#and i am literally in constant fear of everything all the time so i mean. i'm trying my best.

[oscalesoffeeling]

i love that my milf can rip a bitch to shreds with his bare hands and teeth :)

#*picture of a skinny ass old man* omggg he's sooo big and strong hoooo my gosh *twirling my hair* #he could probably throw me over his shoulder tho fr lmao (please?) #how come my hands are so famously small and his hands are so.... big and strong and scarred with all those... nice long sinuous fingers..... #comparing hand sizes and his just fucking engulf mine. holding hands is like.... WOAH. hand on my face and it just eclipses me. #hand on my back and even though i'm kinda stout it just. fucking wow. covers my lower back Totally. big hands on that fucker. #anyway i just find his willingness to and capabilities of murder to be very very reassuring actually. #i would love for him to casually and ruthlessly kill ppl 4 me tbh.... he'll always keep me safe :) #he's my security. like. i never feel safer than when i'm with him <3333 helloooo.. #sometimes i feel kinda guilty for relying so heavily on my f/os to feel safe and secure. and for motivation to perform basic life skills etc #you get it. but they make me so happy. you've got to understand this. they make me happier than anything else #and i am literally in constant fear of everything all the time so i mean. i'm trying my best. #like. i AM a frail little weak sickly mfer who needs constant consistent reassurance and security to feel like enough. #to feel loved or complete or safe. and like. yeah i enjoy being doted on lmao. #ellie rambles about stuff #he spun the stars on his fingernails (tag)

[boldlygoingtohell]

In a weird way, as a Jew, I can kinda take Normal Antisemitism™️.

I mean, I understand where right-wing racists are coming from when it comes to their antisemitism. At the end of the day, theirs just comes from fear, replacement theory, etc… It’s easily identifiable. 2+2=4. Yea its shitty, but I see how they got from A to B and it’s a straight line.

But left-wing antisemitism?? Like, how does that happen? I thought the left was about supporting minority groups, encouraging them to speak and be heard. But all I’m seeing from leftists these days (I myself being super fucking liberal, left, etc…) is just waves and waves of antisemitism. And yes it has to do with Israel, but these people are incapable of criticizing the Israeli government without going “all Jews are responsible!” in the process. It's infuriating.

Are all the the world’s Jews, millions of which live OUTSIDE of Israel, now responsible for Israel’s actions? I'M a stupid American! I’ve never even BEEN to Israel, much less know the intricate details of a geo-political conflict whose complexities go willfully unlearned by armchair activists in favor of yelling in all caps for 140 characters.

But what really gets me, and I mean REALLY get me about the whole situation, is the hypocrisy.

Remember how awful it was when we saw waves of Islamophobic hate crimes after 9/11, American Muslims with no ties to al-Qaeda being targeted for the faith those terrorists claimed to represent?

Or do you remember standing against the wave of anti-Asian hate crimes that was spurned on by COVID falsehoods? The “China virus” as Trump so eloquently put it? You remember being pissed about that, not blaming Asian Americans but standing with them against hate?

And hell, I’ve heard there has been a rash of Islamophobic attacks again because of the Israeli-Gaza conflict. That’s fucking awful, and I will stand against that bull shit because it does not belong here, end of story.

But now there are also antisemitic attacks, hate crimes, being perpetrated around the world. And who are the perpetrators now? The left that stood against everything else. There's no widespread ally-ship for Jews like me. There's no sweeping social media campaign, no catchy hashtag, no ice bucket challenge.

Why am I allowed to be condemned for what a country on the other side of the world is doing, when I have nothing to do with it? Why can I have the finger pointed at me when I don’t want the fighting in the first place? Why must Jews be allowed to be the target of this ire when it's already been decided that other ethnicities/religions don't deserve it either?

Now, I am PROUD to be Jewish; it is my culture, in my heritage, in my literal blood. It is in my genetics, my bones, my spoken language, it is in the holidays I celebrate, the philosophies I live by.

But it is also in the generational trauma of my mother insisting I have a passport as a young child, not because we were traveling, but in case we had to flee. It is in her inherent distrust of the government; a card-carrying Democrat all her life, she would always remind me, "if you don't think the government can't turn on you, you're kidding yourself." It is her constant reminders that as a Jew, our assimilation is conditional, our acceptance is political. I felt these, but never as strongly as she did. Not until now.

I am third generation American, and yet I feel like an outsider in the only country I have ever known. People who I thought understood, who were my friends, who marched with me against the injustices of the world, are now calling after Jews to answer for Israel's actions.

I say I don't want the violence to persist and I'm told that I'm, "one of the good ones". I'm told hurt Israelis don't deserve sympathy because, "all Jews are rich anyway, right? Who cares." I tell them my fears about the rising antisemitism and wearing my star of david necklace out. I'm told, "it doesn't matter, you're white anyway."

For the first time in my life, the racists aren't just some crazy KKK members. They're not just Nazis marching around with beer bellies and ill fitting helmets. It's not just some screeching street preacher who claims I'm going to hell after he caught the glint off my star of david necklace. If needs be, I can kick and punch my way out of those. They're just idiots. Isolated, concentrated incidents. It'd be a good story to tell at a bar the next day though a gap-toothed smile and a sling on my shoulder.

But now, both sides are coming after me and my people. Now, it's not just idiots who have all of their views backwards; it's people I thought I could trust to have my back, to go down swinging with me against those Nazis. Right. Left. It's everywhere. There's no escape.

It's coming from all sides. It's coming from social media platforms, from dinners with friends, from posters on street lamps.

I live in one of the safest, most Jewish neighborhoods in America, and for the first time in my life I am truly scared.

#jumblr #antisemitism #judaism #jewish #I'm just so tired of it all #I wasn't an anxious person before this #racism #long post I guess #can we go back to the days of punching Nazis? #life was simple

[no-droids]

Another Rough Day

gif credit @chrishemsworht

Part Twenty of the Rough Day Series

Rating: Explicit

Word Count: 13.7K

Warnings: Angst, violence, canon-typical blood and gore, language, hurt/comfort

A/N: i wanna thank yall for sticking around during my hermit era, in the time ive been gone i am now officially a junior at a university majoring in aerospace and it’s a fuckin nightmare and i hate everything and god help us all literally kill me and I will be posting INCREDIBLY slowly because of that (I’m talkin weeks or months in between updates yall, im sorry I can’t dedicate more time to this but I am going to finish this fic within the next handful of chapters idk maybe 5 or 6 so you shouldn’t have to wait too too long).  As a heads up there will be hard angst as we enter the final arc, there will be hurt and it’ll get dark but everything is gonna turn out alright so thanks for sticking with me and continuing to stick with me. im sorry if you dont like it or your expectations were subverted or if this isn’t what you’d hoped it would be after following and waiting around for so long but this was planned a long time ago and it took me a good year or two to recognize that I started writing this fic for me and now I’m going to end it writing for me and I hope yall can respect that

ALSO I asked my best BEST FRIEND in the entire world @cptnbvcks to collaborate with me for this after we both took a very long break from creating and she drew some GORGEOUS artwork for this chapter so it will be posted at the end, everyone please go follow her and say hello

ps brittany girl you’re a fuckin menace i had to use my own two ears and listen to ethan literally say the words “the mandalorian cums, hard” what the fuck was that im actually suing

anyways chapter below the cut lets get serious yall

---

You take two of them down before they even realize they’re being attacked.

Your aim is as swift and steady as if Din were behind your shoulder right now, calmly pointing out which stationary tree to hit next in rapid succession.  You’re positioned perfectly at the bottom of the ramp to take full advantage of the ambush, the only thing running through your mind is strategy and the constant calculating of angles and ricochets.  The other three troopers are trapped inside the open Crest and you’re right next to a large boulder that you can step behind for cover, but it proves unnecessary as the rumors were apparently true.

They’re… awful.

Not a single blaster is even fired in your direction—you think you see maybe one panicked red shot bounce around in the hull, but that’s it.  The troopers fumble for their guns and trip over each other at the unexpected attack—a few scream like children through the modulators, but you’re temporarily deaf to anything besides the screech of your weapon hitting its target and the crumpling of armored bodies.

Later on, if someone were to ask you to describe exactly what happened—who died first, who ran for cover, who cried out for help—you don’t think you’d be able to.  You don’t even really feel like a person right now.  The entire thing is cold, robotic survival instinct, pure ruthlessness rising in your soul for the first time in your life.  It feels sick.  Wrong in your bones.  Born from preemptive defense in fear of your life, but that doesn’t mean you stop.  Not until all of them stop moving.

You empty the entire fucking canister for a handful of stormtroopers, firing plasma and char marks across every square inch of the pristine hull even after the last one drops.  Your heart is beating too fast, your finger keeps pulling the trigger multiple times even after the blaster clicks uselessly, completely empty and beeping a warning that it must’ve begun emitting ages ago.  Being out of ammo scares you—you suddenly feel vulnerable, even though the very far away logical part of your mind reminds you that they have to all be dead at this point and no physical threat was ever able to graze you.

Regardless, you quickly spin behind the boulder and grab another canister from your belt, giving it a spare check for leaks while the empty one slides and drops to the rocky ground.  It’s the first time you’ve ever had to reload this weapon instead of just pointing and shooting, but the mechanics are relatively simple and your brain makes up for your lack of coherent thoughts with lightning fast perception.  What's difficult is that your hands are starting to shake now that you’re not aiming, you’re not breathing correctly because you’re not really breathing at all.  You can’t tell the difference between the adrenaline-fueled dissociative silence that muffles everything around you or if it really is just that quiet now.  No more clatter of armor, no modulated voices or terrified screams.  No blasters, no footsteps along the ramp, no birds singing.

You quickly pause to lift your elbow and check the enormous eyes blinking up at you, tiny claws still holding tight to the fabric of your tunic and completely unharmed, and then you force yourself to move.  The blaster is held out in front of you while you walk forward and your finger rests on the trigger, begging to be pulled again.  It’s suspenseful and terrifying in a different way than before—now it’s less about psyching yourself up for confrontation and more about the fact that any sudden movement could mean your very swift end.

Silence.  Silence.  You’re numb and raw at the same time, walking up the ramp as your eyes fly everywhere, not even registering the blood or gore, just searching for movement.  You don’t know if you feel like a predator or prey, you’re that much more brutal and inhuman because of how fucking terrified you are.  You count four stormtroopers in the hull laying crumpled and still on the metal floor, but the one in the far corner only has blood on his shoulder.  You quickly swing the blaster around to remedy that, but then—

“P-Please don’t kill me!”

His words remind you of something.  Reality, maybe.  A world outside yourself and the kid’s survival, the living beings behind the bloody armor your enemies wear.

It’s a miracle your finger stays hovering over the trigger, and you watch him throw the blaster at your feet with a clang and scramble to show you his empty hands.  “Please don’t kill me, please don’t kill me—I’m not loyal to the Empire, I don’t want to be here, please, I don’t want to die, I don’t want to die—”

Behind the mask, your expression furrows.  Stormtroopers are loyal to the bitter end, what is he saying?  They embrace their expendiality, it’s the only thing that makes them any sort of a real threat.  Kuiil told you horror stories about them during your childhood, the cloning facilities and the propaganda they’re force fed since infancy.  It’s nearly impossible to find one who hasn’t been raised from birth to serve the Empire, no matter how crumbled and trace its remaining authority may be.

No, this is a trap, it has to be.  Your expression twists with dread after hearing him speak, readjusting your aim with the blaster and preparing yourself for the years of nightmares that’ll follow—but then he cries out, “Wait!” and then removes his helmet with trembling hands.

You pause, staring down at him in shock.

It’s him, you recognize him immediately.  It’s the same face from a hologram puck you bore into your memory, spent multiple days staring at so you’d be able to spot him under any disguise or circumstances.  Oshua Ryler.  Your quarry, the fifth puck, the one Din was out Maker knows where searching for before this entire mess happened.  A stormtrooper?  His puck said nothing about the Empire, this doesn’t make any sense.  What is he doing here?  Stormtroopers don’t have pucks, they don’t have bounties or relatives or loved ones searching for them.  They’re brainwashed, replaceable, faceless soldiers in suits of armor and they don’t even have names.

“Please don’t kill me,” he begs again, staring at you with wide eyes even as he cowers.  “I have a family, I-I just want to go home, please—”

“Shut up.”  You can’t think straight with him crying like that and you’re wasting so much time just standing here trying to process when your brain had to literally shut itself down to even do the things you’ve already done.  You have to kill him and escape, you have to—you can’t trust this complication, not with the tiny claws currently digging into your back and reminding you of your purpose, but it was so much easier when he had on a helmet.  You hate looking at his face.  It’s going to haunt your dreams now, just like the man you stabbed on Corellia.

“Please don’t kill me—please don’t kill me,” he screws his eyes up and breathes over and over instead, and your stomach wrenches with disgust.  His posture and expression are so fucking pitiful, you can barely keep your eyes on him through the overwhelming nausea and aversion that climbs up your throat.  He’s with the Empire, and they’re looking for the baby.  You know what needs to be done.  Pull the trigger, just one small movement from you and it’ll be all over.  It would be the easiest thing in the world, it would be so easy.

But then instead, you ask, “Why are you a stormtrooper?”

“I’m n-not—I hate the Empire—”

“The Empire is ashes.”  You don’t know if you’re yelling or whispering with how much blood is roaring through your ears.  “They hold no power anymore.  Why are you with them?”

“Because the one thing they have left is money!”  The quarry shrills the words at you, ghostly pale to the point of turning green.  “Th-They buy troopers now—they opened up a whole new market for the smugglers, there’s a base nearby that’s used for training and…”  He stares wide eyed at you and gulps.  “C-Conditioning.”

Your brain is already going a trillion lightyears an hour and it doesn’t have the capacity to empathize or understand anything beyond the child’s survival and the relevant details right now.  “Were they expecting the baby?”

“W-What?”  He squeaks up at you.

“Was the bounty put out on you a trap set by the Empire?”  You ask him, lifting your free arm just enough to flash him the tiny child clinging to your side.  “He said they’re coming after the baby, so tell me if this was planned from the beginning.”

“Who is ‘he’?”  The stormtrooper asks, furrowing his eyebrows and looking around.  “What are you talki—”

“Tell me if the bounty on you was a trap to take this baby!”  You roar, your blaster shaking as you aim it down at him.  Your mind is acutely focused on the tiny claws hanging onto your tunic, the continued safety of the kid and the life or death situation facing him that you were given absolutely no information about.  “Now—”

“If it was I didn’t know!”  He quickly cries out, pleading with you and clamping his eyes shut in terror under the barrel sight.  “I don’t know anything about a b-baby, or a bounty!  They just put blasters in our hands and told us to search for a ship and to bring back anyone we find alive, I swear!”

You’re silent for a moment, biting your lip under the mask and caught halfway between discerning and stalling.  You could still kill him.  You should still kill him, time is ticking down and more troopers could be heading this way any second.

Shit.  “Who put the bounty out on you?”  You ask sharply.  It might not be a completely fair question, but he can’t exactly blame you for not feeling completely fair right now.

“I—I don’t know,” he gasps, clutching his bleeding shoulder.  “Could’ve been anyone—my mother, Cyra, o-or my dad, Obediah, or Thia, or Benja, or S—”

“Thia,” you interrupt his rambling, catching the slurred word and repeating it back to him.

“Yes!”  Oshua jerks his head up, tears and hope immediately filling his eyes at the sound of her name, “Yes, Thiadura Celi Ryler, that’s my sister!”

Maker, if he’s lying, then he’s fucking brilliant at it.  You look towards the cockpit of the ship, biting your lip under the mask.  Get to Nevarro, tell Karga and he’ll… something.  Din was cut off before he finished.  Help?  Know what to do?  You’re lost, but you have a clear directive and the precious seconds are sliding by.  The controls are right up there, two steps to the ladder and less than a minute until you’re rising into the atmosphere.

But then you think back to the terror in Din’s voice.  The blistering panic that made him speak faster and with more urgency than you’ve ever heard from him.  Get to Nevarro.  Tell Karga.  Get to Nevarro.  Tell Karga.

You look back at the quarry.  “How many of you are there?”

“At the base?  Around three hundred,” he immediately spills.  “Half of us are in the hole right now getting brainwashed, they do it in shifts, but they can be mobilized in a few hours.  There were a lot of bodies outside when we were ordered to split off, maybe a third of our squadron, but the rest were still shooting at whatever was—”

“So around a hundred left,”  You finish breathlessly, almost wanting him to speak faster and cut to the chase so you can calculate quicker.  “How many were dispatched on the search?”

“Uh, there were eight groups of five sent in each major direction,” he informs you, still trembling on the ground.  “Told us not to come back until we covered the entire sector.”

Of which, four you’ve already taken care of.  In other circumstances, you’d be nauseated at the thought, but right now, it’s just another number to subtract, just more panicked math in Din’s frightening absence.  That leaves at least sixty troopers left wherever the base is, minimum, and likely a couple more hours before they’ve combed the sector.  If this wasn’t a preconceived trap purposefully set for the kid, then that means reinforcements haven’t arrived yet but likely will soon.  And if this is a base meant for training and conditioning, then that also means there’s a chance not all of them will be loyal yet.

You make the decision immediately.

“Okay,” you announce, clicking the blaster’s safety switch and holstering it, sounding lightyears more certain than you feel.  “Then you’re going to help me carry out a rescue mission, and I’ll take you back to your sister.”

“You…”  He looks uncertain, blinking at your blaster and slowly lowering his hands.  “You want to rescue the men?”

Ideally?  Sure.  Realistically?  You don’t say anything in response.  Instead, you kick his regulation firearm at your feet further away from the quarry just in case your judgment is flawed, and then turn around and grab one of the bodies behind you.

Your adrenaline is still blaring so fast that you only just barely note the severity of what you’ve just done and what you’re continuing to do.  The corpses aren’t real to you right now, they’re inanimate things that you need out of your ship before you can close the doors to it.  They are, however, heavy as fuck, but the only other adult here has a wound in his arm from the gun on your hip.  Regardless, you have experience with lifting dead weight without a big, strong, capable man to do it for you.

“Help me out here, kid,” you mutter over your shoulder, and in response, you feel his claws dig in and climb up just a little bit until he can peek out in front of you.  Thankfully, the burden is suddenly lifted and you can quickly slide the dead troopers down the ramp with ease.  It takes hardly any time at all—you just yank and haul and release and all four of them tumble the rest of the way all by themselves.

When you stand back up, Oshua hasn’t moved and he’s looking at you with a pale, queasy expression.  Glancing down, you see that your white robe is now stained with streaks and patches of rusty blood.  Instead of swallowing back bile at the sight and bolting to the shower to scrub off every last remaining trace, you breeze past it, noting nothing more than a change of color.  Dirtying your white, pristine clothing with the consequences of protecting this baby—you’d rather have blood-soaked fabric with an unharmed kid clinging to you than any other combination of those things.

“Can you make it up to the cockpit?”  You ask the quarry, kicking his rifle off the ship before closing the ramp and then gesturing up the ladder.  Your voice is calm and steady but your hands are beginning to shake again.  “I need as much information as possible about the base.”  You know that’s where Din is, judging from the wall of blaster screeches that drowned him out through the comm.  Logically, you know you could be headed right into a trap, and every instinct inside you wants to find safety, but… you just cannot imagine flying the ship away from this planet without Din onboard.  It isn’t fucking happening, you’ve made your choice.

Without waiting for a response, you climb the ladder and plop down in the pilot’s seat of the Crest.  While Oshua finds some way to clamber up the steps behind you in bulky stormtrooper armor with one good arm, you hold the kid closer on your lap and begin flight checking.  Din will be fucking furious, but the scolding you’ll be sure to get is the least of your worries right now.  Following his instructions and going back to Nevarro is just making shit infinitely more dangerous for him, turning what could be a potential rescue mission into an undeniable suicide mission.  Even if Karga somehow decides to send a few guild members along to infiltrate the base, it’ll be a war you want to avoid.

Besides.  What did you always tell him about running away from him, even when he instructs you to?

It’s just… not really your thing.

---

They’re everywhere.

They crawl like flies out of the base, and for every single body that falls, three more spill from the open doors.  Rapid fire plasma beams launch from the end of Din’s blaster, melting white armor with every twitch of his gloved finger.  Their aim is terrible, as is to be expected, but the sheer number of them more than makes up for it, as is by design.

Din’s heart pounds with exertion, his breath comes in ragged huffs through the modulator as his helmet identifies and isolates which body is closest to him, which body he needs to bring down next.  His blaster is so hot it nearly burns his hand, even through the thick gloves he wears.  When he runs out of ammo, he holsters the pistol and swings his rifle from around his shoulder, spinning to catch a handful of troopers behind him in the obliterating blast.

He’s not thinking much.  He can’t think, even though your safety and that of his son is currently dangling by a thread.  If he focuses on that, he’ll be dead before he can even picture your faces.  He just reacts, he maims and kills without a single thought in his mind.  Blood splatters, screams and sirens blare as he becomes surrounded by more and more troopers.  Din can hear the sound of plasma colliding and ricocheting off his armor; every single one of them is a potential injury he could currently have but might not even be able to feel right now.

His helmet starts beeping rapidly and he turns just enough to see, highlighted in bright red on the screen, two enormous artillery turrets slowly rising up out of the roof of the imperial base.  He feels a fierce flash of anger burn in his chest, it’s like a lightning strike to his veins.

Din needs to go.

And yet… if he was another man.  If he wasn’t a father, or a husband, if he had no family and no attachments like the creed declared he should, he would go.  With just a twitch of his fingers, he could be launching into the sky and retreating as far away from this battlefield as he could reasonably get.  He’s never been the type to run from a threat, but this isn’t just a threat.  Dozens of troopers are gaining on him, they’re trampling their own dead to get within range.  Plasma pings off his shoulder, another one hits his back as they flank from behind.  He can feel the heat through the sizzling beskar, he can see them surrounding him on all sides, and the propulsion trigger for his jetpack is right there under his wrist.

Din holds his ground and continues firing, he plants his feet firmly to the dirt with only one thought in his mind.

Run, sweet girl.  Run.

---

You type in commands to scan for Din’s signal, quickly locating it through the Crest’s computer onboard.  Not far from here, three minutes or less.  The ship rumbles to life beneath you, slowly lifting off the rocky ground and rotating in place as it hovers.  It’s not on autopilot but you feel like you are, you can barely feel your hands as they move the yoke forward and the Crest takes off in the direction of Din’s blinking frequency.

“Tell me about defenses,” you instruct Oshua, restlessly bouncing your leg while the baby coos.

“Two plasma turrets on top of the base,” the quarry quickly answers.  “There’s usually guards stationed around the perimeter, but everyone who’s capable will be outside right now.”

Your mouth twists downwards under the mask.  Blasters don’t scare you much from this high up, but Din’s armor doesn’t cover every inch of his body, he’s not completely invincible.  Doubt churns in your stomach, but you have to stay focused on one task at a time so you don’t get overwhelmed.  The turrets, then.  “Are they automatic?”

“Manual,” he corrects with a shake of his head.

“Radar?”

“Old.  Only engages above fifty meters.”

You eye your altitude and dip the Crest considerably, beginning to weave through the rocky canyons and dodging crumbling cliffs while you travel.  “What about ships?”

“None,” Oshua says, “except for a passenger shuttle used for transport.  TIEs are flown in the Vesta sector, this base is remote and used for basic training only.”

“Anything else?”  You ask, stomach twisting with the knowledge that barely four questions is all you’ve got.  You’re planning to drop into an imperial base to save the man you love and you can’t think of a single other question?  

The quarry shrugs, and your heart slams, does somersaults in your chest at the mere notion that you could fucking die here.  Today, in two minutes or less, you could die here.  The child in your lap looking over the ship’s front panel with a quiet determination in his eyes could die here.  Din could already be dead—that signal broadcasts his location to this computer regardless of whether he’s still breathing or not.  He could already be gone and you’d be flying the baby right into a trap without knowing any differently.

Whelp, you think while taking a deep breath, some strangely calm existential acceptance beginning to flood your soul.  If he isn’t dead, he will be soon if you don’t make it to him on time.

You immediately lift your wrist and speak into the communicator.  “Mando?”  You have no idea if he can hear you, but you need to try anyway.  Your voice is still firm, there’s a strength to it you don’t feel in your chest, but it certainly sounds convincing.  “I’m coming to get you.  Less than a minute to your location, do everything you can to get outside.  If you can’t, I’ll just… uh.  Try to figure something else out.”

That’s it.  That’s it, improvise until you don’t have to.  Even if you’re lacking confidence, you can at least scrounge up some conviction.  Your arms gain feeling again while you veer the Crest through the stony terrain, the familiar reverberations under your feet begin to fill your body with a powerful sense of purpose.  Your breaths begin to come steady, every falling rock you see through the transparisteel feels like it drops in slow motion, allowing you to evade them easily.  It would normally be stupidly dangerous to fly this low with so many unexpected obstacles and hazards narrowly missing the ship, but considering what you’re flying into, a few boulders seems comical.

“Where’s your helmet?”  Oshua asks out of nowhere, and for a second, you don’t think you heard him correctly.

But then it strikes you all at once what he’s attempting to imply, and the sheer lunacy of the thought is enough to make you laugh while you clutch the controls.  “I’m not a Mandalorian.”

“You wear the armor of one,” he points out… rather fairly, you have to admit.  “You cover your face like one.  You have a blaster that fires Philithiorium, a rare and expensive gas native to Mandalore’s stratosphere, and you’re a bounty hunter—”

“I’m not a Mandalorian.”  Your words are short and cutting, you have a daunting task to focus on and don’t feel like having small talk right now.  “I’m not a bounty hunter, either.”

But then again, Karga made you a member of the Guild, didn’t he?  He handed you Oshua’s puck and said this one is for you to find, and you are technically part of a Mandalorian clan.  All of this seems like it happened without your knowledge.  You may be marrying a Mandalorian, you may wear his armor and mother his child and shoot a blaster with his signet branded into it, but war isn’t in your blood.  This robe was a costume when you first made it, this armor was a relic that was restored as a hobby.  In a sense, it still feels that way.  The mask covering your face lended itself to a temporary surge of bravery earlier, but beyond that, the only thing that’s keeping you moving forward now is your family.  The man you love that may or may not be alive right now, the baby holding tight to your leg while the ship sways and weaves through the stony landscape.

Your eyes quickly flick down to the child in your lap, both of his three fingered hands clutching onto the stained fabric of your knee without moving a single inch.  He’d know, you tell yourself.  If his father is gone, he’d already know somehow.  Din is still alive, and he’s counting on you.

---

There’s too many for Din to handle.

They swarmed him, overpowered his endless artillery with massive numbers and there’s nothing he can do anymore.  The backs of his knees are kicked from behind and he slams down to the ground with a clatter, his sizzling hot blasters are ripped from him, and Din folds his hands calmly behind his back even as one of the stormtroopers barks out, “Binders,” to another one, who disappears quickly in response.  In the meantime, a few of them apparently decide to just attempt holding his arms in place, and their measly combined grip is almost enough to make him roll his eyes under the helmet.  These imperial soldiers are even more pitiful than they usually are, but his silent resolve to stall to ensure your escape is enough to keep him stationary and compliant for the time being.

Eventually, a few voices call out from beyond the crowd and there’s some movement from the back.  Dozens of troopers with their blasters all pointed at him begin to shuffle to make way, careful to keep their barrels aimed at him while a path slowly forms.  The crowd of white parts and a stormtrooper with a singular red pauldron on his right shoulder saunters confidently towards Din as he kneels on the ground.

An officer, he assumes.  Conveniently missing from the firefight, the scanner inside his helmet would’ve caught the change in color and Din would’ve made sure to kill him first.

“Well now, what do we have here?”  Comes his thin metallic voice through the tinny filter.  The officer studies him curiously for a few moments, before slowly looking down by his feet, reaching out one cheap, plastic covered foot to gently nudge the body of a dead trooper on the ground with a sigh.  “What a shame.”

Coward, he thinks, his lip curling with disgust under the helmet.

“This is an imperial training base,” he turns his attention back to Din to inform him when he doesn’t immediately respond, rather stupidly he might add.  “How were you able to find us?”

Silence.  The grip on hands held behind his back is even looser now.  He just tilts his chin up slightly in defiance, the scanner inside his helmet locating each weapon strapped to the man’s body and highlighting it red.  Small text boxes blink into existence under each one with a manufacturer and classification—a BlasTech E-11 rifle, a Merr-Sonn thermal detonator, a Kolvo vibroblade—and Din is severely unimpressed with the quality.  The detonator is the only weapon that even catches his eye, and that’s only because the chamber inside that houses the explosive baradium has a release mechanism that’s completely dead.  Useless, then.  Good to know.

After a long moment of quiet tension where Din refuses to speak and the officer continues to confidently scrutinize him, in some strange sort of silent battle of egos that only one seems to have a genuine interest in, another stormtrooper makes his way to the front, shoving past his fellow soldiers to address the superior in charge.

“Commander, we’ve sent out an alert for an intruder,” he tells him, slightly out of breath from running through the crowd in the lightweight armor.  Din wants to roll his eyes, but what he says next makes him snap to immediate attention.  “The fleet informed us that Moff Gideon is currently on route.”

Gideon.  The last time someone spoke that name, it was a quarry on Coruscant and you just barely managed to stop Din from suffocating the bastard for even saying it aloud before freezing him in carbonite.  It would’ve meant half the return on a hunt that lasted nearly a month but he saw red and his hand was crushing his windpipe before he realized what happened.  But he’s dead, Din thinks with a clenched jaw and fists tightening behind his back, he watched that TIE fighter explode and slam into the ground, crushing the man inside it.  The wreck was unsurvivable, he can’t be alive.

“For what?  This Mandalorian?”  The trooper in charge scoffs in response, and Din remains completely mute.

“Yes, sir,” the other one confirms.  “Orders were to capture him, alive.”

“Hm.”  The officer turns his attention back to him, less analyzing and more musing while he tilts his head.  “I see,” he eventually says, and he sounds like he’s grinning, before strolling slightly closer as Din stays completely still on his knees.  “He must want the beskar.  I’m sure it’s worth more than this entire battalion combined.”

All of a sudden, a gloved hand carelessly catches the rim of his helmet and tugs, and Din’s movement is explosive.  He launches off the ground, arms easily slipping from the pathetic grip they were being held in and his fist colliding with the side of the officer’s flimsy white helmet, the plastic making a deafening crack against his face.

Multiple hands immediately rush forward to grab him and yank him back down again while the commanding trooper stumbles backwards in shock, and Din amicably drops to his knees and folds his hands behind his back once more like nothing happened at all.

“Binders!”  A trooper behind him roars loudly once more, and a few men surrounding him begin trotting away this time.

The officer in red stands a few feet away from him now, grabbing his helmet and twisting it back to its proper position on his head where it was skewed.  There’s a shattered hole near his jaw where the material splintered and busted like the cheap piece of banthashit it is, and while he might normally feel pleased with himself for being able to see his skin peeking through, it just fills him with more righteous fury.  It’s such a punchable jaw.

After a few awkward moments of silence, the other one clears his throat and continues.  “He… has inquired about the location and status of a child that should be accompanying him.”

Din inhales deeply through his nose and grinds his teeth.  He wants to snap their necks one by one for even just mentioning his son, but there are just too many, more than even his whistling birds can neutralize.  Still, he gave you as much of a head start as physically possible.  You should be rising into the atmosphere right now, making the jump into hyperspace towards safety.  Karga will know what to do—he’ll protect his family, separate you and the boy so the threat is evenly dispersed instead of collected all in one place, and arm dozens of trained hunters to keep watch over you both individually.  It’s the best Din can do, and it’s the only thing keeping his knees planted on the ground and his body completely motionless while they continue speaking.

“We are combing the sector for a ship with as many men as we can afford to lose,” the trooper in red says, but his voice filter is shattered and now sounds like a puny little droid with a broken voice box, “but our numbers are unimpressive.  Assistance may be required.”

It’s too late, Din thinks, mouth twitching under the beskar with a satisfied smirk.  They’re wasting their time, looking for a ghost.  You’re both long gone by now.  They’ve got no idea you even exist—

“He also spoke of a girl.”

And then he feels his heart stop in his chest.  Every single cell in his body turns to fire, it’s a fucking miracle he doesn’t move a muscle in response.  His sweet girl, the one so far removed from the nightmare of the Empire that she made best friends with the orphans of it.  How the fuck did he know?  He shouldn’t even be breathing, let alone gathering information about you, how did he know?

But then Din thinks back, remembering your makeshift bed on the floor, your panicked eyes and heaving chest as the quarry taunted him with a sick little smile.  Who’s this, Mando?  She’s just darling, isn’t she?  Does Gideon know your crew has a lovely new addition?

“A girl?”

The trooper nods.  “Moff Gideon insisted that if the Mandalorian did not have a child with him, then a girl would likely be protecting him instead.”

He’s going to kill them, Din decides.  Every single one of these imperial pigs, every single soldier standing right now is a dead fucking man.  The blood pumping through his body suddenly turns to acid, deadly black hate poisoning his soul.  His heartbeat morphs into a war drum, the armor strapped to his limbs is the barrel of a gun.  He’s going to fucking kill them and leave an imperial base full of bodies to greet his old nemesis upon his return, and he’s going to enjoy every single second of it.

Except, then—

“Mando?”  The sweetest voice in existence suddenly crackles through the earpiece under his helmet.  “I’m coming to get you.  Less than a minute to your location, do everything you can to get outside.  If you can’t, I’ll just… uh.  Figure something else out.”

And, as Din kneels there in surrender, surrounded by a crowd of enemies he thought he destroyed long ago, all the anger—all the fury and defiance and murder surging through his veins—suddenly morphs to fear.

The emotion is so foreign and old to him, it feels like a face he barely recognizes and a name he can’t remember.  He’s panicked before.  He’s been in situations where a threat has made him blind with rage, he knows what it’s like to look death straight in the eyes and say that he’s busy and to come back another time.  This is different.  This is ice cold that freezes over beskar.

He can’t speak out loud to warn you—he can’t move his hands to press the button on the back of his helmet and allow him to talk without detection.  There’s plasma turrets on the roof of the base, he can see them right now.  The helmet’s scanners say they’re manned and engaged, and though he is outside and this is how you retrieved him before whenever he needed a quick escape, he has fifty fucking imperial blasters trained on him and you know absolutely nothing about this threat.  You’re flying right into a war zone and if either you or his son dies, he won’t ever be able to forgive himself.

Behind the helmet, his eyes fly to each and every trooper, wondering which blaster will be the one to do it.  Which weapon is going to be the one he can’t block in time when you descend, the one that’ll kill him right in front of you.  Which turret will be the one to obliterate the Crest with you and his son inside of it.

“Maker, where are those fucking binders—” he hears someone behind him snarl, but the white noise of pure terror roaring through his ears drowns them out.  His chest starts heaving against his will, sheer panic begins to blur his vision.  For the first time in his life, his armor feels too heavy, his lungs feel like one of these boulders are sitting on them instead of beskar.

All too soon, his helmet starts making a familiar sound that signals quietly in his ear, alerting him of an incoming ship, and the only thing he can physically do is count down the seconds to prepare himself for what is to come.

Ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two…

Like lightning, Din breaks the grip of multiple troopers and surges up, tackling the officer in red to the ground.  There’s a clatter as they both slam into the rocky floor, but in the ensuing scuffle, he easily snatches the thermal detonator from his side holster and holds it up for everyone to see, before pressing the red button on the front and hearing it begin to beep rapidly.

---

You’re right on time.

The Crest rises up through the rocky cliffs surrounding the base and you spot the turrets you were warned about.  Weapons controls are already engaged and you’re too low to be detected by radar—you fire once, twice, and blast both of them to smithereens from behind before they can even rotate around to target you.

Alarms start wailing but the guns are destroyed.  It’s not comforting, though; blasters won’t touch you up here, but that doesn’t mean they can’t fire at Din on the ground.  Your eyes dart across the sea of white, looking for a flash of silver anywhere, and then you spot him instantly in the chaos.

For some reason, the troopers in his vicinity all seem to be bolting away from him.  Their rifles are down, clutched in their hands while they nearly fall over each other to run away as fast as possible, and your heart soars when you spot his jetpack firing up.  Din launches into the sky while another trooper is revealed underneath him, seeming to juggle something in his hands and then throw it into the crowd of retreating soldiers, but the sight of the man you love rising into the air while a flurry of blaster shots from the far edges of the imperial structure follow him gives you the confidence to immediately turn the guns down towards the horde of troopers.

“Which ones are in charge?”  You ask Oshua breathlessly, who leans forward and points out the transparisteel.

“Red pauldrons—” he barely has time to say it before you aim and fire at one of the troopers wearing red that was closest to Din, the plasma beam launching from the Crest so powerful and devastating that it outright obliterates the surface he’s laying on.  Pieces of shattered armor fly and a smoking crater of rubble is all that’s left behind, but your mind is whirling and you’re already onto someone else wearing red at the edges of the complex, and then two more near the doors, and then another—

To their credit, you think the sixty or so soldiers in training seem to figure out that you’re not aiming into the enormous collection of them.  If you were, the damage would be catastrophic and spraying everywhere, but you’re precise and meticulous with your shots, and the only ones who are loyal enough to the cause to hold still and raise their blasters at the incoming threat tend to be the ones you need to mow down anyways.  The rest of them scatter in all directions, scrambling over each other to escape and then disappearing into the distant boulders surrounding the base—but you notice that not a single one of them runs back inside the safety of its open doors.

The hull dips with the weight of Din dropping in, and relief floods your soul even as you continue raining hell down on the superiors in charge.  Any flash of color you see is a target, your eyes lose focus of everything, your vision blurs and turns monochrome as you just search for red.

“Lift up!”  You hear Din’s voice roar from the hull.  You can hear his rifle unloading through the open door.  “Now!  We have to go now!”

You press the button to shut the hull door with Din inside and punch it, rising so fast that the shove of gravity makes it difficult to keep your head up.  Through the sudden surge of downward force, you just barely manage to raise your incredibly heavy arm to push the button that pressurizes the Crest and ignites the launch boosters, preparing the vessel for space travel.  Outside the transparisteel, the gray sky begins darkening as the atmosphere eventually disappears.  The ship’s engines roar, burning so much fuel at once that you’re actually accelerating through the climb, you’re boosting through the gradual ease of gravity as the planet’s curvature and glow becomes softer and softer below you.

As soon as the blackness of space begins to fill the windows, the slight subsiding of force allows you to plug in the coordinates for Nevarro with less difficulty, but you’re still moving, still rising, still escaping.  You can’t find it within yourself to slow down, but then something catches your attention.

Claws suddenly dig sharp into your thigh, sharp enough to sting and cause you to wince, and you look down to see that the kid has gone incredibly tense.  Deadly tense.  Your heart is still pounding even though you’re away from danger, you’ve got Din in the hull, everyone is safe, and yet—

It flickers into existence all at once.  One second it’s just space, just the endless depths of nothingness spread out for light years in front of you, and within the blink of an eye it’s suddenly there.

A star destroyer.

Your body freezes in horrified awe, having never seen a ship so fucking big in your entire life.  It looks like a massive satellite, the size of an enormous asteroid instantly appearing in your vision and dwarfing the vastness of space around it.  All the stars you used to dream about are suddenly blotted out within a fraction of a second, terror so immense seizes your soul that you stop thinking.  You stop calculating, you stop being yourself for a split second that lasts an entire lifetime.

Before you can move a single muscle, the computer beeps quickly and lurches the Crest into hyperspace.

---

The stars streak across the transparisteel like so many times before.  Utter silence nearly deafens you with how abrupt it is after so much noise, but the peace it used to bring does nothing to quell your fear.  Everything is the same as it always was, same bursts of light as you hurdle faster than it towards Nevarro, same quiet, same rumbling hum of the ship.  But now, everything has changed.

You hear the quarry next to you suddenly inhale and exhale loudly, and it shocks you a little bit, reminds you that there’s a person next to you and another is on your lap.  Other people exist outside of the vision of death that just flickered out of existence just as quickly as it appeared.  They’re breathing, Oshua is shakily unbuckling his seatbelt, life is continuing on in the quiet cockpit but you can’t seem to move like he is.  You can’t seem to breathe like he is.  It’s only when the baby slowly maneuvers himself around on your thigh and blinks up at you, placing a tiny hand on your stomach that you finally feel air enter your lungs.

After a moment, you reach down and click open your seatbelt with trembling fingers, scooping the kid up in your arms and slowly attempting to stand.  Everything feels wobbly and dreamlike, you have to brace yourself on the headrest to prevent yourself from falling back into the chair again.

“That was…” Ryler mutters, his voice sounding foggy and distant, “uh.  A close one.”

You look over at him, recognizing that he’s speaking but not quite able to understand the words right now.  Red catches in your vision, and you blink down at the way he’s clutching his left shoulder, the smear of blood darkening the white armor he’s wearing.  You blink a few more times at the sight of it, and though it feels like you normally would be sickened at the wound, somehow shocked out of your state of shock, it does nothing to you.  When you look back up at his face, his expression seems strangely grateful, even when it’s screwed up in what you know must be excruciating pain.    You did that, a quiet voice whispers in your mind, even though the rest of it seems incredibly blank.

Instead of responding, you stumble a few steps over to the ladder, spinning around and hesitating for a moment.  You’re severely lacking in coherent thought, but one thing seems to break through.  You’re not sure if you have enough coordination to do this safely right now.  However, when there’s movement in your peripheral and you look to see Oshua gently offering his right arm to you, seeming to understand you’d like to use both hands for this, you snap back to your senses just the slightest bit and hug the baby tighter to your chest.  Carefully, you begin making the slow climb down the ladder with the kid, still trembling with the aftershocks of adrenaline.  Your limbs feel extra heavy, but eventually the floor meets your feet.

Din is standing there when you slowly turn around, armor gleaming and still as a statue, but he has his back to you.  His helmet is tilted down at the ground, and when you follow his gaze, you’re met with the sight of the bloodstains of dragged bodies that leave dark red streaks all the way up the ramp.

You feel something this time.  It’s… cold.  A burning, searing cold that creeps into your skin.  Like your heart decides to pump nitrogen through your chest instead of warm blood.  You did that.

There’s a sudden urge inside of you to speak, to address him and inform him of your presence, tell him everything is okay, everything worked out, but you can’t find it in yourself to say a single word.  You can’t find a single word to say.  The kid twists as best he can in your clutch, his ears drag against your chest to greet his father, but for some reason, there’s still a strange sense of fear in your bones.  It’s enough to wake you up slightly, it’s enough to tell you it’s not over yet.  There’s a terror in your heart that hasn’t left since he first called over the comm and begged you to run, a crippling dread that you thought climaxed after seeing that star destroyer appear, but it’s somehow only increased after laying eyes on him like this.

You watch as his helmet turns, slowly meeting the pauldron on his shoulder, and for some reason, you feel yourself harden.  Your feet brace against the metal floor like this is another threat you have to face, you let its unyielding metallic strength transfer up through the souls of your boots to your heart in your chest.

But the second you hear cheap white armor clatter as the quarry steps down the ladder behind you, Din bursts into movement.  He suddenly spins and storms up to you in one single step while catching your holstered blaster on your hip.  It’s out and aimed in the blink of an eye, and it’s a miracle you remember how to speak before he remembers how to kill.

“Mando—” you warn, just in time for the quarry to land on the floor of the hull and turn around to reveal his face.

Din holds there for a second, his helmet locked on Oshua’s features.  His gloved fingers twitch wildly on the trigger of your gun held over your shoulder, like he has to remind himself multiple times not to.  You hear Oshua’s armor clack while he likely raises one good arm in surrender, but then Din’s helmet moves a fraction of a millimeter to your face and holds there.  He just stares down at you, and the air feels heavy, your body feels heavy, the feather light child in your arms feels heavy.

Slowly, he lowers his arm, lets it fall while he continues looking at you from behind the visor.  You look back at him, unblinking, unfeeling, and there’s a few seconds that last an utter eternity where nobody moves.  Nobody speaks, nothing happens, but then a soft coo comes from your arms before you can finally break eye contact, knowing there are still some things that need to be done.

You eventually turn around and lift your chin to address Oshua.

“You have to go into carbonite,” you inform him quietly.  Your voice sounds strange, like it’s coming from outside of yourself.  “We’re taking you to Nevarro, and then you’ll be transported to your home planet. When they unfreeze you, your sister will be there to collect you.”

He looks uncertain, one hand still raised while the other hangs uselessly at his side, and you don’t blame him.

But you also don’t feel like saying anymore, not unless he decides he doesn’t want to go in willingly.  Normally you might’ve tried to empathize, offer him further reassurance beyond just a couple short sentences, but you don’t.  Speaking feels difficult, thinking feels difficult.  You’re still in survival mode, not active but reactive.  There’s also no reason for you to lie to him about this, and you can see him glance at Din standing silently behind you, who hasn’t moved a muscle.

He eventually nods and you walk him over to the chamber without another word, watch him turn to face you as he backs into the opening while you reach up towards the control panel.

But then there’s a moment.  One where you hesitate slightly, one where your vision flashes back to the sight of those bloodstains on the floor, and that burning cold fills you again, so cold it feels completely numb.

“I’m… sorry,” you whisper quietly to him, though your voice sounds so empty.  There’s so much emotion that should be there but isn’t, so much regret and pain that should break through but can’t.  “I’m sorry I… killed your friends.”

Later, you’ll think about how you felt absolutely nothing saying it.  Your heart doesn’t constrict with remorse at the mere words leaving your mouth, guilt doesn’t flood into your soul, pain doesn’t wrack through your bones.  You could’ve been saying anything at all and nobody would be able to tell the difference.

He blinks at you, flicking his eyes between yours for a second or two, but then you press the proper button and watch the gas quickly freeze him where he stands.  He’ll be conscious the entire time, but Karga will send him to the correct location and you have no doubt that this elemental purgatory is leagues better than where he just escaped from.  It’s a benefit being the last quarry to be retrieved—he’ll only have to spend a few days trapped in here before being reunited with his family.

When that’s done and Oshua is a complete statue in front of you, bulky white armor now colored a dull metallic gray and frozen in time, you will yourself to finally turn around to face the enormous mountain of a presence behind you.  The baby gently reaches out for him, but Din doesn’t move from where he’s stood.  Your blaster is still clutched tightly in his hand, and he isn’t looking at you.

Slowly, you walk over and stop directly in front of him in the middle of the hull, blinking at him while the helmet subtly moves to lock onto your face.  The kid begins wiggling in your arms, making soft impatient noises while you both stand in complete silence across from each other.

After a few moments, you hear him flick your blaster’s safety on by his side and then toss it carelessly to the ground.  It skids along the floor, light enough to be mostly quiet.  Gloves reach out as he carefully takes the kid from you and settles him in the crook of one arm, and then he looks you up and down, still not saying anything.

Your eyes follow his movement, watching his arm slowly reaching out to you, and you think he’s going to cup your jaw, or brush your hair back.  Give you some sort of physical reassurance since he hasn’t spoken a single word of it.

Instead, Din suddenly grabs the armor clinging to your chest and starts ripping it off you with one hand.  It clangs to the floor so loudly in the silence of hyperspace, the kid’s ears twitch and flutter with each shattering bang.  You hold still while he does it, you barely respond except the unavoidable movement your body experiences as the pauldron is yanked from your shoulder and thrown against the ground.  The ammo belt is tugged over your head and hurled away, the thigh braces are snatched from your legs and they clang to the floor, and the pearly, opalescent fabric revealed underneath is stained in dead man’s blood, rusty and in such great quantities that it shows up as brown instead of red.

“Are you hurt?”

He sounds… dead.  So monotonic that you can’t possibly gauge his emotional state.  He doesn’t move.   His fists don’t clench, he says every single word like it means the same exact thing as the last.  If nothing at all was a person who could speak, they’d use his tone of voice.

“No,” you eventually whisper.

The helmet nods once, and then he spins around and walks away without anything else.  Without saying anything, without touching you, or double checking you for injuries in case you were lying.  You stand utterly still while Din climbs the ladder with the kid cradled in one arm, and you don’t even flinch when the door to the cockpit slides shut behind him.  You have no idea how long you stand there in the splitting silence afterwards, numb and unmoving.

You feel… nothing.  Absolutely nothing.

The hard defenses you strapped to yourself today to reconcile the things you had to do are still high and strong, guarding your soul even if he stripped away your physical armor.  Self preservation is still animating your body, and your facial expression barely changes.  Your first thought, as soon as you remember that you can have one, is that there are things that still need to be done.  Tasks to complete.

Alone, you shower the lingering traces of blood off your body, the normally clear and refreshing water running a sickly, toxic brown.  Alone, your stomach rolls and suddenly decides to empty itself of the very little that was in it as the scalding drops rain down over you—mostly liquid and bile that easily rinses down the drain.  The water is too warm, it beats down on you like blazing hot sand pelting your skin in the desert.  You feel like you did those first few months with Din, where the silence was suffocating, where you’d only interact with the baby if he was on a hunt or if you could tell he didn’t know how to calm him when he was fussy.  If you were in hyperspace, you usually spent time by yourself in the hull while he lived in the cockpit, and if he decided he needed to be in the hull for whatever reason, then you’d trade places with him.  It was… isolating.  Lonely by yourself.  The quiet used to haunt you before it became your cherished friend, but now it’s a betrayer, a ghost that whispers memories and nightmares in your ears.

When you finally finish rinsing the blood from your skin and get dressed, you see the sheets that used to make up your bed now have fried holes in them from your charred plasma marks, the inside of the hull is covered in them and the trails of dried blood where you dragged the bodies down the ramp.  Your armor is still strewn about the hull, the kid’s hovering shield lays dead in the corner.  Everything you meticulously cleaned and organized and collected and created, now the scene of a bloodbath.  One committed by your hand, your blaster still laying uselessly on the floor forever linked to this atrocity.

You spare a glance towards the ladder, but you don’t want to come face to face with Din yet.  You already knew he’d be furious, but… you had hoped that he’d at least…

What?  At least what?  Comfort you?  Coddle you after you deliberately ignored his instructions?  What exactly, in the past year or so of learning Din’s inner workings and intricacies, would ever give you the impression that he’d come give you a big hug after you purposefully defied him?  You flew the kid directly into an imperial base after being told to protect him, you ignored every order he gave to you in the moments he thought would be his last, and though you did it to save his life, you have a feeling that Din has never valued his life even a fraction of what you do.

The misery stabs at your soul, but your mind is finally beginning to process things logically.  He’s alive, the kid is alive, the quarry is secure, and you’re all onboard the safety of this ship hurtling through hyperspace where nobody, not even the Empire, can touch you.  You weighed the consequences before making your decision, you did what you had to do.  If he wants to be mad, then he can fucking well be mad and you’ll find some way to comfort yourself.  At least he’s here being mad, at least he’s alive and safe and breathing and mad, and your rare act of disobedience is to thank for that.

Somewhere in the back of your mind, you realize it’s probably easier than it should be to reconcile the punishment.  Right now, you welcome the exclusion, the negativity and sorrow beating itself into your soul.  Four innocent people died today on this ship, gunned down under your blaster while they panicked and ran for cover.  You keep hearing their screams.

So you start to clean up the hull, needing another task to focus your thoughts on.  You work to erase every inch of the evidence of your deeds, make it disappear like the pool of blood Din once cleaned up while you were sleeping and never acknowledged again.  You only allow the bloodstains to fuck with your head for a single moment, and then you swallow back the nausea until you’re a blank slate again and sink to your knees with a rag in your hand.  After that, your vision stops focusing and it just becomes red contrasting against gunmetal gray, and you work tirelessly to get rid of all remaining traces of it.

Then you start on the blaster marks, you need them gone.  After a few informed attempts at mixing cleaning chemicals, you find one concoction that allows you to wipe them away like they’re nothing more than dirt that got tracked in.  The Crest’s oxygen recycling system works overdrive to constantly purify the air so you don’t get high or pass out, but your nose still stings.  It’s fine, it’s sterile, it burns a bit but it smells sharp and metallic and keeps you hyper focused on the task at hand.

After that’s done, you pick up the charred blankets and ball them up to throw into the trash vent.  You don’t feel anything as you do it.  You don’t think about how long it took you to collect these over months and months of being stuck on this ship, how comfortable they were when everything else was industrial and rigid, how many nights you spent with Din curled up in their softness while he breathed easy and warm.  Sheets are just luxuries, they can afford to be lost.

Next, you gather your armor and wipe it down with the rag, put it away along with your blaster.  The stained robe goes in the trash, along with the sheets and the blood soaked cloth you used to clean everything.  They’re all ruined, you’ll never be able to make them right again.

The hull is sparkling clean when you decide to take another shower.  Nothing on you is dirty except your hands, but you feel filthy.  Wrong, cold, numb, cold, stained, cold.

After scrubbing your skin raw under the water and changing clothes again, since you don’t really know what to do with yourself anymore, you slowly climb the ladder to the cockpit, keeping perfectly silent.  When you reach the upper platform and come face to face with the closed door, you can just barely hear Din’s whispered voice speaking quietly to the baby beyond it.

You raise your hand for a moment, hovering your knuckles over the metal, but then it eventually falls.  Instead, you look over and spot the corner, the same corner Din bunched himself into when he snapped at you for even suggesting going on a hunt with him, blew up at you for the mere notion of something happening like what happened today.  You back yourself into it in defeat and slowly sink down on the floor, resting your head against the metal and hugging your knees to your chest since you don’t have a tiny baby to take their place.

You can’t sleep.  You don’t even try, it’s pointless.  The concept feels foreign the longer you sit here by yourself.  You don’t hear Din or the baby anymore, but you feel… so fucking awful that it’s fitting that you don’t knock or go looking.  You don’t want to hold that sweet child with hands that were covered in blood just a few hours ago.  You killed more people than you can count on your fingers today, and of the ones who had done nothing wrong…  They screamed like younglings, ducked for cover and were able to fire off one single useless shot in the mayhem before you closed their eyes forever and left their bodies to rot in armor that wasn’t ever their choice to wear.

You didn’t know they were kidnapped and smuggled and forced into that situation.  You couldn’t have known, but that isn’t the point.  In this case, knowing doesn’t make one bit of difference.

You also can’t face Din yet, not like this.  You don’t want him to see you cowering, shattered with guilt over the decisions you made under pressure.  How will you ever get him to forgive you for not listening to him when you can’t even forgive yourself for the result of your choices?  Din is a hardened man who grew up in blasterfire and bloodshed, just because you love him doesn’t mean he’s going to magically become someone he isn’t.  You’re here letting guilt sink sharp claws into your chest over four dead men when he had a good fifty or more corpses scattered on the battlefield around him.  You decided to wear that armor, you decided to fly into an imperial base with the kid on your lap, and this is now your penance.  You’ll accept it with your back straight and your chin held high.

Figuratively, of course.  Physically, you’re smaller than you’ve ever been.  Crumpled up into a ball, taking up as little space as possible, curling up as tight as you can like an animal protecting all your vulnerable parts during a brutal attack.

So, since he isn’t here to comfort you himself, you just try to think about what he would tell you.  A long time ago, what would he tell you?

Din would tell you… that you killed someone.  Multiple people, this time.  He’d also tell you that it doesn’t matter what he tells you, what you could have reasonably foreseen or what you should have done.  The end result won’t change.  You own this now.  You’ll carry their deaths with you.

You take a few deep breaths, self-soothing with the undeniable truth that would be murmured matter of factly from his quiet voice.  He wouldn’t argue with you.  He wouldn’t deny the decisions you made or the consequences of them.  It happened, and at the end of the day, you either learn how to handle that, or you don’t.

And, for the four you did shoot, you were responsible for freeing ten times that amount.  You’re responsible for reuniting Oshua Ryler with his family, even if your place in yours is momentarily shunned.  You’d rather be out here alone than in there with the kid, wondering where his dad is or if he’s even still alive.  You rescued Din and now he gets to be here to shut this door on you, hold his son, and whisper calm reassurances to him.  If you listen really hard and imagine, you can pretend they’re for you, too.

That’s it.  Focus on them both, alive and well together.  Focus on the bodies wearing white armor that were moving, the ones that were bolting away from the imperial training base as fast as they could, free from the torture of imprisonment and conditioning.

Finally, you close your eyes and slip into unconsciousness.  It’s not a testament to your exhaustion, but rather just how long you’ve been left to sit here by yourself.  Hours, maybe.  Time is strange in hyperspace.

You dream of a faceless man ringing bells.

---

When you wake up, a small baby has been placed in your arms, and you’re being dragged into a strong, secure beskar hold on the floor.

“Din,” you suddenly lift your head as soon as you’re conscious and nearly bonk it into solid metal, apologies rising in your throat before you even remember where you are.  You did what needed to be done to keep your family alive and together and you’d do it a thousand times again if necessary, but that doesn’t mean you won’t apologize anyways.  After the deeds you’ve committed today, regret feels as natural on your lips as speaking your own name.  “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, I know you’re mad at me but I—”

“Shh,” he whispers, running his gloves through your hair.  He’s still wearing his helmet, he hasn’t taken anything off yet.  “Don’t say anything.  Just… stay here, stay right here with me.”

“I tried to save you,” you croak, tears instantly flooding your eyes.  You did save him.  You saved him and the baby and yourself but you’re so physically and emotionally exhausted that all you can recall is your intent.  “I tried.  Wasn’t gonna leave you there by yourself.  I tried to be brave, like you—y-you wouldn’t have left without me.”

His arms tighten around you, cradling you in such a strong embrace that you burrow into him, you find a place for your head on the hard metal strapped to him and bury yourself there, wishing that you had shovels of dirt being piled on you to justify the death you still feel staining your soul.  Your heart is starting to pound now that you’re remembering, your body is starting to shake with tremors of shock now that you’re aware of your own skin again.

“I was so sc-scared, Din, I didn’t—didn’t know what was happening,” you lament through watery eyes, gasping it out in hopes that it’ll relieve the slightest bit of the gut wrenching guilt just mercilessly crushing you.  It caught you before you could protect yourself against it, that armor you built around yourself isn’t on when you first wake up.  “I-I didn’t want to kill them, but they were already on the ship and y-you said—you said they were coming after the kid s-so I had to, I had to—”

“Stop,” Din whispers, voice so quiet that you can barely hear him.

“I-I cleaned up the blood,” you turn your face against the cold beskar to let all the positives you listed for yourself before scrape across your throat.  They don’t sound comforting anymore, they just sound like excuses.  “It’s gone, it’s like it never happened, everything is okay now, I got the quarry, I protected the baby, I saved a bunch of people, you’re both safe—”

“Stop,” he chokes out.  The modulator cuts off before you can hear his next breath, but you feel it shudder under your body.  “St-Stop it, please.”

Your eyes clench shut so tightly you feel like the streaking stars outside are behind them, tears drop down against his pauldron and you press your face tighter to it like it’s a wound, like the pressure will somehow ease the bleeding.

“Listen to me,” he says very quietly, and you instantly brace yourself.  The walls you just let down shoot right back up, your body physically tightens in preparation for another pain, another trauma, another scar you’ll carry, and you stop shaking.  You stop breathing, even when his hand comes up to ease your face away from his armor.

“You,” he whispers, holding your chin so you’re staring right at him, and your eyes flick fearfully in between his behind the visor, “are a sweet girl.”  Din’s leather thumb brushes along your skin, dragging over the tears below your puffy eyes.  “Not,” his voice catches, “a Mandalorian.”

Your heart goes cold.  Again, everything turns numb.  It doesn’t matter that you already said this yourself out loud earlier today.  It doesn’t matter that you acknowledged this fact, verbally insisted it more than once to hammer home the truth and felt some sense of comfort in it.  For some reason, hearing the words from his mouth is a fucking knife to your chest.

“I taught you how to fight, how to shoot a blaster,” he murmurs, thumb catching every single tear that continues to fall as he speaks.  “I taught you everything I know, everything that’s been taught to me.  I taught you how to defend yourself, how to protect yourself when you’re in danger.  I gave you your blaster, I gave you my armor, I gave you everything I could give you to keep you safe.  And when I thought you were ready, I let you loose on Sanctuary II.  Do you know why I did that?”  The helmet tips forward the slightest bit at the question, probing deep into the most shattered part of your heart.  “After all those months of fighting, and shooting, and training, do you know why I told you to run?”

You blink silently at him, a shaky breath quaking through you, and your expression wants to crumple under the reprimand.  You’re so fragile right now, taking hit after hit after hit to the softest parts inside you, and you want to just give up.  Let the guilt and remorse take you, let it wash you away.  But then, instead…

There’s a flicker of something inside you.  Something strong, endlessly strong, and it makes you want to revolt against what he’s saying.  It replaces the hurt and fear and desperation for comfort with a strange sense of insurgence, like it did earlier when you were hiding behind a boulder, cowering and trembling and not wanting to die.  You’re filled with a quiet urge to defend yourself in the face of this, stand up for yourself and refuse to be beaten down any longer.

“Because you needed to know how to escape danger,” he answers himself when you don’t.  “You needed to know how to disappear, how to outsmart any pursuer and find safety, even the trained ones.  Especially the trained ones.  Anything else was meant to be your last resort.  Not your choice.  Not something you chose.”

“I couldn’t leave you,” you admit to him quietly, voice shaky and tears still coming even as you try to speak up for yourself.  The regret you carry has nothing to do with this, and you decide right now that you won’t feel bad for saving him.  Your hurt comes from the meaningless things, the ones without any need whatsoever, not the necessary ones, and you tried.  You repeated his words to yourself over and over again, told yourself to run, told yourself to get to Nevarro, and it wasn’t going to happen.  “I couldn’t do it.  It wasn’t a choice.”

“It was,” he tells you.  He says it softly, whispers it like it’s the gentlest thing in the world, but the power and inherent distance of the armor strapped to his body finds its way into the words.  “And it was the wrong one.”

“What was I supposed to do?”  You ask, just a hint of that rebellion swimming to the surface now, rising out of the waves of self doubt, the one that feels like a spine growing in your back, an energy coursing through your veins that makes your heart start to beat faster.  Din’s hand slowly drops from your cheek but you don’t care.  “Was I supposed to run away and just let you die?”

“Yes.”  It’s quick and blunt and completely emotionless.  Delivered like a punch to the vulnerable parts of yourself he taught you how to protect, and the utter silence following this single word is comparable to the physical pain you learned to defend against.  It jabs hard against everything good and sweet and tender inside of you, and you’re left speechless even as he continues impassively.  “That’s exactly what you were supposed to do.”

It takes a second, but then that unfamiliar feeling suddenly surges up, breaches with the power of an entire ocean.  Your voices may be nothing more than whispers in the dark, you may be clinging to each other, holding each other with the softest, gentlest love in your hearts, but the strength of your conviction on this would rip metal apart.

“No.”  The word holds the might of your entire being, and it stands alone and defiant in the face of everything you fear, everything that threatens you, him, and this child.  Never.  You’ll die before that happens.  “I love you, and there’s nothing in this galaxy that would ever make me do that.  Not fear, not danger, not the Empire, nothing.  Not even you.”

Din stares at you.  His visor reflects your hardened expression back to you, the force in your soul and the purpose in your eyes, and you don’t even realize the gravity of what you just said because like your love for him, gravity is a constant.  It’s a fundamental truth cemented into the rules that govern your actions and it stays true no matter where you are, no matter what terror you face, or how scared you become.  You have him, you have this little boy in your arms, and if that’s all you have, then you have everything.

After an eternity of this, of feeling his eyes pierce deep into you from behind the helmet while you refuse to wither under his stare, you watch him slowly turn and look down, landing on the sleepy child tucked between you both.  He holds there for a long time, before finally whispering, so quiet that the modulator barely picks it up, “It was the wrong choice.”

You stay quiet.  It happened.  What’s done is done, you can’t change the past.  He can scold and reprimand you about this as much as he wants, but you did the right thing and that decision is the only reason he’s even here to be able to do so.  This exhausted child was reunited with his father because of your choices, and this exhausted father was reunited with his child.  You won’t argue anymore, but it’s a certitude that lives deep in your heart now, builds a home there right alongside the both of them.  Din eventually looks up, his eyes find yours again behind the visor, and his hand rises once more to gently cup your jaw.

“I… thought I’d enjoy seeing you in my armor,” Din finally whispers.  It’s not what you expected, but his voice sounds… weak.  Broken.  “You wore mine once before, and it was…”  He brushes his thumb along your cheek, and then his head shakes slightly, pushing the thought away.  “It wasn’t real.  It didn’t fit.  It dwarfed you, it made you look out of place, it made everything soft and innocent about you stand out.  I liked it because it wasn’t real.”

“Was it… really that bad?”  You whisper back, partially to ease the tension just slightly but quickly breaking eye contact with him when you realize it doesn’t land correctly, it just sounds self conscious and sad.  You try to find that conviction again, that strength and assurance that propped you up so sturdily before, but…  Not a Mandalorian, he’d said.  Of course not.  Of course not.

“It wasn’t the armor.”  Din gently tugs up on your face so that you look at him again.  “It was you covered in blood.  It was you purposefully putting yourself in danger.  You killed multiple armed soldiers of the Empire, you dragged their bodies off the ship.  And then you flew into an imperial base, where you killed the officers, too.  You…”  He shakes his head slowly at you while speaking, and although you can’t see his face, you don’t need to in order to hear the horror in his voice.   “You… collected a quarry… in the middle of a massacre, sweet girl.”

Not a Mandalorian.

“You don’t chase down bounties,” he tells you.  “You don’t fly into war zones.  You don’t kill imperials, you don’t collect quarries, you don’t sacrifice yourself, or our son, to save me.  You said you tried to be brave… like me.”  His fingers tighten against your cheek, he dips his helmet to make sure you understand.  “I’ll never ask you to be brave.  I’ll ask you to survive.”

“I’m… sorry,” you finally whisper, and his arm drops from your cheek to join the other in wrapping around you and holding tight.  They hug you and squeeze, encasing you and the baby in a beskar shield and staying there for a long time.  Long enough for you to tuck your head back into its proper place under his helmet, long enough to start to feel okay with the silence again.  It brutalized you the last time you were surrounded by it, it made you feel alone and desolate and barren inside.  You greet it warily now, settling into it for an unknown amount of time until it’s forgiven once more.

After a while, Din quietly breaks it.

“How many?”  He murmurs to you.  You already know exactly what he’s asking, there's no more clarification necessary on his behalf.

You slowly close your eyes and think back to the smoldering craters, the blood soaked ramp, the fear in Oshua Ryler’s eyes as he begged you not to kill him.

“That didn’t deserve it?”  You ask, clenching your eyes tighter at the memory.  “Four.”

And maybe, maybe six or eight months ago, you would’ve begged for some guidance on how to reconcile that.  Hell, maybe a few hours ago, you could’ve used his arms around you exactly like this, his low voice repeating the same things he’s already told you before, over and over again, if only for some semblance of stability when everything feels turbulent and uncertain.  You’ll never be able to change it, though.  This belongs to you now.

This time, all Din says is, “I’m sorry, too.”

And that covers everything.

The silence envelops you both again, but… there’s something else.  Something that still sits deep in your worries, an image that isn’t a scar of what’s happened but a dread of what’s to come.  You need to tell him.  You don’t feel like saying it, you don’t want to speak it aloud for fear of bringing it into existence, but you need to tell him.

“Din?”  You breathe out, and he makes a soft noise in his throat while cuddling you on the floor.  “I saw…,” you whisper, every word sitting tight and reluctant in your throat.  “Right when we made the jump, I was looking through the window and I-I saw…”

“A star destroyer.”  He says it like… like it’s the worst thing in the world and also completely expected at the same time.  He says it like he already knew, yet can’t even imagine.  You lean every bit of your weight against him since you can’t hold him in return, squish him as best you can against the small corner and curl up even tighter in his arms for comfort.

He takes a deep breath, a shuddery sound you don’t think you’ve ever heard him make before.  It holds untold anxiety, unsaid conflict, uncertain action, an unknown path forward.

“I don’t know what to do,” Din eventually whispers to himself, to you, to the baby in your arms.  His voice is barely a breath through the modulator, his fingers digging into your skin with how many emotions he’s repressing.  “What do I do?”

He sounds so distressed that you automatically feel your soul find the floor—instantly, you become steady and calm and you locate all that rationality that kept you going today.  All your worries still twist deep down, all the guilt and the turmoil wrestles with your soft, easy nature until you can only find bits and pieces of it in the most vulnerable places inside you, but if he’s struggling this terribly, then the least you can do is offer some good, true, unwavering faith in times of uncertainty.  You’re in hyperspace, everything worked out, and it’s going to stay that way for right now.  If he doesn’t know how to talk about it yet, then you trust him enough to wait for him.

“It’ll be okay,” you tell him with a newfound confidence and purpose, carefully easing the baby into one arm so that the other can find its way to the other side of his helmet and pull him closer.  Din tucks his head and allows you to brush your lips against the metal, whisper the words soft and steady to him.  “We’ll figure it out together.”

---

@cptnbvcks thank you so much for the incredible art!

#the mandalorian #the mandalorian x you #the mandalorian x reader #din djarin #din djarin x you #din djarin x reader #mando x reader #mando x you #reader insert #fanfic #star wars #rough day #no-droids

[sirfrogsworth]

I posted the below on my Facebook. I am secretly trying to head things off at the pass. Every time people see pictures of me out and about, they think I have been magically cured or my health status has improved. And I know going to Florida is going to give people that impression.

But also, I just wish a few of my relatives could understand my situation better. And why I didn't come to Christmas. And why I might try to come to Christmas now.

I guess I'll see how this goes.

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

One of the biggest struggles I've had my entire adult life is explaining why I appear fine whenever people see me. I say I am very sick and bed-bound and then they see me and I am out of bed and talking and joking and... a normal healthy person.

What many don't realize is I am making a choice.

A choice to get sick.

I can use up all my energy in a short time frame to accomplish a difficult chore or entertain a friend or go to a doctor, but that is going to have a consequence.

The more I do, the more severe the consequence.

In the ME/CFS world this is called "post-exertional malaise." (for those interested, you can read more about it here: https://rthm.com/art.../what-is-post-exertional-malaise-pem/ )

Imagine every time you wanted to do something, you were *choosing* to get the flu.

Take a walk, get the flu.

Exercise, get the flu.

Spend a night out with friends, get the flu.

And you might be thinking, "Okay, it can't be as bad as the flu. I've had the flu and the flu sucks. No one would choose that."

I may not get the nasty respiratory symptoms, but everything else is pretty much the same. Crippling fatigue, horrible aches, and the loss of the will to do much of anything. Sometimes it is much worse than the flu. Some people don't know how much being this exhausted can hurt. They have never used up enough energy that their body is unable to power itself properly. I usually say it is like every cell in my body is starving and screaming for energy. I feel it in every inch of my body—and not just on the surface... through and through. So, like... cubic inches.

Sometimes I don't even have the energy to power my legs. Trying to stand feels exactly the same as trying to lift a barbell with way more weight than you can lift. I can't get upstairs or even walk to the kitchen. It's a concentrated misery that defies description, despite my constant attempts to try.

Sometimes I get lucky and this flu lasts for a day or two. But the more active I am, the longer it can last. And the severity increases as well. There is also a cumulative version of this—where if I do a bunch of little things over a longer period of time, eventually it will catch up to me and I may be stuck in bed for a few weeks.

And when I say "stuck in bed" I mean stuck in bed.

Short trips to the bathroom and a few minutes in the kitchen to make food. If I spend too much time upright, my legs will literally give out and I will be stuck on the floor until I recharge enough energy to get up again. It would be like every time you needed to get up, you had to hold your breath. Not to mention, the more I do, the longer the recovery will take.

For a long time I chose to never get the flu. I stayed in bed and did just enough to avoid the worst of PEM. I skipped family get-togethers. I didn't see my friends. And I lived my life inside the computer. Some may find that sad, but I actually found a way to make this work. I ran a successful blog that was seen by millions of people and I met my two best friends who I now consider my new family.

One thing that allowed me to choose not to get the flu was my parents. I fear some thought they were spoiling me. They did my laundry. They helped clean my room. They got my groceries. They cooked my food. They took on any chore they could so I could avoid the flu and live some semblance of a life on my computer. There is a lot of guilt wrapped up in that. I didn't ask them to do that. They just sort of... did. And I am so grateful to them.

To be fair, they would have to do these chores for themselves anyway, and tacking on my stuff wasn't a huge deal. But I know it caused them a little extra pain and a few post exertional consequences of their own. So I appreciated that sacrifice more than I can put into words.

But then they both got very sick. And not only could they not help me with my stuff, I had to help them with their stuff. And this was a difficult transition. I had to choose to get the flu to take care of my parents, but then if I got the flu, and I couldn't take care of my parents. I believe this is called a catch-22.

My initial solution was to just not take care of myself. At all. My health and mental well-being was set aside and I just gave all of my energy to them. I didn't shower. I forgot to take important medicines. I didn't do a single thing that brought me joy. And I'm reminded of that analogy of the airplane emergency where the oxygen masks drop. You put on your mask first before you put one on your child. Your instinct is to save them first at all costs. But if you pass out, they are screwed.

So I kept getting that cumulative version of the flu. I'd help them as much as I could for a week or a month and then I'd be useless to them for just as long. Living in the basement did not help. Stairs were very hard for me and constantly going up and down was a huge waste of energy.

And I'm sad to say, the level of care I gave to my mom was not great. I didn't know what I was doing. I didn't understand how to balance my needs with hers. And it led to costly mistakes. She had several preventable falls that caused injuries. At one point she spent hours on the floor because I fell asleep and did not check on her. When you know someone needs regular supervision, you need to synchronize sleepy time.

Thankfully I learned from all of these lessons. Maybe not as quickly as I would have liked, but I did figure it out. I just wish I had learned them before my mom passed. I just wasn't able to give her the help she needed.

And you can tell me "you did your best" all you like, but this isn't a guilt I am choosing. It's just there and I feel it no matter what anyone says. In time I am hoping it will get lighter, but I'm afraid it cannot be wiped away with a well-intentioned platitude.

But with my dad, I decided to move upstairs. That was something I should have done much sooner. But I liked having my personal space and that was hard to give up. When he slept, I slept. When he spent 4 hours at dialysis 3x per week, I would make sure to take care of any personal needs. I would do chores a tiny bit at a time. 5 minutes here, 5 minutes there. And then I would lay on the couch in between and regain my strength. I did everything possible to not get the flu. And I got my flu shots so I wouldn't get the actual flu. (Get your flu shot! 50K die from it every year!) The only hitch in my plan was when I got a kidney stone at the same time my dad was in rehab. I have no idea how I got us through that.

I was very proud of the care I was able to give my dad. And I'm so grateful I was able to pay back just a tiny bit of what my parents did to help me. And the care I gave my father is the only thing that helps me feel better about my failures with my mom.

But now I am entering a new chapter of my life. And I find myself choosing to get the flu more often. I have decided sometimes it is worth the consequences. Part of that is because I am more used to it after dealing with it for 20 years. I have coping mechanisms and procedures and techniques to manage the symptoms. It doesn't make them suck any less, but it definitely makes it more manageable. It's akin to people with chronic pain who still feel the pain just as profoundly as when it was new, but they get so used to it that they forget that isn't how they are supposed to feel.

I approached this scientifically. I did tests. I went to the movies. I tried once a week and that was too much. Then I scaled it back and that was more manageable. Then I realized I had movies at home and decided to end that experiment.

I started to put my energy into something I enjoyed more. My photography. So I have been finding new ways to take pictures again. More experiments. I'm designing a simpler studio that requires much less energy. I'm creating a little product photography workstation where I don't have to set up everything each time I want to take a cool picture of an object. It will just be "turn on the lights" and "take the pictures."

Figuring all of this out made me realize how much I missed photography. And since I have been shooting test pictures here and there, my mental health has been noticeably better. And once I get this all figured out and set up, I am hoping some of you will let me take your photo. Or a photo of your kid. Or a pet. Whatever you have that needs photographing, I'm game.

I'm not going to charge. It's not going to be a business. I do not have the energy to "hustle." And asking people for money just sucked all of the fun out of my beloved art form. It corrupted it. I just love taking pictures and if you need a photo, I'd like to do that for you. I also restore old photos for fun. I'll talk about all of this more in another post when I am ready to start.

And then my grand experiment is coming next week.

I am going to travel.

I am going to see my best friend in Florida for two days. Two days of travel and two days of visiting. This is a scary choice. I know the aftermath is going to be difficult. But I need to get out of this house. I need to see my chosen family in person. And I have never been on a plane and I love the perspective from high places. I know people hate air travel, but for me, looking out that viewport is stunning television that cannot be matched.

Purposely making myself sick sounds like a bad idea. But it isn't life threatening. I have the free time to recover as long as I need to. And I can always choose not to get sick for a while if it gets too hard.

I just ask that people not see this as going from a worse life to a better one. I was really proud of the life I was able to create for myself while staying in bed. That took a long time to figure out. I met some of my favorite people. And I accomplished things I couldn't imagine in my wildest dreams. Please do not shit on that life and think it was sad or meaningless. I was given that life as a gift from my parents and it kept me alive. It has always been a huge insult when people pitied that precious gift they gave me.

This is not a better life that I am trying to figure out. It is just better for me right now. My needs have changed. I have changed. So I am trying to adapt. I just ask that people understand when I go out and do something, please remember the choice I am making.

You may be tempted to say, "You are doing so much better!" I am not any better than I was 10 years ago. Actually, my health has degraded. It's just that before I didn't think getting the flu every time I did something was worth it. And I would hope everyone would understand that was a valid choice.

And now I am inviting those consequences.

On purpose.

Give me the flu, I guess.

[count-lucio]

lucio headcanons because i can't help myself. just a warning that these are rather canon divergent, so keep that in mind while reading! anyway, with no further ado-

my objectively correct lucio 'headcanons' (i am normal)

- he has chronic nerve pain from the constant pain + stress his body was under while he had the plague - even after he comes back. he walks with a cane most days, and claims it's for 'fashion' (it very clearly isn't)

- the whole "missing an entire arm" business is a MUCH bigger deal than the way the game shows it- it's a genuine disability, not just a fun character trait. i'm begging you all to consider lucio needing (and wanting) to spend time with his prosthetic off. lucio phantom limb syndrome and phantom pains. lucio struggling to do things that require both hands on occasion and having to relearn everything after getting his prosthetic. lucio being too rough/too strong/etc with his left arm because he can't feel what he's doing. as much as he loves the gold he can't help but feel terribly insecure and incapable because of it sometimes.

- lucio is not even a tenth as stupid as the writers make him out to be for funny haha villain points. he's actually incredibly intelligent and a big fan of studying + reading "just because." he's very literate and articulate, just overexcitable (and maybe slightly over-emotional) and doesn't always express his intelligence in the best way (or stop and think before doing things). he's also fairly talented, and rather proficient in writing and playing piano - the grand piano in the foyer belongs to both him and nadia!!

- same thing goes for what an incompetent leader he's portrayed to be in the game... it's absolutely nonsensical that he alone was in charge of vesuvia for multiple years and that entire time knew nothing and learned nothing about being an effective ruler. perhaps he's not the most responsible leader at all moments and maaaybe he can be a bit. harsh. but i can't see military-tactical, hand-selected-to-rule-vesuvia-lucio being an INCOMPETENT leader.

- also, the previous count, count spada, took lucio in and taught him everything he knew - the game hardly touches on this and it's an absolute crime because i think the two of them had such a close (dare i say father-son) relationship and spada effectively took lucio under his wing and gave him the necessary training to be an effective leader before naming him his heir. the two of them were very... my parents hate me and i don't know what parental love feels like x i never married or had children and i regret it immensely, yknow ?

- his relationship with morga is much more strained than what's portrayed in canon - both her and his father were rather abusive throughout his childhood and he hides in the palace every time she visits vesuvia and makes nadia deal with her for him (i use 'makes' loosely - nadia would do it even if lucio didn't ask. she's not very fond of morga either and is sympathetic to lucio's fear of her).

- speaking of nadia, the two of them really don't hate eachother all that much. their relationship is much more complicated than what's shown in the game (everyone's is, really, it's all a lot more blurry and queerplatonic than what was written to make it work as a romance game) and while they most definitely butt heads quite often, she by no means hates him and they do, actually, get along a fair amount of the time. they have quite a bit in common and work well together. most of the time.

- contrary to popular belief, mercedes and melchior are not unruly and untrained- they're both trained impeccably, just in lucio's native language, making him the only person capable of controlling them. however when it is him in charge, the three of them are a force to be reckoned with (especially when out hunting) and mercedes and melchior move flawlessly alongside him, nearly predicting what he wants without him even having to speak it aloud. they're impeccably behaved- just for him and him alone.

- on the topic of languages- lucio was raised speaking something different than what is spoken throughout the game. there is no direct real-world equivalent but it's... scandinavian in nature. he has the faintest hint of an accent (and no, it isn't a jersey accent) but he's been speaking other languages for so long it's not quite as noticeable as it was during his mercenary days - although it is quite a bit more noticeable when he's drunk, and he's very prone to cursing in his native language.

#the arcana #the arcana game #count lucio #the arcana lucio #these are all objectively correct because i said so #nobody understands lucio the way i do.

[medievill]

okay. okay. I think I've finally figured out the worst part of the "Ed's going to be an abuser just like his dad" headcanon some of y'all have.

let's go for a ride.

abuse is cyclical, and not just in a micro sense. it's not just "I love you, you're garbage, I'm sorry, I love you, I'm the only one who loves you because you're garbage, I'm sorry, I love you," etc. I mean macro. I mean generationally.

I mean that parents teach their children how to have relationships. we show our kids how adults interact with each other, how adults interact with kids, how kids should interact with kids. we model this behavior constantly. it's one of the most nerve-wracking things about being a parent, actually: you live in a fish bowl now, and the fish bowl is your home, and your children are constantly observing your behavior and interactions, even when you don't want them to, even when you think they're not.

growing up in a home with an abusive parent doesn't just expose you to the abuse—physical, emotional, psychological, religious, whatever it is—it teaches the child that this is how relationships work. and then this kid goes out into the world, interacting with other humans all willy-nilly, and bringing all the knowledge that their parents armed them with to bear. and when the kid (hopefully) realizes that wait, actually, shouting and throwing things and hitting people isn't good, that's not the way you interact, it is solely up to that kid to fix their shit. if they're lucky, they've got someone in their life to help them with that. but even once you've recognized that there's Bad Stuff happening in your interpersonal relationships, you have to retrain your brain. you have to change your go-to reaction. because you can recarve your neural pathways, but it is fucking hard work.

I didn't grow up with a physically abusive parent; I grew up with an emotionally abusive one. every time my partner does something that annoys me, or we disagree on something, and my reaction is "well, I don't really feel like talking"—if you don't think that I don't half- to full-on panic about wait is this the silent treatment, am I doing what my dad did, you are absolutely incorrect. it is a constant fear, that my reactions are inherently abusive. I am constantly gaslighting myself into believing that everything I do in a relationship is bad, hurtful, abusive. I am constantly having to convince myself that it's okay sometimes not to want to talk, and to sometimes be annoyed, and to sometimes disagree, and that none of this is inherently abusive.

now. Ed fucking Teach. do you not think the guy's spent some time introspecting? examining his inner most self? he's smart, and he's depressed, so, yeah. I bet he has. so do you not think, you absolute monsters, that he isn't doing the same fucking thing? Ed Teach, who convinced himself that defending him and his mom against constant violence (a white man, and as if this was a random choice)—ultimately saving their lives (and no, this is not an exaggeration)—made him an unloveable, unlikeable monster. Ed Teach, who is so desperate for love and friendship that his biggest fantasy is owning an inn, where people stay because they want to.

do you really think that one of the thousand internal battles Ed my beloved is fighting isn't don't be your dad don't be your dad don't be your dad? fighting, fucking tooth and nail, to be different. (same as Stede!) this reactionary headcanon literally misses so much of the point of the whole character; it buys into the British Navy's propaganda about him, and worse. it buys into the narrative that a man of color is inherently violent, inherently incapable of change.

#tw: abuse #tw: domestic abuse #tw: emotional abuse #ofmd #our flag means death #ed my beloved #ofmd meta #canyon critical

[butchriptide]

I think Peril and Winter not getting a chance to interact more on friendly terms is one of the many crimes that arc 2, even if, in all fairness, I feel that Peril's POV book/involvement would've been more suitable to some other point in the series.

Because they ARE foils to each other, in a way. They both play on a theme that crops up in a lot of characters of WOF, which is the way that types of trauma and abuse can shape a person and their worldview.

Peril is CONSTANTLY drawn back in by Scarlet through the repeated message of "I am the only person capable of loving you." She spends her entire childhood being gaslit (and I mean genuinely gaslit, not the meaningless twisting of the word that the internet has given it. The actual abuse tactic gaslit.) and manipulated by the only maternal role in her life to be so dependent on her. She's hailed as Scarlet's Champion and a monster alike. She's feared in a way not unlike how Scarlet is feared, but Peril didn't choose that. Her image and role in her society is specifically selected to further isolate her. It isolates her so severely that she is made to feel that she has no hope of integrating into society even IF and WHEN Scarlet disappears from the Skywing kingdom. She's instructed to burn up helpless eggs before she can SPEAK to plant these seeds into her as early as Scarlet can, both in Peril AND in the society which engages with her. Scarlet carves herself into Peril so that Peril is convinced that she can't live without her, and she DELIGHTS in having this kind of specific, all encompassing control over her. She WANTS Peril to stay, not out of any real love for her, but because she loves that she could do this to somebody at all. Peril is just like any other piece of her lavish, extravagant hoard; loved like something intended to be owned, to be possessed.

Winter, meanwhile, is made JUST as dependent on his family, but by opposite means. Winter being nothing to his family, being a constant disappointment to the people he loves, is something that is reinforced time and time again from a young age. He's a failure the moment he fails his first hunt. And thus, he becomes easy to scapegoat. Hailstorm isn't the perfect image of an Icewing in many respects from what we know of him before his capture; he's shown to be goofy, and his plan is what actively gets him and Winter in trouble, but he's still hailed as perfect. Not to say that Hailstorm's treatment was less damaging, we don't know what his relationship to their parents was like beyond reputation, but it showcases that these traits aren't seen as default flaws by Narwhal and Tundra. It's just that you have to be able to justify any deviation from the norm. Everything that deviates from the perfect, ethereal Icewing in Winter though, is something to be picked at, something to be shunned. Slow and obsessive and now the reason his perfect brother's gone. And failing his family doesn't just reflect on Winter, but it in turn reflects on his family, who he loves, within their society. He's made dependent on his family with the intangible promise that if he was just a little better, just a little tougher, just a little more like what they want of him, he could have that love returned to him, he could justify being the one who was left behind in their eyes.

I just think they're the products of very opposite but ultimately overlapping circumstances. Abuse as direct action versus abuse as neglect. Both dependent but in opposing ways; both convinced they can't live without their abuser, but one is convinced into believing she is literally, physically dependent on her abuser while the other is convinced that he is OBLIGATED to prove himself to his abusers, that to live is to justify himself in their eyes. "Champion" as a leash to keep her on and a warm light on the tundra skyline that's never possible to actually reach.

#wings of fire #wof #meta #peril #winter #peril wof #wof peril #wof winter #winter wof #arc 2 #analysis

[knickynoo]

HELLO, EVERYONE! I SAW THE BTTF MUSICAL YESTERDAY, AND AM READY TO POST SOME (SEMI) COHERENT THOUGHTS!

[Fair warning that some things here may spoil parts of the show.]

• First things first: It was so good. It was so, so, very good. Incredible show. I'd been hearing great things about the show since it first came out in London, and I've been listening to the music since it dropped, so I pretty much went in knowing I'd like it but it still managed to be even better than I thought.

• Just the setup of the theater itself and the ambiance prior to it starting was so cool. The way everything is lit blue and there's all the electrical zapping and humming. THE CONSTANT TICKING OF CLOCKS THAT FILLED THE THEATER. Nothing had even happened yet, and I was like, "This is such a good show."

• My one big cause for hesitation was Casey playing Marty. I know absolutely nothing about the guy, but Marty is just so dear to my heart, and MJF's energy and physicality isn't something easily captured. I had my doubts about seeing someone try to bring Marty to Broadway, but Casey walked onto the stage, called out, "Doc?" and I went, "Yeah, okay. There's Marty."

• For real, though, Casey was phenomenal as Marty. He had the vocal inflection down. The right amount of crackliness. Very good balance of cool kid and disoriented mess.

• Um. HUGH COLES?!? Talk about brilliant casting. I mean it when I say that he somehow seemed more George than George from the movie. The audience reacted with a sense of awe when he started speaking and moving around the stage. It was like Crispin Glover had been plucked straight from the film and injected with More Georgeness. When he did the laugh, the audience went nuts. His physical acting and the way he captured George's gestures perfectly was amazing to watch.

• As I'd expected, Musical Doc is ten times more chaotic and unhinged than Movie Doc. Roger Bart's comedic timing is impeccable. He earned himself frequent howling laughter from the audience from the moment he appeared on stage.

• His "Good thing I kept this radiation suit from my Manhattan Project days" line was a nice touch.

• "Despite my fear of heights, I was standing on my toilet," was such a gem of a line.

• THE DELOREAN. WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT THE DELOREAN. I had no idea how they were going to depict a car speeding to 88mph on a small stage, but THEY DID IT. Astounding. Honestly might be the coolest effects I've ever seen done on a stage. Also, I wasn't sure how I'd feel about the addition of it being voice-activated and talking, but it worked nicely!

• The musical obviously had to trim some parts of the movie—and even omit parts entirely—but it was done so well that you either didn't even notice or miss they were gone. The change from George being hit by a car to simply falling out of the tree was one of these changes. (Marty's under the tree trying to catch him, btw, which is how he ends up getting knocked out)

• I couldn't tell if this was an ad-lib from Casey, but when he was trying to get his pants back on in the Baines house scene, he started struggling a bit with the tangled suspenders that were wrapped around one of the legs of the jeans and muttered in frustration, "Why do I wear suspenders??" Very funny little moment.

• Great chemistry between Bart and Casey. The connection between Doc and Marty was THERE. The musical GOT IT RIGHT. So many hilarious moments between them in the form of completely unintelligible banter, where they're just talking over each other and having like...verbal tennis matches of nonsense. It's hard to describe in writing, but trust me, it was so good. It went something like this:

Doc: "Marty!"

Marty: "Doc!"

Both Simultaneously: *literal gibberish*

• There's a beautiful little addition to the scene when Marty shows up at Doc's house in 1955 and tries to convince him he's from the future. After Doc asks him to take him to this supposed "time machine" Marty goes, "Sure, hang on, I just gotta grab some flashlights." Then he goes straight to a cabinet and quickly retrieves two flashlights without a second thought, to which Doc is like, "How did you know they were in there??" Marty knows!! He knows exactly where the flashlights are because of course he does!!

• Perhaps one of the funniest moments of the show was right at the end of the "Future Boy" number, where the music stops and there's that breaking of the fourth wall moment. Doc and Marty look around in confusion at all the backup singers and dancers awkwardly standing around his house (one of the singers continues dancing/singing long after the others has stopped lol) and Doc wordlessly opens the door so they can all scurry out.

• Doc's dream of visiting the year 2020 where everything is perfect and there's "no disease" got some very loud laughter from the audience.

• Oh. Oh, the scene at Doc's house at night after the demonstration with the toy car. The way everything gets solemn for a moment, and Doc is doubting himself and worried about failing. Marty's lovely little speech about how everything will be okay because he believes in him. He trusts Doc. He knows it'll work and they'll get him home. The way Marty is the one looking after and taking care of Doc in that moment. When he asks, "Do you need anything, Doc? Can I make you a sandwich?" And then when he says softly, "Goodnight, Doc. Pleasant dreams."

THE MUSICAL GETS IT RIGHT. THE WARMTH. THE LOVE. THIS WAS SUCH A NICE ADDITION.

• "PUT YOUR MIND TO IT" !!!! I loved this sequence so, so much. Marty gets to strut his stuff while George flails around trying to imitate him. It was funny, the choreography was great, and we get such a nice Marty and George hug at the end! Why didn't they hug in the movie??

• The audience was super engaged and reactive through the whole show, but it noticeably ramped up in the latter part—starting with the night of the dance. There was such an excitement as people anticipated George swooping in to take down Biff and protect Lorraine. When Biff went down, the audience whooped and clapped and cheered so much.

• EARTH ANGEL! THE MOMENT GEORGE AND LORRAINE KISS. It was just like the movie. The music suddenly swelled, Marvin belted out, "The vision of your happiness", George and Lorraine kissed, and the audience. Lost. Their. Minds. It was as if people were experiencing the story for the first time—that's how strong the reaction was. So cool.

• Audience also went wild at the start of Johnny B. Goode. That was a neat sequence as well. Huge laughs at the "But your kids are gonna love it" line.

• The clocktower scene! Marty handing Doc the letter and saying, "I wrote you a thank-you note; don't read it until you get home!!" LOL. So many amazing effects going on in this one. For those of you who have seen the show, you probably remember Doc running up the clocktower stairs, right? Did the audience nearly die of laughter like they did at my showing? That was truly one of the top 5 funniest moments of the show, in my opinion. It had me giggling hours later once I was home. For those of you who have not seen the show, I don't think I can adequately put into words what was happening during this scene, but it was incredibly funny. It's good there wasn't any dialogue during it, because no one would have heard it with the way everyone was laughing.

• The fire trails on stage got quite the awed reaction. Super cool.

• The hug! We get our Doc and Marty hug at the end! I'm so glad they realized that moment was missing from the movie.

• I liked the shift from Marty waking up at home to him waking up on the bench in town instead. The "George McFly Day" part was a fun addition, and it flowed nicely into Marty's "Power of Love" performance.

• THE CAR FLEW. IT FLEW UP IN THE AIR AND THE WHEELS TURNED IN AND IT WENT OUT OVER THE AUDIENCE. HOW DID THEY DO THAT. IT DID A COMPLETE ROTATION UPSIDE DOWN WHILE CASEY AND BART WAVED TO PEOPLE. If anyone knows of any videos or articles explaining how they did things with the car, please let me know because I can't find anything and I would love to know how they did it! You couldn't see anything holding the car, and i'm so confused! The effects were so good.

• Love how, when the show ended, the giant screen on the stage just said, "Make like a tree and get outta here."

...I think those are all my thoughts. I was planning to write up a post with just a couple of bullet points of highlights and instead. Well. This is what you get from me, and if you've followed my blog for any length of time, you know that. But really, the show was so well done. I had a blast. I bought a pin that says, "Whoa, this is heavy" and I'm going to put it on my denim jacket :)

For those who are planning to see the musical, I hope this helps hype you up for it. And for those who can't see it, I hope this gives you a good look at what it's like!

#back to the future #bttf #back to the future: the musical #bttf: the musical #casey likes #roger bart #broadway

[cayde6feetunder]

i mentioned it in some tags fucking forever ago and I posted about it on twitter but might as well post it here too

"I can't be ableist, I'm [x]" has done so much damage to mentally ill and disabled spaces and or threatens to do so. and unchecked internalized ableism and unchecked ableism as a whole.

i am someone with unsavoury symptoms and conditions. There's no beating the bush about this one. My symptoms are considered ugly and there have been times where I've met people who have been all like, "Support people with unsavory symptoms" but when I actually started hanging out with them they ended up being more ableist than anyone I've ever met.

I have memory issues. On some days I forget things quite literally as they happen to me. There's no guarantee I'd remember what you've said to me. It doesn't mean I don't care, I literally sometimes forget what I was doing three minutes ago. no, I'm not making an excuse, I literally forgot that you were bothered by, say, bugs and it was not intentional. Now I will most likely remember but please don't be bothered if moving forward I ask you to clarify what you're bothered by.

I have issues with my emotions. I struggle to articulate what I'm thinking and feeling. PLEASE ask me to elaborate on things before jumping at me and accusing me of twisting things around or whatever, or inviting conflict, or a thousand other "UM ACTUALLY--"s. And please, PLEASE don't assume things, ASK ME THINGS. Let me speak.

I have issues with anxiety. I often distance myself from 90% of discord servers and even my own friends (even if they don't notice it) because I am deeply terrified that they secretly don't like me or they're seconds from snapping, or they find me annoying, or about a thousand fucking other things that there are times where I feel deeply, deeply ill. It's not that I don't like you; it's that I'm actively struggling with myself and putting forth a lot of effort to make things work on my end.

I have PTSD. That PTSD on top of the anxiety manifests in my fear of old terrible cycles repeating even if they're out of my control. This makes pretty much everything else mentioned way worse. Everything is a CONSTANT WAR within myself. I'm a perfectionist and I feel like even if it's not my fault I convince myself that I did something wrong and I rationalize things that way. There's also the bipolar and the BPD.

I am medicated and learning how to manage these things. But we need to accept that these symptoms are ugly, that while I'm doing my part, I and others like me still deserve grace and tenderness and we do NOT need our own community and/or communities who claim to have the exact same issues treating us like shit, spitting on us, or being in general hypocritical towards us in claiming that they support us but then do everything that seems to state the obvious.

it really is your own people sometimes. and it shouldn't have to be.

and whenever i try and say things like this I have people telling me I'm "DODGING RESPONSIBILITY," no I'm not, you cannot assume such things of me when you're only seeing me talking about a very real issue that I and many others face.

Stop reblogging and posting about how much you love and support "unsavoury" symptoms and conditions but then turn around and treat those very same people like absolute shit.

And don't get me started on how autistics like to treat other autistics just because their autism happens to be different.

I'm sorta fuzzy so it's super hard to really articulate or parse together what I'm trying to say properly but I hope what I'm trying to say comes across. Ableism within disabled and mentally ill communities fucking suck. Learn to actually care about and support people with symptoms and conditions you can't romanticize.

#caydeposting #actuallyautistic #actuallybipolar #actuallybpd #actually borderline #this is a risky fucking post

[maddipoof]

There is nothing like staying at home, for real comfort 🌷- pick a character or a few and come up with a prompt and I’ll write a fluff blurb <3

hi hi can u do robin buckley and her asking u to go out with her (which u assume is just as friends) but then she confesses to u on the date and it's just super cute

this is so awkward why cant i phrase things normally

Eeeeeeee thank you, I love you, this has been sitting in my docs for forever but you're finally back so it can finally see the light of day!!!

a/n: ummm to many princess bride references but I love it more than anything soooooo i'll reference it til I die <3 wc:2.4k Also, like, hardly proofread :( but I hope you like it <3 (you're an amazing friend and everyday I'm so grateful for you sara)

“Steve,” Robin rushed behind the counter and kept her back to the edge, a poor attempt to not be recognized. “Steve, Steve, Steve, please, I beg, I can’t do it. You have to help me. When do I ask you for anything?”

“Literally every day.”

“Steve, please, literally I am asking you to help the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen and you’re saying no.”

“I still don’t understand why you can’t talk to her.”

“Why can’t I talk to her?!” She looked around frantically trying to find you, making sure you weren’t close enough to hear her panicking. “Jesus Christ! Have you met me?! I’m a disaster. Last time I talked to her, I couldn’t stop!”

“I remember, Keith got all bent out of shape cus you left a line of 3 people.”

“Heh, yeah,” she agreed with a sarcastic laugh. “Also, I was saying so many things even I couldn’t keep up. It was horrible. It was so bad, I—” Steve turned her around by the shoulder and you smiled at her and held up the VHS in your hands. She finished the other half of the rotation and stopped Steve from running off to the back. “You cannot leave me alone, please, I beg of you,” she mouthed.

He twirled his finger around in the air, meaning ‘turn around,’ and pushed the swinging door open with his back, mouthing “Do it”. Leaving Robin to her own devices indefinitely.

“Hi, um, just this.” You put The Princess Bride on the counter. The 5th time you’ve rented it in 6 months (which she definitely knows from the records on your account and definitely not because she’s been keeping a mental note of everything you like. That’d be ridiculous).

“You really like this one.”

Your eyebrows kind of twitched in a way that made her regret so much as breathing wrong around you, but it vanished before she got the chance to grovel for forgiveness. “Yeah, uh, I really like it.”

She doesn’t even need to ask for your phone number anymore. It’s been on constant repeat in her mind since last Saturday and every Saturday before that. “And your phone number?” But she thought it’d be weird, too forward for you to know she knew it by heart.

“You don’t know it by now?” You raised an eyebrow and she gave you a half smile. She typed it in faster than you could watch her fingers to make sure she got it right, and the lack of hesitation did not go unnoticed by you. She really knew it.

“Uh, did you know…while they were filming, Andre the Giant needed an ATV to get around set since it was like, up on a big hill?” She asked while you counted out the change. She didn’t even want exact change. She’d put up with it. She’d make 97 cents for you, even though they’re fresh out of dimes.

“I did know that. Did you know Cary Elwes broke his toe on said ATV?”

“I did not. How’d he manage that?”

“His foot got caught on the petal and I guess it was enough to break his toe.”

“Oh wow.”

“Sorry, it’s uh, a little over.” Your fingers brushed her palm as you handed her the coins.

“Thank you,” she whispered and you felt the chill of her hand, but you wanted nothing more than to warm them in yours and never let go. She never counted change so fast, just to get to give it to you faster; for your fingertips to brush again. “Um, heh–“ she cut herself off for fear of further embarrassment.

“Sorry?”

“What?”

“You were saying something.”

“Yeah, it was dumb. I don’t–“

“It’s not dumb.”

“Yeah?”

“Now I’m curious so you kind of have to tell me now.”

“I suppose I do then. Do you want–” she huffed and started over. “Are you doing anything Thursday night?”

“I’m working til 6, but I’m free after that.”

“Yeah, at the- the arcade.”

“The arcade, yes. But what were you thinking?”

“Hm?”

“You asked if I was busy, was that just out of curiosity or did you want to go out?”

“Go out?”

“Is that a question?”

Robin just then noticed how close both of you were leaning on the counter. “Um, heh,” she cleared her throat with an awkward laugh. “They're having a special showing, at the drive in, just a town over, and uh, I was wondering if you–If you’d wanna go with me?”

“I’d love to, but I don’t have a car, my brother has it that day.”

“I don’t either.”

“My brother usually picks me up, we get off work at the same time so he could just drive me over to yours and we can figure out something else?”

“If you really want to go, we should go. I really want to take you.” You both smiled brighter than the sun at that. But then Robin had to go and have the worst idea of her life. Worse than following a middle schooler into a secret Russian bunker. “Maybe, uh, Steve could drive us?” She definitely saw the way both corners of your mouth dropped, but you were quick to pick them back up.

“Yeah, yeah. That’s uh, that’d be great. Pick me up at 6:15, yeah? Give me a chance to get ready and then we’ll go?” Robin nodded, mortified, dying on the inside, how could she be such an idiot. You spoke while walking backwards towards the door, “Great, you have my number. Give me a call if anything changes.” You never speed walked to the car. You didn’t even have the chance to turn the key in before you were throwing your head back against the rest. “Fuck, fuck, fuuuck,” then you realized you walked out empty handed. No tape in sight. “Goddamn it.” You were not going back in there.

***

“Oooohhh, is somebody ready for their big date?” Cecelia, your coworker, walked into the bathroom where you were checking your eyeliner in the mirror.

“It’s not a date.”

“The drive in with Steve ‘the Hair’ Harrington? Sounds like a date to me.”

“He’s just dropping us off.” You so, so, so carefully fixed a flake of mascara without messing up the rest of the look.

“Oh, so you’re going with someone else?” Cecelia leaned her back against the small cabinet diagonal from the 2 stalls. “Tell me everything.”

“You know the girl he works with, Robin?” She cocked her head. “Buckley?” Still nothing. “Dirty blonde, in the marching band, plays the trumpet, took AP Spanish freshman year? It was a whole thing.”

“Oh her. Yes, yes, I know her…You’re going on a date with her?”

“Well, I was kinda hoping yeah, but now she’s having Steve drive us ‘cause neither of us have a car, so now I just don’t know.”

“But you want it to be a date?” She stepped up to you and licked her thumb to fix your lipstick.

“Yeah.”

“Then kick him out. Make him fetch you guys some drinks, some popcorn. Tell him to see how many numbers he can get before the Fire Swamp.”

“They’re like a bonded pair! I can’t just separate them like that.”

“You can and you must.” And then she checked her watch. “Better watch it, Sappho. You’re cuttin it close. All that yearning is gonna make you late.”

“Fuuuuckkk.” You groaned then practically ran out the door.

Right out the door and right into Robin.

“Hi,” you smiled regardless of the disappointment in the lack of romantic undertones. You smiled big, and so did she, like your faces didn’t know how to do anything else when you looked at each other.

“Hi, how– how are you? I didn’t mean to scare you, they told me you’d be back here and I didn’t want to seem like a jerk and wait in the car for you to come out because that’d be– that’d be pretty, really shitty. And… yeah, how are you?” You were surprised she didn’t run out of breath, she hasn’t run herself out like that to you in a while. She hasn’t been nervous around you like that in a while.

“I’m good, better now that you’re here. How are you?”

“Good, really good. It starts at 7 but we should get going now if you want a good spot.”

“Yeah, that’d be great.”

“Perfect…I, uh, I hope you don’t mind, Steve brought Max and El, the boys had a campaign and they were all bored.”

Everything she says makes this less and less of a date. Whatever, doesn’t matter, you’ll take her in whatever way you can get her.

“No, that's ok. They’re cool.”

“The coolest.” She offered you her arm which you gladly took.

You’d known each other for months, why did it feel like you didn’t know what to do with each other.

“Hey, how’s it goin?” Steve asked when he got out to open the back door for both of you.

“Good, pretty good. I’m excited for tonight.”

“Good. I should warn you, me and the kids–” “We’re not kids.” “ –will probably be taking off early, Max wants to go look at some supernatural museum she found nearby, but we’ll definitely be back to pick you guys up. It’s a pretty short walk.”

“We have to walk there?!” Max asked with enough attitude to rival Mike’s. Steve gave her a look paired with a sharp nod trying to get her into the front seat. Trying his hardest to be a good wingman.

She shook her head and mouthed fine, then El took the middle seat and Max did the same head nod with her to get her to one side. Robin slid in first to take the middle and you got the seat next to her.

It was a fun ride, Steve and the girls were at their funniest, doing their best to paint Robin in only the most complimenting light. You got the perfect spot. Not too close to the front or back, the perfect distance to see the whole screen but not have it in your face and the concession stand was far enough that it was a walk but there’d be none of it’s traffic buzzing around you.

Somehow, Robin convinced you to stay behind and fix the radio to the right frequency while Steve took her to get a pep talk drinks and popcorn before he left.

“You’re gonna be fine. You were great in the car.”

“Steve, no, listen to me, I cannot do this alone. You cannot leave me.”

“Robin, listen to me. Ok? The whole time in the car she was smiling, she’s having a great time. She really likes you. You feel that electricity?”

“What?”

“The electricity? Between you guys, it’s like off the charts. You got this, man. You’re fine.” He put a hand on her shoulder and El handed her the massive popcorn from one side and Max gave her the extra large slushy with two straws from the other. Then they both gave her big smiles and two thumbs up.

“You got this,” El said and Max gave her another pat on the shoulder and off she went.

You had just got the radio right when you saw her coming down the row of cars. Clearly, her hands were overfull so just as she came up to the car you opened the door and oh fuck.

In a flash of blue, slushie was all over. All over Robin, that is. “Oh thank god none of it got in the car.” She gasped, though her lips were on their way to turning just as blue.

“Robin, no, what about you?!” The urgency was enough to pull you over the center console rather than out the door and around the front to brush off the few pieces that clumped together. “Are you ok?! I don’t care about the car. I’m so sorry, my depth perception has been so messed up from staring at the computer all day, I’m so sorry. I don’t know what I was– I wasn’t thinking.”

“I don’t think that’s how that works,” she mumbled.

“Come on, let’s go change.” You started pulling her in the direction of the bathrooms.

“Into what, I’m soaked.”

“Yeah and if you don’t get into something dry; like my sweatshirt that I promise you I don’t need before you try and tell me I’ll be cold; you’ll freeze.”

“I really don’t– You don’t have to.”

“Yes, I do. Come on.”

You took her into the family one, the big clean one right in the center of all the rest. “Here.” You pulled off the big, fluffy, crew neck and she thought she’d drop dead when she caught sight of the way your shirt rose up the slightest bit. You held it out to her and it took her a second to remember that she wasn’t dreaming.

“Thank you,” and leave it to Robin Buckley to say the dumbest joke at the worst moment. Just as she was about to pull her soaked shirt over her head, “Wow, and here I was thinking we’d get to at least a third date before you got me in such a compromising position.” She said with an unforced laugh at the end with her head still deep inside her sweatshirt so she didn’t see the feature film that was your face trying to figure out what she meant.

“This is a date?”

Really catching her off guard while she’s pulling a soaked bra, now probably stained blue, out of the sleeve.

“Uh, did you– I just– I thought–” She tried to go for the door but you caught her eye.

“I want it to be.”

“You do?”

“I’ve been tearing myself up all week ‘cause I wasn’t sure. But I really wanted it to be. So,, is it?”

She nodded fervently, “Yes, yeah, absolutely.”

“Good, so uh, do you maybe wanna go get some hot chocolates instead and we can take that blanket Steve was trying to be sneaky about and cuddle in the back seat?”

“As you wish.”

Thank you so much for reading, I hope you liked it and if you did I'd love to hear what you think <3 Comments and reblogs mean the world to me 💕💕💕 Support your creators babes

#robin x reader #platonic steve and robin #robin buckley x reader #robin buckley #wlw fanfic #sapphic fanfic #robin buckley fanfiction #robin buckley blurb #robin buckely #platonic stobin #stranger things fan fic #stranger things fic #stranger things x reader #stranger things fanfiction #stranger things #dell's fics #sara 🌷 #della celebrates 100

[hellsfirekeepsyouwarm]

All Hell Breaks Loose Pt. 5

Long time no see darling, and i apologize for abandoning this series this much. Life's been a bitch (between that damn driver's licence and a mystery health issue i'm still working out), and i had literally no will to live. But i promised i would finish this, so here i am. I''m thinking about an epilogue, the story might needs it. Thanks fr waiting this out.

Simon "Ghost" Riley x F!Reader

Warnings: Swearing, injures, reader being very bad, Simon being very bad, all canon typical tbh, not proofread

Summary: The time has come, both you and Simon do everything to survive the night.

The fright that shakes your body helps your aching fingers, breaking the small but sharp piece of wood off your one and only companion, your chair. The wood sits in your palm, squeezing it tight to your hand to feel any and every hope it gives you as a makeshift weapon.

You heart beats in your throat, now focused on the sudden noise on the hallway. Barked orders, heavy boots running around, door slamming and opening again.

A weird tingling sensation erupts in you body, something tells you that your time in this room has come to an end. Fucking finally. It fills you with some energy you lacked for a long time now, the pain and constant silence exhausting your everything. You chuckle on how the grip on your tiny wooden piece is deadly, holding for dear life. Now you wait for some unfortunate bastard to unstrap you.

You hear some kind of alarm going off in the distance, the chaos growing outside, but the space you are in is still annoyingly silent. You are sick of it, thoughts too loud and clear in the numb stillness. It's never been so suffocating in there, knowing something is in motion. Meaning the guys are here, or someone else is. Either way, you'll be moved, and that can be good news, or real fucking bad news. Depends on what happens when the door opens next, and who's walking through it. If Graves himself escorts you, he will do every imaginable thing to keep you and himself alive if it means to have his twisted endgame. That what makes you so fucking scared.

His main target wasn't you, you are a means to an end. You are the pain for someone else. You are Simon's pain and fear. You know this is his worst nightmare, he would switch places with you without thinking. And he would still be guilt ridden because then you would have to live with the thought of loosing him. He wouldn't care about the torture, let that be physical or mental. Nothing could break his spirit if it means you are somewhere safe. You can't say the same.

Your mind couldn't stop circling about all the aches in places you never felt before, pushing your limits to a point you think you'll beg to the next person coming through the door to end it in a way or another.

You shake your head, a swift attempt to get rid of the thoughts with the motion. You are so close, you can feel in your bones, stirring the anxious feeling in your stomach.

You can't quite make out the noises, which boot will barge in and grab you, which one is gonna pass and leave you there for another agonizing minute.

Now you just wait, between immediate death by Graves's hands and a desired rescue by your beloved Lieutenant.

*

Simon's body tensed before his eyes narrowed at the end of the hallway. He is fucking loud, his ego and pride walked in front of him, slapping a person in the face before meeting the man himself. Only a couple minutes passed since the alarms started screaming, he anticipated Graves later.

While the tension is unpleasant, it brings a sense of relief too as Graves stops right next to him. He will go through this fucking door and he can't do shit about it. His heart is a beast against his rib cage, so loud he thinks others surrounding him can hear it through his skin.

Time slows down, his right ear is clear from anything else other than your voice. It's drained, a mere whisper to Graves's taunting cocky voice, but it's there, and his heart sinks. He can't just barge in, can't lay his eyes on you to be sure that what he's hearing is real. He stands there, slowly cut off from you by the shut of the door with an awfully loud bang. After that, is just muffled and coherent sounds. It goes like that for a few minutes before he can hear you again.

"Don't fucking run away from me now Philip! You know what's fucking funny? Huh? You preach about loyalty and trust and all that shit, but do you realize what my loyalty towards you could have done to me?"

Simon body twitches, fingers too close to the trigger, eyes averting nervously. You are definitely in this room, you are loud and clear in his ears. He wasn't imagining you, and the crack on the door allows him a good angle to listen in. He can feel Grave's movements almost, circling around the door. Simon can see in his mind how Graves's body is frozen in one place, contemplating what he should do with you. He remembers that look, it was plastered on him anytime he laid his eyes on you, like an unfinished job, a loose end. He was always unpredictable, and he is certainly kept that attribute. And you are not making this easier by pushing his buttons.

"Yeah you know, you thought about it didn't you? If i stay your Shadow, you right hand, i would have been on that black-bag operation..."

"NO.."

"DON'T FUCKING LIE!"

Oh fuck no. Your voice is something he never heard before. Strained but undying. The undertone of it is agonizing, a reminder of all the times you woke up sobbing in pain in the hospital bed from a nightmare, trying to explain between cries what went down behind those eyes in your sleep. But it's the anger and desperation that catching Simon off guard.

"Don't lie! I would have died then and there with the others protecting that damn cargo. Do you hear me? There is your fucking loyalty."

You talked about it a lot with Simon, how your life would have been the exact opposite if you don't choose the 141. How you thought the change was certainly worse for Graves than you, and that thought process changed real fucking quick after Graves's betray.

"It doesn't fucking matter anymore Y/N. You gotta see that at this point." Graves appears next to Simon in the middle of his sentence, kind of shaken up, seeing the tension on him like never.

"DON'T FUCKING LEAVE ME HERE! YOU WANT 141? YOU CAN FUCK OFF GRAVES, YOU'LL NEVER WIN, YOU UNDERSTAND ME? THEY'LL COME FOR YOU WHEREVER YOU ARE!"

You scream, scream like a madman, loosing every drop of your strength so your words reach him, and you do. Simon eyes flicker on the man, completely zoned out, almost looking shaken up.

"Exfil is in 5 minutes. I'll meet you there. Don't fucking loose her or you'll be looking up at the grass before the sun comes up."

The threat is real, Simon can tell just by he look on his current partner. He plays along nodding vigorously to look somewhat scared.

Graves walks away, two man attached to him by the hips. Simon might can't take out Graves tonight, but he can get you out of here, and that is all he wishes right now.

5 minutes it is.

*

The only thing you can remember is the sharp edges of the wooden piece hugged by your palm, fingers sliding on the rough splints, poking your already aching skin. That is what grounding you, the sharp tiny stings on your fingertips while you wait. You can't tell anymore what is minutes and what is hours, but eventually a man dressed in black step inside. He comes right for you, untying your aching limbs with frantic hands and more frantic breathing. You can see the pulsing vein on his neck, the very pulse you'll dip your gracious weapon with joy.

Your eyes shift, up a little to see a shadow slip in, tall and quiet, looming over the other man, posture threatening and predatory. You almost choke on your cry when you realize, but your weaponized hand is freed, air hitting your irritated skin signaling your green light to lunge forward, nothing was every more simpler than your hand violently colliding with his neck. It's his skin you feel, and not the power of the lethal stab you inflict. He's on the ground right after, the wood still poking out, hands clutching the source of his pain. Or whatever he's feeling.

Simon is stunned for a second, watching you kill a man with probably your last remaining strength.

He moves carefully towards you, in case you have another hidden gem under your sleeve.

"Simon?" You ask with blurry eyes, with so much hope held in your gaze it's giving Simon butterflies and so much pain. You recognized him as soon as he stepped in the room. You recognized him.

"Yeah luv, it's me. It's me." He breathes out softly, cupping your face cautiously afraid he might still spook you. "It's me."

"About damn fucking time." You chuckle a little, foreheads touching for a moment, just a quick breath before coming back to reality.

"Can you walk?" Estimating the damage on you, searching for injuries, collecting information on what is the next step.

"I think so. I have to." You nod a little, accepting his helping hand, even with the gloves on your light touch soothes his troubled mind, clearing the red rage. Oh how much he thought about this moment, haunted by your bruised body, lifeless and cold. But you are alive. Of course you are alive, what a fool he is to believe the opposite.

"I fucking hope you have a plan cuz this is how long i planned ahead." You point down at the dead body next to you, the Shadow's blood now leaving a forever stain on the floor under him.

Simon whole body is surrounding you, a barrier between you and anything else that'll com to your way. Simon hands you the gun that was owned by the guard, the cold metal a blessing in your palm. In a haze you see Simon drag the vest off of the man, then putting it on you in a hurry.

"My plan was to find you, anything else was a mere idea." He admits, not defeated but surely agitated by the lack of potential of escaping the facility in one piece. "We can go back the way i got in, but i..."

His words falters, his masked face isn't enough to hide the fear he feel looking at you, trembling in his hands while the chance of a herd of Shadow barging in any fucking minute. You need to move and do it quickly. "We gotta move. Anything moves, you shoot, copy?"

"Copy." You might look out of breath, but he knows you are more than ready to massacre your way out of this place, and by his side you can do anything.

So you move. Hand clutching the gun close to you, focusing on step after step, hopping from corridor to corridor, trying to ignore the loud rush of your blood in your ears. Fuck it's almost impossible to not tune in with your body shutting down so rapidly, every fiber shouting at you to deal with the pain and how the pain surrenders your body.

In reality you only entered the neighboring hallway. Simon can feel your disoriented body bumping into him when he halts. He only can hope the decoy lasts until you are out of Graves's hair. Which will be a hell of a job considering Graves is probably knows you are gone. That awful five minutes runs by quick when you need it.

The building is oddly quiet, and while the odds are still good, he know any slip up can end up in a disaster. A disaster in a form of only one hostile. The on who is currently radioing in to report the missing hostage, walking right to where Simon is shielding your body from the open space as much as he can. The second are running past and the last resort steps in. He acted his way in here, so he will act his way out.

"Follow my lead." Is all he says before picking up a nasty and harsh behavior. Simon grabs you by your forearm, keeping you close but in a more uncomfortable way than you would like. You whine from the lack of contact, and the sudden pain washing over you as Simon drags you in front of him.

Your distress isn't unnoticed by Simon, his chest twisting in a familiar way, the one where pain is unbearable and the pressure is too much to breath. But he can't let go, because in a second he will face the Shadow, delivering the most important person in his life on a silver platter.

"Negative, Sir. Halls are empty, no sign of any of the."

It's time.

"Don't you dare try anything." Simon huffs out, acting like he's struggling to keep you at bay, and the change of his tone that hits you, seeing a stunned man in front of you and your first thought is the loss of the metal from your hands.

"Sir. She killed.." Simon starts to speak, voice so weird without his natural accent.

"I know i saw. Why didn't you answered the radio? Commander is about to blow and i don't fucking plan to take the damage."

"Sorry sir, i had to act quick before..."

"Yeah yeah, you shit your pants. Now fucking move, Graves is mad as fuck."

Call it in. Fucking call it in. That is all what Simon needs. Just a couple of words into Graves earpiece and he can take you out of there. He can feel your body weighing on his own, knowing it's not an act. You try so hard to make it work, but every step, every breath and blink takes something away from you, the comforting scent and protective arm around you is making your mind too much at ease. You told yourself to just bear with everything until you can see him again, and now you have got what you wanted, your mind is satisfied.

Call it in for fuck's sake.

"Shadow 3-0, i found her. going for exfil now."

Ghost waits, eyes on the back of the Shadow's neck, just a little more to be sure, and he lunges forward.

" Yes sir." Letting you go swiftly, knocking his gun right at the back of his head, the soldier collapsing instantly, right at his feet, knocked out cold. Before you can comprehend anything, he's back at your side, hushing you, asking you to stand up, to lean on him for support, to bare with the pain, just for a few more minutes.

It's a surreal scene, you think. You see the walls of the hall like you see the city lights from car that speeds on the empty road at a godless hour of the night. Your legs move, but you have no idea how, how it's still working for you but not feeling any of it. You are not even a passenger in this reminder of your body, you just watch as everything changes. After the dust, your nose fills with fresh air, cold breeze reminding you of the last time you sat on the porch wishing Simon home. Light to dark, you vision blurred with tears and almost no source of light.

"Just a few more steps luv." He says, but you are confused because you don't feel yourself taking steps, or running or panting, not even the air around you collides with your skin how it should when you move.

Between his earthy scent, and the unmistakable sound of shots fired, your body gives in to the pulling, and the world around you goes dark.

*

The last thing you remember is smelling evergreens, ears ringing with bullets being fired. Your nose crunch up in discomfort, feeling the overwhelming smell of disinfectant.

Breathing picking up, your fingers moving around in a panic to get a hold of something, to know what's happening.

His hands finds your shaking one right when his raspy voice calls out your name next to your ear.

"I'm here, i'm here. You are okay, i'm here with you. You are safe."

*

Taglist: @cabreezer0117 @multitargaryen @embers-of-alluring @batmanunicorns523 @5seastar @sweetybuzz25 @levisbebe @galagcica @briefwinnerpersonaturtle@afro-hispwriter @v-v-x-x @levi-llama @kat-nee @kuwizo @thefairybird @haythemsychopathicgirlfriend @woodeelf @sinon36 @actuallyanita @khjssss @randomchick546 @sinon36 @elliestark13 @jillvalentinesworld @kaghost @lumpypoll @iwaizumicumslut @umiexe @kyuupidwrites @eatingtheworldsoffanfiction @supremekid @yaaamadaa-blog

#simon riley imagine #simon ghost riley x reader #simon riley x reader #simon ghost riley imagine

[cynicaesura]

Dying to read any of your Muriel and Crowley relating to each other snippets

Well shit okay please enjoy the first two chapters of what I am definitely calling All Our Gods Have Abandoned Us

Also please pretend I linked the "that's not constructive criticism" meme bc I can't find it but I like to think I'm funny

One year.

It had now been one year since that day. That awful day. That fucking roller coaster of a day that Crowley had dared to believe might be the greatest day in more than six millenia of existence.

Won't make that mistake again.

If life had taught him anything over and over and over again it was that faith is bullshit. Faith in God, faith in... shit even the ?-damned Bentley had betrayed him on occasion.

Well FUCK God and--okay he could never stay mad at his car--but most of all

FUCK. AZIRAPHALE.

Crowley had learned his lesson. He'd had his year of constant, uninterrupted contemplation over an eternity of heartbreak and betrayal with nothing and no one to distract him.

He was done. Three-hundred and sixty-five days later he was done moping and crying and mourning a life he was never going to have. He was done. He was over it. He was over A--

The doorbell rang.

Was...could...is it...? The timing was too perfect. Or terrible. A sick joke. But still...

Crowley cautiously approached the door. For a moment he paused, took a deep breath, and opened the door.

Shit.

---

Crowley slammed the door before the angel on the other side could see him break. How had he let this happen again?? He'd literally just told himself not five minutes before that hope was stupid and he was done with it. Fuck.

It was then that he processed fully what he saw outside the apartment.

Well fuck, he thought, I think someone else might need to break down more than I do.

Crowley composed himself before opening the door again. Standing there on his not-particularly-welcoming welcome mat was Muriel, dressed 100% more like a regular human than the last time he had seen them, but also with 100% more tears than he had ever seen pour out of a human's eyes.

"Come in," Crowley said, and Muriel immediately ran to wrap their arms around his waist and sob into his shirt.

"Oh-okay. Ow. Um," Crowley choked out as the very small angel managed to squeeze breath he didn't even really need out of him. Muriel made no indication of hearing him. He sighed and awkwardly patted them on the head.

Crowley didn't know Muriel all that well, which was by choice as there was only ever one angel he really cared to know any any of the others were just thorns in his side. But Crowley always had a soft spot for kids, and Muriel's wide-eyed trust and optimism and fascination with everything had an innocence to it, and they had always trusted him even when he was manipulating them.

"What happened?" he asked after a few minutes of letting Muriel clutch him and cry on his chest.

Muriel let go and stepped back, sniffling and wiping their eyes. "It's gone. The bookshop is gone," they said. "It's all gone."

Crowley felt a pit in his stomach. "What do you mean 'gone'?" he asked.

"I went out to the park to read because the weather was so nice," they said, "and when I came back it was just gone! The sign, the books, everything, and it had a big 'for lease' banner where it used to say 'A. Z. Fell and Co.'"

After letting out another sob they continued, "and I thought there must be some mistake up at Headquarters but suddenly I couldn't even feel them anymore and couldn't contact Heaven or even call the elevator and now I don't know what to do! They never gave me any instructions for this!"

A wave of confusion and fear and rage washed over Crowley all at once. Gone? The bookshop couldn't be gone. Aziraphale would never allow that to happen and he certainly wouldn't have allowed poor, sweet, idiot Muriel to slip through the cracks.

Yeah. Just me, he thought, before shaking his head as if that would make him stop thinking about it.

"What were your instructions for running the shop? What was going on in Heaven leading up to this?"

Muriel shifted uncomfortably. "Well a year ago the Metatron put me in charge of the shop when Aziraphale," Crowley winced at the name--"took over as Supreme Archangel and then Aziraphale sent me a binder full of guidelines on how to run the shop."

Crowley snorted. Of course he had made a whole binder for Muriel to ensure not a single book was ever out of place.

"Okay, and then?" he prompted.

"And that's it."

"That's it??"

"Yes," said Muriel. "That was the last time I heard from them."

Crowley let out a big sigh. It was one thing to do it to him. To cast him out and beat him down and reject him over and over again. But Muriel was innocent. Innocent and naïve and simple. He pulled them back into a protective embrace. They were now just an angel and a demon alone on Earth, abandoned by everyone they cared about.

#Be warned I wrote this on my phone for like an hour and have not proofread it #baby's first fic #god I haven't written creatively in like 15 years #I was just like man I really need some content using this fucking Architects song #No one else was gonna do it #good omens #crowley #muriel #anthony j crowley #innefable divorce

[winns-stuff]

LO RANT:

I’m gonna be completely and utterly biased when I say that I am 100% a Tori defender. Yep, I said it and I’m gonna stand with it. Listen, do I think it’s wrong that he just assumed the worst about Persephone around the time and spread rumors about her? Yeah 100% I don’t support him with that he’s on his own there, but what I mean by defending him is really understanding why he assumed so much in the first place. I get where he’s coming from besides the rumors.

Basically, we all know about LO and it’s constant harassment and disregard for employees/workers. There’s multiple times in this comic where a god has used their title to intimidate and even insult beings who “stand in their way” or become an obstacle for them. The way everyone lets it slide is kinda disheartening for me because it feels like what happens in real life too, hard working employees of various stores, restaurants, retail centers, etc. get either harassed, berated, insulted, and even mistreated on the job either by their employers or the customers themselves. This is literally JUST like how LO treats people who work middle class and I’m only saying middle class because that’s the dynamic that LO itself has set up for its world.

Knowing this though, you can also see why there’s some gods (Hera, Hades, Aphrodite, etc) who think lowly of the nymphs and other beings who are forced to work for them and be at their every call. I’m not saying all nymphs and other mythical beings are just plain workers obviously but the ones who are seem to always get overlooked or verbally abused or insulted by those they have to serve. The gods I’ve named have the nerve and absolute gaul to really talk so much incredible shit about these beings almost all the time and interact with them with such terrible intent, it’s genuinely angering how they just blatantly mistreat them and Rachel herself continues to use these themes and implicate them with every single interaction we see between them. I understand that they’re gods and the beings are not but you do not get respect with fear and I know that Rachel is probably trying to show us how respected the gods are but this honestly isn’t the best way to go for me personally.

But again, knowing how the gods treat beings like Tori on the daily it makes sense that he believed that Persephone was also someone just like them. She was around Hades and I’m pretty sure everyone knows of his terrible behavior and inappropriate work ethic so he probably believed that she reflected things such as that. That’s really all I excuse him for because I know he was doing his job but the rumors were completely unnecessary and mean spirited.

I wish though, instead of Hades impulsively pulling out his eye and being creepy and possessive. I say this because around the time he did that she was still his employee and they barely hit the talking stage, it’s weird that he got so attached and obsessive with her without actually knowing her that well and stuff like that is not healthy having someone literally almost kill for you even though you’ve known them for a couple of days shouldn’t be something we romanticize or even want in our lives. But instead of Hades making a life changing decision for Persephone I would’ve much rather either a conversation between them that led to him taking the newspapers down or Persephone handle it her own way. It’s unnecessary that Hades feels the need to do everything for Persephone, it’s not exactly showing that he respects her opinion or judgement.

But this whole exchange really rubbed me the wrong way and made me really dislike Persephone even more. Technically you’ve got your revenge and at the hospital I guess you already made amends of some sort, no need to literally drag a dead dog on a leash just do the account stuff and leave. I know this was her best attempt at standing up for herself and all but really it just makes me roll my eyes because for so long she never had half of the balls to say anything to any of the gods who’ve wronged her in a real way. Persephone always seems to do this thing where she unleashes hell to someone who’s already suffering and plays the victim, she never lashes out on anyone who genuinely deserves it and she basically turns a blind eye to them. She only punishes those she doesn’t think are worthy of her forgiveness even when there’s so many people she keeps around her who deserve it far more, those people are just used as jokes and gags but let a nymph or any being talk bad about Persephone and she’ll literally ruin their life.

All I’m saying is that if she can harass Tori at his work and intimidate him, I better see absolute fucking hellfire to anyone, and I mean anyone who does something worse. Because I’m tired of this shift of energy to some characters and not to others, it doesn’t make her seem like she’s badass just sorta like a cowardly bully in my eyes.

#lo critical #anti lore olympus #anti lo

[circulars-reasoning]

Kindness and Anger

Look.

There is a major issue right now, in syscourse, about being too kind.

It's funny for me to say that -- after all, I'm the "respectability politics" syscourser, am I not? (And no, I have literally never forgotten that label being shoved on me). And the thing is, I really try not to be an asshole in syscourse, or overly pedantic, or just flat out mean -- because I'm a nice person, for fucks sake.

But that still doesn't negate that anger -- and yes, the occasional unkindness -- is needed. This constant shoving down of anger, this constant ridicule of passion and heat, is leading to a lot of incredibly traumatized people being incredibly hurt. Case in point: Me.

What follows is sort of half trauma dump, half vent, and all parts frustration that I'm trying to let out healthily. If you'd like the short version:

TL;DR: While syscourse can be harmful, it can also lead to a lot of joy. It can lead to new understandings. People telling me to back off, to not take it so seriously, are undermining a lot of that and echoing a lot of my past trauma. We should all be more willing to understand the impact these discussions have in real life.

I shoved down a lot of feelings these past few months. Shocker of all shockers, seeing lies being spread about myself and the people I love and the places I've worked to curate sort of pisses me off! But the message from everyone around me was "ignore the trolls, don't pay attention, don't engage--" And it promptly became translated into, "You aren't allowed to openly feel bad, and anyone being upset is a bad thing that needs to be fixed." I don't think this was intentional for many people. They were worried about me hurting.

But the issue was, these people -- traumatized people who have repeatedly been taught that their emotions are harmful -- were telling me that my emotions were harmful. Unsurprisingly, I suddenly was shoved back into this role of looking at and moderating every emotion.

I unmuted every vent room in every server I moderated for (and those I don't). I obsessively stalked many blocks I had blocked, simply to ensure I could brace myself for whatever thing might potentially upset someone else (not even myself -- I didn't care about those emotions). I even forced many of my friends -- the people who were watching me get hit and harassed and battered down every single goddamn day, who were worried about me, who wanted desperately to speak out against the heinous goddamn shit I was experiencing, who they themselves were experiencing -- to stay silent and bottle up their own emotions too.

You know what that all reminds me of?

Being available for those venting reminds me of that time I made sure notifications were on the night a friend sent me a suicide note -- one they later admitted was completely false, that they just were bored and wanted someone to talk to, and that would get me the most engaged. I was stressed by finals but instead of studying or taking care of myself, I stayed on the phone, texting with them for 3 straight hours, bawling my eyes out in fear. I was 18, and I never really grew out of this. I still sacrifice time and energy for people that not only don't deserve it, but who manipulate me into being there for them, no matter what. I don't know if I'll ever heal from that mentality.

Stalking the blogs I had blocked to make sure I knew everything, all of the time, no matter what? What a shocker for someone who memorized the squeaky spots on the floor, made sure to eavesdrop while walking silently through the house, learned to hide in the bathroom where they thought I couldn't hear them, made sure to open the window just a crack so I could hear them outside. To this day, I try to know everything, try to have google on hand, just in case someone asks me for more of my "somehow encyclopedic knowledge" on everything. People rely on me for that. I'm connected to everything, so nobody else has to be.

Making everyone else step back? How inventive, a traumatized person isolating themselves. I forced every single person around me (just like I always do) to pretend it was all fine, because if it wasn't all fine, then things would be bad, and if things were bad, I would melt down, and it would clearly be my fault, because wasn't it always, somehow, in the past?

(I'm still the most sorry about this one. I'm still trying to swallow that guilt and shame I have for letting it get that far, for hurting the people I love so much, just because I convinced myself I was just being stupid for being hurt, like I was always taught in my abuse. I'm so sorry to those of you who I forced to stay silent, just to keep the peace. You deserved so much better.)

Suffice to say -- it took removing myself from a lot of spaces for a cold shock to my system, splitting and not being able to be myself for a straight month, for me to even recognize this is what happened. It was so normalized for me, all my life. I had to emotionally regulate my parents, so it made sense that I had to emotionally regulate everyone else -- particularly when I was one of the people who was hurting.

All because "We can't let ourselves appear too angry -- that's not healthy for us."

As if how I became was healthy. As if the ball of anxiety and health problems I became, as if the nightmares and triggers I was experiencing were healthy. As if losing months at a time was fucking healthy for me. It took me until recently (and until today, writing this post, editing it, and reviewing it while panicking that I'm going to ruin everything if I ever post this) to even realize just how badly this hurt me.

I'm still flinching when I express a negative emotion to my partner. I had gotten over this. I had gotten better. Stabilized. But these past few months, forcing myself to be silent about my pain, forcing myself to not talk about anything negative... I slipped back. I let myself buy into the idea that my anger was ridiculous. That being so passionate was harmful. And look, Lord knows I've been vocal about how syscourse has hurt me. There were so, so many times where my anger took over, where I let myself become a person I look back on and cringe at, because that's just not who I want to be. But there's something called a window of tolerance -- or, as my queer ass therapist calls it, the rainbow of tolerance -- where you find a middle ground. You don't go to either extreme.

And I see a lot of major syscoursers lately (whether they consider themselves major or not) going to one extreme or the other, in their own ways.

In one camp, we have the polite overlords of kindness, hiding every shitty awful thing they say in a veneer of positivity and rainbows. Remarkably, no matter how nice something sounds, or how passionate someone is while being polite, it doesn't make it true, or somehow less harmful.

In another camp, we have the most obsessed goddamn people alive, raging about every little thing and making a post every 5 seconds about every little thing. The rage could be quiet or loud, but it's always just constant stirring of drama. (Looking at you, anti-endos posting incessantly recently about how much they hate endos...)

In yet another camp, and possibly the thing I want to address the most with this post, is those who are brushing syscourse off entirely. It's gaining more and more popularity nowadays. "How are you all caring so much about online discourse" types. "This isn't changing anything" types. The ones who insist that REAL activism happens in real life, and that this is so niche and small that it doesn't have any real impact to "just go and scream on tumblr about your feelings."

This is the one that's hurting me the most, right now, as I look back at a few years of being in syscourse. Because I managed to buy into it wholeheartedly these past few months. I managed to convince myself that this thing -- this place I love, the people I love -- were all wrong, and not only that, but were somehow self harming via this. That I was hurting myself by caring so deeply about misinformation, that I was actively self harming and encouraging others to do so, simply by engaging.

First and foremost: yes. Syscourse can absolutely be harmful. I am not trying to suggest it isn't. I have literally never suggested it isn't, and have vocally said it is harmful, multiple times, across several blogs.

Secondly, and far, far more importantly for this discussion: Syscourse can be beautiful.

I'm reminded of how I met a very, very dear friend -- @justanothersyscourse was the actual blog I'd talked to at the time -- and what I learned in that moment. I was sitting in a Covid testing line, terrified out of my wits, as a part who could barely comprehend anything he was reading online about disorders and dysfunction. He was trying desperately to understand, mostly because he had always been strong before, and now he felt so weak, being the way we were.

And he reached out to this major syscourser -- someone who seemed so angry about "something that's only online," about such a "niche topic that doesn't relate to the real world" -- and asked him, plainly, what was wrong with him. What was making him the way he was? Was everyone right about dysfunction and distress? Did he have to hate who he was just to be real?

And the overwhelming answer was, "No, and you are loved, because you exist, and you deserve it for that reason alone."

SAS didn't say as much in so many words -- actually there were a lot more words and sources thrown about, as well as olive branches all around. It burned me inside to reach out to him (he was anti-endo, after all, and I was not), but he still reached out to me with respect and kindness -- even if he sometimes acts immature, or rudely, or with language that would make a sailor blush.

I came out that day somehow feeling better than I had in years (despite, yes, having Covid). Because finally, a part of me understood... I wasn't broken. I didn't need to hate who I was, this fragmented self I was, because that's not what the criteria meant.

I want to ask each and every person who looks at syscourse with a disdain and dismissal, or who feels the need to post some swarmy holier-than-thou post about how above it they all are, or to remark on how everyone is too passionate and needs to take a step back, regardless of where they're actually at...

How in the 9 hells can I agree with you when I've had these experiences?

Again. I've been hurt by syscourse -- I feel the need to keep mentioning that, just because I know some of you fuckers are going to take this all to mean that I love syscourse too much, and that I'm too supportive of it, or god forbid that I'm fucking self harming by finally opening up about all of this. But the fact is, syscourse has helped me understand so much more about who I am, about the disorder I live with, and has led me to other avenues of research I never would've looked at otherwise. I've started studying Jung -- someone I had ZERO interest in before recently, I had to research far too much about him for my English degree as it is -- all because of the "Studies Proving Endogenic Systems" list I've been working through. I've started buying up self-help textbooks, because syscourse caused me to understand that my experience with therapists was NOT the norm, and most people DO need to work on self-help, and i wanted to understand their perspectives.

How is this not impacting people's lives?!

Of course I'm going to take this seriously. I take it as seriously as I take my teaching. I might not be changing the world, or changing laws. I might be working within a flawed system. But at the very least, if I can make one kid's life better -- give them someone like them to look up to, to relate to, who can give them the ability to make their own choices and learn more while advocating for myself --  then it's worth it.

And that's what I aim for in syscourse. If I can make one person -- singlet, system, plural, collective, whatever have you -- understand themselves or others a little bit better... Is that not, in it's own way, activism? Is that not, in it's own way, changing the world?

And if the answer is "no" then... what the fuck is the point of communication, or socializing, or trying to debate anything, anywhere?

Ugh. Lord, I've rambled so long, I can barely think about everything I've written. Bullet points time.

Syscourse can be harmful, and I won't say it isn't. As someone who has been obsessed with it in the past, who has used it to harm myself, and sometimes still does -- that harm doesn't go away on its own.

Syscourse is also beautiful. We CAN have good conversations, make close friends, and learn more about ourselves through these discussions.

If we don't try to combat that misinformation that's in this space, if we don't try our best to heal this space, then how is it ever going to recover?

I am a person that exists in real life. Syscourse isn't just a chronically online thing -- IT DOES have an impact in the real world! Stop devaluing passion and heat and anger just because you feel like you're so much more above it because you are clearly the person who knows better than everyone else, simply because you "Cracked the code" and somehow figured out how to syscourse unharmfully (newsflash, asshole, so did a lot of people -- it's just not in the way you agree with).

Let yourself be mad. Let yourself be impolite. Don't let it completely overtake every moment of your day, every second of your life, but fucking let yourself be mad. It's okay to be upset!

I don't know how so many of us managed to forget that along the way.

#syscourse #long post #I have a LOT of thoughts on this matter #And a lot that's been bottled up for months #I'm doing my best to not molitov cocktail it at you all #But I'm also trying not to explode myself #I'm so fucking terrified to post this #Because of how far back all of this has set me #But I know ripping off the bandaid might be the best way to start healing #So here we go

[thefandomenchantress]

I think I get what that person is saying about people shrugging Ace off and being hypocritical because there is the part where Ace opens up to Teruko about him being basically afraid of everything and being in a constant state of panic and she kinda just laughs/shrugs it off which is so not cool, it was even before her whole going emo thing /j (sorry that was a bad joke, you get what I mean).

People are constantly shrugging off Ace whenever he opens up or attempts to open up to Ace and I don’t know about most people but me personally in a situation like this, if someone opened up to me and talked about their fears, how they can’t control their anger, or anything like that, the last thing I would do is shrug it off.

This cast just has a lot of teamwork and empathy issues as far as I can see. I do get your point of the characters not seeing as much as the audience has seen but at the same time it does feel like whenever a character does see one of Ace's breakdowns or explanations they just shrug it off altogether.

It is a very complex issue and I just hope at some point someone besides Teruko can hear what Ace is feeling because I think this situation with Ace could be solved/helped with just one empathetic person in the cast hearing him out.

I hope that all makes sense and isn't just a bunch of repeated information and points.

Sorry this has been in my inbox for…a few days, I think? I’ll be honest, the reason I put off responding to it was because I couldn’t really think of anything to say. I’m pretty sure I agree with all your points, for the most part.

I mean, if I thought that Ace was just a jerk who deserved all the treatment he got, I obviously wouldn’t be as obsessed with him and his writing as I am, haha.

Honestly, I do think Teruko shrugging off Ace’s sorta-trauma-dump when he tries to open up to her in the first chapter does say a lot about her and her past, (honestly I can’t believe I wasn’t enthralled with her as a protagonist at first I love her so much). Like, now that you pointed it out I can’t unsee how he’s actually trying to open up and Teruko’s literally like:

I mean I can’t stay mad at her for it because her ‘are you fucking serious’ sprite makes me laugh every time I see it, but still. She is just dismissing him, which isn’t very nice. She’s obviously judging him and not taking him seriously, which Ace probably noticed as his next sprite is one of his angry ones.

Honestly I think almost everyone in the class gets too caught up in their own issues (which is a very human flaw for them to have). I mean, every time one of the characters has a breakdown, I think someone in the cast is finally going to realize what that person is going through and help them through it…And then they just…don’t?

I mean. J is being harassed by Arturo for four days straight and we only see someone try to stop it once, Eden, and she doesn’t do a good job. Can someone please help this this poor effects artist?! I get that maybe someone tried to help off-screen, but since we don’t see it I can’t be sure that happened and honestly I don’t think it did. J has to force Teruko to help her because no one else is trying to, and she almost gets stabbed in the process. And I already rambled about no one helping Nico last time.

All this is to say that the more I think about it, the more I think you’re right. Almost everyone has had a mental breakdown at some point in DRDT (or in Whit’s case complete emotional detachment) and almost none of them get any comfort from others afterwards. Arei did, but David’s motives are…Questionable. Nico did too, but only after things got so bad they threatened Ace’s life.

I should clarify that none of what I said is meant to criticize the dev’s writing. If anything, this shows just how much I love it because can’t think of many other pieces of media where I would have this much to say. DRDT is just so INTERESTING! Every character, every character dynamic, every location and visual and piece of dialogue! Every time I rewatch a scene I find something new to overthink about. I love it so much. :)

Damn. Apparently I did have a lot to say after all. But yeah, I agree with you and you made great points, thanks for your input!

#i think my stance of ‘the Nico-Ace situation was literally everyone’s fault to an extent’ is either a great take or a horrible one #someone help nico why did no one help them until things got so bad they threatened ace’s life (not that they are blameless) #ace shouldn’t need someone to stop him from bullying nico but he does and no one is doing it #…maybe i should make an actual post about that sometime but i’m feeling passionate right now #danganronpa despair time #drdt #ace markey #drdt spoilers #j rosales #j moreno #answering inbox message thingys

[decarbry]

Low-key I can see as part of the "milking as much of the suffering" as the doctor could, Aizawa would have his memories wiped last, so that he deals with the mutation and nomufication on his own?

Which idk makes me curious as to how he would react to eyes appearing and the additional limbs (where the limbs grafted on? Grown?)

Like how did Aizawa sorta live with his own sorta downfall into yaumubre?

Let me preface this by apologizing for the pain I am about to inflict (I assume, for I am pained) and also for not drawing anything for this answer, AND for kind of going off on a semi-related tangent; I feel like this is good fodder for main comic content and I wanted to quickly get my thoughts out. Y’all are giving me good help with dev.

Since Yabureme’s “development” starts right after the USJ raid they’re still not… completely efficient with the Nomu creation, and Garaki is still working on perfecting higher-end Nomus, the actual action of wiping memories is going to be more of a helpful side-effect than an actual step. Like, they definitely need the memories wiped to help ensure obedience, but it’s not “pull the lever, Kronk!” = memories erased. So for Yabureme it’s a gradual spiral into nothingness, little bits and pieces going missing every day of the time he’s “in development”. Every day, every hour, some memory is suddenly gone until in the later stages he remembers nothing, but retains these survival reflex feelings of fear and guilt and ANGER and that SOMETHING is wrong but what is it??!?? And then when the process has ended even those unsettling feelings are gone. Newborn baby boy Nomu.

Imagine if you will. The first and most agonizing stage, injections and infusions, passes, and the overwhelming nature of it all shoves him into a fever. They can’t risk overdoing it and allowing the fever to set in so bad it destroys his brain, so they have to let it break over a night or two, during which our poor lad hallucinates. Literally the first intelligent thought he’s had in a while because you just can’t think when in that much constant pain, and it isn’t even a real thought! One guess who shows up in those hallucinations. The fever eventually passes and he’s finally tossed into a capsule for the longest part of the process.

BUT NOW! THE MORE I THINK ABOUT THIS THE FURTHER DOWN THE RABBIT HOLE I GO. Because GUESS WHAT! HE WOULD HAVE TO BE BLINDFOLDED THE WHOLE TIME!!! Because if he’s allowed to get his eyes on Garaki to erase his quirk at ANY time during ANY of this, that’s at least annoying enough to debilitate the doctor into not being able to work at pace, if not outright kill him after long enough of a stare! Aizawa spends WEEKS in darkness! And then when the quirks are taking hold in his body and the eyes start appearing, there would ABSOLUTELY be fluctuations of unstable quirk activation because of everything he’s going through, which means Garaki’s job becomes even MORE difficult later in the process because you can’t blindfold the whole man!!!

Moral of this disjointed brain vomit: he’s upset. And desperate to stop whatever they’re doing to him. And afraid, but mostly fucking MAD. Aizawa at least gets to be a pain in their backsides until the end. ☺️

#nomu aizawa #shouta aizawa #eraser head #I feel like I did everything but answer the questions posed here but my brain wouldn’t stop #Yabureme Aizawa AU