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fluentmoviequoter · 3 months

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The Better, Hidden Half

Requested Here!

Part 2 Here >

Pairing: Tim Bradford x fem!wife!reader (takes place in The Rookie 1x20-2x1)

Summary: Tim doesn't tell just anyone that he's married. When he's quarantined and his life is threatened by a fatal virus, he asks Lucy to call you, and ends up showing everyone what you mean to him.

Warnings: angst, fluffy comfort at the end, spoilers for episodes 1x20 and 2x1 (this is basically a rewrite, but still includes a brief reference to the suicide line from Tim). reader stress cleans?

A/N: The anxiety/stress cleaning bit is completely self-indulgent; sorry. I tried to manipulate Tim's conversations with Lucy to make them sound more platonic (I don't know if it worked though). I absolutely love this idea and had a ton of fun writing it!🤍

Word Count: 3.9k+ words

Tim Bradford is a man of few words, and he keeps his life separated into two distinct areas: work life and personal life. He tried to bring the two together once, but hated the constant worry that someone from his work life would threaten to hurt people in his personal life or worse, act on their threats. For that reason, for his family’s safety, Tim keeps his life separated, and only a choice few have been chosen to be trusted with a glimpse of both sides of Tim. Angela, Wade, and on occasion, Bishop, see a side of Tim that doesn't exist when he's at work.

✯✯✯✯✯

“How is she?” Angela asks, sitting beside Tim for roll call.

Tim rolls his eyes, crossing his arms and leaning back in his chair. “I trained her, I’m sure she did fine. Better than your golden boy boot, anyway.”

Angela smiles and leans in to whisper, “Didn’t mean Chen.” She turns her attention to Jackson, calling, “80 might be the passing grade, boot, but if you don’t get at least a 90, you should turn in your badge on general principle.”

Tim leans forward to add, “Officer Chen, I will take it as a personal insult if you get anything less than a 93.”

“Yes, sir,” Lucy answers. “Have you figured out what you’re going to do with all your new free time? Might I suggest a book club?”

Angela elbows Tim under the table, and he glances at her quickly, giving her a displeased stare which only makes her work harder to hide her smile.

“What are you talking about?” Tim asks.

“You know, after I pass, there won’t be any more daily evaluations to write.”

“Whether I evaluate you daily or weekly, I will continue to judge you every minute. Understood?”

“Yes, sir.”

As Grey enters, Lucy turns to Nolan, who whispers, “I can’t believe he’s single.”

“Tell me about it,” Lucy replies, rolling her eyes. “Evaluating a wife daily would cut into his ‘man of honor’ time.”

They silence as Wade directs the TOs to only take easy calls while the rookies finish their last shift before their exams. When Tim assures that he follows direct orders, he keeps his eyes straight ahead, knowing that Angela and Bishop are ready to tease him the moment he looks in their direction.

✯✯✯✯✯

7-Adam-19, silent hold-up alarm activated at Madame Megan’s psychic shop. 2417 Vine. Code 3.

Tim and Lucy enter the back room, taking control of the situation quickly, and he dials in once again to being a cop. Not a family man or anything of the sort. Just a police officer.

As Lucy walks out, and the (fake) psychic hits on Tim, he can only think of one thing. Excusing himself from the room, with a lack of grace that is unlike him, Tim lets his mind wander for just a moment. He thinks of a promise he made, a vow he took, and then his focus is back on his new case, a missing person discovered by a phony Hollywood psychic.

✯✯✯✯✯

Miles away, you are trying to focus on work, though you find it much harder than Tim to simply push your family and your personal life from your mind at a moment’s notice. Fiddling with your necklace, you refrain from grabbing your phone, wanting to text the only person on your mind. Oblivious to the dangers Tim is learning about from the CDC and Homeland Security, you sigh and clench your hands into fists before attempting to focus again.

Before you make any progress on starting the project awaiting your attention, your phone rings. Tim’s name appears on your screen, and you rush to answer, dread filling you. He never calls while he’s working, and you immediately expect the worst. Surely if it were something terrible, Angela or Wade would call you. If Tim is calling, that means he is okay, he is alive.

“Hello?” you ask, releasing a sigh when Tim says your name.

“Are you alone?” he adds, his voice strained.

“Yes. What’s going on?”

“I need you to stay where you are or go straight home. There’s a terror cell with a biological weapon; we’re doing everything we can to find them, but I need to know you’re safe.”

“Tim- yeah, of course. Are you okay?”

“Yeah. I- I really can’t say anything else. Not about what we’re doing. Call me if you need anything. Anything at all, okay?”

“I will. Be careful, Tim. I love you.”

“I love you.”

Your phone beeps as the call ends, and your hand finds your necklace again, one finger slipping into Tim’s wedding ring. He leaves it with you each morning, taking it back with gentle touches and loving kisses when he returns each night. Today, all you can do is trust that he is good at his job and that he will protect you and the rest of LA, and then come back to you.

✯✯✯✯✯

Tim and Lucy approach one of the possible address in the search for newly discovered members of the terror cell.

“Man. And here I thought that test was gonna be the hardest part of my day,” Lucy muses.

“Best case scenario, it’s tomorrow’s problem,” Tim points out. His thoughts, however, are stuck on you, especially when Lucy asks what the worst case is.

“Took you long enough,” the man, Peter Langston, says as he opens the door. “Bag’s in here.”

“Sir, we’re here about the bus you took from Phoenix,” Tim explains.

“No kidding. I called you about the bag.”

“And what bag is that?”

“I thought it was mine on the bus. I picked it up by accident.” Tim follows Langston into a bedroom as he continues, “Noticed as soon as I got home. Called right away. Still took you guys like six hours to get here.”

“Uh, sir, we’re not here about a bag.”

“So, you don’t have mine? My computer’s in there… I went through this one for an address, and all I found was some weird science equipment.”

Tim glances back at Lucy, who calls for the task force at the mention of ‘weird science equipment.’

“Sir, did you touch anything in there?” Tim asks, pulling gloves on.

“Yeah, I cut my finger going through it looking for an address. Some kind of broken vial.”

Tim’s eyes widen and his breath catches as the man raises his bloodied finger, adding that it hasn’t stopped bleeding since it was cut. Hemorrhaging, Tim knows.

“Everything okay in there?” Lucy calls.

“Yeah. Just stay out there,” Tim demands.

The man coughs, and Tim flinches as blood lands on his neck and up onto his jaw. Looking down at the blood on the man’s shirt, Tim’s mind forgets the divide between work and personal life. He takes the initiative to lock Lucy out, slamming the door on her to keep her safe, but his true concern is you. If something happens to him, who will look out for you? Who will be your shoulder to cry on? In a moment, as the reality of the situation dawns on him, Tim thinks like a husband, and he begins to regret keeping you, his wife, hidden for so long.

“Tim, no!” Lucy yells, but she steps forward too late.

Tim is on the other side of the door, a new division created as others are dissolved.

✯✯✯✯✯

Tim finds baby wipes on a nearby changing table, wiping the blood from his skin as he lies to Langston, telling him it will be okay and distracting him with meaningless treatments to combat the “bad case of the flu the police were warned about this morning at roll call.”

Langston disappears into the bathroom in search of cold medicine, and Tim walks to the door to ask Lucy, “Everything all right out there, Chen?”

“Uh, yeah. The CDC’s on their way,” she responds. “Hey, you need to come out of there.”

“That’s not gonna happen. Got to keep this contained.”

“Tim-“

“It’s gonna be alright, boot.”

Tim knows that Lucy is concerned about him, and he is similarly concerned for her. He feels responsible for her safety as his rookie, but his thoughts toward her are completely and totally different from his fears concerning you, driven by love rather than mutual respect and duty.

“You keep your head in the game, okay?” Tim encourages Lucy. “Everything’s gonna be fine.”

As Tim looks at the blood-covered wipe in his hand, he thinks of you, and how you’ll respond to the potential notification that he didn’t make it, taken from you by the very thing he tried to protect you from. He turns his attention back to the sick man feet away from him before his thoughts spiral. Tim needs you, so he needs to focus and survive.

✯✯✯✯✯

While the CDC is arriving at the house and quarantining Tim and the infected man, you are pacing in your shared bedroom. Memories of you and Tim exist in every inch of this house, and every moment that goes by without an update increases your worry. Walking into the closet, you find one of Tim’s recently worn shirts, changing into it before picking up the remote to distract yourself. With Tim’s pillow clutched to your chest, you try to laugh at the ridiculous sitcom on the screen, but it doesn’t work as well as you hoped.

✯✯✯✯✯

“Officer Chen, you want to tell me what happened?” Dr. Morgan asks, dressed in full hazmat gear as she enters.

“Yeah, uh, the bus passenger mistakenly grabbed the wrong bag, and the virus must have been in it because he coughed up blood on Tim,” Lucy explains.

“Did you get any blood on you?”

“Uh, no. I was out here. Tim immediately closed the door.”

“Smart man.”

Tim hears Dr. Morgan’s comment and clenches his jaw, knowing you would disagree entirely. At least in this case.

“Hey, doc,” Tim greets, standing against the door.

“How you doing?” Dr. Morgan inquires.

“Fine. But Mr. Langston’s struggling a little.”

“Can you describe his condition?”

“Yeah. He, uh, started coughing blood about 20 minutes ago. Now he’s got a pretty wicked nosebleed.”

“Why aren’t they coming in? Where’s my ambulance?” Langston asks.

“It’ll be here any minute. Just… stay put. Save your energy.”

Lucy interrupts to ask, “Where’s the vaccine?”

“Still in the air,” Dr. Morgan says. “Should land in the next hour or so.”

Scoffing, Lucy argues, “You can’t make Tim wait in there. He might not be infected.”

“Sorry. Quarantine rules exist for a reason.” Dr. Morgan turns to the door and asks Tim, “Officer Bradford, do you mind if I put you to work while you wait?”

“You want to know what’s in the bag?” Tim knows digging through the contents is dangerous, but waiting without doing anything won’t increase his chances of getting home to you.

“Yes, I do.”

“Copy that. Chen, I’m gonna turn on my body cam. You can monitor it from out there.”

“Okay. Please be careful,” she responds.

Tim hears your voice in his mind, telling him the same thing. He trusts himself to listen to you more than his rookie.

“All right. Here we go,” Tim says, using his baton to open the bag.

“Wait. Wait. What is that bottle?” Dr. Morgan wonders.

“Looks like the delivery device,” Tim guesses, raising it carefully from the bag. “It’s a misting fan.”

Dr. Morgan calls Homeland Security with the new information on how the terrorists are planning to spread the virus. As Tim continues searching the bag, failing to find identification or target information, Lucy sees Langston raising a chair in the mirror and yells for Tim just before he is knocked unconscious.

✯✯✯✯✯

Your house is as clean as it has ever been. Using your nervous energy and anxiety-fueled need to move, you clean each room in an attempt to keep your mind from worrying about Tim. You could call someone and ask for an update, but they probably can’t tell you anything. The only comfort you have is knowing that Angela and Wade would call you if you needed to know something. The silence is deafening, but it’s also a good sign.

✯✯✯✯✯

“Tim? Tim!” Lucy continues, growing concerned at the lack of reply.

Tim opens his eyes, moving backward quickly when he sees a puddle of blood running toward his face. He sees Langston standing across the room, mumbling about needing to get out as he tries to break the window. Tim tases him as he stands, and Lucy’s concerned yells continue. Covering his face with his shirt, Tim handcuffs Langston to the bed, shuffling backward as Lucy demands his answer.

“I’m okay! I’m okay!” he replies, breathing heavily. “Well, that was fun.”

“Are you sure you’re okay?”

Tim chuckles. “Kind of depends on your definition of the word.”

While Lucy tells Dr. Morgan to get the vaccine, and the LAPD sends patrol units out to find the other terrorist, Tim keeps his eyes on Langston, but his mind is on you. He should ask someone to tell you and find a way to let you know what is going on, but part of him knows that you are separate from this for a reason. You’re likely worried enough without knowing that Tim’s chance of being infected rises with each moment.

✯✯✯✯✯

Tim watches Langston die, unable to do anything as he begs for help and convulses. Imagining himself in Langston’s place, Tim decides that he has to do something. He can’t go out like that, he won’t, but more importantly, he can’t leave you wondering. If Tim dies today, he is not dying without talking to you one last time, showing everyone around him that you are the best part of him.

He leans against the door in silence until Lucy says, “Hey, I, uh- I just checked with Dr. Morgan. The vaccine’s minutes away.”

“You know, you’re good at a lot of things – lying isn’t one of them,” Tim replies.

“You think I’m good at things? Can I get that in writing? … How are you doing? Are there any symptoms yet?"

"I’m sweating like a pig. But it’s probably because it’s 100 degrees in this room.”

Tim sighs just before Lucy assures, “It’s gonna be okay. I really believe that.”

“I’m sure you do. But if it isn’t-“

“Don’t think like that. It’s-“

“If it isn’t,” Tim repeats. “I’m not going out the way my man Pete here just did.”

“What are you saying?”

Tim sighs again, realizing what he said. He would never leave you like that; he’s a fighter. “I need you to do something for me, Chen.”

“Anything.”

“My- my wife is probably worrying herself sick right now. If this doesn’t end like you think it will, can you tell her that I fought to get home to her? Just- just keep an eye on her if anything happens. Wade and Angela, too.”

“Wife?” Lucy asks softly.

Tim smiles, glad to talk about something other than himself or the virus released in the room with him.

“Yeah. We eloped a while back; Grey, Lopez, and Bishop were there.”

“You’ve never mentioned her.”

“I keep her separated. She - everything in my personal life – would be at risk if there wasn’t a divide there.”

“I get that. What’s she like?”

Tim says your name, closing his eyes and picturing you as he tells Lucy how beautiful, kind, and loving you are. “She’s my better half. I don’t- can’t imagine not going home to her.”

“I promise, Tim. I’m confident you will go home to her, but… I promise.”

“Thank you,” Tim says quietly.

✯✯✯✯✯

“Please tell me that’s the vaccine,” Lucy says when Dr. Morgan returns.

“It is,” she answers quickly, walking toward the door quarantining Tim. “Stand back, Officer Chen. You’re not wearing protective gear.”

“Yeah.” Lucy steps back, hoping Tim is okay, and that he gets to go home to you.

“Officer Bradford, it’s time to let me in,” Dr. Morgan calls.

Tim opens the door, greeting Dr. Morgan before answering that he’s not feeling too bad. She tells him that she’s going to administer the vaccine. “It’s experimental, right?” Tim asks.

“That’s correct. So, we’re just going to have to wait and see what happens. Maybe nothing. Maybe you grow horns. But for now, I’d say you might’ve dodged a bullet.”

Tim looks at Lucy to ask, “Can you get Lopez? Ask her to call for me?”

Lucy nods, pulling her radio out to contact Angela. She knows that Tim will need you, no matter how the vaccine works… or doesn’t.

“Lopez,” she says, sighing before saying, “Tim wants to know if you can call his wife.”

“Of course,” Angela answers. “She’ll be at his side, even if I have to go get her in the shop.”

Lucy smiles at Tim, and he sighs as Dr. Morgan administers the vaccine. There’s more hope surrounding Tim now, but the fight may not be over yet.

✯✯✯✯✯

When you see Angela’s name on your phone, you consider not answering. Biting your bottom lip to hold your tears in, you answer.

“He’s okay,” Angela begins.

You sigh in relief, a few tears breaking free anyway. “Thank you, Angela.”

“The vaccine is experimental, so they’re taking him to the CDC for observation; you can visit with the proper protective gear. Do you want me to come pick you up?”

“I’ll meet you there.”

“See you in a few. And, just so you know, he didn’t call me.”

“Who did?”

“His rookie.”

Angela reminds you that she’s happy to pick you up if you want before ending the call. Tim mentioned me, you think. Then you wonder whether or not that’s a good thing.

✯✯✯✯✯

“Hey, I heard you guys saved the day,” Lucy says, exiting Langston’s house to meet Nolan, Jackson, Lopez, and Bishop.

“It was a group effort,” Jackson corrects.

“Glad you’re okay,” Nolan expresses.

“Me too,” Lucy sighs. “I- I mean that you’re okay, too.”

“How’s Tim?” Angela asks.

“I think he’s gonna be all right. Now, 24-hour observation at the CDC.”

“I’ll bet my pension he just told doctors Tim Bradford does not ride in a wheelchair,” Angela jokes as Tim walks out.

“Only way I’m leavin’ out of here is on my own two feet,” Bishop imitates.

“Don’t you guys have paperwork to finish?” Tim retorts.

Tim looks at Lucy, nodding his thanks before continuing to walk toward the car waiting to transport him to the CDC. He stops suddenly in the yard, growing dizzy before he falls backward onto the grass.

“Officer Bradford!” Dr. Morgan yells.

Lucy, Angela, Bishop, and Jackson run toward him before the CDC holds them back. Someone calls for an ambulance, and Angela backs away to make a call.

✯✯✯✯✯

“What happened?” you ask, answering Angela’s second call.

“Meet us at Shaw instead of the CDC,” she says.

You can hear yelling in the background, and repeat, “What happened?”

Angela says your name, unyielding as she says, “Shaw. I’ll meet you there.”

You inhale deeply, turning toward Shaw. Knowing that you have no chance of beating an ambulance escorted by police cars, you grip the steering wheel, hoping that Los Angeles traffic has grace on you, and you make it to Tim’s side quickly.

✯✯✯✯✯

“Tim better make it,” Jackson says.

“He will.” Angela knows that he’s a fighter, but she also knows that losing him will destroy you. He has to make it for himself, for the police department, and most importantly, for you.

In the ambulance ahead, Tim goes into anaphylactic shock. Lucy helps the paramedics and glances at Tim’s left hand. The line where his wedding ring sits is barely visible, but she whispers for him to keep his promise, to keep fighting.

Once the ambulance and the police cars enter into the hospital parking lot, Nolan notices a woman with a gun, alerting the officers surrounding the ambulance before the firefight starts.

Lucy covers Tim in the ambulance as the paramedics assist him as well as the injured medics. Nolan shoots the woman in the shoulder, but his gun jams as he moves closer to her.

Tim opens the ambulance door, downing the armed woman on a surge of adrenaline. Stepping onto the ambulance driveway, he asks Nolan if he’s okay.

“I should have reloaded on the move,” Nolan mutters. “You?”

“I should’ve taken yesterday off,” Tim answers.

“Alright, Officer Bradford, let’s go,” a nurse says, pushing a wheelchair to his side.

✯✯✯✯✯

“Angela!” you call, jogging to her side.

“Don’t freak out,” she begins, but your eyes widen when you see the bullet holes covering, well, everything.

“Where is he?”

She nods, leading you around her shop. Tim is standing beside Nolan, arguing with a nurse.

“I can walk. Clearly, I’m fine,” Tim argues.

You don’t think about how many people are watching as you walk to Tim’s side. He turns toward you, his eyes softening when he sees you.

“Get in the wheelchair,” you demand.

Tim sighs but does as you say. Nolan and Jackson look at each other in shock, and Lucy smiles as she says, “His wife.”

✯✯✯✯✯

When you walk into Tim’s hospital room, he looks like he’s been waiting for you.

“I’m sorry,” he begins.

“For what? Not listening to the nurse?”

Tim chuckles as he raises his left hand, pulling you to his side. “No. I’m sorry for not showing you off more, for never telling people about us. I worried you; I know I did, and you don’t deserve any of it.”

You lean forward, running your fingers across Tim’s jawline as you smile. “You don’t have to show me off. I know why you do it, Tim. Being a secret, being separated and safe, I get it. What I don’t like is not knowing if you’re okay.”

“I don’t want the separation anymore. You are my entire life, and- I don’t know what will happen tomorrow, but I’m not risking this again. The idea of not making it home, leaving you alone, with no one knowing you or how much you mean to me… that was terrible, and I’m sorry.”

Pursing your lips, you lean toward Tim and look into his eyes before scanning your eyes over his face.

“What are you doing?” he asks.

“Trying to figure out where the Tim I know went.”

Tim smiles, moving over in the bed and tugging you against his side. He taps your necklace before raising your hair away from your neck. You unclasp your necklace, sliding Tim’s wedding ring off the chain. Tim lays his left hand in your lap, and you put his ring on slowly before kissing his hand.

“I love you,” Tim says.

“I love you. And I accept your apology, even though I didn’t need it.”

“Ready to meet the rest of my-“

“Friends?” you fill in, smiling.

“Colleagues,” Tim finishes, shaking his head as his arm tightens around your waist.

“Thank you for making sure Angela called me.”

“How clean is the house?”

You laugh, pressing your face against Tim’s shoulder. He knows you well, and though you didn't know what was truly at stake over the last few hours, you did miss him.

“Hey, Mrs. Bradford,” Wade greets, smiling as he leads a small crowd of officers into the room. “I have some rookies here who don’t believe someone would marry Tim.”

“I changed my mind,” Tim replies. “Get out.”

You elbow him gently, smiling as you stand. “It's much easier when he doesn’t tell people. No association to him.”

Tim laughs behind you, and after shaking hands and introducing yourself, you return to Tim’s side: where nothing can hurt you, everything is safe, and you’re the most important thing in the world.

#tim bradford x reader #tim bradford x you #tim bradford imagine #tim bradford fluff #tim bradford the rookie #tim bradford #the rookie #requests #fem!reader

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operator-report · 3 months

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In middle school, I read a short story for English class called Flowers for Algernon. Maybe you’ve read it, too. In the story, a disabled man named Charlie is given a medicine that cures his disability. Over the course of the story, he comes to realize that his “cure” is temporary and that he will “regress” into being disabled again. The story makes it clear that this is a tragedy. As a disabled teenager when I first read it, the story affected me deeply.

I’d like to talk about David and Noelle.

Content warnings for discussion of suicide, self-harm, ableism and eating disorders below the cut. Spoilers for Worm through arc 27.

When I was first reading arc 18, one of the things that stuck out to me is how much time the story spends on Eidolon. For me, it was the first time I paid much attention to him - prior to that, Eidolon was just an extremely powerful background character to me. But in arc 18, we learn that (1) Eidolon is losing his powers and (2) he believes that fighting Echidna will allow him to tap into some sort of reservoir to bring them back.

We find this out, of course, through Tattletale exposing him, which is always an extremely embarrassing event for Tattletale’s target. It makes it extremely clear that what Eidolon is doing is pathetic. He is going to kill a teenage girl so he can feel something.

Which would be messed up enough, right? We don’t need to make this even worse, right? Wrong. Because Wildblow has spent the last several thousand words building up the Case 53s as X-Men style metaphors for oppressed groups, and one of the forms of oppression that Wildblow generally writes well is ableism. I think you can consider most, if not all of the Case 53s as disabled in some way. I think the link is extremely clear with Noelle.

Noelle doesn’t get her powers from traditional Cauldron human experimentation - at least, not directly. Instead, she and Krouse are facing what is, to them, a no-win scenario. They’re quarantined with limited access to medical care. Breaching this quarantine would permanently render them criminals. If Noelle survives her surgery, which is a pretty big if, she’ll become disabled, in a way that both Krouse and Noelle agree is ugly and undesirable. She won’t be able to do “boyfriend-girlfriend stuff” because she won’t be “any good to look at, after.”

Krouse and Noelle are terrified of death, yes, but they’re also terrified of disability. They are desperate for control over Noelle’s body, control that, as of that moment, only the state has. (Remember the quarantine?) Krouse pressures Noelle into drinking the vial. Noelle is cured.

Noelle’s cure does not last. In attempting to assert control, her body becomes uncontrollable. Her body is her trauma and her eating disorder made literal. She still needs care.

Worm would be bad if this is why her life sucks. But Worm does something better, instead. Noelle goes through hell, not just due to the sheer difficulty of having her power, but because of the way her teammates and Coil treat her. They talk about Noelle like she’s already dead. They’re ashamed of bringing her the food she needs. When Krouse “includes” Noelle in a discussion in arc 12, it’s mostly perfunctory. They do not believe Noelle is human any longer. They lock her away.

Noelle doesn’t want to be put in a cage. Noelle doesn’t want to be dehumanized. In interlude 18, when we get insight into Noelle’s thoughts, we learn that what Noelle is angry about is the fact that Krouse locked her in a concrete bunker and placated her. When she tells people not to look at her, there’s a coda to that sentence that she doesn’t get to verbalize: don’t look at me like that.

This is the person who Eidolon is going to kill.

Via the Simurgh, this is a person Eidolon has unknowingly created.

A few thousand words of Worm go by. It’s Gold Morning. Eidolon is fighting Scion. Now, at the end of the book, we finally get substantial insight into David, the man behind the mask.

David takes a Cauldron vial to cure his disability. David sees this as the only way out, after an unsuccessful application to join the military, and then, an unsuccessful suicide attempt. David is bearing an immense amount of shame and internalized ableism. David is worried that father’s friends are watching him. (Don’t look at me.) David cleaves the world into two kinds of people: those who can have jobs, who are liked and respected because they are useful; and people like him, who are useless.

It’s a terrible way to think. Without that worldview, how could a person not take the vial? David wants to be used, because David wants to be useful. He never gets the independence he craves – not when he’s in that level of debt to Cauldron – but he gets to be useful, and that’s one of the best things you can be.

Like Noelle’s, like Charlie’s in Flowers, David’s cure doesn’t work. His abilities are wearing off. He is essentially told, when Doctor Mother administers his booster shots, that his medicine is too expensive.

Cauldron creates Noelle. David, as Cauldron’s soldier, has a role to play in her creation. David knows exactly what he is doing to Noelle. It happened to him. Worm fandom talks a lot about David being a father. He’s a father in more ways than one. (David’s father is always watching him.) (Don’t look at me.)

Cauldron never cures David’s ableism. In his world, you can be useful, or you can die. David asks Noelle if she wants to win. Noelle tells him no. You can have a job, or you can kill yourself. When David tries to kill Noelle to help himself, isn’t that a mercy?

Of course it isn’t. It goes without saying that all of this is extremely fucked up. When it comes to disability, “cure” is a complicated concept. I’m not going to get into all the ways it can be treated; this post is already a thousand words long. But I do think that Worm, through Noelle and David and the concept of the Cauldron vial, provides an extremely vivid picture of the problems with cure.

Under ableist logic, when you have a disability, a cure is something you’re expected to want. Without it, the story goes, you can’t be useful. You can’t do boyfriend-girlfriend stuff. The expectation is social, like the act of staring. Your desire for it should drive how you organize your life – it is control, like a quarantine. David is crushed by that expectation. He throws his lot in with Cauldron, the cure-makers. The expectation is passed along to Noelle, and even though David can recognize that inheritance, he cannot imagine any other way to respond to it other than attempted murder.

At the beginning of this post, I mentioned that Flowers for Algernon is a tragedy. The reason that story has stuck with me so long is that I keep going back and forth as to why. Is it a tragedy because Charlie goes back to being disabled? There’s a good chance that’s what the author intended. I don’t know. It would be a pretty shitty story if that were the case. Is it a tragedy because people only treat Charlie well when he’s “cured,” and when that stops, he’ll go back to abuse? Seems plausible. I don’t think there’s one right answer. Regardless, when you’re disabled, there’s an immense pressure to seek out a cure, and a cognizable loss when it is withheld. The fact that Worm captures that social pressure and social loss so well is extremely compelling for me, and I’m going to be thinking about these characters for a long time.

#worm #parahumans #wormblr #eidolon #noelle meinhardt #any errors or omissions in this post are due to me reading interlude 27 like 3 hours ago #shoutout to tumblr user artbyblastweave for writing excellent eidolon meta that inspired this one #i would also give a shoutout to my friend who convinced me to read worm but i already shout at her enough. enjoy. thanks for the worms

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nemastraea · 6 months

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Doormat extraordinaire: Andrew Graves is down horrendous for his own sister | Part 1

Or as I like to call it, actual literal word vomit attempting a proper character analysis!

Here's a link to the AO3 version for archive purposes: The doormat extraordinaire has a bit of a romantic streak,

Content warning: This will heavily feature spoilers from Episodes 1 & 2 of The Coffin of Andy and Leyley. Trigger warning: Abuse, cannibalism, child neglect, codependency, harassment, incest, murder, self-harm, and suicide. Disclaimer: I will occasionally reference an extremely normal essay from Sufficient Velocity commenter Leyleyfication (here). It would be a lot easier to read this essay first as Leyleyfication does a pretty good job establishing the following: - Ashley is dependent on Andrew to assure and validate her of her own insecurities, and - The game heavily implies that Andrew wants to fuck his own sister.

Anyway: The Coffin of Andy and Leyley! A game in early access where a pair of siblings are stuck through a seemingly never-ending quarantine together, desperate not to starve to death. When their cultist neighbor dies in a ritual gone wrong, they rationally resort to cannibalism. Fun!

I am definitely going to assume that you read Leyleyfication's extremely normal essay (I am on my knees, begging you to read that). Which is why this essay immediately starts with, "yeah, Andrew definitely wants to fuck his sister" as its baseline.

What I will be adding to that funny little cauldron of fucked up sibling dynamics in a horror visual novel are the following: Andrew's fixation and sexual attraction manifests as his desire to control, dominate, and possess Ashley. And it is framed as a fatalist attraction and the totality of his existence (for worse or even worse).

Because of Tumblr's limit for 30 images per post, though, I'm going to have to split this extremely normal and reasonably lengthy essay into... multiple posts! Yeah! I have no idea how long this will fucking go!

So first things first: how can we tell that Andrew is even attracted to Ashley in the first place?

Nemlei (Devlog 05). Note the hickeys above and below Ashley's choker and her left inner thigh, and Andrew's left hand creeping into her right thigh.

As Leyleyfication points out, the game primes us to believe that Andrew is a pushover and Ashley is his abuser. This occurs in the Steam page as it explicitly says Ashley is "in fact, very bad" and Andrew is a "doormat extraordinaire." Moreover, it's very easy to tell that Ashley is, on some degree, obsessed with Andrew:

She's happy to hear that Julia broke up with Andrew over the phone;

She repeatedly accuses him of finding the Lady from Room 302 attractive and he 'tried anything with her;' and

Her flashback to wanting to punish her friend Nina ("the Bitch in the Box") for crushing on Andrew.

Episode 1, dream and memory. Leyley previously said that Nina should know better than to 'steal from another woman,' referring to herself. The implication that Andy is hers is toyed with after this moment, when she says she'd put Andy back in the box.

The game does prime us to think that Ashley is Andrew's abuser. It also suggests that Ashley projects an unrequited and incestuous love onto Andrew. Before we consider Episode 2's narrative, Episode 1 gives the initial impression that if Andrew comes to reciprocate her feelings, it's more of a reaction and subsuming to her will. That it may not be something he wants for himself and independent of Ashley's manipulation.

But again, I do believe Andrew wants to fuck Ashley. And always has been. He just frequently vacillate between 'subtle' and 'really fucking obvious' tells that completely take advantage of the game's third person limited POV.

Keep in mind that both Andrew and Ashley are extremely unreliable narrators. We aren't going to get information they personally do not care about and that is on top of our own choices as the player.

(A digressive example: you will not learn that the founder and CEO of Toxisoda's company was a former surgeon unless you interact with the television in Andrew's Episode 2 dream and memory of their blood oath. Otherwise, it neatly ties into the surgeon that Mrs. Graves conveniently says she was directed to regarding the siblings' quarantine in the main story.)

When it's really fucking obvious

When you play as Andrew in Episode 2, his post-dinner argument with Ashley carefully frames them both. They are cramped in the foreground and Andrew's left arm is conveniently blocked by Ashley and the kitchen knife, as seen here.

Episode 2, common route. Prior to this, you can interact with Mrs. Graves for her to pointedly comment on the siblings being inseparable.

At this point in the game, their physical closeness is something we're used to by now. After all, we've already seen Ashley on his lap at least twice; Andrew slept in her bed in Episode 1; and Ashley confirmed they've shared the same motel bed multiple times in the one-week interim between Episodes 1 & 2.

But the game abruptly shifts to Mrs. Graves' POV when she enters the scene and not only do we see the two as physically close, but we notice a few more details.

Episode 2, common route. The first picture transitions from Andrew's POV to Mrs. Graves as it introduces us to her entering the scene.

The contrast of how spacious the kitchen is from Mrs. Graves' POV to Andrew's cramped POV is obvious. More importantly, Andrew's fingers loop through Ashley's belt loops when the two are huddled together. When Mrs. Graves clears her throat, the two don't really separate.

Ashley pivots on her left foot so that her body is turned to their mother, not Andrew, but she doesn't step away from him. Andrew, meanwhile, recoils from Ashley and withdraws his hand. But he isn't turning his body to face their mother like Ashley does here. His attention, at least in this moment, is still towards Ashley (and, yanno, the sink).

Episode 2, common route. Two things to consider in the second picture: Andrew hides Ashley's bite mark on his cheek with his left sleeve and he conveniently moves the pillow from behind him to his front.

The 'tell' isn't so much as the two are unusually physically close. Again, we're used to that by now. But it's how the two siblings react whenever Mrs. Graves comes into the picture. Ashley doesn't really give a fuck about whether or not people assume the worst of her or even her intentions regarding Andrew. To Ashley, their proximity is normal and anyone who sees that as a problem is not worth an explanation or reason.

But Andrew is at least subconsciously aware it's 'not normal.' As far as these moments are concerned, Andrew instinctively tries to do damage control by either putting space between them or keeping his hands occupied so they aren't visibly touching Ashley. Still, he either does not mind or actively appreciates his physical closeness with Ashley.

When it's really fucking obvious (but only in hindsight)

In Episode 1, Ashley passes out after trying to clean up after the apartment. Regardless of her passing out in the living room, the bathroom, or their parents' room, she will wake up on the couch with her head pillowed by Andrew's lap.

Episode 1, Ashley's POV. Andrew's hands often hover over Ashley's head, but more than that—

I personally didn't notice this until I replayed Episode 1, when I basically have the hindsight of Andrew's fixation with hair. But yes, his fingers idly twirl through the ends of Ashley's hair as they watch TV. It's implied that Andrew can and will do this when Ashley pillows his lap, awake or asleep. He does not recoil from it when Ashley does wake up and later on, in Episode 2, even continues to brush it from her face.

Episode 2, common route. Ashley fell asleep at the passenger seat, so Andrew had to have transferred her to the back seat to pillow her head again. Though, technically, she's more cramped at the back seat than if he'd just reclined the passenger seat.

So far, we've seen that Andrew has a natural tendency to not only be physically close to Ashley, but to hover over her personal space and be in constant and direct contact with her. Whether it's by having her head on his lap, twirling her hair through his fingers, or even constantly grabbing her by the head in various states of comfort, playfulness, or outright threat (but let's put a pin on that for now).

The weight behind this candid contact shifts when Episode 2 draws a pretty explicit parallel between Julia and Ashley. Assuming that you interacted with Julia's landline and heard Ashley's voicemails, you know (and Andrew knows) that Ashley draws that connection herself:

DO YOU THINK YOU'RE BETTER THAN ME!? Just because you can fuck him and I can't? You think that's love?! Are you fucking delusional?? Cumdumpsters like you are just that. He will never love you. Not like he loves me. I am the only one. I am everything. I am the secrets you'll never hear. When he lies in bed at night, and when he needs someone to hold on to... It's not you he seeks out. It is me.

Episode 2, common route. Andrew's dream and vision implies that Andrew's heard these voicemails before.

That connection extends to the hair contact as well, as Andrew goes in to hug Julia, cards his hand through her hair and requests she tie her hair up.

Episode 2, common route. Andrew's dream and memory of Julia when they're older. From the use of Andrew's present-age portrait, suggests is closer to the timeline of the game's events than his and Ashley's memories as Andy and Leyley.

From this moment, we can have one of two assumptions: either Andrew wants Julia's (black) hair put up like Ashley's, or Ashley caught onto Andrew's hair kink and puts her hair up to imitate it.

Regardless, we infer the following:

Andrew teases affection through touching and even pulling on one's hair.

His fixation on ponytails and pulling on them does not exclude his own sister. It still stands and without reservation, perhaps more explicitly since he can do it so candidly, as we saw before.

The last of that Julia-Ashley parallel is self-contained within Episode 2. But only if you end up in the Burial route regardless of Ashley's platonic or incestuous vision.

Episode 2, common route (first picture) and Burial route (second picture). It's worth pointing out that Andrew is actually disinterested and moody during his conversation with Julia, and only perks up when he mentions Ashley or feigns care for Julia (since he extends his care of Ashley to her as well).

The game ends up drawing parallels on how Andrew treats Ashley, for better or for worse, with his ex (which is definitely worse, poor Julia). In doing so, the game blurs the lines between romantic affection for Julia and 'platonic and familial' affection for Ashley.

Y'all, this isn't even getting into how Andrew respectfully gives his parents space and only crowds them when he threatens them with his cleaver. In his mind, Ashley and Julia are in that same space of physical and romantic displays of affection; something he reserves only for them (only without reservation for Ashley) that does not extend to anyone else. His ex-girlfriend, and his sister. Shit's wild.

When it's obvious BUT it's violent!

That isn't to say that his hair fixation (hair kink?) is completely innocuous, though, as it rears its ugly head (pun unintended) in Decay. Which is what that previous pin was for! Yay!

You end up in the Decay route if Ashley doesn't trust Andrew with keeping an eye on their parents. Here, Ashley sleeps on their parents' bed by herself and has an alarming vision: an unknown party chases after her through the in-between and when they catch up to her, it's Andrew. Ashley has nowhere to run and Andrew eventually grabs her and threatens to kill her.

Whether or not Ashley can defend herself depends on Andrew expending all of her gun's ammo when he deals with the hitman, or not. But that outcome divergence will matter much, much later (so that's another pin for us to come back to).

The sequence of events actually mirrors the way the siblings ambush the Lady from Room 302 back in Episode 1. There, Andrew closes in on her and grabs the Lady by her wrist and uses his front to pin and restrain her. With his cleaver to her throat, the Lady is completely at his mercy.

Episode 1 & 2, common route (first picture) and Decay route (second, third, and fourth pictures). Note that Andrew restrains the Lady from Room 302 by the wrist while with Ashley, by her hair.

Andrew asserts control of the person and the situation through violence. Whether it's by killing them (the wardens) or by threatening physical violence (the Lady from Room 302 and Ashley). It's always on the table for him. As Leyleyfication puts it, "He's so calculated in how he approaches his use of violence [here]."

That violence includes Ashley. It's always on the table where Ashley's concerned. The game even juxtaposes when Andrew threatens violence and physical assault 'playfully' versus when he's seriously out for blood:

When you interact with the wall of call girls' numbers and Ashley jokes about leaving her number on the wall, Andrew 'jokingly' threatens to backhand her for even thinking about it.

When you interact with their parents' latched window for a second time, Andrew 'teases' slapping Ashley if she doesn't find a way to open it. (Ashley jokingly asks if it's on her ass or at her face, and assumes it must be the face when Andrew says she'll have to find out.)

The two other times that Andrew exerts violence against Ashley are both in Episode 1 & 2. We can remember when that happens in Episode 1, when Andrew's had it with Ashley's fits and threatens to kill her:

Episode 1, common route. Y'all, Andrew was choking her hard enough for his grip to bruise.

It happens again in Decay when he confronts Ashley about repeatedly calling him Andy and therefore, breaking the promise he coerced her into from Episode 1.

Episode 2, Decay route. Another thing to keep in mind is that Andrew's outburst is preceded by Ashley prodding him about his current state and insisting that Andrew was fine with 'Andy' during their home invasion.

In Episode 1, Andrew resorts to harming Ashley because he's fucking had it with her accusing him repeatedly of trying anything with the Lady from 302 and, in her eyes, his 'infidelity.' Where she accuses Andrew of not loving her enough that if his eye catches another girl, he'd leave her behind or flip on her. In Episode 2, she's poking and prodding on his boundaries on 'Andy' and whether or not, once again, he's with her on their now-committed life of joint crime.

If I can give another example, it happens in Andrew's common route memory of Nina's death and his blood oath with Leyley.

Episode 2, common route. Prior to this, Andy expresses immense exasperation at Leyley's tantrums over him 'thinking about that bitch again.' When he goes to grab the kitchen knife, cleans it, and returns to Leyley on his bed—he's briefly considering killing her.

Andrew threatens Ashley violently whenever he intends to confront her on her perceived brattiness, for lack of a better word. And keep Leyleyfication's essay segment on Ashley's insecurities and need for Andrew's validation in mind here—when Ashley does this, she wants and even needs Andrew to comfort her. But her aggression treads Andrew's patience and really, his tolerance of her behavior.

When Ashley's anger, clinging behavior, insecurities, and possessiveness of Andrew slips his control and tolerance, he resorts to violence to coerce or even dominate her.

I think (or hope, if it's clear enough) it reinforces what Leyleyfication points out:

The truth of the matter is, Ashley can only make Andrew do anything because he lets her. I don't mean in the sense that I'm saying abuse victims let their abusers emotionally abuse them, I mean in the sense that he is clearly considering his options on the table and choosing to discard those that could stop her, or bring an end to any of this.

It also reflects on another aspect of why Andrew resorts to violence: in all three situations, Andrew remarks on Ashley's behavior and her sake. If she acts up again once they're out of the apartment, it'll cause trouble for him while they're evading authorities. If she's going to call him Andy from hereon out, what's the point of running away with her. If she expects him to leverage keeping 'her secret,' he won't because it's for her sake.

Andrew rationalizes his attempt to control of Ashley's behavior as being for her sake. But really, isn't it him confining her behavior to something he can tolerate and personally handle?

I'd also like to point out that Andrew admits that he noticed Ashley push for calling him 'Andy' during the home invasion, and he did not argue with her on it while they held their parents hostage and readied to sacrifice them. We can infer that when Andrew calculates his use of violence, that can also factor when, where, and how he exerts it.

Well, that's where I can reasonably end this half of my word vomit! Now, onwards, to part 2!

#lia's conspiracy board #The Coffin of Andy and Leyley #TCOAAL: Andrew Graves #TCOAAL: Ashley Graves #ship: coffincest #character analysis

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flickering-nightfall · 1 year

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Some odd slugcats with even odder masks...

(many more doodles under the cut; massive spoilers for hollow knight and rain world though)

Notes:

-HK can NOT catch a break. "The Hollow" could be a name too.

-The Broken is based off the Broken Vessel.

-This world probably gets infested by rot to mirror the infection, but PK somehow quarantined himself away from it. He still mysteriously dies anyways though lmao

-WL can't really do anything with her structure and is missing her arms to boot. Maybe self-inflicted to mirror her source game? (The taboo would stop her from dying of course, but would it stop her from doing that?) Also it was hard to interpret her into iterator form, her antennae are WEIRD

-I had considered pale king/white lady as ancients and vessels as iterators, but slugcat protags felt more fitting for rain world.

-I drew the Radiance as a void worm before realizing that her being an iterator that purposefully spread the rot would be WAY more fitting on every level. Void Entity for void worm instead maybe?? I don't want to draw it right now though xP

#rain world #hollow knight #insert two word indie game titles with heavy void themes and little guy protagonists in a huge lonely world here #rw spoilers #hk spoilers #APPARENTLY. images won't go into grid format after a readmore #or at least they won't for me. rip #flickerdoodles #art

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causeimhappinesss · 1 year

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Your lucky star (Joel Miller x reader)

Summary: Your town got attacked and you survived, before going to the west and then, you meet Joel. He doesn't seem to be receptive, but could he develop feelings for you?

Warning: angst, age gap, implied death of a family member, blood, some slight spoilers if you didn’t play the games

Pairing: Joel Miller x reader

Words: 4,7k

Disclaimer: English isn't my native language (I'm french), so you can correct me if you spot somes mistakes :)

As far back as you can remember, you understood that life was only an eternal suffering. You had never stopped questioning the existence of your life, even if some people told you that we were all born on Earth to fulfill a particular mission. You had never understood yours.

As far back as you can remember, you had spent your time in libraries. You were born in a city that looked more like a slum, six months after the apocalypse began. Then your whole family fled and lived on the road from the time you were three until you were six, in order to find the comfort of a city that wasn’t dictated by the Fedra. You were a family of beautiful doves in search of freedom, guided by the nostalgia of a democracy, of a normal life, where children laughed out loud in the street. Your parents wanted to find a place where you would grow up and learn all sorts of things; they dreamed of a school. A hospital. Warm, cozy homes, similar to the cocoon they had worked so hard to build before the world fell apart.

For as long as you can remember, you've been happy... Because you didn't know the misery of the quarantine zones, of trafficking of all kinds to survive. No, your family had been welcomed in a small town in the countryside called Wintervale. It spanned several streets, each one prettier than the next one. Sure, there were sometimes as many as ten people per household, which justified the sentence "it takes a village to raise a child," but you were safe. The 150 inhabitants lived peacefully, enjoyed hot showers, although a limit of water was decreed, comfortable mattresses, warm blankets, a school, two doctors, a bookstore and a few stores. As for food, it was distributed fairly and the city was self-sufficient. To protect the whole town, electric fences had been installed with guard towers, where each guard was relayed for a 24-hour protection. Thus, while living a normal life, you devoured many books, of all possible genres, from fantasy to science fiction – and those used to make you laugh when they talked about the apocalypse – through historical romance. Sometimes you even read more psychological books, about self-confidence, attachments and emotions.

During 14 years, you had suffered "only" six attacks. Attacks that had caused a few deaths and, thank God, mainly on the side of the attackers. All this was just the beginning... This is what convinced your parents that you had to learn to defend yourself. In the wild, who knows who you might run into, even if you rarely went out? Creatures weren't the only dangerous things lurking in the woods and cities... Looters, rapists, cannibals, slavers... A whole bunch of deranged guys you had to avoid or kill to defend yourself. From the age of 10, you were taught how to handle a bow, a sword and firearms, in addition to defensive techniques as a counterattack. At the same time, you were taught the art of hunting, if you were ever to do so.

All this... It was beautiful.

Despite all this work, you had lost someone essential... Your mother. She had died of a long illness, incurable, according to the doctors... For lack of material and serious medicine. It took you a long time to mourn and recover from her death.

But peace and apocalypse didn’t mix well, blood would flow. You felt that this departure in your life was just a phase to prepare you for the worst. After all, wasn't the role of a mother to love and prepare her child for life?

You could feel it in your bones... Something was coming. Oh no! A clan of raiders had attacked Wintervale with one goal in mind: to take this town, leaving no survivors.

You had fought alongside your family and the other inhabitants to defend this beautiful place tooth and nail... Until you lost them one by one. You could feel the sweat beading up your face, down your neck, and then tracing a furrow down your spine. Breathless, wavering, vision blurred, you knew it was over. You were ready to give up... A bullet whistled and split the air. It was meant for you.

But your father had decided otherwise. He threw himself on top of you to push you off, and the mortal bullet penetrated his flesh with a long, agonized scream. You could feel his warm blood on your hands and abdomen. A metallic scent floated in the cold night air. Your stomach heaved, bile rose up your throat and tears streamed down your face.

What had you done to suffer this?

No, what the poor inhabitants of this city did ? Defending your territory against evil people? No doubt it was the reason.

"Please, go away," your father murmured between coughs.

You wanted to protest, but the look in his eyes, from which life was escaping, begged you to fight...

"You are too young for eternal rest... Leave..."

Through this heartbreaking farewell, having only one way out, that of death for your father, you pressed a kiss on his cheek. What a strange thing, you had never been close to him. Not an "I love you", very few proofs of affection, simply because it wasn’t common in this family... But you found yourself saying these three words, heavy in meaning, loaded with emotions, with a trembling voice.

Your throat tightened, your stomach knotted, you waited for the agitation to calm down around you, your father already dead for a long time on you, to see a flaw... The flaw was the assailants who were dissipating in the city and who left you free to go back to your house. It was a considerable risk, but you couldn't just leave. You had gone back to get a photo album, some canned food, something to drink and provide for your basic needs for the next week... You didn't have time to say goodbye to the place where you had grown up in joy. Now it looked like a graveyard on the asphalt, with corpses lying in pools of blood.

Then you had to leave everything behind and sprint towards the woods with only one gun and two full magazines to defend yourself, a heavy bag on your back.

"Goodbye"... you breathed, without taking a last look at Wintervale.

Weeks passed and you walked across the country, not knowing where to go. You just kept going with old maps you found on your way. You ended up going west, far away from your old life, since your whole family had been dead for over a month and you didn't know anyone else. You were only focused on your survival, on finding edible food and drinkable water, on saving as much as possible. You avoided the places that led to the big abandoned cities, where it was not uncommon to see gangs shooting and kidnapping each other. You had of course come across a lovely couple, but they had only shared your life for a week and a half before they were bitten by some infected. You had no choice but to kill them... Out of dignity for them, but also to prevent new creatures from joining all the others. In fact, you were hoping that states like Wyoming or Idaho would be favorable to you, that you could find a new community based on mutual aid, with no penchant for human meat. Just the thought of it made you flinch.

After months of loneliness, where you had almost died several times at the hands of runners and clickers, but also from severe dehydration... You missed your whole life. You had thought of killing yourself several times. It would have been easier. A bullet in the head, the barrel shoved in your mouth, and it was fine. You would have done it in a room that no one could open, so that your body would be left in peace, so that no one would eat it. For some reason, you kept going. Something was telling you to go on, even though you didn't know what it was.

"No matter what, you keep finding something to fight for"

And this sentence, you will remember it for the rest of your days. You had heard it from the mouth of this man, tall, slender, muscular, bearded, and especially much older than you.

You were screaming. You were biting. You scratched. You were kicking.

The man above you had already managed to take off your shirt to see your bra-clad breasts and his dirty hand was trying to get into your panties.

"Get off me, you piece of shit!" you yelled.

The man, a few years older than you, laughed. He must have been 25 or 26 years old. There was no age for sexual assault, let alone the latest outrages. This psychopath didn't seem to feel pain, despite your best efforts. You dared to hope to attract creatures, which would leave him no choice but to release you. Despite the darkness of the night, you glanced at the sky. You prayed to your lucky stars for help. Any way you could, as long as that scumbag stopped holding on with his weight, far too heavy for yours. You had been losing weight over the years and losing strength as well. In the past, you might have been able to break free from his grip. The shame was slowly overwhelming you and you were losing your strength. You were ashamed that you couldn't push him away. Ashamed that someone would defile you like that. Ashamed to live in a world like this.

You didn't have time to beg him to spare your life, when a melee bar slammed into his skull. His hot blood spurted into your face and made you feel nauseous. His eyes rolled back and his body fell to the side. Immediately, you straightened up and moved back a good meter, before looking up.

In front of you stood a man, accompanied by a little girl. He must have been in his fifties, much older than you, marked with wrinkles, memories of his experiences, his fatigue and the traumas he carried with him. A warm and icy aura at the same time emanated from the charismatic individual.

"Thank you... Thank you... Thank you..." you stammered, over and over.

It was him, your lucky star. There was no doubt.

Your savior had turned around to give you some privacy while you got dressed properly. You were still shaking with terror and wobbling. You took one last look at your attacker before spitting on him. He deserved to be pissed on... You came to your senses at the last second and cleared your throat.

"My name is Y/N..." you breathed, in a dull voice.

They turned around and immediately the teenager next to her, who couldn't have been more than 15, gave you a warm look and a reassuring smile.

"I'm Ellie and the grumpy old man is Joel."

Weren't they related? Your eyebrows furrowed, you scanned them, confused. After all, you wouldn't be surprised if you'd run into a pedo...

"He's kind of my old man. He's annoying, but you'll get used to him. He's a good guy." the girl added.

"Ellie..." growled her "dad" before rolling her eyes.

And that's how you met them. You appreciated Ellie's spontaneity, sarcasm and humor, simply because you shared it. You never imagined that you would share companionship for so long...

For weeks, you grew closer to this man with a solid shell, so hard to break. Something in him attracted you like a magnet. Love at first sight? The mere thought of him made your cheeks flush. You knew you shouldn't have perceived him as a man with whom you wanted to discover the pleasures of life... He was even older than your father. If your family was there, they would have put you in your place and tried to shake you up... But all you could see was Joel... Joel Miller. His name tasted like honey on the tip of your tongue.

September was long and rainy. You found a small house to spend the night in, while Ellie stuck around to flip through the latest comic book she'd unearthed, while eating a can of food. That left you alone with Joel to try to dig up some food in the overgrown neighboring houses, whose white paint had been peeling for ages.

"Do you think we're even close to Jackson County yet?" you tossed, grabbing some handyman tools you could use.

"We have two more days at most. Then we'll rest at Tommy's."

"Man, if you only knew how much I miss a hot shower..." you muttered.

"Did you have them often?"

"Do you really want to talk about the past, Mr. Never Talk About the Past?" you teased him, in a mocking tone.

"Why not?"

That surprising as heck, but you loved the idea, you were so curious about him;

"In that case, you should do the same." you warned him, turning around to look at him.

He scratched his salt-and-pepper beard and nodded. A real miracle was happening, so you smiled, satisfied. But you didn't know what was in store for you... If you told him about your wonderful childhood, he would tell you about his most painful experiences.

Sarah. Tess. Bill. Frank. Smuggling. Life surrounded by Fedra.

"Ellie doesn't know about Sarah and... I don't want to discuss it with her," he revealed, in an enigmatic tone.

You nodded as you followed him out of the last house you had searched. Night was already falling and thunder was rumbling as the wind picked up, crisscrossing the clotted green leaves. Then torrential rain fell on you, like the deluge announced for the apocalypse.

"Hurry!" you hurried, even though you were already soaked from head to toe.

Instinctively, you grabbed his hand and pulled him with you. Against all odds, he didn't reject your hand, but tightened his grip. His hand was warm, calloused and somehow comforting. Your heart was pounding, not just from your physical effort, but from the joy that washed over you. Your whole body was quivering. Once inside the house, you noticed that Ellie was fast asleep on the living room couch.

"I'm going to change, I'm soaked from head to toe. My clean clothes are in the bedroom," you said with an awkward smile.

"I'm following you, I left some of my things there too..."

You nodded, blushing, as your imagination played tricks on you, sending you images more erotic than the others. You shook off these embarrassing thoughts and headed for the only room in the little house. Once you retrieved your other clothes, which you had quickly cleaned and dried, you watched the man unbutton his shirt. Your eyes widened and only when his shirt fell at his feet, you turned around to face him. Your cheeks flushed, your heart pounding and your hands shaking, you took off your sweater and put on a new one, then promptly swapped your pants for another. You took the opportunity to wipe your wet hair, not wanting to get sick. That would clearly be the worst thing... A simple coughing fit could alert a lot of infected people around.

At that very moment, you felt his burning gaze on yours, sweeping over your senses, so that you felt uninhibited. This man had power over you that you loved as much as you hated it. Why did he make your hands shake and your heart beat faster? Why did his lips seem so attractive? Why did you want to curl up against his chest, wrapped in his arms? When you turned around, he had also finished and was sitting on the edge of the bed, taking off his shoes.

"Don't you want to eat? Shouldn't we wake up Ellie?" you questioned him, puzzled.

"She sleeps so well, it would be a shame to get her up just for a meal... Besides, it's better to eat before we leave, we'll have more energy."

In this world so rotten to the core, it was better to ration yourself and make smart choices when it came to food.

When Joel lay down on the bed, you realized that you were going to spend the night with him, unless you preferred the floor... Usually, you shared your bed with Ellie, between girls, while Joel found another mattress or rested on a sofa. You had never slept in the same bed as him, let alone this close. Nervous, you slowly moved closer, took off your shoes, then slipped under the covers. Eyes glued to the ceiling, stained with substances you'd rather not imagine – probably mold stains from water infiltration – you enjoyed the softness of the blankets, even though they didn't have any warmth in them yet and they didn't smell like laundry. At least the bed was decent and you couldn't ask for more. Then you shivered at the cool air in the house and your damp hair.

"Come closer..." he whispered, in his rocky voice.

"What...?" you gasped in surprise.

"Come closer, Y/N."

You didn't have time to retort as he wrapped a warm, firm arm around your body and forced you closer. As you curled up in his arms, as you had been dreaming of doing for a while, you suppressed a smile and closed your eyes. Your heart was pounding against your rib cage, to the point that it was painful. Your hands were shaking on his chest. You dared to hope that he would mistake this for the aftermath of the rain.

"Joel..."

"Good night, Y/N." he whispered in the hollow of your ear, stroking your back.

You held back from stroking his chest, pressing warm kisses on his neck, then undulating your pelvis against his. However, you did nothing and savored the moment, knowing that it wouldn’t happen again soon. Since your childhood, your parents had taught you to cherish every magical moment, something you did, without asking yourself more questions... Questions to which you would have no answer. The heart has its reasons that the reason ignores.

The time passed and you found in the city of his brother, Tommy. The shooting had already taken place, the bodies had been recovered and their families were already preparing to bury them. Then... there was the conflict with Ellie. The situation became more complex, tense and you tried not to interfere too much between Ellie and Joel, because you understood both of their reactions. There was nothing left to do but leave for University in Colorado, was there? Before you could even say a word, Joel slipped an arm behind your back and pulled you with him, a little further away, so that Tommy and Ellie wouldn't hear anything of your conversation.

"Is there a problem...?"

"I want you to stay with Tommy and Paula."

You almost choked and shook your head. Miller pressed his hands on your shoulders and looked into your eyes. A dark look, full of mystery and danger. A look you always melted for... But this time you wanted to stand up to him.

"No way."

"Please. I need you to stay with them... I don't know what's going to happen on the way to this campus or with the Fireflies. We've been through a lot of perilous situations already and..."

His voice froze and he pinched the bridge of his nose, before looking away to the orange trees.

"And what...?"

Joel shook his head and turned back toward two others. However, you wanted him to follow through with his thought, intrigued. He couldn't start a sentence without finishing it, what's more, if you were to be separated and... maybe never see each other again.

"Joel! And what?"

He turned around and took a deep breath.

"I don't want something to happen to you."

You could have smiled and jumped of joy, but at that moment you couldn't. That serious look on his face filled your heart and brain with a poison called fear... An oppressive fear, ready to make your heart bleed.

"Nothing will happen to me. I can defend myself."

"Don’t try to make me change my mind. Do this for me, please." he insisted, in an authoritative tone.

An authoritative tone and a request more toxic than ever, the only thing missing was the "if you love me, do it"... You knew Joel and this man was capable of tying you to a tree if it wasn’t for you to not follow him. With a heavy heart, you resigned yourself to accept. What you didn't understand was that moments like this were like saying "I love you" to him, words they hadn't used in twenty years... words that were so hard to say.

Joel Miller was not a man of words.

He was a man of actions.

And that act meant more than you could ever know.

Months had passed and they had returned, when everyone thought they were dead. In the meantime, Tommy had found a nice little house for you, where Joel and Ellie would soon join you. Meanwhile, you were working as a librarian and organized activities for children. Even though you didn't technically have to work, it was the least you could do. This town offered you shelter, hot water, electricity and food, as well as protection... You felt indebted. You also got to know Tommy and Paula, wonderful people, who always taught you a little more about Joel, but with limits. You wanted the older Miller to open up to you on his own.

Joel was immediately useful to this charming community, from guarding the ramparts to collecting food and doing manual labor in the surrounding area. As he relaxed, you discovered a completely different man, with more humor and a real talent, especially for music.

He began to teach you to play guitar... but that was before he met Jolene, a sultry redhead, a widow with two children. Her husband had died two years before, of a long illness. They had met at a party you couldn't attend, being bedridden with a fever, while Ellie watched over you like a guardian angel. Yet, that night, you would have preferred her to keep Joel under control... Over the next few weeks, you noticed that he was drifting away, focusing on Jolene, whenever he had free time. You were almost forgotten.

Hurt and heartbroken, you made sure to avoid him. You didn't eat meals at the same times as him, you focused on your work, which filled your heart with a little bit of happiness, and you tried to make new friendships with people your own age. So much so that there were no more guitar lessons... and you missed it a lot. You just didn't have the strength to go back to him. Even though he never promised you anything or really showed you something, you felt betrayed. You felt so stupid for letting yourself go and falling in love with a man much older than you, who probably only saw you as a kid... Like Ellie. The very thought made you feel nauseous, twisted your stomach and made you shiver with embarrassment.

One night, after a long day, you came home. Usually Ellie was already asleep or in the shower. There was not a sound, a sign that she was already snoring under all her covers. You took off your coat, scarf, and shoes before stepping further into your house. You walked down the hallway, which opened to the kitchen and the living room, and out of the corner of your eye you saw Joel's guitar. It was in plain sight, whereas most of the time he kept it in a corner. He probably had time to play a tune before he left for Jolene's house, where he slept half the nights... In fact, you were sure he wasn't just sleeping...

Don't think about it, you're hurting yourself for nothing... your conscience whispered. But it was so hard to accept.

A throat clearing pulled you out of your lethargy and made you jump. Quickly, you turned around and saw that Joel had returned without you noticing.

"Hey... I'm going to bed, good night," you whispered.

"Wait."

You frowned and watched him as he moved closer to you. Suddenly closer, he towered over you, so that you lifted your chin and he lowered his nose at you. This proximity made you miss a heartbeat. Only about ten inches separated you, something that had not happened for so long...

"I thought we could play a song together, it's been so long," he suggested, in a warm tone.

"I probably lost everything, it's a waste of time."

You didn't say this with aggression, but as a logical thing. You hadn't practiced since he was dating Jolene and it was late, the fatigue of the day was taking its toll.

"Please, just once..."

Joel wasn't a man you said "no" to so easily, he could be so stubborn and you didn't have the head to bicker with him. No, far from it. So you nodded and followed him into the living room, before sitting on the edge of the couch. He soon joined you with his guitar, which he placed on his thighs, before tuning it.

"I'd like to play you a song... I heard it today, it's been a long time since I heard it and it made me think of you."

With your lips sealed, you admired the way he prepared himself. He cleared his throat another time and began to pluck the strings in a soft melancholy tune. You recognized the notes immediately. Your mother loved this song that came out a few months before the world fell apart. Then, his husky voice, with a so particular tone, which never failed to make you shiver, took you with it and vibrated in the air.

I wanna take you somewhere so you know I care

But it's so cold and I don't know where

I brought you daffodils in a pretty string

But they won't flower like they did last spring

And I wanna kiss you, make you feel alright

I'm just so tired to share my nights

I wanna cry and I wanna love

But all my tears have been used up

On another love, another love

All my tears have been used up

Why are you doing this to me, Joel...? you thought, your eyes moist. You had the feeling that he was doing this to torture you. How could he sing that song to you, with his eyes locked in yours, when he was in a relationship with another woman?

A tear rolled down your cheek as the last notes of music wavered in the air until they disappeared. You wiped it away with the back of your sleeve and jumped to your feet. You couldn't stand this humiliation any longer and be so weak in front of him. It was unacceptable.

"Y/N..."

"Leave me alone. Do you like making fun of me? Well, get the hell out of this house and back to your Jolene, before I beat the crap out of you!" you threatened, in a hoarse voice.

A gleam of guilt shone in the eyes of the older man who tried to take a step forward, but you pointed your index finger in his direction, in order to tell him not to move.

"Y/N, I broke up with Jolene. I have no feelings for her."

"Oh yeah? Nice? Shall we pop the champagne bottle?" you retorted, in a sharp tone.

"You're worse than me, you're stubborn. I just made a declaration of love to you.”

"More stubborn than you? Are you kidding me..."

You stopped dead in your tracks, when you realized what he had just said, confused.

"Wait... Can you say that again?"

Joel didn't like to repeat himself, you couldn't count on him to do that. Instead, his hands framed your face and he pressed his lips against yours. His rough beard teased your face, but you savored the moment. Your hands clutched the back of his neck and your body moved closer to his. You should have gotten mad and pushed him away, but your heart didn't care. For the first time, your heart was truly exploding with joy. Your heart was pounding, your legs felt like cotton and you felt like you were floating. In your bubble, you prayed that this moment would never end.

Love is a war made of battles, each one more difficult than the other and this day, you were triumphant.

Now, I’m thinking about writing a smut part… Should I do it?

My Ko-fi: betrayedwriter

My AO3: BetrayedWriter

My Instagram: carolinemertz_

#joel miller x reader #joel miller x you #tlou #the last of us #joel miller #pedro pascal #pedro pascal x reader #tlou fanfic #joel miller fanfic #joel miller imagine

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mosscoveredcowboy · 1 year

Text

What Each of the Disruptors masking behavior in the Arrival Scene tells us about their Character

Major Glass Onion Spoilers Ahead

Miles:

Miles is the most important, even if he's not pictured, he and how he treats the idea of masking to prevent the spread of covid is represented by the Efficient Man™

Miles Invites all his privileged friends out to his private island mid-pandemic for an unnecessary party, and he has a vaccine/"cure"/SOMETHING that makes covid not a concern and either:

doesn't share it with the world

on some level knows that it's bullshit and just wants to make his friends not mask over their Fun Weekend! and bum out the mood

tbh i don't think the second bullet is likely bc like, miles buys into his own hype that's his whole Thing but also lying to his friends to manipulate them is also very much his Thing

either way, he doesn't give them much choice about receiving this experimental "cure" nor inform them of what is in it

Miles is an egotistical self-absorbed dumbass, and harming people for his own personal gain, hell, just for his own personal entertainment, is entirely ok in his mind. I've seen people suggesting that the movie should have ended with Blanc testing positive for Covid after the trip and I think that would have been perfect. Miles's "cure" did nothing and everyone put their lives at risk during a pandemic just so Miles could have some fun and remind them all why they are under his thumb.

Birdy:

Birdy shows up wearing a flashy mesh diamond mask a la Lana del Ray (note the rest of her staff with her properly masking). She still removes this useless mask to talk to people around her and exclaims about being able to "breath again" after taking Mile's "cure".

She's clearly doing the bare BARE minimum to look like she cares about quarantining and protecting others (see earlier in the movie when asked if she should be having a party she states "they are all in my pod" about hundreds of people in her home).

This aligns with how she approaches doing the right thing in general. Kind of trying to look like she's doing the right thing, but just barely, and you can see right through (ha) her actions and tell she's really doing whatever she wants for her own personal gain. She's not informed, doesn't want to do better, and doesn't listen to those around her who try to help.

Birdy doesn't have empathy for others, and this is later shown when we learn about her sweatpants scandal, how she was unaware that the clothing she made bank off of in the pandemic was produced in a sweatshop. Birdy is more concerned with how this news will make people on twitter mad at her than the actual inhumane working conditions themselves.

Lionel Toussaint:

In the Arrival scene Claire snips to Birdy when she asks if she and Lionel stayed in the hotel that clearly she and Lionel had just arrived. However, unlike Claire, Lionel arrives alone, no one in a car driving him or staff around him. He's wearing a K95 mask, and for this point of the pandemic (it's assumed late 2020) that is still fairly new and most people were not masking this well (to my memory).

Lionel is a scientist, and clearly has a level of knowledge about the transmission of infectious diseases and general contamination protocols to make safe decisions during a pandemic.

Still, he shows up to Miles weekend party and presumably takes the experimental "cure" (though it's not shown on screen). This tells us that Lionel is smart, smart enough to know that Miles is dumb as shit, but he buys into Miles's hype, convinces himself that Miles is a genius and backs him up even when Lionel knows he's wrong or being outright dangerous (see later with his reaction to the hydrogen energy running Miles mansion).

Lionel trusts Miles even when he should be smart enough to know better. He trusts Miles because if he actually questioned Miles's motivations and morals he would have to question his own, and Lionel doesn't want to do that.

Claire:

Claire arrives wearing a cloth mask but not correctly. She gets out of the taxi she arrives in with something sticking out of her mouth and her nose completely uncovered. She constantly adjusts her mask in the scene, and gets too close to others while talking to them. She also takes Miles's cure without question.

Like Birdy, Claire is doing the right thing more because she has to, not from motivation to protect herself and others. Unlike Birdy, she seems to understand how to do this more successfully, a clear difference between the performance of a celebrity and a politician.

I think this is shown later in Claire and Lionel's discussion in the pool as she talks about losing her political base because of the actions Miles wants her to take. On some level, she must align with the environmentalist that makes up her political base, but her loyalty lies more with Miles and the power saying yes to him means for her campaign.

Claire, despite her clear disapproval of Birdy, is very similar to her in that they are both performing to an audience to not be in trouble politically.

This is also shown by her freak out about how Duke's murderer would report her being there, and how it would look if she was hanging out on a Greek island with a manosphere influencer. She seems to have more of a reaction to what people would think of her than to Duke actually being dead.

Duke:

Duke and Whisky's arrival is announced with gunshots. They arrive on Duke's motorcycle, completely unmasked from the beginning (also, like, I assume they don't live in Greece, did they ship the bike there???). He's confirmed is shown to be a right-wing manosphere influencer, along the lines of Alex Jones or Jordan Peterson, those assholes who tell boys how to harass women and then grift them into buying supplements. Duke also takes the "cure" Miles provides without question, but if he lived long enough to see it, he'd likely be one of the people who wouldn't have gotten vaccinated because he doesn't trust what's in it.

Duke has probably been acting like the pandemic hasn't been happening at all, while capitalizing on the topic in his live streams to talk about how "masking is for beta cucks" and how the government is trying to control you.

He is the character that is the most honest to himself in why he is still friends with Miles. It is all about the power and influence Miles can give him, and Duke will cross any line (including making Whiskey seduce Miles) to get it. This forwardness in playing the group's little manipulation game is what later gets him killed by Miles in my opinion.

Duke not masking is a great way to show this. He doesn't align politically with the others, yes, but also he canonically does not care what people think of him. He is a self-absorbed egotistical asshole like the rest of them, but he's proud of it, giving him more freedom to be open about that than the others.

"asshole"

anyway I love how the time period of the pandemic was used in this movie and using each character's approach to masking as a way to inform you of their character is so informative and good storytelling

#glass onion #knives out #knives out 2 #knives out glass onion #the disruptors #benoit blanc #original post #again blessings to the gif makers #i love you #please ignore my repost of this #this is me trying to make tumblr tags care about this post bc this one isn't a rb #long post #sorry but like #i do care about notes on this one #i want ppl to see it i worked hard on it #lol

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hottpinkpenguin · 1 year

Text

Joel Miller X Fem!Reader - Last of Us - Part 5

A/N: read part 1 ! read part 2 ! read part 3 ! read part 4! Taglist: @midgetpottermills @casssiopeia @flyingmushroomss @amethystwonders11 @hiphopdancer101universe @kiszkawagnerwhore @littleshadow17 @rh1nestonecowg1rl @alm0501 @ch4rcuterie @lodeddiperrodrick @amandalove1355 @laurathefahrradsattel @moshpot24x @middleof-thenight @kettlechips3 @happymakercollectorsworld @alainabooks143 @mikariell95

Warnings: dark themes; substance abuse; post-apocalyptic dystopia; death of reader's minor child; probably a lot of non-canon details since I've never played the game; not proofread; spoilers if you haven't seen the show/played the game Word Count: 2891 Abbreviations: QZ = quarantine zone; FDRA "Fedra" = Federal Disaster Response Agency

----

Joel fell out of a restless sleep to his head spinning in the dark room. He sat up on the edge of the bed, rubbing the come-down of a hard drunk from his eyes. His dream clung to the inside of his mind like a fading shadow.

He’d been home, in Austin. Before the outbreak. Sarah had been there, calling to him from her bedroom down the hall. She was scared, he could hear it in her voice. He’d tried to get to her, tried running to her, but the hall warped and elongated as he moved through it. Her screams had gotten farther and farther away the harder he’d tried to run.

He gave up, calling out to her, even though somehow he knew she couldn’t hear him. He stopped running, stopped trying to fight the hallway. He let it stretch and contract with him inside it. Part of him hoped it would squeeze him to death.

Then, right before the walls caved in on him, he’d heard something. Someone, calling his name. Behind him. He’d turned: he knew that voice. It sounded like hope, fresh and soft and gentle. He hadn’t heard anyone say his name that way in years. Around a corner in the hall - a corner that hadn’t existed in the real Austin hallway. It was you. Y/n.

Unable to get to Sarah, he tried running to you. The hallway didn’t stretch: this time it blew open like a water balloon bursting. He saw you from the corner of his eye as the force of the hallway splitting apart threw him past you into the darkness. You were reaching out to him. He could have grabbed you if he’d reached out his hand. But he was afraid he’d pull you down. Instinctive fear took over, and he hesitated for just a moment, but it was too long. He flew by you, boomeranging alone into the darkness. You vanished from sight behind him, your eyes full of grief. He felt himself falling, falling…

That’s when he woke up. The same dream, different night. Four months he’d been having that dream. Didn’t matter how much he drank or how much he fucked. It was the same dream. Sarah and you, you and Sarah. He’d known Sarah for all of her thirteen years before the outbreak ripped her out of his life. You, he’d met only twice before he’d ripped you out of his life. The irony was darkly funny and deeply painful.

Joel fumbled around the graveyard of empty bottles next to his nightstand, knocking a few over with muted, metallic clinks. Fuck. No more whiskey.

Next to him in bed, Tessa stirred but didn’t wake. Joel looked over at her, watching the bright moonlight paint her face in shadow. It was strange how he felt when he looked at her. A mix of pity, self-loathing, and disgust. But mostly, Joel didn’t feel anything at all. She was a means to an end, a distraction from his own thoughts. Ever since the dreams had started, restlessness had taken up residence deep in Joel’s bones. Nothing sated it, nothing soothed the ache in his soul. Nothing, except…

“Fuck that.” He clamped down on that thought before he let it finish, his teeth grinding. A surge of anger roared through his head. He wanted to break something, to crush it, have it splinter and fracture and disintegrate under his touch. That’s how he felt most of the goddamn time anyways. He reached down, picking up the first bottle his hand touched and hurled it against the opposite wall. It shattered with a crisp tinkling as glass shards scattered across the floor.

“What are you doing?” Tessa’s voice was thick with sleep. He ignored her, picking up another bottle and chucking it. The sound of glass colliding with the cracked drywall took just enough of his edge off to keep him from unraveling there in the dark.

“Joel.”

He ignored her still, the anger beginning to ebb.

“Joel!” Tessa’s voice was clearer now, her irritation and being ignored rousing her.

“Couldn’t sleep,” he grunted back, hoping she’d let him be.

As soon as the words left his mouth, he heard a distant rumble and felt a slight tremor in the walls. He jumped up from the bed, ignoring the shards of glass that burrowed into the soles of his feet. Adrenaline sharpened his senses. Following the sound, he strode to the window overlooking the open city, pulling back the tattered curtain. Rising from an otherwise black horizon was a plume of orange and yellow flames in the distance.

“What the hell was that?” Tessa was beside him in a heartbeat, wrapping a blanket around her naked body. They both stared out at the flames, eyes straining to make out any details of the flames.

“Some kind of explosion,” Joel commented aimlessly. His mind ticked through the possible explanations. He’d lived in the QZ almost the entire twenty years since the outbreak, and he’d been in the open city more times than he could count. Not once had he ever seen an infected - even a herd of them - set off an explosion like that. An old transformer degrading, maybe? Some sort of gas build up?

Tessa’s eyes narrowed as she watched the plume of smoke pour up from street level, fanning across the night sky and blotting out the stars.

“Gas line, maybe. Come back to bed.”

Tessa slunk into the bathroom off the bedroom, and Joel heard the meager trickle of the faucet as she filled a glass of water. On her way back to bed, she handed the glass to him.

“Your breath smells like a damn distillery.”

Joel acquiesced and sipped the water. He could smell the chlorine that FDRA used as disinfectant before dumping it into the city’s deteriorating water main. He ignored Tessa’s continued pleas for him to rejoin her, his eyes glued to the spreading fire. Worry settled in his chest like concrete, although he couldn’t say why. Dawn broke before Joel found sleep again. He dreamt again of Sarah and the hallway. This time, though, you weren’t there to call out to him…

****

You woke up to the sound of crinkling plastic and a painful throb under your right breast. You peeked out through slitted eyelids. Ellie was across from you, sitting next to a long neglected fireplace. It was the first time you’d seen her clearly. Her hair was a mousy brown and tied back in a ponytail, her eyes dark and far apart. She moved quickly, like a caged animal or a predator cat, and her lips were pursed together in concentration as she opened a package of crackers. The gray t-shirt under the red hoodie had a dark crimson smear of blood across her chest, and the soles of her sneakers were worn down.

You sat up, straightening your back against the door as you looked around, getting your bearings. You were still inside the house from the night before. Dust hung heavy in the air, motes floating idly in the afternoon sunlight that shafted through one of the boarded up windows.

“You’re awake,” Ellie observed without looking up at you. She was munching quietly on the crackers, picking at a hangnail on her thumb.

You took a breath in, causing your ribs to spasm in pain. White seared across your vision and you struggled to gasp.

“Pretty sure you broke a rib or two.”

You shot the teenager a sour look.

“Yeah, no shit.”

“What was that last night? The explosion?”

Your mind flicked back through your recollections from the night before.

“Propane truck. Damian must have shot it.”

You remembered the truck, tipped on its side probably three or four houses down from where you were now. You could still see Damian as he’d turned around to shoot at the horde. Whether he meant to or not, one of his bullets must have hit the truck’s tank, setting off the explosion.

You tried to pivot on your hip to look out through the mail slot of the front door.

“Don’t bother, there’s nothing out there but roasted shamblers.”

You opened the mail slot anyways. Maybe Damian had managed to survive.

As your eyes adjusted to the bright light, you saw Ellie was right. The entire opposite side of the street was burned out, smoke still curling up from a few of the smoldering foundations where houses had been. The street was littered with charred lumps you could only assume had once been the infected, and your group mates. Luck must have been smiling on you to make sure none of the sparks drifted your way on an errant breeze. You didn’t see anything that looked alive.

You let the mail slot fall closed, moving slowly back to seated, your ribs screaming in protest. You closed your eyes to fight the nausea, leaning your head back against the door.

“What’re we going to do?”

She sounded scared.

“I dunno, kid. I’m not much good like this. You might be on your own.”

“I don’t know where I’m going.”

“Yeah, neither do I. And you’ll not know where you’re going a lot faster without me.”

Ellie considered your words for a second before she looked away. For the first time since you’d met her, you saw a note of fear in her eyes. It reminded you of how young she was. Only a few years older than Gabriel. You always wondered how it felt to be born after the outbreak, like Ellie and Gabriel. To not remember the world without infected, without QZ’s. You had memories of time before: memories of vacations and Christmas shopping and doctors appointments and traffic jams. Those were the things you missed the most - the little things. Things that Ellie and Gabriel had never known.

“Who are you, anyways? Why did the Fireflies send an armed unit out to get you?”

The fear in Ellie’s eyes melted away, replaced by suspicion. She didn’t answer.

“Look, kid, if you can’t tell me what’s going on, how am I supposed to help you anyways?”

Ellie’s eyes narrowed at you.

“I thought you said I was on my own.”

You chuckled, immediately regretting it as agony ripped through your body.

“Yeah, well, I wouldn’t be a very good person if I let a little kid walk around the open city now, would I?”

As much as you couldn’t bear the idea of moving, you knew it was true. You couldn’t leave Ellie alone, even if she was a scrappy thing. You thought of Gabriel, and how you would feel if someone left him alone in the open city.

“I’m not a little kid,” she spat back, indignant.

“You’re littler than I am.”

You’d used that line on Gabriel all the time. Looked like Ellie hated it as much as he did.

“So, now that we’ve established that I’ll somehow go with you, where is it that we’re headed and who are you supposed to be meeting with?”

“Marlene said I shouldn’t tell anybody.”

Your brow furrowed as you considered this.

“Well, Marlene’s probably dead, and if she isn’t, she sure as hell isn’t going to know to look for us here. So it’s just you and me. Which means I need to know why you’re out here and what the hell we’re walking into.”

Ellie sized you up from across the room. Afternoon sun was giving way to the warm gold of evening. If you wanted to put any distance between you and whatever was left of the horde, you’d have to start moving soon.

She stood up abruptly, walking over to you as she rolled up one sleeve of her hoodie. She thrust her arm towards you, a large scarred-over gash on the skin of her pale forearm. You looked at it, momentarily confused.

“Don’t you recognize that?” she asked with a hint of challenge.

You looked at the mark, something familiar about it plucking at the back of your mind. Surely, it couldn’t be…

“That’s a bite mark. From an infected.”

She rolled the sleeve of her hoodie down again, obscuring the scar from view.

Your thoughts felt like they were weighted down in cement. You looked up at her, a million questions in your eyes, the pain in your ribs momentarily forgotten.

“That’s… not possible.”

“Not possible or not, that’s what it is.”

She went back to her original seat by the fireplace, tucking her knees up to her chest and resting her chin on them.

You tried to piece together the facts. Bites were how the infected spread their fungus to living hosts. Bites were always effective. You’d never seen or heard of anyone getting bitten and not turning eventually. You’d seen people try all kinds of things to slow and reverse the effects of the fungus in the early days: amputations, cauterization, pouring battery acid into the bite, eating mass amounts of antifungal medications, cannibalizing healthy human flesh. None of it worked. There was no cure, no antidote, nothing to ease the pain or slow the transition. It had been that way since the outbreak first hit in 2003. It was the only truth that mattered, the foundational fact that your world was built on.

And yet, here she was. Flesh and blood. Perfectly human. The scar tissue on her arm spoke to how long ago she’d received that bite.

“Not… possible…,” you whispered in disbelief.

“Not just possible. True.”

You stared at Ellie, dumbstruck. She held your gaze and waited for your thoughts to catch up with reality.

This was why Marlene and Damian hadn’t told anyone about who Ellie was. This was why the Firefly network was passing her along with armed guards along the way. She was a medical miracle, proof that there was a way out. But how?

“There’s a vaccine?” you asked, your voice trembling with emotion.

Ellie shook her head.

“No. It’s not a vaccine. It’s me. I’m immune.”

Immunity.

You tried to imagine it. What immunity would mean for the world. Immunity would change everything. People would be saved, hell maybe even some of the infected could get turned back. Immunity meant no more living in fear. Immunity meant no more QZ’s, no more FDRA, no more infected vs. survivors.

If immunity could be replicated.

Suddenly, the pieces fell into place.

Your eyes widened in understanding as you took in the sight of the most valuable person in the world: a scared, sixteen year old girl with worn-down sneakers, cowering in the moldy, rotted-out remains of a South Boston house.

Now you understood. You’d seen Marlene move expensive cargo before, but nothing could even come close to Ellie’s value. She was everything. The answer, maybe the only person in the entire world who had the key to unraveling this puzzle. People would kill for that. People had died for that.

You swallowed, the gravity of your situation beginning to press down on you.

“So. Where am I taking you?”

Ellie shook her head, balling herself up tighter.

“I don’t know. I was supposed to rendezvous with Marlene. She knew where I was headed next. No one tells me anything.”

You didn’t know much about Marlene’s larger-scale Firefly operations, but you knew one thing: if Marlene was dead, the answer to where Ellie was headed had died with her. Damian might have known - maybe - although you doubted it. Marlene was nothing if not tight-lipped.

“Well. We better hope that Marlene survived, then.”

The girl shrugged.

“If she survived - which is a big if - she’ll head back to the QZ. I can get us there… I think. If we can get back, I can find her.”

You knew most of Marlene’s haunts in the QZ. Not all of them, but there was enough of the Firefly network for you to get a message to her.

Sensing a decision had been made, Ellie rose from her seat, zipping up her backpack and sliding her arms through the straps. The bag was heavy, weighted down with what you assumed were her traveling supplies. It hung low and saggy off her lower back, the straps pulling away from her shoulder blades like suspenders.

“Here kid, help me up.” You reached out an arm. Ellie obliged, tucking under your armpit and heaving as you rose. The pain was excruciating, white dots peppering your vision, but you managed to brace yourself against the back of the door enough to stay upright.

You tried to keep your breathing shallow so as not to move your ribs. After a few ragged gasps, you nodded at Ellie.

“The QZ is almost directly due west of here. We move quietly, take our time, but we don’t stop. If anything happens, keep following the sunset until you reach the QZ wall.”

Fear pulsed in Ellie’s dark eyes again, but she nodded in understanding.

“Alright, kiddo. Let’s get going.”

Trying to move your upper body as little as possible, you shuffled back from the door as she opened it a few inches, scanning the street for any infected. After a moment of surveying, she nodded, pushing the door the rest of the way open. You followed her out into the late afternoon light, praying and hoping that your luck from the night before had a little juice left in it…

read part 6 here **let me know if you want to be tagged in future chapters! ty to everyone showing this series so much love! <;33

#joel miller #joel miller x reader #joel miller x y/n #joel miller imagine #last of us #last of us hbo #last of us imagine #the last of us #pedro pascal #pedro pascal x reader #pedro pascal x y/n #pedro pascal imagine

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nabulsi · 1 year

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Wayhaven Fanfic Masterpost 🖋

in honor of Book 3 coming out, I figured I'd make a masterpost of all my work~

A du Mortain:

Pas de Deux [Oneshot] Rating: T || Fluff & Angst || 2,510 words

Skin and Bone [Oneshot] Rating: T || Heavy Angst with Happy Ending || 2,716 words

Nocturne [Two-shot Part 1] Rating: M || Heavy Angst and Body Horror || 1,340 words

Aubade [Two-shot Part 2] Rating: T || Heavy Angst / Insects / Horror || 1,403

Ghostly Touches [Oneshot] Rating: G || Fluff and Humor || 595 words

Until Someone Holds Me [Oneshot] Rating: G || Hurt/Comfort || 910 words

Head On Backwards [Oneshot] Rating: G || Angst / Hurt/Comfort || 1,012 words

know that it doesn't hurt me [Oneshot] Rating: T || Heavy Angst / Character Death || 440 words

Girls' Night In [Oneshot] Rating: G || Family & Fluff || 790 words

Little Quarantine Mind [Oneshot] Rating: T || Angst / Hurt/Comfort || 1,620

Silent Harbors [Multichapter - Ongoing] Rating: M || Angst / Psychological Horror & Gore || 15,824 words

Sellout [Multichapter - Ongoing] Rating: T || Lovers to Enemies / Action & Humor || 4,215 words

Twin Souls [Multichapter - Ongoing] Rating: T || Vampire Diaries AU || 2,116 words

F Hauville:

say you wanna be here; [Oneshot] Rating: T || Pure Fluff || 1,268 words

N Sewell:

Ritardando [Oneshot] Rating: G || Pure Fluff || 1,315 words

Untouched and Unspoken [Oneshot] Rating: G || Light Angst / Hurt no Comfort || 990 words

Menace [Multichapter - Ongoing] (Nate / MC / Murphy Love Triangle) Rating: T || Comedy / Thriller / Action || 5,802 words

In Faded Reflections [Multichapter - Ongoing] (Nat is inquisitor in Dragon Age AU / Nat x Solas) Rating: T || Fantasy / Mystery / Slow burn || 1,989 words

Agent M:

Hearts are Frozen [Oneshot] Rating: T || Abbasid Empire AU / Fluff || 1,559

Working Overtime [Oneshot] Rating: T || Fluff with the mildest of spices || 812 words

Repressed Vampire Love Triangle AU [Ava / MC / Morgan]:

Imaginary Relationship [Morgan Oneshot] Rating: G || Hurt/Comfort /Umrequited Feelings || 510 words

Reaching Through the Cracks [Morgan Oneshot] Rating: G || Unrequited Love & Angst || 839 words

If U Think About Me [Morgan Oneshot] (Book 3 Spoilers) Rating: T || Fluff & Angst || 1,106 words

The Conspiracy [Morgan & Ava Oneshot] Rating: T || Angst & Friendship || 742 words

melt into you [Morgan Oneshot] Rating: T || Hurt/Comfort || 1,612 words

Rabbit-Hearted [Morgan & Ava Oneshot] Rating: G || Angst & Jealousy || 600 words

Pulling You into Focus [Morgan Oneshot] Rating: E || Fluff & Smut || 2,043 words

Other:

A Sweet Affair [Ava & Farah Oneshot] Rating: G || Fluff & Family || 750 words

Unsolved [Multichapter || Compete] Rating: T || Dark Comedy / Horror & Mystery || 70,966 words

(Rest of the List is under the cut)

Requests Fulfilled:

Listing these with keywords because they don't have titles~ (None of these are Explicit btw)

A du Mortain:

[Adam Sick-Fic]

[Adam Fluff]

[Ava Domestic Fluff]

[Adam reacting to MC death]

[Ava in Denial over her feelings]

[Waking up with Adam Fluff]

[Adam Angst]

[MC Writes Angsty letter to Ava]

[Ava Silliness]

F Hauville:

[Farah fluff]

[Felix Bath Time]

[Felix at the Arcade]

[Farah Fluffy Silliness]

[More F Fluff]

Agent M:

[Mason Pining - Mason/MC/Felix Love Triangle]

[Mason reassures self conscious MC]

[Morgan distracting MC from work]

[Waking up with Mason]

A / N Polyamory:

[Bath Time fluff w/ Adam and Nate]

#my writing #the wayhaven chronicles #whc #twc #wayhaven fanfiction #twc fanfic #paptalk #i hope all these links work bc my brain stops working when I'm fasting #a

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inconveniently-discorporated · 9 months

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S2 thoughts ahead, potentially spoilery. Mostly just how I feel about it.

You know, now that the whole season has come out, I do regret that we all watched it in one go. And you sort of have to unless you want to quarantine yourself from the internet for six weeks so you don't get spoiled. Even if you don't go on tumblr or fandom sites, algorithms on other social media sites are wholeheartedly serving up heartbreak after heartbreak with little chance to avoid the spoilers.

I agree with Neil that it would've been better to have this week by week.

Like, we've all spent the last couple years building this up in our collective heads and it was all just OVER in six hours, and we went from the end of S1 and all of the lovely art and fanfiction, to having our hearts broken pretty rapidly. And it won't be resolved for another couple years.

As much as I enjoyed talking a self-care day and voraciously consuming new Good Omens content, it feels like it would've been more emotionally impactful to have built up to that final moment only after we had week after week of obsessing and screaming about what happened in episodes 1 - 5. I was going to say the last episode would've been gentler, but I think it would've been even more of a heartbreak after being pampered and fed so well by their relationship the previous episodes.

Anyway, what I'm trying to say is I think the next time Neil points a gun at my face and tells me to trust him to pull off this trick, I probably ought to trust him. 🥲

I think I might do a weekly rewatch one week at a time so I can fully appreciate the flavors of the whole season.

#good omens #gos2 spoilers #Neil Gaiman

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sirowsky · 1 year

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Day 5 and that means that we're back to Joel Miller! This story is courtesy of @bilibiche who chose the prompt: "Gimme a damned second, will you..."

Rating: Mature Warnings: Joel Miller x reader, reader has no physical description and no specified gender, kinda enemies to friends, allusions to violence, cursing, betrayal, guilt, possible spoilers from ep. 5. Word Count: 1630 Sirowsky's Masterlist

--Lost and Found--

You shouldn’t like him.

He’s dangerous, and not just because he doesn’t hesitate to harm or kill anyone that threatens him or the very few things that he cares about, but specifically because he doesn’t care much about anyone or anything. He’s cold. As hardened as the rest of the world by the new rules you all live by, and he seems to have long since given up on hope.

But amidst all of his closed doors, you see something which you know that he doesn’t mean for anyone to ever see. A secret that he keeps locked away, terrified of letting out because of what it would do to him if he tried to set it free and failed. Because it’s the biggest thing that anyone can carry, and yet, it fits into all the smallest nooks and crannies of our beings. Which is why, even when we think that we’ve rooted it out, one drop is all it takes for it to grow.

Love.

He still feels it, no matter how hard he tries not to and no matter how much it hurts him. You don’t know who it is, this precious someone that he drags around with him, unable to let go but equally unwilling to hold on to. It tortures him, so in a twisted ballet of self-preservation, he throws his pain at anyone that he can, trying to keep it from burying him, and the ensuing guilt then makes him angry at himself.

So, in the end, he’s left with nothing but his rage to keep him alive. And it does. Everyone in the QZ fears him, to a greater or lesser extent, because his anger makes him willing to go after anyone, regardless of their rank or status. He just needs a reason, and there have been plenty of them over the years. No one messes with Joel Miller. That’s what every new arrival is told, and sooner or later, they all find out why.

You really shouldn’t like him.

--=¤=-- 9 years later --=¤=--

It’s a wonder that you’ve stayed alive all this time. After being recruited by the Fireflies, you’d ended up outside of the quarantine zone about five years ago, with no way of getting back and knowing that you’d be executed on the spot if you should somehow manage it. All alone out there, you’d been forced to teach yourself to become a better fighter if you were gonna have a chance to survive.

And you had, against all odds. You’d made it long enough to run into a group of people that weren’t assholes, and who had decided to take you in despite quite a rough first meeting. Because by then you were such a good fighter and so adept at surviving in the wild, that you’d become a valuable resource to any community. And especially one trying to build a new home this far out into the wilderness.

Which is why you’ve already been living in Jackson for a year when he rides into town. You can’t quite believe your eyes at first, but then he calls out to Tommy and there’s no doubt that it’s him. Tess isn’t with him, though, and there can only be one reason for that. Instead, he’s got a kid in tow, and that’s what surprises you most of all.

They disappear into the cafeteria, and you quickly head back to work. You have one very compelling reason to not be particularly keen on meeting him again, but you’re also somewhat certain that he would definitely not be happy to see you. So, you make a mental note not to move about town too much until you know whether he’ll be sticking around or not.

But early the next morning, while walking to work, you spot him sitting on the front steps of a house just down the street from yours, and the sight of him makes you stop. Because he looks horrible. You’ve seen him look stressed and angry and absolutely terrifying before, but right now, he’s riddled with sadness and guilt which are things that he’s never allowed to be seen.

And oddly enough, seeing him like that makes you realize that you still like him, in spite of everything. So, you swallow hard, then take a deep breath before turning and heading straight towards him, although you walk slowly. He’s so wrapped up in his own head that he doesn’t hear you approach, and you don’t want to startle him, so you stop some ten yards away.

“Hi, Joel,” you say quietly, and he looks up to search for the source of the voice.

When his eyes locate you, and his brain slowly registers who you are, he turns pale and seems to freeze where he sits. You know why. You know what he did, you’d figured it out a few days after it happened, and for a long time you’d wanted to hate him for it. But you never could, because in his shoes, you might’ve done the same thing.

“I just thought you should know that… I made it,” you tell him with a small shrug, truly wishing to ease his conscience.

Still, he doesn’t move or speak, so you decide to leave him alone with his thoughts. You give him a gentle smile and then turn to resume your walk.

“Gimme a damned second, will you…” he calls just as you take the first step, and you stop and turn back again, just in time to see him run a hand over his clammy face.

Slowly, to give him time, you walk closer to the house, until you’re just a few steps away from him.

“It’s good to see you again,” you offer, but that only deepens the wrinkle between his brows.

“I find that extremely unlikely,” he says, and then continues after a beat. “If you know…”

“Yeah, I worked it out,” you confirm. “But I get it. He’s your brother, you were trying to keep him safe. I don’t blame you for that.”

You can tell that he’s getting agitated, which is only to be expected. You can only imagine how many times he’s thought about you as another one of his victims, hating himself for it, only to now learn that you’ve been alive the whole time.

“I tricked you… made sure you’d be gone, one way or another,” he confesses, and there’s anger in his voice now, but you know that it isn’t aimed at you. “I sent you out there to die.”

“Because with me gone, the operation that I was supposed to head up with Tommy as my second, could never happen,” you recall, and he scoffs.

“It wasn’t an operation, it was suicide.”

“Maybe,” you concede. “We’ll never know.”

He seems to chew on that for a bit, perhaps deciding whether he’s up for debating that point further. But if so, he apparently decides not to. Or at least, that he’s got more pressing questions.

“How the fuck are you alive?” he finally asks, and there’s a hint of awe somewhere in the deeper notes of his voice.

And no wonder, he’s just made the same journey that you did, and undoubtedly encountered the same problems along the way.

“The short answer is that I kept my head. I relied on instincts, but I never stopped working the problem, finding food, water and shelter. And everywhere I went, I trained myself. How to endure and survive heat or cold, how to build shelters if I needed them and how to camouflage myself in different environments. But most importantly… how to fight. With my bare hands or sticks, rocks, ropes, knives if I could find any.”

You stop then, because the past isn’t relevant anymore and there’s no point in going further into detail. Instead, you gesture to the community around you.

“That’s what I do here now. I teach all the things that I learned out there, to everyone living here, to maximize their chances of survival. So, maybe I was always meant to get lost out there. To get away from the control of both Fedra and the Fireflies, and perhaps help to create something better.”

You end with a shrug, and then wait for him to say something, but he doesn’t.

“It’s ironic, isn’t it… That Tommy and I both ended up here and now I’m the one that protects him,” you ponder, but he just stares at you with an expression that you can’t read.

Since you’re about to be late for work, and he’s clearly not ready to have an actual conversation with you, you give up trying to engage him and start turning to leave again. But you have this nagging feeling that this might be your one chance to talk to him, and you so wish that you could somehow free him of any weight that your past might hold over him, you just don’t know how.

“I meant what I said, Joel. It really is good to see you,” you offer, since it’s the only thing that you can think to say.

He still says nothing, but his eyes are far from cold, which makes you feel hopeful that he might’ve lost some of his harsher edges over the years, and that gives you the courage to share one last thing.

“Truthfully, I’ve always liked you,” you confess, and then you turn and walk away, hoping that this won’t be the last time you see him.

But a while later you find out that he’d taken the kid and left shortly after you’d spoken, and somehow, given how unlikely it was that you’d end up meeting out here at all, it seems impossible that your paths will ever cross again.

<<<<<<<THE END>>>>>>>

Thank you for reading and if you enjoyed this, please consider reblogging so that more people might find it <3

@tacticalsparkles @tanzthompson @sarahjkl82-blog @marydjarin @idreamofboobear @annathewitch @agingerindenial @tiffanyleen @winter-fox-queen @lovefreylove @elegantduckturtle @shadowolf993 @callsigncatfish @hounding-around @cannedsoupsucks @ellie-darling @startrekkingaroundasgard @likes-good-reblogs-even-better @thisshipwillsail316 @dihra-vesa @tobealostwanderer @ophelialoveshandsomemen @deadhumourist @tintinn16 @spideysimpossiblegirl @nolanell @toomanystoriessolittletime @prostitute-robot-from-the-future @bilibiche @harriedandharassed @shadesofnerdlygrace @hotchlover @little-mrs-morales @gallowsjoker @cosmicbreathe @criminalmind1927 @myfavpedrothings @spishsstuff @suttonspuds @sjdraws-00 @ezras-channel-rat @justnat15 @anditsmywholeheart @i-love-movies @insomniamamma @lowlights @thelion-sroar @herefordistractions @ellenmunn

#sirowsky's 500 followers celebration 🍾#joel miller fanfiction #joel miller x reader #joel miller x gn!reader #the last of us #the last of us spoilers #hbo tlou #pedro pascal characters #pedro pascal fanfiction

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