#THE PMS IS HITTING REAL HARD LADS

[mistressemmedi]

I'm posting it because we all need the free serotonin boost

#f1 #daniil kvyat #THE PMS IS HITTING REAL HARD LADS #IM SO SOFT #THERE GOES MY STREET CRED

[searchingwardrobes]

Happy belated birthday, @courtorderedcake​ ! I am so sorry this gift is late! It’s been a week, we’ll just say that, and I wanted your gift to be good. I know you have been through SO much difficulty, my dear, and I wanted to write a fic focusing on Emma’s tough past and her strength because I know you identify with her so deeply. This turned out going in a much different direction than I anticipated, especially with the Daddy!Charming at the end. Nevertheless, I hope you like it! I based this on the song of the same name by Pearl Jam, and the two lines I used at the end made me think of you, Court, as well as Emma: “She holds the hand that holds her down/ She will rise above.”

This fic doesn’t follow the season seven timeline simply because it makes my head hurt and it was just easier to ignore it. I also needed Emma’s past in the Land Without Magic to touch her in the present, and the whole “all the realms are in Maine” wouldn’t really work here. Therefore, this is three years after the season six finale. Henry is sixteen Neal Nolan is three, and baby Hope is two months old.

Summary: The past collides with the present when Emma gets an upsetting phone call. But she isn’t a lost girl anymore.

Rating: T for brief discussions of child neglect, emotional abuse, and alcoholism

Words: 3,500 and some change

Also on Ao3 and part of my Fandom Birthday Playlist

Tagging the usuals: @snowbellewells @kmomof4 @xhookswenchx @welllpthisishappening @let-it-raines @teamhook @bethacaciakay @whimsicallyenchantedrose​ @jennjenn615​ @distant-rose​ @delirious-latenight-laughs​ @optomisticgirl​ @spartanguard​ @profdanglaisstuff​ @tiganasummertree​ @resident-of-storybrooke​ @snidgetsafan​ @thislassishooked​ @branlovestowrite​ @scientificapricot​ @stahlop​ @hollyethecurious​ @shireness-says​ @winterbaby89​ @wellhellotragic​

Neither Emma nor Killian would say that their pasts were a faded, distant memory. Trauma just wasn’t that easy to get over. They would say, however, that this life they’d built in Storybrooke made the memories easier to handle. They had legit, “I’d go to hell and back for you”, family and friends. They had the home of their dreams where they could give Henry and Hope all the things they never had. They no longer felt the pang of hunger or the bite of cold.

Most of all, they had each other. Having each other meant sharing the burden of those memories for the first time. It was like peeling an onion, and Emma didn’t mean that metaphor in the usual sense. She meant the layers stung like hell, so they could only handle tiny bits at a time. It was okay, though, Killian told her. They had a lifetime together.

Taking the pain a tiny piece at a time was why the phone call came as such a shock for both of them. It wasn’t that Emma forgot about Hank, it’s just she’d never heard anyone speak of him aloud in almost thirty years.

Killian watched her face go pale, saw her arm go limp even though he could still hear a tiny voice coming through the speaker of her phone.

“Emma? Is everything okay?”

She dropped the phone without ending the call, and it hit one of the throw pillows and slid to the edge of the couch. Without saying a word, she headed upstairs, and Killian snatched the phone up and pressed it to his ear. The person on the other end was saying “hello? Ms. Swan, are you there?”

“This is Mr. - this is her husband,” Killian said. Though Storybrooke was no longer isolated from the outside world, Killian still essentially didn’t exist outside of its borders. Their marriage, though real in every way that mattered, wasn’t legally official outside of their little hamlet of fairy tale characters.

“Oh,” the woman on the line said, “well, could you just let her know that visiting hours end at nine pm?”

Killian’s brow furrowed. “Visiting hours?”

“Yes, if she’d like to come visit Hank Gregory. Her foster father?”

Killian sank to the edge of the couch. “Could you fill me in, please? My wife was a little - overwhelmed by your call.”

“Well, Mr. Gregory was admitted to Maine Medical Center here in Portland about two days ago with complications from both liver disease and diabetes. We’ve done all we can for him, but he’s been admitted into the ICU.” The woman took a deep breath, as if gathering her strength to get the next words out.

“I told your wife this already, but he doesn’t have a lot of time. We asked if he had any next of kin he’d like us to contact, and your wife’s name and number was all he gave us. He said she was his foster daughter?”

Killian rubbed the curve of his hook against his chin. No wonder the nurse phrased it as a question - this call likely wasn’t going the way she had envisioned. Across the room, Henry had discarded his video game controller and was watching Killian with a question furrowing his brow. Killian wished he weren’t so worried himself because it’s one thing for the man to have Emma’s name. It was quite another for him to have her cell phone number.

“Let me jot down those visitation hours,” he finally told the nurse, motioning to Henry to get a pad of paper and a pen. The lad dashed to the kitchen and fished them out of the junk drawer. Killian repeated the information from the nurse as Henry scribbled it down. After ending the call, Henry regarded him intensely.

“What was that all about? Mom seemed really upset.”

Killian sighed and rubbed the back of his neck. “I’m not one hundred percent sure yet, Henry.”

***************************************************************

“Are you’re absolutely positive that you want to do this, love?”

Emma was clutching the steering wheel with a white-knuckled grip, but she nodded at Killian anyway. They were twenty minutes outside of Storybrooke, and she’d been completely silent the entire time.

“I need answers. The man treated me like shit for two years, and now, 24 years later, he calls out of the blue?”

Killian really wasn’t sure what to say, so he merely rubbed Emma’s arm with the curve of his hook. She smiled at the gesture, and her body relaxed. One of her hands released the steering wheel, and she reached over to grasp his. He lifted it to his lips and brushed a kiss across her knuckles.

“The bastard isn’t going to die without me getting a thing or two off my chest, either,” she added with a bitter chuckle.

There was a time a few years ago that the anger radiating from her and the harshness of her words would have him worried. His mind would have gone immediately to his own bitterness towards his father and the darkness that kind of path leads to. But now he knew better. Emma had faced the darkness and risen above it. He also knew she had to face her demons on her own terms.

“I’m right beside you, Swan, you know that.”

Her face relaxed and she turned her palm to lace their fingers together. She lifted their hands and pressed her lips to the back of his before letting go so she could put two hands back on the wheel. She bore right and soon the Bug was heading down 295 to Portland.

**********************************************************

Maine Medical Center was enormous, comprised of several different buildings. To make matters worse, parts of it were being renovated and construction zones were everywhere. They finally found the correct building, finally found a parking deck, and then walked what felt like a million miles to the ICU. Killian had never been anywhere but Storybrooke General, but this massive place had the same sterile smell and chilly air. He noticed Emma shivering and put his arm around her as they walked. She leaned into him, clasping his prosthetic hand in hers, his hook not exactly appropriate for the setting.

“Thank you for coming here with me,” she whispered.

“It’s what a husband does,” he replied, pressing a kiss to her temple.

His quip at least elicited a tiny chuckle from her. They approached the nurses station for the ICU, and Emma told them who she was and that she was here to see Hank Gregory. A smiling woman in her sixties whose spectacles reminded him of Granny Lucas led them to the correct room, which looked more to Killian like a glass prison. She eased the door open and called to the patient in the bed with a voice only slightly above a whisper.

“Mr. Gregory, you have visitors.”

The man’s eyes blinked open, and he turned his head towards the open door. He was covered in wires and tubes, and things blinked and beeped all around him. The nurse pressed a gentle hand to Emma’s arm.

“I’ll let you visit.”

Emma simply nodded, and Killian could tell she would rather flee. But she let out a long, slow breath and then took a step closer towards the man in the bed. His skin was pale and looked as thin as paper, littered in bruises. His eyes were sunken, his cheeks sallow, and there was a yellowish pallor to his face. He was mostly bald with only a few wisps of dingy gray hair. Killian glanced at Emma. She dropped her arms to her sides, and her hands were balled into tight fists.

“Emma,” the man said on a struggled breath, “you came.”

“How the hell did you find me?” she bit back.

The man’s eyes blinked, moist with tears. He looked sad, resigned, but not angry or defensive. “I’ve been keeping an eye on you over the years. Trying to, anyway. You can be a hard girl to find.”

“Yeah, I kinda pride myself on it.”

He ignored her jab, and smiled at Killian. “And who is your young man here?”

“I’m not ten anymore, Hank. This isn’t my young man, he’s my husband.”

“Killian Jones.” Killian gave the man a slight nod, unsure if he should attempt to shake his hand or not. He glanced nervously at Emma, wondering if she was offended by his polite greeting, but her gaze hadn’t left the man in the hospital bed.

“Nice to meet you, son.”

“He’s not your anything.” Emma propped her hands on her hips. “How. Did. You. Find me?”

He sighed, his head sinking even farther into his pillow. “I saw you in the papers a few years back. Emma Swan Always Gets Her Man, that was the headline. I’ve done some, well . . . work with computers, so I -”

“You obtained my personal information illegally, right? Did you know I’m a sheriff now?”

Hank tilted his head. “No, actually, I didn’t. Funny thing, I was following your career in New York, even found out about your son -”

“You stay the hell away from Henry!”

Hank ignored her “-but then the two of you just . . . disappeared. I held onto your number, though. When I gave it to the nurse, I wasn’t sure if it would even work. I was even less sure that you would come.”

Emma’s chin was tilted, and Killian knew what that meant. “Why me?”

“You’re all I’ve got left, Emma. You were my daughter, for God’s sake!”

“Don’t call me that. I’m not your daughter. I never was.”

“Maybe not by blood, but I loved you like my own -”

“You don’t know what love even is!” Emma was shouting now, and Killian glanced nervously at the door. He wasn’t going to stop her, though. Obviously, whatever was pouring out of her had been bottled up for years. Hank was obviously not long for this world, and he knew better than anyone that his wife needed to say everything that had been left unsaid.

Hank was crying now, tears catching in the wrinkles that marred his face. “I didn’t treat you right, I know that, but I did love you, Emma. I did.”

Emma shook her head. “Really? You loved me so much you spent all of the money on liquor while I starved? Loved me so much you spent every waking moment in that damn recliner with the tv on? Do you know how many times I had to clean you up after you’d puked all over yourself? How many times I had to haul trash bags full of empty bottles out to the curb?”

“I know, I know!” Hank was sobbing now, his voice breaking as he struggled to speak. “When Denine and I took you in, we were gonna do it together. We were so excited to give you a home. But then she died, and I . . . she was my life, Emma. I was grieving so badly that I lost myself in the drinking, and -”

“I was grieving too!” Emma shouted. “And I was only ten!”

An awkward silence fell then, the sounds of the hospital machines louder within it. Hank’s gaze trailed to the ceiling, and his hands picked nervously at the thin hospital blanket. He let out a shaky sigh before finally speaking again.

“I’m dying, Emma. My liver’s useless, my kidneys are failing.” Groaning, he struggled to sit up in the bed, his right hand shaking violently as he reached for the blanket across his lap. When he yanked it aside, Killian’s eyes widened in surprise to see legs that ended in blunted stumps where feet should have been. Emma, however, didn’t react at all.

“Look at me,” Hank choked out. “I hated myself so much, I literally killed myself. Didn’t give a shit about my diabetes, so I lost my feet.”

“Serves you right,” Emma replied coldly.

“You’re right, it does,” Hank agreed, awkwardly covering himself back up and collapsing against his pillows. “Denine would be devastated if she saw me now.”

“She was good to me,” Emma whispered, hugging her arms around herself.

Hank nodded, tears gathering in his eyes once again. “I just wanted to tell you how sorry I was before it’s too late. I hoped that maybe we could -”

“Fine,” Emma interrupted him, “you got to apologize, but if you think that means I’ll forgive you, then I guess you’re gonna die disappointed.”

Emma completely ignored the broken man as he sobbed in the hospital bed, turning instead for the door and striding from the room. Killian followed her, but he couldn’t help glancing back at Hank Gregory with sympathy.

****************************************************************

Emma felt physically drained, yet a buzz of righteous anger still tingled along her skin. Killian, however, had fallen into a melancholy she couldn’t understand. They had decided to get lunch in the hospital cafeteria rather than drive around trying to find a place to eat. They had found a spot to sit next to a window looking out at a courtyard, and Killian seemed far more interested in watching the people walking past than the food in front of him.

“Hey,” Emma said softly, reaching out to grasp his hand, “what’s wrong?”

He gave her that smile that never fooled her because it didn’t reach his eyes. “Nothing, love, really.”

As if to try and prove it to her, he picked up his fork and speared a piece of broccoli. Not very convincing, however, when it never reached his mouth. Emma sighed and put down her grilled cheese.

“Yeah right, nothing.” She regarded his brooding nervously, her teeth worrying her bottom lip. “Do you think I’m an awful person? To yell at a dying man like that?”

He shook his head. “Not at all. As difficult as it was, it had to be said.”

If anything, Killian’s words only made him look more depressed. Emma frowned. “But you think I should go back and forgive him?”

Killian shrugged. “I can’t tell you what to do in a situation like this. I confess, I wish you would, but . . . “

“But what?”

He finally met her eyes, dropping the fork with the uneaten broccoli. “Can’t you see it, Swan?”

Her brow furrowed. “See what?”

“Is there really that much difference between me and Hank Gregory?”

Emma couldn’t help it, a short laugh escaped her lips. “You can’t be serious.”

“A one-handed pirate with a drinking problem,” he grumbled.

“What?”

Killian rubbed his forehead, unable to look at her. “It’s what Pan said in Neverland when I told him you were finally seeing me for who I really am.”

Emma rolled her eyes, though she knew Killian was serious. “And you’re going to believe that psychopath?”

“Well, he wasn’t wrong. And here you are, refusing to forgive . . . an alcoholic with no feet.”

Emma’s eyes widened as his words sank in, then her face softened and tears moistened her eyes. “Oh babe,” she told him softly, grasping his hand again and rubbing his knuckles with her thumb, “you’re nothing like him. I’ve seen you drink too much, sure, but you’re not an alcoholic. You’ve never neglected me or Henry or Hope. You’ve done nothing but put us first.” She let out a long, slow breath, relieved when she saw a tiny glimmer spark in her husband’s eyes. “Hank ignored me, neglected me, yelled at me and called me names for two long, excruciating years.”

“Oh Swan,” he told her in a choked voice, “I’m not sure I was much better after losing Milah.”

“No, stop it,” she said firmly, grasping his prosthetic and his hand firmly in both of hers. “That may be true, but I know you, better than anyone. I have no doubt in my mind that if a child needed you, you would have been there. As a matter of fact, you did just that, for Neal - I mean Bae.”

“And then I mucked it all up like I always -”

“Don’t you dare finish that sentence, Jones.”

He gave a small laugh, and ducked his head. Since she didn’t seem to be getting through to him, she got up, plopped right down in his lap and cupped his face in her hands, forcing him to look at her.

“Forget the past, remember? Isn’t that what we said on our wedding day?”

“Yes, but -”

“No buts. Hank Gregory was never a father to me. He sucked, okay? You, however, are the best father I could ever dream of for Henry and Hope.” She punctuated her words with a searing kiss, not giving a damn that they were in the middle of crowded, bustling Maine Medical Center.

****************************************************

Emma rubbed her palms on her jeans nervously as she watched the dying man through the glass of his room in the ICU. Killian put his arm around her and pulled her close.

“You sure about this?” he asked.

Emma nodded. “Yes. You were right, I did need to say those harsh words.” She turned to him and shrugged. “But they weren’t the only words. I guess I have too much of my parents in me.”

He smiled and pressed a soft kiss to her forehead. “I’ll be waiting right here for you.”

With a steadying breath, she stepped away from her husband and opened the door. She had thought Hank was sleeping, but she had been wrong. He turned towards the door and smiled when he saw her.

“I didn’t think I would see you again.”

“Yeah, well . . . “ Emma shrugged as she approached his bed. She stepped to the foot of it and grasped the edge with both hands. “I was talking to my husband, and he reminded me that people can change.”

Hank’s eyes brightened with hopefulness. “I have changed, Emma, and I was hoping maybe I could get to know my daughter again.”

Emma lifted her hand. “Please don’t call me that, Hank. I found my real parents, and they’re wonderful people. My dad and I especially are close. He and I -” she chuckled, surprised when tears rose up in her eyes thinking of David. “Well, we’re a lot alike. My mom definitely says so about a hundred times a day.”

Tears rolled freely down Hank’s cheeks. “Oh, Emma, I’m so happy to hear that. Knowing that, I really think I can leave this world in peace.”

Emma blinked, startled. “What?”

“I was such a horrible parent to you, Emma, and you were so innocent. I never forgave myself, and I tortured myself after children’s services took you away wondering what happened to you. Wondering if you ever found a family to love you the way you always deserved.”

Emma nodded, the tears flowing freely on her own face. “I have. I really have.”

“Anyone else besides Henry, your parents, and that handsome husband of yours?”

“Yes,” Emma said, pulling her cell phone out of her jacket pocket as she came around to the side of the bed, “my baby girl Hope. Here she is on the day she was born.”

Hank’s trembling hand came out to bring the screen closer. “She’s beautiful.”

“She is, isn’t she?”

An awkward silence fell as Emma pocketed her phone. She shifted her feet awkwardly, wondering if she could really spit the words out she had come here to say.

“You don’t have to forgive me,” Hank finally said.

Emma’s face softened as she held his gaze. “Yes, I do. Not for you, but for me.” She took another deep breath and reached out to grasp Hank’s hand. “Hank, I forgive you.”

The man let out a long, shuddering breath, his eyes closing as he whispered, “thank you.” He must have been saving that breath for Emma’s words because as soon as it fell from his lips, every machine in the room started beeping. Emma was shoved out of the way as doctors and nurses rushed in to attend to the dying man. She found herself back in Killian’s arms, weeping against his shoulder.

**********************************************************

The drive home was a bit surreal with nothing but silence their companion back to Storybrooke. Emma didn’t think the feeling was grief - she’d known that, and God, she’d never forget it. Yet she did feel emotionally spent, and wrung out of all coherent thought. Killian didn’t seem concerned by her silence, content to watch the scenery go by and hum along with the radio. Occasionally, he would take her hand in his and give her a reassuring smile.

Emma was surprised when she saw the Welcome to Storybrooke sign - it was like she had driven home on autopilot. When they parked outside of their house, her heart flipped to see her dad’s truck. David came out on the porch before they had even exited the vehicle, Hope cradled in his arms.

“Snow needed to take Neal to t-ball practice so I -” David’s words were cut off when Emma launched herself into his arms. His free arm came up to cup his daughter’s head, and he was shocked to hear her crying against him. He looked to Killian with a startled expression and was relieved when his son-in-law gave him a small smile and a tiny nod that Emma was fine. Killian gently took Hope from him, grinning as the two month old squealed in delight. His arms free, David held Emma tighter.

“Sweetheart, are you okay?” he finally asked her.

Emma pulled back, a smile lighting her face despite the tears. “Yeah, I am. Better than okay. I just . . . I love you, Dad.”

David swallowed back the lump in his throat. “I love you, too.”

She holds the hand that holds her down / She will rise above.

#cs ff #cs future fic #emotional hurt/comfort #daddy charming #killian's self loathing #emma's past #emma facing her past

[buckthegrump]

Reflection - 2

Summary: A choice. Just one. It’s all it takes for the Princess of Arcadia to change her life forever. Whether it was for the better or not, time can only tell. 

Pairing: Princess!Reader x Knight!Bucky

Warnings: swearing and like a fight scene

Word count: 1406

A/n: cuz ya know why the fuck not

Mj had tried to talk Y/n out of going up until the moment she snuck out of her room to leave. But Y/n wouldn’t listen to any of it and now it was far too late.

The witch had given her a ring. It was enchanted so that as long as she wore it she would appear male to everyone around her. It sat on her right ring finger, the weight was foreign and there were multiple times when she absent-mindedly almost took it off. She’d never actually seen when she looked like with the ring on, she hadn’t had time or even thought about looking in the mirror. But seeing her new face would have to wait.

Her worries were put to rest as she passed the other recruits and then paid her no mind. A few greeted her with a nod as they roamed around the training camp. 

The sun was was still low in the sky, the clouds still a little pink from the sunrise.

Y/n hadn’t always been an early riser, she much preferred the quiet of night when everyone had gone to bed and the darkness provided cover perfect for sneaking around. But when Misty began training her, the older woman also forced a new way of living on the princess. With any luck, she would be placed on night watch.

* * *

Y/n pulled back the flap of what was to be her tent and found a young boy who looked way to young to be facing the realities of war.

“I’m Peter,” the boy said sticking out his hand, “Peter Parker.”

She took it hesitantly. A few thoughts crossed her mind as she shook his hand. One, she hadn’t come up with a fake name for herself and she very well couldn’t go by Y/n. People would figure out her secret quickly. Two, she hadn’t ever spoken while wearing the ring so she had no idea if she would sound different or not. And three, Peter seemed way to chipper for whatever the commanding officer had in store.

“Micheal Kingsman,” she said. Her voice was only slightly deeper

If MJ was there she’d make fun of her sister for the obviousness of her chosen last name.

“Sure,” she’d say, “because no one is going to figure that one out.”

But Peter didn’t seem to care, at all. He paced around the tent as Y/n put her bag at the end of the unclaimed bed. Her tentmate rambled on and on about how nervous he was to be working under Captain Barnes. Y/n went rigid at the mention of his name.

“Did you just say, Captain Barnes?” She asked slowly. 

“Yeah,” he sighed sitting down on his cot. “I heard a rumor that in order to get us ready for battle sooner General Knight is having him train us. They say he’s the best. After General Knight of course.”

Hearing Peter refer to Misty as her proper title reminded her that she would need to do so as well. Which was not something she was used to. After years of training with her, Y/n had gotten used to calling her Misty. Another thing that would give Y/n away if she let it slip.

The sound of a drum beating filled the air and Peter sprang up to his feet. He was out of sight before Y/n even had the chance to stand up.

Y/n had heard stories about Captain Barnes. Stories that she’d asked Misty about a million times, but the General refused to corroborate. But she never denied them either, which worried Y/n more.

* * *

“Soldiers!” Barnes bellowed as he walked back and forth on the small platform at the front of the crowd. He held his left wrist with his hand behind his back as he talked about what was expected from the new recruits.

Y/n stood next to Peter who was taking in every single syllable that the Captain spoke. She was only half paying attention though. She was more focused on the fact that Captain Barnes, the notorious Winter Solider, was so good looking.

As in too good looking. He was more than good looking, he was beautiful. No other word would work to describe the man. Y/n almost laughed out loud at the fact that someone had actually piqued her interest. Oh if her sisters could see her now.

His brown hair was cut shorter at the sides and back and had a little more length at the top. Even though she was a few rows back and couldn’t get a good look, she could see the blue of his eyes.

She let her mind wander. Wondering what it would be like to get lost in those eyes, or run her fingers through that hair. It was probably impossibly soft.

Barnes stood facing the crowd of boys, finally finishing his speech.

“We don’t have a lot of time to get you battle ready so I expect everyone to be ready to begin training by 1 pm sharp. A third of you will begin with archery led by Lieutenant Barton. Another third in swordsmanship with Lieutenant Wilson. And the last in hand to hand, with me.”

Y/n smiled to herself at the idea of training with him. Get it together, Y/n. You’re here to fight a war not throw yourself at a knight.

“Do not be late,” Barnes commanded, then released everyone.

* * *

Y/n reported to archery first. It was one of the few areas that she hadn’t covered with Misty. Which wasn’t surprising because Misty had focused on fighting styles because she thought that Y/n would only use them to defend herself.

She did her best not to draw too much attention to herself. Hitting the marks when it was expected but throwing in a few misses so that the Lieutenants wouldn’t single her out. It was going well until she finally had her rotation with the Captain in hand to hand.

As she sat on the sidelines of the fighting area she took mental notes of who had what weaknesses, she’d done the same with Lieutenant Rogers, but she had this odd need to impress Captain Barnes.

“The best thing you can do in a fight is let your opponent underestimate you,” Misty’s advice rang through her ears throughout the first week of training. It wouldn’t be too hard, the body that everyone else saw was a scrawny little lad with wide eyes. So she’d play into their assumptions that Micheal Kingsman was just an unlucky peasant who got summoned for the war.

“You there!” Captain Barnes pointed at her. “What’s your name?”

Y/n was speechless as the Winter Soldier stared at her with such intensity she not only forgot her fake name but her real one as well.

“Are you deaf?” He said louder, “Your name soldier.”

“Micheal Kingsman.” Every time she said her chosen name allowed she could hear her sisters in the back of her mind making fun of her for it.

“Front and center, Kingsman,” Barnes ordered. 

She quickly followed directions and let her self be as small as she could make herself standing in front of her commanding officer.

“How many of the other trainees have you sparred with?” He asked.

“None,” she answered in a small voice. 

His eyes narrowed as he scoffed, she could practically see him file her away as a weakling.

“Well, if you think that you are going to learn anything by watching, let’s see what you’ve learned.” He said it in such a way that pissed the princess off.

She took her stance but made it seem like she was unsure about it. He stood there for a moment waiting for her to make the first move. When she didn’t he attacked landing a few punches. He hit her in the stomach and elbowed her in the back. When she noticed that he was going for a knee to her groin she evaded the hit.

During her observations, she noticed that he favored his right side for everything so she kicked his left side. He spun around with a look of shock on his face when it actually landed. He advanced on her again, she allowed him to knock her down.

“Don’t let think that you can skate by on luck alone,” he told her before walking off.

#Bucky Barnes x Reader #Bucky Barnes AU #bucky x reader #bucky barnes x you #bucky imagine #bucky barnes imagine

[desperationandgin]

Deep as the Road is Long (Part I, Chapter 12)

Rating: General Audiences, character death

Also Read On: AO3

Read Previous Chapter

A/N: The next chapter will post at 4 pm US central time TODAY.

March 2016

It’s the first Thursday of the month when Faith stops eating and begins hurting. She cries, reaching for Jamie to fix something he can’t. If he could rip out his own heart and give it to her and make it better, he would; he would give her anything. Once, when she was two and trying to keep up with older cousins, she fell down a few steps at Lallybroch. Jamie had held her, kissed her bruised leg, and just like that, magically, she was better. He could fix anything wrong with her, then. Now, he could walk through fire for her and it wouldn’t do anything. He’s right there as a morphine drip begins and she slips off to a drug-induced sleep.

There are moments she’s awake and he cherishes them, clings to the sound of her voice. He doesn’t leave her side, and tells her stories even when she sleeps. He knows; she drinks nothing, eats nothing, or close to it. She’s shutting down and it terrifies him, makes him want to wrap around her fragile frame and keep her with him. When her lips chap and her skin dries out, Jamie takes care of her, trying to soothe her tears when she has them while hiding his own. She’s so cold already, and he piles blankets on her, terrified that she’s still here, with him, but there’s no warmth to her anymore.

When she doesn’t wake from sleeping on a morning seventeen days later, his eyes stay glued to the monitors that tell him she’s still there. Claire is the soft place to fall, and he’s grateful to her for closing the door to the room when they talk, when she tells him Faith has some time left with him, but it won’t be long. It’s like collapsing in on himself, and he isn’t sure what was worse: his wife’s fast and bloody death, or knowing, dragging out the inevitable. One left him in such a state of shock he couldn’t function. This is giving him time to let himself think nothing good will ever come after the death of his daughter. He doesn’t want anything, he doesn’t want a damned thing short of his baby with him, healthy and happy.

It’s late on a Wednesday night when Claire comes. He hasn’t moved save to use the bathroom; she knows there’s nothing else going through his mind, nothing else that matters to him right now. She touches his shoulder, then leans over the bed to kiss Faith’s forehead tenderly. Her breathing is noisy, rattling, too much mucus in the back of her throat that her body can’t move or get rid of. Sitting quietly beside Jamie, Claire’s silent. There are no words, she won’t give him platitudes or bereavement speeches; she can’t do that to him. It’s a surprise to her when he reaches over after a few moments and takes her hand, clinging to her like a lifeline.

“I thought I wanted her buried next to her mam. But that’s all the way in France, and I canna…” Tears fill Jamie’s eyes as he blinks and looks down, swallowing heavily. He can’t let her go that far from him, just as he couldn’t leave her all alone when she was born so early.

Claire squeezes his hand tightly. “Next to your mother, Jamie,” she whispers.

He considers it, then nods, rubbing at his eyes with his free hand. “Do ye ever think the universe is trying to tell ye something, Claire?”

“What do you mean?”

Sitting back, his eyes stay trained on Faith. “My da dying was the first time I felt death reach out and touch me, ye ken? My mother, Willie, the bairn; I was still too much of a lad to wrap my mind around it. But my da died, and I had Annalise. Then I lost her, but I had Faith. She kept me whole, and now I’m losing her. Perhaps the universe is trying to tell me I’m no’ supposed to have this. It isna for me, for some reason, and if I open my heart again, I’ll only keep losing what I let in.”

You wouldn’t lose me, Claire wants to scream, though she can’t promise that. It isn’t about her anyway, and she reaches out to wrap her arms around him tightly. “Jamie, everyone deserves to have a person to love. To have a person who loves them. Losing that doesn’t mean anything other than life can be cruel.” She’s lost both parents, lost them in one fell swoop, then her uncle, then her husband. Loss doesn’t miss anyone and doesn’t particularly care how many have already been taken from a person’s life.

“Perhaps to be wi’ me, or to be loved by me, is a curse.”

“I don’t believe in things like that and neither should you,” she says firmly. “You know better than that.”

“Then why do I no’ get to keep the people most precious to me?”

She has no answer for that, and instead kisses his temple, desperate to infuse in him the belief that he’s worth being loved, that he deserves it, that the death of his daughter isn’t a punishment. “Jamie, you need to get some sleep.”

“I’m fine, Sassenach.”

It’s the answer she expected, so she sits with him in silence. They do this for three days until she realizes he’s not accepting food even when she has nurses send it right to the room. When Claire gets there that night, she brings her own food, deciding he can try to say no to her directly. Putting down a bag, she first kisses Faith, then sits beside him again just as she does every evening.

“I brought some sandwiches. You need to eat, get something in your system. Please?”

Jamie rubs his face; he’s pale, he has less than a full beard but more than his normal scruff, the circles under his eyes are darker than they ever have been. “I’m no’ hungry.”

“You might not feel hungry but your body is starving, Jamie,” she says quietly. “Please, don’t make me beg you.”

When he looks at her, there’s so much defeat on his face that she wants to weep with him and wrap him in her arms tightly. She wants to beg, but for his forgiveness. Instead, she quietly reaches for a sandwich and hands it over to him. “It’s just ham and cheese, lettuce, tomato.” Simple, not made for more than sustenance. When he takes it and actually begins to eat, relief floods through her, and they sit together while she eats her own sandwich in solidarity. For three hours, Claire asks nothing else of him, but he needs to get out of the room, he needs to stretch, needs to use his legs.

“Will you go get some fresh air?”

“Absolutely not,” he responds, shaking his head. “I’m no’ leaving her alone.”

“Jamie,” Claire says quietly. “She isn’t alone. I’ll be here.”

He shakes his head again. “I dinna mean to slight ye, Claire. I only meant I’m not letting her think for a moment I’m gone.”

“She wouldn’t think that. And we both know she would tell you to listen to Doctor Claire.” Her words don’t invoke a smile, not even a ghost of one. “Please. Jamie, you need to take a walk. Five minutes. Walk outside for five minutes and breathe in real air.”

There’s silence from him for so long that she decides not to ask again. Finally, though, he slowly stands, knees creaking with it, from not moving much at all. “Alright. Five minutes. But then I wilna move again until I have to.”

Claire stands with him and tries to give him an encouraging smile. “I won’t leave, I promise. She’ll never be alone.”

Jamie nods and presses a kiss to her temple, then kisses Faith’s forehead softly, whispering his love for her. His legs feel like lead; they don’t want to go, but finally, he does, walking toward the elevators. Only once he’s in them alone does he sink back against the wall and let himself feel how exhausted he is. His bones feel tired, and he rubs his eyes for a moment. They burn, and he allows himself to consider that Claire’s right: he needs to get out of the room more. It’s hard, not knowing if his daughter will linger days longer or weeks or hours. He’s rooted to the chair in her room because of the uncertainty and fear, or the sheer hope that she’ll open her eyes again and look at him. He misses her eyes, the brilliant blue of them; never did he think that just gazing into her eyes would be a thing he took for granted, but he has, and he hates himself for it. He remembers when she was tiny, the way only one eye would open in the light as he held her. He used to kiss that one closed eye, then press her to his shoulder and rub her back, and eventually she would press her face into his neck. He should have memorized those moments. He wants to shake every parent he sees and force them to soak it all in, remember it now, because if something ever happens, they’ll have nothing but wishes that they had.

Outside, Jamie looks up at the night sky, realizing it’s not as cool as he thought it would be while taking a deep breath and letting it out slowly. It hits him as he walks around the building; there are things he won’t do with his daughter ever again. Piggyback rides, tickling her until she squeals. She should start school in September, but she won’t. He won’t teach her to ride a bicycle or much later, drive. He won’t get to lecture her about the boy or girl she spends too much time obsessing over, he won’t get to stay up the night of her first date waiting for her to return. No weddings, no first jobs, nothing else. It hits him in a way it only could after putting some distance between them. It would drive him to his knees if not for a nearby bench, and he sits and leans, elbows on his knees and hands covering his face while he weeps. It’s ugly crying, his nose running with it as he gives in, breaking down and choking on the fear and tears. He doesn’t understand why it happened, why his daughter.

Knowing he needs to pull himself together, he exhales and sits for a few more moments before finally standing, needing to get back inside, to at least watch Faith breathe as long as he can. When the elevator doors open on her floor and he walks down the hall, a group of four nurses turns to look at him, not saying anything. They just look at him as if they’ve been struck mute.

He knows.

He knows it right then and runs, not wanting to think it even though his mind is screaming at him that he wasn’t there. The door is open when he arrives at her room, the chairs empty. Looking at the bed, there’s Faith, wrapped in Claire’s arms. Claire, who’s sobbing, holding his daughter to her chest, cradling the back of her head.

No. No, no, no, no.

“Jamie, I’m so sorry.”

No.

He takes one step forward.

“She stopped breathing. God, I’m so sorry.”

The next step he takes sends Jamie to the ground. Before the world goes black he sees, so vividly, his daughter in a tree at Lallybroch, wild red curls whipping behind her in the wind. He was below and she wasn’t too high up, his arms extended out to her. In a moment when she knew he would have her; when trust was for certain and she had no reason to doubt him, her high, sweet voice called out to him.

“Catch me, Da!”

++++

Nobody knows how to say goodbye It seems so easy ‘til you try. Then the moments passed you by Nobody knows how to say goodbye. Nobody knows how to get back home And we set out so long ago. Search the heavens and the Earth below. Nobody knows how to get back home. - The Lumineers

Next Chapter

#outlander fic #outlander #jamie x claire #jamie fraser #claire fraser #datril #deep as the road is long #my fic

[cuethetommo]

LOUPOCOLYPSE DIGITAL STRATEGY BREAKDOWN: DAY 59 (24 Oct 2019)

Digita3:01l Happenings (All times are Los Angeles = UTC -7):

3:01 am - @ LTHQofficial: Walls. The debut album from the boss. January 31st 2020. WE'RE SO EXCITED http://louis-tomlinson.co/Walls-Album 🙌(Twitter) (Instagram)

AM - @ LTHQofficial: RT @ SonyMusic: Stop by @SonySquareNYC tomorrow at 6:15pm to meet @Louis_Tomlinson! Limited spaces available! RSVP here: http://smarturl.it/LouisRSVP *RSVP does not guarantee entry. Follow the link for more details.* (Twitter)

AM - @ LouisT91: Sirius XM Announcement (Instagram Stories)

5:30 am - We Made It Debuts (YouTube)

5:53 am - @ Louis_Tomlinson: #WeMadeIt is out now! http://louis-tomlinson.co/WeMadeIt_Single (Twitter) (LTHQ RT Twitter) (Instagram) (LTHQ Instagram) (Instagram Stories)

~6:00 am - @ Louis_Tomlinson: RT @ hitsradiouk: .@Louis_Tomlinson's brand new video for #WeMadeIt already has over 32k views and it's been online for 7 minutes! 👏Does he have the best fans in the world or what! https://youtu.be/XWXRh6icAzQ 💙(Twitter)

9:09 am - @ Louis_Tomlinson: Been waiting for this moment since I started my solo career. Can't wait to see you all on tour. There are also a few more dates going up at a later date. Thanks for everything. Here we go! http://louis-tomlinson.com (Twitter) (Instagram) (Instagram Stories)

9:14 am - @ LTHQofficial: TOMMO IS GOING ON TOUR. WE REPEAT: TOMMO. IS. GOING. ON. TOUR. (trying really hard to contain our excitement here).  http://louis-tomlinson.com RT Louis_Tomlinson (Twitter) (Instagram)

5:37 pm - @ Louis_Tomlinson: Good to see my mates @SiriusXMHits1 today and play a couple of tunes for @MorningMashUp. Tune in tomorrow from 8am Eastern and Pacific time to hear ! #WeMadeIt (Twitter)

5:48 pm - @ Louis_Tomlinson: Also looking forward to joining @elvisduran tomorrow morning from 8.20EST to have a chat and play #WeMadeIt. See you tomorrow lad! @elvisduranshow (Twitter)

My Opinion:

The hits just keep on coming. The Loupocalypse really began today. We’re readying to buy tickets. Strategizing for small venues. But the digital strategy is just spot on at the moment. I’d make a tweak or two, but they’re really doing a bang-up job. 

I’m actually a little surprised that we don’t have a Snapchat thing happening, but perhaps later. 

LTHQ does a good job of tweaking their content so it’s not exact, but they could lean more. I highly highly doubt there are people that follow LTHQ that don’t follow Louis_Tomlinson. So, switch it up. So folks who are seeing ALL of the content aren’t just getting duplicates. But that’s a really small note in the scheme of things.

I do think KMM set up what we’re seeing with We Made It right now and I need to be a bit less tired to have real thoughts about that. I’d also love to know when Don’t Let It Break Your Heart is coming. I LOVE the teaser at the end of the video thing. It’s very clever.

Spotify Stats: : 2,555,723 followers / 5,503,181 monthly listeners / KMM streams 6,923,705 (8:58 pm UTC - 7)

My goal is to chart this over time, so there will for sure be mistakes. But if you want to see the rest of the series LOUPOCALPSE DIGITAL BREAKDOWN is the tag.

--

Bias Disclaimer: I don’t believe in objectivity. I don’t think that’s something that humans are capable of and certainly not me. So, all I can do is be straight forward about what my biases are (as I know them). I’ve been involved in digital marking since the beginning of Twitter in both small and large capacities. There are certainly folks here who know more than I do, but I know a reasonable amount. I am also a recklessly optimistic person, and I’d be lying if I said that doesn’t color how I see just about everything.

#mine #more to come about wmi #I see you anon #and I'm saving your ask #for when I have a bit more brain power #loupocalypse digital breakdown #day 59 #opinion

[besidemethewholedamntime]

those summer nights

For @precenna 

Here’s your prompt - finally! I’m really sorry it took me so long but I hope you enjoy it! Thank you so much for prompting me <3

Summary: Fitz and Simmons and a farm over the summer.

{Read on Ao3}

This is how the first meeting goes.

Fitz turns up to the door, which is the same shade of red as his shirt and his face is about to become. He knocks, once then another, afraid the first wasn’t loud enough. He fidgets with the hem of his shirt, with the loose thread on the hem, and then eventually just his fingers when he runs out. There’s a significant wait before his knocks are answered, and it gives him enough time to get lost in his own head.

The door swings open. Without thinking, caught in a dream, he stumbles out, “Um, Mr-Mr Simmons?”

The girl, around his own age, dark haired, curious-eyed, bites back a giggle. “Well, no. Not quite.”

Fitz wishes the ground would swallow him whole. The redness starts nowhere, comes from everywhere until his whole face is on fire. “I meant to ask if, uh, if Mr Simmons is in. Yeah. That’s it.”

“Nice recovery.” The girl’s smile is pretty. If he looks at it too long it’s all he’ll see for days. “Yes, he’s in. You can come in and wait for him – he’s on the phone just now.” She opens the door wider and he steps in. She points to his shoes.

“You’ll have to take them off, I’m afraid. Mum hates shoes in the house.”

Obediently he tugs them off, wondering only moments too late if he should have bothered to actually undo the laces. The girl looks at him curiously and he wonders if she knows.

He coughs, resists the urge to run a hand through his hair. It’s one or two beats of uncomfortable silence before she takes pity on him.

“You must be Fitz,” she tells him, holding her hand out. He takes it. Surprisingly cold, unquestionably solid. “I’m Jemma.”

-x-

He is invited to stay for dinner. Mrs Simmons is making roast chicken. “I like to feed,” she says, as she mashes potatoes with a vigour that reminds him of his mum. “And my family like to eat. Sometimes I overcompensate. Please don’t feel shy about helping yourself to as much as you like.” She looks over at her husband and daughter, both grinning from their places at the table. “They never do.”

Over dinner, Fits learns that Jemma is twenty, like him. She’s a student, like him. A prodigy, like him. She studies biochemistry. Unlike him.

“I’m studying engineering,” he tells her, making sure to have swallowed the potatoes in his mouth before speaking.

“What type?” There’s the glitter in her eyes. “Engineering by itself is a rather broad topic.”

Her parents smile as he turns bright red and almost chokes on nothing but air. “Uh, Mechanical, really. But I- well I’m interested in more than that.”

“Jemma, don’t torture the poor lad,” her father laughs. “Otherwise he might change his mind about working here.”

And suddenly he remembers what he’s here for exactly. The Simmons’ farm. The work that needs doing over the long Summer break. The money that will be lovely for his advanced studies.

“I’m not torturing,” Jemma protests. “Only testing. You’re alright, aren’t you, Fitz?”

“Of course,” he mumbles, looking down at his chicken, not quite able to see it clearly because of the memory of the sparkles in her eyes.

-x-

The work, he finds, he actually likes.

It’s hard, there’s no getting away from it. Up early, only stopping for meals, he finds he’s crashed out in the converted garage bedroom that the Simmons have set up for him by ten pm. The hay smells nice, but it gets in his nostrils and he sneezes constantly. The tractor is unreliable, but fixing it provides soothing, his hands instinctively knowing things before his brain is able to catch up. The animals, however, are his favourite. They all clamour for his attention. They like the softness of his voice, the bulk of his pockets which means that he’s brought treats. Fitz enjoys their different personalities, the way they push their heads against his legs in greeting, but their soft noises of melancholy break his heart when he has to leave.

On the weekends, when she herself isn’t working, Jemma comes out to see him. At first, it’s just messages from her father that he’s too busy to bring himself. Then, an antihistamine when he had inhaled a little too much hay and she declared that she could hear his sneezing all the way from the house.

Today, it’s a glass of diluting juice.

“You didn’t have to bring me juice.” Though he takes it quickly enough from her proffered hand.

“Well next time I won’t then,” she huffs, but her eyes let him know she’s only teasing.

Rolling his eyes, he swipes his hand across the back of his mouth. “Thank you.”

“You’re very welcome.”

He gives her a small smile, and goes back to repairing the lock on the barn door. The lambs behind him make gentle noises. Jemma nods, impressed.

“They only do that when they like somebody.”

He tries not to look up at her, but can’t help the corners of his mouth pulling up. “Guess they must really like me, then.”

“I suppose they must.”

And because they’re alone, and because he’s feeling brave for once in his life, he asks, “And what about you? Do you like me, too?”

Jemma takes the glass back.

“You’re tolerable” she says, flashing him a grin before spinning on her heel and walking away.

-x-

It begins a pattern.

She comes out to see him wherever he’s working, even sitting next to him in the tractor, which proves to be quite a gymnastic feat. They talk of anything and everything, conversation never running dry in all the days and weeks that follow. He discovers that she has a boyfriend called Milton that doesn’t seem to be quite the Prince Charming. That she works in a bookshop in town during the summer; the work is the same but the stories never are. She likes the stories, the magic of it all.

“Of course, I know it’s not real,” she tells him, slurping from a carton of juice as Fitz varnishes the new stable door. “Magic is just science we don’t understand quite yet.”

She asks him questions, too, about where he’s from. He tells her of Glasgow, of the city that’s home. Of the Subway that rumbles and screeches beneath the streets and the gothic University building where he spends most of his days. He tells her about his mum, a woman that does everything for him and more, sacrificed so much. He tells her, albeit briefly, about his dad, and feels a weight that’s been there for ten years lift off his shoulders.

The weeks come faster and faster and the workload increases but Jemma is always the same. At night she’ll invite him to watch movies, compare notes about their respective principles. Sometimes he goes into the house, but mostly they stay in his little converted garage. It’s cosier, easier to pretend it’s just the two of them in the whole wide world.

The weeks come faster and Fitz finds he wishes they would slow down.

For the first time in his life, he’s falling in love.

-x-

“I’m single now.”

“Oh?” He tries to keep his face straight as he motions for Jemma to pass him another box of screws, which she does. “What happened?”

“Meh?” She does that shrug thing. “Milton. He was a bit too… impressionable.”

“Really? You don’t say.”

Fitz had met Milton once, when he had come to pick Jemma up after dinner. Untroubled by a single original thought, yet sadly burdened with a cabbage-shaped head, he hadn’t seemed rather the sort that Jemma would go after. Though Fitz had (except not really) done his very best not to voice his opinion on the matter. It might have been his own jealously speaking, after all.

“Ugh, Fitz!” She swots at his arm.

“I’m literally holding a screwdriver, Jemma. Probably not the best idea to hit me.” He sighs, but gives in and looks at her. “Are you alright, though?”

“Of course.” She smiles at him, completely genuine. “It was hardly like it would end in marriage anyway.”

The image of cabbage head Milton in a suit and tie, trying to stumble out vows he’d probably have to Google makes Fitz smile.

“Hardly.”

-x-

They’re sitting one night, out on the grass behind her house, notes spread open in front of them. They’re meant to be pre-reading for their respective courses, but instead they’re just looking at the stars.

“They’re so beautiful, aren’t they?” Jemma says, looking up.

“Very beautiful,” Fitz says, looking at her.

She meets his eyes. Smiles shyly. Tucks her hair behind her ears. “My dad used to take me out here all the time when I was younger.” She looks back up. “I had scoliosis surgery and I couldn’t move for ages afterwards. So, to stop me from being restless, dad brought me out here. Taught me everything about the stars.”

He can imagine a younger Jemma, probably much the same as she is now. Endlessly curious, with an insatiable hunger for knowledge, the stars filling her eyes.

“It was my mum who taught me about them.”

Fitz rarely mentions his mother, his life back home if not directly asked. It makes the ache bearable if he doesn’t talk about it. But tonight, with Jemma Simmons sitting next to him, the stars shining in her eyes and all around them… well, tonight he can be brave.

“She didn’t know a thing, apart from the basic stuff,” he laughs fondly. “But when I was five, I told her I wanted to learn. So, she went to the library and got all of these books with all of these pictures, and she taught herself so she could teach me.” The memory becomes real in his head, like he could almost live in it again if he wanted to. “She made it fun.”

Jemma reaches over and takes his hand. He didn’t know a touch could be so electric. “She sounds like an amazing woman.”

He nods, unable to do more.

So instead they just sit, hand in hand, watching the stars.

-x-

It’s almost time for him to go back home.

Jemma’s almost unable to be pried from his side now, even as he still works the long hours from dawn until well after. They both don’t talk about the reason why.

Most of the time it’s the two of them squidged together in the tractor, the conversation prattling away as normal. It’s rhythmic, soothing, and Fitz thinks that this life could quite happily be his life for a very long time.

One evening, with the remains of the day bleeding out as he parks in the barn, Jemma presses her hand on his.

“How long is it now? Until you go?”

There is no hesitation to his answer. “Ten days.”

“And will you be back? You know, to visit?”

He sighs, heavier than he means. It’s not that he doesn’t want to, but the cosmos would make it bloody hard. He wants to stay, but he has to go.

“Jemma,” he says softly and her eyes, the way they go heavy, tells him that she knows.

It appears they have a psychic connection. Something that cannot be erased.

And maybe it’s the moment. It’s romantic after all. There are charcoal streaks across the sky, fiery orange giving way to the dark. The farm is quiet but not silent; calm and not eerie. Jemma leans over and says, eyes glittering with all of the stars:

“Well, since we only have ten days…” and kisses him.

He’s taken aback for a moment. Just for one. Then he thinks this is what heaven must be like.

Reluctantly, they must break apart for air.

“That was nice,” Jemma says, hair slightly mussed. “Very nice.”

“Maybe we should do it again,” he murmurs.

She grins as she leans in. “Maybe we should.”

They stay there for a while. The sky turns to inky black and neither one of them notice for a very long while.

-x-

“I think I might be falling in love with you,” she tells him.

They’re both off for the loveliest afternoon of the late Summer and sit in the grass on a picnic blanket. Side by side (they way it feels it’s meant to be) they look up at the clouds, making the most ridiculous shapes they can find.

“You think you might be?” He laughs. “I already know I have.”

-x-

It’s a beautiful day when he leaves.

The September sunshine is warm on their faces, as Mrs and Mrs Simmons wish him well from the front door of the place he’s called home for several months now. The give him small gifts, tokens of their appreciation. Their smiles are knowing as Mrs Simmons says, “We’ll let Jemma see you off to the car. Good luck, Fitz. It was a pleasure having you here. Feel free to pop back anytime.”

Jemma isn’t crying. Her eyes are moist, but tears are not falling. Her bottom lip wobbles, but does not crumble. She holds his hand tightly as they walk to his car.

“I wish I didn’t have to go.”

She closes her eyes for a moment. “I know, but I have to go back to uni. And so do you.” Her smile takes a moment to break through, but it does. “We knew from the start this was a temporary thing.”

“I know, I know.” He thinks of the long drive back home, in his rusty car that squeaks and grinds no matter what he does. “Just sucks, you know.”

“I agree.” She pulls him in for a hug, so tightly that he thinks she won’t let go. Into his shoulder she murmurs, “It really does suck.”

She lets go reluctantly, checks her watch. “You better go. You don’t want to get stuck in traffic.”

He doesn’t, and if he doesn’t leave now then he won’t be able to. “Goodbye, Jemma.”

Jemma’s eyes still sparkle. They will never leave his mind. She presses him gently into the car. “Goodbye, Fitz.”

-x-

The year that follows is the slowest of his life.

“Out of everyone in the world, it had to be you to go and fall in love with a lassie from down south,” his mum exclaims, when she sees him checking his phone over dinner. “Oh, Leo. You never fail to surprise me.”

But she’s happy for him, Fitz is sure. She always smiles whenever he talks about Jemma, always asks questions.

“Why would you even want to know that?” He exclaims one day, out of patience, when his mum asks what Jemma’s favourite ice cream flavour is.

“Well, you never know,” she says knowingly, pushing her glasses further up her nose. “That information could come in handy someday.”

-x-

He completes his Master’s the same day she completes hers.

Psychically linked, even right down to the exam timetable.

Her graduation is the same day as his. He contemplates skipping his own to attend hers. His mum, whose bought a new dress for the occasion, swots his head and calls him a lovesick fool.

-x-

The time comes around again.

He knocks on the door, dressed in his best casual shirt and trousers No nerves this time, his stomach is remarkably calm, no fingers playing with the edges of his shirt. In fact he has to keep himself from bouncing on the balls of his feet. The wait has almost killed him, but no longer.

The door opens. The girl with the stars in her eyes answers and tries not very hard to hide her smile. “Yes?”

He cannot help his, either. “Is Mr Simmons here?”

Her eyes sparkle with glitter and her smile is the best thing he has ever seen.

“He’s on the phone.” Jemma takes his hand. “But come on in.”

#aosficnet2 #fitzsimmons #aos #fitzsimmons fic #aos fic #fanfic by moi #eep it's finally done! #i hope you like it!

[ellawritesficssometimes]

My Save Year -USUK (ch. 3)

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/12554533/1/My-Save-Year

Two days later…

Monday:

I was sitting at the front desk in the library, pawing through a files folder as I balanced a corded phone between my ear and shoulder.

"Yes, everything is fine," I sighed, annoyed at having to repeat myself. "I'm starting my third week here already. You know me, I've already developed a daily routine. I feel comfortable now. Hell, I'm so busy, I don't even feel stress anymore. I can't afford to."

Coping by using sarcastic puns? Check.

Midterms were around the corner, so most of my time was spent preparing for them well in advance. Grades were how I proved my self-worth, not to others, but to myself. I had nothing else going for me but my smarts.

"That's good to hear," Alistair grunted on the other end of the phone. "Even so, I just wanted to check in with ye again. Have ye made any new friends? Are ye eating properly? And don't ye dare lie to me, Artie. Ye ken full well that I'll come down there to romp yer skinny little arse if ye are."

I smirked and closed the files drawer shut. It emitted a satisfactory metallic thud.

I spun in my swivel chair and pushed off towards the desk part of the station so that I could smugly drum my fingers against the wooden surface.

"Actually, I have. Five total. Well," I corrected myself. "Three of them are more like acquaintances that I just so happen to share classes with. As for food? I've been trying, really I have. My roommate is even more ruthless than you are, like a hawk. He's resorted to force-feeding me because of my apparent lack in key nutrients."

Alistair laughed gruffly. "And here ye were at the beginning of the year, bitchin' and whining about having ta share a room with someone. It looks like it did ye a lotta good. I'm glad…and surprised. Since when has my wee little brother been so popular? I'm impressed. Nae, I'm proud and impressed."

I faltered. "The people here are…surprisingly nice. It's not like back home, where people's brains are even smaller than the limited geography. I've also noticed that, ah, there's a lot of diversity amongst the writers here, and I'm not just saying this because it's an international academy," I stumbled awkwardly.

Thankfully, Alistair knew how to address the subject without either skirting around it or directly addressing it. I flustered easily; he knew my boundaries of what I was okay with discussing.

"Artists are like tha'. Yer all either depressed, gay, lonely, bitter, or all four. Oops, looks like I just came up with half of yer biography," Alistair teased before changing the subject. "So, have you written anythin' lately? You haven't sent me somethin' for quite a while now."

Alistair was the supportive mother figure in my life. He overcompensated in our true mother's footsteps by taking interest in my hobbies. I only ever trusted Alistair to read my writing.

"Ha ha, very funny," I replied dryly. "Hmmm. I'll send you something soon. I have many assignments due in the coming weeks. I could always use another set of eyes to catch any mistakes."

"Yep."

"How are things in Scotland?" I asked.

"Good, could be better. My flat isna the best, but I'm making do. Mum called yesterday by the way…"

"Oh?" My stomach sank.

"She asked me to tell ye somethin'."

I didn't say anything, which prompted Alistair to tell me anyway.

"She asked me if yer coming back for Christmas… ye don't have to, though!" he blurted out. "I'd understand if ye didn't want to. Artie, I already told em' that you'd be coming home to my place for the holidays. That's the plan. It's up to ye if ye to change or stick with it."

I grit my teeth, swallowing sourly. "That's rich," I snorted bitterly. "You can tell her to fuck right off, along with the rest of them. They just don't want to look bad when I'm not there in front of the other relatives. I'm not going, not again. I don't want to go back, and no amount of guilt-tripping will ever make me. What nerve they have, honestly."

There went my relatively good mood.

My family may not have been physically abuse, but the belittling and constantly critical atmosphere was toxic for me. There were all just so passive-aggressive, it would drive anyone in my position insane. My other brothers would always hip-check me if I was in the way and would also make snide comments when I wasn't around. Mum was miserable, and Dad was just an angry bigot not even worthy of a description.

They didn't want me there, and I was sick of them pretending that they had accepted me for who I was. I haven't forgiven them, especially for the stairs incident with Patrick…

I'll repeat myself again: I wasn't going back. They had already done enough damage.

"I thought ye would say that," Alistair sadly stated. "Don't get me wrong, ye have every right to feel that way. I wasn't keen on going either if I'm to be perfectly honest. I'll make sure to relay the message for ye. No need to cause any more fights."

"Good, because I was definitely looking forward to us attempting to cook, only to give in after almost burning down the building and ordering take-out as a consolation meal," I mused, intending to lighten the mood. It worked.

After that, the conversation shifted to more trivial topics. I elaborated on school, my job, the many ghosts, as well as how strange the entire campus made me feel. I didn't mention the library's rooftop; I hadn't thought of it as very important.

My break was over quicker than expected, and I had to hang-up. It was odd how lenient and patient Alistair was being with me, as opposed to his usual stubborn, worry-wart self. I soon understood why he was acting as such when he said his goodbyes.

"I haven't heard ye be this happy in a while, Artie. I don't ken what's happening there, but I sure do hope that it keeps up. Take care, lad. And don't forget to call me, more than just one day a week if ye can. I'm always available when it comes to yer well-being, just make sure to keep the time in mind if ye do happen to catch me by surprise. Anyways, I have stuff to do, so I should probably let ye go. Best of luck on your midterms. Oh, and I love ye, very much, ye snobby brat."

I smiled. "I love you too, you hard-headed oaf," I retorted. "I'll speak to you again soon."

"Wha-?! Did you just say it back? Who are ye and what did you do with my bro–!"

Shocked, I hung up the phone.

"What in the bloody fuck was that?" I asked myself, feeling my face heat. The last time I had said something like that to him, I was no older than eight. My God, this school was turning me into such a sap.

No matter, I still had work to do. We had just gotten a whole new edition of textbooks to register into stock from the history section. Straightening both my blouse and posture, I set out to do just that.

It was four PM when Matthew came back from his last class of the day. My classes on Monday ended at noon, so I covered the middle shift. Technically, I was only hired to work on weekends, but I was slightly behind on my work as an assistant, so the administrators let me do an extra shift here and there to make up for it. The campus was privately run, so funding and payroll was never an issue.

Besides, the amount of books and files I had to keep track of was insane, near impossible even. I was also in the library most days, save for this weekend as a minor exception. I think you know why, but we'll get into that later.

I wasn't surprised to see Matthew carrying a platter of sandwiches in his hands. "Feeding time again?" I joked. I still found this whole situation ridiculous. It just didn't make any sense to me. A spirit eating food? I had never heard of something so preposterous.

"Oui, ah, yes," Matthew stuttered. "Egg salad is never a favourite in the staff room. I figured I wouldn't let them go to waste."

Matthew opened the plastic wrap covering the platter, offering me a sandwich. "They're pretty awful, but knowing you, you've only had breakfast today, huh?"

The Canadian knew me well. I didn't have a very large appetite, anxious or not. I either ate a lot or didn't eat at all, there was no in between. Although, the reminders I had set on my phone have helped. Throughout the day, I had many snacks, but none of them were meals – the downside of being dirt poor.

I accepted the sandwich, smiling politely as I took a small bite from it. "I don't see anything wrong with it," I shrugged.

"It's plain and processed," Matthew deadpanned. "I swear, you have such a strange taste in food. You'll eat anything, just like the ghost. Speaking of which, have you had a chance to look at the camera footage?" he asked, noting my disheartened expression. "Spooky, right?"

"Something's definitely funny about it," I replied. "Perhaps it's just the lighting, an optical illusion that makes it look like the food is disappearing. The cameras are old too. I still stand by my theory that a student is taking advantage of the free food."

Sue me, I was lying through my teeth. I didn't want many people to know about my abilities. Francis knew, and that was more than enough. Thing is, when I looked at previous camera footage, the food didn't just disappear. A dark and shaded pixelated spirit was in fact taking the food. It's just a pity I wasn't there to actually witness this, since the camera didn't possess the same sight as I did.

"Arthur," Matthew rolled his eyes. This was something we often bickered about now. "My family's been doing this for decades. There's a spirit here, many of them, but this one has the most personality. Keep denying the obvious if you want, but this library is very clearly haunted. Now, if you excuse me, I have a real-life ghost to feed. If I take too long, sometimes it gets impatient and knocks over books. One time it knocked over an entire shelf."

"Mhmm, sure," I hummed dismissively, a playful light in my eyes. "You keep telling yourself that."

"I will," Matthew huffed.

"Good."

"Bien."

"Fine."

"Fine."

"Hitting your head on Friday must have made you even stubborner. As if it wasn't already hard enough to get through to you," Matthew shook his head in disbelief.

The bruise at the back of my head throbbed a little at the reminder. I told Matthew that I had taken a bad fall on Friday, not wanting him to worry about me too much. Francis already did enough of that. I couldn't walk two feet without the Frenchman offering to hold my arm in support.

I had a minor concussion, that's it. Waking me up every hour of the night was more than unnecessary. Stupid patronizing frog. Don't even get me started on refusing to report the incident to campus security…

"Perhaps it did. I wouldn't know," I shrugged, prompting Matthew to leave with a thoroughly 'done' expression on his face.

When Matthew was out of sight, I rolled my chair over to the computer and opened the camera feed. I clicked on the specific one that surveyed the fiction section on the fifth floor. The food was always placed on the study tables there.

I spied on the Canadian, watching him place the sandwich platter in its usual spot. I shamelessly flipped through cameras, making sure that he was far out of hearing distance before I put my plan into motion.

I was going to stake out the spirit. I had done enough readings over the weekend to spare myself some extra time. I also may or may not have refused to leave my dorm room because of Friday's incident. All right, I did.

I had avoided visiting the rooftop because I didn't want to see Alfred. Now that he knew who I was, I couldn't bear to face him again. I didn't want his pity, nor did I want myself to believe that we could become chatting partners again.

He'd seen me in a very sorry, very pitiful state. I just knew that he would never look at me the same if we saw each other again. The problem was, I needed to investigate that rooftop, but he was always there. This mess just made everything more complicated than it needed to be. It was also bizarre how Alfred had just left without another word, but then again, I wasn't going to complain.

Moving on.

Hopefully, this stake out would answer most of my questions. I had very little patience monitoring the cameras; this plan was my only way of physically seeing the spirit, rather than just a fuzzy, pixelated blob on a screen.

Forget waiting, I wanted to know what it was. The uneasy feeling I got whenever I came here was beginning to drive me mad, like a pestering fly that wouldn't stop buzzing in your ear.

And so, that's how I found myself squatted behind a bookcase, phone digging into my hips due to the tight jeans I was wearing. I eyed the food platter, devotedly intending to stay for hours on end if I had to.

"Come out, come out wherever you are," I muttered to myself. "I won't hurt you, I promise. If anything, I just want to help. And here I thought I was stubborn…"

One hour later.

"Oh for fuck's sakes, I'm not going to bite."

Two hours later.

I stretched my back and neck, shifting my position into something more comfortable. I was leaning against the bookshelf now, occasionally looking over my shoulder, only to come up disappointed with the view of the still empty study area.

I was so used to the quiet that when my phone buzzed, I gave a sharp yelp in response.

Turns out, it was just Francis wanting to know if I had started plotting out my Creating Writing assignment. Our Russian professor, an alumnus at the school, was back to teaching here again. Apparently, we were immensely lucky to have him, since he didn't like staying at the campus for more than a year.

Lucky my arse. We had a 20,000 word one-shot due at the end of each month. The professor was out of his bloody mind! It was only a matter of time before I burnt out – a person only had so much creativity and sanity in them, after all.

I couldn't be bothered to answer Francis. I would do so later if I remembered to, which wasn't very likely if I'm to be perfectly honest. It got to the point where I had to turn off my phone to prevent him from blowing up my inbox. God, was he ever insufferable.

The time I spent waiting had almost passed the three-hour mark when a distinct creak and subsequent thud echoed across the area. Immediately, I turned around, eyes locked on the nearest study table.

"Easy does it," I mouthed. "I just want to see who or what you are…"

"Whatcha lookin' at?"

"JESUS FUCKING CHRIST?!" I screamed, jolting upwards only to bang my head on the bookshelf.

My vision blacked out briefly as I reached out to cup the back of my now much sorer head. My vision swam, blurry, before focusing on a startled pair of blue eyes and shiny spectacles, glowing from the fluorescent lights above.

"A-Artie?" Alfred crouched down. "I'm sorry if I startled ya. It's just, I haven't heard from you since, well, you know… I thought I would find you myself. You did mention that you worked and studied here."

"I did, did I?" I groaned, glaring at him through tears. "Couldn't you have found me like a normal person, and oh, I don't know, not sneak up on me?"

Alfred didn't say anything. He looked like he wanted to reach out to see if I was okay, but given my short temper, he knew better not to.

"Stop looking at me like that, I'll be fine. And it's Arthur!" I blurted out. "How many times do I have to tell you that?… Fuck it, I don't even care. I-I should probably get going now." I stood up abruptly, wanting to get out of here as fast as possible.

"Arthur, wait!" Alfred called out when I turned my back on him.

Hesitantly, I turned around, defensive scowl already in place. My eyes bugged out as I took in his hulking height. He was several inches taller than me, albeit lanky. Of course, he was still wearing the same brown bomber jacket and folded jeans, blond hair stuck up in a messy muss. In his right hand, he gripped onto his notebook, and on his back, he was one-strapping a brown leather rucksack.

"What?" I wavered, shy to establish direct eye contact for too long.

"I'm, ah, sorry that I left you hanging like that. I panicked and didn't know what to do. It's why I went running off to find someone else to help out…"

"You found my roommate. I hate my roommate," I sarcastically spat.

Alfred nervously rubbed the back of his neck. "Oh. I didn't know. He seemed nice enough, I guess," I trailed off.

"Is that all? I have to be somewhere."

"Don't lie to me, Arthur. I haven't known you all that long, and yet I can still tell when you're lying. You wear your emotions on your face. You don't just look troubled now. You look embarrassed and I'm here to tell you that you shouldn't. Is that why you haven't come on the roof these past few days? Because you thought I wouldn't accept you for who you are?"

"…Can you blame me?" I whispered, throat constricting. "You saw what they did, what they said. It's repulsive. I'm repulsive…"

"BULLSHIT!" Alfred exploded. When I flinched, he lowered his voice. "That's total bullshit, you hear me?! Don't say such things like that. It only gives those assholes free reign to do whatever the hell they want! You're better than that!"

I inched away from Alfred, hurt crossing over my expression. "Look, if you came here to yell at me, then you may as well just leave. I don't need this right now."

"Arthur," Alfred repeated. "Look man, I'm trying," he paused, taking a deep breath. "I want to be your friend, I really do. It's just hard standing here watching you beat yourself up like this. It's not right.

"Thing is, my anxiety does this weird thing where when I see someone in a similar position to me, I become strong and confident all of a sudden. My sister calls it this 'hero' persona. I don't really care… I'm not trying to be your hero, but I can't just stand around either. I came to talk to you."

I sighed. So that's why he was here. He was pushing aside his shyness to see if I was okay. Sweet, but unnecessary. A waste of his time if you ask me. "You don't have to, I'm fine."

"You weren't fine when I found you that night," Alfred interrupted. "Did you call campus security on those bozos? Maybe there was a camera that caught their faces. They deserve to expelled for what they did, a rotten bunch if I've ever seen one," he seethed.

"I didn't call anyone. I just want it to be done and over with. What happened, happened," I remarked curtly.

Alfred's jaw dropped. "You're not going to try and find them?"

"I just said that, didn't I?"

"But you can't! It's not right!"

"Perhaps, but it's what I want."

Alfred's shoulders slumped. "I can't believe it. I mean, if it's what you really want, fine. It's not what I would do, and it makes me really angry that those criminals are going to get away with something like this... still, I can't force you to do something you don't wanna do."

I looked at the ground, unsure of myself. "Was that all you came here for?"

"No, you invited me to join you in the library sometime, remember? I'm taking you up on that offer. Call me old-fashioned, but I don't have a phone, so this was my only way of finding you. I also, um, want to tell you something," Alfred admitted.

I shrugged. I was too tired and flustered to argue. A seat sounded nice. "All right, I don't see why not."

We sat at a study table, across from one another. Alfred had to pull out his chair as his legs were too long to fit underneath. He kept fidgeting, with both his hands and his feet. The way he clicked his ankle was annoying, but I didn't have the heart to tell him to stop. He was pushing himself out of his comfort zone, for me. He was reaching out – who was I to discourage him from doing so with some useless, petty comment?

After some time, Alfred looked up, smiling out of nervousness. "What you said earlier really bothered me, ya know that? You shouldn't have to feel ashamed of yourself. Do you think I'm repulsive?"

"Of course I don't think you're repulsive!" I snapped. "Why would you say such a thing?"

Alfred gave me a blank stare. "I could say the same thing to you. Don't you get it? No one should ever say such horrible things about themselves because once you say it, you really believe it, and it's not true, okay?!" he breathed deeply, calming himself.

"Let me rephrase myself, dude," Alfred continued. "Would you call me repulsive if you knew that I liked guys too?"

"Y-you do?" I asked, lips trembling. My ears buzzed, unable to process this information.

"Yes, I do. Gals as well. Now answer my question."

"I don't have to rephrase anything," I answered. "I've never thought of you as repulsive. I judge people by character. You haven't given me a reason to think that, so no, I don't find you repulsive."

"Why can't you apply that same logic to yourself then? If you call yourself repulsive for being gay, or at least liking boys, then I want you to look me in the eye and call me repulsive too. Go on, do it."

"I…can't."

"Why not? Do it! If it's so easy to say it to yourself, then say it to me!"

"I don't want to!"

"Why?"

"Because I don't want anyone to ever have to experience what I have!" I croaked.

"Then why beat yourself up, Arthur? Don't become another bully, to yourself nonetheless. I'm not going to lie and tell you that this world and that you yourself are perfect. But that doesn't give you a reason to hate everything either! You're not repulsive, it's how you think that's repulsive! Don't become like those bigots! It'll only make them win!"

I raked a shaky hand through my hair, fisting it. "I-I…don't think you're repulsive."

"I know, but you need to know that you're not either," Alfred said softly, cerulean eyes possessing an indescribable wisdom to them.

"Damn it," I sniffed, wiping at my eyes before tears could spill. "I know I'm not repulsive, but I can't help but believe it sometimes."

"Love and being yourself is never repulsive, as long as it doesn't harm others. My Ma and Pops didn't understand that, but my, ah, sis does. I grew up in the South. My family, they're really religious. For so long, I had to hide who I was. I had crushes on both boys and girls, but could only date girls. At least, not in public. What I'm trying to say is that it's not worth hating what you can't change. There'll always be support, and there'll sometimes be backlash. It doesn't mean you have to accept it or that it's right. Society sucks, but it doesn't mean you have to believe that you suck too. Gosh, that sounded really dirty," he finished, smiling nervously.

"That must have been tough. I can't even bear to imagine it," I whispered.

"Yeah, well, I didn't live there all the time. My twin, Amelia – I think I told you about her – anyways, Amy and I went to boarding school in New York. We grew up in a pretty progressive area. It was there that I found out more about myself. I met a guy…"

Alfred's eyes widened in pain. I didn't know whether to stop him or let him continue.

I resorted to the latter in fear of scaring Alfred away.

"We really, really liked each other. It's just hard when you're forced to be afraid of loving someone. It really got to me. When I close my eyes I can still imagine how pretty his eyes were, a rare, indescribable violet. He was always so worried about what other people thought... he stood me up because of the rumours going around about us. Afterwards, all I could do was blame and hate myself.

"It's not worth it, Arthur. It really isn't. I learned that the hard way. Either way, I still had that experience, horrible as it was. But you know what? At least I got to do what I wanted to without having what others thought about us hold me back."

"I'm so sorry," I said hesitantly.

"Don't be. The point I'm trying to get across is that it's pointless to regret things, especially something unchangeable like your sexuality. Heck, if I don't know how hard it can get at times. I've only ever wanted things to get better. Moving here, it was a fresh start, even if I had to leave my only support system behind. But now I have you, huh? So how about you start seeing yourself like I do: a normal guy who's too hard on himself."

I nodded. "This was…too sweet for words, Alfred. You didn't have to tell me all that, but I appreciate it. You're right, about everything. And yes, you have me now. I consider you as my friend."

"No, no I did. I didn't just want to tell you this, I had to," Alfred said, taking off his glasses. I let out a sharp intake of breath when I saw that he was crying. "Back then, I grew tired of hating myself, for thinking that I would never be happy. Seeing you feel the same way now, it just breaks my heart. No one deserves this. You can't help it, all right? Things may never turn out in your favor, but don't you ever give up. You will find that someone who will accept you for you, it just may take some time. But once you do find that someone, the rest of the world don't matter after that."

"Crap," he whimpered. "I was the one supposed to be cheering you up. Some friend I am. I wanted to make you feel better."

"Hey," I chided, reaching into my pocket to pull out a wad of tissues. "You sound like you've had it much worse than I have. And don't be silly, you did make me feel better. It's reassuring that we have so much in common, truly it is. Please, don't cry. We both can't be messes, now can we?"

I reached over to hand Alfred a tissue, backing away slightly as he looked uncomfortable with getting so close. He accepted the tissue gratefully, blowing the tip of his nose, which was now quite red.

"I can't promise you that I won't think like this, but what I can guarantee is that I'll try not to. Like I've told you before, it'll take time to re-wire years of negativity. Now come on, smile for me," I felt my heart skip a beat. Where was this coming from?

"You cheered me up, now it's my turn. Where's that dopey, grinning smile, you yank? The smile that can brighten just about anything? How about this, I'll go get us some hot chocolate from the staff room, and when I come back, we can do our work together? You know I won't talk, so you don't have to worry about me messing up your writing mojo."

Alfred looked up at me, incredulous before a wisp of a grin began to creep onto his face. "That sounds awesome! I would love that. Thanks man, you're the best!"

"I should be thanking you," I corrected. It was almost adorable how excited he was. Who knows how long it's been since he's been able to share a moment like this. To me it was just a warm drink, but to Alfred, it was a chance to enjoy himself with someone who accepted his quirks, someone he felt he could be himself with.

We were both overcompensating, trying to make the other feel better…

We both knew what it felt like to be unhappy with ourselves.

Just as I was about to leave, Alfred surprised me once again in a brief, but still ever meaningful display of braveness. It was a simple gesture, but to him, it meant so much more than that.

"Arthur, I never got to introduce myself properly. I-I think I would like to do that now," he flushed, cheeks pink.

"What?"

Alfred held out his hand. "Don't make this awkward, dude. I want to shake hands with you."

"Oh…" My stomach flopped. "Yes, yes, of course. Are you… are you sure you want to though?"

"Yeah man. I trust you completely."

"Very well. Nice to meet you, Alfred Jones," I reached out for Alfred's hand, slowly, waiting for him to grab my hand first.

In reciprocation, Alfred reached over the table, shaking slightly. With a determined huff, he clasped his tanned hand around mine, swallowing it. His hands were that of a bear's, or, at least pretty close to it.

"The pleasure's all mine, Kirkland," Alfred grinned, revealing a heart-warming smile that showed off all his teeth. I had to look away in fear of getting both blinded and embarrassed. He had a way of looking at someone that just made them feel so special. What did I ever do to deserve such a beautiful expression from him?

Alfred gave my hand a gentle squeeze before letting go, breathing out with a shudder. "Wasn't so bad."

I gave him a blank stare.

"I'm talking about my shyness!"

"I know," I mused. "It's just fun to get you worked up."

"Hey!"

I stood up and turned my back on him, grinning the entire trip down to the staff room on the first floor.

When I came back, Alfred and I sipped our warm beverages in a comfortable silence. He wrote down ideas in his notebook, tongue wagging out as he did, and I picked out a random book to read.

Occasionally, he would look up at me and grin like a total goofball. Still, it was hard not to smile back. When he was in a good mood, it was contagious. He radiated, a glow of comfortability surrounding him, protecting him.

I too would find myself staring at him, only to look away when we established eye contact. It was thrilling, watching the way how he pouted his lips in thought, long lashes feathering his strong cheekbones.

He was beautiful.

I was beginning to fall in love with Alfred Jones. Too bad I absolutely couldn't let that happen.

…

The next day

…

I was attending a Creative Writing lecture, or, what remained of it. Prof. Braginski was going through the syllabus again to explain a specific assignment due at the end of the month. However, he couldn't get through one sentence without being interrupted by loud bangs from either the auditorium's ceiling or the walls.

Prof. Braginski cleared his throat, trying not to look frazzled as he adjusted the white scarf wrapped around his neck. The man was in his mid- fifties, a hulking giant with pale blond hair, indigo-almost-purple eyes, and a strong nose.

"Ahem, as I was saying, you will all have a 20,000 word one-shot due at the end of each month. This month's theme is something that inspires you. Whether it be friends, family or the heavily-used cliché theme of love–"

BANG! BANG! BANG!

Lovino, Gilbert, and Antonio jumped slightly, sitting to my right, as did the rest of the class save for Francis and myself. Unfortunately, the Frog realized that night classes weren't ideal if he wanted to go out with his friends, and ended up changing most of his classes to conveniently fit the same schedule as mine.

Prof. Braginski paused, waiting to see if there would be any other noise disruptions before continuing. The class was silent, unnerved by the persistent bangs echoing across the amphitheatre. Fifteen minutes passed since the lecture had first started, and yet, hardly anything had been discussed.

Francis – who was sitting by my left – and I exchanged wary looks as the professor began to appear more and more distressed. Rumour has it that he was an extreme introvert and didn't like staying at this university for long, despite having received an education here. Something traumatic happened here to him many years ago, and he only taught out of politeness, going against his wishes.

The hairs on the back of my neck pricked, a faint ringing sound bristling at the tips of my ears.

Something wasn't right. My stomach flopped with inexplicable feelings of anxiety, dread, and hurt. They seeped into my entire being, doing everything to make my mood miserable. Immediately, I recognized that this was all a spirit's doing.

Francis must have noticed this too because he kept clenching and unclenching his fists, rubbing his forehead frequently. Channelling these emotions was a common symptom for spiritual communicators. In fact, I could already feel the beginnings of a migraine form in my own head.

BANG! BANG! BANG!

Prof. Braginski inhaled deeply, rustling the papers in front of him out of nervous habit. "Perhaps there is the construction going on? Leaky piping?" he proposed, slipping into broken English, his voice in an even thicker Russian accent than before.

"How can it be construction or leaky piping if the whole building is shaking?" Gilbert bent over to whisper to Antonio. "It feels like the entire roof is going to cave. And, I don't know about you, but I didn't see any cranes on my way here. Damn, I bet you anything this building is old enough to collapse on us at any given moment. Eh, at least I won't have exams to worry about," he teased nervously, using jokes to compensate for his own unease.

Antonio's eyes widened, just about breaking into tears. Lovino turned sharply and began to hiss at Gilbert for upsetting Antonio.

Another ten minutes passed before Prof. Braginski ended the class early, instructing us to check our emails tonight, as we would likely be changing lecture locations – again.

None of the students complained, eager to get out of class early. Meanwhile, Francis and I stayed back in solidarity, stiff in our seats.

Gilbert stood up, looping his backpack over his right shoulder. "Man, this is so awesome! Maybe if we're lucky, he'll cancel the whole class altogether. Free credits, am I right?"

Lovino rolled his eyes, taking a large chug from his coffee, needing the caffeine to be able to cope with the idiocy around him. "The amount of optimism in that statement is hopeless. Of course he's not going to cancel the class, you knuckle head."

Gilbert pouted.

Lovino faltered, nudging a frozen Antonio's shoulder like a prying mother. "Up you go, bastard. Class is over, didn't you hear?"

Numbly, Antonio stood on the promise that Gilbert and Lovino would take him to their favourite study room. Secretly, they all knew the campus was haunted, but didn't want to make the idea seem real. And so, the thought of ghosts haunting the classroom went largely unacknowledged.

Antonio, Gilbert, and Lovino began to pile down the aisles, only to turn back when they realized that Francis and I hadn't left our seats.

"Fran, aren't you coming?" Gilbert asked. He didn't bother to ask me. The four of them had no idea where I disappeared to after class, only knowing that I preferred being alone when I studied.

"Non, I'm going to stay here."

"With Arthur?" Antonio cocked his head to the side, incredulous.

"Oui, with Arthur. We, ah, both have a love for investigating things, isn't that right Arthur?" Francis mused, lightly elbowing me in the rib-cage.

It took a lot of willpower not to punch him in the throat. "Yes, that's right," I played along with the lie. "We're going to try and figure out the source of the noise. I'm sure there's a rational explanation for them. Honestly, you people always over-react and come to the most ridiculous conclusions."

Gilbert shrugged, adamant on leaving the classroom. He was still spooked by the wardrobe incident, even if I had ruled it off as something non-paranormally related. "Suit yourselves, weirdos. If you get murdered by Bloody Mary, Toni and I call dibs on your room. It's bigger."

"But of course. If that happens, I'll be expecting you three to plan my funeral and bury me in great fashion," Francis joked, grinning as the two friends and the other who denied being their friend but actually was left the auditorium.

As soon as we heard the front doors shut with a thud, we stood up from our seats and piled down to the podium at the front of the room.

I began to pace back and forth, closing my eyes, hoping to get any hints of the spirit residing here. Once again, I got nothing but the same emotions as before.

"A-ha! Got you!" Francis cackled, grabbing my shoulders out of nowhere.

"WHAT IN THE BLOODY FUCK WAS THAT FOR?!" I roared, jumping in fright. The Frog still hadn't learned his lesson from before, that ass.

Francis laughed and bent over to hold his knees, blond curls swinging. "Desole, I just had to. The look of constipation on your face was priceless," he said, straightening his posture. He then wiped a tear from his eye.

I glared at Francis, considering grabbing the meter stick by the front chalk board. There would soon be two ghosts here if he wasn't careful.

"No one asked you to stay back with me," I growled. "If you're going to be a cocky twat, then you may as well leave. I have a full schedule, one that doesn't involve putting up with your constant bullshit."

Acknowledging that he had pushed me too far, Francis raised both hands in surrender. "All right, all right, jokes aside, let's help this spirit. Although, I thought we were having a bonding moment. We both knew we would stay back without having to tell each other. It's adorable, non? How in tune we are with each other?"

"I'll repeat myself again, Frog. Focus, or stop wasting my time."

Francis's shoulders slumped, bored that he couldn't poke fun at me anymore. "Oui, oui, je sais," he muttered.

"Pardon our intrusion," I spoke up, "but, if there is anyone else here in this auditorium, please speak up. We are spiritual communicators and have no other intentions but to help you cross over to the other side. You don't have to be afraid that we can see you. I assure you, we mean no harm."

"What he said," Francis purred. "I can sense much stress and fear from you. Let us make it all go away."

"What are you, a spiritual prostitute?" I snorted. "You sound like you're trying to seduce it into bed."

"Am not!" Francis gasped.

"Are too!"

BANG! BANG! BANG!

The ceiling shuddered and creaked.

"Hello?" I whispered, a bit frightened from how violent the sound was. "I'm sorry for my friend, truly I am. He's a good guy once you get around his ring of obnoxiousness. I won't argue with you like I do with him, promise."

"You're such a miserable grouch, mon dieu! I'm half convinced you're possessed by a bitter 80 year-old-man," Francis growled, walking up to me, a sneer on his usually languid, dreamy face.

Even though we were the same height, I straightened my shoulders and jabbed an angry index finger at him. "Now you listen here! Just because I'm not letting you waltz right into my life with opened legs, doesn't mean you have to be so immature about it. I told you this from the beginning. I'm an asshole. Stop pointing out the obvious, and let's just get this over with, Christ! Either deal with me or leave! I won't repeat myself again!"

"Ohonhonhon!" Francis cracked up, a pervy expression on his face. "Open legs, huh? What an interesting choice of words."

"It's a saying, you tart. No need to get literal!"

BANG! BANG! BANG!

"Oh look, you made it angry."

"Moi? I did no such thing!"

Francis and I both fell silent when the sound of heavy footsteps pattered against the back of the auditorium. No one was there when we looked over our shoulders, however.

"What in the-?" I spluttered. "I'm starting to think we're dealing with a poltergeist. It's the only explanation. It's likely just messing with us."

I'M SORRY! PLEASE, DON'T LEAVE ME!

A voice, unmatchable to anything I've ever heard before, screamed in my mind. Judging by Francis's equally petrified and intrigued expression he had heard it too.

"Q-quoi? We're not leaving, we're right here?"

"Idiot, this place isn't being haunted by an active ghost," I concluded, all of the pieces fitting together. "It's a memory. Something here must have triggered it into existence again. The bangs will stop eventually, there's nothing more we can do."

"Ah… I see now." Francis hummed in understanding.

When a person died, fragments of memories often spread and attached themselves to objects or places meaningful to them. Someone here must have triggered the memory by thinking or saying something, likely on accident. I'd give it a couple days before the memory faded away again.

The problem was, despite the lingering memory, I had no idea if the actual spirit had passed on or not. Spirits lived in different planes of existence. Most times, they didn't realize they were dead and lived their lives normally, creating sounds that those alive would consider to be a haunting. This occurrence, however, was just a memory replaying itself. It wasn't the spirit themself.

Just as Francis and I prepared to leave, Gilbert, Antonio, and Lovino poked their heads into the classroom. I deadpanned upon realizing they had been standing outside in the hallway this entire time.

How much did they know?

"So…" Gilbert drawled, stumbling into the auditorium again, red eyes wide in apprehension. "What the hell just happened?" he put ever so eloquently.

Francis and I glanced at each other, not wanting to reveal too much. You never knew how someone would react to this kind of news. It was the bad, ostracizing reactions that prevents us communicators from telling people about our abilities.

Antonio ended it all by bluntly blurting out what the other two were thinking. "You guys can speak to ghosts? Ay! That would make a lot of sense. I knew you saw something in that wardrobe, Arturo!"

"I sure did," I muttered to myself, solemn at the thought.

"Honestly, what the fuck is even happening anymore?" Lovino followed Antonio and Gilbert into the auditorium, still hesitant as the bangs quieted, but didn't exactly stop.

"Oui," Francis stepped in, since it was obvious I wasn't going to say anything. "We are known as spiritual communicators, or mediums to put it more simply. There is no reason to worry. There are no spirits in this room."

"Ja, we heard. You said something about a memory. Anyway, I'm freaked the shit out, but also strangely excited?" Gilbert grinned. "Why did you bozos hide this from us? You're like real life ghostbusters!"

"Because normally when you tell someone this, they get weirded out," I countetred.

"Everyone here is strange, I honestly don't give a fuck about who or what you are so long as you're not an asshole. What just happened is enough evidence in itself, so you don't have to worry about us not believing you either," Lovino sighed, looking done with life. Same.

"Like Lovi said, you were already weird to begin with," Antonio smiled obliviously. "Honestly, we would have accepted you two either way. Now I feel even safer knowing that you guys won't let any scary demons possess us. My parents didn't want me coming here because of the rumours of it being haunted! They can sleep sound now!"

Lovino smacked the back of Antonio's head. "Idiota! What did I say about being rude to people in person?"

Antonio whined.

Meanwhile, Gilbert was still ogling at us 'mediums' like a child. "Hey, Fran? Do you think you could get in touch with my Gramps? He had a bunch of funds in the bank, but no one can access them because there's a shit ton of security locks. Can you? Huh? Huh? Oh gott, please man. I've been wanting to buy a new car for so long now, but that stingy old fart's accounts aren't supposed to open up for another year. I'm dying here!"

Gilbert's poor choice of words completely triumphed over mine.

"Imbeciles," I shook my head, shoving past Antonio to leave the auditorium.

"Where are you going?" Francis reprimanded, pausing his mini morality lecture with Gilbert. "We still have much to explain."

"I don't have to explain shit!" I called over my shoulder. "I've experienced enough stupidity for an entire week. I need time to recover the brain cells I lost."

The clack of Lovino's dress shoes were quick to catch up with me. "Agreed. Oi, let's get some coffee, my treat?" he offered.

"Sure, why the hell not?"

Before Antonio could join us, Lovino rudely shut the auditorium's door in front of the Spaniard's face.

I couldn't help but laugh.

…

Jittery and anxious already, the coffee I had with Lovino offered no aid in calming my nerves.

As always, after class I found myself in the library, sitting at the front desk even though I wasn't on shift. I was flipping through the cameras again, going over last night's footage. The ghost always came to snatch the food when I wasn't around – it was infuriating.

Matthew, still caught in my lie, found it funny how I was trying to find a rational explanation for the food's disappearance.

"Still scanning the footage, huh?" Matthew mused as he entered the library. He shook his head, soft curls falling out of his eyes as he draped a casual arm over the front desk. "You're so predictable, Arthur."

"I can't help it," I responded. "I'm a very routine-orientated person."

"I can tell," Matthew smirked. "So, come up with or find anything?"

"No, nothing at all," I groaned.

"I'm telling you, this library is the most haunted place on campus. For decades, my family has dedicated themselves to taking care of it. Are you really just going to discard everything they've seen with their own two eyes? Or how about me? I've seen things move without anyone touching them."

I rubbed my temple. "It's all either bollocks or hearsay. I'll believe you when I see it myself. Although," I paused, contemplating my next few words carefully. "I checked the records. It really is unbelievable how many students have committed suicide on the rooftop here. I didn't know this school used to double as a boarding school for high school students either. The information was so well-hidden. It's like the Deans went out of their way to hide it."

Matthew's eyes became sad. "You didn't know that? And yes, very true. The high suicide rate was a huge reason why my grandmother starting hosting a homework club here, actually."

I furrowed my brows in confusion. I remembered him mentioning something about losing a relative in a tragedy like this, but I was having a hard time connecting the dots.

"Oh," Matthew smiled sheepishly. "That relative of mine, they went to the boarding school, but that's completely unrelated. Basically, the club was founded to prevent more suicides; there hasn't been one here since, so I think it's safe to say that it's been really successful in its objective. The homework club offers a safe place for struggling students to come together and make friends. We help each other out and just talk, you know? You're always welcome to join too if you want. I'm sure you've seen the posters. We meet on Fridays here on the first floor."

"That's a wonderful idea," I admitted. "No one wonder it's done so well. But, I'm afraid this is the first I'm hearing from it."

Matthew looked disappointed; he had a talent for living under the radar. "Well, it does have its drawbacks," Matthew sighed. "Recently, I've been tutoring this German guy. His writing is decent, but he still refuses to accept that he can't use the word awesome every two sentences."

"I know someone very similar," I bitterly remarked. "Writers who can't accept criticism just aren't cut out for the field I suppose."

"Eh, I'll get through to him eventually. He's actually a pretty good guy once you brush past his ego."

"Best of luck to you then," I smiled faintly, standing up from my seat.

"Going to the rooftop… again?" Matthew asked, somewhat pensive.

"Yes," I flushed at the reminder. Alfred was my friend, nothing else. I could still enjoy spending time with him.

"There's a wonderful pair of benches and the scenery helps my muse. I always come up with the best writing ideas there. Besides, I'm not the only one who thinks that way. I have a friend I usually sit and chat with," I rambled, overcompensating with my explanation because of the strange look Matthew was giving me.

"That's good, I guess," Matthew shrugged. "It's just a bit odd, considering…"

'Yes, yes, I know," I filled in for him. "It has a depressing history and what not. Still, that shouldn't stop other people from enjoying it."

Matthew smiled. "You're right. Sorry if I seemed judgemental there. I didn't intend to be."

I laughed. "I've experienced far more judgemental things in my life, lad. No worries."

I left the front desk. "See you later," I said, waving over my shoulder with my knapsack haphazardly draped over my left shoulder.

"Take care," Matthew replied back.

When Arthur was out of sight, Matthew pursed his lips, watching the stiff posture of the Brit with narrowed eyes.

"He's definitely hiding something from me," the Canadian whispered to himself. "…I just hope he's okay."

To be continued...

#hetalia #fanfiction #aph America #aph England #USUK #romance #alfred f jones #arthur Kirkland #human AU. #PLEASE remember to review

[hangonimevolving]

Dad’s Cabbage.

We have had a DOOZY of the last ~3 weeks.  Like, doozier than the dooziest times in recent memory.  NOTE:  this might be the longest post in the history of my blog.  I’m not kidding.  Sorry.  And thanks in advance for whatever effort anyone out there wants to make in reading it.  

Alright, here goes:

Wednesday, August 28th-ish:  the news starts reporting about a tropical weather system that is gathering steam in the Caribbean islands.  It is a serious hurricane, and it is called Dorian, and projections start coming in that it *could* impact South Florida at a Category 5 strength.  I absolutely HATE it when the media starts projecting hurricane impacts way, way early - because so many factors are at play, and anything over 72 hours in advance is usually wrong.  But the buzz starts circulating, and the kids’ school starts talking about closures, so it is clear I’ve got to start hurricane prep even though I don’t want to.   I am just SO annoyed at the prospect of school disruptions, when the kids have literally JUST started school the previous week.  Ugh.

Cue annoying trips to Walmart, Lowe’s and the gas stations for provisions, batteries and bottled water, and gasoline.  Lots of waiting in long lines.  Le sigh.

Thursday, August 29:  My parents have been calling from New Orleans to find out what our hurricane evacuation plan is, should we need one... then on their latest phone call, they disclose that they’ve had some weird stuff going on too.  That morning, it seems my father randomly fainted in the kitchen.  My mom was home, rummaging in the pantry for something, when she heard a loud THUNK.  She whirls around, and there is my dad on the floor near the kitchen sink.  He had been taking his daily diabetes medication, and as he was swallowing the pill, he suddenly and only momentarily lost consciousness.  HE came to right away and was totally with it, but perplexed about what had happened, plus his head hurt from thwacking it on the hard tile floor.  After an hour or two of rest, he shrugged the incident off and drove himself to work (UM, yeah, maybe not the best idea!).  I find the whole episode mildly troubling, but the fact that he was well enough to go to work makes me feel maybe it was just a random moment...?  Who knows.

Friday, August 30:  Turns out, over the last 24 hours since thunking his head on the ground, dad hasn’t been feeling too well.  His head aches, and he is dizzy and nauseated.  RED FLAGS!  We all - and especially Dr. Spouse, the neurologist - urge dad to get checked out.  He dutifully abides... to a point.  He again drives himself to work at his own hospital, where he has been a nephrologist and internist for the last 40-ish years, and goes into the ER where a colleague runs a panel of blood tests on him, obtains a head CT, and orders a stress test for his heart.  Fortunately, his head CT comes out clear - but there are some surprising and worrisome issues that pop up on the blood tests and stress test.  His cardiac enzymes are showing up slightly elevated - a marker for heart attack.  Dad is shocked - but he hasn’t felt even the slightest chest pain, just this dizzy and sick feeling.  We are all suddenly feeling that pit in our stomach... but my dad is not entirely convinced that this can be right.  Again, dad is a physician himself, and he has no personal history of heart disease - either his instincts tell him this is inaccurate, or he is in denial, but whatever the case - he signs himself out of the ER, which requires him to sign legal papers for discharge “AMA” (against medical advice), and goes home.  

Saturday, August 31:  All signs are pointing to Hurricane Dorian NOT making landfall anywhere near us, and yet - we are all warned of the possibility of landfall, and the whole town is operating under hurricane precautions.  The coming Monday is Labor Day; the schools preemptively announce closures for Tuesday as well.  

Meanwhile, calls to New Orleans are not particularly reassuring.  Months ago, Mom and Dad have been invited for a wedding of some close friends’ son  this day, and they RSVP’ed yes, but now that the day is here, Dad isn’t feeling up to going - more worrisome is that the wedding is taking place at the clubhouse in the very subdivision they live in, but Dad’s not up to even popping by for a bit, even though its down the street.  His dizziness and nausea are a little worse.  Mom attends alone.  Dr. Spouse and I reiterate that he might need further medical workup than he had permitted his ER colleagues to do, but he’s not ready to hear it yet.

Sunday, September 1:  Still hanging out, waiting for the hurricane that isn’t coming.  The buzz begins about airport and business closures.  Dad is about the same, but seems okay resting at home, so my mom is going to some social event that afternoon/evening with my uncle.  Around 5-6 pm, my dad calls Dr. Spouse’s phone, and relays that he’s not feeling well at all.  He’s already called my mom and uncle back to the house, and they are on their way to take my dad to the emergency room - this time, at a bigger, university-affiliated hospital where my uncle was formerly a neurologist and professor, and has lots of connections.  Dr. Spouse takes the opportunity to give my dad a full (respectful but serious) earful about all the various tests and scans he thinks my dad ought to have done, and my dad is eerily receptive.  While my dad is an excellent physician in his own right, he has always been the embodiment of the phrase “doctors make the worst patients” - so its almost unnerving that he’s being so open and receptive to anyone’s advice, especially his own son-in-law, who is much younger than him.

They arrive at the ER around 9 at night, where after some initial tests, its discovered that my dad has an 85% blockage of his LAD, the left anterior descending artery that supplies the heart muscle with blood.  A 100% blockage of the LAD almost invariably results in a fatal heart attack called a “widow maker.”  It’s dad’s good fortune that this has been found out.  A plan is made for dad to undergo an angiogram and stent placement the very next day.

Monday, September 2:  I am antsy, because I’d ordinarily have rushed to New Orleans to be there for my parents during a serious situation like this, but alas - Dorian, the Hurricane that Would Not Hit Miami, has caused all my area airports to close for 2 days.  Frustrated is not even the word for my state of mind.  However, my heart goes out to citizens of the Bahamas, who are being pummeled by the slowest moving Category 5 hurricane I’ve ever seen.  This morning, over in New Orleans, dad undergoes a successful angiogram and LAD stent placement.  He’s moved to the intensive care unit for recovery, and our entire family is seemingly relieved that all has gone well.  My mom returns home, with plans to return the next day to bring dad home after his discharge.  But late that night/early the next morning, things take a turn.... dad suddenly loses consciousness, his heart rate and blood pressure bottom out, and the code team is summoned to resuscitate him with heart-stimulating medications. We are all shocked to hear this news the next morning.

Tuesday, September 3:  The Non-Hurricane is decidedly NOT swirling around us, but the kids are home from school, making chaos and messes everywhere, and excitedly awaiting the hurricane... that is not coming.  The only hurricanes we have are pancake hurricanes.  

I am on the phone, trying to get real-time updates about dad.  IT seems that though the LAD stenting was successful, further review of the angiogram reveals he has blockages in 4 other arteries surrounding the heart.  His cardiologist calls in a vascular surgeon colleague, and upon thorough review and consultation with each other, its determined that the best course of action for my dad is a CABG - otherwise known as a coronary artery bypass graft.  Open heart surgery - a quadruple bypass!!!!  I think we are all struck dumb.  At first pass, its hard to believe.  At age 74, my dad is still pretty active, works five days a week, and he does about 40 minutes on his elliptical cross trainer about 4-5 times a week.  He is a vegetarian, has never smoked and hardly ever consumed alcohol.  How could he have such severe coronary artery disease to warrant a bypass?!  But we realize over time, he has the risk factors of fairly serious Type 2 diabetes, which in honesty hasn’t always been controlled that well, plus he has a pretty impressive family history of heart disease.  Genetics are legit.  The surgery is set for Monday, September 9th.

From this point till Sunday, September 8th, we live in a bit of a nervous daze, mentally preparing for the fact that dad is going to have open heart surgery, and getting things in order to support him and my mom in the weeks to come.  I call out an SOS to my mother-in-law, who graciously agrees to fly down and help Dr. Spouse with the kids while I fly to NOLA for the big event.  I set about getting things prepared at home to make it easier for her and the kids - I wash and iron school uniforms, prepare homework packets for the next 2 weeks, make and freeze custom-shaped airplane pancakes for breakfasts... its a roller coaster of a week.  I’m nervous about the events ahead, and also sad to leave the kids for an uncertain amount of time - the longest I’ve ever been away from them till now is 4.5 days!  And this time, it might be 2 weeks.... 

Cue STRESS.  I am having trouble sleeping, sitting still, doing anything, really.  I realize I’m kind of losing it, and busy myself with two things: running, and volunteering at my local town hall’s relief efforts to help Hurricane Dorian victims in the Bahamas.  I spend two days sorting and packing boxes of canned goods, baby diapers, emergency supplies, and other stuff along with other good samaritans in my community.  It helps, a LOT.

(that’s my handwriting on those boxes)

Meanwhile, the doctors have insisted that my dad remain in the hospital during this waiting period between the stent placement and his surgery.  They are worried that with the degree of blockage he has, he could once again lose consciousness or have a more serious heart attack at home if they release him. So, right there he sits.  At some point, he is transferred by medical transport ambulance from one hospital to another, because the vascular surgeon only operates at this other hospital.  Mom and Dad send selfies periodically of themselves biding their time, watching Indian soap operas and game shows on their iPad.

Friday, September 6:  my sister Rithers arrives in NOLA to spend two days with mom and dad.  She’s in a tough spot - she had worked at the same giant corporation for several years, and she’d accrued over 180 days of paid time off there... but just 10 days ago, she had quit that job to start a brand new position at a brand new company, and she’s been terribly excited about this new opportunity - but in so doing, she’s forfeited all her available free days and is down to ZERO.  She’s distraught that she can't spend more time - but we all reassure her that its okay, she can come for the weekend to see dad, and the rest of us will be there for the surgery and post-op period.

Sunday, September 8th:  Early this morning, at 5 am, I silently kiss and pat Dr. Spouse, Dey, and Vev goodbye, and board a Lyft car to the airport.  I make my way towards my airplane for my 7 am flight...

... and I am in New Orleans by 8 am local time.

I took a Lyft directly to Touro Infirmary, and found my way to my dad’s room upstairs on the 8th floor - the cardiac telemetry ward, aka a floor full of patients all on constant heart monitoring, being watched over by specially trained cardiac nurses.  My mom and sister drove there too about the same time, and the four of us overlapped in dad’s hospital room for about 30 minutes, before my mom had to take off to drop my sister at the airport for her return flight to DC.  It was a surreal experience.

My mom returned, and she and I hung out with my dad till about 7 or 8 that night, at which time we gave him big hugs, and then departed for home.  Tough moment.  We urged dad to get a really good night’s rest in preparation for the morning.  Also, before bed that day, he would be required to take a thorough shower with a special kind of medical-grade antibacterial soap, and then shower once again with it in the morning - this was to help inhibit him from contracting any infections post-operatively.  The nurses would help him after showering to wear special sterile gowns, and they would make up his bed with sterile sheets each time.  Apparently, he and my mom had gotten a lengthy inservice by the cardiothoracic surgeon’s NP and staff about the importance of infection prevention, limiting visitors post-surgery, etc. and we all took this stuff really seriously.

Mom and I went back home to a dark and quiet house - it was my first time entering that house alone, and so quiet, since Vev was born almost 7 years ago.  I haven’t visited NOLA alone once since that time, and it felt totally bizarre and incomplete to be there without the kids :(  Mom and I warmed up a quick dinner for ourselves, which we both probably gulped down without tasting a thing.  Then we resigned ourselves to bed, where we both probably lay for hours without sleeping before finally succumbing for a few short hours.....

Monday, September 9:  Cabbage Day.  This is the day my dad’s engine would be completely rebuilt inside his vintage exterior.  So so surreal.  Mom and I got up early, around 5 am, and quickly showered, then packed our bags with sweatshirts, blankets, iPads, snacks, and other stuff to keep ourselves occupied for the long day of waiting ahead.  We sped off to the hospital in the pre-dawn hours and arrived by about 6:15 am to find dad laying in bed wide awake, freshly showered for the second time in the special soap, and tucked in tightly to pristine white sterile sheets.  We knew from earlier that we wouldn’t be allowed to touch him, hug him, or even go too close to him.  But we sat and talked to him, and mom played some Hindu shlokas (chanting) on her iPhone until the nurses came over to tell us it was time for him to be wheeled down to the pre-op area on the 3rd floor.

I feel like we all had our game faces on.  Every single one of us was steeled and ready for this moment - weird as it was.  

Mom and I found our way to the surgical waiting room, which was a quiet and comfortable room filled with plush chairs, a few vases of flowers, and a kindly volunteer lady at a desk who kept a coffee maker running, and some muffins on a tray.  Within a few minutes, a face familiar to my mom came into the room to greet us.  One of my dad’s anesthesiologists for his surgery happened to be an acquaintance of my parents - he is a good friend of my mom’s other brother, who is a general surgeon.  Dr. A said hello to us and shook my hand, and he and my mother conversed briefly in Tamil, the Indian language that my family speaks - and then he offered to take us back to see my dad again in the pre-op area (a privilege not usually offered to family members).  We followed Dr. A through special double doors and into the pre-anesthesia bay where my dad was now laying on a metal gurney, with his eyes closed.  He had been administered a small dose of Versed already, a sedative, because the pre-op team had had to begin prepping him for the surgery.  He had a variety of tubes and lines already inserted into him at various places on his body - I’ll detail these later - so I guess they had given him a little Versed to take the edge off as they did all this prep.  Dr. A gently said dad’s name and his eyes opened for a minute and saw us.  He looked at us for a few moments, then closed his eyes again - it was clear that he was having a hard time keeping them open.  Mom and I decided not to stay longer than 2-3 minutes - we didn't want him to fight sleep - so we thanked Dr. A, and found our way back to the waiting room.

Now began the long haul of waiting.  The kindly volunteer at the desk  provided helpful directions to us for the cafeteria and anywhere else in the hospital we might want to go; she also taught us how to follow dad’s status by tracking his hospital ID number on a big monitor screen on the wall.

Mom and I went to the cafeteria and bought ourselves some breakfast, then took it back to the lounge and ate it while we waited.  We decided to take some time to educate ourselves on Sternal Precaution - this is a type of caregiver protocol that is extremely important in caring for patients who have undergone a sternotomy, or surgical breaking of the sternum (breastbone).  

The nuts and bolts of the surgery, according to Lay Person Moi, are like this:  cut chest skin, break sternum, open pericardium (heart sac), hook patient up to a heart-lung machine so that the heart can be stopped to fix stuff, fix all the clogged vessels by using vessels harvested from other parts of the body (esp lower leg) to bypass them, then take patient off of the heart-lung machine and make sure everything works, then close heart sac, wire sternum back shut, and close skin.  EGADS.  Yes, they would LITERALLY BE STOPPING MY DAD’S HEART AND LUNGS for a few hours.  Isn’t that INSANE?!  Yeah.  It is pretty wild.  It’s also amazing that this type of miraculous medical knowledge and technology exists.  

Mom and I weren’t alone in that waiting room for long.... within about an hour, a battalion of my parents’ friends started showing up to wait with us.  First came Uncle S, then Uncle D - these are two of my dad’s oldest friends, they all went to medical school together in India in the 1960′s, and somehow all found their way to the United States, where they all then settled down in the New Orleans area to build their lives.  Then they all started families around the same time, and us kids all grew up together.  I went to high school with Uncle S’s daughter and Uncle D’s son!  (and no, none of them are my actual uncles!  I have two actual uncles in NOLA too!)  Uncle S’s wife Aunty N came, along with Uncle R and Aunty J, and then my ACTUAL uncle, my mom’s brother Marley (the neurologist) showed up.  The last well-wisher to arrive was one of my best friends in the entire world, who I will lovingly call LadyWhoDat here, because she’s the biggest New Orleans Saints fan I know.  LadyWhoDat is the daughter of another one of my dad’s med school friends, and his medical practice partner of over 40 years; she and I went to school together from Kindergarten through 8th grade, we did Indian classical dance together our whole childhoods, played together, trick or treated together, had sleepovers and tea parties and attended nearly every Saints game together in the Superdome from about the 2nd grade till we graduated high school.  We were the MC’s for each others’ weddings, and we both had our first and second children in the same years.  She is an amazing friend - and she is now a high-risk OB/GYN and she happens to work at Touro hospital.  It was sooo thoughtful of her to take time out of her busy life to be with us that day - and she had already visited my parents a number of times in the previous week.

So altogether, my dad’s entourage numbered at a whopping NINE people, and we were absolutely the biggest group in that surgical waiting room that day.  Aunty J had thoughtfully brought my mom some Indian food for lunch.  I ran down to the cafeteria and snagged a limp piece of pizza to bring back.  I don’t think we were even hungry - we just needed something to do with ourselves during the waiting time, otherwise we would go bonkers.

The surgery had started a tiny bit late, around 10:30-11 am, but by 3 pm, we got a phone call from an OR nurse who announced that the surgery was complete, that it had been a success, and that they were closing now.  PHEW.  A palpable sigh of relief washed over us all.  The well-wishers loaded me and mom up with hugs and supportive shoulder squeezes, and then one by one, they went on their way.  Mom and I settled back down in the waiting room and waited another few hours, until finally, we got word that Dad was out of the OR and settled in his room in the ICU for the night.  We were told that dad would remain sedated and intubated, on a ventilator, for several hours more, but that we could pay him a short visit if we wanted.  So we gathered up our stuff, steeled ourselves, and shuffled slowly towards the ICU.

I was really grateful at that moment to be married to Dr. Spouse, who is a critical care neurologist.  My husband works every single day of his life in an Intensive Care Unit, where breathing tubes, ventilators, IV’s and tubes and lines and all sorts of bleeping, blinking machines surrounding an unconscious or semi-conscious patient are the norm.  I’ve visited ICU’s a couple of times in my life, sometimes as a friend or family member of a sick person, but other times just in the course of accompanying Dr. Spouse at work as he passed through before we went on to do something else.  So I had seen a lot of the actual equipment and “stuff” before.

Its a very, very different ball game when its your parent laying there.  Dad was still on the metal gurney, with his torso kind of propped up in a sitting-up position - but his eyes were closed and he was clearly still knocked out.  He had a large breathing tube in his mouth, going down his windpipe, connected to the ventilator, which made his chest slightly puff in and out in a mechanical way.  His tongue was sort of lolled out to the side, to stay out of the way of the tube, I guess.  He had a Swann-Ganz catheter inserted in the side of his neck to monitor his heart and lungs, and a central line entering his upper neck/chest area for the administration of fluids and medication.  He had two IV’s going, one in each arm, and a pulse ox on his finger.  There were chest tubes coming out of each side of his rib cage and connected to a thora-seal - a collection chamber for post-operative blood and fluids accumulating in his chest cavity.  (*this might have been the most alarming thing to look at, though I knew it would be there - though he had the appropriate amount of post-operative oozing going on, it was still kind of scary to see how much red fluid was collecting in the chamber).  There were two pacemaker wires sticking out of the skin of his chest for monitoring his heart, in addition to the giant bandaged incision right over his sternum.  He had a foley catheter attached to a collection bag for urine.  All together, I counted like 16 different contraptions sticking out of his body.  YIKES.  

Some of the scary stuff around him...

Shudder.  Poor guy.  Mom and I stood silently for about 2-3 minutes, while some ICU nurses and personnel moved about efficiently, attending to the beeping screens and monitors, and flashing us warm, reassuring smiles.  They gave us a direct phone line to the ICU to check on Dad later, but also said they’d call us once he woke up and was breathing steadily enough to come off the ventilator.  So at about 6:30 pm, we whispered to Dad that we’d see him in the morning, then at long last went to the car and drove home.

That night, dazed and exhausted from the day but too keyed-up and anxious for information to really rest, Mom and I tuned into the Saints game on Monday Night Football versus the Texans.  It turned out to be a real nail biter!  As if the nail biter of the day we’d just had wasn't enough :)  With 40 seconds left on the clock in the 4th quarter, it looked like we were going to lose to the Texans in our own stadium - but through a series of miracles - we ended up scoring a touchdown and a field goal, to win the game 30-28!  

We called the ICU at this precise moment, around 9:30 pm, and they told us that it was such a coincidence we’d just called right then - b/c dad had come around, and was signaling to them to remove his breathing tube, because he was breathing over the ventilator.  YAY!!!!   We wearily went to bed, still somewhat keyed-up, but glad for positive news to end our day.

We got up early again the next morning to arrive at the ICU to see Dad around 8:30.   I actually went for a run this morning, knowing it would again be a long day of sitting around.  Our plan was to get there in the morning, then mom would stay and hang out with dad for a few hours while I would come home and rest for some time - then I’d return in the evening around 7 pm to have dinner with her, then spend the night with dad once he was transferred back up to the cardiac ward.  We walked into dad’s ICU room to find him alert, talking, and kind of agitated - he was talking about being hungry, demanding his breakfast, and alarmed that without eating, his blood sugar would go down.  It seemed to me that he was a little disoriented, didn’t appear to have any idea what day it was or how long it had been since he’d had surgery, or that he was actually on a glucose/nutrient IV and insulin pump at that moment to keep his blood sugar level perfectly stable.  So I talked to him, explained to him that he was in the ICU, that it was Tuesday, September 10 at about 9 in the morning, that he had only just come out of surgery about 18 hours before, that he had only come off the ventilator about 11 hours before, and that he was on glucose and insulin IV.  Once this was all put into chronological perspective for him, he kind of calmed down and started talking to us normally.  He explained that an overhead light hanging above his bed was blocking the digital clock on the wall, and that he had no idea what time it was - he chuckled at this, and we all did.  So funny the conveniences that hospitals think they’re putting up for their patients, but then little logistical things like the placement of the light, etc. make these conveniences moot!  We talked for a bit - he said he was not in any real pain, but that he was hungry.  Perhaps most interestingly of all to me, Dad had been gifted his STERNAL PILLOW.  I’d read and seen a lot about this online, but it was sort of a big deal to me to see it in real life.  The sternal pillow is a pillow that open-heart surgery patients get after their procedure; it is often shaped like a heart (I assume just for aesthetic purposes) and is used to keep the patient from engaging their chest/arm muscles while sitting up, standing, and even coughting/sneezing.  The patient has to hug their pillow to the chest while changing position or coughing/sneezing as a reminder not to use their upper body, and risk re-opening their sternal incision or stressing the sternum bone, which has been closed up with wire.

I told my dad that once he was well and recovered from everything - that I wanted to keep his pillow as a souvenir.  I couldn’t help but think it was cute :)

He kept dozing off in between short snippets of conversation - he was still on IV morphine, which explained the absence of pain but also the spontaneous sleeping.  My mom and I hung out there awhile, then when it was clear he was going to sleep a lot that day, we decided to leave.  We thought it might be a good use of our time to go to Walmart, and run some other errands - so we left and went directly to do these things.  We bought some groceries and other supplies that might be useful to have at home, then went back home and had some lunch.  We both then decided to take a nap, with the plan that upon waking, mom would go to the hospital on her own and stay awhile, then I’d follow on my own later that evening to relieve her, then I’d spend the night.  And this is what happened.  Mom woke up and left for the hospital around 3 pm, while I stayed, puttered around the house, then showered, ate some dinner, packed a bag, and took off for the hospital around 7 pm. 

I arrived at 7:30, and went straight to the ICU waiting room.  The next few hours were kind of a boring blur - we’d heard that my dad would be transferred back upstairs to the 8th floor, but there wasn’t clear communication on when this would actually happen - so both my mom and I were waiting, in separate areas (she in the ICU by dad’s side, me in this random lounge).  It seemed really stupid and pointless that we were both there, but not in the same place.  She asked me if I was serious about staying the night, and would I prefer that she did it - but I was adamant that I’d stay and let her leave.  The previous week, she had spent several nights in the hospital with my dad, sitting in uncomfortable chairs and not sleeping properly.  I figured I ought to do a few nights and give her a break, especially because once he was discharged to home, she’d be tasked with caring for him on her own, around the clock, so I thought she ought to rest a little before that.  I eventually found my way into the ICU to sit with dad, and she got to go home.  My dad started urging me around 11 pm that I ought to leave too - that it didn’t appear like anyone would be transferring him anywhere, anytime soon.  He was getting frustrated that I was sitting in a crappy stiff chair... I insisted that I’d stay, but it was upsetting him more and more - so I got up to go around midnight, but was stopped by a nurse who said it was transfer time.  Murphy’s law.  So then I headed up to the 8th floor, and into the room which would be my dad’s for this second round on the cardiac telemetry unit - M823.  I ensured that the room had a plush recliner, at my mom’s urging, and a few minutes later, the orderlies arrived with my dad.  I made some room for them to transfer him from the gurney to the bed, which was sort of a nerve-wracking thing to witness, what with all the tubes and wires sticking out of him, and the delicate condition of his post-operative wounds and stuff - but it all went smoothly.  My dad’s heart monitors indicated that he was experiencing a slight arrhythmia - which the nurse attributed to “all the excitement” of being moved and transferred - so they had to start him on an IV of amnioderone, a drug which stabilizes the heart rhythm.  Then they left us to sleep.  By this time, it was about 2 am on Wednesday, September 11th.

He looks just about as exhausted as he actually was in this picture.... what a disorganized transfer, ugh  :(

The nurses made sure he was settled, then shut off the lights to let us sleep.

I think it was around 3-3:30 am when dad started kind of moaning, groaning, cursing and crying out - - and I knew that the morphine he had been given in the ICU was wearing off, and the post-surgical pain was setting in :(  I felt bad for him.  I asked him repeatedly if he wanted me to get the nurse to give him something for pain, but he declined.... He’d continue writhing and moaning till sunrise.  I went down to the cafeteria at some point and bought myself a breakfast burrito to bring back to the room, and I ate there because I didn’t want to miss the physicians’ rounds.  I was present when the cardiologist and internist both made their visits to check up on dad, and he finally conceded that he needed something for the pain.  The internist prescribed him some Percocet, which he took.  My mom arrived somewhere around 10 am, and she took my place, sending me wearily off to home to get some rest.

I went home, showered, ate a second breakfast/brunch, then checked in with Dr. Spouse on the phone briefly around 12 noon, before hitting the sack for a few hours.  My eyes automatically opened up around 3:30-4 pm, and I couldn’t sleep any longer.  I texted mom to check in, and saw that the PT had come to my dad’s room to make him walk a lap around the ward.  My mom mentioned that he was complaining of dizziness and nausea, and he balked at doing the PT, but eventually did it.  Upon completing his lap, he ended up vomiting due to the nausea, which was a bummer to hear because he’d hardly been eating anything except a few teaspoons of jello the last day - but oh well.  He got back into the bed and was sleeping in small stretches.  

I once again made my way back to the hospital in the evening, with the plan to take the night shift.  My mom was reluctant to let me do another night in a row, but I insisted again.  This night, my dad and I seemed to sleep from about 11 pm to 3 am, relatively uninterrupted - hard to do in a hospital, because people are coming in every 30-45 minutes to check vitals, administer meds, or do whatever - but I really thought we got a decent stretch this night.  He claimed later to me that he barely slept (though he was snoring?  I dunno).  At 3 am, dad woke up suddenly, and immediately started vomiting.  I jumped up, lurched forward, and held a plastic basin for him.  But I saw that absolutely nothing was coming up.  No small wonder - in the 8+ hours I had been there, he hadn’t eaten or drank a thing, and the day before that, he’d only had like 2 spoons of jello.  I ran out of the room and got a nurse immediately, and talked with her about what was going on.  Here he was, in pain, getting Percocet, but he was super nauseated and not eating or drinking, and now he was vomiting.  I didn’t feel like this was good for him.  She got him some Zofran, an anti-nausea medication, and administered it in his IV.  It appeared to take at least 40 minutes to kick in, and somewhere in that time he had another dose of pain meds, and then once again he settled back down and fell asleep for a few hours.  But he woke up again around sunrise, once again in pain, and before long he was again feeling the nausea and dizziness.

The morning shift nurse arrived around 7:30 am and introduced herself, and offered to help my dad get up, brush his teeth, and clean up a little in the bathroom.  He was reluctant at first, which worried me - he is usually very insistent upon brushing his teeth first thing in the morning - but he said he was feeling so weak, dizzy and nauseous, that he wasn’t sure he could stand.  The nurse tried encouraging him, and helped him up and into the bathroom.... moments later, I could hear him vomiting in there, and her reassuring him.  I was troubled by all of this, knowing he hadn’t eaten anything.  I discussed it at length with the nurse and she was sympathetic, and just urged my dad to try and eat something soon.  He said he’d try, but he didn’t seem very enthusiastic or sure he could do it.  In general, he was being VERY reluctant to do ANYTHING at all - he tried to refuse doing his PT, he didn’t want to sit in a chair for awhile or even sit his bed up a bit, and getting him to do his respiratory therapy was a huge chore.  Dad had been instructed to take 2 minutes out of every hour he was awake to do 10 reps, sucking on an incentive spirometer, to help him fully re-inflate his lungs after they had essentially been “turned off” and deflated for a few hours during surgery.  Even this small effort, he didn’t want to do - despite knowing how important it is to prevent pneumonia :(

He managed to swallow maybe 2-3 more spoons of jello that I fed him, but he couldn’t do much more than that.  We discussed it briefly, and he explained to me that both amnioderone and Percocet had a side effect of nausea, and in addition, the cardiologist had him taking a VERY high dose of cholesterol-lowering medication that had a common side effect of elevating the liver enzymes, which also caused severe nausea.  He was frustrated at the medications and dosages he was on, and at this point, he started questioning things, demanding they run bloodwork to see his liver enzymes, and refusing certain medications from the nurses.  I was worried about this, but also knew that he probably knew what he was talking about.  It would turn out that he was right - his liver enzymes WERE elevated - but we only got the results of that bloodwork the next day.  Anyway, the nurse was willing to allow him to skip his cholesterol medications and even the pain meds, but she wouldn’t turn off the amnioderone, and her call to dad’s physician confirmed that they’d insist he stay on that to stabilize his heart.  Dad’s nausea started abating just a tad at this point, but he’d still have it for another day or so, till his liver enzymes started coming down.

It was now the morning of Thursday, September 12th.  I felt like dad hadn’t slept much at all this night, and I hadn’t either... as soon as it was an appropriate time, I called Dr. Spouse to sing him the “Happy Birthday” song.  It was his 40th birthday today!  I of course felt bad to be missing it, especially after the GIANT EXTRAVAGANZA he had thrown me for my own 40th birthday - but of course he was understanding and wouldn’t have wanted me anywhere else but with my parents at this time.  

My mom arrived kind of late this day, around 10:30 am, but I didn’t take off just as she arrived.  A few hours earlier, I had actually requested that the nurse page the hospital social worker for me and set up an appointment to talk, as I wanted to meet with her and discuss setting my dad up with a home health aide and other assistive services at home after his discharge.  There was buzz that my dad would be discharged the following day, on Friday - and while many people would see this as good news, I confess I was in a PANIC.  Dad still did not look well at all, he was still in an a-fib heart rhythm, he was eating less and less with each passing day, and I was NOT CONFIDENT that his coming home would be a good thing at this point.  The last thing I wanted was for him to come home, only for us to have to rush him to the hospital again.  I was also worried about how we would take care of him at home, and ensuring that my mom had adequate support.  I’d been doing research and making some calls throughout the week to find out more about setting up a home health aide, but I got really serious about it this day.

I met with the social worker around 11 am that morning, and she was really helpful - she helped me figure out which services my dad’s insurance and Medicare would cover, and which services we’d have to acquire by self-pay.  My dad qualified for a registered nurse to visit him at home 1-2 times a week for checking vitals and his surgical wound healing, to do “patient education” (LOL - my dad would probably kick into doctor mode and try to “educate” the nurse if she dared to teach him anything about heart function), and to draw blood for labs if needed.  He would also receive 2-3x/week visits from a physical therapist and/or occupational therapist for cardiac rehab in the home, for a couple of weeks.  YAY!  I was so happy to hear that these services were available to him. The social worker provided me with a brochure and a list of local agencies to call and set these things up for him, and advised me to ask them if they accepted his insurance before moving forward.  She also happily agreed to start the pre-authorization process for these services with my dad’s insurance company and medicare, and I thanked her profusely.  She was very pleasant about it and actually praised me for being so proactive, saying “I wish more families were like you!  A lot of them don’t think of all this till they’re already home, then they have to play catch-up after the fact!”  It was so nice to have the aid of a warm, encouraging, and helpful person like this... I’ll never forget her.

But, though I was glad for the few services that insurance would cover, what I really wanted for my parents was MORE help at home - at this juncture, I was really anxious about how my mom would manage just ordinary, day-to-day things, because with his sternal incision, my dad needed a LOT of help to get up from bed, to come to a sitting or standing position, walking around the house, going to the bathroom/shower, etc. and I just didn’t think she’d be strong enough for all that, especially considering that she’d just had knee surgery herself a few weeks ago.

Unfortunately, neither insurance nor Medicare provided anything to help with this - what we would need was a “home care sitter” or “respite sitter,” basically an assistant to provide some muscle and an extra set of hands around the house.  Some agencies had people on staff who could do this for a fee, but there was no way for me to see if these folks were well-reviewed.  So I decided to use Care.com to try and find a sitter, since I’d used it many times for babysitting services and nannies with my kids, and had good experiences.  After some legwork and phone calls, I was able to find a local woman who lived close to my parents’ home, and who could come everyday for about 7-8 hours a day for the first 2 weeks of my dad’s recovery at home.  I set up an in-person interview with her for Sunday 9/15.  I also read reviews, made calls, and at long last selected a well-reputed local home health agency for the nurse and PT/OT visits, and set up their initial client intake meetings for Saturday 9/14.

After the meeting with the social worker, I went home to sleep for awhile again.  My mom had told me that she INSISTED she’d do the night shift this night, that there was no way I’d be permitted to say a 3rd night in a row.  I didn’t want to agree to this - I really hated the thought of my mom sleeping on that horrible recliner - but she was adamant.  I told her we could touch base in the afternoon.  So I crashed for a few hours.

I called her around 3-4 pm, and she informed me that my dad was being sort of cranky and grumpy, and that she really felt it was time for her to stay with him because she would probably be able to make him feel more comforted and less self-conscious than me.  He was now insisting on getting up to use the bathroom - no more bedside urinal - and that there was no way he would let me assist him with that.  I knew that was probably true, so I said okay.  She suggested I get to the hospital a little earlier, around 5-5:30, and that I have dinner with her, spend some time, then go home around 9:30-10 pm.  So I said okay.  She asked me to prepare some rasam for my dad, thinking perhaps he might eat better if he had something more familiar and palatable than jello.  Rasam is a peppery broth, flavored with tamarind paste, tomatoes, and coriander leaves, and usually eaten over steamed white rice.  Though I do make rasam frequently enough to know how to do it, I’m not a gourmet cook - and I cringed at the thought of my crappy cooking being the thing to try and tempt him to eat... but I decided to do it: I’d cook something for my dad :)  

I poured a bit of the rasam over some freshly-made white jasmine rice, then put the whole thing into the blender and pureed it.  I ladled a little of it into a thermos, and packed it in my bag to go to the hospital.  

On my way to the hospital, I stopped by my uncle Marley’s house - my mom’s brother, the neurologist uncle who had helped get Dad to the ER in the first place.  His house is in the same subdivision as my parents’, just down the street.  His wife, my aunt Shreeks, was away for the week, and he was home alone.  Marley retired a few years ago and has himself been going through some challenging health problems; I’d actually been more worried about him than my own dad in the months leading up to my dad’s surprise heart troubles. So even if all of this hadn’t happened, I probably would have made a few trips to visit with Marley and hang out with him.... I had been texting with him throughout the whole hospital thing with my dad, and knowing he was all alone at home, feeling anxious about my dad, and a little guilty that his own health problems did not allow him to come visit my dad or be more involved in his care, I just felt an obligation to go spend some time with him and assure him that we had it all under control.  Marley has been an important figure in my life - a second father, a mentor, and always a comedian who has brought levity and laughter into our family gatherings.  Even my kids adore him.  I always feel lucky that he lives so close to my folks and that I get to visit him whenever I’m in town.

Pic of Marley with Vev and Dey from last summer; they’d also actually just hung out with him a few weeks ago....

Anyway.  After a few minutes at Marley’s house, just shooting the shit and updating him about my dad, I took off and made my way to the hospital.  I delivered the care package of rasam to my mom, who took a small taste and exclaimed “THUPPA!” which means ghee/butter :)  I confess I’d played it a little fast and loose with the ghee, knowing how much he likes it.... yeah yeah yeah, the guy just had a quadruple bypass, we are going to have to make sure he is on a heart-healthy diet from now on.  But since he hadn’t eaten in nearly four days, and we were desperate to try and get him to eat something, I figured we’d try and play to his favorite tastes for now :)

Dad ate maybe 2-3 tiny spoonfuls of the rasam/rice puree, which wasn’t much - but at least it was something other than jello.  He was kind of frustrated because even despite almost entirely starving for days, and still receiving regular insulin doses, his blood sugars were nearly 300 at each testing.  But he himself had told me years ago, when the body is under severe stress, sometimes the blood sugar shoots way up.  Maybe that’s what was going on.

He fell asleep again, and mom and I decided to go down to the cafeteria and rustle up some dinner.  She got a bagel with cream cheese, and I got a Beyond Burger.  We ate together, then I headed back up for one more quick visit with dad before then heading home for the night.

I came back the next morning after a brief run in the park, and was told that dad would be getting discharged this day.  My mom and I were both glad in a way, because it was evident dad wouldn’t be getting much sleep if we stayed in this hospital any longer - the multiple days in a row of vitals checks every 45 minutes, interruptions all night for meds and IV’s and other things, were just getting OLD at this point.  His nausea wasn’t great, he still had it - but, it was a tiny bit better than before.  He seemed motivated to come home - he managed to agree to a shower this morning; his doctors had come and removed his pacemaker wires and chest tubes, so he could move around more freely than before.  My mom helped him shower and clean up, and he looked much better afterwards.

I hung out for awhile, allowing my mom to go home, shower, and do a few things for herself.  My dad was resting at one point, when I got a text from my BFF, LadyWhoDat.  She was in the hospital with some free time today, and wondered if I might be up for meeting for a cup of coffee or something.  I asked my dad if that was okay, and he said sure - so I headed down the elevators to meet up with her.  We sat and chatted for about an hour, and it was WONDERFUL - we caught up about our husbands and kids, but also ourselves, which was so, so nice.  It was awesome to hear about how she is training for a full marathon, and poignant to hear the challenges she’s faced trying to balance her fast-paced career with the demands of momming THREE little boys.  We were long overdue for some bonding time, and it was awesome to get it.  

My mom texted me toward the end of the hour, saying she had returned to the hospital, but that I could take my time, nothing was really going on.  So eventually I found my way back upstairs after saying goodbye to LadyWhoDat, and resumed my perch in dad’s room.  It took HOURS - but somewhere around 3-4 pm, they decided the discharge could happen.  We packed up dad’s things, then my mom suggested I head down and load up my car, and head home, stopping at the grocery store and pharmacy along the way to fill his prescriptions.  She would accompany my dad to the car she had driven in and we’d all probably get home around the same time.

I did as instructed, schlepping his suitcase, misc bags of snacks and blankets and other stuff my mom and I had accumulated during our respective time in the recliner chair, and all our other crap - and I headed downstairs.  I drove off to the pharmacy, dropped off his prescriptions, then went to the nearby grocery store for some things she’d asked for.  I also picked up a balloon bouquet and card for dad, before getting the medications and then driving home.

My mom called me once I’d gotten home and asked me to prepare a plate for aarti, a ceremony of welcoming, that she wanted to do for Dad upon his reentry of the house.  I did my best to make it.  The aarti plate is usually silver, and has a mixture of water, vermillion, and turmeric in it.  It also has a small silver oil-lamp in the middle.  I felt like I made a mess, but it more or less had all the proper stuff going on. 

Soon enough, they were home!

The first thing Dad said when he walked in the door is “the minute I stepped out of that hospital, half my nausea went away.”  LOL :)

Nothing like sleeping in your own bed....

So... Friday, September 13th, a whopping 14 days after first going to the emergency room for weird, non-specific symptoms he couldn’t really piece together - my father finally returned home with his same, vintage body - and a fully rebuilt engine <3

I stayed home a few more days, to see through the entire home health arrangements, and also just hang out and help my parents out with things.  During this time, I went running a few times in the neighborhood, watched a bunch of TV with my parents, and checked out some childhood crap and other sights of interest around the house....

a “book” authored by my sister, probably in about the 1st grade... this is the same sister who is now a graphic designer, and self-declared authority on all things color.  She’s a Pantone Institute to herself.

a MUCH LOVED favorite childhood book series of mine - the “Little House on the Prairie” books, by Laura Ingalls Wilder!  I actually reread two of them in the few days I was home :)

An awesome garden frog, just chilling on the gate.

About an hour or two after dad was comfortably settled at home, he asked that we invite Marley over to see him.  Marley came, and the two of them visited for a short time.  I think Marley was awash in relief to know that dad was, at long last, home and doing well.

Though I think my mom and I were both a little nervous as night fell, fortunately things with dad went pretty smoothly.  I think he slept okay, and there weren’t any major alarming incidents or concerns overnight.  He might have had to go to the bathroom once or twice, and my mom accompanied him just to ensure he was steady on his feet - but it was all fine.  

The next morning, dad seemed even better.  He claimed he hadn’t slept well and was tired, but I actually think he slept alright - he just had fatigue from all the medications, the recovery, and probably from the blood loss he had experienced in surgery.  All of that I’m sure was tiring, but it would get better with time.  Dad spent the day about half in bed, half on the sofa, and I was pleased - he hadn’t wanted to sit up much in the hospital, but he seemed to be more okay with it now.  The home health agency nurse and physical therapists came by to do their initial assessments - so out the gate, upon discharge, my parents could see that the next step of recovery was beginning, and that they’d have folks around for that.

Sunday was even better.  I did a quick trip to the Vietnamese market (for some groceries my mom needed, but also to score a veggie banh mi from the adjacent food stall for myself, ha!) and also the regular grocery store for milk and stuff.  There was a Saints game this afternoon (which we lost, boo), and we also had the interview with the respite care sitter and her manager this day, which went well.  We hired her and asked her to start on Tuesday.  Following her departure, I finally agreed to buy my return ticket home.  My parents were starting to get anxious that I had “abandoned my duties” back in Florida to help them out for so long, but that the kids and Dr. Spouse were probably beginning to miss me.  They were also feeling terribly guilty, because this week, I had actually planned a big reunion trip with some of my college girlfriends, and I had had to miss it.  I didn’t care one bit about this, but they of course felt very bad about it.  They wanted me to get back to my life as soon as I could.  Now that the home health agency and the sitter were all squared away, I finally felt comfortable to do it... so I bought a ticket back to Florida for the early morning of Tuesday 9/17.

Monday was a chill day.  I hung with dad for a few hours while Mom visited the Hindu temple, and then she returned and we all just vegged out.  Marley came for dinner that night, which was nice, and dad was in the best spirits and with the most energy and stamina that I’d seen him since the surgery.  He was able to sit on the sofa recliner for several hours, and he ate like 2-3 chapatis with vegetables and rice.  That was really great to see.

My flight the next day was at the ungodly hour of 5:30 am.  I’d have to leave the house at 3:45 am to get to the airport.  So I arranged a Lyft for myself and instructed my parents NOT to wake up and see me off.  But they did anyway.  They both hugged and thanked me for all my help, and my mom walked me out to the dark driveway while I awaited my driver.  I could hear an owl loudly hooting in the dark, which was kind of awesome - Vev would have loved it.

Soon enough, a giant Dodge Ram pickup truck was pulling into my parents’ driveway, and I was off.

I landed in Ft. Lauderdale around 8 am, and Lyfted it home, where I was greeted by my smiling mother-in-law.  We chatted for awhile, then I went to shower and rest till it was time to pick up the kids from school.  

Pixel seemed happy to see me too :)

The kids’ smiles upon my picking them up were huge - it was an awesome reunion.  I feel like they each grew a foot in the 11 days that I was away from them.  They had a zillion things to tell me and update me about, even though I’d FaceTimed them multiple times a day.  We chatted and talked till it was time for me to take them to swimming lessons.  It felt really good to be back in mom mode.

School pictures that they had taken during my absence.  They look huge.

My MIL stayed another two days before finally leaving on Thursday, then Friday morning, Dr. Spouse took off for a weekend trip with his college buddies in Austin.  It was just me and the kids for the weekend, and it was mostly quiet but good, with the usual playing and throwing toys in every corner of the house :)  

Dr. Spouse returned late night on Sunday, and at long last - life was back to normal again.  I made sure to plan a special morning outing for him on Tuesday, as a belated birthday celebration.  We went to a 10:15 am show of the “Downton Abbey” movie!!!  We were both superfans of the series when it was on-air, so it was fun to go see the movie together :)

Yes, we had popcorn and a Coke Icee at 10 in the morning!!!

Magazine I’d bought a few days earlier, but didn't permit myself to open till seeing the movie, out of a fear of spoilers.

Over the last few days, I’ve had a chance to write thank you cards to the many healthcare providers and support staff who helped my dad and our family out over the last two weeks.  I had kept a careful list going throughout the whole experience of my dad’s illness, and I went and purchased some pretty thank-you cards with my MIL before she had left.  It felt good to say a few words of gratitude to each and every person who had helped him through this unexpected illness.

I put a picture of our family in each card, so the person could remember the patient in question.  It only took a short time to write these cards - but these folks helped us a lot, and I think they ought to know how much we appreciate it!  I also sent a special birthday card and present to LadyWhoDat, whose 40th was a few days later - she went above and beyond for my parents, and I am so grateful.

Anyway.  So, that’s more or less the end of the story of my Dad’s Cabbage.  He will still be doing cardiac rehab, and undergoing monitoring and follow-ups for a good long while.... but I think the rebuilt engine will hopefully continue to thrive in the vintage body for some time.  And with lots of good reasons.... he’s a pretty important person around these parts.

February 2013:  first time meeting Vev

Dec 2014:  first time meeting Dey

May 2019:  hanging out with Vev and Dey

#family #Dad #CABG #heart #travel

[late-night-thotties]

So I'm listening to music it started with disclosure - latch witch was like the first song at the prom after party and I still only think of you when I hear my playlists, but Steve lacy just came on and I'm grooving so hard right now and I'm a lil tipsy but I don't have you or any one to talk to :( so I figure I just write something while I'm in the mood to write . The Steve lacy song finished so I replayed the disclosure cause I really like this playlist. There's no point in this message or post I just felt alone and I didn't have anyone to bother and I don't want to go to bed yet so I'm under my covers like a tent , how we used to do, and I'm blasting music on my headphones. I feel all the memories flooding in. We were so young and innocent I didn't know anything when I met you and you helped shape me. I no longer have a friend to tell my secrets to, nobody to tell my deep thots too, no one that I can talk to when I'm feeling like this. It's tuff I know you're going through it too but u have it a lil easier u can just hit up Pierre but I can't hit up the lads with my inner thots. As close as we are and even if I feel comfortable telling them I won't bc that's just not how the friendship is. It's a real genuine friendship but still were not there yet either A) no one has problems so they don't share B) they don't care so what's the point or C) were not as close as we think and still scared of being judged or maybe tired of talking about the same shit shit that's affecting us. Idk this is a stupid message it has no meaning I'm just alone and feeling it extra tonight. I hope you had a good day and I hope u have a better one tomorrow. It's 1:53 a .m currently I work at 3 PM so I can stay up late o Really want to go outside and smoke but I don't have bud or wax and it's late what can I do . Nothing like always man, anyways rip to all my friends and family who didn't make it in life I truly miss you all and I'ma visit ur graves soon to send my blessing and talk and vent to you guys. Even losing them doesn't compare to how I feel about u isn't that selfish of me or wrong ? My own flesh and blood didn't affect me as much as u that's crazy imo . The Steve Lacy song FINISHED and it's now 1:58 am I might go to bed I might not let's see

[thegrimgrinningghost]

ALL OF THEM

oh boy here we go

Mercury: What’s your full name?

My first name is Kaylin, and I’m not comfortable with giving out my last name.

Venus: What’s your first language?

English, but I know a tiny bit of ASL and I took 3 years of Spanish for school.

Earth: Where’s your home?

Southern California, but I’m not gonna go into specifics on the location.

Mars: What’s your sexuality?

Aromantic asexual.

Jupiter: Do you have any siblings?

Nope! Only child here ^_^

Saturn: Any pets?

I have 3 dogs - Turbo, Jax, and Teddy. Turbo and Jax are brothers, we think they’re chihuahuas mixed with some kind of terrier. Teddy is a chihuahua/brussels griffon/actual gremlin.

Uranus: What’s your hobby?

I have a lot of hobbies - baking, drawing, amateur cosplay, Disneyland pin collecting... Although I’m not entirely sure that last one counts as a “hobby” per se.

Neptune: When’s your birthday?

April 18. (psst. send me shit)

Pluto: What time is it right now where you are?

Right as I’m writing this, it’s 9:23 PM, but this is probably gonna take a while ^^’

Moon: What are you studying/planning to study?

I would like to go to a culinary school if at all possible... I’m not sure what else I’d want to do though.

Sun: Have you ever had alcohol?

Nope.

Sirius: Have you ever failed a class?

All I’m gonna say is that physics is a real bitch.

Rigel: Have you ever gone on a roller coaster? Yeah, but the most “intense” one I’ve done willingly is Space Mountain. My parents made me go on California Screamin once and I hated it.

Deneb: Have you ever been out of your home country?

Nope, but I want to! I’d love to go to Europe some day.

Arcturus: Have you ever cried out of something other than sadness?

My dude, I am crying 100% of the time. Don’t underestimate me.

Betelgeuse: What’s something you can never forget about?

UHHHHH NOTHING LMAO. I forget everything. Sometimes I even forget who I am.

Aldebaran: What’s something you care desperately about?

CAN I GET A UHHHHHHHH MY FRIENDS AND FP’S

Canopus: Have you ever broken a bone?

No, unless you count the time I cracked my head open on some stairs.

Bellatrix: Have you ever been forced to lie or keep a secret?

Not really. People don’t seem to trust me with secrets. Which is fine, I don’t know if I could keep one if I had to.

Alphard: Have you ever lost a friend?

Yeah. All of my friends from elementary and middle school have grown apart from me, probably for the better.

Vega: What’s something you’ve done that you wish you hadn’t?

I don’t really know. I guess I don’t regret a lot of stuff I’ve done, it’s more stuff I didn’t do.

Centaurus: Favorite holiday?

Ooh, this is tough. It’s a tie between Halloween and Christmas for me.

Orion: Favorite month?

October! The weather’s perfect - not too hot, not too cold - and it’s the month of one of my aforementioned favorite holidays!

Cassiopeia: Favorite book?

Definitely a Harry Potter book. Hard to say which one though - maybe Half-Blood Prince or Prisoner of Azkaban.

Delphinus: Favorite study?

Not really sure what this means...

Hercules: Favorite instrument?

I can only really play piano, and even that’s... shaky at best. To listen to, though, I really like steel drums! And I’m not entirely sure if this counts, but this instrument is really cool, especially from a technical standpoint!

Gemini: Favorite song?

Another tough one. It changes a lot. Right now, it’s probably Meant to be Yours from Heathers: The Musical or Young and Menace by Fall Out Boy.

Pegasus: Favorite place to be?

Disneyland! It’s just such a happy place, and the details and technological aspect of all the attractions are so cool to me!!

Libra: Favorite color?

Mint green.

Phoenix: Favorite thing to wear?

Anything leather! It makes me feel badass :)

Aries: Favorite movie?

Ahh, all these tough questions! I think it’s a tie between Moana and Coraline.

Cygnus: Favorite Weather?

Rain! Not thunderstorms though. Those scare the SHIT out of me.

Hydra: Favorite sound?

I’m not entirely sure - probably like ambient rain sounds?

Milky Way: Who’s your oldest friend?

We’re not really friends anymore, but she was in my first grade class. Not comfortable with saying who it is though.

Andromeda: Do you consider yourself social?

Nope.

Black Eye Galaxy: Do you believe in love at first sight?

Nope. Maybe in Disney movies, but not in real life.

Cartwheel Galaxy: When was your first kiss?

I’ve never kissed anybody, and tbh I don’t want to.

Cigar Galaxy: How are your flirting skills?

Apparently I unintentionally flirt? I don’t mean to.

Comet Galaxy: Have you ever had to leave a relationship because someone changed too much?

Well, considering I’ve never been in one of those, I’m gonna say no.

Pinwheel Galaxy: Would you date the last person you talked to?

No.

Sombrero Galaxy: Do you have a crush right now?

Nope.

Bode’s Galaxy: Have you ever had a secret admirer?

I don’t know. People have had crushes on me before, but I don’t exactly get the difference between that and a “secret admirer.”

Sunflower’s Galaxy: Would you date/make friends with someone out of pity?

No, because I’ve been on the other end of that. It’s horrible.

Tadpole Galaxy: Would you ever deny a friendship or relationship?

Yes, and I have before, and it feels horrible. But I’m a terrible liar, so it would be hard to keep up.

Whirlpool Galaxy: Have you ever cried at a breakup?

Never had one of those.

Comet: What’s your big dream?

I’ve always wanted to have a cupcake shop. Weirdly specific, I know, but idk.

Asteroid: What does your dream life look like?

I’d love to live with some friends and like 6 gazillion cats.

Meteor: What’s something you wish you could tell, but can’t?

There isn’t much, I’m pretty much an open book.

Nebula: If you could undo one thing in your life, what would it be?

I would stand up for myself more when I was younger. Or pay attention in school. Or not be a piece of shit altogether :)

Shooting Star: If you could bring back one thing, what would it be?

FUCKIN CLUB PENGUIN LADS

Pulsar: What do you hope to do in the next 10 years?

Not die...? I don’t know, man, I have NO GOALS

Supernova: What’s one thing you want to do before you die?

Meet my FP in real life.

Quasar: If you could spend the rest of your life with only one person, who would it be?

hhhhhhHHHHHHHHHHHH REALLY ASKIN THE HARD HITTING QUESTIONS HERE ARENT YA... probably one of my FP’s, but if you ask me to choose I’d probably explode on the spot.

Wormhole: What’s something you wish would happen, but know won’t?

I wish I could meet all of my internet friends, but travel is expensive. It might happen, but it’s highly unlikely

Black Hole: What’s the last thing you want to see?

That’s something that I don’t want to think about or answer right now.

#she answers #Anonymous

[kopfans]

In this advanced chapter of a new book soon to be released Fernando Torres gives an interview in which he explains in some depth why he chose to leave Liverpool. It’s not a short read but it’s worth getting to the end as it challenges some of the ‘facts’ surrounding the very divisive event. I must admit, after reading this I find it difficult to view Torres with anything like the animosity I did when he left, although I’ll always treasure that challenge Agger planted on him a week later.

Fernando Torres On His Anfield Exit: A Complete Chapter From Ring of Fire: Liverpool Into The 21st Century: The Players’ Stories

19 April 2017 2:45 pm

by Simon Hughes

WHEN the cloak of darkness falls upon Madrid in the weeks before spring’s arrival, the temperature drops suddenly and gusts blow across the city. Yet over on the banks of the Manzanares River, at the Vicente Calderón Stadium, there is a flame that always burns.

To understand what Fernando Torres means to supporters of Atlético Madrid, imagine the family of six who have driven two hours on a school night from a town in La Mancha, where the windmills are immortalised by Miguel de Cervantes in the novel Don Quixote.

Torres has not been introduced, having only been selected as a substitute, but with Atlético 2-0 ahead at half-time against Real Sociedad, he takes to the pitch and begins to warm up.

One of the young boys, no older than eight, spots him. “El Niño Torres!” he yaps. “Look, El Niño Torres!” His brothers break from an argument and stare out across the verdant field in front.

Before kick-off, when Torres’s name was announced, the raucous cheers bounced off the ramparts of this tattered football ground, which sits in the working-class south of Spain’s capital, not too far from where Torres grew up. Arganzuela is an industrial neighbourhood and such is the volume of noise it would probably have been enough to conceal the rumble of the M-30 motorway, which runs beneath the west stand while operational on non-match days.

It is a challenge to explain exactly how much of a hero Torres is at the Calderón, where the goal that won the 2008 European Championships, Spain’s first international tournament in 44 years, was believed to be Atlético’s, not only because Torres scored it but also because he celebrated the achievement that night, and then the World Cup in 2010, by decorating himself in an Atlético flag. By then, Torres had left the club and yet soon after his departure in 2007 Liverpool shirts were worn inside the Calderón.

Back home now, after seven-and-a-half seasons away, Torres’s presence is not required. Atlético end up winning 3-0, squashing Sociedad with a display of considerable physical strength and unity. Not one of their players is a real star. Under Diego Simeone, the team is king.

In fact, there is a sense Atlético might not need Torres much longer. He is not really El Niño (the Kid) any more and, rather, a near 32-year-old father of three with his best years behind him. Because Torres is on loan from AC Milan and because, at the time of our interview, Atlético are under a transfer embargo, he might have to go somewhere else when his contract ends in Italy in a few months, whether Simeone wants him or not.

When I meet Torres the following day, the prospect of leaving Atlético for a second time — the club he grew up supporting, the one where he made his debut at 17 and became the youngest captain at 19 — does not appear to concern him too greatly, largely because he is not considering the future as much as he did when he was younger, something which, he explains, contributed towards an acrimonious exit from Liverpool to Chelsea.

“Day by day — I have realised that in life you should look no further,” is one of the first things he says to me.

At Atlético, the love for him is unconditional because when he left, he moved abroad and the supporters understood why he had to do it. The destination of Liverpool was acceptable because Liverpool are not rivals and, as Torres later reminds me, “Liverpool beat Real Madrid in the 1981 European Cup final”, and Real Madrid are Atlético’s enemy.

At Liverpool, no foreign player in modern times has appeared to understand the club and the city as much as he did. As captain of Atlético, he wore an armband that bore the words ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’. In his debut season at Anfield, he scored 33 goals in 46 games. In 2008, when Liverpool became the European Capital of Culture, his presence helped it feel like an even more cosmopolitan place.

That summer, an advert for his boot maker Nike included shots of a house in Anfield being painted in the red and yellow colours of Spain, along with the parking lines on the streets below. There were chip shops advertising all-day tapas, street markets selling paella pans and increased numbers of women at salsa lessons. The world famous Cavern Club became the Caverna Club. The final scene included a modestly dressed Torres walking his dog across green space on Everton Brow, retrieving a football for a group of lads involved in a game. Although injuries interrupted the next two and a half seasons, his name was sung even before Steven Gerrard’s in the pubs before matches. Torres was the working-class hero from another country who simply got it all.

But then he signed for Chelsea, a club whose injection of riches since 2003 had seen them win more than Liverpool, as a new rivalry developed.

Torres says that when he closes his eyes and forces himself, he can remember driving through the gates of Melwood for the last time as a Liverpool player. A gang had congregated, ceremoniously burning his shirt in front of television cameras. John Aldridge, the former Liverpool centre-forward, worked for radio and could not bring himself to utter Torres’s name thereafter, referring to him as “the other fella”. His debut for Chelsea came the following weekend and, as fate would have it, Liverpool were the opponents at Stamford Bridge.

Visiting supporters greeted him with a couple of banners with clear messages: “He who betrays will always walk alone’”and the slightly more obscure “Ya paid 50 mil 4 Margi Clarke”. Torres was hit by a cigarette lighter thrown from the south-east corner of the Shed End and, to complete his indignity, Liverpool won 1-0.

It was a surprise that Torres agreed to meet me. He does not do many interviews and has never before given his side of the story about his departure from Liverpool to Chelsea. The discussions with Torres’s representatives in order to secure time with him were, however, relatively straightforward. They appreciated this as an opportunity to set the record straight over some issues, particularly those that led to his £50million sale from Liverpool, a British record. I flew to Madrid sensing that not everything was quite as it seemed.

My brief was to be at the Cerro del Espino from noon, the day after Atlético’s easy win over Sociedad. Set in the town of Majadahonda, the training ground is 15 miles north-west of Madrid and higher up on the Castile plateau, so the air is cleaner. It is a wealthy area of plush shopping arcades and impressive- looking apartment complexes with gardens. In the distance, the snow-capped mountaintops of the Navacerrada are visible. As Torres finishes his training session, rich smells of fresh bread from a fancy bakery breeze across the car park.

First to arrive is Antonio Sanz, Torres’s long-term adviser. I first met him in the months after Torres joined Liverpool. Football agents tend to be viewed suspiciously but I liked Antonio because of his jolly nature and straight talking. On the day Torres left Liverpool, I spoke to him in the reception area at Melwood and detected some sadness that it had come to this. Before I could ask what was really happening, his mobile phone rang and by the time he had finished his conversation I had been directed somewhere else for another interview with Liverpool’s latest signing, Luis Suárez. It felt like a sliding-doors moment for Liverpool fans — what could have been had both been there at the same time…

Until any interview takes place, you never quite know what you are going to get. It is a relief when Antonio tells me that Torres had decided it was a good idea to do this one straight away. “Ask him anything you want, anything at all,” he says. “There are some things he would like to say.”

Torres has showered and changed into a jumper, jeans and trainers when he appears soon after. His film-star qualities remain: his thin freckled face and, though it is shorter than it was when he was at his best for Liverpool, there is the striking mop of blond hair. A firm handshake makes you trust him that bit more and, despite being shy, he makes consistent eye contact when introducing himself.

We are led into an anteroom next to a press canteen that serves empanadas and juices. There is a wooden table, two wooden chairs and one tiny window at the top of the dimly painted back wall. Jokes follow about it feeling like a set for interrogations and, though I’d like the conversation to be serious, I don’t want him to feel on the back foot straight away, so I open with a few questions he might find it easier to deal with.

I suggest to Torres that it must have been a big decision to leave Atlético for Liverpool in the first place. He leans on the table, joins his hands and begins to speak slowly in a deep, staid voice.

“Well, I had offers from different English teams a few years before I moved to Liverpool,” he says. “Manchester United were one of the clubs that came. But I never took the decision because it was very hard for me to leave Atlético. When I was a kid, I did not see further than Atlético. I wanted to get the chance to play for the first team, to score a few goals, stay there and win trophies. It was everything I dreamed about. I never thought I might leave.

“The situation was difficult for the club at that time [from the moment Torres made his debut in 2001]. We were in the second division and went back to the first division. There were a lot of financial problems. I’d never even played in Europe. So my aim became clear: to help the team qualify for Europe and after that maybe think about leaving.

“It would be the best for me but especially the best for the club, because I felt like they were building a team around me, which I don’t think is the way to become a stronger team. I was sure if I left, they could use the money to build a side the fans could be proud of, rather than just one individual. With time, I saw that this was the conclusion, so it was a relief that it worked this way. OK, it was good for me but it was especially good for Atlético.

“We qualified for Europe. Then Benítez called me. At least I was leaving the team in a good situation. Liverpool had played two European finals in three years. Benítez was there, Alonso and Reina. It was a club where I felt it would be quite easy for me to adapt. The relationship between the fans and the team was also something I was looking for. It was difficult to leave Atlético. But it was not difficult to choose Liverpool.”

From his early teens, Torres was projected as the average boy from the average town who became a supremely talented footballer and did not change. That’s why supporters of Atlético love him so much. It was part of his appeal on the terraces of Anfield too.

Torres was raised in Fuenlabrada, half an hour by train from Madrid’s Atocha Station. I have been there before and it is unremarkable, featuring row upon row of identikit housing blocks. It could have been the outskirts of any major European city had the weather not given an idea of the location away. Fuenlabrada is classic Spanish suburbia: an arid place of tall concrete and shadows. The pace of life is slow. In a smoky room in Café Padilla, I was greeted by strange looks from old men who preferred to engage in their brandy glasses rather than conversation. One of them emerged from the miasma to ask me what I was doing there, and when I explained it was for research into Torres’s early life, the man with lips like bloodied hacked meat scoffed. He was a Real Madrid fan and took pride in informing me that Atlético were the second team in Fuenlabrada, like everywhere else near Madrid.

Torres lived in Parque Granada, the type of barrio where everyone knows everyone else’s business. His parents had moved there from Galicia when his father José was relocated as a policeman. During summer holidays, they would return to Spain’s rugged north-west coast and it was there that Torres met Olalla, his childhood sweetheart, to whom he is now married. They have three children named Leo, Nora and Elsa.

The Torres family resided in a flat on Calle de Alemania and his primary school was 150 yards away from the front door.

By the age of seven, Torres’s gift was obvious from the number of goals he scored in small-sided fútbol sala games, “sometimes 14 or 15,” remembers Jose Camacho, a family friend who owned the sports shop where Torres bought his first pair of football boots.

When Torres scored his hundredth goal for Atlético in February 2016, he gave the shirt to an 84-year-old man called Manuel Briñas. Torres first met Briñas 20 years earlier when he turned up for a trial on the gravel pitches of the Parque de las Cruces in Carabanchel, the prison town, more Atlético turf than Fuenlabrada. Briñas had been tasked with rebuilding Atlético’s youth system after it had been disbanded by Jesús Gil. Along with around 200 other kids, Torres played 11-a-side games split into 20-minute halves while the coaches gave marks out of 10. “Give him 10,” Briñas said when he saw Torres. “In fact, give him 10 and a bit.”

Torres was already an Atlético supporter. His induction to the club as a player consecrated the relationship. Offers later came from Real Madrid, and Pedro Calvo, his first coach, can remember approaches being made by sporting directors at Inter Milan and Arsenal. Financially, those moves would have been rewarding but Torres would not depart because he felt aligned to what he describes as the “sentimiento de rebeldía” or a sense of rebellion. His distaste for Atlético’s rivals does not lay hidden.

“It is difficult sharing a city with one of the most successful clubs in history when you support the other club,” he says. “When I beat Real Madrid with Liverpool, it was my first time, you know? With Atlético we could not beat them. Ever. The satisfaction of going to the Santiago Bernabéu and winning as a Liverpool player was huge.

“Then the next week they came to Anfield and we beat them for a second time, 4-0. I could not help myself, celebrating a goal in front of their fans. It was special. Beating them with Atlético [as he had done the weekend before our meeting] tastes different. There is a lot of pressure here in Madrid when you don’t beat Real for eight years, which happened in my first period here as a professional. I was the main man at Atlético and the one getting all of the blame.”

Michael Robinson, the forward who played for Liverpool in the 1980s before emerging as a famous football commentator on Spanish television, described Atlético as “the dog with fleas”. “You can’t help but love them,” he said. “Atlético can defend well, they can attack well. But they’re not particularly brilliant at anything other than giving everything they’ve got. They’re irresistible.”

Despite the pressure and despite his dubious record against Real before he left for Liverpool, Atlético supporters worship Torres for dragging them out of the second division after they had been relegated for the first time since 1934 in the season before his debut. They love him too because he left to master the world but never forgot them and was true on his promise to return one day.

I ask Torres what Atlético represents to him.

“Atlético means everything to me,” he says. “When I was a kid, I only watched Atlético games, none of the others. I was the kid going to the stand with my grandparents and my dad and brother. I would go by myself sometimes, getting the train and then the metro for one hour from Fuenlabrada. And then I would travel home by myself.

“My life and education has been Atlético. Everything that is happening now to me — the records, the games — it’s so emotional because it makes you look back and consider what has happened since the first day I joined. I remember being 10 years old and playing the final trial game where the club decided whether I was good enough for Atlético or not. The nerves! That was 20 years ago and I still feel it. It makes me smile. You can see me smiling now…

“From that day, I did not think any of this would happen. To score 100 goals for the club — it was too much to believe. It was so emotional, especially because of the reaction of the people. They know I am one of them. I was in the stands before and now I am lucky enough to be on the pitch. When I do not play for the club any more, I will be in the stands again.”

In 2007, a 6–0 defeat to Barcelona made Torres think about his future as an Atlético player because Barcelona was usually the one illustrious opponent Atlético found a way to beat. He was walking his two bulldogs in Madrid when the mobile phone in his pocket began to vibrate and a number he did not recognise flashed across the screen. He explains that he wouldn’t usually answer to an unknown caller but, realising the number was registered in England, he figured it might have been one of his close friends, Pepe Reina or Cesc Fàbregas. Instead, it was Rafael Benítez. Benítez had a list of five targets. They included Internazionale’s Julio Cruz, Palermo’s Amauri, Alberto Gilardino from AC Milan and Lisandro López of Porto. The recruitment of Torres was, however, given priority status.

“I cannot remember if he said, ‘Hi, it’s Rafa’ or, ‘Hi, this is Benítez,’” Torres recalls. The Liverpool manager was on holiday in Portugal a week after the Champions League final defeat to AC Milan, but his focus was already on recruiting a striker that would help propel his team towards the summit of the Premier League. “I was surprised but did not realise the dimension of what I was hearing till I hung up. Then I thought, Wow, this club that can get anybody in the world has rung me; they want me.”

Benítez had complained in interviews immediately after the final in Athens in 2007 that Tom Hicks and George Gillett were not helping him move fast enough to finalise deals for new signings. Torres was in Tahiti on holiday with Olalla when another call came several weeks later, instructing him to return to Europe immediately before flying to Merseyside.

“My medical took two days and nobody knew I was in the city,” he recalls. “The club arranged for me to stay in an apartment in the Albert Dock, supplying me with lots of DVDs and books about Liverpool’s history. I knew Liverpool was one of the great European clubs already. But it is not until you arrive that you realise really what the pressure is like — a good pressure. You are not just signing for a big football club; you are signing for a city. Millions of people across the world are watching you. I was the club’s record transfer.”

If Torres was feeling the weight of expectation, he did not show it. His first goal arrived in his second league game, a 1-1 draw with Chelsea. The way he glided past his marker and the confident execution of the finish made it seem as though a matador was at work, teasing the unfortunate beast, Tal Ben Haim.

Over the course of the next three seasons, he would score in all of the biggest games: against Manchester United, against Everton, against Arsenal and in the Champions League fixtures too.

In 142 appearances for the club, he registered 81 goals, breaking all sorts of records in the process. He reached a half century of goals quicker than Roger Hunt, and the crouching Torres became a familiar sight before kick-offs, lowering himself on to his haunches and staring impassively at the opposition before him, scanning the area and familiarising himself with the goal he was targeting. It made him look like an assassin, mentally placing his victims inside a trap before the attack.

By watching videos of Premier League matches, he familiarised himself with the opponents he would encounter and would adapt his game accordingly. Quickly, he became the player all of the boys wanted to be like and the player all of the girls wanted to be with. He darted across boxes and twisted past defenders. He became one of the greatest strikers to ever play for Liverpool.

“I know I am never going to feel the way I felt at Anfield again, even in my dreams,” he says. “Here at Atlético, I am home. It is where I grew up. I was a supporter in the stand, I joined the academy and then I became a player. It is normal that the people love me, because I am one of them. You can do wrong and they forgive you. At Liverpool, there was no reason for this relationship to develop the way it did. How many players have signed for Liverpool, they go there and play and pass the years but nobody remembers what they did? I was lucky. They did not have any reason to love me that way but they made me feel different to any other player.”

It helped Torres that Steven Gerrard was there, someone similarly talented, with similarly introverted personality traits. Someone, indeed, who had the same experience of captaining his local club from a very young age.

“I admire the player who gives the example by actions, not just with words. We had Carragher with the words, keeping everyone alive, which is so important. In the dressing room, he was the voice. And then on the pitch, he would support those words with actions.

“Stevie was different and more like me: leading by example. Stevie was always first in training; he could play the ball better than anyone. If he needed to kick someone, he did. When you see both of them working that way, you have to follow. If the main players give everything, you cannot give less than them. They set standards.

“Yes, Stevie in some ways is similar to me: more reserved and shy. On the pitch, it is different. There is an aura around him. You feel it as a team-mate. The opponent feels it because they know what is coming. He understood everything about me. I just needed to move into the space and the first thing he would try to do is find me. And he did, whether it was with a long or a short pass. Stevie was the player that completed my game. I will never find someone like him again.”

Gerrard, Torres says, gave him the confidence to display a creative expression that had lain dormant under the burden of home expectation in Madrid.

“In 2008, I went to the Ballon d’Or gala in Switzerland. Messi won, Ronaldo came second and I came third. I could not believe I was nominated. Wow, a private jet — I was in shock. Stevie kept telling me, “Don’t worry, you will win it for sure.” He told me that like he really thought it. I thought he was crazy! I never once thought I’d be good enough to get invited to a gala like this. His words expressed how he felt about me at the club and the performance levels I was reaching with the help of the support. He told me I could be the best in the world and I realised this is the feeling everybody in Liverpool had about me. They made me feel anything was possible, that everything was real.”

The narrative of Torres’s first two seasons at Liverpool is well documented. This was a player who came, who scored, who was adored by the Kop. Liverpool did not win the league title but they came closer than they had in any of the previous 19 years. There were strong performances in the Champions League as well.

Torres relished life in Woolton, where he would go out for meals and be able to shop without interference. People were respectful enough to give him space. Shouting his name and waving was enough. Merseyside allowed him space to breathe and lead a relatively normal life, one that was not possible in Madrid, where it was difficult to know who to trust because everyone wanted a piece of him, where he wasn’t playing for the strongest team and 80 per cent of the people were Real fans.

The story of his final 18 months at Anfield, however, is blurred. There is an accepted version of events, especially of the last few weeks, which is that Torres asked the club to consider an offer from Chelsea before verbal and written requests forced it through. When I mention this to Torres, the shutters slowly begin to come down but then the entire window of the period is exposed for all to see, according to his memories.

He begins by telling me he cannot compare the Liverpool he joined in 2007 to the one he left three-and-a-half years later. Torres has previously weighed all of his answers carefully. From herein, probing is unnecessary. He speaks without much interruption.

“When I decided to move to Liverpool, it was because I was sure Liverpool was very close to becoming the best team in Europe,” he says. “But the situation changed completely…”

He pauses for reflection, then continues: “At times, I believe we were the best team in Europe. We were not lucky enough to win the Premier League, though we were so close. We also lost in a Champions League semi-final. I think the team was great. You can see that by the players. One moved to Real Madrid [Xabi Alonso] and another to Barcelona [Javier Mascherano], and these players are still playing at the highest level.

“We had a team to dream about but one that still needed building. The spine was there. Providing we kept that, I knew we could compete with anyone: Reina, Carragher, Agger, Skrtel, Alonso, Mascherano, Gerrard and then me. It was strong, very powerful. We were difficult to beat and nobody wanted to play against us. We were not far away from being champions of England and champions of Europe. But we needed to keep the team.

“Everything changed when the owners started talking about selling. The mindset of the club went in a different direction. Alonso was sold, Mascherano was sold, Benítez went too. Not all of the money went into new players. The club was saying, ‘We still want to be the best and we want to win’ but doing the opposite.”

He says that Atlético has always been his club.

“I left my club to win,” he continues. “By the time I left Liverpool, when everybody was leaving, I did not have the feeling that I was going to win there. It was hard because I had been so happy. I’d never felt happier than during my time at Liverpool. But then I felt betrayed. That’s the truth.”

Torres admits he is not blameless in what happened. And yet he ended up taking ‘máximo responsabilidad’ for the outcome.

Torres reveals that in July 2010, he was aware of interest from Chelsea and Manchester City. He explains that late that month he met with Christian Purslow, Liverpool’s managing director, to discuss his concerns about the direction the club was moving in.

The season before, Liverpool had finished seventh under Rafael Benítez, which contributed towards his leaving. Purslow was hired by Tom Hicks and George Gillett in 2009 in the aftermath of Rick Parry’s departure, with a priority of renegotiating the £350million loan the club had outstanding with Royal Bank of Scotland and to assume overall management of the club until a new permanent chief executive could be appointed.

Purslow had emerged from Cambridge with a degree in modern and medieval languages. A career in investment banking followed.

“Benítez was not there: the club sacked him. I finished the World Cup and I talked with Purslow on holiday. He came with Roy Hodgson, who was keen to speak to me. I told them my view on what was happening at the club: that we were so close to winning and now good players were leaving. What was our future?

“Purslow explained that Liverpool were in the process of being sold to new owners and that nobody could leave in the summer because the club had a higher value with the players they had at that time. ‘We cannot sell you,’ he told me. I told them we would not win without investment and that it worried me we’d fall behind very quickly. I explained that when I joined the club, the mood was totally different and that Benítez’s ambition had taken me to Liverpool. Purslow told me that nobody would leave but as soon as the club was sold he would speak to the new owner and try to find a solution. If I wanted to leave then, I could.

“Nobody ever said to me, ‘We want you to stay and be like Stevie.’ The message was: ‘We’ll sell the club and you can leave.’ That means to me the people running the club did not really care about Liverpool, only themselves. They wanted to save themselves. And then Mascherano was sold anyway.”

Torres understands that Hodgson was appointed into a difficult position, one where maybe even he did not appreciate the full facts of the bleak outlook at Liverpool. Torres says he liked Hodgson even though on the outside it may have seemed their relationship was not close.

“It was a pity because Hodgson was a great coach and a great guy,” Torres says. “They didn’t let him work. They brought in all these Australian people [a new medical team] who controlled everything: who could play, who could not. He wasn’t able to use the players the way he wanted. From that pre-season to the January when I left, it was a nightmare. Not just for me but for everybody, for Hodgson too. He was not allowed to work properly — the situation was more difficult for him than it was for anyone else. Everything was a mess. We were not good enough. In the middle of that, they finally sold the club.”

Though he realises Liverpool was rotting from the head, Torres recognises that Hicks’s and Gillett’s money took him to Liverpool in the first place. He had no relationship with either of them.

“I don’t think it’s so important the owners are in England, in Liverpool,” he says. “What I think is important is that they put someone in charge who is in Liverpool — the right person who understands what Liverpool means. I am sure most owners have many businesses. The only thing they have to do in football is give the money that you need to compete with others. Whatever name you want — the president or the sporting director — they need to understand Liverpool, the feelings. He has to listen to the fans and listen to the players and do a job that is up to the level of the club, meeting the standards that have been set through history.

“You need someone there who understands what Liverpool is, because for the owners it is just a business and without someone telling them the right information it will fail. OK, if they are in Liverpool it will help them but if they are not, put someone in charge who is there and understands football and the club.”

Boston-based investment firm New England Sports Ventures (later to become Fenway Sports Group) acquired Liverpool in a move that Hicks described as “an epic swindle”. Both Martin Broughton, the chairman, and Purslow stepped down from their roles at that point, though Purslow remained as an adviser for a while longer. Liverpool would be structured in a different way, with a sporting director taking on some of Purslow’s responsibilities: primarily dealing with recruitment and sales. Damien Comolli, a Frenchman, was appointed to the role, having achieved varied success at Tottenham Hotspur before.

“I went to talk with Comolli and told him about my concerns and what had happened. He said the same as Purslow: ‘No, no, you cannot leave because we do not have any other players to play.’ Again, he was not telling me, ‘You cannot leave because we need you for the project.’ It was, ‘OK, we will find someone else, then maybe you can leave.’ It said to me that they did not want to keep me, really. They wanted to find someone else. But first they wanted to wait until the summer.

“Comolli told me Liverpool were going to buy Luis Suárez but because Suárez was not a goalscorer I needed to stay until they found one. ‘Suárez is the player to play behind; he is not going to score too many goals,’ was the message. You can see they signed Suárez thinking he could not score goals…”

Torres affords a light smile recalling this memory, insisting that history has since proven that Suárez deserves to be considered one of the game’s best modern strikers alongside Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo.

“Comolli told me that the new owners [FSG], they had an idea of how to spend their investment. They wanted to bring in young players, to build something new. I was thinking to myself, This takes time to work. It takes two, three, four, maybe even 10 years. I didn’t have that time. I was 27 years old. I did not have the time to wait. I wanted to win. Here we are five years later and they are still trying to build — around the same position in the league as when I left.”

With Liverpool mid table, FSG’s next big decision was to sack Hodgson at the start of January 2011 and replace him with Kenny Dalglish until the end of the season. A reflection of Hodgson’s shattered relationship with Liverpool’s supporters by the end was the sound of the “Hodgson for England” chants from the away end in a game at Blackburn Rovers. His reign proved to be the shortest of any permanent Liverpool manager in the club’s history.

Dalglish, meanwhile, was viewed as the greatest Liverpool player. He had also led Liverpool to their last league title nearly 21 years earlier. He is someone whose status on Merseyside is at a papal level.

Torres liked Dalglish and after his appointment spoke to him about his disappointing conversations with Purslow and Comolli. At one meeting, Torres insists he did not request to leave but stressed if Liverpool were thinking about following a different path, one where investment in proven quality was not imminent “because we needed it”, it might be worth considering financially acceptable offers for him and allowing Liverpool to build with the money accrued.

In the week that followed, as Liverpool negotiated privately with Chelsea and as they inched closer to an agreement that would make Torres the subject of the highest transfer deal in English history, stories began to circulate in the press claiming that Torres had ‘verbally’ requested a transfer. Torres believes this came from a leak at the club, a deliberate attempt to sully his name before the conclusion of the inevitable: making him take “maximum responsibility” for the transfer when really the club were happy to make it happen.

“When Chelsea made their first offer before the game at Wolverhampton, I spoke with Dalglish and Steve Clarke [the assistant manager]. I think Comolli wanted to be at the meeting but I told them I only wanted to speak with the coaches. Again, I told Dalglish and Clarke that I only left my club to win and now we were so far away from winning. I told them I felt as though I’d been lied to. Despite telling me they would not sell the good players, Mascherano was sold. I told them that the Chelsea offer was a good one and it would allow me to keep improving and the club would receive a huge financial reward. Dalglish told me that he did not want me to leave — he was the only one. ‘I need you here,’ he said, although he never spoke about his reasons, so they may have been the same as Comolli’s.

“Before leaving the room, I thought we had an understanding. It might have been a difficult conversation but there was respect on both sides. It was no pasa nada [no problem]. Dalglish told me he’d always be grateful for what I’d done for Liverpool and that hopefully I’d stay.

“Whether I stayed or left, the idea was to continue as normal. I wanted to do everything the right way. I scored twice at Wolverhampton, then played OK against Fulham three days later at Anfield. Dalglish had told me he did not want me to leave but at the same time I knew Liverpool were negotiating with Chelsea, so maybe this was not the truth.

“What I did not expect was what they did with the media, changing the way it looked. They tried to show that I was the guilty one, el único [the only one]. I’d gone face to face with Dalglish to explain the situation so that everything was clear. I did not use my agent. He knew how I felt: I wanted to win but at Liverpool it did not seem as though that was possible for at least a few years. And you can see what happened in the few years after — I was not wrong.

“I told him City had a great team, United were still winning things, then there was Chelsea as usual and Tottenham. We were so far from them. I told him about my conversations with Purslow in the summer and that I stayed then because I did not want to be responsible for Liverpool not being sold.

“I explained to him that nobody ever wanted me to stay for the right reasons — reasons only related to football. I told him Comolli had told me I could leave at the end of the season. He was not interested in me staying for ever. I told Dalglish I had the chance to leave then — in January — and I did not know whether Chelsea, City or Bayern Munich would come again. I knew the season was not going to be very good — we had been in the bottom half of the table. Who knows what is going to happen? I had the chance to go and it was a great offer for the club also. But if you want me to stay for ever, tell me that. If Liverpool were going to build a great team again, I wanted to stay, there would be no reason to leave, though I did not think this was going to happen, because I did not believe in Comolli’s ideas. I wasn’t sure whether he really cared about Liverpool at all.”

By selling Torres, Comolli would potentially have more money to play with, more money to exert influence on the club in his first few months in the job. It is Dalglish whom Torres feels most let down by, though.

“My respect for him was huge. I knew that Dalglish was one of the best players in the history of the club, that everyone loved him. But I think he had the power to change the situation. I don’t know why he didn’t do so. If he had asked for money for players, I think they’d have given it to him. If he had insisted to the owners that I stay, then I would have stayed. He came and the team started playing better. I started scoring more goals. The way he wanted to play was much better for the players we had. Steve Clarke was a fantastic coach and he did a great job too.

“Stories appeared in the press about me demanding to leave, though. This made it difficult for me to stay and to trust the people at Liverpool. Someone must have told them. Because I did not.”

I remind Torres that a similar thing happened with Javier Mascherano when he left for Barcelona at the end of the previous August. After a man-of-the-match performance against Arsenal on the opening day of the season, it was reported that he had refused to play against Manchester City. I wondered whether Liverpool were in the business of discrediting a departing player’s name so the club looked better and the parting of ways was made more acceptable to supporters.

“The stories that appeared in the press changed the view of everybody including myself. It was not the truth. The truth was that I moved from my home to a club that was ready to win. When I left, there was not a single piece of the winning culture left.

“What’s so hard for me is that I felt the relationship between myself and the club was really close. That’s why I tried to go and talk to them straight. I will say this again: I did not use my agent. I went first to Purslow, then to Comolli and after to Dalglish — all face-to-face. I tried to explain to each one of them why I left Atlético to go to Liverpool in the first place. I tried to explain that you couldn’t expect to win if you sold your best players. Nobody could give me a straight answer, a football answer.

“It looked like I wanted to leave for Chelsea and I did not love Liverpool any more. It looked like I did not want to train and play and that’s why I asked for a transfer request. It was presented as if I was a traitor. It was not like this in the discussion. Liverpool could not admit they were doing something wrong with the whole team. They had to find a guilty one.”

Liverpool supporters saw his choice to join Chelsea as treason. Torres viewed it as his only option.

“I feel sorry for the fans, because they are always going to love Liverpool. The club is bigger than any player. That’s why it was so hard to decide to leave and why it was so hard to see the facts getting twisted, for everything to be pointed at me. I can understand the supporters, because if I read everything that was in the media and believed it, I would feel the same way. But I will tell you again: nothing will ever change my feelings for Liverpool, for the fans and for the city. From day one until the last, they were fantastic towards me.”

There is a sense from Torres that the situation either got out of control very quickly or someone at Liverpool achieved what they wanted in the end. While Dalglish had been out of front-line football for longer than a decade and was landed in a situation that was not of his making, FSG, whose principal owner is John W. Henry, had no previous experience in dealing with such political transfers. FSG have always admitted to taking council from mysterious-sounding ‘pre-eminent advisers’.

During the long-running battle between Mill Financial, former owner George Gillett and Royal Bank of Scotland, it was revealed in 2016 from a New York courtroom that back in 2010 when Mill were competing with FSG to buy the club, both Torres and Pepe Reina were viewed by FSG as being “probably beyond their primes”.

“John Henry was the last person I spoke to and he was great to me, I cannot say anything bad,” Torres says. “He told me he did not want me to leave. If I did want to leave, he told me that the price had to be very high. I told him that I did not want to talk about numbers; that was for him to decide and I would respect whatever decision he came to.”

The discussion with Steven Gerrard about the situation was the one he dreaded most.

“I went to him before speaking with Dalglish. We were in the dressing room at Melwood alone, sitting together. I explained there had been an offer from Chelsea and that the team was not going to be good in the years to come. I asked him what he thought I should do. Stevie told me not to go, never to leave Liverpool. But he realised too I had to do what was best for me; he understood that my situation and his were different. These were words from the best captain.

“I know that Stevie was devastated when I left. I was as well, in some ways. I remember the flight from Liverpool to London. I did not know what to feel. I was not happy, I was not angry; I was empty. I was on a helicopter and it was getting dark, flying over Liverpool below. I began to feel sad. I was so happy there, so, so happy…

“After a few weeks, I went back to Liverpool to get my stuff. My son was born in Liverpool. Usually, the house would be busy and he’d be greeting me at the door. But the house was silent. That was hard too.”

Torres struggles to describe his emotions when he made his debut for Chelsea the following weekend against Liverpool. He performed that day as if he did not want to be there.

“To play against Liverpool was never something I liked,” he admits. “There were so many memories and feelings. The reaction of the fans was something I expected but it was still too much for me. I did not react in a good way. Again, it was so, so hard.”

His mind drifts to a game at Anfield in 2014 when victory for Liverpool would have put them two more wins away from the club’s first league title in 24 years. Steven Gerrard slipped, enabling Demba Ba to score Chelsea’s opener, and in injury time Torres — sent on as a substitute — raced through on goal.

He could have made it 2–0 but elected to pass to Willian. During the course of this interview, it is the only question he dodges: the one where I suggest it seems as though he could not contemplate scoring, that he couldn’t bear to stop Liverpool achieving a feat he never accomplished with them.

“That was the toughest day,” he prefers to say. “I felt so sorry for Stevie and for Liverpool. [They] were so close and really deserved to win the league. If they had won, I think Liverpool would have created history. What a moment for the city. It was so hard seeing the people in the stands. I still feel the same way for them. No matter what has happened, I still love them. I know some of them are still angry but it will not change how I feel for them. Atlético is my club but I still support Liverpool and I want them to win every game, every trophy.”

He explains that he has wished for the platform to speak freely about Liverpool for some time. Being a Chelsea player made that impossible.

“Liverpool is unique. It is different to Atlético, for example,” he continues. “I’m from here and I love Atlético because my heart is here. But as a club, at Liverpool I felt at home even though I was not from there. The relationship between the workers, the people in the offices, the people around the team and the fans – it is special.

“I never felt at Chelsea or even at Atlético the same way I did at Liverpool. At Liverpool, they made me feel like a king. I really felt like I could do anything. I remember playing my first game at Anfield. Pepe [Reina] came and said, ‘Look at the atmosphere – this is where you need to be. You do not get this at Atlético.’ After the game, I told Pepe that I thought I could score in every single game at Anfield. As soon as I stepped on to the pitch: goals. I was flying. Not only because I was the best age to play football but also because of the atmosphere around the club. It was magic.”

Torres admits he reacts better when the energy towards him is positive. At Liverpool, he felt adoration. At Chelsea, he felt the need to justify a huge price tag while not being fully fit. Remorse about the manner of his departure from Liverpool lingered. From being arguably the deadliest striker on the planet for Liverpool, he was never able to reach the same level. Behind the eyes he instead appeared dead.

“Right now I do not think that winning trophies is more important than being happy. I have realised that winning the Champions League [as he did with Chelsea in 2012], it does not change how you feel every day. I have realised the target should not be the main thing in your life; taking life day by day is key.

“When I was at Chelsea, I did not start well for a few reasons. We won almost everything I wanted to win. But maybe that was not enough for me. I was missing playing with Stevie and I missed playing for Liverpool. I thought a lot about the games with the team we had, fighting together. It really means something to me. It is something I found again at Atlético: a team together. Maybe we don’t have huge names but we are a team that competes and enjoys every victory. It does not matter who scores the goal, it does not matter if at the end we cannot win, because at least we are doing something with our hearts.”

I suggest to Torres that it suits him to play for a club where there is a common cause, one that is not viewed as a representative of an establishment, like Real Madrid or, perhaps, Chelsea because they are from London.

“It is the most difficult thing in life: to choose the right moment at the right time to be in the right place,” he says. “If you can find a club that suits you in everything, then it’s going to be great, but getting there is a big challenge. You don’t really know a club until you are there. And then it’s too late to go back.”

This prompts me to come out and ask him: “Fernando, do you regret moving to Chelsea?”

“No, because I won,” he insists. “That is what I wanted at that time. I had not won anything before, only promotion with Atlético and nothing with Liverpool despite a promising situation. The reason to move was to win trophies. And I did. It is silly to regret something you wanted. But maybe you realise it does not bring you contentment.”

Then he offers a different strand of thought.

“There are some questions journalists don’t ask me in interviews,” he continues. “I see Stevie leaving to go to the MLS — it was his decision. I thought, how great would it have been for Stevie to finish his career at Liverpool, like Totti at Roma? Maybe I should have done that here at Atlético. From the outside, you become a player to admire forever. Everyone will always remember you as the one that stayed. Sometimes I think I should never have moved from Atlético — never. Maybe the team would have got better with me there, maybe they would still have won the trophies they won when I was not around. Now I would be nearly 32 — all my career at one club, winning trophies and having the respect of everyone. What could be better?

“But then I think I would never change my time in Liverpool. I needed to move. I found something great, special and different. It was my happiest time as a player. To feel the love of a community where you haven’t grown up — it is hard for me to describe what this meant to me.

“I was hungry, though. I wanted trophies. When you are younger, many people are motivated by success. This was me at that moment: the next step was winning. I wanted it to be at Liverpool. But the circumstances changed.

“Chelsea was not good from the beginning, though. I did not find a team that suited me on the pitch. [There was a] good organisation [off it] but the different personality [of the team] was not for me, even though I got what I wanted [by winning trophies].

“I tried in Italy with AC Milan but that was not for me either. Then I had the chance to come back to Atlético — to really enjoy every day even if I was not playing on a regular basis like I used to. I am enjoying what I’m doing. And that is more important.”

Having returned to Anfield for a charity game in honour of Steven Gerrard and Jamie Carragher in 2015, the crowd cheered when Torres’s name was read out across the public address system, suggesting time has healed some old wounds.

The song broke out: “His armband proved he was a Red, Torres, Torres / You’ll Never Walk Alone it read, Torres, Torres / We bought the lad from sunny Spain / He gets the ball and scores again, Fernando Torres, Liverpool’s Number 9!”

“Maybe this was the happiest moment of the last five years for me,” he considers, a smile stretching across his face. “In my last game there with Chelsea, I was booed. It was depressing. To go and hear my song again, to see the reaction of the fans — it makes me feel I am at peace now. I know I broke their hearts and in some way my heart was also broken. To have my last memory of Anfield as this one…I am so, so lucky.”

Torres is intelligent, introspective, sensitive and somewhat repentant. He queries the choices he has made. He does it here frequently without the need for questions. When listening to his words, there might appear to be an ambiguity to some of his conclusions. At the very end of our discussion, he makes a point of revisiting one particular subject without request.

“In my last full season with Liverpool, I had a problem in my knee,” he reveals. “It stopped me playing and training at my best. I wanted to play in the World Cup and I was on crutches two months before the tournament started. I was so desperate, and I made it into the squad. But I was not playing well, because I could not bend my knee. Then I got injured again in the final and if you look at the pictures, you can see the pain.

“For a long time after that, I did not feel the same. Sometimes you want something so much you do not make the right decisions. I became a world champion but was it worth it? I don’t know.

“Was it the right decision to think about moving away from Liverpool to Chelsea, where the chance to win trophies was greater at that time? I don’t know.”

It is then you realise that only by looking into his dark, inky eyes can the truth really be revealed.

© Simon Hughes 2017. Extracted from Ring of Fire: Liverpool FC into the 21st Century – The Players’ Stories by Simon Hughes, published by Bantam Press. Out in paperback tomorrow (Thursday, April 20). Order now.

The post Torres Reveals Reasons For Departure appeared first on Kopfans.

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[thepoolscene]

The Pool Scene - Alex Pagulayan, Billy Thorpe, Mika Immonen, Thorsten Hohmann - World Pool Billiard

New Post on http://thepoolscene.com/?p=21379

THERE’S A NEW KID IN TOWN--Day 2 Report from the Molinari Players Championship

20 year old American Billy Thorpe upsets two world champions to storm into the final 16 at the Molinari Player’s Championship in New York City. 

American Billy Thorpe erupts in joy after winning a round of 32 shootout against Alex Pagulayan.

By Ted LernerWPS Media Officer

Photos By JP Parmentier/WPS

(New York City)–For several years up through 2015, Billy Thorpe made a name for himself on the American pool scene as a dashing young talent with a hot stroke who dared to play—and win– ridiculously high stakes money games. Then in 2016 the then 19 year old decided he wanted to transition into being a real pro, and for the last year he has slugged it out with the big boys in tournaments big and small, attracting attention from pool fans eagerly looking for the next great American player.

Thorpe did create some noise in 2016, but history will surely show that it was in New York City  on a cold Sunday in January, 2017, when the brash Dayton, Ohio native truly arrived as a professional, and stamped his mark as possibly that next great American pool player.

Playing with a panache and heart that belied his years, the now 20 year old Thorpe created one of the biggest stories of the first 8-ball event of the four-tournament World Pool Series, by taking down two world champions and barging into the final 16 of the Molinari Players Championship.

In a round of 64 TV table match, Thorpe played marvelously in defeating heavily favored three-time world English 8-ball champion Mick Hill, 13-11. Then, in the final 32, Thorpe roared back from an 11-8 deficit to tie former World 9-ball Champion Alex Pagulayan, 12-12. The young American then dramatically won the match by sinking all five shots in the thrilling shootout to advance to the final 16 on Monday.

Within moments Thorpe, who has been playing pool since he was three years old when his dad would let him walk on top of the family pool table and slap balls, had become nothing short of mini-sensation inside the packed Steinway Billiards in Queens, accepting congratulations from fans and posing for photos. The good looking and infectiously excitable American had become an instant hit, and he relished every moment of it.

“These wins tonight really opened my eyes a little bit for me,” Thorpe said. “I’ve worked hard. I’m always at tournaments and I’m always playing. I knew I could hang with these guys but I was always making too many mistakes and that would cost me against these players. So I’m trying to minimize my mistakes and take advantage if they make a mistake.

“I’m playing by far the best pool of my life. I’m really happy with my game. I’m grinding every shot, trying to keep nerves down, taking it ball by ball, playing my heart out like I always do.

“It means a lot. Hopefully I’m going to be on their level one day, be a world champion myself. I love that pressure. I love that adrenalin. I love being out there playing with these guys.”

American Earl Strickland kept his hopes alive with two wins on Sunday.

  Thorpe’s feats were just one part of brilliant and long day of hardcore 8-ball at the highest levels on Sunday as the Molinari Players Championship moved into the money rounds. The day began at 10am with 64 players and ended past midnight with just 16 players remaining. These 16 represent the full spectrum of some of pool’s great talents, from legends and world champions, to up-and-comers like Thorpe, and from nearly all corners of the globe. On Monday all matches will become a bit longer and turn to winner breaks, and will see the field cut to four. The champion will be crowned on Tuesday evening.

The Philippines is not normally known as an 8-ball playing country. But the Filipinos love of 15 ball rotation seems to serve them well in a heavy traffic game like 8-ball and the four Pinoys remaining in the event have looked exceptionally strong.  Former World 8-ball Champion Dennis Orcollo breezed into the final 16 with two easy wins today and his positive demeanor bodes well for the veteran. After coming back to defeat American Frankie Hernandez, Lee Vann Corteza headed to the TV table where he turned on the gas and defeated talented Greek Nikos Ekonomopoulos.  The exciting and good looking Johann Chua looked unflappable with two wins. Carlo Biado also played rock solid today, and his round of 32 win against very tough Englishman Mark Gray proved that the young Filipino has the goods to go all the way.

Mick Hill’s and Gray’s loss aside, the British lads had a terrific outing on Sunday and it’s clear that their English 8-ball background will serve them very well here in New York. White hot Jayson Shaw continued his winning ways with two victories today. Karl Boyes gutted out a nice come from behind over Taiwan’s Lo Li Wen to advance. Multi-world champion and event promoter Darren Appleton notched two wins to stay alive. And former two time English 8-ball world champion Chris Melling also won two to make it to day 3.

Multi-world champion Thorsten Hohmann of Germany won two matches on Sunday to secure his spot in the final 16.

Melling hasn’t played American pool in two years after quitting the game and selling his cue to join the World Snooker tour where he achieved a ranking of 76. But when his good friend Appleton asked him to play on his new 8-ball tour, Melling answered the call and came to New York.

Playing with a mix and match cue, the super talented Melling engaged in a brilliant match with Spain’s David Alcaide in the round of 32. The pair slugged it out in a highly entertaining affair with Melling coming back to squeak past the Spaniard, 13-11.

When he’s on, Melling can be positively electrifying on the table, taking daring shots that no other player would even think of. He claims he’s playing without confidence, but those who watched him play on Sunday certainly saw flashes of his brilliance that could surely carry the Englishman to the winner’s circle.

“Because I’ve been out of the game for two or three years,” Melling said, “I think it’s important to play the really good players. I’m not frightened of anybody. I don’t care about reputations because I know what I can do on the table. If I concentrate on my own game, it doesn’t matter what anyone else does because I’m in control of my game. When you let other people get in your head, that’s when you lose. So I’ve got to take each game as it comes.

“I actually feel like I’m playing bad. In my head I think I’m going to miss every shot I’m playing. And that’s just a lack of confidence because I haven’t been playing. Normally I’m probably the most confident guy in pool and that’s because at one point I was winning everything. But then when you lose a few matches and things don’t go your way, you start questioning your ability, your cue action, am I jumping up on the shot. You don’t know what you’re doing. It’s just nice to win even when you don’t feel good.”

Finnish Hall of Famer Mika Immonen came from behind then won a dramatic shootout against Filipino veteran Ramil Gallego to advance to the last 16.

Some more names in the final 16 represent a who’s who of pool heavyweights from the past generation. Germany’s  two legends,Thorsten Hohmann and Ralf Souquet, made it through. So too did the USA’s Hall of Famer Earl Strickland. Another Hall of Famer, Mika Immonen had to come from back from a deep deficit to tie Filipino veteran Ramil Gallego, then promptly won the dramatic shootout to secure his place in the final 16.

Also advancing to the final 16 were Russia’s Ruslan Chinakov, Greece’ Alexander Kazakis and Japan’s Naoyuki Oi.

The round of 16 begins at 2:30pm Monday at Steinway Billiards. (GMT -5). The quarterfinals will begin at 8:30pm.

The semi-finals and finals will take place on Tuesday.

All matches through to the semi-final will now be winner breaks and race to 15. The final will be winner breaks and race to 16.

The winner of the Molinari Player’s Championship will receive $20,000.

*The first event of the World Pool Series, The Molinari Players Championship, takes place at Steinway Billiards in Astoria, Queens, New York City from January 14-17, 2017. The World Pool Series is sponsored by Molinari, Predator, Cheqio, RYO Rack, Aramith, Iwan Simonis, Kamui, Billiards Digest, Ultimate Team Gear, and High Rock.

For more information on the live stream, please visit the official website of the World Pool Series at http://www.worldpoolseries.com/Complete online brackets and live scoring can be found here:  https://cuescore.com/tournament/WPS+1st+series+-+Molinari+Players+Championship/1286018

The World Pool Series is on Facebook at: https://www.facebook.com/worldpoolseries/

Final 16Jan. 16, 20172:30 PM, EST(GMT-5)

Jayson Shaw  (GBR) vs. Johann Chua (PHL)Chris Melling (GBR) vs. Ralf Souquet (GER)

Thorsten Hohmann (GER) vs. Karl Boyes (GBR)Ruslan Chinahov (RUS) vs. Alex Kazakis (GRE)

Carlo Biado (PHL) vs   Naoyuki Oi (JPN)Lee Van Corteza (PHL) vs.Mika Immonen (FIN)

Darren Appleton (GBR) vs. Earl Strickland (USA)Dennis Orcollo (PHL) vs. Billy Thorpe (USA)

#Alex Pagulayan #Billy Thorpe #Mika Immonen #Thorsten Hohmann