#and being so desperate for the doctor in a different kind of unhinged way that's like ONLY used on women is so vile | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

transingthoseformers · 4 months

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I wanted to tell someone else about this, and I feel like I haven't poked your ask box in a while. Hi Riot!

I am currently gnawing on a very juicy idea of Pharma as a Scavenger. Though it is unofficial at first.

Basically, his storyline has similar beats but changed. Still the opening with Tarn starting to blackmail him and the slow growth of demands he can at first meet with general stock and natural death. But Tarn escalates the numbers, and his terrible behavior and Pharma is caged in.

On the terrible day he is thinking of letting a patient slip away he hears his staff talking about black market organ market and Ambulon admitting yes, Swindle partook sometimes but Decepticons mainly got theirs from Scavenger teams and command turned the other way if the sold extra.

So Pharma goes looking and finds the Scavengers.

He starts paying them to provide tcogs, and they figure way not. Life is expensive, and they aren't being used. It takes them a while to realize their best client is an Autobot when Pharma is forced to meet in person and is very aggressive with them. But even if he is an ass and an Autobot, he pays good.

The first meeting is basically that meme of have a good day/fuck you/damn actually hope your day gets worse.

Pharma keeps meeting them coming more and more unhinged because Tarn is pushing in different ways when his stressball isn't breaking as expected and Pharma is having to adjust. Misfire makes the mistake of touching him at the wrong moment, and Pharma proceeds to have a very messy breakdown in the WAP because he feels scrubbed raw inside from secrets and having had a "house call" from Tarn the day before. Krok talks him down, and they Scavengers, who'd kind of assumed he was a transmute addict get the whole story out of him in between Pharma, throwing them hateful barbs.

Misfire, with perfect tact, says, "damn that's fragged up" which makes Pharma laugh wetly.

Krok, meanwhile, is furious at the "extracurricular entertainment," a phrase Tarn used, and Pharma spat out. Blackmailing someone to get supplies is one thing, but the more Pharma tells him about the interworkings of the DJD, which were a semi myth until now, the more disgusted Krok is.

The Scavengers make a point to be nicer to their doctor and check in on him during their deals, and Pharma softens a bit as they get to know him and offer comfort and a place he can share the burden. They are essentially saving his patients each time and Spinister gets very good at tcog extraction.

But this is hanging on by a thread, and all know something has to give. Crankcase is the one who finally says, "How would you kill him?" The Scavengers and Pharma start plotting to murder the DJD even if it half in jest because as they point out, Misfire gives them a target on their back.

Pharma has Red Rust ready as a late night musing with Spinister that leads Misfire to asking, "So, uh, are we going to kill the DJD...?" and no one knows what to say.

Eventually, though, they get delayed calling Pharma to tell him Misfire was taken by the Galactic Council. He uses his connections to assist so they find him faster, but they are still delayed. Pharma needs one more tcog. Pharma, after seven years of careful control, lets a patient slip away, and it breaks him.

He desperately uses the plague to escape and leave a trap for Tarn if he comes calling. Things go down the same-ish with him disassociated half the time. The only difference is while he is weeping rust he messages the Scavengers to warn them to not come he's dying and the plague is active. Spinister of course already made it too and innoculated them one day going through and stabbing everyone with no explanation so they book it. They get there in time to see Pharma get abducted and follow Tyrest back to the moon.

They proceed to stalk it out and get Fulcrum to sneak in as a spy joining Lockdown's gang to get info and learn about Pharma being used as a lab rat and the Kill Switch and plot save the CCs. Then, of course, the Lost Light shows up to ruin it. Krok activates the plan early, which makes things more chaotic as he smuggle Misfire and Spinister in to talk to Pharma, who is having a breakdown over Ratchet. They have a very emotional reunion, and Misfire hugs him and tells him he they've got new hands for him. Pharma has a breakdown crying because someone remembered him and came for him, and Misfire calls him their Autobot while Ratchet, who is a spine, watches confused. Pharma is considerably more stable and reluctantly tells Spinister to fix Ratchet. He does and keeps Pharma's hands and leaves Ratchet handless until he finds Ratchet’s hands in the Lost Light's medivay–for some reason I think Iremember the initial confrontation there and then them moving to the Luna-1 maybe I'm wrong–and casually fixes them before reattaching Ratchet's good as new hands and giving Pharma his back.

They go to destroy the Kill Switch, but Misfire has initiated hug protocol, so Pharma is being switched off from Scavenger to Scavenger seriously, so he's never not being hugged.

They find Krok and Rodimus arguing. Misfire shoves Pharma into Fulcrum's arms introducing him as the new guy, and Fulcrum awkwardly hugs him, which makes Pharma laugh as they make small talk. Pharma helps them disarm it without Rodimus dying refusing to make eye contact with the medics while Fulcrum awkwardly hold one hand as a compromise.

The Scavengers inform Pharma he is coming with them because he's one of them and he starts crying.

The Scavengers have a big group hug with Pharma crying into his–his–hands in the middle of a Decepticon plus Grimlock group hug. Minimus tries to make something of it, but the Scavengers all pull guns for their Autobot, and Rodimus makes the executive decision to let it go since they just saved the day together. Minimus and First Aid grumble and Pharma throws his Autobrand at them saying they can take this as his formal defection before Crankcase picks him up in a bear hig to prevent violence.

Ambulon insists on a goodbye and says he's sorry and thank you for Pharma trying to protect them. Misfire finally remembers his name which is the one before he was called Ambulon and goes "Wait, Thunderclash?!" Ambulon dies a littke because there was a reason he changed it. And the Scavengers exit stage left. Though Misfire shows that he might have pocketed something and it's half the Matrix which he presents to Pharma as compensation. Pharma laughs.

Oooooo???

Makes sense in another verse he'd resort to outside sources for his t-cogs, and ooo that they don't know he's an autobot until they finally meet him, which has gotta create crunchy first reactions

Makes sense the Scavs would be seeing Pharma's mental state worsen because Tarn being a bastard, and i like to think they have severe opinions on that (especially since it's the D-J-fucking-D we're talking about here)

Aaand yep they do, nice to see Krok kinda cares

"Are we going to kill the DJD?" One hell of a question because that's not easy to do

"Spinister no" "Spinister yes"

"Oh scrap, he's got our guy!" I feel like we as a fandom do not dwell on Pharma's time with Tyrest enough, like. Yes, Tarn & Delphi traumatized him pretty good. But so did Tyrest, and we as a fandom need to chew on the Tyrest arc more.

The LL and the WAP meeting a lot earlier than in canon has gotta have funny moments

Spinister would totally be able to fix Ratchet's hands

shsggd that's sooo sweet

He issss he isss a Scavenger now

Misfire pocketed what

#maccadam #transformers #mtmte scavengers #mtmte pharma #mtmte rodimus #decepticon justice division #mtmte minimus ambus #mtmte ambulon #mtmte tarn #mtmte first aid

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regenderate · 1 year

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Say more about Rose and Yaz, I think you're onto something

I'M RIGHT. THIS IS THE THING. I'M RIGHT. like i don't know i feel so deranged sometimes but i literally am right. (and also who cares if i'm deranged it's doctor who fanfiction and i'm having a good time)

i mean okay so like full disclosure i've written extensive fanfiction with a number of different rose&/yaz relationship dynamics. at some point last year i had a real unhinged spiral about parallels between the two (uhh i have a post about it here. i don't really think thirteen was written that way on purpose anymore though, i was a lot more optimistic about the specials when i wrote that).

but like... okay so of course i'm deeply attached to both of them as individual characters. but my interest in their dynamic i guess started as just... noticing that yaz fits the same archetype as rose (19-year-old woman, bored with her job, meets the doctor, falls in love) and wanting them to meet and talk about being with the doctor. and then my unhinged spiral last year ended with me being like "okay so they both spend their early 20's looking desperately for the doctor. what if they met during that time." and at that point i didn't really ship them romantically, but i thought that just by virtue of both being in love with the doctor, they would each understand something really fundamental about the other, and between that and just being really really lonely/touch starved they would find a connection.

but then it's like... okay so like. rose is really emotionally intelligent and open. i would consider that to be one of her main character traits. and she expresses her attraction openly too, for the most part. like it takes her a long time to verbalize her love for the doctor, but you can see it in everything she does. and yaz is a lot more reserved/repressed in that area. so putting rose into the equation helps her open up, helps her relax a little bit, and also forces her to express herself, because rose will straight-up be like "so you're in love with the doctor" and then yaz has to deal with the fact that yes she is very in love with the doctor.

and then i think in a lot of ways i see yaz as very steady. like of course she and rose will both run into danger at a moment's notice, they are doctor enjoyers, but i think yaz has sort of a logic to her that i think makes her very stable specifically for rose, if that makes sense. and like i think she's also very emotionally intelligent but in a very different way. so like she's someone rose can rely on for support, she's good in a crisis, etc.

and they give each other a level of understanding that she really needs from someone-- yaz sort of gets that from dan, but like… like do you ever think about how rose and yaz both canonically ran away from home as teenagers? i think about it. i think they have a lot in common that they don't necessarily get from anywhere else. like i just feel like they see each other in a way neither of them is necessarily used to. and they can be open with each other in a way they kind of can't be with anyone else, up to and including the doctor, because with the doctor (and to be clear i do hardcore ship both of them with the doctor) there's still this sense of uncertainty, like they don't know where they stand, they don't know whether or not the doctor even does romance like a human, etc, and there's this sort of barrier (i mean also like. the doctorrose is gay meta is relevant here too, because part of why that barrier exists is that the doctor does soooo much repression). but with each other they can express themselves, and there's a lot they just understand without expressing it.

and then also i think it does give them both space to exist without the doctor/outside of the doctor. which of course they can do without being shipped with anyone (one reason i love the rose tyler dimension cannon audios is they showcase rose's character and growth without the doctor), but like both rose and yaz are so strongly associated with the doctor that i think it's fun too to step back and say "yeah that's cool but what about this other dynamic?"

of course with doctor who there are so many different dynamics to explore, and honestly i find most of them to be really fascinating. like you can put any two characters in a room and i will find something to go full unhinged blorbo brain about. but of course rose and yaz are both really dear to me as characters and i think about them often. separately and together. and i do maintain that they stabilize each other in a really interesting (and arguably healthy) way.

if you are. interested. i am going to link a few of my fics too that explore their dynamic/illustrate my personal thought progression. i feel like linking my own fic here comes off as insufferably self-centered but like the fact is if you want me to say more you might be thrilled to hear i have already said like tens of thousands of words in fic form. and i think too it's something that like... it's easiest to explain by just. showing examples of how i think their dynamic could play out naturally. i guess because when i first say "yaz/rose" i feel like it sounds like it comes out of nowhere but if you put them both in a story and give it enough buildup i think it's easier to understand? but of course then i have to convince people to read tens of thousands of words of fanfiction about it. anyway:

this is the first one where i was like. yeah yaz and rose should meet and possibly be friends

this is the one where i was like... okay yeah they'd be friends but let's see if thasmin and thirteenrose can exist in the same space (spoiler alert They Can)

this is the one i wrote after my super unhinged brainrot where they meet while yaz is stranded in edwardian era and rose is dimension hopping

this is not the first thirteenyazrose i published but it is the first thirteenyazrose i wrote. it's also part of the series in which i established disabled rose but that's... a different post.

this is the human au i'm currently posting weekly in which i have yaz and rose already knowing each other long before they meet the doctor. i have another au with similar dynamics but it's nowhere near being ready to post, i just rotate it in my mind every so often.

so yeah that's all. thank you so much for sending me this ask i literally could rotate them in my mind forever. like. i really really could. blorbos

#doctor who #meta #lifeblogs #literally like i would have elaborated on my own but i feel so much less silly about it if other people are asking me

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thistexanlife · 2 years

Text

On Waves (Both Kinds).

Dear friends,

I have this memory from high school, from a long-ago era without smartphones or distractions in third period Calculus (how was I ever so able to cope with boredom??), of this app on my graphing calculator called "Biorhythms." In my memory, a boy I had a crush on put it on my calculator for me, but I did some digging, and it seems like high school graphing calculators just came with the program? At any rate: it was a black and white calculator, so there wasn't any explanation provided about what it was or how it worked, really—you just plugged in your birthdate and the current date, and it would trace out these three smooth sine waves: P, E, and l. (You get why it was on a graphing calculator yet?)

I've been reading about it again recently, and I guess the theory was that you have these different upswings and downswings in your life, and sometimes they all line up neatly in little peaks and valleys, but mostly they sort of swing back and forth across each other, one or two up, the other down, all three passing in the middle, back and forth in perpetuity. (Side note: what an unhinged way to teach children about trigonometry.) It sounds kind of plausible, until you learn that the whole theory was created by a German doctor in the 1800s who called the emotional cycle the "female" cycle and for some reason also advocated for a surgery to "sever the link between the nose and the genitals," and you're like, okay, I kind of get why some people don't believe in science.

Honestly, my Instagram explore page has been FULL of fake stuff like this lately: biorhythms, manifestation, weird bogus tweets from celebrities. It has kind of felt like my feed has been saying to me: I don't know, girl, you seem desperate and you've tapped on every therapy post I've shown you. Maybe this is what you need next? Maybe you'll find the answers you're looking for here? Sometimes I have half-expected to get one of those stock banners across my screen: Help is available. Speak with someone today. (In case it needs to be said, I'm okay, and I've got a therapist who has grown on me—I just wonder if my algorithms wonder otherwise.)

I think what I’m getting at is that I feel like if biorhythms were real, then I think I'd be at an inflection point on my chart, i.e., at the very tippy bottom of a short-term curve but towards the tippy top of a different, much longer-term curve. After nearly two years of life being so restricted (staying home entirely, refreshing the New York Times Covid-19 case counts every morning, skipping and cancelling plans and traditions, feeling anxious about every in-person interaction, feeling anxious about talking about every in-person interaction, having conversations about feeling anxious about every in-person interaction, blah blah, you get it, you were on this planet for it, too), 2022 has felt like such a gigantic upswing the likes of which I haven't seen for a long time. It feels a little like freshman year of college; everybody's been cramped for a while and is looking to do a big stretch to shake it off.

(I'm simplifying a lot here; if there were an "Economic" biorhythm for the past year or two I think mine might look a bit like something called Torsades de Pointes, and I think a "Professional" one might look more like this, but for whatever reason, Dr. Fliess didn't see fit to include those domains in the project. Maybe he got distracted chasing that nasogenital connection. Truly, we'll never know.)

So, like, have I cried probably 20 times in the past week? I mean, I haven't exactly been counting, but sure, that sounds like a reasonable estimate. But in between, I've also found a couple of moments of immense peace and gratitude, the kind of moments where it's so easy to lean back in my chair and laugh and think about the present and the future and think, fuck, I have so much to be grateful for. (I have also found a few of these moments through some grounding techniques [highly recommend for my anxious friends], but I swear sometimes they've come on their own.)

It’s possible I’m cracking a little (recent Google search: "hypomania self test"), but I think my brain is just doing its best to make sense of 200 different things at once and get me through a really difficult time. I also wonder if this might be what the very beginning of healing looks like. I also know I'm both too close to the circumstances and also too early into them to know if either of those things are true.

I feel like I’m just at the very tail end of something, and maybe I have been for a long time, and I’ve been so desperate to hold onto that tail end and not let go, to squeeze it longer and longer and narrower and narrower like a taffy puller, that I’ve been totally blind to the beginning of anything else that could have been right around the corner. Not necessarily something better, but, you know. Something else. A few years ago, my job felt very much on the chopping block, and I would always make this joke about just being a string quartet member on the Titanic, playing Nearer, My God, to Thee until the boat sank into the Atlantic Ocean. (You know what scene I mean; don't watch it if you're at the bottom of your emotional curve like me. Also, let's go ahead and update that estimate above to 21 times.) I've very often said I never know when is the right time to move on, and I think it's okay to forgive myself for being that way, but I also know that in the end, I still need to know how to set down that violin in time to make it to a lifeboat. (It's 2022; they have to be legally required to have room for men on one of them, right?)

Anyway, I think that's nearly enough about me, even on a blog that has nearly always and entirely been about me. Something I know is true (but have a very hard time adhering to) is the principle that the more I focus my energy and kindness outward, the more full of it I'll feel. There are so many places to aim this fire hose... just gotta figure out where.

(One last thing: I still think and know 100% that biorhythms are totally bunk and fake and meaningless. Just interesting to note mine today...)

···

With love, and gratitude, and a few good tools for managing anxiety,

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robininthelabyrinth · 3 years

Text

Targets - ao3

- Chapter 6 -

“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Mistress Wen,” the boy with the gentle smile who called himself Meng Yao said, bowing. “I’ve heard so much about you.”

Wen Qing did not especially want to talk to – anyone, really, but she really didn’t want to talk, least of all, to a boy some seven years her junior, from another sect with everything that entailed. But just over his shoulder, she could see that Wen Ning was smiling, his cheeks almost bulging with the force of it, as he spoke with the other children, making friends for the first time in his life, and she supposed it was in her best interest to make friends as well.

“I’m not planning on staying, you know,” she told him, just in case, and he nodded agreeably. “I’m a prisoner of war.”

A very comfortable prisoner of war. Who may or may not have put up very little fuss about getting captured when her supposedly secure carriage escort had gotten raided by the Nie sect, especially when their sect leader had recognized her by sight on first meeting and bowed politely instead of taking her head off at once as she might have expected. He’d even asked after her brother’s health – Wen Ruohan hadn’t done that once in the entire time she’d known him, and still less after he’d abruptly gone mad.

And he had, in fact, gone mad.

There was no other way to explain his behavior.

One day he’d been fine, scheming and vicious and narcissistic the way she’d always known he was but also cautious and thoughtful, set upon a slow and inexorable scheme of domination that would see him eventually claim all that he desired, and the next moment he was – very nearly unhinged. He saw himself as the rightful master of the cultivation world, just as he always had, except now it was as if he had had safely it in the palm of his hand and then had it snatched away from him, rather than anticipating a future prize to be eventually savored; he was frustrated and so, so angry, lashing out at all around him.

His sons had loved the idea of attacking the other sects – Wen Xu was old enough to plan out battles, the son of Sect Leader Wen’s previous wife, while Wen Chao, who was still young but old enough to tear off the limbs of small creatures, couldn’t wait to torment the children that had shown him up in achievements, stealing the accolades that he viewed as belonging to him.

They were still young, she’d told herself, and didn’t know better, could still be educated into something like kindness and compassion, but she’d also known that that wouldn’t help them if the other sects defeated theirs - that was the problem with war like this, where there was no room for mercy. What idiot would permit them to live long enough to seek vengeance for their clan?

What idiot would allow her and Wen Ning to live, assuming the same would be true for them?

As a result, Wen Qing had been much less enthusiastic about the whole project, although after her uncle had made an example of the few generals that dared to protest his decisions she was very quiet about her lack of enthusiasm. It didn’t mean she agreed with anything he was doing – that wasn’t new, she hadn’t agreed with anything he was doing for years now, but she’d gotten used to closing her eyes and shutting her ears, but nowadays it was much worse than before. He was acting as though he’d already finished all his carefully-laid plans – the ones he’d previously recognized were necessary as a foundation for the strike he would be ready to make in five or ten years, the one-shot-kill domination of the cultivation world – and nothing, seemingly, could be done to convince him otherwise.

Not even the risk to his precious sons.

The Fire Palace was full of new people, and new things, too, and if Wen Qing ever found out what sick, twisted mind had come up with those torture machines…

“Of course you’re a prisoner, Mistress Wen,” Meng Yao said smoothly. “I am merely acting as a prison guard. Would you like some lunch? Or a bath, or some rest…?”

She narrowed her eyes at him. “You’re not a servant,” she said. “Your clothing is too fine for that.”

“I’m a disciple of the Nie sect, a new one,” Meng Yao said, and she thought he almost sounded surprised about that. “That doesn’t mean that I can’t see to your comfort.”

Wen Qing looked again at Wen Ning, who was now being lured onto the training field and a bow pressed into his hand by excited youngsters. His cheeks were bright red, a sure sign that someone was complimenting him – probably the Wei boy, the Jiang sect’s ward, who was waving his hands around very enthusiastically as if he were trying to sell Wen Ning whole and entire, clothing and crown thrown in for free. The other children seemed just as enthusiastic, though, excluding perhaps the Lan sect’s second young master who mostly just looked harassed but continued to linger as if he were hoping for even more harassment.

It seemed…exhausting.

“A bath would be nice,” she said, giving in with a sigh and wishing, not for the first time, that she wasn’t one of the oldest of her generation. Wen Xu was older, yes, but he obviously wasn’t here, and most of the Nie sect that were her age would be away to war soon enough if they weren’t already. She foresaw a great deal of babysitting in her future. “And then, perhaps, a conversation with some relevant individual to pass along important battle information that I definitely wouldn’t have access to, being a humble and unimportant doctor?”

Meng Yao grinned at her.

“Oh, I think something like that can be arranged,” he said cheerfully. Probably more than he would be if he knew half the information she had to offer was completely insane – for example, her uncle had gotten terribly fixated on demonic cultivation of late, claiming that it would allow a single man to take down a battalion, except he had no idea how to make any of it work. She hoped he never figured it out. “The more the merrier here, Wen-jiejie, and I think we’re all of the opinion that the sooner this war is over, the better. Wouldn’t you say?”

“You’re not the only one who thinks so,” Wen Qing said tartly, not sure if she appreciated the intimacy or not. At least it boded well for her future survival, and Wen Ning’s... “Part of my uncle’s insanity has been his – quite frankly – ridiculous conviction that he needs to kill all of you specifically before you, and I quote, ‘threaten to shoot down the sun’.”

What madman would target the sun?

Maybe they should, though, she thought, and not as unwillingly as she’d always believed she’d be if it ever came down to it. Wen Ruohan might be her uncle, her patron, the one who pulled her up into the sky, and she’d always been resigned to the fact that if he was shot down, so would she; the knowledge had paralyzed her, forced her to be indifferent to his crimes. But the Nie sect was treating her as if she were still Dafan Wen, just different enough to be left out of the dirty water Qishan Wen was splashing all over her surname – through war, through domination, through the attempted kidnapping and murder of lots of innocent children...

Maybe it would be good for him to understand what it’s like to be made a target.

“I like that,” an unexpected voice behind her said – it was the Nie sect leader again, looking unusually boyish without his war-armor and with a smile on his face instead of a scowl. She abruptly wondered how old he was, and how much he’d suffered collaterally when it had been his father who’d been the target instead of her uncle; it hadn’t been something she’d thought much about before. “If there was ever a need to shoot the sun down, it’s now, with Wen Ruohan equating himself for it…it’s like aiming at kite flying in the sky that’s in desperate need of deflating. We could call the war the Sunshot Campaign.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Wen Qing couldn’t help but scoff. “What’s the likelihood that something like that catching on?”

#mdzs #wen qing #meng yao #jin guangyao #nie mingjue #my fic #my fics #targets

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giorno-plays-piano · 3 years

Text

Lovers End Part 5

Pairing: Bucky Barnes x Reader

Warnings: yandere, obsession, emotional abuse, threats, PTSD, minor depiction of violence, allusion to non-con, toxic reader and unhinged Bucky, death of minor characters.

Words: 1318.

Summary: Your marriage is falling apart, and you're done trying to save it when all your spineless husband does is crying at night when he thinks you can't hear him. Little do you know how horrifying Bucky can be.

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

P.S. It's not me, it's magnificent @navegandoaciegas and her awesome ideas! Also inspired by TDDUP VN!

____________

Once you finished with the vacuum, you locked yourself in the bathroom with Bucky’s diary in your hands - it was the only place where you could bolt the door. Besides, he could hardly hear you crying from there.

His writing was becoming more and more chaotic: soon he had stopped keeping the dates, and all of it became some kind of never-ending essay about things he hated and feared. You could his mental health deteriorating with every page, and God, you were scared of him - and you pitied him, too. Sometimes you could spot your own name, and you cried when you read how much Bucky loved you. His feelings were gradually evolving into some kind of unhealthy obsession, but you were thankful they didn’t turn into intense hatred, considering the way you treated him up until now.

Reading about you tormenting your husband was something entirely different if you compared it with your own memories - or a lack of those - but the more you read, the more horrified with your actions you became. How did it happen? When did you turn from a supporting wife into a cruel fury ready to tear apart the only person you loved? When did you reach the point of no return? You supposed it could have been that day in December, but Bucky wasn't at fault. Not directly, at least, you thought when you considered his negligence and you working like a horse.

Maybe that terrible thing was just destined to happen to you, anyway.

Regardless, that was no the reason to treat Bucky like that. You could have left a long time ago, realizing where all this had been going, and it would still be better than living how you two lived now. Now you could see the true horror of the situation and what would inevitably happen if you didn't do anything to end it: Bucky could pull the trigger any moment now.

The only option you saw was leaving. Of course, in an ideal world you could ask him to visit doctor Romanova and make him confess he wasn't really following her instructions, help him get back on track and try to recover, but you knew this wasn't going to happen. Not when Bucky had almost suffocated you and locked you in the house. Why would he listen to you now, after everything that happened between you? He'd rather think you are doing this just to get rid of him, so you doubted he'd do what you asked him to. Now there were two ways out - leave or die.

You prefered the first one even knowing Bucky was obsessed with you. You could at least try, couldn't you? In the end, you would finish with a bullet in your head if you did nothing at all to fix all this.

You still couldn't believe it was happening to you. Weren't you a really, really good couple before? You remembered your ex-coworkers envying you when Bucky was visiting the office, a bouquet of wild flowers in his hands. He had always been kind and understanding, gentle, loving, cheerful; the best husband you had ever wanted, that very same prince you had been dreaming about. You loved him to the point of leaving your mother, the only family you had, just because you wanted to be with him. Because of that you were desinherited, but you didn't care as long as Bucky was with you.

Huh, all of a sudden you remembered the times when he was in the hot spot while you waited for him at home, every day waking up with a thought somebody would call and tell you Bucky's dead. It was your worst nightmare because of which you were afraid to go to sleep every night. You prayed for him to return safely, and the day when you received a notice of him losing his left arm, you were hysterical to the point your boss had to send you to the hospital to get help.

Oh, how happy you were the day he came back. Crippled, lost, desperate, barely able to function because of his PTSD but alive. You wanted nothing as much but for your husband to come home to you. That's why, even though the company you worked for went bankrupt and you could find nothing better but being a cashier in a local food store, you were ready to do whatever it took to help Bucky get back on his feet.

Was it too much for you? Were you too weak to go through all this for him? Apparently, you were. With months of constant hard work, insomnia because of the constant night shifts, inability to put food on the table, you forgot why were you doing all this. You forgot how much you loved him and he loved you. It all turned to ashes.

Hiding the diary beneath your bed, you did your best to wipe the tears and make yourself a bit more presentable - now you saw how terrible you looked with those dark circles beneath your eyes and wrinkles, bad skin, prominent blood vessels along the inside of your eyes because constant crying... You were a young woman, still, but you felt like your body was falling to pieces. It couldn't continue like that.

"Bucky, I have to leave." You told him once you approached your husband in the living room still sitting on the couch in front of TV with a blank expression.

However, once he heard you, his face clenched up, "Did you not hear me the first time I said it? You’re going nowhere."

Trembling, you tried to pull yourself together and even sat on the couch, your palms on your knees.

"Bucky, we're not alright. Let's admit it. Things aren't going to come back to how they were before... this. We won't get better."

You swallowed nervously, not looking at him, but Bucky fell silent, waiting for you to continue. You were sure he wasn't insane to the point he didn't understand what was happening.

"Please, let me leave. You can have the house if you want to, I won't take anything. I... I'll be sending you half of my salary until you get yourself a job."

Huh, you probably wouldn't be able to rent your own place with what was left, but maybe you convince your boss to let you sleep in the back room. Hell, even sleeping under the bridge was better than being murdered by your own husband.

When you saw him crawling towards you, you held your breath, "T-this is fair! You can have whatever you want!"

But he didn't stop, and before you could jump off the couch and ran, Bucky was already on top of you, his metal hand grabbing both yours and pining them above your head.

"I want you." He shook his head, sitting on top of you, his flesh arm caressing the curves of your body. "Maybe you're right and we can't go back. But we can do better."

"Get off, Bucky!" You desperately tried pushing him away, but all you did was fueling his desire. "GET OFF!"

"Maybe you'll love me again if I put a baby in you." He exhaled, nuzzling against the crook of your neck, and you frozen in fear and disgust, you eyes wet again despite all your efforts. "And we'll be a real family again."

"NO!"

You didn't know where that power to throw your beefy husband off you came, but you were already up, back on your unsteady legs and ready to fight him even he was going to try suffocating you or breaking your neck. You weren't going to let Bucky do... this to you.

Oh God. You wanted to never let him know of what had happened on the 14th of December, but you had no choice now.

"I've already lost my baby. I'm not doing it again."

_________

Tags: @finleyjayne @alexakeyloveloki @helenaeisenhower @villanellevi @hurricanerin @void-hoechlin @abyssaint @heeeyitskay @chris-evans-indian-fanfic @navegandoaciegas @rosalynshields @brattycherubwrites @sllooney @angrythingstarlight @lookiamtrying @buckysbunny @soleil-dor @stargazingfangirl18 @dillybuggg @literate-lamb @cosicas-cuquis @sarge-barnes-sir @buckybarnesplumwhore @jaysayey @megzdoodle @gotnofucks @lux-ravenwolf @iheartsebandchris @ninefuckingoneone

#bucky barnes x reader #bucky barnes #dark bucky barnes #dark bucky barnes x reader #winter soldier #yandere #mcu

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starshipsofstarlord · 4 years

Text

Can’t Be Selfish | Damon Salvatore

These were your last breaths, they were staggered and slow as you breathed through the oxygen mask. This wasn’t how you wanted your death to be, in your mind it was supposed to be meaningful, not only painful. Your death would serve no purpose, it was just one of many. There were so many things that you were unaware of, like how everyone back in Mystic Falls were doing.

You left a couple of years back, and you had never returned. A part of you wanted to look back, but you had made a life for yourself, and the involvement of vampires, witches and werewolves and whatever else was new would ruin that. Your husband stroked the back of your hand as your children said their goodbyes.

This was not what you had expected when you were younger. At one point, you were dating a vampire, his name was Damon Salvatore. Just thinking of him made you feel as though you were opening up a history book. There were a lot of bad times, from when he turned his humanity off to where he was almost killed by the Originals. But they didn’t triumph over the good, like the morning bubble baths you soaked in together, or the pub games you participated in at the Grill.

For all you knew, he could be dead now. And you wouldn’t even be told, and that was how you wanted it. That life that you had lived was insanely dangerous, it was a surprise that you hadn’t died sooner.

Chase, your husband, kissed your forehead, as he got up from his seat. Your children crushed you in a light hug, he was going to take them to his parents’ place for the night. They didn’t need to see you get any sicker, it wasn’t fair on them, they were only three and five.

Before your significant other could leave, you grabbed his hand with a gentle grip. You weren’t strong enough to hold it any tighter. “Will you come back?” You asked him. You didn’t want to spend the night alone. Frankly, you were terrified. There was no longer another side to cross into, maybe you’d just be enveloped into nothing. A part of you hoped you would, so that you wouldn’t need to reminisce about your regrets or the past you had tried so hard to forget.

But it was unforgettable. Mystic Falls would always be a part of you, whether you wanted it to be or not. That place was like hell on earth, there was so much death and pain and suffering that had rendered from the borders witches had installed. Somehow you had escaped all of that madness, but death had been persistent, and followed you all the way to your new home.

“Of course I will.” He smiled, slowly removing your hand from atop of his, placing one more kiss upon the skin before he disappeared out of the door, leaving you alone in the white walled room.

It was all too light. You were adapted to darkness. A part of you had hoped that you would die a vampire, at least then you would have lived longer, or so you would have anticipated. Even being shot would be better than this ultimatum. It would be quick, in a sudden instant you would be gone. If you could ask for one last wish, it’s be for this process to hurry its ass up, because it sure as hell was taking its sweet time.

For a moment, you thought you were hallucinating. A shadow crossed in front of the hospital bed, one that carried a familiar eeriness. It had black hair, and blue eyes that made you freeze in place. “(Y/N)?” Damon asked in shock.

He was doing his bidding for Cade, with his brother. They came into hospital to kill the already dying, and here you were, your face drained and thinned out, your eyes lacking the lustre of life that they had once held so dearly.

“Damon, is that really you?” You couldn’t be sure, the doctors had upped your medication to make your ease that bit easier. The vampire could feel his eyes welling up at the sight of you. He could just leave right now, and find someone else to contribute to the cause.

As he thought that, Stefan leant himself against the door frame. He was unhinged, he would make him do this. “Yeah, it is.” His voice croaked as he came closer to you, analysing everything that was different about you. There was a ring on the side, one far too big for your pencil thin fingers, but he presumed it belonged to you.

“Of course you had to show up when I was on my deathbed.” You laughed to yourself, wincing when you threw your head back onto the hospital pillow.

“You can’t die…” He spoke more to himself than you. You were too young, too kind to die. But maybe you were dying because you were too human. At his optimistic statement, you smiled.

“Don’t go soft Salvatore, it doesn’t suit you.” At that, you began coughing, it was visible that it was causing you pain. If only you had stayed in Mystic Falls, then they could have stopped this. Bonnie could have made a potion, or he could have…

“I’ll turn you.” Stefan shook his head with a dark smirk, but he let you respond instead. The least he could do was give an old friend her last words.

“No Damon, you won’t.” The last thing you wanted was to be a vampire. It would be like a cruel game against your family, messing with the minds with the fact that you wouldn’t leave this room to cowering from the sunlight. “I don’t want that. I just want this to hurry up. The end has finally come for me, and nothing can be done, or at least nothing normal.”

He was desperate to help you, but you hadn’t changed. You were still independent, wanting to do everything yourself. That was one of the first qualities he had realised about you when you had met, and it had made him more attracted to you. But now he was cursing it. If only you were open to interpretation, then maybe you wouldn’t be in this defeated state.

“Brother, it’s time.” Stefan spoke, walking in and shutting the door. “Make sure to make it quick, there are others that need to also be taken care of.” At the tone and words of Stefan, you frowned. It was so un- Stefan- like, or at least from what you remembered.

“What’s he talking about Damon?” In this moment, there was a heavier weight of trust on Damon’s shoulders.

“He has to kill you.” Stefan answered in his place, placing on hand on the end rail of your bed. However, your reaction wasn’t what he had expected. He thought tears would fall and you’d reek of fear, but you were rather calm.

“Okay.” You answered, breaking Damon’s heart for a second time. “Just pull these out.” You showed him your arm which had tubes going through it, tape holding them in place.

“I’m sorry.” He said, sitting on the side as he removed them all individually. Everything became slow after a couple of minutes, he held you as you became dazed. And then you went limp, he could no longer hear your heart or the blood pulsing through your veins.

Out of everyone, you least deserved to go to hell, but from his duty, he had sent you to Cade’s dominion.

When Chase returned, it was just your body. He had come back, but not to what he had expected.

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annewritesfic · 3 years

Text

Happy Endings Don’t Exist

y’all i’m so attached to this au-

anyways! based on chapter 58 of cress by marissa meyer!

tw: discussion of blood, violence, chess has a pretty gorey nightmare in the first section (you can skip the first few paragraphs and pick up at “Chess opened her eyes with a gasp” to miss it), blades, pain medication, mention of attempted murder/murder, hallucinations

word count: 2275

In Chess's dreams, she was being chased by a wolf.

She was running through a field of crops with thick mud that sucked at her shoes, fog soaking her jacket and leggings, her lungs burning and her eyes stinging and her heart thundering. Dry leaves crunched underfoot, quickly being swallowed by the mud, and something in the back of her head dimly registered that she was being chased through the sugar beet fields on the Benoit farm back home. Even as she thought it, something began to glow in the distance - the lights of a farmhouse. Her house. The house she’d grown up in, the house that had always been safe and warm. If she could just make it to the farmhouse, then everything would be okay.

But no matter how hard and fast Chess ran, the farmhouse didn’t get closer. It almost seemed that for every step she took, the farmhouse was three steps farther away. She might’ve been running for hours or days or months or years, but the farmhouse got no closer. Eventually, the fog closed in and swallowed the farmhouse, the warm glow blinking out of existence.

She tripped, landing on her hands and knees with a shout of pain, mud sticking to her clothes and caking her braid. The damp wetness soaked into her bones, making them ache from the cold. She looked up, and just a few feet away was the wolf, crouched low to the ground, eyes flashing with hunger and anger. Her hands desperately searched for a weapon on the ground, something, anything, as the wolf got closer, and closer, and closer…

There. Something smooth and hard under her fingers. It was surprisingly easy to yank from the mud. She barely had time to look at it, to register the blade glistening in the moonlight under the layer of mud, the sanded wooden handle - an axe - before the wolf leaped in the air, jaws unhinged, sharp teeth reflecting in the axe blade. Chess lifted the axe reflectively, bracing herself, just moments before the wolf would’ve landed on her chest and ripped her to shreds.

The axe cut clean through the wolf, slicing it in two pieces from snout to tail. Its blood splashed all over Chess’s face and chest, and she heard twin thumps as the two halves fell on either side of her head. A choking sob fought its way up her throat, and she pressed a hand to her mouth, sure she was going to throw up.

Then the two halves of the wolf began to move, shifting beside her into two human-like shapes, each wearing half of the pelt. The fog began to clear as two hands reached towards her, and Chess stifled a cry - her grandmother and Cairo, welcoming her home.

Chess opened her eyes with a gasp.

Instead of her grandmother’s old military jacket and Cairo’s shining eyes, all she saw were steel bars. The air was filled with the scent of ferns and moss. The chatter of birds was so overwhelming she almost covered her ears.

A soft yip came from somewhere to the side, sounding concerned - the white wolf. Chess rolled over to look at him - on the other side of the pathway, the wolf sat, watching her. He tilted his head a little bit, and it struck her how much he almost seemed like the neighbors’ dogs back home.

Home…

It wasn’t the first time she thought it, but Chess was still shocked by the near-physical pain in her chest, the longing for the rolling fields and blue skies and familiar faces. She wanted to go home.

“He likes you,” said a voice.

Chess inhaled sharply and sat up, eyes searching wildly for the source of the voice. A girl about her age was sitting in her cage, hands folded in her lap, watching her curiously, close enough to touch. Chess tried to move away, but pain shot through her hand, and she fell back to the ground with a hiss of pain. Her hand was wrapped in bandages, but her pinky was the worst of it - during her trial, Levana had forced her hand to pick up a hatchet and use it on the pinky finger of her other hand, taking it off at the second knuckle. The pain had been bad enough that she’d wished to pass out, although she hadn’t. But while that was the worst of her pain now, it wasn’t all of it - there were scratches and cuts and bruises all over her entire body, some from the scuffle on the satellite and some from that awful Lunar boy she’d stayed with for several days and most of the aches from sleeping on hard floors for more nights than she could count.

The strange girl didn’t react to Chess’s fear. She sat quietly against the wall, her back straight, looking interested and curious. She clearly wasn’t another prisoner - she wore a pale pink dress that looked out of place against the dark regolith Chess’s cage was carved from. Her honey-brown hair tumbled around her shoulders in healthy, shiny curls, half of it tied up in a ponytail. Her eyes were a pale blue, sparkling with excitement, and Chess realized that her left eye had three scars below it, cutting in straight, parallel lines down her cheek - almost like perpetual tear tracks.

She was the most beautiful person Chess had ever seen.

And it was that beauty that made Chess realize she was wearing another glamour - another trick.

“Ryu and I were wondering if that was a very good dream or a very bad one?” the girl asked in a sweet voice. “You were mumbling to yourself quite a lot.”

Chess pushed away the lingering memory of the dream, the image of Cairo and her grandmother smiling at her. “Who the hell are you? And-and who’s Ryu?”

The girl smiled. “Ryu is the wolf, silly!” She turned to look at the wolf across the path. “Haven’t you been neighbors for four months now? Ryu, why haven’t you introduced yourself?”

The wolf blinked big yellow eyes at her.

The girl looked back at Chess and leaned forward, like she was sharing a big secret. “And I am your new best friend. But you mustn't tell anyone, because all the guards think that I am your master and you are my pet - they don’t know that my pets are my dearest friends of all! We will fool all of them, you and I.”

Chess struggled to comprehend what the girl was saying. None of it made sense, or answered Chess’s question.

The girl reached for a basket beside her that Chess hadn’t noticed before. It seemed like a picnic basket, lined with some soft, silvery material. “I thought that today, we could perhaps play doctor and patient! I’ll be the doctor, of course. You seem in need of some care.”

Chess sat up and pressed herself against the opposite wall. “You’re not a doctor.”

“I know. That’s why it’s pretend.” The girl smiled wider. “Aren’t you having fun?”

“No, actually, I’m really not.” Chess’s fingers pressed against the rough stone floor. “I’ve been mentally and physically tortured, I’m starving, I’m thirsty, I’m locked up in a cage in a goddamn zoo-”

“Menagerie.”

“-and I’m hurting in a thousand different places. And now some crazy girl comes in here and wants to play make-believe? Like we’re best friends or some shit?” Chess scoffed. “I’m good. Go away.”

The girl sighed and leaned her chin on her hand, resting her elbow on her knee. “You shouldn’t call me crazy. The guards don’t like that. Even though it’s true.”

Neither of them broke the silence for a moment.

“I know it’s true. You want to know how I know?” The girl leaned forward again. “The palace walls have been bleeding for years, but I am the only one who sees.”

More silence.

“No one believes me, no matter how many times I say it,” the girl continued. “Sometimes I can’t help but step in it, and then I track bloody footprints everywhere, and I worry that perhaps a wolf soldier will smell it and come for me. But if the blood was real, don’t you think the palace maids would clean it up?”

Chess tried and failed to think of an answer.

The girl pulled a small box wrapped in ribbon. “These are for you. Doctor’s orders are to take one pill twice a day.” She handed Chess the box with a wink. “It isn’t real medicine, of course. It’s just candy. Sour apple petites - they’re my favorite.”

“I’m not eating one of those.”

“Why not? It’s a gift.” The girl opened the box and held it out to Chess - four small, round red candies, shiny and smooth. Chess didn’t move, and after a moment, the girl set the open box down on the floor between them.

“What do you want from me?” Chess asked.

“I want to be friends.”

“A friendship based on lies?” Chess laughed sharply, humorlessly. “Of course you don’t mind that. You’re Lunar. Lying is all you know how to do.”

The girl looked at her lap. “I’ve only ever had two friends - two human friends. One became a pile of girl-shaped ashes when we were very little, and the other has gone missing. I don’t know if he’ll ever return.” She shuddered, squeezing her eyes shut. “But I asked the stars to send me a sign that he was all right, and the next day was a trial like any other trial, except standing before me was an Earthen girl who’d seen him.”

“Can you make sense? Please?”

The girl leaned forward, closer than she had before, close enough that Chess could almost feel her breath across her face. “Is he all right? Sybil said he was still alive, that he probably was supposed to be piloting that ship, but she didn’t say whether he’d been injured. Do you think he’s safe?”

“Who?”

The girl smiled again, almost wistfully. “Clark Winslett. Sybil’s guard. The man with the blond hair and the kind eyes and the smile that holds the sun. Is he all right?”

Chess blinked, baffled. She didn’t remember much from the fight on the Rampion, and what few memories she did have were blurry. But while her focus had been mostly on the thaumaturge, she did faintly remember a blond guard.

But the smile that holds the sun? Bullshit.

“I remember two people that tried to kill us,” she muttered.

“And he was one of them?” the girl pressed, seemingly unconcerned with the killing part.

“Yeah, I guess.”

The girl smiled gleefully. “Did he look okay?”

“He looked like he was trying to kill me,” Chess said. “But I bet my friends killed him first. That’s our typical procedure for people who work for your queen.”

The girl’s smile vanished. “You’re lying.”

“Nope. And he deserved it.”

The girl began to shake, almost hyperventilating. The wolf - Ryu - pawed at the bars of his enclosure, whimpering. Chess tamped down her guilt and told herself she wouldn’t call for the guard’s help.

The girl got her breathing under control and sat up, her hand resting on her basket. “I see. Well, I-I should go.” She moved as if to stand, but then stopped. “I wasn’t lying about the bleeding walls. Soon, the palace will be so soaked with blood that Artemisia Lake will be so red, even Earthens will see it.”

“I don’t care,” Chess said. “And I’m not going to feel sorry for you. Your glamours and your mind control - you people have built your entire civilization around those lies, and I don’t want anything to do with it.”

The girl crossed her arms and narrowed her eyes at Chess, but said nothing for almost a minute. Chess lifted her chin and looked the girl in the eye, refusing to be afraid.

“I haven’t used my glamour since I was twelve years old,” the girl said at last. “That’s why I have these visions. Why I’m going mad.”

Chess didn’t show her surprise as the steel bars of the cage opened and the girl ducked out, taking her basket but leaving the candy. “Your Highness,” said the guard as he closed and relocked the cage door.

Chess listened to the footprints retreat down the path, staring at the candies, her heart thundering in her ears.

Your Highness.

Princess Annleigh.

The queen’s stepdaughter.

Annleigh was rumored to be more beautiful than Levana herself - which was why the queen had given her those scars. Even Earth knew about her, about her unspeakable beauty, about her scars… though Chess had never heard about the girl going mad.

The candies lay in front of her still, tempting her. Chess had no reason to trust her, but she’d finished her one small meal hours ago, and she wouldn’t be fed until the next day. Her stomach began to ache, and her head spun, and while she was proud of how long she made it, eventually she reached for the box and lifted one of the candies from the shreds of paper it was nestled in. It was smooth as glass between her teeth and cracked easily, the warm, melty center sweet and sour on her tongue. Nothing, nothing, had ever tasted so good.

But it was nothing compared to the sensation that expanded through her chest, down to her legs and into her fingers. A feeling of warmth, of comfort, that took her pain away with it.

Chess managed a smile up at the glass ceiling, at the stars beyond it. Perhaps the princess wasn’t so cruel after all.

#we are the tigers #chess watt #annleigh o'daniel #blood tw #violence tw #nightmare tw #drugs tw #murder tw #ask to tag #clarkleigh #the lunar chronicles

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2ofswords · 4 years

Text

Since I am so tired of reading „I know Dankovsky sucks and his ending is horrible“, before every comment that defends him, I will now throw myself into the fires of discourse and write an essay about:

Why The P1 Utopian ending does not mean Danko is an asshole

(A bit of swearing and a lot of spoilers under the cut)

Since I already spoke about being tired of disclaiming a lot, here are some of them. Firstly: This is NOT a comparison and I am definitely not saying, that his ending is better than the ending of the Haruspex or the Changeling. That would be ridiculous and I wholeheartedly belief that the other characters have morally better endings. (Though I will make one ending comparison at the end of this essay just to make myself even more of a hypocrite and there will be a comparison of one aspect of all three P1 endings, that is not made to compare their general quality but… well… this specific aspect of the ending.)

Also this essay isn‘t about Dankovsky not being an asshole. This is not a character analysis, I am only talking about the ending and his relationship regarding his path towards it. There are entirely different arguments to be made about his character that I will not talk about. Surprisingly a character is not only defined by the outcome of their story.

And last but not least the weirdest disclaimer of them all: While my arguments try to defend Dankovsky in his ending I totally understand if you still think his ending makes him more of an asshole. Killing a lot of people is always a dick move and the decision is still a horrible one. I do not really want to argue that people are wrong for judging him based of his ending. I just want to explain, why we also do not have to feel ashamed for deciding to not judge him as a complete asshole based on the main outcome of his route and why his motivation isn’t only based on spite or even ruthless calculation. Also, I think that there is a lot to say about his decision, that isn’t really said and that these are interesting aspects. Sorry to say it, but I just wanted to have a catchy title. I just really love this ending and it’s complexity and wanted to discuss it aside of calling it the evil Danko ending.

So. Let’s start with the easy argument that some people are talking about.

Argument 1: Danko completely lost it and holding him accountable due to his rationality defies the point of his route.

This one is… one of the weaker arguments, but I will still elaborate on it. The entirety of his route is built upon loss and failure. While the Haruspex starts with a mob that wants to kill him and works his way up, the dynamic of his route is him seemingly starting on top of everything and slowly loosing his bearings and by the end of the story this man is already driven to madness. Being used as a pawn in politics, getting daily “fuck you”-letters from the Powers that Be, realizing your lives work is already destroyed and all of your colleagues are probably as doomed (and being the one responsible because he was their leader), realizing that Aglaya – who was the one person who seemed to be his ally at the end – used and betrayed him just like everyone else, having the one truly honestly kind person commit suicide at least partly because of his failures, witnessing his own helplessness against the plague (an enemy that should align with his expertise as a doctor), being hated from day one by almost everybody in town, realizing that the political allies are totally bonkers and also preparing to off themselves (Victor! You seemed moderately sane at the beginning. The betrayal!), getting almost beaten to death while trying to help the town while spending all these days in an hostile place that slips into chaos… yeah I think you really aren’t in the headspace for rational thought. It is a miracle that that guy hasn’t completely broken down and day eleven and to some extend day 9 and 10 are showing him as completely unhinged already, only leading up to a decision, that isn’t really made out of spite or coldness but rather desperation and blind tunnel vision. The day eleven mission involves him going on a rampage against a military squad because of a vague hint and he only checks after the killings, if Andrew is even there. That isn’t a calculated action it’s about a man being completely shattered and making everybody suffer because of that. (Which is also horrible, but an entirely different sort of tragedy.) By now he just shouldn’t be the one handling the situation at all but the local powers sure want to wash their hand of any guilt that they haven’t already attracted. Also – and more importantly – the Polyhedron literally is the one good thing happening to this man. After going into it on day 9 he thanks Khan for reminding him of a childhood he has forgotten! He has a shit week, he is completely beaten down (quite literally) and this is the one happy moment he finds in all this chaos. Clinging onto that is surely not rational, but it is human. We all know that the Bachelor has the tendency to survive on willpower alone and here clinging to the tower and its miracles is literally his only motivation to continue his route at all. Of course he is going to protect it at that point, if thinking about any other option bring nothing but utter misery and the acceptance of complete and utter failure. After all Dankovskys route is about the limits of his rational worldview and how it hinders him more that it serves him in a world, that isn’t defined by rational beliefs. Of course he will be out of it by the end and actually loosing his composure is an important part of his suffering and character development in the story. His ending is not a sign of rational thought but the last consequence of being enraptured in a web of circumstances that forbid him from making rational decisions in the first place.

Truth to be told, I don’t really like this as an argument. I love this thought as a peace of characterization. As much as I love his ending and the horrible consequences and the actual failure it imposes, when we look at the other playable characters. But it doesn’t really help us here. It doesn’t change the fact, that Dankovsky destroyed an entire town just for a dream, a man-made building, a promise of utopia that we never witness ourselves. He still destroyed so… so much! But… let’s look a bit deeper into the motivations behind that exchange.

Argument 2: The Trolley problem

“There is a runaway trolley barrelling down the railway tracks. Ahead, on the tracks, there are five people tied up and unable to move. The trolley is headed straight for them. You are standing some distance off in the train yard, next to a lever. If you pull this lever, the trolley will switch to a different set of tracks. However, you notice that there is one person on the side track. You have two options:

Do nothing and allow the trolley to kill the five people on the main track. Pull the lever, diverting the trolley onto the side track where it will kill one person. Which is the more ethical option? Or, more simply: What is the right thing to do?” (Wikipedia)

There is a variation to this question and interestingly enough it is one of the morality questions Aglaya asks in Pathologic 2: Would you push a man down a bridge, to save the children from a train? The curious thing is, that we can see all healers giving the same answer, (even if we have the choice to choose differently, since it is… you know… a dilemma). Necessary sacrifice is a constant of all three routes and every single protagonist has to kill in order to save a larger amount of people. Still, the game never answers moral choices with a simple answer and here with the Utopian ending we can see the darker side of this moral dilemma in full force (to a lesser extend this also applies to the Humble ending, since it also involves the Trolley problem, albeit on a smaller scale.) If we take the Kain’s studies about the focus and the soul seriously and see the Polyhedron as a method to ensure immortality seriously – or if we at least assume that Dankovsky wholeheartedly believes in that concept – than protecting the Polyhedron at the cost of the town suddenly becomes the Trolley problem at a significantly larger scale. The Polyhedron could ensure the survival of humankind but only at the expense of the town and it’s infected inhabitants. After all death is to Dankovsky but an affliction that can be healed just like the plague and consumes far more victims (if not all of them even if one would survive the disease). And that poses the question: When does the Trolley Dilemma stop working? What if there are two million people on the tracks and one million on the other side? What if there are hundred people on one and ninety nine on the other? What about five million vs. four million and nine hundred thousand? Can a human life be counted against the life of several others? If we look at the game itself and the healers answer in their daily life, it seems kind of simple: Yes, it is possible. The effort of saving is worth dirtying your hands after all. Risking at least your own life seems like a fair deal and no route really works without at least some degree of human sacrifice. But on this larger scale… it seems absurd. And… well… it is. But still. If we just try to empathise with the Bachelors mindset. If there is a possibility to cure humanity’s mortality… if there is a sliver of possibility (and since Thanatica is destroyed the Polyhedron seems like the only possibility at this point)… what kind of sacrifice is worth preserving it?

I myself have my own answer to that question. In Germany the Constitution starts with the sentence “Die Würde des Menschen ist unantastbar” or: “Human dignity shall be inviolable.” (This is the official translation though a more direct translation would be “Human dignity is inviolable” which is more of a statement and less of a law) Even if the effect of that sentence in politics is very debatable and it is incredibly vague and not really a usable sentence as a law… I really like it. The human rights as a concept as well as equality can be concluded from the fact, that human dignity is something that cannot – under any circumstance – been taken away and is always a thing that must be considered just by being human. It is… nice. And it also means, that a human being cannot be seen as a mere object and has its own agency. A human being is not quantifiable in their existence by any parameter, be it birth, skin colour, gender, sexuality, religion, interests, talent, job, body, etc… It is incredibly important… and incredibly interesting in our scenario. Because if life isn’t quantifiable at any circumstance… the Trolley Dilemma has a solution. There is no way to tell, if one life can outweigh several others and deciding over their lives is something and judge over the worth of their live is something one should never do. Thus Dankovsky’s choice to save the Polyhedron and outweigh the lives of the infected seems morally wrong.

But… is that the answer the game has? Well… the artbook of Pathologic 2 states that the design of the game is about enforcing ambiguity and I would argue that the first instalment is no different. Firstly: In times of crisis lives become quantifiable. That is part of the tragedy. The healers’ lives are suddenly worth preserving, while others appear as nameless numbers in a daily statistic and caring about the individual dignity seems impossible. As already said the act of killing in order to preserve life is almost mandatory in every single run. So, what about human dignity? Can it even be preserved under such a dilemma? (And there is probably a point to be made about everybody being dolls and thus not even a being with dignity and agency at all… but I digress) Especially doctors have to face this dilemma and they have to make these judgement calls, weather they like it or not. The game doesn’t answer it but makes different variations of the same dilemma that we may judge differently. The Utopian ending is one variation.

What I want to say is, that – if we take the Kains’ believes seriously and see the survival of miracles against the law of nature not only as progress but as a question about human mortality itself – the question if the Polyhedron is worth saving is a very different one. I personally think that the idea of the focus still feels too esoteric to be a real point of interest but on the other hand… it is not like we haven’t some proof when we visit Khan and listen to his testimony. It is not that this place is above it’s miracles, and we know that a lot of the mysticism is grounded in reality, be it by the very real ways of the Kin or the past existence of Simon. So only thinking of the polyhedron as an abstract concept is… well doing it a disservice if we take the other parts as serious. Yeah it is made out of it’s own idea but… you know being like “it cannot exist but it can sure puncture the earth and kill everything” is… a weird way of thinking and it sure is a McGuffin (and even called that in the Artbook) but as we said, the game is about ambiguity and the only way to look at its existence is not only “evil tower of doom”. Is it worth keeping? Eh… I wouldn’t say so myself. I still think the Utopian ending is pretty shit and seeing the tower as salvation for our mortal lives is pretty farfetched. But the question for this essay is: Is it wrong to think, it is worth keeping? And from Dankovsky’s perspective, who sees it as the only possible chance of curing human mortality… Well… the answer at least isn’t as simple anymore. But – and now we are getting somewhere – the argument about the complexity of human value can be also made without even relying on Kain-Bullshit.

Argument 3: The Utopian Ending is the only ending, that completely gets rid of the plague (at least from Dankos point of view)

But wait you say, the other endings also defeat the plague! There even is a cure, something our beloved Bachelor of Medicine never archives. What is this lunacy?

Well here is the catch: A cure does not destroy its disease. Or at least it is an unreliable method. Sure, if everyone is cured and/or the disease helps to build antibodies, then it does help to get rid of it. But the sandpest seems to leave the bodies and not finding these remnants and antibodies is one essential part of the Bachelor’s route. It is the reason Rubin needs a living heart in the first place. The disease doesn’t seem to stay and no antibodies seem to be developed. (And even if I try to avoid material of Pathologic 2 in this analysis since there are differences in the Canon I still at least want to mention, that the Panacea as well as the shmowder do indeed not help against the disease after it is cured and a person can be reinfected. I do not know, if the same is the case in one and if you can test it out.) But if there are no antibodies, the cure could only eradicate the disease if every single infected person is cured at the same time. Good luck with that! That’s not bound to be a complete mess in this town!

This is backed up on day 12 in the Bachelor’s own route. When he is presented with the options the other healers have, he always asks both of them the same question: How does that ensure the future of the town? The Haruspex makes a cure yes. But what if the disease returns? After all the underground water he talks about still exists and there is no telling, if it will ever reemerge. It already happened once… The Haruspex doesn’t answer with “no, that will never happen”. He says that they will have enough cure if this is the case. An optimist, I see. And definitely not a satisfying answer if we consider a scientific perspective. What if the cure runs out? What if they find out too late and the plague spreads outside of town? A cure is not a waterproof system against plague. (You know what works better though? A vaccine.) Daniil’s mission was always to eradicate the disease and this would not do the trick. Having only a cure is risky. And it might not be a permanent solution.

The same applies for the Humble ending. If one asks the Changeling what would happen if the blood of their sacrifice runs out she answers “There will always be people willing to sacrifice themselves” Which is… just great. Constant human sacrifice just doesn’t seem that sustainable. And it also means that there will be constant loss of human life. Something that might even lead to more sacrifice in the long run (although that would be a reaaaaly long run considering how long the sacrifice of the Clara’s bound is supposed to last.) But it sure as hell doesn’t make the plague disappear. What if there are no willing sacrifices? What if Clara is gone and there is no one to perform a miracle? Clara’s ending relies on faith by nature and putting your trust in it is easy from a player’s perspective but even harder when there are lives at stake, the success unsure and these questions to consider.

Dankovsky’s ending is built upon uprooting the plague and eradicating it. The problem is that it is everywhere and not easily destroyed. As Lara very adequately realised: There is no source. His ending is the consequence of that goal and even if it loses in every other aspect, this is the one, where it wins. It actually destroys the problem itself. Building a new town and keeping the tower it cannot reach, actively minimalizes the possibility of the plague reappearing. And a more permanent solution might save more lives than one that sounds more humane at the beginning.

Okay, to defend the Haruspex for a change of pace: In his route he actually does believe that his method eradicates the disease as much as Dankovsky is convinced that his solution does the trick. For him the source is the Polyhedron and the way, it wounds the earth. With it removed the plague will not reappear. But why should Dankovsky share this belief? No one tells him! The inquisitor says that the Polyhedron is the root of evil but there never is any actual proof for that. Even If the Polyhedron is partially responsible and Danko actually does acknowledge this, it is the bloody mess of underground fluids that are in fact the source (which is ironically confirmed by the Haruspex himself). As he tells the inquisitor herself at the last day: The source and the cause can be too different things. It already seeped through Andrey’s spiral to the upper layers. The damage has already been done and in fact the Polyhedron is now the only save place, where nobody is infected. Everything else needs to be destroyed to eradicate the disease but why even destroy the Polyhedron? Wait. Why even destroy the Polyhedron? What good would that even do if we would consider it? What the fuck would Dankovsky even do with the destroyed Polyhedron, how would that save the town?

Argument 4: Dankos ending isn’t about the town vs. the polyhedron at all!(From his perspective. It totally is for the player though!)

I experienced something weird while playing the Bachelor’s route in P1. And with that I mean that I experienced something weird, that I wasn’t already expecting. After hearing so much about the fabled Polyhedron love, assuming that he sacrifices the whole town for its sake and hearing from the inquisitor in Pathologic 2 again and again how obsessed he is, I waited for the revelation. The moment Dankovsky would completely lose it and become utterly and undeniably obsessed with the children’s tower. That moment… never happened. Or well… it happened remarkably late and with less impact than I thought. Until day 9 the tower isn’t even a point of interest to the Bachelor, which is two thirds of his route. But even after you witness the miracles of the Polyhedron yourself, you still can argue against its glory. You can agree with Aglaya on day 10, that it seems dangerous (even if that could also be tactics, but until this point there is not really a reason for that). Hell, you can tell Peter on day 12, that his ideas will always only exist in his mind and blueprints and that the new town they will create will not work out! That is so weird, if the result of his run is, that he sacrifices the town for the Polyhedron! Why is there always an option to speak against the miracle we want to save? Isn’t that completely strange?

If we take the town vs. polyhedron conflict serious then… yeah it is. But is this all, what his end can be about? I would argue against it. Because what finally tips him to his solution and completes his view on the map of the town isn’t the Polyhedrons glory: It is the towns underground water and the Haruspex telling him, that the deeper layers are infected. That is, when he flips his shit and he even has an “oh no, it can’t be!” moment. Weird, isn’t it? If he would be set about destroying the town, why agonizing over this information? But from his point of view it is a nail in the coffin, the realization, that the whole towns ground is seeping with infection and if not eradicated, it will reappear. The Bachelor doesn’t have a cure and the Haruspex, while promising that he has a solution, sure as hell doesn’t explain how that would work and insists on arguing his own case without interference. (Which is completely understandable but doesn’t clear the situation.) The Bachelor has no means on his own to fight the plague outside of destroying the town. This is his only option to call of the bombardment of the Polyhedron and the tower and from his point of view, destroying the tower would archive absolutely nothing. It is free of infection, why destroy it? What would ripping it out do aside from letting even more blood seep out? In his own case, this would be completely useless, thus destroying the Polyhedron does not save the town! When the Bachelor flips the switch and guides the trolley in a different direction, he isn’t guiding it from hitting the Polyhedron to hitting the town. He guides the trolley from hitting the town and the polyhedron to only hitting the town! And by the way to only hit the town which his infected people while everybody else evacuates in the tower. (Which is confirmed by his ending cutscene, where people are actually present. After all it takes the healthy to built the new town). In his own mind, the Bachelor is saving people, not killing them! He does what he can so that the most of them survives and in his case, destroying the town is the only method to ensure victory at all.

If we stick to his own route – as I am doing right now – we have two counterarguments against this theory. The first one: But isn’t that only the failure of finding a better method? And: yes it is. As we already discussed in the first argument, the Bachelors story is about failure and the game itself is about necessary sacrifice, lose-lose situations and making the best out of a desperate hopeless scenario. Which leaves us with the question: Could Dankovsky have found a better solution? And… maybe. If he was more attentive, made different choices, would have been nicer to the Kin… There always are “ifs” but I would argue that the ones in this scenario are… pretty small odds for a change. He does genuinely try to inspect the abattoir and find a solution and ensure it’s safety and is almost punched to death as a result. The Kin regard him with absolute hostility, and for a good reason but it doesn’t help his case. Without Burakh’s knowledge and caste-rights making a cure would be (almost) impossible. He isn’t allowed to do any normal doctoring the one time, he tried to gain some blood from dead people, multiple guards had to die in order to ensure this absolute act of evil to go unnoticed. Thus he has to rely on Rubin’s secret lab. The possibility of Simon and his powers against the plague also aren’t usable… The Bachelor doesn’t even get to see his corpse after all. What choice does he have other than eradicating the cause itself? It’s definitely not the elegant solution that he was hoping for but there is a reason for him switching to inspect everything after ruling out a living plague carrier. These are the desperate means of finding a solution when his own knowledge of medicine has already failed him and the hopes of providing such medicine are already dwindling. Saving the town is simply not an option, the moment itself becomes the source of the plague.

The second counterargument is this one: Why not side with another healer, when they provide a better solution? And this is also a very valid argument. And thus, the moment it becomes an option, we as the Bachelor can choose to do so. If he has the cures that are necessary to ensure another healers victory, it is completely possible to avoid that ending. He doesn’t have to stick with it as well as the other healers do not have to, so judging him based on the other routes being better outcomes becomes obsolete. He has the ability to use these options, but if we lack the cures, his own solution is the only one. (Of course you can also save the other characters bound and then still decide to destroy the town, but using this scenario as his only motivation, when you can totally decide for yourself is a bit harsh, isn’t it?)

Of course, this argument collapses the moment we play any other route and he is trying to convince us to save the Polyhedron and abandon our own plans. However his own route can be considered his own perception of the story and our knowledge, how much he knows about the others paths is pretty limited and dependant of our choices as the player. Also, seeing his character and the changes made with that in mind, we can actually explain, why they appear. Of course, everybody tells Artemy how much the Bachelor is in love with the tower, when we’re not seeing it to that extreme in his route! It is necessary to fulfil his role in the Haruspex route. Of course, both the Bachelor and the Haruspex will appear as demons in Clara’s route. They do offer nothing but destruction from her point of view and both solutions seem destructive and spiteful, if they try to convince her. Everybody seems on board with seeing the characters in her route differently, but I think that the same applies to the Bachelor and the Haruspex in each other’s route, since their roles in the game changes. Or at least the perspective changes based on the others worldview. The Haruspex seems a lot more dangerous and his medicine a whole lot shadier, while the Bachelor seems to be more in love with the tower and ready to abandon everything for it, because it seems that way in comparison to the other persons knowledge of the situation. This is also backed up by the doll ending, where the Bachelor is being called out as the villain most of the time. In other routes he appears more villainous than in his own route, because we do actually have the means of comparison. But this is our perspective and not actual character motivation. We as the player do have the choice to work toward an ending. We can with our knowledge of the game go the extra mile to secure enough cures from the very beginning and help another healer. We are aware of the fact, that Clara and Artemy are other playable characters and we know from the very beginning that their beliefs have to be of value and their solutions will be backed up by their own routes. We know the opposition these characters stand in and while we see the different routes we may judge them for ourselves. And while Clara definitely knows and the other two healers show some sensibility towards this opposition (the “left hand, right hand”-quote comes to mind), at least the male healers are basing their decision upon their beliefs and not some outside point of view (while Clara watches and not-so-silently judges them). They even try to help each other and even provide the key insight to their own plan’s destruction (the Bachelor guides the inquisitor eyes to the Polyhedron and its structure, while Artemy outright tells Daniil of the underground infection). Of course they do not have the full picture! How could they, this entire game is about them not having it and making terrible mistakes! Dankovsky doesn’t have the ability to judge his own solution how the player does. And while judging his ending based on this information is completely valid and sensible, implying that he knows this detriment and still goes through with everything feels… a bit unfair to say the least. The conflict of the town vs. the polyhedron is an important debate in the game. And yes, Dankovsky’s role is being the advocate of the polyhedron, but man, this guy has the tendency to get manipulated into advocating random shit! The town vs. polyhedron debate is as present with him, as it is with the Haruspex. With the Polyhedron being the source in his route, he really has no choice but to remove it. After all, this guy really has no reason, to protect the Polyhedron. Of course he doesn’t! He would never sacrifice the town for the sake of his own ideology!

Argument 5: Let’s talk Nocturnal!

I promised one comparison, didn’t I? Still, we are now diving into abstract talk about the games’ themes and less about character motivation. Consider this more of a bonus and a different thought and less as an argument for Dankovsky himself. Comparing one ending to a different one does not make one of these characters more or less of an asshole. And comparing Pathologic 1 to Pathologic 2 obviously doesn’t tell us anything about the canon of either of those games, since they have vastly different results and we have no idea what the Bachelor’s endings will look like in Parhologic 2 (though I would be surprised if we couldn’t destroy the town and save the Polyhedron. But who knows, in Artemy’s case the army only pisses off.) Still, I think it is very interesting to talk about both of these endings side by side.

And I will begin this comparison by telling you that I love this ending! I am so happy that it exists and I think it is glorious and I think it’s existence is really important. I am so happy that Artemy has a reason to destroy the town. But is this okay? Or – as a comparison – is this a better idea than the one Dankovsky had?

I would argue that these endings have a lot in common. They both preserve their own ideals and establish a radically new order at the cost of the town itself. They both kill a shit ton of people for the miracles they have witnessed along the way. One could even argue that the Nocturnal ending is more horrifying. Firstly, more people die. While the Bachelor saves the uninfected, Artemy saves only those who “live with earths will” which seems to be like… the ten guys chilling in the abattoir and some of the kids. We know that there are only mere hundreds of people left of the kin and since everybody in the termitary doesn’t seem to count… who even gets saved? It’s at least as vague as the question who isn’t infected and can be saved at the Utopian end. But – more importantly – Artemy definitely has a choice in that matter and decides to sacrifice the town for the sake of the past. (If you’re not me. In my playthrough I got the courier note twenty minutes before 22:00 and the game was like “what are you going to do, such a hard choice” and I was like “I literally do not have the time to get this thing to town hall”. And then Aspity was like “you made your own conscious and completely willed decision” while Artemy just awkwardly stared at her…) But even disregarding that, the ending is surprisingly similar. Yet I see no one judging either the Haruspex or his ending for being overly cruel and well… killing a lot. Actually, I only read posts defending it and saying that it is as morally okay as the diurnal ending and could also count as a good end. And… I kind of agree. The sacrifice of the diurnal ending is pretty steep and destroying some species – while the worms, herb brides and albinos definitely show human qualities – is pretty fucked up as well and preserving them can seem worth the cost. (Oh my, do not say we arrived at the problem of human value again!) Still… It is destroying the town for its miracles. That is literally what this ending is about, yet our asshole sense does not tingle at all! Why is that?

I think there are two arguments for this difference between our outlook on the Nocturnal and the Utopian end. The first one is that the Kin and its culture is very endangered and protecting it just seems more morally sound than protecting some rich dudes. Which is very fair and the Kains are very fucked up. Buuuut, it isn’t like there is the termitary quest that preludes the diurnal ending. Finishing the game doesn’t exactly mean that we abandon the Kin. Part of its beliefs and culture, yes. Definitely, and as I said I still think the Diurnal and Nocturnal ending are pretty balanced. But a part of the Kin is assimilated and is coping and while protecting its culture and very real traditions is completely valid, the Nocturnal ending also destroys parts of the Kin (the Termitary part) as ill fitting for living with the earth…. So… hm… It’s not as easy as saying “but you help the Kin in one and some rich dudes in the other”, since the Kin itself are also torn and we are still only allowing a specific way of living. A specific worldview containing the miracles of the town… On the other hand, the polyhedron and its miracles can also be considered endangered and unique. It is a one of a kind structure as is the miracles it can provide. The Stamatins are pretty unable to reproduce it, as the game likes to tell us and destroying it would destroy all hopes of a one in a time event to come to life. Also there are talks about the Utopians being a faction of the entire town with one third of the population agreeing on their beliefs (as it is the case with the other ideologies). And the plans Peter and Maria make do sound interesting, dreamlike and… well unique. Something that can also only happen in this circumstance. But alas… we do not know that much about it and their word is only what we have. And this is the second aspect that makes the Nocturnal ending more relatable: Buildup. We witness first-hand what this Nocturnal world would be (sometimes for better and sometimes for worse), we know the beings and the miracles of the earth. We do not really get in touch which the utopian ideas and only have the rambling of good old Georgji which… yeah that doesn’t help their case! But there are kids calling this new town an “eternal adventure” a miracle that can come to live and I would say, that this thought is quite beautiful. And it certainly is unique, which is the main argument of the Nocturnal ending. Wonders, plague and miracles. Destroy one and the other will vanish. So… what is worth keeping a miracle? The answer now seems even harder to grasp. Maybe even impossible.

But we also do not have every puzzle peace. I still have hope for the two different routes and with them there are the possibilities of new realizations and also new endings. I myself am really curious if we either get an option to save the town or a reason to destroy the Polyhedron as the Bachelor. (And I am very curious as well, if Clara will get a second ending. What would that even be? An all destruction ending to set everyone free???) There also could be more elaboration on the Polyhedron and its inner workings. Maybe we will even understand what the Kains are talking about! There are some allusions to a more concrete Kain worldview. The nut-game while very disturbing makes the entrapment of the soul way more real and gives the focus some context. (It also doesn’t only connect it with the polyhedron since “anything can be a focus. A polyhedron, a room, a nut”.) The same applies to the clocks and their connection to the save system, which makes the miracles of the Kains way more real. And I digress. Only time will tell.

Conclusion:

I think it is clear by now, that this way too long text isn’t really about giving answers and more about perspective. I myself would say that the Bachelor’s choice is terribly misguided most of the time and the only possible method to save anything at best. But I do not think that it is made with its destructive force in mind. What I wanted to show is, that the motives and the narratives surrounding this ending are way more complex and also really, really interesting. (I just wanted to gush about this game!) As are the characters that comment on the situation at hand. And reflecting on how we judge them can say a lot about our own view and the world (this one as well as the Town on Gorkhon).

#pathologic #daniil dankovsky #repost because the first didnt show up as a search result

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thegreenfairy13 · 4 years

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No Country For Heroes - Part 2

Last week @justsimplymeagain gave me the prompt ‘beg’ and I wrote a one-shot. I am sorry to announce that I decided to turn this one-shot into a full story. You can find the previous chapter here on Ao3.

I raised the rating to an M for the subject matter and following chapters.

Summary: when Gotham is cut off from the mainland, the GCPD decides to turn Jim in in exchange for the Penguins protection.

It’s fitting, in a way. They dragged him in half-dead, they are keeping him half-alive now.

Jim isn’t sure how long he has been there. He only knows his entire body is burning up while his teeth won’t start clattering. The blanket they gave him is not big enough to cover him entirely. Not that it would do anything anyway to keep him warm, sweat-sodden as it is.

Now and then, a doctor comes. At least Jim believes he’s a doctor. He can’t even tell if it’s night or day when he arrives, for the room he’s being kept in has no windows. It’s a small cell - only big enough for a single bed, a toilet, and a sink.

The medic arrives and tends to Jim’s wound. By this point, the detective barely whimpers when he carves out the puss with a sharp scoop. He tells Jim he’s sorry and that they ran out of antibiotics. Jim takes a good look at his face, notes the eerie smile, and doesn’t believe him for a single second. He looks somehow familiar but before he can figure out who it might be, he passes out.

Small blessings.

When he wakes up, Jim thinks he can hear Harvey’s voice and Cobblepot. “Now you’ve seen him,” the Penguin snarls, clearly exasperated. “It’s not due to my men’s doings he’s in this dire condition,” he adds. “I’ll keep my promise, I’ll keep him alive,” Cobblepot finishes solemnly and Jim shudders. It sounds like a threat.

He makes it to the toilet the next time he regains consciousness and even manages to drink some water from the tap before collapsing again.

When waking up again, he’s hooked to an IV, and his head is spinning.

Oswald is watching him from the door, a wide, toothy grin plastered all over his face.

“Itsy bitsy, toothy teeth,” Jim thinks in his half-delirious state. He starts laughing. ‘Toothy teeth’, that sounds ridiculous, doesn’t it? They are sharp like daggers, though, and oh so pearly-white. Jim remembers when they used to be yellow, and full of stains. Oswald hadn’t had the money for a dentist back then. Now, they look like rows and rows of knives carved from ivory.

Jim waits for him to unhinge his jaw and swallow him whole.

He blinks, sits up, and shakes his head in an attempt to sober up enough to deal with the gangster.

“What do you want from me?” he snaps, more harshly than is probably wise. But then given his current state, he’s as threatening as a kitten hissing at a snake.

As expected, Oswald’s smile merely widens in response, mocking him. “What I want?” he drawls, studying the detective intently.

Pushing himself from the wall, he limps closer. The bed dips under his weight, and just like that, he’s sitting next to Jim, so close he can feel the other man’s warmth. The detective tries to move away, to get some space between the two of them, but Oswald is having none of it.

He catches Jim’s bruised hand in his gloved one, inspects the blue and black marks blossoming on his knuckles. Pressing down in a silent warning, he halts the former cop in his tracks.

To an innocent bystander, they’d look serene, like two old friends united in worry for each other’s fate.

Jim gasps softly when Oswald increases the pressure. The motion could be comforting.

“What I want,” he repeats pensively. “There are a lot of answers to this question, detective,” he ponders. “So I’m sorry,” he says, directing his gaze at the man next to him, “this might take some time.”

“Then go on,” Jim urges through gritted teeth and Oswald smirks.

“So much bravado,” the mobster acknowledges. “Even now.” Leaning in closely, he whispers, “I can see the fear in your eyes.”

Jim wants to jerk away from his grasp but Oswald’s fingers clench around him like a vice.

“Do you think someone will save you?” he asks haughtily. “Do you think someone will bust through that door, knock me out, and carry you to safety?” He yanks the detective closer, until he’s all but breathing into his face. “I’ll tell you a secret, Jim. All these good people, those honest Gothamites you kept safe for months didn’t hesitate to sacrifice you. That freedom, that justice you offered them, meant nothing to them. Even Harvey couldn’t deny the temptation of exchanging you for a chance to have his old life, his old comfort back.”

Jim’s eyes widen in shock before he finally pulls his hand free.

“Liar!” he growls.

The Penguin tilts his head and sighs, pity written all over his features. “He couldn’t wait to take the bribes off my hands once they appointed him Captain, don’t you remember? I promised him to keep you alive, and that I did.” He nods, obviously pleased with himself.

Getting up from the bed, Oswald starts pacing the room. “I have been this city’s mayor before,” he mutters. “I did good, kept the crime-rates low and the streets safe. I built hospitals and renewed the streets, staffed schools. The moment Ed shot me it was all forgotten,” he reminisces bitterly.

“They couldn’t wait to toss me back into the gutter, to depict me as a monster. Do you think it would be different with you?” he scoffs, turning to Jim. “I had been their hero and their villain and so have you,” he challenges.

“They will carry you on their shoulders and praise your name as long as you benefit them, James. And when I demanded you, they decided that indeed, you have always been the villain to keep them from getting reconnected with the mainland.”

Shaking his head fondly, he walks back to the bed. “This city makes or breaks you,” he whispers, placing his hands on Jim’s shoulders.

“So, pray tell, why do you want me?” the cop urges.

Oswald opens his mouth and closes it again, seemingly staring at a point in the distance.

“I want revenge, Jim,” he admits softly. “I need retaliation for Arkham, for every time you betrayed me, rejected my friendship…” His voice breaks off and Jim feels a cold shiver running down his spine.

Tilting his head, he inspects the former detective. “I never wanted your death,” he confesses. “Not even when I put the bounty on your head. I dreaded the possibility of someone dragging your cold, lifeless body into my house.”

Unshed tears glisten in the mobster’s eyes. Reaching out, he touches Jim’s face hesitantly, starts following the lines of his features with long, cold digits. The cop lets him, frozen in fear by the implications of the Penguin’s request.

“You were the rare exception in this city. The good, good man. Sure, you’d make your hands dirty, turn to me when there was no one else to turn to, but once you had gotten what you wanted, you’d betray me to my face.”

Swallowing heavily, Jim tries regaining his voice. He’s still feverish, weak, can feel the cold sweat dripping down his forehead. “And you allowed it,” he rasps out. “Every time. And you always knew right from the start that it would end that way.”

The Penguin smiles, sadly, longingly. “I had always so much hope,” he whispers. “So much hope you’d realize how much I used to love you.”

When leaning forward, Jim thinks he’ll kiss him again. The cop’s mouth drops open. He knew, of course, he knew. What kind of detective would he be if he didn’t realize what had been obvious for so long? It would probably be a good moment to remind Oswald of that fact, of him being a detective - or of all the times he looked the other way when the Penguin committed another crime.

His mouth runs dry though when the other man starts running his hands down his torso. “I had a stepmother, briefly,” he shares. “I had also stepsiblings,” he carries on. “They poisoned my father. So I cut them into little pieces and fed them to their mother.”

The smile contorting his features when sharing this tidbit of information will haunt Jim Gordon forever.

“That was after Arkham,” he declares. “They made me good there, Jim,” he adds, directing his gaze back at the detective. “They took apart my entire being, my personality, my very core, and pieced it back together according to their vision.”

Jim wants to protest how they obviously didn’t achieve anything there but keeps his mouth shut for once. This time, he’s smart enough not to taunt the mobster even more.

“Grace, my stepmother, in a way she helped me becoming myself again,” he muses. “When they released me, I felt sane - but never just quite.” His lower lip quivers and Jim wonders if he should offer some comfort. Finally making a decision, he places a slightly trembling hand above the one still laying on his torso.

Gratefully, Oswald squeezes his fingers lightly.

“There was always something off with me though, when they released me. Did you ever dring rotten milk from a box? It tastes normal at first, but then you smack your lips, and it’s there, this slightly sour, rotten taste. You need a moment to catch on, because your body wants to taste this regular milk so badly. At some point, you have to swallow, though. And there’s the clump, and you can’t continue pretending.”

With a sigh, he lays down next to Jim. “My father was a good man, like my mother. They could have never harmed anyone. So, so good...just like you.”

Burying his head in Jim’s neck, he inhales deeply. The cop stiffens, before awkwardly patting his back, unsure how to answer all that.

“Grace, she accused me of being a rapist.” The criminal shudders in silent disgust. “I protested, of course. Yet she looked at me that way, as if I only hadn’t committed this particular crime yet.”

Oswald’s voice is full of desperation when he speaks again. “Who would be as pathetic as to take love by force. But looking at you,” his voice breaks off when reaching again for Jim, hunger written all over his face. “I want you so much.”

The cop swallows. Whatever he says now, whatever he does, is crucial. Somehow he knows that even a false movement could end him for good.

Suddenly, Oswald jumps from the bed as if something had bitten him. Straightening out his suit, he narrows his eyes at Jim. “I could make you want me to,” he blurts out. “I learned everything I need at Arkham, I watched Victor doing his magic,” he shares. Working himself up into an excited frenzy, he starts pacing the room and Jim has had enough of it.

“You want to what?” he snorts, appalled. “Brainwash me into loving you?” The words come out too harshly, and Jim realizes his mistake instantly, but nevertheless too late.

Oswald halts in his tracks, eyes wild and as feverish as Jim feels. “Yes! Yes!” he exclaims. “Exactly that.”

Jim Gordon had been afraid of the Penguin before. When he had only been an overeager little umbrella-boy, a creep who used to lurk in the dark, stalking him and his then-fiancée, he had been repulsed, disgusted even with him, yet now, he learns what true terror means.

With a shudder, he pulls the blanket around his shoulders, presses his entire body against the bed-frame. He feels like a child, hiding in his bed from the monsters, too terrified to get up and turn the lights on. Except, this monster is standing before him in broad light, entirely unwilling to go away.

But there’s not only fear. Even if he rarely admits it, Jim knows somewhere deep inside of him that he helped to shape this particular monster that came to haunt him today. This beast had been molded from grief and betrayal. The cop recognizes a broken heart when he sees one, and a part of him wants to reach out, give in, and grant him his wish.

And there’s another part, one Jim keeps hidden even from himself. It would probably be wise to speak about it right now, but just like his gangster, he is a fool, full of hope.

#gobblepot #fanfiction

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trying-write-fanfics · 4 years

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OverhaulXReader part 43 (O)

There is an implied sex scene just for warning.

“Thanks again for driving me.” Y/n said. “Those doctors were really in my business.”

“They just want you to be safe.” Tai told her. “Why didn’t you call your friend to pick you up?”

“She’s 84.” Y/n told him. “We met in choir. She’ll take care of me for the next couple days.”

“An old lady? What is she gonna do when you faint?”

“Life alert.” She joked. “I can’t stay with you, Mr-pro-hero. Don’t wanna ruin your reputation.” She told him. “Why did they release you yesterday anyway?”

“I had some more paperwork to fill out.” He lied.

“The cops weren’t really asking me much. I thought there would be more. I listened to you and told them that stuff. I didn’t think it would be that easy.”

“I told you to trust me.”

“I just have to get something and I’ll be ready.” She told him.

Y/n gathered more of her things from the hospital room. She wanted to forget her stay here. Not only did she cry for the sins of her boyfriend, but then later that fateful day, he lost his arms. There would be no trial. He would be locked away forever, gone. The police were not on her case and was surprised she was looking at houses worked. She figured having a pro hero helping her worked. She walked out of the room and immediately dropped what she gathered when she ran into someone.

Her eyes widened seeing that green hair. Everyone told her how strong this kid was, how proud they were, Deku. He beat Overhaul and protected the child, Eri. Y/n was able to piece together what had happened in the battle from the murmurs, Tai, and his interns.

“Sorry, let me help you with that.” The teen said.

He gathered her things as she watched him. She hated the boy, but knew it was the right thing. It had to be done. Overhaul was no longer the prince of her past, but an abuser, a liar of her present. Y/n was trying to have her body and mind understand Overhaul did hurt her and used her. There was evidence, but she couldn’t totally understand it. She was special to him, she knew she was, so why did he do that.

“You did a good job, I heard.” Y/n told the teen.

“Oh- well I’m sorry you got caught up in all of it. Have your injuries been healing?”

“Yes, it’s been going quite smoothly.” She told the boy, taking her things back. “You’re so young.”

“Ah, it was my first big mission.”

“And you got to be the star of it.” She told him.

“I wouldn’t say star…” Deku sighed.

“Keep your chin up, people are gonna be looking up to you now.”

Yes, she hated the kid, but she knew it was wrong of her. Overhaul did horrible things, but she still worried for him. Deku did the right thing….Y/n would just need therapy. It had been a rough couple of years, but she had always had her love, but now apparently he was adding to it.

“Thanks for waiting.” She told Tai.

“Of course.”

“I didn’t know you had a car. Especially a sedan.” She told him.

“I’ll be renting it. While I’m working back to my fat form and recovering I won’t be running as much.” Tai told her. “Now that we’re alone, I need to know, are you in danger?”

“I don’t think I am, I think. Overhaul was always keeping me away from his work.”

She didn’t know.

“I think you you need a bodyguard.”

“You think I’ll be dragged down?”

“Yes.”

“Who to hire?” She mused.

“I could”

“You’re injured.” She told him.

“I had to look deep in your record and you’ve been to the hospital a lot. You’re free from the police having their suspicions about you, but you’re in danger now. I just think you need extra protection.” Tai told her.

Tai was flip flopping on his stance on Y/n. Yes he wanted to protect her, but he knew his lenses were clouded, and she was vulnerable. He convinced himself that despite his feelings, she was in danger whether he liked it or not. They took down one of the biggest organized crime groups in the area, but there’s a new threat rising and they might wanna twist Overhaul’s wound back open.

“You don’t think Gladys can keep me safe?”

“I’m being serious, Y/n. Chisaki has many active enemies.” Tai told her.

“I can’t think about all of that right now.” She told him honestly.

The last few days were hard, but Tai supported both interns and Y/n. His interns weren’t too emotionally injured, and their families came to visit their kids. Y/n on the other hand had a different recovery experience. Her parents never showed. Her boss came in to offer her more time off, but was a little distant with her. She suffered anxiety attacks and stress vomit. She knew she would get the answers she wanted while in the hospital, but Kai did a number on her. It hurt Tai watching her go through this. She felt loved by him, cared by him, but now was she just a mere piece in his plan and she fell for the siren song of nostalgia? She gave up her relationship with her parents for him.

Tai did feel guilty for the enjoyment he got out of seeing Kai. Defenseless, unable to fight, disabled quirk, helpless, alone, rotting in prison. He abused Eri, the poor child. Cutting her open and putting her back together like she was just some toy. He also hurt someone who loves him and compromised on continuing loving him. But his last words “make sure she is protected” rang too many times in his head. He wasn’t doing it for Chisaki, but for Y/n. Chisaki ruined Y/n.

“I don’t know if you have that kind of luxury.” Tai told her.

“You know me, I’ll just land back in the hospital like I always do!” She laughed.

Please just listen to me, Tai was internally begging. He already knows how dangerous the league was, blue flames, touch into dust, and a woman who can slash about anything. Y/n was no match for any of them.

Tai helped Y/n get her bags and walked to the porch of the small house. Gladys didn’t know what time they were going to arrive and Y/n was just going to knock on the door. Tai set the bag down and with his hand he cupped her fist. With his other hand he pulled a more bold move and turned her waist to face him. He was desperate to keep her alive. His tired eyes explored her widened (colored) ones. Was she scared of him? Did he go too far? Yeah it was early to do something like this, but Gladys didn’t sound like someone who can fend for Y/n against a fire blast.

Was Overhaul ever like this with her? It was a known fact now that he hated touch. Would he break his fear for Y/n or was this completely forgein to her? How could Overhaul have someone so beautiful by his side and would avoid her touch? She was bruised and bandaged, but to Tai she was the most gorgeous. He wanted her safe and protected. If she would let him, he would want to love her right.

“Please, just think about it.” He said no louder than a whisper.

“I will…” she breathed.

She took her things and knocked on the door. The old women with scales on her neck answered. Gladys thanked Tainfor driving Y/n and she would make sure she would be monitored. It worked both ways, Gladys also wanted a human companion to watch over her just in case she slipped or fell. She even told Tai she taught her cats how to dial 911. Though it was hard Tai was able to leave.

At 6 o’clock Gladys went to bed and that’s when the thoughts began to unhinge. Y/n tried watching TV, but it only caused her headache to get worse. She tried showering, but remembered the day Kai walked in on her sleeping in the tub. She jumped out and threw up. She brushed her teeth and tried to calm down. She told herself it didn’t matter whether Kai had loved her not, he used her and abused a child. She tried not to blame herself but she did anyway. She should have known the signs that he was abusing a child. She wasn’t allowed at his place freely but he could come to her house whenever he please. Did he please that much? Sure he was in the yakuza so it could have to do with that why she wasn’t allowed over. Despite all that maybe she should have never came back. She always knew the yakuza was dangerous, she knew he was dealing drugs but she stayed with him and seemed him out! It was a fairytale she was following only with the worst ending. She should have known and listened to her parents to not rejoin the yakuza that they were so desperately trying to break ties from.

Gladys was sleeping. Y/n was alone and desperate. She wanted to feel anything else than what she was. She needed to stop thinking about Kai, but how? She had wanted him for over a decade, got with him and he destroyed her!

It wasn’t totally unthinkable what she did next. She wasn’t thinking, just following an instinct. She took the subway and found herself at Tai’s door.

Covered in sweat, the two were panting. It was like being pulled back to reality as Tai had really realized what he was doing. He should have been a hero, but instead he felt like he had manipulated her in to this position. Half of him felt amazing, was he sticking it to a child abuser, a domestic abuser, or was it that he had these feelings for Y/n.

“Keep going, what wrong?” Y/n panted.

His consciousness faded. He listened to his ID. Even if she was using him and didn’t even feel anything for him, he wanted to enjoy this moment. He was aggressive. She felt heavenly to him. When it was over they laid on the bed.

Y/n’s back was turned to him. Was it instant regret? Her bandages were still on her body, just like his own. The guilt began to hit his reality once more. He wasn’t much better than Overhaul. Sure Tai didn’t destroy a neighborhood, indirectly hurt his girlfriend, and sold drugs with people’s blood, but he was too impulsive. He listened to pleasure. He could have just told Y/n it wasn’t right, but instead he let her in and let their hands roam each other’s bodies’. He knew her weaknesses subconsciously. He knew how badly she was yearning for connection, warmth, and care. Since he done the deed, he would go through with it all the way. He pulled the sheet over her frame and spooned her. He wasn’t gonna let her feel like this was only a conquest. If she was going to be up for it, he’d do it again for her. If she wanted to be something more, he would accept, but right now, he promised himself he wouldn’t ask for anything yet.

At some point that night, Tai was awoken by the sound of sniffles. His face was in Y/n’s hair, but he checked her face. The moonlight revealed she was crying. They had alright been asleep, did she wake up feeling regretful? He delicately brushed her hair out of her face. With his thumb he wiped her tears and realized she was crying in her sleep. Tai kissed her temple. She did have a lot to cry about.

However Tai woke up alone. Though it was a somber gray morning, he tried not to feel too bad about it. He promised himself he would be fine with whatever happened between them next because he felt wrong with what he did. It wasn’t all terrible. She made him thank you pancakes. Though he loved food, deep down he did want to spend the morning together.

#overhaulxreader #overhaul #chisaki kai #chisaki kaixreader #xreader #bnha #bnha fanfiction

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interludcs · 4 years

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BENEDETTA PORCAROLI , CIS FEMALE , SHE / HER → according to the school records , GIOVANNA ELOISA ARGENTI has been attending sacred heart for the past two years . i last saw them hanging around stan's place ; i think they were tying cherry stems into knots . at twenty - one , gio has been studying classics and get this , i heard that her bloodline has long been cursed to succumb to inevitable madness and it’s been the cause of many mysterious deaths in the family already — figure it’s true ? everyone around here always associates them with biting into an apple only to realize it’s rotten , a bloody nose dripping onto silk stockings , and the distorted screech of a violin coming from another room . in the time since these strange happenings , they have encountered unexplained occurrences .

━ ˙ ˖ ☆ QUICK STATS !

full name : giovanna eloisa argenti

nickname(s) : gio , gigi ( although she likes to think she outgrew it )

zodiac : scorpio sun , gemini moon ( click ! )

sexuality : bisexual .

occupation : student & heiress .

birthplace : rome , italy .

current residence : sacred heart academy .

pinterest : ( click ! )

━ ˙ ˖ ☆ BACKSTORY ! ( tw : depression , murder , suicide & drug abuse )

born in 1953 to one of the wealthiest families in italy ! the argenti's posses a ridiculous and tbh kinda disgusting fortune because of their distant ties to the old italian monarchy ... and are also long rumored to have been cursed hundreds of years ago as divine punishment for the sins of a past family member .

the family has a long and gruesome history — good husbands turning into killers , more than one argenti woman flinging herself off one of the many balconies in the family estate , children who hear voices in the night . more often than people care to count , these fits of madness are seemingly inexplicable .

giovanna was born on chilly autumn night . she would be her mother’s first and last child , but lucianna argenti saw her baby girl as anything but a miracle . when she was only five months old , a nanny discovered the woman trying to drown giovanna in the bathtub , stuck in a trance she’d later have no recollection of being in . long in denial of the family curse , marco argenti hired nearly every notable doctor in italy , but none of them could find a sound explanation for the violent and nonsensical trances his wife would experience for the next three years before ultimately taking her own life .

leaving giovanna to grow up all alone in the too big family estate at the hands of nannies , marco argenti would spend the better years of his only daughter’s life traveling all around europe , desperate to shake the ghost of his wife , but never succeeding .

despite all the tragedy early on in gio’s life , she had an almost typical upbringing for someone in her socioeconomic circle . a childhood devoid of the love her parents were supposed to give , nannies who gave in to the rotten demands only a wealthy child and sole heir could conjure up , a house that never felt like a home .

by the time she was a teenager , gio had grown up to be a different kind of monster — not the madwomen her classmates would snicker about when speaking ill of the blood that flowed through her veins , but something perhaps more dangerous , a selfish girl too clever and too beautiful for her own good .

on the eve of her 18th birthday her father makes his grand return home , gone so long he mistakes his daughter for a maid before a groundskeeper politely informs him of his mistake . causing more tension still was the brand new gold band on his ring finger , as well as the announcement that he’s selling the estate , and that gio’s to come live with his new wife and three small children in france .

the day giovanna argenti turns 18 is a day she can no longer remember save for waking up in the remnants of a burnt down home , ash caked underneath her fingernails , smoke burning her lungs . servants who have been loyal to the argenti family for decades will later testify that there had been a terrible accident lighting the birthday cake that night , that marco argenti had never returned home the night before , and that the family of four in paris crying murder were nothing but scammers after the family fortune .

gio spends the next year scrambling to piece together the mysterious events , a tiny voice inside her head insisting something wasn’t right with the story she’d been fed by the people who raised her , albeit confused as to why they’d hide the truth if something sinister had indeed happened that night . she could have sworn the memory of her father coming home was a real one — until she gets a letter in the mail , signed marco argenti , polaroid attached , a blurry shot of a man who bears the family resemblance standing in front of the statue of liberty .

cue the drug abuse ( coke being her poison of choice ) , the reckless and dangerous stunts all in the name of having a good time , the mind numbing sex with strangers . heart heavy with the idea that she was indeed going insane , following in the footsteps of all the argenti’s that had come before her , giovanna was left with the haunting sensation that her life was already doomed , and so she might as well make the most of it . on the flip side of this she also came to the realization that she could pretty much .... do whatever she wanted and get away with it ? people already thought she was cursed and crazy ... might as well act the part ... a little self fulfilling prophecy ... as a treat <3

in a feeble attempt to save her from an untimely and rather stupid demise , she is shipped off to sacred heart academy , a place a distant cousin once attended . mind clouded by addiction and unresolved trauma alike , giovanna can’t be sure the strange happenings at sacred heart are real at all or just a product of a dark and overactive imagination .

━ ˙ ˖ ☆ PERSONALITY + TIDBITS !

first & foremost ... gio was inspired loosely by some sexy women including miss effy stonem from skins , choi sooji from tempted , ludo from baby , villanelle from killing eve & lady macbeth minus the murder ( ... unless ? 😏 ) , as well as more lana del rey songs than i care to admit so we won’t be talking about it aha x

yes what i’m trying to say is she’s a little unhinged ... but in that fun sexy way like when amy dunne gives the cool girl speech in gone girl .

speaking of cool girls ... gio is one 😌 you would think growing up with a last name that’s literally famous for being cursed would have put a bigger damper on her popularity among people but there’s a certain fascination gio holds and she knows it . this isn’t to say she’s got a lot of friends because she definitely doesn’t , she just knows how to get people’s attention .

at her core she is clever , charming , everything someone who grew up with money is bound to be . but unlike the selfishness of other trust fund babies , gio’s operates on a different scale . she’s self obsessed , not because she views herself as better than anyone else , but because she’s so haunted by the idea that something terrible and wicked exists inside of her and it’s only a matter of time before darkness takes over .

in an effort to counter that weight , she breezes through life without taking much seriously . toying with people , the mind games she plays , it’s all an effort to distract herself , to entertain her brain with thoughts that somehow seem lighter in comparison to her own inevitable self destruction although the people she plays with might say otherwise .

consequences should scare her more than they do , but honestly she’s got a penchant for doing the things deemed bad for her . on one hand she figures little matters if she’s truly cursed , on the other hand she figures if she is cursed than whatever consequence comes her way is deserved .

flirty , but most of the time it never means anything . she is prone to intense infatuations , however , all of which have ended tragically so far so proceed with caution .

she’s definitely someone most people would know of , as she’s got an almost bad habit of striking up conversations with whoever , but ask someone to name her favorite color or any profound fact about her and they probably wouldn’t be able to .

very nosy due to her childhood of people watching and intensely studying the adults who raised her , and so the habit has carried on into her adult life . she won’t outwardly pry , but if you catch her interest she’ll unabashedly observe you like she’s an actor trying to better understand their part .

tons of fun at parties , but also in class , considering she’s snorting enough coke on the daily to treat school like it’s one big social gathering . life’s a beach baby <3

studying classics because she likes how intense the stories and history are , but she’s surprised herself by being rather good at the language aspect of the major .

deep deep down ... there is the desire to be understood and loved despite whatever uninhibited thing she’s convinced lurks around inside her but that is constantly in conflict with the idea that she’s fundamentally undeserving of real affection ... just girly things you know 🥺

━ ˙ ˖ ☆ WANTED CONNECTIONS ! ( all open to all genders )

my brain is quite literally all rot rn im just gonna list stuff with minimal elaboration please vibe with me ...

people she gets high with <3

ex infatuations that ended tragically lets get that angst

spare parental figures ... any professors out there want a demon child who will idolize u but not know how to deal with that so they just act up all the while hoping for forgiveness and the attention they never got from their own parents </3

speaking of professors i will play into the problematic trope of a student being obsessed with a professor -___- solely because i would lov to have gio go full throttle crazy ... as a treat ... this has nothing to do with that one line in lorde’s writer in the dark u know the one truly this does not have to be reciprocated at ALL

a confidant / someone she probably considers her closest friend who she is constantly disgusted with herself for opening up to but also truly not able to live without so it’s a fun cycle of push and pull but truly she’d probably die for them just don’t ask her that she’ll say no

i think it would be fun to have someone who knows about the supposed argenti curse maybe their family had some associations to gio’s or maybe they spent some time in italy at some point growing up and met her there idk im cute not smart ...

we’ve all been begging and begging i will jump on the bandwagon and ask for a sexy rival doesnt mean anything if u say i hate u after hooking up

someone she keeps bumping into when she’s sneaking out past curfew or cutting class and at first it was like dude seriously do we have to start alternating but now it turned into like wow i really hope we bump into each other again would u like a cigarette wanna listen to some music together

someone she sees a lot at stan’s place . perhaps on campus they have a very different relationship but off campus they feel free to have another

current hookups we love to see it there’s so many directions to go in maybe its purely a casual thing , maybe it’s casual for gio but not for them , or maybe gio’s the one like worm maybe i would like more than sex , maybe it’s like a we only hookup when we’re high at parties thing , perhaps it’s a secret hookup thing so it gets angsty

maybe a rival or someone she swears she hates and they swear the same but they accidentally bond along the way and it’s like well i thought i hated u but perhaps we are more similar than we thought but also we only know how to be enemies so how do we even move past this ...

perhaps someone gio goes to when she’s especially fucked up and they take care of her / start to resent her for seemingly caring so little abt her own well being and she resents them for caring too much bc it’s not liked she asked but she keeps showing up at their door and they keep letting her in

someone she can be in cahoots with ... go absolutely bonkers with knowing they won’t judge her and she won’t judge them

perhaps someone she can be a bad influence on

also someone who makes her want to be a better person bc we need balance

a group of girls gio can be like men r disgusting with but then they catch her hooking up with said stinky man and it’s just a cycle like please get some help luv

a dealer mayhaps ?

someone whose favorite pen she stole but blatantly lied and said she didn’t steal it but she uses it everyday in class so u know she did in fact steal ur pen

ok she’s out of juice i’m she

i wont lie to u ive been writing this all damn day … but we finally made it baby 😭😭😭 im sosososo sorry for the length & the wait … also i feel like my charas always change a lil once i actually start plotting & writing so sorry again if u see me finally writing as giovanna on the dash and ur like lit rally who is that … JSDBWJBDWBDJ also side note i promise u im almost done word vomiting all over the place but it must b said ... u know how there’s that trope that supposed insanity is like not always real like how female hysteria was a whole as thing or like how in haunting of hill house where the charas weren’t really haunted by ghosts at all more so by their trauma ... that was my whole inspo with the argenti’s like are they even cursed at all ? who is to say ... PLEASE come message me on discord to plot ! @ you are my soulmate ʕ´• ᴥ•̥`ʔ#8172 maybe … give this a like if u wanna … do that hehehe thank u for reading all this ur so brave for that stay sexy stan loona x

#heretics.intro #╰ ♡ . 𝒏𝒐 𝒕𝒉𝒐𝒕𝒔 𝒉𝒆𝒂𝒅 𝒆𝒎𝒑𝒕𝒚 ── ooc !#pls lets not talk abt the length the quality OR the lateness ... compliments only x #JSBDJWBDJWBDJWD

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alia15 · 4 years

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2020: Who Saw THIS Coming?

Remember when I retired from blogging?

I actually did retire, except, I consider this little corner of the Internet -- MY corner -- to be a place where I document the big stuff. I told you about my engagement and then came back several months later to recap my wedding. Remember that? The wedding that THANKFULLY occurred in late 2019 before the world turned to shit??

Yeah. You know what happened. “The pandemic.” “The virus.” “Covid.” Covid-19″ (I personally prefer the first five Covids; I feel like they really fell off after that). “CORONAVIRUS.”

THE DUMPSTER FIRE THAT IS...2020.

Suuuuuuuuure, good ol’ Rona robbed Leo and me of our Italian honeymoon, but aside from that? We were able to squeeze in all kinds of fun things in good ol 2019 -- oh how I miss you, 2019 -- and have an unforgettable year. This year is proving to be unforgettable too -- just, ya know -- in like, a traumatizing sorta way.

Anyway, as I was saying, I have to document the big stuff on here. I imagine myself reading and looking back on this blog like an old, embarrassing diary (hell, I do it already) (the dating posts make me want to die) and who can omit THIS chapter? It’s got it all: a deadly virus, racially fueled riots and protesting, social injustice, a deranged madman in the oval office, and... MURDER HORNETS?

exactly.

So rather than write out a whole long thing about my experience in 2020, I thought I’d break it down by month, starting in March. I’m going to be documenting the good, the BAD (there’s a decent amount of that), and anything new that transpired in that time frame. Did I take up any hobbies? Start baking sourdough? I guess you’ll find out.

Let’s start with:

MARCH.

The good. There was immediately a novelty to this whole Covid-19 thing. In the first half of the month I was commuting, going to work in my NYC office, and doing my usual amount of social things on weekends. When it was decided in mid-March that we’d have to work and stay home for a “bit” (lol), there was something exciting about it. We made jokes about social distancing and masks and had cutesy puns for “quarantining.” We hit the ground RUNNING with Zoom calls/video chats. There was something fun and exhilarating about all this.

The bad. People I KNOW got this virus. People I know LOST people to this virus. My Grandma’s health took a turn and things did not look good, but I couldn’t go see her. Shit, I didn’t see ANYONE except Leo, and even he was going to work in his office every day. I had to get used to this abrupt abundance of...alone time.

What’s new? I’ve always taken to social media as a creative outlet, but I QUICKLY started using it more -- and differently -- once things in the world got hairy. I treated my Instagram like my one gateway to the outside world, because it was: I surveyed my followers and asked how they were doing. I took silly videos talking to myself in the mirror. I wrote long captions on my photos letting everyone know what my experience was like. I tried to entertain those who were stuck at home, as I was, and needing an escape.

Oh, and ya know... Tiger King.

APRIL.

The good. The weather was getting nicer, so Leo and I took advantage and often went for walks around our complex and even a local trail/preserve in our town. We started doing “lawn visits” to see our families from a distance, and that helped. For two people who were used to seeing their ‘people’ regularly, 3-4 weeks of not seeing them took a toll. I also started doing “Grateful April” on Instagram, where I shared a few things each day that made me happy/appreciative. Some followers of mine followed suit, which was awesome to see.

The bad. Hmm, I think all this sitting and lack of moving is hurting my back? (#foreshadowing). Also, ENOUGH with the Zoom calls and “virtual happy hours,” for the LOVE OF GOD! Oh, and that “novelty” I mentioned in March? That wore off quickly, and a lot of us started to feel weird, sad, isolated, uneasy, unproductive and stir-crazy. Myself included.

We were also reminded that this was the month we were supposed to depart for our honeymoon. Ugh.

What’s New? I did some arts & crafts (I painted ceramic bowls I bought from Target), gave myself a mediocre pedicure, found new/creative ways to engage and interact with folks on social media (polls, asking questions like “what’s in your Amazon cart?” and “who sponsors your quarantine?”), and got to see what it was like to have a husband with hair. I also discovered my love of tie-dye and wore...a lot of it.

Oh, and I was on CBS news talking about screen time. Iconic.

MAY.

The good. The weather got summer-like and I definitely felt a MAJOR shift in my mood. Leo and I spent more time outside on our deck: listening to music, making margaritas, talking to neighbors. I even took work calls outside and got some much-needed Vitamin D. I had my first real “beach days” (bathing suit, chair and all). I started to FINALLY see my family in person; first, outside only -- and then eventually indoors.

The bad. Ahmaud Arbery. George Floyd, obviously. Dumb-dumbs protesting the lock-down and demanding haircuts. CLEARLY more to come on this. (See: June)

Oh, and my back pain? WAY worse.

What’s new? Some more arts and crafts: I started painting shells I found on the beach (lol). I bought a pair of Crocs and documented the most absurd series on social media where I paired the heinous footwear with items that rhymed (Crocs & socks, Crocs & shamrocks, Crocs & botox...you get the idea.) I experimented with a few new recipes (made lemon poppy muffins & homemade vodka sauce). I re-watched Mad Men and it made me miss my office and coworkers.

JUNE. A rough one.

The good. We started doing more social things with our families: BBQs, celebrating Father’s Day, our nephew’s baptism. Doing this truly felt like “normalcy” and in those moments, we’d forget about all the garbage going on around us. I also decided (yes, after 3 friggin months of lock-down) that I needed to start exercising; something I needed for my physical AND mental health. I thought it could help my back -- which, yes, was feeling worse as time went on -- and it did make me feel good to spend a little time each day walking, jogging, lifting weights and just MOVING.

The bad. Um? Everything? For starters, the racial tension in the country came to a head and erupted in a MAJOR way -- and while the protests and all the #BlackLivesMatter movements were a positive thing, it absolutely brought out the WORST in so many others. There was rioting, looting and violence. Racism ran RAMPANT. Karens went wild. “Covidiots” were ENRAGED about being told to wear masks. There was police brutality and a President who threw fuel into the fire. Tensions and emotions were at an all-time high and we all got a harsh dose of reality that this country has SO FAR TO GO in regards to equality and civil rights and even basic human decency. I was -- and still am -- sad for this country.

Also? I finally went for an MRI on my back and found out I have two herniated discs; well THAT certainly helps explain things! Shortly after, I pull my back out entirely, and could not walk or move. The pain is excruciating; debilitating and I think, “can things get any worse?” and then...

My Grandma passes away.

It hurts. It still does. It was inevitable -- as death is, especially given her age and health condition at the time -- but it still felt like taking a bullet. I will always be grateful that I was able to get to see her one day before she passed away to say goodbye, but it’s hard not to be resentful that she didn’t get the memorial service and send-off she so deserved because of the pandemic.

(Side note: read about my amazing Grandma HERE)

In short, June sucked.

What’s new? We got a new stationary bike and set it up outside on the deck which was awesome, and I ended the month getting some epidural shots at the spine doctor. While the (strong) meds and injections didn’t exactly *cure* my issue, they made things a LOT better. Leo and I also drove into NYC (my first time there in MONTHS!) so I could go get my migraine Botox treatment at my neurologist.

I voted by mail (which is not fraudulent, by the way) (#eyeroll) in the NY Primary.

I also got not one, but TWO, amazing rainbows the week my grandmother passed away. I needed those, and I’d like to think she knew that.

JULY.

The good. More beach days and some consistent amazing weather (thanks, Mother Nature!). I started seeing a chiropractor twice a week and quickly respond REALLY WELL to treatment and start feeling a lot better. I put things into perspective and realize how lucky I am to live where I do -- on the beach -- and get to enjoy all this newfound free time doing things I enjoy. We also celebrate some family birthdays and have a small family gathering in honor of our beloved Dorothy.

Have you noticed that “seeing family” always ends up in my “good” section?

The bad. Naya Rivera died unexpectedly, John Lewis died, REGIS died. Our President remains as unhinged as ever, we desperately want to #FreeBritney, and Kanye West has a really sad, scary and concerning, uh, episode. He’s also running for President, maybe? Or not? On a personal note, Leo and I tried to eat dinner on the beach one night and LIT-rally got attacked by seagulls. Weeks later, bull sharks are spotted in the ocean RIGHT WHERE WE LIVE, and they prohibit swimming.

What’s new? Hamilton on Disney+: need I say more? The fig tree that’s been on our deck for three summers FINALLY started to grow figs! I re-watched Broad City and it is just... *chef’s kiss* perfection. Taylor Swift releases her album ‘folklore’ and I listen on repeat for seven days straight.

AUGUST.

Well, who knows? We’re not there yet. 2020 has certainly been a ride (and it’s not over yet; dear GOD), and I still can’t believe it ended up being this insane year, unlike anything I’ve EVER experienced. And while it undoubtedly has come with its fair share of challenges, it has also come with some blessings.

I have all this extra time now and I make a point to use it productively (most days). I log off from working and go outside, I walk the beach, go in our complex pool, ride the stationary bike, catch up with friends/family on the phone, read, and watch/re-watch shows.

The commute and hustle and bustle of every day in my pre-pandemic life would make me stressed and anxious; I was constantly snoozing alarm clocks, rushing in the mornings, dealing with overcrowded/delayed trains, and getting home late each night.

Life has become slower, in a good way, and it’s made me appreciate the simple things. I care less about material things and more about the basics: enjoying nice weather/the outdoors, my home, my husband, my family and close friends.

I genuinely stopped caring about getting my hair and nails done, going out to dinner, getting dolled up, or traveling. Don’t get me wrong: I enjoy all these things and I’ll of course do them again, but this whole situation made me realize that what I need *most* in this world are the simple joys that money can’t buy.

And for that? I’m grateful.

*stay safe, friends.*

#coronavirus #pandemic #life #2020 #this year #recap #family #blm #year in review #my life #covid #life as we know it #changes #death #loss #love #beach

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vintagemichelle91 · 7 years

Text

A Hard Lesson in Vanity: Chapter 6

Authors’ Note: Let’s check in on Rafael and see how he is actually dealing with being second chair! Once again @rauliskafan and I thank you for the feedback! We look forward to it and it gives us joy to bring this new part to you guys to fill in the hiatus void!

“Ready to roll?”

Rafael looked up from his case notes to see Eve Selby framed in the doorway of the courthouse conference room. Her dark hair crowned her head by way of a braid, and her cream-colored suit made him consider questioning where she had her outfits tailored. Shaking the idea off, for now, he packed up his briefcase and removed his glasses to meet her eyes.

“Absolutely,” he started. “Might be something to your master plan.”

“Think you’ll see I’m a perfect fit for this position,” Eve said. “Ever gone fishing by any chance?”

“Fishing?” he echoed. “Can’t say that I have.”

“Not a surprise,” Eve chuckled. “It’s cold and messy and requires a supreme amount of patience. Somehow I think that none of those are your style.”

He felt his jaw unhinge, his tongue starting to fire back a retort when she grabbed his arm and gave a squeeze through his pinstriped jacket just above the elbow.

“I’m having some fun with you,” she said. “Don’t tell me you can’t take a joke.”

In response, his slowly nodded… slightly stunned when she patted his cheek.

“Better,” Eve said. “I would think that a lone wolf in a house of ladies is used to being that kind of thing.”

“Well…” On that fact, she was spot on. Natalia teased whenever he scowled, and Violetta was always quick to point out when he was being too literal for her liking. Ashtonja, so prim and polite, seemed at home enough to roll her eyes when he started to glide off the rails. Even the twins were already tuned into his moods and learned to stop squealing and reach for his nose if the situation suddenly felt too serious.

“You are good,” Rafael had to admit. “Perhaps I’ll pick up a few pointers watching you play the game.”

“Damn straight you will,” Eve agreed before they headed to the courtroom. Glancing into the gallery, Rafael spied the squad sitting, waiting. Eve was quick to smile at all of them, and Rafael locked eyes with his brother-in-law.

“Problem?” Rafael asked.

“Not from here,” Dodds said. “How’s it looking?”

“Our chances are good.”

“Think you can let her take the lead?” Dodds asked.

If he was being honest, second chair still stung around the edges, creeping slowly towards the center of his stomach like a series of sloppy somersaults. In the past, those flips would settle before stretching up his throat to fly out and stick the landing the instant he saw a jury. Today would require a different feat of strength, enduring various stretches of forever while twelve men and women reviewed the facts. Yes, there was the familiar hope that they would come back with one word: guilty. Naturally, he wished he was leading this team of two. But it was up to Eve to spread the chalk and go for the gold.

“I have to be,” Rafael said. “And I could do worse than...”

He gestured to Eve literally laying out the case before sitting in the supple leather chair and crossing her long legs. Not one single fidget. She did not even reach for the pitcher of water resting on the table. Yes; he could do much worse.

“Well will you look at that,” Dodds said.

John Buchanan wore much more flop sweat than usual. The man probably faced juries in his sleep, somehow dreaming himself the hero even though so many of the men and women he defended dripped with guilt. All in a day’s work; on some level that much Rafael understood. Possibly in the past he had even excused. But inevitably his mind floated back to Robert Emerson… what his hands had done to his wife, his hermosa flor. Buchanan wanted that scum to walk. For that he became and remained enemy number one, and a part of him always want to throttle the son of a bitch for trying to set more monsters free.

“You okay?” Dodds knowingly asked.

“Just dandy,” Rafael quipped. “Buchanan looks a little green around the gills”

“Bad breakfast burrito or ten,” Dodds snickered before returning to his seat, and Rafael caught a quick smile passing between Eve and Carisi as he started to sit…

…stopping short when he viewed Rollins looking worse than the defense lawyer, and he searched for something to say, small talk to be sure but at least something soothing, when Eve tapped his arm.

“You still with me, Rafael?” she asked.

“I…”

He had asked Natalia if Rollins was the reason she seemed uneasy after the dinner party. His wife merely nodded and said that she had hoped for something different for Sonny. After that, she wanted to let the matter drop, and she snuggled so close albeit without the blue negligee he had hoped for. That subject fell away as well, and it was always enough to hold her, to savor her soft skin under the tips of his fingers…

…and her long, loving kiss before he left that morning convinced him that he would do anything to sweep the sinners from the streets and paint the way ahead with petals worthy of her fair feet.

Even if it meant having to hold his tongue, and the somersaults promising to lead nowhere.

“I am, Ms. Selby,” he said. “Make the fat man squirm.”

“That’s a bit crude,” Eve said with a small smirk.

“That’s our adversary,” Rafael replied. “Don’t forget it.”

“I never underestimate the men I’m up against.” With that, she stood slowly to deliver her opening argument.

“Good morning, Ladies and Gentlemen,” she began. “I want to start by thanking you for joining us today. This is a matter of grave importance and don’t think that the twelve of you were selected by accident; you are the best jury… the only jury for this moment in time.”

Rafael watched the assorted men and women beam with pride in the wake of her words, and he settled back in his chair, expecting a litany of all the reasons why the defendant, why Julian Frost was guilty---

“Honestly, I don’t want to take up too much of those valuable minutes,” Eve continued. “Your presence is already enough. I defer to my able colleague. I am sure that he has a story to tell, and we’ll talk again when the time is right. Just wanted to say hello. And again… thank you.”

Smiling, she turned on her heel and returned to her chair. Rafael sat still for a second until she shot him a wink.

“It’s called getting on their good side right off the bat,” Eve said. “Try it one of these days.”

He rolled his eyes as Buchanan lumbered forward and spent the better part of a half hour outlining all the ways in which his client was a pillar of the community, artistic and otherwise. He accused their victim of being an opportunist, someone who ultimately failed Frost’s film… someone who was crying rape in a pathetic bid for attention, the spectacle of the courtroom and possibly a stint at a reality show which would document her life as a desperate actress.

But if anyone in the courtroom sounded desperate…

“Bullseye,” Eve muttered under her breath. “Just the jerk I wanted him to be.”

“Not bad,” Rafael admitted out of the corner of his mouth. “I’ve only ever seen him finesse a jury.”

“Give yourself some credit, counselor; I know you’ve had him up against the ropes a time or two.”

“Have you made a habit of studying my case histories?” he asked as he lowered his eyes behind his glasses and looked to her pen furiously scribbling notes on a legal pad.

“Of course,” Eve said. “Heard it said once that you were the King of the Courtroom.”

“I think you’re about to challenge me for that title, Ms. Selby.”

Their eyes locked, and Rafael smirked, ready to watch her lay waste to both Buchanan and Frost. One thing for her to lay it out at his dinner table; quite another to see it wielded like a sword, aimed at the hearts of the opposition. Eve blushed as she dropped her pen, and when Buchanan’s far lengthier closing argument came to a halt, she stood to take another turn. Glancing over his shoulder, he spied the squad sitting on the edge of their seats… save for Rollins who stared at her shoes.

“Well, I guess I better get down to brass tacks,” Eve joked with the jury. She started with the admitting emergency room doctor who examined Marcia Brown in the wake of her assault. And then Liv entered to take the stand. Rafael exchanged a quick glance with her, and he saw her confidence in Eve, listened as the lieutenant listed off the actress’ attitude, affect, and all the other reasons why it to believe her above all else. At the heart of Liv’s argument, there were six simple words.

“Marcia did not ask for this,” Liv said, cutting her eyes towards the jury. “She signed on to his film to work. Julian Frost flipped the script.”

“Objection!”

Buchanan’s voice rang out, and even though the last part of Liv’s testimony was stricken from the record, Eve smiled as she resumed her seat.

“That’ll leave a mark,” she muttered under her breath.

And Rafael could not help but agree. Buchanan’s attempts to paint the actress as a fake and a fraud fell flat once the words left his mouth, and when Marcia Brown took the stand, her eyes watery and her voice more so with every beat of her tragic tale, Buchanan could do little in the way of objections. He cracked his knuckles when he had his shot at the actress, but she stood up under his cross, and the tears that finally flowed did nothing to endear him or his client to the jury.

“Bet you my salary that he doesn’t ask for a recess,” Eve said.

“You don’t he wants a chance to regroup?” Rafael asked.

“Not if I know where his mind’s at,” Eve replied. “He wants to turn the tide now. If he can.”

Right on cue, Buchanan called Julian Frost to testify. The fair-haired director sat in the witness box and explained how Marcia Brown was a gifted thespian but not up to the task of his major motion picture.

“First it was a bullseye, and now we’re talking jackpot,” Eve said, standing slowly to button her blazer and stare the defendant down.

“Mr. Frost, I’ve been looking over your credits.”

“Where do you find the time?” he laughed, trying to seem friendly or charming or something sincere in the eyes of the jury.

“I love light reading,” Eve continued. “This one caught my eye… Diana. At first I thought it was another Princess of Wales story but---”

“It’s a myth,” Julian said. “Retold for the modern age.”

“Too bad she couldn’t talk to audiences the way she talked to animals,” Eve said. “The reviews… those that I could find… they called it a new low in---”

“There were some post-production problems with that one,” Julian said, shifting in his seat.

“Just that one?” Eve challenged. What about Corsets? Was that an actual film or just an excuse to watch women in costumes that flatter the bust? Or maybe you prefer looking at women in cages?”

“It was a period piece,” Julian said. “And a damn good one if I say so myself.”

“Can you say the same for Starlight. Now this one really seemed like a sure thing! I mean, who hasn’t envisioned the Last Supper inhabited by a cast of aliens and---”

“Your honor, is there a relevant question here?” Buchanan demanded. Waiting, wishing he had the director in his cross hairs but still admiring Eve’s abilities, Rafael watched her stare down the witness with fire in her eyes.

“The fact of the matter, Mr. Frost, is that you haven’t had a hit in almost five years. So maybe you’re the one seeking some attention.”

“No.”

“I think yes,” Eve continued. “Maybe you were lonely or just feeling a little less than. Isn’t that why you lured Ms. Brown to---?”

“Enough, you lying little bitch!” he exclaimed. “I’ll show you some real attention that will make your head---”

The entire courtroom gasped, and Eve took a step back. Carisi stood to steady her as she waved him off, and Rafael saw the director sputter as he tried and failed to smooth the wrinkles from his tie.

“I… yes,” he began. “Maybe I… maybe I haven’t had a hit in years. Maybe I’ve got more ex-wives and alimony payments than the good people of this jury would care to count. But I…”

Slumping back in his seat, Julian Frost shook his head and folded his hands in his lap.

“But I did not do this. Marcia came on to me. I never raped her.”

“Can’t wait to see the trailer for that one,” Eve scoffed softly before withdrawing the statement as the judge called the afternoon recess, and she nudged Rafael’s side.

“Think this is almost in the bag,” she said.

“Are you so sure?” Rafael asked. “Buchanan will have other witnesses.”

“Fellow directors,” Eve said. “An actress or two looking for her chance in the spotlight.”

“You sound so uncharitable,” Rafael observed.

“Why do they deserve my pity?” Eve asked. “They never garnered one decent review. But I’ll know a thing or two about raves before the evening is out.”

She patted his cheek again and departed with a grinning Carisi for lunch… prompting Rollins to leave without a word. Hoping that he would see her outside, Rafael failed to find her, and there was nothing to do but hit the food trucks with Liv and Dodds.

“She really impressed me,” Liv said. “If only every perp could sing on cue.”

“Are you saying that I’m not theatrical enough for you?” Rafael asked.

“Come on, Barba,” she laughed, handing him a napkin and a straw. “I’m pretty sure I’ve been in awe of you more times than I could count.”

“Have you?” Rafael asked, his eyebrows lifting to his hairline.

“Don’t let it give you a swelled head,” Liv said, leaving his side to take a call, leaving him with Dodds who said little as they finished their lunch and exchanged greetings with Eve and Carisi before returning to the trial. And after the parade of performers and the closing arguments, the jury was out for less than an hour.

“Your honor, we find the defendant, Julian Frost, guilty of the charge of rape in the first degree.”

The director’s body sagged, and he flailed and fumed as he was led from the courtroom. Rafael watched Eve and Liv congratulate Marica Brown and wanted to call it a day well done, wanted to return to Natalia. Sitting second chair hadn’t been horrible. Not that he wanted to make a habit of it but---

“Rafael?”

The sound of Eve’s voice stirred him from his thoughts, and he met her blue eyes… saw her smile.

“Come on; we’re celebrating tonight.”

#rafael barba #raul esparza #law and order svu #svu fanfiction #sonny carisi #olivia benson #mike dodds #a hard lesson series #Rafael Barba/OC #a hard lesson in vanity

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theartofbeinganerd · 7 years

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I was planning on answering my next prompt tonight, but I’ve got a lot going on and wasn’t feeling up to writing tonight, so I decided to take the night off. Instead, here’s another fic that I wrote last year for 52 Prompts for 52 Weeks; Week Thirty-One, “A story set at sea”, which I chose to answer with a 1x22 AU.

(Ao3)

First, all that Fitz had felt was utter betrayal. All he could picture was Ward, the man they’d thought a friend, thought that they could trust, hitting that button and launching them to their deaths.

The fear hadn’t set in until his stomach had dropped out from under him and he’d realized – they were falling into the ocean. They had tumbled about in the pod as it made its descent, and it wasn’t until Jemma was knocked unconscious during a rather nasty drop against the far wall that he’d rushed into action, fumbling about to get her strapped in.

Strapping himself in had been a touch harder though, given that moments after securing Jemma, he’d found himself falling onto the hard floor of the pod, his arm crunching beneath him as he landed on it at an awkward angle. Still, he’d managed to strap himself in as well with his one good hand – just as the pod finally made impact on the ocean’s surface and immediately burst apart.

Fitz came up gasping for air, struggling to get himself free of the restraints that were no longer a safety measure so much as a hindrance as he desperately searched for Jemma. He’d freed himself in record time, given his injury, and paddled one-handedly through the debris, shoving away medical bits and pieces and scraps of metal until he found her, still unconscious but – thank god – not drowning.

Using only the frenzied kicking of his legs to keep him afloat, Fitz unstrapped Jemma as well, awkwardly sliding her half onto one of the larger metal scraps as he held onto it for extra insurance. His gaze swept over the ruin around them, looking for something – anything – that would ensure their admittedly bleak-looking survival.

Luckily, he caught sight of an AED bobbing in the water not far away, and with some rather spectacular maneuvering (if he did say so himself), he managed to keep a hold of the makeshift life raft, keep an eye on Jemma, and rig the AED to let out a homing beacon on an old SHIELD frequency.

It wasn’t until he’d finished that he realized it. No one was going to find them, because no one was going to be listening to the frequency.

They were going to die out there, in the middle of the damn ocean. All because of Ward.

In a fit of blinding anger and frustration, Fitz heaved the AED back into the water, throwing it as far away from them as he could (which admittedly, wasn’t much, given his broken arm and the grip he had to keep a hold of on their meager life raft).

It made a satisfying splash, disappearing for a moment before popping back up to float on the surface, still flashing with the distress call that would never be heard.

Fitz wasn’t quite able to keep track of time, but it seemed like it had to be hours that he spent holding onto that piece of metal tightly, his gaze locked on Jemma to make sure that she was still there, still breathing, still alive. Finally, though, her breathing changed and her eyelids began to flutter.

He froze involuntarily as Jemma blinked her eyes open, her clouded gaze landing on him and her lips curling downward in confusion. “Fitz?” she mumbled, lifting a hand to rub at her eyes. She let out a little cry of shock, however, when her shifting caused her to slide right off the metal scrap.

Panic filled his entire body as Jemma disappeared back into the unforgiving depths of the sea, but then a moment later she burst back to the surface, gasping for breath and her hands scrambling for purchase on the makeshift raft.

“What’s going on?!” she demanded, her eyes wide and terrified. Then, before he could answer, her gaze darted around them, taking in the wreckage, and it seemed to click. Her expression became flat, and she whispered tonelessly, “The pod was destroyed upon impact, wasn’t it? We’re…we’re stranded in the middle of nowhere.”

“That’s about the gist of it, yeah,” Fitz replied quietly, attempting a shrug, but he bit out a hiss of pain when it pulled at his injured arm.

Jemma’s eyes shot to him at the sound, and he noticed the familiar sight of her calculated doctor look as she quickly surveyed him. It didn’t take long for her to zero-in on the arm hanging limply and uselessly into the water at his side. “You’re injured.”

“Yeah, I know, thanks,” Fitz muttered dryly. When she glanced up to meet his gaze, concern in hers, he gave her a reassuring smile. “M’fine.”

Her concern was replaced with disapproval, and she frowned – the same frown he’d been on the receiving end of for the past ten years whenever he chose not to study before a big test, or slept late and therefore ended up being late for work, or when he didn’t follow proper lab procedures and rules. It had only been recently that he’d realized just how much he actually, really, truly loved that stupid frown – because it was her, it was Jemma, and god damn it, he loved everything about her.

“No you’re not,” she snapped, cautiously swimming closer to him, making sure to keep a hand on the raft as she did so. “Let me see.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Fitz insisted, shaking his head. What was the point of fixing up his arm when they were just going to die out there? Besides, he didn’t deserve her care. He’d failed her. He wasn’t sure how, but there must’ve been something else he could’ve done, something more that he just hadn’t thought of, that would’ve kept them from ever being in that dumb pod in the first place. But, he hadn’t, and because of that, she was going to die.

As impossible as it seemed, the world was going to lose Jemma’s staggering brilliance, her insatiable curiosity, her stunning beauty, her god-awful need to be the best at everything, her at-times slightly strange sense of humor, her unwavering belief in science and all its capabilities…that…that unbelievable, awe-inspiring, fantastic light that she had always exuded that had taken him far too long to notice – and all because he wasn’t a hero. He wasn’t even a good SHIELD agent – unable to even protect himself, let alone the most important person in the world.

“Fitz, come on,” Jemma insisted, making a grab for his arm (though her touch was still remarkably gentle, because well, that was Jemma) that he skillfully dodged. She gritted her teeth in anger, but it seemed to go out of her in an instant, and her expression collapsed into sadness and fear. Her eyes rose to meet his, and he winced a bit at the pleading in them, because he’d never been able to deny Jemma Simmons a damn thing – and that was even before he’d fallen for her (well…at least before he’d realized just how deeply he loved her. He still wasn’t sure when it had actually happened).

With a heavy sigh, he stopped fighting her and allowed her to carefully lift his aching arm from the water. She let out a hiss of sympathy after she’d rolled up his sleeve and gotten a look at the damage. “What’s the prognosis?” he asked, trying to keep his tone light and humorous when their situation was anything but.

“You’ve broken it in two places,” Jemma informed him plainly, her mouth curving down into another familiar frown – she was trying to work out a solution to a potentially impossible problem. “I can set it for you, but then you’ll need some kind of sling.” Squinting her eyes against the sunlight, she glanced around at the remaining debris from the crash, but clearly didn’t find anything of use when her frown only deepened.

“It’s fine like it is,” Fitz rushed to assure her, “You don’t have to do anything, Jemma.”

Jemma shot a rather terrifying glare at him. “It’s going to be quite a bit harder to swim with that arm trailing behind you as a deadweight, and you’re already an awful swimmer as it is.” He rolled his eyes at that, huffing at her constant reminders of her skills as a swimmer that only slightly trumped his own. “It’ll be much easier with it strapped to your chest.”

“And where exactly are we swimming to?” Fitz asked with an arched eyebrow.

She opened her mouth to answer immediately, but no words came, and she hesitated before shooting a desperate look all around them. When she saw the same thing that he’d noticed some time ago – that there was nothing but water for hundreds of miles around them – her wide eyes began to fill with tears. “We…we’re going to die out here,” she breathed, her words just barely loud enough to be heard.

He wanted to say something that would make her feel better, but there was nothing that wasn’t horribly false, so instead he simply replied in an undertone, “Yeah, seems that way.”

Jemma’s bottom lip trembled slightly, but then she pressed her lips together and took a deep breath, allowing her professional mask to fall back down to cover her expression. “Well, I’m still not going to let you continue on injured like this.”

Fitz’s lips quirked up into a tiny grin at her stubbornness, shaking his head lightly. “What difference does it make, Jemma? I’m gonna die either way.”

Her mask slipped a bit, and he saw the terror seizing her. “Don’t. Fitz, please.”

“I’m not gonna lie to you, Jemma.” For a moment, the slightly unhinged thought passed through his mind that if she asked him, then and there, what had been wrong with him lately, why he’d been acting strangely, he’d let it all spill out, every single bit of it, in the way he’d been too afraid to on that quinjet when she’d asked him about Trip.

“You never have,” she replied softly, giving him that warm, secretive smile that she’d always seemed to reserve just for him, even though he’d never quite figured out what he’d done to have one of Jemma Simmons’s beautiful smiles all to himself.

Swallowing thickly as her words struck a chord with his thoughts about her inquiries into his dislike of Trip, he opened his mouth to set her straight, to apologize for the one time he’d lied to her and just be brave and honest, like she deserved.

However, she spoke first, murmuring in a shaky voice, “I’m scared, Fitz.”

His good hand fumbled around on the metal raft helping them stay afloat, finally finding hers and wrapping her cold, wet fingers up in his mostly dry ones. “Me too.”

She managed a grateful smile at his sincerity, but it was gone just as quickly as it’d appeared, and she grew contemplative. She was quiet for a long moment, then abruptly she broke the silence to say, “The first law of thermodynamics.”

Brow furrowing in confusion, Fitz started to ask for clarification, “That no energy in the universe is created –”

“ – and none is destroyed, yes,” Jemma cut in to finish, nodding in reply to his unfinished question. “I think that must be what it’s like. After death, I mean. The energy inside of us, every bit of it, all of which came from someplace else possibly millions of years ago…it’ll all go on to be a part of something else. Perhaps something beautiful.” She’d been gazing absently out over the expansive ocean as she’d spoken, but then she turned to meet his eyes, and that smile just for him was back, playing around her lips. “And I have no doubt that whatever our energy goes on to create, we’ll be together Fitz.”

That new and strange and wonderful and awful and perfect love for Jemma surged up inside of him then, seizing his lungs and making it hard to breathe, causing his blood to thunder through his veins and his heart to beat out a pounding rhythm in his chest, and he knew. If there was ever a moment to be completely and utterly raw and open and honest with her, it was now. After all, it wasn’t like he’d get another chance once they were dead. “Jemma?”

“Yes Fitz?” she asked softly, matching his low tone even as her brow furrowed in concern, most likely in response to the trembling quality he’d been unable to erase from his voice.

“I…I…” It should’ve been easy – he was going to die for Christ’s sake, rejection couldn’t be that bad in comparison! But, regardless, the words got stuck in his throat, and seemed unable to make it past his suddenly thick tongue.

“Fitz?” Jemma asked gently, her concern obvious in her voice. When he silently shook his head, begging her to understand something he knew she’d never be able to guess, her thumb began to lightly stroke the back of his hand, still held within hers, and she whispered, “Whatever it is, you can tell me, Fitz. You’re my best friend in the world, you know.”

“Yeah, and you’re more than that, Jemma.” The words came out in a rush, seeming to have a mind of their own, and he winced at the abrupt delivery he’d been trying to avoid. But, regardless, the words were out there for her to respond to in whatever way she chose to. Jemma’s eyes grew wide immediately, her mouth falling open in a silent gasp. Suddenly, Fitz decided that maybe that wasn’t enough and hastened to explain, “I couldn’t find the words to tell you, but…but it’s how I feel and I’ve tried not to but it’s…I think I’m incapable of not…” Shaking his head at his own ridiculous inability to say anything that even remotely made sense, he finished shortly, “You don’t have to say anything. I just wanted you to know before we…y’know.”

She continued to gape at him, which was making him more than a little uncomfortable and self-conscious, but her hand was still tightly clutching his, so he wasn’t quite sure what she was thinking. Finally, after a long moment, she choked out a whisper of, “Fitz…” and he was disconcerted to find tears once more gathering in her eyes.

“I didn’t mean to make you cry,” he said miserably, shutting his eyes and dropping his head back as he let out a groan at his own stupidity. He couldn’t have just let things continue to go unsaid? He just had to be honest and make everything awkward and uncomfortable.

“Fitz, please. Look at me,” she murmured as he felt the dripping fingers of her free hand grazing the skin of cheek. Obligingly, he lowered his head and opened his eyes, finding her staring at him in wonder, studying him as though she’d never seen him before. “How…how long have you felt this way?”

Fitz gave a small shrug. “Dunno. Just…figured things out after you nearly…” He clenched his jaw tightly shut as he saw it all again in his mind’s eye, Jemma falling to her death as he stood by, allowing someone else to go and save her because he wasn’t some muscled Ops agent.

“Oh.” The word was soft, but filled with understanding. She blinked, then the pieces appeared to finally fit together and she asked in a dawning understanding, “That’s why you disliked Agent Triplett, because I was spending time with him?”

He gave her a weak, apologetic smile, paired with another shrug. “Yeah. Never knew myself to be the jealous type, but…yeah. Sorry. I never meant to take it out on you. It wasn’t your fault.”

“I wish you’d told me,” Jemma admitted, giving his hand a small squeeze. “I’ve been so confused by your behavior the past few weeks. It all makes sense now.”

“Can you see why I didn’t?” Fitz asked dryly, arching an eyebrow. “It doesn’t exactly paint me in a great light, pining after my best friend and throwing dirty looks at other guys ‘cause they’ve realized the same thing as I have. Only difference is that they actually have a chance.” He let out a chuckle at his little joke, but Jemma almost seemed to grow…angry and his chuckle slowly faded into silence.

“Do you seriously think…” She trailed off, shaking her head in clear frustration. “Fitz, don’t sell yourself short. You’re a wonderful man – the best I’ve ever known. You’re my absolute favorite person, and I can’t imagine my life without you.”

“’Cause I’m your best friend in the world, I know,” Fitz assured her with a smile, giving her hand a little nudge. “You don’t have to say all this stuff, I already knew it wasn’t gonna work, Jemma.”

Jemma’s expression became almost thunderstruck as she glared fiercely up at him, and Fitz knew that if they hadn’t been bobbing in the water, she would’ve crossed her arms and planted her feet by now. “Now who told you that you could make my decisions for me, Leopold Fitz?”

Thrown by her anger at what was simply a fact, Fitz leaned away from her a bit and winced. “Uh…I was just using common sense?”

Her eyes narrowed further, and for a moment she continued to simply glare up at him. Then, in a flash, she lunged, throwing her free arm around his neck and (rather violently) pressing her lips against his. His absolute shock and her swift movement upset their hold on the metal raft, and before Fitz could even process what the hell was going on, water was rushing up around them and they were forced to part in order to swim back up to the surface.

Fitz’s broken arm was doing him no favors, and he flailed about wildly with his one good arm, kicking fiercely with his legs, but it wasn’t until Jemma’s hand wrapped around his collar and helped tug him upward that he broke through the water, gasping for air. He scrambled for their little raft, leaning as heavily on it as he dared as he panted out, “What the hell?”

Jemma opened her mouth to give some kind of answer as to why she’d felt the need to assault him (but he wasn’t angry – he could never be angry that he actually, truly knew what it was like to kiss Jemma Simmons, even if it was right before he died – he was just extremely confused and praying that she hadn’t done it just to prove a point or…oh god…out of pity), but she was interrupted before she could begin by the nearly deafening sound of…chopper blades?

Both their heads whipped up to find a helicopter lowering above them, and what appeared to be…Nick Fury reaching out toward them. However, it was a rescue, even if it came at the hands of their supposedly deceased boss, so they weren’t going to be picky.

As Jemma was extending her hand toward Fury’s, she caught his eye, and the look she gave him told him without her needing to say a thing that they’d be having words later. Whether that was good or bad for him remained to be seen.

Then, it hit him that he’d told Jemma how he felt thinking they were going to die and now…now they weren’t and she knew.

Above him, Jemma was just scrambling into the helicopter beside Fury, and then he was reaching back down for Fitz, and just briefly he contemplated demanding they leave him there in the ocean because if he went with them he was sure to die of embarrassment, and drowning or dying of starvation just sounded so much more pleasant.

But, then Jemma was peering back down at him, her eyes shining and the little strands of hair that had fallen from her messy ponytail were whipping around her face in the strong wind and she was beaming down at him and he would do absolutely anything for her, god damn it.

So, Fitz took Fury’s hand and allowed himself to be tugged upward into the helicopter, whatever was in his future be damned, because no matter what it was, at least Jemma would be there beside him – nothing would ever change that.

#shayna writes #fsfic #fitzsimmons #shayna's one shot collection #season one au #1x22 au #i'll get back to prompts in the next couple of days #there's just a lot going on in my life right now #that's been draining me emotionally #so it takes a toll on my writing #but i'm still posting every day!!

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