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pendragon-writes · 1 year

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Interrogation

Chapter 2

Chapter 4

Arthur Harrow sighed as he looked at Captain Gregson. "For the last time, I loved my wife." "I didn't hurt her, and before this moment, I had no idea there was any safe room in my house." He said.

Behind the one-sided mirror (Y/n) and Steven watched Captain Gregson interrogate the husband. "You get why that's hard for us to believe, don't you?" Gregson asked. "The place was gutted before Amy and I moved in two years ago," Arthur explained. As Arthur continued to plead his innocence (Y/n) took out his phone and zoomed in on the husband's hands, taking a quick photo of it. Both (Y/n) and Steven continued to watch Gregson interrogate the man. "How do you do it?" He asked (Y/n), still looking towards the suspect. "Do what?" (Y/n) questioned back. "Guess things." "I don't guess. I observe." (Y/n) informed, still looking at the suspect. "And once I've observed, I deduce."

"You said you could tell from my hands that I used to be a surgeon." "'Hand'. Singular, actually." "It was soft, no calluses." Steven nodded at that. "Also, it smelled faintly of beeswax." This statement caused Steven to look at him, before looking away. "Many surgeons, as you know, use a beeswax cream to protect their hands from the dehydrating effects of repeated washings. Well... You're no longer practicing, but old habits die hard." "As far as why you gave up your medical career to become a companion.." "I'd wager that addiction claimed the life of someone close to you, and his or her death moved you to make drastic changes in your life." (Y/n) said, still not looking at him.

"Am I close?" He asked Steven. "What about my father?" Steven asked, ignoring (Y/n)'s question. "What about him?" "How did you know he had an affair?" He asked, looking at the consultant. "Google." He replied. He looked at him with a raised brow. "Well, not everything is deducible." Steven nodded at this and turned his head towards the door as he heard someone open it, that someone is the officer from before and Captain Gregson.

"I, uh, just want to say thanks for helping out today." He said. "You- You got us our guy in, and uh... and we're grateful." He said, before reaching out his hands for (Y/n) to shake. "We can take it from here." (Y/n) did not accept the hand as he began to talk. "Respectfully, Detective, I doubt that very much." "'Cause I have reason to believe that Arthur Harrow did not kill his wife." The detective slowly lowered the hand he previously offered as he watched (Y/n) walk past him. "Wait, wait, wait. Come again?" The detective said in a confused manner, walking to (Y/n) and catching up to him. "Dr. Harrow has girls' feet, or hadn't you noticed?" (Y/n) said, still walking before stopping. "He's a size eight if he's an inch." "The boot print on his front door was an 11." He explained to them, leaning on the wall. "So? So he was smart." "He wore bigger shoes to throw us off."The detective tried to reason. "Did he also wear bigger hands when he strangled his wife?" (Y/n) remarked.

"Holmes..." The Captain said with a scolding tone. (Y/n) pulled out his phone and showcased the pictures. "Well, these strangulation marks are indicative of a man much larger than Harrow." "Not just heavier, but taller too." The photo was a close-up shot of the women's bruised neck. "I'd estimate his height to be somewhere between six foot-one, six foot-three." "Your M.E. will come to the same conclusion in a couple of hours." The detective gave an amused scoff at this. "I'm delivering it now. You're a doctor." He turned his focus from Gregson to Steven. "Tell 'em I'm right." (Y/n) said. "I'm not a doctor," Steven responded. "Were a doctor." "Surely you haven't forgotten how bruising works." Steven sighed before speaking. "Okay, yeah, sure, these hands do seem a bit small for the bruise pattern, but I-" Steven was interrupted by (Y/n). "With your permission, Captain, I'd like a moment alone with Dr. Harrow."

"Captain this-" The detective tried to argue once more, but was stopped. "You got two minutes." The Captain said with crossed arms. With this in mind (Y/n) rushed into the interrogation room, aggressively slamming a small notepad and pen on the table in front of Arthur Harrow. "Tall men in your life. I'd like a list." He said. Arthur looked up at him in a slightly annoyed way, before sighing and giving a list.

°。°。°。°。°。°。

(Y/n) and Steven walked together with a man that was one of the people on the list. "Amy was a good person, but if you're here because you think I had something to do with it.." "Dr. Harrow said that you'd made a pass at her at a holiday party last year." (Y/n) said, making the man pause in his steps. "Actually, no, I didn't." He said slightly pissed off. "I asked her about all the plastic surgery she'd had." He explained. "Plastic surgery?" (Y/n) asked as if he didn't already suspect it. "Okay, look, I helped plan a fund-raiser for the hospital, two years ago, that was before the surgeries." "I know I still have the pictures." He explained, leading them to his office.

°。°。°。°。°。°。

(Y/n) and Steven waited as the man searched through his computer. Steven took note of the shoe box with the size 11 on the couch, which he gestured with his eyes for (Y/n) to see. (Y/n) looked at the shoe box before looking at Steven and nodding in understanding. "There." The man said, turning his camera around to showcase the photo of Amy and Dr. Harrow. "That's the picture of Amy and Dr. Harrow that I took that night, okay? Tell me you wouldn't want to ask her why she did it." He said.

"Tell me about the stalking charge brought against you two years ago." (Y/n) asked. "I asked my neighbor out." "She overreacted." He explained. (Y/n) hummed at this and Steven decided to talk. "Mr. Polk, can you tell us where you were last night?" (Y/n) looked at Steven with a bit of worry as he heard what he asked. "I was home... alone." Mr. Polk said. "I know. Not much of an alibi, but I don't care, because I didn't do it."

Taglist: @god-complex-12

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solangelover · 3 years

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A Glowing Future

Submission by @satans-little-helper33

This piece takes place right after Nico’s final chapter at the end of Blood of Olympus.

Main Characters: Will Solace and Nico DiAngelo

Solangelo fluff

Nico’s encounter with Eros had cracked him wide open and left him feeling vulnerable and broken, forced to face his own reality and feelings, exposed in front of Jason; he was forced to share his darkest secret for a god’s amusement. Nico now knew he could trust Jason to keep it to himself, though, and he was beginning to realize that in order to crawl out of his self-constructed prison, his barriers first had to be torn down.

The feelings that had haunted him for so long—the shame, the fear, the denial—caused by the mentality of the 1940s he’d grown up in began to fade away.

He was no longer that scared little boy who had been enraptured by the presence of a powerful demigod, and now that he had finally confessed his past feelings to Percy, Nico felt that he could finally move forward.

Hades’s son made his way back down the hill to where Will was waiting for him, wearing scrubs, jeans, and a crooked smile that made his heart skip a beat.

--------

“Sorry I didn’t come visit you in the infirmary,” Nico said, wearing the hint of a smile.

“It’s alright, I forgive you,” Will Solace said, his mouth set tight but laughter in his eyes, like he was trying to stay mad at Nico and failing.

“You wanted me to stay there--”

“For at least three days. Doctor’s orders.” Will started to lead Nico back toward the infirmary.

“Really, I’m Fine,” Nico began, but then his knees buckled and Will hoisted him back up.

“Uh huh. Right. Let’s get you to a bed.”

--------

Even after Coach Hedge’s nature magic/sports drink concoction, which had sustained Nico for a while, the arduous task of shadow-travelling the Athena Parthenos across the world had caught up with him again.

When Nico opened his eyes again, he was in the infirmary half sitting, half lying on a piece of furniture that was somewhere between a bed and a stretcher.

“Welcome back to the world of the living,” a familiar voice intoned, “have some ambrosia.”

Will sat on a chair beside the bed; the room of the infirmary he was in was long and lined with similar bed-stretchers, separated by white curtains that shimmered in different colors when they were moved.

Several other beds were occupied with demigods sporting now-relatively-minor injuries left over from the battle with Gaia and the monster army: a daughter of Hecate 2 beds over was glaring at her leg in a cast as if she was insulted by the inconvenience.

Nico turned back to Will, and noticed that beside the bed there was a small table with a baggie of ambrosia squares on it. Nico reached out to pick one up but encountered a familiar problem: his fingers passed right through the baggie and ambrosia, as if he was becoming one with the shadows permanently. His hand appeared fuzzy around the edges, as if he was dissolving.

“Uhh, maybe if I try again--”

Will frowned, then sighed. “This is what happens when you overextend yourself. Here, let me help you.” He picked up a square and held it out to feed Nico.

Nico leaned back. “What are you doing?”

“No arguing. Open up.” Solace said, his tone making it clear that he wasn’t taking no for an answer.

Will took none of Nico’s shit. That was one of the things Nico found most endearing and annoying about him; no matter how hard the son of Hades tried to push him away, Will simply refused to let him.

Nico took the ambrosia, and after a few moments they looked back at his hand, which seemed to be coming back into sharper focus.

“You had me worried there, diAngelo,” Will said, smiling, and briefly gripped his hand to check if it was now solid. Day of the Dead skeletons tapped out a jig in Nico’s chest.

“You were worried...about me?” Nico said, still wrapping his mind around the fact that Will had wanted a death demigod to visit him in the infirmary.

“Get some sleep.” he said, closing the ziplock bag.

“I’m not tired.”

“Well you will be in a second. CLOVIS,” he called out. The calf-like son of Morpheus appeared around the corner and Will told him “we’ve got another stubborn one,” throwing a teasing smile Nico’s way.

Clovis yawned. “I’m all over it,” he said, and--despite Nico’s protests--touched his forehead. The son of Hades drifted off into a deep sleep.

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

Nico awoke feeling more rested than he had in weeks.

He quickly sat up, suddenly worried, because the last time he’d felt this rested, he’d been asleep for three days.

Nico stopped a passing Apollo healer.

“How long have I been out??”

The healer scratched his chin, trying to estimate. “About 6 hours?” He walked off.

Will walked into the infirmary, arguing with a Demeter camper; something about herbs and supplies? He turned and spotted Nico.

“Well, good evening, sleepyhead! How was your nap? Feeling better?”

“I think 6 hours is slightly more than a nap.” Nico retorted.

“Well, count yourself lucky that Clovis has learned to control his powers better. A while ago he put a camper out for a week by accident.” Will made his way toward him. “Can you stand?”

“Um, let’s find out.” Nico swung his legs over the bed and got up. Aside from stumbling a little, he was feeling much better. Nico marvelled at the healing powers of sleep.

As if he read his mind, Will said, “Oh yeah, sleep has endless benefits.”

Nico twisted his skull ring. “Hey, I came in here at about noon, which means--”

The conch horn signalling the dinner feast echoed across the valley. Will grinned. “I think that’s our cue.”

--------

The Half Blood campfire that night still carried with it an aura of elation spurred from disbelief, that they had won the battle against Gaia and made allies with the Romans, and a sort of desperation to feel alive brought about by all of those who had died in the process. Nico felt a pang for Leo, though he had a strange feeling that his death wasn’t as straightforward as it seemed.

Will sat by him at the bonfire, the Apollo cabin on his left and Nico on his right, leaving Nico unsure as to whether Will had sat next to him or his cabin. He chastised himself for hoping that it was the former.

The enchanted flames in the brazier blazed brightly with the energy of the campers, and Nico felt the warmth flare in his heart as he cast a glance at the son of Apollo, the light from the fire reflecting off of his blonde hair.

--------

Nico lay in his bunk that night after the campfire, staring up at the ceiling of the Hades cabin that was inset with precious stones. He quickly realized that there was no way he was falling asleep any time soon, and he climbed out of bed. The whole room was drenched in liquid shadows, and despite his exhaustion after the journey shadow travelling with the Athena Parthenos, Nico stepped forward and became one with the darkness with ease.

He melted from the shadow of a tree, finding himself by the lakeside at the edge of Camp Half-Blood. A full moon cast a pale glow on the night. Nico walked down to the sand and sat down; the silence was intoxicating, and Nico closed his eyes and listened to the gentle lapping of small waves against the shore. Suddenly he felt something nearby, heard the brush rustle, and wondered whether the cleaning harpies had come to eat him for being out past curfew. Nico drew his Stygian sword, which seemed to pull at the darkness like a magnet, and got ready to defend himself. What actually emerged from the brush was Will, who abruptly spotted Nico’s sword and laughed quietly.

“Expecting a fight?”

Nico quickly sheathed his sword. “What are you doing out here?” He noticed for the first time that Will had something in his hands.

He held up two goblets. “Mind if I join you?”

Will was the only one at camp who was not blatantly wary of him; after several years as an outcast, the effect felt foreign.

Will sat down next to the son of Hades and spoke to one of the goblets--“Pomegranate juice”--and handed it to Nico as the cup filled with garnet liquid.

“Are these--” Nico began.

“Glasses from the dining pavilion? Yeah. I snuck a couple out before dinner ended.” He wore his trademark mischievous smile. “I noticed you asked for pomegranate juice at dinner.” Nico felt his face grow warm as Will turned to his own cup and requested ginger beer. Soon the glass was filled with amber.

“It...reminds me of my mom.” Nico said quietly. “Not Persephone, ironically. When Bianca, my mom, and I...” his voice caught on Bianca’s name “when we lived in New Orleans, I was little, but I remember her giving us pomegranate juice on special occasions. It was a tough thing to find where we lived, so she would only have it on celebrations or...when my dad came to visit. I was just a baby when she was murdered.”

He stared down in silence at his drink.

“It wasn’t your fault, you know. Bianca, your mom, none of it,” Will said gently.

“I know,” Nico muttered, his voice nonetheless doubtful.

Will placed his hand on Nico’s, and he tensed, ready to pull away, but then instead turned his palm up to hold Will’s.

Nico turned his head to look up at Will, his pale blue eyes shining in the moonlight, almost periwinkle, an indiscernible expression on his face.

“You’re amazing, you know that?” Will murmured, his gaze taking Nico in. Will looked into his dark eyes as if he could perceive all of him, good and bad, and was still enraptured by what he saw.

Will reached out hesitantly, as if to touch Nico’s face, but stopped before, gaging his reaction, and when the son of Hades didn’t pull away, he brushed the ink-black hair out of his face.

Involuntarily, Nico’s eyes closed and his heart began to race. His life had, for years, been spent more with the dead than the living. No one had touched him tenderly for what felt like eons, not since Bianca, and only now did he realize how starved for physical affection he had been. Not just starved, he thought to himself, afraid of it…

And in that moment he decided that he was not going to be afraid anymore.

Will’s gaze moved from Nico’s eyes to his lips, and he leaned in carefully as if approaching a wild animal. Nico closed the distance, and as their lips met, his life bloomed before him like a chrysanthemum opening layer by layer. Suddenly Nico could see a future before him that wasn’t ruled by death and solitude.

Unnoticed by either of them, a dead mouse at the edge of the forest was brought back to life and scampered off into the trees.

- Alya

@satans-little-helper33

My writing blog: @from-story-to-screen

#submission #not mine #but I love this #I miss this #I miss Solangelo #when I would read infirmary fics for days on end #will and Nico’s dynamic is just so nice #it’s like my comfort zone #nico di angelo #solangelo #will solace #pjo #hoo #toa #infirmary #three days infirmary fic #solangelo fanfiction #solangelo fanfic #fic

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pcttrailsidereader · 3 years

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Death by Lightning on the PCT/JMT

By Carmen George

Excerpted from the Fresno Bee

First came an immense flash of bright white light, then a sound like a cannon exploding feet away.

Four backpackers’ thoughts quickly turned to the youngest member of their group, Nicholas Torchia, who was just behind them on their high Sierra backpack trip through the John Muir Wilderness of eastern Fresno County.

“He’s been hit,” said a man who dashed by the hikers, running toward nearby Muir Trail Ranch on July 30 to get help.

Nick Torchia

Torchia was just up the trail, lying beside a tree struck by lightning along the Sallie Keyes Cutoff, between the John Muir and Florence Lake trails. The electricity also traveled through the 37-year-old Fresno man.

A pastor and his friend, who ran for help, reached Torchia first, within 20 seconds of the lightning strike around 1:25 p.m. Torchia told them he was badly injured. The pastor, Andy Cornett, took his hand and assured him they were getting help.

“He thanked me and asked me to straighten out his legs,” Cornett later told his family. “That was the last he spoke.”

Cornett asked if Torchia could feel his fingers, feet and toes. He nodded. Cornett checked his body for external injuries, helped him lie flat, covered him with a blanket, and started attending to a head wound.

Around this time, Torchia stopped breathing and lost his pulse. The four people Torchia was backpacking with — three of his uncles and one of their friends — were now also by his side.

For hours after, however, his uncles and other hikers held out hope that Torchia could be revived. A group of around 10 people, including a pastor, a nurse, doctor, firefighter and emergency medical technician, took turns administering CPR for more than three hours. Some of those hikers came up from Muir Trail Ranch, located east of Florence Lake and about three quarters of a mile from where Torchia was hit.

Other hikers worked to keep Torchia’s body warm and dry, and an ultramarathon runner darted up and down trails retrieving supplies from Muir Trail Ranch.

“Their cooperation, compassion and patient work over those hours was a testimony to me of some of the best of what human beings can do and be for each other,” said Cornett, associate pastor of families at Signal Mountain Presbyterian Church in Tennessee.

The group hoped a search and rescue team might eventually deliver an automated external defibrillator that could jump-start Torchia’s heart, but ongoing storms and their remote location in roadless wilderness delayed an emergency response.

Jeff Holbrook, one of Torchia’s uncles who started the CPR, finally asked one medical professional what chance there was of an AED device being effective if delivered within a couple more hours. He quickly received an answer: “Zero.”

The group decided to stop the CPR. Torchia’s death was recorded at 4:41 p.m. July 30.

Nick (Center) with his three uncles and a friend

The group prayed over his body, and then carried him down to Muir Trail Ranch. A California Highway Patrol helicopter landed nearby that evening during a break in the storm and retrieved Torchia’s body.

‘No one made a mistake’ hiking back from John Muir Trail in Sierra

Torchia; his uncles Jeff, Tom and Bill Holbrook; and friend Terry McCurdy were returning from a backpack trip to Sallie Keyes Lake on the JMT/PCT in the John Muir Wilderness when Torchia was hit.

It was sunny when the group started their descent from the lake that morning. They had planned to camp at Muir Trail Ranch that night and then catch a boat ride across Florence Lake the next day to return home. The group started their trip together earlier that week.

Torchia and his uncles had been working to complete the entire 211-mile John Muir Trail over the past 10 or so years via annual backpack trips together.

Torchia’s uncles said he was struck when he was just seconds behind them on the trail, after the group stopped briefly to put on rain ponchos.

“He was the last to put on a rain jacket and go catch up with Bill, but he didn’t,” his mother Kathy Torchia said.

His family and Cornett aren’t sure how close Torchia was to the tree when it was hit, or how long he was near it. Jeff Holbrook thinks his nephew might have been adjusting some of his gear or eating a snack when he was struck.

Tom Holbrook described the incident as a freak accident from a sudden storm.

“No one made a mistake. ... We dealt with extreme conditions before,” he said.

The lightning bolt that took their nephew’s life was the only one Jeff and Tom said they saw that day in that area, estimated to be around 8,000 feet in elevation. Cornett said other lightning strikes seemed much further away.

“It was terrifying,” Cornett said of the lightning that narrowly missed him. “It was brilliant white, and the sound was felt as much as heard.”

The lightning blew items out of Torchia’s pockets, ripped off some of his clothes, and tore bark off the tree that was struck. Jeff said its force moved his own body forward a couple inches.

The Fresno County Coroner’s Office announced a few days later that Torchia died by electrocution caused by lightning. No one else was injured by the lightning strike.

There’s only been 14 other fatalities and 72 injuries from lightning in California since 1950, according to data through this spring from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Centers for Environmental Information. The National Weather Service reported that only about 10% of people struck by lightning die from the voltage.

Torchia is remembered as exceedingly kind, with a genuine concern and sensitivity to the feelings of others that sometimes caused him pain. One of his two brothers, Ben Torchia of Clovis, said he sees his brother’s passing as God deciding to free his “good soul” from that pain.

“He just had this struggle internally – some things that are probably pretty simple for you or me were not simple for him,” his brother said. “He had a struggle that people in America owned houses while people in third-world countries didn’t. He had a tough time accepting the status quo. He could never get over things like that.”

Torchia crossing Muir Pass (on a 2019 trip)

Cornett said the experience of caring for Torchia in his final moments made him feel “profoundly humbled at how vulnerable life is.”

“Obviously you realize that when you’re in the mountains and outdoors,” Cornett said, “but it’s true of our given life at any given moment, and it causes you to reflect.”

Torchia was one of six children and had an 11-year-old daughter, Makayla, who lives in South Africa with her mother.

He graduated from Ridgeview High School in Bakersfield and joined the Navy when he was 18 years old, serving for almost six years. He also previously worked as a driver for Community Food Bank and senior citizens in Clovis.

Torchia most recently was a student at Clovis Community College. He hoped to become a psychologist and counselor, his mom said.

Douglas Houston, interim chancellor of State Center Community College District, recalled Torchia as an “outstanding student” in a recent email to staff, encouraging condolences for his family.

His mother said he loved hiking, backpacking, swimming, rock climbing and cycling, and had many other talents.

“I call him the Renaissance man,” Kathy Torchia said. “He could do anything.”

Torchia was the youngest on last week’s backpack trip. The other four in his group are in their 60s.

“He was like our safety chain,” Jeff Holbrook said. “We were all getting older and he was still viable and young and he looked after us, and we always felt safe with him by our side.”

Torchia made a separate trip up to Sallie Keyes Lake the week before the trip with his uncles to haul a tent and other gear up the mountain so they wouldn’t have to carry as much. Among the gear was a cushion and hammock he insisted they use.

Family said the compassionate Torchia also had a way of infusing fun into even the simplest of tasks.

“What a great spirit this young man had,” Tom Holbrook said of his nephew. “We loved him.”

Friend Pete Debruynkops, who went on previous John Muir Trail backpack trips with Torchia, said Torchia loved being in the wilderness, and that his friend’s adventurous spirit earned him the hiking nickname of “Stray Dog” because he was always straying off the trail to check things out.

Jeff Holbrook said he recently experienced some joy thinking of Torchia.

Jeff Holbrook’s phone started playing music when he and others were trying to revive Torchia on the trail. It took him a while to realize the sound was coming from his pocket because he said his phone rarely plays music, even when he tries.

He pulled it out and hit pause. The song was “Neon Pegasus” by Parry Gripp, about a mythical, divine, winged horse soaring over troubles. It made him think of his nephew and a herd of horses that ran by them on the trail earlier in their trip.

Some of the lyrics: “Unbreak your heart, Neon Pegasus, and go climbing through the stars, out there with your dreams, your sparkly dreams. ... Never again to be lonely, never again to be without a home. ... Soaring over it all, high up in the clouds.”

Jeff Holbrook accidentally dropped his phone in water later at Muir Trail Ranch. When it turned on the next day, the song was still paused on Neon Pegasus.

He played it later and sobbed. He said it was a beautiful release of “just joy.” He felt like his nephew was telling him, “I’m in a beautiful place and I’ve got wings and I’m flying, and I’m happy as can be.”

#Lightning #Death on the PCT

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falcqns · 3 years

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always yours

Pairing: Seth MacFarlane x Reader

Summary: You give Seth something he didn't know he wanted.

Warnings: childbirth, fluff, insinuations to smut, csection, near death experience

A/N: I based the c section section off of what happened to my mom, although I didn't add the part of the baby (my brother) falling back inside her and almost dying as well LMAO

always yours

As you stared down at the small stick in your hand, you had no idea what to do.

You had been working as Seth’s live in personal assistant for two, almost three, years now, and you had just gotten back from visiting home for the holidays. While you were there, you went to a party your old friend group was throwing, and you ended up hooking up with your ex.

Your ex who, had told you on numerous occasions, that he didn't want kids, and if you got pregnant, he would leave you.

You knew you didn't want to tell him. He had insinuated in the past that he didn't want kids, so why should you tell him if you knew it meant you'd be painted as a bad person?

Your next thought was Seth. You knew you couldn't raise the baby here, it was Seth’s house, not yours. You may have had your own bedroom and ensuite bathroom, it was still under his roof.

You had decided to not go with him on set for the past few days as you were feeling sick, and he demanded you stay home.

‘Seth, I’m fine!’ You remember the conversation going.

He shook his head at you. ‘Y/N, you've been up all night throwing up. You look absolutely exhausted, and you can barely keep down water. You need rest,’

You let out a dramatic sigh. ‘I’m feeling better, though,’ You retorted, as you watched him lay a blanket over your shaking body on the couch.

He shook his head once more, before kneeling beside you. His hand came to rest into your hair, something he always did when you were upset or agitated.

‘No. Just rest. I’ll be fine without you for a few days, I promise love.’ He whispered, his brown eyes looking into yours.

You nodded, your eyes welling up with tears. ‘I’m sorry,’

Seth gave you a sad smile, before sitting next to you.

‘Don’t be. Everyone gets sick. You probably caught something at home or on the plane. Don’t worry about it, just relax, okay?’

You nodded, and drifted off to sleep to the feeling of him running his hands through your hair, and him humming a Frank Sinatra tune that you couldn't name at that moment.

You knew he wouldn't be mad that you were pregnant, but you also didn't know what his exact reaction would be.

You picked up your phone, and dialled his number, knowing he’d almost be done for the day. You wanted to give him a heads up so he could mentally prepare for this kind of news.

“Hey, how are you feeling?” You heard Seth say in a soft voice on the other end of the phone once he answered.

“Um, a little better,” You said, in a shaky voice which you knew he’d be able to recognize instantly. He had always been able to sense your emotions well, and that was something you were grateful for.

“What’s wrong?” He questioned. “Have you gotten more sick?”

“N-no, it’s nothing like that, I just need to talk to you about something when you get home,” You said, and you felt a tear fall from your eye, before you sniffled.

“Okay. Just calm down okay? Everything is going to be fine,” He reassured you, and you heard his Tesla starting up. “I’m 20 minutes away still. Why don’t you go lay down, and I’ll come and see you when I get home?”

“O-okay,” You stuttered.

“Okay. I’ll see you soon,” He said in a gentle voice, which made you warm on the inside, knowing that he cares.

“Okay, bye,”

He said his goodbyes, and you made your way from your bathroom, and laid down in your bed, the small test still grasped in your hand.

You had just drifted off to sleep, when your bedroom door opened, and Seth stepped in.

He took a seat on your bed, and brushed a hand through your hair to wake you up.

You opened your eyes groggily, and gave him a small smile, before sitting up.

“What’s wrong?” He asked, giving you a comforting look.

You didn't know how to just come out and say it, so you passed the pregnancy test to him, before dragging your knees close to your chest to hide your face.

He didn't say anything, but leaned over, and wrapped his arms around you.

“Everything is going to be fine, I promise Y/N.” He whispered. You immediately started to sob.

Seth pulled you into his arms further with zero hesitation.

“I’ll look for an apartment to move into,” You whispered, and Seth pulled back in shock.

“What are you talking about, Y/N?” He questioned. “Why would you look for an apartment?” You looked up at him. “This is your house, I can't expect you to allow me to raise my child here.”

Seth scoffed, and fully pulled you into his lap.

“I want you to stay. Don’t worry about moving, you're fine here,” He said. He had rested his head atop yours and began to rock you back and forth gently.

You nodded. “Thank you,”

Over the next few months as your belly grew, so did your bond with Seth. He helped you tell your parents, who were supportive. He came with you to every appointment, was there for every new milestone, and was the first person to feel your baby kick.

While your bond with him grew, so did your feelings for him. You had always had a crush on him, but you managed to keep it at a manageable level. However with your hormones, you were barely keeping it under wraps, especially now that he loved to touch your bump, and sing to the baby.

At 35 weeks, you had begun to sleep in his bed, so he could be right with you when your water broke. This didn't help with your hormones, especially because you would often wake up in the middle of the night to him singing and talking quietly to your baby.

This morning, was no different. You woke up at 6 am, to Seth saying good morning to your baby, before crawling out of bed and into the bathroom.

You got up as well, and headed down stairs to make coffee and breakfast. While you two had grown closer, you were still his assistant.

You had just made it out of the bedroom when Hank, Seth’s cat, ran up to you and rubbed his face against your swollen legs.

“Hi, Hankie baby,” You whispered to him, before continuing down the stairs, with Hank trailing not too far behind.

You had just made his coffee and placed his breakfast on the table when he entered the kitchen.

“Good morning,” He said, to which you returned. “How are you feeling?”

You smiled at him, while drinking your mug of decaf coffee. “A little tired, but I’ll be fine,” You said. He nodded.

“I’m not going to set today, I’ll just be in the office, so let me know if you need anything, okay?” He said.

You grabbed your plate and took a seat at the table. “Okay. What do you need me to do today?”

“All I need you to do is to call set design and get an estimate for the quarters,” He said. Since you had hit 35 weeks, he had been lowering your work load (not that you had a huge work load to begin with with him), and you were grateful for it.

Especially today. You sensed something was going to start happening, since Hank hadn't left you alone since you walked out of the bedroom.

You didn't want to worry Seth though, so you kept it to yourself.

“Okay, perfect, I’ll call them after breakfast.”

The two of you ate your breakfasts and Seth headed up to his office, while you headed to your bedroom.

You gave the set designers a quick call, and was about to go and let Seth know the time frame the you felt it.

A sharp cramp, running across your stomach.

It was only the first one, so you pushed it out of your mind, and continued on with your day.

A few hours later, you had already had 4 contractions, and had decided you needed to pack your hospital bag.

You did that, and continued nesting around the house, while also making sure Seth had food and water while he worked.

You were about to bring him his dinner when you felt your water breaking.

“You've gotta be fucking kidding me,” You said to yourself, Seth’s dinner in hand.

You ran to the laundry room to grab some new pants out of the dryer. You got changed and continued to Seth’s office.

You walked in, and he was still working.

“Here’s your dinner,” You said, before another contraction hit you.

Seth immediately recognized what was happening, and pulled you into a hug, his hands running up and down your back.

“Breathe,” He whispered. Not too much longer, the contraction subsided.

“Are you in labor?” He asked, as he pulled back slightly.

You nodded, and he immediately guided you to sit in the chair he was once occupying.

“M-my water broke a few minutes ago, and I’ve gotten a few contractions today, but they haven't been consistent.” You said. He kneeled in front of you, and ran his hands on your legs gently.

“Okay.” He said, with a soothing smile on his face. He reached behind him for his phone.

“Tell me when the next one starts, okay?” He whispered, and you nodded.

A few minutes later, it hit you again. “I’m having one,”

Seth nodded and hit start on the timer before grasping your hand.

It passed, and Seth told you it lasted about a minute.

You nodded. “I think it’s time to go to the hospital,” You whimpered, tears welling up in your eyes. You felt close to having a break down, but desperately tried to hold it together.

Seth stood up, and helped you up. He noticed the fear on your face, and cupped your jaw in his hand.

“What’s wrong?” He asked.

You broke down.

“I-I’m terrified, Seth,” You said, and he immediately pulled you to his chest.

“You're going to be okay, Y/N. I’m not going to leave your side, I promise.” You nodded into his shoulder, and he led you out of the office. He sat you on the couch.

He called your doctor, and she advised that you go to the hospital.

“M-my hospital bag, it’s on my bed,” You whimpered out. He nodded, and ran up the stairs to grab it. You sensed that he as nervous as well, and promised yourself you’d keep him calm.

He came back down the stairs with your bag, and helped you into the car.

He kept his eyes on you while he drives, letting you grasp his hand whenever you had a contraction.

You made it to the hospital a few minutes later, and Seth helped you out and into reception.

“Hello, I’m looking for the maternity ward,” He said, his hand never leaving yours.

“Okay, it’s on the second floor,” The nurse said, as she stood up to grab you a wheelchair. You sat down, and Seth thanked her before wheeling you towards the elevators.

Soon, you were in a hospital gown, in bed, with Seth by your side.

Your doctor came in not too much later and checked you.

“Okay, Y/N, you're 8 centimetres dilated, so you're close.” She said.

“O-Okay,” You whimpered. The doctor left the room to give you and Seth some privacy.

He sat down on the bed next to you, and offered your water with a straw to you.

“Are you okay?” He asked, as you took a sip. You swallowed the water and nodded.

“It hurts a lot,” You whined out, and Seth ran a hand through your hair.

“I know, sweet girl, but it’ll be over soon and you’ll have your little baby in your arms,” He whispered, and you smiled. You reached out for his hand, and he took it.

For the next hour, Seth attempted to distract you, which worked to an extent.

The doctor came back in and announced you were at 10 centimetres, and were ready to push.

Your hand grasped Seth’s even tighter. “Please, don't leave,” You begged him.

He smiled, and bent down to press a kiss to your forehead.”I'm not going anywhere, angel,”

You nodded, and he stood by your head, and held your hand.

You began to push and he encouraged you the whole time. His hand never left yours, no matter how hard you squeezed.

You had pushed for what felt like hours, when the doctors announced that you would need a c-section, because your baby’s heart rate kept dropping.

You immediately started to freak out, but Seth reassures you.

“Y/N, angel,” He said, taking your face in his hands. “Everything is going to be fine! It’s okay,”

You looked in his eyes and felt yourself instantly calm.

“Don’t leave,” You whispered, and he nodded.

“Wouldn't dream of it, angel.”

A team of nurses came in, and prepped you for surgery. The surgeon walked up to Seth.

“Are you her partner?” He asked, and Seth immediately nodded. “Yes I am.” Your heart dropped when he answered, but deep down thought it was only because you wanted him to stay with you.

The surgeon handed him some scrubs. “Here are your scrubs, and Melissa here,” He motioned to one of the nurses. “Will help you scrub up, and then you’ll meet her in the OR.”

Seth nodded, and turned to you, just before the wheeled you out of the room.

“I’ll be there really soon, okay? You’ll be okay,” He said, as he leaned down. He pressed a kiss to your forehead. You waved goodbye, and was wheeled away.

When you saw Seth again, you were on the operating table, and your stomach had been cut open already.

He rushed to your side, and held your hand.

“How are you feeling?” He asked, taking a seat next to you.

You smiled weakly at him.

“I’m okay,” You said.”Thank you for everything, you're the best.”

Seth lifted his hand and placed it onto your forehead. “No, you are. You went through your pregnancy with out the father of your child. You refused to take maternity leave, and you went into labor while working for me. You have flown all over the country while pregnant, and so many more things. Now, you're sitting here, cut open like a side of beef, waiting for your little baby. You, are the best.” He whispered, his thumb tracing a line on your forehead.

A few moments later a small cry pierced the air.

“Congratulations, it’s a girl!” You heard the doctor announce, before you felt tears pour down your face.

She was wrapped up, and brought over to you. Your arms were strapped to the table, so you couldn't hold her, but Seth took her gently from the nurse and brought her close so you could see her and press a kiss to her small cheek.

The surgeon came up to Seth once more.

“We’re going to have you follow Nurse Melissa with the baby into her recovery room, just so we can stitch her up, okay?” Seth nodded, and turned to you, your daughter still safe in his arms.

“I’ll see you soon, okay?” He said, and leaned down so you could say goodbye to your daughter.

You kissed your daughter once more, before watching Seth walk out with her.

Seth walked into the recovery room, and took a seat with her.

He gazed down at her, and noticed just how much she resembled you.

“Hey, baby girl,” He whispered. “Your mama will be here soon, okay?”

He watched as her eyes fluttered open, and gazed up at him.

Seth began to talk to her, and soon realized it had been more than an hour, and you still weren't back.

His mind began to race. Did something go wrong? If it did, who was your daughter supposed to go to? But, before he could panic too much, you were wheeled in.

“She began to haemorrhage, but we got her stabilized. She’s all stitched up, and perfectly fine. She’s on some pretty heavy sedatives though, so it’ll be a few hours before she wakes up,” The doctors explained.

The doctor continued talking, but Seth didn't absorb any of it, he was only focused on your still sleeping form.

He had almost lost you. He had almost lost the woman he loved, that he had loved since the morning after you moved in.

As he sat next to your bed, with your sleeping daughter still in his arms, he remembered that morning.

You were in the kitchen, in a One Direction concert shirt, and grey sweatpants, making his breakfast at the stove. He had seen you stood there many times before, but this time you were yourself. Not his assistant, you were Y/N. And he loved it.

Thats when he knew.

He kept switching his gaze between you and your daughter, admiring your two.

Your daughters eyes fluttered open to look at Seth again.

He smiled at her warmly.

“You know, I love your mother a lot. I’ve loved her for years, and I've never told her. I don't know why. There have been so many chances to tell her, and I never did.” A smile spread across his face as the 2 hour old baby seemed to be hanging on to his every word. “Everything used to be so blurry when it came to her, and to my feelings for her, but now you're here, it’s all so clear. I love her. Hell, you're not even mine, and I already love you like you are,”

He paused to press a kiss to her forehead before continuing.

“As soon as she wakes up, I’ll tell her,” His gaze drifted over to your sleeping form. “If she’ll let me, I’ll be the best daddy I can to you. I promise.” She had drifted back off to sleep, and Seth laid her in the bassinet.

He sat on the bed, and took your hand in his. You woke up a few moments later.

He gave you a soft smile. “How are you feeling?” He asked.

You shifted slightly and grimaced. “Sore,” Seth chuckled.

“Is my daughter okay?” Seth nodded, and pulled the bassinet closer to the bed so you could see her.

“She’s perfect. She hasn't cried at all. Such a perfect angel,”

You sniffled, feeling emotional as you looked down in admiration at your beautiful baby girl.

“She really is,” You whispered, lifting your free hand to stroke her cheek.

Seth cleared his throat, and looked at you.

“I need to tell you something,” He said, and you nodded, encouraging him to continue. “I’m in love with you. I have been for years, but I never told you, and I have no idea why. I understand if you don't feel the same, but it's been eating me up ever since I walked out of the room with her.” He glanced over at the baby once more, before looking at you apprehensively.

You just smiled, and squeezed his hand. “I love you too, Seth. So much.”

A huge smile spread across his face, and he moved closer. He pressed a gentle kiss to your lips, before your daughter began fussing.

Seth lifted her up, and helped her latch, before sitting back down once more.

As he looked at you feed her, a question came to mind.

“What are you going to call her?” He whispered, rubbing her forehead with his thumb.

You smiled before pressing a kiss to his lips once more.

“Violet Anne MacFarlane,” You suggested, and his face broke out into a huge smile.

“A-are you sure?” He asked, and you nodded.

“She’s always been yours. Biology can go fuck itself,” You said, and he pressed another kiss to your lips.

“Thank you,” He said, looking up at you, the woman he loves, and his daughter.

#sethmacfarlane #theorville #familyguy #fluff #pregnancy

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sothatmyocshauntmealittleless · 3 years

Text

No time to die - part 1/2

->part 2

author's note: so this is a piece I started writing when I got bored in a family gathering like two years ago, and I rewrote it recently. This is the first part and I haven't finished editing the rest but I estimate that there would be one or two more parts. The story is about two high school friends that meet after five years of having no contact with each other and their confrontation. Also the name is inspired by the song with the same name by Billie Eilish 'cause I was listening to it while writing a part of this and the song really suits the relationship between the characters.

~1800 words

I’m feeling a burning ache in my abdomen, and my mind is full of different scenarios that this could lead to, one worse that the other. What if I call an ambulance? I answer myself within a fraction of a second that it wouldn’t lead to pleasant things though the alternative which is bleeding to death isn’t ideal either. So just when I’ve finally convinced myself to pick up the phone and call an ambulance before I pass out, a name crosses my mind. It’s the best and the worst thing that I can do at the same time, but well sometimes your survival instincts would take over your overthinking abilities, no matter how strong they are. And despite all my hesitation, I know the number by heart.

She picks up the phone after few rings, “Hello?”, I’m a bit thrown off by how her voice is the same but her tone is different from the last time I’ve heard her, “Hi”, my voice shakes and I don’t know if it’s from the injury or hearing her voice again. “Riley? Is that you?”, somehow she could recognize me from just that one word and at least her tone is less formal now. “Yeah it’s me, listen I wanted to ask if you could come here now if you can, but it’s totally fine if you can’t make it.” Maybe it’s the shock of hearing someone from your past, or my shaky voice that she agrees to come without any other questions and I tell her my address in the calmest pace I can.

Until she arrives I spend my time overthinking on how bad of an idea it was to call her, and why would she even bother herself with my problems anymore, like who in their right mind would hurry in the middle of the night to heal someone from their past that they tried so hard to abandon. But careful knocks on the door save me from my thoughts. I open the door and for a moment think that the option of bleeding to death at least could’ve saved me from the awkwardness of this, before I manage to say “Thank you so much for coming, I really didn’t want to trouble you”, she replies “Not that I love getting surprise calls at midnight but what’s the occasion?” and then she takes a look at me with her perfect hazel eyes and sees it, the blood soaking my shirt and says “holy fuck Ri, what did… what happen- it doesn’t matter now”

It takes her only few moments to get into her other sleeve, the doctor she was trained to be, giving orders and analyzing the situation, only stopping once to curse me under her breath that I should’ve told her to bring her medical stuff and that I’m a lucky bastard that she didn’t come totally unprepared. Then her inner doctor takes charge completely. I tell myself maybe outer, you know it’s who she is now, heal first talk later that’s what she does.

“Take your shirt off”, I obey without making a snarky comment because even I can tell it would be inappropriate. I can’t really describe the process of her stitching me up, because I’ve never been a big fan of surgeries to the point I even skip them when they come up in movies, and maybe beside how pain makes everything hazy, I can’t wrap my head around the idea of her hands on me.

When it’s done she gives me some final instructions and tells me to don’t move from where I’m sitting for at least half an hour. Then standing in front of me without taking a step, she looks at her watch and her gaze lingers to the door and I know she’s thinking about leaving, but decides against it, at least for now.

“So are you gonna tell me how this happened?”, she asks gesturing towards my wound that is now stitched and bandaged. I guess I’m too exhausted for anything but the truth so I say “I was working on a case, and it didn’t end well.” She glares at me, “Well I can see that clearly, but how did it turn that way?”, “my client was a small business going to court against a big company, I had some dirty things on them but they weren’t enough proof so I was looking for more and they sent someone to scare me off I think, but um I tried to resist and it escalated quickly and I got a nice killer knife wound.” “It wasn’t fatal,” she says, “What?” I reply a bit shocked, “I said it wasn’t fatal, the knife didn’t go that deep, what? You thought I could fix a fatal cut with couple of stiches?” to that I mumble that I really trust her abilities and she rolls her eyes. I think at this point we’re past the formal greetings and small talks and now that the crisis is over she seems done with my shit so she continues “So you’ve finally fulfilled your dreams and became the woman you’ve always aspired to be, a detective/lawyer hunting down bad guys and giving them what they deserve” she doesn’t even try to hide the bitterness in her voice, and so if we’re going there now, I won’t try to hide it from mine either, “And you’ve became a doctor, a life you have dreamed of from the beginning, never even thinking to be anything else.”

She sighs and drops to the couch in front of me, “So this is the time that you’ve finally decided to talk about it.” It doesn’t sound like a question, more like a statement. Maybe being in pain and exhausted sharpens your edges and makes the things you’ve hidden carefully to snap free because I can’t hold back when I say: “Says the one who just abandoned me overnight and decided to part ways forever without even a heads up.” The thing is I’ve imagined having this conversation so many times in so many different situations, that it actually happening doesn’t feel real, it feels like another one of those fantasies in my head except she is really here now, and my pulse is betraying me by beating so damn fast.

“I didn’t abandon you, If I had you’d still be bleeding.” And a part of me wants to just accept that and move on and embrace her, because I’ve missed her, hell I’ve missed her so much I want to hug her and never let go, and we have a lot to catch up on too, five years worth of memories. Five years that we were no more than outside observers in each other's lives, but the stronger part, the part that’s been hurting ever since wants to have this conversation, needs to have this conversation or else I would never stop imagining it in my head.

“Well maybe our definition of abandonment is a bit different, ‘cause changing your life course and treating me like a stranger and pretending like all our planning and dreaming for future never happened sure as hell fits in mine.”

“I never treated you like a stranger, you were the one who decided to not talk to me and have anything to do with me anymore and cut contact completely”

“Because I couldn’t do it like that anymore, like I was just another one in your new class, as if we didn’t have history, like what we had wasn’t something more. We used to joke about how disconnected we felt from them, not because we hated them because we were different, or at least I thought you were.”

“People change Riley.”

And for a few moments neither of us backfires anything else to the other, and my mind finds time to wonder for the thousandth time why we didn’t even call each other all these years. But well one of the things that made us close at first was how stubborn we were. I remember clearly when there was a debate competition in school and we were a team and crashed the whole thing. Beside our passion for the matter we were unstoppable, to the point that each match ended to the other team being like “dear god just let it go it’s over”, and remembering those days even now in the midst of this makes me a little calmer.

I can’t help but ask, “Was it because I tried to-“ before letting me finish she says “God no, you think I could transfer in a day? And for what? Not everything is about you, or what you do or what you want, I thought five years would be enough time to learn that”, and well I’ve always known that it was a coincidence that those two things happened successively. But deep down I couldn’t shove the idea away that it was all because she wanted to get away from me, that it was my fault and I shouldn’t have done it after all. I know that doubt has led me to be selfish, and to give up on trying to fix it, and to suffer more, and I don’t know how to defend it (or if I even should). Throughout all these years I’ve also imagined getting the answer to this question countless times, and how I’ll finally be at peace if I got this answer, but now I don’t feel relived as much as I wanted to.

“So you thought of me in those years?” I say in a hopeful tone still desperately clenching to this conversation, as if all this could be solved just if we have this talk. “Way to avoid my point right? You haven’t changed a bit, reckless and careless and always holding on to things that don’t matter much to the extent that you nearly got yourself killed,” but she says this in a kinder tone than the previous one, maybe even with a hint of worry in her voice. I finally give up on trying to get this conversation to fix it all, and decide that we’re too tired now, so I reply “I thought you said it wasn’t fatal.” A pause then, “It’s really late, are you going to leave now?” I hope that she can hear the silent ‘stay’ in what I just said. “I don’t think I can get a taxi now, can I? considering the time, and I don’t have the energy to explain all this to someone and wake them to pick me up”, “you can stay if you want?” and for all we’ve been through, I’m relieved when she agrees.

//end of part 1

->part 2

#so this is the first piece of writing that I'm posting online and I'm a bit nervous but also excited about it #anyways I hope you enjoy it #writing #authors #writrblr #writers on tumblr

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phoebosacerales · 3 years

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The 6th house in Astrology

I thought I'd just share this excerpt from "The Plague", which feels like a whole lesson on the 6th house, while also being very relevant in these times of covid-19. It says a lot more than I could ever try to say and explain about the joy of Mars.

"The word 'plague' had just been uttered for the first time. At this stage of the narrative, with Dr. Bernard Rieux standing at his window, the narrator may, perhaps, be allowed to justify the doctor's uncertainty and surprise, since, with very slight differences, his reaction was the same as that of the great majority of our townsfolk. Everybody knows that pestilences have a way of recurring in the world; yet somehow we find it hard to believe in ones that crash down on our heads from a blue sky. There have been as many plagues as wars in history; yet always plagues and wars take people equally by surprise.

In fact, like our fellow citizens, Rieux was caught off his guard, and we should understand his hesitations in the light of this fact; and similarly understand how he was torn between conflicting fears and confidence. When a war breaks out, people say: 'It's too stupid; it can't last long.' But though a war may well be 'too stupid', that doesn't prevent its lasting. Stupidity has a knack of getting its way; as we should see if we were not always so much wrapped up in ourselves.

In this respect our townsfolk were like everybody else, wrapped up in themselves; in other words they were humanists: they disbelieved in pestilences.

A pestilence isn't a thing made to man's measure; therefore we tell ourselves that pestilence is a mere bogy of the mind, a bad dream that will pass away. But it doesn't always pass away and, from one bad dream to another, it is men who pass away, and the humanists first of all, because they haven't taken their precautions.

Our townsfolk were not more to blame than others; they forgot to be modest, that was all, and thought that everything still was possible for them; which presupposed that pestilences were impossible. They went on doing business, arranged for journeys, and formed views. How should they have given a thought to anything like plague, which rules out any future, cancels journeys, silences the exchange of views. They fancied themselves free, and no one will ever be free so long as there are pestilences.

Indeed, even after Dr. Rieux had admitted in his friend's company that a handful of persons, scattered about the town, had without warning died of plague, the danger still remained fantastically unreal. For the simple reason that, when a man is a doctor, he comes to have his own ideas of physical suffering, and to acquire somewhat more imagination than the average. Looking from his window at the town, outwardly quite unchanged, the doctor felt little more than a faint qualm for the future, a vague unease.

He tried to recall what he had read about the disease. Figures floated across his memory, and he recalled that some thirty or so great plagues known to history had accounted for nearly a hundred million deaths. But what are a hundred million deaths? When one has served in a war, one hardly knows what a dead man is, after a while. And since a dead man has no substance unless one has actually seen him dead, a hundred million corpses broadcast through history are no more than a puff of smoke in the imagination. The doctor remembered the plague at Constantinople that, according to Procopius, caused ten thousand deaths in a single day. Ten thousand dead made about five times the audience in a biggish cinema. Yes, that was how it should be done. You should collect the people at the exits of five picture-houses, you should lead them to a city square and make them die in heaps if you wanted to get a clear notion of what it means. Then at least you could add some familiar faces to the anonymous mass. But naturally that was impossible to put into practice; moreover, what man knows ten thousand faces? In any case the figures of those old historians, like Procopius, weren't to be relied on; that was common knowledge. Seventy years ago, at Canton, forty thousand rats died of plague before the disease spread to the inhabitants. But, again, in the Canton epidemic there was no reliable way of counting up the rats. A very rough estimate was all that could be made, with, obviously, a wide margin for error.

'Let's see,' the doctor murmured to himself, "supposing the length of a rat to be ten inches, forty thousand rats placed end to end would make a line of...'

He pulled himself up sharply. He was letting his imagination play pranks, the last thing wanted just now. A few cases, he told himself, don't make an epidemic; they merely call for serious precautions. He must fix his mind, first of all, on the observed facts: stupor and extreme prostration, buboes, intense thirst, delirium, dark blotches on the body, internal dilatation, and, in conclusion... In conclusion, some words came back to the doctor's mind; aptly enough, the concluding sentence of the description of the symptoms given in his medical handbook: 'The pulse becomes fluttering, dicrotic, and intermittent, and death ensues as the result of the slightest movement.' Yes, in conclusion, the patient's life hung on a thread, and three people out of four (he remembered the exact figures) were too impatient not to make the very slight movement that snapped the thread.

The doctor was still looking out of the window. Beyond it lay the tranquil radiance of a cool spring sky; inside the room a word was echoing still, the word 'plague'. A word that conjured up in the doctor's mind not only what science chose to put into it, but a whole series of fantastic possibilities utterly out of keeping with that gray and yellow town under his eyes, from which were rising the sounds of mild activity characteristic of the hour; a drone rather than a bustling, the noises of a happy town, in short, if it's possible to be at once so dull and happy. A tranquillity so casual and thoughtless seemed almost effortlessly to give the lie to those old pictures of the plague: Athens, a charnel-house reeking to heaven and deserted even by the birds; Chinese towns cluttered up with victims silent in their agony; the convicts at Marseille piling rotting corpses into pits; the building of the Great Wall in Provence to fend off the furious plague-wind; the damp, putrefying pallets stuck to the mud floor at the Constantinople lazar-house, where the patients were hauled up from their beds with hooks; the carnival of masked doctors at the Black Death; men and women copulating in the cemeteries of Milan; cartloads of dead bodies rumbling through London's ghoul-haunted darkness, nights and days filled always, everywhere, with the eternal cry of human pain. No, all those horrors were not near enough as yet even to ruffle the equanimity of that spring afternoon. The clang of an unseen streetcar came through the window, briskly refuting cruelty and pain. Only the sea, murmurous behind the dingy checkerboard of houses, told of the unrest, the precariousness, of all things in this world. And, gazing in the direction of the bay, Dr. Rieux called to mind the plague-fires of which Lucretius tells, which the Athenians kindled on the seashore. The dead were brought there after nightfall, but there was not room enough, and the living fought one another with torches for a space where to lay those who had been dear to them; for they had rather engage in bloody conflicts than abandon their dead to the waves. A picture rose before him of the red glow of the pyres mirrored on a wine-dark, slumbrous sea, battling torches whirling sparks across the darkness, and thick, fetid smoke rising toward the watchful sky. Yes, it was not beyond the bounds of possibility....

But these extravagant forebodings dwindled in the light of reason. True, the word 'plague had been uttered; true, at this very moment one or two victims were being seized and laid low by the disease. Still, that could stop, or be stopped. It was only a matter of lucidly recognizing what had to be recognized; of dispelling extraneous shadows and doing what needed to be done. Then the plague would come to an end, because it was unthinkable, or, rather, because one thought of it on misleading lines. If, as was most likely, it died out, all would be well. If not, one would know it anyhow for what it was and what steps should be taken for coping with and finally overcoming it.

The doctor opened the window, and at once the noises of the town grew louder.

The brief, intermittent sibilance of a machine-saw came from a near-by workshop.

Rieux pulled himself together. There lay certitude; there, in the daily round.

All the rest hung on mere threads and trivial contingencies; you couldn't waste your time on it. The thing was to do your job as it should be done."

"The Plague", by Albert Camus.

#the plague #albert camus #hellenistic astrology #astrology #mars #6th house #traditional astrology #covid-19

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evabellasworld · 3 years

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Storm of the Republic

Chapter 24

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Summary: When Tup murdered General Tiplar during a battle, Anakin Skywalker and Captain Rex dispatched Ahsoka, Fives, and Yara to solve the mystery that was plaguing the Clone Army. Meanwhile, Senator Padme Amidala contacted Commander Fox, Commander Tori, Riyo Chuchi, and Dipper to help her continue investigating the death of Palpatine, suspecting that Dooku was behind the evil plot. But when Dooku send an ISB agent to stop them, the team had to race against time to search for the truth, which could alter the course of the galaxy.

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Holding a flashlight, Dr. Urakchaevy checked her patient’s eyes and noticed her eyes squinted towards the flare. Maria, the Rodian lady, felt her sight were blurry as the doctor found halos around her sparkling eyes, making her frown. This is unusual for a Rodian’s eyes to look like that, she thought, as she jotted down on her datapad.

Dr. Urakchaevy took a deep breath and sat back at her desk, facing Maria with a frown on her face. “I’ve checked your eyes, and it’s terrible. I can reach to the conclusion that you are having cataracts in your eyes.”

“I’m not surprised,” Maria hung her head low, her hands clutched together. “Is there anything you could do to cure my cataract from my eyes? I don’t think I can survive without my eyes.”

“I agree, nobody wants to lose their sight, but as you get older, issues like eye problems and chronic pains are inevitable. Do you have any history with diabetes before?”

“I’m afraid I do. I have been on insulins for years and I had my leg amputated because of gangrene, so maybe this could be the reason my health has worsened over the years. I guess I’m not as young as I used to be.”

Dr. Urakchaevy pouted as she bobbled her head before scribbling a prescription on a piece of paper. “Your appointment date for your surgery will be on Friday. The sooner we get your cataract removed, the sooner you can see clearly like a young woman.”

“Thank you, Doctor,” said Maria, as she got up from her seat and left her office, leaving the doctor alone. Grabbing a tablecloth and a sanitizer, Dr. Urakchaevy wiped every single part of her office as part of standard procedure, making sure her office was hygienic enough for her next patient.

Having worked in a hospital on Coruscant before, the turquoise Theelin had to sanitise both her equipment and patient’s seat to prevent infections. Medical centres treated various diseases, such as common flu, chickenpox, and the infamous Shining Death, which killed hundreds and thousands of patients two decades ago.

At some point, Dr. Urakchaevy was contracted with the virus, but recovered for a month in the hospital. Her wife, Thando, was pacing up and down back home, wondering when she would return. Nobody could visit the hospital ward back then, as doctors and nurses did not want the Shining Death to spread and kill more people.

Tossing her disposable gloves into the bin, the doctor groaned and stretched her back as she stepped out of her office, only to find Fives and Yara seated on a blue chair, with Tup still inside his gurney, breathing through his ventilator. She wasn’t expecting their company, but she was ready to help anyone who stepped into her clinic.

“Good afternoon, Doc,” Fives greeted her with a smile. “I’m Fives, and this is Tup and Yara. I believe you could help us with our situation right now.”

“I’m guessing Liana Halls had sent you here,” estimated Dr. Urakchaevy.

“Who?” Yara raised her eyebrows, gazing at the doctor.

“The medicine lady earlier. Did she send you here?”

“She did, Doc,” she grinned. “It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

Dr. Urakchaevy stood there in silence and eyed Yara and Tup, taking a mental note of their current condition. The former was next to her brother with a dazed eye, munching on her cookies that Thando had baked while holding her forehead. She then glimpsed at Tup, who seemed to be in a critical condition and in a need of medical care.

“How long has he been inside?” she asked the ARC Trooper, agitated.

“Over 5 hours,” he told her. “Can you save him? He looks like he’s dying.”

“Yes, I can,” Dr Urakchaevy nodded, as she gestured to them to hurry inside her office.

Putting on another set of rubber gloves, Fives put down Yara on the doctor’s desk, helped the doctor to unstrap Tup and carried him towards the patient’s bed, before placing a new set of ventilators and a heart monitor beside him. The latter was beeping rapidly as Dr. Urakchaevy squeezed some oxygen for Tup, hoping to stabilise his heart rate.

“How is he, Doc?”

“He’s getting weaker,” she answered him. “Is he having a heart attack or something? He looks pretty young to have these health conditions.”

“It’s complicated,” Fives stuttered, rubbing the back of his neck. “We don’t know to explain this.”

“If you don’t tell me, it would be very difficult for me to save your brother. Besides, I’ve dealt with strange diseases throughout my entire career. I’m sure this isn’t as bad as the Shining Death.”

Taking a deep breath, Fives explained everything that happened earlier on Ringo Vinda. From how Tup was acting strange before the fight, how he shot Master Tiplee to death, and how he acted aggressive when he stared at another Jedi, without sparing a single detail about the incident. “We think it was a virus developed by the Separatist, but we couldn’t find anything through the scans. That’s why we came to see you instead, since you’re the best doctor in town.”

Dr. Urakchaevy blinked as she slumped on a black chair and crossed her legs. She stared at the floor for a moment, processing what she had heard from Fives. Out of all the patients she had treated, she had never thought she would come across a clone trooper until today. “Are you sure Tup isn’t having a case of PTSD, cause aggression is part of the symptom, you know.”

Fives shook his head, crossing his arms. “Tup, Yara, and I have been through many battles together and he never acted this way before, really. He’s been through a lot with us since Umbara. It was the deadliest battle for a rookie like him.”

“I see. Well then, I’ll have to apologise since I have never treated a clone trooper before, hence I’m only observing based on my experience.”

“No worries, Doc,” he assured her, lowering his voice. “I’m sorry for shouting at you. It’s been a stressful day for all of us, inclusing you.”

“Apology accepted,” Dr. Urakchaevy gave a slight smile. “Did you see a medic before you came to me?”

Fives gave a nod. “We did, Doctor. Apparently, the Jedi and the medic said that it could be a virus developed by the Empire to control clones like us. There were rumours about it, and I think it could be true.”

Dr. Urakchaevy could only burst into laughter as she heard his statement before composing herself. “This is the first time I’ve heard of a virus that can cause aggression in a patient. Honestly, it is the most absurd thing someone has told me, really. I don’t remember learning that in medical school.”

“You mean a virus doesn’t do that?”

“No, they don’t. I’ve studied and treated viral infections on patients and I have never seen a patient acting aggressive solely for that reason.”

“Well, maybe the Empire developed one in their fancy lab. It could be possible, considering they tried to take Tup away.”

“Even if the Empire had produced a virus in their lab, the first symptoms of any virus would be runny nose, coughs, fever, and lethargy. Did Tup have those symptoms before the battle?”

Fives denied. “He was perfectly healthy. It was unlike my brother to kill a Jedi General, you know. He’s not the kind to get into bar fights easily.”

“Yeah, he seemed like a sweet man,” Dr. Urakchaevy chuckled, before moving on with the next question. “What about his brain? Does he have any brain problems?”

“Not that I know of, though it could be possible. After all, he was rubbing his head before the fight, so that could be it.”

“In that case, I will start a brain scan for Tup,” she stood up, along with Fives. “What about your sister, Yara? Is she having the same problem as well?”

“She broke her left arm and hit her head after the ship crash,” Fives said. “I had to carry her all the way here since she looked dizzy.”

“I’ll get my wife to deal with her. In the meantime, you need some rest for yourself. It’s been a long journey for all of you.”

“What about Tup? Will he be okay?”

“He will,” Dr. Urakchaevy comforted him, placing her hand on his shoulder. “I’ll do everything I can to save him.”

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orangeoctopi7 · 3 years

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A Negligible Price

I guess it’s becoming a tradition for me to add another chapter to A Minor Inconvenience every year for @stanuary . I swear I didn’t mean for this to happen. It’s just that the prompt “Sacrifice” got me thinking about this story and where I thought it could go, and then I got writing and I started coming up with ideas for how I could actually put a finish to this story. So yeah, hopefully it won’t be another year before I post chapter 4, but not promises!

Also, first time I’ve had to do this, but:

CONTENT WARNING: DISCUSSION OF SUICIDE/MARTYR COMPLEX AND SUIDICE ADJACENT THEMES.

* * *

Bill rushes to gather himself together again. Now that Sixer and his idiot brother have caught on, he knows they’ll probably be making a move against him soon. The time for lying in wait and keeping a low profile has passed. He’s been getting faster, better at finding the tiny flecks of gold scattered into the dark abyss below.

Unfortunately that also means that he’s noticed that some missing pieces just never turn up. As an interdimensional being who’s existed in countless dimensions across innumerable timelines, Bill likes to think he knows himself pretty well now. What he’s made of, how much power he’s accumulated, what he’s capable of. And if he had to estimate now, which he does, he’d say he’s been reduced to maybe a third of his power. Roughly two thirds of him are missing.

What happened to those missing pieces? Were they simply deleted by that memory eraser? Did he leave some of himself behind in that physical form he left to enter Stan’s mind in the Fearamid? Bill can only guess, but really, in the grand scheme of things, it doesn’t matter. What matters is getting out of this moron’s brain and starting again on his path to a universe free of rules.

* * *

Stan recovered from his latest memory lapse quickly, despite the fact that it was the worst one he’d experienced since he sacrificed himself to the memory gun last summer. The experience had clearly put Ford on edge, and as much as he tried to bottle up his emotions and remain calm, Stan could practically feel the panic coming off him in waves.

They were both relieved when they reached Spitsbergen. There was a hospital in Longyearbyen, where Ford insisted they stop to give Stan a check-up. Stan felt fine, but if it helped ease Ford’s nerves, then he could sit through a check-up.

Explaining Stan’s condition to the doctor was a struggle, considering English was not his strongest language. They definitely got across that Stan was experiencing memory problems, but the doctor seemed to be under the impression it had been caused by an injury to the head in an accident, rather than a purposeful exposure to a memory-erasing device.

Eventually, Ford had lost his patience and just asked if they could use the CT or MRI machine themselves. The doctor spoke enough English to tell them that the nearest CT or MRI machine was in either Iceland or Russia.

The elder Pines twins left the hospital in low spirits. Ford kicked at little pebbles as they walked down the street.

“There’s a research facility in Ny-Ålesund. Perhaps we could sail up there and commandeer some equipment to rig up our own CT scan…”

“I think it’d be easier to just hop on a plane back to the States at this point.” Stan suggested.

“If we’re going to hop on a plane somewhere, it’ll be to Reykjavik, where we won’t have to pay an arm and a leg for any treatments.”

“Yeah, we’ll just have to wait half a year.” Stan rolled his eyes. “I don’t think they’re gonna take ‘revived demon in my head’ as an urgent need.”

“Probably not…” Ford admitted.

“And you’re sure you didn’t figure anything else out the last time you were pokin’ around in my head?”

Ford grit his teeth. The truth was, he was afraid what would happen if he tried to revisit that memory. The cold flames of the memory eraser had felt so real, even just revisiting it in Stan’s mind, and they seemed to be the trigger of his latest memory lapse. Would they have a similar effect within Ford’s own memory?

“Nothing I’ve been able to make sense of.”

Stan grit his teeth. “So what now? Just leave that jerk in my head?”

Ford sighed. “I want to do some more research into what we’ve learned so far. Perhaps a trip to the library will help me find some insight. But truthfully… I may have been too hasty with punching out Bill, when I encountered him. He’s a liar who can’t be trusted, but he’s also a braggart. If I’d just let him run his mouth a little longer, we may have learned something about what he’s up to.”

* * *

Longyearbyen’s library wasn’t any bigger than the public library in Gravity Falls, and had significantly fewer books relating to Bill and mind magic, but it did at least have access to several library databases that Ford couldn’t typically log into from the Stan’O’War II. (According to Fiddleford, these databases could be hacked into quite easily, but Ford didn’t have the time or the wherewithal to learn how) It would have to do for now. Ford took a seat at a computer, and with a little help from a librarian, he was soon scrolling through peer-reviewed articles from different archeologists and anthropologists and folklore experts and descendants of the Aztecs and Mayans debating who Xolotl was, what his role was in the Aztec religion, how much his lore changed from Pre- and Post- Colombian invasion, and so forth.

What he’d learned so far was interesting, to say the least. The things that most people agreed upon was that Xolotl was a god of death, fire, and lightning. What caught Ford’s attention was the fact that they were also the god of twins and deformities. He glanced down at his twelve fingers, which rested awkwardly on the small keyboard meant for people with just ten. It seemed odd that Bill would call on this particular death god, when they seemed far more likely to be a patron to Stan and Ford.

While Ford puzzled over this new information, Stan browsed the library, looking for something to entertain himself while he waited. Unsurprisingly, there weren’t a whole lot of English books in this Norwegian library. Luckily, it wasn’t long before he stumbled upon an extensive comics section. Even though he still couldn’t read most of them, the pictures were at least enough that he got the gist of what was going on.

European comics were very different from American comics. They featured a lot less costumed superheroes punching bad guys and a lot more weird, quirky characters setting out on adventures and exploring the world. They also seemed to lean more heavily on comedy rather than drama. Stan decided he liked them.

He’d been looking at a story about some rich duck when he noticed he felt odd. He didn’t know how else to explain it other than to say that his brain felt itchy. The more he concentrated on it, the more it faded away, but when he went back to looking at the comic and got absorbed back into the story, it came back.

After almost an hour of the feeling coming and going, Stan decided he was not imagining the sensation. He stuffed a tissue into the comic as a bookmark and got up to see what Ford would have to say about it. Almost as soon as he laid eyes on his brother, a wave of anger washed over him. Just like the itchy brain feeling, it went away almost as soon as he stopped and thought about it, but it had been so strong, that he couldn’t deny it had happened.

“Hey.” Stan tapped his brother on the shoulder as the old researcher skimmed an article about why the Aztecs associated lightning with twins.

“Hmm?” Ford acknowledged him without looking away from the screen.

“Am I forgettin’ to be mad at you about somethin’?”

That got Ford to turn and look at him. “Are you having a memory lapse!?”

“I don’t think so, but just a second ago I looked over at you and I felt really mad all of a sudden. Can’t really think of a reason why, though. I’m just wondering if maybe the other day, when I had the big blank-out, maybe we missed somethin’?”

The old researcher’s face contorted with guilt. “You have ample reason to be mad at me. I didn’t stand up for you when dad kicked you out. I never reached out to you for over ten years. I expected you to drop everything and help me with my problems without any explanation. I refused to thank you for saving my life--”

“Yeah, no, none of that stuff.” Stan shook his head. “I remember all that stuff, and I’ve already forgiven you and junk. Mmmm… did you try to enchant the mop again and not let me remember it?” But even as he joked that the underlying reason must be the latest chapter in a minor argument, he knew that couldn’t be right. The sudden bloom of anger had been much more deep-seated and horrible than that. It had felt like… it had felt like Ford had ruined everything.

To be fair, there had been a long period of Stan’s life when he had felt like Ford had ruined everything. But Stan was over that now, and this brief brush with anger had felt even more heated than that.

Ford gave him an appraising look. “Were there any other memories or emotions associated with this feeling?”

“Oh yeah, my brain was feelin’ itchy right before that.”

“Have… you been using shampoo?” Ford asked, unsure of what to do with this information.

“Not my scalp, genius, like the actual thinking part of my brain!”

“... I can’t even begin to guess what that means.”

“Ugh, I don’t know how else to describe it, ok? It’s like somethin’ was squirmin’ around in my mind!”

The brothers wore twin expressions of realization as the words left Stan’s mouth.

“We need to get back to the boat.” Ford stood from the computer desk abruptly.

“Yep.” Stan set the comic he’d been reading down on the desk, not even bothering to remove his improvised bookmark.

* * *

Bill throws his hands up and roars in frustration. He can’t seem to take control, even when the moron’s mind is zoning out, losing himself in some stupid comic book. He’s already in the mind! He’s been here for months! He knows his way around here. So why isn’t it working? Is it because he never made a deal with this guy? That shouldn’t matter! The last thing they did before the whole memory gun thing was shake hands!

There's no time to waste complaining, though. Sixer will be poking around here any minute. Bill needs a plan. Before, he'd spent millions of years in the Nightmare Realm planning. Now he's making everything up as he goes.

It's clear that Bill can't just take control of Stan like he'd been counting on. But do the other two know that? He might still be able to use that to his advantage.

If Bill is going to trick these losers and get out of here, he needs to play his opponents right. Luckily, he's got years of experience fighting against Sixer. It's the Big Mackerel that he worries about.

Before, Bill hadn't paid much attention to Stan. He thought he understood what made the simple con man tick. But then, in the end, he found he didn't understand at all. Even after months of being trapped in his mindscape, Stan is very much still a mystery to Bill.

But there is one thing about Stan that Bill does understand.

He’s willing to sacrifice himself for his family.

* * *

Once they were back aboard the Stan’O’War II, Stan allowed himself to relax, just a little. At least here his surroundings were familiar, and the only person he had to worry about was his own brother.

Under normal circumstances, “the only person he had to worry about” meant he didn’t have to look over his shoulder for law enforcement or old criminals who might recognize Stan from his drifter days.

Today “the only person he had to worry about” meant the only person he could possibly endanger if Bill was able to take control of him. Ford was the last person Stan wanted to put in danger, but he also had to admit, his brother knew more about the demon than any other living being on the planet.

Stan may have been able to relax a tiny fraction once they were back aboard their boat, but not Ford. Ford was in full-blown panic mode.

He frantically searched around the storage room for something, anything, that could help protect his brother from Bill. Unfortunately, they hadn’t thought to bring unicorn hair or moonstones on their voyage. He did have titanium, but he wasn’t confident enough in his emergency medical knowledge to perform cranial surgery on his own, and he doubted they’d be able to find a doctor crooked enough to do it for them. Currently, his best idea was to build an updated version of Project Mentem, but that would take time. Time he wasn’t sure Stan had.

“I can re-enter your mindscape and shatter him again.” Ford decided, pulling out the candles again. “That should at least buy you a few days.”

“Ok.” Stan nodded. He’d definitely prefer to know Bill was shattered again, and not moving around in his brain. “But it’s not like he’s doing anything right now.”

“He’s probably trying to get us to lower our guard.” Ford assumed. “I’ll need to tie you up. He usually makes his move while his victim is asleep.”

“If I need to fall asleep for your spell while tied up, we’re gonna be waitin’ a long time.” Stan warned. “I dunno if I could even fall asleep right now if I had the world’s most comfortable bed.”

“Fair point.” Ford nodded. “I may have to drug you.”

“You gotta be kidding me!” It was abundantly clear that Ford was not kidding in the slightest.

“Would you rather be used as his puppet!?” The old researcher shouted. The outburst rang in the air for a few seconds while Ford tried to steady his breathing. “Stan I… I’m sorry, I just--”

“It’s ok.” Stan pulled him into a hug and tried his best to calm his brother down. “I know you’re just scared.”

“I’m not scared for myself.” Ford explained in a small voice. “I’m scared for you. Waking up to find that you’ve hurt someone, it’s-- I wouldn’t wish that on anyone, least of all you--”

“Stanford, look at me. We’re not gonna let that happen. What if we do it while I’m awake, like we did with the memory before?”

Ford nodded meekly. “That… that could work.”

“You can still tie me up if that makes you feel better.”

The old researcher bit his lip. “...It shouldn't be necessary...”

“Ford.”

“...But it probably would ease some of my fears, yes.” he admitted.

“That’s what I thought. I’ll go get the rope.”

Still unwilling to let his brother out of his sight, Ford followed Stan up to the deck while he retrieved said rope. Once they were back below deck, he wrapped Stan tightly in a large blanket before sitting him down on a chair and tying him up, to ensure he was as comfortable as possible while still restricting his movement.

“How do you feel?” Ford asked as he lit the candles.

“Like I’m about to be shipped back to Oregon in the mail.”

“And Bill…?”

“I haven’t felt anything else from him since we left the library.”

The lack of activity should have reassured Ford, but instead it just added to his general unease. At least he was able to compose himself enough to perform the incantation.

Just as last time, after a flash of light, he found himself on the deck of Stan’s mindscape, with Stan himself standing beside him. This time, though, Bill was floating there, waiting for them.

“I KNEW YOU’D BE BACK HERE AFTER I GOT YOUR ATTENTION IN THE LIBRARY!” The demon taunted. “OH, AND LOOK. STANO HERE EVEN MADE A MENTAL CONSTRUCT OF HIMSELF WITHIN HIS OWN MIND JUST SO YOU WOULDN’T HAVE TO FACE ME ALONE! HOW CUTE!” He prodded Stan in the stomach like he was the Pillsbury Doughboy.

“Back off, bucko!” Stan threatened. “We’re here to break your whole face!”

“WHAT, YOU COULDN’T WAIT UNTIL TONIGHT TO DO IT IN YOUR DREAMS LIKE YOU ALWAYS DO?” Bill asked, voice dripping with false innocence.

“We’re not able to risk the chance of you parading about in Stanley’s body.” Ford growled.

“HA! YOU SHOULD KNOW BETTER THAN ANYONE, FORDSY, I ONLY DO THAT TO STUBBORN KNOW-IT-ALLS WHO WON’T WORK WITH ME WILLINGLY.”

“If you think I’m gonna work with you willingly, then you’re an even bigger idiot than I thought.” Stan grunted.

“HEAR ME OUT, MAC! WE BOTH WANT THE SAME THING HERE! ME, OUT OF YOUR SAD PATHETIC MIND!”

“You can’t leave!?” Ford asked in surprise.

“WHAT, YOU THINK I ENJOY SPENDING TIME IN THIS BOZO’S MIND? YOU THINK I WAS PLOTTING MY REVENGE?”

“Honestly, yes.”

Bill gave a long, mocking laugh. “AHAHAHAHAHA! YOU REALLY THINK I CARE ABOUT A COUPLE OF INSIGNIFICANT FLESH SACKS LIKE YOU?”

“We’re the insignificant flesh sacks who killed you!” Stan reminded him.

“WELL, YOU KNOW WHAT THEY SAY. THE BEST REVENGE IS LIVING WELL.”

The brothers exchanged a suspicious glance. They highly doubted Bill actually believed that adage.

“BUT I CAN’T EXACTLY LIVE WELL TRAPPED IN YOUR MINDSCAPE. I MIGHT GET BORED AND DECIDE THE BEST REVENGE IS KILLING YOUR ENTIRE FAMILY WITH YOUR OWN HANDS.”

Ah yes, that was more along the lines of what they expected from Bill.

“So you’re saying you’ll just let bygones be bygones if I cooperate with you?” Stan asked skeptically.

“WE’LL GO OUR SEPARATE WAYS, NEVER TO MEET AGAIN!”

“And what are you planning on doing once you’re free?” Ford asked coldly.

“NONE OF YOUR BUSINESS, SIXER.” The demon waved him off. “NOW ARE YOU GONNA HELP ME OUT OF HERE OR NOT? THE SOONER THE BETTER. YOU TWO AREN’T GETTING ANY FURTHER AWAY FROM THE AVERAGE LIFE EXPECTANCY OF A HUMAN MALE, AND FISH FACE HERE DOESN'T EXACTLY TAKE GOOD CARE OF HIS BODY.”

“Hey!” Stan shouted indignantly.

“Why should Stan’s life expectancy factor into this?” Ford asked.

“HMMM? OH, NO REASON.” Bill said evasively. “I’M JUST, Y’KNOW, IN A HURRY.”

“You’re an immortal, extradimensional being. You’ve been trying to find a way out of the nightmare realm since before multicellular life developed on this planet. If you’re so sure we’re close to the end of our lives, why not wait until we’re out of the way? You must realize we’ll try and stop you from starting Weirdmaggedon again!” Ford reasoned.

“WHO SAID ANYTHING ABOUT STARTING WEIRDMAGGEDON AGAIN?” Bill denied. “AND MAYBE AFTER A BILLION YEARS, I’M TIRED OF WAITING!”

“Unless you aren’t immortal any more.” the old researcher concluded.

“YOU’VE SEEN FOR YOURSELF, FORDSY, EVERY TIME YOU OR YOUR IDIOT BROTHER SHATTER ME, I PULL MYSELF BACK TOGETHER.”

“Immortal in the mind, perhaps. But what happens when the mind you’re occupying finally dies?”

“ALRIGHT, YOU FIGURED IT OUT!” Bill sneered. “I SHOULD HAVE KNOWN A GENIUS LIKE YOU WOULD. YEAH, MY LIFE’S TIED TO THE BIG MACKEREL’S NOW. SO WHAT? YOU GONNA KILL YOUR BROTHER JUST TO GET RID OF ME?”

“Of course not!” Ford barked.

“Hey, I’d be more than happy to take you down with me if it meant making sure you never hurt anyone else ever again!” Stan challenged the demon.

Ford stared at his brother with wide eyes. “Stanley, no!”

“Hey, relax, I’m not talkin’ suicide or anything.” Stan assured him. “But he’s right about one thing. I’m not gonna live forever.”

I’ll only do it if I have to. A stray thought cawed overhead.

Stan cussed under his breath as Ford gaped at him with a mix of alarm and pity.

“I’m not gonna take it back.” Stan insisted after a moment. “If that’s what it comes down to, to keep him from hurtin’ you or the kids, then I’m taking him down with me.”

Ford placed his hands firmly on Stan’s shoulders and looked him straight in the eye with all the intensity he could muster. “We won’t let that happen!”

Bill laughed at them cruelly. “RIGHT, CUZ YOU’VE HAD SO MUCH SUCCESS STOPPING ME IN THE PAST.”

“I’ll find some other way!” Ford insisted.

“I’M SURE YOU COULD, WITH TIME.” Bill agreed. “BUT I’M GONNA STRANGLE YOU IN YOUR SLEEP BEFORE THEN!”

Not if I strangle myself first! Another one of Stan’s stray thoughts called.

Ford gave his brother a frustrated shake. “No! Stanley, I swear to you, that won’t be necessary!”

“Alright, that’s it. We’re not havin’ this conversation in my brain, where you can hear all my unprocessed thoughts.” Stan decided.

Suddenly, Ford’s form and everything around them flickered and began to fade to white. Stan and Bill were the only ones who remained solid and whole. Stan was waking up? But he’d never been asleep before the spell in the first place!

“Don’t you try any funny business!” Stan pointed an accusing finger at Bill. “I’m coming back to shatter you into a million smaller pieces as soon as I fall asleep tonight!”

#Gravity Falls #Fanfiction #Stanley Pines #Stanford Pines #Stanuary 2021 #This jerk

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brain-jarred · 3 years

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Chapter one. Marriage problems

In the dank bowels of New York, it was a normal day of extracting brains from dubiously consenting test subjects, and Dr. Hal was bored. Bored with his life, he knew he was smart, he knew he had a brilliant mind. In theory this job was in fact nurturing his mind, and putting it to good use in bettering mankind, and-

Yeah yeah whatever. He knew that this was for a good cause, as he carefully cut open the patient's skull, revealing the squishy and oozing brain. He sighed, and his colleague finally took notice of his dour mood. “Dr. Hal? What's wrong? You don't seem very enthusiastic about this.” Dr. Param asked, looking up from their clipboard which they were doodling in the margins of. Dr. Param was very much like Dr. Hal, in the sense that both of them had similar backgrounds. Though despite this similarity, the two were as different as could be. “Come on, Hal! Put some pep into that neuro-needle!” They said cheerfully, pumping their metal arm in the air, much like a cheerleader. In response, Dr. Hal just rolled his eyes and took the neuro-needle out of the tray, and did what you do with a needle.

Once he was done with it, he returned it to the tray, and the doctor began the process of removing the brain from the skull. He sighed again, and turned to Dr. Param. “Hey Dr. Param? Do you ever feel like… I don't know, that we could be doing literally anything else with our lives?” He questioned as he lifted the brain with one hand, and cut the spinal cord with the other. “Like, I know that this is to improve mankind and everything, but… this is just so…” He plopped the brain into a jar, staring at it for a bit. “Boring.” He said flatly. Dr. Param looked shocked. “What?! No way!” They retorted, limping their metal wrist joint in at Dr. Hal. They put down their clipboard and slid a pan containing a brain across the counter. Then, they sat their elbow where it had been. “Listen Hal, Dr. Hal. All jobs have their… their dips!” “Dips?” “Like low points on a graph!” Dr. Param said while walking around. Their six metal legs made clicking sounds as they moved on the metal floors. They had their arms behind their back. They circled around the now brainless body that was laying on the surgical table. They patted one of the legs to accentuate their point. “You just-” Another slap to the cadaver’s legs.”-Just gotta keep going!”

“Dr. Param, I appreciate the enthusiasm, as well as the attempts at motivation, but you should stop slapping the body.” “You aren't listening to me!” Dr. Param slapped the body. “No. I’m not.” The scientist sighed and walked over to the sink, removing his thick plastic gloves, placing them in the cleaning solution. His hands were… not human. Because neither Dr. Hal, nor Doctor Param, were human beings. Doctor Param was a centipede-esque cyborg, maybe even centaur-like in their design. They had one almost normal looking hand, if not for the sharp claws on the tips, and one needle like appendage on the other arm. The other legs, six of them, were simple, like a bug’s legs. They had huge red eyes that stared annoyed into the back of Dr. Hal’s head. Or rather, they were staring at Dr. Hal’s brain, that was visible through the translucent psychic aura that made up his body. He looked very much like a person, but without bones, skin, muscle, or even nerves. He looked like a person composed entirely of blue jelly. The only solid parts of him were his brain and his eyes. The two doctors both had human brains, greatly enhanced, yet still human, brains.

“I’m just saying-” “I know what you're saying.” Dr. Hal interjected. “You're saying I should just accept the life I've been given, and I shouldn't wish for anything more.” “Wow. Rude.” The cyborg huffed. ”That's your problem! You are rude. When people try to cheer you up, you just-” they waved their arms around. “You push them away! You push me away.” He huffed. “Why have you been so- what am I doing wrong!? You have been so on edge lately.” “I don't want to talk about this anymore.” Dr. Hal looked away and began to pad out of the room. “Don't walk away from me!” They said, raising their voice. “Please! Let's just talk!” They said, throwing their arms up in the air.They had been working with each other for sixteen years, and though Dr. Hal was walking away, and acting standoffish, he did care about his colleague. The two of them had been working together for sixteen years. The pair acted like a married couple when they argued. But really, they were both married to their jobs, not each other. Recently though, Dr. Hal’s marriage with work was failing. Like a marriage in which both of the participants were no longer in love with each other.

Dr. Param followed Dr. Hal for a bit, before sighing and going to sit down in one of the chairs outside the operating theatre. It was a bit awkward to sit in, considering they had a 5 foot long body. In reality, the bug-like cyborg laid on the chair rather than sat in it. They watched as Dr. Hal put his hands in his lab coat and power-walked away to his quarters. They hated when he got like this. Lately they had been noticing that his colleague's heart just wasn't in his work like it used to be. Dr. Param missed it, back when things were simple. Executing tests on subjects, researching, and all the other marvelous things- they weren't fun anymore. Maybe it wasn't supposed to be fun, maybe this work was supposed to be hard and laborious. But… Ugh. Dr. Param just sat there, trying to think of ways to reignite that fire that had been reduced to cinders within Dr. Hal. Meanwhile, Dr. Hal was in his quarters. The off-white walls surrounded him, it was a small room, only about 9 feet wide and long. The ceiling was low, and if he jumped, he would probably hit his head on the ceiling. Not that he was the type to just randomly jump. That was more of Dr. Param’s thing. Being all excited and enthusiastic about their job… Dr. Hal wondered how they did it. How they managed to be as passionate about their work as they were the day they both first woke up and did their first assignments. Part of him admired it, maybe even envied it. These walls. These floors. The lights, the blood, the smell of this lab. It was all the both of them knew. Their old lives were gone. Dr. Hal wasn't supposed to miss it. He had consented to this after all. He consented to having his body removed from his brain, and having his brain utterly transformed into something inhuman. Dr. Param consented to it too. So then why did he feel like something was missing?

Why would he miss being a terminally ill cancer patient? This was a far more noble life than wasting away in a hospital bed with no family to be there as he died. Of course he did not remember being a terminally ill cancer patient, but that was what his bosses told him. They even showed him pictures of who he used to be. Birth records, I.D., photographs. All meaningless to him now.

He had been thinking more about it lately. He hadn't told anyone though. He always got the feeling that the bosses didn't like it. It was an unspoken taboo to mention the past when the goal of the organization was to further the path into the future. He closed his eyes. Well, he didn't really have eyelids. He just shaped the ectoplasm that comprised his body to slide over his eyeballs. And then there was a knock at his door, before he could tell them to come in, someone he didn't expect to see today walked into his room stiffly. The person that entered his room was a pale man, with wispy and wild white hair, and a ratty scarf worn over his lab coat. His face was round, it would have been almost friendly looking if not for the deep scowl that he wore on his face at all times. Dr. Hal sat up, and then got off his bed to stand respectfully towards the head scientist “Dr. Brian.” He remarked. “It's good to see you.” “You did good work on the last subject, but we have another assignment for you.” Doctor brian said, ignoring pleasantries and going straight for what was needed of Dr. Hal. “We have a subject coming in that is extremely high profile. Not only that, but it's going to be a vivisection. Further details will be given later.” He said in a monotone. “Oh. I see. But why are you telling me this in person? I feel like this could have been communicated in a memo.” He crossed his arms and tilted his head. “Because you haven't been confirming your memos.” He huffed. “You have been acting highly unprofessional lately. Now tell me why that is.” He asked pointedly, glaring up at Dr. Hal. “I apologize.” He began, taking in a breath. “I have just been feeling unwell lately. I was actually going to request a week’s vacation for-” “Denied.” The head scientist interrupted. “The high profile vivisection is tomorrow.” “Oh.” Dr. Hal folded his arms. “I assume my...talents will be needed?” he asked. “Both you and Dr. Param will be needed, yes.” “Alright.” he looked away. “Tell you what-” Dr Brian began. “You can have your week's vacation after the vivisection tomorrow. It's estimated to take six hours to complete.” Dr. Hal’s eyes widened. Wow. That was more than double the length of the longest vivisections he had done. This must be someone special that they were vivisecting. “Will it be a terminal one?” He asked. “Yes.” Damn it. Dr. Hal hated the terminal ones. Usually they were performed only on death row prisoners or terminally ill patients. So he didn't feel shame about most of them, despite technically being a murderer. Well, he wasn't really a murderer. They were going to die anyway, so who cares? He certainly didn't. But it was still unpleasant to be in the mind of a dying person. It was sometimes borderline nightmarish. Of course, he wouldn't voice these opinions out loud. But Dr. Brian’s scowl still deepened. “Do what you will for the rest of today.” He huffed, and exited the room. End of chapter one

#oc #oc story #mad scientist oc #robot oc #Brainjarred #medical horror #body horror

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imjustthemechanic · 3 years

Photo

The Price of a Soul

Part 1/? - Agent Russel Part 2/? - The Letter Part 3/? - Miss Lake Part 4/? - The Stewardess Part 5/? - An Assassination Part 6/? - Fallout Part 7/? - Face to Face Part 8/? - Deals, Details, and Other Devils Part 9/? - Baggage Part 10/? - Private Funding Part 11/? - Just Passing Through Part 12/? - Party of Four Part 13/? - Resolute Part 14/? - The Wreck Part 15/? - Body Snatchers Part 16/? - Out of the Frying Pan

Out of the frying pan, but into the fire would be a worse mistake than Peggy knows.

Part of Peggy’s mind was flying. How had Masters found out about this? Thompson would have let him know when Kay escaped, but wouldn’t have had any idea where they were going because Peggy hadn’t told anyone about the coordinates except Daniel and… well, there was Russel, who could probably guess the significance of them but would not have known that Peggy was planning to actually investigate. She’d only mentioned them to him once. Had Kay left a note? Or was her initial theory correct, and he’d just overheard Jason’s radio message to Stark Industries? What had Jason actually said?

Another part was doing its level best to clamp down on the urge to punch him in the face.

“Agent Carter,” he said. “Fleeing the country upon finding out you’re under investigation doesn’t look good at all.”

“I had every intention of returning, which you would know if you’d asked my landlord or my employer,” Peggy replied.

He was not impressed. “And what’s your explanation for assisting in the escape of a known Soviet agent – again – and attempted theft of US Government property?”

“Don’t insult me,” said Kay. “I escaped by myself.”

Masters glanced at her. “From full-security police lockup under the noses of the entire East Coast SSR and the CIA?”

“What? Like it’s hard?” asked Kay, in a mock ‘dimwit’ voice, wiggling her head and shoulders to cement the implication that any floozy could have done it.

“What government property are you referring to, Mr. Masters?” Peggy asked. She had a feeling she knew the answer, and she didn’t like it a bit.

Masters turned to her again. “You know damn well I’m referring to Captain America and his equipment. The shield is the world’s entire known stock of Vibranium, and his body is the only hope we or anybody else have of recreating Erskine’s serum. And you were about to sell both of them to the Russians!” He looked her over in disgust. “Were you already planning that when he was alive, or is it that now he’s dead his wishes don’t matter anymore?”

This time Peggy very nearly did punch him – she actually raised an arm before she managed to get herself under control, leading Kay to grab her around the shoulders to stop her, and several of the soldiers surrounding them to aim their guns at her face.

“They certainly don’t seem to matter to you,” she said through her teeth, shrugging Kay off of her. “Steve would not have wanted to be an object of study after his death.”

“Captain Rogers wanted us to win the war,” Masters replied. “We’re fighting a new war now and he’s gonna be our key to winning it.” He stepped back. “I want these two put in the brig, Captain Lewis – and don’t take eyes off them for a moment. They’re slippery.”

The man who must’ve been Lewis nodded. “Do it,” he told the men. “And get the Captain straight down to the morgue to thaw out. The scientists are waiting.”

Peggy and Kay were taken unceremoniously by the shoulders and frog-marched inside.

It took a few minutes for the red haze at the edge of Peggy’s vision to fade away and her fists to unclench before she could think about this logically, and when she did, she began to realize she was in very serious trouble indeed. All this time Masters had nothing on her but suspicions and circumstances, but now she’d been caught with her hand in the cookie jar, so to speak. Who would believe her story that she and Howard were just bringing Steve back for burial when they’d been so secretive about the whole thing? Perhaps Kay would testify in her defense… but who would believe her when she was an admitted spy and a murderess?

The soldiers put them in a cell in the brig, far down in the belly of the ship, and left two very large and imposing men to watch over them. Peggy and Kay sat down on the little cot in the cell, and their guards sat down on either side of a small table outside, and dealt themselves a hand of cards. How ironic, Peggy thought with a barely-suppressed sneer.

Kay had said nothing since mocking the SSR’s security out on the deck. She did not look particularly inclined to say anything now. She merely sat looking at her watch.

“Have you anything to say for yourself?” Peggy asked her.

There was no reply. Of course there wasn’t. Kay had never explained anything and there was no reason for her to start now. Instead of trying to talk, Peggy decided to try to think.

What were their options at this point? They could sit here and be taken back to the States for trial – that would most likely end in a guilty verdict and imprisonment, if not hanging, for both of them. They could try to escape. Peggy could probably pick the lock on the door but the guards would see and hear her doing it, and she doubted she could take both of them. Perhaps Kay could take one, but that would just be further evidence that the two were in cahoots. What a silly-sounding word cahoots was. Where on Earth had it come from?

If they did escape, where would they go? They were on a ship. Peggy could not fly a plane or a helicopter, although she wondered whether Kay might be able to. Their only options would be to take a lifeboat or to jump into the water. The former would be easily pursued, and the latter meant death by hypothermia. The same fate Steve himself had suffered… also nicely ironic.

They could try to escape long enough to go get Steve’s body back, but what would they do with it? The options seemed to be destroying it or dumping it overboard. The second was not a good idea – it might still be retrieved. But the former was deeply distasteful. Peggy couldn’t imagine cutting him up or… or burning him? The ship would have huge furnaces to keep the crew warm and provide steam for the propellers. Those would certainly make a fine crematorium… could she bring herself to do it herself?

Maybe she could, if she were desperate enough. At the moment Peggy had nothing to lose… but that still left the question of how to get out of this cell…

“You stupid bitch,” said Kay suddenly.

Peggy’s head snapped up. “Excuse me?” she said. Her companion had said nothing at all for what must have been ten minutes at least, and now was offering insults out of nowhere?

Kay shot a glance at the guards, then glared at Peggy. “You had no plan, did you? Here I thought you were coming out here knowing what you were doing, but you had no idea and now we’re in here!”

Ah. “Why should I have a plan?” Peggy demanded. “I didn’t think we were going to find a bloody thing up here except ice and snow! Did you really think I was taking your word for something so important? How can you be smart enough to escape from Thompson and yet stupid enough to think I would trust you?”

“You didn’t need to trust me! You just needed to have a backup plan!” Kay gave Peggy a shove.

“Don’t you dare touch me, you daft Russian whore!” Peggy shoved her back, and the two of them rolled off the cot to grapple on the floor. Having fought with Dottie more than once, Peggy knew the Russian women were ruthless and skilled, but now Kay wrestled like a child who’d never been in a fight in her life, grabbing and pinching and pulling hair. Peggy did likewise. If this were going where she thought it was going…

“That’s enough, you two!” a male voice announced. Keys jingled. Peggy didn’t dare look up as two pairs of heavy boots approached – the men were going to try to separate her. For an instant she caught Kay’s eye, and saw a smile on the other woman’s face.

Then a pair of hands grabbed Peggy’s shoulders. She wrapped her legs around the man’s boots and twisted – he fell against the cot. Before he could right himself, Peggy was on her feet and grabbed him by the hair to smash his face against the wall repeatedly. By the second impact his nose was bloody, and by the fourth he was limp in her hands. She let him drop and turned around. Kay had gotten a hold of the second man’s tags and twisted them tight around his neck. Peggy was just in time to see him turn blue and pass out.

“Well done,” Peggy said, as the soldier collapsed at Kay’s feet.

“Letting them think you’re stupid and emotional is always your best weapon,” Kay told her, brushing off her hands.

“I have some experience with that myself,” said Peggy. “To the morgue?”

“Obviously.”

They helped themselves to the unconscious soldiers’ guns, and Peggy took the keys off one of their belts and locked the cell door on them.

The ship they were on was a Casablanca-class escort carrier. Peggy had never been on one, but she knew that on large military ships both the brig and the morgue were deep in the interior, far from anywhere the rank and file sailors would normally go. Left to her own devices, it probably wouldn’t have taken her very long to find the one from the other, but she didn’t have to. Kay appeared to know exactly where she was going. She headed down a flight of steps, and then paused in the stairwell, putting an ear to the doors. Peggy crept up next to her.

“How’s he doing?” a male voice asked.

“He’s free of most of the ice,” a woman replied, “but still pretty solid.”

Peggy put her eye to the gap between the two doors. Two doctors in white coats were talking to a brunette nurse, just to the right of a solid door labeled MORGUE. The door was closed and apparently locked.

“We can’t wait too long, or the blood will start to clot,” said the shorter of the doctors.

“We’ll still have the bone marrow,” the first man reassured him. “Can you give me an estimate, Miss Harper?”

“They’re saying at least another hour,” the nurse said, and turned to unlock the door. All three people headed through.

Peggy and Kay exchanged a glance to make sure they were still agreed as to the plan. It seemed they were, so they both burst out of the stairwell and took the trio from behind. Peggy clocked the taller one on the back of the head with the gun she’d taken off her jailer. He dropped to his knees, holding his bleeding scalp. Kay vaulted onto the shorter one’s back and knocked him forward into Miss Harper, spilling both of them onto the floor. Miss Harper tried to scream, but Kay kicked her in the face, and then drove her knee into the second doctor’s jaw. He fell.

Inside the morgue room, two more doctors and three nurses were standing around the gurney where Steve’s body was now lying. They were, for the moment, too shocked by this sudden and violent intrusion to react to it, which gave Peggy and Kay the advantage. Peggy grabbed the nearest equipment tray and hit one of the doctors in the face with it. The first blow appeared to merely stun him and he just stood there blinking at her. She hit him three more times, until he fell. One of the nurses tried to flee, and Peggy pushed the doctor’s body into her.

While Peggy was occupied with that, Kay had shoved the other doctor into the open drawer that had been waiting to receive Steve’s body. She shut it and turned the lock, then she and Peggy both pulled out their guns and trained them on the two nurses still standing. Both women put their hands up.

Kay twitched her chin towards the first two doctors and Miss Harper, all lying on the floor in various states of unconsciousness. “Get them out of the way,” she ordered the nurses.

The women didn’t move.

“We have had a very upsetting day,” Peggy warned them.

Terrified, the nurses went to start rolling the bodies of their co-workers away from the door. Kay kept her eyes and a gun on them, while Peggy took the brakes off the gurney. There was a white drop cloth over the corpse. Peggy knew it would be a terrible idea to look beneath it, but she told herself that after all this trouble they had better make sure they had the right body, and lifted it for a peek.

There he was. They’d cut his uniform off him, leaving him quite naked. Bruises and scrapes he’d gotten on his last mission were still there. Peggy recognized one on his arm where a bullet had grazed him. She’d bandaged that herself, because he’d been too sunken in depression from the death of his friend to do it. And the cut on his cheek, just beneath his left earlobe. She’d kissed that. The memory, buried for three years, was suddenly as fresh as if it had happened moments ago.

She reached to touch the place, and quickly drew her hand back upon finding his skin was wet and still icy cold, feeling more like frozen meat than human tissue. How was he still pink? As he thawed the blood ought to start pooling in his back and buttocks, like it always did on dead bodies. Maybe those parts were still frozen.

“Peggy!” Kay barked. “Is that him?”

Peggy quickly dropped the cloth and wiped her wet fingers on her coat. “It’s him,” she said.

“Follow me,” said Kay.

“Where are we going?” Peggy asked, as she wheeled the gurney out of the room.

Kay led the way up the hall with the longest strides she could take. “The boiler room,” she said.

“Oh, good,” Peggy nodded. Had Kay’s mission perhaps been to either secure Captain America’s body for her own people or, failing that, to see to it the Americans didn’t get a hold of him either? Peggy decided she didn’t care anymore. Whatever the reasons, they were going to do right by Steve, and after that, if Masters wanted to hang her, she would go to the gallows with her head held high.

#fanfic #captain america #agent carter #peggy carter #steve rogers #steggy #fix it fic

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chocolatedutchthehoe · 3 years

Text

Another Diamond Day.

TW: Cancer, Mentions of death.

—————————————————

The sun peeked through my sheer curtains as I laid flat on my bed reaching above me. It’s rays kissed my eyelids, the tenderness of warmth lingered on my cheek and I smiled into its warmth. I don’t get this feeling often.

Its unexplainable.

This feeling, much like motivation, is fleeting. Some days I let it slip through the tiniest crack of my fingers. Other days The aches in my body melt away over night as I wake with purpose. I uncover myself from my soft linens and sit up allowing my feet to dangle freely over my plush white rug.

I take in the warmth of the sun, the smile set on my face for the day. I yawned loudly, standing and opening the large window in front of me and breathing in deeply the cool crisp air.

I don’t get many days like this but when I do I feel it through my body. I feel light, airy, as if if I jumped just a little bit my body would simply float above the satin covers sprawled across my bed.

I sat back down reaching behind me to touch the only tangible thing in my bed other than my covers. My body followed my arms as I laid back, I caressed his upper left thigh with my hand and laid my head on his stomach. The rise and fall of his toned abdomen made me feel like just my head was on a boat floating ever so softly up and down a small tide.

He sucked in a deep breath finally waking up before reaching above himself and stretching then bringing his fingers back down and playing in my tree rooted like Locs. Twisting the fully closed ends in between his pointer and thumb before slowly making his way up to my freely new hair.

“You have to re-twist it soon right?”

I chuckled a little.

“Its retighten and yes baby I do. But I will do it after my appointment.”

“I’m coming with you.”

“I know you are you weren’t gonna let me go without you anyway..”

I stared at the ceiling as silence filled the room.

“Are you scared..”

It was more of a statement then a question. But Dom was mostly asking himself.

“No... I’m prepared.”

I stood where I once was before he woke and rounded our bed to his side. Taking his hand in mine and leading him to the our connected on sweet bathroom.

We washed out bodies together; the water from the shower head above rushed from our heads to our toes. He watched me under tired lids. The lazy smile he stretched across his face. I couldn’t help but trace his chest with my fingers. We stood, For what seemed like hours, in each others presence was merely fifteen minutes as we took turns washing our bodies we couldn’t help but love each other in the process. Even if it was for just a moment just to take our mind off of the task we had to

Overcome today.

He stepped out first drying himself feverishly as I stayed under the water that has now turned cold. The fog from

Our heat escaped the bathroom as he opened the door to the bedroom. I gave it a few seconds letting the cold water run down my neck and chest before turning it off and following in pursuit.

We dressed comfortably. I wore my shirred beige backless hemmed dress with white sandals and he matched with his light brown slacks and white turtle neck. We bonded in the kitchen making our favorites for breakfasts. French toast with bananas, sweet sausage and eggs with a side of chopped fruit.

I like tea.. He likes coffee. I like the smell of coffee... He claims he doesn’t think teas have a smell. I smile to myself at the arguments we have about whether they do or don’t.

It’s the first day of spring, although the sun is out it was still chilly.

“Don’t forget your jacket.”

I rolled my eyes with my back facing him and my right hand on our front doorknob.

“I don’t think it’s that cold outside.”

I tried to convince with no luck. He sucked his teeth making his way to our coat closet and pulling out both our jackets.

“You don’t ever think it’s ‘That Cold’, Alana.”

He took my hand in his as he led me down the hallway, to the elevator and down to the garage to the car. We walked in unison towards his truck, both rounding to the passenger side. He opened the door and I took the passenger seat as he shut my door and rounded to the drivers side.

We drove in a comfortable silence. The stereo playing a random FM radio and his hand clasped over mine on the center console. The streets were quiet as if the day was made for us. No traffic, no loud noise from impatient drivers slamming their fist on the center of their wheel and screaming out their window. The trees were green, vibrant and lively. Although today was the first day of spring it’s has been warm for weeks with slight rain showers allowing the plants of all different shapes and sizes bloom freely.

The people on the side walks walked with purpose as the sun followed us to our destination. I opened the sunroof, The breeze was warm I could feel it on every part of my skin as it blew through my locs and tickled the top of my head. My doctors office wasn’t far but I know Dom took the longer routs just to waste time. Finally pulling into the parking lot. He stepped out first from the parked car and I Waited for him to make his way to my side as he always made me do. ‘Don’t touch my door.’ Was what he always told me. He grabbed ahold of my hand with his left as his right hand held the door open. The wind once again embraced me, it flew past my covered arms, giving me goosebumps, and dipped between my legs lifting my dress. We walked once again hand in hand into the large brick building. Patients, Doctors, Nurses, and other medical staff filled the large common area seemingly wandering aimlessly although I knew they had an agenda.

The secretary gave us directions to outpatient. When we arrived I signed myself in and got my blood pressure taken. We sat in the waiting room listening to the chiming bells and awaiting a nurse to announce my name.

His large fingers danced in my open palm as we watched whatever they had on their main television. A few minutes have gone by since we’ve been seated and I rested my head on his shoulder trying to stay awake.

“Alana Cole.”

my head lifted in response as the nurse smiled from the door way ushering us through. We followed her to an empty office and before she turned to leave she smiled again.

“Dr. Andrews will be in with you in a moment.” She shut the door.

We sat in silence, something that seemed to be in a common repetition for us today. But I could tell this silence more than the others. It was tense. Dom bounced his left leg nervously and roughly massaged my left hand. The weight of the world was on his shoulders for some reason. He breathed heavily and ever time he exhaled he pursed his lips like he wanted to whistle, blowing his cheeks out. I rested my right hand over his eager ones.

“Calm down baby.” I caressed his cheek taking my free hand turning his head away from the door where he stared waiting for the doctor.

I kissed him softly hopefully taking his mind off the inevitable that was sure to come. Even if it was for just a moment.

The doctor entered. Dom stood shaking his hand. I mimicked to not seem rude although it wouldn’t have made a difference.

“How are you guys this morning?”

He asked unease though he tried not to show it.

“We’re doing okay. A little timid if I’m being honest.”

Dom answered. He was scared.

“Well let’s not waste time then.” Dr. Andrews stood, pulling an image from a file folder with my name labeled on it. He attached it to a white board with an LED light on it to see more clearly.

“As you can see here we are in the early stages of Three. Which is a little further than what we were hoping for as far as surgery goes. The tumor has spread from the lower muscular tissue on the left side of you brain down to your left shoulder and c-v in your spine. That’s where the tightness and soreness you were talking about come in. It is still treatable with some chemo radiation therapy.”

“How early can we start therapy?” Dom jumped to the edge of his seat.

He and Dr. Andrews pondered through treatment strategies. I couldn’t help but fall into my own diseased mind. Their voices faded away as I took in my surroundings...

More importantly Dom’s face. His dark curly hair that contrasted perfect with his light brown eyes. The specs of green the surrounded the edges of his iris. His smooth brown skin was Arguably lighter than mine as I spent more Time Outside then he did. His chiseled jaw was perfectly even and his beard connected from his hair line to the end of his chin. He was always so clean shaven. His eyes curved down like a falling crescent moon. And he had the nose bridge of a Nubian prince. His smile was a bright as th-

“How does that sound Ms.Cole..”

Breaking away from my thoughts I smiled at him. I didn’t hear a word he said but did it really matter.

“If I don’t go through with treatment how long would you estimate my time.”

“Oh I’m-. we would have plenty of time if we started this week.“

“If we didn’t?”

“Alana he’s saying we can start trea-“

“I heard what he said baby.... I just want to know.”

The doctor pondered.

“I would estimate roughly eight- ten months if you refuse treatment..”

I nodded understandingly. Picking up my purse and going to shake his hand once again.

“Alana the chances of chemo going well outweighs anything else. And once we are able to shrink the tumor to a manageable size surgery would be just as easy. I would like you to take it into consideration.”

I knodded again holding his one large hand in both of my small ones.

“Thank you.”

I looked back at Dominic expecting my stance to be a signal to him to follow but he seemed to be still processing my choice.

“Dom let’s go.”

he stood from his chair, still dazed by the conversation that happened mere seconds ago, and walked towards the doctor shaking his hand with begging eyes.

“You two have a wander full day.”

We made our way back to the car. The sun was higher in the sky, the heat more prominent. The rays hit our faces as we walked towards the parking lot. I was a foot

In front of him. He treaded slowly behind me but his long legs didn’t allow him to fall far behind. I reached the truck before Dom waiting for him to open the door. He stopped just a hair before me and squinted up at the sky. He took my small hand in his and held on fully as apposed to me holding his pointer and middle. And squeezed . He pulled me

Into him and held me longingly. Kissing the my forehead like it was the first time we were meeting after years of separation but at the same time like we were parting again.

“I love you.” He whispered to the top of my head.

“I love you more...”

“You can be so selfish sometimes...”

He continued. Tears stained his face, falling in pattern onto my forehead and down my face.

“How do you manage, with so much love around you, how do you manage to be so selfish Alana.”

He was angry though he didn’t let go. I was dying and there was nothing he could Do about it.

‘How could I love him and do this to him.’ Is what he wanted to say.

I don’t know how. So I kept quiet.

He wasted no time reaching behind me and opening my door. I sat down and he closed the door roughly trying not to slam it. He made his way to the drivers side.

I watched as he started the engine and put the car into reverse. He tried not to look at me. For the first time I couldn’t tell what he held in his eyes. The mixed emotions that swirled in his golden iris’s were clouded by tears he refused to let fall.

Sitting forward he put the car in drive and clasped his hand over mine on the center console. The drive back home was hotter and the radio played louder to void what would have been an uncomfortable silence.

I don’t get many days like this but when I do I feel it through my body. I feel light, airy, as if if I jumped just a little bit my body would simply float. I didn’t want to ruin it.

#Love #black #black woman #black man #Sage #SageTheGemini #couple #sad #aesthetic #BlackLive #BLM

11 notes · View notes

theotherackerman · 3 years

Text

My Mind Turns Your Life Into Folklore

NOTES:

Monday January 18th

song eren sings: hey stephen-taylor swift

chapter twenty: slipped away into a moment in time

Annie did not like doctors to begin with.

They asked too many questions looking for answers she did not have.

Were her parents alive?

Were her parents dead?

She didn’t have the slightest clue.

This doctor decided to go on and on about how Annie needed to know these answers so she could see if the baby was going to need certain genetic testing.

After twenty minutes of arguing with the doctor how she didn’t know and that there was no way for her to find those answers, Annie left.

She wasn’t doing this.

They wouldn’t unseal files just because Annie was pregnant.

Armin trailed after her.

“We’ll find another doctor,” Armin assured her.

“It will just be more of the same questions,” Annie sighed.

“Maybe we find one that’s more understanding,” he reassured her as they walked to the car.

“If you say so,” she replied.

Annie didn’t have much hope.

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

The first lot was mostly empty of both people and cars.

After the salesman tried to argue with Ymir about what type of engine a car had while Ymir was staring at it, they moved onto the second car lot on the list.

The second lot was much better. It had a better selection of cars and there was a woman salesperson.

Ymir drooled over a black Chevy Camaro that was used. It was manual so it was out of the question for Mikasa.

But for Ymir, she knew how to drive a manual.

Both Levi and Mikasa took note of how Ymir was staring at it.

Mikasa ended up staring at a red Dodge Charger.

“You’re going to get so many tickets. Cops favor red,” Levi sighed.

“That would require her to drive over the speed limit,” Ymir scoffed.

“She’s got a point there,” Eren nodded.

“I can hear you,” Mikasa told them.

“It’s your color. What do you think?” Eren asked her.

“You want to take it for a drive?” the saleswoman asked them .

“Go ahead,” Levi sighed.

Once Mikasa, Eren, and Ymir were in the car and driving it around the block with the saleswoman. Levi went to find another one.

“I want to take the black Camaro out,” he informed the people at the desk.

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

Ymir didn’t like this.

She didn’t like how Mikasa was signing a check for Ymir’s car.

“You don’t...you shouldn’t…” Ymir protested.

It took one death glare from Mikasa followed by the words, “shut up.”

The check was signed. The Camaro was Ymir’s.

And suddenly Ymir realized she would never be able to repay this kindness.

“What about Historia? She doesn’t have a car either,” Ymir protested.

“She doesn’t seem like she misses her car that much. If she does, I'll just buy her one too," Mikasa shrugged

"You can't spend all your money on us," Ymir grumbled.

"Learn to take a gift with grace, Ymir," Levi said before he rolled his eyes.

She had not been expecting this at all. She certainly didn't understand it when she was pulling into the driveway.

The Camaro drove like a dream. She had thought she would have forgotten how to drive a manual as it had been so long. But it all came back to her like it was second nature. She could remember learning how to drive it with Jean and Reiner. Jean's mother had got him a Porsche which was, of course, manual. Reiner's truck had been the same. After nagging Historia who Reiner had been dating at the time, Reiner agreed to teach Ymir. It had been a strange moment for Ymir. Because she had been jealous of Reiner's relationships with Historia.

Mikasa pulled into the driveway not long after Ymir with Eren sitting into the front passenger seat.

The ride here had been fairly quiet. She worried about what was going through his mind.

“Do you remember that song you sang for me in high school? Before we got together?” He asked her.

“Which one?” Mikasa asked as she put the car into park.

“It goes something like {lyrics redacted due to copyright},” Eren sang before he undid his seatbelt.

“Nope. No idea what you’re talking about. I’ll see you inside,” Mikasa tried to get out of the car quickly but Eren grabbed her arm.

“Oh come on, you know it. Because half through you shut your notebook, said it was terrible, and changed the subject.”

Mikasa sighed, “what made you think of this?”

“I don’t know. It just kind of popped into my head.” He let go of her arm.

“I was fifteen. I was embarrassed and thought you would know it was about you. That’s why I stopped. Is that the song you added too?”

“Nope. Not that one. Do you still have that notebook?”

She nodded. “It’s in one of the drawers of my desk.”

“Maybe we could play it together,” he said before he looked down.

“It’s embarrassing…” she replied before she opened the door.

“Then I’ll play you one of my old songs written about you. It’s probably more embarrassing than yours. I promise.”

Eren told her before she got out of the car.

Mikasa sighed.

They were supposed to be baring everything. There was supposed to be no secrets between them. She got out of the car, locking it behind her.

“How embarrassing?” she asked him.

“You have no idea,” he told her with a smirk.

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

Hoover Construction and Architecture was who Levi had hired to work in the basement. Bertolt and his father had arrived at the house along with Marco around noon. Turns out that Marco was interning as architect there. They had looked at the basement and future nursery before giving Levi a fair estimate. They were to begin work on the basement on Thursday.

Annie showed up with Armin in tow after lunch.

“You’ll be okay?” he asked Annie as he picked up his backpack.

They had stopped by a pregnancy clinic after their failure with the doctor. Armin had spotted it. The people inside had been extremely nice and understanding. They had helped Annie and Armin find a doctor who would also be just as understanding. Annie had had her first ultrasound. She was eight weeks along.

She had had a breakdown in the car, crying. Annie’s worry had been that maybe there was some secret in her past that had made her parents give her up. An underlying health condition was her worry that she would pass down to her child. She wondered if her parents were alive or dead.

But Armin had reassured her. He had stopped and got her favorite fast food...which she surprisingly had kept down.

“I’ll be fine,” Annie reassured him.

“Don’t worry, Arlert, she’s got the best care anyone could ask for right here,” Ymir grinned as she flung her arm around Annie’s shoulders.

“Oh. I know. Wouldn’t leave her with anyone but family,” Armin smiled.

“Have a safe drive back,” Mikasa told him before pulling on Ymir’s sleeve.

“Thanks, Mikasa,” Armin nodded.

“Yeah, don’t die on us Arlert. You’re the father of my future best friend,” Ymir said before following Mikasa into the kitchen.

“Are you going to be here this weekend?” Armin asked Eren.

“Dunno yet,” he shrugged.

“Well, Annie is letting me borrow her car. You’re what….a half hour from my university? I can swing by if you want….” Armin trailed off.

“I’ll see. We just added Pieck to the band so rehearsal and stuff.”

Armin nodded.

Eren hugged him which Armin happily returned back. Eren nodded before going into the kitchen.

“You’re sure you want me to take the car?” Armin asked her.

Annie nodded.

“I’m a phone call away,” he reassured her.

She nodded again.

He kissed her.

A kiss that was far too short for either of them.

“Drive safe,” she told him.

He nodded again before leaving out the front door.

Moments later, Mikasa appeared with Ymir and Eren in tow.

"Let's see the ultrasound!" Ymir exclaimed.

Levi came in and brought Annie a cup of tea that he place on the coffee table.

Annie couldn’t help but smile.

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

Pieck Finger has been Zeke Yeager’s best friend for far too long of a time. They loved each other. They had amazing chemistry with one another onstage when they had previously played together. This issue was that chemistry was all an act.

Pieck’s mother wanted that chemistry to be more than an act. Oh, how Mrs. Finger wished for Pieck to marry Zeke. She thought that Pieck and Zeke were the perfect match.

There was a problem with all this.

Neither of them had any romantic feelings for one another.

The two had lived next door to one another when they were children. Pieck always bothered Zeke, he would be reading and she’d make him read to her. He had a very hard time saying no to her, even back then.

They had kissed once, when Pieck had been twenty one and Zeke had twenty six.

“Can I kiss you?” she had asked him.

Zeke had dropped the cigarette he had been smoking.

“What the fuck, Pieck?”

“It’s just...well...I was starting to wonder what it would be like to kiss you.”

“Are you on drugs? Are you drunk? Maybe you should come to my psych class and get your head examined,” he said before he patted her on the head.

“My mom is always saying how we make a good match so I thought we could see if anything there.”

“Didn’t your mom think you should marry Porco at one point too?”

“Yes, well, I did kiss him too. It felt weird.”

“Did you kiss Marcel too?”

“Hmm...no, I prefer blondes. Besides, you’re thinking about what it would be like to kiss me right now too.”

“Well yeah! Now that you brought it up,” Zeke said as he began to turn red.

“So can I kiss you?”

“Yeah, sure. What’s the worst that can happen?” Zeke said before he leaned down

Pieck kissed him.

While the kiss itself was nice, there was absolutely no emotion behind it on either side.

It didn’t last very long.

“Huh, well...” Pieck said, after a moment of silence.

“Nothing?” Zeke asked.

Pieck nodded, “nothing.”

“Are we going to make this weird now?” he asked her.

“No, I won’t. I don’t know about you.”

“Why would I make it weird?”

“You make everything weird.”

After that, their friendship did indeed stay intact. Neither of them made anything weird about it.

Pieck and Zeke both used the fact that they had kissed to run off Yelena when the woman had not got the hint that her relationship with Zeke was over last year.

Pieck had come over to go over some of the more popular songs that the band played.

Onstage and at rehearsal, Pieck could flirt with Zeke and both of them knew it was an act.

Besides, he deserved it.

He would get bored at the office when he had no patients and come bother Pieck at her photography studio. She felt no guilt about her little act since Zeke knew it was also an act.

In a break between songs, they had sat their instruments to the side.

“So, how many times has he texted you?” He teased her.

“Not answering that,” Pieck replied as she sat down on the couch.

“You know...he is friends with Eren…”

Pieck rolled her eyes.

“I don’t know why it bothers you so much.”

“Because he’s five years younger than me and it should have never happened.”

“Which time?” Zeke teased her before he sat down next to her on the couch.

“And you wonder why I don’t talk about these things with you,” she elbowed him.

“Ow! Look, you clearly like him which is why you always text him back. I do not see what the big deal is. There’s five years between us too, you know. You are still my best friend.”

“Too bad you’re not mine,” Pieck said as she stood up.

“You wound me, Pieck!” He clutched his chest in pain.

“Good, you deserve it,” Pieck said as she walked over to her bass, she turned her amp up. She picked it up and played a few notes.

“It’s the Galliard brothers, isn’t it? They are your best friends while I’m left all alone in the cold! Because they live with you and I do not!” He shouted over the music.

So they went back to Zeke teaching Pieck the songs. Afterwards, they had dinner at Zeke’s with Zeke ordering takeout. Pieck was sipping on wine.

“Alright, Spill the details,” Zeke said as he sat down at the kitchen table.

Pieck sighed, “where do you want me to start?”

“The beginning is always good,” Zeke smirked.

“Ugh. Fine…”

And Pieck launched into her story.

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

Zeke had a gig tonight and Pieck should have been there.

She wanted to be there.

But no.

Her mother insisted on her coming to this charity event. It was the same cancer that her father had recovered from so she understood the sentiment.

Porco was drunk off his ass, trying to chat up some random blonde. Pieck scoffed at him. He had a type as much as she did.

Reiner was waiting tables. His mother had done the catering here.

Pieck was absolutely bored out of her mind.

So she found Reiner alone.

"Lighter, cigarette, please," she smiled at him.

Reiner sighed before handing them over.

Pieck disappeared out onto the balcony.

The cold air hit her as she lit her cigarette. So she stood there smoking and swirling cheap champagne in its glass.

Then the door opened.

She turned to see a rather good looking man. He stared at her for a moment before he moved to the other side of her. He looked at her and then back down to the ground.

"Are you lost?" She asked him after a moment.

He raised an eyebrow at her. "Are you?"

She took another drag as she cocked her head to the side. "Do you dye your hair?"

"What? No. Do you?"

She laughed.

"Why does everyone ask me that?"

"Because it's two toned."

“It’s just because my roots are darker than the rest of my hair! It’s always grown like that!”

Pieck was amused by his protests. “So what girl rejected you?” She asked, poking the bear once more.

“What?”

“I’m guessing you don’t smoke. You seem too straight edged for that. You’re clearly not drunk. So that leaves only a few possibilities. Plus judging from your overall body language and how easily you are to anger, you must have been rejected,” Pieck replied as she took another drag from her cigarette.

“I..I…” he shuttered.

“Point made. See you around,” she replied as she put her cigarette out in the ashtray before heading back inside.

It was several weeks before it was another charity event.

Pieck wasn’t even sure what this cause was, she hadn’t been paying attention as her mother had rambled on.

Zeke was here tonight but only for a few hours. Pieck clung to him as it kept her mother far away. Her father had told her mother many times so just let Pieck and Zeke be. However, her mother lived in a fantasy where Zeke and Pieck would one day get married.

“Take me with you,” she pleaded as Zeke got his coat from the coat check.

“I cannot help but think if I take you with me, your mother will be given false hope. I am only leaving because Eren has physical therapy early in the morning. Besides, were you not just saying moments ago how you wanted to hook up with someone? You cannot do that if you are sitting on my couch eating mint chocolate ice cream and crying over old movies while getting drunk on wine.”

“You know what? I changed my mind. Leave,” she said as she pushed Zeke towards the exit.

He laughed at her as he pulled his coat on. “Alright, bye Pieck. I will see you for lunch tomorrow,” he replied before he kissed her on the cheek.

Pieck kicked him directly in his ass as he walked out the door. “I’m not your child!”

“Then stop acting like it!” he shouted back.

What a strange relationship they had.

This charity gala was more boring than the last one.

She found herself sitting on the steps, awaiting valet to bring her her car. She saw the blonde stranger she had run into on the balcony at the prior party, walking up to valet and digging through the keys.

“You being valet...no wonder you got rejected,” she teased him.

“I’m not valet. I’m just not waiting for my car,” he replied.

“Let me guess, you drive some economically safe car. It probably plugs in and everything.”

“I really don’t like you. I shouldn’t be surprised. Any girlfriend of Zeke Jaeger’s is someone I’m going to steer clear of.”

“I’m not dating Zeke Jaeger.”

“Okay, I believe you,” he said as he finally grasped the keys he had been looking for.

“So what if I was? Are you jealous?”

The stranger laughed, “dream on. What could I possibly be jealous of?”

“He’s very good looking and doesn’t get rejected nearly as much as you do. By the way, the lipstick stain on your cheek is not your color.”

The valet drove up and Pieck got into her car.

The third time they met, Pieck had been the only one of her friends at the charity event.

Her mother and father weren’t even here. So here Pieck was, representing the whole Finger family on her own.

She had made sure to talk to all the important people as she made her rounds around the room. Until finally, she stepped out on the balcony with the cigarettes she had swiped from Zeke earlier in the day.

To her surprise, the balcony was already occupied. She watched as the blonde stranger made out with a blonde girl. Pieck lit up her cigarette. She wondered why she kept running into him.

“Don’t stop on my account. Nice to see you not get rejected for once,” she replied as she pushed passed them and to the other end of the wrap around balcony, far out of the view of the two lovers.

There was this tinge of jealousy that ate at Pieck. She equaled it to the fact she hadn’t had any sexual or romantic exploits in a while.

So she stood there and smoked.

But what she hadn’t been expecting was for her blonde stranger to come storming over there.

“Why do you have to do that?” he asked her as he swiped the cigarette from her hand.

She stared back at him in disbelief. “Do what?”

“Ruin my night. Every time,” he replied before he took a drag.

Pieck waited for the inevitable cough that came with most people trying to smoke when they hadn’t. It never came. Maybe she had judged him wrong.

“Already done with the blonde?” she asked.

“Turns out she’s not really my type.”

“So what is your type?”

“Do you care?”

“Not really but I’m bored.”

Jean sighed, “Someone who challenges me and I prefer dark hair.”

Pieck didn’t miss the fact that there seemed to be a bit of red darkening his cheeks.

“I prefer blondes,” she replied as she rested her arms on the balcony.

“That’s interesting,” he muttered.

Pieck felt a smile cross her face as she turned and looked at him. “I’m Pieck, by the way.”

“Jean,” he replied.

And they just stood there in the silence of the night.

Pieck would have been lying if she said that at the next charity event she hadn’t been looking for Jean.

Maybe she had put a little extra effort into her look for the night and maybe she had watched as the groups of people come and go.

And she would be lying if she said that when they did find one another, her heart didn’t speed up a little.

“You want to get out of here?” he asked in a low quiet voice.

She had nodded and the two of them ran past valet and into the parking garage. She had sent Porco a text telling him she had left and not to wait for her. He had replied with a winky face.

There was nothing economically smart about Jean’s car. It was expensive, fast, and a manual. She couldn’t help but wonder what it would be like to drive this thing around in the summer with the convertible top down. Why was she thinking that? This was a one time thing.

And they were good until they hit the elevator.

As soon as the doors closed, Pieck wasn’t sure who had made the move first. She just knew he was so ridiculously tall and his hands were tangled in her hair. How his lips made her feel she was high and couldn’t get enough of this.

Then the elevator dinged, telling them that they had arrived on their desired floor. They broke apart but Jean took Pieck’s hand, leading her towards his apartment.

“My roommate is gone for tonight,” he informed her as he unlocked the door. Once the door was locked behind them, the scene from the elevator repeated.

Pieck told herself the next day that it had been a one time thing.

It wasn’t repeating.

But with another charity event came another chance meeting,

So it repeated.

Then they exchanged numbers.

They started talking, almost like friends.

It was nothing more than sex, she reminded herself and him.

“Now I see why you never bring a guy back here. Your insides were clearly getting moved all around last night,” Porco had smirked at breakfast.

Pieck poured a box of cereal on his head. “You were supposed to be gone.”

“I forgot my charger. Also, you’re buying me more cereal.”

But Porco was right. Pieck had never brought someone back to the apartment.

The more Pieck and Jean talked, the more they realized the things they had in common. He was an artist, like her. Though it was not something he was pursuing, the talent was still there.

“You have paint on your face,” she told him as he sat next to her in the photography studio on the floor.

He wiped her face, only smearing the paint instead of cleaning it off. “Did I get it?” he asked.

“No, you made it worse,” she laughed at him.

He grabbed her face and rubbed his face against her face.

“Your beard is scratchy!” she shouted.

“Thought you liked my beard,” he smirked as he let go. “Especially when it’s against….”

She didn’t let him finish that sentence.

Her lips were on his, silencing him for once. She leaned back pulling him with her as her back hit the floor, never once losing contact as his tongue slipped into her mouth.

There was a clearing of a throat.

Pieck and Jean quickly separated as Zeke was seen leaning in the doorway, smirking.

And that's how it all began.

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

“So what you are saying is you met someone who can hold his own against you but you will not actually be in a relationship with him?” Zeke asked.

“He doesn’t want one either!” Pieck defended herself.

Zeke sighed, “you know this is not going to end well. For either of you.”

“It will be fine. We both know it’s nothing but sex.”

“Pieck, I know that look in your eyes. I have seen it before.”

“With who? I’ve never done relationships,” Pieck said before she took another drink of her wine. “Besides, you said that was fine as long as everyone involved understood it.”

“The problem is...I do not think you understand it.”

Pieck glared at him. “It’s nothing but sex.”

“And when this blows up in your face, I will be here to tell you I told you so.”

“And this is why I didn’t tell you all about this.”

“You did not have to. I walked in on it.”

"Where is Eren by the way?" Pieck asked as she swirled her wine around in her glass.

"At Levi's. Mikasa's father's birthday is Wednesday. He asked if he could stay until after that. I could not deny that request. He has finally stop being fucking stupid. Though now you are. So maybe it is contagious.."

"Hey!"

"I hope Niccolo does not catch it. That will be another mess…."

"I'm going to have another glass of wine and take over your bed if you do not stop."

"I have a whole third story to this house and you have to always kick me out of my bed."

"That I do. Besides, no one goes up there.".

Zeke sighed.

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

When Historia and Sasha returned from work, they both loved the new cars that sat in the driveway.

“Oh! You can finally drive me everywhere!” Historia exclaimed with a smile as she held on Ymir’s arm.

“You’re not mad?” Ymir asked her.

“Why would I be mad? I miss my car, yes but I took the limo everywhere I could. I hate having to always drive.”

Ymir sighed, “you’re spoiled.”

“And that’s why you love me! Now take me for a drive in this thing!”

So Ymir, Sasha, and Historia went out in Ymir’s new car.

That left Eren and Mikasa alone with Levi, Annie, and the dogs at the house.

Mikasa watched as Eren flipped through her old lyrics journal.

"There's a lot of good lyrics in here," he smiled at her.

"Thanks," she replied before looking down.

Eren reading those lyrics were like him reading into her soul. She'd never let him have the whole lyric journal to look through. Some songs were half started and never finished.

An unfinished song….

"Watch the flash drive with me," she said.

Eren's eyes met hers. He swallowed. He opened his mouth before quickly shutting it.

"What….what if you hate me afterwards?"

The question caught Mikasa so off guard. She didn't know how to even begin to respond to that.

"Or worse, what if you hate what I did to the song?"

"I won't," she reassured him before reaching across the bed. She took one of his hands off of the old lyric journal that he was holding and held it.

He squeezed her hand.

He was terrified.

Mikasa had seen Eren afraid before but not like this. Not to the point where he looked like he wanted to run.

"You said I should listen to it. I know you said when you weren't around but you're reading my lyrics. My feelings for you all the way back then. Shouldn't I be able to see how you thought of me?" She asked.

Eren nodded. "You're right."

"And it's probably better to do it right now while it's only us, Levi, Annie, and the dogs here."

Eren nodded again.

"So I'll go ask Levi for it."

Mikasa left.

Eren's nerves are slowly taking him over. It's not like there is anything bad in the song. He wasn't even sure why he sent it. He didn't even know that she was here.

He had ordered the delivery person to make sure to only let Mikasa sign for the package. If she didn't, Eren wanted it back in his possession.

And he hadn't expected her to be there at all.

But she had been.

The song had been a last ditch effort by Eren.

For what?

He wasn't sure.

He heard footsteps retreating down the hall.

A few moments later, Mikasa returned with both the flash drive and letter in hand.

"Give me that," he said as he held his hand. Mikasa handed him the letter.

"Dear Mikasa,

I hope this find you well. The last year has been absolute hell. My drinking finally caught up with me like you always said it would. They took a large portion of my liver. I found out that I'm actually bipolar too. Who knew? I don't even know what this is. I broke your heart a year ago.

I broke everything.

Including myself.

With hope of avoiding hurting you like my dad did my mom, I lost everything.

This isn't a plea for you to come back. It's not even a plea to forgive.

I guess I just want you to understand.

I hope you find someone who treats you right and deserves you. I wish you nothing but happiness. You really do deserve it.

The flash drive in the box included is a song you played for me long ago. I used my band and the video recording I had of you to make it. I made it in garage band so it's nothing fancy.

Love always,

Eren ," Eren read out loud before he held the letter out to Mikasa.

Mikasa pulled her laptop off the desk and onto the bed. She opened the box to see a black flash drive inside. She pulled it out of the box and inserted into the usb port on the side.

The window popped up on the screen.

She clicked on the file.

It was a video.

“I thought you said you used garage band to make it,” she said as she looked over at him.

“Yeah, to make the audio. The video is just at the beginning,” he said before he looked down.

“Okay,” she replied before pressing play.

The video began.

#mmtylif #my writing

3 notes · View notes

anistarrose · 4 years

Text

Counting the Days (Gravity Falls)

AO3: archiveofourown.org/works/24739027

Summary: Ford stops acknowledging his birthday during his time in the portal.

Characters: Ford Pines, Stan Pines, Mabel Pines, Dipper Pines

Relationships: Ford Pines & Stan Pines, Dipper Pines & Ford Pines & Mabel Pines & Stan Pines

Warnings: some morbid thoughts about aging and death, general angst but there’s a happy ending

Been a while since I returned to my “angsty GF one-shot with a happy ending” roots, huh? And there’s no better day than June 15th to change that :)

@thestanbros, I guess this counts for Week 2: Birthday!

***

Ford carefully counts the years he spends traveling between dimensions — he has to, he’s decided, in order to stay sane. He can’t lose sight of what he’s fighting for, or how long he’s been fighting for it. It’s his anchor to reality in an infinite, incomprehensible multiverse — he could be (and has been) lost in space, but he will never be lost in time. He could be marooned in the abyss at the bottom of an alien sea, but he’d still never lose sight of his goal or of everything he’s accomplished so far.

It’s been five, ten, fifteen years since the betrayal, since the postcard, since falling — and each year further reinforces his resolve. He’s survived this long, he has to make it worth something.

But somewhere along the line, Ford stops acknowledging his birthday.

It’s not because of a grudge against Stan. He’s angry, he thinks he’ll always be angry, but he was angry with Stan throughout his early adulthood on Earth, and he still celebrated his birthday back then. He tried to separate the date of June 15th from his thoughts of Stan, failed more often than not, and blamed the sickening lonely feeling in his gut on eating too much cake, but he acknowledged it nonetheless — until now.

“Now” is somewhere around the time his hair stops being brown with a few streaks of gray, and starts looking more gray with a faint hint of brown, when he stops celebrating the passage of the years. It’s somewhere in his late forties when he looks in the mirror on the morning of his birthday, and a thought hits him like a neutrino blast to the chest — his age and his experience are working for him right now, but they’ll be working against him soon.

His mission to defeat Bill is running against an invisible countdown timer, manifesting not in numbers, but in the aching of his joints and the slowing of his reflexes. At best, he figures, he has about twenty-five years before the last few silent ticks of that timer close in on him — and that’s only the most generous of estimates.

He thinks of the people he’s met across the multiverse, the people he’s promised to save by assassinating their triangular, demonic dictator. He wonders what they’ll think if unbeknownst to them, he dies of old age (or reflexes that fail him, or a wit that’s not quite as sharp as it used to be, or an infection he would’ve easily fought off as a younger man — it’s all the same, in the end). He wonders what they’ll think after putting their faith in him for years, only for freedom to never come. If they’ll think he’s just given up. If they’ll feel betrayed. If they even realized the implications of Ford being a human, short-lived among the smartest species of the multiverse, or if they even knew how short human lifespans were in the first place.

He stops acknowledging his birthday, once he starts wondering those things.

***

Worlds away, but on the very same June 15th, a man weathers out a thunderstorm in the basement of his house, navigating the laboratory by candlelight and praying the power surge and subsequent blackout haven’t damaged the portal.

He thinks (hopes) that he’s in the clear, because he thankfully doesn’t see any blown circuits, but he can’t be sure. He’s never been sure how the workings of the portal are supposed to look when operational — that’s what all his biggest problems boil down to, in the end.

Stan rests the candle on his desk — in the blackout, he hadn’t been able to find his usually-reliable gas lantern — and pulls out the journal. He winces as he sees his reflection in the golden hand — more shadow than face, thanks to the flickering candlelight, but Stan has spent enough time looking in mirrors to fill in the gaps.

He hopes Ford is aging better than he is, wherever Ford is. At this rate, they’ll both be decrepit by the time they see each other again…

If we ever do.

Stan’s spent enough nights alone in the basement with his fears to know that this train of thoughts isn’t going anywhere good, but it’s already accelerated past his ability to halt.

Stan hasn’t seen a doctor in decades. There is a realistic chance that Ford, despite facing unimaginable peril in an alien dimension, will still outlive him. And if Stan can’t reactivate the portal before his health fails him… then what will Ford think?

Will he assume Stan had tried his best and failed, even the most basic principles of the portal’s operation flying completely over his head? Or will he just figure Stan had abandoned him, giving up at the first sign of difficulty, and in the process betraying his brother once again?

Stan looks at his watch, barely readable in the dim light, and realizes not just that it’s past midnight, but that it’s already been the 15th for several hours.

He trudges into the portal room, holding the candle at arms length and the journal close to his chest, then sits down on the cold earth floor, the muffled roar of thunder sounding off overhead.

“Happy birthday, Sixer,” he whispers, and blows out the candle. “I’m trying my best, I promise.”

He sits there in the darkness for a long time, until the storm outside calms and the lights finally flicker back on.

***

Stan and Ford are heading into the living room, carrying reels of film and other family memorabilia, when Mabel ambushes them with a confetti cannon in one hand and a can of silly string in the other.

“Happy birthday, you two!”

“Whoa, what?” Stan brushes silly string off the photo album he’s holding. “Our birthday’s in June. Who told you it was today?”

“If anything, you should be saving this confetti for your own birthday festivities,” Ford adds.

“We know it was in June,” Dipper speaks up from the other side of the room, from which he’s carrying in a precariously balanced tray of cupcakes, “but Mabel and I were talking yesterday, and we realized you guys missed out on spending a whole bunch of birthdays together.”

“So we’re fixing that!” Mabel explains. “Today is the first of your many Bonus Birthdays, which you get to share because you’re actually in the same house and the same dimension and everything!”

“Any day from now on could turn out to be a Bonus Birthday,” Dipper adds with a grave nod. “Bonus Birthdays have a way of sneaking up on you when you least expect them.”

Ford slowly shakes his head, but he’s smiling. “And who gets to declare whether a given day is a Bonus Birthday or not?”

“That’s our job, of course!” Mabel answers. “We might not be able to bake you cupcakes once we’re back in California, but I’m sure we’ll still be chatting online, so we’ll keep you updated on when you need to drop everything and celebrate together!”

“Kids, I —” Stan’s voice fails him. “I can’t believe — you didn’t have to —”

Ford wipes his eyes. “It’s okay, Stan. They already know you’re a sentimental old man.”

“You’re one to talk, Sixer.” Stan sets down his photo album to hug Mabel, and Ford does the same to hug Dipper.

“This means… this means so much more than I even think I could explain,” Ford murmurs. “Thank you for doing this, kids.”

#gravity falls #stanford pines #stanley pines #dipper pines #mabel pines #stan twins birthday #rosalia writes fic

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pixelatedrose · 4 years

Text

Dukeceit

Asked by @i-am-not-a-dinner-roll

Word Count: 1,973

Warnings: major character, hospital, feeling like there isn't enough time, not a happy ending, if i missed anything please tell me

Want me to write you something? Here are some ideas!!

You Are My Sunshine

Remus Miller was a wild kid. Everyone at school knew it. He was a party animal, druggie, alcoholic, pay-me-and-I'll-do-anything kid.

"He's had sex with three cheerleaders and half the football team plus some of the teachers I heard."

"I heard he once blew up the chem lab because he thought it would be fun."

"He goes around and shatters the windows of people he doesn't like with a baseball bat."

But no one had ever gotten to any true fact about Remus Miller.

No one knew Remus had a boyfriend that he loved more dearly than anything in the entire world.

No one knew Remus was one of the most kind and gentle partners someone could ask for.

No one knew Remus's boyfriend was Damian Dee.

And no one would believe it if they ever did find out.

And every day after school he'd go and visit his dearest.

He'd get on the city bus and take it to the hospital where he'd see the familiar receptionist, Logan Reese, and shoot him finger guns. Logan would smile back, a far cry from the stiff death glares he used to get, and Remus would walk into room 203 and sit down beside the hospital bed.

If the occupant was awake, they'd talk for hours and play card games or watch tv, sometimes they'd draw together or Remus would teach him about math. Many times they'd cuddle together in the hospital bed and Remus would read to the small fragile boy, watching as he slowly fell asleep in his arms.

Because Damian Dee was in the hospital. He had been for a very very long time. Damian had a bad heart, they said. He was in the hospital constantly for maintenance and surgeries. His family was supportive and friendly, hopeful as ever that he'd pull through it all.

Remus had first met Damian because his parents were friends with Damian's and had forced him to tag along to a very small house party at Damian's house years ago. Damian was healthy enough at the time to live with his parents and the two made eye contact from across the room.

Remus made his way over to the boy with medical equipment surrounding him. "I bet you're a party animal, am I right?"

Damian laughed darkly. "Oh heaven knows I wouldn't actually be here if i was able to leave."

"Oh yeah? And what would a small fry like you do out there in the world?" Remus asked, a smirk on his face.

And just like that, they hit it off. Damian turned out to be one who loved mischief, but was never able to cause it. He was smart and funny, and oh so charming, even hooked up to all his medical equipment.

But those days were over now.

Now Damian lay in a hospital bed all hours of the day, tired and fragile. Remus knew how much he hated it.

“They act like I’m going to shatter to pieces at any given moment.” Damian once told Remus. “I know I’m not the healthiest but honestly. I’m not made of glass.”

But it was clear that Damian was only getting worse.

Remus arrived at the hospital one early march morning, the spring air still chill from winter. He came in, shooting a smile and finger guns at Logan, who smiled back. He walked into room 203 and smiled widely at his boyfriend.

“Hey there, DeeDee! How’s it going today?” He called.

Damian smiled softly. “Better, now that you’re here.” He said softly, the remnants of sleep thick in his voice. He must have just woken up.

“Alright, so what are we doing today?” Remus asked, unzipping his backpack.

“Actually, I’m pretty tired today. Can I just-” Damian reached his hands out for Remus and he understood.

Remus nodded and moved himself into the hospital bed with his dearest, gently pulling him in closer, letting his body fall into the crook of his arm, his head resting against his chest. “This is just fine too, DeeDee.” he said softly, pressing a kiss into his love’s hair.

The two sat there for a very long time, Remus softly humming and listening to Damian’s ever soft breaths as he drifted back into sleep, enjoying the time he had with the smaller boy, enjoying being with him.

It must have been an hour before Damian’s parents entered the room with his doctor, Doctor Virgil Prince.

He looked only slightly surprised to see Remus there. “Oh, you’re already here. And it looks like Damian’s asleep too, perfect.”

Remus smiled. “Yep! Fell right asleep, this one! Can’t wait till he’s finally free to get out of this place!” Remus quietly chirruped.

Virgil sighed sadly. “That’s actually what I wanted to talk about.” He started sullenly. “We ran some more tests and...well it doesn’t look too good-”

Remus’s smile faded. “Wait, Damian be awake for this, don’t you think?”

Virgil glanced between Remus and Damian’s parents. Damian’s mother nodded. “Alright, we’ll wake him up first.”

Remus carefully nudged the small boy encased in his arms and quietly whispered in his ear. “Hey, DeeDee, it’s time to wake up. We have news.”

Damian stirred and yawned. God he looked so cute when he yawned. “Oh…” He blinked his eyes open and smiled up at Remus before cuddling closer to him. “Hey, Re…” He opened his eyes to see he had more of an audience. “Oh. Is everything okay?” He asked, sitting up a little.

Virgil sighed a little and shook his head. “Not exactly, Damian. We just ran some more tests and it doesn’t look too good…We have an estimate on about how much time you have left though.”

Damian’s eyes glittered with a mix of emotions. “So how long?” He asked, eyes brimming with sullen excitement. “Fifteen years? Ten?”

Virgil looked anxiously between Damian and his parents. “...Three…”

The silence was sickening.

It felt like watching the moon shatter into dust.

“We predict he has at least three years left. Four or five if we’re lucky.”

“What do you mean he only has three years?!” Damian’s father screamed.

Virgil looked over at Remus, who still held Damian in his arms. Quietly he took his parents out in the hall to discuss the details.

There was a silence once more.

It was a frozen silence. It felt like thick, cold ice. Like a once friendly lake now bitter and frozen over.

Ad Remus felt as if he was trapped under that icey cold lake, drowning in the news and quiet of the room.

Finally he spoke.

“Three years…? That...That’s it…?”

Something in his voice must have set something off in Damian. “Hey, it’s okay! That’s still three whole years! That’s a lot of-”

Remus started to detangle himself from Damian, getting up out of the bed. “That’s not a lot of anything, Damian!!” Remus thought of everything he couldn’t do with Damian. He would never get to see him go to school.

“It’s okay, Remus! Three years is the minimum, remember! It could be up to five years!!”

“Five years is still not enough!! You deserve more than that!!” He would never get help Damian move out of his house.

“Come on, Remus! I know it doesn’t feel like a lot, but it’s still more than nothing! And it’s better than not knowing at all, Right?”

“I don’t know that it is!!” He would never get to celebrate graduating college with him.

“Remus, it’s still time-”

“It’s not ENOUGH time!!” Remus yelled.He sat down in the hard plastic chair next to the bed and looked down at the ground.

Damian cupped Remus’s face in his small hands and gently wiped at his tears with his thumb. When had Remus started crying? “I know...I know it’s not enough time. But we can make the most of it.” He leaned forward and pressed a kiss to his lips.

Remus held Damian’s hand against his cheek and looked at his love. He only had Three years. So they better make the most of it.

“Okay…” Remus breathed. He shook the dread from his heart and smiled, eyes suddenly shining. “I’m gonna make a to-do list and we’re going to do every! Single! One of them!!”

Damian giggled softly. “There we go!! That’s it!! Three years! We can do this, Love!”

~~•~~

Three years…

Remus stood in front of the grave, tears trickling down his face.

It was supposed to be three years…

~~•~~

Remus got a call while he was in school. It was from Damian’s mother.

He’d never run faster than he had that day.

Damian’s not doing well, I think you should come.

He sprinted in the doors of the hospital, for the first time ever ignoring Logan. He ran into the room and was met with Damian’s parents standing over the bed, worry and dread clear on their faces.

They stepped out of the room, giving the couple their space to talk.

Remus rushed to the side of the bed, panic crystallized in his eyes. “Damian, are you okay, are you hurting, what’s going on-”

Damian smiled weakly at the frantic boy at the side of his bed. “Hey, hey! It’s all okay! Everything is just fine…!” He said softly, reaching out his hand for the one so worried.

Remus held it before crawling in next to him. Outside he could hear the muffled voices of Damian’s parents talking to Virgil. “Everything is fine…?” He asked, trying desperately to keep the panic out of his voice.

Damian snuggled up to Remus and smiled softly. “Of course…! Everything is going to be just fine…” Remus held Damian tighter and they sat for a while before Damian spoke again. “Can I hear you sing my favorite song…?”

Remus nodded and began singing. It was such a silly little song, Damian’s favorite.

“You are my sunshine, my only sunshine,”

“There we go…” Damian snuggled even closer to Remus, curling his small body up against him and in his arms. “You always had the prettiest voice, Love…”

“You make me happy when skies are grey,”

Remus listened to the beeping monitor in growing dread as he sang. Something felt horribly wrong.

“You never know dear, how much I love you,”

Damian whispered quietly, a soft gentle sound full of every good thing the world had ever offered anyone ever. “I love you, Remus…”

“Please don’t take my sunshine away.”

In a horrible moment, the beeping sound from Damian’s monitor trailed off.

“Wait, no…” Remus started to panic, horrific feelings rising in his chest. “No, no, no, no!! No wait, Damian!” Remus held his love tighter, holding him to his chest. “Damian come back!! Please this isn’t right!!” He held him close, trying to feel the heartbeat against his own. But there was none. “No, this isn’t how the story goes!!”

Doctors rushed in and Remus was pulled away from Damian. “No WAIT!!! YOU CAN’T DO THIS!!” Virgil had him around the waist, pulling him out of the room. “No, no, no, YOU SAID THREE YEARS!!!”

Virgil managed to get him out of the room and was softly holding him. “Shh, shh...I know, I know…”

All Remus could do now was sob into the tall doctor’s lab coat. “You said three years…!!”

~~•~~

Three weeks.

That’s how long it had been since they had gotten the news.

Now, another two weeks later, Remus stood in front of the grave. Everyone had left ages ago.

He held a small bouquet of forget-me-nots, Damian’s favorite flower.

He quietly placed the flowers on the grave and began to sing softly, tears dripping on the stone below him.

“The other night, dear, while I was sleeping,”

“I dreamt I held you in my arms.”

“When I awoke, dear, I was mistaken,”

“And I hung my head and cried.”

Tag list:

@iwillsithereandtrytocontribute

#sanders sides #ts sides #sanders sides fic #ts sides fic #deceit sanders #remus sanders #ts deceit #ts remus #tw death #my writing #Dukceit #demus

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