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luxaofhesperides · 3 days

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greener on the other side.

Danny makes a habit out of hopping into portals and exploring the places he ends up. It just so happens that this time, he ends up in Gotham right as the Signal begins his patrol. Duke meets the strangest, funniest, cutest guy on the roof of the Gotham City Public Library. He knows Batman would not approve of literally anything he's doing, but sue him, he wants a meta friend and this guy seems to be up for it. -- OR: how Duke and Danny get together despite having secret identities and living in different dimensions.

chapter three: how it shines - 8.6k

read the entire fic on ao3!

the final chapter of this fic... and the end to the first fic in the series!! theres a lot i say in the end notes of ao3 so i highly recommend reading this chapter there! . . .

Signal: you ever feel like maybe the world is out to get you

Signal: [attached photo shows Signal lying in the middle of a torn up road, post-fight, his helmet lightly blackened with ash.]

Danny: buddy, the world has already taken me out

Danny: [attached photo is a selfie of Danny, frowning at the camera. Behind him, a large, flying robot is pointing a rocket launcher at him.]

Signal: okay, you win. are you alright???

Danny: lol im fine. this literally happens every week i know how to beat this guy up

Danny: tbh i think the real threat to my existence is school

Signal: so true. one day we will be free of it….

Danny: but not today

Signal: but not today

Danny: got a minute?

Signal: yeah what’s up?

Danny: u have a secret identity

Signal: …yes?

Danny: have u told other people abt ur secret identity

Signal: yes? but some of them just kinda found out on their own

Signal: why?

Danny: how did that go. did they react well? did u have to defend urself from them?

Signal: there were some problems about me throwing myself in danger, but i was always safe with them

Danny: okay. cool. got it.

Signal: everything okay?

Danny: im thinking about telling my parents a secret about me. im kinda terrified of how they’re going to react

Signal: are you coming out to them?

Danny: in a way i guess.

Danny: gonna recruit my sister into helping me talk to them. and also get rid of all their weapons beforehand so there’s a lower chance of them shooting me

Signal: shooting you?!?!? dude are you going to be okay??? don’t do anything that could get you hurt!!

Danny: gtg

Signal: dude??

Signal: danny?

Signal: let me know how it goes, okay? i can’t travel through dimensions like you can, but i can figure something out if you need a rescue

Signal: good luck danny!

Danny: ever get into a fist fight with a walmart knock off vampire in the parking lot of a burger joint?

Danny: [attached photo is Danny’s hand flipping off a man hovering in a parking lot. He’s wearing a cape and vampire-coded clothes.]

Signal: ever have a snack break in the middle of fighting a crocodile man?

Signal: [attached photo shows Signal holding up a half eaten taco, a giant crocodile man behind him with his own box of tacos. They’re sitting next to each other in an alley.]

Danny: point to u bc u actually got food

Signal: 😝

Signal: also, everything okay? with your parents?

Danny: let’s not talk about that.

Signal: okay. but if you do want to talk, i’ll be here for you

Danny: idk if dash is trying to annoy me into another fling or if he actually wants me to throw him across the field but if he doesn’t back off im going for violence

Signal: uh

Danny: THAT WAS MEANT FOR TUCKER IM SO SORRY

Signal: should i be jealous that someone is hoping for another fling with you lol

Danny: it was once and will never happen again. 1) he’s not my type 2) he’s so annoying

Danny: also why would u get jealous of anyone ure literally a hero? hello?

Signal: hey man that guy is with you in your dimension and im all the way over here

Signal: totally reasonable for me to get jealous!! this is like a more extreme version of having online friends

Danny: true… hey i can swing by for the weekend if u want!! honestly the less time i spend here the better

Signal: that bad?

Danny: i’ve known everyone here for my entire life. i need OUT

Danny: gothams cool! its a big city with things to do!!! obviously im gonna like it more than Normal Town Illinois 🤮

Signal: weather is bad all week tho…. even if you come over we wouldnt be able to go out

Signal: its been a while since we had a storm so bad

Danny: man if that was happening here i would be able to punch the storm away

Signal: im taking that as a joke

Danny: no i literally punched a storm away before. he was a dick tho he deserved it

Signal: ….this is still Normal Town Illinois right?

Danny: .

Danny: ok fine maybe u have a point

Danny: anyways!!! i just wanna hang out with you dude i would be happy just playing video games or something

Signal: we can do that!! let me know when u get here 😊

Signal: and good luck dealing w this dash guy!!

Danny: ugh dont remind me

Signal: hye u know our plana to hang out tody

Signal: maybe rain chek tht im not goos company rn

Danny: u ok? i can always come by some other weekend

Signal: got hit and everythif bad

Danny: did u hit ur head?

Signal: yes

Danny: ok im going to call u so you can stop looking at ur phone screen. just in case u have a concussion

The phone rings twice before Signal picks up. He mumbles something that might be a hello, but it’s honestly hard to tell.

“Hey, man,” Danny says, leaning back in his chair to look up at the faded glow in the dark stars he stuck up on his ceiling years ago. “Are you okay?”

Signal hums a vague response, then sighs, sending static down the line. “Just got a headache right now. Can’t even go out since it’s too bright.”

“Is it sunny in Gotham right now?”

“No, it’s super cloudy and that’s still too much. I hate concussions.” There’s a bit of a whine in his voice that reminds Danny that under the helmet, Signal is a normal guy just like anyone else. And like everyone else, powers don’t save him from the pain of brain trauma.

Danny would know; he’s gotten pretty good at taking care of injuries and the such through his high school career of getting tossed in lockers and attacked by ghosts. He’s pretty sure parts of his brain are still rattled from the amount of times he’s been thrown into and through walls.

“I hear you, man,” Danny commiserates, “Head injuries are the worst. But it should start feeling better in a few days, so you can just stay home and relax until the pain stops.”

“Ugh, I wish. I still have to go to school tomorrow.”

“Dude, that sucks. If you can stay home sick, then don’t force yourself to go. Concussions are no joke.”

Signal hums again, then mumbles, “I can’t think of an excuse. Cause the concussion is from being hit on patrol so like. I can’t say that! I have to figure out a reason for my civilian identity to have a concussion.”

“Can I suggest something?”

“Please, I’ll take anything at this point, man. My brain is done for.”

“Make up an embarrassing story. You have to make yourself look silly and people will believe you more and not ask follow up questions because you’re too embarrassed to say more.”

“...Keep talking. This sounds viable. The only advice I got was to basically fake my death or get into a car accident to get more injured.”

“I think you need to fight whoever said that,” Danny says, “That is horrible advice.”

“I know!” Signal laughs. “Oh I shouldn’t have laughed, my head is hurting more.”

Danny lets out a slow breath, tilting his head back to look up at the ceiling of his bedroom. If he strains his hearing, he can make out the rustle of fabric from Signal’s end of the call as well as the murmur of his parent’s voices downstairs. He closes his eyes and focuses on the call, pushing away the heavy weight of regret on his chest that hits him each time he thinks about his parents.

Now is not the time for that. Signal needs calm and quiet, so Danny is going to give that to him and then let him go to rest.

“Are you drinking enough water? Getting some comfort food?”

“Yeah, I’m being taken care of. Don’t worry Danny, I got a whole crew of dysfunctional caretakers.”

“Good. I’ll let you get back to resting, then.”

“I’m still so sorry I had to cancel. I was looking forward to seeing you again.”

Warmth rises to his cheeks and Danny rubs a hand against them, trying to ignore the butterflies in his stomach that came to life at those words. “We can always do a different day. Let me know when you feel better, okay?”

“Yeah, alright. Thanks, Danny.”

“I hope you feel better soon, Signal. I missed you too.”

There’s a pause where Danny’s heart pounds hard against his chest, as though trying to escape his ribcage. He bites his tongue, wondering it that was too much, if he made things weird, if Signal didn’t feel the same way.

And then Signal says with a soft voice, “I can’t wait to see you again. You’re too sweet to me.”

“Okay!” Danny squeaks, cheeks aflame, “Go sleep, Signal! I’ll talk to you once you can look at a screen again.”

“Alright. Thanks, Danny.”

“Of course, dude. Bye.”

Signal makes a soft mumble that could be ‘bye’ but it’s hard to tell with Signal’s voice going all rough and low, exhausting in every sound, and then the call is ending.

Danny drops the phone onto his desk and draws his knees up to hold them against his chest. He rests his chin on them, filled with longing for Gotham.

Not just for the Signal, though that’s a big part of it. But for the anonymity of a big city in a dimension where he doesn’t exist. A place where he can be himself, just Danny instead of being torn between his parent’s son and Phantom. Plus, Gotham has heroes! Not other ghosts, not ghost hunters, but people with superpowers who help people whenever they can.

It would be nice to be someplace like Gotham where he wouldn’t have to carry the responsibility of protecting an entire city on his shoulders. It would be nice to have friends who understand why he can’t not give his all to protect people, regardless of how they feel for him, friends who make the same choice, friends who aren’t weighed down by guilt with their part in his death.

As much as he loves Sam and Tucker, he knows that will be something that haunts them for the rest of their lives.

It’s better now that it had been in freshman year, but it’s still something that changed them all. He’ll always love them, and he knows they love him, but they need to spend some time apart.

In Amity Park, they’re the outsiders who are too weird for the rest of the school, outcasts who stick together, a tightly knit group full of secrets. They’ve been each others only friends for the longest time; sometimes, others come in and out of their lives, like Valerie, but the bond he has with Sam and Tucker can’t be replicated.

They need to be with new people to grow any more. He can see how they’re holding each other back.

They’ll always find a way to be together, but they have to be apart first.

Gotham will be good for that.

Hell, any place in that dimension would be good!

Danny just wants to be more than he is, wants to be better and he can’t do that here or with his friends.

And he certainly can’t do that with his parents.

After telling them about everything’s he’s done as Phantom, all the times he’s ruined their inventions or fought with the GIW or endangered people through his fights with other ghosts, his parents just stared at him. They were seated around the kitchen table, Jazz standing behind Danny with a comforting hand on his shoulder, as his parents just… stared.

There were no accusations of possession, no weapons drawn, no demands for an explanation. Just a haunted look in his parents eyes as they went silent, still, horrified.

“Danny,” his mom had whispered, “You mean you’re—”

“I’m Phantom, yeah. The ghost menace,” he had answered.

“You’re dead,” she finished as if he hadn’t spoken. “You died and we didn’t… we never noticed. What— How—”

The thing about being Phantom is that Danny knows he died. He knows he came back changed. But he doesn’t like thinking about it, still wakes up from nightmares of electricity racing through his body, frying him from inside out as it stops and restarts his heart in an endless painful pattern. Yes he died, but he got powers out of it! He got to meet other ghosts, explore the Infinite Realms, do so many cool things no one else is able to do…

But he still died. Half of him is still dead. He’s never going to be the kid he once was.

“It was an accident,” he had whispered, “With the portal. The on button is inside it, and when I went in for some stupid picture, I tripped and hit it.”

“And we only cared about the portal working,” his dad had said, grief coloring every line in his face. “We didn’t even look at you. We just went straight for the portal. We were so happy to be right that we didn’t stop to think about what it meant, how it could have happened…”

The tears he saw well up in his parents eyes made his heart twist uncomfortably in his chest. For several long minutes, silence settled around them as his parents closed either eyes are stared down at the table, refusing to look at him. Jazz had squeezed his shoulder, then pulled him up out of his seat.

“Danny, go upstairs. Or to Tucker’s place. I need to have my own talk with them,” she had said. There was a steel in her gaze that told Danny there was no use in arguing, so he walked out the front door and transformed so he could fly out into the woods where he could be alone, watching the sky change colors as the sun set.

It’s been two weeks since then. His parents still can’t look at him for too long. They can’t look him in the eyes at all.

He wonders if he would have preferred them trying to kill him. At least then they would acknowledge that he’s still here instead of moving around him as if he’s a memory haunting the halls of their home, one they’re too guilty to face just yet.

He misses his dad’s loud voice and enthusiasm. He misses his mom’s quick wit and quicker reflexes. He misses the chaos of each meal they would have together and how his parents would drag him and Jazz along on random, sudden trips for the sake of science.

He misses his parents.

Danny hates that the family he loves died with him in that portal.

As much as he still loves them, being in the house, and in Amity Park in general, is suffocating. The farther he can get from them the better; Danny isn’t sure he’d react well if he stayed in this universe and woke up one day with his parents decided to break into his new home because they finally feel up to having a conversation with him.

Maybe he’d talk to Signal about what living in Gotham is like. That might help him make a decision on what to do with himself once he graduates from Casper High School.

He’ll save it for the next time they meet.

Some things are better done in person, after all. And it wouldn’t hurt for Danny to use it as an excuse to make sure he’s fine.

But for now, he’ll wait until the days pass and keep daydreaming about better things.

Signal: hey man, u doing okay? i haven’t heard from u in a while

Danny: yeah im good! i was waiting for u to text first bc i didnt know how long you’d need to recover from a concussion

Signal: ive been good for a while, dude. dw abt waiting to text me, just send me something and i’ll reply once i can!!

Danny: i’ll keep that in mind for the next time u get injured 👍

Signal: but fr are u good? tell me to back off if u need but u seem kinda down

Danny: im fine!!! just dealing w the crushing weight of existence, that’s all 🫠

Signal: oh mood. anything i can do to make things better for u?

Danny: nah it’s fine, im just like this sometimes. i promise it’ll pass

Signal: want a distraction?

Danny: please

Signal: so i was just swinging thru the streets as i do and this group called me down while theyre having a huge argument

Signal: so i go bc i dont want things escalating yknow?

Signal: and idk the context of this argument AT ALL but one of them turns to me

Signal: looks me dead in the eyes

Signal: and says ‘penis enhancement pills are NOT a thing, right?’

Danny: SKDFJALSDJ NO WAY

Signal: oh man. this isnt even the best part of this story

Danny: there’s MORE?????

Signal: its gotham, danny, there’s always more lmao

Signal: so anyways……..

Danny: i hope you know that story has been haunting me all week

Danny: dash was being a dick again and i was half asleep so i told him ‘maybe u’d be less of a dick if u stop taking penis enhancing pills’

Signal: THATS GOLD

Signal: my job here is done. nothing will ever top that. i’ll see myself out ✌️

Danny: he looked so shocked lmaooo

Danny: tried to say he DOESNT take any pills but it was too late

Danny: he was too flustered by it no one believed him

Danny: top 10 things to say to ur former bully

Signal: i didnt know he bullied u. good for u! get his ass!

Danny: he’s fine now lol just annoying. we all grew out of the super cliche high school phase after freshman year when we had to work together to fend off ghosts and the government

Signal: nothing like a little anarchy to bring people together

Signal: its why im still good friends w the people who were in a gang i joined when i was younger to be like. street kid vigilantes bc gotham was going bad back then

Danny: everything u say about gotham and ur life is so fascinating literally how are u real?? ure the perfect ya novel protagonist

Signal: thats the sweetest thing anyones ever said to me ❣️

Signal: but also lol. lmao. gotham really is just like that. no one is immune

Signal: u also sound like a ya protag jsyk.

Danny: literally how im so boring??

Signal: danny. babe. im gonna have to bring out the capital letters for this bc i get the feeling that u really believe that

Danny: oh boy

Signal: Listen. You live in a small town that’s Haunted, fight ghosts, have powers, went from being bullied to being chill with your bully, and can travel the multiverse. You are a YA Protagonist.

Danny: damn i can’t argue with that :/

Danny: why’d i have to be the ghost hunter’s ghost son. i wanna be a side character. give me a refund on this life pls

Signal: do i dare ask clarification on the ghost thing?

Danny: uuuh no? its kinda personal and im dealing w it but its also kinda like ur civilian id?

Danny: its something i’ll share once we’re closer and i know u better and can trust u with it

Signal: totally fair. want me to pretend that part of the conversation never happened?

Danny: please

Signal: cool. watch this

Signal changed Danny’s name to YA protag (real)

YA protag (real): ooooh my god

YA protag (real): im not taking this lying down

YA protag (real) changed Signal’s name to YA menace

YA protag (real) changed their name to YA protag (retired)

YA menace: lmao

YA menace: does this mean… ure my senior…. my knowledgeable mentor… my senpai 🥺

YA protag (retired): i will throw us both into a black hole dont even try me 🔪

YA menace: LMAO

YA menace: fair. just saying that dealt me so much psychological damage

YA protag (retired): deserved

YA protag (retired): can we attempt Danny Visits Gotham: 2! Electric Boo-galoo?

YA menace: yeah!!!! im free this weekend if u wanna come by then!!

YA protag (retired): i can do this weekend!!

YA menace: i will do my very best not to get a head injury before then

YA protag (retired): can u maybe aim for no injuries?

YA menace: danny we need to be realistic here

YA menace: my goal is to have no bleeding wounds that need stitches. as long as i don’t bleed its not a problem 👍

YA protag (retired): …..

YA menace: no need for the judgment i have everything under control

YA protag (retired): …………

YA protag (retired): :/

YA menace: lmk when ure gonna be in gotham! i’ll make sure to be outside waiting for u

YA protag (retired): i’ll be another hour but i’ll send a msg before i head out!!

YA protag (retired): actually it might be a bit longer i gotta fight some people who are trying to cheer me up

YA menace: should i be concerned

YA protag (retired): nah its fine they’re just annoying

YA menace: if u need to reschedule

YA protag (retired): noooo!!!! i’ll be in gotham soon i swear!!!!

YA menace: ok!! ok!!!! i will keep waiting for you then 🫡

Duke waits for an hour and a half, swinging through streets and waving to people, before Danny texts him to let him know that he’s next to the botanical gardens.

One moment, Duke is perched on the roof of a Mexican restaurant in the Bowery. The next, he’s halfway across Gotham, swinging recklessly from building to building.

So what if he’s excited to see Danny again! That’s normal!

Anyone would do the same in his position.

Plus, Duke still feels so bad about having to cancel last time due to his concussion. The sooner he gets to Danny, the sooner he can start making up for it. He didn’t spend the last few patrols being extra careful for nothing; he only has a few bruise and no bleeding at all!

Danny’s star glow helps Duke find him behind the botanical gardens, hidden away from the rest of the street.

He drops down from the roof, using the shadows to soften the impact of landing.

When he looks at Danny, leaning against the building, he’s greeted with a bright smile.

“Signal!” he says, pushing off the wall to close the distance between them. “I hope I didn’t make you wait too long or anything.”

“Nah, you’re good. You alright?”

“Oh, yeah, of course! It was just some friendly fighting, and they wouldn’t be able to really hurt me even if they tried. I’m all good! So, what’s the plan for today?”

Duke looks him over just in case, but Danny does appear to be perfectly fine. Not a single bruise on him. Maybe it was just a few friends roughhousing with him? That might be it, since Sam and Tucker did try to take each other out last time they were in Gotham. So he’s just going to go with what Danny says! He’s fine, and they can move on!

He’s totally going to worry about it later, but right now is not the time for it when Danny’s waiting to spend the day with him.

“Well, I still have to finish patrol, but that’s just for another hour if you wanna join me,” he says. “And then we can head to the Hatch to just… hang out. Or we can find something else to do, totally up to you.”

“The Hatch?” Danny repeats, tilting his head to the side curiously. Duke has to take a moment and just appreciate how cute Danny is before he can compose himself enough to answer.

“Yeah, it’s like my… secret base? HQ? The place I go for superhero things that is for me, specifically, and that I don’t have to share with a bunch of other people.”

“You have a secret base?! That’s so awesome! I just have—” Danny falters, his excitement falling, and then he plasters on a pained, fake smile. “I’ve always wanted to see a superhero’s HQ. Are you sure it’s fine to show it to me, though?”

Part of him wants to ask about what he was going to say before switching gears, but the drawn expression on his face is more than enough to make Duke back off. “Yeah, man, don’t even worry about it. Besides, it’s not like there’s any other places we can go to without me revealing my identity, you know?”

“Fair enough,” Danny nods. “But maybe one day we can?”

“For sure,” Duke says. “Come on, up for a quick patrol around Gotham?”

“Oh, definitely.” The light returns to Danny’s eyes as he lifts off the ground, floating. The smile on his face is more sincere, and the sight of it makes the knot of worry in Duke’s heart pull loose. He pulls his grapple out and aims for the highest ledge of Poison Ivy’s greenhouse, tucked in the back of the botanical gardens, then takes off.

Danny is flying next to him immediately, a blur of invisibility, and they fall into a rhythm quickly as they head towards the Bowery. As Duke free runs and swings between buildings, Danny flies around him, the occasional laugh slipping past his lips as he circles around Duke.

It’s hard not to have his attention stolen by Danny, but Duke is here to protect the people of Gotham, so he focuses 90% of his attention to the streets, keeping an eye and ear out for any trouble.

There’s not much happening today, thankfully. He’s only had to stop a few burglaries, a bank robbery, and chase off a stalker before Danny arrived. Truthfully, the peace is making him nervous; there hasn’t been a big attack to the city in a while, with no word on the movement of rogues and nothing big brewing among the gangs and mobs. Peace rarely lasts so long in Gotham, and Duke is genuinely worried the next thing will be some continent destroying, apocalypse bringing disaster.

In the last hour of his patrol, he only has to stop a purse-snatcher and help someone move their broken down car off the street and into a parking lot. Danny stays in the air for both, invisible to everyone but him, and the blur of his aura floats around the areas Duke stops at curiously.

They hit up touristy places last time he was in Gotham, and food trucks before that. Maybe next time Duke can get takeout from a nice restaurant and they can have a rooftop picnic.

Not quite a date, not yet at least, but something close to it. A testing of the waters. An unspoken promise for something more.

With the hour ends, Duke comes to stop on the roof of a tattoo parlor and gestures for Danny to join him.

The blur of invisibility fades away and Danny’s features come back into focus as he lowers himself down to the roof.

“What’s up?” Danny asks, glancing around them curiously.

“It’s about time for patrol to end, so we can head to the Hatch now. But I do need to blindfold you so you don’t see where the Hatch is located.”

“Oh! Yeah, that’s fine. Will I just have to hold onto you or something? Since I won’t be able to see where we’re going.”

“I was thinking I’d just carry you. It’s easier that way.”

“Sure, that works!” Danny closes his eyes, cheeks already darkening with a blush. “I’ll just… let you blindfold me now?”

Duke desperately wants to smoosh Danny’s cheeks together in his hands, but valiantly resists the urge. He’s on a mission! To hang out with Danny! He can cry about how cute Danny is later!

He walks up to Danny on silent feet, circling around him. Then he lifts his hands, picturing the light solidifying in his palms, turning to fabric that darkens and obscures, bending the light to be darker and darker until it’s nearly black. He gently pulls it across Danny’s eyes, leaning in closer to him to make sure he’s not putting it on too tightly.

Danny gasps slightly when his back bumps into Duke’s chest, and Duke can’t help the way his eyes dart down to Danny’s mouth, his red cheeks, the long line of his neck.

Focus, he tells himself sternly, and draws the ends of his makeshift blindfold back to tie the ends together behind Danny’s head.

“There,” he says in a low voice. “All done.”

Danny doesn’t answer. He just leans back against Duke, pressing them together slightly, and Duke brings his hands down to Danny’s hips to hold his steady.

“Ready to go?”

“Ready,” Danny answers in a faint voice. “How do you want me?”

Now that’s a dangerous question to ask right then and there. Duke bites back a number of flirtatious, suggestive answers, and makes himself actually think about the best way he can carry Danny while grappling to the Hatch. He’ll need one hand free to grapple, but also needs to keep a secure grip on Danny…

He steps to the side and guides one of Danny’s arms up to wrap around his shoulders. Then he picks Danny up, leaving him to wrap his legs around his waist as he walks over to the edge of the roof and looks towards the area in Gotham where the Hatch is hidden. Duke takes a moment to adjust his arm to keep Danny secure against his chest, then takes hold of his grapple with his free hand.

“Ready?” he checks, tightening his hold on Danny’s waist.

Danny nods against his neck, tucking his face in the crook of Duke’s shoulder. “Ready!”

Duke grins and jumps off the building, shooting out his grapple as they begin to fall. Danny yelps lightly, then clings to Duke even harder, his blindfold still secure around his head. It’s become a bit fainter as Duke’s attention slipped off of it, but he focuses on it again to darken it and keep Danny from seeing where they’re going.

It occurs to him halfway to the Hatch how much trust Danny is putting in him. To put a blindfold on him. To lead him to a place he’s never been to before. To let Duke swing him across the streets of Gotham without using his own ability to fly.

Oracle’s apprehension about Danny (and his friends) is a heavy weight on his mind, but he can’t help but think it’s unnecessary. She’d understand if she ever met Danny in person. He wears his heart on his sleeve and offers it so freely; how could Duke not trust him?

The weeks they’ve been texting each other only make him sure that Danny’s a good person, someone he wants in his life for as long as he can stay, someone he wants to be honest with. They just click, somehow, like they’re each holding a puzzle piece that’s been missing in each other’s lives.

I think I’ve been waiting my whole life to meet you, he wants to say. But the street entrance to the Hatch is just a block away and Danny still doesn’t know his name, so Duke bites his tongue and forces all those feelings back into more platonic territory.

Just as the reach the building with the hidden panel to allow him entrance to the Hatch, Duke pulls at the light around them to hide them from sight as they drop down from the sky.

“Almost in,” he says, holding Danny up with one arm as he tucks his grapple away and push the fake brick cover out of the way to punch in his twelve digit access code.

A hidden door in the wall of the building, the back bricked off from the operating portion courtesy of Wayne Industries funding the restoration project for this area of the city after a major alien attack, opens up smoothly and without a sound. The ground slopes downward at a steep angle; he uses this door for when he’s riding his motorcycle out of the cave networks underneath the city that keep the Hatch connected to the Batcave, but it’s not too far from where the Hatch itself is.

He carries Danny in, then makes sure the door closes completely behind him before setting Danny down on his feet. “We’ve still got a bit of a walk to the Hatch, but you can take your blindfold off now.”

“I’ll wait until we get there,” Danny says. “I’m going to use this as an excuse to cling to you for as long as I can.”

“Fair enough!” Duke laughs, “Cling away, I’ll make sure you don’t trip.”

And cling away Danny does, wrapping his arms around Duke’s left arm, holding onto it as they make their way down the tunnel. Duke keeps an eye out for anything that might trip him and carefully steers him past them.

“Are we underground?”

“Yeah, there’s this huge cave system under the city that we use to get around,” Duke answers. “Though we’ve paved in small roads and made stable tunnels to go through, so it’s all safe.”

“Huh, that’s cool. It would be nice if I had a way to get around Amity like this.”

“Danny, you can fly.”

“That’s not relevant!”

“How is it not relevant?” Duke laughs incredulously, jostling Danny slightly. Danny turns towards him and they trip over each other slightly, clutching to each other to keep their balance.

“It just isn’t!”

They bicker lightheartedly down the tunnel until it opens up into the garage of the Hatch. Duke helps Danny up the stairs to the main area, where he keeps his suit, weapons, and the large computer Bruce installed when the Hatch was first made. Once he’s sure Danny’s comfortable, he leaves to change into his civilian clothes with only a domino mask slapped over his eyes to protect his identity.

And if Duke takes an extra minute to fix up his hair, the long locs in a disarray from being tied back and stuffed into his helmet, then that’s no one’s business but his own.

Maybe he does need to get a hair cut. He’s starting to get why Steph wants to shave her head and rock a pixie cut like Selena. But, on the other hand, he does like how he looks with longer hair, especially when it’s tied up…

Long hair for now. It makes him look good and he’s here to impress Danny.

When he heads back to where Danny is, he sees Danny sitting down patiently, his blindfold still on, though it’s become much more transparent than it was before. He can see how Danny’s eyes are closed beneath it, waiting for Duke to return, tapping out a slow rhythm on his knee with his fingers.

“You can take that off now,” he says as he walks up to Danny.

“You sure?”

“If I wasn’t, I wouldn’t have brought you in here.”

Danny reaches up and gently pulls the blindfold off, slowly blinking his eyes open. He watches as the blindfold dissolves in his hand, becoming light again, then shyly turns to look at Duke.

“Oh,” he says softly, taking in Duke, who tries very hard not to fidget and reveal just how nervous he is to be out of his Signal armor before Danny. “You are so unfair?”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“You can’t be kind, a superhero, and attractive! Tell me something you’re bad at so I know you have some flaws.”

Duke grins, flattered. “You think I’m attractive?”

“Stop fishing for compliments!” Danny pushes him lightly, barely enough force to make him tilt to the side. “Give me something you’re bad at, come on.”

“Well, if you really need to know…” Duke takes a moment to think of something that won’t completely embarrass him. “I’m terrible at learning other languages. Vocab doesn’t stick in my head, grammar rules mean nothing to me, and my accent is atrocious.”

“That doesn’t count, that’s normal,” Danny argues.

“It the only thing I can think of right now! I’m just really bad at non-English languages!”

Danny rolls his eyes, shaking his head fondly. “I can’t believe you. You have powers, you’re cute, and you’re good at flirting. Stop winning at life so much, the rest of us stand no chance against you.”

“I promise I’m a disaster when I’m not trying to impress people.”

“Lies. You’re being perfect right now and there’s no one to impress.”

“I’m trying to impress you.”

Danny blinks. “Oh.” He bites his lip in an attempt to force down a smile. “Shut up. I don’t count. You don’t need to try to impress me, you’ve already done that.”

“Yeah? Well, maybe I’ll try to be more of a mess around you from now on.”

“Please do, I can’t be the only one making a fool of myself. Where’s the friendship? The solidarity? Suffer with me!”

Duke shoves him back playfully, and just like that, they fall back into a rhythm of easy conversation and light touches, skirting the lines of friendly with something more. Time slips away from him and Duke spends every second with Danny wishing he could have this always, that they didn’t have a time limit over their heads, that the universe itself wasn’t keeping them apart. He shows off the Hatch and some Bat gadgets, which Danny finds fascinating, then they spend an hour comparing their most commonly used powers.

Danny has to leave all too soon, opening up a small portal of swirling green with the help of a small pocketwatch-like device, and Duke can only hope that they can do this again soon, but without the domino on his face.

One day, he swears. One day they’ll have that.

YA menace: hey quickly rate this guys fit

YA menace: [attached photo is a goon with a black and white striped shirt with a purple question mark safety pinned onto it. They’re also wearing neon purple sweatpants and are glaring at the camera.]

YA protag (retired): ngl thats not the worst ive seen. 6/10

YA menace: 6???

YA menace: 6?????????????

YA menace: danny i say this with all the love in my heart, go get ur eyes checked

YA protag (retired): before u say anything else. look at what i regularly have to deal with

YA protag (retired): [attached photo is a floating man with blue-ish skin an d a very dramatic hairstyle. He’s wearing a long black cloak, a white suit, and a Green Bay Packer’s football jersey on top of all that.]

YA menace: damn. no wonder ur judgement of bad fits is Like That. this guys to blame

YA protag (retired): wanna know the worst part?

YA menace: this can get worse??

YA protag (retired): thats my godfather.

YA protag (retired): this is a man my parents thought were fit to be responsible for me and my sister if anything happens to us

YA protag (retired): THIS GUY

YA menace: u have my sincerest condolences

YA menace: oh shit more riddler guys are here i gtg they got guns

YA protag (retired): be safe!! please dont get shot!!!!

YA menace: i’ll do my best 🫡

YA protag (retired): came home today and all the weapons that were attached to my house disappeared

YA protag (retired): i feel like im in the twilight zone

YA protag (retired): if i start talking backwards or acting like a robot pls know it is not me but something wearing my face

YA menace: the weapons attached to ur house????

YA menace: im starting there but i want u to know that everything u said was concerning

YA protag (retired): have i not mentioned it before? my parents are kinda mad scientists and make a lot of weird but working things. mostly weapons to fight ghosts.

YA menace: cant believe ure only just dropping lore abt urself when we’ve been talking for so long

YA protag (retired): in my defense!!!! everyone here knows abt them so im used to not having to say anything!!!

YA protag (retired): people usually just Get It!!!

YA menace: moving on to my second point: having the weapons removed from ur house is whats concerning??? not the weapons being attached to ur house???

YA protag (retired): listen. i have spent p much my entire life with a house that doubles as an armed fortress. when i was a kid i was convinced it would come to life and protect me from monsters. this was also during my urban legends monster phrase and i scared myself reading abt them and needed the comfort

YA protag (retired): my POINT is that its normal for my house to have weapons. so seeing them gone is worrying!!!!!

YA menace: .

YA menace: ok fair enough. last point: is being replaced by a robot version of urself a concern in ur universe? bc it is here

YA protag (retired): no its not a legit concern here

YA protag (retired): probably. dont quote me on that. i had a cloning situation a few years ago

YA menace: a hwat

YA protag (retired): dont worry about it!!!

YA protag (retired): oh my parents are home. i need to talk to them. Bye!!

YA menace: gl!! let me know if u need rescuing from evil clone robots

RED: before I say anything else, Signal this is the price u pay for not letting me play with interdimensional tech after you let O have a turn at it.

YA protag (retired): um.

YA protag (retired): wrong chat???

RED: no this is the right chat. Hi Danny :)

YA protag (retired): hi???? who are u????

YA menace: oh my god

YA menace: this is NOT NECESSARY RED

RED: as I said. U did this to urself.

YA menace: 🙄🙄🙄

YA protag (retired): wait. did u… hack into this chat?? did u hack the phone????

RED: yeah lol.

RED: was a bit of a challenge but it was fun

RED: had to pull out the spare alien tech to make something that would connect

YA protag (retired): ok 1. tucker will want to marry u for ur brain

YA protag (retired): 2. ALIEN TECH?????

YA menace: i feel like we already talked abt aliens being real in my dimension

YA protag (retired): THATS DIFFERENT FROM HAVNG ALIEN TECH

YA protag (retired): hey red what do u accept as bribes

YA menace: u ask him while im right here????

YA protag (retired): u dont have the alien tech. red does. case closed.

RED: oh wow. Signal….. Wow.

YA menace: what? shut up. cant leave any of yall unsupervised i swear

RED: also, Danny I accept tech from different dimensions and also fun tasting sodas and energy drinks

YA protag (retired): done. i will have the goods ready next time i go to gotham, pls hook me up w alien teach

RED: do u just like new tech?

YA menace: hes a space nerd so he loves aliens

RED: do u just wanna meet an alien then?

YA protag (retired): CAN I??!!

RED: yeah I can pull something together for u

YA menace: omfg. Red can u go stop stealing danny from me

RED: up ur game Signal. We’re ALL going to try to steal Danny away

YA menace: how tf do i kick u out of the chat

RED: u cant 😇 im too good to be kicked

YA menace: put that halo away we all know what u really are

YA menace: 🤡

YA protag (retired): omg….. rip red ur cool reputation will be missed

RED: hey now. What happened to the bribes :(

YA protag (retired): ur still gonna get them but i am playing favorites

YA protag (retired): and signal is obviously my fave

YA menace: knew i could count on u to have my back danny 💛

YA menace: drop ur location red i just wanna talk

RED: lol no

RED: good luck catching me :)

YA menace: coward!!!!

YA protag (retired): there he goes…..

YA protag (retired): hey u know what i just realized?

YA menace: what?

YA protag (real) changed YA menace’s name to Light

YA protag (real) changed their name to Night

Night: rhyming buddies 😄

Light: i get the light bc of my powers but wheres the night coming from?

Night: bc i love space! the night sky!!

Light: ok thats pretty cute ngl

Light: give me some warning bc u do stuff like that its bad for my heart

Night: stop sweet talking me im busy feeling clever

Light: lmaooooo

Light: fair enough i’ll get back to it in 3-5 business days

Night: good 👍

Night: also is now a good time to ask abt red…. who was that….

Light: that was a nerd. dont worry abt him ok im cooler

Light: serious answer: hes red robin and hes another vigilante in gotham. we’re chill

Night: did u find his location for a throw down tho

Light: i can do u one better: i know where he lives

Night: oh???

Light: yeah his dad is my mentor of sorts so its not THAT impressive that i know

Light: i did steal all his zesti tho lol

Night: not sure what that is but im proud of u

Light: its just a drink that hes obsessed w. i love being a minor annoyance 😇

Night: shaking ur hand. its really the best thing to be

Light: hell yeah!!!

Light: hey got a kinda serious question for u

Night: whats up?

Light: have u thought abt ur future?

Light: like what u want to do in college, where u want to go after high school, what career u want

Night: i mean. some.

Night: not as much as my parents want me to.

Night: my sister goes to harvard and is super smart. im not that impressive so i keep disappointing them

Night: and with things recently… idk its hard. it kinda feels like they dont believe i have a future.

Night: not that they really see me in the present anyways

Night: sorry that was heavy. short answer is no! not really!

Light: that sounds rough. wanna talk abt it?

Night: not really but not talking hasnt done me much good

Night: my sister would want me to talk anyways. to someone trustworthy at least

Night: so if u dont mind listening…

Light: go for it!! im here for u danny

Light: emotionally at least. not physically but thats not by choice

Night: it can wait tho honestly. whyd u ask abt the future? something on ur mind?

Light: just feeling really lost rn is all.

Light: its like everyone around me has an idea of what to do with their lives while im still surprised that i made it as far as i have

Light: this is really the first time ive seriously thought abt my future and i have no idea what to do

Light: so i wanted to talk to u bc u help make things feel less terrifying

Night: signal…. ur going to make me cry

Night: u make me feel brave too

Night: ♥️

Night: i get what u mean 100% btw. u go so long sure that u dont have a future that u dont know what to do now that its here

Light: exactly.

Light: what am i supposed to do with my life? i dont want to be a hero full time, ive seen how that breaks people

Night: do u want to go to college? or do u just feel like u have to bc everyone else is?

Light: i do want to.

Light: my parents both went and theyve always wanted me to get a degree and be successful

Light: they may not be around anymore, not really, but i do still want to make them proud

Light: they cant see me graduate, but maybe when i tell them the next time i visit, itll reach the part of them thats still alive in their minds

Light: what about u? do u want to go to college?

Night: yeah. it was always my dream to become an astronaut. work at nasa and everything

Night: no chance its ever gonna happen now tho lol

Night: dying and the health problems that comes w that will do that to ya ✌️

Light: oh man that sucks

Night: yeah

Night: i might still study aerospace engineering tho. even if i cant be an astronaut, maybe i can help others get there

Light: thats a good alternative!! im glad u still have some idea of what u can do that can help u work at nasa and achieve part of ur dream

Night: we’ll see tho

Night: im not really feeling college atm. or life in general

Night: idk i feel…. stuck. like nothing will change even if i get out of illinois. it’ll just be the same stuff at a different place

Night: and i know itll take one visit from my parents to start ruining things for me

Night: i just… dont really wanna deal w that. ive kinda given up on life tbh i might as well just focus on the ghostly side of things. stay in the ghost zone more permanently

Light: i dont wanna judge or anything but that doesnt sound healthy??

Light: pls dont disappear into the ghost zone. i’d miss u.

Night: sweet talker

Night: i wont. dont worry. its just a feeling i get sometimes, that it’d be better if i wasnt in this world. if i could just go somewhere else

Light: hey. what if

Light: sorry if this idea is stupid or something

Light: but what if u lived here? in my dimension? u could establish a life and go to college here.

Light: a total fresh start

Night: thats. not a bad idea actually

Night: i would love that. wouldn’t it be hard to do tho? i dont exist there.

Light: we can make it work. its not like us gotham vigilantes are new to creating new identities/lives out of nothing

Light: i could ask for a few favors, do a few dubiously legal things. you could live here

Night: im planning to take a gap year to figure out if i wanna stay in the human world at all. i could spend that year in gotham before making my choice

Night: if u dont mind me asking this huge favor of u

Light: i dont mind at all!!

Light: danny i would love for u to be here are u kidding me. i’d do anything so we could be closer together

Night: thanks signal ♥️

Night: i made this all abt me im so sorry

Night: wanna talk more abt how ur feeling or ur plans for the future?

Light: maybe some other time. i wanna get to work on making sure u can live here for the year (and more! hopefully!)

Light: tell u what.

Light: we can talk more abt this the next time we see each other in person ok?

Night: deal

Night: im really glad i met u

Light: me too

Light: im here for u for as long as u want me around, honey

Light: u dont need to worry about a thing with me

Night: ure too sweet.

Night: im going to go now before u make me melt into a puddle of feelings

Night: ♥️

Light: ♥️

“Hey Babs, I have a favor to ask…”

#ghostlights #duke thomas/danny fenton #dcxdp #dpxdc #dc x dp #dp x dc #my writing #dc x dp fic #now to all my other wips! and then the next fic in the series!!#i did make the series on ao3 btw if u wanna subscribe to it #v excited to get into it. i have MUCH to say abt the fenton family and duke's indecision abt his future and duke and dannys relationship!!!

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the-firebird69 · 9 months

Text

Trisha Brown's Man Walking Down the Side of a Building

YouTube · Walker Art Center

Jun 9, 2009

youtube

Our son has been to this building but it was a bank and it's still a bank that's not an art center and there isn't one there so get a little curious why they were saying that and it's because he's walking and it's an art form amazing. Who's singing about our son and he's criticizing him and ridiculing him and he has no clue what he's saying about and he's an ignorant person he's also very annoying and he is oblivious to a lot of things and he's that stupid looking Italian like guy at Walmart who got run over by a truck in Shrewsbury that's right he's a retard and he's not a smart person and he doesn't understand what our son is all about and what he can do and why he's valuable for real he's a moron he needs to be killed like all these other morons. We did study let me know that hardly any of them can conceive of why he's valuable and we have been eliminating those people. Mostly people who get in the fights with him and yell at them don't have a clue and his mom knew about it and he's valuable but she still would get angry and yell at him because she doesn't understand what he's inventing she's a little clueless for one of the clans persons and they did express it to her this is better I can't understand Ken no he doesn't have a full grasp of it either so this is to show you what it's like for him it's a lot of people don't understand it these two in the apartment don't get it they're dumb Terry cheesman knows. Bja knows off and on and he's not reliable he's an imbecile these people are sick and I can't remember where they are lots of times and they do need help getting around and it's not right to have him with them but he's forced to be by everybody else and improved costly now Mac is off and on too he doesn't get it that much and he parked his bike so he can move it so I'll send it to get up and see if there's anybody working and get in trouble he thought and our son didn't get in trouble and nobody took anything but he tried to fake it and try coming back and on stupid s*** so he's all done we had a situation and he's f****** around trying to grab him cuz he thought that he was going to invade so he's all done okay that guys smoked. My son picked up on it just didn't have the energy to start yelling about it and people there knew and he said okay you're the witnesses have fun and I said this is great LOL crap this town is so they went outside instead of yelling the guy left they got it said oh he's going to come back so they left unless there's stuff there and they left the stuff there now they grabbed it and left it was just a lady really the other guy already left saw you leaving and said oh s*** and she didn't put it together I'll send you both together and said he's gone off to get the cop car and I'll be sitting here she probably just stay there true and took him 20 minutes and he figured out he was not there so he drove by came back when she left and there's no one there so immediately he thought she ratted I was watching he's just done with the laundry but what I'm paying that guy is completely toasted it's running this huge operation trying to kidnap her son and he's trying to get the military in here.

And we saw him he was facing these people down. But he moved a lot of troops to the inside they said you can go home or you can fight us. They managed to go back to their houses no it started fighting said you're small you can just wipe you out and Corky's a shitted and they got hit from ships so many times it was a joke and they pretty much all died. Her son said the lady get help and you said no I said get lost then because I'm actually using ships and she says okay. The whole thing ended with about 300,000 dead and they came in and looking for a hundred thousand accomplices who escaped.

It probably was about half original people here and that's a lot and it was 10 from the neighborhood so yeah we're down to 110 and that's pretty low.

We probably have a few more rounds of that and then they won't be able to do it and people will stop coming in that's because people will be blocked and we will have to come in by force and we shall as we already are. Right now our infiltrating pretty well and we will have a decent amount of people here shortly it's not a fun place to be rarely just anything to work right. And we're watching him have trouble everyday and just barely make it. There's a lot of problems here. And Mac is nuts and there's a kidnapper and one flew of the cuckoo's nest movie people say it already happened and yeah it happened Oregon and Washington State are closing shortly and our son says there's going to be a bunch of movies there and they're trying to keep it open by going after stuff and that's true and we think the movie happens later and it works for us. Most of the gifted people don't want to be over and don't want him to get his brain back and a lot of them are holding on to that and people see it and a lot of people don't like it namely back doesn't like it there's a large force of people that are heading here cuz what happened this morning and let's look like you're screwing around with her son and may have been a little cuz he's not very well but he was also running that program to stop the idiots and it was necessary they're freaking nuts and it's going to happen again if people don't stop them so we did not find an amusement at all right now gathering up north and it's to come here and just straighten these people out.

Couple other things are occurring these guys noticed that this is a heinous place that innocence and you're sending for people to come fix things and so they can have a presence so nasty nasty place and it's full of idiots.

-another thing is that they are figuring out nobody here wants to do anything. They tried pilot programs and small factories and most of the people don't want to do it. Minority morlock don't want to do it they don't want factory jobs and they don't want to be that part of establishment they have areas where they do that. There however helping to fix things and there's a lot of them doing it.

-there's a bunch of people who are ignoring everything that's going on for the most part then they're massively annoying there's a group going the wrong way and they fight other rebels and it's disgusting everybody is just going to take your territory and that's the way it is bja has discussed going after minority morlock areas and Trump areas right now in the eastern hemisphere bja is rolling over Trump and he's rolling over Stan and the Viking areas there's only one group left and is contemplating doing it and that's minority molok ... That sounds suggested a temporary structure between the garage and house for some reason they don't want to attach it so he decided he's going to try and figure out if you can do that and you're a bunch of idiots because my code he can bring the garage up the code and attached to the house and he can rebuild on the footing and foundation is there because his grandfather closed and he needs a good lawyer to sue the town for money because what they're doing is wrong and to sue to get a bill it might ruin the whole house and it might ruin his living situation but it's the right thing to do and said are you a lawyers to know I'm a construction professional and listed in who's who. You suddenly see something you had to be recommended so he's going to court no he's going to go to the town because he researched it in the code book and ordinances and it says it right there that he can rebuild and they're a bunch of dummies and yeah it's a trumpster doing it and the guy next door is an airhead a****** oh yes he's got to fight he has to go downtown and fight it's a lot of work we're going to publish him we have another subject

Thor Freya

Zues Hera

Olympus

#Youtube

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mandoalorian · 3 years

Note

How do you think each of Pedro’s characters would be while drunk? Like which ones do you think would get really chatty after a few drinks, which ones do you think would get moody or super horny, that kinda thing

Pedro characters and what they’re like when they’re drunk

Din Djarin doesn’t really go anywhere near alcohol; but he wasn’t entirely avoidant of it when he was younger. When he’s drunk, he gets a thrill for adventure and he has been prone to waking up in the middle of nowhere wondering what the hell happened last night.

Javier Peña… I think we all know he’s a brooding drunk. He questions all his life decisions and wonders where he went wrong. Get this man away from alcohol and pass him a tall glass of water, with extra ice. And some painkillers. Please.

Maxwell Lord is a happy/excitable drunk. When he’s with company, at galas and parties, he bubbles with confidence and charm; and the alcohol only helps with this. When he’s with you, and he’s drunk, he can get a little horny. But it’s cheeky and he doesn’t take himself too seriously which is a rarity for Max.

Frankie Morales would get so soft and cuddly and maybe even a little giggly. He’d pull you into his lap and nuzzle his face into your neck, holding you tight. He’d think of random things to do, like “hey honey I know it’s 2am but would you like to go get burgers and eat them under the moonlight in the middle of a Walmart parking lot?”— he says shit that makes no sense but it’s very endearing. He has the purest of hearts.

Joel Miller gets quiet and finds himself contemplating a lot, maybe even spiralling slightly. That’s why he tends to avoid alcohol and would prefer a mug of hot coffee.

Javi Gutierrez will turn on Paddington 2 and hysterically sob when he’s drunk. He’ll point at the screen with tear glazed eyes professing his love for the movie, and how it’s well and truly the most underrated cinematic masterpiece. He nudges into you and says, with desperation dripping from his tongue: “I know he’s fictional, but I love him so much. Why can’t he be real? I love him. I love that bear.”

Max Phillips gets horny, there’s no question about it. Maybe a little grumpy if he doesn’t get his own way. He dons a pouty face that will turn into a wicked smirk if you choose to play along with his drunken antics.

When Oberyn gets drunk, he wants to fight. He will pick a fight on anyone who dares look at him the wrong way. He will stab a dagger into you and then laugh it off and maybe ask if you’d be interested in fucking him back at the palace.

Dave York wont actually murder when he’s drunk. He knows it’s a bad idea. He will have the urge to engage in rough sex with you though. He’s a horny drunk. Kinda scary too, but you know he’d never hurt you.

Pero Tovar is a hungry drunk and he’ll devour absolute anything and everything in sight — including you, if you’re not careful.

Jack Daniels. I wouldn’t even trust this man to even hold my drink. There, I said it. The vibes are off. He’s definitely an overtly friendly drunk who makes a habit of getting very close to you, adorning you in pet names like “sugar” and “babycakes”.

#pedro pascal #pedro pascal x reader #maxwell lord #din djarin #frankie morales #javier peña #max phillips #agent whiskey #jose pedro balmaceda pascal

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slversoul · 3 years

Text

* lauren tsai, cis female + she/her | you know ramona pei, right? they’re twenty-three, and they’ve lived in irving for, like, eight years? well, their spotify wrapped says they listened to can i believe you by fleet foxes like, a million times this year, which makes sense ‘cause they’ve got that whole sitting at the bottom of a swimming pool while your lungs are screaming for air, the muffle of a tv from behind a closed door at 3am, ripping your dress as you crawl into your friends window thing going on. i just checked and their birthday is march 6, so they’re a pisces, which is unsurprising, all things considered. ( corny :D )

also sorry this got so long :(( really meant to shorten it but uh oh well. let’s get into it shall we...

TW: blood mentions, violence, arson, emotional manipulation, cheating, absentee parenting, parental fighting

ABOUT.

in her hand, ramona held an antique vase, white with blue detailing. passed down from generation to generation, it had been in her family for decades. not wanting to drop it, she held it as tightly as possible. held so tight that it shattered anyway, breaking into hundreds of pieces that cut her hand as they fell.

a trip to china to celebrate graduating college despite having two children in between, patti met a man and had a short-lived but passionate affair, only to return home to find out she was pregnant.

in the middle of a storm, ramona was born into a home longer than it was tall. patti gave her her father’s last name, some shallow attempt to connect her to a man and culture she didn’t know.

ramona’s early years float through her mind like a montage of memories. rolling in the dirt and eating worms. climbing up the trees that shadowed the driveway to their house, jumping from branch to branch. cutting her doll’s hair before cutting her own to match. the first meeting of patti’s new boyfriend. his hairy belly hanging out of his white wife beater as he fell asleep on the couch with the tv on.

patti loved her children. she loved trent, shirley, and ramona with her whole heart, but she was tired. working all day and all night, it was hard to keep tabs on them at all times. the three of them woke up early every morning, singing as they packed lunches, and they kept up with their chore wheel, and they ran barefoot for hours in the woods behind their house.

she first learned to swim in a grimmy lake a couple miles from her house. she’d sit on the bike with trent as he took them there. she jumped right in and paddled her arms until she learned to stay afloat. she’d go under and swim deeper and deeper until her siblings were screaming her name. she’d come up and laugh, knowing that her siblings cared for her.

her first friend was debbie. they were inseparable. holding hands on the playground. playing hopscotch after school. swimming in the lake by her house. as the days went on, debbie made new friends. less and less she was at ramona’s house, eating peanut butter sandwiches trent had made. a thursday afternoon, ramona stole a hershey’s bar from the gas station — deb’s favorite candy. after her mom tucked her in, she snuck out and ran to her friend’s, still in her pjs. she threw rocks at the window, and one was thrown a bit too hard, shattering the window. debbie’s screams woke the whole neighborhood. the cops were called. while she was escorted home, ramona was crying the whole time, confused as to what she did wrong. all she wanted to do was win her friend back.

she felt like she didn’t belong. she’d cut up pictures of her favorite actresses and paste pictures of her own face over theirs, hanging those portraits all over the walls of the house. if she lived like the characters on the tv, she would have to be real. that was real life. there were times when everything felt perfect. the feeling of relief that comes from placing the last piece in a puzzle. snapshot memories like sitting at the table with her siblings, swinging her feet because her legs were too small to hit the ground. her first kiss underneath the slide. running with her friend, crayons in hand as they doodled along the walls. she was inclined to freeze these memories, trying to prolong them and make them last forever.

so when trent left for college, ramona, 13 at the time, hugged him so tight and wouldn’t let go. her mother and sister had to pry her off of him, and she scratched him so hard she drew blood in the process. or when her first boyfriend broke up with her and two weeks later he had a new girlfriend. she took her nail polish and wrote ‘cunt’ on his locker, earning herself a week-long suspension. shirley only congratulated her. her mother was at work. her step-father was passed out on the couch.

she acclimated to high school easily with shirley there to guide her. but she quickly made her own friends. tamra’s parents were hardly home. her house served as homebase. ramona’s parents didn’t realize when she left. they were too busy screaming at each other over the static of the tv. she’d slip out and run to tamra’s, climbing into the window left open. they’d put makeup on like their favorite movie character and get in their nicest dresses, before meeting their girlfriends and boyfriends in the parking lot of the abandoned walmart, making a competition out of who could get the drunkest. they would head home and four or five of them would pile into tamra’s bed and sleep there until late afternoon.

ramona’s first serious relationship was russell. she swore they were in love until she caught him making out with someone else at a bonfire. she pushed him over and ran into the woods. two weeks later, they were back together. he was her dream guy. not even nicholas sparks could write a lead so romantic. he kept pushing her and pushing her because he knew she wouldn’t let go. until one night she got so mad that she smashed in the windows of his car and sliced up the leather interior. fits of rage were rare for her, but when they came around, they were all consuming. she was lucky he didn’t press charges.

life was a whirlwind of change the summer before sophomore year. shirley was packing up for college. patti was getting a divorce and moving them to irving, her hometown. ramona locked herself in her room. she wouldn’t come out for anything. the next day, when she still wouldn’t leave, shirley broke into her room, only to find it empty with the window wide open. a town-wide manhunt ensued, only to find her hiding up in a tree in the woods.

even though she was back home, she wasn’t really there. she wouldn’t speak. didn’t speak until the day shirley moved away to go to college.

despite her reservations, she liked irving. she had never seen the ocean before. ramona stepped up to the shore and looked out at the horizon. peace washed over her as the waves lapped at her ankles. there was a sense of security in feeling so small. she took to swimming in the ocean rather than the lake, searching for sea creatures big and small to befriend.

the tv was always on at their house. her mom couldn’t stand the quiet and neither could she. the house was empty with three less booming voices. ramona clung to her friends, using them as an escape for everything she didn’t want to think about.

surrounded by all of these people, she still felt alone, isolated, like they only loved a certain version of her. when her and patti left to meet trent to visit shirley at school, she cried the whole trip, thinking her friends would talk about her while she was gone, and that they would be closer when she wasn’t there.

but she seemed to always be there, forcing her way into every plan and every activity rather than be left out. it was suffocating, but she was usually kind, so people put up with her.

there were always the times she wasn’t kind. when she’d make passive aggressive comments about what a bitch someone was because they didn’t want her using their favorite eyeshadow. or when someone said they wanted space and she went on a tirade about how horribly they treated her because she didn’t want them to leave her -- a reactionary measure that always seemed to make everything worse. but then she would act out her favorite television episodes for her friends and they would laugh and clap along, forgetting her desperate attempts to fight change.

she couldn’t follow in her siblings footsteps. siblings she hardly hears from anymore, but desperately tries to reach out to. she stayed home and got a job as a swim instructor and a lifeguard in the summer. she sells handmade jewelry on the side. she’s floating and untethered, waiting to see where the tide carries her, only wanting to make fun memories from now until the end of time.

PERSONALITY.

um she’s a bit horrible? her heart is always in the right place and her intensions are good. she romanticizes literally everything. she wants to be loved so badly that she will look past any and all flaws <3. she often acts out because she is scared of losing her friends, and so she’ll be rude and passive aggressive. she wants them to feel like they need her more than she needs them. it’s all a weird power move in a way to keep her friends close. consumed by fomo. sometimes she can be outright mean and aggressive, but she really has to be pushed to her limit. doesn’t ever see what she’s doing as wrong. her older siblings were more of parents to her than her actual parents, and since they were all within 5 years of each other in age, her siblings never disciplined her because they were all immature. she is playful and untamed and just likes to do things because she can’t sit still. can always be found hanging out with friends and doing arts in crafts, or climbing rocks or swimming in the ocean.

HEADCANONS.

she can’t get rid of things. her windowsill is lined with empty makeup bottles and empty deodorants and flowers in old wine bottles. she wears clothes until they literally fall apart. she has a million posters and pictures covering every space of her walls and ceiling. her room is a collection of her life with piles of clothes on her desk chair and bras and sweaters hanging from door handles.

for three months, she wore a bathing suit every day. some days it was under regular clothes and others it was the only thing she wore. she liked it and thought it was fashionable. it was how she was most comfortable.

she can’t drive! only rides her bike!

only wears dresses now <3

cannot sleep without the tv on! likes to hear voices lull her to sleep and inspire her dreams.

speaking of dreams, she has a whole notebook filled with the time she decided to analyze dreams for fun. has a notebook per passion she wants to explore. is always trying new things or researching new things to try to find her forever interest, not coming to terms that she wants to run wild forever and live like a witch in the woods, completely unburdened by anything.

she has a scar on her knee and the palm of her hand. she was hiking up a waterfall with friends one time, and got dared to climb up some slippery rocks. needless to say, she fell and cut herself badly.

she likes laughing and running and swimming. she likes posters and nail polish and cozy comforters. she dislikes being confined indoors and people who go out of their way to be mean and rainy days. she dislikes the color orange and words she can’t pronounce and learning from a textbook. she likes bikes and she doesn’t like cars. she likes anyone with kind eyes.

#irvingintro

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creativeskullcreations · 3 years

Text

Outside chapter 17: Dinner at Home

New chapter, new plot. Plus got to see a little bit of Danny in this 'verse. :D

And plans are in motion now. What's gonna happen? Stick around to find out.

Stacy sighed as she got into the truck, undoing the professional looking bun her hair was in. Scout popped out of her bag when she set it in the passenger seat, gasping over-dramatically.

"Oh stop that. You're fine." Stacy told her, buckling herself in. She started the car, and got ready to back out of the parking spot.

"Says you! You aren't spending eight hours a day in a fucking bubble!" The puppet flopped out of the bag. "Are we going home yet?"

"No, we've gotta go grocery shopping." Scout groaned and threw one arm over her eyes.

"Aw man. I hate Walmart." She grumbled. "There's always too many kids staring at me."

"It'll be fine. We can go look at movies again before we get the food."

"Okay fine." Scout climbed up the door to look out the window. "But I want Pop Tarts this time! Real ones!"

"I think I can do that." Stacy agreed as she pulled into the parking lot. She reached over and grabbed her wallet before grabbing Scout, letting her settle into the hood of her jacket as they entered the store.

They checked movies, though there was nothing new out yet that they hadn't seen, and then went on to collect the items on Stacy's list. A quick checkout later and they were finally on their way home. It could not have come soon enough for Scout.

The way home from Walmart wasn't too long, maybe a ten minute drive on a bad day. So they got home quick enough, and Scout watched as Stacy started to juggle the many bags. She ended up having to sting them onto her prosthetic in order to get them all into the house, but did succeed in getting all the bags to the kitchen.

Will was downstairs, as he usually was at this time of day. Though, whether he was working on computers or his... hobby, was anyone's guess. Scout certainly wasn't going to go down there to check, either way. Instead she Jumped to her room, which was almost more of a closet with how small it was. But, it held a bed(in her own size!), a charging station for the Switch, and sometimes Stacy's laptop when she could be bothered to drag it in there. The walls were lined with multiple shelves with rope ladders connecting them, giving her a lot of storage space. Most of it was still empty, but she had collected a few things over the past several months.

Including clothes, apparently. Stacy had expressed concern with Scout running around with Mortimer's face on her shirt, and had enlisted Lisa to make her some new ones. Not that Scout could take her "shirt" off, of course, but she could wear other ones over it. Her favorite so far was a green one that said "eat dick and die". It was the best one, no contest, but Stacy wouldn't let her wear it outside the house.

"It's crude, and while I know you love that stuff it's not a good idea to wear that to my job. Someone could go to HR about it." Her Host had told her. Scout thought that was just stupid, but had agreed not to wear it to the workplace.

Stacy, meanwhile, worked on putting groceries away. It was good practice for her arm, especially in not crushing the groceries. She managed to mangle to bread only a little bit this time, and figured she was probably doing better than she usually did. Scout reappeared a moment later, wearing the green shirt Lisa had made her. She handed over the Pop Tarts to the puppet, who immediately tore into the box to grab one of the foil packets.

"It's almost suppertime, so don't eat too many of those." Stacy warned her, only to be met by a muffled grunt in response. She sighed, and just collected the stuff she needed; Kraft macs n cheese, premade burger patties, and some green beans for a vegetable. Maybe not the best dinner, but Will was still working and they needed some food.

As she got the stove going, a pan of water for the mac set up, and the pan for the burgers got oiled. She selected three patties and put the rest back in the freezer for another day while things heated up. The beans she dumped in a third pan on the back of the stove, adding a bit of salt for taste.

Scout watched all of this while softly crunching on the Pop Tarts. Months in the Host World, and she still didn't understand why Stacy wanted to cook. It was much easier and quicker to just grab one of the snacks laying around. Then again, maybe it had to do with that "nutrition" shit Will had told her about once.

As Stacy cooked she started typing out a message to Will on her phone, mostly to let him know dinner was done. He may have been just right in the basement, but she didn't want to go down there if she didn't have to. But as things finished cooking and she started to set the table, Will still hadn't come upstairs or even answered her text. And so, with a sigh, she covered the food and made her way downstairs.

"Will? It's time for dinner." She called as she reached the bottom of the stairs. No answer, but the muffled beat of heavy metal and the high pitched whine of a buzz-saw. She went through the door and was greeted with a mess. A wooden doll was stretched on the exam table in the middle, and Will was standing over it with the buzz-saw, shouting over the pounding music and whining noise.

"Hey, bitch! Make your boyfriend turn it down!" A red haired doll in a welded shut dog crate yelled over the music. She ignored it and instead punched a nearby gong with her metal fist. The resulting metal bang startled Will enough that he almost dropped the saw. He looked over and, once he spotted her, rushed to shut everything down.

"Yeah babe?" He asked, like he hadn't been threatening a sentient doll. The puppet in question was gagged, but sending a quite fierce death-glare at him.

"It's dinner time. Finish up here and come up, I made burgers." She told him, smiling a little as his face lit up.

"Score!" He quickly shoved the saw away before turning to take the doll off the table and put it into a cage. It swapped it's glare to her as he shoved it inside the crate, but Stacy just stared stonily back at it.

"Yeah, you keep trying that buddy. Nothing stops these two assholes. Ow!" The red headed doll sent Stacy his own death glare as she kicked his cage, knocking him over.

"Keep quiet." She growled out, not even looking at him. "Be thankful you're not tied up too."

"Yeah yeah. Go back to your favorite toy, Bitch." He huffed out. "Can't believe you keep that thing living up there with ya. If you had any kind of integrity, she'd be down here, in a cage, with the rest of us. Ow! Fuckin' shit would you stop that?!"

"Chucky, be quiet." A nearby doll in a ripped wedding dress scolded. "You know better than to antagonize her."

"What, it's true! That thing up there is just like us, but she gets to live in the lap of luxury! Hey!"

Stacy propped a foot up on the cage, tipping it onto it's edge and leaning down to glare at the toy inside. "You wanna stop talking now? Or do you want me to come back down here after dinner, Mr. Ray?"

The dolls said nothing more and Stacy righted the cage as Will finished up. The went back upstairs, locking the door behind them.

On the table was Scout, with half a burger patty in her mouth. She froze when the two Hosts walked into the room.

"Scout, seriously?" Stacy asked. "You're supposed to wait for us before you start eating."

Scout spat out the half eaten patty. "You were taking too long. I wanted to eat."

"You still should have waited. We only took a couple of minutes."

"But I didn't want to wait."

Stacy just sighed, and grabbed a bun out of the bag to squirt some ketchup onto. This was a fight just not worth getting into, especially when it wouldn't change anything.

Instead they made up their buns and sides, and were sat down to eat. Will prayed, and Stacy waited for him to be done before digging in. Scout didn't even wait, and just finished off her meat patty before digging into the macs and cheese.

The trio ate in silence, too hungry to talk at first. But eventually Stacy swallowed a bit, and decided she was sick of the quiet.

"So, you make any progress with the Gardner job?" She asked Will. Doll torturer or not, he did still have a "real" job, same as her.

"Eh, a little. Gotta ask who usually uses the computer, though. It's full of viruses from porn sites."

"Ew. Do they have a kid, or just a really stupid adult?"

"They've got a twelve year old girl, so she's the most likely suspect." Will swallowed another bite. "Miss Gardner is always away and working, like, three jobs so it's gotta be the kid or a friend she has."

"Who would go on a porn site? It's just naked sweaty Hosts, they're gross."

"Uh..." Stacy wondered how to handle this. And then wondered if Scout had ever gone on one of those sites, to know about that part. "It's... just a thing. Some people like to look at." She coughed. "Don't question it."

"Sure." Scout comped down on a green bean, and Stacy gave a soft sigh of relief. Scout was bad enough with her language already, and Stacy didn't want to risk her learning more words and terms.

Dinner ended soon after that, with Will loading the new dishwasher when everyone was done eating. He went back downstairs to finish up what he'd been doing. Stacy and Scout meanwhile went to play video-games. Well, Stacy played, while Scout watched her do quests from her lap.

"Go down that tunnel! Go! The left!" Scout pointed forcefully, waving her arms when she was ignored.

"No, that's where we came from." Stacy sighed, annoyed yet also a little amused. "Would you rather be the one playing?"

"No. I can't hold the controller." The Puppet waved her off before suddenly yelling. "You're not looting the bodies!"

"And you won't shut up." The Host muttered, looting a single body before going back to chasing the objective. "Are you sure you don't want to play?"

"How would I even fucking do that? Don't answer that."

"Okay." Stacy fought a few more Drauger. She thought about mentioning that she wouldn't really mind it, if Scout wanted to play, but decided against it. The body swap was still a sore subject, and she didn't want to ruin the good mood.

A ping from her phone, and she paused the game to answer a text from her brother. Being the nosy Puppet that she is, Scout tried to see what she was typing. "Who's that? I thought you didn't have friends."

"It's my younger brother, Danny. Doc wanted me to talk to him more, so I am."

Scout blinked. "You have a brother?" She thought back, tried to think if she'd ever seen any pictures of Stacy's family, but couldn't remember. Will she knew had a picture of his mother, but other than that neither Host talked about their families that much.

"Yeah." A couple of swipes, and she lowered the phone to show the Puppet a photo of a younger boy. He had the same reddish hair she did, but with much paler skin and brighter blue eyes. He was also wearing an absolutely atrocious looking sweater. "He's about eight or nine years younger than me, depending on who's had a birthday at that point."

"Oh..." Scout stared at the picture. "Why is he wearing headphones?"

"Those are part of his cochlear implants. He's deaf." She swiped back over to messaging to finish her text. "But he got the surgery at a young enough age that you pretty much can't tell. He's just got a little bit of a weird sounding accent."

"Oh, cool." Stacy finished her text and went back to the game, Scout watching quietly this time. "I have a brother."

Stacy fumbled an attack, but recovered quickly enough that she didn't die. "I'm sorry, what?"

"Yeah. And three sisters." She squirmed a little, playing with the hem of her shirt. "... They probably all have Hosts by now. They were a lot better at... fitting in, than I was."

"Oh." Stacy paused the game, considering. "I'm... uh, do you you wanna talk about it?"

"Nah. I just thought you should know about them." She settled back, and Stacy unpaused the game. "I doubt I'm ever going to see them again, anyways. They were all assholes."

"Sounds like it, if they were able to "fit in" over there."

-------

Canon huffed, doing her best to try and suck in air. This was the... she didn't know how many times she'd been almost torn apart by the spells Mortimer was working on. Not really, of course, but it certainly felt like it. Like there was a scalpel carefully slicing into each stitch, cutting the small threads one by one.

"Hmm, looks like things are going well. I think I'm just about done with this spell." The magician commented, ignoring how the smaller Puppet lay limply on the floor. "Yes this plan has come together splendidly! Soon your sister will be right where she ought to be."

"... Great..." She groaned, trying to force herself upright. She failed, falling back to the floor with a soft thump. "I... can't... wait..." She had to finish the rhyme, at least, no matter how much it hurt.

"Indeed." He smirked, then grabbed a phone off the wall. "Oh Riley, we're just about ready to start! All we're missing now is the star! So gather your tools and a henchman, and go warm up the car."

"Preparations have already begun!" She relayed with an excited giggle. "Oh, this is going to be so much fun!"

#hello puppets #outside #fanfiction #stacy stein #scout #riley ruckus #canon #will carson #mortimer handee

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slash-em-up · 4 years

Text

A Sinclair Family Christmas Vacation: Sinclair Bros Fluff

Catch me fuckin around with the movie canon to make my writing work... it’s free real estate! This is a Christmas present for the most beautiful goomba of them all, @slashermom who not only has a huge brain and giant meat; but is also one of the kindest most generous people I know. YOU’RE THE BEST M!!!!

——————————————————————

You’d officially decide that being ‘on the lam’ didn’t agree with you at all.

The cold truck-stop coffee in the cup holder seemed to look at you mockingly as your stomach gurgled in displeasure. You probably shouldn’t have had a second cup without food to go along with it; but all Lester had bought was a handful of Slim Jims and Cheetos and no one besides him was interested in that particular combination.

You’d been driving for more than ten hours straight today – for the third week in a row - trying to get your small family as far away from Louisiana as possible - all to protect the brothers resting in the seats surrounding you.

The escape from Ambrose and subsequent healing of the twins was something you wished to forget as quickly as possible.

Everything from hiding with Lester from the police, to Vincent’s cries of exhausted pain as you and Lester held him down, to snapping Bo’s dislocated jaw back into place were sanguine phantoms you could all see out of the corner of your eyes – but the only thing you could do was keep moving.

So that’s what you did. State to state, never staying anywhere more than a couple of days, hoping somewhere would feel like home again soon.

———————————————————————

Colorado was just as beautiful as you’d always imagined it would be.

The Rocky Mountains rose like colossal spires before you, stretching out as far as you could see. You appreciated the view quietly, letting the men sprawled across the bench seats in the back get as much rest as they could before one of them took a shift at the wheel.

A glance down at the thermometer showed the temperature dropping at an alarming rate, and as snow began to fall faster and faster through the frozen air, you were suddenly aware that the light jackets that were plenty of protection in a Southern winter wouldn’t do much good when contending with cold like this.

The last dollar bills you’d pulled from an ATM sat heavily in your pocket as you pulled into a Walmart parking lot and slipped out of the car as silently as possible- leaving the heat running and shushing Jonesy’s inquisitive huff with a quick snap of your fingers.

A couple hundred dollars and half an hour later found you burdened down with bags of proper winter clothing and enough McDonald’s cheeseburgers to feed a small army; trudging back to the car through the quickly accumulating snow.

———————————————————————-

“Vincent! Bo! Wake the fuck up!!”

Lester’s cries brought both twins out of their slumber like the crash of a gong.

Bo shot up, ready to fight whatever was causing his brother to panic, while Vincent carefully righted himself, still wary of the knife wound on his healing side.

The car was dark, but for a few slivers of grey light slipping past whatever was covering the windows.

Lester was touching the opaque surface with awe – eyes wide as he felt the cold seeping in through the glass.

“Is that… snow?”

“Aww hell.” Bo grouched “Not this shit again…”

Vincent chuckled at his brothers reactions. The sound ringing clear and unmuffled through the truck from his unmasked face.

The departure from Ambrose had necessitated quick packing by yourself and Lester - and Vincent’s masks had already been confiscated by the local authorities. It had been a rough adjustment for the long-haired man. Not being able to hide his cavernous deformity has sent him into silent depression for days.

The last time the twins had seen snow had been in 1974, right before Lester was born. The unprecedented shift in temperatures had brought a cool two inches of snow to coat the ground in Ambrose, closing shops and canceling schools until it melted.

Vincent remembered enjoying the way the white fluff had turned the streets into a sparkling kingdom, completely foreign and exciting to the young boy.

Bo had not enjoyed the snow in the slightest. This may have had something to do with their father waking them both up at the crack of dawn to shovel the walk; but he couldn’t say for sure.

Vincent’s train of thought was interrupted by Lester forcing the frozen door of the car open and immediately yelping in shock as a small hill of snow fell from the roof down the collar of his shirt.

Bo laughed at his brothers misfortune until his bruised jaw became too sore. He rubbed gingerly at his stubbly cheek until the pain abated, looking out at the snow in contemplation.

Having recovered from his snowy bath, Lester poked his head out of the car – giving a low whistle before twisting in his seat and dropping to the ground.

Another cry of consternation was heard from outside, and Vincent quickly opened his own door to see what the matter was. He leaned back in time to avoid getting snow down his own shirt, but gaped stupidly at the picture Lester made – buried nearly to his knees in freshly fallen snow.

“Is it supposed to get this deep?”

Before Vincent could answer Jonesy decided to join the fun, and leapt from the bench between Bo and him to launch herself into the snow.

The younger twin called out after the quickly retreating form of his dog before climbing out of the car and taking off after her himself.

“GET THE FUCK BACK HERE!!!” Bo roared from his seat in the car.

Lester was now chasing after Vincent who was chasing after Jonesy and Bo had had quite enough of these snowy antics thank you very much.

This was the scene you arrived back to, huffing and puffing from behind your scarf.

You stopped by Bo’s open door just in time to watch Lester trip over a hidden rock and face-plant into a snow drift.

“… what the hell?”

———————————————————————

It was Christmas Eve and you’d been snowed in.

An hour further inland and the thick flakes had started falling so hard that none of you could see more than five feet in front of the car.

Your saving grace had been the flickering neon of a 24-hour roadside diner, and once you parked, the boys had formed a single-file line through the thigh-deep snow, trying to make it easier for you and Jonesy to trudge along with them.

The warm building was manned by a single grey-haired waitress and two cooks. They were clearly surprised to see anyone braving the blizzard - all the locals having been wise enough to stay indoors during the storm.

Bo’s signature charm was enough to secure a place for Jonesy along with the four of you, and after a plateful of pancakes and potful of hot coffee everyone was feeling a bit more like themselves.

Despite the biting wind and whipping snow the mood was festive, as the TV played White Christmas and the cooks sang off-key Christmas carols from the kitchen.

Lester leaned back against the plastic booth seat and patted his stomach.

“Ooo boy that’s a good feeling. Real food. Wish ya’ll had let me stop and pick up that doe we saw – she’d make a nice stew right about now.”

Bo scoffed.

“Yeah, and where would we keep it genius? Let alone cook it. Nothin’ says ‘look at me’ more than a deer tied to your hood.”

You giggled and leaned against Vincent. The deformed twin was sitting in the furthest corner of the booth, making sure to keep his ‘bad side’ facing the wall and the beanie hat you’d bought him pulled as low as he could.

He offered you a small smile and took a sip of hot coffee, enjoying the feeling of normalcy, if only for a few hours.

The heated debate was interrupted by the waitress.

“You folks want a warm-up? It’ll be just about the only warm thing you’ll see tonight if you’re planning on braving the roads again.”

“Why Carol, you read my mind.” Bo offered the waitress a cocky smile, making her shoot him a bemused one of her own. He held out his mug and Carol filled it to the brim, snorting as Bo winked at her.

“Is he always like this?” She asked the group.

Lester and Vincent chuckled as you hummed out a sing-song “I’m afraid so… he’s a real lady-killer.”

Bo kicked at you from under the table, but you dodged and stuck out your tongue.

Vincent rapped his knuckled on the table, bringing all attention to him.

“Merry Christmas…” he said quietly.

A glance at the clock told you all that it was indeed officially Christmas morning.

You smiled, sharing warm looks with Lester and Vincent, returning the holiday sentiment. Bo looked around at you, at his brothers, at his family - bruised and broken, but somehow, still alive and together.

He raised his coffee cup as Bing and Rosemary began singing ‘White Christmas’.

“And a happy New Year…”

#horror movies #jessica writes #slasher fiction #house of wax 2005 #house of wax #bo sinclair #lester sinclair #vincent sinclair

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ericdeggans · 4 years

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A Tale of Two Videos: Why the Images of George Floyd Dying Broke the Nation

Why is the footage of George Floyd dying beneath a policeman’s knee the video that finally broke the nation?

I actually think the story of our current public chaos stems from two videos, brought to the public at nearly the same time, that outline both ends of a system which elevates white, moneyed people at the expense of everyone else -- especially those of us who are darker than blue.

In one, a white woman threatens a black man by telling him she will call the police and lie about him threatening her life. In another, a black man is pinned down by several police officers, pleading for help to breathe, until he dies.

One video shows the nightmare of overpolicing black bodies; losing your life because a store clerk thought you tried to pay with a counterfeit bill. The other shows a white woman well aware of the power that such overpolicing gives people like her when she calls 9-1-1. She knows – and assumes the black man she’s threatening also knows – whose interests will be defended, possibly with lethal force, when officers arrive.

Amy Cooper’s confrontation with Christian Cooper and the death of George Floyd have revealed the full scope of white supremacy non-white people live with every day in America. We have been talking about it for a long time; I wrote a book about it in 2012. But it is a reality many other Americans will not believe, until someone grabs a cellphone at a fateful moment, records it, and shows it to them. Again and again.

Because we have seen these videos before. We saw Philando Castile, a black man filmed in his last moments by his girlfriend, shot by a police officer during a traffic stop. We saw John Crawford, a black man who was going to buy a pellet gun at WalMart, shot to death by police within seconds of their arrival at the store after a 9-1-1 call. We saw 12-year-old Tamir Rice, playing with a toy gun in a park, gunned down within seconds of a police car driving on the scene.

We saw Levar Jones, a black man who survived being shot by a cop during a traffic stop at a gas station as he was retrieving his license (the reason the cop stopped him? He was driving without a seat belt just before turning into the gas station.)

Eric Garner. Darrien Hunt. Botham Jean. The list of black people hurt or killed by police under suspicious circumstances is long and infuriating. How can a white college student suspected in the murders of two people who inspired a nationwide manhunt get taken into custody without incident, while a black man accused of passing a bad $20 bill winds up dead on a street, killed in broad daylight while cellphone cameras captured it all?

Beyond the frustration of the rising body count, there is frustration at the high price America demands before it will believe there is a problem in the first place.

People of color constantly have to rip open their wounds to prove to white America that racism is killing us. The videos are a blur of bottomless tragedy; a parade of pain where victims are often left screaming at officers: What did I do? Why won’t you help me?

And every time a new video emerges, black America asks that same question of the nation.

The challenge we face is summed up in a statistic from my book. I quoted a September 2011 study which found 46 percent of Americans believe discrimination against white people had become as big a problem as discrimination against racial minorities.

A study published in November 2017 by NPR, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and Harvard University’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health came up with different numbers. In that study, 55 percent of white Americans said discrimination against white people exists and 63 percent of white Americans said local police were just as likely to use unnecessary force against white people as non-white people.

This is the question at the heart of so many political and social conflicts in America: The fight over the very existence of systemic racism and prejudice.

It’s one reason conservative-oriented Fox News Channel is often so tone deaf on issues of race. Many of the channel’s pundits resist the idea that systemic racism against people of color is a serious issue. Lots of conservatives have decried George Floyd’s death; but the question of whether that death is a result of a few bad cops acting out or a result of systemic overpolicing and overpunishing people of color is the real dividing line in this crisis.

When Fox News anchor Tucker Carlson interviewed Ted Cruz on the unrest in Minneapolis, both men were careful to note they were horrified by the actions of one officer, while extolling the bravery of most police officers. But what about the notion that police officers work inside a flawed system that can shield bad cops and make it tougher for good officers, regardless of their race, to stop something terrible as it is happening?

This “one bad apple” idea – a notion expertly dismantled by comedian Chris Rock years ago – was also advanced by White House National Security Advisor Robert O’Brien Sunday on Jake Tapper’s CNN show State of the Union.

“I don’t think there’s systemic racism,” O’Brien said during one exchange with Tapper, before praising “99.9 percent” of police officers. “But you know what, there are some bad apples in there.”

Given all the videos we all have seen of black people hurt or killed unfairly by law enforcement in recent years, that sure seems like a lot of bad apples. And again the question rises: How many videos do you need to see, before you consider another possibility? How much pain leads to contemplating another explanation?

Of course, Donald Trump has only made a volatile situation worse. I think his actions are summed up by a phrase I read or heard someone else say about him years ago: He can’t help saying the quiet part out loud.

So when Trump tweeted about the unrest in Minneapolis on Friday, he called protestors “thugs” – a word sometimes used as demeaning code for unruly black people – and dropped the phrase “when the looting starts, the shooting starts.” That’s a saying traced back to a speech by 1960s-era Miami police chief Walter Headley, often accused of racist policing tactics during the civil rights era.

In another tweet, Trump promised protestors who came close to breaching the White House fence would be “greeted with the most vicious dogs, and most ominous weapons,” invoking another terrible image from the 1960s, when segregationist police would use attack dogs to break up civil rights marches.

The quiet part. Tweeted out loud.

As cable TV news was filled with reports on looting and unrest in cities across the country, I was struck by a tweet from celebrity comic Chelsea Handler, who posted “Something for all white people to think about. Reflect on our privilege and ask ourselves if we’ve ever had to protest for the lives of our white brothers and sisters.”

With all respect, I suggested something a little different. Perhaps white people should find one element in their lives that supports or reflects white supremacy: that Fox News-loving relative, the pal who posts terrible things on Facebook or the boss/coworker who says awful things about non-white people when he thinks they aren’t listening (guess what: we usually know, anyway).

Find one element and do something to address it. Do what you can to dismantle the system where you can.

Beyond that, governmental leaders of all stripes need to learn that platitudes and the “one bad apple” philosophy will not satisfy people who feel like an endangered species in their own country.

Don’t make us rip open another wound to prove something we have been telling you for a long time. Maybe this time, when black people say they need help, you could just listen. And then help.

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lovelytonys · 5 years

Note

PLEASE GIVE ALL OF YOUR THOUGHTS AND FEELINGS AFTER FFH

I LITERALLY DON’T THINK I CAN DO THAT BC IT’S WILD UP IN MY BRAIN RN BUT LET’S ATTEMPT SOME BULLET POINTS

•it was SO fun. Everyone got me so scared to go see it but instead I had a blast. Sure the emotional parts were a little rough but what no one told me is that the movie put the pieces back together too! It felt very healing as far as Endgame sadness and no one told me it would be like that. Plus I thought it was so funny and Peter & his friends & teachers were GOLD

•I love this MJ. GOD do I LOVE this MJ. Zendaya is wonderful. “Awkward teen” is such a common archetype that it never seems to feel real and miss zendaya waltzes in with her impeccable acting instincts and realistic quirks and mannerisms and just nails this teenaged character with complete authenticity.......wig

•in the same vein I’m head over heels for this version of petermj GOD YES I don’t want perfectly romantic high school couples because things don’t WORK like that!! Why did things ever work like that!! Plus like every version of Peter Parker is a big nerd anyway it’s just unrealistic to expect him to have any game, you know? I love watching Zendaya & Tom play off of each other bc they both have SOLID instincts honestly they’re a joy to watch when they share the screen

•jake gyllenhaal man,,,,,jake gyllenhaal,,,,I don’t even know where to go with this. Mysterio was a cheesy level of evil, like he was ridiculously theatrical, and it would have been cheesy and ridiculous in less skilled hands but INSTEAD mr jake SNATCHED my WIG. He was so goshdarn charming in the first half that I caught myself wanting to like him (when I wasn’t mentally challenging him to fight me in a Walmart parking lot for being such a huge jerk) and that was all well and good but once he got to let his villainy loose? WOOOOOO okay first of all that SMILE that goshdarn SMILE the second Peter left the bar haha oh MAN he just, like, flipped a switch, you know? WILD. Riveting. mr jake’s teeth get 20 Oscars ALSO his villain speech? I can’t get into it there’s a lot to unpack but his delivery was so great. SO great. I loved how he was generally reserved and charming even when evil so that the moments when he had an outburst were scary. Like any time when he got angry and started yelling felt like a Moment bc of how he held back for the rest of it. He was always so deliciously menacing too like ugh sometimes I just love a good old fashioned villain, you know? He’s not terribly complicated, he’s pretty much just evil! Simple as that! Woohoo! And his dying line gave me CHILLS it wasn’t even just the line even tho the words are chill-enducing enough but it was his DELIVERY that just SENT ME like the way he’s trailing off and ESPECIALLY that creepy & deranged little smile AAAAHHHHHHH

•while we’re on the last line I get chills when I think about it bc when remembering the moment you fit the mid credit scene in with it and it’s like,,,,so THAT’S what that means,,,,THAT’S what the smile is for,,,,,THAT’S why you’re so pleased that anyone will believe anything,,,,,W I L D

•and I thought it was so cool how they updated Mysterio. He’s a special effects guy, right? That’s how the story goes when you look back at his origin comic, yeah? So to see him working with modern special effects instead of the practical effects of the era of his debut was so cool. Seeing Jake Gyllenhaal walk around in a Marvel movie wearing a morph suit was kinda meta and I kinda dig it. I thought it was all very creative

•if you had told me years ago that Back in Black by AC/DC would be the thing to set off an emotional outburst for me I literally would not have believed you but here we are

•no joke I was doing a relatively good job of holding it together (and relative is good for me) until AC/DC started playing, then I kinda lost it

•TOM HOLLAND SMASHED IT

•HE JUST SMASHED IT IDK

•THE SCENE IN THE PLANE. YOU KNOW THE ONE. 3000 OSCARS FOR MR TOM real talk I would kill to see him do a legit drama piece and I also can’t even imagine what he’ll be doing when he’s older. I mean. He’s pulling this out in a summer blockbuster of all things before he’s 25.....imagine what he’ll be doing if he gets to the point of having, like, decades of experience behind him

•the part when he was building his suit.......I cried

•as far as the plot...on one hand? Predictable every step of the way. On the other hand? I find a weird satisfaction in watching a movie that flawlessly fulfills basic beat structure and yeah it would be boring if every movie did that but it’s okay sometimes

•the first scene. the first. goshdarn scene. I have never truly known what it was like to laugh and cry at the same time

•MJ AND A MACE!!!! YEAH!

•I like how this movie begins with the question “is Spider-Man the next Iron Man” and proceeds to answer it with “no. He’s Spider-Man and that’s more than good enough.” Tony’s shadow is a huge one to live under and I love that the movie explicitly places Peter outside of that shadow. Like, yeah, he’s similar to Tony in some ways but at the end of the day? He’s his own hero. It’s highlighted even more by the fact that Mysterio is his foil and Mysterio wanted to be the new Iron Man.

•I don’t know what I was expecting from the second credit scene but that......wasn’t it. The two credits scenes threw me through more loops than the entire actual movie did

•J Jonah Jameson got a bigger reaction out of me than anything else in the movie by far

•I swear to you the words “pizza time” were uttered in this film I just don’t remember where

•I literally thought I was going to die when looking at Peter immediately after he got hit by the train

•the consistency with the limp throughout the whole second half really heckin Got Me and also how he touched his ribs in the final battle bc they were injured from the train accident. It’s the little things like that that make Peter seem more human & genuine

•WHEN HE SAW HAPPY AND WAS AFRAID OF HIM BC HE DIDN’T KNOW IF HE WAS REAL,,,,THAT HURT MY GUYS,,,,POOR BBY BOYYYYY but then when he hugged Happy I thought I was going to have a meltdown don’t worry I didn’t

•the scene where Mysterio seriously gets in Peter’s head, you know the one, good golly was that overwhelming. Like. I was feeling the need to jump up and start pacing the floor, you know? It was really well done and it stressed me outtt

•Iron Zombie had me feelin a little queasy if I’m being totally real here lol I was not feelin good about that one

•it took me the whole 2 hours to bounce back from “even dead I’m the hero” oh my god that was SO Tony. I can hear it in his voice. I miss him.

•can’t believe Tony is still out here fully protecting Peter with a whole army of drones from beyond the grave wow the irondad JUMPED out

•BUT OVERALL I FEEL SO GREAT AND EXCITED ABOUT THIS MOVIE WOOOOOOOOOOOOO

#far from home spoilers #spider-man #spider-man far from home #peter parker #mysterio #quentin beck #iron man #tony stark #michelle jones #tom holland #jake gyllenhaal #zendaya

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aswallowssong · 4 years

Text

Second Child, Restless Child

Chapter 5 - The Devil in Me

@valkyrie-5583

Read on AO3

The second part of a gap fill for 1x13, Poison. TW for illness, hospitals, and drug mentions. Also super minor character death?

After JJ, Reid, and Hotch learn a little more about Kit's family, the nurse-out-of-water feels the effects of the field crash over her. As she and Gideon continue to butt heads, she wonders how this is ever going to work. She's helpful in her own right, but if she can't get the respect and the support of the whole team, how will she ever belong?

The ride to the hotel was comfortable enough. Reid and Kit sat in the back while JJ sat in the passenger seat, and the communications liaison took her chance to pick and pry when Kit couldn’t escape her questions. She’d been trying since the moment Kit had been shuffled onto their team, but Kit had been able to avoid it thus far. She hated ‘get to know you’ questions, as they reminded her of terrible high school teachers and their lack-luster ice breakers.

“So, Kit, do you have siblings?”

Kit nodded, though the woman couldn't see her. She’d play along, of course, and this was an easy question. She loved talking about her siblings.

“Oh, yeah. There’s nine of us.”

Reid made a sound next to her that sounded like choking, but when she looked he wasn’t dying. He was instead, astonished.

“Nine?”

“Yeah,” she said easily, “nine.”

Hotch knew that, he’d read her file, but he asked anyway, “What number are you?”

“Five,” Kit said before smiling, “sort of? There’s Wash, and then Ginny and Seese. Ari, and Monty, and I. Then George, and Alex, and Lina’s the baby.”

“That puts you sixth,” Reid said, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world, and Kit was suddenly ten years old.

Didn’t we just have a pseudo heart-to-heart about being treated like a child?

Kit tried not to roll her eyes before she remembered that the only one who knew about Ari and Monty was Morgan. And, probably Hotch, of course.

“Ari and Monty and I are triplets,” she said evenly, “and technically, I was born second of the three of us.”

“Wow,” JJ said, “triplets? I can’t imagine what that would be like.”

“It’s great, actually,” Kit assured, not being able to stop the spreading smile on her face. “We get along really well. Monty and I are actually monozygotic twins, which means-”

“Monozygotic twins, often called identical twins, are the result of one egg fertilized by one sperm that experiences postzygotic division.”

Reid’s voice was rougher than before, telling of the fact that the medicine she’d given him had worn off, as he effectively cut her off. She tried not to take offense at him interrupting her and telling her about her own fetal development. He’d interrupted others in several conversations. Regardless, she felt her lips tug into a frown.

“Exactly. My Gran used to say that Monty and I have twin souls, though my mam and dad have always said that Ari was one half of the soul, and we were the other half, you know, together.”

JJ turned all the way around in her seat, grinning as she listened to Kit speak of her family.

“So, Ari and Monty are nicknames, right?”

Kit nodded again, frown dissipating.

“Right. My parents immigrated from Ireland, and they spoke Irish, or Gaelic, better than English. They wanted to stick out less, or so they say, so they, well,” she thought for a moment before she couldn’t stop the small giggle forcing its way up her throat. “They thought it would be a really good idea to name their kids after the states. Like, literal American states.”

“Like Dakota,” Hotch offered, and Kit wrinkled her nose.

“Yeah, like Dakota. My family all call me Kody, but I prefer Kit.”

“And Monty is, what? Montana?” JJ asked, now looking determined. As if it was some kind of game.

Kit nodded again, saying, “Exactly. The thing is that some states, like thankfully Dakota, are names. But some…” She shrugged lightly, “Not so much.”

“Can I guess?”

JJ, not surprising to Kit, was giving off a competitive energy that would rival the one she got off Morgan the few times they’d raced at the track.

“She could just tell us,” Reid offered, but JJ just scoffed.

“No way, Spence. You’re just afraid you’re going to lose.”

Reid narrowed his eyes at her, and though Kit could feel his slight trembling next to her, fever burning once again, she knew he wasn’t going to back down. He even gave her and JJ half a smirk before saying, “You’re on.”

In the end, it was Hotch that came up with a surprising upset. Reid was vehemently denying that ‘Seese’ was a nickname for Tennessee, and JJ was still upset that Reid won the “guess what number I’m thinking of” game and got to go first.

“No way that’s fair,” she’d complained when Reid gave a small, raspy noise of victory and guessed that Wash was short for Washington, obviously.

Hotch had gotten lucky and gone second, securing that George was actually Kit’s younger sister, Georgia, and had gotten that Lina was Carolina, the baby of their very large family.

“You went after Carolina right away, Hotch,” JJ said, laughing at Reid’s dejected mumbling. That was the second time he’d lost a game that day.

“Familiar territory.”

“Is that so?” Kit asked, raising an eyebrow at the stern man in the driver’s seat. “Did you work in their field office?”

“No, I worked in their Walmart,” he said simply, turning into the parking lot of their hotel. He didn’t add or give any more about it, and they didn’t pry, though Kit had to fight a grin at the idea that their stern unit chief could be secretly southern.

-----

Hotch checked in and passed them their keys, Kit taking hers with slightly wide eyes. She’d only stayed in a hotel a few times, and the idea that she was now left to her own devices in a hotel she’d never been in, in a state she didn’t know, really got her mind racing. She realized quickly that no one else was feeling the anxiety she was. They were all familiar with this, and it seemed to be easy for them to turn off the part of their brain that was working on the case.

Instead, she was running her brain, trying to think of anything she knew that could help them catch the unsub that was hurting these people. She dealt in people. People were her thing. People were the reason she had been assigned to the pilot position she was in. The reason she was in New Jersey when she could just as easily be home, getting ready for bed while she listened to Ari sing around their apartment as he got ready for his shift.

They would give the profile. The team would give the profile and she would watch with JJ. She would try to help however she was asked, and she would keep an eye on Reid while being sensitive to not treat him like a child.

She followed JJ and Reid up to their floor, Hotch having stayed to give the others their keys, and nodded and responded politely when JJ had wished her goodnight. Reid hadn’t done as much, though she had missed his attempt to get her attention before she’d closed her door behind her.

Once inside she drew what could have passed for her first real breath all day. Between Reid’s sniffling, apologizing to Morgan, the jet, the hospital, taking care of Reid without making him feel like a child, and tiptoeing around Gideon- Which didn’t even work! - Kit was stretched too thin. With the door shut, the only emotions she could pick up on were her own. Which, honestly, we’re never just her own.

Ari and Monty called them Big Feelings; them being the swelling and surging of her own emotions that were kept buried to grow as the day went on. She could tend to the needs of others and keep her own feelings in check, but the thing about Kit was that the more she dealt with others, the more the feelings being buried in her chest compounded. Try as she might, she couldn’t really differentiate between what she created herself and what she took from others.

Most days were perfectly fine. It wasn’t like everyone around her was melting down simultaneously, every single day. But some days, when there’d been so much and there were so many people and so many situations, she absolutely crashed.

In retrospect, she held on for longer than she thought she would, the deep, even breaths she was drawing distracting her from the energy that built. Her fingers working to unzip her go bag. She pulled out her pajamas, shedding her jacket and cardigan before making her way to take a shower.

She took out her contacts. Shed the rest of her clothes. Took her shower. Brushed her teeth. Braided her hair.

She kept her breathing even through every motion, changing into her pajamas and settling cross legged on the bed. Her fingers of her right hand tapped lightly on her thigh while the fingers of her left pulled tightly at her braided, sopping wet hair. The right braid was dripping clean shower water onto her shoulder, the left sending a slow cascade of water down her arm. She sat for five minutes that way, breathing evenly, staring at the blurry white wall in front of her and willing herself not to crash. Not to crash. Not to crash.

And then, she crashed.

All at once, everything in her body felt like it was vibrating. Her breaths came in hitches that were shallow and choppy, her chest heaving sharply with each one. Nothing like the pace she’d been trying to keep for that last fifteen minutes. They sputtered and cut each other off, tears running down her cheeks and falling in large drops, adding to where her braids had already left dark wet spots on her pale yellow tee shirt.

It wasn’t loud. It had never been loud, regardless of the way her mind seemed to be screaming. She was way too warm, warmer than she had been in the steaming water of the shower. Her chest ached with a flurry of feelings that flashed and passed so quickly she couldn’t hope to name them. It left her helpless, hands clenching and unclenching, fingers occasionally scratching up and down her arms or thighs. The emotional overload left her with internal mania and, other than her fingers roaming and tears flowing, external shutdown. She didn’t have to bury anymore. The emotional zombies of the last eighteen hours could come to light.

Ari always let her come down on her own time. Sometimes he held her tightly, and sometimes he left her to her own devices. Most of the time he stayed in the same space. On the couch opposite her. Sat at the kitchen table as she sat on the counter. Cross legged at the end of her bed. He didn’t try to have her put the thoughts or emotions into words. He didn’t press her or tell her it would be okay. That she was okay, because really, she wasn’t. He just let it pass.

She knew it could be as short as ten minutes or as long as forty five. One time, an hour, but that was the first time she’d lost a patient. The time didn’t matter as much to her. Ten or sixty, the number of minutes always felt like an eternity. She didn’t know how long it would take this time, sat in a New Jersey hotel room. Especially when on top of everything else, she felt so completely alone.

As far as Kit was aware, it could have been seven minutes or seven hours when the thing that finally grounded her back to the real world was a steady three-wrap knock at her door. Her hands stilled instantly, the deepest breath she’d taken since the wave crashed over her almost making her dizzy.

Her head swiveled towards the door, and it was a moment before her mind could catch up. She was in her hotel room. Someone was knocking on the door.

Get up and open it. Come on, Kody. Stand up and open the door.

She swallowed thickly, wiping a shaking hand down her face. The bed was close to the door, and while she sat staring at the door, the knock came again. Three wraps in rapid succession. Her brain started to catch up, the distraction pulling her out of the waves she was drowning in.

Hotch? Could it be Hotch? Did someone actually get poisoned this late at night? Gideon was right, she shouldn’t have said anything. Now it was going to be her fault and there would be disappointment and anger and annoyance and-

Stop.

It took longer than it should have for her to pull herself off of the mattress, shaking her head quickly as if to expel the internal debate. Everything in her chest told her not to get up, but her head won and allowed her to quickly scramble from her spot and pad across the room.

In hindsight, she should have checked to make sure she didn’t look like a complete disaster. She never had to worry about that at home, so it hadn’t crossed her mind how she might be perceived as she stood there; pajamas on, wet hair, flushed, tear tracks and red eyes against shaky pale skin.

She squinted at the person on the other side of the door once she all but flung it open. Tall. Dark hair. Tee shirt. Skinny. To her untrained and straining eyes, she was unsure who she was looking at.

Before the other person could speak she held up her hand, still trembling, and turned to dig in her backpack. The glasses she pulled out were seldom used, but she had lost a contact on three separate occasions in the last year, and she wasn’t going to fly half-blind into a crisis.

She turned, unceremoniously shoving the thin frames onto her face, and looked at her offender.

Spencer Reid. Pale as ever, clearly fever flushed, and looking at her with glassy-eyed concern.

“Are you crying?” is what he ended up asking before stifling a raspy coughing fit into his elbow.

Kit narrowed her burning eyes at him, but there were no lasers in her stare. Confusion, and exasperation, but not the lasers she’d set on him all those hours before.

“Do you need something? I thought you went to bed.”

He cleared his throat and winced, swallowing as if it was physically painful before he came up with, “I did. I was. Um, I mean, I was try-trying to? I, um.”

His hands came up to wring together at waist height, his eyes looking everywhere but at her. Uncomfortable. He was uncomfortable. Probably from having come into her personal space where she was very obviously having a very private meltdown.

“You were trying to… oh.” It took longer for her to piece together than it should have. Her mind was still foggy, trying to stay above the waves she’d just been so jarringly pulled from. “You were trying to sleep and you couldn’t.”

“Yes,” he supplied quickly, “Because, well,” he sighed, a hand going to run through his hair. He curled his arms over his chest then, clearing his throat again. “Because my head is pounding and I’m freezing and my throat hurts. And the stuff you had earlier helped. And I was… I was wondering if-”

She did cut him off now, having been careful not to up to that point, but she could feel his discomfort growing the longer he tried to explain himself. He was struggling to be vulnerable, and she wasn’t going to make it worse by allowing him to trip over himself longer than necessary.

“If I had more.”

“Yes.”

“Of course I do, sit down,” she supplied, gesturing awkwardly to the bed she’d just been sat on, taking a breath and straightening her shoulders.

She never had to turn back on after she’d let herself shut down. It was always, always in times where she knew she could be either asleep or a zombie for the rest of the night, and she was trying to fight back to functioning as she dug through her backpack once more.

She heard him take a moment before settling down on the bed, sniffling a few times in a way that made Kit want to scream, but instead just caused her to dig more frantically.

Blue pills. Blue pills. Come on, Dakota, where are they? Why is your bag such a mess? Why are you such a mess? Reid probably thinks you can’t handle this, and how he’s going to tell Gideon, and they’re going to tell Hotch, and-

“Are you okay?”

Her hands froze in between a wrist brace and a bottle of ibuprofen.

“Yes,” she said evenly, though her whole body tensed, “Why do you ask?”

“Well,” he said quietly, “You’re breathing picked up, and when you answered the door, you were crying. And the longer you look through your backpack the more agitated you seem.”

It was quiet for a moment. Kit didn’t resume her digging, but instead turned to face Reid at his spot atop her bed.

“What happened to not profiling one another?” She asked after a moment.

His eyebrows pulled together, searching for a moment before his head tilted, tongue flicking over chapped lips before he offered, “It’s okay if this is hard. Gideon always says that-”

“It’s not,” she said, effectively cutting him off for the second time in the five minutes he’d been in her room. She didn’t care at all what Gideon always said.

He looked unconvinced, suspicion flooding off of him, in addition to the sick feeling he’d already been sending her way.

She could feel her hands clenching, and she closed her eyes for a moment.

He has no idea. He has no idea so you can’t be upset with him. He doesn’t know anything about you. He probably thinks you’re just as incompetent as Gideon does. Don’t give him any fuel for the fire.

“It’s not hard,” she said, just a bit softer than before. “I’m perfectly capable, and I’m tired. Here.”

She turned and pulled the blue blister pack out of her backpack, hand suddenly knowing exactly where it was.

Naturally.

“Take these. I’ll give you the other ones in the morning.”

Reid looked down at the pills for a moment before he worried at his lip, eyes nervous as he asked, “You’re really not going to tell Hotch?”

“No, Reid, I’m really not going to tell Hotch. And I won’t tell Gideon either. No one knows. Go to sleep.”

She watched as he took a moment before nodding at her, standing up and heading for the door. He was halfway through before he turned and shifted his weight on his feet.

“Dakota?”

I might kill this one. Just this one.

“Reid?”

“Thank you,” he said softly, “again. I’m sorry that I intruded.”

She watched him for a moment before she shook her head. She realized that the trembling had stopped, and she didn’t feel as foggy anymore. Having a distraction, even if the distraction sniffled and asked probing questions and used her first name, it had helped.

She let herself give him a small smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes.

“It’s okay, that’s why I’m here. Get some sleep.”

He nodded gently, returning her half smile with one of his own.

“Goodnight.”

She watched as he closed the door, the room becoming isolated again. She settled back on the bed, only allowing herself to be lost for a moment before she shut the light out.

-----

“We believe whoever poisoned these people was motivated by revenge,” Hotch was saying. They’d met early to give the profile, but it was later than they’d wanted when they were finally able to gather all the officers.

They were all pushed to one side of the room, sitting on various surfaces or standing in the middle where they could easily be seen. Kit had sat on top of the desk Reid was sitting in, wordlessly pressing a cup of tea into his slightly trembling hands. They’d found a moment when they weren’t being watched for her to slip the pills into his hand, but she’d only been able to find a drink just before Hotch had begun.

Morgan was continuing what Hotch had started, and Reid took the moment to slip the medication into his mouth, chasing it with a too-large sip of too-hot tea. Kit had to hold her snicker at the face he pulled.

“The randomness of the victimology - average people in an average-sized town... All points to a local resident.”

“We know that people who poison for the purpose of revenge primarily act alone,” Elle continued.

“However,” Hotch added, “he may have manipulated someone close to him to assist him. The unsub usually disposes of these accomplices when they're of no further use to him.”

Kit listened as they bounced around, all taking a part of the profile to deliver. She paid attention as closely as she could, taking in everything that was being said, and wishing that she could be able to see what they all saw.

She focused on Reid saying, ”This individual was savvy enough to use rohypnol to obstruct our investigation, erasing the memories of the victims of how they were poisoned,” and she felt herself nodding along with him, listening closely to his voice and watching to see if anyone had picked up on what she’d been trying to help him mask.

So far her efforts seemed successful, and she let herself feel good about that. She could take care of this team. Hotch’s faith was well placed.

She focused back on the profile again, her heart sinking when the emotions in the room shifted dramatically. Gideon had said that a lot of people could die, and everyone had flooded the room with varying levels of anxiety.

A lot of people could die, and they had limited time to find him.

JJ came up behind them, drawing the attention of the profilers around her. She whispered quietly to Hotch, though it was quiet everywhere now, and her words caused quick movement in every body that filled the small room.

“We have a leak.”

The small television in the station was turned on immediately, grainy and nearly not loud enough for them all to hear.

“That's right, Steve. Neighbors became aware something was wrong when a local Beechwood restaurant closed early. From inside sources, we learned that representatives of the CDC began testing food inside the restaurant.”

Gideon spoke over the woman for a moment, a wave of agitation flying off of him. “If you're gonna report the story, name the restaurant.”

“Unconfirmed, we were told that some of the food had been tainted with hallucinogenic drugs,” the reporter continued, and Kit understood exactly what Gideon meant.

“Name the restaurant,” he said again, and Kit found herself standing from her spot atop the desk. Spencer raised an eyebrow at her, but she gravitated towards the TV wordlessly.

“Until we do confirm all of this, we will not release the name of the restaurant. We'll only say it's a Beechwood area favorite. This is Suzanne Whang reporting live from Beechwood. Back to you, Steve.”

“Damn it,” Kit said forcefully, surprising herself a bit at the venom in her words. She rarely swore in English, and she went a bit pink at the thought that Irish would have probably been a more appropriate choice.

Gideon was glaring daggers at her, not really looking like he cared much what she had said, but that she’d spoken at all.

“They didn't name the restaurant,” JJ said, not paying attention to anyone else. She sounded dejected, but kept her tone more even than Kit had.

“What is it?” Detective Hanover said, looking confused.

“Call the local hospital, make sure they know what's coming. Excuse me,” Gideon said. Kit started to move before she realized he had been talking to JJ.

Heat welled inside of her. He was asking JJ to contact the hospital when she was standing right there. She understood, of course, that JJ’s job was communication, but she was the one that had been running point with the hospital. Especially the day before, when she and Reid had nearly spent the whole day there. The pink of her face flushed to red, and her hands clenched.

“Where do your 911 calls get routed?” Hotch asked Hanover. His calm determination set her straight back into the throws of what was happening. The restaurant. No name given. People were going to freak out, no doubt in her mind.

“There's a county phone bank. They contact first responders, the fire department.”

“Alert them, too. They're going to need additional personnel and any other backup you've got. Auxiliary cops. You're going to have to call them.”

“But, why?”

Though Hotch was stoic and calm, Kit could feel the tense energy he now had. It would be a mess to get everything under control once the storm hit.

“Because we're going to have a heck of a time just calming people down and we really don't need the confusion to interfere with our investigation,” Hotch answered, calm never failing.

“Do you want me to start making those calls?” An officer asked readily, and Kit watched as that set Hanover right off the edge.

He moved to the center of the room and started yelling, hands in the air.

Here we go.

“No, no, no, no. Hey, hey! Everybody please shut up for a minute. Tell me what this is all about.”

There was a moment where everything stopped. JJ stood with the phone at her ear. All eyes were on Hanover, mostly surprise and confusion around them.

Then the phones started. They all rang, loud and overlapping, deafening almost everything else in the air.

There was a moment before Gideon simply said, “Panic.”

It took a moment for there to be any sort of control. People were answering phones left and right, including Kit, who was back at the desk she and Reid had started in.

“We can’t comment at this time, thank you,” she said for at least the fifth time, hanging the phone up and looking at Reid.

“How are you doing?”

“I’ll be far better when this is over,” he said, taking a sip from the tea she knew was probably now lukewarm at best. He got up and they moved to where JJ and Hotch were, following the lead of Elle and Morgan.

“I just got off with the hospital. They're swamped with over 50 potential poisonings from local restaurants, but no hallucinations,” JJ said, hanging up the phone and looking around.

“Another poisoning?” Morgan asked.

“Or maybe more hysteria,” Hotch

“We've looked into any civil or criminal complaints from employees, ex-employees, Suppliers, regulars at the cafe. Not one good lead,” Hanover said.

He was dejected. The inability to control what was happening to his own town was what Kit guessed had him giving off such a feeling of hopelessness.

“There's got to be somebody connected to that cafe who pops as a suspect,” Gideon said, rifling through some papers.

“Morgan, you wanna go back there, see if we can find another angle?” Elle suggested.

“Couldn’t hurt,” he said.

The two of them turned to leave, and Hotch looked at the three still standing there. “JJ, you, Colghain, and Reid go to the hospital. See if any of the poisonings seem legit.”

-----

When they got to the hospital, JJ and Reid both waited for a moment outside the door. Kit stopped in her tracks, following their lead. There was an awkward moment before she said,

“What are we waiting for? Is someone meeting us?”

JJ shook her head, giving Kit a small smile.

“We’re following you. I made contact with the hospital, but I’m not sure exactly who is the best point of contact in an ER overrun like this. I assumed you do.”

Kit couldn’t help but give a small smile at the warmth that flooded her chest at those words. She and JJ hadn’t talked a lot, but between their guessing game in the car the night before, and the even temper and apt social skills she showed, Kit really respected and liked her. She was good to work with, and clearly knew how to read a room.

“I do. Stay out of the way as best you can and stay close, there will definitely be gurneys going in and out.”

They walked in, flashing their badges as they crossed back into the busy ER. There were gurneys as Kit had predicted, and she was almost overwhelmed by the amount of panic flooding the small ER hallway they found themselves in. She could feel JJ and Reid close to her, and she stopped the first nurse she saw.

“Hi, I’m Nurse Colghain with the FBI,” she said quickly, using a different title than she normally would. The nurse was holding a file, she didn’t have the moment Kit needed to assure her competence.

“The FBI has nurses?” The young nurse said, clearly a little skeptical, but antsy as she glanced towards her assumed destination.

“Yes, ma’am,” Kit said, speaking as she would to any of her nurses back at the clinic. “Where can I find your Head?”

“Nurses’ Station. Nurse Leah. Tall, dark hair. Excuse me.” She scampered off, but Kit had all she needed.

She led JJ and Spencer to the Nurses’ Station and spotted a tall, dark haired woman who was exuding calm, though just beneath it was clear uncertainty.

“That’s her,” she said to Reid and JJ without turning around. “Excuse me,” she said louder, “Nurse Leah?”

The woman turned, searching for a moment before she spotted the out-of-place agents.

“Yes? Who are you?”

“I’m Nurse Cloghain with the FBI. This is Agent Jareau and Doctor Reid. Can we have a minute?”

Nurse Leah shook her head quickly, scowling a bit as the three agents bellied up to the Nurse’ Station wall.

“I really can't talk right now. We just got hammered,” she said, starting to walk away.

“Listen,” Kit said, moving to follow her, “most of these food poisonings are probably psychosomatic.”

“What makes you think that?” Nurse Leah said, her attitude changing to one of skepticism and annoyance.

“A news broadcast just reported a local restaurant was poisoned. Now, it would be a huge coincidence if there was another poisoning right after that aired,” JJ said, her voice shifting from the friendliness she’s used outside the hospital door to the political tightness she used with reporters.

“So what do you want me to do?” Nurse Leah said, her eyes darting between them.

“Help us find out which cases, if any, are real,” Reid said, posture straight, not a tremble in sight. He either felt great, or he was masking incredibly well.

“People are coming in with all kinds of complaints,” she said, “But, there's at least one case that isn't psychosomatic. She's barely breathing.”

Reid’s eyebrows pulled together, “Can you take us to the doctor that's treating that patient?”

Nurse Leah nodded, moving to take them with her. Reid and Kit moved to follow, but JJ started to walk away.

“I'll call Hotch,” she assured, and the two others nodded, letting her disappear down the hallway.

The doctor they were passed off to took them down the hallway and towards the patient’s room, talking all the while.

“When the patient got here, she didn't remember anything about her day. And her speech was so slurred, I could barely understand her.” He said. His body language was favored toward Reid once he’d been introduced as “Doctor,” but they hadn’t gotten to clarify that he was not that kind of doctor. Still, Kit hoped his genius brain could make connections faster than her medically inclined one could.

“It sounds like rohypnol,” Reid said, “Did you test her?”

They walked into the patient's room and Kit’s eyes went wide. She was coughing desperately, the oxygen mask over her nose and mouth doing little to prevent it.

“She was positive for rohypnol, negative for LSD. But, we're running more tests because rohypnol alone doesn't explain her symptoms. She presented with nausea, difficulty swallowing, labored breathing. She was also having trouble moving her legs.”

“How long had she been sick?” JJ asked.

“She didn't know. I could barely understand her when she first got her. Now, she can't speak at all.”

“And she’d been coughing like that the whole time?” Kit asked, glancing to the bed. Her heart ached at the panic she felt coming from the ill woman.

“Yes, consistently.”

“Do you know any biological agents that have similar symptoms: Ricin, Sarin gas?” Reid asked quietly, his back turned to the bed.

“You think this is a biological attack?” The doctor said, keeping his expression even.

“We can't rule anything out,” Reid said, eyebrows raised and arms crossed firmly over his middle.

The doctor took a moment before he said, “I'll order a few more tests.”

Hotch arrived not very long after, meeting Kit, Reid, and JJ outside of the patient, Lynn Dempsey’s room. They bounced around ideas, but nothing seemed to stick. At one point Kit used “finding the restroom” as an excuse to dig out more pills for Reid, and the two of them did a seamless pass off in front of the decrepit coffee machine.

It wasn’t twenty minutes before there was a call for Hotch, the unit chief pulling the phone to his ear.

“Morgan, it's Hotch. What's up?”

JJ’s voice came out sharp, having been looking into Ms. Dempsey’s room. “Guys, I think she's trying to say something.”

The three of them flooded into her room, getting close to the bed as she leaned towards them.

“The en,” she said. Her voice carried almost no weight, though the urgency was obvious.

“The end?” JJ asked, looking at Reid and Kit. Kit shook her head, and Reid leaned forward.

“She may be incoherent from the lack of oxygen,” he said, eyes scanning. Kit moved closer to the bed, leaning in just a bit.

“Can you say it again, Ms. Dempsey?” She said gently. The tone and pacing she used with patients came second-nature to her, and it didn’t take any effort to shift from self conscious BAU draft to Head Nurse.

“It’s the en-” Ms. Dempsey tried again before being cut off by coughs that sounded as if they were already choking her.

“Doctor!” JJ called quickly, panic flooding from her, and Kit turned towards the other two agents.

“Give her some space,” she said, not allowing wiggle room in her tone. She started moving back herself, drawing the other two with her. “Here, let’s give some room.”

The doctor came in, setting down the new tox screen and working quickly over Ms. Dempsey. It was a few minutes before things calmed enough for Kit to ask calmly,

“Doctor, do you mind if I look at that?”

She gestured to the tox screen, to which he nodded quickly. Kit picked it up and started rifling through it, listening as JJ asked, “So, what are the chances that she's not poisoned, that maybe she just got some bad food?”

“Highly improbable. Chances are basically nil,” he said.

Hotch came to stand beside Reid.

“What is the rate of survival?” Reid asked.

“This dose,” the doctor said, “without anti-toxin... Zero.”

“What is it?” Hotch asked.

Kit’s voice came quickly and quietly, eyes darting up from the tox screen. “Botulism.”

There was a moment of quiet before a Nurse said with seriousness, “Doctor, her BP is dropping rapidly.”

“It's sepsis. Give another amp of epi,” he said.

“She's going into defib.”

“She's crashing! Get the paddles.”

Kit watched as the nurses and doctor worked over Ms. Dempsey. She’d been on her share of crash teams, but she’d never just watched and done nothing as a patient started to code right in front of her. They were paging a code blue, starting CPR, and everything in her screamed that she should be helping. She should be doing something. She should be moving, or speaking, or reading charts and screens and percentages. Something. Anything.

The problem was, she didn’t know if she was allowed. She had no idea what the rules were about jumping on a code in a hospital that wasn’t yours. She’d never had to. She’d never talked to Hotch about anything like that. Her job was with the BAU, only assisting on cases that were medical.

This case was medical, but where was the line?

“The test run is over,” Reid said, swallowing hard and heading out of the room.

He jarred her from her thoughts, and her eyes went to follow him as he walked out.

JJ followed immediately, but Kit stood there for a few extra moments before she felt a hand on her shoulder.

She turned away from Reid’s receding frame, looking up to see Hotch. His eyes held the same soft kindness they always did, and he gestured over his shoulder wordlessly.

Kit took one last look at Lynn Dempsey, the doctor and nurses performing CPR on her lifeless body, before turning and following Hotch out of the hospital room.

Kit tried not to think of Lynn Dempsey as a patient dying in a hospital. She tried to think of Lynn Dempsey as a person outside of oxygen masks and heart monitors and charge paddles.

It wasn’t helping that they went back to the police station, where the profilers sifted through her life in an attempt to see if she was a murderer.

“Lynn Dempsey was an executive assistant. She has no expertise with chemicals. She doesn't fit the profile of the unsub,” Gideon said, leafing through some of Dempsey’s information.

Morgan didn’t quite agree. “But the CDC found both LSD and rohypnol in the candy she was replacing at the bank.”

“She must have been an accomplice,” Hotch said, “and when the unsub finished using her to further his attack, he killed her with botulism.”

“So, what does that tell us about the unsub?” Gideon said, finally looking up and around at the team.

Reid leaned forward on the desk, furthest away from them all. “He's far more sophisticated than we realized,” he offered.

Elle was getting frustrated, and she looked at Reid as if she was lost.

“Why is that?”

Reid looked as if he was going to respond, but suddenly cleared his throat in a way that made Kit’s eyebrows pull together. It sounded to her like he was trying not to cough, a small bit of anxiety rolling off of him as she connected the dots.

“The botulism toxin is the deadliest substance known to man,” she said, biding time and giving every bit of information she knew about what exactly the toxin was. Maybe it would help somehow. If anything, it would buy Reid some time. “It blocks acetylcholine receptors, paralyzing the body until it’s essentially choked death.” She looked around, watching as all eyes were on her. Reid had gotten himself back under control, and she gave a small shrug before she ended her spiel. “Without an antitoxin, a lethal dose will kill you in thirty six hours.”

The quiet that followed her information was nearly choking to Kit herself, and she could feel the variety of reactions to her speaking up. Morgan was surprised, but that was all. There was nothing hostile there. Hotch and Elle were processing and spinning again, trying to connect it all together. Gideon was either annoyed or unimpressed, neither of which made her feel any better.

But Reid was grateful, which helped.

“How many people have access to this stuff?” Elle asked seriously, looking at Kit with anticipation.

“I don't know,” Kit said, and she turned her eyes to Reid.

“In New Jersey, quite a few,” he said, “It's the pharmaceutical and chemical capital of the U.S., so that the toxin can be ordered in the form of botox through any chemical or biological lab or botox clinic. It has to be purified, but any chemist or lab assistant has that capability.”

“So, we're looking for chemists and sophisticated lab assistants?” Elle asked.

Reid nodded. “Basically.”

Morgan spoke up from the side of their group. He was the closest to Kit, and she was thankful that he had taken station there. While she tried to stay one step away and isolate, taking as infrequently as she could, it was reassuring that Morgan would choose that spot and keep her in the loop.

“Okay, wait a minute. If the unsub is a chemist with access to the toxin, what'd he need Dempsey for?”

“Well, we don't know yet,” Gideon said, “But, she worked for a, she worked for a company, called, uh,” he started rifling through the papers, “Hitchcock Pharmaceuticals. I think there's a good chance the unsub worked there, too.”

Hotch nodded. “Well, let's start with people who fit the profile who've had a recent stressor.”

Morgan called Garcia, and she found them some names to work with. Kit tried to pay attention, but Reid had settled himself down in one of the desks again, fingers trembling slightly, but nothing else giving him away.

While the team spoke she found herself walking to make another cup of tea, eyes darting to her backpack as she steeped the bag. She retrieved what she was looking for quickly, the honey stick having been tucked in there by Monty as a “just in case” item. Kit had laughed at her then, but she was glad for it now.

When she came back and set the tea down next to Reid, making sure the rest of the team was distracted by the case, Elle was saying, “All those innocent people at the bank.”

Gideon didn’t seem concerned, and that bothered Kit to no end.

“They meant nothing to him. He'll take out anybody to forward his cause.”

There was a moment that Kit wasn’t in the precinct anymore. She was at the hospital, watching Lynn Dempsey die before her very eyes. Her chest constricted, like she was being squeezed in the grasp of a snake. Grieving a woman she had never known.

“Like Dempsey,” she said.

Gideon didn’t seem to feel the weight of her comment the way she did, continuing on as if she’d barely spoken.

“Like Dempsey, and eventually, even himself. Until he finishes taking out his primary targets.”

“We have no idea where he's going to strike next,” Morgan said, expressing the frustration we all had, “For all we know, he could poison the local reservoir.”

“Elle, the local cops haven't gotten any leads out of Dempsey. Why don't you go to Hitchcock and see if you have any luck,” Hotch said, causing Elle to perk up a bit.

“Yeah,” she said, nodding and moving out of her seat.

-----

“This is my job!”

Kit was not yelling. She was speaking to Hotchner with a whole lot of heat, hands clenched by her sides so they wouldn’t tap. Wouldn’t tug. Wouldn’t give away how frustrated she was.

“Colghain, this is going to end in arrest, or suicide. You aren’t needed on this takedown, the profile doesn’t state that he will do anything to hurt anyone but himself.”

“But what if you’re wrong?” she said, “What if the profile is wrong and something happens.”

“The profile isn’t wrong,” came a voice over her shoulder.

Kit closed her eyes and took a deep breath. Gideon was not going to make her lose her cool. Not like in Delaware. She was having a conversation with Hotch, and Gideon could think anything he wanted, but she would ignore him if it meant keeping her words and tone relatively professional.

“I would never forgive myself if something happened to any of you.”

She meant it, and Hotch knew that. She knew he could see it in her. He was the best profiler of them all.

“Nothing is going to happen. I appreciate your dedication to your position, but this is my decision. We’ll have local SWAT with us, and we’re going in last. This will end in an arrest or a suicide.”

Hotch spoke as if to say “and that’s final” once he was done. His tone wasn’t demanding or forceful, but she knew he wasn’t going to give in.

Her shoulders finally relaxed, one hand coming up to rub at her opposite bicep.

“Please be careful,” she said finally, to which Hotch nodded.

“We will. I’d like you to check in with Reid. He’s looking… off.”

“I already did,” she said simply, full intention to keep her promise. “He’s okay. Said he hasn’t been sleeping well.”

Hotch didn’t look convinced, but let that be her answer without more pushing.

“Alright, well, maybe check again. He won’t ask for help.”

“Don’t you have an unsub to go face without me?” She said, and though she was still frustrated, she allowed herself to push it down with the other emotions, giving him a small smile.

He nodded, turning on his heel and setting off down the hall.

Kit took a moment to breathe before she turned back to the precinct. Gideon wasn’t standing behind her. She had no idea where he’d gone, actually.

Wonderful. He wants to be confrontational and Hotch isn’t here anymore. He didn’t let you go on the takedown. Did Gideon get to him? Does he not think I’m capable?

“What are you thinking about?”

“Cac!” Kit jumped, turning towards the slightly flushed assailant behind her. “Reid! That’s the third time you’ve done that.”

“What does that mean?” He asked, voice nasal.

She tilted her head, pulling her eyebrows together as she thought about his question. It felt vaguely familiar.

“What?”

“What does that mean? You spoke Gaelic.”

“Oh,” she said, smoothing out her pants that were not wrinkled, and ignoring the fact that her tongue itched to correct him. Her parents called it Irish, and most people called it Gaelic, but she wasn’t going to get into linguistical nuances with Reid. “I don’t know what I said. You scared me, I reacted.”

“Cac.”

She raised an eyebrow at him, jaw dropping slightly. “What?”

“Cac, that’s what you said. You said ca-”

“Stop!” She all but yelled, her hands coming up in front of her as if to physically stop him from talking. “Okay, yes. I got it. That’s what I said. Please stop saying it.”

He looked confused by her outburst, sheepish even. “Tell me what it means.”

“It’s…” She trailed off, feeling the embarrassment creep across her face. “It’s rude. It’s a rude word.”

“Like a swear word?”

“No, a rude word. Like, that a child would say.”

“Are you trying to tell me that it’s a… bathroom word?”

Kit watched as Reid’s face morphed into a smirk. Was he teasing her? Reid could tease? She hadn’t been involved in any kind of situation that would warrant Reid teasing her. Was he being friendly?

Don’t think too hard about it. He’s Gideon’s protégé, and Gideon doesn’t like you.

“No more questions!” She snapped quickly, turning back into the precinct and stalking as far away as she could. Maybe she could find JJ and be of use somewhere with no Reid and no Gideon until the others got back.

-----

“He let us take him,” Hotch said. “He didn't kill himself. Doesn't fit the profile of a workplace killer.”

He, Gideon, Reid, and Kit were standing in the viewing portion of the interrogation room, the four of them staring through the glass at Hill. Kit hadn’t gotten a chance to ask Hotch why exactly she was needed. She figured Elle or Morgan would have been a much more appropriate choice.

“Sometimes you miss the mark,” Gideon said, hands pressed firmly on the top of the room’s table. “Let's be glad we did. He's our best chance at stopping the next attack.”

“Well, his lab had traces of botulinum toxin, but no clues as to what he's up to next,” Hanover said, walking in the room to stand near Gideon. He sounded listless, and Kit could feel the shift in the room when he entered. He was in over his head and he knew it.

Hotch didn’t look towards him, instead staying trained on Hill. “Our only chance is to make him tell us.”

Hanover didn’t seem convinced. “You think he will?”

“Once caught, these types usually do. They want the whole world to know about their brilliant plan to destroy their enemies,” Reid offered him, not sounding very impressed by Hill’s archetype.

“In case he doesn't give it up, let's play every angle,” Gideon said, angling his body away from where Kit stood at the wall. He wasn’t talking to her, that much was very clear. “We need to re-examine everything we know about this guy.”

Reid shifted on his feet, pressing his hands into his pockets. “I'll check witness reports, forensic evidence, anything that might be a clue to this guy's plan.”

Gideon nodded as Reid turned to him for approval. “A lot of lives could be at stake,” he said softly.

“I can help you,” Kit offered, keeping her voice level. She wanted to check her notebook for Reid’s medicinal distribution times more than she thought she would be helpful with his paperwork search, but she didn’t want to be in the room with Gideon anymore, and she wasn’t really doing anything just standing around.

“No,” Hotch said, now looking away from Hill and towards her isolated spot. “Colghain, I want you here while Gideon and I speak with Hill. Watch from this side of the glass. I’ll need your input when we’re done.”

“Hotch-”

“Sir-”

Gideon and Kit went to speak at the same time, causing Reid’s eyes to widen. He took his leave from the room quickly, and Hotch raised a hand to stop both Kit and Gideon before they could continue their grievance.

“Colghain will stay here and listen in while we interview Hill. Watch him closely.”

Kit hadn’t even been able to look at Hill during their short time on their side of the glass. He was a killer, and to her knowledge, she’d never been in the presence of one before. How one person could feel they were above so many others, that their feelings and their lives were more important, was lost to her, and she had no desire to look at him at all. Let alone watch him for the duration of his interview.

The room suddenly felt very cramped, though they had lost both Reid and Hanover in the moments of situational discomfort. Hotch’s eyes darted between Kit and Gideon, narrowing slightly as the physical tension in the far-too-small space between the two.

“Colghain,” Hotch said again, now gaining her attention more fully. “I want you at the window. Feel him out.”

She took a breath that seemed to catch in her chest, not able to get deep enough to make the feelings of discomfort go away. Her head nodded of its own accord, and her feet seemed to follow suit, moving towards the window and finally looking at the man sat there.

He wasn’t much. Not remarkable. He looked like a dad she would have seen at afternoon pick-up in grade school.

But he isn’t a dad at school, Kody. This man hurt people. Killed two of them, and was trying to kill others. He was using drugs and toxins to harm people. What sort of sick person could do that? Not much of a person at all.

The hatred sat like a weight in her gut, and while it was obvious Hotch and Gideon had no benevolent feelings for Hill, it didn’t belong to either of them. It was all her own.

Her eyes narrowed through the glass, and she took a breath.

“Okay. Yes, sir,” she said. She heard even footsteps pad out the doorway. Her eyes didn’t move from Hill as she continued mumbling, now directly to Hill though the glass, even though he couldn’t hear her. “Go dtachtfadh an diabhal thú.”

“What did you say to him?”

Gideon.

“Sorry?” Kit said, eyes never moving from the window. She’d thought Gideon had left as well and was following Hotch, not staying behind to watch her.

“What did you say? To Hill.”

She took a breath and turned, eyes narrowing at the older man in front of her. He didn’t want her there anyway, she might as well tell him.

“Go dtachtfadh an diabhal thú,” she said, now louder. Each word was enunciated clearly, eyes not moving from Gideon’s. If he wanted to know, she’d tell him. “It’s something my Gran used to say to people with tattoos after she came to America.”

“And what does it mean?” He asked, mouth in a hard line, eyes searching her for an answer.

“May the devil choke you,” she said simply, voice never wavering.

There was a moment of silence between them. Kit didn’t shift. She didn’t fidget or rock her weight. She didn’t move her eyes from his.

“Where’s yours?” He finally asked.

She raised an eyebrow at him, eyes never becoming less severe as she tried to gauge his question.

“My what?”

“Your tattoo? Where is it?”

She let out a breath, shaking her head. She hated the way Gideon felt so smug. How it seemed to circle in the air and choke her.

“There it is,” he said, not waiting any longer for her answer.

“There what is?” she responded, not able to keep the bite from her tone.

“Trouble,” he said simply. His eyes never left hers.

For a moment she considered pushing. Considered defending herself, and telling him that she wasn’t trouble. That she was doing her job, and that he should just let her be.

She didn’t get the chance, though, as he turned on his heel and followed where Hotch had left the room.

Kit stood, staring at the spot Gideon had just been for a long while before she heard Hotch’s voice through the speaker.

She turned back to the glass, watching now as Hotch and Gideon spoke to Hill. She took in his facial expressions. His body language. The feel of his emotions, though it wasn’t easy through the glass.

She did her job.

When they finished and reentered the room Kit was in, Hotch stood next to her, looking in at Hill.

“I called JJ. She, Morgan, and Elle are headed to the party now.”

Kit nodded once, eyes still searching Hill as he sat across the glass.

“What did you notice?”

She took a breath, calmer now that Hotch was there, and that she’d had something productive to focus on. “He’s really… sweaty. That probably sounds stupid, but it’s strange to me. He didn’t give me a feeling of regret. He seemed sure of his decision, I guess, until you started to talk about taking his case. Then less sure, but he was sweating before that.” She waited for him to stop her, but he didn’t, so she continued. “He started fidgeting a lot there at the end. I don’t think it was guilt though. More like… discomfort. Like there was something else bothering him other than the two of you doing your interrogation.”

Hotch nodded, turning to look at her now. “He was sweating before we started?”

“Yeah,” she said, “I’m sure of it. That’s one of the things I look for when I’m watching for patients in distress.”

The three agents watched Hill for another minute before Hotch spoke to Gideon, saying, “What is it?”

“You're right,” Gideon said, “It doesn't make sense. Why didn't Hill take his own life when we had him surrounded?”

“Guys, I think we have a problem.”

Reid walked into the room as he spoke at a brisk pace, all sense that there was something wrong with his health pushed aside by his serious demeanor. “I've been looking over the victim reports. One of the victims that was originally dosed was severely diabetic.”

Kit’s eyes went wide, though Hotch didn’t seem to see the issue.

“And?” He asked.

“He wouldn't have taken any candy from the bowl at the bank,” Kit said, eyes flicking to her, and then back to Reid.

He nodded at her and said, “All of the victims were there. We know that, but how were they poisoned? I started looking at the security footage.”

He turned the laptop he was holding. On the screen was the film from the bank, in which Lynn Dempsey was meddling with the candy bowl.

“We know Lynn Dempsey replaced some candy from the bowl. Look how close that jar is to the deposit envelopes. Now, watch this.” He clicked a button, and the film zoomed in to show Lynn Dempsey’s hand on top of the stack of envelopes, right next to the candy bowl. “See that? Her hand is directly in the stack of envelopes.”

“So, you think the envelopes were poisoned as well as the candy?” Hotch asked. Kit took a step closer, eyes looking carefully at the picture.

Reid continued. “As Lynn Dempsey was dying, she kept saying something like "the end, the end." I think that what she was saying was "the envelopes." I mean, what was Hill actually testing? The rohypnol? The LSD?”

Gideon took a moment before saying, “The delivery system.”

“Exactly,” Reid said, “Botulinum toxin and LSD are the only two substances in the world toxic enough to be effective in doses as small as thousandths of a gram. Small enough to fit on the glue strip of an envelope.”

Kit found herself nodding, though no one was looking at her. She might have added more to Spencer’s finding, but Gideon’s words from earlier stopped her.

Trouble.

She wouldn’t prove him right.

“But, the CDC didn't find any evidence of poison on the envelopes,” Hotch said, face slightly scrunched in confusion. Grasping at straws, just like they all were.

“They wouldn't have. The envelopes were destroyed after the checks were deposited and processed,” Spencer explained. He started to sound a bit hoarse now, and Kit shifted her weight in sympathy of his discomfort.

“So,” Hotch said, clearly needing to process out loud at the speed he took his words. “like the rohypnol, Hill was using the candy to throw us off. To cover his tracks. To distract us from the fact that he was testing the envelopes.”

Reid was still working it over as well. “What I can't figure out is why would he poison the envelopes to test the punch?”

“Because the punch is a decoy just like the candy,” Hotch offered.

Kit turned to look at Hill. There was something they were missing. Something right there, but they just couldn't see it.

What could he still be hiding?

She watched for a moment as he started to go a bit red, Hill’s breathing seeming strained. She heard Gideon speak behind her.

“He's not finished.”

She felt her jaw go slack as she realized what was happening. Hill was choking. He’d dosed himself with the botulism toxin before he could be captured. That was why he didn’t kill himself. He’d already done it. He was dying.

He’s dying.

“Hotch!” She yelled, moving quickly out the door of the room and around the side. She was pretty sure she didn’t have the clearance to be doing whatever she was about to do, but she didn’t really care.

She heard Hotch call, “Gideon!” behind her, but she didn’t stop.

She threw the door open, pulling desperately at the chair Hill was sitting in. The chair was heavy, and with Hill sitting on it she struggled.

Hotch came up behind her, helping pull the chair out.

“Get him down on the floor!” She called. She could feel Gideon behind her, trying to move into her space and take control.

“Get his head back!”

“Shut up!” She yelled, pulling at Hill’s arms to release the hold he had on himself as the toxin paralyzed his diaphragm.

It only took a few seconds before Hill stopped breathing, tongue going slack inside his mouth as his life ended before their eyes.

“He's dead,” Hotch said simply.

Gideon was quick to respond. “He killed himself before we even got to him.”

Kit stood to her feet, slamming her hand onto the table, “Damn it!” She yelled, rounding on Gideon. “What the hell is wrong with you?! What the hell-” she slammed her hand on the table again, “-do you think I’m doing here?!”

“Colghain-” Hotch started, but Kit was already making her way out the door.

“I’m calling EMS!” She yelled angrily over her shoulder, pushing past a dumbfounded Reid standing in the hallway, and leaving all three agents in her wake.

Kit was pacing in the hallway once she finished the call. She expected Hotch to reprimand her, or Gideon to be angry with her. Reid hadn’t even said anything, though by the look of him after his revelation about Lynn Dempsey, he was exhausted and didn’t have the energy to try to unpack what had happened.

She considered trying to help him some more. Pump him full of cold medicine and send him to bed. She didn’t. She just continued to pace, infuriated by the way Gideon had tried to take over. He had no respect for her, that much was clear.

Why am I even here? Why am I here with these people who think I’m a joke? Who have no respect for my job or for me? They don’t care about what I’m doing or who I am. They’re stiffs. They’re all stiffs.

“Colghain, come on.”

She looked up to see Gideon and Reid already setting off down the hallway, Hotch in their wake. Gideon’s body language suggested he was frustrated, but Kit genuinely couldn’t have cared less.

“The victims need to ingest the anti-toxin within four hours of the time they were poisoned,” Reid was saying.

Kit caught up to Hotch, right at his heels. They were moving in a way that suggested action, and she couldn’t pace and fume in the hallway anymore.

“You found the real targets?”

“They’re in the woods.”

“Do we know where in the woods?”

The SUV flew down the highway, and when they got there they were out of their seats in seconds. The four of them vaulted the wall between the car and the campsite, and Kit only slowed when she saw Reid nearly topple over. Was he dizzy? She’d have to check later.

They got to the officers waiting there out of breath, but entirely focused. Nothing but the victims mattered.

“These guys are in bad shape and getting worse by the minute,” the officer that greeted them said.

Hotch almost didn’t let the officer finish before he was asking, “Who's the sickest?”

“That one over there,” the man said.

Gideon didn’t let the officer finish before he was already yelling. “Medic!”

“He’s having trouble breathing. Hyperventilating, I think,” the officer continued, and they moved quickly.

“What time did he lick the envelopes?” Reid asked, just behind where Kit was walking. Gideon and Hotch were already near the man that was sweating heavily, his breaths wheezing with exertion.

“They said around 12:30,” the officer assured.

Kit let out a breath. They had time. They would be okay.

She came upon them as Gideon was starting to speak to the man. His tone was gentle and understanding. Not at all anything like he’d ever used towards her.

The tone she associated with him was scathing. Questioning. When he spoke to the victim, she could have confused him with one of her clinic nurses.

“I’m a federal agent. You're going to be fine. This is gonna make you feel a hundred percent. Relax and breathe. You're gonna be fine.”

“Thank you,” the man said, his voice weak, but the panic flooding off of him reduced to worry.

Kit moved to another one of the executives, speaking softly and assuringly as they were administered the antitoxin. She wished she could be of more help, but the EMS workers had it covered. That was their job. At that moment, she was a federal agent. Just like Gideon.

She settled in the seat across from Morgan on the jet. He put on his headphones and crashed almost immediately, and Kit envied his ability to sleep so easily.

Her mind kept drifting to Hill. To the way he died on the floor of the interrogation room. To Gideon trying to get in her way, or take her job as she attempted to help the dying man. To the way she’d yelled at him.

Ari and Monty would never believe it if she told them she’d lost her temper that way. Monty was their spitfire, at least at work. In the clinic there wasn’t a cooler head than Kit’s. But something about the way Gideon treated not only her, but those all around him, bothered her deep in her gut. She watched as he was gentle with Reid, and people he didn’t know, but never with other members of the team.

Now, she figured he probably didn’t tell everyone else they were trouble. She was trouble. Just her.

Her hands moved to help tuck her legs under her, brushing gently on the tattoo just higher than her ankle. A sprig of holly. She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of knowing he was right.

She waited a moment before pulling her backpack onto the seat with her. She grabbed the blue pills from where she’d purposefully stashed them that morning, and then sat up taller, leaning over the back of her seat to where Reid had all but thrown himself.

Gideon was sleeping across from him, but she could see that their youngest wasn’t asleep at all.

“Reid,” she said quietly.

He opened his eyes and blinked up at her. “Um, yes?” His voice was rough again, sounding almost congested.

“Here. Before Hotch finishes making his coffee.” She passed over the pills and a bottle of water she’d snagged from the nurses station at the hospital the day before. She’d saved it for this exact purpose.

Reid looked surprised for a moment before sitting up, sniffling before accepting the offering. “Thanks.”

“Mhm,” she hummed, turning back to sit in her seat correctly without another word.

She wasn’t mad at Reid. She was mad at Gideon. He made her feel small, and unimportant, and stupid. That wasn’t Reid’s fault.

But Gideon was Reid’s mentor, and she had no room in her emotional baggage to be friends with the pseudo son of her antagonizer.

She scratched down the medication in her notebook before shoving it back into place in her bag. A moment passed before she heaved a sigh, glancing to Morgan and pulling out her own iPod. It wasn’t a long flight. Soon she would be back in her apartment, maybe even before Ari left for the day, and she could process about Gideon. She could process about Reid. She could process about Lynn Dempsey, coding in her hospital bed. She could process about Hill dying on the floor, right in front of her.

-----

Kit got to the metro station in record time. The redline had only three minutes until it was supposed to pick up for the night, and Kit pulled her coat tighter around herself. She’d left quickly, only going up to the sixth floor to grab her thermos from two mornings before. She’d wash it before she was due to be in the BAU the next morning, and Hotch had even told them they could have a soft start, since they got in so late.

She was wondering if she should have given Reid the nighttime version of the medication she offered. She didn’t really think about him having to drive home, and drowsy was probably not the best choice for driving across DC on a Tuesday night.

“Do you have any more water?”

“Cac!”

Kit spun around, hands at the ready, only to find Reid standing two feet behind her. His eyes were wide, nose bright red, and fever flush covering his cheeks.

“Reid! What the hell!”

“I thought you said that was a rude word,” he rasped. No one had really spoken after they got off the jet, and Reid definitely sounded worse for wear.

“What?” She said, eyes narrowing. “It is. What are you doing here?”

A wave of confusion came off of him at that. “Um, what do you mean?”

She raised an eyebrow, gesturing to the metro tracks. “What are you doing here at my metro stop?” She scoffed quietly, not letting him have the chance to lie to her. “You can tell Gideon that I take the metro just like any other person. Monty and Ari and I share a car, and normally I’m leaving the office before eleven. You don’t have to, like, spy on me.”

She watched as his eyebrows hit his hairline. He was confused, but she didn’t care. She was tired and her emotions were starting to creep back up on her. She wasn’t going to meltdown on the metro, and she was not going to meltdown in front of Reid.

Not after what he’d already seen.

“You… what?”

“Yeah, I know exactly what you’re doing,” she continued. Thankfully, the metro pulled up at that moment. She stepped onto the train and turned to face him again, gesturing to his general being. “Also, you look terrible. Don’t come in to work tomorrow.”

“Wait, no, Dakota-”

“Stop.” She said, putting every bit of force into her words, but making sure she didn’t sound aggravated enough for someone around them to try and jump in. The last thing she needed was a good samaritan to misunderstand their situation. “Just stop. Goodnight, Reid.”

He didn’t get a chance to reply before Kit moved away from the door and took a seat. She put her face in her hands and took a deep breath.

She didn’t notice him step through a door farther down, sinking into his own train seat, fevered forehead pressed against the cold redline glass as the train pulled away from the now empty stop.

#Brenna writes things #or at least she tries #Second Child Restless Child #SCRC #Criminal Minds #Criminal Minds fanfic #fanfic #fanfiction #gaelic/irish #OC #female OC #Can anyone tell I hate Jason Gideon?#1x13 Poison #gap fill #TW illness #TW hospitals #tw minor character death #it's that one lady

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lucycaitlin13 · 4 years

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Manipulation and Gaslighting

Do you ever just hear a song and instantly feel sad? That song tonight was Can’t Help Falling in Love by Elvis Presley. I’m going to take a break from my journals this evening. I’d like to talk about unhealthy relationships I think.

Most days I am happy or at least content with my life, but other days I hit some lows. They never last too long, but these are the days that I reflect on my past “relationships” and current lack thereof.

I used quotes around relationships because 99% of them weren’t more than a man disappointing me and the other 1% was a mentally abusive relationship. I mean I’ve had one serious relationship in my entire life and it was fucking terrible. I have never been treated like a lady worth someone’s time and that really gets to me sometimes.

Do you wanna know what I get to reflect on when I look at the men I’ve “talked to”? I get to think about scumbags from high school who were just looking to get their dick wet. Every single guy I did something with in high school took advantage of me because they knew I wanted a relationship.

See, I am someone who wants to actually find someone to spend my life with. I enjoy simple things like cooking dinner together and watching a movie. I want to go to a museum and look at art. I want to go to a bookstore and find a book and read together. I want easy and romantic.

I gave my heart away too easily thinking, “Maybe this one will be good. Maybe they actually like me this time.” So I allow someone to smooth talk their way into my DM’s and I meet up and go on a “date” if that’s what you want to call it.

Let me tell you about some of the “dates” I’ve been on because I clearly didn’t value my self worth. The Walmart parking lot, nature trail behind the school, driving around in a truck and ending up in the back, dugouts at football games, Lake Junaluska, Blue Ridge Parkway, and many other similar situations.

Now, obviously I take some responsibility for allowing things to escalate. However, I was a teenage girl who just was hoping to find that “high school sweetheart” that every girl wants. So of course I let my hopes and feelings take charge because surely one of these boys would be “the one’. WRONG.

Not one boy in high school was anything more than a hookup. Some not even that. As far as I’m concerned, every boy lied to me to get what they wanted and then exited stage left. Poof. Never had a boyfriend in high school. Just a bunch of mistakes. You could say that I was easily manipulated because I was blinded by the lies I was being told.

(By the way, I’m using the term hookup loosely. It doesn’t necessarily mean I slept with them. Could’ve just been a make-out session. But I digress.)

So I graduate high school and go to college. I have a fresh start where not everyone knows me. Surely someone will want to take me out! Nope. Nothing changed during that first semester.

I moved home and sure enough, I started dating someone who I had known for a while previously. This person was much older than me (BIG mistake at age 18). Sure I was mature for my age, which a lot of people say that, but I wasn’t the normal 18 year old. I was just ready to settle. I’m an old soul and like I said, I like simple and easy.

This was my first and only real relationship and at first it was okay. I didn’t really have anything to base it off of as I mentioned previously that all the guys in my past were scumbags. So, to me, this is surely how relationships should be!

But lets just look at some red flags that I should have noticed and probably did, but I ignored because I “fell” for this person. First off, when you catch someone in a lie, you should probably take it more seriously than how I did. I just blew it off because they were “sorry” and promised it wouldn’t happen again.

I was kicked out in the middle of the night because another woman had called.. I’m sorry, what? Yeah, you heard that right. So I stormed out of the house and went home. But did I forgive him when he apologized a week later. YUP! This was a month into seeing this person and looking back, this was the point I should have ran! But I didn’t.

I ended up moving in with this person; moving several times during our relationship. In the beginning I knew there was baggage and I thought I was okay with it. I clearly wasn’t.

Was I a perfect girlfriend? NOPE. I’m sure I wasn’t. I went through his phone and didn’t trust him. How could I fully trust someone who I repeatedly caught talking to other people etc? Guess I shouldn’t have been in a relationship if that was how I felt, but I was young and dumb.

Over the 3 years, maybe a little less, that we were together, there were WAY more lows than there were highs. I was told yelled at that I was a “horrible, rotten cunt” while they were driving. He yelled so loud I thought the windows in the car would shatter. I was terrified, yet I apologized. Sex was rare. A month or so would go by without anything. Any time I tried to initiate anything, I was yelled at for bothering him. So, it was always on his terms. Yet I apologized for being a nuisance.

I probably was annoying at times. I mean, I’m not perfect as I mentioned before. But things just got worse and worse. He would go out with his friends and drink, but I wasn’t old enough, so I stayed home. This was fine until I found out from people that he was flirting at the bars. Of course there was more fighting when this was brought up. And denial. So I apologized and dropped it.

An old fling had Facebook messaged me one time just asking how I had been. I told him I was happy and about my boyfriend. I left this open on the desktop and was screamed at when he picked me up from class that night. I was forced to message him and tell him that I wasn’t allowed to talk to him anymore and to block him. I was then thrown on the floor. Yet I kept apologizing repeatedly for how sorry I was.

So many little things happened in between all of this. From his junkie friend moving in with us because he was “helping her get back on her feet” and trying to help her stay clean. This wasn’t a choice I had any say in. I was told it was happening. To him calling one of my best friends a bitch and tried to fight with her. But every time we fought, I apologized because it was my fault, right?

Then the beginning of the end.. I started finding things in our home that didn’t belong there. Items that belonged to a mutual friend. I questioned this and of course here came a bunch of lies. “She came over with her kid and we went running.” “She came by with her kid to have dinner with us.” Etc etc. I started bagging all the shit I found and threw it in the fucking trash.

I of course was going through his phone, tablet, and anything else I could at this point. How could I not? I don’t have any regrets in doing this because fuck him! And guess what I found? NOTHING. But how could I find nothing if I knew they texted? Why was he deleting an entire thread if there was nothing to hide? But I had no concrete proof of anything.

UNTIL one night when I decided to go through everything again only to come up with nada. So I rolled back over and tried to go back to sleep, but something was telling me to look again. So I checked his email.. Email that I was given access to to begin with to help print documents and such. Surely he wasn’t that dumb right? Sooo wrong! He was that dumb. I found pictures and videos of this bitch who was supposed to be a mutual friend!

And so we broke up. I moved out. And for the next 9 months I TRIED TO FIX THIS ABUSIVE AS FUCK RELATIONSHIP. What the actual fuck! I was fed lie after lie. I was told this was all my fault. It was my fault he cheated. It was my fault that he kept seeing her again and again when I was being told he wanted to work on things.

I was accused of sleeping with one of my good friends over and over again. I had my phone thrown out of a moving car. I was never allowed to hang out with friends. I was made to get out of the car on the interstate. I was brought into the middle of nowhere and literally texted a friend to call 911 because I was fearing for my life.

So when I say I don’t trust men easily, I have my fucking reasons. That relationship was over 4 years ago at this point and I have been single since. And guess what? Every guy since that relationship has also been a waste of my time because not one of them gave a fuck about me. Just sex.

So I have to wonder? What is wrong with me? Am I not pretty enough? Am I not skinny enough? Not funny enough? Or do they just realize there’s something better around the corner?

I’ve never really had someone actually love me or even like me for that matter. That relationship was not love and never was. I know now what I didn’t at the time. I was taken advantage of as I always have been. I was manipulated and gaslighted. I was embarrassed and made fun of by my own boyfriend and apologized for everything.

So yeah, this post all started out with a song making you feel sad. But what that song made me feel was actually longing. Longing for someone to love me the way I know I deserve. Longing for someone to spend my life with that actually enjoys being with me. That’s really all I want, but all I can get is a DM from fuckboys for a one night stand. So I just don’t reply to anyone ever because what’s the point?

I just want all of you to know that it was okay to leave someone before they leave you. It is okay to throw in the towel because they are mentally or physically abusing you. Sometimes you feel like you have to make it work because you’ve spent X amount of years in your relationship and you don’t want to have wasted all that time. IT’S OKAY!

If there is one piece of advice I could give my younger self, it would be to listen to your friends! Listen to them when they tell you what is happening is wrong. Many of my close friends told me time and time again and I never listened to a word because I was so blinded by the bullshit.

I am much happier now and obviously haven’t let many people in since because I have some HIGH fucking standards now. And that is okay too! Sure I get sad sometimes, but I’m still much happier than I was.

To all the boys who fucked me over and made me feel used - *middle finger emoji*.

I’m ending this here because I don’t know what else to say.

Xoxo

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the-firebird69 · 2 years

Text

BJ is up he's full of it he won't shut up his are heading in with big ships but not worships yet but they're fully laden well laden not fully and some of them are hitting now and they're getting wiped out and he doesn't feel that great anymore tons of them are firing everything they have and works a little so the continuously doing it

Half to force is gone though and it was gigantic. But then we're not real battleships no May humongous fleet is following and their medium to light cruisers even if they're large and they're going to fire shortly some of them are and so ahead of time but they're afraid they're pulling up quick they're all aiming and firing now lots of hit and the Empire is fine back it's a huge War the foreigners are fighting the empire's fleet in space as much as they can and we're supplementing and the Empire is taking big hits and yes Mac is part of it.

A humongous fleet of course just left and yes battleships and real cruisers are in it huge ones too they're all made out of metal and they're all big after that it's mostly wooden chips but these ships should do something to the blockade at least

Thor Freya

We are in your debt and Zeus and Hera we are amazed at the performance and what's going on and it is a lot of work and they try and come down on you so going to try and get him stuff I'm ordering it now we ordered tons of stuff to be tried all day and all night until it gets there right now we're ordering certain things that seem to have promise the FDIC thing it's still a wishing a prayer it's a lot of money so we're going for the 4 or 5 months in between his payments and things like that and the $2,000 of Ellie has and the $7,000 that St Elizabeth has and things like that are ready available cash that are his there's some money around here too $200 from a man who passed away who owes our son and miraculously came back there's a whole bunch of that too people money and Garth doesn't owe him money anymore. He remembers the $10 in the parking lot at Walmart also need to start feeling a little better it's like that when your wicked poor and he is upset about the mailbox when he heard him going stop stop and he drove off and didn't even notice no he knew didn't do anything to the mailbox not even sure if they noticed we're going to get him some money I'm going to court over the will and write in our face is his mom and it's not really right but she can't help it so we're picking off all these Max and she probably would have posted anyways and anyone would but we have to try it and the court May approve it it doesn't matter Uncle rosary died way back when he's back he's been back forever Sos Grandpa and his president. But still anyone who's normal will do that that's a lot of money though and stuff and it's not out there yet and we're holding it too and we're going after it pretty hard but there's more money that's readily available and social security is a big one people wanted to have that to try and mess them up and it's stupid cuz social security is like confident and it might push along the FDIC which might push along the private cash and it's all going ahead now that those out to the social security people and they're trying to look at it to approve it they say

Other than that we're having a war and the blockade is getting beat up now those big ships will be there at momentarily along with the fleet that was ahead of it and it's not a bad idea and they're going to pummel it they say they're already firing long range and finding a lot of them they come in hot and they're hitting occasionally there's a huge number of Empire ships that have gone down in the past hour but a gigantic number of rebel ships and the war is on by the way they're going after all sorts of bases of the Empire regular basis and laser bases blaster bases anything that is there so they're going after and it starts off the Star wars saga today and yes Fargo begins today and Argo starts shortly after it's starting this afternoon with Trump and bja again

Yeah he's that stupid blonde idiot that would not shut up in the TV show and that's who gets killed

Olympus

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bcketts · 4 years

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INTRODUCING...ALLIE BECKETT. ( @gallagherintro )

OK, I’M VERY EXCITED AND NERVOUS BC...what a weird time to bring in a new character ! i hope it works out, who knows ??? i guess i’ll be plotting with you all for a bit while allie is confined to the 5th floor with no phone lmao, but i have lots of plot ideas and muse so i can talk your ear off forever. so at least there’s that.

if you’d like to plot on tumblr LIKE THIS POST and if u want to plot on discord, hmu at #kati7600 for a good time ( or just comment or something and i’ll hit u up )

click here for her stats page & here for her pinterest !

⌠ VIRGINIA GARDNER, 21, CISFEMALE, SHE+HER ⌡ welcome to gallagher academy, ALLISON “ALLIE” BECKETT! originally hailing from POINTSETT, ARKANSAS they were exposed to too much during the protest, and the academy is now in charge of their safe care. when i see them walking around in the halls, i usually see a flash of ( warm chamomile tea on a winter morning, a collection of polaroids stacked in shoeboxes under your bed, bare feet running through an open field, laughter until your sides hurt. ) when it’s the ( virgo ) ’s birthday on 8/28/98, on the bad nights they request their HAWAIIAN PIZZA from the school’s chefs. looks like they’re safe in witness protection. ⌿ kati, 23, est, she/her ⍀

hi i’m sorry her bio is long and in 2nd person but at least u have lots of time to read it while she’s on lockdown ??

you come into this world silent. from the moment you are born, jeremy, your twin brother, does all the screaming for you. both blonde-haired with blue eyes, things will come easy to you – but even easier for him, because red-faced and screaming, he knows how to make his mark. katherine and richard beckett are thrilled to welcome two perfectly happy and healthy babies. and as your brother screams beside you, develops colic and obstinance, you are deemed the favorite – he is deemed the problem. people underestimate how important those early years are.

it’s your first day of kindergarten and you bury yourself in your mother’s skirt, scared. jeremy runs in the room with confidence, introducing himself to the other kids and settling in the corner near the firetrucks. but you cry so much that your mother takes you home and when you finally come back a week later, all the children stare at you, like you’re going to explode at any moment. but children are resilient and within time, you make friends and you excitedly tell your mother about each new day in the car.

you go to church with your family on sunday mornings and your parents dress you up like a doll. you love the pink ribbons though, the way your parents dress you up and introduce them to all your friends. your brother is a lost cause and gets to play his gameboy on the pews but you are your parents pride and joy and you are paraded around – people love a little blonde girl and you smile widely at everyone you meet. it’s all a show though, you know that as you listen to your parents from the top of the stairs at night, yelling. they’re not happy. you clutch the railing, listening in, and you fight back the tears that threaten to stream down your face.

on your tenth birthday, your parents throw the two of you an elaborate party and you have a bouncy castle and everyone brings swimsuits for the pool. your parents can’t stop smiling. it isn’t until late that night after all the streamers have been taken out with the trash that you hear them yelling again. you listen in from the corner of the kitchen. you hear a glass shatter and you race upstairs to your brother. “i think they’re going to divorce,” you tell him. he laughs. “they’ll never do that, no matter what. we’re catholic, allie.” he flashes you a wry smile and you find yourself wondering what to believe.

your best days are spent at pointsett park. your parents often take you there after church, on sundays, and you and jeremy run around through the forests pretending to be wood nymphs with sticks in your hair. as you get older, the magic starts to fade and you feel less like a fairy princess and more like a moody teenager, but you and jeremy fill a shoebox full of things from your childhood and bury it, deep in the park, by the ugly tree. “if i were a tree, i’d be this one,” he jokes, as if all the girls at pointsett middle haven’t just sent him candy grams. “shut up,” you say, shoving him, “or put you in the ground instead of this shoebox.” he grins wryly at that. “clever.” you always were the clever one.

it’s the first day of high school and you feel like an outsider, everyone’s getting their first kisses and jumping in cars and you have to be home in time for curfew. you have friends from church, but with every glass your mother breaks, you wonder how much you really fit in with them at all. in an attempt to try something new, you go to cheerleading tryouts, but of course, you don’t make the team. at least you won’t have to beg your dad to let you wear the uniform. you trudge home and expect to be greeted by yells - you’ve come home late - but your parents are in the kitchen, berating your brother. he smells like marijuana. he gives you a lazy wink from the kitchen as you sneak upstairs.

a boy asks you on a date, a real one, your first real date ! you’re only a sophomore and wade matthews is a senior and you’re really nervous when he picks you up in his car. he tries to kiss you throughout the whole movie but you’re nervous and really, you want to watch the movie. when he pulls the car in an overhang near the mountains and kisses you, it’s rough and unwanted and he goes in with tongue. it’s hardly the enchanting first kiss you imagined and you pull back. is that what kissing’s like? really? he goes in again, saying he’s really turned on, asking if you want to have sex. you say no, but he tries to kiss you again. you push him back so hard his head hits the dashboard. “take me home,” you say. and he does. he obviously doesn’t call.

you have a few girls over for a sleepover and you’re sitting around in your pjs watching grease and passing around thermoses filled with rosé. you pass it on to the girl beside you without taking a sip. you start to raise the volume on the tv as you hear your parents fighting downstairs ( you think your mom might be sleeping with her doctor, which is all kinds of weird. ) when the thermos comes back to you, you take a swig.

you’re sitting in the basement with jeremy, head in your hands. “that’s it, i’m never drinking again.” he laughs. “allie, it’s your first hangover. you’re gonna be okay. and you’re probably going to drink again. it’s okay.” you shake your head, “this is exactly why it’s wrong, i’m so stupid.” your brother sits on the bed beside you, wraps his arm around you. “you’re allowed to be a stupid teenager, you know? fuck up a bit? mom and dad are…they’re crazy. i love ‘em, but they’re so obsessed with consequences, with image. if you don’t quit overthinking shit, you’re gonna wind up just like them.”

“COMING SOON: POINTSETT MALL” the poster is covered in icons, like a dunkin’ donuts and a macy’s. lots of people in the town talk about how excited they are, but they don’t talk about the fact that they’re tearing up pointsett park to build it, the park that holds all your best memories, all the ways you and jeremy would disappear into the woods growing up, skipping rocks in the pond and catching glimpses of magic creatures in the trees ( creatures that mostly turned out to be squirrels, ) where you buried your time capsule. you and jeremy sneak into the park late at night to dig it up, ducking under the caution tape. while you stand there digging, you get the idea: “we have to save the park!” you say, and it starts out as bake sales, town meetings, the twins who think they’re going to save a couple trees from corporate capitalism. but you make a video of the two of you, the history of playing in the park, and you talk about your dreams and memories. that’s what goes viral, and that’s what garners attention. suddenly, hundreds of people are showing up at your town hall – not because they love the park, but because they used to love their own special place, the one that’s now a walmart, a target, a gas station.

they build the strip mall. of course they do, because in the end it comes down to money. but the social media campaign that spirals, everyone sharing their own special places and what became of them, has made an impact. your project – Save Pointsett Park – is enough to get both you and your brother the interest of several prestigious schools. you have nearly the same SAT scores, even though you took two prep classes and studied for weeks and he nearly forgot about the test entirely, walked in with his shoes untied and a blunt in his shirtpocket. in the end, you both choose georgetown together, because despite your differences, you always do everything together.

you opt for a degree in global health because it combines your interests – biology and helping people, and you have dreams of working in healthcare and bringing it to parts of the world that don’t have it. you might have something of a complex, maybe something to prove. you’ve always had a diminished interest in boys, opting to put your studies first, until you meet him – richard hudson, the sort of boy you daydream about even though you stopped believing in fairy tales a long time ago. he’s the second boy to kiss you and it feels so much different than wade matthew’s sweaty car at the drive in. he’s gentle and sweet, and he makes you feel uncharacteristically special – you wish you’d had the patience to wait for a first kiss like that. jeremy only teases you a little bit when you toss your purity ring – and he never even owned one.

you’re comfortable with him in a way you’ve never been with anyone else, and his attention has you falling hard and fast. you’re obnoxiously perfect at times, all over each other and always laughing, but like most fairy tales, things end. you notice the way he looks at her, the way he talks about her, and the way his eyes linger. you’re reminded of your parents, stuck in some unhappy farce when they’d really rather be anywhere else, with anyone else. you don’t want to be like them – you don’t want to trap him like that. so, you step back where you’re supposed to, even though it hurts, and your saving grace is jeremy, who holds you through the night through your first heartbreak. you experience all your sadness together.

until you don’t. here is the first sadness you’ve ever had to process without jeremy by your side, and it happens so fast. one second, he’s alive, and the next he’s blown into nonexistence, leaving a gaping ache in your chest that doesn’t seem to sooth itself. until now, your life has always been cushy, perfect, and smooth sailing. now, you toss and turn with nightmares, a ghost of yourself, trying to understand why you’re the one who gets to survive and why you matter at all. you’ve never existed in this world without him, and you thought you’d never have to.

you don’t sleep well now. you wander the halls at night, you act a little more recklessly. after all, jeremy broke rules all the time. maybe it’s your turn.

HEADCANONS.

sweet and pampered, maybe, but she’s still from arkansas. allie is extremely capable with a firearm and has pretty keen survival skills. she’s never actually shot anything, but she’s gone to the shooting range with her dad enough times, and she has been on frequent fishing trips. her family used to go camping quite a bit.

really a terrible driver. she’s really easily distracted and cannot focus, she’s a bit of a disaster behind the wheel, but it’s almost comical – as long as you’re not in the passenger seat.

is bisexual, although she’s never had the chance to explore that. growing up in a strictly catholic household and then spending most of her college years dating a boy, she’s never really thought about. finding girls pretty and thinking about them like that is what everyone does, right?

bakes when she’s stressed or upset. she’s got treats for everyone right now.

currently plagued by night terrors and is having a lot of trouble sleeping, so find her staying up until all hours or wandering campus with some dark circles under her eyes. she’s trying to cope, but it isn’t coming easily right now. it’s pretty disorienting, and anyone who knows her will notice the difference in disposition.

has traveled a lot for mission and/or service trips. uganda is where she usually goes, she’s been spending summers volunteering at the same women’s clinic for the past three years.

pineapple pizza advocate and WILL fight you on that

WANTED CONNECTIONS.

someone at gallagher she has a crush on. Basically, someone at gallagher who has really caught her eye and she’s stuck daydreaming about. The purpose of this is because she’ll be super nosy about them, trying to learn more about them, and that’s probably going to make this character nervous.

a dare/challenge??? This is so cheesy of me, but I’d love a plot where a Gallagher student has a dare or something to hook up with one of the WP kids and they make Allie into their sort of conquest. Things probably won’t go as planned for them.

brother’s ex/best friend. I might submit this to the main, but I’d love a WP character who was allie’s best friend & was dating her brother. All this grief and sadness and not knowing who to comfort who, but also getting over the loss together.

crushing??? I feel like all the WP kids are pretty paired off, but...it might be fun to have a WP character that’s had a crush on Allie all those years she’s been obsessing over her ex...you know, for pining & angst

any brother connections?? Idk, I’d love WP kids to also be connected to her brother, who was also in the club, so we can probably stem something spicy off of that too. Maybe they were his best friend, or more interestingly, maybe they fucking hated him.

someone from the past. someone at gallagher who knows her prior whether from school, volunteering, etc.she travels a lot and her parents have too, so there’s some flexibility, but maybe someone she knows or used to be close to and they grew apart, but they have the chance to rekindle things now. she probably really wants to.

a close friend. they have been at gallagher for a hot minute now, and I’d love for her to have bonded with a few of the people there. from my understanding, shit’s going to hit the fan, so a few close relationships would be spicy. people at gallagher who were actually really there for her about her brother, probably could relate to losing a loved one, and probably opened up to her. people at gallagher to worry about her safety now.

hook up? she’s really going through it, and although hookups aren’t typical, ithink it wouldn’t be weird for her to look for a warm body or seek comfort in the first person to smile at her at gallagher...not to mention she’s rooming with her ex and his crush, so a distraction is super welcome. i would also imagine that it’s against the rules for a gallagher student to hook up with a WP kid, so. the drama !

^ on that same vein, maybe a repeated hookup.

a girl to help her realize her sexuality.

someone totally lying to her. a gallagher student practicing their skills and getting to know allie using a totally fake backstory and identity, blatantly lying to her about things. and she’s naively playing into it? and maybe your character is realizing they’re actually fond of her and like hanging out with her, but they’ve lied about legit everything lol.

someone she’s suspicious of. there’s something off about this person, and allie is determined to find out what it is about them that just doesn’t fit.

someone to help her solve her problems by denial. someone who wants to break allie out of her shell and believes that the best way to get over it is to have a good time ! someone to be a bit of a bad influence on her, basically, get her partying, introduce her to some unhealthy coping mechanisms.

someone who recognizes how sad she is? aka someone who’s been in that same position and can really tell she’s faking it every time she says she’s “fine.” this person probably has a sort of fondness for her and keeps reaching out when she pushes away because they know what it’s like.

#gallagher:intro #intro

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swirlyrobe · 4 years

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Jul 28, 2015

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after that i ended up in a special ed school and thats when i started listening to rap with dipset and stealing yugioh cards for money and robitussin to get high. when i was 16 i only had a couple good friends and everybody else just avoided me caus they were scared i was going to fight them and one of them steve (who’s 3 years younger than me) had me meet his (at the time) ex gf one day and i ended up getting my thing sucked>.> yea for the first time and then we planned to lose our virginity the next week. she brought her friend and we had a threesome tho my drugs caught up with me because i was on probation for beating somebody up on the bus and i kept getting dirty urines for weed so i went to rehab a couple weeks after

i never really had gfs in highschool other than that, there was only 5 girls in my special ed school, i was friends with most of them but they used me for drugs. i went to community college right after highschool and made friends rapping tho immediately got involved in a small crime ring of stealing video games from stores, selling them to gamestop to make a couple hundred daily as well as smoking a lot more weed (while still on probation for another assault) that didnt catch up with me yet tho when i was 19 this girl sabrina added me on facebook and i really liked her, ended up meeting her at the mall it was a really sweet date(we had fun getting physical😄) she wasn’t like everybody else because she didnt try to be normal. i had court coming up though i ended up smoking pcp for the first time and had a psychotic break where i thought this girl was her (who wasnt) and got arrested for unlawful restraint (i thought she was bugging out and i didnt want to leave until i knew what was wrong). i went to jail and got released to rehab again.

when i got out of rehab i went to outpatient rehab (i was 20 now) and met a woman heather who was 33. we dated and she bought a ring for me 3 months after to propose which i accepted because i was desperate and i thought i loved her though she asked if i was attracted to her and i honestly said only her face and not her body so she broke up with me. after that i started smoking again until i started talking to this girl Haley who lived the city over from me, she said she wanted a brother yet i really started liking her when we talked. this is when i really started realizing i liked younger girls and she ended up admitting she had a bf months after and lied to both of us. (i made a lot of songs about her😔😪){&2020 update about haley: we moved on with our lives and had never met though I talked to her a little on Facebook this year and, thankfully I wasn't as enamored and clingy😪}

there's a couple dozen other girls i dated/talked to between that and then there was bella who heard my music on an old social site called PHEED and i thought she was beautiful so i told her that and we talked. she lived in texas but we had intense convos she was really smart, beautiful, funny and we swore we would be together though i had to go to rehab again(this time inpatient in New London where, I lived in a sober house & got a job after) because i violated probation yet i wanted to test if she’d stay with me so i didnt tell her i went. about 4 months later when i was getting out of rehab i talked to her again and she acted like everything was alright and she had moved to NY as well as gotten a license and really had her life together. she said she loved me and was gonna drive to see me in new london so, I waited an hour for her to come until I talked to her and she said because I "played" her she was playing me so, not coming 😢😞(this was in 2014)

So in 2015 I was clean about a year so, I applied & got accepted for McNally Smith college of music (to major in audio production) in st Paul Minnesota where I Was clean for months until (for some reason I forgot but, probably running around fast) I got kicked out of my weightlifting gym out there so I was upset and, found some people @ a park near downtown st Paul smoking weed which I got in on and, ten weeks later I saw someone with dreads buying a dutch in a bodega so, I asked if he knew where to get weed and: It turned out he was a dealer so I ended up buying lot's of weed and trading for studio time for him to record but, I got caught smoking sometimes in my dorm & because I got in arguments with students and staff at college so, they warned me if I got in ANY fight in or, outside of school I would be expelled & I DID get expelled; probably because of the fight where I sent that guy who hit my head with a brick to the hospital (which drew a LOT of attention and PROBABLY was on the news)

Though they said it was because I got in too many arguments and, smoked too much weed in my dorm...

So I moved back with my grandma later in 2015 where I was until she kicked me out for smoking weed and k2 so, I was homeless In which I slept under a blanket near the library and, behind a church in hamden until, the church let me live in their garage when it became winter so I stayed there until early 2016 where, I moved to a spot in Hamden off the bike trail in the woods where I started with a one person tent until I stole a 8 person tent from Walmart and, uused a shopping cart to carry a bed my friend gave away down the bike trail to my spot and late I stole a propane heater plus propane powered stove so I stole an empty propane can outside of krauzers and I kept paying $20 to get it filled at The car wash up the street so I used it to cook ramen and, oatmeal on my stove and power my heater in the winter and I finally got clean in August 2016 while STILL homeless then completed a course to get into CTWORKS which helped me get nice used suits and an interview g for the job I got at Chipotle in December 2016 while, still homeless 😪 I told them I still lived at my grandmas and took showers at my friend's house until I got a la fitness membership with my first paycheck which was actually through the woods near my tent so, I took showers there EVERY morning & worked out there in addition to, at my tent where I still had a barbell set from my grandmas and, then in the spring of 2017 I applied to and, got a landscaping job I saw on the ctworks job search online so I woke up at 5am EVERY morning with a battery powered alarm clock I stole from Walmart and, caught the first Whitney bus that went downtown at 5:30 and, then I took the next train around 5:45 to go to milford where, the landscaping base is so I ran there when I got to Milford around 6am to get there on time by 6:30-45

So I worked there while I was still homeless and, I got approved for shelter plus Care which some people That lived in the woods near me told me about and, I got my apartment with 2 jobs off the post road behind dunkin donuts in West Haven so, I took The bus up the post road to get to BOTH jobs until, I saw a moped for sale from east haven on Craigslist for$200 in mid spring of 2017 which, I rode to my jobs on until, I got a drivers permit (coincidentally on the day I heard my grandma was dying so, I Went to her house and Watched her die 😥

Then I took drivers ed classes;

Then I started getting driving lessons in late spring 2017 until I learned to drive in a couple months so, I took the drivers test in summer 2017 and, then took motorcycle classes at north haven gateway (where I ran into my dr's receptionist Alexandra ai had a crush on (who I even had written and recorded a song about) then, my mom helped me get my 250 ninja from new Haven power sports so: I drove that to my jobs until my crash on August 6th 2019 which, I don't remember but, I woke up at the residential physical rehab hospital Gaylord where : I leave weekly what happened was I hit an suv on mg way to work, had a right brain stroke & broken pelvic also my left side was paralyzed and got contractures (where my left arm, fingers and left got really curled up and difficult to straighten so I'm still working on walking again 😥

(I'm getting botox injections to help my left side straighten and , I'm able to my left leg and arm though, they're really bent and my fingers are too bent for me to move, use,or, hold anything😪

So now I am living at my aunts waiting to get another apartment through my insurance agency while, I still get votox every 2 months unrtil I hopefully gain control and use of my left side😪 &, the ability to walk again...

I went from being REAL STRONG to, being weak (though I'm ljfting more with my right arm with a dumbbell then I used to!)

Either way: I'm a survivor!

💪🏽😁👍🏼

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shellheadtm-a · 4 years

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alright, y'all, fuck it, i'm not going back and rereading civil war again bc it literally breaks me every goddamn time bc my stupid ass will literally always reread the confession and the road to civil war, and leads to me rereading iron man: director of shield, which also breaks me, which makes me read secret invasion and dark reign, which makes me read fraction's run, which makes me-

you get the idea.

but let's. let's talk about this a minute. i'm not gonna rehash the entire comic civil war here, it's a lot, but you should read it if you haven't. it's a big turning point in the 616 world and leads almost directly to the current state of things as they stand today. you should read it. period. if you're mcu be prepared for a bigger gut punch than anything the films gave you, i sob like a fucking baby every time i read fallen son and the confession. and...the end of the brain wipe, which i'll also get to here in a minute, when tony starts filling himself in on what he's missing. it's different. it's bigger, but more contained (as in us-based only). it's nastier. and it drags on a hell of a lot longer than what amounts to one fight in a walmart parking lot, i'm talking months. there is no nomad bullshit in this (steve hasn't picked up nomad in a very, very long time and the circumstances were different). what i'm saying is, civil war literally divided and tore the entire us superhero community apart. people that were friends were suddenly on opposite sides of the debate. it didn't just tear apart tony and steve, think of carol and jess. think of peter parker caught in the middle. think of all the people who loved tony and steve equally and found themselves torn on who to support. think of sue and reed, and johnny and ben, who were all over the board and nearly ripped their family apart permanently over it.

civil war was no bullshit. it hit hard. it hit fast. people died. it left the superhero community in complete tatters.

so let's get going.

extremis: there are things concerning this i want to touch on. one: steve rogers did not like extremis. this isn't fanon, he vocally was displeased about what tony had done to himself. he thought it made tony strange. distant. more machine than man. (he wasn't really wrong in some ways.) but something i really want to point in connection with it, outside of execute program which is a nice move into civil war, is that...tony never once really used it to find the rogue avengers. not once, not really. he had access to every camera, every satellite, every...digital anything. he had the upper ground there. and yet, somehow, the new avengers always managed to mostly stay free. funny, huh.

miriam sharpe: there's something too right about her, which makes her feel too wrong, you get me? there's something about her that...is too perfect at pressing tony's emotional buttons to make her...mmm...legit. i don't know if she was a plant for sure. i don't. but i'd be completely, utterly unsurprised to find out she was. i also wouldn’t be surprised if she also turned out to be a skrull, tbh.

the night before registration was signed into law: the team leads were separated. god, folks, outside of steve's touchiness about extremis, and execute program, this was one of the best teams of avengers since the early mansion years. tony and steve were closer than ever, they'd put down the avengers and then when steve wanted them back, tony couldn't tell him no. they were doing what they do best, and doing it next to each other (and i'm sorry, you can fight me, but steve and tony are at their absolute peak when they're working together as an unstoppable duo, they're a team within a team, they're partners, they're best friends - in a lot of ways they're each other's whole world and driving force). but the night before while they'd all gathered together, steve got called to the helicarrier. tony and steve were separated. steve was given an illegal order and refused. he had fire opened on him. and he bolted. he and tony never did regroup and circle the wagons, not really, to actually talk about it. i don't think...in any way...things would have gone as sideways as they did if steve and tony had been together and presenting a united front. and i think certain powers that be were well, well aware of that fact.

thor clone: tony might have had a thor hair, okay. sure. i can see him thinking at some point it would be neat to see what asgardian dna looked like but uh. did everyone forget that biochem's not his thing? it's not his wheelhouse? he's an engineer. an electrical and mechanical engineer. now...who do we know that's a biochem person that supported registration, one of the foremost scientists in the field, hmm...oh, that's right. hank pym. and...gasp. it turned out...hank pym...was a skrull. wow, what a coinkidink. i'm sure that totally absolutely doesn't mean a thing.

steve's extremes: okay, so...steve does some stuff that is...drastic. like steve is stubborn. he's bullheaded. once he plants his feet, getting him to move is damned near impossible. you know who can usually bring him around to some form of compromise or agreeing to disagree? ding ding ding, tony stark can. this is not the first time tony and steve have had a bitchfit at each other. they're in each other's pockets, literally, at almost all times, they fight sometimes. it happens. but they always, always manage to patch up and walk away friends and better for having had that talk. the supreme intelligence. tony erasing him being known as iron man. the whole shebang, if you're familiar with the older comics. they fight, they make up, they climb back in each other's back pockets again and they go home happy. so...this is it? they've had bigger shit on their plate and this is the one that does them in as friends? this is the one that makes them fight like they do? steve...does some hinky as fuck shit here, no one is blameless in this, steve is not in the right, tony is not in the right, no one is. that's the fucking point. but the extremes steve went to: tony meeting him in good faith to actually talk because they haven't and need to and tony knows that, and steve taking him out with an emp (which if it had shut down extremis completely it would have killed tony and don't think steve isn't aware of that - steve is far more tech savvy than you'd think). tony begging for another talk to ask steve directly if he had anything to do with happy hogan's death and yet another ambush by team steve. meeting in the mansion one final time to talk and he and tony literally beating the shit out of each other (or rather, steve really unfairly smacking tony around because tony dropped his armor, and had been practically sobbing, begging steve to talk to him) and parting ways for good. the thing here is: tony called steve and steve still picked up. steve still fucking picked up even though they were at war with each other. and...of course...that final fight. tony's armor was disabled by the vision. he was a fucking sitting duck, he could not fight back in any meaningful way against 220+lbs of pissed off super soldier. his armor was dead. and steve beat the everloving fuck out of him. tony, laying there in the street, his helmet smashed to hell, jaw broken, face swollen, steve on top of him with the shield raised about to drop it on tony's unprotected face, and tony laying there...begging steve to end it. begging him. and then steve getting yanked off of tony by a bunch of civilians who saw steve about to murder tony right there in the street and took action.

is it all steve's fault? fuck no, tony did some nasty shit, too. which is my point. they both did things that overall, were out of character for both of them. tony okaying hit squads? of supervillains? to bring in kid superheroes? tony? are you fucking serious right now? that is not typical tony stark behavior. see: young avengers for details, when it's very obvious he doesn't think steve coming down so hard on kids wanting to help make the world better place was necessarily the right thing to do. steve rogers, the man who mourned bucky barnes for years? because he lost his best friend? about to kill his other best friend in cold blood? in the middle of a street? really? really???

steve in his cell: when steve surrenders and steve's in the helicarrier, power dampner on, under arrest, awaiting arraignment, and tony comes to talk to him...things i want to point out: this wasn't like an extended period of time after steve surrendered. this was...very soon after that. please remember, tony had been beat to all fucking hell by steve. he shows up in full armor, never removes his helmet, nothing. extremis's healing factor is good, but it's not that good. tony's still beat to hell. i'm willing to bet he was using the armor's autopilot function, too, because if he could actually stand up straight i'd call you a fucking a liar. steve flinging out accusations on tony's mental health like barbs (he's not wrong, though, but you can bet tony takes every fucking word to heart in the absolute worst way). the last words steve rogers says to tony stark is "was it worth it? answer me." as tony walks away.

steve's death: hoo boy. okay. so, let me just...throw this out here: steve's death fucking broke tony. broke him. completely. utterly. unmade him entirely. steve on his way to arraignment takes a sniper shot for someone else, because steve is that kind of guy. sharon, under mind control, pumps three bullets (time bullets it later turns out) into steve's stomach. steve bleeds out. dies. you know what happens? tony, who was supposed to give steve's eulogy, loses it. breaks down when he gets up to speak. starts sobbing hopelessly. has to step down, there's no way in fuck tony stark will ever hold it together to deliver a real eulogy like that for steve. i keep saying i cannot overstate how important they are to each other. i can't. i really can't. like...they're so close at some points i feel like they're one soul in two bodies. anyway. when asked, tony says finding steve was the greatest day of his life. not only does tony just fucking lose it, it turns out they don't bury steve that day. instead, the remaining of the original avengers (tony, hank, jan) meet in the ice fields they found steve in. they give him a quiet send off, for just the three of them and steve. it's where "i miss your battlecry" comes from. namor takes steve's coffin, promises no one will ever bother it. they put steve back in the ice they found him. yeah that...sure sounds like...the treatment of a guy who hated steve rogers, huh, and this on top of the fact that, yes, tony watched steve's autopsy (through the helicarrier camers). he tortured himself just like that. clint never had to tell tony he might as well have pulled the trigger himself, tony was already telling himself that. he saw what happened to steve's body after, just...what it looked like. he argued with sharon. and then made sure sharon was taken care of, as completely as he could, after everything, because that's the kind of person tony is. he continued to completely fall apart and not deal with steve's death in any fucking meaningful way. he talked to steve's body after they brought him to the helicarrier before his autopsy. he told him literally everything. he told him through snot and tears and sobs and a complete and utter breakdown. he told him it wasn't worth it, because the truth is, tony stark cannot bear the thought of living in a world where steve rogers does not exist. there's a flipside to this, hold that thought.

tony's breakdowns: post civil war tony has...quite a few of these. he hallucinates steve (a side effect of extremis, all the info he takes in on a daily basis gets shoved into the part of his brain that processes guilt to be sorted through, and then his brain spits out important information in the form of people who are dead that tony blames himself for - steve played a prominent role there). everyone can see it. he doesn't leave the armor most of the time. he flips out randomly. he loses his shit utterly. he's put on admin leave barring a psyche eval as direct of shield (a position he got ultimately railroaded into). tony doesn't deal, is what i'm saying. steve's death? fucking breaks him. totally. tony does not pull himself back together at fucking all. he doesn't handle it. he blames himself for everything. utterly everything. yes, he was at fault for some things. yes, he made a lot of bad calls. but he canonizes steve (who also did hinky shit) and then turns around and tells himself he doesn't deserve even the modicum of happiness. he has good days and bad days. sometimes he almost seems like his old self. most of the time he's barely holding himself together with spit and bubblegum. ...i'd argue he may have been more than a little suicidal, at points. he does some really, really risky shit - riskier than normal.

bucky/steve's letter: bucky comes to kill tony. there's just no other way to put it. and they fight. and tony does his absolute best not to hurt bucky. he'd just gotten steve's letter - via execution of steve's estate - and even in the thick of it...steve still reached out to tony. that letter was like...a friendly shoulder squeeze through the veil, you get me? tony needed that, he really did. it was a bandaid over a bullet wound, but he needed it. and he turned around, and because steve utterly believed in bucky, put the weight of his faith and his trust behind bucky completely. gave him the shield. knew no one else would carry on steve's legacy the way bucky would. ended up trusting bucky enough as the new cap to give him all the info on iron man, and how to shut tony down permanently, if need be.

frank castle: steve damn near kills him. steve. that steve. steve rogers. y'all get how weird that is, right? steve is wound like a bowstring the entire goddamn length of civil war. i wonder if...the purpose...wasn't to get him to snap utterly and you know what that could have culminated in? that's right. tony's death at steve's hands. you'd never get tony to kill steve. ever. ever. but the other way around? if you...tweak it just right? hmmm.

the brain wipe: so tony just...magically doesn't have any backups that include the worst year of his life. i'm supposed to believe tony "meticulous to a fault" stark didn't back up his brain more than once. uh huh. okay. so he just...manages to forget completely how unfunctioning he was after steve's death. wipes out how utterly devastated and destroyed he was because steve was no longer in the world, who was fine with steve hating him and never speaking to him again as long as tony could protect him. okay. sure, karen. but also, as a point, he left the decision up to thor and cap, ultimately, whether or not to bring him back. at the time, thor was...mmm... but they had don. and cap was bucky. but they also brought steve in, who was alive at that point, because everyone knew when tony said cap in that recording he meant steve rogers. and the holdout was pepper. no one else really hesitated. of course they bring tony back. the world needs iron man. the world needs tony stark. gee, does...does that sound...like the guy ready to turn his best friend's head to mush with his shield? hmmmm hmmmm hmmmm.

brain wipe aftermath: tony's not wrangled well enough. i...will argue that leaving him alone with pepper and maria hill might not have been the best of things to do. i get it, osborn was being osborn, but. it played out as being vindictive, letting tony stumble upon all of that himself. but the huge, key thing to note here is steve fucking rogers tearing into the building where tony's being kept, knowing what's up, demanding to know where tony is because tony's only very recently woken up and...it turns...out...he's playing catch up on the last year and...has found...he thinks steve is dead. in that moment tony stark thinks steve rogers is dead and you know what he does? what tony always does when confronted with steve's mortality: he starts crying. he gets upset. and i definitely think how tony finds out sets the tony for things for...a good long while, especially between himself and steve.

and going on in the background of all of this melodrama is...civil war itself, of course, everyone fighting each other viciously over registration, the nightmare of the fifty state initiative, which does not...go well. the shit with the negative zone and a huge flashing warning light in the form of tony telling carol that of course they have to bring their friends into custody. if he and the mighty avengers don't, they will. they being shield. remember project wideawake? think microchipping every superhuman. think genetic testing for powers. think sentinals for everyone, not just mutants. think people like spider-man on a dissection table. all the shit tony was trying to get in front of, and put a stop to.

secret invasion happens. and the first person in the entire thing, openly, that gets taken out? tony stark. extremis is mostly shut down. his tech gets taken down. iron man is, for a time, effectively removed from the picture completely. tony, having seen it coming, has set rhodey up with a suit that has no starktech. has a plan in place. tony seizes. he damned near dies, really. almost gets taken in by the skrull queen (who's been psing as spider-woman all this time). and during all of this steve's floating through time, trying to make his way back to his own body so the red skull can't take it. eventually succeeds at that. what i'm saying is everything was a complete and utter shitshow.

norman osborn? now director of shield. it goes about as well as you think it does, him and his dark avengers. he tries to lay siege to asgard (which is floating up above and near broxton, oklahoma) after going off the rails. he does some naughty naughty things. it's not good. he steals tony's tech. he damned near beats tony to death on live tv. the rt in tony's chest doesn't just cover the brain wipe, folks, it handles the fucking brain damage norman osborn did to him.

things to particularly consider: jessica drew was a skrull during all of this. with pheromone powers. firmly on the side of team steve. just...think about that. think about steve's aggressiveness. think about how easily the real jess is able to like. sweeten up the hulk (he made her a sandwich and it's the most precious thing) even when he's angry and in pain. just. think about it.

think about project wideawake. think about how firmly tony opposed it. think about how he saw the writing on the wall after stamford and knew they had to get in front of it. think about tony going to all those kids' funerals. think about how emotionally open he'd be. think about how perfectly miriam sharpe played into things. think about all the praise she heaped on tony every time he did something she wanted. think about how tony's self-esteem issues work. just...think about that.

think about how a lot of players in shra were all involved in anti-mutant stuff. consider that a moment.

think about how easily the green fucking goblin was able to get into the good public graces by killing the skrull queen.

and the most important piece of evidence i'll give you: civil war: warzones. it's a what if. a what if had civil war dragged on instead of ending in steve's death. guess what. turns out the skrulls had been escalating and manipulating the entire fucking time.

just. think about it. all of it. and civil war starts to make a hell of a lot more sense.

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