#moving on and recovering from mental breakdowns has got to be one of the worst things ever | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

Visit Blog

Explore Tumblr blogs with no restrictions, modern design and the best experience.

Fun Fact

Post activity is at the highest at 4:00 pm EDT; notes peak at 10:00 pm EDT.

#moving on and recovering from mental breakdowns has got to be one of the worst things ever

laniemae · 2 months

Text

We need to talk about Nilovalentine’s behaviour in this whole situation (NOT A HATE POST JUST EXPLANATION)

[IMPORTANT PLEASE READ]

To say it once again, this is not a hate post of any kind, I just want to talk the specifics of what has happened the past month.

I know this is a very risky post to make, for me and for everyone involved. But to properly tell the truth about everything that’s happened I believe is the best for my mental health and to learn and recover from this situation, and to hopefully never get caught up in something again.

Before you hate on me for saying this, please don’t instantly assume the worst of me for speaking up about this sort of behaviour. I don’t want any sort of anchoring bias to be at play here and am trying my best to simply explain what has happened without any bias, and I please want everyone who reads this to understand this and to at least understand where I’m coming from, ok?

———

So to start off, this post is not in any way justifying my actions. I have already talked about what I have done and what I did was bad, I explained that in another post. But I feel like if you guys understand Nilo’s behaviour in this situation hopefully this can be of benefit to us all. And please don’t attack any one mentioned.

Basically it all started with my first breakdown from the second new years gartic phone game. It’s hard to remember as I often forget stressful things but when I first got upset Nilo commented on my post saying how 0709 was “ok because…” instead of acknowledging how uncomfortable I was with it and trying to reason with me. I stated before in my apology post that sort of attitude gives me really bad memories, but in his benefit at that time he wouldn’t have known that.

I got really upset at the post and told him how that just made things worse. Then not too long later Nilo proceeded to joke about it on his account and completely disregard how uncomfortable I was in the situation. Now, just to make things clear, from this point it could’ve been a misunderstanding where he thought it was some silly ship hate and didn’t notice my discomfort, but things just proceeded to get worse as time went on.

I ended up talking to someone who tried to help me in all of this. They went on to try and ask for an apology/more notice on the situation. I don’t know what exactly happened from their perspective but Nilo had taken over a week to even respond and the apology did not mention anything about my discomfort and feels redundant over what has happened recently.

Things were quiet for a while until the Valentine’s post last week that set me off. To say it once again, I acted brash and overly violent in that situation and I am not justifying what I did, I was just at my nadir at that time and couldn’t see anything else in sight and thought it was the end. What happened afterwards is what made me really worried about Nilo’s attitude towards my situation.

He proceeded to go on and joke about the situation replying to an ask with some joke about this being like a war or a game to someone who supported him with some silly soldier image telling them “god bless soldier”, completely disregarding how uncomfortable and a dark mental state I was in treating it like it was just some game.

Nilo replied to my reblog when I got incredibly upset about it saying that he didn’t hate me only to say that he didn’t care. He blamed everything that happened on me while again, very clearly not acknowledging my mental state at the time or that had ignored any sort of reasoning I had before I became violent. He claimed that I could move on like it was no problem implying that my whole behaviour was stupid and proceeded to make way too many assumptions about me and my behaviour.

Even though I reacted violently and inappropriately in this situation Nilovalentine’s ignorant behaviour should not go unnoticed. With me, I’m trying to learn from my mistakes and become a better person. I don’t want to make any assumptions or anything but I don’t think anything has changed with Nilo.

He’s repeatedly ignored my situation and discomfort, joked about my situation and had put no efforts to reason with me and literally said he did not care and put all the blame on me. Yes, a lot of it was my fault but the ignorant behaviour is what spiralled it out of control in the first place.

Again, this is a very risky post for me to make but I feel like the only way things would ever move forward is by saying this. I can’t bottle this up and keep it all to myself as that’s probably what caused me to act so badly on Valentine’s Day last week.

And to say it, since I’m only me I don’t know every perspective from this situation so there would be more to this, this is only my experience and the behaviours I’ve had to deal with. We’re all human after all, so there’s so good or bad here, just choices and mistakes.

Please, do not hate on either of us for everything that’s happened. This post is only intended to be a stone for my recovery and subsequent efforts to rejoin this fandom once more, even if I have to get everything of my chest and risk a lot as I know lots of you are mutuals with Nilovalentine. So please, take this post to heart and consider things from a wider perspective from now on out. I only want to make things better for everyone and after hitting rock bottom I’ve started to understand this situation more clearly, and the acceptance that comes with moving on.

I’m sorry for posting this as it’s a hard topic, but we all need to move on at some point and not get stuck in a cycle of stagnation.

Please treat this situation with respect and don’t rush to any sides

If you haven’t read it, this is my original apology post detailing the situation and why I responded as I did in greater detail https://www.tumblr.com/laniemae/742434928724164608/about-the-situation-at-hand-and-why-i-responded?source=share

#milgram #I’m very sorry for maintagging this #I guess this is an important post that needs to address everything #I’m scared of the reception this may get #I don’t want anyone to get hurt anymore because I’ve had enough of that #The only way to move is to move forward if we all try it’s not that hard if you clear your mind #I am truly sorry for my behaviour I exhibited during this whole situation #Like I said I was at my lowest and could not make sense of anything that was happening and was too overwhelming #I hope this comes as a learning experience to me so I can avoid making mistakes such as this in the future #It feels so bad for talking about someone so specifically about this and I know I’ll probably get gossiped about alot #But I feel that this is necessary to move on #Tag to find later

6 notes · View notes

spicysociety · 2 months

Text

Healing is a Journey

originally written April 4, 2019.

I've not written anything in a while, so forgive me if this is a little ramblin' and all over the place. I'm just kind of putting words down.

As some of you know, I have had the unfortunate experience of recovering from an abusive relationship. It wasn't all bad, but it certainly wasn't good, and I am still dealing with the emotional scars left behind and it's been over a year.

I thought I had made further progress in the last few months. I had gone to an event last fall that he attended and managed to hold it together until I got home. I had a good breakdown about a month ago over some of the pain I still feel from his actions, and I thought the breakdown had done me some good and helped me move forward. I've been trying to be mindful of what things make me twitch and why, and figuring out if I need to find coping mechanisms for those things or just need to work through it.

But I was wrong about how much progress I've made. Recently, I had to deal with an incident where he was invited to a weekend event by a host who knew of our history and still invited him even after they were aware that my children and I would be there, and I found out two days before the event. It was something I really wanted to go to, for multiple reasons. But because of his presence, I felt I was not capable. I had multiple almost-panic attacks just thinking about being in the same area of him for roughly two days. My oldest daughter had an almost gut reaction of "no" when I told her that he would be there. My youngest daughter broke down into one of the worst fits of tears I've seen out of her in a while.

I decided against going. I did not know if I could mentally handle it, and I did not know if I could trust myself to be adult enough not to say something to the co-host who took it upon themselves to invite him despite knowing that I wanted to be there for very serious reasons.

I thought that would be the end of it. That I would just not go and I would be ok. But this week has been a hard one. I've been more sensitive to anything that even remotely reminds me of my time with him. I've had trouble discerning triggers from normal grumpies. I am on edge, and I am trying to keep from breaking.

I am still healing. I'm still very much in the process of extricating all the splinters and shards from the wounds he inflicted. People say that emotional and mental abuse isn't the same, and some people, especially those who knew us while we were together, might have a hard time believing that the trauma runs as deep as it does. When it's insidious, when it is innocuous to outsiders, and when they do see it, it seems like jokes and sarcasm, to me, that makes it worse. Because people don't want to believe that you're serious. They want to believe that it was all just someone being an asshole, but not a real asshole, the kind of asshole that can be shrugged off and brushed aside and not taken seriously.

This is not to say that physical, mental, and emotional abuse of other kinds are not valid. This is just to say the next time someone tells you they have been abused, and they tell you who their abuser is, and you don't want to believe it because you think the abuser is really just a joker, stop yourself. Rethink that. Just because you don't see the abuse doesn't mean it isn't happening. And you don't get to decide if someone has been hurt.

#emotional abuse #abuse survivor #relationship abuse #narcissistic abuse #narcissism #survivor #psychological abuse

0 notes

makeste · 3 years

Text

BnHA Chapter 317: My Boy Was Just Like Me

Previously on BnHA: AFO randomly blew up Lady Nagant as a good reminder of why you should never make a deal with this fucking guy, smdh. Hawks was all “well if it isn’t my two best friends, Deku and Lady Nagant, both of whom I respect and love tremendously.” Everyone was all “??” and Horikoshi was all “shh... just pretend” because it was too embarrassing for him to admit that he forgot to write a couple of set-up flashbacks I guess. Anyway so Hawks got Lady to tell them where AFO was hiding out, and everyone said goodbye to her and Overhaul, who never did get to see his boss (sorry buddy, I’ll send you a vial of my tears in the mail), and headed out to a house in the woods. AFO was all “hello Deku :) :) it sure is fun making you suffer :) :) :) anyways this is a trap”, and blew up the house. Yeah, we all here are getting reaaaaaaaal tired of your shit, AFO.

Today on BnHA: The Hawksquad and Edgeplatoon meet in a warehouse and are all “what should we do about the fact that everything sucks?” Mt. Lady is all “here’s a thought, what if we tried battling AFO with more than six people.” Hawks and Endeavor are all “great initiative, but just a friendly reminder that our friends also suck and would probably betray Deku which would suck further still.” Shouto is all “ANSWER THE PHONE DAD” and Endeavor is all “[IRONICALLY DOESN’T ANSWER THE PHONE].” Meanwhile over in Sadtown, capital of Sadland Prefecture, Japan, Deku is all “All Might, as you can clearly see I am completely fine and good, never been better in fact, definitely not caught up in the throes of an epic mental breakdown which is shutting me down emotionally, anyway so on that note I would like to leave you now goodbye!!” All Might is all “[can’t actually form any words because he’s too distraught].” Fandom is all “o(╥﹏╥)o.” Horikoshi is all “(*＾-’) 乃 [pew pew finger guns and barrel rolls into the darkness].”

sweet jesus lord

this literally doesn’t even look like Deku anymore?? this looks like Dark!Deku who shows up to fight you in that one room in the Water Temple. he looks like he’s about to crawl out of my television set and murder me with his psychic powers good lord

holy shit lmao Horikoshi is really just shrugging his shoulders and resolving last week’s cliffhanger with a single line of dialogue

fire is no one’s weakness. idk what other options you’ve got, AFO, but you’re gonna have to go back to the drawing board. maybe try bees or something. I’m just saying. we’re all expecting fire at this point but nobody is expecting bees

anyway so now they’re all sitting in some warehouse somewhere chatting about it I guess. shoutout to Horikoshi for finally giving my man Edgeshot some more dialogue at long last

well, Edgeshot, to answer your question, she exploded. so naturally she’s fine

nah just kidding, Hawks says she won’t be able to help them out much because she’s recovering from being exploded. this is the part where we all ignore the fact that Hawks got set on fire for like a full ten minutes back during the War arc and was only in the hospital for a day. anyways enjoy your temporary plot hiatus Nagant

man there’s a lot of dialogue here and I’m trying to figure out where to insert commentary but it’s kinda difficult lol. basically, Edge and the others are saying that they should gather up the other remaining heroes and get them all caught up on the whole OFA situation. which, hmmmm

like on the one hand, these guys definitely aren’t going to cut it on their own, so it’s a reasonable suggestion on the face of it. but on the other hand, do we really want to entrust the OFA secret to a bunch of other people, most of whom shat the bed during the War arc to be quite frank? is it really worth the additional risk? especially given that any one of them might go spilling the beans to the public -- or worse, betray them to AFO??

also just a quick side note here, Mt. Lady’s character development never ceases to delight me. she’s become so committed to her responsibility as a hero these days, and it fucking suits her. I genuinely consider to be one of the elites now. I mean it doesn’t hurt that all the other elites are fucking dead lol but still

wait what? Death Arms retired??

Death Arms as in the guy who was too afraid of a little fire to try and save a terrified 14-year-old kid who was slowly suffocating right before his eyes?? that Death Arms???? color me surprised. shocked, I tell you

...okay but holy fuck

Death Arms. bro. my expectations for you were low but holy shit. like I’m sorry, but I don’t even have it in me to try and pretend like I feel the slightest bit of sympathy for him or Old Man Samurai or any of those other guys today. thanks for a whole lot of nothing my dude. good riddance

(ETA: so I’m rereading this the next day and realize this comes off as kind of harsh, so let me just try to clarify. it’s not the fact that he’s quitting that bothers me, to be honest. it’s the fact that he’s quitting specifically because he feels like the public is being mean to him. that’s it.

seriously. it would be one thing if he was quitting because he was scared, because now that is human. nobody wants to die, and I doubt any amount of training can ever fully prepare someone to go up against that fear. but the thing is, he never once mentions that, or talks about the danger aspect. instead, I got the distinct vibe from this speech that Death Arms is one of those people who only became a hero because of the limelight. and I just don’t have any patience for that. if all you care about are likes and subscribes then go become a fucking youtuber or some shit. nothing wrong with that! but you didn’t; you signed up to be a hero and protect these people. they gave you their respect and admiration because they trusted you to protect them. and now that they’re no longer in the mood to worship and applaud your every move on account of them being scared shitless because they’re living in the literal end times, you decide to dip. so like okay, fine then. don’t let the door hit you on the way out. anyways lol sorry for the rant.)

anyway so yeah. perfect example of why I don’t exactly have a ton of faith in most of the remaining heroes out there lol. also let me just once again give a shoutout to my best girl Mt. Lady whom I suddenly find myself appreciating all the more

“please calm down makeste. drink some water and enjoy this fresh new jeans pun” listen Horikoshi don’t tell me what to do dammit

fine. it is a nice pun, I guess

-- damn so now Endeavor’s saying that the media is already being fed info by the retired heroes. so for some of these guys it wasn’t enough for them to abandon all the people they swore to protect and to leave their fellow heroes out in the cold; they decided they might as well actively make things worse for them while they were at it, huh. like I get wanting to spill all the dirty secrets from your old job that you just quit, but this isn’t Jeff Bezos you’re screwing over, this is a sixteen-year-old kid

-- like, yes!! this, right here!!

exactly!! let’s not forget that there are already two prior instances of this happening. Endeavor arguably deserved it, but Katsuki not so much

huh. Endeavor seems to have a more optimistic outlook regarding this than I do lol

I mean, this is the same public that didn’t hesitant to blame a kidnapped child for his own kidnapping, and then later on for being the downfall of the Symbol of Peace. but okay then

anyway so blah blah blah, more talk about how they need to use Deku as bait, which basically puts them back at square one, and then they’re all just trailing off into silence and sitting around in the dark lmao this is getting very depressing

SKDJFLSDKJ:LFKJ

SHOUTO?????

NOOOOOOOO ARE YOU KIDDING ME

OH HOW THE TURNTABLES OMG. THE GHOSTER HAS BECOME THE GHOSTEE. Endeavor you petty son of a bitch. and what a brutal cut to that flashback too. “let’s stop Touya together” nah Shouto I’ve got a better idea why don’t I abandon you in U.A. and sally off with Hawks and Jeanist to found the “let’s pretend like we’re doing something to help Deku” club, which basically consists of us sitting around making terrible decisions all day long

Shouto, honey. you deserve better my little Coca Cola can. .........but if you really do have something important you need to tell your dad you could just text it to him. all the love and support, hugs and kisses, you’re doing amazing sweetie. but if you need to pass on any vital information you can just write it down and hit send honey that’s all I’m saying love

now he’s getting another call?? -- or, no, Hawks is getting a call from All Might

ARE YOU FOR REAL HAWKS OMFG

so while you all were sitting around talking about how useless you are, the kid you’re supposed to be protecting was battling another hired gun. I see. please pardon me for one second, I have a phone call to make. the phone call is to RockLockRock and Manual. the reason for the call is to apologize for calling them the worst bodyguards ever back during the War arc. the reason for the apology is because it turns out I WAS SEVERELY MISTAKEN OMFG

JESUS CHRIST DEKU DID YOU JUST KILL THIS MAN LMAO

shoutout to Horikoshi for offscreening this fight. we get it, lol. Deku strong and scary, villains ineffectual and feeble, and AFO... [checks notes] yep, still a dick. the angst arc continues

-- the angst arc continues, SIR

jesus christ I may have to rethink all of my opinions about Deku being framed for murder in movie 3 lmao. never mind. he did it, your honor

holy fucking shit Deku. “he might blow up, so please be careful” fdlskjflk jlskdjflk lwkejflk anyway so I’ve decided the explosion running gag can stay, actually

DEKU WAIT YOU FORGOT YOUR LUNCH!!

lol why do I get the feeling some serious shit is about to go down. ALL MIGHT NEVER MIND BACK OFF I THINK HE NEEDS HIS SPACE

OH MY FUCK I GASPED OUT LOUD

NO NO NO. I KNEW THIS WAS COMING GODDAMMIT BUT NO. NEVER MIND, I CHANGED MY MIND ABOUT IT, I’M NOT READY TO CRY TODAY

shit. shit shit shit shit and OF COURSE all I can fucking think about is that stupid fucking prophecy and gahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

Deku please. please please please if you really are going to leave All Might here, please be so very careful in choosing your farewell words to him now because have this sudden horrible fear that this might be the last time you ever see him alive and oh god. oh god oh god

DEKU NO, YOU’RE REALLY NOT!?!?

I HAVE NEVER SEEN ANYONE LESS FINE IN MY LIFE, ACTUALLY????

holy shit. and the fucking callback to the prophecy now. just in case we forgot. WHICH FYI, WE DIDN’T. but that’s basically confirming that this is all still very much on the table and HORIKOSHI NEVER FORGETS oh my god someone please hold me

and the fact that Deku’s flashing back to it now too, though?? because he never forgot either, because of course he didn’t, and now all this stuff is happening, and AFO’s words are getting to him, and this is literally his worst fear come to life and so of course he’s distancing himself from everyone, and now it’s finally come to even this. even the person he admires most

-- OKAY NO, FUCKING COME ON ALREADY I CAN’T TAKE THIS

I GET IT OH MY GOD, I ALREADY UNDERSTAND THE EMOTIONAL IMPACT OF THIS MOMENT WITHOUT ALL OF THE DEVASTATING FLASHBACKS THANK YOU SO VERY MUCH!! YOU ACTUALLY DO WANT ME TO CRY, HUH, IS THAT IT. THIS MAN THAT HE THINKS OF AS A FATHER, THIS MAN WHO HAS BEEN EVERYTHING TO HIM SINCE HE WAS A VERY YOUNG CHILD. EVERYTHING THEY’VE BEEN THROUGH, JUXTAPOSED AGAINST EVERYTHING DEKU IS UP AGAINST, EVERYTHING THAT’S AT RISK. LET’S JUST PUT IT ALL SIDE BY SIDE. LET’S JUST PILE ON ALL OF THE FEELS

(ETA: just a quick note that even though some of the posts I’ve read have described these as All Might’s flashbacks, I’m pretty sure they are Deku’s. most of these are scenes that only he was there for, so yeah. even though All Might is the one thinking the thoughts on the next page, the flashbacks are what’s running through Deku’s mind right now, and so we’re getting that emotion from both of them, which makes it extra devastating lol.)

wait, what???

WHAT??? do you really think that’s why he’s been so determined to protect you this entire time?? simply because you’re his successor?

-- oh no wait lol I think I got that mixed up, this is All Might saying that Deku feels the need to protect him. well that makes more sense lol

oh my god I cannot

his last words. his last words to him. and we can’t even see if he is smiling, like All Might always encouraged him to do. but what are the odds he can’t actually bring himself to do it. what are the odds he’s actually crying. oh god this scene is going to rip my heart out and STOMP on it in the anime isn’t it. Deku’s VA is going to full on murder me with emotion. not that there’ll be much of me left to murder after the thorough job that Horikoshi has already done here

YOU’RE CRYING. DEKU IS LEAVING ALL MIGHT AND IGNORING HIS OUTSTRETCHED HAND AND YOU’RE CRYING. AND BY “YOU” I MEAN “ME”, FUCK

nope nope nope nope nope nope nope nope nope no words just feels just a big ol’ pile of feels. I do not have the strength. future me... [broadly gestures] good luck with all that

(ETA: LOL, WELL THEN.

what breaks my heart here is All Might. All Might, and everything he’s been through, and history repeating itself, and forcing him to live this moment from both sides because he wasn’t strong enough to fix things.

Toshinori had only just turned eighteen when Nana died. like, I feel like we don’t mention this enough. the All Might we know is a sixty-something-year-old man, and so everyone always talks about him like he’s basically been an adult forever. but he was a child when he met Nana. and he was still just a child when she died. barely a year older than Deku is now. younger than Mirio was when we first met him.

and we don’t talk about that. we don’t talk about how devastating that was for him. and we don’t talk about how the reason he grew up to become so reserved and withdrawn -- for all that he always tried so hard to outwardly project the image of a bold, confident, smiling hero -- was specifically because of what AFO did to him. because AFO targeted him in the exact way that he is now targeting Deku. because that’s what he does. he goes after every new user of OFA, and he finds out what’s most important to them, and then he destroys it. and for Toshinori, that was Nana. if you’ve read All Might Rising, you know that AFO basically killed her in front of him (and only killed her, while letting Toshinori and Gran get away). Toshinori (while crying) later says she was like a mother to him. and interestingly enough, during this same conversation, Gran tells Toshinori that he can see “that madness in [his] eyes” when Toshi talks about becoming strong enough to defeat AFO. madness in his eyes. sound familiar??

what’s happening to Deku now is the exact same thing that happened to Toshinori when he was a boy. AFO tried every bit as hard to break him as he’s trying with Deku now. “the path you’ve chosen is a thorny one. every battle grinds away at your soul with no end in sight.” we don’t talk about how Toshinori experienced this same thing for forty fucking years. and all the while isolating himself, exactly like Deku is doing now. pushing people away, exactly like Deku. because he never had anyone who was able to reach out and pull him back. and those words that he now finds himself frozen and unable to speak -- “don’t push yourself”; “you can rest” -- are the same words that no one ever said to him until decades later, when it was already far too late to make any difference.

everything that Deku is experiencing now is what Toshinori also went through. and it’s only now, as he watches it happen to his student, the boy he loves like a son, that he’s finally starting to realize the full extent of how wrong it was. you shouldn’t have to fight alone. you shouldn’t have to bear that kind of enormous burden alone. you shouldn’t have to push yourself, and you can rest. you can rest.

but it’s too late. just as he’s finally coming to understand it all, it’s all too fucking late. and he can’t say the words, he doesn’t know how to say the words, and then just like that, Deku is gone.

and he’s alone. again.)

I can’t. this can’t be their goodbye. I’m not ready. for this to be how they finally part, and then they never see each other again except in OFA. how is that fair. how is that fair. how is that fair

fuck me. lol. how many pages are left in this thing. let’s just wrap this up lol. so now of all the times for this fucking guy to finally show up

I can’t believe Stain has been here literally this entire time hiding behind this random wall and cutting onions. that was you who was cutting the onions, right. no need to answer that we’ll just say it was

HORIKOSHI JUST END THE CHAPTER PLEASE I’M OUT OF SPOONS. YOU HURT ME SO GOOD AND I LOVE YOU FOR IT BUT YOU NEED TO LET ME GO NOW SO I CAN BEGIN THE PROCESS OF TRYING TO PUT MY LIFE BACK IN ORDER HERE. SO WHERE ARE WE CUTTING TO NOW WHAT IS HAPPENING

Stain did you also let AFO give you a new quirk. what’s with you guys. do you like blowing up

oh nvm lol because they were talking about THIS GUY ohhhhhh my fucking god

THAT’S BECAUSE HE’S SAD, LINDA!! jesus

omfg. and so yes, good, the chapter is ending here now on page 15. for once I am FULLY on board with that lmao

anyway so tune in next week for more adventures of Werewolf Deku!! that is, assuming we don’t finally cut back to U.A. at long last, which is actually a strong possibility considering that this chapter will likely mark the end of volume 31. it sure wouldn’t kill Horikoshi to start giving us some hope after everything he’s just put us through lol. KACCHAN COME GET YA BOY

#bnha 317 #all might #midoriya izuku #and endeavor and hawks and mt. lady and all the rest of them I guess #literally forgot all about them by the end lol #bnha #boku no hero academia #bnha meta #bnha spoilers #mha spoilers #bnha manga spoilers #makeste reads bnha #this wound up so long lmao I'm so sorry

368 notes · View notes

iamanartichoke · 3 years

Text

I wasn't sure if I was going to post this, but I may as well.

I keep starting to reply to things and then stopping bc the words just aren't there, and I suppose I figured out the core of what bothers me so much (and is making me have such a rollercoaster of a fan experience) about the show.

(cut for length)

It's not well-written. My opinion is my opinion, so I'm saying this subjectively, take it or leave it, but ... I feel that it's not well-written. The overall story is fine, and the plot is fine, but I don't know if it's because of the limited number of episodes not being enough to house the story, or because of the relative inexperience of the writer/showrunner+director, or both, or something else, but -

In an earlier reaction post to episode 4, I mentioned really wanting to sink my teeth into all of the subtext I picked up on. That was what made me initially enjoy the episode so much - there were a lot of little moments that I initially felt revealed so much about the characters and about Loki, and I wanted to analyze them. But at some point, as I gathered more information, my perspective changed and now I no longer want to analyze the subtext bc ... subtext = good. Subtext w/out payoff = not as good.

I'll go into more detail in a moment, but I think the tl;dr of it is that I feel like the narrative requires the audience to work way too hard to put together all of the moving pieces here and, like, I kinda just don't want to do that work? Not so much of it, and not in vain. A lot of the enjoyment of Loki's characterization is coming from fans who are rationalizing why he's behaving as he is, but the narrative never actually confirms those rationalizations. It's asking us to figure it out and maybe our conclusions will be correct but maybe they won't, though. At some point, subtext isn't enough without explicit follow-through.

I thought my issue was with the lack of character development - that is, not having enough narrative space to really earn the big things that are happening now, like Loki/Sylvie or Mobius turning against the TVA. And that's still true, to an extent; I still feel like the pacing is all very off and it seems like most of these things kinda came out of nowhere (but are not unbelievable - just undeveloped).

But, yknow, it is what it is, it's a limited series, and I can excuse some things. Ultimately, my issue isn't a problem with what the narrative isn't doing, it's a problem with what the narrative already failed to do and probably cannot recover from at this point.

The narrative has left out significant details that should at least help us do some of the work here. If a person turned on Loki and started episode 1 and had no background knowledge of the character besides that he tried to take over New York - how would that person interpret Loki? Would that person say, oh, well, he's been through X, Y, and Z, and plus A happened, not to mention B, C, and D, so really, it makes sense that he seems off-the-rails, or that he'd want to get ridiculously drunk at the worst time ever.

Maybe we'd like to believe they would, but how would they be getting to that conclusion? The narrative hasn't led them in that direction so, no, they would not say well we have to consider this, this, and that. It would be impossible to really understand Loki as a character from just what we've gotten in the series. The general audience would probably interpret Loki as being out of his element and so it becomes, I wonder how this character is going to get the upper hand here. And, while that's not wrong, it's just so limited.

The narrative at face value does not address Loki's identity crisis from Thor 2011. It does not address his hurt and devastation at being lied to, nor does it address how complicated his self-image is (bc it sucked to begin with and that was before he found out he was part of a race of "monsters," as he'd been taught his entire life). It does not reference Loki being so broken at the end of Thor 2011 that he deliberately let himself fall into the void of space (aka tried to kill himself). It does not reference that he was tortured by Thanos or even that he went through a seriously dark time in between Thor and Avengers, and it absolutely does not reference or address any influence or control of the mind stone.

These are all things that we, the fan audience, know because we've already invested our time into this character's story. But tons of people, the general audience, wouldn't know these things. Or if they did, bc they saw Thor and Avengers, they wouldn't be thinking about them as deeply as we would, nor contextualizing them with how Loki is behaving now, or why it would make sense that he needed to get drunk, or why it's understandable that he needs to keep going-going-going in order to not have a spare second to think or feel.

They'd probably look at Loki, again, as a character who was a villain and is now getting his comeuppance in a place where he has no power or control, and no literal powers, and even when he manages to escape and catch up to the variant, he proceeds to fuck up their plan for seemingly no real reason except that he wanted to get drunk bc he's hedonistic. Which Sylvie even berates him for! I mean. This is not exactly a complex character breakdown, nor a very flattering one, but that's what the narrative has given us.

(If the narrative has addressed Loki's mind control, his torture, his mental breakdown, his suicide attempt, and his general shitty self-esteem as a result of his upbringing, please point it out to me. If the narrative has explicitly acknowledged and referenced these things anywhere and I am missing it, please show me where. Please explain to me how the casual viewer would know any of these things that they need to know in order to actually understand what's happening in this story.)

So I mean, okay, we have a narrative that doesn't paint a full, accurate picture of Loki. Fine, sure. But because the general audience starts out on the wrong footing, they're not going to get out of the overall story what the writers probably intended them to. For example, in episode 3, a lot of us theorized that Loki had some kind of plan - that he broke the timepad on purpose, for some reason, bc otherwise it wasn't believable that he'd be such a failure. But episode 4 revealed that no, there was no bigger plan, Loki just plain old messed up. Which is fine if, again, one is only considering the surface-level portrayal here, but it's not true to Loki's actual characterization.

I mean. Loki is not perfect and Loki actually fails a lot, this is true. He fails for a lot of reasons, but incompetence has never been one of them. Usually it's that either things grew beyond his control, or there ended up being too many moving parts, or he had to change his plan at the last minute due to some roadblock or another being thrown his way, or even that he got in his own way - whatever the case may be for his plans' failures, he was always at least shown to know what he was doing.

That wasn't the case here. The "plan" to fix the Timepad failed as a direct result of Loki's actions, which were careless and made him seem incompetent, like he couldn't even handle this mission. "You had one job," etc. And there were pretty big consequences for this; they were not able to get off-world in time and would have been killed had the TVA not shown up at the last second.

And maybe none of these things matter bc the writers never intended any of this to be a reflection on Loki's character, positive or negative. The situation exists solely because the writers needed to put Loki and Sylvie together in some kind of hopeless scenario so that they could get closer, and thus the narrative could set up their romance. I get that - but, there were other ways to do it that didn't require Loki to look foolish.

Furthermore, the whole reason they needed to set up the romance is to show Loki eventually learning to love himself (like, figuratively but also literally). The audience is supposed to gather that Loki and Sylvie fell for one another, possibly due to the high emotional aspect of, yknow, being about to die (in addition to the variant-bond). The intent is clear: Loki and Sylvie almost die but get rescued at the last minute, having now created an emotional bond --> Loki and Sylvie team up and the narrative further establishes that Loki, at least, has caught feelings --> Loki might confess them but is pruned before he gets the chance --> he somehow survives, he and Sylvie are reunited and don't want to lose one another again, and the combined power of their love is enough to break the sacred timeline and spawn the multiverse, and the reason that the power of their love is so, well, powerful is because it's about self-love and self-acceptance as much as it is about having the capacity to love someone else. The end.

I get all that. The writers more or less said all that. And, I mean, it's certainly not the way I would have chosen to go about it, but it's a fair enough arc to explore. I don't really have an issue with the intent - but my question, however, is this: if the narrative has so far not addressed Loki's background issues (as outlined above), and has furthermore kinda gone out of its way to portray Loki as hedonistic and narcissistic, among other things (like kinda incompetent), and the context the audience starts with is that Loki's this villain who deserves what he gets -

- my question is 1, why should the audience care whether or not Loki gets to a point of loving and accepting himself (thus to make the theme of self-love, via the romance, hold weight) if they don't know that he hates himself to begin with and 2, why should the audience root for Loki to reach that point when so far the perception of him is that he's "kind of an asshole"? if he's a hedonistic narcissist, he probably already has a pretty inflated sense of himself, right? A misplaced inflated sense of himself, at that, because, again, the narrative has made him out to be not that capable of much of anything. (And it didn't start out that way! It seemed to start out with Loki being capable and intelligent but it's like episode 3, in trying to set up the romance, just jumbled it all up somewhere. I think this is why I'm harping on the Loki/Sylvie aspect so much - it's frustrating bc it kinda messes up the whole story and can't even accomplish what it's supposed to anyway.)

Anyway, that's beside the point. What I'm ultimately getting at is, at what point is the audience supposed to get invested in Loki's personal growth journey?

They can't, not really. Without understanding and having the context of everything Loki has been through up until now, and why he hates himself, and why it's so important that he learn to love himself, then the "payoff" becomes kinda pointless bc the significance of it is lost in translation. So suddenly we're left with this romance that comes off as either "Loki loves Sylvie bc of Reasons" (best-case scenario) or "Loki loves Sylvie bc he's vain, narcissistic, and kinda twisted" (worst-case scenario). Neither of these conclusions are what the writers intended or were going for, I'm positive, but there we are, regardless.

In order for the writers' intent in these storylines to land, they need to address the context of what makes these particular stakes high for Loki. So far, they haven't done that. They're asking the audience to pick up on all of these things, and they're showing things that subtextually make sense and are relatively in-character - but only if you realize there's subtext in the first place.

But you can't expect the audience to do all of the work for you. If you don't want the audience to think that Loki is a narcissistic asshole and instead you are trying to convey that, worst-case scenario, he thinks he's a narcissist but is an unreliable narrator, then you have to address that. If you need the audience to understand why you're going the selfcest route and why it's important to explore Loki's capacity to love himself and others, you have to address where that exploration is starting from and why it matters. Etc etc etc.

The narrative isn't doing any of that. And it isn't like it'd be that hard to do it. They don't need to reinvent the wheel here; a lot of the pieces are already there. A few lines of dialogue for context, a brief scene here or there addressing the issues, a little more care and consistency in how Loki handles things - these are all little things that could go a long fucking way in making the narrative stronger.

I'm rambling. My basic point is that my rollercoaster of emotions with this show is because

- as a part of the fan audience, not the general one, I can contextualize and analyze the subtext and come to the conclusions the show wants me to, and thus find the story and the characters more or less enjoyable,

- but I am also going to be using the subtext to come to conclusions that aren't there but probably should be (I think it would be a better story, for example, for Loki to confuse platonic love with romantic love bc it would pave the way to explore just how fucked up Loki's understanding of love - whether of other people or of himself, and the different forms it can take - actually is)

- and when they're ultimately not there, then I think, okay why am I bothering doing all this work just to ultimately feel very unfulfilled? They don't even have to write it the way I would, I'm not saying that, but they do have to do something to make the story feel rewarding.

If we don't get some confirmation of what Loki's been through, and where his headspace is, and why it matters for him to love himself, then the story remains pretty shallow and, for me, it's not fulfilling enough. It's not engaging enough. There isn't actually anything to sink my teeth into, so it becomes kind of boring. Maybe it's rewarding to other people, and that's great for them, but like - I need more than whatever this is.

So I'm just like - well, I had a lot of worries about this show, but my being bored wasn't one of them and now there's only two episodes left and am I really not going to get anything out of this, in the long run? No new canons, no new depths or layers, no new information on Loki's experiences? This is it?

I don't dislike it. I didn't start out disliking it, and I probably wont end up disliking it. I mean, there are a lot of good moments, and good things, and fan service-y things that I appreciate. As far as inspiration for fic goes, it's a goldmine, both plot-wise as well as aesthetic-wise. All of that is great. I don't dislike this show.

But I am disappointed in it, and I feel like I'll be watching the next two episodes lacking the sense of anticipation that would make it exciting. I'll still enjoy them, probably, if for nothing else just the sheer Loki content, but whatever it was I felt watching episodes 1 and 2 is gone and I'm sad about that, too. Because I really wanted to feel fulfilled by this series; I wanted it to fill up the void that Loki's death in IW created three years ago. And I just ... don't feel it. Maybe, maybe that'll change over the course of episodes 5 and 6. I don't know.

Everything that I end up enjoying long-term, I think, will come about as a result of my own interpretations and analysis and while theoretically there's nothing wrong with that, if I had known all I'd get out of this series was more headcanons or support for my current headcanons then, well - that's fine, I suppose, but I'll definitely a little bit robbed.

#loki spoilers #loki series negativity #loki tv series spoilers #loki series spoilers #long post

149 notes · View notes

kittydemon9000 · 3 years

Text

SO MERLOPIAN KAI PART 2 ELECTRIC BOOGALOO

So, with Kalmaar, he ofc immediately goes to his parents about his feeling, slightly placing his revenge on hold. They are...dubious about it, but Maya raises the point of how there has never been a human/merlopian hybrid before, and from what Ray has told them about having two EM parents it’s possible for Kai to have some water abilities himself, which could be what gave Kalmaar his feeling. So, they agree to look into it.

Moving on..... Uh. Kai doesn’t have a fun time in S6, as briefly as he’s there. You see, Nahdakahn knows exactly what buttons to press and is able to get Kai into a panicked state where he, on the verge of a panic attack and mental breakdown, just says “I wish that I could just be normal! I wish I could just go home! I wish I could be with dad and mom and father and Kal and Bentho and Nya!!!”

The “normal” comment comes from how they weren’t able to completely hide Kai’s heritage since yeah, there were other people on the boat who saw him. That and he also tried a lot less to keep it hidden. And because some humans are assholes, he has to deal with that.

So ofc, Nahdakahn interprets it in the worst ways and as two wishes. Kai is now a full human yes….but was also sent to where the fish fam currently were……which just so happened to be at the bottom of the ocean.

So yeah, double trauma for both groups. Kai got to experience what drowning felt like, and his fam was essentially forced to watch him die since there was nothing they could do. They were too far under to take him to the surface and too far from the palace to take him there.

But dw, it gets even worse.

You see, the whole reason Nahdakahn is being this malicious about Kai’s wishes is because he learned that Kai was the reason the Preeminent was destroyed, thereby destroying Djinjago.

Nahdakahn is then able to do a “oh? Is this not what you wanted? I thought you wished to be normal.” Which ofc sounds really bad since it’s in front of his family. “But, I understand. You grow tired of the stares in the street, how they whisper behind you back about what you are. Not human, not merlopian, not normal. Just a freak masquerading as one of them.”

This ofc supremely pisses off the fam. Like, weapons drawn ready to commit murder.

But then Nahdakahn stop them with a “ah ah ah, I wouldn’t do that if I were you. After all, I am the only way your son has a chance at living. So go ahead. Make a wish.”

Trimaar ends up being the one to do it, and is smart enough to know this uh will twist it in anyway he can so says. “I wish for Kai to be sent safely to the surface without harm done upon him.”

Blah blah blah, your wish is yours to keep, Trimaar realizing “wait there’s a lot that could be interpreted” but too late BAM now Kai’s kinda stuck on the Misfortune’s Keep.

And he....generally has a pretty bad time. Think Jay but this time it’s personal.

However, Kai’s appearance had Trimaar get the Merlopian army and start heading to the surface. The remaining ninja have a brief moment of “are you kidding me two enemies at once” before learning that this is Kai’s lost family and they’re here to help.

So now the ninja have a whole ass fish army to help them, plus a very protective, very angry fish family.

But for the rest of canon, the only difference is that when they’re leaving Tiger Widow Island, Nya gets snatched along with Jay(who was taken because he hadn’t used his wish yet) and they aren’t stuck on the island, and then later that Kai gets sucked into the sword when the ninja launch their rescue mission.

But yeah, it gets all Un-Happened by Jay’s wish(which at seeing Kai physically hurt and being emotionally torn apart at his baby sister dying, wished that none of this ever happened and that Nahdakahn was never found), only like canon Nya and Jay still remember what happens.

Nya is now firmly on team Kai Is Alive and tells her parents everything about what happened and the wish Jay made, and more importantly where Kai is.

Unfortunately, they need to take some time and prepare. Trimaar and Maya have been doing their best over the years to open the populace possibly making bonds with the humans, but now it’s finally happening. They can’t just go up there out of no where, since from what Nya has told them 1) most humans don’t even know they exist and 2) in the past few years they have been subject of many attacks, mostly from non-humans, so they need to make sure the humans understand they don’t mean any harm.

So DotD happens, then the beginnings of S7 :)

Right out, Kai never liked the museum curator. Up to that point he’d only ever caught fleeting glimpse of him but something about him Kai just despised. As a result, he also visited the museum as scarcely as possible, and thus didn’t notice a very interesting painting containing a two very strange figures.

When he learns his name was Dr.Saunders.....things don’t go well.

It happened when Kai brought the helmet with his dad’s symbol on it. As much as he disliked the curator, he was the most likely to be able to recognize what kind of helmet it was.

Then in his anger he gets himself captured.

He’s taken to a special cell lined with vengestone and has guards around the clock, and Krux takes extra care to make sure Kai doesn’t know where Ray is.

ofc it’s around this time that the Merlopians arrive and express their wishes for a possible alliance between their two races. Unfortunately they showed up at literally the worst time, and double unfortunately the people in charge of diplomacy decide to bring some of the ninja in as an extra precaution because of the villains have been running around.

So the people who join the meeting are Lloyd and Jay from the ninja(they would’ve brought Kai but he hasn’t returned from his missions yet and isn’t answering their calls) as well as some police officers and from the Merlopians is the whole royal family plus a few guards.

Both Jay and Nya have a silent moment of staring at each other since “I know and I’m not sure you know but I think you know but I don’t want to say anything since you might not”

And just as they’re about to start, The Time Twins attack. Because why the hell not.

They’re actually able to hold them off for a while, but unfortunately there are too many Vermillion. Then Kalmaar whips out his Water Powers which causes him to get kidnapped since they need both Fire and Water masters for the blade.

While they’re recovering, Lloyd then gets a panicked call from Zane saying that he checked the museum footage and Kai has been captured. The gets overheard by the royal family, and then Lloyd asks why they looked so upset at which they learn(sans Jay since wish) that Kai is royalty. The eldest son actually, and thus first in line for the throne, as well as being presumed dead for the past five years.

So basically Krux has kidnapped the King and Queen’s husband, the crown prince, and the second in line prince(if anyone knows a more fancy term for this please let me know)

Maya, Trimaar, Nya and Benthomaar are not happy. Not with the Ninjagian people, no they’re fine, but they’re bout ready to murder Krux, and they don’t even know about Ray yet.

So they offer any help they can.

Zap back to how Kai and Kalmaar are doing.

Kalmaar is….kind feral tbh. Like, he’s biting, clawing, trying to strangle them with his tentacles, and before they got vengestone cuffs on him was trying very hard to drown anyone.

Ofc, this does little to the Vermillion and soon Kalmaar finds himself in the cell right next to Kai’s. He’s overjoyed to see his brother again, albeit upset that this is why.

They both reluctantly come to the conclusion that there isn’t much they can do at the moment, and there are many Vermillion guards right outside their cells, so they decide to start catching up.

And for pretty much the rest of the season canon is pretty much the same, just shuffle around the characters a bit and add a protective Fish Fam.

Though their little trip back in time is quite sight for the Past EMs, especially because of how Kalmaar is using his powers, which leaves Kai mostly stuck in his Fish Form. This time they don’t even bother trying to explain, just give instructions on how to defeat the Vermillion and jumping into the battle.

And I mean just imagine that from the EMs perspective. An enemy you thought you defeated just returned with a giant metal creature and an army of snake things that don’t look like any kind of Serpentine they’d ever seen. Then a shark person and squid person??? show up and not only do they know how to fight the snake things but they also seem to be Elemental Masters???? Despite the fact Ray is very much alive and they didn’t even know there was a Water EM. Then the two not only summon dragons but they also fuse their dragons into an even bigger one with two heads.

And then all of them disappear into the sky without a trace.

W i l d

But yeah, after that it calms down quite a bit. Kai spends the time skip before S8 reconnecting with his family and his dad, and through some tech courtesy of Borg they're able to bring Ray with them :D

And Kai actually goes to meet the Jade Royal Family since y’know. He’s the crown prince. He’s kinda important and legitimately forgot about it. Luckily Kalmaar is able to help coach Kai through it, but is also a bit smug about how he finally has something to teach to his older brother. Kai was actually the one who suggested asking the ninja for help protecting the mask.....but we know how that inevitably ends.

Bentho, Kal and Nya were actually on the ship for this particular adventure, and then Nya and Bentho were dragged along when they got sent to the First Realm. Bentho, despite being the youngest sibling and to the surprise of literally everyone, was actually really good with kids and spent the most time with Little Wu, right behind Cole.

But yeah S9......Nya and Bentho have a really bad time in the First Realm beause of the heat, but at least they don’t get captured. Kai on the other hand....

Yeah at some point he gets accidentally splashed with water and well.....it definitely doesn’t help with the Oni accusations. The Dragon Hunters decide to burn him along with the Wind Dragon, which moves up their Build Our Own Dragon time table.

After they escape Faith is actually pretty chill about the whole fish thing, but she does ask a lot of questions.

And then S10..... kinda the same. They end up dropping off as many people as they can with the Merlopians since the smoke can’t reach them.

I might make a Part 3 for the rest of the seasons, but yeah. this is where we’re at.

#merlopian royalty au #info dump #ninjago #kai #kai smith #kalmaar #prince kalmaar #trimaar #king trimaar #krux

65 notes · View notes

dawsons-justice · 3 years

Text

He Promised, You Trusted.

Part Two to “I Promise, You Trust”

A/N: Reader is between 14-17, so this is a Father Figure!Antonio x Reader. No romance, 100% platonic.

TW: Nothing horribly graphic, some mild angst, but mostly just to lead up to the fluff

Masterlist

It sure was cold outside. Chicago had been cold, but Minnesota somehow was colder. Your aunt had apologized she couldn't pick you up from school but it wasn't really her fault. She had to pick up some extra shifts to keep up with the bills. You're just glad she let you stay with her. 8 months ago, you really had no idea where you would end up.

8 months ago...

Detective Dawson ran off to make some calls, leaving you to your own thoughts. You noticed the worried glances of his coworkers watching you from the unit floor. You didn’t know any of them, they were all sorta intimidating in their own way, well, except for the woman with brown hair, she looked nice. It just felt better to block them out and focus on the mug in your hands. The hot chocolate had gotten cold in the time it took you to process everything and really you haven’t truly processed anything.

Dawson came back in the room, his face muddled with several emotions. There was some stress, determination and anger but you made out the sympathy on his features most of all. Most people don't want sympathy, but you were just glad someone was caring enough to do so. Trailing behind him was another cop, older, you'd seen him before, just didn't know his name.

"You got anyone we can call?" Antonio asks. you had to wrack your brain a bit. It hadn’t occurred to you that this would be important. "I have an aunt. I haven't talked to her in years. My dad and her don't get along."

The two men exchanged a glance. And you understood now. If you didn't find a home yourself, they'd have to put you in a group home. That was not good. You had heard stories, everyone has. Group homes only provide shelter to trouble. If you ended up there who knows what would happen to you after. You hadn’t thought this through, this was a bad idea. In some sort of a desperate plea, you grab the detective’s hand as he’s about the leave with the other guy.

"Wait no no... I can't live in a home. I can't. I'd rather go home to my dad. Please no." Panic evident in your voice. His face softens, kneeling down to your height. He was just going to try to comfort you. You forced yourself to remember whatever he says can’t change the truth. He isn’t the one making the rules. You’re not naive.

"Hey, hey kiddo. Not there yet, let's give your aunt a ring and see if we can get ahold of her. You got a name?" His voice calm, if he was worried you really couldn’t tell now, unlike when he first returned. You gave her name, not knowing anything besides she lived in St. Paul. But they were cops, you figured they could track her down.

The other guy, Voight, left, you heard him call out to someone named Halstead to run your aunt's name. Antonio didn’t move, just kept holding your hand looking around as if he wasn’t. The fact we seemed unbothered by the comforting gesture put you more at ease, yet you still were struggling with this.

"B-but what if she doesn't want me?"

There was a look of disbelief in his face, as if you were made of solid gold. It was fake and you knew it, still, it was comforting. "We're gonna figure it out, ok? I'll tell her myself what a great kid you are."

"I'm sorry."

The detective didn’t have to say anything, but you knew he deflected your apology. Somehow you just knew the minute you said it what his response was going to be. He didn’t feel bothered. And on top of this it was going to work out. He would make sure it worked out.

And it did. Given the explanation of the situation, your Aunt was happy to take you in. Antonio pulled some strings and you spent one night with his colleague Kim Burgess (the woman with the brown hair) before your aunt took over custody. In less than 48 hours you were on your way to Minnesota with a bag you packed and your dad had no clue. For once you knew there was at least one person who was worth trusting in this world.

The snow crunched below your feet. It was only another mile or so to your aunt’s place. The roads were pretty clear. Much of the snow had been packed down for days, but a recent heatwave melted and refroze the roads to solid ice. The deceiving snow was only an inch or two thick on top of the slick icy layer beneath. So, when you hear tires squeal, it is not in any way surprising. You were learning to drive yourself; ice roads were something that even your aunt had trouble managing let alone teach you how to navigate. You had respect for anyone who was able to successfully manage those roads in two-wheel drive. Whipping around, there’s not a two-ton car sliding towards you as you had expected, planning to dive roll into the snow. There’s a black van with a guy in a ski mask running towards you.

Crap.

Taking advantage of the ice, you threw your backpack at him, hoping he’d lose his balance and walk onto the more slippery road. Yet things do not go to plan as he easily recovers and continues to pursue you, reaching you and wrapping his arms around your waist. You fought. You screamed, wailed, bit, flailed, kicked and every other defensive action your subconscious could think of. It didn’t work, he was just too much bigger than you. You were thrown into the back of the van.

no no no no no this can’t be happening.

You considered yourself a calm person, but that was before you were tied and gagged in the back of a van. The darkness seemed to only escalate your fears as you had a blank canvas to imagine your worst nightmares becoming reality. "Please, just let me go” you must have said it 40 times before something heavy hit your head.

Things faded in and out. Darkness and light fought a battle, but you could never really tell if you could see or not, it was all just shadows. The nausea was also coming in waves, paired with the throbbing sensation on the back of your head. You had been pistol whipped. But of course, you didn’t know that. The sheer terror of the entire situation still had you disoriented. You couldn’t feel the time pass, most people know what a minute or five minutes feels like, but you couldn’t focus. It was all too much.

When the van doors slide open you hear the guy who grabbed you talk to whoever was driving. “I still can’t believe this guy.” His gruff voice scoffed, close by.

“Well, he had the money, who are we to judge.”

“Guy? Had someone hired them to take me? Was I about to be sold or something?”

You’re embarrassed to say the next voice you heard brought you half a millisecond of comfort, it was misplaced. “You had to put a sack over her head?” It was your dad. How? Better question why would he ask that question though he had no emotion in his voice.

The men and your dad talk as you wrestle with this entire shock. Suddenly someone picks you up and carries you over their shoulder. You figured it was guy who grabbed you, but feeling that whoever was holding you gently lowered you to the floor, you made the new assumption it was your dad. The blindfold and gag came off in a quick motion. You were met with the hollow face of your father in some sort of abandoned room. He gave a sickening smile, one that brought no relief with it. “I brought you back sugar!”

“Dad, let me go.”

He nodded and started to undo your restraints. It couldn’t be this easy. Taking a moment, he was preoccupied with removing the duct tape glue from your arms, as if he cared, you jumped up, running across the room to open the metal door, but it was locked.

“Open the door, dad.”

“Y-you’ll just leave.” He whimpered, face looking offended.

This wasn’t your dad. The eyes were too hopeful and the demeanor was too caring. This was you dad having some sort of a mental breakdown. The pieces came together as you watched the tremors in his hands. Not knowing the man in front of you felt more terrifying than the man you ran away from. Before, you knew somewhere buried deep in his subconscious he would never seriously harm you beyond some bruises. But you stared into eyes you didn’t recognize. It was entirely possible he was going to kill you. All of that mess 8 months ago just to end up dying in Chicago and nobody knows about it.

But that’s where you were wrong.

Within a 25 mile radius…

“Detective Dawson,”

The somewhat uncaring police deputy at St. Paul started running down the situation. There wasn’t much to tell. Your backpack was found in a snowbank near some blood in the snow with you nowhere to be found. Your aunt had been adamant that the deputy at the front desk reach Antonio. And of course, the detective roped his unit into the situation. Voight made it a priority. It didn’t take a psychologist to see that Antonio cared about you, he cared about all his teen CIs. They were his secondary kids. He would find you, even if he hadn’t promised you to do so. He promised himself. When word had come in that your dad had been behind the entire situation it was not much of a shock. A man with a past of petty crime and domestic abuse with mental health concerns did seem like a high probability suspect. He had also rented out a storage container on the industrial side of town. Antonio and his team suited up. He was going to end this situation here and now.

“CHICAGO PD OPEN THE DOOR”

In a frenzied craze, your father throws you to the floor. It would make sense for him to run, but logic wasn’t a key factor right now. His foot goes to your neck and the gun points to your head. The gun must have been on his back, you hadn’t seen it until now.

I don’t want to die.

Not like this.

Not here.

Please no.

Please.

Bursting through the door you make out several people with weapons drawn on your dad. Light floods the dark room leaving the two of you partially blind, yet the tension still filled the air.

“LET HER GO.” It wasn’t a request. It was an order. Regardless, your neck was still being crushed. Air was slowly waning from your lungs. And then it wasn’t. In an instant you felt his foot roll out from over you, giving you a chance to scramble away.

“Y/N, Y/N, it’s ok. We’re police.”

And that was likely the only time anyone from your side of town was happy to hear that phrase. But still, you couldn’t quite comprehend it. It was a full mess of tears, screaming, wailing and shaking. You had been mere seconds from death by gun or choking, you couldn’t just suck it up. Not even you were that badass. Nonetheless, the cops weren’t getting anywhere with calming you down.

“Call an ambo.” Calls another voice, a woman. “Tonio, you ok?”

“Yeah” And under normal circumstances you would have connected the dots, but as it has already been overly reiterated, you were not stable right now. The only thing you could register was the familiar hand on top of yours gently squeezing your arm below.

“Shhh shhh, it’s ok kiddo, we got you. He’s gone.”

Hold it, you know that voice.

And what would you know, you finally grasped it. Staring down at you is Detective Dawson, once again saving your neck, literally. It was probably against some rule, but you just buried your head in his shoulder trying to block out everything outside. He let it slide, just holding you there, seemingly not in any rush to move you till the paramedics arrived. In time you realized the other officer trying to calm you down had been Burgess, but you just hadn’t recognized her. You’re in pain, but not horrendous amounts, must be the adrenaline. Regardless, Antonio calls another officer, Atwater, to carry you outside to the ambulance. Before you know it, the ambo is driving away from the scene to Chicago Med, leaving the Intelligence Unit to deal with the aftermath including Dawson.

Sitting in the ER, you wait for test results to return on your head scan. More had happened in the last 12 hours than in the last 8 months. You realized how much you liked the simplicity and (relative) safety of Minnesota, but now you’d at least carry pepper spray. You’re pulled from your thoughts as you see Dawson peak from the side of the curtains. You had not felt too lonely or afraid before given the officers stationed outside your room, but seeing him made you feel better.

“Hey kiddo, how’s the neck?” he smiles, moving into the room slowly as if he was trying not to scare you.

You smile weakly, still exhausted. “Alright, considering.” You noticed tape on the base of his neck on one side extending underneath his shirt where you couldn’t see. “What happened?”

“I might be getting a little long in the tooth for tackling suspects.” And by suspects, you knew he meant your dad. He was the one who got him off you. “Are you ok?” You ask. “All good, just had to get my shoulder checked out.”

“Ok, glad you’re ok.” And you truly were. You would feel awful if you had been the reason he had been seriously injured, especially after you were supposed to be out of his hair.

He nods, fiddling with his hands on the rail at the end of your bed. “Hey, your aunt is on her way to get you, it’s gonna be awhile, but I talked to your doctor and they said they’ll keep you till she arrives to monitor your concussion.”

You nod. “My dad?”

“We got him, he’s going away for a long time.” You notice his lack of enthusiasm in that response, obviously thinking that justice had not been fully served.

“But not forever.” Your voice soft, barely over a whisper.

He shook his head. “Long enough you’re not going to need to worry about him.”

“But you’ll come rescue me again if he tries, right?” You cocked an eyebrow, knowing it wasn’t a promise he could make, but every reassuring thing he told you made you feel better anyways.

“As much as I love the job, I don’t know if I’m going to be on the force in 40 years.”

“Yeah, you might not be able to a shoot a gun while using a walker with tennis balls on the bottom.” The two of you laugh a bit at that visualization.

As you quiet down you notice he looks a bit more serious.“But yeah, I’ll get you.”

Once again, probably against some protocol, but you just had to reach out and hug him burying your face in his leather jacket. He leans forward to pull you in. Something about it was just natural, you knew he’d protect you, you knew that now.

“Thank you so much. I’d be dead.”

“Of course,” He pets your hair, resting his chin on the top of your head.

“T-thank you for caring.” He pulls back to look you in the eyes.

“I checked your record, no priors since you left. Thank you for being worth it.” He smiles.

The two of you sit there for a minute, staring at each other, his hand still the (good) side of your head. You’d never really had a dad moment like this, but if this was the first and last dad moment you ever had, you were ok with it. It was perfect. He stands up, stretching out his back as if he’s about to leave. But instead, he pulls up a chair.

“You don’t mind if I stick around till your aunt arrives do you?”

You gently shook your head. Truth was, you were too afraid to ask him to do so, but of course, somehow, he knew what you needed. So there the two of you sat. Talking about the extremely normal things you had been involved in back in Minnesota. You swear he kept a small smile on his face the entire time. Just happy to see you moving on. It was done.

When you turned 18, you reached out the Antonio again and asked if he would be willing to meet up for lunch, now that it was “legal” to do so. And now it has become an annual event with occasional bonus trips when you somehow wind up in the Windy City. Your lives may have grown apart in distance but something would always keep the two of you together. He’d always be there for you, and you needed that. Maybe not everyone needs a perfect father figure to survive in the world, but knowing a tough boxing detective would be by your side in one phone call gave you the freedom of safety. Your aunt is an amazing woman, but Antonio Dawson is really the one who you owe everything to.

He promised, you trusted, and it was the first decision of your life that truly mattered.

A/N: I know my presence on this account is sporadic, but I hope some people enjoy this. I’m going to dive into my drafts to work on some of the partially written responses I have for some old requests. (:

#antonio dawson #antonio dawson x reader #Chicago PD #one chicago #antonio dawson imagines #antonio dawson imagine #antonio dawson baby #fanfiction #fandom #fanfic

154 notes · View notes

cafeinthemoon · 3 years

Text

From the Human Heart - Chapter III

Chapter: 3/4

Wordcount: 2905

Title: The Lamb and the Knife

Fandom: Jujutsu Kaisen

Pairing: Ryomen Sukuna X reader

Previous chapters

1 . 2

Symbols: ⭕ . ➕ . 💛 . ▶️▶️

Warning (s): Mental breakdown, mental instability (one occurrence in the beginning of the chapter)

N. A.: I confess I was a bit afraid that this chapter ended up too sad or depressing during reader's return to the village, because what she sees there is something that could break anyone's spirit, and with her things are not different. However this story has a happy ending, so I guess I can make up for it 😅 Also, I was planning to finish the story in this chapter, but the text ended up being too long, so I had to add a fourth chapter. I usually avoid establishing a number of chapters in my wips because they always get longer than I plan, but this one should be a short story (guess I failed in this smh)

A shiver ran all over your body and woke you up in an instant.

You didn’t open your eyes yet, but you knew you were lying on something cold, having your cloak to protect you from the chilling breeze of the morning. Morning? Something was telling you that it was morning already. Well, in that case… when did you fall asleep? What happened to you while you were not awake?

The rustling noise of the leaves was heard when you moved on your spot, your right arm aching after spending a long time in the same position. You opened your eyes at last and found a gray, autumnal day around you, the fainting light barely breaking through the dense top of the trees. All you could see was brown, red and yellow, as expected. Fortunately, winter hasn’t reached you yet.

That was strange, to be honest. Why would you think you’ve spent more than one night in that place, long enough to not see the change of seasons?

You sat on the forest’s ground and checked your own state. Everything was in its place: your dress, with the slit in the cleavage made by the King of Curses; the cut in your cloak’s stripe was still there, but the stripe was tied up again around your neck, a bit tighter; your empty bag was on the ground, serving as a pillow in that wild, improvised bed. Was it you that arranged things this way? Was it him? You didn’t know, and you didn’t think that finding out the truth would bring you any comfort.

In an urge to make sure you were alright, you opened your cleavage and checked your skin in the spot touched by Sukuna to seal the pact. There was no stain, no wound, no mark there; you weren’t feeling pain, burning or ache. Nothing changed in it. Of course not, you old yourself: what he did was an enchantment to change your soul, not your body. Any change that could come from it would not be visible to the eye.

With effort, you took your bag and stood up. You shook the leaves and tugs off your dress and cloak and took a second look at your surroundings. That was the same clearing in which you met Sukuna, and you were lying among the roots of the same tree you stopped at to read the sentences of the ritual.

The clearing didn’t seem so large and mysterious now that you were seeing it under the day light. It was silent, unlike the moment when you found it, full of sounds of night birds and small predators rushing their paws through the leaves, out of your sight. All that life was now gone, as if it has never existed.

A blow of cold wind twirled and passed by you before you could see where it came from, carrying leaves and dust with it. You took it was a sign to leave, as if it was saying to you that there was nothing there but death and oblivion. You protected your eyes and once the column of dust moved away, you ran out of that place.

You didn’t know how you managed to run through the same way that brought you to that cursed forest without ending up breathless, aching and out of your mind. Your feet were carried down through its declined territory, full of traps and roots, not stumbling in a single one of them, nor your clothing were ripped or got stuck while you ran.

To you, you’ve been running forever: the more you moved forward, the more the scenario around you looked the same. Was it part of the enchantment or were you just tired, eager to return to your village and see the results of the treaty?

You relied on this latter and continued to move.

***

The village, seen from the high spot of the hill, was the same since you left it. Not that you should expect something else – you were changed, nor your old home. Besides, you couldn’t have left for so long. But it felt like years in your heart, and the night before landed as a dream in your memory now. You adjusted the hood upon your head and tightened your grip around your cloak: the cold breeze ran free without the trees to obstruct it and you wanted to protect yourself; and, despite your trust in the results of the enchantment, you still had no ways to know exactly who were going to see you or not, so that you didn’t want to expose yourself before you had the chance to explore the territory.

Well, when you were reaching the lowest spot of the hill you were left with minimal choices regarding this.

A commotion was happening at the village’s entry, not so far from the place you where standing: a group of people stared with desperation to two or three men who you recognized as members of the Jujutsu council, the ones your father used to refer as his closest allies among them; these men were trying, with great effort, to contain a man who screamed incomprehensible words in a harsh, animalistic voice and scaring the villagers. The man was dressed in the same traditional clothing of the sorcerers, but all the noble aspect of it was gone, replaced with rips and blood as if its owner was kept locked inside a cage and tried everything in his reach to escape it, fighting with people and weapons.

Your blood ran cold in your veins when you recognized the insane man as your father.

After that, it was like your ears were uncovered and you started to understand what he and the other men were saying. They were arguing under a case of thievery: a treasure has vanished from the Jujutsu collection at your father’s house; the masters were convinced that the responsible for the crime was now far away from the village and must have been a clever Jujutsu sorcerer since they managed to deceive all of them, including your father; however, they were confused by the story your father was telling.

Between one growl and another, this was what you could understand from his speech.

- I know exactly who did this! My daughter did this! My own daughter! And I will hunt her till the end of the world!

His own daughter. You.

Your feet stepped back in an unconscious urge to run, but somehow you stood to listen to the rest. You immediately understood the agitation among the Jujutsu masters: the treasure that disappeared was the flower, without which they could not stand a chance against its true owner. Without the jewel, all the lies told by them and their leader were going to be brought to the surface and the whole village was going to pay for their dishonesty.

But none of this has hit you like the realization that your father was talking about you, that he still remembered about you and was willing to come after you to recover the jewel.

And that the situation was not the same to anyone among the people around him.

- Please, enough with this nonsense, master y/sn! – one of the sorcerers was saying, struggling to hold the furious man by his arm.

- Enough with this! – a second man shouted with less patience – You have no daughter! You’ve never had!

Yes, it wasn’t that surprising that the elders couldn’t see you – they never hid their distaste towards you, the greatest obstacle to their ascension in your Jujutsu society. But you didn’t take too long to notice that they weren’t the only ones who have forgotten about you: the entire village has, or at least all the people who were at your sight, some of them known to you for years. Some of them you yourself used to love and respect, and have trusted with your life in the worst moments of your relationship with your father – people you could swear to love you back.

Could it be that you, known by your connection with the most important sorcerer of the village, was an unpleasant presence to them as much as your father must have been? Could it be that they only tolerated you because of him?

A tear rolled down your left cheek, dried by the cold wind that passed at that moment, strong enough to take off the hood of your head. You still weren’t sure of what was more painful: to realize that your father was the only one who remembered you or to see that not even the people you liked were able to reciprocate you just enough to not forget you after an enchantment.

Something died inside you while you saw that. So you just put your hood back and turned your back on your old home, restarting your way up the hill again and hurrying up before your father noticed your presence.

***

It wouldn’t make a great difference if you decided to stay in that forest if the next night reached you there, for you had nowhere to come back as much as you had no place to go to. You were no longer on a hurry: running up that hill twice in so little time has taken the remaining energy in your body and your spirit, so you started walking; if you were passing by the same paths you’ve crossed before, you didn’t know and didn’t care.

To say you were walking was too much. Your legs were shaking, and your numb feet were stumbling even before reaching the obstacles; your hands were doing their best to hold on to the branches and any other support they were able to find, since you couldn’t count on your eyes to guide you: you hadn’t go blind, but you weren’t seeing anything in your way. Your attention was all in what you just witnessed, not in what you had in front of you.

It was as if you just died and had the opportunity to come back to see how the people you knew were dealing with your absence. If you were honest to yourself, you would have already accepted that what you saw wasn’t unexpected at all; still, it wasn’t something that you could completely understand until it happened to you.

At some dense spot of the grove you stopped, despite not having any hopes of finding some rest. You held tight on a low branch to not fall of exhaustion and concentrated on your breath. It was when you noticed you didn’t sense the expected harshness of wood while touching its surface.

You looked at your hand and screamed – your skin, exposed until your fist, was blue. Blue, but not just as a way to say it was cold: it was indeed blue, as a frozen lake reflecting the winter sky. You stepped back as if that was the hand of a stranger, but it followed you and obeyed all your commands, not letting any space for doubts; it belonged to you. You turned it to see its back and noticed variations in the blue, stains of a darker shade, and saw that your nails were now indigo, all of them in a sharp shape, just like…

Just like Sukuna’s nails. A curse’s nails.

You gasped at the memory of his warning. This was what supposed to happen in case you didn’t accept the result of the enchantment. You looked again at your palms and saw no cut nor wound that the branches could cause to a human’s delicate skin – yours were intact, as expected from a resistant curse’s body part. You rolled up your dress’ sleeves to see if your arms were blue as well and observed in horror as the slow transformation reached them.

You adjusted the sleeves and stopped looking. There was no use in desperation. You adjusted the cloak around you and crossed your arms around yourself, accepting the punishment.

- For someone who was so determined just one day before, you do not seem so happy now… child.

His voice grew from the depths of the forest and reached you as if it vibrated by its own will, shaking every nerve you had in you, waking you up to the darkness of your new reality.

You turned to find the King of Curses in the middle of the clearing, just like the first time you’ve met, but now the day was still there above you, with no sign of the red shadows of the summoning. That could only mean one thing: he hasn’t left after the treaty; instead, he remained in those lands, perhaps observing you while you were unconscious or waiting for the next events in the village to take place.

Having him witnessing your downfall in all its bitter details disgusted you in a way you didn’t think to be possible. Still, you found strength to give him a verbal response.

- Haven’t you had enough fun by now? – and after a gasp – Why are you still here?

Sukuna shrugged, not even a little upset by your hostile reception.

- I was just passing by and happened to meet you again – he raised an eyebrow –I am surprised to see that you are still here, to be honest. I thought you have left these lands yesterday. This is the reason why you wanted the enchantment, is not it?

Before you could formulate an answer, he approached and lowered his four eyes to your hands; you clenched your fists and tried to hide them behind your back as a last attempt to save your dignity, but your move was ignored by him, who passed his hands around you and brought yours to his sight, examining their skin with simulated preoccupation. You gave up on any attempt to pull them back: though there was no harshness in the way he was holding them, you knew he had enough strength to break them in such case, or cut them off with the same easiness he has cut the stripe of your cloak or the lock of your hair.

- So it is happening already? – he frowned while caressing them with his thumbs, speaking more to himself than to you – So soon…

- Soon?! – you spat the word – Are you telling me you deceived me?!

Sukuna’s gaze turned to you in surprise at this accusation.

- What do you mean, brat?

- I gave you back the jewel my father stole from you and didn't ask for anything near its price in return, and yet look at me now!

- You knew that I was going to… that this was going to happen to me anyway… is this what you’re telling me, right?

- Hm?

His carefree manners were making you more and more furious and desperate.

- What did I do for you to deceive me like this?!

- Who said I deceived you? – he sighed – I thought you were smarter than this, dear. I was honest with you in our whole treaty. The seal was established according to the rules and the enchantment worked as well. Otherwise you would not have noticed any difference or, in a worst hypothesis, you would have died in the process. Well, not even I would be here in such case. If I broke the rules, I would be punished. You must know that.

You fell silent. That was true: in the Jujutsu world, if two individuals established a pact, both of them were under the obligation to respect the rules of the said pact, otherwise they would be punished – with death in the case of a human and with exorcism in the case of a curse. Still, you were convinced that something was wrong with your own deal.

- It cannot be…

You felt your eyes burning, full with tears that you weren’t able to contain. The weight of what you have done has reached you at last, and from it you couldn’t escape. But were you capable of carrying it? You doubted that.

You felt his hand wiping the tears of your cheek.

- Shhh… No more whining, dear – he lifted your chin to make you meet his gaze – Now, tell me what is going on... What is it that is upsetting you so much regarding the enchantment?

You were impatient, of course, but didn't offer any resistance. You spoke all at once before your voice could crack in a new burst of desperation.

- I came back to the village and found out that the only person who was able to see me was my father. No one else remembers me. And this situation made him insane… – you sobbed – Tell me, how is this possible?!

He giggled and assumed the tone of a Jujutsu teacher.

- You want me to confirm what you are not willing to tell yourself even in thoughts? Alright. I think I can do this for you. You know the rules as well as I do. If someone does not love you, they will forget about your existence. If they do, they will remember you, whether they are the only one in this case or not – and then, he had nothing for you now besides the logical conclusion of the case – So, if your father is the only one who can see you now… He must be the only one who loves you.

#jjk #jujutsu kaisen #jjk fanfic #jujutsu kaisen fanfic #sukuna #ryomen sukuna #sukuna x reader #ryomen sukuna x reader #jjk x y/n

45 notes · View notes

fallingforyou123 · 3 years

Text

You Will Never Be A God-Une

Warnings: Slight language, implied smut, alight angst

Word Count: 1.7k

A/N: Here is the official part one! Hope you'll like it, reblogs and feedback are always appreciated!

Series Masterpost

The sheets hung loosely around her frame, the only thing keeping her from being exposed to the cold air. The stranger laid beside her in a dazed out state, chest rising ever so slowly. A small cloud of smoke engulfed the both of them, a bad habit Stevi had picked up from an ex of hers.

“Those will kill you one day.”

“No more than sleeping with strangers will.”

“Touche.”

Stevi moved to get dressed, keeping quiet to avoid another conversation. Leaving was always bad, but leaving when there was still so much to be said was the worst. She couldn’t quite place it, but there was a feeling, something small sitting in her gut. It worried her, she’d never felt like this with a stranger. So safe and comfortable.

“Stay. Just till the morning, I’ll have my driver take you home.” Came the voice from the other side of the bed.

“No, definitely no. I have rules, no names, no staying. I can’t”

“What a lonely life you must live, to disconnect so much from those around you.”

Stevi looked at him, truly looked at him. He looked so much different than the man she met a couple hours ago. His perfectly gelled hair was nothing more than a brown mess atop his head, his eyes were clouded with a sleepy haze, and his suit had been replaced by a very thin sheet. He looked like someone she could see herself falling for back in university, she had to remind herself that this was a man with a lot of money, someone she’d probably dig up dirt on for an article.

She shook her head, she needed to leave.

After she finished dressing, she grabbed her bag from the front room and slipped out the door. Checking her phone she saw a couple missed calls from Brooke and an enthusiastic ‘be safe!’ text from Poppy. She quickly both, ensuring them that she was not dead in a ditch somewhere, before ordering an uber and hoping in the elevator.

***

The rest of the weekend had gone by in a blur. She’d spent all of Saturday nursing her hangover with ice cream and old reruns of Golden Girls in bed. Then Sunday was brunch with the girls at a little cafe where she was forced to share every detail of the events that unfolded Friday night, only leaving out how weird she had felt in the strangers' company. And then all too soon she was getting ready for a week of meetings and interviews.

Walking into the office, Stevi was greeted by her boss informing her that her 11am was now Stevi’s and ‘oh, look, he’s early.’ She mentally groaned, there was not enough caffeine in the world to make this worth it. Don’t get her wrong, Stevi loved her job, but god did she hate her boss. She was flakey, and whenever anything didn’t appeal to her, she’d simply give it to Stevi with barely any notice. There were far too many nights that she had to stay late because she was given a column to write only hours before it was due.

With a heavy sigh, she walks into the conference room, hoping that this won’t last long. “Good morning, my name is Stevi, I’ll be doing the interview today since Diane couldn’t be here.”

“Rule one.”

She whips her head up towards the man, “What?”

It’s in that moment that she realizes who this is, the man from Friday night. And coincidentally, Tom Holland. She should’ve known the other night who he was, his name and face had been plastered on the bulletin board for weeks, one of their most anticipated interviews this year. Tom was not only a pretty face, but the youngest CEO to be running an international company in decades. His father had started Holland and Co. Publishing almost 30 years ago, and only a few months ago he handed it over to Tom.

“I said, rule one darling. You’ve broken it.” She’d forgotten how lovely that voice was, remembering how captivating it was to have him whispering in her ear.

“I heard what you said, Mr. Holland.”

“Call me Tom, you’ve more than earned that privilege.”

“This is my place of work, not some stupid nightclub, I keep things professional here.”

Neither of them take their eyes off the other, a silent war taking place between the two of them.

“Well, if you’re such a professional, stop looking at me like you’re wanting to fuck me.”

A small gasp leaves Stevi. She stands up to leave, gathering her things, and looks at him with venom in her eyes, “Mr. Holland, I’m afraid that this interview is over, if you would please talk to the receptionist she will reschedule you in with someone other than me.”

A small look of shock crosses Tom’s face before he too stands, reaching out to grab Stevi’s arm, “Wait, I'm sorry. Sit down, I’ll be civil.”

Reluctantly, she does. Placing her notebooks in front of her and pulling out the recorder. Before she begins she gives Tom a warning look, “One word, one single word out of line, and this is over.” To which he nods and sits back, hands folded in his lap, looking like a true business man.

***

The rest of the interview goes by smoothly, only a couple of suggestive looks being thrown her way before he bites his tongue. Stevi’s never been more relieved to finish something in her life, the tension between the two becoming almost unbearable as the interview went on. “Okay, I think that’s all we need for the article, a draft will be sent to your assistant to go over before we publish it in next week's business column.”

Stevi stands quickly, ready to put everything behind her and spend the rest of her day hiding in her office. Before she can leave, a hand is wrapped around her arm once again, and body right behind her. “Let me take you to dinner, darling. A reward for being good.”

The voice in her ear sends a shiver down her spine, and for a second she debates it, “Tom, I can’t. I don’t mix business with pleasure, this is already a conflict of interest.”

“More of those damn rules. Live a little, let your guard down for once.” He looks at her with pleading eyes, something that makes him look more like his true age. That feeling sneaks its way back into again, and for a moment, while she stares into his eyes, nothing else exists. Just the two of them and a world of possibilities.

“If I say yes, this stays between us. The people we are here, and the people we are then are not the same. My job may not seem dangerous to you, but it could be very bad for me if someone gets the wrong idea.”

Tom nods, he knows all too well what she means. “Tonight at 7, meet me at The Garden on 22nd, I’ll make the reservation.”

She agrees, lets him put his number in her phone, and gives Tom one last smile before heading down the hall to her office.

She jumps when she sees someone sitting at her desk, “James, what are you doing here?”

“What, can’t check in on my favourite captain?”

“Not without a secret agenda, and last I checked, I have nothing to report to you, I’m off duty.” Stevi walks towards him, pushing his legs off of her desk.

“Ah, sweetheart, you’re never off duty. Not when you’re talking to men like that.” James points out the door, to where Tom can be seen talking to the receptionist.

“That is none of your business, James.”

“I want details, everything you can find out about him, on my desk by Friday, you know what’ll happen if it’s not. Have a good day Stevi.” And with that, James walks out of the room, leaving a chill hanging in the air.

Stevi suddenly can’t breathe, the four walls surrounding her feeling like a cage. She quickly grabs her things and walks to Dianes’ office, telling her there’s a family emergency and she’ll work on the article at home. Within minutes she’s scrambling to get into her car, dialing Poppys’ number, needing someone to calm her down.

She spends the rest of the day on Poppys’ couch trying to recover from her near mental breakdown. This life was never something she wanted, she’d been dragged into it by her ex. After he failed to complete a simple task, he was killed in their apartment, and she was responsible for finishing it out. But it’s never that simple, one task turned into two, and then four, and now she was too far in to be able to leave.

All too soon, it was 6:30 and she was leaving for her date with Tom. She’d left Poppys an hour ago, promising her that there was nothing to worry about, it had just been a bad day. She drove in silence, not wanting to focus on anything but the road. She got to the restaurant right on time, quickly being seated in one of the private rooms. She’d been here once before with her parents when she first moved to the city. They’d taken her out to celebrate and they’d spent the night drinking fancy wine and eating more food than they could’ve ever imagined.

Lost in her memories, she didn’t realise how much time had passed since she’d arrived. Checking her phone she saw that it was now quarter past, and no sign of Tom. She tries texting him, thinking maybe he’d gotten off of work late. By 7:30 she starts to panic, she’s 2 glasses of wine in and still no sign of him. To no avail, she calls him, worry turning into anger when it goes straight to voicemail.

It’s almost 8 when the waiter informs her that Tom has called, he won’t be making it, but to order whatever she likes and he’ll pay for it.

And so she sits there, wine glass in hand, wishing she’d never even met Tom.

#tom holland #tom holland smut #tom holland fluff #tom holland angst #tom holland x reader #tom holland imagine #tom holland series #tom holland x oc #mob!tom holland x reader #tom holland and co

40 notes · View notes

untilmynextstory · 3 years

Photo

Chapter 5: Widening Gyre

Word Count: 8K

There are just some things no one can prepare you for. There are things Alma knows she will never recover from. She had already buried one child. She doesn't know if her own heart could even manage to bury her second child.

Her precious baby girl was no longer here. Despite all the doctor visits, the medication, and vigilant watch over her baby girl's heart, it wasn't enough. Her baby girl was only five years old. She had a future. She had a life in front of her.

Alma didn't even know how she was going to be able to grieve. She didn't know what the grieving process meant for her along with her family. She had to comfort her son. She didn't know how to do that, but she tried by letting him cry in her arms. Holding him tight in her arms as she put him to bed holding one of Kaylee's favorite stuffed animals.

She knew it was going to be a slow process in healing, but when she thought of her husband, she wasn't sure if there was anything she could do.

Words have barely been exchanged between the two. She was surprised they were able to even pull it together to even have a funeral.

Jax has spent the past couple weeks locked inside of Kaylee's room with weed and alcohol as therapy. He just drinks and smokes. He keeps himself in that room and doesn't leave. He only removes himself off the floor to piss and maybe head into the kitchen for something to stomach. Although his meager meals do nothing to absorb the alcohol he is poisoning himself with.

Alma isn't sure what would be the best method to approach. She isn't sure if she even wants to. She knows she is not strong enough to shoulder his grief along with hers. She already went through Ben's death alone, she had come to terms she would have to navigate the stages of grief for Kaylee alone.

She has made a schedule for herself. She gets up, showers, and tends to every single one of Nathan's needs. It's the best she can do. Worse, her baby boy had turned 7 and he had denied wanting even a cake for his birthday. She stopped looking at her phone. She unplugged the landline and stopped answering the door. She can't deal with the pity or other's nosiness.

Alma lingers at Kaylee's bedroom. She only meant to take a peek at the cold room. Everything has been left untouched since her passing. She finds her husband sitting up against the dresser as he looks ahead of him in a daze. He slowly brings a blunt to his lips. He inhales and exhales. She wants to scream at him that he is only tainting their daughter's room. They will no longer be able to smell the chamomile with a tinge of lavender that settles in the room due to Kaylee's favorite body wash products.

She bites her tongue. She doesn't want to start an argument. She doesn't want to say things in anger that neither will be able to take back. The only reason she moves from the door is because the alarm signals that someone has opened the front door.

Alma moves down the hallway and finds her mom stepping through the door with grocery bags.

Ann has been staying in Charming since Kaylee's passing. She is not exactly sure where her mother is staying, but she is grateful that her mom isn't inserting herself in the house. However, Alma has a feeling her mom is at her wits end from the radio silence. After all, despite how much Alma wants to curl in bed and shut out the world, she has Nathan to think about. He still needs at least one of his parents.

Her mom looks up at her with a grim smile. "I brought you guys some food."

Alma nods as she meets her the rest of the way. Alma notices her mom has forgone the expensive jewelry and makeup. Her face is bare and she is in a simple suede pink sweatsuit. A pair of white Adidas adore her feet.

Alma is silent as she puts away the phone. She knows her mom is surprised that the house isn't a mess. Or the downstairs isn't at least. In grief, every member of the house has been confined into a bedroom. Alma spends most of her time with Nathan in his room while Jax is in Kaylee's.

"Maybe you guys should come North with me. Get out of Charming for a bit." Ann hesitantly suggests.

"It's not going to change anything." Alma replies. Kaylee would still be gone when they returned. Her baby girl would still be dead.

"Tell me how I can help you, baby," her mother pleads.

"I don't think you can. Not with this." Alma tells her. She doesn't even know how to pick up the pieces for some type of living.

"You need to talk to someone. Losing Ben and now Kaylee…" her mother trails off before approaching her like a wounded animal. Her mom's hands cup her cheeks forcing her to look at her. "You can't be Wonder Woman all the time. You need a break. You can't forget yourself in all this." Her mom steps back and gives her some space. "I'll stay for a bit. Cook, clean up whatever. Just take a nap. Soak in the tub."

Alma inhales deeply and blows the hot air out. "Okay. Thanks, mom."

Ann waited until she heard the tub began draining and about 30 minutes after the master bedroom door shut before she went to complete her mission.

She had begun cleaning up the little dust that accumulated in the past week downstairs. She checked on Nathan, who had just woken up from a nap, fed him a sandwich with some chips, before he told her that he just wanted to draw in his room. Ann pressed a kiss to her grandson's head and let him be.

It was clear her grandson was trying to be strong. She admired her grandson, her only grandchild still living. That hurts. Knowing that she has outlived two children who didn't even make it past the age of 5.

She can't imagine the pain her daughter is feeling. She doesn't even know how to help her daughter cope with this loss. She can barely linger on that grief before it makes her breakdown. Right now, she can't do that. She needs to shoulder some of this pain for her daughter as her worthless son in law isn't doing shit.

She had walked past Kaylee's room and was hit with the smell of weed. She risked a glance inside and any grief was quickly replaced with anger.

She could understand his anger with Ben. He was not here to help or to be there to grieve with his family. Ann knows that grief can make people selfish, but she expected better of the man her daughter married. Yet, she doesn't know how she could forget how selfish these men were. She experienced the club's selfishness first hand.

So she had waited. She wanted her daughter to be asleep before she took matters in her own hands. It wasn't as if she went out of her way to purposely antagonize Jax. It was just she wasn't going to blindly stand on the sidelines and watch him treat her daughter with disrespect. She didn't want Alma to go through what she went through with Chico. It is a shame that Ann could overlook the ways that the men made money. After all, it had her and Alma living comfortably. Yet, the women and the control issues Chico had...Ann couldn't suffer through the emotional and mental abuse anymore.

For a time, she thought she could overlook the other women. She did, but Chico could never be quiet about it. He constantly threw it in her face he would be with croweaters in Charming, not just on runs. The worst betrayal was only finding out that Chico only tolerated her because of Alma. She was simply a good lay at the time. A consistent lay that got pregnant. In this world, she was shown how disposable women are to these men. She just couldn't understand how everyone was pissed at her for wanting to divorce Chico when he had been embarrassing her for years.

Maybe it is wrong of her to project those feelings onto Jax. However, it had been an open secret he was fucking around on her daughter when he got released. He did it right in front of her. Ann knows that the reason her daughter was staying was for the kids and the unfortunate circumstance of Jax being the one to provide financial security. She was only able not to get some more independence due to Luann, but unfortunately that was ripped away before it could fully develop.

Ann steps into the room where her son in law is shirtless and glad in some basketball shorts. The room smells like a distrilley and a hide out for skunks.

"Un-fucking-believable." Ann mutters as she steps forward. She stands in his line of step and he doesn't even blink, but stares blankly. "Get up."

He doesn't move or even flinch.

She bends down to look him directly in the eye. "Get the fuck up. You smell like shit and you're tainting your daughter's room with this shit."

"Fuck you." He whispers hoarsely.

"Get up," she sneers in disgust and his reflexes are too slow as she grabs the bottle of Jack and the ashtray on the floor with the burning joint. She moves quickly and Jax falls to his side as she runs out the room.

She makes it to the closest bathroom where she immediately slams the door with Jax hot on her tail.

She instantly pours the bottle down the drain. She jumps when Jax pounds on the door.

"Opening this fucking door!" He screams.

"Calm the fuck down and take a shower. You smell like shit." Ann replies back. The pounding continues and she winces as she hears a crack. "Jax, you're going to break the fucking door!"

"Well fucking open it!" He shouts.

Ann flushes the blunt down the toilet along with the ashes. She places the ceramic tray next to the empty bottle of whiskey. She swings the door open to meet the glare of her son in law.

"What the fuck are you even doing here?" He seethes as he enters the bathroom.

"Taking care of your family since you are incapable of doing shit that doesn't revolve around you." Ann bites.

Jax's body goes tense. He stands down in front of her, his lips set in snarl. "This is not the time for your bullshit."

"No, it's not time for your bullshit!" She snaps back. "You have a fucking wife and son that need you. Stop being so goddamn selfish! Your father would fucking disgusted with the sight of you right now."

This time Ann knows she snapped something in Jax as she even realizes a startled yelp when he smashes the glass bottle against the wall.

"Jax?"

Both she and Jax are still at the sound of Alma's voice at the end of the hall. Ann hurries out of the bathroom.

"You need to fucking get out of here," she tells her daughter.

Jax sits down against the tombstone next to the disturbed dirt next to it. It's too early for Kaylee's tombstone yet. Benjamin's is an upright monument with columns with red granite. They decided to get Kaylee a matching one with an angel.

And only a few rows away lies Jax's own brother, Thomas, and his father.

This is only the second time Jax has been to the cemetery. He hadn't never ventured to see Ben's grave until Kaylee's funeral. It didn't seem real. He felt he could ignore that loss. He could push it aside. He never allowed himself to feel it until it was too late - too much.

He has lost his little girl. His baby girl. The light in his life. She's gone. He has lost two children due to his fucking family flaw.

He bows his head as he finally lets the past months catch up to him. His body shudders as everything hits him. He doesn't even care that he is in public at this point. He just wants the pain to go away. He just wants his world to go back to the way it was.

He wants his children alive. He wants to be able to go home to his wife and not feel like a failure. He isn't even sure how to help his family anymore. He knows they don't need him. Alma hasn't even spoken to him after his episode with her mother and even then he isn't even too sure what the last conversation they had was between each other. All he knows is she steers clear of him.

Nathan hasn't come to him for comfort at all. His boy is usually wrapped up in his mother's arms and he can hear him crying for Kaylee in her arms. He feels useless in his own house. He could go to the clubhouse, but he doesn't want to be coddled by his mother or even by his brothers. He just wants the pain to stop. He wants everything to stop hurting, but he knows that it won't happen for a while. In fact, he knows this pain will never go away. He will have to learn how to carry it. He needs to learn how to manage it. He doesn't know how his mom and dad manage to deal when Tommy died. He doesn't know how they found a place to accept it. He doesn't think he can ever accept this loss without it paralyzing him.

He stands up from the grave and places a kiss on top of Ben's grave. He kneels down on the fistrubed dirt and places his hand where his little rests before moving to visit his brother and father.

He tries not to think about how half of his family is buried in the fucking cemetry.

He is making his way to his bike when he spots Piney standing by it waiting for him.

"So, how's the old man?" Piney greets.

Jax manages a small smile. "Still dead."

"You know, I hear that happens." He replies.

Jax nods his head and kicks his foot at some loose gravel. "What are you doing, cruising for widows?"

"No. Stopped by your house. Alma didn't know where you were. Figure this would be the next stop." Piney reveals. "You, uh, you want to bounce something off of me? I mean, I'm not as smart as J.T., but I've been known to have my moments."

Jax stands a little taller. "I'm good."

Piney frowns at him. "Jax... we don't, uh, we don't have shrinks or priests. You don't want to talk to me, that's fine. But you gonna talk to somebody in this club and work this shit out?"

Jax releases a shaky breath. "I lost two of my kids Piney. I don't think I can even find a direction to go in. I just end up in a place I never even knew could be this bad." Jax doesn't know how to even be a man with his grief. He can't look at Alma without feeling as if he failed her and their children. Jax wipes away the tears that have begun to leak out of his eyes. "I don't think we can come back from this, Piney."

Maybe Jax thinks is what is eating him up the most. He knows his marriage is slowly reaching it's expiration date. They barely survived losing one child. Hell, they were barely communicating and only just addressed that their relationship wasn't the same and then they lost Kaylee. Most marriages barely manage surviving the loss of one child, but they lost two.

Jax knows the demise of his marriage is solely on him. He was the first one to break away. He weakened the foundation. He also knows he has answer for his episode with Ann in the bathroom, but she never knew when to stop fucking pushing. It wasn't an excuse, but she could never let things be.

Piney grips his shoulders. "Hey, Alma loves you, Jax. You just need to talk to her. She'll understand. You both can work through this."

Jax shakes his head. He doesn't think love alone is enough to fix the space that has come between him and his wife. "I don't think talking can fix it this time, Piney."

He feels like a stranger in his own home. He was unsure if he was even welcomed in the bedroom. It's not like Jax is expecting any form of sexual intimacy, but at least physical. Alma has closed herself off from him. He knew it would be a bad move to even try to wrap her in his arms. So he stayed rooted on his side of the bed and laid on his back.

He thinks he may have even slept with his eyes open. He doesn't feel well rested. He blinks what little sleep he got from his eyes as he realizes the sound of Alma cleaning is what woke him. She seemed to have already taken a shower as her hair was leaving wet spots on her white t-shirt. She is throwing his clothes he had recklessly discarded into a basket while tidying up things around the room.

"Al…" he says unsure.

She looks up at him and holds the hamper against her hip. She doesn't say anything, but looks at him expectedly.

He sits up in the bed and licks his lips. "We need to talk."

"About what?"

"Alma, please…"

"So what, when you want to talk I have to listen?" She fires back.

"That's not...I didn't mean...we lost our daughter, Alma, how in the fuck is any parent supposed to react."

"Maybe not by drowning in weed or booze, or about tending to your son and wife. How about we grieve together!" Alma snaps.

"How when we can barely be in the same room together, Alma. You act like you want nothing to do with me. I can't turn to you. You don't want me."

"You pushed me away first." Alma states. "With Ben...you weren't here...I didn't hold it against you. I couldn't and even with how you...grieved...I pushed aside the hurt and humiliation you put me through. But I'm not going to be your fucking doormat."

Jax is at a loss for words. He doesn't know what to even say in fear of pushing Alma away. He knows sorry isn't enough at this point. He isn't stupid enough to not know where this anger is coming from. He moves to sit on the edge of the bed.

"Alma please…"

Alma looks away from him. He can tell there are things she wants to say. He wants her to say it even if it makes him scared, or things he doesn't want to hear.

Her shoulders drop and she looks at him with a blank expression. "We need to focus on Nathan, Jax."

He wants to ask what the fuck does that even mean. He wants to say a lot of things, but he bites his tongue.

"I love you, Alma."

Her blank expression cracks a little. She clears her throat. "I know."

She walks out of the bedroom.

Jax grabs the lamp on the stand next to the bed and throws it across the room.

Alma is standing near the door of the office of the garage as she watched Nathan and Jax exchange goodbyes. The boys are going on a run to Eureka for a blood drive. Alma also thinks it is a semi celebratory run that with Zobelle leaving without a trace the case against them was dropped even with the weapon charges. It seemed with Zobelle being a known rat could have something to help with that.

Alma does notice the goodbye between her boys is stunted and stiff. More so from Nathan and it reminds her that her son is very aware of the shift happening inside the house. It is the last thing she wants. Despite whatever is going on between her and Jax, she does not want that to leak down into his relationship with his son.

Still it doesn't change that Nathan witnessed how Jax did grieve alone while Nathan found comfort in her arms. And Nathan shouldn't have that choice of having to settle for the other parents because the other one was too deep in their own grief.

Alma feels a presence behind her and she knows its Gemma. Surprisingly, the biker matriarch's helicopter parenting had taken a step back. She thinks it is because Gemma knows what it is like to lose a child that it is best not to impose, but even then Gemma never lost two children in the span of a year.

She does appreciate the space.

Gemma wraps her arms around her shoulder. She thinks maybe Gemma is thinking the same thing as her that Jax shouldn't be on this run. Alma has a feeling about what is going to happen on this run. She knows since she rejected Jax in trying to communicate that she was the one to push him away this time. He will probably justify any action he makes.

Her breath catches in her throat and she feels as if she is being suffocated. She escapes Gemma's hold and rushes into the bathroom in the garage. She slams the door shut and leans against it. She feels as if she is having a panic attack.

She knows her marriage is over.

Her marriage is over.

Jax sighs at the burn of the whiskey traveling down his throat. He really didn't care for the run to Eureka. It was simple, but nothing he was itching to do. However, being on the road reminded him how much he loved riding. He still had a refuge. He thinks maybe when they get back that a nice long ride will do him some good to clear his head. He doesn't know why he didn't think of taking a ride by himself before. Maybe a roundabout would do him some good. He and Alma could get some space and clarity and figure out how to move forward with their relationship.

Jax leans back in his chair. He lights a cigarette and blows a ring of smoke. He smiles at a few croweaters before his attention is taken by his stepfather. Clay looks at him with furrowed brows, his eyes hidden behind his dark sunglasses.

Jax raises an eyebrow at his President. "Can I help you?"

"I want to know what the fuck you're doing," Clay says lowly.

"Trying to enjoy the party," Jax replies as he takes another sip from his whiskey.

"You know what I mean," Clay answers.

Jax thinks his mom has put Clay up to this. Clay never intervenes on what he deems to be family business. Only when it interferes with club business will Clay open his mouth. Even then, outside of the two weeks following Kaylee's funeral, Jax has been at every church meeting and any task Clay hesitantly gives him. Sure, he sometimes has a glossy look in his eyes and his hair and beard aren't trimmed as he usually keeps it, but he isn't zoning out. He isn't compromising anything within the club. "If you have something to say, just say it."

"Your mom is worried about her family." Clay reveals, which isn't surprising to Jax. "She doesn't know everything about what you did when Ben passed. But we all knew…." Clay trails off. "Probably 40, 50 patches watching us right now. We represent the past, present and future of this club. Sure, the sons are a Democratic organization, but everybody knows what happens in charming sets the tone for every charter."

Jax furrows his brows. He is confused. "And what's happening in Charming?"

"You tell me. These men behind us, they love you. They respect you and they understand your grief. But they're also wondering what you're gonna do with it."

Jax clenches his jaw. "That's my business."

"No, it isn't. Some of these guys are old enough to remember what happened to your old man. How he... fell apart, lost focus when Thomas died."

"Yeah, well, I'm not my old man."

"I know that, but they don't. You gotta show 'em something."

"Show them fucking what?" Jax snaps. "I lost my son and daughter that has fuck all to do with the club."

"How you treat your family is," Clay fires back. "Don't forget Alma is a daughter of a First 9. Some won't take kindly how you're treating her."

"You got to be fucking kidding me." Now people want to care about Alma's lineage. Now they want to care about how members cash in on the run protocol. No one has no problem with Clay indulging knowing he is with his mother. "My marriage isn't club business."

"If people see you can't manage your family life they are gonna start doubting how you can effectively lead this club."

"So what, I'm supposed to wipe the tears away and be done grieving for my kids. It doesn't work like that."

Clay looks at him silently. "You need to make a decision son. You fix things with Alma. Get your head on fucking straight, or you let that hammer drop and be done with it."

Jax laughs as Nathan does another cannonball in the pool. It is just the two of them at the house. Alma had only told him that she was going to be out for the day. He wasn't really left with a choice in the matter of watching Nathan. He decided that he would skip out going to the club and spend the day with his son.

So they had immediately changed into their swimming trunks and Jax lathered on the sunscreen on his boy. He thinks this is the first time they have hung out just one on one since Kaylee's passing. Nathan has preferred the company of Alma to him.

It hurts, but Jax knows that it is because of his doing and his own grief that his son couldn't come to him. If anything, Jax knows how to deal with the loss of a sibling. He could try and help his son with that because they will never truly be over the loss of Kaylee. They just have to make room for the hurt.

Jax jumps from his place at the edge of the pool and wades over to his son where he is heading into the deep end. Jax knows Nathan is only waddling towards that end since Alma isn't here especially without some type of floaty.

It wasn't as if Nathan was a bad swimmer. He swan pretty good, but when Alma is in mama bear mode they all know not to go against her.

He follows his son as he treads the water. He admires the changes in his son. Outside of the blue eyes, Nathan is all Alma. All he can see is Alma in the shape of his face, nose, smile, and the color of their hair. Alma will tell him that Nathan has his personality, but Nathan is Alma with their quiet demeanor and how they think and contemplate their words and actions before speaking.

"Be careful," Jax warns.

"I know how to swim," Nathan remarks.

"Well you can explain that one to your mother if she sees you without a floatie."

Nathan stills and swims over to Jax. His arms wrap around his neck. It reminds Jax of when Nathan was little and still in a diaper. Nathan loved water and would always smack his reflection and release a tirade of giggles.

Jax holds his son close. He presses a kiss to his son's head. "Everything alright?"

"Are you and Mommy happy?"

Jax wasn't prepared for that question. "What makes you ask that?"

"No one laughs anymore."

Jax's heart tightens.

Nathan continues before Jax can respond. "I know with...Kaylee...but even before that you and Mommy didn't seem happy. Mommy always seemed sad."

Jax swallows the lump in his throat. "Well when Mommy is sad...we just have to tell her we love her and give her lots of hugs and kisses, yeah."

"Are you sad, Daddy?"

"Right now, no. You make me happy. You and your mom."

Nathan furrows his brows and pouts his lips. "I want you and Mommy to be happy."

Jax hikes Nathan up a little higher so he can look his son in his eyes. "No matter what, your mom and I love you very much."

"I love you too, Daddy." Nathan replies.

Alma had been surprised when Donna reached out to have a girls day together. There has been space building between the two. This time it is coming from Alma after the loss of Kaylee. She has been isolating herself from everyone while she tries to figure out the next move in her life.

They aren't doing much either. Donna's parents have taken the kids for the day and they are at Donna's house. Donna had suggested they go to an actual spa, but Alma didn't want to deal with the looks of pity in public. They have wine and multiple colors of nail polish on the table. Alma isn't sure what is playing on TV, but her and Donna have been giggling since the third glass of wine. Alma might be staying the night if she doesn't sober up a bit.

Alma had painted her nails a very vibrant hot pink with an equally bright yellow on her toes. She is currently waiting for her toes to dry.

"So are you still doing nails at Cara Cara?" Donna asks.

Alma takes a sip of her wine. "Yea and no. I don't go to the studio, but there are some girls that still come to me. Not all of them, but most."

"You should open your own place up." Donna suggests.

Alma smiles. "I'll hire you to be the receptionist."

"You would probably pay better." Donna comments.

"Just lately, I haven't thought about it. Just been focusing on Nathan."

"You also need to focus on yourself." Donna points out. "If you don't you are going to break."

"How are things for you?" Alma asks. Opie still has years left in prison and outwardly Donna has her head held high, but she knows that is not the case. Plus, even far away, Alma knows that Opie is still a present husband. Donna may be alone, but she is not going through all of this alone.

"I have my days, ya know. I'm sure I haven't been through the worst yet."

"But you have Opie though."

Donna gives her a sad smile. "You and Jax…"

Alma gives a bitter laugh. "Watering a dead flower."

"Al…"

Alma finishes her glass of wine. She really doesn't want to cry over her husband anymore. She knows her marriage is at the end. They both are prolonging the inevitable and are making each other miserable. Although the thing is, if she and Jax separate where would she go. How would she support herself and Nathan. She can't just leave. She can't just take Nathan away from his father.

"If you need help. I'm here for you and Nathan."

"I just love him so much. I guess my mother was right about why it wouldn't last." Alma tells Donna.

"Do you think you guys can't work it out?" Donna probes.

Alma leans forward and refills her wine glass. "I think the damage has been done. I don't think it would be fair to him if I stayed."

"If you need help, I'm here." Donna promises.

Considering the exciting day in the pool, Nathan had quickly fallen asleep after his dinner and shower. It left Jax to his own devices as Alma still wasn't home. He had washed the dishes and tidied up a bit. In cleaning, he found an empty journal and for some reason began writing as he sat in the living room to wait for Alma. He had been baring his soul into this journal about everything that has happened within the past year. He was writing to Nathan, Kaylee, and Ben about his greatest achievements and failures.

Although in the back of his mind and on his paper, he couldn't divulge into his doubts about his marriage has turned out. Alma's silence all day only highlighted it more. He didn't want to bug her as it was rare she enjoyed a day to herself. He just knows if she isn't home in 30 minutes he will call her cell.

He has just placed his pen down and is flexing his hand when the front door opens. He is standing up when he hears keys hit the floor along with a "shit". He moves towards the foyer and he finds Alma struggling to take her shoes off.

"Al?"

His voice startles her and if he wasn't so concerned he would've laughed with how she fell on her ass. Although Alma is giggling enough for the both of them.

"Is Nathan up," Alma hiccups.

Jax furrows his brows. "Are you drunk?"

Alma stands on her shaky legs and Jax can't really ever think of a time Alma got drunk. She would be on the edge, but nothing to have her stumbling.

"If I am?" She counters as she brushes past him to their bedroom.

He follows her confused. "Where were you?"

She makes it to their room and begins to haphazardly throw her clothes and accessories around the room. He follows her as he picks up her clothes and puts them into the hamper. She doesn't answer him and he watches as she strips down to nothing but to her bra and underwear. He helps take off her jewelry and places them in her jewelry case.

"Who were you with?" He presses.

Alma sighs and it seems any tipiness she was feeling had disappeared. "Do you want a divorce?"

Jax freezes and a lump forms in his throat. He was not expecting that to come out of her mouth.

"Couples barely make it through losing one child. We lost two." Jax can see the tears forming in her eyes, but she doesn't bother to hide the pain she is feeling. "We both don't need to be miserable."

"Are you miserable?" He asks her.

"I don't make you happy," she answers.

Jax feels guilty. With all the shit going on, he has neglected his best friend. Even if Chino is a six hour ride, he had promised to do in house visits at least once a month. He hasn't in a while. He knows that Opie won't give him shit for it, but it doesn't change the fact Jax has been a shit husband and friend lately.

He embraces his friend in a tight hug.

"Fuck, man, I'm so sorry. How you've been?" Opie asks him as they pull apart.

"I don't know man. Shit is just upside down and everywhere." Jax says as they take a seat at the table.

Opie is quiet for a bit. "What do we want to tackle first?"

Jax chuckles and shakes his head a bit. "I can't talk about the kids. I mean...I know...it's gonna take time. I'm trying to deal with it. I am finally dealing with it. I hate that you weren't there, ya know. You didn't get to say goodbye to Kaylee...you never got to meet Ben.." Jax stops as he can feel the tears building.

"Hey, man, I know. I know. We don't have to go there right now…"

"I think Alma wants a divorce." Jax reveals. Since Alma's drunken question, he hasn't been too sure of how to fix their marriage. He isn't sure how to show Alma that he wants them together. He loves her. He doesn't want to live in a world without her. He knows that he is the cause of her having doubts with them and herself.

"Did she say that?"

"She asked if it was what I wanted…" Jax licks his lips. "But if she had to ask me that...it's my fault where we are at where we are."

"What you do?"

"Treated her like shit since I came back." Jax states truthfully.

"Did you…?"

Jax nods his head regretfully. "I fucked up, Opie."

"She know?"

"Yeah. Had a few fights about it and other things. I just feel...we make an effort and it sets us back, or something happens. She's not happy, but I don't want to let her go."

Opie is silent and Jax knows he probably won't like what his friend has to say. "You think about leaving the house? Start back to square one. Just having space between the two of you can give clarity."

"With this life...I just didn't want Nathan to have to grow up in a broken home." Jax reveals.

With the Life he has, he wanted his children to have a strong family base. He may not be a good man, but he wanted to keep that shelter from his kids for as long as he could. He didn't want his kids to grow up like he did with knowing everything. He doesn't even know how much Nathan knows about club business. Sure, he entertains his son when he says that he wants to join the club, but his son didn't know the truth. He still had that child innocence that he knows is surely being stripped away.

"I think him seeing you and Alma slowly turn into shells of yourselves is gonna be worse than you two being apart and healthy. And it's not like you guys can't find your way back to each other."

"I just fucked up. I know I did." Jax says shaking his head. "I don't think I can fix this."

"When you go home, send Nathan to your moms, even if Alma is resistant, you force her to talk. You lay everything out. It might be best for you to stay at your moms than the clubhouse though."

Jax chuckles a bit. "I just...I hate myself for hurting her like this."

"You're human. Make mistakes, it is how we learn and grow from them. Marriage is hard. You both have gone through so much shit...maybe this is what you guys need so the damage isn't fixable at a certain point."

"I got you Mom!" Nathan shouts as he shoots his water gun directly on his mom's stomach. The water stain spreads and his mom huffs. His mom was mowing the front lawn and he was bored and found the stash of water guns.

"I don't know if I should be concerned about how you know your way around a gun so well." His mom states as she steps away from the lawn mower and looks down her shirt.

"I practice, Mom," Nathan says gleefully.

"Maybe a little too much," she adds.

"I miss playing with Uncle Opie." Nathan tells his mom. He really wanted to see his Uncle Opie with his dad, but he wasn't allowed to go for whatever reason.

"Well write a letter and set up a phone call date." His mom tells him.

"Yeah, but it's not the same." Nathan mutters.

Alma frowns and wraps her arms around her son. "I know, baby. Maybe when Donna goes to visit Uncle Opie we can see if you can go. Or maybe we'll make a trip with it. I'm sure Aunt Donna and your cousins would like that."

"Can Dad come?"

"Yeah, I don't see why not," she replies.

"Are you sure?"

"Why wouldn' I be?"

Nathan bites his lip. He may be young, but he notices things. Since his sister has passed away things have not been the same. He thinks even before that something was wrong with his parents.

He was used to his parents always kissing and hugging one another, but he hasn't seen them have any of those interactions in months. There isn't any laughter between them. He knows losing Ben and Kaylee has to do with most of it, but Nathan got better with the grief with his mom. She helped him. He just isn't sure how his parents aren't able to help each other.

"I just want you and Dad to be happy." He tells his mom.

Alma kneels down in front of him. He notices that she has the sad smile on her face that she has had even before Kaylee has passed. She cups his cheek and her thumb roams back and forth across it. "I love your Dad. I always will, but sometimes happiness and love aren't mutually exclusive."

"So loving Dad doesn't make you happy?"

"I will always love your Dad, but sometimes that love will make me feel sad or mad," she says with a scrunched nose that makes them both laugh. "I'm sorry things haven't been how they were. Things haven't been the same since Kaylee...and Ben, but I think things will get better. Not right away, but we just have to make a new normal for us."

"Does this new normal involve a new bike?" Nathan asks with a smile.

Alma pinches his cheeks. "You are just like your father."

"Excuse me?"

Both he and his mom jump at the voice of a woman who is standing in front of them. She has blonde hair that looks like honey. Nathan thinks she is really tall. Taller than his mom. But his eyes are drawn to her very pregnant belly.

"I'm looking for Jax Teller." The woman says.

. . .

Her name was Wendy. She was pregnant. Six months pregnant to be exact. Her belly was round and full. Wendy had told her that Jury was even kind enough to keep her working behind the bar since she couldn't glide on a pole anymore.

Wendy didn't have to tell Alma why exactly she was here. The belly and scared look on her face was enough. Alma had politely informed Wendy that Jax wasn't here and Alma gathered the appropriate contact info for the woman staying at the Ramada. Although, Alma wouldn't be surprised if Wendy made a pit stop to the clubhouse.

Alma is surprised she hasn't gotten numb to being humiliated by Jax. The only silver lining to any of this was Gemma was not busy and Alma had dropped Nathan off to spend the day with his grandmother.

Alma knows she wouldn't have been able to keep a poker face around her son. She wasn't even sure of what she wanted to do or going to do. She really wanted to kill her husband at this point. She just knows she didn't have any more tears left for her husband.

She is sitting in the living room smoking a blunt with a bottle of vodka open. She hates vodka, but right now it tastes like Kool Aid. She practically inhales the bottle when she hears Jax's bike pull into the driveway.

She waits in silence for him to enter the house.

"Babe?" Jax calls out as he enters the house.

She doesn't bother replying as he is going to smell the weed anyways. He seems to be following the scent as she hears his footsteps approaching.

"Are you smoking weed?" He asks in disbelief.

She doesn't bother with an answer. She can feel him besides her. His shadow looms over her. "And you're drinking." He takes a seat next to her. "What happened?"

Alma didn't say anything for a couple minutes. She doesn't know if she even has the right to be mad. She should've left when she first found out Jax was sleeping around. She stayed and now it is slapping her in the goddamn face.

She digs into the pocket of her cardigan. She places the paper that contains all the information to contact Wendy on the table and slides it over to Jax.

"She's looking for you." Alma tells him.

Jax furrows his brows and he looks down at the paper. It doesn't seem to click as he stares at the paper for a couple minutes. Although maybe Alma adding that she is from Nevada might have helped connect the dots.

"Babe -" Jax starts and goes to reach out to her, but Alma stands immediately and creates some distance. He immediately clamps his mouth shut.

"I want you out of the house. I don't care where you go or who you are with, but I want you gone. If you need something regarding Nathan, you can talk to me through Gemma. But don't call me, don't come here, don't do anything until I reach out."

"Alma, please let -"

"She's pregnant!" Alma shouts and Jax's freezes.

"It's not mine. I wore -"

"I don't care. You slept with her. She's pregnant and she's here." Alma folds her arms around herself. "I'll give you space to pack your clothes."

. . .

Two weeks Jax has felt like he has been in a constant state of panic. It's been two weeks since he has heard from Alma or even seen a glimpse of her. She had been deadly serious that if there was anything concerning Nathan that it was to go through his mom.

Even when he got Nathan on the Thursdays to Monday morning, his mom would drop him off or pick him up.

Jax had decided to stay with his mom as well. He didn't want to stay at the clubhouse. The guys were not saying much, outside of Piney, but were giving him looks of pity. He knew it was going to be any day now that Alma would serve him divorce papers.

And after a couple days, Jax had made a move to contact Wendy. He had been met with a very pregnant Wendy. She was claiming that he could be the father. He fits in her timeline of conception. He demanded a DNA test, but of course she wanted to wait until the baby was born for the non invasive test. Still, there was a chance that this baby could be his. Even if it wasn't the damage was already done.

"Sitting in your self pity isn't going to get your wife back."

Jax snaps his gaze up from his half empty coffee mug to look at his mother. He of course got a verbal ass whooping from his mother. He feared his mother was going to shoot him. He also had been surprised that she wasn't trying to help him mend his marriage, but he knows it would only piss off Alma more.

"Maybe we should get a court order demanding Wendy performs a DNA test now."

"I'm not going to do that." Jax says.

"Why not? Do you realize what is at stake here? Alma is going to leave your sorry ass."

"Thanks for the reminder, Mom. But I would rather not have to deal with an angry Wendy."

"Who gives a fuck about that bitch's feelings. She went out of her way to humiliate your wife in front of your son. She knew what she was doing when going to your house." Gemma snarls. "Besides from the way you are talking, it seems the kid is yours."

"It could be." Jax admits truthfully.

Gemma sighs. "Then the ink on your divorce papers is practically dry, Jax."

"You know I really don't need this right now, Ma."

"Oh I'm sorry, Alma didn't need to be humiliated and betrayed by her husband when she was mourning the loss of their children. See what happens when you bury your fucking problems in pussy that isn't your wife!" Gemma snaps.

Jax scowls at his mom and he doesn't get to reply as his phone starts vibrating. He sees it's Half Sack. Despite Alma's no contact order he had given the Prospect instructions to keep tabs on his wife.

"Yeah?"

"Jax, you need to get to the house."

Jax immediately stands. "Why what's going on?"

"I think she is leaving, Jax."

. . .

He wasn't surprised to see Ann there. He should have expected it. He doesn't even properly park his bike as he stands and gets off it. He can hear it fall down on the driveway and he removes his helmet and tosses it on the ground.

Nathan is sitting on the steps crying. Ann is packing an unrecognizable car he thinks could be a rental. Alma stands out on the steps not entirely shocked to see him. Any misery vanishes at the thought of Alma leaving and taking his son without any warning.

"So you were just going to fucking leave without saying anything. You were going to take my son!" He roars and he doesn't care about causing a scene.

"Nathan wants to stay here with you." Alma replies calmly. "I was gonna drop him off with you at your mom's. Lowen drew up some divorce papers."

Jax's heart drops to his chest. His anger instantly vanishes. "Alma, please, we can work this out. Just don't leave."

Alma steps down from the steps. "I have no choice but to leave you. Just please sign the papers that is all I want."

"Alma, please…" He begs.

He can tell Alma is trying to fight back the tears. "There isn't anything you can do or say, Jax. I don't want to end up hating you more. When I get settled we can make arrangements for Nathan. Just keep him safe."

She turns away from him and she kneels down to face Nathan. He can't hear what she is saying, but his little boy begins to cry harder.

"Please, don't go, Mom. Just stay please," Nathan wails as Alma holds their son close. Nathan's cries lower, but his body is shaking from the effort. Alma presses a kiss to his head and holds him before she stands.

Alma turns to him. Her eyes filled with unshed tears. "I'll call Nathan when I get settled."

"Where are you going?" Jax asks her. "You don't need to leave, Alma. You can have the house -"

"Charming isn't my home anymore Jax. You made sure of that."

Jax watches as Alma reaches her mom, who finally closes the trunk of the car. Jax is surprised Ann isn't jumping for joy or doing cartwheels. Alma doesn't look back as she gets into the passenger side of the door. The car begins pulling out of the driveway when Nathan gets up screaming for them to stop. The car stops and Alma opens the door.

Nathan stands in front of him. His blue eyes red from tears. "I want to go with Mom."

Jax doesn't bother hiding his tears as he bends down and embraces his son tightly. He cannot deny the boy the right to want to leave with Alma. "You take care of your mom, alright."

Nathan holds him tightly. "I love you, Dad."

Jax presses a kiss to his son's head. "I love you too. You and your mom."

Nathan loosens his grip and Jax lets his son go. He watches as Alma holds Nathan tightly before she helps him into the backseat of the car.

Jax watches his family drive away.

He falls to his knees and he doesn't care who sees him.

#soa #soa fanfiction #sons of anarchy #sons of anarchy fanfiction #jax teller #jax teller x oc #jackson teller

11 notes · View notes

hillnerd · 4 years

Text

ptsd/c-ptsd, therapy & writing

(This is written by someone with CPTSD - I am not a mental health expert, and am just writing from my own experience! )

So a lot of writers want to incorporate PTSD and C-PTSD into their fiction. Sometimes people get it super right- other times I’m left cringing. I wrote this to help writers know more about it, then it also ended up being something I sent to a friend with PTSD as it got into it so she’d know more what the therapy process is like.

So! What’s it like to have PTSD? PTSD therapy vs regular therapy-How are they different? How are they the same? What does PTSD therapy consist of?

Trigger warning:

I will be describing therapy, talk of other disorders like anxiety and depression, and might use some 'you' talk - example 'once you've gone through this, then you start to feel better.' This will also skim over child abuse, suicidal ideation mentions and trauma in general- Read w/ caution if you are sensitive to this

general overview to PTSD and C-PTSD

I am diagnosed with PTSD, but it's actually C-PTSD*

C-PTSD or Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder differs from PTSD in that it's more for people who have had chronic environments of trauma/abuse for years - and is currently proposed to have a certain symptoms not listed under PTSD symptoms.

Much of these symptoms have more to do with how one relates to other people, their self perception, and generally their learned behaviors in order to protect themselves long-term. PTSD is more about a specific event, of series of events that occurred in quick succession.

Despite the lack of official diagnosis, therapists treat people for CPTSD all the time- they just use a lot of the same tools they would for PTSD.

Not everyone who experiences trauma or battles develops PTSD, but there are factors that make you more inclined to develop it.

What is PTSD like?

There are many ways that people manifest PTSD/CPTSD symptoms.They are easy enough to google and be familiar with, but what's it ACTUALLY like for me.

a hair-trigger startle instinct I have had a few times where my husband is up at night, and I didn’t realize he was in the room- then I see the outline and start screaming- and can’t stop for like 2 minutes- then the crying settles in for 30 minutes. My traumas had nothing to do with strangers in the night. I just have a super intense startle instinct that sends my whole body into panic mode sometimes.

Hyper-vigilance- trying to control everything around you to keep you safe, and being super on edge keeping an eye out for how things will fall apart. Making sure things are locked, being extra wary of people, wanting to not have your back to people, perking up at every little noise etc.

issues sleeping- insomnia, light sleeping, & nightmares- Sometimes reliving a memory, or just having intense dreams that leave you exhausted the next day you can barely function. This ties in with hyper-vigilance a lot- so falling asleep and staying asleep can be hard.

Depression and anxiety- pretty self explanatory- but it's common to experience these, and for pills to not necessarily be that helpful without the therapy. Sometimes anxious self destructive thoughts and memories start haunting you and making you freeze up or panic, feel like you’re going to die/be left alone by everyone etc. Sometimes emotional abuse from your past starts coming up and haunting you and you feel all your selfworth leaving your body leaving behind nothing but the want to sleep all day/cut yourself off from people - at times this can turn to suicidal ideation and other really dangerous behaviors and thoughts.

Sudden mood switches/panic responses usually a trigger for these switches is something associated with your trauma- but basically when something associated with our trauma suddenly comes up sometimes it causes us to start having feelings and emotions that feel out of whack for the situation at hand.

Example: When I was a five I was beaten and locked on a sunny porch of a 2 story building with a sliding door. Once my husband blocked me on the way to the door so I wouldn’t accidentally walk into some freshly painted furniture on the other side of the sliding door. I immediately panicked and angrily screamed at him to’ let me GO! fuck you!!! when he’s the gentlest man in the world and has never ever been anything but kind and wonderful with me. Then after the rage wore off I was like crying and so sorry.

I’m usually not an ‘angry reaction’ person- I’m usually a freeze/cry type- but yeah.Sometime people get panicked in crowded places, or if they feel someone is mad at them, or if they feel trapped, or if they feel like they’re being abandoned.

Sometimes I’ll get super manic and impatient/snappish if there’s not a plan on what we’re doing at a crowded place (really it’s because I want an escape plan/safe place I know we can always go to- and feel vulnerable when it’s a lot of people standing around without a plan and feel like I’ll get lost/abducted)

intrusive negative thoughts

It’ll be the darkest weirdest repeating thoughts that you associate with emotional upset. In ptsd treatment there is a lot of going through the events and rethinking your conclusions you’ve taken away from them. It’s simplified a lot in shows to a simple ‘it’s not your fault’- which, yeah, that’s the crux of it- but the actual work of it is super intense, exhausting, and so much more in depth.

unhealthy coping mechanisms so a lot of people with ptsd will find ways to cope to help them fill an emotional void, or to cover up feelings etc. There are tons of ways people do this. Some will do extreme things like drugs, risky behaviors, drinking a lot etc Example: They experience a ‘violent retraumatizing’ moment like a pet getting killed in front of them- then later to cope have casual sex and drink too much in order to numb their emotions and not think about them.

A lot of ‘avoidance’ and ‘overdependence’ can be a part of ptsd. Like you might avoid certain things like the plague, or constrastingly might start using people or things or substances or food like an emotional crutch/security blanket instead of coping in a healthier way or learning to be independent.

Self protective steps you take might be super over the top, or self-destructive and borderline suicidal.

Sometimes trying to repress all your emotions and not express them is something you do to protect yourself.

This can be all over the map really- there are hundreds of examples!

triggering moments of your ‘Stuck points’

Stuck points are thoughts that keep us from recovering. Stuck points are concise statements that reflect a thought – not a feeling, behavior, or event.

Example of stuck points: 'If I let other people get close to me, I'll get hurt again', 'I am useless.' 'I'm broken', 'I can't trust anyone in authority', 'People will reject me if they get to know me/see me at my worst’ ‘I’m a monster.’ ‘I’m worthless’

These can come up and you won’t even realize it at first. You’ll have something super innocuous happen and all of a sudden you’re on the verge of a breakdown, angry and/or panicking for seemingly no reason.

These intense emotions will hit you and don’t feel like there’s any thoughts connected to them- there ARE thoughts behind it of course, but it takes a bit of deconstructing to figure it out though and realize ‘ooooh, there’s the thought train that was bubbling under the surface! I didn’t realize because thinking through my emotional processes was something I wasn’t allowed to do during my trauma- so now I don’t know how to instinctively do that even a little.’

Examples in fiction

Harry Potter in Order of the Phoenix where he is yelling at the drop of a hat when he feels abandoned/rejected by everyone. His reactions are so CLEARLY PTSD related to me. Actually, I think he has CPTSD and it just got to a tipping point due to the traumas he experienced in the graveyard.

Hunger Games Books Probably the best portrayal of PTSD, of books I’ve read, is Hunger Games. The movies glazed over it a bit- but the books? Oh man, they nail it so hard.

HP and Hunger Games both have protagonists who are great portrayals of ptsd. The anger, the disassociation, the depression, the nightmares, the inability to identify with humans at times, the self protective steps that are unhealthy, the coping mechanism of avoidance etc.

Disassociating

People describe this in tons of different ways, but personally I think of it like body/brain numbness. All of a sudden it’s like a blankness comes over you, almost like that hazy way of daydreaming, only instead of daydreams it’s nothing but a buzzing blankness with maybe like slight almost invisible undercurrent of panic. It’s like the body is paralyzed, and you can’t act or think or do anything but stare or numbly move a bit- it almost feels like your soul just left your body for a bit and you’ve been consumed by a white room of emptiness. Not a black void- it’s not being lost in darkness- it’s like being lost in the light, if that makes sense? Like think of a blank why void like in The Matrix where the whiteness goes on forever.

Flashbacks

In tv shows they often show it like it's a hallucination or something. Flashbacks are typically shown as a person basically becoming delirious and having visual and audio hallucinations, then perhaps even becoming violent to those around them because they literally see something different than what is real.

Again, this is my experience- but flashbacks have never worked like that for me. I more disassociate, and then all the emotions of that memory hit me, and in my brain I’m able to see bits and pieces of what happened back then, or even the whole thing- it’s like a SUPER intense memory/daydream/nightmare just settles in there for a bit- and you feel all the full emotions of it for a bit- can suddenly feel the sensations of it too at times-but at NO point am I actively moving about in a real room around people getting them confused with the past and lashing out at the hallucinations.

I’m just sitting there, or crying there- and if someone in the room with me were to talk to me they might have to get my attention because I'm deep in that daydream/flashback- but I’d hear them and see them once I realize I’m spacing out. The most outburst I’d have would be to not want anyone to touch me- or get super startled from someone touching me then pushing them away from me. That’s very different than the crazy shit they show on TV and movies sometimes.

BAD EXAMPLE: One particular one that still makes me mad is when that had Owen from Grey’s Anatomy sees a fan- then get ‘triggered into a ptsd episode’ where he is unblinkingly choking out Cristina as she begs him to stop for a long time. Like…. It’s one thing for someone to be startled and have their instinct be to strike out- that’s a very different thing from what they portrayed. If they wanted to show him as ptsd dangerous- which is worrisome to me as people with mental health are stigmatized enough- but if they wanted to- it would have made much more sense for her to startle him somehow and for him to just blindly strike out before he realizes it. With combat training, he could very well have instincts that aren’t safe when he’s over sensitized and startled.

What are the main treatments for PTSD?

Cognitive Processing Therapy (CPT)

CPT is the main treatment for PTSD. It is highly structured, and the majority of it is writing and worksheets. There is a LOT of writing and talking out about your trauma, writing and talking about how you process it, and analyzing it.

Beyond the traumatic memories, there is also noticing the behaviors you have that are related to your trauma and how they come out in every day scenarios. This leads to:

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)

This is not about processing past events, but about processing current behaviors/reactions and trying to slowly change those behaviors over time so that they are healthier reactions/coping mechanism in place.

Exposure therapy- Reliving memories

For PTSD some people do a lot of reliving the trauma memories by describing them in detail, every tiny detail they can think of- and basically reliving them, but then trying to reroute the emotional response to them.

Some people are SO repressed that this is a very difficult thing for them to access- both remembering the memory, but also knowing what their emotions were/are. These memories of trauma aren't always easy to remember/re-feel/access and that can be frustrating.

I personally am REALLY GOOD at reliving memories- in fact I'm so good that we have been avoiding it for a bit because i go straight into flashback mode way too easy (more on flashbacks and how they work later)

There are ways of doing this that are more than just revising the memory through talk therapy, that I haven't done and would require research on your part:

virtual reality to revisit the place

watching videos or listening to recordings of the event and talking it through

exposure therapy that's more about getting used to sounds/smells/words that are triggering

The main point though is to process the emotions tied to that event and not make your brain default to that flight/fight/freeze mode when triggering things happen.

IMPORTANT TOOLS FOR THERAPY

If a person hasn't had much therapy, CPT/CBT has a lot of learning for that person, and a LOT of trying to identify emotions and really feel them, so one can process them.

Grounding techniques/exercises-

techniques used to sooth/calm a person when activated- there are like thousands of these guys out there- I think everyone is a bit familiar with them- like breathing exercises in yoga? Basically it's a way of regrouping and centering yourself- 'grounding' you in reality, instead of letting your brain go off on a tangent/emotional rollercoaster.

It's basically any way you can snap your thinking out of your anxious thoughts and concentrate on something until your re-calibrate and are calmer.

Personally the breathing techniques make me freak out- so I don't use those. :P Ones I find helpful are ones like 'Name every color you can see.' or 'go through the alphabet and letter by letter name an animal that starts with that letter.' and 'hold an ice cube in your hand and concentrate fully on every sensation you're feeling.'example example

-CBT and CPT WORKSHEETS

god, SO many worksheets.

Here are some helpful links

https://positivepsychologyprogram.com/cbt-cognitive-behavioral-therapy-techniques-worksheets/ --- This page covers cognitive distortions really well, and has some helpful resources and worksheets.

https://trailstowellness.org/resources This page has a lot of great worksheets for trauma.

https://www.psychologytools.com/professional/problems/post-traumatic-stress-disorder-ptsd/- unfortunately you cannot access the documents here without paying- BUT you can read what the docs are, and how they will be used in a therapy setting- so can use that as a launch point for what sort of worksheets/phrases to google.

I specifically worked from Cognitive Processing Therapy for PTSD: A Comprehensive Manual a lot.

What is the structure of PTSD therapy?

First session

The first thing I had to do was fill out a questionnaire (PTSD test , cptsd questionnaire) to make sure she thought the treatment was appropriate. We talked about this a bit, what symptoms I had, talked over examples of it. I'm comfortable with therapy so this wasn't so bad for me, but I can see this being very difficult for people who aren't as comfortable in this setting and would need to be walked through it more and have more questions as they might not have a lot of self-awareness. We discussed goals, what could be achieved, and generally what it would be like. We went over the first worksheet and I was given homework of figuring out what my stuck points are.

Sessions after that

Each session we begin with typical therapy for a bit 'how was the last week? Were there any events I should know about?' Then we go over the worksheet I filled out, and analyze it, talk about examples, or apply it to trauma memories.

What is trauma therapy LIKE?

I always try to have the next day or so as free as possible after therapy, because afterwards I am wiped out, exhausted, and sometimes super triggered and crying afterwards.

The analogy I like to use is cleaning out a closet you keep hoarding stuff in:

Your house is your life, your brain is a closet, and PTSD/trauma is a messy hoarders type hidden away in the closet. When the door to this closet is closed you can almost pretend there isn't a mess there at all. Y ou close the door by being in denial, not thinking about your trauma, not acknowledging or processing it. You just keep stuffing the trauma into the closet.

But the longer you let the closet stay like that, the worse the situation gets. Soon that closet door keeps busting open and all sorts of crap falls out when you don't want it to. Freakouts, hypervigilance, meltdowns etc. The crap in the closet starts to multiply.

Ever seen Hoarders or Marie Kondo? You know how people are crying over t-shirts and crap and the house looks WORSE for a while? That's trauma therapy.

In therapy you have to open the closet door, take out ALL the crap you've been hoarding in the closet, process it, organize it, and then put things in order again. Every single box of trauma needs to be looked at then put away- The goal is to throw out the intense intrusive emotions tied to the junk. You have to keep your memories- but you don't have to keep holding on to the behaviors they've formed, the turbulent emotions, and the intensity of it all. During therapy at first it's fine. Kondo is walking you through it and it's all just fine and dandy- then you are faced with this HOARD of CRAP you have to work through- and it's SO overwhelming. My anxiety and depression got way worse for a while. Like, I was on EDGE and having nightmares and it was horrible. But then once you've processed the memories, and start actively applying what you've learned and start using grounding techniques more and more- things do get easier.

I am not fixed. I am not cured. I will have to continue to work through stuff- It's that whole 'healing is a not a straight line' thing. Like, there are times I regress and I hate it. :P But it's gotten a lot better.

IF YOU GUYS HAVE ANY QUESTIONS ABOUT THIS I’M HAPPY TO HELP.

I figure this can be an ok resource for people who don’t know much about ptsd except what it says on like webmd (which isn’t that accessible to me) and want to write about it (or want to just know more about it)

( *C-PTSD has not been considered an official different disorder from PTSD for all that long. In fact, one technically can't be medically diagnosed with CPTSD in america yet. PTSD is diagnosable and has been considered an official disorder for decades, but C-PTSD has not been named a disorder of its own yet in the official guidebook of psychological disorders in the US (DSM). I think they might have JUST recognized it in the UK guidebook (ICD). I know it was proposed for the 11th addition.)

#ptsd #trauma #writing ptsd #writing trauma #mental health

31 notes · View notes

xxmisty · 4 years

Text

My Big Humiliating Torchwood Confession - Part 1 :P

Warning: this will be a LONG post, and i’m sorry about that!

Lucy is sat opposite me asking me repeatedly if I’ve started typing yet because she knows how desperately i’m putting off making this post!!1

This is awful, this is.... probably the most embarrassingly intimate confession i’ll have made since the day I opened up about my fetish way back at the start of 2013. And on the surface of it it probably doesn’t seem like that big of a deal but IT IS TO ME! And a big chunk of the trauma i’m about to express is tongue in cheek but it’s genuinely been - and continues to be - a huge bundle of DISTRESS AND HUMILIATION AND UTTER RESENTMENT!!! Because this year has been.... one hell of a personal journey and i don’t even mean anything to do with the pandemic.

It all started on New Year’s Day. I was feeling horrendously ill; the miraculous medication that had started to give me my life back had run out and thanks to the festive postal delays my new lot hadn’t arrived yet. I was in agony, I had a horrible headache, I felt sick and I could hardly move. We spent the day watching a bunch of muppet stuff, and that night we watched the first ep of season 12 of Doctor Who and, y’know, it was a pretty damn good episode (plus thirteen in the suit.... fuuckkk)

So afterwards we started having a discussion about Chris Chibnall - we’ve long held criticisms about some of his writing (not all of it, but it’s a mixed bag) and Lucy told me I still hadn’t seen his worst writing because that was for Torchwood...

Which I had never seen. Which I had been desperately trying not to see, although I didn’t know why. I just always had this vibe like a big “NO ENTRY!” sign at the idea of ever watching it. It’s not as though I had a logical reason for it, it’s not like I’d read up about it and thought, ‘naahhhhhh, I don’t fancy watching that’. I just had a big WARNING sign in my head, telling me not to go there.

Several years ago Lucy made me watch the first episode (after i’d been avoiding her threats of showing it to me for like 2 years) and like... it wasn’t horrible? It wasn’t... great either... but it didn’t kill me. Then a couple of years ago she showed me Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang because we were having a big Runaways phase so she wanted to show me an episode with James Marsters in. Again, it didn’t kill me. It wasn’t horrible. But I still had those big NO ENTRY!!! signs up in my head. I was still trying desperately to avoid actually being shown Torchwood as a show.

And the the new year happened and I was too WEAK AND DEFENCELESS to know what was happening when Lucy and I cuddled up in bed that night. I was too sick to really comprehend what she was doing or to fight back when she announced she was going to show me the very worst of Chris Chibnall’s writing... and put on Day One followed by Cyberwoman.

Oh. My. God.

All day I had been in a state of physical agony. Suddenly my mental and emotional state was far, FAR worse!!! The sex gas alien was bad enough, then by the time she put on Cyberwoman my brain was trying to shut down. I used to suffer blackouts and, god, I kept blacking out all the way through it, and instead of being her usual loving, wonderful self she KEPT FORCING ME TO COME ROUND TO WATCH IT!!!

By this point it was gone midnight and I was in a state of utter distress!! This was the worst double helping of tv I had ever sat through in my life and I sat up and let forth a tirade of absolute distress! This, I decided, had to be the reason I’d been avoiding Torchwood. Because it was more like.... Torurewood :P

Yep, that had to be it. Couldn’t possibly be anything worse, could it?

At least now lucy had shown me those two terrible Chibnall eps I would NEVER EVER HAVE TO WATCH THEM AGAIN. Or ANY Torchwood episodes. Yes, my ordeal was over. Had to be.

Nope. We went back to bed and she put on Out if Time. And i’ll admit, the story was much stronger but goddddd I had issues with the endings! And my level of despair started to rise even higher. I HATED Torchwood! This was the most distressing night’s viewing ever and I just wanted to go to sleep and be done with it all! Lucy put one more episode on afterwards: They Keep Killing Suzie. And that was much better but halfway through we finally fell asleep - so surely my trauma was over with.

Nope.

I had horrible nightmares of a very thirsty Gwen coming onto me all night, over and over again and it was HORRIBLE!!! Like, you have no idea how distressed I was! And when I woke up I blamed lucy whole-heartedly and she very sympathetically laughed at my plight!

But yeah. My trauma was over. No more Torchwood. I’d suffered the night from hell. Now it was time to pick up the pieces of my shattered life and move on! My medication arrived that day, I started work on some new pet portraits and life went back to normal.

Until that night, when I saw the telltale sign of Lucy putting a video on and turning her iPad around and then there they were - the opening titles of Torchwood - and I wanted to jump out the boat and into the canal and swim as far away as possible!!!

But the episode she put on was Fragments. She said she wanted to show me Chris Chibnall’s finest episode. And y’know what? It was really pretty fucking good. And god, I was fURIOUS about that!!! When we went to bed she pulled a real double whammy though by putting on Adam - which became instantly one of my favourite episodes of ANYTHING, EVER. And I looked at my wife, shook my head, sighed and told her, ‘nice save, Lucy... nice save...’

Over the next couple of weeks we also had a major Doctor Who rewatch and revisited most of the New Who era, and - to my mixed feelings - she dotted various other episodes of Torchwood in around them. I was conflicted - after the Adam and Fragments double bill I was no longer in brain-screamy hatred territory. I did however keep having flashbacks to that godawful night. Plus i’d had several further nightmares about a thirsty Gwen and I did NOT like it! But by a couple of weeks into January I’d seen a fair bit of Torchwood. Some of them twice.

Around this same time I’d started back in testosterone after not being able to afford it for the last 3 years. And then I started to notice I was getting some..... urghhhhhh..... unusual... and very uncomfortable feelings... about certain.... things... and characters.

And I started falling headlong into a great big gay panic :P

And here’s where the whole story becomes a HELL of a lot more embarrassing so i’m going to put it under a read more :P

Did ya click on that read more? Wh-why? there’s nothing to see here... especially not a long tale of shame and distress :P ugggghhhhhhh ok, FINE;

Basically there were two things happening at the same time. One was that I started to feel something I hadn’t felt in two decades. When I was a kid/teen we didn’t have the phrase ‘hyperfixation’ so I just called them obsessions. I always had obsessions, at any given point there was always this ONE THING that was my entire life. i lived it, breathed it, became it. It was my whole world, my whole personality, my focus, my lifeline. 9 times out of 10 it would be a tv show. Between the ages of 12 and 15 I would generally change my obsession about once a month. There were several ‘usual suspects’ that would cycle around over and over - Red Dwarf, The Brittas Empire, Sonic the Hedgehog, Halfway Across the Galaxy, Parallel 9, Out of this World...

late in 1995 I became obsessed with The X Files and - bizarrely - that obsession just ran and ran. I was so used to my obsession changing around once every month that it was bizarre to still be absolutely hyperfixated on it almost 9 months later. And then, in June 1996, my longest ever obsession took its place, a little known uk fantasy show called Bugs.

That... was my longest running obsession. And oh my god, was I ever obsessed with it. I have no idea how that one obsession kept going for 3 years. i’m sorry this is particularly wordy but this is kind of personal and I want to explain this right.

If you’ve been following me for a while you’ll probably known that one of the most defining moments of my life happened in the summer of ‘98. My cousin’s husband sexually assaulted me and my life spiralled into total despair. While that night was bad enough, the slow breakdown I went through over the course of the year that followed was harder to recover from. And eventually I came out the other side to some degree but i’d lost my love of three things that made me the person I was: writing, drawing and being obsessed. All three were so closely entangled with that night and surviving afterwards that it changed something that had always been a fundamental part of me.

I was no longer able to feel obsession. To hyperfixate the way I previously had. It was like something was broken inside me. And that was like a loss unto itself. It was SUCH a big part of me. It had been the only way i’d survived years of depression when I was young. My obsessions were what kept me afloat.

In the last decade there are a few things that I called ‘obsessions’ and I thought were as close as I would ever get to the way I used to feel. I thought maybe it was because i’d ‘grown up’ (pah). That’s not to say that i wasn't thoroughly into Ashes to Ashes, FNAF and Homestuck, for example, because of course I was! I even called them obsessions, but there was something that just... wasn’t the same, no matter what I did.

And over time, I got back the other things I’d lost. I started writing my A2A fics in 2010 and Lucy helped me to start drawing again in 2018 and god, both times it was like finally having a piece of myself returned after so long! As for my ‘obsessions’, I just thought I wasn't able to feel the way I used to because I wasn’t a kid any more.

But then, I thought that about Christmas Eve too, and then lucy came into my life <3

Still, the last thing I was expecting was... for *those* feelings to start sneaking back in my life. Feelings I hadn’t been able to experience since the summer of 1998-9. And to my further distress I discovered that they were relating to a certain show that I’d had a traumatising introduction to on new year’s day...

Suddenly it was all I could think about; TORCHWOOD! TORCHWOOD! Aargghhhhh and yet I still hated it! It was still awful! And yet... at the same time... it was so goooooooood.... arghhhhh, every time we watched an episode there was a knife twisting in my guts, reminding me that I hadn’t even felt these feelings over things we’d been HUGELY into... the fandoms we’d met through, the fandoms we discovered together. Nope. It was Torchwood that brought back my ability to hyperfixate! And I have SO MANY ANGRY FEELINGS ABOUT THIS!!!! Grrrrrrrrr!!

And believe me, I kept thinking it was going to stop and go away BUT IT HASN’T! It’s only gotten worse! And as of yesterday Torchwood officially became my second longest obsession ever!!!

I. AM. FURIOUS!!!

It’s... urrghhhh I hate this fact but it’s almost like I have a crush on the *show*??!!! I... can’t explain it better than that??? It’s like, if I could throw Torchwood on the bed and make sweet, sweet love to it I would :P and yeah, i’m saying all of this tongue in cheek but i’ve had a fucking sky high libido ever since I went back on T (ohhhhh and believe me I am LOVING it!!! 💙💙💙) But it’s like... there are elements of Torchwood itself that are so fucking hot that I get.... reactions that I am SO FUCKING EMBARRASSED ABOUT for so many reasons deidjdhdggjhaaahhhhhhhhh

Lucy literally only has to say ‘Torchwood’ at me and I end up in a gibbering heap half the time - I am not even kidding!!!

This, however, is NOT the worst thing that happened as a result of Lucy making me watch this god damned show.

But honestly this post has gone on WAY too long already so i’m going to save that for part 2.

Oh god... my shame.... my total and utter shame....

To be continued :P

#torchwood #about me #me #obsessions #hyperfixation #moirspritmaterail blogging #Lucy is MEAN!!!#my posts

12 notes · View notes

fordarkisthesuede · 4 years

Text

The Tolls of Justice - Chapter 9

Whoooooooooo boy, are you ready for a long, long chapter??? So long it took me over 150 days to write it??? I hope so!!!

If you are sensitive to talk about mental illness (specifically disassociation and mental breakdowns/crying), mentions of medications, and mentions of past deaths [within this story], please read the spoiler tags carefully.

Please enjoy this chapter at your own pace, and know that I love you. ♡

IMPORTANT SPOILER TAGS: sexually suggestive situations; discussion of mental illness[es]; paranoia; discussion of dissociation/depersonalization; hero-complex mention; mental breakdown/crying; car crash mention; thisisfine.jpg meme mention; p*lice mention; emt mention; past-death mention; r*talin mention; r*hypn*l mention; injury/bruise mention; gun/gun violence mention; food mention

Read on Ao3 or continue below:

[Chapter 9 - Strength in Numbers]

John could feel a warm weight on his collarbone as everything in him seemed to echo with his pulse.

Things ached where they normally didn’t. Tenderness sat in one of his kidneys and just over his heart, radiating with each breath. A slightly familiar soreness sat in his hips.

He was practically melted into the mattress under his back, feeling like a pile of warm jelly stuck to a plate by the summer heat, yet he could still tell he had bones and flesh intact.

I’m definitely not in Arkham anymore.

He didn’t need to open his eyes to see Bruce lying next to him, his arm draped around John’s collar and his face buried into the pillow, but it certainly was a sight to behold. Especially when he stirred and moved to kiss John’s cheek like he’d been waiting for the opportunity.

“Good morning,” Bruce said in his ear, not sounding as awake as he seemed. Black hair mussed, eyes darkened like the ocean depths, a real smile floating on his lips - there was nothing about the whole look that didn’t make John’s heart give that funny little shake that only seemed to come with certain experiences with Bruce.

“I’ll say.” He snatched a kiss for himself, taking the opportunity to trail his fingertips up and over the arm over his chest. The curves of hard muscle were practically begging to be pet. “That dance… You really know how to show a guy a good time. Kinda makes the emotional turmoil worth it.”

Bruce turned on his side, his cute sleepily-contented expression moving to something more contemplative as the sheets moved with him, exposing the little black chest hairs and very lickable pectorals of his torso. He was bruised in places, and John eyed the marks his boot heel had made.

“Reeeally worth it,” he purred, rolling to face him and run his fingers over the marks. Bruce grunted when he pressed in, sending a lovely pang of heat to John’s groin. “Did that hurt?”

“You know it did,” Bruce frowned slightly. No, wait, it looked more like a pout... How cute! So cute it made him want to tease him.

“Want me to kiss it better?” He traced over the bruise gently, playing over the little hairs brushing his fingertips. Everything felt so real. Everything was real. Bruce was aaallll his - his to touch, his to love, as real as John himself. “I can soothe all your aches and pains, if you’d like. You just have to tell me where it hurts.”

“What about you?” Bruce asked, making John’s heart shiver as he stroked his thumb over John’s arm. “We got kind of rough last night.”

Why would Bruce want to take that away? John needed this. “I don’t know if you noticed, but I was very into that,” John answered, “You don’t know how amazing these aftereffects are. I feel like I’m floating and sinking into this bed - everything is so...solid.”

Bruce didn’t seem to really like that. He seemed like he was rolling the words around in his head, not touching in a way that was deliberately comforting anymore. He was clearly choosing his next words, because John had inevitably said the wrong thing, again, and now he ruined their morning just as it was starting; Bruce was going to corner him into something unpleasant, and John could feel something in him shrink and bristle.

“John,” Bruce started in that I’m-just-concerned-about-you tone John had long grown accustomed to from everyone else, “why didn’t you tell me you were still struggling with your perception?”

John didn’t have any other option but to answer. “Ha, I can see you just fine,” he dodged, hoping Bruce would drop it and forget he ever asked, “You’re a solid ten-outta-ten in my twenty-twenty, Brucie.”

Bruce’s brow furrowed. John knew that look in his eye - he wasn’t in the mood for messing around. “You know that’s not what I meant. You told me you were having vivid nightmares. Last night, you said you were having problems making sure things were real; that you’d wake up thinking of Ace Chemicals-”

“I don’t want to talk about it,” John said a little too loudly as he rolled over, turning away from the image of barely-covered Bruce trying to push John’s demons front-and-center for him to see.

“You already talked about it,” Bruce admonished in a huff.

“Then I don’t need to say it again!” John shot back.

Silence.

Silence and the vision of an unpowered digital clock on a bare nightstand and a boringly-painted wall with stripes of sun that said it was probably past noon. John could hear breathing, but barely, hearing his own pulse and the quiet guilt piling in his chest more than anything.

Movement next to him, the shuffle of sheets, something thick in John’s chest threatening to choke him inside-out - he took hold of his neck, feeling all the words he’d been holding in there, half-wishing the hallucination of everything would break, and felt the ache of reality as they began to spill out in a strangled voice: “I-I just -” the hand on his shoulder was very real, so heavy and hot – “don’t LOOK at me!” John curled a little more into himself. Warmth lingered as weight left, all real real real. Bruce’s weight settled behind him in a swish of fabric and shift in balance.

“There,” Bruce said, sounding like he was talking to the opposing wall, “I can’t see you.”

He couldn’t bear to look at him directly. Eyes were the windows into the soul, after all. The wall was boring, but it was like talking to some of the Arkham therapists. Less like he was spilling the darkest parts of his guts to the one person who always saw him.

“I…keep thinking I’m still in Arkham,” he said, curling his fingers in the sheets by the pillow, “That I’m... I’m just waiting to wake up there like nothing’s changed, that…all of this has been some whacked-up ha-hallucination. Ha ha ha - that I’ve just been imagining these things! I mean, it’s so unreal, how you and I are working it out, having friends, having this...weird pseudo-family thing. Being…being happy.” His eyes hurt. He wanted to close them, but he’d lose focus, or worse, lose the grip on his shaky feelings. “I admired you for so long, just being with you is like a dream. I could only ever imagine I’d get this far, or that you’d stick with me, or…anything. I can feel everything, remember everything, but it’s like it’s not enough - and the worst part is that I can’t tell anyone this, or… I’ll just get tossed back!”

“You wouldn’t get put back in Arkham, John,” Bruce said softly.

“Ye-ha-ah I would! You think any of the white coats won’t use any excuse to lock me away? Any at all?” John spat, hugging himself a little too hard, aware of how much pressure he was putting on his sides but not caring. “They’d slam me in the hole if I so much as hinted at a relapse!”

“They’re your doctors.” So what? “St. Dymphna’s New Life Home isn’t Arkham -” Same stupid uncaring people, anybody can be bought - “it’s rehabilitation, John, not imprisonment. They know you’re still recovering.” That’s what they all say, at first. “Do you really think I’d let the court send you there without researching them first?”

John’s train of thought broke. He turned to look at Bruce, at the smushed black hairs on the back of his head that had been finger-combed into an angled mess, and wanted to see his face instead.

“I did extensive background checks on the facility, its patient care, its staff – I wasn’t about to let someone send you to another Dr. Quinnzel or Dr. Crane.”

John felt his heart squeeze. He never thought about that. Bruce had reassured him the days leading up to his move, but he’d just taken it as a loving-boyfriend-thing. “Why… Why aren’t you mad at me? I’ve – I’ve been holding out on therapy – practically cheating!” Bruce still just laid there, all quiet and calm. “Come on, just say it! You’re disappointed in me, right?!”

“No,” he answered, “I just wish you told me earlier. You shouldn’t have to hold all that in. Not with me.” He paused, stiffening like he was stopping himself from something. “Can I look at you?”

John took a deep breath, smelling stale sweat and cum and faded laundry-safe bleach. He clenched the cotton sheets under his hands, feeling the fabric and the bittersweet ache in his chest. He was real, Bruce was real, the feelings laid bare last night were real - could he live with Bruce seeing him like this, heart out in the open and primed for stabbing?

Hadn’t he seen the worst of him? John spattered with blood and begging him to believe him like no one else ever had? John at his worst, uncaring and hostile and full of rage and vengeance, covered in blood he’d spilt before Bruce’s very eyes?

He’d sat across from him then, battered and bruised, and told him they were friends, despite just shoving a Batarang into his hand to stop him from doing any more harm. He’d seen John in Arkham, his no-name existence shoved into a single cell on display with his sickness, and he came back. He’d rushed to rescue him from Dr. Crane’s experiments and the temptation to step backwards and take revenge. He kept coming back, over and over and over, chasing after John to save him from himself.

John stared at his back, at the scars on his shoulders he wanted to kiss better, and knew. “Yeah.”

Bruce turned back around, the covers slipping with him, and faced him with all his wounds on display. “I know I kept things from you that I shouldn’t have,” he said as unthreatening and unmalicious as John had no right to expect, “and that I keep doing it. I should’ve told you about me and the Agency, about Tiffany working for me, about keeping us a secret - every time I didn’t, it was because I thought it was for the better.”

John didn’t want him to look at him like that. He didn’t stop holding the sheets, knowing if he let go that slapping his hand over Bruce’s eyes to cover the honesty that was too much like that night wouldn’t go over well.

“You keep proving me wrong,” he said, looking hurt - by himself or John, it was difficult to tell. “I keep hurting you, and I keep making things worse. I know there are things you haven’t told me, and things that you feel you have to keep from me. And I know I don’t deserve to hear any honest answers with the way I’ve treated you, but… I’m not going to run away from you.”

Bruce held out his hand, laying it in the space between their pillows.

He wasn’t running, or judging, or looking confused. He wasn’t angry or disappointed in John for failing in the one thing he was supposed to be doing right. He was just there, with him.

“I just… I want to be near you,” John admitted, barely feeling the words leave his throat as he wound his thin fingers between Bruce’s, feeling imperfect rough parts where nicks and cuts left lasting marks, “so badly… Not just to be with you. You know how I’ve always admired you.” He still did, and Bruce had to have known that. “You’re always...respected - even if they don’t like you, they listen to you,” he explained, seeing the slight confusion on Bruce’s face at the word respect, “You’re someone people want to be,” he continued slowly, “People talk about you, talk to you, look at you... People don’t...forget you.”

Bruce seemed to understand the unspoken words that used to eat at John’s brain, because he squeezed John’s hand back.

“It’s like… I’m drifting in the ocean, and I keep trying to swim towards the lighthouse - and just when I get close enough, the current pulls me away into the rocks. And I just...want to reach you. Hah, isn’t that stupid?”

“No,” Bruce answered, not looking away for a moment, “But...I don’t think you realize how much closer you are to me,” he said with a little tilted smile and a very low hmph, “If I’m not knee-deep in the water already, I’ve definitely run out to help you.”

“Ha ha - that’s so typical, steering my insane metaphor to suit your hero-complex,” John shot back with the smile he felt tugging at his lips at the mental image.

“I don’t have a-”

“Yes you do,” John interrupted, pulling Bruce’s hand up to give him a peck on the knuckles, “And I love you for it.” Bruce’s mouth was still scrunched a little; he seemed to dislike the idea he had a complex at all. “So – since we’re spilling secrets,” he started, settling their hands between the pillow as he thought of the best way to phrase it, “what’s the other reason you didn’t tell anyone about us?”

“There’s isn’t any other,” Bruce stressed, “I just wanted them to see you as you. If I came home with you and reintroduced you as ‘my boyfriend John’, that would be the only thing they’d think of.” He paused for a second, seeming to rethink. “Well, after Joker,” he added with a slight nod to the side.

“You don’t think they’d have given me a second chance right off the bat, huh?” John puzzled, “Even after what happened with Dr. Crane?”

“That...was a bit of a mess,” he said, looking somewhat embarrassed, “It was an emergency. I don’t think they really saw the best of you.” Bruce held his gaze. “I’ve gotten to see the best parts of you every day. I just want them to experience that.”

John was tempted to make a joke out of that, but a nagging question leapt out of his mouth: “And what if they still rejected me?”

Bruce’s emotions were subtle, but John could tell he’d made him uncomfortable. He didn’t want to answer that. He didn’t like the answer.

Well, it was honesty-hour, and John bared his heart for him, so Bruce could do the same. “Would you still run after me?”

“Yes.”

There was no doubt, no dishonestly, no lingering maybe. He would, as sure as Batman’s armor was black and John’s hair was green and Bruce was a sturdy pillar of reality.

“But what would you do about them?”

Bruce breathed, not really looking at him, hard and stony like he wanted to turn tail with a swish of his bat-cape. John slowly ran this thumb over Bruce’s knuckle, softening him into something John would almost call vulnerable. “I don’t know,” he admitted like it was some shameful secret.

John had never known Bruce to not have a plan. He always had a backup for his backups. It didn’t make sense, it was almost like… “You’re scared of that, aren’t you?” He asked, realizing the answer without ever hearing it, “That’s why you planned everything out.” (It wasn’t excusing it, he reminded himself. Bruce hurt him and he should know it... But he couldn’t watch him suffer forever, and he shouldn’t want to.) “Oh, Bruce. Honey. No one can know everything; not even you. I mean, look at how my life turned out - I don’t think anyone could’ve known how I’d end up. Or even that I’d live this long.” Bruce seemed to be absorbing that, which was good; he wasn’t running away from his own truth. That was progress. A different Bruce in a different time would’ve denied being scared of the unknown at all. “Besides, did you really think they wouldn’t figure it out eventually, with my shameless wolf-whistling?”

There it was: the tiny spark of humor that pushed away the clouds. He didn’t have to smile for John to see it; he could tell. The little change of light, the tiny bits of relaxation in his brow and mouth. “I sort of had the idea we’d make it gradually more obvious.”

“Gradual - me? Do you even know me?” he teased, “I’d take two miles with any inch you’d give me. Especially with those eight you’re packing...”

Good gracious, Bruce was cute when he smiled. Cuter when his little snort developed into a chuckle into his pillow. “Honestly, that was really the most appealing part,” he continued, voice lighter than before but still a little guilty, “I like how you talk. The tension would’ve made it easier to explain why I pulled you away to make out with you somewhere.”

John tittered at the image of a flustered, frustrated Bruce giving in and showing him what-for in some undisturbed part of the manor. “Oh, buddy, I can only imagine what that kind of tension could do for us. I had some good fantasies about us sneaking in those little hideyholes at Arkham, and if they’re anything to go by... Ooh, do you have any secret passages in the manor we could use? Arkham had a few; not counting the air vents and sewers, of course, I mean the real hidden passage kind.”

John watched as Bruce’s eyes widened with the look of just remembering something important as he practically leaped out of bed to search his pants on the floor, clad in nothing but boxer-briefs, his demi-godlike body on display for John to stare at as blood tried to rush inconveniently to his groin. (Oof, he’d put his weight behind him last night, all those heavy moves and hits controlled until the very end, and just thinking about the power locked away under the same strict moral code that Bruce unleashed on the unsuspecting dirt in Gotham made John feel like he was going to melt. Batman was truly a wonder, even out of the suit… And boy, he fucked like it.)

“Bruce,” John managed, sitting up and trying not to drool too obviously, “I never thought I’d say this, but please put on a shirt on.”

Bruce tossed an almost-pocket-sized hardback at John’s lap. “Check the map page.”

And he was being bossy. “You could’ve said please,” John grumbled for Bruce to hear, not disliking how the commanding voice still did things for him. “What are you looking for?”

“I want to know if there are any Owl markings near downtown Gotham,” Bruce answered, dutifully throwing his shirt back on as he checked his phone, “Specifically nests. Please.”

The map page was fairly simple. The illustrator had gone out of their way to make a nice key to detail the “important” areas of worship or decision-making “parliaments” or leader’s houses, versus the hideaways that were “nests” and burial sites of nameless victims. John spied the owl-face stamp on Arkham Island and forced himself to ignore it. He knew - roughly - where most sections of the city were cut.

“Well there’s nothing specific in Downtown - you have to go up and over to see the nearest nest. Which according to our author was one of the last added before the birds went completely coo-coo.”

Bruce did a tame belly-flop next to John - still sans pants - and pulled up his own map of Gotham, looking like it was pulled straight from the Batcave’s supercomputer. John could see the little red pins Bruce had marked on what looked like deaths. “Here’s The Lot, and if the nearest nest is here… Look,” he tilted the phone towards John, showing off the yellow flag he’d made to mark the nest and the newly-added blue lines highlighting pipes, “it’s a bit far, but I was thinking last night about how the woman disappeared from The Lot so fast, and I thought about how the old sewers still connect with the newer parts of the city as it expanded-”

“Wait, last night? When did you have the time?”

“It was after you fell asleep,” Bruce answered simply, “But I realized the sewers still connected everywhere, so they probably used that for a quick escape. It’s not too difficult to get from one section of the city to another underneath it, if you know where you’re going - I had to do it myself a few years ago, back when I was looking to make some smaller hideouts. I didn’t think about it until you mentioned the Court of Owls. I figured they might have had a car waiting on another street, but it could be that they took only a few streets away to get into a getaway vehicle. I checked the saved camera footage last night, and I think it’s a good possibility, considering a couple of promising possible cars parked in the street for short periods of time, but since this nest is just outside of the Downtown area, it wouldn’t be an overreach to say someone took the sewer the whole way.”

John blinked. “Just how long were you up?”

“About fifteen, twenty minutes. I was originally going to tell you when you woke up.”

From zero to all the ideas in fifteen minutes while in a haze of afterglow… He really was amazing. And breathtaking. And completely ludicrous. “Hah ha! So if fist-fighting and hard sex after a long day aren’t enough to stop you - geez, what even are you?”

“I’m Batman,” Bruce answered with a smirk, “I think it’s worth looking at the building itself - that area’s been closed for construction for a while, the city’s put a halt on tearing the structure down due to historical value.”

“Pfft, historical value, sure…” John peeked at the picture Bruce had pulled up: a rather small, plain-bricked theater with a very yellowing sign.

“It was one of the first theaters in Gotham,” Bruce explained, “A historical preservation group is trying to save it. Someone on it could be an Owl. I don’t like to think it’s a coincidence.” He frowned a little at the device as he put it aside, seeming to decide something, and when he looked back at John it was with the same determination as before. “When Jackie brought you here, did you two discuss anything?”

“Only the very basics of what happened with you. She’s been on sessions with me before, she’s used to seeing me angry.” He’d only be asking after the topic of owls for one reason. “You think she’s one of them, huh?”

“She knew I cared about you enough to use me against Dr. Crane, she could’ve figured I would have kept you in the house and used the Gala as an excuse.”

He...supposed. She did crash it, and she wasn’t alone, and it was true how she had a list of dead friends as long as her arm and how some of them had been the result of murder and manslaughter, but... “She didn’t really look like she wanted to be there, though,” John said thoughtfully, “She’d said helping her boyfriend research at the gala was better than -” Research? - “ohh, I see what you mean! Could be, could be…”

“How was she last night?”

“Well, uh, I was kiiinda paying more attention to me, Bruce. Specifically the dark swirling thoughts of how I’ll never be truly accepted and how much of an idiot I was to think I would be. And how much I hated feeling everything around me. But that’s a hole we can spelunk into another time - how about we just go pay her a visit?”

As if on queue, like they were in some ridiculous play themselves, Bruce’s phone began to buzz by his hand, and Tiffany’s face took over half the screen, looking happier than John had ever seen her.

Bruce took a breath, nothing in his expression but the cool, collective sense of duty, and answered, bringing it to his ear so John couldn’t listen in. “Yes?”

John could hear something that sounded like ‘why didn’t you tell me you were okay’, but he could barely hear it over the tinny electronic whistling tune emitting from his own phone, telling him the person on the other end was a mystery.

Unknown contact, but a Gotham area code.

“Clown Funeral Services, where your last ride fits twenty,” John answered cheerfully, “Who’s the lucky bozo?”

“…John, do you answer all your calls like that?”

“Mickey! I didn’t know you had a contraband phone, you rascal! You should’ve told me, I would’ve thought of a better greeting for you.”

“I’m using the hotel’s landline,” the gruff voice of Mickey Williamson answered with a tone of mild bewilderment, “I’m calling because… You know how you were asking about that Ian guy the other day? The one who left after a month?”

“Yeeeah?”

“I saw him leave just a few minutes ago.”

“Ian just left The Lucky Hotel?” Ian Coggs, who Tiffany had been trying to track, who was the only known lead to finding Roman Sionis’ hideaway, was staying here? Was this some kind of whacked-up dream of a coincidence, or was it fate itself following them from the shadows? Either way, Bruce was paying attention, now. “Mickey, if I weren’t in a committed relationship with the love of my life, I’d come out there and kiss you right now.”

Bruce glanced over at him with a jealous squint and raised brow. John just nudged him with his foot in return.

“Um…thanks,” he answered, not sounding like he was really that appreciative of the idea.

John had several questions - What room did he come out of? What was he wearing? Did you see his car? – but figured he’d boil it down to the most obvious one: “Please tell me you overheard detailed plans of where he was going.”

“No, but, uh, I got the license plate of the car he hopped in. Does that help?”

John felt a laugh bubble in his throat, and he didn’t bother to stop it. “Does it-?! Yes, you big galloot! Ha ha ha! Oh, man, hang on a sec’,” he paused and snatched the hotel pen from the floor, where it had rolled with the broken lamp, and put him on speaker so Bruce could hear. “Okay, lay it on me, Mick’!”

“C-P-5-K-1-N-G.”

Bruce was suddenly paying attention, phone partway away from his ear, blinking at the phone in John’s hand as John scribbled the letters and numbers in ink on his palm. John couldn’t hear what Tiffany was saying on the other end, but it was quieter than before.

“Mick’, you’re truly my number two guy,” John praised, “Remind me to buy you lunch one of these days.”

“Thanks. I’ll…remember that.”

The call ended without a goodbye, but John beamed proudly at Bruce, who was ‘uh-huh’-ing seriously into his phone. “Right. Twenty minutes.” A pause, during which John could hear Tiffany’s tone all soft despite the muffled words, and Bruce gave a sigh through his nostrils. “I’ll check.” He put the phone down, muting it and staring ahead with a somewhat tired expression, and then looked back to John. “Tiffany wants to talk to you.”

John definitely did not want to talk to her. Not when he was in such a good mood; not when he’d finally ironed out a bit more of the grievances between him and Bruce. He wasn’t ready to take on more emotional pain. Not now, not later today…he’d prefer not to for the rest of his life.

“Don’t make that face,” Bruce admonished lightly, “she wants to apologize.”

“Don’t tell me how to feel,” John snapped lightly, “I don’t have to talk to anyone if I don’t want to. Especially not someone who was rude to me.” (He knew how that sounded. Like the old John. But it was how he felt, and wasn’t he still John? Weren’t his hands still that John’s? Wasn’t the scar on his hand a sign of the past and present and future blended together?) “Just…not right now,” he added, staring at the faded white line as it covered Bruce’s hand still lying on the sheets. Bruce’s skin always seemed warmer than his own. “Please.”

Depths of blue and black had never looked so non-judgmental as they did today. It must’ve been love. (No, it was. It always was. He’d always known it was, the fascination, the curiosity, the concern, the sympathy and understanding and passion of all kinds no matter how subtle – all Bruce’s love, on full display with a glance.) “You’ll have to talk to him later. Yeah. Bye.” The phone was black when he put it back down. “Tiffany’s informant here said the same thing: Ian Coggs left here five minutes ago, riding in a black sedan with the same plate. Tiffany’s following it – it’s heading west.”

“You’re following after them, aren’t you?”

“I have to.”

No you don’t, John wanted to say, but it wasn’t the truth. Bruce always had to follow through. Had to make that catch. “I know.”

“I’m heading right there, so Iman’s coming to pick you up,” he said, typing away a message in rapid swipes, “I want you two to check out the Nest on the Aylin Street theater. I’m telling her to bring some of my gear for you to use; I think the Nest is just used as an intermittent safe house, but take precautions.”

John was going on an investigation. He was getting responsibility – trust – directly from Batman, while his body ached and tingled with constant reminders of what happened between them last night. He couldn’t have felt more wonderful than if Bruce was jacking him off and letting John film the whole thing. “I won’t let you down!” (Did that come out too enthusiastic? Aw, hell, what did he care?!) “I’ll tell you what – I’ll interrogate Jackie while I’m waiting, too! She shouldn’t be too tough an egg to crack – not when we’ve split it open once already.”

He looked like he was going to protest about the idea, but he softened with a slight sigh and one look over at John. “You’d do it even if I told you not to, wouldn’t you?”

“Just as sure as you would,” John needled with a grin.

“Just…be careful,” Bruce seemed to land on as he slid away and started to put on pants, keeping eye contact for most of it, “I don’t want to catch Roman and then find out you’d been kidnapped because Jackie has a Talon on speed-dial.”

“Ha, that’s cute, you think kids still use speed-dial.”

“John, she’s almost three years older than Tiffany, she’s not a kid.” (“It was only a joke,” John muttered to himself as he made a mental note of Tiffany being twenty-three.) “Besides, my point still stands. Keep your eyes and ears open, and call me or Iman if you think something’s wrong.”

Bruce was edging on babying him again. A twitch of anger came, but John breathed slowly, staring at Bruce’s hard shoulders as he let it pass. There was more than one way to make him understand that he didn’t need that. “The same goes for you, Bruce,” John purred, throwing covers and any minute sense of so-called decency he had away to stroll up to Bruce, feeling proud at how Bruce’s face turned a nice shade of red as he seemed to struggle not to look everywhere he clearly wanted. It was funnier to see it burning in his eyes as John gently straightened his shirt by its ends. He could practically feel the rope on Bruce’s self-restraint. “Dancing wouldn’t be the same without my partner,” he teased slowly, trailing his fingers to the curve of Bruce’s rear, “You know I’ve always got your back,” he emphasized with a gentle squeeze. “You call, and I’ll come after you.”

Poor Bruce was trying so hard to keep himself together. It was so cute. John had to pretend not to see his Adam’s apple bob in his peripheral vision. “I’ll be fine.”

“I know you will, Batman,” John hummed, pecking him and feeling the brief warmth burst new life in his grin as he slipped out of Bruce’s arms and turned to clean himself up properly, “because I will be, too.”

† † † † †

The time it took for John to redress and down a very sugary cup of the terrible brown liquid that the hotel passed for coffee was small and unmemorable and annoying. The time it took for Bruce to snatch his arm in the hallway, kiss him deep, and wish him luck in a whispered voice coupled with adoration and determination in his eyes was only a handful of a seconds, and yet John felt like he was holding onto them and stretching them into something of an hour as he licked his lips, watching Bruce’s back disappear around the elevator doors with his own call of good luck still echoing in his mouth.

Jackie’s room was right across the hall from his. One heck of a coincidence, in John’s mind, after he ruled out the ridiculous idea of Mickey somehow being in on the whole thing. It was mere luck, and something even Jackie was surprised at when she walked him there last night.

He knocked, deciding on a fun pattern of ‘da, dada-da-da, da-da’, and heard shuffling. Then a pause, and he had the feeling he was being watched.

“Are you alone out there?”

“Aren’t we all?” John joked, rocking on his heels.

Jackie appeared in an instant, familiar dark circles under her brown eyes and her little spackle of freckles in full view. Her eyebrows were lighter than yesterday, her eyelashes weren’t as long, and she didn’t seem to care that she was only wearing men’s boxers and an oversized shirt with an oozing orange skull front-and-center. She looked at his neck, and then his arms, where Bruce’s hands had pressed sweet reality into John the night before. “Where did you get those?”

“It’s not important,” he waved off, not wanting to spill any details of last night, “You’ve got makeup, right? Think I could borrow some of your clown-whitest? I, uh, don’t want to be seen like this.” It was a complete lie, and she might know it – John wanted nothing more than to show off the yellow-purple mark left from Bruce’s hand. “Not by my therapists, anyway,” he added.

Jackie stepped aside. “I should have something. Come on in.”

Jackie’s room was identical to the one he slept in, sans the broken lamp and teeming with the contents of her luggage. She clearly didn’t care about her shoes, as they were thrown in the corner, but her dress was hanging in the open closet next to a neatly-kept tuxedo in a thin plastic sheet. He recognized the stuffed black cat lying sideways on the sheets, being the same one that had sat on her desk in her old apartment. Both pillows were dented and the bed was unmade.

“Sooo,” John stretched, noticing the desk-vanity had a variety of dirty makeup brushes left on it, “Your boyfriend around?”

“He had work this morning; some indie film, he’s been doing it most of the week. Take a seat – do you want coffee?”

John wrinkled his nose. “I’ve had enough hotel garbage water, thanks.”

“I brought my own grounds,” Jackie added, swinging a half-empty bag of hazelnut roast she’d picked up from the corner of the dresser. “And I’ve got good creamer.”

“Is it pumpkin spice flavored?”

“Caramel,” she answered, already heading to the bathroom. John leaned just enough to see and make sure she was doing what she said she was. Coffee was being put in the strainer and sure enough, there were little cartons of caramel creamer on the countertop, along with various sugar packets and jams he was sure she swiped from restaurant tables. “I’ve also got mini-muffins.”

Actual sugar? Owls, schmowls, he wasn’t going to pass up free breakfast along the way. “In that case, Jackie, have I told you you’re an absolute angel?”

“No, but please, feel free to tell me I’m a multi-eyed messenger of God whose physical form is incomprehensible to men,” she answered with a definite note of humor, “It sounds much better than ‘sweetie-pie’ or ‘doll-face’. Though… It is nice just hearing my own name again.”

John wondered how that felt. He’d been called ‘John Doe’ for so long he couldn’t imagine responding to any he might have had before. But he shook the thought away, a new question forming in his head as he scooted towards the makeshift makeup table. The little box on the corner looked like it was chock-full of goodies. “Your boyfriend doesn’t call you Jackie?” He asked, checking the labels - almost all of them had Janus stamped on them in elegant print. Powders and liquids and creams, oh my. It was probably worth taking a quick snap of anything that might help, so he pulled out his phone to whip open the camera app - snap!

“He doesn’t know me as Jackie,” she answered, something too flat about her tone of voice to be what John knew as dismissal, “I’m only Jaqueline to him. And the rest of the world.”

That must’ve been a weird adjustment… What did people say to things like this? He couldn’t just blurt out wow just how little do you trust the guy you like. He supposed joking about all the world being a stage would help, maybe with a French accent, but… Something didn’t feel right. If it were Bruce… “Um… I’m sorry to hear that,” he tried, “Even if you did sort of do it to yourself.”

“...do you think Batman would say that, too?” She sounded slightly...what, mournful? Maybe?

Well, why lie? Why not say what he thought and knew in his heart of hearts? “Probably. If he thought you were bad enough, anyway,” he chose, taking a peek into the trashcan nearby - a hand-sized piece of rubber or thin beige plastic was ripped and thrown in there along with some makeup wipes. Hmm. Picture-worthy, for sure. “You did try to kill a guy - and even if he does deserve to rot, pinning the blame on someone else falls a little high on the bad scale. But he did let you go, so it’s not like he’d think you’re complete scum or something.”

It was quiet, and John, despite knowing he could easily take Jackie down by herself, wondered if he’d said too much. The bathroom alcove was still.

“I’m glad you can say stuff like that,” Jackie answered solemnly, making John slowly move for the butterfly knife in his pocket and waiting for the ‘because it’s the last thing you’ll ever say’. “No one else is that honest.”

John hovered his hand over the knife handle.

“It’s weird how you’re one of the few people who’ve seen the real me,” she continued, not sounding like she was going to come out with a gun in her hand, “Everyone else treats me like some tragic heroine - I just tell people I used to live here and they pretend to be sympathetic.”

She seemed to be spilling out grievances rather than vengeance. John took the opportunity to peek into the dresser drawer. It was like three different men crammed their best outfits in one drawer, minus the shoes. Not exactly the artsy or fashionably-trendy wardrobe he expected from a handsome actor.

He should probably say something to continue the conversation as he poked around, though, to avert any suspicion. Time to see if she could crack. “What, do they think Gotham’s some crime-infested city where bat-people roam the streets and not having mace is practically illegal?”

There came the distinct noise of a choked laugh, and John knew he’d won a point or two in his favor. He pushed some of the material aside, but nothing was hidden in-between them but a few crumpled receipts that had definitely been shoved aside for later. (Bad Italian place, 13th Street gondola, All Stitched Up, good Italian place... Wow, The Two Gilded Cups was pricey - 223 bucks for two people?! And that was discounted, yeesh! Snap, snap, snap - he captured the whole drawer.)

“You know a lot of people thought it was really weird that I carried brass knuckles around?” Jackie asked bemusedly.

“So do I, a knife is way easier to hide on yourself, Jackie.” The second drawer had some of her trademark blend of dark and fall colors - even in underwear - as well as a lumpy plastic bag of used things he was not going to touch. It didn’t feel the same as when he poked through Bruce’s closet. It didn’t have that rush of being somewhere he shouldn’t… Maybe because he was nervous. Bruce wasn’t liable to whip out a Taser or whatever else Jackie might have on hand because he was snooping through delicate places; Bruce would just bottle it up a bit and pout.

“Heh… No, it was more that I was carrying around anything. I think only some of the girls I worked with carried mace. And I was always like, ‘what, you only carry mace? I’ve got three things on me at all times!’”

He could hear actual humor in her tone. See, she’s not going to run out with something in her hand. She’s fine. Just keep it up. “Ooh, what’s number three?” he teased, pushing aside some t-shirts. (She seemed to have dumped her professional-psychologist wardrobe in favor of comfier clothing. At least for her stay here…)

“A derringer.”

John stared at the tiny gun in its tiny Kevlar holster, hidden between a pumpkin-orange shirt and a thin yellow-plaid hoodie. How did these things keep lining up in perfect time for him?

“Oh, don’t worry, I don’t have it on me right now,” she waved off, “It’s tucked away. I won’t… I mean, you’re not - I don’t have any reason to use it.”

“I hope not,” he muttered to himself, carefully placing the fabric back around it closing the drawer quietly. There was a little buzz from the coffee maker, and John hurried to make himself look like he’d been sitting at the desk the whole time. He was glad she wasn’t there to see him wince and wiggle on the seat as aches from last night’s spanking-session sent a wonderful flare to his brain; that would’ve been very awkward to explain away. He distracted himself by poking around a bit more.

The makeup case was interesting. A lot of neutrals were used recently. And often, apparently, if their large portions of missing product were any indication. There were also little hard scraps of paper and a damp washcloth thrown on it. He took one last picture and shoved his phone in his pocket.

The foundation, brow, crease, and blush brushes had been used. John could see the clumps of powder and wet paste. He couldn’t resist the urge to touch the foundation one - smooth goop smeared on his fingers. Decent quality. “Must be a cheap set if your boyfriend has to apply his own makeup before he leaves, huh?”

“That’s the indie-film life,” Jackie shrugged, setting the foam cups and a plastic case of miniature blueberry muffins on the table, “Guy’s got to supply the costume, too. But he wears makeup everyday anyway, so I don’t think it’s that big a deal. Let me get my case, I should have Cadaver Paint to blend with some pale skin tones.”

Everyday really explained the missing chunks of neutral colors in the tubes. But something bugged him. A lot. “What kind of film is it?” he asked, popping a muffin in his mouth and peeking at a sealed Janus-brand tub of something called Moddy; it looked like a face mask clay.

“Some action thing. He always says he’s too good to play a small part, but he tends to take them if it’s something he hasn’t done before.”

The Moddy tub was almost empty. John spied another underneath its spot in the case. He pinched a bit of the stuff between his fingers from the open tub - it was almost like Play-Doh, only it made a funny tingling sensation on his skin, like he was dipping his finger in something warm and heavily carbonated. “What is this stuff?” he asked, wiping it off on the wet washcloth.

Jackie brought over a little plastic cutting board that had been stained with almost a rainbow of colors in one hand and tubes of cream makeup and a tiny spatula in the other. “Modification putty. It’s like sculpting clay for your face - you can use it to fill in gaps, add pieces to faces to make them bigger; pretty much anything. It’s good for temporary stuff if you don’t have the money to buy prosthetics. Or hate spirit gum,” she explained, squeezing white face paint onto the board and putting in tiny dabs of pink to blend. He could see Cadaver Paint in old-timey cursive on the white tube – definitely not a Janus brand. “I’m gonna test some spots on you first. You’re gonna be a fun challenge,” she added with a tiny smile. “Hold out your hand.”

John let her test colors, his mind churning like an ice-cream machine. Janus makeup wasn’t cheap. Matt-the-actor did his own makeup. Three different men practically sat in the dresser drawer. The thing in the trash had to have been a bald cap. Moddy could easily be used to cover and expand areas. It wasn’t a stretch to think Matt Chaney was the mysterious man-of-two-criminal-faces. In fact, it was a completely logical conclusion to come to, given everything in the room…

“Matt seems to go through a tub of that stuff every month,” Jackie commented, sponging a second test on his hand as he half-listened. “He has some serious facial scarring from a bad car accident in college. But you didn’t hear it from me,” she said with a sly smile at him. “I only found out because I caught him reapplying it in the dressing room when I was playing Antigone on a shoestring budget.”

John could practically feel his thoughts halt in their tracks as a pun bubbled in front of them. “Ha ha ha ha ha! Oh, you must’ve been a shoe-in for that role!”

Her mood had improved drastically, pride and joy lighting up her face. “Well, I did pop some of a prospects’ tires just in case, but yeah, I was. It wasn’t a good production, though. We did a fun 1930’s version of Romeo and Juliet that was way better; that one lasted a full month. You would’ve liked it, actually, it had gangsters versus cops instead of royal families.”

“So they didn’t take the two houses alike in dignity line seriously, then?” he grinned, seeing the punchline land successfully with her open laugh. “Romeo, Romeo - come out wit’ your hands up, Romeo,” he mocked, earning a sturdier giggle.

“What’s funnier is that was actually a line!”

Compliments, the way to anyone’s confidence, he told himself. “I bet you killed it,” he chose and regretted the second they left his mouth. But there was no fear, no pause, no shift of any kind to indicate she was thinking about her near-brush with being a murderer. Just a normal, non-malicious smile. The nice, honest sort he’d seen on Bruce, like it was a reflex they couldn’t help.

“I did. I even got reviews to prove it – my performance ‘turned a predictable script into a rollercoaster of dark comedy’. Didn’t have to pop anyone’s tires to get the lead, either.” She tilted his hand in the light, inspecting her work. “I think this matches, don’t you?”

It was hard to believe she was involved. He didn’t want to force her into a corner when she could be a bystander; it was better to build her up. “It’s like you skinned me and put me in a tube,” he praised, watching her nose scrunch in mock-disgust even as her smile stayed put.

“So… Did Bruce end up calling you or something?” she asked, sponging some of the foundation on his neck. John could see the bruises begin to disappear in the mirror as he popped another muffin in his mouth. “You seem a lot better than how I left you.”

He was so tempted to be honest. Mostly. He’d kept all the relationship stuff secret for so long. But it would be dumb to say anything when she could, potentially, pass information along. “Something like that,” he answered vaguely.

“Booooo. Come on, John, it’s just me; what am I gonna do, post it on Friendbook? Vlog about it? Run to the Moonrise? I’m practically the only person you can tell.”

Cheerful bonding followed by an I’m-the-only-one-you-can-trust speech? He wasn’t going to fall for that Harley-league talk. No siree, Bob - not this time. Two could play that game of manipulation. “Hmm, I suppose we do look like virtual strangers to each other,” he started smoothly, “Jaqueline Latern doesn’t know anybody real in Gotham… And Jackie Lant doesn’t have any friends left to tell...” That clearly struck a soft spot. “The only ones who know who and where we are are each other… Well, and I guess Matt has half an idea.”

“He doesn’t know you’re here,” she answered, dabbing slower with the less-pleased look of honesty, “He stayed behind to schmooze with some director. I didn’t think he’d take me driving another guy back here very well.”

“Ha! Don’t tell me he’d be jealous of someone like me.”

“Why not?” she put the paint aside and started to mix flakes of white foundation-powder with a pale neutral on a clean section of the plastic. “I lied to him about how I knew a good-looking guy - he’s already fragile with me knowing what he actually looks like. Not that he should be; I like him, you know?” She returned to powdering over the makeshift-foundation with a fluffy brush.

“Just ‘like’, huh?” he teased.

“It’s…more than ‘like’, I think. But I’m not sure how to put it.” Her brown eyes turned soft and contemplative. “It’s inspiring to see him on stage. He has this...presence, and it’s so immersive, it’s real. Some days I’m not sure if I want to just watch him and…I dunno, absorb it all, or if I want to be with him.”

That wasn’t good: John could feel a connecting sort of something in him. Like before, in her apartment, watching her pour her feelings out on camera. He was dangerously close to feeling sympathy for someone who might not be deserving of it. And this time it wasn’t as ironically funny.

“I mean, he’s also full of himself,” she added with a little tilt to her lip, “but he’s still thoughtful. Doesn’t ask questions, doesn’t seem to judge… Well, much.”

He didn’t know what he wanted to do. She hadn’t been a good would-be-doctor, but she might be trying to butter him up by pretending to feel the exact same way he did about Bruce. She might have heard him in those rare moments he talked about him, she might’ve remembered things, she might be throwing him off by making him sympathize with her and thus throw the whole idea of her being involved with Owls away. She might’ve planned this whole damn thing, there was no such thing as coincidence anymore and look where he was, right on the x on the antagonist's set with their guilty evidence in plain view like he couldn’t connect dots together and see the gun in her hand...

But the deepest part of him - the one that said Bruce loved him, that said he should take his meds, that told him he was here when sensory input was in focus - said she was being honest. He almost hated that.

She was putting the makeshift foundation on his wrist, seeming to think about who-knew-what. He snatched her hand, not caring if he got messy, the urge to squeeze hard sitting in his fingertips.

The proverbial cogs turned behind her darting eyes as fight or flight lit up her brain; John’s window to ask the questions that had been on the table since he walked in was shrinking.

“Sorry,” he said, half-meaning it as he let go, “It’s just…” People appreciated kindness, and honesty was usually a part of it - he had to lead with something he was sure she already knew and make it seem like a big deal, and let her talk. “Uncanny - how we feel about our prospective muses. They feel like they’re something otherworldly, but just seeing them makes you feel so real, doesn’t it?”

Jackie’s primitive urges died as understanding kinship seemed to take over.

“Of course, you’ve probably spent more time here alone with yours than I ever have,” he trailed with a shrug and a pout. “Though if I add every hour I’ve spent with Bruce up…” He pretended to count on his fingers. “Do you guys get a full eight hours’ sleep together, or…?”

“John,” she snorted into a smile, “even if he didn’t have a film to shoot, he still scouts jobs and visits his agent. I’m not around for all that. Trust me, you and Bruce have way more time together under your belt than the…” Jackie whipped out her phone and tapped around. “One-hundred and forty-four we’d potentially spend.”

One-hundred and forty-four divided by twenty-four… “You’ve been here six days already?”

“Mm-hmm.” Jackie sipped her coffee. “Matt started shooting on Monday night. I was pretty pissed about that - thank God for those corner gondolas.”

He left her here? That sounded like something Harley would’ve done. “Doesn’t he know how much you hate Gotham?”

Jackie scowled slightly into her cup and took another sip. “He knows I have issues here.” She picked up the powder brush and dabbed it over John’s arm, covering the last of the foundation. It was like John had never been bruised at all. It made the small pink cuts on his arm from where he’s torn the bandage off last night stand out a lot, but he didn’t mind walking around with those. “I mean, what am I supposed to do, tell him how I’m permanently mourning a lifetime of dead friends and my own name? Or how I almost killed a guy just to get out of the debt I sank myself in for a career I didn’t want? People already get weird around me when I get all moody,” she grunted, “He shouldn’t have to deal with all that.”

Aha ha ha hee hee! Now their kinship was ironically funny! “J-Jackie, you - you really do make a terrible psychologist,” he managed, his ribs aching with the rapid movement, “Mine have all been telling me to be open about these things with people, and until recently, I just ignored them! I mean, what do they know? Rejection for us in our cases means spiraling into another nasty bout of bad symptoms.”

He could tell she understood. He could see the dark sense of understanding there. They might have very different illnesses, but they were both a product of Gotham, with him born on the wrong side of its blanket and her forcibly rolled over to it. It was something she and Bruce shared - he couldn’t help but see it, and he felt the urge to both poke it and push it away to see what she’d do.

“But you know, it turns out they’re kind of right,” he continued, deciding to soften her up a little more with the truth, “I’d been hiding my symptoms from Bruce because I didn’t trust him not to be disappointed in me, and it only hurt us. Turns out telling him just opened both of us right up,” he emphasized with a spread of his hands. “I get not telling Matt about the whole attempted-murder thing, but to me, it feels like you don’t trust Matt enough with your feelings, and you excuse it by putting his before yours.”

She definitely seemed softened, if surprise counted as such. “I hate it when you do this,” she said, frowning into her cup and taking a not-very-angry sip. “Though I guess it’s easier to work through others’ problems than your own, huh?” she jabbed, taking a seat on the edge of the large bed.

“Now you’re just deflecting,” he teased, crossing his legs and taking a long sip from his own cup.

“Maybe,” she grunted, “It’s just… Matt and I have known each other a few months, but I’ve spent six days back in this shithole city, and it’s like I hardly see him. Monday was ‘surprise, honey, I have a shoot tonight’; Tuesday was ‘oh I have to shoot until after dark, my bad’! Just constant ins and outs and ‘my agent’s calling me,’ or ‘they need me back on set’ bullshit. I don’t even have the opportunity to open up to him.” She took a long sip as John nodded along.

“Matt’s the reason you’re in town, though, right? Since I saw you Saturday, there must’ve been some good days,” he said as innocently as he could, mentally ticking off the box for Muddy Nye’s and Ian Coggs’ doppelgangers.

“Saturday was supposed to be good,” she grumbled, “That went fucking bust. The best day was...probably Wednesday. We spent most of the day together… I got to see him eat a Peralta’s cruller first-hand,” she answered with a wistful little smile. “He makes a cute mmm-face... And he had this great idea - dress up as the producers he’d met on set, go to a fancy-ass restaurant, and reap in their frequenter-discount while they were stuck shooting a night scene. That was worth it.”

The Two Gilded Cups. Hmm, hmm, hmm. “Well, now I’m curious! How’d you look?”

“You tell me,” she smirked, handing him her phone.

Sonja Townsend, in an ironed pant-suit that Jackie definitely did not and would not have in her wardrobe, beamed at him from the selfie-style picture. Vindication burst in his head like a bottle of champagne - his prime suspect for The Wednesday Nighters’ murders was at dinner that night (according to Tiffany), and if Jackie was the one at the dinner, then it only reasoned the real Sonja was at The Lot.

“Pretty good, huh? I worked off a picture he took; no one suspected a thing,” she chirped, “We had to drop the costumes off at his costar’s place afterwards, but it was fun. We got prime seats, a special discount - even got a free bottle of wine out of it.”

But she had no idea. She had no inkling of what had happened this week. His joy at finally being completely right at something was quickly souring. Jackie was an innocent pawn. Disgust was twisting in his throat and palatable on his tongue. He couldn’t find it in himself to walk away and leave her there while he tracked her lying pig of a boyfriend down and gave him some scars he wouldn’t be able to hide… After all, it was much more cathartic for her to get some hits in.

“Uh, are you okay?”

Of course he wasn’t. He felt angry, and guilty, and really annoyed at how he couldn’t be happy about being right. “You really don’t know who this is, do you?” (He never could understand how Bruce kept so much anger out of his voice. How did he not feel it bubbling under his skin and radiating from his tongue?)

“A Mrs. Sonja Townsend - she and her husband are small-time producers.” She stared him down, searching and annoyingly stony. “Why?”

“She works for Wayne Enterprises.” John forwarded the picture to his phone and tossed hers next to her lap, scrolling through his own gallery. Eenie, meenie, miney, moe - the very-much-alive picture of Muddy Nye pulled from the BatComputer was the lucky first choice in the presentation he was about to throw her. “Have you seen this guy before?”

She glanced at it, recognition flashing in her eyes. “Where did you get that?”

“So that’s a definite yes. I’m guessing you don’t know who he really is, either? This,” he emphasized with a grand gesture of his hand at the picture, “is Muddy Nye, a once-budding member of the False Face Society turned-traitor and presumably-lone-survivor of the East Dock murders on Monday night. He was found chucked in a dumpster on Wednesday.”

He didn’t mind how she pulled the phone towards her to look. She was staring down at it, seeming to take in every detail, with a look John could practically feel. It was almost as if he was seeing her in his place, standing on the railings above vats of steaming chemical soups.

Treat people the way you want to be treated, he remembered. But you didn’t get a co-conspirator - innocent or not - to talk by being gentle, and he needed her to see the same reality that he could feel in the chair, in his pulse, and in the aches of his breath. “You said yourself that Matt’s shoot started-”

“This is a coincidence,” she said, staring back at him with clear denial as she tossed the phone back, “Matt always uses real-life references. What does this have to do with that woman I played?”

He fought back the urge to snap at her to just listen by squeezing his hands and remembering that her excuses were natural in the given circumstances. It was a very Bruce thing to say, really. “You haven’t read the news lately, have you?”

She sucked her teeth with a light sneer. “I stopped reading Gotham news a month after I left.”

Of course she had. Matt probably knew that. Or maybe he didn’t, and he didn’t care. “Well, that woman you played killed seven people in a casino on Wednesday night. Her only alibi is that she was at dinner with her husband.”

The surprise on her face shifted, and if looks could wound, he was sure he’d have a hole in his arm right now. “And you think we had something to do with it?”

No, I think your boyfriend did, he thought. Any hostility would result in a bad time. He had to be careful. “If I did, Jackie, I wouldn’t be talking to you - you’d have a knife lodged in your shoulder to match ol’ Scarecrow’s scar.” She sank a little. Funny how that seemed to be an okay thing with her. “I just need to be sure. When Matt left today, what did he look like?”

“Why?”

“Because someone visited All Stitched Up Alterations, threatened my very nice boss into filling a vest with plastic explosives, and handed it off to Black Mask to try and kill the only good Wayne at his own party - and I’m positive that someone isn’t who they say they are.”

Jackie was still for a moment, staring him down like she used to do at her notepad in the sessions she was ghosting on. Back then, she seemed to be a mile away or more, likely trying to plot her escape to try and distract herself from the way Arkham’s walls practically bled with the compounded toxicity of Gotham. The Jackie right now didn’t seem so different, only that she was doing it in her makeshift pajamas.

She stood, handing him her foam cup with a “hold this” in an oddly steady voice, and John watched as she dug around in what must’ve been Matt’s luggage, sorting through boring men’s shoes, short black umbrellas, and a curling iron to retrieve a rather expensive-looking digital camera. He heard a lot of beeps as she cycled through the pictures. “He doesn’t upload everything,” Jackie managed to say, only slightly shaky on the last word, “but he’s always proud of his work.”

In other words, he was narcissistic enough to leave some evidence behind. John hoped he didn’t like to throw away perfectly reusable costumes, too.

Jackie just stood there, gripping the camera too hard, looking caught between the budding reality that the person she admired the most was as rotten as the residents of Gotham Cemetery and the mind’s emergency exit.

“How about we trade?” he offered, wiggling his phone at her. “So we know for sure what the other saw.”

She blinked. “Alright.” There were a few beeps from the camera, and in turn he pulled up the picture of Ian Coggs. “Just don’t cycle back too far.”

“Ha! Ditto. On three,” he said, holding his phone sideways as she extended the bulky end of the camera at arm’s length, “One…” She didn’t look ready, but then again, who would be? “Two...” There was no time to think about what he would do if she went off the deep end. “Three!”

His phone was snatched out of his hand as he yanked the camera from hers.

Sure enough, there was Ian ‘Nito’ Coggs, tilting his head and trying to scowl in much better lighting than the hotel room actually had, in the same jacket and jeans that John had seen on Wednesday, piercings and tattoos in full view. He’d taken multiple shots, showing off the makeshift tattoos on his hands and neck (the sock and buskin masks still peeking out over the top of his shirt), doing multiple expressions and close-ups, and going back further were similar pictures of Muddy Nye in what looked like a studio apartment.

He’d hit the jackpot, but the same ugly disturbance sat in his mouth even as sparklers lit up in his brain.

He looked up at Jackie, half mad at her for ruining what should’ve been a good moment of catharsis by making him feel sympathy, and wondered if that was how he looked back at Ace Chemicals when the gray-hued truth had smashed the black and white lines his mind had drawn in the shape of a bat.

At last, it was like he could see the yolk for a second time, but it was in danger of bursting and slipping out of the shell and into the bubbling vats. She looked like she might somehow break the phone in her hand like a peanut.

So John did what he thought was best - he gently put the camera down, stood in front of her, and carefully put his hands on her shoulders to bring her back to Earth and away from the chemical fumes.

Jackie looked up at him, a step away from the big red exit sign with its tempting whisper of antagonistic nihilism, and pulled him into a crushing hug.

He didn’t know what to do. He was standing on the floor of the mediocre hotel room, letting her fingers dig painfully into his ribs as she squeezed him, hearing her scream into his shirt. And then choke into a sob and wail-scream like Cannibal Carl when he was desperate for his sense of taste to return at one in the morning.

Despite how this was really real and definitely happening what with all the different sensations he was experiencing, he had even less of an idea of what he should be doing. Still, life was short and fairly pointless and not knowing something hadn’t stopped him from experimenting before, so he reached around to return the impromptu hug and gave a pat for good measure. “It’s okay,” he tried, remembering how comfortable and reassuring Bruce’s hugs were, “Iiit’s okay.” He kept still, feeling a little less awkward as her grip loosened a little amongst another scream. “Cry it out, pumpkin-head, Joker’s right here.” There was a lower wail in response. “Do you want me to scream with you, so you don’t feel left out?”

Her sob choked into a laugh, shoulders shaking like there was no difference at all, and her grip on him loosened substantially. The laugh still came in little bursts as she pulled away, tears still streaking down her reddened face. “No - no, you don’t have to.”

“But I could if I wanted? Because it is really fun, especially when everyone’s asleep...”

She gave another few ha’s and wiped her nose on the back of her hand. “It’s past noon.”

“So? We both know place doesn’t have a lot of early-risers.”

She sank back onto the bed with another amused ha-hmm. “When did you take that picture?” she sniffed as John picked the fallen phone off the bleached carpet.

“Wednesday morning, at the alterations place up the road.”

She was getting that bent-over-her-notepad look. “He walked me over there on Monday to drop off my dress.”

Scouting the premises, most likely.

“He chose this place, too,” she commented, wiping her face with downcast sort of sneer, “Said it was convenient.”

“It kinda is,” John noted aloud, taking his seat back in the desk-chair and scooting it closer to her, “Muddy Nye was found in the alley behind All Stitched Up’s fence. Closer to the docks.” He waited a beat as he let it sink in. He knew she didn’t like too much sympathy – it was best to get her mind jogging. “What did Matt do with his outfit on Monday night?”

“I never saw that one,” she shrugged, “only the test shots he’d taken. He said was getting changed on set that day.”

John pulled up his map application and zoomed in on 13th Street until he found the Lucky Hotel. “Do you remember where you went on Wednesday night, to drop the ‘costumes’ off?” he asked, doing his best to think like Bruce.

“Yeah,” she muttered, scrolling right and down and left, and swiping with an occasional pause – he noticed she had scrolled all the way to the Two Gilded Cups, and now was taking turns down streets like she was trying to remember the driving route. Apparently, they took some detours. “Here,” she said, pointing to the corner with the fishmonger and Muddy’s makeshift coffin of rotting fish, “We changed clothes in the car. His costar offered to let him drop them off.” Her face twisted into a teary scowl. “I’m so fucking stupid. I should’ve known something was off when I didn’t see any lights on upstairs. But nooo, I trusted him…”

John remembered the empty rooms above the fish place. That had been Tuesday, but what if… “What’d you guys put the clothes in?”

“A duffle bag. I thought it was something he’d borrowed from the set.”

“Ooh, that’s devious,” he chuckled to himself, “These guys have got balls, I’ll give ‘em that.” She looked confused. “See, Muddy was found here,” he accentuated with a point at the alleyway, “There’s spaces above the fish place. I bet they had that bag waiting in one of those rooms. Wednesday, Matt goes to pick it up, brings it here, you guys play dress up - and once it’s over, he throws it back right where he found it, and someone probably came to pick it up the next day. Probably Sonja herself; she or some P.A. she’s got on a leash came around before I got to work on Tuesday – looong story there - and as far as I know came back after Wednesday.”

“Uh…what?”

“Look, I said it’s a long story. The short, short version is someone close to Sonja dropped off an item at work and it was still there when I left Wednesday.” He sat back on his hands, tapping his feet to help him think. It might be safe for her to check out that place. She wouldn’t be as obvious, and she could probably think up a good excuse to go in the first place. Hmm…

“Well… At least everything else suddenly makes stupid sense,” Jackie muttered, “Earlier, I kept thinking ‘He wouldn’t have brought me with him if he knew Black Mask would crash, right?’ But why else didn’t he want me seeing him on set? Why didn’t he want me meeting anyone he worked with? Why was it sheer luck that he pulled me out of the party to go bone in the bathroom minutes before it all went to hell?”

“So that’s where you went!” John exclaimed, “I thought I didn’t see you during the raid! I thought you just hid under a table or something…”

Jackie seemed surprised at that. “Wait, you went back – did you and Batman team up?” she asked, leaning in with an almost awed sort of look, “Everyone was saying he crashed! How? Did he follow those masked guys there? Did he follow you there?”

It had certainly changed her mood, but he wasn’t about to suggest that… Well, actually, maybe. Hah - why not?! “He came there to see me,” he boasted, “Bruce took me out of my home-away-from-home after the little attempted-murder-by-sniper incident the other day, and Bats was hounding me for clues.”

“You were shot at?!”

“Oh, yeah, that’s another story. Stuff just keeps piling up, really,” John added, tapping his feet together, “Though that does bring up something - you remember the Court of Owls, right?”

“Uh… Yeah, Dr. Crane was interested in them.” She squinted at him, seeming to put the pieces together. “You’re not saying they’re behind the attack on you?”

“Bingo. The mass murders of Black Mask’s crew on the boat and the docks, Muddy Nye and Hubbard Jr.’s murders, the casino slaughter of The Wednesday Nighters – all of it was orchestrated by them, using Black Mask’s inside info. Which is where Matt came in. Oh, and me and Catwoman got targeted, too, but…here I am!”

She seemed… Well, the best thing he could think of was the sort of bewilderment that might come with finding out aliens were real, but also ate planets whole. “O-kay… That’s a lot.”

“Ha ha! Yeah, it’s been one hell of a ride!” he chuckled to himself.

Jackie breathed deep. The tears had long stopped trying to flow, but the tracks could still be seen on her flushed face. “Okay… Ignoring my constant internal screams and urges to bite anything in range, you and Batman are working together on this, right?” She looked at him with a sort of wild, determined hope that made him think she was going to start muttering to herself that everything would be okay.

“Um, yeah?”

“Thank fuck. I know this is all evidence, but you have no idea – that is the only thing stopping me from destroying everything in here right now.”

“Ha ha ha hee he! I have plenty of ideas, actually - you’re feeling like everything you knew is breaking apart, right? It’s like -” he made a fist and slammed it into his open palm - “BAM! There goes your hopes and dreams!” He kicked the air in front of him. “SMASH! Your trust in anything is gone! WHAM!” - he flung himself backward in the chair, exaggerating falling - “Nothing matters anymore! Aha ha ha ha ha haa! It hurts reeeeal bad!” he added, sitting back upright and giving her a light smack on the shoulder, “Trust me, Jackie, I’m literally the only person in Gotham who knows exactly what this feels like.” Did that sound like too much? He wanted her help, but getting it was going to take more than repeating things… Though it was also the truth. “It’s gonna hurt like hell for a while, but I know you’ll pull through!”

She looked at his thumbs up and offered a little chuff noise and tiny smile in return. “I don’t know how you’re so optimistic about it. Then again, I don’t have a Batman here to beat some sense into me,” she joked. It faded after a moment. “Thank you for telling me all this, John. And...being here. I don’t think I’d be able to restrain myself if I discovered any of this on my own.”

“Hey, what are friends for?” John nudged, the Speaking of which on the tip of his tongue dying as she scrunched her brow in the confused manner that couldn’t be good…

“We’re friends?”

At least it wasn’t derisive sounding. Or sarcastic. Or anything that made it a clear rejection, actually, but it was best to cover himself... “Well, yeah, we both went through the whole Scarecrow fiasco together – sorta – and you helped me out last night without asking for anything in return. And now that you know what it feels like to have your muse break your perception of reality, I’d say we have a proper enemies-to-friends buildup here,” he finished with a general wave to the empathy-fueled-vibes between them.

“I’d say ‘knowing my track record, this won’t end well’… But you are weirdly lucky. And annoyingly right about some things.” She pursed her lips and blew air up at a stray lock of her very curly hair, slapped her knees, and stood as tall as her legs would let her. “Okay. Let me help you guys. I know Matt, I can find any evidence you might need and tell you anything you need to know – passwords, phone numbers, whatever. He’s too proud to just throw his tools away; I’d bet anything he stashed his costume someplace, probably with his other one for the dead guy. I can find them and either put them here or in my car, whichever’s safer.”

Yahtzee! “And you promise you won’t run off with any of it?”

“Because as much as I’d love to burn everything he ever had to the ground right now,” she scowled, poison practically dripping from her mouth, “I’ve been through enough breakups and psych classes to know that won’t fix anything. The only way I’ll get any kind of catharsis is to see him break – and I guarantee he’ll do that before a judge.” She picked her phone up and tapped around. “Besides, we’re friends, I’ve got nothing to lose, and if I can help out some of the only people worth a shit in this hellhole, I’ll do it. Here, add your number.”

John dolefully typed in his personal number, adding the little joker-card emoticon on either side of his name, and sent himself a text. “Think you can copy what’s on that camera for me?”

“Sure.” She took her phone back. “I’ll send you his MuSec and InstaPic logins, too,” she added as John’s phone gave another short buzz. “Might be worth a look.”

The text was from Iman: I’m out front.

“Looks like I’ve got the red light, kiddo.” John dusted himself off a bit, failing to brush off the empathy that seemed to stick there. He guessed he had to learn to live with this, too, like he didn’t have enough guilt and woe and bouts of sympathy to deal with. “I’ll give Matt a little stab in the kidney for you if I see him,” he joked, taking the edge off himself.

“Your prince is waiting to take you away in his chariot, huh?” Jackie picked up her coffee cup, drained the last of it, and crushed it in her fist, not seeming to care about the drops on the carpet or her hand. “That’s okay. I’ll text you if I feel like I’m going to high-dive off a building or something.”

John snorted into a laugh. “Aw, Jackie, we both -” John emphasized with a light boop to her nose - “know you’re more a danger to others right now. You should really just call me if you feel like you’re going to go off the deep end, anyway, a real voice helps more. And that includes if you get gun-happy.”

Jackie had gotten a little pink in the face, but she looked better, even mumbling a sincere ‘okay’ as she followed him to the door.

“Text me anything you find and I’ll make sure you get a few brownie points from Bats, too.”

“If these come in the form of an autographed photo, I’ll take ‘em,” Jackie seemed to joke, “Oh, and you can do me a favor, since I keep helping you out - tell Bruce to stop and say ‘hi’ before he leaves next time.” He must’ve had the ‘but how did you know?!’ written on his back, or else he froze in the doorway a second too long, because she snorted before he even turned to look over his shoulder. “You make it too obvious. Besides, I know a hickey when I see one, Joke-man,” she elaborated with a smirk. “Stay safe out there.”

With a little wave his way, John was again alone in the hotel hall at a loss for meaningful words, feeling like he was in some weird space where time didn’t mean anything. “Uh, thanks,” he said to the door, unsure if it was the right thing to say.

He breathed in, focusing on the plot of his feet on the out-of-date carpet and the smell of diluted off-brand cleaning solution that seemed to stick everywhere. It might have felt like a strange place, but this was a strange week and he was able to cross multiple goals off his list barely an hour after waking up. He was so damn right about so many things! And he had evidence to prove it! He could take this all back to the rest of them and shove it under their noses and go HA!

“That went well!” he affirmed to himself as he strut into the same elevator Bruce had taken down, “Bruce’ll be so proud!”

† † † † †

True to her word, Iman had been parked and waiting right outside the hotel in a very sleek silver sedan, the tinted window rolled down so John could see her face. Upon closer inspection, the car had no identifying hood ornament. Or really, anything extraneous at all.

People had always joked about how you could always tell an Agent by their shoes, but surely an unmarked car was another dead giveaway.

“Gooood morning, Iman,” John greeted, sliding into the passenger seat, “You ready to do a B-’n’-E?”

“I like to think of it as more of a surprise covert inspection.”

That would explain the dark jumpsuit and the messy bun she’d put her hair in. “What’s the ‘G’ for?” he asked, pointing to the patch over the breast pocket.

“Gotham Construction. Bruce thankfully has a closet full of things like this. Though I don’t know why the ‘G’ on some of them are shaped like this

gear… But it was the only one that fit me. Yours is behind the seat. I also picked you up-”

John was already popping open the grease-spotted paper bag next to the matching jumpsuit, the unmistakable smell of grease and fried meat hitting him like a slap in the face. “A pancake burger?!”

“Egg-sausage-muffin. I’m guessing a pancake burger is exactly what it sounds like?”

“Yup! I’m about ninety-percent sure I didn’t dream that food-truck,” John said, biting into the woefully-unsyruped sandwich. At least it had cheese. “T’ey’re ‘mazin’.” Realizing he was being rude, he swallowed to speak. “But this is good, too!”

“I’ll have to find that truck for next time,” Iman smiled as she merged into traffic. “I’m guessing things went well last night?”

“Mm-hmm!” John flashed a thumb’s up her way while he swallowed another bite. “I’m glad you’re not weirded out about it. I take it this is your way of apology for not telling the others? I mean, you did figure it out before last night, right?”

Iman shot him a look he couldn’t decipher. “I’m not apologizing for anything; I just figured you’d be hungry by now. And just because I figured it out on my own months ago doesn’t mean it’s my responsibility to act as Bruce’s psychiatrist and tell him what to do, let alone tell his secrets for him.”

He didn’t want to tell her she should’ve said it anyways for his sake. “I bet you still hint at him,” he said instead, hoping that was true, “You’re good at subtlety.”

“Only when I think he’s going to do something...” she trailed off, seeming to search for the word she wanted.

“Stupid?” John offered, “Asinine? It’s okay, you can say it - for all his smarts, he has his dumb moments.”

“I was going to say ‘detrimental to the cause’,” Iman finished, not looking at him. “I joined the Agency because I wanted to help save lives. But I’ve always admired Batman’s commitment to pursuing justice outside of the legal limits that don’t always work in our favor - it’s why I came to Gotham on the Riddler case.”

He felt like he was back at the visiting table in Arkham, examining her little movements and steady gaze with as much scrutiny as he could allow. She was holding herself up, all pride and seriousness, reminding him very much of Bruce some days. “I…kinda knew that.”

“Batman’s whole purpose is to clean up the parts of the city where regular law enforcement don’t. I’m proud to be a part of that, even if I’m not in the field,” she noted with a twinge of regret, “But Bruce is Batman, and he’s human - consequently more people know about Batman. If I thought someone, or something Bruce has done was going to interfere with Batman’s work in some way, I’d tell him.”

They stopped at a light - she looked back at him, serious but not reprimanding or upset. It did not calm him at all. He could feel stress blooming in his brain at the implication she was making. He couldn’t bring himself to speak, let alone think – he might as well not be in the car or the city at all, but on Dr. Leland’s bench.

“I know you won’t betray Bruce, John,” she said with all the honesty of the top brass of St. Dymphna, “and I know that he trusts you, but I need to know you can work with us on the same level.”

Relief unraveled the knot in his stomach with one simple tug and let the air out of his lungs in a joyous burst. “Ha ha ha ha ha! That’s all? Whelp, good news – I’m way ahead of you!” John whipped out his phone to pull up the gallery, finding a text from Jackie with app links attached:

MuSec has play scenes with lofi and some sos of Bludhaven. :/ So good luck with that. InstaPic has got a million selfies of his usual looks + stage work at least, maybe prototypes.

“I’ve got all the dirt on our two-timing man on the inside.”

Sos??? he typed back.

Shot on shitteos. Grainy vhs filter + dark filter + indie = ~tortured artist~ lol

“Such as?” Iman asked, clearly waiting for more. John supposed it wasn’t a great start to their team-up to get distracted.

“Name, real face, evidence a-plenty! Guy by the name of Matt Chaney – a real master of makeup with image issues. He crashed the Gala last night with our little pumpkin-headed former-antagonist.” He pulled up InstaPic and logged in, finding rows of Matt’s face in various outfits, makeup tweaked just enough to make him look like whatever character he was playing while maintaining his Hollywood-handsome face. Jackie was next to him here and there, along with other co-stars. “Not that she’s been part of it. Knowingly, anyway.”

“You’ve…lost me.”

“Oh, you never met Jackie, did you… Bruce has her pumpkin mask in the case by Scarecrow’s.”

“Jackie Lant.” Iman scrunched her face thoughtfully. “You don’t think she’s had a hand in with either the Owls or the False Face Society?”

“Nope! Because I was right - Sonja Townsend is our Lot killer. Matt coerced Jackie into dressing up as Sonja, and they made sure Mr.-and-Mrs. Townsend were seen on Wednesday night.”

“And you have proof of that?”

Something about her tone rubbed him the wrong way. The way that started to brew that old familiar feeling in his head that normally lead to…outbursts. “Sonja actually being there is…complicated,” he shrugged, trying and failing not to sneer, “You guys never said you found anything at the scene, so I only have her signature on that alterations receipt. And the relation to the card-carrier. But I know I’m right!” He knew it wasn’t what a lawyer might call concrete, especially since you weren’t supposed to show yourself riled up in court, but that was what brass-knuckle confessions were for. “Here’s Jackie as Wednesday-Sonja,” he emphasized, pushing the picture he’d gotten into her field of view. “And I have the receipt from their little excursion – the time on it puts her squarely there! And I’ve got a gallery of proof that Matt’s Ian Coggs!”

Iman glanced over, seeming to take it in, and returned to driving as usual. “I meant of Matt coercing Jackie. I can stretch my sense of disbelief to include Sonja Townsend masquerading as a younger woman and using her son-in-law’s card to register the room. But it’s hard to believe a young woman who had once planned a murder and eventual cover-up by pretending to be someone just swept up in a psych-experiment-gone-wrong could be coerced into anything. I watched the tape of her shooting Dr. Crane,” she added with an air of one of the Arkham doctors walking him through the concept of ‘consequences for his actions’, “It was cold and calculated; she’s the type to plan far in advance. Neither you nor Bruce had suspected her of tampering with your visiting rights at the time. And if ‘Matt Chaney’ is the one who’s disguising himself as Muddy Nye and Ian Coggs, then there’s no one to say Jackie Lant isn’t doing something similar.”

“I can say it,” John grumbled. Iman didn’t see her try to desperately cover for Matt before scream-crying on him.

“But I only have your word.” The car stopped again. “I want to trust you on this, John, but I can’t trust your interpretation without any proof.”

“You’d trust Bruce’s,” he scoffed quietly, spitefully taking a larger bite.

“You know Bruce would say the same thing,” Iman added gently. “Send what you have to the BatComputer and we’ll look over it together.”

John could easily imagine Bruce asking for evidence, but that didn’t stop irritation from growing and sitting in his jaw. He didn’t know how else to prove that Jackie was exactly as innocent as she seemed without any physical proof, and she was currently trying to gather further proof that Matt had been Muddy Nye.

Hey, send me your InstaPic too, he typed, hoping she had something that concretely put her far and away from any of Matt’s fishy business.

What you can’t see my face on Matt’s page? 9_9

xXPumpkinPrincessXx

Sure enough, Matt’s InstaPic account had Jackie’s face near the top of his friends-list. John decided to check that last.

Matt had a lot of stuff in his direct messages from people trying to impress him with reactions, flirty messages, and boasts about buying tickets to various projects he must have had a role in. John couldn’t really see the appeal of him, outside of his mildly-handsome face and lightweight build – sure, the costumes were nice when he wore them, but Matt had far too many public-facing selfies, the majority of which was just Matt doing normal things. A simple picture of him drinking a smoothie in a tank top got him fifteen-thousand likes, and the ones that featured Jackie or other people he guessed worked in Bludhaven’s theater troupes (an awful lot of women, John noticed) got maybe six-thousand at most. There were some flagged-for-review selfies that definitely edged the line between appropriate and softcore porn that had gotten a few thousand before they were pulled from the public. Ones of him in costumes seemed to get ten-thousand on the regular, with the most-liked in the bunch being a silent time-lapse video of Matt transforming into a near mirror-image of Vincent Price two months ago – even John had to admit that the head-explosion emoticons people had commented with were appropriate…

John blinked, looking at the grid of pictures, and realized that something was missing from the looping .gif of Matt in the makeup chair. Something obvious. Something he’d seen in plain daylight for himself.

“Now that’s interesting…”

“What is?” Iman asked from the driver’s seat. John didn’t look up to see where they were, but they were still moving.

“Matt Chaney didn’t have his tattoo two months ago. The one with the theater masks.” John scrolled down – there were some entries that had been removed for violating the site’s policy, but the last shirtless picture Matt had taken was three months ago. John circled back to the top, looking at the picture of Matt sucking just a little suggestively on the smoothie straw four weeks ago in his plain white tank, and noticed the inked mask of comedy sitting above the fabric line. “But he had it last month.”

“Quite a few of the False Faces had mask tattoos,” Iman commented thoughtfully, “Including the theater one.”

“Oh yeeeah,” John mumbled, “Roman split the gang up into sections, didn’t he? What was that Melpomene-Thalia group assigned to?”

Iman’s mouth curled into a disgusted frown; that was a first for her. Her eyes crinkled and narrowed, like the car in front of her had a racist bumper-sticker. “I don’t believe those are as cut and dry as some of the others.” Her clean polished fingers clenched the steering wheel a little. “One of the masks we captured last night was on the Agency’s watch-list for threatening public officials, suspected blackmail, and grand arson. Another had a previous charge for assault, vandalism, and stalking. What does that say to you?”

Ooh, test time! Threats, destruction, stalking abilities… Put together right it could be a little terrorist group. But unlike Harvey Dent and his little militia, Roman didn’t seem to have an interest in taking a government position or two and using it for personal vendettas; he liked keeping things underground. “Sounds like the right-hand messengers – dish out destruction as your last warning before the boss order’s your death.”

“Exactly. They’re some of the top brass, so to speak. So why leave ‘Ian’ out of the Gala… Just because he was newer?” She tapped the wheel as they came to a stop. “Matt might have done the initiation and gotten the tattoo in Ian’s place, assuming Ian was dead before that. But how long had he pretended to be him? How did Ian get pulled into the gang in the first place…?”

“Probably knew a guy who knew a guy,” John shrugged, thinking of the cronies that had been brought into the Pact. “Word gets around in all kinds of circles. I bet Matt was doing ‘research’ and overheard some of Black Mask’s goons looking to hire. I’d be surprised if he didn’t stalk Ian for a while beforehand.” He drummed his fingers on his phone. “Besides, Ian’s real-life-rap-sheet wasn’t up to their level, so I bet he got put on retainer in case the Bat hit the fan. That, or they drew straws.”

She blinked, arching a brow at him. “Straws? Really?”

“Sure, the guys did it all the time in the Pact! Only hand-picked ones got to have the special jobs, y’know. The light’s green,” he added with a point.

Iman didn’t say anything, but the ‘why didn’t I think of that’ look said enough as she took off again. “I’m guessing Matt wasn’t in the ballroom when Roman showed up,” she said stiffly.

“Nope. Took Jackie to bone in the bathroom. Her words,” he explained at the look thrown his way, “Guy really plays both sides of the field – he could’ve high-tailed it before the masks arrived, but he went and stayed behind to see who survived.”

“He wasn’t there to see the end results, John – he was there to spy on Bruce.”

The thought hadn’t occurred to John before, but it seemed like made sense. “You think?”

“Bruce is a billionaire with some serious social connections and an infamy for throwing money around various charitable causes. I’d be surprised if the Court of Owls wasn’t trying to circle his heels – on paper, he’s a potentially ideal pigeon.”

John’s grin practically split his face in two as he cackled, slapping the door’s armrest before remembering he shouldn’t break things that belonged to friends. “Ahee ha ha HA – a-a STOOLIE thinks Bruce is a PIGEON !”

John could’ve sworn he’d heard something that sounded like a chuckle not coming from him, but Iman definitively cleared her throat as his last laugh petered out.

“Ha ha, sorry – I couldn’t resist. You really think they’re after him for his money?”

“If not, it’s probably to get close enough to kill him,” she continued as if she wasn’t also feeling like icy water had slipped down to her stomach, “He might have had a hand in dismantling the Pact, but even if they don’t put his own criminal behavior during that period or his family name against him, everyone knows he’s close to you – they might want to kill him on principal.”

That was an interesting thought. The kind that jabbed him in the ribs but sent that helpless spark of intrigue into his brain. “I know I shouldn’t be surprised, but I am,” he ribbed lightly, “Guess I should’ve taken that book’s quote about the slightest hand being guided by the Devil a little more seriously…”

“Well, I didn’t think about it until this morning, either.”

There was a pause, and John drummed his fingers against his thigh, unsure of what to say. If Iman was right – and there was a pretty darn high chance she was – that meant Bruce wasn’t safe in or out of the Batsuit. And he was already halfway into the suit, following an Owl wearing a literal False Face right into Black Mask’s hiding spot. That…might not end well, if Matt was able to get a message out to the Owls before Bruce or Tiffany body-slammed him.

It was probably a good idea to tell Bruce that. Just in case something over-the-top levels of weird happened. Be careful buddy!!, he started, Jackie’s boytoy from the party is our mysterious double-agent – aka that guy Matt Chaney ur chasing rn. And yeeees I’m uploading everything so just concentrate on plucking his feathers and punching Skullface so I still have a Bat to smooch later. ;p

Iman seemed to be thinking. That, or she was concentrating on the road – they had come to a weirder part of town, where street names were confusingly labeled with similar (if not exact) names one after another. They passed a Rodney St only to see Rodey St right after it.

John decided to scroll through Matt’s MuSec page, which automatically sorted by most popular and didn’t change when the filter was set to sort by date. A lot of it looked like duplicate videos from InstaPic, but the ones of Bludhaven stood out like the Batsignal against a cloudy night sky, most of them looking just as Jackie had described. He ignored the bulk of them, eying date stamps instead, thinking back to the original Ian Coggs’ last day in Bludhaven’s mental care facility.

Nothing, nothing, and more nothing. He guessed it was too much to hope for something obviously linking him to Ian ‘Nito’. The only thing he could discern was that Matt never seemed to take videos with other people unless he was on stage with them. No hangouts with friends, no secret recordings of strangers – just Matt, his career, and his home. Just him, him, him.

It didn’t feel familiar to John at all. He pulled up InstaPic again, scrolling through the group-shots - it was just the same kind of smile on Matt’s face plastered on each one, barely varying between fans and costars, the angle always being a tilted selfie from Matt’s hand. It was almost like the attempt at Bruce’s charming photo-ready smile John had seen back at the Gala. But of course anyone who knew Bruce beyond the surface knew that those smiles were -

…ah.

As fake as Bruce’s past “romances” – maybe some had substance, somewhere, but ultimately they meant nothing.

The MuSec page might have held no criminal evidence, but it sure helped prove that Matt Chaney was a selfish prick.

Now Jackie Lant, on the other hand… One glance told him her MuSec was the opposite of Matt’s. The thumbnails showed clear collaborations and only a couple of standalone videos of her on stage or in her makeup chair. Her InstaPic showed a lot of the same things, but with a UBox link at the top and Matt’s face on every row of images with some different and seemingly-genuine expressions. She had less

followers – 3055 - to Matt’s ridiculous 8055 – but she had likes and reblogs a-plenty on both pages, and where Matt had three uploads all week, Jackie had three or more every day. Particularly of various takeaway outings, the last of which showed a Citizens Against Bats flyer in the window – the bat symbol crossed out in red, of course, and a group meeting advertised for next week with a burner number – and the caption “signs that your restaurant is a front for something shady #OnlyInGotham #atleasttheirpizzasmellsgood”.

The upload times were erratic, but Wednesday highlighted her story of being out with Matt there – any opportunity for a picture of or with him was there for everyone to see. Nothing concrete from a hah-they-weren’t-doing-crimes-together perspective, but from a character one…there was only one conclusion he could draw.

“What’s so funny?” Iman asked from the driver’s seat.

He’d didn’t think his giggling was that obvious. That, or her peripheral vision was really good, even when driving. “I was in a really dark place last night. The itching to hurt myself and anything around me kind of place. And when I saw a car pull around at an opportune time, I didn’t care who was in it – and for someone who couldn’t sympathize enough with the horrible thoughts us patients spilled on the couch, Jackie had no problem putting up with me. Even today! She just welcomed me in helped me out like we were pals. And I didn’t really think about it before, but picture after picture here proves what I could guess - she did it because she was lonely! Ha ha ha - imagine being so desperate for company you’d let me, the mental patient your boss wouldn’t let you talk to without supervision, in your car! Aha ha ha ha ha haa!” The laugh made his lungs ache with pressure, but he didn’t care. “What’s funnier is… I get it! It’s like getting a visitor after being in the Hole: you don’t care who it is; anything’s better than being by yourself.”

“I don’t see how that’s funny,” Iman said coolly, “She didn’t have many friends living in Gotham by the time she left. I imagine she’s had a hard time really bonding with other people due to losing so many in traumatic fashions – and after a traumatic event like last night’s hostage situation, it’s reasonable that she wanted to help you, especially since she knows you already. It would be both grounding and give her a sense of accomplishment and heroism that she couldn’t have fulfilled at the manor.”

Man, Iman sure had a way with words. “Yeah, but you missed the point – it’s me. That’s what makes it funny. If it were almost anyone else…ehh,” he added with a shrug. “I mean, if we only mildly knew one another – like we parted ways after my whole stunt trying to kill Waller – and you saw me stop your car and just hop in it, gnashing my teeth and barely holding myself together, would you just go along with it?”

“Yes, I would,” Iman answered, not a dishonest syllable to be heard, “Though I’d make sure we’d talk to your doctor right away and get you to a safer place than that hotel.”

John hadn’t really expected that answer. He knew Bruce would say yes, but he didn’t like leaving hurt people alone to begin with, and Bruce was less likely to call a doctor and far more likely take care of things himself. John had expected Iman to think carefully before answering with a noncommittal variation of ‘yes’. What a caring gal. “Man, you were wasted on the Agency,” he answered warmly, “You’re way too good for them.”

Iman gave a soft smile in return, which John took as a wordless ‘thanks’. “Is everything sent to the BatComputer?”

He’d forgotten to start the transfer. “Iiit’s still working on it,” John fumbled as he pulled up the share function of his phone’s gallery. Sure enough, the crummy tower signal he was getting told him it would take a while to upload anyway. Sharing the texts was much faster, at least. “Still no response from Bruce, though…”

“Just because he can text on his gauntlet doesn’t mean he should,” Iman teased, “He’ll be fine. He and Tiffany are looking after one another.”

John hummed, wanting to believe that despite the sting at the mention of Tiffany. Bruce usually texted back fast, even as Batman…

The Herold Rite’s Theatre appeared around the corner, tearing John away from his thoughts. Its old playbill sign was yellowed and empty, but the lights surrounding it weren’t broken and the theater’s name was still perfectly legible. It just looked…dreary. Sunburnt paper covered the inside of the ticket booth’s glass behind the thin metal storm shutters. Laminated notices on each of the doors’ shutters showcased the place as under construction, do not enter, yadda yadda yadda, but the fractured plastic and faded ink reminded passerby’s it had been out-of-commission for some time.

“I’m guessing we’re not taking the front door,” John joked.

“There’s a staff exit we can break into around the back.” Iman pulled the car into the shady alleyway nearby. “I’ve already checked for city footage, this place is almost invisible. City inspections haven’t been officially done in a month, and it’s been closed for a couple of years now.”

“So we should expect lots of graffiti and garbage inside, huh?”

“Most likely. I’d be surprised if someone hadn’t tried living in it before now. If anything, we at least have to watch out for rats.”

“I thought owls ate those,” John nudged, getting a chuckle in response.

“I don’t think they’ve gone that native.” She parked just in front of the dumpster. “Get changed, I’ll wait where you can see me.”

The jumpsuit was loose enough to cover John’s clothes; he didn’t like the idea of taking anything off in Iman’s car (even if the windows were tinted and she was waiting with her back to him by the driver-side door) so he simply zipped it over everything else, tossing his St. Dymphna phone in the center armrest for safekeeping. The coveralls were annoyingly baggy to the point where he found himself pulling at the bunches of fabric around his waist and trying to figure out if he could tuck them in as he trailed behind Iman’s flat thuds of proper work-boots.

The sun was clearly already in early-summer mode, beating down on his shoulders the second he’d stepped out of the car – it didn’t matter that the sun wasn’t actually shining in their dark little corner, of course. It was omnipresent and tearing through layers of brick to hit him, specifically, like a punishment for looking where he shouldn’t. At least it felt like it.

John rubbed the back of his neck, the heat of his palm not helping. He didn’t know why he felt...paranoid. He was here, right now, growing steadily sweaty with stupid layers and summer heat, and he had a right to poke into business if it was his. Which this definitely was. He looked over his shoulder, not seeing so much as a camera, and looked around the roof edges for any sign of life.

Of course there was nothing there, because for all the strides he’d taken, his brain still liked to trick him.

Iman bent before the door with a very used-looking toolkit. John wondered at what to say.

He pushed the ideas of ‘Should we really be here’ and ‘Do you think they roost on rooftops’ away. “Didn’t you normally just kick the door down?” he joked lightly.

“I thought it would be best to be stealthy about this.” The lock clicked. “Besides, it’d be a waste if I didn’t get to actually use this after all the practicing I’ve done,” she boasted, tucking the kit away in one of her very deep pockets.

“You’re not gonna start wearing leather and cat ears on the job, are you?”

Iman pulled a face somewhere between amused and disturbed. “No. At least I hope not.”

The theater was even drearier inside. It reminded John of the Old Five Points, minus the working lights and water, and plus the smell of buttered popcorn practically soaked into what was left of the carpet. It felt as damp and dark as it looked, mold and mildew creeping in his nose to mingle with popcorn only a few steps in.

Iman passed him a small clip-on flashlight, having her own clinging to the pocket with the gear-shaped ‘G’. John clipped it to his jumpsuit’s collar, remembering how Bruce had a similar one on his cape when they had explored the mausoleum last year. Only now they were dependent on only the flashlights and not on loud EDM and glow-stick-filled pumpkins to guide them.

“There don’t appear to be any heat signatures in any of these…” Iman turned her head slowly, seeming to scan the hallway of supply rooms like a robot.

“Ooh, did you steal Bruce’s special contacts?”

“I borrowed them – with permission. Same goes for these,” Iman emphasized with a smile, handing John a few Bat-decorated goodies. A small can of tear gas, two Batarangs, and a palm-sized remote taser . John ran this thumb just over the edge of the thin blade, excitement prickling at his temples. “Hopefully, we won’t have to use them. These are strictly loaner pieces.”

John tucked them all away, no longer hating the roomy coveralls. “Oh, no worries, I get ’cha.”

“You can’t keep them,” she added pointedly.

“I wouldn’t dream of it! And I’m sure you wouldn’t keep them in your car for a rainy day and write the loss off as a misadventure,” he needled, “Not that I’d say anything if you did.”

Iman looked like she was definitely noting that to herself. “Let’s start checking rooms. I’ll take the right side.”

“You got it.”

Graffiti of all kinds was plastered on the walls, mostly tags covering parts of worn-out posters or stickers. Which would’ve been fine, if it hadn’t been clear that someone had gone to the trouble of drawing thick black lines over the middle of them all, regardless of size. It reminded John of censor marks over people’s eyes in photos. Some were darker than others, showing the paint can was running out but still usable, and it brought to mind the tics made on the asylum walls, counting days like they mattered.

A couple of Bat-symbols not unlike the one shown from the G.C.P.D. roof were scattered around, all but one in bright yellow crossed out. The paint had dripped from the wing and tail end before it dried. John took a picture of it, feeling like he’d seen the beacon itself, and then opened the supply room it was next to, finding replacement seats stained with something dark he didn’t want to think about and two very broken popcorn makers shoved inside.

A prop room was next, so cluttered he didn’t think he could walk three feet into without getting impaled on a plastic spear. He spied a copy of his clown smiley-face tucked away by a familiar red-pyramid-and-floating-eyeball that had been crossed out with a large ‘x’, but decided against taking a picture of it. He wasn’t sure if he liked his logo there, sitting among the scrawled-out bats…

“Nothing here.” Iman had seemingly found a cleaning closet with a crudely-drawn pentagram and ‘hail satin’ still legible by the door.

“Ha, talk about your false idols,” John cracked as Iman followed his line of sight, “Now, velvet - there’s a fabric I could worship!”

“Personally I don’t think there’s anything better than a cashmere sweater, but I don’t think I’d hail it,” Iman shot back with a chuckle.

John peeked in a blank dressing room, seeing nothing but a costume rack with two moth-eaten dresses, a dressing table with half its bulbs missing or broken on the floor, and a lot of molding cardboard boxes, most of which had been upturned and whatever contents inside torn apart or left on the floor. John spied a broken beer bottle and a suspiciously familiar sort of stain on the wall. “Nooothing here.”

“John, come look at this.”

John went over to her side, passing two doors that clearly didn’t open, and peeked over her shoulder at what looked like a dressing room. This one had more dust-covered boxes and a foggy vinyl sheet hanging over a long rack of costumes shoved in the back, with just enough room to walk. It looked like just another haven for moths and dust. “It sure is a room of gross moldy boxes,” he commented.

“No, look – that costume rack is half-full.”

“So?”

“So there’s a pathway back there and the people who trashed this place didn’t think to take a look?”

“Ah-haa.”

Iman went straight for the rack, carefully stepping around boxes as John examined the ones that seemed open, finding old promotional trading cards for an old sci-fi film with big-brained aliens sitting on some boring looking documents in one. Another had costume pieces, which he almost didn’t bother with until he saw a flash of purple, and then the instinct to rifle through things fell in his hands. He tossed things out and shoved everything aside in a flurry of colored fabric and plastic and pulled out what he could only think of as the best hat he’d ever seen.

A violet-colored and practically pristine wide-brimmed fedora. John couldn’t help but let out an ooh and turn it over in his hands. It was almost, if not exactly the color of his long coat back at the cave. It was like it was made for him. Even the dark fabric band on it was more deep green than black.

“John - don’t. You don’t know where that’s been.”

“Aw, come on, it’s clean! And look, it has a real label inside!” He flipped it to show her the faded gold print, hoping to turn her concerned frown upside-down. It did not, and he could practically hear what she was going to say next. “Fiiine, I’ll keep looking for evidence,” he groaned, putting the perfect hat gently back in the box. “I’ll come back for you later,” he muttered to himself.

His phone buzzed in his pocket – another text from Jackie:

Camera pics uploaded to my share drive: https://bit.gt.gd/S3272019F?=RO

Sorry it took so long. Kinda forcing myself to feel like this rn lol

She tacked on a picture of a dog calmly sitting at a table surrounding by a raging fire, staring at their coffee mug like nothing was wrong. John snickered to himself.

Ha ha ha ha!!! You’ve done it!! You’ve boiled this whole week down into a single classic meme!!! He texted back, Thanks pumpkinhead, I’ll pass these on to Bats!! ;D

“Was that Bruce?” Iman asked as John forwarded the link to the BatComputer’s catch-all.

“Nope. The other photographic evidence finally came in,” he answered, resuming his search.

The last visible open box held a lot of plastic badge holders – the kind that he’d seen the Arkham and St. Dymphna staff use to display their ID’s. But behind the boxes, not covered in a speck of dust… “Now what do you suppose a perfectly good printer is doing in a place like this?” John asked rhetorically.

“Probably making ID’s to match these.”

John peered over at the costume rack –polo shirts, dress pants, and bullet-proof vests hung there with an array of logos.

“Gotham Construction, Janus Industries, G.C.P.D., Gotham E.M.T. – Wayne Enterprises…” Iman grumbled, her thoughts seeming to swirl behind her brow. “Is there a laptop or tower connected to that printer?”

“Nope. There’s only…that thing near it.”

She peered over his shoulder. “That’s a signal repeater. It’s an older model.” She looked at her phone for a moment, poking around. “We can probably trace the router signal; the network its broadcasting isn’t from the surrounding buildings.”

John snapped a picture of the setup. “What, you think they have an Owl-themed computer set up somewhere?”

“That’s possible, but I was thinking more like a tablet or laptop that’s making the IDs. They’re portable, easily hidden or disposed of, and can easily support the software. I wouldn’t be surprised if they were trying to take down security systems or using social media to recruit, too – but we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.”

He snapped a picture of the rack of clothing, too. “You really think they’ll leave that laying around in here?”

“I’m more hoping they have. But I bet we’ll find the nest if we find the router this signal is coming from.”

The room next to it was wide open and all but beckoning them inside, a spray-painted black bat flying above the door. It was another dressing room, but it looked cleaned out – the makeup table was dust-free and had all its bulbs, and there was a minimal amount of boxes in there.

Iman walked in, heading straight to the lone garbage can and squatting to take a better look. “At least we know someone used this one for more than making fake IDs.”

John took a look at the table. A smear of a peach-toned neutral was left on the surface otherwise wiped off with what smelled like cheap makeup remover. “And they left a mess.”

“That’s good news for us,” Iman chuffed, “Looks like they tossed their contact in the wrong place. It doesn’t look tinted – probably corrective.”

John watched as Iman pulled tweezers out of her pocket and prepared to tuck the evidence away into a small plastic bag. “Someone came prepared,” he muttered enviously, looking around for anything that could be considered useful.

The streak was likely residue from Sonja’s makeup, since Bruce thought it was connected to The Lot. She might have changed in there, too, both heading in and out… If Bruce were here, he could likely use his amped-up forensic skills and handy-dandy gear to analyze the chair, but unless Iman had a pocket-sized version hidden on her, that was a moot option. What he did have was an imagination and a penchant for peeking in places he normally shouldn’t.

The only working drawer had a mish-mash of makeup in a rainbow of powders, pencils, and various flesh-toned pastes sitting next to a tub of Moddy and an empty bottle of Janus Clear-Away Makeup Remover. The tiny brushes and sponges besides them were all, unfortunately, clean as bristly whistles.

John eyed the streak on the tabletop, picturing someone sitting there and wiping foundation away…

Actually, the smear on the surface went all the way around to the edge, like someone had spilled or squirted too much from the bottle. And there was one broken bulb at the corner of the lined mirror, like something had knocked into it…

“Hey, Iman – the Lot shooter, were they left handed or right handed?”

“Left handed.” Iman stood next to him, examining the table. “She carried her purse on her right shoulder and opened the room door with her left hand.”

“And Jackie’s right handed, further proving my side,” he rubbed in, “So if I dropped it here,” he tried, miming dropping a bag on the table and sliding his hand on the left to crash the bottle of foundation into the bulb, “it might’ve fallen over.”

“There’s scuff marks by the chair,” Iman pointed out, “She was wearing heels, I wouldn’t be surprised if she slipped after wearing them for so long. Especially if she’s not used to them.”

“So, like-” John popped into position, miming a fall while keeping his balance on one leg – “whoooops!” He spread both hands, as if knocking things over while trying to catch himself on the table. “Crash!”

Iman kneeled to the right of his leg. “There’s a tube of foundation under here. And it looks like...” She reappeared a moment later with a poker chip held in her tweezers. “Good thinking, John.”

John straightened, pride inflating with a self-esteem boost.

“Looks like a promotional chip – they leave them in the rooms for guests.” She turned it over, exposing the logo – it looked a series of sticks in a fist. “It’s definitely from The Lot.”

John took a picture of it. “Five bucks? Cheapskates.”

Iman tucked the new piece of evidence back where she had picked it up from. “I’ll just make a note of this one.”

That was…unusual, to say the least. “Uh, why?”

“Because the Lot killer wore gloves; this just proves that they stopped here. If the G.C.P.D. does a raid later, they can point to it as evidence. Even though it’ll be labeled as circumstantial, it’s something noteworthy.”

“Buuut you’re taking the contact lens…?”

“So I can run a DNA match, if there’s anything on it. I’ll just put it back later.”

“Iman, that’s cheating,” John said with a titter, “I knew I liked you.”

There didn’t seem to be anything left in the room for them to search, so they moved on, turning the corner and finding locked or obstructed doors or rooms stuffed full of garbage from squatters one after another the closer they got to the stage entrance; the graffiti continued with them, countless symbols of anarchy censored out, the bat symbols disappearing altogether as the wireless signal Iman was tracing got stronger.

Iman pushed open the stage door, a dreadful squeal ripping through the air. John expected a pigeon or two to fly from the holes in the curtains up to the burnt, partially-dilapidated ceiling barely illuminated by a few leftover construction lights running on power-saving mode. The projector screen that had clearly been added after the initial build was still hanging stubbornly from the shoddy catwalk. The whole place smelled strange, must and mold mingling with a smell like cigarette burns on sheets.

“There should be a trapdoor under the stage for performers,” Iman commented as she led the way, “I’ll bet that’s where our nest is.”

John followed her, glancing out over the open stage and feeling something hitch in his stomach at the sight of the rows and rows of empty seats. They stood sturdy against the test of time despite the occasional moth-eaten holes, all silent and dark, not a flutter of movement among a single seat all the way up to the rafters. He could see the black, shadowy area in the back where the fire had seemed to start and trail away up to the ceiling. “Why is this place so creepy?”

“Because you’re expecting an audience when you go on a stage, and there isn’t one,” Iman said, prying at a section of the floor with a small crowbar she had pulled out from her jumpsuit. She grunted, prying hard at the section of floor that was suspiciously less dusty than the rest. “Can you give me a hand?”

He couldn’t resist. The joke was right there. “Sure!” He clapped his hands together. “Good hustle, kid! I like your realism!”

“Very funny,” she grumbled, prying again.

“Ha ha, sorry – but you walked right into it!” John moved to the opposite side of the trapdoor, stomping hard on the end he was sure was meant to go down. One foot wasn’t enough, but he felt a shift, so he stomped harder as Iman pried. “Ugh, come on, move!” He jumped on the end with both feet, realizing too late it was a bad idea as the floor gave away.

He landed with a hard thud on the balls of his feet, automatically bending at his knees and finding himself still stumbling to his side and knocking over something tall with a fwump and clatter of wood. “I’m okay!” he called up, rubbing his newly-bruised elbow, “But I definitely didn’t stick the landing!”

Iman landed next to him with a soft plat of boots, hands already steadying him as he rose back up. “Are you sure? Can you rotate your ankles?”

“Ha, it’ll take more than a poorly-placed coatrack to take me down.” He squinted at the little green light in the corner of the room over her shoulder. “At least we found your mystery-router.”

The wireless router was plugged into an outlet that looked like it had hastily been rewired, sitting by an open door that was obviously made to blend into the wall. There didn’t seem to be any lights strung up anywhere for easier viewing.

“Hopefully we’ll find what they were connecting to it, too.”

Their clip-on lights illuminated some of the room, showing another costume rack with several empty hangers and not a piece of clothing in sight. An old map of Gotham could be seen among a throng of paper tacked on the walls. A few plastic grocery bags holding emptied, bug-attracting food containers and the squashed couch shoved in the corner with a cheap blanket made it feel like it was a squatter’s den; the difference was the large picture of an owl that had been carved on the wall over a century ago, it’s clawed feet bared viciously at them.

“Seems like more of a burrow than a nest,” John commented, spying a cockroach scurrying to hide beneath one of the makeshift garbage bags, “‘No amenities; makes Arkham feel welcoming. Zero stars.’”

At least that made Iman laugh a little, which toned down the creepy vibe and widened the smile on John’s face.

Iman seemed to gravitate towards the wall of paper, so John followed suite. Mug-shots and stolen police forms were front-and-center, faces crossed out with a black ‘x’.

“Ugh, and someone’s crossing people off their little list,” John grunted in disgust, looking over the crossed-out faces. “Hey, that’s the guy who got stabbed in the eye on the Chandis!”

“That’s not surprising, Randolf Barron is over here. And Jack Whendleham, Kirby Noltz… It looks like everyone found on board the ship is here.”

“Plus a few gals from Poison Ivy’s gang… I know that guy’s in with the 8-Bits… Little Nel from the Rossi family? I thought he left Gotham seven years ago.”

“He did,” Iman grunted, “He was released from prison on good behavior; the Rossi’s blew up his car when he decided to leave the mob. He changed his name and moved to somewhere on the East coast. I think we can officially cross off any personal grudges,” she continued, shining her light elsewhere, “since Selina Kyle’s picture is also over here.”

Hers was the only one unmarked, and one of three on the whole wall that weren’t official police photos. John (thankfully) did not see his own face up there.

Iman turned to face the old wooden office desk behind them, so John followed along.

A knife was sitting on a pedestal there, clearly some kind of ceremonial dagger with the image of an owl bearing its claws and spreading its wings up the handle. The filing drawer was ajar and the surface was partially littered with highlighted and circled article pieces about Batman, even the Gotham Moonrise picture of Batman, Joker, and a somewhat-concealed Jim Gordon standing at the back of an ambulance.

Only where Joker was supposed to be, there was nothing but crooked edges– John had been cut out of the picture entirely. “Looks like our Owl’s a jealous rival Bat-fan, too.”

Iman flipped through the other half of the papers. “Looks like they stalked Selina for a while,” she mumbled, “They found her rental contract for her gallery and got a copy of the blueprint.”

John peered over at it – exits were marked and security shifts were scribbled on the printed map. Pictures were called for; he made sure to get the whole wall of photos.

Iman pulled open the top drawer slowly, revealing several charging cables in varying degrees of broken and two bottles of medication with the labels torn off. She shook the bottle to take a closer look at them without opening it. “White powder, pullapart capsule type… NVR R20. And I don’t have a signal down here. I wish I knew a pharmacist.”

John perked up. “Ooh, wait! I know that one…” he trailed, mentally sorting through the list of all the drugs he’d ever used, traded, or stolen, “Ritalin!”

She hummed thoughtfully, putting the bottle back and taking out the other, with little dull-green capsules rattling around. “And what I’m fairly sure is R-2 - Rohypnol.”

“I don’t remember seeing anyone up there being drugged before they died. That we know of, anyway…”

“They could be using it as a counteractive to the Ritalin, if they take a high enough dose. Some cocaine users take Rohypnol to come down easier. Anything in your side of the desk?”

John pulled open the first drawer. A few more paper copies of police reports and photos, with Harvey Dent’s picture on the top of the pile. His police report and a messy copy of his Arkham admittance sat underneath. “Looks like our next set of fresh victims include some more notorious Gothamites; ‘Big Bad Harvey’ is in here.” He flipped more, spying ‘Cannibal’ Carl Whistley and Victor Zsasz. “And some of the guys from my floor…”

“I’m not surprised, at this point,” Iman commented, wedging open the stuck filing drawer.

John flipped further, and felt his heart jolt horribly. “And Bruce.” He was sure he wasn’t imagining the photo in his hands of Bruce Wayne at the podium during his publicity stunt almost two years ago, where he announced devoting his money to fixing Arkham before he was almost run over. Everything felt too real. “I can’t believe they’re using this photo.”

John had found the whole segment amusing at the time, mulling over how handsome he seemed, all clean-shaven and acting all daring by getting out of the way just in time like he’d done it before, wondering to himself just how much danger Bruce could actually handle, how much they could both put themselves in on the outside together…

John scoffed at himself. “I really should’ve put Bruce and Batman together when I saw him dodge that van like it was no problem. But I thought ‘nah, Batman’s a completely different person!’ But I also thought Bruce would fit in with Harley’s ideas about stealing a potential cure for our little problems – shows how much I knew.” He flipped the picture over, spying the very shoddy record of Bruce’s time with the Pact laid out in a photocopied police form. “Looks like you were right about Bruce’s Pact past coming back to bite him; his form’s in here.”

“At least we know he’s not a current target,” Iman said, not comforting John very much, “This person seems like they want to finish what they started before moving onto something new. And if they were after Bruce now, they would’ve followed him straight to you a dozen times by now. We know that’s not the case,” Iman soothed with a light hand on his shoulder. She took it away a moment later. “And there is some good news – we have their tablet,” Iman added, holding up a tablet computer that was far too thick to be new. “Which means we can get out of here and reconnect with Batman and Robin.”

“I don’t know about the Robin part right now,” John pouted, walking out alongside her, “but I’m all for leaving the Gallery-o’-Death.”

Iman tucked the tablet into the fabric belt around her waist and dug her foot into the makeshift foothold nailed to the wall who-knew-how-many years ago. John looked away, not wanting to be weird and watch her as she hoisted herself up to the edge of the opening, but didn’t want to turn around entirely in case she slipped or needed a boost.

Just as he folded his arms and tapped his fingers against the healing cuts on his forearm, he heard an odd hiss.

He looked up too late – Iman slipped back down, coughing as she landed on top of him, sending them both to the ground in a bruising heap.

John grunted, trying to sit them both up and ending up sliding backwards instead as Iman struggled to not collapse back on top of him, coughing into her hand and trying to wipe away something from her face. “Hey – are you okay?!”

She didn’t look like she was. She was blinking hard, taking in sucking breaths, and doing a bad job of trying to point upward. John followed her finger towards the only exit.

The light was blocked out and there came a soft thump as a tall dark figure with broad shoulders and the painted wooden face of an owl with short horns protruding from the top of their head faced him, the eyes glowing white in the light.

The Owl-man tilted his head, as if regarding John like a curious animal, and light blue mist puffed out of the thick metal tube wrapped around his outstretched arm before John could move away.

John coughed and sputtered, tasting salt, and saw the world around him tilt on its axis as he tried to move backward, Iman’s weight collapsing onto his legs with a sighing breath.

There was little room to move and Iman was suddenly heavier than normal, but John still fumbled for the Bat-stamped taser in his pocket, hoping he could throw it or shock the Batman-knockoff when he came close enough.

He thought he might throw up from the sudden blurry movement of everything. His fingers wouldn’t move the way he wanted them to. Everything felt like it was teetering nonstop.

He felt the taser in his hand. Heard boots on the floor as he blinked away the awful seesawing layout.

He could feel the button trigger under his thumb, he just had to get his arm to move...

John blinked hard, feeling a familiar tug of his conscious towards the void at the back of his brain as he tried to focus on the closest thing he could, the bare coatrack lying on the floor.

“You shouldn’t be here,” a low, hoarse voice whispered to him in the dark, as it had done a hundred times before...

† † † † †

Notes: John's path to a better life outside of Arkham is a rocky one filled with the kind of problems he's very tired of dealing with. But unlike Bruce, who channels his issues into his drive to keep Gotham and his loved ones safe via detective work and kicking criminal butt, John finds it difficult to sort through his problems because he mainly needs emotional support. He and Bruce both have to face harsh things in this story, but John's journey is always the driving force behind it's very creation. It's interesting to really look at the parallel between Bruce and John right now: John has few people who's supportive of him (and would have less if "the player" made bad decisions regarding his new friends) and desperately needs it, and Bruce has a very steady group behind him 24/7 but still struggles with wanting to be alone; John struggles to hold onto reality and needs to remind himself that Bruce is always there for him, and Bruce just wants the escape from the world that John brings but can never seem to have him around long enough; Bruce is almost overly-protective over the people he works with and John is a little over-confident in people's abilities to take care of themselves. (Though both have problems taking care of themselves, ha ha!)

Have some fun facts!: 1) In this storyline, if Iman wasn't around, John would've gotten a Ryde; in the Villain route, John's clown-posse would've picked him up…or maybe he drives his own clown car? 2) If Jackie wasn't around, John bumps into Matt directly at the Gala, steals a car to go to the Hotel/the Theater, and searches the hotel room by himself. Jackie's part of Sonja is instead played by an innocent nobody Matt is dating and John doesn't get as upset. 3) I debated the "destined hat" John finds for, like, an hour. I think BtAS had Joker in a bolero, and I am a sucker for that style and making loving homages. I ended up with a fedora because it leans more with John's budding mockery of a classic detective. 4) You know, I mentioned the villain route…yes, Bruce has the option to fuck Joker (/cheat on Selina, if applicable) last chapter in that route, too, because who am I to stop you? ;) He and John do still have their little heart-to-heart here, but since the story plays out a little differently, it's missing the heart-wrenching confession John gives and the acceptance he gets, and is instead a convo/argument centered around John's and Bruce's possessiveness over one another. 5) If there's no Robin or Iman, Alfred is actually who alerts Bruce to BM's hideout, even if their relationship is rocky and regardless of which John you have. 6) If by some miracle Jackie is here, but your John's a villain, their interaction is a lot more tense and there's no real friendship forged. 7) The camera feature John has wouldn't be allowed all the time - like you couldn't take pictures of Bruce's butt, or the inside of Iman's swanky ride, for example - but I think there would be spots, like the Theater or Hotel Room, where you'd have free range. If I were making this a real game, I'd probably sneak in a bunch more Easter eggs: references to Condiment King, Bat-Cow, fandom members' usernames… What would you guys add?

If I had to pick a favorite thing to write this time around, the first is John's conversation with Bruce because I've been building to it, and the second is Jackie Lant! My Halloween baby, my pumpkin-pie, my darling depressed mess! I was planning her breakdown with John ever since the start of the story, but it was nice to craft her and John's bonding points over time.

Next chapter (which hopefully will be less than 3 months from now) we join back with Batman and Robin. Considering the timing of everything I've planned, it might be the first chapter that has both Bruce and John's "perspectives" in it… That, or I'll have to split it into two chapters. In the meantime, wear your mask, wash your hands, donate to BLM any way you can, and take care of yourself. (⌯˘̤ ॢᵌ ू˘̤)യ♡

28 notes · View notes

creativelyderangedme · 4 years

Text

Breaking Point Chapter 2

Adrien has made a deal with the lying devil herself. How will he fare?

Want to read the rest of the story? AO3 is updated up to Chapter 7

Chapter 2: The Run-In

Adrien just wanted a few minutes of silence. Was that really so much to ask? Just a small respite. A short period of peace so that he didn't lose his goddamn mind. "God, I just can't get over how cool you guys look!" Fucking hell - if he had to hear that one more time... "I know, right? Adrien is just such a great teacher." The compliment was sugar sweet slipping from Lila's mouth as she managed to squeeze in closer to him on his bench despite him having purposely sat on the edge so she couldn't, so now she was practically pushing her way into his lap and that knowledge made him physically ill, "And with the fall lines nearly finished, I've been asked to sign on full time! Adrien and I will be representing Gabriel at Paris Fashion Week. We really do look great together don't we?" Adrien clamped his teeth down on his tongue tightly to keep from growling under his breath.

There it was.

Hawkmoth send an Akuma now. He'd gladly accept it at this point because he was fucking miserable.

Not that he should really complain - or had any right to. Not when he'd willingly put himself in the line of fire. And there wasn't a doubt in his mind that he would do it all again if necessary. That didn't mean he had to enjoy it though.

It had been a long month dealing with Lila Rossi on a near-daily basis - at school where she clung to him and dragged him around the moment she got her claws on him, at photoshoots where he was forced to pose with her and smile and act like his universe revolved around her. And more recently, at home, where he found that she'd somehow managed a rare invitation from his father on select evenings where she was supposed to be tutoring him in math but found herself trying to get him into compromising positions that made his stomach turn.

And all of it was really starting to get to him. He felt trapped in ways that made his previous house arrest seem like total and complete freedom in comparison.

He felt like he never got to spend time with his friends anymore. Nino often invited him out only for Lila to show up with some excuse for why she needed him. The upcoming fashion week, the shoots, the tutoring. And while Nino and Alya and the rest of the class seemed totally fine with accepting this, he wasn't. Not by a long shot. He was never alone for more than a few minutes or after dark, and even then, his nights were used for catching up on schoolwork or patrolling. Not that the patrols weren't a welcome distraction. He'd always loved spending time with his Lady just wandering the Parisian city skyline, but more recently than not, he just wasn't in the game. His focus was almost entirely devoted to keeping his emotions in check so that they didn't have to worry about an akumatized chat noir. And even that was a full-time job.

It didn’t help that Ladybug had taken notice too.

She was very observant like that. And of course, she was worried.

And didn't that just make everything so much worse? He was supposed to be protecting her, and yet, here he was making her worry.

She’d ask, but the whole ‘secret identities must be kept secret’ rule often made him hold back. She’d encouraged him to talk to her, tell her as much as he could without giving too much away, but it was impossible. Not just because any detail would be too much, but because of the guilt he felt for letting it get as bad as it had. How would his lady feel after finding out his involvement in something like this? Would she think him a complete disappointment? Would she demand he return his miraculous?

So he’d taken to lying - even more than usual. Telling her it was stress and that he’d be fine and she had nothing to worry about.

Something deep down told him someone should worry though. Because suffice it to say, Adrien was floundering. And it was starting to show both in and out of the mask. Lack of sleep, agitation, lack of appetite, anxiety.

And he couldn't say anything to anyone. He'd done this to himself to protect one of his best friends. And it angered him that he couldn't just swallow his own pride to deal with it until something could be done about it. All he wanted was a few minutes of silence. So when Lila was being distracted by a couple of girls from another class who'd come to gush over their most recent shoot, Adrien saw an opportunity and took it. Slipping out of his bench without a word and heading straight for the door. Freedom beckoning him like a siren’s song. "Adrien? Where are you going?" Lila asked sweetly making him freeze, but he could hear the venom in her tone. How anyone else was so taken with her, he had no idea. All he ever heard now was the poison-laced through her words. Subtle, sweet, but deadly when used on her unsuspecting victims. Damn... he'd hoped she hadn't noticed, but of course, she had. It was like she had a radar for him. Managing an easy painted-on smile, he pointed over his shoulder to the door, inching toward it, "bathroom." He remarked quickly, turning on his heel without waiting for a reply and bolting out of the classroom and down the stairs, ignoring the strange looks he received from students finding their way to their classrooms before the final bell could ring.

Once his feet hit the main floor, though, he found himself at a crossroads.

He could have done exactly what he said he was going to do. He could have found the nearest restroom, splashed his face, gave himself the pep talk of the century, and returned to the class and pretended he was okay. He could have swallowed his pride and done exactly what he promised himself he was going to do - protect Marinette from the viper that was Lila Rossi by allowing the witch to slither all over him and think she'd won him over. But he didn't. He couldn't. He couldn't take it anymore. He needed to be free for a little while and get ahold of himself. He needed to feel like he had some semblance of control, even if just for a little while. So he ran. He bolted towards the front doors of the school in a full-on sprint with every intention of skipping the day on some roof somewhere. Taking his mantle of Chat Noir to bring peace to more than just the city of Paris. But to himself as well. Remind himself why he was doing this in the first place, school be damned.

All he had to do was get through the front door. What he hadn't planned on was the collision - running full speed into another body running full speed at him. They collided hard, knocking heads before falling to the ground just outside the doors to the school with a loud thunk. "Ouch..." came a soft grumble and Adrien rubbed his forehead as the stars cleared from his vision. "S-sorry... I wasn't looking where I was going," he heard again, and this time he managed to blink past the pain of the growing headache to see Marinette Dupain-Cheng absently rubbing her head too, looking up at him in surprise and gasping as she took him in. "Ah! A-Adrien! I-I'm so sorry!" She squeaked moving impossibly quick to recover and roll up on to her feet to offer him a hand to help him to his. In the time she'd been juggling some strange reactions to having collided with him, he had just started at her and her offered palm like it was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen. This was perfect. An answered prayer. A godsend if he'd ever seen one. "Marinette..." he whispered in reverence, finding that just saying her name did wonders for the turbulent cacophony of emotions raging under his skin. There was a soft squeak at his use of her name, "y-yeah?" Adrien took her offered hand and stood, never taking his eyes off her. He knew out of anyone, she would understand. Even if he couldn’t tell her… She’d never turned him away before. "Marinette can I please hide out at your place for a little while?" He asked suddenly, receiving a very confused stare back. "Please?" Deja vu suddenly washed over him as he recalled asking her this same question before for almost entirely similar reasons. And he stored that information away to examine later - why he felt out of anywhere and anyone, Marinette and her home felt like a safe place for him, he wasn’t sure. Like a stray seeking refuge from the rain.

And right now it was pouring. She watched him, brows pulling together in her confusion as she glanced up at the school just beyond him, "but-but class is about to begin." "I-I know that... but please. I can't go back there right now." There was a momentary silence between them that made a knot form in the model's core.

Maybe she'd say no. That this was too much for him to ask for. He hadn't exactly had a chance to spend much time with her since the whole expulsion ordeal, no thanks to Lila. Maybe she thought he'd betrayed her. Maybe she thought he wasn't actually on her side. Maybe by trying to step in, he'd only destroyed his friendship with her.

And wasn’t that just the worst thing to pass over his thoughts while he was on the precipice of a mental breakdown.

Losing the friendship of the sweetest girl he’d ever met would be like losing one of his senses - the world would be so much duller and dark without it. Maybe it was the pleading tone or the absolute desperation in his eyes, but confusion shifted to a softened determination as Marinette glanced up again at the school building, and then grabbed his hand and started pulling him in the opposite direction of the school, towards her family’s bakery. And Adrien couldn't even begin to express the pure elation that flooded him when she did all of this without so much of an explanation. They practically ran the whole way there, only stopping once they'd reached the bakery door and Marinette pushed it open to give her parents a tempered smile and timid wave. "Marinette? What are you doing back here? Why aren't you in class?" Fuck. He'd almost forgotten about her parents. He couldn't do anything right, could he? Before she had to make an excuse for him, he stepped up, "Please, don't be angry with her, I asked if I could hang out here for a bit."

He was being selfish again. Of course, his actions were causing her trouble. Why couldn't he just follow through? Why was he such a fucking coward? "We shouldn't have come. I'm so sorry. I wasn't thinking straight." He grumbled softly and went to turn back to the door before a heavy hand clasped his shoulder, keeping him in place. Adrien glanced back to see Tom Dupain giving him a careful look, having moved very quickly from where he'd been working near the bakery's counter. The blonde model had done a lot of growing in the last couple years (a fact that deeply aggravated his father), but no matter how tall he grew, Tom Dupain remained ever the imposing giant. He was a beast of a man, and Adrien briefly wondered if Marinette's unusual strength came from him. Or if he'd have to worry about said hulking strength at present as he was held to the spot. They continued staring at each other before a soft smile spread over Tom's face, "Adrien, right?" He couldn't speak as he was afraid that the man would pulverize him for taking advantage of his daughter's kindness, so he just nodded quickly. What he hadn't expected was the quick wink the man shot him, "Thanks for bringing Marinette home since she's obviously too sick to go to class." Adrien merely gaped at the man as Marinette groaned a quick ‘Papa’ at his side but chuckled nonetheless. What's happening here? Marinette was sick? Adrien glanced back at his friend who rolled her eyes. From where he was standing, she didn't look very sick. Why did he feel left out of some inside joke?

"You know, though," Tom put a thoughtful hand to his chin, looking between Adrien and his daughter, "Unfortunately, neither Sabine or myself can keep an eye on her until the doctor can come." He sighed heavily before his gaze came back to the blonde and his eyes lit up like he'd just had the best idea since sliced bread, "Would you mind keeping an eye on her, Adrien? I know you'd miss some of your classes but Sabine and I will vouch for you."

There was a musical chuckle from the small woman behind the bakery’s counter, but Sabine didn’t say anything, just merely nodded in agreement with her husband. Oh. Now he understood. And the realization hit him two-fold. He was not only allowed to stay and hide out for a while, but should it get back to anyone at the school or, god forbid, his father, the Dupain-Chengs would cover for him. It brought tears to his eyes as he gave a soft smile and nodded quickly, “Y-yes sir.” A new hand grasped his other shoulder, and he turned to see Marinette grin softly at him with a tilt of her head that said they should take this upstairs. "Go make yourself comfy in my room. I'll bring us some snacks," She said with that grin still firmly in place once they'd made it to the apartment, pushing him towards the stairs to her room before turning to the kitchen.

That sounded like the best idea anyone's had all day.

#miraculous ladybug #miraculousladybug #miraculoustalesofladybugandcatnoir #miraculous lb #post miracle queen #ml fic #ml season 3 #adrien agreste #protective adrien agreste #post ladybug #ladybug and chat noir #miraculous ladybug fic #adrien needs a hug #lila rossi exposed #lila rossi #ml angst #ml fluff #protective marinette

99 notes · View notes

bluethursday · 5 years

Text

Friendly Neighbourhood Robin

The Villains on occasion, do Tim a favour or two. The Batfam is a bit confused. This is a prompt-fill for Yufei (you are the best) *smiles*.

Tim stands crouched on a streetlamp, perching himself like a cat, the air is still and nothing is breathing tonight. He can see a figure moving in the dark, pouncing from rooftop to rooftop.

“Well, well, well, Baby Bat,” calls out Selene Kyle, holding the goods from a heist around her neck in the form of a diamond necklace. It is very cat burglar cliche if Tim doesn’t say so himself.

Blinking down at Catwoman, Tim gives her a wave. This close, he can see her holding a brown paper bag with grease stains on the bottom.

“I brought you…breakfast?” She offers, waving the baggie. Unsure of what the meal should be called.

Tim shouldn’t but he knows Selena well enough to trust the food, he’s hungry and he’s been out all night on patrol. Shimmying down the pole he swings himself down to grab the baggie, and stand beside the nice lady who brought him food.

Opening the bag Tim finds that he is in possession of what looks like a double cheeseburger and fries from one of the slummiest, yet most delicious joints in Gotham. It was shut down twice for health and safety violations.

Grinning up at Selena he says, “Thanks, Catwoman.”

Ruffling his hair Selena replies, “No worries kiddo, you helped me out in a tight spot at the Wayne party, it was the least I could do.”

Tim had served as an excellent distraction for Miss Kyle as she ran away fast as she could from one of the Gotham city council members who was convinced he could…solicit…her services. Tim dropped a wine glass on his crotch, entirely by accident of course. He was really, very sorry.

…

Joker stands at attention monologuing on about something to do with gas, and schoolchildren and killing, as Damian and Tim sit bound to each other by meters of sail rope. They’re back to back and not pleased with where they currently are in life.

Somewhere in his monologue Joker kicks a random floor knife backwards towards the bound heroes, and gives Tim a pointed look and a cough, before going on to say, “Batsy one and two will never get out of here alive, by the time Batman comes, I’ll have you dead…two little birdies in the garden.”

Which would ordinarily be very disturbing if he had’t just helped them out. They were wrapped up in rope like the world’s worst Christmas present. He gave them a knife. Ergo, he was giving them an exit plan. He also conveniently left the room he had no reason to leave while loudly exclaiming that he’d be gone for exactly thirty minutes to check on the other hostages.

It was such bad acting it almost felt like a trap. Tim pulled the knife close to his body with his feet, grabbed it and cut them free.

“It’s a trap.” Damian hissed.

Tim rolled his eyes, not that anyone could see the motion under the domino. “It could be, but either way we’re free. Let’s contact B. We’ll deal with the maybe-a-trap on the way.”

About two weeks ago, Tim had rolled Joker into a dumpster to hide him from some of Black Mask’s thugs, He didn’t think the clown was awake at the time, he also never expected repayment for his actions. But here he was, not dead, witnessing a cheesy looney tunes style villain monologue from one of the creepiest clowns in Gotham. It was…not reassuring but it was nice be…thanked…Tim guessed? Not that, not killing someone was usually a thank you, but in this case, Tim would take it.

“Come on Demon Bird, stop stalling,” Tim continued, grabbing Damian by the hand before repelling out the window.

…

Jay gaped in shock as he watched Slade give Tim a bo staff. Just give it to him. On a rooftop. It even had a little blue bow on it. It was a gift.

Pulling out a gun, after recovering from the shock, Jason pointed it at Slade and screamed, “What the fuck do you think, you’re doing Slade?”

Slade, creepy motherfucker that he was, stroked Tim’s cheek, as he purred out, “I’m leaving young Timothy a gift.”

Okay. Ew. “Back away from the little boy Deathstroke.”

“Relax, Jason. I’ll be out of your hair in a moment, though if you do pull that trigger you’ll find that you’ll be short one Red Robin.”

Who hit on someone, and then used that same person as a hostage? Jason kept the gun trained on Slade’s face.

He watched the assassin stroke Tim’s cheek one more time before running off. Tim, that moron turned to Jason, and waved the shiny new bo.

“Look,” he said. “I’ve got a new staff. Isn’t that nice?”

No. No that was not nice. Jason grabbed the thing and spat out, “We’re getting this tested, why the fuck is that creep even giving you things anyway in the first place?”

Tim kicked him in the shin, “It’s my staff. He’s just being nice.”

Jason raised an eyebrow in disbelief. “He’s Deathstroke he doesn’t do nice.”

Tim grumbled the entire way home, and was far too smug when the bo turned out clean. He helped out Rose the other day. He prevented her from getting caught by the police during an unexpected ambush, but throwing her out a window and into a tree. Slade was honestly just being nice. But it was funny to watch Jason panic so Tim was going to keep that information from him.

…

“Tim,” Batman started. “It has come to my attention that some of the villains are being…lenient towards you.”

That wasn’t an actual question so Tim waited.

“Do you have any idea why?” Bruce asked.

“Nope.” Tim replied. He lied. He knew exactly why. He was being a good samaritan. It’s not like the others didn’t help people get their penguins out of trees, or rescue lost cats, or help mentally unstable men find their things. It was just that Tim had the luck of running into villains pretty often, and those villains paid him back. Sometimes in increasingly questionable ways, but who was Tim to turn down a gift, even if that gift were a dead rat.

They hit lighter, created openings for him to escape, and sometimes gave him food. The highlight of his week was when Joker of all villains, tried to give him food, that wasn’t even poisoned. The muffin had a bite taken out of it, but it wasn’t poisoned, and if it was diseased Tim hadn’t noticed yet. They split it. J was cool when he wasn’t trying to kill everyone around him. Or having a mental breakdown.

Maybe if the Bats were nicer, they too would get half eaten muffins but until that point, Tim saw no need to enlighten them.

Bruce glared at him, and returned to his information map as though it would give him the answer Tim wouldn’t.

Smiling Tim turned, and left. He wondered if Ivy was growing apples again, he was craving some and she’d let him pick stuff in her garden if he helped prune the plants. Best grocery store on town.

…

p.p1 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 11.0px Helvetica; -webkit-text-stroke: #000000} span.s1 {font-kerning: none}

526 notes · View notes

nightcoremoon · 4 years

Text

here's some controversy that has nothing to do with social issues.

a lot of people hate the band five finger death punch. saying those words provoked a visceral response in half the people reading this, and a "who?" in the other half. they're a groove metal band; similar to slipknot, mudvayne, disturbed, all that remains, system of a down, korn, and killswitch engage. they're one of those really controversial bands that are hated because they're ~not real metal~ by dumbshits who think that NWOBHM is the only valid metal genre. even though england ruined metal and punk but that's a conbfetsation for another day.

now, if you just don't like metal, that's fine. I don't expect everyone to like every genre. so obviously you won't like them, or any band in the genre. obviously. and these are not the people who are being targeted with this post. no, this goes to those who love metallica, ozzy, megadeth, slayer, pantera, testament, opeth, tool, manowar, meshuggah, children of bodom, cannibal corpse, fear factory, mercyful fate: this is to the people who love metal. now, I say this as one of us, but metalheads are one of the most judgmental groups of people in history. and frequently I find that metalheads make the same remarks in regards to their opinions on five finger death punch.

they do nothing but covers. they just yell and cuss. forty year old men with teenage angst. bad musicianship. they look stupid. they fuck their sisters and daughters. they sold out to the military. they're gay. they do too many ballads. they're redneck bait. they're toxic masculinity and macho personified. they rely on guest stars to carry their songs. they're talentless hacks.

these are all complaints I've heard multiple times from multiple people. and frankly I'm sick of it. I'm sick of hearing the bullshit complaints rather than the ACTUAL REASONS why they aren't the best band in the world. which I'll go through now.

they have an overreliance on breakdowns as if they were a post-hardcore band but they're not. breaking benjamin also skirts the line between post-grunge metal and post-hardcore and have many breakdowns, but the difference is that BB's breakdowns have math rock roots and use different patterns that syncopate well. five finger's breakdowns are... eighth notes. it's the difference between, say, black veil brides- who have excellent syncopated breakdowns- and as I lay dying, who have shitty and boring breakdowns. the only difference is that AILD has blast beats (and is fronted by an abusive asshole), and five finger has... ivan growling threats or whatever because they think that it sounds cool to have metal blaring while he says shit like "you wanna disrespect me? I will slap you so fucking hard you'll feel like you kissed a freight train, fuck you," or "if there was ever a time for you to back the fuck up it's right fuckin here and right fuckin now" or "it's not the size of the dog in the fight it's the size of the fight in the dog," or "in the end we're all just chalk lines on the concrete, drawn only to be washed away; in the time that I've been given, I am what I am", etc, all preceding screams. and no these are not exaggerations, these are literally exact quotes. there's also one that plays radio chatter from the military while he goes "hut hut oorah", which is different slightly. and in any case, they have done nearly a hundred different solos over their career, there is NO REASON for them to have such a ridiculous amount of breakdowns. they rival memphis may fire in that regard, but MMF actually has great breakdowns. churko is a metal producer, NOT a hardcore producer, and they sound empty when you strip out the vocals.

sometimes they will overuse a chorus, and hit the pop music pitfalls of having a song that's over half chorus. I'm sure they did this so the label would be happy with singles because the music industry is a commercialized garbage fire and holding it against the artists would be so fucking stupid especially since tool (the best metal band in existence) fucking said it best, "all you know about me is what I sold you, I sold out long before you ever knew my name, I sold my soul to make a record, dipshit, then you bought one; I've got some advice for you little buddy, before you point your finger you should know that I'm the man and if I'm the man then he's he man and you're the man as well so you can take that fucking finger and shove it up your ass". translation; the fact that you know a band at all means that they sold out to even exist in the first place because that's what selling out is. so even this complaint I have that sometimes they have repeated chorus is more of a complaint about a music industry which dumbs things down to sell radioplay to the lowest common denominator, which EVERY SINGLE ARTIST IS GUILTY OF. so moving on.

sometimes they'll have songs which are fairly simple from a harmonic/mechanical standpoint. opening verse chorus verse chorus solo bridge chorus chorus ending. verse goes some mix of eighth and quarter notes and rests in 4:4, solo is just the vocal line of the chorus, bass and drums are nonexistent and only serve to be a melodic backbone, and the music only exists to serve the lyrics... oh wait I can make the exact same arguments about metallica, rage against the machine, pantera, disturbed, and a hundred other bands. those guys aren't hated as much as five finger. hmm. wonder why.

the lyrics are often angsty. namely that they deal with honor, government corruption, mental illness, we live in a society, religious corruption, abandonment issues, recovering from toxic relationships, hey wait a minute these are all just insanely common topics for metal songs!

they usually play in the same key- wait shit every band has a favored key.

they do a lot of covers- wait shit they have literally more ALBUMS than covers.

(yeah that's weird to me too, but they only did a new level by pantera, from out of nowhere by faith no more, bad company by bad company, mama said knock you out by LL cool J, house of the rising sun by the animals, gone away by offspring, and blue on black by kenny wayne shepard... that's 7. they have 8 albums now.)

so shut the fuck up forever about the cover songs. metallica and the deftones and a perfect circle all had fucking cover ALBUMS, van halen only has a career because of the kinks, and every single rock band in the world is just ripping off the beatles, pink floyd, black sabbath, the who, led zeppelin, and cream. pick a legitimate reason to hate on a band, hypocrite.

alright what else...

"they're gay"

I'm not gonna dignify that with a response.

"they suck"

so does your favorite band. boom roasted.

"they're bad at music"

I'd like to see you do better then.

"they sold out to the military"

no they support the veterans and the troops; they fucking hate the military if you pay any attention at all. they believe in the good parts of the military that the government pays half our taxes to make us believe. you're not better than anyone else just because you see through one specific piece of propaganda because odds are you're blinded by another dozen. they write songs about how war is hell and how when vets come home they should be treated better. and anyway when you're in the dog eat dog world of the music industry hey guess what you need a market to sell to or else it's back to baskin robbins. I don't blame them for one second. if I had the option of endorsing cops to pay my bills you bet your ass I'll fly a blue lives matter flag and sell my soul to make money, and then donate shit to the black lives matter movement. flying a flag is worthless if I can do actual good with the money that those dumbasses send in. and name better irony than fighting to abolish a group that pays me to do it go on I'll wait.

"you're just a fanboy"

a) it's fangirl but metal elitists don't give a shit about the LGBTQ and b) just because I like a band doesn't in any way diminish the validity of my statements and any bias I might have is easily countered by whatever bias you might have and c) they're not even my favorite band you idiot I just think there's way worse out there just like I think it's unfair to say nickelback is the worst band in existence when drunk mom rock like hinder buckcherry savingabel and kidrock exists, and limp bizkit is standing right there, and d) they're not even the worst groove metal band, just look at fucking lamb of god, and e) if I was a fangirl I wouldn't have pointed out the flaws you fucking brainless troglodyte, and f) even if they were my favorite band in the world it doesn't matter if you think they suck because music taste is subjective anyway you goddamn moron. those guys write their own music, play their own music, perform their own music, and they love their fanbase more than most other bands. andrew biersack and kellin quinn and pepper keenan and glenn danzig and liam gallagher and axl rose and van halen and ted nugent and kurt cobain HATE their fans, or at least are huge fucking assholes. but not five finger. jeremy played until he literally broke his back; he's as devoted as phil collins, and if he made like atreyu and sang while drumming he'd be singing from a wheelchair, or like dave grohl when he broke his leg right in the middle of a concert, went to the hospital and got set and put in a cast, THEN CAME RIGHT BACK TO THE FUCKING SHOW AND PLAYED GUITAR AND SANG IN A CAST AND WHEELCHAIR. oh but wait, people say phil collins and dave grohl suck too, and turn around and suck mustaine's dick even though he's the biggest asshole in thrash metal behind tom araya and drunk james hetfield. point being, just because x doesn't like y doesn't diminish z's opinion.

"the singer fucked his daughter lol lol his grandchild is his son too lol lol his daughter is his wife lol lol it's funny because rednecks and incest lol lol" he's from colorado not alabama you dumb motherfuckers, and all the lol incest in georgia jokes are rooted in good ol yankee classism. also the guitarist is hungarian so the american redneck jokes don't even fuckin work. shut the hell up, you have all of the intellectual capacity of a common bog leech.

you can dislike the band. you can say you don't like it. you can say that you'd rather listen to different music. that's fine! that's okay! listen to justin bieber if you like him, listen to taylor swift if you like her, listen to new kids on the block if you want! I don't care! but stop expressing your opinions that you stole from someone else as fact. all you're doing is meme bandwagoning so you can find a community because you don't have the social skills necessary to meet people through the things you love so instead you try to pull serotonin out of making other people feel as miserable as you do.

with that being said, fuck all of the annoying dudebro douchebags who listen to the band and show 5FDP next to the confederate flag, blue lives matter flag, don't tread on me flag, punisher skull, trump sticker, and the crossed assault rifles on the back of your truck. you're all shit for reasons other than your music taste.

6 notes · View notes

Last Seen Blogs

cristianocasadio96

The Nameless c:

mechani

Mechani

satyriist

BELIEVE.

medicalveda

Veda Medical

skybson

🚀✨🐋🐋