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ellivenollivander · 10 months

Note

So, your healer!sebastian post really got me thinking. If you want to, would you maybe write something about seb as a healer working somewhere, he had lost touch with MC, but she comes in gravely injured one day. He saves her and they reconnect?

@skittish1807 Thank you for your patience, I know it has been way too long since you requested this. I love you and your endless patience, pal. Special shoutout to cold brew, sweet tea and ambient world on youtube for helping me finally finish this fic. Rating: 18+ (Mildly NSFW for insinuations) TW: Blood, Injury, Death Mention. Word Count: 8,635 (I know, i'm sorry.) A/N: This is my first Sebastian Fic, please be kind lol

Reconciliation

Sebastian didn’t know exactly how things ended up the way that they did with MC, he just knows that sometimes in the quiet moments of his now hectic life, when he’s left alone with his thoughts, she creeps in from the recesses of his mind.

He can hear her voice when he’s working in the Alchemy room at St. Mungos, criticizing the technique he uses to prepare his ingredients. The hint of a smile tugging at his lips as he stands alone in the dark room, dropping his sliced dittany into the bubbling cauldron. Wouldn’t you prefer chopped? It brews so much more quickly.

When he’s blowing off steam in the cellar of his home, taking out his anger of losing a patient on the training dummy he paid off an Auror for. He can feel her fingers wrapping around his wrist, adjusting his aim or her hand on his hip, correcting his stance.

The soft morning light brings him the smell of her shampoo, from the nights she’d slept in his bed. After long, late nights of studying and searching for anything, tucked behind his closed bed curtains. She’d claim the walk back to her dorm was much too far and crawl between the covers, enveloping him with the scent of her. He would wake up and she would be gone, but the smell of her shampoo would reside on his pillow, proof of her presence.

None of these soft memories made him feel like he did now, lying on a cot in the room designated for Healers to catch up on their sleep during their long shifts at St. Mungos. Sebastian rarely slept, but he tried. He had found an old daily prophet, shoved beneath the pillow, undoubtedly left by one of his fellow healers and decided to try and bore himself to sleep with whatever mess the Wizarding World had found themselves in today.

He found the classifieds, black ink advertising Cruppies - Free to a good home! and Stay Warm with BOGO Self Warming Scarves and Gloves at Twilfitt and Tattings!, as his eyes moved from advertisements to job listings. The memory of how he and MC had spent many of their meal times at Hogwarts hunched over the same paper, talking animatedly about what they could possibly do with their lives after graduation, made his heart constrict.

If he lets himself think about it, her, too much he finds himself spiraling. Desperate to find her, desperate to make things right. Despite being an orphan, and no longer having any family to speak of, he thinks the pain of losing the girl he was in love with for three years of his life might hurt worse.

The knowledge that she was alive and well, and just not here with him, a fate worse than death.

There was nothing he could do about his parents or Anne or even Solomon, they were gone. Never to return. Sebastian wonders if the pain hurts worse, because it was exacerbated by hope that they could be together again. That she’d come back to him.

Which is why he pitches the newspaper against the wall opposite, before punching the tattered pillow he’s shoving his face into, silently pleading for sleep to take him. His attempts only last about ten minutes, before the loudspeaker above the door alerts him to an incoming patient, being transported to the Potions and Poisoning ward.

He heaves himself from the bed with a groan, stretching out his tired limbs and makes his way to the third floor, taking the stairs two at a time. He pauses for just a moment, when he arrives at the patient's room. His eyes watching the brass plaque alongside the door frame materializing with his name, a sentimental pride filling him at the sight.

Healer in Charge: Sebastian Sallow

It had been five years since he’d graduated from Hogwarts, three since he completed the Healer training program. His career choice had been heavily influenced by the desire to feel like he was doing some good in the world, healing instead of hurting. The hefty knowledge he already possessed in his fruitless search for a cure for his ailing sister had just been a benefit, aiding him along in the program, impressing his instructors.

He didn’t pause long enough to think about how it had been five years since he had seen her.

Sebastian pushes open the door, the clipboard instantly pulling itself from the wall and into his hands, greeting his patient with a small smile, his eyes on the clipboard.

“Hello, I’m Healer Sallow, I’ll be getting you sorted out today. What seems to be the problem?”

He studies the intake form quickly as he speaks.

Casper Doolan. Age 9. Potions Accident.

Sebastian’s demeanor shifts slightly when he sees the age of the boy and he relaxes his shoulders, plasters on a smile as he finally takes a look at the patient; A freckled blonde boy, who seemed to be sprouting leaves across his body, sat cross legged on the bed looking as though he had not a care in the world. His parents standing behind him, looking much more distraught, and a teen girl red faced and teary eyed.

Sebastian lets his hand drop the clipboard, which slots itself right back into place on the wall, and he steps closer to the family.

“Hey pal, Casper right? I’m Sebastian. I’m going to get you all fixed up. Alright? Mind if I take a closer look?”

When the boy shrugs his shoulders, he gently lifts the boy's chin to get a better look at the foliage protruding from his face, keeping a small smile on his face. “Mind telling me what happened?” He directs the question to the adults standing above him, as he’s leant down examining Casper.

The clipboard comes back from the wall, levitating in the air and the quill begins recording the words of the Doolans’ recollection of the events of the day. Their daughter had been practicing her potion brewing when Casper had been overcome with curiosity, and had taken a swig from her concoction. An hour later they had been sitting in the St. Mungo’s waiting area when no antidote or healing charm rectified the effects.

Sebastian let out a puff of air, nodding along to the story.

“Can’t say it’s the first time, and I know it will not be the last. Are you in any pain, Casper? Does it hurt? Be honest, no being brave. It’s important that I know.”

Little Casper shakes his head, relaying that it just feels funny. Sebastian gives him another wide grin, before turning towards the older sister.

“Can I ask what you were trying to brew?”

She tenses under Sebastian’s gaze, and he realizes he sounds a bit more accusatory then he had meant too and he clears his throat, holding his hands up. “I just need to know to help your brother… I’m not upset. This really does happen all of the time. Our little patients are notorious potion drinkers.” He smiles back down at Casper who blushes a bit at the comment. “He’s going to be just fine.”

She relaxes, her blush unfading.

“I…uh, I was working on a fertilizer… for herbology, it’s my worst subject in school… It was never meant to be drunk.” She shoots her own accusatory glare in her little brother's direction, and Sebastian has to bite back a laugh.

“Did you follow a recipe or were you just experimenting?”

The quill was poised to take down the information beside his head, his mind already moving in a million different directions on how to move forward with Casper’s treatment based on the information he was being given.

“O-of course I followed a recipe. It was the standard recipe for dragon dung fertilizer…”

At the words dragon dung, Casper’s face blanched at the realization of what he had consumed. He whipped around to face his sister, cheeks red with fury, the leaves in his skin shaking violently. Before he could start screaming at his sister, Sebastian spoke calmly, questioning if she had substituted any ingredients from the standard recipe. The scratch of the quill near his ear, oddly calming.

“No, I stayed true to the recipe but I hadn't added the mandrake yet, it was still stewing when pea brain here decided to take a swig.”

The quill continued recording and Sebastian nodded along appropriately, unable to keep back the playful grin at the name calling between siblings, his heart twinging in grief for just a moment.

“Good news is I think he’ll be just fine. Just have to allow the brew to run its course, I’d say. Let it pass through his system. Could give him a tonic to help it along but since he’s not experiencing any discomfort and he seems to be in good spirits, I’d hardly say that’s necessary.”

At the cheery diagnosis, the tension in the room seemed to immediately dissipate and the Doolan patriarch smacked Casper upside the head. As if he had been lying in wait to be told his son was indeed not dying, before he chastised him.

Sebastian bid the family goodbye, with a comment on lessons learned and to please come back if Caspers condition seemed to worsen in any way. Though before he left, he shook Casper’s hand like a man and slipped a candy into his palm. Before taking his leave with a small playful wink in the boy's direction.

The remaining hours of his shift included a disgruntled Auror who had been stuck feeling the effects of a tickling charm for a week, an elderly woman who had mistaken a Jarvey for a stray cat in her garden and suffered a particularly nasty attack and finally, another Hogwarts student who had botched a polyjuice potion and had found himself stuck between looking like himself and his next door neighbor.

Sebastian finally stood outside of St. Mungos in the summer rain, exhausted and desperate for a drink. He made his way to Undercroft, in hopes of finding some pretty little witch to help him forget the one everything in his life reminded him of.

If only for a night.

~*~

He had, and she did.

Though the only evidence of her presence in his home was the tiny bit of parchment she left on the pillow beside his head.

The pub had been lively, as usual. A popular spot for the younger wizarding demographic. Those that were out of school but not quite ready to hang up their hats and reminisce on their youth.

Sebastian had slid into his stool at the end of the bar, tucked into the corner. A whiskey sliding into his hand before he could even greet the barkeep, his best friend.

Ominis had purchased the building and opened his pub shortly after graduation, with the money left to him from his Aunt Noctua. He had been the sole heir to her estate, something he had only discovered on his seventeenth birthday in their seventh year. A ministry official knocking on the boys’ door in Feldcroft, bearing keys and paperwork.

He and Sebastian had spent an entire night drinking and laughing on the floor of the empty building, brainstorming names until they finally decided on Undercroft. An ode to their schooldays, to their little shelter in the storm of their youth. Hoping the name would inspire Ominis’ pub to be a similar sort of sanctuary for others. A place to unwind, to celebrate, to come together.

The Undercroft at Hogwarts had, of course, been where Ominis and Sebastian had spent a similar night of bonding. When Ominis had found him, crying in a corner, clutching Solomon’s last will and testament.

It had been the catalyst to the mending of their once thought ruined friendship. The guilt had overcome Sebastian, at the realization that Solomon had planned on giving him everything upon his death. The words had poured out of him with shaking sobs, dumping all of the trauma inside of him onto the boy who had just come to retrieve a forgotten textbook.

They had been inseparable ever since, Ominis had even officially moved into the home in Feldcroft, finally able to escape his family. He had sat with Sebastian when he received the news of Anne’s demise, tears of his own mixing with his on the quivering parchment in his hand. When he discovered how she had passed away alone and far from home at some London inn. The Aurors who found her only knowing to alert Sebastian by a folded up bit of parchment in her robes, A letter Sebastian had written to her just after he returned to Hogwarts after she had been cursed.

And Ominis had stayed when MC did not, her presence in his life fading more and more as the weeks passed after the night in the catacomb. Even more so, after Anne’s death when Sebastian had spiralled into the darkness of his mind. Swathed in guilt and grief with no foreseeable way of escaping it all.

He had been too caught up in his own pain to mind any attention to hers, and he had lost her completely. By the time he had relearned how to be alive again, she was gone. The situation too tedious to try and mend. He had let her go, knowing she’d be far better off without him, and by the time graduation came around, she was hardly more than a memory and had become yet another ache in his heart.

It was Ominis who had put him onto the pretty little blonde, a rag tossed over his shoulder as he leant across the bar to tell him all about how she was french and looking for a good time that Sebastian was all too happy to give.

Sebastian finally pulled himself out of his reminiscing, and out of his bed, to ready himself for his shift. The girl from last night already fading into just another memory of a good time.

~*~ The chill of the late morning air and the smoke in his lungs steadied Sebastian’s racing heart as he stood upon the roof of St. Mungos.

His morning had been taken up entirely by a handful of Aurors who had walked straight into a trap laid by a cell of dark wizards, led by a tip from an informant who had been playing both sides. He and his fellow Healers had managed to save most, but the one he had not is what had sent him up to the roof to clear his head, and settle his stomach. Every one of his failures twisted in his gut like a blade, making him want to crawl out of his skin.

Sebastian closed his eyes as he took another long drag of his cigarette, willing the vision of the aurors final moments from his brain, though he knew he’d be stuck with it until he drew his own final breath, just like all of the others.

He was pulled from his morbid reverie by a trainee healer, summoning him back inside from her place at the door, her arms crossed over her chest, an instinctual attempt to shield herself from the cold. Sebastian flicked the half finished smoke from his fingers as he turned to follow her back inside, the cigarette disappearing before it hit the ground.

The trainee quickly filled him in on his call as they descended the stairs, two at a time.

“Another Auror.. Got splinched when they attempted to apparate her here, away from the scene. Suspect her body was too weak to handle apparition. Had to arrange for an emergency portkey, she’s in a bad state.”

Sebastian nodded along, his heart racing once again, with a mix of adrenaline and dread.

Their feet landed simultaneously on the landing of the fourth floor, and the elder healer slammed through the door, to a small crowd and a blood bath. Right there in the corridor. He pushed his way through the onlooking Aurors in varying states of distress, to the figure lying on the floor, writhing and gasping in a pool of her own blood.

He had been so lost in taking in the damage, the hurt, his mind whirring a million miles a minute at the prospect of what he was walking into, he hadn’t taken a moment to register her face.

A face he knew, a face that had him stop dead in his tracks. It was as if ice water had replaced the blood in his veins as he stood over MC, convinced his racing heart had now stopped completely.

“MC?”

He allowed himself no more than a half second hesitation before he kneeled beside her twitching form. His eyes roamed her injured body, avoiding her face, unable to force himself to witness the pain there. As his hands found a wound in her abdomen, he knew this was more than a splinch, the mutilation was more than simply severed flesh.

Sebastian turned to look at the Auror standing closer than the others, trying to ignore the sounds of his old friends choked gasping. He had to bite back an exasperated laugh as he stared into the face of Leander Prewett.

“Prewett.” He closed his eyes, fixing his tone, the greeting had come out much more venomous than intended. The shock and terror he felt about this situation clouding his mind. “Can you tell me what happened?” He tried keeping his voice steady, as he always did when he took on the role of calm and collected healer as he questioned the man standing above him, who looked as panicked as he felt. Leander gave Sebastian a polite nod before recollecting the moment of MC’s injury.

“She’s..she's a scout. She went in first, surveyed the area… she knew it was a trap before any of us realized… one of the bastards ran her through with a blade… he came out of nowhere. Then.. it was just chaos… we were surrounded… After things were under control, we tried everything to stop the bleeding… to fix her. Wiggenweld, essence of dittany, every healing spell they teach us in the program. Nothing worked.”

Sebastians seemed to brain click back into place, and he shook off another laugh of realization as he lifted MC into his arms and off the stone floor, the sight of his lime green robes spreading beneath him a striking contrast against the pool of blood he had been kneeling in.

“Cursed. I’m positive the blade was cursed.” He nodded his head at the trainee healer who had been standing behind him, observing his work and she sprinted off for the alchemy lab, the knowledge she had absorbed from Sebastian at this point in her training made a verbal request redundant. Sebastian turned to push through into a hospital room to lay MC on the clean cot. He tried once again, to ignore the sight and sounds of the girl fighting for her life, the girl he once thought was the love of his life. Leander followed them inside, planting himself on the opposite side of the bed, his eyes never once leaving MC’s bloodied form. Sebastian couldn’t help the passing thought that the two Aurors were together, or the jealousy that suddenly roared inside of him at the thought.

He moved to the cabinet above the bed, his touch letting the lock release and the door fall open. He grabbed a small glass vial and turned back to Leander and MC, setting it down on the small wooden table beside him.

To ease Leander’s mind as much as his own, Sebastian welcomed the habitual way he slipped into a calm recitation of what he knew to be the issue, and how they could resolve it. Even now, amidst the chaos and fear, Sebastian felt a swell of pride and peace fill his chest, knowing he had found exactly what he was meant to do with his life.

“Suspect the blade was cursed to make the wound untreatable, to prevent any common healing rectification to take hold, unfortunately I also suspect it’s why we can’t heal the splinch either. The curse affects the entirety of her body, including new injuries. So this..” Sebastian holds up the small glass vial. “...Will hopefully slow the bleeding, while I do my work, the counter charms tend to take a bit of time, time that we do not have.”

Sebastian expected Leander to pelt him with panicked questions, or threaten his life if he did not manage to save MC. Reactions he was accustomed to receiving by loved ones of his patients, instead, the redhead simply nodded, his face stoic and determined. The Healer couldn’t help but wonder if the Auror was simply still in shock, numb from the battle. A part of him wished Prewett would yell or curse or panic, then, at the very least the only sound in the room would not be the sounds of their dying friend.

The Healer had no time to psychoanalyze the Auror, instead he put him to work.

“Alright, Prewett. Would you mind giving me a hand holding her head back?”

Leander didn’t hesitate as he gently took MC’s head in his hands, and tilted it back so Sebastian could pour the potion down her throat, with shaky hands, trembling with anxiety at seeing his former friend in such a state. Prewett’s hands on her head ensured she didn’t choke them back up or spit them out in her fight for breath.

Despite Sebastian being finished feeding her the potion, Prewett didn’t move his hand away from where it rested on the top of her head, his fingers trailing through her hair in what could only be interpreted as comfort.

Sebastian stamped down the bubbling angry jealousy at the gesture, and set the empty vial into a hole in the wall, where they promptly disappeared, knowing it would reappear back in the alchemy lab instantly, ready to be sterilized and reused.

He returned to the side of the bed, pulling out his wand, and began softly muttering the necessary charms and counter curses. So lost in his work, he didn’t notice his trainee return, setting the necessary potions for the course of the treatment onto the table, at his side.

He wasn’t so lost in his work, however, that he didn’t hear when Prewett finally spoke up, his voice quiet and soft, words directed at the trainee. His gaze was on MC who was still in a state of agony, her gasping still the only sounds in the room until he had begun to speak.

“I told them we shouldn’t have tried apparating with her, that we should wait for a portkey or summon for a healer to come to her.”

The trainee shook her head in sympathy, her mouth opening and closing, completely unaware of what to say, how to help the man who had brought MC to them to be saved. Sebastian understood this was one of the hardest parts of the job, of their careers. Dealing with the patients' friends and family. When MC’s body seemed to be wrapped up in a golden light, he exhaled softly, and lifted his wand from where it rested centimeters above her body, its tip lit with the same golden light. Then, he sent his trainee out to assist the other healers with their work.

He attempted to crack a joke, to lighten the mood now that he knew he could fix her, heal her.

“Turns out some Aurors do have brain function. Wouldn’t have expected it to be you though, Prewett.”

Sebastian felt a bit of satisfaction when his playful jab pulled Leanders gaze away from the girl in the bed, and on him with a roll of his eyes and a small smirk. It wasn’t Leander who returned the banter, however. The choked words and sound of MC’s voice made both men startle.

“Fuck off, Sallow.”

Sebastian couldn’t help the grin that split his face, and Leander wore a matching one as he looked back at her, quickly pulling his hand away from where he still had it laid on her head. She was still twitching slightly and her face was still contorted in pain, but the curse leaving her body and the slowing of the blood flow must have had her pain dissipating just enough to be coherent.

“Well, seems she’s at least in good spirits.”

Leander spoke first, and Sebastian knew he had to pull himself together. His mind already running with hope that this could be what brings MC back to him, this could be his chance to redeem himself to the last person alive he still felt indebted to do so.

When MC met Leanders gaze, and her pained look twisted into an almost smile, Sebastian swallowed thickly, his arm moving to pull out another potion from the cabinet.

“You two together, then?”

Before either Auror could respond to his query, a knock on the door pulled all three of their attentions towards it. It opened slowly, revealing an older, official looking wizard, who barely glanced at the girl in the bed before turning his stoic gaze on Leander. “Prewett. Boss wants your statement. Now.”

Leander stiffened, his eyes flicking between the man in the door, MC and Sebastian. Who was torn between wanting information and wanting to be rid of the one thing standing between him and being alone with MC. He continued his work, pretending not to pay any attention to the exchange as he gently applied the potion to the two gaping wounds in MC’s abdomen.

MC hissed at the sensation of the liquid dripping into her body through her lesions and she spoke to Leander through gritted teeth, her voice tight with pain, assuring him she would be fine. Prewett rolled his eyes, but patted her arm gingerly, and made his departure with a small scowl.

Sebastian kept his gaze on his work on the injuries, smiling when he watched the essence of dittany do its job, stitching her flesh back together. His grin grew wider when it stayed that way, his mind now reverting back to what he could possibly say now, with his work nearly done, the girl beneath him nearly healed.

“Merlin, that feels so weird every time.” MC’s voice sounded lighter, less tight and laced with pain as she commented on Sebastian’s healing work on her damaged body. Sebastian tilted his head to smirk down at her, another playful glint in his eye.

“Finding yourself injured quite a bit then, MC?”

Clearly uncomfortable with the seemingly imbalanced power dynamic with Sebastian standing above her, MC tried to raise herself up into a sitting position with shaky arms, ignoring his teasing comment. Despite the pain dissipating with the disappearance of her wounds, she was still quite pale and Sebastian could see the dizziness in her eyes. He instinctively grasped her shoulders to lie her back down on the bed, earning himself a scowl that brought him right back to age 15 when he’d try and steal from her Honeydukes haul.

“Oh wipe that scowl off your face, I’m trying to help you, you know. I’ve already saved your life.” Sebastians tone was firm, but laced with a familiar playfulness he always felt with her. “You’ve lost a lot of blood, MC. It’s why you feel so weak.” MC, in fact, did not wipe the scowl from her face, but she did lie back down. Sebastian was grateful for the small victory as he popped the cork of the last vial, the one the trainee had fetched for him from the alchemy lab.

He offered the vial to MC with a small smile, and an expectant look.

“Drink up, Buttercup.”

Her scowl deepened, but she obediently took the vial with shaking hands, but before she tipped it back she looked back at Sebastian.

“Am I at least allowed to ask what this is or am I just supposed to trust you?”

Sebastian knew she meant nothing more from her choice of words, but they stung just the same. His mind ran off with memories of everything he had put her through with her trust in him. How he had lost her trust, her friendship, her love for him with his reckless pursuit in their adolescence.

He recovers quickly, with a roll of his eyes as he tilts the vial up to her lips with two fingers.

“It’s just a blood replenishing potion, I promise. Now, drink before you pass out.” He crosses his arms, watching her expectantly, before cracking another joke and making a move to stop her from downing the vial. “On second thought, if you do pass out I won’t have to put up with your sass.”

MC shoots him an unconvincing glare as she swallows the dark red liquid, wincing at the taste. It was hard to believe that it had been nearly six years since the two had seen one another, and had been even longer since they’d had a proper conversation. Yet, here they were, falling into easy banter as if no time at all had come to pass.

As Sebastian brings the vial back to the depository to send it back to the Alchemy room, MC clears her throat, and with the effects of the potion already settling into her system, she sits up in the bed using arms that are now much more stable.

“We aren’t… together, just so you know. Leander and I. We’re just friends, partners at work, but not… together.”

When Sebastian doesn’t respond right away, because he’s lost in a sea of thoughts of everything more this could mean for him, for the hope he had slowly building inside his heart. She speaks again, her voice sounding much more irritable.

“You asked, before… which is why I’m telling you. You asked.”

Sebastian gives her another teasing grin, quirking an eyebrow at her ready defense as he returns to her bedside.

“Ah, and here I thought you were simply coming onto me. Wouldn’t be surprising if I'm honest. Happens all the time, when I save pretty little witches from their untimely demise. Quite common for Healers actually.”

MC scoffs, crossing her legs beneath her on the bed. Her strength and personality slowly coming back to her again, with an adequate amount of blood now pumping through her veins.

“Clearly your ego hasn’t dissolved with age, Sebastian.”

Sebastian manages an easy laugh at her retort, the clipboard coming from the wall and into his hands. His mind running off with thoughts on just how long he could keep her here, at St. Mungos, under healer advisement. Keep her here with him, take away any chance for her to bolt back out of his life, give him a chance to make things right.

“Quite the opposite, really. I’m surprised I don’t fall over with how big my head is.”

MC rolls her eyes, muttering something about it’s so full of air I’m surprised you don’t float away. Her gaze falling to the clipboard in Sebastians’ hands.

“You’re not keeping me here, are you?”

Sebastian glances away from the form in his hand, and at MC’s scowling face ready for a fight. He lets out a heavy sigh as he drops the clipboard, and crosses his arms over his chest, giving her his best stern look of authority.

“You were cursed, MC, and you lost a decent amount of blood.”

The Healer should have known better than to expect MC to see logic and sense. She bristled at his words, swinging her legs from the bed with a look of determination. Sebastian half-hoped she’d wobble as she stood, then he could at least feel justified in his desire to keep her here.

No such luck. MC stood in a firm stance, and then pranced around the small room. As if to prove she was well and able to get the hell out of this place. Sebastian couldn’t stop the chuckle that escaped him at her antics that were bordering on playful. She continued moving around, glaring at Sebastian all the while. Though luck was back on his side, when she attempted a spin. The motion giving way to a bout of dizziness that had Sebastian catching her with a small, exasperated, laugh.

Sebastian guided her back to the bed, a look of triumph on his face as she blinked slowly, trying to steady the whirling inside of her head. He raises his arms in innocent submission when he tries to help her onto the bed, which had earned him a deadly glare.

“Habit, MC. This is my job after all.” He defends himself with a signature smirk, the corner of his mouth tilting slightly upward. MC made a sound in her throat, as she settled back on the bed, her glare unsubsiding.

“Yes, well. I still feel as though I’m alright to leave, Healer Sallow. I promise not to spin in circles like a buffoon for the foreseeable future.”

Sebastian hummed thoughtfully, doing everything he could to avoid looking at her face, each time he had since her return to the world of the living, it felt like the vice around his heart tightened further, stealing the air from his lungs. He busied himself with his clipboard, flipping the pages of parchment as if searching for something.

“Oh? No apparating? No traveling by Portkey? Going to travel like a proper muggle are you?” When his words got no snarky defense from the girl lying on the bed, he forced himself to look at her and fixed his tone back to Healer, rather than something akin to a friend. “I can’t force you to stay, MC, but I’d feel much more comfortable if you, at the very least, stuck around for just a few more hours. Until I am absolutely certain you are alright.”

MC heaved a dramatic sigh, huffing and puffing as she made a show of getting comfortable on the bed. Her eyes narrowed in his direction all the while, looking much more like a petulant child than a fearless Auror. Sebastian took her silent movements as an agreement, under the assumption this is the best he would get from the prideful girl.

“Oh come now, MC, no need to pout. Come on, sweetheart, give me a smile.” That did the trick, Sebastian thought, as he watched the fire light in her eyes once again at his words, her head whipping around to face him. Though, before she had a chance to speak or curse, Sebastian continued on. “Would you like to hear a joke? Always seems to cheer up my pouting patients, though they’re usually children… but I suppose with your current behavior you’re one and the same.”

He gave her a cheeky grin to counter her deadly glare.

This is nice, he thought to himself, Just like we’re fifteen again.

“If looks could kill…” The Healer muttered, his smile unfading. “Now, What’s a vampire's favorite ship?” He let the start of his joke hang in the air, completely aware that MC would not offer up the punchline. He delivered it with a theatrical grin and open hands. “...A blood vessel.”

MC met his joke with a loud groan, her eyes closed but the hint of an exasperated smile on her face.

“Please, Sebastian. Six years later and your jokes still suck?”

Sebastian’s heart pounded in his chest, six years, since they had seen one another. It had been even longer since the two of them had been anything that could be considered remotely close. He knew this, of course. The thought plaguing his brain whenever he was still, whenever he couldn’t fill it with his work, or distract himself with pretty witches he found in pubs.

It was hearing it from her mouth, in her words, that had his hands pausing from where they had been scrawling a note to send to the Alchemy lab. They trembled now, with a mix of anticipation and dread. Sebastian took a deep breath, his exhale slow, the sudden reality settling on his chest and clearing his head of anything but his need to fix this, to bring her back. He tapped the parchment with his wand, watching it fold itself up into the shape of a bird before flitting towards the door. He walked over to release it into the corridor, allowing it to continue to its destination.

Sebastian slowly shut the door, turning back around to face the girl he had been desperately and painfully missing for the better part of a decade, who was now two feet away from him with a small smile on her face, from his dreadful joke. The click of the door closing again seemed to suck all of the air out of the small room, and that smile was fading now, MC picking up on the sudden, awkward tension.

He ran his hand over the back of his neck, awkwardly. Wondering how the hell one even starts a conversation such as this. He decides that’s exactly where to start. All these years later, after all of the mistakes and avoidance and emotional immaturity, the only thing that needed to be said was the truth, and Sebastian decided that would start now.

No matter how awkward and tense the conversation may be, Sebastian was not going to give up this chance, perhaps his only chance at saying what he had been wanting to say for years. He had to do it for himself, and for the hope that still flickered in his heart for them, together.

“MC… I… I don’t even know where to start with this… with me… and you… and us.”

He clears his throat again, forcing down the growing lump of emotion that was threatening to overcome him. His gaze flicked from where he had taken a sudden interest in the stone floor, to MC, who was now white as a sheet and her chest heaving, in quick and short bursts.

Sebastian continued on, certain that her demeanor was from him, his words, and not remnants of the curse she had befallen. He pulled the chair meant for visitors of patients, and slid it close to her bedside, seating himself on it. Moving his eyesight to his sweating hands clasped in front of him, away from the girl staring at him with wide eyes.

“Suppose the best place to start is with an apology… though I don’t think there’s anything I can say or do that would even come close to proving to you how sorry I am. For how I treated you, how I let myself pull away from you… and never even tried to come back.”

He paused to swallow, to try and work something into coherency in his head. He startled when MC swung her legs off the side of the bed to face him head on, her voice seeming much louder than it was in the silent room.

“What are you talking about, Sebastian?”

Her words left him reeling with confusion, and he managed to make himself look at her, slightly above him with her position on the bed. MC’s face was concerned, laced with confusion that only served to deepen his own.

“I.. um.” Perhaps she had forgotten? Or this had only been a heartbreaking journey for him? Perhaps his last two years in school, drowning in grief had addled his brain? His recollection?

He didn’t know the answers, and his racing pulse seemed to quicken even further. Still, he had to keep trying. He couldn’t, wouldn’t let her leave again. Not without hearing everything he had always meant to say, before it had been too late. Sebastian ran his hands down his face, as if to wipe away the confusion, the anxiety and he heard her take a deep, shaking breath just as he had minutes ago.

When he removed his hands, MC was meeting his gaze. Her eyes now swimming with tears of her own. They were mirrors of one another. Hands clasped in laps, pulses racing, cheeks twinged pink, eyes filled with tears threatening to fall. The Healer was certain, if he concentrated just hard enough, he would be able to hear the sounds of their hearts pounding in the silent room.

They kept a locked gaze for a beat, before she closed her eyes, a look of anxious determination crossing her face as she did so. As if willing herself to trudge on.

Then, she touched him.

She leant forward, to curl her fingers around his shoulders, over the stains of her blood still present on his robes, as if to steady him, steady both of them. Despite the air leaving his lungs at the feeling of her hands on his body, no matter how innocent the touch, He felt his pulse evening out. The look in her eyes was full of hurt and concern, not anger or resentment.

“Have you… thought this… us… was your fault all this time? That you were solely responsible for… this?”

Her words settled in his mind, exacerbating his confusion, because of course he was. This was all his fault, just as everything that had transpired in their schooldays was his fault. The look on his face must have betrayed his thoughts because as his mouth opened, ready to spill everything. She cut him off with a laugh, an incredulous look on her face as she looked past him. Sebastian could nearly see the gears turning in her mind, he waited for her to return from whatever recesses of her mind she had retreated too before he tried speaking once again.

Once again, being cut off by the girl he knew he was still desperately in love with.

“I’m sorry. I’m not laughing at you, not really anyway. I just… am baffled that you have spent the better part of ten years believing that the death of our friendship rested entirely on your shoulders.”

Sebastian was the one feeling dumbfounded. He had been the one to seal himself away from anyone who tried to show him the tiniest bit of kindness after Solomon’s death. He had been the one to disappear nearly entirely when he got word of Anne joining their Uncle in an eternal rest. It had only been Ominis that he allowed to stand by his side as he buried her beside Solomon, if only as yet another offering of remorse for his actions that brought them all to that moment.

Of course the distance between Sebastian and MC was entirely his fault. He was the one who put it there, drove a wedge between them with his grief and his guilt. When he opened his mouth to say so, to explain, to accept the responsibility his voice was soft, and sincere.

“Because it was, MC. I was the one who disappeared. Who created this distance between us, built a wall and didn’t let anyone behind it. It was all entirely my fault. You were the one always chiding me about accepting the consequences of my actions, of my choices. That’s what I’m doing. Hoping that by doing so, we can… start over.”

MC took his admission with another breathy laugh, and a roll of her eyes. It had Sebastian contemplating what he possibly could have been missing from this equation. Why was she acting as though he was innocent? As though he had done nothing to cause this rift between them? Was it Pity? The thought of the girl he had pushed away, pitying him was enough to create a pit the size of a graphorn in his stomach. When he spoke again, his voice was soft and shaking.

He steeled himself, and said the one thing he had always, viscerally, wanted to say.

“I loved you, MC. I still love you. Even when I was acting as though I couldn’t care less about you. I was in love with you. There’s a part of me that thinks that I always will be, which is why I need you to listen to me. Let me try and fix this! Because there’s also a part of me that still believes you love me too.”

His voice raised an octave, as passion flowed through him and his speech. Sebastian took another risk, taking her cold hands into his, his thumbs gently caressing the unbelievably soft skin on the backs of her hands.

“Please.”

The tears that had been building in her eyes finally fell as Sebastian stared into her face with impassioned determination. He watched as they raced down her cheeks, falling onto their clasped hands. He watched as she took another shaky breath, squeezing her eyes shut tight.

“No, Sebastian. It was me. I left. I could have tried harder to be there for you when… after… Well, everything. But I didn’t want to. I was sick over how much you had lost because of me. I should have listened to Ominis when he told me not to encourage you with the relic. I should have stopped you from… I should have stopped you that night in the catacombs with Solomon. I could have and I didn’t.”

She takes a beat, to breathe deeply again.

“Then, Anne. Merlin. I… I just couldn’t… I couldn’t bear to… to be around you after she. After I couldn’t save her. The guilt of everything that was my fault, and seeing how hurt you were because of it all. I just… I distanced myself from you. It was me, Sebastian. I wanted this, because I was selfish and couldn’t accept what I had done, that I had played a part in all of your pain. Because I loved you too.”

The room was silent once again. Save for the sounds of their shared labored breathing, both of them trying to catch their breath after their passionate confessions and exclamations. Both of them trying to absorb the other's words. They had lived entirely separate lives, distanced themselves from one another because they both believed themselves to be at fault. If they could have just talked to one another, all those years ago, perhaps it wouldn’t have had to be this way. Perhaps MC wouldn’t have had to face death to see Sebastian again.

Sebastian was about to shoulder more blame, tell her how he could have chased her, could have tried harder once he had crawled out of his hole of grief stricken depression. Though before he could say anything, he was smiling softly, his eyebrow quirked with mild amusement and curiosity. He gave her hands a gentle squeeze.

“Loved? As in past tense?”

Despite it all, that incessant hope in his heart flickered still, and he held his breath while he watched her expression soften. Her hands dropped his, and she caressed his face with gentle fingers. “Don’t think I let myself think about it too much, or for too long… because it’s painful too. But I think you know that I do, still, love you, Sebastian.”

He did know, deep, deep down, but still, he wanted to hear her say it. It had been worth it, hearing those words from her mouth had his heart feeling like it was going to burst forth from his chest. The tears of guilt and anxiety now replaced with tears of joy he had not felt in a long, long time. It felt as though the weight of the entire world was lifted from his chest, like he was breathing fresh air for the first time after months underground.

Sebastian stood up, to hold MC’s face in his hands and stare into her eyes, hoping that she could sense his sincerity.

“We were both stupid kids. Didn’t know what the hell we were doing, I’m still sorry, and I will forever blame myself for us being in this position now… but we’re not kids anymore. Do you think… Do you think we could do this? Fix this? Be together?”

He was nervous to ask, but the look in her eyes wasn’t dowsing his hope, it was igniting it. Her lips slowly curled into a smile, and her voice was soft, and as sincere as he felt.

“I’d like to try.”

No sooner had the words left her mouth when his lips were pressing against hers, his fingers moving to tangle into her hair, still caked with her own blood. Some part of Sebastian expected to feel sparks, or some dramatic swell of emotion that made him weak in the knees, but the kiss settled into his heart like he’d been dosed with a calming draught, like this is where he had always meant to be, with her lips on his.

Sebastian had been so lost in the moment, in this reconciliation with MC, he had forgotten he was at work, on shift, as a Healer. The thought had managed to weasel its way into his mind, ruining the passionate moment with MC, and it felt like he had been doused with ice water.

He pulled away with an apologetic smile, and his fingers still on her chin.

It had been just in time, as at that moment the door swung open, revealing his Trainee Healer, having returned with more vials of blood-replenishing potion he had ordered for MC. He hoped that the position they were discovered in could be seen as an innocent exam.

Sebastian managed to ignore the teasing grin MC was giving him, with her back to the Trainee. He met his fellow Healer halfway into the room and accepted the vials with a smile and a thank you before she left once again, shutting the door quietly.

When Sebastian turned back around, to set the vials onto the side table beside the bed, MC had laid herself back against the pillows, playing the role of innocent patient well.

He stood beside the bed, unable to fight his smile or the urge to caress her hair as he stood at her bedside. Sebastian tried putting himself back into the role of Healer, and not lovesick former school friend.

“My shift is up in a few hours. Will you behave and be a good patient until then? Please? We can… talk.”

MC gave him a mischievous grin, and made a show of settling herself into the bed.

“I suppose I can stick around for a few more hours. I’ll be sure to be the most needy patient you have ever had the misfortune of dealing with.”

Her teasing comment seemed to bring the oxygen back into the room, the tension dissipating instantly as he rolled his eyes and pressed a soft kiss to her forehead. The tender moment making his heart swell, one he had had many a daydream about.

“I’d expect nothing less.” He slid the bottles of potion across the wooden side table, and closer to MC. “I’ll be back to make sure you take these. One every half an hour until I’m certain you have an adequate amount of blood back in your body.”

MC rolled her eyes, and Sebastian returned it with a grin before moving towards the door of the exam room and slipping outside. Before he fully left the room, he peeked back inside.

“Hey MC?” Once he had her attention, he said what he wanted to say. “I’m glad you got cursed today.”

Sebastian managed to close the door with a loud laugh, and made his way down the corridor towards his next patient, before he had to endure whatever scathing retort or hex MC undoubtedly had for him.

#sebastian sallow #sebastian sallow x f!mc #GOD this is nerve wracking #i have never been so nervy to post a fic lmao #why are fic endings so damn hard #ok here it is have fun enjoy #hogwarts legacy #hogwarts legacy fanfic

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kaktus-tajam · 30 days

Text

"We are, the employees of Allah, after all."

What is the parameter of success in our work? Of your writings, your artworks, your social media posts?

As someone who's into art and writing, I was in my quest to answer that question. In medical school, I am so accustomed to diagnostic criteria with which we are able to diagnose diseases for our (future) patients. When these boxes are tick, they summed a certain score sometimes indicating severity.

Yes, a quantifiable parameter would be an easier answer to the question. But is it the same for this case?

Until one day, Allah led me to an instagram post by Farah Qoonita, whose words haunted me until now.

Is it determined by the number of copies your books sold?

Or the amount of views and likes in your posts?

Or the cheers and chants of your name that you received?

Or the rows of awards on your shelf?

These lines sting.

No. Alas, they are not the indicator of success.

I then see myself on the stage during talkshows. I remember the compliments I received, admiration look I saw. Shaytaan it is. Playing tricks on my heart, to deviate my intentions. That for a brief moment, I was indeed: feeling proud of myself. Astaghfirullah.

This similar case occurs for social media posts. Likes, comments, saves, shares, reaches, new followers and so on! (Do you know, how much youtube videos discuss hacks to gain more of these by breaking Instagram algorithms? Are these what our generation is only after?)

It is when.. the praises are addressed, not to you, but rather to The One whose all praises belong to.

It is when.. admirers admire, not you, but The Creator of sky, earth and all in between.

It is when.. enthusiasts wish to be in vicinity, not with you, but with The Almighty.

As the story of Prophet Sulaiman (PBUH) and the Queen. By the Prophet Sulaiman's crafted castle, impressed she became. No, not to his figure. The Queen prostrated and believed. To Him.

This is, the highest rank of work.

Today, Ustadzah Faiza disclosed her story of her journey in understanding this concept. The wisdom she attained was,

"Create, share and tell. However remember! We are nothing but employees of Allah. We work not to introduce ourselves, but introduce Him.

Shift the center of focus, to The Almighty. Let ourselves play the only role to be intermediary of His messages.

This is the pledge, from the very beginning.

And wait for His Wonders of Guidance."

Today.

We are filled with digressed intentions.

We seek only popularities within earth.

Had we not dream of being acknowledged throughout the Skies?

Astaghfirullah.

-h.a.

Catatan di notes tahun 2018

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andypantsx3 · 2 years

Text

fingerprints | 3 | todoroki x reader

pairing: Todoroki Shouto / Reader

length: 3.5k of est. 20k words | 1 of 7 chapters

summary: When you’re outed as pro hero Shouto’s soulmate on national television, there are really only two sensible things for you to do: blame someone else and run.

tags/warnings: romance, soulmate au, fluff, pining, not actually unrequited love, aged up characters, eventual smut

It turned out you had not hallucinated Todoroki Shouto in your animal shelter–or if you had, it had been a very prophetic hallucination–because not two hours later, Todoroki was indeed hosting a press conference. The affair was live streamed on youtube by a major broadcasting company, and was accompanied by the most deeply unhinged live chat you had ever seen in your entire life.

You’d made your way back home after your shift and propped yourself up on the couch to rewrap your bandages, unable to help tuning into Tododoki’s press conference curiously. The snippet you caught was deeply uncomfortable, especially with poor Yosihizuki Ayumi looking small and overwhelmed at the table next to Todoroki and some of his executive team. The sight of her made you feel kind of guilty, but Todoroki–and in particular his super terrifying agency manager–seemed to have things well in hand.

“--but the marks were soulmarks,” a reporter had been saying earnestly, when you’d clicked on the TV.

Todoroki leaned into the microphone in front of him, looking solemn and handsome. “Yes.”

“--and yet you don’t know who left them? I find that difficult to believe,” she continued.

Todoroki’s face went very carefully still, but before he had a chance to lean back in, his manager, a petite woman in the cleanest blazer and neatest pearl set you had ever seen, leaned in, wrapping an expertly manicured hand around her microphone to yank it closer.

“Maybe if you were on the field rescuing people instead of haranguing them with inane questions, you’d understand how adrenaline can interact with attention and recall. Shouto was busy rescuing people, not jotting down tasty bits of gossip to divulge to you later,” she said.

You let out a shocked laugh, so sudden and so violent that you accidentally jerked your bandage too tight where you were tying it off. You swore, wincing.

The reporter’s shoulders stiffened, but she refused to look cowed. Out of the corner of your eye, you saw the live chat pick up into light speed, messages flashing faster than you could register them. Approximately seven thousand fire emojis flashed past in the blink of an eye.

Todoroki leaned into his mic again, and your eyes followed the shift of those broad shoulders as he did so. “I interacted with multiple victims, paramedics, police, and bystanders.”

“And what about the girl who shouted about Yoshizuki Ayumi? Running girl? She must have seen something.”

Todoroki seemed to hesitate for just the smallest millisecond. Fear suddenly lanced your heart, but he swept in smoothly. “She has been contacted. She was similarly swept up in the chaos of the moment and it seems she was mistaken. We ask that you do not attempt to contact her or any of the other victims or bystanders–the agency and police bureau are still taking statements and to do so would disrupt our investigation into the crime that took place.”

His tone was low, familiar and smooth, and the certainty of his answer relaxed the anxious set of your shoulders. You marveled at the fact that he hadn’t said anything untrue, all while disguising the real nature of the conversation he’d had with you today.

If you really hadn’t hallucinated it, that was.

The rest of the conference continued along the same vein, Todoroki and Ayumi eventually demonstrating via touch that neither was the other’s soulmate, their fingers coming away from the other’s skin pale and clean. Your eyes traced Todoroki’s fingers on Ayumi’s hand hawkishly, almost jealously, and you had to click the TV off, marveling at how absolutely insane you were being.

Even if Shouto was your soulmate–which, you were still processing, honestly–you had no rights to him. You didn’t even know the guy. You almost wanted to bop yourself on the nose for bad behavior, like one of the shelter pups.

By the time you’d finished rewrapping your bandages and had made a light dinner, it was deep dark out, the winter night having swept in swiftly. The apartment was silent, your roommate holed up at her boyfriend’s for the weekend—a silence suddenly broken by the buzz of your cellphone.

You glanced down, dropping your fork when you saw the name flashing across the screen: Shouto.

You fumbled to pick it up, almost accidentally hanging up on him as you did so.

“Hi,” you breathed, as you pressed the phone to your ear.

“Y/N,” Todoroki’s voice intoned on the other end of the line. The sound of your name in his mouth–which you suddenly realized you’d never told him–sent a strange, shivery feeling down all of your limbs, your grip on your phone suddenly feeling weak.

“Um, hi. Yes. Hi,” you said, cringing at how stupid you sounded.

There was a small pause, and when Todoroki’s voice came back on, he sounded almost amused. “We did not have much time earlier. I’d like to see you again,” he said.

Your heart did another wild somersault in your chest. He wanted to see you again! He wanted to see you again!

You tried to force your voice to remain even as you answered him. “That would be—yeah—I would like that.”

Todoroki let out a low, soft hum. A tiny little shudder crept up your spine.

You pinched yourself, trying to remind yourself that you did not know this man and your reactions were way too out of whack. He might have been hot beyond all reason, and noble and selfless and whatever—but you didn’t know him know him. Maybe he would be kind of a jerk once you got to know him, the way hot people sometimes were. Maybe you wouldn’t like him at all.

“What should we, um—how should we meet?” you asked.

You supposed it was too forward to ask to go to his place, and would probably come off the wrong way too. You didn’t just ask to go to a famous person’s house. There were too many implications to consider, and you were worried he would think you were like, scoping out his wealth or something else equally opportunistic.

But you also hesitated at the idea of Todoroki at your place. Your place was probably the opposite of his—tiny and cramped and stuffed with a wild assortment of mismatched furniture you’d stocked up on for free during university move out day, where everyone just left their unwanted things out on the sidewalk. College Christmas, they called it. Even your roommate hated the set up, but your animal shelter budget would only stretch so far, and it would have been unfair to ask her to pay for furniture all on her own.

You imagined Todoroki crammed into one of your ugly chevron chairs with the rip in the arm, and had to stifle a laugh. No—he could never be allowed to see the interior of your apartment.

It would have to be someplace else.

You tried to think of a place with no romantic connotations lest Todoroki think you were attempting to put the moves on him.

“There’s a coffee shop near me that’s pretty good,” you said. “Or if that’s out of the way, I can come to your office or something?”

Todoroki hummed again. “A coffee shop would be fine,” he said. "Are you free now?”

Your heartbeat spiked again. “Uh, um. Yes.”

“I’d like to meet you there, then,” he said.

Your stomach did a full turn, flopping around like it was being tossed around inside a washing machine. “Okay! I can text you the address?”

Todoroki agreed, and you bade him a quick farewell, hanging up before you could make a bigger fool of yourself.

You shot off the address, then rushed into your bedroom, frantically digging out a cuter sweater and a more flattering pair of jeans. You ran a brush through your hair, but stopped short of touching up your face—it might look too forward if you showed up working a red lip and a smokey eye—especially for a meet up that was specifically not a date.

You tugged on your hat and scarf and jacket, shoving your hands deep in your pockets and wishing your gloves had held out until at least next weekend, when you’d have your paycheck in hand and could run out and buy new ones. And then you let yourself out into the dark, snowy evening, trudging your way through the drifts to the coffee shop.

The cafe was usually open a couple hours past dinner but cleared out after mid-afternoon, only leaving a couple college students behind, frowning at their laptops and annotated texts, funneling coffees down like they were water bottles in the harsh desert.

You found a tiny table in the back, wedged into a corner, where Todoroki probably wouldn’t be noticed. The gesture soon proved to be useless, however, as an audible hush fell over the shop as he entered, covered up though he was. You really couldn’t hide a build that lean and strong, and especially not in the expensive, well-fitted clothes you were beginning to sense he always wore.

You could just tell the guy underneath all those clothes was going to be handsome.

He found you almost immediately, striding over to your table, the tiniest upturn at the corner of his mouth.

“Hi!” you chirped, resisting the urge to smooth your hair down.

“Hello,” he murmured in his deep tone. He sank down into the chair opposite you, long legs stretching out past yours.

“It’s um—good to see you again,” you said. Then, unable to help the way you needed to compulsively fill any silence: “I’m sorry about the press conference. I saw, um, some of it. I guess I didn’t realize the trouble it would put you through, and Ayumi, too. I….I panicked, I think. I’m—sorry. I’d like to, um, treat you to a coffee or something as an apology, at the least.”

Todoroki regarded you beneath lowered lids. “There is no need.”

You made a frustrated little sound. “There is a huge need, actually. That was—so invasive? So nerve-wracking? If I was Ayumi I would be plotting the most elaborate revenge, perhaps actual decades in the planning. And if I was you, I would probably, I don’t know, like roast me to a crisp, villain-style.”

Todoroki’s mouth twitched. “Villain-style.”

You waved a hand at him, undeterred. “Please just let me get you a coffee as the beginning of an apology.”

Todoroki watched you for a long minute. “As I said, there is no need. For an apology, as well. Neither of us were…prepared for the situation to unfold as it did.”

“Okay but one of us didn’t fling someone under the bus and book it,” you said.

Todoroki let out a cough that sounded suspiciously like it was hiding a surprised laugh. “I have media training, fortunately. And several years’ experience handling…unexpected scenarios.”

“And I have one guilty conscience and a desire to soothe it by obtaining you a coffee of your choice,” you insisted.

Todoroki smiled, then, a little white sliver that turned up both sides of his full mouth. Your heartbeat shot up so high it should have been medically concerning. He was so unfairly gorgeous.

“I will accept, but I’d like to look at the menu,” he said. Then he paused. “What do you usually have?”

“Oh, just a regular coffee. But at night a hot chocolate is best,” you informed him. Especially on a night as cold as this, though you supposed his quirk freed him from that type of worry.

Todoroki nodded and stood, going over to the counter. Instead of pausing to look at the menu, however, you watched as he leaned in and ordered immediately. Your mouth dropped open when he drew his wallet out of his back pocket and swiped a very intimidating-looking black card. He came back over bearing two cups and a plate with a slice of cheesecake, with fresh cream and three tiny sliced strawberries.

“Hot chocolate,” he told you as he passed you a cup, and then set the plate of cheesecake down in front of you too.

You gaped. “Did you just—? But I—”

Todoroki leaned in, then, with an expression that might have been called smug on anyone else. “I was already up.”

“You are such a little sneak,” you said, shocked. Had you just been played? Shouldn’t a pro hero have been more upstanding than this? Was the trustworthy number four hero actually a total fucking con artist?

“You are not the only one who can run off and do whatever they please,” he said blandly.

Your ears went hot. “Oh my god.”

Todoroki looked far too pleased with himself. You sensed, suddenly, that you had just met the real Todoroki—the man behind the number four image—and he was much more of a little shit than anyone might have accounted for. There was something else lurking behind that pretty facade.

“But I am supposed to be getting one for you,” you explained.

Todoroki looked unbothered.

“You can pay next time,” he said simply.

Your face warmed. Next time. There was going to be a next time. You knew you were being pacified, but it was working, goddammit.

“Fine, but I’m onto your tricks now,” you informed him, waving a finger at him. Todoroki did not seem threatened in the least. He put his mouth to his cup, taking a long, slow drink.

To your horror, you developed an instant fascination with the careful press of his mouth against the rim, the strong line of his throat working as he swallowed. You immediately looked away, face steaming.

Unhinged. You were totally unhinged.

“So, um, how do we do this?” you asked, for something to take your attention off of Todoroki. “How should we get to know each other?”

Todoroki looked contemplative. “I’d like to ask you some questions.”

You blinked. Well, that was straightforward enough. “Okay. Um, you too then, I guess?”

Todoroki’s mouth pulled up again at the edge, and he leaned in, his bangs falling into his eyes a little. “What would you like to know?”

How that mouth would feel pressed against yours instead of his cup.

“Uhhh, I guess—something that I wouldn’t know from the media,” you said quickly. “Um, what do you like to do when you’re not saving people’s lives?”

Todoroki leaned back, drumming those slender fingers on the side of his cup. “Reading-–manga, mostly. My friend Sero—Cellophane—trades volumes with me often. I like seeing friends. Visiting my mother,” he seemed to think for a moment. “My sister Fuyumi has been teaching me to cook with mixed results.”

You laughed at the look on his face. “What’s your best dish?”

Todoroki considered this. “Rice,” he said seriously.

You had to clamp your mouth shut to stop from spitting out your hot chocolate all over the table. The silver of Todoroki’s right eye glinted, and you realized with some surprise he’d just made a joke, though his expression hadn’t changed.

Who would have guessed? The number four—not only a con artist, but a comedian too.

There really was a lot more to him than you had anticipated.

“Tell me about the pet shelter,” Todoroki said, looking at you over the rim of his cup as he took another sip. “Do you like working there?”

“It’s great,” you told him. “The animals are so good, even the crazy and nervous ones.” Or the nefarious little criminals like the orange princess. You couldn’t help but gush about all your faves, how you’d gotten into the job, and how you one day hoped to open your own rescue.

Todoroki listened quietly, expression polite, and he asked a bunch of follow up questions, seemingly interested. He even asked after the orange kitten, and you promised to send a picture when you were back on shift tomorrow.

After that opening, the conversation flowed, surprisingly. Despite his general quiet, Todoroki proved strangely easy to talk to. He was attentive, shockingly funny for someone so deadly serious-looking, and his answers to your questions proved him a devastatingly appealing man.

It seemed like he cared about his family a lot, spending time with each of them and looking after his mom closely. He spoke of his friends with such great affection that you had trouble reconciling who he was actually talking about—like bloodthirsty number two hero Dynamight—with the the friend he was telling tales about—who would crop up at Todoroki’s agency with leftovers he claimed were “going in the trash, fucking eat them you ugly fucking candy cane” except the leftovers in question would be perfectly arranged, with neat little garnishes and side dishes and everything.

It was clear Todoroki had good friends, cared deeply for everyone in his life, and evaluated everyone and everything with a quiet thoughtfulness that left you a little lightheaded just to think about.

The conversation only drew to a close when the barista announced the coffee shop was closing for the evening, and Todoroki followed you back out into the cold.

“Um, thank you for the hot chocolate and dessert,” you told him. “I definitely owe you next time.”

You tugged on your hat and scarf, before shoving your hands deep into your pockets, shivering. Todoroki’s eyes followed your hands curiously as you did so.

“Did you not bring gloves?” he asked lightly.

You startled, hesitating. If you told him you’d worn the last pair through to total deterioration this week, and didn’t yet have the funds to replace them, he might think you didn’t take very good care of your things or know how to budget well. He’d already seen your phone.

You didn’t want him to think badly of you. “Uh, yeah. Didn’t bring any,” you said vaguely.

He reached into his jacket pocket, tugging out a pair of extremely soft-looking gloves in a dark fabric, holding them out to you. His gloves. “I insist you wear them home.”

You stared at him. “Um, no it’s okay! It’s my fault for not bringing any—”

Todoroki did not let you finish. To your eternal mortification, he reached right into your pocket and took your wrist, gently tugging your hand back out, and started putting a glove on you himself. His fingers left smudges of color wherever they touched your bare skin, and your face instantly went so hot it warmed you all the way through your frozen fingers.

“I have a temperature quirk,” Todoroki informed you. “The cold will not inconvenience me.”

It seemed he cared for almost perfect strangers the exact same way he cared for his family and friends too. You were beginning to realize he was unbearably good, in a way that explained everything about why and how he’d chosen heroics as a career.

You stood there, completely frozen, as he finished tugging his gloves over your hands. They were as soft as they looked, some kind of silky lining on the inside that you instantly wanted to roll in.

“I–thank you, Todoroki—um.”

Todoroki leaned down a little bit, to look you in the face more fully. “It’s Shouto,” he said, eyes fixing on yours very intently.

It took all your determination not to look down from his insistent gaze. Slowly, you nodded. “Shouto, then. Um, thank you, Shouto.”

Todoroki–Shouto–hummed softly, that low sound again that made your spine feel all weird and tingly.

“I guess, text me when you get home safe?” you said.

This made his mouth twitch again, and he asked calmly, “Do you plan to come to the rescue if I do not?”

You sniffed, disliking how amused he was at the prospect. Even if it was probably clear to him by now that you had no quirk with which to defend anybody.

“No,” you said. “I plan to lift your scarf and hat off you too, if it comes to that.”

Shouto laughed, a low, surprised note that made you warm all over again. “I’ll be sure to throw them out of harm’s way, then, if needed.”

You smiled, unable to help the way his amusement pulled your own right out of you. “I mean it, though. Please, um, text. Just so I know that you’re fine.”

Shouto smiled, another boyish, unreasonably charming pull of that full mouth. “If you can promise the same,” he said.

You nodded. “I do,” you said.

Then you realized how I do sounded and what it was associated with, and you backpedaled wildly. “Uh, promise that is. To text. I will text, yes. Okay, have a great night!” You babbled, backing away from Shouto.

He watched you go, another weird look of amusement passing over his features. “Good night, Y/N,” he said quietly.

“Good night! Thank you again! Goodbye!” You shouted, and then you turned, rushing off into the night, head spinning with everything that had just happened.

A soft huff of a laugh followed after you, warm in the cold of the evening.

Your whole body ran hot the entire way home.

#todoroki shouto x reader #todoroki x you #todoroki x reader #shouto todoroki

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cupcakegalaxia · 5 months

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There is alot of really bad theology right now. NAR, Word of Faith and old heresies ( Like reinventing Modalism) are running rampant online that are being perpetuated by so called big-A apostles, prophets and people who claim to perform miracles.

If anyone, and I mean ANYONE, who claims to be an Apostle (specifically of Jesus Christ -- There are only 12.) or a prophet and teaches things that not only are not in the Bible but ask for a 'seed offering' or any kind of monetary gain or deviate from what has been written, they are to be called out as wolves and false teachers. They commit spiritual abuse against people who want to be free from pain and sin by exploiting them, selling them a false bags of goods and keeps telling them to come back again and again to get their 'deliverance from the demon of anxiety.'

These are the 'demon slayer' group, the guys who think that born again Christians can be possessed by demons. Are you flipping kidding me?! Can a demon be in the same vessel of the Holy Spirit who is God? Any well read Christian would know that according to Scripture, its utterly bogus.

Then when they have been taken advantaged of for so long and get out, some remain Christian by the grace of God and fall into the footsteps of true Christianity but most will remain in the hands of wolves. Being fleeced, lulled by what they want to hear, thinking that perhaps being a spiritual person is better then being a biblical person.

The doctrine we have in Scripture rightly tells us about God's Character, Promises, and our salvation outside of our experiences and emotions. Emotions and experiences are different and change, they are secondary to the Scriptures.

But what these NAR--New Apostolic Reformation--folks do is they twist doctrine in that God is now calling new Apostles and prophets to rule the Church. They lull people into their prophetic words and sayings, telling people what they want to hear. Using experience and emotion to get people hooked into their teachings.

I've seen a couple of people on here who post such teachers and this I tell you; run. Run far away from those wolves, they will only bring you to spiritual death and destruction. You posting those teachers can actively stumble others who were brought out of this movements.

Its doctrine like this that strays people away from a full filled Christian life, binding them and presenting a false version of Christianity to the world. Its doctrine like this that will produce rotten fruit.

Now I am not saying that miracles are not for today but it solely depends on God's will, not ourselves. We don't get to decide what gift God gives us and certainly if God has given these gifts, He would give them to whoever He so well pleases.

Find yourself a biblical church, committed to expository preaching. Ask God to get you to a biblical church with a equally biblical pastor. Look at resources like Ligonier Ministry (R.C Sproul) , Crossway, Pirate Christian Radio, The Messed Up Church, White Horse Inn and Founders Ministry.

If you are coming out of the NAR, I highly recommend Pirate Christian Radio (Fighting for the Faith on Youtube) and The Messed Up Church. I would highly recommend Dawn Hill , she came out of the NAR and has since repented of the things she had done in that movement. Lovely lady.

I implore you, and anyone else who is finding themselves falling into these churches. I pray that those wolves repent and turn.

#christianity #new apostolic reformation #nar #christian life #christian #christian living #christian doctrine #biblical scripture #absolute buffoonery in some of these NAR churches #Im dead serious #look at Church by the Glades or Chuck Pierce's church #madhouses

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iuicmontreal · 3 months

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🚨 TODAY AT 12:30PM 🚨

Catch the Captains of IUIC on the Freedom March TV Show In The Bahamas‼️

‼️ 25 murders in counting on a 20 mile long Island in the last 30 days ‼️

🔥🔥The Solution to the problem is here, the ❕WORD OF GOD❕brought to you by the Prophets of God🔥🔥

❗️ COMING SOON ❗️

Don't Miss It👇👇👇👇👇👇

((IUIC ORLANDO YOUTUBE PAGE))

https://youtu.be/W0OKwQ24ueA?si=t80KokbhotrhS_gj

#Nathanyel7 #iuic #Bahamas #hebrewisraelites #Nassau #freedommarch #Jamaica #blackhistorymonth #israelites #bible #blackonblackcrime

#iuic #blacks #hispanics #nativeamericans #israelites #12tribes #latinos #youtube #nathanyel7 #influencer

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feedingtheflockministry · 1 year

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Using the Name of The Lord as a Curse Word

Scripture passage:

Now the son of an Israelite woman, whose father was an Egyptian, went out among the sons of Israel; and the Israelite woman’s son and a man of Israel struggled with each other in the camp. The son of the Israelite woman blasphemed the Name and cursed. So they brought him to Moses. (Now his mother’s name was Shelomith, the daughter of Dibri, of the tribe of Dan.) They put him in custody so that the command of the LORD might be made clear to them.

Then the LORD spoke to Moses, saying, “Bring the one who has cursed outside the camp, and let all who heard him lay their hands on his head; then let all the congregation stone him. You shall speak to the sons of Israel, saying, ‘If anyone curses his God, then he will bear his sin. Moreover, the one who blasphemes the name of the LORD shall surely be put to death; all the congregation shall certainly stone him. The alien as well as the native, when he blasphemes the Name, shall be put to death.” Leviticus 24:10-16

Message:

The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines blasphemy as this; to speak in a way that shows irreverence for God or something sacred : to utter blasphemy. They define curse as; to use profanely insolent language against: blaspheme.

Over the course of my lifetime I have heard a lot of curse words being thrown around to express a variety of emotions. In the last decade in particular the name of The Lord Jesus Christ has been adopted into the realm of curse words. Even some that claim to believe in Him use His name in this manner time to time without considering the sin they commit by doing so.

When we read the Bible we see in many places where this behavior is spoken harshly against, and those that commit this act are put to death. However, American movies and television shows increasingly support this practice, and treat it as if it has been going on for a lot longer than it has. I even hear gamers and film reviewers on platforms like YouTube (as well as other places) use The Lord’s name in this manner. As a believer and follower of Jesus Christ it makes me cringe every time I hear His name invoked in this way.

I believe this practice is on the rise for this reason. The more that people use His name in this way the more disrespect people will pay Him, and the further they travel away from Him into the darkness. Only rebellious people act in such a way. I would call this practice demonic, but demons themselves fear His name and Him. However, the nature behind this practice is indeed evil. To show such irreverence to the Creator of the universe, and Savior of mankind (both male and female) is truly disgraceful. We must all stop using His name in this way, and ask Him to forgive us of our dishonor and disrespect towards Him.

I, as an American say this: The United States of America is a breeding ground for a lot of misinformation, false teachings, false prophetic words, false dreams and visions, slanderous language, corruption, greed, pride, arrogance, sexual immorality, propaganda, deception, all the while raising up a new generation of atheists that strive to make war with The Creator of Life itself by denouncing His visible attributes. These things are found in all areas of American culture which includes, but not limited to, government, economics, and religious institutions. Many people globally are influenced by these institutions in America through writings, videos, television, and social media, and because of that the world’s population follows in pursuit after them and their practices.

The best thing anyone can do, anywhere, is read the Bible and let that be what influences them (by believing what it says, not what they observe in todays world), while praying and seeking to understand it, continually seeking righteousness, and to make peace with Jesus Christ. For only in His name can peace, life, joy, love, patience, kindness, mercy, grace, and salvation be obtained fully.

#bible #jesus christ #christianity #scriptures #jesussaves #biblescripture

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itsyourchoicedevotionals · 9 months

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Kept In Painful Suspense

“For this we declare to you by a word from the Lord, that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will not precede those who have fallen asleep.” 1Thessalonians 4:15ESV

Who were the “we” Paul referring to in the text verse? Almost every Commentary writer agrees— Paul considered himself to be one of the “we.”

Remembering back into my childhood church years, preachers would attempt to scare us into heaven. They said something like— ‘Jesus may be here even tonight. You’ll miss the first trumpet call out of here. To go to heaven after the first trumpet you’ll be beheaded or go to hell— UNLESS you get up here right now, you’ll end in hell.’ Later in young adulthood, there were eschatology charts everywhere with the timeline for Christ’s return. Preachers gave the same call as in my childhood. This was extremely prevalent because Israel had become a nation in 1948, a MAJOR signpost for His return

We’re close— absolutely. His return may be a breath away, but there are still things to be fulfilled, namely the building of the third temple in Jerusalem. They say the third temple is in a prefab stage awaiting the land in Israel to open for construction. I’m here to tell you, this can occur today.

There’s a video on YouTube regarding persecution mounting against prophets and their prophecies. Even my brother said, ‘prophecies are like people in fear about the devil winning and overtaking believers yakking to each other— well, here’s is a sign. Here’s another sign. Just scared people.’

Every Believer in every generation is kept in painful suspense awaiting His return. Why hasn’t He come yet? 2 Peter 3:9 (NKJV) "The Lord is not slack concerning His promise, as some count slackness, but is longsuffering toward us, not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance.” Do I want my grands and great-grandchildren to end in hell, or be those of the Tribulation? No, I don’t. As long as there are people begging for mercy on their family members He’s probably not coming. There will come a day when evil will be so evil Believers will beg Yahweh to get them out of this earth, even if not all of their family members are born again.

I found myself again being kept in the painful suspense. Things I truly wanted to do, I hesitated in doing because He was coming soon. Was I more fearful than excited? After all of those preachers who had preached to promote fear, now I find no fear, only sheer, ecstatic excitement— I will at last see His face, my Beloved, my King.

Don’t be afraid of missing when He comes back. Nor be afraid of having to live on in the ocean of evil we currently live in all around us. Least of all, fearing we can’t live life because He may appear today. He’s got us. “if we are faithless, He remains faithful— for He cannot deny Himself” 2Timothy 2:13ESV. Let not fear be your master, nor time, nor circumstances, nor the dead and buried. We hav a work to do in winning the lost; conquering evil around each of our personal sphere; and taking back our governments.Trust Him with your times and leave suspense behind. It’s your choice. You choose.

LET’S PRAY: Heavenly God, thank You for giving us assurance of Your return. Help us to find joy in working for Your kingdom and in the waiting for Jesus to come back, in the name of Jesus Christ I pray.

#Jesus Christ #lord of lords #word of god #God #Holy Spirit #it's your choice #devotional #painful #suspense #rapture #faithless #faithful #heaven #hell #fear #trust #believe #love #hope #faith

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reina-morada · 2 years

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Hey! I hope this isn’t too personal or anything but I was wondering if I could ask a question? So I was raised muslim and after many years of crisis a have been wrestling with doubt of gods existence but I’ve recently kind of found god again and am believing. My issue is I feel torn between Islam and Christianity. Can I ask what prompted your conversion from Christianity to Islam? I have been reading bits of the Quran and the Bible and I just feel myself drawn more to the bible, I feel kind of… empty whilst reading the Quran. But at the same time I am incredibly drawn towards Sufism. And I also have issues with the whole trinity thing. Ughhhh. Any advice?

Salaam,

It was an easy decision for me because I don't believe Jesus is divine, therefore I can't be a Christian. I believe he is a very important and holy Prophet, that he performed miracles by the power of Allah, and affirm his role in Muslim eschatology. But I just don't believe he is the same as Allah, or the literal "son of god" beyond it being a title. Cyrus the Great was also referred to as the "son of God" for example (Isa 45:1), I don't think it points to literal divinity but rather to Jesus' status as an important God-led person. I have always felt very attached to Jesus' message as an ex-Catholic, but I bow to no one but Allah, so worshipping Jesus in a charismatic way just doesn't suit me personally. I am very influenced by liberation theology and Jesus' message, but do not equate him with Allah.

Also, Muslims believe that Allah revealed particular scriptures to the Prophets. For Musa/Moses, it was the Torah. For Isa/Jesus, it was the Injil/Gospels. For David, the Psalms. Being Muslim isn't necessarily rejecting the Bible, but simply acknowledging that it is a book compiled over hundreds of years by countless authors and translated countless times, so much so that great study and care are necessary to attempt to truly grasp the original intended message. After seven years of Jesuit university study, I learned enough about the history of the scripture to see it as a glimpse into the thoughts of the writers of the time, but one written by humans and not the divine. I approach the text from a historical-critical point of view and I think of the Bible as the footprints of my spiritual ancestors, and read it often, but do not personally feel it holds the same weight as the Qur'an.

Honestly, finding a translation of the Qur'an that you enjoy is important to understanding it in English. My favorite is The Holy Qur'an in Today's English by Yahiya Emerick. I find it very easy to read, and very poetic. And as much as I can, I listen to the Qur'an with the translation and the transliteration in Youtube videos. The Qur'an is the extent of my familiarity with Arabic, and you can only gain so much reading words on a page in English. My heart feels fuller and more at ease when I listen to the Qur'an, which was actually meant to be recited/spoken out loud, rather than read.

As for Sufism, I am part of an organization influenced by the Mevlevi Order. The organization is filled with Muslims and non-Muslims alike. Ultimately, you will find yourself searching for the One that is beyond denomination, scripture, and language. The annihilation of the ego cares less about which scripture you look at, and more about polishing the mirror that is your heart.

I hope this helps you some.

#islam #catolica #answers

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grandhotelabyss · 2 years

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The entirety of the Larry Kramer-scripted Ken Russell adaptation of Lawrence’s Women in Love from 1969 can be watched on YouTube. (I would embed the video, but it’s age-restricted unless you’re signed in.) The film seems to me not notably inferior to the novel. Despite the symbolic and theatrical non-narrative technique Lawrence adopts, he is often too prolix and analytical. The novel must have wanted to be a film all along. And stressing the visual over the verbal tilts the tale’s ideological balance away from Lawrence’s Germanic apocalypticism to something lighter, brighter. Or, as I write in my new essay on the novel:

If my criticism above implicating Lawrence in the Holocaust was too heavy and moralistic, and it was, I will conclude by suggesting that the novel’s best critics were screenwriter Larry Kramer and director Ken Russell, who adapted Women in Love into a classic film of 1969. The gay and Jewish Kramer and the Catholic Russell revenge themselves on the ultra-Protestant Lawrence’s northern apocalypse by stressing the novel’s painterly pictorialism, often drowned in Lawrence’s prose-poetic prolixity, and the arch wit of its dialogue. Lawrence’s somber Nietzschean homoerotic fascism—as relevant as ever in our epoch of Bronze Age Pervert—melts into a more campy playfulness. Onscreen, the narrative’s sexuality, gay and straight, is unmistakably a matter of bodies in sweltering or shivering contact rather than star-souls in an abstract cosmic collision. And Glenda Jackson’s Oscar-winning turn as Gudrun fills out the character with the knowing sensuality and artistic gift she sometimes lacks in the novel.

I don’t quote much criticism in my essay. From my casual glance, Lawrence criticism doesn’t seem very interesting; it looks mainly biographical, mainly political. He’s a strange writer but not a puzzling or riddling one, so he doesn’t inspire the critic to virtuoso feats of exegesis like some of the other modernists. I only cite an essay from the ’70s by Joyce Carol Oates, who, despite her indeed ’70s-style feminism, once wrote that Lawrence (and Thomas Hardy) understood “the relations between the sexes” better than Jane Austen and George Eliot. I like a good offensive provocation, but this is apples-to-oranges, an unfair comparison; Hardy and Lawrence were writing later and could be more frank.

As for anti-feminism, I didn’t find the space to quote Camille Paglia’s tribute to Women in Love (collected in Vamps and Tramps), where, weirdly, this cinephile has nothing to say about a film adaptation that seems tailor-made for her. Like Oates, with whom she otherwise has nothing in common, Paglia judges Lawrence more insightful about men, women, and sex than second-wave feminism.

Lawrence’s caricatures of feminists seem realistic again, since the current [i.e., ’80s/’90s-era] reborn women’s movement similarly veered toward fanaticism, not just among the anti-pornography and anti-beauty ideologues (today’s Carry Nations) but among mainstream activists whose obsession with feminist rhetoric has supplanted all larger philosophical or cultural concerns. I now recognize in the dissatisfied, word-obsessed Gudrun Brangwen the bright, perfect, brittle overcontrolled women careerists of the legal, corporate, and academic worlds who have risen to prominence in the last twenty years and who coolly schedule their delayed pregnancies and professional childcare by the time clock. Their destined mate is Gerald Crich, the ultimate capitalist manager, patron of the body reduced to a machine.

Very prophetic of and influential upon the anti-neoliberal anti-girlboss anti-feminism of recent years. I will end, however, with her most compelling tribute to the novel’s aesthetics. While I tend to see Lawrence in the Puritan line—why he understood the American classics so well—she emphasizes his questing multiculturalism:

One of Lawrence’s major insights, a basic principle of Hinduism and Zen Buddhism, is that words cannot possibly correspond to or fully convey ultimate truths about life or the universe. By rhythmic repetition, surreal imagery, and heightened, operatic phrasings, Lawrence uses language to break through language in ways far beyond French poststructuralism with its bourgeois pedantry and preciosity. The characters of Women in Love struggle toward understanding, their rational and verbal resources overwhelmed by influx of unsorted sensory data and by eruptions of amoral unconscious impulses.

Once again, my essay on the novel is here.

#d.h. lawrence #larry kramer #ken russell #joyce carol oates #camille paglia #literature #literary criticism #cinema #film #modernism

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gods-message-today · 2 years

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fortleegospel · 17 days

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Gospel News

Dear friends and members of Fort Lee Gospel Church,

Many years ago, I visited a friend who was a pastor of a church in a rural, farming community. My friend had three children and the entire church was made up of families with 3 or 4 children each. What an unusual church considering our modern cultural experience. We live in a time when motherhood and large families are an oddity more than a norm.

This Sunday is Mother’s Day in our nation. A day to honor mothers. With all due respect to the many among us who do not have children, I would like to bring us back to some biblical thoughts around motherhood. I start with the account of Hannah in I Samuel 1. She was not able to conceive until God heard her prayers. I Sam. 1:20 says,

So in the course of time Hannah became pregnant and gave birth to a son. She named him Samuel, saying, “Because I asked the Lord for him.”

The Hebrew word for Samuel is similar to ‘heard by God.’ Samuel was a gift from God to Hannah and she literally gave him back to God by leaving him at the temple when he was weaned. Samuel went on to be a great prophet and leader of God’s people.

In light of our cultural trends, here are some thoughts on Motherhood in 2024:

Motherhood is challenging. Yet in Genesis 1:28 we read:

God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground.”

Being fruitful and having children was God’s design from the beginning. The challenge today is that having children is inconvenient and disruptive to modern life. Here are some of the challenges to motherhood faced by young adults today:

Education has given opportunities for women to succeed in career paths once reserved mostly for men. Women have often proven to be better students and that has led to millions of successful career women. That is good. The downside is that motherhood often hurts career success. For the ‘superwomen’ who try to both raise a family and advance in their careers, life is hard. Many have rightly noted that they cannot do it all. Every advanced culture in the world is dealing with declining birth rates. The demands of work and motherhood is often a major factor.

Marriage rates have been declining in our culture. Many young people grew up seeing marriages fail in the lives of adults they knew. Some choose to delay marriage and date for many years. Others struggle with the restrictions that come with marriage. Many learn to build a meaningful life as a single person. I am happy that we live in a time where life can be rich and full for single adults. The New Testament has much to say about spirituality for those who were single, including Jesus and Paul. Raising children is hard when you are married, and harder still for those who are single. The drop in marriage contributes to fewer mothers in America.

Economics is a third reason that it is hard to be a mother in America. Baby boomers (myself included) were born in a time when an average job could buy a house, support a family, and allow the wife to stay home and raise the children. We do not live in that economic reality today. Young people today may be the first generation to expect to be poorer than their parents. Most young couples need two incomes to pay the bills. Ambitious young couples may see having a family as costing too much. It is costly to be a parent today.

For these reasons and others, we honor mothers (especially young mothers) this Mother’s Day. Raising children is not easy. Young mothers (and fathers) need the prayers and support of those of us who are older. May God raise up godly families among us in the years ahead. God bless!

-Pastor Rick

Weekly Announcements

Sunday worship services at 11:00 AM continue to be livestreamed on our Fort Lee Gospel Facebook page, YouTube channel, and our website, www.fortleegospel.org. We meet in the building where we include a time of worship after the online portion of the service.

The Tuesday Men’s Lunch and study meets at the church at 12:30 PM.

The Tuesday Bible Study meets at 7:00 PM weekly. We are studying the book of Romans.

The 6:00 AM Prayer Meeting on Wednesdays and Saturdays is at the church with an option to connect on Google Meet.

The Women’s Bible Study meets this Saturday, May 11th at 2:00 PM. The study continues from the book of Ephesians. All women are welcome.

Connect info for Tuesday Bible Studies and Morning Prayer is:

Meeting URL :

https://meet.google.com/suk-xpsf-nwh

For dial in: Phone: +1 567-351-1104 PIN: 469 349 929#

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atomosphericnonsense · 2 months

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The question is not did I write A Between Two Ferns with Zack Galifianakis Batman crack fic but with Spoiler as Zack Galifianakis, no the real question is how long did it take me to write such a thing. The answer is five months LMAO.

ao3 link fic is also below the cut.

The video starts with a screenshot of a YouTube thumbnail that shows several members of the Justice League with the words “what to do during an alien invasion” written across them. Batman is notably absent. The screen shot disappears and reveals a room with two ferns, two chairs, and one Spoiler pacing the room.

“It was boring,” she says. “Informational and boring.” She turns to the camera. “We can do better, we can do way better.” She spins her cape twirling out behind her and then she sits down in the right chair, seated in the left chair is Red Robin, he just appeared while Spoiler was pacing. “And if Zack Galifianakis takes issue he can fist fight me behind any Batburger.”

The title card appears it reads: Red Robin: Between Two Ferns with Spoiler

“Today, I have with me everyone’s least favorite place to eat, Red Robin,” Spoiler starts, after saying Red Robin’s name a chorus of Yum is heard off camera. “How many people’s names did you burglal just to end up a fast food restaurant?”

“Too many,” Red Robin answers, his name appearing on screen along with . “It wasn’t worth it.”

“Should have been Batburger. How do you rank yourself amongst Gotham’s Capes?”

“8 and a half.”

“Jason Mendoza scaling or regular?”

Red Robin tilts his head for a moment. “Either way. You?”

“Oh, I break all scales with my sheer epic power.”

Red Robin makes an ‘of course,’ sort of gesture.

“What advice would you give to other aspiring high school dropouts?”

“Do drugs and look into lactose intolerance.”

Spoiler looks down at her notecards. “Do you think explosions kill people?”

“Only if they’re in booty shorts.” As soon as the words leave Red’s mouth a knife flies across the screen at him. Red catches it and tosses the knife aside.

“And what is the first thing a civilian should do during an alien invasion?”

Red Robin looks directly into the camera. “Cry.”

The Screen cuts to a new title card. Black Bat: Between Two Ferns with Spoiler

“Sitting with me right now is my favorite person ever, Black Bat, do you love me?”

“You are so sweet.” Black Bat answers, sitting back in the chair with her legs crossed.

“Do you think you could take me?”

“Of course,” Black Bat says.

“Wait, in a fight or…”

Black Bat does not answer this question.

“Do you ever get embarrassed for the criminals you absolutely demolish?”

Black Bat shakes her head. “They know what they did.”

“Do you have any advice on how to be cooler?”

“Not that I can legally share.”

“Will you sign my petition to start sending the rogues to Queer Eye instead of Arkham? I really think it would work out better. Don’t you think if the Riddler knew what a French Tuck was he’d calm down a bit?”

“I’ll sign the petition, but I think a French Tuck would make The Penguin worse.”

Spoiler leans back in shock. “You are so right.”

Black Bat nods.

“Anyway,” Spoiler moves on. “What’s the first thing a civilian should do during an alien invasion?”

“Go outside and run around screaming.” Black Bat gives the camera a thumbs up and the video cuts to the next title card.

Signal: Between Two Ferns with Spoiler

Now Signal is sitting in the designated guest seat.

“Sitting with me is day time hero, The Signal,” Spoiler turns to him. “How many bridges would you jump off of if given the opportunity?”

“At least one more.” The Signal answers.

“You have the impulse control of a god.”

“Have you met Wonder Woman?”

“Have you?”

The Signal turns in his seat. “You know I might actually be immortal.”

“Might?”

“I’m not testing that.”

“What even are your powers? I thought you just glowed.”

“I am a Prophet.” The Signal stands up, ”PROPHET! PROPHET! I PROPHESY! I HAVE SIGHT! I SEE!” He sits back down.

The camera zooms in on Spoiler’s unimpressed face.

“What do you have to say to accusations that you’re a reverse vampire and will die if caught in the dark?”

“Unfounded, the darkness loves me.” Signal turns invisible with a wink.

“Shit, where’d he go? Signal, I still need to ask about alien invasions. SIGNAL?!”

Signal reappears directly in front of the camera, “just don’t worry about it.”

The screen cuts to black and then to the next title card. Red Hood: Between Two Ferns with Spoiler

Red Hood is now in the guest seat. Two large googly eyes and a doodled smile have been edited onto his helmet in post production.

“Next up is who you’d think would be the real clown prince of crime considering how funny he claims to be. But has never once actually been funny nor committed a crime? Red Hood! Commonly seen helping old ladies out of trees and cats cross the street.”

“It’s great to be here.” Red hood says in a deadpan.

“Your favorite book is Pride and Prejudice?” Spoiler asks.

“Yes.”

“And what lie do you tell your goons?”

“I don’t lie about Austen.”

“Thoughts on fratricide?”

“Getting better.”

“Patricide?”

The Red Hood shrugs, “who's to say?”

“You, that’s why I asked.”

They sit in silence for a moment, the camera shifting between their faces.

“Have you considered being original?” Spoiler finally asks.

“Briefly.”

“You wear a helmet?” She asks.

“You have functioning eyes?” He asks.

“So when you made that choice did you realize how dumb it would make your whole thing look or were you too busy practicing a monologue?”

“I figured I’d just shoot anyone who mentioned it.” He pauses for a moment considering. “And you called me unoriginal.”

“If I get the Batman to commit vehicular manslaughter will you finally shut the fuck up?”

“Not likely.”

“What is the first thing a civilian should do during an alien invasion?”

“I would recommend dying at your earliest convenience and then coming back with a vengeance and cooler hair.”

“Fair enough,” Spoiler turns to the camera and then it cuts to black.

The title card Batgirl: Between Two Ferns with Spoiler appears on the screen.

The camera never shows both chairs in this section. It cuts between close ups of Spoiler and Batgirl.

“With me is the sexiest woman alive, Batgirl, how are you doing today, baby?”

“Oh, please, Spoiler. You flatter me. I’ve been great though.”

“As a badass supreme goddess of crime fighting and general awesomeness, who has done all three looks. Who does it better, blondes, brunettes, or redheads?”

“I wish you wouldn’t pit bad bitches against each other,” Batgirl mouths ‘blondes,’ to the camera. Fitting with her current hair color.

“Does your back hurt carrying all of the caped community?”

“No, that would imply it was difficult being better than everyone else.”

“Have you ever confronted Batman for stealing the bat theme from you?”

“Imitation is the highest form of flattery, but I did beat his ass for that one. I did.”

“And what is the first thing a civilian should do during an alien invasion?”

“Just ask yourself, what would Batgirl do?” Batgirl winks and the screen cuts to black.

Nightwing: Between Two Ferns with Spoiler, this title card is sparkly.

Nightwing is relaxed in his chair, one leg crossed over the other in a casual sprawl.

“This is Nightwing,” Spoiler says.

“Really? That’s it?”

“No, you’re right, what am I doing? With me right now is occasional Gotham traitor, frequent flyer, Nightwing. Spotted often in places that aren’t Gotham.”

“Well, not all of us are cursed to never leave its boundaries.”

“Sad but true, why are you gaslighting people into thinking Bludhaven exists?”

“Tax reasons.”

“When are you going back to Discowing, it was your best costume.”

“I’ll change right now.”

The video cuts and Nightwing is in his classic Discowing suit.

“Better?” Nightwing asks.

“Yeah, honestly, your styles gotten really boring recently. It’s almost like you’re an old man or something.”

“Almost.”

“When are you going to start doing some sort of awareness campaign or fundraiser for geriatric superheroes?”

The camera zooms in on Nightwing nodding and repeatedly opening and shutting his mouth for a solid thirty seconds.

“No, take your time,” Spoiler assures.

“I’m not thinking of a comeback, I'm debating my no kill rule.”

“Well, while you sort out your morals, mind telling us what the first thing a civilian should do during an alien invasion is?”

“Put on ABBA Gold and pretend nothings wrong.”

The video cuts to the next title card. Robin: Between Two Ferns with Spoiler

“Seated with me right now, is Gotham legend. The immortal chaos god, the guy that once threw a Molotov cocktail directly at a giant robot while yelling ‘JERSEY,’ Robin.”

Young Robin nods, he has a sword in his lap. Everytime the camera cuts to him there are more swords.

“What costume do you regret the most?”

“I would say the leotard, as it was an embarrassment, however the first rendition with pants disgusts me on a deeper level.”

“Of course,” Spoiler agrees. “How was being a woman for two months?”

“Brief.”

“Did you name the Teen Titans after you built the massive T shaped tower or before?”

“Those were unrelated.”

“What has been your favorite weapon to fight with?”

Robin, surrounded by swords, tsks. “Hand to hand always feels the most personal.”

“Of course, what do you have to say to rumors that you are a little baby man, little boy, little guy, a poor little meow meow who needs adult supervision, some choccy milk and a nap?”

“Who is saying this?”

Spoiler shrugs.

“I will take the chocolate milk, but I am an ancient being of unimaginable power and a,” Robin stops, looks off to the side as if reading something or being told something. He sighs. “And a big boy with big crime fighting pants.” He rolls his eyes.

“And what is the first thing a civilian should do in an alien invasion?”

“They should feel immense regret at not learning basic self defense or survival skills.”

The final title card appears. Batman: Between Two Ferns with Spoiler

“I introduce Batman, the Dark Knight, founding member of the Justice League, oldest man to ever walk the Earth. How are you doing tonight?”

Batman is very clearly Harley Quinn wearing the cowl and cape over her typical costume. Batman makes slightly audible noise.

“When you left Catwoman for Mothman was it an upgrade or a downgrade?”

Batman makes a grunting noise.

“I’m your second favorite, correct?”

Batman makes another grunt.

“Were you surprised when your goth phase lasted out of high school or did you know from the start it was a lifelong thing?”

Batman makes a Batman noise.

“Can I just, real quick, compliment your amazing communication skills. Honestly the entire Justice League could learn so much from the way in which you always answer questions clearly and deliver all necessary information.”

Batman nods once.

“Would you like to explain what’s going on between you and Ghostmaker? No? Okay, that’s fine. How about that British guy in the trench coat?”

Batman does not make a noise. Batman hands Spoiler a crumpled piece of paper.

“Oh,” Spoiler unfolds the paper, “oh right,” she says. Spoiler looks up into the camera, “Batman, are you really stating formally that the Gotham City Sirens should be excused from all laws and previous crimes in a The Purge (2013) sort of situation and allowed to do whatever they want because they are totally good now and have never done anything wrong ever anyway.”

Batman nods aggressively and gives a thumbs up.

“And what is the first thing a civilian should do during an alien invasion?”

Batman’s mouth opens and then the video ends.

#fanfiction #batfamily #crack fic #between two ferns with spoiler #Stephanie brown could do between two ferns #but Zack Galifianakis could not do literally anything she has done ever

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