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katyawriteswhump · 4 months

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Bed of Roses (steddie love month, day 17)

For @steddielovemonth, Day 17 prompt: Love is about a hand reaching out to you so you don't get lost (@yournowheregirl ) Thank you <3

Rating: M. CW: prostitution, unwanted kink/abuse/pet-names (NOT between Steddie) alcoholism, substance abuse. Tags: rockstar Eddie, rent-boy Steve, make-up fic, angst, shameless perversion of Bon Jovi lyrics. WC: 2,000.

...

“'Cause a bottle of vodka's still lodged in my head…”

In his dressing room, pre-show, Eddie grasped his second bottle of vodka in an unsteady hand.

“…and some blonde gave me nightmares; I think that she’s still in my bed.”

This was NOT GOOD. Eddie had gotten sap-fest Bon Jovi lyrics slithering around his brain. He couldn’t for the life of him remember his own lyrics.

“Hey, Amigo,” he announced to the vodka. “I got a venue of ten thousand to entertain, and you’re literally my Obi-Wan—my only hope.” He caressed the bottle’s label. “80% proof, huh, Baby?”

I’m serious, Eddie, you’ve had enough. You WANT to follow Kurt Cobain into the 27-Club?

Riiiight. That was not a Bon Jovi lyric. That sounded more like Steve Harrington, in sensible-parent mode, hands planted on his slender hips.

The tears struck fast. Eddie clonked the bottle onto the dressing table then followed it, pressing his heavy head to the glass.

He seriously didn’t want to die. However, he was so through with this life. Of any life, without Steve. The cavity where his heart once lay veered between grating emptiness and an unbearable pain.

His fingers twitched toward the bottle. Screw it, the show must go on, and he’d lost his only light in the darkness…

“… as I dream about movies, they won't make of me when I'm dead.”

That still wasn’t one of his own darn lyrics. In fact, he couldn’t remember a single goddamn word of any of Corroded Coffin’s songs.

A sharp knock on the dressing-room door had him squealing like a little piggy. An old guy poked his head in.

“Who the hell are you?”

“You hired me, Mr Munson. Dirk Gordon—Private Dick?”

“Ah… Yeah, so I did.” Eddie’s rotten heart hammered way too fast. “Have you..?"

“Yes, Mr Munson. I believe I’ve found him.”

…

“What do you mean, you're not gonna pay me?” Steve wrapped his arms tight around himself. The only heating in his boss’s rundown office came from the guy’s endless chain of cigarettes. “I spent the whole evening simpering at that old dragon. You told me she liked music—I talked music endlessly.”

“You yammered on about some death-metal garbage. She likes Wagner.”

Steve wrinkled his nose. “What’s Wagner? That crusty old film-star?”

“Oh, Steve, Steve, Steve. What am I gonna do with you?” His boss sauntered around the desk and hooked an arm around him.

Jesus, you stink.

“You’re good-looking, kid, you’re charming, but you simply can’t cut it with that kind of high-end client.”

“She seemed happy.” Steve shrugged his shoulders, failing to shake the guy off him. “She paid you, right?”

“Not the full whack, and you got a fancy meal out of the bitch. Look, I’ll give you your cut, if you do better tonight.”

He squeezed the back of Steve’s neck. Steve tried not to shudder. When his boss produced a piece of paper and wedged it down the back of Steve’s skin-tight jeans, he stopped trying to hide his revulsion.

“Details are all there. He’s a banking exec, early forties—no more dinners and dances with Doris, you’re spending the night at his house.”

A dry lump clogged Steve’s throat. “Is he gonna want..?”

“Sex? Christ on a bike, what trade do you think you’re in?” He squeezed Steve’s butt.

“Jesus fu—” Steve bit his lip, fixed on his damp sneakers.

“Believe me, Steve, your hair ain’t your best asset. You’re gonna have to sell that plump lil’ ass for real, sooner or later.”

Steve flinched, then schooled his features as blankly as he could.

“This guy’s got a few kinks, but as Johns go, he’s a pussycat.” He lifted Steve’s drooping chin with his knuckles. “Show him what ya got, Sport.”

Steve couldn’t get out into the drab morning fast enough. He retrieved the paper from his underwear, shoved it in a pocket unread, then stumbled, zombie-like, into a diner. “Black coffee, please? It’s an emergency.”

The waitress smiled. “You want breakfast, Steve?”

He shook his head, though his stomach grumbled.

He ended up slumped on the table, his face pillowed in his arms. Christ, ‘male escort’ had never seemed like a great idea, but he’d figured the pay would beat waiting tables. So how come he was still behind on his rent, and that he still couldn’t afford to eat some days, let alone buy his pain meds?

He muffled a miserable laugh in his elbow. He genuinely wished he could afford to get smashed, get high, because nothing could fill that gaping black hole of pain. Even worse, one of his fave Bon Jovi songs was playing on the radio, and SO not helping:

“Tonight I won't be alone, but you know that don't mean I'm not lonely.” Shit! He was fighting back dumbass tears already. “I got nothing to prove, for it’s you I’d die to defend.”

Why the hell did he run away? He can’t recall any reason that mattered anymore. “I’m sorry, Eddie,” he mumbled. “I miss you so much.”

Somebody touched his elbow, and he jolted up. “Sorry, hon,’” said the waitress, “we need this table for dine-in customers.”

“Right.” Steve swiped any tell-tale moisture from his cheekbones. “I’ll clear outta your way.”

...

“Ready for playtime, Bunny Rabbit?”

Steve’s skin crawled, and his face burned. He’d gotten his head in the client’s lap, and the guy was playing with his hair. It would be tolerable, he guessed, if he’d not so often laid in Eddie’s lap like this, and… Christ, Eddie! Steve shut out the unwanted touching and began to drift. He was so beyond tired. And that song from the diner crept back:

“Now as you close your eyes, know I'll be thinking about you. While my mistress—she calls me to stand in her spotlight again…”

The pinch on his cheek startled Steve back to the present. “You kipping there, Bunny Rabbit?”

“Uh… er, sorry, Daddy.” Uuuuuuurgh! “Whatever you want, Daddy.” He dared sit up. “I’ll grab a condom and, uh… stuff.”

“Hey, hey, hey.” When Steve went to rise, his arm was grabbed, and he was held in place. “I don’t like rubbers, Cutie.”

“You heard of this thing called AIDS?” Dipshit!

Steve wrenched his arm free. The guy raised his hand and slapped him. Which wasn’t exactly out-of-the-blue, because face-slapping had been listed among this repellent son-of-a-bitch’s kinks.

“I’m paying top whack for you.” He leaned over Steve, suddenly kinda huge and scary, not least because Steve now saw double. “Your pimp said you were clean, so I’m gonna have you any way I like.”

“I… uh…” Steve kicked the bastard’s shin and shoved him hard. “Go to hell, asshole.”

He fled out into the night, still dizzy from the blow. He pulled his mesh vest back on over his head. The icy wind bit, and he realised he’d left his only jacket behind.

“Jesus Christ! JESUS CHRIST!” He kicked a lamppost, holding back on venting the true force of his feelings. Still hurt.

He limped off up the street, fast as he could. The ache in his toes at least distracted him from the ringing in his ears. An hour later, he stumbled around the corner of his block, thinking only of throwing himself into his bed, while he still had one.

He was so close, when the hairs on the back of his neck stood suddenly on end. Through the haze of his exhaustion, he realised a car crawled up the gutter behind him.

Had Mr Happy-Slappy-Sleazebag come after him? Then again, Steve’s pursuer could be anybody. After all, he was walking through a red-light district, shivering his ass off. Dressed like the whore I am. Hahaha!

The car pulled up right beside him. A blacked-out window rolled down.

Steve ran, turning sharp up a dark alley, then… Shit, shit, SHIT AGAIN! He was only a hundred yards from his digs, and yet he was so messed-up that he’d sprinted up a dead-end.

He nearly kicked the bricks. Instead, he punched them, as if that would blast through the solid wall. He turned about, bit his grazed fist, and sank slowly onto his haunches.

Two figures approached up the alley, silhouetted against the lights of the street behind. Get up, Harrington! GET UP! His legs wouldn’t obey, and his breaths came only as rapid gasps. Nothing felt real anymore. Am I gonna die..? I’m gonna die!

A hand stretched out of the gloom.

Steve stared at it—at the familiar chunky silver rings, which couldn’t be real. He glanced up, and… wtf? It was Eddie, apart from it wasn’t Eddie. This dude looked more like Eddie’s ghost. Steve’s eyes fluttered closed.

Maybe I scored some Benzos after all, and totally ODd.

“Stevie?”

No mistaking that voice. If this was a trip, it was a good one. Steve pried an eye open, and Eddie’s hand was still there. Steve took it, let it help him to his feet, because… Why not? Suddenly, they were in each other’s arms, clasping each other tightly. This is real. You’re real! Eddie reeked of booze, and also of something devastatingly comforting and familiar. Somebody’s wretched sobs shook through them both.

“I’m s-sorry.” Steve sounded broken. “I-I honestly don't know why I left anymore. I was such an idiot.”

“No. I was the idiot. I’m sorry, too. So very fucking sorry.” Eddie sniffed hard, lifted his tear stained cheek from Steve’s shoulder. “I’ve not been doing so good without you.”

Steve blinked the moisture from his vision. He wondered if he looked as wrecked as Eddie—red-eyed and waxy pale, under the distant glimmer of the streetlamps. Probably. If he hadn't leaned against Eddie, his legs would’ve given out again.

He laughed, without knowing why. Eddie laughed too, and it warmed Steve’s soul. “Gonna be honest, Eddie—not been doing so good without you, either.”

…

When Eddie got out of rehab, Steve waited on the steps of the clinic, hand stretched out to take his. He pulled Eddie close, and then into a sweet, lingering kiss that renewed Eddie more thoroughly than even a lengthy booze-free sleep.

“I’m never going through that again,” said Eddie, his lips still brushing against Steve’s.

Not least because I never ever want to be parted from you again, even for a fortnight.

“Yeah, but you’re dry, Eddie, and you’re alive. I’d say that’s goddamn metal of you.”

They started back to the car, hands still clasped tightly. “Not gonna take credit, Stevie. You’re what got me through.”

“You might’ve got me out of a fix, so we’re even.” Steve’s sigh rode on a wistful sadness. “I mean, I was so lost. Thinking of you was all that kept me… I dunno, alive, I guess. You know, I kept on thinking about that Bon Jovi song.”

“Uh, you know how I feel about Bon J—"

Too late. Steve burst into song: “Well, I'm so far away, each step that I take is on my way home. A king's ransom in dimes I'd give each night to see through this pay-phone—”

Eddie pressed fingers to his boyfriend’s parted lips. “As much as I hate cutting you off in your prime—two teensy-weensy issues. Firstly, I had no idea where you were, and you never called! Second, what’s wrong with my blood-and-death drenched lyrics?”

Steve took Eddie’s fingers and kissed them: “Hurt too much to think about them.”

“You know what, Sweetheart? Hurt too much to sing them, without you around. Even though none of them are actually love songs.” Eddie raised his gaze to the heavens, and looped his arms around Steve. “Go figure.”

“You sure they’re not love songs? C’mon—they’re all secretly about me, right? Only coded or something. I’ll crack it one day.”

Steve’s gently mocking smile destroyed him, in the best possible way. They tumbled into a French kiss, and he resigned himself willingly to the only thing that mattered:

“And the truth is… Baby, you’re all that I need.”

...

Thanks for reading <3 Likes, comments and reblogs always much appreciated :)

(also part of my steve whump fic series on ao3).

#steddielovemonth #steddie #steddie fic #steddie fanfic #steve harrington #steve harrington whump #steve harrington x eddie munson #eddie munson #steve x eddie #rock star eddie munson #steve harrington fanfic #stranger things fanfic #steddie fanfiction #eddie x steve #steddie love month

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isleofdarkness · 2 months

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Chapter 7 FINAL DRAFT

Warnings- medical procedures, near-death experience, medical info, gun pointed at child, blood, murder, slight body horror, war, swearing, gang violence, trauma, flashbacks, slavery, chronic pain, selling souls Implied/referenced; genocide, starvation, character death, noncon, minor noncon, childhood prostitution, child sexual abuse, child abuse, torture, grievous injury, massacres, terrorism, gang violence

Part one

Sultana Jasmine was pacing.

That was what struck Li Shang first. Before he even noticed the books stacked on the table or the pale, drawn look on Aladdin's face, he noticed that Jasmine, eternally unshakeable Jasmine, was pacing.

Whatever they had been summoned for, it was going to be bad.

A glance around the room confirmed that suspicion. Everyone was there- Heracles, Megara, and Hryhoriy, King Arthur and Queen Guinevere, Tiana and Naveen, Kida, Milo, Sweet, Audrey, Vinny, and Whitmore, Aurora and Phillip, Snow, Rose, and Florian, Esmeralda and Phoebus, Ariel, Eric, and Melody, Elsa, Kristoff, and Anna, Moana, Merida, Ella, Christopher, and Anthony, Jabari and Dahlia, Anita and Roger, Hank McCoy, Logan, Kurt, and Charles Xavier, Alma Madrigal, even Oliver Warbucks. Everyone was there, even those who rarely came to these meetings. Something was very, very wrong.

Jasmine spotted them and stopped, hijab swinging as she whipped to face them. "Welcome to Jahannam! Please, don't linger in the doorway, come in and suffer with the rest of us!"

Ancestors protect them.

"What's going on?" He asked, stepping further into the room. There were a few murmurs of assent- everyone else was just as confused as he was.

Jasmine gestured sharply to the beaten books on the table. "The Isle kids snuck these across the barrier and had Jabari deliver them to us. These books are all about the Isle." She grabbed one and tossed it to Mulan, then one to him. "Shan Sarangerel, daughter of Shan Yu, and a written record of Shan Yu's efforts to keep the Isle alive with one bottle of medicine a year." She tossed one to Heracles. "That one's all about the suffering of Hades. I would advise you not to read it on a full stomach." She tossed a massive book to Naveen. "That's about the efforts by Doctor Facilier to help the children of the Isle." One to Kida. "Would you like to read about Rick, the son of Helga? He's a lot like Kaldur. And this-" She threw one to Anna, "Is about a little girl named Anna, daughter of Hans. Don't read it on a full stomach. The good done by Madonna Tremaine-" she tossed one to Ella, "The life of Anthony Tremaine II," to Anthony, "The life of Mal," to Aurora, "And our dear Claudine," to Esmeralda. "And more! Any requests?"

None of them had the nerve to answer.

"Diego de Vil, Belle LeGume, Harriet Jones, Jay, Riah, Harabolos, Evie, Uma, Yzla, Mischa, Reza, Sammy, Davin- prostitution, torture, abuse, rape, death, and more!" She held out to Rapunzel. "This one's on your daughter, Ginny. She's doing well, even has her own EMS- well, except for the fact that she's been raised by Mother Gothel, not by Cassandra." Rapunzel gasped, but Jasmine wasn't done. "You're about to be a grandmother, because she's nearly due with a baby. Of course, that's not mentioning the two children one of her loves already has-" she whipped to face Anthony, "Possibly the children of Anthony Tremaine the second! Congratulations.

"Riah," she continued, whirling to face Aurora, "Got that limp and all of those broken bones when he was ten, when six grown men broke into his house, raped him, and tried to beat him to death. He was only saved because Hades had a gut feeling and managed to escape a session with Maleficent halfway across the island. They had to do surgery where all he had was half a bottle of whiskey. Claudine," to Esmeralda, "Has been sexually and religiously abused her entire life, to the point where Ginny is almost certain she has dissociative identity disorder and to the point of permanent, irreversible damage caused by trauma she doesn't even remember! And just you wait until you read what her older sister has done to try and protect her!" Jasmine threw another book to the table. "Meet Lydia Snoops, who sold her soul at the age of five to save lives and has been turned into a monster. She's been sexually abused her entire life, she started her period when she was three, and she has to regularly go back to the cult that abused her to keep Claudine from getting hurt, even though it means taking the abuse herself. Our dear Mal," back to Aurora, "Is asexual, as fae tend to be. Her mother knows this. Maleficent has been selling her asexual daughter to a brothel whenever Mal fails her impossible explanations, she's been doing so ever since Mal was ten. It's to the point where the brothel is checked every night just in case. And Jay-"

They were spared her horror by Jasmine slipping into Arabic, but her fury and horror were catching even with the language barrier. It took nearly an hour for Jasmine to cut herself off, spinning on her heel to face one of the mirrors and pulling out a tube of eyeliner. Oh, she was beyond angry.

No one dared say a word as Jasmine wiped off and reapplied her flawless makeup, calming herself down. Her rage was gone when she turned back to them, replaced by grim determination. "I've already spoken to Fairy Godmother about my concerns, but she refuses to listen. We'll have to take this into our own hands." She grabbed a large stack of paper and dropped it onto the table. "Julieta was kind enough to send the files she collected on the six and Katherine Pulitzer has conducted multiple interviews about life on the Isle. Charles, would you be willing to conduct more extensive exams, as most of these six are genetic variants?" Charles nodded. "We should also conduct psychological evaluations. Ginny has assumptions but, without any proper medical training, nothing is certain. A word from you or Dr McCoy may be enough to petition for these children to be allowed regular and unrestricted contact with a therapist and a psychiatrist. These records are not to be released until Beast does something truly stupid and only within reason. I'm starting to look to remove children from the Isle." Woah- "I'm setting up a system here, but shelter and food will not be enough to help these children. I will need doctors, psychologists, paediatricians, medical specialists, and childcare specialists. If any of you are willing, I would readily welcome your help. If you are unwilling," she shrugged, "You may leave. No grudge will be held."

None of them left.

"Thank you."

Two weeks later, Riah started the worst day of his year by falling down the stairs.

October twenty-ninth was the anniversary. Not just the weeks surrounding it, when his symptoms built up and eased back, but the exact day It had happened, the day he'd nearly been killed. The day six men had broken into his home and made him know he would never be safe anywhere. The day... The day. He hated the day.

With his sixteenth birthday coming up in two days, his curse was getting worse. He'd woken up to spots dancing in his vision and thick fog filling his mind. It had taken a hellish fifteen minutes for him to remember where he'd hidden his oxygen concentrator, then another fifteen for him to get to it with how he was wheezing and coughing. The machine did its job, but just barely. It was a day where he absolutely needed the machine's help, but there was no way in hell he was letting the others or the Auradon kids see him relying on a machine to breathe. If he was lucky, he might have been able to get thirty minutes between each use. He just had to properly time a few bathroom breaks throughout the day. Unlike he would on the Isle, he made sure to wear it under his shirt, using a jacket to further conceal it. His brain protested not using it, but he wasn't letting anyone figure out he needed a stupid oxygen machine.

On top of everything else from the date, it was a bad pain day. A storm was rolling in on a cold day and his bones let him know about it. Even the bones that weren't usually a problem, his arms, good leg, ribs, jaw, and pelvis, ached. His skull felt like someone had buried a knife in his temporal hard enough to crush the side of his head. He could barely move his hands, couldn't even properly hold onto his cane. And his bad leg? His bad leg hadn't hurt this much in years. Hell, it had only hurt this badly when it was actually broken.

And he had class.

On the Isle, a day like this would be a day he wouldn't get out of bed. He wouldn't mind Hades and Seph worrying over him, and he wouldn't worry about them thinking he couldn't do anything for himself. This should have been a day where he curled up under the warm blankets and went in and out of sleep, his parents waking him every time a nightmare started to take hold and making sure he ate when he couldn't even walk. A day where he wouldn't mind who saw him relying on his dog for even the simple stuff. A shitty day, sure, but less shitty than it could have been. A day where he didn't have to do anything, because he couldn't find it in himself. But not in Auradon. In Auradon, a day like this meant class. And class meant walking down thirty stone stairs.

He knew he was going to fall. It was just a matter of how bad the fall would be. He'd hoped his arm and leg could at least hold out to the middle of the staircase.

They didn't. Not even two steps down, his bad leg collapsed. His bad left arm, his cane arm, folded when he put too much weight on it.

He went down.

His foot slipped out from under him as he lurched back on reflex, putting his elbow behind him to take the impact on it instead of the back of his skull. His bad leg caught on one of the stairs as he slid, forcing him into a tumble, and he tried to curl in on himself to protect his face and stomach from the worst of it, just like he would on the Isle.

Of course, that had been a routine for a simpler time, when he didn't have two very snappable bones coming out of his skull.

His horns were the first crack he heard. But they weren't the last.

Horns hand fingers leg skull-

He wasn't sure who screamed when he fell. He was pretty sure it wasn't him.

Spine leg leg hands-

He hit the ground hard enough to wind him and slammed into one of the heavy, cushy chairs. His head cracked back against the side table and he saw stars, going limp.

When he blinked the darkness from his vision, his first instinct was to scream. His second was to start swearing. He managed to refrain from both. He still had shocked scared tears in his eyes when he looked up to see his friends racing down the stairs. And to feel the gaze of every Auradon kid in the building on him, concerned gazes cutting into him like knives. Fucking fantastic. They were all going to see him as weak and helpless just because of a bad day, his friends were going to see him as weak and helpless because of a bad day, Jay and maybe even Ben were going to see him as fucking weak and helpless and he had to show that he wasn't-

Refusing to show weakness, he forced himself to his feet, putting weight on his bad and now-broken left leg in the absence of his cane. The smile he gave his concerned friends definitely looked more like a snarl or a grimace, but he didn't care. "Fucking... just tell Fairy Godbitch I'll be late to class. I'm gonna see the nurse cause I just broke my leg in three places. Where's my cane?"

"How'd the ground taste?" Jay joked on what had to be reflex, holding Riah's cane out to him before withdrawing. Riah saw red. "Wait, you shouldn't-"

"Shouldn't what, Jay?" Riah snapped. Gods, his day sucked absolute dick and he'd only been awake for an hour. He needed to get to the nurse so that everyone wasn't staring at him like he deserved pity or something. "Walk with a broken leg? Newsflash, my leg's been broken for five fucking years and I got along just fine without someone carrying me to and from like I'm some kinda princess. Give me my godsdamn cane or I swear on my father that I'll be removing it from the hands of your corpse."

His eyes went black to prove his point, but none of them were impressed. Mal was giving him a shocked, worried, pitying look and Riah's blood boiled. "You shouldn't walk on a broken leg, cane or not, so-"

"I'm going to be walking out of here with or without my fucking cane so you'd best give it to me if you're so concerned." He reached out his hand, using magick to pull the cursed metal in his cane out of Jay's hand and into his. "I can manage by myself, I don't need help. I especially don't need pity. Stop acting like I'm fragile or some shit." He turned sharply, levelling a murderous glare at the Auradon kids between him and the door. "Is there a reason you guys are in my way?"

The Auradon kids practically dove out of his way. He stormed past them.

Just to prove his point, he forced himself to walk without his cane. The rage gave him enough fuel to walk sort of normally, but the fading adrenaline meant that he felt every. Single. Step.

The second he ducked around the corner of the building, he folded, leaning hard on both his cane and the wall and trying desperately to breathe on his own. Stupid leg and stupid curse and stupid everyone who thought he couldn't do anything and stupid Auradon and fuck, he was going to pass out-

There was no way in hell he was letting anyone see him like this after what had just happened. Fuck it. If Fairy Godbitch wanted to throw him out of school she could. He wasn't getting across campus without it but he sure as shit wasn't going to let anyone see it, so he had to. He whispered a spell, calling on magick from his grandmother, to make himself invisible to those he didn't want to see him. Once he was sure that was done, he pulled the flattened plastic mask out of his shirt, fixed the metal edges over his mouth and nose, and pulled the elastic bands over his head to fix it to his face. He didn't bother to lift his shirt to see the buttons on the machine hidden at his side, just flipped the power switch and sighed in relief as the oxygen concentrator started working.

Fucking sixteenth birthday. Bitchass spell couldn't even wait two days to kill him.

Claudine was a lot stronger than Mal thought. When she and Jay started after Riah, Claudine held them both back without effort. "Don't. You'll only make it worse."

"What are you talking about?" Riah had fallen down the stairs and was walking on a broken leg without his cane. How could they possibly make that any worse?

All too aware of the eyes on them, Claudine dragged Jay and Mal back up the stairs, leading the gang to the closest of their rooms and locking the door behind her. Wasn't she supposed to be Riah's friend? How could she be so calm? Mal would've lost her shit if Jay tried what Riah was currently doing. "You can't try to help him. It's not a good idea in general and it's definitely not a good idea today." Claudine bit her lip and sighed, clearly trying to figure something out. "I can't go into too much detail, but today is the anniversary of when his leg was broken. There was a lot of stuff that happened. Those breaks are all from today, as well as most of his scars. Have you guys seen the scars on his arms, collarbone, and jaw?" They were hard to see but yeah, they'd all seen them. "There's more of those across nineteen of his ribs, on his spine, on his pelvis, and down his good leg, and those are from where they managed to operate on his to put the bones back into place. He was awake during that and that was five years ago today. That's why he's been so touchy these past few weeks and he's going to be touchy for a few weeks after this, he always has been. Today is always a bad day for him, he usually doesn't even get out of bed. And it's a bad idea to try to help him in general, but it's one of the worst things you could do today."

"If he needs help," Mal argued, "Why's it so bad to try and help him?"

"Because none of you know how to ask and none of you ask anyway," Claudine explained patiently. "If you want to help Riah, you've got to ask if you can help him, not if he needs help. And if he says no, you have to respect that. Riah tries to be independent, he hates when people assume or act like he can't do something. It makes him feel as though people see him as less than and when you do that, he goes overboard to prove you wrong. I've seen him scale a brick wall using just his hands to prove that he could get up the stairs and I know Hades has seen him do a great deal more. Riah is very capable of a lot of stuff and he's usually really good about sticking to his limits, but he'll push himself too hard if he thinks people are going to think less of him for what he can't do. Riah was probably extremely embarrassed about falling down the stairs in front of everyone and I probably didn't help by screaming and drawing attention. What he needed us to do was act as though someone like Jay had just tripped. When he falls down the stairs, unless he's saying something is wrong, it's best to make a joke like Jay did and move on. You give him his cane and if he puts his hand out, you help him to his feet like it's no big deal. Don't even put your hand out to help him. I know you meant well and you just didn't know, so I'm telling you guys now so that this doesn't happen again." Huh. Claudine could definitely be a nurse. "Never, ever, try to take his cane away. That would be like taking Agony's arm or leg-" There was a collective wince. They'd all seen what happened when someone did that and how severely upset Agony had been. "Because that is like Riah's arm or leg. Plus, he can walk without it. He can run without it. And he will. Believe me, I've seen him do both and the aftermath of both is never pretty. If he doesn't have his cane he will hurt himself. He'll walk and run on that leg and if the bone breaks the wrong way it's an emergency trip to the hospital and several blood transfusions from the three people he can receive blood from and who aren't in Auradon."

"What about his breathing?" Evie asked. Shit, was there something wrong with how he was breathing? Mal hadn't even noticed. She was supposed to notice this stuff to take care of her crew. "His lips and fingernails were blue and he was breathing too fast and not deep enough."

"His curse." His fucking what? "Riah has a curse trying to crush his lungs, he's had it for his entire life. He wears an amulet to keep it from killing him, that blue stone he doesn't take off, but..." Claudine gave Mal a nervous look. "It was cast by Maleficent and you know how her curses are. They kill on the sixteenth birthday. And Riah's sixteenth birthday is in two days."

"Hold the fuck up," Mal raised a hand to cut Claudine off. "Are you telling me right now that Riah is cursed to fucking die on his sixteenth birthday, which is in two days, and neither of you told me or any of the gods know how many magical beings we have access to?"

"He thought he could handle it and I thought he could, too. Mal, Riah wasn't cursed to die when he turned sixteen, he was cursed to die before he turned thirteen. He's lived with a spell trying to kill him for three years. He thought, with the magic he would have access to here, he would be able to keep fighting it. But..." Tears started to glitter in Claudine's eyes. Claudine never cried. "He can't. He only has so much left to use and once it's gone, he's going to die. But he won't take more. He can't. He would rather die."

"Take what?" She needed someone to draw a diagram so she could keep track of the punches. Riah was going to die in two days. Great.

"Life." What?! "I don't know how it works. Riah drained the life energy, the souls, out of four people almost fourteen years ago. That's how he's stayed alive. With that abundance of life magick, he's been able to extend his own life. But it's been so long, he's running out, and he can't get more."

"Can't he just drain someone else?"

"And get us all kicked out of Auradon?" Good point. "Even if that weren't a problem, he's not capable of it. He's got something keeping him from using it. Someone would have to willingly perform magick to transfer their life, their soul, into him, knowing that they would be destroying themselves. Their lives would be gone and so would their souls. Their souls would be destroyed, taken apart for magick, and they would cease to exist in even the afterlife. No one would be willing to do that. There's... there's no way to fix it."

No. No, Mal refused to believe that. Her crew had survived dozens of things that couldn't be fixed. If Evie's heart could be fixed, if Carlos's lungs could be fixed, if her brain could be fixed, if Jay's spine could be fixed, Riah could be fixed. They just had to think outside of the box. There had to be a way and they were going to find it. "Claudine, I need you to stay with Riah today. Don't leave him alone. We'll get you excused from class." Think think think, there had to be someone or something that could help. "Jay, get Jordan to bring her dad to talk to us. Evie, get Adam Constantine and see if Snow White can get us in touch with Aurora. Carlos, see if Audrey can get us an audience with Kida, or if Kida has any kids we can talk to. I'll talk to Jane and Doctor Sweet. If you have the chance, ask if they can get us in touch with Maui, Elsa, Heracles, Te Fiti or Moana, Rapunzel, Sofia the First, anyone who knows a lot about magic. No Merlin and no Fairy Godmother. There's an answer to this, we've just gotta find it."

They had to try.

Thank God Doctor McCoy had been visiting. If he hadn't been, Julieta was almost certain the Isle boy would have died.

The boy with the cane- Riah, she remembered- had only just managed to stagger through the doorway before he had collapsed, clumsily throwing a hand out to catch the edge of the desk and slow his fall. Julieta, as fast as she was, had barely managed to get to her feet before Riah's hands went to his chest and spread out just under his neck, pushing down slightly. It was a strange sign, almost like a failed attempt at a choking sign, but his intention became clear when she got a look at him.

His lips and fingertips were blue. Each tiny exhale came out as a strangled grunt. His chest was falling far too deep, as if his body was trying to suck his ribs to his spine. His nostrils were flared behind his oxygen mask and he was mouthing something as he curled in on himself. He went down before Julieta could kneel in front of him.

"His lungs!" She grabbed him by the shoulders and laid him on his back, undoing the magnets in the shoulders of his shirt to undo the magnets of his binder before starting chest compressions. "He's in respiratory arrest-" she wasn't doing any good, only forcing more air out of lungs that couldn't expand. "Take over chest compressions so I can call 911."

"It won't do any good," he argued, handing her his phone as he took over. "An ambulance won't get here in time. Call Kurt and tell him he needs to teleport to your office and that there's a medical emergency incoming. Cecilia needs to set up the life support machines for respiratory arrest."

The three rings of the phone were the longest few seconds of Julieta's life. She didn't give the person on the other end of the line time to speak. "This is Julieta Madrigal we need Kurt to come to my office at Auradon Prep immediately and we need Cecilia to prepare McCoy's equipment for respiratory arrest."

"Charles!" The voice on the other end shouted, accent thick even in one syllable. "Tell him what you know, I will be there in two seconds."

Another voice started to speak. She didn't give them the chance to. "The patient is a fifteen-year-old transgender boy in respiratory arrest. He has a curse constricting his lungs and his lungs cannot expand. He's on oxygen but it won't do good if he can't breathe."

"Slow down," the man ordered gently. "What do you know about the curse?"

"It crushes his lungs. He has an amulet to create a barrier between his lungs and the spell but the amulet doesn't always work. He wouldn't say much about it."

"So the spell is a physical thing?"

"The way he explained it, yes." She knew nothing about this kind of magic. The Encanto was a blessing, a miracle, not a curse. She didn't know anything about curses.

"They'll be there in one-" There was a strange sound as three people appeared in a puff of smoke. "Moment."

The older of the two women, a Latina woman with brown locs pulled back in a bun, knelt next to Riah and put her fingers to his neck. "No pulse." She pulled the shirt and binder off the rest of the way, making access easier. "McCoy, move on three. One, two, three-" McCoy jerked back and she quickly got his clothes off and pulled the strap for his strange oxygen machine over his head. "Resume." McCoy went back to chest compressions as she tore the corners from the wax paper covers on the electrodes and poured a clear gel into her hand. "McCoy. One, two, three." He moved back again and she quickly applied the gel across Riah's chest, then applied the five electrodes. "Resume."

The young woman with red hair put her fingers to her temple, brow wrinkling. "I can't move it much, but I've given him maybe an inch of room. There's something really wrong with the shape of his lungs. I've never seen anything like it. It looks like some kind of ILD, but I can't find an exact diagnosis."

McCoy frowned. "We'll have to do an imaging scan." He didn't say it, but the way the atmosphere was quickly turning grim told Julieta how dangerous the situation was becoming.

The machine came to life, showing a pulse that was far too slow and far too shallow. But it wasn't a flatline. Cecilia let out a small sigh of relief, turning over his arm and quickly finding a vein and swabbing the skin. "Julieta, Jean, hold him down. McCoy, in one, two, three-" McCoy stopped compressions again as Cecilia pressed a needle into his arm and injected it.

Riah jerked hard, eyes flying open for just a moment as he gasped and choked. He wasn't awake for long, only a few seconds, but the added space gave his heart and lungs a chance to start working again. When he went back down, he was breathing.

"Keep him down," Cecilia ordered. She quickly set up the ventilator she'd bought with her and got a breathing tube down like it was easy. No one dared to breathe as they waited a few minutes, making sure Riah wasn't going to back into immediate danger. He didn't. "He's not stabilized yet, but he's fit for transport. Call his parents and Kurt can bring them back to the institute."

"His parents aren't available." It was horrifying to think about. Riah had nearly died and they couldn't so much as call them to say what had happened. "He's one of the Isle children. I can contact his friends and the family taking care of him here."

After a beat of horrified silence, Cecilia nodded. "Do that. Hopefully, we'll have good news to send to his parents."

How had none of them noticed? That one question played on repeat in Jay's head as everything kept getting worse and worse.

How did we not notice he's cursed? He'd wondered as Claudine explained Riah's situation. They all knew Riah had an issue with his lungs, but he'd brushed it off as some lung condition, said it was no big deal. And they had all believed him. How could none of them have noticed that his "condition" was a curse, a curse that had been actively trying to end his life for three years?

How did we not notice him dying? The thought had been agonizing. Jay took it upon himself to notice everything about his friends. If Evie looked a bit too thin or perfect, if Mal looked a bit too desperate, if Carlos was just a second off- Jay was supposed to notice this stuff. He was the one who watched out for the crew even if Mal already was. If something got past Mal, he was supposed to catch it. How had he not caught the fact that Riah was dying? How could anyone hide something so well, knowing they were going to die in just a few days? Had there been something he missed? Had he overlooked something? Had some sort of negligence on his part led to this getting this bad?

How could he hide this from us? Yeah, they hadn't known him for long, but this wasn't something you hid from your allies. Why would he do that? How had he been able to? How the hell could someone be so good at lying that he could hide a curse and his impending death from them?

What else is he hiding?

What if he dies?

Considering how often his mind went to worst-case scenarios, Jay was no stranger to praying he would be wrong. He could count on one hand the amount of times he'd been hoping it this hard. Riah was tough, after all. He wasn't going to let some stupid curse kill him. When the blue demon (he would worry about that later) grabbed him by the shoulder and made them appear in some sort of hospital room, Jay had almost convinced himself he was going to be wrong.

The second he saw Riah, that growing hope died.

How the hell had he gotten so bad without any of them noticing?

He knew Riah was thin, they all were, but the lack of a jacket and long pants let him see that Riah was skeletal. He had some muscle, sure, but it was all flat and dense and right underneath the skin, as though he didn't have even the thinnest layer of fat. His skin was clinging to his muscles and bones. What Jay had thought were just high cheekbones and a sharp jawline suddenly became evidence of severe starvation- how had this guy managed to get out of bed, let alone walk the quarter-mile to the nurse's office? He had picked Riah up, how had he not noticed the guy being a bag of bones? How could Riah, who easily ate more than any of them, be so skinny?

The paper gown revealed just how bad his leg was. He'd known the bone was curved, but thick jeans had hidden the worst of it. The skin on his left thigh was bumpy, as though the bone had healed in spikes under it. His leg wasn't merely bruised, it was almost entirely painted in shades of black and blue. Bruises painted his thigh entirely in patterns that meant breaks, and most of those bruises were old. His knee was bent in a slightly weird way, as though the lower part of the joint had turned a bit, and the swelling and bruising showed both dislocation and breaks. There was even a slight but unnatural indent to his calf, with bruising that looked like it had broken a few weeks ago- the entire leg was an emergency on its own. How had Riah been able to put any weight on that leg, let alone walk on it without his cane?

The third thing he noticed was the least important, but somehow it surprised him the most. They'd all been wondering why Fairy Godmother insisted on calling Riah Rhiannon, a girl's name, and why he'd been put in a girl's room. Despite everything, he felt a hot flash of anger. What was wrong with this place? Riah had made it abundantly clear that he was a guy, so what did it matter if his body didn't match? There was no way they hadn't known about him being a boy. Were they trying to make some kind of point? Allah, that was so messed up.

Claudine wasn't surprised. She darted to Riah's side as the rest of them paused, squeezing his limp hand. "How bad is it?"

Another one covered in blue fur, this one built like a gorilla, shook his head. "The damage is too severe to be fixed and his blood type makes a transplant impossible. There's no way to make his lungs function again. I'm so sorry."

No.

Jay nearly staggered under the weight of those words. Riah... no, Riah couldn't die. He'd been fine yesterday. They'd been joking and complaining just like normal only yesterday. Riah had been a bit stressed, yeah, but he'd been fine. And now he was going to die. He was going to die and Jay would never see his smile or hear his laugh or trade insults with him ever again. He was only fifteen and he was going to die. And they would have to send his body to the Isle with the barge as though it was garbage, and there was no guarantee Hades would get his body before anyone else because Hades wouldn't even know Riah was dead-

Claudine jolted, face going hard. "There is. We need to get him to the Isle. Right. Now."

"What're you talking about?" Mal asked. Was it something about letting Riah die with his family?

"He's had transplants before, his heart and kidneys. A lung transplant is possible, but we need to get him to the Isle for that to happen." She shot to her feet. "Mara Winchester is a complete universal donor and her tissue changes to match whoever it's transplanted into."

"Winchester?" Jay shared a confused look with Mal. Mara Winchester as in that weird girl who lived in the forest? The one who smoked, drank, swore every three words and insulted someone every five? The firstborn daughter of Madam Mim and the Horned King, with the-

The pure white skin, curly black hair, and glowing red eyes.

Holy shit.

"He's Matilda Mim," Evie whispered. Matilda Mim the Third was a bit of an urban legend on the Isle. The secondborn kid of the Horned King and Madam Mim, born three months premature, cursed, and left to die at only a few hours old. Legend was that Matilda had actually survived and was still alive-

"Don't call him that," Claudine corrected. "His name is Riah. But yes, he was."

Holy shit!

"We're wasting time," she continued. "The longer we wait, the more damage is done. If we get him there within the next hour he might be able to survive long enough for the transplant-"

"What's going on?"

Jay's.

Heart.

Stopped.

They all whirled to Ben standing in the doorway, Aurora and Audrey with him. His eyes were tight with worry, his muscles tensed and ready to move. He looked worried, but there was no way he would let them take Riah back to the Isle at the drop of a hat-

"We're taking Riah to the Isle to save his life," Claudine said, squaring her shoulders and giving him a look as if daring him to argue. "And we're taking him there right now."

"You'd better believe they are."

As if this couldn't get any more confusing-

The man who stepped out of the shadows was Isle, it was obvious even if Jay hadn't known who she was. The scars on her skin and across her face- he could match so many of her features to Riah's- the tattoos painting her arms, her light turquoise hair, buzzed at the back and sides but long at the top in a way no one on Auradon used, her black armour-

Maverick fucking Mim.

She gave them a crooked smile, just like Riah's, and stepped further into the room. She was only a few inches taller than Ben, but she seemed to tower over him "Let me make this clear, Benny Baby- if Riah dies, everyone dies. Riah is not supposed to die yet and if he does, it fucks the natural order sideways in a way that reality really can't afford. I ain't in the position to kill myself so that his death wouldn't upset the natural order, so you're going to take him to the Isle so that I can continue playing cleanup for the absolute fucking disaster your daddy created. Now." She turned back to them. "There's a specific way you have to do this."

"How the fuck are you here?" Mal asked, finally finding her tongue in her shock. Maverick Mim didn't have any way to be in Auradon. She was powerful with magick, sure, but if she hadn't broken the barrier yet, she wasn't going to. So how had she gotten to Auradon?

"Technically I'm not," she shrugged. Yeah, because that made sense. "I'm astral projecting so that I can talk to you because I don't want the world to end. And, by the way, ask King Beast how I know Riah's dying because that fucker knows, and he also knows why Riah's death before my death would upset the natural order of everything. We ain't got time to unpack all that. Now, are you gonna listen to me or are you gonna let him die so that the world ends?"

If any of them had a response, she didn't give them enough time to say it. "As I was saying, you guys need to follow directions because there's a certain way this needs done. Get him to the barrier but don't open it and I'll take care of the rest. You're going to need to drive."

"The Blackbird can get there faster," some bald guy in a wheelchair said.

Maverick shook her head. "Not gonna work. Number one, the hospital is underground-"

"Since when?" Mal sounded frazzled. Well, it was nice to see he wasn't the only one who had no clue what was going on.

"If one of you idiots interrupts me one more motherfucking time I swear to the gods," Maverick snapped. "We moved it because of I'll explain later. Point is, shit's underground now. There's no way for an aircraft to get to it even if we could get an aircraft through the barrier safely. So, you need to drive to where the bridge breaks. I'll handle everything else. I'll explain once the world is no longer in danger of ending. Get my little brother to the barrier and bring Benny Baby with you." She turned again, giving Ben a grin that was all teeth. "We need to talk."

"Who are you?" Ben managed.

"That answer will have to wait until we're face-to-face, golden boy, and none of you are allowed to tell him. I think a demonstration will drive it home better than me just saying it." With that cryptic statement, she turned back to the five. "Just get my brother to the barrier. I'll explain everything once he's stable. You guys willing to do that or do I have to do something that's going to bring Auradon's fist down on thousands of innocent children?"

Jay was so confused he was practically dizzy from it- he was almost certain he was physically swaying from it. Mal grabbed his hand, squeezing hard to try and ground him. "We'll get him to the barrier. Everything else can wait."

That was why Mal was the leader. She had a gift for keeping her head in even the worst situations.

Maverick nodded. "I'll be waiting. And, no matter what, you guys need to not interfere with what I'm going to do unless I tell you to. If I don't tell you to do anything, you do nothing. That goes for the X-Men, too." She gestured at the adults so that there was no question who the "X Men" were.

"I'll keep them in line," Mal promised. With one final nod, Maverick stepped back into the shadows, melting into them. Just as inexplicably as she had arrived, she was gone. "Let's get moving, fast. If she's involved, we need to believe her because she never gets involved unless it's the apocalypse."

"Who was that?" Ben asked, struggling to sound composed. The poor guy looked as confused as Jay felt.

"That," Mal gestured at the shadow Maverick had vanished into, "Was our sign that the world is going to end and a way to keep it from ending. On the Isle, her word is law. If she orders you to jump, no matter what gang you're part of, you say 'How high?' If she's saying we need to get Riah to the Isle, we're getting Riah to the fucking Isle. Now let's get moving before he dies."

Ben had no idea what was going on. It turned out that the Isle kids didn't, either.

The entire journey in the X-Van was spent listening to Claudine explain everything. No matter how bad Riah's physical conditions had seemed, they were only the surface of the issues. Riah had been born nearly three months premature. He'd been blind when he was younger and had needed surgeries and different treatments to fix this, but his eyes were still sensitive to light and he struggled with processing visual information. He'd needed multiple organs replaced- his heart, his kidneys, his intestines, and even two vertebrae. He'd had brain surgery when he was three to lessen severe epilepsy, but he was still epileptic and had seizures triggered by stress (which he was on medications for, but still.) His left femur wasn't simply broken, it had been eighty-five percent shattered. Fixing it had been impossible for reasons Ben never got but they all seemed to know. He had chronic pain from dozens of broken bones and this pain was sometimes so severe that he couldn't get out of bed. Today had been one of those days, and Riah had still forced himself out of bed and tried to walk down the stairs.

The only area Claudine didn't know much about was his lungs. That was where Doctor McCoy stepped in.

"Getting an imaging scan was far easier than you think. Equipment for mutants with ice, fire, and electricity abilities worked like a charm. This is why these six must see a provider used to working with genetic variants- if this had been detected earlier, we would have been able to act before it was an emergency." So they needed mutant doctors. He would have to see if the Xavier Institute would be willing to treat them moving forward. "Riah's lungs are extremely malformed. If I had to guess, I would say they were the size of an eight-year-old's lungs, and a small eight-year-old at that. Their growth has been severely restricted by the curse. As a result, they've grown into an extremely dysfunctional shape. The walls of his lungs are inconsistent, some parts are far too thick while some parts are as thin as tissue paper. The insides are almost eighty percent scar tissue, I suspect due to the way they've been forced to grow. It appears he's had some sort of laryngotracheal reconstruction surgery, surgery to fix his windpipe, at least twice in his life, but there's still a great deal of damage and malformation with his windpipe."

"He shouldn't be alive," Audrey whispered, eyes wide with horror. "How can he still be alive?"

"It appears he has some minor form of immortality. His body seems to adapt to any issues that put his life at risk. I noticed in the scans that he has scar tissue across his intestines, right under the scar across his stomach. An injury like this should not have been able to heal and should have required removal and a great deal of medical intervention, but his body was able to heal the damage and restore function. Scans of his brain, stomach, heart, liver, and spinal cord reveal similar scars and similar healing. If I had to guess, I would say the tissue in his lungs has mutated to function despite the damage. The real question is why this ability suddenly stopped." The Isle kids shared a minute, knowing look. "I hope to speak to someone who knows more about his medical history."

"Hades should know," Claudine whispered. "He's been taking care of Riah for Riah's entire life. He knows everything there is to know about Riah's medical issues and he'll probably be at the hospital."

"Fantastic." McCoy looked almost like a child at Christmas.

"We're bringing his dog back with us," Aurora said. Ben looked at her, puzzled. Since when did Riah have a dog? And why did they need to bring a dog with them to Auradon? "He has a service dog, Lydia, and he wasn't allowed to bring her with him. He needs her."

"She does a lot," Claudine added. "She helps him get around, grabs stuff for him, keeps him from falling or helps him get up after a fall, opens and closes stuff, wakes him up from nightmares, alerts for his panic attacks, meltdowns, shutdowns, flashbacks, and dissociation, and she helps him feel safe. She can even alert them to his seizures before he has one, sometimes an hour before they happen. I've seen how much she helps him. She's as important to him as his cane, maybe more."

"If she's so important, why wasn't he allowed to bring her?" He'd never said anything about the Isle kids not being allowed to bring pets, and he'd certainly never forbidden service dogs. If Riah had a service dog, he should have been allowed to bring her with him. And why hadn't he been told about this? At the very least he should have been made aware that Riah had an essential service dog he'd been forced to leave on the Isle.

"She's a Tibetan mastiff." A what? "According to Hades, her breed qualifies as giant, like a Newfoundland or Great Dane. She's heavier than Riah by around twenty pounds and when she stands on her hind legs, she can put her front paws on her shoulders. She looks like some kind of lion, too, or a bear. She's just a massive dog, and I guess they thought that her size made her dangerous." Claudine gave him a pleading look. "But she's not. She's so gentle, she doesn't have a mean bone in her body. She's not friendly, yeah, but she's not aggressive. I swear, she won't put anyone in danger. If anything, she'll keep bad situations from happening."

"If he needs her, I don't see why he shouldn't be allowed to have her. I had no idea he had a service dog that he wasn't allowed to bring with him." Maybe not having his dog would explain why Riah seemed to have gone downhill so fast in Auradon. He was the only one of the Isle kids who had lost weight, and he'd lost a lot- maybe the dog reminded him to eat, or helped relieve stress so he could eat? If she kept him from falling, his leg probably wouldn't be as bad as it looked. Maybe she could have calmed him down before he snapped under his anger or anxiety. Maybe a lot of his anxiety was from not having his dog- not having the comfort, not having an early warning for seizures, not having something that could remind him to listen to his emotions and take care of himself- it would make a lot of sense. He couldn't believe this had never been brought to his attention. "Do any of you have service animals you left behind? We can collect them while we're here."

Mal shook her head. "But I know I've got some stuff I left at home, and I know the others probably do. Would it be okay if we went home and grabbed some things we forgot?"

"Absolutely. Just don't bring any weapons." He felt stupid saying it. The Isle kids might have been rough, but they weren't dangerous. They weren't going to bring weapons into the school.

Jay snorted into his hand and Evie bit her lip to keep from laughing. Mal elbowed both of them, but it was clear she was trying not to laugh. "No problem."

With those plans made, Ben looked back at Riah, still unconscious in the gurney that had fit perfectly into the X-Van. He was so thin, far thinner than he'd been when he first came to Auradon, and covered in black bruises. It was hard to believe he'd been in Auradon for two months. While the other five had healed up and gained weight, he'd lost weight and gotten injury after injury. "Has he been eating?"

"He eats more than any of us," Jay frowned. "Sometimes I think he eats more than all of us put together. I don't get how he lost so much weight."

"Maybe we should ask Mara." Who was Mara and where did she come into this? Seeing Ben's confusion, Mal went on. "She's his biological sister, around a year older than him, and they look like they could be twins. If anyone knows how Riah managed to lose this much weight, it's her. Maybe she'll even know how to help him get back to normal... Well, normal for his weird ass. She'll be the one he's getting lungs from, so she should be there."

"His sister is really going to die for him?" That was a very impressive amount of sibling dedication, but God... How could they talk about that like it was no big deal? How were they supposed to talk to this girl knowing she was going to die so that Riah could live?

"What?" Mal gave him a strange look, then seemed to understand. "Oh- Mara's immortal. She sold her soul to the woman you saw earlier because Mara needs to be immortal for now. She'll just regenerate her lungs and she'll be fine."

"There isn't any magic on the Isle." If there was no magic, how could anyone sell their soul to anyone? How could they become magically immortal and get to magically regenerate without magic?

"There's names," Mal explained. "If I were to ask someone to give me their name- never have, by the way, except in emergencies when someone won't be able to live unless I do it, and I always free them the second they aren't in danger- and they were to say their full name, I would own their soul. It's a rare practice, but people do it. Some people use it in very bad ways, but some people, like the person from earlier, use it to help people. Mara's currently the only thing keeping some of the adults in check, so she sold her soul to M- that person from earlier, because she needs to be immortal for everyone's sake. For what it's worth, she's has never forced any of the people who've sold their souls to her to do anything they don't want to do. Actually, I know at least two of them are freed from their contract if she tries to order them to do something they don't want to do."

Back to the mystery woman from earlier. Even the memory of her made Ben feel small. He could still feel her bright turquoise eyes piercing his soul, seeing every wrong he'd ever done. She had obviously been a lot older than all of them, twenty-one at the minimum, but he couldn't tell which villain she was. Of course, he hadn't been able to identify anything about her. If not for the Isle kids, he wouldn't have even known she was a woman. "Who is that woman? How do you know her?"

"Don't call her a woman. She's fine with she/her pronouns but she prefers titles for a guy or gender-neutral- so she'd be a man, not a woman." That didn't make any sense to him but he wasn't going to police how someone identified. Okay, M was a guy... ish? "As for who she is, she's..." Mal shook her head. "If she said we can't tell you who she is, we won't. When that one gets involved, she's in charge. When she gives us an order, we listen. We know her as Destiny, basically." Destiny as in Destiny of the Endless? The oldest of them, with a chronicle of all time chained to his arm? The most powerful being on the planet? "She's not, obviously, but we treat her like she is. She knows everything, knows what'll happen if something else happens. She has a really good intuition, or some kind of magical schooling, and we listen because she's never been wrong. And she rarely gets involved. Usually, she stays on her part of the Isle, doesn't interact with anyone outside of her gang. When she gets involved, it means something extinction-level needs stopped, and she knows how to stop it. If something is bad enough that she gets involved, we listen to her because she never gets involved."

"She's the Pope of the Isle," Claudine said. "She doesn't give orders often but when she does, her word is absolute law."

"How is she going to get us onto the Isle?" Ben felt like he was trying to put together a billion-piece puzzle with no edges and no picture. He wasn't going to let himself dwell on anything, just learn what he could so that he could figure out the bigger picture.

Mal shrugged. "No idea. But if she said she's going to get us onto the Isle, I believe her."

Ben glanced out the window, at the wide expanse of blue ocean, then at Riah.

Whatever happened, he hoped it happened fast.

#chapter 7 #descendants #descendants au #isle of darkness #original character #descendants oc #swearing

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tomdarryecs · 1 year

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I need more break up klaine fics where Blaine was the successful one, and not the mess with prostitution and drugs addiction or depression.

As much I love Blangst and I know his character is more open to navigate this kind of things for his poor backstory and the difficult relationship with his parents and his poor support system(besides Kurt and his family and friends).I think I need more fics where show Blaine resilience because despite having a homophobic family and attack an a young age, he survived and he knew how to be Kurt's mentor and support and I think everyone forget about it.

So he could survive a break up with Kurt anyway, the break up s.6 show us how he could survive without Kurt and despite all the sadness he could be a great teacher to the warblers and rebuild his life.

So more succesful Blaine stories please, a devoted reader beg to all of you

#blaine anderson #kurt hummel #klaine #klaine fanfiction #glee fanfiction #fanfic readers #fanfic writers

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homomenhommes · 7 months

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THIS DAY IN GAY HISTORY

based on: The White Crane Institute's 'Gay Wisdom', Gay Birthdays, Gay For Today, Famous GLBT, glbt-Gay Encylopedia, Today in Gay History, Wikipedia, and more …

1874 – Adolf Brand (d.1945) was a German writer, individualist anarchist and pioneering campaigner for the acceptance of male bisexuality and homosexuality.

Born in Berlin in 1874, Brand became a school teacher briefly before establishing a publishing firm and producing a German homosexual periodical, Der Eigene (The Own) in 1896. This was the first ongoing homosexual publication in the world, and ran until 1931. The name was taken from writings of egoist philosopher Max Stirner, who had greatly influenced the young Brand, and refers to Stirner's concept of "self-ownership" of the individual. Der Eigene concentrated on cultural and scholarly material, and may have had an average of around 1500 subscribers per issue during its lifetime, although the exact numbers are uncertain. Contributors included Erich Mühsam, Kurt Hiller, John Henry Mackay (under the pseudonym Sagitta) and artists Wilhelm von Gloeden, Fidus and Sascha Schneider. Brand contributed many poems and articles himself. Brand's writings, together with those of other contributors to Der Eigene, aimed at a revival of Greek pederasty as a cultural model for modern homosexuality.

Brand became involved in Magnus Hirschfeld's Scientific-Humanitarian Committee (the first public homosexual rights organization), until there was a split in 1903; that same year Brand led the formation of the Gemeinschaft der Eigenen organisation with the scientist Benedict Friedlaender as principal theorist, and Wilhelm Jansen. To this new group, male-male love, in particular that of an older man for a youth, was viewed as a simple aspect of virile manliness available to all men; they rejected the medical theories of doctors such as Magnus Hirschfeld who found that a gay man was a certain type of person, the intermediate sex.

The GdE was a sort of scouting movement that echoed the warrior creed of Sparta and the ideals of pederasty in Ancient Greece. The GdE was heavily involved with camping and trekking and occasionally practiced nudism - the latter then common as part of the Nacktkultur ('culture of nudity') sweeping Germany.

Long before the advent of the term, Brand was a proponent of "outing" politicians who publicly proclaimed anti-gay positions while privately practicing homosexuality. In 1904, he claimed in print that Friedrich Dasbach, a Center Party Reichstag delegate, consorted with male prostitutes. Dasbach threatened to sue Brand for libel, but they reached an out-of-court settlement. In 1907, Brand claimed in print that German chancellor Prince von Bülow (1849-1929) had a long-standing homosexual relationship with Privy Councilor Max Scheefer. This time Brand was brought to court on libel charges and was sentenced to eighteen months in prison.

Brand was also sentenced to two months in prison in 1905 for publishing allegedly "lewd writings" in Der Eigene. During World War I Brand and the GdE curtailed their activities for the duration; Brand served in the German army for two years and married a nurse, Elise Behrendt. After the war the enforcement of Paragraph 175 slowly declined.

The GdE and other groups formed a united 'action committee' with Magnus Hirschfeld's group, to formulate a new law. In 1925 more groups joined and the larger Cartel for Reform of the Law against Sexual Offenses was formed. Despite a new law being drafted, it was not voted on, and by 1929 there was no further chance to reform Paragraph 175.

Adolf Brand gave up homosexual activism in the early 1930s, after constant harassment from the Nazis who silenced Der Eigene, destroyed his life's work and left him in financial ruin. After the sacking and burning of the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft, he finally sent a public letter to his followers announcing the end of the movement.

He and his wife were killed by an Allied bomb on 2 February 1945. He was 70.

1906 – Albrecht Becker (d.2002) was a production designer, photographer, and actor, who was imprisoned by the Nazi regime for the charge of homosexuality.

Born in Thale, Germany, he trained as a teacher. At eighteen he began a relationship with an older man that lasted ten years. He was an actor and production designer. His partner was the Director of the State Archive in Würzburg. Through this contact he met an array of influential and artistic people. He traveled around the world and developed a lsense of culture and sophistication.

He devoted himself completely to photography. While living in Freiburg and Vienna he showed his first exhibitions and earned his first commissions. He supplemented his income by providing photographs for newspapers and magazines.

Würzburg is a small town in the southern state of Bavaria. Living in Würzburg in the 1930s was a Jewish wine merchant by the name of Dr. Leopold Obermayer. Obermayer apparently complained to the local police department that his mail was being opened. The complaint was investigated by the Gestapo, who took the liberty to search Obermayer's home and discovered a number of photographs of young men in his safe. One of these photographs was of Albrecht Becker. Becker was brought in for questioning in 1935 on suspicion of violating Paragraph 175. Becker reportedly declared: "Everybody knows I'm a homosexual." Both Obermayer and Becker were put on trial. Becker was sentenced to three years in prison at Nürnberg. Obermayer was also convicted of violating Paragraph 175, but as a Jew was sent to Dachau. He was tortured there and sent to Mauthausen, where he died.

Towards the end of the war as the need to replace losses increased Becker was released in order to serve in the Wehrmacht. He served on the Russian front until 1944. Becker spoke of his experiences during the war in the 2000 documentary Paragraph 175.

1908 – (Joseph Raymond) Joe McCarthy (d.1957) was an American politician who served as a Republican U.S. Senator from the state of Wisconsin from 1947 until his death in 1957. Beginning in 1950, McCarthy became the most visible public face of a period in which Cold War tensions fueled fears of widespread Communist subversion. He was noted for making claims that there were large numbers of Communists and Soviet spies and sympathizers inside the United States federal government and elsewhere. Homosexuals were particularly suspect of Communistic leanings.

McCarthy made accusations of Communist infiltration into the State Department, the administration of President Harry S. Truman, Voice of America, and the United States Army. He also used charges of communism, communist sympathies, or disloyalty to attack a number of politicians and other individuals inside and outside of government. Thousands of careers and lives were destroyed by his wild accusations

For a time, he was one of the most feared - and hated - men in America.

With the highly publicized Army-McCarthy hearings of 1954, McCarthy's support and popularity began to fade. On December 2, 1954, the Senate voted to censure Senator McCarthy by a vote of 67 to 22, making him one of the few senators ever to be disciplined in this fashion. McCarthy died in Bethesda Naval Hospital on May 2, 1957, at the age of 48. The official cause of death was acute hepatitis; it is widely accepted that this was exacerbated by alcoholism. There is no substance to the rumor the he, himself, was homosexual.

The term McCarthyism, coined in 1950 in reference to McCarthy's practices of demagoguery, baseless defamation, and mudslinging, was soon applied to similar anti-communist activities. Today the term is used more generally in reference to demagogic, reckless, and unsubstantiated accusations, as well as public attacks on the character and/or patriotism of political opponents.

Stefano Gabbana (front) & Domenico Dolce

1962 – Born: Stefano Gabbana, co-founder of the Dolce and Gabbana fashion house, known for their sexy, glamorous women's clothing and sharp men's tailoring, all of which embody a distinctively southern Italian feel. Domenico Dolce's native island of Sicily, a place Gabbana had fallen in love with on holiday, became the bond between the two when they met in the early 1980s, when they worked for the same design studio in Milan.

Stefano Gabbana was born in Milan on November 14, 1962. Initially he went to art school to study graphics but soon transferred to fashion. In 1982 the two men left the design company where they were working when they met to pursue separate consulting careers, but they continued to share an office as well as a private life. After eighteen months, they decided to join forces and the Dolce & Gabbana label was born.

For some 19 years, Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana were partners in life as well as in business. Their personal relationship, which commenced soon after their meeting in the early 1980s, was well documented and they spoke freely about their home life as well as their business partnership in interviews.

Their clothes for men mix the same key elements of sexiness and traditional detail as do their womenswear collections. Just as they put women in "men's clothes," so they mix traditionally masculine elements such as the white singlet (much loved and worn by gay men in the summer of 1995) and pin-striped suits with overtly feminine designs in bright colors.

"It has nothing to do with sexuality or being gay," Dolce told The Guardian Weekend magazine, "It's just that we all have this side ... It's today's society that has made men and women so different. It's good to search inside and discover this small part of the other sex which is inside you."

Dolce & Gabbana's clothes are worn by a whole host of celebrities: Tom Cruise, Brian Ferry, Brad Pitt, Bruce Willis, Isabella Rossellini, Demi Moore, and Nicole Kidman, to name but a few. They are known for donating clothes to and designing for stars they like. To those they do not like, they say "there is a shop."

By far their favorite celebrity is Madonna. "We love Madonna, so anything she asks we say yes, because we love the person, the style, the music--everything." Their admiration for Madonna is fully reciprocated. She is a very big fan of the duo, who are known in America as "the Italian designers"; she acknowledged their place in Italian culture when she stated "Now that Fellini, Rossellini, Pasolini and Visconti are gone, all we have is Dolce & Gabbana's neorealistic fashion."

In February 2005 Dolce and Gabbana broke up as lovers. According to Gabbana, they "had been drifting apart for about five years" prior to the split. The two remain friends and are still working together. Both say that they are committed to the ongoing success of their fashion house and that they plan to remain partners in the business even though they are no longer together as a couple.

1978 - Zoltan Voros (variously known as Zoltán Vörös, Zolival Vörös and Zoli Vörös) – is a leading Hungarian bodybuilder and occasionally a model. His regular occupation is security guard. Voros’ trainer is László Mazaga. According to both Polish Wikipedia and also the LGBT blog Fabulous Rainbow Stars, he is homosexual. He’s currently one of a few gay bodybuilders in Europe.

1981 – Russell Tovey is an English actor with numerous television, film and stage credits. Tovey is known for playing the role of werewolf George Sands in the BBC's supernatural drama Being Human which started in 2008. In November 2011, Tovey announced he would be leaving Being Human to work full-time on his BBC Three sitcom, Him & Her. Tovey is also known for his portrayal of the character of Rudge in both the original London and Broadway stage version, and later the film, of The History Boys.

Tovey is gay. He says he came out to himself when he was 15 or 16, and to his parents when he was 18. Tovey and his father had a falling out over Tovey's homosexuality, and his father suggested that, had he known earlier, he would have asked Tovey to take hormones or undergo some other medical treatment to "fix the problem". Tovey says his parents were deeply concerned about the possibility he might contract HIV, which may have contributed to the falling out. The birth of Tovey's nephew in 2005 helped them mend their relationship.

In an interview with The Scotsman, Tovey said,

"The only thing I can give to young gay people is that when I was growing up there were no role models that were blokey, that were men. Everybody was flamboyant and camp, and I remember going, 'That's not me, so even though I think I am gay, I don't think I fit into this world.'"

In 2015, Tovey was the subject of public criticism from the LGBT+ press regarding comments he made about effeminate gay men. In his interview with Tom Lamont of The Observer, the actor stated that his schooling made him feel as though he "had to toughen up", going on to say "If I'd have been able to relax, prance around and sing in the street, I might be a different person now." Much of the criticism centered on what was perceived to be a passive criticism of effeminate gay men, with Tovey saying that "I thank my dad for that, for not allowing me to go down the path." Tovey later apologized for the remarks.

Tovey was reported to be dating rugby coach Steve Brockman from early 2016. They became engaged in February 2018 but separated in June of the same year. They reconciled in August 2019 and, as of 2022, are still together.

Russell Tovey (R) and Steve Brockmann

1986 – Andy Herren is an American part-time adjunct professor of public speaking, most notable for winning the fifteenth season of the American reality television show Big Brother 15 (U.S.) in 2013. He is also the first openly gay winner in the show's history.

Andy won Big Brother 15 by a vote of 7-2 on finale night, only not receiving votes from Aaryn and Judd, becoming the first openly gay houseguest to win Big Brother.

1994 – China determines that same-sex acts are no longer to be considered a "social order" offense.

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kill-worthy · 2 years

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Kinderwhore, Candy Darling, Nancy Spungen, and Courtney Love

What if I told you that the picture above was not of Courtney Love but of Candy Darling, a transgender actress from the sixties? Would you believe me? Well, I hope you do because that is Candy Darling dancing in a VERY Courtney Love fashion.

Who was Candy Darling you ask? She was one of Andy Warhol's Superstars, like Edie Sedgwick. Candy spent a lot of time in Warhol's company both socially and at the Warhol's infamous Factory. The song Take a Walk on the Wild side by Lou Reed was partially written about Candy. The Smiths cover art for Sheila Take a Bow was an image of Candy's face. The song Candy Says by The Velvet Underground was written about her and how she felt betrayed by the gender she was born with.

She was in fact before her time and taken from this world too soon (in 1974).

I like to tell people that it was Candy Darling that invented the "kinderwhore" style of fashion popularized by Courtney Love. In the sixties short dresses were already the modern style. However, Candy wanted to have a more classy and sometimes innocently girly look than what was popular with her peers. Unfortunately (or fortunately), Candy was quiet tall giving her dresses the almost doll-like look that is synonymous with kinderwhore.

I also like to take it one step further and postulate that Courtney Love modeled a lot of her early persona after Candy Darling (and Nancy Spungen but I will get to that in a minute). In the following images you can see pictures of Candy wearing a heart shaped locket.

The icon of a heart was also used predominantly by Courtney Love in much of her early years. I always felt like this was another nod to Candy Darling's look. (Yes, I am aware of the connection of hearts to her surname and Nirvana's Heart Shaped Box.)

What is interesting is that Nancy Spungen also wore a heart shaped locket seen in these photos.

Nancy Spunge was dubbed, "Nauseating Nancy" by the press. She was famous for being Sid Vicious's (from the Sex Pistols) other half. She was also a prostitute and a drug dealer -- and not shy about it. Nancy was known for being blunt, loud, and out of control. Yet, somehow Sid and Nancy were in love. Unfortunately, their romance came to a tragic end.

On October 12, 1978, Nancy was found dead under sink with a stab wound in her hotel. Sid was arrested for her murder. The case never went to court because he soon thereafter overdosed and died.

I can't help seeing Sid and Nancy's demented love story, far too similar to that of Courtney Love's and Kurt Cobain's (from Nirvana). Obviously, they did not have the same narrative or ending. Courtney Love is still alive and kicking. However, their lives had similar chaos and acts of self destructive behavior to Sid and Nancy.

Courtney Love's own love-story ended in gruesome death of Kurt Cobain. But before that, the comparison of her image to the image of Nancy Spungen was lost on no one. Kurt Cobain himself said, "She looked like Nancy Spungen [when he first met Courtney] and I probably could have fucked her that night." And when Courtney Love auditioned for a part in the movie Sid and Nancy she exclaimed, "I am Nancy!"

I find that I have to agree.

In fact, I have always seen the public image of Courtney Love (in the nineties at least) as a weird mashup of Candy Darling and Nancy Spungen. It is as if she idolized these two characters and formed a temporary identity around them. Leaving her core identity untouched. Maybe it is just a coincidence. Maybe not. I just can't help think that Courtney Love took what she needed and came out the other side.

I'll leave you with these two quotes from Courtney Love and let you decide.

"Drag queens taught me how to be a rock star." - Courtney Love

"Nancy was stupid." - Courtney Love

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littlemonstert-blog · 1 year

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Green Arrow Dawn of DC

First issue starts of as generic but I'm kinda intrested

But I can't help to laugh cause everytime this guy get lost on a island no matter what lmao.

I think Green Arrow needs a better Rogue's Gallery because usually he end up with Batman's C-listers villians.

Not really a fan of Green Arrow (Oliver Queen) but there were some cool runs he was in. I think the three times I was ever intrested in him were JLU, Young Justice & Injustice.

I couldn't really care for the main character but side cast I love.

Roy harper ( Red Arrow/Arsenal/Speedy)

But I'm happy for Roy gotten to have his daughter back again. It was amazing journey to see him fight his addiction. Lian Harper is a somewhat new so I need a few more years. Cool to see her work with Catwoman.

Black Canary

I still wonder is it New52/ Rebirth Dinah Drake Lance bc she got it by marriage to Kurt Lance never understood why they made it so confusing. Maybe they went back to Dinah Laruel Lance since the Infinite Frontier/Dark Crisis aka soft reboot happened and that's everyone favorite version she was the one who is the second version of Canary as a metahuman. I'll go with "Laurel" Lance since she the version that knows Roy has a kid. I just hope we explore her side with the JSA & other bonds. Not to be too tied up in Green Arrow lore.

Idk about this knew outfit something feels missing to it.

Connor Hawke

He's okay maybe need to reread his comic runs. Similar to Damian Wayne ( Conner was made first though I'd say Damian is a better character) but difference is, Green Arrow knew about him but was never around aka he was a shitty dad but, I kinda let it go since they reconnected.

Arrowette (Suzanne "Cissie" King-Jones)

She a legacy character her mother Bonnie King was the first Arrowette way way back in old comics "Miss Arrow" a Green arrow fangirl. She never was apart of the Arrow Family. Cissie was just apart of Young Justice & would on/off quit being a hero writers tended to leave her behind. She's pretty intresting hope to see more of her in green arrow. Hopefully she'll be more used in the animated series Young Justice next season. I think this would offically be her first time meeting him in comics.

Speedy (Mia Dearden)

I know bit of a cliche but, Mia is a fun character even if her past is sad. She had a bad childhood and somewhere down the line got Mia her trafficked into a prostitution ring. Mia tested positive for HIV, but still wanted to keep fighting and never gving up the good fight. Hope to see her more they left her behind in the years of comics. Don't know if they still have her with HIV in this countunity. New52 daughter of a crimelord but still she's a good person.

Red Arrow (Emiko Queen)

Another Diamine Wayne but more willing wants to be good. Green Arrow half-sister. I'll be honest I don't care for her. She not all the intresting compared to other characters. I'd say the one time I care for her was in Teen Titans comic runs. Her relationship with Wallace West (Kid Flash) is cute tho.

John Diggle

A character from the arrow show he was pretty cool in there so they added him in the comics.

Red Canary (Sienna)

Not much is known about her but she is a college student a fan of Black canary & took up the Canary mantle when a report said she had died. I have alot riding on her since I like Black Canary to. I also love her design.

the rest in the group picture are anti heroes or villians so there's that.

A character I hope to see: Artemis Crock,I know she's mostly a villian back in somewhat old comics. They added her in New52 ( looks like she was going to switch sides to anit/hero) but it was trash. due to the series Young Justice & Stargirl. I love her character hoping to see her more in the comics with Green Arrow or JSA comics.

#dc comics #green arrow #roy harper #red arrow #black canary #john diggle #red canary #dinah lance #lian harper #emiko queen #speedy #arrowette #hope it's a good run #artemis crock

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klaineccfanficlibrary · 10 months

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Come Alive

Author: delires

Rating: M

Status: Completed in September 2022

Word Count: 34,204

Summary: Newly-wed junior advertising exec Blaine Anderson finds a missing piece to his puzzle in the back room of a Manhattan bar. Mad Men era AU.

Tropes/Genre: historical!Klaine, AU, prostitute!Kurt, Mad Men AU, romance, 1960s

Lynne's review: Excellent. So well written. The imagery of the period is spot on. A wonderful read.

Read at: AO3

#delires #klaine fanfic #klaine fanfiction #Rated M #complete #Word Count: Under 50K #historical!Klaine #AU #prostitute!Kurt #Mad Men AU #romance #Sebastian Smythe #Rachel Berry #Come Alive #August 2023 #1960s

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soincorrectglee · 10 months

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Blaine : Isn’t it weird that we pay money to see other people?

Kurt : Plane tickets?

Tina : Concert tickets?

Sam : Prostitution?

Blaine, holding his broken frames : Glasses.

#glee #gleek #incorrect glee quotes #incorrect quotes #glee club #tina cohen chang #blaine anderson #sam evans #kurt hummel

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thoughtfulfangirling · 1 year

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2023 Reads

A new year means a new book list! I don't think I can top my 2022 count, but that's okay! I'm not totally sure what my reading goals this year will actually be, but I guess I'll sort it out on the way! XD For future reads, here's my 2024 list!

Four Treasures of the Sky - Jenny Tinghui Zhang

Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass - Frederick Douglass+

The Bear and the Nightengale - of the Winternight Trilogy by Katherine Arden

The Secrets We Keep - Mia Hayes

Indian Nations of Wisconsin: Histories of Endurance and Renewal - Patty Loew+

The First Sister - Linden A. Lewis^

The House of the Seven Gables - Nathaniel Hawthorne

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian - Sherman Alexie

Fahrenheit 451 - Ray Bradbury~

Fin Mac Cool - Morgan Llewlyn^

How Long 'til Black Future Month by N. K. Jemisin

Lavinia - Ursula K Le Guin^

Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austin*

Black Cowboys of the Old West: True, Sensational, and Littke-Known Stories form History - Tricia Martineau Wagner+

The Mysteries of Thorn Manor - Margaret Roberson%

Disfigured: On Fairy Tales, Disability, and Making Space - Amanda Leduc+

Her Majesty's Royal Coven - Juno Dawson^

She Who Became the Sun~ - Shelley Parker-Chan*

The Witch King - H.E. Edgmon^

Love in the Time of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Legends & Lattes - Travis Baldree*

Mistress of the Art of Death - Ariana Franklin^

The Adventures of Amina El-Serafi - S.A. Chakraborty

Humankind: A Hopeful History - Rutger Bregman+

The Folk Keeper - Frannie Billingsly*%

Believe Me: A Memoir of Love, Death, and Jazz Chickens - (Suzy) Eddie Izzard+

Juniper & Thorn - Ava Reid

Upright Women Wanted - Sarah Gailey%

I Await the Devil's Coming - Mary MacLane+

Slaughterhouse Five - Kurt Vonnegut~

Revolting Prostitutes: The Fight for Sex Workers' Rights - Molly Smith & Juno Mac+

The Woman in White - Wilke Collins^

King of Battle and Blood - Scarlett St. Clair

Sarah - J.T. LeRoy^

The City Beautiful - Aden Polydoros^

Freshwater - Akwaeke Emezi

Always the Almost - Edward Underhill

All Systems Red - Martha Wells%

The Song of Achilles - Madeline Miller

Nevada - Imogen Binnie

A Dowry of Blood - S. T. Gibson

The Prince - Niccolo Machiavelli

The Second Rebel - Linden A Lewis

Get a Life Chloe Brown - Talia Hibbert

The Hero and the Crown* - Robin McKinley

What Happened to You?: Conversations on Trauma, Resilience, and Healing - Bruce D Perry & Oprah Winfrey+^

Can't Spell Treason Without Tea - Rebecca Thorne

The Eye of the Heron - Ursula K Leguin

Artificial Condition -Martha Wells%

The Kraken's Sacrifice - Katee Robert%

Crown Duel - Sherwood Smith*

Rogue Protocol - Martha Wells%

Remarkably Bright Creatures - Shelby Van Pelt

Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents: How to Heal from Distant, Rejecting, or Self Involved Parents - Lindsay C Gibson+

Wildcat: The Untold Story of Pearl Hart, the Wild West's Most Notorious Woman Bandit - John Boessenecker+

The History of Wales - History Nerds+%

Ander & Santi Were Here - Jonny Garza Villa

The Glass Castle - Jeanette Walls^

Rosemary and Rue - Seanan McGuire^

The Gilda Stories - Jewelle Gomez

Irish Fairy and Folk Tails - Various+

The Dead and the Dark - Courtney Gould

Haunted Wisconsin - Michael Norman and Beth Scott+

The Other Black Girl - Zakiya Dalila Harris

The Ruins - Scott Smith

He Who Drowned the World - Shelley Parker-Chan

Fledgling - Octavia Butler

Vampire Forensics: Uncovering the Origins of an Enduring Legend - Mark Collins Jenkins+

The Vampyre - John Polidori%

This is Halloween - James A Moore

Sorrowland - Rivers Soloman

The Lamb will Slaughter the Lion - Margaret Killjoy%

Mexican Gothic - Silvia Moreno-Garcia

Love Her or Lose Her - Tessa Bailey^

One Last Stop - Casey McQuiston*

The Last Hero - Linden A. Lewis

Lovelight Farms - B. K. Borison

Reindeer Falls Collection: Volume One - Jana Aston

Currently reading: One Last Stop (Audiobook to help me sleep XD)

Nonfiction is annotated by + A Re-read is annotated by * A book completed from the list below is annotated by ^ A Read with Empty will be annotated by ~ A Novella %

My current, loose and not that interesting goal for this year is to really work on the books I have current access to right now... at the start of this year. Because it's a lot XD This means books currently favorite in Scribd, on my StoryGraph 'to read' pile, or a book I currently own on my shelves. Main goal is at least one of these a month.

For my own personal reference, I'm putting a list of such books below to hold myself accountable.

Edit: Now the end of 2023, and here's a breakdown of my goal to read books I already had access to at the start of 2023:

I didn't read one a month per se, but I got more than 12 done, so I call this a win. These books are:

-Can't Spell Treason Without Tea - Rebecca Thorn -The City Beautiful - Aden Polydoros -Finn Mac Cool - Morgan Llewlyn -The First Sister by Linden A Lewis (proceeded by the other two in the series) -Get a Life, Chloe Brown - Talia Hibbert -The Glass Castle - Jeannette Walls -Haunted Wisconsin - Michael Norman & Beth Scott -Her Majesty's Royal Coven - Juno Dawson -I Await the Devil's Coming - Mary McClane -The Kraken's Sacrifice - Katee Robert -Lavinia - Ursula K Le Guin -Love Her or Lose Her - Tessa Bailey -Mistress of the Art of Death - Ariana Franklin -Nevada - Imogen Binnie -The Prince - Niccolo Machiavelli -Rosemary and Rue - Seanan McGuire -The Ruins - Scott Smith -The Song of Achilles - Madeline Miller -Sarah - J.T. LeRoy -Vampire Forensics - Mark Collins Jenkins -What Happened to You? - Oprah Winfrey -The Witch King - H. E. Edgmon -The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins

The books I did not get around to reading from this list are as follows: Black Water Sister by Zen Cho; Blood Scion by Deborah Falaye (o); The Book of M by Peng Shepard (o); Charity and Sylvia by Rachel Hope Cleves (o); The Cruel Prince by Holly Black (a); The Echo Wife by Sarah Gailey (s); Fallen by Lauren Kate (o); Fanny Hill by John Cleland (o); Felix Ever After by Kacen Callender (s); The Glass Woman by Caroline Lea (s); The Great Hunger by Cecil Woodham-Smith (o); Helping Her Get Free by Susan Brewster (o); The Impossible Girl by Lydia Kang (s); Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold (o); The Merry Spinster by Daniel Lavery (o); On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong (o); The Poppy War by R. F. Kuang (s); Radiance by Grace Draven (a); Watching the Tree by Adeline Yen Mah (o); The Willows by Algernon Blackwood (s); Wings of Fire (o); Witches Steeped in Gold by Clannon Smart (o); The Wolf and the Woodsman by Ava Reid (s)

23/46 Whoa! That's exactly 50% of the books I had on my list! That's pretty cool! All in all, I consider this 2023 goal successfully done!

#tf reads #2023 reads #books #yearly lists #long post #well it will be ok even without the readmore eventually #reading #my reading index

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grinchwrapsupreme · 1 year

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There's a song used in the movie The World's End, final instalment of the Cornetto Trilogy, called Alabama Song (or sometimes Moon of Alabama) as performed by the band The Doors in 1967 and it kills me I have no excuse ever to tell people it's a cover of a song from a 1930's opera called The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny about a city built in the desert for the express purpose of gambling and prostitution and the subsequent arrest and trial of one of their patrons, and was composed by Kurt Weill and written by playwright Bertolt Brecht, a German playwright who wrote a lot of crazy shit and who theatre students almost universally cannot stand

#the worlds end #the cornetto trilogy #bertolt brecht #i'm watching the movie rn which is my only excuse to talk about it #also i know this because i ran lights for a production of mahagonny in school #and that particular song was great #no one understood the plot except us because we had to watch it so many times lmao

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isleofdarkness · 11 months

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Black Magick ch7 p1/3

Warnings- (implied/referenced- rape/noncon, CSA and CSE, cult abuse, forced prostitution, childhood prostitution, religious abuse,) PTSD and trauma, medical issues, character is going to die (or at least thinks he will,) internalized ableism, broken bones (severely,) near-death experiences, tell me if I need to add more.

Sultana Jasmine was pacing.

That was what struck Li Shang first. Before he even noticed the books stacked on the table or the pale, drawn look on Aladdin's face, he noticed that Jasmine, eternally-unshakeable Jasmine, was pacing.

Whatever they had been summoned for, it was going to be bad.

Jasmine spotted them and stopped, hijab swinging as she whipped to face them. "Welcome to Jahannam! Please, don't linger in the doorway, come in and suffer with the rest of us!"

Ancestors protect them.

"What's going on?" He asked, stepping further into the room. There were a few murmurs of assent- clearly everyone else was just as confused as he was.

Jasmine gestured sharply to the beaten books on the table. "The Isle kids snuck these across the barrier and had Jabari deliver them to us. These books are all about the Isle." She grabbed one and tossed it to Mulan, then one to him. "Shan Sarangerel, daughter of Shan Yu, and a written record of Shan Yu's efforts to keep the Isle alive with one bottle of medicine a year." She tossed one to Heracles. "That one's all about the suffering of Hades. I would advise you not read it on a full stomach." She tossed a massive book to Naveen. "That's about the efforts by Doctor Facilier to help the children of the Isle." One to Kida. "Would you like to read about Rick, the son of Helga? He's a lot like Kaldur. And this-" She threw one to Anna, "Is about a little girl named Anna, daughter of Hans. Don't read it on a full stomach. The good done by Madonna Tremaine-" she tossed one to Ella, "The life of Anthony Tremaine II," to Anthony, "The life of Mal," to Aurora, "And our dear Claudine," to Esmeralda. "And more! Any requests?"

None of them had the nerve to answer.

None of them left.

"Thank you."

Two weeks later, Riah started the worst day of his year by falling down the stairs.

And he had class.

He knew he was going to fall. It was just a matter of how bad the fall would be. He'd hoped his arm and leg could at least hold out to the middle of the staircase.

They didn't. Not even two steps down, his bad leg collapsed. His bad left arm, his cane arm, folded when he put too much weight on it.

He went down.

Of course, that had been a routine for a simpler time, when he didn't have two very snappable bones coming out of his skull.

His horns were the first crack he heard. But they weren't the last.

Horns hand fingers leg skull-

He wasn't sure who screamed when he fell. He was pretty sure it wasn't him.

Spine leg leg hands-

He hit the ground hard enough to wind him and slammed into one of the heavy, cushy chairs. His head cracked back against the side table and he saw stars, going limp.

When he blinked the darkness from his vision, his first instinct was to scream. His second was to start swearing. He managed to refrain from both. He still had shocked scared tears in his eyes when he looked up to see his friends racing down the stairs. And he could feel the eyes of every Auradon kid in the stupid building staring at him. Fucking fantastic. They were all going to see him as weak and helpless just because of a bad day, his friends were going to see him as weak and helpless because of a bad day, Jay and maybe even Ben were going to see him as fucking weak and helpless and he had to show that he wasn't-

Refusing to show weakness, he forced himself to his feet, putting weight on his bad and now-broken left leg in absence of his cane. The smile he gave his concerned friends definitely looked more like a snarl or a grimace, but he didn't care. "Fucking... just tell Fairy Godbitch I'll be late to class. I'm gonna see the nurse cause I just broke my leg in three places. Where's my cane?"

"How'd the ground taste?" Jay joked on what had to be reflex, holding Riah's cane out to him before withdrawing. Riah saw red. "Wait, you shouldn't-"

The Auradon kids practically dove out of his way. He stormed past them.

Just to prove his point, he forced himself to walk without his cane. The rage gave him enough fuel to walk sort-of normally, but the fading adrenaline meant that he felt every. Single. Step.

There was no way in hell he was letting anyone see him like this after what had just happened. Fuck it. If Fairy Godbitch wanted to throw him out of school she could. He wasn't getting across campus without it but he sure as shit wasn't going to let anyone see it, so he had to. He whispered a spell, calling on magick from his grandmother, to make himself invisible to those he didn't want to see him. Once he was sure that was done, he pulled the flattened plastic mask out of his shirt, fixed the metal edges over his mouth and nose, and pulled the elastic bands over his head to fix it to his face. He didn't bother to lift up his shirt to see the buttons on the machine hidden at his side, just flipped the power switch and sighed in relief as the oxygen concentrator started working.

Fucking sixteenth birthday. Bitchass spell couldn't even wait two days to kill him.

Claudine was a lot stronger than Mal thought. When she and Jay started after Riah, Claudine held them both back without effort. "Don't. You'll only make it worse."

"What are you talking about?" Riah had fallen down the stairs and was walking on a broken leg without his cane. How could they possibly make that any worse?

"If he needs help," Mal argued, "Why's it so bad to try and help him?"

"Because none of you know how to ask and none of you ask anyway," Claudine explained patiently. "If you want to help Riah, you've got to ask if you can help him, not if he needs help. And if he says no, you have to respect that. Riah really tries to be independent, he hates when people assume or act like he can't do something. It makes him feel as though people see him as less than and when you do that, he goes overboard to prove you wrong. I've seen him scale a brick wall using just his hands to prove that he could get up the stairs and I know Hades has seen him do a great deal more. Riah is very capable of a lot of stuff and he's usually really good about sticking to his limits, but he'll push himself too hard if he thinks people are going to think less of him for what he can't do. Riah was probably extremely embarrassed about falling down the stairs in front of everyone and I probably didn't help by screaming and drawing attention. What he needed us to do was act as though someone like Jay had just tripped. When he falls down the stairs, unless he's saying something is wrong, it's best to make a joke like Jay did and move on. You give him his cane and if he puts his hand out, you help him to his feet like it's no big deal. Don't even put your hand out to help him. I know you meant well and you just didn't know, so I'm telling you guys now so that this doesn't happen again." Huh. Claudine could definitely be a nurse. "Never, ever, try to take his cane away. That would be like taking Agony's arm or leg-" There was a collective wince. They'd all seen what happened when someone did that and how severely upset Agony had been. "Because that is like Riah's arm or leg. Plus, he can walk without it. He can run without it. And he will. Believe me, I've seen him do both and the aftermath of both is never pretty. If he doesn't have his cane he will hurt himself. He'll walk and run on that leg and if the bone breaks the wrong way it's an emergency trip to the hospital and several blood transfusions from the three people he can receive blood from and who aren't in Auradon."

"His curse." His fucking what? "Riah has a curse trying to crush his lungs, he's had it for his entire life. He wears an amulet to keep it from killing him, that blue stone he doesn't take off, but..." Claudine gave Mal a nervous look. "It was cast by Maleficent and you know how her curses are. They kill at the sixteenth birthday. And Riah's sixteenth birthday is in two days."

"He thought he could handle it and I thought he could, too. Mal, Riah wasn't cursed to die when he turns sixteen, he was cursed to die before he turned thirteen. He's lived with a spell trying to kill him for three years. He thought, with the magic he would have access to here, he would be able to keep fighting it. But..." Tears started to glitter in Claudine's eyes. Claudine never cried. "He can't. He only has so much left to use and once it's gone, he's going to die. But he won't take more. He can't. He would rather die."

"Take what?" She needed someone to draw a diagram so she could keep track of the punches. Riah was going to die in two days. Great.

"Life." What?! "I don't know how it works. Riah drained the life energy, the souls, out of four people almost fourteen years ago. That's how he's stayed alive. With that abundance of life magick he's been able to extend his own life. But it's been so long, he's running out, and he can't get more."

"Can't he just drain someone else?"

They had to try.

Thank God Doctor McCoy had been visiting. If he hadn't been, Julieta was almost certain the Isle boy would have died.

"Charles!" The voice on the other end shouted, accent thick even in one syllable. "Tell him what you know, I vill be there in two seconds."

"Slow down," the man ordered gently. "What do you know about the curse?"

"It crushes his lungs. He has an amulet to create a barrier between his lungs and the spell but the amulet doesn't always work. He wouldn't say much about it."

"So the spell is a physical thing?"

"The way he explained it, yes." She really knew nothing about this kind of magic. The Encanto was a blessing, a miracle, not a curse. She didn't know anything about curses.

"They'll be there in one-" there was a strange sound as three people appeared in a puff of smoke. "Moment."

The younger of the two women, a Latina woman with brown locs pulled back in a bun, knelt next to Riah and put her fingers to his neck. "No pulse." She pulled the shirt and binder off the rest of the way, making access easier. "McCoy, move on three. One, two, three-" McCoy jerked back and she quickly got his clothes off and pulled the strap for his strange oxygen machine over his head. "Resume." McCoy went back to chest compressions as she tore the corners from the wax paper covers on the electrodes and poured a clear gel into her hand. "McCoy. One, two, three." He moved back again and she quickly applied the gel across Riah's chest, then applied the five electrodes. "Resume."

The woman with red hair put her fingers to her temple, brow wrinkling. "I can't move it much, but I've given him maybe an inch of room. There's something really wrong with the shape of his lungs. I've never seen anything like it. It looks like some kind of ILD, but I can't find an exact diagnosis."

McCoy frowned. "We'll have to do an imaging scan." He didn't say it, but the way the atmosphere was quickly turning grim told Julieta how dangerous the situation was becoming.

After a beat of horrified silence, Cecilia nodded. "Do that. Hopefully we'll have good news to send to his parents."

How had none of them noticed? That one question played on repeat in Jay's head as everything kept getting worse and worse.

What else is he hiding?

What if he dies?

The second he saw Riah, that growing hope died.

How the hell had he gotten so bad without any of them noticing?

He knew Riah was thin, they all were, but the lack of jacket and long pants let him see that Riah was skeletal. He had some muscle, sure, but it was all flat and dense and right underneath the skin, as though he didn't have even the thinnest layer of fat. His skin was clinging to his muscles and bones. What Jay had thought were just high cheekbones and a sharp jawline suddenly became evidence of severe starvation- how had this guy managed to get out of bed, let alone walk the quarter-mile to the nurse's office? He had picked Riah up, how had he not noticed the guy being a bag of bones? How could Riah, who easily ate more than any of them, be so skinny?

The paper gown revealed just how bad his leg was. He'd known the bone was curved, but thick jeans had hidden the worst of it. The skin on his left thigh was bumpy, as though the bone had healed in spikes under it. His leg wasn't merely bruised, it was almost entirely painted in shades of black and blue. Bruises painted his thigh entirely in patterns that meant breaks, and most of those bruises were old. His knee was bent in a slightly weird way, as though the lower part of the joint had turned a bit, and the swelling and bruising showed both dislocation and breaks. There was even a slight but definitely unnatural indent to his calf, with bruising that looked like it had broken a few weeks ago- the entire leg was an emergency on its own. How had Riah been able to put any weight on that leg, let alone walk on it without his cane?

Claudine wasn't surprised. She darted to Riah's side as the rest of them paused, squeezing his limp hand. "How bad is it?"

No.

Claudine jolted, face going hard. "There is. We need to get him to the Isle. Right. Now."

"What're you talking about?" Mal asked. Was it something about letting Riah die with his family?

The pure white skin, curly black hair, and glowing red eyes.

Holy shit.

"He's Matilda Mim," Evie whispered. Matilda Mim the third was a bit of an urban legend on the Isle. The secondborn kid of the Horned King and Madam Mim, born three months premature, cursed, left to die at only a few hours old. Legend was that Matilda had actually survived and was still alive-

"Don't call him that," Claudine corrected. "His name is Riah. But yes, he was."

Holy shit!

"We're wasting time," she continued. "The longer we wait, the more damage is done. If we get him there within the next hour he might be able to survive long enough for the transplant-"

"What's going on?"

Jay's.

Heart.

Stopped.

"We're taking Riah to the Isle to save his life," Claudine said, squaring her shoulders and giving him a look as if daring him to argue. "And we're taking him there right now."

"You'd better believe they are."

As if this couldn't get anymore confusing-

The woman who stepped out of the shadows was Isle, it was obvious even if Jay hadn't known who she was. The scars on her skin and across her face- he could match so many of her features to Riah's- the tattoos painting her arms, her light turquoise hair, buzzed at the back and sides but long at the top in a way no one on Auradon used, her black armour-

Maverick fucking Mim.

"The Blackbird can get there faster," some bald guy in a wheelchair said.

Maverick shook her head. "Not gonna work. Number one, the hospital is underground-"

"Since when?" Mal sounded frazzled. Well, it was nice to see he wasn't the only one who had no clue what was going on.

"Who are you?" Ben managed.

That was why Mal was the leader. She had a gift for keeping her head in even the worst situations.

"Who was that?" Ben asked, struggling to sound composed. The poor guy looked as confused as Jay felt.

"That," Mal gestured at the shadow Maverick had vanished into, "Was our sign that the world is going to end and a way to keep it from ending. On the Isle, she gives the orders. If she orders you to jump, no matter what gang you're part of, you say 'how high?' If she's saying we need to get Riah to the Isle, we're getting Riah to the fucking Isle. Now let's get moving before he dies."

Ben had no idea what was going on. It turned out that the Isle kids didn't, either.

The entire journey in the X-Van was spent listening to Claudine explain everything. No matter how bad Riah's physical conditions had seemed, they were only the surface of the issues. Riah had been born nearly three months premature. He'd been blind when he was younger and had needed surgeries and different treatments to fix this, but his eyes were still sensitive to light and he struggled with processing visual information. He'd needed multiple organs replaced- his heart, his kidneys, his intestines, and even two vertebrae. He'd had brain surgery when he was three to lessen severe epilepsy, but he was still epileptic and had seizures triggered by stress (which he was on medications for, but still.) His left femur wasn't simply broken, in had been eighty-five percent shattered. Fixing it had been impossible for reasons Ben never got but they all seemed to know. He had chronic pain from dozens of broken bones and this pain was sometimes so severe that he couldn't get out of bed. Today had been one of those days, and Riah had still forced himself out of bed and tried to walk down the stairs.

The only area Claudine didn't know much about was his lungs. That was where Doctor McCoy stepped in.

"Getting an imaging scan was far easier than you think. Equipment for mutants with ice, fire, and electricity abilities worked like a charm. This is why it's important these six see a provider used to working with genetic variants- if this had been detected earlier, we would have been able to act before it was an emergency." So they needed mutant doctors. He would have to see if the Xavier Institute would be willing to treat them moving forward. "Riah's lungs are extremely malformed. If I had to guess, I would say they were the size of an eight-year-old's lungs, and a small eight-year-old at that. Their growth has clearly been severely restricted by the curse. As a result, they've grown into an extremely dysfunctional shape. The walls of his lungs are inconsistent, some parts are far too thick while some parts are as thin as tissue paper. The insides are almost eighty percent scar tissue, I suspect due to the way they've been forced to grow. It appears he's had some sort of laryngotracheal reconstruction surgery, surgery to fix his windpipe, at least twice in his life, but there's still a great deal of damage and malformation with his windpipe."

"He shouldn't be alive," Audrey whispered, eyes wide with horror. "How can he still be alive?"

"It appears he has some minor form of immortality. His body seems to adapt to any issues that put his life at risk. I noticed in the scans that he has scar tissue across his intestines, right under the scar across his stomach. An injury like this should not have been able to heal and should have required removal and a great deal of medical intervention, but his body was able to heal the damage and restore function. Scans of his brain, stomach, heart, liver, and spinal cord reveals similar scars and similar healing. If I had to guess, I would say the tissue in his lungs has mutated to function despite the damage. The real question is why this ability suddenly stopped." The Isle kids shared a minute, knowing look. "I hope to speak to someone who knows more about his medical history."

"Fantastic." McCoy looked almost like a child at Christmas.

"She does a lot," Claudine added. "She helps him get around, grabs stuff for him, keeps him from falling or helps him get up after a fall, opens and closes stuff, wakes his up from nightmares, alerts for his panic attacks, meltdowns, shutdowns, flashbacks, and dissociation, and she helps him feel safe. She can even alert to his seizures before he has one, sometimes an hour before they happen. I've seen how much she helps him. She's as important to him as his cane, maybe more."

"If he needs her, I don't see why he shouldn't be allowed to have her. I had no idea he had a service dog that he wasn't allowed to bring with him." Maybe not having his dog would explain why Riah seemed to have gone downhill so fast in Auradon. He was the only one of the Isle kids who had lost weight, and he'd lost a lot- maybe the dog reminded him to eat, or helped relieve stress so he could eat? If she kept him from falling, his leg probably wouldn't be as bad as it looked. Maybe she could have calmed him down before he snapped under his anger or anxiety. Maybe a lot of his anxiety was from not having his dog- not having the comfort, not having an early warning for seizures, not having something that could remind him to listen to his emotions and take care of himself- it would make a lot of sense. He couldn't believe this had never been bought to his attention. "Do any of you have service animals you left behind? We can collect them while we're here."

Mal shook her head. "But I know I've got some stuff I left at home, and I know the others probably do. Would it be okay if we went home and grabbed some things we forgot?"

"Absolutely. Just don't bring any weapons." He felt stupid saying it. The Isle kids might have been rough, but they weren't dangerous. They clearly weren't going to bring weapons into the school.

Jay snorted into his hand and Evie bit her lip to keep from laughing. Mal elbowed both of them, but it was clear she was trying not to laugh. "No problem."

With those plans made, Ben looked back at Riah, still unconcious in the gourney that had fit perfectly into the X-Van. He was so thin, far thinner than he'd been when he first came to Auradon, and covered in black bruises. It was hard to believe he'd been in Auradon for two months. While the other five had healed up and gained weight, he'd lost weight and gotten injury after injury. "Has he been eating?"

"He eats more than any of us," Jay frowned. "Sometimes I think he eats more than all of us put together. I don't get how he lost so much weight."

"There isn't any magic on the Isle." If there was no magic, how could anyone sell their soul to anyone? How could they become magically immortal and get to magically regenerate without magic?

"There's names," Mal explained. "If I were to ask someone to give me their name- never have, by the way, except in emergencies when someone won't be able to live unless I do it, and I always free them the second they aren't in danger- and they were to say their full name, I would own their soul. It's a rare practice, but people do it. Some people use it in very bad ways, but some people, like the woman from earlier, use it to help people. Mara's currently the only thing keeping some of the adults in check, so she sold her soul to M- that woman, because she needs to be immortal for everyone's sake. For what it's worth, that woman has never forced any of the people who've sold their souls to her to do anything they don't want to do. Actually, I know at least two of them are freed from their contract if she tries to order them to do something they don't want to do."

"She's..." Mal shook her head. "If she said we can't tell you who she is, we won't. When that one gets involved, she's in charge. When she gives us an order, we listen. We know her as Destiny, basically." Destiny as in Destiny of the Endless? The oldest of them, with a chronicle of all time chained to his arm? The most powerful being on the planet? "She's not, obviously, but we treat her like she is. She knows everything, knows what'll happen if something else happens. She has a really good intuition, or some kind of magical schooling, and we listen because she's never been wrong. And she rarely gets involved. Usually she stays on her part of the Isle, doesn't interact with anyone outside of her gang. When she gets involved, it means something extinction-level needs stopped, and she knows how to stop it. If something is bad enough that she gets involved, we listen to her because she never gets involved."

"She's the Pope of the Isle," Claudine said. "She doesn't give orders often but when she does, her word is absolute law."

Mal shrugged. "No idea. But if she said she's going to get us onto the Isle, I believe her."

Ben glanced out the window, at the wide expanse of blue ocean, then at Riah.

Whatever happened, he hoped it happened fast.

#descendants #descendants au #isle of darkness #original character #descendants oc #zachariah darhk #swearing #descendants jay #descendants evie #claudine frollo #descendants mal #mal briar #carlos de vil #descendants ben #maverick mim

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