#seriously though there are American flags everywhere. I see them every day. How did I forget????

[emometalhead]

I've seen so many pictures of Axl wearing American flag outfits today that I saw an actual flag and my first thought was "oh that looks like something Axl wore" not "oh look a flag".

I legit forgot about the flag and I'M AMERICAN.

#yes this is a struggle post #I've just seen so many pics of him in flag outfits today #why am I like this #it took me a couple minutes to realize I was looking at the flag. It wasn't a real flag it was on a puzzle if that improves the situation #axl rose #guns n roses #seriously though there are American flags everywhere. I see them every day. How did I forget???? #ashley overshares

[blessed-but-distressed]

#FindEmmaSwanAFriend

Feeling left behind by her more successful, settled friends, Emma Swan moves to Scotland on a whim. Sure, she’s winning at Instagram, but something is still missing from her new life. Fortunately, her friends back home are on it. #FindEmmaSwanAFriend goes viral. Enter Killian Jones, reluctant columnist, who is on the hunt for his newest subject, and may just have found her. CS AU

also on ff.net and ao3

Tagging: @katie-dub , @wholockgal , @kat2609 , @whovianlunatic, @optomisticgirl, @ladyciaramiggles, @the-lady-of-misthaven, @emmaswanchoosesyou, @ilovemesomekillianjones, @biancaros3, @cigarettes-and-scotch-whisky, @ms-babs-gordon  @ab-normality, @andiirivera, @fangirl-till-it-hurts, @onceuponaprincessworld , @natascha-remi-ronin and whoever else asks me.

A/N: Yep. It’s been forever. And to add insult to injury, this is only Part 1 of 2. But umm... yay content?

***

SOS. My boss is wearing a powdered wig, and a guy in US flag speedos and nothing else just spilled punch down my dress. ES

What's this? A damsel in distress? Sounds like a perfect opportunity for a certain bearded gentleman to swoop in. One with cocktail knowledge and combat experience. Where is dear Rambo tonight? KJ

Don't call him that. And he's in Belfast, doing research. You know, like academics are supposed to do? ES

Ah, yes. Research. I've heard of it. KJ

That's it? No daring rescue plan? We have a code T here. ES

Code T? KJ

T for Transparent. As in, my dress. From being soaked through with punch by that asshole. Am I painting a clear enough picture? ES

I assure you, the image is extremely vivid. You might've led with that. Where is this damnable affair taking place, again? KJ

***

Emma

It wasn't that Emma was ashamed of where she came from. Not exactly. Recent election results aside, she had to acknowledge she hadn't ended up teaching American History by accident. Even when her country frustrated her, you had to admit, it was never boring. It was just...

She'd never been a foreigner before. Not really. A week in Cabo. That time Mary Margaret had forced her to third-wheel on a couple's ski trip to the Laurentians. Because that wasn't awkward at all.

But if she'd thought her American-ness would be a novelty in Scotland, she'd been seriously deluding herself.

Between the onset of summer vacation, the Instagram-worthy architecture and the enduring appeal of Jamie Fraser, there had never been more Americans in Edinburgh than there were at that moment. The Outlander Effect, they were calling it.

And Emma couldn't exactly miss them. They were everywhere, and not just herding en masse down the Royal Mile. On the bus. Crowding into the Jinglin' Geordie on Open Mic Night. Talking group assignments in the Starbucks line. Hell, a lot of her own students came equipped with homegrown accents, her class allowing their studies to mesh seamlessly with the syllabus back home.

Most encounters were pretty jarring. Like listening to your own voice played back on a recording.

Do I really sound like that?

She hoped not.

Did it really take me that long to figure out it isn't pronounced Edin-burg?

No comment.

Do I really have trouble translating common anglicisms?

Only sometimes.

Usually when they came out of the mouth of someone like Will Scarlet, and she couldn't tell if he was using some highly localized Derbyshire dialect, or if he was just fucking with her.

Sure, Killian tried a little too hard to sound like some kind of dashing 17th-century buccaneer most of the time, but at least it was still recognizable as a form of English. With Will though, she could never really be sure.

Still, after nearly a year, she liked to think she had a handle on things. She could order a 'Laphroaig' without completely mangling it, and knew enough to keep an umbrella on her person at all times. And if and when her cravings for American snack foods struck, they were being plenty satisfied by her local Sainsbury's, who kept one shelf fully stocked with all of the Twinkies, Peanut Butter Cups, and Lucky Charms a girl could ever wish for.

So when her Head of Department was looking for volunteers for their annual Fourth of July barbecue, Emma had to admit she did try to get out of it.

It was her own fault, really. It was summer. She should've been sunning it up in the Algarve with the rest of her colleagues, day drinking, and returning her skin tone to a less deathly pallor. Instead, she was the sucker who'd been roped into teaching Summer School classes to a revolving door of international students, who were keen to let some of the school's reputation rub off on them, without the three or four year commitment. Every three weeks a new lot arrived, and Emma's life descended into Groundhog Day as she repeated her lectures anew, reliving the same debates and excuses on a constant loop.

So she only had herself to blame when the department head went looking for warm bodies, that hers was the only one still lingering in the corridors.

"Great!" her boss said, clapping her hands together. "Don't forget to wear something festive!"

Festive.

There was no way this wasn't going to be a disaster.

***

The damsel in distress line might've rankled her, but she had to hand it to the guy, he came through.

Fifteen minutes after she'd barricaded herself in the bathroom after The Fruit Punch Incident she was summoned curbside, arms still determinedly crossed over her chest, to where a black cab sat idling, an incorrigible Englishman leaning against it holding up a leather holdall.

"Does Elsa know you went through her closet?" she asked, eyeing the bag.

"Who do you think paid for the cab?" he grinned.

Emma really needed to send that woman a fruit basket or something. Did people still do that? Send fruit baskets? Elsa would know. She probably went to one of those fancy Swiss finishing schools, where you learned shit like that.

The bag even smelled expensive as Killian handed it over, his eyes dropping for the first time to properly take in her ruined outfit, and lingering.

"Don't even say it," she warned, as he fought to suppress a grin.

She was never wearing a white sundress again. Ever.

"If anyone could pull it off..." he began, but a warning finger cut him off.

The picture of innocence, he raised his hands and stepped away. Which was precisely the moment Emma realized they were not, in fact, alone.

"In a spot of bother, milady?" came the cheerful greeting from the figure still wedged into the backseat of the cab, waving at her.

Robin. Attractive single Dad Robin, with the Oxbridge accent, criminal mastermind father, and good sense to keep his eyes averted.

"What the hell?" Emma hissed under her breath, whacking Killian in the shoulder. "Are we charging admission for my humiliations now?"

"Easy, lass," he said, rubbing the spot where she'd hit him. "I was out with Robin when you texted. I was hardly going to leave him on his own, now was I? Not very good form."

She glanced back to where Robin sat, whistling to himself, then back to Killian. "Oh, so now you're the honorable one?"

"What's this?" he scoffed. "An attack on my character? And after I've orchestrated such a dashing rescue? A fair maiden in distress and I'm on the spot."

The indignation would've been a little easier to swallow if his grin hadn't been quite so… wolfish.

"Yeah, right," Emma said with a roll of her eyes. "Like this isn't making it into your column."

He didn't deny it. He didn't need to. Just offered her a clumsy wink, and motioned to the building before them.

"One good turn deserves another, don't you think?" he suggested, and Emma's stomach dropped. "How does one merit an invitation to an exclusive gathering of expatriates, exactly? Do they check passports at the door? Make you recite the Pledge of Allegiance?"

He held his prosthetic over his heart, and affixed a solemn expression.

"Wrong hand, asshole," she said, grabbing his wrist and tugging his hand back down by his side.

"Probably for the best," Killian shrugged. "I confess I don't actually know the words. Does the School of Rock version count?"

"You seriously want to go up there? You know they're celebrating their independence from the English, right?"

"I'm a journalist, Swan. An arbiter of truth. Would you really deny me the materials I need to make an honest living?"

"You're a hack," Emma grumbled, clutching the bag of clothes to her chest.

"Aye, that I am," Killian agreed, dropping his voice at least an octave. "But a rather dashing one, don't you think?"

So this is how Killian Jones got what he wanted. The ol' razzle dazzle.

It wasn't entirely ineffective. With a huff of annoyance, Emma walked over to lean by the window of the cab. "What do you say, Robin? Want to see my countrymen cut loose and fight about politics?"

He tilted his head, considering her offer. "Do you really put marshmallows in your sweet potatoes?"

"Different holiday. But yeah, we do."

"Alright then," he said, gathering up his belongings where they were strewn across the back seat. "I'll be there presently."

Rapping her knuckles against the side of the cab, she turned back to Killian, who was looking unbearably pleased with himself. Even more than usual.

"Lead the way, lass" he declared, with an exaggerated bow.

"It's a little too late to play at being the gentleman, don't you think?" Emma pointed out.

"Oh?" he asked, his gaze unnervingly direct. "And why is that, Swan?"

If he was trying for intimidation, then he really didn't know Emma well enough. Instead, she simply turned to lead the way back up the stairs to the front stoop, bag swinging by her side. "I'm just saying…" she replied in a sing-song voice. "A gentleman wouldn't have looked."

***

When Emma pictured a Fourth of July barbecue, she pictured hot dogs, hyperactive neighborhood kids with water pistols, and sunshine. The Edinburgh version was something very different.

For one thing, it was not a family affair. For another, she doubted you could even really call it a barbecue, when there was no grill in sight. And unfortunately, for Emma, the party was still in full swing when she returned after her costume change, all of her dreams for a quick getaway evaporating along with the last of the punch.

If anything, the numbers had swelled with a sea of Uncle Sams and Lady Liberties spilling out into the garden, wine glasses in hand. If Emma hadn't already realized the gross pay disparity between educators and administrators, the garden would've really sealed it.

You couldn't swing a Heriot Row townhouse on Emma's salary. Hell, you couldn't even swing a Heriot Row parking space on Emma's salary. Yet somehow, the university muckety-muck who'd been bullied into hosting this little soiree didn't seem to have that problem.

At least the booze was free.

Emma looked longingly over at the refreshments table, but gave it a wide berth. The last thing she needed to do was ruin her borrowed sweater. It was a little on the tight side, but she did appreciate its fuzzy warmth. Even as she wondered if Killian had purposefully picked out the preppiest sweater he could find, or if she was just cursed.

"Hey," came a call from her left. It was a guy in a Captain America outfit, with none of Chris Evan's dimensions. "Ivanka, right?"

Emma looked down at herself, wondering if that was the name of the designer. "I'm sorry?"

"You're dressed as Ivanka Trump, right? Nice."

He was gone before she could deny it, and she glanced back to the gilded mirror in the hallway in alarm. With her hair recently straightened, she had to admit to a passing resemblance. If you squinted.

Oh god.

She had to find the boys and get them out of here, before she was pilloried as a Republican infiltrator.

She scanned the crowd, but the only person in a leather jacket she saw was channeling Maverick from Top Gun. Frustrated, she headed out into the garden, where she spotted Robin, cornered amongst the shrubberies by a very determined looking woman in a Wonder Woman costume.

Was Wonder Woman even American, technically?

Whatever the debates on her true origin, Emma had to admit the woman pulled off the look, even if the cleavage spilling out from the neckline of the outfit was a wardrobe malfunction waiting to happen. She was fully fixated on Robin, her fingers trailing up and down his arm, laughing at one of his anecdotes.

As she walked by she shot him a questioning look, in case he needed an assist, but he just gave a wink, and started in on a new story.

Hot Single Dad Robin still had it. And something told her he wouldn't be up for any plan that involved cutting out with her early.

Heaving a sigh, she liberated a Coors Light from an icebox and took another turn around the garden.

"Ivanka?" Another woman asked, her look practically accusatory.

"Elle Woods," Emma blurted out. The sweater was baby blue, not pink, but it was the best she could come up with on the fly.

Hurrying away from that interaction, she rounded a pillar and finally came upon her quarry, sitting alone on a bench beside a gurgling water feature.

"And here I thought you'd be the life of the party," Emma said, snagging the space beside him. She gestured towards where Robin was getting half his face mauled off by Wonder Woman. "Was every other member of the Justice League taken?"

She was rewarded with the ghost of a smile, but his gaze was still fixed ahead, not really seeing, as he rolled an unopened bottle of Budweiser between his fingers.

"You okay?" Emma asked, taking the bottle from his hand and removing the cap with a well-placed tap against the side of the bench.

"Where'd you learn that little trick?" he asked, ignoring her question as he accepted the open bottle.

"A bus shelter in Framingham, Massachusetts." It was more detail than he was expecting, and she nearly laughed at the sudden brightness in his eyes. "It was my first beer. You kind of remember stuff like that."

"You has your first beer in a bus shelter in Framingham Massachusetts?" He repeated it back, like there was something especially weird about that.

"Yeah. I was 14, and in between foster homes. Stole a six pack from the Stop and Shop after the clerk told me off for browsing the magazines. And then some old army vet at the bus shelter showed me how to take the cap off against the side of a trash can."

He furrowed his brows. "You're trying to get me to open up by revealing things about yourself. Which you never do."

"Maybe," Emma offered, taking a swig of her beer. "Is it working?"

He took a long sip on his own bottle, made a face, and then settled it back into his lap. "You mentioned a brush with the law, as a teenager. I'm assuming that wasn't for underage drinking at bus stops?"

Emma grimaced. "Not so much. Possession of stolen goods, with intent to sell. I got lucky. The watch I had on me was worth just shy of $500. They knocked it down to a misdemeanor and I got probation."

"You stole a watch?"

"No, my skeezy boyfriend stole a case of watches. I just happened to be wearing one when he called the cops to frame me while he took off to Canada with the rest."

"When he what?! Please tell me this wanker is dead in a ditch somewhere." Emma had to admit, she didn't mind his tone. Like he might go out and finish the job, if need be.

Emma shrugged, picking at the label on her bottle. "Probably. I never saw him again after that."

"So that explains it," Killian huffed.

"Explains what?" Emma asked, preparing to get defensive.

"Your Walsh fellow's appeal. I'm guessing he wasn't the larcenous type?"

Oh. Not even remotely.

"Yeah, he was the kind of guy who washed out his jars before he put them in the recycling. He was kind of the anti-Neal."

"That was his name? Neal?"

"Neal Cassidy," Emma sighed. "And yes, like the writer. He had it changed when he was 18 as a Fuck You to his Dad."

"Well, he sounds like a right tosser."

Emma snorted. "Yeah, pretty much."

"And not all that clever, if he thought losing you for a case of watches was an even trade."

That had Emma looking up, sarcastic retort on the tip of her tongue. But instead of making fun, Killian's expression was deadly serious, eyes meeting hers directly. Like he actually meant it. Emma's gaze flicked back to the label on her beer, nearly entirely peeled away by this stage, and fought to keep her face level.

"You think so?" she asked, her words coming out less jokingly than she intended.

"I do."

It was the answer that had her looking back up again, a frown forming. "Killian, I-"

"You're worth at least two cases," he added. "Maybe three. I mean, what are we talking here? Cartier? Rolex?" His eyebrow was raised again in that familiar roguish way.

Emma let out a breath, and extinguished the tiny flame that burned somewhere inside her stomach. Friends, she reminded herself. They were friends.

"You're hilarious," Emma replied deadpan. "And if we're going to continue sharing, I really need something stronger than this," she said, tipping back her head and draining the last of her bottle.

"When I was looking for extra chairs earlier, I think I saw a wet bar in the study. Fancy a dram?" Killian asked, rising to his feet.

"Oh, so you're journalistic snooping does come in handy sometimes?"

"More than sometimes," he said with a grin that would fell a lesser beast. And suddenly Emma wasn't so sure the flame was truly out.

Later, she still couldn't recall whether he'd held out a hand to take her empty bottle, or to help her up. All she knew, was as they moved from the garden back to the party proper, she had Killian's hand in hers.

***

Reasons Not To Push Killian Jones Up Against The Nearest Wall And Have Your Way With Him:

1. Hello, work event. Have some goddamn professionalism.

2. You're wearing Elsa's clothes. Don't make this weird.

3. You like him, and never talking to him again would suck.

4. He would definitely allude to it in his column, and you would have to emigrate. Again.

5. Graham. Oh, fuck. Graham.

***

The upstairs study was everything you'd expect from an overpaid university administrator. Soft red leather furnishings. Framed certificates covering an entire wall. A solid oak desk that could, hypothetically, bear the weight of two people at once.

And, oh yeah, the promised wet bar.

Emma was not, nor had she ever been, a cheater. And even if she and Graham were still only in the "getting to know you" phase of tentative texts and PG-13 cocktail hours, she knew betraying that would still be a shitty thing to do.

So when Killian offered her the glass of whisky, she didn't do what she wanted to do, which was down the lot and drag him towards her by the collar. Instead, she sat on the red leather couch as far from him as possible, and held the glass in front of her like a shield.

"Reminds me of your jacket," he said with a smile, letting his hand glide against the upholstery. Emma's skin still tingled from where his hand had gripped hers, so unused to foreign contact.

She took a gulp of her drink, and let it burn down her esophagus in penance for her crimes. Only once she'd regained sufficient control of her hormones did she speak.

"So, are you going to tell me what's been up with you?

"Up with me?" Killian replied, his oh-so-innocent look oh-so-unconvincing. "Whatever do you mean?"

"Oh, I don't know," Emma said, rolling her eyes heavenward. "The sudden phone emergencies. The brooding. The black eye. You've been different lately. Kind of… subdued, for you."

In answer, Killian drained what was left of his glass, and turned to face her. "Perceptive, aren't you, Swan?" He didn't sound happy about the fact.

Emma shrugged, taking another sip. "You can't kid a kidder."

He considered that, finger tapping absently against the side of his glass. "Perhaps not. Very well then. The truth: The magazine is broke."

It wasn't what Emma had been expecting. What had she been expecting? A secret drug habit? Abusive new girlfriend? Fight Club?

"Broke?" she repeated.

"Utterly. But instead of accepting the inevitable, and bowing out gracefully, my brother, well-intentioned idiot that he is, decided to take what was left in the coffers and make a few wagers."

Emma's heart sank into her stomach. "He didn't."

"Oh, he did. The apple doesn't fall far from the tree, apparently. Lost the lot. Bloody prat. Thought he'd come back a conquering hero. Instead he's having to dip into his own savings to keep the whole operation afloat until he can find a way to pay back his bookie."

That explained the black eye.

"And no one knows about this? Don't you have accountants or something?"

"There is a fellow, Tim, who's been covering for him. Let him take out the entire balance in the first place, didn't he? So now he feels equally culpable. So there's Liam. Tim. Me. And now you."

"Elsa doesn't know?"

"Not in so many words. She isn't bloody stupid though. He's been decidedly distracted on the homefront. Probably thinks he's having a mid-life crisis or an affair or something stupid. Would be easier to just tell her, but the problem is, he knows if she finds out about it she'll feel obligated to help."

"Well, that would be a good thing, right? No more, uhhh…" Emma waved a hand over her eye.

"Well, when Elsa's parents died, they left her a good deal of money. Most of it went towards the house, and setting up her sister in New York, but there's enough left to get Weaver off his back. Problem is, my brother's pride would never let him accept it. And then there's the matter of Elsa's aunt."

"Elsa's aunt?"

"She owns the magazine. And let's just say, she's not quite as err… understanding as Elsa can be. If she gets word of it, there'll be criminal charges."

"Fuck."

"Fuck,' he agreed, leaning forward in his chair to pour himself another whisky.

"And you've just been carrying this all around on your shoulders for what? Months?"

"But what magnificent shoulders, wouldn't you say, Swan?" The grin was almost leering, but not in a good way. More in a defense mechanism kind of way.

"Don't do that," Emma chided, leaning over to smooth the wrinkle above his brows with her fingers. "Just be you."

"And how is that?" He asked, with a look of such genuine curiosity that her hand paused somewhere in the region of his jaw.

"Same as me," Emma shrugged. "A little fucked up. A little scared."

She leaned forward then, and placed a kiss on that same spot above his brow.

Maybe it wasn't where she'd wanted to kiss him five minutes ago, but it felt right. She heard him inhale sharply underneath her, but she didn't immediately break contact. Not until his face relaxed, and his arms came up to wrap around her waist.

She let her head fall onto his shoulder, and his on hers, breathing each other in. Comfortable fucking silence.

Only when her phone started chirping in her pocket did she pull away at last, steadying herself on his shoulders. "You're going to be okay, Killian Jones. You and your fucked up family."

The grin was wry, but it was real.

"You going to get that?" he asked, ducking his chin down to where they were practically intertwined. Probably best not to add vibration to the mix.

She fished the phone out of her pocket, and checked the caller ID.

August.

He never called. He sent ten page letters typed up on his pretentious vintage typewriter, but he never called.

With a look of apology, she peeled herself off of Killian's lap, and hit accept.

"August? Is someone dead?"

"Em! Where are you?" Wherever he was, he sounded cheerful. And just a little bit drunk. Well, it was the Fourth of July.

"Where am I? I'm in Scotland, where I'm supposed to be. How much have you had to drink?"

"Nooo," he corrected, words slurring a little. "I mean, where right now? Someone in your department told me you were at this party. But no one remembers seeing you. Are you here?"

Emma's stomach lurched. "Party? You mean, in Edinburgh?"

"Of course, in Edinburgh! The party I'm at, it's at… hang on," his words muffled as he conferred with nearby partygoers, "17 Heriot Row?"

Oh. Fucking. Fuck. Fucking August and his fucking surprises.

"I'll be five minutes. Stay right where you are."

Feeling the color drain from her face, she ended the call, and tucked her phone back into the pocket of her borrowed jeans. "We need to get downstairs. I need to-" She looked around for a mirror, but there were none in the vicinity. Of course.

"Lass?" He had her by the elbow, holding her still. "What has you all a-flutter?"

Emma pinched the bridge of her nose. "You remember I mentioned my friend August?"

"Knee still creaks when it rains, August?" The boy did have superior recall. "Novelist August?"

"Yeah. Anyway, he's downstairs."

#cs ff #cs au #findemmaswanafriend #look who's back from outer space? #cs au ff

[tempest-loupnoir]

This is one of the many reasons why personal information should not be marketed and distributed everywhere.

Today I got mail from my former veterinarian and from an expo center in my former neighborhood. I have moved twice in one year. Neither place should have my current mailing address. Especially since neither piece of mail was addressed for a living relative!

My dog died this summer and I went on the vet’s website that month to post that we no longer needed their services. My dad died in 2010 and you would think 20 death certificates would have been enough to prove to the many different organizations Mom had to contact to say he was no longer earning income would have been enough. But we got an invitation to the expo with my dad’s name on it. They should not have his name. They should not have our current address! How the hay did they get that and who do I call to say “Get that name off of your list forever!”

It hurts. It freaking hurts seeing names that were part of my identity as a person and who still live on in a big gaping hole in my ragged heart being brought up as if they are still here. It hurts being reminded of how futile it is to try to get everyone to listen.

All this time later, we’re still having to call for More death certificates because Someone didn’t the notice the first ten times. We’ve even gotten a bill from the IRS saying Dad owed income taxes in 2017! Seven freaking years after he died painfully from government caused cancer (Oh yeah, did I forget to mention my dad’s entire generation of classmates has been dropping like flies because back when they were babies, the government set off an atomic bomb in the desert nearby and they All got Downwinders Syndrome!? Thanks a lot. And they still have the Widow’s tax in place that was supposed to be removed after World War 2, and they take away whatever Social Security one married partner earned and force them to choose which one they will live off of, and halve it. That’s right! Halve it! So instead of Mom and Dad living off their individual Social Security checks now like Dad planned, Mom had to give up her own because it was worth less than Dad’s, but because she didn’t earn his herself, she only gets half of it. Which is just enough to cover the cost of groceries each month. Not all the other bills and taxes and what not we as blessed Americans get to pay. Why do people want to come into this country again? There is absolutely nothing that is free. Someone pays for it somehow, be it Social Security (which was made for citizens to invest in for themselves, not for the government to use as their own piggy bank), Wellfare, Medicare, taxes on personal property, death taxes, vehicle taxes, income taxes, etc. Whatever one person does not pay out of pocket, someone else has to pick up the slack somewhere else. Makes me almost want to immigrate Out of this backwards country that my family has defended and built since the 1700’s

Even more off topic, that vet office is lucky I was polite and did not leave a scorching review on their Facebook page. I went there my dog’s entire life. The past six years, they did not take any of my concerns for his health seriously, blaming me for my dog’s instant weight gain after surgery and his coughing and IBS. I followed their directions! I walked my dog multiple times a day, fed him only the amount he was supposed to eat with an expensive brand of dog food (thirty dollars for a three pound bag), made him healthy human food when he wasn’t feeling well like baked chicken, and played fetch indoors with him every day. He was happy, but he was chronically ill and the people I saw (and there were different people there each time I went. That was a red flag I’ll keep in mind in the future) kept treating my dog like an object instead of a sentient caring creature. They practically tortured him trying to get a stool sample when I took him for watery diarrhea hours after he’d stopped going because we could not get an earlier appointment and he had run out at stuff for them to collect. They never wanted to accept samples I brought in on any other visit, and they could not see past his weight to look for an underlying issue causing it. They were satisfied with just blaming me for being a bad dog owner, even though I was trying to get help! Because they never looked beyond “he’s fat”, he did not get medication for a failing diseased liver until it was far far too late for himto recover, and the vet who found his liver cirrhosis found it on our very first visit with her in our new home state! Argh! If I had followed my gut and gone to a different vet years ago, I might still have my baby boy beside me! Or at least I would have known what his chronic issues were really saying about his health and would have gotten him treatment years ago. My poor baby!

End rant. For now. I’ll heal from my sorrow and anger, but this kind of stuff happens all the time to many other people, not just me.

Please, if there is someone out there reading this who handles contact information updates, please ask someone else to help you update everything if you’re falling behind. Don’t ignore anything or save it for another day and let people fall through the cracks. Please follow up if you must! Send a note in the mail. A slip up hurts someone somewhere along the line and while I don’t normally get mail for two dead relatives on the same day, I do get mail and phone calls and emails for my dad often enough, it feels like nobody got the message that he’s dead. It feels like nobody cares that he was a person who meant the world to two people left behind, and nobody cares about their broken minds and hearts.

#personal rant #mail mistakes #Downwinders Syndrome #death #grief #veterinarian oversight #personal hell #the number of death certificates we’ve had to get is probably closer to a hundred now #and no we did not have the energy or finances to sue so we have not gotten reimbursed for all the wasted doc appointments and meds and #end of life expenses are hell and make life hell for the living

[glowwormsmith]

Joseph’s Birthday Bash

Uh-oh, sisters! You think the Far Cry 5 Birthday Bash was over? When I told my boyfriend about the event, he decided to make a special gift for me. I loved it. He also gave me full permission to share this on Tumblr, so to celebrate the last day of March, here is my boyfriend’s gift to the Far Cry 5 fandom. God help us all.

This is also unedited with only minor grammatical changes to make it read better. Enjoy the fic~

Summary: It’s Joseph’s birthday and everyone in Hope County is invited. Things can only go well from here.

Warning: This is a crack fic. Expect OOC-ness (though he says it’s an accurate portrayal of all the characters), general silliness, fourth-wall breaking, off-color jokes, and anything else associated with a humor/crack fic. If anything needs to be tagged, let me know.

 AN: In truth, I know very little about Far Cry 5.

Joseph's Birthday Bash

           It was a clear and sunny day at the Project of Eden's Gate compound, colloquially known as “The Father's Church.” As opposed to the compound’s usual stark and austere look, today it was vibrant; the fence that was torn open from a recent helicopter crash was fixed, and what looked to be white moonflowers were tied into every single link of every chain. Even the sign that on any other day of the year proudly displayed “Project at Eden's Gate” was covered up with a black tarp that instead was spray-painted to say “Happy Birthday!”

           Truly, it was a surreal site.

           “Oooh, it's perfect!” A young woman in a white frilly dress exclaimed, as she took in her handiwork. “Now we just have to finish the outside of the church! Go on, mush!”

           In response, the ragtag group of strangely-dressed bald men who were the ones actually tying the flowers into the chain link fence turned to give a glassy-eyed stare to their commander.

           “Mush.” She repeated, snapping her fingers and pointing to the church.

           Sluggishly, the men picked up their basket of flowers and headed to the church.

           “Ah, Faith.” A long-suffering sigh came from just behind the gate as a man with a perfectly coiffed beard and a three-hundred-dollar coat stepped through. “As usual, you're truly an inspiration to observe. I wish I could be half as sympathetic to those in my region.”

           “John!” The aforementioned Faith beamed at the new arrival. “As usual, you're acting like a posh bitch!”

           John's head jerked back slightly at her bluntness and he was just about to retort, until another, much larger man came and put his hand on his shoulder.

           “Enough.” The large redhead grunted “Don't the two of you start. It's insufferable.”

           “Wow!” Faith said with a sing-song lilt. “‘Insufferable?’ Isn't that a little too many syllables for you, jarhead?”

           Jarhead gazed at her and gave an unimpressed grunt.

           “Really, would it kill you to act a little more ladylike?” John asked the girl. “This is why you're not in the Christmas photos.”

           “This is why you’re not--” She mimicked.

           “Really. Stop.” Jarhead said. “Joseph's going to be here soon. You know how he gets about the two of you bickering. I'd rather not hear it for once.”

           “Sorry, brother,” John mumbled.

           “Sorry, brother~” Faith mimicked, to everyone's distaste.

           “Rachel.” Jarhead warned, making her grimace slightly. “Stop.”

           Faith stuck out her tongue at him for a brief moment, then turned her head towards the church and fell silent. Suddenly, a small cloud of dust kicked up from one of the cliffs above them accompanied by a hum of an engine.

           “He's here.”

           A Jeep with tinted-black windows came into view from over the cliff, driving down into the gated compound. In moments it pulled unto the gate right in front of the three siblings. The driver's side door opened and out stepped a man who practically glowed with an enlightened aura. This was the most notable man in Hope County, Joseph Seed.

           He was also wearing a blindfold.

           “Jesus H. Christ!” Jarhead barked. “Where you driving that thing blindfolded!”

           “Jacob, my brother!” Joseph greeted, turning almost (but not quite) to face where Jacob was and spreading his arms. “My escorts told me that I had to wear this, otherwise I'd spoil the surprise.”

           “Your escorts were supposed to drive!” Jacob growled, looking towards two men in red balaclavas who stepped out of the passenger and rear seats, respectively. “I am disappointed.”

           “B-but...” One of the strangely dressed men stuttered out. “The Father--he wanted to drive!”

           “Blindfolded?”

           “Now, Jacob.” The still-blindfolded Father consoled, patting his brother on the shoulder. “It's like John 9:25 says, ‘I was blind, and now I can see!’.”

           “It's not.” Jacob sighed. “You still have that thing on.”

           “You never were the most spiritual, brother.”

           “Oh for--” The tall ginger ran his hand down his face. “Can we just get on with this whole thing?”

           “I dunno,” Faith said, twirling a flower in between her fingers. “This is kinda fun to watch.”

           “No, don't listen to her.” John wheedled his way between his two brothers and grabbed Joseph by his bicep. “Come, Brother, let us show you what we prepared!”

           Ignoring the disapproving stares from pretty much everybody, John sidled up to his brother, in a way that one could say was unnervingly close even for siblings, and led him into the compound. Stopping just before the church, John held his breath before motioning for his siblings and the followers to gather around and quickly ripped off Joseph's blindfold.

           “Surprise!” Everyone hollered. “Happy birthday, Father!”

           Joseph serenely took in the whole event, gazing at his church, defaced by clumsily pasted on moonflowers behind his piss-tinted aviators.

           “Were you wearing your glasses under your blindfold?” Jacob asked, stunned by his brother's dedication to fashion.

           “Well, Brother?!” John ignored his favorite brother's apparent psychosis. “Isn't this a wonderful surprise?”

           “It is no surprise, my children.” Joseph smiled back at all his followers, eyes crinkling slightly at the corners. His visage was that of one who has truly reached enlightenment. “For I have foreseen this.”

           “D'Ohhhhh!” his followers cried, shuffling their feet, as Faith nodded sagely, completely eating it up, and John looked crushed.

           “Of course you did,” Jacob sighed, wondering why he spent any time with his family.

           “Now, John.” The Father gazed around the decorated compound and nodded his head before turning and beckoning to his younger brother. “Bring me your Devil Box.”

           “My what?”

           “Your devil box,” Joseph said, as if he was talking to a small child. “Which you use to broadcast the past onto other, squarer devil boxes.”

           John looked as if he was about to have a conniption. The rest of the followers weren't much better.

           “Your camera,” Jacob grunted.

           “Oh!” John exclaimed. “But why, Joseph?”

           “Why John, today is the birthday of our Savior,” The Father chided. “Me. Obviously today should be a day of armistice and coming together.”

           “No,” Jacob interjected, already seeing where this was going.

           “Therefore, I suggest--”

           “No.”

           “--That we invite--”

           “Seriously. This is dumb.”

           “--The deputies and their friends!”

           “Joseph.”

           “Worry not, my dear brother, things are going as foreseen.” Joseph settled the matter with a deft hand and turned to his other siblings. “John, Faith, we must prepare for our guests.”

           “As the Father decrees!” Faith screeched, turning to her homeless-looking followers who gave their agreement with a cacophony of inhuman moans.

 Elsewhere

           The town of Fall's End had seen a major downsizing since the Project at Eden's Gate had started. While it was never what would be described as a “booming town,” it had a scattered few stores with a surprising variety of goods, tailored to the unique individuals that lived in Hope County. Now all stores were closed but two: a bar called the Spread Eagle, and a hardware shop that sold guns.

           It was unfortunate for the town of Fall's End that even the followers of the Project at Eden's Gate couldn't rid them of their town idiot, though.

           “DEPUTY!” A grown man with a roughshod beard and a stylized American flag shirt shouted, as he waved his hands and ran down an empty street. “DEPUTY!”

           His shouting continued until he entered the Spread Eagle.

           “DEPUTY!”

           “Hurk!” The bartender, a blonde woman, shouted back as she cleaned her glasses with a wet rag. “Quiet down! You're bothering my customers!”

           “Oh! Hey man, sorry,” Hurk said, looking around at the scattered few patrons giving him the stink-eye from over their mugs. “I was just looking for—OH, THERE YOU ARE!”

           “Hurk!” the bartender threatened.

           “Oh, sorry, man.” The town idiot nodded back again, then proceeded to walk towards a patron who was doing their best to not look at him. “Hey, man, where have you been? I've been calling your name for the last hour!”

           The person Hurk was addressing was an iconic figure of Hope County, Deputy Rook. The deputy was, even by Hope County's standards, a complete and hopeless weirdo. They were a small person, standing maybe 5'7”, and not a single person besides their parents probably knew their gender.

           Why one might ask? Because Deputy Rook always wore some kind of weird mask on their head. Be it a big chicken mask, an alien mask, or even what they were wearing today, a gigantic eyeball mask. No one truly knew what Rook's face looked like. The deputy even wore a big horse mask to their police academy graduation, which was probably the reason they were assigned to this podunk town.

           Even more than that, they were slight of build, had shaved and waxed legs, and never spoke. Ever.

           “Hey man, have you seen the TV?” Hurk questioned Deputy Rook, who in response continued to give the impression of not looking at Hurk (which was doubly impressive, given that they were wearing a gigantic eyeball on their head) and poured their beer into the cornea of their mask.

           As expected, it didn't go into the mask and splashed everywhere.

           “Yeah? That's cool, man. But seriously, you should check it out,” Hurk continued, seemingly oblivious of Rook's indifference. “HEY, MARY MAY!”

           “Hurk. I'm going to kick you out,” the bartender countered.

           “DON'T BE LIKE THAT, MAN! JUST TURN THE TV ON TO CHANNEL 3!!”            “Hurk, the only channel we get anymore is channel 3,” Mary May sighed, as she picked up the dusty TV remote from behind the bar and turned on the small CRT that they used in the past to watch the Cougar's baseball games. “You can just say ‘turn on the TV’.”

           “WILL DO, PRETTY LADY!” Hurk screamed conversationally, as he turned back to the Deputy. “Hey man, look, it's Joseph.”

           The deputy quickly glanced up to see that, indeed, on the TV was Joseph Seed. They then got up, turned their bar stool around and continued to splash their beer around.

           “Greetings, my children,” TV Joseph spoke, static slightly modulating his voice into a deeper, more seductive tone. “I am broadcasting this message to give good tidings to you all!”

           “Oh man, I don't know what that means, but it sounds sinister, don't it?!” Hurk questioned the Deputy, who raised a finger in the air to silence him.

           Mary Mae poured them a shot glass of clear liquid, which they proceeded to throw all over their mask.

           “Yeah, I like the liquor too.” Hurk nodded.

           “Today marks the day of the birth of your Savior.” TV Joseph looked over his piss-goggles for a brief moment “Me.”

           “What an asshole.” Mary May came to the general consensus as she poured herself a shot glass of clear liquid and proceeded to throw it back.

           “As such, today will be a day of peace!” The camera zoomed out to show the entirety of the followers of the Project at Eden’s Gate crowded around what looked to be Joseph's church, but it was covered in badly placed flowers. “I invite you all to my church to partake in the merriment. I hope to see you all there!”

           TV Joseph lowered his aviators again. “Especially you, Lamb of God.”

           “Huh, wonder who he was talking about.” Hurk scratched his head as the recording abruptly cut off and repeated itself a moment later. “Must be his secret weapon.”

           Deputy Rook scooted their chair as far away from Hurk as they could. They were, unfortunately, between him and a wall, and therefore had to press themselves up against a wall to get as far away from the idiot as humanly possible.

           “But you know, man, what this means we need to do?” Hurk questioned the Deputy, who was sidling the wall and trying to very sneakily escape. “WE NEED TO GO CRASH THAT PARTY!”

           “Alright Hurk, that's it! Get out of my bar!”

 Elsewhere, sometime later

             “This is a waste of time, Joseph,” Jacob grunted from his seat at the porch of Joseph's church. “Our enemies aren't just going to waltz into here.”

           He couldn't have picked a worse time to say that, as a helicopter came into view on the horizon and the sound of a horn blaring from an 18-wheeler echoed down the cliff side of their compound.

           “Faith, brother.” Joseph gave Jacob the smuggest grin.

           In short order, a convoy of vehicles pulled up to the gate of the compound: an 18-wheeler with a flame decal, a shitty-looking jeep with a Gatling gun on the roof, some gaudy looking sports car, a black sedan, and a handful of ATVs. The helicopter came and landed next to them, followed by a red biplane that didn't quite stick it's landing and rammed into the gate slightly, knocking over a 50-foot section of the chain link fence.

           “Lovely that you all have come,” Joseph said serenely, waving to the group of people who were filtering out of their vehicles and checking the safety on their weapons. “Truly, it is a day for celebration--and don't worry, we've made enough macaroni salad for everyone!”

           “Bleh!” Hurk said in sync with a young man holding a flamethrower stylized with a shark motif.

           “Come, my children,” Joseph beckoned, conveniently ignoring anything that didn't fit his worldview. “We shall begin to make with the merriment!”

           “Check your guns at the door,” Jacob added.

             As it turned out, the community gathering didn't immediately dissolve into a crazed slaughter. There was (surprisingly for the Seed’s) a good amount of liquor provided. Deputy Hudson, the only (at least proven) female deputy, managed to integrate herself with a group of Jacob's hunters and were quietly discussing amongst themselves what the best shotgun slug on the market was. Whitehorse had a surprising love of fashion and was discussing Mumu's Fashion Week with John, who was an avid collector. Deputy Rook even managed to be companionable, if silent, after one of Joseph's followers commented that they liked the gaudy, skeleton-embroidered gloves they wore. Everyone else was laughing at the Project at Eden Gate followers suffering through the classic Seed macaroni salad. All in all, it was a good time.

           “Everyone,” Joseph called out. “It's now time for the exchange of gifts!”

           Alas, all good things come to an end.

           Whitehorse motioned to Deputy Rook, who leaned their dumb eyeball mask close to their boss. “We were supposed to get gifts?”

           Rook shrugged. It was a birthday after all.

           “Why didn't you tell me?” Whitehorse demanded. Rook turned their eyeball mask fully to face the sheriff down in a stare-off.

           “...Fine.” Whitehorse relented. “You make a good case. You're lucky you’re such a damn good speaker, Rook.”

           A deep sigh came from the mask before Rook turned back towards the Father.

           “Me first!” John shouted, pushing his way to the front of the crowd. He cleared his throat and presented a perfectly wrapped box to his brother.

           “Thank you, dear brother,” praised the Father as he carefully unwrapped the box. As he reached inside, he pulled out a painting frame. “...Modern art?”

           “It's the first sin I carved out of myself!” John proudly displayed a scar on his left underarm, “Are you not proud, brother?!”

           Slightly green, Joseph nodded, setting the framed piece of flayed skin in a pile he mentally marked as 'trash'. “Very. Next, please.”

           No one moved.

           “Come now, no need to be shy.” Joseph looked around the crowd who was trying very hard not to meet his eyes. “How about Faith? Come now, my child.”

           “Err...” Faith's eyes darted around like a rabbit staring down a shotgun. “How about Jacob first?”

           “No, no. I'm sure your gift will be wonderful,” The Father countered with a smile.

           “Sure, yeah! Wonderful.” Faith inched away. “I just have to go get it! I'll be right back!”

           The young woman bolted away. A couple minutes passed, then five, then ten. Most of the gathered guests wondered if she was going to come back (most hoped that she wouldn't). Any concerns were allayed and hopes dashed moments later, however, when she came back with a poorly wrapped and heavily-taped, ball-looking object.

           “Happy birthday, Father!” Faith exclaimed with a proud smile as she shoved the gift into his outstretched hands.

           “Thank you, sister.” Joseph serenely intoned, carefully picking at his gift in order to most carefully unwrap it, only for it to spill all over his suit. “...Dirt?”

           “It's symbolic,” Faith explained.

           “Oh?” The Father was quite interested. “How so?”

           “It's symbolic,” Faith repeated, sweat beading down her face, her ever present smile trembling slightly.

           The Father looked over his glasses at her with what half the crowd would say was disappointment, and the other half would say was understanding. “I see.”

           “Jacob!” Faith screeched grabbing her actually-not-really brother by his huge bear arm and dragged him forward. “You're turn.”

           “Fine,” he huffed. Reaching into his inner coat pocket, he withdrew a small, unwrapped cardboard box, not much bigger than a soda can. “Happy birthday, Jo.”

           “Thank you, Jacob.” The Father smiled, comfortable in the knowledge that his eldest brother would actually bring him a regular gift. He opened the box and examined the plastic object. “...What is it, exactly?”

           “It's a speed reloader,” Jacob explained, picking up the gift and holding it in what Joseph assumed was the correct configuration. “You load your bullets here, and if you ever need to reload, it'll barely take you a half-second.”

           “A speed reloader?” Joseph was baffled. “For an assault rifle?”

           “What? No.” Jacob was beginning to be as baffled as his brother and pointed to the gun at his waist. “I've never seen you with a rifle. That's for the revolver you're always totting around.”

           The Father stared at his brother for a solid two seconds before bursting out with warm laughter. “Oh Jacob, I'll never actually use this weapon.”

           “Joseph, I know you don't like guns, but--”

           “No, no brother. It's just a character design element,” The Father explained. “Why, using it would be silly.”

           “I don't understand what you're saying.”

           “Don't worry, all is as foreseen,” Joseph said, falling back to his cop-out line.

           “I'm done.” Jacob gave up, rubbing his forehead in suppressed rage, he gestured to the deputies and their compatriots. “One of you idiots can go next.”

           “Oh, I'll go, I'll go!” Hurk waved his hand and ran up to Joseph before shoving what looked to be a shopping bag right in his face. It made a satisfying “bonk” as it rebounded off his forehead. “I know we had our troubles, man, with me dropping out of the cult and all, but this has been cool.”

           “Thank you, young Herakles,” Joseph said benevolently, ignoring the throbbing pain in his head. “I'm glad—”

           “Yo, man, where did you hear that name?” Hurk tried to whisper, but it came across even louder. “My name is Hurk.”

           A rasping chuckle came from the weirdo in the giant eyeball mask in the crowd.

           “Young Herakles,” Joseph said. “You should be proud of your name. It has heritage and—”

           “WOO-HEE!!” Hurk screamed. “WHO KNOWS WHAT THESE PEGGIES ARE SAYING, AMIRITE?!”

           “I'll just open this now,” Joseph said, opening his shopping bag and taking out a rather nice bottle of wine. “Young Herakles, this is one of the bottles of wine I bought for this party.”

           “I know, man!” Hurk agreed. “I knew you'd like it.”

           Joseph looked at the bottle in his hand and set it beside him. He looked to his eldest brother and made a motion of cutting his throat. “I see.”

           Jacob grunted, grabbed Hurk by the shoulder and guided him back to his friends. “Next.”

           “Sure.” A black man with a smooth voice stepped to the front of the queue. “I've got something to give Joseph.”

           As the Father saw this guest, his eyes lit up. “If it isn't my old friend, Jerome!”

           “‘Old friend’. Sure,” Jerome said dryly.

           “I missed you, friend,” The Father continued. “Remember when we used to camp out together?”

           “You mean when you squatted in my church?”

           “Or when you had me as a guest preacher?” Joseph pushed on.

           “You wouldn't stop interrupting my Mass.”

           “Such good times.” Joseph said. “What tidings do you bring, old friend?”

           “This.” Jerome placed a half-drank water bottle in front of the father emblazoned with the words ‘Holy Water’ in still-wet, permanent marker ink. “Blessed it myself. I'm curious if you'll spontaneously combust when it touches your skin.”

           “You blessed it yourself?!” Joseph gasped. “I'll treasure it. Thank you, my friend.”

           Jerome just glared at the Father.

           “And no hard feelings about the thing with your daughter, right, friend?” Joseph pushed.

           Jerome continued to glare at the Father.

           “Haha, of course not old, friend. What a story.”

           Deputy Hudson quickly went up and dragged the preacher away before he went to strangle Joseph.

           “That will be a hard act to follow,” Joseph warned.

           The gathered looked at each other and started shoving each other to try to push one unwilling sacrifice to the head of the crowd. After a couple moments, a man stumbled out at the head of the crowd.            “I suppose I'll go,” said a dirty man with crazy hair. He walked up to the Father, dug through his pocket, and dropped a crumpled cardboard business card on his place mat. “Here.”

            “Why...Thank you,” Joseph said, inching away from the filthy man. He gave a glance at the business card before grabbing the tongs from the macaroni salad, and used it to pick up the card and bring it to eye level. “A free, 1-year subscription to...Zip Kupka's NewsBattles?”

           “It's my internet talk show,” Zip Kupka explained. “You can get it on XM radio, too. It tells about all the hard-hitting news, like the bliss in the Henbane turning all the fish gay!”

           “Lies!” Faith shouted, perhaps a bit too loudly. “Baseless slander!”

           “Wait,” Skylar Kohrs, the young fishing champion of Hope County, muttered. “Is that why there are no Demonfish out this season?”

           “What are Demonfish?” Staci Pratt, local emasculated deputy, asked the butch fisher-girl.

           “You know,” Skylar explained, holding out her hands to their full wingspan. “About this big, dorsal fins, huge teeth.”

           “Skylar,” Staci said in a slow voice, as if talking to an idiot. “There aren't any sharks in Montana.”

           “I know,” Skylar shot back. “They're Demonfish.”

           “Children, children.” Joseph held up his hands, forestalling their argument. “We're getting away from the important thing here. Me.”

           Deputy Rook idly wondered if the buffet table sporks graciously given out for the macaroni salad would make a good enough weapon to stab Joseph. Before they could act on that train of thought, an old, bearded man in an apron jogged into the middle of the crowd, shouting unintelligible madness.

           “Mphyadn, Shawdamnh Birthday,” the seemingly crazed man said. “Hadph, doart cake mera fer lpod.”

           “My child, do have peanut butter in your mouth?” Joseph offered the man a glass of wine. “You sound like you could use a drink.”

           “No Padfd Btha.” The man shook his head, but took the glass from the Father and downed it all in one quick throw. “Baday cake Tephda, Aldkh?”

           “Err,” Whitehorse broke in, seeing as none of the cult members (or their leaders) could understand this man. “Chad here's saying that for his gift, he made a birthday cake for you. He was asking if he could clear off some space to bring it out.”

           “Of course, my child!” Joseph said. “But leave the macaroni, all my children seem to be enjoying it.”

           Chad looked disbelievingly at the Father as a cry of “Your macaroni sucks!” came from the crowd, but nodded and went to his truck where he retrieved the cake, made some space on the table near Joseph, and set it down.

           “Quite an...” Joseph looked at the giant meatball in front of him. “...Interesting-looking birthday cake.”

           “Mera o Mtabaffth,” Chad explained.

           Wordlessly, Joseph turned to the Sheriff.

           “It's more of a meatloaf,” Whitehorse said. “Chad's a world-class BBQ chef. It makes more sense than him actually baking a cake.”

           “I see.” Joseph nodded, carefully cutting a small piece of the giant meatball and eating it. After a couple moments of chewing, his eyes lit up and he took a bigger piece. “This is actually quite good! What kind of meat is this?”

           Chad smiled and then said, in perfectly understandable and unaccented English, “Bull testicles.”

           The Father stopped chewing, and audibly gulped. He set his tableware to the side and nodded. “Thank you, my child. I think I'll save the rest for all my guests.”            “Oh wow, you sure?!” a man in aviators and a flannel vest pushed his way forwards before grabbing a literal handful of the cake. “Look, Kim! They got testies!”

           “...Great job, honey.” A pregnant Asian woman congratulated him from the gaggle of guests as she hung her head in shame.

           The Father watched on in fascinated horror behind his glasses as the man savagely ate the handful of testicles with an “Om nom nom!”

           “Is it really that good?” one of the Project at Eden's Gate followers wondered aloud.

           “It must be, look at him go,” another said, pointing at the man filling his cheeks with testicles. “Chad is a world-class BBQ chef, after all.

           “Hey, yeah, let’s go try some.” And so, the entire crowd of guests meandered their way forward and made quick work of the testicle cake.

           “Oh my,” Joseph said drolly. “I wish my macaroni salad would go as quickly.”

           The worshipers looked away from the Father. A cry of “Your macaroni sucks!” came from somewhere in the crowd.

           “Hey man, it's like, nature.” Sharky Boshaw, Hope County's resident firebug, said, spraying bull testicle everywhere as he did so. “You can't stop nature. Everyone wants to get some balls in their mouth.”

           “Young man,” Joseph preached, gesturing towards where his siblings stood. “Of course, you can go against nature. Why, look at my siblings.”

           Turning, Joseph only saw Jacob there, with a disassembled gun in his lap.

           “Where did John and Faith go?” Joseph asked his brother. Jacob grunted and motioned towards the table with his head. Turning, the Father came to the sight of his youngest brother and sister stuffing their face with testicles. Looking at his siblings voraciously eating the balls, Joseph could only come to agreement with the young man in front of him. “Nature is truly a frightening thing.”

           “Yeah, man. Anyways, happy B-day,” Sharky said, before digging in his pocket and tossing the Father a lighter. “That's a favorite of mine, real sentimental value.”

           The Father examined the bright blue plastic lighter. “It's a Zippo.”            “Good brand,” Sharky agreed with a nod.

           “It has a 99-cent sticker on it,” The Father argued, before spinning the striker. “And it's empty.”

           “Real sentimental value.”

           Joseph set down the lighter in the “trash” pile next to John's gift. “Thank you, my child.”

           “Oh yeah! Sharky kills it again!” The pyro pumped his fist. “Beat that, po-po!”

           Sighing, Deputy Rook rose to bring their gift to the so-called prophet.

           “Oh, the Lamb of God!” Joseph rose from his chair and held out his hand. “Wait, wait!”

           The Father grabbed the left shoulder of his suit coat with his right hand, and in one fluid movement, ripped off his whole suit top and dress shirt and threw it to the side, revealing his tattoos to the world. He looked over his glasses at Deputy Rook and held his arms towards them, motioning for them to 'come hither'. “Come, my child.”

           The Deputy's whole dumb eyeball mask rolled. They woodenly marched forward and reached into their jacket and dropped, into the Father's outstretched hands, a remote bomb. On it was a sticky note that read, ‘Not every problem can be solved with a bullet. This isn't a bullet.’

           Suddenly, everyone was pointing weapons at each other.

           “PUT THE GUN DOWN!” John was yelling at Sharky as he pushed his gun against his forehead.

           “YOU FUCKING PUT THE GUN DOWN!” Hurk yelled back as he pushed his rocket launcher against John's liver.

           “YOU AREN'T GOING TO FUCKING DO IT!” Faith shouted as she rapidly moved her shotgun between them.

           Deputy Rook, meanwhile, rolled the detonator between their palms.

           Joseph sighed and set the gift down in the trash pile. “Peace, children, peace.”

           “Joseph,” Jacob grunted. “You're sitting next to a bomb. Peace is a little out of the picture.”

           “Now, brother,” Joseph said placatingly, pulling out a silver stopwatch and checking the time. “Let's wait until we get the last gift.”

           “What last gift?” Jacob hissed at his brother, who turned his head skyward.

           “That.” A whistling was heard in the distance. Then, Joseph's church exploded in a shower of wood, sawdust and moonflowers. The kinetic energy from the blast sent everyone except Joseph, who was standing in just the right spot, hurtling to the ground, ears ringing.

           The Father walked up to the object jutting out from his now destroyed church, and lay his hand upon its cool, metal surface.

           Jacob was the first of those not blessed by (a dark) God to recover. He looked up at his brother to see him stroking an undetonated ICBM. On it was Cyrillic characters that he recognized; Russian. He only knew a brief smattering, so it took him a moment to translate what it said, but when he did, he could only mutter, “Crazy bastard.”

           On the missile it read, Happy Birthday, Joseph – God.

           Smiling, Joseph meet his older brother's eyes. “It is all as foreseen.”

           Then the world was covered in cleansing fire.

         Fin

#far cry 5 #long post #fc5 #far cry 5 fic #joseph seed #john seed #jacob seed #faith seed #far cry #deputy rook #eden's gate #hope county #behold my boyfriend's work and despair

[missvalerietanner]

Last weekend, I was jet lagged and had to rest. This past weekend... turns out I needed more rest. XD But I finally got everything organized, and it’s time to share... 

I WENT TO CANADA!

As a birthday present to myself, back in June, I filled out all the paperwork and got myself a passport ‘cause, damn it, I want to travel. Just three little months later in September, I had to help my boss check in for his flight for a work thing ( he’s not so computer savvy), and I got antsy. I wanted to be flying somewhere too. And I wanted to give my passport a trial run. SO! My aunt had mentioned wanting to see Niagara Falls, and I was cool with seeing Canada cause 1. passport test, and 2. Lewis Black’s words haunt me: “Even drunk on a bet, you make it to Canada.” (in reference to the fact that George W. had never been outside the country. 

So I started planning, told my aunt (she was thrilled by the idea), and in a matter of two weeks, we had the trip laid out, plan tickets bought, hotel room reserved, and we were good to go.

We stayed in Niagara Falls, Ontario, Canada. We flew into the Buffalo airport in New York, got a rental car, and drove across the Rainbow Bridge ‘cause I figured that’d be pretty cool. Our flight got into Buffalo at midnight, Friday morning (Nov. 2nd), and we reached our hotel in Canada at about 2AM. Should’ve slept, but we were both too jazzed to fall asleep ‘cause we were excited and we could see the freakin’ falls from our hotel room so we stayed up until about 4AM just planning the next day’s adventures and finally crashed. Then we woke up at about 8AM. Insane.

Friday, we shopped at Niagara on the Lake, this cute shopping district about 30 mins north from our hotel (Sheraton on the Falls, if you’re curious). 

Saturday, I had bought us tickets to the boat tours with Hornblower Cruises. We got on the first boat at 10AM and froze our butts off in that 40 degree weather while getting hosed by the mist coming off the Falls. But as I have told everyone, “It’s cool. My face caught most of it.”

That water was cold, but it was revitalizing. We got back to the hotel room, and my aunt said, “Don’t you feel refreshed?” And, you know what? I fucking did. I felt, like, not “born again,” but definitely close to that. I felt... pure and alive.

After the boat ride, which was only 20 mins, I drove us up to Toronto ‘cause, why not, right? We were RIGHT there. Well, not right there, but only two hours away. XD The drive was nice, though, and there are some beautiful bridges along the way. (Though, I never really adjusted to the speed limit signs being in kilometers per hour versus miles. But that’s my fault and America’s. We seriously need to be standard.)

Anyhoo, Toronto was large and loud and busy and kinda insane. Though with 2.2 or so (I think the sign said?) million people, it’s like the crowds of Manhattan with the insanity of L.A. (I assume?). The city’s pretty, though. The architecture of the residential areas was so homey and 1980s feeling--I loved it. So nostalgic and well-kept... like something out of a sitcom. Every yard was perfect. Every car maintained and polished. It was lovely.

On the way out of Toronto (we just drove in and pretty much back out ‘cause it was such a long drive to get back to the hotel), we drove through a primarily Jewish community and saw some of them heading to church--I assume by the way they were all gussied up. That was awesome and definitely not something you happen upon in Tennessee. 

And, look, I don’t wanna come off as creepy, but on the way into Toronto, we stopped at the ONLY SHELL GAS STATION WE EVER SAW, and bought a shit ton of candy for the ride. Then we spot this super adorable Jewish boy, and I made a few jokes about offering him candy (not where he could hear me, obviously). He stared at us as we passed. We stared at him, and I joked that’d he’d puff up his collar and tell his buddies: “These babes were checkin’ ME out.” But in reality, it’s probably more like: “These weird Americans from Pennsylvania were staring at me.”

We had Penn state license plates on our rental car, and whenever I passed people in traffic, I’d say, “Let show ‘em how we drive in Pennsylvania.”

We are NOT from Pennsylvania.

Then on Sunday, our flight was at 7:27 PM in Buffalo, the plan was to just get to the airport and wait there and be bored. But stupid Daylight Savings Time totally fucked us. Not to mention we switched from Central to Eastern time while flying, so we lost an hour then gained one then lost it again on the way home. Fucking stupid.

Anyway, we accidentally checked out of the hotel an hour early ‘cause we thought it was noon (spolier: it was only 11 AM). I realize then when we’re leaving in the car--too late. We cross the border, eat lunch at an Irish pub in... I forget what city it was--but upstate New York outside Albany and about twenty minutes from the Buffalo airport. The place was called Connor’s, and it was fuckin’ delish.

Then we returned the rental car, chilled in the airport for like five hours (that went by faster than you’d think), flew to North Carolina for a layover (which turned into a stress-filled sprint walk, as Daniel Tosh calls it, to our boarding gate which we were late arriving too ‘cause our previous pilot had to circle the damn state of NC ‘cause some jackass was blocking up the runway), and then finally back to Nashville.

All in all, the trip was a blast. It cost me roughly $1000 for the three day trip. We split the hotel room and plane tickets, but I paid for the rental car, gas, and the boat tour. And then I spent roughly $400 on souvenirs and food. Not a bad chunk of change for such a relaxing vacation. That weekend felt SO long, but every minute of it was awesome.

OH! We also ate twice at this ice cream place on the corner from the hotel (well, actually inside the hotel) called Sweet Jesus. Look it up. That place is fucking wonderful.

Canada is lovely and so so peaceful. Probably the best thing about the trip was leaving behind all the bullshit of American culture. We are seriously bogged down here with so much shit every day and so many things demanding our attention and our money and... UGH! I didn’t feel any of that in Canada. Granted, being on vacation and not at work helped, but even still, the country just seemed laid back and calm. 

We all need a little Canada in our life.

Also one place we ate at served tiny packets of peanut butter at breakfast time along with typical tiny packets of jams and jellys. Totally stole one. Totally awesome. 

And at that Shell gas station, I spotted these:

They taste more like hot sauce on a potato chip rather than ketchup, but awesome to see. Oh, and I bought us Tim Horton’s coffee one morning, ‘cause I just HAD to. And boy do Canadians love their Wendy’s and Subway’s. We saw those two eateries everywhere. And we passed a marijuana store which was pretty nifty too.

We didn’t go in, despite what the guys at work say.

Ready for some pictures? :D

This was the view from our hotel room on the 8th floor. We could open the door and just get such a perfect view of the Falls. Every night, they lit up the Falls in an array of colors, but when they colored them for the American and Canadian flags... just wow.

Beautiful homes in Toronto. (And the Mini Cooper that was behind me FOR MILES and probably getting pissed ‘cause he’s in every damn shot. XD)

More houses. I love architecture, o.k.!

Made my aunt grab this shot while I drove. 

Another shot of the Falls, but lit in blue, white, and green. 

And a shot on Sunday morning at about 9AM (we thought it was 10AM XD). Sunday was the only sunny day while we were there, but I didn’t mind. We did a lot of walking--I mean, A LOT--and I’d rather walk under clouds than the sun any day.

And this is Connor’s, the Irish pub we stopped it in New York. 

Here’s a shot of us on the Hornblower boat. The distorted look is ‘cause it was shot with my cheapo-knock off Go-Pro. The big green building in the center back is our hotel. ;p

‘Nother shot from the boat with the CamPark. Those are the American side of the Falls.

The Horseshoe Falls on the Canadian side. Probably the best angle the CamPark caught on the boat.

There were also fireworks over the Falls on Saturday night. I overheard some women in the hotel saying there was some winter festival starting that night (Nov. 3rd). Dunno, but the fireworks were beautiful.

At long last, a shot of some sweet Canadian money ‘cause I still have the $5 bill and one of the $2 coins. I love the look of their money. 

[/content sigh]

...I would absolutely go back.

The even better news is that my aunt knows this chruch group that travels around a lot (like, right now, they’re in freakin’ Sierra Leone!), and they’re planing an Italy trip next June.

YES! Be still my heart!

My aunt signed us both up, and barring an unforeseen accident or a lobotomy, I could be in Italy in June 2019. And the chosen dates line up with my birthday, so I could very well spend my 30th birthday in FREAKIN’ ITALY, MAN! How cool would that be? And yeah, I’m not much for church and religion, but I am willing to put up with anything if it gets me to Italy. XD Plus, Italy has so many beautiful churches I’d love to see, and a church group damn better get me there.

#LONG post #canada #little facts about me #vacation

[tessatechaitea]

DC House of Horror #1, Part One

Is it really appropriate for DC to release a horror title when we're living in America in 2017?

I don't know what "jack their jaws" means but I know what I want it to mean!

That's Pa Kent lying dead in the field. This is an Elseworlds Horror Story as you can tell by the cell phones being used by Ma and Pa Kent. Also that Pa is dead. He seems to have been killed by whatever came out of the ship that crashed in their field. My guess is that it wasn't baby Kal. Maybe this is an Alien/Superman crossover! Martha is attacked by whatever was in the pod. It seems to be an overly cooked Superboy. At one point, as Ma is running from the creature, she thinks, "I promise I'll never rag about guns in the house again." See?! Americans also need guns to protect them from creatures from outer space! If guns were outlawed, only super strong creatures from out of space who can't be killed by guns would have guns! After killing Martha, Toddler Clark who can only scream in Kryptonian letters flies off to destroy the world. I guess this story was a thought experiment. It's lucky Clark was only a baby when he got to Earth and could be raised and molded by loving parents because look what would have happened if he'd arrived when he was two! What a fucking monster! Bump in the Night Rating: If you like seeing beloved characters killed by their cherished child, you're a sick fuck. Also, this story is for you. I wish there had been more guns.

#DC Comics #House of Horror

[therothwoman]

TV: The Doctor Who Chapter (To Have a Home, chapter 5)

Words: 3,387

Relationship: Stucky

Characters: Bucky, Steve, with brief cameos from Natasha and Sam.

Content warnings: Bucky gets triggered and has a panic attack, but through outside help and his own coping mechanisms he pulls through just fine.

Summary: Warm. Pictures. Company. Stray. TV. Share. Loved. Months after the events of Re-establishing Contact, a security mishap forces Steve and Bucky to be placed in different apartments at distant ends of the city. With a small but brand-new place to call his own, functional in society but still laying low and still wrestling with voices in the night, Bucky begins building a new home. This is a story about friendship, love, photography, books, movies, television, cats, prank wars, and having somewhere to go in times of need. This is a year in the life of Bucky Barnes. (New tags added with new chapters. This fic can be read as a complete story or as a series of vignettes. Each chapter’s opening notes will state chapter-specific tags.)

Chapter: Bucky decides to check out some 21st century sci-fi television and gets just a little bit more than he bargained for.

Notes: In which I take a few steps further and get Even More Self-Indulgent than the Pokemon scene from Re-establishing Contact. As a geeky BA-in-English-holder and certified Whovian, futzing around with reactions and thematic parallels between my favorite media like this was probably inevitable. Add to that the fact that Simmons referencing the TARDIS in Agents of SHIELD means that Doctor Who does exist as an actual series in the MCU. So I figured hey, why not make it a bit of a narrative? When I was first writing this chapter, it was mostly in the form of Bucky's text reactions to each season. But then I got stuck as I approached Season 6-8 because I felt like I knew them a lot less intimately (even though I watched them when they aired). Also, I didn't want to overwhelm non-Whovian Stucks with what was essentially turning into Twitter Who: Bucky Barnes Edition. To compromise, I've set those aside in a separate fic.

Chapter-specific tags: Television Watching, doctor who - Freeform, Panic Attacks

From the beginning

Previous chapter

On AO3: http://archiveofourown.org/works/8353570/chapters/21823745

TV

Bucky: [Okay I just finished the first episode.]

Bucky: [We’ve already got alien time travelers, some sort of space war, murder mannequins, and exploding buildings.]

Bucky: [I’m not sure how much crazier this show can get.]

Sam: [oh]

Sam: [oh man you just wait]

It had started with a fairly simple question. While Banks the cat did a good job of keeping Bucky company during the day, his presence had not stopped Bucky’s nightmares. He hadn’t reasonably expected it to, though. There was a decrease, and Bucky having something warm and freely affectionate to hold in the aftermath every time was certainly a blessing, but he still kept up his repertoire of staying up and doing something to keep his mind and/or body active for a bit before attempting sleep again, if at all. During a group video call, Bucky brought up a desire for something a little more structured.

“Whenever I need a distraction by turning on the TV, I always just watch whatever’s on,” he said. “I’d like something to actually watch, something that I can keep up with and get engaged in.”

There was a smattering of affirmative murmurs before Natasha said, “Easy enough, what are you interested in watching?”

Bucky considered for a moment. “Hmm. I want…something with adventure. Something about the little guys beating the odds. Something that doesn’t take itself too seriously but respects the weight of a situation when it needs to. Something with love. Something with…” His eyebrows lowered, thoughtfully. “Something with a home base. Someplace the characters can always come back to.”

The others looked contemplative for a second before Steve snapped his fingers. “I know one I’ve been enjoying.”

Sam smirked. “Are we thinking of the same one?”

“Is it the same one I stopped watching after Season 6?” asked Natasha.

“Yes.”

“Okay.”

And then all three of them in unison: “Doctor Who.”

For the most part, it was a great time. Bucky actually found himself watching it of his own accord instead of for nightmare balm more often than not. He loved all the characters and the wild stories, identified with some, and took offense at others (he had some angry caps-lock words to say about the two-parter that took place in 1930’s New York). If there was one issue he did have, it was with any story that involved memory erasure or reality alteration. And there were a number of those. He was fine through Human Nature and The Family of Blood, because there was an established sure-fire way for the Doctor-turned-John-Smith to be returned to his old self in a moment. The ending of Journey’s End, with poor Donna and her forced mind-wipe, was a significantly tougher sequence to go through. The one episode he couldn’t bring himself to finish at all was Amy’s Choice, because it was one thing to have an entire episode about switching between two perceived realities and being forced to determine which one was real, but the event’s orchestrator looking like the spitting image of Arnim Zola was a step too far. Still, ever-eager to know what happened next, he pressed on.

Nearly two hours later, his shaking fingers were hastily tapping to Steve’s number on his phone. The dial tone rang twice before Steve picked up. It had been months since Bucky was so relieved to hear his voice.

“Steve, I just…it was the ending of Cold Blood,” Bucky stumbled, trying to keep breathing. “…Rory died…Amy had to watch him die…and then he got swallowed by the crack…Steve, the universe itself made her forget him. She…she was willing to die instead of live in a world without him…yes I know, I looked up the rest of that episode…but I just…Steve…when I fell off the train…when you fell into the river…what if we’d…Jesus, Steve, I can’t…I just can’t…” He heard Steve trying to make reassuring noises over his anxious chattering.

“Hey hey hey, listen, Buck,” Steve said, “first of all, there’s no crack in the universe that’s going to make us forget each other…”

“But the technology…!”

“…was destroyed with that arm of Hydra. Second,” Steve continued, “I’m coming over now. You haven’t sounded this bad in weeks. Third, can I tell you a spoiler if it’ll help you feel better?”

Bucky nodded, even though Steve couldn’t see him. “Yeah, that’d be great.”

“Okay,” said Steve. “Rory comes back.”

Bucky was amazed that he had the mental energy to be puzzled. “O-kay…I’ll question it later. But yeah, c’mon over, I’m so sorry that…”

“Bucky,” Steve interrupted, “whatever you’re about to apologize for, you don’t need to. Just hang tight for a bit, okay? I’ll be right there.”

“I will, thanks.”

They wrapped up, and Bucky went to turn on the lights as he brought up the next episode of a podcast he’d been enjoying to put on as background noise. He scooped up Banks from the towel-cushioned cardboard box he’d fashioned as a cat bed (cheaper and more likely to actually be used than a real cat bed, according to the Internet) and sat back down on the couch to stroke the purring fluffball while listening to the animated rambling of the two podcast hosts. It was nice to have a source of such variety of listening in one show, with topics as mixed as flags and computers and human consciousness and promoting widespread availability of those little plastic sticks you used to plug up the hole in your coffee lid. He did tend to get a bit unsettled when the Australian guy talked about plane crashes with such zeal. Bucky usually skipped those segments when they came up. Thank god the American host wasn’t going on another lecture about how free will was probably an illusion, because Bucky really didn’t think he could handle that right now. It was about one podcast episode later when the intercom finally buzzed. Banks vacated Bucky’s lap as the less-distressed man went to let Steve in.

“Hey,” said Steve as he entered.

“Hi.”

“C’mere.” Bucky welcomed Steve’s warm embrace and the soothing hand rubbing his back, feeling the solidness of touching and knowing that Steve really was there and wasn’t about to vanish into a crack in time and space and make Bucky forget about him for another seventy years, or worse. They moved to lie down on the couch and just held each other for a while, Bucky stroking Steve’s shoulder blade with his right hand while Steve breathed calmly for him and gave Bucky occasional kisses to the forehead. Bucky had half a mind to reach up and try to drape the blanket over them, to just let them sleep in the comfort of each other’s company, but the thought kept nagging at the back of his mind: seriously, how the hell did Rory come back from the dead?

“Y’know,” he said at last, “I kinda still want to watch the next episode.”

Steve had his left hand in Bucky’s hair, giving him fond scratches around his crown. He stopped and patted Bucky’s head. “Ordinarily I’d say you could stop here if you wanted,” he said, “but I actually do really think you should see Vincent and the Doctor. It’s…I dunno how else to put it…it’s a healing episode.”

“Alright,” said Bucky, turning over to set up the next episode. “Let’s do this.”

After the dire straits of the previous story, switching to the subject of a troubled artist in the French countryside occasionally tormented by an invisible space monster was a welcome change for Bucky. He found himself nodding solemnly at Vincent’s talk about how the others in the village treated him horribly because they believed him to be the cause of their problems. Bucky thought back to his days in Bucharest, how that looming sensation followed him everywhere he went: that feeling of do they know? Do they know what I am? What I was? Oh, the number of times he had expected something to be thrown at him, or for a crowd in front of him to suddenly bolt as he approached, or for a distant siren to herald a swarm of armed soldiers with their guns trained on him and ready to finish him off. The fact that the invisible space monster in the episode was, in death, revealed to be a scared, wounded, and lonely creature itself did not help much. But it was in the aftermath of that scene that Bucky began to understand what Steve meant by this being a “healing episode.” For those few days, Vincent didn’t have to face his demons alone. More importantly, he was given the incredible chance to take a trip forward in the TARDIS to see the effect his work would have on future generations; to be reminded that just because you don’t get to see the impact of your time on this earth in your lifetime, it doesn’t mean you didn’t have an impact at all. For a minute, Bucky was worried that the episode had shot itself in the foot with the reveal that the Doctor and Amy’s visit ultimately didn’t prevent Vincent’s suicide, but then the Doctor rolled out the “pile of good things” speech and Bucky started to get sniffle-y again.

“’The good things don’t always soften the bad things, but the bad things don’t always spoil the good things or make them unimportant,’” Bucky repeated once the episode was over. “That’s one hell of a line. Come to think of it, there’ve been a lot of great lines on this show. Maybe that’s my next collage project: a Doctor Who quote wall.”

“I’d love to see it when you’re done,” said Steve. “Oh hey, the sun’s coming up.”

Bucky looked away from the TV and towards the kitchen window where the first rays of dawn were shimmering outside. The start of a new day. “Huh. So it is. Only got three episodes of the season left, I think I’m gonna keep going. You staying or…? You can crash on my bed if you want.”

Steve yawned. “Why don’t I make us some coffee first?” He patted Bucky’s shoulder as he got up from the couch.

“Hope you like espresso, ‘cause that’s all I’ve got,” said Bucky.

They blazed through the rest of the season, musing on the themes of protecting those you love (and using temporary superhuman abilities to do so. “He waited two thousand years for her and you only waited about seventy for me? Jesus, step up your game, Rogers,” Bucky had quipped with a playful elbow to the ribs) and the idea of “if something can be remembered, then it can come back.”

“Wow,” said Bucky at the conclusion. “What d’you think, Steve? Remembering things just…brings them back?”

“Not that literally, that’s for sure,” said Steve. “But…what do memories do other than bring back echoes of events, people, feelings, smells, places?”

“Easy,” said Bucky, stretching his shoulders a bit as though he subconsciously felt the need to physically assert himself as a perfect example of a response to Steve’s question. “Memories inform us. They tell us where we’ve been and how we got here. They give us context for being. I spent decades knowing and remembering nothing but Hydra, and then you showed up in Washington. Things started to come back. I knew that there’d been something to me before Hydra. There were other people I knew…another man I’d been…more context to me that had been blocked out.” He paused thoughtfully, gazing at the blank wall above the TV. A thought flitted by his mind ever so briefly that this was more blank wall space where he could put something up if he wanted to. “What d’you think, Steve?” he said again. “Have I gotten enough context back that I’m who I used to be?”

Steve lowered his eyebrows and took a few moments to answer, presumably searching for the right words. “I think it’s unreasonable to expect that you’d be the exact same James Buchanan Barnes I lived with in Brooklyn and fought with in the war. Like you said, memories inform you. I had faith that enough of the old you would come back that I could look into your face and see the man I loved again, but...” he sighed, “…that doesn’t change what happened in between. But if there was a way to…”

“Steve, don’t,” Bucky interrupted. “I know what you’re going to say, I know you’ve told me about how Wanda can mess with people’s heads and how she could probably use that power to my benefit. But quite frankly, it wouldn’t…it wouldn’t feel right. What right do I have to forget everything that I did? Or…sorry, right…what I was made to do? Or even to feel better about it? What kind of disrespect is that to all the lives I was made to shatter? Besides…” he laced his fingers together and closed his eyes in a very slow blink, curling his mouth up in the faintest of smiles, “…I…think I like what I am now. I’m a man living his own life, and I think that’s all anyone can ask for. I’m someone who’s already given his service to his country, but I know there’s more I can do, and I want to stick around for that day. I’m alive and I want to keep living. I want to stay someone who can give and receive love. And if anything that’s happened to me, good or bad, has helped me become that, I want to remember it.”

Steve took a few moments to respond, eventually lifting a hand and resting it on Bucky’s shoulder. “You’re right, Buck, I’m sorry,” said Steve. “Your mind, your memories, your decision.”

Bucky nodded, turning half his attention to the rest of the room. “Y’know, it’s funny,” he said. “The details I can remember and the ones I can’t. If you gave me a sheet of paper and a pencil, I could probably trace a rough floor plan of our old place. I could tell you where the couch was, where the stove was, where the bed was, but I couldn’t tell you…” his brow furrowed, “…the colors and patterns are things I have trouble with. I want to say the old bed sheets were sky blue, but that’s just because of the ones I have now. I think we had books, too. We must’ve had books.”

“We did have books. Not a lot, but…” Steve turned to look at Bucky’s current bookcase against the wall next to him. “Maybe a shelf or two of what you’ve got there? There wasn’t a lot of time for reading, not with the hours we had to keep to afford rent sometimes.”

“I remember some of the stuff I read, but more vague plot things than actual titles, unless it was one of The Classics,” Bucky continued. “I know a read a bunch of H.G. Wells, I’m pretty sure I read Frankenstein, I must’ve read Alice in Wonderland at some point because I know there was something in there somewhere about a girl going on a goddamn trip. When I first remembered it existed, it took me a while to stop getting it mixed up with The Wizard of Oz. If we had any P.G. Wodehouse books, they were definitely yours. You liked them a lot more than me, I remember that. Or at least the Jeeves books. I never really understood what you got out of stories of bored rich guys getting almost-married every few weeks.”

“Honestly, I think it was more the writing than the stories,” said Steve with a light chuckle. “Maybe I’m just a sucker for a good well-worded sentence. Or, in this case, a lot of them in a row.”

Bucky tilted his head with a smile. “I might have to give those another shot,” he said, “because one of them has the only specific sentences I remember from back then.”

Steve’s eyes widened. “You remember actual lines from the books?”

“Just barely,” said Bucky. “I know you got me to read the Jeeves short stories, and there was one…” he closed his eyes, “…I can’t remember the name of the story or which book it was or anything else that happened in the actual plot but…Bertie Wooster and some other guy got stuck on the roof of a gazebo in the middle of a lake or something and they couldn’t get back to the boat because there was an angry swan in the way. So Jeeves has to come save them and…again, I don’t remember the meat of that one paragraph but I know it started ‘every young man starting life ought to know how to cope with an angry swan, so I will briefly relate the proper procedure’ and it ended with ‘that was Jeeves’s method, and I cannot see how it could have been improved upon’.” Bucky turned to look at Steve again, whose eyes were still wide and whose mouth was slightly open in pleasant surprise.

“Oh my god,” he said with the slightest of pauses. “I remember that. I remember you reading that. I was tidying up the kitchen and you were laughing your ass off in the next room and suddenly you rushed in with the book and yelled ‘STEVE, I’VE JUST…’”

“’…FOUND THE FUNNIEST SHIT I’VE EVER READ IN MY LIFE’,” they finished in unison.

“Yeah,” Steve continued. “You tried doing a dramatic reading of it, but you barely got to the end before you were on the floor with one hand over your stomach and the other slapping the rug.”

Bucky grinned. “Ohhh man, when the hell was the last time I found something that funny?”

“You know they made a TV show out of that?” said Steve.

“Wait, out of the Jeeves books?”

“Yeah, it’s just called Jeeves and Wooster. I haven’t seen it yet, but I’d like to.”

“Well then,” said Bucky, leaning back into the couch, “I bet I know what we’re watching after I catch up on Doctor Who.”

Bucky: [Holy shit]

Bucky: [Hoooooooooly shit]

Bucky: [Steve, I just realized something about season 9.]

Bucky: [That was us. That was basically us.]

Steve: [It…wait]

Bucky: [I mean, think about it:]

Bucky: [There’s a protagonist and his best friend who mean the universe to each other and fight evil together]

Bucky: [And one day the protagonist has to watch his best friend die, shortly before he himself gets agelessly aged by a lot]

Bucky: [And then the protagonist learns there might be a way to get his friend back, so he goes through hell and high water to make it happen, maybe crossing a few lines along the way]

Bucky: [And when the protagonist finally gets his friend back, something happens to separate them again.]

Bucky: [Plus there’s forced memory loss and a part where one of them tries to kill the other because they don’t recognize them.]

Steve: [You know, it’s freaky]

Steve: [I feel like I thought that too when I first watched it, but I hadn’t put it into words like that.]

Bucky: [I think you and I won out in the long run, didn’t we?]

Steve: [Yeah, we did. We absolutely did.]

Steve: [Wait, what’s with this me being “the protagonist”? This isn’t a movie of my life, Buck.]

Bucky: [Yeah, but it fit the metaphor.]

Steve: [Maybe you should stick that somewhere on your quote wall: “I am the protagonist of my own story.”]

Bucky: [That’s a thought. I’ve already got the rest of it laid out though.]

Bucky: [Maybe it’s just because we just watched it earlier this week and it’s still fresh in my head, but I’m giving a really good space to that one line about]

Bucky: [“Never be cruel and never be cowardly, and if you ever are, always make amends.”]

Bucky: [I only hope I can achieve that someday.]

Steve: [You do tend to apologize a lot these days.]

Bucky: [If it’s a coping mechanism, let’s just say it works for me and leave it at that.]

Steve: [Hey, what works for you that isn’t hurting yourself, works for me.]

Bucky: [Sounds fair. Thank you.]

Steve: [Speaking of “leaving it at that,” have you seen that Christmas special with River Song yet?]

Bucky: [RIGHT, THAT. NO I HAVEN’T, LET ME FIX THAT.]

#stucky #bucky barnes #steve rogers #captain america #winter soldier #bucky #doctor who #my fics #fanfikshun