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babeyvenus · 2 years

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My Future

Derek Hale x OC

Samantha, Stiles and Scott are always joking about the impossible. Who wouldn't when your best friend's dad is the sheriff of Beacon Hills? All jokes stop when they realize the impossible is indeed possible.

Chapter 19: Forgiveness

"You know when you're drowning, you don't actually inhale until right before you black out?", Sam told Ms. Morrell, the guidance counselor, as she picked at her lacrosse stick.

"It's called voluntary apnea. It's like no matter how much you're freaking out, the instinct of not letting any water in is so strong that you won't open your mouth until you feel like your head's exploding. But then when you finally do let it in, that's when it stops hurting. It's not scary anymore. It's actually kind of peaceful.", Sam says, staring off into space.

"Are you saying you hope Matt felt some peace in his last moments?", Ms. Morrell asked. Sam's eyes glanced over at her. "I don't feel sorry for him."

"Can you feel sorry for the nine-year-old Matt who drowned?"

Sam's jaw clenched. "Just because a bunch of dumbasses dragged him into a pool when he couldn't swim doesn't really give him the right to go off killing them one by one. Not only that, Stiles' dad told me they found a bunch of pictures of Allison on Matt's computer. And not just of her.", she scoffed at the memory. "I mean, he photoshopped himself into these pictures. Stuff like them holding hands and kissing. He was building himself a fake relationship with these pictures. Him drowning isn't an excuse to be delusional."

"One positive thing came out of this though, right?", she asked.

"I guess, but I still feel like there's something wrong between us. I don't know."

"Can you explain?"

"There's this one night, I had a nightmare. My brother and my mom were arguing over what he wanted to do with his life, and he turned around and blamed my dad's death on my mom. He saw me and said the same thing. Said I'd never see him again. Said he wished I was never born.", Sam swallowed. "All I can ask myself is, was it really my fault? Since then, I haven't seen my brother."

"Is your father dead?", she asked. Sam shrugged. "I can't really say. He and my mom got into this really big argument, and he walked out on us. I was 8 at the time so I can't really remember. I don't really know if he died, but my brother was convinced that he did after we moved here."

"Maybe it was a dream. Maybe he's still alive.", she reassured.

"Maybe. But it's different in the house now. Mom's always working, I barely see her. I thank every lucky star I have that she doesn't see me coming home the way I do or that she doesn't know half of the things I've been through.", Sam says, rubbing her face.

"Have you talked to her about it since that night?"

"No, not really. I mean, I'm more focused on everything else so everything that's happened has been a distraction from being at home. Scott's got his own problems to deal with. I don't think he's talked to Allison yet either. But as I told her, that's her own choice. Her mom dying hit her pretty hard. But I guess it brought her and her dad closer.", Sam says as she shakes her head.

"Stiles and I are still pretty close… At least, I hope we still are. We were supposed to be talking about he felt, but we never did. Him and his dad are pretty on and off with each other. Jackson, though? Jackson hasn't really been himself lately. " Sam chuckled humorlessly. "Actually, the funny thing is, as of right now, Lydia is the only one who seems the most normal."

She frowned once more. "And then, there's this guy..." She shook her head. "Sometimes, I don't understand him. I can't get in his head. I can't tell what he's thinking or what his next moves are gonna be. He's...cold and distant one minute and then caring and softer the next. I don't know what to make of him."

"Boy troubles, hm? Maybe talk to him about how he feels. If he doesn't open up right away, that's okay, but he might if he sees how much you care.", the older woman suggests. Sam shrugged.

"And what about the championship game tomorrow night? Feeling nervous?", Ms. Morrell asked.

Sam shook her head. "Not really… Scott always has my back in the games."

"But you said you haven't talked to him recently."

"Me and Scott always get on each other's nerves as well as me and Stiles. But we've stuck together through it.", Sam says, letting a small smile play on her lips before dropping. "Though… tension is rising in my team too. I mean, one of my teammates is dead and one of them is missing."

"You mean, Isaac. One of the three runaways. You haven't heard from any of them, have you?", she asked her. Sam looked at her desk, noticing she wasn't even writing anything.

"How come you're not taking any notes about this?"

"I do my notes after the session."

"Your memory's that good?"

"How about we get back to you?", the woman insisted, and Sam looked back into her lap, shaking her head. "Sam?" The girl looked back up at Ms. Morrell.

"I'm fine. Yeah, aside from not sleeping, jumping at every loud, sudden noise, and feeling this heavy dread something terrible is about to happen."

"It's called hyper vigilance, the persistent feeling of being under threat.", she informed.

"But it's not just a feeling, though. It's like," Sam shook her head, thinking. "It's like a panic attack. You know, like I can't breathe."

"Like you're drowning?"

"Yeah.", Sam nodded.

"So if you're drowning and you're trying to keep your mouth closed until that very last moment, what if you choose to not open your mouth? To not let the water in?"

"But you do that anyway? It's a reflex.", Sam says, confused.

"But if you hold off until that reflex kicks in, you have more time, right?"

"Not much time.", Sam responded.

"But more time to fight your way to the surface?"

"I guess."

"More time to be rescued?"

"More time to be in agonizing pain. And did you forget the part where you feel like your head's exploding?"

"If it's about survival, isn't a little agony worth it?"

"And what if it gets worse? What if it's agony now and then. . . and it's just hell later on?"

"Then think about something Winston Churchill once said, "If you're going through hell, keep going."

Sam sat on the bench with Stiles and Scott as Coach came up behind Stiles.

"What the hell are you talking about?", Coach questioned Stiles. "The game hasn't even started. Now put on your helmet and get out there."

"You're letting Stiles play?", Sam asked, smiling.

"You're in for Greenburg.", Coach told Stiles.

"What?", Stiles asked. "What happened to Greenburg?"

"What happened to Greenburg? He sucks. You suck slightly less."

"I'm playing? On the field? With the team?"

"Yes, unless you rather play with yourself."

"I already did that today. Twice.", Stiles replied.

Sam looked at him, unamused. "Stiles."

"Get the hell out there!", Coach yelled and Stiles grabbed his stuff, running out on the field. Sam put her helmet on as they took their spots.

"Ok, Stiles, whatever you do, try to stay close to me so I can save your ass whenever I can.", Sam said as the game started.

She winced as Stiles constantly got brutally tackled. Isaac came out onto the field and ran to her.

"We got to get Scott out on the field.", Isaac said.

"How?", Sam asked. "He's failing, like, three classes."

"Got to make it seem like Coach doesn't have a choice."

Sam smirked. "I can definitely do that." The whistle and Sam charged forward and curled up into a ball and rolled Gotez over.

"Ramirez! You're in!" Isaac tackled Ramirez and Sam got Murphy. "Lahey! Wilson! Seriously, what the hell is your problem?", Coach shouted.

"Sorry, coach!", Sam yelled, grinning. She was about to charge at the last player, but someone slammed into her. Sam tumbled to the ground and groaned in pain. Scott came to her side.

Sam felt her ribs being sore. Not broken at least.

She didn't move as the Paramedics came and loaded her onto the stretcher. Sam quickly went into the locker room to change. As she began changing, she stopped as she heard a shing of metal. The fuck…?

Sam turned around and saw Gerard and his hunters coming toward her.

Shit.

She kept forgetting he's the principal. Him being the principal has given him too many conveniences.

Sam's eyes widened as she saw Scott behind Gerard. Scott slammed the two hunters into the wall and turned around to her, eyes yellow, to see Gerard gone.

"Where is he?", Scott asked. Not bothering to ask any more questions, Scott and Sam ran outside to the field to see ten seconds on the clock.

The buzzer sounded and the lights went out leaving the field pitch black. Screams sounded and Scott and Sam looked around to place the scream.

"What the hell is going on?", Sam asked Scott as they looked around.

The lights of the field came back on. They ran to the middle of the field to see Jackson, lying still on the ground.

"Jackson!", they heard Lydia yell, running to Jackson. She pushed past the teens to Jackson. "Jackson, what's happening?"

"Can we get a medic over here?", Coach yelled. "We're gonna need a medic!"

Melissa came and knelt beside Jackson.

"He's not breathing.", Melissa said. "No pulse." Melissa lifted up Jackson's shirt to see blood.

"Look," Sam whispered to Scott and Isaac, pointing to Jackson's hands which were covered in blood.

"He did it to himself?", Isaac asked them. Stiles' dad came off the bleachers to the middle of the field.

"Stiles?", he called out, looking around. "Where's Stiles? Where...where is my son? Where's Stiles? Where the hell is my son?"

Her eyes widened as she frantically looked around. Where the hell was her best friend?

She ran through the hallways looking for Stiles and ran in the locker room, only to see Scott and Isaac rummaging through Stiles' locker.

"How come you get his shirt and I get his shoe?", Isaac asked, looking at the sneaker in his hands.

"You guys haven't found anything?", Sam asked. They shook their heads and Scott suddenly pulled her towards him.

Sam turned around and saw Derek. "We need to talk.", Derek said. "All of us.", Peter came out from behind his nephew.

Sam took Stiles' shoe out of Isaac's hand and threw it at Peter. He hid behind Derek again before popping out with a smile.

Scott frowned. "What the hell is this?"

"You know, I thought the same thing when I saw you talking to Gerard at the Sheriff's station.", Derek confessed.

"Okay, hold on. He threatened to kill my mom. And I had to get close to him. What was I supposed to do?", Scott defended.

"I'm going to go with Scott on this one. Have you seen his mom? She's gorgeous.", Peter chimed.

"Shut up!" Scott, Derek, and Sam yelled at Peter simultaneously. He rolled his eyes.

"Who is he?", Isaac quietly asked Sam.

"That's Peter, Derek's uncle. A little while back he threatened to kill us all, he bit me, and then they set him on fire and Derek slashed his throat.", she explained, crossing her arms.

"Hi.", Peter waved his fingers. Isaac nervously and half-heartedly smiled. "Good to know."

"How is he alive?", Scott asked.

"He's alive because of me and Lydia.", Sam says. Scott gaped at her. "You? How?"

"He was controlling us.", Sam confessed, glaring at the older man.

"He's controlling you?"

"Look, the short version is, he's back and he knows how to stop Jackson. Maybe how to save him.", Derek said, as they all looked at him in shock.

"Well that's pretty helpful except, Jackson's dead.", Isaac confessed bluntly.

"What?", Derek asked, shocked himself.

"It literally just happened on the field. He's dead.", Sam says. Derek and Peter looked at each other concerned. "Okay why is no one taking this as good news?", Isaac wondered.

"Because if Jackson is dead it didn't just happen, Gerard wanted it to happen.", Peter said.

"But why?", Derek asked his uncle.

"Well that's exactly what we need to figure out and something tells me the window of opportunity is closing. Quickly.", Peter sighed, taking a step forward.

"Are you seriously asking us to trust you?", Sam asked, incredulously.

"Yes. On this one subject involving Jackson, I'm asking you, Samantha, to trust me."

Sam stepped up to him, uncrossing her arms. "I'm only nice once, Peter. You killed your niece, bit my best friend, tried to kill me and my friends, you bit me and tried to turn me, took over my body, literally almost killed your nephew," She pointed at Derek.

"Could've killed his mom," she pointed at Scott. "Used me and Lydia to bring you back to life, and now you're asking me to trust you. That's not happening. You've got ways to go before I start trusting you."

"Well, that'll work fine for me.", he says. "Piss off. Seriously.", Sam retorted.

The door creaked as Scott, Isaac, Peter, Derek, and Sam walked into the Hale house.

Her phone buzzed as she got a text from Stiles, instantly sighing in relief. "Stiles is okay.", Sam announced.

"Look, I told you I looked everywhere.", Derek told Peter, who crouched over the bottom stairs.

"You didn't look here." Peter took out a wooden plank from the stairs. He reached inside and grabbed a large suitcase, carefully pulling it out and brushing the dust off the top.

"What is that, a book?", Derek asked. Peter looked at him, offended.

"No, it's a laptop.", Peter sassed. "What century are you living in?" Derek rolled his eyes.

"I'm shocked you know what that is.", Sam says, crossing her arms.

"A few days after I got out of the coma, I transferred everything that we had. Fortunately, the Argents aren't the only ones that keep records." He got up and paced into another room. All of them followed, minus Scott who left to go to his mom with Isaac.

Sam kept Scott on the line as he went to the hospital.

"He's in some type of transparent casing made from the venom coming out of his claws.", she told Derek as we watched Peter, who sat at an old desk searching through his MacBook.

"That sounds sufficiently terrifying.", Peter mumbled.

"They also say he's starting to move.", Sam said, taking the phone from her ear.

"Look, I think I found something." Peter types quickly. "Looks like what you're seeing from Jackson is just the kanima's beta shape."

"It has a beta shape??", Sam asked in disbelief.

"What, meaning it can turn into something bigger?", Derek asked, leaning in closer to the screen. Peter's eyes widened and he leaned back in his chair. "Bigger and better."

On the screen was an indescribable looking monster that looked way more powerful than Jackson looked now. It was bigger, at least twice the size. Its claws looked way sharper and longer, even the tail looked more deadly.

Derek's eyes also widened. "He's turning into that? That has wings."

"I can see that.", Peter quietly replied. Sam sighed. "Scott, bring him to us please.", Sam says into the phone.

"I don't think that'll be possible, Sam.", Scott replies.

"Look, someone actually made an animation of it.", Peter clicked on the YouTube link to it. Derek and Sam leaned forward to look. "Maybe it's less frightening if we—" a terrifying reptilian screech came crying through the computer and the most horrifying picture of the alpha kanima moving showed up, making Derek and Sam flinch and stand up straight. Peter immediately shut the computer.

"Nope, not at all.", Peter turned his head to look at Derek. "You should probably meet him half way."

"Scott, get him out of there now. Go now!", Derek took her phone and ordered before hanging up and they started to rush out of the house.

"Derek, we need Lydia.", Peter said before they left the house.

"Look, there's no tim—" Peter cut Derek off by putting his finger in the air to quiet his nephew. "That's the problem. We're rushing, we're moving too fast. Everybody knows that a moving target is harder to hit and here we are, racing right into Gerard's crosshairs."

"If I get the chance to kill Jackson, I'm taking it.", Derek said, walking off. Peter looked at Sam, cocking his head.

"Don't look at me. That's your nephew.", Sam said, shaking her head in dismissal.

"We need her, Samantha."

Sam sighed harshly.

"You said it yourself originally that there had to be another way, Jackson couldn't die. For that to not happen, we need Lydia.", Peter said. Sam shook her head, raising her arms to slap against her thighs in defeat. "Fine. We'll get her."

Sam whipped out her phone to text Stiles to find Lydia and bring her to the warehouse district.

Peter and Sam arrived at the Beacon Hills Warehouse District, sighing as they saw headlights from another car. They could see a SUV in front of them, so Sam cut the engine to the Camaro and got out of the car.

She sighed. "Fuck.", she whispered, realizing who the SUV belonged to. An Argent. She turned around and saw that Peter was nowhere to be found. The Hale boys and their disappearances, typical.

"Where's Derek?", Chris Argent asked, walking up to her. Before she could answer, Derek came running down the foggy street on all fours. He leaped into the air and crouched down onto the pavement.

"Oh boy.", Sam muttered, shaking her head. "What the hell are you doing here?", Sam asked Chris. Derek stared at Chris with hatred and spite.

"I'm here for Jackson, not you.", Chris directed at Derek.

"Somehow that doesn't feel very comforting."

Chris and Derek nodded at each other. "Get him inside.", Derek demanded. They all ordered. Once they were all inside, Scott was the first to speak up.

"Where are they?", he asked Derek and Sam. Derek looked from side to side, confused. "Who?"

"Peter and Lydia.", Scott answered and looked around.

"Sam, where the hell is Peter?", Scott yelled. Sam pointed at him. "Don't start with me, Scott. I don't know."

She knew he was here; he was just hiding in the shadows. She could sense him.

Derek ignored Scott and crouched over the body bag, unzipping it to reveal a dead Jackson.

"Hold on a second, you said you knew how to save him!", Scott cried.

"We're passed that.", Derek told him. "What—what about—" Scott began to yell, but Derek yelled at him. "Think about it, Scott! Gerard controls him now! He's turned Jackson into his own personal guard dog! He set all of this in motion so that Jackson could get even bigger and more powerful."

"No…", Chris spoke up, Derek and Sam turned to face him. "No, he wouldn't do that. If Jackson's a dog, he's turning rabid, and my father would never let a rabid dog live.", the older man said.

"Of course not," they turned around to see Gerard emerging from the darkness, revealing himself.

Shit.

"Anything that dangerous, that out of control, is better off dead.", Gerard said evilly. Derek growled, looked down to Jackson, and drew back his arm to thrust his claws into Jackson's chest.

Before he could, Jackson stabbed his own claws into Derek's chest. Effortlessly, he lifted Derek off his feet as he began standing up and hurled him into the next room.

"No!", Sam yelled, ready to run to him. Chris Argent, with a gun in his hand, held her back. They all looked at Gerard in fear.

"Well done to the last, Scott.", Gerard congratulated. "Like the concerned friend you are, you brought Jackson to Derek to save him. You just didn't realize that you were also bringing Derek to me."

An arrow whizzed right for Scott, but he managed to dodge it, so it hit Isaac in the shoulder. He groaned in pain and fell to the ground.

Sam glared at the Argent daughter who glared at her.

"Allison?", Scott gaped, realizing she was trying to kill him. Scott and Sam rushed to Isaac, helping him up and pulling the arrow out of his shoulder. Chris began shooting off bullets, triggering Jackson's screeching.

"Can you move?", Sam asked Isaac.

"It hurts.", he whimpered. "It's healing, I'll be okay."

"Sam, get out of here." Scott demanded.

"You get Gerard and Jackson. I've got Allison.", Sam says.

"Don't hurt her.", he growled at her. She looked at him like he had grown another head. "Uh, first off, she tried to kill us, okay? All of us at this point. I'm not promising that.", Sam says, and ducked as Derek came flipping over wooden crates and crouching down, all wolfed out.

Both Isaac and Scott had phased too. Sam snuck over to the broken trunk of the Argents' SUV and grabbed a gun. When she turned around, she came face to face with Gerard. He shoved her into the car. Gerard began fighting her. She felt a couple blows to the stomach and a couple to the side of her face. She kicked him in the stomach, and he stumbled out of the car.

She fought back against the old man, but Gerard pushed her to the ground. The gun flew out of her hands, clattering a few feet from her. Sam scurried up, grabbing it and running towards where she could see Jackson. The three werewolves could barely take him, they were all getting thrown down every time they attacked. Sam watched as Isaac was choked by the kanima and thrown into a pile of wood, Derek jumped down from a machine and began fighting with him.

Sam lifted the gun. "Derek, move!", she shouted. Derek looked at Sam with wide eyes and dodged as Sam aimed the gun right at Jackson and shot it off. A bullet went straight through Jackson, and he screeched, glaring at her with hate. He pushed Derek to the floor and went after Sam.

"Come on.", Sam called. Behind him, Scott appeared and caught him off guard, but he reacted quickly and threw him into a wall. Derek went right back up again but managed to get his side slashed. He started stumbling, until he finally fell over.

Shit, not again.

Sam looked around and saw Allison attacking Isaac and she watched as Allison turned to Derek. Sam rushed in front of him and pointed her gun at her. She couldn't let her kill Derek.

"Back off, Allison.", Sam threatened.

"You wouldn't.", she hissed. Sam lips quickly quirked in a challenging smile, immediately remembering her words from the night before. She raised her eyebrows and aimed the gun a few inches away from Allison's direction, and shot the gun, nearly grazing her ear.

Allison looked at her in horror and frowned as her face turned hateful. She raised her knife and started to rush at Sam.

"Allison!", Scott yelled. In one swift motion, the knife was taken from Allison's hands and dropped to the floor. She was now dangling above ground, the kanima's scaly hands wrapped around her neck.

"Not yet, sweetheart.", Gerard said, smiling.

"What are you doing?", Allison choked in panic.

"He's doing what he came here to do.", Scott said.

"Then you know." Gerard didn't seem surprised.

"What is he talking about?", Allison asked.

"It was that night outside the hospital, wasn't it? When I threatened your mother. I knew I saw something in your eyes. You could smell it, couldn't you?", Gerard asked.

"He's dying.", Issac said, looking at Gerard.

"I am. I have been for a while now.", Gerard practically shrugged. "Unfortunately, science doesn't have a cure for cancer yet. But, the supernatural does."

He looked at Derek who was in his wolf form. He was still paralyzed and the only thing defending him was Sam. Allison started gasping and Gerard flashed Jackson a look, making his grip harder on his granddaughter.

"You monster.", Chris Argent growled at his father.

"Not yet.", Gerard smirked.

"What are you doing?", Allison cried.

"You'll kill her too!", Chris cried.

"When it comes to survival, I'd kill my own son!" Gerard's jaw clenched tightly and then he focused on Scott.

"Scott.", he smiled at the boy. Scott phased back to himself and looked from Chris Argent, to Derek, to Sam and back again.

"Scott, no.", Sam exclaimed. He seemed sorry for a moment before walking over to her, shoving Sam with force and plunged his claws into Derek's neck. Derek let out a weakened roar.

"Scott, he's going to kill him after!", Sam yelled at him, trying to stop him, but before she could run after him, Jackson's tail quickly wrapped around Sam's throat.

Derek looked up at Sam with furrowed eyebrows. "He's going to be an Alpha.", Derek mumbled to Scott.

"That's true. But I think he already knows that. Don't you, Scott? He knows that the ultimate prize is Allison. Do this small task for me and they can be together. You're the only piece that doesn't fit, Derek. And in case you haven't learned yet, there's just no competing with young love." Gerard began to take his jacket off, preparing for the bite.

"Scott, don't.", Derek looked at him.

"Don't, Scott!", Sam pleaded to her friend as she choked. "All of this would've been for nothing if you just give him what he wants."

"I'm sorry!", Scott apologized in a yell, then he quieted down. "But I have to."

Gerard rolled up his sleeve and walked over to Derek. Gerard put his forearm into Derek's mouth and clamped down his jaw. A loud cry of pain echoed in the room. It stopped when Gerard snatched his arm out of Derek's mouth, and Derek stumbled to the ground.

Sam kicked the back of Jackson's head and wiggled out of the Kanima's tail, catching her breath as she ran over, crouching to the ground to help Derek sit up. He looked at her with sadness in his eyes as Sam glared at Scott and Gerard. Gerard gave a victory laugh while they all stared at his bitten arm as it began to bleed black. Streams of black blood were trickling down his arm and they all watched in horror.

"What?", He asked. He looked down to his arm and saw the black blood. "What is this?" Sam's eyes widened as she looked at Scott. He planned this. Holy shit.

She let out a chuckle. "Your plan just backfired.", she told Gerard.

"What did you do?", Gerard glared at Scott.

Derek and Sam looked up at Scott, who looked down at them.

"Everyone said Gerard always had a plan," Scott faced Gerard, "I had a plan too." Gerard, stunned, quickly shoved his hand into his pocket and took out his silver pill container.

"No.", Gerard growled. He spilled the pills into his hand. "Mountain Ash!", he screamed, crushing the pills in his hand making a black powder flying out of his fist.

Gerard fell to his knees, black blood was coming out of his eyes and nose. It even spewed out of his mouth. Then he fell to the floor, exhausted.

"Why didn't you tell me?", Derek asked Scott, hurt evident in his voice. "Because you might be an Alpha, but you're not mine.", Scott declared. Derek's eyes fell down to the ground and Sam helped him stand.

"Kill them! Kill. Them. All!", Gerard screamed at the top of his lungs.

Shit.

A loud crash echoed through the warehouse. They all watched as Stiles' jeep came ramming into the building and hit the Kanima.

"Stiles!", Sam exclaimed, happy to see him.

"Did I hit him?", Stiles' eyes were squeezed shut. Scott and Sam chuckled. Jackson jumped on the roof of the car, making Lydia and Stiles scream. They both stumbled out of the car as fast as possible.

Stiles ran over to Scott but Lydia stood right in front of Jackson, yelling his name. Jackson held back his hand and was about to slash Lydia's throat.

"Lydia!", Stiles and Sam screamed. Sam was about to go help her until Derek held her back by wrapping his hand around her arm. She looked at him, as he gave her a look to stop.

Sam watched as Lydia held up a small object in front of her face. It made Jackson stop and look at it for a second. He just stared at the object as if he was remembering something and from then on, his scales disappeared from his face.

Jackson backed away from Lydia. Sam noticed Peter had jumped from wherever he was hiding, signaling Derek.

Quickly, Derek's claws were piercing in Jackson's abdomen while Peter's were in his back. They lifted him off the ground and their claws sliced through his skin. Jackson was coughing and choking on his blood and spit, and they finally let him go.

Lydia went to catch him and Derek came back to me. Lydia and Jackson sank to the ground, the redhead was crying.

Sam felt bad. Lydia really did love him. Despite his shitty attitude towards her, she still loved him. Sam felt a hand placed itself on her shoulder as she backed away from the scene.

Sam turned around and saw Derek looking at her with sad eyes. Her own filled with tears as she looked back at the scene before her. She backed up and stayed by his side, Isaac soon came over on his other side.

"Do you—do you still—", Jackson stuttered out.

"I do.", Lydia immediately replied. She slowly nodded while tears were streaming down her face. "I do still love you." She let out a sob. "I do, I do still love you. I do.", she whispered. Jackson seemed satisfied and his head drooped on her shoulder before his body went limp.

Sam looked away, clenching her fists. He was an ass. He was always an ass...but she grew up with him. She never hated him as much as she pretended. She tolerated him and vise versa.

He didn't deserve to die. Saving him should've been the better option.

The object dropped from Jackson's hands and clanked loudly onto the concrete floor. It was a key—a house key. It must've held memories.

Lydia rocked back and forth, quietly repeating that she still loved him. Finally, she laid him on the ground as the last bit of his scales disappeared.

"Where's Gerard?", Allison asked. Sam rolled her eyes and looked over to where Gerard once laid, but he was gone. A pool of black blood was left in his place. What the hell.

"He can't be far.", Chris assured. This old creep was crawling away and no one was concerned??

Lydia slowly stood up, sobbing and barely keeping it together. Stiles went to go comfort her but stopped when they all heard a noise echo through the warehouse.

It sounded something scratching against the floor…something like claws. They all focused behind Lydia to see Jackson. His wounds were healed, but he was still dead.

Suddenly Jackson's eyes opened, revealing his irises shining an unnatural icy blue. They all watched silently as he carefully got up and shifted into a werewolf right before them.

He stared up at the ceiling for half a second before letting out a ground-shaking howl. Jackson looked just as confused as they did after he shifted back to normal.

"Holy hell…", Sam muttered and looked at Derek as he looked at the boy in shock. This wasn't the plan. Lydia hurried and ran into his arms. They both tightly embraced and wrapped each other's arms around one another.

Everything was fine…for now.

"Let's go home." Sam looked at Derek who looked back down at her with a small smile. She returned the smile, and they did, only headed back to her place to get him cleaned after he had changed.

Derek sat on Sam's bed as she wrung out a towel before walking over to him. His face was still dirty from dried blood and dust.

He didn't meet her eyes as she cleaned his face. "You shouldn't be doing this.", he says. Sam smiled. "You're not the first person I cleaned up after a hard day."

"I'm sorry.", he suddenly said. Sam stopped. "You're apologizing."

He nodded. "For what?", Sam asked, resuming her cleaning. "Everything. I shouldn't have said what I said to you. I shouldn't have blamed you for Peter's doing. You're not an inconvenience. I never meant that.", he said.

Sam stopped, looking at him with a frown. "Derek."

"I'm serious. It wasn't right. I wasn't protecting you. I was protecting myself. I wasn't supposed to care what anyone thought of me. I...I haven't had anyone care about me after Laura... so it was difficult when you came around.", he confessed, looking down.

"For so long, I wanted to feel like I was somebody. Someone that others could rely on. Someone powerful. Someone who knew what they were doing. Scott made me realize that I'm really untrustworthy.", he expressed. "Before we left for Jackson…Erica and Boyd left."

Sam sighed.

Setting the damp towel down on her desk, she turned to him. "I knew you didn't mean what you said. Despite being hurt by your words, I know you didn't mean it. I just… I wish you'd have a little more faith in me. That's all. I do rely on you and sometimes I feel like I shouldn't because you already have so much to deal with."

She walked back over to him. "Your personality is a little questionable and your methods of caring are a little strange in its own way, but you still have a heart. That's what I like about you. That's why I trust you. You can be an amazing alpha. You know when to make the tough calls, despite not liking them.", Sam says and sit down next to him.

She looked down. "I know what it's like to feel alone. Abandoned. But if you have people that care about you, they'll stick around. They'll be there for you when you need them.", she says, smiling wistfully and looks up at him.

"When people leave you without a good reason, you gotta let them go sometimes. It's for your own good. All you can do is move on. If Erica and Boyd thought it was a good idea to leave, that's on them. But guess who you have. Me and Isaac and the others, and for some strange reason, your psychotic uncle. You're not alone, Derek.", she says, making him look at her. "You're not as bad as you make yourself seem."

His eyes blinked as if he were blinking away tears and suddenly hugged her. She hugged him back. "Thank you.", she hears him rasp. She rubbed his back as they sat in her dimmed moonlit room.

Early the next morning, before Derek was about to drop her at Stiles' house, they had made a quick stop into the woods with Isaac and Peter. As they approached the house, there was a weird symbol painted on the door. It was similar to Derek's weird tattoo, but it was different.

"This kinda looks like a swastika.", Sam muttered, and Isaac's eyes widened at her assumption.

"You haven't told them everything yet, have you?", Peter asked, looking over at Derek. Derek glared over at Peter, who grinned and leaned against a tree. Isaac and Sam looked at each other, shrugging and confused.

"What do you mean?", Isaac asked the older man.

"Why do you think Derek was in such a hurry to build his pack? So eager to strengthen his power and his number?"

"To be stronger. Strength in numbers.", Sam said, shrugging.

"When there's a new Alpha, people take notice.", Peter said.

"People like who?", Sam asked, looking at Derek.

Isaac walked up the steps of the house and pointed to the door. "What even is this?" Derek walked next to Sam. "What does this mean?", Sam asked.

"It's their symbol.", Derek said, gruffed. "And it means they're coming."

"Who?", Sam asked, concerned. They already had another threat…?

"Alphas.", Derek answered. Sam looked at him in bewilderment. "Alphas? As in plural?"

"A pack of them.", Derek said.

"A pack–?", Sam sighed, running a hand through her coils.

"An Alpha pack. And they're not coming…they're already here.", Peter said. Sam looked from Derek to Peter to Derek again.

Despite the issue, Derek dropped her off at the school and Stiles pulled his jeep onto the empty field; the trio piled out and went straight to the goal.

"So you really think she'll come back to you?", Sam asked Scott, who seemed better.

"Yeah, I know she will.", Scott said optimistically. Sam smiled and turned to Stiles. "What about you and Lydia?", Sam asked.

"Well, my ten-year plan for Lydia to fall in love with me may have to stretch to fifteen, but the plan is definitely still in motion.", he smiled.

"Good.", Sam grinned. The boys followed her to the goal.

"Why don't you just ask her out?", Scott asked. Stiles and Sam laughed.

"Yeah, okay. Why don't you just get in the goal and help me make team captain like you promised, big guy.", Stiles suggested.

"You're reaching for the stars, huh?", Sam asked, smiling.

Stiles dropped his lacrosse gear to the ground and Sam stood next to him; Scott ventured into the goal with a lacrosse stick.

"Hey, you know what I just realized? I'm right back where I started.", Scott said.

"What do you mean?" Stiles wondered.

"I mean no lacrosse, no popularity, no girlfriend, nothing."

"Dude, you still got me.", Stiles said, offended.

"I guess I'm just chopped liver.", Sam laughed.

"And you still got us. So life fulfilled, okay?", Stiles reassured.

"Yeah, well I had you guys before.", Scott said.

"You're gonna have to work to get rid of us.", Sam grinned.

"Alright.", Scott smiled.

"Alright, remember no wolf powers.", Stiles reminded, readying his stick.

"Got it.", Scott nodded.

"No, I mean it! No super fast reflexes, no super eyesight, no hearing, none of that crap. Okay?"

"Okay.", Scott agreed. "Come on!", he urged with a laugh. Stiles got in position hesitantly.

"You promise?" He called.

"Stiles!", Sam laughed.

"Will you just take the shot already?", Scott rushed. Sam saw Scott's eyes turn gold and a smirk appeared on his lips. Stiles threw the ball into the net and Scott caught it fast.

"I said no wolf powers!", Stiles whined.

#teen wolf derek hale #derek hale x oc #derek hale x reader #derek hale imagine #derek hale #derek hale headcanon #derek hale x plus size reader #derek hale x black reader #plus size reader #x black reader #black reader

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deltaclaws · 1 year

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Writing Scraps- Creature’s Comfort

I’ve found as I’ve started writing again that I go through two different openings before finding one that sticks, and I keep those on the doc in case I liked the previous one better.

Because I think these things are neat and it’s not quite the same as posting a sketch dump, I’m gonna share the stuff I don’t use and label them Writing Scraps for easier reference. With that, here’s two intros for an upcoming fic that I didn’t like as much but thought they’d be fun to share.

Opening #1-

Sun Wukong had seen sick mortals before. Seen sick immortals too- he himself had been severely under the weather several times in his very long life. The king could tell when a cold was from natural causes or a curse inflicted on somebody. Sun Wukong had also had front row seats for sicknesses that, to this day, leave him wanting to drag his eyes through dirt as some sort of solace to the disgusting images burned into his brain.

A thought that had only crossed his mind once in the past year was what would happen if his successor-turned-kid got ill, and that potentially disastrous line of intrusive thoughts only came about because MK told him of the cursed meatballs he ate when Wukong was away.

“So, did you actually win anything, or was that stunt purely for bragging rights?” he drawled as he leaned against a recently pulverized rock, one eyebrow quirked in a way that said 'This is hilarious and I am never letting you forget it’.

MK tapped his staff down firmly and squared up his shoulders, looking prouder than he had any right to be. “Well I had to set a new record!” he stated, before the proud stance melted into a more humbled slouch, and his student brought his hand up to rub the side of his face sheepishly. “Definitely not worth the city-shaking hiccups, or making Sandy go on a conveniently timed quest for the cure…”

Opening #2-

Sun Wukong liked keeping the technology he used limited. Not for any “The good old days were better” reasons, because indoor plumbing, WiFi, and video games are easily in his Top 5 list of best innovations and no one will ever pry those from his cold, stone hands.

It was strictly for his privacy. His lawyer had to fight him literally tooth and nail to get another computer- too many instances of people finding his one and only personal email years back had led to some very interesting letters. Letters that some lower deities would consider curses to the eyes for their content.

Because no, Sun Wukong will not be sending pictures of any kind to anyone, he will not look at any pictures his weirder fans send him, and he’d prefer to be stewed alive before he read another story that shared waaaay too much personal information.

Even with those very good reasons presented in a very professional manner to his lawyer, he was shot down.

“Handwritten letters from your Fortress of Solitude take ages to get here Wukong. I’m tired of playing Heavenly Messenger to get your approval for these licenses, Wukong.”. While he could’ve argued with that, after getting a new laptop and seeing how fast communication had gotten with computers, he conceded that it was a solid investment alone for getting his lawyer off his back. Now he just needed to answer those emails.

A laptop, a TV, and a gaming console were all he wanted. It was simple! Three easy outlets to enjoy the near infinite library of digital media, and an avenue for his contacts to message him and be promptly ignored.

Then MK became a part of his life again, almost two years went by, and now he had a phone. Arguments of ‘It’s helpful! We can contact each other without using monkey mind powers! I can send you all my favorite memes!’ wore him down faster than anything. Possibly because the kid also used the underhanded move of the puppy dog face combined with a little guilt tripping. Just dusted on top, like some guilty sugar.

#writing scraps #WIP fanfic #LEGO Monkie Kid #LMK #Monkie Kid #Sun Wukong #Monkey King #My writing

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duhragonball · 6 months

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Mega Man Ecch

I decided to ruin my weekend by playing Mega Man X7, and yeah, it was terrible. I was kind of fascinated by the decline of the Mega Man X series, and the videos I've watched about it never quite seemed to give me the full picture. Reviewers and analysts can give me a lot of technical and critical explanations, but at the end of the day, they're just really bad games. At best, they're boring, and at worst they're really frustrating from a UI standpoint.

The word "broken" gets thrown around a lot, but that almost gives X6 and X7 too much credit. "Broken" sounds kind of cool or funny, like "Big Rigs". X6 and X7 are just tired and annoying. This is what happens when you've done thirteen iterations of a game and no one cares anymore. What sucks the most about X6 and X7 is that both games put a lot of emphasis on replay value without making the first playthrough compelling enough to make you want to try it again. Like you're supposed to go back through all the other stages and find new items and stuff, and then have fun using those items on the same levels you beat before, but the levels suck, so why would anyone bother?

One video I watched made the point that you can't call these the "worst games ever", because they're not "Superman 64" levels of bad. This is true, and I suppose that's what I find so frustrating about X6 and X7. They're reviled, but they're not so terrible that there's any juicy details about their failure. I went out of my way to play these things just to see what their deal was, and I don't have much to show for it.

The thing is, I really don't enjoy the good Mega Man X games either. X4 is supposed to be one of the best ones, and I found it annoying. The big problem with these games is their over-reliance on story. They keep putting cutscenes and voice acting and long, unskippable dialogue boxes in these games, like this is Resident Evil and not a bunch of bug-eyed cartoon robots shooting at each other. I've played seven of these things and I still don't understand what the fuck is going on, or what Sigma wants, or why I'm supposed to care about any of the characters when their allegiances can literally be changed by flipping a switch. All the dialogue is stuff like "According to this data, if the DNA from the Reploid Virus interacts with the Maverick Virus, it could infect all Reploids who used to be Mavericks with a new type of virus, called the Virus Reploid DNA Maverick Virus."

I feel like somewhere I heard there was a fan theory that Sigma is basically the remnants of Dr. Wily digitized intelligence. Like, Zero was established to be Dr. Wily's ultimate creation, making him an evil version of X. But then Sigma tracked him down and tried to turn him good, only to get infected with bad guy juice or something, so that's why Zero is good and Sigma is bad in the games. So maybe the evil influence within Sigma is just Dr. Wily living on as a computer program. Which sounds kind of compelling, until you realize this would mean it all boils down to Dr. Wily being the final boss of all the games, which got old in 1992. It also undermines all of the cutscenes and handwringing in the X games, because "Dr. Wily is a jerk and we have to stop him" is a pretty elementary. All of these games are just repeating Mega Man 1 and trying to turn it into some elaborate moral dilemma. No, Dr. Wily is a jerk and we have to stop him. He decorates his castle with skulls. This isn't complicated.

At least the worst is over, and I have X8 to look "forward" to. People seem to look back generously on this one, mainly for offering the series a hint of redemption before it ended once and for all. From my perspective though, I mostly remember seeing X8 at Wal-Mart in 2004 and thinking "They're still making these things?"

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scarlettaagni · 1 year

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book I cannot find

I’m too lazy to make an account and figure out how to navigate reddit so I wanna open-end ask here.

so it was like, late elementary school, or middle school (so, 2010-2013), I was really into like, the pulp kids horror stuff like Goosebumps, and I was starting to get into R.L. Stine's other stuff like Fear Street which is for like, a slightly older audience. I read a book in my school’s library/my classroom’s personal books for our selection that had STRONG Fear Street or otherwise written-by-R.L.-Stine energy, but looking at his bibliography including spinoffs even written by ghostwriters, can't find anything close to it.

I remember the book's cover which was very crisp and painterly like they did back when people cared: it was some nerdy boy sitting in either his bedroom or a computer lab (predominantly blue), being knocked away from the monitor he was sitting at, as an evil woman who looked like a cross between Mortal Kombat Sindel and Wonder Woman shot out of the screen and turning back, shot a red ray out of her fingers at the screen, to destroy the computer so she can’t be put back. The story was about a video game, but these kinds of books are like from the turn of the century so it was like, old CD-ROM and floppy disc kinda technology described, and big chunky beige monitors as pictured on the cover. Two 12-ish year old boys are video game nerds, one is black and one is white, and I think they find some mysterious game, or unlock a secret in a game they like that allows the hero of the game to beam himself into reality and they befriend him, a very whole like, Iron Giant "hide the cool thing i found and teach him how the world works" kinda plot, but the villains of the game also escape, and they can use rays shot out of their hands to put real people into the game in their places (their rays are color coded, the evil woman, the main villain and on the cover, is red)

I think there's a side plot of the kids' shitty coach getting beamed into the game, and they can't hide the hero anymore so they like, put him in one of their dads' suits and pass him off as the new coach. There's a joke about the game requiring some athleticism so the main kid picks the coach, but he was a shit coach who just sat around yelling at the kids so he's out of shape and fails the challenge (this doesn’t kill the coach, it just means the kid has to try again, and can switch between “characters” to use) So the villains go around zapping people into the game until just the white kid is left and has to beat the game using the people beamed in there as his player characters since the real ones are beamed into reality. (iirc, after the coach fails, the kid picks his own friend to try it out, I think this involved climbing a spider web)

The game had 5 levels all with different themes, the last one being inside a human body where he has to go to the brain, the heart and then the soul (literally the sole of the foot) ← that’s basically how the book phrased this little joke As some miscellaneous potentially unhelpful info, I don't think anywhere on the cover they depicted the hero character, but in my mind I pictured He-Man, he gave off those 80s kids action barbarian vibes.

I’ve gone through R.L. Stine’s bibliography multiple times over, it isn’t Goosebumps, nor Fear Street (although it falls VERY in line with the vibes of those books) or any of his more older teen - adult novels, it isn’t Fright Time or American Chillers, not a nonhorror thing like The Bailey School Kids series, but it was most definitely part of a series with unrelated stories and new characters every time like Goosebumps. And it was definitely a paperback book with no illustrations beyond the cover, so no comics.

#nerd stuff

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bugtransport · 1 year

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oh geez guess who remembered they can actually explain the thought process behind Whatever The Fuck The Rothko Comic Is look don't ask me let's just let me talk about art for a minute that's probably easiest

"nooo aha dont write a fucking novel about your favorite piece of art haha youre so sexy" shut up! my meat is huge. AND i'm sexy as hell. thank you.

let's talk about Clothespin by Claes Oldenburg.

my favorite piece of art of all time. this isn't a joke actually. this 10 foot tall clothespin has made me feel just about every emotion in existence. there's a larger (i think about 45 ft?) version in philadelphia somewhere that i'm aware of but i haven't actually gotten to see that one in person (maybe someday) so we're just going to be talking about the smaller one. which is still quite large. i think to actually explain myself and this one i need to take you through my history with it and how i originally saw it, because that really plays a lot into how i view it. maybe more so than the actual piece itself.

i'm just going from memory here so bear with me... this story takes place back in middle school when i lived in the midwest. i was a young dumb kid who liked drawing stuff so my parents would just sign me up for whatever art classes they could find (i took botanical art with a bunch of middle aged ladies once which fucked severely) and, since we were in the burbs just a train ride away from chicago, one of the options available was to take kids classes at the art institute. so i took some digital art classes there.

enter me: 12 years old and just wanting to learn how to draw anime girls on the computer. at this point i have not thought about art beyond knowing superficially that i enjoy Some Paintings and that certain narrative works have whipped my nuts off and sometimes i would look at pics on deviantart and get emotions i was unable to describe but i have not really, at this point in the story, thought to question why i feel that way.

there's one other important thing to know to make this whole experience make sense. the timing of me attending these classes was right around when the art institute opened up their modern wing! brand new wing + taking a digital art class = i spent so much time in there i cannot even begin to describe it. i wouldn't necessarily say that i like modern art more or less than anything else... but i can say that by sheer volume alone, no question, it is the majority of museum art i have consumed.

anyway, for those unfamiliar: the art institute has two entrances (well, that i know of). there's the main one with the lions that you've probably seen in ferris bueller's day off, and the second one is through the modern wing. here are some pictures i found online showing what the main hall is kind of like:

that glass wall in the far part of the picture is where the doors are. it's a really nice space; there are galleries both upstairs and downstairs. this is also the same place that i saw Untitled (Portrait of Ross in LA) but that's really neither here nor there. i've just seen it brought up before here and thought i would mention that it was a very cool experience. one of those things again where i saw it way before i could comprehend why it made me feel the emotions it made me feel... and then i got hit with The Understanding years later like a cartoon anvil. i couldn't actually find any pics in the 5 minutes i had to spend on google with Clothespin actually displayed, but here it is with a different statue in roughly, to my recollection, the same place:

that is a really dramatic place to put a sculpture.

okay well, anyway, the first time i saw this piece, i did not think it would rock my shit. i actually thought it was just kind of funny. i still remember it - our little group was walking to go take a look at a specific piece and of course, had to go through the lobby to get there. i saw Clothespin for the first time and went "haha, that one's kinda funny, i wonder what that means?" and someone shot back "i don't know, maybe a giant lost it doing laundry." that exchange tickled me so much that i spent the rest of the day and into the next week thinking about it.

the second time i saw Clothespin i was mostly just confused. in the same way that today i can still remember my first interaction with it but not any of the other pieces of art i saw that day, i was confused as to why this thing was leaving such a large impression on me compared to everything else. i did look at it for a while and then just kind of left. and came back to it. and left again. and came back to it.

that dance continued for a couple visits until i finally got the chance to sit down and watch it for a while. there were some benches under the stairs for people to rest; i took one of those and started to people watch. and brother... suddenly i began to get it, i think?

[to be read in the tone of someone who has been haunted by these thoughts for over half their life] see, i think the real genius in the way this was (and the really large one is) displayed is that they're in thoroughfares. they're both in high traffic areas where people are mainly trying to get from one place to another more interesting place, right. people entering a museum usually have a starting point in mind that they're looking to get to and go from there; people exiting a museum are usually kind of wiped and probably not really looking to look at much more art at that point. it's not quiet in a lobby like you get when going through an exhibit - it's not loud, but there is a constant background hum. there's a café upstairs and people checking tickets and families and school groups chatting and, of course, in the middle of that, a 10 ft tall steel clothespin, being largely ignored.

yeah, okay, not totally ignored. people would stop and look at it for a second or make a comment about it maybe or glance at it in passing. but people didn't really tend to look at it like they would if it would have been displayed in a room. maybe that was because they didn't want to hold up the flow of traffic going through (it was always pretty packed on the weekends) or maybe the display location inherently lowered the perceived value of the piece as art - it's not "enough" to be put on display in one of the collections specifically, it's just a clothespin. but it was big and quite impressive and in the middle of the floor and not something you could easily ignore, really. the juxtaposition between the impact it had on me and the way it was being treated by the visitors en masse... you know what? it is kind of being treated with the same thought that you would give an actual clothespin.

it might seem like a pretty base level concept. and it is! of course everything that has ever been made has been made by someone. but this was the first time that thought had really occurred to me in a way where i actually grasped the impact of that statement. somebody out there designed the clothespin and put thought into how it worked and felt and looked. even the most utilitarian designs are still designed. Clothespin my beloved is a reminder to myself to appreciate and recognize the beauty in the little things in life that people might not otherwise think about and i cannot overstate the impact that way of thinking has had on my life. some pieces of art i think definitely are better learning things about the artist but i've never looked anything up about Clothespin - i don't think this is necessarily the impact that the artist set out for it to make, but it alone and regardless of intent obviously has done one hell of a number on me.

"julia that fucks but what does that have to do with sonoi tarou" i'm getting there i'm getting there. god!

i think the important and relevant part of that story isn't at all what i ended up getting out of that piece. the important and relevant part is the confusion i felt leading up to the realization. i am not looking to get into a debate about What Makes Art but i think that we could probably agree on a baseline statement that one of the things that may make something art is the ability to elicit emotions from the viewer.* while yeah sure probably not what i think most people would anticipate or look to get out of art, frustration at your own lack of connection and understanding is an emotion. being unable to understand the artist's intention and experiencing connections but taking those connections you make completely off book is still experiencing an emotion. simply enjoying something superficially is as well an emotion. sonoi is so painfully close to getting things in my Humble Onion and goddamn that really makes me feel some kind of way. he just has to unclench about it.

for someone who has a stick so far up his ass ("integrity and perfection personified," cannot stand the bitch) i can understand why the concept of allowing himself to relax and consider how he is already obviously being impacted by art and what that means is hard. to focus on the correct way to view and create art is... well, how many duels have he and tarou had? how long have they spent trying to do things "right" and get the "correct" feelings from it? i mean, it makes sense for his character. i know a lot of people who feel the same way looking at art. i totally experienced adjacent feelings before the cataclysmic earth-shattering world-busting event known as Clothespin. ooh i just want to grab him by the shoulders and shake him. introspection! it's uncomfortable but that's the joy in it! i want to psychoanalyze him so bad.

fuckin, to conclude: MY moral of the story is that there's no right or wrong way to look at art. and i dont think there's any wrong way to love someone either.

*"julia are you arguing that fat anime milf tits are art" fuck yeah i am because they make me feel an emotion: HORNY. sorry i had to add that joke into this otherwise dry ass essay.

p.s. it's my life goal to make everyone look at Clothespin. i have a picture of it at my desk. again i have never made a joke in my life

#making spaghetti #this is why i can never describe my own art i just go off the rails #i already gave someone like half this essay but i needed to do this or else it would keep haunting me #i cant be assed to proofread this so sorry if anyone actually reads this nonsense

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icewindandboringhorror · 1 year

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Daily Log 7

Trying out (probably just temporarily) making short daily-ish notes about things, in an attempt to see if it helps me be more reflective or productive lol.

Activities: Finished all of the little things I carved out of avocado pits, will maybe post pictures at some point? I painted some sections (like for the eye I carved, I made part of it white for contrast, etc.) and then generally glazed them with some shiny paint stuff. Now I really wish I had more avocado pits, I was unsure at first, but I have some new ideas.. I want to try inlaying stones like I've seen in some pictures, similar to the same ones I use for eyes in my sculptures. >:3 (random google image example of the stones inside, like this sort of thing V)

Low effort/small house cleaning tasks, did a few dishes, put up laundry, organized things, put up the recycling, paid bills, etc.

Still extremely sleepy and unfocused, it was hot last night and the cats woke me up multiple times so I only got a few hours of sleep and barely had any energy to do anything and also had a headache and back pain a lot of the day. ToT

Finally made an appointment I was supposed to make like 4 days ago lol..

Gave wet food to the cats (this is an ordeal because George eats way faster than Noodle, so I have to separate them and stand guard so George doesn't vacuum his up immediately then run over and try to eat all of his brothers food.. evil boy must be watched to prevent his crimes )

Edited videos for like.. 15 minutes but still have not been very productive on that front (or editing costume photos or anything) due to shoulder pain and stuff making it hard to type/use mouse much on the computer. grrbbb >:V

Spent 10 minutes looking up a weird pendant I had in my rock collection area and found out it's an old piece of costume jewelry from the 60s(?) and could be worth like $200 potentially, which is cool. I'm not sure if I'll sell it though because I do think it's quite unique and good for a prop when making wizard character inventories, etc, and I'd never be able to find anything like it again (it's this one below.. it's very weird.. looks like something a mage would have lol)

Translated the tapestry text for 5 minutes, and got out some tubs of clothes to start organizing them to sell outfits and stuff online, but then felt ill and had to go lay down so now the tubs are just sitting out on the floor ghgh..

Notable sights: It rained a bit and the sky was very pretty at one point. Didn't get to go outside today due to schedule/low energy, so no clovers or anything. Saw a fat squirrel out the window once though. Also when I was looking through my "rock collection" (which also includes marbles, dice, pieces of glass, stones, gems, rubber balls, seashells, smooth wood, jewelry scraps, etc. ggh.. really more "shiny things collection" but it's mostly rocks, so) for interesting stones to possibly put into avocado pits in the future, I saw a lot of pretty rocks I hadn't thought about in a while, so that was nice.

Goals moving forward: Focus on social activities, finding new friends in the places I want to move, communicating with ones I have. Physical therapy exercises. Finish and upload videos, edit costume pictures & etc. Do the new costumes I've planned. MAKE SCULPTURES at some point, I miss them.

Notable foods: Nothing really.. but it's an asparagus day tomorrow I think so.. >:)c hehehehe... Oh, I did try a bite of corn, which I really really love corn but am not supposed to have it on my diet. The miniscule morsel was sufficiently cherished. Still craving hearty stuff despite resuming my iron supplements lol..

#just posting these publicly since it feels more like I'm doing something or easier to hold yourself accountable if you make public #declarations of goals and progress or etc. .. perhaps.. for now #just want to do worldbuilding I want to work on the language I want to do these sorts of things #furstrating to just walk around in a haze all day unable to focus on mental tasks like that #One of the most important things in my entire life actually is being able to think about little elves and magic and etc.#annoying to have multiple days in a row where I make very little progress on that aside from thinking of a few little story #ideas or something here and there. I should have had the text translated already and finished the worldbuilding slideshow #already and made a game set in my world already and so on and so forth.. grr #There's another upcoming heatwave again and summer is soon so I think it will only get worsw #the more often I feel warm and sick or cant sleep due to the temperature etc.#But I am trying to catch up somehow.. a little.. lol #I think it's very common to feel like you're not making enough progress in life on the things that matter the most to you #especially during capitalism and with low income and mental/physical health issues and during a still ongoing pandemic #threat and etc. etc. etc. like.. Logically I get it and I know it's not something to be too worked up over because that's just how #probably half of the population feels at all times especially people who are in similar situations to me #but still.. my brain is like Yes i know the facts of the situation No i do not care #if someone else came to me like 'ough Im feeling so unproductive for xyz reason' I'd reassure them and talk about how #it's situational and a lot of people feel that way and it's the system we live in and blah blah #but when it's ME it's like.. No.. This Situation Is Different Of Course. Surely It Is Much More Terrible #If You Haven't Finished Your Entire ToDo List By The End Of The Week Then The World Will Explode #ANYWAY..#daily log

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kmclaude · 2 years

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Hey Claude, how are you? Ive been going through months of writer's block, and it seems like I can't find inspiration anywhere. Maybe it's because I'm going through a lot in my non-creative life (which is unusual for me), but it's been more than just frustrating, it's been disheartening. So I was wondering, how do you deal with creative blocks? And what media do you go to for inspiration, if you do? Songs, movies, shows, anything really. This summer been long as hell, and I'd be happy maybe just to find somethin new to fixate on lol --🕊 (@pearlwhitetears)

hiiiii @pearlwhitetears sorry you're struggling!!!! creative blocks are hard and suck, especially when creative stuff is like....your escape/relaxation/relief from noncreative life.

for me i feel like a lot of my creative blocks are usually because i either need some new media to jostle my brain (or some old media that i can enjoy on a 'wow, this actress' choice to do x is really good' type analytical level as opposed to a 'wow i am experiencing this for the first time!!!!!!), i need to approach creativity from another angle (usually by sitting at my little bedroom craft desk and doing traditional artwork or typing away curled in a chair on some story or coding a website -- either way, not at my Drawing On The Computer Desk and not Doing A Computer Drawing), or -- often the hardest -- life is sucking ass right now.

for that last one -- the very Externalized Art Block, the kind of "a lot is going on in my life" sort of blocks -- I find it's...mmm, I don't wanna say self fulfilling prophesy or Sisyphean hell cycle, but it's one of those "life sucks -> try to create -> too stressed to create because life sucks -> despair -> life sucks more now" circles that the pressure TO create just adds another weight, another stressor, that feeds back into the stress of noncreative life.

for those...yeah, fuck, those are hard. hell, I'm literally in the middle of one: this time last year a lot of things happened one after another including my car getting totaled, going to the ER, and a terrible hurricane. then less than a year ago my fiancé left me and i am still absolutely devastated by that (and this would've been our anniversary month so you know...yeah, i’m still recovering emotionally) plus my noncreative jobs' have shifted and, while a good shift, it now requires a LOT more brain power. those stressors, good and bad, all stack and stack and take more and more mental, emotional, and other abilities away from your creative pursuits in order to funnel them towards, well, not falling apart -- which is a good thing! it is! not falling apart is generally good! but all that to say -- yeah! i know what you mean! it's a lot and it's super disheartening and exhausting to feel you can't even create!

what i've found, though, that works for me is finding the small small small wins and taking them. make them real. thought of a way to write a scene you've been stuck on? don't feel you gotta go write it all out right now because then you'll smash your head on your keyboard in a rage when it doesn't work right -- but DO jot down those thoughts real quick on a pad of paper. there! you did it, you did A Creative Thing today, you don't gotta do any more, there's 0 pressure. tomorrow you can take a picture of those notes and email them to yourself or otherwise digitize them. and the next day, hey, maybe you can review the notes and write down any other thoughts. etc. and eventually either those single small things will begin to add up until you find the flow again or by doing your One Little Creative Thing it sparks creating another and another and another until you putter out that day (and it's okay to putter out because hey, you did your ONE thing already!)

like shoot, i still haven't done A Creative Task I Need To Do but I did do a small thing to bring me one step closer to said task. one small thing is better than no thing, you know?

anyway, I think that's generally how I try to tackle them. do a little thing. even if that thing is getting out of your head -- journaling whatever thoughts are swirling around.

as for media i go to...it depends! right now i'm watching dear brother/oniisama e on tubi which is great because it is actually entertaining but also episodes keep you interested without aggressively spilling over so you wind up binging and then losing a day and feeling bad about it. so that's been a good sort of time keeper? usually i try to find something interesting on the various streaming platforms, else, i'll lean on some of my reliable comfort movies (you know, like Takarazuka's Elisabeth: Ai to Shi no Rondo because when I hear COMFORT MOVIE I think Japanese adaptation of Viennese musicals about Empress Elisabeth of Austria having severe depression! fun times!) hell, i rewatched The Ring the other day and was struck by how damn good that film still is, since while i am obsessed with the franchise i haven't rewatched it in yeeeeeears. sometimes it's just rewatching something you love but haven't watched in a bit.

i also have gotten into records if you've got a record player (or apparently now they make cassette players that enable you to convert to digital which is cool, the local record stores also sell beaucoup cassettes) which has lead to finding just random cool stuff as well as also forcing myself into a time lock: you can't exactly skip tracks in a record so you're stuck playing a side through, might as well doodle something or write a letter or knock out an easy task while it plays. it helps! because in part i know when the record ends i can get up and stop (or i can get up and flip it and keep on doing my little tasks but i have a guaranteed out.)

(can you tell for me it's been a lot of 'trick yourself into Doing An Art haha'? but hey it's working so far!)

actual media-wise, here's some things i've either gotten into recently that've been really slamming the 'wow not every day is a total shit and art is a thing that may be fun' endorphins button in my brain as well as some Go To Brain Likey stuff:

Perfect Obedience, a Spanish-language film I just got to see with friends on Sunday that was so so soooo good (warning it's about a priest who molests young seminarians and I mean young as in like...middle schooler): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tmlZYsz5i7g

Rammstein's latest album, Zeit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-NUBR2kufw&list=OLAK5uy_kEcSS0IizYOnBcB1V0EpkFWVo87eAtFFw

Elisabeth Ai to Shi no Rondo, 2016 Cosmos Troupe version with English subtitles, which 20 bucks says will get copyright strike'd soon but if you like rock operas, ladies, and distracting pretty things, hey!: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sj0XN3ibpiI

The German-language version of Elisabeth: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lr8z-yyGqF8

The Hunchback of Notre Dame Musical Studio Recording, because look ok look....look....look i love patrick page: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_kxStpxNrNAtPKNFl8mgwFBUIQqLBBAjKQ

At one point last year I had Hadestown on repeat so uh yeah hope you like musicals because that apparently is my go-to, sorry: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kwg1mswuxzY

Oniisama e (found ep 1 on YT lol) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lQbvy9Nr9fQ

Oingo Boingo's farewell concert is such a banger: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HnEkodpneqI

idk man idk i basically throw a lot at the wall that is my brain and hope something sticks. i'm also someone who will listen to one thing on repeat forever OR open spotify and start digging through the algorithmic recommendations off of bands i like until i find something new that punches the feel good button of my brain. it's a fight between COMFORT COMFORT COMFORT FOOD U KNOW AND LOVE and IF I DONT GET A NEW STIMULI RIGHT NOW IWILL LITERALLY UNALIVE

so. yeah. lol. god i hope any of that helps.

#kmclaudereplies #kmclaudereplies to ask #pearlwhitetears

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pbandjesse · 2 years

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I am able to look at today with very dark rose colored glasses. But for real most of the day I felt really crappy. It's amazing how much I fall apart when I'm to hot.

It didn't feel like it was just the heat though. I felt like I was sick and felt very bad. Thankfully though I slept alright. I woke up at 8 and decided to sleep another hour. And woke up in a good mood. But then I didn't like my outfit. My jumpsuit was pulling on my shoulders so I would end up changing into the dress pictured. But I was just uncomfy. My tummy hurt. My body was having weird hot waves. Jess thinks it's an inner ear thing. I think I ate something weird. Plus just being over heated.

I tried to be okay though. I did some computer work and had a half a bagel. I wanted to pick some stuff up around the apartment but I didn't do much. I did water the plants. And I did pick up the kitchen. I got rid of old food in the fridge but I had to keep laying down because I didn't feel good.

I laid in the couch for a while. And around noon I decided I needed to go for a drive. So I brought Sweetp in from the fire escape, through protest, and headed out.

I went to chipotle. Even though I had been so disappointed. I had much better luck. And I felt a lot less like I was dying after eating something. I got the food and ate in the car. I listened to a podcast. And then I drove over to the shopping center.

I went to Ulta and got the lotion I like. Because even though I just got rid of a bunch I wasn't happy with the texture of the one I have been using so I'm back to one I was using before that I ran out of.

And then I went to five below to look around. But didnt get anything.

Next I went to Target. I got some stuff we had on our list. And I picked up some mini Lego Pokemon for me and James to build. I also got another of the little car critters. And I love them so much.

After I checked out I decided I wasn't ready to go home yet. I wanted to walk in some in ac for some more time. And so I went over to Michaels.

Where I ran into our friend Benairen. I went to grab a cart and all of a sudden he was there and we both were like. Ahh! And so I got to meet his girlfriend and we caught up. My brain felt a little bit like mush though and my body was having weird hot waves. So I probably wasn't the best conversationalist. But it was so nice seeing him. He is filming a pilot soon and just got cast in a play. He's so cool. And his girlfriend is nice too! Turns out they are friends with the woman who invited me to be apart of the Abell market, Kathleen! So that was just really cool.

I said goodbye to them so they could go work on the gift baskets they told me about. And I went to search for clearance items. And I had a great time. I got really cheap felt and some more metal stamping stuff. I had fun looking around though. But soon I ran out of steam and had to go home.

I sat in the parking lot for a bit. I was very woozy. The ac helped. I opened the blind boxes I got for pui pui molecars. And then felt ready to drive.

Google took me a funny way home. Got to avoid all the squeegee boys though so that was something. I don't have anything against them, but I almost never have cash and I feel bad.

I got back here and used the wagon to load out as much stuff as I could from the car. I found a dog bowl stand that I though we could use for plants in the trash. It's heavy so the wagon was very helpful.

I got everything inside. And was struggle a bit but I got everything up here because I fell apart.

I was very very dizzy. I sat in front of the fan and tried to cool off. I took the packaging off of everything but I couldn't do anything else. I was not having fun.

I texted James and they would come home soon. They would help me find a missing sweater and take down the Halloween stuff. I drank more water and started feeling a little better.

I had more of my chipotle while James chilled with me. And then I got an email from Matt.

He wrote the script for our wedding. The whole ceremony speech. And I legit got teary. It was so sweet. And had a good amount of humor. I had some notes and changes for little stuff. But overall it's great and I'm very excited.

Me and James spent the night hanging out. I eventually moved to the bedroom to lay in the ac. And I almost immediately felt better. I'm apparently just a wilting flower.

Eventually I took a cool bath. And watched a spooky video. And that's basically what I've been doing all night. Brandon came over and him and James are watching the new game of thrones prequel. And I am doing a little bit of sewing and hanging out.

It has been a nice night. And I am in a good mood. Tomorrow we are doing wedding stuff and going to IKEA. I hope it's just a lot of fun. Spending the day with my James.

I hope you all sleep good tonight. Thank you for reading. Until tomorrow!

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affectiondeficitdisorder · 1 month

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SECONDS AND INCHES: Dodging the love addiction bullet.... maybe

Okay, this is going to be very reductive. Below is a column I just published on my Substack, which is where you go now when you click on www.AffectionDeficitDisorder.com. It is all about the fact that people still find the blog on Tumbler, which surprises me, and still respond to it, which delights me. I did, however, put fresh art on it, so you do get something new if you've read all 12 1/2 years of this Tumbler. (12 1/2 years? Jesus...) It is, however, a picture I took backstage at the US Festival in 1983. So... nostalgia all around, today.

Here ya' go:

I just got a ping from my old Tumbler page, which for some reason is still active. Zoomer nostalgia, maybe? Someone liked a blog post that I wrote in September of 2011. It has aged remarkably well, considering... right down to the unreliability of AT&T. Here ya go. Enjoy all over again.

(The illustration is a picture I took of Steve Nicks at the US Festival in 1983, because I just found a pile of forgotten stuff from my rock journalist days and also because she’s kind of a patron saint of love addicts.)

The original post:

This newswire story landed in my inbox a few times, as you can imagine:

AMSTERDAM (AP) — Dutch prosecutors are charging a 42-year-old woman with stalking after she allegedly called her ex-boyfriend 65,000 times in the past year.

The 62-year-old victim from The Hague filed a police complaint in August due to the persistent phone calls. Police arrested the suspected stalker Monday, seizing several cell phones and computers from her home in Rotterdam.

Hague prosecution spokeswoman Nicolette Stoel said Thursday the woman argued to judges at a preliminary hearing she had a relationship with the man and the number of calls she placed to him wasn't excessive. The man denied they had a relationship.

The court ordered her not to contact him again.

It’s the kind of story that makes a love addict wipe her brow and exclaim, “See! I don’t have a problem. She has a problem.” It’s analogous to the feeling of relief a closet drinker has when a Skid Row wino cleans his windshield with a dirty rag. “See!” he smiles through the streaky window, “I don’t have a problem. He has a problem.”

Old joke:

Him: “Would you have sex with a stranger for a million dollars?”

Her: “A million dollars? Sure I would.”

Him: “How about having sex with me for fifty dollars?”

Her: “Are you nuts? What do you think I am?”

Him: “We already established that. Now we’re negotiating price.”

The point is… it’s all matter of degree. Fifty bucks is a whore; a million is a Demi Moore movie. Sixty-five thousand phone calls is a stalker; 65 is an episode of Gossip Girl. Where do you draw the line? Can you honestly say that you never called someone a second (or third) time when they didn’t return your call the first time? After all, they might have accidentally deleted your message. Or the cell phone might have cut out -- it’s AT&T; it happens. Or maybe they lost your digits. Or lost their phone. Or they did call you back, but you didn't get it because... um, it's AT&T. It’s amazing the excuses the addict brain will come up with and the urgency to which it attaches making that call.

I feel that Dutch woman, unable to go ten minutes without at least hearing the sound of his voice on his voicemail. I relate to that urgency; it's like drowning and suffocating at the same time. Withdrawal in love addiction is as physical and palpable as a nicotine fit, and she had a three-pack-a-day crush.

You might only smoke half a pack a day — that doesn’t mean you’re not a nicotine addict. Just because you don’t make 65,000 phone calls but only peek at his Facebook page sometimes… or occasionally drive past her house… or just happen to join the same gym… don’t think that none of this applies to you.

#love addiction #sex addiction #love addict #relationships #substack #stalker #obsessive love

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starlightreactor · 7 months

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Compuper Chronicles

So I've been a user of computers for some time now, and the hard drives of my laptop are almost full. For a good while I thought it's just because I have so many games installed on it, but after a bit of searching my hard drive issue seems to be more than just a lot of games.

I have a C: and D: drive, with 585gb and 346gb respectively (each standing for 'Computer' and 'Data' I imagine). C is where I have most of my documents and such, as well as where Windows is installed. D is where I store most of my games.

I learned that in steam's (the software I use to install games) settings it gives you a readout of how much of your drive is taken up by installed games. According to steam, I have 248gb of installed games on my D: drive (the largest being Destiny 2 at 100gb), and 96gb of games on my C: drive (the largest on that one being Elden Ring at 48gb). Those numbers come as no surprise, but Steam also reads any non-steam installations and lumps them into the category of 'other'. On my C: drive I have 349 Gigabytes of 'other'. Accounting for Documents (64gb), Pictures (10gb), Downloads(8gb) and Videos (47gb) +~10gb total in ART, GAMER SECTOR, 3d Objects, and music, that leaves nearly 207 gigabytes of unknown files on my C: drive.

The D: drive isn't much better. On D: is 97 gigabytes of 'other' according to steam. The only non-steam file on D: is Fortnite, which comes to 26.5 gigs. That leaves ~71 gigabytes of who knows what on D: drive.

Now, I've already done some housekeeping before writing this. I uninstalled the game Elite Dangerous off my D: drive ages ago, but when I went looking in the D: steam folder the whole chunk of the game was still in there! I could boot it up and everything. That was ~50 gigabytes of stuff.

Going back to the C: drive steam folder, I found some pretty interesting stuff. Firstly, in C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\music_database\covers, I found a bunch of random pngs? Like this bone:

There is also a fern, greek column, and what I presume is the cover art for a bunch of games' osts. Some of these games I don't own though, like A hat in time, Spooky's jumpscare mansion, and WarioWare smooth moves (that game isn't even on steam!? why is it in here). There's also the cover for Minecraft's volume 1 ost.

^There's some of the covers. I have never downloaded Neil Cicirega's Mouth Moods, but I'm not surprised seeing him in there cuz if anyone would infiltrate the random corners of my computer it would be him. This isn't a storage issue, so I may as well leave them there.

I had also found more game files in steam's Common folder which come up as 'uninstalled' in steam itself but never actually uninstalled, such as all of the old Garry's Mod addons that I unsubscribed from, but were never deleted from C:. Luckily, Gmod has a factory reset button in it's installation folder so I just used that. I found more workshop addons in the SteamVR folder that amounted to 34 gigabytes of stuff that I haven't used or interacted with in any form in years, so that went out the window and into the dumper.

I also decided to uninstall some tf2 mods that I haven't played like ever, and with that I could uninstall the Source 2013 multiplayer SDK (but not before looking through the SDK's files), and for whatever gosh darn reason I found smell.jpg in there:

There he is!! I have no idea how he ended up in the folder, but he was there ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ (I moved him into /steamapps before I deleted the SDK so he's safe inside steam's folder, dont worry).

Alrighty! Writing these as I find them now. Apparently, Gmod is installed on my D: drive! and all of the freaking addons as well! Thats 25 gigabytes of game that I don't even use because the Gmod I play is on my C: drive.

Found another 1.29gb in Kerbal Space Program, which is also not installed. Easy peasy. 1.67 gigabytes in Portal 2, which, you guessed it, is not actually installed. 3 more gigs freed because I had a copy of the Rain World level editor in Rain World's folder.

Alright. I've reduced D: drive's 'other' to 56 gigabytes. Minus Fortnite that is 30 gigs unaccounted for, which I'll go look for later. For now, it's late so I'm gonna sign off. I will update this tomorrow when I tackle the mystery of C: drive.

#computer

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aspenmissing · 9 months

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𝙷𝚘𝚖𝚎 (𝙿𝚝 𝟷)

Dean is on the computer; Sam is drawing a picture of a tree and Theo is reading through their father's journal.

"All right. I've been cruisin' some websites. I think I found a few candidates for our next gig. A fishing trawler found off the coast of Cali-its crew vanished. And, uh, we got some cattle mutilations in West Texas. Hey" Sam looks up from his drawing "Am I boring you with this hunting evil stuff?"

"No. I'm listening. Keep going" Sam says.

"And, here, a Sacramento man shot himself in the head. Three times" Dean waves his hand in front of Sam's face "Any of these things blowin' up your skirt, pal?"

"Wait. I've seen this" Sam says looking at the picture he drew.

"See what?" Sam gets up from the bed and goes searching through his duffel bag "What are you doing?" Theo asks. Sam finds a photo of their family from when he was a baby. He compares the tree in the photo to his drawing. They are the same.

"Dean, Theo, I know where we have to go next"

"Where?" Dean asks.

"Back home-back to Kansas"

"Okay, random. Where'd that come from?" Sam shows the picture to Theo and Dean.

"All right, um, this photo was taken in front of our old house, right? The house where Mom died?"

"Yeah" Theo says.

"And it didn't burn down, right? I mean, not completely, they rebuilt it, right?"

" I guess so, yeah. What the hell are you talkin' about?" Dean asks.

"Okay, look, this is gonna sound crazy but...the people who live in our old house-I think they might be in danger"

"Why would you think that? Theo asks.

" Uh...it's just, um...look, just trust me on this, okay?" Sam starts to walk away, Dean and Y/N follow him.

"Wait, whoa, whoa, trust you?"

"Yeah"

"I mean, I trust him" Dean looks at her. She shrugs. He then looks back at Sam.

"Come on, man, that's weak. You gotta give me a little bit more than that"

"I can't really explain it is all"

"Well, tough. I'm not goin' anywhere until you do" Sam sighs.

"I have these nightmares" Sam says.

"We've noticed" Theo says.

"And sometimes...they come true" The twins look stunned.

"Come again?" Dean asks.

"Look, Dean, Theo... I dreamt about Jessica's death-for days before it happened"

"Sam, people have weird dreams, man. I'm sure it's just a coincidence" Dean says sitting down on the bed.

"No, I dreamt about the blood dripping, her on the ceiling, the fire, everything, and I didn't do anything about it 'cause I didn't believe it. And now I'm dreaming about that tree, about our house, and about some woman inside screaming for help. I mean, that's where it all started, man, this has to mean something, right?"

"I don't know?" Dean says getting overwhelmed. Theo sits down next to him. Then Sam sits across from the two.

"What do you mean you don't know, Dean? This woman might be in danger. I mean, this might even be the thing that killed Mom and Jessica!"

"All right, just slow down, would ya?" Dean stands up and begins pacing "I mean, first you tell me that you've got the Shining? And then you tell me that we gotta go back home? Especially when..." Dean says gesturing between himself and Theo.

"When what?" Sam asks.

"When we swore to ourselves that we would never go back there" Theo says sadly.

"Look, Dean, Theo, we have to check this out. Just to make sure" Sam says softly.

"I know we do" Dean says.

Dean pulls up outside of a house and the three look at it.

"You two gonna be all right?" Theo lets out a deep exhale and nods.

"Let me get back to you on that" Dean says. They get out of the car and they go up to the door. They knock and a women answers.

"Yes?" She asks.

"Sorry to bother you, ma'am, but we're with the Federal-"Dean says but is cut off by Sam.

"I'm Sam Winchester, and this is my brother, Dean and Sister, Theo. We used to live here. You know, we were just drivin' by, and we were wondering if we could come see the old place"

"Winchester. Yeah, that's so funny. You know, I think I found some of your photos the other night"

"You did?" Dean asks. Jenny nods and steps aside.

"Come on in" They go inside. Inside the house, the four of them go to the kitchen. A little girl is sitting at the table doing homework and a toddler is in his playpen.

"Juice! Juice! Juice! Juice!"

"That's Ritchie. He's kind of a juice junkie" She takes a sippy cup out of the refrigerator and hands it to Richie "But, hey, at least he won't get scurvy" She walks over to the little girl "Sari, this is Sam, Dean and Theo. They used to live here"

"Hi" Sari says. Dean and Theo wave.

"Hey, Sari" Sam says.

"So, you just moved in?" Theo asks.

"Yeah, from Wichita"

"You got family here, or...?"

"No. I just, uh...needed a fresh start, that's all. So, new town, new job- I mean, as soon as I find one. New house"

"So, how you likin' it so far?" Sam asks.

"Well, uh, all due respect to your childhood home- I mean, I'm sure you had lots of happy memories here" Dean smiles weakly, and Theo grabs his arm, smiling softly "But this place has its issues"

"What do you mean?"

"Well, it's just getting old. Like the wiring, you know? We've got flickering lights almost hourly"

"Oh, that's too bad. What else?"

"Um...sinks backed up, there's rats in the basement" She pauses "I'm sorry. I don't mean to complain" The three aren’t offended.

"No. Have you seen the rats or have you just heard scratching?"

"It's just the scratching, actually"

"Mom?" Jenny kneels down next to her "Ask them if it was here when they lived here.

"What, Sari?" Sam asks.

"The thing in my closet"

"Oh, no, baby, there was nothing in their closets" She says looking at Sam, Dean and Theo "Right?"

"Right. No, no, of course not" Theo says, smiling down at Sari.

"She had a nightmare the other night"

"I wasn't dreaming. It come into my bedroom-and it was on fire" Sam, Theo and Dean are shocked.

The three walk back to the car.

"You hear that? A figure on fire"

"And that woman, Jenny, that was the woman in your dreams?" Dean asks.

"Yeah. And you hear what she was talking about? Scratching, flickering lights, both signs of a malevolent spirit"

" Yeah, well, I'm just freaked out that your weirdo visions are comin' true" Sam gets panicked.

"Well, forget about that for a minute. The thing in the house, do you think it's the thing that killed Mom and Jessica?"

"I don't know!"

"Well, I mean, has it come back or has it been here the whole time?"

"Or maybe it's something else entirely, Sam, we don't know yet" Theo says.

"Well, those people are in danger, Theo. We have to get 'em out of that house"

"And we will"

"No, I mean now"

"And how you gonna do that, huh? You got a story that she's gonna believe?"

"Then what are we supposed to do?" Sam asks.

"We just gotta chill out, that's all. You know, if this was any other kind of job, what would we do?" Theo asks as Sam sighs.

"We'd try to figure out what we were dealin' with. We'd dig into the history of the house"

"Exactly, except this time, we already know what happened"

"Yeah, but how much do we know? I mean, how much do you actually remember?" Sam asks. Dean and Theo look at each other.

"About that night, you mean?" Dean asks.

"Yeah"

"Not much. I remember the fire...the head" Dean pauses for a moment, Theo reaches over and rubs his arm, and he sighs "And then I carried you out the front door with Theo gripping my arm"

"You did?" Sam asks, surprised.

"Yeah, what, you never knew that?" Sam shakes his head.

"No"

"And, well, you know Dad's story as well as I do. Mom was...was on the ceiling. And whatever put her there was long gone by the time Dad found her"

"And he never had a theory about what did it"

"If he did, he kept it to himself. God knows we asked him enough times"

"Okay. So, if we're gonna figure out what's goin' on now...we have to figure out what happened back then. And see if it's the same thing"

"Yeah. We'll talk to Dad's friends, neighbours, people who were there at the time" Theo says and they pause for a second.

"Does this feel like just another job to you?" Sam asks. They say nothing for a moment.

"I'll be right back. I gotta go to the bathroom" She walks away. After turning a corner, she stands next to the bathroom door and takes out her cell phone. After making sure no one can see her, she dials a number.

"This is John Winchester. If this is an emergency, call my daughter, Theo at 866-907-3235"

"Dad? I know I've left you messages before. I don't even know if you'll get 'em" She clears her throat "But I'm with Sam and Dean. And we're in Lawrence. And there's somethin' in our old house. I don't know if it's the thing that killed Mom or not, but..." Her voice breaks. She pauses, barely keeping herself together "...I don't know what to do. Dean doesn’t know what to do" She begins to cry "So, whatever you're doin', if you could get here. Please. I need your help, Dad" She hangs up sadly, with tears in her eyes.

Dean, Theo and Sam are talking to the owner of a garage.

"So, you and John Winchester, you used to own this garage together?" Dean asks.

"Yeah, we used to, a long time ago. Matter of fact, it must be, uh...twenty years since John disappeared. So why the cops interested all of a sudden?"

"Oh, we're re-opening some of our unsolved cases, and the Winchester disappearance is one of 'em" Theo says.

"Oh, well, what do you wanna know about John?"

"Well, whatever you remember, you know, whatever sticks out in your mind"

"Well...he was a stubborn bastard, I remember that" He laughs "And, uh, whatever the game, he hated to lose, you know? It's that whole Marine thing" Dean, Sam and Theo nod "But, oh, he sure loved Mary. And he doted on those kids"

"But that was before the fire?" Sam asks.

"That's right"

"He ever talk about that night?"

"No, not at first. I think he was in shock" The owner says.

"Right. But eventually? What did he say about it?"

"Oh, he wasn't thinkin' straight. He said somethin' caused that fire and killed Mary"

"He ever say what did it?" Dean asks.

"Nothin' did it. It was an accident-an electrical short in the ceiling or walls or somethin'. I begged him to get some help, but..."

"But what?"

"Oh, he just got worse and worse"

"How?" Theo asks.

"Oh, he started readin' these strange ol' books. He started goin' to see this palm reader in town"

"Palm reader? Uh, do you have a name?" The owner scoffs.

"No"

The car is parked by a payphone, where Sam is looking through a phonebook.

"All right, so there are a few psychics and palm readers in town. There's someone named El Divino. There's, uh-" Sam laughs "-there's the Mysterious Mister Fortinsky. Uh, Missouri Moseley-"

"Wait, wait. Missouri Moseley?" Theo asks. Both her and Dean look at each other.

"What?"

"That's a psychic?" Dean asks.

"Uh, yeah. Yeah, I guess so" Theo goes into the backseat of the car and pulls out John's journal.

"In Dad's journal...here, look at this" Dean opens to the first page "First page, first sentence, read that"

"I went to Missouri and I learned the truth" Sam reads.

"We always thought he meant the state" Dean says.

#older sister winchester #supernatural #Oc Insert #supernatural fanfiction #supernatural fandom

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