thetomorrowshow - Tumblr blog

thetomorrowshow · 10 days

Text

apologies

empires superpowers au masterlist (currently out of date)

a story that takes place during chapter 10 of ‘poisoned rats’.

cw: past abuse, anxiety, food

“Hi, Major!”

Jimmy starts, looks behind them.

Blossom is standing on the curb across the road, opening up a mailbox to remove the contents.

Scott waves back cheerily, one hand still unlocking the front door. “Hey, Blossom! Your garden looks so cute today!”

“Scott,” Jimmy mutters, tugging anxiously on the hem of his own hoodie. “Scott. Can we please go in?”

“Aw, thanks! Hi, Major’s roommate! How are you doing?”

That’s Blossom. He can’t—he looks over at Scott, silently begging him to unlock the door and let him in so he doesn’t have to answer.

“We’re both doing wonderful,” Scott replies, in lieu of Jimmy saying anything. Blossom smiles widely, and Jimmy’s close to actually tapping Scott on the shoulder because they’ve been standing there with the keys in the lock for what feels like hours and he really doesn’t feel comfortable making small talk with Blossom, of all people.

“Scott, please,” he whispers, and Scott finally notices his distress and pushes the door open, stepping aside to let Jimmy in.

Jimmy pushes past him, uncaring of how rude it probably seems, as Scott calls another pleasantry across the road.

It wasn’t his first venture out of the house, but only his third, and he’d been on edge the entire time at the hardware store, had barely been able to give his opinion on the paint swatches he was supposed to be looking at.

They’re painting his room, as much as he insists he’s fine with the white walls. He’d decided on a pale green eventually, and now he sets the two cans of paint down on the dining room table and puts his hands beside them and just tries to breathe.

He’s fine. It’s fine. He lives in a neighborhood of superheros, of course he’s going to run into them at some point. It’s unreasonable to think that he can live in total isolation and still get better.

He’d just prefer they were strangers.

The front door closes. “Jimmy?”

Jimmy doesn’t look up, just presses his hands harder into the table. “I’m fine,” he lies, voice shaking.

Scott sounds unsure when he next speaks. “Was it—was it just someone talking to you? Or was there something else?”

There are some things that Scott will just let go. Things that he clearly doesn’t know how to handle, so he doesn’t push and accepts that it’s something Jimmy isn’t capable of and they leave it at that.

This is clearly not one of those things.

“I’ve hurt her,” he manages, swallowing past the lump in his throat. “Both recently, and . . . before. I’ve—I’ve hurt all of them, Scott, I’ve hurt Pearl and Gem and the Mad King and—”

“Do you want to sit down?” interrupts Scott, and Jimmy nods gratefully and lets Scott take him by the arm and lead him to the living room sofa.

“Jimmy,” Scott starts, glancing uncertainly at him, “they don’t . . . Blossom doesn’t know, you know? Most of them don’t know who you are.”

Most implies that some of them do, and that does little to calm Jimmy’s nerves anyway. The facts of the matter are that Jimmy’s hurt a lot of people whether he meant to or not, and some of those people just happened to be well-loved and extremely powerful superheroes, and if he tries to apologize and explain to any of them, he’s more likely to be killed or jailed than forgiven.

“Who does know?”

Scott bites his lip. “Gem, for sure. She knows just about everything, actually, and she’s a very forgiving person and is fine with it.”

Gem is one of the people he’s hurt the worst—he remembers hurting her so badly back when she first became a hero that she was out of commission for weeks.

He needs to apologize in person.

“And because Gem knows, fWhip knows, and maybe Mythics and Pearl, considering whatever weird friendship they all have.”

Great. That doesn’t make him panic any less. He knew that Mythics knew the connection between Solidarity and the Canary due to less than fortunate circumstances, and he’d had a hand in kidnapping Gem so that makes sense anyways. fWhip doesn’t particularly like him, but if he hasn’t said anything then hopefully he doesn’t have to reach out. Pearl is an unknown.

“Oh, and Joel, of course,” Scott waves off, and Jimmy frowns.

“Joel?”

Scott blinks, his face falling. “Forget I said anything?” he tries half-heartedly. Then he shrugs, grins at Jimmy. “Eh, you would’ve learned it eventually. That’s the Mad King, he helped a lot in getting you and Gem out of there.”

Okay, that’s not . . . that’s not too bad. His memory is, admittedly, blurry, but he can vaguely recall the Mad King turning up at the end of . . . that day.

At least it’s not the entire city. Jimmy knows that Scott had had to pull some pretty powerful strings to arrange for his identity to be kept a secret, which he’s forever grateful for. It’s just utterly terrifying, knowing that there are so many people who do know who he is, and those people just so happen to be those wronged by him.

He clenches his hands into fists to keep them from shaking. “I need—I need to apologize to them. If I can.”

Scott doesn’t answer at first, just surveys him with an unreadable expression. “You sure?”

Jimmy nods. It’s absolutely terrifying, but he has to do it—just like how he still has to apologize to Lizzie.

Maybe apologizing with other people, for less important transgressions, will make the eventual confrontation with his estranged sister easier.

“Well, there’s actually a neighborhood barbeque this weekend,” Scott offers, and there’s something—there’s something sly in his voice, something suspicious, but Scott’s face is open and innocent when Jimmy meets his eyes. “Masked, of course. We could go to that, and you could see those people in person.”

Already, a pit in his stomach opens, dread spilling out of it. It’s Tuesday. That only gives him a couple of days before he has to see these people. Barely any time to plan anything, barely any time to try to find the words that he’s been searching for for the past five weeks while he postpones Lizzie’s visits.

Scott’s been talking a lot lately about spontaneity.

Jimmy used to live his life based around spontaneity.

Maybe he can just . . . be spontaneous again. It’s been so long since he didn’t have a schedule (even if it wasn’t one that he planned out), so long since he just rolled with the punches.

Maybe this will be good for him.

Jimmy’s precisely thirty seconds into the barbeque and he knows it will not be good for him.

It’s being hosted in the Mad King’s backyard, just down the street, and he and Scott are early enough that they’re the second to arrive, just after Blossom.

“She’s usually on time to stuff,” Scott whispers to Jimmy as they help the Mad King—or, Joel—lug coolers out onto the patio. “Gem is too, but if she’s bringing fWhip along she’ll be late.”

Gem doesn’t arrive at six on the dot, so Jimmy assumes fWhip is coming along. Joy.

It’s not a large group that’s gathered in Joel’s backyard by the time a half hour has passed, but there are several unfamiliar faces—or, masks, rather. Scott mentions that they don’t necessarily all live here, but there are many upstart heroes in the city and inviting them to neighborhood events is a way to show that the city-sponsored ones recognize the good they do.

He mostly sticks to Scott’s side, fiddling with the sleeves of his hoodie, tugging at his mask every so often. It feels like everyone at the party is watching him, knows who he is. There’s no way they don’t recognize him. There’s no way they don’t see his hair combined with his frame and mask and see the Canary or Solidarity.

“Hi, Major’s roommate,” Blossom greets him cheerfully when he and Scott make their way to the drinks table. She’s getting herself some lemonade; Jimmy fills a red solo cup with water and holds onto it to try and stop his hands from shaking so much.

“Hey, Blossom,” Scott says for him, picking up a cherry tomato from the vegetable spread someone had brought and popping it into his mouth. “I’m not sure I ever thanked you for catching my shift last week. Did anyone give you any trouble?”

“Not at all! I think they knew that I was around, and I wasn’t playing games, Major,” Blossom teases. Scott scoffs.

“Yeah, right. More like they decided to go easy on you.”

“Hey, TJ, right?” someone says loudly from behind him. Jimmy jumps, spins around to be face-to-face with the Mad King, a mask crooked over his eyes and a plain apron thrown over his jeans and t-shirt.

“I—uh—”

The Mad King jerks his head toward the grill. “Don’t freak out or anything, just wanted to ask for some help.”

Jimmy glances at Scott, who gives him an encouraging nod, then follows, feeling almost as though the Mad King is leading him to the gallows.

Which is entirely overdramatic, especially since the man helped rescue him in the first place.

The Mad King hands Jimmy a pair of tongs and a plate of hot dogs, explains the segment of the grill he ought to put them on, and tells him when to rotate them, even as he seasons burgers already on the grill and flips them around. Jimmy’s not quite sure what’s happening—he’s never used a grill before, so he isn’t sure if Joel’s cooking is anything particularly talented, but he’s impressed at least.

“How’ve you been holding up?” The Mad King asks after a moment, voice low. Jimmy blinks.

“Um. I’m—well, I’m here?”

Joel snorts. “Yeah, I thought that was kind of weird, really. What’d Major have to do to convince you to come to the superhero barbecue?”

At some point while crossing the yard, Jimmy had set down his cup. He wishes that he still had it, so that both his hands could be occupied. Instead, he stuffs one in his hoodie pocket, and very carefully turns a hot dog with the other.

“I want to apologize,” he says eventually. “I—to the people who know who I am. S—Major said, like—like, Gem, and fWhip know? And maybe Pearl? But I don’t know . . . I don’t. . . .”

“Know how to, like, start a conversation like that?” Joel suggests, and Jimmy nods. Joel clicks his tongue. “Go for it blunt. ‘Hi, my name’s TJ, I beat you up a couple times. How ‘bout we let bygones be bygones, yeah?’ Like that.”

“Absolutely not,” Jimmy says instantly, horrified by the idea. “I can’t just—I need to do it right—”

“‘Hi, Gem, remember when I kidnapped you and submitted you to torture? That’s my bad. Want to play pin the tail on the donkey?’”

“Oh my gosh—”

“‘Oh, fWhip! Yeah, I’m the guy who broke your back. Good times. How’re the kids?’”

“You are something else,” Jimmy manages faintly, setting the tongs down to bury his face in his hands. “Does he really have kids? Did he really break his back?”

“Pretty sure he didn’t break his back, you know, but yeah, his back got broken. Not sure about the kids.”

“I’m never going to get through this,” Jimmy mutters, slightly hysterical. “I’m going to die here. I’m going to panic and break something and then Scott will send me away and—”

“Hey, hey, secret identities,” the Mad King chides. Jimmy presses his fingers into his eyes, trying to regulate his breathing. After a moment, there’s a heavy pat-pat on his shoulder that he just barely doesn’t flinch away from.

“There, there,” Joel says awkwardly. It’s out-of-place enough that Jimmy laughs a bit, sucking in a long breath.

When he can, he lifts his face, picks the tongs back up, returns to watching the hot dogs cook. He glances around, checking to see if anyone’s watching. Everything’s going as normal, nobody seems to have noticed—even Scott, across the yard and lightyears away, is just laughing at some joke Pearl made.

“Sorry,” Jimmy says. Joel chuckles.

“How about you just start with apologizing to me?”

Well, the Mad King is on his apology list. But though he’d just been talking with him, though the conversation even seems almost friendly, Jimmy’s suddenly sweating from everywhere, heart jumping into his throat.

He has to do this.

“I’m—sorry,” he ekes out. He sets the tongs down, then doesn’t know what to do with his hands, and picks them back up. He avoids making eye contact with the Mad King. “For—for all the times I hurt you as the Canary. Or as Solidarity. I wasn’t—things weren’t going great. And also that time I hit you with a trash can.”

“Twice,” Joel points out.

Jimmy swallows. “Yeah. Twice.”

“Those are probably done, by the way,” Joel says, holding out the plate. Mechanically, Jimmy layers the hot dogs onto it.

“Honestly, TJ?” says Joel, flipping a burger and setting another one on the plate. “I’m really surprised you’re even here. It’s been, what—five weeks? Six? Since you got here?”

Jimmy nods.

“Right. Well, if I were you, I’d—I’d be bloomin’ terrified. I wouldn’t have even left my room. You just being here—even if you don’t talk to anyone else—that’s huge, in my opinion.”

Jimmy nods again, glances over to Scott, who is now alone. He starts to sidle away—he isn’t sure how to end conversations, really, he hasn’t had much practice and Scott never minds it when he just heads out to avoid the ending part, but Joel holds a hand out, offers him a small grin.

“And thanks. I accept your apology,” he says, before waving Jimmy on. “Go on, have a good time. Or don’t, more likely. At least eat something, yeah? Lizzie would kill me if she knew you weren’t eating.”

Jimmy doesn’t process that until he’s halfway across the yard, but when he does, he freezes in his tracks.

And it kind of makes sense, when he thinks about it. He’d witnessed the Mad King in battles teamed up with his sister, and they’d both gone with Scott to rescue him.

He tables that for a later date. Maybe Scott knows something about it. He doesn’t really want to strike up another conversation with the Mad King just to ask about it—as nice as he is, he is a little disconcerting.

Jimmy continues toward Scott, only to freeze again when someone taps him on the shoulder.

He spins around, and—fWhip.

fWhip offers him a toothy grin. “Hey, Major’s roommate, yeah? How long have you guys . . . you know. . . ?”

Jimmy stares back, mouth slightly agape. One of the people he definitely has to talk to, and the anxiety in his chest is bubbling up past boiling point.

fWhip’s grin fades. “Right. Um. Anyway, my sister and I—that is, Gem—we were wondering if we could chat with you for a quick minute? I promise we won’t keep you from Scott for very long.”

Which is an odd thing to say, but not exactly wrong. Jimmy thinks for a moment longer—for all he knows, they’ll lead him to a back alley somewhere and beat him up—but he’d deserve it, really, so he decides to go along.

Gem is waiting just inside the house, leaning against the kitchen counter. She smiles wryly, waves a little bit.

“Hi,” she greets him. “Are you still the Canary, or just Solidarity?”

Jimmy winces. “Er, neither,” he says stiltedly. “Just—just TJ. If that’s okay.”

“You weren’t mind-controlled, were you?” fWhip says bluntly. “The Mad King always said you weren’t. And—”

“TJ,” Gem interrupts. “I wanted to say I’m sorry. Mythics told us how badly you were hurting, and we never even noticed anything was wrong. It’s made me rethink my approach to being a hero. I want to help people, but I think I made things worse for you, and I’m sorry.”

Jimmy blinks. Tries to process that.

She’s apologizing to him? But—he doesn’t deserve that, he doesn’t deserve it when he’s the one who hurt her over and over before he was even Xornoth’s, then kidnapped her and subjected her to torture.

His head feels a bit like it’s spinning.

“I mean, I’m not gonna apologize,” fWhip says, shrugging. “But no hard feelings, yeah? I think we’ve both been in some pretty bad situations recently. So yeah.”

Jimmy swallows a few times. At least fWhip hadn’t apologized, he’s not sure what he would’ve done if he had.

“I’m sorry, too,” he forces out. “I shouldn’t have—I hurt you, both of you, a lot. You didn’t do anything.”

“It’s fine,” Gem says at the same time that fWhip says, “Thanks for apologizing.” They exchange a look, then both turn back to Jimmy.

“I know Major pretty well,” Gem says. “I trust him to be a good judge of character. I look forward to getting to know you, TJ.” She smiles warmly, then slides past him and out the backdoor.

“I don’t really trust you,” fWhip says. “Or Major, really. But I trust Gem. So, just . . . glad you’re reforming and all that. See ya.”

And then Jimmy’s alone in the kitchen, and that hadn’t exactly gone as anticipated. It hadn’t gone at all like anticipated, actually.

He’s going to need a couple of days to come to terms with that.

Jimmy heads back out, making a beeline for Scott. This time, nobody pulls him aside, and he can get all the way to him with no issue. Scott raises an eyebrow, but Jimmy shakes his head, so Scott just points him to the grill.

“Go get something to eat, yeah? We can leave after that if you aren’t comfortable.”

Joel shoots him a grin when he takes a hot dog, and Gem passes him the mayo at the condiments table, and Blossom corners him by the chips to ask him if he and Scott have seen the latest episodes of some unknowable TV show (and when he says they haven’t, she gushes about it for a good ten minutes while he tries to eat, frequently giving him strange looks whenever she brings up the main character’s romance).

It’s a lot. It’s inevitable that something goes wrong—and it does, but nothing big, just Jimmy trips over a small crack in the patio that quickly becomes a very large crack as the corner of the paving splits off.

He looks over at Joel, who shrugs, then back to Scott, who calls out an apology to Joel. And that’s it. Joel turns back to his conversation with Pearl and that’s it.

For the first time that evening, the knot in Jimmy’s chest loosens a little bit.

And if he can handle this, then talking to Lizzie will be a piece of cake.

#empires smp #empires smp fanfic #jimmy solidarity #scott smajor #empires superpowers au #esh au #040924 #mas writes #hskjdhj this one was lowkey so ufn #*fun #jimmy hanging out with the heroes is just a lil fluffy!#still away of course #so not much to say here!#hope yall enjoyed this one #love you guys

19 notes · View notes

thetomorrowshow · 16 days

Text

for a light

okay I PROMISE that comfort is coming I PROMISE

Scott stares Xornoth down from across the plateau, wind whipping the demon's hair and robes, black streaking out from him like some decaying flag.

They're alone, just the two of them, so far away (ndisu ndikitá'ána).

He's here.

It's time.

He sets the crown of antlers upon his head.

His fingers tighten on the thin grip of his sword.

Scott hisses as his finger bumps the pot, drops his hold and sticks the finger in his mouth. He was just trying to shift it to settle it better in the coals. Stupid cloth slipping.

Right. There's literally snow right there.

Scott removes his finger from his mouth, digs it into the snow beside him. The burn cools, eventually going numb.

That's one upside to living in a permanent winter. There's snow everywhere.

This little clearing in the woods that he took used to have a tent pitched in the center, grass and trees and wildflowers all around.

The tent is long gone, having collapsed under the weight of the snow and ice that collected upon it. Scott replaced it with an ice hut of sorts, which he thinks he created while asleep because he's not exactly sure how he did it. It's kind of ugly, but it has four walls and a roof and a little hole for a door, and it works.

The grass and plants aren't really visible anymore, the ground covered in a thick blanket of snow. Scott's not sure how, but someone had managed to get him a good pair of elven work boots, insulated and sturdy, so that he can tromp through the six or seven inches of snow without much issue. He's cold, this old, patched coat not quite enough to block out the chill, but the gloves keep his fingers from feeling too much like ice and the hand-knit hat prevents a majority of the headaches that his frozen ears cause. He's not too badly off, to be honest. There's just so much . . . cold.

And if he could get it to melt, that would be great.

He can make ice and snow appear just fine. There's plenty of snow, and he can point and ice spikes will shoot up out of the ground, and he can picture a cube of ice and watch as it forms in front of him, but that just means that now he has a little pile of ice cubes and a ludicrous amount of spikes the size of a tree. He can't get rid of anything.

And sure, he has a modicum of control. He can form ice cubes, and spikes, or whatever. But he can't turn off the way ice and snow just grows around him, or the freeze that blasts from him when he waves his arms.

He's been here for two weeks, figuring absolutely nothing out, and he doesn't have much hope for the future.

It feels like there's a wall in his head, a literal barrier keeping him from finding the way to draw back the ice. He's spent hours, days, even, pushing and shoving and just sitting against this wall, trying to force it to work.

It won't give. It's exhausting, day-in and day-out, to try again and again and again as the ice and snow just build up around him.

"Scott!"

Jimmy.

They haven't really . . . talked. Of course, Jimmy turns up every day without fail, bringing with him food and supplies. He always stands on the fringe of the clearing, shares news of the camp, of their latest excursion, of the fight they have planned.

Scott never really says much. He doesn't know how to respond, and Jimmy always leaves with his shoulders sagging the slightest bit.

What is he supposed to say?

I mourned you. I cried for you every day, because I knew I'd never see you again. I attended your funeral. I comforted your sister. I wore a depressing mimicry of what we once wore together, covering myself in the same darkness that took you. I lost you.

You didn't die, you survived, and I still lost you.

How is he supposed to tell Jimmy that what hurts more than anything about this situation is that he never tried to disabuse Scott of the notion that he was dead?

He thinks he still loves Jimmy. Their hearts were made for each other. They've been through too much together to just let go of everything they had.

But there were forty-two of the worst days of Scott's life, in which Scott believed his betrothed to be dead. He can't forget that. He can't pretend that Jimmy even attempted to contact him.

His mind always returns to that. Why didn't he? What reasons has he given, other than his ominous “it wasn't time yet”? Why?

And now they're here, in this horribly awkward phase where they haven't even discussed whether or not they're still an item (Scott's desperately in love with Jimmy but he isn't sure he can even stand to see him it hurts so much) or if that's even something they want to pursue right now (Scott wants so badly just to hold his hand but he can't let himself hurt Jimmy).

"Hey, Scott!"

Scott straightens (his wings shudder under the weight of the ice coating them, but none of it cracks), shakes the snow off his hands, and turns, stomach twisting.

Jimmy is standing there, a good ten feet away, leaning out from between the trees.

It's just Jimmy. Hair still too long, beard still obstinately there, an anxious smile on his pockmarked face.

Doesn't he have anything better to do, rather than visit Scott every day?

Jimmy holds up a bundle of cloth.

"I brought some bread and . . . venison, I think? I forgot to ask what it was. Does that sound good?"

Scott tugs his scarf up a bit higher on his cheeks. "Sounds fine," he calls back, voice muffled by the fabric.

Jimmy tosses it; Scott catches the bundle, grimaces when it frosts over the moment it touches his hands.

"What are you cooking?" Jimmy asks, stuffing his hands in his pockets. Scott glances back at his little pot on the dying coals.

"Just porridge," he says. That's all Jimmy gave him yesterday, after all. The grain for whatever chunky porridge it is that they eat at the camp all the time.

"That's . . . that's cool," says Jimmy. Dear Aeor, he looks so unbearably awkward. What does he want?

Thankfully, Jimmy gets straight to the point, no more hobbling around small talk.

"We're going on a mission," he says, the words coming out in puffs of frozen air. "There's a village about a day's walk from here, the largest we've gone for yet. They're going to be a huge asset to our rebellion."

Scott nods a couple of times. "Okay. How long until you're back?"

Jimmy chews on his lip—the way he always does when he's anxious, or isn't sure how to approach a problem. "That's . . . well, I wanted to see if you would come, actually."

It takes Scott a few seconds to process that, but when he does, he almost laughs out loud.

He's out of his mind if he thinks Scott will risk something like that. He can't control this! He's had to separate himself from the rest of the camp because there's a ten foot radius of winter wonderland that appears around him!

He has to be joking.

"You have to be joking," Scott says.

Jimmy shrugs. "I talked about it with the others that are coming on the mission, and they're all fine with it. If it makes you feel better—"

"No, I'm dangerous—"

"—we can walk apart from you, and—"

"—you don't understand, I hurt Gem, I'll—"

"—was just thinking that it can't be good for you to—"

"Jimmy, I said no!"

And childishly, to emphasize his point, Scott stamps his foot.

Ice crackles along the ground like a whip, shooting up in little spikes, a ten-inch wall down the middle of his little clearing.

It stops just short of Jimmy, the last little spike rising just inches from his boots, and Scott almost wants to go and shove him out of the way because Jimmy doesn't even move!

Doesn't he have any sense of self-preservation?

Jimmy doesn't seem scared when he looks up at Scott. He just seems sad.

"That's why I can't," Scott bites out, wrapping his arms around himself. His scarf is slipping, nose exposed to the cold. "I'm not safe. I don't want to hurt someone."

"Okay. Can I explain myself, though?"

Before Scott can give an answer, Jimmy takes a small step forward, boot crunching on snow.

Scott takes a step back.

"We know how to keep ourselves safe," he says. "Most of the people here escaped terrible conditions where one wrong move could kill them. They know how to recognize threats and keep a safe distance. It wouldn't even be an issue to travel with you."

Scott wants to argue, but Jimmy takes another step. Scott quickly steps back, swallowing down the fear that rises in his throat, burning like bile.

"We would travel kind of separately, and it wouldn't even be a long journey. Two days at most, I think. So the main group would stick together, and you would stay within sight off to the side. We usually move quietly, so you wouldn't miss out on conversation or anything."

Okay, that's probably what Scott would do if they were forced to travel. He's pretty sure that he can cause ice issues outside of the ten foot radius, if he tries, but it doesn't automatically happen. Travel plans like that might actually work.

Which doesn't mean they're good. They aren't. They just might work.

"This village has a lot of soldiers, from what we can tell. Way more than there ought to be. They're beginning to figure out our game. We usually wouldn't go for someplace so risky, but there's so many people there. If we freed them, we could easily add two hundred to our able fighters."

Is Jimmy stupid?

"It's a trap," Scott says, pointing out what seems obvious. "Why would they have so many Mythlanders there if not to wait for you?"

Jimmy scoffs. "We know it's a trap," he says. "That's why we want you. We want to avoid fights if possible—and if you were there, we would have a really decent chance of getting in and out without losing anyone."

"You're forgetting that I can't really control this," Scott says icily, and as if to match his tone, it spontaneously begins to snow. "I'm just as likely to hurt one of you."

"We just need you to make it as cold as possible. The Cod will survive—we're pretty good with cold temperatures. But humans are a bit more sensitive to that kind of thing. So we thought—if you could freeze over the village, then all the guards would go inside and we could sneak everyone out!"

That. . . .

That is a monumentally idiotic plan.

Scott blinks several times, just to make sure it really is Jimmy in front of him and not some hallucination induced by so much time alone.

"Or we could not do that," he says. "Just a suggestion."

Jimmy laughs a little. "I kind of figured you'd say that," he says. "But it's worth a shot, right? And if it doesn't work, we can go back to camp and figure out something else. No harm done, right?"

"Other than the possible harm that my very presence could cause," Scott says. "Do you really think that staying ten feet away while traveling would work? Just because that's my snowglobe radius doesn't mean anyone is safe outside of it."

He re-crosses his arms, waits for Jimmy to meet his eyes.

Jimmy's quiet for a long time, looking around at the unintentional ice spikes and piles of snow. Long enough that Scott turns away, tosses the sack from Jimmy into his ice hut.

That's that, then. He and Jimmy aren't going to talk about any of their real issues. Jimmy's so focused on this inconsequential rebellion of his that he won't even think about the fact that Xornoth may be controlling the world by now. Gem might be dead—literally any of them could be dead, Lizzie or Shubble or Joel all could have fallen—and Xornoth has control of half of the empires or all of them. And the only way to stop him didn't work.

Yet all Jimmy will even give thought to is his stupid little rebellion.

"I know it's hard," Jimmy says, voice awkwardly too-loud, rousing Scott from his thoughts. "It's really, really hard. I know that you don't trust yourself, and that you're hurting, and there's so much tangled up between us that I don't really understand but I know isn't making any of this easier for you. But I know you want to get better. I know you, Scott. And I know you will do everything in your power to keep those people safe."

Scott doesn't say anything, blinks back the sudden tears. He doesn't need this. He doesn't need Jimmy telling him what he feels.

Even if he's right.

He would do everything to keep the others safe.

He just can't guarantee that it would work.

"I trust you," Jimmy says firmly. "We trust you. I wouldn't have even brought it up if I hadn't cleared it with everyone else. And if it doesn't work, I'll never ask you to do it again. But please, Scott. If not for the people suffering, do it for me."

He doesn't owe Jimmy anything.

As a ruler, he pledged to defend his people, and he failed. What about when he fails again? Will he even be able to live with himself?

Will he be able to live with himself if he doesn't try?

In the grand scheme of things, a rebel attack to evacuate citizens of a small town in the Codlands is absolutely nothing. It will likely not contribute at all to the ending of the war.

But it's somewhere to start. Jimmy's always talking about how if they're still alive after everything, they ought to be doing something good with it. If he wants to eventually try to launch some sort of hopeless attack on Xornoth, he has to start somewhere. He has to figure this ice stuff out.

"Okay," he says eventually, reluctantly. "I don't . . . I don't want to. I don't think it will go well."

"If you can't trust yourself, you can trust me," offers Jimmy, and Scott grimaces at the hope in his voice.

He doesn't respond.

He wants to trust Jimmy. He wishes nothing had ever broken the trust that was there.

He isn't sure what did break it. He can't exactly blame Jimmy for not dying.

"I'll come get you tomorrow around midmorning, okay? We're hoping to arrive when it's dark the next day, then just have you freeze it overnight and get the Cod out before sunrise. Sound good?"

Scott shrugs. "It's your plan," he says. "Does it sound good to you?"

Jimmy doesn't respond, glancing over his shoulder. "I need to go finish prepping," he says when he turns back. "Take care. I . . . I'll see you tomorrow."

Scott doesn't move (frozen to the spot, he thinks idly), just watches Jimmy go, picking his way back between the trees.

What has he agreed to?

The journey goes exactly as Jimmy had laid out. Jimmy travels in a band of thirty-two people (Scott counts them during one of their fifteen minute rests), all able young Cod, some with cobbled-together armor or swords, others with nothing but the clothes on their back and improvised weapons. Scott sees two hand-made slings, one little hunting bow, and a couple of large branches shaped into clubs. All from afar, of course.

Scott walks a good thirty or forty feet away from the group, shying away whenever someone accidentally veers a little close. They always hurry back to the others, shivering and rubbing their arms.

Jimmy, of course, comes close on purpose. He keeps trailing along on the edges of the group, giving Scott terribly hopeful glances.

Scott just keeps his eyes on the snowy ground before him and wishes he could figure out how to talk to him.

Does he even want to talk to him?

Of course he does. Of course he wants to talk to his . . . to Jimmy.

He just can't. He can't risk hurting him. He can't risk getting hurt.

And soon enough, they've arrived at the town.

Scott has somehow managed to avoid hurting anyone, though one Cod only narrowly avoids getting stabbed by a flying ice spike when Scott gets startled by a bee.

He isn't sure how powerful he is, just that he's managed to tie it down and lash it to himself. But Scott, more often than not, feels like there's a thin door being battered and blown by a terrible snowstorm, ice seeping in through the cracks, and soon enough he'll have to try to open the door just a little bit. He can only imagine it blasting it open and sending bursts of unstoppable power out, forever unable to be closed.

Jimmy approaches him as Scott finishes up eating a cold supper, and even though it's dark Scott knows it's Jimmy because he knows Jimmy, he knows his habits and his tendencies and just weeks ago that had been painful, precious knowledge and now it means nothing significant.

"We're about ready," Jimmy says, not looking at Scott. He's looking out over the ridge that they're hidden behind, toward the town below. Scott wants to shake him, scream at him, drag him down to the ground. Doesn't he know he'll be seen? That his outline against the darkening sky will be obstinately visible?

"I'll take you down there in about a half hour. Then you just need to drop the temperatures to about freezing, all right? We'll do everything from there."

Scott doesn't answer. He doesn't have anything to say.

You left me you died to me I lost you and you were here. You were here this whole time and I've been hurting, and I'm still hurting and you just don't care. Why didn't you comfort me? Why aren't you helping me? Why won't you listen to everything I can't say?

Jimmy doesn't say anything, either, despite Scott's silent cries. He just stands there awkwardly, then gives Scott a nod and jogs back over to the main group.

Scott flexes his fingers in their gloves, blows on his hands, relishes the momentary warmth that brings him. He's always so cold these days. For good reason, of course—and despite all that, elves naturally run colder than humans, with the climate of their dwelling—, but he doesn't have to like it.

How is he meant to freeze an entire town without accidentally doing more damage than intended?

At this point, Scott has absolutely zero doubt that he'll be able to freeze the town. Piece of cake. The problem is drawing back the power after it's been extended.

It doesn't help that he doesn't know what he's doing. It doesn't help that all he's done for the past two weeks is try to not explode. He hasn't actually learned anything about control, or using the magic to his advantage.

And now he has to save a town. Use this untamable magic in moderation.

He's going to fail so badly.

And yet, when Jimmy returns not long later, Scott readjusts the little knapsack that hangs off his shoulder and sets off around the ridge, following Jimmy from a safe distance.

They skirt around their little camp on the side of the ridge, giving the refugees a wide berth so as to avoid getting any of them mixed up in Scott's personal snowstorm. That wouldn't help anything about this situation.

The ice hasn't been unfreezing behind him, either. That's been kind of concerning. He'd assumed, back in his little patch of the forest, that the ice hadn't gone away because he hadn't gone away. But now there's just a path of frost and snow through the long grasses of the outer Codlands, a trail leading directly to the rebel camp.

Scott really hopes it melts with time. It wouldn't be good to have one of fWhip's flying fish spies follow it and discover the camp.

He gets pulled from his thoughts by necessity as they approach the town, Jimmy making sure to keep them to the shadows, out of range of the torchlight from the perimeter guards. They crouch down behind some bushes (Jimmy beckons Scott closer, miming something about talking, and Scott reluctantly settles down close enough beside him—about five feet away, the closest to anyone he's been in weeks), peering between the brambles. Sure enough, there's more guards than a small border town ought to have—Scott counts at least four that patrol by the edge of town in the five minutes that they sit there and watch.

"We need to give my people a few more minutes, probably," Jimmy whispers, glancing up at the sky. The moon hasn't risen yet, so Scott's really not sure what he's checking. "But if you want to start the freeze, you can."

Right. Freezing an entire town.

Scott reaches inside himself for . . . for something. He isn't sure what. It's not like there's anything in there. Just his aching heart.

He legitimately feels fatigued from holding back the magic the best he can, but he doesn't know how to let go. He doesn't have any sort of point of reference for this. What is he supposed to do?

After several long minutes of indecision, of pulling at different parts of his mind to see if something just releases the switch, Scott gives up on figuring it out and just pushes.

He's not sure if the dam is broken, but a little flurry of snowflakes shoots out of his hands and he imagines the town, water in barrels and canals slowly freezing over, the temperatures dropping, the night air becoming frigid and biting.

Why does it have to be him?

"Nice," Jimmy whispers beside him. Scott blinks, looks up.

It's snowing. All across the town is snowing.

He didn't mean to make it snow. He only wanted to make it cold.

And it is cold. His fingers through their gloves are aching, the exposed skin on his face burns as a gust of freezing wind blows past.

"Was that too much?" he whispers, twisting his hands together. "I didn't mean for—"

Jimmy breathes out a near-silent laugh, gives him a grin. "I knew you could do it. I knew it!"

He made Jimmy happy.

Despite all the confusing hurt keeping them apart, that still makes Scott's heart squeeze in the best way possible.

The guards glance around at the fat flakes of snow, clearly confused. There's some shouting person to person, and within torchlight on the edge of town, a cluster of guards gather, rubbing their hands together and stamping their feet and pointing back to the center of town as they talk.

There's no way this will work. If his guards at Rivendell left their posts because it got a little cold, they would be in severe trouble with their captain.

But as Scott watches, one by one, the guards begin to trail away, heading toward what Scott assumes to be the inn.

There's no way. There's no way this is actually working. This can't be real.

Jimmy takes in a near-silent breath, lets it out in a low, loud, whoop/whistle. It sounds strikingly like the call of an owl that Scott has heard occasionally in these parts, late at night.

When did Jimmy learn bird calls?

It's a small thing. It's not even anything that matters. It's tiny and unimportant and Scott really shouldn't be close to tears right now.

It's like he doesn't even know Jimmy. He doesn't want to be upset, but he can't seem to stop it.

Jimmy still loves him and wants him; Jimmy wants them to be in love again.

How is it so hard?

Every guard has gone inside now, the town quiet.

The snow continues to fall, slow, drifting gently onto a peaceful street, becoming a picturesque winter scene.

Yet staring at it doesn't bring Scott peace. He only grows more and more anxious, eyes scanning from point to point, as though he might miss the operation entirely if he only watches the snow.

And after five or so minutes of waiting, Scott sees, past the falling snow, camouflaged people stealing through the streets, peering in windows, tapping lightly on doors.

The Cod residents are quick and quiet to answer, which is absolutely absurd.

It's actually working.

The other day, this was the most ridiculous plan Scott had ever heard. He never would have believed that any part of it would actually come to any sort of fruition.

And here they are.

He continues to watch as entire families sneak out of houses, glancing left and right before stepping out into the street, some bundled up in layers of clothing and others with nothing but a thin tunic protecting them from the weather.

The rebels move in phases, ushering out first this side street, then that one, making sure each sector of the town doesn't leave without instruction.

Scott watches, and something within him marvels.

This is the work. This had seemed so inconsequential to him just days ago—there are much larger things to worry about, after all—but now he can see how this had become Jimmy's whole world.

There's so many of them. They're moving house-by-house, sending one group before beckoning the next, but the streets are still close to packed.

There's a woman, hands covering her mouth as tears stream down her face, following a group into an alley. A shirtless man, carrying two children at once, his shirt draped over the both of them. A child—a tiny slip of a girl, surely not older than eight, clinging to her parent's leg, the torchlight from the abandoned guard posts illuminating her face just enough that Scott can see a hand-shaped bruise spanning her cheek.

The people are malnourished, injured, terrified. They’ve been desperately praying that someone will rescue them, someone will come along and deliver them from this darkness.

And here Jimmy is, a shining light, their once-dead king returned to save them specifically, as unimportant as they feel they are.

It makes sense. Jimmy's forces aren't strong enough to take on Xornoth, so why should he even focus on something so unattainable?

This, while not easy, is doable, and something that both strengthens his numbers and helps his people.

Scott gets it. It's about hope. It's about remembering the lost. It's about finding strength and life in this world of corruption.

"Scott," Jimmy whispers, pulling him from his realization.

Scott blinks, looks over at him. Jimmy's teeth are chattering, his nose pink, his lips pale of color. His arms are clutched around himself, doing nothing to hide the way his entire body trembles.

"You can reel it back in, a bit," Jimmy says, clearly going for humor, but the words fall flat when his lips can't even twitch up in some semblance of a smile.

Oh.

Scott looks back to the town, and now, he doesn't just see the wonder of it all. He sees how slowly everyone is moving, the way the rebels look up fearfully at the quickening snow, the way none of them are wearing any proper winter gear.

It's cold out. It's very, very cold out. It's definitely far below freezing, icicles already hanging from buildings, a thick layer of snow blanketing the ground.

It's too cold. He sees, all at once, three children collapse, and their caretakers pick them up but can barely keep going.

It's too much. It's too cold, so cold that a man stumbles and falls, and those around him are too cold to stop and help.

"Scott, make it stop," Jimmy whispers with increasing urgency. "It's too cold. Scott, stop."

He can't stop.

The door has been opened, and Scott doesn't know how to close it.

He can't make it warm up, he can't even stop it from getting colder. The night sky is growing steadily darker as more clouds roll in, the snow falling harder and faster—there's actual ice spreading, visibly spreading, crawling out from the bushes where he and Jimmy are crouched, heading toward the town and Scott can't stop it—

"Scott—"

"I can't stop it," breathes Scott, and it's nothing but the truth. He can't just turn it off, that isn't something he knows how to do—he doesn't know how to do anything, this is a curse and he hates it and nothing will ever be right again!

"I can't stop it," he says again, louder, voice shaking. "I can't—I can't do it, I told you I can't, I don't know how—"

"Just try," Jimmy says over him, hands held up. "I know you can do it, I trust you—"

"Just—just stop!" Scott bursts out, finally, all those terrible emotions rising to his tongue. "You keep saying—you keep—you were dead, you left me and you don't get to—you can't tell me what I can and can't do, I don't—"

"Scott," Jimmy says, something horribly placating in his voice, and it sounds just like the old Jimmy, just like the one who died—

Scott stumbles up, backing away from Jimmy. He can't—he doesn't want—this is all too much, too much, he's ruined everything and it's too much—

Jimmy stands as well, taking a couple of steps toward him. "Scott, I'm going to touch you, okay?"

"No!" Scott bites out. The wind is whistling in his ears, he can barely hear Jimmy over it—he can barely see Jimmy through the snow, there's so much of it, and Scott can't make it stop! He can't fix this! "Don't touch me, I don't—I don't even know you, I'll hurt you!"

"Scott—"

"Get—away—" Jimmy's just coming closer, one step at a time, and Scott doesn't want him, that's not his Jimmy, he doesn't want to hurt him—

The storm is rapidly getting worse, the snow beating down on his face with little pellets of ice, he had never meant to make it snow let alone storm, he's cursed, he's forever cursed, there's no way he can make things right, there's no way anything will ever be right again—!

And then there are arms around him.

Jimmy squeezes him tightly, good pressure and tightly enough that his brain is forced to settle into a more peaceful state, despite his surroundings.

His lover is warm against him, and Scott instinctively buries his face in the crook of Jimmy's shoulder where it belongs and perfectly fits.

Something inside doesn't really click into place. It doesn't quite work. It's close, but it's just not where it needs to be.

But it does slide together nicely, and Scott somehow finds a slippery grasp on the cold and tugs it back in.

He hadn't even been able to have this before. He hadn't even been able to feel a way to control it, let alone actually take hold.

But there's some kind of power positively radiating from Jimmy, something that Scott can feel and recognize in this entirely new world of magic that he never even knew existed.

It's got to be Jimmy's love.

Jimmy loves him so so much that it overpowers the curse.

And Scott, for the first time in weeks, feels warm.

He feels warm. Jimmy's here, his arms wrapped around Scott, and he feels warm.

A sob rises in his chest.

This is his Jimmy.

His Jimmy is holding him, and loves him, and is so very warm.

"There we go," Jimmy whispers into his hair, voice slightly muffled. "Not too much, now. We still need a little bit of snow coming down."

Right.

Scott doesn't think he has the emotional capacity to pay attention to anything but Jimmy, but he loosens his grip on the ice just a little, enough that the snow doesn't stop.

The sob bursts out of his mouth, and Scott clutches Jimmy as close to him as possible.

His Jimmy is here. He's actually here.

And Scott can feel his fingers again, warmth washing over every part of his body.

They don't move for a long time. Jimmy watches the exodus over his shoulder as Scott cries into his chest, letting all of the emotions that he's been feeling for the past two months pour out onto Jimmy's coat.

They stand there, and Scott sobs.

After too long, long enough that the tears on Scott's face become more sticky than wet (they aren't freezing on his cheeks, like they've been doing, and isn't that just a miracle), Jimmy pulls away.

Scott feels his tenuous control slip from his grasp—too cold again, too cold—and he launches himself back into Jimmy's arms.

"Don't go," he chokes out.

"Okay."

"Please . . . I can't—I can't do this without you."

"Okay."

Scott takes in a shuddering breath. He's stronger than this. He can do this.

"Do you think you can stop the snow?"

Scott nods, his nose wiping across Jimmy's coat. Then, with a mustering of what little strength he has, he shuts that imaginary door.

It almost doesn't shut. Scott strains against it in his mind, inch by inch, but eventually it clicks shut.

He can't lock it. But holding to Jimmy keeps it shut, and Scott doesn't plan on letting go.

Jimmy's right here.

Jimmy is real.

He's alive.

"You died," Scott sniffles, tears burning at the corners of his eyes. "You died!"

"I know," Jimmy murmurs, sounding absolutely heartbroken. "I know. I'm here."

"You weren't there, though. You—you left me! I was so—so alone!"

"I know," Jimmy says again. "I'm so sorry, Scott. I'm so sorry."

Jimmy's crying too, Scott realizes. They're in snow up to their knees, in full view of the town, and they're both just standing here crying.

Scott. . . .

Scott doesn't really care.

His heart, broken by the weight of the grief hanging so heavily on it, is finally beginning to heal.

That's more important than anything else around.

Scott doesn't let go of Jimmy's hand the entire trip back.

They walk back to the camp, bringing up the rear of a long crowd of refugees. Scott's trail of frost is barely-there, and he never feels like he's a danger to anyone while Jimmy is at his side.

They arrive back at the camp almost three days later, the group slower-moving with the addition of a good three hundred people. The camp is thrown into chaos, more than doubled in size, and Jimmy's pulled every which way by every person possible as they try to make arrangements and adjustments on such a large scale.

Scott stays with him through it all. He presses himself into Jimmy's side during a hurried meeting about leadership for splitting into several camps; he clings to him while Jimmy directs new refugees to food; he holds his hand through long hours of pointing people this way and that.

Jimmy doesn't end up being forced to bed until past midnight, a young Cod practically pushing him and Scott to his tent. Jimmy goes reluctantly, walk stumbling and eyes bloodshot. Scott can't imagine that he looks any better—he can feel how oily his hair is, limp after being literally frozen for so long, his wings unkempt and dragging. He can barely stay upright, and relief floods him when they finally reach Jimmy's tent.

Jimmy collapses onto his bedroll without even taking off his boots or unbuckling the enchanted sword on his back, and Scott is just able to manage loosening the laces of his own boots and kicking them off before he falls down beside him.

"There's still so much to do," mumbles Jimmy, and instinctively, they wrap around each other, knees slotting perfectly and arms weaving just right.

It's like nothing changed.

It's like everything is right again.

"I missed you," Scott whispers, though his throat threatens to choke on the words.

He lost Jimmy. Forty-two days of mourning, of the worst torture he's ever been subjected to.

He lost him, and it still hurts. Everything still feels so terribly hopeless, so dark, and Jimmy forsook him for so long.

But he's back. He's here, and alive, and through his thin tunic under the hilt of the sword Scott can feel a new scar just below the nape of his neck (Jimmy shudders as his fingers trace it, but doesn't pull away) but he's alive and in Scott's arms.

He died. Jimmy died, and it must have been terribly traumatic for him in ways that Scott hasn't even considered.

But by some miracle, he's here. He's okay.

He is, isn't he?

"Are you all right?" Scott asks quietly, seized by the need to know that his love is well. He doesn't know the specifics, not really—but Jimmy said he'd been stabbed several times, and that can't have been easy to recover from—and Scott had made it awfully cold earlier, and he knows that some of the refugees suffered because of it, and Jimmy only had that thin coat on.

Jimmy doesn't respond, though, breathing slow and even, and Scott eventually relaxes, assuming that he's asleep. He can get his answer tomorrow, after all. He can fuss over him all he wants.

Scott honestly can't believe that he let himself drift so far from Jimmy. He let his feelings of abandonment and despair and everything else get in the way of being here, holding his beloved, giving him comfort and receiving it in bucketloads.

He was so wrapped up in losing Jimmy the first time, he almost lost him again.

Then Jimmy shifts in his arms, sighs a little bit. "I'm okay," he finally replies. "That's what you asked, right?"

Scott nods against his shoulder, and Jimmy lets out a low chuckle. "My good ear is pressed to the pillow, sorry," he says by way of explanation. "Couldn't quite hear you. Are you okay?"

Is he okay?

He's not physically injured. And he's not quite so cold—with Jimmy's love warming him, he can keep a lid on the ice magic, stopping it from spreading beyond his fingertips.

Everything about this situation still hurts. Everything's still so terrible, and there's no way to overcome it.

But Jimmy's here now, and he loves Scott.

And Scott loves him.

"I'm all right," he says eventually, before burying his face deeper into Jimmy's shoulder.

And he thinks, for the moment, that it's true.

Scott dreams that night.

He dreams of a plateau, ice, wind whipping dark robes every which way.

He dreams of his hand tightening around a sword hilt.

He dreams of a crown upon his head.

Inka kuuna ndikitá'ána.

It's just barely past dawn, and a young girl with mousy brown hair and scales smattered across her face like freckles is wandering down to the river to collect water.

It's a bit of a long walk, but Lithi doesn't mind—it's preferable to the walk back, when the empty waterskin strapped to her back will be filled with water.

She's a girl forced to grow up too fast, barely in her teens, yet made to take up her mother's armor and flee into exile.

But she doesn't cry. Lithi never cries, and it's a point of pride for her. Her peers seem to be constantly crying, after all. She isn't going to let herself be perceived as a weak little girl. Not after everything her people have been through.

The ground beneath her bare feet becomes squishy, pockmarked with little puddles of water, and she veers right. Her course has taken her too near the slow, swampy portion of the river, and while she longs to go splash about in the swamp, she knows that the water there isn't clear enough to use back at camp. Not to mention, the Codfather wants them to avoid the swamps, for some reason.

She misses the marshes of home. They all do—Cod aren't made to spend all their lives on land.

She knows the swamp misses them, too.

And that reminds her of the folk song that her mother taught her, and her mother's parents taught her, and their parents taught them.

So, while the girl walks, she sings.

The sun is brighting,

Children, come home!

The grass is sighing,

Children, come home!

Where the water's dark and deep

There her children will find sleep

The marsh is calling,

Children, come home!

The frogs are croaking,

Children, come home!

The critters woken,

Children, come home!

Where the water's dark and deep

There her children will find sleep

The marsh is calling,

Children, come home!

The birds are singing,

Children, come home!

The trees are ringing

Children, come home!

Where the water's dark and deep

There her children will find sleep

The marsh is calling,

Children, come home!

The fries are playing,

Children, come home!

The wind is saying,

Children, come home!

Where the water's dark and deep

There her children will find sleep

The marsh is calling,

Children, come home!

The marsh is calling,

Children, come home!

The night is falling,

Children, come home!

Where the water's dark and deep

There her children will find sleep

The marsh is crying,

Children, come home!

She reaches the riverbank as the song comes to a close, singing the last line over and over again, in a myriad of styles and keys.

She shrugs the waterskin off her shoulders, clumsily dips it into the water. The riverbank is uncomfortably dry and sandy between her toes, which long for the mud of home.

Why can't they go to the swamp? Not that she would ever rebel against their Codfather, but she just wants to feel at peace again.

The waterskin isn't totally full, but she draws it up out of the water and ties it closed, arms shaking, straining to hold it up. And now she has to make the long walk back to camp with this heavy load, the leather straps cutting into her shoulder blades with every step.

So maybe she dawdles by the river. Maybe she dips her fingers into the water, swishes it around.

It's that distraction, perhaps, that changes everything.

Because had Lithi not lingered, she wouldn't have seen the glimpse of bright green caught under a rock in the water. She wouldn't have levied up the rock, pulled loose the thing. She wouldn't have held up the sodden leather bag, beautifully embroidered with a bright green cod and a sky blue stag.

And most importantly of all, she wouldn't have opened the bag to find a thin, Oceanic book, nor caught a glimpse of gold shimmering in the silty mud beneath where the bag had lain.

29 notes · View notes

thetomorrowshow · 18 days

Text

hi all! it's oasis, with another rare mas post (being a post I am making from mas's account. idk don't question it <3)! just so you know, I have turned on mas's boops, so feel free to shower them with boops :D. I already have lol.

have a wonderful april 1st y'all!! :))

#posts from oasis #boop #april fools #april fool's day 2024

11 notes · View notes

thetomorrowshow · 19 days

Text

Working on new designs again, how do we feel about Crutchie??

#HE <3333 #I love him #mas would be satisfied with this posting #q #posts from oasis

462 notes · View notes

thetomorrowshow · 1 month

Text

Please enjoy this updated meme:

#q #posts from oasis

191K notes · View notes

thetomorrowshow · 1 month

Text

we've done it again folks

#posts from oasis #free from the q for another 15 minutes 🥳

81K notes · View notes

thetomorrowshow · 1 month

Text

this is targeted tumblr content

#ides of march #not putting it in the q because the day is almost through #posts from oasis

27K notes · View notes

thetomorrowshow · 1 month

Text

i love fish biology youtube

#q #posts from oasis

25K notes · View notes

thetomorrowshow · 1 month

Note

How do you keep being kind when everyone else is awful? On the internet too, where people say the worst things. How are you so gentle to everyone’s ideas? Do you ever get the urge to punch someone, and if you do, how do you respond nicely?

I guess I've been on social media since 1989. I've made every mistake you can make already. At the point I figure the only point in being here is to be as kind and helpful as I can be.

#posts from oasis #q

3K notes · View notes

thetomorrowshow · 1 month

Text

glass and grey hoodies

empires superpowers au masterlist (not up to date)

mind the content warnings on this one, folks. in an altered mental state, jimmy attempts suicide several times in the first portion of the fic. the rest of it is an account of his time in the psych ward.

this story takes place between chapters 9 and 10 of ‘poisoned rats’.

cw: past abuse, suicide attempts, blood and injury, hospitals, flashbacks

It’s loud.

It’s loud, and his head hurts, and he doesn’t know where he is and he doesn’t like it.

He opens his eyes to see blurry white walls. Figures standing over him. The pinch of a needle in his arm. An ache that spreads from his neck all the way to the tips of his toes.

He’s back on the table, then.

He doesn’t remember what happened before now, but he knows what this means. If he’s back on the table, something bad happened. If he’s back here. . . .

He suddenly knows. They’re going to take it away.

He’d misbehaved enough that they’re going to take away whatever they put in him all that time ago, whatever it is that lets him control his powers and makes his life the least bit livable. And it’s his fault.

He knows what he has to do, then. He can’t go back to that.

The scientists know he’s awake, he thinks, but either they don’t care or they want him awake, because no one reacts to him looking around, taking stock of things the best he can.

There’s some sort of surgical instrument on a rolling table near his left arm. Something sharp. Something that, if he can sit up quickly, he can reach.

He does a little test of his stomach muscles, tensing them and moving as if to sit up. Painful, but certainly doable.

He has to do it now, then. Before it’s too late.

He sits up, and maybe it’s a bit slower than it should be, because there’s a rubber glove of a hand pressing into his shoulder, loud words that he doesn’t understand—but he isn’t slow at all when he grabs the sharp tool and plunges it into his gut.

He wakes up again later, still bleary and with a stabbing pain in his lower stomach.

Funny, he thinks. He did stab himself, after all.

The problem is, however, that he survived. He didn’t mean to survive. He meant to be completely out of this world, away from the lab, away from the scientists, away from his master and all the blood he’s spilt.

Luckily, the room is empty. He’s sure it won’t be soon, not now that he’s conscious.

It’s not easy for him to sit up. It’s even more difficult for him to stand, going all lightheaded and woozy from pain.

So, pretty much the norm.

There’s scissors on the counter that lines the right side of the room, no other potentially dangerous items in sight. He glances toward the clear glass sliding door. The curtain in front of it is pulled back, and anyone walking by could see him.

He hobbles to the counter, stuck by a tugging in his right arm that he realizes is because it’s hooked up to some machine of some sort. It luckily has wheels, so he pulls it along a few steps until he can reach the scissors.

His hand is firm when he starts slashing the blades across his wrists.

He wakes up restrained after they knock him out again.

He doesn’t like that at all.

Restrained means velcro around his wrists, holding him to the hospital bed. Restrained means quiet sobs as he pulls against them. Restrained means wishing over and over that he hadn’t failed, because now he won’t have another opportunity.

However, they don’t really . . . do much to him. Someone in scrubs comes by every so often, asks him a bunch of questions that he doesn’t care to listen to, and writes things on a dry erase board on the wall. A man sits beside him, also in scrubs, scrolling through his phone and lazily eating a bag of chips.

And that’s it, for a while. He even stops crying out of confusion, just lies there and stares at the ceiling. He’s good at that.

He realizes, eventually, that he’s wearing something like a big t-shirt, but the back feels uncomfortably open. Maybe some sort of sheet with sleeves? It’s got little green clovers as a pattern, and he stares at it for far too long, knowing he hasn’t seen anything like it in all his time here.

The next thing he realizes is that he isn’t wearing a mask. That almost gets him crying again, but he’s overwhelmed by hopelessness before he can even start. What’s the point? Really, he doesn’t belong to himself, doesn’t exactly have a life of his own. This was the natural next step. It’s not like he had any sort of ownership over the mask.

The man beside him talks sometimes, but he’s too out of it to understand. He’s too out of it to process much, really.

He just lies there, drifting in and out of consciousness, dreading the moment the pain will truly start.

It’s late, he thinks, when he feels like his head has finally cleared a little bit—the man beside him is now a sleepy woman, and the lights in the room are dimmed, curtains drawn.

If he does this right, he might get another chance.

It takes a while to get any sort of adrenaline built up, but once he has some sort of spark going, he aims it at the restraint on his left arm. After a moment, the plastic part of the velcro snaps and his hand is free.

The woman looks up at the noise so he doesn’t move, leaving his hand in the velcro as if nothing has changed. After a moment, she returns to the book she’s reading.

The dressings on his right arm should be easy to get through—it’s the type with the cloth tape, the stuff that rips off quick. And underneath is a thin tube, which presumably has a hidden needle.

His next moves are fast. He pulls his hand free of the velcro, tears off the dressing, and yanks out the IV line, the machine suddenly beeping very loudly. He jabs it back into his arm—no needle. Where’d the needle go? Is it in his arm?

There’s got to be another needle—he checks the rolling table still beside him, but of course they haven’t left any sharp items out, they’re learning—

And then his left arm is being pulled back down and held there while another woman rushes into the room.

“You’re at the E. James Hospital in Empires City,” a strange woman tells him, and he doesn’t think he can be blamed if he doesn’t believe her. She waits a moment longer, then sighs and writes something on the whiteboard.

When she moves, he can see it. Unresponsive, she’s written.

“You may be feeling a little funny for a while,” she continues. “We’ve got you on some anti-anxiety medication, and it takes a little bit to adjust. Does that make sense?”

Well, it explains how numb he feels. He stares at her, trying to understand her place here.

“We’ll send in someone from psych to evaluate you later on today, but until then, Anthony is going to be here with you. Anthony, could you wave?”

A man—the same man from earlier—waves from the chair in the corner. He doesn’t say anything.

The woman says some more stuff, but he doesn’t take it in. He’s not even entirely sure that he’s conscious.

All he knows is that if he tries, he can shatter that glass canister of cotton balls on the counter. And some of the glass shards are likely to be sharp.

The person from psych is nice enough. She introduces herself, but he doesn’t catch the name. She asks him how he feels. She unstraps his left arm when he doesn’t answer and asks him to point at the scale of one-to-ten faces paper that she pulls out of a binder.

He points at the seven, the face that’s orange and frowning. She then shows him a poster that has emotions written on it, attached to images of kids acting out those emotions. She asks him to point to the emotions he feels right now.

This is the first moment when he starts to wonder if maybe he isn’t in the lab. Maybe the woman from earlier wasn’t lying.

The emotions on the poster aren’t complex enough to describe how he feels, but he eventually points at ‘confused’.

He’s not entirely sure what she says after that��he has vague flashes of her asking him to write something, and him not even looking at her (pets can’t write, who does she think she is?) before she leaves, writing a string of numbers on the whiteboard, then using a magnet to pin a list there.

He’s alone, if only for a moment.

She hadn’t left his arm unstrapped—she’s not stupid—but he can break the straps without issue. One splits down the middle, one just cracks enough for him to tear it the rest of the way.

He’s more steady than he was last time. And somewhere, deep down, he knows that they won’t give him the opportunity again. They want him alive.

This is his last chance.

It takes one touch for the glass canister on the counter to shatter. He picks up the largest shard, pauses as he aims it first at his wrist, then at the inside of his elbow as the bandages at his wrist deter him.

There’s an artery in the thigh, isn’t there? And his thigh is practically bare, due to the shirt-thing he’s wearing.

Wait. Is he . . . is this a hospital gown?

He stabs the glass into his thigh. It doesn’t go as deep as he would’ve liked, but it hurts like the devil, breaking through the numb state of his mind.

For a moment, he panics. That’s a lot of blood spilling out over his fingers, his grip on the glass slippery. He doesn’t want to die, does he?

But he has to get out. He can’t live in this place any longer. He can’t take it, can’t be a pet for the rest of his life, can’t kill person after person at the whim of a maniac—

He digs the glass in further, and feels his head go fuzzy before his vision blacks out and he crumples to the floor.

For a long time, life passes from blur to blur. He’s aware of what’s going on, he knows he is. He recognizes that the drugs are upped, that he’s a high-risk case and there’s always someone at his side. He hears when they tell him that his wounds are healing well and he’s gained a bit of weight, so they’re sending him on a seventy-two hour hold to the psych ward. They tell him he’ll be safer there.

He floats by all these blurry moments, crying one moment and unresponsive the next. The day they put him in a wheelchair and take him away is a day where he can barely feel anything, thoughts slower than molasses crawling down the side of a bottle.

When he arrives, they don’t give him much. A room. With a roommate. Some clothes.

He doesn’t really process any of it. He just lies on the bed and stares at the ceiling. He takes things that are offered to him—pills, food, water. When a voice tells him to shower, he obediently gets up and limps to the shower. When a voice tells him to go somewhere, he follows them and sits in that place until he’s led back to his room.

He’s not sure how long he’s there before things really start to register, but it starts with his roommate’s voice.

“Are you ever gonna stop being a zombie? When they told me you were a suicide risk, I thought you’d be way more exciting.”

He blinks.

“What?” he croaks, because that really is a weird thing to regain awareness to. His roommate laughs, and it’s a laugh that he recognizes as somewhat sad.

“Yeah, it’s okay, half the people here act real weird for the first couple of days on the meds. That’s what my last roommate told me, anyway. I’ve only been here for a week.”

He doesn’t remember much. But he knows now, with a strange clarity, that the horrible detached memories of that place from before are not of the lab. This may all be a dream, but he hasn’t been taken back to that place.

Taken back? When did he leave?

They call him TJ, for some reason. Drugged-up him had been happy to accept that, not really sure that there was another option.

But he’s TJ now, and that’s okay.

Josh (his therapist, who is actually really nice) explains to him, in as little detail as possible, what happened when it becomes clear that he’s confused.

Josh tells him that they know he’s the Canary, that he was rescued by a group of heroes and that Xornoth is dead.

Maybe it’s still the drugs working, but he doesn’t feel much more than a small sense of vindication at learning that. Not that he believes it at first, of course, but Josh explains at length the various pieces of evidence for him actually being here.

He doesn’t really believe that either, not until the next day, when he is suddenly vividly eating green beans in a common room, a dead-eyed woman eating the same beside him.

And Jimmy’s properly here, and he knows he’s here, and he wants to cry from the relief of it. Because that means it had all been real, and Xornoth’s dead, and he’s out.

He’s been rescued. He’s alive.

Maybe he does cry, a little. No one judges him.

Josh is proud of him for having that breakthrough. Unfortunately (or fortunately, according to Josh, despite their emotional exhaustion), that breakthrough is just the first in a line of many.

It feels wrong to talk. He hasn’t willingly spoken in close to a year, and it’s definitely taking some getting used to—but it’s really the easiest of his issues. He still thinks of himself as a pet, he still expects punishment at the slightest provocation, he struggles to remember to walk instead of crawl and sit on chairs—and each of those come with a plethora of their own issues, such as the hour he spent sitting at the feet of a nurse, the closest figure of authority he could find.

He knows he locked away a part of himself, compartmentalized his brain until he could truly be subservient for his master. But reintegration is difficult, and scary, and Josh is his only guide.

“I know I’m in here,” he tells Josh one day, his quiet, raspy voice not an adequate instrument for conveying just how frustrated he feels. He picks a bit at his sweatpants, not quite daring to look Josh in the eye. “I can remember. I know I’m different. Supposed to be different.”

“That’s a very normal feeling for those who have been under the influence of a telepath for a long time,” Josh says gently, and Jimmy just . . . doesn’t bring up that he wasn’t. He knows it’s lying, and he knows it’s wrong, but someone had given him that cover story and it somehow kept him from going to jail, so he’s keeping it.

“Is there anything I can do for you right now?” asks Josh not ten minutes later, when it becomes clear that Jimmy isn’t going to say anything else.

And there is something he wants, actually. The only way to find out is by asking, and he knows logically that Josh isn’t going to hurt him for such a request, but he can’t shake the fear.

“Long sleeves?” he whispers eventually, and he doesn’t miss the way Josh’s eyes fall to the word scarred on his left arm.

“We can do that,” Josh says. “That shouldn’t be a problem. I actually saw a nice hoodie the other day while out shopping, so I can pick that up on my way home tonight. They’ll take out the drawstring, if that’s all good. Or do you want, like, a long-sleeved shirt?”

“Hoodie,” Jimmy says, not wanting to cause more of an inconvenience.

The next day, he’s got a grey hoodie, a little large (but everything hangs loose on him) and without drawstrings.

He wears it every day.

Jimmy knows he’s getting better, even if it’s frustratingly slow. Josh helps him map out his progress one day, reminding him that he went from nearly vegetative to actually asking for what he wants.

Sure, he doesn’t really eat the way they want him to (he’s always got one of those terribly chalky protein shakes in hand now), but he’s trying. He wants to eat more, and he always tries to get at least a bite down at every meal (they’re too frequent, too regular, he never gets to eat that much there must be a catch).

And of course, all of his other problems that he hates to get into. Problems that have him changing bandages around his wrists and stomach and thigh. Problems that leave him crying on the floor at random times, mourning pieces of himself that he doesn’t know if he’ll ever get back.

But, like Josh says, he’s getting better. He’s really starting to think for himself again.

Until it all seems to reverse.

One day, he’s fine. He talks about a happy memory (as few as they are) with Josh. He’s brave enough for the first time to actually venture out into the common room, play a game of Battleship with his roommate Peter. He actually considers joining the group therapy session when it rolls around. He eats half his meal at dinner that night. He takes his evening pills without complaint and sleeps through some of the nightly checks.

The next day, everything is wrong.

The next day, Jimmy collapses on his cell—bedroom—on the floor of the place where he sleeps, certain that there are people surrounding him and grabbing at his clothes and pulling on his hair and he thought he was safe, they told him he was safe—

And then he’s back, Peter shaking him and calling for help.

It keeps happening after that. He can’t go more than an hour or so without believing he’s back there, without being strapped to a table or kicked by a heavy boot or having knives thrown at him. Each time he comes back to reality, he’s more exhausted and scared than before.

Josh calls them flashbacks, and as soon as Jimmy hears the word he knows it’s right. He has one during therapy (he’s so hungry, he was left here for hours with no one and nothing and it’s a test, he knows it’s a test), and when he comes to, he’s laid out on the couch with Josh speaking quiet words of reassurance.

“Sorry,” he mutters roughly, and Josh just shrugs and gives him a list of grounding activities, and breathing exercises for homework (not that he has a home to take it to).

It doesn’t work, though. It should work, and it doesn’t, because half the people here dress like they’re from the lab. The whole place smells like a hospital, sterile and awful. He’s alone—Peter had gone home that day. It’s just him, in a white room, and he’s fine by himself, he’s always been by himself, but he can’t help but think that maybe, if his caretakers had put a bit of thought into it, they wouldn’t have left him on his own. Not that he’s going to try again—he wants to be here, to some extent, he thinks—but he’s been alone for so very long and he can’t control what he does while in a flashback.

He tells that to Josh—Peter had apparently been here for a longer period of time than expected, struggling to handle an eating disorder, but had finally been deemed well enough to return to his life (with constant check-ins and therapy appointments). And while that was all good for him, there don’t seem to be any other viable roommates at the moment—those safe to share already have roommates, but Josh assures him that he’s first on the list for either a new admittance or a leftover patient when their roommate leaves.

Jimmy has another flashback that session, one of a noose around his throat that he is being forced to tighten. He doesn’t know where he is afterwards, or what’s going on, and a smiling man with dark hair who smells funny leads him to a bed and gives him a pill to swallow. Jimmy doesn’t care if it’s going to kill him. He swallows it, and falls asleep shortly after.

The days go on like that. Jimmy wakes up, struggles through a day lived half in the past, at some point panics badly enough that he has to be drugged to sleep, and so on. His eating habits slowly go downhill, only managing half of the daily protein shake that he’d always pushed to finish before.

And he’s really, genuinely trying—on days when he can find his voice, he talks in therapy. He starts attending group therapy, even if he only listens. He sits in the common room and watches TV with other patients as often as he can drag himself there. He tries to eat every meal, tries to talk to other people, tries to get better.

It’s those vile flashbacks throwing a wrench in everything, of course. One day during therapy, Josh theorizes that the flashbacks are so frequent and so awful due to a constant trigger, and when Jimmy wryly points out that he has a lot of trauma around medical situations, Josh grimaces and tells him to keep a trigger journal.

Which only serves to prove what Jimmy had suggested. His most common trigger is the smell of rubbing alcohol or hand sanitizer, as far as he can tell. And right after that is the sound of someone snapping on a pair of rubber gloves. Things aren’t looking all that hopeful until one day in therapy, when Josh mentions a very familiar name.

Jimmy’s drawing during the conversation, little squiggles and spirals around various words—emotions, mostly. It’s something that Josh had introduced fairly early on, a place for him to identify his emotions without getting too far in his head trying to think about them. Here, he can just write them down and move on with the knowledge that what Josh just said makes him feel anxious, or sad, or angry. And then, Josh can ask why that statement made him angry, and it’s easier to explain with a marker doodling in his hand.

“Now, TJ, I’m not sure if you’re aware of this, but Major made arrangements for you to be here.”

That draws Jimmy up short. His marker point bleeds into the paper as he looks up, forces himself to speak. “Um—but, the hospital—with the, uh, the hold—”

“Right, but Major had been in brief contact with them—along with some other important people, I’m sure—to make sure you got the help you needed. He offered to take care of any bills, I think.”

Jimmy bites his lip, jots down a quick ‘anxious’.

“He wanted to make it clear that you don’t owe him anything,” Josh says, clearly noticing what Jimmy’s written. “And I know that for a fact—I talked with him yesterday. I asked if he would meet with you, and he said yes.”

And if that doesn’t send his blood pressure through the roof.

What on earth does Major want with him now? To make sure he’s mentally okay before sending him to prison?

Not that that’s turning out very well for him so far.

“I think meeting with Major might help you get a proper goal,” Josh hints, and Jimmy frowns. This whole time, Josh has been on him about getting a goal. Doesn’t he realize that Jimmy hadn’t expected to survive? Doesn’t he realize that Jimmy was stuck with no future but the one that Xornoth had planned for him, that he’d been willing to kill himself to escape it and it’s a little difficult to regain his footing after that?

“It’s up to you, but I think talking with Major will help a lot. I think he’ll be able to open up some opportunities for you.”

Well. It’s not like he has much else to do, does he?

#empires smp #empires smp fanfic #jimmy solidarity #empires superpowers au #esh au #mas writes #031224 #monthly reminder that i am not back yet #if i was back i'd delete that tag #i really didn't want to edit this one bc it's another of the heavy kind #the type that's just sort of emotionally exhausting to work on yk?#so if the editing is a bit lacking that's why #i really just skimmed it #in the main story we already vaguely know what happened in this fic #this is just the description of all of it from jimmy's pov rather than just what we had heard #in bits and pieces #lmk what you think!#love you guys

12 notes · View notes