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overheard-at-star-command · 9 months

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'Daddy's Little Princess'

I want to play Dr. Animus for a moment and analyze Mira Nova’s daddy issues. And take a closer look at her dad himself.

(I meant to write this essay for Father’s Day, btw)

In most cases, interpretations of stories are not about what is literally in the text but what is drawn on from the cultural and social experience of the society that created the text. Thus, it’s a stretch to suggest that the writers and creators of Buzz Lightyear of Star Command deliberately wrote Mira’s relationship with her father to be deep or complex. On the other hand, you would be forgiven for thinking that King Nova is just a stock “mean dad” character for a kids’ show.

But, believe it or not, King Nova has a character arc: it’s about a father who goes from being hostile towards his adult daughter to supporting her.

As an adult who has struggled with her own daddy issues, and as someone who has dabbled in the social sciences, psychology, and mythology, I see a much deeper story in the series about the stress of parent and adult child relationships and how the two parties negotiate a new balance between them.

To be up front, I’ve been listening to lectures and podcasts by Jordan Peterson recently, and I will pull interpretive material from his sources. (I understand that Peterson is a controversial figure. If you don’t like him, then go read something else.)

During my first semester of college, a very long time ago, I took an introduction to family studies course. One topic that the got discussed briefly in class was that of family transitions: that is, the question of how families deal with changes such as birth, marriage, divorce, and death. Family transitions bring about changes in how the individual members perform their roles in the family system or relate to one another. The lack of clarity or communication about what these new roles look like creates stress between family members as they try to figure it out on their own. One of the most difficult types of transitions is when an adult child moves out of the household, which my professor referred to (appropriately for this discussion about a kids’ sci-fi show) as ‘launching’.

Launching creates friction in the parent-child relationship because the parent(s) and child need to redefine the terms of their relationship but will have differing opinions on how to do so. The adult child how has autonomy over their own life. They now set their own boundaries and create their own identity without input from the parent. The adult child either does not fulfil their parent’s expectations for them or outright reject them. The parent wants to support the child but has to let go of providing for most or all of their needs. Social and political differences or even just personal disagreements can cause distance in the relationship and even outright resentment. If not resolved, conflict can lead to one party cutting off the relationship with the other. According to the notes I have saved, my professor remarked that it is the parents who suffer more during launching rather than the adult children.

Father and Daughter

Let me address the elephant in the room: Mira Nova is never mentioned as having a mother. Considering that Mira is a Disney ‘princess’ this is hardly a surprise, since many Disney protagonists, and fairy-tale characters in general, have one or both biological parents missing. Absence or separation from parents requires the hero or heroine of a given story to act as an adult and take responsibility for their own survival. A child missing one or both parents must learn the rules of life by themselves because the parent is not there to teach them. In many cases, absence or separation from parents/parent figures initiates the Hero’s Journey. The archetypal adventure story is a symbolic journey into adulthood itself. Luke Skywalker’s arc in Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope is about how he gets off his aunt and uncle’s moisture farm where he spent his childhood and dedicates his adulthood to becoming a Jedi.

Assume, for the sake of argument, that Mira did have a mother, but she is absent because of some unnamed circumstances. She may even be dead. Mira and her father are emotionally close because each is the only nuclear family member the other has, and that closeness gives their disagreements higher stakes and greater potential for damage. If Mira’s hypothetical mother was lost or even killed in some tragedy, it would give King Nova a stronger desire to control and protect his daughter.

I would be remiss if I didn’t mention “The Lightyear Factor”, which presents an alternate universe where Mira has lost EVERYTHING including her father. The alternate-universe Mira blames Buzz Lightyear for the crimes committed by his evil doppelganger, including the ones that hit closest to home:

Mira: This is for what you did to Tangea, for what you did to my father! I never got the chance to tell him that I loved him. Buzz: See? For all your rebellious fights with your father, you still cared deeply and you should’ve told him.

As Buzz assumes, the same is true for the Mira in the first universe. Deep down Mira still cares about her father, and even the risk of losing him pains her, as hinted at in ‘The Planet Destroyer’.

Flashbacks: ‘Star-Crossed’ and ‘First Missions’

King Nova is a single father and the monarch of a planet with an insular culture suspicious of outside forces. His go-to parenting strategy is lecturing and discipline. He uses Tangea’s genteel society as a box within to contain and protect his daughter. Without a mother figure in her life, Mira has nothing to mitigate or balance out her father’s absolute control over her. To paraphrase Jordan Peterson, then, instead of being the ideal Wise King and encouraging father, King Nova is the Tyrant over both his planet and his daughter’s life.

The flashbacks in “Star Crossed” tell us that as a teenager, Mira snuck out of the royal palace to explore the outside world, thus starting the journey to adulthood in absence of a mother’s guidance and in defiance of a tyrannical father. It was during these excursions that she met and fell in love with Romac, a Grounder. Mira dating a grounder was the manifestation of King Nova’s worst fears: she had gone into the dangerous outside world and betrayed his expectations for her. Her forced separation from Romac traumatized her, and it is not unfounded to conclude that this incident became a source of hostile feelings towards her father.

An archetype that Jordan Peterson refers to in his lectures is that of the monster parent that devours their own child: think of Kronos in the Greek theogony. The monster parent eats their offspring because they are jealous of the child, either for their potential to surpass them or for having other friends and guardians besides the parent. King Nova ‘swallowed’ his daughter in order to protect her from the dangers of the outside world, those ‘dangers’ being independence, romance, and mingling with ‘common grounders’. In this sense, he is on par with fairy tale parents who attempt and fail to protect their children from the chaos of adulthood, notably the father of Sleeping Beauty or Rapunzel’s ‘Mother’ Gothel.

It's ironic: no solid walls can hold Tangeans, and yet the king of that species expects his own daughter to stay inside the palace.

A few years later, as we learn in “First Missions”, the Galactic Alliance approached King Nova about bringing the planet Tangea into their organization. He was not in favor of accepting the offer. He only changed his mind because the Evil Emperor Zurg literally invaded his house, forcing him to see the political necessity. In the process of that home invasion and rescue, Buzz Lightyear came into Mira Nova’s life as an alternative parental figure and a mentor. So Tangea gained membership in the Galactic Alliance, but its king lost his daughter in the bargain.

‘The Planet Destroyer’ (episode 7)

The first time we meet King Nova in the release order of the series is ‘The Planet Destroyer’. This is what happens in his first scene with Mira:

Mira: That laser webbing will prevent even a speck of cosmic dust from entering Tangea’s atmosphere. King: This is all much ado about nothing. Tangea can take care of its own. We certainly don’t need monkeys in space suits to protect us. Mira: 'Monkeys in space suits?' King: Mira, you know how much I disapprove of you being part of that space club. Mira: It is not a club, father. It’s Star Command. King: Mmm, yes. Whatever you call it. I don’t like it. It’s beneath us. Mira: Why, because we’re royal? King: Because we’re Tangean. This diversion is keeping you from the proper development of your powers. Besides, if you consort with monkeys. You’re bound to start acting like one.

They have had this conversation before.

Mira returns to her crew feeling absolutely LIVID. “He’s the most vain, egotistical, conceited man to ever walk Tangea!” she mutters.

I think King Nova feels like he is losing control of his life, and he is: his planet’s political status has changed and his daughter has left home. In response, he doubles down on his controlling speech and attitude towards his daughter. He invalidates Mira and her life away from home.

It is my personal headcanon that the lowest point in Mira’s relationship with her father was when she decided to join Star Command. They may have had terrible arguments. She might have left for the training Academy without saying goodbye. He might have not called her or answered her calls while she was at the Academy and perhaps not even after she graduated (or if he did, it was to ask when she was coming back to Tangea). This could be the first time they’ve seen each other and even talked since she left home.

After Mira graduated, she became partners with Buzz Lightyear along with Booster and XR, and Team Lightyear became her new family. Mira has likely talked to her father about her teammates, so I think the king takes Mira finding an alternative family as a betrayal of their relationship. Therefore, he has no qualms about calling them ‘monkeys’ and ‘inferior’ to specifically insult them.

Zurg’s ‘planet destroyer’ device makes Tangea disappear. But Mira, strangely, is not upset about it. I would argue that this bit of exposition could have been written better. However, when Team Lightyear goes to search for Zurg’s weapon, Mira asserts that Tangea isn’t really destroyed because she still has a mental connection to her planet and her father. She doesn’t know how this connection is possible—and then she admits that if she understood her supernatural powers more then she would have a better idea of how and why the connection worked. What Mira really acknowledges is that her father is partly right about needing to develop her powers.

Mira’s intuition leads Team Lightyear to the alternate dimension where Zurg transported the planets he ‘destroyed’. King Nova appears and Mira is grateful to see him alive. But how to reverse the effects of Zurg’s weapon?

King: With my enormous mental powers, I might be able to penetrate the trans-dimensional hull of this so-called ‘planet-destroyer’” Mira: Mm-hm, okay. And what will you do when Zurg’s killer robots attack? King: Oh. Well, I…hadn’t really thought of that.

Now it is her dad’s turn to realize that he does not know everything he needs to save the day. The king has expertise that Mira does not have, and Mira has the combat skills that the king lacks. With Buzz Lightyear’s encouragement, father and daughter compromise in order to carry out the next part of the mission. They succeed, and Mira gets a few tutorials on more ways to use her ghosting powers besides breaking and entering. King Nova does acknowledge that his daughter being a space ranger does have its benefits—but he is not about to give her his stamp of approval.

‘Mira’s Wedding’ (episode 16)

This brings us to episode 16, “Mira’s Wedding.” King Nova admits to Mira when she comes home to Tangea that her betrothal to Fop Doppler was not his idea, but he is one hundred percent in support of the match. At a later moment, King Nova very rudely informs Buzz, Booster, and XR—her other family—that they are not invited: “You. No go. Wedding.” For the king, the forced marriage of is daughter is an opportunity to bring her back into the protective sphere of the Tangean royal court and their father-daughter relationship at home. This is his chance to ‘swallow’ her again after she escaped.

According to Jordan Peterson, the role of the ideal parent is to encourage their child to be strong and independent. The child that is not allowed to leave home because of overly-attached parents can become ‘a crippled monster’. If you want a monstrosity, look at Mira’s so-called wedding dress (*scream*). Thankfully, the whole engagement and wedding is revealed as a plot to destroy the king, and it is duly foiled. Mira is allowed to return to Star Command. The hostility level between Mira and her father returns to its level of grudging respect.

‘SuperNova’ (episode 23)

Now we get to ‘SuperNova.’ Mira discovers ghosting through energy sources amplifies her Tangean powers and gives her more extraordinary abilities. After the first time she does this, she calls her father to brag about it. King Nova, however, sees Mira’s ‘achievement’ for what it really is.

King: Forget this feeling, Mira. Let it wear off. And never think of it again. Mira: *laughing* You’ve got to be kidding! This is so great! King: Listen to me, child: Tangeans absorb the energy we ghost through. It’s invigorating at first, but— Mira: But what? I feel awesome! King: Of course. Until you can’t stop. Mira: Aw, c’mon! I can handle it!

King: Listen to me, daughter: no good can come from this power ghosting. It can destroy you. It WILL destroy you. Mira: You just can’t stand to see me succeed!

Someone watching ‘SuperNova’ for the first time might think that the king is reprimanding his daughter for no reason, as usual. But this time the king is in the right.

The problem with Mira’s relationship with her father is that she cannot tell the difference between her father (or anyone else) criticizing her wrongly and genuinely helping her because the discord between them has lasted for so long Mira accuses him of being jealous of her independence—right assumption, wrong time. After this conversation, Mira doubles down. She becomes addicted to power ghosting through restricted energy sources in order to keep up her ‘high’ and her amplified powers.

As for the king, his parenting style has come back to bite him. It’s a twisted parallel to the proverbial boy who cried wolf.

Mira’s bad behavior gets her a serious reprimand from Commander Nebula. “You sound like my—father!” she says just as her father himself enters the Star Command hangar.

In The Adventure Begins, it was the Commander who recommended Mira to be Buzz’s partner. My personal headcanon is that Mira saw Commander Nebula as another alternative parent figure: the ‘cool dad’, if you like. Commander Nebula chewing her out for her energy addiction and being in cahoots with her real father against her is a huge betrayal.

What’s more, if King Nova is so attached to Tangea, then seeing him away from his homeworld and at Star Command means that this issue is serious. This is him starting to cross over to her side of their divide, even if he himself does not see it as such. He tells her, “If I don’t do everything Tangean-ly possible to stop you from this, I’ll never forgive myself.”

Mira, of course, won’t listen to either her father or her commanding officer. Instead, she decides that she needs to use her enhanced powers to destroy Emperor Zurg once and for all. Buzz, Booster, and XR agree to go with her, but she sneaks out alone for Planet Z: partly to protect them, yes, but running away is a usual way for her to rebel.

The Evil Emperor Zurg had been keeping track on the wayward princess, and when she arrives to destroy him, he has a trap waiting for her. When Mira exhausts her powers fighting him, he puts her in a dungeon cell adjacent to a waiting energy core, a core that fuels a weapon that will destroy Star Command. The rest of Team Lightyear arrives to join Mira, but Zurg springs a cage on them as well.

Enter King Nova. He walks up to the bars of Mira’s prison cell.

King: Don’t do it, child! Don’t give in to your cravings! Mira: What gives you the right to tell me what to do? King: Because I know how it feels! I, too, once ghosted through energy. I felt its power. And it took me to the brink of destruction.

Then, in what is perhaps one of the rawest lines in the whole series, Mira tells him, “Well, I’m not you!”

With that, she ghosts out of her cell and into Zurg’s waiting power core. But then, to Zurg’s dismay, she ghosts right back out of it.

The Evil Emperor is confused. Isn’t Mira so hopelessly addicted to power that she can’t live without it?

Mira’s next line is the moral message of the episode:

“But there are other kinds of strength, like being able to say enough is enough, or helping someone who’s too stubborn to realize she needs help.”

And she looks at her father and her friends as she says this.

Running through the whole scene again, Mira’s statement about learning her lesson seems to contradict the ‘I’m not you’ line. But let me break down the scene from before that moment. When her friends come to save her and get captured, Mira recognizes that their capture is a consequence of her poor choices.

She tells her father “I’m not you” moments after his big confession, which means she is still processing it when she walks away. I believe that while getting a final charge from Zurg’s power core, Mira comes to terms with what has just happened: her father has confessed that he is not perfect.

Up until this point, Mira’s image of her father was that of a stern tyrant who embodied his own ideas of Tangean perfection. King Nova has now left his homeworld in defiance of his ego and come to Planet Z (Hell) to save his daughter from Zurg (more or less the Devil, horns and all). He has revealed to her that he had the same weakness that she struggles with currently. He wants to help her overcome it not just out of duty but out of compassion. The king’s actions destroy the false image that his daughter had of him. It can be seen as a symbolic death, in Mira’s mind, of the person she thought her father was.

Mira Nova then undergoes her own symbolic death. She comes out of Zurg’s power core no longer glowing like she did when she was supercharged, meaning that she only absorbed enough energy to get out and fight to save her friends. She leaves her spacesuit inside the energy core, rigged to self-destruct in order to destroy the core, and she is armed with a big blaster. Leaving her spacesuit behind to detonate is her way of shedding her ordeal with her addiction; destroying the core itself is ending her physical dependency on it and similar power sources. Both father and daughter have killed their egos.

In the final scene of the episode, Mira apologizes to her friends for her recent behavior. She even informs Commander Nebula that she is willing to resign from Star Command. She holds herself accountable for her recent actions. In contrast to the start of the episode. Mira admits that she isn’t perfect, either as a person or a space ranger. Buzz intervenes and informs Commander Nebula that in spite of her weakness Mira is still good enough to be a space ranger: her actions after leaving Zurg’s dungeon cell prove as much.

And then, at the very end of the episode, King Nova finally tells Mira that she can stay at Star Command. Because of these events, he is finally willing to let her choose her own path for her adult life. Mira has demonstrated to her father that she can do what is morally right for herself.

The entire incident is the turning point for Mira’s relationship with her father. That is why I believe ‘SuperNova’ is one of the best episodes of the series. In spite of how hard it is to watch Mira mess up, she recognizes her mistakes and makes amends, and in the process, she makes up with her dad. The episode’s emotional payoff is sincere.

‘The Starthought’ (episode 48)

King Nova enters the scene in “The Starthought” on a completely different footing. He offers Star Command a high-tech spaceship to add to its fleet—on the condition that Mira pilots it. He is willing to support Mira as a space ranger now, but she has to do it in a way that displays Tangean superiority—his way.

At first, Mira is not down to be the Starthought pilot. “Can’t you accept I am not a princess here? I’m a ranger, like everyone else.” In spite of now allowing Mira to stay at Star Command, the king and his daughter have still not figured out the boundaries of their relationship. As her father, he wants to still provide support for her, but in an environment where she is an independently functioning adult this is inappropriate. Mira keeps her work life and her home/royal life separate. She does not want special royal treatment as a space ranger, but she’s happy to live and work as an equal to her colleagues. It looks like she tried to tell her father about this but he failed to understand.

What pushes Mira to take the bait, however, is a snide remark from rival ranger Rocket Crocket. Mira might not be as arrogant as the average Tangean, yet she still has an ego problem. The need to prove herself is normal and healthy, but she is willing to do stupid or risky things to one-up her critics. Mira does pull off some heroics with the Starthought. However, her showing off results in the Starthought being captured by Zurg.

By far, my second favorite scene with Mira and her father is at Cosmo’s diner after the capture of the Starthought. King Nova isn’t angry with Mira for losing the Starthought. “The important thing is that you’re all right,” he tells her.

Mira: I was showing off, and that was wrong. King: Wrong runs in the family.

It’s a very interesting admission. King Nova is admitting that as her father, trying to prop Mira up with the Starthought was a poor decision. He was showing her off just as much as she was using the Starthought to show herself off. He does not excuse himself for this or for any other mistakes he has made in the past.

Team Lightyear goes to Planet Z, and thanks to some clever shenanigans from Mira the Starthought is destroyed before Zurg can use it for evil. Buzz makes the following statement to the evil Emperor, but he may as well have also said it to the king:

“It’s not the spacecraft of Star Command that wins battles, it’s the space rangers—and we’ve got the best.”

And as he makes that statement, Buzz is holding Mira’s shoulder, showing her off for who she is.

Speaking of Buzz Lightyear, one thing I’ve noticed about Buzz in these episodes is that he acts as a mediator between Mira and her father. It was Buzz who encouraged Mira to seek her independence and her identity in “First Missions’. He encourages Mira and the king to compromise with each other, as in “The Planet Destroyer”, and in that episode and in “Mira’s Wedding” he prods the king to acknowledge that it was Star Command’s intervention that saved the day. In “SuperNova”, Buzz uses persuasion to try and talk Mira out of her addiction before the King resorts to calling Commander Nebula. Buzz later affirms her capability as a space ranger to save her from expulsion. In “The Starthought,” finally, Buzz, Booster, and XR sneakily followed Mira to Cosmo’s with the king (they may have brought him there), but they offer silent moral support while the king and his daughter talk it out. Buzz ensures that King Nova plays the appropriate part of the supportive parent that Mira needs. Buzz can be seen as an alternative dad figure—but I think he brings a whole new level of meaning to the phrase ‘mom friend’.

The final scene at Cosmo’s is an apt finale for King Nova’s arc.

King: I guess I just need to get used to the fact that you don’t need your father’s anymore. Mira: Well, actually…I do. The bill? I left my unibucks in my other spacesuit. Thanks, Daddy. King: *laughs* Of course you did. My treat.

Father and daughter are still connected, even though their roles in relation to one another are now those of hands-off parent and independent adult child. The king has also accepted Buzz, Booster, and XR as Mira’s new family away from home.

Mira’s arc in Buzz Lightyear of Star Command is the story of a young woman stepping into her new life as an adult. I conclude, then, that King Nova’s arc is the story of a father who at first refuses to allow his adult child to grow up, but then learns the hard way to let his daughter decide her own future.

I apologize for this being such a long essay but there was a lot I wanted to say. If you are more informed on the subjects of mythology, anthropology, psychology, and family studies or you’re just a fan like me, feel free to add constructive comments or corrections.

My personal takeaway: if Mira Nova can figure out her daddy issues, then mine aren't hopeless either.

Video Sources

(Wish I had more, I put this together on somewhat short notice)

Dr. Joshua Coleman On Family Estrangement

Dr. Jordan Peterson

Pinocchio and Leaving Your Parents

Mother's vs. Father's Roles

Tyrannical Fathers

Saving the Father Figure

Conversation with Jonathan Pageau about AI and Fairy Tales

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deathmycotime · 1 year

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i already posted these images that don't really have much context i just wanted to ramble about my aspec ocs haha

They started out as a typical romantic type relationship. but the more i changed and redefined their characters the more they turned into the queerplatonic type. i sometimes feel nervous depicting or labelling their relationship as such because. i don't know if i'm doing this right, like it feels like how i normally ship characters. until i realise i have always been shipping characters in a quite qpr sense 🗿 how should i know i wasn't seeing shipping in actual romance lenses like the alloallos see it lmao.

anyway, back to the aeris. the 🔔🍓. the uh, idk, berry of night. nightberry.

noctis has always been in the aroace spectrum. I'm not sure when she finds out, maybe in her tertiary education years through the internet. she probbly has attended an aspec meetup, but never really brings it up to anyone in her life because she never gets that close to anyone anyway, she has lived mostly by herself in adulthood.

aeron on the other hand started out as openly bi. even if he technically never had a relationship in his teen years, and kinda avoided it by just,, unintentionally friendzoning people who took interest. he'd been called oblivious because of not realising romantic connotations or that his words/actions could be misread as flirting. when most of the time he thought he was just being friendly. the last year of school was when he did get into a relationship, although his feelings were kinda manipulated and he had thought that was what he wanted. He managed to get out of the relationship tho.

That point in adulthood he started getting more involved in dating and such. In some part because of peer/societal pressure, and because he thought that was just how it goes. Meeting someone and then getting along and being close can lead to romantic relationships forming which then you work to make each other happy. which is true but he didn't knew there were actual specific feelings that would usually influence this decision. he enjoys hugs, but kissing, hand holding, touching and other intimacy does not usually bring any sort of emotion in him. and he would mostly do it for his partners. though none of his relationships last that long, and it always ends with him being left confused.

I think some time later he does suspect him to be somewhere aro/ace tho never put much thought into it because he doesn't like the thought of living his entire life by himself. i guess, like, he has a lot of friends but he realised at the end of the day, those people have someone they prioritise above all else, and while his close friends would treat their friendship as important, they wouldn't view their friendship in the same level as him. ah, like, yknow, romantic relationships always being put as more important than friendships. not inherently a bad thing because that's just what partners are, but still, he gets sad to think that his friendships won't be the same closeness as how he sees it.

aight so cut to noctis and aeron meeting each other and becoming friends. I have, somewhat their first meeting figured out, and it's funny to think that even before I saw koisenu futari, the idea was that they met at a grocery store. maybe you really do meet your fellow aro/aces at the local grocery store produce aisle lmao /j. anyway their workplace is also in the same block (?) so they could've seen each other again and just, idk get lunch at the same place and then meet and talk and eventually became friends. noctis didn't really expect it but for aeron it's a normal occurrence cuz, it's mostly easy for him to make new acquaintances.

idk how the topic of qpr would surface, but maybe, idk, aeron would complain about relationships, after experiencing yet another misunderstanding that he led someone on and that people around him maybe making comments on him getting older but still having no one or whatever. i think his parents are understanding and don't pressure him but maybe also think he's focusing too much on work that, unintentionally, are making him feel pressured. noctis doesn't really have any connection to their family anymore nor does she have any close connections aside from a few coworkers. the conversation would probably lead to noctis going on a rant about romance and like, amatonormativity, and maybe end with them like, saying they do think about the luxury of having someone they can return to, but her disconnection with love and romance always put her back to not wanting to pursue anything. it's never been an importance to her anyway but like, she already accepts that she would never have that.

and idk since noctis is used to staying closeted, the whole sudden thing made her hyperaware of what she just said but like, i guess that resonated with aeron and it just, led to him talking about his experiences and question his identity and stuff. i guess noctis would like, suggest he look more into aromanticism and asexuality and maybe like, one-off come out that she is aroace. i lowkey want to go the koisenu futari route but also i can try a different thing. anyway i think aeron would be the one to bring up being platonic partners and eeeeeee i can't think anymore i'll think about it later

#oc talk #original character #qpr #aspec #aroace character #um. yea ehe #;🔔🍓#casually procrastinating as always

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denimbex1986 · 3 months

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'"Maybe I didn't hold you / All those lonely, lonely times

And I guess I never told you / I am so happy that you're mine…"

An adult Adam is cross-legged on the floor, gazing upwards, child-like. His deceased mother mutters the words, never once breaking eye contact, while decorating the Christmas tree.

On the surface, the candles and fairy lights should have evoked a homely warmth, stirring early memories of festive joy. But in this scene the air is thick with regret, and the song's poignant lyrics say more than dialogue ever could.

All of Us Strangers first introduces Adam (Andrew Scott) years after this, in his London tower block, with little but his laptop for company. That is, until his neighbour Harry (Paul Mescal) arrives at his door. What unfolds is a cross-generational gay love story, both heartbreaking and beautiful.

But when Adam decides to revisit his childhood, the film also hits home in another way. Watching through tears, in the dim of the movie theatre, I'm struck by how profoundly it resonated with me, as a mother to my boy.

Motherhood is a redefining experience, one that pushes you to reflect while also looking forwards through new eyes. The film articulates that reconnection with your inner child, and the notion of wanting to do things differently for the baby who's now in your arms.

All of Us Strangers captures a weight carried through to adulthood by many queer people: the distance that can be born from your parents not really knowing who you are. The film arrives as a new generation now starts to navigate its own approach to parenthood, determined not to repeat the past.

All of Us Strangers is steeped in grief. But for a story that orbits a man who lost his parents at the tender age of 12, it's far deeper than a physical absence.

Stuck in a sort of purgatory, Adam is seeking out things that make him feel closer to what he's missing. Against a score of '80s hits, which would have formed the soundtrack of his formative years, Adam arrives back to his childhood home. From the wallpaper to his record collection, it's just as he remembers. His parents are still there too, just as they were on the day they died.

Through Adam's conversations with his dead parents, it becomes clear that even in life they were out of reach.

A father, too repressed to comfort his son when he was crying; a mother, too overwhelmed to centre the needs of her child.

In these new interactions Adam's instinct is to suppress his feelings, comforting and tending to his parents' emotions instead. It speaks of a child who learned that his own feelings were a burden, that vulnerability wasn't welcome.

These post-mortem exchanges offer a chance for catharsis, though. Adam is given the opportunity to come out to each of his parents in turn. Their responses are filtered through the moral panic of their time, but having them meet this older, more worldly, version of Adam allows for some growth.

Adam's inner child continues to push through, still yearning to be seen for himself rather than the image that his parents once cultivated. Much like the film's own use of reflection, his parents saw what they wanted to see mirrored back at them, projecting their own expectations rather than truly seeing Adam for the boy he was.

It's a generational cycle that needs to be broken, and this is echoed in his mother's own regret. There's a push and a pull, as his parents start to realise that they were themselves stuck in a pattern passed on to them.

As Adam crawled between his parents in the middle of the night, in his childhood pyjamas that no longer fit, she told him of her yearning to get better, with time.

But of course in reality, a fatal car crash robbed her – and Adam – of these chances. The thought of the childhood that could have been still continued to tighten with that knot in his chest.

For those of us now trying to parent more consciously, to be led by our children, giving them space to discover exactly who they are, free of assumption and expectation, All of Us Strangers has struck a chord.

Our sons will not keep their tears hidden away, un-wiped, behind closed doors. Neither will they be given a complex about sitting with their legs crossed, or burdened with the presumption that they should surely have a girlfriend. Their childhood home will be a sanctuary, removed from those that don't understand, not a place they want to run from at the first opportunity.

The film and the thoughts it has provoked cling as tightly as that final farewell embrace between Adam and Harry.

Days after sitting in that movie theatre, now two-stepping and twirling around to The Housemartins with my own baby, who loves to dance, in his childhood home, these feelings are further solidified.

"Let's build a house where we can stay [ba ba ba ba build], add a new bit every day…"'

#Pet Shop Boys #Always on My Mind #The Housemartins #Build #All of Us Strangers #Andrew Scott #Paul Mescal

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whetstonefires · 3 years

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Hi Whetstonefire, I was reading your meta about Batman and I don't remember the post but I think it said in either the tags or the post itself, that "Dick's angry teenager phase ended up changing Bruce's character" and I was wondering if you could explain what you meant? I already don't like the New Teen Titans (mainly because I can't stand Nightwing) and in that series, from the few panels I've seen, it looks like Bruce was written as kind of a jerk by the authors just to give Nightwing angst.

Lmaoooo I like Nightwing! And the NTT actually. But yeah its prominence and its Angry Teen Energy had some unfortunate backwash onto Batman.

What's funny is early on Dick was clearly supposed to be kind of in the wrong about it. This is issue 1 or 2, I think, of NTT?

which then cuts to

And what you'll notice here is that Bruce was sitting there like a fine healthy Dad-shaped person, albeit one combining ascot and dressing-gown, expressing concern and offering support in a reasonable manner.

But Dick pushes him away and then thought-bubbles that Bruce is mad at him for dropping out of college, which fails to align with the evidence sufficiently that the intent seems to very firmly be of Dick projecting anger, that he possibly feels he deserves for being a fuck-up.

This is, at this point, Irrational Teenage Angst(tm).

(Bruce actually had a small empty-nest mental breakdown about Dick leaving for college lol so odds are good he was secretly happy he dropped out and feeling bad about it, but they didn't put that in the comic, we may merely choose to infer it.)

But as NTT went on and had more and more incredibly shitty parents--like for real Cyborg's dad who accidentally blew him up and then rebuilt him and then built them Titan Tower anonymously before dropping dead is very much a contender for top three parenting achievements--as recurring narrative prop to guarantee the independence of these 16-22-year-olds and narrative device to explore their developing psyches, Batman turned up more rarely, and appeared in Dick's mouth in negative terms more often.

Because it was a series aimed, very effectively, at the kind of middle-class teens for whom negotiating a new relationship with their parents as authority figures was a central preoccupation of life, Dick's journey to adulthood got framed in those terms a lot, even at times when it didn't make a lot of sense. And since this was Dick's book and not Bruce's, Bruce got the raw side of Dick's 'defining himself in opposition to his parent' process.

Which was understandable in its context, but as it was a very popular series redefining a very popular character a lot of things that had originally been meant to be part of the self-contained story of Dick's coming-of-age spilled out, and got treated over time and elsewhere as literal fact. Especially once the Crisis hit and the past was getting liberally redefined all over the place anyway.

And then when he got his own title for the first time as Nightwing, in Deep Angst Phase, it followed him there, into much more Batman-centric stories, and from his book into crossovers with the increasingly numerous Bat books, at which point the process was pretty irreversible.

All of this was like 30 years ago so it's pretty ingrained at this point but it's still instructive to look at how we got here, when deciding how to incorporate these elements into our personal understandings and versions of the canon.

#hoc est meum #ask #new teen titans #comics #batman #what is canon a miserable pile of panels

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hellsbellschime · 4 years

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A Brief Exploration Of How Generational Trauma Destroys The World

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Although The Umbrella Academy is only two seasons deep, one thing about the family that serves as the focal point of this story seems abundantly clear. They are absolutely, abysmally awful at their jobs.

After the bizarre births of some seemingly extraordinary children, Sir Reginald Hargreeves set out to purchase as many of these oddities as possible with one singular purpose behind it in mind, using these exceptional kids to save the world. Although Reginald only managed to acquire seven of these baby flukes, each of the Hargreeves children were gifted with some extremely unusual superpowers that seem to set all of them up for a successful life as superheroes.

Reginald raised them with the most rigorous superhuman training that he could devise, and he explicitly intended for his children to save the world. However, after nearly two decades of training and experience, along with a few major bumps in the road, the vast majority of the Umbrella Academy decided to leave the life of the hero behind.

But despite the fact that the children were raised to save the world, it seems like they can't help but to end it. The family has been estranged for years, but now, over the course of two seasons, they've managed to end the world twice, and in both instances it was just mere days after reuniting as a family. So, why the hell do all of the Hargreeves kids suck at life so hard?

Although the Hargreeves clan is supposed to be a squad of superheroes, the reality of the situation is that they are truly just a group of neglected and traumatized children who are not equipped to deal with adulthood, and their lack of ability to cope seems to have catastrophic consequences for the rest of the world. However, each one of the children is dysfunctional in their own way.

LUTHER

Oh, Number 1. Luther is the assigned leader of the Umbrella Academy, but it's painfully, awkwardly obvious that Allison might be the only one to even possibly defer to Luther in an emergency situation.

It is very interesting though, that Reginald has made Luther his number 1. Clearly Luther doesn't have the necessary leadership skills to keep his siblings on task, but he also arguably has one of the least useful superpowers of the entire group. So then, why is it that he's number 1?

Well, the obvious answer seems to be that, while he is not the most powerful, he may be the most useful to Reginald, because he is the only one of Reginald's children who actually tows the company line. He's the only person who has truly committed his life to Reginald's failed experiment, so even if he's the least powerful, he provides the most utility to Reginald.

In Reginald's eyes it's easy to see why Luther may have been the most important, however through the eyes of a normal human being, it's easy to see why Luther's experience growing up in the Umbrella Academy and his experience as Number 1 was so psychologically damaging to him. Luther seems to go to great lengths to seek approval and love specifically from people who always deny him, and this self sabotaging behavior seems to be reflected in many of the largest and smallest aspects of Luther's life.

Luther shouldered a disproportionate amount of blame for ending the world in season 1. Yes, his actions did have the direst consequences that any actions can have, but it's not at all difficult to understand his train of thought.

Firstly, he's the only member of the Hargreeves family who has never been able to escape his abuser. Luther's entire self identity is designed around what Reginald has taught him, and his overly simplistic idea of what a hero is and how he needs to lead his family is one of the many ways in which Luther demonstrates that he truly has not experienced life outside of his abusive childhood.

Secondly, it should come as no surprise at all that Luther's first instinct on how to handle Vanya is to do exactly what Reginald would have done. Despite the fact that no one actually remembers Vanya being locked up, Luther's reaction to the threat that Vanya poses is astonishingly predictable given that he is built by Reginald's design, through and through.

But finally, while Luther's actions are obviously the incorrect ones, clearly his assumptions about the threat that Vanya posed were absolutely correct. There were very few reasonable courses of action when the family realized that Vanya not only had powers, but had become dangerously unstable surprisingly quickly. Luther did take the wrong course of action, but there was really nothing wrong with his thought process behind it, and ironically it was likely only Reginald's extended isolation of Vanya in her childhood that led to Luther's imprisonment of her in adulthood causing such apocalyptic consequences.

Although Luther is a product of his environment, it's clear that he takes his duties as a real life superhero seriously. And interestingly, even though he was the last child to extricate himself from Reginald (and he didn't extricate himself willingly), he has actually shown himself to be one of the most easily self-reflective and self-critical characters in season 2 of The Umbrella Academy.

Luther made an enormous mistake because he recognized that Vanya was a powder keg ready to explode, but the choices that he made actually caused that bomb to go off. When he sees Vanya again, it's understandable that his first instinct is to eliminate the threat at any cost. But after just a few moments of consideration, he takes responsibility for his own actions, he recognizes that he needs to change, and he acknowledges that Vanya deserves the opportunity to change as well. Ironically, one of his first choices as an individual that isn't directed and controlled by Reginald is exactly the kind of decision that a good leader would make, which really goes to show how much Reginald's influence has stifled Luther's growth as a person.

DIEGO

If you're not first, you're last. Despite the fact that Diego is outwardly the most resistant to the training and indoctrination that his abusive father foisted upon him, it seems like Diego's position as Number 2 is how he has defined himself for his entire life.

The effect that Reginald's abuse had seems to be the most obvious with Diego out of anyone in the family, because it controls every aspect of his being. Everything that Diego thinks, says, or does is in reaction to his realization and understanding that he was raised by an abusive monster, as well as his deep and unyielding desire to experience true parental love in a way that was always denied to him.

It's intriguing but understandable that, despite hating his father more than anyone, Diego wound up becoming his Number 2. Because although Diego seems to mold himself in a reactionary way against everything that his father taught him, he's still the most ardently heroic member of the family, even more so than Luther.

Interestingly, despite the fact that Diego appears to be the most aggressive and brash member of the family, it seems like whenver he makes an attempt to express any of his sincere or deep emotions, he has a lot of trouble doing so directly. Both in the literal sense, due to his stutter, but also in an emotional and psychological sense too.

Like many of the Hargreeves kids, Diego's form of dysfuction almost seems to be an extension of his own superpower. He can literally adjust the trajectory of flying objects when they're already in flight, and his life's obsession seems to be redirecting his heroic story arc in the direction that he wants to see it go instead of along the path that his father set out for him. However, it's still incredibly telling and meaningful that Diego still defines himself by the heroic archetype that his father forced on to him when he was a child.

Similarly, Diego seems to be equally conflicted in his feelings towards his siblings. He at times embraces them, at times resists them, and he always seems to want to redefine the relationships that they all have on his terms instead of his father's terms. And the fact that he is so ardent that they all be a part of Team Zero when he spent his entire life playing the role of Number Two just goes to show that while he seems to rebel against everything that Reginald forced upon him, he still defines himself, his family, and the world in the terms that the Hargreeves patriarch laid out for him.

ALLISON

On the surface it would seem like Allison is the Hargreeves sibling who has gotten the closest to achieving a relatively normal life and who is the most capable of relating to others on a more healthy and normal psychological level, but it's still clear that her power defines how she relates to people and relates to the world, whether or not she's actually using it at the time.

Clearly her relationship with Luther is her most important familial bond, and while she doesn't seem to share Luther's more romantic interest in her, she does seem to be very keen to lean in to the person that Luther sees her as. And it's an understandable impulse, since it would appear that she doesn't use her powers on Luther or anyone in her family besides Vanya, so he's one of the few people who's interpretation of her she can actually rely on to be truthful.

But even when Allison can't or won't use her superpowers, her attempts at relating to other people or to society at large seem to be mostly driven by a need to control, redirect, or otherwise influence their way of thinking, even if they're extremely resistant to it. Of course, this isn't an entirely uncommon behavior, and it is an attitude that can be enormously beneficial in some situations while enormously detrimental in others.

However, the damage that Reginald has done to Allison is readily apparent because, regardless of the fact that she has been able to form deeper and more complex interpersonal relationships than any of her siblings, she still has no understanding of how to relate to people outside of her power.

And why would she? Allison's constant attempts at creating a normal life that seem to inevitably fail are not just failures because she is a superhuman trying to live in a human world. It's because she never had a fully dimensional and fleshed out human experience as a child. She wasn't seen as a person, but as a power, so she only knows how to develop or maintain relationships in which she exercises some sort of psychological control over the people she is engaging with, regardless of whether or not she's actually using her power in order to do it.

KLAUS

Klaus is undeniably one of the most compelling characters in the entire series, and it's easy to see why his childhood trauma has resulted in such extreme behavior and personality traits in his adulthood.

Reginald is a parent who did an exceptionally poor job of socializing his own children in a way that would help them function in the real world, but that lack of appropriate parenting seems like it would have the most extreme impact on Klaus, because Klaus' power is inherently social.

Seeing ghosts would be terrifying for any child and pretty much any adult on earth, but for a child who has no idea how to interact or relate to others, it could be an utterly crippling ability to have.

It's clear that the ghosts that Klaus typically sees are spirits who have some sort of unfinished business left in the world. And not only would any child be astonishingly incompetent when it came to dealing with those kinds of emotionally and psychologically complex situations, but the fact that Klaus' father mostly psychologically neglected and occasionally outright terrorized him meant that he had a very mentally draining and damaging power and was given no tools or coping skills with which to deal with them.

More than any other member of the Hargreeves family, it is Klaus that does everything that he can in order to escape his power, which is ironic considering that it was the only characteristic that his father seemed to think was relevant about him.

But, Klaus' desire to dull his senses by any means necessary was a rational response from a poorly emotionally developed person that was stuck in an astoundingly bizarre and psychologically taxing situation. In a sense, none of the siblings were failed by Reginald quite as much as Klaus was.

And that is a truly tragic result of Klaus' exceptional abilities. It's very telling that Klaus seems to occupy some metaphysical space between life and death that allows him to commune with the dead, but he's also terrified of losing the ones that he loves to death.

If most people knew with any degree of certainty that the afterlife was real, let alone if they could actually commune with the dead, it would be a huge relief. But Klaus lied to Ben about going into the light because he was afraid to lose him, and he spent most of the second season doing whatever he could to save Dave from certain death. But why? Well, because his father made his own abilities, and the dead, into his source of constant terror.

FIVE

Interestingly, despite the fact that he spent the least amount of time with Reginald out of all of his siblings, it seems that Five's utilitarian attitude towards heroism mirrors his father's the most closely out of anyone. It's easy to see why that would be the case, but the fact that Five's reaction to the most extreme trauma that any of the Hargreeves kids have endured is to act more like Reginald than any of the other members of his family is a strong indication of how abuse and generational trauma can affect an individual as well as an entire family.

However, there is one stark difference between Five and Reginald. While Five has a very easy time grasping the greater good in any morally difficult situation, he still goes out of his way to prioritize the health, safety, or survival of his family whenever he can.

With all of the Hargreeves children, there is an element of conflict that arises from the fact that they were raised being told that they had to save humanity, but they were also raised in a way that completely disconnected them from humanity. And with no character is that conflict more apparent than with Five.

Five is ready and willing to sacrifice nearly anyone that he feels he must on the altar of the greater good, but his emotional connection to his family is extremely strong, and even in the most dire of circumstances it seems like he always keeps them as his priority.

It's an interesting dichotomy for the character, because the distance between him and the rest of his siblings is larger and longer, both literally and psychologically, than anyone else in the Hargreeves family, but he seems to be almost entirely oriented around his family at the expense of himself. And it's a sharp contrast with his father, his father seems to have reacted to world-ending trauma by ensuring he would have no familial bond with his children, but Five has reacted to it by holding on to his familial bonds as if they're the only thing in the world that matters.

Although the trauma that Five experienced in the post-apocalyptic world as well as during his tenure as a time-traveling assassin is probably far worse than the trauma that he experienced as a child being raised by Reginald Hargreeves, becoming the survivor of an apocalyptic holocaust led him to most clearly mirror and contrast the parent who spent his entire life raising him with the intent of preventing another apocalyptic holocaust.

BEN

Most of the Hargreeves siblings seem to have some sort of connection between their power and their personality, either because of nature or nuture, so it's fascinating that Ben seems to be diametrically opposed to his. His ability to summon and partially transform into some horrific Eldtritch creature seems to completely contrast to his innocent, sweet, and generally kind disposition. But why is that?

Ironically Ben seems to be the most well adjusted member of the Hargreeves family, and it's hard not to speculate that his maturity might actually be driven by the fact that he died young.

He was subjected to the abusive and neglectful parenting of Reginald just like the rest of his siblings, but through death he actually wound up escaping his abuser. So, while his literal growth came to an abrupt end, it seems like his personal growth may have actually begun.

On the one hand, it seems like Ben's behavior is an obvious signifier of the fact that his life stopped at a relatively young age, however, a lot of Ben's behavior and overall outlook on life seems to be exceptionally childlike, even for someone who died as a teenager. And that in combination with the fact that he seems to be so well adjusted in relation to his other family members begs the question of whether or not death finally allowed Ben to have the childhood that he deserved but never had.

Either way, it certainly says a lot that the two most well adjusted members of the Hargreeves family either spent most of their lives in an apocalyptic hellscape or literally dead.

VANYA

Poor Number 7. Being relegated to the least important member of your family is never an easy position to occupy for anyone, but it seems like Vanya is the purest and most clear manifestation of all of Reginald Hargreeves' failings as a parent and teacher.

There are a lot of curious complexities to Vanya, and it's obvious that having no real human parental influence is almost certainly why she became the most dangerous member of the Umbrella Academy despite not even using her powers for most of her life.

Reginald's fatal mistake with Vanya was his belief that constantly reminding her of how un-special she was would lead to her never becoming dangerous enough to do real damage to the world. But his assumption of what would be the best way to handle her seems to be based on an incorrect conclusion that Reginald drew based on Vanya's behavior towards her nannies.

It's quite an odd dynamic, because while Vanya seems to have extremely negative reactions towards the nannies that try to parent her, Vanya's behavior in general has demonstrated her to be an extremely emotional, empathetic, and kind individual who doesn't want to hurt anyone or anything. So why did she keep on lashing out at the women who were being hired to care for her?

Well, because she is someone who had never experienced a human parent-child dynamic, and therefore she lashed out emotionally when that dynamic was suddenly thrust upon her.

Vanya may have become dangerous after years of being horribly abused, but what's sad about the trajectory of her life is that she clearly had an abundance of emotion, much of it positive emotion, that she was desperate to express but couldn't.

Given that she has very quickly fallen in love twice over the course of two seasons, it's painfully obvious that she feels like she has a lot of love to give and no one to give it too, but it's also tragically clear that she doesn't know how to differentiate between a healthy relationship and an unhealthy one.

Vanya dedicated her life to expressing herself through music, which is clearly deeply connected to the latent superpower that had been repressed for her entire life, but as a result of that enforced repression she even felt like a complete failure at that.

So, while everyone at the Umbrella Academy contributed to Vanya's meltdown in some way, the honest truth seems to be that nothing could have been done to prevent it. After a literal lifetime of total repression, abuse, and neglect, there was no other way for Vanya's abuse, or the abuse of all of the Hargreeves children, to end.

REGINALD

Of course, as the patriarch of the Hargreeves family, Reginald Hargreeves is truly the architect of his children's dysfunction. They all react to his neglect and abuse in their own way, but ironically the entire reason that the Umbrella Academy seems to repeatedly fail in it's sole mission is because of Reginald's single-minded focus on it. The Hargreeves children are doomed to destroy the world because all Reginald ever cared about was saving it.

Reginald is literally an alien, but the literal and metaphorical implications of a group of children who are raised in a world that separates them from their humanity is a rich textual and subtextual aspect of The Umbrella Academy.

Reginald himself is not a suitable parent to his children, but all of the outside influences that he allows on his children are literally not human either. Grace and Pogo provide some basic functional emotional satisfaction to the Hargreeves children, but they're still not people. They don't help the children to understand humanity or human existence any better, and they still serve to separate the Umbrella Academy from the very world that they're meant to protect.

On the whole, Reginald's abject failure as a parent, teacher, and creator is a fantastic allegory for the nature of generational trauma. Reginald is a failure as a parent for many reasons, but ultimately Reginald is a being who was extremely traumatized by the destruction of his own world, and as a parent, he passed that trauma down to his own children.

In that sense, the failure of The Umbrella Academy to live up to it's potential solely rests on the failings of Reginald himself.

#the umbrella academy #umbrella academy #tua #the umbrella academy meta #tua meta #luther hargreeves #diego hargreeves #allison hargreeves #klaus hargreeves #five hargreeves #ben hargreeves #vanya hargreeves #reginald hargreeves #tua spoilers #lordt just let this one work

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phantomato · 3 years

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As a Voldemort fan, what do you think about the "Voldemort is my past, present, and future" line? Do you like it? Agree with it? I'd love to know!

So, I don’t normally think about specific lines of dialogue, and I took some time to do so before responding to this. Thanks for your patience!!

Reading within the context of canon

There are a couple of factors I want to keep in mind about this piece of dialogue:

It’s delivered by Diary Horcrux

It’s said as part of a villain monologue/identity reveal

I don’t bring these up to discredit the sentiment. It’s just that, in the realm of the books, we get relatively little direct interaction with either Tom Riddle or Voldemort, don’t we? Most of what we get is mediated through someone else’s memory or is a soul shard operating on its own (diary, locket, Harry mind-meld). Diary is the most coherent horcrux by far, which you can headcanon to be true for any number of reasons. I suppose he’s a useful lens into some part of Voldemort, but I am not sure I view him as a true snapshot of V at 16, more like a mix of V’s ambitions for himself, his mental/emotional state around that time, and whatever it means to be part of a soul stuck in an object for 50 years. And I don’t mean to imply that Diary has been sentient and awake and trapped, necessarily—maybe he’s dormant unless someone interacts with him, idk—but he is clearly disconnected from time, relying on the people who write to him to inform him about current events.

I suppose I’d say that the line sounds like the kind of bluster that an overconfident teenager might say, mixed with the sort of moral certainty that comes from flattening a person into a shade of themself. Adult Voldemort is more clever, and his dialogue, even when campy, has a subtlety to it in that he sounds like he’s saying things to amuse himself. Half of his conversations post-resurrection sound as though he’s not talking to anyone else in the room, and maybe that’s the cauldron-body Second Coming thing messing with his mind, but mostly I think of him as… intelligent and bored. Around someone who kept up with his pace of conversation, he wouldn’t need to be so distracted, because the other person would keep him engaged.

And, well, Diary is demonstrating the early stages of developing that skill, but he’s stuck with the mind of a 16-year-old and never gets to progress to the levels of genius that adult Voldemort reached. He thinks it’s funny (and frustrating) that this stupid child hero needs the whole “I am Lord Voldemort” thing spelled out so clearly, but Harry is… not the cleverest 12-year-old, and really, Diary, your monologue isn’t all it seems to be for all that Harry is amazed by it.

So, onto the sentiment.

Past

Personally, I much prefer a Voldemort who sees an intentional break between his childhood as Tom Riddle and his adulthood as Voldemort. I don‘t mind an acknowledgment that the potential was always there, or for him to believe that Voldemort was inevitable, but I like the agency of Voldemort deciding to live with this identity and deciding that this identity should not have ties back to Tom Riddle, or that he should get to control those ties and when they are invoked. But I’m also comfortable with the idea that he might have taken some time to reach that point, that at 16, beginning to question who he is, he might have been more comfortable erasing anything other than the Voldemort identity, especially as he was forced to perform Tom Riddle every day.

Future

I just like more fluidity to my Voldemort than this unyielding quote provides. What defines him above nearly all else, for me, is his desire to survive—and I will usually settle on the idea that if survival means preserving the identity of Tom Riddle for possible use (as in Made of Clay), then I think Voldemort would consider it as an option. This is all to say that Voldemort might ideally be his future, but… I think he’d consider Tom again if the choice was death as Voldemort or life as Tom.

Present

I’m working on a first-war Voldemort piece right now; the first chapter should go up late this week. I love Voldemort. I think he’s a fantastic character, with his own wonderful challenges both related to but separable from the idea of a middle-aged Tom Riddle. A Voldemort who has chosen to become V, to abandon the birth name and shed connections to people who knew him as such, redefining those relationships as something new, is compelling to me. There’s a particular attempt to sever himself from humanity that I think only exists when he has gone fully into being Lord Voldemort, and how humanity sneaks back into even that identity is a fundamentally interesting question. I don’t think 16-year-old Tom was presently Voldemort, though. I don’t think he truly becomes Voldemort until much later in life, and I’d bet he prefers not to relive the almost… naive joy that his teenage self took in claiming that name, given everything he must go through before he can truly live as it. He wouldn’t want to be that boy again. Mid-40s Voldemort is very happy that teenage Tom’s version of Voldemort is not his present.

#ask #voldemort

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intpstyle · 4 years

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Detective Conan Meta: Trauma, being seen & the Inner Child

Okay, so it’s 6AM and I woke up with this essay half-formed in my mind and I need to talk about DC. Yesterday, I saw a quote on tumblr that read

“to be loved is to be seen”

and it literally haunted my dreams. I dreamt of Shinichi being unable to tell Ran who he is for so long now (we won’t go into the half a year debate (in this post)) and it got me thinking about the unbearable loneliness of it all. Then I thought of Heiji and of how liberating it must be for Shinichi that some people do know him for who he really is - that some people see him, that some people are able to love him, all of him, because they’ve recognised him even when he looks like a child. And that got a chain reaction of symbolism going in my brain because THINK ABOUT IT, Shinichi is literally forced to live as his own inner child.

So, we open with this lovably weird 17-year-old (fuck no, in the manga he’s actually only 16) with barely any survival skills who’s been left alone in a huge mansion because his parents went adios, who doesn’t have a whole lot of close friends because he always found it difficult to connect with others because he’s so focussed on his detective work and who, when he finally manages to ask the love of his life out on a date and inevitably stumbles over another murder, claims that “you get used to it”, that corpses don’t affect him, that nothing really affects him and, worst of all, he actually means it. This is our protagonist. He’s All Grown Up. He always tried to be All Grown Up. Frankly, with parents like these, he always had to be All Grown Up. And it’s okay! Because he found something he loves doing (finding the truth, restoring justice, helping people) and he’s good at it and people actually love him for it (look at all these fan letters, Ran, look at them!)

And then Ran (bless you, angel child) starts crying because - because so many reasons. One, she’s still affected by what happened. Two, she sees the love of her life being strong - and he always has and had to be strong; it must be so bloody exhausting and he’s not even aware of how tired he is, but to ask him to take a break, to take a look at what all this death and suffering and loneliness really means, to take it in, to stop, would be to take the one thing away (apart from her, but she doesn’t know that) that keeps him stable and grounded and to risk having him fall apart. I don’t think she knows this consciously, but Ran is empathetic and has been around Shinichi all her life - this, I think, is the moment it really hits her that this brutality (a literal decapitated corpse that spews blood like a fountain on a roller coaster!!!) has become her best friend’s “normal”. She is scared. She is worried. And she shows it.

And then Shinichi (bless you, cool child) tries to play it down, to make her feel better, to show her that this is nothing to despair over. He, too, is trying to be considerate of this incredible girl who always takes on other people’s burdens and their pain and grins and bears it. But it isn’t all compassion - he frankly also does not have the tools to deal with someone being so vulnerable and innocent and, dare I say?, child-like. And what does he do? Does he stay and engage with her side of things? Does he hear her out and consider that he HAS become callous and somewhat addicted to shedding light on the dark sides of other people? That he feels uncomfortable feeling the light turned back on himself? No! No, of course not! He’s 16 and has the emotional range of a tea spoon (#relatable). Instead, he latches onto the next sign of mystery and turns back to his quest for truth where he feels safe and needed. He LITERALLY tells Ran to “go ahead” and that he’ll “catch up” and boy, will he ever (emotionally).

We all know what happens next: he bites off more than he can chew. He stumbles over a case that even he admits is “serious” and is LITERALLY hit over the head with the realisation that this - socio-economic corruption, systemic criminal organisations, being vulnerable and opening up to a loved one - is the world of adults and he is NOT ready for it. So he, like everybody else, is given the choice to call it quits or to choose life, start over and re-learn the things he missed out in childhood to become an adult. He becomes his inner child again (the first chapter literally ends with the dialogue

“You okay!? Can you stand up, little boy?”

“Huh?”

and he’s trying. He’s trying to stand up, okay?) and it smarts. In this old/new form, he is taken care of, but not taken taken seriously by the policemen (”You must’ve been scared”) and it freaks him out that they treat him (the master detective!) like a child again. At this height, he fails to get into his own house (some more symbolism right there) and he is not recognised by Professor Agasa until he shows him some impressive deduction work, demonstrating that this really is at the core of his character - he enjoys and is good at mysteries. That was never the problem. Neglecting just about everything else was (- the same goes for OG Holmes, I’d argue). Seeing how the situation he went through literally (damn that’s a lot of literally) turned Shinichi back into a child, Professor Agasa warns him not to inflict the same traumatic damage on others - especially since the situation is not yet resolved. (...but Agasa’s involvement is another can of worms)

There’s a whole other post in Shinichi’s choice to call himself “Conan Edogawa” and wearing his father’s glasses as well (aka trying to redefine his identity by viewing the world through the lense of the people he admired (notably his father’s frames without the lenses though!)), but the most interesting thing happens when Ran shows up. He tries, desperately, not to be recognised - not to be seen - by her in this form because it’s not HIM (it is though) and because it would involve Ran in danger; would put her in the adult world he couldn’t deal with and couldn’t protect her from, thus, ironically, infantilising her and (although in an attempt to be heroic, nonetheless still) limiting her agency.

And this is where the irony really kicks in - because Ran finds it much easier to talk to this raw, vulnerable version of himself that he doesn’t allow her to see as a “grown-up” 16-year-old. It is now, as a child that asks straight-forward questions, that he learns that Ran really does love him and that she knows the good (dependable, brave & cool), as well as the bad (full of himself, bit of a jerk and obsessed with mysteries) sides of him better than he does. At the very moment, he, touched by her vulnerability and wanting to open up, decides to tell her the truth, he is again reminded of the Men in Black by Kogoro falling down the stairs like a sack of potatoes and he (dependable, brave & cool) decides not to involve anyone in the mess he brought upon himself until he can stand up to the world of adulthood that he shrank from.

The beauty of the series is that Shinichi slowly realises, bit by bit, drop by drop, excruciating chapter after excruciating chapter, that the way for him (an INTP) to become an adult is precisely by letting others see him as he is and thus forming lasting, real and dependable relationships (by developing his Fe). This tragically begins with Akemi Miyano (a first step and another reminder that he is not capable enough yet), is slowly built up with the Detective Boys (who are honestly so important for him), continues with Ai (#bestpartners, for both of whom Professor Agasa, the eternal child-inventor, is a safe haven where they can catch up on what they missed out on, Ai obviously much more so than Conan), reaches a really, really sweet high with Heiji (#bestbromance), a rather dissatisfying conclusion with his parents (who, and I cannot stress this enough, decide the best way to convince their traumatised son that his life is in danger is to point a literal gun (okay, it’s a pistol) at his face in disguise) and climaxes with Eisuke Hondo (at which point he is confident enough to proclaim who he is even while still in the form of a child (although that doesn’t make the context of the situation any less stupid (thus proving that he IS still a love-struck teenager at the end of the day))). tl;dr By being both the professional adult “Sleeping Kogoro”, as well as the cooky child “Conan Edogawa” at once, Shinichi can play with both facets of his teenage life until he reaches a level of stability that allows him to integrate the child mind into his adult mind - and that will be the point at which he’ll be able to fully become (not just temporarily play the role of) Shinichi Kudo.

PS: It is also interesting to compare Ai’s and Shinichi’s approaches to being stuck in their childhood selves. Shinichi, not as scarred and slowly building up a network of people he trusts, is eager to move on and begs Ai to give him the temporary antidote as often as he can - he WANTS to grow up and be a grown-up so badly. There is so much (Ran) waiting for him there.

Ai, on the other hand, is much more cautious and warns him not to jump the gun. To her, much more scarred and still rather alone, this is an invaluable second shot at life and she is as careful with it as she humanly can, constantly worrying and on the look-out that someone could drag her back to the prison of responsibilities and obligations. That’s why it was SUCH a pivotal moment for her when she used and realised the use of her adult form when she saved the Detective Boys from the fire. She, too, is slowly connecting the two halves of herself but I suspect that it’ll take her an entire childhood to do so. (Also, interestingly, as an INTJ, she puts down her roots in a very different way from Conan. She cherishes her new relationships and protects them fiercely, but the real signs of her settling down ever-so-slowly is her growing willingness to reconstruct her internal moral system (Fi) and to acquire and find security in material possessions (Se), like her designer handbags and her little football-man-phone-strap.)

#so this is why i got a ba in literature huh #good to know #detective conan #intp #shinichi kudo #meitantei conan #psychological development #growing up #adulthood #inner child #manga #conan edogawa #shiho miyano #ai haibara #detective conan meta #manga meta #trauma #recovery #healing

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sisterofiris · 5 years

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How do you feel about re-interpreting the Delphic maxims to more modern ones/definitions? Like say, #9. Intend to get married, it could be redefined to more like: don’t waste your time in unfulfilling/unloving relationships? Something like that? Because I like a lot of the maxims but I feel like some of them are dated from the original context and ancient cultural views that aren’t held by a lot of people today. Thanks in advance🌻

I feel like some adaptation is necessary for those of us who want to follow the Maxims, but I also think it needs to be done carefully.

In my opinion, the first thing one needs to do when deciding whether or not to follow the Delphic Maxims is to reflect on whether they consider them to be the word of Apollon himself, transmitted by oracle, or simple moral guidelines that circulated in Ancient Greece. If you believe the second, then there is no need whatsoever to take the Maxims as a whole - you can pick and choose! Don’t think “intend to get married” applies to modern society, or to you personally? Don’t follow it! Hellenic polytheism has no sacred texts you are required to follow, so there is nothing bad about deciding the Maxims don’t suit you. (The exception being for those that are fairly well-attested Hellenic values, like xenia or eusebeia. I would be quite iffy about someone dismissing those while still considering themselves a Hellenic polytheist.)

On the other hand, if you believe the Maxims originate from Apollon himself, you will need to tread more carefully. You could go the fundamentalist route and take them all literally, including the ever-so-lovely “rule your wife”, though I’m not a massive fan of this myself. (But hey, if you happen to have a wife and she likes to be ruled, you do you. So long as your lifestyle doesn’t cause harm to others or to yourself, I firmly believe you should have the freedom to live it.) If you’re not big on fundamentalism, however, that’s when reinterpretation comes in.

When reinterpreting an ancient source, whether the Maxims, Homer, Euripides, the Orphic Hymns, or anything else, I think it’s very important to be aware of its cultural context and the meaning behind it. For example, when it comes to “intend to get married”, I wouldn’t see it so much as referring to romantic relationships; most marriages in Ancient Greece were not based on romantic love (though that did often develop later) but on partnership and the establishment of a household. Looking at this from a modern perspective, I would interpret it as encouraging people to embrace adulthood and create their own independent household - whether that means a husband and wife, two husbands, two wives, a bunch of friends sharing a home, a single person and their pets, or something completely different.

Likewise, I would be tempted to interpret “rule your wife” as “have a healthy relationship with your partner” (considering that a healthy relationship, in Ancient Greece, meant the husband having authority over his wife) or maybe “be in good charge of what is yours” (considering that a wife was viewed as her husband’s property back then). The point is not to take the Maxims word for word, nor to interpret them however you like - it’s to research and reflect on the meaning behind them, on where Apollon (or the oracle, or whoever you think the author is) is coming from, and to apply that to your daily life.

So yes, I do approve of reinterpretation and even believe it necessary in many cases. But as with most things, the balance must be maintained between what is written and what you personally believe.

#delphic maxims #hellenic polytheism #Hellenismos

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hoarderofwords · 4 years

Text

Day #2: My WIP

NOVEL PREP TAG

Thank you for the tag, @thewalkingnerdx! I’m doing this for Day #2 of @owl-writes Writeblr Life Week, but since I’m still in the process of outlining The Hollow Prince, some of the questions may or may not be answerable. We’ll see how it goes!

FIRST LOOK

1. Describe your novel in 1-2 sentences (elevator pitch).

A young conman with a terrible secret is forced to confront his past when his victims start turning up dead.

2. How long do you plan for your novel to be? (Is it a novella, single book, book series, etc?)

I’m not sure yet. I’ve been toying with the idea of making it part of a trilogy, but it depends on how the story pans out.

3. What is your novel’s aesthetic?

Paris during the Reign of Terror, gilded aristocracy gone slightly to seed, crumbling statues, vacant ballrooms, sepia ink on faded parchment, gilt chairs and broken cornices, long skirts and glittering masks, a red ribbon around the throat, library bookshelves full of dusty books that whisper with secret magic.

4. What other stories inspired your novel?

Captive Prince series by C. S. Pacat. Nightrunner series by Lynn Flewelling. Captain Corelli’s Mandolin by Louis de Bernières

5. Share 3+ images that give a feel for your novel.

MAIN CHARACTER(S)

6. Who is your protagonist?

He prefers to be known as Gill, but that’s not his real name.

7. Who is their closest ally?

Lynette. She’s like an elder sister to him, and she keeps him out of trouble. Well, she tries. Well, at least she makes sure he doesn’t die when he inevitably gets into trouble, usually by charging right on in after him.

8. Who is their enemy?

The person who keeps killing the people Gill has conned.

9. What do they want more than anything?

Gill will tell you that what he wants is to be left alone to do as he pleases, but what he really wants is to make his parents proud by being the person they always told him he would be.

10. Why can’t they have it?

His parents are dead. Plus, he doesn’t believe he’s capable of being that person anymore.

11. What do they wrongly believe about themselves?

He is convinced that he is not the sort of person that his parents would approve of, because he’s a liar and a cheat and has had to do ugly things in order to survive. For this reason, he avoids responsibility and refuses to take things seriously, and tends to be very cynical and dismissive of “heroism” as a general rule.

PLOT POINTS

12. Draw your protagonist! (or share a description)

In lieu of either of these, since that would take time I don’t currently have, pls accept this gif of Louis XIV (George Blagden) instead.

13. What is the internal conflict?

For Gill, it’s the struggle between self-interest and the greater good, between cynicism and hope, and between the image of himself as he is and the person he could be, if he stopped trying to force himself to be something he’s not.

For Lynette, it’s about remaking herself, learning to redefine what is important to her outside of the ideas of duty and obligation. In a way, her journey is a mirror of Gill’s: where he has to learn to take responsibility, she has to learn to give some of it up.

For Cassian (Gill’s love interest, still not entirely sold on the name), the conflict is between what he has been taught and what he has learned through experience, the struggle to listen to and trust his own instincts and his own path even when it runs contrary to what he’s “supposed” to do.

14. What is the external conflict?

Someone keeps killing people Gill has conned, and Gill’s the only one who can stop them.

15. What is the worst thing that could happen to your protagonist?

Failure. As in, he fails to stop the killer, the people he loves die, and it’s all his fault.

16. What secrets will be revealed that will change the course of the story?

I can’t tell you that, because spoilers!

17. Do you know how it ends?

Not yet.

18. What is the theme?

Self-determination. Basically, it’s a “coming-of-age” novel for New Adults, about dealing with the transition into Adulthood proper and the disillusionment that can come with it, and having to adjust your view of yourself and your purpose when the world turns out to be different than you expected.

19. What is a recurring symbol?

Haven’t got that far in my planning yet!

20. Where is the story set? (share a description!)

Again, still working on this part of my world-building.

21. Do you have any images or scenes in your mind already?

Yep! I already know that books, words, and libraries are going to be important, and I have written some scenes from the characters’ backstories to flesh out their motivations and personalities.

22. Tell us about your usual writing method!

Well, I don’t really have one “usual” method, but right now I’m trying out the Story Genius approach by Lisa Cron. I tend to be a bit of a landscape gardener when it comes to outlining; I need to have enough worked out that I know what I’m doing, but if I get overly detailed in my planning, I get bored with an idea and wander off. I’m really excited about this approach because it’s the first outlining method I’ve found that fits with how I usually work, so it’s given me a bit more structure to follow while also allowing me to keep much of my own style. It’s also very character-focused, which I like, because that’s where my stories tend to come from.

23. What excited you about this story?

Originally, it was an idea I picked up on the NaNo forums and wrote as a joke, but I really like the idea of turning it into a serious story exploring the ramifications of certain fantasy cliches (and also I just really wanted to write a cool LGBT+ fantasy novel, you know? *g*).

Since I don’t really know enough people to tag for this, consider yourself tagged if it looks like something you’d like to try! And please tag me when you’re done so I can have a read of your answers :)

#writeblr #writeblrlifeweek #writeblr community #am writing fantasy #am writing LGBTQ #am writing #my wips #novel prep tag #wip: the hollow prince #talk tag #tag games #my writing

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themostfunthing · 5 years

Text

Stay Core, Stay Poor

(Opening remarks for the “Stay Core, Stay Poor” panel to conclude the 2019 Pushing Boarders conference in Malmö, Sweden. Delivered August 18, 2019. Panelists: Josh Friedberg, Kim Woozy, Paul Shier, Nick Sharrat, and Claire Alleaume.)

My name is Kyle Beachy. I'm a novelist and a professor of literature and creative writing, neither of which professions have anything to do with the skateboard industry.

But about seven or eight years ago I began writing articles about skateboarding because I had been doing it for a very long time and I was thinking about it basically all the time, due to a novel I was writing. At first I wrote about a few skaters who struck me as particularly important. I wrote about Nike's insidious and totally obvious strategy to work their way into a skateboarding market that had already rebuffed them twice.

And last year I wrote an article that began with some old though no less despicable comments from a white California skateboard legend that were unearthed in the wake of a late-career Thrasher cover and his ending part in a Converse video. But the comments weren't surprising, given American racial dynamics, and I wasn't interested in cancelling or harming the man himself.

Really I wrote about my profound disappointment in the way that the US skateboarding industry responded to these comments with just overwhelming silence. What the incident made clear was that the industry as it stood did not have the infrastructure in place to adequately address the racism, misogyny, and homophobia that have always lurked in the back corners of skateboarding, and often in plain sight.

…

When I was young, before I understood my self or my body, skateboarding taught me what it means to long, to yearn, to fantasize. Skateboarding opened me to longing even before it was complicated by adolescence and sexual desires. I longed for a place I had never been, and worshipped a handful of impossibly, world-historically cool young men that I would never meet.

And this longing changed but lingered into adulthood. I recall a period of a few weeks in 2002 or 2003 when I had a recurring dream of PJ Ladd. In these dreams he was just nearby, wearing an Es hoodie, baggy denim and his Accels. We weren't even skating. We were just kicking it. Like in basement or on a porch. And each morning I would wake to terrible sudden comprehension that it was just a dream, that PJ was not, actually, my homie.

This is what the skate industry did to me: it shaped my dreams, was the algorithm of my desires, and was just profoundly instrumental in the way I conceptualize my identity. It's given me fashion, music, jokes. And for me and a lot of other people who look like me, skating has been by far the most culturally interesting thing about us.

Ever since I achieved the slightest modicum of self-awareness, self-actualization, and, more recently, actively sought out various forms of therapies to assist me with mental and emotional health, I have always leaned upon skateboarding as a foundational text of my personal narrative.

…

I have an impossible goal right now: to have this panel serve as a kind of culmination to this week's wildly interesting and important conversations. And in a way, it will be, because has to be. And here's what I mean by that.

Much of this conference has been about the different ways that skateboarding creates or facilitates meaning. What skateboarding means for individuals like me, and many other individuals who are totally unlike me. What it means for cities, places, for history itself. Also this week we've heard people speak of strategies for leveraging the practice, the activity of skateboarding into other uses—education, activism, therapy—and we've discussed difficult realities about who gets to chronicle skateboarding and tell its stories. We've confronted the broader social truths of power disparities and many, assorted forms of imbalance and injustice. We've brushed against the sacred, we've applauded latecomers, and listened to the voices of people we might otherwise assume are simply grateful for Western help.

But just as all questions of contemporary suffering are ultimately questions of capitalism, all of these things we've discussed about skateboarding—its promise, its utility, its fundamental weirdness and unquantifiability—are, at core, dependent on the production, distribution, and marketing of skateboard products. And as we here go about our work to both understand and redefine the ways skateboarding matters, we absolutely must keep in mind the relationship between our ideas, our noble practices, and the economic realities of our beloved little toy.

And so, here we have a cross section of the contemporary skate industry. Who, like us, have witnessed the conversations this week. Who, like us, are skaters. Who, like us, love skateboarding. And who, perhaps more and perhaps less than us, play a role in writing skateboarding's ongoing narrative.

And now we get to have a conversation, which is as close as we get to the divine. I hope to move this conversation through four main parts.

We're going to start with questions about "core" and what, if anything, that word means today. Then we'll discuss SB's growth and exposure in new parts of the world, and touch on the question of gatekeeping. We'll address what this growth means to people who skateboard professionally and also casually, including questions about ethical treatments and practices. And then we'll discuss SB's future in a world teetering on the brink of apocalypse.

So, now. To utter those famous, perfect words: let's do this.

#toward a poetics of skateboarding

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angstymarshmallow · 5 years

Text

part four: “nothing left for us here.” (cal lowell x mc)

[a little note: I still haven’t come up with a name for my series. But I’m playing around with one or two names. In any case, I’ve mentioned before that this part is pretty long - but it’s after two in the morning and I want to post it before I give it another second thought. If you read it - than you! If you leave a comment, bless you! ]

[words counted: 11191] Yup 11.1k, I haven’t written this much for a series chapteer in foreverrrr.

[summary: when trouble brews on the horizon for Cal and Wren (MC) as a werewolf alpha threatens their pack’s safety - Cal must make a decision to protect them. Because after all, the pack must always come first].

[part one, part two, part three]

His biological clock ticks down the hours, minutes and seconds before his eyes fly open. He can never sleep past it. Not since adulthood came knocking at his door. The blood of the wolf thrums inside his vein. It demands him to rouse awake – always close to the highest peak of dawn.

Today is of course no different.

The beast inside him stirs with a keen sense of awareness. His nerves can’t sit still. Move. Move. He’s too wired up from last night and his urge to burn the lingering stress, outweighs his desire to stay in bed.

Still, Cal forces himself to take a second. He appreciates being home again – he appreciates the sense of security and stability that comes a long with it. And the comfort of coming home to someone.

He breathes deeply, letting his lungs fill with the allure of clean sheets and the slight musky scent from the clothes they discarded in a hurry last night. Rolling over, he nearly collides into the warm body nestled beside him but halts his free arm just in time. He keeps the rest of himself steady - barely a hair length away.

When she doesn’t stir, Cal utters a small sigh of relief.

The last thing he wants is to devoid her of anymore sleep than necessary. Sometimes, she hardly gets any – her job keeps her up more often than is. But more than that, his reasons are purely selfish for keeping her bed. It’s in moments like these – when everything is still, that makes waking up first worth it.

Cal props himself up on one elbow to study her.

His lover. His best friend. His mate.

Wren exemplifies all of these qualities and more. It’s exhilarating, terrifying and wonderful all at once to find someone he wants to spend more than a few precious moments with. Ever since they’ve met – it’s been one moment leading into another. Now that he’s had a taste of this, he doesn’t think he can go back to being alone again.

Cal’s brow creases at the thought.

He isn’t afraid. He should be, but he isn’t. For one, she isn’t the most reliable person. There’s been a few close calls of her coming home – battered and bruised. But it’s the nature of her job. For another, hey haven’t known each other for very long and as his mate there are certain responsibilities that comes along with the newfound territory. Not to mention they argue almost as much as they make-up, but in spite of all this – in spite of all the reasons he can think of – he’s still not afraid.

None of these reasons, plausible or not change how he feels. Deep within him, there’s a sense of peace and a surge of unadultered joy in knowing it’s her.

Before Cal is able to stop himself, his fingers stretch the rest of the distance between them and he weaves them through the softness of her hair. Lightly, his forefingers rub between its finer strands of earthy brown.

She stirs slightly from the motion; nuzzling further into her pillow with a half-hearted smile flitting across her face.

Something in his chest flutters.

He never gets tired of the view. He tucks a few of them behind her ear.

Taking another few seconds to admire her asleep, he drops a kiss to her brow and then slips out of bed. He rubs his eyes before they are drawn to the window, where the telltale signs of a new day have already begun. Sunlight seeps through their curtains, casting a dazzling gleam across his pillow as he swings his legs out of the way.

Cal stretches a second time, his muscles bunching as he rolls his shoulders back to release tension. Standing, he hunts for a pair of fresh clothes.

But clothes don’t matter, they never do for mornings like this – because mornings like this are made for running with the sun beating down his back. They are made to chase away the cold air from the night before and run until sweat beads across every inch of his skin. They are made for feeling the earth beneath his feet and for his paws to dig into the soil as he basks in its sunny disposition.

Twisting his chestnut hair into a loose bun, Cal fishes for a pair of shorts before he ventures downstairs and then out the door. His mind acts on memory as a roadmap for the best place to burn off his pent-up energy surfaces.

Within seconds, he takes off. A light jog is more than adequate for now. He deeply inhales the finer smells in the air, the taste of sunshine on his skin. His eyes linger on different sections of his neighborhood, searching for anything remotely off. Anything unfamiliar. After last night, he can’t be too careful. He can never be too careful again so long as another alpha threatens his territory.

By the time he steps off the main path leading into the woods, less than a half an hour has passed. He rolls his shoulders back again, does a few last-minute stretches before checking for his usual spots.

He ducks his head low after ignoring the first bush. It isn’t until he’s able to find a rosebush large enough to obscure most of his body that he stops inside his tracks. Thorns prick his skin as he makes quick work of shedding his clothes and abandoning his shoes. He doesn’t care; those bruises always heal fast– at least, far faster than the ones from last night anyway. He’s still feeling some of the pain, despite most of his body already undergoing his extensive healing process; with only jarred edges of scars to mark the only shred of evidence left behind.

But there’s still an ache in his body that reminds him he’s gone through hell.

Carefully, he stashes his clothes away.

The last thing he has to take care of is double-checking the area before he’s ready to shift. But wolf in him is impatient, it yearns to be free. His eyes and body work together to search the parameter. He can’t afford to have anyone else in town freaking out about their wolf population.

When Cal is satisfied with the knowledge of nearly complete solitude, he heads back in the bush’s direction.

Hunching over, he closes his eyes – and starts the change.

His bones break first. They always do to redefine what it means to be man and wolf. Then slowly, they begin to remake themselves – a sickening crunch here and there signifies the worst parts of it; where his limbs bend at an awkward angle and his legs buckle to keep him upright. Cal flinches but he doesn’t make a sound. He is accustomed to the pain and a sense of exhilaration comes along with feeling every crack, every bone that transcends into the animal as the beast inside him stirs awake. Familiar tingles travel up his spine; it’s his sensory perceptions overriding the more rational part of himself with the fundamental knowledge that it is almost over – and none of it is completely unpleasant anymore. Gradually, fur replaces skin and his large - often coarse hands shift into paws with claws sharp enough to tear through even the sturdiest of metals. With a howl, Cal sheds the remainder of his human form – as the final layers which prevented him from embracing his truest nature dissipates into nothing.

Everything is much clearer, crisper when he’s like this. When his heart races faster and excitement propel all 800 pounds of him forward. His better senses take control, he is no longer just Cal – he is so much more.

He pauses to sniff the air.

His ears perk at the sound of footsteps that leads further into the forest. Is that rabbit? No! He inhales deeply, and a slight shudder ripples his fur. It’s definitely antelope. He can almost picture the creature in his head – scrambling through the forest as though abruptly aware of his presence.

Then Cal sets off again – crouching low and digging his paws to feel the soil beneath him. He makes a beeline for the trees, howling over the wind and his russet fur ruffles by the motion. He leaps from tree to tree; its colour makes it easy to for him to blend in with most of the bark in his immediate area, and even if didn’t – he isn’t worried. Right now, he isn’t worried about anything.

He lets go of all those human novelties – of regret, fear and second-guessing his own past judgements. All that’s left is the wolf – and whatever the wolf demands, he simply gives.

An hour later, Cal has gathered his pants and changes with quick fluidity. Thankfully, no one has spotted him despite how embarrassingly loud he’d been during his hunt in the woods. He allows his hair to be free with a shake of his head and takes off into another jog to travel home.

The moment Cal approaches the front door, his stomach grumbles at the smell of something freshly made. To a regular human being the smell would have barely found its way outside, but to him – even the very whiff of it is intoxicating. He sniffs the air in excitement, trying to discern the flavors in the atmosphere – is that bacon? He sniffs again – and pancakes?

He boards the rest of their porch with barely contained eagerness, slamming the door a little too hard behind him before he empties his feet free of boots by their welcome home mat.

“There better still be a door, Cal!” Comes a loud yell from down the hall.

Cal winces guiltily and then double-checks its safety. So far so good. He hasn’t pried off any of their doors yet. Well – not in a long time anyway.

He quickly pads against the wooden floorboards of their home, finding Donny already sitting across the couch watching a familiar-looking show at first glance, with an ample amount of bacon and pancakes in his lap. “Morning,” He greets warmly, flashing his brother a smile.

Donny’s answer is lost within a grunt as he stuffs another mouthful of food into his mouth. His eyes haven’t even left the screen.

“Well good morning to you too.” Cal raises an eyebrow, waiting expectantly for some sort of response.

Donny visibly swallows. “Mornin’,” he mutters finally, almost appearing unwilful as he glances towards him. He tilts his chin, then directs his attention back to his screen.

Shaking his head, Cal reaches over to ruffle his brother’s head, earning a scowl from him before he slaps his hands away.

“Don’t.” Donny’s nostrils flares until he turns completely still, abruptly seeming uneasy as they made eye contact with each other. “Just…don’t.”

It takes a moment for Cal to realize the emotions flickering across his youthful features aren’t anger – they’re worry. Regret. Fear. Guilt.

“I’m sorry.” Donny blurts the words out, his cheeks suddenly going flush under the weight of Cal’s penetrating stare. His eyes fall to his feet. “I’m so sorry.”

“You should be, you could have gotten yourself killed.”

His brother flinches at the sound of anger in his voice. “I know.”

“You could have gotten Wren killed.”

A pause. “I know.”

“Donny,” Cal takes a ragged breath, letting his harsh exhale override his urge to snap at his brother. He isn’t mad at him, not really. He had been last night but not anymore. Anger isn’t going to solve any of their problems. It’s just a knee jerk reaction that causes the wolf in him to rise to its feet to snarl and snap at anyone he has a problem with. But Cal doesn’t have a problem with his brother. And he has to work tirelessly to temper that anger, to practice restraint and remain in control.

Donny is all he has left in this world. He wouldn’t trade him for anything.

After their dad’s death – Cal has always felt like it’s up to him to keep them alive – to keep them safe. “You scared me last night.” He confesses slowly, dragging his fingers through his hair. “When I came in and saw what was going on – fuck, I feared the worst.” He cuts off his sentence, suddenly grabbing his brother by the arm. He nearly knocks his plate aside, in his rush to pull him to his feet and hug him. To make sure he’s alright, that there’s nothing broken.

For a split second, Donny doesn’t react. Cal could feel his brother tensing as his arms remain loosely at his sides. Then another second passes and it’s almost as if he jolts out of it. Suddenly, Donny is embracing him back, and taking deep breaths to keep his pulse steady.

“You gotta stop doing this.” Cal mutters, releasing him. “You’re not just a kid anymore Donny. You’re seventeen. You’re growing up. You can’t keep making the same mistakes and not expect bad things to happen.”

Donny lowers his gaze to the floor.

Something in Cal’s chest squeezes. “You’ve –” his tone grows softer, “you’ve gotta stop giving me a heart attack Donny. At this rate – I don’t think I’ll make it to forty.”

Despite his half-serious tone, Donny glances back up and snorts. He’s never been good at explaining how he feels, and Cal wonders if it’s his fault for always wanting to shelter him. “I think you’ll be fine. You’ve dealt with a lot worse.”

“Nothing could be worse than losing you.” He says emphatically, holding his stare. “Nothing.”

The smugness in Donny’s expression falters. He’s suddenly blinking and glancing away again – as if he’s afraid of looking at him. “Even if it meant you wouldn’t have to deal with my shit anymore?”

“Even then,” Cal lips soften into a timid smile. He reaches between them to squeeze his shoulder. “There’s nothing I wouldn’t do for you.”

Donny ducks his head as his cheeks flush against his olive skin. He mumbles under his breath, “thanks, I guess.”

“You’re welcome.” Recognizing his brother’s tells that the discussion is uncomfortable, Cal drops the subject and gives his shoulder another squeeze before reaching for the remote. He rewinds the last several minutes and offers the remote to him.

“Thanks,” Donny mutters.

Inclining his head, Cal pushes past the door to wade into their kitchen. He sniffs he air again, stomach growling at the very thought of eating. His keen senses help him to determine and approve of the types of spices she uses to change its typical flavor. A slight pinch of ginger. A dash of salt. Some cloves. And is that…garlic power? He can almost taste how good it will be melting on his tongue. It’s his favourite kind of bacon after all, underneath all that sauce – and his mouth is practically salivating with the urge to suddenly dive in and eat.

It’s the sight of Wren bent and leaning over their counter that causes a different reaction. Something that goes further than his hunger. The wolf in him stirs, and yearns to touch her. Want. Need. Sometimes, the line blurs between the two.

Leaning against the door frame, Cal smiles. “What did I do to deserve such a view?” he teases.

“Knowing you Cal – probably something really good in your past life.” She answers without hesitation. “You just have kinda that look about you.”

He laughs.

“But you can always come closer and find out,” Wren tosses a wink over her shoulder. “I know a dozen ways to remind you why you deserve this, why you deserve me.”

“Oh, just a dozen?” He steps close enough for her cheeks to grow lightly flushed under his smoldering stare. But she doesn’t look away, not his Wren. She meets his gaze head on, tilts her chin back as he leans forward between them to nip her chin.

It may have been the heat from the stove, but he likes to think he’s always able to cause that kind of reaction from her. He relishes in her slight shiver. The proximity between them is close enough to place his hands at either side of her. Still, Cal eaves enough room for her to close the distance if she wants to.

Instead of stepping closer, Wren loops her arms around his neck and tugs him towards her – erasing the rest of the gap. “We’ll start with a dozen.”

Before Cal can respond, across the hall his ears perk at the sound of Donny making gagging noises. Gagging noises that are painfully obvious as lacking any sort of authenticity. He makes a point of ignoring him.

He buries his lips to her neck, drawing a deep breath – comforted by her scent. The faintest hint of her bodywash still lingers on her skin. Mmm. Vanilla.

“Is Donny okay?”

“He’s faking it.” Cal snorts, then releases her and glances down in surprise. “You actually sound worried.”

She smacks his shoulder playfully with the dish rag from the counter. “I am worried. A little.”

“It seems like things between you two are getting better.” Cal can’t keep the smile out of his voice as he says it. His smile grows wider when she shrugs and mumbles under her breath. He knows Donny’s adjustment to someone new in his life hasn’t been easy. It’s never been easy for either of them.

“Finally, last night was a lot.” Wren pauses, and a small smile pokes out from the corner of her lips when she meets his stare. “And Donny’s not a bad kid.”

“No, he isn’t.” Suddenly remembering last night, Cal winces and twists to lean against the counter behind them. “Although, sometimes I wish he’d think before he does something he knows I won’t approve of.” The words may sound harsh to someone who didn’t know them – who didn’t know the Donny he’s had to bail out of trouble countless of times. But Cal says it without malice, he has always been genuinely concerned for his brother’s safety. Just thinking what their dad would’ve done if it had been him doing those things would have gotten him killed a long time ago.

“You remember what it was like being his age, right?” Wren responds, bumping his hip and interrupting the flow of his thoughts. “Everything felt important, like something you just had to do. There was no waiting around for anything or anyone else – and,” she says the rest slowly, nodding her head as though lost in thought, “sometimes that means doing some really dumb shit.”

“It’s just a part of growing up,” Cal agrees whole-heartedly. How couldn’t he, when he’s done his fair share of dumb things as a teenager? But he can’t think of a familiar instance comparable to last night. That bar fight shouldn’t have happened. “I can’t think of anything as bad as last night.”

“Oh, come on.” Wren gives him a look. “I don’t believe that for one second, Cal. You’re as handsome as sin.”

He holds up his hands, “I swear to you. Never that bad.”

“Uh huh,” she arches an eyebrow and places a hand by her hip. “But you did all that other stuff right? Sneaking out, staying out late. Spent some time experimenting with drugs. Drink before you were actually legal– that’s the really exciting part about drinking, the thrill of doing something bad – that kinda stuff?”

“You’re painting such a colourful childhood.”

Uncharacteristically, she sticks her tongue out at him. “What I mean to say is – it’s not easy being a kid. At least, I don’t remember it being easy.”

His brow furrows at the last jab. “We all do some things we regret, whether or not we’re seventeen or in our twenties. I think our bars for stupid hasn’t changed much.”

Wren laughs, her lips quirking into a know-it-all smirk. “Yup totally. I think I was the poster child for stupid shit and for breaking all the rules.”

“It must kinda come with the territory.” He means it as a light and gentle kind of prodding, keeping his voice tentatively low while he gauges her for her reaction. They never spend a lot of time talking about her past. And he senses the change in the air, even before her expression slightly changes.

“Group homes aren’t the most stable environments.” Although, she says the words dismissively – her eyes are wary, calculated – like she’s weighing how much to tell him. “I ran away a lot, got in trouble a lot for it. There wasn’t any place for me to really call home.”

Cal tries to swallow past the sudden lump in his throat as he tries to picture her out on the street – surviving on her own. It breaks his heart a little to wonder what a younger version of her was like, living the way she did. But she’s here now, and he’d do anything to make sure she’d never go through that again.

She bumps her nose with his, and her eyes suddenly bright with resolve. ��At least until now.”

He places a tender kiss across her nose.

Her shoulders relax. “But I bet it’s definitely nothing like growing up here in NOLA.” Wren changes the subject smoothly.

“Not when you’ve had a pack to contend with all your life – no.”

Her nose wrinkles. “All your life huh? It’s be all our end all with you guys.”

“It’s something we were born into,” Cal responds defensively. “And it’s all we’ve ever known.” There’s no sense of sugar-coating the words – not that he would ever want to. Cal loves being a werewolf – despite its ups and downs, it’s simply apart of who he is. “I wouldn’t want to change anything about it.” He adds earnestly.

Something passes quickly in her eyes as she slips out of his grip to grab a plate. “We should eat before it gets cold.”

Piled up unto the couch with their plates of bountiful food stationed in front of them, they’ve settled into their normal routine. Cal stretches out his long legs, bracing them loosely across the edge of their coffee table, after Wren’s able to successfully wrestle the remote from his brother and declares it her turn to choose a show.

Donny’s posture deflates a little as he mutters something about never having enough time to watch what he wants before Cal suggests something to watch on more neutral territory.

They both hesitate – Donny still shooting Wren a glare and in turn, she rolls her eyes until Cal steps in. He retrieves the remote out of her hands without a second thought and declares it’s what the alpha wants; making it a moot point to further argue anyway.

Donny, almost immediately recedes in defeat. He glances away and leans his wiry frame against the seat in sulky silence while Wren has more difficulty letting it go. She purses her lips before until Cal’s arm snakes around her waist and draws her snugly to his side.

“This way, everybody wins.”

“This way, you win.” She fires back, but surrenders control and she plants a kiss on his cheek. “Don’t worry, I’ll get you back later.”

Her sudden smirk, incites a reaction inside of him. His eyes drift down to her lips and then lower. “Is that a promise?” Because he’d really like to make good on such a promise.

Before Wren is able to answer, the younger Lowell brother loudly clears his throat. “I’m still right here guys.” Donny makes a point of grabbing a pillow and tossing at them. “Can you not be gross in front of me?”

Cal’s cheeks flush with a look of apology as Wren catches the pillow at the very last second and laughs. “Sorry kid. You know I can’t help it – your brother is so damn sexy.” She whistles as if to drive her point home and then wriggles her eyebrows at Cal.

His wolfish grin causes her to lean in closer.

“Oh, look. The show is starting.” Donny changes the subject quickly, grabbing the remote and turning up the volume to drone out the rest of their banter.

“Spoilsport.” Wren declares.

But Donny ignores her public outcry and shushes them both the second they both laugh.

Half-way through the episode, the door rings and Cal is up in a flash to answer it. He heard footsteps rustling around earlier, but it’s only after Wren grabs the remote from the coffee table that he’s able to tell whose it is. Their footsteps are measured and precise – there are only few people that had that kind of strut.

Wren’s eyes shoot up in question until Cal jerks his chin. “It’s just Jayde.” He says reassuringly and instantly her entire body relaxes.

“Okay, we’ll just wait.”

“No need, I’ll catch up – keep going.” Cal doesn’t leave room to protest as he takes several long strides towards the hall. He catches the end of Donny’s sentence on his way out. “…you heard the man, keep going.”

His Beta stands outside with her hands tucked loosely inside her leather jacket as he opens the door. The piercing on her nose seem to gleam against the sun. Her evasive dark emeralds have always been sharp, but they are currently missing as he’s able to tell by the slight dull amber colour of her eyes that she’s recently shifted.

Her slightly pointed chin, lowers in reverence after meeting his stare. “Cal,” she says his name smoothly.

Her greeting is nothing short of what he expects when she’s serious.

He’s known Jayde for several years and their relationship hasn’t always been this solid. They met at their local high school’s football team after tryouts had them competing for the same spot. While she’s been a part of the pack nearly as long he has, they wouldn’t have gotten a long if they hadn’t spent a lot of time outside of school together. Their awkward fumble at prom when they’d try working out as something more than friends in his father’s old car is still a haunting and uncomfortable memory that pops up every now and then when he sees her. Thankfully, they’ve grown a lot closer as friends than they ever did as anything else. “Jayde, hey.” He greets warmly, flashing her a smile. “What can I do for you? Want come in? We’re watching –”

“I’m afraid this isn’t really a social call.” She interjects and hesitates when he arches a brow at her; as though she’s trying to choose her words carefully. “It’s about yesterday night.”

The wolf in him stirs. He grits his teeth at the sudden burst of protectiveness for his pack, swells in his chest. “You’ve heard something?”

She shakes her head. “No, not really but those wolves we took in are restless.” She punctuates the word. “They were in a hurry to leave this morning until one of our guys caught wind of it and notified me.”

“Where are they now?”

“Wolf’s Den. Pete is keeping them busy when I came to get you.”

“Good call.” Cal gives her a brief nod of encouragement before he turns on his heels to promptly find his jacket. “We should get going then.”

“No time like the present.” Jayde agrees. Then hesitates again, her sharp features softening a little as she gestures behind him. “Sorry for interrupting.”

“It’s alright.” While he cherishes these moments of reprieve where he can stave away from the rest of the world; time slips by too quickly when he’s like this. When he can almost there’s more to life than just this, than just Wren.

“The pack’s safety comes first.” He says the words more to himself than to her, committing it again to memory. It’s more of a mantra at this point. It has too much meaning for there to be any kind of simplicity behind them.

It’s remarkable to him even after defeating Octavia all those months ago that he’s alpha. If only his dad was here to see it. But more than that – remarkable and responsibility are two sides of the same coin. Responsibility has always been Cal’s burden in some shape or form – whether it was taking care of their dad, Donny or the pack – there’s been countless of circumstances where he has to put everything else first.

“Donny,” He calls loudly, after finding his boots. “Change of plans buddy, we gotta go.” He turns his attention down the hall, waits expectantly for him to heed his call and follow.

Donny appears within seconds. From the look in his eyes, when he spots Jayde – whatever argument he’d make disappears with the knowledge that this is pack business and not just a simple social call. He ducks inside the closet to find his shoes and Cal’s attention has swerved to watch Wren when he feels her eyes on him.

Her confident gait stops a few feet away. She doesn’t greet Jayde; her eyes are solely on him – and for him only, when her eyebrows arch critically.

Cal knows what she’ll say even before she says it. She gets that same determined look in her eyes every time. Shit, it makes it hard to say no to her.

“I’m coming.” There’s no room in her voice for an argument.

From behind him, Jayde snorts.

This time Wren shifts her gaze. It’s only slightly but it’s enough to acknowledge his Beta’s presence.

There’s tension brewing, Cal feels it. He has to choose his words carefully, knowing that if he doesn’t – she’d fight him on this, given the chance. “It’s really not that simple.”

“How complicated can it be?” She counters.

“It’s…dangerous.”

She scoffs. “You say that like it’s supposed to stop me.” She strides past Donny to search for her boots.

Jayde raises an eyebrow, her lips drawing back into a frown. “It’s pack business.” Although, there’s no hostility behind her words – Cal does detect a hint of flatness that betrays her distrust of her.

“You say that like it’s going to stop me.”

“Look pup, this isn’t about you. We –”

Cal intervenes, physically putting himself between them before Jayde’s able to finish.

Jayde flinches and breaks off her sentence. Her eyes drift down to the floor while her jaw remains clenched.

There’s no sense in beating around the bush. Even with the months Cal has spent, integrating Wren into his pack – claiming her as his mate; the tension surrounding her in her complete disregard of committing herself as one of them has caused a shift in his power. An imbalance that he’s starting to wonder if anyone would fight him for. One that he’s keenly aware of in moments like this –when Jayde’s nostrils flare in hostility and Wren’s glare is enough to cut a lesser person down. He’ll have to think about that later, but right now – there are more important matters to deal with than this sudden pissing match.

“Wren is my mate.” Cal says the words with renewed purpose, his stare intense enough for Jayde to step back. “Despite how much I think it’s better for her to stay – she’s capable of making her own decisions.” He doesn’t miss the taunting smile Wren shoots back at Jayde. He gives her a look of reproach before the smile swiftly fades from view.

Nodding shrewdly, Jayde steps off their porch. “Then I’ll meet you at Wolf’s Den.” She says the words crisply, leaving no room for him to think she has anything more to add.

Donny stops her before she leaves. “Mind if I tag along with you?”

The tightness in Jayde expression softens a little as Donny walks in stride beside her. “It’d be my pleasure kid, let’s go.”

“I’ll meet you guys there!” The younger Lowell brother tosses behind him, eagerly keeping pace with Jayde as they approach her car.

Cal watches them go for a moment, sighing with relief that he’d avoided another fight. On some days, he isn’t always so lucky.

She lifts an eyebrow, “he’s never that interested getting in my truck.”

“Wren – are you jealous?” He tries to fight the smile off his face when she shoots him a glare, but eventually it wins out and he laughs.

“You’ve seen how long it took for him to even smile at me, let alone invite himself to hitch a ride.” She shakes her head. “Ridiculous.” She murmurs.

“Well, I’ll hitch a ride with you any day babe.” He drawls, throwin an arm around her shoulders.

“I think that goes without saying.” But her smile is bigger than her retort, and she reaches up on her toes to kiss him.

He kisses her back, immediately resting his arms by her waist. Her lips part. Cal’s tongue slides between the slight crack as he deepens the kiss. It only lasts seconds but Cal dejectedly let’s her go. He knows he has more pressing matters other than the boner his mate gives him with a searing kiss as she cups him through his pants.

Damn these fucking jeans.

He’s almost tempted to scoop her up and return back inside. The wolf in him is practically panting at the idea. He wants to ravish her – but she’s already tossing a teasing smirk over her shoulder as she gestures to her truck. “We’re taking my ride.”

Smiling in amusement, Cal follows the sashay of her hips until he finds the passenger seat and slips inside. He watches her profile view as the engine roars to life. All things considered; he knows he’ll have nothing to worry about so long as the most important people in his life are safe.

The Wolf’s Den is unusually quiet as Cal swaggers in with Wren in tow behind him. He walks with purpose as the air of authority clings to his every movement. He cannot appear anything less than an alpha – than in complete control despite feeling a little uncertain on the situation he’s walking in on.

Immediately all eyes in the room fall upon him.

The entire room is silent as he steps further inside the house.

Jayde is standing off to the side with Donny in tow, Wren is always more comfortable out of the spotlight and sticks to the shadows of the room. Every wolf has their head bowed as his long strides past them and it isn’t until Cal has uttered his first few words since walking inside, does the atmosphere in the room change.

“By now you’ve all heard about what happened at The Howlers last night.” He begins, gathering his thoughts. “We need to talk.” His eyes skim every member of his pack – every solemn and uneasy face until they’ve made a complete circle. “Because what I have to say could potentially threaten the safety of our pack.”

Murmurs break out uneasily between small groups of people. Jayde steps forward with a curt nod from Cal to bring the rest of their attention at three distinct people.

They’re young, probably somewhere between early adulthood. The tallest of the bunch looks the most reassured and the least nervous at being the center of attention. He doesn’t shrink away from it as the other two do, instead he remains in eye contact with Cal. His copper hair shines like sheen under the fluorescent light they’re standing under. The other two are almost indistinguishable from each other to be anything less than siblings. They don’t meet Cal’s stare.

The copper-haired pup doesn’t break eye contact with Cal as he opens his mouth to speak. “Look, we don’t want any trouble. We’ve been grateful to you since you’ve taken us in. So what the hell is this?”

“Someone from your old pack showed up to The Howlers last night. He threatened my brother, threatened my mate.” Cal punctuates the words, letting his entire pack know the enormity of the situation. Anyone doing that, shouldn’t be taken lightly. “If it was just about money, I wouldn’t have batted an eye but it’s about more than that.”

The trio of young wolves share glances between themselves.

“Isn’t that right – Nick, Theo and Saline?”

The tallest, Nick – goes almost and completely still, white Theo and Saline continue to cower slightly behind him – their grey eyes are wide and their skin pales in comparison to Nick’s at the question.

“I don’t want to worry you,” Cal forces his tone to be a little less firm and more neutral. “But your alpha’s beta had specific instructions to bring you back and when I told him no – he didn’t like that.” He takes a deep breath to calm the sudden quell of frustration inside him at the thought. The man tried to tear him into pieces and the wolf in him demanded his own penance in blood before Cal had nearly killed him. “I sent him my own message.” This time, his eyes don’t linger on just the trio of meek wolves in front of him – they look to everyone to attest and emphasize his own point. “I don’t abandon my family.”

Nick’s shoulders relax, Theo and Saline lets out sighs of relief as some of the tension begins to ooze out of the room. Even the rest of the pack seems a little less worried by the strong convictions in Cal’s voice. “But I do need to know why he’s come looking for you,” Cal continues, skirting his stare back in their direction. “Because if it affects you, it affects all of us. Because next time – we might not all be so lucky to have a simple bar fight.”

There’s another murmur of discontent, several wolves have looked worried again until Jayde roughly clears her throat. “Our alpha is talking! So shut the hell up and listen!”

Cal shoots Jayde a slight and grateful nod until he makes a point of standing in the center. “Why don’t you tell us why you left?”

Nick’s body has regained some of its hostility. His shoulders are too straight and his mouth forms a silent sneer. He jerks his chin defiantly. “We already did. He was getting violent and it wasn’t safe for us to be there anymore.”

And yet, by the slight tremble in his voice – and his aggressive posture, Cal doesn’t believe him. He narrows his eyes a little, straightens his shoulders back and peers down at him. The wolf in him snaps at the firm judgement call he’s willing to make. “You’re not telling me everything, and I’m not fond of liars Nick.”

The change in his posture makes Nick welp and he steps back as though Cal struck him. He might as well have.

“I –”

“He’s been selling us off!” Saline yells behind Nick.

Nearly everyone in the Wolf’s Den freezes at her public outcry. Even Nick looks surprised before he shoots a look of betrayal at her. “What the hell are you doing?!”

“Telling the truth!” Saline fires back, her greys suddenly sparking with anger.

“Richard’ll kill us the moment he finds us!” Nick hisses back, suddenly grabbing the younger wolf by the collar.

Theo slaps Nick’s hand away as a growl leaves his throat. “Paws off my sister!” He steps protectively in front of her. “And Saline’s right, when we left – we swore off anything to do with that pack, we agreed that anything else was better than going back there.” He tears his gaze away from the taller boy to stare pleadingly at Cal. “You have to do something! We got out but not everyone’s been so lucky!”

“Woah, woah. Slow down.” Cal raises a hand as civil unrest continues the uneasy glances between the members of his pack. “You mean Richard Shaw?!” He blinks in disbelief. The man had one of the biggest packs this side of the country.

Cal doesn’t Shaw well, they’ve only met a few seldom times but he didn’t strike Cal as a man capable of such things.

Saline nods vehemently, peeking out from behind her brother’s shoulder. “It used to be one at a time. At first, we didn’t even notice. Richard has a pretty big pack, one of the biggest in the world so we were really proud to be brought in the fold after all – we were a couple of orphans until he took us in.” As she speaks, Saline reaches for her brother’s hand and then Nick’s, squeezing them affectionately before continuing, “But recently more of us have been disappearing for us to notice.”

“It started with Bethany,” Nick continues slowly, dropping Saline’s hand. “She was my girlfriend and when I brought it up to Shaw, he decked me.” He rubs the side of his face, almost as though in memory of what happened.

“We couldn’t believe it – because we’ve never seen him look so angry before,” Saline steps away from her brother; eyes trained on her every movement as she keeps going. “Not for just asking a simple question, the whole thing was suspicious especially when Derek threatened to beat the shit out of us after.”

“So, we did a little bit of digging,” Nick muttered. “I was pretty good at computer science in school and I knew a couple professors personally, so I innocently asked my favourite professor to look into Shaw. At first, he didn’t find anything incriminating and told me if I was looking for something specific, I should go to the cops.”

“But we were too scared that he’d find out, so we didn’t.” Saline bites her lower lip, “But then he called Nick back a few days later mentioning Shaw has been hanging around with London Kavinsky lately and that drew a couple red flags for us.”

Cal’s eyes widen a fraction at the name. London Kavinsky is more than a casino mogul, he’s collector of antiques to the modern 21st century. He’s never cared about such things himself, but he remembers Kristof and Octavia talking about trading with him on more than one occasion.

Still, it doesn’t sound completely out of the ordinary for Shaw to have a contact such as himself – not if he’s been trading with him. Although what Shaw had to offer the multimillionaire, he hasn’t the faintest clue. “I don’t see why that detail is completely important.”

“The meetings Shaw and Mr. Kavinsky has go way back,” Saline insists, “we think –” she looks between her brother and Nick. “As far back since the first werewolf disappearance in our pack.” She stops short and corrects herself, “our old pack.”

For once, the entire room has gone silent.

Cal blinks a couple times in shock, before clearing his throat. If what they’re saying is remotely true… He can’t leave any room for doubt and interpretation; they have to be sure. “That’s a serious accusation.” Not to mention what it means – werewolf trafficking. The thought makes him ill.

“We wouldn’t be coming to you if we didn’t have some kind of proof of it ourselves.” Theo says. He’s been mostly quiet this entire time – silently assessing everything they’ve all said until now. “We followed Shaw. Once we could roughly put two and two together; he was due for another shipment to carry out for Kavinsky. He was meeting with Brady to go hunting alone. For a while, we thought he was grooming him since they’ve been getting along so well – but the thing is Brady has been there for only two years; and there’s plenty of other older and much mature wolves that were flying under the radar.” His eyes slam shut for a moment, before he opens them again to stare at Cal with a glint of determination. “So we followed them both after a long hunt one night – because we roughly figured when another shipment would take place and sure enough, Shaw and Derek had taken Brady out to eat. They called it a celebration until Kavinsky had showed up at the restaurant. We didn’t see where they went after that, but we do know that Brady never came back home.”

Cal’s brow furrows at the implication of Theo’s words. “That doesn’t mean anything happened to him,” he wants to believe them but there were still too many holes in their story. Were they even sure it was Brady? How much of a good look could they have without Shaw realizing someone’s been following him? “He could have simply left the pack.” Although the thought doesn’t sit well with him, and it doesn’t seem the likely scenario – it is a possibility they all have to consider.

Nick almost bares his teeth at him until a sharp look from Jayde deviates him into staring at the floor. Even Theo seems unsettled by his dismissal as he stuffs his hands inside his pants and stiffen. “We know Brady, he would never leave the pack. He’d pretty much bent over backwards to please Shaw. He wouldn’t just leave.”

“Not like you guys, right?” Someone from his pack mutters and Saline flinches at their choice of words.

“Why else would we risk everything and leave his pack if we didn’t think something fishy was going on?” Saline juts her chin out. Her looks is almost pleading when she gestures to Cal. “We’ve been keeping our heads down, doing everything we can for the pack. We would never try to risk anything to ruin our place here – unless, we really believed we had no other choice.”

Nick and Theo nod, stepping beside her to join in a unified front. “Richard Shaw is breaking pack laws by selling our own to Mr. Kavinsky.”

The room erupted into chaos. Everyone has started talking at once – some demanding justice, while others have condemned the three wolves in front of them for saying anything at all. The worst of it are his brothers and sisters that wanted to turn their back on them; declaring its none of their business to involve themselves in such a thing. All of it makes Cal’s stomach churn.

His mind is whirling with how to deal with the panic – the indifference and most of all the people that actually want to help, despite the potential doom it means for all of them, if they’re wrong. Or worse – if these proclamations are true – Shaw has to step down as pack leader of New York.

The arguments continue back and forth as members of his pack begin to shove at each other, baring teeth as if ready to fight until Cal’s thunderous voice engulfs the room. “Shut it!”

Immediately, the entire room falls impeccably quiet.

He jerks his chin at Jayde and she steps forward without hesitation. “Can you keep an eye on them?” He gestures to all three of them; still huddled together some paces in front – watching the room with apprentice caution as though expecting someone to jump out at them at any moment. But they wouldn’t – so long as Cal deems them family, no one would ever dare.

Still, his stomach seizes at the uncomfortable position they’ve placed him in. The tension in the air is almost palpable as Cal wets his lips and the room seems to hover uncertainty as he formulates his thoughts into words. “This isn’t an accusation none of us should take likely. If they’re right – what Shaw is doing must be stopped. It goes against everything we are to allow this atrocity to continue. But, if they’re wrong –” he focuses his attention solely on them.

As though a needle pricks his skin, Cal slightly flinches at sight of fear in their eyes. They want him to save them, to save everyone – but, how can he? He’s only one man, one alpha. And while his gut wants to trust them, to believe them – the reality is, he needs more. And he needs to put his pack first – above all else, their safety is paramount. “Then I can’t guarantee your safety, and Shaw’s demands will no longer go unanswered.”

They blink in shock, their mouths hanging slightly open and even the rest of his pack seems surprised and uneasy at his decision. “For right now, I think we should all be careful. Derek is still out there, and if the circumstances are to be believed – there’s more of them where that came from.” He nods once, letting his pack know that the discussion is over.

While the hostility in the air is still very much apparent, no one speaks up to challenge his decision. Feeling a little relieved, Cal gestures for Jayde to follow him towards the study upstairs. His gaze drops short of Wren, - who for all intense purposes looks furious but makes a show of keeping her mouth shut as he disappears from the hall.

When Cal and Jayde are alone, he allows himself a moment. Just a moment. His shoulders sag as he sits inside a chair and he runs his hands across his face with a resigned sigh.

“Holy shit Cal.” Jayde starts, bracing a hip across the long desk in front of them.

“I know.”

He leans back inside his seat and peeks a glance at her.

She seems speechless herself, which is rare for someone like her. Her eyes appear lost in thought before she rises off the table to pace the room. “If what they’re saying is true –”

“Then this is huge.” Cal finishes for her, rubbing his face. “How the fuck did this go unnoticed for so long?”

She shrugs, folding her arms. “Shaw’s been alpha far longer than you and Kristof combined. His influence probably goes so far higher than any of ours.” She stops to arch an eyebrow at him, “do you believe them then?”

“Fuck.” He squeezes his eyes shut.

“So, I take that as a yes.”

He opens his eyes to stare out of the office window. He watches as the afternoon sun barely touches the horizon. It’s so peaceful out there, and yet he’s stuck in here – dealing with problems, he has no idea of fixing. “It’s a – I-don’t-know-what-to-think.” He mutters finally, answering her with a response he hopes is adequate enough to show how screwed they really are. “How am I supposed to take the word of three kids over someone like Shaw?” He rubs his eyes and heaves another sigh. “You’re right that his influence stretches far and ours – well it’s nowhere even close.”

Jayde nods slowly, her brows pinching together. “Then what the hell do we do?”

Cal is starting to wonder than himself.

Shaw’s pack outnumbers his ten to one, and going up against someone like that requires proof. His thoughts turn to Kavinsky. He has to find some way to get to him – he may be more reasonable to at least talk to at this point. Besides, as long as he appears in the dark of the whole problem – what reason would the man have to suspect him of anything?

“First, we find proof.” Cal rises to feet, breaking the silence. “Proof can go a long way in crippling Shaw’s plans.”

“And how do you suppose we find proof?”

“I have to meet Kavinsky. In person.” He pauses and then adds, “on my own probably. I haven’t been alpha for very long and I know Kristof had deals with him in the past. It won’t really look suspicious if I’m coming to him for a favour.”

“Uh huh,” Jayde nods along. “I’m with you so far. Still….it’s risky,” she hesitates, glancing off to watch the window. “Going in alone.”

“It’s better this way. No one else gets pulled into this..mess. And all I’m doing is looking for clues – nothing else. Kavinsky is a major player not just for us – but for vampires, the fae witches - there’s a lot of other people that rely on him.” Cal shakes his head. “I can’t just try to stop him – compared to Shaw, the idea is fucking crazy at best.” He starts to pace the room as well; dragging his fingers through his hair as he contemplates his next move.

“So, we find proof that Shaw is a psychopath and then what?” He can almost see the wheels turning in her expression. “Look, his pack is much bigger than ours and even if we find anything –”

“That may not change anything else, I know. But I can’t just sit around and wait for another one of his wolves to do something again!” Cal gestures angrily in the air, turning on his heels to bang his knuckles against the window. “That puts us all at risk.”

“The easiest thing to do would be to send those kids packing.” She folds her arms defensively as he glances up, eyes flashing in anger. “and I know that’s not something you want to hear.”

He snorts derisively.

“And I know you Cal – you’re not going to do that anyway. You’re going to help, even if –” she falls short for a second and Cal is surprised at the sudden tremble in her voice. “Even if it ends up getting you killed.” A look passes in her eyes; something close to vulnerability before she glances away again.

Cal releases a breath. He’s under no false pretenses here. If he pursues this…there’s no telling what can happen. But he has to prepare himself, he has to prepare her and the rest of the pack for whatever the hell this all means. “There’s no way everyone’s coming out of this alive,” he tries to smile but it falls short. “But let’s hope it won’t come to that. Maybe it’s all just a misunderstanding.” Cal tries to smile but it falters and comes up short. He doesn’t believe his own lies.

Before Jayde can respond, the door bursts open and all five feet seven of Wren stands in at ready – with her hands clenched at her sides and her eyes a blaze of dark fury.

Shit.

The door rattles as it slams shut behind her. “What the hell was that?” As she takes a step towards them, Jayde’s posture shifts into one of almost fierce protectiveness. “Back off, Jayde.” She barks, waving an angry hand in her direction. She doesn’t tear her gaze from him.

“You don’t talk to the alpha like that.” Jayde’s bares her teeth at her in an angry snarl.

It’s out of instinct more than anything else, Jayde doesn’t have any malice behind her words. Still, Cal knows it’s better to defuse the situation than to let it escalate any further. “What’re you talking about?”

Wren’s withering stare intensifies. “That.” She points to the door. “Downstairs. What you said to those kids –”

“– is more than fair considering what they’re asking of us.” Jayde interjects; her eyes narrowing at Wren’s disposition.

“I’m sorry,” She shifts her hostile onto his beta. “I failed to remember when I asked for your opinion.” She presses her lips into a firm line, “now if you could actually give Cal and I a second alone, and when I ask you for your thoughts – I’ll let you know.”

Jayde stiffens, her eyes illuminating amber specks as she takes a step forward towards his mate. Wren moves almost right after her, tilting her head as if to challenge the wolf herself.

Cal beats them both to it. He stands a little taller and straightens his shoulders to exert his will as alpha. “We should probably get going anyway, it’s getting late.” He makes a point of waiting for Jayde to return his gaze before he inclines his head and asks for a favour. “Do you mind taking Donny home for us? And giving those three a ride home?”

She nods once, jaw clenching and unclenching before she excuses herself from the room. Her shoulders brush past Wren a little harder than Cal thinks it should, and he bares his teeth into a snarl before Jayde glances back to mutter a stiff apology.

“What a bitch.” Wren mutters.

“She means well,” his protest is almost immediate until she narrows her eyes at him. “Are you really going to defend her right now? You know that’s the last thing that’s gonna help you.”

Left alone with Wren, Cal closes the distance between them with a few quick and long strides. “I’m sorry.” He says the words softly but Wren doesn’t appear to be deterred by the sincerity of his apology.

“How could you?” She jerks her chin at him.

He swallows past the sudden lump in his throat. The look of anger that suddenly flits across her face, nearly stifles his lungs attempt to breathe. “It’s not that simple.” He protests weakly.

“It’s not that simple?!” She mimics him with a scoff, points a finger to his chest. “They’re kids Cal, orphans for fuck’s sake. The kind of treatment you’ve given them, they don’t deserve it!”

“What else was I supposed to do?! Take them by their word?” Cal blinks disbelievingly at her. “You have to realize how ridiculous that sounds – the allegations they’re tossing around are pretty fucked up. I’d be a fool to just listen to them without any proof, it’s their alpha we’re talking about.”

“Their old alpha.” She reminds him, lips thinning into a frown. “You’re their alpha now.” Her chin lifts defiantly, “and you’re doing a pretty shitty job at protecting them.”

The accusation more than hurts. It stings. They pierce a piece of himself that no one else has been able to reach. But for Wren, it’s always been easy, so easy for her to get past his defenses. Why doesn’t she get it? Why can’t she see why he’s doing this?

“I’m trying to protect everyone, not just three people that pissed off their old alpha. And if you haven’t noticed, there’s more than them out there – there’s goddamn thirty!” His voice escalates with every word he utters.

There’s less than a few measly inches between them and his taut body steps close enough to see the slight flicks of dark gold around the irises of her eyes as he gestures angrily between them. “Thirty people that have as much right to be protected than everyone else.” They need him – they all need him.

The way she makes it sounds – it’s as if she doesn’t get how hard this all is. How much stress and danger this puts on his pack, especially if a word of this gets out to anyone else.

And maybe she doesn’t, get it. She doesn’t get why it’s more complicated to protect those kids than it is to let them go. She’s doesn’t get why this could all get them slaughtered if he makes one wrong move. She’s never going to understand completely because she’s always had one foot in the door – meanwhile, he’s spent his entire life on the other side of it.

“They’re still just kids.” Her hands tremble as they grip the folds of his shirt. “They’ve been all alone and you were like – like a lifeline for them.” There’s a haunting look in her eyes that pushes far past their conversation. “Do you think it’s easy what they did? Standing up in front of all those people? They didn’t ask to be in this position!” Her grip tightens into tight fists as her eyes widen with a fierceness he’s never seen before.

“Yeah – well neither did I, fuck –” He lets out a string of curses. “And it’s not like I’m not trying to help. I’m sticking my own ass to meet with Kavinsky is the first place.”

He doesn’t want to put his hands on her, he’d never hurt her – but her fingers are wound so tightly into his shirt that Cal has to pry them off. The wolf inside him snaps when she fights his attempt to dissuade her. And the leash he often uses to keep the worst parts of himself at bay, rattles – because it yearns to be free. But he won’t give in, he can’t. This is Wren. This is the love of his life.

Wren flinches slightly at the roughness of his grip. Instead of dropping her hands, she places them on his chest and pushes. She pushes him with such abrupt force that he staggers back a fraction. “That’s not enough, don’t you get it Cal? This is something you need to fix now, and the Cal I know would never turn his back on someone – not when they needed him. Hell – you’ve never turned your back on me.”

“I’m alpha now.” He says the words defensively, but there’s no flash of recognition in her eyes – no hint that she gets the harsh predicament he’s in. It’s one thing when it’s been just himself, Donny and her – there was no one else to worry about then. They’ve been the center of his world for so long that he understands why she still believes that.

He used to have no responsibilities hanging over his head when he’d disappear for weeks at a time to be with her. But after challenging Octavia and winning – everything changed. Now he has too many people counting on him. Too many people that need protecting.

“Yeah? And? I’m your mate – since we’re throwing pointless titles around.” She lashes out, drawing upon her full height to stare up at him.

“That’s where you’re wrong Wren. It’s not just a title. It’s who I am. I fought tooth and nail for it because I believed I could do better than Octavia – I still do. And I’m not going to jeopardize that because you don’t believe in me.”

She fumbles to respond. “That’s not what I meant–”

“Isn’t it?” Cal shakes his head. “You’ve never believed in me Wren, let’s not pretend. You’ve wanted to, but you’ve never tried to make it work with my pack.”

She flinches.

“Every time I’ve brought it up – your answer has always been the same. You aren’t ready to be apart of my life – not the way I need you to be.”

“Cal, I’m your mate.”

He continues talking as if she hadn’t spoken. “Do you even know what that means? Mate? Do you know how much you’ve had to be willing to sacrifice to be my mate? To be apart of my pack?” He shakes his head again. “You’ve never been invested into that - not completely.” He forces himself to swallow, despite the sudden crack in his voice as he looks at her. “Into us. Into this pack. You’ve always had one foot in the door.”

Wren recoils in shock as though he’d struck her. Her hands drop loosely to her sides as she staggers away from him. “That isn’t –”

“True?” He goads, taking full reins of his temper. God, he should stop – he knows he should stop before he says something he can never take back. But the lines they’ve crossed over and over again, the lines they’ve blurred ten times over has always been something they’ve done together – except now, right now Cal feels completely alone.

“If isn’t true then tell me I’m wrong.” A sense of urgency threatens to overwhelm him as he closes the distance between them to grip her shoulders. “Tell me you love me right now. Tell me you’re willing to turn and complete the mating ritual to always belong to me. And only me.” His fingers dig into her flesh and he fights the temptation to shake her.

Her mouth slips open, before quickly snapping shut again.

The silence hangs between them.

And it hurts. The silence fucking hurts, it hurts even more to think he’s driven her speechless, driven her utterly dumbstruck by the one question he’s always been too afraid to pursue. He’s given her time; even when he struggles with his own patience – he’s given her more than enough to show how completely committed he’s always been to her.

Cal drops his hands, and blinks back the tears that suddenly prick at the corner of his eyes. He thought it could be enough. “You can’t say it, can you?”

But he thought wrong.

“That isn’t – that isn’t fair.” She’s shaking so much that she visibly has to reach for the wall behind herself to keep steady and her voice – it cracks, like there’s tiny pieces of herself breaking.

He doesn’t want to break her; he’s only ever wanted to love her.

“You know I care deeply about you Cal.” Her voice is suddenly desperate as she reaches for him, only to stop short when he steps away and create more space between them. “You’re the one person that I’ve ever cared about enough to stick around for – do you think I’d still be in NOLA if I didn’t have you? If I didn’t give a damn about you or Donny – or any of this?” She throws her hands up in the air, clearly frustrated as her eyes turn glassy. “The pack is yours – but you’re mine. You’ve always been mine.”

But it’s not enough. It’s not enough for her to give a damn about him, to claim him like he’s a regular human being when he’s not. It isn’t enough for what Cal feels - because he’s fallen so far and si deeply for her that there’s no hope of seeing the surface again.

“Cal, say something please.” She begs. There’s a vulnerability in her eyes and it clings to her as her gaze turns pleading. Her hand stretches towards him – as if to touch and erase whatever stain her words have made on his soul, except at the last second – they fall back to her side and Cal shudders at the mark that’s still left on his heart.

“Say anything.”

The only thing he can say isn’t something he’s ready to admit out-loud. Not yet.

Saying it out-loud makes it real.

Instead, Cal tries to commit everything about her to memory. The way her long chestnut hair is scooped up into a messy ponytail that he’s spent countless of hours running his fingers through. The way those dark eyes of hers’ have often winked mischievously at him now seems on the brink of tearing up – the way he currently feels on the inside staring down at her. The way those lips of hers had often laughed or whispered lewd things to his ears and smiled at him indulgently – even when the entire world was looking. The way her skin looks – albeit pale but flushed against him after the moments they’ve stolen together over the course of a year.

Cal memorizes it all, even as his heart breaks at the thought – he tries to piece together every Wren moment in his life that’s lead him here. In front of her.

It is in this moment, staring at her that Cal realizes what he hasn’t been able to before. All the reasons why relationships never work out are suddenly at the forefront of his mind and months of dancing around the subject has left him feeling tired, and heartbroken. He used to think they were the exception but now the truth is undeniable as it leaves an angry mark across his heart.

He can’t be alpha and be the man she wants.

It’s as clear as day now that he’s said to himself. Now that he isn’t pretending anymore. And there’s some relief and pain in knowing he’s done everything he can to salvage that. But he can’t keep this up – pretending everything will be okay and calling it love will break him. Break them.

As long as she can’t accept this is who he is, and his pack is who he is meant to lead – there’s no version of themselves that can be happy.

The air in his lungs evaporates within a heated frenzy as Cal finally breaks his vow of silence. The words are hallowed as they leave his lips, but they needed to be said. “I can’t be what you Wren, and you....can’t be what I want. There’s nothing left for us here.”

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