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highfantasy-soul · 30 days

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NATLA Episode 8 - Legends (4/4)

[Masterlist of my NATLA thoughts]

Of course, full spoilers ahead.

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I think the live-action show wraps up the season a lot better than the animated show did. The animated show just…ends with no dialogue between the Gaang, no momentum forward for the next season. Aang just turns back into himself, hugs Katara, and the three of them stare out over the water, the battle won. There's no lingering on the cost, there's no decisions for the future, it's just…over. I like that the live-action has them grapple with what just happened, process the battle and the losses and how it's not going to end. We see the actual loss from the battle - there's none of that in the animated show. We see Hahn's body, the body of the young waterbender who called Katara master, and we get to see Aang's horror at the violence of war (and what the Avatar state can do) now, right after it happened rather than just ending on the 'high' of him defeating everyone and saving the trauma for next season.

We reiterate the arcs of the season: we can't run away from the pain of war, all we can do is keep fighting for a better future. Sokka's worth isn't in his fighting ability but in his heart and using every aspect of his being to help out. Katara is growth and change and standing up for what's right even when the whole world tells her no - and reminding others of those truths too. And above all, they're going to lean on each other to help save the world - they don't have to do it alone.

Again, we have Katara herself being the one to change Pakku's mind, not some connection with a past love, but Katara and her showing him by her actions and arguments that she was right. Love that he offers her a place helping train new waterbenders, recognizing that she has things to teach that no one else knows - but she turns it down because her place is beside Aang for now. They've got a journey to complete.

The scene with Zuko and Iroh is pulled right from the animated and it's another instance of them knowing exactly what to keep the same - but this time, I feel like Zuko is even MORE tired than in the animated show. This really does leave his path forward more open than it was in the animated series. While his father hasn't outright said he can never return, even if he gets the Avatar, Zuko is now questioning if Zhao was right and what he should do if he is. I think that season 2 can open very similarly to the animated series and I'm looking forward to how they do that.

This final scene with the Gaang is a wonderful summation of the season: this war isn't Aang's fault - death and pain are going to keep coming as long as the fire nation can act with impunity, so Aang needs to let go of the past (not let it paralyze him with the fear that it'll happen again) and take steps toward building a better future. Learn the elements, master the Avatar state, and take down the Fire Lord.

Their little banter right at the end was so cute!!!! Sokka talking about food, Katara judging him for it, Aang joking around - perfect Gaang dynamic there. I love that that's the last thing we see of our protagonists this season: not some epic inspiring speech or act, but just three friends bantering as they get ready to take on an insurmountable challenge - a lighthearted moment after all that darkness.

The stinger of the Fire Nation is a great way to set up next season and the specific challenges the Gaang will face. The full circle strategy of drawing the attention to one place while really attacking to debilitate another was such an awesome callback to Sozin's plan with the Air Nomad invasion. Ozai, I think, is playing it even more intricately. He sets many pieces out on the board and even though he has a feeling certain ones will succeed while others fail, the 'weaker' options still have the change of surprising him.

Ozai says it was always a long shot that Zhao could take the North, but Zhao almost surprised him with his ingenuity of the 'killing the moon spirit' plan. Not that it worked out for him, but there was at least a chance it could have worked. Ozai really sent Azula out to take Omashu - the target that had a greater chance to fall than the entire Northern Water Tribe and gave that plan the best chance to succeed - and it did. He's playing the same game with Azula herself and Zuko - he has a feeling Azula is going to be the one to come out on top, so he waters her the most and gives her the greater resources and tasks that have a chance of success, but he's still waiting to see if all the games and hitting of pressure points sparks something in Zuko that will make him claw to the tops of the ranks. He's the underdog, but I don't believe Ozai has counted him entirely out of the running yet.

I think next season can pick up pretty much the same place the animated series did: Ty Lee at the circus now that Azula is off in the world doing things, Mai and her family taking over Omoshu as 'New Ozai', and Azula sent off into the world to collect Zuko and bring him home since his quest hasn't borne any fruit. Then the Gaang hanging out and training Aang with waterbending and then off to find Aang an earthbending teacher. I think there's also a good chance they'll seed in something of a Jong Jong episode where Aang will attempt firebending as well and include some of the other storylines that didn't make it into season 1. I'll write another post about the storylines cut and why I think that might have been as well as a post about storylines they added.

Overall, I think they did a really great job adapting the animated series to this new format. They deepened a lot of things I thought were glossed over in the animated series (Iroh's past as a general and the loss of characters we got to know and like) and added some really great threads such as Katara's waterbending journey being fully linked to the fire nation trying to destroy her culture and the death of her mother, Sokka learning how to be a whole person and not deny parts of himself just because 'traditional masculinity' is what he thought was needed in this time of war, and Aang really taking the time to grapple with coming to terms with the past and stepping into the future to take his place as the Avatar.

I think they kept the hearts of the characters the same - I genuinely believe they kept Katara's anger and fire (but added more layers to it which I think added depth, it didn't 'water it down'), Sokka's unhealthy relationship with non-traditional masculinity and needing to be in charge added realism and a deeper story than just flat, 2000's sexism, and I love love love how we got to see more of Gyatzo and Aang's relationship heightening Aang's desire to keep the Air Nomad traditions of diplomacy, non-violence, and open friendship alive like he wants to in the animated show.

Aang truly is the Avatar needed for this time. He brings joy and the belief that people are, at heart, good back to a world that has been suffering through a 100 year war.

#natla #avatar the last airbender #netflix avatar #atla #natla positivity

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slightlyrebelliouswriter23 · 2 years

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Madoc rlly had all the audacity in Faerie land to look shocked when Jude called him out on his bullshit in twk.

Like my brother in christ…. YOU traumatized them first (the sisters). Their parents were literally murdered in front of them and then they leave every single thing they ever learned about the world behind and get thrown head first into a world that plays by completely different rules, and everyone around them has a head start on them. I even doubt he gave them any time to grieve or make sense of their trauma. He couldn’t have thought claiming them as his “real” daughters was gonna make a difference. The people whose world they share literally hate everything there is about them. Their culture, their clothes, their skin, hair color/eye color; and they make it a point to throw this in mortals faces every second they’re in Faerie. The sisters felt they had to earn their place in the world because just existing wasn’t good enough in other folks eyes. Your home should NEVER feel like that. And then madoc brings home a beautiful bride and a new son but the catch is she try’s very hard to act like nobody but oak exists and calls one of the sisters a devil child. Like yea no wonder one’s lying about everything in her life to please the one thing she’s found that makes her happy. No wonder another’s letting the folk walk all over her just so she could have the hope of being able to survive among them and then snapping when that chance turned out even worse than she thought. And it’s no damn wonder the last one is hatching political plots and murdering people left and right. Jude was on the money with that “I am what you made me” line. Their environment and home life shaped them to be what they are. The folk act even worse than the sisters towards mortals but it’s never criticized, but no, mortals can’t do what they do. The sisters are very much what they started out as, traumatized children who have never been able relax for one second. They’re in survival mode 24/7. Jude’s narrative is biased but her intention behind every move is to survive, the folk are horrible because they just up and decided to be.

i feel like i don't even need to say anything else. this is a full and complete thought. i am passing you the mic.

oh no wait, i do have one thing to say: it's about the inherent and insurmountable anger at those who raise us. it's about the inescapable futility of raising children in a world that hates them. it's about the deep chasm of despair between parent and progeny. and then, horrifically, it's about the unburnable bridge between child and guardian.

–Em 🖤🗡

more theories and analysis

#i love their dynamic i hate their dynamic i love-#this one's for the girlies who are angry at the whole world #thanks for the ask!! 💜#your essays #tfota #jurdan #holly black #jude duarte #madoc #the cruel prince #the wicked king #the queen of nothing #the folk of the air #tfota meta #tfota analysis #my analysis #asked and answered #nonnie

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a-shape-changer-in-winter · 9 months

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The Price of Tenderness 3

I have tried, over and over, to enter this essay the way a door opens in another room. More than anything, I want to hold your face in my hands and tell you, “The work in us is not finished yet” I know it’s a grind bringing your everything, especially when you feel shackled to the past. Like Van Gogh’s sadness, the missing can go on forever - but perhaps an impossible longing that spreads is necessary for us to make room. Jorie Graham would remind us that our task is to handle the fire without getting obliterated and still pass on the fire, which feels like ancestral magic. A magic that I remember more than I discover as I age. I think that wisdom exists in each of us. We’ve just forgotten it. In a workshop in 2019 - I asked Ada Limón how she could dive into grief without burning up on (re)entry, and she responded: “Mostly because I’ve done it a lot […] We’ve all romanticized looking for answers at the bottom of the well […] you’ve got to protect yourself; know your strength, what you’re capable of that day - even at that moment. Some days we’re better equipped to dive in; you must care for yourself - mental, emotional, and spiritual health. Ensure you have a way out [of grief or despair]; sometimes, the poem [itself] is the way out. “

Among the ways that we're most connected to one another is that we’re all going to experience insurmountable loss. We all have to live with the deteriorating state of the world and unanswerable questions. Tony Hoagland believes “[..] that's why / we invented the complex sentence, so we could stand at a distance, // and make adjustments // in the view // while trying hard to track / the twisty, ever-turning plot”. And I believe that [true] recognition - of our feeble attempts to solve what no one else has solved facilitates a life of care. But only if we stop framing those questions so they fit the story we want to tell about our lives. Part of owning our story is letting the truth defend itself, even if it’s awful. I used to tell my story like I was describing a haunted house because I couldn’t bear the telling [eldrich horror] of what lived inside it. Our task isn’t to solve the beautiful terribles but to tend and hold them while allowing them to ripen us. Rilke told us to live the questions, but part of his insistence was for us to stop looking for answers, and that type of surrender is tricky because you have to choose it, sometimes multiple times a day. And then you gotta get up tomorrow and do it all over again. I have learned that grief is cone-shaped, and we will always orbit the gravity of immense loss and trauma - but we have to dissent on the days when we feel their gravity pulling us toward the event horizon. I believe part of our duty in recovery is refusing to fall after we’ve risen. We all stumble occasionally, but I’m talking about refusing to return to what buried you. Marie Howe assures us: “It hurts to be present [on these days], though. I ask my students every week to write ten observations of the actual world. It’s very hard for them….Just tell me what you saw this morning in two lines. I saw a water glass on a brown tablecloth, and the light came through it in three places. No metaphor. And resisting metaphor is very difficult because you have to endure the thing itself…”

In Paper Houses, Dominique Fortier reminds us that many masters, like Emily Dickinson, have already shown us how to endure and pay attention to the difficult and the banal: “As she writes, [ Dickinson] erases herself. She disappears behind the blade of grass that, if not for her, we would never have seen. She does not write to express herself, perish the thought. […S]he doesn’t write to be noticed. She writes to bear witness: here lived a flower, for three days in July, the year of 18**, killed by a morning shower. Each poem is a tiny tomb erected to the memory of the invisible.” This type of witnessing is a bright darkness. An earnestness that doesn’t strive to solve but to hold will give off its own light - because [holy shit] it turns out that holding and surrendering to the impossible thing is the critical alchemy to our bioluminescence.

Joy, like poetry [according to John Berger], “can repair no loss, but it defies the space which separates…by its continual labor of reassembling what has been scattered”. It is the evidence of our reaching across to one another in the midst of, or as a way even of caring for, one another's sorrows. And without sadness, joy would become something else entirely. Perhaps it wouldn’t exist at all. The perceived simplicity of meekness shifts in this context away from its synonymy with weakness and transmutes into an active passivity that may become an extraordinary force of symbolic resistance and, as such, fuses to both our ethics and politics. It is the ethos of [my] queerness because I reached a point where I wanted to live differently so desperately that it altered my gender identity [he/they], reverberating Bell Hook’s definition because I was at odds with everything around me and something deep down needed to invent and create and find a place to speak and to thrive and to live. Queerness, for me, is the antithesis of hyper-independence and masochism. Gordon Marion wrote: “In general, tenderness involves increased sensitivity. When we say that an injury is tender, we mean that it is hyper-sensitive to the touch. And in moments of tenderness, it is as though the ego and all its machinations momentarily melt away so that our feelings are heightened and we are perhaps moved by the impulse to reach out with a comforting hand.” Gentleness was [and is] my force of secret life-giving transformation linked to what the ancients called potentiality. If we hold the virtues of tenderness at our cores, the concise list of impossible things may never leave us, but the other list - of what is still possible - becomes exponential. Our greatest challenge doesn’t lie with either list - but with the limitations of our imaginations. I still return to “Maybe You Should Talk to Someone,” where Lori Gottlieb’s therapist, Wendall, illustrates for her:

“I’m reminded,” he begins, “of a famous cartoon. It’s of a prisoner, shaking the bars, desperately trying to get out—but to his right and left, it’s open, no bars.”

He pauses, allowing the image to sink in.

“All the prisoner has to do is walk around. But still, he frantically shakes the bars. That’s most of us. We feel completely stuck, trapped in our emotional cells, but there’s a way out—as long as we’re willing to see it.”

Because it’s such an accurate visualization of entitlement [at least for me], gentleness and tenderness already made the exits out of that prison, but we refuse to use them because they require us to let go of the bars [familiar pain, grief, or shame] we’ve been clinging to. I have been wrong whenever I believed I needed something specific for healing or transmutation. Not only was I wrong, and it prevented me from healing - but holding onto that belief exacerbated that pain. It’s laughable now, but my most significant failures [and character defects] in my 20s revolved around believing life [or someone else] owed me answers. This isn’t much different than a 7-year-old throwing a temper tantrum in the cereal aisle because they tried to sneak cinnamon toast crunch into the shopping cart and got caught. We don’t get to decide what life owes us or what miracles the universe offers. Although, there have been times when I wished I could climb that stairway to heaven and smash open the spigot from which grace seems to be metered. Accepting that I’m not in control is another form of surrender, knowing I didn’t earn this grace through my suffering. But, I believe I can be worthy of it if I extend it to others and keep my palms open like windows.

I find it prudent to believe any pain that we’ve processed will also die [if we stop excavating around it], that wear and tear await every haunted house, and that some [pains] already have no more meaning for us as their ghosts fade like film left out in the July sun. I know the miracle of today, like everything else, attains its richness in what erodes and decays in time. The gift of friendship isn’t just in recognition, equipping, and believing in the other - but the nourishment that is only possible through our mingling. It is the source of our greatest sorrows and attachments and our place of luminescence. What purpose does that light serve but to illuminate the ways between you and me? I know something wonderful is happening to us - if we would allow it. I know that we have not forgotten each other. I think of you all with the utmost/excruciating warmth, and in a sense - I pray for each of you nightly. And while I wish I could take each of your hands and hold them dear in mine - want I wish for most is that you continue to be who you are and who you’ve been called to be. And if you aren’t yet, I pray that you are convicted to. I wish for nothing more than transformative experiences in your lives and awakenings in each of our hearts.

There's a dream I keep having where I'm running up the stairs of your porch to your front door. A dream where nothing separates us. Not space. Not time, borders, or language. A dream where I am with you, and the loss has finally made us both open, [and love, it bears repeating] open roads.

#blog

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divine-nonchalance · 1 year

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∞

The 9D Arcturian Council, Channeled by Daniel Scranton

“Greetings. We are the Arcturian Council. We are pleased to connect with all of you.

We have an enormous amount of respect for all of you who have chosen very challenging lives for yourselves, because we know that you are not just doing it for your own experiences. We know that those of you who come forth and take on a lot are doing it for your entire ancestral line. You are helping past life versions of yourselves, and you are helping the generations that are to be born into your family in the future. You are helping parallel aspects of yourselves on other timelines and even in other universes. You are also helping all of humanity by moving through a very challenging life circumstance, or what some might even call a trauma, because you are showing others that there is another way.

You are showing everyone who is connected to you that they too can handle life’s challenges, with grace, with dignity, and with love and joy flowing to them and through them. Life’s traumas do not have to crush anyone, and what we are seeing there on Earth at this time is that far fewer of you are being crushed by those challenges that you placed in front of you before incarnating.

The first thing you want to do when facing a seemingly insurmountable challenge is accept it. The second thing you want to do is to recognize that you chose it. The third thing you want to do is acknowledge your emotions that you feel in regards to it. The next thing you want to do is feel those emotions. And finally, having cleared those emotions you will have a much different perspective on what it is that is actually happening. You will be able to see it as a springboard, a way for you to grow even more spiritually.

All of life’s traumas, challenges, and tragedies are nudging each and everyone of you in a particular direction. Some of you start support groups. Others form bonds with those who went through the circumstance with them. Some have spiritually transformative experiences during the trauma, and when you hear about someone who not only survived one of these very challenging experiences but also is thriving now, you get inspired. You are all meant to inspire each other, and no one is meant to pity anyone else there on Earth. But having compassion for someone is different from pitying them, and you are all meant to have compassion for your fellow humans who are going through the suffering that they are going through.

And when you can hold space for one of those individuals to get what they are supposed to get out of it and eventually thrive, then you really are being of service to them, and you can watch and wait for their moment where they will inspire you and everyone else who eventually hears their story. And that is how you clear ancestral trauma and help everyone who shares planet Earth with you at this time.

We are the Arcturian Council, and we have enjoyed connecting with you.”

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punksarahreese · 2 years

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“We really shouldn’t be doing this…” maybe for ghost ava? - 3 or 5 sentences or however long you’d like :)

Ava did a lot of things she regretted in her life, some of them stemming from her borderline and others simply out of human error. She had been so thoughtful on paper but as she reached her end all she became was impulsive. Looking back her downward spiral was obvious, though perhaps she wasn’t the only problem if no one else had noticed until she bled out under Connor’s scalpel.

Even in death, old habits die hard. It’s what Ava told herself to justify what she was about to do, knowing full well what Jason would say.

“We really shouldn’t be doing this, Bekker…”

He wasn’t there, though. He didn’t see what Ava saw, he never could. As much as Jason wanted to understand her over-emotional attachment to things, he never would. He could warn her about the shadow people all he wanted. It wouldn’t change the fact that ignoring the scene in front of her would make her as heartless as the living chalked her up to be.

The emergency department was crawling with people, as loud and uncomfortable as Ava remembered. It wasn’t the bloodied faces of patients or screaming of grieving family that upset her that day, though. Instead it was the barely there figure crouching behind a privacy curtain, tiny blue socks just peeking through. Ava had watched the scene unfold merely by accident and she knew better than to interfere, yet something in her was screaming not to turn away.

“Hey, little one,” she tried to speak quietly, though her voice somehow rang out over the bustle of the ED. A tiny squeak told her she had been heard, though no words proceeded.

“Harper?” She remembered the name falling from Doctor Marcel’s lips like a broken promise all those months ago. She had watched the toddler follow her father around for weeks, just barely touching him before he slipped from her tiny grasp yet again. Jason never let her get involved, telling her they couldn’t interfere. It would only hurt the baby, risking her becoming trapped in the hospital just like they were. It was too late now, though. Ava couldn’t let the child’s spirit go, not after what she saw.

“P-papa,” her voice was shaky and Ava wondered if she had even used it after her death. She peeked through the curtain at the woman in front of her, Ava tried not to take it to heart when she cried out. The large wound in her neck was a shock to anyone, even without the blood, but to a baby it would be mortifying.

“Your papa is busy helping people now,” she said slowly, “Did you get scared, Harper?”

Blue eyes met hers again, chemo having robbed her of any eyelashes to catch her tears. Instead they slid freely down her cheeks as she nodded, clutching her stuffed animal tightly to her chest.

“I know it must have been scary…” Ava couldn’t help but think of her own childhood, the things she saw before she could tie her shoes would be enough to make a grown woman weep. She knew Harper went through an insurmountable pain before she was out of diapers, so being haunted by it in death was an injustice no one deserved.

“I’m Ava,” she added as an afterthought, “I can help you find a safer place to play, you can wait for your papa there.”

“Wanna see… see papa…”

“He’s working, darling, and this isn’t a good place for you to be. He’s helping people feel better, you know that?”

It took some more coaxing before Harper would come out from her hiding place. She did eventually, though, and Ava couldn’t help but be relieved. She didn’t know where she would take Harper or what would happen now that she spoke to her. All Ava knew was an ED after a shooting was no place for a toddler and she couldn’t let more trauma befall the kid.

So with Harper’s tiny hand in hers, Ava led her through the double doors and down the hall. The surgeon felt a million eyes on her, burning through her very soul, but she had to shake it off. She’d done what Jason had warned her against from the beginning; now she would just have to accept their wrath.

#hi it’s 6 am and I haven’t slept yet :) have this <3 #kinda just started writing and kept going out of nowhere with this one gsjdkdkf #thank u zee <3 #ava bekker #chicago med #harper marcel #ghost!ava #ghost!harper #16:22 #time of death!au #my aus #asks #mutuals #zee tag

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spectacularsanah · 2 years

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COVID- Trick or treat – how has COVID impacted on the mental health of people and my reflections on returning to normal

For all adults and youth, COVID-19 meant staying inside the confines of your home and isolating from the world. This alone, is enough to make anyone experience stress, anxiety, fear, sadness and loneliness. Even though we are in the aftermath of the pandemic, its effects still linger with us in the scars that it has left behind. And trying to recover from a circumstance that once looked almost insurmountable, is a task that each and every one of us is still conquering.

Research has shown a marked increases in levels of stress, depression, anxiety, and loneliness in the overall population over the course of the pandemic. The pandemic has affected multiple aspects of mental health as well as multiple populations and groups. People have lost their jobs, have experienced reduced income, or lost their business, are experiencing considerable stress and anxiety due to financial uncertainty, which ranges from not being able to pay their bills to fearing eviction from their homes. Those whose children are not in school and cannot afford childcare have increased anxiety and stress due to having to care full time or home school their children, while also managing their jobs. Younger populations and children may also have reduced social development due to lack of interpersonal context. ( Martin Hagger, PhD, 2021 )

From the sources above, one can clearly infer that the first Lockdown of COVID-19 or surviving the virus, was like jumping from a sinking boat to a life raft. And that was the easy part. In the aftermath where we have to now reach dry land, that is harder. The effect of COVID-19 has been staggering, on the mental health of people, and in a South African context the realty is that access to support or mental health care is limited. This then leaves the majority of our population to face this difficulty all alone. So what can OT do?

The role of OT in the aftermath of COVID is to teach clients to:

Combat mood disruptions, such as fear, stress and loneliness, that arose due to social isolation.

Address occupational deprivation and establishing useful habits, roles, and routines.

So what comes next ?

During the pandemic and continuing into after, the most popular saying was the we are in a New Normal. We've never lived through a time like this. Even though masks are not necessary in South Africa many people still wear it. It makes them feel safe and protected. Going into lockdown made us vulnerable, and coming out of lockdown left us vulnerable. We are still learning what it means to be in a new normal and to heal from the past grief, traumas and depression.

Returning to normal is hard. Uncertainty coupled with the loss of normalcy can cause one to lose hope. It is important to remember that the rest of the world is with you. If one thing is true about COVID-19, it is that we have all been in this together.

#occupational therapy #covid 19 #mental health #mental heath support #mentalheathawareness #coping #south africa #student

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endogenicredstar · 1 month

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Pondering Things 5: Poke Along Sylum!

Good afternoon, everyone! I hope you all are having a lovely day thus far, and if you're just now going to bed, I hope you have a lovely night!

These past three days have been quite stressful. Two of those days were spent outside of the house. I had to go to my PCP-- that means primary care physician-- on the first day. And on the second day, I had to go and see my therapist. Let me tell you, the first day was not easy. That was supposed to be the day that I came out to my doctor as tranmasc. And I was supposed to tell him that I wanted to seek some form of vocal therapy to deepen my voice. I had the moment to tell him, and I almost did. Problem was, that my dad came back from the lab a bit too soon. So, I unfortunately chickened out. I'm still mad at myself about that. I know my father we'll find out sooner or later, but I don't want him to yet. Hell, I don't think I ever will tell him. He's voiced his distaste for people like me. So, for the sake of my own physical safety, I have to keep my mouth shut.

I also had to get my blood drawn on the first day, so that some tests could be done. Let's just say I don't do well with needles. That was the start of my anxiety for the day. Then, I learned that I have to start using a glucometer. That's a little device that monitors a person's blood sugar. You poke yourself in the finger with a needle, and feed it to the machine. It then tells you how high or low your blood sugar is. So, yes, I'm pretty much diabetic now. Specifically, the doctor said I was pre-diabetic some time ago. As previously stated, I don't do well with needles. So, coupled with my intense anxiety from that day, I've been feeling rather awful. I've been both mentally, and emotionally exhausted. But, fret not! I'm slowly but surely recovering.

I used my glucometer for the first time this morning. It was easy enough, I suppose. It definitely wasn't as painful as I thought it would be. Of course, that's what happens when your mind gives you the worst case scenario; you're so scared of the possible outcome, that the real thing tends to be quite tame. A tiny, little prick is nothing compared to the insurmountable pain that my brain conjured up.

I'm going to speak on one more thing. And, some of you may not like me for this. I've discovered quite recently that I am what is known as an endogenic system. That means I have alters/headmates without having trauma. Apparently, some people really hate that. Including the person that could be my canonmate. I asked them about it without mentioning that I am one. And they said, and I'm paraphrasing here, "I don't support them. You can't be a system without trauma." When I read those words, I felt as though I had been slapped in the face. So, I left the server that they ran, and I've not spoken to them since. As much as it wounds me, I don't think it would benefit me to stay friends with someone like that. This means that I've lost my second canonmate. Will this torment never end?

I suppose I shouldn't stop here for now. Thank you also very much for reading, and I'll see you in the next entry!

#pondering things #fictionkin #otherkin #bumakin #musings #endogenic system #I'll introduce the system mates some point. just not today.

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joyfuldeepend · 1 year

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And now what….

Hi to all my deependers!! It’s been awhile since I’ve had the capacity to write anything. I’d love to say it’s because life has been busy and I’ve been thriving. However, just like my kitchen calendar, I’ve been stuck in October. When things ended abruptly with the girls it crushed something in me and I haven’t figured out how to untangle it.

Seasonal depression seemed to invite itself in and I’ve been fighting to keep my mind above water. Increasing meds, talking to doctors and trying to just keep…moving. Busy days are best because when it slows down the ability to even get off the couch seems insurmountable.

I keep looking at the dates and holding on for the day when sunlight will return. When the afternoon sun will warm my face and the desire to move and engage will return. When the grief of this season will feel like a distant memory.

My therapist reminds me to sit in and feel the grief and not push it away. I often would like to push her away 🤪😂…because I can’t breathe some days from the weight of all the things I feel. So I lean in and feel it and swim up towards where the sunlight crests the water and my peace awaits.

I’ve had contact with all the girls, who’ve been in my home this past year, within the past few weeks. I’m working towards trust and relationship with the sisters as I discern what our future could look like. My mama’s heart yearns for their laughter and shenanigans to fill my silent home and my adult sense waits for relational stability wisdom.

This isn’t the only thing in my reality (oh the work & dating stories you’d need popcorn for) and yet it often feels like my world. I told my therapist that there was something that was awakened in me, something that finally made sense in me as their foster mom. This awakened part of me doesn’t know what to do with itself in this season. It cries out and is left to wail without response. I resist the urge to tie a bow on my life and journey. For those who this feels dark and like too much, I often say I’m too responsible for suicide so don’t worry for that portion. Worry about how our system treats foster kids. Worry for the kids that won’t have someone tell them they’re loved this season. Worry for kids who’s parents breed trauma in their children. Worry for the next generation. For me I will survive, so let me be sad, let me talk without a direction as I wrestle with this. For people who need tangible things, send random texts, food and gift cards as you desire…but most of all ask me “and now what”…and just listen 💜

It’s deep here and it’s also the joyful deepend friends! For where great love was, deep loss is felt!

#mylife #tumblr #blog #joyfuldeepend #blogpost #myloves #createwhatyoucrave #dowhatisrightnotwhatiseasy #vulnerability #fostercareflow #mystory

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bifuriouswaterbender · 1 year

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Stranger Things (Steve and Eddie) for 87

Send me a ship (or fandom) and a number between 1 & 101, and I’ll use my Spotify Wrapped as fic inspo

87 - IS IT ME - Loveless

Note: This is post-season 4 canon compliant. It isn't Steddie so much as Steve realizing what Steddie could have been. I hurt myself a little writing it, so while it isn't the angstiest thing ever written, you've been warned. This one might get polished and posted to AO3 at some point.

The aftermath of their battle goes much the same Steve as it always does. He lets Nancy and the others fuss over him medically. Then he goes home to an empty house. He scrubs off the Upside Down grime in the shower and redresses his own wounds after. He goes to bed and tries to pretend the nightmares won’t wait him up the moment he managed to push the images away and try to sleep.

It won’t work. It never does.

But he’s also never had to deal with one of the images in that memory collection being the one where he drags Dustin away from a friend’s corpse.

They should have brought him back. Closing portals be damned.

But Steve had been too focused on keeping Dustin off his ankle and trying to block out that haunted look on Eddie’s face, the blood soaking down the shredded remains of his front.

Steve has always done a good job of looking affected. Even after the Russians, no one had known he woke up screaming every night for over a month. His parents hadn’t been around, so Steve didn’t even need an excuse.

Now, though, he struggles getting up for work in the mornings. It all feels so pointless.

Eddie had finally been about to graduate—a man full of life and vitality and direction. Maybe he hadn’t known where, but Steve knows he was going somewhere, going to do something special. He’d never given much thought to Eddie Munson before all this, and now he regrets it. He should have given him a chance, should have basked in a little of the warmth he gave off even as he tried to look like the kind of guy who would push everyone away.

He has a panic attack for the first time at work. Some klutzy middle schoolers knock over an entire shelf, and instead of berating them, Steve drops to the ground at the sound, unable to breathe. His heart is too loud, like it’s trying to beat up and out his throat.

“Steve?” Robin says, and she almost start hyperventilating with him as she babbles and tries to pull him back from the edge.

In the end, it isn’t Robin who helps him. It’s a whisper in the back of his mind, a memory of Eddie saying, “We aren’t heroes.” They were. He was. And here’s Steve unable to get through the day. But if Eddie can face insurmountable odds knowing he’s not going to make it (because Dustin could tell; it was all over his face), Steve can make himself take a breath. And another. And another.

“Oh thank god!” Robin’s voice is loud in his ear, and Steve flinches away from her.

“You’re okay,” she says, and Steve really needs her to stop talking. “You’re having a perfectly normal reaction to the amount of trauma you’ve gone through. It’s fine. We’re fine. We’ll kick those kids out of the store and clean up the display. It’ll be fine.”

“Go deal with them,” he manages to mutter. Although Steve doesn’t tell Robin he needs her to get out of his space right now, she seems to understand.

By the time she’s sent the kids out the door, Steve’s ready to drag himself back to his face. He can do this.

Within a couple weeks, he’s realized he can’t do this. Steve spends most of his time at work wondering how he’s ended up in a dead-end job stuck in his home town and the rest of it panicked that someone will need hima nd he won’t immediately be there. Even lying on his couch at home (because it’s closer to the door than his bedroom if someone needs him), Steve wonders what would happen if his walkie died, if the kids didn’t have time to radio, if he’s the one who gets flayed, Venca’d, or whatever the next hellish trick is they’ll have to go up against.

He won’t be enough. Steve knows he won’t be.

He won’t be in the right place, with the right group. He’s avoiding the hospital because he wasn’t there to help protect Max from Jason or Venca, and he’s avoiding Dustin because he wasn’t there to stop Eddie from sacrificing himself. At the same time, he can’t stand not to see them.

Steve knows he’s spiraling. He would have known that even if Robin hadn’t so helpfully pointed it out. Still, he doesn’t know how to stop it.

He doesn’t know how to deal with any of it.

“He kept flirting with you the last few days,” Dustin says when he’s finally cornered Steve and guilted him into dinner.

Steve choked on his food.

“Did you notice that?”

Steve attempts to swallow. “Yeah, I might have noticed.”

“Were you flirting back?”

Steve takes a drink not to stall this conversation but to keep his throat from closing up. “I don’t know.”

“If he had survived, would you have?”

“Maybe.”

“You’d have matching scars if he had.”

Dustin says it so casually, like it’s just a fact, not like it’s a bomb that sets Steve off, has him crumbled and sobbing in an old diner booth.

People look at them curiously. Dustin doesn’t show anything on his face to say he’s surprised. They must assume it’s normal.

For Steve, it has become normal.

Everyone else seems to be handling this the way they always do. There are nightmares, of course, and hard moments during the day, but no one else is struggling like Steve. Maybe he’s just taken on too much. Maybe he was always going to hit this point eventually.

He sees flashes of what his life should be. He sees big brown eyes and a wicked smile. Long ringed fingers moving across a guitar Steve has to share affection with. Nights spent curled up together. This was never his life. He can’t assume it would have been. But he can imagine it so clearly that it almost feels like a memory of what he never got. What he never gets.

Eddie is dead.

The man Steve could have fallen in love with his gone. And he’s partially responsible because he should have planned better. He should have insisted on being with the distractions because they were taking on too much. He should have known better. He didn’t. Now that’s his knowledge to be haunted with. Steve’s not as smart as the people around him. He’s stuck, treading water on a lake where he might be pulled it by demobats at any moment.

And he’s the only one who hurts like this.

#steddie #eddie munson #steve harrington #steddie drabble #my writing #my fanfic

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rosalesbeausderholle · 2 years

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I feel bad for saying this out loud but while I understand reactions to trauma can make someone this way and many women are legit incredibly traumatized by patriarchy it is still not normal or not okay to genuinely talk about killing people this much. Not in a jokey way which I know everyone does on the internet because the medium has taken all the weight off "k*ll yourself" messages (this is a BAD thing that social media has done to us by the way, it is NOT NORMAL or okay to be so accustomed to send or receive those messages, or the ones that wish rape on someone), but, while this is fucked up, I mean rather in the radblr/radtwt way of "the only way we do anything about patriarchy is by k*lling all/many men" and other such gender essentialist nonsense said as if that's no big deal as if that's just a fact of life or even something good?

Like I understand the point about change through violence (I still vehemently disagree that that's how anything has to be ftr, I will always be a pacifist in anything and everything), but still??? It's much worse on twitter than on tumblr because the audience here skews older but it's simply not normal that people here and on twitter, young women who want(ed) to learn about feminism and were excited to change the world, end up talking about the hypothetical murder/death of millions of people as if that's no big deal just a fact of life. And like, I know it's an hypothetical and I get why trauma from men creates those revenge fantasies as coping mechanisms I get it. But seeing young women get "blackpilled" into a sense of doom that I'm sure causes a lot more mental health issues than what they had to deal with before just absolutely breaks my heart.

I have seen young women, teenagers, accuse every man they come across of pedophilia and saying that since she thinks they're all inherently so that male victims of pedos then deserve to be laughed at. I have seen these kinds of ideas directed at gay men, at men of color. At trans people the longest. I know it's not feminism's job to concern itself with male issues such as male victims of sexual assault or to take every oppression under it's wing because it's a movement for women, but it still shouldn't be feminism and feminist women which are teaching young, traumatized teens to have so little empathy for their fellow human beings.

This doesn't help women in any way. All of these women don't want to do anything but cry all day about how everything is hopeless. I just can't imagine what that all does to your psyche I think there's a lot of retraumatizing going on (on top of the already ongoing potential hateful radicalization which gets worse each year) tbh. No type of feminism shouldn't be like this for women.

Yes, facing what the patriarchy does head on hurts and it feels like an insurmountable mountain. But even if you think it's all hopeless, if you're a feminist, the very least you could do is make other women feel better rather than be all doom and gloom about everything.

#feminism #i also saw someone once accuse a random trans woman of rape bc their rapist was also trans and she was convinced every trans person was #and the trans woman rightfully reacted angrily bc of course she did???#and this was a trans woman who was very much a feminist #and everyone on radtwt was like well you must have done something!#why are you such sociopathic oh my fuckinf god

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spacestationdaedalus · 3 years

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when my demons won’t let me be

or: not in his right state of mind, Jon accidentally compels Martin. It’s not okay, but it’s okay.

or or: i spend so much time reading sick fic and i finally wrote one of my own angst and plenty of hurt/comfort, warnings for canon-typical compulsion and descriptions of panic and disassociation

Martin wakes to a shifting of weight and a cut off breath. It's a hazy half-awareness, coming to him under a snowdrift, on a radio station drowning in dull static.

In a well-practiced motion, Martin extends an arm over the covers to rest on Jon's chest. He doesn't let the full weight fall, not yet. Enough for Jon to know he's there, a touch light enough that Jon can readily push away or lean into. It depends on the particular brand of nightmare, the terror that's chosen to follow him to sleep. Sometimes he sets Martin's arm aside with a gentle squeeze, sitting up against the headboard and taking comfort in the cool bedroom air and the sound of Martin's breathing. At least, in Jon's own words. Other times, he holds Martin's arm to his chest, taking comfort in the weight and warmth of it.

Neither of those things happen, though.

Jon rolls sharply, seemingly ignoring Martin's arm in favor of the other side of the bed. He curls around himself with a low whine, harshly cut off in the back of his throat.

"J'n?" Martin props himself up on one arm. Voice rough with sleep, but no less concerned.

Jon shifts, a back and forth movement that looks like it could be the shaking of his head. His shoulders are taut and trembling. He makes another sound that could be the beginning of a shout, and it brings Martin to full awareness. He moves his hands to Jon's shoulder before he has time to think, desperate to help, to comfort, to something.

"Jon, it's alright-"

“Don’t touch me!” Jon bursts out, dripping and full of static and oh oh oh. It cascades over Martin’s mind, oily and slick. His hands pull away like they've been burned, but numb and far off. As though belonging to a stranger.

He shifts away from Jon and off of the bed, limbs moving robotically to pull back the covers, to move him away until his back meets the bedroom wall. Martin's hands are raised halfway, frozen in a caricature of comfort. A puppet on strings. He wants to move, shout, anything. But the gaze of eyes he can’t see bears down on him, an insurmountable weight holding him in place. Like a butterfly pinned inside a glass display case.

Jon is sitting up, now. Eyes (eyes, eyes, he's all eyes) blown wide, bright and glassy even in the low light of the room. His breathing is ragged and uneven in obvious panic. Even with his hands clenched tight in the front of his nightshirt, Martin can see they’re trembling. Martin’s heart aches and he wants to help but he can’t move and Jon’s eyes are still on him and he can’t breathe and it hurts. And he's afraid. He can hear his pulse pounding in his ears, the eyes are still watching him and it feels so much like burning paper and righteous anger and Elias's face and everything Martin had been trying to forget.

Jon brings up a hand to cover his mouth. Horror and panic clear in his eyes, which Martin knows are reflected in his own. Then Jon backs away, clearly unsteady on shaking legs. Martin's vision starts to blur (when was the last time he blinked?) but he hears Jon's steps fade into the hall. And Martin can do nothing.

The back of Martin's mind still using logic was hoping the feeling would fade once Jon wasn't looking at him. Unfortunately, Martin is used to being proven wrong. Face blank, body rigid, mind screaming.

Autonomy comes back to him slowly, a tingling in his fingertips that trickles down his arms and leaves an awful shakiness in its wake. Nerves making up for lost time, maybe. Trying to catch up with the adrenaline coursing through his veins. A grip Martin wasn't aware of begins to loosen from around his ribcage, and his first real breath in ages is a shuddering gasp. The force of it combined with the jelly replacing his knees sends him sliding to the floor, using the wall for support.

Martin breathes. In. Out. The first breath is molten in his lungs. His eyes water against it, and the second one is even worse. The third leaves as a sob that echoes back at him. In one last betrayal of his body against him, the tears spill over to drip down his cheeks. Martin rests his forehead against his knees and wills himself not to fall apart.

The Lonely was easy, in that regard. For months, Martin didn't have to worry about this kind of thing - the fear and anger and gaping misery that had been following them for so long. But evidently suppressing your trauma with more trauma wasn't a healthy coping mechanism. Go figure.

Leaving the Lonely was hard. Martin had spent most of the first 48 hours oscillating wildly between numb detachment and emotion so overwhelming he thought he would drown in it. Jon helped. He was patient, gentle, all the things Martin thought were too good to be true.

Martin forces himself up as soon as he's able. Maybe sooner, given the way the room sways when he stands. But it passes after a moment, and Martin goes to find Jon.

The house is dark. The occasional creak from the pipes and floors could be off-putting, but compared to everything else, it's benign. He uses fingers brushed against the wall to guide him down the short hallway.

"Jon?" He calls. The floor creaks in response.

Martin reaches the threshold between the hall and the kitchen. The haze of the moon behind thin clouds bleeds through the window above the sink, providing just enough light to see. Martin catches a shadow out of the corner of his eye, but it isn't actually a shadow, and Martin lets himself feel a hint of temporary relief.

Jon is tucked in the corner between two cabinets. Head buried against his bent knees, hands gripping into his hair in a position that mirrors Martin's from mere moments ago. Martin's heart leaps into his throat.

"Oh, Jon." Martin kneels in front of him, slow as to not startle him. If Jon notices, he makes no sign of it.

"Jon?" Martin reaches, but stops halfway. He doesn't want a repeat of before. His palm itches, but he keeps it airborne. Until he knows it's okay.

Jon makes a sound in the back of his throat, one that Martin hasn't heard before. His next inhale is strained and wet and - oh.

Martin had never seen Jon cry before. Angry, upset, shaken, sure. But not this. It twists something awful and thorny in his chest. Martin wants to hug him, but he keeps the few inches between them.

"Don't-" Jon starts suddenly, and for an awful moment the hairs on the back of Martin's neck stand up on end. But Jon cuts himself off with a keening noise, and curls further into himself. His shoulders are trembling, either from holding back sobs or the biting chill of the poorly-insulated kitchen floor, Martin can't be sure. Probably both.

"I-I'm sorry-" Jon stutters, sounding like each word is a fight to get out. "I-I-I don't - I don't know…"

"Just breathe, Jon. It's alright."

Jon shakes his head against his legs. "N-no, you need to-" A sob cuts him off.

"Need to what, love?" The term of endearment slips out naturally on Martin's tongue. If Jon notices, he doesn't say so.

"Leave." The last word crackles slightly in the air, like static electricity threatening a shock. Martin freezes. The compulsion threatens to overtake him, but it's weaker than before. It rings in his skull, and Martin fights it back until it fades to background noise.

Jon whispers, barely audible. "I can't - I can't control it."

Oh.

"Alright, alright…" Martin bites his lip for a moment. Nods to himself.

"Okay, let's just - I'll ask you yes or no questions for now. You can, ah - just nod for yes and shake your head for no. Is that alright?"

Jon's face is still hidden, but that's alright. After a moment, he nods enough for Martin to discern the movement.

"G-good, okay-" Martin pauses, not immediately sure what question to go with first.

"Did you have a nightmare, earlier? Is that what scared you?" Martin silently chides himself for asking two questions, but hopefully it won't matter.

Jon nods.

"Has this happened before? The, uh-" Martin makes a hand motion, but Jon can't see it. "Th-the 'not being able to control the compulsion,' thing?"

There's a pause, then Jon shakes his head. Martin frowns.

"Alright, that's alright. Do you think you can look at me?"

Another pause, longer. Martin doesn't press as the seconds pass. Then Jon slowly raises his head.

Jon's eyes are wide, rimmed with red and dark circles more pronounced than they had been in the last few days. Tears are steadily dripping down his cheeks, flushed dark against his complexion. His lips are pressed tightly together, and Martin can see the barely contained panic mingled with exhaustion in every line of his face.

"Hey." Martin greets, feeling like a small victory. Jon quickly casts his gaze down and to the side, not meeting Martin's eyes. He also moves his hands to wrap around his torso, shivering harshly against the cabinets. Martin frowns again. He racks his brain for the seemingly mundane moments from the previous day. Jon talking less as the day had gone on, his less-than-already-finnicky appetite, going to bed early because he said he was a bit tired. Nothing individually out of the ordinary, not after the hell they'd dragged themselves through just to get here. But-

"Jon, is it alright if I touch you?"

Jon nods almost immediately, but still avoids Martin's eyes. Encouraged, Martin moves carefully to press the back of his hand against Jon's cheek. It's warm - hot, even - to the touch. Martin checks his forehead for good measure, feeling the heat before their skin actually makes contact. Martin's winces in sympathy, moving his hand back to Jon's cheek. He uses both hands, for good measure, to cup Jon's face, and wipe the stray tears still dripping from his lashes.

"Oh, love. You're burning up." Martin says, gently. "That must have something to do with it."

Jon's brow furrows. He brings his own hand up to his face, seemingly to try and feel his own temperature. Martin can't help the quiet laugh.

"First let's get off the floor. 's not exactly comfortable, yeah?" Martin offers.

Jon doesn't react, eyes locked in a middle distance between the two of them. But then all at once his expression breaks, and he buries his face in his hands.

Martin's heart leaps into his throat. "Oh, hey, hey-"

Jon's words are muffled by his hands, and broken up by harsh, jagged sobs.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I-I didn't-"

Martin moves forward slightly so he can wrap his arms around Jon. He can feel the shivers wracking Jon's frame, and the heat radiating off of him in waves. Martin tucks Jon's head under his chin, and holds him.

"Hey, it's okay." And it's not a lie. Martin was scared - terrified, to put it lightly. He knows he can't just brush that fear away. But he's not scared of Jon, never has been, never will be. And Martin know Jon, knows him and loves him and knows that he loves him back. Martin thinks that this might be more complicated than that, but right now, with Jon coming apart on the kitchen floor, it feels that simple.

"I know you didn't mean to, Jon. It's alright."

Jon shakes his head weakly in protest. Martin can't make out his exact words, jumbled as they are. But he feels the intent behind them, with the way they reverberate in his chest.

"We can talk about it later, when you're feeling better. But I'm not mad, I promise." Martin runs a hand through Jon's hair. It might have been a braid when Jon first went to bed, but it's mostly undone now. "Right now, I'm just worried about you. That's a nasty fever you're running."

They stay like that for a few minutes more. Jon's form is still a trembling leaf in Martin's arms, shallow and uneven breaths punctured by the occasional apology and stifled cry. Jon's forehead is pressed into his neck, burning like a furnace against Martin's skin.

Martin almost asks Jon if he can walk, but instead-

"Jon, is it alright if I pick you up?"

Jon tenses, and Martin immediately regrets asking. But then Jon nods affirmative, relaxing slightly into Martin's hold. Oh thank god.

Jon fits easily into the bends of Martin's arms, one at his back and one under his knees. Jon's hands clench the front of Martin's shirt, tightening and loosening in an uneven rhythm as Martin stands. It's easy for Martin to carry him the short distance to the bedroom, mindful of the narrow door frames.

The quilt and sheets are pulled back from before, which is helpful now. Martin eases Jon onto the bed. He brushes Jon's hair away from his face in what Martin hopes is a comforting gesture. But Jon still has that faraway, panicky look in his eyes, and Martin has an idea.

"Don't move, alright? I'll be right back, I promise." Martin presses a kiss to Jon's forehead, hoping he heard and understood enough of that to not mind when he leaves the room.

Martin comes back with a damp cloth and a glass of water. And a bottle of pain reliever - one that Martin had originally picked up from the store as an afterthought, but is grateful for now. He sets the glass and bottle on the nightstand and sits gingerly on the edge of the bed. Next to Jon, who hasn't so much as shifted in Martin's admittedly brief absence. Martin lays a hand on Jon's shoulder, but after a moment, moves to Jon's cheek. An olive branch to Jon's clouded awareness.

"Alright, love. I'm gonna lay this on the back of your neck, okay? Can you lean forward a touch for me?"

Jon doesn't move or otherwise react for a moment, and Martin is almost sure he didn't hear it. But then he pitches forward slightly, and Martin shifts so he can support Jon's weight against his shoulder. He brushes Jon's loose curls to the side, letting his fingers linger there for good measure.

"It's gonna feel really cold, but it'll help. Easy," Martin murmurs, placing the folded cloth on the back of Jon's neck. Jon flinches at the touch, hissing between a groan and a whimper.

"I know, I know." Martin soothes easily, adding other words of comfort here and there, lost to his memory as soon as they cross his lips. He holds Jon close, taking the chance to comb his fingers again through Jon's bed-moussed hair. He knows Jon likes having his hair played with, so Martin ever so gently works his way through some of the tangles, careful never to pull too hard or too fast. Jon's breaths slow and deepen - still marred by the occasional hitch, but a vast improvement from before. He gradually sinks more of his weight onto Martin's shoulder, until Martin is sure he's the only reason Jon is still upright. But Martin doesn't mind.

"Better?" Martin asks, when Jon's trembling passes and his breaths sound less like someone on the verge of drowning. Jon clears his throat.

"I- yes." He rasps, hardly a whisper. The word pulls a cough out of him, but he keeps going. "Th- thank you."

"Of course." Martin says. He all but beams at the sound of Jon's voice, wretched as it sounds. He considers making tea, but something about the bonelessness of Jon's posture tells him Jon won't be awake long enough to see a cup finished. But he does grab the glass of water from the nightstand, and shifts so Jon can take it in both hands.

"Drink some of that for me." Martin presses, and Jon doesn't argue. Martin reaches for the pain reliever next, shaking two pills out and handing them to Jon. He seems surprised at first, but quietly offers a thank you as he takes them from Martin's hand.

"How are you feeling?" Martin asks. It feels like a stupid question, but one of those stupid questions that you just have to ask in lieu of anything else.

"I'm-" Martin knows Jon is about to say I'm alright and something in his face must stop Jon from finishing, because he cuts himself off with a sigh. He presses the heel of his palm into his eye, suppressing a wince. "To - to be honest, uh, quite terrible."

The frankness of it could almost be funny, but Martin's heart aches instead. "I'm sorry. The medicine should help, at least."

Even without his glasses, Martin can make out the two in the hour place of the digital clock on the nightstand, and yeah, it's time for bed.

"And some proper sleep."

Jon nods, eyelids heavy. Martin takes the half-empty glass from his hand, and encourages Jon to lie back with a gentle push. Martin joins him on the other side of the bed, pulling the covers back over the two of them. He leans, partially sitting up against the headboard, inviting Jon into the place at his side if he wants it.

Jon fills the space immediately, burrowing his face into Martin's shoulder. Arms curled in front of him, pressed into Martin's side. He sighs softly. Martin watches the last of the tension bleed out of Jon's face, eyes closed. Jon's fever leaves Martin's side overly warm in minutes, but Martin can't bring himself to mind.

He's sure Jon is already asleep, but-

"M-rtin?"

"What is it, Jon? Do you need something?"

Jon makes a negative sound into Martin's shoulder, shaking his head. It's quiet for a moment, save for their breathing.

"I love you."

Martin freezes, and the response comes as naturally as an inhale after an exhale.

"I love you too."

#the magnus archives #tma #martin blackwood #jonathan sims #jonmartin #tma fics #my writing #i have not proofread this but i'm also proud of it pls forgive me

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lydias--stiles · 3 years

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love, between the shadow and the soul

chenford | drabble | post-canon | title: sonnet xvii - pablo neruda

///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

Look, Tim Bradford did not get attracted to rookies, okay? In all the years he had been a TO, none had grabbed his attention. Not when he and Isabelle were dating, or married, or when she disappeared into the night with a trail of illicit affairs and a shot of heartache for him. Dozens of young women had sat in that car beside him and never ever had he let their femininity distract him. He served his country. He fought wars overseas. He looked Death right in the eye every single day and never blinked.

But then came officer Lucy Chen. He instantly knew the type of cop she’d be the second she turned in her seat, meeting his gaze for the first time, and nervously smiled at him. Nerves were normal, he was aware, but the doe-eyed look and the hopeful grin sold her out. No mystery. Just another young cop that would either slip through the cracks by the exam by tanking their grade due to stress, or she’d become a desk duty cop — one that stayed far from danger, that handled life with a perpetual softer touch ‘cause of her shrink parents.

Nothing wrong with that, Bishop would chastise him. Every cop had its use, she’d add. Sure, that might be true, but Tim didn’t want to babysit an armed toddler waiting for it to cry and call for mom. With just a couple well-placed Tim-tests, she’d be out of his hair in no time and then he could cross his fingers for a better recruit in the following weeks.

Life had the ability to change in a snap though — their funny, yet stern reminder that the universe called the shots, not the gun in his holster, or the rulebook. He got shot. Officer Chen backed him up. Her stubborn, yet brazen, yet honest attitude reeled him in just enough to ignore her little quirks she always joyfully displayed in the shop. Whenever he didn’t nip her ramblings in the bud fast enough, she babbled on and on about her personal life, her personal issues and relationships, like they were best friends (They weren’t! Boots and him never befriended!), like their relationship was anything more than a transactional training period. They got each other’s six. That was it.

But fuck, man. She got under his skin, too.

Lucy wore this… really nice perfume. A lot of female officers had make-up and perfume on, allowed a small sliver of self-expression, and he and Lopez had spend countless hours in a shop together. He was used to it. But somehow, Lucy’s stuck in his nose and didn’t leave. He felt like a creep, thinking about the blend of cardamom and oranges and cherry blossoms mixing with her warm skin, uncontrollable while also wanted. He wanted to fantasise about that fucking perfume of hers, a realisation that took a long time to come to terms with.

That didn’t mean he liked her though — he quickly corrected himself the first time he caught the pattern of behaviour — all it meant was that Lucy had good taste in perfume. Case closed.

So why did he linger whenever her shimmery eyes flicked up at him, why did his breath catch in his throat when her voice dropped to that infuriating sincerity as she uttered words of appraisal? Why his heart go haywire when she recorded all those audio books for him; an out of line gesture and overzealous task for a boot, which would normally result in him laughing their face.

Tim never thought he’d get over Isabelle, nor did he ever believe he’d have his happily ever after with Rachel, but with Lucy he foolishly hoped for more. A more that came from such a stupid and deluded place, probably fostered through months of loneliness and the Pavlovian response to her perfume, but one he didn’t stop. He couldn’t stop it. The man was always in control about everything, ran his own tests and went over every possible outcome every day, every hour — and yet he didn’t see her coming. Lucy Chen had been right under his nose and he hadn’t been prepared for the ground to disappear beneath his feet; something that should honestly get him fired. The callousness of his emotions while entertaining the idea of a relationship with his own boot sentenced him straight to P2 or desk duty, or whatever.

Lucy deserved someone better, anyway.

Someone that understood her love for sage and cleansing homes. Someone that liked veggie burgers, chai lattes, karaoke nights and social media lurking. Someone that wouldn’t hesitate for one second to open her door for a teenage girl in need of safety and a little bit of that Chen-love. Someone that wasn’t any of those firemen assholes, but wasn’t Tim either.

He never let his insecurities get the best of him, but after seeing her thrive as a P2 without him, handling undercover stints like a pro, conquering her trauma of being buried alive, it only showcased that she had more bravery in her index finger than some army members had in their entire body, all while staying innately kind. Of course Tim lost his mind over her. Of course he tried shaping officer Barnes to be more like Lucy — more sun and bite and charisma, less army BS. Of course, of course, of course. Even Rosalind, the person he hated most besides Caleb, had him figured out in seconds. He was obvious as hell.

Which was why he had to move stations. Away from the Mid-Wilshire Division and to another. He couldn’t be around her anymore and risk compromising missions or attacks. He didn’t tell Angela the details, though her knowing look said enough, and simply replied that she’d miss him and that she was sure the chief would happily reinstate him any time.

He should’ve known that information leaked through like a wildfire.

The morning of his resignment, uniform neatly folded in his locker, Lucy stopped him in the hallway with the most befuddled expression he’d ever seen.

“What?” he said.

“What the hell,” she exclaimed. “You’re leaving and I have to hear it from Angela? Why’re you…? You love this division. Is everything okay?”

Shouldering past her, he drawled over his shoulder: “Everything’s fine, officer Chen. I’d advise you to put on your uniform and get to roll call.”

“Don’t pull this crap with me,” she bit back, latching onto his arm before he was out of reach. His feet reflexively stopped in place, stupidly waiting on her to finish her train of thought. “Tim, you can tell me if something’s wrong. We’ve been through… way too much for you to act this cold with me.”

He scoffed, feigning mockery, and put his hands on his hips. “We? Chen, I was your TO. That’s it. Get it out of your head it was more.”

Lucy blinked, once, twice, a hurt expression crossing her features, followed by disbelief and a quiet contempt he had become awfully familiar with. Swallowing back the regret, he watched as she pursed her lips and took a step back. “Wow. Okay.”

“Don’t take it personally.”

“Hard not to, officer Bradford,” she muttered. Turning to the locker rooms, she added, “Talk to me when you’re ready to not be an asshole.”

That should’ve been his cue to let her go and resume his trek to sergeant Grey, but a whiff of her fragrance wafted in his face from her dancing curls and any sensical thought was knocked out his head. He wanted to embrace her and burrow his face in her hair, he wanted to hold her with intent, he wanted to kiss the scent off her skin. His feet followed her instead, both fully aware and totally impulsive at once. He chose the excuse of loving a good argument with her to then utter: “I’m not an asshole, Chen. I’m honest.”

“If you’re honest, you’d admit that we’ve been very close friends these past months,” she exhaled, refusing to look him in the eye. He supposed he deserved that. Stopping in front of her locker, she continued with, “Distorting your own reality to fit your macho narrative isn’t healthy. Also, this is the women’s locker room. Out. Now.”

Tim sputtered out a laugh and crossed his arms. “Macho narrative? Please.”

Lucy’s eyes narrowed, all air sucked out the room at the intensity of her stare, and Tim felt himself flailing, suddenly wondering why the hell he wanted to turn in his badge when the only place he could have moments with lucy was, well, here. Why was he giving up on this, how silly it might be?

With a resolute voice, she said, “Tim, why are you resigning?”

Nothing in his entire career prepared him for this. Tim Bradford had survived Iraq and Afghanistan, twelve years of the LAPD and counting, a deadly virus, hundreds of bullets taken by the vest and felt the power of death on the blue lips of Lucy in the quiet countryside. Fear got pushed aside. Pride pulled him forward, onwards. But right now, he had to take a leap of faith — the sole thing he never relied on, but Lucy did — and trust she’d be there after the fall.

(He wanted to be that amazing someone for her.)

“Because of you,” he whispered. His fight or flight told him to run for the first time in forever, but he kept his feet glued to the floor.

Her jaw fell slack in shock. “E-excuse me? Me?! I’ve done nothing wrong!”

“Exactly,” he spit. “You… you’re…” Tim sighed. “You’re the best, Lucy.”

Faltering, her brows furrowed in utter confusion, a grain of her fury replaced with compassion. He wasn’t sure if that was warranted. All he was trying to do was get it off his chest, confess, before it escalated to insurmountable heights. “I don’t think I understand.”

“Uh…”

“You’re resigning, because I’m the best?” she tried to deduce. “No offense, any other day I’d be dancing right now, but this is just…” She gestured at him. “So weird.”

Tim let out a miserable sigh and ripped the band-aid off. Fuck it. “I’m trying to be honest about my feelings, Lucy.”

She froze. “What?”

“I like you. A lot.” Her wonderstruck expression didn’t make him feel better, so he quickly added: “Which is why I gotta decrease the risk of this exploding in our faces and go.”

“Whoa!” Lucy’s hand wrapped around his, eyes wide and searching, like any empirical data would be found within his green irises, otherwise known as fondness and unresolved tension with every quiet moment they had. “Is this… another test? Are you getting back at me for pranking you?”

He quirked a brow. “You’re a P2 now. Tests are over.”

“Right,” she quipped, catching herself. She let go of him and nervously tucked a lock behind her ear. “Yeah. Okay. And you’re serious?”

“Yes.”

“Okay. O-kay. Let me, uh…” the locker swung open “… wrap my head around this.”

“It’s a pretty easy thing to—”

“Tim.”

“Yeah, okay.” He backed off, hating how the control was out of his hands now, how he practically shoved his heart in her grip and her pretty fingers could crush it to dust if she wanted to. “I’ll let you do that.”

Walking out the locker room, he took a deep breath and straightened up his face. Alright. He royally screwed that over. If his army buddies knew, they’d all laugh in his face and tease him for the rest of his life. But at least he told her and got his answer, that a relationship was off the table but that they could save their friendship once he switched divisions and some distance mended his twisted, inside-out heart. Lucy had rocked his world and all she had to do was exist.

“Tim!”

“Wha— wow!”

Her body crashed into him the second he turned around to her beautiful voice, Lucy’s arms wrapping around his neck and pulling him down to her level ‘til all he experienced were her sweet eyes and breathless smile and a kiss. Lucy kissing him, slow and tentative, but it lit his heart aflame and urged him to hold onto her. Her perfume was all-encompassing, nose full of the fragrance and the soft slope of her neck and long, brown hair and fuck, he was kissing Lucy Chen. Except he didn’t care if the entire precinct idly watched by, or if she yanked him out the building on impulse, or anything — ‘cause he was kissing her and it was perfect. Her plump lips were better than he ever imagined.

Her hands slid from his hair to his shoulders, arms and then his hands, squeezing. His forehead pressed against hers, embarrassingly weak in the knees from that incredible kiss that he didn’t dare to stand up straight. Two silly grins broke loose on their faces. He had no clue what to do now, or not do, but he did know he wanted her. He wanted everything.

Lucy decided for him.

“Don’t go,” she whispered.

Tim smiled. “Okay.”

#testing the waters... figuring out their voices...#chenford #the rookie fanfiction #the rookie x pablo neruda overlap is the funniest thing about this whole thing #the rookie

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criticofallthings · 3 years

Text

SO IT’S 5:12AM BECAUSE I’VE BEEN TYPING AWAY A NEW HEADCANNON PIECE OF CRACK IDEA THAT WOULDN’T LET ME SLEEP IF I DIDN’T. edit: bc tumblr mobile app is dumb I had to restart in a web browser and it is now 6:03 AM.

Anyway yeah so that Hawkmokn lore tab where we see Guardian lad and Crow get drunk and be merry (brain’s a little scramble rn, but I’m preeetty sure its the Hawkmoon lore tab)?? Yeah so that and trauma bonding / healing bc if I haven’t said it a thousand times and then sme yet, Imma say it again: POOR TRAUMATIZED GUARDIANS OMFG 😭😭😭

No title no beta bc literally just shat this out the past couple of hours:

cw/tw: ptsd, referenced major character death, death, implied depression/major grief, self depreciation

ps. usually I write nonbinary Guardian, but today we got lady she/her Guardian

pps. this fic is a heckin chonker compared to the previous ones

———————————————————————

Crow’s lips were gentle against the Guardian’s own, a bit dry, but sweet and heady with the lingering wine. The kiss was sudden. It was spontaneous. And it made something warm and so soft and so, so very fragile, hatch within the Guardian’s chest.

Until she opened her eyes and saw those golden eyes, glowly softly in the dark, beneath dusky white and raven black fringe. The pale smokey blue of his skin, luminous where it reflected the warmth of the campfire, and cast in deep shadows where the night’s darkness fought to shade his face. The smell of ash suddenly weighs much heavier in the air.

That warm, soft, and fragile thing in the Guardian’s chest goes cold and sharp and hard. Time slows and speeds up at the same time within her mind, stealing her away to a prison of memories. Blood rushes to her ears, drowning out the warning from Ghost to Crow and Glint.

The Guardian shoved Crow away and stood up, a heavy handcannon with a white spade on the stock materializing into her hand, aimed at Crow’s heart. An errant blip of data-Light to Crow’s left is all that hints at Glint’s swift dematerialization. Crow stays prone on the ground, spawled on his back, one hand raised up, in an attempt to pacify —unwittingly making it harder for the Guardian to snap out of that memory.

The stench of burnt oil, sweat, and soot fills her nose. She only hears the crackles of flames and electric buzzing as her heart pounds, coldly staring into Crow’s bewildered eyes. Those deep golden eyes that had haunted her waking hours and chased her down in nightmares. Those eyes filled with cruelty as they watched her stumble to Cayde’s dying side. She doesn’t realize yet, but the tears she couldn’t shed before, now weep from her eyes. The handcannon trembles slightly in her grip.

Ghost floats over into his Guardian’s field of view. He’s careful to let her know he’s doing so by giving her shoulder a bump as he glides to a rest above the stock of the handcannon. He hovers there, his one eye searching both of hers, glow dimmed slightly. His shell gives a soft whirl before he speaks, leaning in gently towards her.

“That is not him.”

The silence is deafening, every second only increasing the tension. Ghost clicks his shell, uncertain if his words were even heard. He tries again, bobbing in the air.

“Crow is not him.”

The handcannon trembles. But the Warlock doesn’t move, bound by so much tension you’d think she was a Hunter about to leap into the air to throw a Blade Barrage.

“Crow is not him.”

Ghost speaks again, insistent, shell whirling softly as he flits closer to his Guardian. A flicker of recognition crosses her face. The handcannon falters, no longer aimed directly at Crow’s chest. Ghost nudges her hand, bumping the Guardian’s aim to the ground.

She trembles, a full body shudder and the handcannon slips from her grasp. Suddenly she’s aware, all too aware of what happened, and the tension holding her still dissipates. She falls to her knees, energy completely spent.

“I, I-I’m so sorry.” She’s barely able to whisper the words in his direction.

Before her, Crow watches, eyes wide and doe-like, shocked and unsure of what to do. Of what just happened. A sinking feeling blooms in his gut.

He knows he wasn’t a good man before he died. Plenty of guardians had made that clear through their boot heels and fists, gunfire and knives, with their Light in three different energies: arc, void, and solar. As did the Eliksni, who cursed him in their language while their Captains tore him apart with their four arms.

Crow knows it’s an understatement to say he wasn’t a good man in his previous life. Even if he could never learn about who that man was, what he did, and would only by the number of shattered bones and bruised flesh just how much pain that man had caused —Crow decided early on that he could take it. It was penance. It was justly due and therefore he couldn’t call it painful.

But this? This hurt.

It hurt because now he knows that the man he once was had struck an incomprehensible blow to the Guardian he had come to know more of. It hurt because he had been holding on to a small hope, an indescribably small bit of hope, that of all the people he had encountered in his previous life that he had never met the Guardian. Because if they had never met, then maybe, maybe there was someone he didn’t hurt. His first friend. His savoir. His now not-so-secret-crush. And the longer he thought about it, the greater that sinking feeling in his gut grew.

He could no longer deny the shock and subdued anger and almost very well hidden grief he had seen flash across her face when he revealed himself to her and Osiris. He could no longer deny the way they had kept him at distance while easily in sight with a hand hovering over their gun every time they met him for a Hunt or to study a newly sprouted Cryptolith. Why his attempts at humor and jokes were met with cool silence. Why whenever he saw that handcannon, he instinctively recoiled away from it, phantom pain bursting sharply in his heart.

——————

Crow remembers the first time he saw the Guardian wield that gun. How she had effortlessly cleared a pack of thrall in one clip, each headshot exploding in a flurry of solar. How his body reacted: legs collapsing beneath him, his heart burning painfully, lungs gasping for air that never seemed to make it into him, retching pathetically, as tears streamed down his face.

Why was he crying?

Why did he feel an insurmountable wall of sorrow and regret?

She had seen him fall and before the last thrall had burnt away completely, she came running towards him. All he could see in that moment was that gun getting closer and all he felt was an innate desire to get away.

Run, run, run, run, run before you die!

Run you before you burn!

The Guardian came close, hands splayed before her, voice speaking in soothing tones, words lost upon his panicking ears. He had screamed then, in abject terror. It was a garbled and pitched sound as he tried to breathe and vomit and scrabble away all at the same time; his eyes riveted to the handcannon now holstered at her side. Her Warlock mind, keen to details, quickly realized what had triggered his panic and she deftly threw the gun to her Ghost who transmatted it away mid-air.

Crow doesn’t remember what the Guardian said to him, but he remembers how carefully she reached out to him. How she framed his face in her gauntleted hands, so gentle, so lightly, as if he might shatter into glass —just to touch her forehead to his. How the puffs of her outward breaths ghosting by his cheeks helped calm his own.

And he knew then, in that moment that no matter what that gun meant that he was already in too deep. When with a simple touch, the Guardian could soothe away old terrors he himself knew nothing of, Crow knew then. He loves her.

——————

Crow slowly got to his feet, mindful of the Guardian (who was despondently staring into her open hands while Ghost hovered on her shoulder). He looks at that gun, chest starting to burn, heartbeat increasing. Clenching a fist at his side, Crow takes a tentative step and then another until he’s close enough to pick up the handcannon. He gingerly picks it up by the barrel, keeping his hands off the stock on purpose. It’s another small step towards the Guardian before he kneels in front of them.

He pauses there, unsure of what he can do —of what he did that caused the Guardian to react so violently before. He doesn’t think it was the kiss itself...that seemed to be fine until she looked at his face, into his eyes. Ah. Crow rests the handcannon on his thigh and pulls up his hood, jerking it to cover more of his face. Cautiously he grabs the handcannon by the barrel again and with his other hand, slowly reaches for one of the Guardian’s own. She lets him guide her hand to the handcannon and once he’s sure she won’t drop it, Crow gently pushes both towards her again. The Guardian looks away, but cradles the handcannon in her lap.

More hesitantly now, Crow raises his hands to cup her face just as she once did for him. He can’t exactly see with his hood covering so much of his face, but he slowly gets nearer and carefully moves his hands over the side of her face. He leans forward to rest his forehead against hers, the edges of his hood brushing across his nose as he did so, fully obscuring his vision. Crow doesn’t know of anything he could say in this moment —what could he of all people say to her, Guardian of guardians, that could possibly make a difference? So he doesn’t say anything. Instead, Crow softly hums.

It’s an old melody, a lullaby he found while exploring abandoned freighters and passenger ships in the Reef. When Glint discovered his fondness for it, the Little Light would often hum the tune, sitting on his chest, to soothe him on several sleepless nights in Spider’s Lair. Crow hopes that this at least, can help ground the Guardian in the present and away from the painful memories in her past.

They stay like this for a while. The Guardian’s breath evens out and somewhere along the time past, Ghost had dematerialized. It was just the two of them now. Crow stops humming when he feels the Guardian raise a hand to cover one of his over her face. She leans into his palm, then forward against his forehead for a moment.

“I’m sorry, Crow, I’m so sor—“ She starts to apologize and it’s a whisper until she says his name to apologize once more. Crow doesn’t want to hear this, he doesn’t deserve an apology. So Crow cuts off the Guardian by dropping his hands to her sides and pulling her into his chest.

The sudden movement sends the Guardian toppling onto Crow. He curls forward to protect his head, but keeps his arms around her, falling flat on his back. The Guardian doesn’t move to get off of him and Crow takes that as an okay sign. He keeps one arm around her, the other he moves to card his fingers through her hair.

“Of all the people in this world, Guardian, I am the last of anyone to whom you owe an apology.” Crow let’s his words hang in the air, trying to keep his breathing even so his heart would stay less frantic too.

“If anything,” he pauses to admire a particularly silky strand of hair as it slips through his fingers.

“I am the one indebited to you.”

There’s another pause as he sorts his next words before speaking. His hand idly resumes carding through the Guardian's hair again.

“So much so that I wonder if it’s selfish greed that makes me want to stay like this.” Crow sighs, looking straight up into the star speckled sky above them. At this angle he can’t see the Guardian, but he feel her shift slightly in his arms.

“Even though you’ve done so much for a worthless stain of a being as me…Even though I can never atone for the things I’ve done befo—“ He’s interrupted by the Guardian slapping a hand over his mouth.

“You are not him.” She shifts in his arms, sitting up, moving a leg over to straddle him properly.

Crow grabs his fallen hood in a panic, pulling the fabric so swiftly up around his face he hears the fabric creak as its seams struggle to stay sewn. Still, he doesn’t let the material go, trying to keep his face hidden.

“You are not him.” The Guardian repeats herself, lifting her hand from his mouth. Crow can’t tell with what emotion she said it with and he’s too afraid to check just yet. He doesn’t want to cause her harm again, regardless of how circumstantially accidental it was.

“Crow…”

He freezes at the way she calls his name. It was different from how she usually said it. It sounded soft and so warm in her voice. The Guardian prods at one of hands clamped on his hood. He turns his head to the side, trying to escape beneath a look he could practically feel brushing against his hands.

“I...I-I don’t want to hurt you...again.” Crow’s heart beats skittishly within his chest, causing a lump to form in his throat. He’s barely able to say these words out loud without an audible whimper to them. He tries to speak again, but fails.

The Guardian leans forward over him and a shifting moment later he feels her tap her forehead against his. Her hands rest, half-covering his own, but exerting no force to push of pry his fingers away from his hood.

“Crow.” She whispers his name, just as soft and warm as before. Her lips ghost across his clenched hands when she spoke, sending goosebumps down his arms. Crow tenses.

It’s a full body reaction as Crow completely freezes up. Once more he tries to swallow down the lump in his throat with little success. His tongue feels dry and too heavy in his mouth. He can feel his heart rate spike, beating so hard now he’s unsure if the metaphorical ache that had been nesting there is becoming a real one.

“Please, Crow?” The Guardian pleads softly, leaning back and letting her hands slide from his face to over his chest.

“You can’t hide your handsome face forever.” She tries to make it sound light hearted, an easy joke, but the anxious tapping of her finger against his chest reveals her anxiety. Crow takes a deep, shaky inhale, holding it a second before letting it out.

“I-I can’t.” Crow sputters, the breath he had taken just before speaking seemed too little for all the things he wanted to say. Did she really just call his face handsome right now? Oh Traveler, why was that now all he could focus on??

He feels the Guardian shift in his lap again. The movement snaps Crow out of his thoughts and inadvertently he tightens his grip on his hood again. Somewhere behind his head, a seam in the hood gives way and the fabric tears from the stress.

A small chuckle near his ear catches him off guard and Crow isn’t able to stop his head from jerking sideways. This gives the Guardian an advantage and she presses against him, letting her head rest side by side to his. It keeps him unable to turn his face again. Even still, Crow maintains his hold over his ruined hood.

“Well then...” The Guardian pauses. Her voice, low and smooth, is right next to Crow’s ear. Crow flinches slightly, swallowing rapidly again, not expecting her to be so close.

“...how am I supposed to kiss you back?”

“Huuh??”

Crow lets out a confused sound, brain derailing instantly, but also cutting some of the tension out of his body. Certainly, he must have heard the Guardian wrong. But the sound of two ghosts re-materializing interrupts the Guardian (who Crow is now very aware is straddling him) from speaking as she suddenly freezes.

“OH. Oh! Oh...well uh, w-we’ll come back later!! N-n-not too soon, ofcou—” Ghost’s shocked rambling is halted by metallic clinking as Glint’s shell collides with his. In the background, Glint’s hurried whispers of “Just go! Just go!” are just barely audible before the two Little Lights decompile once more.

Above him, the Guardian lets out a heavy breath once the two ghosts are gone. Beneath his hands, Crow breaks into a brief smile at that. The brief interruption had brought a measure of calm to him and he didn’t want to waste the moment.

“I, well...the man I was did something pretty horrible to you, didn’t I?” Crow lets the question hang in the air, but pushes on. If he lets the Guardian speak now, he’s not sure he’ll ever be able to say these words again.

“Not just you, to all the guardians...the Vanguard, and even the Eliksni, maybe even to the Scorn.” The Guardian is still above him, listening, but against his chest Crow can feel the heavy, measured beating of her heart.

“A-and I know. I just know. That that handcannon --the one with the white spade— I know that man died to that gun...This body remembers, but I also think it’s much more than that.” Crow stops to take a shuddering breath in. He focuses on the steady feeling of the Guardian’s heart against his chest to center himself.

“When I see that gun...it’s like I can feel that final shot burning again and again. But then there’s so much more to it. So much pain that isn’t from that bullet, so much grief, and fear, and even anger. Anger at myself, knowing I —all I did was —all I caused was…” He trails off, not able to find the words to describe how those moments felt. When he speaks again, it’s all in whispers.

“But when I see you, I know it’s not right, I know it’s selfish, I know you didn’t even like me at the beginning….but when I see you, I know I’ll be okay. Because the Light gave me a second chance to be okay and you did the same.”

Crow stops when he feels the Guardian shifting again. She grabs him by his elbows and slides off of his lap, tugging on him to join her in a sitting position. His knees are now tucked under his chin and he can feel her legs framing his own. It’s silent for a moment, but then he feels her edge closer to plant a chaste kiss to the back of his hands.

“It was an accident, a trick of the light and shadow…I—you are not like him in many, many ways.” For a moment Crow’s heart plummeted to his gut, wrenching at her first few words. Her hands cover his own again and Crow’s heart grows light.

“Please. Look at me.” The Guardian asks Crow while gently pressing against his knuckles. She rubs her thumbs over the side and backs of his hands, small soothing gestures.

Crow clenches his jaw, then decides against it. He releases his hold on his cloak’s hood, fingers stiff and aching from how tightly he had clung to the material. Crow doesn’t let the hood fall from his face and keeps his eyes shut. The Guardian takes his hands into her own, warming and massaging them to ease the stiffness.

Once she deems his hands warm enough, the Guardian lets them go. Crow rests them at his side, not confident yet to open his eyes. He focuses on the way the air moves instead, trying to anticipate her next move so he doesn’t jump.

Slowly, the Guardian moves the hood off of his head. She cups his face with one hand while the other strokes his cheek before tucking several stray strands of hair behind his ear. Throughout it all, Crow is still. However, his heart beats fast within his chest.

“Wha-“ Crow’s questions are cutoff before he could even start to ask —the Guardian smothering them beneath a passionate kiss. She teases his bottom lip with her teeth and in his surprise, Crow opens his eyes.

He’s immediately consumed by the Guardian’s smoldering eyes, half-open to catch his reaction. Crow’s not one to be outdone, and he raises a hand to cradle the back of her head as he presses into the kiss. He teases the Guardian back with a lick of his tongue, half expecting nothing, but pleasantly surprised when she returned in kind. It’s a sweet and warm moment and once again the Guardian feels that soft and fragile thing flutter in her chest.

“See,” the Guardian whispers against Crow’s lips as she caresses his face, maintaining steady eye contact, “all okay. You are you.”

Crow’s brows upturn at her words, feeling almost overwhelmed. Those words offered more solace to his heart than the kisses —kisses which he could hardly believe happened. He’ll have to make sure she was on the same page as him later, because any further and Crow would fall even more inextricably in love with the Guardian.

They lean into each other for some time, letting the comforting silence speak for them. Beside them, the fire pops as it fades off, nearly just embers now.

Crow’s the first to move, stretching behind himself to reach a spare log. He tosses it onto the middle of the fire. It doesn’t catch right away, but the Guardian flicks a bit of solar Light at it and soon the fire cackles warmly again.

Adjusting himself, Crow scoots closer to the Guardian so that they’re sitting shoulder to shoulder.

“Could you tell me—only if you want to—about…” Unsure of how to ask and knowing it’s taboo for guardians to learn details of their past, Crow trails off.

“I-I just want to listen...if that would help.”

The Guardian catches his hand at that and brings it to her lips. She plants a gentle kiss on his palm. Looking into Crow’s eyes, she slowly nods. He leans forward to give the Guardian a chaste peck on her lips. Crow adjusts how he’s sitting to embrace the Guardian from behind and she shifts to lean into him.

“No questions about details related to your past, alright? Only if you don’t understand something like time or place.”

Crow nods several times, suddenly feeling shy and too anxious to speak. He hugs the Guardian tightly before easing up to let her speak.

“Alright,” She sounds a bit tired now, the exact kind of weariness that only comes from raging against a deep grief and losing the battle, but accepting the scars and moving on. One foot in front of the other. “it’s a Golden Age saying that the road to Hell is paved with good intentions.”

“Let me tell you the story of how a beloved space cowboy, an enigmatic jailer, and a terribly misguided, but utterly-devoted-to-his-dead-sister brother collided into absolute tragedy.”

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luvvewan · 3 years

Note

EEEE can you do 11?? Obi wan and qui gon JA time period? :D

Thank you very much for the prompt, @general-flame ! ❤️ I realized after writing this blurb that you specified Jedi Apprentice and this actually follows new canon/Master and Apprentice. I hope you enjoy it anyway but feel free to send send another JA prompt and I’ll try to be more observant! 😬

11. “I need you to breathe for me. Slowly – in and out.”

—

(then)

When Obi-Wan opened his eyes, the first thing he saw was the bleary afternoon sky above him, sullen and swollen with dark clouds. He immediately vomited, and his confused head thought it must be rain water, this tepid liquid rushing up from his guts.

He tried to take a deep breath, but made a clumsy gulping sound instead. Warm pressure settled on the nape of his neck, and he felt the Force, suffused with healing, yet strained.

Panicked.

He tried to wrench away from the touch. His fingers dug into the grainy earth. He tasted the grain—no, sand—in the back of his throat. It was going to fill his lungs, but he wretched again. He could not stop, overtaken by great, shuddering heaves, the Force more shadowed than the sky, dark with fear.

I should not be afraid to die.

I am Jedi.

Hands beat on his back, while another clutched his arm, keeping him upright, although he was very tired and his vision had dissolved along the edges. A vice squeezed his lungs, the hand squeezed his arm. Voices drifted down from the clouds.

“Obi-Wan—“

“Steady now. Breathe, kid.”

Two voices; he didn’t recognize the second. He tried to obey it anyway, letting the order override his body’s twitchy, mindless reactions. Obi-Wan spit out wet sand, but didn’t vomit, which allowed a thin stream of air through. Then more. The sharp pinch in his chest eased. He wanted to suck in the clean, sweet air, glut himself on it. He sputtered instead, and the hand moved along his spine, wide palm stroking up and down.

“Easy,” A different voice, lower, closer. “Focus on calming your heart.”

Master. He was suddenly shaking, even though it was the opposite of what Qui-Gon wanted, and there was a skittering flurry in the Force, and he realized his heart was pounding as if it wanted to burst out of him. He was going to puke, ohhh—-

“Qui-Gon, he’s—“

“I know.”

Despite the cacophony in his ears, Obi-Wan could hear the disappointment there. He blinked up, forcing his eyes to center on the vague face-shape hovering above him. Water dripped onto him, this time from the ends of Qui-Gon’s long hair. He was looking at Obi-Wan.

Blue eyes striated with grey. Like the sea.

Obi-Wan coughed and shivered. “What,” he started to say, but was unconscious before he could finish the question.

What do you know?

—-

(now)

“N-N…”

“I need you to breathe for me.”

Obi-Wan choked and sputtered.

“Slowly-in and out,” Qui-Gon braced his Padawan’s shoulders in an attempt to ground him. Though instinctively he wanted to draw the trembling young man closer, Qui-Gon remained at the edge of the sofa, giving Obi-Wan space. In the chaos of the moment, it was difficult to remember the healer’s suggestions, but he was getting better at it.

Unfortunately, Qui-Gon had already been provided several opportunities to practice.

The Force energy surrounding Obi-Wan pulsed with rapid, unfiltered emotion—confusion, panic, fear. Qui-Gon felt the echoes of terror, as clearly as he could still hear the desperate gasps from that day, weeks ago. When the attacks came, Obi-Wan sounded like he was struggling for air.

Drowning.

“Do you want the lights on?” Qui-Gon asked softly.

Obi-Wan’s eyes were screwed shut; after a few seconds he nodded.

Qui-Gon waved on a glow lamp. The common area of his quarters looked aggressively normal, unaffected, their tea cups from earlier in the evening still sitting on the end table. It was only the blanket, thrown onto the floor, that spoke of any unease.

He picked it up, shook it out and draped it over Obi-Wan’s shoulders. “That’s it. You’re doing better. In and out.”

Obi-Wan opened his eyes and looked at Qui-Gon. His chest was still fluttering spastically, but as the minutes passed, he took more and more control, until at last the wild-bright panic faded. Obi-Wan sagged against the sofa.

“Well done.” He held Obi-Wan’s gaze, something that had been hard to do, as of late. He wondered when he would be able to look in those gray eyes again without remembering how they had widened with terror, silently pleading for help. Qui-Gon had failed his Padawan that day.

And now Obi-Wan was staying with him, rather than in the apprentice dorms. Obi-Wan had insisted it was unnecessary, embarrassed by Qui-Gon’s offer. But he was not sleeping, and Qui-Gon could not sleep either, imagining his Padawan in the throes of these ruthless attacks, alone.

He had made enough mistakes with this young man. He would do what he could to fix it.

Obi-Wan was glancing around the room, as if discreetly scanning for danger.

Qui-Gon understood that it was a side effect of the anxiety and trauma. As the soul healer explained it, Obi-Wan’s close call triggered primitive responses in his brain. His body currently perceived threats even in safe places, like his Master’s rooms in the Temple.

Or perhaps he is right to sense danger here, a niggling voice in the back of his head pointed out. After all, you did not protect him. Far from it.

He gingerly squeezed Obi-Wan’s knee. “I’ll get you some water.”

Obi-Wan blinked. In the weak amber light, he looked younger than his twenty years. “Alright. Thanks.”

Qui-Gon glanced at the chrono when he walked into the small kitchen. Close to daybreak. So it would be another early morning. He returned with a glass of cool water.

Obi-Wan took it with a quiet ‘thank you’ and sipped. His hair was flattened on one side of his head, the other half standing in riotous spikes. Qui-Gon had begun to believe the regulation Padawan cut in human males existed to endear them to their teachers. He smiled and smoothed the sweaty hair with his palm.

He noticed Obi-Wan’s mouth tense and his eyes dropped to the glass in his hands.

“You have no reason to be ashamed, young one.”

Obi-Wan snorted. “No, of course not. All senior apprentices lose their minds and have to sleep on their Master’s couch.”

It was meant partially in jest, but the words twisted Qui-Gon’s heart nonetheless. He set the glass on the table and leaned back on the sofa, crossing his arms over his sleep robe. “You have not lost your mind. Healer Che said this is not uncommon after a traumatic event.”

“Nor is it common.” Obi-Wan started to fiddle with his braid, then caught himself. “I don’t see how it’s especially traumatic,” he confessed, looking at Qui-Gon with bloodshot eyes. “I just need to learn how to swim.”

—

They were Temple-bound while Obi-Wan recovered. Unlike a physical injury, the parameters for mental recovery were ill-defined. Obi-Wan went to appointments with a soul healer; he rarely spoke of what was discussed in the sessions. Qui-Gon got the impression that his Padawan firmly wanted to move on, and was both irritated and discouraged by the attacks.

Qui-Gon wanted to move on too, of course. He and Obi-Wan had only just begun to mend their relationship after the fateful mission to Pijal, and Qui-Gon’s near-acceptance of the Council seat.

He sat on a bench in a less-traveled area of the Gardens. His eyes burned from interrupted sleep. The episodes were becoming much more frequent, nearly every night. He worried for Obi-Wan, who was currently sitting in a lecture, undoubtedly exhausted.

If he was a more experienced Master, would this all be easier? Over and over, he grappled with the idea that Obi-Wan needed someone like Mace, or even Yoda. The boy was so different from him. He never knew if he was providing Obi-Wan with the tools he needed to thrive, as a Jedi or as a person. Pijal had proved to Qui-Gon he could not give Obi-Wan up, nor were their problems insurmountable. He had returned to Coruscant with hope, and turned the Council’s offer down.

And then, on their very next mission following Pijal, Obi-Wan almost drowned.

Since then, Qui-Gon’s thoughts dwelled on a conversation he’d had with Obi-Wan, back when he still intended to join the Council.

“I’ve never taught you to swim, have I, Obi-Wan?”

“No, Master. But I know how—well, a little bit.”

“We’ll practice. Every Jedi should be able to swim like a Mon Calamari.” *

He could forgive some mistakes he had made as Obi-Wan’s mentor. Obi-Wan was his first Padawan, assigned to him by Master Yoda, and there were bound to be stumbling blocks. In this case, Qui-Gon had no excuse. For years, it had not occurred to him to ask Obi-Wan if he knew how to swim.

He had assumed, as with so much else in this relationship—assumed somewhere along the way, Obi-Wan had learned how to swim. He should have taken Obi-Wan to the Temple pools as soon as they returned from Pijal, as he had pledged to do.

Their lives were busy. He had forgotten.

He cleared his throat, looking out at the vibrant greenery. He remembered swimming with Master Dooku. Qui-Gon could swim, and swim well, before his first proper mission as a Padawan. Why had he let so many things slip with Obi-Wan? Admittedly, in the beginning, Qui-Gon had felt shades of resentment towards the boy, foisted upon him when he had not asked for such a sudden and complete change. Yet he had grown to care deeply for Obi-Wan, despite their differences. He thought he had done his best.

Pijal had opened his eyes. But not enough, or else he would have corrected the vital lapse in Obi-Wan’s skills as soon as he was made aware.

“We’ll practice.”

There were nightmares of his own, in which he was too late, and Obi-Wan did not…he refused to give the image life or dimension now, in the Gardens, amid other Jedi and the optimistic light of day. Yoda would tell him not to dwell on what-ifs. Certainly Qui-Gon had been reminded recently enough that dreams were easily misinterpreted.

He would bring up the swimming lesson with Obi-Wan, he decided. It was a start.

—

*dialogue excerpts taken from the novel Master and Apprentice by Claudia Gray

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