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morsking · 4 years

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And so we have concluded Lostbelt 2! Now that I’ve experienced it for myself, I have a much clearer picture about how I feel about this chapter. As I progressed one thing became very clear to me, and that was that Hazuki Minase likely did NOT have any influence with this chapter, and its weakest points can be attributed to its main writer, Hikaru Sakurai, once we more closely scrutinize her work.

For starters, I would like to apologize to the people who kept trying to tell me Minase had nothing to do with the writing of Losbelt 2. You were correct, I simply acted stubbornly because I was terrified that one of the writers I loathe the most had returned to haunt and corrupt the franchise I hold very dear to me. I insisted on blaming him for any flaws because he was an easy scapegoat and a bogeyman, and while we all agree he is a pervert and a hack who should be fired, it is simply not fair to point fingers at imaginary criminals. A person should always be held accountable only for the misdeeds they have actually committed. Indeed, we may now explore Lostbelt 2 and the integrity of its writing with a more objective perspective, or rather as objective as I can manage to be.

The overall theme of the Lostbelt is “acknowledging one’s emotions as a vehicle for personal growth”. The issue persistent in the setting of Lostbelt Scandinavia was that it was a place where only young humans were allowed to survive. These humans would be oblivious to what real growth and prosperity were really like. They were innocent, and emotionally and intellectually stunted groups of people who only knew to live for the truth of their eventual demise. They lived short, rushed lives where they would stay ignorant of basic human experiences, such as love, grudges, aging, vice, hate, competition, and companionship because they devoted themselves to living how Scathach-Skadi ordered them to. They were unable to think or decide what to do for themselves, and were thus incapable of not just taking the reins to decide their own evolution as we do in Proper Human History, but also of fathoming doing such a thing in the first place.

This is a mirror to Ophelia Phamrsolone. Ophelia was conditioned to only listen to others for purpose and direction. Ophelia doesn’t actually know how to listen to her own feelings or even what those feelings even are because she was never allowed to connect not just with herself but with anyone. Ophelia, like Surtr points out, is still very much a little girl terrified by everything around her because she has no balance, no capacity for finding her center as a healthy and normal human being would. Unbeknownst to herself, all her interactions with others are a plea for help. Her very first interaction with Mash in 2017 was asking her if she’d like to have lunch with her and Pepe because Ophelia is terrified by male strangers and wishes to connect with other women as well. Ophelia’s conversations with Kirschtaria are also her not knowing how to proceed with challenges and therefore appealing to authority both for comfort and advice. Finally, her monologues with the Alien Priestess are Ophelia venting about how she feels, as if she were unaware of what to really think of herself as her helplessness and indecision drown her in a lake of self-loathing.

These cries for help extend to the way she summons her Servants. Ophelia is noted to be incredibly proficient at evocation. Some might even call her a genius. In fact, she is such a genius she unknowingly managed to contract not just with one, nor two, but three different Servants all at once. The first Servant to answer her summon was Sigurd, the King of Warriors from Nordic mythology. The second Servant was Surtr the King of Giants and Scourge of Ragnarok (titled by yours truly), who hijacked the summoning and took over Sigurd. The third, and most pivotal, was Napoleon Bonaparte, the French Emperor whose Spirit Origin was modified to embody the “ideal Good Fellow who could make dreams come true” rather than the actual historical Napoleon.

What these three Servants have in common is that Ophelia wished for all of them from the darkest depths of her heart. Ophelia desired capable Servants who could give her some form of direction and stability.

Sigurd, for example, is a hero renown for rescuing Brynhild and giving brand new meaning to her life by showering her with love and devotion. Love and devotion are things that Ophelia not just desires to be shown but actively struggles to adequately express to others because she has never known what it’s like to experience those things. To Ophelia, Sigurd represents “being given that which you have never known and finding fulfillment”.

Surtr, on the other hand, embodies a darker type of direction: the terror stagnation, conformity, monotony, inaction, and eternal suffering. Surtr exercises control over Ophelia by threatening to destroy the world if he is released, prompting Ophelia to flash to her childhood locked away by her abusive parents every dreaded Sunday. Surtr locks Ophelia into a state of helplessness and indecision where she has to carefully consider how she will proceed with dealing with Surtr. Ophelia has decided to lock herself in with him as a way to prevent him from breaking out of both Sigurd’s body and the physical prison inside the Lostbelt’s sun. This is a situation where Ophelia is in a constant state of stress and fear, since as a Crypter the last thing she could ever want to see is the destruction of yet another world by her hands. More personally, the death of the Lostbelt would also mean death for Ophelia, as she has failed her purpose once again and thus would have no worth as a person. However, what Ophelia cannot understand, because Surtr himself does not, is that Surtr’s destructive impulses are how he wants to show love and devotion towards her. Surtr has reasoned that since their worlds abandoned them after they failed to perform their ordained tasks, the only thing left is to annihilate them completely as retribution for their suffering. Surtr does not wish to hurt Ophelia, but because he is a being defined only by his overwhelming desire to burn everything, he cannot help her heal or grow in any way that matters. All he can offer is annihilation. To Ophelia, Surtr represents “self-destruction through a static state of being”.

Finally, there is Napoleon. Napoleon represents a pronounced antithesis to Ophelia’s entire personality. He is an upbeat, improvising, confident man who chooses to not stress over things because what he is seeing is only what lies ahead, not what lies in front of him.He also breaks her defenses by asking something so ridiculous and unexpected as her hand in marriage when they have only just met. Napoleon refuses to give in to any negative outcome regardless of how much the odds are stacked against him, as he demonstrated in Scathach-Skadi’s throne room where he refused to let Sigurd kill his Master despite being restrained by Skadi’s paralyzing rune. He demonstrates this once again when he blows his final shot at Surtr during the final battle, sacrificing his own life to give Chaldea the opportunity to regroup and bombard Surtr to bring him down. He is called the Man of Infinite Possibilities precisely because he faces the unknown head on and finds the best path to walk for his comrades to advance. He does not let fear take over his heart and judgement, he creates a rainbow as a bridge connecting the present to the bright, shining future. He is precisely the hero Ophelia needs, because he embodies “the bravery to grasp your own future and find your own direction”.

But analyzing these characters further is a post for another time. What I want to get into are the gripes I have with this Lostbelt.

Now, I could lead you on through a couple more paragraphs before I wham you with what this all means in a much higher metatextual level, but I don’t have the time nor the creativity to do that so I’m just gonna give it to you straight. This square between Ophelia, Sigurd, Surtr, and Napoleon is the storyline that matters most in Lostbelt 2. Scathach-Skadi matters little despite her own parallels with Ophelia and being the Lostbelt King, and the situation with the Lostbelt’s inhabitants matters even less. Why?

Because Lostbelt 2 is Sakurai coming full circle and writing an otome game like Fate/Prototype was meant to be before Fate/stay night became a thing.

SHOCKER!! SOUND EFFECTS OF SURPRISE!! DRAMATIC KAZOOS GALORE!!

Now, that’s exaggerating a little. Or maybe not that much, actually.

What Sakurai was doing was applying conventional otome game tropes into the setting not just what she’s familiar writing for, but because Lostbelt 2 is inherently an incredibly self-indulgent project.

There is a classic trademark otome fantasy at play here: the fantasy of multiple men being devoted to a female main character a player can relate to. There is no denying there is a certain appeal to the idea that there are several handsome men all willing to devore their entire lives to a person. Sigurd, Surtr, and Napoleon all embody certain otome game love interest archetypes. Sigurd is the cold, composed, intellectual man who is actually earnest, just, affectionate, and wise. Surtr is the dark-hearted troubled man with fiery disposition struggling with expressing love. Napoleon is the strong, confident, borderline pixie manic dream boy with almost zero brains but plenty of empathy and... *ahem*, physique to make up for his seeming lack of tact and intelligence (he’s a himbo is what I’m saying but that comes as no surprise). The problems arise with Napoleon himself, however. Napoleon hounds Ophelia with marriage proposals she refuses time and time and again. When he proposes to her in front of Chaldea for the first time, the narrative has Mash take Napoleon’s side and urges you to do the same because Sakurai believed the reader would’ve caught on to what’s actually going on between Ophelia and Napoleon.

The issue here is that Sakurai’s clues up to that point had been far too hidden for the player to make a proper connection, and it’s not until AFTER the proposal that the player discovers Napoleon is predisposed to fall in love with whoever summons him because that’s what Ophelia wanted out of an ideal Servant. Because of the poor execution in presenting all these factors that completely recontextualize the relationship between Napoleon and Ophelia, when Sakurai has Napoleon say “You did not reject me therefore you DID agree,” we jump to the conclusion that Napoleon is engaging in extremely reprehensible behavior and ideology reminiscent of dangerous and abusive men IRL rather than take it as harmless flirtation from a well-meaning oaf of a man as he tries to break the shell of his beloved. Sakurai invokes a very dangerous trope that does more to excuse misogynistic behavior when done incorrectly rather than successfully appear as a romantic gesture of attempting to liberate a loved one from the clutches of isolation and victimhood.

On a larger scale, the application of these tropes is where Lostbelt 2 starts to suffer, and that’s where Sakurai’s writing further begins to resemble Minase’s. Sakurai spent so much time building these interpersonal dynamics that she spent the least amount of effort actually building upon the situation of the Lostbelt and Scathach-Skadi’s character and motivations for keeping the Scandinavia the way it is.

Upon scrutiny, it’s not very difficult to pick apart the setting and make a mark out of the glaring logistical inconsistencies of maintaining a population of only 10,000 humans for a span of 3,000 years by having them reproduce at 15 years old at the latest to execute them at 25. Anyone with a passing understanding of biology would know that forcing children to carry babies to term can lead to terrible health and psychological complications that would certainly end up in a lot more miscarriages, stillbirths, and failed attempts at impregnation than actual successful births. The problem here then is rather evident. Sakurai wanted to use the fact that all these children are young, innocent, naive, gullible, and ignorant to draw a connection to Ophelia’s own psychological and emotional circumstance. However, she realized that because she was writing a setting that obligated her to work around a 3000-year gap between Ragnarok and the present day. She needed something that would compromise the need for a realistic system that would ensure the reproductive viability of a human population through such a long period of time and the thematic vehicle of childhood and repression of growth as a way to connect Ophelia to her environment. This compromise ended up working for the absolute worse because she chose the worst possible system she was aware was the worst possible system she could’ve come up with and therefore decided to forsake that part of the plot without going through the implications of it and leaving the specifics to the reader’s imagination so they could sort it out in her stead.

This unwillingness to properly explore the problematic implications of Scathach-Skadi’s system not only deprived the player of a possible engaging storyline where child endangerment, a common theme in the Nasuverse, is explored and criticized through a different angle, but also actively hurts Scathach-Skadi’s connection to the player because we never get the opportunity to debate with her about her ideology and the state of the Lostbelt. We never hold her accountable for enforcing such a brutally predatory and dehumanizing system that targets children, instead Sakurai opts to build her up as a flawed, self-absorbed mother figure desperately trying to combat the extinction of the remnant of her world who also never really learned how to deal with the revelation there is an entire life she did not get to have in this universe that we MUST sympathize because she occasionally sees through the characters and acts kind towards them until the time comes for us to fight her in earnest as a matter of principle completely divorced from the question of how she’s managed her Lostbelt. The fact Scathach-Skadi’s model of sustainability does not work is made obvious by the fact it takes place in a Lostbelt, what we are trying to get at here is that it does not work from a writing standpoint because of all the different holes you can poke on it before you’ve punched through the paper screen entirely and revealed the superfluousness of it all.

There is nothing inherently bad about self-indulgent storylines. If I’m being honest, if Sakurai wanted to use Ophelia and Musashi as self-inserts to fantasize about romancing the different kinds of characters she finds attractive, more power to her. But the problem surrounding Lostbelt 2, which is the same problem that plagued Septem and Fate/Extella, is a veritable lack of restraint from her part as a professional writer in charge of a multi-billion dollar mobile game. What the writing room over at Type-Moon has to realize is that they are no longer a small doujin writing circle that can get away with whatever they want because they operate under obscurity. They are visible to the entire world and will be held accountable and criticized as professionals by consumers and their peers in the industry. A little bit of self-fulfillment in a published work never hurt anyone, you can cater to yourself most of all with your professional work (I mean, just look at She-Ra), but you must be sure that in your pursuit of indulgence your work does not suffer for it and ends up alienating and disappointing your fanbase and giving them the wrong impression of what you stand for.

Anyway we’re popping the biggest bottles when GudaMoth becomes canon this December.

#fate series #fate grand order #fgo #fate/grand order #fate go #homecooked meta #WOW THIS WAS LONG #for some reason sakurai ends up bringing the best in me even at her worst #IF I MISSED SOME THINGS IT'S WHATEVER IT'S 4:20 AM

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writingithink · 4 years

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Tangled Timelines Chapter 1 Rated: T Wordcount: 5,895 Summary: The Doctor and Rose have some news to share with Jackie, but the trip doesn't go quite as planned. Notes:Hello! This is my fic for the Classic Tropes Event. Mine was Fix-It Fic. This one is going to be a multi-chapter, with more tags added as I go. For those of you who have been reading the whole series, I actually plan to finish up the honeymoon fics (they've just been giving me grief). So those will come later, with edits to series order etc etc. If you haven't read the series, I think you should be okay? They're bonded. It was an accident. That should be all the info you really need. All of the thanks ever imaginable to @hey-there-juliet for betaing <33 All mistakes are most definitely mine (esp since I did a lot of glaring at this thing after it was beta'd). I own nothing.

Multiple trips to the TARDIS' library and seemingly endless cross-referencing all culminated in the moment the large tome slipped from the Doctor's hands and onto the bed. It knocked against Rose’s leg and his eyes automatically moved to her face - still asleep. Since their bonding, his wife had gotten used to him bringing various things into bed with them for when he inevitably got bored while she slept.

“And you couldn’t alert me to this, because …?” he whispered to his ship, voice flat and eyes wide as his brain struggled to assimilate everything he had just read.

There was no answer from the TARDIS, not even a hum of acknowledgement. It figured.

The Doctor scrubbed his hand across his face before leaving the bed, heading straight to the infirmary despite the fact that he was only wearing boxers and a vest. This time he didn’t ask his inconsiderate ship for any assistance, simply pulled up every single file on Rose Marion Tyler that existed, on the TARDIS or not. It only took seconds to hack into Earth hospital files, after all.

Not that they helped much, as the technology used in Rose’s time was appallingly primitive.

“Level five medical garbage,” he muttered to himself, zooming past all of her records. Vaccines, minor illnesses, nothing that gave him a good picture of Rose Marion Tyler before she stepped onto the TARDIS. Which, overall, was a good thing - it meant that she had never been so hurt that she needed a CAT scan or an MRI. It would have just been nice to have the data, what with his near obsessive compulsive desire to have the most complete picture of his wife’s biological history.

It’s as if no one had ever heard of voluntary medical data filing. But so be it. The TARDIS had more than enough base scans, starting from the first moment Rose set foot on the ship. This time he wasn’t going to cut corners like he had before, when he’d looked at just her telepathic centers and absolutely nothing else.

Thinking about the last time he and his wife had been in here, weeks ago, the Doctor opened a new screen to check the progress of the six-dimensional comprehensive deep scan results. They were nearly complete.

A feeling of dread lodged in his stomach.

They should have been finished ages ago. The fact that they weren’t -

He shook his head, wiping a hand down his face as he swiveled back to the primary view screen. The base scans should be able to offer him an explanation. Would. They would, because he needed to know exactly what was going on.

The TARDIS had automatically compiled all base scans since their last visit, and his previous parameters were still in place, focused solely on what in humans was called the pineal gland. The Doctor wasn’t sure that name quite applied for Rose’s brain anymore - Epiphysis Cerebri seemed like a much more accurate name for her telepathic center, which was still showing slow, incremental growth.

Fingers moving quickly, he navigated away and started gathering new information. Graphs of brain capacity and function, cellular activity and health, levels of all hormones and neurotransmitters and molecules with a special search for anything that wouldn’t normally be found in a 21st century Earth human.

Waiting for the TARDIS to compile all of these graphs felt like torture, even though it took a relatively short amount of time.

And then he had screens and screens of data all vying for his considerable attention and painting a picture that had his hearts going into overdrive, adrenaline throttling through his systems. Terror. Elation. Fear. Hope. All of his emotions were muddled and changing by the nanosecond. Panic was a constant, however.

All of it was so overpowering that the Doctor soon found himself actively fighting his traitorous body as it tried to enter a completely unnecessary healing trance, confused as it was by his sudden inability to keep control of processes that he generally had a tight grip on.

Two hands fell onto his shoulders, shocking him into jumping up, nearly crashing into the infirmary’s computational system. He whirled around to see the confused and frightened face of his bondmate.

“Doctor?” she asked, hesitating.

He wondered how long she had been trying to speak to him, both verbally and through their bond. Covering his face with both hands, he finally got his breathing back in order and his hearts-rate down.

“Sorry,” he finally managed, once he was capable of speech again, though the single word came out hoarse and scratchy.

“What’s happening? What’s wrong?” Rose asked, still not moving, hands fisted at her sides.

Focusing on their connection, he could feel her overwhelming concern … for him. Well, it did make sense in the ironic way these things always tended to. Since she had been asleep when he left her, the Doctor hadn’t put any thought into shielding. All of his emotions must have barreled into her like a freight train. Couldn’t have possibly been a pleasant way to wake up.

Reluctantly he dropped his hands, palms sliding down his face slowly as he gave up their paltry defense.

“Nothing’s wrong per se,” he hedged, wincing as her mental disbelief permeated their link. “It- it’s more complicated than that. It’s-”

He didn’t know how to explain it. His normally ever-present gob seemed to be offline now that he desperately needed it. Telepathic communication seemed to also be out, as his brain was still in the process of resettling from the accidentally self-induced bulldozing of his basic systems.

“It’s what?”

As the Doctor took another deep breath, Rose looked around, seeming to just realize where they were. She must have raced through the TARDIS to get to him in her worry. He felt incredibly guilty.

“It’s something that we would probably be much more comfortable discussing somewhere else,” he decided, scratching the hairs at the nape of his neck and looking down, shocked to realize that he was nearly naked. “Maybe after getting dressed. And a shower. Breakfast. Not in that order!”

Rose sighed and crossed her arms. The Doctor took a moment to notice her clothing, which consisted of a housecoat and slippers, but he couldn’t tell what she had on underneath (if anything).

“And then we’ll talk?” she questioned, both eyebrows raised, getting his mind back on track.

“Yes. Definitely. How does tea in the library sound?”

Her lips were pursed, but she eventually nodded.

“Good. Great! And I- I’m really, truly sorry for worrying you,” he sighed, finally moving forward and wrapping his arms around his impossible wife. It took a few moments before Rose relaxed into the embrace.

“This is about me, isn’t it?” she whispered after a few long, silent moments.

“Shh,” he scolded. “Shower first. Shower, clothes, food, then talking.”

Procrastination really is just a different type of running, and no one knew that better than the Doctor. He also knew that he wasn’t fooling Rose for a moment. Their bond was still wide open, the contents of their impending discussion only hidden due to the fact that it was all categorized in his mind as ‘scientific information’, and therefore held back by one of the many barriers he kept permanently in place so that he wouldn’t inundate his bondmate with headache inducing amounts of information.

“Alright then,” she conceded, “let’s get going.”

The Doctor took her hand as she pulled away, allowing himself to be led through his time ship. In his current, nebulous state he doubted he’d be able to find their room if he tried. He was just grateful that Rose understood that his desire to put off this conversation didn’t mean he wanted to be separated from her in the slightest.

It was funny, sometimes, to imagine that all of the effort he had previously put into studiously trying to not overwhelm her with just how much he wanted to almost always be in her presence had been completely inverted now that all of their cards were forever on the table.

They got into the shower together and he began to wash his wife’s hair as if on auto-pilot, only refocusing on the present moment when feelings of relaxation and contentment began to pierce through the veil of unpleasant emotions tangled across their shared minds. Once the shampoo rinsed away, the Doctor couldn’t stop himself from cupping her face and pulling her into a relatively chaste kiss. Maybe, just maybe, he could convince himself that everything would all truly be alright (for once). Because one thing that had been clear while looking through her scans was that Rose was perfectly healthy. Her life wasn’t threatened in the slightest.

Things were just … different.

Before he was quite ready, they had finished showering, were both fully clothed, somehow tea and toast had been made (though he barely remembered being in the galley), and they had reached the library. Rose immediately sat down on the sofa, a fire already crackling away in the grate. He followed her, taking a large gulp of his beverage the moment he sat down. For all of the time he had spent trying to organize his thoughts, they were still less than refined.

The problem was, despite being bonded and therefore having an intimate knowledge of her thought processes, the Doctor still couldn’t predict how she would react to any of what he’d discovered in the hours his wife had spent sleeping. And despite the fact that she wasn’t actually saying anything, he did know that she was growing more and more impatient by the second.

“Sooo,” he began, hoping that the rest of the words would just happen, as it were, “this is cozy, innit?”

Obviously it didn’t work.

“Why don’t you start at the beginning?” she suggested.

“Oh, blimey, alright then. Well, billions of years ago, a cataclysmic explosion of a singularity caused what you could refer to as the Big Bang, Event One, or even just ‘creation’. It resulted in a very compact, tiny universe that was very dense and very hot, riddled with dimension pockets and full of space-time anomalies that are now considered exceedingly rare. These were the beginnings of the Dark Times, of which not much is known - time travel so far back was-”

“Doctor,” Rose interrupted, “does this have anything to do with what has you so upset? The, erm, results?”

“Ah, well, no … not as such. I mean, it’s tangentially related to absolutely everything, of course, but it … right, sorry.” He took another sip of tea, followed by a deep breath. The beginning, but not that beginning. “I finally tracked it down. Old texts, ancient, that had descriptions of telepathic marriage bonds. Took ages to find one that sounded right, though. Apparently most ancient Gallifreyans needed to have the assistance of an experienced telepath who specialized in this kind of thing in order to join their minds. Knew that couldn’t be right, so I kept on digging and when I-”

The words were flowing out now, faster than he could keep track of and for once he was aware of just how irrelevant they were. With a huff he stood up and began to pace in front of the fire, hoping that the movement would help.

“Very old, very rare, very specific. That’s what our bond is. There isn’t even a translation for what they called it, the word would be absolutely meaningless to anyone else, anyone who hasn’t experienced it for themselves. It’s the specificity, though, that made me realize that there was much more at work than just your growing telepathic abilities. When I went to the infirmary, it was really a toss up - either I was right or I was wrong and hadn’t found the proper information yet.”

“But you weren’t wrong, were you?” She bit her bottom lip, eyes tracking him as he moved back and forth across the sitting area that for once seemed much too small.

“No,” the Doctor sighed, running his fingers through his hair. “The 6D scans will probably be ready later today, but I didn’t need those. Just different graphs of your base scans to measure different things. The thing is,” he nearly shouted, “if I hadn’t been about to regenerate, and then freshly regenerated, and then unpardonably distracted, I should have done this all ages ago! Quick as I could after I’d taken the Vortex out of you.”

“Think we were a bit busy savin’ the Universe to bother with all that,” Rose pointed out, comfort and understanding passing over to him through their link, along with a few spikes of irritation and general chastisement for pointlessly blaming himself for something yet again.

“And what’s my excuse for after all that?” he drawled, unwilling to let her absolve him for this appalling negligence of her health and well-being. What kind of doctor was he, if he couldn’t be arsed to take adequate care of the woman he loved?

“Maybe, I dunno, the fact that I felt absolutely fine? That we were busy navigating all your new quirks and preferences while still saving planets? Anyway, you still haven’t even told me what’s going on.”

The Doctor scrunched up his face as he dug the heels of his palms into his eyes. She was right, obviously. Somehow he was still managing to procrastinate. His teeth ground slightly as he set his jaw and made his way back to the couch.

“You have a large amount of artron energy,” he began. “More than just background radiation. Way more. I would say life threatening amounts, except you also are absolutely riddled with huon particles. Also deadly.”

“Huon particles?”

“Eradicated by the Time Lords near the end of the dark times - oh, look at that, it all came back ‘round, sort of.”

“But you just said they were deadly,” Rose frowned. “Why does it sound like they’re a good thing? I mean, your people obviously had a reason for gettin’ rid of ‘em all. How’re they even there?”

Oh, his magnificent, brilliant, fantastic bondmate - always asking the right questions. A small smile lighted her face as she caught the thought.

“See, the TARDIS is connected to the Vortex, which goes all the way back - remnants of huon particles exist in her heart, which you opened up and used to merge with her, a whole fifth dimension running through the both of you. The huon particles are stabilizing the artron energy - it’s feeding them instead of overtly impacting the rest of your body. So in this case, this one case, the reemergence of deadly particles from the dawn of time is a good thing. Even so, that wouldn’t be enough, except you didn’t just merge with the Vortex alone but with the TARDIS. The TARDIS emits chronon particles, and one of the key differences between Time Lords and non-Time Lord Gallifreyans is that our bodies are surrounded by a bio-plasmic field of chronon energy, allowing us to bond with a TARDIS.”

“Oh. Right, that’s why when you were sick the TARDIS wasn’t working properly. Couldn’t translate for us.”

“Yes, yes, exactly.” The Doctor got back to his feet, the need to pace outweighing his desire to remain close to his wife. “Now, the thing about having a surrounding field is that it can, er, leach on to others. Infect them. Not in a bad way. It’s what provides me with protection from the time stream, helps with cell rejuvenation, etcetera. So actually, if a bit of it didn’t migrate away to those I’m close with, I’d never be able to bring anyone along on the TARDIS with me. Too dangerous. Thing is, you have your own now, not just an echo of mine. Which makes sense. You two became one, of course she would bond with you as well. Thing is, to do that - your DNA, Rose. Becoming Bad Wolf. It’s given you symbiotic chronon nuclei.”

“And what’s that, then? Something to do with the chronon particles?”

“In a sense. It’s only viewable with a temporal reading, which the TARDIS base scans do automatically, because that’s what’s normal for me. She doesn’t change protocols just because the other person she’s scanning happens to be human. I’ve mentioned before that I have TNA. Triple helix instead of double, yes?”

Rose nodded, taking a wary sip of her tea.

“Well, it’s actually a bit more complicated than that. Properly, temporally scanned it’s actually four strands. That symbiotic chronon nuclei is the physical, quasi-symbiotic link between the TARDIS and I. Now you have one too.”

“So wait, I’ve got four strands of DNA now? And we didn’t even notice?” Her mug clattered onto the table as she deposited it and stood quickly.

“No, no, no, just the three. No TNA. But this is where things get complicated.”

“You mean there’s more ?” she screeched, going paler than she already had been, thoughts becoming a whirl of panic. “Isn’t it complicated enough?!”

“Weeeeeell, let’s go back to that third strand I’ve got, yeah? It’s pretty much, and by pretty much I mean almost the sole reason, that regeneration is possible. Stores all the information for past and future incarnations, as well as other things,” he explained, waving his hands around, “and as far as I understood it, that’s what allowed for a Gallifreyan’s self-replicating biogenic molecules.”

“Your what?”

“Remember the nanogenes?” he asked, finally walking back to her in order to weave their fingers together.

“Yeah, ‘course.”

“Gallifreyan bodies have something like that. Biological nanites. Not only do they allow for regeneration, but on a daily basis they repair and prune any damaged or malformed cells. Hence why we age so slowly. I’ll look just like this for hundreds of years yet.”

She nodded slowly. “And lemme guess, I’ve got those too, somehow.”

“Yes. Though wired differently than mine, You’re still human , Rose. Just … with genetic modifications. Powerful genetic modifications. Obviously meant to keep you alive, because really, thinking about it properly, you shouldn’t have survived the trip back to the gamestation, much less been able to accomplish everything you did. A symbiotic self-renewing cell structure is really the obvious solution to the problem, and if you did have TNA like I do, the gigantic surge of artron energy would have triggered a regeneration, just like it did for me. But your body doesn’t work that way, so it just- just healed the damage, no mess, no fuss.”

“And they’re still there now, healing stuff?”

The Doctor nodded.

“So what does it all mean, then, exactly? Without all of the science babble.”

“Without it?” He winced at the way his voice nearly squeaked.

“As little of it as you can get away with,” Rose conceded, the smidge of laughter in her voice doing wonders for his frayed nerves.

“Alright. Well, your cell death is almost non-existent. Your brain activity, in addition to the new telepathic adjustments, has increased in both capacity and function. You likely haven’t noticed because you haven’t tried to stretch things more than average, and why would you? Despite all of these changes, it’s not like you really knew about them or have had any sort of training on how to incorporate them aside from our telepathy lessons. With the way you’re connected to the TARDIS, you could probably learn to sense time. That’s what allows for most of my time senses, by the way.”

“Doctor, less babble,” his wife helpfully reminded him.

“Right, yes, well,” he swallowed audibly, “the main thing is … you’re not going to age at the same rate as everyone else you know. Everyone human, that is. There’s no way for me to be certain how long your life might be, since our timelines are too tightly wound together.”

“They are?”

“Of course they are.” At this, the Doctor finally smiled, wrapping his arms around her. “That’s the thing, the crucial thing, about the bond. Why I needed to check the scans to make sure. It exists not just because we love each other, not just because we have compatible minds, but because our timelines were able to be synced. Literally able to be together forever, however long forever might be. This connection we have, it’s not the kind that can be forced, it can only happen spontaneously. In fact, from what I’ve read, the existence of this form of bond is exactly why the practice of making less deep and all encompassing ones came into being. Others who weren’t as, as destined for each other, for lack of a better word, wanted the same kind of intimacy. And of course it fell out of favor, not just because of Gallifrey’s abandonment of emotional ties in general, but because of the pain associated with losing a partner you’ve permanently telepathically merged with.”

“So that, us … we won’t have that?”

“I can’t view my own timeline and I can’t view yours, but I do know that they’re so tightly twined that you can’t tell the two apart. I can feel it, and maybe someday you will be able to on your own, but for now I can always show you,” he offered.

“I- I’d like that, but …” Rose trailed off, biting her lip and looking away.

“What?”

“’S just, you were so, so upset earlier. And it’s definitely a lot to take in, but, I mean, doesn’t it all seem like a good thing?” she asked, turning back toward him, eyes locking with his and broadcasting her pained confusion just as adequately as the bond itself was.

“For me? Of course it is, and the selfish part of me has never been more happy. But Rose, you have to understand that I wasn’t trying to be dramatic that night, outside of the chippy, when I said that my lifespan was a curse. You’re going to outlive everyone you know and love, aside from me. You won’t age at the same rate that they do. And I know that it’s expected for children to outlive their parents, but you’re going to spend far longer without your mother than with her. This … it was never something I wanted for you, the pain of so many goodbyes.”

Rose shut her eyes before burrowing her head into his chest, holding him tighter. For a long time they were silent, though the Doctor could hear her racing thoughts as she tried to process all of the information he had shoved at her in such a short period of time. He was content to just hold her, rubbing a soothing arm up and down her back until a singular thought rang out across their bond that had her gasping and him groaning.

We have to tell mum.

The Doctor spun around the console in a whirlwind, Rose clinging to the jumpseat. He could feel her trepidation as they landed, her worry about her mother’s reaction to their news. So he wasn’t surprised in the slightest at her shock upon opening the TARDIS' door and finding them very much not on Earth.

“Think your driving’s a bit more off than usual,” she noted vaguely as he finally stepped away from the console to grab his jacket.

“Is it really?” He gave her a look of wide eyed bewilderment, just as his thoughts inevitably revealed that he had had no intention of making the trip to Jackie’s - yet.

Rose crossed her arms, giving him an unconvincing glare as the Doctor finally met her at the door and stuck his head outside.

“Ah, perfect!” he exclaimed. “Right where I wanted to be.”

“Oh, really? And where’s that then?” his wife asked, finally stepping out of their ship and having a look around. There were rows and rows of stalls and booths as far as the eye could see.

“It’s a bazaar. On an asteroid. Moves around every four cycles to a different asteroid in a different sector. Used to just be a handful of merchants and artisans and performing artists, a sort of circus, if you will, only without the mistreated animals and exploited people. Was called Mz’trak’s Marvelous Moving Menagerie - gotta love that alliteration, absolutely amazing. But as you can see, it grew. Doesn’t have a name now. Too much going on. Still, organized enough to make it’s trip across the quadrant. They span galaxies, Rose Tyler! This is the place to go to find anything you could possibly imagine!”

“Okay,” she said slowly, drawing out the word as she turned back to face him. “And what, exactly, are we lookin’ for that’s so important that you’re putting off visiting mum?”

“Oh, right, see, about that - I thought, maybe, just maaaybe, you’d be able to find something for her here. To, erm, soften the blow, as it were. Butter her up a bit.” Make her less likely to regenerate me, he didn’t say, but he didn’t have to. The thought was pretty much blaring on a loop that his bondmate was unlikely to miss.

“Seriously?! Doctor, if you hide away again and force me to have this talk all on my own, I swear-”

“No, no, I won’t! We’ll do this together, I promise!” he hastened. No need to have two angry Tylers on his hands.

“Honestly, I don’t know why you’re so afraid of her,” Rose said with a roll of her eyes before taking his hand and beginning to walk through the market.

Normally she buzzed up to nearly every stall, wanting to see as many strange and novel alien things as possible, but this time his wife was quickly passing them by, categorizing everything in their immediate vicinity as ‘too alien’. Admittedly, the Doctor hadn’t given that much consideration when he decided that a gift for his mother-in-law would be a good plan.

“It’s a premonition I have, really,” he told her, “that your mum will be the death of me. Unlikely, I’ll give you that, but you never know. Sometimes these things have merit. I was once very good at that kind of thing, seeing the future. Well, not really. More like an unconscious tracking of future timelines that seems like a form of prescience but is really-”

“You are so full of it,” Rose laughed. “But speaking of past yous, I’m not going to regenerate, am I?”

While the Doctor had thought that he’d been very clear in the library earlier, perhaps he hadn’t explained very well. Too much ‘science babble’, probably.

“Nope,” he assured her, popping the ‘p’ and giving her one of his best grins.

“So Bad Wolf didn’t make me into a Time Lord. Just …”

“Bad Wolf didn’t do any such thing,” he frowned. “If you want, I can show you the second by second time stamps of the scans the TARDIS took of you during all that - constant state of danger, there’s hundreds of them. But no, the TARDIS did all of that herself so that you two could become Bad Wolf. If you recall, our ship is a multidimensional alien being that even I don’t completely understand. And she likes you. A lot. Didn’t want you to die.”

He stopped himself, barely, from continuing on (again) about how he should have realized this all ages ago. There was really no point to it, just his wounded ego. Plus, who had time for brooding, anyway?

“Sure she doesn’t just like you a lot?” his wife asked with a smirk. “Y’know, making sure the girl her pilot likes so much has a matching lifespan?”

The Doctor abruptly stopped his near-skipping and pulled Rose into his arms with a growl.

“Oh, I much more than like you, Rose Tyler.”

“That so?” his cheeky wife asked him with a tongue touched grin.

Minx, he chastised telepathically, his mouth now busy as he dipped her into a snog that was likely inappropriate for public, but for once she wasn’t complaining.

“Also,” he added, after breaking the kiss so that she could catch her breath, “it would be Time Lady, you know. And that is a little complicated, now that I think about it. Because you’re not Gallifreyan, but not all Gallifreyan’s are Time Lords or Time Ladies. Then again, you have the bit of genetic jiggery pokery that makes a Gallifreyan a Time, er-”

“Let’s just go with Time Lord, yeah?”

“It’s a hypothetical political correctness jumble,” he muttered with a grimace.

“So I’m a bit like a human Time Lady? Kind of?”

“Kind of. Eh. Doesn’t really matter, though, does it?”

Rose had gone back to scanning the booths, but was quick to turn her sharp gaze back to him. “How could it not matter?”

“Well, I mean, you’re still Rose Tyler. Doesn’t matter to me, what kind of species you call yourself. The important thing is that you’re you, and I get to keep you.”

And the Doctor could tell that she didn’t exactly agree with him, all of the ramifications of this still buzzing around in her head and the impending talk with Jackie making her permanently anxious. But still, she smiled at him and squeezed his hand.

“Yeah, I suppose you’re right.”

Finally some stalls came up that looked promising and his bondmate began looking at things in earnest. As he watched her flit about, the thought began to really settle in. They would be able to stay together, not just for the very short human forever that he had struggled to come to terms with, but for his forever.

The weight of the Universe on his shoulders had never felt lighter.

It suddenly did seem a little bit ridiculous, all of his worries about Jackie’s reaction. At least when it came to him . Over 900 years old, he could (probably) take it. If anything, he was more concerned for Rose. If (or really, it was more likely to be when) her mother reacted poorly, she would undoubtedly be hurt.

Flashes of their ‘marriage announcement’ briefly passed through his mind.

This time, though, he would be there for her. Absolutely no swanning off or hiding or cowering of any sort. Well, minimal cowering. Can’t set the bar too high, knowing he was about to get a smack (even if none of it was actually his fault). It would all be worth it in the end, being able to spend the rest of his life with the woman he loved.

“Do you think mum would like this?” Rose asked, interrupting his chaotic stream of thought.

“What’s that?” The Doctor walked closer to the booth, finally taking notice of his surroundings instead of blindly following his wife. “Oh! These are all made of bazoolium! That’s brilliant!” he exclaimed, touching a large piece that was either intended to be abstract art or a Raqkle Bear about to attack, unsurprised by the neutral temperature. After all there was no weather to speak of on the asteroid.

“Yeah, he was just tellin’ me that they could predict the weather,” she said, gesturing toward the shopkeeper. The Doctor barely spared him a glance before investigating the ones that were combined with wind chimes, surprised when the chimes were actually made of bazoolium as well.

“They’re not incredibly unlike the barometers you lot have, only much more accurate. The truly impressive part is the fact that this property is naturally occurring in the mineral. Plus there’s really not much interpreting to it - if it’s hot, you’ll have a nice sunshine-y day, and if it’s cold there’ll be rain. Or snow, I suppose. But all you have to do is touch it. Definitely simple enough for Jackie to get use of-”

He winced when Rose telepathically zapped him, which he really should have seen coming.

After apologizing, the Doctor (for the most part) kept his mouth shut as she selected a small one that looked as un-alien as possible, something that any of Jackie’s friends would look at and think was some random tchotchke, just a thing and then think nothing of it. As soon as she finished her purchase, he took her hand and reluctantly headed back the way they came.

In a private corner of his mind he had come up with thousands of different ideas for putting this next trip off, but eventually discarded every single one of them (even if some were astonishingly brilliant). His wife wanted to get this over with, so that’s what they were going to do.

If anything, he regretted putting all of their efforts into getting her mother some bauble to put her in a good mood when they should have also been coming up with a plan for distracting her after this ‘talk’.

“Distracting her? How would we possibly distract her?” Rose wondered aloud.

The Doctor felt strangely giddy, knowing that she’d been paying attention to him over the bond. They were starting to get pretty good at not constantly acknowledging all of the thoughts that were projected without real intent, so much so that he sometimes wondered if his wife was listening most of the time. His thoughts were very interesting, after all, so he wasn’t sure how she could ignore them if she wasn’t just tuning it all out.

She rolled her eyes, making it clear that she’d caught all of that as well.

“I don’t know,” he went on, “I’m not sure what would hold her attention, aside from gossip and telly. Maybe we should nip into the future, get some Eastenders DVDs. Or some tabloids. Then again, I doubt your mother could keep her future knowledge a secret and next thing you know, we’ll have a paradox on our hands. Can’t have that.”

Rose laughed as they entered the TARDIS.

“Dunno if it’s really much of a distraction, but I do have some laundry I’ve been meaning to bring over.”

Now it was his turn to roll his eyes. “I refuse to believe your mother actually enjoys doing your laundry. There’s a perfectly good laundry room in the TARDIS. You don’t even have to do much of anything. Just put your clothes down the chute and she’ll do all the rest, even the folding.” And yes, he had told her all of this before, on multiple occasions - every time she had laundry to bring back, in fact.

So the Doctor wasn’t surprised when she said, “It makes her feel useful. She likes doing mum stuff for me.”

She said something along those lines every time. This time, however, his responding ‘fine’ was telepathic, rather than verbal as he began piloting them into the Vortex and she disappeared down the corridor to gather said laundry.

Since he was going to have to wait until Rose was finished before flying them to Jackie’s (let it not be said that he can’t learn a lesson) he almost followed her to their room. But just as he moved away from the console, he sensed that his bondmate could use some privacy while she got her thoughts in order, trying to decide exactly what she was going to say to her mum, not wanting to get into absolutely everything.

So he sat down on the jumpseat, kicked his feet onto the console, and focused on sending soothing emotions over their bond. Eventually, Rose reappeared with her giant red duffle, looking plenty nervous but definitely less so than she’d been before.

“Ready?” he asked, hopping back to his feet.

“No,” she sighed, dropping the bag onto the newly vacated seat before flashing him a wary grin. “Let’s go.”

#dw fanfiction #ficandchips #ten x rose #timepetals #tenrose #dw classic trope event #fandom: doctor who #pairing: rose x doctor #my fic #fic: tangled timelines

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elmidol · 4 years

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The Shackles of Fate - Two (NSFW)

Dark Faerie Tale AU

Read on AO3

Read Chapter One

Summary: If one misses curfew it is not only their life that is on the line, but their very soul. You are unlucky enough to encounter the fallen faerie prince when you miss curfew. He decides to claim your soul for himself rather than turn it over to the Master he has been enslaved by. As you are drawn further into his world, you learn more of your own past and how it is connected to the stories of your childhood.

Pairing: Kylo Ren/Reader Ben/Reader

Warning: dark fic, dub con, oral

The Shackles of Fate

Two

It smelled of damp soil in the place that you awoke. Your eyelids fluttered open and you discovered that there was an extreme lack of light. Darkness pervaded the area—was it a room? Normally when you were in bed there were traces of shadows that played along the walls. There was none of that where you now were. You inhaled deeply and worked to rely on your other senses in order to ascertain your current location. It occurred to you that this could well be limbo. Purgatory. The pit of Snoke’s stomach after he had consumed your soul. There were countless phrases and terms that would equate to the same thing. If not for the feel of moss under your fingertips, you would have truly believed that you had met death for your failure to make curfew. You sniffed the air once more, however, to reaffirm that there was a distinct lack of a gastric aroma.

One unfortunate fact of your childhood was that, as the dark faerie had stated, you had had no parents to comfort you. They had abandoned you as an infant, leaving you behind to be raised in the orphanage owned by the Plutt family. That was where you had met and befriended Rey. She had been there only a little while longer than you had. Never once did she give up on the possibility that her family would return for her. You, on the other hand, had escaped into the faerie tales and rejected the possibility that your parents had loved you. It hurt you more to think that they had wanted you only to leave you there.

Of the many household chores that you had been assigned, it was cleaning the toilets that had forever instilled the memory of regurgitated stale beer. You had done all that you could to ensure that the outlook you had on life remained overall positive. That was the very reason you had embraced and adored tales of faeries in your youth. Your becoming a nursemaid had been due to your growing desire to bring laughter into the lives of children as a means of preventing them from experiencing a similar childhood to yours and Rey’s.

Present circumstances did not dissuade you from believing that you had chosen the correct path for your life. The governess that you worked alongside, a woman by the name of Rose Tico, had quickly become a dear friend; and she, too, believed that you had a gift for working with the younger children in the household. Though Rose was only twenty-two years of age, her word held much weight in your opinion. She had always been wise in repeating the rules regarding surviving Snoke’s power. If you had given more heed to them, such as the at morning ensure the clock is not broken portion, you might not have wound up there.

Where there happened to be.

In darkness where not even the white material of your nightgown could be seen, that was where you were. You touched your hands to the clothing. You could not help but wonder how filthy it was. When you returned home—you firmly believed that you would be returning; you were willing to fight tooth and nail to do so—you would invest in a nightgown that was a darker shade. The current one would undoubtedly need to be tossed out. Allowing yourself to think of these mundane plans helped you to keep a level head. You had since risen to your feet and had started to tiptoe through the darkness. One hand outstretched in front of you, wiggling your toes between each step in search of anything that might bring harm.

You froze when light broke through the darkness. You squinted and shielded your eyes. A silhouette emerged, obscuring a generous amount of that brightness. You gave a quick sweep of the room to survey your surroundings in case you were again sealed inside. A shout for help lodged in your throat. You did not know if you could trust the individual. Were they yet another prisoner of the faerie? One of the guards?

Perhaps, despite his words, the faerie prince did intend on carrying out his duty of ripping your soul from your body. Not wanting to do something did not always equate to refraining from committing oneself to the dreadful task. Much as it had been in your room, there were no weapons that you could use to defend yourself. Except, of course, your fists. Your childhood had resulted in you knowing basic defensive maneuvers as well as how to properly throw a punch to break someone’s nose. Rey had also instructed you on other techniques that she had picked up during her travels.

“I can deliver you no harm. You are his guest.” Guest was certainly not the term you would have used. You clenched your teeth in order to bite back any retort you had for the female speaker.

All the same, you stepped nearer to the light when the other being shifted towards the left in a gesture of welcoming. You repeatedly blinked as your eyes struggled to fully adjust to the brightness. Something touched your shoulder, prompting you to jump. You spun around, your hands lifting to touch the material that had been placed on you. Relaxing, you tucked your arms into the sleeves of the travel shawl. You were grateful to have an added layer to your attire given that the wetness from the moss was causing portions of your nightgown to become rather transparent.

The faerie standing in front of you was dressed in earthly colors. Her wings were different than those of the dark creature that had entered your bedroom. These were a translucent pink. The faerie’s face was obscured by a mask and every bit of her flesh was hidden by her clothing.

“Should you find yourself in need of nutrition, provisions will be provided.” The faerie offered a brief bow of her head then walked around you, leaving you to your own devices.

You knit your brow in confusion. You twisted at your waist one way then the other, searching your surroundings once more. There were wooden shelves that held filled bottles and glass jars. Curled up in a corner underneath those shelves and observing you was a small feline. Its tail reminded you of a lizard, as did the tongue that flicked out from its mouth. The sound that emerged from it was a coo.

Upon closer inspection of the jars and bottles, you discovered the contents were things that made your stomach turn. You fought off the urge to gag upon noticing the pinkish organs that you strongly believed were human. One of the jars held coagulated blood and another ashes. Recoiling from the collection, you were relieved to find that the feline did not move to follow you when you walked in the direction of a different door than the one the faerie had exited.

Lanterns lit your path in the garden that the door opened to. You looked back over your shoulder, wondering what the hut you had just left was normally used for. It had not been a prison cell as you had started to fear. The stench of damp soil gave way to the various perfumes offered by the flowers in the garden. They mixed together to produce a calming aroma. You had never seen such plants in your life, although they did bear a certain resemblance to some of the illustrations in picture books.

The lanterns did not illuminate your path near as much as you would have preferred. They were spaced apart enough where shadows played on the ground and the darkness threatened to drown you every few inches. One bush of the bushes that was easily visible had berries you could have plucked off and eaten if you had wanted to.

You knew better than to allow anything too close to your mouth. Stories had long told of humans becoming trapped as servants to the fae when they ate or drank from this realm. Governess Tico did not neglect her duty to keep the entire household, including the staff, informed of these precautions and rules. The children that you looked after knew more about imps than faeries; those more malevolent creatures specialized in stealing children away to serve in the demon king’s army. Their souls were kept in a constant state of agony until they had worn out their use, at which point the imp would officially harvest the soul for Snoke’s meal.

You considered yourself lucky that you had been met with a faerie instead of an imp. You did have a strong dislike of faerie dust though, or at least when it was used to assist in your abduction.

Guest my ass, you thought, your lips puckering forward in a sour expression.

You drew the gray travel shawl more tightly around your body. In the distance you could hear voices and the occasional laughter, some of it dry and humorless. You ignored those sounds. You used the lanterns as a guide; they carried you deeper into the garden and farther away from the voices. With any luck, you would find a portal to take you back to your realm.

“You’ll be disappointed—the portal will not open for you.” The yelp that left you had your cheeks growing hot with blush. You recognized the voice and turned to its owner.

An absence of his helmet had not been what you had expected to find. Your eyes darted about the features of his face, which were far different than you had believed they would be. Despite having seen his jawline while he had been on your bed with you, you had not expected the rest of his countenance to also look human. His brown eyes had an intensity to them. You could not decide if you would refer to them as fierce or deep. They drew you in rather than repelled you. Because of this, you chose to think of them with the latter term. His hair was longer than you had seen on men where you lived. Your fingers twitched at the thought that those locks could very well be as soft as they appeared. The light curls looked much like feathers to you.

“You’ve been watching me,” you said, your tone less accusatory than the situation might have warranted. His jaw twitched. You watched his lips begin to purse only to settle back into their former frown of indifference. When he failed to reply verbally, you tried once more. “I hadn’t thought that your eyes were made for a darker world.” Instantly you felt a sense of regret over your poor word choice; faeries had not always been denizens of darkness.

His wings stretched out an inch to either side. They folded in a similar manner to a bat’s, although their texture brought to mind a moth. “The helmet?” His natural voice caused you to relax. You nodded a single time in response to his inquiry. “There are obstacles that exist between realms.” The way he spoke had changed, his tone adapting a sardonic quality. It was akin to the moments you found yourself explaining the most basic of rules to the younger children for the umpteenth time. You wondered how old this faerie prince was. That information had not been readily available in any of the tales that you had heard.

You digested the minute amount of information he had willingly provided. First, there was a portal, likely nearby given that he had felt a need to comment on it. Second, as he had stated, it would not open for you. Faerie magics were strong and it had been such forces that had once held Snoke back from your realm. You were not arrogant enough to believe that you could break them.

“Why did you bring me here?” you asked, your level of impatience winning.

When he spoke, it was not to answer your question, but to pose another. “You truly don’t know what you are, do you?” You, having glanced in the direction of the voices of the other faeries, laid your eyes on the faerie prince. His lips were curled at the corners in amusement, his eyes pinching. It was clear that he was holding in his laughter, though a breathy exhalation from his nose managed to break through. You waited for him to tease you while revealing whatever it was he believed he was going on about. You were left disappointed.

With a huff, you decided to change tactics. “Why did you put me in that hut?”

“To carry you over my threshold would have ramifications I doubt you would be prepared for.” He had worded his reply well. Your eyes widened. The prince’s smirk appeared once more and he turned his back to you. Each time he spoke, your gaze had lowered to his mouth. His canine teeth were more pointed than a human’s, although you would not refer to them as fangs since that brought to mind a vampire. You were beginning to believe that, in his own way, he had been merciful. When he had stated that he did not wish to kill you, he had meant it and acted in a way to prevent your death.

If things were as simple as that, he would be able to break free from the demon king. There has to be more.

You ran the fingers of your right hand through your hair, tucking some back behind your ear. The faerie tilted back his head. You could hear him sniff the air. Shoulders rising, you took a step in retreat. You were at a loss how to handle this behavior. The obvious statement of it’s not human would have made you roll your eyes; understanding this, though, did little to help you from feeling self-conscious.

The faerie twisted around, closing the distance between the two of you before you had a chance to react. His wings extended their full length. You turned your head to the left so that you could take in their full size and design. You had barely enough time to react to them closing again, this time wrapping around your body and pulling you against their owner. You braced your forearms against his chest, looked up at him, and glared. You would have verbally protested his actions had he not spoken first, informing you that he was masking your scent with his own. After the female faerie had referred to you as a guest, you had dismissed the idea that others in this realm might be interested in targeting you.

Your soul, according to the treaty signed by those who summoned the demon king into the human realm, belonged to Snoke as an offering. It had never been known for certain how it was that the faeries, imps and demons were able to sense who had failed to meet curfew. It was not as though those marked lived long enough to learn this secret.

A breeze rustled the leaves in the trees and bushes. The faerie’s wings shifted off of you to once more wrap around only their owner’s body. You looked down at your clothes and found that dust coated the material. The same dust that had previously knocked you unconscious. It seemed to have more than one use. You pinched the front of the travel shawl, rubbed your fingers together through the material, and inspected the digits. None of the dust had clung to your flesh.

“It will soon be morning.”

You looked up from your fingers and met the faerie’s gaze. “You will take me back to my home—I haven’t eaten anything.” His shoulders shook in silent laughter, one of his gloved hands concealing the lower half of his face. “I…” You released a strangled noise, temporarily at a loss for words. Recovering, you tried again. “I refuse to remain your prisoner!”

He lowered the limb from his face in unison with stepping around you. The faerie circled you, his eyes in constant motion. You tugged at the hem of the shawl’s sleeves. Did wearing their clothing seal your fate? The tip of his tongue peeked out from between his lips. The faerie took a step towards you and you took one back. He repeated his actions, you yours until you felt the hard surface of a tree trunk against your back, blocking you from going any further. His hands cupped you through your nightgown. You grabbed at his wrists, your eyes wide and glued to his face. He was meeting your gaze. “Don’t fight it.” He bent two fingers at the knuckles. Straightened them and bent them again. Short, slow strokes. He teased you through the thin layer of clothing that you wore.

You trembled at his touch and averted your gaze. You knew that you had not outright rejected him. What if you did? The words refused to form on your tongue as the warmth of pleasure blossomed in your stomach and pooled lower. Your panties were becoming damp. The faerie prince prodded at you, his gentle strokes coming to an end.

“Have you ever touched yourself?” he asked. You bit down on the insides of your cheeks to keep from answering. “Some go to bed early to do so.” Teasing you, reminding you of your failure. You shrunk in on yourself then straightened as his fingers resumed petting you. “I cannot take their souls.” An admission that he played the role of voyeur. He applied more pressure, managing to work open your outer lips. He fucked his fingers into them. Your wet panties were now making the front of your nightgown wet. “I can smell you like this. You like it.”

A part of you wondered why he was doing it given his prior actions, that he had worked to mask your scent.

“You said you ate nothing?” You nodded. The smirk on his lips was a filthy promise that he sunk to his knees to deliver. “I will.” Once more you were stunned to silence. Your eyes wide, you watched as the faerie prince lifted the front of your nightgown and pulled it over his head. The fingers that had been stroking you now hooked into your panties, tugging them out of his way. His warm breath crept over you. You buried your face in your hands as your body reacted. The wetness between your legs trailed down your thighs and had undoubtedly dribbled onto his face.

Your mind conjured up the memory of that pink tongue between his lips as you felt it dance along your folds. The faerie prince sunk the tips of his fingers into your thighs, working them open, and flattened his tongue against you. You felt it undulate then curl. He pulled all that he could into his mouth, noisily slurping and groaning. If it hadn’t been for the tree, you would have collapsed. Your hands dropped away from your face and you held the back of his head through your nightgown. Tilting back your head, you closed your eyes and rocked against his mouth. The grip he had on your left thigh lessened. He hooked that leg over his shoulder then plunged his tongue into you. You gasped at the intrusion, at the way he felt inside of you. Your hands tugged at him in a futile effort to get him closer. He opened his mouth around you then slowly closed his lips, dragging them along your folds while his tongue again swirled, this time on your clit.

He repeated the act, only this time he flattened his tongue and dragged it up. Moved it in reverse so that the underside gathered more of you. Another lick from that devilish tongue. He started to draw lazy designs that may have been words. As he delivered a final stroke down with the very tip, you were brought over the edge. The world around you seemed to disappear, all sounds drowned out by the pulse in your ears. His hand was on your stomach to keep you from pitching forward. His mouth still on you, tongue greedily lapping up all that he could.

Once he was satisfied, the faerie prince withdrew from your nightgown, your panties shifting back into place. You wiggled to help them. All the while you worked to catch your breath and tried to remember why you had allowed this stranger to touch you. Not that it hadn’t felt good. He wiped his mouth on the back of his hand.

“The portal will open and I will return you to your home—until night again comes. Your soul is marked. If you wish to keep it, you will not attempt to escape my protection. The imps can smell humans best of all. I will ensure your scent is masked.” He gestured in a wide arc to the many bushes in the garden. “In here you shall play while I serve the demon king.”

While you murder and ripe out the souls of others, you thought bitterly. Reality hit you hard and you felt physically ill. No matter how merciful appeared and alluring this creature was, he nevertheless was a murderer. A monster, twisted from whatever former beauty he may have been. You pressed your legs closer together and mentally berated yourself for giving into desire.

Turning, you toyed with the flower nearest to you. It was a red blossom with yellow streaks on its petals. You bent down, smelling its sweet scent, which reminded you of a hard candy that had always been your favorite. You lowered yourself onto your knees then sat on your legs. Your hands were in your lap and your eyes did not leave the flower. Resigned to your fate, until you could find a loophole, you asked for the faerie’s name. It came as no surprise that he failed to answer.

“What should I call you?” he asked. You rubbed your thumb along your leg, swiping it back and forth. Four seconds elapsed before you decided to humor the faerie prince by giving your name.

For this you earned nothing more than a grunt of acknowledgment. You rose to your feet and faced the faerie. “Are you...Ben?”

The dark winged creature flinched, drawing back from you as though you had given a great insult. “He was weak and now slumbers.” It was not exactly a no, not in your opinion. “Kylo.” He held out his hand to you. “I will take you home.”

That voice, those words, echoed in your head as you opened your eyes to find yourself staring up at the ceiling of your room. Had any of that truly occurred? Heat exploded across your face at the memory of that tongue. A dream? You touched your shoulders. There was no travel shawl. You sat up enough to push aside your blankets and examine your nightgown. It was clean, perfectly so. Your eyes shifted to the clock on the bedside dresser. It ticked, properly counting each second that passed. You started to convince yourself that it had all been a dream. Which would explain the ease with which the faerie had seduced you. Laying your head back on your pillow, however, you saw something in the corner of your eye.

You shifted on the bed, turning onto your side and staring at the small object that looked to you like a cocoon. Its design was familiar. They were… Your lips parted in a silent gasp. Kylo’s wings had the same pattern, but this was so tiny. You gently touched the tip of your index finger to the cocoon. It opened, one wing sliding down to reveal the face of a slumbering young man. He was nearly identical to Kylo, although his features were softer. More peaceful. Instead of the dark robes that Kylo had worn, this faerie was adorned in white with golden designs. He was curled with his head nestled on his crossed arms and his legs drawn towards his stomach. You carefully nudged the wing aside to see the remainder of his body.

If he were to stand his full height, he would have been just a little larger than your middle finger.

You spoke softly to the small faerie, urging him to wake up. He did not stir. You bit down on your bottom lip. If you were to leave him, there was a chance that one of the cats would enter the room and eat him.

Now slumbers, you thought with an outward groan. You had not even considered that the curse placed on the faerie prince by Snoke ran more deeply than being trapped in servitude. By night his slave, by day…

“I hope you don’t mind living in a pocket,” you muttered, rising from the bed and grabbing fresh clothes. You could already hear movement from the upper floors. The children were waking and within the hour you would once more be Nursemaid. Your predicament would have to wait until lunch hour, at which point you would be allowed to confer with Governess Tico.

#kylo ren x reader #kylo x reader #ben solo x reader #kylo ren smut #kylo ren imagine #dark faerie #dark faerie tale au #elmidolfanfic

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libertine-lioness · 3 years

Text

123✨February13,2021

Hangin by a Literal Thread🙃

FAIR WARNING: This post contains some serious bitching about the current fuckery going on in my life . If you relate in any way shape or form... hang in there Brotherrrr! If I have to keep truckin’(even though I really don’t wanna),so do you😘 And On the other hand,If you happen to live a perfectly peaceful life and you don’t relate to any kind of dis bullshit.... props to you! ya filthy liar!😶Either way, I’m going to bitch about the struggles of existing,on MY Tumblr blog AGAIN. I do hate to be such a drag to your dash, my Dear Followers. BUT Perhaps if moderately decent therapy was affordable, I’d go throw up my dark feelings there. Unfortunately that’s just not the case. Wild, right?!🤯 ANNNNYHOOOT!!!!!!

Okay so before I get into those dark dirty deets, I’ll start out by sharing a little noteworthy positivity going on. A little silver lining to the chaos surrounding my every day thoughts and feels...

A few months ago I was told that the iron and Vitamin D levels in my body, were so dangerously low, that my test results showed “alert levels” instead of the average “high,normal, or low levels”. Scary, huh? Anyway, I’ve been prescribed an extremely high dose of Vitamin D that I take twice a week. I’ve also been receiving Iron infusions once a week at the Khafman Cancer Center. And although, I’m not finished with the infusions quite yet, I feel like I’ve noticed a dramatic difference in my energy level after only 3 weeks.

Basically, I don’t feel quite as dead inside anymore. I was convinced that my low energy came from my crippling depression(still there no doubt),when in fact, a huge factor of my torpid state of being, came from my body being broken. I’m grateful that at least one of my issues are being mended. I actually feel somewhat human again. Fingers crossed, I won’t feel at all like a zombie after a few more weeks🤞🏻

Okay, so now that I’ve gotten that off my chest, here’s where the bitching begins🙃

2021 sure as hell isn’t going down like I previously anticipated. With all the global issues aside, my personal life was looking up back in November and December, 2020. I really believed for a second that maybe, just maybe, things were finally starting to look up(emotionally speaking) and that 2021 wasn’t going to hurt quite as bad as the year before.

FOOOL!

I was so very foolish, for thinking so optimistically! And wow! I gadda say... this feeling blows. I’ve been let down a ton in my time, and yet somehow this time, it’s truly hitting way different! This time feels like hitting rock bottom, followed by being metaphorically curb stomped, and then to top off that emotional and mental turmoil...financial catastrophes are swallowing me whole. Definitely not ideal.

Let me break it down....

Financially speaking:

👎🏻I’m already a shitty “saver”. I’ll admit it. But I pay my bills on time and I have enough to get by comfortably(normally). Not right now though...

👎🏻I haven’t gotten my stimulus check yet.

👎🏻While I was driving on my favorite back road home last week, I got a flat tire (after buying 4 new tires less than 3 months ago/ plus an additional $600 worth of needed repairs. $980 total in car repairs)

👎🏻Put my car in the shop only to find out I needed way more than just a new tire.

👎🏻Apparently I need at least $600-$700 worth of more work done on my car.

👎🏻 I’ve been late on every bill this month because of this issue and have had to put my tail between my legs to ask to borrow money from my grandmother.

👎🏻finally the IRS/ Covid relief system going on has royally fucked me this year on my taxes. I allegedly owe thousands of dollars. I’m not buying it, but uhh okayyy.

Emotionally speaking:

💘 I allowed myself to fall for another Leo male. As if I haven’t learned my lesson multiple times before.

💘 He felt so different though! Especially because he’s been in my life for five fucking years!

💘 I painted him a “masterpiece” and bought him “Punpkin King” socks for Christmas(to keep it breezy and light)

💘 we spent New Year’s Eve together and it felt magical enough for me to write him a handwritten appreciation letter the day after I left his place in Philly.

💘he went awol and disappeared for weeks, so I of course I took that shit personal.

💘he finally (sorta) acknowledged my letter over a month later. He got it but said “he wasn’t in the right head space to read it yet” on Saturday.

💘On Thursday he messaged me a cute silly selfie, followed by some casual flirty banter. Still didn’t fully acknowledge the letter’s content though.

💘to bandaid my fragile gaping wound of an ego... I got back on Tinder. 750 matches and dozens of flattering messages later, I’m still hung up on the leo.

💘I’ve been sleeping with an ex con who happens to be my first kiss/ first hand job.

💘I entertained conversation with my ex boyfriend, despite my better judgment (never ever again btw).

💘 I lost an uncle to Covid, and my dads best friend to cancer.

💘 still no fucking concerts

Mentally Speaking:

🤕 I’m overly anxious about my living situation.

🤕 the one person who could possibly understand me (the former resident of the room I rent/ my so called BFF) is ghosting me like a bitch.

🤕my parents think I’m crazy

🤕I’m isolating myself from friends

🤕I’m overindulging in recklessness

🤕my job is mundane

🤕still lack real motivation

🤕my brain is in a constant state of scattered, fear, and worry.

With alllll that being said.....

PLEASE UNIVERSE! I’m pleading desperately for some genuine clarity. I have got to get myself out of this dreadful hole I keep falling deeper into. Please please please.... cut me a break and hit me with those sweet signs you used to send me! I don’t know how much longer I can last if life keeps going this way.

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obduratemoon · 4 years

Text

Sedimentary City 15: DESCENT

Rehabilitation Systems, also known as the ‘Gulag’, is Sedimentary City’s prison system, located on a level known only by a few elite members of the Oligarchy. As such, it is a closely guarded secret. Prisoners, along with guards, wardens and other employees, are transported there unconscious and in sensory-adiabatic pods. No hint or clue as to its form or topology exists. Hardly any prisoners are allowed back, the few who do return remain tight lipped, perhaps a condition of their release or, more likely, conditioning upon release. It is estimated that perhaps as much as one-fifth to a quarter of the population has been sent down there, a large quantity of people vanished into that undescribed blackness.

The haze of sleep released its grip upon him and like crushed fresh grass, Jan found his awareness slowly arising to once again form himself. He woke up, languid and quiet, into a place so black and anechoic that it hardly felt like wakefulness, only a shining crystalline ipseity assured him that he was in fact no longer asleep.

The hatch opened and two guards dressed with black on black All-Suits stood by with truncheons in their hands. The All-Suit hoods formed into a visored helmet that was scaled like a pangolin with intermeshed hard plates. They seemed anonymous except for their body shapes, one much taller, the other stocky and thick. Where the visor met the top of their helmet headlamps glowed brightly making it hard to gaze upon them. Jan stood on a dim platform where everything was poorly lit. The only things that he could see were circumscribed within the headlamps’ pools of light.

The tall guard flicked his wrist and his truncheon was brought to life as it arced electricity, a tacit warning.

“Get out and follow us.” he said, not unkindly. Jan did as he was told and they walked off the platform and into a long corridor, almost like a tunnel. At the end of it was a door.

“When you go through this door, take off all your clothes and throw them into the bin. The room is a hygiene chamber, so it will clean you up and then you can put on the provided All-Suit. All prisoners wear it. Just listen to the instructions and make sure you follow them. Failure to do so means that the room will eventually run an execute-and-dispose procedure which, I assume, you do not want.”

The stocky one chuckled.

The tall man leaned in closer and said in a conspiratorial tone. “Mr. Kavfryd, I am also instructed to tell you that after you go through intake, you will meet two men. Go with them. They will take care of you.”

Both the guards raised their visors and looked at the wall on either side of the door, eyes open and revealed for the retinal scan. There was a beep and a click after which the tall guard then opened the door. Jan peered inside: it was minimal and grey, a small box plumb in its utilitarianism.

“Have a good life!” said the tall guard in parting as Jan walked across the threshold. The door closed behind him, irrevocable as death or birth.

As instructed, Jan stripped naked and threw everything into the bin. He was bereft now of all things, the clothes on his back the last artifacts which connected him to his past life. He stepped into the hygiene area and soon a mechanical voice instructed him through the procedure.

“Please stand here, please stand here.”

Jan moved to stand over a glowing circle on the floor. There was a woosh of air and the air shimmered as nanobots flooded the chamber. They accreted upon Jan’s skin, inside his nose and ears, underneath his cuticles, scraping and collecting dirt and dust. Once begrimed, they fell to the ground, another whooshing sound vacuumed them out.

“Please spread your legs.” Two foot shaped lights glowed to indicate where Jan should put his feet. He did so, his legs now spread out to form something close to a 90 degree angle at his taint. Very quickly, a hole opened up directly underneath him followed by an abrupt pneumatic sound. Jan felt something hard thud and attached itself right near the lip of his anus. Before he could scream or contract his sphincter, the thing had crawled inside and he felt it wriggling up, a cold metallic bolus, impossibly high into his guts. Jan let go of his breath and he gasped for air panting fast, eyes wide with alarm and horror. It was an alien feeling, excruciating and exquisite, which sent him reeling.

“Please be calm,” the room said matter of factly, “that is a tracker bot which will live just above your rectum for the duration of your stay at Rehabilitation Systems. Please step forward and put on the regulation All Suit.”

Jan took a long time gathering his wits and calming his breath again. But now that the thing had stopped moving and had been warmed up to be the same temperature as his body he could not feel it anymore.

He walked awkwardly and delicately into the next room which had a small bench and on the wall across from it was an All Suit, bright and pink. Jan declined to sit. The All Suit was made from coarse materials, pocketless and plain, hardly more than a jumpsuit. Jan wondered at how -- even now, in the pits of despair and nadir of his life, just moments before he was to be ingested into the Gulag and ejected from all life as he knew it -- it was possible that some part of him still managed to react with visceral disgust at the ugliness of this particular All Suit. How could it be that he still noticed or cared? It worried Jan that the perhaps at the core of himself -- basic, immutable, and constant -- was nothing grand nor poetic but instead merely a collection of capricious whims. Perhaps man’s recalcitrance at introspection has nothing to do with a fear of some chthonic and unholy monsters, but rather dread at finding nothing there besides baubles, vanities, and comic trifles.

Jan zipped up the suit and the voice then began to list all the rules and regulations within the Rehabilitation System, the gist of which was that there were many rules to follow but it was well known that only a few of them mattered. The state hardly cared what happened in the Gulag as long as the prisoners never made it out, a fact assured by the tracker. The tracker could be used to locate anyone, but it also doubled as a tiny internal bomb if anyone left a certain perimeter away from the Gulag. It was a small detonation, just enough to turn a person's lower intestines and rectum into a morass of carnal destruction as if meat pushed through a grinder. It was a drawn out and horrible death, the victims allowed to slowly contemplate their mistake as chunks of innards fell out of a horrendously expanded anus. Few attempted escape.

Finally the voice proclaimed, “Now you are ready to go inside.” And a door slid open to reveal a portal into a dark and enclosed world. The Gulag lived in constant subterranean twilight, the amount of electricity supplied to it was strictly limited and controlled.

Jan walked out and looked around, blinking his eyes as they adjusted to the dimness. Out from the shadows a voice called out.

“Jan? Jan Kavfryd, yes?”

“Yes.” Jan replied.

“Very good.” The man turned on his headlight and approached Jan. He was average in stature, his posture slumped as he walked with a slow saunter of arrogant dejection. The light of the headlamp threw out a weak trickle of tarnished yellowed light which jumped and moved with a life of his own, but in fact a function of his strange gait and gaze.

When he got closer Jan noticed that behind him, half hidden in penumbra, was another man, a giant, as wide as two people with prominent muscles noticeable even in all this darkness. Jan could not help but noticed that their All Suits were not pink but rather a dark grey. Each wore an arm band, light grey with a circle half black and half white described within.

The man who spoke was close to Jan now and he saw the pallid face of an older man, pale as paper. He extended a hand, “Pyotr. It’s a pleasure. The Boss and your father have done some business, on your behalf. So here we are. The guards must have told you as much. The Gulag is abuzz with the news of a Kavfryd, but no need to worry, you will be safe with us.”

Jan shook his hand, which was rough and calloused. He did not feel particularly assured by what Pyotr had to say but what choice did he have?

“Jan,” he said although they knew who he was already, “and thank you.”

The man jerked a hand over his right shoulder at the subsequent shrouded giant who stood behind him.

“That’s Rollo. Not much of a speaker, but capable and strong! Before he came here he was an Enforcer for the State, if you can believe it. But one day he went on a rampage, killed a crowd. Not that it should matter for an Enforcer, they usually get away with most murders. But one of the victims happened to be a high level Processor. Bad luck. I heard you off’d a Processor as well, eh?”

At this Pyotr emitted a slow chuckle. “I must say, I am surprised. You don’t look like the type.”

Jan remained quiet, gave a small shrug. What could he say?

“Well, it’s like they say, the only good Processor is dead one right? Rollo! Shake Mr. Kavfyrd’s hand already, don’t be impolite.”

The gargantuan man moved forward like a Rhino, placid and menacing at the same time. Close up his size was even more impressive, bulky and yoked up with trapezius so large as to make his neck delible. His hand was meaty and large and it enveloped Jan’s the way an adult's hand consumes a small child’s, yet his grip was gentle, almost delicate.

“A pleasure.” Rollo’s voice was low yet somehow sonorous and resonant. Up close Jan could see that he was as pale as Pyotr, as if carved from ivory, with strikingly sad eyes. Jan thought of the Elephant in the zoo, and felt that similar sensation of having a huge animal come forth and approach. A bit astonished and intimidated, Jan nodded his head in reply.

“Well, no point in standing around here talking by the intake portals, we should get you back. The Boss is excited to see you Mr. Kavfryd, and we mustn't keep him waiting. But we can’t travel with you looking like that. Here, put this one on instead.”

Pyotr reached into a duffle bag that Rollo had been holding and pulled out a dark grey All Suit. In the large man’s hands it almost looked like a mere handbag.

“And you’ll need this headlamp as well. It’s one of the brighter ones, just for until your eyes adjust.”

After changing Jan stood holding the pink All-Suit, his erstwhile garb, looking a bit lost.

“Ah, just leave that here,” Pyotr said, “no one wears that pink shit except the chattel. Ok, now come with us.”

#sedimentary city

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8bityeol · 7 years

Text

Love Potion N.9

AU + Witch!Baek // The best place to find a potion is at the house in the forest clearing. In need of a love potion you ask the local wizard but of course there’s a price to pay.

“How much are you willing to part with?” He asks, sliding a finger through your hair.

Swallowing, you take a step back, but the room seems to become smaller as he closes the new distance. “W-what do you mean?” You ask, blinking far too fast to even fake confidence. If he could smell weakness (he probably could) you’d be burning his sinuses.

“It’s not an easy process you know. It’s tedious.” He says, with a cat-like smile stretching his face. “First, I have to find the ingredients,” He points to the rack of herbs and bottles behind you, “Then I have to mix everything together, and some of those ingredients are poisonous. George’s root? It’s a nasty little thing, it gives you warts-”

“I’ll do it,” You butt in, thinking he’d at least have the heart to step back.

Unmoving, He presses a finger on your lips, “I wasn’t done Kitten.”

You mumble a muffled sorry.

“You can’t do it,” He says with a hint of seriousness that causes your blood to still. You wouldn’t be so..so scared if he wasn’t so close and if his eyes were a normal colour for starters. Who in the world has yellow eyes? “You wanna know why?” he continues.

You really don’t, but in this situation, it’d seemed right to nod. He could kill you easily. A quick slice of the neck or a hurried mumble of some spell, you would been ash in no time and swept away by a simple flick of broom.

“Because you don’t have The Book,” at the mention of ‘The Book’, a flash of purple runs through his irises and from the corner of your eye you can see pages of large book fluttering as if a large gust of wind has just entered. “And only I can use The Book, you can’t. If you happen to use it, I can’t guarantee your life.”

Finally, he moves his finger and much to your disgust or horror, he swipes it across the lapel of his jacket. it wasn’t as if forced him to slap his finger across your mouth! the nerve! but what would you expect from a man who lives alone in the forest, manners yes, but social cues, of course not.

“Anyways, what are you willing to give me?” His eyes pierce into yours as if he was looking into your deepest and darkest secrets, those which you rather die with than let anyone know.

What were you willing to give him? Your voice? but he wasn’t Ursula and it wasn’t as if you had the voice of Celine Dion; it was more like a chicken. Maybe it was your body….no. Anything but that. But what if it was what he wanted. As your thoughts derailed into things unimaginable you could feel the blood rushing to your face.

You can’t bare to look him anymore, considering how close he was, you could see every pore dotted across his clear face. “I’ve got money,” You say.

As if fueled by your nervousness, his grin grows bigger and deep chuckles burst from within him. “Money? not that useless thing!” He says, “I need something more, something worth so much more. Every jack and jill has money. Kitten, what I want isn’t material.”

Your hands fly to your chest, “N-no I can’t!”

His face stills, “Huh…?” He cocks his head to the side, blinks a few times. “What exactly did you have in mind?”

Barely able to breathe, you squeeze your eyes shut and wish yourself somewhere far. Preferably under the covers of your bed.He hadn’t even been thinking of sex…yet you. Fuck.

“Nothing, I was just…” You say, just able to form the words. “Nothing.”

“You thought I wanted your body.” Its statement, not a question.

“No, no, no. You’ve got it all wrong!” The words come out rushed and messy.

He narrows his eyes and smirks, he was enjoying this. “With your level of protest, I can’t help but think I am in fact right. You thought I wanted your body … how dirty. Here I was thinking you were innocent.”

“I wasn’t thinking that!” This time you talk through gritted teeth, you couldn’t take the constant teasing anymore.

He tuts you, “Don’t lie Kitten. But let’s clear things up, I’m not that depraved to ask for your body in payment. Not every wizard or warlock is a sex crazed freak, we do have humane thoughts. Understand?”

You nod diligently, “I understand. It was just nerves and you’re really close so my mind couldn’t help but wander.”

he looks down, finally noticing that he’d been practically leaning closer and closer to you. He takes a few steps back until he’s leaning against the island, “Ahh, personal space…sorry. I can’t seem to grasp the concept.”

Regaining some composure you say: ‘thank you’

“Anyways, what does a young girl like you need a love potion?” He asks, running his eyes over you so quick you only caught it by a half a second.

The answer was simple and humiliating at best, but if it was what was needed for the potion then so be it. You’d already come so far. “My friend. I know there’s something there, I can feel it, but he never acts on it and I’m tired of waiting so, I’m sure this little potion might quicken things up a bit.”

“Look, I know I’m not a person of great moral standing and all, but, is this really the right thing to do?” He says, “If it’s not meant to be, then why force it? What if you end up hating him? Sometimes, the person who you think is the water in the desert, might just be the mirage.”

You stare at him dead in the eye, “Well if he is a mirage then so be it. I’m a big girl, I can handle it.”

He snorts in amusement, “Aren’t we confident?”

“What is the payment?” You ask, dreading the words that may come from his mouth. He could ask for anything, gods, what if he asked for your soul? is that possible?

He holds one finger up, a wordless hang on. He disappears into another room and after some clangs and clashes…and a meow? He emerges holding a paper in his hand.“Found it!” He exclaims.

He motions for you to sit on the chair facing his desk. The desk seemed to be the only thing kept in order, the parchment had its place, the books had its place and the pens had its place. But the rest of the room was another situation. Vials were scattered around the room, vintage cups were stacked in some far corner. It was a mission in itself to get to said seat.

“OK here is the contract,” He slides the paper across the desk, “It basically says that I cannot be held accountable for anything that could occur after I hand the potion to you. Meaning that if your beloved takes this potion and dies or experiences and adverse side-effects, you have no right to gather up the citizens and come at my door with pitchforks.”

“That’s all well and good, but the payment?” You press.

He leans over the table and flips the page, “It says right here the appropriate payment for the potion you have requested, the love potion, is….your first born child.”

Your eyes widen, surely he didn’t say first born child?

“F-first born child?” A shakiness lines your voice, he nods. “You can’t possibly…I can’t…my first?”

A seemingly sympathetic look overcomes him, maybe its real. you can’t tell. “I know, I didn’t make the rules. It’s the witchcraft council, but on the brightside its only the first one, you and your beloved could have twenty more?”

“There must be some other option?” You ask voice airy and weak, “It’s a simple potion, the price can’t be that high…please.”

He shakes his head, “The potion you deamingly refer to as ‘simple’ has the power to manipulate and overcome free will, it’s as deadly as poison it’s self. Being in love can drive the most complacent person to do th most outrageous thing, love it’s natural state is deadly, but love in this form? it should be illegal. So, is that simple to you?”

The authority lining his voice brings back the fear by tenfold, how you’d managed to get comfortable around some the likes of him was truly

Here’s the thing, if you sign the contract now and don’t pick up the potion then the payment is null and void, no child will be taken.“

You nod slowly and mull over every single word. Are you willing to do it?

A/N

shout out to this would be series ~ that I started but accidently deleted the other parts cause I wrote it on my phone. I’m still heated about it.

#baekhyun scenario #exo scenario #baekhyun fanfic #exo fanfic #baekhyun oneshot #baekhyun fluff #exo fluff

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mtasubwaywhisperer-blog · 5 years

Text

Escaping Dachau

It was a pleasant day today compared to the ruthless nature of East Coast winter. I have discovered that a muffler is underrated as a winter accessory and wearing one in almost subzero temperatures enhances the comfort level by a considerable amount. Thursdays are usually long and as per routine I took the Q train to Brooklyn in the evening. Subway commute can get pretty boring, especially if it is a long one and almost 70% of the journey is through long and dark underground tunnels. Although, the Q line provides some respite from this drudgery by running the train through the Manhattan bridge over the East River.

As always, I was reading a book and didn’t quite realize when the train crossed the bridge and was already entering Dekalb Avenue station. During the evening trains going towards Brooklyn are crowded and it is difficult to find a seat to rest one’s ass. At the Dekalb Avenue station I saw an elderly gentleman been helped to the senior citizens seat by a young guy. Judging from my observation, the elderly gentleman was about 80 years old and half of the weight of this 80 years of experience was on a wooden stick and the other half was in the hands of a 20 year old, kippah wearing bright young boy. The old gentleman was wearing a black suit with a long black coat. Actually, I didn’t notice the kippah on the boy at first and so, it is not the thing that gave away the fact they were Jewish. My mind, due to its devilish need to establish a relationship between the two generations, came to the conclusion that they are grandfather and grandson. Although all the evidence is circumstantial, later I did realize some sort of facial similarities between these two people. As, I was saying, it was not the Kippah that gave away the Jewish identity of these two. Rather, it was the name tag the boy had on his jacket. The last name read “Lewinski”. For those who are unaware, often it is not difficult to identify a Jewish surname. As, soon as they sat down, I knew there might be a good chance of getting the observations required for my blogpost for today.

It is easier said than done. From the few glances I took at them, nothing seemed interesting enough to act as fuel for this blogpost. Then arrived my window of useless opportunity. I saw the elderly gentleman slide the handcuffs of his shirt down to look at the watch and I saw, a thick scar on the side of his left wrist. Once I saw that scar, I knew I had my material ready and my usually idle brain started to race backwards looking for a plot which would justify that scar. Actually, I should be a little honest. It was more because of the book I was reading than my imagination which influenced the plot. I’m reading a book on the Second World War and so, it wouldn’t require a lot of imagination to connect a scar on the hand of an elderly Jewish person to the Second World War. So, here goes my story today.

Fall season was on the horizon and so was the German Army. The darkest days were set to befall on the mundane city of Weilun. Weilun had a considerable number of Jewish people residing at that time. One such Jewish family, who shared the surname Lewinski was enjoying last of their sound sleep. The otherwise peaceful dawn was bludgeoned to death by the sound of the Luftwaffe engines roaring over the skies. The ride of the Valkyries had begun. Insistent bombing of the city continued as screams and cries mixed with the dark smoke welcomed the red sun on that godforsaken day. By the evening, the terrorizing sound of German boots were shaking up the already crumbling walls of the city. With half of the brick walls of the Lewinski house in ruins, the Horowitz family managed to fit themselves in the tiny basement. But when death has its eyes set on you, there is very little one can do about it. German soldiers ransacked the whole house and flushed out all the members of the family with the threat of burning the whole building down. Issac Lewinski, the youngest member of the family was only 8 years old at that time. Mr. Lewinski worked at the bank and had enough wealth to persuade any ordinary criminal to let them go in exchange for money. However, these were the Nazis. They were a special kind of criminal, whose determination to do evil cannot be bought with wealth. Mr. Lewinski’s pleas for mercy in exchange for wealth was met with a bullet to the head in front of lanky little Issac and his mother. With his father’s blood splashed over his face, began the story of Issac Lewinski.

Two days after witnessing his father’s splattered head all over the floor, little Issac and his mother were boarded onto a crowded truck, full of children and women who had the same dreaded faces as one would have after staring into the eyes of certain death. After a whole days journey, the truck stopped outside the gates of Isengard or in other words the Dachau concentration camp. As per the rules of the concentration camp, Issac was separated from his mother and was forced along with other boys and men. Then and there ended the childhood of the lanky Jewish boy. There are enough historical as well as fictional accounts about the daily life in concentration camps and so, as a complete outsider, I can add very little

During the first few days at the camp, Issac used to cry often and would beg the Nazi officers to let him see his mother and every time he would be met with a sadistic laugh from the officers. Soon enough his tear glands dried up and he thought that maybe, this is what adulthood is like. This is what children are supposed to do when they grow up. When people start to accept their reality, no matter how treacherous it might be, the very basic human instinct is to find a silver lining. Issac’s silver lining was his friend Robert. Robert was a little older than Issac and due to his advantage in age, soon became a role model for Issac. He used to follow the ways of Robert in every aspect of life. The void left in Issac’s life due to the absence of his parents was soon filled by Robert. However, as everything good in life has to come to an end, the silver lining in Issac’s life was soon to become a trauma which would haunt him all his life.

As can be imagined. food in the concentration camp was at the level of being considered inhumane and a loaf of bread still having some soft parts was a rarity. Even in the most dreadful of conditions, vices of men find a way to come to the fore, perhaps with even more wickedness. There were some prisoners who found evil ways to satisfy their carnal instincts. Such a group had promised Robert a bowl full of hot soup with distinctive amount of peas and in exchange they wanted Robert to lure Issac into the kitchen at night. Under the circumstances, it would be too much to expect that anyone could deny the promise of hot soup and so Robert did what was asked. As soon as Issac got into the kitchen, a group of men pounced on him like hungry hyenas. One of them had a piece of broken glass and stabbed Issac right on his left wrist. It would be an act of vulgarity on my part to describe what followed. Later that night, Issac was discovered by some prisoners, lying naked in a pool of blood, unconscious. The benevolent prisoners took Issac to the camp doctor, who later sent him to the local hospital out of some new found sympathy towards the kid.

It took Issac a whole week to gain consciousness and that too would have been impossible without the constant care of Dr. Fritz. Dr.Fritz was a German doctor of high repute. His reputation had gained him connections directly with the top brass of the Third Reich. Dr. Fritz used his connections to take Issac home till he recovered from his injuries. Using his connections in the Government, Dr. Fritz had managed to convince the authorities to put Issac on a boat to Ireland. On a rainy evening, Issac got off at the Dublin port. He did recover from the physical injury, but the trauma had messed up with his mental state forever. Tired, traumatized, he thought he saw someone who looked alike one of the Nazi officers in the camp. Out of fear, he ran across the port to another ship and hid behind the cargo and after a while, fell unconscious. When he did manage to wake up, he saw the blue waters of the Atlantic and he was surrounded by people in tattered clothes, speaking a weird language. Some women were sympathetic enough to give him some food, just enough to make him survive the long journey over the ocean.

One day on the ship, Issac woke up at dawn and in the horizon, he could see a shadow of a gigantic person holding some kind of a torch. It was the statue of the Roman Goddess of Liberty, Libertas. The whole ship began to cheer as the Manhattan skyline became slowly visible as the ship drew near the Hudson Bay port. The lanky Polish Jew, Issac due to a traumatic event of his life had managed to land up in the bustling and ever busy, New York City.

On the ship, Issac had befriended an elderly women by the name of Ailis. She had relatives in Poland and so could speak a little bit of Polish. She was perhaps the only person on the ship to whom Issac could express himself. Issac tagged along with Ailis and landed up working in a small Italian bakery in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Later on...oops, the train has stopped at Avenue H, I have to get off. That’s all I could imagine about the lanky Jewish boy’s escape from Dachau.

#newyork #concentrationcamp #second world war

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mccumbersalecsander93 · 4 years

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felifu · 4 years

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Mini No. 1 -- Teenagehood and Stigma

Did you use to have bad stomach pain from your constant, unending anxiety, or are you normal?

This is what I used to think was normal as a teenager. All the constant thoughts, doubts. Is my hair right? Am I being too loud? Should I have introduced myself? I’m tired, doctors doubt me when I say I cry from constant negative, grating thoughts and my stomach hurts from it. I don’t know why it does but whenever I have a lot of these thoughts, and then my stomach hurts. A lot.

You’ll just say to me, an unknowing and impressionable teenage girl with limited knowledge of medical research on mental health, you tell me that it’s all in my head. Get over it, they would say. It’s just nerves, another would say to me. Those words, since they’re coming from a professional, make their permanent home in my mind.

This is why I’m like this. It’s my fault, I should stop being such a crybaby. Toughen up, I would tell myself. This is the way things were in the ’90s and 2000s. The birthday of the internet, the cell phone, and emails. Yet we didn’t all have twitter, or fancy websites to fact check your doctors diagnosis. You had no reason to mistrust your doctor, at least I thought we didn’t. Yet mental health was still a stigma to openly talk about. Unless it was ADD, it was hard to admit a child had anxiety or depression, let alone bipolar. These brush offs had added a new level of pressure in my mind. It’s my fault. It’s my fault I’m broken.

I found my constant pressure complimented poetically by the intense heat of Phoenix. My reprieve from the suffering only to be found in the small pockets of comfort. I lean down in a meltingly hot car going down the highway, or parked in my own, and breathe deep the cool breeze of the air conditioning.

My personal heaven is found in the little comforts. Like staying up on a school night to talk with my friends on AIM, or talk on a message board like GaiaOnline, as your average teen were want to do in the 2000s, before the invention of social media as we know it today. Myspace was around, where you may share bulletins and occasionally send a message, but AIM and forum boards were where friends would connect outside of school hours. To escape my constant barrage of thoughts and fears, I would delve deep into my personal heavens. Drawing, writing, socializing, videogames, my little pockets of comfort I could look forward to and enjoy throughout my hellscape days.

I found myself, a sophomore in high school, and busy with color guard practice and homework from my advanced placement courses. Even though I found comfort in staying busy, my body found itself under a ton of stress. I buried myself in such a tightly wound schedule to avoid everything that caused my poor mental state, that symptoms would eke out in small but constant ways. My morning habit became normal where I would wake up, vomit, crawl into activewear for morning practice, and have a cup of milk and white bread to calm my stomach before walking out onto that football field.

I ignored my anxiety every time my coach would yell, saying we need to get it right next run. I ignored it every time I came home with 12 hours of homework, all given today and due tomorrow. I ignored my looming depression while watching my stepmom and great aunt slowly die in my living room. I ignored my constant mixed feeling of excitement and dread when I was told it was my mother’s turn to have me when the weekend hit.

It’s hard to admit where your mental illness comes from. Where you were raised in a house with both laughter and fear. Where you learned every movement and smile to avoid cracking the eggshells of temper. I vividly remember my mother’s screams and violent bouts, yet I also fondly remember the days my brothers and I would play videogames all day long. All the fun and the tears mixed together in one at the mention of staying over for the weekend.

My father’s and stepmother’s home was its own little reprieve from the memories of childhood with my mother. The place I could come home, do my homework, and then go ride my bike with friends or play with my sister until it was time for supper. The place where we said grace, sat down with distractions aside to eat a home-cooked meal. It was a place I knew, where as long as I was honest and kind, I would be treated with love and respect. No mind games twisting my perception, no guilt trips for asking the wrong question. I had structure, routine, a sense of control, perfect for my mental state.

Despite my shortcomings freshman year, my teenage life thrived on routine, a tightly packed schedule backed by a stable home. Still, my anxiety got the best of me in small ways. Stomach aches, insomnia, and exhaustion at the same time. I found myself crying, lashing out at family members, and becoming addicted to escapism.

Since it was the 2000s, mental health stigma was still alive and well. Doctors would sway me away from the idea that I had any issues, until one day. As a teenager, I took a moment of bravery to ask my father if it was possible to go to a psychiatrist. My father, trying his best to be understanding and supportive, took me to one to help me. That was my very first clinical diagnosis: depression. They gave me some basic anti-depressants and sent me on my way.

Since then, I’ve grown as a person. Not only have I learned that it’s okay to see a psychiatrist, but it’s also okay to see a therapist. It’s hard to unlearn, my own personal mental health stigma, as well as the stigma others have placed on me. Ten years later, as my mental health degraded, and a few mental breakdowns later, I found myself in a mental health hospital in Texas. Far from my original home in Arizona, I was given the diagnosis I believe to be the light in the darkness. The answer I had been searching for: I was diagnosed with bipolar.

It took 10 years of nay-saying, of doctors telling me to snap out of it, get over it, or that it’s all in my head. All of my pain and mood dysregulations had a name now, and like Mister Rogers once said;

“If it’s mentionable, it’s manageable.”

#short story #writing #nonfiction #mental health #mental illness #bipolar #depression #anxiety #practice #mini story

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ladystylestores · 4 years

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Homes for disabled hit hard by COVID, faced past violations

Neil Sullivan was angry, frustrated and crushed with guilt. His brother Joe had been rushed by ambulance from his home for the developmentally disabled to the emergency room with a possible case of the coronavirus.

Neil had known the people at the Elisabeth Ludeman Developmental Center near Chicago were at risk. Regulators had flagged the facility over the years for violations such as neglect of residents and not keeping restrooms stocked with soap and paper towels. And now, in the middle of a pandemic, a staffer told Neil they were still short of life-saving equipment like surgical masks, gowns, hand sanitizers and even wipes.

He watched helplessly as COVID-19 tore through Ludeman, infecting 220 residents — more than half the people living there — and 125 workers. Six residents and four staff members would die. Neil was overcome with dread that his 52-year-old brother would be among them.

“You start thinking to yourself, is there something I should have done better?” he said.

The outbreak in Ludeman shows the threat of the pandemic to a highly vulnerable population that is flying almost completely under the radar: The developmentally and intellectually disabled. While nursing homes have come under the spotlight, little attention has gone toward facilities nationwide that experts have estimated house more than 275,000 people with conditions such as Down syndrome, cerebral palsy and autism. Many residents have severe underlying medical issues that leave them vulnerable to the coronavirus.

At least 5,800 residents in such facilities nationwide have already contracted COVID-19, and more than 680 have died, The Associated Press found in a survey of every state. The true number is almost certainly much higher because about a dozen states did not respond or disclose comprehensive information, including two of the biggest, California and Texas.

Many of these places have been at risk for infectious diseases for years, AP found.

Perhaps the best-known government-funded homes for the disabled are called Intermediate Care Facilities, which range from large state-run institutions to homes for a handful of people. Before the coronavirus hit, regulators concluded that about 40 percent of these facilities — at least 2,300 — had failed to meet safety standards for preventing and controlling the spread of infections and communicable diseases, according to inspection reports obtained by AP. The failures, from 2013 to early 2019, ranged from not taking precautionary steps to limit the spread of infections to unsanitary conditions and missed signs that illnesses were passing between residents and employees.

Story continues

No such data exists for thousands of other group homes for the disabled because they are less regulated. But AP found those homes have also been hit hard by the virus.

“These people are marginalized across the spectrum,” said Christopher Rodriguez, executive director at Disability Rights Louisiana, which monitors the state’s homes for the disabled. “If you have developmental disabilities, you are seen as less than human. You can see it in education, civil rights, employment. And now, you can see it by how they are being treated during the pandemic.”

Advocates are urging the federal government to do more to protect the disabled in congregate settings. They noted that as the virus spread, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) ordered states to provide information to the federal government about COVID-19 infections and deaths in nursing homes. CMS also increased fines and made data about infections in nursing homes available to the public.

But the requirements did not extend to homes for the developmentally disabled, where the overall population is smaller but the virus is still taking a heavy toll.

“The lives of people with disabilities in these settings are equally as at risk — and equally as worth protecting — as people in nursing homes,” the Consortium for Citizens with Disabilities said in a May 5 letter to Alex Azar, secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees CMS.

Some states had outdated plans and policies to face a pandemic, said Curt Decker, executive director of the National Disability Rights Network. In Georgia, for example, he said the state’s policy provided for protective equipment for nursing homes, but not homes for the disabled. He said staffing levels and training were already “a crisis” across the country even before the coronavirus.

“It was clearly a disaster waiting to happen,” he said.

CMS did not respond to the AP’s questions within two weeks and did not say why requirements are different for nursing homes. For days, the agency said it was working on a statement, but did not provide one.

_______________

As the outbreak spread through Ludeman, Neil felt as helpless as on the day his family dropped Joe off at the facility decades ago.

His parents believed they couldn’t have children, so they adopted Joe. But shortly after, his mother discovered she was pregnant with Neil.

As children, Neil and Joe shared the same room. When Joe developed severe behavioral problems, their parents turned to Ludeman.

To this day, the images of leaving his brother behind at the institution are seared into Neil’s memory. He looked back and glimpsed his brother, staring out a window, wailing.

“It was the most desperate cry you could ever imagine,” he said. “It was a child that knows it’s being left behind by its parents.”

Over the years, Neil looked out for his brother. As his parents got older, he became Joe’s legal guardian, driven by “survivor’s guilt” from that day so long ago when they left Joe behind.

When COVID-19 began spreading across the country, Neil prayed it wouldn’t hit Ludeman — where some 340 people live in 40 ranch-style homes spread across a campus that resembles an apartment complex.

About 66,000 people nationwide live in Intermediate Care Facilities like Ludeman. Even more people live in other types of group homes, which operate under less scrutiny. Nobody, not even the federal government, seems to know exactly how many people live in these homes, which advocates say is another sign of a highly marginalized population.

More than 2,100 homes for the disabled have seen COVID-19 infections among residents or staff, according to the AP survey — an undercount because not all states provided specific information.

The virus poses an especially big risk for the disabled. Some are bedridden or prone to seizures. Others have visual or hearing impairments and are non-verbal, so they can’t articulate when they don’t feel well. And social distancing — one of the key preventive measures for COVID-19 — is nearly impossible because many residents have roommates, share common living areas and need full-time assistance for basic tasks like brushing their teeth.

“You’re dealing with a community that needs constant 24-hour, one-on-one supervision,” said Joe Montemayor, whose union represents employees at homes for the disabled in Texas. “Their reasoning isn’t quite there, so you do your best to teach them about the spread of germs and things like that.”

It’s gotten so bad that some staffers are afraid to report to work, Montemayor said.

Advocates also worry that the special needs and fragile medical condition of the developmentally and intellectually disabled will make them a low priority if hospitals — especially in rural areas — are overrun with COVID-19 patients. Disability rights groups have filed federal civil rights complaints against several states to stop ventilator-rationing proposals, fearing that the disabled will end up last in the line because they may not be able to adhere to protocols after an operation or procedure.

“People with disabilities have just the same right to extend their lives for as long as possible as any other human,” said Elizabeth Priaulx, a legal specialist with the National Disability Rights Network.

For the families, the fear of the virus is compounded by the fact that they can’t visit their loved ones.

Stephanie Kirby’s voice breaks when she talks about her son Petre, who has lived in the Denton State Supported Living Center in Texas for three years. More than 60 of the 443 residents at the large, state-run ICF contracted the virus, according to the local health department. AP found the facility has been flagged seven times for poor infection control practices since 2013.

Petre is 28, but functions on the level of a 4-year-old. Kirby hasn’t seen him since March, when the governor banned visitors to prevent the spread of the disease. It’s the longest they’ve been apart since she adopted Petre from a Romanian orphanage.

Now, Kirby worries not only about Petre’s health, but about the emotional impact the separation might have on him. She doesn’t want him to feel like she has abandoned him — like his family did in Romania. But she fears it’s too late.

Kirby said she’s asked Texas officials all the way up to the governor’s office why they won’t allow her to see her son, and she’s gotten the runaround. On Mother’s Day, Kirby drove to Denton, parked her car outside the front gate and sat there for three hours, crying.

“I didn’t know what else to do,” she said.

Christine Mann, a spokeswoman for the Texas Health and Human Services Commission, said the agency is working closely with the facility to prevent the spread of disease. Mann said that infection control violations were “minor incidences” immediately corrected, and that the facility has increased video conferencing and added phone lines to help families.

But for Kirby, that’s not enough. “When will a mom be considered an essential person in the life and health and well-being of her children?” she asked.

___________

For Neil, the coronavirus is only the latest of a string of challenges with Joe at Ludeman.

Many staff members have been kind, and Neil praised those who have worked with his brother in recent years. But some of Joe’s teeth were knocked out in the 1990s with no good explanation, Neil said. At other times, Neil suspected Joe didn’t receive the attention he needs.

“There were people there, especially in the past, that really treated them like zoo animals,” Neil said.

Neil tried to move his brother into another institution with more activities, but Joe was turned down because that facility considered him too aggressive. For people like Joe, options are scarce.

Ludeman has been cited dozens of times since 2013, most often for safety violations but also for more serious issues, including mistreatment of residents. While Ludeman was not cited specifically in the infection control category, inspectors noted that staff didn’t always encourage practices like proper hand washing.

Meghan Powers, a spokeswoman for the Illinois Department of Human Services, which oversees the facility, said the high numbers are driven in part by the fact that all residents have been tested.

“It is also sometimes challenging for our residents to adhere to all of the protective measures we are taking,” Powers said.

The agency implemented “many new protocols” at Ludeman and other facilities across the state on March 12 that included creating an infectious disease team, restricting visitors and checking the temperatures for all staff and residents at shift changes, Powers said. She acknowledged that Ludeman had challenges in the past with maintaining soap and paper towels, but she said that problem was solved by improving its supply distribution. And while shortages of personal protection equipment were an issue across the state, staff working directly with sick residents “have never run out or been severely short to date,” Powers said.

Like Ludeman, many other homes for the disabled have struggled to contain outbreaks, AP found.

Nearly half of the 2,300 Intermediate Care Facilities with past problems controlling infections were cited multiple times — some chronically so, over the course of multiple inspections. In dozens of instances, the problems weren’t corrected by the time regulators showed up for a follow-up visit. At least seven times, the safety lapses were so serious that they placed residents’ health in “immediate jeopardy,” a finding that requires make prompt corrections under the threat of a losing government funding.

Inspection reports show that regulators repeatedly found examples of:

_Staff not washing hands while caring for multiple residents or re-using protective gear like gloves and masks.

_Unclean environments, such as soiled diapers or linens left out, insect infestations, dried body fluids and feces on surfaces of common areas.

_Outbreaks of influenza, staph/MRSA and scabies in a small number of cases.

Other types of group homes aren’t included in the data, but it’s clear that many were also poorly prepared to stop the spread of the virus, the AP found. For example, hundreds of group homes in Massachusetts reported positive cases, as well as the state’s two Intermediate Care Facilities, according to the AP and advocacy groups. Advocates say low pay and difficult working conditions have led to high staff turnover and inadequate training, exacerbated by the pandemic.

The outbreak at Ludeman was so bad that the National Guard was called in to help. A family association asking for supplies said Chicago’s Major League Baseball teams donated 2,200 rain ponchos that the staff could use “until disposable gowns are available.”

When Neil got the call that his brother was infected with COVID-19, all the years of frustration spilled over.

“It was just rage,” he said. “I was so upset that I was afraid to talk because I didn’t know what was going to come out of my mouth.”

It didn’t help that he was on his own. His father has Alzheimer’s and is in a nursing home fighting its own outbreak; his mother has chronic lung disease.

After finding out his brother was being rushed to the emergency room. Neil called Ludeman’s staff and talked to other families. He was told that the facility was running low on critical items like protective masks, gowns, disinfectant — even anti-bacterial soap.

So he began a drive to collect goods, calling friends and family and reaching out to people on social media. After he had enough supplies, he decided to make a trip to Ludeman. He didn’t even know if they’d let him onto the campus — the facility was on lockdown. But he was going to try.

As he pulled up to the red and brown brick building with white trim, he didn’t know what to expect.

No one stopped him. He jumped out of the car and began unloading the goods. And then he got a surprise. There he was, Joe, sitting in a room with a staff member. Sullivan’s heart raced. He smiled, then waved to his brother through the window.

“I can tell you it made a world of difference because I really, genuinely believed he was going to die until I saw him,” he said. “Once I put my eyes on him, he still didn’t look good. But I believed he was going to pull through.”

In the end, Joe would beat the virus. Others wouldn’t be so fortunate.

_______

Contact AP’s Global Investigative Team at [email protected]

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violetsystems · 6 years

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#personal

I’m a little drained from this last week but not so much in a bad way. I had a music friend visit from New York this weekend and had people over for the afternoon. We played Street Fighter, dj’d in the backroom and ate burritos. People from New York are a lot more supportive of us than the cool crowd in our hometown. It’s a lot more diverse out there and a lot less sheltered. People shut down in this city over confrontation. Sometimes it’s completely selfish especially amongst transplants trying to take over. I was talking to a friend about the frustrations with organizing especially when prejudice arises. That quote today from Angela Davis really struck me that there is this sort of complacency with just being ‘non-racist.’ You have to call it out. No matter whose feelings it hurts. I’m white. Most of my good friends aren’t. Some are. But none of us tolerate a lot of phobias. Our friend from New York is Puerto Rican. He was staying in a Mexican neighborhood. Our Indonesian friend came out early last year. I could tell he felt a little uncomfortable mentioning it to me. I was supportive. I think sometimes that’s all you have to be. And to listen. And to sometimes offer a different environment for people to hang out in. I don’t know much about safe spaces other than my own home. I’ve hosted a lot of people all over the world here from as far as Finland to Japan. I never got a badge or anything for it. I don’t know that there’s a point to that. You do the things and make the choices that define who you are out of free will pretty much. I never expect anything back other than to promote an environment that respects people as people. People should know me by now at least on that level. And believe me there’s times when people believed the opposite for absolutely no valid reason at all. People are afraid. Sometimes people are in over their head in fear. It’s a slippery slope. Fear drives a lot of phobias. Many of them impede on the freedom and peace of mind of others. A conscious decision has to be made to give into that fear. And sometimes people are powerless to choose otherwise. Unless of course you operate from a position of power and privilege. Then what exactly is the excuse for all this anyway?

If there’s one thing about feeling awkward consistently is you learn ways to improve on the way you communicate things. You also learn when it’s proper to stand up for yourself and when it’s time to let someone else speak. I don’t think checking your own power and privilege is a bad thing. In fact I think that privilege and power exists to manipulate you. I work a lot. I’ve done a lot of volunteer work. I learned a lot about group dynamics and motivation. I learned that through utter failure. Sometimes volunteer work is like watching a car wreck in slow motion and you are the superhero trying to stop time. Sometimes it’s probably a two person job. Often you can only rely on yourself. Organizing people is hard. Often luck and probability have the most impact on how successful you are. Also money. And volunteer work often has no budget other than what you seek out from corporations. I’ve had to do that painfully boring sort of hustle. For a Korean festival in Chicago that ended up going completely under. And I saw that happen very slowly. And I was forgotten and so were the politics aside from the two Chicago newspapers that interviewed me about the failure. This is years ago at this point. I gained nothing. Nobody cared. I was still just as problematic as I was when I first started watching anime and eating gimbap. I say this sarcastically but I’m not sensitive about it. I make jokes about myself all the time. White people are super sensitive. White racists even more so. There’s a Steve Bannon lecture happening at another school people are protesting. They stood up and actually argued the tired “artistic freedom” argument we’ve heard over and over on Fox news and whatever high bandwidth low brow conservative media source is out there. Back in the day my school almost lost funding because of a piece by an artist named Dread Scott. He encouraged people to walk on a flag. His work is about being Black in America. How that feels. Maybe some white people don’t understand how painful that history can be. How could they when they don’t listen, support, and empathize? That requires the ability to process emotion and feel things like genuine remorse and pain. A platform which Steve Bannon knows all too well. For supporting the Black struggle we risked Federal aid and however you feel about money or Steve Bannon, you can see a stark contrast and a drastic step backward in America.

I’m as tired as anybody of it. I used to fight skinheads back in the day at a goth club where I met my current boss. She was working at an Occult bookstore and writing pieces for Propaganda magazine years back. She happened to be a Japanese woman and a pretty fiercely independent one at that. We don’t always get along. We definitely don’t share the same kind of personal life. But I respect her and listen to what she has to say because she is the boss. My staff has always been diverse. They challenge me every day on stuff. Sexism, Racism, so many isms in the workplace that we talk about openly. And we try to create an environment that respects diversity and shares power. I know it sounds communist as fuck. But it makes working together a lot more rewarding. Which is why I don’t fucking understand why people are afraid of confronting their own intolerance. Fear basically. What it will drag to the surface. What you will be forced to live with openly. There’s that quote about men and rape culture how we are now living in a state of constant awkwardness when dealing with women. And how women have been living with worse for a long time. I don’t need a badge for any of this shit. I’m not the sheriff of this town. I don’t run the fucking internet. I am exhausted with the way the world is against us all. And I’m doing my part to fix that. I was trying to imagine today a communist Yacht Club and what that would look like. I don’t particularly have the money to afford a yacht. I got hit with a massive tax bill this year. I’m paying it. I decided to postpone a trip to Japan this spring because of it. Two days later I found out I’m on a tour with someone from Japan in America now for two weeks. So it balances out with clear intention. My tv also fell off my table on Sunday and broke magically. Replacing it was kind of an either or type of situation. I’m still trying to stick to the predictability of a budget. I’m still trying to figure out how to adjust and stand on my own. I said today kind of angrily that I felt sorry about somebody’s graduate thesis about me turning out to be fan fiction. It wasn’t meant to hurt any more than it hurt me all these years. I’m not so sensitive about these things anymore. I’ve grown and learned how to be a better person. I can only speak to my strengths and weaknesses but I’ve done more than enough to prove my worth. A lot of quotes by Ursula K. Le Guin hit me yesterday. The one about pain, boredom and evil the most. Bored enough to own a yacht and share it. I don’t think there’s enough Michael McDonald records in the world to make me suffer that particular brand of communism. Maybe I should confront the entire discography just to be sure. <3 Tim

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