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snicketstrange · 3 years

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Rereading The End Chapter 13

Chapter 13: From the moment the Baudelaire teeth bit down on the apple—first Violet's, and then Klaus's, and then Sunny's—the stalks and caps of the Medusoid Mycelium began to shrink, and within moments all traces of the dreaded mushroom had withered away, and the children could breathe clearly and easily. The hybrid apple almost instantly cures the disease caused by the deadly fungus MM. This leads me to the conclusion that Kit's death was unnecessary. Kit could have been saved if the moment Beatrice Jr had her umbilical cord cut, she ate an apple. I don't know why Violet didn't even think about it, even if it didn't work out, I think it would be good for someone to have mentioned the possibility of saving Kit. "Stockpot," Sunny said, and walked to the rack of pots on the ceiling, where the snake helped her take down an enormous metal pot that could hold a great number of apples and in fact had been used to make an enormous vat of applesauce a number of years previously." This passage makes me even more certain that Lemony had read the island book, for how else would he know that precisely that cauldron was the same one that had been used to make a particular dessert years before? Certainly he read the island book and was able to compare information previously written in the book with the new information written by the Baudelaires. "Who was playing the violin in the candlelit restaurant when the Baudelaire parents first laid eyes on one another..." This description bothers me a lot. This seems to indicate that Bertrand and Beatrice met for the first time in a restaurant, however, I believed that one of the people cited by Lemony as B in the VFD school on TBL in Lemony's childhood was Bertrand. But to think that Bertrand Baudelaire first met Beatrice a few years after she met Lemony makes more sense given that Lemony apparently didn't trust Bertrand very much. In ATWQ, the way S. talks to Lemony about Bertrand seems to indicate that Lemony didn't know Bertrand personally or at least wasn't intimate with him. Ish suggests that all islanders leave the island after being poisoned. I always imagined that Ish actually believed he could save everyone by getting to the factory that produced the poison's thinner. But rereading the chapter today, I realized that his plan was to let everyone die. Those people had failed to produce a peaceful community, and he himself had failed as a facilitator. As I said, Olaf had triumphed. Ish apparently acknowledged his defeat. But for some reason, this motivated him to let everyone die except himself. And just as some cult leaders led all the faithful to commit collective suicide by making them believe that this was the way to achieve salvation, Ish also made his faithful commit collective suicide. The deadly MM fungus wouldn't spread across the world, and Ish knew it. He would make sure everyone was dead before they reached shore. I'm sorry for Friday... Ish has become a child killer. Friday chose to die rather than withdraw from her family's religious sect even though she was smart enough to realize that her decision would result in her own death. Daniel Handler makes the dangerous message in Ish's words very clear: "Your mother is right, Friday," Ishmael said firmly. "You should respect your parent's wishes." This time it wasn't a suggestion: it was something Ish said Friday should do. Ish didn't want to lose any of his faithful. Ish knew that apples could heal the island people, because he had read about it in the island book. He ate the apple himself to save himself. He really decided to kill the entire colony. And everyone followed him blindly to death. But did they survive through the apple that Ink brought to them? I truly believe Daniel Handler inserted that hope here just to lessen how dark the story was. He left that question unanswered. Lemony Snicket doesn't know if they died or not. But I'm pretty sure Daniel Handler knows they're dead. People refused to eat the apple, even when they were poisoned, even with the arguments of the Baudelaires. Why would they change their minds when a serpent that doesn't speak came to the vessel? Ish didn't want people to eat the apple, he wanted them to die. Do you really think Ish would let one of the islanders eat the apple when the snake arrived? Also, how much time did the islanders have before they passed out from lack of air? The Baudelaires were infected at the same time and had almost no strength... So, in a few minutes the chance of saving the islanders through a single apple brought by a mute animal would become close to zero, considering that the only person who would still be awake and with strength would be Ish himself, who evidently didn't want anyone to eat the apple. Now let's talk about Kit again. "How reliable is Snicket a narrator?" I think this question is asked many times and there are still people who will defend one side or the other of the issue. However now I realized that maybe we were asking the right question about the wrong Snicket. Kit Snicket needs to be re-evaluated with regard to her narration being trustworthy or not. It is true that the certainty of death often makes a person very trustworthy. But there's an important detail about this: Kit wasn't sure she was going to die. Kit believed that survival was possible, precisely because the cure was so close to her. "I hope I'm half as good a mother as yours was, Violet," she said. "You will be," Klaus said. "I don't know," (Kit said) I believe Kit's plan was to have the baby and then be a good mother to her. Despite that, she also knew she could die. Therefore, as death was not an absolute certainty, total honesty was perhaps not the only option. Now let's get back to what we actually know: 1 - Kit claimed that the Queequeg was attacked. 2 - Fernald went to Hector's mobile home with the object of attacking it and according to Lemony Snicket that's what he did. (See TPP chapter 8)- 3 - According to Olaf, the Carmelite Submarine was stolen by Fernald and Fiona. (See TPP chapter 9 In other words, while Fernald was fighting the Quagmires he had already betrayed Olaf and he had already stolen Olaf's submarine along with Fiona. Come to think of it, realize how unlikely it is that what Kit said was true. She said: "I failed you," Kit Said Sadly, and Coughed. "Quigley Managed to Reach the Self-Sustaining Hot Air Mobile Home, Just as I Hoped He Would, and Helping His Siblings and Hector Catch the Treacherous Eagles in an Enormous Net, while I met Captain Widdershins and his stepchildren." Then there's Quigley's difficult move to self-sustaining hot air mobile home. How did he do it? We don't know... But in the world of asoue amazing things are possible. But after that Kit claims that Captain W was already with his stepchildren. This contradicts Lemony's claim that Fernald was the enemy who had led the eagles to the self-sustaining hot air mobile home. So if Lemony isn't lying, (and I don't see any reason for Lemony to lie about these details when he could have just omitted it) Kit is lying. Fernald wouldn't have stolen the Carmelita along with Fiona, then gone to the self -sustaining hot air mobile home, used the eagles to attack them, then left the eagles there, returned to the submarine, met Captain W, regretted it, found Kit and then abandoned the Carmelita and then went along with Kit to help to the Quagmires. I mean... Is this possible? Yes. But this is very unlikely. Especially since Kit claimed to have been attacked. Did Kit Snicket have reason to lie? I believe so. The reason is that her hypocrisy had been exposed. When she spoke out against the mutiny, two islanders had shown the Baudelaires that she herself was also a violent woman. Now she needed to invent a story to preserve her image. In fact, even if she died there that day, she certainly wanted the Baudelaires to tell her daughter good stories about Kit Snicket. In other words, Kit wanted the Baudelaires to portray her from the best angle. So Kit Snicket lied. She denied having been attacked and taken part in a match against Fernald. If there's any truth to Kit's story, I think it's more likely that Submarine Q detected Submarine C via sonar. (After all, we saw in TGG that this is quite possible). Submarine C attacked Submarine Q. (Submarine C has tentacles that can be used as weapons at short ranges, as we saw in TGG). Kit hurt her feet in this attack, as she claimed to have happened. Fernald was on Submarine C along with Fiona. And the eagles were nearby causing problems for the self-sustaining hot air mobile home, which was right above. Then yes, the house fell on them. Then things can make sense. Both submarine C and submarine Q were hit. And then Fernald and Fiona were seen by Kit for the first time, in the water. I hope several kids also got off the C-sub in time, and Kit didn't mention them to avoid needing to give details about the fight she had with C-sub. "From the depths of the sea a mysterious figure approaching—almost like a question mark, rising out of the water." As we saw in TGG, this question-mark entity had been behind Submarine C for a long time. It was submarine C that attracted her. An important note: I am not saying that this was Daniel Handler's intention. He probably just got confused by generating these contradictions. I am saying that, given what is written, I think this is the best explanation. "All I heard," she said, "was one of the Quagmires calling Violet's name." That phrase always made me dream. Now I understand that DH's goal was probably to somehow strengthen the love triangle between Ducan, Violet and Quigley. But he did it at such an awkward moment that it made me imagine other, more interesting things. And do you know? I still have a right to imagine. In my headcanon, one of the Quagmires saw a woman inside looking like Violet. And he got confused, thinking she was the girl. And so he asks out loud, "Violet?" to which Kit interpreted that he was screaming for Violet. And that's my big plot Twist from asoue. Beatrice was alive all along, and not even Lemony Snicket knows it. That might not be true, but for me it's the perfect ending. Chapter 13, on the other hand, goes against my selfish desires. It's a chapter devoted to accepting death, and my headcanon is the exact opposite of that. The Baudelaires and Kit mourn the death of the people they loved. And they cry a lot more than all the previous descriptions. I think Daniel Handler abandoned all ideas about the possibility that one of the Baudelaire parents could have survived, although he honestly thought about it at some point. But as I've already explained, Headcanon are valid when the author decides to let the story have a life of its own. But I have to recognize that the story is better if you just accept how the story looks. Death is surprisingly simple. So I don't think the great unknown represents death. I think the great unknown represents the open ending of asoue and uncertainty about the fate of some characters. In the end, it doesn't matter whether the Baudelaires' parents survived or not. The fact is, they never met again in recorded history. Just like they've never met the Quagmires again. All these characters are in the great unknown. And like the publication of the end, the Baudelaires themselves are symbolically in the great unknown, as it doesn't matter whether or not they survived their departure from the island: in the end we won't have access to new official adventures about them. But the beauty of the unknown is that it stimulates the imagination. And it's interesting that in my imagination, Beatrice was already inside the great unknown when one of the Quagmires saw her. So, in my own Headcanon, Beatrice's fate is uncertain. As much as I want to escape from allegories to interpret asoue, the allegory is present even though the entity in the form of a question mark is a physical entity: the name given to the entity and its shape make it a walking allegory, just like the ants are a walking allegory for organization and work. We keep thinking: if it was God who created animals like these, would he want to teach us a lesson? And if Daniel Handler is the god of asoue, did he want to teach a lesson with the question-mark entity? I think the answer is yes in both cases. So, in a universe created by someone's creativity, entities can be both physical entities and allegories at the same time. So, I think that's what TGU is. And I don't see any more problems with that. It is an interesting fact to note that Kit believed her both brothers were dead. In LSTUA we notice that Kit was trying to exonerate Lemony of the Baudelaire arson charge, even though she knew he might already be dead, which may indicate that she believed Lemony could have died in the fire itself. Kit claims that the Baudelaire family and the Snicket family needed to stay away from each other, not just Lemony and Beatrice needed to stay away from each other. These mysterious motives must surely have been detailed in the letter Beatrice wrote to Lemony. So I don't think the wedding was canceled because Beatrice fell in love with someone else. I don't think the wedding was definitely canceled because they were life-threatening. I think there are organizational reasons for the Snickets and the Baudelaires to keep away from each other. Now the scene of Olaf's death. I have to say: what an epic scene! Whether it was Olaf who killed Beatrice and Bertrand we will never know for sure, but he never admitted it even when he believed he would die. He didn't seem to be willing to hide facts at the time. He seemed to me to list the things he managed to do. And Olaf always liked to brag about his murders. So for me the fire was accidental. Oalf bit the apple in order to recover from the MM fungus. He, like Kit and Ish, apparently knew that apples cure the disease caused by the fungus. He at first refused. Had he accepted death? I think so. Now: What was the relationship between Kit and Olaf? Everything indicates that it had been an old relationship. Something like a first love. Olaf did not apologize. He didn't think he was wrong. He wasn't sorry for his villainy. Kit survived for more than an hour, I am sure of it, before Beatrice could be born. A mother's willpower is really impressive. This excerpt below is for me one of the most important: "The Baudelaires would sit together in the two large reading chairs and take turns reading out loud from the book their parents had left behind, and sometimes they would flip to the back of the book, and add a few lines to the history themselves. reading and writing, the siblings found many answers for which they had been looking, although each answer, of course, only brought forth another mystery, as there were many details of the Baudelaires' lives that seemed like a strange, unreadable shape of some great unknown." This is clear proof that the Baudelaires left their own history on the island. Not only did Klaus write about it, but all three Baudelaires did, including Sunny who must have had enough time to learn to write. And Lemony knows they wrote it. I can only conclude that Lemony knows what they wrote, and it is on this basis that Lemony makes a narrative from the Baudelaires' point of view, even including an exact record of what they thought and talked privately. Another evidence that Lemony read this book is seen in the following excerpt: "As the night grew later the ould drop off to sleep, just as their parents did, in the chairs in the secret space beneath the roots of the bitter apple tree." Lemony knew details of what had happened to the Baudelaires' parents, which evidently happened when they were on the island. They themselves had written these events in the same book. Now, regarding the final section of the chapter: "In many ways, the lives of the Baudelaire orphans that year is not unlike my own, now that I have concluded my investigation. Like Violet, like Klaus, and like Sunny, I visit certain grave, and often spend my mornings standing on a brae, staring out at the same sea. It is not the whole story, of course, but it is enough. Under the circumstances, it is the best for which you can hope." I think it's pretty clear that Lemony wrote this passage while he was on the island. Lemony was visiting the same graves as he waited for an opportunity to leave the island. I will still read TBL again. So I know that Lemony wrote the letter to the editor of TBL after he learned of Beatrice Jr.'s existence. After he learned of her existence, Lemony searched for the items cited in TBL. So after that he went to the island and finished writing TE on the island. As I said, it is very likely that at this time the island was already inhabited by very nice people who did not allow apples to be removed from the island.

#ASoUE #asoue theory #asoue headcanons #The End #The Beatrice Letters #the great unknown #Lemony Snicket #snicketverse

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heyiwrotesomethings · 3 years

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Mitsuri’s Birthday

ShinoMitsu Week 2021 Day Seven: (Happy Birthday Mitsuri, Free Day)

A/N: Hello, welcome to the last day of my ShinoMitsu Week writings. This has been a fun little challenge for me as I scrambled to get everything done in time. I only finished this last piece last night so, much like with every other piece I did this week, I hope there aren’t too many errors because I’m tired and only skimmed through twice. Anyway, many thanks to those who read along! Lastly, I’d like to apologize to Mitsuri for making her sick on her birthday. At least Shinobu came to help! Word Count: 2,030

Mitsuri’s eyes fluttered against the sunlight filtering through her window, causing her to roll over and sigh with relief when the light no longer reached her. Nothing could make her get out of her warm, soft blankets.

“Wake up, Onee-chan!”

“Ah!”

Nothing could get her out of bed, except maybe her eight year old sister jumping on her bed.

“Happy birthday! Happy birthday!” Natsumi cheered as she bounced with abandon.

Mitsuri whined. Her sister did this every morning, special occasion or not, but today the jostling made her feel terrible.

“Natsumi, please be gentle.” Mitsuri coughed. Now that she was actually awake, Mitsuri noticed just how terrible she felt. She felt hot, achy and it hurt just to swallow.

“Mitsuri, honey, you’re going to be late for school if you don’t get ready soon.” she heard her mother call from down the hall.

“Moooom? Onee-chan doesn’t look too good.” Natsumi called, taking note of her big sister’s trembling and sweating form.

“I don’t feel well at all.” Mitsuri moaned. “Why today of all days?”

Their mother came into the girls’ shared room. She felt her eldest daughter’s forehead and tisked, a sympathetic look upon her face.

“Oh honey, you’re burning up. I guess you’ll be staying with me today.”

“But, birthday plans...” Mitsuri rasped, disappointment evident in her tone.

“Another day, sweetheart. Wouldn’t you rather be able to enjoy yourself to the fullest?”

“I guess...”

“Akimitsu?” The mother called and the young boy appeared in the doorway. “Walk Natsumi to her school will you? Your big sister is sick.”

“Okay mom. Get well soon, Onee-san. I’m sorry you’re sick on your birthday.” The polite boy frowned.

“Thank you.” Mitsuri sniffled.

“I’m going to make you some warm, soothing miso. I’ll be back soon.” Mitsuri’s mother smoothed back Mitsuri’s colorful bangs before following her other children out the door before closing it gently behind her.

Mitsuri weakly kicked her blanket to the bottom of her bed, freedom from the now stifling heat brought mere seconds of relief before returning to discomfort.

With difficulty, she heaved herself into a sitting position and peeled off the large sweatshirt she had taken from Shinobu’s the last time she stayed over. She weakly tossed it at the hamper and it barely made it halfway across the floor.

“Aww,” Mitsuri looked down at the tank top she was wearing covered in sweat. She really needed a cool bath. Carefully, she swung her legs over the side of the bed and stood up on shaky legs. Her hips left especially achy with the change in altitude and her vision was swimming as lightheadedness consumed her.

She grasped onto her bedside table and sucked in a few deep breaths before braving the trip across the hall to the bathroom.

As she exited the room, she heard the cries of the twins as her mother worked to console them. Mitsuri would have loved to help her, but she knew she would be no help as she was now. Her mother would likely scold her for being up anyway.

Finally, she made it to the bathroom and stripped. A full bath would have been nice, but she simply didn’t have the energy and instead cooled herself and washed away the sticky sweat with the shower nozzle.

When she was done, she patted herself dry and hobbled back into her room. She had just enough strength to pull on another tank top and a pair of shorts before flipping back into her bed with a frown. At least the sweatshirt had helped keep most of the sweat off of her sheets.

She stared at her ceiling, feeling miserable. The chills were back so she pulled her blanket back up over her body, turning just in time to see her phone blink to life.

She gingerly scooped it up and squinted at the notification, a text from Shinobu. Mitsuri hurriedly unlocked her phone to open their conversation.

‘Where are you? You’re going to be late.’ the text read.

‘I’m sick : (‘ Mitsuri responded, frowning to herself as she realized she wouldn’t be seeing Shinobu today. Maybe she could ask for a facetime after school? This was easily her worst birthday ever.

‘I’m sorry Sunshine, that’s awful. What are your symptoms?’ Shinobu’s next text inquired.

Mitsuri relayed what she felt, selfishly wishing all the while that Shinobu would ditch her classes and sit beside her all day.

It took a little longer for Shinobu to text back, but when she did, the message made her heart soar.

‘Naho-san is working deliveries in the pharmacy today. She’ll be by in about half an hour with medicine and some other helpful items. I’ll come check on you after school. Love you.’

‘Love you too. Thank you, my knight <3 <3 <3’

Mitsuri clicked the screen off and hugged the phone to her chest. She coughed harshly and turned in her bed, eagerly awaiting Shinobu’s arrival later that afternoon.

About twenty minutes later, Mitsuri’s frazzled mother came in with Naho trailing behind her. The young woman waved at Mitsuri as soon as she saw her and she weakly gave one in return.

“Mitsuri, Naho-san from the pharmacy has a care package for you, but I’m sure you already knew she was coming.” Her mother guessed, carefully setting the miso on her daughter’s nightstand.

“Yeah, thank you for coming by Naho-san.”

“You’re welcome, Mitsuri-chan.” the pharmaceuticals student approached, “You do look ill, poor dear. Not to worry though, Kiyo, Sumi and I put together everything you’ll need for a speedy recovery!”

Naho produced a little bottle of medicine and explained to Mitsuri and her mother how much to take and when. Then she got out a little box of throat soothing tea leaves, a cooling peppermint oil for aching joints and a cute little pink elephant plush.

“On behalf of everyone at the Kochou Family Pharmacy, I hope you feel better soon, Mitsuri-chan, happy birthday.” Naho grinned.

“Thank you so much Naho-san. Please give Sumi-san and Kiyo-san my thanks as well.”

“Of course! Bye, Mitsuri-chan, Kanroji-san.”

And with that, Naho left to her next destination. Mitsuri’s mom stayed with Mitsuri a while longer to help her resettle. When Mitsuri fell asleep, she turned off the light and closed the door gently behind her.

***

Awhile later, Mitsuri began to stir in her sleep, a cough racked her lungs and stabbed at her throat like needles. She would have to ask her mother to make more of that tea. She was starting to feel hot again too. A small whine sounded in the back of her throat and mere moments later cool, smooth skin rested over her forehead.

Slowly, Mitsuri opened her bleary eyes to find Shinobu hovering close over head. Her eyes closed in concentration as her forehead resting against Mitsuri’s.

With a displeased hum, Shinobu straightened and opened her eyes, noticing Mitsuri staring back up at her.

“Oh, you’re awake,” Shinobu blushed faintly, “I was checking your temperature. You’re very warm. I’m going to get you a damp washcloth, I’ll be right back.”

“Wait Shinobu.” Mitsuri said, her voice quieted by her awakening as well as her sore throat.

Shinobu turned back to face her, “Yes?”.

“Hi.”

“Hi Sunshine.” Shinobu simpered, turning back to the door to retrieve a washcloth from the bathroom.

While Shinobu was away, something caught Mitsuri’s periphery and she turned her head to observe it more clearly. She was cheered by the sight of a lovely bouquet of flowers.

“Do you like them?”

Mitsuri startled a bit as the cool cloth was placed on her forehead, so distracted she hadn’t notice Shinobu come back in.

“Kanae helped me pick them out. She’s more adept at the whole flower language thing. These ones are supposed to represent good health and healing.” Shinobu informed.

“They’re beautiful, thank you.”

“I’m glad you like them. I’ve brought you some other things too.” Shinobu said, reaching for her school bag.

“Oo!” Mitsuri winced as another dry cough stabbed through, “what, what is it?”

“Well, least exciting is that I collected all your homework. Hinatsuru-senpai even made copies of all of her notes for you.”

“Ah, how practical of you two. Forgive me for not being excited by the thought of schoolwork.” Mitsuri groaned, causing Shinobu to laugh.

“I take no offense. Don’t worry, I’ve got something else you might enjoy more,” Shinobu returned her hand to her bag once more, withdrawing a neatly wrapped box, “Happy birthday, Mitsuri.”

“Aw, Shinobu!” Mitsuri squeaked as Shinobu handed her the box.

She gently removed the pretty wrapping paper as she always did, not wanting to tear it. Then she popped open the lid, wiggling once she saw the contents of the gift. If her throat wasn’t so sore, if she wasn’t so sick, she’d be bouncing around her room squeeing and showering Shinobu in kisses.

Inside was a neatly packed container of sakura mochi, a gift card from the Kamado Bakery, a new cook book detailing recipes from around the world and a beautifully crafted butterfly hairpin.

“Shinobu, this is all wonderful. Thank you so much!” Mitsuri couldn’t help but let a few tears slip down her cheeks and she sniffled, “I really wish I could kiss you right now but I don’t want you to get sick.”

“Then you’ll just have to rest and get better soon, won’t you?” Shinobu looked down at Mitsuri warmly. “Do you need anything? More tea perhaps?”

“Yes please.” Mitsuri sighed.

“Alright, I’ll be back soon,” Shinobu said as she turned over the cloth on Mitsuri’s forehead to the cooler side.

“You’re bedside manner is very good, Shinobu, like you’ve been helping sick people all your life and beyond. I’m so lucky.”

“If there’s one thing my family knows, it’s treatment of human health.” Shinobu nodded. “But it helps that you’re such an easy patient.”

Shinobu left the bedroom again and Mitsuri could hear Natsumi talking her ear off before they were too far away to be heard. Mitsuri looked back down at her box to touch the wing of the butterfly pin. She had often told Shinobu how much she liked hers and how cute it was that her sisters wore them too. It felt very special to be gifted one of her own.

Mitsuri ran a finger longing over the mochi, wanting nothing more than to dig right in. She knew she would enjoy them much more when she felt better so she held off. She took the cook book out and set the rest of the box down on the nightstand.

Shinobu returned with the tea, carefully setting it beside the flowers and box.

“Find any interesting recipes you want to try?” She asked.

“Mm, kind of. It’s hard to focus with this headache.” Mitsuri answered, rubbing at her eyes. Then she looked up at Shinobu standing in front of her, her eyes wide and pleading. “Will you read it to me?”

“Okay, put those puppy dog eyes away. I’ll be happy to read to the birthday girl.”

Shinobu walked around the bed and Mitsuri scooted over a bit to make room for her. Shinobu sat with her back against the headboard and smoothed her skirt over before taking the book from Mitsuri’s hands.

“Anywhere you want me to start in particular?” Shinobu asked, watching Mitsuri down her tea.

“The beginning is fine,” Mitsuri breathed, once she finished the cup and set it back down. Then she maneuvered herself to rest her head on Shinobu’s thigh, relaxing further when Shinobu combed her fingers through her fringe, trying to keep the wash cloth in place.

“Very well, recipes from Afghanistan it is. First we have a kidney bean curry recipe, lubya. The ingredients are as follows: coconut oil, coriander, cumin, dried mint, tomato, garlic, onion, broth, kidney beans...” Shinobu carried on, her voice as soft as a light breeze. She had hardly made it to the instructions when Mitsuri began to snore.

Shinobu set the cook book down with care and watched Mitsuri cling to her side. It may not have been the best birthday Mitsuri could have had, but Shinobu was happy she could be there to help her feel better.

#shinomitsuweek2021 #shinomitsu #shinobu kochou #shinobu kocho #mitsuri kanroji #demon slayer #kny #au

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haliyam · 3 years

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interim (ii)

zeke x reader/oc

summary: You return to Liberio not long after the Warriors arrive home from their failed mission in Paradis and discover that things have changed. (Or they will, and maybe a little more with Zeke than you expect.) [Season 4 and manga spoilers ahead]

AO3 link | Ch 1 | Ch 3

Hi again! I forgot to note in the first chapter that Reader here is 19 years old, while Zeke is 25. (Clearly, before the developments of this story, there was nothing but friendship there.) For the other Warriors, I put Pieck at 19 as well, while Porco is Reiner's age (around 17/18 that year). Marcel would have been the same age as Pieck and Reader in my headcanon. If you're not comfortable with the age difference, I understand.

Also, about university here so you don't get confused this chapter - I lifted the medical school system for Marley from Germany's current system where after a competitive state exam post-high school, students are able to head straight for medical school for a 6-year track followed by specialization.

Reminder that the Reader/OC, default name Lucy, is a cis-female Eldian character with a set background, but please feel free to set the substitution for the Reader to your chosen First Name using the InteractiveFics browser extension if you’re reading through the browser! So that would be: Lucy = Your or your character's First Name. Because reader will have a set background, you'll have a set surname as well.

Chapter 2

You don’t even get a moment to breathe. General List launches into a speech about the nerve of other so-called nations almost as soon as you sit down. Apparently, those in the Mid East peninsula have grown considerably bold over the last few months, with several navy ships withdrawing from the port of Ichakar and transferring, presumably, to Qali - which gives them a better angle from which to attack the mainland if they so wish it. They’ve also fortified their borders—ground troops distributed across the land close to Marley’s newly acquired cities—which is of course the sovereign right of those nations, but it’s blasphemy to the regime’s unending ambition.

You wish they had given you a brief with all this information before the meeting, the kind you have seen Willy and father poring over in their office in the past, but you get the feeling that the general is unloading information on you with the intent to overwhelm.

“On the diplomatic front,” he continues with a hint of mockery, because of course he thinks of such things as futile, “they have been making demands. Asking that we keep to our waters when it is they who have encroached upon ours! The audacity—the delineation clearly states—” He continues to ramble until he is red in the face, but your neutral expression must slip into a wide-eyed look at some point, because he regains his composure with a visible wrinkle of his nose. “This arrogance can only mean one thing.”

He stares at you, and you realize he is expecting you to answer. You feel all eyes at the table on you, the Commander’s especially, and clear your throat. “...Weapons research, Sir?”

“Weapons development, Miss Tybur,” he corrects you. “Advanced and more prolific than we may have considered.”

He pauses, and you can’t help but speak. You can tell Magath knows it because he sits up straighter somehow, and in a moment of rebellion, you refuse to recognize the caution in his posture. “With all due respect, Sir, the… armaments race among the other nations is no secret, and on Eldian labor, no less.”

A fist slamming on the desk causes everyone around it to jump in their seats. “It’s what Eldians deserve!” the general next to List says, so naturally that he might have been born saying it. You blink, the heat of embarrassment and indignation crawling up your neck, but it’s only with List’s raised hand that the man remembers that the white band on your left arm is only for show. He glances away. “Present company excluded, of course.”

With the exception of his hand, List continues as though neither of you ever interrupted him. “And now, to the point. We need further information on the status of this little race. That is where you come in, Miss Tybur. You will use your family’s connections to enter the peninsula with our people - the peninsula and beyond, as the exact lay of their operations lies beyond our ken - and retrieve this information.”

It’s one thing to predict a general’s words and another to be confronted with them. You suppose you were still hoping he wouldn’t say it. “General List, are you saying you want a Tybur to be a spy?”

List glances over at Magath. “They were trained for interrogation, weren’t they?” Your old instructor is barely able to nod before the general recalls to you, “Ah, yes, I read the file. You withstood all but the final test. A failure then, but rather more a fluke, in my opinion. An irreplicable circumstance.”

You don’t say anything. You would rather not remember that night. Or that particular moment.

He takes your silence for agreement. “And so I answer, why not? You became a Warrior candidate - unprecedented initiative and involvement by the Tybur family. Why should this be any different?”

“Because—” Because becoming a Warrior isn’t a choice a child makes of their own free will, not really, but a Tybur doesn’t question the decisions of the former head of the family, of father, before all these strangers. No matter that they were loyal to him. You purse your lips. “Sir, I just don’t believe I’m the right person for this.”

“Your file did say you were always hasty, Miss Tybur,” List says, and you both glance at Magath at that. He doesn’t nod, only meets your gazes. He seems as trapped in this as you are, which makes your resentment for him ebb only slightly. “But you should know better now.”

Now you’re getting irritated. The temper that was your closest companion in your early childhood, and then your early adolescence seizes your fist under the table as List continues. “How goes Foundation operations?”

The Tybur Family Foundation. Set up by Walter Tybur when he first became head of the family and operated by the eponymous Tyburs - most often chaired by the spouse of whoever leads it. Your mother first, once, when she cared to, and now Mila. It provides healthcare and educational opportunities for ‘peoples once oppressed by the Eldian Empire,’ as part of continuing reparations for sins the Tybur family did not commit. Or so they say. Many of its employees now are Eldian, part of Willy’s initiative to improve Eldian relations… but in reality it does little when the Foundation is only a grantmaking organization.

“Well enough, Sir.”

“Is that so? From what I hear, the Foundation is unable to set up even offices in several countries in spite of the family’s stellar international relations.”

“And,” you add carefully, “if they ever catch wind of my close involvement with the regime even after all this time, that will not improve.”

“Clearly, Miss Tybur.” His level gaze shifts to patronizing in all the ways you hate. “But say you become more independent. Distance yourself from the military that leads our fine motherland… Say,” he smiles, “that you make overtures of dissatisfaction with Marley’s cruel expansionist policies and express the utmost sympathy for other nations. Perhaps then they will permit you to expand your operations within their borders.”

Your jaw almost drops at the very suggestion. You’ve always thought, since Willy became Lord Tybur, that only the Tyburs have the power to change the direction of Marley. For obvious reasons, not so obvious to the rest of the world, but also for the heritage you represent. If the Tybur family can be good Eldians, why can they not be only one of many good Eldians? Why not introduce the concept that any Eldian can be good, as any other race of people?

“You…” You rein in your reaction even as your imagination sets off in the direction List has set it—and far more. Especially the part where the Tybur family spreads the good name of Eldians throughout the world. No more ‘special’ treatment, no more interment zones…

No more Warriors.

Maybe. If Marley gets what it wants.

You would allow that? was your question. But the answer, you understand suddenly, is that they would allow perhaps the chance of it, in exchange for Marley’s continued expansion using Eldian bodies on the front lines. A slim chance of sparing Eldian lives for the certainty of losing them. You feel lightheaded just considering it. You want to help, but you are the last person who should hold so many lives in her hands.

Your eyes refocus on General List. A pleased smile brims beneath his well-trimmed beard, like he’s already read your mind. But he can’t know—you’ve shared your thoughts with no one but Willy and Lara, who have been as dismissive as they have been receptive. In other words, as though you’re still the child father sent away thirteen years ago they expect will eventually forget all her questions.

“Does Lord Tybur know about this, Sir?” You eye the intelligence officer not far from List.

List clears his throat. “Not as yet. Lord Tybur might be more receptive to such a scheme were his sister to present it to him herself. We are aware that Lady Tybur chairs the Foundation. Her movements are conservative, but she may agree to a more generous, active Foundation on your word.”

Scheme. That’s what it is, but that isn’t what really catches your attention. Willy and Mila, listening to you? You want to burst into laughter, tell them that they have severely misunderstood the dynamics of the Tybur family. But that intelligence officer is here, which makes you think List is lying.

“Why not ask Lady Tybur to head the operation?”

“Lord Tybur would never allow us to risk his wife,” List laughs. The implication of his words is hardly lost on you, but the general tempers his mockery with a compliment. “And we believe a new, younger face for the Foundation - perhaps one our enemies believe to be foolishly idealistic - will better suit it.”

Foolishly idealistic. Like the sort of person who would agree to this plan. Your face doesn’t fall, but your eyes do - toward the table, the way the fingers of each general drum against the wood. Magath’s hands clasp each other, firm as ever. When you look up to List again, you frown.

“Sir, you know that I’ve returned to Liberio to enter the university’s medical program.”

“Yes, yes, we were quite impressed when we learned of your state exam results, Miss Tybur,” List waves, impatient. He’s been relaxed back against his chair, but now that his certainty is dwindling, he leans forward on the table. “But think. Look at the bigger picture. As a physician you may help a man in need one after the other - years and years down the line. Six years at the shortest, and if you mean to be a specialist, how much longer? But with the Foundation’s resources, and with our backing at that, you will aid hundreds, thousands - and the motherland most importantly. Within the year. Half, if we move quickly.”

You bite your lip. You want it and you don’t. The Tyburs must do something, or else we are nothing were your exact words to Willy before. But the idea of retaking your name when you have only just arrived here nauseates you, and assisting the expansion, the destruction, under the guise of aid more so.

“I… would like time to give this some thought, Sir.”

A sigh seems to echo around the room, but it’s only all the men with you and their exasperation. Only Magath is expressionless as List visibly bites his tongue. He gives the commander a glare for good measure, as though it’s his fault you did not agree at once. “Very well,” he says. “But know that prolonging this will only bring harm to the motherland.”

You only nod. Much as you would like to have it, you have no intention of getting the last word here. You avert your gaze from the Commander when you permit the men to leave the room ahead of you.

It seems like the start of a rather miserable day - you’re practically scheduled to overthink all this some time this week, if not this afternoon - when, once the steady march of power has cleared from the hallway, Pieck meets you as you step out of the conference room.

“Boo.”

Your hand flies over your chest, but it’s a chuckle that comes out of you. “You’re a sight for sore eyes.”

“So I’ve been told.” She peeks into the room behind you right as you close the doors. “The brass did not look pleased.”

You wince. “I gave them no reason to be. I hate to get the Commander in trouble, but...” You trail off. You both know you can’t say much more.

It’s Pieck’s turn to raise an eyebrow.

“...Sorry.”

“That’s all right,” she shrugs. “I came here for lunch, not information.”

You doubt she knows the extent of the Tyburs’ relationship with the regime, but you can always trust Pieck to know not to pry. “You know, I remember now why you’re my favorite Warrior.”

“Oh?” Pieck grins. “Not the Boy Wonder?”

“Boy Wonder,” you repeat, the way the two of you always have when that name comes up - with a snicker and definitely with no one else around. You’ll never understand how the brass can say it with such straight faces. “So how about that meal?”

She pinches at the skin of your elbow through your sleeve. “Changing the subject doesn’t work on me, you know.”

You sigh. “Can we please eat first? I’m miserable enough without an empty stomach.”

“I guess some things don’t change.”

“Hey!” You half-scoff, half-laugh. With a wink, Pieck slips her arm around yours, and you start down the hallway in companionable silence.

Or you would, if you didn’t know that you owe her a little more than that. Reaching over to rest your free hand over the arm linked with yours, you look at her. “I’m sorry, Pieck. I really am.”

Pieck waits a moment, and then meets your gaze. She searches yours for the lie, but she already knows it won’t be there. You always were too candid for your own good. With a squeeze at your hand, she nods. “I know. Tell me all about it after that meal. Your treat, right?”

You blink, and then laugh with shaking relief. “Of course.”

You and Pieck fall back into the easy rapport you’ve shared since you became friends more than a decade ago. Contrary to her words, she doesn’t press you for answers as you decide on where to eat in the zone. For old times’ sake, you agree on the sandwich place two blocks from the Yeagers’, and you end up sharing a meal in your bedroom.

Sitting on your bed together, legs dangling over one edge as you nip at your food, you finally work up the courage to speak through your guilt and explain yourself and the past five years—or most of it. And of course Pieck is understanding, which makes you feel even more pathetic. True to form, she picks that up as well and gracefully changes the subject.

You’re the one who brings it back to what still hangs in the air over you when you’ve finished eating. Nothing personal—but though Marcel was the only one with whom you were ever close friends with, Reiner, Bertholdt, and Annie were your teammates too. You’d suffered your superiors together during training, and you’d been there for each of their first transformations. For all the experiments too; even their first assault mission.

“What happened?”

Propped up on one elbow, Pieck is lying on her side, legs tucked under her skirt as you set aside your trash. She accepts the glass you hand her from the table, eyes distant. “Zeke hasn’t told you?”

“Zeke won’t look at me unless he absolutely has to. You know how he is.”

Pieck groans. She knows. “He was so irritating after you stopped writing.”

You click your teeth in a wince. “Really?”

“Imagine, Lucy—after you all left, I was stuck with him and Porco. The abandonment issues didn’t just double, they were exponential. Multiply that with the ego and the sarcasm? The Commander was my favorite person those days.”

You laugh in spite of yourself. “I am so sorry, Pieck.”

“You should be,” she grumbles, but the remark is softened with a grin. When you grimace, she braces herself with a deep breath.

She tells you everything, or most of it: that the people of Paradis were shocked to find others alive outside of the walls, what Reiner and Bertholdt and Annie went through the past so many years, how the latter were captured—and exactly what happened to Marcel. She saves that one for last, and though you are infinitely more curious about the world behind the coward king’s walls, you reach for her hand again.

“I’m sorry, Pieck.”

She shakes her head. “You don’t have to make apologies all day, you know.”

“Don’t I?” you grin, embarrassed, teeth gritted even when your feigned mirth starts to droop. The dreamy way she speaks throws others off, but you know Pieck. She’s always been the most pragmatic of the Warriors and so she must feel silly, thinking about what could have been, had Marcel returned. Would a childhood crush have become something more between them if things were different? He had promised his family, and her specifically, that he would come home after saving the world. The thought, the regret for a chance not even yours gone, has a weight settling in your throat too.

You clear it and huff. “Well, it’s a great loss. I think everyone was a little in love with Marcel.”

Pieck glances at you.

“...Except Annie,” you add.

The sudden exemption makes Pieck choke with laughter, with tears not far behind. “Except Annie. Of course.”

You giggle, and both of you pretend not to see each other wiping your own eyes. “You know. Annie was always the toughest among us.” You pause. “Is. She is.” When Pieck’s laughter gives way to somber agreement, you ask, “What about Reiner? What has he said? I know what he’s said, but… two weeks of debriefing… it sounds like a little much.”

“He was there for years,” Pieck shakes her head. “He grew up there, Lucy. He’s… completely different now. Kind of like you.”

“I think that’s giving me a little too much credit.” You haven’t done anything remotely in the way of serving the motherland; not that you begrudge the others that the way you once did. “All I’ve done is see things and get upset. Until I can get my degree, and then until I can get the War Hammer, there’s nothing I can do.”

That’s a lie. There is apparently the Foundation—but the idea of directly assisting the regime in its efforts is something you cannot consider as you are.

“If you do become a doctor, will they let you have the War Hammer?”

You bite your lip. If only for Lara, you’re still bitter about that. “What was it all for otherwise? Though… I guess if I had inherited it then, there’s no way I’d ever be able to come back and see you all except under specific circumstances. Much less be permitted to study.”

Pieck only sighs, reaching for your hand. “Well, I’m glad you didn’t. And when I think about it… a part of me is glad Marcel didn’t have to see all of what Marley has done. What we had to do in Paradis—and I only saw a speck.”

You know what the others did, but Zeke and Pieck’s involvement apart from retrieving your old comrades is still vague.

You squeeze her hand reassuringly, but you can’t help it. “What did you have to do?”

“What we’ve always had to,” she answers with a faint smile. Your friends always had tells when they would rather not say more, and this is unmistakably hers. Given your earlier explanation, you understand why. She intertwines your fingers with gratitude at your silence.

“So,” you start after a while, “how about some dessert before I walk you back to HQ?”

“Sure. I might as well treat myself a little before we have to head out to the mountains again.” At your questioning gaze, she says, “Training with the Panzer Unit. That’s what all the paperwork was for.”

“Gross.”

She chuckles. “That’s exactly what Zeke says.”

Your face falls at the mention of him. Relieved as you are with your progress with Pieck, Zeke is an entirely different ball game. You hate that that’s the phrase you even thought of.

“You know what?” Pieck sits up smacks her hands on her lap. “I’ll treat you, too.”

You perk up. “Really?”

“For a price.”

“...What’s that?”

“Talk to Zeke already. If I come back after a month to your gloomy faces still, I’m going to go crazy.”

“It’s only been a day,” you mutter. “And I’ve tried to apologize to him.”

Pieck gives you a knowing look.

“I did,” you insist helplessly, but you both know that’s probably a lie. In Pieck’s case. You know it is absolutely false: when Zeke came upstairs after dish duty, quietly closing the door to his room, you stepped out of yours and stood outside in the hallway, your hand raised to knock on his door. You just couldn’t do it. You can take Porco’s jabs any day, but last night, the thought of Zeke and his silence, or worse, his caustic cheer, sent you scurrying back to your room.

You sigh. “Fine.”

Amused, Pieck gets to her feet for the opportunity to loom akimbo over you. “Good. And if you start to lose heart, try to remember that six-year old who used to glare at Magath like she had nothing to lose. That girl had guts.”

“You mean the half-dead one who wasn’t allowed dinner and got a Warrior class’s worth of cleanup duty alone, whom you specifically told to get over herself if she didn’t want to actually die a few months into training?”

“Exactly. What is Zeke going to do? Tell you to go to your room without dinner?”

Maybe. You sigh. “Sometimes I don’t like it when you’re right.”

Pieck grins. “And when Zeke gets over himself—maybe he’ll tell you about his brother.”

Your shock would be better illustrated in this moment were you sipping a drink you could spit in her face. “His what?”

“Shh. I don’t think he’s told the Yeagers. I think… he only told Magath because I was there when he discovered it. Still,” she says when your eyes remain wide and expectant, “it’s not my place to say. So talk to him.”

Medicine is one of the few fields for which Eldians are permitted to pursue higher education. It’s only logical—there are only a few non-Eldians who care to treat pig-blooded devils, and the efforts of those who do are wasted on said filth. And so the regime allows the admission of more Eldians than often permitted under quotas for other majors, even if the number does remain small regardless.

After parting ways with Pieck, you find yourself standing in line in some administrative building in the University of Liberio in the midday heat of summer. The line stretches outside because this is the queue for Eldian students wishing to confirm their intention to enroll over a month from now. That’s all—you need only submit a form and pay a fee, and the line for non-Eldians students has long finished—but of course the line has barely moved for your kind.

You’re clutching your envelope and your permit to your chest, which you quickly realize is a terrible idea. Sweat is starting to trickle down the nape of your neck, and you start to fan yourself with the envelope. Talking to the other applicants in line is prohibited - you must be spaced far from one another so as not to make noise and distract students who actually deserve to be here.

It’s ridiculous. You can’t even leave the line because saving spots is prohibited. Something about being fair.

The frustration crawls up your neck in the form of prickling heat, and you feel a headache coming. You fan yourself more vigorously, trying to calm down. It takes a minute, but the background buzz eventually starts to soothe you, and you begin to accept that you can simply return to the Yeagers’ and change as soon as this is over. The glares your line receives from passing students and the guards watching you, ensuring none of you causes a ruckus (as if any Eldian would dare), fade under the memory of your childhood. You withstood it before, with Magath and the other drill instructors screaming in your face. You can ignore a few nasty looks.

With that as a frame of reference, the line is even almost... peaceful. The heat is dry, not humid, there’s no mud, no blisters in your feet, no rucksack weighing you down, and no rifle either.

Only the sudden rustle of paper as it slips from your thumb interrupts that peace.

“No!” you gasp, watching your permit flutter closer to a guard with his back turned.

Just then a hand swoops in to save it - its owner bent forward, dark hair falling over his face until he rights himself, permit in hand, and glances around. You sigh in relief when you spot the band around his arm and wave him over.

He jogs over to you, hand already extended with the permit. “Confirming your slot for the medical school?” he asks, brushing away the bangs that fall over his face. He’s got the slightest stubble around his jaw, which he brushes his fingers over when he notices you looking.

You meet his gaze when you notice you’re looking. “Yeah,” you say, clearing your throat. He smiles at once, as if he can tell you’re embarrassed, but he only casts a glance at the line behind and ahead of you. “It was a lot worse during my time. They had us looping around the gate.”

“Ugh, really?”

He nods, but swallows down his grimace to lick his lips. “I’ve… never seen you around the zone before.”

You blink. Smile a little as you glance around the line. “You know everyone in the zone?”

He opens his mouth to respond with a sheepish grin that makes his eyes twinkle when movement behind him catches your peripheral vision. One of the guards watching the line has noticed him and is stomping his way over. Noticing your alarm, he sticks out a hand. “I’m Kellan, by the way.”

“Lucy. It’s nice to meet you.”

“Lucy,” he repeats, and you’re barely able to shake his hand when the guard yanks him back.

“Damn pig’s blood—!”

“I’m going, sir. Sorry,” says Kellan, ending the apology with his eyes on you even as he winces from the shorter man’s grip. When he’s eventually released, he ducks away and walks off. He glances over his shoulder to wave, but another guard keeps him moving with a shove.

The shorter one glares at you when he’s gone, and though you remember Pieck’s words, you know this isn’t the time or the place.

“Sorry,” you mutter, eyes to the ground as you turn ahead. Once he’s assured of your submission, he leaves too.

The line takes longer than you expect, but you survive the sweltering heat and submit your form just before the offices close. You hurry back to the zone afterward, dropping by the Galliard bakery to call on Mr. and Mrs. Galliard and offer your condolences. They are shocked but overjoyed to see you, and insist that you take your old favorites when they discover that you’ll be dropping in on Mr. Finger afterward.

You don’t stay long, though Mr. Finger is pleased about your choice of future employment. You feel even guiltier at the unspoken regret in his smile, and beg him not to mention it when he tries to thank you for the support the Tybur family has sent the Fingers over the years—the one thing you think Willy has ever done right.

You return to the Yeagers before dark, early enough to help Mrs. Yeager start with dinner. Dr. Yeager is apologetic as always, but you’re able to change the subject by serving the blueberry pie from the Galliards for a mid-meal dessert of sorts, and the dinner table relaxes soon after. Zeke is absent - he still hasn’t come home from work - so you make sure to leave some for him. This time, Mrs. Yeager allows you to take over cleanup, and the couple retires to their bedroom once the conversation fades into a comfortable silence.

You hope to meet Zeke right as he arrives, corner him into talking to you somehow unless he decides to miss dinner himself, but after half an hour of sitting at the dinner table, cleaning anything you might have missed in the kitchen and the dining room, and rearranging anything out of place in the living room, it starts to look like he won’t be coming anytime soon.

That’s fine, you tell yourself. You feel slimy from being out in the sun all afternoon anyway, and you treat yourself to a relaxing bath. Zeke is still away when you return to your room, and the calming warmth of your evening has you yawning. You have no choice but to change into your pajamas.

In truth, you’re a little relieved. Not that you’re particularly answerable to Pieck anyway, at least not until she finishes training with the Panzer Unit, but it won’t be your fault that you and Zeke weren’t able to talk tonight. But just to feel as though you’ve tried your very best, you keep yourself up by starting to write to Lara—and then regret your principle when you hear heavy footsteps outside and a soft click of the door across yours.

The word you’re writing skitters off to the edge of the paper in your surprise. Your heartbeat invades the tense silence of your room, but you manage to take a deep breath, folding your unfinished letter and slipping it under the paperweight on your desk.

Your door is your next obstacle.

Overlapping images of how Zeke will surely reject you race through your mind alongside the words you wish you could say, and you’re able to keep up with about... none of them. You thought that the words would come to you, and maybe they will, but the moment is about to come and you can’t think of a single word to say.

If you have time to worry, you have time to just get over there and do it, you tell yourself. You shake your head, regretting your own harshness, but also nod as you hastily gulp down the glass of water on your bedside table. Those words in mind, you move, switching one door for another. No longer standing nose-to-panel with your bedroom door, you’re doing it with Zeke’s in the hallway instead.

Hand raised to knock, you eye the light peeking out from the gap beneath the door. Knock. Just knock. The worst he can do is turn you away, and you’ll probably want to wriggle under the dirt and cry, but you’ll at least have tried. You owe it to him to try, like you did with Pieck, and you know you’re braver than this. Or you were, once upon a time.

If you’re still the same girl from years ago, you don’t get to find out just yet.

You hear his footsteps coming from the bathroom too late. No, it’s the heat of another and the familiar scent of his soap which alert you to his presence.

That and his voice, still too deep for the older boy you remember. “Aren’t you a little too old to still be knocking on my door at night?”

“Zeke,” you say, trying to pull your heart down from your throat before you turn and meet his flat expression. He’s in pajamas himself, his hair damp. You must not have heard him head for the bathroom you share down the hall. “Hi.”

That’s more than your mind could summon a while ago, but you still want to smack yourself.

His chest rises and falls as he takes a deep breath. His jaw shifts even as his pale eyes stare down at you in the dim light, as if deciding what to do with you... and then he sighs. He’s too tired to be glib tonight. “Can I help you, Lucy?”

Your lips purse with trepidation, but you stand your ground. “Can we talk?”

He pushes his glasses further up the bridge of his nose. Looking down at you is clearly work. “I’m listening.”

You hesitate, trying not to make another face. It seems to come naturally with Zeke around, but you resist the urge, and instead tilt your head to the side. There is no light coming from the master bedroom down the length of the hallway. When you glance back up at Zeke, you give him a pointed look.

Zeke sighs again, and then… decides to just brush past you to grab his doorknob.

Your stomach twists with both disappointment and pique. “Zeke,” you whisper furiously, barely just stomping your foot.

He whips his head to face you, halfway inside already. “What?” he whispers back, like you’re nagging him. Then he rolls his eyes, swinging his door wide open and backing into it to give you room.

“Get in.”

Sorry for the dearth of Zeke moments this chapter, but the next one will mooostly feature him and yes we'll finally find out why Zeke is upset. I used to write very long chapters with fics, but that really exhausted me so I'm trying to write shorter now to keep myself from burning out. But I'm enjoying writing in 2nd person! I never used to do it because it was frowned upon long ago, and possibly still is now? But idc anymore it's fun to try.

Thank you for reading!

#zeke x reader #zeke x oc #zeke yeager x reader #zeke yeager x oc #zeke jaeger x reader #zeke jaeger x oc #aot #snk #aot fic #aot fanfic #haliyam #interim #snk fanfiction #aot fanfiction #zeke yeager #zeke jaeger #snk fanfic

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emilyofjane · 3 years

Text

Why the Disney Princesses definitely need therapy: a Hot Take

Snow White

Losing her parents as a child and having to learn to take care of herself at a very young age (Snow White is 14 in the movie, and judging by her work ethic, she appears to at least have some experience with living independently before moving in with the 7 dwarves)

Lack of socialization due to isolation

Depression due to isolation and loneliness. This makes the whole “Someday My Prince Will Come” thing much more believable, because Snow White really isn’t in any sort of immediate danger and doesn’t need “saving” or whatever; she’s just tired of being alone and wants human companionship. (And tbh who can blame her? The poor girl’s literally talking to birds and moved in with the first group of humanoid creatures she could find ffs)

This one’s a bit of a stretch, but I’m pretty sure Snow White would also have an unhealthy fear of strangers and/or an irrational fear of being poisoned after the whole apple fiasco

Cinderella

Being raised in an abusive home environment for most (if not virtually all) of her life

The complete lack of positive social interaction throughout her life has probably led to problems with social withdrawal and isolation at some point, and I wouldn’t be surprised if she has repressed symptoms of chronic depression due to loneliness.

Her closest emotional confidants are literally two talking mice, and that just screams “My only friends are animals because their love is unconditional I’ve been invalidated and unloved by every human being in my life” (aka extreme emotional neglect)

She probably has tons of questions about her biological parents that were never answerd because, again, her stepfamily hated her, which would obviously lead to some emotional baggage

If we consider Cinderella III: A Twist in Time to be the new canon, she definitely has some unresolved PTSD from her near-death experience (the “almost getting crushed to death in the carriage because it was transforming back into a pumpkin” scene)

Aurora

Existential crisis because the three fairy godmothers basically rewrote her entire identity as “Rose” and hid the fact that she was a princess

Never knowing who her real parents were as a child, leading to emotional baggage similar to that of Cinderella and Snow White mentioned above

Either the emotional burden of having to make up for 16+ years of lost time with her biological family, or the grief of losing her biological family without ever getting the chance to know them (idk whether Aurora actually got to meet her parents by the end of the movie or if they died before she woke up, because I don’t remember exactly how much time had passed while she was in the coma)

Speaking of the spindle prick-induced magical coma (which is a really long-winded and inefficient way to kill someone honestly, idk what Melificent was thinking), Aurora also has to deal with the emotional burden of how much time has passed while she was in a coma, which would only further feed into the existential crisis and emotional trauma in bullet points 1 and 3.

(Also, off the record, but Aurora’s entire life post-movie is just a hot fucking mess and she really deserves a second movie exploring that concept imo. I know that Sleeping Beauty has already gotten a live-action villain spinoff, but the story of Aurora herself really deserves to be reexamined under a modern lens also. Aurora is easily one of the most overlooked Disney princesses and tbh she deserves more love.)

Belle (feat. the expanded lore from the live-action movie)

Witnessing her mother die from the plague in their own home

Being forceed to move from the more culturally progressive city of Paris to the unnamed “poor provential town” in the movie, where she is clearly the odd one out and is subject to gender inequality on a daily basis (in the form of being publically shamed and socially ostacized for being an educated woman)

Being regularly sexually harassed by Gaston, which is further exacerbated by the villagers and their close-mindedness. Not only is Gaston’s behavior enabled and encouraged by the villagers, but they even go so far as to idolize Gaston — as shown during his namesake song — despite his obviously predatory actions, simply because he is a cishet white man that they find conventionally attractive

Watching her father get arrested despite being 100% innocent...TWICE

Also being arrested when her father is wrongly convicted a second time, by none other than her abuser

Watching her lover — who besides her parents was the first person in her life who truly loved her and respected her intellect despite being a woman — nearly die in her arms, as well as everyone else in the castle (who ALSO respected her regardless of her gender) nearly die at the same exact time.

...And you know, Stockholm Syndrome or whatever. (But tbh, given how everyone in the castle was very kind and respectful and how the Beast was a tsundere at best, Belle would probably suffer far more from PTSD brought upon by Gaston and her previous environment than from “Stockholm Syndrome” in a castle where everyone actually treated her like a normal fucking human being. Unpopular opinion I know but as a sexual assault survivor this is literally a hill I will die on.)

Jasmine

I’ve actually never watched Aladdin all the way through, so unfortunately I can’t give a full analysis of Jasmine’s conflicts...but I have seen that gif of her saying “I am not a prize to be won” and that just screams “I’ve suffered a lifetime of female objectification and gender inequality despite my social status, and not even in the highest position of authority possible am I allowed to have a voice” and idk about you but that is really fucked up man

Ariel

PTSD from being manipulated by Ursula to give up her voice and nearly losing everything (both her previous life in the ocean and the promise of a new life on land with her love interest) because of it

Near-death experience from *vague hand gesture to whatever the fuck that was at the end of the movie*

Inevitable depression from abandoning the only home she’s ever known (the ocean) and leaving her friends and family behind

She’ll probably also need some form of behavioral therapy to help her adjust to her new home on land, whose culture is still extremely foreign to her — and maybe even additional therapy for social anxiety, given how her first 3 days of human interaction were so mortifyingly embarrassing that she’ll probably be laying wide awake at 3 AM and thinking “oh my god I can’t believe I looked Eric’s parents dead in the eyes and brushed my hair with a dinner fork” for the next 10 years.

Tiana

PTSD from literally being turned into a frog

Overworking herself to the point of near burnout, and being unable to fully live out her prime adult years because of said burnout

Constantly dealing with shitty customers, bosses, and other white-collared people disrespecting her and treating her as subhuman because of her career choice, which is unfortunately a common shared experience among restaurant workers and those who work hourly wages

Since this movie takes place in the United States presumably before the 1960’s, it’s probably safe to assume that Tiana also probably had to deal with segregation, Jim Crow laws, and other forms of racism off-screen on a daily basis, which would obviously take a toll on her mental well-being and further exacerbate the issues mentioned in #3

Grief from losing her dad, which has likely been repressed due to her workaholic tendencies denying her the ability to properly take the time to mourn

I don’t even know what to categorize the whole witch doctor shenanigans as, I just know that she and Naveen are both going to need some SERIOUS therapy after going through all that shit

Rapunzel

Being raised in an emotionally abusive and controlling environment for her entire life

Being completely isolated for 18 years with no social interaction whatsoever with anyone except her own abuser

Existential/identity crisis from discovering that she’s actually a princess, that her “mom” was actually the one who kidnapped her as a baby and tried to cut her hair, and that everything she knew about herself and the world she lived in was essentially a lie to keep her obedient to Gothel

Near-death experience (the drowning scene)

Internalized fear and mistrust in strangers — and quite possibly in people in general — due to Gothel’s lifelong warnings that people in the outside world would only want to take advantage of her

Watching the woman who raised her MERCILESSLY STAB THE ONLY OTHER PERSON SHE EVER KNEW AND LOVED IN THE GODDAMN CHEST

Watching the woman who raised her LITERALLY CRUMBLE TO DUST IN FRONT OF HER VERY EYES

WATCHING FLYNN, THE ONLY OTHER PERSON SHE EVER KNEW AND LOVED BESIDES HER GODDAMN ABUSER, FUCKING DIE RIGHT IN FRONT OF HER before she miraculously healed him

Because Flynn’s revival was such an uncanny revival that not even Rapunzel knew how she did it, she obviously thought he was gone for good...and since Gothel was gone also, there must’ve been at least a split second before she healed Flynn where, for the first time in her entire life, she was completely and utterly alone. That alone deserves to be a bullet point because holy shit

I’m not even going to get into Tangled: the Series man this list is getting too long as it is

Elsa

Losing her parents at a young age

Abandonment and isolation issues (mostly self-inflicted due to her own fear of hurting others, see #3)

Internalized fear and self-doubt of her powers — and, by extension, fear and self-doubt in herself

Guilt from nearly plunging Arendelle into an eternal winter

Guilt from almost losing her sister (twice!) due to her own direct actions

(Coinciding with #3) Guilt from isolating herself from her sister to protect her, only to nearly get her killed by the very thing she was trying to protect her from

Anxiety. Just lots and lots of general anxiety.

(Omitting Frozen 2 for Elsa because I haven’t seen it yet and this list is getting too long)

Anna

Also losing her parents at a young age

Abandonment and isolation issues, but hers are moreso due to Elsa “shutting her out” as a kid and having no one else her age in the castle to interact with

Lack of socialization in general for much of her childhood, as well as any social anxieties/lack of social knowledge and etiquette/etc. that would come with it

Abusive relationship with Hans (I know it was only one day, but holy fuck that was a trainwreck. What Hans did to Anna is a literal breeding ground for PTSD and trauma)

Coming to terms with the fact that the trolls fucking erased her memories of Elsa having ice powers and that Elsa isolated herself to protect her (and not, you know, because she hated her or something)

Leftover guilt from holding a grudge against Elsa for most of her childhood for shutting her out, because NO ONE BOTHERED TO TELL HER THAT IT WAS FOR HER OWN GOOD and she never knew why

Basically Anna and Elsa both need joint therapy or family counseling or something because holy shit their parents did NOT handle this situation properly AT ALL

(Also omitting Frozen 2 for Anna because I haven’t seen it and this list is also getting too long)

Moana

Surprisingly, Moana’s movie was relatively tame — in fact, because her tribe returned to voyaging and she is now exploring the seas/following her passion, these events were arguably beneficial to Moana’s mental health rather than detrimental. The only emotional baggage I can really imagine Moana having post-movie is leftover grief from her grandma dying and maybe the stress of having to put up with Maui’s shit

#shitpost #meta #disney characters #disney princess #long post #this has been in my drafts for literally a year so i may as well post it

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boxoftheskyking · 3 years

Text

Pick Up Every Piece, Part Four

Ugh this took forevvvvver

I know that the MDZS map is like based on actual China, so my apologies to whatever Yiling is based on. I need a shithole for this story, and Yiling’s it.

In which Lan Zhan follows A Story

Part One, Part Two, Part Three

----

Early November 2000

Lan Zhan is headed back to Moling. It’s not a trip that he particularly enjoys, anymore. He takes the train these days, since he got rid of his car.

He used to drive the 45 minutes there twice a week when he and Liu Shirong were first dating, before they moved in together in Caiyi. There used to be a sense of anticipation, enjoyment, each landmark and familiar turning a step closer to someone he wanted to see. An arm across his back, a kiss to his jaw, Shirong reaching up on tiptoe to greet him. He’d pick up Shirong at school and they’d wave out the window at the little kids in the schoolyard. Bye, Teacher Liu! Moling was an escape, an innocent place, somewhere far away from the darkness and dirt he spent his days sifting through.

Dear Shirong. He’s a good man. Short, kind, a silly gasping laugh. Desperate for children. He has two now, and a husband. Lan Zhan has lunch with him occasionally.

Now that he thinks about it, their last lunch was over a year ago. He supposes that doesn’t count as “occasionally” anymore. He could reach out first, if he wanted to. But he’s never been the type to reach out. Shirong has a life, a family, all the things he always wanted. All the things Lan Zhan couldn’t give him.

“I cannot imagine myself with a child,” he’d said when they broke up. He hadn’t intended for it to actually be a breakup—he hadn’t really thought that far ahead. But Shirong had visited an actual agency the day before and handed him a brochure, and Lan Zhan had left the apartment and driven into the mountains in a blind panic. He’d ended up stopped outside someone’s cabin, all the way up their driveway, and parked outside this stranger’s house until he’d gotten his breathing under control. That’s one of the reasons he’d sold the car. He’d never done that before, taken off like that, trespassed on private property, so getting rid of the car was the safest option.

Precept 45 of the Lan Clan: Do not act impulsively.

Precept 213: Be strict with yourself.

Precept 341: When faced with temptation away from the righteous path, remove the source of temptation.

His brother finds his interest in the old clan rules an amusing idiosyncrasy. Even his uncle, strict as he is, finds the rules nothing more than an heirloom, evidence of some kind of hereditary virtue but nothing relevant to the modern day.

It’s not that he follows them. He just likes to know them, to turn them over in his mind. As options. When faced with a decision, there’s a comfort in turning to generations of dead Lans for guidance. Some people like astrology.

There are a lot of Lans, these days, enough that he’s never met a good number of cousins. There’s plenty of Lans he’s barely related to at all, at this point, but the name still has a good reputation. It’s the opposite of what the Wens have to deal with, those who weren’t involved in the insurrection. Everyone knows the old clans are ancient history and you can’t judge someone on their family name. But still, no one named Wen is going to find work in Lanling anytime soon.

The point is, the Lans have survived and multiplied, so whatever kept them going in the old days can’t be completely useless.

His original interest in the rules was mostly as a journalist, which he’d hoped his uncle might understand. Every rule implies a story. A reason. Thousands of them mean you can triangulate an entire context. Who were we? How did we get here? What did we lose, and how?

Precept 9: Do not speak dishonestly.

Precept 77: Do not make promises that you cannot honor.

“I cannot imagine myself with a child,” he’d said.

Don’t worry, Lan Zhan, we’ll figure it out together. “I’m not sure I want to imagine myself with a child.” It will be different when it’s ours. You’ll see. “The more you talk about it, the less sure I am.” That’s okay, Lan Zhan, I can be sure enough for the both of us.

“I don’t want this. I don’t want this with you.”

Precept 424: Do not be needlessly cruel.

Lan Zhan had killed men during the war. Cultivation was useful for long-range attacks, but he still found himself in the situation of killing up close, of watching the light leave an enemy’s eyes.

He saw the light leave Liu Shirong’s eyes. For a moment his instincts had jolted, shocking through his nervous system. You’ve killed him. You activated your core, by accident, and you’ve killed him.

But it wasn’t the end of Liu Shirong’s life, of course, just the end of his love for Lan Zhan, the end of their life together, the end of whatever future he’d imagined for them. Lan Zhan had meant to release him gently, like a small rabbit with a newly-healed leg, back out into the world he came from. But he’d crushed him instead, under his clumsy feet.

Do not be needlessly cruel.

There are pools of guilt around Moling. Every place that he recognizes, everywhere they went together, even if the memories themselves are good. The guilt gathers on his clothes, soaks through to the skin, makes him cold.

It’s not that he misses Shirong. Perhaps he should miss him more than he does. It’s been nearly three years since they split up. It should perhaps hurt more than it does. It’s embarrassing that it took longer for him to get over Wei Ying—a relationship that never happened.

The worst part of the breakup didn’t even have to do with Shirong himself. He hadn’t made a special call after Shirong left, or even after he officially moved out a week later, but he had mentioned it when Lan Huan called him as usual on the second Tuesday of the month.

“Oh, I’m sorry, didi,” Lan Huan had said. “I know you did love him, in your own way.”

In your own way.

Is he not— Did he not—

Had he never—

He is nearly to Moling. The train track curves here, about fifteen minutes out, and the rails were laid in crooked. It’s a jolt, every time. It’s easy to see who the regular commuters are, whose coffee sloshes over, who widens their stance in time, who looks suddenly out the window, worried. Sabotage on the tracks, maybe, or someone under the cars. The younger people don’t look worried, only bored.

The landscape is odd, he realizes suddenly. He’s been staring vaguely out the window, letting his mind wander, but where he’s used to a few farms, a man-made lake, and mostly open country there is torn up ground, heavy machinery, and miles of chain-link fence. Did he not notice this on his last trip? Had he been reading?

Out the window he sees a large sign on the fence announcing, “Future home of Jin Industries Moling Satellite Campus.” Typical.

In your own way.

He never asked what Lan Huan meant by that. Lan Zhan has won multiple awards for his reporting, for his ability to encourage others to talk. The right facial expression at the right time. A direct, polite question with just the right emphasis. Merciless is what they say about him, sometimes. He’s like a swordsman in an old movie, Nie Mingue used to say, in a way that sounded like a compliment. He moves so quick and so sharp, you don’t even know he’s cut you until you’re around the corner and your head falls off.

He’s poking at it like a sore tooth, needlessly. His golden core makes itself known, just a little sense, a small awakening. It’s always ready to defend him, even so many years later. He does nothing with the awareness, of course. No cultivation is authorized outside of combat. But his core was never removed, never shut down. Can’t put the hot sauce back in that bottle, Jiang Cheng had said once.

The train slows, stops.

“Moling station. Depart here—” The pleasant voice is cut off by a beeping. Lan Zhan stands and shoulders his bag.

“Attention passengers,” a crackled voice comes over the loudspeaker, far less pleasant than the recording. “Due to a security concern all passengers must depart the train at car fourteen. Doors will not open except for car fourteen. Departing passengers, please make your way to car fourteen.”

Lan Zhan looks around the car, then sees a “3” on the far wall. He sighs and follows the few people who are struggling with the connecting door to car four. The chimes that gently demand Get off the damn train are going. He has to speedwalk down the aisle, which is undignified, and everyone looks up at him with that poor bastard expression reserved for torn grocery bags and flat tires.

He makes it off the train a second before the door closes and it pulls away.

“Close one!” an old man grins at him, more humor than teeth.

The police have roped off most of the platform, everyone standing around looking at each other. A few are smoking. Lan Zhan goes over to the rope, coming up next to a kid with one of those handheld electronic games. The kid’s staring around at the cops while his game beeps vaguely in a lonely sort of way.

“What’s happened?” Lan Zhan asks him.

The kid answers without looking at him. “Abandoned bag. Nothing’s happening.” He sounds disappointed.

“Hm.” Sure enough, there’s a nondescript green backpack slumped on a bench.

“They always say it might blow up, but it never does.”

“Not so much these days,” Lan Zhan agrees.

“Like, if it was gonna blow up they wouldn’t be smoking near it, right?”

Lan Zhan smiles despite himself. “Good eye,” he says. His golden core is settled within him, curling beneath his breastbone like a sleeping cat, uninterested and unconcerned. No danger.

There had been a certain amount of withdrawal, after the war. And grief, and nightmares, and a limp for a while. But the end of regular cultivation, of relying on his golden core as a seventh sense, a second consciousness, a second self, the end of healing himself from the inside, of Wangji at his back and power at his fingertips . . .

It’s not entirely the government’s fault, if he’s being fair. Governments have always thrown away veterans, no matter who is in power. Always have, always will. Use you up and spit you out with maybe some benefits and the number of some overtaxed and underpaid case worker. And cultivation, being both new and more ancient than anything, was an unknown since the beginning. There are no peer-reviewed studies on the long-term effects of using a golden core. If Jin Guangyao hadn’t been doing his own research with the Wens for all those years, only to defect back to his father’s side when the tide began to turn, there wouldn’t have been a cultivator corps at all. So Lan Zhan can’t put the responsibility on any one person’s shoulders.

But it still claws at him, sometimes. His core wants out, wants to stretch, to strike, to light something up. It’s like wrapping his head in blankets, sometimes, stifling and muffled and hard to breathe.

Jin Zixuan likes to talk about it, how it feels. Lan Zhan and Jiang Cheng do not.

He checks his watch and picks up his pace, passing by another building down the block under renovation with a Jin Industries sign. The logo is close enough to the Sunshot flag that the government connection is implied, but different enough for plausible deniability.

Lan Qiaolian is leaning on her car a few blocks away, exactly where she said she’d be. Lan Zhan appreciates it—they’ve met only once, and he doesn’t trust his ability to pick her out in a crowd. She’s a short woman, but solidly built. Doesn’t look like a Lan, is what his uncle would say.

“Lan Zhan!” she waves to him and drops her cigarette on the pavement. “Thanks for coming.”

He nods and takes his place in the passenger seat. The drive to the Moling Children’s Center is quiet for a while. The Center is near Yilong’s old gym; he remembers the road.

“You had a meeting with the detective?” he asks, though he knows the answer.

“Yeah. Still stonewalling me. Everything’s fucking confidential. They say they’ve canvassed the neighborhood, everywhere between the school and the bus stop and home. But it’s like everyone saw him walking home with his cousin, his cousin turns around for a minute to chase a damn neighborhood cat up a tree, and Sizhui is just . . . gone. How does a kid just disappear like that?”

“But this lead?”

“The administrator I talked to at the Center said they might have something, some record of where he was born. Maybe someone from his birth family has been looking for him, would take him? There’s just— Even if the records do exist, if they weren’t destroyed, I don’t know who has access. And he’s just a kid, you know? I’m not special. We’re not special. So I can’t think of anything but the worst. You know what happens to kids, especially if they take them West, I know they sell—”

“You don’t know,” Lan Zhan cuts her off, gently. “No one knows. No reason to go down that road unless the evidence points there.”

Lan Qiaolian rubs her face. “I just don’t know what the evidence is.”

“We’ll find something. I have a hunch.”

He does not have a hunch. He doesn’t believe in hunches. Or, rather, he didn’t before he started cultivating. Now he believes in the extra-sensory perception of his golden core, which he has been ordered—and signed pages of documents agreeing—to never use it again.

Either way, he’s learned that the general public like hunches. It’s comforting, apparently, someone taking the lead off of no information. It doesn’t make much sense, but most reassuring things don’t.

“I can’t help thinking—” Lan Qiaolian trails off, tapping her thumb on the steering wheel. “Maybe he left because of me.”

This is not a comfortable situation. Lan Zhan should respond with Of course not, don’t think like that. But for all he knows it could be true. He doesn’t really know Lan Qiaolian, and he certainly doesn’t know Lan Sizhui.

All he knows are the facts. Lan Qiaolian began fostering Lan Sizhui a year ago, when he was eight. It was just the two of them until a few weeks ago when Lan Sizhui went missing. It’s not his job to find missing children, but they are technically family, and if there’s some kidnapping or a dangerous part of Moling where children are falling into holes in the ground, that’s a story.

“Why would you think that?” It’s not as gentle, maybe, but it’s useful.

“I got laid off a few years ago. A lot of us did, mass layoffs.”

“Construction?”

“Yeah. Everyone from site managers to the detailers to— well, everyone. One whole firm shut down. So I thought, you know, I’d be home for a while, I got some unemployment, so maybe it would be a good time to finally start fostering. You know? I could stay home until he got adjusted, then when he started school I’d have found something new.”

“And he was happy?”

Lan Qiaolian smiles. “He’s always happy. He’s a real happy kid. Whatever he went through when he was little, he doesn’t seem to remember. Makes friends easily, fine by himself. He’s a dream. But maybe he was just good at showing me what I wanted to see. You know? Coming from a traumatic background like that, being in the system. You know, kids learn how to survive.”

“If he seemed happy, I’m sure he was.”

She sighs. “I just— The work never came back. The last six, seven months I’ve been calling everywhere I can think of. Even considered moving. Nothing. And so it’s been tight, even though it’s just the two of us. I figured with my husband’s life insurance we’d be fine until I found something, but I didn’t anticipate it taking this long. I’ve got some unemployment, but the support payments from fostering messed with my benefits. And so it’s been tight. And maybe he— You know, the secondhand clothes, no takeout, no games. Not getting to go on the school trips because I can’t pay the— I can’t help thinking, maybe all that time in the system, he must’ve been dreaming about a home, you know, what it would be like. And then when it wasn’t—”

“That’s a lot of conjecture.”

She laughs. “True. I just— The brain, it spins. You know?”

“Hm.” Lan Zhan looks out the window at the familiar neighborhood, then startles a bit. “Did they tear down the market?”

Qiaolian glances over. “Oh, yeah. Couple months ago. No more independent groceries in this part of town anymore. Not that most people could afford it at the end. They tried to stick it out, but the big chains moved in after the war, got those tax breaks.”

“Ah. ‘Economic revitalization.’”

She laughs again.

“So, if I can ask,” he starts, glancing out of the corner of his eye to gauge her response. “On the train I noticed building sites. Jin Industries?”

Her jaw clenches. “They’re not hiring.”

He raises an eyebrow.

“We’ve all tried. They’ve bought up half of Moling, and whoever’s running the construction’s not hiring local. Union’s totally shut out.”

“Really?”

“I’ve tried, okay? I’ve called so many—” she cuts off with a frustrated noise.

“Forgive me. It wasn’t a criticism. I’m just curious.”

She nods curtly. “We’re here.”

The administrator who has agreed to meet with them has black toner smudged up the inside of her left forearm and a framed picture of a cat on her desk. She offers Lan Zhan room temperature water in a cracked coffee mug.

“So you’re my eleven o’clock, right? Okay, right.”

“That’s an old flag,” Lan Zhan says, nodding up at the wall behind her. “I haven’t seen that design for a while.”

For the most part, it’s a standard Sunshot, but in addition to the golden hand and red sun, thin black lines reach up the palm like branches.

The administrator looks surprised, turning around to it. “Oh. Yeah, I guess. I don’t know, I don’t have time to keep up with all that. We have to pay for our own, you know. We’re required to hang a flag in every room but the bathroom, but it comes out of our general operating budget. The official ones aren’t cheap.”

Lan Qiaolian chuckles. “My cousin got it tattooed right after he got discharged. He was pissed when they got rid of the black squiggles in the update. I told him, that’s why you gotta think for more than a week before you make a permanent decision, you know?”

The administrator smiles politely. “Anyway. Let me see here.” She starts digging through her pile of folders. “Lai, Lai—”

“Lan,” Lan Zhan corrects.

“Sorry?”

“The name, it’s Lan.”

“Right! Right, okay, Lan. Lan . . . Here we go. Lan . . . Qiaolian. Foster mother. Yes?”

Qiaolian nods.

“And you are?”

“Family,” Lan Zhan says.

“Right. Okay, let’s see. Lan Sizhui, age nine.”

Lan Zhan leans forward. “Anything you can tell us about where he came from, his life before Lan Qiaolian met him?”

She clicks her tongue and runs a finger down the page. “War orphan, typical story. Moved around, a bit once he got to Gusu. No injuries or disabilities. Hearing and sight all good, average height. Slightly underweight, but that’s not unusual.”

“When did he arrive here?”

“At our facility? Looks like ‘98.”

“So he wasn’t here long before you got him,” Lan Zhan looks to Lan Qiaolian.

“Yeah, I guess. We don’t really talk about his past. That’s what the counselors recommend. You’re supposed to wait until they volunteer, you know? You don’t ask first.”

“Any idea where he came from? Birth family?”

The administrator clicks her tongue again, flips a few pages. Lan Zhan catches a sight of a grainy printed photograph, a kid looking around six, big chubby cheeks and shaggy long hair.

“Came in through law enforcement. No note of any charges or juvenile detention, so likely if he had surviving family they lost custody due to a criminal conviction. Looks like the child didn’t offer any details to counselors or placement. Um, looks like Sizhui was the name he got here.”

Lan Qiaolian frowns. “You named him? That’s not his birth name?”

“Common practice, especially if we have multiple kids with the same given name. He never gave a family name—Likely he either didn’t know his parents or forgot after being in the system for a while. A-Yuan is what he was called when he got here.”

“Yuan,” Lan Zhan turns it over in his mouth. “Something Yuan. Any record of where he was born?”

“Mmm, can’t be sure. But he entered the system in Yiling.”

“Yiling?”

“Yep. First registered into care in Yiling, 1995.”

Lan Zhan looks back up at the flag. The others must be thinking the same thing. Yiling in 1995, the Sunshot Massacre. But that’s a ridiculous thought—there were no survivors then, and plenty of other battles, bombings, one-off murders in the area at the end of the war.

“No family names though?” Lan Qiaolian asks. “Any record of someone who might be looking for him, might want him back?”

The administrator suddenly yawns hugely, covering her mouth with both hands. “I’m so sorry. No, no siblings, no recorded birth family. I’m so sorry, I haven’t been sleeping.”

“It’s all right,” Qiaolian says.

“I live over on the East side. They’re building some new damn complex, pounding in pilings at all hours of the night.”

“At night?” Qiaolian asks. “Why?”

The woman sighs. “I don’t know. Lights coming in the windows at one in the morning. I had to dig out my old curtains, thank goodness I still have them. Wake up in the middle of the night thinking the bombing’s started up again, ha, the banging and the lights. We’ve been complaining, but the company offered all the neighbors a settlement stop reporting it. Two months’ rent, we couldn’t turn it down.”

“Lots of construction,” Lan Zhan says, carefully. “Unusual construction.”

“I wouldn’t know,” the administrator shrugs. “I just hope they finish up quickly. My cats are getting stressed to death.”

“Have you noticed— Never mind.” Qiaolian chews her lip.

“Noticed what?”

“The site over by me, there’s a lot of trailers.”

“Like trailers you live in?”

“They look similar—usually there’s a double-wide or two for an on-site office, break area, you know. The site by us there’s a dozen at least. I just find that odd.”

“I haven’t noticed. Maybe. I don’t know, I try to ignore it. Whatever office complex or hotel or whatever it is, I don’t need it.”

The administrator flips through the file again. “I’m afraid that’s about all I can give you. Yiling might have more information—I think the children’s home there moved a couple years ago so files might have been lost, but it’s worth an ask. Signature on the transfer form looks like a Xie Ling. It’s not a huge town, anyway, could be someone remembers the kid, or the family. Local police or courts maybe, if they keep decent records.”

Lan Zhan and Lan Qiaolian exchange a glance.

“Sounds like I’m going to Yiling,” Lan Zhan says.

“You don’t have to—”

He shakes his head, then hands his card to the administrator. “If you think of anything, or hear anything.”

She takes it. “Gusu Herald? You’re not going to mention the flag thing, right? We’re compliant with everything, this one’s just a mistake.”

“I doubt you’ll even be mentioned. I’m just following the story.”

She looks doubtful. “Okay. We’re compliant, though.”

“I work for a newspaper, not the government.”

She snorts. “Yeah. Okay. ”

It twists a little in his stomach, but he nods at her politely as they leave.

The hallway takes them past a large window showing some kind of playroom. Three adults huddle around a low table, arguing in hushed tones, while a child who looks around four plays by himself with a few scratched up toy cars. The child has a cast on one arm, rolling one car at a time solemnly around on the carpet. He looks up as they pass him and tracks them all the way down the hallway. Lan Zhan can feel his eyes on the back of his neck even as they go out into the sunshine.

“Did Sizhui talk about anybody here?” Lan Zhan asks as they get back in the car. “Any friends at the group home, or children he knew when he was younger?”

“Not really. I was worried he’d have a hard time making friends, because he always seemed so content playing by himself. It’s why I was so glad he had Jingyi, his cousin. He’s the same age. He’s the one who was with—” Qiaolian breaks off, blinking hard. “Sorry. Long day.”

“You don’t need to apologize,” he says. He should say something else like It’s okay. It will be fine. We will find him. But he doesn’t, because that would probably be a lie. His silence rises like water in the car, over his mouth, his nose, stifling.

Do not be needlessly cruel.

“Yiling,” Lan Zhan says, to fill the space.

“Fucking Yiling,” Qiaolian agrees.

“I’ll go this weekend.”

“What? You can’t just take off across the country.”

“I haven’t taken vacation in three years. I can go.”

“Lan Zhan—”

“I will go. I’m not saying I will find him, but I will go.”

Lan Qiaolian doesn’t say anything else for the rest of the ride. When she drops him at the station, she just nods, lips pressed tight together.

“I will call you,” he says. She nods again and he gets out.

He stops by the payphone on the way in to the station to call the office.

“Can I talk to Lan Shu? Yes, thank you.” He waits while the call is transferred down to the basement. “Hi, Lan Shu. Have we got anything from Yiling? Anything we’ve covered. Is there a local paper there? I haven’t—”

Lan Shu snaps her gum on the other end of the line. He pulls the receiver away from his ear, wincing. It’s a very wet sound. “Yeah, I got some. I’ll check our clippings, but they’ve got some shitty local rag. A weekly, I think.”

“Please pull that for me. I’m looking for 1995, don’t know what month.”

“Eh, looks like it’s only been running a couple years. First edition I have is April ‘98.”

Lan Zhan taps his finger, thinking. “I’ll take everything you’ve got. Any of our coverage from ‘95.”

“So, Sunshot.”

“And anything else we covered.”

Lan Shu laughs around her gum, “What else is there? No one gave a shit about Yiling before Sunshot, and nobody’s given a shit since.”

Lan Zhan sighs. “Just pull what you can find. Please. I’ll be by in an hour and a half.”

He hangs up before she can snap her gum again. It gives him a headache, the wet sound.

He grabs a copy of the Herald for the train ride back. Instead of reading, he flips through the entire paper looking for one word: Yiling. He finds three mentions: once as the birthplace of a soccer player (a rags-to-riches story), once as the site of a hailstorm in the weather section, and once, as expected, in reference to the Sunshot Massacre.

He hasn’t thought about it much before. He’s never been to Yiling, but there’s never really been a reason. Even before the war it was a small, poor, middle of nowhere town with low property values, high crime rates, and the worst literacy numbers in the country. It was shitty, but not in an interesting way. Qinghe was always shitty but exciting—drug kingpins and porn producers and a famous red light district. It’s become more respectable since the war, though it’s kept some of it’s sleazy veneer. Lan Huan likes to visit, says there’s a good arts scene, but Lan Zhan has never been tempted. He traveled a lot during the war, but since returning home he’s never really felt the urge. For a while it was justified. Recovery. But five years? Maybe he’s more than comfortable, now. Maybe he’s stagnating.

Lan Shu gives him two-and-a-half years of weekly papers in a brown paper bag and slim folder of photocopied clipping from the Herald’s own files. He hauls it all home on the bus piles them neatly by year on the coffee table, then settles in with a cup of tea to read. There are empty gum wrappers in the bottom of the bag.

The Yiling Observer is a quick read, only eight pages in its first edition. There are no bylines, oddly, no editors listed, no photographs, just one phone number and a street address in the masthead. The stories are . . . not quite what he expected. No gruesome crimes or depressing statistics. Just coverage of a local amateur basketball tournament, a car accident that took out a storefront, an interview with a grandmother about her vegetable garden. Small stories, almost defiantly local, but clearly and concisely written. Professional. A recipe for xiao long bao attributed to a Mrs. Yi.

He flips to the back page, under the fold. Whatever it says in bold.

This is your humble author’s own column, where our fearless and frightening editor has given me these few inches to write whatever I like. Hence the name, Whatever. Today we’re going to talk about the Sunshot Flag, or as I like to call it, “Hey, let’s slap reminders of a war crime up on every building in the country, that’s a great idea.”

Lan Zhan snorts. Whoever the writer is, they’re not wrong. He gets up to heat more water and adds to his list of things to do on the kitchen counter. Read all of the newspapers. Call the HR department and schedule a few days of vacation, maybe a week. Wait until his uncle sees it on the out of office calendar and calls him in a huff to explain the story. Book a train ticket to Yiling. Make an appointment at children’s services. Find a hotel. Ask Lan Huan to water his plants. Do laundry.

He feels better with a list, like all of the static of potential responsibilities has focused into a clearly intelligible sound inside his skull.

He goes back to the paper.

And before you complain—and I know some of you will—you’re the one reading my paper. Maybe someday you’ll have better options and can use this only for lining your bird cages, but for now I’m the best you got. That’s Yiling, baby.

Part Five

#assorted writings #pick up every piece #the untamed #cql #mo dao zu shi #postwar journalist au #i hate plot

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tailorvizsla · 4 years

Text

A Proper Mandalorian Courtship - Chapter 1

Title: The Armorer and an Introduction Word Count: ~2350 Pairing: Paz x Reader Rating: PG-13 Warnings: Cursing, canon-typical violence, crack humor that’s also serious Summary:

Mandalorian courtship is very simple: declare your interest in someone, spend time together if they reciprocate, and get married after a year or so. Getting married is even easier – simply swap the vows and announce it a few days later to the Tribe so you can all celebrate the happy news. Then spend the next few months fending off the nosy Elders (who all want to know when they can expect to hear more little feet on the ground). At the end of it all, Mandalorians court the same way the rest of the galaxy does.

Except for Paz Vizla. Despite his Traditionalist background, he goes about this courtship and marriage business in a very nontraditional way...a very, very, very nontraditional way. This can also be found at AO3. Chapters: 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10

📚 My Master List 📚 Author’s Notes:

This is my first attempt at a multi-chapter story in a very long time.

I’ve been working on this since February. It’s been finished for a few weeks now, but I’ve been procrastinating in posting because I have had such a hard time justifying why Paz behaves the way he does even though we only see him for like 3 seconds in the series. I’m not sure if anyone else does this, but I like having a reason to write a story, even if it’s just to get the fluff out. For this, I wanted to flesh out Paz’s character for future works, but I have had such a hard time figuring out the words for it that I just...didn’t post. It felt wrong to continue forward without being able to explain to myself why he does what he does. Something that @plexflexico said in one of their responses to a review I left resonated with me and finally inspired me to post this publicly.

“Paz might have had less than a minute of screen time, but that time was VERY enlightening because both scenes were at moments of great tension and high emotion. I felt that any man who could succinctly put his people’s plight into words, and was so angry over this betrayal by someone who should have known better that there was no way this was simply a brute. This is a man who thinks and feels, deeply.”

This. This is exactly what I couldn’t find the words for. This, to me, is Paz Vizla. I have seen stories/HCs that portray him as a brute in an attempt to show him as a strong, confident, and masculine character. I am not fond of that portrayal because it lacks depth. I don't see that from a man whose culture embraces competency and skill before gender or sex. For those of you who have not read Asterism, go do it now, I promise you will love every single word. @plexflexico perfectly captures every emotion and thought of each scene just perfectly. This is Grade Amazing Super Plus Rank writing and Plex deserves an award for their work. And also for the inspiration because her Paz is the man everyone who wants a man deserves to have in their life.

The Foundry is the most sacred place for any Tribe blessed enough to have one of its own. It is the physical manifestation of the Resol'nare: education and armor, self-defense, the tribe, the language, and the leader. Here, children and new recruits receive their first set of beskar'gam and swear their oaths to follow the path, making the Foundry the spiritual birthplace of every member of the Tribe.

At night, when the work is finished, and the flames are dimmed, the young and old gather within so they may learn from and educate one another. Most importantly, this is where most individuals begin their first lessons in Mando'a, under the guidance of the Elders. The foundry is where the armaments are made and dispensed for the protection of each person and the Tribe as a whole. When a hunter returns with their offerings, they return to the Foundry, and disperse it to those who depend upon them for sustenance and care. Finally, the Foundry serves as a place for the leadership to gather.

Armorer has had the distinct honor and privilege of being both armorer and leader to her people for many years, though she is now only the armorer for the tribe. Upon joining with tribe Marell, she relinquished her role as the Alor. However, the respect and authority she commands is not diminished in any capacity. Should Alor Dezha not be available to decide on a course of action, the Tribe will come to her, and her decision will be both supported and respected. Dezha respects her a great deal, and he will often seek her opinion if his path is unclear. Despite the differences in their interpretations of the Oath, they have come to live in harmony with one another. They strengthen what is weak in each other, and that is how it should be in a flourishing Tribe.

Tonight, she once more has the honor of being part of a marriage ceremony. Lifting her heavy hammer, Armorer brings it down onto the glowing ingot of metal, watching as it flattens and spreads under her blow. She continues to strike the metal with slow, methodical precision until it reaches the proper thickness. Then the Armorer takes it back to the flame, where she allows it to glow blazing white. It only takes a few moments, and she returns it to the anvil. The steady clang clang of her hammer is punctuated only by the occasional trip to the flames.

The union of two Mandalorians in marriage is – and always has been – a joyous occasion, for that union brings forth stability for the children and the Tribe. Traditionally, the parents take turns hunting, or if the Tribe has the numbers, both parents will hunt together, and leave their children in the care of the rest of the family. Having that one trusted person, the one who knows their every strength and weakness by their side, leads to success, both in the field and at home.

She pauses once more to check the ingot. When she sees it is properly folded, she divides it in half, and begins to form each blade precisely with her smaller hammer. Two Mandalorians, forged into one soul and body by marriage, whether they are together, or they are apart. Two blades, made from a single piece of steel, to symbolize that union. When they are formed to her satisfaction, she takes the blades to the oil vat and quenches them, a satisfying hiss escaping the bubbling liquid.

Then she returns to the forge, narrowing one of the flames to begin the differential tempering process. Here, the tang and the edges of the blades will be hardened to resist shattering, yet the spines will remain flexible, so that they may flex as needed. Once joined, the couple hardens themselves to outsiders; instead, they will turn their affection and respect inward, so they may grow together. Where one is brittle, the other is flexible, and together, they become stronger than they would be individually. She withdraws the first blade from the flame just as the pale amber color creeps to the edges of the blade and plunges it directly into the water bath to cool.

It takes hours to sharpen the ceremonial blades on the grinding belts, but she works steadily and carefully, honing the edges with precision. The hilts are left bare; they will be wrapped by the parties entering the marriage. When they speak their vows, they will exchange blades, so they may carry a piece of the other with them when they are physically parted. She nestles the blades into separate boxes lined with soft fabric. When she delivers the blades tonight, the newlyweds will handle the rest on their own. Armorer lowers the heat of the flame before she returns to her quarters. There she draws the curtain across her living space. Exhaling, she takes a seat at her low table with a pot of hot tea to await being summoned by the Elders to acknowledge the vows. Her shoulders are tense and tight. It is a good sign of hard work.

It has been many years since she has witnessed a proper Mandalorian courtship unfold and blossom into marriage. The Armorer has known from the start that Paz would be the one to fully embrace the traditional ways. Now, he has chosen to make himself an example to the younger Mandalorians and enter the bonds of matrimony. Her heart swells with pride as she imagines the future progeny they will gift to the Tribe, whether they are born or found. However, she takes the time to close her eyes and pray to the spirits. The newlyweds will need guidance.

Hopefully, the wedding night will not result in nearly as much structural damage as the courtship had.

The first time Paz ever laid eyes upon you was shortly after the Armorer had finished negotiations to join with yours. It took nearly three weeks of negotiations, but your Tribe had ultimately yielded. No sane alor would turn away a dozen Hunters and their children, anyway. Paz admits that he did not find you all that impressive at first. You were – and still are - pretty average. Your armor at the time consisted of a bes’kar helmet and a steel chestplate that looked like the Armorer’s. Everything else was made of leather.

Tradesperson, he thought to himself, and he put you out of his mind.

As time went on, Paz came to like you, and even enjoy spending a few minutes with you here and there as his duties allowed. Even though you openly admitted that were an average warrior (at best), you did your job freakishly well. You had made your desire for a large family vocal, and that, combined with your skills, had caught the attention of several Hunters visiting to deliver the latest news. According to the Elders, the offers of marriage had come flooding in the instant you completed your first hunt, even though you hadn’t completed it until your twenty-third birthday.

When the average Mandalorian completed their first hunt by their nineteenth.

And Paz completed his on his seventeenth.

It didn’t take long for him to understand how you earned the loving-yet-frighteningly-accurate nickname shu’shika from the Tribe – you truly are a tiny disaster. You are dearly loved by your Tribe, but there is a tendency for things to break while you are around.

You are stubborn to a fault. That Paz can deal with. Over the past thirty or so years, he has had plenty of practice to out-stubborn his subordinates, and he always wins. The same holds true with his bounties. With you? There have been a few situations where he has come dangerously close to cracking and losing his temper. It is only your terrible self-defense skills and his affection for you that keep him from simply putting you in a headlock until you submit.

Paz sometimes wonders if you provoke him on purpose because you know he will not throw fists with someone who lacks proper training. He takes no pleasure in winning a fight if it was never a true fight to begin with.

Far too often, you get mouthy with him, to the point where he sometimes wants to grab you around the waist and launch you straight into the lake for being such a brat. You are never truly disrespectful, but you have no problem telling him what you think. Even when he does not ask for your opinion. He does, however, appreciate your honesty with him, since others are usually too intimidated by him to be as direct as you.

You’re kriffing fearless, to the point of recklessness. His threats to launch you into the lake have gone from true threats to playful teasing, and it always earns a laugh from you.

Your forgetfulness…it is truly obnoxious. At this point, he has stopped reminding you to pick up your shit. He has grown used to simply picking up your things off the floor (or the couch, or the tables, or the showers), stuffing them in a bag, and dumping it all on your table in the workshop. Just like everyone else in the Tribe does for you. Or, if he wants to see you, he will pocket your datapad until you come wandering into the common areas, and hand it over without a word. It never ceases to amaze you that Paz somehow seems to know exactly what you are looking for.

Paz has no doubts that if you ever set your bucket down, you will lose it. He kind of finds it endearing. But only from you. He has no problems holding armor, weapons, or personal property for ransom if some idiot leaves it unattended.

If there is even a single power cable in a wide-open room, you will invariably find it and trip over it. Stairs have to be clearly marked with vibrant tape to remind you of their existence even though they’ve been there for ten kriffing years. Your navigational skills are nonexistent. It is all Paz can do to refrain from simply attaching a tracker to your backside to keep you from getting lost whenever someone takes you to the market.

The first time he had taken you to the market, he lost you within forty-eight seconds. He panicked the entire time he looked for you. Fortunately, he found you trying to dig enough money out of your bag to buy some ice cream, with no regards as to how you were going to eat the kriffing ice cream with a damn bucket on your head.

Sometimes, Paz feels like his relationship with you is going to give him a full head of grey hair before his fiftieth birthday. But he thinks you are the most beautiful disaster he has ever seen in his life.

You get his dumb jokes and laugh at his silly puns. You let him steal the end pieces of the bread when you bake. You try so damn hard to improve your hand-to-hand combat skills, even when Doctor Shen threatens to tie you to a bed to keep you from hurting yourself. You turn to him first when you want to learn a new technique. You play hunters-and-prey with the children for hours, like you don’t care that the others are grumbling about you spoiling the kids. You listen to him ramble about whatever random topic he has picked up that week, and while you may not know anything about it, you ask questions and take the time to learn more about what makes him happy. You even offer to share your tiingilar with him, even when you only have a quarter ration of it.

He has spent most of his forty-four years alone in life. His eight-year relationship had ended exactly ten years ago when his partner chose to commit adultery. He was on the verge of proposing marriage when he caught them in his bed. Neither had been wearing their helmet. It was a privilege his partner had never granted him, even after nearly a decade together. After that gut-wrenching betrayal, something had shattered in him. Paz invested himself in his work fervently, his bitterness turning him away from the possibility of a long-term relationship. Now that he is older and wiser, he feels a sort of emptiness to his days. Like his successes mean nothing without having someone to share them with. He wants someone there to encourage and support him in his hunts. Someone who is not as cynical and burnt out from the constant threat of death and war. Someone who still has that shereshoya – that Mandalorian lust for each new day and every experience that it brings. That brightness in your soul draws him to you like a moth to the flame. It is your hidden gentility that has him so happily trapped in your orbit.

He wants to make you strong where you are weak.

He wants you to make him strong where he is weak.

Seeing you waiting for him at the shooting range brings a spring to his step. Hearing your laughter at one of his awful jokes makes him glad he wears a helmet so no one can see the ridiculous grin on his face. Smelling the sweet, flowery soap that you use makes his knees go all wobbly, though he’s not sure if it’s from affection or just from age. Just feeling your hand brush up against his makes him turn into a sweaty, flushed mess.

Paz Vizla feels like he’s strapped to the wing of a TIE fighter spinning out of control as it plummets to the ground below, or something like a fully-grown rath’tar has wrapped itself around his heart to squeeze. His belly is jam-packed with spice-crazed minochs and his heart is pounding wildly. When he thinks about kissing you one day, maybe just gently pressing his helmet against yours, his heart gets so full he can barely breathe.

You make him Feel Things he has never felt before.

Paz Vizla turns into a hot kriffing mess under his armor when he is around you, and he wants off this malfunctioning jetpack.

Feel free to leave comments, concerns, or critiques. I love all sorts of feedback <3

#star wars #the mandalorian #paz vizla #paz vizla x reader #paz vizsla x reader #romance #humor #the armorer #din djarin #original characters #tailor's world #tv: the mandalorian #paz vizsla x f!reader #paz vizla x f!reader #tailor writes #series: a proper mandalorian courtship

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sneakerdoodle · 4 years

Text

I was going to release this as a long video essay but devices and software had conspired against me and eventually drained my patience, so here it is in the written form. My magnum opus. My 15 pages long analysis of the three Infinity Train seasons currently out.

1. Introduction

So for starters, I watched Infinity Train way too late, only a few weeks before the release of Book 3. And it immediately gave me MANY many thoughts, head full... Needless to say, when the first 5 episodes of Book 3 were released I was HYPED. So hyped that, being on a vacation out in the countryside, with better connection only availble upon climbing a nearby hill, I made some. sacrifices. To get there after dark, when everyone else was sound asleep.

[id: two screenshots of separate discord messages by someone with a handle “fern”, one reading “ also i decided to not risk bothering people/dogs by opening the gate, so i jumped the swamp instead, except i didn’t actually cover it, my foot got stuck, i barely saved my shoe, and i need to do that again to get back bc i am locked out”, another reading “well” with a photo of a person’s legs covered in black dirst from feet to knees. end id]

And by the rules of friendly bullying, I am now destined to have that night haunt me forever. Naturally.

[id:discord chat search results for the word ”swamp” (38 results found), cropped so that a part of one message is readable, saying “... KNOW it was the SWAMP that embraced ME, not the other way around”, another (by someone with a handle “Fleur” saying “you already DID embrace a swamp”. end id]

[id: a message from the same person saying “he asks ‘how was your swamp’”. end id]

[id: a message from the same person saying “big words coming from mx. soggy feet” with an angry red overlay. end id]

And, well. The first two Books had left me with a sense of assuredness, the underlying motif of them appearing empowering and infinitely comforting, and I was excited to get another supporting pillar in season 3. Another story to turn to in time of need to remind me that I have the power to make my life a better one, that it is never too late to make something of where I am. And, well, it's not that Book 3 didn't continue the topic of personal choice and growth, but the story it told added... let's say, more weight to the idea of personal development.

That is perhaps only natural: narratives need to grow, to develop, to take the themes explored in them further, deeper with every coil of the spiral. And a more, grave, exploration of them will only bring them closer to life. But in the aftermath of Book 3 I had to deal with a certain sense of powerlessness, not being able to fit it into a neat system, put it on a shelf in a shiny frame of witty analysis and call it a day. But, quite ironically, I believe that this exact feeling of unending change and death of comfort is the exact thing the show wants us to get comfortable with. And that's what I want to talk about here. Infinity Train's core narrative of an individual versus the wrold, individual versus change. The very concept of personhood, the relationship between the person and their environment and the way to approach it that is shown as perhaps the most productive.

I’ll start with my Many Thoughts on the first two books to explain what I thought was the underlying message of both of them.

2. Book 1: The Perennial Child and the Unproducitve Protagonist Complex

Book 1 establishes the core elements of the narrative wonderfully, the writing is smooth, effortless, beautiful and takes you on a wonderul, deeply impactful and bittersweet emotional ride. We have Tulip, The Perennial Child herself, who has to renegotiate her relationship with the world, with life, change, and other people's power to bring said change. Tulip is also to learn true connection and make peace with its price.

The narrower narrative of a story centered around a divorce is a perfect gateway into a broader one, so let's explore the specifics of the foremer first. Tulip's mindset is the mindset of a child from a dysfunctional family. The notion of blame is very strong in her perception of the world. On one hand, she sufferes from a misplaced sense of responsibility for the way things are, as she admits in her conversation with One One. That is the most natural for someone who grew up in an unstable environment, with parents whose relationship was not harmonic and healthy. A child caught in the middle of adults' anger and argumments internalizes that anger and those arguments as something having to do with them. And that's what we see Tulip go through, with her having to listen to her parents fight because of her needs.

[id: a screenshot from Infinity Train Book 1 showing younger Tulip, a read-headed girl, sitting between her two parents upset as her father is telling something to her mother angrily. end id]

Tulip also has to step in as a caregiver to a suffering adult, tucking her dad in at night; the dialogue emphasizes that their usual roles are being reversed in that situation. Growing up in the middle of constant conflicts, having to provide care and comfort and stability to someone who was supposed to take care of her, had naturally resulted in a deeply ingrained painful perception that Tulip is the one responsible for her environment, is the one to blame when it is “broken”, and is the one who should step up and fix it, make it right.

Then, on the other hand, there is the notion of blame Tulip puts on others, specifically her parents. Here, we see the same mindset but reversed: Tulip feels caught in the middle of their divorce and demands that they make it right, make it work, for her sake. She needs her family, she needs stability, she needs her parents to work out their schedules, she needs to get to the game design camp. And she is prone to seeing her parents as people who are cruelly destroying her life and her family for no apparent reason.

I am not calling her entitled, of course; ideally, stability is exactly what parents need to provide their children with. That is their mission. And when they fail, it is more than natural for children to feel hurt and betrayed. In a way, they are. Tulip's agony over her parents' divorce is never mocked nor undermined in the show, either; it is shown with the deepest compassion. So this is not so much about calling her feeligns invalid, but about looking for ways to redefine the situation in a way that would help Tulip heal. The way out of her agony seems to be to abandon the mindset that puts her at the center of her family life – and at the center of the world, in general. Things are not that simple; people have reasons for behaving the way that they do outside of how it affects her; and avoiding and rejecting that truth hurts her, first and foremost. Feeling like the center of the universe isn't so much selfish or arrogant or toxic; it's just painful, and Tulip needs to step out of it, for her own sake.

[id: screenshot from Infinity Train Book 1 showing the two adults from before, Tulip’s parents, with exaggerated demonic features, surrounded by flames. end id]

An important thing to discuss is that the notion of “blame” can only exist if there is indeed something wrong with the world. Let's go back to Tulip's defining conversation with One One, in which she gets to say some incredibly important words: “It's not your fault the car is this way.There isn't a fault, it just is.”. “No fault” can mean “no one to blame” as much as “there is actually nothing wrong with the world”. The words “It just is” carry this simple and raw reality check that forces us to accept the way things are, with no emotional withdrawal or avoidance of it.

The world simply is the way it is, and even if the way it is hurts us, it doesn't mean that what hurts us is wrong.

I would like to suggest that the Unfinished Car itself, the residents of which continue adapting to their unconventional reality and genuinely thriving in it through acceptance and flexibility, are here to emphasize that. We may not like the way things are, but that doesn't mean we should go looking for someone to blame and force to “fix” them, be out ourselves and others. We shouldn't ferociously attack what hurts us with wrenches, kicking and screaming and tyring to get it to Work Already. Sometimes the only thing we can do is to accept the reality of it, let go, and see what we ourselves can do to feel happy and content in the present circumstances.

Making peace with the way the world is, renouncing responsibility for it outside of her personal decisions, is exactly what Tulip gets to learn on the train. Being half-abducted by it during a time when Amelia has taken over and no one is there to give a nice welcoming message with specific instructions, Tulip is deeply distraught by the mysteries surrounding her, and infinitely frustrated by her seeming inability to 'logic' her way through the challenges. She boards the train as a girl whose main need is to create a semblance of control over her environment, through understanding it.

[id: two shots of Tulip’s sketchbook where she is tryng to figure out train’s puzzles. end id]

She is at the center of the universe, she is responsible for the way things are, and it is up to her to figure them out.

That is a lone, individualistic journey of a single person who only wants to deal with their own life, their own problems, and Tulip does not welcome any companions at the beginnig of it. It makes sense for her to seek solitude: she feels overwhelmingly responsible for her own little personal world, just how unbearable would it be to let it merge with other people's lives, for her to suddenly be at fault when those she cares about are hurt? Not to mention that new people are new unknowns, new factors that can make her life harder, more confusing and painful. For a person stuck in her desperate desire for control, it makes a lot of sense to prefer to deal with her problems on her own and expect others to do the same.

Meeting One One, who is the first to care, and Atticus, who is there to dispense his pearls of wisdom about the resources we find in each other, the value of friendship and its ultimate worth in the face of responsibility and risk of loss that comes with it, is what helps Tulip find comfort and humility in her relationship with others. She is simply one of the many people influencing each other's lives; she is not at the center, not at fault for the pain that comes to others, even if they were hurt through their association with her; it was their chocie to lend her a hand or a paw, and they had the right to make that choice.

Similar humility of being just one of the many is found in Tulip's relationship with the world at large, too, shown through her relationship with the train. First, she is frustrated and impatient, trying to figure out the most rational logical way to proceed in her attempts to control what happens to her next. Then, as she finds joy and connection, things become easier, she finds a rhythm that works for her, as seen at the start of “The Ball Pit Car”. And then soon after that, in swoops Amelia, ready to wreck havoc and quench Tulip's progress by trying to kill one of her friends and turning the other into a monster, and pinning it all on her.

Losing Atticus is far too big of a blow, and so Tulip gives up her lessons and falls into fatalism, feeling like she has no control over her fate, like she will never be allowed to make it off the train.

But the core component of Tulip's character is her ability to “bounce back”. She loses her progress quite tangibly, with the number going up – and yet reverses that development rapidly, when she gives it all another try and subsequently learns the truth about Amelia. Finding out that the current self-appointed conductor who has been terrorizing cars and threatening Tulip and her friends is just a person, Tulip asks a very important quesiton: “What's stopping me from doing what she did?”. She stops interpreting her surroundings as alien, hostile and created to act against her, in weird incomprehensible ways that seem to be mocking her attempts to find a shred of logic to them. Instead, she takes full control of her own actions and starts using her environment to her own benefits, much like Amelia did. But Tulip takes it a step further and approaches it in a healthier fashion. Where Amelia is desperately trying to make the world do her bidding, Tulip states a simple objecitve: help her friend, - and looks at her options.

Tulip steps into her power when she realizes her choices and actions matter and have full weight. That restores her faith into being able to help Atticus. She cannot control her surroundings fully, she cannot control how other people behave, and trying to make herself responsible for it is unfair to herself and others and hurts everyone. She can, however, make her own choices and use her own skills to strive to perserve what is important to her.

Once again, that mindset is directily opposed to Amelia's. In Book 1, Amelia is stuck in the constant attempts to recreate her life, to change the world around her, to bend her environment to her will instead of growing internally, accepting the change and adapting to it, taking responsibility for her own feelings and not for what surrounds her. The key motivation in the prison she has created for herself is grief. Unwilling to let go of the world she once shared with someone she loved, not wanting to accept the passing of something that was incredibly important to her, Amelia stagnates, rejects the thought of progress, of healing, of moving on. To start to get over such a loss is to create distance between yourself and what you are mourning. When you move on, you leave it futher and furher behind with each step. And so Amelia decides to stay exactly where she is: in the depth of soul-shattering suffering. Symbolically, she never even leaves the pod she was delivered to the train in, stays at the very beginning of her recovery journey, turns her pain into her armor until forcefully broken out of it by Tulip.

The two characters are perfect for each other as counterforces; even more so, the very environment that Amelia has created, the one that frustrates Tulip with all the unanswered questions and mysteries, is the exact one that would motivate this girl to grow. This is something to keep in mind when approaching Infinity Train's narrative: Amelia is a perfect antognist to Tulip, and it is through encountering her that Tulip grows. Amelia's mistakes result in Tulip's progress.

A key moment in the two characters' confrontation is Amelia's offer to give Tulip a car of her own, where her and her family can be pitcture-perfect and happy in the exact way Tulip wants them to be. By that point in the narrative Tulip has already had to face the truth of her family situation, the reality of it, it not being anyone's fault nor her parents' whim, sad things simply just happening for reasons outside of anyone's control. And with Amelia's offer, she has to come painfully close to the truth that she has just started making peace with once again. She has to really internalize the fact that her real parents were not happy together, and wouldn't be happy in this simulated reality; and if they were, they would not truly be the people she knows.

Tulip acknowledges the painful and beautiful truth of life: if you want to be surrounded by real people you can love, people that can love you, you need to give them the freedom to live their lives, freedom to hurt you, to walk away, to change the life you share, to have their own personal feelings that might be different from the ones you wish they had. They need to have freedom to make choices. It is scary, and it hurts, but that is the only way to have something real. While Amelia is obsessed with molding her environment in the image of her perfect life, and failing miserably, Tulip realizes that to reunite with her parents she needs to accept that, as long as they are in her life, things can change between them; and that is okay. That is the only way love can exist. With the risk of loss and pain, not any less worth it for that.

At the end of her journey, Tulip has learned the nature and price of connection, and her place in the complicated, irrational, incomprehensible world. She gets to accept that things don't need a reason for happening, that there is not always someone to blame and demand reparations from. She gets to accept that she is just one person - but that realization gives her so much personal power. As just one person, she is free from the weight of the world she used to carry on her shoulders; as just one person, she has the full scope of her personal skills and power to protect herself and those she loves, to change with the world and adapt to it, once she starts treating it as a friend and engaging with it on its own terms. At the end of her arc, she truly gets to say that she is ready for everything: she learns a whole new way to approach life that makes handling change much less painful.

She is a protagonist that gives up the protagonist complex, telling her she is the central point of the larger narrative. And through that, she finds peace and flexibility.

What is fascinating is that the narrative itself then supports that idea by removing Tulip from the center of the show. In the next book we follow the arc of Lake, my beautiful perfect child. And with it being centered around the idea of Lake's personhood and them transcending the role of a denizen, that decision could not have been any more metatextually perfect.

3. Book 2: Cracked Reflection and the Relationship between Personhood and Connection

In the first season, Lake is a side character that appears for just one episode, contributes to the protagonist's journey and is then gone. But as the story shifts and focuses on them, we see their struggle as they try to break out of the role of a 'supporting character' and prove their completion and worth outside of their contribution to someone else's story. Their intial place in the narrative and their initial position within their own story echo each other beautifully, and this is the exact kind of writing excellency that has me absolutely hooked. Thank you Infinity Train.

Quite interestingly, the idea of personhood is explored in relation to the theme of connection. Lake shares their journey with Jesse, and the two character arcs mirror each other, dealing with the relationship between personal freedom and external bonds.

Lake and Jesse operate under the same false pretense that to connect to people means to be what they want you to be, that in order to have friends you have to sacrifice who you are, what you want. They approach this false predicament from the opposite ends: Lake by avoiding any connection altogether and Jesse by readily caving in to peer pressure, adult pressure, just... general imposion of everyone else's expectations, because he suffers from the compulsive need to be liked and accepted. Lake refuses to fit in and is left to deal with their horrifying situation alone, Jesse hurts himself and those he loves in order to fit in.

It's very interesting how the narrative connects reflectiveness to connection. 'Empathy Goes', the song about friendship that Jesse sings, starts with lines “When I look at you, I see me” – words that take on a quite literal uncomfortable meaning for Lake.

[id: a screenshot from Infinity Train Book 2 of a small girl looking at her reflection in a reflective child (Lake)’s head, Lake unamused. end id]

Then the thematic core of season 2 – Lake's conversation with the dying Sieve, in which the latter torments them – introduces the thought that, by befriending Jesse and helping him grow, Lake became what he needed them to be; became his reflection.

That is, of course, not true. The idea that Lake had simply fulfilled the role of a denizen is disproven by the fact that they are the protagonist of Book 2 that goes through the same journey as Tulip, meeting the exact people and creatures and foes that influence and challenge them in the most important ways. At the end of the day, their victory was not changing their external circumstances but their internal approach to them.

As this awesome person has pointed out, that to get off the train, Lake had to embrace their reflectiveness. However heartbreaking was their enraged plea to have their personhood recognized, they never really did change One One's mind. In his perception, they remained a denizen, “so good at helping”.

The truth is, however, is that yes, Lake has helped Jesse - by being themselves unapologetically, by not fitting in, by showing him that that is an option, and in that life, you can still be loved and cared about – because Jesse without doubt cares about Lake very deeply.

But Jesse has helped Lake, too, has changed them – by giving them connection and recognition, by showing them they can be accepted and loved without the need to change who they are, without the need to tailor themselves to another person and 'mirror' them. At the end, the two get one escape for two people – because their journey was a shared one, because their paths cannot be separated, because they have influenced each other equally.

And much like Amelia was the perfect person to challenge Tulip, One One with his inability to think outside of the algorythm and acknowledge Lake's personhood, was perfect for challenging them and putting them into a situation where they had no other choice but to accept, acknowledge and appreciate the connections they have made, and the fact that those connections define them - partially.

Reflectiveness represents bonds, letting other people into your life, letting them influence you, teach you something, ask something from you – and, fascinatingly, that seems to be a part of what defines us, gives us personhood. Are we just what we do for other people? No, obviously not. Are we simply what separates us from others, what makes us unique, who we are completely on our own, with no regard to what unites us with other people, what they bring into our lives and what we bring into theirs? The answer Infinity Train provides appears to be no, once again.

Lake names themselves – finds a true, real name that they identify with, when they embrace their reflective nature and see themselves in a body of water that, yes, lets the world in, reflects it, while also undoubtedly having a life and depth of its own. Personhood, real, full human experience seems to be the subtle dance of individualism and connection, both what defines us as separate from others and what tethers us to them.

I mentioned how Lake's journey being similar to Tulip's is a part of what validates their personhood. That's one of those fascinating things in Infinity Train's writing: how the intial split of the cast into the passenger and supporting denizen characters appears almost like commentary on the protagonist complex, with Tulip actually having to internalize the idea that the world and her life are not centered solely around her, are not all about her happiness and growth, that some things happen just because they do, not because they have something to do with her.

Then, opening with a lead that needs to outgrow the protagonist complex, the show moves on to that character's narrative foil and shows them grow into the central point of the narrative, fighting to have the world recognize them as the main character of their separate, independent story. And to us viewers there is no doubt that Lake is a person of their own and has full rights to personal protagonism – they are the one we are watching, whose struggle is the focus of the Book, they are who we sympathise with in the story.

This wonderful meta decision really drills in the idea that every single character we only ever catch a glimpse of is the main hero of their own journey, and has a full life and full personhood outside of the role they play in the story we watch unravel. At the same time, as per the rules of narrating, we only see the people and events that serve the current protagonist's growth. Through that, and through being an antalogy that unravels by latching onto a secondary character time after time, book after book, exploring their own journeys and inner worlds, Infinity Train creates a breathtaking polycentric model of reality, in which every single person is the main character on their own path, with people around them contributing something of value to that path – and the main character contributing something to theirs, becoming in turn a secondary supporting character in someone else's story.

Tulip and Atticus are a wonderful example of that: embarking (hehe) on the same journey for different reasons, helping each other, accepting the responsibility that comes with being each other's friends and companions, welcoming the pain that comes with connection and at the end aiding each other in their quests. And Jesse and Lake are much the same.

The idea of companionship being the escape is only directly introduced in Book 2, but it had already sprouted in Book 1. The themes of connection, renegotiating one's relationship with the seemingly hostile world, and coming to terms with everyone's place in it as one of the many, but having endless personal power over our own narrative, are constantly and continuously present in the show, with the differnet smaller plots and character arcs beautifully overlapping.

___________________________________________________________

Analyzing all of this in the past, I felt incredibly secure and confident in the seeming underlying lesson. That there is no reason to fight the world at large, the things that are outside of your or someone else's control. And that doesn't mean “not standing up to those who are hurting others”, as shown in Tulip's confrontation with Amelia, Jesse's confrontation with the Apex. It means that some things, like where you have come from, what the relationships of people around you are, and who you have lost, cannot be changed, and our subconscious attempts to fight them only hurt us in the end.

The idea of our boundless ability to find resources in ourselves and people around us, learn from people that surround us, accept their help and offer them ours, find love once we accept the change love brings; the idea that we always have the ability to thrive in our current circumstances, once we accept that we ourselves are getting in our own way, out of the unwillingness to let go of something we hold dear; the idea that we can always, always bounce back, that it is never too late for any of us, and that true companionship will always be there to give us escape...

The idea of the world as our friend, with its own will and wishes, something that is not to be controlled and bruteforce- reasoned through, but something to engage with...

These all gave me strength, held me up, and gave me a new paradigm that allowed me to look at the reality from a place of comfort and assuredness. The paradigm of the complicated web of life where everything is in its place, where our shortcomings create valuable lessons for someone else, where our choices, even if they hurt us and others, create lessons, as established by Sieve, have their place in the big picture, like what we see with Amelia's mitakes and Tulip's progress.

Then, the idea that in that big picture, you are exactly where you need to be, always, because you always have the only thing you need to grow and recover and thrive – you have yourself and the people around you. How infinitely comforting this is, how solid.

And then Book 3 has arrived. And holy shit y’all.

4. Book 3: Cult of the Conductor and Trust vs Control

And once again, this season has not necessarily disproven all of the aforementioned stuff, just... put a lot more emphasis on the reality of pain people have to endure. In this book we had to witness simultaneously a recovery – within Grace's arc, - a descend – within Simon's, - and an actual, raw trauma, that Hazel had to suffer through on screen. We had to watch Simon murder Hazel's caregiver and repeatedly make her feel unsafe, and Grace withdraw herself and leave Hazel alone because of her ungoing identity crisis. We have to come uncomfortably close to the reality of the pain that shapes people, and with how horribly we all can hurt each other. That pain is no longer obscured by the passage of time, it's not something in the character's past. And that is... very rattling.

But, once again, the constant running themes and motifs remain. Once again, the show tackles the idea of change, of connection and the relationship between the individual and the world.

Regarding the latter, what we see with the Apex is the protagonist complex projected on a group. The Apex myth simultaneously places them at the top of the world – hence the name – and makes them the poor victims of the evil False Conductor that of course seeks to destroy them and targets them specifically. Grace and Simon developed the idea of themselves and their group as the sole people for whom the train exists, as well as the chosen deliberate targets of the entity that had taken over their environment, instead of accepting that maybe the world does not revolve around them!

Upon meeting Amelia they learn that they are not chosen, that they are not on the train because the outside world did not recognize their value, that there was never someone at the top who had their best needs in mind, and that the entity that calls the shots now does not actually know anything about them besides the fact that they exist.

The theme of connection makes a comeback hand in hand with the motif of empathy, with the book opening with Jesse's song 'Empathy Goes'. And that's what's being explored in Grace's and Simon's respective arcs with relation to denizens: their ability to show compassion and recognize someone else's personhood.

The narrative is multi-layered here. On one hand, what is being explored is a group mentality, a cult mentality that paints the outside world as simultaneously inferior and hostile, and we can see Grace and Simon accidentally inventing some pretty mean propaganda techniques. Whew, those kids. But then on the other, the idea of denizens as projections, 'nulls', incapable of actual feeling, only pretending to be real people... this brings to mind such complicated and staggering concepts as philosophical zombies or the idea of the world as something that is simply a projection of your, you currently reading thinking person, brain, where nothing is real except for your own consciousness. And since it is simply impossible to possess others and make sure they are indeed living breathing feeling creatures and not just NPCs in one wild, wild dream, empathy becomes a fascinating choice. What we're left with is 1) believing that other people do in fact feel what they say they do, 2) treating them with respect just in case or because being mean feels bad, or, 3) you know, deciding that we're on top of the world, and are the Apex predator, and everything exists for us, and we can do whatever we want with people around us.

It's interesting to see this mindset as a group mentality, but it makes sense, too; with the Apex we get to watch what happens when a group only recognizes the personhood of those that are a part of it. The thing is, there is no actual empathy within that group, either; we see that once Grace stops fitting into it as smoothly. To the Apex, she becomes a 'void', a nothing, something hollow, devoid of status and power and therefore rights and feelings that need to be respected. Simon's approach is “whatever I do not like is not real”, so by proxy, the new version of Grace is nothing, and should be erased.

This lack of empathy can be tracked deeper and deeper down to Simon as the extremely tyrannical leader, his refusal to recognize the personhood of anyone who does not agree with him. It is natural for us all to act as if what we believe is correct; otherwise, why would we believe it? But Simon takes it to the extremes, refusing to even for a second consider an alternative point of view, and ends up locked in a mindset in which he is the only person entitled to the ability to see the truth, and everyone else somehow is inferior and incomplete. That's the protagonist complex, that's the experience of a person who considers themselves at the center of the world. Why would he out of all people be the keeper of truth? He simply does not ask himself that, because he does not stop to think about the existence of others, or their experiences.

However, it wouldn't be correct to say that Simon is completely devoid of empathy. It's just that his version of it is extremely self-centered and unable to discern between his personal situation and someone else's reality. As my awesome friend @buttercup-bug has pointed out, the relationship between Grace and Hazel and Simon and Hazel is built on extending that limited, conditional empathy. As they have noted, the golden and silver masks at the start of the season that are performing the song 'Empathy Goes' represent the two of them, the golden one directly intersecting with the one Grace wears, and in general gold and silver matching their color schemes.

The position of the masks matches their position on the stage, as well: they are the two leading figures in the big messed-up play that is the Apex, removed from reality, avoiding it, living in their own little world. They perform that reality in different ways, Grace leading with smiles and emotions/emotional manipulation, Simon being more uptight and serious.

[id: two shots from Infinity Train Book 3, showinng first a scene with halves of two theatrical masks, a sorrowful and a laughing one, surrounded by undefined actor creatures; then Simon and Grace, two young people, Simon white and blonde, Grace black, with shortr dredlocs, wearing a golden masks, holding hands with each other and two other kids in a curtain call manner, with fire raging behind them. end id]

Now, returning to the empathy motif: as it was pointed out to me, the two extend their empathy to Hazel in their own ways, representing their relationship with the inner child. Grace relates to Hazel as a lonely young girl seeking connection with other children, and engages with her in a fun, upbeat way, making it so they enjoy each other's company and spend time together like friends do. That helps her get closer to Hazel, get genuinely attached and through that let Hazel influence her worldview a bit, and be there for Hazel through harder, less fun things as well, till.. a certain point.

Simon, on the other hand, sees himself in Hazel as someone stranded on the train and under the care of a denizen, and automatically perceives Tuba as a threat. And he expresses his empathy in a direct, serious, violent way, by doing what he thinks needs doing: by getting rid of Tuba without making time for smiles and fun times.

Grace is the leader, she engages with people emotionally, making them feel needed and special and through that keeping the group together. Simon is the general who leads the army in what he perceives as the Apex's attempt to protect themselves. His approach does not leave much space for bodning. And it makes sense for him as someone much more focused on safety to have his understanding of denizens as dangerous run deeper, be more at the forefront, in his focus. He’s the one calculating the “danger levels” of encountered denizens. And of course the incident with The Cat makes it much more personal. I think it's fair to assume that both Grace and Simon must've had some unfortunate run-ins with the inhabitants of the train, with Grace being initially so set in her belief that denizens are dangerous because they are unpredictable, and you never know what they will do next. Though the only time we actually see her endangered is by the steward that Amelia had reprogrammed. Either way, the two had started off feeling endangered by the unpredictable and unreliable creatures surrounding them, and probably, in their attempts to find a reason to trust each other and feel safer around each other in a dangerous and confusing world, decided that passengers must be inherently good, denizens must be inherently bad.

There is, however, no actual trust in that, none at all between them.

I'd say that “trust”' is the core motif of season 3. Infinity Train tends to adopt an aphorism that keeps reappearing throughout a season, pronounced by different characters or in different contexts, highlighting the thematic movement and change and the development of the theme within the plot. In Book 1, it was the collocation “bounce back”, as the core of Tulip's character. In Book 2, we had “You can't spell 'escape' without 'companionship'”. In Book 3, our boy Roy introduced the phrase “Teamwork starts with two people trusting each other”. Simon's horrifying rendition of it emphasized the idea that not everyone counts as a person, so not everyone is deserving of trust. You can only rely on those who fit your narrow criteria of one.

However, even when Grace and Simon were on the same side of the barricades they've built with their own hands, they could never actually trust each other. Their bond and their care for each other were extremely conditional, hinging on the ultra specific image of a passenger, and influenced by the power hierarchy they had created.

We see that Grace is reluctant to trust Simon or the Apex with the changes happening to her, with her number going down, because she didn't want them to think “less of her”. Her personal issues, her fear of loneliness and abandonment and the idea that she needs to be something specific, someone who is always strong and right for people to stick around her, have certainly played into that. Grace is so used to comforting herself through saying the world is mean to her because she is special; she wears her “special” status as a mask, she has the highest number, she is “so good at the train”, and that's what keeps others around her in this reality, keeps them needing her. But it's not actually about her as a person. But it is also just the system the two have established. Numbers are power; one's number going down is their failure.

The amount of trust only diminishes as the plot progresses, with Grace's perspective shifting but her not being able to trust Simon with those thoughts and feelings – quite understandably, since he remained adamant about his beliefs till the very end. Grace could never truly trust Simon outside of the invented value system they've been existing within for many years. And that is reflective of her constant inner struggle, not being able to trust anyone with her self, without any myth explaining why she is awesome and irreplacable. Hazel was the first person who spent time around Grace while also falling out of the equation, not being influenced by the Apex propaganda, and that is why their bond was so life-changing to Grace – aside from the aforementioned grounds for empathy.

Now, was Simon ever able to truly trust Grace? I think he desperately needed to, and facing the fact that Grace has in some ways betrayed that trust by keepings things from him was one of the things that played into him going off the rails. (...That pun was not intended. )

As it was pointed out many times by many viewers, Simon seems to know quite a lot about funerals, which means that he probably had to attend one as a kid. Then, his relationship with The Cat seems to be a metaphor for neglectful parenting due to an addiction. The Cat is a collector, her treasures seeming to be extremely important to her. The voice in which Simon says the words “She is collecting again” hints on a long, ongoing problem. Then in the memory of his meeting with Grace, we see that The Cat had actually probably endangered him on one of her car crawls. Overall, Simon's childhood seems to had been an extremely unstable one, with nothing and no one he could truly rely on, with parental figures either dying or neglecting him. It is similar to Tulip's struggle, but most likely running even deeper.

We see Simon continuously leaning on Grace, which at times causes her frustration: she snaps and asks bitterly if she always has to tell him what to do. When Grace starts behaving weirdly, starts changing, acting in a way that Simon can't understand and is not used to, he probably feels endangered, like his life is growing incomprehensible and unstable once again, like things are slipping through his fingers and out of his control.

But at the end of the day, not one of them was truly relying on the other. Grace never trusted Simon to just stick around because he liked her, she needed the upper hand, the leading position, the idea of being “very good at the train”, and the system in which they should stick together as the passengers threatened by the dangerous environment and “the false conductor”. Simon never truly trusted Grace as we should trust those we love: with the freedom for them to grow and change and still remain someone we can feel safe and happy around. Instead of taking that leap of faith and relying on her to do right by him, he was in fact leaning on the system they've created, clinging to it desperately to the very end. People may change, but the system will stay the same, as long as he doesn't reconsider his worldview, and he had decided to never abandon it, whatever happens.

The lack of trust is warranted by their treatment of each other. How could Simon rely on Grace if she had never shown him her true self? How could Grace trust Simon with her genuine self if he needed her to be something very specific and unchanging? Their bond, while being something that helped them through the lonely existence in a weird, dangerous place, was in fact incredibly, tragically toxic. That is not something that people acknowledge easily. These two held onto their semblance of friendship for dear life, but that only worsened their respective problems, made them less and less capable of actual genuine friendships.

Both of their characters are very complex and convincing, and before I speak directly of some less pleasant parts of them I want to establish that I love Grace and am so very proud of her, and glad to see that a Black woman character did not remain an antagonist and got explored deeply and compassionately. And that while I was absolutely enraged by Simon's actions throughout the season, I can also appreciate the depth and complexity of the show's writing in his arc, and the tragedy of it, and I do feel for him quite deeply.

It is also worth mentioning that, even tho they are on the older end of 'kids', they are both kids still, with their formative years spent in unfortunate, unhelpful environments, and the age of growth and self-discovery happening in an actual cult, even tho it is one they had locked themselves into.

So now, to what can be perceieved as the darker parts of their characters. A unifying element of both Grace's and Simon's characters are their desire for control. Both scared of what life would be without it, they bend over backwards to make people behave in the way they need them to.

Grace does that through emotional manipulation, she directs her entire demeanor into making people see her as the most knowledgable and powerful, someone they need. She makes them want to be a part of the gang, telling them that it makes them special and brave, as well as making them belive that the outside world means them harm, which is... a classic cult tactic. She hides the truth from them when the truth threatens her position and bonds with them. In the culmination of her personal growth, she admits the reason behind it: she did everything in her power to not be left alone. She tried to control the way other people see the world, and through that control how they see her, thinking that that will make them want to stick around. But her manipulation was what kept her from creating genuine connections, so after she first fell out of her own equation and then pushed Hazel away in the last desperate attempt to fit back into it, there was no one left around her. She made people need her cult, not her person. She never let them know the real her that would make them want to stay. The truth is that people change constantly, and we can't eternally push ourselves to live up to a specific expectation, so any attempt to keep people around with anything else than our genuine self are simply doomed.

Simon does not have the same talent for manipulation that Grace does, despite his attempts to use her own techniques on her when trapping her in her memories.

[id: screenshot from Book 3 showing Grace looking at Simon, who’s sitting next to her with a grave expression on his face. end id]

Lacking subtlty, he seeks to control the world around him through brute force. We see him repeatedly grabbing Grace in an unsettling, scary, invasive and violent manner. He is unable to influence her mentality like she influences the mentality of other people. He can't act subtly, through emotion and manipulation. And his desperation to control the world and force it to work in ways that suit him get externalized through physical aggression.

That does not excuse him, nor does his desperation warrant sympathy, but the idea of his shows of power being actually signs of powerlessness seems... captivating, reassuring somehow. People who lash out at us do so because they don't actually get to control how we feel, and never can. They can influence and wound us deeply, but they can never actually fully control us, they don’t get to rewrite us.

...Buuut back to the character analysis. Much like Grace who at the start was holding the position of “whatever doesn’t pleases or entertains me gets wheeled” (perhaps a reflection of her “never needed them anyway” attitude seen in how she feels about her failed attempts at friendship), Simon also denies everything that doesn't suit him, not just the value of it but the reality of it, too. Despite all reason, he refuses to believe that he had been living a lie for the last uhh number of years. If something isn't working the way he wants it to, if someone is behaving in a way he doesn't like, he deems them broken and wrong. As Grace points out, her memories are only a true and reliable source to him as long as he likes them, and once he doesn't, they must be lies.

Simon is the very embodiment of stagnation, complete lack of flexibility – out of his compulsive need to control the world, to have it remain the same and stable, after the turbulences of his childhood. He is very, very much like Tulip – but he is not given a chance to 'bounce back'. Amelia, another example of deep stagnation and refusal to accept the changes in the world, is allowed that decades after boarding the train. She might never leave it, but she can still make an effort, she can still grow, bit by bit. Simon never makes it to the point where he is ready to accept the reality and start making peace with it.

I assume that for the biggest part of the show he is simply constantly triggered. He spends time with Grace, like they used to, before the Apex – but they met and started travelling together right after The Cat had abandoned him. Then they encounter a child who has no one but a supposedly unreliable denizen taking care of her – another thing to remind Simon of his own neglect. Then they straight up bump into The Cat, and Simon learns that her addicition is still active, that nothing has changed, that what happened to him wasn't enough for his parental figure to reconsider her ways. Then things start changing, Grace starts behaving differently, abandones the 'passenger-denizen' binary and makes him feel more alone and directionless than he probably has been in years.

But after he traps her in her tape and returns to the Apex, there is at least a couple of month for him to get out of the spiral and reconsier. All Of That. and yet he doesn't. At this point his actions are not solely motivated by the very unstable state he was in – which is not to say that he wouldn't need to take responsibility for them either way. But a certain amount of time and distance from it all could have been used for reflection, and yet Simon stays firmly in his position of clinging to the system and revelling in the ultimate control he had found by becoming a leader. He creates a myth of Grace as someone who is worthless because she is unfit to be a leader. He paints himself as more reliable and powerful through the firmness of his beliefs. With him, you can always know what the rules are going to be, how to be the best. Perhaps, in his twisted horrifying perception, he was giving the Apex kids the stability he'd never had.

Going back to the question of why Simon was not given the opportunity to bounce back... Obviously, a core element of his character is his refusal to change in any form, and that’s on him. But with making peace with change being a big theme in the show from season 1, with Amelia doing the same for decades and eventually getting to a place where she had finally accepted it... This is a heavy and fascinating narrative decision.

It's good to consider that Amelia never actually succeeded at controlling the world in the way that she needed. Among all the characters, her grief was the most hopeless, most desperate: she tried to reverse time, she tried to bring someone back to life. Unlike her, Simon achieved some at least perceived control that he had been striving for. The danger of his character is that he executed his power over actual physical people, and he felt like he could actually decide what their life was going to be, what his life was going to be. He never got to lose it all, like Grace did. He never got to face just how hollow his illusion of control was. So in some ways within his arc him not getting redemption makes sense.

But what does it mean for the show at large, for the underlying message? It feels inconsistent with the Infinity Train's narrative to just make Simon out to be a cautionary tale of what happens to those who deny change, or a foil to Grace who did ended up accepting it; we've already established that in the show's polycentric system, every character is more than just a part of someone else's journey, has full existence and autonomy outside of that.

Once again quoting my wonderful smart friend @buttercup-bug, I want to refer to the end of season 3 in which Grace tells the ex-Apex kids that it is not fair for her to decide for them what their place on the train is, who they are, what life is to them; and in the same way, the unconcluded story of this book can be open to interpretations, with every one of us getting to choose what to take out of the simple reality of it. Simon's story simply happened. We can take whatever lesson we need from it.

But before we part our ways and each one decides what to think of the bone-chilling end of his arc, I want to point a couple more things out.

5. The Train as a Metaphor for Life

Something that has really fascinated me about the show's narrative ever since my marathon of the first two seasons is the concept of the train. One One seems so very sure the train inspires growth, and yet, as we have learned in season 3, he, the Conductor himself, does not actually know much about the passengers' life aboard it except their numbers. There is no established system, there is no assigning of the denizens, there is no rulebook for them, they are not aware of the specific problems of the passengers they meet. Passengers can actually die on the train, which is wild if the goal of it is to make them grow and flourish. We are so used to thinking that to heal, one needs a perfectly supportive, comfortable and safe environment, and yet the train is challenging, dangerous, unpredictable.

I think the idea here, with characters time after time having to come to terms with life being confusing, ever-changing, often painful and entirely outside of our control, is that the train is not necessarily there to soothe the wounds but to raise the stakes, challenging people in such a way that their choices and their actions and approach to the reality have much more serious consequences. Tulip learns to accept help and help others in situations that actually threaten her and her loved ones, while what she would risk in the past when shutting herself off was just upsetting some friends and family and, you know, being fundamentally alone. Jesse went from letting others bully his brother to balancing on the edge of selling Lake out, which would end their entire existence. Grace went from being a child who creates fights and eggs others on to do something stupid to being an actual teenage cult leader. The train raises the stakes exponentially, and that makes everyone on board reconsider the real price of their actions.

Aside from that and giving specific directions for growth through numbers, though, it doesn't really... do anything. It functions the way life functions: things just happen, people just behave in ways that make sense for them, and everyone has full autonomy. At the same time, we see characters encounter the exact companions that make them grow, the exact enemies that challenge them in the most important ways. To once again quote Fleur @buttercup-bug a.k.a. the established sponsor of all of the behind-the-scenes Infinity Train discussions, the train is both ambigious and very meta, and “acts both as a narrative arc machine in a storytelling sense and as a lesson provider in a life sense, which bridges the gap between story and reality in a really personal way”.

That is a wonderful way to put something that captivated me upon my first watch. The train is a metaphor for life. It is contrasted against the metaphor for death or non-existence: the lifeless wasteland through which it is constantly moving, the wasteland populated by soul-sucking parasites also symbolical of nothing other than death. The train is life that is always moving, never the same, outside of our control, bigger than us, not obeying our wishes no matter how hard we try, challenging, populated by other people that have their free will, which often hurts us. And yet, the train is a provider of companions, which are to be our escape. And they are not crafted or tailored to us, nor are we crafted for them - and yet as our paths intersect, we impact each other, and we learn from each other in incredibly meaningful ways.

When thinking about this, I've landed on two possibilities. Either the Engine or the Train – something separate from One One – is a great and omnipotent mind capabe of foreseeing how things would unravel to everyone's utmost benefit, placing the correct people at the correct places, weaving an incredibly complex web of connections in which we always meet the companions we are supposed to meet ot exchange lessons with... or it doesn't need to be at all. And I think I like the latter much more.

The train doesn't need to be that, because, as I've already proposed earlier, ourselves and the people around us, whoever they are, are all we ever need. Wherever you are right now, wherever the Universe has put you, you are supposed to be there, not because it has some grand plan and knows something that you don't, but because no matter your circumstances, you already have what you need for growth. You have yourself and you have other people and their stories, and the connection they can offer you. (Hazel, who is perhaps the most mature character we meet – which is tragic considering how many dysfunctional adults she has to be around – seeks to connect with everyone around her who is not outwardly dangerous, no matter how little in common they seem to have. And eventually something is found, some strand of connection, creating empathy.) People around you always have something to offer. You yourself always have something to offer.

I would hold onto that idea, as well as the idea of “bouncing back”, of it never being too late to get better. And I felt a bit off-balance when Simon was not given a chance to do that. But in a way, shifitng the story from fated encounters that kickstart someone's progress, like the one between Tulip and Amelia, Lake and Jesse, gives even more weight to this concept, by putting our personal decision to change into focus.

It's not all about meeting this one specific person who will show you the error of your ways; even more so, sometimes people who have a lot in common and mirror each other hold each other back instead of helping each other grow. Sometimes one of them changing only pushes the other further down when they refuse to accept that. And at the end, it is all up to us.

Getting a little bit existential here, but we are fundamentally the only ones who define our lone separate experience, and we are always on our own and solely repsonsible for ourselves. Connection is always there to support us, to teach us something, and playing a role in someone's life is what makes us real and vice versa, and at the same time we are all masters of our own destiny. We do not bear responsibility for other people's actions, and they do not bear responsibility for ours. Some environments are more suited for our growth, some less, but at the end of the day the choice to take whatever opportunities we have is up to us.

Which means that we don't have to sit around waiting for the Logical Point in our character arcs to achieve a breakthrough. The world is always there for us to engage with, to hear what it has to say. The question is, are we ready to accept it? To see it for what it is? With time it will grow louder, ignoring the truth we're avoiding will become harder, but the choice to listen is always ours. We can do it sooner rather than later. Or we can do it... never, refuse the reality, refuse change and the nature of life. Because we are the ones responsible. We can't blame the world for not delivering the needed lessons sooner in life, because even if it did, nothing would stop us from ignoring them. We can't feel entitled to endless lessons and endless comfort from people around us. We should take care of ourselves.

Which means that, wherever we are, at any point of our lives, we can always grow if we listen, if we open ourselves up to the truth. And the truth is that life is incredibly, undescribably complicated. It stretches across so many different individual experiences, and it does not prioritize a single one of them. We are a part of such a vast web of events and connections, and it is foolish to consider that the world is the way it is just to spite you or hurt you, or that it should change, stop and start spinning in the opposite direction just to ease your pain.

Things happen that no one is to blame for. There is no fault in the way the world is. Nothing is broken. Life goes on, endlessly, life changes, people change, people leave, people hurt us. That is okay. We can always change ourselves, we can be flexible and open and alive, we can extend our hand to the world and work together with it in true companionship.

Life is the way it is, wild and uncontrollable, and you cannot escape it, you cannot escape change, as long as you are alive. But you can make peace with that. Through acceptance, love and connection.

Gohms, creatures dwelling in the desert that symbolizes non-existence, parasites that symbolize death, are what awaits those who choose to get off the train. Those who try to escape the endless movement and challenges of life. You cannot truly stagnate, you cannot stop moving, you cannot stop things form changing, as long as you exist. As Simon attempts to control the world, still it, for the very last time, that is what happens to him. He stops existing. By refusing change, he refuses life itself. And loses it. And maybe it's not about him never getting to arrive at a point that would tip him over and change him. Maybe it's about his choice to not take all the opportunities that were presented to him before. Maybe he could've done something very different, whether that would have changed his fate or not, with whatever time he had left.

#infinity train #infinity train book three #infinity train book two #infinity train book one #meta #tulip olsen #lake infinity train #grace monroe #simon laurent #trauma mention tw #childhood neglect tw #addiction tw #analysis tag #OOF #ive been waiting to get this out of my head for so LONG

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professorlthings · 3 years

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How Supernatural Gripped Me Tight and Raised Me from Perdition

Happiness in Just Being:

How Supernatural Gripped Me Tight and Raised Me from Perdition

I am a broke college student. What little money I have is often spent on books I don’t technically need, much to the chagrin of my mother, who I have clearly not learned how to budget from. Furthermore, with Supernatural conventions on the 2021 calendar, saving money has really become something I strive to do. Nonetheless, sometimes my budgeting fails.

Trudging through Barnes & Noble one evening, looking for two YA books I’d recently added to my reading list, I walked into a Supernatural display. Now, as mentioned above, I’m a college student with limited funds to my name, but my investment in the Winchester brothers and their angelic ally Castiel had peaked this semester, and I was immediately drawn to one of the books, a volume entitled Family Don’t End With Blood, which had a drawing of the Winchesters standing against their 1967 Impala.

After a brief, agonized contemplation, I bought the book, along with several other pieces of Supernaturalparaphernalia, completely depleting my bank account – this is not hyperbole. Though I haven’t even begun to scratch the surface of all the essays people have written in this book about how Supernatural changed their lives, I am conscious of one indisputable truth: it changed mine, too. So, in the spirit of inspiration by the book, here is the story of how Supernatural gripped me tight and raised me from perdition.

I almost died this semester.

No, no. That’s too passive. I almost killed myself this semester. It’s unfair to say “I almost died” as though it wasn’t something completely in my control. Well, both under my control and ridiculously out of my control.

I got low this semester. It’s been a taxing year for everyone, I grant, and I was no exception. I’d fallen into such a bad place that I had taken to cutting myself with the red kitchen knife my mom had given me when I graduated high school. Cutting became a routine, something I would fall back upon. But I eventually stopped. And as I think back to the last evening I ever cut myself, I wonder what stayed my hand, what made me put that knife down.

It wasn’t my friends. Some of use weren’t even talking at this point.

It wasn’t my family. We were in a bad place, too.

It was something about me. Some resolution to keep living, despite every bad thing that had happened to me in the last 12 months.

Two months later, I shrug out of my trench coat, making sure to keep my open button-down on over my grey waffle undershirt, the cold already biting through my heavily layered clothing. My clothing is at this point 75% inspired by the Winchester brothers, from my red, purple, and green striped button-down to my now just broken-in Doc Martens; the other 25% belongs to Castiel, who inspired me to buy this trench coat. And it so happened that America’s Thrift Store had just what I was looking for – for $16.99.

I survey the now almost empty campus of the University of Alabama, oddly empty for the middle of dead week; it seems that most of the students have seen fit to go home, unlike me and my ragtag group of friends, most of whom decided to stay through until the end of finals week. I catch a glimpse of two people walking their dog across the Quad, and they probably notice me as well, sitting on the steps of Gorgas Library, a haunt usually occupied by many students at this time of year.

But, then again, it hasn’t exactly been a normal year, by any standards.

When Quarantine hit and I suddenly found myself back home at my parents’ place, I did what half of the population must have decided to do – I began watching a new TV series. With Doctor Who, Sherlock, and Good Omens already under my belt, the obvious place to go next was Supernatural. I had shockingly written it off as a show of little interest, because it was American, not British. Nonetheless, I didn’t think anything particular about this particular choice; it more just seemed like a natural next step. My younger sister and I began with “Pilot” and stopped somewhere in the middle of season 3, when my sister lost interest in the show. But my journey with Supernatural didn’t end there.

As an English major, I’d been thinking about what I’m going to write my senior thesis on, and I eventually decided to write it on free will in the works of John Milton. And in exploring Miltonic free will in modern media for my directed readings class with my thesis director, Dr. Ainsworth, I found that Supernatural spoke volumes for the research I wanted to conduct for this class. Thus, without hesitation, Dr. Ainsworth and I added Supernatural, seasons 4 and 5, to our syllabus for the course.

I won’t lie, though, this semester got away from me.

I had a fight with one of my best friends and we didn’t talk for weeks.

I was sent to the North Harbor psychiatric facility for the second time this year.

Needless to say, with all of this stacking up on me, school became a less than a priority. My grades started slipping in all my classes, especially in Italian, where, for the first time in three years, my grade dropped from the usual A+ all the way down to a C.

I forgot all about Supernatural, BSing relevant facts about it and free will during my meetings with Dr Ainsworth, barely having a hold on my Milton project at all.

My grades were tanking, and my mental health was slipping out of my control. For the first time in my life, I really didn’t know what to do. I resorted to cutting on the regular, always in the same place, the outside of my wrist. At first, I’d just barely draw blood, but one time – the last time – I cut it so deeply that it wouldn’t stop bleeding. My sweatpants were covered in blood, as was my bathroom floor. That’s when I realized I needed to stop.

It was a resolution. A resolution that I would never cut myself again. I hate making promises, and try to avoid them at all costs, but when I make promises, I keep them. And this is what I promised myself. And it was hard. It was so hard!

Nonetheless, life began looking up.

Lightning struck.

Sometime in the weeks that I was back at my parents’ place in New Mexico, healing, I realized I wanted my essay for Dr. Ainsworth to be a good essay; I wanted it to be lit journal-worthy, hopefully.

That meant I needed to watch seasons 4 and 5 of Supernatural. Which meant I needed to finish season 3 first.

I made a half-hearted attempt to start season 3 back up where we’d left off, but I watched one episode and lost interest, my overtaxed mind refusing to focus on the Winchesters. Besides, Castiel was the relevant character for my essay, not the Winchesters, and he didn’t show up until season 4.

Okay, I thought, I’ll give up the chronological watching and just start season 4. I did. And from then on, I kept watching. At first I watched every episode, but with deadlines for my paper coming up quicker than I was prepared for, I began just watching episodes that Castiel appeared in.

I didn’t stop once I’d finished the relevant seasons, either. The Winchester brothers and Castiel quickly became an integral part of my life – and that’s where this story truly begins.

Once lightning strikes in my soul, it usually means we’re in for the long haul, which in this case means 15 seasons worth of the long haul, culminating in my senior thesis next fall, a project linking John Milton’s Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained with Supernatural. I found the link – love is what gives us free will, and all of the media I was engaging with supported this idea.

Don’t even get me started on how Castiel in season 15 ties into this thesis, but oh my goodness, he does.

In Supernatural, I found more than examples of how the power of love gives individuals free will. I found things relatable to me that I never would have previously been able to relate to, had it not been for this profoundly hellish year.

I found Sam Winchester.

Sam Winchester is not perfect. Sam Winchester has so many faults. Sam Winchester is so profoundly relatable that I count him responsible for saving my life.

How did Sam Winchester inspire me and how does he continue to inspire me? I couldn’t count the ways. But I think the most important thing about Sam was that he taught me I was okay. Broken as I was, Sam taught me that I was not beyond saving – that there was hope that I could still get my life back on track.

One of the key aspects of season 4 is Sam’s addiction to drinking demon blood. I saw myself in Sam; his addiction to demon blood mirrored my addiction to self-harm. On that night I realized I needed to stop, I made a deal with myself that I was never going to pick up a knife again. And I haven’t. Now, whenever I start to feel that I’d be better off dead, or when I tempted to pick up a knife again, I think of Sam Winchester. If for no other reason, I can do it for Sam. As Sam taught me, you can overcome addiction and get your life back on track – even when the addiction makes you feel so good and you suffer withdrawal without it. If Sam Winchester can avoid demon blood, I can avoid cutting myself. And I have. For nearly two months.

Sam continues to encourage me to not lose faith. For instance, when Sam didn’t tell Dean the whole truth about what he was doing, that caused his brother to lose trust in him. Sam didn’t tell Dean that he was drinking demon blood, teaming up with a demon, or any number of other things. Dean flat out tells Sam that he can’t trust him anymore, that their relationship will never be what it once was. And that resounds with my soul in ways so hurtful I wish it didn’t. My oldest sister said she doesn’t trust me anymore, after things I’ve said and not said this year. I see myself in the same situation with her as Sam is with Dean. And it hurts; but at least I have Sam to relate to.

But perhaps most importantly, Sam Winchester tries to do right by the people around him. Sam tries to focus on others rather than himself, and he tries to help whenever he can. I wish I was more like Sam Winchester, and I am eternally grateful to Jared Padalecki for his portrayal of Sam that inspired me to continue on.

Castiel, too, makes me strive for better. And when I say that Castiel’s final speech in 15.18 is the reason I’m as happy as I am, I mean it.

Castiel makes a simple statement: “Happiness isn’t in the having; it’s in just being.”

Preach, Castiel.

Though people may have gripes about season 15 of Supernatural, one thing that kept right until the end was solid character development. Nobody did anything outrageously out of character, and for that I am truly grateful. As could be expected, Supernatural ended in heartache, but also a profound sense of peace – the idea that if you pursue the greater good, as motivated by those you love, you will have a fulfilling life.

I think I finally understand.

Years of depression and anxiety cannot stack up to these few words:

“Happiness isn’t in the having; it’s in just being.”

I’ve finally found my happiness, and I have Supernatural to thank for that.

This essay would be incomplete, however, without a shout-out to Dean Winchester as well. Although I see less of myself in Dean, I admire many traits he possesses. He cares about his family, almost to a fault, and he cares about his friends. While he doesn’t express feelings on the regular, he does in the important moments, and that’s what matters.

Dean Winchester is perhaps a role model I could take, saving people, caring about his family and friends, and living life to the fullest.

Furthermore, Dean is arguably a bisexual icon. I really appreciate both the subtle and blatant ways in which Dean Winchester’s sexuality is portrayed on screen. Though I know not everyone believes that Dean is queer, as a queer person, I find the idea of Dean being a canonically bisexual character in mainstream television exceptionally powerful. So it’s canon to me.

Watching Dean’s death scene in 15.20 nearly broke me. Although a good friend and I tried to get drunk to watch the season 15 finale, alcohol was not enough to prepare me for the emotions I felt watching that one last episode. When Dean died, it genuinely felt like I’d lost a good friend. I cried a lot. Both in the moment and in the days that followed.

But missing things reminds me to be grateful for the fact that these things exist in the first place. Yes, Supernatural may have ended, but we were lucky to have it with us for fifteen years.

Because, after all, “Happiness isn’t in the having; it’s in just being.”

Supernatural taught me that love of friends and family can truly save the world, and that in a world where you can be anything and love anyone, it’s best to be yourself. So here I am.

With this essay drawing to a close and the cold air beginning to freeze my fingers as I type, I have one last thing to say:

I don’t seek acceptance or love or approval from anyone other than myself – I am no one’s but mine – and I now have a new life mantra. Say it with me.

“Happiness isn’t in the having; it’s in just being.”

The fact that an ex-blood junkie, a fallen angel, and a college dropout with six bucks to his name saved my life speaks volumes both to how Supernatural affected me, as well as how bad things had to get to get me to that point. I can look back on this year, everything I did right and everything I did wrong, and one thought rings truer than all the others: Supernatural changed the course of this year – and my life.

Thank you to Lynn Zubernis, Jared Padalecki, Misha Collins, Jensen Ackles, and Eric Kripke (among many, many others) for helping me to discover this amazing experience!

#supernatural #spn #spn 15x18 #spn 15x20 #jared padalecki #jensen ackles #misha collins #dean winchester #sam winchester #castiel #cas #saving people hunting things #dean #sam #how supernatural gripped me tight and raised me from perdition

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ripley95 · 4 years

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Echoes of Old Embers

Chapter 13

Pairing: F!Shepard/Kaidan Alenko

Rating: T

Chapter length: 3.7K

Story Synopsis:

After surviving the war, one of Shepard’s biggest regrets was rejecting Kaidan at Apollo’s. Fate has a way of bringing Jane and Kaidan back into each other’s lives. A misunderstanding with his family makes Kaidan and Shepard relive old history and question where they stand.

Link to Chapter 1 on AO3

Chapter Synopsis:

Shepard goes to find Kaidan in the wine cellar. They’re forced to finally have a much-needed discussion.

Read to Chapter 13 on AO3

Tumblr Links:

Read the chapter here below the cut:

Shepard made her way through the grass towards the house. Dew was already collecting in the cool night air and her feet were getting wet through her open-toed shoes. Her dress showed more skin than she was accustomed to and goosebumps were starting to develop thanks to the chill. She finally reached the sliding door to the kitchen and stepped in. The house was still dark thanks to not having been in use since the afternoon, except for a light coming from the open door leading down towards the cellar that was attached to the kitchen.

She hadn’t had the pleasure of seeing that part of the house for herself yet, everyone had been so busy. Kaidan and Ada had both told her that the cellar was down there, though, housing what was left of the family wine.

She slowly made her way to the door and looked down the staircase. It was longer than she was expecting, barely any of the actual cellar was visible from up at the top. It was apparent that Kaidan was probably still down there since the lights were still on, so she started to go down the steps. Suddenly, she remembered how close Ada had been to hearing their semi-private conversation the previous day, so she decided to shut the door behind her. As she got closer to the bottom, she noticed a chill in the air that was getting more and more noticeable as it started prickling the hairs on her arms. She remembered Kaidan telling her that it was imperative to keep the cellar cool in order to maintain the best quality, and she was definitely feeling it. Her attire did nothing to help warm her, her goosebumps getting worse, but she was sure she could stick it out for one conversation.

She passed a larger metallic door at the bottom and took a better look around now that she could see more. It was bigger than she had imagined it would be—rows of casks, and more rows of actual bottles being stored on special shelving units. Everything was cast in a dim, warm glow from the low voltage lighting overhead. It could have been rather quaint and cozy had it not been for the cold temperature that was nipping at her flesh.

She looked around a bit and couldn’t see him or even hear him for that matter. If he was still down here, he was doing an excellent job of being quiet.

“Kaidan?” she spoke up, loud enough that the entire room should have been able to hear it.

She heard a clacking noise and an “oof,” coming from a couple of rows over. She moved towards the sound.

“Kaidan?” she asked again, a little softer this time.

He stood up in front of the shelf he was looking in, rubbing the back of his head. He must have been hunched over in search of the wine Ada sent him down here to look for and got startled by her calling out for him.

“Oh,” he said, sounding slightly dejected, “hey, Shepard.” He was rubbing the back of his head in pain from hitting it so hard.

“Are you okay?” Shepard asked.

He relaxed his arm back down to his side. “Yeah. Just a bump. Don’t worry about it.”

Shepard nodded at that, glad that he wasn’t hurt at least. “Uh, so, I saw you run away earlier. I just wanted to make sure you were okay,” Shepard said, lacking her characteristic confidence.

He looked down towards his feet, silent for a moment. “Yeah. I’m fine,” he said in a way that sounded like he wasn’t even sure of that, himself.

Shepard took that as a clue that he probably didn’t want to talk about it. She wasn’t about to force him. Besides, she was here for her own reasons anyway, and that was to tell him she was going to leave in the morning. Though, now that she was confronted with the reality of it, she didn’t want to say it. She knew that would be the last step to saying goodbye, maybe forever, but she couldn’t keep going this way anymore, so it was for the best.

“Um, so, listen,” Shepard said, garnering Kaidan’s attention. “I’ve decided that I’m going to leave tomorrow. After breakfast.”

“Oh,” he said, sounding somewhat surprised. He looked up from his feet then. “Do you have anywhere to go?” His question was laced with genuine concern. Something she should have expected from this whole idea.

Shepard fidgeted with her hands a bit, wanting to avert his gaze worse than she ever had before. She’d never felt so flustered and unsettled in her life, and that was saying a lot.

“I’ll think of something. I just think it’s for the best.”

Kaidan looked back to the wine rack, not so much out of having a purpose. Shepard suspected it was more for wanting a distraction.

“Ah. Okay,” was all he muttered and it pained her. It was what she wanted after all, but she wasn’t expecting this kind of reaction. Something must have happened to make him withdraw so much and let her go so willingly. She supposed it told her all she needed to know, though.

They were silent for another moment, neither of them knowing what to say.

“Well,” Kaidan finally said. “Mom asked me to come down here to find a bottle of wine for Libby and Derek, but I sure as hell can’t find the one she’s looking for. We should probably get back to the party. Don’t want people wondering where we escaped off to,” he said, not even looking at her as he brushed past her.

He made his way over to the staircase, Shepard following closely behind. He went up a few steps quickly before finally looking up to the top of the stairs when he stopped dead in his tracks. With one hand on the rail, he turned back to look at her.

“What?” she asked, concerned.

“Did you close the door?”

She looked at him, slightly concerned for where this was going. “After your mom almost caught us talking in the living room yesterday, I just wanted to make sure we’d have some privacy.”

He rubbed his forehead in frustration before running his fingers across his jawline, the prickle of stubble only just coming through, making that scraping noise.

“We’re locked in, aren’t we?”

“I don’t know,” he said, making his way up the stairs. Shepard opted to stay at the bottom, crossing her arms, waiting. “The last time I was here, the lock was broken. It was on my to-do list to check while I was here this time, but we’ve been so busy. I haven’t had the chance to check it yet.”

As he got to the top, he fiddled with the door handle. It was another one of those old-fashioned doors that Shepard wasn’t used to, though, this one seemed a lot more solid than the other doors in the house. It wouldn't be an easy one to break through, even if he was willing to do that to his mom’s door.

“I’m not sure how people function like this anymore,” he said, trying to rotate the handle more. “Everything’s attachable to an omni-tool these days. One wave of the wrist and doors open by proximity. But no, my parents kept putting off upgrading, saying they wanted to maintain the rustic look. It fit the property better,” he said with a bit more frustration as he huffed out in exasperation. He weaved his fingers through his hair, looking towards the handle. “Of course, they didn’t mind automating the tree pruners, but this is the hill they chose to die on. If they had just updated, I could have hacked our way out of here.”

Shepard still didn’t know what to say, the chill of the air made her goosebumps even worse. She grazed her hands over her arms, trying to transfer some heat over herself.

“Do you have a bobby pin or anything?”

“What, you know how to pick a lock like that?” she asked, looking at him incredulously.

“Do you have any better ideas?”

He had a point there. Luckily, she did have some. She pulled one out as she went up the stairs to meet him. He took the pin from her hand, and turned around to fit it into the keyhole. He moved it around and jiggled the handle. It was all uncoordinated and filled with frustration.

He stood up and huffed out, making his irritation evident. “I don’t know what I’m doing here, Shepard.”

“I don’t suppose you keep any tools down here? A crowbar? Anything?”

He looked down at the floor. “I wasn’t talking about the door,” he said before turning around and brushing past her to go back down the stairs. “Though, yeah, I don’t know what I’m doing there either.”

The words struck her off balance. She watched him momentarily before she started following. He went to the back corner of the cellar and took another close look at the wine rack he was studying earlier. He was acting like he was trying to find something specific.

“What did you mean by that?” she asked, the curiosity unbearable.

“Nothing. Let’s just drop it,” he said, sounding more upset with himself over it rather than her asking.

He ended up randomly choosing one of the bottles. He then went over to the counter and pulled out a drawer to find a corkscrew. He quickly opened the bottle, tossing the opener on the counter, and took a chug right out of the bottle.

“Here, you want some?” he asked, after he finished, handing her the bottle.

She took it, but didn’t take a drink. Not yet, anyway.

“Dad set up this whole cellar to act as a bunker if the Reapers hit after the attack on the Citadel. I’m pretty sure it’s the only reason my family made it out of the war okay,” he said, moving towards a cabinet beside the counter, opening it to look at the contents. “Thanks to that, he put signal blockers throughout the whole ceiling. Even if we were to try to call anyone or send a message through our omni-tools, I don’t think any of them would get through.”

“What about your mom? She was the one that sent you down here. She’d have to know that something must have happened if you don’t make your way back to the party, right?”

“It’s possible, but I wouldn’t count on it,” he said, shifting through the cabinet some more. “It’s her daughter’s wedding. She’s busy having fun. I wouldn’t be surprised if we might have to wait until morning when everyone’s having breakfast and hope that people can hear us banging on the door from the kitchen.”

That didn’t exactly instill much confidence.

“The one good thing about dad turning this into a bunker is that there’s plenty of supplies still here. Even a couple of sleeping bags,” he said as he took them out of the cabinet and brought them over to an empty space up against the wall. He rolled them out for both of them to sit on. “May as well make ourselves comfortable. Even if we’re not here all night, it’s probably going to be a while,” he said, turning towards her before he had a chance to sit down. He noticed that she hadn’t taken a sip of the wine and held her arms in a way that suggested she was cold. As he examined her more, he saw that she was covered in goosebumps. “Oh, I didn’t even think of the temperatures down here. You must be freezing. I can turn it up a bit, but I probably shouldn’t tamper with it too much.” He took out his omni-tool and made an adjustment before he took his jacket off. “See, another thing I can do with an omni-tool. I don’t know what they were thinking with that damn door. But here. Take this. Hopefully that will help a bit, too,” he said with a smile, offering his jacket.

“You really don’t have to do that. I’m sure I’ll be fine.” Shepard said, appreciating the chivalry, but not wanting to add another kind gesture from him on top of everything else to make her feel even more guilty.

He kept his arm out, insistent on her taking it. “Come on. You know I’m basically a human furnace.”

She did know that. She usually ran cold, herself. The brief amount of time they did spend together romantically, she always woke up curled around him, seeking out that warmth.

“I’ve been so hot all day. You’d practically be doing me a favour at this point.”

“Well, in that case, how could I say no,” she said with a forced smile. She exchanged the bottle of wine for his jacket and put it on. Damned if she did, damned if she didn’t, so she may as well have the extra layer.

When she was finished, Kaidan decided to sit down on the sleeping bag. He took a swig of the wine, and patted the area next to him, signalling for her to join him. “May as well get comfortable.”

She was hesitant for a moment, but figured he was right. They could be in for a long night. Her leg was already starting to bother her from all of the dancing earlier and it probably wouldn’t do any good to make it worse by standing around awkwardly, so she moved to join him. As she sat down, she stretched her legs out and crossed them at her ankles, wrapping the jacket tighter around herself, trying to contain any heat. The chill already felt like it had settled in her bones, so it wouldn’t be easy to warm up with that being her starting point.

Kaidan took another swig of the wine, and passed it over to her. She stared at it, having half a mind to think better of it. As much as she was looking forward to alcohol earlier in the evening, this particular situation was bad enough without being inebriated. Against her better judgement, she decided she may as well join him, otherwise it might be a really long night.

She took a swig from the bottle, savouring the flavours, almost surprised by it. Clearly, the Alenkos took this part of their family business seriously, seeing the investment they made in this cellar. Still, she didn’t expect this kind of quality. “Damn, Kaidan, this really is good.”

He smiled at that. “You know I had nothing to do with it, right?”

“I guess that makes sense,” she said, taking another swig before handing the bottle back. “Well, kudos to your family then.”

“I’ll be sure to let them know you said so,” he said with a small laugh.

He drank a bit more of it before putting the bottle down beside him. He rested his head back against the wall and closed his eyes. A silence settled between them—one of many as of late. Shepard stared at the casks in front of her, not knowing what else to say at this point. After everything that had happened, maybe silence wasn’t the worst thing anyway. She folded her arms in front of her, pulling the jacket tighter. Kaidan let out a big sigh next to her, prompting her to look back at him.

“I miss you, Jane,” he said softly with a tinge of sadness behind it.

She looked back to him, speechless by the admission. It gave her a surge of hope. Did he mean romantically? Maybe she was overreading the situation. They hadn’t spent time together like this since the Normandy, after all. Maybe he just missed their friendship. Still, though, that hint of sadness behind his words made her feel like it was more. She still worried whether that really mattered, though. She planned to get back into combat when she was deemed ready for active duty. The possibility of dying would always be real in her line of work. That’s what they signed up for. But somehow, the state of things felt a little less bleak than they used to. She no longer had the weight of the galaxy on her shoulders. That risk of death didn’t feel like an absolute finality anymore, not like it did during the war. Did they have to be destined to live an entire life away from each other just for a chance?

Kaidan rubbed his forehead then. “I said that out loud, didn’t I? Don’t worry. I’ve been picking up the hints. I think you’ve made it pretty clear that you still just want to be friends. Forget I even mentioned it.”

He must have gotten insecure from the silence that passed while she was in thought. She eyed his hand that was in his lap now, too tempting not to reach out. She gently slid her own palm underneath his and intertwined their fingers. Was she really doing this? This whole trip, she’d been telling herself she needed to keep her distance. She fought so hard to maintain that, but now she was giving into herself so easily. Holding his hand was as invigorating as the day he showed her around the orchard, except this time, it also held hope.

“I miss you, too,” she said quietly and genuinely.

Kaidan looked to her with questioning eyes as though that was the last thing he was expecting her to say.

“What?” he said, mouth slightly agape like he was still trying to understand.

“I made a mistake,” she said, finally admitting it, hoping that this was the right decision. She stuck to her guns for so long that this admission also felt like a mistake. But nothing could be worse than living in denial anymore. Not when he was here giving her an opening for a second chance. She looked down at their joined hands, not able to look him in the eye. “At Apollo’s. When you wanted to get back together. It hurt me more than you know to reject you back then.”

“Then why?” he asked, a hint of sadness behind the words. It sounded like his heart was ripped out of his chest, and it was enough to make her cringe slightly. She finally realised that no matter what she had done, trying to protect him or not, it had hurt him all the same.

“I couldn’t do it to you again,” she said, still not able to look at him.

“Couldn’t do what?”

“Couldn’t die. Couldn’t leave you like that again,” she said, biting the edge of her lip. She felt like she could cry from the year’s worth of regret she was carrying. “I was so sure I was never going to come out of the war alive.”

Kaidan let out a sigh. He turned to her then, gently clasping her cheek and turning her head to face him before resting his forehead against hers, eyes closed as she leaned into it.

“I wish you’d talked to me. Given me a choice,” he said, brushing his thumb over her cheek softly. It made her jaw tingle in a way she had missed. “Even if that did end up happening, all I ever wanted was to spend whatever time we had left together. That hasn’t changed. I tried moving on from you, but I can’t. You’re it for me, Jane. Not being with you wouldn’t have made it any less difficult.”

She let out a sob. She’d been so foolish taking matters into her own hands. He was right and she would have felt the same way had the roles been reversed. It didn’t matter that they weren’t together, she would have been just as lost and destroyed without him if he had died. Why had she thought it would be any different for him?

“I’m sorry,” was all she managed to get out without her voice cracking.

That prompted him to move his hand down to her chin and prop her head up a bit more, separating their foreheads, making her look at him.

“It’s okay. Let’s not dwell on what we can’t change. We’re both here now.”

She gave the subtlest of nods, agreeing with the sentiment. They looked at each other for another moment before they both leaned in close enough to share each other’s breath. They paused as though they had waited so long that galaxies would implode if they took that final step now. Thoughts of wasted time, and wondering if this was real filled the seconds they stayed like that in anticipation. Finally, Kaidan pulled her in the rest of the way. Their lips grazed gently before pulling apart ever so slightly. It was so familiar and missed.

They both smiled at the thought.

“Jane,” Kaidan said, prompting her to look at him seriously. “I want to be a part of your life, no matter what’s in store. I want to be there for you in your moment of need. I want to be there for the good and the bad. I want it all, no matter how long that might be,” he said softly.

“I want that, too,” she said, looking at him more genuinely than she had ever looked at him before.

He smiled at her with a look of elation at those words. “Let’s never let time pass us by like that ever again,” he said, caressing her cheek.

She nodded slightly. “Never again,” she agreed.

She leaned into him, their lips brushing more firmly this time. She brought her hand up to graze the back of his neck, her fingers twined through his hair. She missed that. It was the perfect length to brush her fingers through. Silky and smooth. She used it as a way to draw him closer with more hunger, her fingers clasped at the back of his neck gently. Her heart pounded with adrenaline and relief and for the first time in a long time, she felt joy. Kissing through smiles and heavy breathing, it was pure and utter bliss.

For the first time, she thought, ‘I hope this lasts forever.’

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