#i wanted to do the new years challenge but...idk i need a nap | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

milkybonya · 3 years

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heartbroken

order 003 for anon: a large banana milk tea with strawberry popping boba for treasure’s Yedam

Warnings: angst, crying, explicit language, threats, violence

Summary: where Yedam is the badboy! at school and he has a soft spot for you ^-^ you somehow end up as his tutor and.. yeah :")

[a/n]: idk why it's so hard for me to imagine Yedam as a bad boy??? i hope i wrote this well T.T i love the badboy! concept tho hehe so i loved this,, aLSO I'M SORRY FOR SACRIFICING JEONGWOO LIKE THIS JEONGWOO ILY <3 i feel like i kind of unconsciously wrote Yedam as resembling Han Seo Jun from True Beauty hmmmm also i’ve been listening to a lot of Kang Daniel lately and am falling hard for that man so if you see this pls send Kang Daniel pics thx ily

"Everyone move the fuck aside and let me through," Yedam growls, speaking to the crowd that's blocking the classroom door. No one listens so he barges through, pushing people down to the ground if he has to just to get to class.

He doesn't care about why they've all gathered, or the poor student that has fainted at the door. He simply sits at his desk, props his feet up and closes his eyes to take a nap as all the students wonder what they should do.

"Yedam, what the hell?! Now is not the time for sleeping. A student has fainted and all you do is push people aside so you can nap at your desk?"

Yedam opens his eyes and pushes up the shades he's wearing. No one has ever spoken to him like this before, and even the students tending to the fainted person are shocked overhearing this. A relatively quiet student yelling at Yedam?

Who's this? Yedam wonders to himself, staring you up and down. He catches a glimpse of your name tag: [y/n]. I've never met this person- ... oh.

The one memory with you that he remembers: him falling off the top of the soccer goal post in an empty field just last year after class had already ended; you leaving the library and finding him there. Despite being scared of him and wanting to just leave, you approached him and gave him a piggy back all the way to the nearest hospital. He remembers the searing pain in his leg and how fast you tried to run, the wind blowing your hair in all directions as you shouted words of comfort into the wind: "It's gonna be okay! We'll get to the hospital soon, I promise."

When he later told his friend, Haruto about it, Haruto said, "I would've left you there and never looked back."

Even though Yedam knew he was joking, he can't forget how kind your actions were that day.

Is this why he isn't getting mad at you even though you're yelling in his face?

"Just let me take a nap," is all he says to you, sliding his sunglasses back down on his face. You shake your head at him before leaving the classroom, rushing to tell the teacher about the fainted student.

From that day, Yedam decides he won't leave you alone. For what reason? No one knows, not even him.

"Sir!"

"Yes, Yedam, what is your question?" the teacher asks, turning around from the blackboard to face the class.

"Can I change my seat?" Yedam asks.

The class laughs until Yedam shoots a glare in everyone’s direction.

"We're in the middle of a mathematics lesson, Yedam. Talk to me about it later."

"It's an emergency!"

"What's the emergency?"

"I need to sit here," Yedam says, getting up from his spot and walking to the seat on your right, tapping his fingers on the desk.

"And why's that?" the teacher asks, crossing his arms.

"Because... it's closer to the blackboard?"

Your heart is nervously racing throughout this interaction. Never in a million years would you want Yedam, the school's most renowned bad boy to sit beside you. Never.

"You've been sitting in the back for years. What's the problem?" the teacher asks.

"There's a problem. Very big one."

Yedam sits on the desk of that innocent student, sitting on their notes and crossing his arms.

"Yedam, can we talk about this later-"

"Nope. Hey... Junkyu? Can you move to my spot?" Yedam asks the student. One fierce glare from him is enough to get the student to pack up and clear the desk out.

"See? problem sorted," Yedam tells the teacher, sitting at his new spot beside you.

The teacher worriedly looks at you, noticing your discomfort.

"Well, we need to hurry on with the lesson so we'll talk about this later, okay?" the teacher explains, looking at both you and Yedam.

For the rest of the lesson, Yedam does nothing but stare at you. You don't look at him, not even once, but you can feel his eyes on you. It makes you lose focus, even though you're trying your best to take notes.

He's memorizing all of your features. the curve of your nose and lips, the colour of your eyes and how they look in the sunlight. He doesn't know why, but he just wants to look at you.

Finally, when the lesson ends and the teacher asks both of you to follow him to his office, you slam your arms down on your desk and glare at Yedam.

"Can you stop staring at me? I haven't been able to focus and you're making me uncomfortable!" you yell, silencing the chatter of the classroom.

Yedam gulps.

"I can't focus either, cause of you," Yedam says with a wink, resting his head on his palm.

You cough, shocked at his words.

"What are you saying?" you choke out.

"Let's go to the teacher's office. Whatever he says, tell him you're helping me with my studies so I need to sit beside you."

"And if I don't?" you challenge Yedam.

Yedam simply glares at you with his sharp eyes and you decide to comply.

As he lopes out of the class in a relaxed manner, you rush along behind him. In the teacher's office, you sit beside one another and across from your teacher, who sighs before he speaks.

"Yedam, I can tell [y/n] is uncomfortable with your actions. They don't want to be sitting beside you so please go back to your usual spot for the next class, okay?"

The teacher only speaks to Yedam, not even looking in your direction or asking for your opinion. You understand his intentions, but it still upsets you a little...

Yedam looks at you instead, an expectant expression on his face. Although you find him extremely annoying, his look is enough encouragement to get you to speak, even though you're about to say a bunch of lies.

"But sir, I've actually been helping Yedam with his studies these days," you croak out, gaining more confidence with each word you speak.

"Have you?" the teacher asks, raising his brow.

"They have, and you'll be seeing my improved grades soon," Yedam says, nudging you with a smirk.

"Well... if that's true, then alright. I'd better see those improved grades," the teacher says.

Yedam bites his lip while grinning, clearly glad that he'll be allowed to sit with you. On the other hand, you sigh. Who knows what kind of trouble this will bring for you...

After that meeting, the two of you sit beside one another in your next class. You feel your heart beating rapidly in your chest as Yedam stares at you from your right. The rest of the class has their eyes on you, too, wondering why Yedam is still sitting beside you.

"Can you please... stop staring at me," you whisper under your breath.

"I don't want to," Yedam says with a smile, continuing to look at you while his head is being held up by his palm, elbow propped up on his desk.

"I bet that [y/n] somehow seduced Yedam. They may look quiet, but they might be the slyest person on this planet," a classmate suggests from behind you.

Yedam's chair screeches backwards from beside you and he stands up, his arms swinging slightly at his sides.

"What the fuck did you just say?" Yedam asks, turning around to the classmate who was speaking nonsense. His face looks extremely angry - you've never seen him like this before.

The classmate puffs up their chest, trying to look stronger than they really are.

"I said [y/n] seduced you! And what?"

"You idiot," Yedam hisses, taking a few strides forward and smacking them in the face.

Instead of fighting back, the classmate doesn't budge. They have their head down, slowly reaching their hand up to their injured cheek.

Yedam crouches down to the seated student to meet their eyes.

"[y/n] never seduced me and never will. We've all been classmates for so long, you still can't recognize one another? Stop the bullshit. If I hear this again, it'll be more than your face that'll be harmed, you hear me?"

"Yedam, that's enough," you say, tugging at the back of his uniform blazer.

He finally turns around after a while, greeting you with such a bright smile that you wonder if he's forgotten everything that just happened.

"So, [y/n], are you gonna help me study or what?" Yedam asks you, returning to his seat."

"What do you mean?" you ask, confused.

"The teacher is expecting improved grades, so of course we should show him that, shouldn't we?"

The way Yedam tilts his head to one side while smiling at you makes your breath falter for a second.

"I-I guess we should," you stutter. Why are you suddenly getting so nervous around a jerk like Yedam? No but firstly, why is he being so nice to you?

"Okay, everyone! Class is starting, get to your- what happened to Jeongwoo?" the teacher asks, pointing to the classmate who Yedam smacked.

Jeongwoo's cheek is red and he has some ice pressed up against it.

"Got hit by a baseball. He's never paying attention to the right things," Yedam says, shaking his head.

The teacher thankfully shrugs things off. If not, Yedam would have been in deep trouble.

You release the breath you didn’t realize you’ve been holding and Yedam pokes you with the eraser end of his pencil.

“Library after school today, okay?” he whispers. You nod.

Yedam watches you neatly pack up your things with his arms crossed, unconsciously smiling at the way you make sure everything is in the right part of your bag before you sling it over your shoulders and declare that you’re ready to go.

“You don’t mind taking a motorbike ride real quick, do you?” Yedam asks, glancing at you as the two of you walk down the hallway.

Shit. You’d forgotten that Yedam has a motorbike and takes the thing everywhere with him. Even though you’re a little scared to ride it with him, if that’s what he’s suggesting, you’re more scared to say ‘no’ to Yedam, so you simply nod.

Yedam is quick to notice the way you gulp, though, and how you nervously fidget with your hands as you walk, taking shaky steps.

They’re nervous... he tells himself. I’d better treat them well.

Yedam hands you his spare helmet. When you hesitate to take it from him, he places it over your head himself, knocking on it to show how protective it is.

“In case anything happens, I promise I won’t let you get hurt, okay?” he tells you, holding out his pinkie finger.

You let out a scoff at his unexpected childishness, but still loop your pinkie around his.

“I’m not scared, you know,” you exert, swinging your right leg around the motorbike as you take a seat behind Yedam.

“Sure.”

Before you can even blink, Yedam starts the motorbike and whizzes off. You’re forced to wrap your arms tightly around him out of fear, and he smiles under your warm embrace.

“You can just grab onto my blazer instead, you know,” he yells into the wind. You hear him, but pretend you didn’t. You’re too scared to move your hands right now.

After getting over some of the fear, you raise your head and admire the moving blue sky above you, the way the trees stand at the edge of the skyline and how the wind seems to surge through your veins as well as directly through you.

You don’t even realize you’ve arrived until Yedam tells you, helping you get off the bike. Regaining your senses, you stare at the glass building in front of you.

“Yedam... why are we here?” you ask him in shock. This mans really brought you to the library that’s on the other side of the city.

“I just wanted to enjoy a fun bike ride with you,” he mumbles, walking up the steps to the library.

Once the two of you find a spot, you don’t waste any time in getting right to work.

“So... what subject do you struggle with the most?”

“[y/n],” he mumbles.

“What?”

“Uh... math.”

“Okay... let’s get started with that, then.”

As you talk, Yedam loses focus, getting lost in the sweet tone of your voice, the way your hands move as you talk, and your precious lips.

“Yedam? What’s the answer to this question?” you ask, pointing to the equation you’ve written on the paper before you.

“Uh... I don’t know,” he admits.

You sigh.

“I just explained to you how you should solve this! Did you not understand or were you not listening?”

“Um... I kind of just want to kiss you right now,” Yedam mumbles under his breath, smiling up at you with a slightly reddened face.

“What? Yedam, you’ve been mumbling all day today and it’s been scaring me.”

“Scaring you? No no, I don’t mean to scare you-”

Both of your phones vibrate on the desk and you glance at one another. You check yours and find out it’s a message from the class groupchat.

Jeongwoo: guys guys! [y/n] and Yedam are at the library across town studying together! i’m telling you, something is up...

Junkyu: says who?

Jeongwoo: sent a photo.

When you look at the photo, it’s of you and Yedam at the very desk you’re sitting at right now. Suddenly, you feel anxious. Has someone been following you? For how long?

Yedam: whichever one of you hoes is following us better fucking stop before i show up at your house and set it on fire. istg please leave us the FUCK ALONE!

Jeongwoo: shit i didn’t mean to send this to the class groupchat...

Yedam slams his phone down and looks carefully around the library.

“I found him,” he whispers before getting up and running across the library. You try to follow his trail and find someone wearing your school uniform running away with Yedam chasing closely behind.

If a fight breaks out because of you, you won’t be able to forgive yourself... you rush after them and follow them to the parking lot, which is luckily quite busy. You know Yedam won’t start a fight in such a busy place...

“You asshole, did Jeongwoo set you up to this?” Yedam grunts, grabbing your classmate by his collar.

“N-no.”

“Don’t lie to me,” Yedam growls.

“Guys, please stop! This parking lot is full of people-”

“Leave me alone!” the boy yells at the top of his lungs. People start to stare and Yedam lets go of his collar, dusting himself off. The veins on his neck are visible, showing his anger.

“If you do anything like this again, you’ll be in for it,” Yedam says to the boy before he runs away.

“[y/n], I’m so sorry-”

“Yedam, if this is what it’s gonna be like for me to help you study then I don’t want to do it!”

“I know, but-”

“Yedam, I’m scared,” you admit, starting to tear up slightly.

Yedam doesn’t know what to do, so he just sadly watches you as you cover your face and try not to cry. Then, you feel his arms around you as he presses his body against yours.

“I’m sorry, [y/n], I just... I’m sorry for putting you in this situation but I just... wanted to spend some time with you and-”

“You call this spending time with me?!” you sob into his chest.

“I’ll make them pay...”

“No, Yedam. I’ve had enough of your revenge and violence and... I just want to go back to my quiet life. Even a day spent like this has been too much for me.”

Yedam pulls away and steps back.

“I’ll pack up my stuff from the library. Please don’t talk to me ever again.”

As you walk away, Yedam silently watches you, hating himself for the fact that his heart is breaking. Why is his heart breaking?

The next day, Yedam is in his usual spot somewhere behind you in class, trying to sleep with his head on the desk but being unable to because you still haven’t shown up and he’s worried.

The same thing happens the next day.

And the next.

At this point, you haven’t shown up for a week and Yedam is incredibly worried. He’s tried texting and calling you, but you haven’t replied. So he storms into the teachers’ office, demanding for your home address so he can visit you.

The teachers refuse for privacy reasons, but Yedam says he won’t leave the office until they give it to him, so they reluctantly do.

“You better not be going to bother [y/n] in any way, but to truly just visit them.”

“Do I look like I would bother [y/n]?”

“Yes.”

Yedam scoffs, leaving the office with your address in his hands. He leaves the school right then and there too, not caring about the rest of his classes for that day.

After an hour of getting lost on his motorbike searching for your home, he finally finds it. Slightly sweaty and incredibly tired, he knocks on your door, praying that you’ll open it.

“Who is it?” you sleepily ask, opening the door. Your first reaction is to slam the door shut as soon as you see Yedam, but he stops you.

“Please, [y/n],” he begs. “I’ve been searching for your house for an hour and I’m so tired... just let me in.”

Your pure and wholesome soul can’t say no to this, so you invite him in, quickly bringing him a glass of water.

“Why haven’t you been at school?”

“I think you know why,” you say, sitting on the couch next to Yedam’s.

“Because of me?”

You nod.

Yedam sighs.

“[y/n], you shouldn’t stop coming to school because-”

“The kids have stopped talking about us now, right? So I’ll come back, don’t worry.”

“Ah... right,” Yedam says with a sigh, running his hand through his hair.

“Why are you even... here?” you ask him.

“To check on you?” he says in a sarcastic tone, as if it should be obvious.

“Why?”

“Because I-” like you. He almost says it but stops himself, knowing that now is not the right time but also because what the heck?! He likes you?! Since when?! These feelings have been growing so fast on their own that Yedam can’t even keep up with them.

“Because?” you urge him.

“I was worried. Am I not allowed to be here?”

“That’s the thing, I don’t get why you would be worried.”

The truth is, you’re suspecting Yedam has developed feelings for you. You’re hoping it isn’t true, but you need to know. So you’re trying to get him to confess.

“I like you, [y/n], okay?! I know now isn’t the time but you keep putting so much pressure on me and I just...”

Your heart works harder than normal in your chest to keep blood flowing, and you wonder why. It’s not like you like Yedam or anything... right?

“I’m sorry, [y/n]. I’ll leave now,” he says, standing up and grabbing his helmet from where he left it at his feet.

Your heart races as you wonder if you should decide to do that thing you’re thinking about... should you... kiss him?

Ah, you don’t even like this jerk! Why would you do that?!

Exactly, why would you...? Why are you even considering this-

Before you know it, your body is moving on its own as you pull Yedam towards you and connect your lips to his. The sound of his helmet hitting the floor doesn’t hinder you from deepening the kiss as you realize that heck... maybe you really do like Yedam. Why else would you have butterflies?! You wouldn’t get butterflies from kissing someone you hate! Like you wouldn’t get butterflies from kissing trump-

okay sorry, i’ve lost myself here but i’m trying to say

the way Yedam is giving you butterflies is unlike anything you’ve ever experienced before, and the way he wraps his arm around your lower back, holding you close makes you...

Yedam pulls away, panting slightly.

“[y/n], what the fuck?”

“Yedam... I think I like you, too.”

“You think?” Yedam teases you, grinning.

“What was that for, then?” he asks, pointing to his lips.

“Shut up,” you say, walking past him and purposely bumping into his shoulder.

He grabs your arm and whirls you back around to face him.

“Just how the heck did we end up liking each other?” he asks you. But after looking at you for even a second, he knows. You’re beautiful, and he realized this the day you helped him when he was injured in that empty school field.

I guess for you, somehow this idiot made his way into your life, and his repeated efforts to win your love somehow rubbed off on you. But still, no one can make your heart race like Yedam does.

“[y/n] is back!”

“Yedam is sitting next to [y/n] again?”

“Are they holding hands?!”

You and Yedam sit side by side in class, discreetly holding hands under the desk while sharing earbuds. Sure, the whole class will probably talk and spread rumours about you dating Yedam, but who cares? You’ve found someone you love now, and that’s all that matters.

“Okay, class, let’s start the lesson,” the teacher says, only stopping to show a thumbs up and a wink in your and Yedam’s direction.

“What was that?” you ask Yedam, who smiles.

“I guess he’s showing his support for our newfound relationship?”

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phoenixyfriend · 3 years

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The “Momma Sturmvoraus was Literally Satan” AU

As requested by @spazzbot. This AU was initially brainstormed on the GG fanworks server almost a year ago. Specifically, on the first day of 2020.

[ID: a truncated discord message by “Miss Nixy, Gay for RoboLadies” posted 01/01/2020. The message reads “I need to sleep but please for the moment consider:” and ends there.]

So. Let’s get to it.

Satan took a human form because why not see what's going on topside, live like a human, and “Oh shit is this pregnancy? This is pregnancy. Fuck, that's a tiny human. Which is now half demon. Am I supposed to take care it? Wonder if retconing this form into that Valois family was a bad idea. They do have SO much money though, I get to live like a queen. I suppose another child shouldn't hurt, it wasn't that bad. Oh, he's cute, this is actually making sense, why humans do all the sinning. Not counting dear Aaronev's murders, of course, those are just evil, but I did search out the worst of the humans to pair myself to...”

This is literally just "Tarvek and Anevka's mom was low-key Satan on a bored “let's be human for a decade or two to see what happens” jaunt, consequences happen because these kids are LITERALLY half-demon and arguably anti-Christs."

Also it's just Very Funny for Tarvek, ineffectual sexy lamp fashion twunk extraordinaire, to be an antichrist

Jeff thinks he’s pretty. Jeff keeps describing features that don’t entirely make sense. (Jeff’s canon name is Karl Thotep but they spent so long unnamed that the server collectively named them Jeff.)

This is not a crossover with anything, btw. Ambiguously Pop Culture Satan just got bored and went to have babies with a serial killer.

They’re just kids! That are vaguely demonic. So. Moreso than the rest of the Valois.

Sometimes "mom" comes back from the dead and visits Anevka and Tarvek to impart Wisdom and possibly magic lessons The rooms always smell faintly of sulfur after that...

They try to put Anevka in the machine but SHE isn't hurt and the MACHINE just melts

So that's the end of that.

It's very awkward for everyone, but the paperwork isn't too bad. It's very easy to write "incidental fire began during late-fugue experimentation, resulted in fire spreading through six rooms and several casualties, including Prince Aaronev Wilhelm Sturmvoraus."

As per @atagotiak, “I feel like if we’re going in any way dimensional weirdness with thing, Tarvek got so good at exploring bc he could just clip through walls.”

With image provided by @thisarenotarealblog:

Tarvek in Paris: My dead mother keeps showing up in my dreams to tell me I need to seduce my way out of my problems and also she looks like Satan. Tarvek's Voltaire-Appointed Therapist: I still don't know what that means. Just like the last five times. Tarvek: I keep telling her that I can’t seduce Colette, if seduction is that important she should get Anevka to do it.

Like he probably wouldn’t say most of that in front of any Voltaire-approved individual, but still.

Tarvek is still very good at self control but there's a Special Edge to his rants.

(Derailed in the moment to me thinking about Anevka in a sfw-but-concerningly-deadly succubus getup, because... yeah.)

Aaronev dies and goes to hell and his dead wife is just there like "hi! Time to be tortured for eternity!" He wasn't a good husband so. He can't exactly sentimentalize his way out.

“In the sexy way?” “... not for you, no.”

Mostly I just want the BULLSHIT that is "Storm Mom was actually just Satan getting bored and going on vacation as a retconned Valois girl, the kids are half-demons and sometimes it Shows."

To clarify: the Satan bit isn't the retcon. Grandma used to have one daughter. Now there are two. (Seffie and Martellus's mother doesn't remember being an only child, but sometimes...)

Satan retconned a new daughter in, which included a Valid Valois Venusian Vestment, so the blood tests play out.

The subtle signs of wrongness would be fun too. Anevka tends to smile a bit too wide and sharp for a human face. Inexplicable uneasiness, here you can’t point at any specific thing that’s wrong but it’s uncomfortable. Uncanny valley prettiness, almost like the porcelain she became in other timelines. Skin isn’t supposed to be that smooth.

My brain's pre-nap contribution at that point was "Satan's pronouns when not pretending to Human are sin/sinself" which is! Certainly a thing.

Tarvek, at some nebulous future point: I mean, your ancestors were monsters, but my dad was a serial killer and my mom was literally Satan, instead of just figuratively like Lucrezia, so. I mean. I kind of get what you're going through.

Per @firebirdeternal: Tarvek and Anevka growing up with "you're allergic to holy water" and not questioning it until a little later because What.

And then they test it and it's like "yeah, no, there's a rash now. That stung. What the fuck."

It INFURIATES Gil in Paris when Tarvek tells him that's a thing, because there's nothing chemically different about Holy water and regular water. But no, this is somehow happening.

It gets logged in medical journals as a Valois genetic thing because, well, Mom was like that too, right?

One time they both go into a church for an Adventure and Gil is very annoyed to find that Tarvek is like. Faintly smoking. It smells like burnt hair in here.

Gil: What smells like burnt hairgel? Tarvek: [glares]

Gil decides that it must be something particular to the church, like a fungus or something in the stone, contaminating the air and water so it only LOOKS like the holiness is what's setting off reactions.

It is not.

Tarvek once got into an argument with someone and ate a slab of raw, completely uncooked meat as a power move.

SVV seems to work perfectly. Everyone is fine. We get the ‘you fight like ducks’ moment.

And then Tarvek bursts into flames, and everyone panics because no they fixed this what the fuck is he still infected with Hogfarb’s oh my god... and then everything settles down and he's perfectly fine. Not a scratch on him, no longer turning funny colors. Completely unharmed. He's in a nicely tailored suit and looks faintly stunned

"I just met my dead mom, who's apparently Satan. She told me that after I died the first time just now, I should be harder to kill later, especially with fire, because now there's more demon and less mortal and guys I think I'm going crazy." "Is that a martini?" Tarvek looks down. "Apparently."

Tarvek starts just. Randomly setting things on fire by glaring too hard and has to tone it down. Meanwhile, Agatha and Gil are having crises about how he's somehow getting PRETTIER.

Is he faintly glowing? Maybe!

Gil handles it by angrily sniping at Tarvek about how of COURSE he's an evil little rat with a background like that.

Tarvek just wants a nap and to forget this ever happened. Many people are sworn to secrecy. It's very awkward.

Still, SVV did something, for handwave-y reasons, and so they're linked now. Gil and Agatha both getting tiny flashes of the same shenanigans.

They get none of the powers. They just keep getting Weird Shit.

Other characters with divine influence are like "Did you.... did you make a pact with a demon?" "What no that's our boyfriend."

Tho tbh I wouldn’t be surprised if a Heterodyne did sign a contract with a demon at some point in exchange for like. Materials. A hundred souls sacrificed in exchange for some succubus blood. Thanks!

Tarvek and Othar: Falling out of CW as in canon. Tarvek: WHAT THE HELL SINCE WHEN DO I HAVE WINGS HIDE THIS BEFORE I GET BOOTED FROM THE LINE FOR THE THRONE

IDK where Anevka is during all this. I think she might have decided to go sleep her way through the courts of the Ice Tsars. Vacation, y'know?

Othar after he's decided to make Tarvek his new Heroic Apprentice: AH, my poor afflicted young friend, it's noble of you to go against the dark nature of your tragic heritage like this. Tarvek: I hate you. I wish I could hate you to death. But you have a point. I shouldn't let my father's blood limit what I strive for in life. Othar: I... I thought your mother was... Tarvek: I know what I said.

Tarvek: Also you can't tell ANYONE about that, I can't have them thinking I'm not actually in line for the Storm King's throne.

He does admittedly have to like. Explain things to Grandma.

Terabithia is Tarvek’s maternal grandmother so this is supremely awkward. That said...

Grandma fondly remembers her pregnancy cravings; bone marrow and sulfur.

"Yeah so, my mother, your daughter, was... maybe actually Satan? But retconned into your life?" "Tarvek, darling, please. I figured that out half a century ago."

TARVEK ACCIDENTALLY FINDS HIM HIMSELF WEIRDLY INTENSE AT CONTRACTS

I mean that honestly just Tracks about Tarvek anyways? But like moreso.

He just. Writes something up and there's things getting signed or shook on and then the person tries to break the contract and either suddenly catch fire or are deeply unlucky for a set amount of time.

And Tarvek's just standing there like "how in the FUCK did I do that?"

Severity of infernal punishment depends on the severity of the breach of contract.

Tarvek finds out that Anevka's been convincing rich people to sign their souls over to her. It's a fun challenge. She keeps them in jars.

They can still remotely pilot their bodies but like. They can't TELL anyone what happened.

Satan: I'm going to go make babies and now everyone else has to deal with the consequences.

Anevka's living up to that whole "princess of hell" vibe. Tarvek's just like "nope nope nope I want the storm throne, not the hell throne, BYE MOM."

Satan's just feeling sinself down in hell like "awwww look at my babies go, aren't they adorable?"

Tarvek: Anevka, what... first off, how did you figure it out? Anevka: Well, I temporarily died when father put me in the machine, and... I can't say that hell kicked me out because they were afraid I'd take over, but mother DID say she'd rather I play about with human governments instead of Hell's. Tarvek: Okay, cool cool cool. What after you planning to DO with all these souls? Anevka: They make for some lovely reading lamps, don't they?

(Anevka absolutely sets herself the goal of acquiring new titles that rival her old ones, or even surpass them. She just black widows her way through Europa.)

I just want someone (probably Snackleford) to ascend, take one look at Tarvek, and run SCREAMING.

Tarvek still needed to be anchored to Higgs, because Tarvek is Baby.

Gil is eventually in a relationship with an Eternal God Queen and the Literal Son of Satan.

Family dinners can include ALL the in-laws if you duck down to hell! - You borrow Bill from... probably heaven, maybe purgatory. - You have Lu and Aaronev and Satan already there, though the first two... well. Aaronev and Lu get invited to dinner but they have to eat by themselves at the kiddy table and nobody talks to them or acknowledges their presence. After all, this is hell, and what better punishment for Lu than to be completely ignored, and for Aaronev to see Lu at her worst and be reminded that he gave everything for this horrible, horrible person who isn't even pretending to care about him anymore. - Zanta and Klaus get invited via portal. - Anevka saunters in with a blood-soaked dress and a complaint about militant demon-hunters refusing to let her go shopping for a new pair of shoes. - Zeetha tagged along with the OT3. (She can't wait to see this situation explode.)

Oh God, Satan is actually second place as far as good parenting goes.

Well, actually, fourth. Because Adam and Lilith. But second as far as bio parents go. 1. Zanta 2. Satan 3. Klaus 4/5. Lu and Aaronev N/A. Bill

Someone (Anevka) decides to stir the pot and invites Von Pinn, Terabithia, Bang.

Bang is basically Gil’s older sister, right? Right.

This is Zanta meeting Bang for the first time! Zanta is just: "It's so nice to meet my husband's adopted daughter." Klaus freezes. Bang freezes. Gil is the only one who is just. "Yeah." Meanwhile Zeetha is crying with laughter off to the side because both of them deserve this. (Zanta would legit love Bang though.)

Agatha: Tarvek, I think DuPree is-- Tarvek: Hitting on my sister? I know. Agatha: On your mom, actually. Tarvek: NO!

Also I do love the idea of like. Nobody tells Bang they're inviting her. She just wakes up in Hell like. "Ah. Yes. Fair enough."

Satan: Oh no no no my dear, you're here as a guest. Besides as well as you'd fit you're not one of mine, you've got other things waiting for you. Bang: Okay, but I love the decor. And is that Cheesecake?

Bang’s family has their own evil god in the novels, but! Bang DID pick on Tarvek a lot in Paris. Satan cares more than Anevka does. Bang might get the sexy punishment.

I feel like the fact that no permanent damage was done and it taught Tarvek a lot of things means Satan isn't gonna be all that upset about it.

And let's be real, if there's a character in GG who could look the literal Christian devil in the eye and be like "Yeah I tortured your kid, what're you going to do about it?" it's Bang.

Even Satan doesn't know what to do or think about Othar.

He sure is here! As Anevka’s arm candy! Nobody knows what to do except Anevka herself, who just wants to be Smug.

(What's that scene from Phineas and Ferb that's the mad scientist trapping the platypus within the rules of polite dining at a fine restaurant? Like he can't make a scene because that would be rude?) (That. Othar would dearly love to start a fight, but it's a Family Dinner. You're only allowed to fight verbally at those.)

(Othar isn't even fighting Satan, he just wants to argue with Klaus.) (And maybe fanboy in Bill's direction a bit).

#Girl Genius #Phoenix Posts #Anevka Sturmvoraus #Tarvek Sturmvoraus #Aaronev Sturmvoraus #Gilgamesh Wulfenbach #Agatha Heterodyne #Lucrezia Mongfish #Othar Tryggvassen #Bangladesh DuPree #Otharnevka #GG OT3

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utterlyinevitable · 3 years

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After seeing ur explanation for that anon i really want to see a fic or a hc of ethan as a dad and becca as mom can u please do it??

omg okay ahhh my babys having babies. this is gonna be long and idk if it’ll make sense bc imma jot down everything i know about domestic e&b.

[just finished and... this is long and broken down into 6 categories........... enjoy!]

Ethan & Becca as Parents

The Pregnancy

They didn’t plan on having children, it just kind of happened. Becca and Ethan took a day for the news to settle before they jumped into excited, expecting parents mode.

The most exciting part was renovating the condo to make the most perfect nursery and shopping for decorations and mentally planning all the traditions and things they’d love to give to their little family.

All of the happiness couldn’t mask the struggles of pregnancy.

Becca hated being pregnant. She was sick and nauseous constantly, and her back and feet always ached.

Throughout the whole thing Ethan doted on her; holding her hair back and learning how to tie it up in the way she likes, rubbing her back, running out to get whatever she was craving.

He even made copious amounts of notes about her eating patterns. Enough to keep two of everything in the condo.

If she was having a restless night, he would too; even if she was restless for non-human-growing reasons.

They were in this together.

And even when she was huddled over a garbage pail, dribble running down her chin, she never looked more beautiful to him.

There was just something about all this that made him feel all weird and fuzzy inside.

When her symptoms barely settled throughout the second trimester she overhauled her entire birthing plan. There was no way she was making it to 42 weeks. She was absolutely miserable. So she made a c-section appointment for 40 weeks.

She had an entire argument with Ethan one evening (she really was only yelling while he nodded his head). Her main points were: “It’s my body and the baby will be fine. I was born 6 weeks early and I turned out fantastic!” and “Once the baby’s out of me I’m still going to have to pee. Omg what if she rips me open!? How am I supposed to use the bathroom without worrying about my stitches?”

All he kept reiterating was: “I love you. I trust you and your instincts.”

Becca felt better as he held her face in his large hands, his calming azure eyes boring into hers and letting her know everything will be alight.

But deep down she spent the next few weeks since making the appointment wondering if she should have given vaginal birth a try. She didn’t want Ethan to resent her for chickening out of her body’s natural function.

The Birth

Becca made it to her c-section appointment. Happily rubbing her large belly and glowing: “I can’t wait to not be pregnant anymore! Never do this to me again.”

All Ethan did was chuckle.

He was happy she was getting color back and that her symptoms finally settled enough for her to spend the last few weeks enjoying their daughters kicks. But oh my god was Ethan Ramsey terrified of being a father.

He wouldn’t tell Becca though. She was emotional and worried enough as is. Any and all his concerns were saved for the short conversations he had with his father. “Don’t overthink it, son. The moment you lay eyes on your daughter you’ll know what to do. It’s instinct. Biology. That was your best subject in school, wasn’t it?” Alan would joke.

The surgery went off without a hitch.

All of Becca’s hatred for the phenomenon of pregnancy vanished the second the nurse placed their daughter on her chest.

Rebecca was in awe. She made that! This little person came out of her! This little pink person that looks like a plucked chicken with a tiny tuft of brown hair was here and she was beautiful. The perfect combination of her and Ethan.

The embodiment of their love.

Dakota Dolores Ramsey was completely unplanned. Unplanned but not unwanted.

The first time Ethan Ramsey held his daughter time froze. The universe needed a minute to process the broad grin and full heart thumping rapidly from this stoic and reserved man.

The earth was about to spin the wrong way but then Dakota opened her eyes.

Everything was the way divinity had planned it.

At Home

Although Ethan and Becca lived a 10 minutes drive from Edenbrook, nearly a straight run, Becca forced him to drive as slow as possible.

Dakota was asleep and she needed to keep it that way.

Due to her stitches, Becca was forced to take things easy. No matter how many times she argued with Ethan that she was capable of menial tasks around the house.

Ethan would not let her lift a finger.

If Dakota needed a change he’d happily do it. if Becca was hungry he’d make her favorite.

“You had her to yourself for nine months. Let me take the next few days.” Becca went to retort, all she wanted was to hold her baby for the rest of eternity. She’d never tire of looking at her scrunched up potato face and watching as her features changed every moment of every day. “I promise to share.” “You better,” she kissed him as he tucked her into bed for a much needed nap.

The only thing he was forced to share with his partner was feeding duty - Becca was adamant on breast feeding. A bottle would not touch their daughters lips for months to come.

That in itself brought its own challenges.

Most nights Ethan laid in bed with Becca curled up at his side in one arm and Dakota resting on his bare chest.

Parenting was weird, but an exhilarating change.

Ethan couldn’t diagnose what he could have possibly have done right in his life to be this wholly happy.

The Second

Once Ethan and Becca had one child they were both itching for a second.

“You know what say: ‘if you have one you have to have two’.” “Is that so?” “You don’t want Dakota to have a sibling?” “I was an only child and look how I turned out.” “Emotionally stunted and certified loner?” she teased.

Truth be told, Ethan wanted another. He’s been thinking of giving his pride and joy a few siblings for weeks now. He just didn’t know how to tell Becca.

Becca complained frequently about how happy she was to not be pregnant, and often about how her scar healed funnily.

All of the signs pointed to her not wanting another. And Ethan was okay with that. He never expected to have one child. He’d cherish every moment of what’s been placed right in his fingertips.

He’ll let his soon-to-be wife choose their path. She’s dictated everything else thus far. Ethan was elated she chose him to be along for the ride.

After Dakota’s first birthday, when they made the decision to have another, they tried desperately to conceive.

“I really don’t want to have to deal with diapers for five years,” was Becca’s main reason for keeping the kids close in age. “We can try surrogacy.” Ethan offered, knowing how much she hated pregnancy. He didn’t want to push her into anything. “No. I have to do it. I’ll do it for our kids. But you owe me big time.”

And 14 months later Caroline Marie Ramsey made her grand appearance.

And Becca got her first push present.

The Last

It’s fitting that four years later Ethan and Becca were blessed with another surprise.

Her pregnancy with James Jonah was the smoothest of them all.

Of course that meant something had to go wrong.

At 34 weeks Becca went into premature vaginal labor.

Within six hours their baby boy arrived. 5lbs 2oz and looking like an alien.

Ethan almost lost them both after the fact.

Becca lost too much blood with the placenta and JJ was so tiny.

But the Lao’s were fighters and they pulled through. Ethan cried at her bedside once the harrowing 24 hours were up.

Becca stayed at the hospital for a week, Ethan and Alan bringing the girls to visit every single day.

JJ had to stay a few days longer and Becca refused to leave until she could bring her son home.

She went through her first experience with postpartum depression. Becca didn’t think anything could be worse than the mental toll her abortion had on her years earlier. But she was wrong.

She was so wrong.

All their friends chipped in to help take care of the kids while Ethan devoted his time to helping his wife. The couple went to therapy, sometimes together, other times Ethan sat in the waiting room as Becca worked through her emotions.

Months later, the parents were sitting at home. Ethan held their son and their daughters were curled on their laps: He muttered into his wife’s hair, “I’d like to have one more.” “Not with me you’re not,” she scoffed. “We’re outnumbered as is.”

JJ began to cry and the girls stirred. Dakota mumbling, “Tell the baby to shut up, I’m sleeping here.”

They couldn’t help but laugh and pull apart to put their whole world to bed.

Old and graying and spending more time at home with his kids, Ethan wanted just one more baby. Four was a strong, even number. He could have a whole daycare full of them - each one the best variations of him and Becca.

Becca had spent a large portion of her 30s childrearing and she’s done. Done with diapers and formula, especially. She loves her children more than anything but they’re exhausting. She can’t wait for them to be in school full time and she can have some more alone time with her husband. It’s been so long since it’s been just them too.

“Don’t hate me...” “I could never hate you,” Ethan said as he brushed a few strands of hair from his wife’s face. She swallowed and confidently said, “I want you to get a vasectomy.”

He agreed without further consideration. She made a very compelling argument.

Parenting

Ethan is the doting helicopter dad and Becca is doctor drill sergeant. The kids get away with nothing under their mother’s watch.

Ethan is very soft and adores his children. The grumpy attending could have a whole gaggle of them. He spoils his daughters rotten, picking up the newest doll and toy they’re obsessed with, and making them promise not to tell mommy.

The women in Ethan’s life get away with everything and he wouldn’t have it any other way.

When the girls were born, Ethan stepped back at work letting the better Dr. Ramsey have her career defining moments.

He took half days to pick the girls up from preschool and would bring them to the park or museums. He’d even try to teach them to cook their favorite recipes on cold, rainy days. He’d tire them out so that he and mom could tuck them in after dinner.

Ethan’s afraid of his son. He’s afraid the tot is going to turn out exactly like him - he’s the spitting image, except that his hair curls like his mother’s.

Instead of putting JJ in fulltime daycare, Ethan chose part time preschool. The girls were in primary school now and he’s taken a bigger step back from the hospital after the baby was born.

He devotes all his free time to teaching his son about all he knows and learning all he doesn’t.

Becca complains about the state of her vagina and stomach all the time. Never in front of the children but often enough Ethan knows the look on her face right before she says the same two lines.

Her favorite activity is building forts and taking the kids to the beach.

The holidays have never felt more alive with the full house. Ethan even became a Christmas and Valentines Day lover.

Becca loved watching him change over the years. Every new first they celebrated with each child, every one of their kids passions, Ethan would adopt them all and make it his mission to be a connoisseur of every facet.

Dakota sat her parents down one day with a serious topic of conversation: “Mommy, Daddy. I’m going to be a fashion designer.” “Will you?” “Yes. And I need to dress myself.” “As long as it’s weather appropriate, consider it done.” “And we need to get supplies.”

The conversation went on for 15 minutes with Ethan and Becca asking questions and Dakota making demands. Once they’ve settled on an agreement on how to make their daughter’s dream happen, Ethan retired to his office. He taught himself the basics of sewing.

Even with all the struggles of raising three children in a suburb of Boston while balancing very demanding medical careers, Ethan and Becca wouldn’t have it any other way. The life they carved out of all their complications was worth it.

All of this was inevitable.

And they wouldn’t take a moment for granted.

________________________________________

Um... this became bigger than intended... If you made it this far, thank you ♥

Masterlist

Perma:

@rookiemarsswiftie @lucy-268 @binny1985 @thegreentwin @queencarb @danijimenezv @starrystarrytrouble e @terrm9 @interobanginyourmom @adrex04 @maurine07 @mercury84choices @schnitzelbutterfingers @theeccentricbibliophile @wingedhairstylemusicweasel @kaavyaethanramsey @mvalentine @rookie-ramsey @drariellevalentine @lifeaskim @otherworldlypresents @therookie @aylaramseycarrera @angela8754 @fireycookie @stateofgracious

Ethan:

@udishaman @honeyandsunfl0wers @hutchereverlark23 @ohchoices @dulceghernandez @blossomanarchy @claredal424 @caseyvalentineramsey @rookieoh @openheartthot @senseofduties @lilyvalentine @tsrookie @kalogh @aworldoffandoms @takemyopenheart t @casey-v @ramseyandrys @peaceinmidstofchaos

#Anonymous #asked #this was a lot of word vomit #did not edit at all #don't let this flop #reblog for the 3 kids ethan and becca need to support #ethan x mc #ethan ramsey #ethan ramsey x mc #open heart #open heart fanfic

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forevfangirlwrites · 3 years

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Okay so Percabeth and winter activities sledding, building a snowman, baking cookies, hot chocolate etc. because Percy was kidnapped so they could do them the first year they were dating and they had college and stuff so domestic Percy realizing this and wanting those experiences with Annabeth so he plans them out? Idk

It doesn’t hit him until his mom tells him that they’re taking Estelle sledding.

When was the last time he went sledding?

Between two wars, getting kidnapped, and college, there hadn’t been that much time to go sledding. A simple sentiment sure, a lot of adults don’t go sledding, but he had lost his childhood to a prophecy.

His mother catches the shift in his mood and raises an eyebrow as she hands him some hot chocolate. She wants to know what’s up, but he truly believes that bringing up his “had-to-grow-up-to-fast” story would completely sour the mood.

“Can we come?” he asks instead.

“Of course!” Sally responds quickly. “You and Annabeth are always welcome to come.”

He hadn’t realized he had lumped Annabeth with him, it’s second nature at this point, but it brings up an even bigger question. When was the last time she’d gone sledding?

Had she ever gone sledding?

He doesn’t know the answer but considering she’s been right by his side through the wars and college and all, it’s probably a negative.

He makes plans for the following day, hugs his mom and sister and walks out the door with more thoughts than he had expected.

Their apartment isn’t too far so he opts to walk, braving through the cold, in an attempt to gather the series of revelations that had occurred to him.

What other winter activities had they missed out on? Luckily, Christmas and New Years had been covered, but sledding is just the tip of the iceberg.

Building snowmen, for example, had they ever done that? Given Camp’s magical weather border, he doesn’t think so. And what about ice skating? Couples are always doing that kind of stuff.

Was he a bad boyfriend for not taking her on the quintessential ice-skating date??

Realistically, he knows he isn’t a bad boyfriend. But with ideas in his head, he knows how he can be a better one.

He’s still smiling when he comes through the door. Annabeth runs up to greet him.

“What’s up?” she asks, eyes subtly roaming his body and he knows she’s checking for signs of a battle.

He does the same, but in that moment, it hurts that she even has to think that way. She’s been on the lookout since she was seven, all he wants is that for one day she doesn’t have to be.

“We’ve got plans tomorrow.”

“What plans?” Her eyebrows crease in question in the most adorable way and he forgoes answering for kissing her because, well, he can.

-.-

“All these layers, I know it’s cold, but what gives?”

Percy thinks Annabeth is smart enough to figure out where they’re going, can see the vague idea forming in her head, but she wants him to confirm it.

He doesn’t, just taking her hand instead.

“Annabeth, I know you’re the planner and strategist and all that, but let me plan one date.” He smiles to let her know he doesn’t mean it and she playfully pouts back, shoulders easing into a more relaxed position.

She’s giving up her need for control on this one. It’s a testament to how well she knows him because clearly something about him is screaming that he wants this day to go well.

Estelle spots them before he does.

“Nannabeth!” she screams, running up to them as Percy pretends to be hurt by the preferential treatment from his younger sister. Annabeth sticks her tongue out at the display, bending down to give her a hug.

But a second later, Estelle yells, “Percy!” in the same delighted screech and he gets a hug of his own.

“There you are! We have another sled but Estelle is afraid to go down,” his mother explains, walking up to them with Paul in tow.

“We’ll go first so she can see that it’s fun,” Percy replies, grabbing a sled while beckoning Annabeth and Estelle over.

“Watch this, Este, Annabeth and I are about to sled down the hill!”

His sister watches as he sits down, holding the sled in place for Annabeth to climb in front.

“No! Percy!” Estelle is clearly still scared but Annabeth turns to shoot her a thumbs up a second before he lets go and gravity does the work.

“WOOOOOO!” The scream isn’t even for Estelle anymore, he’s just truly having a blast. It also helps that Annabeth is right in front of him and despite the wind he can feel her warmth.

They slow to a stop at the end, falling sideways into the snow. Annabeth turns to look at him and he sees her face for the first time since they started.

Eyes wide, cheeks flushed, she’s wearing the biggest grin he’s seen in a while. It makes his heart flutter and he’d kiss her if he wasn’t also grinning as much.

They stand up and Percy waves to Estelle at the top as they make their way back up the side.

“I haven’t gone sledding since I was like four years old,” Annabeth says breathlessly. “Thanks, Percy.”

He doesn’t think he can respond with how his throat is choking up at the genuineness of her voice. Luckily, he doesn’t have to because Estelle is rushing over.

“That was SO much fun!” Annabeth says with the same wide smile to her worried little face.

Needless to say, one go down the hill with Percy, and Estelle is screaming with joy demanding to go again with Annabeth this time.

About twenty minutes in, they manage to get Sally and Paul to go down the hill.

“Last ride,” his mother tells them about an hour later. “Estelle’s nap time is coming up.”

Naturally, Estelle doesn’t want to go but they split up the two sleds, so Percy takes one and Annabeth and Estelle get the other.

“Race you down,” he challenges.

“We’re so gonna win,” Annabeth replies, looking down at Estelle who’s beyond hyped about the race.

“Yeah!”

Paul counts them down. “3, 2, 1, GO!”

The girls win.

Estelle shrieks in joy and Annabeth has the flushed beam on her face. It brings back the memory of the first time she ever kissed him, standing in a chariot, surrounded by victory. He has to physically resist the urge to kiss her right then as he pretends to slump in defeat.

“That was a lot of fun,” Annabeth says once they wave the other three goodbye.

“It’s not over yet.”

“It’s not?” She tilts her head to the side, but he just smiles, turning to scan the park for a good spot.

“Nope! Come on!” Her hand in his, he pulls her to a small section of the field covered in snow. Reaching down, he pats some into a sizable ball and starts to roll.

“Help me,” he says looking up at her. Her eyes are full of amusement, but she drops down beside him to start packing in snow.

“A snowman?”

“He’s not just a snowman! Don’t listen to her Greg.”

Annabeth pulls more snow together, building up the base. “Who’s Greg?”

“Our snowman, duh!”

She stops mid roll to look over at him with a raised eyebrow. “Why is his name Greg?”

Percy doesn’t stop mid roll to answer. “Because that’s just his name. Why is your name Annabeth?”

She shakes her head, a smile still gracing her face, and returns to her work.

Just as Percy thought, building a snowman is right up Annabeth’s alley. If she can design Olympus, she can create the best snowman ever and there’s a glimmer in her eyes as she studies the creation.

He can’t help but stare, only stopping when she sends him out to find some sticks for hands.

By the time he’s back with the sticks, she’s miraculously dug out a few rocks for the face.

They stand back to look at Greg.

“He’s so handsome!” Annabeth exclaims happily.

“But not more than me, right?”

She turns to meet his eyes, the smile turning into a smirk. “Um….”

Percy makes a face, stepping back to throw a snowball right at her chest. Well, he’d been aiming for the face but aiming had never been his strong suit and he’d always opted out of archery.

Something he regrets now, because Annabeth’s aim is much better, and her snowball does hit him in the face.

Cold washes over his nose and cheeks and he turns, scandalized at Annabeth’s giggling form. It’s almost cute enough to prevent his retaliation…almost.

The snowball fight doesn’t last long, mostly because Annabeth breaks out into laughter and can’t seem to stop. It’s too contagious for even Percy to hold back.

“Who even won?” Annabeth asks, still giggling as he wraps his arms around her.

“Greg.”

They both turn to look at the snowman.

“Yeah, sounds about right,” Annabeth agrees, as they bid farewell to Greg and start walking out of the park.

The best part of winter in NYC is that the street vendors just turn to selling hot chocolate, especially near ice skating rinks, so he buys two cups for them to warm up as they watch the ice skaters.

Annabeth holds the cup to her lips, covering her face in steam, but he still sees her eyes watch the ice skaters.

“You want to go?” He asks.

She turns to look at him. “Something tells me you’ve planned for us to go.”

“Only if you want to, we’ve done a lot today.”

“Tomorrow?” She asks hopefully.

“Of course.” As if he could say no to her.

-.-

“Thank you for today,” Annabeth says later that night as she slips into bed beside him.

“You don’t need to thank me.”

She cuddles close. “Yeah I do, I’ve got the best boyfriend ever.”

He wraps and arm around her and pulls her even closer. “I’m just glad you had fun.”

Annabeth’s arm drapes across his chest, hand stopping right over his heart. “I did, and I figured out why my name is Annabeth.”

“Oh?” He raises an eyebrow.

“Cause it fits with Percy so nicely. Percy and Annabeth, they just go together.”

This time he doesn’t—can’t—stop himself from kissing her.

A/N: Thank you for the prompt! It was such a cute fic to write! I haven’t written canon Percabeth in a while either, so it was even better. Sorry it took a while to write, but I hope you liked this fluffy oneshot! Thanks again!

#percy and annabeth #percabeth #percabeth fic #canon percabeth #percabeth fanfiction #fluff #cute

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blu-eh · 3 years

Note

Prompt request if your up to it (kinda specific idk how I came up with it). You know the idea that Peter steals the Avenger's food when they don't yet know who he is? I was thinking if he were ever stealing Thor's poptarts (or whatever other food) and Thor decided to put Mjolnir on top, maybe record footage of it at night, and Peter is half asleep while moving the hammer and taking the pop tarts leaving everyone watching him super confused at the whole situation. Weird I know but I thought this could be super funny, do with it what you'd like.

as per what I usually do with prompts: I took this and then ran with it in the opposite direction. messy & unedited ofc

“I know the hazing rituals for the Avengers would probably be a ride or die but this is just ridiculous,” Peter says.

“It’s punishment,” Mr. Stark tells him.

All in all, it’s pretty terrible punishment. Peter had been caught with his hand in the cookie jar—or the poptart box, in this very specific case—no less than three times in the past mouth which, yeah. Peter can’t really say he was the best at sneaking around but, to be fair, it wasn’t like he knew the poptarts were Thor’s specifically.

Following a very important Avengers level meeting that involved the entire team, the conclusion to protect Thor’s poptarts was not to write his name on them like any sensible person but instead to take his very large and very magical hammer and leave it on a box of poptarts so Peter could no longer access them.

Which is the exact scene that Peter Parker walked into on that early Sunday morning after taking a car to the side and getting smashed around by the lizard. Devastated seems a little dramatic to describe the feelings Peter experienced upon realization, but there had been nothing he’d been looking to more than taking a poptart and possibly a nap. And as cool as it is to see Thor’s hammer up close, it’s currently in the way of Peter’s very important weekend cooldown that usually involves some tasty preserved parties and a bed.

Now that won’t happen because the Avengers put Thor’s hammer on said box of poptarts.

Still. You would think the Avengers would be more creative in their Anti-Spider-Man Stealing Mechanisms.

Peter tells Mr. Stark as much.

“Doesn’t need to be creative if it works,” Mr. Stark says which is more than a little hypocritical considering Mr. Stark takes the word creative to the extreme on a good day. “It’s stopping you right now, isn’t it?”

Peter sighs with all of the exasperation of a super-powered teenager who hasn’t had food in at least two hours and a truck load of determination to spare, rolls up his nonexistent sleeves on his t-shirt, and says, “Okay. No one can say I don’t like challenges.”

“If you can put Thor’s hammer in an elevator and the elevator still moves up, then we’re working on the assumption that the hammer is only heavy when something interacts with it so—hey, Mr. Stark, could one of your suits lift it?”

“Not with me in it,” Mr. Stark says.

The rest of the Avengers had taken to watching Peter try and figure out the like it was some 90s soap opera—which is to say, they have been absolutely invested since the moment that Peter started writing on the whiteboard and pacing around the common room.

“He’s still going at this?” Mr. Steve whispers to Ms. Nat.

“He hasn’t stopped since he came here,” Ms. Nat says right back.

Peter dutifully ignores outside conversations and scribbles his notes on the Avengers- approved whiteboard that he’d dug out of Mr. Stark’s lab for the sole purpose of trying to figure out how to free a box of poptarts from a magic hammer. “Yeah, you’re not worthy so you wouldn’t be able to lift it—”

“Thank you for the reminder, Underroos.”

“But I’m talking about like, if it were just the suit. Hey, would FRIDAY be worthy? Could she drive a suit and lift the hammer? She’s not technically alive so maybe…Never mind, we’ll test that later. Would something like a pulley work? If I’m not directly lifting it, would that still influence the magic still? Dr. Banner, what do you think?”

“Truthfully, I have no opinion on this, Peter,” Dr. Banner says.

“I think,” Sam says. “That you are putting way too much thought into a magic hammer.”

“A magic hammer that’s on my food.”

“It’s Thor’s,” Sam says. “Not yours.”

“That hammer? I figured that was pretty obvious.”

“Sam looks two seconds away from lunging and wringing Peter’s neck. He takes a deep breath and says, “No. The food.”

“Minor detail,” Peter says. “Hey, do you think—”

Clint whistles. “Impressive.”

Sam’s got that mom-friend worrying look in his eyes and a hand on his cellphone already to dial emergency services or, worse, Peter’s aunt. “Is that…is that going to work?”

“Honestly, I have no idea,” Peter says.

‘That’ is a cumulation of nuts and pipes and bolts and various scrap metal that Peter has managed to scrape up and put together in the last two hours. It towers over the living area and into the kitchen. A roller coaster of science, compacted down into a Rube Goldberg constructed out of more than a couple thousand dollars of junk pieces and starts with a single marble that’s no bigger than a quarter.

Peter’s done a look of cool stuff in his two years of Avengering—missions, messing around in Mr. Stark’s lab, working on top secret projects for an even more top secret government—but he’s not quite sure anything lives up to this masterful creation.

Mr. Steve and Mr. Stark are off to the side with the rest of the Avengers who cared enough to watch him construct everything after the five hour mark. Mr. Steve leans over to Mr. Stark and whispers, almost too quiet for Peter to hear, “Should you stop him?”

“The good mentor slash guardian thing would be to stop him,” Mr. Stark says right back. “But at this point, I’m invested so no.”

That’s about as good of permission as Peter’s ever going to get so he takes the first step and drops the marble into a pipe. From there, it moves through wood pieces, metal sculpted into ramps and tunnels and pulleys until it’s caused a cascade of reactions. It takes a solid three minutes before it nears the end and Peter can only wait with baited breath and the whole mechanism comes to a valiant conclusion and the last piece slams into the hammer and…

The hammer doesn’t move.

Sam doesn’t even bother hiding his laugh. “Better luck next time, spider-kid.”

Clint shrugs. “It was a good effort.”

In science, it’s not uncommon for things not to work. Peter’s had his fair share of exploding inventions, spider webs in his face, and code that doesn’t run. It still doesn’t prepare him for the crushing disappointment that he feels upon seeing that magic hammer still sitting on a box of poptarts that he so desperately wants to free.

At this point, it’s not even about the food anymore. Peter’s too invested to not see this through some way or another.

So he starts building and tries it again. And again. And again.

By the time night had fallen and the starts were covered by light pollution in the heart of New York, Peter’s no closer to those poptarts than he was during the early afternoon. The rest of the Avengers had lost interest at this point—content to longue around the lobby with a movie playing in the background and an ear peeled just to make sure Peter hasn’t accidently injured himself yet.

Eventually, Mr. Stark wanders back into the room and knocks on the wall. When Peter looks up, Mr. Stark says, “Alright, Underoors, it’s bed time.”

“But I’m not done,” Peter says. “I’m so close, Mr. Stark!”

Mr. Stark takes in the scattered pieces of junk and the hammer still sitting atop the poptart box, unscaved and unmoved. “Uh huh. Right. Well, I’m sure it will still be there next time you stop by but it’s a school night and I don’t want to face your aunt’s wrath if I bring you home too late.”

“But…”

“I am sure you can thwart the poptart box some other time,” Mr. Stark says which is really just the tipping point for this entire situation.

By the end of it, Peter’s so frustrated the he goes to yank the poptart box out from under the hammer itself, damned if the poptarts get crushed, ripped, or otherwise destroyed in the process. He puts one hand on the hammer and one hand on the box and just pulls.

It’s not the poptart box that comes loose.

There’s a hammer in his hand that hadn’t been there before, lightweight in a way that made Peter think he had been holding a piece of paper and not an extremely destructive magic weapon. The room around him goes so quiet that a pen could be dropped and the echo would be heard all the way down the hall.

“Oh,” Peter says. “Huh.”

“He did not just do that,” Sam says. “Please tell me the fourteen year old did not just do that.”

Peter pivots on his heel and points the hammer at him. “I’m sixteen.”

The rest of the Avengers are looking at him in a way that Peter can’t quite really describe in a totality. Dr. Banner has a hand over his mouth, Clint’s jaw is about as close to the ground as it can be, Ms. Nat looks somewhat amused but there’s something else there—Peter’s not fantastic at reading expressions and even less fantastic when it’s reading expressions of a superspy so he doesn’t even try there. Mr. Stark looks a bit more exasperated than surprised but it’s that exasperation when you think your kid can’t do something and are pleasantly surprised to see them succeed. Mr. Steve is standing, white-knuckled grip on the couch’s arm and eyes wide in an expression of shock that Peter’s never really seen on him before.

Peter’s surprised the Avengers a handful of times but he thinks, with the hammer in his hands and the poptart box freed, that this is situation is the best.

“I think,” Mr. Stark says in the same tone voice he always has when he’s trying to take control of a situation where he has very little control in. “That we need Thor. Right now.”

#marvel #marvel fics #spider man #MCU spiderman #spiderman fics #my fics #asks #u ever just churn something out in like 30 minutes because u have literally nothing better to do

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tellywoodtrash · 3 years

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immj2 04.11.20 lb

ok speed-watched the 3rd nov ep and here are the highlights:

mummy and kabir ka freakout about ragini being alive.

someone in a mask (siya??????) knocking already paralysed riddhima out with chloroform when she tries to make a call to kabir.

kabir sneaking into the mansion and riddhima passing on a message to him in the form of a conversation with vansh, during which she challenges V that she'll steal ragini away from him.

kabir looking 👌🏽👌🏽👌🏽 hey boy are you a family pack of haldiram's aloo bhujia coz you AN ABSOLUTE SNACCCC. (i think there was a convo between him and mummy ki she has to help riddhima so that riddhima can get him to ragini. but i was too busy staring at his neck/chest coz......... tharak. 😜😜😜)

vansh digging a grave in his backyard at midnight like the fucking weirdo he is, and riddhima being like smh really, i got horny for THIS dude???????

some cocky talk by vansh next morning about how his mission for revenge is finally gonna come to a head today and how riddhima should be happy coz this means that they can start their new lives together. followed by some truly savage dahi-cheeni eating that grossed me tf out. this show really doing The Most to make this hot dude absolutely repulsive to me.

vansh instructing ishani to keep an eye on riddhima to make sure she doesn't leave the house today.

ok now that you're caught up, onwardsssssssssss!

———————————————————————

*pink panther theme music playing*

mummy distracting ishani from noticing riddhima in the most Boomer way possible; phone mein app download nahi ho raha, mere liye kardo plssssssss.

“teen saal pehle jo kaam humara fail ho gaya tha woh waapas aa raha hai.” 0.0% surprising revelation that they the ones who tried to murder ragini.

mask person has knocked riddhima out YET AGAIN. THE SECOND TIME IN LIKE, 12 HOURS. DUDE. THIS CAN'T BE GOOD FOR HER HEALTH. Y'ALL FUCKING CRAZY.

oh thank god, dadi is finally back. not that inki kuch khaas chalti hai, but at least these three raisinghania hellions will stop constantly giving riddhima mini-comas every 6 hours, on the dot. yes, i'm fully including siya in it, i'm absolutely sure that she's the mask person now. idk why, but i am.

mummy is like oufff isko nikalna tha aur behosh ho gayi aur ab yahaan baithi juice pee rahi hai manhoos.

riddhima like yup, there's definitely another person here other than ishani who's helping vansh. YEAH IT SIYA YOU DUMBASSSSSSSS.

riddhima doing bukhaar waali acting and i'm sure has hacked the thermometer hum hain raahi pyaar ke style to show temp of 103.

a doctor has been called and kabir has been informed ki riddhima is awwal number ki nikkami jisne saara plan fail kiya hua hai.

but behen is super duper determined and convinced that she will beat vansh no matter what. yeah sis. beat him. beat him over the head with a danda.

lmaoooooooooooooo look at these two smirking at each other over their shady shenanigans. the real love story of this show.

“aise important mauke waste karna hi uska talent hai.” i truly live for mummy's verbal evisceration of riddhima.

kabir sure ki this is part of riddhima's plan. get you a man like kabir who has fulllllll confidence in you. not one like vansh who constantly underestimates you. oh, and paralyses you.

ishani is truly Forever Mood.

gaadi ruk gayi. smirky boys not smirking anymore.

snort. someone’s been watching a little too much ipk on hotstar.

riddhima has picked up a trick from the raisinghanias. aur do issko ideas.

“i'm so proud of you riddhima!!!!!!!!”

i love his snarky asssssss so much.

SHE WAS RUSHING AROUND SAYING TIME NAHI HAI TIME NAHI HAI HAR EK MINUTE KEEMTI HAI RAGINI KO BACHAANE KE LIYE, BUT NOW SHE HAS TIME TO STAND AROUND AND IMAGINE HER TWO BOYTOYS DEBATING ABOUT PYAAR AND FARZ. GODDDDDDDDDDDDD

waise bhi, do hotties ko saath mein imagine karr hi rahi ho toh bhi yeh lameass debate? wouldn't be me. my imagination would have them shirtless and wrestling for my hand in marriage.

BITCH EVERY MAN IS A UNIQUE NIGHTMARE IN HIS OWN WAY; STOP WASTING TIME OVER CHOOSING ONE OF THEM AND JUST GET YOUR ASS MOVINGGGGGGGG

rrahul's angry acting is unbearable.

doctor has to be a dumbass not to ask her why it took her HALF AN HOUR to just give one injection. and what's with the drastic change in eye makeup situation?!?!!?!?! the patient gave you a makeover?????

ishani yeh ghatiya blue lenses hatao toh tumhe dikhe jo mummy ko dikha.

idhar they've literally been standing around doing jack for one hour. in this time, literally 40 autos have passed him and he didn't think to hail even one of them.

EVEN NOW HE'S SCREAMING AT THE CARS TO STOP AND NOT THE EMPTYASSSSSSS AUTOS. ARE YOU ALLOWED TO BE A MAFIA LEADER OR WHATEVER THE FUCK HE IS THAT MADE HIM SO GODDAMN RICH IF YOU'RE THIS FUCKING STOOOOOPID????????

pachchis minute to reach aaaaaaaaaaaaaand...........

yup. this is the choice he makes. wonderful.

riddhima’s new gig as an uber driver has commenced with an auspicious customer.

RACE SAANSON KI.

RACE CHAAHAT KI.

RACE DHADKAN KI.

MY HEART IS RACING ON!!!!!!!!! (because i am very very unfit and have severe anxiety.)

watch out milind soman, you got competition in the hot-dude-running-for-absolutely-no-good-reason department.

ishani knows bhaabi sus as hell and damn near breaking the door down.

but dadi came and took her away. but not before they peeked in and saw SOMEONE in bed and assumed it's riddhima. raisinghanias really got shit for brains.

meanwhile..........

yeah, this looks like it's going as well as i expected.

he just hurt his leg and then when he stood up the pant leg still spotless white.

if kabir wasn't a murderous psycho who wanted to murder ragini himself his righteous anger seeing her haalat would totally turn me on rn.

LMAO WHAT, YOU WANT HER TO TAKE RAGINI OUT WHILE YOU HANDLE THE NURSE?!?!?! HOW DOES THAT MAKE SENSE HOW IS TINY BIRD LIKE RIDDHIMA SUPPOSED TO SMUGGLE AN UNCONSCIOUS WOMAN HER SIZE OUT???? LET *HER* HANDLE THE NURSE AND YOU CARRY RAGINI OUT, YOU FUCKING DUMBASS.

“usse harm mat karna.”

kabir nods yes AND THEN PROMPTLY GOES ON TO SUFFOCATE THE NURSE. MAN, YOU PPL IN THIS SHOW REALLY TAKE UNCONSCIOUSNESS VERYYYYYYYYYYYYY LIGHTLY.

how is ragini's hair so shiny and conditioned and still in the braid after being bedridden for 3 years, when my hair is a fucking chidiya ka ghosla after a half hour nap????

lo, yeh mahashay finally pohunch gaye.

OH SHITTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTT

oh thank god. idk why i'm so invested in kameena kabir getting away with his shit, but i am. i just like him better.

he knows someone is here and made the nurse unconscious. THEN WHY THE FUCK IS HE YELLLLLLLLLLLING AND LETTING WHOEVER IS TRYING TO GET RAGINI KNOW THAT HE’S HERE AND COMING INTO THE ROOM?!?!!?!?!?!?!?!?

pls god can this show free rrahul??? he needs to be in a softboy romantic role where he can flash his puppy eyes and sassy smile. this role is just notttttttt a good fit for him. THIS IS LIKE WHEN THEY MADE OMKARA A CRAZYASS JUNGLEEEEEE IN DBO ALLLLLL OVER AGAIN. IT JUST DOESN’T FIT THE ACTOR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

LMAO ISKI KHUSHIIIIIIIII TOH DEKHO. truly, nothing makes me happier than a woman who has fucked a man over and made him miserable. and this one toh particularly deserved it also. i know it’s all gonna turn to shit later coz she’ll have ruined some mission that had a “noble” reason behind it, but for now, i’m happy she managed to get at least a small badla for the paralysis thing.

#ishq mein marjawan 2 #immj2 #immj2 lbs #episode liveblogs

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nikstersss · 3 years

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Not How To Pass The PLE

Before I go into the main gist of this post, let me give you a small background story. I was a mid-year post-graduate intern in Manila who started in January 2021. I lived alone in our condo unit near the hospital I went to. My usual routine was to get up early, prep, take a short walk to the trike station where I’d take a tricycle to the hospital, go on duty, insert a coffee or carioca break in between, walk all the way home at the end of the day, then maybe have a short study session with a couple friends after dinner or just chill at home. It was a pretty good setup. But then COVID happened. Suddenly, I was a pandemic e-ntern stuck at home listening to Zoom endorsements and lectures all day. At first I was hopeful that things would somehow go back to normal and maybe I wouldn’t be spending the rest of my internship in front of a screen, but we all know how that turned out.

I finished the first half of my internship with the regular year PGIs online. While they were prepping for their boards, I was on my second half with the new batch of interns (that’s probably you, dear reader)—still online. Now you might think that it would have been wise of me to use all that “free” time to start early with my own boards prep and you would be correct. I thought the exact same thing. And trust me, I tried. And failed. Countless times. I won’t even try to justify it. Admittedly, I still think it was a wasted opportunity to read more and make notes, but then again, there’s no use crying over spilled milk. Besides, while it would have been nice and probably less stressful, I still survived without it. Which means that you can, too. So if you’re one of those who’s berating himself because you “didn’t make the most out of your time”, cut it out. You’ll be fine.

Towards the end of my internship, I enrolled in a review center. Despite the asynchronous setup, the review schedule was super tight and the sessions already started while I was still in the middle of final reports and exams. Needless to say, I was already behind on that before it even began. In fact, I didn’t even get to focus on reviewing itself until maybe around early February because of clearance, paperwork, and application stuff. So if you were to ask me how long I really reviewed for the March 2021 boards, I’d say just a little over a month. Kasalanan ko. Wag po tularan. Stressful siya. Nakakaloka.

And even when I did get to really buckle down and do some intense reading, I didn’t follow the program anymore. I tried to catch up at first, but I was already way behind. But I am grateful for all the summarized material because that meant I didn’t have to pore over the mother books anymore. What I will say, though, is that because I didn’t exactly follow the recommended study hours etcetera, I was able to enjoy the whole process because I did it at my own pace. Sure, there was still that dread that maybe I wasn’t on the same level as the others, but I learned to tune those thoughts out eventually. And that’s where goal-setting and discipline comes in, I guess.

The most common question I’ve been getting is what was my day like during the PLE review season. Honestly, I’d like to say I had a routine I followed, but that’s only half-true. While I did have a structure for my day, I rarely followed it exactly. Nevertheless, allow me to share what it would have been like if I did:

Ideally, I’d wake up at 5:00 A.M. then do my morning routine which included prayer and meditation, making my bed, taking a shower, and brewing coffee. And because I’m the type of person who enjoys these mundane activities and slow mornings, I also took this opportunity to get myself in the zone before all the studying that’s to come. I’d plan out my study goals and outline (something you can do the night before, actually) then maybe have breakfast while watching some videos (could be review-related, or those self-motivational vids, or maybe even Korean street food). I’d do whatever I wanted to wake my brain up without stressing it out too much until around 6:30 A.M. By this time, I’d work on backlogs for about an hour and study until about 10 or 11 A.M.—it depends how in the zone I am. I’d prep and cook lunch and then eat while watching Netflix maybe or even play a bit of Fortnite or Paladins until about 1:00 P.M. At this point, I’m pretty certain to be quite sleepy so it’s either I make coffee or tea, or maybe even go out to study at a coffee shop, and then it’s study all the way until 7 P.M. I then take a break to get some exercise, take a shower, have a light dinner, and if I feel like I deserve it, nap for a little bit. At around 8:30, my family usually calls and then we pray the rosary together. After this, I study again, but more of a recall and review session for the day’s progress until about 11:30. I then have my night self-care routine and then go to sleep around midnight.

The main takeaway from the previous paragraph? “Ideally.”

During the first few days of setting up my schedule or routine, following it was already challenging, but still doable. But then the backlogs started piling up and no matter how much I tried to streamline the whole study process, I just couldn’t keep up. I did what I could to follow study habits and schedules, but the setup was falling apart. And you know what? That was okay.

Normally, my type A self would have been so frustrated already with how poorly I was handling my review season. Admittedly, there were a few meltdowns and anxiety attacks as the exam drew nearer, but for the most part, I just let things happen as they did. I still adjusted, sure, but I wasn’t hard on myself for always having to. I kept changing goals when I didn’t meet them (which was probably 80% of the time). There were even instances where I’d finish a handout and then I’d say that okay, I’ll watch an episode for a reward, but that episode became the entire season. While I considered myself to be the most chill reviewee, I also thought I was the worst because I refused to give up any of my wants for my needs. I resisted, of course, but then they’d bug me the entire time I was studying so instead of staying productive, I’d just annoy the hell out of myself. I was probably just lazy and stubborn. LOL. Long story, short, it was a constant battle.

There were times when I felt confident enough to power through the whole thing. I enjoyed the whole process of studying, actually. Making notes and my own ways of memorizing things was fun. I made use of different study strategies, self-checks, and motivational boosters (more on these on a different post). Aside from these, having review-mates who were just a chat away made things bearable. Breakdown session muna tas aral na ulit. And how could I forget all my sweet friends who would send over coffee ayuda every now and then? To me, passing the boards, while mainly should be for oneself and one’s self-actualization, is also about not letting down these people who have been with you throughout your journey.

But it wasn’t always a hyped-90s-movie-transformation-montage kind of environment. Other times, I was just worn out and dejected by my lack of progress. In the already meager time I had to study, I still had plenty of off-days. Concepts just wouldn’t stick and it was disappointing how I’d already forgotten what I just read a couple days ago. It got really tiring even if I was staying indoors all the time. I missed the comfort of coffee shops and the company of study buddies. I missed my family. I wanted to hug our dog. There were days when I couldn’t even bring myself to make coffee and open my notes. I even reached a point where I was sure that I wouldn’t finish reading all the material. (I kid you not, I have handouts I never got to open.)

Yet here I am. Here I am writing about how I survived all that and got those two letters attached to my name. I am not a good example, obviously. There are hundreds better than me and you probably should be taking advice from them instead. I’m simply writing this to tell you that you don’t have to worry. This is all just to ease your anxieties about the PLE. I’m not saying it’s an easy feat that you can just achieve just like that. While I seemed rather complacent, I still put in the work, after all. Admittedly, I know I could have done more, but again, I’m not going to dwell on that anymore. It’s done.

My goal in writing this is to let you know, my dear future doctor, that you’re going to be just fine. Here’s someone who understands the huge disconnect that stemmed from being a pandemic e-ntern. Here’s someone who’s always been doubtful and full of anxieties about the PLE even before she filed her application at the PRC. Here’s someone who constantly prayed that the PLE be moved even for just a month (or kahit two weeks lang masaya na ako nun) up to the week before the exam along with a rising number of cases. Here’s someone who barely has the capability to maintain focus for more than an hour. Here’s someone whose reading pace was literally at 10 minutes per page (yes, I actually timed it and IDK if that’s slow or really slow). Here’s someone who still allowed herself to study at coffee shops and even have samgyup (with proper health protocols, of course) even if she knew she was drowning in backlogs.

My point is that if I managed to pass despite all that, you can, too. My close friends know that I developed a rather funny mentality to ease the jitters as the boards drew nearer. I knew and claimed it for myself that I would already pass. I viewed the whole PLE as just a “formality”--a means for His plans of me becoming a doctor to manifest in this realm. I believed it so much to the point that I thought that no matter what bloopers and slip-ups I have during the test, I’d still see my name on the list of board passers. I’m not saying you should totally ease up and just have a come-what-may attitude. Again, I’m not the model student you should be following here. What I’m saying is to have faith in yourself, your capabilities, and in God. So chin up, Doc. Just a little more ‘til you get to legally practice with that MD at the end of your name.

#nikstersss #PLE

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vanderlindemangofarm · 4 years

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This isn't related to RDR, but I wanted to write a quick post regarding Easter and issues around food.

I used to have major difficulties with binge eating/restriction and this time of year can still be a real challenge, what with all the sweet treats and emphasis on indulgence. So without going into too much detail, I wanted to share some tips that help me, just in case it can help anyone else who reads my blog that's struggling right now (or any time of year!) ❤️

✨ Obviously, I am not a medical professional and have no training. This is simply a list of things that I personally find helpful. ✨

Let yourself enjoy your chocolate. Eat slowly, deliberately.

Check in with how you're feeling. Are you full? Do you feel sick? Are you still enjoying this Easter egg, or is it difficult?

Drink a small glass of water. Just do it. It never hurts.

Bake stuff! Idk, there's just something about the process that calms me right down.

If you over-indulge, the world won't end. Nothing has been ruined. You still need to eat tomorrow, or later on today.

If you feel rubbish after eating a bit too much - or much too much! - sip some water, have a short walk if you can, take a nap if you want to. Tea is good too, especially peppermint, chamomile or ginger. Take a bath or just wash your face. Let yourself "reset".

Don't feel the need to over-exercise, especially not immediately after a binge. You'll feel like crap and it doesn't help.

Although you don't have to, eating a light meal or snack can help. Fresh vegetables are delicious and always make me feel better.

Have a wank. No, seriously.

Tomorrow is a brand new day, and food is not the enemy. Get up at a decent hour and have a delicious breakfast.

#cw binge eating #cw eating disorders #not rdr #easter #mango irl

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meteor752 · 4 years

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Alright but like...what if a female clone was bred??

(Pssst! I made an continuation here)

How? I don’t know! Hiccup in the system or whatever! She just exists!

And it has been shown that Clones that are a little *cough cough* Defected, has been “Kept” (Enter, the bad batch)

But anyway, here we have CT-7526, a smol little babbu girl that no one knows what to do with. So they assign her to a squad, because what can go wrong??

So now poor Lil’ CT-7526 (T7, as she is commonly called) gets her first doubts, coming from the Reptile Squad (I have no fucking clue how they name these squads, so I just chose one for plot stuff), and she’s like ??? Rude???

And after that, her whole life is changed because I’m a fucking capable soldier! So she trains a little extra, and when she doesn’t she spends hours on her holopad watching previous battles and training sessions.

Let's just say she crushes her vods in the citadel challenge, finishing it by herself before her brothers are halfway across. Yeah, Commander Colt wasn’t too happy about that, and spoke words that literally changed her worldview and that she would repeat multiple times in her life

“A good soldier follow orders, a great soldier listens to orders”

Anyhow, Reptile squad graduates.

And let us talk about them!:

We have Turtle, the squad leader and squad sweetheart, Gecco, the hothead, Cobra, the tough guy, and Mongoose who just wants to take a nap.

They all are separated, and both Mongoose and T7 ends up in the 501st (Because PLOT), while Gecco’s in the 104th, Turtle in 327th and Cobra a coruscant guard.

T7′s first real meeting with Skywalker is...interesting, as it takes place after the second battle of Geonosis. It basically goes down as she marches up to him, throws her helmet on the ground and yells at him because you threw my brother over a wall?! Are you TRYING, to get us killed?!

And poor Ani is just. stunned. because why is she a woman. when did this happen.

Yeah, those news hadn’t quite reached the Jedi temple just yet.

Not long after that she is promoted to ARC-trooper. So yeah go T7!

And two days after that Turtle dies in battle. It was sad. Gecco and Mongoose cried a lot.

So now we have ARC-trooper T7, and since I can’t draw I will just describe how she looks. Mohawk, zick zack tattoo under her eyes, female symbol on the side of her forehead. Boom.

But anyway, not too much happens after that in her life. I mean, Gecco dies after his ship was shot down and Cobra in an explosion, but life is chill.

Her relationships with the others in 501st is...interesting.

She likes Kix. He’s chill

Jesse is tolerable, but he jokes around to much of you ask her

Hardcase is annoying, but she can stand him

Tup reminds her of Turtle. Everyone likes Tup

Dogma (Droidma) needs to stop following orders blindly (A good soldier follow orders, a great soldier listens to orders)

Echo is cool

Fives could go die in a hole and she wouldn’t care. They have a very stereotypical sibling relationship

Rex is awesome, nobody fucking hurt him yes that includes you Cody I don’t care if your his riduur back off!

T7 also has no respect whatsoever for Skywalker and Tano, because fuck them. She isn’t much for Jedi

Kenobi is a fucking boss though

Anyways, the battle of Umbara happens! This is where shit hits the fan for T7

T7 is easily one of the first to doubt Krell, because you’re killing my brothers how are you a General?!

And she absolutely helps Jesse, Hardcase and Fives with stealing the ships and blowing shit up. And no she did not cry when Hardcase died what are you talking about?!

After that she officially chooses her name, Tori, which translates to Victory. And after that she almost gets executed. Fuck You Droidma

Oh and after that Mongoose dies in the “Clone battle”. Yeah, that hurt

So she is more than happy to arrest (or kill) Krell, like let’s go boys!

Then Droidma kills Krell, and she gains at least some respect for the Trooper.

But Umbara was a hard blow for Tori. Not just the whole “Mongoose dying” shit, but also the realization that this is much bigger than any of them, and their lives are entirely in their Jedis, and she’d had enough of it.

So that night...she leaves. Rex catches her in the act, but after she explaines herself, he promises to keep her updated. Then she’s off.

Tori lands on some random planet, idk which, where she gets a job as a bartender just because.

She chats with Rex once a week for one hour, no more no less. Well, unless it’s an emergency. Like Fives and Tup.

Aka two deaths she takes hard because hello? That was my vod’ikas how dare they?? Rex also tells her about the chips Fives was rambling about, so she urged him to do more research.

And then...order 66. She of course has no contact with the emperor, so the order doesn’t reach her, but she gets to hear about it and just. collapses.

After that, she puts her old life entirely behind her. She wants nothing to do with the empire not the rebellion, she just stays put.

Until Rex accidentally stumbled upon her that is. Yeah, after like what, Seven years? he came into the bar and they talked for like thirty seconds before going “Hey wait a minute!”

After that, she sticks around Rex, have a reunion with Wolffe who she does not like, and meets Gregor for the first time.

And yeah, that’s how it is for a couple of years. They try to track doen any of their Vods that isn’t a mindless slave of the empire, but none is found.

Then the whole Rebel shit happens and Tori is really done with it, because hurray! More Jedi!

She do follow the Ghost Crew and going the rebellion though, but more as a trainer than a soldier. And she gets her first rank, say hello to Lieutenant Tori!

Tori Finally meets her doom in the battle of Yavin, where she’s one of the pilots who tries to blow up the Death Star. It’s tragic, sure, but that’s life.

Plus, she did fight beside a Skywalker one last time (Well, two, but we don’t talk about her), and this kid is a lot more responsible and less insane than you Ani! Got some Padme in him that’s for sure.

But yeah! That’s the story of the Female Clone! This could have gone in so many directions, but when I discussed this with my Clone Wars Squad, we all thought that this would be the most interesting direction to take the story.

Shoutout to Molly for coming up with her name and her squad, you really helped!

I might add some more shit to this who fucking knows

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atomicfilm · 5 years

Text

The types as people I know

ENTP: dnd enthusiast, trying to sell the world on his beliefs, owns like 69 :0 rubix cubes so people will know he’s smart, probably wears a cloak when he’s home alone, loves volunteering at bingo w/ elderly people, always trying to compete w/ me to finish our work first/best and usually looses because he overlooks something, 98% of people are annoyed by his presence, likes to start fights/debates, actually super sweet and big on respect but misunderstood

INTP: we all adopt really random catchphrases (mine is “that’s hot” and my friend’s is “j’accuse”), we have very specific interests (”your thing is learning about concentration camps in the Czech Republic? Mine is 18th-century poems about cats in fishbowls”), devoted to comedy, going to vote but doesn’t openly support anyone because the candidate will mess up, caught between dreaming and reality, doesn’t really understand other people’s perceptions of them, built to withstand anything (and I mean anything, more on that later), managing my bookmarks is my routine chore

ENFP: stereotypical gemini through and through, I love her but I can’t stand to be close friends with her, has a bunch of plans to marry people and move in with friends later in life, friends w/ everyone she has ever met (if you say you don’t like her then you’re on her hit list), very nice but definitely scheming, attention split between 8,917 things rn, falls in love easily and obsessively, so so creative, great singer, wants to go into advertising but will probably become a pediatrician, loves babies and taking care of things

INFP: lots of feels, really into the arts, nervous about talking, people pleaser, writes poems in their spare time, would adopt 500 puppies if it made financial sense and wouldn’t stress them out, stressed out anyway, sees the red flags but ignores them, either your literal mom or the mom friend

ISFP: aesthetics-oriented, their room is really clean except for one area with whatever they collect (shoes, tchotchkes from Asia, snowglobes, ect.), usually overshadowed in the art department but turn out to be the best artist in the room, speak French and/or want to move to Paris (except it’s dirty, wah), they typically measure in oofs (”big oof”, “little oof”, “8 oz. of oof”)

ESFP: a new boyfriend every two weeks, eyebrow game strong, funniest person in the room (or at least that’s what they think), extremely sassy, watches videos of tobacco spitting contests in the Midwest for fun, 9/10 times (this is a fake statistic) they’re a theatre kid, forget who you are if they haven’t seen you in a year (even if you were close friends prior), drives fast (and poorly), hot (and knows it), very confident, their default state is shirtless, dramatic

ISTP: everything is an adventure, their ideal romance movie is Baby Driver, wants to learn how to hot-wire a car, doesn’t realize they look punk but they do, should be employed as a makeup artist, probably pretty kinky (or at least act like it), either a fake f-boy or a very, very real one

ESTP: wants to be an architect or CEO, mostly wants to be paid to do nothing, most-often found asleep during class or telling a story in a crowd at a party, drives drunk a lot, already dating someone but tries to get with you anyway, straight male w/ dangly earrings (queer vibes), very hilarious and everyone knows who they are, their closest friends are introverts who they force to share the spotlight w/ them, either don’t show up or show up late, fun to be around, class valedictorian but everyone thinks it’s someone else

ESFJ: once had a nightmare where all of their friends got drunk and they had to take care of them, brings you cupcakes on your birthday, all of their friends are social degenerates and they don’t know what to do, watches children’s movies their entire life, has more stuffed animals than friends, everyone knows who they are

ISFJ: their catchphrase is “I need healing” (warning: they will steal your catchphrase), carries a singular band-aid at all times, makes lots of jokes about Communism, makes racist jokes against themself, their extended family lives with them, uncomfortable about breaking rules, always wants to pay for things, everyone’s boyfriend but only dating 1 person/no one, big on the American Dream, literally Captain America, appears to be a virgin at first, makes lots of sex jokes once you get to know them, n e r d, good at everything / you thought perfect people didn’t exist? you were wrong

ISTJ: ESTP’s best friend, the obviously intellectual one, does everything with amazing skill, supports their friends tirelessly, great at math, understand systems really well, the designated driver, try to follow the rules as best as they can, laughs a lot at other people’s engineering mistakes, quiet and unnoticed most of the time, surprisingly funny

ESTJ: give you advice even when you don’t ask for it, seem like they’re judging every decision you have ever made, won’t speak to you if you lie to them, the stereotypical club president, takes initiative, likes to mention that mission trip they went on very frequently, shops at Dillards (always hunting for good deals), has a very traditional sense of fashion until you see their crocodile cowboy boots, they have a very idealistic sense of society and if you don’t meet their standards they’ll yell very loudly, remembers everything, constantly fact-checking, actually should be president

ENTJ: control freak, but only because they don’t trust you enough to make the right decision, ready to race you at all times, could probably run a mile in 6 minutes without breaking a sweat, confident, prefer strategy games like Settlers of Catan, if they were a society they would be Ancient Rome, want to motivate you to succeed, see themselves as the best but want everyone to match them, running out of patience, seems insensitive and ready to cut you off but probably has a warm, beating heart (idk I haven’t dissected them, personally)

INTJ: I don’t think they really exist, supposedly everyone on Tumblr is one but they only make up approximately .8% of the population, if I met one I would probably think they’re a weirdly assertive/controlling INTP, I think people mistype as one because their ideal sense of self is being an effective problem-solver who challenges tradition from the comfort of their home and purposefully does things (i.e. learning a new language for business) but are they really

Idk

I can’t tell if they have a high sense of self or are trying to demonize themselves

INTJs are textbook villains in the movie world but also probably a lot of detectives or something

ENFJ: don’t know any of them/anyone I think could be one personally but I wish I did / I feel like if I met one I would want to be as good of a person as them all the time

INFJ: not very reality-oriented yet in love with science, wants to be a writer, curious, wants to figure everything out but primarily wants to love everyone, passionate about a few specific projects that they talk a lot about (social issues), always reblogs positivity posts, once gave a ted talk about mental health, he’s the debate captain yet cries every time he loses a debate (because he has a lot of self-doubt), prefers to nap than to talk sometimes, eventually realizes they wants to adopt all of the people younger than him and protect them from the world, easy to love, they may reflect your personality, may also have very particular body movements (the one I know does a lot of fan kicks), actually make NTs feel (like a lot, like a lot a lot, like real crying), eventually dates their best friend and marries them, doesn’t draw but collects art

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altrcistics · 4 years

Text

❄️❄️ –––– have you seen [ ESME MACMILLAN ] since the storm? some say they look like [ DANIELLE CAMPBELL ] but they’re [ 21 ] & go by [ THE TACITURN ]. [ SHE ] lived in halloway for [ 11 YEARS ] & they are originally from [ LONDON ]. before the town vanished they were studying [ MEDICINE ] and lived at [ UNI BLVD ]. most people knew the [ CISFEMALE ] as [ ALTRUISTIC ] but i’ve heard they can also be [ RETICENT ]. for some reason, they feel [ UNEASY ] about the town’s disappearance. –––

–––––– well , well if it isn’t me , b , with a broken theme !! but i’m too eager to pay any mind to it right now , and i’ve got homework due at midnight that has to happen after i get this baby posted . hi friends !! very excited to be here . this is my soul baby esme who is just trying her gd best and is stressed out 99% of the time . needs a 12 hour nap and maybe a therapist . summed up in a word ? soft , probably . i hope you love her like i do anYWAY GONNA leave this here and get to plotting so you can also hit me up at b a y#9956 on discord!!

LONDON.

weston and anna macmillan never planned on having a child. they were young and in love, and both had struck the genetic lottery – weston with his brains, anna with her trust fund. while weston was up and coming in the world of corporate law, anna had spent her life in pointe shoes and was at the top of her game as a principle dancer for the royal ballet in london. they were picturesque… perfect, even. until anna found herself to be three weeks late and their dazzling little dream life reached its first hiccup.

that hiccup entered the world screaming a whole nine months later!! tiny blue eyed esme grace macmillan was a fuckin handful even before she was born. as anna went through prenatal checkups, she found that her heartbeat was irregular. further tests concluded that she had hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (hcm) which is a genetic condition that affects the muscles in the heart and causes irregular blood flow. it’s not fatal, but it is hereditary and gets riskier with physical exertion. being a new mother, anna made the decision to shelve ballet and focus on this new chapter of her life.

which was probably a good thing! she loved being a mom, and it was safe to say that having a set of eyes on esme at all times was the right choice. she was restless and constantly full of energy. from a really young age, it became apparent that esme had inherited some of the best parts of her parents. she got her dad’s brains, catching onto things quickly and learning to walk and talk earlier than most. this turned into simple reading and messy writing shortly after. she wasn’t a very social kid though, didn’t talk much.

as soon as esme was old enough, she was put into tiny pink ballet slippers. she took a liking to dance, and this is when they realized she’d also inherited her mother’s natural grace. early on, it looked like she’d easily follow in her mother’s footsteps.

dance really really opened esme up. it was here that she started making friends and began tip toeing outside of her comfort zone and opening up a little bit, but her direction changed when she was six and discovered figure skating.

it was technical and lyrical like ballet, but it was far more challenging. even as a kid, esme loved a good challenge. so her parents bought her a pair of skates, and the rest is history. as she grew up, her weekends were occupied with practices, performances, and eventually competitions. she was a natural. and for the first time there was an air of confidence about her.

though she loved it more than anything in the world, her life soon came to revolve around school and skating. it caused her to miss out on a normal childhood, never really making friends close enough to be invited to sleepovers or birthday parties.

that made the move much easier for esme. when she was 10, her father’s firm went international and he was put in charge of the american branch. thus, the macmillans hopped across the atlantic and moved to halloway for a fresh start, a new adventure.

HALLOWAY.

she took a small break from competitive skating when they moved; it was her parents’ choice in hopes of her actually making friends in new hampshire. and it worked! for a while. esme was still quiet, still a little too book smart and a little less than street smart. even as a kid, she was awkward, but she was kind and clever and for the most part — people liked her.

and life was good for a long time! she got back into skating, and around the time she was thirteen she showed no signs of stopping. in fact, her sights were set on an olympic medal, and though her parents were wary of her inherited condition, they supported her in every possible way.

entering high school, life got a little bit harder. her schoolwork and training kept her pretty tied up, and it was often really hard for her to balance a social life along with that. she didn’t show up to every party. she didn’t really have any interest in going on dates. she kept up with her friends and made time for the important things, but she wasn’t exactly the most open person.

this backfired real quick!! as a freshman, at a bonfire, a senior boy kinda came onto her and when she said nope no thank you, he got pissed. instead of taking rejection Like A Man, he decided to spread a little rumor about them hooking up. this combined with her quiet nature kind of caused her to get a bit of a reputation of being aloof and a bit easy which is so far from the truth. but high school is high school!! and people were fuckin mean about it for a long time thereafter!

around this time was also when her parents sorta…. fell out of love. as in… her father got a little power hungry, a little bored of his life, and like the cliche he is started having an affair. the secrecy of it didn’t last… long and he ultimately left both anna and esme. she felt kind of.. abandoned. like they weren’t good enough almost but.. she and her mom got . even closer because of it tbh. the macmillan girls don’t need no man!!

so she threw herself into her studies and even more so into skating. she trained in the morning and on the weekends, year round. winning competitions made her feel good, and she kept doing so. when she was fifteen, she competed at the world figure skating championship. though she didn’t medal, her scores were impressive and she became an alternate for the us figure skating team at 16. being so close to those five rings was enough to push her further.

she left traditional high school and threw herself even further into figure skating. (this only fueled halloway rumors that she was a bit of a snob akjdfha) after graduating, she enrolled at halloway part time in order to slowly get through her gen eds while training for, yup, you guessed it, the 2018 olympics.

and ya know what? it paid off. at 20, she’d had two world’s silvers and a world’s gold under her belt as she competed in the winter games. her whole life had been leading up to that moment, and she brought home an olympic gold medal in women’s figure skating. that’s right, ya girl fucking peaked.

it was a high, for a while. and she rode it quietly and gracefully. idk she was PROUD ok she worked so hard…. but her incessant need to be perfect and to continuously better herself was nagging in the back of her mind. she wasn’t sure how you could really get better than gold at the olympics.

needless to say, she’s in the midst of a bit of an identity crisis. with her heart condition and ya know aging… she knows figure skating isn’t a forever-thing. so she went back to halloway, taking an interest in medicine and trying to understand her own weakness— a weak heart. she began studying medicine and to fell in love with that profession, but . she honestly can’t stay off of the ice. activate existential dread! she doesn’t actually know who she is!

and then the heckin storm happened smh

NEW HALLOWAY.

with a calm exterior and a notorious knack for being maternal . . . someone , somewhere along the line said hey let’s put esme in charge of the hospital to which she said in a john-mulaney-esque voice . . . huh ? what ? huh ? what ??? huh ???? and then did it anyway

if she’s not on call or working at the hospital , best believe she’s studying because she’ll be the first to tell you she has no business calling herself a doctor

it’s been months!! since!! they disappeared!! and she’s sort of adjusting to this new life which often makes her feel very, very guilty because she doesn’t know what’s happened to her mother at this point

when everything was frozen she still found time to escape and do some skating on the lake aksdjfhas

for the most part, she keeps herself busy ... someone like .... help her tho

PERSONALITY.

esme’s naturally introverted. she likes people, but she’s a textbook people pleaser and gets exhausted quickly when she’s socializing. she’s always been quiet, never the center of attention (unless on ice) and never the loudest voice in the room. when she does speak, though, it’s purposeful and articulate. the sort of ‘she doesn’t talk much but when she does it’s important’ kinda thing idk. she’s not meek ya know.. just reserved

she’s naturally… very kind. cares a lot about other people but struggles to express that which is why she gravitates towards the profession of medicine. she enjoys helping people ya know

ya girl keeps her shit close to her chest. doesn’t really want to bother anyone with her own shit and takes her anger out in physical activity, disassociates from her sadness by reading. a lot of people know her but not on a deep level. tbh does she even know herself? prob not

she’s not a stick in the mud, but she does need a little push every now and then. she lets loose when she’s around people that she’s comfortable with tbh. behind the prim and proper macmillan facade is.. a bit of a goofball. does not hesitate to participate in dramatically karaoke or midnight swims in a lake.

SOFT as fuck but she’s not one to be walked all over. she’s clever as all get out and when snapped at harshly enough won’t hesitate to snap back. she doesn’t get angry to the point of showing it easily, but when she does, she’s very purposeful with her words. don’t underestimate her she hATES being underestimated

competitive as heck. in academics, in sports, in board games. she’s a sweetheart but she will wreck you in spite and malice or sorry bc she just… has a competitive nature

really does give a shit about what people think of her. like… wants to be liked. not being liked by some people in high school really fucked w her bc she just….. can’t help caring about how other people perceive her and wants it to be positively. it’s in part because of how she was raised?? she grew up in a pretty monitored, strict environment between rigorous training and her parents’ world of the rich (will this change after the storm tho??? we’ll SEE)

values honesty like has absolutely 0 time to be lied to and 0 time for bullshit

SO curious, always ready to learn more

will make a fool of herself to see you laugh

a lil bit of amy santiago.. a lil bit of rory gilmore.. a lil bit of caroline forbes..

needs to relax; constantly Anxious

s t u b b o r n

literally never sleeps

doesn’t curse bc there are more clever ways to express anger

reputation: aloof and stuck up. reality: literally just shy lmao

is TRYING VERY HARD

WANTED PLOTS.

i have a few connection ideas here!! and a tag here!! but also…

friends from halloway that she’s just… straight up been pals with since she moved there

i’m… constantly thirsty for … girl gang shit. any of y’all watch the bold type? i eat that shit uP AND IT’S all i NeED TO BE . HAPPY OK

esme’s an only child and i would love to see a sibling-like bond for her

academic rivals pls and thank!! mayb in their major…. mayb back in high school…. paris vs rory anyone?

the maya to her riley oh man

a bad influence or even… the polar opposite . to her Mom Friend-ness

someone else who grew up in the realm of rich parents like galas suck but at least we got each other!!

neighbors!!

new friends! people who she’s met through halloway and quickly taken a liking to. super interesting dynamic bc… while she’s eager to know u she’s not so eager to …. open up lmao

previous roommates

y’all into angsty exes? i know this is the end of the world and all but that don’t mean wE CAN’T get SAD

someone she became friends w via… skating yikes akjdfha i swear that’s not her only personality trait

someone she agreed to tutor!! or study buddies!! ‘i’m going to cry literal tears on my flashcards please study with me!’

someone she was forced to be friend with post-storm. they step on each other’s toes but suck it up for the sake of everyone else

i .. love combining ideas and brainstorming too so!!! we can also do that!!

if you made it this far i’m literally going to cry bc i love you already for reading a rambling like this . aNYWAY !! that’s my esme. feel free to smash the like and i’ll come to you or message me on discord!!

#hallowayintro #OOOOOF #admin b is most certainly not killing it today #but pls just.... love me anyway

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lizzieraindrops · 4 years

Text

Your chance to make the sun rise thrice (Chapter 2)

a river that still runs (8803 words)

Beth Childs has come to Helsinki to meet her best friend Veera for the first time in the Herbs on the windowsill universe, an alternate timeline where the original Helsinki massacre was prevented and DYAD routed by Clone Club Alpha’s successful publicity stunt back in 2001. Veera Suominen and Niki Lintula survived and decided to live in a little apartment together as qpp’s. Numerous Leda clones worldwide are now in contact via a secure online network that Veera maintains.

Note: This chapter is a bit heavier than the rest of the AU. Beth is still struggling with a lot of the same challenges in this universe, even if the events causing them are somewhat different because of such early canon divergence. But the whole point of this story is that things can end up okay no matter how rough it's been. She's getting the help she needs and she's gonna be alright. That said, warning for soft discussion of past abuse, the effects of trauma, depression and anxiety, and some suicidal ideation. And of course, lots of love and learning how to heal, with support from her best friend.

Fun fact: Veera's username is 3mika, and she always sets her font to the precise warm turquoise of hex color #2299aa. She thinks she's hilarious, and she's right.

Also on AO3 | Playlist | Aesthetic sideblog

Part 1: Herbs on the windowsill

Part 2: Someday colors

Part 3: Your chance to make the sun rise thrice | Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3

***

Beth wakes on a squashy couch that isn't hers. Morning-soft sunlight pours through the window above her, bouncing back off the walls to fill even the shady corners with a warm secondhand glow. Her limbs are soft, splayed under unfamiliar blankets and sinking into the cushions. She doesn't move yet.

The apartment. Helsinki. Beth's really here. She holds herself still, letting the truth sink into her. She half expects the usual anxious tension to clench her into a ball the instant she moves a muscle, but it isn't there. Neither is the invisible weight that so often pins her immobile. She still wakes frequently with both of them holding her body hostage, keeping her muscles unmoving but restless, even in sleep. Right now though, they're gone. She just lies there, soft beneath the window.

It's quiet but not silent. The occasional car on the little road outside chuckles as it passes. A soft rush of water echoes through pipes in the walls, running toward an early riser in another unit. These sounds fall strangely on Beth's Toronto-bred ears, isolated in the stillness of this of this little apartment on the outskirts of the city. Still, the early-morning atmosphere settles comfortably into her jet-lagged bones, murmuring a rhythm for her to sink into. The temporal upheaval of a transcontinental red-eye and a series of exhausted naps yesterday have left her a little unbalanced. And yet, here she is waking up with the day, and the ground under her feels so much more stable than she’s used to.

Beth breaks her stillness with a deep, deep breath that she can feel expanding all the way down to her feet. She stretches, too, but soon pulls the toes that get exposed back underneath the warm, scratchy blanket. The cushions of the old couch creak a little in complaint as she shifts, but her limbs remain supple. For a time, she just observes the sensations. Then, her awareness spreads beyond the couch and the window to the rest of the room.

All around her, an oddly blocky pattern covers the walls. It's one of the first things she noticed when she walked into the apartment yesterday afternoon. The pattern isn't wallpaper like it appears at first glance, but actually a multitude of small photographs. Most of them are unframed, but taped up in crisply aligned rows. In them, she sees the same face infused with a hundred different lives. Just above her, a sleeping, slack-jawed redhead with bulky headphones around her neck sprawls on the very same couch Beth's laying on now. A few rows down, a brunette and a blonde with their long hair in matching wild waves are leaning all over each other and grinning like devils. One of the few framed photos shows a girl with a hospital-short buzz cut and a delighted expression, sitting in front of what looks like a mouthwatering strawberry shortcake. Beth can see at least six others in the background behind strawberry girl. Among them are Mika with her unmistakable scars and Niki with her bright blonde hair, their arms around each other's shoulders.

Morning light glances off the glossy surfaces of the photos on the west wall. The particularly bright reflection off one of the framed photos draws Beth's eye. With a tiny jolt, Beth recognizes one of her own selfies beneath the glass. In it, she's wearing the same old turquoise blue sweatshirt that's spilling out of her suitcase next to the couch right now. Underneath it, she's wearing her track gear, so the photo is at least two years old. She'd had to quit cross-country so she could try to get the shitshow her life had become under control. She vaguely recalls sending it to Mika a long time ago. It's strange to think that her presence has been in this apartment for so long.

She's here. In Finland. Staying with Mika – Mika - and Niki. Far, far away from everything.

Sprawling on the couch she slept on with a sigh as if she hadn’t a care in the world, Beth can't believe she's really gone and done it. She's run so far away that there's an ocean between her and her problems. It’s so much better than she's dreamed, even if it's only for a little while. It’s worth it, even though she'll be going back far too soon. For the first time in years, it feels like she’s where she’s supposed to be right now.

It had all started out as foolish idea she'd floated one Saturday morning, months ago. She hadn't been serious at all. She'd woken up so relieved at not having to get up and go to work, until she remembered her weekly therapy appointment with a hopeless groan.

Putting off the genuinely daunting prospect of hauling herself out of bed, she reached out to snag her phone from on top of her dresser, checking to see if she'd heard from Mika overnight. After all, Helsinki was nine hours ahead, so Mika had already seen most of the day that was just beginning for Beth. They talked so often these days, since they'd first made contact over two years ago. Rarely a day passed without touching base. But there wasn’t anything since Beth had checked last night. She took it upon herself to send the first message of the day.

runwaterblue: god, i dont wanna get up and deal with any of thsi shit today

After her world fell apart, after finding out about Project Leda, after realizing that all her nightmares and more were real, after her father...

runwaterblue: wish i could come visit u and get away form everything for awhile

Mika replied almost immediately.

3mika: you can

It was evening in her time zone, but to be honest, Beth had no idea if she had anything resembling a regular sleep schedule. The girl was always online.

3mika: though you really should go to your appointment. you always feel better afterward

runwaterblue: howd you know i have therapy today

3mika: you always have an appointment saturday afternoons

runwaterblue: yes but how do you remember that? i cant evne remember my own appts lmao

3mika: you mentioned it months ago when you switched from sundays to saturdays

Beth shook her head with a smile. Mika was so good with details.

3mika: anyway. you’re welcome here, if you can get here

3mika: it would be great to see you

3mika: Niki wouldn't mind. we've had a bunch of Ledas visit us here, it's always fun

3mika: except that one time Dani and Ary got into a fight over football. some French-Italian team rivalry thing. that was not fun.

Beth laughed. It was funny how Mika was so good at making her do that, even on days like these. She leaned back against her pillow and held her phone over her head without sitting up, being careful not to drop it on her own face. She'd done that before. More times than she'd admit.

runwaterblue: i was kidding. id love to visit, but idk how id get there

runwaterblue: u should see the americans go off abt their football lmao. they're nerly as bad as the hockey freaks here

3mika: pls no

3mika: no more sports. it was a year ago and I’m still exhausted

3mika: sports are banned in this apartment.

Beth snorted. Mika wanted nothing to do with sports of any kind, and with Beth's athletic record, the topic had become a point of mutual teasing between them.

In so many ways, they were such different people, DNA be damned. Mika was reticent where Beth was outgoing. (Or at least, Beth had been. She was never quite sure how to think of herself these days.) Clone drama aside, Beth had been a pretty average Canadian high schooler. She got reasonable grades, played a few sports, and kept mostly out of trouble because there would be hell to pay if she didn’t. Mika was a brilliant homeschooled autistic orphan who had been raised in near isolation by her guardian after surviving the hospital fire that marked her skin for life. Beth mostly listened to pop music, and where no one else could hear, the occasional classical symphony. Mika held fast to Finland's weird obsession with death metal and dabbled in literally everything else.

And yet, Mika understands Beth like no one else does. And it's not just because they've both been through all this Project Leda bullshit. Though Beth doesn't know what she would have done without Mika to help her through that, too.

Beth won't ever be able to forget the moment that everything changed. Recognizing a her own face from the mirror on the evening news stopped her in her tracks, as something in her gut caved in with the hollow certainty that it wasn't her. Then face after face flickered before her, a flipbook barrage of déja vu. Blonde and smiling. Scarred and pensive. Braids and piercings and a rakish grin. Beth was rooted in place as people she had never been wearing things she had never worn said things she was never supposed to know.

That utter strangeness on the screen immediately seeped into her life like an oil slick into a river, tainting every thing she thought she knew with clinging uncertainty. Her father was inexplicably even more upset about it than Beth was, yet adamant that they shouldn't look into the matter. But it was already too late to stop herself from thinking. With slow horror, the truth of what exactly his behavior must mean dawned on her. And yet, even with the desperate growing certainty about who her Leda monitor must be, it was hard to believe that he could be anything other than her plain stern father.

He was always a bit strict and overprotective - probably well more than a bit, she realizes these days. But she’d thought that's just what it was like to be a cop's daughter. He'd never done anything really extreme, nothing beyond the firm discipline any kid could expect. He was just not a man to be trifled with, that was all. So until everything she thought she knew shifted that day and threatened to topple every assumption she’d built her life on, she had never truly dared to cross him.

Outright daring him to say to her face that he wasn't her monitor was probably considered a step beyond trifling. He did not take it kindly.

Two months later, Beth and her mother were living in an apartment on the opposite side of the city. It took two months for the two of them to lay plans to leave together, for good. For two months, her every move was watched. She spent two months knowing there would be hell to pay if she didn't give the performance of a lifetime pretending everything was fine, even while sirens blared inside her day and night. Two months was more than enough to teach her things she never wanted to know about the hidden marks fear leaves on the body.

Even after she finally escaped, her life was in tatters and nothing made sense. It wasn’t just the sudden jarring discovery of Project Leda, or the crisis it had forced her to confront. It was learning that, deep down, she had known that she’d never once felt free. She’d unconsciously kept herself from knowing to avoid exactly that conflict of wills that she’d known she would lose.

Trying to come to terms with what had happened and how it changed everything, Beth was continuously losing her balance. Questioning which parts of her life had been screwed over by her father and which by being part of some ridiculous supervillain science experiment was like trying to stand on two kickboards in a pool. She couldn't find her footing, and all she could do was try and stay afloat. She had to repeat her whole junior year of high school that she lost to this shitshow, while starting over at a new school, and only barely scraped her way into senior year. Now that she knew how honestly terrible she'd been at judging who in her life she could trust, it was as hard to talk to old friends as it was to make new ones.

Therapy helped her start sorting out what she was feeling, and how the environment she’d grown up in was really not the healthiest. She hadn’t realized how much she’d learned to doubt her own perceptions. That made constructing any kind of new understanding of her situation an uphill struggle. And of course, her therapist couldn’t help her confirm anything about a human experiment that was so illegal it had been an international secret. As she continued to stumble forward, Beth even started doubting her former certainty of the identity of her Leda monitor. She questioned herself and everything she knew until she wanted to scream with frustration or weep with confusion. The floor of the counselor’s office could have been mopped with her tears. It was, quite literally, driving her mad.

So, finally, Beth had taken up the invitation on the banner of every Leda news feature to "Contact the secure, clone-run Clone Youth Group Network (CYGNet) for answers by emailing [email protected]."

She wanted something concrete that would help convince her brain to stop reenacting these head games that warped her reality. It still insisted on playing through the patterns it had been taught, even in its teacher’s absence. She needed something that could brace her against the ideas that she was really just paranoid, overreacting, accusing, that this was all her fault for making a big deal out of nothing. Even with his other faults (cruelties, her mind whispered) aside, at least his involvement with Project Leda was unforgivable, and she wanted proof of it. Maybe if she had that, she could stop being mad at herself for not wanting to forgive. And if anyone had that proof, CYGNet would.

Maybe it was just because of the sheer blunt honesty about her motives, or the inescapable vulnerability of the message Beth sent, but Mika had replied to her within a day. And she'd been so gentle about it, too, enough to make Beth later question where the stereotype of autistic brashness came from. Then again, over email, Mika had all the time she needed to compose her thoughts and lay them out as softly as she wanted. She didn't have to spit them out as fast as she could to keep pace with a quick and painfully overwhelming world.

Hi Beth Childs,

I'm so sorry for what you had to go through. I still don't know how they got away with doing things like this for so long. I suppose people will always find ways to be cruel. But we've survived this long, and the whole point of CYGNet is to help us all heal. The experimental network has been dismantled, and we are assembling resources to help us. We've brought mental health professionals on to the project to develop custom programs for our needs. We can make them available to you, if you are interested.

I attached scans of some of your files that we recovered from DYAD. There are a few case reports with the signature of the person you asked about, spaced throughout your lifetime. There are also financial records with his name in the list of paid employees. He was without a doubt part of the Leda monitor program. I can provide all of the documentation that we have related to you, if you like, but I thought that would be too much all at once. I know these are hard to look at, but I hope they help let your mind rest. They are very real, and every awful thing we have experienced was also real, no matter how they tried to convince everyone that we were making it all up.

Please take your time with these, and stay in contact if you want to. You can join our mailing list, if you want to know when we have new information or new resources available. We're here for you.

And hey, if you just want to talk to someone who knows what it's like to deal with all of this, I'm here, too. You can reach my personal inbox or IM me at [email protected]. It'll be okay.

-Veera

Beth had started crying before she even finished reading the letter, much less opened the attachments. She cried so often these days. She only knew why half the time. But this time, it felt like the tears were extracting some of her pain as they left her, instead of just overflowing from the unending wellspring of her directionless distress. All of this was real, and someone else knew it.

Though she was grateful beyond measure for her mother’s untiring support, they were each other’s too-close, ever-present reminders of what they’d survived, trying to act like they weren’t, trying to convince each other and themselves that they were okay. Beth had needed something else, too, something until now unnamed.

This was a handhold, a backstop Beth didn't know she'd been desperate to find. It wasn't just the confirmation of what she’d concluded about her father. The ability speak plainly to someone she didn't feel the need to pretend around was an exhale of a breath held too long. At least one person in the world not only understood, but really and truly didn't want or expect her to act like any of this was normal or okay, or that she would ever be the same again.

Veera – or Mika, as she often went by online – made good on her offer of a sympathetic ear. Their correspondence started off with awkward, grammatically correct messages about the less painful details of their lives. Mika told her about the farmer’s market three blocks away where she went walking early in the morning before it got busy, and the plant stand there that her best friend and roommate Niki (also a Leda) had to ask her to stop buying so many succulents from.

At first, Beth tried to chatter like she used to, but there were no safe subjects. What had happened had touched all of her life. Normally, she’d talk about school, or sports, or her friends. But she was trying to start all over again at a new school with all the struggles that came with it. She didn’t have the time or energy for sports anymore, and talking about them hurt, now. Running used to make her heart sing. But no matter how she tried, there was no joy in the motion anymore. To top it all off, it was as hard to connect with old friends from her old life as it was to try and make new ones. She spent most interactions either doubting her own character judgement or dreading the moment people recognized her Leda face from the news.

She didn’t know how to talk about any of it to anyone. Maybe she could have if it had been just the clone thing or just the dad thing. But the two were inextricably entangled, and she still couldn’t even explain it to herself. It was all unbelievably horrifying, and any time she tried to be honest about it, people ended up disbelieving or horrified. Shocker.

Maybe, though, it wouldn’t be weird to talk about it with Mika. Mika already knew the worst. Beth didn’t have to hide that hurt from her to keep from shaking her world, or to keep her dismissal from hurting Beth. Maybe that’s what was hurting the most: the feeling that even after escaping, she still had to pretend to be okay. That compulsive stifling feeling choked her whenever it bubbled back up. On her bad days, a simple “how are you?” could reduce her to a blank face plastered over a raw tangle of emotions held motionless her own iron grip.

But Mika mentioned having bad days, too. Days came where she was too scared and nightmare-weary to do anything but make herself some tea and soak up some sunlight in the safety of home. Beth could casually say things like after those two months, i still twitch every time i hear a door open, and i wish my body would quit feeling like it doesn’t exist, my legs feel numb. It barely broke the surface of what it was like in her head, but was discomfiting enough for people that she held her tongue at school.

Sometimes, Beth got tired of constantly thinking about all this shit and tried to lighten things up. On one comically disastrous occasion of cultural exchange, she liveblogged Mika her attempt at eating the infamous Scandinavian lutefisk, along with an audio recording of the incoherent horrified noises she made after tasting it. In return, she received a recording of someone, presumably Mika, laughing harder than she’d ever heard anyone laugh before. It made Beth smile. Not many things did, back then.

Slowly, as the formality fell away from their transcontinental conversations, their heavier stories seething below the surface seeped in. Beth had been in therapy long enough now to know that she couldn't just recklessly unload on people the way she did in counseling sessions. But a counselor couldn't always provide the same kind of unspoken solidarity that someone in the same boat could.

Bit by bit, slipped into the chats that were becoming a daily occurrence, they talked about monitors, about what the experiment had really all been for, why that both was and wasn’t important, and how they'd discovered they were a part of Project Leda. Putting words to the pain hurt, a lot. But the ability to lay out long-unspoken truths in front of each other, knowing they were believed in the way that only people who have shared something can, was a healing kind of pain instead of the festering one Beth had been living with.

The two of them had more in common than they'd thought, growing up a world apart. Beth's experience raised under the subconscious wariness of her father's hovering thumb felt a lot like what Mika described growing up largely isolated with her former guardian. But sometimes, whenever they realized that something they'd both thought was normal was pretty not, they got a good laugh out of it despite the weight of their pasts. Mika seemed somewhat accustomed to her normal being considered pretty weird, so she usually took the revelations in stride better than Beth did. Beth wouldn't find out for at least a year after meeting her that it was because of her Asperger's, since it was a topic Mika seemed quite sensitive about.

Mika explained it once, in a conversation full of long pauses on her part and watching the typing icon disappear and reappear on Beth’s. The way she put it, it just meant that her brain worked a bit differently than most people's, processing sounds and sights and all the information it took in at different speeds and with different emphases. The difference could turn everyday things like the sound of a refrigerator running into a splitting headache, or something as simple as the soft texture of her favorite jacket into a kind of bliss. That alternative way of processing also extended to things like words and emotions as well. Sometimes, it took her longer than the world was willing to wait to process them into something that made sense. It often made communication tricky, trying to compensate for the gap in mutual understanding with most people. The world and the people in it could be so overwhelming sometimes, so fast and bright and full of noise and uncertainty and bewilderingly arbitrary social conventions. But the biggest challenge was other people expecting her to do everything the same way they did, ignorant of the fact there were any ways to exist other than their own, and completely oblivious to the fact that she was already putting in at least twice as much effort to communicate with them as they were with her.

And yet, even coming from such a different perspective, Mika gets it. Beth says sometimes i dream of drowning and its not a nightmare and i wake up not knowing how to feel, and Mika says I still dream of burning and wake up not knowing which fires are real, and they both say yeah. And they sit there across the world from each other knowing these things, knowing that it doesn't fix anything. And yet, it does change something. Nothing's any better, really. But somehow, the knowledge that someone else understands makes it a little easier to bear.

And that's just it. Somehow, without ever even having seen her face, Mika sees Beth clearer than anyone. All of her, all the ugly parts she hides so that they can't hurt anyone, and all the good parts that she also hides so that nobody can hurt them or take them away from her. Mika sees all of that and then just tells Beth another story about the Northern Lights she sees on the regular. Apparently, in Finnish, they’re called "fox fires." Beth hardly ever sees the aurora, living relatively far south in a bright city. But her stories about life in the metropolis by the lake intrigue Mika as much as the tales of the twisting green lights do her. And Beth can talk about something lighter again while not having to pretend that the heaviness isn’t there, too, even while she’s just once more trying and failing to explain poutine. For her, the weight never really goes away. But the effort of pretending she’s not carrying it takes more out of her than the weight itself. Mika understands that.

Maybe that’s why Beth had talked it over with Mika first, even before her mom, when she was considering taking a gap year after she hopefully managed to finish her senior year of high school. (God, it was so hard to think about English or math or whatever when just that morning she’d woken from a nightmare about being back in a not-home house that she never escaped.) Beth's mom had been so unbelievably supportive of Beth's recovery, even while she herself was adjusting to the wrenching change in both of their lives. It was both inspiring and a little intimidating. If her mom managed to run a household and raise a daughter all on her own, even while trying to heal from her own trauma, how could Beth not do her utmost, too? She was grateful to be able to talk to Mika about it, to get a reality check from someone who both understood her situation intimately and didn't make Beth feel that pressure of expectation. In the end, Beth did decide to take a year or two off before considering college, and her mom was again nothing if not supportive. Beth figured, after this entire mess, she deserved some time to herself to work on sorting her shit out, and her mom agreed.

After graduating with reasonable if not flying colors, Beth worked a series of part-time and odd jobs that didn't stress her out too much, letting herself focus on her own healing. In between her mom's support, seeing a counselor regularly, and the security of having a friend she could really trust, Beth felt like she was making progress. Slow progress, sure, but progress, nonetheless. Considering that she had seventeen years' worth of lies to unbelieve and emotional trauma to finally acknowledge, Beth figured that there was only so much she could do in the three years she'd had.

Her days were still hard. Getting sleep and waking up and eating and even just existing were still so fucking hard sometimes, and it was horrible. Some days, the thinnest sheet trapped her in bed like it was a car pinning her down. It felt so stupid for such simple things to be so hard. But then her therapist would remind her that that’s what mental illness and trauma was, that this was what the wounds in her mind and heart made her feel like. And once in awhile, sun broke through the shadows, and she had a day that reminded her what an okay day felt like – that okay days existed. That more might.

Now, she’s here, lying in a bright living room so far from home, with her dearest friend in the next room. She’s comfortable, except for the knot in her neck from sleeping oddly on the couch. The soreness pales in comparison to the usual tensions that are so strangely absent. Beth can’t remember the last time she felt this okay. She’s not steeling herself to go to work. She’s not dreading the next conversation with her mother that goes quiet as they both remember awful things they don’t mention. She’s not bracing herself for the next time her brain runs rampant worrying about whether she’ll run into the subject of her restraining order somewhere in the city and have to wonder if he'll honor it.

None of that reaches her here. There’s something about this quiet little pocket of space. It’s overrun with a proliferation of potted plants, from the sprawling lacy-leafed monster in the corner, to the fern peeping out of the kitchen, to the vine cuttings spilling out of an oddly familiar leaf-shaped glass bottle on the sill. Sunlight streaks through leaves and windowpanes and across the colorful patchwork of rugs on the floor. In the midst of it all, Beth is held by a palpable aura of gentleness. It holds her so softly that she doesn't need to hold herself in. It's like the layer of caution that she always keeps wrapped between herself and the rest of the world has simply dissolved away. In this moment suspended in morning light, she is okay.

She feels safe.

The realization undoes something in her. She feels the tears starting, and she expects the taut tension of involuntary stifling that always comes with them to return. But it doesn’t. She lies still and soft on the couch with the water creeping over her cheeks, breath occasionally catching but flowing freely. She savors it in the quiet.

The soft thunk of an ill-fitted door opening breaks into her odd reverie. Mika’s up. Beth sniffs and scrubs at her eyes halfheartedly, but she can’t hide them right now and she doesn’t want to. Mika notices immediately, and comes trotting over with quiet steps, leaning forward all concern.

"Beth," she says softly. She shifts from foot to foot like a nervous cat, watching Beth with enormous eyes. Beth has never met anyone else with such an intense stare. Or maybe it's just the fact that Beth knows beyond all doubt that she's being looked at by somebody who really sees her in her entirety. It's like she's staring right into Beth's soul. But Mika was able to do that long before they saw each others' faces. They've shared so many thousands of words over screens and seas, so many emotions that have gone otherwise unspoken, so many too-early mornings and too-late nights on the fringes of each other's dawns and dusks.

“What’s wrong?”

Finally, a flash of that sick tension runs through Beth’s body. It’s been okay when Mika has asked that before, when it was just silent letters on a screen. But out loud, the question falls on her ears like every well-meaning inquiry she’s ever had to scramble to find an acceptable answer for. The strain begins to cinch tight around her again like coarse ropes across barely-healed skin, ready to compel her to replace the truth with something safer. Her arms and legs tied, she begins to freeze, railing against herself for tainting the softness, the safety of this place.

"Beth." Mika says again, softer but more urgent.

In the gap between thoughts created by hearing her name, Beth seizes the chance to redirect them to the present. She clings to the welling in the corners of her eyes, the warmth of the sun caressing her back. The leaves of trees whisper outside the third-floor window in a mild breeze. The brightness spills over the sill and across Mika’s asymmetrical, half-craggy face and lights up tufts of her short hair as she steps closer. The couch dips as Mika sits down next to her, tilting Beth toward her.

Without meeting her eyes, Mika lifts a hesitant hand that hovers in the air between them, uncertain yet reaching. Her gentle palm falls onto Beth's forearm as softly as a floating leaf. The fingers curl around Beth’s arm just below the wrist, firm but not tight. Comforting.

The softness surrounding Beth seeps back into her, saturating her. As the memory fades like a ripple into water, the tension slackens. But it leaves her shaky, with traces of a familiar ache in her neck muscles, one that goes deeper than the simple stiffness from the couch. She sucks in a few unsteady breaths while Mika gives her arm a gentle squeeze.

“Sorry,” Beth says in a small, awkward voice.

Mika tilts her head. “Why?”

“Uh, I didn’t mean to bring all – this mess, in here.” Beth rubs the back of her neck with her free hand. “It’s so... soft, and okay, and – I don’t wanna ruin it,” she says, trailing off into a mumble.

“Hey.” Mika moves her hand from Beth’s arm to her shoulder. When Beth looks at her, she’s looking right back. Mika's eyes dart down to the floor for a moment, but then return to hold Beth’s with deliberate steadiness. “It’s alright. It’s like this here because we wanted it to be safe to be messy. You’re not ruining anything.”

“... Oh.” She’s steadied by Mika’s fingers curling around her shoulder, by the tendrils of sunlight spreading across her head and back and arms. Mika’s voice is small but steady, and somehow it comes from the same throat that makes that huge pealing laugh. It’s so strange how they sound nothing alike. Until yesterday, Beth hadn’t heard her voice since the lutefisk incident. They’d mostly kept to text and pictures. It had seemed easier, the way it gave them both plenty time to think before they spoke through their different uncertainties. Beth was already planning her trip before they realized that they’d never actually called each other. By that point, it sounded like more fun to meet in person the old-fashioned way.

"I'll make you some tea." Mika abruptly stands and lets go of her. Beth is sad to lose the contact. She flits across the room toward the kitchen in her soft cotton pajama pants, complemented by yet another black graphic tee for yet another Scandinavian metal band Beth's never heard of. Or at least, she'd never heard of them before Mika, who has something to say about all of them, and now Beth knows more than she'll ever need to.

Mika moves in and out of view behind the half-wall that separates the little living room from the kitchen. The fronds of the fern on the counter make a green rustling as she brushes by them. It sends soft feathered shadows waving across the wall opposite the window. Beth hears the rush of water boiling out of sight, and soon sees steam rising from the mug that's being handed to her.

"It's hot," Mika says unnecessarily. She sits down next to her again, this time leaning into Beth with her arm. Beth’s glad for it.

"Have you ditched the bags and gone loose leaf?" Beth says, eyeing the fragments of bright green leaf free floating in her mug.

"It didn't come in a bag. It came from the window."

"The window?"

"It's basil tea. For the fear and pain. Five large fresh leaves in two hundred and fifty milliliters water. We grew it here."

Beth takes a cautious sip. It's surprisingly sweet, and the savory smell of the steam rising from it curls into her sinuses. The aching in her head and neck begin to relax. It's unfamiliar, but it feels like home should, just like everything else here.

"Thanks," Beth says. On an impulse of craving closeness, she leans her head onto Mika's shoulder with a sigh. The sensation of contact deepens as Mika leans against her, too.

Beth holds the cup close, fingers wrapping around its warmth. She takes another sip and gets a bit of leaf stuck in her teeth. The way she scrunches up her face trying to dislodge it pulls a tiny laugh out of Mika.

“You don’t have to be okay here,” Mika whispers. “You can just be. That’s what we do.”

Beth finds her eyes wet again, but she smiles while she sets her mug down and wipes them away. “Kinda already wish I could stay here,” she says with a chuckle.

“... That’s probably not impossible.”

“Really?” Beth asks wryly. “Not even twenty-four hours, and you’d already be willing to put up with me?”

“Twenty-four hours and twenty-seven months.”

Beth melts a little even while waving the idea aside. “I wasn’t serious.”

“I know, but... weren’t you looking at the school here?”

“I mean, yeah, but... really, my mom just thought I deserved a break to get away for a little while. She’d saved up a bit, and I didn’t want to make it a big deal or anything, but she really wanted me to. She knew I wanted to come see you. Checking out the school was mostly an excuse. I know it’s a great place, but... I don’t really think it’ll help with what I wanna do.”

“What do you want to do?”

Beth sighs and leans back, looking at the ceiling. Mika follows her so that they’re still shoulder to shoulder, and pulls her feet up to tuck them in cross-legged.

She flounders for a moment, trying to find where to begin. She hasn’t told anyone this yet.

“This Leda crap has been kind of awful, right? It’s screwed so many of us up. But there’s only, what, a few hundred of us? And that’s not the only reason things get messed up.” She swallows. Her eyes trace irregularities in the ceiling: a knot in an exposed wooden beam here, a sealed and repainted crack there. “Kids like me are a dime a dozen. There’s so many people out there going through hell, just because they got stuck with people who are hurting so much that they hurt other people. And then they go on and hurt more people. It’s a cycle that’s really fucking hard to break.”

Breaths that have become harsh force her to pause and let them lengthen again. A touch on her knee draws her eyes down to a hand resting on it palm up, offering. Beth takes it. Mika squeezes her fingers in reassurance.

“When I was little, I wanted to be a cop like my dad, did you know that?” Mika, eyes wide, shakes her head. “Yeah. That was always my plan. I used to think he was so brave. Wanted to be just like him.” She shudders. Mika grips her hand, steady. “Even if I could do it better than he did, the system is still full of people like him. It’s broken. I couldn’t – I can’t end up like that. I can’t keep being a part of this shit. I want to actually help people.

“I never thought about it before I met you, but the people you brought in to do therapy programs and all for CYGNet? They’re amazing. The stuff I’ve gotten from them has helped me so much. And I don’t know what I’d do without my regular therapist. These people really help people like me. Like all of us. Those are the kind of people I wanna be like.”

Beth’s voice drops and becomes small and secretive, but firm. “I’ve been looking at the social work programs at home. There’s some really good ones at the uni near where mom and I live now. And that’s the city where I grew up. I know how things work there. I know it won’t be easy, but. I could really... do stuff.”

Silence stretches. Beth looks at Mika, only to be completely thrown off by an expression she can’t make heads or tails of. “What?”

Mika’s face is blank yet soft, only barely hinting at her thoughts in the faintest crinkling of her eyes. It’s funny, how quiet her face is most of the time. Beth never would have guessed, going off her online impressions of her. Mika’s so expressive and eloquent with her written words. In person, she is much more subtle. But even after only a day spent around her, Beth is already starting to see how her movements speak volumes in a language of their own. The flickering of her hands flares to life with excitement. The casual shake of her head tosses her hair out of her eyes even when it’s not in the way, like she’s clearing the slate of her mind. And much like Beth these days, she goes very still and tense when she’s getting uncomfortable or overwhelmed, the way she did after a particularly loud whistle at the train station. It shows in her shoulders. They’re soft now though, and she just watches Beth and squeezes her hand once more.

“You’re really amazing, you know,” Mika says.

“Wh- huh?”

“Well.” She looks away and turns their hands over, but doesn’t let go. “After the awful things you’ve been through – nnnh! Don’t pretend,” she says, looking back sharply as Beth begins to protest that she didn’t have it that bad. Mika knows her so well. Beth can’t help but laugh a little. “After all that, you just want to help people. All I ever want to do is get away from them, most of the time.”

Beth quirks a brow at her with a bemused grin. “Really? Because setting up and running an organization that provides mental health resources and extremely important information to a few hundred people is a really shit way to not help people.”

“I never talk to most of them! And CYGNet only has one hundred and thirteen members, not hundreds.”

Beth rolls her eyes with an exaggerated motion. “Yeah, so, you’ve somehow convinced, what, a whole freaking third of a huge group of scared strangers to trust you?”

“A lot of that was Niki and the press team, she’s way better at talking to people th–”

“And you’ve been careful enough and clever enough to keep them and all the information you got from DYAD safe and secure? I can’t even imagine the organization and, and cyber-security and whatever the hell else you put into all this. That you still put in. And look what you’ve done. You’re helping so many people. You found something only you could do, and do it really damn well.”

Mika looks down into her lap, half her face flushed. The raised ridges and swirls of the scarred side are pink, but not as dark. Her shoulders curl in a little, but she doesn’t pull her hand away from Beth’s. If anything, she holds on a little tighter.

“You don’t have to like talking to people to help them. You don’t have to be someone you’re not,” Beth says gently, then pauses as a new thought occurs to her. “Why did you talk to me?”

Mika gives a tiny shrug, eyes still downcast. “You reached out to me. Most people are scared, or suspicious, or hard to talk to, but you were just... honest. You told me exactly what you needed, even if that meant sharing your painful secrets with a stranger. I...” She trails off, looking toward the closed door of Niki’s bedroom. She blinks slowly.

“It reminded me of something Niki said a long time ago. When we first met. We didn’t trust each other at first. But when things got bad, we needed to, and she just... We’d only known each other for a day. She told me a true story that people had called her crazy for, and trusted me to believe her. And when I told her about... my Asperger’s, about being autistic, she just told me something about herself, too, another thing that a lot of people get cruel about when they know. This was back before she came out, too. She was hardly out to herself, then, really. But she told me anyway. ‘Secret for a secret,’ she said.”

“She’s really special to you.” It’s not a question. How could it be, with the sheer softness of love rounding out every syllable and making Mika melt into the couch and into Beth’s shoulder.

“She’s... yes. She’s my family.” Mika looks out the window, and the bright light dances over her nose. “I don’t remember ever having one.”

Beth slings an arm around Mika’s shoulders and smiles as she curls closer into Beth’s side. “Looks like you’re part of a pretty big one, now,” she says, waving a hand at the dozens of photos on the walls circling them.

“I guess so.”

“No need to guess. The evidence is right there. And I’m right here.”

Mika turns those huge eyes on her again. She’s done that multiple times now, even though Beth knows she rarely looks people in the eye. Eye contact is too much, most of the time. She describes it as too intense, too distracting, too intimate. Meeting those eyes – so like Beth’s own, but filled with such a different kind of light – Beth thinks she understands a glimmer of it. If every eye she met were as overwhelmingly expressive as Mika’s, Beth probably wouldn’t meet them all either. It keeps taking her by surprise, coming across their eloquence in an otherwise quiet face. Caught by that gaze, every emotion that lives in it touches Beth. Right now, it’s soft with adoration but shaded with a gradient of doubt. The width and depth of Mika’s eyes reveal a clear view of a vulnerable, aching, healing heart that spent eleven years starving for the love it needs and still hasn’t forgotten the famine.

It might be breaking Beth’s heart. No wonder Niki is always showering her with hugs and kind words and gentle hands on rounded shoulders. Maybe one of these days, Mika will have spent long enough finally getting to soak up all that affection that she won’t look at Beth like this when she says the simple truth.

“Hey. Here I am. Really.” Beth’s voice is a little choked up. She pulls Mika into a proper hug with both arms. Mika squeaks in surprise at being squeezed so emphatically, but returns it all the same. God, but she gives the best hugs of anyone Beth’s ever met. All contact and even, firm pressure and steadiness. “It’s so damn good to see you. I can’t believe you’re...” real, Beth thinks but doesn’t say. I can’t believe I didn’t imagine you. I can’t believe you’re just as kind as your words. I can’t believe how good it feels to be around you. “I can’t believe I’m really here.”

Mika doesn’t say anything. For a moment, one of her hands leaves Beth’s back to fiddle with something, then comes back to give her a little squeeze that Beth returns.

Beth’s phone buzzes a notification behind her on the little glass-top table next to the couch. The table’s wooden base is a round blob carved into the shape of a very fluffy and very ugly sheep with curly horns. Beth’s arms loosen from their embrace as she turns to look at it, bemused. No one but Mika really messages her except for her mom. But if it’s morning here, it’s about time for bed at home. She checks it, just to be sure she’s okay.

But it’s not from her mom.

Mika reaches out to gently grasp her forearm again as Beth shoots her a quizzical look and opens the message.

3mika: I'm glad you're here.

Beth's heart quails.

To think, that her darker days might have kept her from ever being in this moment. Beth might never have gotten to this point, hurt but healing and here. Here, she's seven time zones and an ocean away from the cycle of pain she grew up in, barely aware she needed to escape. She might well feel safer right here in this crossroads of time and place than she has at any other in her entire life. It's a realization that's as humbling as it is nourishing.

Already, the distance this journey has taken her has given her so much perspective. She wasn’t sure, before, whether the work she’s been considering was just a response to what she’s been through – or just a way for the cycle to keep her within its spiral. But she’s seen what Mika can do, what Beth could do one day, if she keeps on.

It won’t be easy. She’ll go back, and deep-seated memories will try to drag her back into small dark places. But being here, even for only a few hours, has already changed her. She can change, and she can grow, and she is already tapping into new strengths that her past has yet to reckon with. She is here, right now, in spite of all of it. And today is not a dark day.

“Me too, Mika. I’m glad to be here, too.” Beth’s tongue stumbles over the name, because she’s never said it out loud before, only read it on a screen.

Surprise sends Mika’s eyebrows up and her eyes wide again, like she’s never heard it before, either. Maybe she hasn’t. She tilts her head again like a question, touching her ear and looking at Beth.

Beth grins. “Mika.” A smile blooms on that curious face, lighting it up. She’s the one who pulls Beth into a hug this time, and it’s both fierce and soft. When she lets go, she leans into Beth’s side again and they stay like that, arms over shoulders and comfortably curled up together, soaking in the warmth of each other’s presence like leaves drink in light. The simple sweetness and companionship of it soothes Beth’s heart, seeking its way into the aching crevices. It’s an odd feeling, both seeping inward and flowing outward, trickling all the way through her until it warms her cold toes in a way that feels both new and strangely familiar.

A long, sleepy yawn announces that Niki’s awake now, too. Soon, she comes out of her room stretching her arms over her head. Mika reaches a hand out toward her to wave in greeting, though she leaves the other arm draped over Beth’s shoulders. Niki smiles at them. That kind smile, too, adds to the warmth washing through Beth. Her feet practically itch with it, and with a growing sensation of déja vu. She fidgets her toes against the floor as Niki walks over to brush Mika’s outstretched hand like a touchstone.

“How'd you sleep? Isn’t that couch the comfiest?” she says to Beth.

“Well, I’ve got a crick in my neck, but I still slept better than I have in years.”

Niki turns her sunny smile on Beth. “Good to hear it. Weird, though, I nap there all the time and my neck’s always fine. Huh. Anyway, I think I might make waffles. You two want some breakfast?”

Mika nods, but doesn’t let go of Beth yet. Beth is lost in thought, trying to remember what that light, floating feeling in her feet reminds her of.

“Sweet.” Niki ambles toward the kitchen and bends down with pursed lips to peer at the fern perched on the counter. “Hmm. You still look a little pale. Let’s get you some more sun.” She brings the plant over to the living room and is fussing over settling it on the sheep table when it clicks for Beth. A physical memory washes over her, for once welcome. She lets it fill her, refreshing like a deep breath of cold morning air her lungs are suddenly hungry for. She flexes her calves and ankles, her legs remembering the joy and freedom of stride and strike. Her bones are finally recalling how they once carried her with ease, even while they're adjusting to the new weight of who she's become. Fully alive again for at least this moment, her soles are practically prickling with the desire to eat up ground.

“How about you, Beth? Do you like waffles?” Niki asks, fluffing the fern’s crinkly green leaves. Mika squeezes her shoulder.

Beth grins and plants steady feet on the blue rug in front of the couch. “Save a few for me? I think I might actually go for a run first.”

#orphan black #clone club #veera suominen #beth childs #niki lintula #mk ob #mika ob #herbs on the windowsill au #lizzie taking up space #lizzie's adventures in writing #welcome back yall #long post #fic #ob fic #that a garden will grow

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