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outsiderisin · 4 years

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Unsaid Goodbyes

13 sat in the UIU briefing room as Director Henry addressed the entire room which was filled with new and experienced agents. The canman and the cart her team had been chasing was larger than they had originally thought. It actually had a can too and they had half waltzed into it without noticing till nearly too late. 13 was still worried about Alex, Agent Time, who had been targeted mostly for his anomalous ability of showing time down. He was alright but his brush with near instant death had shaken the man.

Sure it wasn’t the first time, the team had faced death but it felt different this round. Like there was something more to it all that no one was telling them. 13 remembered getting momentarily separated on the retreat, just long enough to get a message that made no sense. “Tell him thank you for unleashing us and him for godhood.” She couldn’t shake the feeling she knew who it was referring too at least and it made her worried as Henry’s next notion had her on her feets.

“Yes, Agent Reality?” Henry asked with caution as 13 took a breath to steady herself. Her team looked concerned at her as the room focused on her.

“I mean no disrespect Sir, but are you out of your fucken mind? This thing is out of our league and you know it and I mean you know it, Director Henry. If we send in new agents to this, you might as well just shoot them right now. Even us with experience don’t got a chance.” 13 said trying to bay her anger as Henry tensed on her empathization. He took a moment to level himself and sternly replied,

“Noted Agent Reality. Now sit back down.”

“You know I am right, and you keeping secrets from us isn’t helping.” 13 shot back in whispered hiss, before heading back to her chair and flopping down in it. Henry glared at her as 13 stared back. The room was silent and was fixated on them. No one had ever seen Director Henry angry like this before and Agent Reality had never interrupted a briefing before. Laura, Agent Space, gently touched 13’s arm but 13 shrugged it off. After a moment, Henry growled out;

“Got more you wish to say 13?” “Yeah, this thing knows you. It said you unleashed it Henry. It said that with the fullest of belief which makes it hard not to believe it. And now you are telling us that the whole UIU is going to go gunning for it; something ain’t right, but it does confirm something Henry. You know it, but you wouldn’t tell us what it is.” 13 said, letting her frustration seep into her words, before adding “This ain’t about protecting the world this time. It’s something to do with your personal pride and you don’t care who gets killed because of it. And for that, Fuck you Henry…. Fuck. You.” Henry was visibly shaking in anger. His face was red as veins bulged on his temples. His fists tight enough that his fingernails had drawn blood while his knuckles turned white. His jaw was clenched as his eyes burned through 13 who had stood back up as her chair was now on the ground behind her. 13’s hands were in firm fists as she stood like an imposing wall.

“Agent Reality. GET OUT!” Henry’s voice boomed, “You are no longer part of the UIU and don't think ‘that’ phone call wouldn’t be going to the foundation.”

13 tensed at the threat as the room seemed shook at what was happening. 13 could hear the agents whispering as she struggled to keep herself from lashing out. She had to act quick when John, Agent Theory, asked,

“What phone call? 13, what does he mean?”

13 didn’t have time to respond as she saw Henry was going to tell everyone her secret. She let off a blast of energy which slowed down time like Alex’s ability, but no one could hear her and Henry; who had been tossed back into his chair. Henry looked scared, as 13 floated off the floor as she came closer. Her fists clenched tighter as she then spoke up, “Henry, I wish you hadn’t done that. I respected you, trusted you and believed you were a man to rely on, but this changes everything. I don’t know what is so personal between you and that canman, but I will not take a part of personal vengeance. You even taught us that personal vengeance only leads to ruin. It clouds your judgement.” 13 spat out holding the whole room at a stand still, the whole building actually.

“13, you need to calm down. You are right, I was out of…” Henry began to jumbled out as 13 spoke up again,

“No. Just no.”

“What?!” Henry asked, confused as 13’s head hung low as her long hair fell into her face.

“No.” 13 replied about ready to cry “You broke my trust, my belief, my respect for you Henry. It took a lot to reveal that I was once a D-class in another reality. That here is not my home and that because of certain events that I can hardly understand, my old anomalous ability reactivated. An anomalous ability that is so dangerous that it has an instant termination call from all sides. So no, I wouldn’t take your apologies or excuses. You crossed the line, Henry.”

“You can’t kill me 13. It will cause too much suspicion. Calm down, we’ll think of something. Together as we always do. 13? 13?! 13!” Henry yelled as 13 closed her eyes as she froze Henry. She then looked back to her team who looked scared for her as she felt her heartache at what she was about to do. She then took in a deep breath, still fighting tears as she thought hard and ordered.

“Forget me.”

13 thought of every person she had met or seen and put them in a list in her head as she thought of them all just forgetting her and false memories or dreams taking those blank spaces. It was hard to do as she also focused on pictures, videos, notes, documents and anything else that might show that she ever had existed, before she teleported herself away. Everyone then unfroze and seemed confused. Henry guts told him something was wrong as Laura, Alex and John looked concerned as nothing in front of them. A flipped chair between them all, did not help. Henry gently calmed everyone, saying it might have been an effect from Laura’s team entering a can zone. Might of been a word trigger. He postponed the briefing to later as he rushed back to his office to look into his files, but found nothing out of the ordinary. But he felt deep regret as he could only recall a blurred shadow in his mind.

Alex was outside as Laura lit a hand rolled cigarette next to him, John was rushing through his notebook, looking at blocks of missing text. Alex scrolled through his phone for any clue when a MTF member called him. “Time, something just happened. Like everyone who has worked with your team, can’t remember certain things. Like get Henry on the line now. The O5 council needs to speak with him, ‘cause O5-5 has been affected. Hurry.” “GOT IT.” Alex chripped back loudly, rushing off to find Henry as Laura sighed. She went to pass the cigarette to someone that wasn’t there, which confused her.

“John… I think we are missing someone” She said

“I know. My journals are missing anything that could point to who. Do you think they might have got caught by that thing and after getting all the information from them, it deleted them from history for insurance?” John replied, trying to make sense of why their ability was no help either.

“Potentially. Let’s give that to Henry. It makes enough sense to be possible.” Laura said, looking around for a moment as John gently nudged her towards the door.

Over at the Foundation, O5-5, Orchid, sat on the faceless video call as Henry had little answers other than the hypothesis his agents had come up with. She ran her hand through her hair in concern as she rattled her brain for any ideas to add. She tried to recall details: a name, appearance, items they had, and places. A house came to mind as she cut in with its address before apologizing. She was assured that it was okay this time due to the matter at hand. A MTF was deployed shortly after the call had ended.

Commander Matthew drove the van finding it odd he didn’t really need the map as he drove. It wasn’t his normal team with him as they were still getting checked out for the memory loss, but it felt eerie and uncomfortable. He made sure to glance occasionally at the map as the team whispered behind him. He finally called back.

“Hey, you all okay back there. Not used to this quiet of trips.”

“Sorry Commander, we just didn’t want to distract you. We’re just surprised you are spearheading this operation after your team and all.” replied Diana

“Yeah. How spooky is it with not remembering this agent person?” Jax asked

“How does it feel?” Lexi inquired

“It’s definitely scary to suddenly not remember someone, but not very eerie given our line of work. How it makes me feel though… I feel…. Heartbroken.” Matthew replied as he did feel that way. What he could recall was that he had feelings for this agent and that the agent liked him back. That they were close and their disappearance left gaps of daydreams in his mind. It hurt, deepily. He then added “We had grown close, too close. I don’t quite remember it, but I feel it. It’s just, we never told each other that we loved one another. I now wish I did.” “Damn. Sorry we asked Commander.” Jax said as Matthew saw the other two nod in the mirror.

“It’s fine. I just hope they are still alive and do remember us. Otherwise, I hope they are still alive at least.” Matthew said as they pulled up on the house. Him freezing at seeing the house was decaying. Him looking at a photo that had to be recent as he ordered the other to gear up now. The door was open and the house was just as bad as the outside. No furniture, no color, no signs of life as Matthew carefully swept the place before stopping in the master bedroom’s bathroom. The cabinet was open with a new box of plasters as he remembered a woman standing in the old sands of another dimension, pointing a gun at him. “You got Agent Drummer killed back then. I hate you and just want you to feel my pain over and over again till you break” she growled as sand swarmed around her, but he couldn’t recall her voice properly as the plasters covered a part of her chest and arm. He then snapped back as Lexi grabbed his shoulder.

“Commander, are you okay?” she asked, concerned as Matthew recorded his finding. It was a fake memory, but the feeling of it felt right. The woman had once hated him for his hand in her partner's death. It then clicked as he pulled out his cellphone to call Orchid. Another lead had been found.

13 had teleported herself, crying, to her family’s old abandoned estate. No one knew of it, not even Henry, so she knew she was safe for the time being. She felt like shit as she focused on fixing the interior part and getting some basic items running, hating the fact she didn’t think of emptying her old bank account before making herself disappear. She then sat on the old couch from her childhood and pulled her legs up to her chest while she tried not to think. She didn’t want to think of her friends and allies she left behind. Nor her found family or Matthew who must be going mad over not remembering her. She actually doubted the bend would fully work on him or even Clef for that matter. She then closed her eyes as she tried to keep out her own thoughts as she felt sick. Another home and family gone in an instant. She then fell apart, crying her eyes dry before falling asleep as nightmares plagued her dreams once more.

#scp #scp foundation #scp ocs #13 aka agent reality #bobby aka agent drummer #alex aka agent time #john aka agent theory #laura aka agent space #director henry #orchid aka o5-5 #O5 council #agent matthew #13 is a mess #this was a rollercoaster #to write #please enjoy and sorry for the errors #warning: long #language

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glamrockmonarch · 5 years

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ok official request for u to tell us all the history or timeline u have in ur head of what goes down w current bri n rog that leaves them single like I'd rly like to kno what happened to sarina n anita n how the taylors n May's react to their dads having young new wives or gfs n them having kids (I'm sorry I dont mean to hound) but mostly about sarina n anita I'd be fascinated by what storyline u have about what happens to them,, I lov ur work btw adore ur blog take ur time tho tysm 4 ur work!!!

Alright, so I have already done this for Roger and for Brian with their respective so’s.

But since you wanna know about their families I will do it again and it might be a bit different (cause I want to make it that way):

ROGER:

You getting together with Rog was a big deal only in your heads, Roger was concerned because he had ended things with Sarina after meeting you and it was no secret among his children that you two had great chemistry - Lola went as far as to point out to her sisters and brothers that you did not even need money or attention, so your relationship with their father could not be something out of interest.

When you and Roger finally happened it was a bit chaotic, you had not intended on going fast with him, the two of you tried to keep things on the down low and you would never be each other’s date at events - even if you were attending the same party. It was difficult for you to let people know you were together because of the age gap and the fact that Roger did divorce his wife because of you - Sarina was not happy to be pushed away by a man she trusted and loved so much, although since they did not have children together it was somewhat an easier separation for the drummer from his previous ones. For his children, it was too, even though the British press had the time of their lives destroying you on the regular, Roger’s kids were supportive of their father no matter what. Which meant that they had your back.

It was great having this kind of support, and since you worked on PR you would always lend them a hand where needed, of course, Roger loved to see how you had a more normal job and still remained relatable to his kids. Especially helping out Rufus and Lily with their social media accounts.

It took you about three months to be living together and after that only a year to be married. Undoubtedly, you were going at quite fast, not wanting to spend any time, you got to know each other to perfection, Roger taught you about cars and music, he challenged you intellectually, which most people would not know: he was well informed of the political issues worldwide and you sometimes found yourself having arguments about something you read on the newspaper earlier.

Having children was not exactly on the plans, you did not intend on getting pregnant during your second year together...this scared you as much as telling his children about the relationship had scared you before, with the difference that now Roger seemed to go pale at the sound of the words that came out of your mouth.

“Pregnant!” Roger’s eyes were blown wide as he stared at you, half-hoping it was a joke.

“Due in March, love!” You tried to give him an honest smile, but it did not reach the corners of your eyes as it should have.

The thing was, this baby was not planned...still, Roger was not mad, how could he be? You were young, smart and gorgeous! But most of all, you were scared - he could tell. Roger was scared too, but at least he had already taken care of his other children, he knew how to do to at least half-ass the parenthood thing. You did not. Then came the topic of the press. God, they would judge him so badly for having a child at his age... and what about his grown-up children?

Rufus was pissed. Not pissed at you, he was simply mad knowing that Roger told him last. The first to hear the news was Rory because Roger needed to vent to someone, this happened to be his eldest daughter, who listened and then shot her father back with a simple “so what?” She showed her father support and comfort, encouraging him by telling him what a great father he had always been, even through his separations all of his children always knew that things would be alright because Roger remained close to all of them, never leaving them and never turning his back on them. Rog felt a lot better, which translated into you feeling a lot less scared since your husband was so positive and supportive. When you decided on telling his children about your pregnancy half of them already knew, and they were all happy for their father, enthused by the thought of a new family member to have fun with in the future.

BRIAN:

THE WORLD WAS COMING TO AN END THE DAY BRIAN AND ANITA SPLIT UP. Anita was simply not into Brian’s self-doubt, she was old, yeah...but she was also so full of energy! She just wanted to keep performing and her husband obviously craved for his wife to be home with him when the days were rough and the nights rough. So, yeah...Brian was left single again. And the man does not know how to be alone, he is bad at it. He needs someone to rely on, someone to share his busy thoughts with and someone to listen to when he is being too stubborn to make sense of anything but his own patronizing ideas.

Lucky for Brian, you were in town. You met at the studio while he was working on the guitar version of 20th Century Fox Fanfare, he was on the studio for not too long but while he was there you were told to remain in the mixing booth in case the musician needed anything. Of course, working the job of an assistant was not what you intended for when you took the internship at Universal Music, but it paid some money you needed and it also got you a chance at learning a little bit more about music production.

Brian was a gentle giant, you learnt that first time you met, and while you did not expect much more than that first time meeting you were pleased to see him again after the highly publicized separation from his wife. You did not intend on being flirty, though Brian was no twelve-year-old boy and he caught on to your hair flipping and nervous laughter. He took his chance as he saw it approach with every step he took towards the exit door at Universal, and you were pleased to hear him say he would love to have you drink tea with him sometime. The rest was history.

You became an item, although not too fast as Roger had done with his girlfriend... no, no, no. You went at it slow and methodically, as one would do when one follows the scientific method.

Observation. You were possibly opposites in many areas, personality wise the two of you got along, curious and creative, you hated to be proved wrong but loved to hear good reasoning. You had scientific training too, but you pursued a different career path than originally intended. With a degree in Chemistry, you were a good rival to Brian’s rhetoric.

Hypothesis. Brian was falling in love with you at the same exact rate you were falling for him, even as you probably should not you would always try to follow him in his adventures into the farms when he worked on his environmental projects. Saving badgers was nothing that concerned you too badly, but you took interest in it after watching Brian and Anne take care of a couple of them. Animals seemed to become something you loved.

Experiment. Telling his children about you. Uh...that was one of the ugliest diners you have ever attended. There was yelling, there was crying and sadly some of it came from you too. His daughters were not having it when you told them about your relationship, and it got worse when Ruth saw the ring already lying on your finger.

Things were tense with his children for the whole of six months while you planned your wedding, the only moment when it softened was after the actual event when it was more than clear to everyone around that your and Brian were meant to be, each of you giving equally dorky and adorable speeches at the beginning of the reception.

It was also hard for Brian’s kids to come to grips with the fact that they were going to have a little half-brother or sister soon once you announced your pregnancy plans to them. Brian was aware that you wanted children from the moment you got together, and who was he to keep you from having them? Of course, compromises were made and you agreed on having a single baby together was only for the best. Ruth, Jimmy, and Louisa were reluctant to accept this new addition to their family, but once your baby boy was born, the storm seemed to clear off. The May children were astounded at the sight of the little man, all of them looking incredulous as the baby shared a huge resemblance to Brian - therefore to them.

“Is that a curl?” Ruth wondered, glancing down at her own curls while Brian laughed.

Of course, the boy had the darkest scarce hair on his head, but there did seem to be some waves already twisting whatever few hairs there were...

#anon #asks #brian may concept #present day stuff #present day roger x reader #present day roger x young reader #present day brian may #present day brian may x reader #present day brian may x young reader

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thebrotherswholoved · 5 years

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Day Two: “Secret Santa”

“How much homework d’you got?”

Sam’s sitting there, staring at the eraser of a number two pencil, trying to make it implode. Maybe if he has no pencil he won’t have to take the exam?

“Sam?”

Oh, yeah. Jessica’s sitting cross legged on the table beside him, legs knocking into the nearby bookcase just filled to the brim with knowledge: useless and obsolete knowledge, at least. That section of the library is history. Oh, shit, will Gottesman put Assyrian culture on the test?!

“Samuel Winchester, what is going on inside that big head of yours?” Jess flirts in that shameless, up-in-the-clouds air about her that made the entire junior varsity football team fall for her.

Sam thinks she’s cute. That said, he doesn’t think she’s hot and she’s definitely not his type, but she’s sweet and bakes delicious pastries for the environmental awareness club’s bake sale. She’s the type of girl any guy, girl, or anybody in between would be lucky to have—just not him. Jess would be his type if she had short hair. And a more phallic pubic area.

He’d usually make conversation and let his dimples do the talking to protect her from eminent rejection on his part, but he’s too fucking stressed right now to do anything but dissociate and stare at the damn pencil he’s holding.

“Mostly elephants,” he mutters, flicking at the wood like a syringe. He just came from his anatomy course, so he’s in a doctor-y mood.

The blonde snorts a bit, covers her nose, and tries to cover up her ‘crudeness’ with a dainty chuckle. “Elephants? Why the hell are you thinking of elephants, beautiful mind?”

“I’m trying to remember who they trampled in that one damn war, I think it’s the Persian one?” He blows air through his teeth and rolls the writing utensil away until it hits his pre-calculus book. “And I’m wondering if they can trample me.”

“You’ll do fine, Sam,” she slides off the table, tiny plaid skirt pleating with her in the motion. That just reminds him of how scratchy his own plaid tie is against his throat. Damn uniforms. “It’s Reid you need to worry about. He’s gonna kill my grade.”

This draws a chuckle from the lanky freshman, long hair—that just barely abides by the dress code—dangling in his face.

“Like, with the test or wielding a sword?”

“Yes,” Jess sighs and prepares to leave to her next period. “Alright, nerd. Good luck with your elephants, or whatever.”

Sam lets out a breathy laugh and turns to look out the window at the snow falling into the bleak mid morning air. He wishes he could go and frolic out there—maybe even practice his physics by zigzagging around an open area to prove his hypothesis.

“You Sam Winchester?”

Jumping out of his skin, he turns around and is met with the sight of Benny, a boy in his English class he’s never spoken to.

“Uh...yes?” He stutters. This boy is intimidating: he’s a sophomore in remedial English, a jock, and a total dickhead to freshmen. Especially nerdy freshmen on the robotics team—great, this is exactly what he needs right now.

Before he can offer any explanation up for why this guy is even in a library, a tiny package is being tossed into his hands and Benny is trudging away to go beat up a mathlete or something.

The small box is wrapped in what appears to be the Sunday comics from the newspaper, and judging by the date on one of the sides, it was yesterday’s paper. The job is poor, but the haste the person who wrapped it was in seems to be kind-of endearing. There’s a dollar store bow taped onto the top of the gift, and Sam feels an impulse to be as delicate as possible.

Unwrapping the thin pages covering the present and opens the box, he feels his heart drop into his lungs at what he finds. It’s a necklace with thin black thread and a golden pendant in the shape of some ancient figure’s head. Whoever this is, they know his style—it’s absolutely beautiful.

When he takes it into his hands like a wounded dove, a note falls out as well. It’s written with erasable ink on loose leaf notebook paper and folded into uneven quarter squares. The handwriting betrays the presentation, however: beautiful cursive glides across the page in narrow strokes of the shitty blue-inked pen used. In shock, he holds the note in both hands while still thumbing over the blunt edges of the pendant.

“Sam—

God, that’s a pretty name. It suits you, you know: you’re totally a Sam. A pretty name for a pretty boy.

Sorry, I know I suck at this. I’m only writing because I’m too fucking scared to talk to you. I know I’ll blush and make a fool of myself, and that’s not attractive.

We’ve met twice before. Once in September when you worked as a library aide and helped me find a barcode on a Stephen King novel, and again last week when I picked up your pencil for you. Each of those times I had to walk away and breathe for a minute because you just stole my suaveness and tore it to shreds.

I want you to wear this necklace all week, okay? My uncle gave it to me, and I don’t do jewelry, but I thought it’d look good on you. It’s supposed to bring good luck to the wearer, not like you’ll need it. You just seemed stressed.

If I have the balls, I’ll try to talk to ‘ya soon in person.

Awkwardly,

Your Secret Santa”

Sam’s hands are trembling with excitement and trepidation at the note. Someone likes him—and it’s a boy! He’s never had another guy like him, ever. Then again, who the hell is this boy with beautiful handwriting?

He helped a lot of people check out books in September, and lots of Stephen King novels were read. Plus, he’s fucking clumsy. Literally everyone has had to pick up his pencil for him!

It’s gonna be a long week.

•••

For the love of god, let his suffering end!

Sam wants to bang his head against his locker until he passes out. This secret santa gig coupled with the seven midterms he’s taken this week have successfully steeped his brain in anxiety. His last exam period just got let out and yes, elephants were included; but now, he has no distraction from the whole crush scenario.

The brunette fumbles with his amulet in stressed anticipation as his steps quicken, eager to escape the hallway and get to his locker. Over the course of the last five days, he’s received four more notes in the same penmanship, each one making his heart melt. Sure, it’s no Shakespeare but it’s unique and genuine.

His fingers tremble as he twists the number dial lock: 11-02-83. Expecting a note, he begins scanning the blue walls of the metal rectangle but finds nothing but that same handwriting in erasable marker on the door:

“Turn around.”

By the time he whips around, brown hair following the action, he’s neglected to notice that everyone has cleared the hallway and is standing with giddy smiles and phones on video. The only person in this vacant zone is a tall, sandy blonde, freckled junior boy.

Holy shit. It’s Dean fucking Smith.

His hand finds the necklace and he tries to breathe but can’t find the willpower to do so. His brain is running into overdrive trying to decide if this is real or not. The footsteps nearing him seem real and so do the calloused, motor-oil-stained fingers wrapping around his hand in a cautious way, Dean being afraid of something Sam can’t quite place.

“Do you like it?” The boy runs his fingers through his spiked hair and bites his lip, cheeks blushing beet red.

“I love it.” Sam blurts out before his sense of reason can muffle his heart. Exhaling, he relaxes a bit. “I really love it.”

Dean lets out a breath and lets his thumb roll over the soft skin on the back of the younger’s hand. “Good. I hoped you would.”

Sam’s heart is beating out of his chest like in one of those wacky cartoons, but he steps forward and rocks back on his heels. Bravery rising, his hand moved from his own to cup under his chin, emerald eyes scanning his lips.

“Can I kiss you?”

He doesn’t need to ask twice. Sam’s head seems to nod before the taller man can even finish his question, and Dean’s eyes flicker with excitement before closing. The gap between them is closed and chapped lips meet peppermint chapstick as their worlds collide. The crowd is cheering but they can’t hear anything. Both boys are far too focused on the taste of each other on their tongues and when they part, Dean drops his bad boy act and wraps him in a hug.

Arms tightening around his neck in response, Sam brings his lips to Dean’s ear and smiles.

“You have beautiful handwriting.”

#wincest #sam x dean #sam/dean #fanfic #drabble #10 days of wincest #prompt list #see my other post #this took awhile sorry

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ournewoverlords · 5 years

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Some thoughts on Ted Chiang’s Exhalation (2019) - Part I

Ted Chiang is such an interesting writer to me. His stories have such a neutral, impersonal tone — “thinky” scifi, theoretical what-if experiments far from our own space and time — and yet they wrestle with such “base” human questions at their core. I was surprised at how emotional I felt after reading some of them — not during the reading but days afterwards, when I’d watch a kid play in the park and think about the main character in “The Lifecycle of Software Objects”, who’d tried very hard to give her digital-child-pet a life in a society that didn’t consider it worthy of one. There’s something about his stories that have an impact on you a long time later, like a stone dropped too clean to make an initial splash, but whose ripples keep echoing in you for a long time after.

Some of these questions are very familiar, if you’ve read his previous collections, most famously Stories of Your Life and Others: how much free will do we really have; how do we go on in a world without it; how the instruments we use (language and writing, as much as any other tech) changes the way we think, feel, and relate to each other; the purpose of science and the purpose of stories, and the lines where they cross, the spaces where they meet. Is it the actual, physical, objective-laws world that shapes who we are, or the stories we tell ourselves about it? What is an individual — a single, measly person, whose only contribution might be to write a good account of the advent of a piece of tech, not even the inventor but a bystander — to the clockwork machinery of the universe? Why are we, in the cosmic scheme of things?

Maybe it’s all the Black-Mirror/Hunger-Games type stuff that’s been so en vogue in the last decade (not to mention a certain orange-y harbinger of the apocalypse sitting in the White House, and the impending existential dread of climate change), but I found this to be a very “hopeful” collection. Optimistic may be too strong a word for it, but it grapples with these dystopian concepts and comes out the other side with the sense that just as the world grows and changes, we will find a way to grow and change, and whether time turns all our great pyramids and gods to dust we are still a species worth saving. The time machines, robots, parallel universes, and knowledge that we have no destiny except the final entropy of all living things will challenge who we are, but not the missive to be kind to one another. Even if our fate is already set, we can still choose what kind of person we will be when we meet it.

In that way, perhaps the way the narrators, men and women and nameless alike, are so detached and analytical in the way they observe the world reflects not a limitation of Chiang’s character range, but a purposeful choice by the author. They’re scientists, struggling with a crisis of faith: whether they’ve made the correct diagnosis, drawn the correct conclusion, stuck to the right course, let go at the right time. Watches, who’ve met their watchmaker. Yet what makes this collection particularly beautiful — particularly scifi — to me is how these mechanical people become not gods in the future, but simply more human.

Some thoughts on the individual stories under the cut, warning for spoilers. I’m splitting this into two parts because I'm a rambler, so this one is the first half, going up to The Lifecyle of Software Objects:

The Merchant and the Alchemist’s Gate

“Nothing erases the past. There is repentance, there is atonement, and there is forgiveness. That is all, but that is enough.”

I think it’s so fitting that a short-story collection about the meaning of stories opens with a scifi retelling of Scheherazade’s One Thousand and One Nights, the most famous short-story collection of all. It’s not just the ancient Middle East setting that’s familiar, but the structure: like those fables, this is a nested story-within-a-story, a series of morality tales told to a narrator who has his own secret not yet revealed to the audience. The scifi piece here is the time-machine gate, which, like Arrival, raises questions about the nature of time and free will — what if the future were an unchangeable scroll, the script set in ink before your birth? What does coming to know that future do to the knower?

Some, naturally, use it to enrich themselves, the classic time-travel trope of traveling to the past to give yourself the stock picks (note: buy Apple). Another underestimates the trickery of fate, while the wife uses it to rescue her future husband. But what’s interesting here is that in all these cases, no one actually changes the future; nor did they actually change the past, because the past *must* have happened for the future to happen. The characters merely make the future that was going to happen happen, much as Arrival’s Louise felt obligated “to act precisely as she knew would.”

It’s a theme that Chiang is clearly very interested in, with his most famous demonstration in Stories of Your Life / Arrival. If we already know the future, and we can’t change it no matter what we do, that implies that we don’t have free will. The narrator’s attempt then, to change his future by changing his past must fail: a harsh word spoken and a wife lost can’t be taken back, unless it was meant to be.

But the fact that the narrator tried, I think, and went to great lengths trying, is the human element of this fantasy story. That his first instinct was to try to save his wife says something about him; the fact that it was all futile in the end doesn’t negate the meaning of his attempt. I keep remembering this Vonnegut quote about Lot’s wife, who was warned not to look back at the burning city, and yet couldn’t help doing so as she fled: “but she did look back, and I love her for that, because it was so human.” The merchant didn’t do the wise thing, but he did the human thing — isn’t that the part that hurts?

The one issue I had with this story is that I’m always completely frustrated by time-travel-paradox stories — it doesn’t make sense to me that a universe wouldn’t branch off, so to speak, the moment you step back in time, so I don’t understand *why* both our past and future can’t be changed. I had the same issue with Arrival, where I couldn’t explain to myself why Louise HAD to walk the future she saw. (It doesn’t help that I’ve been watching a lot of Future Man, which has a lot of fun jumping around and sticking its fingers up the timey-wimey stuff.) But I also believe that the technical puzzle really isn’t the point of this story — accepting the premise that the past and future are unchangeable even if we can see them, the idea is that we still have to live them anyways, and it’s through those experiences that we change, grow, become different people. If the merchant hadn’t tried to rescue his wife, would he have found his atonement at the end? Or are there things we have to do anyways, even if we already know the answer?

Exhalation

“But in truth the source of life is a difference in air pressure, the flow of air from spaces where it is thick to those where it is thin.”

A slim little story, with a steampunk texture and some lovely little flourishes of prose in between extremely in-depth explanations of what I can only describe as “mechanical stuff” (you can see the technical writer in Chiang here — he really likes describing machinery). But the thing I really like about his work is that even as he’s a geek fascinated by the technology itself, he’s even more interested in its impact on the people and societies that find themselves confronting it. “How the world works” affects how people think about themselves, and that philosophical bent gives his stories more depth than “wouldn’t it be cool if…” thought experiments to me.

On the one level, “air” here could be a direct substitution for “energy”, where the second law of thermodynamics states that the entropy of an isolated system can only go up, never down. Every breath we take adds another little bit of disorder into the universe. That makes sense: none of us are renewable machines, all our civilizations have finite lifespans, and the way we’re treating the planet doesn’t exactly bode well for at least extending what time we have. Hell, we’re literally screwing our own oxygen, and unlike the narrator’s species we don’t need the laws of physics to do it for us.

What I thought was particularly interesting, though, was reading this on a more metaphorical level. I’m stretching it here, but it’s the idea that people don’t really live on the materia itself, but on the immaterial ebbs and flows between them; that it’s the passing of thoughts, energy, love, emotion between us that keeps us alive. When that exchange dies — whether because we all became the same, or because we’ve lost interest in seeking that exchange — so too do we as a species.

Is it language that keeps us alive, or having another person hear it? Is it the having of food, or having someone with whom to share it?

What’s Expected of Us

“My message to you is this: Pretend that you have free will.”

Oh ho — I had a thought after reading this that the order of the stories in this collection is really deliberate, because this book is in tension to itself. That is, one story will set out one hypothesis/POV, and then the next will straight-up rebut it, a kind of self-conflict that reminds me both of the history of science and the way I think most conflicts occur in real life: not as wrong vs right, but as different POVs that can all be true at once without being the whole of the answer, if there is one at all.

The previous story ends with a spirited declaration that “the buildings we have erected, the art and music and verse we have composed, the very lives we’ve led: none of them could have been predicted, because none of them was inevitable.” This one states exactly the opposite: everything HAS been predicted and you have no choice at all. And unlike the first story, which had the same deterministic view, the conclusion here is not to accept fate but to fight it. (Not that you can choose whether to fight it or not - it’s all been predetermined!)

First of all, this is based on a real, ongoing debate. I was really interested in neuroscience (and in particular, its impact on ethics and law) back in college and it reminded me instantly of those experiments showing that our subconscious brain makes a decision before we become conscious of making it (see Neuroscience of free will), and I’m sure experiments like Libet’s were the inspiration behind the Predictor device here.

The fact that no one’s reacted the same way people do here is probably because we have such a strong perception of our own free will that it just seems too obviously ludicrous, and the experiments so far are nowhere near as iron-tight and replicable as the Predictor. Even so, though, think about all those factors you didn’t have control over that have such an impact on where you are today: where you were born (living at the poverty level in the U.S. still puts you at the top 14% worldwide!), your parents, your genetic temperament, much of your health and innate interests and talents. There’s a lot of that vaunted genetics-plus-environment explanation for behavior that is out of our hands, and what’s left over is all the most interesting — and hardest to define — stuff.

I’m not saying that Chiang is making a social critique here, but I think that’s what this whole collection is grappling with: “the stuff that’s left over.” Keep in mind the narrator’s two assertions at the end that will pop over and over again: the idea that civilization depends on “self-deception” — or what others might call “stories” — and that “some of you will succumb and some of you won’t, and my sending this warning won’t alter those proportions”. Because in the last story, following the narrator’s command to believe in the lie is exactly what alters them.

The Lifecycle of Software Objects

Confession: I’m rarely blown away by Chiang’s prose. It does the job but it doesn’t get me swooning over a sentence or a particularly striking piece of imagery. Reading TLoSO, the piece of fiction I kept thinking of was Philip K Dick’s Do Android Dream of Electric Sheep, a novella whose wordcraft I also thought was workmanly — and yet, I fucking love that book, and this was my favorite story in Exhalation.

I can’t fully articulate why, but it’s the one that’s stuck with me the longest, even as I think The Truth of Fact, the Truth of Feeling is more original and Anxiety is the Dizziness of Freedom is more satisfying. It’s one of the most “conventional” stories here, along with Anxiety (perhaps unsurprisingly, it’s these two that are being adapted for Hollywood) — actual characters, with actual story arcs, and things happening and people making difficult choices. It has a cinematic vision and a fully-realized world that spans decades in the lives of those characters. It even has bad guys, and an interesting conceit: what if we had these digital pets called “digients” that could learn how to talk, and play, and maybe even learn up to the level of a adolescent while looking like these adorable baby animals that you’ll never have to feed, clean, or scoop poop after? You can just “suspend” them when you’re tired of playing with them; they’re cuter than robots, less pressure than children, and less work than pets!

The length and conventionality of the narrative structure makes it easier to relate to, I think, but it’s not why I love it and keep juxtaposing it by the Philip K Dick book. Like Androids, at the heart of it I think this is a story about empathy. It’s a story about the inherent terror, sorrow, and joy of parenting, of being in charge of another life with no guardrails or handbook on how to do it. It’s about being an adult, with jobs, responsibilities, and obligations to others in constant competition with values inside yourself, and never knowing if you got that balance right.

It’s about being a parent in a society where you’re in constant negotiation with it about the value of that life: where the only worth your child has is how much money they can make someone, how intelligent they are (and therefore how much money they can make someone), how much utility they have as an academic exercise or as a sex partner. No matter how much you love your kid, the only thing the world cares about is whether they have some “use”, and this story is all about that feeling: the heartache of justifying an existence you don’t feel should need justifying. Because whether the digients are actually robots, children, pets, or replicants — that’s probably never going to be proven, in the same way we’ll never know if Deckard really is a replicant, but that’s not really what matters here. What matters is whether you choose to believe these digital-pet-things deserve to be treated like they have value, the kind of value that makes torturing them evil, discarding them cruel, and keeping promises to them matter.

Ana and Derek choose to believe. They’re one of the very few who do, and they raise their digients as children, teaching them how to read, finding them play partners, taking joy in their successes, wrestling with how to discipline their mischief. When disaster strikes — Blue Gamma goes bankrupt, Data Earth becomes obsolete, making obsolete their first-gen digients with it — they shield them from the “finances”, much as many parents do. Then they throw themselves into the only mission that matters anymore: finding a way to give them some semblance of a good life.

Hope after hope turns them down, until at last, there’s only a startup called Binary Desire, who proposes to make the digients sex bots, in the most reasonable language: they won’t be sex slaves, this is a voluntary modification to their circuits plus careful training that will make them genuinely fall in love with their chosen partner. A kind of directed puberty, if you will — after all, none of us asked for our hormones and crushes, right? How is this different from being born with the oxytocin to connect to our family, or Blue Gamma’s initial breeding of the digients to be cute and cuddly? How is it different from being born with a certain set of genes that might predispose us to like certain people — isn’t that even the whole concept of “soul mates” in the first place, an innate connection?

But there’s something so particularly awful about Binary Desire’s proposal, as nicely as they couch it as completely consensual. First of all, as Ana and Derek argue, the digients are still child-like (though this is partly because of Derek’s and especially Ana’s own protectiveness). But even if they had the consciousness and experience of full adults, it’d still feel wrong to me, and I think it’s because of this: forcing a being to remake themselves just for our own convenience feels instinctively wrong. Binary Desire’s customers could find real, living, actually-consensual partners — but they don’t want to, they’d rather pay for a bot hardwired to fall in love with them, and delude themselves that this is “ultimate sexual fulfillment” for both parties.

That’s what feels so wrong about the way the digients are treated in the society of TLoSO in general: it’s not that people are actively torturing the bots a la the Kubrick/Spielberg movie A.I., it’s just that they’re always doing whatever is most convenient for themselves. There’s no friction, no “cost” — and therefore, no weight to any of their relationships either. It’s not that they’re selfish people, any more than us fast-swiping Tinder and all those other dating apps whose entire goal was to remove friction from “the dating market” — the point is that technology has made these options available that were never there before.

What if you could push a button and make your child perfect? What if you could pay a few bucks and make someone love you forever? Binary Sense even tries to get around that by demanding the relationship be built up over months rather than a cheap-and-quick hormonal hit because people want “real” relationships not slaves — but that friction is still artificial, just like how Ana tells Derek at the beginning that it’s weirder to pretend the digients are real animals. Getting things easy, getting things without having to pay any emotional price or sacrificing anything of yourself — that cheapens you.

I think that’s the answer to Binary Desire’s question that tortures Ana: “why can nonsexual relationships with them [like yours and Derek’s] be healthy, while sexual ones can’t?” It’s not really about nonsexual vs sexual — it’s about investing in a relationship honestly, vs trying to take shortcuts. Binary Desire’s emotional training program to get the digient to fall in love is still a shortcut, just a different kind of shortcut. People are always looking for certainty, the certainty that they’ve made the right choice — certain profit, certain success, certain returns for their investment. But relationships aren’t about certainty; at every moment, you might be fucking this all up forever, but it’s that discomfort that you makes you human. It’s about knowing that you might have nothing left to show at the end of years of effort and being willing to make that effort anyway.

The people in Ana and Dereks’ society suck because they’re unwilling to take the risk that might they invest everything, and still be left with nothing. They would never give their whole heart to something, whether that thing was a person or a bot. They want the kind of relationship that you can suspend, rewind, erase, start over if you don’t like it anymore. And that’s no relationship at all.

That’s why Ana and Derek are the heroes here, or at least, as much “hero” as you can be in a Ted Chiang piece — because they do pay a price for their love for Jax and Marco and Polo. They don’t take the easy way out of suspending them even as it costs them relationships, jobs, their statuses in society. At the end, Derek even sacrifices the one thing he discovered he wanted throughout the years— his chance with Ana — to make what he hopes is the right choice for Marco. They’re not the same kind of parents at all — Ana is more protective, Derek more willing to push them, to let them struggle out of the idea that’s needed for growth — but the crucial thing is both put that duty above themselves, the moment they became “parents”: the duty to try to give them a good life.

On the one hand, you can say it’s a sickness, valuing robots that might never gain more intellectual capacity than a 10-year-old over other human beings; on the other you can say they have this kind of fundamental integrity, this will to treat them right. Because Ana promised Jax she wouldn’t suspend him, she won’t. Because Derek can sacrifice neither Marco nor Ana, he lets Marco make his own choice, and lets Ana blame him. Maybe those are all terrible choices, maybe it’s not what you’d think of as a happy life, but — being able to have empathy with something outside yourself, even if it’s a thing not a person, being the kind of person who stands by their promises and doesn’t squirrel out of the hard decisions — isn’t that the kind of life you can live with? And isn’t that all we can ask for in the end?

---

Second half coming up!

#exhalation #ted chiang #exhalation review #book review

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radiumeater · 5 years

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Alcoholics Anonymous is famously difficult to study. By necessity, it keeps no records of who attends meetings; members come and go and are, of course, anonymous. No conclusive data exist on how well it works. In 2006, the Cochrane Collaboration, a health-care research group, reviewed studies going back to the 1960s and found that “no experimental studies unequivocally demonstrated the effectiveness of AA or [12-step] approaches for reducing alcohol dependence or problems.”

The Big Book includes an assertion first made in the second edition, which was published in 1955: that AA has worked for 75 percent of people who have gone to meetings and “really tried.” It says that 50 percent got sober right away, and another 25 percent struggled for a while but eventually recovered. According to AA, these figures are based on members’ experiences.

In his recent book, The Sober Truth: Debunking the Bad Science Behind 12-Step Programs and the Rehab Industry, Lance Dodes, a retired psychiatry professor from Harvard Medical School, looked at Alcoholics Anonymous’s retention rates along with studies on sobriety and rates of active involvement (attending meetings regularly and working the program) among AA members. Based on these data, he put AA’s actual success rate somewhere between 5 and 8 percent. That is just a rough estimate, but it’s the most precise one I’ve been able to find.

I spent three years researching a book about women and alcohol, Her Best-Kept Secret: Why Women Drink—And How They Can Regain Control, which was published in 2013. During that time, I encountered disbelief from doctors and psychiatrists every time I mentioned that the Alcoholics Anonymous success rate appears to hover in the single digits. We’ve grown so accustomed to testimonials from those who say AA saved their life that we take the program’s efficacy as an article of faith. Rarely do we hear from those for whom 12-step treatment doesn’t work. But think about it: How many celebrities can you name who bounced in and out of rehab without ever getting better? Why do we assume they failed the program, rather than that the program failed them?

When my book came out, dozens of Alcoholics Anonymous members said that because I had challenged AA’s claim of a 75 percent success rate, I would hurt or even kill people by discouraging attendance at meetings. A few insisted that I must be an “alcoholic in denial.” But most of the people I heard from were desperate to tell me about their experiences in the American treatment industry. Amy Lee Coy, the author of the memoir From Death Do I Part: How I Freed Myself From Addiction, told me about her eight trips to rehab, starting at age 13. “It’s like getting the same antibiotic for a resistant infection—eight times,” she told me. “Does that make sense?”

She and countless others had put their faith in a system they had been led to believe was effective—even though finding treatment centers’ success rates is next to impossible: facilities rarely publish their data or even track their patients after discharging them. “Many will tell you that those who complete the program have a ‘great success rate,’ meaning that most are abstaining from drugs and alcohol while enrolled there,” says Bankole Johnson, an alcohol researcher and the chair of the psychiatry department at the University of Maryland School of Medicine. “Well, no kidding.”

[...]

AA truisms have so infiltrated our culture that many people believe heavy drinkers cannot recover before they “hit bottom.” Researchers I’ve talked with say that’s akin to offering antidepressants only to those who have attempted suicide, or prescribing insulin only after a patient has lapsed into a diabetic coma. “You might as well tell a guy who weighs 250 pounds and has untreated hypertension and cholesterol of 300, ‘Don’t exercise, keep eating fast food, and we’ll give you a triple bypass when you have a heart attack,’ ” Mark Willenbring, a psychiatrist in St. Paul and a former director of treatment and recovery research at the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, told me. He threw up his hands. “Absurd.”

Part of the problem is our one-size-fits-all approach. Alcoholics Anonymous was originally intended for chronic, severe drinkers—those who may, indeed, be powerless over alcohol—but its program has since been applied much more broadly. Today, for instance, judges routinely require people to attend meetings after a DUI arrest; fully 12 percent of AA members are there by court order.

Whereas AA teaches that alcoholism is a progressive disease that follows an inevitable trajectory, data from a federally funded survey called the National Epidemiological Survey on Alcohol and Related Conditions show that nearly one-fifth of those who have had alcohol dependence go on to drink at low-risk levels with no symptoms of abuse. And a recent survey of nearly 140,000 adults by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that nine out of 10 heavy drinkers are not dependent on alcohol and, with the help of a medical professional’s brief intervention, can change unhealthy habits. We once thought about drinking problems in binary terms—you either had control or you didn’t; you were an alcoholic or you weren’t—but experts now describe a spectrum. An estimated 18 million Americans suffer from alcohol-use disorder, as the DSM-5, the latest edition of the American Psychiatric Association’s diagnostic manual, calls it. (The new term replaces the older alcohol abuse and the much more dated alcoholism, which has been out of favor with researchers for decades.) Only about 15 percent of those with alcohol-use disorder are at the severe end of the spectrum. The rest fall somewhere in the mild-to-moderate range, but they have been largely ignored by researchers and clinicians. Both groups—the hard-core abusers and the more moderate overdrinkers—need more-individualized treatment options. The United States already spends about $35 billion a year on alcohol- and substance-abuse treatment, yet heavy drinking causes 88,000 deaths a year—including deaths from car accidents and diseases linked to alcohol. It also costs the country hundreds of billions of dollars in expenses related to health care, criminal justice, motor-vehicle crashes, and lost workplace productivity, according to the CDC. With the Affordable Care Act’s expansion of coverage, it’s time to ask some important questions: Which treatments should we be willing to pay for? Have they been proved effective? And for whom—only those at the extreme end of the spectrum? Or also those in the vast, long-overlooked middle? For a glimpse of how treatment works elsewhere, I traveled to Finland, a country that shares with the United States a history of prohibition (inspired by the American temperance movement, the Finns outlawed alcohol from 1919 to 1932) and a culture of heavy drinking. Finland’s treatment model is based in large part on the work of an American neuroscientist named John David Sinclair. I met with Sinclair in Helsinki in early July. He was battling late-stage prostate cancer, and his thick white hair was cropped short in preparation for chemotherapy. Sinclair has researched alcohol’s effects on the brain since his days as an undergraduate at the University of Cincinnati, where he experimented with rats that had been given alcohol for an extended period. Sinclair expected that after several weeks without booze, the rats would lose their desire for it. Instead, when he gave them alcohol again, they went on week-long benders, drinking far more than they ever had before—more, he says, than any rat had ever been shown to drink. Sinclair called this the alcohol-deprivation effect, and his laboratory results, which have since been confirmed by many other studies, suggested a fundamental flaw in abstinence-based treatment: going cold turkey only intensifies cravings. This discovery helped explain why relapses are common. Sinclair published his findings in a handful of journals and in the early 1970s moved to Finland, drawn by the chance to work in what he considered the best alcohol-research lab in the world, complete with special rats that had been bred to prefer alcohol to water. He spent the next decade researching alcohol and the brain.Sinclair came to believe that people develop drinking problems through a chemical process: each time they drink, the endorphins released in the brain strengthen certain synapses. The stronger these synapses grow, the more likely the person is to think about, and eventually crave, alcohol—until almost anything can trigger a thirst for booze, and drinking becomes compulsive. Sinclair theorized that if you could stop the endorphins from reaching their target, the brain’s opiate receptors, you could gradually weaken the synapses, and the cravings would subside. To test this hypothesis, he administered opioid antagonists—drugs that block opiate receptors—to the specially bred alcohol-loving rats. He found that if the rats took the medication each time they were given alcohol, they gradually drank less and less. He published his findings in peer-reviewed journals beginning in the 1980s. Subsequent studies found that an opioid antagonist called naltrexone was safe and effective for humans, and Sinclair began working with clinicians in Finland. He suggested prescribing naltrexone for patients to take an hour before drinking. As their cravings subsided, they could then learn to control their consumption. Numerous clinical trials have confirmed that the method is effective, and in 2001 Sinclair published a paper in the journal Alcohol and Alcoholism reporting a 78 percent success rate in helping patients reduce their drinking to about 10 drinks a week. Some stopped drinking entirely.I visited one of three private treatment centers, called the Contral Clinics, that Sinclair co-founded in Finland. (There’s an additional one in Spain.) In the past 18 years, more than 5,000 Finns have gone to the Contral Clinics for help with a drinking problem. Seventy-five percent of them have had success reducing their consumption to a safe level. [...] In the United States, doctors generally prescribe naltrexone for daily use and tell patients to avoid alcohol, instead of instructing them to take the drug anytime they plan to drink, as Sinclair would advise. There is disagreement among experts about which approach is better—Sinclair is adamant that American doctors are missing the drug’s full potential—but both seem to work: naltrexone has been found to reduce drinking in more than a dozen clinical trials, including a large-scale one funded by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism that was published in JAMA in 2006. The results have been largely overlooked. Less than 1 percent of people treated for alcohol problems in the United States are prescribed naltrexone or any other drug shown to help control drinking. To understand why, you have to first understand the history. The American approach to treatment for drinking problems has roots in the country’s long-standing love-hate relationship with booze. The first settlers arrived with a great thirst for whiskey and hard cider, and in the early days of the republic, alcohol was one of the few beverages that was reliably safe from contamination. (It was also cheaper than coffee or tea.) The historian W. J. Rorabaugh has estimated that between the 1770s and 1830s, the average American over age 15 consumed at least five gallons of pure alcohol a year—the rough equivalent of three shots of hard liquor a day. Religious fervor, aided by the introduction of public water-filtration systems, helped galvanize the temperance movement, which culminated in 1920 with Prohibition. That experiment ended after 14 years, but the drinking culture it fostered—secrecy and frenzied bingeing—persists.In 1934, just after Prohibition’s repeal, a failed stockbroker named Bill Wilson staggered into a Manhattan hospital. Wilson was known to drink two quarts of whiskey a day, a habit he’d attempted to kick many times. He was given the hallucinogen belladonna, an experimental treatment for addictions, and from his hospital bed he called out to God to loosen alcohol’s grip. He reported seeing a flash of light and feeling a serenity he had never before experienced. He quit booze for good. The next year, he co-founded Alcoholics Anonymous. He based its principles on the beliefs of the evangelical Oxford Group, which taught that people were sinners who, through confession and God’s help, could right their paths. AA filled a vacuum in the medical world, which at the time had few answers for heavy drinkers. In 1956, the American Medical Association named alcoholism a disease, but doctors continued to offer little beyond the standard treatment that had been around for decades: detoxification in state psychiatric wards or private sanatoriums. As Alcoholics Anonymous grew, hospitals began creating “alcoholism wards,” where patients detoxed but were given no other medical treatment. Instead, AA members—who, as part of the 12 steps, pledge to help other alcoholics—appeared at bedsides and invited the newly sober to meetings. A public-relations specialist and early AA member named Marty Mann worked to disseminate the group’s main tenet: that alcoholics had an illness that rendered them powerless over booze. Their drinking was a disease, in other words, not a moral failing. Paradoxically, the prescription for this medical condition was a set of spiritual steps that required accepting a higher power, taking a “fearless moral inventory,” admitting “the exact nature of our wrongs,” and asking God to remove all character defects. Mann helped ensure that these ideas made their way to Hollywood. In 1945’s The Lost Weekend, a struggling novelist tries to loosen his writer’s block with booze, to devastating effect. In Days of Wine and Roses, released in 1962, Jack Lemmon slides into alcoholism along with his wife, played by Lee Remick. He finds help through AA, but she rejects the group and loses her family. Mann also collaborated with a physiologist named E. M. Jellinek. Mann was eager to bolster the scientific claims behind AA, and Jellinek wanted to make a name for himself in the growing field of alcohol research. In 1946, Jellinek published the results of a survey mailed to 1,600 AA members. Only 158 were returned. Jellinek and Mann jettisoned 45 that had been improperly completed and another 15 filled out by women, whose responses were so unlike the men’s that they risked complicating the results. From this small sample—98 men—Jellinek drew sweeping conclusions about the “phases of alcoholism,” which included an unavoidable succession of binges that led to blackouts, “indefinable fears,” and hitting bottom. Though the paper was filled with caveats about its lack of scientific rigor, it became AA gospel. Jellinek, however, later tried to distance himself from this work, and from Alcoholics Anonymous. His ideas came to be illustrated by a chart showing how alcoholics progressed from occasionally drinking for relief, to sneaking drinks, to guilt, and so on until they hit bottom (“complete defeat admitted”) and then recovered. If you could locate yourself even early in the downward trajectory on that curve, you could see where your drinking was headed. In 1952, Jellinek noted that the word alcoholic had been adopted to describe anyone who drank excessively. He warned that overuse of that word would undermine the disease concept. He later beseeched AA to stay out of the way of scientists trying to do objective research. [...] As the rehab industry began expanding in the 1970s, its profit motives dovetailed nicely with AA’s view that counseling could be delivered by people who had themselves struggled with addiction, rather than by highly trained (and highly paid) doctors and mental-health professionals. No other area of medicine or counseling makes such allowances. There is no mandatory national certification exam for addiction counselors. The 2012 Columbia University report on addiction medicine found that only six states required alcohol- and substance-abuse counselors to have at least a bachelor’s degree and that only one state, Vermont, required a master’s degree. Fourteen states had no license requirements whatsoever—not even a GED or an introductory training course was necessary—and yet counselors are often called on by the judicial system and medical boards to give expert opinions on their clients’ prospects for recovery. Mark Willenbring, the St. Paul psychiatrist, winced when I mentioned this. “What’s wrong,” he asked me rhetorically, “with people with no qualifications or talents—other than being recovering alcoholics—being licensed as professionals with decision-making authority over whether you are imprisoned or lose your medical license?

#ref

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minyoongijjangjjangmanboongboong · 6 years

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The Parting Chapter Eleven

Description: The only certainty in life is death, and it seems to follow Park Jimin. All his life, the icy shadow of death has hung closely by his side, along with the shadow of…something else. Reapers exist to guide the souls of the living to the world beyond. But what happens when a particular Reaper tampers with the natural order and saves a mortal boy’s life? What will they do once their fates become inextricably linked?

Genre: Supernatural, Drama, Fluff, Angst

Pairing: Jimin x (f) OC

Word Count: 8.6k

Tags: Flower Shop Owner!Jimin, Reaper!OC, Non-Idol!AU, Cop!Yoongi, Supernatural!AU

Warnings: Death, swearing and mentions of alcohol, although infrequently

A/N: Hello! This story is pretty quickly wrapping up! Only a few things left to be seen/answered. I hope you guys have enjoyed the ride as much as I have! And I’m already planning for my next fic, which will be VERY reliant upon your interaction! Your choices will directly affect the story. Anyway, I’ll post more information about that once we get to the last chapter of this story. As always, I will respond to all asks received within a day of receiving them, so feel free and feel comfortable sending me anything! And please send feedback, criticism, comments or concerns my way so I can address them.

DISCLAIMER!!! Although I have researched quite a lot about Korean culture, I am taking a fictitious approach to its history. While I am trying to be historically accurate, there are sure to be details that I mess up! Please know that I have no poor intentions! DISCLAIMER!!!

AHH! And I started a Ko-Fi account! PLEASE do NOT feel pressured to donate if you don’t have the money or just don’t want to! There’s no expectation or obligation, but anything is appreciated. Love you guys! https://ko-fi.com/mercurywriter

- Mercury

Previous Chapter – Next Chapter

Chapter One

Masterlist

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Hoseok sat on an old rope swing, swaying gently along with the branches overhead. I stood beside him, leaning against the rough side of a tree with my eyes on the underbrush below our feet. Neither of us said anything for a while. After we’d seen each other, Hoseok had quickly righted himself and jerked his head towards the exit. I’d followed, throwing apologies over my shoulder at Seonhwa as I rushed after her son. She called after us, but after a few moments she simply shrugged and hopped back over the desk to rest with the pharmaceuticals.

It had been five minutes of silence between me and the nurse.

“Hoseok-,”

“Hold on,” he said, shaking his head as he gripped the rope swing with both hands. “I need to think about how to word this.”

I sighed and laced my fingers in front of me. “Please take your time,” I said. I was still avoiding going back to Jimin for the time being.

He glanced up at me from below and shook his head, staring at me properly as he blinked and said nothing for a while. “It’s just crazy,” he said.

I raised my brows. “What is?”

“All of this,” he said.

“Be specific.”

He sighed. “At first…I guess I was kinda suspicious of you because you can see…those things.”

I thought a moment. Could he possibly mean…? “Reapers?” I asked.

His eyes went wide. “They have a name?” he asked.

“Yes,” I said, then sighed. “I’m rather stunned that you can see them too.”

He shrugged and watched his feet as they traced circles into the dirt below. “Every few generations, someone in the family gets the…gene or whatever. It’s always been the women until I was born.”

I stared at the ground. “I…I believe I used to be the same. In the past.”

He cocked a brow. “Which past?” he asked.

I stiffened. “Hoseok, what do you know about me?” I asked.

He sighed and stood up, standing in front of me properly. “My mom and my grandma used to tell stories about the family heritage. Apparently, we come from a line of shamans.”

My eyes widened. So my theories were correct. These people…were my descendants. “Y-You do?”

“The earliest Kwon was named Seonhwa. She lived a really successful life actually. She practiced herbal medicine in the common class, but she wasn’t a shaman. Her grandmother was, and so was her sister…,” he paused to glance at me. “Her sister Nari.”

I shook my head and raked my fingers through my hair. “So she grew up well…,” I breathed, relief flooding through me. “She lived well. Children too…”

Hoseok chuckled. “So you really are her then? You’re…that Nari?” he asked.

I met his dark eyes, scanning them for a long moment, and reluctantly nodded my head. “I believe I am.”

He smiled and chuckled, reaching a hand out to me. “It’s nice to officially meet you,” he said, shaking my hand gently.

“You seem very unfazed by all of this,” I said.

He shrugged. “Once Dad told us that you took a temporary name, I kinda put it all together. The fact that you can see those shadows, the fact that you look like Mom and Jisoo…I don’t know, it made sense,” he said.

I chuckled. “What an odd life you must live if something like that makes any sense to you.”

He laughed and shrugged, his expression softer and kinder somehow, less hostile and distrusting than before. “Weird shit has always happened to me. Hell, this town,” he said with a laugh. “Anyway, I just got a weird vibe from you since the start. And the fact that you could talk to the shadows-,”

“Wait, how did you know that?” I asked.

He raised his brows. “That day at the hospital when Jimin found you in the hallway. I was following that shadow after it left a room and heard your voice,” he said.

“Why didn’t you say anything?” I groaned.

He scoffed. “And risk you thinking I was a crazy person? No thanks,” he said. “What if my hypothesis was wrong? I’m a nurse. I value the scientific method.”

I rolled my eyes. “Anyway…I guess I’m your aunt now?” I asked, furrowing my brow. “That seems wrong.”

He laughed and nodded. “Yeah, well…” His expression shifted as if he remembered something suddenly and he turned to me, arms crossed and eyes wide. “There’s something I’m curious about though. Aunt Nari…she died really young.”

My stomach dropped. Another early death. Just what had happened to Jimin and me all those lifetimes ago? “How young…?”

“It’s hard to say since it’s just a family story, but…twenty-one or so,” he said. “It just seems strange that you’d come to this town as the same age she died at.”

I shook my head. “I…I didn’t come here, Hoseok,” I said softly.

His eyes narrowed. “What do you mean?”

“I can’t explain it but…just know that I was sincere when I said I didn’t remember a life before waking up on the street,” I said.

His eyes went dark as he scanned me. “Nari, you’re confusing me,” he said, tone serious.

I shook my head. “That’s all I can say. Hoseok, my life began two weeks ago,” I said.

Hoseok watched me with confusion in his eyes and his jaw clenched before a sigh escaped him and he nodded. “As long as it’s not, like, time travel or something I’ll accept it.”

I laughed, feeling the mood shift towards something more comfortable and playful and nodded my head. “I am certain that’s not it.” I sighed and ran my hands over my thighs. “But…do you know how that Nari died?” I asked.

He pursed his lips. “Mom said that Grandma Seonhwa didn’t like talking about it. Seems it was a pretty big wound for the family,” he said, then peered around as if looking for spies. He leaned close. “But I have a theory.”

I raised my brows. “You do?” I asked, grabbing his arm. “What is it?”

He glanced at my fingers before prying them off of his skin. He sighed. “Whenever the family keeps something secret, it has to do with all that shaman business,” he said quietly. “It’s not something the family likes to be associated with. Ever since Grandma Seonhwa started doing herbal medicine, nobody in the family worked as shamans.”

My eyes widened. “Even though they were born with that…gift?” I asked.

He nodded. “I’ve always been suspicious. Like, why do we talk to death about all of the other relatives, but we never learn about Aunt Nari and what she did? Why she died? It’s suspicious.”

“So you think…something paranormal happened to her-er, to me?” I asked, shaking my head.

He gave me a heavy, grim look and nodded once. “I think so.”

If Jimin died at twenty-three, and I died at twenty-one then we died around the same time. Coincidences like that didn’t just…happen. I’d lost all faith in coincidence. It had to be connected. Slowly, the dots of my past life began to emerge, their hazy connections taking shape as I uncovered more information.

But there was still something nagging at me.

How did Jimin die?

At the end of the week, I made a trip to the library. Jimin and I had grown distant, with neither of us speaking much and no more shy glances. It seemed I’d really hurt him. My heart ached, but it was for his own good. I was never meant to be a permanent fixture in his life. He’d gotten too close too rapidly. The fact alone that he didn’t care about what I was said enough. He was deluded by feelings he shouldn’t have for me. And despite my own curiosities about my background and the life I lived before, I didn’t need to entangle Jimin any further. It seemed I couldn’t keep my promise to him that we’d figure things out together…

I sat at the same table we’d shared that day and watched the empty space where he would have sat with a tightening chest. I shook my head and grabbed the book of records, quickly locating Jimin’s name and trailing a finger down the page, searching for an obituary or even a cause of death. After a few seconds scanning the words, I found it.

Drowning…

I furrowed my brow and touched the word with the tip of my finger, shaking my head. How could he have drowned? I remembered that river and a shiver ran up my spine. I shut the book and slid it away, crossing my arms as I stared at the wobbly table before me, unable to understand exactly what it was that had happened between us.

“You’re researching the boy…,” said a voice from behind me.

I jumped and turned to find Zero standing with his back to me, eyes flitting over the shelves of books before him. I stood and rushed to his side, watching him as he gently lifted a hand to touch a book before sighing and glancing to the side, peering down at me.

“Zero…what are you doing here?” I asked, frantically looking around for any onlookers. “In public?”

He smiled slightly and returned to scanning the books. “We are the only souls in this library who don’t work here,” he said with a listless chuckle. “Quite a lot safer than that apartment.”

I stiffened and sighed. “Yes,” I said. “I was researching him.”

“Not the him from this lifetime, however,” he said, not even bothering to look at me.

I nodded. There was no use lying to him when he knew it all already. “Yes.”

“So you’ve remembered something?” he asked, looking at me with a smirk. “Just how much?”

“Zero…what do you know?” I asked.

He smiled, but it didn’t seem malicious. “I’m bound by contract not to tell you,” he said. “But it seems I may not have to.”

I stared up at him. “What do you mean?”

He shrugged. “Your memories are returning on their own. That, my friend, was not part of the contract,” he said, laughing slightly. “I almost can’t believe it.”

“So…my memories…they’re really mine?” I asked, voice timid, giving life to the silent fears and worries that had plagued me for weeks.

“That I cannot answer,” he said. “The only solution is to continue remembering.”

I shook my head. “But Zero, I have just over a week left before the deadline. How am I supposed to remember a lifetime?”

He sighed. “You must,” he said, finally turning to me and sending me a severe look. “If you don’t and time runs out, I must take matters into my own hands regarding the boy.”

“Can you do that?” I asked.

He nodded. “I can do many things,” he said, resting his Book on his hip. His expression soured. “If I am beckoned.”

“Beckoned…?”

He stared down at me and a soft smile touched his sharp features. “What I saw in you before is stronger now,” he said with a nod. “Remember your place.”

I exhaled in a long huff and shook my head. “I don’t understand what you mean! Stop speaking in riddles and tell me properly.”

He shook his head and reached out to give my shoulder an almost reassuring squeeze. “You have the answers, Nari.”

My eyes went wide. He called me by my name… Before I could respond, he was gone and I was left alone, staring at a shelf of books with my pulse thrumming. There was something barring Zero from speaking, some contract binding him to silence. But he said I had the answers…

All I had to do was remember.

“And that’s how Grandma Jisoo got away with insurance fraud,” said Hoseok with a sigh, leaning back on his palms as the two of us watched the advancing tide.

We’d spent the entire afternoon going over old family stories, hoping to stumble upon something useful. If Zero was convinced I had the answers, then that meant there might be a way to save both Jimin and Injung. If I could only find the right key, I could unlock the door to my third option.

But it seemed that key was rather elusive, since hours had passed and nothing had seemed relevant enough to remember. Although hearing about my descendants made me smile, I didn’t have the luxury of time to enjoy their stories. Hoseok and I sat on a checkered blanket on the sand, the sun seeping into my skin as I sighed and rested my chin on my knees. What in the world was I supposed to do when my only insight came from dreams I could neither control nor summon?

“Hoseok!” called a female voice from behind us.

The two of us turned to the source and saw Jisoo — not Grandma Jisoo who successfully committed fraud, but the living one — rushing down the beach towards us. As she approached, she rested her hands on her knees and caught her breath. She sent Hoseok a sharp look before turning to me with a smile.

“Hi, Nari!” she said, voice singsongy.

I chuckled and flitted my fingers. “Nice to see you, Jisoo.”

She wore her casual clothes which, much like mine, seemed slightly too big for her. And in her hair was a striking little pin. The pin she’d toted the other day, the lily pin. A vision flashed before my eyes to the pin I’d worn in my own hair in my dreams. I furrowed my brow. Hadn’t that been mine from the start? How could they be the same when she’d received it as a gift from Yeoreum?

I shifted away from Hoseok to make room for Jisoo on the blanket and she sat with a grin. “What’re you doing down here? Aren’t you helping Mom today?” asked Hoseok.

Jisoo tossed him a glare before returning her attention to me. “She wanted me to tell you we’re ordering takeout and you have to go get it.”

I glanced to Hoseok. There was still so much we needed to go over. Hoseok shrugged his shoulders and stood up, dusting off the backs of his legs with a sigh. “We can talk more later, Nari,” he said with a wave.

I moved to follow him, but quickly remembered Jisoo and settled back down. “You look kinda pale,” she remarked, scanning my features. “Paler than usual.”

I nodded. “I’m not doing very well.”

She pouted. “Is it something I can help with?” she asked.

I smiled and gave the top of her hand a pat. “I don’t think so,” I said. Hoseok had agreed it was best not to tell Jisoo or Seonhwa about my past life, given how the family reacted to anything occult. So I simple smiled. “That pin really suits you,” I said.

She touched it with a grin and nodded. “I think so too.”

“And it was a gift? From Yeoreum?” I asked, my tone edgy. “You mentioned he bought it.”

She shrugged. “I dunno where he got it. I kinda just assumed he bought it, but the more I look at it the more it seems like…really old.”

I stiffened. It did seem rather antiquated. “I see…”

“Mom told me a cool story when I first got it about one of our ancestors,” she said. “The one Mom is named after.”

I nodded. “Hoseok has been telling me some of your family’s stories. It’s very interesting,” I said, to which her dark eyes lit up.

She grinned. “Right? This story is my favorite I think. She’s told parts of it before, but she never told me this part,” she said with a nod. “When Grandma Seonhwa moved to this town, she met with a super rich family. Like, one of the richest ones in the area.”

I raised my brows. Such an industrious girl was meeting with nobles? “How did she know them?”

Jisoo shook her head and glanced out to the water. “We don’t know. She never talked about it.”

“Huh…” Another thing they didn’t talk about…I could only theorize that it had to do with me somehow.

“Anyway, the youngest son was her age and he really liked her,” she said with a laugh. “Every day he would send her gifts and try to get her attention, but she never responded to him.”

I chuckled. That, I could picture. The young, plucky girl with her messy hair and dirt-stained hands. Of course she would reject the advances of someone like that. “Charming.”

She shook her head. “Anyway, I guess he kept trying to give her this one lily hairpin and she kept saying no. I dunno why, but I guess that gift really ticked her off and she finally told him outright to stop,” she said, then laughed. “Which only made him like her more. I guess he only gave up when she got married to someone else.”

“How persistent,” I said, but my mind had begun churning. If that lily pin really was mine, and it did look horribly similar, then what did that say about the youngest son? A cold chill ran through me as an inkling of an idea took form in my mind. “Tell me, Jisoo. Do you know if this man had siblings?”

She nodded. “Two older brothers.”

I stiffened and stared at her profile with wide eyes. “And what was their family name?”

She pursed her lips, then snapped her fingers. “It’s Park!” she said with a grin. “Just like Jimin. I actually thought it was pretty funny when Jimin told me his family name the first day we met, since it was the same as that rich family.”

I felt my stomach flip and my hands grip the blanket tightly. Yeoreum was related to Jimin’s past. He had to be. After Seonhwa rejected that pin, that youngest son must have held onto it. And if Seonhwa was at marrying age, then I was already dead. She likely cast it away so vehemently because it had once belonged to me. I shook my head. Just how connected was everything in this town?

“Just how long will you continue watching me?” I asked, washing the linens with downcast eyes as the river rushed over my fingers.

Jimin cleared his throat and came to sit beside me, footfalls soft on the leaves and underbrush. He adjusted his hanbok and crouched on the balls of his feet, watching me as I tended to the laundry.

“Hello…,” he said softly.

I nodded my head, but didn’t look at him. For months, the boy had been relentless in his approaches toward me, leaving me no choice but to ignore him. While I was mixing herbs for his older brother’s rash, he was watching in the doorway like a specter. The day I’d spent teaching his younger brother calligraphy, the boy had lingered just outside in the garden, listening in. Time passed this way, almost too quickly for me to notice, and without even realizing I’d become comfortable with this place and with that strange second son. But the more persistent he was, the weaker my will became. I simply was no match for his stubbornness.

“Is there something you wish to discuss?” I asked. I’d grown bolder during my time with the Parks, and I seldom held my tongue around the sons.

Jimin cleared his throat and wrung his hands. “Well…it’s a bit strange, but…uh…hm…”

I finally glanced at him and saw in his cherubic cheeks was a pinkish blush, blooming all across his fair skin. I raised my brows. “Yes?”

He sighed and ruffled his hair, frustrated, before he turned to me and took my hands. I jumped, desperate to avoid his touch and the unpleasant consequences of it, but his grip was tight and his eyes were pleading. Slowly, I stilled and watched him with cautiously narrowed gaze.

“Nari, will you accompany me to the festival tonight?” he asked.

I tilted my head to the side. “Festival?” I asked.

He nodded, brows knitted. “I would really love it if you could,” he said, then his eyes went wide. “If you can spare the time of course!”

Why then did my heart race? I glanced down at my chest, ordering my fickle heart to settle down, before I met his eyes once more. “Is that appropriate? For someone like me to accompany you?”

He furrowed his brow. “Appropriate?” he asked, seemingly baffled. “What does that matter? I want to go with you.”

“And because you want it, is it so?” I asked, sighing as I gathered the washing and placed it carefully in my basket. “This is the critical difference between you and me. You, Park Jimin, request and receive. Have you known rejection?”

He stood up and stared down at me with cheeks flaming. “Yes!” he exclaimed, pointing at me wildly. “I experience it every day with you!”

I scoffed and rested my basket on my hip. “And just what do you mean?”

“I come to you all day and all day you make yourself scarce to me,” he said, pouting slightly and crossing his arms over his chest. “Would you like to know what I think our critical difference is?”

I nodded and offered a grin. “I would love to know.”

He squinted at me before glancing away, still pouting. “I see things that I desire and I reach for them,” he said, then smirked slyly. “I am not a coward.”

My chest puffed and I gaped at him, unable to manage my expression. “A coward?!” I shouted, wagging a finger at his chest. “My apologies, Young Master, but those of us who serve others have not the liberty to be brave!”

He stuck his tongue out at me and shrugged. “I am hearing many excuses from you today, Nari.” He took a step toward me. “It seems to me that you are simply finding ways to avoid me because you are afraid you may fall for me.”

I gaped. “Park Jimin, in what reality would that be the case?” I asked.

He chuckled, confidence now inhabiting his form as he leaned away. “If you’re unafraid, then come with me tonight.”

I laughed and nodded. “Fine,” I said, holding out my free hand for him to shake. “But expect no falling from me.”

He grinned and grabbed my hand, shaking it firmly. “We shall see.”

Why then did I tend to my appearance so carefully that night? I sighed at my reflection, touching my lily pin gently with my fingertip. If Seonhwa could have seen me then, gracefully made and pristinely dressed, she would have laughed. But something about that boy made me frustrated, agitated. He made me competitive and ornery. A spoiled young aristocrat, born into wealth and power, taking a shine to someone like me? It was comical. The plot to a lackluster theater performance.

Nonetheless, I made sure not a hair was set out of place.

When I entered the garden to meet him, Jimin was wringing his hands and staring at the ground. He seemed to be regulating his breathing and I wondered briefly if perhaps he was nervous. I quickly banished the thought with a dismissive shake of my head and approached him, mindful to maintain a stoicism that his charm couldn’t penetrate.

But as he turned to me with a smile, my heart leapt and I had to glance away from his flushed face and his shy grin to keep from feeling something troubling. The two of us walked together along the path from the estate which led into the town center. Jimin and I made quiet conversation, although to call it conversation was slightly overstating. Jimin indeed did most of the talking. But I didn’t find it unpleasant. In fact, his anecdotes and jesting tales made me laugh.

“Ah, Nari!” he called, pointing to a stall serving nuts to crack in the teeth. The harvest ceremony had already ended and evening was descending, lanterns lightening the paths which all the townspeople traversed with smiles. “Would you like to try?”

I stiffened and rushed toward him. “I cannot afford it-,”

He gave me a look which silenced me and shook his head. “I asked if you would like to try, not if you had money.”

I blinked and glanced back toward the stall. “I…suppose,” I said quietly.

He smiled gently, the yellow light from the lanterns reflecting in his eyes, and I wondered if perhaps he had been right. Perhaps I really had been afraid… “Let’s go then,” he said, taking my hand and leading me toward the stall.

We each pressed the nuts between our back teeth and bit down hard. It ached my jaw, but watching Jimin laugh and giggle as the crumbs fell from his lips kept my complaints from being aired. I simply watched him with a fond smile as he cracked a few more, joking that his teeth would surely be the strongest in the town if he kept going.

After a while, Jimin led the way to the beach. Many of the townsfolk dared not descend that far from the festivities, choosing instead to deviate in groups and climb cliffs to catch a glimpse of the first full moon. Jimin and I stood together, watching the sky as it turned vibrant orange and red, neither of us saying much of anything. Twilight was encroaching on the horizon, and I watched the sky carefully.

“You must like the night sky,” I remarked, thinking privately.

He glanced at me, bathed in sunset light, and smiled. “Hm?”

I felt my face go red and cleared my throat. “Well…considering your father’s occupation.”

He nodded with a sigh. “Father thinks the sky has the answers, but…I think he troubles himself too much with fate. If it is indeed inescapable, then why assume the burden of monitoring it?” he asked.

I thought a moment. His father had said that he was very worried for his second son. For Jimin. I turned to him slightly. “What do you think?” I asked.

He glanced at me with only his eyes before a small smile touched his lips. “I think…life is a very fleeting blessing. I wish to live each day with that in mind.”

I opened my mouth to remind him that not everyone could live that way, but stopped myself. The air between us was somber, vulnerable. For reasons I didn’t fully understand, I wanted to protect that. “Is that why you were so persistent towards me?” I asked.

He swallowed harshly and coughed a little, clasping his hands behind his back and turning to walk down the beach. I quickly followed, taking up a spot by his side, and examined his expression. “That is…part of the reason, yes.”

“And the other part?” I asked.

His eyes slid towards me. “The other part is…because…,” he started, then cringed slightly and shook his head. “Forget me. I’m rambling.”

“I was the one who asked,” I said, scanning him.

He flushed and looked away, his strides long and slow and easy. “Well…the other part is because you are…very different from anyone else I’ve met.”

“Is that a compliment?” I asked, emboldened by the sunset and the warm atmosphere between us.

He chuckled and rubbed the back of his neck. “You are awfully direct,” he said, then sighed and faced me. “It is a very, very good thing.” I looked away, chagrined, and listened to his endearing laugh. “When you spend all your life with people who wish to exploit you and your family…it is refreshing to meet someone sincere. Someone with a moral compass and too much pride.”

“Excuse me?” I asked, eyes wide.

He laughed and shook his head. “I really enjoy you.”

My breath hitched and I avoided his eyes once more. What sort of feeling was this? Had he always been so kind? The Park Jimin I’d known since coming to his home had been a petty troublemaker, a mischievous boy with a penchant for disturbing me. He’d frustrated me and charmed me in equal measures.

But this evening…he seemed different.

And my heart behaved differently in turn.

“I…suppose your company is not entirely bothersome,” I said, my tone begrudging as I avoided his imploring gaze.

He laughed. “Please repeat that.”

I shook my head. “I do not repeat myself for nobles.”

Jimin’s laugh echoed through the beach, now drenched in the purple hues of twilight. “I am glad to know you regard me more kindly now,” he said, voice as gentle as a cresting wave. “I’ve always regarded you that way.”

My stomach fluttered slightly and I nearly groaned in frustration. How could I have these budding emotions for someone like him? After all these years caring only for my family, I’d never once considered my romantic life. Marriage, children…they all seemed lofty goals compared to daily survival. But this aristocrat was stirring my heart about carelessly.

“Say,” he began, taking wide, sweeping steps forward. “How did you learn medicine?”

I pursed my lips. “It was out of necessity. My family…we are not the kind of people who can receive aid in any way. This includes medical treatment,” I said with a sigh.

He raised his brows and stared down at me. “Truly?”

I nodded. “Many people live this way,” I said.

He furrowed his brow. “They shouldn’t.”

With a smile, I chanced a glance his way and noticed his jaw set staunchly and his eyes narrowed. I chuckled. “Righteous outrage?” I asked.

“I never knew people really lived that way,” he said, shaking his head. “If I take after my father, I’ll see to it that the king affords basic human dignity to even the lowest class.”

I smiled. “I hope you can do it,” I said.

He peeked down at me and as our eyes met, his cheeks grew pink and he cleared his throat. “H-How do you know my father then? If you cannot approach him.”

“My father is…a very trusted physician,” I said with a nod, although the words felt like acid. “He works with your father often.”

His eyes went wide. “If your father is a physician, then your class equals mine,” he said.

I smiled at my feet as they flattened the sand beneath them. “If I were conceived legitimately, certainly.” He paused and his steps slowed to a stop. I turned to face him and met his eyes, something burning in my chest. “Does your favor end here? Has your opinion of me changed?”

He furrowed his brow and crossed his arms over his chest. “Do you think I’m such a spineless man?”

I blinked at him. “No, your reaction is simply-,”

“I’m upset,” he said. “It upsets me that you’ve had to live so poorly for nothing more than a birthright. What kind of society allows this?” he asked.

My heart pounded. I’d never imagined holding counsel with an aristocrat over such issues, and even stranger still was that our opinions aligned. I took a step toward him and crossed my own arms. “Does it truly upset you?”

He nodded. “Of course! What great wrong have you committed to live this way? And your poor mother!”

A small smile stretched across my face. “Poor indeed,” I said, tilting my head to the side as he watched the beach over my shoulder, stewing in frustration. “Father stayed with us even after my sister was born, saying he would cast away his title and raise us from poverty with the strength of his hands alone.”

Jimin’s eyes went wide. “A sister too!” he scoffed. “What a horrible man.”

“A liar too,” I said with a full-fledged grin. “He left even after promising so much. A man is only worth the value of his word, don’t you think?”

“A man’s word is his bond!” exclaimed Jimin, brows set low and face red all over from anger.

I took another small step closer, watching the spectrum of emotions on his face. “My grandmother too now must work,” I said. “Isn’t that too cruel? My elderly grandmother working as a shaman?”

“Deplorable!”

“And my sister catches fish!”

“A little girl!”

“And I work for a rich family, separated from my own!” I shouted, smiling.

At this, his outraged waned and he looked down at me with eyes reflecting the ocean, lips parted. “Why…why does your expression seem so joyful while recounting such awful things?”

I laughed and, gently, pressed my index finger between his eyebrows where the skin was creased with worry. His eyes grew round. “It is the first time I’ve commiserated with someone.” I retracted my hand and smiled at the ground. “How strange. Watching you assume my woes has made me smile.”

“Then I’ll do it forever!”

I looked up at him, at the earnestness in his wide eyes, and couldn't help but laugh. “Truly?”

“Of course! If it brings you joy…anything,” he said softly, voice petering out at the end as he turned his eyes to the ocean and the sky. “Ah! It’s the moon!” he called, pointing toward the sky with a grin.

I followed his finger and noticed that indeed, a ghost of the moon was appearing amongst the lilac clouds. I laughed. “Incredible!” I looked toward the boy and found him smiling brightly at the sky, neck craned and eyes locked on the heavens. I smiled despite myself. “Do you know the old superstition? That the first person to glimpse the first full moon of the lunar new year is granted one wish?”

He turned to me and smiled. “Is that so?”

I nodded. “You must wish quickly. Someone else may be looking at that moon as well,” I said, nudging his shoulder toward the shoreline.

He stiffened and nodded, squeezing his eyes shut and clasping his hands in front of his chest. “I wish…I wish to live a long and happy life with the people I care for, and to make the world better for those people with that life.”

I watched him profess his sincerest wish and felt a twinge of sadness in his voice. I scanned him, desperate to discern even a fraction of his thoughts from his expression. But all I saw was a yearning hope. Had I ever seen someone with such wholehearted, profound longing?

Why was he reaching for his wish with such wild, grasping hands?

He opened his eyes and offered me a smile which I couldn’t return. Instead, I simply watched him for a moment before sighing. “Why did you sound like a man about to die?” I asked.

He blinked and glanced away, rubbing the back of his head. “Do not trouble yourself on my account.”

“It is too late to advise me not to trouble myself. I am at present very troubled,” I said, walking to his side and scanning his profile, a bashful smile on his face. “If you refuse to tell me, perhaps I can write to your father.”

“No!” he shouted, turning to me with a fearful look. “He cannot know I am spending time off the estate.”

“Why is that?” I asked.

He sighed and settled on the sand, sitting on his backside and watching the waves. I joined him, still scanning his features. He ran his hands through his shaggy hair with a grimace. “I’ll tell you,” he said, then shook his head. “But once the night is over. I still wish to have fun.”

I sighed and nodded. “Fine,” I said, touching my own hair and grazing the pin with my fingertips. I watched Jimin’s face as his eyes drank in the scene of the ocean before him. Why did he look so lonesome? I removed the lily pin and held it in my palm, sighing softly. “This pin…was the only gift my father ever gave me.”

Jimin turned to me slightly, watching me. “A lily pin? For your name?”

I smiled at it, turning it over in my hands. “Yes. He said that for a name as lovely as mine, I should have a pin to match,” I said, smoothing my fingers over it. “Perhaps it seems silly to hold something that man gave me so dear, but…it is my most precious possession.”

“How many possessions do you have?” he asked, a teasing smile on his face.

I cast him a sharp glare. “Well now,” I said, huffing with a laugh. “Regardless, it is very important to me.”

“It’s beautiful.”

I was quiet a moment before taking his hand and placing it palm-up atop my knee. “I’d like you to have it,” I said as I placed the pin in his palm.

His eyes widened and he shook his head. “I couldn’t possibly-,”

I met his gaze with a soft smile. “As a thank you for this evening,” I began, “and as a reminder.” I watched his eyes flit over the pin. “You mentioned that you’d like to change the way things are, to fix them for people like me and my family. I want you to keep this pin and remember that promise.”

He stared at it, sitting daintily in his rough palm, and blinked. “Nari, I simply couldn’t-,”

“I am asking you to,” I said, then smiled. “And I am asking you to live a long, healthy life so you can do what you said you would.”

His eyes grew hazy and his fingers closed around the pin. He took it onto his lap and stared at it, nodding his head. “I will,” he said, then turned to me once more.

Slowly, he moved closer. I’d forgotten myself that night, neglecting my position and allowing myself to slip into the easy fantasy that the two of us were simply people. Perhaps friends even. But as his advanced, eyes shut, a brief panic ran through me. I had to run away. I had to save myself from the punishment of cavorting with someone so far above me. I had to save Jimin from the harsh reprimands of his father should anything happen between us.

But in the end, once his plush lips touched mine, I could do nothing but shut my eyes and lean into his touch. Frustration coursed through me, but so did something else. Something much deeper and warmer, skipping through my veins and setting my skin alight. The kiss was short, chaste, but intimate. He pulled back first and stared at me, face still inches from mine, breaths coming slightly shallow as he scanned me. His brows knitted and his eyes fell to the ground.

He took a steadying breath before looking at me again. “Nari…the reason I made that wish is because…,” he began, then stopped and shook his head, swallowing hard. “I am very, very sick.”

My eyes went wide and I backed away, watching him carefully as he ran his fingers through his hair. We’d shared but one kiss, one evening of joy and laughter, and yet this confession sent my heart aching. Why, after just one night, did I wish so deeply to protect this boy?

Morning light sifted through the curtains beside my bed and I watched it for a moment as my senses returned to me. I had awoken from my dreams not with a start, but with a stiffness in my chest. The dream had only confirmed my fears. The Jimin from my memory was nearing his demise. The more of my past memories returned, the closer I felt to this horrible itch in the back of my mind, ever-present and scraping, growing stronger and stronger. I was close to something, something important.

All I had to do was remember.

But I had less than a week left.

I padded out of my bedroom, scratching my head as I wandered towards the kitchen. But as I did, I noticed the refrigerator was open and standing before it was Jimin. He turned to me and opened his mouth as if to speak before, upon thinking a moment, shutting it with a sigh and shutting the refrigerator, maneuvering around me into the living room where he fell against the sofa.

While I tried to make myself accept the distance I’d forced between myself and Jimin, it still hurt to see him in the mornings, readying himself alone, eating alone, heading down to the shop alone. It was a far bigger wedge than a simple rejection. If I’d rejected him, perhaps he might have laughed it off and continued as normal. I’d placed a block between us that was forged of steel. My own unwillingness to allow him close to me, an impregnable wall keeping him from coming to me.

Things were fine before I’d known the depth of his feelings for me. I could convince myself he would surely hate me once I told him the truth about me, but still he stood beside me, steadfast as ever. I could force myself to believe he was only attached to me because I was available, because I was around so often. But he wanted to be with me. For real.

It was for his own good that I wouldn’t allow it.

“Will you pick up some purple ribbon from the store? I’m arranging a wedding bouquet and I don’t have enough,” he said.

Our words were scarce lately. I nodded. “Sure.”

He was quiet, the silence palpable as I stood with nothing to do in the kitchen. “Nari?” he asked, voice breaking slightly.

I swallowed the lump in my throat and nodded. “Mhm?”

“Please don’t disappear,” he said softly.

I felt the tears welling in my eyes. How could he be so astute yet so oblivious? I turned toward the front door and dabbed my eyes. “I’ll get going now,” I said.

Jungkook helped me check out after I’d found the right ribbon, and the way he eyed me from above let me know he was worried. His brow was slightly lowered, his eyes scanning my features. I wanted to tell him it was fine, that I was fine, but I couldn’t bring myself to lie to him. Things were so messy and complicated, and my only saving grace was a faulty memory which only arrived in bursts while I slept.

I left the supermarket with one small bag in my hands and wandered through the streets of the town, the tall white-washed buildings I’d glided through before this whole mess began. The uneven pavement, the bright sky and the sun which bleached the bricks. Before I knew it, I was outside that bar. The one Jimin had gone to the night he’d almost died. It was odd to return to such an unsettling place. Just down the street was where I’d emerged as a human being, where I’d defied the laws of the universe for a single boy. I remembered the street slicked with rain and black as sin. I remembered the tingles in my new naked body as I struggled to understand what had happened. After three-hundred years of invisibility…

I sighed and continued walking, routing myself back towards the flower shop.

But as I rounded a corner, I heard a distinct voice. A deep, chesty voice that I recognized at once. Kim Taehyung. Quickly, I crept along the side of a building and inched into the backstreet, untouched by foot-traffic and the source of Taehyung’s voice. I followed it slowly, keeping to the shadows, and peeked around the corner of a decrepit building, catching sight of a red bandana and dark hair. It was him indeed.

“I’m not doing this,” he said, and from his voice alone I knew he was agitated.

I stiffened and peeked at my own discretion, keeping close to the exterior wall of the building so as not to be noticed. “I know. I don’t wanna do it either…,” said a second voice. I tried to place it.

“Then don’t,” he implored.

The second voice sighed. “It’s not that simple.”

Taehyung huffed and I heard a crash, likely the sound of him kicking something into the silent, empty street. “It is! Just leave him alone! Haven’t you done enough now?” he asked.

I shook my head. Surely, he couldn’t mean Jimin… “If I could stop I would, okay?” asked the second voice in a shout. It was so familiar, but impossible to assign to someone without seeing their face. It was too frantic to match the voices I knew. Perhaps if he calmed down…

“Whatever. You’re alone on this one. I had a bad feeling that first night that I shouldn’t have accepted your stupid deal,” spat Taehyung.

The second man sighed. “I should’ve told you the truth from the start. But listen, we’re in too deep now. If I get caught, so do you,” he said.

“What?! I’m not the one who tried to kill somebody! Your instructions were clear: invite Jimin out, get him drunk, text you when he leaves the bar,” said Taehyung. My heart raced. He was the one after all. But who was this man who had commissioned him?

“Do you really think they’ll let you off with a slap on the wrist?! You’re an accomplice to an attempted murder!” shouted the second man. The longer I listened, the more familiar his voice became. But it was still too hard to discern through the yelling.

“Like hell!” shouted Taehyung. “I’m out! Just…skip town or something. I don’t wanna see your face anymore.”

“Wait!”

“Getting involved with you was a fucking mistake!” he yelled.

The first man shouted into the air. “It’s one more night Taehyung! All I need you to do is make sure he goes to that stupid fair!” he called.

“Not a chance!”

“Jesus, do I really have to threaten you?” the man yelled.

The conversation was going nowhere and Taehyung’s voice was growing more and more distant. This was my chance. An opportunity to get a glimpse of the murderer with my own eyes. If I didn’t seize it, he would slip through my fingers once more. I didn’t have much time to unravel this mystery before it was too late. And if this man was planning to attack during the fair, I needed to know who to look out for.

Stealthily, I edged around the corner. I could only see his back, calling after Taehyung, but I could see some distinguishable features. Dark hair, long legs, black shirt. He was too far away. If I could just get a closer look…

“What was that?” asked Taehyung, whipping around to look in my direction. His eyes went round and horrified as he stared at me and I was rendered immobile in fear.

The culprit’s posture went rigid as he looked at Taehyung before, like a lightning bolt, he was sprinting down the street. “Stop!” I screamed, running after him.

Taehyung watched me as I whizzed past him before he too began running, but in the opposite direction. I wasn’t sure where he was going or what he would do, but as we passed one another, I noticed him reach into his pocket and grab his cell phone. Just like that night. I shook my head and kept running, pushing my body to its limit as I raced after the man’s rapidly retreating form as he became but a dot on the horizon, weaving through alleyways and between buildings.

I searched for the man for hours, the ribbon long forgotten, my breaths coming and going in wheezing gasps. But in the end, he was far faster than me. I’d been so foolish, chasing a man like that. I was desperate. There was nothing more I could do besides run and run. And as I ran, things became clearer and clearer. Taehyung had been contracted by this man to lure Jimin out. Taehyung seemed not to know the scope of what he was involved in, likely unaware that the end result would be murder. This man, this mastermind, seemed bound to his actions as well. As if there was something far larger than him pulling the strings.

Just like Jin had said. Perhaps this was much larger than a petty murder case…

I approached the flower shop with blisters on my heels and my hair a mess atop my head. My eyes never lifted as I walked past the front of the shop, but I noticed in the reflection of the glass that two police patrol cars were parked on the curb. I tilted my head and thought a moment. Why were they here?

Unless…

My heart raced and I shook my head in fear, hands trembling as I quickly ripped the door open. No, no, no. The murderer was surely not reckless enough to attack Jimin right after being spotted. Surely he had more sense than that. Surely, surely. I shook my head, rushing into the shop.

Breathlessly, I looked around and tears began collecting in my eyes. “Jimin!” I shouted, voice cracking from the strain. “Jimin! Jimin, are you okay?!” I cried.

Movement came from the back of the shop and my eyes darted madly towards it, jumping at the promise of Jimin’s safety. But who emerged left my chest deflated. Yoongi approached me slowly, sighing as he came close, and scanned my face, avoiding my eyes altogether.

“Where’s Jimin? Is he safe?” I asked, tears spilling.

Yoongi nodded. “He’s in the back talking to Namjoon.”

I sighed, relief rushing through my body, and nodded. “Thank God. I just saw the murderer. I chased him, but I lost him in town. He was talking to-,”

“You’re under arrest for suspicion of attempted murder.”

My blood ran cold and my words halted. “What?”

“You have the right to an attorney,” he said, staring into the middle ground beside me with an almost disinterested affect. “Anything you say can and will be held against you in the court of law-,”

“Yoongi-,”

“If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be assigned to you.”

“Yoongi, wait-,”

“Please come with me back to the station.”

“Yoongi!” I shouted, finally forcing him to look me in the eyes. When he did, I saw something there that startled me. Both regret and apprehension. He didn’t trust me… “Yoongi, you know I didn’t do it.”

He sighed and gripped the bridge of his nose. “I don’t know, Nari. That’s the problem.”

I shook my head. “I’d never hurt Jimin.”

“We received an incriminating testimony from someone who was at the bar that night,” he reported with a shake of his head. “He said you spoke to a man while Jimin was lying on the ground before removing your clothes and feigning unconsciousness.”

“I…I what?” I asked, shaking my head. “Yoongi, that is absolutely impossible.”

He shrugged. “It’s a reliable statement.”

I swallowed hard, peering over his shoulder towards the back of the store as Namjoon and Jimin emerged. Jimin’s face was red. It was clear he’d been crying, eyes swollen and cheeks puffy. He lifted his eyes to look at me and I tried with all my heart to understand what those eyes held for me. Contempt? Anger? Hatred?

All I could see was a broken boy, all alone.

“Was it Taehyung?” I asked quietly, piecing it all together.

Yoongi sighed. “I can’t disclose that.”

I nodded. “I understand.”

Wordlessly, he placed a hand between my shoulder blades and led me towards the front door, guiding me to his car. Before I exited the shop, I looked over my shoulder and met Jimin’s eyes. Hopelessly, I sniffled as tears trailed down my face. Suddenly, the ground was ripped out from under me. Everything I relied upon was taken in an instant, and I was left stumbling in the blackness of the infinite unknown alone.

I didn’t know if I would ever see him again.

So, loudly enough for him to hear, I nodded my head and said the only thing I knew was true. The only thing I could think to say. “I love you.”

#bts #bts fanfic #bts fanfiction #bts horror au #jimin fanfic #jimin #jimin fanfiction #park jimin #bts jimin #jimin angst #jimin fluff #jimin oneshot #bts fluff #bts angst

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oruni · 5 years

Text

The Hawkins Experiments: Entry I

August 17th, 1977

Before I describe the nature of the seemingly ridiculous mission that I have undertaken and the moments leading up to my decision to do so I must pose one absolute fact for the reader, whoever that may be, to keep in mind. I am a man of science. I did not decide to venture down the superstitious paths that I have with ignorance and delusions of grandeur as many others have and will. I aim to do so only with infallible reason to be my guide, and only in the pursuit of truth. All manner of the occult I regarded as fiction, fiction that intrigued me but was fiction nonetheless, until I came into possession of documents which contained a hypothesis on the subject which finally seemed plausible. These were the notes of one late Dr. Amanda Hawkins, one whose abrupt death a man with less conviction than I might have interpreted as a prophetic warning.

The way through which I came into possession of these notes is shrouded in mystery. Dr. Hawkins and I’s areas of study did not overlap and we shared no other connection. Before finding her notes strewn across my desk from a thick, stained manila folder as if tossed there haphazardly I had never even heard her name. My study had been secure when I had left it, of that I was certain. The sound of the lock clicking open as I twisted the key in its heart just a few moments prior was fresh in my mind. Still, I am a man of science. I could not ignore the trove of unidentified information that I had perceived as a gift. The suspicion of just how it had gotten there was very quickly overpowered by the unyielding drive of my own curiosity. I pushed the heavy door of my study shut with a thud that resounded off its lofty walls and was upon these mystery documents in an instant.

I’d never been enthralled by text in quite the way I was by Dr. Hawkins’ account of her surreptitious experiments. I don’t know how many hours I sat, looming over my desk to absorb her secrets in a trance-like state of reading. Her notes were expansive, and at first, organized with an admirable level of care. I could tell that this was a labor of love. She left no room for inquiry, detailing with perfect clarity every aspect of her experiments as well as the reading which gave her the theories that made these experiments worthy of her investment. It quickly became apparent to me that the theories that justified such great effort were based in the occult. It was my first instinct to recoil in disgust at the thought of a woman of science falling to such nonsensical depravities, but as I continued to read, I found that not only were her conclusions reasonable, to me they made sense. Dr. Hawkins’ ultimate goal was not only to prove the effectiveness of “Magick”, but to explain it in the language of psychology and neuroscience rather than superstition and rituals. Circuits of consciousness and bundles of cerebral nerve clusters rather than voodoo dolls and hexbags. This was a language that I understood very well.

By her account a ‘Unity State’ could be achieved by the conscious, preconscious, and unconscious, at which point one’s mind was capable of extraordinary things. She listed several methods by which this feat could be achieved. Deep meditation, insurmountable fear, severe blood loss, and even orgasm. A theory that explained the appalling nature of many occult practices but made me no more eager to practice them. Further reading revealed that Dr. Hawkins’ preferred a far more convenient method of achieving Unity State. LSD. Rather than have the subjects of her experiment undergo the arduous months, potentially years, long journey of mastering meditation in order to perform the rituals of the occult consistently in a controlled setting she needed only add a single, volatile ingredient. The drug proved a powerful aid. Too powerful. Though she experienced wild success and recorded it with glee, the invocations often coming to fruition, one by one she lost her test subjects. They complained of the terrible visions they saw while under the hallucinogenic influence of the drug following them in their waking life like an esoteric wolf stalking its prey. Within three rounds of invocations several committed suicide. The rest, rather than descend further into madness, quit together shortly after. I could not find anywhere in the texts what happened of these people. Whether their visions ceased with the rituals or if they met similar fates I cannot guess. The last passage graced with the coherence and sound reason that I had come to know and respect Dr. Hawkins’ for ends with an angrily scribbled footnote.

“They lack the sensibility to combat the side effects of the ascension of the human psyche. But I am a woman of science. If anyone has the logic necessary to quell insanity and unearth the truth it must be me. It must be me.”

In the pages that followed the documents grew to be less and less coherent. She began to speak in cryptic riddles and foreboding prophecies. Her once neat and concise penmanship had degraded to erratic hardly legible scratchings and in the margins she sketched horrifying things of which I could not for the life of me identify and I assume she hallucinated. She began to quite regularly use the sigils that she once penned only for sake of explaining the rituals in place of words, and soon after replaced her speech entirely for it. Just over half way through, the entirety of the remaining pages consisted only of chaotically etched sigils, some of which had been penned forcefully enough to rip through the parchment.

Having finally finished the stack I fell back into my chair in exhaustion and drew my hand up to rub my poor, tired, eyes. I would find no solace in rest, for the moment they closed, her sigils and sketches burned in the interior of my eyelids. I had never been shaken so deeply, let alone by something as simple as a text… Luckily, I had stowed just the right medicine for such an occasion in the form of a half empty glass bottle of irish whiskey, accompanied by a dusty glass, in a cabinet built into the arm of my desk. Only for special occasions. A powerful breath blew the cobwebs out of the glass, replaced not a moment later by a pungent amber liquid. The scent alone brought terrible memories of the last time I felt inclined to indulge, but indulge I did. Alcohol dulls the higher senses, so I regard it as poison. When one’s mind is racing faster than he can comprehend, though, it can be instrumental in slowing it down. I’ve heard a thought that the difference between medicine and poison is sometimes in the dose, but I argue that it’s in the context.

I lamented the descent into madness and assumed death of someone who had the potential to be an increasingly rare colleague worthy of respect but could not resist the pull of the unanswered questions and riddles that her incomplete work posed. It was in no short amount of time, and admittedly, in no short amount of alcohol, that I had resolved to finish her work. I felt a strong compulsion to do so in a sense that I’ve never been compelled to do anything before. To myself, I reasoned that I couldn’t bear to see her questions unanswered and her work lost to history. After all, I am a man of science, and the pursuit of truth was and always will be my ultimate priority.

I slept in the study that night. I read and I drank and I re-read and I studied the sigils until they blurred before me. Not long after that effect set in I fell to sleep, but just before, in the void of my heavily inebriated thought, my face pressed against the cold surface of my desk, I swore I heard them speaking to me in some forbidden language I couldn’t hope to understand. When I woke and my faculties returned to me I rationalized their whisperings as tricks of the drunken mind and immediately after began the penning of this document — the first entry of many to come in a journal of sorts. A logbook of my experience serving both as a measure of defense to help preserve my sanity and as something of an alibis in the event that I lose this battle and cannot explain my actions as Dr. Hawkins could not.

With the end of this entry I shall make the rare treacherous journey from my secluded manor, through the snowy peaks, and into town to gather a stockade of strange supplies and referenced texts that I’m sure will cost my reputation. A necessary sacrifice, for if anyone can complete Dr. Hawkins work, it must be me.

— K.H.

#short story #series #writing #horror #occult

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silverliningslurk · 6 years

Text

Finding You (Kendou/Yaoyorozu)

Written for @dailybnha‘s secret santa, so, Happy Christmas, @remade-to-bauagent/@bauagent, hopefully tagging that right!

Pairing: Itsuka Kendou/Yaoyorozu Momo, background Neito Monoma/Hitoshi Shinsou Rating: Teen Summary: Itsuka has numbers on her wrist, telling her the distance between her and her soulmate. When she finds them, it’s not all plain sailing, but they’ll make it, together. She hopes.

Also posted here on AO3.

In a world full of people who brainwashed or manipulated fire or could be half bird, the idea of soulmates wasn’t such a far-fetched one. It hadn’t always been normal – at some point in history, soulmate indicators seemed to be something that had manifested. They appeared in various forms around the world. The Samoan peoples experienced a time pause when soulmates first made contact, although no one could scientifically prove the phenomena happened. Some Inuit tribes had matching tattoos to indicate their connection. It became increasingly rare to have no insignia to imply an indescribable connection with another person.

Although it didn’t have any strong basis in science – how did one determine a ‘soulmate’? – it was a well-accepted hypothesis. Most people believed, because most people had found, incidentally, that another person with whom they clicked, would in fact comply with whichever soulmate indicator they had.

Itsuka herself was quite fond of the idea. She often looked at the little digits on her wrist, counting down the distances between the two of them, her and her soulmate.

It was nearly always a big number, but she didn’t let that bother her. Most of her friends’ numbers were much higher, one even stretching way down his forearm, and refusing to shorten. The lower digits fluctuated almost constantly, and sometimes, Itsuka would stare at her own as she took the train, or drove to her grandmother’s, and watched them grow. She wondered if her soulmate worried about it. She wondered if they worried, particularly when she went to China to visit relatives there; the numbers then were nearly at the crease of her elbow. She’d watched them while she’d taken the boat, slowly ticking up, stretching out in the distance.

She thought about them, often. There were horror stories, of course, but she liked to be positive.

Secretly, she hoped it would be a girl.

Not that she had anything against boys – they made great friends – but she didn’t want to marry one. They were messy, and inconsiderate most of the time. There was something indescribably alluring about girls, she thought; she loved watching them, the way their hair swished in a ponytail, the infinite styles of long hair, the cute faces framed by short hair, the make-up and the subtle hints of cheekbones, the way their eyes went just so when happy and it’s breath-taking, it’s beautiful. She worked hard to emulate even a little of that glamour, and hoped, prayed, that her soulmate would be a girl, a girl who would let her look as much as she wanted. Itsuka didn’t even think it mattered what she actually looked like. She knew her soulmate would be beautiful to her regardless.

<hr>

Elementary school and middle school passed by her easily. She made every effort to improve the use of her Quirk in the hopes of getting into UA High School on the hero program, and managed to at least be entered for the entrance exam.

She did her best not to be discouraged when the distance counter wasn’t very low at the entrance exam. Maybe she wasn’t meant to meet her soulmate yet. Although plenty of people did meet theirs around this age, a good number only met them later on, at college or in their line of work.

So Itsuka continued on with her dreaming of a nice girl to live out her days with. She passed the entrance exam, and continued her studies. Passed her middle school exams, went through her final winter there and said goodbye to friends. Threw her certificate in one corner of her room and bided her time until the day she arrived for the graduation ceremony.

She sat in the enormous hall listening to Principal Nezu talk about their responsibilities and potential. It wasn’t the most interesting speech, sounding a little rehearsed; she stretched her arms forwards, itching with the need to just get started, rather than listen. Her sleeve rode up a bit. She looked on instinct.

The numbers on her wrist were remarkably low. They usually spread a third of the way up her arm, but now…

Soulmate distance indicators were in their own, arbitrary units, but they had been roughly mapped to real world units, and using that estimate, her soulmate was… in the same room, potentially?

Itsuka’s eyes lit up. Eagerly she scanned the room, now entirely uninterested in the principal’s chatter. Her gaze caught on every feminine character in there; purple, short hair, messing around on her phone. Was it her? Green, plant-like hair, rapt with attention, good posture. Was it her? Brown hair, blonde, pink, horns, invisible – there were just so many. Itsuka tried to see if anyone was looking around like she was, mentally begged the girl she was connected with to give her a sign, something, anything—

A blonde took her eye as they turned around; she found herself the subject of a piercing grey-eyed gaze. It was a boy, she would think, although not incredibly masculine. He looked like the kind of person she could get along with. He smiled, somewhat smugly, and turned back to the front, and Itsuka wondered if it was him.

For the first time in a long time, it hit her that most soulmates were of the opposite gender. It was unlikely to be a girl, no matter how much she wanted it to be.

Itsuka deflated. Wasn’t that just a depressing thought? Maybe she could find someone else in the same position as her? Or maybe, maybe she was just connected to a boy and that would be that. Maybe she would just have to live with that instead, and set aside dreams of a nice girlfriend to grow old with…

No, she had no time to mope! She could lead a full and happy life even if she didn’t have a partner, and she would. Her and her soulmate could purely be friends. Maybe it was him, and maybe he’d be nice. She could explain and he would understand, if he turned out to be her soulmate. If he didn’t, maybe there wasn’t quite so much to this soulmate thing as Itsuka liked to think there was.

<hr>

The blond, Neito Monoma, turned out not to be her soulmate, but her classmate instead. Itsuka was rather relieved. He was prone to stirring trouble, but Itsuka supposed that keeping him out of any messes was better than getting into her own. She enjoyed his company, enjoyed the sarcastic comments she’d never dare make herself, even if he was at times a little vengeful. He even made her forget, at times.

But at others, she would watch the numbers. They rarely changed that much now; it was usually one number when she was at home, and one in school. It didn’t take a genius to work out that her soulmate was either in 1-A or 1-C, or perhaps 2-A, B, or C above her, which left her with quite a bit of room for error. The only thing she was sure about was that it was not someone in her class – the numbers were a little too high for that. They would also change occasionally during a lesson, indicating her soulmate was moving. Seeing as Itsuka herself and her class were still, it immediately removed all of them from consideration.

Slowly, she started to eliminate people. She didn’t have too much time within the school day to go searching for her soulmate, in between trying to keep Monoma out of trouble and keeping her grades and physical ability up. Therefore, it was only at the sports festival she actually started to pull things together.

In the first round, she found out it had to be another first year, but in the melee, she had no hope of working out who. In the cavalry battle, she worked out it had to be one of the top forty participants, but she didn’t exactly have the luxury of time to work it out.

She had her suspicions during some of the matches, but she didn’t remember to look at the critical times. There had been movement in the numbers during the latter matches of the first round, but her lack of knowledge of the exact distance they conveyed meant she was unable to exactly pinpoint who it might be. However, it greatly narrowed the pool down, until she had a few candidates: Mei Hatsume, Tenya Iida, Mina Ashido, Yuuga Aoyama, Fumikage Tokoyami, Momo Yaoyorozu, Ochaco Uraraka, and Bakugou Katsuki,

She was able to narrow it down further once the second round of matches, considering the numbers stopped moving; it left her with Hatsume, Aoyama, Yaoyorozu and Uraraka. In the drama after that, she wasn’t able to remove candidates, although she direly hoped it was either Yaoyorozu or Uraraka – the other two just seemed a little too… flamboyant for her tastes. It would be sad to work it out only to find she didn’t actually get on with her soulmate.

Only during the internship did she actually get confirmation.

It was a girl, as she’d always hoped: Yaoyorozu Momo stared back at her, eyes flicking between Itsuka’s face and the numbers on her wrist, which were hovering at three.

On Itsuka’s other arm, an intricate navy blue six-sided star, where Yaoyorozu had touched her. To match Yaoyorozu’s, on the inside of her shoulder, adjacent to her collarbone.

“You must be my—” Itsuka started, excitement starting to build.

“May- may I have time to consider this?” Yaoyorozu interrupted, her voice clipped. Her gaze strayed to a corner of the room. Itsuka wondered if she was wrong, but the number on her wrist remained constant, unflinching. Three units away. Her soulmate was three units away, but that could be thousands of metres if she didn’t want to know Itsuka.

Itsuka didn’t want to give her a single moment. Didn’t want to give her any time at all. She wanted Yaoyorozu to be as happy about this as she was, wanted her to feel excited and like she wanted to run off with Itsuka, and spend their life together. Wanted her to accept it immediately. Itsuka had felt ready to meet her soulmate forever, it seemed. Why wasn’t Yaoyorozu the same? Wasn’t she happy? Didn’t everyone love their soulmate unconditionally?

Itsuka looked down at the floor, blinked hard for a second. When she looked up again, it was all trapped in her mind, and did not show on the outside. She knew it didn’t.

“Sure,” she offered, even as she wanted to step closer, to persuade her. She couldn’t crowd Yaoyorozu. She could think about it later. Get upset later. Cry later. Right now: “Take as much time as you need.”

And they just got on with the internship. Yaoyorozu didn’t bring it up again.

<hr>

Monoma was the only one Itsuka told. For all his flaws, he could keep secrets. It helped that she said he had a free pass to copy her quirk next time he needed to, provided the reason wasn’t solely to taunt Class 1-A. Monoma, she found out, had a soulmate mark on his foot, and according to his family, he would finally attain colour vision upon first contact. Despite this, he wasn’t fond of the idea of finding them – probably too scared about having someone accept him as he was – and hadn’t tried.

His lack of enthusiasm about it helped, in an odd way. It made her reiterate the thinking that soulmates weren’t the end of the earth, and she could know Yaoyorozu was her soulmate without any input the other way. Perhaps it was enough just to know. To know that maybe one day Yaoyorozu might seek her out, but if she didn’t, Itsuka could still be just fine. There were other girls in the world that she might just have a chance with.

Nearing the end of term, and getting used to the idea of a non-soulmate pairing, it came as a surprise to her when she found Yaoyorozu herself striding up to her.

“Itsuka Kendou.” Yaoyorozu said, faintly out of breath. “I systematically searched the entire school. I touched everyone. Except I realise now I discounted fifty percent of students, since I mistakenly believed soulmates could only be of the opposite gender,” she announced. Itsuka stood there, stunned; they weren’t even alone, a few stragglers from classes strewn around, and some now looking their way. She couldn’t find it in her to care.

Yaoyorozu stopped about a metre in front of her. Her hands twisted together, betraying her nerves, but her eyes did not stray from Itsuka’s.

“I’m sorry that it took me so long. I would be honoured if you could accept me as your soulmate.” She bowed for a long moment. Itsuka didn’t know what to say – considering she’d started to discount the link altogether – so she laughed instead, initially, which earned her a puzzled look.

“Are you kidding? I like you. Of course I want to be your soulmate,” she replied jovially. She was overjoyed, actually, but that might be coming on a bit strong. She’d taken to tracing Yaoyorozu’s mark sometimes, and wondering if it would always stay there, or if Yaoyorozu rejected her, it might fade. Itsuka was elated that she might not have to find out.

Yaoyorozu blinked. She didn’t seem to have thought such an easy answer possible, perhaps thinking that Itsuka had taken some kind of umbrage with her not immediately embracing the idea. But Itsuka was happy. She didn’t need a soulmate to complete her, but she’d be very glad for the one she had to get along with her.

“But I…” she started, puzzled. Itsuka grinned, the happiness seeping through to her very bones. Admittedly, she had started to think that maybe Yaoyorozu wouldn’t want to be her soulmate, and to ignore the link forever. She’d started to adapt to that way of thinking. Now that Yaoyorozu did want to be with her, have her in her life, in whatever capacity, set a warm glow in her heart and made her whole body feel light.

“You’re my soulmate. It would have taken a lot for me to refuse you, y’know?” Itsuka closed her eyes briefly in her huge grin, teeth showing and everything – when she next looked at Yaoyorozu, she was biting her lip, making that face people made when they were desperately trying not to cry. “Aww, no, what’s the problem?” Itsuka asked softly, stepping forwards and peering up at Yaoyorozu.

“I- it’s nothing! I just—” Her lip wobbled, and Itsuka naturally swooped in to hug her.

Yaoyorozu flinched for an instant, like maybe she wasn’t used to it (Itsuka would change that if she had any say in the matter) but then pulled her in tightly.

It was perfect.

Itsuka practically felt the digits on her wrist flicker to zero, practically felt their marks warm, practically felt their hearts beating together. Yaoyorozu was, she found, very comforting to hug. She was the perfect size to fit in her arms, and despite how Itsuka had hugged a lot of people, Yaoyorozu felt different. She felt perfect.

Yaoyorozu pressed her face into the crook of Itsuka’s neck, and sniffled. She didn’t seem to want to say anything or explain though, and Itsuka really didn’t mind right now.

She had a soulmate, and her soulmate wanted her. That was more than enough.

<hr>

Between incidents with villains, kidnappings, fights and disasters, they got to be good friends. Itsuka would have Momo over frequently, her mother used to the unexpected visits by now, and consequently always had Momo’s favourite tea in stock. Itsuka had been over to the mansion Momo called home. They’d studied together, trained together, had sleepovers, comforted each other. Itsuka had introduced Momo to movie marathons, Momo had introduced her to a wide variety of teas. They’d had a few minor arguments, but come out of each stronger, and understanding each other better.

The sum of Itsuka’s knowledge now was that she really, really wanted to be more than friends with Momo.

The knowledge was not unexpected, but somewhat frightening nonetheless. To find herself daydreaming about kissing Momo, having to stop wayward thoughts upon seeing Momo in her hero costume, wayward dreams more nights than she’d like to admit – none of it was unexpected. But that didn’t make it less scary. Equally, Itsuka had no idea if Momo was merely being friendly with her at any given moment or whether she felt the same, and was trying to convey this.

Again, Monoma was subjected to her babbling on the subject. He opened himself up to this conversation by admitting that part of the reason he now distanced Class 1-A and taunted them was because he found half of them attractive, and it wasn’t nearly so easily split by gender. Itsuka took this as a clue that perhaps he wouldn’t be off-put by her situation, and indeed he wasn’t. This did lead to him being the unfortunate other end to her meltdowns about what to do.

Typically, Monoma told her to just say something. Monoma who had found an extra spurt of courage in finding a partner in Hitoshi Shinsou, and would sing their praises to anyone who would listen to him. Monoma did not care whether anyone knew he and Shinsou were together. Shinsou seemed equally unperturbed by any comments thrown their way, although that was how they generally were publically.

Just to add further fuel to the flame, Shinsou suggested she ought to just say something. Or, they threatened, they might take control of her and tell Momo for her.

Itsuka stuck her tongue out at them, Monoma curled an arm around Shinsou protectively, and Shinsou merely smirked.

All told though, Itsuka was not a coward, and if she could face villains and the public, she could face Momo and tell her the truth.

Her next best opportunity after that point came a few days later, when Momo dropped in with a textbook Itsuka had forgotten she’d asked for.

She sat Momo down, in the kitchen. She gave her a cup of tea. She sat down herself. And took a breath.

And:

“Momo, I like you.”

Said it.

Somehow.

Momo looked at her, eyes wide.

“You like me?” she repeated, no inflection in her voice. Itsuka felt herself wither a little, but tried not to let it show.

“Yeah, I do. I’m just saying, you don’t have to respond or anything, but if you wanna, be my guest, I don’t want to force you or anything…” Itsuka made herself trail off for fear of babbling. Momo’s mouth was a pure, round ‘o’ shape, and Itsuka really wanted to know what it would be like to kiss it. To kiss Momo. To be close in that intimate way she’d started to want so desperately.

“But I- I’m a girl!” Momo exclaimed, shocked. Itsuka cringed, unable to hide it. She wanted to hide herself, at this point, and was intensely thankful for the rest of her family being out on a shopping trip.

“I know. Believe me, I know. Should I take that as a no? Kinda sounding like a no to me right now.” Itsuka mumbled, only watching Momo in her peripheral vision, hardly daring to even do that. Momo’s face was the exact image of the shocked emoji, round and round and round.

It was not quite the face Itsuka wanted, or really had imagined, her making.

“You can do that? That’s acceptable?” she asked breathlessly. Itsuka narrowed her eyes slightly, confused.

“I mean, yeah? We’re in the 21st century, aren’t we?”

Momo took one short moment to take it in, and then threw herself forwards, slamming her hands on the table and nearly crashing into Itsuka with her vigour.

“So we could date? And kiss? And it wouldn’t be odd?” She questioned. Itsuka couldn’t help but stare directly into her eyes – it was not like she had many other places to look, and Momo just got this intense feel about her sometimes, when she needed to know something, when it was important to her. She drew everything else to her, when she was like this.

“Uh, well, yes? If any two people are in a mutual relationship, they do that kind of thing, right?” She murmured a little self-consciously. Momo, meanwhile, grinned, her eyes lighting up, the very air around her seeming to go vibrant with apparent glee. Itsuka barely dared hope.

“Yes! I like you too, Itsuka! I wasn’t aware it was an option, I didn’t think I could ask anybody else, but this solves all my problems! I’m so happy! We could go ice-skating! I can get Mother to book seats at the best restaurant—”

“Momo, I really wanna kiss you now.” Itsuka interrupted, glee boiling in her veins.

Momo didn’t even look phased. To say she was enthusiastic was probably an understatement.

Happily, that made two of them. Itsuka thought, perhaps, that her long held dream might just come true after all.

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