#sunken billionaires

[garthnadermemestash]

The internet remains undefeated

#rich assholes #sunken billionaires #oceangate #titanic wreck #titanic memes #titanic #eat the rich #billionaire #111 years ago #internet remains undefeated #straight to hell #tumblr memes #mst memes #mistaken con man #garth nader memes #mystery sovcit theater memes #dankest memes #pathetic3 #political memes #implosion #submersible #missing submarine

[wkemeup]

In Every Lifetime

summary: When Bucky’s first love from the 1940′s is found alive in cyro, he begins to question whether you’d turn from him in fear or disgust. 

pairing: bucky x reader

word count: 5k

warnings: angsty angst (with a happy ending), bucky’s sad internal dialogue, 

Bucky had half a mind to wonder whether his heart might truly escape his chest. It pounded infernally against his rib cage; violently shaking against the bones until they splintered and cracked, he was certain he might look down at the SHIELD emblem on his sweatshirt to find blood soaking through the fabric. Or perhaps the bones of his sternum piercing through his skin. Hell, he might have left his heart on the tile a few paces behind him – throbbing on the ground, exposed to the elements.

He hadn’t so much as taken a breath since he caught word of what Stark uncovered in the Atlantic. It was only meant to be an exploratory mission; a simple means of honoring his father’s legacy by scanning the ocean depths in search of a history Howard had idolized in his time. Simple, apparently, to a billionaire with nothing but time on his well-manicured hands.   

But Stark had uncovered a sunken Hydra warship instead; filled with stolen paintings, priceless jewels, and artifacts of a lost era. To the surprise of the men piloting the underwater craft, the ship had also housed dozens of cryochambers; ones occupied by German and Russian soldiers still dressed in their formal military garb and ice crystalized on their skin. Human bodies still preserved, still alive after decades on the ice. 

There was only one chamber housed by a civilian – no, a prisoner.  

Bucky had heard the whispered rumors through the hallway; seen the sharp eyes glancing curiously in his direction. He’d gotten used to it over the years, but there was something in the cautious hesitation of the agents around him that made the hair on his right arm stand on edge. They were waiting for him to snap. It was personal, he realized quickly – whatever Stark found.  

Your name was only said once, but it was enough.  

He ran until his legs felt weak; weaving through the seemingly endless hallways within the compound. On a decent day, agents cleared a direct path when they caught sight of Bucky. He’d walk with his head down, hands shoved tight into his pockets. He’d make himself as small and unthreatening as possible; baseball cap over his head and a long sleeve jacket to hide the blinding silver on his arm. Still – they carefully moved from his path as if he were little more than untrained animal.  

This time – they spared no pretense of eggshells as they threw themselves towards the walls. Classified documents fluttered into the air when he nearly collided with a terrified intern though he managed to swerve just in time to put a dent into the wall instead. Tight gasps followed with hands flinching to weapons on hips in the sudden panic. 

Bucky kept on – channeling his attention only on his next step. Only on the next tile under his foot.

He couldn’t allow himself to process what he might find at the end of the hallway. He couldn’t. Because then he’d think of the letters you'd once sent him when he was curled at the base of muddied trenches, how he’d clung to the fragile papers in his sleep and folded them tightly to the breast pocket of his shirt. He’d remember how he used to tap a hand against that same pocket each time he crossed the line into battle, how it had garnered him strength he hadn’t known he’d had. He’d let himself ache for the letters that kept him alive until the steel pipe fractured under his weight and he dropped into the ravine – the handwritten words he’d read over and over again until tear marks blurred the ink; letters of the future you’d planned when he returned home to you.  

Bucky couldn’t allow himself to think of that, because then he’d wonder whether you cried when his letters stopped coming, if you’d grieved for him. He’d wonder whether something broke inside your chest when you realized he was never going to be yours again; if you sobbed and cursed at the world for taking away the one thing you ever dared to want for yourself. If you shattered like he had the day your image returned to his memory.  

If he let himself think of you, he might question whether you’d found the future you had once promised him with someone else.  

Bucky never had the courage to find out what happened to you after all these years. It was an act of masochism, he reasoned, to read about the love of his life in pages on a computer screen; moments he was supposed to share with you as you met him at the end of the aisle, as he held your hand as you gave him a child, as he kept you warm and safe and loved all your years. A life stolen from him by the war – by Hydra. A love he should have been able to give and earn in return.  

He couldn’t put himself through the pain of knowing – to be an outside observer to a life he would have traded everything to have. 

Bucky had loved you so fiercely, he couldn’t stomach the thought of someone else standing in his place. He wished for your happiness – always, above all else, at his own expensive if he must. But he would not torture himself with it. 

So, he never dared to search for you after he escaped Hydra and found his memories again. He didn’t want to know whether your last name had changed, if you’d gone on to have a wonderfully happy life as if you’d never known him at all, if you had children you adored, if you now laid in a grave beside a man who wasn’t him.  

The shame of it – the selfishness – ate him alive.  

He wondered if you knew all that time as he held your letters in his shaking hands amongst the echo of gunfire that he would have sent his blistering soul across ocean currents in search of you, if only to grant you the love you deserved. 

*** 

Bucky was only a few paces outside Stark’s main lab room when he hit a brunt wall of muscle.  

“Buck, stop,” Steve warned, his hands digging sharply into Bucky’s shoulders as he tried to shove his way around his friend. His left arm gave no leeway to Steve’s strength, while his right began to ache under the pressure. Steve gritted his teeth, pushing Bucky to the edge of the hallway. “You gotta let me talk to you first.” 

Through the windows, artifacts from the Hydra warship were laid out upon countertops, surrounded by dozens of techs as they methodically de-iced the valuables and cataloged classified information for Fury before it would be turned over to the proper channels. Further into the room were pieces of the ship itself as if Stark meant to reconstruct the damn thing on solid ground. Bucky winced at the massive emblem of the skull and tentacles painted on a large steel slab of the recovered ship – faded in its time and weathered by the water, but it still managed to meet his eye and mock him.  

“Steve,” Bucky choked out, not sure what else he planned to say after that as he caught sight of the series of cryochambers lined up against the back wall. His heart clenched, as did his hands. “Tell me I’m wrong. Tell me... Tell me I’m being crazy. Tell me it’s not her.” 

It was a curse to know his best friend as well as he did, Bucky realized. Because he could read every slip in the carefully constructed mask upon Steve’s face, every line on his ageless skin, every twitch of a muscle in his jawline. Steve released Bucky’s shoulders and his features warped into an awful expression of remorse. Corners of his lips tilting down, a slight clench of his teeth. A line crossing his forehead just above his brow.  

Steve’s gaze slipped down to his feet and with it, Bucky's stomach.  

“No,” Bucky all but whimpered, stumbling a single pace until his back met the glass. “No, she—she was supposed to be happy, Steve. She was supposed to move on with her life. How—How did she—” 

“Stark’s got people working on it,” Steve answered quickly before Bucky could spiral further. Bucky’s focus shifted back the windows of the lab and as if Steve could read the next question on his friend’s mind, he said, “It’s really her, Buck. I don’t know how or why, but it’s her. And she’s alive.” 

Bucky would have lost his balance if not for the wall propping his body up. He could still feel his heart beating somewhere in his chest – suffocating him, smothering him. Or maybe it was still laying on the ground by the doors to the east wing evading the careless steps of rookie agents rushing through their drills. Maybe his chest was empty. Maybe that was why he felt so numb.  

“Is she awake?” His voice was barely a whisper.  

Steve shook his head. “Sam is going to be there when she does.” 

Bucky narrowed his eyes, a scoff that burned like jealously in his throat. “Sam?” 

He earned a glare in return. 

“We have to assume she still believes both of us to be dead, Buck,” Steve explained, resting a hand against his hip. “You can’t throw her into shock by just walking in the room. A lot had changed since she last saw you. She doesn’t know where she is or when she is. Her last memories will have been on that Hydra ship. She’ll likely be on defense from the moment she wakes.” 

A sticky residue slid along Bucky’s palm and he looked down to find blood trickling from the ends of his fingers where he’d dug his nails into his skin. It was only then that he remembered the sleeve of metal on his left and the history it carried.  

There was relief, he realized, in the stories he’d tortured himself over of the life you might have had without him. If any of it were true, you never would have known what became of him. You’d never have to meet the Winter Soldier or witness the hand that doled out such violence over the decades. You’d never know the monster he’d become.  

You’d have lived a peaceful, happy life free of his demons and the blood he spilt. He’d never have to confront the possibility you might take one look at him and cower in fear of what he’d done, of the man he turned into – that you might not want him anymore.  

“We don’t know the timeline of when she was captured,” Steve continued, his voice wary now, tentative, “but we know she was found wearing a field nurse uniform.” 

Bucky blinked; the air pulled from his lungs. 

No, that couldn’t be right. Bucky had committed all of your letters to memory. You would have told him if you were studying to be a field nurse, if you’d intended on shipping yourself out to the front. It would have ruined him – the thought of you amongst the violence of the trenches like he was. He could suffer his own burdens tenfold, but he could not tolerate the thought of you in such danger. It would have drowned him. He would have remembered that agony.

“I’m as surprised as you,” Steve said in what sounded like a sliver of an apology on his tone, “but Stark’s certain. It’s authentic.” 

Bucky swallowed. It tasted bitter. Blood, maybe. Or bile.  

“Sam will call for us when she’s ready to talk,” Steve said upon noticing the slight discoloration in Bucky’s skin. 

Bucky didn’t say anything else but he managed a short nod. Then, he was left on his own; he and the hoard of demons digging their vicious claws into his spine, dragging him back to the darkest corners of his mind.  

*** 

It was three days before Sam called for him.  

It wasn’t fast enough. It was too soon.  

Bucky almost looked over his shoulder for the shreds of his heart on the tile floor as he made his way to the med bay. His right hand was sore and bruised from the long nights in the gym – breaking and reopening old wounds on his knuckles against the leathered bag. The thinly healed skin nearly fractured as he drew his hand to a fist to stop the shaking.  

He did his best to keep himself centered on the facts – that you’d enlisted yourself as a field nurse mere hours after learning of Bucky’s presumed death in the alps, that Hydra had taken you and your squadron captive one month before the end of the war, that you’d been declared MIA shortly after and, like him, history believed you dead.  

You took the news of waking to the future in stride – better than Steve had apparently. It didn’t surprise Bucky one bit given your affinity for technology and Howard Stark’s Expos you had eagerly joined him to every year. You were always stronger than anyone gave you credit for. Stronger than him, certainly.  

Sam told him you were as helpful to the SHIELD analysts as you could be; giving full reports on everything you could recall before you were put under the ice, from the shift of the Hydra guards to the small talk you’d once overhead from your cell. It was information that would have decimated Hydra’s forces had an Allied warship rescued you before the ship met its home at the bottom of the Atlantic. It did little use to them now than to help to locate old bunkers and destroy the remnants left behind, but it was one less Hydra base on the map and Bucky’s chest was a little lighter knowing only rubble remained in its place.  

Steve was the first of them to visit you.  

You’d been prepared for it, told by Sam a full two days after you regained consciousness. He waited until your vitals were strong, until you’d grown as accustomed as you could to the news of the twenty-first century before he’d told you of Steve’s survival. It was meant to be a test; to see how you reacted to Steve before they dared to bring up Bucky.  

It wasn’t the same, Bucky had tried to argue. Not for the nature of your relationships, but because of the separate lives they led in the years since you last saw them. 

Steve had gone down as a hero in the forties and that hadn’t changed when he woke from the ice. He was an idolized symbol of selfless courage. He was Captain-fucking-America. 

But Bucky? Bucky had spent those years mutilated into a weapon. Tortured. Beaten into submission. His mind warped from his body and weapons placed in his hands. He’d been made into a killer, a monster. He wasn’t whole – not mentally, not physically. He bared little resemblance to the version of the man you’d once written letters to until tears spilled to the fragile paper – letters that had kept him from crumbling under the pressure of war and the weight of responsibility on his young shoulders. He wasn’t the man you once knew.  

Steve had grown more cynical over the years and now bore a wall around his chest after the loss of Agent Carter, but he was still the same man who crossed enemy lines in search of his best friend and brought an entire squadron back with him. He was still the hero who sacrificed himself to the ocean to save New York. He still looked like that man you remembered. 

Bucky flexed his left hand, examining the sharp reflection of impervious metal. This hand held no memory of you the way his right once had. It had not held your weeping frame the night his number was called on the radio and his life was committed to an army he’d never volunteered for. It had not sweetly brushed the hair from your eyes or warmed your frozen fingers on cold winter nights. It had not touched you with adoration and awe until you came apart under bated breath.  

No, this hand was violence incarnate. It was born of vengeance and blood. It had no place near the woman he loved. He’d sever it from his body if he could, if only it would ease the fear you might hold in your eyes when you finally saw him again.  

He cut his hair, foolishly hoping it would be less jarring for you to see him this way. He’d done away with the shoulder length locks shortly after moving into the compound, following Sam’s ridiculous advice that a physical separation from the Winter Soldier might do him some good. He never told Sam that he flinched a little less, hated his reflection a little less, each time he looked in the mirror after the scissors had done their work. Perhaps he should have.  

He'd trimmed the edges himself in a dimly lit bathroom the evening he learned of your survival. It was a little shorter than he kept it in recent months, but it reminded him of the cut he had the day he was shipped overseas. He hoped it might be familiar to you, that you might look at him and see the man who had once held the tips of your fingers through the open window of an Allied war ship until it pulled from the dock and you disappeared from view.  

Sam had told you the basics of what happened to him all these years. Bucky had insisted upon it, though he did not offer an explanation why. He did not tell Sam that he thought you might change your mind upon learning the truth of his past, that you might fear the monster he’d become. He didn’t know if he’d survive the rejection if he saw it on your face.  

Sam had only furrowed his brow at Bucky’s request, as if he’d read straight through his sharp inflections and taunt expression, but he’d agreed to share Bucky’s past with you.  

You’d still requested to see him.  

Bucky wasn’t sure what to make of that. Perhaps you wanted to confirm what you’d been told with your own eyes or you wished to grant him the closure to your relationship neither of you had gotten before you walked out of his life completely. Either way, Bucky caught himself looking for pieces of his shattered heart down the long hall to the med bay. 

By the time he reached the door to your room, he was certain he was going to be sick. He’d prepared himself the best he could for the rejection he was certain to find upon your features; fear or disgust or pity – he wasn’t sure which would hurt the most. He steeled himself against the wall, trying to find his courage when he heard your voice for the first time in seventy years. 

He thought he’d remembered the gentle inflections in your tone, the smile and the levity in your voice. He thought he’d held a clear enough picture to not be brought to his knees by little more than the soft laughter you shared with Sam Wilson as he told you stories of his early days as Captain America’s wingman. He thought he’d be strong enough for this.  

He was wrong. 

“Buck?” Steve’s voice nearly startled him out of his skin. Steve glanced into the room where you were sitting cross legged on the bed with Sam sitting in the folding chair to your left, before he turned back to his friend. “You ready, pal?” 

Bucky swallowed, though it did little to coat his dried throat. He shook his head.  

Steve gave a short nod of understanding and took one step into the room. Your laughter hushed behind muffled hands as Sam shushed you playfully as if the teacher had just strolled into the detention room.  

“Sam, a word?” Steve requested, gesturing to the hallway. Even from his position behind the wall, Bucky could still glimpse the tight expression on Steve’s face through the doorway. Sam must have picked up on who was waiting on the other side of the door and quickly excused himself.  

Sam didn’t scowl at Bucky like he’d anticipated as he stepped into the hall. Instead, all he offered in his expression was a soft encouragement. Lips curved subtle into a smile, a short tap of his hand on Bucky’s shoulder. Sam and Steve disappeared down the end of the hall without another word.  

Bucky exhaled a tense breath and did not allow himself the time to reconsider before he stepped into the doorway. He did not dare to look up when he heard the sharp intake of your breath or the rustling of the sheets as you scrambled quickly to your feet. He only caught a glimpse of the navy-blue sweatpants provided by SHIELD and your bare feet on the cold tile as he stepped closer. It was enough to bottom his stomach.  

You shifted your weight. Nervously, he realized.  

“I—” Bucky started, though his voice came out broken and raspy. He swallowed, trying to find his voice again. “I know this is a shock and I—I don’t want to make this harder for you. I’ll answer any questions you have. I’ll tell you whatever you want to know and then I’ll— I'll leave you be. You won’t have to see me again.” 

He flexed his left hand in the pocket of his hoodie, hiding the metal fist from your view. He was certain you might be able to see through the fabric completely and uncover the monster underneath. But you did not cower in fear of him. You did not speak at all. Bucky couldn’t will his gaze away from the floor. 

“I know Sam told you what happened to me,” Bucky continued, if only to break the agonizing silence. “You know about Hydra and... and the Winter Soldier. You know what I did for them. What I was. What they... turned me into.” 

It was a question, he realized as the words left his lips. He couldn’t be certain whether Sam had held up to his promise because you had yet to move from your position – holding firm, steady, in his presence. He expected you to flinch when he spoke, to wince as he took a step in your direction. But you did not move. You barely took in a breath.  

“So much has changed,” Bucky whispered, his voice breaking. “I’m not... I’m not the man you remember. The things Hydra did to me... The things I’ve done...” 

“It's really true?” your voice fluttered through Bucky’s senses enough to steal the words from his tongue. Light and beautiful and still, etched in an agonizing weight he couldn’t understand. “Sam had said but... I couldn’t believe it. I was afraid to.” 

Bucky winced; his gaze still centered on the floor. Of course, you'd be afraid of him. Of course, you’d be frightened of the thing he’d become. He tried to swallow the tang of copper in his mouth and found he could hardly even will himself to breathe. He took a hesitant step back.  

But your breath hitched as he put space between you, as if you’d been burned, and you reached a hand to him. It landed so gently against his left forearm that he almost hadn’t noticed it. His gaze sharply snapped to your hand as your finger squeezed against solid metal shielded only by the fabric of his sweatshirt. Your thumb brushed over the ridges on the cloth.  

“I was afraid to believe you’d really survived,” you explained gently, the thick ache of tears in your tone. “I was afraid to hope. To allow that for myself.”  

You drew back a shaken breath and Bucky dared to let himself peer at the very edges of his vision, only enough to see the relief of a smile on your lips. You were as beautiful as he remembered; your eyes always too impossibly kind for what he deserved. You looked at him with such grace, such love, he didn’t know what to make of it. How to process it. He wondered how you could even stomach looking at him.  

“Sweetheart,” you eased and his knees nearly buckled. Your hand slid up his arm, tender touches against the machine he despised until your chilled palm rested on the side of his face. Always cold, he remembered. He'd spent so many evenings trying to warm your frozen hands between his own, taking any excuse you’d give him to hold you a little while longer.  

“Sweetheart, look at me,” you asked again.  

Bucky could never find it in him to deny you, not even when he knew it would crush him.  

Slowly, he lifted his eyes, allowing himself to take in the details of the freshly laundered SHIELD sweatshirt and the slight discoloration in patches of your skin he recognized as burns from the ice in cyro. He let himself really look at you for the first time since he left you behind on that dock and a sob crept up to smother him before he could shove it down.  

Your arms were around him in an instant, pulling him tight to your chest as you eased him to sit with you on the edge of the bed. He felt the gentle trace of your palm over his spine, in his hair, along his cheek, and it shattered every piece of him. Broke him and remade his soul again under your touch as his body trembled in your arms.  

Only once he was able to catch his breath again, did you say, “I’m so proud of you.” 

Bucky looked at you, stunned, and it earned him a soft smile in return.  

“You survived more than anyone has ever endured – awful, terrible things,” you continued, brushing your knuckles gingerly along the side of his jaw. “You survived and you kept your promise. Seventy years later. You came home to me.” 

His lips parted, features softening in disbelief. He licked at his lips, heart racing. He shook his head. “But I— The things I’ve done—” 

“I know. I know and I’m still here.” You took his left hand into yours, pushing up the sleeve of his sweatshirt and revealing the metal beneath. You did not wince at you touched the cold vibranium, did not contort your features in disgust or fear. Instead, what crossed your face was an expression of gratitude.  

“I slept through those decades while Hydra controlled you and hurt you,” you said, your voice thick with regret, “but you’re safe now. You’re here, among friends. Among family, from what Sam tells me.” You smiled at him then, something bright and wonderful enough to loosen the chains in his chest. “And I... I know time had passed differently for us. I know that you have lived decades while I slept. For me, the news of your death came mere months ago and I—I still love you, Bucky. I will always love you. In whatever form you come to me in. With whatever past. I will take you. I will always take you. But I would understand if you—” 

Bucky hadn’t realized his own courage until his lips were on yours. Too sudden, perhaps. Maybe too soon. But after an agonizing second of shock, he felt your smile press into his cheeks as you relaxed against him, as you kissed him back for the first time since he was called to the front lines.  

He wasn’t good with words. Not these days. So he hoped he might be able to convey everything he could not say with this kiss. 

That he could not fathom a world where he could willingly say goodbye to you again. That he loved you even on the days he did not remember your face or your name. That he would learn to forgive himself with the kindness and compassion you so easily granted him. That he would give his soul to whatever god was responsible for bringing you back into his life again, even if it was Tony Stark.  

You were breathless when you pulled away, though Bucky could have happily drowned to kiss you just a moment longer. Your lips were swollen, your eyes glossy. He could have stayed in that moment forever if time would let him, would preserve that memory under glass and steel if he could. You laughed then, as you always had after he’d left you flustered, and for a moment, Bucky remembered what it felt like to be the man you loved. Full. Whole. Happy.  

“I never stopped loving you,” he exhaled, his voice stronger than it had been in days. 

“But it’s been so long,” you asked, whether it was in challenge or awe of his confession, he didn’t know.  

But Bucky merely shrugged and traced the edges of your swollen lips with his thumb. “I promised you a lifetime once. I’ll give you this one too if you’ll let me.” 

It seemed as though he’d been the one to render you without words this time as your only response was to kiss him again – softer, gentler than before, tender and chaste. Your fingertips lingered on his cheek as you pulled away, looking at him no different than you had all these years ago – like you saw every ounce of good in his bones and loved him desperate enough to forgive the rest, even when it could not grant it to himself.  

He was different now. He knew he was. And he supposed you were, too. 

But the love still remained. Unconditional. Unwavering.  

In this lifetime, the one before, and whatever came next.  

--

Thank you so much for reading! ❤️ If you enjoyed this fic, please consider supporting me at my ko-fi account ✨

#bucky barnes x reader #bucky barnes #bucky barnes x y/n #bucky barnes one shot #bucky barnes x female reader

[museofvoid]

Now I suggest we gaslight billionaires into thinking that building your own submarines to go look at sunken ships is actually super safe. Oceangate? Implosion? What are you talking about that sounds like that movie markiplier is making, you're just mixing up fiction and reality. Yeah you should totally go on that trip to the Mariana trench it'll be fine. Bring your friends too the more the merrier. And make sure to seal the sub real good to keep that pesky water from getting in.

#i think it could work if we all try hard enough #oceangate #titanic #titan

[skiplo-wave]

Pov you paid: $250,000 to see the sunken titanic and you captain pulls out this to drive the sub

( it’s the knowing the captain is a billionaire himself. Rich people have no common sense I swear)

Ocean gate is a god damn circus act

#the titanic #the titan

[odinsblog]

🤡🤡🤡 clown alert

Nazi lover Harlan Crow out here collecting weak minded, “educated” negroes like Pokémon. He’s already got Clarence Thomas, and now he’s going for “brother” Cornel West because he’s gotta catch ‘em all, I guess ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

It’s funny because I’ve seen some dejected Cornel West followers who can’t believe he sold out for $3,300 dollars, less than the price of a crappy used car.

My thoughts are 1) Either West is hard up for cash so he sold out to a Nazi for dirt cheap, or 2) the $3,300 is only the beginning of a very long payoff like Clarence Thomas has been receiving, and therefore he really didn’t sell out for cheap, or 3) Cornel West is simply thee dumbest retail politician ever, because if 1) and 2) aren’t true, then you must ask yourself why Mr. West didn’t simply say, “Oopsies, my bad. That was a clerical oversight and my campaign has already returned the donation.” Easy peasy, problem solved.

BUT INSTEAD, what West is doing is, he is defending his long “friendship” with Harlan Crow, the Nazi lover. Which, of course, begs several other questions: How long have you known this racist billionaire? What, precisely, has been the nature of this long term “friendship”? Has he ever given money to you or your family or any of your projects before?

Sorry, but those are your only three options, and the longer & harder West continues to stand up for Crow, the more it looks very bad and very suspect for Mr. West.

And you know Black twitter, they hopped into the way back machine and are pulling up all the old receipts, like Cornel West praising Ronald fucking Reagan, for example.

Good riddance to Cornel West. He’s in the sunken place, sunk into the floor. He’s a clown.

#politics #cornel west #harlan crow #sellouts #clarence thomas #west 24

[mask131]

I am reposting this in its own post, since a reblog usually doesn’t get seen much.

It is about the disappearance of the Titan underneath the sea. The current “Titanic disaster” happening. I originally wrote this because if you are on Tumblr, all you see is “Who cares about a handful of billionaires?” “Just eat the rich!” “Let the billionaires die” “Everybody is making a fuss about some rich people’s endangering themselves for pure tourism”. And I need to add something, something a lot of people if not everybody on Tumblr seems to have completely missed, an info that apparently you can only have if you are in France. Just to explain why, for example, this event impacts France a bit more directly than other countries, and why simplifying the situation to “A bunch of stupid billionaires killed themselves due to being stupid” can be very annoying to hear. And it all lies in the fact that there’s one specific man in Titan. This introduction being done, here is the copy-paste of my original reblog:

The reason France talks so much about it, for example, is because there is one French man inside this machine: Paul-Henri Nargeolet. And the whole thing that is taking everybody’s mind is the fact that Nargeolet is one of the greatest French experts of the Titanic. He is described by everyone as an adventurer and explorer, and he has always been doing jobs related to underwater diving (his first job was to work as a deminer-diver from the 60s to the 80s, getting care of a lot of underwater bombs and explosives. But in the 80s it is when he started getting involved with the Titanic - and became one of THE French names tied to it. His first descent to the Titanic was in 1987 in the submarine Le Nautile, and he kept going down there again and again, decades after decades.

Because as I said, he was an explorer. He studied the Titanic, he explored the sunken ship carcass - and more importantly he brought back a lot of objects from the Titanic. He brought up more than 800 different objects (he was part of the RMS Titanic and oversaw a lot of other exploraton operations of the Titanic). Mind you, him bringing up the 800 objects was in the 90s. In his own word, I think he said that in 1993 (but I’m not sure), he brought all these objects because he wanted that future generations might have something that came from the Titanic. Mind you, his explorations have been quite divisive - in fact, he perfectly resumed it in one of the books he wrote about exploring the Titanic. He had received the visit (when he was still digging up the Titanic objects) of two sisters, survivors of the Titanic sinking. One came to him to say “I do not like what you are doing. Our father died in this ship, and I think what you are doing is wrong.” But the other came to him saying “I appreciate a lot what you do. Before the sinking, our mother had placed her pearl necklace by the little cupboard near her bed. Could you try to fetch it back for us?”. As he explains in his book, it was the best illustration of how polarizing him, his explorations of the Titanic and his fetching of items were.

But the point I am trying to make is that this man’s life was entirely about the Titanic. He was part of many research and studies about the Titanic, he kept writing books about the Titanic, he dived down there and explored the Titanic more than two dozen times, and he is the man responsible for us having today more than 800 items taken out of the carcass on the seafloor. In fact, in the French news this was brought up when we learned he was aboard “But... he has been down there like 25 fives already! Why would he pay to go down there yet again? On top of that he’s 77 today, he should just quit going down there!”. And one of his friends answered on TV that, basically, Nargeolet had described him how seeing the Titanic, exploring it, going down there to be near it, became like a drug - an addiction. He wanted to keep going down there for as long as he could, to keep exploring and searching for the ship’s secrets, before its total destruction.

As I do a quick fact-check to make sure I don’t say anything stupid (and I probably will have because I am not a Nargeolet’s biograph) I discover that there is some British billionaire aboard this machine - and I will say you honestly, I have been stuck near 24h info channels in France (thanks to having to work with sound in the background) and never once did they mention this rich British guy. All we talk about here is Nargeolet and his life - and what nobody says but everybody thinks, is how much of a tragic irony it would be if one of the great French explorers and experts of the Titanic died by wanting to see it one last time. This is why, at least in France, we talk a lot about this. (And to be frank, honestly the French news REALLY do not care about the others - if you listened to them there’s only Nargeolet in this little machine down there and nobody else)

EDIT: I just learned he wasn't even going down there purely to see the Titanic. He was going down there to test the Titan - because he had some hopes that maybe, if a mechanical arm was added to the Titan, he could get some items and objects he couldn't have with his own exploration submarine, the Nautilus.  Though it was quite a slim hope, because apparently he also didn't believe the Titan could work with a mechanical arm - but he still decided to do one descent with it just to see how it worked down there...

#titan #the titan disaster #titan sinking #the titan sinking #titanic #the titanic #paul-henri nargeolet #titanic studies #titanic exploration #french things

[tititilani]

I think the most insane thing to me about the whole Ocean Gate submersible vessel thing

is not that it's guided by what I'm pretty sure is a PS3 controller

or the fact that it is, for some reason, bolted from the outside so even if the people inside get to the surface, they still can't open it

or even the ironic "billionaires spend an ridiculous amount of money to cram themselves into a tiny death tube to go look at the very symbol of hubris" part

it's the fact that said tiny death trap only has ONE WINDOW. And it's in the bathroom!!*

Imagine spending 250k per person to go look at a boring sunken ship 12,500 feet down at the ocean's floor and STILL having to look at it through a shitty camera lens

Hell, I can do that from home and not risk drowning to death.

*I'm using the word bathroom loosely. Very loosely.

#ocean gate #titanic #rms titanic #missing submarine #it's genuinely insane to think about #anyways #the ocean is out here ACTUALLY eating the rich #we need to get on her level

[whatshouldbetchescallme]

Me and my bestie going to find the wallets of the sunken submarine billionaires

#titanic gif #submarine #pirates of the caribbean #oceangate

[ayameric]

I Don’t Recognise You Anymore | N. ROMANOFF

YOU DO NOT HAVE PERMISSION TO REPOST MY WORK UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCE.

Natasha Romanoff x Fem!SuperSoldier!Reader

A/N: So, this is my first crack at tumblr fic, and my requests are open!

SERIES Masterlist | MAIN Masterlist

‘The hands that wrap around my throat feel no mercy, no remorse. Those cold-blooded eyes have no memory of what they once saw in me.’

“You good there, Romanoff?” Steve asked quietly, gently nudging the woman beside him.

“Fine.” The redhead grumbled, still sat on the living room couch with her arms folded across her chest, sunken into the couch.

The team were having their newly instituted ‘team bonding’ night, and Natasha did not want to be there. She hadn’t been okay since you had gone and being around everyone reminded her of what had happened.

It had been just over a year since you had gone, and the team still hadn’t given up looking, but it was no longer a priority. Everyone was beginning to move on, slowly, after every lead they chased ended up dead in the water. You had disappeared off the face of the earth.

But Natasha couldn’t move on.

She had totally isolated herself ever since, and it was a miracle Steve and Clint managed to get her out of her room tonight.

“Nat…” Steve tried, but Natasha just sighed, sitting up and practically storming out of the room, down the compound halls to her bedroom.

Everyone stopped talking and watched her as she left, the same look of pity exchanged around the room.

“She’ll never forgive us if we stop looking.” Steve surmised, leaning forward on the couch and clasping his hands together.

“Nat or Y/N?” Clint asked with a raised brow, and Steve just sighed out.

“Steve is right. We need to keep looking.” Wanda stated, and Clint nodded, but Tony just threw his arms up exasperatedly.

“How? Every lead feels like a wild goose chase! I hate to be the realist in the room, but-“ Tony trailed off, but he didn’t need to finish his sentence for everyone to know where he was going with it.

“You think she’s dead.” Clint affirmed, and Tony opened his mouth to talk, but no words left.

The room fell silent, a stark contrast to how lively it had been earlier.  

“We can’t give up, even if it means bringing home a body.” Steve broke the silence. “They both deserve that much.”

Tony rolled his eyes, you and he always had a pretty good relationship, so it was hard for everyone to see him throw in the towel.

“Y/N is gone! And we have nothing! What more can we do?!” Tony yelled, standing up out of his seat on the couch and throwing his arms up exasperatedly.

“Would you be saying any of this if it was Peter? Or Pepper?” Steve argued, now also standing up, almost getting in Tony’s face.

The billionaire bit his tongue and huffed out, clearly not liking what Steve was implying.

“We’re done.” He hissed, before grabbing his whiskey from the coffee table and storming out of the room.

Clint quietly announced he was going to check on his friend, leaving behind the rest of the group to fester it the awkward silence. He walked until he found himself outside of Nat’s room, which at one point, was your shared room, but it was just her occupying it now.

He raised his hand to knock but took a deep inhale as he paused just before doing so.

“Nat?” He called out as he tapped a couple of times.

There wasn’t an answer for a moment, but a quiet ‘come in’ was heard, so the archer opened the door and entered. He saw Nat lying on her side on the large queen-sized bed, facing away from him, noting that she was wearing one of your sweatshirts.

The dark blue hoodie was your favourite, and quickly became Nat’s favourite too. She had worn it sometimes when you had been dating but wore it every day now (when it wasn’t being washed).

Clint didn’t say anything as he walked over, sitting down on the end of the bed.

“Y/N will find her way back to you, y’know?” He said abruptly, trying to soothe his friend, as if those words would offer any comfort. As if she hadn’t heard that a dozen times already.

Those were just words to her now, empty, meaningless words.

Nat stayed silent, but Clint could hear an almost silent sniffle.

“I wish you’d talk to us.” Clint stated to break the silence, but Natasha didn’t seem to budge. “I know talking about feelings isn’t your style…but it might make all of this a little easier.”

The redhead just scoffed lightly but stayed facing away from her best friend.

He could only sigh, letting the silence take over.

“You’ve all given up.” Nat’s voice suddenly broke the silence, and Clint watched her as she sat up on the bed, leaning against her pillows. “You think I don’t see it, but I do.”

Clint didn’t know what to say, opting to instead look down at his feet in shame. Natasha was right.

Most of the team were losing hope with each passing day that they were going to find you, but it had been so long. The team didn’t want to give up, but they were running out of options.

“We aren’t giving up Nat. It’s hard, but I promise you-“ Clint finally looked up and caught her gaze. “We will bring Y/N home.”

Natasha let a singular tear slip down her cheek, nodding gently as she quickly wiped it away.

She had to believe him; Natasha wouldn’t give up on you.

It had been a few weeks since the incident, and no one had said anything about it since. Everyone had really gone about their business.

Steve, Nat, Bucky, Sam and Wanda were all out on a mission in Egypt after there had been reports of a domestic terrorist incident in a small town just outside of Cairo. The group was unknown, and so were their motives, but the threat they posed was one that needed to be squashed before it got out of hand.

The group arrived and were greeted by a large explosion in the town centre, and they all immediately sprang into action.

They spotted the waves of troops, who looked a little rough around the edges, but they were tactically charged. Clad in black, similar to HYDRA, they began firing at the Avengers, as though that was who they were here for.

“Nat! Go and help Wanda clear civilians!” Steve yelled through the comms, to which she affirmed and ran off to find her teammate.

She dodged through the barrages of fire that littered the marketplace of the small town and took cover as best she could. Her eyes caught Wanda using her powers to stop rubble from collapsing onto a group of people.

Natasha sprinted and helped the people move, allowing Wanda to let the rubble drop to the ground without hurting anyone.

“You good?” Natasha questioned as she jogged back over to the Sokovian, who nodded. The pair heard screams coming from inside a building just behind them, and both bolted to the source.

Inside they saw one of the soldiers pointing a gun at a man, a woman screaming in the corner, begging for him to spare his life.

Natasha wasted no time in hitting him with a widow bite, immobilising him as he convulsed on the floor from the voltage.

Wanda got the couple to safety, sending them in the opposite direction of the conflict, but a small clattering rolled on the floor, and the pair could only eye the grenade before it went off. It exploded with a burst of smoke, causing the pair to lose each other in the mist.

“Natasha?!” Wanda called out, coughing and spluttering.

But Natasha couldn’t respond as a large figure, taller and broader than the rest of the soldiers, came storming over to her. The figure grabbed a hold of her neck before she could react and lifted her from the ground with an ungodly strength.

The smoke as still thick, but Natasha could make out that the soldier was wearing a mask, akin to a hockey mask. But Natasha heart stopped for a split second as she made eye contact with the soldier, and it caused her to lose focus. She was frozen.

It was as if her body was in shock at the sight of those eyes.

But the grip around her neck tightened, and the redhead began to lose consciousness. Her hands scrambled to her assailant’s grip, trying desperately to alleviate some pressure and get some air, but the soldier was hellbent on suffocating her there and then.

Natasha’s eyes brimmed with tears, looking into the cold, empty eyes of her soon to be killer. Deep oceans of nothing made contact with her pained ones, and a flash of recognition rushed through the redhead.

It was impossible.

Nat dropped one of her hands from their hand, and desperately patted herself to grab a widow bite, finding one and sticking it on the soldier’s shoulder. But it had no effect, Natasha saw a glimpse of pain in their eyes as they twinged at the shock, but their stature didn’t falter.

The mist had now cleared, and it took Wanda using her abilities to send both the masked person and Natasha flying into a wall. It crumbled as the assailant took most of the hit, but Natasha used their momentary falter to get up on her feet and gain some distance, rushing to the side of the room where Wanda was sat injured. She must’ve taken a hit when the explosion went off, if the bloody cut on her head was anything to go by.

Her hands found her pistol and aimed at the soldier who was now stood up and stumbling over to her as they shook off their previous hit.  

The gun was cocked and aimed right at the soldier’s head, who was still storming over but Natasha’s finger wouldn’t pull on the trigger. She would be thanking her lucky stars as just before the thug got to her, Sam came flying in and dove at them, taking them to the ground.

A struggle started and blows were exchanged, with Sam being thrown off and through a wall.

The soldier got up, and immediately went straight for Natasha, who wised up and dashed off, calling out to Steve in the comms.

It was clear to Natasha that this super soldier was after her, so gaining distance was her best option. Somehow, the soldier had escaped Wanda and Sam, but they were now running after her at an inhuman speed.

A glimpse over her shoulder told Nat that her assailant was gaining on her, but Captain America had dropped down from a rooftop and tossed his shield, hitting the soldier square in the chest, sending them straight backwards.

But a shot fired at Steve hit him in the arm, but the shooter was quickly taken out by Bucky. It was enough of a distraction to let the super soldier getaway, with the Captain’s shield.

Sam returned, holding Wanda up who was clearly quite injured.

“Who the hell is that?!” Sam called out as the group reunited.

“You mean the thing that took Cap’s shield?” Bucky somewhat jested, but nobody was in the mood to laugh.

“They seem hellbent on taking out Romanoff.” Sam pointed out, and everyone looked at the woman who was unnaturally quiet.  

“I don’t think this was any random attack, I think whoever did this wanted our attention.” Steve stated, turning his eyes to Nat. “I think they wanted Nat.”

“But why?” Bucky asked for the redhead, who was seemingly unable to talk.

“I don’t know, but I think we need to figure out who this is, then we can find out why.” The Captain surmised, before a beeping noise suddenly began blaring next to them.

Steve spotted the small round grenade that had rolled next to them and kicked it and sent it flying down the long road of market stalls.

It exploded, causing an eruption of sand and stalls.

The team readied themselves for whatever had thrown the grenade, and from the dust and rubble, a figure emerged.

“Dramatic much?” Wanda coughed, as everyone recognised it to the soldier that had appeared earlier, now wielding Steve’s shield.

“We don’t have time for this.” Bucky grumbled, stepping in front of Steve and Nat and aiming his pistol at the soldier who was stalking over.

He fired, but the figure was smart enough to use the shield to block it, then proceeding to throw it and hit Bucky, knocking him to the ground. It bounced but Steve managed to grab it, ready to fight.

Bucky scrambled to his feet as the figure stopped, only several feet away from the group of Avengers.

“Who are you?!” Sam called out, still holding Wanda upright.

The figure didn’t respond. They only raised their arm, pointing at Natasha.

There was silent shock, but it wasn’t a surprise that Natasha had enemies, but the real question was who was behind all of this.

The spy’s emotions got the better of her, and she pulled her pistol from her holster, and took a step forward, firing a shot right at the head of the soldier.

“Romanoff, wait!” Steve called out, but it was too late, the barrel discharged the shot, and it travelled too quickly for the inhuman figure to move completely clear. Their head moved, but the bullet hit the side of their mask, causing it to fly off.

There was a moment where time felt like it was frozen. The small group of Avengers stood still as the tall figure looked back up at them.

It was you.

“Y/N/N?” Natasha let out a small whimper as all her emotions came crashing down on her at once.

But your face remained neutral, which Natasha noted was littered with a lot more scars and burns. She couldn’t believe it was you, that you were alive, and that she had just tried to shoot you.

A whistle was heard in the distance, and you gave one final glance before bolting off through the ruins of the town.

#natasha romanoff #natasha romanov #natasha romanoff x reader #natasha romanoff x you #reader insert #marvel #mcu #fxf

[garthnadermemestash]

titanic taught me about class war

#titanic #oceangate #submersible #implode billionaires #sinking #titanic memes #tumblr memes #dankest memes #savage memes #dark humor #sunken billionaires #billionaires in tubes #pathetic3 #garth nader memes #political memes #mystery sovcit theater memes #mistaken con man #mst memes #yellow submarine #shipwreck #eat the rich #class war

[youwerelikeanangel]

instead of talking about the billionaires in the sunken submersible please, if you can, consider donating (and spread the word) to organisations like leave no one behind , sea watch , sos mediterranee or sos humanity and therefore help asylum seekers in the mediterranean sea. thank you.

#or any cause that is worthy of your time and money . thank you . #x

[stormxpadme]

Whumptober 2023 No. 31 - Emptiness/Setbacks/“Take it easy.”

Scogan Bingo challenge | SBC_005 FREE Scogan Bingo challenge | Halloween/Spooky-themed adoptables 9 - Back From The Dead

When Hank called Logan and told him to get his ass to Stark Tower this instant, Logan almost told the blue furball to go fuck himself.

The dust of the Phoenix and Cure crises was only just starting to settle. They'd literally buried their dead – or rather, honored them, as two of these three graves were notoriously empty – just yesterday. Politicians all over the world were circle-jerking to who could come up with the most absurd new restrictions for mutants, punishing everyone for a few insane motherfuckers going off the rails once more, while the Cure kept on tearing their race apart from the inside.

And in all that mess, Ororo and Logan were suddenly entirely alone, supposed to lead a whole damn mutant school with what little they'd managed to read up in Charles' last message to them and his files by now, and with what Ororo had caught in the cause of the years of how to organize this place. When they weren’t busy trying to explain to completely distraught children what the fuck had happened without even understanding it themselves yet, or listening to minors cry themselves to sleep, they took the occasional minute in their respective apartments for a breakdown of their own, not even having begun to process this whole clusterfuck personally. Seriously. The very last thing Logan had any interest in right now was condescending bullshit from that douchebag billionaire Stark and that walking flag parody of a team leader who had both been happy to sit out this whole crisis on their asses although they usually never got tired of interfering with the X-Men's dealings. But in the end, Logan got on his bike and drove downtown anyway, not least because getting out of this house full of depression for an hour might actually save his sanity. And also because no matter how far he was from accepting that still? He'd probably just been promoted to full-time team leader, after already having been Scott's second-in-command since Alkali Lake. At least temporarily. In spite of Charles, of Jean herself, telling it to his face, part of Logan still refused to accept that Scott was gone. It couldn’t be. Not when the two of them had only just begun admitting how they felt about each other before Jean's return, approaching at snail's pace, not even daring to put a label on things yet … But they'd been ready to see where this surprising new path would take them, together, before Jean's return had ripped it all to pieces, literally. Just considering that to be true had Logan's hands clench so hard on the handlebars of his – Scott's old – bike that they deformed under his mutation-enhanced strength and he almost skidded off the damn road thanks to the activated hyperspeed. Not good. Maybe Logan only held on to denial in spite of literally just having buried a non-existent corpse, in spite of all eulogies and Ororo's tear-stained looks from her sunken dark eyes whenever they met his, because he had no idea what would happen if he finally moved on to the stage of acceptance. If the animal inside tore loose from its chains in the grief inevitably waiting at the end of that line, Logan's mind blanking out as rage and hate took over, with not even anyone left to vent it on … Logan had a funny idea, then Ororo would be left on her own as Principal for good, at least until Hank would deign to move his arrogant ass back to Mutant High. As long as Logan could possibly prevent such an unhappy outcome, he had to try, somehow. No matter how loud that exasperated voice in the back of his head was, calling him delusional. He'd done stupider things. "Care to tell me what the fuck is so important that you couldn’t tell me on the phone?" he snapped after parking his bike in Stark's impressive garage full of fancy sports cars and admittedly quite pretty bikes, and the elevator had automatically brought him only one floor up to the Tower's cellar. The sickbay, the laboratories, where Hank had spent the last few days for some reason, instead of being in Washington to try and help calm the general mood down as he'd actually said he would when leaving.

"You'll have to see for yourself. You wouldn’t believe me." Hank nodded him along a long sterile hallway, paws clenching and unclenching restlessly in a kind of agitation Logan had rarely seen in this guy before.

"You know that's what they tell the dumb jocks and chicks in the movies before leading them to the slaughterhouse," Logan grumbled, only even more annoyed instead of curious. If this was about some unnecessary new invention of Stark's again, supposed to make the world for mutants easier and in the end probably turning out to be just as much a tool of war and division as that damn Cure, Logan would break some expensive machine on his way out on pure accident.

Or maybe it was a trap; not unlikely either. Stark and Rogers notoriously weren’t huge fans of mutant-kind; probably even less now that whole Phoenix catastrophe.

But since thanks to his healing factor, Logan usually didn’t have a lot to fear from any threat, he finally shrugged and played along, rummaging in his jacket for a cigar, just to annoy his on-and-off-teammate a little about ash and smoke in sterile environments. Logan entirely forgot to light it though when he entered the examination room he was being shown to and was suddenly standing before a huge glass tank filled with transparent fluid in which a human body was floating.

Scott.

He only vaguely noticed from the brief pain in one wrist and the dull thud of metal that his legs had given out under him. The voices of Hank, of Stark and Rogers in the background, of some blonde in a revealing white corset Logan didn’t know, turned to incomprehensible noise, nothing but his rapid breathing, his racing heartbeat echoing in his mind as he stared at the body of his dead partner.

Scott. And he was not dead.

Only when the first shock subsided and Logan's eyes weren’t that clouded by terror anymore, when he remembered how to blink, his mind caught on to the fact that no, contrary to his first panic, he hadn’t been called here because Scott's corpse had finally been found, on display here for sick entertainment for some reason. Logan's instincts, once more, hadn’t been off at all.

The ghostly pale, almost white body, intubated and hooked to IVs and drains through holes in the tank's ceiling, wasn't moving on its own, lazily drifting in whatever fluid that was, but it was breathing. Listening closer, drowning out the voices in the room consciously now, Logan could even make out a very slow, faint heartbeat.

There were some details he couldn’t wrap his head around right away, and he should probably be asking about those to suspend the last of his disbelief … But for a moment, all he could do was gaze at the man he thought he'd never see again with his eyes burning, his body shaking, and send a silent thanks to whoever out there might be responsible for fate for this most unexpected surprise. When a strong paw grabbed him by the shoulder, shaking him rudely, Logan almost ran his claws through Hank's guts on pure instinct, but after another few deep breaths, he could somehow get himself together and push himself back to his feet. It took a lot of self-composure not to immediately hurry over to that tank, up the metal stairs leading to the top, just to try and touch the man inside, just to go sure. First, he needed details. "You wanna tell me what the fuck is going on, McCoy?"

"We've been trying for five minutes," Rogers from his silent corner answered dryly, arms crossed in front of his ridiculously broad chest. With his usual wing mask pulled back from his face, the Avengers' leader looked remarkably pale himself, his square jaw set tight as he regarded that tank with not half as much joy as Logan, which immediately provoked the wish in Logan to get over there and shove boy scout out of the room. That Scott and Steve had never been exactly friends was no secret in the world of the enhanced, and Scott wasn’t in any position to fight a possible attack right now.

Well, that was what Logan was here for. "Not sure I need to hear anything from you, flag boy. Hank?"

"Much as it pains me to say, you should show our hosts a bit of politeness for once," Hank answered with an askew smile. "It was them, and our friend Emma Frost over there, who received the request to attempt this experiment. It was part of Charles' will, drafted right before his death. He knew there was a very real chance he wouldn’t survive when Erik and he set out to stop Phoenix. The letter he wrote for Ororo and you wasn’t the only one. He knew Stark is the only person not stopped by legal or moral boundaries with the technical means to achieve what Charles had in mind, and Rogers as team leader had to sign the whole deal off. Grudgingly, I might add. Steve doesn’t have a high opinion on illegal laboratory experiments from personal experience. But in the end, we all decided together that Phoenix was an extraordinary force no one could have seen coming or had a chance to fight, and that people Jean unwillingly has on her conscience should get a second chance if possible."

"Is there any way I can make you get to the point before sunrise, King Kong?" Logan wearily rubbed his eyes, trying his best not to let all those formalities and details get to him that he couldn't be caring about any less right now. Sure, that something was shady about this whole thing had been clear the moment Stark's security had patted him down for cameras outside. And if what Hank was implying was true – and given what Charles had read in Jean's mind about how Scott had died, Logan had to assume, it was –, they better made sure that the how about this whole deal would indeed stay within these walls. Or Scott would end up locked away as a lab rat in some S.H.I.E.L.D. facility. But as far as Logan was concerned, none of that mattered right fucking now. "You telling me I'm looking at a human clone?"

"The technique's been sound for more than a decade," Stark barged in for the first time, a proud grin plain to see twitching under his stupid goatee. "No one's allowed to use it is all. Those who don't give a shit about that are usually working for illegal organ farms or fertility facilities, or doing human experiments, since breeding a fully grown body within weeks in an egg is useless for anything else when you don't have the mind and soul to go with it. That's what we have her for." A fond glance toward the one Hank had called Emma, full of the affection and interest going with a couple of hormones too many, interrupted Stark's usual litany of self-praise.

"I run a school similar to Charles'." The woman brushed back the hood of a white cape she'd drawn deep into her face, apparently sensing Logan's usual apprehension towards strangers, and regarded him with a not-unfriendly but impatient-feeling look before turning back to the tank. "Charles' and my power sets are also similar. We've been working together for decades. I did many things wrong in my youth which is why I'm keeping out of most crises and huge battle these days, to not get tempted again. But when Charles really needed me, he could always count on me, he knew that. When I received his letter, I rushed to the place he described for his own rebirth immediately, but there's no sign of him, at least so far. At this point, there's no telling if we can bring him back. But Tony's been saving the DNA of many other enhanced in his databank for these kinds of cases for a long time. So once Steve approved, he and I turned to a next case we were pretty sure we could succeed with. And for a while, things went well, as you can see." Somehow, Logan didn’t like that limitation in the woman's last sentence, especially with how dejectedly, almost in resignation she raised her hand to the crystal clear glass of the tank, her eyes closing for a moment as she seemed to reach out with her mind to the person inside, only to shudder back both physically and mentally immediately.

Sensing Logan's exploding impatience, Hank grabbed him by the arm before he could ask again, in a far ruder manner this time, and led him away a few steps while Emma visibly tried to recollect herself. "Bringing a mind back postmortem is not a cake run. Usually, when you try, these souls have already left off to … wherever you believe people go when it's time. That's not for us to know at this time. What we do know is that there is a kind of mental limbo between death and that other sphere of existence that many souls rest in, especially when they were ripped from life early. If a patient's soul is there and for how long, no one can tell before a telepath tries to find them. The good news is, Emma found Scott. He's definitely still somewhere around. Emma thinks, Jean had a hand in that. Or well, the part of her that was still her. Jean knew about Charles' emergency plans for such situations and probably wanted to make sure, Scott at least had a chance to come back."

"Still waiting for the but, King Kong." Logan had to physically stop himself from scratching the massive metal lining the walls, or slap one of the people in here over the back of their heads so that someone would finally talk.

"She can't pull him out." Hank's sunken eyes withdrew even further behind their membranes as he turned to the tank, burying his hands deeply in the pockets of his lab coat. "His soul is resisting. Emma keeps on running into setbacks, every time she thinks she has a grasp on him. He slips away, or it's just an illusion, and then he shuts her right back out. She can't clearly communicate with him, his mind is in disarrange. After what happened, not much of a surprise. Emma can't tell if he's just confused and scared which would be an entirely normal reaction or if he doesn’t want to be brought back. And if the latter is the case, Logan … Then we have no right to force him. Not to mention that we probably can't, anyway, even if Rogers was willing to ignore the condition he's made for the procedure to be done. We need to go sure, and soon. You can only keep a fully bred clone without a mind on life support for so long."

"Then stop wasting time." Finally understanding his role in this whole drama, Logan shuddered, his eyes meeting Emma's sharp blue ones as he tried to prepare in vain for the unloved upcoming intrusion of a telepath. Nothing he would usually agree to voluntarily, especially not after Phoenix … But even if this whole thing would go wrong, even if it should indeed turn out that Scott no longer wanted to face a world going down the drain, in which case even Logan would have to accept that … At least he might get the chance to talk to the man he'd come to love for a last time.

Tony, having listened to their conversation sneakily of course, showed a relieved grin, the guy surely happy that such a dubious and doubtlessly costly project maybe wasn’t doomed to fail after all. "I'll have everything set up."

Logan just nodded vaguely, not half as enthusiastic about what was to come. With his arms wrapped around his own body as he suddenly felt freezing cold from the residing shock, he strode back to the tank, swallowing thickly as he beheld the shape inside, this time with the necessary knowledge and rationality. Which didn’t make the humiliating sight of a naked, helpless shape openly on display for everyone entering to see, easier to bear. Not to mention there were still things that seemed simply off about this reproduced body that Logan couldn’t put on the slightly blurred view of the containment fluid, much as he tried. "He looks different."

"He looks remade," Hank corrected him, apparently knowing exactly what Logan's sharp sense of vision was aimed at. "You do realize Scott's team hadn’t only formed right before you came to join them at Liberty Island, right?"

"Meaning?" Logan's impatience with guessing games was at an all-time low.

Hank pinched the bridge of his flat nose with an exasperated sigh. "For two people so madly head over heels for each other, you two made remarkably little effort, looking into each other's files and past. Scott's had hip replacement on both sides before he was even 20, Logan. Either Jean or I relocated his jaw more often than we cared to count. Hardly any of his teeth were his own on the day he died. He's had two ribs missing. 15 percent of his skin was Shi’ar tissue replacement for third-degree burns. Need me to go on? If you look at him and see a changed physique, it's because you haven’t met him before he was orphaned and Charles turned him into a child soldier. And that’s before we take into account, he probably will no longer need his glasses now. Though I would prefer putting them on for safety reasons anyway if we try this whole thing until we know for sure."

Logan had no words left to say for a moment, not even to repeat that they were of course going through with this. That there was no way he wouldn’t at least try to bring Scott back, seeing as he was the only one left close enough to the guy to have a chance at that … But was that really the truth? With Logan apparently never really having shed his shallow belief from the beginning, that before Liberty Island, Scott had never really been in a true war?

Even afterward, he'd never had the impression that his partner was prone to exaggerated physical damage in the field. Scott had always been remarkably fit for his slightly slim stature, fast, athletic, and an excellent hand-to-hand combatant. At least while Logan had been in the field together with the X-Men, he honestly couldn’t remember the guy ever coming home with as much as a sprained ankle.

"What happened that he suddenly stopped throwing himself off every cliff within reach?"

"You happened." Coming to stand behind him, Hank rested his hand heavily on Logan's shoulder, their eyes meeting in the faint reflection of the water, distracting Logan from the frightening sight of one bony, absurdly smooth thigh right before his eyes. "When you became part of us, you became his shield, Logan. And I promise you, none of us ever took that for granted. Even the ones of us not always residing in Westchester, only joining the team when shit hits the fan … We all have a great deal of love and respect for our young Captain here. Devastation among our kind upon learning of his fate runs deep. But that's not even why I called you. The one thing Rogers and I can agree on, the main reason why Steve said yes in spite of his inhibitions, is that Scott never really had a chance for a real life of his own after Charles took him in. He was raised with nothing but the fight ever since he was twelve. If there's anyone who deserves another shot, it's him. Do your best, please. That's all I'm asking you."

"Mean to, McCoy." Logan gave the guy a short, serene nod before pushing his hand away and straightening his posture, gritting his teeth. No use, drawing this out any longer than necessary. "So, where's that Frost woman?"

*****

"He'll try to push you out, to get rid of you." Emma was still preaching by the time she and Logan lay down on the narrow stretchers installed right next to the top of the tank in a haste, while Stark proceeded to open one of the small treatment holes in the solid metal disk covering the tank, for the last necessary step. "Once all of our minds are connected, you'll see things both from his and your and possibly even from my past that his subconsciousness creates to scare intruders off. It's possible he'll believe it isn’t you. You'll have to find a way to convince him. When you encounter other souls waiting in the limbo, ignore them. You don't want to communicate with the dead, Logan. Believe me, it's not worth it."

"And here I was thinking that was the plan," he commented dryly, raising his hand in tired defense when Emma was about to break in another sermon. "I got the idea, Snowflake. McCoy says, time's short, so let's get a move on it." Glad when the woman finally shut up, Logan allowed Hank, albeit reluctantly, to restrain his ankles and right wrist to the damn stretcher with adamantium cuffs of which Logan decided he didn’t even want to know where Stark had them from. None of them was hot on Logan's instincts taking over his mind at the wrong moment in such a mental exceptional situations, and his claws accidentally going through the wrong person within reach. His left arm was encased in a longer, looser shackle to his left, fastened to the tank's lid … And then there was suddenly the alarmingly cool but hauntingly familiar sensation of a well-known hand in his. In a very true sense of the word, it was like touching an empty hull, entirely unmoving, filled by only the faintest rush of blood beneath the surface … But given that Logan had been certain not too long ago he wouldn’t ever feel that touch anymore, he had a new lump in his throat anyway. He refused to turn his head toward that hole in the tank lid because the sight of that freshly crafted body still creeped him out, focusing on Emma instead whose small, thin shape had relaxed deeply into the stretcher's hard surface, her breathing going deep and evenly as she fell into a kind of deep meditation more by the second.

Just when Logan was about to open his mouth to ask, the woman suddenly grabbed his shackled hand without a warning, and Logan's world drowned in darkness.

******

He woke up in the Mutant High. For a moment, Logan was almost tempted to believe, this whole shit had been an especially detailed dream, even worse than his usual nightmares as it had felt so damn real, including getting someone back he'd thought lost … That he might actually be able to do that if he didn’t fuck up again, he only remembered when he sluggishly sat up from where he was curled in a ball in the corner of the living room, and the disorientated greyness of sleep and dampened sleepy condition of his senses didn’t go away. Not a dream. An illusion. His legs felt wobbly when he stood up, as if the floor beneath him was shaking, and after a first tentative step, he realized it was, the wooden boards not only creaking but dented, like mud, with every cautious step. When Logan looked down, he saw that he was barefoot suddenly, and leaving a trail of bloody footprints on the expensive beige carpet though he couldn’t make out any injury on his body. Not that he was having one right now as he had to remind himself repeatedly. Just as little real as the creepily authentic-feeling environment of a building he knew to the last corner and crevice, looking, sounding even smelling the same … except that it was yawningly empty. Remembering Emma's words and suspecting, he wouldn’t be seeing a welcoming committee anytime soon, Logan turned to the door to the garage after a moment of hesitation.

This was where Scott had fled to when he'd needed an hour for himself. To tinker with one of his rides sponsored by Charles over the course of the years, to free his head with something for his hands to do, to make something broken work again, as he had once told Logan. Every now and then that had helped, forgetting how helpless they all were, in spite of all their powers and efforts, against the dangers that mutant world was facing every day and the ongoing bigotry of far too many normal people.

But when Logan opened said door, it wasn’t to dozens of expensive rides. Instead, he was standing in the middle of a battlefield, gunshots going off all around him, the air thick with smoke, blood, and powder, causing his instincts to spring to life instantly. He threw himself behind the cover of the next best huge rock before he'd even really taken in the situation, the flag and uniforms of a hostile country long wiped off the maps, the corpses of a unit he'd once been part of laying all around him, guts out, explosions in the distance decimating the rest of the men to zero.

Except one.

When Logan retched and turned away from a scene he'd never seen in such detail in his dreams, reminding himself arduously that none of this was real, none of this could hurt him, he realized he wasn’t alone in his hiding spot.

Kneeling before him on the blood-soaked ground was one of his arch enemies although Logan needed to look twice to recognize that much sharper-looking face without hip-length, unkempt hair and filthy fur clothes. Creed's eyes were the same though, filled with perverted lust for killing, torture, and human flesh, his uniform red all over from blood that wasn’t his, his claws deeply in the neck of the guy he'd buried himself in, lost in his perverted urges for fast, sadistic satisfaction. His canines, too, were dripping with blood as he looked up to grin broadly at Logan, winking at him playfully without ever stopping what he was doing. "Gonna join the fun or what, Jimmy? Offensive's a bust anyway. Time to have some fun."

That voice, never exactly pleasant for the ears even in real life, was screeching like nails on a chalkboard, reminding Logan more effectively than any warning earlier that all he encountered in here was part of some mind in shambles, and it probably didn’t matter much if it was his own or the dying, trapped one he'd set out to find. These new splatter images just planted into his memory along with a whole bunch of new intrusive fears and self-loathing, he could think about when he'd finished the damn mission. Before he wordlessly left, he cut off Creed's ugly head with his claws anyway. Just on principle.

The violent act of defiance seemed to attract attention. After Logan's next blink, he was back in the living room, and this time, not alone. Only it wasn’t the lively chatter and laughter of dozens of enhanced fleas around him, brightening even his worst days in a way he'd never expected it, moving into this damn house back then. Perched on the ground, on the sofas, the windowsills, were unmoving, ghostly silhouettes, none of which he knew. Some looked almost like wax figures, their skin shining in the nearly entirely desaturated colors of the surroundings, some showed the often terrible wounds they had died from. None of them were breathing but all of them were alive in this weird, ghostly way of existence that this place of dread only offered.

When Logan made a hesitative step towards the stairs, to continue his search, a little girl with a high forehead, long brunette braids, and eyes somehow looking creepily familiar came to stand in his way, a doll with a broken face in her hand, her eyes empty like from a 70-year-old veteran. "You can't go up there! No one is allowed up there!"

Logan tried to ignore the creepy phenomenon like he'd been advised, going around it only to find the damn thing had moved like ghosts obviously did and was right in his path again, baring worryingly sharp teeth at him. "Yeah, well, I'm not like other people, kiddo." He made another useless attempt of sneaking by the girl, wincing at the sound of his own, also far too gravelly voice, sounding like coming from some scratchy LP played too slow. He was just as little real as everything else in here; he should better not forget that. Which hopefully meant, the same non-existent rules of nature applied to him. Taking a deep breath, bracing himself, Logan sprinted off, running right through the girl. He thought to taste copper in his mouth for a moment, all his insides clenching at the sensation of being penetrated thoroughly by something he couldn’t even identify, his brain flooded with a whole heap of memories that weren’t his own. He had to hold on to the stair railing, panting … When he opened his eyes again, he was certain, that damn thing must be gone now.

Instead, the girl was two steps above him now, grinning at him menacingly. Blood slowly began to drip from her lips, her ears, her eyes, soaking her stained shirt and jeans, but she was still smiling, obviously delighting in Logan's growing shock. Under his disbelieving sight, two long claws of bones on each side started to emerge from her hands as she crouched down in a position before him that he also knew damn well, about to pounce.

Suddenly, Logan had to fear he wasn’t half as immune to such an attack as he'd thought, not with how frozen he suddenly was in place …

"Laura! That's enough. He's a friendly."

In spite of the kid grudgingly disappearing immediately, Logan was still entirely unable to move a single muscle, his blood ice cold in his veins from one second to another. This voice, he would have recognized in a million after just one syllable. "Jean." This was the cruelest illusion of them all, so much worse than any blood and violence that had been haunting him all his life anyway. This was what he'd really dreaded, agreeing to this whole thing, knowing how likely he was, he'd stumble into memories of this kind in Scott's mind and at a loss how to deal with it, just days after Jean's death …

"Logan. Look at me." She was closer now, but still at a respectable distance to his claws, and Logan suddenly realized, her voice wasn’t distorted and screeching.

The scent of her rose perfume hit his nose and promptly brought tears to his eyes. This was the last thing he'd sensed of her as she had died in his arms. When he had killed her.

"You didn’t. You saved me." That pleading gentleness in her warm, deep voice finally enough to get through to him, make him turn around on shaking knees, Jean smiled at him gently, every bit the flawless beauty as which he'd been allowed to behold her just for a few minutes at a stretch upon her last return, whenever that out of control side of her hadn’t prevailed.

She'd still been somewhere in there, under all that madness and lust for destruction; he'd known that the whole time. If only he'd tried just a little harder …

"Logan, you got it all wrong." Even now, in a place that didn’t even really exist, she could still easily read his mind … And all of a sudden, as she stepped closer, every bit as graceful with her floating, fiery hair, her tight green dress, Logan was certain that this was definitely real. Jean nodded softly, a small smile on her beautiful lips. "I'm neither a memory nor an illusion. I'm much like them." She nodded at the ghostly shapes in the distance that were no longer a threat, obviously having a great deal of respect for her for some reason. "I'm not sure for long I'll be here. I still need a while to make peace with all that happened. But I only can do that because you had the strength to end it that day, Logan. I will never forget that." Close enough now for him to feel her warmth, encasing his non-body in this eerie place like a wool blanket, Jean reached up to softly wipe the tears from under his eyes, from his beard, a look of so much honest affection in her dark eyes that it broke his heart all over. "You need to stop blaming yourself. Nothing you could have done, or anyone else, could have changed the outcome of this. Charles didn’t know this but he was wrong about me. I wasn’t schizophrenic, Logan. I was possessed. By a cosmic force that none of you could recognize when you encountered it. One that fortunately died with me before it could really emerge. If it would have, it would have torn the whole universe to pieces. It's only thanks to you that didn’t happen." The grip of her hand on the back of his neck tightening, Jean shyly pulled him in, remembering only too well what had happened the last time they'd been this close.

But that had been another person, nothing of what Jean had really been like in life, and Logan's feelings for Scott weren’t in the way of how much he'd also cared about this woman back then either. The three of them had long stopped trading on such outdated moral boundaries. When their lips met, a bit of color seemed to seep back into the world around him, his thoughts finally no longer that clouded. Suddenly he was a hundred percent sure where he would find the person he was looking for, and he still had to hurry the fuck up. But one thing, he still needed to know. "Jeannie …" Grabbing her thin shoulders as she tried to turn away with a satisfied nod, having fulfilled what she'd come for, he fought the new lump in his throat in vain, trying to put all into words into seconds he'd never been able to tell her when she'd been alive. Maybe he didn’t have to. Maybe she knew, now that she seemed to know everything going on in the world of both the dead and the living. And then, even more so, he needed her to tell him something, or he would wonder all his life. "If this works, Jeannie … Can we bring you back, too? You're a telepath, you can find your way back alone …"

"Any body I would slip back into, Dark Phoenix would already be waiting in for me," Jean answered, choked, wiping her eyes in the same deeply rooted sadness and longing that probably kept her here still. "I can't risk all life for a single one, Logan. But you can be sure, I will keep a close eye on all of you, especially on you two." She pointed her chin up towards the first floor with a tender smile. "You'll take care of him for me, right? That's all I ask of you."

"Always, Red. I'll see you. One day." No longer bothering to fight his tears, Logan pulled her hand close for a last fleeting kiss on it before forcing himself to turn away from this hopefully last, the hardest meeting in this damn ghost house.

****

Scott was waiting for him in the same place, the same hunched position that Logan had found him so often in back then before his death. On what had once been Jean's and his bed, staring dully to the ground, haggard and pale, entirely absent from the world, long before he'd been forced to leave it. And just one time too many, Logan hadn’t tried hard enough to break this dangerous cycle of depression and grief back then, failing to stop his lover from basically throwing himself at Dark Phoenix' feet.

Not this time. "Hey, Slim." Never hesitating for a second, he knelt down on the floor in front Scott, closing his hands around that stubbly, hollowed face, lifting it until he could be sure Scott was at least vaguely aware of him. "Time to go home."

"Been trying." Scott's choked, far too quiet voice didn’t sound like he was seriously aware of a living presence in this shambled world of his, more like he was talking to himself. Or to an image of someone he'd love to have by his side right now, the latter sparking at least the smallest bit of hope in Logan's soul that he wasn’t being too late yet.

"They won't let me. I got nothing left with the living. So why won't they let me find the light, Logan? Every time I see it, it's gone before I can get there."

"That's because that's not where your home is. Not yet." Logan gently brushed the hair from Scott's face, to take a look at his glasses, not surprised that he failed to see any smallest flash of red behind them. "Let me take these off for you, bub."

A surprising, almost violent jerk of energy went through Scott's lethetic body, his most deeply rooted fears still just as real as in his first life. "Don't!"

"It's fine, Slim. Look at me. It's alright. Your blasts are gone. You can control them now." Logan gently held Scott's wrists tight, glad that his lover didn’t pull away, not just vanishing under his grip like ghosts usually did. This was just as real as his last talk a minute ago. And he'd be damned if he'd leave this conversation partner behind, too.

Something clenched painfully in his heart when Scott let out a cynical, deeply hurt laugh. "The last time someone I loved told me that, I was ripped to particles a minute later."

"That wasn’t Jean. It was something that had taken hold of her. You know Jean would never have done that to you, Slim. She loved you more than anything." Logan took a choked breath, bracing himself against possible disbelief, hostility even, at the sound of something he'd never been able to bring himself to say before, a neglect he might be bitterly regretting in a second. "Just like I do."

"You …?" Scott stared at him in visible shock but at least looking more there than he'd been in all these weeks before leaving for Alkali Lake back then, in spite of all of Logan's efforts to reach out to him. This time, when Logan carefully pulled the glasses away from Scott's face, he didn’t startle back. A beautiful sky-blue was staring back at Logan, wide with grief and confusion and pain … and suddenly, the longer they were fixed at him, with just a hint of understanding and hope. "You … Are you real? Are you here? For me?"

"What do you think? That I'd battle demons and play haunted house because I'm bored, instead of watching some game over a six-pack on a Friday night?" Logan threw Scott a crooked smile but quickly turned serious again, resting his hand on his lover's cheek again with tender circling fingertips on his temple which had helped Scott's frequent headaches back then so often, relieved to see Scott's eyelids flutter in beginning relaxation as if not a day had passed since then … And just like that, Logan knew what to do. "We had our first date in the Danger Room, a month after Alkali Lake. You kept on running into my claws because you were all over the place, and I had to stitch you up. We had a beer in the pool of your blood, we toasted to Jeannie, and then you cried on my uniform for half an hour. You deleted the record afterward, by the way, in case your obsessive brain is trying to convince you I'm someone else right now."

Scott shook himself a little, starting to look clearer by the second, his posture straightening, yet there was a distraught frown on his face as he looked around the room, his breathing promptly going too fast and uneven. "I … I don't … What …? Logan, what are you doing here in the Further? This is no place for you, you need to go …"

"Not without you, bub." Two knuckles firmly on his chin, Logan turned Scott's head back to him, seeking his gaze once more and never letting go of it. "I promised you, remember? When we kissed for the first time, on loungers under that swanky Ford Probe of yours. Starter was a bust. You needed something to fix after two of the teenagers were almost shot to death by bigots in the city. We were both covered in motor oil and you were crying again. I told you that day, you're no longer alone in all this shit and that I'm not going anywhere. I'm holding to that, Scott." Logan's thumb softly grazed Scott's far too-dry lower lip, brushing away the salt from his cheeks just like he had back then. "Phoenix is defeated, and most of us are still up and fighting. You have a lot left to live for, and someone who doesn’t want to live without you. I know how much you're hurting and I will do all I can to help you with that. But you have to let me. You have to trust me one more time. Think you can do that?"

Finally, Scott nuzzled firmly into that touch on his face, the last of his tears starting to dry on his skin. For the first time in what felt like months, Logan saw the shadow of a smile curl on his pretty lips. "I never stopped trusting you, Logan."

Relief flooding his soul, Logan reached out and pulled his lover in his arms, clumsily, with a jerk, pulling him right on top of him just to wrap his arms around him tightly, Scott's surprised, breathless chuckle in his ear. His eyes falling close, he suddenly found with a hint of a bad conscience that he had no real idea how they should get out of here, now that he'd found his target. Frost had probably told him but with his attention span not exactly being the greatest earlier … Before he could follow that trail of thought any further, his mind short-circuited a second time within an hour.

******

"Take it easy, Summers. Easy! Calm, deep breaths. I know that hurts like a bitch. Give your muscles a minute, they're new to this whole deal. That's it, just keep breathing. We got you …"

Logan awoke with what felt like probably the first damn hangover of his life, all his muscles stiff from a thrashing against his restraints that he couldn’t remember, the bitter taste of bile in his mouth, and the mother of all headaches behind his eyes. But he also awoke to the sight of Hank and Steve pulling out a certain reborn body from that damn medical tank, still snow-white and far too thin and covered in a sickening layer of drugs … But, far more importantly, underneath, carrying the grounded, familiar scent Logan had once fallen in love with, and moving on its own. "Frost?" He barely dared to ask, absolutely convinced for a moment after all these days of grief and the losses that the X-Men had suffered in the last crisis, that there was no way this could have really worked out, that it was probably just muscle spasms he was seeing, and that Stark would just shoot that zombified body right back into pieces in a second before it could harm anyone …

A small female hand, trembling from the effort of the job and weak still, came to rest on the wrist it had just freed from the last hackle, giving his hand a long, amicable squeeze. "Great job, Logan."

Only at the mention of his name, this instinctive, panicked struggling of the cloned body suddenly stopped, Scott's bare shape, still dripping sterile fluid, sinking onto a third stretcher next to them without resistance now, discreetly covered at last by a blanket Hank had brought, the patient's raspy breathing gradually slowing down. "Logan?"

"'m here." Weakly scooting over to the other stretcher that Emma had been nice enough to leave, feeling battered both in body and mind but happier than on any damn day since Alkali Lake, Logan bent over his lover, with his face firmly buried against Scott's neck, a strangled sob in his throat when he could feel that pulse against his cheek there finally going steady and strong.

A little too fast, even, when Scott tried to wrap his arm around him in return with muscles that would only have to learn again how to move right. At least turning his head to press his lips to Logan's ear, he managed, murmuring a hoarse, whispered thanks that wouldn’t have been necessary. "You came for me."

"Always, Slim. Told ya. To hell and back." Logan straightened up again to capture his lover's lips in a tender, long kiss before resting his head on that bony chest for long, precious minutes of an intimacy he'd thought never be allowed to feel again. He couldn’t remember ever feeling so happy before.

*******************************************************************************

@whumptober | @whumptober-archive

@scoganbingo

#whumptober2023 #no.31 #Emptiness #Setbacks #Take it easy #x men #fic #cannibalism #gore #nothing graphic and not happening to canon characters #everything after x2 didn't happen sue me #x men original timeline movies #x men movies #fanfiction #stormys fanfics #scott summers #cyclops #wolverine #scoganbingo #scogan #scott x logan #laura kinney #hank mccoy #steve rogers #tony stark #emma frost #aka the x3 fixit resurrection i keep yapping about finally written out #this is halloween galore #demons haunted house splatter gore we got it all #just mentions tho with no canon characters on the receiving end

[sabrina-vs-misty]

CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS

Gilded Dirt, issue iv

After a long subaquatic slumber Gilded Dirt has returned to the surface with the BERMUDA ▲ SADCORE issue ! Drifting ashore this summer !

As though transmitting from within the ‘vile vortex’, the plaintive music of Weyes Blood serves as a warning to treat the open ocean with reverence. Between the reluctant mermaid of Seven Words, the amphibious starlet beckoning her audience underwater in Movies, the waterlogged chorals of In Holy Flux and the whirlpool of classical collisions on Front Row Seat - the real (and make-believe) horrors and wonders of the sea are never far from sight.

Taking cues from the imagined wreckage recovery of 2019’s Titanic Rising, we invite you into the doldrums in search of treasure; glimpses of a phantom vessel, underwater cities in rust, abandoned sea forts, devotional letters cast adrift, living fossils, vampiric squid, titanic fauna and any trace of life after all in the sunken catacombs.

We are looking for submissions of poetry, flash fiction and flash essays on the topic of..

aimless drifting..

"aliens" of The Abyss..

Andromeda + Cetus..

Andromeda (750% Slower)..

billionaire hubris..

bottled messages..

coral skeletons..

deep-sea gigantism..

figureheads + apotropaic magic..

flotsam and jetsam..

Ghost of Maiden’s Peak..

ghost ships..

immortal jellyfish..

Jewels of the Sea (1961)..

Lake Lachrymose and its leeches..

lure of the siren..

Mary Celeste’s mythical mise en scène..

mutiny -and- bounty..

Ocean of Tears..

octopus cities..

Sailers Delight

(sea)bedroom pop..

Sea Punk..

Seven Words speculation..

St. Elmos fire..

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch..

The Jacuzzi of Despair..

The Milky Sea Effect..

whale-fall ecosystems..

x marks the spot..

You can submit under ONE of the following categories:

Flash essays / nonfiction: up to 500 words

1-3 pages of poetry in any form

Flash fiction: up to 100 words

All submissions must be sent as a .doc file. If you have nonstandard formatting you may additionally send a pdf. Submissions which do not adhere to word count will be disregarded. No need to send a full bio but a brief cover letter is appreciated.

Submissions should be sent to: [email protected] with subject heading ‘SUBMISSION: [CATEGORY]’. Categories are either ESSAY/POETRY/FICTION.

Please name your files: NAME_CATEGORY_DATE

Deadline: 12th April 2024

We aim to respond to all submissions within 2-3 months.

Gilded Dirt is a free e-zine edited by Douglas Pattison and Maria Sledmere. Unfortunately, we cannot offer payment to contributors. You can view past issues at

https://issuu.com/gildeddirt.

#poetry zine #poetry submissions #poetry #gilded dirt #trash aesthetic #underwater #seapunk #fiction #nonfiction #call for submissions #water

[tlaltechuli]

   I WILL VANISH IN THE MORNING LIGHT, I WAS ONLY AN INVENTION OF DARKNESS.

“ make no mistake — this isn’t some creation myth of the sea serpent becoming divine and joining its place among the ranks of the gods. there is no phoenix here, no burning to made anew. yes, tlali rose from the lower classes in a classic rags to riches story. but the sea snake stayed a snake, because why become a dragon when it’s just another magical beast used for the gods’ bidding? the dragon guards. the snake, however, remembers the dirt in which it came, and it will gladly burn down the temple of the gods, if only for the dust to settle and fertilize the dirt in which it still calls home. ”

TLALTECHULI TALAMANTES  /  sunken witch.   —   SKELETON.   /   APPLICATION.   /   PINTEREST.

rumor is, if you manage to say her full name correctly three times in front of a mirror, she’ll appear and throw a pearl into your mouth like a chef at those japanese grilling restaurants

bunken .... bitch ....

genius dumbass, billionaire, playgirl, philander

graduated from whoring !! yay !! celebrated with some sexy stabbing and betrayal; now works her extension network of connections for information trading ( will still demand payment if she sleeps w/ you though ... she thinks it’s funny and also bc she just loves shiny things what can i say )

pls don’t ask about her taxes

that’s it. that’s all u need to know. she’s just here to be sexy and insane

#⁺ 𝐒𝐔𝐍𝐊𝐄𝐍 𝐖𝐈𝐓𝐂𝐇 › INTRO.

[notreallyimportant]

The same people saying that we need to show compassion to the 5 billionaires that paid $250k to ride in a homemade( completely dangerous) submarine that was controlled by a bootleg PlayStation controller to see the sunken Titanic, are the same ones that was calling Jeffery Dahmer hot last summer.

Like why would you tell me to be sympathetic to rich people making dumb choices? When many of the same people aren’t sympathetic to MMIW? They adultify black kids when something happens to them, but I’m supposed to have sympathy for five adults making a piss poor decision? Thousands of migrants leave their countries seeking asylum and die along the way or are forced into inhumane camps, but because they “crossed illegally” they deserve no amount of kindness?

Also if you’re joke about the sinking submarine is “you’ll never find women at the bottom of the ocean” please self correct it to rich,white women. There’s some bodies of African women at the bottom that either chose death or were thrown overboard by enslavers for shits and giggles.

#eat the rich #oceangate

[iwantedtosavetheworld]

people are shocked that the general public wants the sunken billionaires to live. remember tony stark