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strangerays · 3 years

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Nothing in Particular Update #2

It’s the Nothing and Particular and Everything update part two: the electric booglaloo. This one is long, so strap in.

It’s been a while since I wrote an update for this story. To be honest, this one gave me a lot of stress, but here I am! Writing this story feels like it is going very slow. I keep telling myself I’ve made a lot of progress (which is true, I have) but for some reason it doesn’t feel like I have? This is likely just my own insecurity. To be frank, I can’t believe I’m still writing this story. If you had told me in February that I’d still be writing this when the weather got warm, I would have laughed.

I am SO excited that I will finally be able to focus on writing now that I’m out of school. I’m afraid to speak the rough deadline that I’ve given myself for this story (the end of August-early September) but now that I’ve spoken it into existence, I hope I can finish! (I hope I can stop watching dumb videogame playthroughs and listening to The Magnus Archives and get something done)

Here is a link to the story introduction and previous update!

TAGLIST (ask to be +/-); @wannabeauthorzofija @a-completely-normal-writer @baguettethebooklover @corkytheguar @writeherewaiting

STORY CHANGES/THOUGHTS/IDEAS:

Here is a big one: I’ve been trying to write this story for myself. I started writing Ray’s story from a place that was personal to me, but I feel like, as that part of myself has begun to heal, I’ve started to think about what a reader would want out of the story. I’m realizing that this is my story so it has to be what I want. Drafts are drafts for a reason, so I’m going to try to get better at letting myself explore what is fun to me.

I always thought I was a discovery writer (I still sort of think I am) but as I’ve finished small sections of the story, I am finding that it’s very helpful to do a rough outline of scenes in upcoming chapters. (I also recommend turning to this if something doesn’t work and you need to retrace your steps!) Just helps me feel more organized!

Jude’s character has got to be one of the most difficult personalities I’ve ever written. Putting her beside Ray just makes it harder. Where Ray is secretive and keeps to herself, Jude is ready to unpack her entire life’s story to anyone. I find that I really have to slow down when writing their interactions. I know this is going to be nowhere near perfect in the first draft, but I think it is a main contributor to my slow writing.

I really like this little narrative I’ve created in the background of the main plot with Ray and Lonan. I love writing these scenes because it’s a way for me to use Lonan when he’s not actively with Ray and to show why Ray is predetermined about things at certain points. Also I love their friendship so much <3

CONGRATULATIONS TO ME on starting to read again because I forgot how much of a help reading other people’s stories can be when you’re struggling with your own oml

I now have a set timeline for the story! Takes place ~4-5 months.

I did that thing where you write a letter from the characters’ perspectives and that was kind of fun

Also just for fun I thought I’d add in that I spent an hour and a half last week filling up a page in my sketchbook with diagrams of the plot. It feels good to be a mad scientist

EXCERPTS UNDER THE CUT!

*At this point, I’m only sharing writing that I am really proud of in order not to spoil the story! This is because I am unsure whether I want to publish this story someday. With that said, that does NOT give you permission to steal my ideas!

CHAPTER: NIGHT CRIES

In the last week of summer, I did everything I could to avoid post-vacation blues. I rode my bike along the gravel roads with no destination, wore my dark sunglasses to people-watch, and fed salami to the minnows that floated on the cusps of boulders. Usually, I sat still for so long that my elbows turned a deep shade of red and the blood in my toes buzzed.

New pockets seemed to open up in Point Blink every day. And with them, came new people. Most of them were older – a middle aged woman who caked her lipstick on, an uncle estranged from his brother, a couple who had miscarried. I hadn’t forgotten about the kids at Mothouse. It was impossible not to think about them. It wasn’t just that I’d never seen them before.

The girl’s limp cigarette bled a trail of smoke that seeped into my Vans. My shirt folded like skin over my bed post. Haunted the room – foiled my mauve sheets and teased my locks. Swept the curtains apart and heated the oak floor. Beams of moonlight leapt to my bookcases; highlighted the posters from various podcasts and bands that I listened to. Wind whistled when I was too still. She forced me to look outside, onto the dark cul-de-sac lit by the reflections of forming rain puddles. No matter whether I sat at my desk or burrowed under my sheets, I felt out of place. She made my bedroom louder. She made my bedroom quieter.

I decided it would probably be best if I never saw her again.

To be honest, I don’t remember much about writing this chapter because it was over a month ago (sorry) but I’m still quite happy with the prose! This comes in after Ray sees Jude for the first time at Mothouse. Based on a first impression, decides that she might want be friends with Jude.

CHAPTER: SORRY

If you spend any long amount of time with someone, you’ll become a thief to their behaviors. If I stared long enough, trees began to replace all of the people we’d ever seen. Oaks had roots that serpentined the ground like children splashing in the bay, pines with needles like spindly old hands, maples with hollows like watchful eyes – all things Lonan had taught me to observe.

CHAPTER: GHOSTS

Then there was the sea – violent and knowing as it romped within bays and alcoves. She had eaten me many times before, both my father and Lonan too. Gulped them as if they were shining plastic wrappings left behind after a meal. I spited her for inviting me once again. I reached up again to grapple with the next rung. It twisted and offered a low whistle.

In these two chapters, Ray is on a photography trip with her class. This is the first time she’s been on this annual trip without Lonan. She left that morning with a goal of being independent and learning to get on with one of the only people she has felt close to. I realize now that the Ghost excerpt sort of sounds like her dad and Lonan have drowned?? Which was not my intention??

CHAPTER: A DIVINE INTERVENTION

“Do you believe in ghosts?” A raspy voice teased from behind me. Cigarette smoke tickled the words, like they were stuck together with jelly inside of her. The question wasn’t particularly calming, but it strengthened my grip on reality. As if the foiled leaves, bark, and dandelions had sprung from the ground and begun to float, they came crashing back down.

I was made of stone.

“I’m not a ghost,” Jude said. “If I was, a ladder would be a pretty counteractive way to outrun me. I could just float up there and haunt you.”

“Maybe you’re a ghost,” she asked, her voice distant.

I shifted my grasp up and down the sides of the ladder. “What?”

“Don’t you believe in ghosts?”

I was reading back some of Ray and Jude’s conversation and there are so many snippets of dialogue that make me laugh because I totally forgot I wrote them... but UGhhH I don’t know if I want to share them because I don’t know whether or not I want to try and publish the story someday. Speaking of that, it’s sort of because it’s so personal to me? I don’t know (this is for future me to pursue) Honestly though, reading these back has made me really happy :)

I wanted to shake her by the shoulders. She acted as though Point Blink could breathe – as though corpses in the cemetery might pull the grass away like dead skin, neighbors would draw blades, and blood-salt would stain her clothes rather than that from the sea. “Trust me, they’ll forgive you. But, I’m just saying, most people around here don’t care nearly as much as you think so. Most of them are way older anyways, so they’re tired of us.”

“Is that you complimenting yourself?” Jude asked.

“Not intentionally,” I said, “but I will take it.”

She laughed. “You shouldn’t be so nice to strangers.”

I wasn’t trying to be. I just didn’t think I wanted her to dislike me.

“I don’t think it’s a bad thing or a good thing,” Jude said. “Being good gets you tucked into a thousand different memories. Being good makes you live a lifetime.”

I almost laughed, but then I wondered what I was to her now. “I don’t talk to lots of people.”

“Sometimes there aren’t many people to talk to. But I thought you would have loads of friends.”

I wasn’t sure what to say to that. “I thought you would too.”

Alarm like grief lit her eyes, but she laughed. I did too.

“You hardly know me,” she said quietly.

Then the girls explore some old newspapers and letters in a fire tower! Spooky fun!

CHAPTER: YOU LET THIS HAPPEN

This isn’t a major spoiler as it’s literally in the blurb I wrote, but Ray and Jude are caught (targeted..??) in a fire. Ray is brought back to a field where she is questioned.

CHAPTER: NOTHING HAPPENS

He was quiet for several moments while he painted a picture with what little details I had given him, then said, “It’s unfair. I think that’s why it hurts.”

“Because we almost got hurt?”

“No. Because it came true.”

His gentle, ragged voice made me think I could tell him anything. Sometimes, I think that, even then, he knew I left something out.

Ray talks to Lonan after the fire... She’s being a bit dishonest about what actually happened.

CHAPTER: WHY NOT

I remember how the barest amount of red light glared across Lonan’s entire scalp and washed his boyish curls magenta from the roots out. When Jude leaned back on the counter, she melded into the darkness.

This chapter is just part of the narrative that I created with Ray and Lonan’s friendship. There isn’t much I want to spoil from it, but I liked this paragraph!

CHAPTER: INEVITABLE

“We didn’t do anything,” I said.

“Someone did. Why won’t you believe me?”

“I think I would remember whether or not someone was there with us,” I said, “even if we didn’t have the picture.”

This was untrue. I hung lots of photos in my room. A long time would pass before I went to a restaurant again, or a specific coven on one of the beaches, or an outfit that I wore, and I would look into one of my pictures and remember it, and then I would be quite angry with myself that I had almost forgotten that thing forever.

“I don’t think you understand what I mean,” Jude said. I didn’t like the way she’d lowered her voice. She sounded different every time I saw her. She reached out her arm so our photos were side by side and our fingers were almost touching. “I don’t think you want to.”

Ray finds herself alone in the school’s dark room with Jude. Based on the contents of one of her photos, she tries to convince Ray that there is more to the fire than what meets the eye.

CHAPTER: (this one is untitled)

I didn’t mind that he followed me everywhere. Even when he was quiet, I didn’t find it strange to be around him. We sat silently through films and went on walks. Once, he had fallen asleep while watching The Iron Giant in my bed. I didn’t know if I should wake him up once it ended. I tried not to stare at him. He’d rolled onto his side and bundled himself in one of my blankets covered in stars up to his shoulders so only his small face poked out like a baby owl’s. His soft breath messed his dirty gold coils. They were at their longest. Except for the ebbing light from a candle on my desk, my house was asleep – Lonan needed to go home.

For the first time, I wondered if anyone cared where he was.

Another small part of the little friendship narrative! (This really is the part of the story where I get nostalgic for my childhood, isn’t it) Ray starts to discover more about Lonan’s home life in this part of the story, but there’s not much that I think I want to reveal about that for now.

CHAPTER: THE CRUX OF IT

Why did I feel so paranoid? I found myself staring out the window, into the film of blue that the late sun shown onto the grass and trying to remember what summer felt like.

My main problem was that I didn’t know how to talk to Jude unless it was about Sugarfell. I ran from the hush of cigarette smoke behind closing doors and heard her loud voice in conversations. Even though there might have still been a part of me that wanted to be friends with her, I didn’t have much to base that feeling off of. I could have spent hours clicking the little pieces of her that I had together, but the crux of it was that I would never know Jude unless I forced myself to.

For some reason, that really scared me.

I spent all week trying to think of what to say to her. By Friday afternoon, I still had nothing.

I left off writing with Ray actively avoiding Jude’s little investigation into the arsonist. Ray doesn’t want to be involved in this because she feels that it will throw her sense of normalcy off course. She really just wants to learn how to adapt to a life without her best friend. (It doesn’t help that she’s got fresh trauma)

What will Ray decide? I don’t know. We shall see. (just kidding I know)

Sorry this update was longer! I think I would like to start updating more often than once a month just because they would be shorter and those of you reading this won’t forget what happened in the last update. There are thousands and thousands of words that didn’t show up in this update because - like I said - I don’t know whether I want to publish this story ever?? I’ll probably talk more about this in a separate update.

Thank you so much to those of you who read about my story! I hope you enjoy it!

p.s. btw I now have a myWriteClub account! You can check it out here and stalk me as I tragically fail my writing goals!

#ffs writing this update was like throwing a boulder into a lake #there was so much I wanted to share #it's really difficult to decide what to share as sometimes a paragraph that I'm really proud of will be really spoilery #I can only imagine this will be more and more difficult as I get further into the story #ANYWAYS #I feel like I'm really beginning to see who my characters are <3 #I feel like a proud mother #To be honest #I kind of hated Jude in the beginning #but now I feel like Ray hates her too so that makes me like her #haha im so mean #tune in next time for a Sapphic spy date

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sepublic · 3 years

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From Understanding Willow to Agony of a Witch

I think Understanding Willow is in some ways foreshadowing to Agony of a Witch, as well as the flashback in Young Blood, Old Souls; Specifically Amity, and the way she handles hurting her close friend Willow, and how that parallels how Lilith hurt Eda…

The first time Amity hurts Willow, both herself AND Willow are being threatened here. In Agony of a Witch, Belos threatens to kill Lilith by the end of the day if she doesn’t deliver Eda to him; Not only that, but Lilith has been told by Belos that he’ll cure Eda of her curse if she does so. Lilith knows the curse is worsening, that Eda hates it and wants it gone- And we also know from Eda herself that it’s going to deliver her to a ‘fate worse than death’.

Amity is being threatened by her own parents, which- It’s asking a LOT for an abused kid to stand up to that. But not only that, Willow’s chances at Hexside are directly threatened, and Amity couldn’t imagine ruining Willow’s academic future! And while I doubt Willow would’ve enjoyed losing her chance at Hexside; I feel like had she known the full context, she wouldn’t have valued enrollment at the school THAT much, just as Eda hates the curse, but isn’t willing to have it cured if it means joining Belos. Amity and Lilith make this sort of choice for their loved one, without really telling them or giving them any agency in it; Likely because it hurts a lot for them to admit that the person they’re serving is terrible. For Lilith, she’d be admitting to Eda that yes, Belos IS a tyrant that she’s been serving; And Amity, she’s an abused kid, and I imagine it’s super uncomfortable to admit what her parents are like to anyone, even her best friend.

Then in the present-day, Amity goes behind Willow’s back to burn her memory photo; And while I can see her having some semblance of altruism behind the act, ultimately it was done in selfish motive, possibly to preserve Amity’s friendship with Luz, for fear that Luz would judge her after hearing how Amity broke ties with Willow. When Lilith and Eda had to duel to join the Emperor’s Coven, Lilith also goes behind Eda’s back to curse her; And while I’m sure she also justified it in her head with the idea of Eda being so talented that she could join the Emperor’s Coven another time anyway (just as Amity could’ve reasoned that Willow wouldn’t want this painful memory), it was still done for selfish reasons.

Lilith wanted to join the Emperor’s Coven… And she cast a curse that should’ve been way more simple, way less disastrous, than it actually was; Just like how Amity burned the memory photo, and only expected THAT photo to burn; But then the rest did, starting a process that would’ve destroyed Willow’s mind, while also igniting (ba-dum tsss) some very powerful grief and rage within her former friend. Both Lilith and Amity acted selfishly to harm their loved one, believing the actual effects would be way less than what they ended up being… And unlike Amity, Lilith wasn’t able to undo the damage.

(It’s also worth noting that Lilith didn’t have a ‘Luz’ to guide her, to tell her that what she did was wrong; While also providing Lilith the opportunity and support to fix the actual problem. I just think that’s important to remember when it comes to this show’s themes of loneliness and how that can really effect one’s relationships and handling of issues.)

Of course, Lilith and Amity also contrast as well, as they’re not exact copies of one another; Lilith’s selfish decision came in the past, Amity’s in the present; With Lilith’s more forced decision happening in the present, while Amity’s occurred in the past. Lilith’s second mistake was in some ways done to remedy what she’d done; While Amity’s was to hide what she did. In Understanding Willow, we’re led to assume the worst of Amity, but then find out the story was more nuanced than we were led to believe; While with Lilith, we’re led to believe that she’s trying to cure her sister out of the goodness of her heart, and she IS… But then we learn that she’s also fixing a problem that shecaused. Amity’s actions are re-contextualized as more sympathetic, whilst Lilith’s become much darker.

However, even though Amity’s side of the story DOES make her rejection of Willow come across as a lot less cruel and painful, and in some ways altruistic… It was still bad. And I think that’s interesting, that Amity recognizes that it’s valid to tell her side of the story regarding what happened, to at least get that out of the way; But she also acknowledges that it hardly excuses what she did, that Amity still messed up and she has to change her behavior to fix things. While Inner Willow does briefly calm down and reconsider everything that happened with the new information, Amity still makes a point that she still failed Willow in ways she didn’t need to; And that she needs to make up for what she’s done, apologize, and change her behavior.

Amity never suggests nor insinuates that Willow should be grateful, that Willow should forgive her- If anything, Amity resists telling the truth, possibly because she refuses to defend herself. Amity thinks that what she did to Willow was so deplorable that it doesn’t need an explanation, because that wouldn’t change what she did. But in the end, Amity tells the truth- Possibly because she’s learning to vouch for herself with Luz’s encouragement… But mostly, I imagine, because Amity knows that Willow deserves closure as part of the healing process. That even if Amity was doing what seemed like the best decision at the time, Willow still deserves to know the truth, just to give her that peace of mind.

This is different from Lilith, who refuses to tell Eda about why she cursed her sister, about why she’s willing to take Luz hostage; Likely out of more cowardice, but also some degree of pride. Again, Lilith probably doesn’t want to admit that her revered Emperor is actually a terrible person for threatening her, to Eda’s face. Lilith never explains her side of the story to give Eda some comfort, that at least Lilith had to be forced to do this; And she definitely doesn’t explain why the curse happened, for plenty of selfish reasons, alongside potentially not wanting to hurt Eda with that kind of knowledge of betrayal. When Lilith DOES initially confess, she does so out of spite; While Amity does it out of a sense of care.

Then there’s Lilith explaining her side of the story a second time, regarding why she cursed Eda; And while she tells it to Luz (because Eda isn’t there), it at least gives closure to the girl, who can later pass it on to Eda if Lilith can’t. It reassures Luz that Lilith isn’t THAT terrible, that she did mean well, or at least not nearly as terribly- And thus she can be counted on for wanting to fix her mistakes.

In short, Understanding Willow foreshadows Agony of a Witch, in that both episodes have a witch who’s forced to hurt their loved one, under duress of both themselves AND their loved one. Lilith and Amity both thought they were doing the best possible option in that scenario, while also protecting the loved one they were hurting; But in the end, they still caused pain, and neither Eda nor Willow owe them forgiveness. Similarly, Lilith and Amity don’t want to admit their side of the story, because it means acknowledging that they’re unhappy, that they’re being forced to do this and lack agency; And it involves admitting to others that the people they look up to in their lives, are actually terrible.

There’s also foreshadowing to Lilith’s flashback in Young Blood, Old Souls; And how an explanation shouldn’t detract from the apology… After Lilith confesses, she briefly insinuates (whether or not she believes it or if she’s just doing damage control) that her explanation would make Eda less hurt, and in many ways that makes sense… But it’s also clearly done because Lilith believes that Eda will be more inclined to forgive her, while with Amity, she doesn’t seem to expect much, if any sympathy… Lilith seems to hope that additional context will make Eda less hurt; But Amity knows that while Willow deserves context, she also deserves an actual change in behavior, whilst Lilith continues with trying to capture Eda, and even threatens Luz’s life to do so.

Lilith realizes this, and that’s why in Young Blood, Old Souls, she both gives her a long-due explanation for the curse, and THEN follows up by actually changing her behavior; Helping Luz rescue Eda. Because even if context is needed, it doesn’t make up for an apology; Actual changed behavior is also needed. When Lilith realized she first cursed Eda, she tried to change her behavior initially by finding a cure, but she didn’t tell the truth. Then when Lilith told the truth about the curse, she didn’t change her behavior and kept using Luz as a hostage, while trying to capture Eda; Only by doing both, by telling the truth AND changing her behavior, did Lilith begin to make things right with Eda. Now she’s begun to reconnect with her sister after so long… Thereby providing a happiness and closure that was long-due.

These similarities make sense, Lilith and Amity ARE narrative parallels after all! By the end of the day, they recognize that they still irreparably hurt a loved one, and shouldn’t expect them to be grateful that they didn’t hurt them as much as they could have; ‘For your own good’ does not justify hurting a loved one, even if that motive does provide more nuance and closure, as well as a reassurance that they weren’t hurt pointlessly, needlessly- At least, that was not the intention. Because knowing what happened and explaining yourself, let’s that person know they weren’t hurt for no reason, and that if there’s good intent behind actions; That good intent can be repurposed to be actually constructive, helpful, meaningful! Because they DO want to help, really, and they need guidance on how to do so- They’re not someone acting with planned malice, the way ‘jerks who want to debate aren’t coming from a place of intellectual honesty’, as Luz would put it!

And ultimately, I think it plays a role into why Eda will sometimes explain, upon questioning by Luz, her own thought process behind certain unusual ideas or teaching methods, as a reassurance that she DOES care and want the best… Which in turn shows Luz that Eda is willing to respond to criticism, because she’s acting in good faith, or trying to- And that means Luz feels safe to voice her own ideas, because she knows that Eda will legitimately take them into account, this time really, for Luz’s own good. It’s an open, honest communication, and showing that your loved one’s input really did have an impact. It’s why I think Lilith and Amity could really benefit to learn from Eda, because if they’d been more open and honest with those they cared about, been willing to reach out and admit that they need help- A LOT of issues could’ve been avoided. And while sometimes it can be too little, too late; Oftentimes it’s better late, than never.

#the owl house #toh #the owl house amity #amity blight #the owl house lilith #lilith clawthorne #the owl house willow #willow park #the owl house eda #edalyn clawthorne #the owl house luz #luz noceda #meta #foreshadowing #analysis

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gingit-cake · 3 years

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Therapeutic Gallavich

I’ve been wanting to write a tribute post to the Gallavich universe as a free source of therapy during the pandemic. I’m somewhat tongue in cheek here, but in a country (USA) where we have too little mental health support and too much stigma about mental health, diving into the Gallavich fandom and binging Shameless over the past 6m has been a really comforting coping mechanism for me. There is so much grief and loss in the world, so many ways our government and - for many people - our peers have failed us, that the fictional world of Ian and Mickey has been a wonderful source of comfort, in a lot of ways. It’s a retreat from the IRL shitshow. It’s got endless permutations of happy endings, to give us that serotonin boost and vicarious thrill. And given Mickey and Ian’s respective struggles - homophobic and sexual abuse, mental illness, neglect, parental death, incarceration, etc. - there are also countless fanfics that include therapy, recovery, and informal paths towards healing from past trauma. I’ve never related to a show so personally as I have Shameless, and binging it during the pandemic - when social isolation leaves way too much time for rumination, compounded by being at midlife and the reflection that triggers - it basically ripped open my heart and dredged up long buried stuff I’m finally willing to address. My husband and I watched the S7 finale on New Year’s Day, and let’s just say 2021 has been an emotional retcon of my life since. (I’m learning all the creative, literary terms.) (And don’t worry, strangers on the internet, I am fortunate to have a therapist and the insurance to pay for it. I wish we all had this.)

There’s been a few fanfics I explicitly want to give a shoutout too as ones featuring therapy or recovery or conversations that have stayed with me in a meaningful way. Excerpts, tributes, and links below the jump. Possible spoilers for Enemy Lines, Someone to Hold Me Up, Buy and By, and Etherized Against the Sky.

Enemy Lines, by J_Q and stars_fall_on - Ian has a therapist Dr. Lancaster, who introduces him to the concept of rumination:

“He felt a tightening in his chest. Did he even want to let go of Mickey? If not, what the hell was he still holding onto? A memory. A feeling. A belief that he’d made a real connection. But nothing substantial. Nothing real. // 'Ian, is there something hindering you from wanting to move on?" she asked then sat back, looking closely at him. “Are you familiar with the term rumination? // ... // Rumination, as opposed to worry, very often focuses on loss and an overpowering need to understand why something happened.' She continued to watch him closely as she spoke. 'While emotional processing starts out this way, healthy processing leads to acceptance and a release of negative emotions, but rumination keeps you stuck in a pattern.’”

THIS is my brain in a nutshell. As I wrote in a comment on one of the chapters to this amazing slow burn, enemies-to-lovers fic, I’ve got relationships from 20y+ ago that I still brood over. I’m working on letting go and the Gallavich universe has been a creative inspiration for doing some of that work.

Someone to Hold Me Up, by @westernredcedar - Mickey has a conversation with an OC about forgiveness, after reconnecting with Ian in this hurt/comfort fic:

“'You ever have to forgive your guy for something?' Mickey asks. // Mel laughs. 'Of course. Daily, actually. The man’s a damn slob.' // Mickey snorts, but then he runs his hand over his mouth and tries to actually get to the point. ‘What about something big?' // Mel looks like he’s considering the question thoughtfully, and Mickey realizes that somewhere in the midst of all this madness, he’s really gotten to like this guy. 'I have lots of thoughts about forgiveness, actually,” Mel says with an eyebrow raised. “So you may not want to get me started on that theme. But it’s more about my parents and my sister than about Jeffrey, if that matters. I guess for me it all boils down to this: would it cost me more to forgive or cost me more to stay angry? And my answer to that question is not the same for everyone.’”

This conversation about forgiveness has really stayed with me. One of the reasons I’ve realted so much to the character of Ian Gallagher is I had a hothead brunet of a boyfriend in high school during that same age range (15-17) who is probably the same height as Noel Fisher and caused no shortage of DRAMA in my life, and it didn’t end well. (We were definitely NOT soulmates.) I am serious when I say Shameless and Gallavich specifically helped me let a lot of this 30y old angst go. This exchange b/w Mickey and Mel gets at it - it was costing ME a lot to hang on to this past.

By and By, by @nowherenj - This one I’m not going to excerpt, because it was the whole story that moved me. Nowherennj draws on their experience in recovery, and this slow burn is both beautifully written and a primer on being in recovery. This was really helpful for me, as I have close friends and family who are in recovery, some with a dual diagnosis (drug use + mental health diagnosis), and this story’s generous attention to detail helped illustrate their experiences for me in a way that we don’t talk about on a regular basis. One of the reasons I identify so strongly with Shameless is because I come from a big sprawling Irish-American family with a lot of addiction and mental illness in it. This fic about Ian and Mickey in recovery makes explicit much of what I think my family hovers around because it can be so hard to talk about openly. I wept reading this one when the author brought in The Avett Brothers’ No Hard Feelings - how I want to live my life.

Etherized against the Sky, by Snarfle - This one is less about my own therapeutic journey and more about what I hope I can be for young adults that I work with now. It has a character in it named Mr. Strickland, who is a very important father figure for Mickey. I was a professor for a decade, and still mentor young adults in my current job. I think one of the unsung roles that I experienced in academia is too be a mentor for young people. Some instructors are just about curriculum and grading, but when you cross paths with young adults at the beginning of this stage of life, figuring their sh*t out, the ability to be a kind and safe source of input and an active, non-judgemental listener is honestly the most fulfilling aspect of working with students and young professionals, in my view. Maybe it’s because the years 15-25 were such chaos for me, but I love working with people this age (and probably why I hang around on Tumblr despite my near eligibility for AARP lol). You’ve got your whole life in front of you! So many possibilities! Full of hot boyfriends and tomato plants and rescue dogs and heated pools. :)

There are surely more, I’ve realized that “hurt/comfort” is a great tag for these kinds of stories. But this post is already too long. Thanks to all of you in the fandom who have created art and narrative that have kept me coming back for more, and not feeling so alone in the pandemic. We are a mighty little community!

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amwritingmeta · 4 years

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15x14: Striking A Balance

This is late. I fell behind. Life happens. I still haven’t watched 15x15. Gah! But now to some thoughts on 15x14...

I thought this was a great episode the first time I watched it. Then I thought it was a bloody fantastic episode the second time I watched it, and the third time… well, it just gets better and better. I’m thoroughly looking forward to the final six. I hope you are too.

I hope you’re as well as you can be and that you’re not living in a stress bubble. They’re the worst. I’d hand you a big old needle if I could. Maybe this meta can be some sort of needle (for popping), because at least I don’t feel the ending of this show is anything we need to stress about. I do believe it’s going to be utterly spectacular. *all the faith*

So I spent a chunk of lockdown watching this show of ours. I started at 12x19 (that episode still makes me tremble with its sheer brilliance) through to 15x13, and felt an overwhelming satisfaction at the evenness of the storytelling for these last three-ish seasons.

A brief breakdown of three years of meta writing would be: Dean has been pushed to face, recognise and dismantle his internalised toxic masculinity traits aka his Shadow (which has been the root of unhealthy coping mechanisms and an inability to put down boundaries, communicate openly and handle his emotions), he’s been pushed to see the strength and power of his feminine traits (his nurturing side, his compassion, his protective nature) through being put in situations where he’s had no choice but to open up to being honest with himself, in turn bringing him on a course to him handling his emotions better, as well as the narrative giving us moments where he’s gotten the chance to acknowledge and embrace his neglected inner child.

Yes, Jungian doctrine runs like a river through it, what can I say? I’m a fan.

With Dean as our protagonist, Sam and Cas are both on mirroring journeys, though Sam is Dean’s mirror opposite and Cas is Dean’s mirror likeness. It doesn’t take away from the individual journeys of Sam and Cas: it’s just that their choices and their progression are not determining the course of the narrative. Rather, their choices and progression work to underline and highlight Dean’s growth. Sam and Cas are main characters, but they’re not driving the core of the plot.

Make sense? Cool!

Especially as this also means that Dean’s progression is pivotal for all three of them to actually reach… well, since it’s a word used twice this season why shouldn’t we just go with it? — completion.

Which is why my eyes are happily peeled for Dean having moments that display a deepened sense of self-understanding (like his prayer to Cas, where Dean put words on the anger he’s always feeling and how he doesn’t know why or where it’s coming from) (an enormous step toward actually dealing with that emotion) (as self-deception through denial caused by fear of weakness tied to fear of rejection and fear of failure — that’s a mouthful — has always formed Dean’s biggest internal obstacle) because neither Sam nor Cas should, when we look at the narrative as a whole, be able or allowed to reach full completion (or individuation, to use Jungian terms) without Dean getting there first, or at least being shown to be well on his way to getting there.

This episode then is more of an epicsode, because, man, do we get to explore balanced!Dean, and it’s all through Jack: the narrative representation of Dean’s inner child.

Oh, yeah. Way I see it, Jeremy Adams brought us right back to the threads he was pulling on in Scoobynatural. *bless his brain* Only this time he’s pushed it a step further and rather than Dean simply facing his inner child—as (14x16 whoops I mean) 13x16 opened up that can of worms—now, in 15x14, Dean is forced to properly acknowledge and embrace that inner child. I mean. The mind crackles. The feels are cascading like a waterfall over a great cliff. The excitement, people, is real.

Let’s dig in!

Sam and Dean

They were glorious this episode!!

So Sam ended up tortured a little, but that was because he was shooting first, asking questions second, and sure, Mrs. Butters had gone a bit crazy, but as he learned: it wasn’t her fault. It wasn’t her nature, the crazy had been torture-nurtured into her.

And Dean was faced with yet one more reminder of how kindness, compassion and protectiveness can go haywire when there’s influence from toxic masculinity (aka Cuthbert Sinclair) pushing someone into a position of mistrust, insecurity and need for control.

Let me reiterate the fact that when I’m talking masculine/feminine I’m not tying these concepts to gender, though of course these concepts have been tied to gender traits to the point of brainwashing people into thinking they should dictate what is male and what is female. (mental) Rather I mean all of our internal masculine/feminine traits that need to find balance if we are each to feel happy and content as human beings.

It’s Tao, and it’s Jung, and it’s beautiful. Is all I’m saying.

Digression.

My point is that in spite of sorting stuff out in their individual arcs, the brotherly relationship was depicted awesomely this episode, with Dean being 1000% supportive of Sam going to get itches scratched with Eileen, to the point of feeling he would rather just handle the sudden turn of events and this new threat by himself, than disrupt Sam and Eileen’s fun times (and by “fun times” I mean sex), and Sam going along for the joyride of holiday celebrations, home cooked meals and the supportive, warm and caring mother figure that they’re both, again, missing in their lives.

Sam was submissive this episode, following Dean’s opinions on how to best handle Jack (even with Dean being disastrous in the past when stating what Jack needs) which is somewhat frustrating, because Sam has so much more in him, but he also got to show that humongous heart of his, where he understood the root cause of Mrs. Butters’ behaviour and showed compassion, rather than judgement. His compassion has always been one of his most formidable strengths.

And, of course, Sam had to ride sidesaddle this episode because if he was putting up any sort of protest—regarding accepting Mrs. Butters as part of the bunker or how best to deal with Jack— Dean wouldn’t have gone through the push for progression, delivered through the representation of his inner femininity that is Mrs. Butters, but primarily through the representation of (and here we go into the deeper digging) his inner child—Jack.

Dean and Jack

You know, end of the episode Dean states what is evident throughout: he’s trying.

In the opening scene he asks Sam if Jack’s come out of his room, and then he’s the one who goes and knocks on Jack’s door to warn him about Mrs. Butters, placing trust in Jack that he can handle it and will call them if anything gets weird, and he cajoles Jack to come out with the promise of snickerdoodles. All of this subtly shows us that Dean knows what Jack is suffering, and we can be sure of that because we know he’s been there enough times.

The guilt, the self-blame, as well as the self-doubt underpinning it all, making it difficult to forgive.

Because, thing is, Jack is struggling to forgive himself. To accept that it was an accident. He’s waiting for Dean’s forgiveness to give him a marker for whether it’s okay for him to even begin to forgive himself, which is understandable on all the levels of his character progression, but especially when looking at him as a representative of Dean’s inner child.

So then, why is Dean acknowledging, embracing and nurturing his inner child important?

Because, when looking at the narrative from the angle where it’s filled with symbolisism to do with Dean’s internal journey (and by extension the internal journeys of all the characters), then Dean’s progression, and especially lack there of, has been closely tied to the fact that he never got to be a kid.

He had to grow up fast, got responsibility put on him that was way out of proportion for a four year old child, had to be a father and a mother to his younger brother, and learned to repress and suppress his childish urges, wants and needs through unhealthy coping mechanisms in order to dress himself in the image of the strongerst person that he’s ever known: his father.

(which is a misnomer because there was plenty of weakness to John Winchester) (especially how he was a highly emotional man who spent the years after his wife’s death driven by grief, but hammered it into his eldest son that emotions are weaknesses that will get you killed and you should control them to the point of barely being able to recognise them anymore)

It’s imperitive for Dean to deal with the neglect he suffered in his childhood, rather than ignore it, if he’s ever going to be able to let those wounds heal over. And letting them heal over is important because pushing down trauma leaves it room to influence our choices and to keep us in old patterns of behaviour. Because self-denial and self-neglect is where our Shadow lives and thrives—our unconscious gaining power over us and dictating our behaviour even as we’re unaware of it.

Remember how Jack swallowed Michael? Remember how Michael was Dean’s Shadow representative? It’s not by accident that what Dean has left to confront, fully, is self-trust, self-forgiveness and finding his way to real self-love, symbolically given to us in this narrative through his treatment of Jack.

Because Jack is the final piece of Dean’s internal puzzle: his inner child in need of some real TLC.

So then, what does Dean need in order to be able to show Jack aka himself some real TLC?

Mrs. Butters

Ah, yes, of course what Dean needs most is to engage with his internal femininity.

Mrs. Butters represents Dean’s suppressed and repressed longing for more in life, for a home, for love, and the only reason there’s been a need to suppress and repress this longing is to due with what he was taught as a child and throughout his formative years, actively by his father, and unconsciously by the way he was never taught or shown how to deal in any type of healthy way with the loss of his mother.

Mrs. Butters as our representative of positive femininity then shows us as the audience how Dean, in his heart of heart, wants to believe that he can have good things in his life. That he deserves them.

Mrs. Butters shows us that what Dean needs is to allow himself to feel joy, without expecting it to flip at a moment’s notice into feeling loss.

And yes, I realise where the episode ends, but perhaps the feeling of joy wouldn’t flip if the lesson was learned in full and Dean knew how to trust and simply let go of the undercurrent of fear that the flip is lurking somewhere just around the next bend.

What this episode shows us is that he’s just not quite there yet, but omg the threshholding is intense.

Because Mrs. Butters underlines that what Dean needs, more than anything, is to practice trust. Dean needs to practice opening up. Dean needs to practice letting go of his need for control.

He can still be in charge of a situation, without thinking it’s all on him always.

Now, the episode highlights this in a rather glorious way, by trapping him in a room, under threat, knowing Sam is about to walk into the situation, and deciding not only is he not going to call Sam for help, he’s not even going to text him a heads up.

Look. This might be a plothole here. Jeremy Adams might have been so focused on the joke of Dean not wanting to interrupt Sam’s sexy times that he didn’t realise the implactions of Dean not even sending a text to warn Sam that he was essentially heading home to a dangerous situation, yeah?

But the rather lax attitude of the brothers this episode: letting Mrs. Butters stay, and both of them neglecting the need for them to look into her backstory further, because they both got so distracted by holiday celebrations and her amazing cooking, combined with the hopscotch way they approach getting rid of her, all this is intentional enough for me to lean into the reading of Dean’s need to practice trust being explored in awesome ways.

Because Dean needs someone to take the load off, and Mrs. Butters does this in spades.

What with how she brokers zero arguments, immediately getting him to clean up his language, and I mean, Dean then defying this is a moment of awesomeness and of course we all want him to continue being midly CW foulmouthed, but for all intents and purposes, he succumbs to her chastising quickly, and she gets him to open up to the joy of the moment via holiday celebrations, and, to top it all off, she gets him to eat healthier.

The fact that she’s introduced folding his underwear, and then goes on to tell him that she wouldn’t have had to if he’d just done it right to begin with, is fairly epic. (verrryy epic) As is her giving Dean the nightshirt from Scoobynatural. Obviously! He’s wrapped in hugs! Purple hugs! And having Dean dressed in purple and eating vegetables in the same episode is enough to make one’s head explode.

*head* *ex* *ploded*

Balance. Is why my head is exploding. The purple and the vegetables are indications of growing internal balance. *yes please and thank you!*

I loved them celebrating Sam’s birthday and Dean having specific requests for his, Mrs. Butters dismissing him with how she thought he’s too old to want to celebrate. It was such a moment of reminding Dean that he’s not supposed to regress, he’s not to forget that he is, in fact, an adult, and nurturing his inner child is about letting go of the need for the childhood he never had—which is keeping him from properly having the adult life he deep down yearns for.

(and then this reminder was followed by a moment of kindness) (as there already were rice crispie treats waiting for him) (and his eager little face!) *heart eyes*

There was so much to love about Mrs. Butters, though!

Like the big bowl of crispy bacon on the breakfast table and her encouraging Sam to enjoy the world he’s fighting for, the waxing of Baby (!!), the introduction of the monster radar, finally getting the telescope—pardon me, the interdimensional geoscope—given some attention, Dean blowing a door down by using the grenade launcher (symbolically tied to self-liberation), the fixing of the TV in the Deancave (with thanks to Jeremy! he who breaketh he too shalt fixeth), the fact that Mrs. Butters is a straight-up anti-Nazi killing machine and that her violence stems directly from her need to protect her home and the people she cares about.

Yeah, there’s so much good in her that her not ending up shot, even though she tortured Sam, is not very surprising and I really enjoyed the fact that her story ended on a compassionate note of understanding, and that, if she hadn’t longed to go back to the woods, the boys would have wanted her to stick around.

Forgiveness—looking for it, or needing it— is a clear thread through this episode.

As For the Deeper Symbolism

Dean starts out cooking, wearing his new favourite garment—an apron. Now, I could tie that to Dean embracing his inner femininity and the rest of the episode working to underline this fact to us, but that’s just my reading of it, so who knows what the deal with the apron actually is. I do love it though, and it’s put in dialogue twice so we were definitely meant to make note of it.

The cooking ties him directly to Mrs. Butters, of course (or her to him, if you will) and creates a bookend for the episode, where Dean starts and ends the episode wearing the apron: first presenting Sam with a burger (meat man!) and then presenting Jack with a birthday cake.

This bookend is also tied very strongly to Jack.

Dean asks about him in the opening scene and we learn Jack is holed up in his room, the episode going from having Jack hiding himself away, ashamed and self-hating in his room, to him sitting opposite Sam, expressing concern that they’re putting all their bets on him and he’s not sure he’ll be able to kill God, Sam offering assurance and Dean, through his cake-baking and happy birthday wishes, offering forgiveness and support.

It’s awesome! Beyond awesome! It’s bloody brilliant, is what it is!

Especially when looking at the implications it holds for Dean’s inner work: his inner child starts out locked away, fearful and despairing, being brought out of that room through the kind and supportive side to his internal femininity representative, only for that representative to turn around and step into the shoes of the toxic masculinity traits that have always been the source of Dean’s self-hatred, distrust and lack of faith in himself, and once being granted honesty from the ego (Dean’s consciousness admitting that he’s trying, he’s angry, maybe always will be, but he’s trying) his inner child ends up with the ego showing that inner child how much it matters, that it’s trusted, cared for and loved.

*brains on ceiling*

Now, as mentioned briefly, the narrative gives us Dean’s inner femininity (Mrs. Butters) influenced by what is a clear toxic masculinity/Shadow character (Sinclair) and shows us why Dean is still wary of his inner child, still not entirely trusting, and it makes all the sense, especially now that the inner child has swallowed up the Shadow and incorporated it into himself.

Mrs. Butters’ mistrust of Jack becomes emblematic of Dean’s own mistrust in himself, but his inner child knows better and Jack’s continous denial of Mrs. Butters’ accusations underscores this fact. There is self-trust within Dean. Stronger than the lingering mistrust.

All of this inner work for Dean and Sam’s the one who gets tortured?

Well, I can see good reason why Sam is Mrs. Butters’ favourite and it’s to do with how he’s so closely tied to Dean’s purpose in life. Mrs. Butters is a reflection of Dean, and as she moves into Protector of the Bunker she’s also a reflection of any lingering toxic masculinity within Dean, and how it’s always been trying to find a way to sink its claws in Sam, but Sam has never bought into the toxic masculinty spiel, and because of that he’s needed in this instance, to see through the behaviour, to push for compassion, to break through the brainwashing that Mrs. Butters is under, to point out how she was used, taken out of her true nature to do someone else’s bidding.

The most thrilling part is that it’s Dean who delivers the biggest missing piece to Mrs. Butters’ puzzle: the true nature of Jack.

Because, looked at symbolically, Jack’s ability to save the world represents Dean’s inner child’s ability to save Dean.

Because if any side to Dean were to destroy/thoroughly repress his inner child, he’d be lost. He would never be able to heal.

The fact that Dean gets to be the one to do this, to talk a representative of his own inner imbalance down, makes me giddy.

He would not have been able to do this a season ago. He was barely able to do this at the beginning of this season, because he was so full of anger.

That anger, after voicing it to Cas, doesn’t hold the same sway anymore.

He freely admitted to Jack that he’s still angry, and perhaps he always will be a little angry, but he is trying, and this, to me, is enormous. He expressed his emotion and he’s in zero ways allowing that emotion to control his actions anymore.

And, hey, we got Dean, wearing purple, assuring Mrs. Butters that Jack is a good kid.

It’s just… happy happy joy joy!

And a standing ovation to Meagen Fay. She really helped make the episode compelling to watch, balancing Mrs. Butters’ homely and darling characteristics with the darker and MoL compelled Protector of the Bunker that slowly, but surely, reared its not-as-darling head. Kudos!

Right. I could write about this episode some more, because layers, but it’s time to leave off. One thing before I go, though: I loved that we finally had them talk about that big-ass telescope. And I love that it’s not a telescope, because it makes sense. They’re underground—how would they see the stars? I figured there was some sort of skylight somehow that would open or something but meh, dull. This is so much better! And I loved that the green colour of warning was actually to do with the fact that they’re now not being able to see anything through it, rather than the colour having to do exclusively with Mrs. Butters. Utterly brilliant! And… oh dear, what horrors lie ahead??

Now to go watch 15x15.

I’m not biting my nails.

At all.

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reidingdays · 4 years

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bau as songs from folklore

tw: mentions and allusions to drugs, death, grief, blood

the 1: jj painful and blinding optimism. hope. knowing where you've come from and how it has shaped you. going about your day. growing. letting go peacefully. curiosity. sneakers ambling down pavements with your earphones in. sunshine and leafy trees. recognising your worth. it’s alright now.

cardigan: spencer darkness like a blanket. the scratch of a needle against a nostalgic vinyl. a reassuring weight on your chest, like an old cat. pouring over somebody like the final page of a book. oxymoronic. something destined. something borrowed. stars aligning in a clear night sky. making excuses that blur logic. leaving like a father. wise beyond your years. belonging. abandoning. lingering, longing fingertips.

the last great american dynasty: rossi winding narratives. extravagant retellings and rumours. keepsakes. red wine and sunlight streaming through high windows. board games. banter and feuds. family heirlooms. a big house by the sea. breezy. loud laughter. chosen family gatherings. captivating, collected words. a warm afternoon. a cat in a sunbeam.

exile: morgan walks in solitude to clear your head. exuding love to give. leaving your home behind. an understudy, overlooked, discarded. a foot soldier. a protector. bloodied knuckles. dashed expectations. finishing a film that should have ended long ago. demolishing a wall, then demolishing the whole house. balancing on breaking branches. irreplaceable. risking it all. compartmentalising. stolen innocence forced to confront reality.

my tears ricochet: emily haunted ghosts. sobbing 'let me in, i'm come home!'. a chill inside your bones. a set jaw. inky midnight blue skies. rain storming against rattling windows. a hollow shell. echoing choirs. unrequited love. silent tears streaking down a face. drowning your jewels in the ocean. the past catching up to you. digging up an empty grave. an aching chest. sacrifice. brave, shaking hands. three walled coffins. screaming at the sky.

mirrorball: garcia a used spectacle. shattered glass that still sparkles. whimsy. try, try, trying. tarnished but that’s what makes it glitter. a balancing act. soft prisms of light painting the walls. floating around a party. resilience. towering heels. a rainbow smile, fleeting, shining, beautiful. something rare and special. offering hope to those that need it most. people pleasing. insightful. reliable. in a seventh heaven.

seven: tara protective, undying love. an unfinished childhood. before i learned civility. clipped wings. manners. a misty forest, gnarled branches, changing leaves, appropriate footwear. evolution. investigative. an open perspective. weeds are flowers. intelligence, elegance. violin bows. tamed wild horses. are there still beautiful things?

august: luke simple things in life. honesty and naivety. longing, worshipping. strumming a guitar in the summertime. salt on your skin. twisted bedsheets. wonder and hope. falling too far too fast and not caring for the consequences. sleeping in. reminiscing. warm sand beneath your feet. warm arms around your waist. carefree chases along the coast, towels streaming like kites behind you. no strings attached. childlike laughter. frisky hands. driving with the roof off.

this is me trying: hotch learning strength is vulnerability. shiniest wheels now they're rusting. crumbling walls, opening cage doors. letting out demons. depending and dependable. faintest smiles. turning up at your friend's front door in the pouring rain. accepting defeat. learning softness. heads resting on shoulders. short temper. doing better. keeping up appearances. strictest with yourself. for once in your life, undoing your tie. hugging your son.

illicit affairs: spencer secretive, private. preferring your alone time. withdrawn. a drug that only worked the first few hundred times. chasing the impossible. frustration. self-destructive. loss and disregard. me for her. cover me. ripping off a tie, ripping off a kevlar. don't call me kid. desperation. mercurial highs. volatile, bitchy, snappy. lonely.

invisible string: matt a fairytale ending. going with the flow. the pattering of little feet against hardwood floors. fingerpainting with primary colours. trusting. looking through an photo album. awe. tied together for all eternity. forgiving and forgetting. being thankful. reflection. bedtime stories. full dinner tables, full tummies. making birthday cakes at 3am with the love of your life. doing it all over again.

mad woman: elle sharp tongue, sharp claws. do not trespass. taking your time because they took everything from you. vengeance. justice. a panther prowling the back alleys. fuck you forever. holding grudges. ruthless. terrified. biting back. constantly looking over your shoulder.

epiphany: spencer floating, dreaming if you're lucky. just one single glimpse of relief. alchemy. overcast. service and sacrifice. unspeakable traumas. silver linings to clutch onto. gentleness. holding hands with strangers. lifelines. comfort. humanity. cloudy days, white haze, an intermittent white light. sleepless, drifting. like the tide, breathing in, breathing out. at peace.

betty: jj open, brazen, communicative. country girl. no holding back. admitting your shortfalls. saying sorry. last chances. pining. would you tell me to go fuck myself or lead me to the garden? grand gestures. speaking your mind no matter what chaos it may chance.

peace: emily no longer a lamb, but the fox that kills them. hardened, but doubt still clawing at your insides. is it enough? saving face. a rapid heartbeat. flickering fire. chosen family. dying for your loved ones in secret. calamity hanging like a shadow over you, inescapable. taking the fall. fighting to keep your head above water. knowing that it’s worth the strife.

hoax: blake smoke and mirrored metaphors. analytical armour. burying your nose in a crossword. worn old volumes you’ve read countless times over. cynicism, stoicism. incomplete, no longer whole. giving everything you've got. a loss echoing in every chamber of your heart that no other sadness in the world would do. you know the hero died so what’s the movie for? enduring. leaning on loved ones. healing in private.

#criminal minds #taylor swift #emily prentiss #spencer reid #aaron hotchner #jennifer jareau #derek morgan #alex blake #tara lewis #luke alvez #matt simmons #elle greenaway #penelope garcia #david rossi #writings

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onelastbreath-writes · 3 years

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I’ll Meet You There (Part 3)

Pairing: Marcus Moreno/ Wife!Reader (AFAB, no y/n)

Word Count: 2.6K

Warnings: Talks about loss of spouse, loss of child, medical conditions/inaccuracies, grief/mourning, manipulation/brainwashing (subtext/implied, but we’ll get into it later *winkwink*)

Tags: Hurt/No comfort (for now), ANGST, eventual happy ending, one really sad man for whom I just keep making things worse, #sorrynotsorry, and now I’m just making stuff up as I go along

Summary(lite): You are Marcus’s wife, and you’re definitely not dead. No one is having a great time right now, but like hell if there's a force on this earth that’ll keep you apart forever. This is not a goodbye, its just a see you later. And the interim is going to be everyone else’s problem, you’ll make sure of it.

A/N: Hello dears, welcome back to my twisted mind story,,, guess who showed up like 2 weeks late with a smoothie! So things about this new chapter: I am a criminal with italics and someone needs to stop me, hello switching scenes and perspectives because I just want to fast forward to the good stuff but y’all don’t live in my head and don’t know all the stuff that happens to get us there so here we are taking the slow lane, and I keep brainstorming new and horrible things for my characters because I am A Lot, All The Time, and will not be stopped. Also hey, Marcus the Simp is here for you, so much. I hope this is acceptable to be a reader fic still, because I am giving you some serious personality traits... ehh, it is what it is. Tell me if you spot any of my various references, there’s a lot of ‘em. Thanks to everyone who has liked/reblogged/commented, y’all are gorgeous and I’m so grateful for the love <3 Drop me a message/ask if you want a secret about one of the characters (specify which one), I need an outlet for my endless b.t.s. plotting >;) Please enjoy p3!

AO3|Masterlist

[Previous Part]

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There were more casseroles in his fridge that Marcus knew what to do with, and more sympathy and “thinking of you” cards stacked in piles around the house than he could count. He appreciated everyone’s gestures, but he could recognize the difference between people who were kind in the interest of helping others, and those who were kind only to help themselves. It was quite obvious which type were flooding his mailbox.

Hell, most of the people sending him cards, his fans, didn’t even know his wife, never spoke to her, didn’t feel the empty Her-shaped-space in their very souls. They just wanted the clout, the prestige, of being ‘involved’ and sympathetic to a grieving superhero. It was exhausting, but no one seemed to empathize with him on that.

The Heroics upper management, and the director specifically after his press conference and the publicity the attack had brought the organization, had insisted on Marcus taking an undetermined amount of leave from the team so he could “process and mourn his loss in the comfort of his own home.” Like he didn’t look around and see every piece of himself and his wife over the years; the Home they built for their family, filled with all the hopes and dreams of two starry eyed lovers ready to take on the world together. Like her absence wasn’t slowly killing him.

And it wasn’t like she was gone gone.

Dead.

She wasn’t dead.

No way in Hell.

Whether it was because she worked with superpowered people, her experience as a medical professional, or if she was just more paranoid than most, his wife was a planner, and she was prepared for this. “In the event of my death...," like she just knew it would be necessary.

Truthfully, she had schemes and contingencies and all manner of reactionary plans prepared for if (and when) the worst happened; terrified to be blindsided or caught unaware, unable to help those she would have been able to, if only if she had the time to think. Unpreparedness costs lives in both of their careers, and she refused to leave anything up to chance if possible. And so, she’d plan, and he’d listen.

All throughout their relationship, from before they’d even gotten serious enough to discuss marriage, to when they heard their unborn child’s heartbeat for the first time, and just on random weekday afternoons when they would take Missy for walks around the neighbourhood to show her the beauty in their lives, his wife would paint her theories and ideas like artwork. She’d tell him a story, full of action and mystery, humour and theatrics, tragic romance and harrowing adventure; she could spin a tale like she had a silver tongue, but she never lost herself in her own narratives. In the end, they were messages, lessons, for him to remember when everything was going wrong.

“It’s all about momentum, babe. Bleeding off energy and taking a bad hit instead of a fatal hit. You can’t just full stop; you’d absorb all the kinetic energy, and the resulting trauma will turn all your squishy internals into, like, body soup, which is just super unpleasant. And of course, head is always number one priority. Bracing for impact works better at giving you fewer serious injuries, especially for your neck and head. Muscles should absorb as much of the energy as possible, instead of letting it fall to your ligaments, discs, and nerves to take the force. So, tense up and roll in the case of a low air evacuation.”

Low air evac... she was concerned he was going to have to jump from an aircraft without a parachute at some point in his life. Which was probably accurate he’d admit, but still, he wasn’t hoping to actually need that plan.

Thankfully, it wasn’t always fire and brimstone with her, and she had many strange and terrible schemes to keep the common, everyday superhero family on their toes. Always carry at least two lip balms... never tell someone you don’t have plans for the evening... don’t smile in your mugshot... no clowns. Ever.

She was so weird, a total nerd, and so completely the girl of his dreams.

He loved teasing her about her unending train of thought, the brain that never sleeps, how she’d go on tangents while on tangents but always circle back around; even nicknamed her (quite cheekily, and because it made them both laugh) Doctor Batman, which was usually saved for when she was being particularly dramatic and gloomy. Turn the supercomputer off for a second, Bats, come see what Missy’s doing!

He was her anchor, always ready to pull her back to earth when she started drifting off too far from them, but he never asked and never wanted her to change. He adored her, silly or serious, or when she woke him up in the middle of the night to make him promise that he’d never get their kid(s) a pet owl (because they’re “scary”, and “our kids would be too powerful, Marcus. Promise me!”), or that in the event of them inviting a third to their bed, it would “absolutely never, ever, ever be Miracle. No way!”

He thought it was quite entertaining most of the time, listening to her plan for zombies and old gods and what to do if everyone just started hating cheese one day, but if it was all so important to her: having him remember this or agree to that, he’d accede to her requests in a heartbeat. Most of it was cute, harmless stuff he didn’t think would even happen, but sometimes she would hit him with serious stuff. Entirely out of left field, she’d go for his heart, and ask him for things that would hurt him, destroy him inside, if he ever had to follow through with it.

“Marcus, if it’s a choice between my safety- my life, and Missy’s? I’m always going to choose her. Kids come first, okay?”

She wasn’t superpowered, didn’t have a shred of anything other than pure, normal human in her, but she was easily the strongest person he knew. Fearless and brave, kinder than this world deserved, she’d do anything for the people she cared about. And she’d promised him, maybe as a way to repay him for all the things he’d agreed to over the years, that she’d move heavens and the earth to return to their family. That nothing in this world, or beyond, could keep her away. “Eventually,” she’d stared into his eyes, glossy with tears from how forcefully she believed, “I will find my way back to you. I swear it, so keep a weather eye on the horizon.” See? A whole-ass nerd, and he couldn’t have loved her more.

So, she wasn’t dead. Pure and simple. She was somewhere, somehow, and he was going to find her again.

---

“Marcus, the grieving process is different for everyone, but it is always unpredictable and painful. You will have days where you will feel like you haven’t made any progress, or even lost the progress you’ve previously made, but please know that this is natural; it's something everyone experiences, and that it doesn’t mean you’ve failed in your objective. Healing takes time, and a major part of recovery is learning to forgive yourself when you slip up. No one expects you to be back to normal tomorrow, or next week, or next month. Healing from grief is not a race, so we will go at your own pace, and we will work together to accomplish your recovery goals. You aren’t alone in this journey, and you don’t need to handle everything by yourself.”

The grief specialist he was seeing was someone he would describe as an “old soul”. She exuded the patience and peace of someone who had watched empires rise and fall, seen the turning of the wheel of time and drifted along with the current. Her voice was deep, rich in emotion and empathy for those who needed guidance, calming and intriguing with a soft lilt on her vowels. Timeless and ancient all in one, and even if he wasn’t actually mourning the death of his wife, he did find himself deeply grieving being without her. They were two halves of a whole, and though his soul was at a loss without its partner here, he still had their greatest creation, their pride and joy, their baby girl to raise.

He would do whatever he had to do to be the best parent he could for Missy. And so, if meeting with a physiatrist every week was something that would help, then he would be here, every week. He'd learn to live with his grief, his sadness and loneliness, with just the memory of his Everything, and he’d help their kid with all hers too.

It’s what he promised to do, after all.

“If anything ever happens to me, you’ll just have to love her enough for the both of us.”

---

There was nothing they could recover of the people closest to centre of the explosion. No remains, no blood, nothing. Like they hadn’t been there at all.

Suspicious.

Upper Management had brought in a team of private investigators to handle the case, people who would keep the details quiet and the public appeased with what little information they’d choose to release.

Marcus was a superhero, and sure, his job was to hit things until they weren’t a problem anymore, but he couldn’t understand why all the highly trained professionals didn’t question the sheer amount of evidence that just wasn’t adding up.

He tried to bring up the inconsistencies once with the lead investigator, but they had just given the distraught, widowed husband, so lost in his own denial and grasping at straws, a sad smile and told him they would do everything they could to find the truth for him and the rest of the victims’ families.

Typical.

After being brushed off without a second thought, he decided to keep his ideas quiet, and since they’d proven their unwillingness to listen, he’d just have to solve the mass disappearance himself.

“Have you ever thought about how to commit the perfect murder, mi amor? I have. First: If there’s no body, they can’t prove the person is dead. No evidence of death? No murder. Simple. But of course, completely vanishing a full human would be a challenge. Short of having the superpowers necessary to, like, erase someone from reality in their entirety, there would be a lot of chances to leave evidence. Ordering suspicious chemicals leaves a trail, driving out to a pig farm in the middle of the night is shady as hell and all neighbors are professional narcs, and fires? Hah! Do you have any idea how hot the fire needs to be to cremate human remains, and how long they would need to grill for? Huh, maybe the perfect murder isn’t a murder at all...

Hey babe...

Always doubt a body, but always doubt no body, more.”

---

You tended to lose time when there was no one else in your room. It was hard to tell when your eyes were open because you started dreaming about the only things you could see since you first woke up: drop-ceiling tiles, white walls, and pale blue curtain dividers. And it was easier that way, in the end. Your heart didn’t hurt when you only dreamt of the room. You couldn’t mourn the things and people only your soul could remember if you thought of the room. Drifting in and out of consciousness was how you were coping.

---

You had been here, left in this room alone, for ages. You had agreed to help the man who had saved you from the explosion that killed your family, but apparently you couldn’t help him until you had recovered enough. You’d read your charts, grilled your nurses and doctors more and more the longer you were kept here. What were they all waiting for? There was nothing wrong with you except the mild post traumatic amnesia, and the whole not-remembering-much-(or anything, really)-about-your-personal-life-and-family-of-the-recent-few-years thing you had going on. It was nothing compared to when you first awoke and could remember nothing. It killed you to be without the memories of your husband and child, to know only of them instead of actually knowing them, but there was nothing you or the doctors here could do. The brain was a tricky thing, and you had to accept that your memory loss might be permanent.

That just meant that you had to put all that you could remember to good use. You could help people here, and work towards getting justice for your family. Years and years of school, practical experience and training, you had gained it all back; re-read textbooks and studies, wrote papers on your re-emerging knowledge and jogged your memory about long nights and early mornings, surgeries and follow ups... it was all still in your head. It had returned to you easily, like diving into a cool pool on a hot summer day. It was like coming home and taking off your shoes; it felt good, freeing, as-it-should-be.

But still they weren’t letting you leave. So: what were they waiting for?

“Ah, Doctor, it’s lovely to see you, as always. How are we feeling today?” Okay, so the guy who “saved” you (read: paid the people who actually saved your life) gave you the heebie-jeebies. He looked like a classic pompous asshole bigwig, like, oil tycoon or something. And he definitely had some sort of thing for you. Gross.

“I’m doing as well as can be expected, trapped in a room with nothing to do, you know, brain rotting, et cetera. Thanks for asking.” The sass was a choice, probably not a great choice, but your choice none-the-less. You really hadn’t had many opportunities to choose anything for yourself in a while.

Well...

You were bored, and that was going to be everyone else’s problem.

“Ah, well, good news then! You have been cleared from observation and you’ll be able to be discharged soon. Isn’t that just delightful!” Mister Craig (“Please, just Greg is fine”), was some sort of horrible group hallucination, you were convinced. No one was that cheery, that animated, unless they were on something, or you were on something. “I’ll have someone bring you your personal effects shortly, and then I can show you to your new apartment. The complex isn’t in the best neighbourhood unfortunately, but it's got some real charm, very vintage! You’ll love it!”

“I’ll look forward to seeing it then; sounds like it’ll be a real interesting place to stay. You can also explain what it is I’m going to be doing with your organization. Because you haven’t specified yet. And I expect a proper contract and wage agreement. Legally binding preferably, for your sake, of course, Mr. Craig.” Even if you weren’t the most physically intimidating person around, you knew how, and more so, when, to assert your dominance in a conversation. Especially with men like him. He was the type of guy who would pinch a nurse’s ass and then accuse them of not being able to take a joke.

“You wound me, Doctor, I am a man of integrity! I promised you an opportunity to make a difference! To get justice for the loved ones so cruelly torn from you! You have nothing to worry about!”

Sounds legit. Totally above board. Can’t wait.

---

Taglist (omg!! thanks love): @killtherandomness

Drop me a line if you want to be added <3

#we can be heroes #we can be heroes fanfiction #marcus moreno #marcus moreno x reader #Marcus Moreno x you #reader x marcus moreno #reader insert #Pedro Pascal #hurt/comfort #eventual happy ending #say hello to doctor batman lol. theres a whole thing i created just for that nickname to happen. ask me about it if you want XD #also you're a sassy BAMF. oops

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masterofmagnetism · 3 years

Text

they put me in the ground (but i’m back from the dead)

They took my life but it isn't the end They put me in the ground but I'm back from the dead

Oh, I'm the World Ender baby and I'm coming for you

WHO: Erik Lehnsherr, Scott Summers @firstxman, Jean Grey-Summers @jeaniegreysummers, Bruce Banner @hulkout. Mention of @mistressxfmagnetism WHERE: Stark Tower’s CRADLE lab. WHEN: February 21, 2021 WHAT: Jean and Scott get Bruce’s help resurrecting Erik. Erik comes back and is Not Happy. WARNINGS: Reference to past major character death, abuse, murder, assorted mental health issues, grief, ptsd. WORDS: 11k

JEAN: Erik crossed a line. No matter how she cried over his body, no matter how empty she felt when he was lowered into that grave (and she felt it, the shift in the earth, felt the ripple of emotion that came from the funeral even as she curled up in the rain under a tree in the park, even as she flicked through annotated poetry anthologies, a German dictionary propped open beside her), she knew they’d made the right decision. The only decision. Because Genosha was meant to be a place of safety, of respite, somewhere to escape from centuries of persecution and war. They’d already declared their strength with the siege. Anything after that was nothing more than malicious.

More than malicious. Genocidal.

Jean tried to tell herself it was the Phoenix. She told herself that if she could wake up in the morning with moon dust on her knees and blood under her nails and not remember any of it, that maybe the same thing was happening to Erik. Maybe he was overcome like she was on that lawn. But Erik didn’t ask for help. Erik didn’t hesitate, didn’t have a moment of outward remorse, didn’t let her into his head to see if there was an instance of it even internally.

Didn’t trust her, at the end of the day, despite his promises, despite his love. Despite everything they’d been to each other for all these years, Jean still wasn’t enough to break through. Her other father made that same mistake, out on that beach all those years ago. He made the same mistake every time he sent children to fight an old friend he wasn’t entirely sure would pull his punches

But that still didn’t give her the right to kill him.

After all, it was Jean who put the Phoenix into him. It was Jean who split the Raft, Jean who helped orchestrate the siege, Jean who encouraged the alliance between Erik and Scott. It was Jean who was fundamental in the unlocking of Lorna’s memories, Jean who indirectly led to the assault on Julio Richter.

Jean at the epicentre, as always, for once a driving force in her own narrative and hating every goddamn minute.

She killed Erik Lehnsherr, and it was the right thing to do, but him staying dead was a decision she couldn’t swallow. Asking the Phoenix for help was impossible. There were forces at play there she could never understand. Science was the only way forward, and there was something there when they exhumed the grave (Lorna would kill her, if this didn’t work. Jean would let her). Erik didn’t feel dead. He didn’t feel gone. He felt like he was … frozen. Waiting.

Stasis. A pause, rather than a full stop.

Jean chewed at the inside of her cheek, arms folded against the white of her lab coat. “We’ve run the preliminary tests more times than I can count,” she said. Scott would recommend, no doubt, that she slept before they tried this -- but she hadn’t slept properly in weeks. She couldn’t, until this was resolved. “We don’t know what frame of mind he might be in when he comes out, so we need to be prepared for anything.” Including killing him again, if necessary. This time, it would be her dealing the final blow. Marriage was all about equality.

SCOTT: When Scott was a child, his father was a retreating back. He always seemed to walk out of the door more often than he walked in it, always seemed happier leaving than staying. Scott remembered carrying a child’s anger in tiny fists, remembered a heart pounding against a ribcage in a way he wasn’t yet familiar with, remembered asking his mother on the days when she felt well enough to leave her bedroom why his father never seemed to want to stay. ’This is supposed to be his home,’ he’d said, ’and people are supposed to want to be home.’ And his mother went quiet, looked down at her hands, tried to think of something to say, some way to explain away anger too big to fit inside a body so small. ’People do things sometimes,’ she told him, ’Not because they want to. Because they have to. Because some things need doing. Your father does important work, Scotty. He does what he has to do.’

He learned to hate that phrase over the years. He does what he has to do. Even after his father died doing what he had to do, even after he took Scott’s mother with him, the phrase lingered. It was one Sinister used in that basement lab, one he hummed as he poked needles into veins and pulled memories from an already fractured mind. It was one Winters sneered when he kicked Scott in the ribs so hard he heard something crack. It was one Erik clung to with missiles pointed at a city full of people Scott loved.

And it was one Scott used when he took off his glasses and painted the whole world red.

Erik wasn’t very different from the rest of the fathers who’d let him down over the years. Scott knew that now. He wasn’t entirely separate from Christopher Summers, from Nathaniel Essex, from Jack Winters. They all clung to the same excuse, all hurt people and offered themselves an easy out in the process. Erik wasn’t very different from them at all. But neither was Scott.

If he voiced the concern to her, Jean would reassure him. Scott was sure of as much. She’d tell him that he’d saved lives doing what he did, remind him that Erik hadn’t offered much of a choice. She’d tell him everything he needed to hear, and she’d make him feel better in the process. That was exactly why Scott hadn’t told her his thoughts aloud. Jean would comfort him, and Scott wasn’t sure he deserved comfort. He wasn’t sure he deserved forgiveness. And redemption, he knew, wasn’t an option at all. You couldn’t be redeemed from a thing like this. Once that blood was on your hands, it stayed there. You could never get it out from beneath your nails.

But… Jean was offering him a chance to come as close to fixing things as was possible. Bringing Erik back sans Phoenix wouldn’t undo the damage that had been done. Scott knew from experience that raising the dead didn’t heal the wounds they’d left behind, but it was something. And god, he couldn’t keep doing nothing. Anything was better than that.

So he was here. In a lab he felt fundamentally uncomfortable in, with a man he hardly knew, planning on doing the impossible for someone he’d killed himself. His palms itched and his chest ached and his eyes were heavy with all the sleep he’d missed since Erik’s death, but he was here. And he hoped that could count for something.

“Can you restrain him, if necessary?” He looked to Jean, nervous energy flittering in his chest. “He may need time to… calm down.” There was every chance he’d be angry, when he came back. Scott certainly had been, and there was a letter in the Bugle to prove it. And Erik…

Erik had always done anger better than anyone.

BRUCE: Assumptions disappointed and killed more people than anything else in the world. When Bruce was young, he thought it was because disappointed weighed you down like boulders tied to your ankles in quicksand, but as the scientist had aged, he found that it wasn’t because the feeling was so heavy - it was because assumptions were akin to hope. Hope spread like a disease: clogged your arteries, confused the mind, and chased happiness down like catfish in a barrel.

Hope, on its own, could save lives. Could bring a dead man back to life under the skilled hands of a mutant and a man who belonged nowhere - could salvage what little tenderness resided in a heart made of stone. And in the very next second, it could slit the wrists of the person wielding it. It starts as a small trickle of blood that eventually bleeds you dry without you knowing, Bruce thought, large hands pulling open a gaudy blue menu, full of numbers and operations that, with hope, man could understand.

Bruce didn’t know the X-Men very well. Knew Logan from the few times they were forced to cross paths in laboratories just like this one, but not much else. Knew what he’d read in the papers and knew how Erik Lehnsherr should probably stay dead.

In his apparent all-mighty knowing (that he’d likely adapted from Tony), he also knew what assumptions did to good people who were just in the wrong place, at the wrong time, doing the wrong things for the right reasons.

While he hadn’t seen Scott and Jean very often, Bruce couldn’t imagine they looked this exhausted all of the time. While hero-ing and saving and destroying often took a toll on your mental and physical health, the look that they carried said ‘I’m pleading for hope, and this is the last place I have left to look.’ Bruce thought, for just a moment as he booted up the core CRADLE systems, that he’d probably worn that look too many times in his life too. Half-naked in the streets of Harlem, showing up in the rain on Tony Stark’s doorstep, visiting his mother’s grave with a clenched fist and flowers she would never get to see, or on the faces of the other monks at the Phuktal monastery in Zanskar when they finally learned of his story, who Bruce Banner really was.

Yet, he continued to hope that somehow things would change. That someone would bandage his wrists and tell him he could stop bleeding for the sins of others - do the right things because they felt right, sleep at night because it was OK if he stopped to rest, eat because it was alright to have something in his stomach other than regret.

People always assumed Bruce Banner was always battling for control, hoped that he wouldn’t let go of himself. Bruce always wondered if tomorrow would finally be the day he wouldn’t wake up again.

Staring down at Erik’s lifeless, bio-illuminated face inside of the CRADLE vault, Bruce wanted Erik to wake up. Whether it was for the right reasons or not, he wanted Erik to wake up. Licking his lips, Bruce gave Scott a somewhat sad smile, brows furrowed, “I think if things get out of control, I’ve got it covered.” We have it covered, his ridiculously sardonic brain reminded him unhelpfully. Even his mind and body were not his own - out of his control.

The stillness within the lab seemed almost clinical, if it weren’t for the fact that they were about to scientifically reconstitute living cells in an organically preserved carcass of someone they all considered a friend. “To be fair to Erik, I’d probably be pretty -“ Happy, “- mad if someone I trusted off’d me too.” The joke fell flat between them, and the chemical hiss of the CRADLE as it began to pre-register every input that he had settled into the machine filled in the silence for him. “I would say ‘ready when you are’ but I’m not sure I’ll ever be ready, so. It’s more ‘ready when you go because I have to be ready,’ haha.”

JEAN: Everything about this was a bad idea. Jean had fought between her head and her heart for as long as she could remember, and right now her stomach was squirming and her mind was screaming at her to stop, to leave well enough alone, to leave because Banner was a master scientist, but he needed their energy levels to make this work. She wrung her hands together as she looked down at the CRADLE and thought about that night, the couple of minutes that changed their lives completely. Erik stood there, argued with them that genocide could be an option. He turned into the very monster he’d been fighting since he was a child, and he saw nothing wrong with it.

Some people may say that was just Magneto. Jean knew better -- she had to know better. If she loved that man as much as she had, if she trusted him, then that meant there was something good in him, something worth protecting. That meant it was the Phoenix that caused him to stand there, thumb hovering over the metaphorical trigger. It was the Phoenix that almost had him killing her friends, her former students, even mutants who still resided on the other side of the bay.

He wasn’t thinking straight. He wasn’t thinking like himself. And when he came back, just as when she came back from Zatanna taking her out on the lawn of her childhood home, he would understand that. He would thank them, for doing what was necessary -- because he was the one who taught her how to do that.

Sentimentality had no place in war, Jean knew that, but she did what she did for him. She wouldn’t have his legacy tarnished by one final decision made in the heat of a cosmic flame.

“I can hold him,” she said. She was confident in that much. There was a reason why she wasn’t taking the risk of using the Phoenix, even if it was a tried and true method. She would stop it from fracturing into him again -- or anyone again -- if she could help it at all. “No,” Jean countered, turning around to Bruce. Softening her voice, she repeated, “No. You’re here as a scientist -- to help. If he’s going to lash out at anyone, it’ll be us.” Me, she thought to herself. If anyone touched a hair on Scott’s head, she’d never forgive herself … and chances were it would go a lot more south than she intended when she was trying to repair bridges.

She touched against the top of the CRADLE, ran her eyes quickly over the calculations flying across the screen. “There’s a reason I asked you, you know,” she said to Bruce. “Because I knew you’d understand it was more than just offing someone who was inconvenient. It was…” Mercy? The word itself seemed like an insult. “I thought of all people,” she continued, “you’d understand why we needed a Plan B.”

It wasn’t a personal secret. It had been broadcast over the TV, radio, newspapers. The self loathing that followed after Banner and the Hulk was comparable to that of Scott and Jean themselves. They’d never had pride in what they were unless they were trained to -- conditioned to. And from what Jean read in Stark’s mind, she knew Banner had contingency plans. The Hulkbuster armor, a series of arrows, certain poisons that would at least slow him down if not kill him if push came to shove.

“Erik didn’t know what she was doing,” Jean said, and her voice was far firmer on account of looking at Scott when she said it than she thought herself capable. “He doesn’t deserve to die for someone else’s mistakes.” A beat passed, a breath taken, and Jean nodded. “Start the process.”

SCOTT: Even without the Phoenix, paranoia ate at Scott’s gut like a disease. He’d never been a trusting man, not after a childhood wracked by grief and betrayal, and after everything that had happened since… Without a little doubt clinging to his fractured mind, he wouldn’t have made it as long as he had. He wouldn’t be alive now if not for his healthy dose of uncertainty.

(But was he alive at all? Did this count as living? He was clay and bone, an inanimate thing Jean had breathed life into, a body the Phoenix had claimed. Was living the proper word for what he was doing, or was it one assigned to him because no one knew any better term? How many times could a dead thing die? Maybe they were about to find out.)

This paranoia made him tense at Banner’s presence, made him uncertain and uneasy, made him shift and tighten at the reminder that the room was not occupied by his family alone. It was Scott, it was Jean, it was the empty shell of the man they had loved and killed, and it was Banner. It was them, and it was an Avenger. And they needed him, Scott knew. They needed him to ensure that this wasn’t a repeat of Jean standing over Scott’s grave on Valentine’s Day, needed an outside influence to ensure they wouldn’t repeat the same mistakes and call it a solution, but Scott was uneasy all the same. .

Banner swore he could handle it if Erik got out of control… but Scott looked to Jean anyways, didn’t relax until she confirmed that she would be able to hold him if she had to. The ease of tension didn’t last long before Banner spoke again and Scott tightened all over, wound tighter than a spring ready to take off. “If you’d rather have let him kill eight million people…” His voice was tight and sharp and unnecessary. It had been a joke, Scott knew, a poorly timed one, perhaps a tasteless one, but still a joke. But Scott Summers wasn’t known for his sense of humor.

(Scott Summers wasn’t known for anything decent at all. He hadn’t been for a long time now, and he was aware that it was a perception that predated the Phoenix’s reign of his body. He’d never been a good person. The things the Phoenix talked him in to doing only cemented a fact everyone else had always already known.)

Glancing to Jean, Scott let his lungs deflate, let the breath that was caught there escape in a quiet sigh. Erik didn’t know what he was doing. She sounded so sure of it, so positive, but… Scott had known what he was doing, with the bird ravaging his mind. He had known every step he took, been aware of every word he said. And maybe he wouldn’t have said them without the firebird insisting they needed to be said, but he would have thought them all the same. Maybe he wouldn’t have written a letter to the Bugle or killed police officers who stood in his way or participated in an insurrection against the government of a country he’d only ever wanted to belong to, but he wasn’t sure he would have thought those things were wrong, either.

It wasn’t entirely fair to say that Erik hadn’t been himself, but Scott wouldn’t argue it, either. He wouldn’t tell Jean that he wasn’t sure the bird absolved Erik of his sins, wouldn’t admit that he didn’t believe it absolved him of his, because doing so would mean saying that Jean wasn’t free of hers, either. And Scott loved her far too much to breathe that sentence to life, even if it might have been true.

“He deserves a second chance,” he said, because he believed that, if nothing else. Erik deserved a second chance because everyone did, because Scott had gotten more than his fair share and this was what he’d done with them, because Erik had suffered so much and worked so hard and he’d deserved a better end than the one Scott gave him. “So let’s give him one.”

BRUCE: It took a lot, for someone like Bruce to keep their comments to themselves. Even with the thought of his father barreling him down with a glass whiskey bottle, Bruce still piped up when it was not his place. He’d watched plenty of curses take the lives of people who didn’t necessarily deserve it - but Bruce knew from personal experience, just like the other people in that room, that Erik knew what he was doing. Likely deserved to pay some sort of penance for his actions. But Bruce also thought, calibrating the machine, that maybe knowing what kind of monster lurked beneath the skin was enough of a punishment in itself.

“I won’t say I understand,” The scientist started, initiating launch sequence, a loud hiss coming from the chamber beside them, hearing an echo of Tony’s voice in his head. Yeah, buddy. I’ll strike you down in cold blood if need be. Tony waving him off a moment later to talk about some sport neither of them gave a damn about. How hard had it been for Jean and Scott to make the decision to put Erik down? “But I get it. How much you want it, I mean.” How much you want the monster to be imaginary, he thought.

The hissing grew louder, echoing off of the metal room within the lab, numbers flying across Bruce’s panel and a loading bar appearing for the sequence duration. The ominous glowing green had Bruce shutting his eyes tightly for a moment, remembering the day the bomb went off. The gamma seeping into every fibre of his being - the excruciating pain he felt the first time Hulk entered his mind. Bruce wondered if maybe a piece of Erik would be missing too, when it was all over. If the Phoenix would gauge a hole in him that nothing could ever fill again.

“Go, Jean.”

ERIK: He’d been fifteen when Shaw had conducted the experiment that changed his life. Strapped to a table in the middle of the man’s lab in Auschwitz, leather strap between his teeth, Erik had been terrified by the manic look in the doctor’s eyes as he readied a syringe. The other doctor had been there, too, the one everyone in the camp knew only as Nosferatu, the one who never had his subjects come back to their bunks. Erik was scared of Shaw, but that one had his adrenaline pounding extra hard, noxious fear making his mind spin as he struggled to watch the two men out of the corner of his eyes.

He hadn’t realized he’d been shaking the metal table beneath him until Shaw turned to him and clicked his tongue, and Erik made a concerted effort to rein his powers back in—from the table, from the needle, from everything, because the last time he’d lost control, Shaw had pinned him down and broken his arm in two places.

Shaw finished his prep work and rolled over to the side of the table, the other man at his shoulder, watching with a detached gaze that made Erik feel like a butterfly pinned to a board. Shaw had brushed his hand through Erik’s hair as if he were trying to calm a spooked horse, shushing him as he readied the needle.

“This is my gift to you, Max,” he’d smiled. ”So you can be like me. Like us.” And then he’d slid the needle into his arm and pressed the plunger, and everything felt like it was on fire. He’d discovered later what the man meant, what ‘gift’ he’d bestowed on him in those labs.

Life. Too much of it. He’d been 93 years old, facing off against his children in the silo, and he’d scarcely looked into his forties. His cells aged slowly the way Shaw’s had, and he’d hated it, hated that the man couldn’t simply be relegated to memory.

When Scott had flipped the visor, Erik had died. But his cells hadn’t quite done the same—had sat in stasis through his burial, through his exhumation, through his settling into the Cradle and the tests that led up to the flood of energy that finally sparked his neurons back to life.

His heart beat once. Twice. His chest heaved as he dragged air into his lungs for the first time since the silo.

They tell you that your life flashes before your eyes when you die. They don’t tell you that it does the same thing when you come back.

Over the years, Erik had carefully constructed mental walls to keep unwanted memories at bay. Charles had once remarked that his mind was one of the most organized he’d ever been in, neatly linear and uncluttered by anything except The Goal and The Plan.

You wouldn’t know it, now.

The first thing he was aware of was that his mind felt empty, somehow, like he was missing a limb. He’d had a cosmic force that devoured worlds tucked in alongside his own consciousness for so long that its absence was jarring. Almost as jarring as the realization that all those walls were so much rubble.

Erik opened his eyes, saw a lab, and those memories of Shaw that should’ve been locked away assaulted him all at once. Terror, not helped by the realization that he was contained.

Get out get out get out get out.

The top of the Cradle slammed open, and Erik sat up, powers already stretching around the room, wrapping around whatever metal was in reach. Natural, unbidden, just reaching, leaving pens and tools hovering in the air above where they’d been resting. Defensive instincts long-honed seizing on anything that could be a weapon before he could even identify the threat.

And then he saw them.

“I love you, but I can’t love this.” Jean’s face, stone cold.

“You’ll be grateful I stopped you, later.” Scott’s fingers, perfectly steady on his glasses.

Betrayal from two of the people he loved and trusted most. ( But he should have expected that, shouldn’t he? Shaw’s voice, warning him that “sentiment will be the death of you if you let it, my boy.” Magda running away, Charles turning on him, sending an army of children after him—He should have known, always, and yet. )

Fury reared its head, as it always did, and Erik felt the beginning brushes of Jean’s mind against his and realized that those walls were gone, too, and no. No, no, no, no no.

<<Get OUT.>>

The sentiment was punctuated by the hovering metal around the room all flying toward the couple at once as Erik hauled himself out of the Cradle.

Jean didn’t even need to interfere, because the second his feet his the floor, a wall of exhaustion slammed into him. The Phoenix had been able to keep him going through almost no sleep for months, but without its energy in his mind, all that time putting off his body’s needs crashed into him at once.

His legs gave out from under him, and the airborne metal hit the floor at the same time he did.

Someone else was at his side, moving to help, and Erik snarled before he even realized who it was. “Don’t touch me.” Banner—it was Banner, and he was safe-ish, wasn’t he? Erik didn’t know if anyone was, couldn’t relax—stopped, hand halfway to his shoulder, and Erik curled his fists and shook his head as he tried to get the flood of memories clamoring for attention to settle.

“Make them leave. Get them out.” He was in no condition to be dealing with them—mind too loud, powers too weak. Maybe once, that wouldn’t have been a problem.

But he didn’t trust either of them. Not. One. Bit.

JEAN: Bruce wasn’t going to forgive them. He could say he understood a part of it, while distancing himself from the darkest aspects of what they had done -- the darkest aspects of the forces they were playing with now. The Phoenix remained silent in the back of her mind, though it was never true silence. That would imply some degree of calm, and Jean hadn’t known what that felt like since … God, since she was ten years old, maybe before. The Phoenix’s absence from this occasion said all it needed to about her stance. She thought Jean should’ve asked her. She thought they could’ve worked together, that Jean would turn to her and beg, that she’d regret what she’d done.

Regret that Erik was dead, perhaps. Regret over the actions she had taken to prevent something worse … not exactly. Charles drummed into her since she was fourteen years old that to be truly useful in this world, you needed to protect the downtrodden. To be truly good, you had to defend those who couldn’t defend themselves, defend those who would never forgive you for making yourself bleed on their behalf. The city of New York had done nothing for Jean Grey but rip her apart and refuse to put her back together again. The people hated her, splashed her husband’s face in graffiti, treated her father like a lunatic in the press.

But that didn’t mean she’d let them die. It was the same principle she extended here, standing over the CRADLE, watching the mechanisms begin to shift. (Did Stark know they were here, she wondered? He trusted Banner, she’d picked up on that much -- but from what she understood of Iron Man, he was a pragmatist. A logistician, at his core. He would say this was a terrible idea. Jean understood where that impression could come from.)

Everyone deserved forgiveness. The Phoenix had hurt, had ripped them apart, made them commit so many atrocities -- but this was the first step in giving a second chance, in piecing together the things Jean had broken.

But, again, that didn’t mean Jean was blindly trusting. Her intelligence wasn’t the first thing people thought of, when they thought of her (and she knew, of course, courtesy of hearing every goddamn ‘compliment’ that went through every person’s head), but it was something that only grew with experience. The CRADLE burst open, and Jean already had protective shields formed around Scott, around Bruce, and a split second later, around herself.

The metal dropped, though. The invisible shields remained in place, even if she knew Erik would assume their presence. The CRADLE hissed, smoke still rising from the chamber. The lights flickered, the walls shook, electricity in the air made her hair go static—

And Erik was standing in front of her. Erik was standing in front of her, eyebrows furrowed, jaw clenched, hands curled into fists by his side. Chest moving, breaths heaving. He was angry, always angry, angrier than she’d ever seen him -- but he was alive.

(Was that all that mattered? Rictor said, once, she over-simplified it. Breathing alone wasn’t enough to keep a person alive, but it was the first step. It was the foundations. Jean always had faith that could lead to something else.)

There was a beat of relief, a wash that went through her chest and relieved the tension that had curled into it (she could tell Lorna she brought her dad back), and then a moment where she realised it wasn’t dad she thought when she looked at this man. It was something else, something foreign, like looking at a stranger.

She’d mourned him, Jean reminded herself. She’d sat, curled in his seat, looking around at the books in his office. She’d taken a blanket from his home during the funeral, tried to find his smell under whiskey and cigar smoke. She’d mourned him, she’d loved him, and the first words that left his mouth…

Well, she had expected it. She had expected it, but there was a part of Jean that hoped, against all odds, just as there had always been.

“Last time we left,” she replied, coolly, keeping her hands stiff by her sides and her feet firmly on the ground, “you almost caused the Third World War. I’d like to make sure that’s not going to happen again.” If that meant Bruce and Scott remained wrapped in a telekinetic shield, if it meant she took the brunt of the flames, so be it.

Jean was used to the fire.

SCOTT: The process, once it happened, wasn’t a slow one. It was strange, watching it play out. Scott had never been present for this part before. He’d watched people he loved die so many times that the images were etched on the back of his eyelids, playing out like a movie projected on a sheet. He could rewind, pause, fast forward, take it from the top. Those moments were a part of him. And he’d had people come back to him, too, of course. Jean walking up to the Institute doors with her hands clasped together so tightly her knuckles were white, like a prayer and an answer all at once. Illyana showing up again years after she’d died, breathing and wild-eyed. He watched people die and saw them lowered into their graves, watched them walk back through the door after the dirt had settled, but this? The only resurrection Scott had ever been present for was his own, and there had been nothing miraculous about that. Nothing good, nothing incredible.

This was different. This wasn’t the Phoenix, wasn’t a cosmic force that described a curse as a blessing. This was some hodgepodge mix of science and telepathy that Scott doubted he’d ever entirely understand. Part of him hadn’t expected it to work at all, had thought the most they’d do was desecrate the corpse of a man who’d more than earned his right to rest, but he’d gone along anyway because Jean had asked him to and Scott had been bad at saying no to her since she took his hand on that park bench decades ago and asked him to stay. The Phoenix was like playing with fire, but this? This was more akin to trying to shape water into something tangible. Scott’s expectations hadn’t been high.

But they should have been. He should have understood that Jean Grey (Jean Summers) never failed at something she’d put her mind and heart into, should have remembered that she was the same girl who’d convinced a sullen, quiet boy that he was a thing worth loving, should have understood that she would move heaven and earth for the people she loved and that Erik, for all his faults, was one of them.

The Cradle slammed open. The metal in the room began to hum, hovering free of gravity. A familiar shield engulfed him, invisible and protective. And Erik Lehnsherr was revived the same way he had died --- suddenly, violently, and with a love so great that there was room for little else besides it.

There was a moment where the world stood still. Everything hung motionless. Scott held his breath, swore that his heart stopped beating for an instant, swore that the blood stopped pumping through his veins as the world waited to right itself again. And then it did, and everything came crashing back down in an instant. The anger slammed into the room like a train obliterating everything left on the tracks, like a car crash of rage and betrayal and grief and defeat. Erik was alive, and he was angry. Scott couldn’t blame him for that, couldn’t fault it. If not for Jean, he would have accepted whatever punishment felt necessary, would have let himself be skewered for his sins.

(“You don’t have to be a martyr,” Warren told him once. ”You don’t have to shoulder every mistake. You’re allowed to forgive yourself, Scott. You’re allowed to move on.” And he might have tried that if anyone had ever told him how. He might have done it if it hadn’t seemed so impossible, so unreal. How could you get out from under something that stretched the length of the whole sky above you? How could you get away from something that was a part of you? It only sounded easy if you’d never felt it before.)

But Jean was there, was shielding him, was protecting him no matter how little he deserved it. The metal dropped to the ground, and the shields stayed up. The anger remained. And with it, the guilt. The grief. The betrayal.

Scott stayed quiet, eyes darting away from Erik and back to Jean. She was hurt. He could feel it through the bond, see it in her posture. She wasn’t surprised, but she was hurt, and he ached with her. He’d wanted a happier resolution to this, a better end, but it had been a fool’s dream. Jean forgave Zatanna when she took the Phoenix down, just as Scott forgave Logan when he ended his suffering on that grassy knoll in Central Park. There were people, he knew that were easy to forgive. There were people good enough, decent enough, that forgiving them came as simply as breathing, as blinking, as turning your head. There were people who were easy to forgive because they were easy to love, because you wanted them in your life no matter the cost.

Scott had never been one of them.

BRUCE: Bruce wasn’t sure what he had been expecting. If there was one well-known thing about Erik Lehnsherr, at least to the public, it was that he was very focused. For good, for bad, he had the insight of an owl and the determination of a bull. Apparently, even in death, in exhaustion, he was equally so. He wondered if he would ever get to feel death. If it would always elude him like many other things in life; happiness, a home, a family, somewhere he felt safe.

He thought, for a moment, maybe he had been a little jealous of Erik. That Jean didn’t have the right to take that away from him, no matter how much he would be missed.

Jean’s protective barrier didn’t seem to move him. Emotionally of course, because her raw power was enough to match Erik’s, and he could take the static in the air like the Kansas plains right before a tornado came through. How many people would he stand beside who were more convicted than him? What kind of hurts did they hold, and why did they hurt enough to bring Erik back? ( Why did he bring Erik back? )

“Hey, buddy - it’s — hey. Let’s not do anything drastic,” Like accidentally murder someone else, haha — “I know you’re angry. Totally get it,” Bruce slowly approached with scuffed dress shoes, each click of their rubber soles sounding like a gunshot in the suddenly too-quiet room. He couldn’t imagine having that kind of power - to make everyone notice when he was there and also when he wasn’t. “But you’re going to be really dehydrated in a hot minute if you don’t let me help you up, okay?”

Bruce spared a look for his two companions, and maybe Jean was right. Maybe he was someone who could understand what they’d been through. That if someone had to save Bruce from himself, he would at least want it to be someone he cared about. Clint, Tony, Steve. He would never ask Nat to do it - she’d been made enough times to be a stone-hearted killer, Bruce wouldn’t add to that.

Although he didn’t really know either of them well enough, he could tell when somebody cared enough to still be there after you’d disappointed them. Jean thought Erik would be disappointed, stayed anyway. Would anyone care enough to stick around for him too?

Gently, as if approaching a spooked animal, Bruce placed calloused fingers on an expensive funeral suit, surprised when he electricity in the room didn’t shock him on contact. The ever-present scientist in him placed that interesting tidbit of knowledge in a file for future examination. Maybe because Hulk’s skin was like reinforced rubber? Was he a grounding material? Could that be something helpful in the future, like making schools safer during storms, or for severe weather shelters for the homeless—

“If you want them to leave, they’ll leave,” Bruce promised, not looking back at the couple again. He supposed the situation really wasn’t about them.

ERIK: Everything was too much. His mind felt like it had been ransacked, left in tatters as his previous cohabitant had rifled through memories and motivations alike to trim down only to what was useful. Tweaking perceptions, ramping up the paranoia.

Not paranoid enough, some part of him noted wryly.

Bruce's fingers wrapped gently around his shoulder, tone and stance reminiscent of the way they used to handle shell-shocked soldiers. He stiffened under the touch, knuckles going white against the floor, but he didn't shake him off. Reached up and dragged himself to his feet again, even if he swayed, even if the room spun a bit around him and wavered black at the edges. He needed food, he needed water, he needed sleep.

More importantly, he needed to get out of the presence of the two people who had murdered him before he lost control entirely. Scott was standing there in silence, expression torn between surprise and guilt, and there was none of Erik that had the capacity to feel anything but disgust for the man right now. It didn't take a genius to put together who had led the charge in the silo, who'd been calling the shots. Scott was a good little soldier. A good little husband. "Bird got your tongue?" Scott didn't have the Phoenix anymore, that much was clear--guilt wouldn't be anywhere in his face if it was. But the point stood regardless, and Erik didn't care that Jean always got tetchy when he so much as breathed a negative word in Scott's direction.

(Somewhat hysterically, he wondered if he'd make her mad enough to kill him again. Maybe he should--the time between his death and now was rapidly flitting away from his mind, but he remembered warmth, remembered family, and part of him wanted to claw it back.)

Jean's words had him choking on a laugh, and Erik nearly snarled at her across the Cradle, fingers pressing dents into the metal. "If that's what you're worried about, why am I back?" he hissed. And oh, there were other questions that came crashing on him, then.

"FRIDAY," he said, because he wasn't sure he could trust anyone in this room except the machine he could feel thrumming in the walls around them. "What's today's date?"

"February 21, 2021, Mr. Lehnsherr."

February. Two months. Two months.

Scott Summers had been resurrected a week to the day from his death. Jean had been so grief-stricken, so heartbroken, that she had moved heaven and earth and death itself to bring him back after just a week without him.

Two months. He hated that there was a part of him that was wounded by that fact almost more than the murder itself. There had always been two reasons that he was kept around, two reasons that people kept him close: love or use. She hadn't brought him back because she missed him or because Lorna did, which meant she must need him to do something—

Lorna.

The world constricted once again, because Lorna wasn't here. Her father was being resurrected, and she wasn't here. Erik knew his powers could scarcely reach across the room let alone the bay, but g-d if he didn't try anyway, breath caught in his throat. He felt the room tip at the exertion before he stopped, kept upright only by the tight grip on the Cradle and Bruce's hand at his back.

"Where is Lorna? Where is my daughter?!"

If she was dead, and they'd brought him back to a world without her, he would drag them all back to the grave with him.

JEAN: She’d never been the kind of woman who lived on an island. Her mind was tattered, splintered into pieces that could cut intruders like knives, ever since the Phoenix rushed into her body so many years ago and refused to leave. Jean never made sense, she knew, to the people around her. She burned too bright or not at all. She went hot or far too cold. She was capable of almost pathological compartmentalisation, or she saw everything at once so the picture was too damn big for anyone else to understand. She loved and loathed in equal measure, and she was, above all else, not the kind of woman who was easy to digest. Easy to adore, perhaps, but so many people desired to get close to the fire before they truly knew what it meant to be burned. There were so few who saw the worst of her and stayed.

Scott was one of them. If anyone touched a hair on his head -- even someone she considered family, someone who was more blood than anyone else on the planet -- she would rip them into a thousand pieces and scatter them to the wind without hesitation, without guilt, without grief. But there was another person who looked at her in all her chaos, in her fear, in her self hatred and mania, and who said, this girl is worth trusting. There was another person who approached her in the wreckage of other people’s lives and said it wasn’t her fault, that she held a great gift inside of her, and the only way to control it was to refuse to control it, to embrace it instead.

Erik had been that person. Erik knelt down in front of a child and he reached to her even when the rest of the world was pulling back. He gave her a safe place to rest, gave her logic, pragmatism, gave her a path that she followed long after he was gone. And then he was on the other side of a battlefield, throwing buses at her friends and threatening everything the X-Men were fighting for, and she was told to defeat him at any cost.

Perhaps this was inevitable. Perhaps there could only ever be Jean alive or Erik. Maybe having them both here at once, occupying the same space, defied some kind of cosic deity -- defied the Phoenix. Because as Jean looked at Erik, her chest tightening and her throat burning, the Phoenix was conspicuously silent. Conspicuously void of opinion, for one of the first times in living history.

Then Bruce opened his mouth, and the bird came back to life. We could kill him next, she offered.

“We’re not killing anyone.” It took a breath, just a second, for Jean to realise she said those words out loud, that she’d turned her head to the side as if a friend was standing right there -- as if Maddie was beside her (why was she thinking of Maddie, now, as if she was a shadow? As if she was someone lingering, constantly, even when she wasn’t here physically? Was it because they’d done it together, the three of them, and so it made sense to picture her now?) Jean collected herself, levelled a look at Erik as her eyes burned, too.

She wouldn’t cry. She refused to. But God, it would be so easy to let those tears spill, to fall to her knees, to run towards him like she was an eleven year old girl who’d lost everything that mattered to her in the world and he had all the answers.

But he was insulting her husband. He’d threatened the safety, the peace, of their entire people. He messed with Kara’s head, threatened Rictor, almost started another World War. She couldn’t forget that.

“I didn’t want you dead, Erik,” she said, as simply as she could. There were a hundred other things she could say. She could tell him how she knew the Phoenix felt in him, how it twisted everything, how it made things so simple and so complicated all at the same time. She could vindicate him, could say this wasn’t his fault -- but the way he was looking at her now…

(Maybe there was always meant to be one, in the end.)

She knew where his mind went, when he asked for the date. “I didn’t want to use her,” she said, because he deserved something of an explanation. “I couldn’t.”

You could have. Haven’t I helped you before? Haven’t I made things so beautiful—

“We needed you back,” Jean said, “not someone else. I found another way. It took some time, but …” It worked, clearly. It worked so far as there was breath in his lungs now and color in his cheeks. If that was the definition of life, they’d succeeded -- but Jean knew it was far more complicated than that. “Lorna’s alive,” she continued. “She’s safe, and she knows we’re here. I wanted to make sure we were … that she stayed that way.”

The Erik she knew would’ve wanted her paranoid, if it came to Lorna. He would’ve wanted her to take every precaution when dealing with something as unpredictable as life and death. Yet, as she stood there looking at someone who felt as much like a stranger as he had on that very first day they faced off in the middle of New York City, she wasn’t entirely sure he would see it like that now.

SCOTT: Banner’s voice was like radio static, something there-and-not-there in a way Scott had grown accustomed to as a teenager when the world became like a television with no static and he began to understand why his mother locked herself in her room for days at a time, why she spent so many afternoons in bed. It shut out the world sometimes, made him his thoughts and nothing else. Banner was there. Erik was there. Jean was there. And Scott wasn’t. Scott was in a silo, in a hospital waiting room, in a grave. Banner was promising he’d leave as if he knew how, Jean was throwing a shield around him as if there was something left to protect, Erik was---

---Erik was speaking to him. The realization dawned slowly, like a wave lapping your feet on a beach, covering them with sand slowly and quickly all at once in a way you didn’t realize until the pressure was there cementing you to the ground. It took Scott’s mind a moment to catch up with his ears, a moment for the words to register. It always did, when he got like this. When the world was radio static and his mind hopped from one place to the next like Kurt’s teleportation, like a superpower that took him to every place he’d never wanted to be.

Bird got your tongue? The words came to him, slow and deliberate, and for a moment he felt like he was twelve years old, like he was standing in Essex’s lab with his arms stiff at his side and his eyes locked to his feet, like fingers would come in at any moment to grip his chin and force it upwards, force eye contact. (Essex was the last person he’d looked in the eyes before the world went red and a pair of lenses separated him from everything he saw. He thought of that sometimes, what it meant. What it said.) For a moment, there was an echo of another man’s voice, decades ago but just as cold, just as disgusted. Come on, Scott. You’re so much prettier when you smile.

He flinched. He didn’t mean to, but he did. And it wasn’t fair, he knew. Scott was not a victim here. (And maybe he hadn’t been a victim back then, either. Maybe Essex had never done anything he didn’t have coming. Maybe if he were better, smarter, easier to love, things could have been different. Maybe - ) Scott had killed Erik, had opened his eyes and turned the whole world red, and maybe Erik was angry now but he had a right to be. Scott Summers was not Zatanna Zatara. He was not Logan. He was not a person who had done a favor for a friend, not someone who was only doing what his would-be victim asked him to do. What he did was his choice, his decision. No one forced him. No one made him. And maybe he’d only damned himself to save Erik from the same fate, but that didn’t make him any less damned. Did it?

Scott stayed silent, and the world kept moving around him. Time went slower, he’d found, without the Phoenix coloring it. The loss of immortality made every moment a mountain, every second a marathon. He watched realization dawn in Erik’s eyes in slow motion, watched anger turn to grief turn to fear. And Jean spoke, but it wasn’t---

It wasn’t to Erik. It wasn’t to Banner, it wasn’t to Scott. It was to someone else. Scott could almost feel her in the room, like a phantom limb. The Phoenix. Had Jean ever spoken to her aloud before? (He had, towards the end. He remembered it. Pacing in his room, muttering to himself. It was one of the things that made him realize the line had been crossed, one of the things that made him realize he was going, going, gone. His heart dropped into his stomach and his chest felt tight. Jean had a handle on this. She had to. She had to.)

He tuned back in to the conversation, listened as Jean insisted that they’d done what they’d done to ensure they resurrected Erik and not something else. A strangled sound escaped from the back of Scott’s throat at that, and he cursed himself for drawing the attention back to him. Given the opportunity, Scott had always preferred to exist in the peripheral. To be seen and not heard, the way he’d been taught by his father, Essex, Winters. “If we’d taken shortcuts,” he said, because the attention was on him and if he didn’t make it seem like he had something to say then it might stay that way, “we wouldn’t have solved any problems. Take it from me, that isn’t… It’s not how you want to come back.” An apologetic glance to Jean, the echo of a statement he didn’t dare repeat. Maybe we were better off dead. “Lorna’s safe. You’re safe. Genosha, New York… It’s all safe. We just wanted to keep it that way. That’s all.”

BRUCE: Every word Scott breathed made Bruce’s chest feel tighter and tighter. Safe, like Erik wasn’t capable of controlling himself. Safe, as if something really got out of control, they couldn’t handle it. Couldn’t handle him.

If Erik had needed to be put down because he was a danger to society and he hadn’t even hurt anyone yet, then what did that make Bruce?

Unbeknownst to him, lost in his thoughts, Bruce’s skin under his lab-coat began to turn an eerie shade of green, spiderwebbing out from under his sleeve and onto the fist that gripped Erik’s suit, holding the man up like he was Bruce’s lifeline. “Don’t talk to him like that.” The words sounded echo-y and far-away, like someone had smashed pots and pans together beside his ears and just let them ring. His throat felt full, like he’d been drooling for days and had forgotten to swallow. If they loved him so much, then they wouldn’t have killed him when it became inconvenient.

Would they have?

Hulk roared in the pit of his stomach, startling him into a barely noticeable jump. Gripping Erik tighter, green creeping into the corners of his vision, Bruce managed a not-so-controlled, “I’ve got it from here. You guys’ve done enough, right?” He hated, how much like his father he sounded when his ridiculous Dayton-Ohio-accent came out with his words.

Hated feeling like a monster, in front of judgmental eyes. Bruce may not have known Jean or Scott very well, but he couldn’t trust them any farther than he could throw them. As Banner, anyway. “I’ll make sure he ‘stays out of trouble.’” The words dripped with poorly hidden malice, maybe some misguided hurt, and he couldn’t hold eye contact with either of them anymore. Instead, he focused on Erik. Fed off of his exhaustion and hoped that maybe they could trade places. That maybe the next person that came knocking could put him down instead.

“FRIDAY? Can you make sure my floor is set to 75 degrees? He’s probably going to be a little cold, as tired as he is.” Licking his lips, Bruce cocked an eyebrow, still staring at the ground as if to say ‘Anything else?’

ERIK: Lorna's alive. It was buried in their responses, between excuses and explanations and lies he didn't care to hear, but it was there, nonetheless. Lorna was alive, and some of the panic that had filled his lungs like cement dissipated. Lorna was alive.

With that assurance, it was easier to focus on the rest of what they said. Safe, safe, safe, safe, safe....

(Alles ist gut, alles ist gut--)

And that was funny, wasn't it--absolutely hysterical, and the laughter bubbled up out of his chest before he realized it was coming.

We needed you back. Not someone else. (And it was needed, wasn't it, not wanted--)

It's not how you want to come back. The metal groaned under his fingers, lights flickering for as his voice rose. "What made you think that I wanted to come back?" he snapped, voice cracking for a moment. Just a moment.

Get it together. He cleared his throat, shook off the edges of black tinting his vision, marshalled his focus into staying on his feet. Don't show weakness. (Too late, too late, too late--)

"It doesn't really matter, does it? Because you needed me. And here. I. Am. My life was a problem. My death was a problem. How long do I get the floor this time, Jean?"

He stared across the Cradle at Scott, expression stuck in a strange space between anger and pity. "It was all for keeping everyone safe, hm? Is that what she told you to help you sleep at night, Scott? That you were making the world safe? No, no, no. You stopped me to keep everyone safe--fair enough. Can't begrudge you that. But that's not why you killed me. You killed me because you were angry. Because your chest was burning over Ric, over Kara, over Lorna, over all the failures of your fathers, and because you could take something in recompense. And because she told you to. Good soldier, good husband."

And then, for a moment, some of that anger edged back, some more of the pity filtering in, because Erik knew what it was like to love someone enough to do anything. "Did you realize you said almost the same thing she did, just now, hm? Did she notice?" A brief glance at Jean, before he looked back at Scott. They'd been sharing minds for years. Might be doing so now, even, and that had been the reason he'd never quite let Charles do the same--the fear of not knowing where your thoughts ended and theirs began.

"You and I both held the Phoenix, Scott. You know what it does, what it's like. How long has she been talking to it out loud? Do you feel safe, right now?" His head was starting to swim, the room growing more distant through the tunnel that was starting to settle in front of his vision, and Erik reflected absently that perhaps it wasn't the wisest of choices to be using so much oxygen on talking when his legs were barely keeping under him.

(You don't know when to quit-- oh, he owed Ric so much...)

He felt Banner's shift starting behind him, felt the radiation in the room spike, even through the dim grip he had on his powers at the moment. The man's voice, when it came, was strained, his grip tightening at Erik's back, and he would be lying if he didn't say it wasn't more than a little vindicating to hear the disdain with which the Avenger spoke to Jean and Scott.

He didn't quite get to express that, before the black won out.

JEAN: Jean had been angry her entire life. She’d been angry at what she wasn’t allowed to do, what she was, how she could go against the natural order of things and nothing ever seemed to come of it -- not until later, at least -- not until the sum of all her mistakes came crashing down in one fell swoop and she was left drowning at the deep end. But there was always someone who dove in, whether it was a backyard pool or the ocean during a raging storm, and that was Scott. Scott, who changed the world for her. Scott, who she changed the world for. Scott who killed a man when Jean asked him to, who would live and die for her, who promised to spend his life by her side regardless of whether she was beside him at the breakfast table or six foot under in a cemetery.

“Don’t speak to my husband like that,” Jean said, taking a step in front of Scott when Bruce shot him a glare. She didn’t come to the other scientist to be judged. She didn’t come here to be treated as the villain when she knew, deeply and instinctively, what the Phoenix was capable of -- how it changed people, twisted them up inside, changed them. She came here for one reason and one reason only, and he was standing in front of her now.

He was standing in front of her angry, but Jean knew him far too well to expect anything else, even if there was still a sickening disappointment swirling in her gut. “Because I always did,” she said, her voice quiet. Because she always would want to come back, regardless of what horrors were awaiting her the second air filled her lungs once more. Life would forever, constantly, be preferable to the lingering emptiness on the other side. “Because I thought--”

You didn’t deserve this. She wasn’t sure if he would hear it, if she was broadcasting it, if the feelings were leaking out of her like water from a cracked dam. “Because I’ve always needed you.”

Because it was her fault. The Phoenix wouldn’t be a part of their lives if it wasn’t for her decision on the shuttle at eighteen years old, a stupid child playing at being a god, a woman so desperate for approval from anywhere that she’d take sycophancy whispering in her head and preach it like gospel. “It wasn’t you, Erik. It wasn’t you any more than it was me on that lawn.”

He didn’t see that now. Maybe he never would. But Jean knew there was no other option, no other choice. Erik would admit himself there was nothing that could stop him from accomplishing his mission unless it was death. He was a man forged by soldiers’ cruelty, but he shared their pragmatism, their single-minded focus.

And then he kept talking, and the Phoenix roared to life in her mind -- almost laughing. Yes, it was laughing. It was bitter and cruel, but it was laughter, genuine amusement.

Oh look, she whispered, you brought him back insane.

“We were angry,” Jean said. “Of course we were angry. You violated the very principles we founded Genosha on when you threatened one of our own in a public place, for all to see. We were meant to be peaceful, a sanctuary. We were meant to be safety, and you turned it into your own personal battleground where you were judge, jury and executioner. You ripped apart the sanctity of a woman’s mind who is good and kind and honest in more ways than we could ever be, and you pointed a gun at the head of every citizen in New York and tried to justify it in a way that didn’t make you sound like Shaw.”

Because yes, that was in the notes she’d collected. Yes, that was in the memories he’d shared with her. Yes, she knew all about it -- and she knew that, if it came down to it, Erik would never become the monster that had ripped him apart and put him back together different than was ever intended. He wouldn’t wanted her to stop him. Her father would’ve wanted that.

Maybe this man wasn’t her father.

Bruce spoke again, and this time Jean let out a bitter huff of almost laughter. “Right,” she said, “because the Avengers are such a safe place for mutants, always have been. Remind me of all you did for our kind while you were parading the streets after your great victories and we were still hiding in backalleys, getting murdered for how we were born.”

(Jean never had a personal problem with the Avengers. She never understood why Scott burned with resentment towards what they represented, even if the people themselves weren’t to blame. She did now. Bruce stood there, on a pedestal despite his mistakes, looking down on them as if they were to pity. Like they were the monsters.)

“Erik, you belong at home. You belong in the place you helped to build. You belong in your own paradise. Come home, and we can be there or we can leave, but don’t--”

Don’t push us away. Not just Scott and Jean, which was inevitable, but the entirety of mutantkind that resided in the streets he’d pieced together. Everything he’d worked for, everything he’d sacrificed, and the Phoenix had torn it apart.

And then Erik hit the ground, and Jean was beside him in an instant, fingers going to the pulse on his neck as her other hand squeezed his arm.

Breathing? the Phoenix enquired. Jean nodded. How unfortunate. I thought we’d get to work together, again.

Jean looked back up at Bruce, at Scott, and slowly rose to her feet. Reluctant to leave him when the experiment was so new, so uncertain, and reluctant to leave him because everything within her screamed that was her family hurting, on the floor, aching.

“Take care of him,” Jean said to Bruce, reaching for Scott’s hand to intertwine their fingers together. Flames flickered, orange and purple at the tips, and formed a circle -- a circle she could see through, right back to their sofa and fireplace back in Genosha, right back to home where Rachel would no doubt be making cocoa in the kitchen. She’d never done that before.

Cosmic travel? Of course we have. You just forget. The human mind can only bend so far.

Jean squeezed Scott’s hand once more, knuckles white, and past the burning in her chest and throat she took a step into the portal, unsure whether she’d just healed a wound or created a new one.

#( adding a little bit of spicy doom tones at the beginning for *drama* )#f: discord #d: back from the dead #c: scott summers #c: jean grey #c: bruce banner #tw: murder mention #tw: abuse mention #tw: grief #tw: ptsd #tw: mental health issues

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