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emotionallychargedtowel · 1 year

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The Eighth Sense e5 & e6: portraying trauma with nuance

Episodes 5 and 6 of The Eighth Sense have really blown up a discourse bomb in tumblr’s BL scene. I had been putting off watching these episodes because I had gathered that episode 6 ended with something pretty distressing, and stuff like that sometimes hits me pretty hard, especially when it’s left as a cliffhanger. But I was already tempted to rip off the band-aid and watch it anyway, and then everyone has been debating aspects of these episodes. So I just had to see what all the discussion was about and figure out my own take on it.

In case it’s not obvious, the following will have spoilers for the series up to and including episode 6. I have a lot to say about this, because it touches on subjects that have been a major focus for me in my personal life, in my previous work as a trainee therapist, and in my research and writing. But I want this to be a manageable read, so I’m going to put things in bullet form when I can to keep them brief and organized and I’m going to make some section headings to help with skimming or skipping around. But before I launch into the rest, there’s one thing I should get out of the way: I don’t think any part of episodes 5 or 6 are a hallucination, a dream, or otherwise did not occur. I do think that there are aspects of the way the show portrays certain things that indicate dissociation and/or an acute trauma response. I’ll talk more about that below. (Hey, @waitmyturtles, this is the epic TES post I’ve been writing off and on for two days! I hope it’s of interest.)

Here are the section headings I’ll use below, to give a sense of what I’m going to talk about:

Conceptualizing Jae Won: Or, what I think is happening with him

Jae Won’s therapist - comments and interpretations

Jae Won’s therapist - medication management

Human beings’ amazing capacity for self-blame

Interpreting show production choices psychologically

Are the creators of The Eighth Sense going to pull a “who shot JR?” move?

Conceptualizing Jae Won: Or, what I think is happening with him

We don’t know how his younger brother died, but we know that he died in front of Jae Won when they were together, and it’s clear that he blames himself. I would be shocked if he was actually at fault even a little bit. But it does appear to have happened “on his watch” in a sense that lends itself to blaming himself. This is a huge issue, one that I’ll discuss in more detail later on.

Even before his brother’s death, Jae Won was clearly under a ton of pressure from his parents. And his father appears to be emotionally and, almost certainly, physically abusive. This is also far more likely to have pre-dated his brother’s death than to have only developed afterward.

In addition to pressure and abuse, I think it’s pretty clear that Jae Won was a parentified child. This means that he was put in a position of having to take care of his parents’ emotional needs as a child. This kind of role reversal has profound effects throughout the parentified person’s life.

Jae Won’s self-blame about his brother’s death means he was always going to be predisposed to stay stuck in the chronic version of the acute trauma response instead of moving through the natural healing process. In other words, he was almost certain to develop PTSD.

This is less clearly shown in the show, but my impression is that Jae Won has a deep-seated depressive tendency that existed before the loss of his brother. This would make sense for someone who faced the family-of-origin difficulties that he did.

When he did develop PTSD, as I have no doubt he did, Jae Won’s existing challenges were going to make him even more likely to develop the depressive symptoms of PTSD than others. We’ve seen some of these in the show already:

feeling alienated from others, unable to form meaningful connections with them,

anhedonia (an inability to feel positive emotions), and

negative beliefs about himself, other people, and the world.

All of this is happening at once. He’s dealing with PTSD, but he also still has all the same habits and beliefs he had before due to the parentification and training in people-pleasing, so he’s supposed to bottle up all of this pain. And if it’s his fault (in his mind) that his brother died, how much more does he owe his parents than he ever did before? This is a distorted, unhealthy way of thinking about all of it, but these kinds of maladaptive thoughts and expectations happen all the time with trauma survivors.

Jae Won’s therapist really sums all of this up very well when she says, “All your worries, not doing what you want to do because you do not want to let your parents down, and trying hard to be a good person to everyone because you do not want to disappoint others. Don’t you think it might be all because of your younger brother? Your younger brother, who got into an accident while with you. Your younger brother, who you couldn’t protect. And you are struggling to live your life for him as well.”

Jae Won’s therapist - comments and interpretations

I went into this series feeling nervous about its portrayal of therapy. I was very excited that therapy was being portrayed at all, mind you! It’s horrifying how seldom we see therapy mentioned as an option, much less shown, either in BLs or kdramas, and I’ve hoped for this to change for a long time now. But therapy is shown in an inaccurate way so often in media. And often, we see therapists and other mental health professionals breaking ethical rules. So I was on my guard, big time.

There’s one thing I really take issue with about Jae Won’s therapist, and it’s somewhat of a small thing: her office is way, way too dark! I just don’t think that kind of low lighting, with a lot of the illumination coming from her aquarium and other tinted light sources, is professional or conducive to therapy work. Of course, it’s obvious that her office is lit in this way because it looks cool and sets a certain mood for the show. And that’s fine. It’s a very stylized show in a lot of ways. But it makes me a little tweaky to watch it.

Some of the things she does in the therapy space with Jae Won are a bit open to interpretation, and could be debated. But I view her in a fairly charitable light, and I found that a favorable interpretation wasn’t difficult to justify at all. I ended up viewing her (so far, at least) as a very skillful and effective therapist.

I loved it when she joked, in the first scene after the credits for episode 1, “For God’s sake! Just tell me what your worries are!” Jae Won isn’t great at sharing. He’s been trained from early childhood not to show his messy, vulnerable emotions around authority figures. Jae Won is not an easy client by any stretch, so she may have been showing a mild version of some real frustration with him when she began that comment with mock-hostility. But he seems really sensitive to criticism, real or perceived. Coming at him directly about this could be risky. Using humor is a good way to get around this sensitivity pretty effectively. It’s worth noting, though, that I wouldn’t endorse this kind of move by a therapist unless they knew a client very well and had built a solid rapport with them.

The comment I quoted above (”Don’t you think it might be all because of your younger brother?”) connects so many of Jae Won’s interpersonal difficulties to the loss of his brother in a skillful way. It was very astute and well-put. But there are some things I would quibble with about it.

First, I’m kind of surprised that she is only saying this explicitly this far into therapy with Jae Won. It seems rather late to make such an observation considering this constellation of issues has, without a doubt, been in place the entire time they’ve been working together. This could definitely have been done sooner.

At the same time, paradoxically, it’s delivered abruptly, as if she blurted it out too soon. Actually, the abruptness comes from the fact that there’s not sufficient lead-up to the comment in their discussion beforehand.

Though the show’s treatment of mental health is strong overall, I think this part of this scene suffered from flawed writing. If I had written this scene, I would have made a change that I think would have resolved both of these issues. Instead of introducing this insight as if the therapist has just voiced it for the first time, I would have presented it as something she and Jae Won have touched on together more than once during their work together. Anyone who’s been to therapy knows that the same ideas, which appear as shocking revelations at first, often have to be returned to many times and worked through before we can benefit from them. She could have said something like, “This is that issue we’ve talked about before, right? It seems like another case of your beliefs about your brother’s death causing trouble in other areas of your life.”

Even better, she could have been shown quoting some kind of metaphor or shorthand Jae Won came up with himself when they’d spoken about this previously. For example, I had a client once who used to talk about metaphorically carrying around a giant, heavy book where he wrote down all of his failures. He described it in a similar way to “the catalog of mistakes” (I’m not going to share his actual wording, of course). Whenever I would use his wording, saying “the catalog of mistakes” or even “the catalog,” all of our prior discussion of that issue came into both our minds immediately. It also served as a reminder of our rapport and the importance I placed on his perspective.

Jae Won’s therapist - medication management

There’s one other area of Jae Won’s interactions with his therapist that is a bit hard to interpret. The exchange he has with his therapist about the amount of medication she’ll prescribe to him certainly seems important, but it’s hard to tell what exactly it means.

One thing that complicates this is the fact that he is receiving therapy and medication management services from the same provider. In other words, she seems to be a psychiatrist who provides therapy services. In most parts of the United States, this is rare (though that wasn’t always the case). I haven’t been able to tell whether this is more commonplace in South Korea.

Because she’s a prescriber and a therapist, asking for three weeks’ worth of medication instead of two also means waiting longer before having another therapy session. Maybe Jae Won really is just busy and trying to cut down on demands on his time, but this doesn’t seem too likely. It’s also possible that he’s seeking a greater quantity of his medication for some purpose, such as abusing it or using it for self-harm or to end his life. But he also could just be trying to put off his next therapy session to a later date because of his difficulty talking about vulnerable topics, something he demonstrates at multiple points in his therapy session. Similarly, when his therapist says she can extend his prescription to three weeks but not a month, because, as she puts it, “I need to do my job,” this could be in reference to the medication or her therapy work. Part of her job is keeping him from having access to too large an amount of medication at once, while another part is having therapy sessions with him (that are frequent enough to be useful). It’s hard to tell which of the two she was referring to, or whether it could be something else entirely. So I don’t think there’s one clearly correct interpretation here. But I do think we should be attentive to the possibility that he might be medication-seeking, possibly with the aim of using the medication for self-harm.

Human beings’ amazing capacity for self-blame

Even if you have experienced trauma or have been close to someone who has, unless you’ve spent time with a sizable sample of trauma survivors, it’s hard to understand just how readily people blame themselves for traumatic experiences. I had had personal experience with this as a survivor of intimate partner violence before I ever did any training in trauma therapy, but I was still totally floored when I observed firsthand just how often this happens and how unjustifiable every single instance of self-blame I encountered in clients turned out to be.

This is actually a big area for me as a researcher so I’m going to try not to go off on a massive tangent, but I think this is important. When we experience trauma, one of the most frequent responses people have is to blame themselves. I used to describe this to clients as a “deal with the devil.” Blaming ourselves allows us to feel like we have control over whether such things will happen to us (and/or those we care about) in the future. If we tell ourselves, “the trauma only happened to me because I did something bad, or something wrong,” then we can also tell ourselves, “but I’ll never do the bad or wrong thing again so from now on I’ll be safe.”

It’s very tempting to make this bargain, but it is an extremely bad deal. Self-blame is one of the biggest reasons some people get stuck in their acute trauma response instead of completing the healing process, resulting in PTSD. That feeling of control isn’t worth that. But human beings are so tempted to make this trade. When I was doing trauma therapy as a trainee, I saw example after example of folks who did seriously remarkable amounts of mental gymnastics in order to justify blaming themselves for their trauma. I’m going to talk briefly now about a client I had many years ago, without giving any details that could be remotely identifying. This person had witnessed the death of a close friend when they were in combat together. I did prolonged exposure therapy with this person, meaning he had to tell me the story of his friend’s death again and again and again. When we do this type of work, it usually seems at first like the client is telling the exact same story again and again without any real change. But little changes crop up gradually and accumulate and after a while, you find the story has made big shifts. And occasionally, a big change happens.

This client started out telling his story in a way that looked for every possible reason his friend’s death could have been his fault. And wow, was he ever grasping at straws. It was almost as if he had said something as nonsensical as “I had oatmeal for breakfast that day and maybe that’s why my friend died.” Every miniscule decision he had made that day could, in his eyes, potentially have caused his friend’s death in some mysterious and imperceptible way. It would have been absurd had it not been so sad. But thankfully, as we continued the exposure work, his story gradually changed and these justifications for self-blame started to fall away a little at a time.

Then, one day, a crucial detail was added to the story that blew me away. After weeks of telling the story in the usual way, my client mentioned for the first time that just before his friend was hit, he had called out a warning to him, which the friend had ignored. He’d mentioned countless ways he might be to blame--none of them remotely justified--but had never told me about the one very clear way in which he had tried to prevent his friend’s death. When I pointed this out, my client was shocked that he had never mentioned that detail before. We spent a lot of time unpacking what all of this meant. It was the single biggest turning point in his therapy. So, yeah. People have an amazing capacity for figuring out even the slimmest of pretexts for self-blame, and it’s abundantly clear that Jae Won is exercising that capacity big time. I’m pretty certain we’ll find out that he has been blaming himself a lot for what happened while having no real justification for doing so.

(Side note: I have tons more thoughts about trauma, self-blame, victim-blaming more generally, and other related psychological constructs--these are all longstanding research interests of mine--but I’m going to stop here because this thing is already ridiculously long. But if anyone reading this ever wants to discuss any of this further, please feel free to hit me up! I love talking about these things.)

Interpreting show production choices psychologically

Let’s review where we find Jae Won toward the beginning of the show. I’ve talked about how Jae Won had a lot of psychological difficulties before the story started. His family of origin situation was damaging even before he lost his brother, and then he had to contend with trauma and complicated grief. After that, he went through a breakup (possibly due to his partner cheating on him), completed his military service, and then had to make the transition back to civilian life, which isn’t easy under the best of circumstances.

And then he meets Ji Hyun, and his feelings for him unsettle the precarious set of strategies that he’s been using to get by. Ji Hyun makes Jae Won feel tempted to let his guard down and be himself. He places a degree of trust in Jae Won that challenges his cynicism and makes him feel tempted to trust Ji Hyun in return--to trust him to an extent that would normally be out of the question for him. Ji Hyun shakes things up, and while this is mostly a very positive thing--there are a lot of things in Jae Won’s life that urgently need to change--it’s also rather destabilizing in the short term.

Then the shit starts to hit the fan when Jae Won wakes up after staying out late drinking to hear his father pounding on his door. And the makers of the show start to play around with cinematography, editing, sound design, and other aspects of the show’s production to evoke Jae Won’s inner experience. After his dad pounds on his door, the way the show is shot and edited changes.

This disjointed editing and other distortions of typical filmmaking at this point in episode 5 have reminded some folks on here of a dissociative state, and I can see why. I would agree that it has a dissociative flavor. There are two prominent types of dissociation (which can happen simultaneously):

derealization, a feeling that the world around us isn’t real--it may feel empty, strange, or just plain wrong; and

depersonalization, in which we feel like we’re seeing ourselves from the outside, as if the person we’re observing isn’t us.

It’s tricky to talk about either of these in the context of tv/film because as viewers watching a fictional story unfold in a TV show, we are by definition:

perceiving that the world the characters inhabit doesn’t seem real, because it isn’t

looking at the characters from the outside, because they aren’t us (and they aren’t real)

But there are conventions of film and tv production that give us a sense of realism and of seeing things from characters’ points of view, and when Jae Won is dissociating we see those conventions get suspended or distorted. For example:

Conventional editing creates a flow of time that feels realistic (partly because we learn the “language” of film from a young age and interpret it that way). At important moments in The Eighth Sense, the editing breaks the rules of conventional editing, often messing with the viewers’ sense of time. Contexts change abruptly, as when Jae Won suddenly goes from being at home to being in his car. At other points, dialogue also goes out of sync.

Shot-reverse shot techniques help to approximate seeing things from the characters’ perspectives, situating us in the story so that we don’t feel like we’re observing from a distance. The most notable moment when this rule is broken happens when Jae Won is upset about his camera being damaged. We see him telling someone between sobs that the camera was a gift from his younger brother, but that person (assumably his dad) isn’t shown at all--not even a shoulder or the back of a head.

There’s also a lot of use of shallow depth of field (something the show uses in other ways as well), putting Jae Won in focus while his surroundings become a blur, making the world around him look hazy and unreal.

The sequence where Ji Hyun and Jae Won kiss in the ocean puts their dialogue way out of sync. On my first viewing, this just seemed like an interesting choice, one that gave the scene a sort of dreamlike quality. I’ve seen this strategy used before, as well, without any reference to mental illness, usually in art films. The first example that came to mind for me was from a Godard movie. It would be a valid option regardless of mental health-related content in a show. But after what immediately follows, I think that scene is portraying a trauma memory. Sometimes benign events that happened just before something traumatic become encoded with trauma memories rather than our usual type. (To put it briefly, trauma memories are encoded and stored in a different part of the brain from our everyday memories, and this is why they “behave” differently and have a different sensory quality from typical memories. Trauma recovery often involves some degree of re-encoding these memories in a more normal manner.)

Basically, the show sometimes puts the viewer into an approximation of a derealized and depersonalized state, particularly relative to what we’re used to as TV watchers. At other points, it shows characters’ experiences as if they were traumatic memories.

Are the creators of The Eighth Sense going to pull a “who shot JR?” move?

All this being said, I think that Jae Won’s dissociative moments, while very concerning and doubtless extremely distressing for him, do not point toward any sort of severe dissociative disorder like Dissociative Identity Disorder, nor do they make me concerned that his reality-testing (his ability to effectively distinguish what is and isn’t real) is impaired. I also don’t see any signs of cognitive impairment that would create a similar degree of confusion about reality. As a result, I don’t think the show’s use of signs of dissociation suggests that entire sections of the story will later be shown not to have happened.

Here’s the thing about dissociation. On paper, it sounds like an extreme symptom that approaches the kind of severe mental illness that includes symptoms like hallucinations and delusions. But the vast majority of the time, it’s very different from psychosis. And it’s also, in my opinion, more of a spectrum than we care to acknowledge most of the time. When we look at it that way, we can see that in a sense, Jae Won is at least a tiny bit dissociated a whole lot of the time. But frankly, so am I. It’s not uncommon for trauma survivors. It’s very different from something that would result in impaired reality-testing.

It’s possible that the show will end up revealing that Jae Won’s mental illness has resulted in him imagining entire segments of the show. These types of symptoms are often portrayed in media, for a couple of reasons: 1) people just find psychosis fascinating, and 2) these types of symptoms are very handy for creating plot twists and other interesting narrative devices. It’s not hard to think of examples of this. Fight Club, Black Swan, Shutter Island...the list goes on and on. But these portrayals are almost always inaccurate and exploitative. So far, the folks who make The Eighth Sense have shown a great deal of nuanced awareness of and sensitivity toward mental health matters, so I don’t think they would use this kind of cheap plot device. But they might. If so, I’ll find that pretty disappointing.

There is one thing the showrunners are doing that is somewhat sneaky in a way that’s could look analogous to that. Others have pointed out that Jae Won and his therapist are wearing the same clothes in every therapy scene, suggesting that we’re seeing the same therapy session interspersed with the other events of the series. In other words, the therapy session operates on a very different timeline from the rest of the story. We don’t know where to situate it relative to the rest of the plot. But I don’t see that as tied to the show’s portrayal of Jae Won’s mental health, nor does it seem exploitative or out of left field.

To sum up:

So far, The Eighth Sense has been remarkably accurate regarding psychological matters and has portrayed therapy and the use of psychotropic medication in a mostly positive and realistic light. I get the feeling the writers/directors/etc. have had some experience receiving mental health treatment. I really hope they maintain this level of quality throughout the remainder of the series.

I don’t think Jae Won’s PTSD (or his depression/anxiety) are sufficient for him to experience psychosis. I don’t expect entire segments of the show will be revealed to be an elaborate lie or hallucination, and if they are, I would consider that to be an example of poor writing and an unrealistic and potentially harmful representation of mental illness.

#The Eighth Sense #psychology of BL #trauma #self-blame #dissociation #media portrayals of mental illness #media portrayals of psychotherapy #media portrayals of trauma #jae won x ji hyun

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em-writes-stuff · 1 year

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hidden scars

warnings: (implied) past abuse, child whumpee

characters: villain, sidekick

1020 words

a/n: this was in my drafts as needing a part two, but i probably won’t end up doing that. have it as is!

---

Sidekick falls to the ground, air pushed out of their lungs as their back hits the soft ground. Villain advances, glaring menacingly at their small frame.

Sidekick tries to sit up, trying to gain some control over their body, but the pain in their ribcage stops them. Instead, they curl in on themself, sheltering their stomach with their shins.

Villain crouches down to face them and whispers, “I’ve got you now, Sidekick. No more running. No more hiding.”

They hold Sidekick’s wrist gently and pull them up, trying their hardest not to aggravate any of their new wounds.

Sidekick looks at them uncertainly, “Why are you being so…gentle?”

Villain laughs, “I can hardly in good conscience take you to be tortured for information if you’re injured before we even arrive.” they sling an arm around Sidekick’s waist and start walking. “Besides, you’re only a child. Most of your torture will be psychological.”

Sidekick laughs dryly, “Oh, goodie.”

Villain smiles and picks up the pace, not failing to notice how Sidekick favors their left leg and winces when they adjust the arm holding them up. They choose to ignore it for now.

As soon as they got to the car, Sidekick had crawled to the back seat and hadn’t moved since. Villain sat in the seat in front of them, in an attempt to gain their trust. Villain would have thought they were sleeping, but they could see Sidekick’s eyes wide open.

“Tell me, Sidekick, why do you work for Hero? What does he do for you?” Villain asks.

Sidekick turns to face the window. Villain thinks for a moment that Sidekick won’t tell them, but then they speak.

“Hero… saved my life a long time ago. And I didn’t have anywhere else to go. He took me in and I owe it to him to do what he wants.” They close their eyes and lean their forehead against the cold glass. “Besides, there’s not much else I can do.”

For the rest of the long car ride, they sit in silence.

At Villain’s hideout, Henchman opens the car door for Villain and Sidekick, but Sidekick stays in their seat. Villain rolls their eyes and crawls back into the car. They gently touch Sidekick’s arm and they flinch back, hitting their head on the car window. They wince, but say nothing. Villain tilts their head to the side for a moment, but then they reach their arm out for Sidekick to grab.

“We’re here.” They say simply.

Sidekick is shown to their new room, which is more impressive than they were expecting. The ceiling was high and a light hung from it. There was a large window on the wall facing a lake. A queen sized bed was covered in blankets and pillows.

Villain clears their throat and Sidekick quickly turns to look at them.

“I trust you’ll be comfortable. I’ll come back with a change of clothes and some first-aid supplies in a few minutes. Is there anything else I can get you while I get those?”

Sidekick shakes their head, blinking in confusion.

Villain smiles gently and walks out of the room. “I’ll be right back then. I have to lock this door behind me, but that’s just since you’re technically the enemy and a prisoner.”

Sidekick wanders around the room, checking any spots that could be used to hide things, seeing if there’s any chance the window can be opened (there isn’t), and organizing the things on the bed. The door opens and Villain walks in with an armful of clothes and a first-aid kit.

“Here, change. Those clothes look really dirty. I’ll wash them for you.” They throw the bundle of clothes at Sidekick and turn around to let them change.

“Why are you being so kind? Hero told me that you’re cruel.” Sidekick asks.

Villain closes their eyes and tilts their head up. “Just because I do things that go against Hero’s moral code, doesn’t mean I’m a bad person. Hero, of all people, should know that.”

They can hear Sidekick’s sharp breaths as they aggravate wounds and have to fight every instinct in themself to turn around and help. They know that if they’re to gain Sidekick’s trust, they have to move slowly.

“Villain?” Sidekick asks with a small tremor in their voice. “Can I have something with long sleeves?”

“Are you sure? It gets pretty warm here at night.” They turn and see Sidekick. There’s a pile of their clothes on the floor next to them and Villain could swear they saw scars on their arms, but they crossed their arms in front of them too quickly to be sure.

“I’m sure.”

Villain nods. “Ok, well, let me dress your wounds first, then I’ll find something.” “I can do it.”

“Nonsense, I have much more experience than you do in this. Besides, you look like you’re going to pass out. Just sit down and let me.”

Sidekick shakes their head. “I can do it.” They look down, “Please.”

“Alright, but I’ll watch just to make sure you do it alright. Don’t want any of these getting infected.”

They set the first-aid kit on the table and watch as Sidekick cleans their cuts.

“You’re pretty good at that, kid. Where’d you learn?” they chuckle. “Let me guess, Hero makes you patch him up?”

Sidekick grits their teeth, “Not quite.” They hiss as they dab some rubbing alcohol on one of the bigger cuts. Villain tilts their head and Sidekick looks up at them. “I have to dress my own wounds a lot of the time.”

Villain nods, not quite knowing what to say. “I’ll go get you a jacket or something.”

Sidekick sighs as the door closes. They finish bandaging the last major cut and lean their head against the back of the chair. They cross their arms in front of them, trying their best to cover the majority of the scars on their arms, but failing pretty miserably.

Villain comes back into the room and hands Sidekick a large hoodie, trying their best not to stare at the surplus of scars along their skin.

#em writes #em writes stuff #my writing #sidekick whumpee #villain caretaker #past abuse #hero whumper #sidekick whump #child whumpee #whump #whump fic #whump writing

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idyllcy · 1 year

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crimson

Inspiration: autumn comes when you're not yet done by tieressian

Word count: 11.8k

Warnings: smut, reader's in some twisted sugar daddy relationship with the committee, death, murder

Summary: In the end, both of you are human, even if he resembles a god

The first time you meet Hinata, he has a bruise on his cheek and scratches all over.

"Hinata-senpai!" You gasp, tossing your clipboard onto the table and rushing over to him. "Stay still!"

"Wait-"

"I don't want to hear the story right now! You need to be patched up!" You rush behind him for a medical kit, and he watches you, eyes wide with surprise.

It's a horrifying idea, really. Being handed a clipboard and then told to take care of a student on your first day at Hope's peak. Something about the Hope Cultivation Plan. You're surprised to meet eye to eye with two boys who look no older than you. No, both of them were one year your senior. You weren't even supposed to be in the class under them. You had just been called in to deal with the psychology aspect of the entire project after accepting to be a student in the following year.

Your hands are gentle against his skin. Your movements are practiced, and you patch him up quickly. Matsuda walks in on the sight of you applying antiseptic onto his cheek. You press the patch to his skin, and you sigh as you finish. You're the new one on the project; the psychologist brought in after the neurologist requested a psychologist aide.

"Story." You pout at him. "Please. I barely met you, and here you are, bruised all over. Don't you know that this project requires the best body out there? Argh."

Hinata laughs awkwardly, but he spills the story. You learn quite a bit about him from the story. People aren't careful with their words. Hinata ends up spilling much more than he intended to you, and he mentions that he doesn't want to be normal; in fear of being not enough. He talks about the murder of his classmates, and how the ultimate got involved. He talks about wanting to talk to a student but being forced out of the main building. You suppose it's to be expected.

"So..." You stare at the background papers they finally gave you. "You don't want to get kicked out because you can't pay the fees? Isn't being talentless a gift?"

Hinata's eyes widen at your words.

"Oi-" Matsuda frowns. "Newbie."

"Just hear me out," You flip through the paper. "We ultimate are tied to our talents for the rest of our lives. I'm stuck treating patients until there's nothing left for me to do. One day, I'll look out the window and pray I wake up without talent the next morning. Treating people who are worse than me is going to take a toll on me."

Hinata looks to the side in distaste. "That's just because you have a talent."

"Hinata-senpai," You mumble sadly. "We all want something we can't have. You and I aren't different."

Hinata stares to the side, avoiding your gaze in anger. "Ah, who are you again?"

You hum. "I'm the ultimate psychologist, Y/n L/n. Feel free to call me Y/n. How are you feeling today? Other than the story about the bruise"

Matsuda, who you later on learned was the neurologist, sits through the entire session with you. He makes no move to interfere when Hinata gets excited, and you think your session bores him a little bit. But you suppose the higher-ups wanted him to keep an eye out on the new one. You don't blame them. You suppose that makes the chase more fun.

"Hinata-senpai, any discomfort?" You stare at the notes about his background.

"No," He shakes his head. "Ah, it feels weird being called senpai by a doctor taking care of me. You can call me Hinata," He nods slowly, no sign of a smile on his face.

"Subject... I333K." You hum. "Yes. So have you signed the waiver?"

"No." He shakes his head. "I was told you'd provide it."

"Matsuda-san?"

"Here," He hands the paper to the boy, and he stares at it. "Your parents signed it three hours ago. The ultimate psychologist wanted to meet with you before you signed it. Is everything normal?"

"To be expected." You shrug. "He's got a perfect brain from the other tests we ran on him earlier. He's perfectly average in every way. It's interesting, actually. If he wants to, we can progress early."

Hinata watches the two of you discuss his brain.

"All of his nerve cells have an excellent connection," Matsuda points at the highlighted regions of his brain. "It's like a textbook model."

"That's good." You hum. "Perfect to work with, right?"

"Yes," He nods.

"Do you mind asking the questions?" You mumble. "He appears to be doing well, but I need you to ask the questions and for me to observe another time. I need catch any microexpressions."

"What are you? Paul Eckman?" Matsuda scoffs. "Why do you need to read his microexpressions?"

"Because if I don't, then something is going to happen. I'm responsible for the patient," You shrug. "You know that, doctor."

Matsuda asks the questions, and you note down any expressions that flash across his face. Your face remains neutral the whole time, yet Hinata can tell that you're a cheerful person from your face alone. Your resting face has your lips tugged upward into a gentle smile. Your notes are messy scribbles, yet you write with a gel pen. You don't seem very professional if anything.

"And finally, any medical history we should know about?"

"Nothing," Hinata rubs the back of his neck.

"Uh oh," You pout. "You're lying! Now, what was it? A broken bone? Undiagnosed schizophrenia? Or even worse, munchausen syndrome by proxy?"

"No!" He raises a brow. "It's just... I've broken an arm before."

"No medication as of right now?"

"None." Hinata nods.

"Got it," He hums. "Anything else?"

"Ah," You kick Matsuda's revolving chair out of the way. "Have you ever medically diagnosed with an anxiety disorder or mood disorder?"

"No?" Hinata looks concerned.

You note that down, and you grin. "Onto more personal matters. Your grades as of right now."

"Straight Cs."

"Average student," You scribble onto the paper. "Number of friends?"

"They're both dead."

You pause and blink. "Right. No other friends, though?"

"One, from the main course."

"Alright," You tap the end of your pen against the clipboard, and Matsuda gets up from his fallen chair. He takes note of the way Hinata's knuckles are white while you read through the rest of the questions. Hinata wants a talent desperately. The feeling of worthlessness claws at the back of his mind, eating away every other thought. When the principal promised him a talent through the hope restoration project, he thought it was a sign from the heavens. He needed this. Yet, as he watches you read through the questions, he doesn't understand why you would tell him that you hate treating people when it's your talent. Nothing adds up.

"You have questions written all over your face," You grumble. "Spill it. Don't tell me you don't have any. I know you do."

"Do you... like your talent?"

"It's not that I dislike it," You kick your legs onto the edge of the table. "It's just that it becomes boring when it's not a passion. Some people adore their talents. I am not one of them. I'm stuck treating patients every day and understanding the logic behind every single person and why they do something. I resemble an ultimate analyst almost; yet I'm not, because I consider all emotions and do things that the analyst can't. You had another question."

Hinata's surprised at how well you read him. "Ah... I don't understand why you dislike your talent."

"It's boring," You shrug. "Alright, last question. Since the process of the surgery is confidential, you realize that you are signing liability away, yes?"

"Yes."

"Then, without further ado," You sign the bottom of the paper, and Matsuda signs the second space. "Welcome to the team. We look forward to working with you," You kick your legs off the table. "Hajime Hinata."

When he grasps your hand to shake it, you know where this is going to end up.

"So... am I moving in here?"

"Yeah," You nod. "I'll start procedures in a week. Get adjusted to this while we're at it."

You hold complete power over a patient under your wing.

Matsuda supposes you're strange to some degree. He watches you break out a camera from the stuffed animal and review the entire hour that the three of you talked. You might've not taken specific notes during the actual meeting, but your writing is detailed and fine from the video. You observe Hinata to the millisecond, spending 15 minutes on a simple facial expression, breaking it down to the possible things that occurred. It doesn't matter as much to you as you'd want to admit, but you had cared for plenty of people before attending Hope's peak. He was no exception.

-Ѱ-

Information collected:

General reasoning: Average

Intelligence quotient: Average

Emotional quotient: Average

Brain scans: Normal

Talents acquired: None

Note from doctor:

Patient signed the waiver. This means he will be expelled and start the process. Having said that, please provide at least 30 minutes of (real) sunlight time to patient on days off. I can accompany him or a guard. If patient develops depression, it will be hard to rewire a broken brain. Other than that, all signs are healthy. Nothing sad is read from his microexpressions.

Signed, Ultimate Psychologist

-Ѱ-

Matsuda doesn't share any details about the experiment. If anything, he might be in the dark about it as well. He doesn't pose any questions like you do. You're pretty sure the Steering Committee is about to fire you. But as you bat your lashes innocently in the name of protecting your patient, they let you off. They're going to alter his brain of some sort. You wonder if it'll cause him brain trauma. Matsuda tells you that's not part of your job. You ignore him and ask the guards around. They don't know either.

You're incredibly keen. Matsuda wonders if you're older than him sometimes. You but each person you meet, and as soon as you get what you need, the bug is gone. You're touchy, and while it seems annoying to many, you get what you want. He supposes that's what makes you so trustworthy. No patient's secret is sold, but any spare gossip you heard from students is always spared for some extra help. You will get what you want. It doesn't concern you. Anything not about your patients doesn't concern you.

You're a terrifying force to be reckoned with. The Steering Committee had granted you access to every single room in the building within the span of the week you moved in. Matsuda knows the way they stare at you. It's the human flaw to the bone. It's sickening. Yet, you use it to your advantage. The way that your lipstick's always ruined after a meeting makes Matsuda sick.

But as much as Matsuda hates you, you are someone who puts your patient first. Treatment is hard for Hinata the first week. He has to adjust to learning a new skill each day, and you're stuck observing him and forcing him to practice until it's written into his bones. You always stay until he's ready to leave, and you've given him an on-call button for when he needs help. You start treatment slowly. Hinata's put into the situations and forced to learn a skill until his fingers bleed or his mind breaks.

"What's today?" Hinata looks tired. The bags are forming under his eyes, and you can tell he's been working half to death.

"Something much gentler than yesterday," You smile, holding up a crochet kit. "I won't force you to master it at once, but we do need to start learning skills that we can't promise perfect implementation through surgery."

"Right..." Hinata grimaces.

You smile. "Shall we go over how to crochet?"

"You know how to?"

"Isn't it simple? I am allowed to have hobbies outside of my talent," You smile at him. "So,"

You're good with your hands and words. Hinata learns how to crochet basics from you incredibly quickly. He works fast, and you even consider teaching him knitting that same day. Yet as Hinata seems to smile at the yarn when he finishes, you decide it could be saved for another day. He looks somewhat at peace after two weeks of a literal hell.

He has pretty green eyes. The eyes are a determined shade of green as he starts a new ball of yarn. Despite being locked up for a month, he's progressing slowly. By now, he's gotten at least 20 of the talents expected of him. Other skills would be learned through surgery later on. You still don't know the exact number of times they're going to put him under.

He works slowly per your instructions, and he eventually speeds up. Although you don't tell him, he's required to master this by the end of the day and show you results the next. The two of you sit in silence, and chat idly while you crochet. Hinata speeds up with time, and by the time you finish one, he has four ready.

"Incredible!" You gasp. "You really are fast, Hinata-kun! You're speeding up!"

"Not only that," Matsuda closes the door as he enters. "His cerebellum's neural connection has improved significantly."

"Ah, really?" Hinata looks happy.

"What's the cerebellum store," You throw a scalpel at Hinata, and he dodges. Matsuda shows you the new brain scan.

"Implicit memories?"

"Good job!" You clasp your hands together. "Seems like he remembers the neuroscience stuff."

"Mm," Matsuda grumbles. "You haven't paid them a visit lately. The old men."

"I got what I wanted," You shrug. "There's no need. It's not like I don't have them on a leash anyways."

"You what?"

Hinata stares at you press a napkin to your lips and apply a wine red.

"You're uncomfortable?"

You stare at the boy. "Don't worry about it."

"This stupid dumbass has been s-"

"That's enough," You smack your hand over Matsuda's mouth, and you scribble a note on your clipboard. "Prep surgeries start tomorrow as told... They basically rewire your brain so that you can learn more... and suffer more brain trauma."

"Trauma?" Hinata looks scared.

"How do you think some people get their talents?" You shrug. "In two days, we master the art of chess."

"Oh, god," Hinata groans.

"Bye! I hope surgery goes well!" You wave at him as the two of you make it out of the room. Matsuda doesn't ask you any questions as to why you suddenly decided to teach him crochet of all things, but he does speak up about the surgery.

"I start tomorrow." He flips through his files. "I've been told to rewire his cerebellum. The fact that you've already improved neural networking there is going to make my job much easier."

"That's good," You flip through your own papers. "I have to report to the committee today. Thanks for bringing the right lipstick shade."

"Whose dick are you sucking today?"

"No one's," You hum as you find the right page. "There is a lot more to making sure a patient is safe than just sucking old men dick."

"Whatever you say," He rolls his eyes as the two of you enter the room.

-Ѱ-

Information collected:

General reasoning: Average

Intelligence quotient: Average

Emotional quotient: Average

Brain scans: Normal - cerebellum neural networking improved

Talents acquired: 27

Doctor's note:

Patient seems good. Although a little apprehensive about the whole thing, he doesn't seem to be too worried. Surgery in the cerebellum can begin. Next surgery is advised to be surgery regarding the hippocampus. Muscle memory can be strengthened but explicit memory has to be improved as well.

Signed, Ultimate Psychologist.

-Ѱ-

"We're doing... baking?"

"Muscle memory," You grin. "But yes, baking."

"Out in the sun?"

"It's the perfect time to gather your daily vitamin d," You shrug, lips quirked into a smile.

"At the sunroof?"

"It's not like you're allowed outside," You smile at him.

Hinata is groggy from the surgery still. Playing chess with you after surgery was a nightmare. You had called Matsuda in for help, and the two of you obliterated him in the game. He worked his ass off to learn all the strategies, and eventually, he managed to memorize the chessboard.

"Kf4," Matsuda stares at the chessboard.

"Ra8," Hinata presses the butter down.

"Rg1," Matsuda clicks his tongue. "You lost, again."

"Ugh," Hinata grumbles. "This isn't fair! Both of you are ultimates!"

"Hinata-kun, neither of us are the ultimate chessmaster," You point a finger at him. "Again."

"Again?"

"You can visualize the chessboard now," You hum. "That's an improvement."

"Is it?" Hinata stares at you uncertainly.

"Working memory at it's finest." You smile. "considering that we haven't operated on your hippocampus yet, it's pretty remarkable."

"Starting over." Matsuda resets the board. "You're white."

"d4."

"Nf6,"

The two go back and forth, and you recall it from a chess championship. You don't remember when or where but you think you've heard of this game before. You wonder if Matsuda knows. He probably doesn't.

"Hinata-kunn," You peek at his batter. "You have't added the sugar..."

"Ah," He pauses in his moves to add the sugar.

"Kf7,"

"Nd4." Hinata calls back, finishing his batter.

"Chocolate chips?"

"No, thank you," Hinata shakes his head, scooping the batter onto the tray. The two of you set the cookie batter, and Hinata places all the trays onto the cart the two of you took up to the sunroof.

"How many hours of exercise?"

"Two..."

"Today?"

"Yeah."

"That's enough," You hum. "Your heartrate went above, right?"

"Kd8," Matsuda calls.

"f5,"

"Qg1." Matsuda clicks his tongue.

"Ng7," Hinata silently cheers.

"Good job," You nod at Matsuda, and he cleans up the chessboard.

"What's next?"

"We watch you bake the cookies," You smile. "And if you burn them, tomorrow's going to be hell."

"What is this positive punishment you're shoving onto me?"

"Oh, you know!" You gasp. "Congrats! But you still need to bake the cookies."

Hinata turns out to be a pretty decent baker. His cookies come out a little raw, but they're edible. Yours come out just fine. He frowns when he spots the same temperature as yours, and you grin at him. "Wanna know why mine are better?"

"Why?"

"You added too much butter." You grin. "I'm off to send these around. I'll drop by in a bit for a cookie. Tomorrow, you learn another talent."

"What's next?"

"Calligraphy," You hum. "And then after that, you get your second surgery the day after."

"on which part?"

"Hippocampus." You hum. "That should speed up your learning speed since we'll be trying to make your working memory hold more than plus or minus seven."

Hinata looks to the side. "What else?"

"After that..." You grimace. "You start the traumatizing stuff. We're getting guinea pigs brought in so you can master how to perform surgery."

"No."

"Yes." You nod. "I won't be in charge of that, but I will be in the room to watch. Good luck."

The door closes with a muffled click.

"I brought cookies!!!" You wave your arm cheerfully at Matsuda and the guards. He turns around to grab one off of your tray, and you hand one to each of the guards, skipping down the hall. The way to a person's heart is through the stomach, yet you do everything. Matsuda no longer cares if you're manipulating him like his best friend, he's grown used to it.

"What flavour today?" One of the guards pulls down their mask to bite into the cookie.

"Sugar cookies," You hum. "Without too much sugar."

"It's good," he hums. "What did you want to know today?"

"How was the surgery last time?"

"They had to put him down on pills afterwards." He mumbles. "With Xanax or something."

You pause. That bad? You grimace as the guard takes another cookie, and you sigh. "Thank you. I figured that Matsuda-senpai had prescribed him something. I'll talk to him about it today. Thank you!"

"Can we have biscuits next time?"

"Sure." You hum. "Honey?"

"Honey."

"Hinata-kun?" You peek into the kitchen at the boy taking out his cookies. They're good now.

"Do you... want one?"

"Sure," You hand him one of yours, and he hands you his. You bite into it.

"Oh... you know what? This would be good if you had chilled the cookie batter in the fridge before..."

"That's an option?"

"Mhm!" You grin. "It's really good too."

"I'll try that next time."

-Ѱ-

Information collected:

General reasoning: Average

Intelligence quotient: Above Average

Emotional quotient: Average

Brain scans: Normal - cerebellum surgery improved neural networking - success

Talents acquired: 59

Doctor's note:

Patient will undergo surgery in the hippocampus region of the brain next. After surgery, he will officially start learning every medical surgery process. Real humans are requested, and he will be given a neutralizer for his amygdala each time he operates on a human until his amygdala is destroyed via surgery next appointment. Please start logging patient's hours under the sun.

Signed, Ultimate Psychologist

Additional notes:

A minimum of four days of mandatory rest will be forced upon patient after hippocampus surgery. This is non-negotiable.

-Ѱ-

"Time for your checkup!" You grin, breaking into Hinata's room after a week. "Have you had your 30 minutes of sunlight yet? I can go with you! I brought a picnic basket and everything."

After your notes to the Steering Committee, you had assigned one of the guards to take Hinata out to the sunroof each day for at least fifty minutes in a day. The first day, he had to be wheeled because of how awful he felt from the surgery. Thankfully, it was only a brief moment. Matsuda hadn't damaged his hippocampus at all, only improving the functions.

"Ah... I already did..." Hinata stares at you. You wonder if he's traumatized after you locked him up for a whole week against the Steering Committee's wishes.

"Too bad!!" You grin. "The committee can deal with me. Shall we go? We can go on the roof."

"Ah... sure," Hinata scratches his cheek as you drag him through the halls.

"I figured," Matsuda stops discussing with a scientist before following the two of you. You scan your eye at the door, and the door to the elevator opens. You stare up at the security camera and strike a pose before throwing a cloth over it. You tap your foot on the floor, and you grin. The door opens on the top floor, and you grin at the sun.

"Oh, my beloved vitamin d!!" Matsuda takes the picnic basket from your arms, and you spread the mat. "So, Hinata, shall we get started?"

"Sure," He smiles softly, sitting next to you.

"How are you feeling today? Did anything weird happen since I last saw you? Anything."

"Nothing," He mumbles. "I just... I'm nervous? You locked me up in my room for a week other than the daily sun trips. It hurt."

"That one's on me," You hum. "Your hippocampus ended up taking a little more of a hit than we planned, so we had to put you on hold for a bit. This project matters a lot to the Steering Committee. The Hope restoration project is kind of concerning. Shall we practice stories today? I'll throw you a couple words."

"Sure."

"Pink, glow, click." You uncap your pen, ready to write notes.

Hinata tells you a story of a girl who sits by the fountain. She has pink hair, and when the sun shines from behind her on its way down, she glows. Hinata talks about a boy whom she had befriended with disgust written all over his tongue, the way the two's GameBoy keys click. You sit and listen to Hinata tell the story. He's speaking from experience.

"That's a story of your own, is it not?"You tap your pen against the clipboard. "Anything else, Hinata?"

"Ah," He pauses. "I... miss Chiaki."

"Hold my shit," You throw your clipboard and pen at Matsuda, and he reaches for a scalpel.

"Pull that out on me and I'll put laxatives in your cookie next time," You click on your phone, and you grin. "No biggie. Alright, is that all you're feeling? Anything else? Apprehension... excitement... nervousness?"

"No..." Hinata stares out the glass longingly. "I just... want to get the talents and talk to Chiaki soon."

"Understandable," You hand him a kusamochi from the basket. "The girl from the main course is Chiaki?"

"Yeah," He nods, staring at you for any sign of emotion. "Why are you conflicted?"

"I regret teaching you about microexpressions," You huff. "I'm not. I just had a moment of realization that the pink haired girl who sat every day by the fountain was called Chiaki."

"Every day?"

"She seems to be waiting for you," You shrug. "Other than that, she's fine, I think. I've never stopped to talk to her before. Shall I do that next time?"

"Please. Thank you," He feels a little better, biting down on the snack. "Ah, do you know how their class is doing?"

"Eh," You shrug. "Same as always. I heard they had soup laced with an aphrodisiac or something."

"Huh?"

"Everyone's fine," You bite into your sandwich. "Thankfully."

"Ah," He frowns.

"You want your talents soon, huh?" You stare at the frown on his face for a moment.

"I do."

"I'll talk to them about speeding up the process. Just to let you know, there's much more than just the surgery part," You pause. "There's... also the actual training after that."

"Training?"Hinata raises a brow. "Aren't I going through a training already?"

"They gave me the schedule for the harder talents," You grimace. "Hinata-kun, it's like traumatizing an adult. Do you know how bad it is? It could make you schizophrenic or give you depression. Hinata-kun, please-"

"I want to," He stares at you, eyes full of pain. "I want to have the talent."

"There's no use convincing him," Matsuda slices the apple in the basket, and he hands the two of you a third. "Don't blame either of us when you leave the pod."

You stare at Matsuda, brows furrowed, pain written all over your face. He knows. You'll come to regret not being able to save him all of your life, but you don't have much of a choice. In the end, no matter how much the Steering Committee got along with you, there was no way they would heed your advice on something that they spent years preparing. You have to stand on the side for that one. It is the one time they'll force you to.

"Hinata," You let out a breath. "Even if you lose your identity as Hajime Hinata?"

"Huh?"

"Are you willing to exchange your whole being in order to hold every single talent there is?"

Hinata stares at you. You don't know if he knows. You don't know if he can take knowing this. His entire existence as Hajime Hinata would be erased. In exchange for the talent he wanted so badly, he would give up himself as a being. He's already been given more anesthetic than necessary during his surgeries, you don't want him to get struck. He has a chance to leave before the deal closes and forces him to forget his entire existence.

Hinata isn't stupid. Well, he knows all the terms and conditions of the project. He's the guinea pig, and in exchange, he's given all the talents in the world. He wants this. He's tired of feeling like he's inferior to those with a talent. Yet, as he watches you recall everything from a textbook with ease, knowing that you worked for your talent, he falters.

"Talents..." You pause yourself. "Are bought."

"Huh?" Hinata stares at you, pausing mid-reach into the basket.

"The rich," You swallow. "We're born with a significant advantage, because we can learn things incredibly young, with the right teachers. Our parents spend money on us in exchange for our development of a talent. That's what a lot of us are. Talents like musicians, gamers, housekeepers, mechanic... we're all people who pushed our whole being into something to develop a talent. Hinata-kun, we worked hard for our talents."

Hinata doesn't want to hear another lecture.

"The rich are guaranteed a spot at this school," You smile sadly. "Hinata-kun, when you come out of surgery... no. That's selfish."

Hinata watches you stand up, and you stretch your arms above your head. Your shirt hikes up the side of your waist, and his expression grows grim. He watches you wipe your lipstick off and put on a velvet red.

"What do you need this time?"

"I want to monitor Hinata after the surgery," You stare at yourself in the window's reflection. "I'm going to work for it."

"And if they lie to you? You lied to them about locking him up."

"Then I get turned down," You stare at the lipstick. Hinata takes note that you're at the end of the pigment.

"What does that color mean?"

"Nothing that you should worry about," You fish out your ID, and you toss it to Matsuda. "That goes back downstairs. Take him to the room in around ten minutes. Take the other hallway."

Matsuda grimaces.

Hinata's picked up a few cues from staying with you in the building. You have a total of six different shades of lipstick. Well, five. Your lips usually rest with a light pink tink from your vaseline, yet occasionally, you put on lipstick. He doesn't understand why, but the look of disgust the ultimate neuroscientist gives you as you put on four of the five shades of lipstick rubs him the wrong way. It's like you reserved lipstick for something... only the Steering Committee knows about. It rubs him the wrong way, yet as he watches you leave every time, he fears that you'll leave for good one day.

He sits in silence with Matsuda.

"Do you know what their lipsticks mean?"

"What?"

"Each one represents a different Steering Committee member. Every single time you've been let off, it's because of those lipsticks," Matsuda frowns in disgust. "Do what you will with that information. Let's go back to your room."

Hinata thinks he knows.

You wipe the shade from your lips, your hair messed up from all the grabbing. You rinse out your mouth, the taste of disgust crawling up your spine. Strange. You thought you took a pill to suppress emotions before it. As you brush your teeth and adjust your hair, you take note of the red smeared on your bottom lip. You look like a mess, yet you got what you wanted. It felt disgusting. Those meaty hands grabbing the back of your head, forcing you to take more of what you despised. In the end, you were no better than a disgusting little whore.

As you step out of the bathroom, your eyes meet Matsuda's.

"What did you do it for this time?" He holds a makeup wipe, and he hands it to you. You wipe off the lipstick you couldn't get off, and you sigh.

"I wanted to be in charge of him after the surgery. I told you." You sigh. "Take a look at the back of my throat. Anything?"

Matsuda stares, and he shakes his head. "You disgust me."

"Cool. People do things to survive," You hum, pressing the vaseline onto your lips again. "Even if it disgust them."

"You have no need to."

"Why do you think we got a kitchen in this stupid building? Is it not my doing?"

"You didn't need to."

"Yes, but he needed it so he could make somewhat of a good memory before death."

"I suppose."

-Ѱ-

Information collected:

General reasoning: Above Average

Intelligence quotient: Above Average

Emotional quotient: Average

Brain scans: Normal - hippocampus surgery improved neural networking - success

Talents acquired: 79

Doctor's note:

Patient will undergo the remaining surgery in the next session. His amygdala will be neutralized, and any parts containing emotions or memories will be wiped. Then, we will implement the rest of the talents through information injection the Ultimate Neurologist is in charge of. Patient's emotions are stabilized, though missing a friend. No issue other than that.

Signed, Ultimate Psychologist

-[Steering Committee]-

Ultimate Psychologist has been placed to be in charge of Kamukura Izuru's recovery process.

If he wakes during the procedure at any time, increase anesthetic dose and forcibly put him back down.

-Ѱ-

Hinata wakes during surgery, screaming and thrashing for you or his mom. The committee questions why you, but you just brush it off as transference. He wouldn't feel anything after waking up without any ability to feel emotion. You watch outside through the glass, nothing through your mind. Wrong. You feel disgusting. You've just taken a human life in the name of science and created a whole new person. It feels disgusting. It fills you with nothing but the urge to kill.

Matsuda doesn't seem to be too phased. He was the one who was put in charge of all of this anyways. It doesn't matter if either of you knew. Neither of you could've prevented this. It's disgusting. Your eyes are emotionless as you watch, the first time your emotions aren't written on your sleeve. Would Hinata- no. Would Kamukura even remember you after this? It didn't matter. You were never supposed to develop emotions for the boy, and neither was he. You're forced to be in charge of this whole situation as the only one with some sort of power left.

"Teach me neurosurgery." You stare up at Matsuda, eyes hard. He's never seen you so serious before.

"I can't," He stares at you. "You know this."

You stare up at him one last time before you hear the sound of the pod opening.

Izuru Kamukura is bored. His eyes are a piercing red, one that seems like it would kill without reason. The ends of his hair brush the floor, and instead of the brown you'd grown used to, it's a deathly black. Other than that, he's still the same. No. He isn't. When his eyes meet yours through the glass, you can read everything that you had grown used to. He was bored. He was bored. He was bored of existing already.

Unlike the Steering Committee, you have no way out of the building. All the old guards you had grown close to are replaced with new ones. You assume they killed the old ones off. The smell of blood and sanitizer lurks in the air as you open the door to Kamukura's room. You scan your eye, and the door unlocks with a click. You meet eyes with the boy.

"...general things today. We're here to check all of the talents I've once taught you. Tomorrow, we start on the new talents we gave you through surgery." You exhale through your nose, eyes weary with dread.

"Do you pity me?"

"No," You slide him an intelligence test. "I don't pity you, I feel disgust at myself. I taught you this, Kamukura-senpai. I thought you'd be better at reading by now. Why are you flawed?"

"I'm not," He fills in the paper as he talks to you. "You showed no sign of disgust."

"Talk to me in french," You sit on the seat on the other side of the table.

"Non." he stares at you, soulless. "Je veux pas." No. I don't want to.

"Ne me dites pas non. Il faut que je vérifie vos connaissances linguistiques." You write down on the notes. "Une autre langue?" Don't tell me no. I have to check your languages. Another language?

"¿y por qué debería hacerlo?" He continues filling out the test. and why should I?

"Ya te lo dije." You check the box next to Spanish. "中文." I told you. Chinese.

"然后呢？你是除了什么问题吗？我直接把其他的语言给你讲了吧." Kamukura's voice is smooth with each language. And then? Is there a problem? I'll just cover the rest of the languages for you.

He shows no sign of linguistic determinism, his voice tone the same throughout all of the languages. You nearly envy it. It doesn't matter. The way that he talks in each language is then verified with the device. All linguistics look good. You wish you could speak that many languages.

"I'll leave you some white paper."

"It'll bore me."

"Unless you want to sit in the room with nothing to do?" You stare at him. Kamukura takes it reluctantly, his gaze lingering on you as you wipe off your lip balm. You replace it with a red.

"You're going to sleep with one of the Committee members again." You can hear something akin to disgust in his voice. You're surprised. You thought his emotions were completely wiped.

"That's cute," You stare at him. "I'm sure you know the reason as well, then."

He doesn't. Yet, something in him feels guilt.

-Ѱ-

Information collected:

General reasoning: Exceptional

Intelligence quotient: Exceptional

Emotional quotient: None

Brain scans: Exceptional

Talents Checked: Linguistics, Languages, IQ.

Doctor's note:

Emotions are gone. No more neurosurgery is necessary.

Signed, Ultimate Psychologist

-[Steering Committee]-

Ultimate Psychologist's room has been merged with Subject I333K

No cameras in the room are necessary.

Signed, Steering Committee

-[Observations from Patient's work]-

First stack of paper

- encompassed the entire Japanese dictionary.

Second stack of paper:

- art (drawn with lipstick) of sketches of a woman sucking a man off. There appears to be a significant age gap, and it objectifies the man.

There consists of seven different sheets of this.

The first one is a woman applying lipstick.

The second is the woman tying her hair back.

The third through sixth are sketches of a woman sucking a man off from different angles.

The final one is an image of a woman holding a key in her hand.

Additional notes:

The woman bears a strange resemblance to the Ultimate Psychologist.

-Ѱ-

Izuru stares at you, trying to read the emotions on your face.

"Musical talent," You exhale. "Music room. Let's go."

The music room is the few rooms that you didn't have to sleep with someone to get. The stains of your lipstick are still prominent on your bottom lip and chin, yet you don't seem to notice it. You scan your eye to enter the music room, and you're mildly surprised at the interior.

Kamukura reaches for your chin, grabbing it gently, eyes still emotionless.

He wipes the lipstick from your chin.

You sense no emotion from him, so you don't give him anything in response.

"Thank you." You hum. "Shall we start with piano and work our way around?"

"Every single instrument?"

"The program is funded way more than what you think," You unfold a chair on the side, and you watch Kamukura open the piano. The sound of music floats through the air, soothing you to some degree. He sounds like a computer-generated piece. You suppose that was the perfection that the Steering Committee wanted while they created him. His music lacks emotion. You aren't in the position to nitpick at him, but it's kind of dull.

"Stop." You call after he finishes with the violin. "I won't blame you, but you lack emotion for any of the ultimate musicians. Harp."

Kamukura sits with the harp between his legs, and he plays. He still sounds generated. He sounds like a computer. You don't sense an ounce of emotion behind it. It disgusts you. The idea of wiping out a person's emotions until the chemicals they feel are nothing more than a bother to them. Everything is predictable in the eyes of a god. Is that what he was? Then surely you'd be punished for trying to do so.

"That's enough." You sigh. "You can dance as well, yes?"

He nods. "You look agitated."

"Thanks for pointing out the obvious." You grumble. "They took away your ability to feel emotion so your ability to play sounds like it's a computer generated piece. I suppose that's what they wanted you to be. Something akin to a computer. Dance for me."

"With what music?"

You pry the piano open, and you stretch your fingers. "Random notes."

They aren't, in fact, random notes. Kamukura hears a whole melody behind it, yet he encapsulates the dance perfectly. You force him to swap from jazz to ballet. From ballet to tap dancing, and then from tap to modern. You force him to dance over and over again, changing styles with each measure. Kamukura is a perfect dancer. He moves elegantly and all lively. He looks pretty like that. You stop playing, and he stops to stare at you.

"No sweating?" You close the piano, and you press your fingers to his forehead.

He doesn't flinch, yet he raises a brow at you.

"I know," You hum. "Woe is you, who must listen and read the entire world."

"Why do you do this?"

"Because I have no choice? Because I didn't read the fine print on the papers?" You shrug. "because humans are flawed."

"How expected."

"Mhm," You shrug. "Let's get back."

"You will be staying with me starting today, correct?"

"Yes." You hum. "Anything you request can be granted. I hold the keys to each room in this building. Including the room to the Steering Committee."

"You slept with them that many times," It's more of a statement than a question. "How expected."

"How else do you think this entire floor has been renovated into a house of my own?" You shrug. "Sometimes your mouth is more useful than words."

"Sometimes?" He stares at you, eyes digging into yours. "It seems that you can't convince them with words alone."

"Ah, how surprising," You shrug. "You should know, right? Survival tactics are different for everyone. I wonder if they moved my bed into your room yet."

"Aren't they just going to knock the wall down?"

"You're like a child," You stare at Kamukura. "A young child that can think of every possible answer, yet can't. Can you see ghosts?"

"They don't exist."

"How disappointing." You mumble. "Say, help me out with my makeup later, will you? I have something else I need in the room."

-Ѱ-

Information collected:

General reasoning: Exceptional

Intelligence quotient: Exceptional

Emotional quotient: None

Brain scans: Exceptional

Talents Checked: Music, Makeup

Doctor's note:

{Blank}

Signed, Ultimate Psychologist

-[Steering Committee]-

{Blank}

Signed, Steering Committee

-[Observations from Patient's work]-

No papers were left behind, though the Ultimate Psychologist left him four different puzzles. He solved them within the 10 minutes that she first left. He then solved it without manual instructions in a way that we weren't able to determine.

-Ѱ-

Kamukura stares at the machinery you have Matsuda help bring into the room. His eyes dig into yours, and you stare back at him. You have a new shade of lipstick on. None of you say anything as Matsuda plugs all of the strings and stickers onto his skin. They don't bother him anymore. He knows why you're doing this. He knows what your motive is. Yet, as you stare at him, eyes void of anything he can read, he falters. When has the created ever outsmarted the creator? Though, he knows what eyes those are.

"You're going to suck me off."

You spin the keys on your finger, and you grin at him. He seems to laugh at you in his own way. In the bland, expected, boring way that he always does. His eyes are anything but amused. The other doctors have begun to enter the room in the intervals that you're in class, and he's being taught that talentless people are useless. He wonders what you have to say about it. Though, something in the back of his mind tells him he already knows.

Matsuda checks the machine before nodding at you. The neuroscientist had stopped his visits altogether after you wrote the first note. He was no longer needed, and he was just another pawn on the board that the Steering Committee held. Your lips quirk up in amusement as Matsuda leaves the room, and you finally speak up.

"No. I don't think people without talent are useless," You chuckle as you open up your notes. "I think you already know that."

Kamukura answers you with silence. The same, disgusting silence that you've grown used to. The two of you sit in silence for a while, and then you let out a laugh that Kamukura has been wired to think is unhinged. Your lips are a deathly shade of crimson. They match his eyes. For a moment, Kamukura thinks you're going to do exactly as he predicted. Yet, as your laugh turns into a cracked smile, he's intrigued.

"You've seen all the possibilities," You smile. "What do you think about a little entertainment?"

"Of?"

"A killing game," You shrug. "A school shooting? A mass protest? A loss of identity? Or... a guessing game? Who am I going to kill with a cookie tonight?"

Kamukura stares at your lips.

"Wanna kiss me? This is the same shade as the strawberry blonde chick that visited you the other day. I stole her lipstick from her room while visiting with Matsuda. She probably knows this by now."

"You look much better in it than her."

"How flattering."

Kamukura should have grown to know that his creator would have been anything but human in any way. Yet, as you bite down on a cookie from the batch, he's playing with probability. There's a chance it could be anyone. It wouldn't be surprising if it were any of the guards. Perhaps you would kill someone you didn't get along with. You just snort as you click on a handful of buttons on the machine connected to him.

"We'll find out later," You step up to him, fingers loosening his tie. "Tea?"

Kamukura knows every reference in the book, yet as you stare at him with a slimmer of compassion, he finds himself nodding unconsciously. "It doesn't matter." His eyes tell you something else.

"Just to measure brain activity." You unbuckle his belt, fingers working nimbly. You stare at the device. "Wow, not an ounce of a reaction... I'm sure you'll see if there's a reason behind why I always get my way with the old men."

As your lips press onto his, he doesn't once make a move to push you off. He wonders if you're checking all his sexual talents today. You never mentioned what you were checking. In a way, he thinks that you're here to check if he's human, perhaps. Lust was one of the oldest temptations in the world. Zeus lusted after nearly everything. The sweet taste of the fruit on Eve's lips was no less than lust. The siren's songs, the cheap women on the streets. Everyone fell into that desire at some point in their life. Maybe this was your way of checking if he was human.

"Mm," You stare at the hickey you left on his collar, and then at his heart rate. "Good to see they didn't fuck up your heart. Let's see if you run out of breath from these lips you seem to despise so much, hm?"

Throughout the entire scan, there aren't any abnormalities. You're pretty sure that it's concerning in a way, yet as you wipe your lipstick off with the makeup remover, you're proved wrong. The scans don't show improved brain activity, but the chemicals released are all those related to pleasure. Kamukura pants, chest heaving. His lips are parted in order to catch his breath, and the bed is a mess of bodily fluids under him, mostly his. If anything, you've remained dry throughout the entire session. Kamukura's mind is a little hazed, his patient robe loose around his body now.

"Nice tits." You laugh at the paper in your hand, eyeing Kamukura.

He stares at you without moving his head, eyes slanted with no surprise.

"A shame, really," You shrug. "Have they started making you work out?"

"No." He stares at you. "Are you going to put on velvet again?"

"Hm? Yeah," You grab the lipstick from the basket, and you press the baby pink onto your lips. "You want to work out, no?"

"I do."

"Then I'll get what we need." You use your pinky to check if it stains, and you smile when it doesn't.

"Anything else?"

He stares at you. "What were the results of my test?"

"I'm sure you know."

Kamukura's eyes are filled with disgust as you walk out again.

-Ѱ-

Information collected:

Brain scan: Exceptional

Talents Checked: NSFW

Doctor's note:

He's a good fuck. Perfect one, actually. Quite a shame that none of you are gay.

Signed, Ultimate Psychologist

-[Steering Committee]-

A gym will be built in room 17 at the end of the hall across from the music room. Once finished, Ultimate Psychologist is to go there to check the Ultimate Hope's talents.

It would be a shame if any of us struck that way. A show has been requested for the next request.

Signed, Steering Committee

-[Observations from Patient's work]-

Noticed activity in the TVA region in Ultimate Hope's brain around Ultimate Psychologist. Though not harmful, it is advised to keep the chain tighter.

Noticed release of vasopressin and oxytocin in patient's brain region when engaging in sexual activity.

Signed, Ultimate Neurologist

-Ѱ-

"It's good you can show disgust now," You hum. "How were the other doctors?"

Kamukura stares at you, eyes void. "You let them in."

"I didn't," You tap the clipboard with your pen. "I didn't know."

You didn't. Kamukura blames you because of the notes you wrote the committee. Yet, you had no clue they would do that. At least you got him the pass to enter the gym as he willed. It's disgusting, being used. He feels nothing as they abuse him with their power, yet the fact that he was being used by someone other than you struck him the wrong way. His eyes meet yours, and you smile at him. Your lips are colorless today.

"Not sleeping with anyone today?"

You laugh. "No. I'm sleeping with someone who hates lipstick."

"Matsuda."

You imitate the sound of bells, and you smile at him.

"You're giving me that lie again." He taps the table. "You just finished sleeping with one of the men. I believe it was the tall one."

"Oh? No. You got that one wrong," You hum. "My lips are colorless because I lost the shade I was supposed to wear. I should be hearing about it anyyy minute now."

The clock strikes twelve.

"ULTIMATE?! ARE YOU IN THERE? A COMMITTEE MEMBER HAS FALLEN ILL!" One of the guards bangs on the door, and you stare at Kamukura for a brief moment before opening the door.

"What happened?" You punch the code to the door in frantically, and he pants. "Doctor says he died."

"Oh," Your eyes are wide with genuine shock. "Which one?"

As his name rolls off the guard's lips, your lip quivers. Your heart shatters in a way. Kamukura watches genuine emotion roll out of you in waves. He watches as horror floods through your body at the name, and how you rush out of the room after the guards frantically. He isn't allowed to follow you, yet you drag him along anyway. Your excuse was that he could predict everything; surely he could catch the killer of the case. As the four of you make it to the door, Matsuda shakes his head. He's gone.

He meets eyes with Kamukura. Neither of them says anything.

You're allowed out to attend his funeral. You put on quite the show for everyone. Kamukura watches your face lace with genuine grief. You're not lying in any way; none of your microexpressions give you away. The only two aware of the whole situation stay quiet. You aren't sure why Kamukura doesn't sell you out and accuses another member of the Steering Committee instead, but you go along with it. You're pretty sure he's going to ask for something in exchange.

The member is dragged off, yelling, screaming, thrashing against the guards. You beg the guards that it couldn't have been him. He was so kind to you. He did everything that was instructed of him! Your tears convince the guards to let you talk to him in hopes of lightening his sentence. You sit in the cell with him, Kamukura behind you like a dog standing guard. You stop the crying with the sound of footsteps fading, and you stare at him.

"Get me out of here, darling! You know I would never kill any of them!" His voice is frantic, genuine fear flooding through his body. He trusts you a lot. Your faux sympathy seeps into his skin, causing it to crawl. You were a strange one.

"But you were found at the scene!" You wipe your tears, lips pulled into an awful sob. "But it has to be a mistake. Surely?"

"Yes! Oh, darling, only you believe me now..." His voice is filled with affection for you.

"So? Was it adequate?" Your lips are the color that he adores. They look poisonous today. Your lips are quirked into a gentle smirk, and you lower your voice. The velvet on your lips looks duller under the prison light, and his eyes widen in realization. You hum, a soft smile on your face. "Was it adequate? Did it feel good? When you killed a member of the committee with your own hands?"

"Darling, you told me that he hated me!"

"I did no such thing!" Your voice wavers, and instead of reading a lie, they would read it as genuine pain. "How could you accuse me of that! You were the one who told me that you felt like he was suspecting you, so I went to ask him! You're the one who bugged me!"

Everything matches up to the false reality Kamukura created for this scenario. You cry tears, and Kamukura knocks at the door twice. The guard comes in and escorts you out, and your shoulders shake from the weight of your tears. The velvet on your lips seems to be lighter, and you barely have the energy to do anything. The next morning, he's found dead in his cell.

The weight of everything hits you hard. The velvet red is ditched in the trash; As you reach your room with Kamukura, your eyes meet his.

"Was that fun?"

"It was predictable."

"No," You shake your head. "Not the trial or acting. Was seeing the tabloid fun?"

Kamukura stares at the newspaper sticking out from your purse. You unbutton the coat, and you get changed as he reads. The paper has his face plastered on it and then a simple testimony and transcript from the male's last moments before death. Kamukura doesn't read it with a trace of surprise, yet he blinks at the name of the writer.

Kamukura Izuru, the dead principal.

He looks up at your half-naked figure, and he stares. His eyes don't move, and he takes in every inch of your skin. You don't mind the staring, having grown used to it. It was like he couldn't seem to learn about you no matter how hard he tried. The independent variable that changed and spun at will. He wonders when you had clasped that chain around his neck so gently. Perhaps you had it on him ever since he met eyes with you after surgery. Kamukura finds no will to break free. You provided more entertainment than whatever the pink-haired girl had promised him.

"Who's next?"

"Guess," Your lips have a pretty rose on them.

Out of the four men, the only two left are the weak-willed ones.

Eventually, the rose-red is thrown into the trash. The committee member hung himself. His suicide note was perfectly written, perfectly in his style. No one questions the reason for his death. Again, you're crying when you hear the news. Kamukura makes a perfect alibi. No one questions him, and if they do, he forcibly represses that memory. No one questions either of you. Kamukura is programmed to be honest with the committee members.

With the last man in the room, he sighs as you step into the room.

"Honey."

"Are you okay?" You sit in his lap, hand on his chest, drawing slow circles. "Their deaths... must've taken a toll on you."

"At least I have you left," He sighs. "I just..."

"Of course..." You mumble sadly. "You're the one who scribbled out the note that you wanted a show, right?"

He pauses as he spots the blood-red eyes in the dark.

"How about a show for him?" The old man stares at the way Kamukura's eyes are sharp with disgust at him.

As he finishes the sentence, the man grabs you. His lips are on yours, and you can taste the metal on his tongue. You hear the sound of a few people dropping to the ground with a thud, and you pull the knife from your leg, hooking your arms around his neck. The knife is pressed to his neck, the satisfying sound of a crunch echoing through the room as the last man drops dead. Your mouth tastes disgusting.

You reach your fingers into your mouth, stained with his blood, in hopes of getting rid of his taste. You're repulsed. It tastes just like him.

Kamukura stares at you from across the room, and you stare at him.

"Help me out?" You give him doe eyes, and he complies.

He steps closer to you, and he traces your bottom lip with his thumb, removing the lipstick. He takes off the glove, and he slides two fingers into your mouth to collect the saliva and shake it off of him. Wiping it off with his hand, you taste the flavor on your tongue. It's gone.

"Thank you." You step off of the corpse, half of your pretty dress ruined by the blood. His eyes stare at the color the white has been stained to, and you stare at the guards outside. Your lips are quirked into a stunning smile, and you wave at them. Kamukura has an urge to press his lips to yours, but stops himself before any more thoughts can occur.

"How about a prize?" You hum, tugging on the tie of his suit. He complies, realizing that you saw right through him. Your lips are his shade of crimson instead of the wine red that you usually used with the dead man. He had wiped off your lipstick before, yet you still had time to put on the crimson. He presses his lips to yours, eyes staying open. Yours close, fingers playing with his hair. He likes this. Is that what the emotion was? He likes it.

You're in charge now.

The first thing you do is make the atrocity public. Every detail about your life is hidden from the public eye, and Kamukura stares at the way people avoid him in the halls. His lips are pulled into the thin line that is expected of him; you find him predictable at this rate.

"You'll be joining 77b." You hum. "I'm in class 78."

He stares at you. "77b."

"Yeah, your class," You hum, looking at the paperwork.

"No." He stares at you. "How brainless must you be? You are to join class 77b with me."

"Oh, I don't decide that," You shrug. "Talk to the principal."

"You underestimate me," He hands you your student ID, and you blink at the sight of you being moved up an entire grade. You wonder if Kamukura blackmailed the principal again. Yet, as he stares at you with something akin to interest, you scoff. Maybe it would be funny.

"How much longer until I bore you?"

He doesn't answer.

"I hope you stay interested in me for the rest of my life, because I've already grown bored of you." Your lips are pulled in the same smile that Kamukura had seen that day. It's grown enticing. It's like an invitation that he knows the ending to. He no longer minds the predictability of you. He takes the broken hand you hold out to him. He flies closer and closer to the sun as Icarus had, knowing that his wings were bound to burn out on him at some point. He doesn't care. If his wings were to burn out while grasping onto you, he would.

"It feels weird not having something between my lips now," Your fingers work on the crochet project, and he finishes the other side casually. His eyes meet yours, and you laugh. "I'm kidding. Sort of. It feels weird not sleeping with someone to make sure I have basic survival necessities."

"They made you?" He raises a brow. The few things he could never read was your relationship with the men. It was strange. It was like a part of his brain refused to believe that you were capable of it. You were, and strangely enough, you are.

"I lied!" You beam. "I was the one who waltzed into the room. They were just prey."

"Excuse me?"

You smile. "Exactly what you think."

Kamukura is a dog. He knows his place, almost. It's like he knows he has a chain around his neck and belongs to the supposed Ultimate Psychologist. He wonders if you had more than just a single talent. It would make sense. Or it was a survival tactic you had learned. He follows behind you around school, eyes hard and cold to anyone who wanted to approach you. You stick around your classmates, yet the clouds of a storm form around you. Kamukura can feel it coming.

It comes in the form of a new lip balm.

"Strawberry."

"It'll be gone within a week," You pull gently on his tie, and he follows after you.

True to your word, the girl is dead by the end of the week. You stare down at the strawberry blonde and her sister in a pool of blood. The strawberry lip balm tastes sweet against Izuru's lips as you kiss him as a reward. He likes prizes from you. You spoil him to bits and pieces. The way your lips seem to be some sort of drug to him; he doesn't know why. He's enamored with you. Oh, if he could hold on to you forever. He wonders why he has such thoughts.

"Your TVA has been active lately," You hum, pressing your fingers into your cheek as you look at the test results. "How surprising."

Kamukura is quiet as he draws on the paper. It bores him the same way everything else does, yet he draws your pretty face while kissing him. The sight of you pressed close to him provides him with some sort of emotion. He doesn't know what he feels for you, yet it works, he supposes. The lip balm isn't as prominent as the cherry red from last time, yet it's still visibly you and him.

"Do I get a kiss each time I kill someone?"

"No," You continue working on the project in your hand. "You can get a kiss whenever you want. Don't you know? Or is your frontal cortex not working because of the vast amount of oxytocin and vassopressin being released? I can't believe they neutralized your amygdala only for you to fall in love and still produce the two love chemicals."

"Is that so," He takes a step toward you.

"Yeah," You kick one leg over the other, and you stare up at him. His eyes drop to your cleavage, and then an exhale.

"I could do many things to you."

"I know," You smirk. "Yet you don't."

"If I do something worth it, may I have my way with you?"

He's polite. "Sure."

The two of you go about your school lives with relative ease. While everything bores Kamukura to no end, you find it cute. The two of you attend class, scribbling notes to each other and playing games with Chiaki. You always end up in last place. The other true stuck hard to their talents, yet you have a little fun with Komaeda, providing treatment to him. Kamukura sits down and lets Ibuki do his hair as you help out your classmates.

"It's boring,"

"Yeah, but you find beauty in the boring things, no?" You smile at him. "If it bores you that much, then find something to do?"

"Lipstick."

"Ah, I can't throw any away yet," You sigh. "Shall we buy one for you to use?"

"No," He brushes his thumb along your bottom lip and wipes it onto the paper. "I'll just use you."

"How cute," You mumble. "You still have scenes to draw?"

"No," He stares at you. "Shall you help me out?"

Kamukura is mean.

He's mean not because of what he says to you. You can take what he says to you. You amuse him with your mindless banter. Your tongue is just as sharp as his, yet he argues back with you for some sort of amusement. You've got a pretty crimson collar on him, yet he pulls on the black one clasped around your neck only during times like this. Even if it means it's predictable.

No. Kamukura is mean because he likes having his way with you.

He likes pressing your mascara-stained cheeks into the mattress as he rams into you. He likes the way your moans are muffled from the plush of the pillow. He likes seeing you look a tear-stained mess under him. He likes the way you whine and complain about how he's too much. It's the few things he enjoys. It sends a rush through his body that he feels few times in life. And the best part is, no matter how many times he does it, it doesn't get boring.

"'s too much," You whine as he forces his cock into you again.

"Too bad," He mumbles, forcing you to arch by pulling your collar. Your face is a mess. Drool trickles past your crimson lips, and your cheeks are stained black. You look like a mess, but a pretty one. "You like this."

You recall the few times that you had actually let him have his way with you. The first time, he had taken it easy since it was just for examination. He had passed, and you were thankfully conscious enough to complete the form. The second time, it was when you had let him entertain himself for a bit after the death of the Steering Committee. He had found out you look exceptionally good with tear-stained cheeks. The third, it was an impulse for you. He had let you pull on his collar, yet it didn't bore him. You were strange.

"I- hah," You moan. "Don't."

"Keep telling yourself that," His eyes stay half-lidded as he presses your face into the mattress. "You were begging for more earlier. I gave you what you want, so why are you whining about too much now?"

"N-no," You hiss as his fingers dig into your waist. "I said-" You help as he lets go of the collar, forcing you to fall onto the mattress. His hand forces you into the bed, the sound of skin slapping skin echoing in the room. You want to argue that it was his idea to test your limits, but you can't seem to form a coherent sentence anymore. Mindless babbles slip past your lips. You're hazy with lust instead. You don't seem to fight him as much as before.

Kamukura likes this twist on power. Usually, it was you who had him on a leash and forced him to obey. He likes the image of black running down your cheeks and red smeared across your lips. He hooks an arm under your stomach, forcing you back up. He stares at you in the mirror. He gets a kick out of the way you look messed up from his antics. You're pretty. Incredibly so. And as he starts pressing back into you, and a whine slips past your lips, he thinks you sound good as well.

Perhaps this was why the men had been so reluctant to let you go. Too bad you're his now.

He feels you clench around him and whine, and he exhales. "Cum."

You gasp and claw the sheets as you finally get to cum. The whine that slips past your lips triggers something primal in Kamukura as he finishes inside of you. You mumble a weak complaint about the action, but you relax as soon as you remember he's got every single talent. Your eyes are hazy from the sex, panting as you come down from the high. Kamukura is sure to make sure you're taken care of.

"How many sheets of paper will that last you?"

"At least two stacks," He wipes you down, and you sigh.

"Better than last time."

"I'll tell Yukizome-sensei that you'll be out tomorrow," His voice is surprisingly gentle.

"What happened to your boredom?"

"I had fun." He pauses to stare at you.

"Well," He helps you sit up. "Good to know you aren't lying..."

The silence overtakes the two of you. A million thoughts plague your mind, and you close your eyes. You don't want to say it. His red eyes would just dig into yours without emotion again, his body language giving nothing away. No matter how entertaining he found you, he would never be able to stay amused for long. You cover your eyes with your forearm in hopes that maybe the thoughts would be taken away. They aren't.

"Say it." Kamukura mumbles.

"You'll grow bored of me one day."

"I won't," He mumbles, nestling his chin in the crook of your neck.

"How do you know?"

"The created never leaves the creator," You feel his lashes flutter against your skin. "Just as the devil never left god, or how your sins never leave your body. How humans gravitate back to their soulmates regardless. I'm not good with words of comfort. I... apologize."

"Don't," You close your eyes, lips tugging into a smile. "You don't lie to me."

"I don't," He affirms.

"That's enough for me." You smile. "If my heart is to burn in your hands, then I would be satisfied. Even if there is no entertainment left for you in this world, I would hope that my death would do something for you."

"No." He mumbles. "Because in the end, both you and I are humans."

#kamukura x reader #izuru x reader #izuru kamukura x reader #dr3 x reader #danganronpa x reader #izuru kamukura #izuru #kamukura #☾.nsfw #☾.fics

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ilovescarletwitch · 10 months

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Palpatine and the Jedi Order

I have recently had some midnight thoughts about Palpatine and his relationship to the Jedi Order. Mostly born from a fic that clearly states that Master Windu was always suspicious of Palpatine and his relationship with Anakin.

Now, I believe there were a lot of things wrong with the Order. There were a lot of ways they were cruel and insensitive to Anakin because they blindly followed traditions and convention and just didn't stop to apply actual compassion to his situation. They had allowed themselves to become complacent and dependent to the Senate and that limited their ability to help people and were all mostly okay with that. Their insistence on taking on only toddlers and raising to know no other life stinks of indoctrination. But they were not deliberately cruel and they wanted to do good, even if they fell short on occasion.

Anakin had been friends with the Chancellor since he was a small child. At that age it would have been easy for his caretakers to bar the friendship. A nine year old wouldn't go out on his own and befriend the most important man in the galaxy. So the friendship was allowed by the Order. It's alright for a single knight or two to privately think and later say that they would have done things differently. But not the Master of the Order or other Council members.

Because if they always suspected the Chancellor, then it's pretty unforgivable to me that they left a small child alone with him. They took Anakin in and had a duty of care and responsibility to protect. If they knowingly left him with a man they suspected was a predator or was seeking to gain something from Anakin, then there are some pretty terrible implications. Namely,they didn't care what happened to Anakin and decided the slave child that had been taught from birth to completely obey anyone with power over him was an acceptable price to pay to keep the Chancellor happy.

But I actually like the Jedi and want to see them get their shit together and help people. I like Master Windu too, don't actually think his relationship with Anakin is so terrible as others think. He made some colossal mistakes with regards to Anakin but that was mostly ignorance. He would never place young Anakin in the path of a predator. Same for the rest of the council and Obi-Wan.

So they must have trusted Palpatine with Anakin. And I feel that this is so interesting and also canon. Because the whole point of Palpatine is that he is an incredible manipulator. He convinces people he is good. He makes them trust him. He gives advice that will ruin them while making it sound reasonable and right and if the advice didn't work it's because everyone else is terrible.

So let's imagine the Council does trust Palpatine. He seems genuinely kind. He fights against corruption. He worked tirelessly to get Naboo the humanitarian aid they needed to rebuild after the end of the occupation. He made time to return to his homeworld and personally assist making a fairer treaty with the Gungans (personal headcanon because at this point it would be inevitable so he must look supportive and ruin it at a later point).

Let's also imagine that Palpatine was also a councillor. Yes, that's right. The Palpatine in my head studied psychology. He understands people so well, knows just how to manipulate them. He must have learned from somewhere. Meanwhile, the Jedi are struggling with Anakin. They have never had a youngling like that. So this really nice guy, who has studied psychology and even worked as a councillor for a small amount of time, is offering to help. Naboo has a tradition of people entering politics and activism from too early, so these sort of mentoring relationships are common. And Anakin did help his planet not just by destroying a ship but by offering Padme help when he himself was in a desperate situation. So Palpatine feels obligated to offer help to the small child who is now struggling. And so the Jedi council gives it a shot.

And Palpatine is careful. He first builds an emotional rapport with Anakin and then slowly fans Anakin's doupts, self worth and self loathing issues and his feelings of isolation. But for the first few meetings Palpatine lends a judgement free ear and Anakin looks better when he returns. So the Jedi decide this has the dual benefit of both helping Anakin and building good relations with the Chancellor and approve the friendship.

#star wars #Anakin Skywalker #Jedi Order Critical #But they still try to be good #Sheev Palpatine is creepy

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dailyanarchistposts · 22 days

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Chapter 7. Neighboring Societies

Networks not borders

As nation-states evolved in Europe over several hundred years, governments worked hard to fabricate a sense of community on the basis of shared language, shared culture, and shared history, all of which were conflated with shared government. This fictive community serves to foster identification with and thus allegiance to the central authorities, to obscure the conflict of interests between lower classes and the elite by framing them as being on the same team, and to confuse the good fortune or glory of the rulers with a good fortune shared by all; it also makes it easier for poor people in one country to kill poor people in another country by creating psychological distance between them.

On inspection, this notion that nation-states are based on shared culture and history is a fraud. For example, Spain created itself by expelling the Moors and the Jews. Even apart from this, without the central gravity produced by the state, Spain would not exist. There isn’t a single Spanish language, but at least five: Catalan, Euskera, Gallego, Castillian, and the dialect of Arabic developed in Morocco and Andalucia. If any of these languages were subject to careful scrutiny, more fractures would appear. The Valencians might say, not without reason, that their language is not the same as Catalan, but if you put the seat of government in Barcelona you would get the same suppression of Valenciano that the Spanish government employed against Catalan.

Without the enforced homogenization of nation-stations, there would be even more variety, as languages and cultures evolve and blend with each other. Borders hinder this cultural diffusion, and thus promote conflict by formalizing similarities and differences. Borders don’t protect people; they are a means by which governments protect their assets, which include us. When the borders shift in a war, the victorious state has advanced, staking its claim to new territory, new resources, and new subjects. We are plunder — potential cannon fodder, taxpayers, and laborers — and borders are the walls of our prison.

Even without borders, there may occasionally be clear differences in the ways societies organize — for example, one may attempt to conquer a neighbor or maintain the oppression of women. But decentralized, borderless societies can still defend themselves from aggression. A community with a clear sense of its autonomy does not need to see an invader cross an imaginary line in order to notice aggression. People fighting for their freedom and their own homes fight fiercely and are capable of organizing spontaneously. If there were no governments to fund military complexes, those fighting defensive campaigns would usually enjoy the advantage, so it wouldn’t pay to go on the offensive. When European states conquered the rest of the world, they enjoyed certain decisive advantages, including unprecedented population density and technologies their victims had never seen before. These advantages existed at a certain historical moment, and they are no longer pertinent. Communication is now global, population density and resistance to disease are more evenly distributed, and the popular weapons necessary for waging effective defensive warfare against the most technologically advanced of armies — assault rifles and explosives — are available in most parts of the world and can be manufactured at home. In a future without government, aggressive societies would be disadvantaged.

Anarchists are breaking down borders today by creating worldwide networks, undermining nationalism, and fighting in solidarity with immigrants who are upsetting the homogeneity of nation-states. People on the borders can help abolish them by aiding illegal border crossings or supporting people who cross illegally, learning the language spoken on the other side, and building communities that span the border. People farther inland can assist by ending their allegiance to centralized, homogenized culture and developing local culture, by welcoming migrants into their communities, and by spreading awareness and acting in solidarity with struggles in other parts of the world.

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favefandomimagines · 2 years

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Hidden (ace.)

Summary: after the run in with the wraith, you hide the fact that you’re injured from Ace. Until it’s impossible to hide it anymore.

AN: takes places in the beginning of season 2 after the whole thing with the wraith in the woods. It was both Nancy and the reader on the bus when the wraith attacks it, reader gets hurt pretty badly but covers it up.

Reader and Ace are in an established relationship

Request: @clairbear2002 “Hey, I was wondering if you could do Nancy drew ace x reader maybe where the reader gets hurt or cursed and tries to hid it from ace please?”

You weren’t afraid to throw yourself into a dangerous situation. Almost every time you and your friends are faced with something life or death, you’re the first to put yourself in harms way.

It was what made you and Nancy so close, because she was prone to doing it too. You joked you were born under a gold star because you have never once gotten hurt; yet. George thought you had some weird death wish, Bess tried to psychologically diagnose you based on your family situation but Ace was just Ace.

He was supportive, yet knew when to tell you something might be too much for you. Though he hated it when you were so quick to risk your life especially when you didn’t have to. But he knew that you wouldn’t be you if you weren’t ready to protect and help your friends.

Now, apart of you believed that your luck was starting to run out when you were trapped in a bus with your best friend, a supernatural creature attempting to kill you both. You thought you both came out physically unscathed, but you soon felt a deep stinging in your side and felt the blood seeping through your shirt.

You couldn’t tell you friends, especially with everything that’s going on with the Aglaeca. Your injury was very low on the list of worries you all had right now. But Ace could tell the second you were all walking out of the woods that something was wrong. You walked a bit behind the rest of the group and it seemed as if your mind was elsewhere.

It wasn’t until you got back to The Claw when Ace confronted you about your behavior. You were sat in a booth near the window and you were pale, your skin was slicked with sweat. He knew that something was not right.

“Are you okay?” He asked, sitting across from you. “I’m fine. Just tired.” You lied. Ace knew you well enough to know when you were lying and you definitely were. “Tell me the truth, Y/N.” He said.

You paused for a moment before signing and lifting the sleeve of your shirt. On your forearm was a deep, bloody gash that did not look good.

“Y/N,” Ace started. “I know, okay? I should’ve told you when it happened.” You said. “Why didn’t you?” He asked “I don’t know. I guess I never thought my good luck streak would end.” You answered bashfully.

Ace stood up and grabbed the first aid kit from the kitchen. He sat back down next to you and began working on your arm.

“Y/N I love you. Which is why I need to tell you that you’re not invincible and your not indispensable. You matter to so many people and I hate seeing you put yourself in danger all the time. If anything ever happened to you, I wouldn’t know what to do.” Ace said.

You watched him as he cleaned the wound on your arm, afraid of you looked up your tears would fall. “I’m sorry.” You whispered. “Hey, hey, don’t cry. I just don’t want to lose you.” Ace said wiping the tears from your cheeks. “I’m sorry, Ace. I guess I never thought how me acting so recklessly would make you feel and that’s so selfish of me and-“ You stared before Ace cut you off.

“Stop that. You wouldn’t be you if you didn’t throw yourself into dangerous situations. It scares me to death, yeah, but that’s the Y/N I fell in love with.” He said. “I love you too.” You replied. “Now, let’s get this cleaned up I before it gets infected.” He said.

You smiled up at him, wondering how the hell Ace was able to put up with you the way he did. But you were grateful that he does because you couldn’t do it without him.

#imagine #imagines #ace nancy drew x reader #ace nancy drew imagine #nancy drew cw #ace nancy drew #ace imagine

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scalpsavior · 1 month

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lucysweatslove · 9 months

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We're halfway through disability pride month and I want to bring something up that many of us don't know or don't think about.

We know that the medical system, at least here in the US, is not very disability-friendly. Have you ever wondered where that starts? Why so many docs do this bullshit?

Medical education is incredibly hostile towards their own students with disabilities.

It's such a problem that the American Medical Association has written ethical discussions about this only two years ago. Schools may say they are inclusive/want to foster diversity via disability status, but in practice, most only do the bare minimum required legally. They also cultivate a culture that does not respect disabilities- including not just physical disabilities such as mobility limitations and limb differences but psychological and learning disabilities and chronic health conditions.

We, as medical students, are told indirectly through policies + para- and non-verbal communication that disabilities are burdensome and do not belong in medicine. Our accommodations are given in accordance to law, not out of desire to create an inclusive environment. Psychological disabilities are still heavily stigmatized to the point that when potential students apply, they are nearly universally advised against disclosure. Once accepted, accommodations for reasonable time off for adequate rest, access to private spaces for medical telehealth appointments, time off for required in-person appointments, and even during learning, accommodations like extra time on tests or taking exams in private areas to reduce distraction are seen as "unfair advantaged." Being able to act "abled" as much as possible may not be an outwardly spoken goal, but the subtext in conversation is that if there is something we as disabled students can do to make everybody else more comfortable around us and seem "less" disabled, we should do that.

Physical disabilities that are common enough that most people reasonably accommodate for them- such as being deaf or HOH or blind- are not viewed favorably even when assistive technology gets them up to technical standards. A deaf/HOH physician can use specialized stethoscopes to visualize sound patterns, or they may use an amplifier that can bluetooth to hearing aids or cochlear implants, but they are still experience push-back for not being able to use "regular" stethoscopes.

When disabilities cannot be accommodated, the language and tone used sends the message that the person with the disability is wrong or unfit. Programs do not take often accountability for having inaccessible facilities or policies.

The "hidden curriculum" in medical education is that people with disabilities are burdens. Difficult to accommodate. And that we should make ourselves and our needs as small as possible. For those of us with disabilities- we learn internalized ableism even if we didn't come in with much.

Why would doctors, trained in an ableist environment, trained to view disabilities as burdens and accommodations as unfair, treat YOU, their disabled patient, with dignity and respect?

Disability inclusion is needed at every single step to ensure fair and equitable treatment for all.

#disability #disability pride month #disability pride #ableism #medical ableism #internalized ableism #disabilities

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snow-system-wol · 6 days

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With Menphina starting to study healing more in earnest, S'ria grapples again with the fact that he should really be able to do the same.

Ao3

"I don't want you to have to keep sitting here in pain, maybe we should… give up on this for now. You should heal it yourself."

G'raha raised an eyebrow. "Ria, 'tis quite literally just a scratch, I hardly feel it. You can try a little longer, if this is important to you."

"It is important to me." S'ria's voice sounded already very fatigued. "That's why this is so frustrating. This is so simple, I just need to…heal it." His shoulders dropped. "I have no idea what I'm doing, it just doesn't click. I don't know why Menphina can but I just can't."

"You just need to channel your aether. It should feel easy and natural, like when you attune to aetherytes or the flow of aether currents – so try imagining that sensation and working from that."

S'ria's hands fell from where they were hovering over G'raha's arm to rest flat on the floor. "...is it supposed to feel 'easy and natural' to do those things? I thought it took everyone a lot of effort." He willed himself to not start crying. "I see."

G'raha shifted to sit next to S'ria, leaning gently into his shoulder. "You do not need the aid of magic to be a formidable ally. There is no one I'd rather have in a fight. And besides, there are plenty of people who cannot properly channel aether, such as –".

"Garleans. Such as Garleans." S'ria's voice was flat, but there was a deep anger just below the surface.

"...such as Thancred, was what I was going to say".

S'ria sighed and forced his posture into something less tense. "That is an easier comparison, yes."

"Given the cause of Thancred's difficulties, might you have some sort of block or stagnation – even if it's just psychological? I'm afraid that 'tis beyond me to properly check, but there are others. Mayhap we could have someone, a specialist, take a look at you –"

"No!" S'ria immediately leaned away from G'raha, ears flat against his skull. He looked confused and alarmed by his own reaction. "No… no doctors, no evaluations, no one looking and testing and..." S'ria cut himself with a grimace.

Several questions formed and died on G'raha's tongue, none of them feeling the right level of delicate or respectful to speak into existence. Why not? or. Is there something I should know? or. Did He do something that created an association? He let them all go. Knowing the cause of the fear wasn't important unless S'ria actually wanted to work through it. Avoiding the topic of S'ria's younger years, there remained one question that he could not help but ask.

"Have you ever been medically examined for the sake of your health any time in the last decade?" He said it as gently and nonjudgmentally as he could.

S'ria shook his head miserably, looking as though he feared G'raha would be upset with him. G'raha could not say he wasn't concerned, with all that S'ria's body had been subjected to in the rather brutal last several years. (Good gods, mayhap that should've been a priority after the Light was poisoning him for months). But...

"Ria, 'tis all right, I shall drop it. We can cross that bridge if it becomes necessary, and you may always consult my medical knowledge first if that's more comfortable."

S'ria nodded, hesitantly lifting his hands to hover over the scratch on G'raha's arm. "Can I just…keep trying? For a little longer?"

"May I ask why you are so set on learning? Is it truly so bad if Menphina hones her skills instead? As you've said, she's always been quite responsive, and able to help you heal without even displacing you fully."

S'ria sighed. "I'm not…unwilling to kill, Twelve know I've done plenty of it – but I'd like to be able to help someone in a way that doesn't involve violence. Surely the Warrior of Light can be more than just that?"

G'raha gently took S'ria's hands in his. "Look at me?" S'ria half-complied. "You do help people in other ways. When we rescue people that try to flinch away from your touch, I've seen the care and empathy you afford them, the way you try to reassure – and before you say that's Menphina, I know you do it too."

S'ria looked at G'raha, confused and not much comforted. "I mean – how could I not? Isn't that the bare minimum, if I understand what their suffering is like?"

G'raha squeezed his hand. "No. It is not the bare minimum, and that you even believe that is a testament to you caring. It's easy to rid people of a problem – less so to help ease their hearts once the dust has settled."

S'ria leaned down and gently bumped his forehead against G'raha's. "Thank you, I appreciate you saying as such, even if I'm not fully convinced. I'll let this go for the moment, before I exhaust myself." He drew back with a determined look. "This is not me wholly giving up on the idea."

G'raha chuckled fondly. "I would not dream of presuming that."

#snow-system #ffxiv-oc #ffxiv-reactions #s'ria 🌸❄️#speaking of our prev post about his aether #writings

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surely-galena · 1 year

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A very short collection of Giann & Marius fic recs

(for @roshie-writes who asked in this post and I didn't want to go over the character/word limit in the comments)

i see dead people (against my will) by @samsspambox

Artem, for as long as he could remember, was able to see things others couldn’t.

Yes, Senior Attorney Artem Wing can see ghosts.

He could see ghosts and hid the ability for as long as he could remember. That was his life and, frankly, it was a good one. No one but Neil knew about his ability (and even then, he was still skeptical), he had a crush on a coworker for the first time in his life, and no ghosts had ever come to haunt him.

He just never expected to see Giann von Hagen back in the NXX office.

or alternatively: artem wing sees the ghost of giann and has to deal with the fallout. which may include telling his maybe friends

While the focus of Sam's fic here is mostly on Artem & Giann, there's a lot of Giann content (and a lot of Marius, too)! It's Marius having to come to terms with Giann dying and ghost!Giann trying to communicate with his brother through Artem. Also Giann being a little menace and found family shenanigans if you enjoy that :D

There's a Giann death scene so heads up for that (but I personally find it to be really well written). Overall this fic is a good mixture of comedy and angst and it absolutely does pull at the heartstrings!

you can run, you can hide, but this email WILL find you! by @actualbird

from: Vyn Richter [[email protected]] to: Marius von Hagen [[email protected]] subject: Tutoring Details

Good day, Marius.

I am Dr. Vyn Richter, a professor as well as a friend of your brother, Giann. I am sure that at this point, he has explained to you his request that I be your tutor. I agreed, though the wording of his explanation to me seems that this is a non-negotiable for you. Rest assured, I will ensure that our classes will not be a hindrance in any way. Instead, what I have planned is a course to aid your transition towards your postgraduate studies.

Attached is the syllabus and schedule for our classes, both open to reasonable adjustments. If you have questions, you may email me any time after 12:00pm.

Best regards, Vyn Richter, Ph.D. Associate Professor Department of Psychology Stellis University

from: Marius von Hagen [[email protected]] to: Vyn Richter [[email protected]] subject: Tutoring Details

Cool, got this. See ya. ✌️

Sent from my iPhone

Before going missing, Giann asks Vyn to tutor Marius. Vyn agrees. (A story of annoyance and acceptance, all told through emails.)

If you enjoy epistolary fic, look no further than this one Zak wrote a while back! I still think back to this fic and your question gave me the chance to go back and have a reread :D

The main focus is Vyn and Marius figuring out their tutoring sessions (and a prelude to found family), but there's also a lot of background Marius & Giann and Vyn & Giann. It's tagged as comedy and light angst, so you know what's going down with Giann during the events of the fic :')

10/10 would recommend, I mean the fic is already on this list of recs but I just want to reiterate that this one is really good.

Tiny plug-in for myself but it's just chapter 3 of my fic The L stands for Lukecrative (link leads to ch3) for a very specific scene when Marius has a flashback about getting ice cream with Giann as a kid. You don't necessarily need the context of the previous two chapters to understand what's going on, but I've provided the link for the ease of navigating straight to the ice cream scene if you wish.

Posts here on tumblr:

Time by @samsspambox -- a giann von hagen musing (about marius, about his mother)

yes marius and giann have matching tattoos and heres how they (emotionally) end up getting it by @actualbird -- 1.5K words; Giann takes Marius to get a tattoo and then decides to get a matching one, too, because he doesn't want Marius to be in pain alone

hey, who made the NXX logo? also by @actualbird -- Giann commissions Marius to make the NXX logo we see in HQ

@cheri-carnival 's translated comics from artist 君楽研 (jun le yan) [1] [2] [3]

Some fic concepts by me based on fake titles Sam gave me, but the second one spotlights Giann and Marius

Hope you find something you like in here, roshie-writes!! Have a good rest of your day!

#unfortunately it's a bit tricky to find fics focused only on marius and giann!#giann von hagen #marius von hagen #tears of themis #tears of themis fic #I have a giann & marius fic concept in my doc of ideas so maybe I should bump that up just to throw in my two cents into the tag haha

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your-local-uwu-artist · 10 months

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It was a warm day in June. The sun was shining brightly. It was the last day of school. Then, I’d be done for good (unless I went to college). my classes seem to take forever. Then it’s graduation time. My mother, father, grandmother, grandfather, and younger sister are in the front row. My friend, Katherina maze, is called first. Then Fiona kettle, Mazza grave, and Anthony Brass. Then, my name, Timpani Ozona, is called. My family is cheering louder than ever before. In fact, my 4th grader sister, flute, even got her cheerleading squad to do a cheer for me! I was smiling wider than ever. I get to study to be a doctor, my dream job. I was excited, but might have gotten a bit carried away when I did a front flip in front of the audience. I go back to my spot, feeling awesome.” After everyone was called, me and my friends walked home. ‘How lucky!’ Kate exclaims. Her twin sister, Jane, replies in a know-it-all voice, “it takes skill, not luck.” Then she turns to me and congratulates me. When I get home, I get no break. We went out to Zina’s grill, my favorite. Then we went to get cake, where I bump into my friend celine. She congratulated me then says “tell me everything you learn, alright?” “I’ll try,” I reply. “I have to leave on august 1st. See you!” When we return home, I pack for college. It is in Madica, Cleveland. I’ll have to go live there. ✨S U D D E N L Y✨, my best friend hope pops up out of nowhere. “Agh! You scared me!” “We can be roommates!” She says excitedly. “Yes!” I say. The rest of the days go by in a blur. However, I can remember something late said. My old boyfriend, Dane, totally dumped me. I was sad for a while. Kate told me. “If you get an awesome boyfriend tell me!!!” Hope pipes up. Her little sister piper is there. She and my sis are BFFS. Three days later, I’m speechless. “Wow” I say, taking in all of Cleveland university of tequila. A guide shows us around. It’s amazing. I hear hope suddenly ask if we can be roommates. “You’ll have to talk to ms. Paleo.” He paused for a moment. “Do you have your books?” “Yes!” “Good. Your classroom is over here.” He says, pointing to a room marked ‘275’ I find two empty desks. We sit down. “Okay class, open to page 52 in the human body: anatomy and workings.” The days go by, and I learn a lot…

It is late august. I am twenty-three years old, and I still keep a diary. I don’t know why. Today this morning I went for a walk, but something told me to bring my first aid kit. I brought a fold up stretcher (are injuries really that severe today???) and stuff to set a broken bone (I’m a total weirdo). I had been strolling happily for five minutes when I heard something interesting. I saw two TOD (tribe of darkness) boys pestering- no, threatening another. They were slowly inching closer so he’d fall off. I caught one word tho: “you’re so scared you belong on the human side haha” they laugh. Why are they laughing, I wondered, why are they pushing someone off Cliff Cleveland, which is 150,000 meters tall. I set up my portable elevator (tons of technology, right? It’s the year of 2109. I climb down it, but it’s too late. The sound of somebody falling echoes through the canyon. He took quite a fall. I pull out the stretcher, and go somewhere where my supplies are. I’m thought learning learning how to treat TOD people was completely worthless, but it paid off BIG TIME. thirty minutes or so later, while I’m fixing myself a cup of tea, I hear a noise. I quickly head back to the room. He looks confused. I hadn’t really thought about what I’d do once he woke up. He starts squirming. He’s obviously trying to get out. He needs to stay 25 more minutes. I was warned about this. I also took psychology (I was a very lucky girl. Not many girls went to college. I had to get 100% on every assignment and had to do 15 sheets of extra credit every night. I had to work very hard.) I also learned that TOD people need to stay in bed for an hour. There were still twenty three minutes left.

@interdimensionalvoid ????????????????????????????????

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darklydeliciousdesires · 2 years

Text

Mo Shíorghrá - Chapter Five.

Thanks to the few people reading and interacting with this, you make the effort worth it.

Previous chapters - One Two Three Four

Tag list - In the comments. Please DM to be added/removed

Words - 5,870

Warnings - 18+ content throughout. Minors DNI!

“Oh my god. Oh, Jesus, Fil. Look at them. They’re so little.”

A sob followed those words, Abi reaching for his hand as she blinked tears down her cheeks after being wheeled into the NICU to see her sons for the first time, her own condition now stable enough to allow for her to leave her bed. She’d taken her first steps the day before on her new hip with the physiotherapist and the aid of a frame, finding it much easier than she’d anticipated it would be, but still very painful.

Painkillers following that had helped, but there was nothing she could take to get over seeing her precious babies within an incubator, wires and tubes sticking out of them. Her husband had been very right when he’d told her they were not much bigger than one of his hands.

He crouched by her side, kissing her hand, his other skimming her inner forearm while she reached in to touch Henry for the first time, her little finger stroking his hand, the baby responding instantly to his mother's touch, his tiny fingers flexing at the contact. Still, she continued to cry, Chibs wiping her tears, kissing her head tenderly as he gently wrapped an arm around her.

“They’ve gained just over half a pound each since their delivery, they’re gaining at the upper end of the expected weight gain, so this is great progress. Bearing this in mind, we hope for you to be able to hold them when they reach four pounds, so realistically it’ll be around another three weeks," Tara explained, handing Abi a tissue.

“I hate that I can’t hold them, though I understand.” If Chibs could identify with anything, it was that. His arms ached to hold his babies close, strong as his fatherly protective streak was. For Abi, it was a hugely emotional moment, reaching through to Riley as well to gently stroke his foot where he wriggled, pleased to hear that it had only been in the last few days he’d become strong enough to do that, their steady progress reassuring. Still, seeing them so small, compounded by the upset she felt at not being able to hold them, colliding with the rage that someone had put their mortality at such grave risk, it all stirred up within and left her very emotional.

“Shhh, darlin’. Try not tae upset yourself,” Chibs told her softly after she’d returned to her room, Abi crying uncontrollably. “Do you need anything?”

“A hug. I need a big hug.”

“Okay. Shuffle forward a wee bit.” With his help, she edged down the bed, Chibs kicking off his boots and shrugging himself out of his jacket and kutte, climbing onto the bed behind her, letting her rest back against him as he held her carefully. Oh, she’d needed that, to lie back against the steadying, comforting embrace of her husband, breathing in his scent, turning her head and listening to the rhythm of his heartbeat against her ear. Still, for a time, she couldn’t quite rest, though.

“They’re not even out of the woods yet, the fucking list of issues they could go on to have. Cerebral palsy, hearing and sight trouble, learning difficulties, psychological problems, asthma, increased risk of sudden infant death syndrome. It isn’t going to be as simple as they put on weight, leave incubation and eventually come home. This could be something that leaves them with afflictions for their whole lives!”

“Abi, you’ve got to calm down, darlin’,” he began, taking her hand. “If they do, then they do, and as their mum and dad, we support them through it. If they’re deaf, we learn sign language, have cerebral palsy, get them to the right specialists to cope with it, blind, train the pups to be guide dogs. We adjust and we cope.” She smiled a little, at hearing his suggestion to train their dogs to guide dog standards. They’d be distracted at the first sniff of an ice cream cone. That flicker of amusement didn’t last long, though.

“I want to fucking murder the bastard that did this.” Of course, he knew that her upset was fuelled by a burning rage within to exact revenge upon the man who had almost taken hers and her children’s lives. It was very much in line with the woman she was, after all.

“You’re not alone there, hen. It’ll happen. As soon as he’s found, I’ll make him suffer, you have my word there.” He stroked her face gently, Abi sobbing against his chest, twitching with discomfort when her broken clavicle began to throb. Turning slightly to her right side made it bearable, tucking her head beneath his chin, tracing the top line of the bill tattoo on his chest with her thumb. He could have used that moment to reveal they’d at least found which direction her attack had come from, the Russians responsible, but calming her down again was of greater importance at that moment. Fuelling her anger wouldn’t do her any good, she didn’t need it while recovering.

What she needed was his comfort, of which he gave, stroking the side of her neck as he felt her breathing steady, her crying beginning to cease. It was nice, to simply hold her close again. For Abi, that closeness was the kind of comfort she’d craved, just to be near to him, to feel his warmth. It made her physical pain a little more bearable to withstand, too. God, the c-section site hurt like hell, all her muscles burning with fury from being yanked apart and cut. Listening to his breathing calmed her further, her fingers coming to stop against his chest as she began to drift, Chibs smiling down at her as he kissed her head.

“I’m here for a while, then.” There was no way he was walking her up. Whenever he visited her, she always looked so tired, her sleep mostly pharmaceutically induced rather than naturally occurring. Now that she’d fallen asleep without the aid of such, he wasn’t prepared to disturb it. Instead, his mind wandered back to the first morning he’d ever woken up with her lying against him like that, which from memory was likely after the fifth occasion he’d ended up in her bed...

Belfast, 1994

“Well, I think it’s fair to say I knackered you out plenty last night," he spoke when Abi finally roused from slumber, sitting up, her eyes widening a little when she realised where she’d been resting.

“Oh Jesus, I’m sorry.” Embarrassed, she scooted back over to her side of the bed, Chibs raising an eyebrow.

“For what?”

She pointed at his chest, the place she’d been very comfortably sleeping against. “Sleeping on you. Probably the last thing you want.”

He was amused at her assertion, leaning close to her. “I’m not made of stone, Abi. Not averse to a pretty wee thing falling asleep on my chest. What I’m not so fond of is feeling like a badger curled up in my mouth and died. Can I borrow your toothbrush?”

She laughed there, sitting up, finger combing her mountain of unruly hair, wondering what kind of state she looked. “Yeah, no worries. There’s a spare one in the cabinet, actually. Just use that.” He got out of bed, Abi treated to the feast for the eyes that was him naked, all lithe muscles and tattooed arms.

“Stop staring at my arse.”

She snickered, looking amused. “Why? It’s gorgeous.”

And he knew he was gorgeous, and had an enviably trim body, but still, a sexy, seventeen-year-old who could have her pick of any bloke she wanted was the one who wanted him. He’d never get over the inner gleam of such knowledge. While he was cleaning his teeth, Abi made a few rounds of toast and some coffee, taking it all back to bed with her.

It had been just over a week since they’d first had sex, and this was the first time he’d stayed over after finishing doing a superb job of shagging her utterly senseless the night before. He joined her, Abi pushing the toast plate over a little, Chibs thanking her before taking a slice.

“Oh, thank fuck you use actual butter. Fi buys that Flora crap and it tastes vile,” he exclaimed, Abi shuddering.

“So does my ma. Da got me this from the farmers market yesterday, we sat there eating it with fresh soda bread while watching Men Behaving Badly. Ma won’t have it on at home, absolutely can’t stand it but it makes us cry laughing!” Rubbing her eye as she remembered the antics of Tony and Gary, she then looked at her finger, seeing a huge, black smudge. “God, I bet I look an absolute state, so I do!”

Chibs turned, eyeing her. “You look smoking.”

“Even with my makeup all smudged?”

“Especially with your makeup all smudged,” he grinned, leaning to kiss her shoulder. Once they’d finished eating, Abi found herself back against his chest, very content to lie there being lazy. She hadn’t really thought he’d be all that fond of little moments of affection and closeness like that when they weren’t actually having sex, being that she was just a casual bit on the extramarital side, but he surprised her greatly. “Has anyone ever told you just how gorgeous your eyes are? I swear, you’ve got the prettiest eyes I’ve ever seen.”

“You think?” she asked, tilting her head back a little, Chibs leaning to kiss her.

“Aye, they’re like the fucking sky. You’re bloody beautiful.” He kissed her again, Abi humming happily. She honestly didn’t expect him to be like this, so it took her by surprise greatly. She didn’t truly know how to feel about that either. He was married, after all, and despite the fact he seemed very invested in having sex with her whenever he could, he loved Fiona. She knew that. The way he behaved with her that morning did seem somewhat contradictory to her assertion, though.

Or was she just being seventeen and naïve? Being nice to her didn’t mean he loved his wife any less. Thinking differently to that, she knew, would lead to her getting hurt.

While she was chastising herself for overthinking something that was merely supposed to be a bit of fun to be enjoyed, she had no idea that the man whom she lay against was struggling with something quite similar. Even though he found himself making it sexual very quickly that morning, he’d be lying to himself if he said that was solely what he felt towards Abi, sexual interest and nothing more.

Apart from her being gorgeous, funny, cute, crazy as hell and into a lot of similar things he was, he felt a connection to her that he truly couldn’t explain, a link, something unseen, undescribed by words, but which stirred his emotions heavily. He found it a little distressing, if he was frank, that what he felt, he’d experienced with no other, not even Fiona. It scared him a bit, that he could fall so headlong into something, something that was likely the last thing a fun loving seventeen-year-old wanted from him.

So, he kept to what he knew she definitely sought.

They shared fervent kisses as his fingers raked at every depth inside her soaking cunt, one of her gorgeous, long legs rested over his waist as they lay facing one another, Chibs glad that Fiona was away visiting her mother in Ballymena, so he didn’t have to hurry home. He could spend as long as he wanted sending his young lover to the edges of heaven, so that’s exactly what he did.

He moved his kisses to her neck, fingers retreating to begin stroking at her with long rubs through her slit, spreading her wetness around, the heat of her against him absolutely blazing. Moving his focus to her clit, he softly circled, touching her so gently he was barely making contact, little by little increasing the pressure, watching her intently as she lost herself to what he inflicted upon her.

“Is that nice?” he chuckled in whisper at her breathlessness, Abi’s helpless groan making him laugh a little louder.

“Oh, you’re too bloody good by far!” He loved it when she was utterly beside herself with pleasure.

“Just you wait until it’s my tongue.”

“I can’t wait, don’t make me!”

Oh, what a state he’d worked her into, dark eyes watching her as she continued to softly mewl, his fingers suddenly speeding up. “Be patient.” Kissing her again, he silenced her until sliding his mouth to her breasts, sucking her nipples, having her practically sobbing with bliss, his fingers now working a quickly rubbed circle at her bud. Abi cried out as she broke apart against the hot throb they evoked, the flames of her release licking her spine, her shuddering body spent, yet craving more. “Okay, now you get my mouth.”

He laid open mouthed kisses down the centre of her body, the smell of her arousal, her fragrant womanhood calling his mouth, beckoning the swipe of his tongue, which he duly laid after levelling his face with her burning slit, wet pressure bathing her sensitive bud, a slow swirl to begin with, gentle flicking added, his hands stroking her slender thighs as she tipped her head back and moaned prettily for him, his mouth gorging upon her as he began to suck, stopping only to bob his tongue inside her a few times, feeling her clench on him as she gasped and shook.

“Fuck, you have such a pretty little pussy.” He complimented, moaning as he sucked her, her insides sparking with incandescence. Her hands held his head, nails flexing in his hair as he took a mouthful of her and sucked again, evoking her wail, watching her with lust blown pupils, covetingly gazing at the beauty who he was aroused out of his senses by.

The wet drag of each lick languidly rolled through her slit, up to her clit again, circling, nudging, glimmers skittering through her when he aimed his next suck right there, her breath catching in her throat, her little bud sucked plumper before bathed in the fast beating of his tongue. Fast... faster... faster... oh... how was he real?

Her body arched off the bed, her toes curling, an orb of fire rolling through her groin before boom, it exploded and she came hard, her legs wrapping around his head, her clit throbbing against his tongue. He moaned against her slick pink, tongue continuing to explore her, hands roaming up to grasp her breasts and roll her nipples between his thumbs and forefingers.

“You look so goddamned pretty when you cum.” he praised her with, taking mouthful of her and sucking thirstily, eyes closing, hands continuing to stroke her curves, Abi gently writhing against his face.

There was no other way to explain it, she was lost in pleasure, unmoored, adrift on the wide, dark sea that was a man who knew exactly how to turn her on until she felt senseless and boneless. She had never known arousal like it, never been tended to quite so thoroughly, by someone who held such extensive knowledge of a woman’s body and exactly how to play with it.

His fingers pushed back within the heat of her core, laying soft kisses all over her slit, up her abdomen, tongue circling her navel before slipping down again to continue eating her. He granted her no clemency with the sublimity of his tongue, rapid and unyielding as he gratified her fervently, her womanhood the altar where he laid his worship of such beauty, given unto him.

He was almost predatory with his mouth, not ceasing or slowing, his fingertips seeking the place they had before to press precisely, her insides twitching aggressively as his tongue swept her bud with rapid circles, her body keening as she felt herself driven closer, her core close to absolute convulsion as she panted and wailed, the surge of orgasm tearing through her.

“Oh... my... fucking... god...” she panted, Chibs kissing her thigh, watching her fighting for breath. She then looked at him with a glint of utter feral desire. “Get on your damned back.”

“I’m not much in the habit of being ordered around, but since it’s you.” He turned at speed, cock rigid against his hip, Abi climbing astride him and sinking down on that big, thick hardness with a shuddered breath. Oh, how she’d ridden him into that bed. Fuck. It was a memory that hadn’t left him, sex so good it still made him tingle when he thought of it, as well as what followed. Just six days later and they’d told each other how they knew they felt, not able to fight the fact that against all odds, they’d fallen deeply in love with one another.

“Filip, have you got a hard on?” Abi suddenly spoke, waking after napping for half an hour. His chuckle confirmed.

“Sorry.”

“You’re bloody unfair! Lying there like a bloody tepee and I’m too broken to enjoy it!” It was a moment of comic relief they both needed, Chibs stroking her arms as he leaned to kiss her head, waiting for himself to calm down a little before moving back to the seat. “I suppose I should take it as a compliment.”

“Yeah, you should. What can I say? I miss my wife, in more than one way.” His wink cracked her up, Abi holding her side as she tried to compose her chuckles. Her lung was still very sore, but she guessed having a shattered rib poke a hole in it would do that to anyone. “I was lying there thinking about the first time I slept over at your old flat, when you woke up and freaked out that you’d fallen asleep against my chest.”

She remembered it like it was yesterday, her mind revolving in the horror of ‘oh my god, as if he wants his shag piece all curled up around him. Abort, Abi! Abort!’ before she’d scrambled away from where she’d so comfortably rested. She laughed about it now, now of course that he was hers, the humour of trying to remain somewhat aloof with the man whom she’d fallen so hard in love with. She thought of it later that night after he’d left, the day he’d taken her down to Armagh to get the tattoo she wanted for her birthday, the artist of her choice residing there. Kevin Dougherty had been the man who’d done her first, a snake winding around her right wrist, his work famous throughout Northern Ireland.

She could picture it so clearly in her mind, walking towards his shop hand in hand with her outlaw...

Belfast, 1994

Armagh. Nobody knew them in Armagh, meaning that for the first time ever, Abi could walk along with her boyfriend hand in hand, and it didn’t matter. There’d be no prying eyes ready to run back to either her father or Fiona with the scandalous information, so if she wanted to suddenly stop in the middle of the street and kiss him, she could.

“What was that for?” he asked after she’d done just that.

“Because I fucking love you.”

He arched an eyebrow. God, she loved it when he did that. It made her throb, both in her heart and between her legs. He was just too sexy for his own good. “Good enough reason as any, CB.” He kissed her again then, a big, open mouthed, tongue swirling kiss, drawing a few comments of disapproval from passing elderly people, neither of them caring at all over the distain their filthy kisses provoked.

While walking, Abi noticed that they attracted further attention too, as was the norm with outlaws. People knew who the Sons were, even if nobody there knew him personally, the stories of the club travelled, of course they did. Outlaws spelled danger, and while Abi thrived on such, others did not.

They were the men mothers warned their daughters to steer clear of, and Abi, she was the kind of girl those same daughters were told never to end up like. Her dress code alone raised eyebrows of disapproval from women, and looks of longing from men. That day, she’d chosen her standard fishnets, a pair of platform PVC boots, and a black cropped top and hot pants set, her usual plethora of necklaces and chains and her old, battered leather jacket on top.

Yes, the outlaw and his barely dressed young girlfriend raised more than a few eyebrows as they walked the street, even more so when they entered the tattoo shop, the men within it giving Abi some very favourable glances. One of whom had Chibs in fits while Abi was checking the placement of her tattoo in the mirror as Kevin looked on.

“She your girlfriend, fella?”

“Aye,” Chibs beamed, the large man with the shaved head and the near full bodysuit of tattoos shaking his head as he looked back at her.

“You lucky fucking bastard.”

“I know.”

“How do you let her out of bed? I swear, I’d never be off her if she was my girl!”

Chibs laughed, winking at her when she blew him a kiss. Of course, she could hear their entire conversation, the large man next to her boyfriend not being particularly quiet. “Trust me, she gets ridden more than my fucking Harley.”

“Fucking fair play, sonny.” He offered his hand, Chibs shaking it with laughter before joining Abi.

“So, all ready for your tramp stamp, crazy baby?”

Kevin snorted laughing, loading the tattoo machine with black ink.

“Stop calling it that!”

“Never!” he leaned forward and kissed her, Abi grumbling at him before wincing as Kevin began.

“Arrgh, bloody hell! I forgot how much is fucking stings to start with!”

“Yeah, like a cat with red hot claws scratching the shite out of you, isn’t it?”

“That’s exactly what it feels like, so! I remember Monica getting hers done on her ribcage, remember, Kevin? She likened it to hot razors.”

“I do, aye. You having to fan her with a copy Skin Deep so she didn’t pass out, bless her. I miss that girl,” he lamented. Kevin had once dated Monica very briefly after she’d originally gone to him for her first tattoo and they’d hit it off, the relationship fizzling out due to neither of them having the time to travel the near hour journey to see each other regularly. “Not half as much as I bet you do though, eh?”

“Likely not. She was the best.”

“She was, a bloody grand lass, so.”

She continued to wince and grumble as the outline was added to, having her mind taken off it by gripping Chibs’ hand and receiving kisses from him. At doing so, once again he was the envy of all of the men within the shop, grinning to himself smugly. Sexy, heavenly body, utter badass, and she was all his. As for Abi, his affections took her mind away from feeling a little mournful over her sister, and the fact that her lower back was currently on fire.

“I’ve a good plan to take your mind off it later,” he whispered, kissing the side of her neck. He was never really one for public displays of affection, but with her, he truly couldn’t help himself.

“Oh? And what does this plan of yours entail?” she inquired, looking at him with a lower lip biting grin.

“Letting you sit on my face until you forget how sore your tramp stamp is.”

She narrowed her eyes immediately, but the grin that followed was that of megawatt magnitude. “The first part, I like. You continually referring to my lovely tattoo as a tramp stamp, not so much.”

“I’m paying for it; I get to call it whatever I like. Happy birthday, beautiful.” It had been her actual birthday two days previously, but Kevin only had space to tattoo her after the event. Besides, she wanted to get drunk off her face all day, and alcohol and tattooing didn’t mix, so there’d been that, too. And god, how drunk the SAMBEL lads had gotten her. As soon as she’d walked into the clubhouse with her friends in tow, the roar of ‘shots!’ had gone up like a siren.

“I could do with some of that right now.” she grumbled back in the present, shifting in order to get comfortable, placing her arm back in the sling to alleviate the pain in her broken clavicle. It always did hurt after her walking physio, having to take weight on her left arm to support herself as she walked, getting the muscles working around her new hip. At least it all wasn’t quite as painful as she remembered in the moments between her morphine dazes upon first waking after her accident. She thanked god that apparently, he was watching out for her.

Her healing was progressing just as it should have been, meaning that after a further twelve days in hospital, she was given the all clear to head home. Not that she particularly wanted to. Not without her boys.

“I’ll be back to see you first thing in the morning. You get to meet your aunt Venus too, she’s going to bring me up here while daddy is working, yes, she is,” Abi pledged to her babies, stroking their hands lovingly. “I love you both so much. See you tomorrow.” It took her a few moments to compose her tears before she stood, aided by a crutch in one hand, holding onto Chib’s arm with the other. Walking was still painful, but not as bad as it had been, now three weeks on from the accident and subsequent replacement. She just had to be careful not to overdo things, since she still got out of breath fairly easily after the trauma she’d suffered to her lung.

She could have killed for a cigarette, but didn’t think it wise beyond taking two puffs off the one Chibs lit once they got outside, with him eyeing her disapprovingly. “Don’t come crying to me when you cannae breathe right,” he warned, Abi tightening her jaw a little.

“I think after everything I’ve been through, I can be forgiven for wanting a small hit of nicotine.”

He nodded. “Aye, I suppose you’re right.”

“I might need you to put that on a t shirt, since you so seldom concede,” she teased, walking steadily to her car.

“Shut up, you wee shite.” She laughed, and it felt good, good to laugh and joke with him, to see him smile rather than look perpetually scared to death. Once he’d helped her into the car, he took her home, carrying her things in and then grabbing hold of two very excited dogs so they didn’t dive all over her as she carefully made her way inside. “Steady, lads, steady.” he told them, letting go of their collars once she was seated in the armchair, Ozzy and Jimi staying low, their entire bodies quivering with excitement that their mum had returned, receiving scratches and tummy rubs from her, Abi thrilled to see her again.

Looking around, she was glad to be home, the sights and smells comforting to her. “Is that furniture polish I smell?”

“It is.”

“Oh. Venus came by and cleaned, then? She said she’d call in to make sure the house hadn’t reverted back to, and I quote, a bachelor pad comprised of dusty surfaces, overspilling ashtrays and the scent of ripe underpants.”

“She did, but I did the cleaning.”

“Pardon?” Her eyes widened so much, he couldn’t help but laugh softly.

“Just because I don’t like to, doesn’t mean I don’t know how to. I cleaned and did laundry, and Venus cooked enough food to feed a small army so you’d be all sorted and wouldn’t have to do anything other than take things out of the freezer or fridge. And she walked the dogs as well. That woman is an absolute diamond.”

Abi smiled, certainly believing so. “Anyway, my love. I have to shoot off. Duty calls, but I’ll try not to be too late home. Love you.”

“Alright, don’t worry about me. I’ll just be sitting here having a 90’s film marathon. Love you too.” While she relaxed with her very happy dogs and the first of a long run of her favourite films, Chibs rode out with the rest of the club to meet with the remaining west coast based Russians, determined to get to the bottom of who the hit and run driver was.

The bar they met at was seedy and stank of vodka and stale urine, a typical meeting place between men who most definitely fell upon the wrong side of the law. It was the kind establishment regular, law-abiding patrons eschewed by a very wide berth.

“Gentlemen, welcome,” Leo Lenkov, the man who had ascended to power within the west coast fraction of the Russian mob spoke, gesturing to the red leather seating section he and his guys rested within. “Although, I am at a loss to understand the purpose of this meet. Your Mexican friends tied up any, ah, loose ends between us, shall we say.”

He eyed them carefully from behind the thick framed glasses he wore, his turnout immaculate, smelling strongly of expensive cologne, his suit pressed crisply, the top buttons of his black shirt undone to reveal a similar tattoo to that of the man they were attempting to locate.

“Except for the one that lead a Russian to attempt to murder my wife and unborn children,” Chibs spoke, his dark eyes practically boring into the back of Leo’s skull.

“And you know this, how?” Clay took the image from his kutte, unfolding the paper and sliding it across the black, chipped lacquer table. Leo lifted it, studying it carefully. “Russian, he most definitely is, this is obvious. Alas, I do not know his identity. I know of course from his tattoos that he is indeed bratva, but not of my particular franchise.”

Chibs virtually snarled at his reply. “I’m calling bullshit on that.”

Clay moved on instinct, halting the reach for his gun with a hand pressed to his arm. Leo remained passive, unmoved. “You can call it whatever you want, mister Sergeant at arms. No number of bullets will jog a memory that is simply non-existent. This was not a planned hit from my side. We did that already, of course, as you know. Your wife, I would likely assume, was a target on a personal vendetta basis, for nothing was sanctioned by me. This, I swear on the pride of my motherland. Also, a personal code of mine would forbid me from calling for the harming of children. Especially of the unborn kind. A man has to have his uncrossable line.”

He sank a shot of vodka, placing his glass down. “Does she have any links to my people, perhaps there is a hostility there which needs to be uncovered. Is she Russian herself, your wife?”

Chibs intrinsically knew when he was being lied to, knew the little tells to look out for, the plays, the gestures. Leo Lenkov did not display any of them. He was telling the truth, and from the looks of it, did actually want to offer assistance. “No, Irish. And yes, there’s a tentative link. She used to date a man you’ve likely heard of, Vladislav Morozov.” He was, of course, one of the men whom had died at the hands of the club in their retaliation against the Russians, on the night of Opie and Lyla’s wedding.

Immediately, Leo’s eyebrows fluttered in recognition. “You are married to the gadyuka?”

“What the fuck does that mean?” Clay questioned, about as perplexed as everyone else not fluent in Russian.

“Gadyuka is the Russian word for viper. Vlad spoke of her to me once, told me of the insane IRA arms dealer he had been with for around half a year. Her reputation precedes her. Gentleman, I would not personally go after a woman with that kind of propensity for blowing up those who anger her, for I am not a stupid man. Whomever did this, I would likely wager is either a stupid man, or a man hellbent on revenge for something she did to him, but I state once more, this did not come from me. Perhaps your net needs to be cast further afield. I am sorry I can be of no further assistance, and I do mean that. As far as I am concerned, we are even now.”

Clay looked to Chibs, who nodded, satisfied by what Leo had stated, but not why his wife had been targeted. He mulled it over as they left, suddenly stopping outside of the bar when it hit him, his eyes widening in realisation.

“Fuck.”

Jax turned, pausing from placing his helmet on. “What is it, bro?”

“He’s fucking right, about it being personal.” How it hadn’t dawned on him until that moment, he didn’t know, but he could have fucking kicked himself. “Who was it that got us the information to begin with over where Jimmy was hiding out? Who reached out to her ex-boyfriend, a call that ultimately led to him ending up dead?”

Jax closed his eyes momentarily. “Jesus fucking Christ.”

“We need to start digging into Vladislav’s family.”

“And you need to get home to your wife, because that guy is still out there, and if he knows she ain’t dead...” Clay began, Chibs racing to his bike.

“Shit!” Of course, there’d been no sniff of further retribution while she’d been at the hospital, the guys considering their debt paid in the harm that had befallen Abi. But now they knew differently, with the perpetrator still out there in the wild and Abi now released, anything was possible.

“Hey, Chibs. Take this with you. For all we know, Abi is the best person to ask, if she met any of his family back while she was with him.” Taking the picture, he stuffed it into his kutte before departing at speed, Clay ordering Ratboy to follow him back and keep a lookout, sending Phil to the hospital to be stationed outside the NICU unit, just in case an attempt to harm the babies was made. Chibs must have broken every speed limit there was in racing home, his heart calming immediately at entering the house to the sounds of happy barks from his dogs and a content looking wife. Thank Christ.

“You’re back much earlier than I expected,” she spoke, pausing the film, receiving a kiss from him happily.

“We spoke to the Russians, and while we’re confident it didn’t come from their specific fraction of the bratva, it did throw up a line of thinking we hadn’t pursued,” he began, reaching into his kutte and unfolding the picture. “This is an image of the man who hit you. Do you recognise him at all?”

Taking the picture, Abi only needed to study it for a second, her body stiffening slightly. “Aye, I do. That’s Ivan Morozov, my ex-boyfriend Vlad’s elder brother.”

Now, here you are at the end of the chapter, and your author is asking you that you please, please comment and/or reblog. User interaction is dwindling and visibility within tumblr is becoming so poor that content creators are literally vanishing. You can help with that. If I created something you liked, don’t just click heart, SHOW ME. TELL ME. Please!

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