#the wicked powers conspiracy theories | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

decolonize-the-left · 1 year

Text

"youre being an alarmist"

The party of Telling on Themselves is actually conflating queer ppl/our allies with pedophiles and would happily see us tried to death as pedophiles if we get in between Desantis and human rights.

Fascist ideologues taught that national identity was the foundation of individual identity and should not be corrupted by foreign influences, especially if they were left-wing. Nazism condemned Marxist and liberal internationalisms as threats to German national unity.

Fascists in general wanted to replace internationalist class solidarity with nationalist class collaboration. The Italian, French, and Spanish notion of integral nationalism was hostile to individualism and political pluralism. Unlike democratic conservatives, fascists accused their political opponents of being less “patriotic” than they, sometimes even labeling them “traitors.”

[...]

Scapegoating

Fascists often blamed their countries’ problems on scapegoats. Jews, Freemasons, Marxists, and immigrants were prominent among the groups that were demonized. According to fascist propaganda, the long depression of the 1930s resulted less from insufficient government regulation of the economy or inadequate lower-class purchasing power than from “Judeo-Masonic-bolshevik” conspiracies, left-wing agitation, and the presence of immigrants. The implication was that depriving these demons of their power and influence would cause the nation’s major problems to go away.

Which includes everyone else they targeted of course. Queer folk included. For depriving the Aryan race of children.

From the same entry:

Populism

Fascists praised the Volk and pandered to populist anti-intellectualism. Nazi art criticism, for example, upheld the populist view that the common man was the best judge of art and that art that did not appeal to popular taste was decadent. Also populist was the Nazi propaganda theme that Hitler was a “new man” who had “emerged from the depth of the people.”

This is the ideology behind banning drag. Labeling it as legally obscene which generally means "offensive or disgusting by accepted standards of morality and decency." There is no singular legal definition. Whatever locals see fit. Which is how Desantis is getting away with what he's doing.

Pretty direct tie to that is this next bit:

Revolutionary Image

[...] Under the Third Reich, Goebbels subsidized an exhibition of modern art not to celebrate its glory but to expose its decadence; he called it simply the “Exhibition of Degenerate Art.” Fascism’s claims to newness did not prevent its propagandists from pandering to fearful traditionalists who associated cultural modernism with secular humanism, feminism, sexual license, and the destruction of the Christian family.

And for all the leftists constantly saying to disregard the rural, more conservative areas like the ones I'm in. To the ones saying "they're a useless effort" and to focus on cities.

Antiurbanism

Fascists also pandered to antiurban feelings. The Nazis won most of their electoral support from rural areas and small towns. In Nazi propaganda the ideal German was not an urban intellectual but a simple peasant, and uprooted intellectualism was considered a threat to the deep, irrational sources of the Volk soul. Jews were often portrayed—and therefore condemned—as quintessential city dwellers. In 1941 La Rocque commented: “The theory of ‘families of good stock who have their roots in the earth’ leads us to conclusions not far from [those of] Walter Darre, Minister of Agriculture for the Reich.” Romanian fascism relied heavily on the support of landed peasants who distrusted the “wicked” city. The agrarian wing of Japanese fascism praised the peasant soldier and denigrated the industrial worker.

Yeah. Gives new meaning to "those damn city folk" which is you guessed it: a dogwhistle.

"oh but the Democrats aren't racist or-" I mean they are but even if they weren't:

Varieties of fascism

Just as Marxists, liberals, and conservatives differed within and between various countries, so too did fascists. In some countries there were rivalries between native fascist movements over personal, tactical, and other differences. Fascist movements also displayed significant differences with respect to their acceptance of racism and particularly anti-Semitism, their identification with Christianity, and their support for Nazi Germany.

Identification with Christianity

Most fascist movements portrayed themselves as defenders of Christianity and the traditional Christian family against atheists and amoral humanists. This was true of Catholic fascist movements in Poland, Spain, Portugal, France, Austria, Hungary, Croatia, Bolivia, Argentina, Chile, and Brazil.

[...]Although fascists in Germany and Italy also posed as protectors of the church, their ideologies contained many elements that conflicted with traditional Christian beliefs, and their policies were sometimes opposed by church leaders. The Nazis criticized the Christian ideals of meekness and guilt on the grounds that they repressed the violent instincts necessary to prevent inferior races from dominating Aryans

Sound familiar maybe?

Many fascist ideas derived from the reactionary backlash to the progressive revolutions of 1789, 1830, 1848, and 1871 and to the secular liberalism and social radicalism that accompanied these upheavals

Hmmmm

Secular liberalism- Political ideology: Secular liberalism is a form of liberalism in which secularist principles and values, and sometimes non-religious ethics, are especially emphasised. It supports the separation of religion and state.

Radical politics denotes the intent to transform or replace the fundamental principles of a society or political system, often through social change, structural change, revolution or radical reform. The process of adopting radical views is termed radicalisation.

So they just took advantage of people in rural areas, used their support for subtle fascist policies to develop fascism and silence to people who opposed them fascism. In a time of social upheaval. Huh.

That's funny, it sounds just like the radicalization of people in rural areas across the US that are sick of the status quo and politicians using that momentum to push discriminatory bills and silence opposition... happening right now...in 2023 after a few years of protests in a row.

This one's easier to read in modern day if you interpret this as being "anti-woke"

Racial Darwinists such as Vogt, Haeckel, Treitschke, Langbehn, Lagarde, and Chamberlain glorified the survival of the fittest, scolded humanitarians for attempting to protect the racially unfit, and rejected the idea of social equality (“Equality is death, hierarchy is life,” wrote Langbehn). Chamberlain saw no reason to give inferior races equal rights. Treitschke raged against democracy, socialism, and feminism (all of which he attributed to Jews), insisted that might made right, and praised warrior imperialism (“Brave peoples expand, cowardly peoples perish”).

But surely it couldn't have listed even trad-wives and the divine feminist TERF nonsense right???

In the late 19th century many conservative nationalists were philosophical idealists who accused liberals and socialists of materialism and thereby portrayed their own politics as more spiritual.

And lastly:

Although in principle there were significant differences between fascism and nonfascist conservatism, the two camps shared some of the same goals, which in times of crisis led some nonfascists to collaborate with fascists.

As Weiss observed, “Any study of fascism which centers too narrowly on the fascists and Nazis alone may miss the true significance of right-wing extremism. For without necessarily becoming party members or accepting the entire range of party principles themselves, aristocratic landlords, army officers, government and civil service officials, and important industrialists in Italy and Germany helped bring fascists to power.”

[...]During the Great Depression, thousands of middle-class conservatives fearful of the growing power of the left abandoned traditional right-wing parties and adopted fascism. The ideological distance traveled from traditional conservatism to Nazism was sometimes small, since many of the ideas that Hitler exploited in the 1930s had long been common currency within the German right.

[...]

Fascists also received support from Christian conservatives. Between 1930 and 1932 Hitler was supported by many Protestant voters in rural Prussia, and after 1933 the Catholic church in Germany largely accommodated itself to his regime. In 1933 the Vatican, which had previously interdicted Catholic membership in socialist organizations, signed a concordat with Germany that forbade priests to speak out on politics and gave Hitler a say in naming bishops.

Neofascism

The postwar period to the end of the 20th century

[...]Neofascist parties differed from earlier fascist movements in several significant respects, many of them having to do with the profound political, economic, and social changes that took place in Europe in the first decades after the end of the war.

For example, whereas fascists assigned much of the blame for their countries’ economic problems to the machinations of bolsheviks, liberals, and Jews, neofascists tended to focus on non-European immigrants—such as Turks, Pakistanis, and Algerians—who arrived in increasing numbers beginning in the 1970s.

[...] Finally, the gradual acceptance of democratic norms by the vast majority of western Europeans reduced the appeal of authoritarian ideologies and required that neofascist parties make a concerted effort to portray themselves as democratic and “mainstream.”

Some neofascists even included words like “democratic” and “liberal” in the titles of their movements.

Most neofascists abandoned the outward trappings of earlier fascist parties, such as paramilitary uniforms and Roman salutes, and many explicitly denounced fascist policies or denied that their parties were fascist. Noting this transformation, in 1996 Roger Eatwell cautioned: “Beware of men—and women—wearing smart Italian suits: the colour is now gray, the material is cut to fit the times, but the aim is still power.…Fascism is on the move once more, even if its most sophisticated forms have learned to dress to suit the times.” Similarly, historian Richard Wolin described these movements as “designer fascism.”

As with fascist movements of the interwar period, neofascist movements differed from one another in various respects.

The rhetoric of neofascists in Russia and the Balkans, for example, tended to be more openly brutal and militaristic than that of the majority of their Western counterparts.

[...] Portuguese, British, and (for a time) Italian neofascists advocated corporatism, in contrast to French and many other Western neofascists, who promoted free-market capitalism and lower taxes. In the 1990s in Russia and eastern Europe, neofascist movements were generally more leftist than their counterparts in western Europe, emphasizing the interests of workers and peasants over those of the urban middle class and calling for “mixed” socialist and capitalist economies.

One of the largest neofascist movements in western Europe in the 1990s was the Italian Social Movement (Movimento Sociale Italiano [MSI]; renamed the National Alliance [Alleanza Nazionale] in 1994). Founded in 1946, it was led at various times by Giorgio Almirante, Augusto De Marsanich, Arturo Michelini, and Gianfranco Fini. As an official in Mussolini’s Italian Social Republic, a puppet state established by the Germans in northern Italy in 1944, Almirante oversaw the regime’s propaganda machinery.

When the MSI was launched in 1946, Almirante sought to give it a modern image, urging its members to “beware of representing fascism in a grotesque way, or at any rate, in an outdated, anachronistic, and stupidly nostalgic way.”

Fascists aren't stupid and they've had a long time to plan out how to make their beliefs publicly acceptable.

Tumblr user daj2793 is showing us how that includes aligning their opponents with people that the majority would find reprehensible to defend.

It's a very simple pill to swallow if you don't know what's in it.

66 notes · View notes

goldenstrikeheart · 9 months

Text

Villain Glinda the Good AU idea

There was (and still is) a fun theory going around that Glinda was the true villain in the original Wizard of Oz movie, so I decided to make an AU that Glinda is the villain in Lost in Oz.

In this AU, Glinda got rid of the Wizard and the Wicked Witches through the Original Dorothy, and when Dorothy left, Glinda was the only acceptable ruler of Oz. In Lost in Oz, in childhood, Glinda makes friends with Evelyn and Crya to try to get them to forgive their past. It is clear later it won’t happen, and she eventually leaves it be. As said in the show, Glinda had been trying to bring the Gales and the witches together, because if they forgave each other, she would have less threats to her position from the Witch family. Later in the series, the magic crisis is still happening, but Glinda keeps her magic in case all goes to ruins, so she will still have power. Langadeire hates Glinda for the whole Gale and witch stuff but slowly figures out that Glinda was the main villain, causing all the pain her family went through. She doesn’t take it as an invitation to become the hero, as she realizes that she can rule Oz herself, so she goes to keep Glinda away in the painting. (Same events in canon, really.) While Glinda is stuck in the painting, she tries her best to get out, but when she hears Dorothy from outside of the painting, she stays and waits. She knows that the Gales are smart and will push to find answers. Dorothy will eventually find Glinda. When finally she does, Glinda manipulates the game again.

Upon learning that West has inner magic, Glinda takes West under her wing to learn about how it works. If Glinda was found out that she had manipulated everything, it was something that could threaten her position in charge of Oz. When it turns out Dorothy is the one who can help West with her magic, Glinda tries to separate the two’s friendship. If those two teamed up against her, Glinda would have trouble. With West, Glinda tells her about how Dorothy’s ancestor killed hers, and Glinda put in the thought that she should stay away from Dorothy. That Dorothy could potentially be dangerous or the inner magic she has could be used for destructive motives. With Dorothy, you put a thought in her head that she has to prove that she’s a good person, and that she’s not like the ‘witch killers’. Glinda doesn’t mention either that the witches were wicked, making it seem like they were innocent, or that the Original Dorothy killed them by accident, and never truly intended on killing the wicked witches.

When the Wizard scenes happen, Glinda takes a chance to put the Wizard in a more evil light, saying that he stole the gnome king’s belt, and destroyed the treasury. Truly, he knew the truth of Glinda trying to get power by erasing all of the threats to herself. He blew up the treasury to get rid of any of the other magical items that she could use to her advantage, but it was an illusion. He hid the items, making Glinda think they were destroyed, while they were just hidden out of plain sight. When he comes back, the Wizard tries to get Dorothy’s help on his side by talking about how he knew his family to get her trust, but Glinda is using her family background as a motivation to be better than them, and not to be ‘evil’ or a ‘witch killer’, making her against the wizard, despite that he’s the truly good guy.

“Well, I know all about you, and your family.” “I’m sure you’re not going to be like your ancestor, right?”

In this AU, Reigh never fully trusts Glinda in this AU, because something feels off. Of course, the others usually will brush off his suspicions for being paranoid. When Dorothy and West’s fragment in their friendship starts getting more apparent and worse, he takes it upon himself to figure out what’s happening, and why they just keep fighting and arguing. Patchwork later joins in with him, mostly because he thought Reigh was being paranoid and a conspiracy theorist, later figuring out what Reigh is onto something. They go undercover to meet the wizard, and try to piece things together.

When they figure it out, they go to Ojo to tell him, as he is the one who sees Glinda the least. When they set out all the evidence that Glinda was there to try and get more power, Ojo seems to slowly process it. Throughout the whole story, he has been in the middle of Dorothy’s and West’s fights, and just wants them to get along like they used to. He doesn’t take too much time to get convinced, as the evidence seems clear on it. He only questions it because they got the information from the Wizard, who was said to be bad.

Finally, Scarecrow. He was the hardest person to convince of course, because all the time he knew Glinda as said, ‘Glinda the Good’, who helped Oz and ruled over just and fair. Even with his memory problem, everything he can remember is nothing to what the others are saying. Of course, he always thought the wizard wasn’t evil, but he doesn’t think Glinda is evil either. Before he had lost his memory, the Wizard had tried to convince him, and it had somewhat worked, but you were very good at minuplating the game to your will, so the Wizard never truly got to convince Scarecrow that she was manipulating everybody.

For West, West does not agree with them at all. She thinks that Glinda isn't lying or that Glinda has a plan for power and such. She thinks that Dorothy is dangerous to be around, and that Glinda is correct in what she’s saying. But the more West thinks about it, she slowly starts realizing manipulative actions and the way Glinda words things. It throws her off, but she realizes her friends are correct. It takes her a lot of time to fully understand it, and she feels a bit betrayed at it. That Glinda the ‘Good’, had always been lying. They are left with having to try to convince Dorothy.

Because of Glinda’s manipulative moves on Dorothy, she questions her mortals, constantly trying to make everybody happy and constantly stressing about it. She is trying so hard to not seem like a bad person, and to prove that she's NOT one. (She's not.) With the fights West and she had been having, she's trying to convince herself that she's not dangerous, and helps good people. When she learns that Glinda is the villain, she sort of mentally falls apart for a while. Glinda couldn't be the villain, because that means that she was helping a villain. Which means she's not a good person. She questions who's good and who's bad, and for a while she's just denying it for the sake of her sanity at the moment.

#lost in oz #wizard of oz #alternate universe #glinda the good #villain au #should i write this?#Reigh thought she was the villain #and what if she WAS?#should i post more?

22 notes · View notes

mariacallous · 3 months

Text

Donald Trump’s supporters believe the “deep state” is out to get him – even though, if the USA had a deep state worthy of the name, the CIA would have sent a hitman to dispatch Trump years ago.

The Tory press, Liz Truss, Jacob Rees-Mogg, and their pals on the Tory right blame an establishment plot for the failure of 14 years of Tory rule – rather than blaming – oh I don’t know, let’s pick an example at random – themselves.

Everywhere you see the new right of the 21st century embracing the conspiracy theory of the old left of the 20th century. Democracy is in danger because the unelected elite in business, the civil service and the media will never allow real change.

I am not making a case for moral or political equivalence. Indeed, I want to argue that the radical right matters more than the left for one simple reason: the radical right actually wins power.

Before going any further, here is how the sworn enemies can look like bosom buddies

To understand the mental universe of the rulers of the UK and, if our luck fails us, the future rulers of the US, come back with me 40 years to the left of the 1980s.

We, too, were raging against a world that seemed to have escaped our control. Voters, including working class voters, had put Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher in power, and they kept them there, despite the right of the day presiding over extraordinary levels of unemployment. The Cold War was entering a terrifying phase. The Soviet Union and the USA were placing medium-range nuclear weapons in Europe and threatening to turn the continent into a battlefield.

If I could offer you one book that encapsulates the mood on the 1980s left, I would offer Chris Mullin’s A Very British Coup, published in 1982 and turned into a TV drama later in the decade. (See above).

It’s still worth reading and watching, if you have a few hours. I have nothing against it as drama. But the best way to view is as a map of what were then left-wing fears.

Mullin was a Labour MP and a follower of Tony Benn, the left-wing champion of the day. Benn failed to become Labour leader or even deputy leader. But inspired by the movement he represented, the party swung to the left in the 1980s. No good did it do Labour. It went down to landslide defeats in 1983 and 1987. I can still remember feeling scared and astonished as a young man as I watched Mrs Thatcher crush all opposition.

Mullin escaped from defeat into a kind of fantasy world. He imagined what the “elite” of the day would do to a radical Labour government. Mullin created Harry Perkins, a working-class Labour leader. He became prime minister, and was determined to put in place a Bennite programme.

Media monopolies would go, under Mullin’s fictional Labour government, so out with Rupert Murdoch. The UK would commit to unilateral nuclear disarmament, and withdraw from Europe (the old left hated Europe with a passion that matches that of today’s new Right). It would support a Palestinian state, nationalisation…and all the other courses on the left’s menu du jour.

“'Our ruling class have never been up for re-election before,” cries Perkins. “But I hereby serve notice on behalf of the people of Great Britain that their time has come.’ Such language had never been heard from a British Prime Minister before. Although received with rapture in Sheffield town hall, Harry Perkins’ words burst upon the Athenaeum as though the end of the world was at hand. Which, in a manner of speaking, it was.”

The Athenaeum for readers unfamiliar with the geography of the British class system is an establishment Pall Mall club, where in the imagination of Mullin and many, many thousands of others the privileged meet to plot their wicked schemes.

Which Mullins’ establishment duly does. It leaks details of Labour politicians’ affairs to the gutter press and drives their families to suicide. The CIA conspires to make the country ungovernable. The civil service and the military conspire against the elected government they are sworn to serve.

I could go on but you get the picture. The power elite will never allow the left to govern.

And now it is right-wing politicians who sound like the left of the 1980s. Here is Jacob Rees-Mogg, a faux aristocratic populist at this week’s launch of the satirically titled “Popular Conservatism” movement. He was a snob looking for a mob to raise

Rees-Mogg began with the language of the 1790s and quoted the anti-Jacobin Tory politician George Canning denouncing the cosmopolitan progressives of Georgian England.

“A steady patriot of the world alone, The friend of every country but his own”

Well, OK, and fair enough. Canning has been proved right down the generations. Liberals and leftists have often laid themselves open to charges of lacking patriotism. In Chris Mullin’s day we were demanding that the UK give up its nuclear weapons in return for nothing at all from the Soviet Union, to cite one of many examples.

And, yet after 14 years of Conservative rule, who is betraying whom? Who is the true friend of this country?

Wages have not increased, the public realm is derelict, the country is in decline.

Rees-Mogg refused to accept responsibility. Instead, he spent much of his speech laying into British judges. The reason this government had failed to stop asylum seekers reaching these shores was, he said, the fault of the judicial enemy within.

Speaking alongside him was Liz Truss, the Lady Jane Grey of the Conservative party. In her 49 days in power, she crashed the economy, sent interest rates hurtling upwards, and nearly destroyed the private pension industries.

Commentators covering the event focused on the admittedly absurd spectacle of the most unpopular prime minister ever appearing at a “popular conservatism” conference.

They missed the construction of a myth. Truss’s economic policy was as much a fantasy as any of the ideas of the defeated left of my youth.

When they were in power, Truss and her chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng announced unfunded tax cuts for the rich. There were no reductions in public spending to pay for them, just the belief that tax cuts would magically pay for themselves – an idea as utopian in its way as the left’s belief in the 1980s that, if the UK unilaterally disarmed, the USSR would do the same.

Despite it burning in flames, the right cannot let go of the dream, as Truss proved with her speech

“The left don’t just compete with us at the ballot box now. They also work to take over our institutions. We see it in much of the media, we see it in the corporations, we see it in the quangos and much of the bureaucracy that emerged under Tony Blair.”

And which quangos did Ms Truss have in mind?

The Office of Budget Responsibility, home to a rather tame bunch of economists, the right wants to blame for the economic disaster Truss let loose on the British.

Notice the conspiracy theory. The crash in the British economy was brought about because generally rather right-wing men (and the occasional woman) working in the bond markets concluded that the government of the United Kingdom was in the hands of “morons”.

Rather than accept the judgement of her peers. Truss and those around her want to blame the Treasury, the Bank of England, and the Office for Budget Responsibility for the Conservative party’s mistakes

But note, too, how the right appropriated the conspiracy theory of the left.

One of the leftists in Mullins’ drama declares that

“They’ll never let a Labour government headed by Harry Perkins take power,” he told her.”

‘Who’re ‘they’?’ she had asked innocently.

‘Your friends in the City, the newspaper owners, the civil servants, all them sort of people’.”

Today he might be a Tory explaining why, to use Truss’s list, the media, the corporations and the quangos will never allow a truly Conservative government to enforce the “will of the people”.

Paranoia has its consolations. The left of the 1980s was destroyed in election after election. And yet it could think that it did not fail because leaving Europe and unilaterally disarming were terrible ideas. Rather we could believe a vast conspiracy had brainwashed the public into voting against its interests.

Conservatives think the same today, and the temptation is to make some glib remark about the “horseshoe theory” proving that the radical left and right aren’t so different after all and leave it there.

But there is one very striking difference: the radical left loses but the radical right wins.

The UK is so clearly moving towards electing a Labour government we can miss the wider picture that everywhere you look radical right parties are advancing.

Indeed, even out of power Donald Trump is controlling our lives. He is threatening to throw Ukraine to Putin and pull US forces from Europe, and can rely on his allies in the US Congress to make his malign dreams come true.

Despite calling themselves patriots, Rees Mogg and Truss are all for Trump. They prefer his America to NATO and the UK’s defence interest because Trump’s success and the successes of the European radical right allows them to believe that they are not out of the game yet.

And they may not be wrong. Unless we can find arguments to defeat them, they will be back.

7 notes · View notes

richincolor · 6 months

Text

Jessica's 2023 Favorites

It's always so hard to pick my favorite books of the year -- there were so many! I read poignant graphic novels that made me sob, lighthearted adventures that made me think, and heartfelt romances that I couldn't stop telling people about. I've narrowed my favorite reads this year down to three -- and I imagine they might be on your list too! We'd love to hear what you loved reading this year and what you look forward to reading next year. Anyway, without further ado...

In Limbo by Deb JJ Lee A debut YA graphic memoir about a Korean-American girl's coming-of-age story—and a coming home story—set between a New Jersey suburb and Seoul, South Korea.

Deborah (Jung-Jin) Lee knows she's different. Ever since her family emigrated from South Korea to the United States, she's felt her Otherness. For a while, her English isn't perfect. None of her teachers can pronounce her Korean name. Her face and her eyes—especially her eyes—stand out. As the pressures of high school ramp up, friendships change and end, and everything gets harder. Even home isn't a safe place, as fights with her mom escalate. Deb is caught in a limbo, with nowhere to go, and her mental health plummets.

But Deb is resilient. She discovers art and self-care, and gradually begins to start recovering. And during a return trip to South Korea, she realizes something that changes her perspective on her family, her heritage, and herself.

This stunning debut graphic memoir features page after page of gorgeous, evocative art, perfect for Tillie Walden fans. It's a cross section of the Korean-American diaspora and mental health, a moving and powerful read in the vein of Hey, Kiddo and The Best We Could Do.

The Wicked Bargain by Gabe Cole Novoa El Diablo is in the details in this Latinx pirate fantasy starring a transmasculine nonbinary teen with a mission of revenge, redemption, and revolution.

On Mar León-de la Rosa's 16th birthday, el Diablo comes calling. Mar is a transmasculine nonbinary teen pirate hiding a magical ability to manipulate fire and ice. But their magic isn't enough to reverse a wicked bargain made by their father and now el Diablo has come to collect his payment: the soul of Mar's father and the entire crew of their ship.

When Mar is miraculously rescued by the sole remaining pirate crew in the Caribbean, el Diablo returns to give them a choice: give up your soul to save your father by the Harvest Moon or never see him again. The task is impossible--Mar refuses to make a bargain and there's no way their magic is any match for el Diablo. Then, Mar finds the most unlikely allies: Bas, an infuriatingly arrogant and handsome pirate -- and the captain's son; and Dami, a genderfluid demonio whose motives are never quite clear. For the first time in their life, Mar may have the courage to use their magic. It could be their only redemption -- or it could mean certain death.

Highly Suspicious and Unfairly Cute by Talia Hibbert Bradley Graeme is pretty much perfect. He's a star football player, manages his OCD well (enough), and comes out on top in all his classes . . . except the ones he shares with his ex-best friend, Celine.

Celine Bangura is conspiracy-theory-obsessed. Social media followers eat up her takes on everything from UFOs to holiday overconsumption--yet, she's still not cool enough for the popular kids' table. Which is why Brad abandoned her for the in-crowd years ago. (At least, that's how Celine sees it.)

These days, there's nothing between them other than petty insults and academic rivalry. So when Celine signs up for a survival course in the woods, she's surprised to find Brad right beside her.

Forced to work as a team for the chance to win a grand prize, these two teens must trudge through not just mud and dirt but their messy past. And as this adventure brings them closer together, they begin to remember the good bits of their history. But has too much time passed . . . or just enough to spark a whole new kind of relationship?

#highly suspicious and unfairly cute #the wicked bargain #in limbo #ya lit #graphic novels

14 notes · View notes

darkestprompts · 1 year

Text

Leprosy and inner strength

Thinking about our favorite king again. Particularly this line:

"My suffering has granted me a modicum of power..."

His class description also has allusions to how the trials imposed by his decaying body have given him a special type of strength:

"He has learned to channel his energy inward, a kingdom within one man. His power can neither serve nor comfort others; but, drawing on it, he can gain strength others can but dream of, or the endurance to bear what no other could."

It's already remarkable that he did not become frail from suffering the late stages of a disease known to cause muscle weakness and nerve damage. Yet, tway it's described, Baldwin seems to have grown stronger, at least in some aspects. His class is defined by devastating blows from a massive, cumbersome weapon. His eyesight is terrible, sure, he's slow (although note that his base speed is still higher than Reynauld's!) and I suppose you could interpret his massive base HP as pain tolerance and lack of sensitivity. But beyond the physical consequences, he seems to have gained this zen-like ability to, quoth the Ancestor, perform beyond one's limits.

Ok, why is this interesting? Because, you see, Baldwin is religious. There's a common misconception that medieval Christianity only saw disease in a negative sense, probably stemming from the apocalyptic despair we see in accounts of the Black Plague. I want to make a few objections to that view.

First, epidemics can more easily be seen as a result of vague "evils of mankind" without the victims being considered culpable. Refer to common conspiracy theories, where minority groups would be blamed and suspicion could actually grow faster if they weren't affected. Secondly, despite all that talk that "the son shall not suffer for the sins of the father", the idea of an innocent suffering for another's sins isn't unusual. Think of all the parents that were thought to have been punished by losing their children. Third, and most important, "natural" evil such as diseases and disasters could be seen as punishment for the wicked, but also as trials for the good. Even Jesus was tested in the Bible!

That's all to explain that with regard to leprosy, yes, there was ostracism and sure enough it was thought of as punishment or an outward sign of moral corruption. But it was just as well seen as a test of faith to be endured with patience, or even its own kind of indirect blessing. No, really: since suffering alleviates sin, the suffering of a serious and painful disease was thought to ensure a blissful afterlife. Lepers were experiencing purgatory on Earth, and that was regarded with a sort of solemn respect.

In that sense, the leper could be considered to lead a sort of saint-like existence, enduring the decay of the body away from society like a hermit. And recall that at the time hermits were considered "white martyrs" for sequestering themselves from mundane life for spiritual reasons ("red martyrs" were ones who suffered violent deaths for their faith). This special status of leprosy as a disease was further highlighted by the way they are featured in scripture, as deserving of compassion and aid.

The hagiographic tone of Baldwin's story and the fact that he has gained superior ability through his "death to the world" fits this idea perfectly. It's only enhanced by the existence of one other class that thrives on suffering -- the Flagellant -- because it corroborates the notion that this is a setting where pain can be transformed through religious conviction. You can even make the white vs red martyr parallel, and I think that's just lovely.

#darkest dungeon #meta #dd leper #dd baldwin #thoughts #headcanons

55 notes · View notes

boundinparchment · 1 year

Text

Deus In Absentia - VII

The first time was a coincidence. The second time was a fluke. But the third time? You were starting to think it was fate. Or, more likely, a calculated trap. Reposted from my previous blog, @/zhonglis-empty-wallet AO3

You had questions.

A lot of them.

A third of them were why you allowed and enabled this habit of drink and food consumption near delicate materials.

The entire book only took a few hours to read and as you boiled water for the requested tea, your mind spun so hard, you couldn’t see straight.

A cycle of violence started by the defiance and rejection of the Heavenly Principles, by straying too far from the path of destiny.

But how could one stray from destiny when, in fact, destiny itself was a lie? Couldn’t one have been destined to stray from the intended path to begin with? Closing the loop precisely by thinking one was not following it, ultimately fulfilling the very end one didn’t wish to?

And that was only a single part in the larger picture. A Veil between Teyvat and the rest of the universe, powered by the Ley Lines; Teyvat was nothing more than an inverted pocket dimension. One in which the demon gods were the kindest, playing the role of wardens, while their celestial masters lorded over all and sought to maintain the status quo of ignorance and compliance through violence and genocide.

There were whole other universes out there beyond the stars.

But the very stars in the sky were nothing but a fucking lie .

If this was true. Then again, why wouldn’t it (couldn’t it) be?

The kettle screeched and you were brought back to the task at hand. Dottore’s omission on what tea was preferable was one that would make anyone else falter to the point of inaction. Asking him was tantamount to offering oneself up on a silver platter for his next experiment. It interrupted his workflow to deal with such a mundane thing. But for you, the choice was obvious; he wanted to discuss the knowledge shared and for those occasions; something strong and caffeinated.

Such information wasn’t exactly in the purview of your title of Archivist, not really. But it helped and made life, such as it was, bearable. Not when it came to preservation of documents, granted. At least most of the priceless stuff was already hermetically sealed away. You saw to that months ago.

In hindsight, lacking such attention to detail would have made everything far better to begin with. Then you wouldn’t have been swept up into this and your head wouldn’t swimming with the knowledge that everything about the very world you lived in was a goddamn fucking lie.

You arranged the tray and made your way to Dottore’s private study, where he had retreated hours prior. When you nudged the door open after knocking and announcing yourself, he cast a single glance towards the door and then pushed whatever paperwork he was looking at aside. At least he was self-aware.

“You’ve read it, then,” Dottore stated as you began pouring tea for both of you.

You flicked your gaze up at him, finding a wicked smile on his face and a dark gleam in his eyes. It was the same look he got when he realized one of his “specimens” was frightened or when he had someone cornered. Something between ravenous hunger and joyful pride.

“I have,” you said, turning your attention back to the porcelain before you.

“And what do you make of it?”

Words sprang to mind: conspiracy, lies, heresy, nonsense. It contradicted everything accepted as truth in the known world, even the very Archon the Fatui served. The hypothesis (for it couldn’t be a theory, theories required more concrete evidence) made sense on paper, all laid out and organized in an easy-to-digest structure with supporting evidence and sources.

“An inverted pocket dimension tucked away at the roots of the World Tree and ruled by demon gods that are just as much prisoners of the Heavenly Principles as the humanity they rule, with a false sky and supposed predetermination” you said at last. “It sounds like a tale from Yae Publishing House, truthfully.”

You, of all people, would know; you were in the business of books, after all.

“I understand the concept well enough,” you continued. “But where do the Fatui and the Tsaritsa’s plan come into play? As far as the events of the book go, the Cryo Archon was…”

Dottore slammed a hand on the desk, the tray and tea set rattling. You flinched, glared, and then caught yourself, suddenly fascinated with the sugar bowl.

“ Nasha Tsaritsa and her fellow Archons were given no choice but to take the action they did. It is the nature of Ascension, of owning a Gnosis.”

He rose from his seat and began pacing. What you had hoped would have been a short, civil conversation clearly sparked something in his soul (did he have one of those?); the more he spoke, the more animated he became.

“The Archons are enforcers of a will that is not their own. They were not acting in Celestia’s interest; rather, they were coerced to do so. We believe the Archons to be all-powerful, that allogenes are selected by them to represent their ideals. But everything in this world has a price , Archivist. Even one as brilliant as myself has not found a proper way to fix that for Delusions.”

You thought back to the text. Dottore was referring to the evidence pointing out that several of the Archons, the Tsaritsa and Morax among them, wanted to leave Khaenri’ah, the Godless Ones, in peace. Their hands were forced when Khaenri’ah struck first. Heathens stepping foot in Monstadt would only give people ideas and when the Archon War was finally coming to a close…senseless slaughter was no one’s wish.

You could understand the ideas and actions of the Eclipse Dynasty. They were already paying a steep price for rejecting Celestia’s chokehold, living separate from the rest of the nations. A land where life sprang from nothing, a tool of survival twisted into a weapon of destruction. The land was far underground, left with nothing but the knowledge of the world above and what they didn’t have.

“Was it Khemia, what you did to Krupp?” you found yourself asking.

“Not quite, one needs to be incredibly attuned to the earth for that. As far as I am aware, it truly only works for those from the Godless Land, in either birth or another connection. There is a fundamental that those like you or I cannot master. The First mentioned as such…”

That took you aback. You’d met the First, Pierro, briefly; stars for eyes and a coat with tails that held a galaxy inside of it. He was…?

“So, Khaenri’ah tore a hole in the Veil Between Worlds, exposed the lie, and then was just…”

“Obliterated. They refused to heed to Celestia to begin with and when one is in direct opposition to an otherwise totalitarian rule…it makes perfect sense strategically, Archivist. Especially when you consider they had no need for Visions…no need to sacrifice anyone at all except their Field Tillers and the shadow creatures of Gold’s…enhanced beings, standing in for their humans…imagine, if you would, the power in one with a foot in both worlds, human ingenuity but a machine’s strength, far beyond that of a mortal…they might have won if they’d thought it through.”

He was lost in his thoughts, fingers combing through his hair as a grin broke out on his face.

“ Nasha Tsaritsa lost so much in the Cataclysm. So did humanity. We worship Vision users but in truth their Visions regulate the Ley Lines, powering the very Veil Khaenri’ah once tore. The tears still exist, if you know where to look. That brat Tartaglia would know.”

“My question remains the same, Lord Harbinger. Why learn of this truth unless the Fatui, unless Nasha Tsaritsa ,” you were careful to use his wording, our Tsaritsa , “are taking action?”

He would have remained at the Akademiya if he wished to simply study , you knew. He’d said as much when his assistants dawdled, when he was stuck waiting for material, coaxing information, or in a logical loop from previous sources that resulted in broken flasks and sleepless nights. The Akademiya was bogged down by inaction, too focused on the gathering of knowledge to make any damn use of it.

Dottore looked at you again, a manic smile and jubilation dancing his eyes.

“We will take all of the chess pieces back and put them back into play, or in other words, collect the Gnoses that Celestia loves so much. Find the Genesis of it all and free fate itself. We will tear down the Veil and never again let the truth be hidden from us. And then at last, we still bring down the sky and hand humanity back control. What say you, Archivist?”

He stated it as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.

The destruction of everything. If this was known outside of these four walls, outside of the Palace, it would mean another Cataclysm. Assuming you understood, this meant that the Harbingers were not just seeking the Gnoses for power but to locate the Genesis Pearl…a newborn star…

Hope.

They were going to bring hope back to the masses, stop the cycle. Do what those in power failed to do so long ago. How far you’d come from your tiny shop, selling books to allow escapism, widen horizons…wasn’t this so much better, you reasoned.

“What can I assist with, Lord Harbinger?”

Dottore let out a laugh that curdled your blood and set it afire all at once.

_____________________________

Other assistants were given tasks you took on in Krupp’s absence as well as your other projects. You never had staff below you before but you could only hope you conveyed your plans and intentions accurately; after all, you always ran the shop yourself with hardly any help, and managing people was not the same as managing a supply chain.

You weren’t the only liaison between the Harbingers but you were probably the most aware , you came to realize. Others in a similar position either feigned a lack of knowledge or were kept further in the dark. Should you have been honored by the truth that Dottore thrust upon your shoulders, a sharing of a burden? Or was ignorance, to the other Harbingers, a kindness?

La Signora’s return from Mondstadt brought a hum of excitement to the Palace. One Gnosis obtained. Rumors swirled among the lower ranks about how she punched the Anemo Archon in the stomach, centuries of grievances in a single blow, and ripped the chess piece from him as if it was nothing but a flower amongst weeds. She would not even step close to the basement doors for the initial testing, much to Dottore’s frustration. From the Second’s mumbling, you gathered that the lab was too similar to the Akademiya for her comfort, something your commanding officer couldn’t wrap his head around.

“It is a well known fact that one left the Akademiya in search of a more conducive environment, I fail to understand her logic,” was the final word on that.

When you gazed upon the Eighth, you realized perhaps it had nothing to do with comfort at all, for she met Dottore shot for shot in a verbal spar. She was cold, distant; she needed to be. It wasn’t clear why, for her facade seemed to melt for a moment whenever the Eighth laid eyes on the Lovers, but it was clearly for everyone’s best interest.

The Lovers, Arrleccino and Columbina, were inseparable. Even if the Tsaritsa separated them for missions, they always found their way back to one another. Magnets. You preferred Dottore’s parallel to particles sped up only to collide, resulting in their own destruction. As loyal as they were to the cause, it was their subordinates who did their reports and paperwork and made all preparations. One needed to essentially run their own business if they worked below either of the Lovers.

Which was true of your presence alongside Dottore, you supposed, but at least he was distracted by the cause itself…

“Let them have their peace,” Pierro often said. “For we may never know what comes next.”

The First was intimidating. After all, he was the Tsaritsa’s most trusted Harbinger and responsible for recruiting Signora and Dottore, to say nothing of managing the very strings of the very plan you were now privy to. Pierro was the sole Harbinger with pupils in the shape of stars, a reflection of the Abyss dancing in his coat, the tails curling into almost impossible, comical swirls. Although he wore the designs of what was commonly known as a Jester, he was anything but a fool.

It was no wonder he was chosen by the Tsaritsa, how their goals aligned so perfectly. Change was necessary for survival in this world, until the heavens could be ripped asunder and the wheel broken.

Pantalone, Tartaglia, and Scaramouche, were the only ones you ever saw down in Haersys willingly.

The Ninth often needed a second pair of eyes when it came to double-checking balance sheets; who better than another who understood data plain as day, especially when they shared a lack of a God’s Eye? Dottore would negotiate a larger monthly stipend in exchange for the trouble and you tried to ignore that most of that stipend ended up on your paysheet.

The Eleventh was…well…far from the innocence his alias portrayed. Cunning, unpredictable, and often the reason for additional requisitions regarding parts. And yet loyal as loyal could be. He was helpful, Dottore mentioned once; he found weaknesses in his machines and his toys and allowed Dottore to improve his work. Tartaglia was as bloodthirsty as they came, a reliable warrior who would stop at nothing to accomplish his goal. Despite the lack of light and life in his sea-blue eyes, he wore his intentions clear as day. You could appreciate that when the rest of this world you were now a part of was nothing more than cloaks and daggers for the greater good.

You would never quite forget the curious tilt of Tartaglia’s head when he first caught sight of you through the open doorway as he passed by and the, “Huh…” that crossed his lips.

The Sixth never said a word to anyone except Dottore when he came into Haersys. Most of their encounters were arguments. You vaguely understood that the K in the papers from the Archon Residue files referred to someone called Kunikuzushi, a prototype for the Raiden Shogun. As close to an Archon as possible with none of the power. The parallel was impossible to ignore. It was all but confirmed when you overheard the Second mutter something about a puppet in need of strings.

You experienced Scaramouche’s inability to stop running his mouth first-hand as you waited outside of the Tsaritsa’s throne room. Dottore had a private audience, as all Harbingers did, but as of late you were never far from his side. He disliked being without his Archivist, he said; you were reliable, anticipatory, loyal. The little dance your heart did at the revelation should have frightened you but you enjoyed being useful, being his.

“So, you’re the one he’s always on about,” Scaramouche spat as he entered the foyer. “You’re hardly anything special.”

He was one to talk, you wanted to shoot back. But it did no one any good to earn the ire of the other Harbingers, especially for an underling like you. You held no rank, exception though you were.

“He is too devoted to the Tsaritsa. You shouldn’t make the mistake of thinking there is room in his heart; he doesn’t have one. She has given him everything he has ever wanted and the means to achieve it.”

You kept your expression blank, hoping the mask you wore hid the inevitable heat searing your cheeks. A part of you wished he’d opted for something embarrassing but Scaramouche avoided painting the pictures, carnal and needy, that lived in your head lately. It was too obvious, you supposed; better to go beyond and crush potential and hope.

Scaramouche patted your cheek in mock sympathy and then laughed when he realized his hand was wet with a single tear. He scoffed at your emotional expression, suppressed though it was.

“Someone like him could never care about any other living being except the Tsaritsa. Especially someone as sniveling as you. Better hope he doesn’t catch you crying.”

Just as Scaramouche stepped away, the throne room’s doors opened and Dottore strode through. When he caught sight of the Sixth, he clicked his tongue.

“Don’t you have your own subordinates to harass, Balladeer?” Dottore snapped.

“I was just going. Remember what I said, Archivist,” Scaramouche cast a last look your way before he turned and walked away, raising a mocking hand in parting as he went.

Dottore’s eyes narrowed as he looked you over, inspecting you. The question was clearly on his mind but he didn’t ask it; it wasn’t in his nature to bother caring whether someone was well. After all, he didn’t ask you to come work for him; you were given no choice.

“What did that piece of dross say?”

“It was nothing,” you said as you began walking in the opposite direction of Scaramouche, towards the other entrance to the basement levels.

Dottore caught up to you in a few long strides, taking point, refusing to be led. He was silent until you both reached the bottom of the steps. You were about to go your separate ways to continue working, but it was as though something was tugging you, keeping you from walking away from him. He didn’t need to know; he would find everything carved into your heart when it was inevitably cut from your body in due time.

You turned to walk away, distract yourself, but Dottore spoke first.

“Archivist.”

Your back straightened at his commanding tone and you lingered in the doorway to your study. Dottore looked at you over his shoulder, his mask obscuring everything except his gaze, a single red eye watching you.

“Do not hide troublesome matters from me in the future. One should at least be respectful to another’s subordinates if they cannot be respectful among their colleagues. If he opens his mouth again, tell me; I’ll make sure his next modification is particularly unpleasant.”

Weeks passed in a blur, the Sixth’s hideous encounter forgotten as the Geo Archon’s Gnosis was retrieved and the plans for Inazuma continued on as intended.

You assisted Dottore with a stubborn piece of machinery and made an inventory of all possible parts as he went along. This particular device was from the depths of the Chasm, sent just before the mine was sealed off by the Qixing. You had never seen nor heard anything like it before, a burrowing serpent in the fashion of the Ruin Gaurds; a Khaenri’ahn mystery.

“Lord Harbinger?”

Dottore made a sound from the other side of the serpent, too occupied to properly speak.

Your curiosity had the better of you. And you knew, perhaps, it was best left alone. But doubt had sown itself; it was hard to forget the words spoken to you. On some level, they pointed out the very thing you wished wasn’t true: how little you knew of the one who hired you, who stole you away from the world.

“How did you end up…” you gestured widely to the cavernous space that always seemed to threaten to swallow everything whole, the ceiling so high the light never reached.

“One was naught but a young scholar at the Sumeru Akademiya when Pierro followed the rumors of my heresy, on the cusp of expulsion and in need of a more conducive work environment,” Dottore said.

He left little room for continuing the conversation. Like most of his colleagues, he did not like discussing anything other than the tasks at hand, prideful though he was. The past was nothing to them. A shell left behind, a husk of who they once were, before the world ripped them asunder.

But it shaped him, nonetheless.

Dottore avoided your eyes, reaching for a tool and diving back into the Ruin Serpent in an attempt to focus on something, anything else. You would not get more out of him. You excused yourself with a bow and determined that the documentation of the Geo Gnosis was a better use of your time than numbly standing there, waiting for an answer to a question you couldn’t bring yourself to ask.

You returned to his study hours later to drop off your findings and pick up stray dishes and cups (and leave one behind for the faithful rat that nested near his desk with plenty of morsels). Before you could begin the task, Dottore caught your wrist, his hands free of his gloves. His touch was cold.

“One must say something and it is imperative you listen, Archivist.”

It dug at you, the distant way he spoke of himself occasionally. The rare moments of “I” were a flash of pride, of awareness of himself. Other times, he spoke as if he were the very machines he worked on, aware that perhaps he missed some of the key components of humanity. Something gripped your heart and squeezed, something you would rather not put a name to; it only threatened to squeeze harder.

“I was born in a small village on the outskirts of Fontaine, on the border of Sumeru,” he started. “I have no father; only a deceased mother who taught her son everything she knew about machinery. When the village became aware that I was modifying animals, she died protecting me. They drove me out with pitchforks and clubs and torches; they managed to burn half of my face in the process. I had only an invitation to the Akademiya with me when I arrived in Sumeru.”

He continued, all the while, his red eyes focused on the corner behind you. Never quite seeing you, looking at you.

“They all thought me mad in the end for my research but no one at the Akademiya considered life to be sacred anyway. They squandered their youth, their existence, to chase knowledge but never dared to step out of line and figure out their own paths. Guided sheep who thought they were finding the secrets of the universe. I pulled back the wool over their eyes and they called me a monster, a madman.”

The hold on your wrist tightened. But it didn’t frighten you. Dottore’s other hand reached up and pulled his mask away, revealing scarred flesh. It never quite healed right, you could tell. Muscle never repaired itself properly and although he could blink, his eyebrow on the left was not as expressive as the right.

“What do you see, Archivist, when you look at me?”

Ruby eyes finally, finally bore into you. He waited but for what, you didn’t know. A wince? A gasp? Disgust, horror? Expectation danced across his face, lips turned into a snarl, a dog defensive of its last meal.

“Someone who is willing to do the work no one else is. Someone who was harmed for daring to ask questions that should, rightfully, be asked. One who has experienced the injustice of this world and seeks to right it.”

Someone who carried a burden alone for longer than they should have , who has not known the kindness this world has to offer, you wanted to continue, but thought better of it.

“You’ve been spending too much time with Pierro, Archivist,” he whispered.

His fingers slipped from your wrist but you didn’t move immediately or pull back from him. Instead, you reached forward, fingertips grazing his scars tentatively, the skin too smooth beneath your touch. The silent question in your mind on whether his nerves had ever healed was answered when he closed his eyes and tilted his head towards your touch and for the tiniest second, his face relaxed.

“One such as myself detests lies, no matter how small. Your candor is appreciated.”

You weren’t sure, exactly, how it happened, but you soon found yourself pressed against the nearest wall, Dottore’s face a hair away from yours. He brought a hand up to cover yours, warm against his scars, blood red eyes gazing down at you, a predator waiting to strike.

“Never lie to me.”

His words were punctuated by the brush of his teeth against your lip.

“Never,” you promised.

Dottore consumed your very soul for that promise, sealed with a haze of euphoria as the last of the distance between you vanished. There was no going back now.

And you would gladly pay the price over and over again, if it meant moments such as this.

#fic: deus in absentia #dottore #il dottore #il dottore x reader #dottore x reader #dottore x gender neutral reader #il dottore x gender neutral reader

20 notes · View notes

mayumiiyuu · 2 years

Text

v. curiouser and curiouser.

the kaleidoscope project masterlist.

June, 1985, Hawkins, Indiana.

I had grown exponentially since my escape.

Physically, I was a lot taller than I had been. Now that I was being taken care of and groomed myself almost on a daily basis, I regularly caught my reflection in the mirror, allowed myself to look, especially now that I had begun to express myself outwardly. My hair had grown longer along with my limbs, my face lost most of the softness from childhood, the occasional acne would litter some parts of my skin as I reached adolescence, and my voice had lost the high-pitched tone of a child, turning smoother and more steady as I had matured.

I had changed inwardly as well as I continued to find my personality. I was able to have better control of my emotions, occasionally having to close my eyes and shove my hands behind my back or distance myself a bit to keep my powers in check, but otherwise I only ever did so by habit. Some things didn't change though, as I continued to mostly enjoy my own company customarily, with the exception of the Byers, some of my new friends, and Irene.

Speaking of which, 'Irene' had soon turned into 'mom'. It left a strange feeling in my mouth those initial days she had asked me to call her that since she was my legal parent now, despite how she assured me that it was alright that I didn't, I still felt the need to do so, to cement it into my mind that I had a mother now, after years of detaching myself from the idea. But as time passed, I got used to it, felt giddy every time I used that label to refer to her, glad that I had someone to call my family, until it became as normal to me as breathing.

I had finally been enrolled into school after finishing the requirements needed, now, I was set for my Junior year of high school, excited for what was to come, no matter how tedious or boring school got.

I didn't have many friends, but the ones I had I was sure to have forever. While we didn't always eat together at lunch, I had made friends with a girl named Robin Buckley. As quiet and reserved as I had been in class, she managed to crack my hardened shell with jokes that made my ribs shake with laughter and interesting conversations I would go over time and again as I lay in bed at night. I remember that one conversation we had as she rambled on about conspiracy theories and UFOs and Area 51.

"I'm telling you, there are things that the government isn't telling us!" Her hands move rapidly in wild gestures.

I nod my head, genuinely interested in what she had to say, being living proof of the secrets the government held. "Yeah, no, definitely."

"You don't actually believe me." She says flatly.

"No, no, I do! Like that one thing you said about Area 51 and the Roswell incident, why would they need to cover it up if it wasn't aliens?"

"Exactly!"

I was still good friends with Jonathan, Will, and Joyce, them being close family friends and all. I had been devastated when Will had gone missing all those years ago, always by their side during those hard times. I rejoiced when Will had been found, visiting him along with my mom at the hospital, gifting him a new set of colored pencils to draw with.

I even reconnected with that one boy who first found me when I had collapsed after I fled the lab, the same boy I was too flustered to talk to in the music shop: Eddie Munson, who I would apparently still be schoolmates with this year as he repeated his senior year. His second time of being a senior, now. But I never looked down on him for that, how could I with his wicked sense of humor and kind nature? We had met that one time I had Saturday detention for calling another student out when they called him a bad name, utterly tired of her senseless bullying. Which may or may not have led me to using some profanities against her as insults, causing her to weep as if she were the victim just as a teacher had walked in. Cue frustrated groan.

We made eye contact as I entered the room, huffing as I sat down. He quickly switched seats, taking a seat on the chair right beside me.

"Hey, uh, (Y/N), right?"

I arched my brow at him. "Yeah?"

"I just wanted to say thanks, that was really cool of you, getting all up in that girl's face like that. Totally badass," he chuckled, drumming his knuckles in the table, it was then I had noticed the rings on his fingers. "I'm Eddie by the way, Eddie Munson."

I cock my head at him slightly, did he not remember me? Oh well, it was so long ago and our interaction was brief, anyway.

"(Y/N) Willows." I give him a lopsided smile.

"I was thinking, do you wanna ditch? The teacher in charge usually sleeps like a log."

I snort, shaking my head at the idea. "And get into more trouble? I don't know."

He shrugs before smirking at me, eyes glimmering with mischief. "We're only in trouble if we get caught."

I glanced at the teacher at his desk, already snoring softly as his head lolled on his shoulder, deep in slumber.

I run my tongue along my canines, nudging him. "You think we can get back before he wakes up?"

Eddie snickers under his hand as he rested his elbow on the table. "You and I are going to get along just fine, Willows."

From then on, hanging out with Eddie Munson became a regular occurrence whenever we had the free time. We bonded over many things, he was the one who introduced me to more music, talked to me about thought provoking ideas about society. I admired his non conforming nature, not caring about what people thought of him.

While I didn't care about my reputation at school, rolling my eyes at the thought of the exclusivity of high school cliques, it seemed that people naturally stayed out of my way, never being bothered nor bullied even when I sat alone at lunch, as I flipped through a book. Whenever I'd spot someone trying to mess with any one of my friends, one glare from me and they'd back away.

Thank you, resting bitch face!

I didn't mean to be intimidating, but I guess that was the effect I had on people. If people were too intimidated by me to be my friend, I didn't want them to be my friend. It was a sweet deal considering the fact nobody ever bothered me either.

Currently, I sat on the passenger seat of Eddie's van, on the way to Starcourt mall, banging our heads to a Metallica song.

While the mall was most definitely not Eddie's usual stomping grounds, I had begged, pleaded, and bribed him with cookies to come with me, as my mom had been too busy with work recently.

"For a hill, men would kill—!" Eddie yelled out the lyrics of the song, tapping his hand on the steering wheel to the beat.

"—why? They do not know!" I continued, rocking my head side to side.

He pulled over to a parking spot a short walk away from the entrance, shutting down the car engine.

"Hey, I have a question for you," I say as I unbuckled my seatbelt.

"Shoot." He replies, opening the door.

"When are you ever going to let me play ABBA?" I smirk as I heard him groan.

"I don't know, probably when I'm six feet under?" He shrugs sarcastically.

I fold my arms, nodding. "That can be arranged."

He tilts his head back with a gruesome groan, stumbling backwards theatrically as he places his hand over his chest for dramatic effect. I place my fists atop one another as I held my imaginary sword, pretending to pierce through his stomach with a loud 'hi-yah!'.

He sticks his tongue out as he closes his eyes. "That's it, you've done it, (Y/N), you got to play ABBA in my van, but at what cost?"

I giggle, slapping him on the arm. "Anything to hear Lay All Your Love On Me, Munson."

He pushes the doors open for me, allowing me to pass through, ever the gentleman. "You'd seriously sacrifice your best friend to listen to that?" He looks at me incredulously.

"And I'd do it again," I laugh as he pokes my side. "I will get you to like ABBA, Eddie Munson, just you watch!"

"Suddenly I'm blind." He replies monotonously, covering his eyes with his hands.

"Screw you," I say with a laugh as I shove him lightly.

"Yeah yeah, you want your ice cream or not? I was thinking about treating you too." He hummed, shoving his hands in his pockets.

"To Scoops Ahoy we go!" I exclaim, grabbing him by the arm as I raced through the brightly colored mall.

I walk over towards the counter, lugging Eddie behind me. In spite of Robin being right in front of me, I ding the bell repeatedly just to annoy her. She snatched the bell from under my hand.

"What do you want from me?" She rolls her eyes, trying to hide her grin.

"Here I thought you'd be happy to see me, Robin, the light of my life and the source of all my happiness." I pout, giving her puppy dog eyes. She flicks my forehead, making Eddie snort.

"I will sue you." I remark, a faint chuckle staining my words.

"Okay, are you just here to make my job ten times more insufferable by annoying me or do you actually want ice cream?"

"I'll have the usual." I shrug.

She furrows her eyebrows at me. "You've..never even been here?"

"Robin, we've been best friends since freshmen year, I really thought you'd have my favorite ice cream flavor down by now." I shake my head in fake disappointment as I sigh.

Robin rolls her yes at me for what seemed to be the tenth time as she scoops up my favorite flavor into an ice cream cone before she hands it to me.

She glances over at Eddie and then me.

"Oh, he'll have two scoops: one chocolate and one strawberry."

"Coming right up."

Eddie raises his brows at me. "Okay, stalker, how did you know what I wanted? Can—can you read minds?"

"Seeing as we share about one braincell, yeah, I can," my eyes crinkle as I watch him laugh. "No but seriously, of course I do, remember that time we went out to that convenience store for ice cream at like, 3 in the morning?"

"Oh yeah, I remember." He nods, twisting the ring on his left hand. "It's touching how you remember the little things, (Y/N)."

I roll my eyes at him.

"Whatever. Get your ice cream, I'll pay for it.” I reach into my pocket to pull out a few dollars.

"Hey, no, I said I'd treat you." He shoves his hand into his pocket as well, fishing for his wallet.

"No need for chivalry, Munson, I got this." I say as I hand over the money towards Robin, only for him to take it back and drop it into my hand.

"You treated me to milkshakes last week, let me return the favor." His tone is stern as he takes money from his wallet, handing it to Robin.

I roll my eyes with a smile as I nudge him gently. "Thanks, Eds."

He nudged me back softly. "No worries, red."

My eyes widen at his words, memories from the past flashing through my head, the whispers grew louder as I blinked rapidly before I shut my eyes, stilling myself, reminding myself that there were people around me. He takes his arm off of me, placing a hand at my back.

"You okay?"

I nod, steadying my breathing as I reopen my eyelids. "Yeah, it's just, why'd you call me that?" I chuckle halfheartedly, attempting to seem casual despite my pulsating heartbeat.

"Oh, y'know, 'cuz of that jacket you were a lot." He tugs at my jacket sleeves to emphasize his point, the same jacket I had bought on my 'birthday' all those years ago had begun to fit me better as I aged.

"Yeah, right, sorry, just got a random headache I guess."

"Probably from the heat, come on, let's eat up our ice cream." He ushers me towards a booth.

In spite of my strange reaction from earlier, I slowly let myself be at ease, more so now that Eddie was joking around. I throw my head back in laughter, covering my mouth to prevent my ice cream from splattering out. Just as I was relaxing, I catch sight of a girl, walking into the shop with another girl with red hair.

A breath hitches itself in my throat as I glance at her face, eerily familiar. Her eyes meet mine and she furrows her brows at me, only for her to smile again as she reached the counter.

"Hello? Earth to (Y/N), come in (Y/N)." Eddie waves his hand in front of me, snapping me out of my thoughts.

"Dude, seriously, you okay? You look like you've seen a ghost." He cocks his head to the side, concern filling his features.

I shake my head. "No, it's nothing, just thought I saw someone I knew."

"Okay," he says slowly. "Well, I'm practically done with my ice cream, and yours.. seems to be dripping out of your cone so you might wanna do something about that."

I quickly lick up the side of my ice cream cone, not wanting it to drip into my hand.

"Yeah," he stands up as I finish my ice cream, munching on the cone. "Wanna go now? Gotta rehearse at Jeff's in a while."

I grin, following his lead. "Yeah, let's go."

....

July, 1986, Hawkins, Indiana

I wave goodbye to Robin and Steve after they dropped me off at my house, wondering how on earth they became so close after having just worked together that one summer. Robin had asked me to hang out, introducing me to Steve in the process. I was apprehensive at first, knowing full well of his previous reputation at school. But rumors were rumors, and I decided I would pay no mind to that, not wanting to judge a book by its cover. As it turned out, he was friendly and easygoing, I laughed at how weak his argument against Robin's was when they got into a heated debate about music, of all things.

I smile to myself as I turn the doorknob, yelling out to signal to my mother that I was home before I shut the door. I made my way towards the living room to greet her, only to stop dead in my tracks as I saw a man sitting down on one of the chairs, two other men who were dressed in dark green uniforms stood at the side: military personnel.

The man that sat on the chair opposite to my mother regarded me with a nod before he stood up. I looked at my mother, my eyebrows furrowed in confusion.

"Mom," I inhale deeply, fidgeting with the sleeves of my jacket. "Who is this?"

Before she can open her mouth to speak, the man answers for me.

"I'm Dr. Owens," his tone is calm and even as he placed his hands into his pockets, I eye the white lab coat he wore with suspicion, hiding my hands behind my back as it fizzed with energy, instinctively lowering my gaze to the floor. "I'm glad to see you're doing okay, Red."

Panic crawls up my spine at the sound of my former name, my breathing started to turn ragged as my heartbeat quickened.

"It's okay, honey," my mother stood up, slowly making her way towards me. "He just wants to talk to you."

"What did he tell you?" I say, taking a step back away from her as my eyes flickered red.

Her features soften into one of dejection, but her eyes only showed understanding. "So it is true."

My gaze falls upon the two military personnel who were now eyeing me defensively. I look back at my mother, shaking my head slowly as I felt tears prickle my eyes, fear invading my senses as my irises faintly glowed.

"Please don't let them take me away." My lower lip trembled, my voice barely above a whisper I said this.

She reaches her hands towards me, but I stepped to the side, afraid I may hurt her as kept my hands to my chest.

"No one's taking you away, I promise. Just—just let him talk to you first, okay?"

I stared at Dr. Owens, my nerves still uneasy.

"It's okay, Red, like she said, I just want to talk—"

"Her name is (Y/N)." My mother interjected, mama bear mode activated as she glared at him sternly.

"Okay, (Y/N)," he nodded, speaking his words carefully. "I'm not going to take you away from her, but we need to go somewhere more private, more secure."

I shut my eyes, breathing in and out slowly before I open them, my irises back to their normal color, my hands no longer sparkling with red energy.

"How should I know if I can trust you?"

Dr. Owens raises his hands up in defense. "You just have to, I swear that I'll get you back here as soon as we're done."

I exhale, gazing at my mother worriedly, only for her to squeeze my hand, reassuring me that everything would be okay. I look to Dr. Owens again.

"Fine.”

....

I bounced my knee subconsciously as I bit the corner of my thumb, I was sat down in a bare room with only a table and two chairs. The coldness of the room reminded me all too well of the facilities I had been trapped in. I just started to live my life, what if they had wanted to take that away from me? My eyes glowed red at the thought, my other hand twitched as it emitted small red sparks.

I looked up as Dr. Owens entered a room, folders in hand. He placed them onto the table as he took a seat.

"I meant what I said when I told you I wasn't going to take you away. The Hawkins Lab had shut down already, I'm sure that you at least know that."

I had read of the shutdown in a newspaper once, as they had apparently caused the death of a girl named Barbara Holland. I pitied her, truly I did, but I couldn't help but feel relieved at the news that that terrible place had finally been closed for good.

"Are you aware of the events that transpired at Starcourt mall?"

My eyebrows knit together at his question, wondering what that had to do with me. "It burned down, there was a mall fire."

That had also been on the news, my mother and I looking at each other with concern as we heard it over the radio. So many deaths, so many innocent lives taken from an unfortunate accident.

"No, you're wrong," he flips over one of the folders, stacked with various documents and pictures. "There's more to it than that."

He told me the truth of what had happened, the shocking, bitter reality of that night, of otherworldly dimensions and monsters I thought only ever existed in fiction. I stared at the photos taken of the scene, of the remnants of the hideous beast they had managed to take samples of.

"Dr. Brenner had taken you from your previous lab because he was fascinated by your abilities, but after your escape, an..event took place, and he refocused his goal on his original experiments, one named Eleven, the only survivor of the massacre at the lab that day."

I furrowed my brows. "Massacre? If you’re insinuating something, that had nothing to do with me, I was long gone after that."

"No, I know, someone else was behind it, Dr. Brenner’s original experiment: One, who posed under the name Peter Ballard," he looks to me, my eyes glinting as my heart hammered in my chest, clenching my fists under the table at the sudden realization.

"He.. was the ward assigned to me," I whisper, the words coming out of my mouth slowly as I began to process the information. "He helped me escape, he—he took care of me, taught me how to control myself. This doesn’t make sense."

Dr. Owens stays silent, exhaling before he spoke.

“Not everything in life does, but somehow we suspect that he had been transported to the Upside Down, the other dimension, by Eleven after a fight had ensued between the two.”

I remember that little girl who had extracted the device from my neck, empathized with her as we were both trapped in the same facility. Even after all these years I would toss and turn in my bed, envisioning what had happened to her that day, if she had even been able to escape. My mind wandered over to that girl I saw at the mall those months ago, the same girl I had been introduced to by Will before they left for California, how her eyes had regarded me with the same wariness when we shook hands, the bizarre sense of familiarity that twisted in my stomach when I met her.

“In 1983, there had been a fluke accident during one of Brenner’s experimentations on her, she opened the gateway to this world by accident, releasing one of its native creatures,” he slides over another folder to me, already opened. My hands trembled as I caught sight of a picture of Will. “We found that it had been responsible for the disappearance of one William Byers.”

I clamped my eyes shut, steadying my breaths to calm myself down, pushing away the voices that lingered in my mind.

“I was then put in charge of the lab in 1984; stranger still, the gate was still very much open, despite my team’s efforts, it seemed that something had attached itself to Will, allowing for more creatures to escape.”

I swallow, hard, at the thought of that sweet boy being out through so much. I screamed at myself in my head for not being there to protect him, beating myself up that I hadn’t been part of this treacherous endeavor. I could have done something about it, prevented him from suffering, but I was too afraid to lose the new life I had to use my powers or to reveal it to anyone.

“Eleven had managed to close the gate, but we had become too complacent, thinking that everything was finally over and done for. That was when the events at Starcourt had occurred. If it weren’t for Will and his friends for intervening time and again, I fear that something worse might have happened.”

I scan over another document that detailed what had happened at Starcourt mall, a breath hitched itself in my throat as I read out the names of the people who had been a part of the defeat of the monster, all of Will’s friends’ names were there, including Joyce and former police chief Jim Hopper—but four names had stuck out to me in particular: Jonathan Byers, Nancy Wheeler, Steve Harrington, and Robin Buckley.

Of all the people Robin or even Jonathan could have confided in about this, I thought that I would be the first person they would have ran to. We told each other practically everything, holding each of the secrets we had spilled to one another closely to our hearts. But I didn’t blame them for keeping this from me; if I did I would have been a hypocrite. I had far too many dark secrets that I held inside myself, too afraid to tell a soul.

“So you see now why we may need you.” Dr. Owens clasps his hands together. “Your friends have deliberately put themselves in danger more than once now, all for the greater good. The question now is: are you willing to do the same?”

I look down at my hands, the tips of my fingers lightly buzzed, red sparks of energy flitting to and fro. I tightened my hands into fists, but I remained silent. If I revealed myself to them, would they run away? Would it mean that I would be putting them in more danger? Or would hiding that push that danger to the extremes?

I realized then that I couldn’t run away any longer.

“Tell me, (Y/N),” Dr. Owens cocked his head to the side as he regarded me curiously. “Can you still use your abilities?”

“Yes.” I answered. I had spent years hiding them, ignoring my memories as I pushed them to the back of my mind, but I was still very much a Color. That was one thing I could never erase from my identity.

“Show me, if you can.”

I took in a deep breath as I closed my eyes, allowing my memories to flow. Recollections of being pierced with needles, thrown into a cell, electrocuted with tasers occupied my mind. I lifted my hand up, feeling the energy that coursed through my veins, the light above us flickered as I absorbed electricity from the wiring in the walls and ceiling. As I opened my eyes, irises glittering red, my fingers danced, gracefully flexing and relaxing as I held a glowing ball of pure energy in my hand.

The red glow in my eyes flickered as I let the energy dissipate, the light on the ceiling returning to a steady gleam.

Dr. Owens nodded. “And of your ability regarding molecular transfiguration?”

I place my palms on the metal table between us, and I closed my eyes again. The image was clear in my mind as I felt the atoms that made up the table, compact and steady as the structure of metal should be. I willed for them to disperse from one another, opening my eyes to reveal the table in a liquid state, mercury-like as some drops of fluid floated into the air. I focused, concentrating the atoms back to their original state as the metal table turned back into what it once was.

“Excellent,” Dr. Owens breathed out at my display of my abilities. “Your capabilities speak for themselves, it seems.”

He hands me another folder, the cover of this one more yellowed than the others, marking its older age. “After doing some digging, I found your file, the one from your original lab.”

I take it, heart pulsating in my chest, unsure of whether or not I should even open it.

“This is extremely delicate, private information, so I need you to safeguard it as best as possible. I’m giving this to you because I feel that you need to learn its contents, know about your past,” he takes a pen from the front pocket of his lab coat, then a slip of paper from another as he wrote a number on it. “Call this number if you ever need to reach me, but make sure to use it only when necessary. Do you understand?”

I nod my head as he hands me the paper, staring intently at the number.

“Okay,” he stands, fixing his lab coat. “Let’s get you home.”

….

As I stepped onto the porch, my head felt light, thoughts spun around my head a mile a minute, instead of being satisfied with the answers and truths Dr. Owens had revealed to me, it only left me with more questions, more uncertainties.

I quietly made my way towards the backyard, fear prickled the back of my neck as I hadn’t found my mother inside the house, breathing out in relief as I found her sat on the staircase of the back porch, eyes trained towards the horizon as if she were in deep thought.

She turned to me as she heard the door close, enveloping me in a hug which I gladly returned.

“I’m sorry,” I say, voice shaking with guilt from withholding so much from her. “I’m sorry I never told you.”

She stroked the back of my head lovingly, shushing me as she pulled away. “You have nothing to be sorry about.”

I shake my head, gritting my teeth to prevent my chin from trembling as I wiped away tears. “No, you deserved to know, and I kept that from you for so long.”

“You had your reasons, I understand that now,” she leads me to the top step of the staircase, sitting me down, rubbing my shoulder soothingly as she wrapped her arm around me. I leaned my head onto her shoulder. “If I were in your shoes, I don’t think I would’ve said anything about it either.”

“Will this change things?” I say, voice barely above a whisper as I turned to look at her. “Would you still have adopted me even if you knew?”

She smiled at me, affection gracing her features. “I’d be stupid if I didn’t, I love you, (Y/N), powers or none. Guess I was right when I said I thought you were special, huh?” She nudged me playfully, causing me to giggle despite my tears. I frown as a thought passed through my head, mustering the courage to speak it aloud.

“But what if I hurt you?”

She shakes her head, kissing me on the forehead. “You could never. I know you, (Y/N), you have a good heart, which is a fantastic feat all in itself considering everything that you’ve been through. You’re strong, you managed to survive so much, and on your own, too. And I want you to know that I’m proud of you for that, for not letting what had happened to you, your trauma, turn you into a bad person.”

I sniff at her words, leaning more into her touch as she held me. I once wondered what it was like to feel loved, wholly and genuinely, in spite of all my flaws and shortcomings.

I was glad to know what that was like now.

That night, we ate dinner as usual, laughed and talked as we washed the dishes and cleaned up after ourselves. Once it was time for me to go to bed, she gave me a warm hug, assuring me that she was always here for me if I needed anyone to talk to, to help me manage my abilities. I thank whatever gods and forces of the universe for placing her in my life as she did so.

Just as I was about to fall asleep, I shot up out of bed, remembering the documents Dr. Owens had handed to me. I bit my lip, still anxious of what information would be brought down upon me like an atom bomb.

I sighed as I stood up, walking towards my desk, opening the drawer I had kept it in. As I switched on the lamp, I drummed my fingers on the table, staring at the file intently.

Screw it.

I flipped open the file, scanning over the first page.

‘Subject A-370 of Project K

Code name: Red

Born (birthdate), 1968.

Spawned from Subject B-5126, (mother’s name)

Data report:

Upon running the corresponding tests, Subject A-370 displays immense potential for extraordinary abilities, notably the manipulation and absorption of energy and energy sources, as well as the manipulation of atomic structures and matter. Subject A-370 is the amalgamation of the efforts on genetic enhancement and mutation from Project Beta, i.e. Project Fordus, marking the overall project as a success despite the failures that preceded it. It is worth noting that Subject B-5126 of Project Beta is now inutile to the Project, unable to properly birth another successful subject other than A-370, furthering the miraculous nature of this particular specimen.

Report authored & validated by Dr. Amelia Peters.’

I feel my facial features form into a scowl as I gripped the edges of the table, my eyes flared red with anger, I could feel the tips of my fingers start to burn the wood of the table. I remove my hands from it quickly, rubbing them as I took in a breath.

My head felt heavy, massaging my temple as questions congested my brain.

Who was (mother’s name)? And what did they mean when they referred to me as her spawn? Was she my biological mother then, seeing as the report had stated that she had apparently birthed me?

Despite my heavy mind, my body felt light while my stomach did somersaults, as if I had been falling—just like Alice, falling deeper and deeper into the rabbit hole, her curiosity only got the best of her in the end as she spiraled, with no way of getting back up. The information I had just bore witness to opened up some sort of portal in my mind, allowing some of my memories to become more clear as I envisioned a woman’s face. Was that her? Was that subject B-5126? How long had they experimented on others just to get the results they wanted? How many lives had they destroyed for the sake of their twisted ambitions?

Further down the rabbit hole I went, curiouser and curiouser until I found myself knee-deep in the mystery of my past, finding that there was more to the story than I had ever known.

I glance at the slip of paper Dr. Owens had given me, his words ringing throughout my head as I traced the numbers written in ink.

I needed to make a call.

….

taglist: @preciousbabypeter @justaproudlslytherpuff @iiheartbowie @beebeerockknot @nightless @lovelydivs @r-royce

#stranger things x reader #eddie munson #eddie munson x reader #stranger things #stranger things season 4 #eddie munson stranger things #stranger things smut #eddie munson smut #stranger things fic

109 notes · View notes

kitty-gray · 3 months

Text

Am I the last person on earth to realize I have loved you and you haven't known it might mean that Ty not just did know what Kit meant with I love you, Ty, I love you but that he also regrets not saying it back? That maybe if he had, Kit wouldn't have left. That maybe, on top of the guilt he feels for the ritual, he's also carrying the guilt of not saying it back? Because maybe, just maybe, if he hadn't been so shocked by [everything that was going on at that moment] he could've stopped Kit from leaving. Maybe if he could've said it at the time, Kit would've stayed. That he thinks he lost Kit because of it. That part of his self imposed penance is related to that.

#also im curious how this would reflect in twp #ty blackthorn #tiberius blackthorn #cassandra clare #the shadowhuter chronicles #shadowhunter chronicles #cassieclare #cassandraclare #shadowhunters #cazadores de sombras #cassie clare #kit herondale #christopher herondale #the wicked powers #kitty tda #kit herondale x ty blackthorn #the wicked powers conspiracy theories #im sure im the last person in realize but roll with it

101 notes · View notes

aroace-cat-lady · 9 months

Text

Okay objectively it'd be hilarious if Kit is taller. Like. Imagine you're Ty Blackthorn and you fall your ass off for this dude that's your age and you kinda have the same height, and then he ghosts you for three years and when you see him again he's not just ten times hotter but also taller??? Ty hates surprises and that'd be the fucking mother of surprises.

#im drinking water now guys the thirsty posting is getting at its end dw #cassandra clare #the shadowhuter chronicles #shadowhunter chronicles #the wicked powers conspiracy theories #the wicked powers #ty blackthorn #kit herondale x ty blackthorn #kit herondale #kit x ty #kit and ty

199 notes · View notes

hiswordsarekisses · 11 months

Text

TRUSTING DEVILS, by Troi Cockyane

Who will be the ones who die?

When Psalm 91 says, “Though a thousand may fall at your side, and ten thousand at your right hand, no harm will come near you.”

We often as Christian’s find great comfort in such an amazing promise.

But, who will be the ‘thousand’ and the ‘ten thousand’ that do ‘fall’ or are seriously ‘harmed’.

Sadly, those who [refuse] to love the Truth, God says He will send strong delusion.

2 THESSALONIANS 2:9-12

“The coming of the lawless one will be accompanied by the working of Satan, with every kind of power, sign, and false wonder, and with every wicked deception [directed against] those who are perishing, [because] they refused the love of the truth that would have saved them. For this reason God will send them a powerful delusion so that they believe the lie, in order that judgment may come upon all who have disbelieved the truth and delighted in wickedness.”

Truth is our saving friend. Truth sets us FREE. Truth divinely protects us as stated in Psalm 91 and all through scripture.

Those who ‘love not the Truth, but delight in wickedness’ describes who??

I think of those who trust obvious devils like godless Gates, Fauci and the many corrupt politicians. Democrats by the millions will be the first to die from lying traps.

Mask wearers.

Those who trust mainstream media.

Those [who mock] the expert doctors that are sharing solid evidence and alarming facts.

Those who ignore the avalanche of Truth concerning deadly DNA altering vaccines.

Those who ignore the hard data, facts and figures that are being freely shared by ‘conspiracy theory’ family and friends…

They will undoubtedly be the first to die. And many will not stand in the judgment.

This is the heartbreaking fact.

The strong delusion coming from devils using corrupt politicians and corrupt and treasonous leaders in the FDA, CDC, FBI, and CIA.

The strong delusion coming through our school boards, court systems, and health boards and medical systems.

Like a massive mob of blind zombies 🧟‍♀️ 🧟‍♂️ 🧟 spiritually dead, only influenced by the demonic.

Pray for their souls. God is able to protect His people. But WOE to those who [love not] the Truth.

According to 2nd Corinthians, there is no hope for these people. They will perish [because] ‘they refused the love of the truth that would have saved them.’

6 notes · View notes

mortemoppetere · 1 year

Text

Timing: later in the day after Wait and Sea Feat: @eldritchaccident & @mortemoppetere Warnings: (supernatural) animal cruelty Summary: after becoming suspicious of them during the 'interrogation' on their houseboat, emilio trails teddy to where the demon is keeping his client's daughter. neither of them is very good at using their words.

The events of the morning laid very lightly on the conscience of the demon all things considered. Whereas the detective (Who they didn’t even realize was a detective) was full of a paranoia (that could out conspiracy theory the very greatest in the false conclusion olympics) Teddy notably lacked that sense of self preservation. Most of the time. The perhaps haughty notion that they were the apex predator kept them in a perpetual state of nonchalance and ease.

As much as Ted loved humans and humanity, as much as they admired the fact that humans could accomplish so much with so little, they were still raised to believe that the creatures were somehow below. Humans had an inevitable end. Demons were stronger, more powerful, all around better. And no one could tell them what to do. That was like, devil lesson 101. Watching your back while heading to a secret location however, maybe Teddy just missed that day of class. Or maybe they were too busy with their head in the clouds. That’s not to say that the demon didn’t do any due diligence. Just… not enough to spot the tail they’d sprouted. So to speak. Following them all the way out to the cliffs and the ominous looking building that sat on their edge.

The warehouse looked abandoned from the outside. Maybe under construction was a better way to put it. Joy Avery Cavendish, who Teddy guessed had to be the owner of this horrible place, was trying to make something of it. Trying to set it up as a place where people with enough money could come and gawk at the strange and unseemly. A real modern day P.T. Barnum. But with just a little edge of Gaslight, Gatekeep, Girlboss. Y’know, to keep it fresh.

Going after the heiress surprisingly wasn’t an impulsive decision. Like many of the folks who found themselves at the end of Teddy’s ‘lessons’ they had studied the woman for a while. Made sure the punishment fit the crime. Made sure it was earned. For her, it seemed like the right thing to do was shove her right in the same predicament as the ‘pets’ she tried to collect. Of course, that did mean Teddy had to single handedly figure out what to actually do with the rest of the creatures. At the moment it meant making sure they all had their respective needs met, until they could find a place to let them free. There wasn’t exactly an easy source of legitimate information on this kind of thing, and they didn’t want to upset the already very tumultuous ecosystem inside Wicked’s Rest. But they were determined to do this thing right.

“Alrighty, Fluffy I think I know where you can go next.” Teddy smiled brightly at the Karkaskuttle, a beast that was not at all fluffy in any manner of the word, and did in fact look like a large misshapen crustacean.

“What the hell is wrong with you?!” Joy bellowed, also not living up to her name very well.

“Lots of stuff I’m sure, but what do you mean specifically right now, hmm?” “These are monsters, and you have to let me go. Please. I can pay you, just-” “I dunno, Fluffy, who do you think the monster is here?”

The crab thing did not understand the conversation, therefore, it did not respond.

“It doesn’t even have fur!! You’re insane!! Just let me go!!!” Clearly Joy was getting a little more than a little agitated. These weren’t the kind of conditions she was used to. Her face was streaked with mascara tears, and she certainly looked like she was the poor victim in this situation.

“Do you know what you did wrong?” Teddy tilted their head, waiting for a response and only getting a glare in return. “Ahh, well, then I can’t let you go. Sorry bud.”

—

The safe thing to do would have involved waiting. Trailing someone immediately after an ‘interrogation’ usually saw them at their most paranoid, which meant they were likely to catch you in the act. And that tended to get messy. People did stupid things when they realized they were caught, and the vast majority of those stupid things ran the risk of Emilio not getting the information he needed before shit hit the fan. And in this particular situation, that couldn’t be an option. There was a missing girl, and her father was searching for her. His world had tunneled to the point that he couldn’t see much outside of that. So, yeah. Not getting the information he was after couldn’t be an option here.

But waiting wasn’t much of an option, either.

Right now, there was a chance that Joy Cavendish was still alive. It might not be a particularly large chance, but it was still a chance. And if this ‘Teddy’ guy caught wind of the fact that Emilio had seen that necklace in their houseboat, if they realized the jig was up… They’d have no reason to keep a witness around for him to find.

So, Emilio ran the risk. He weighed his options, and he decided following his suspect now was the best choice on the table. He trailed Teddy for a while, careful to keep himself from being seen, but they didn’t seem to pick up on his presence. In fact, it was one of the easier tails he’d done; a sign of arrogance, maybe, or a hint that he’d managed to play it much cooler than he was usually capable during his earlier conversation with the suspect. There was a hint of anxiety at the ease of it all — was he being played? Was Teddy toying with him, just leading him in circles until they got bored enough to lead him to his death? — but he pushed the feeling down. If it came down to a fight, he’d fight. He liked his odds a lot better than he liked theirs.

Eventually, he followed them up a path leading to the edge of a cliff. It all seemed pretty ominous and, if not for the presence of a warehouse there, he might have assumed he was being toyed with after all. But the warehouse would be a decent place to stash someone, as far removed as it was from the town itself. If Teddy did have Cavendish’s daughter here, it would make this location perhaps the only smart move they’d made. Secluded, isolated, hard to stumble upon accidentally. Emilio was a little disappointed he didn’t have a place like this for himself, if he was being honest.

He watched Teddy enter the warehouse, holding his breath for a moment and counting to ten. People were more likely to let their guard down when they got into their routine and, given the way Teddy had walked towards the warehouse like it wasn’t the first time they’d done so, there was a routine here. After a beat, Emilio moved forward, sliding into the warehouse just in time to catch the tail end of a conversation. A conversation with a woman. He’d never heard Joy Cavendish speak, but he was willing to bet that was her voice carrying through the warehouse.

He took a moment to observe the scene from the shadows. Cages full of various supernatural beasts, Joy in one of her own. Teddy seemed to be talking to a karkaskuttle like it was a puppy. Were they using the animals as torture devices? Had they been collecting pets and decided they needed a human to complete their stockpile? There was certainly something unseemly going on here, but the specifics didn’t matter much. He was here to get Joy back. That was all he could focus on for now.

Emilio wasn’t one for stealth. He couldn’t get his client’s daughter out of here without letting himself be seen. He didn’t even particularly want to. It was more fun, he thought, if Teddy knew it was him. There was a certain satisfaction to it, a little bit of I-told-you-so. Juliana always used to say he had something of a petty streak. Even when they were at their worst, she’d known him better than just about anybody else.

He stepped out into the warehouse, into Joy’s line of sight. Her eyes met his and widened, and he offered her a small nod. The girl had no real poker face; it would be impossible for Teddy not to realize something was up. If Emilio were a little better at quick retorts, now would have been the time for one. As it was, he just glared until Teddy finally turned around. “And you said you’d call me if you saw anything suspicious,” he deadpanned. “This seems like something suspicious, I think.”

—

Oblivious to the fact that they'd been followed, Teddy didn't suspect a thing until the woman's expression changed. Until the now familiar voice called them out. Oops. "Huhn." More than likely it wasn't the reaction the detective was expecting. A look of sudden confusion maybe, but still far too relaxed. Teddy clicked their tongue against the roof of their mouth. Folded their arms across their chest and slumped their weight all onto one hip. "So you are a body guard then? Did you know about all this?"

It was more like the demon was figuring out a puzzle than being caught red handed in what certainly looked like a Bond villain level scheme. Without the context, even their question didn't give any rise to the truth of the matter. That Joy was the one who put the whole shindig together. That Teddy was the one trying to fix it. Not that it really mattered though, from their side it looked like this beefy angry model man was in on it all along. If Emilio knew what she had been doing to these creatures and didn't help them. Well that was a form of guilt too, right?

"So what happens now then?"

—

Teddy’s reaction wasn’t quite what he’d been expecting, but at least they didn’t take a shot at him. Thanks to the fact that the people he went up against most often preferred to fight with teeth and claws rather than human weaponry, Emilio had managed to make it this far in life without being shot, and he wasn’t looking to break that streak now. Bullets always looked like they’d be a bitch to dig out.

The fact that Teddy seemed almost disappointed, like it was a shame someone was shutting down their little game, reignited the fire in Emilio’s chest. Like all of this had just been a fun way to pass the time for them, traumatizing both Joy and the animals they’d caged up in here. The detective, of course, had no idea who the true mastermind behind the warehouse was; from where he stood, things seemed obvious. The bad guy was the person not shoved into a tiny cage. If he’d known the full story, if it wasn’t Joy’s father who’d come to him, if he could go a day without his own daughter’s death replaying like an old film reel in his mind, if, if, if.

There were a thousand ways things could have gone better, but none of them were true.

“Not a body guard, no. And the details are pretty easy to pick up on, I think.” Teddy had told him everything he needed to know the moment they were sloppy enough to leave Joy’s necklace somewhere where Emilio could see it. Even if they hadn’t led him here, he would have found it eventually with enough digging. Of course, by that point, Joy might not have been alive to save. It was hard to say if Teddy had been planning on killing the creatures in their ‘care,’ but human beings were fragile things. They couldn’t survive under conditions like this for long. So this was the preferable option, as far as Emilio was concerned.

“Now?” He glanced over, meeting Joy’s wide eyes from behind the bars of her cage and offering her what he hoped was a reassuring smile. “Now I’m going to get her out of here. Take her home. You can try to stop me, but I wouldn’t recommend it.”

—

"Are they?" Teddy's face scrunched up, trying to think of how exactly any of this came off as easy to understand. Maybe Emilio just meant that he was getting paid enough to not care about the things his employers did. Either way it left a sour sort of taste in their mouth. One that only grew more bitter and unpleasant as the man continued on.

"Ahh come on. Don't you think she deserves this? Just a little? I mean look at her." What might have been a better thing to say would have been, look at the things she's done. Then it might have opened the other man's eyes to what was going on, rather than looking like a deranged insult on top of all this injury. "Do you really care about your paycheck that much?"

The fit of rage Joy pulled after hearing Teddy say all that was fairly called for. In her mind, no. She didn't deserve this, she was being an entrepreneur. A smart business owner capitalizing on the town's obsession with the odd. Something the Joneses could respect, if it didn't come at the cost of the creatures she was trying to show off.

—

“Seems like it.” How much clearer could it be? He’d followed them to a warehouse full of cages, stumbled upon them monologuing to a person locked inside one of said cages. Open and shut cases were pretty rare in Wicked’s Rest, but this was as close to one as Emilio had ever seen.

Of course, Teddy could always make it worse. And that was exactly what they did. To imply that Joy was somehow responsible for her own imprisonment, to take such a sick satisfaction out of seeing her in a cage that they thought looking at her locked behind bars would make Emilio understand, somehow… He’d seen a lot of sick people in his day, but this was starting to take the cake. At least the undead had the excuse of not being entirely human when they did terrible things. From what Emilio could tell, Teddy was just a human being. A seriously fucked up one, but human all the same. That always made things a bit harder.

“Make this easy on yourself,” he said lowly, looking away from Joy’s righteous anger to meet Teddy’s eye instead. “Unlock the cage, and you can disappear. I won’t come after you.” Unless they did something like this again, of course. Emilio killed vampires and other undead without hesitation, but he didn’t tend to go after humans unless he’d done enough research to be sure of the intent behind their actions. Maybe Teddy was just fucked up in the head. Emilio wouldn’t kill someone for that. Especially not when they wouldn’t turn to dust and make the cleanup easy afterwards.

—

Time slowed, not in any sort of dramatic way, just enough that there was a pause. As if the whole room was considering what to do next. All eyes were on the demon. Who stood tall, still, contemplative, and still a bit puzzled. Teddy let out a dramatic sigh. Why couldn’t things just go according to plan? Hmm? Just once. Someone would learn their lesson, and be a better person because of it, and no one would have to actually die or really even get that injured. Honestly. It would be so much easier if the world worked the way it was supposed to.

Behind those red sunglasses, big eyes darted between Emilio and Joy. Between the cages and the animals within them. Making it easy on themself wasn’t high on their priority list. Their hand lifted, gently fiddling with the keys on the loop at their hip. For a moment it looked like the detective’s plea had landed. Hit solid ground.

That is, until Teddy turned heel and took off.

Racing for the opposite end of the warehouse. Knowing very well that those cages were hard to open without the actual key. Emilio might have a better chance with a bonesaw than a lockpick. And that’s even if he knew how to use one. No if he really wanted to lick boots that hard, he was going to have to work for it. Each mighty slap of their flip flops against the cool concrete set the creatures in the menagerie alight. Some barking, some growling, and some looking like they were trying very very hard to make noise, but something around their neck kept that from happening.

Teddy had to get the animals out. That was the most important thing. The control room. One switch that would open up the bay doors, and smaller ones to pop open each individual cell. If all went well, they could get there, let the creatures go, keep Dr. Shithead in her cage, and wreck the controls so Mr. Meathead couldn’t do shit about it. If the Winchester’s lost cousin kept up? Well, maybe they’d just press the big whammy. Open up every door and hope for the best.

—

For a second, it looked like things might go smoothly. And, honestly? It was on Emilio for believing that. Experience should have taught him that things never went smoothly when he was involved. The sooner he learned that lesson, the sooner he’d stop being surprised when things like this happened. Teddy took off running, and the detective let out a groan. One look at the cages told him that brute forcing his way through them was going to be difficult, if it was possible at all. And without knowing where Teddy was going? It added an additional risk. The locks looked to have some kind of remote open feature, and if all the cages were to open while he was trying to get Joy out of hers… Well, none of the animals here would understand that Emilio wasn’t the one who’d stuffed them into cages. Most of them would see him as little more than their next meal.

So he had little choice but to follow after Teddy, moving as fast as his stupid, fucked up knee would allow. Against a vampire, the offending limb tended to make keeping up a near impossible feat to achieve. Against what appeared to be a human in shoes that weren’t exactly sensible for short-distance sprints, it was a little more manageable. He’d be in plenty of pain when he got home tonight, sure, but he could handle that well enough. Especially if he managed to deliver Joy relatively unharmed to her father and earn himself a bonus that would pay for a little extra whiskey to numb the feeling.

Emilio pushed forward, quickly gaining on Teddy. If the other stopped, even for something as simple as opening a door, would mean being met with a hulking mass of angry slayer. If he couldn’t catch the asshole, he’d make sure he could outlast them. Then he’d yank the key off them when they fell over. Solid plan.

—

Fuck, fuck, FUCK. Teddy’s heart was racing. Maybe this is what Siobhan meant about getting caught being fun. They could see that. Kind of. Maybe? Was this fun? It was something. Exhilarating maybe? Each step was a contest and Teddy was very competitive. Ran in their nature, they supposed. Wasn’t that a thing? Devils and games? Okay. Not super helpful to think about. That’s fine. Teddy hopped, taking a precious second to pull their shoes off and use them as improvised weapons. Not that the two dollar flip flops were really going to do much against the wall of angry that was in hot pursuit.

The shoes flipped, flopped, and at least one landed where Ted had wanted it to. YES. Hopefully blinding the chaser so the chase-ey could get some ground. Control room wasn’t going to be an option. At this point Teddy was rapidly running out of space to go. Unless…

Wiry limbs reached up and grabbed for the lowest pipe they could. Ignoring the fact that it was hot and stung their hands as they used it to alleyoop up to the next level of catwalks. And started racing toward the only door available to them. Roof access. Fuck. Great. Love it. Teddy hadn’t been up there yet, not more than to glance outside the hatch. But there had to be a way down right? Fire safety and all that. Eh. It was about 50/50 with this town. With a building like this. And the fact that it was in such disrepair. Maybe 60/40 against. Oh well.

—

He hadn’t been expecting the shoe. If he weren’t so pissed off, he might have been a little impressed at Teddy’s improvisation skills. Or concerned that a shoe was the best weapon they had on them. Emilio’s mother had drilled it into him before he was old enough to speak that a person needed to have at least three weapons on them at all times if they hoped to live long enough to amount to anything. Apparently, Teddy’s parents hadn’t done the same.

But, in any case, they were decent at improvising. The way they slung themself up onto the catwalk, too, was unexpected, though Emilio managed to follow without much issue. Didn’t expect the damn pipe to be hot, but it didn’t really matter. Slayer healing would take care of that easy enough. He figured out where they were going the moment he caught sight of the sign for roof access, cursing silently to himself. Of course they had an escape route planned — this was their building, after all. Who knew what kind of weapons they had stashed up on the roof? Emilio pulled out a knife in preparation, shoving his way onto the roof just a heartbeat after Teddy did.

“Just give me the key, pendejo. We can pretend it never happened. You go your way, I go mine, hm?” For once, he really didn’t feel like a fight.

—

Every fiber, every muscle, every joint was burning. Not in the way they did during a shift, something totally different. A little bit new. Which was always exciting for the demon. Teddy jumped, ran, pulled, and climbed their way higher into the building. Banking as many hard turns as they could to throw Emilio off their trail, though each only bought a second at best. It was enough though, that they had a moment to fiddle with the hatch. Throwing open the heavy metal door and scrambling to get through it.

A loud and bright twaaang reverberated through the metal as the demon pulled themselves skyward. Misjudging the size of the doorway or perhaps the momentum of their limbs; their elbow thwacked against the frame. Thank goodness they were already most of the way out, because the resulting frenzy surely would have toppled them otherwise. A sudden wall of hurt filled Teddy's chest with air. Puffed up their cheeks and bent them in half as they grasped for the afflicted appendage. They bit down hard on their lower lip as they tried in vain to contain the scream they wanted to loose. Kind of like a tea kettle ready to pour. Before they were righted though, a shadow overtook their line of sight.

"Hold on–just–!!" The soft aloof voice strained both with the effort of the chase, and the pain shooting up their arm. "Ahh fuck me, why does that hurt so bad?" Teddy had quite literally felt their body rip apart and knit back together hundreds of times, and yet somehow this was always worse. "Right on the funny bone–" with their free hand, Ted held up a finger. A plea of their own towards the detective. There wasn't much else of a place they could go. And they weren't about to fight this guy. Not up here. Not when they didn't know enough about him to sign a death warrant. He was a prick sure, but so was Teddy half the time. No need to pull out the big guns.

"Are they paying you? Is that it? Didn't wanna– ah fuck– bring it up in front of your boss but I could–" Teddy breathed hard, still playing catch up. They'd be feeling this in the morning for sure. Probably for the next week at this rate. "-- I could double it. Whatever they got you contracted for. Easy. Done."

—

Adrenaline coursed through his veins, allowing him to keep up with Teddy in spite of the way his knee ached. It’d come back to bite him in the ass later, he knew — slayer healing didn’t do as much for chronic pain as he would have liked, and after days of this much physical exertion, he tended to find walking hard for a week after — but in the moment? There was something kind of exhilarating about it all. Easy cases made for nice money, but Emilio had always been the type to get bored easily. And this case certainly hadn’t been boring so far.

He watched Teddy go down with a quiet satisfaction, privately pleased at the evident karma that had come for them. Smacking your elbow against a metal door frame wasn’t exactly quite up to the level of what a person deserved for locking a girl in a cage like an animal, but it was fun to watch anyway. And it allowed Emilio to take his time as he walked over to Teddy, pausing when he stood over them. The hard part was over now. There was nowhere else Teddy could go. Whatever escape they’d planned up here, they couldn’t make it there without him catching up.

So, Emilio gave them a moment. He looked down at them patiently as they squirmed and grappled with the pain in their elbow, though there was no semblance of sympathy in his expression. To a man whose form of fun childhood activity had involved his mother locking him in small spaces with angry undead creatures, this much drama over smacking an elbow on a door frame seemed a little silly. If he’d shown this much pain over anything, he was fairly certain his mother would have rewarded the display with a good deal more pain to put things into perspective. Hard to focus on an aching elbow when someone had snapped a few of your fingers, after all.

But there was no need for that here. He didn’t need to teach Teddy any kind of a lesson. He only needed to get that damn key. Anger flared up in his chest again when they spoke, offering him money like that was the issue here. Like, for the right price, he could excuse what he’d seen in that warehouse, walk away like nothing was wrong. What did they think he was, exactly? “Ay, go fuck yourself, asshole. Give me the fucking key. How’s that for easy?”

—

Loyal to the company, huh? Teddy scoffed. No real saving a henchman like that. What was the use of having a brain if you didn’t use it to make decisions about who you were supporting. This amount of cruelty, the conditions the animals were in before Teddy had got to them? What was he just following orders? If Emilio had some part of that then Ted wanted nothing to do with him. For maybe the first time in this whole debacle their face turned to something serious. A deep draw to their brows, arching over dark eyes. Staring down the other like an actual opponent now. Or maybe a meal.

Like hell they were going to make this easy.

“Just think about this for like, two seconds, okay?” The demon circled, carefully treading on bare feet, still trying to make themselves appear a little less formidable than they actually were. A pretty easy feat considering how human they looked most of the time.

“She’s just as much a beast as the rest of those creatures.” Worse, in Teddy’s mind. The animals were just going about their lives, their only crime was that they were supernatural. Strange. Different. People like Joy Cavendish hated things that were different. Lobbied against them then proclaimed how it was for the greater good. Locking her up was a service as far as Ted was concerned. “What are you even going to do with all of them, huh? Make people pay to come and see?”

The demon was far more ready to just throw the damn key into the ocean below than fork it over. The ocean that loomed behind them, like a yawning maw ready to dine. A nice long fall and then— Well hopefully Teddy wouldn’t have to find out. They’d find another way down. Or maybe, just maybe, Emilio would listen to reason. Grow his heart three times that day or whatever. That or the plunge. Wouldn’t be the worst thing they’d ever dealt with. Unless it was just really shallow next to this cliffside. If that was the case, then… rest in pepperonis Mr. Jones.

—

Just as much a beast as the rest of those creatures. The words ignited a new fire, a new rage. They were one of those, then? The kind of person who saw human beings as animals, as disposable? Emilio had been operating under the assumption that Teddy themself was human, but this shone some doubt onto that. The way they spoke about the very human woman they’d put in a cage, like she was nothing more than a beast…

Maybe, if not for how the case had come to him, Emilio would be able to view this with a clearer head. If it hadn’t been Joy’s father who’d shown up at his door with red-rimmed eyes and a quiet desperation, if Emilio hadn’t been a bottle of whiskey deep at the time and soaked in grief about his own daughter, if he hadn’t stumbled upon Teddy as a suspect before he did the due diligence of investigating Joy to find out why she was missing… But everything Teddy said seemed to back up Emilio’s assumption. There was a double meaning behind all of it, a way to make it all adhere to the narrative that seemed so obvious in his head.

“Why, is that what you were going to do? Lock up an innocent woman in a cage, make her father pay you cash to visit her in your little petting zoo? Vete a la chingada, pendejo. I’m done talking.” He saw the moment Teddy glanced to the ocean behind them, understood what they were planning on doing with those keys. And Emilio couldn’t let it happen. Fumbling with Joy’s cage without the keys, with Teddy running around fully capable of letting all those animals out for dinner and a show… It wasn’t how this case needed to go. It couldn’t be how things went. Whatever happened to Emilio happened. But he wanted to get this girl back to his father. He wanted to save somebody’s daughter, even if it could never be his.

It was an impulsive thing, really. Sliding the knife out of his sleeve and into his hand. It was meant as more of a distraction than anything — a quick slash with one hand while the other went for the keys. He still wasn’t trying to kill Teddy. Not without knowing more about them, in any case. He just wanted to slow them down long enough for him to get Joy free.

—

“Wait what? Father? Pay? She’s not– How do you mean inno-” That was all that was able to escape the demon before their attention returned towards Emilio and Emilio’s knife hit its mark. Eyes darted to the other hand, seeing its trajectory and trying in vain to jerk away from his grasp. Pushing Teddy back a precious few inches toward the edge. All that was needed for their center of gravity to hang too far beyond the safety of the ledge.

What was worse than what the detective had said, was how he reached for Teddy. How in that far too short split second of confusion it seemed like they both realized there was a manner of misplay. A cosmic irony adding layers and layers of miscommunication on top of what could have been just a funny little kismet.

But they had already slipped. Gone too far. And gravity, as always, had its way with Teddy. Sending the demon soaring down below. Almost no time at all between the initial yelp of surprised confusion, and the resulting splash that broke up the waves. Even after a few moments, nothing resurfaced. Barely any bubbles that weren’t washed away by the turbulent waters. For all any observer could tell, Teddy Jones was all but lost to the sea.

One stroke of luck though. Or maybe another layer of dramatic ire, the keys had fallen off of Teddy’s belt during the struggle. Landed safely where their feet had just been.

—

It wasn’t supposed to go this way. It really wasn’t. The knife was a distraction, not an attack. Teddy wasn’t supposed to stumble backwards, the ledge wasn’t supposed to be this close, no one was supposed to fall. But they were tumbling off the side in an instant, and though Emilio scrambled to grab them, the earlier pursuit chose that moment to catch up with him in the form of his damn knee giving out before he could reach.

The result was a dramatic display: Emilio, reaching a hand out and finding open air and Teddy tumbling down to the sea below. Emilio scrambled over to the edge of the roof, but there was no sign of the other at the bottom. Swallowed up into the sea, he figured. Frustrated, he smacked a hand against the roof. Goddammit. Goddammit. Just one time, just one goddamn time, could things not go the way he wanted them to go? Could he manage, just once, to navigate a single goddamn situation without making everything a thousand times worse? Without hurting anyone?

He let his forehead drop onto the roof, letting out a frustrated sigh. What was done was done. Teddy was gone, but Joy wasn’t. There was one person in this scenario that could still be saved. All he had to do was save them.

Gathering himself up, Emilio looked to the roof where the keys now sat, unassuming and innocent as if what had just happened meant nothing at all. He scooped them into his hands before standing up, wincing when he put weight on his bad knee. He’d get Joy out and send her home, then he’d free the animals. And after that… He’d go home and drink himself into a stupor.

Yeah. Hell of a plan, Cortez.

#eldritchaccident #teddy: a joy to be here #animal cruelty tw #wickedswriting #s1 writing #season 1

8 notes · View notes