black sheep

julián de la cruz - he/him - 49 - auror corporal - pacific squad points: 190 cases: stolen timeturners in anchorage

[jdelacruz]

vesperbranwen​:

Vesper has always felt at home in Julián’s apartment, always. Though, they’ve always been fairly sure that Julián doesn’t. The place itself makes that clear, as if J has only lived here for a few weeks instead of years and years. He never really settled in to the space, never made it a home instead of just an apartment. Vesper would have, if that had the chance. Would have made a place that felt like a haven away from the rest of the world, warm and den-like, somewhere they can hide. But Julián takes them past the outer layers of the place and in to the sanctum, the small place that feels like him the most. His bedroom. They feel safer inside the walls, feel less like their entire world is falling apart. 

Safer again when Julián hugs them, wraps those arms around their body and holds them fast. He’s always been a little strange with hugs –– it doesn’t come naturally to him. They would have made some joke, maybe, about how he didn’t get hugged enough as a child. But he really didn’t. Whoever Vesper was, once upon a time, must have been spoiled with affection. Sometimes they need it so much that they might break if they don’t get it. Sometimes they wait so long that they feel like they’re going to break when they finally do. And it feels the best, the most important, coming from Julián. Because he isnt great at this, but he does it for them, because he knows how much they need it. 

They let it fall away, after a moment, the touch. They might cling on again later, but for now they shift, move to sit on the edge of Julián’s bed, hands supporting them down by their side and curling in to the sheet beneath them. 

“Just stay.” They say, and there’s a shake in their voice. Vesper shakes their head, because… Because they can’t have Julián walk away, maybe. Because they’re confused, and they look up at him through it, after a moment. They pat the bed, and wait for Julián to sit, a warm weight next to them.

“He knew me.” They shake their head as they say it. There’s no doubt, only a little fear. Because its true, because the man at the club had certain eyes when he looked at them. “How the fuck does that work.” 

He does as they ask: stays, just stays, sinks down onto the edge of the bed beside them, close enough that their sides press together. It’s easier contact than a full hug, something passive but reassuring. He does this, more often than he hugs, and he knows it isn’t always enough but it’s something good, something steady for them to cling to. He sits and listens, though they don’t say much at first, take their time working towards the thought. 

They sound so upset; they sound like they’re in utter disbelief. He knows they’re right; he’s been an auror for long enough that it’s practically instinct to know whether or not someone is lying, and the man at the bar had been telling the truth, completely convinced. Not to mention the matching tattoos. And the fact that Vesper had reacted so strongly... it spoke of some unremembered scar, a wound they’d forgotten they had being pressed on, the pain all the worse because of the confusion over the source.

     “You must have forgotten him,” he says. Because he’s pretty sure what they want right now isn’t platitudes. They sounded so, so desperately scared, back at the club. They sound, now, like what they need is answers. “If you knew him when you were young... I mean, you two look around the same age, he could have known you from anywhere.” 

The thought occurs to him rather suddenly—he hasn’t fully had a chance to think it through as he says it, hasn’t had a chance to talk himself out of something that surely Vesper has tried, at some point in time, in the decade since they lost their memories.

      “Hey, do you think a strong enough legilimens could find memories that you don’t remember anymore?” 

[jdelacruz]

aurorcaro​:

They watch him closely, hoping to find some further guidance in just what he wanted from them. The moment their hand touches his, they can feel a small seize in the muscles, and they almost pull back, worried they’d overstepped and had misinterpreted the situation again. 

But that doesn’t quite feel like that’s the case… they think to themself, feeling the muscles relax under their hand, and notice the lost look that soon seems to plague Julián’s features. He’s stuck in his head, they think, thoughts seemingly miles away from the counter they were currently sitting at. They’re not quite sure how to pull him back, even as someone who spent half their time wrapped up in their own spiraling thoughts.

They try to take a figurative step back though, to get a better read on it all. Brushing their thumb over the top of his hand, their brow knits in thought. The scale seemed to be a bit off-balance between them now, what with everything they saw the night before, and what he’d confessed to them since they sat down. They now knew a lot more about shit he probably didn’t want them to, the gritty and ugly details of his life over the last decade laid out now fully for them to examine. 

They needed to even the deck more, they decide, no matter how much the thought of doing so caused their chest to tighten and burn as stomach acid began to creep up their esophagus. 

“I wasn’t- I wasn’t mad at you…” they begin, taking a deep breath as they do, “when you didn’t recognize me. I mean fuck… I hoped you never would, even though the name would have eventually clued you in.” They’re not sure if airing out at least their own part to play in what happened in the last couple years would help or not, but they feel like if they were going to try to offer themself up as someone that could help him, they at least had to explain why they waited until now to do so. 

“I tried to stay in New York after it happened,” they say, before gesturing towards their face and then the rest of their body, “but it’s hard to try to move forward from something, when every time someone looks at you it’s all they see. So I moved out here, you know, where no one knew fuck all about what happened, and didn’t look at me like I was some broken thing, because it’s different when this face is the only one you know.” 

They pause for a second to take a drink of their coffee, wishing it was something stronger as their knee viciously bobs under the counter. They’re the one not making eye contact now, not really wanting to see what he was thinking until they were through. 

“When I first saw you in the bullpen after I got hired, I was so fuckin’ scared you’d recognize me some how, I was afraid it’d be New York all over again- but worse because it was you…. But then you looked past me- well sort of,” they chuckle weakly, only imagining what Julián‘s first impression of them was without realizing who they were. “And I was so relieved- but then….” 

But then they made a mistake, they think to themself. They couldn’t remember just where they were specifically when it happened, but they remember walking into the headquarters in full morph, and passing him. The encounter couldn’t have lasted but a few seconds, but they can still remember the look of recognition in Julián’s features, followed by what they interpreted as shock and horror, after he realized the scarred up new auror and the old cadet/eventual officer he used to fuck around with were one in the same person. 

“I thought it would be easier for the two of us, if I made myself more scarce when you were around. Hell, I even sent in a request to Lin to not put us on any cases together, and told her about our history as a reason why.” And damn, wasn’t that the most fun conversation they ever had with their chief…. It got the job done though, and they have to hand it to Lin for actually following through with the request for the last few years. “I figured after how things ended before, you wouldn’t necessarily take any offense to it, but prefer it anyway.” 

They look to him then finally, because if they don’t they feel like they’ll bolt out of there if they wait any longer to do so. They’re not sure just what they expect or hope in the form of an answer, but they feel like he had to know, if anything just so they could find some way to move past this shit that keeps tangling their feet up as they try to move on from it. 

It’s easier, to move away from talking about him. Loosens something in his throat, something that had been slowly tightening towards something like panic for minutes as he say there under Lucky’s scrutiny, flayed open and awaiting judgement. he clears his throat, takes a sip of the coffee still sitting in front of him, as Lucky starts to talk, clearing out the lingering feelings. Pushing them back where they belong, deep down where he can keep ignoring them like he usually does. Like any normal, functional person does. 

It’s easier to focus on Lucky. It shouldn’t be, maybe; he hasn’t heard the story behind the scars they have now that they didn’t have the last time they turned up to his apartment with breakfast, years and years ago, but he knew what they were working on when he left New York, knew what they were getting into, and he’s not an incredible auror but he does know how to put two and two together. With how cagey they clearly are now, in a way they weren’t before, he has some idea, a gesture of an idea towards what they’ve been through, and enough common sense not to ask or to bring it up. 

He’s got enough common sense here, too, to not assume he knows what they’re going to say. To actually get out of his own head for a minute and listen to what is clearly some kind of... not apology, but olive branch, maybe. Since they’d walked into his and Vesper’s business without asking and ripped out all of the drawers to throw dirty laundry all over the place. 

It makes sense. The train of thought that had led Lucky here. Why they’d left New York, why they’d kept their distance, why the two of them hadn’t had a case together since Lucky started on the Pacific Squad. He hadn’t thought to be curious, honestly, hadn’t questioned any of it. It just felt like fate handing him the short end of the stick again, and he’d left it at that—and sort of forgotten, somewhere along the way, that Lucky was the other half of the story, that Lucky had agency of their own absent fate’s cruel hand. That they had reasons for avoiding him, reasons for staying so far apart. 

Except—

The words what do you mean, how things ended? are almost out of his mouth before he stops himself and thinks about it. Him and Lucky—it wasn’t something he’d thought of as having an ending. It was something that had been, and it was something that had been doomed from the start, and it was something he stepped away from before it ended, knowing it would hurt less if he never had to see the inevitable disappointment in Lucky’s eyes when they finally caught up, saw the full picture, realized he wasn’t worth their time. 

But... of course it had ended for Lucky. 

There’s no good answer, to everything Lucky’s said. To digging up this much of their pasts and laying it all bare on the table in between the half-eaten waffles and the bad diner coffee. But he makes the best attempt he can.

     “I was embarrassed. That I hadn’t recognized you sooner. But I’d been wrapped up in my own shit for so long. I left New York thinking it would be a good opportunity, and it ended up just being... eight steps backwards, somehow. Like the distance between Rafael and I is somehow inversely proportional to my ability to be a halfway decent person. I didn’t blame you, for hating me. I’m pretty used to that being how people feel when I walk into a room.” 

[nikolaj-costerwaldau]

Raúl Esparza as Rafael Barba in Law and Order: SVU 22x04

[ngalitzine]

THE GOOD PLACE | 4.13 — “Whenever You’re Ready”

[jdelacruz]

astermontero​:

Aster is admittedly pretty thrilled when the case file gets handed to her. This beautiful, exciting, thrilling case. It makes her mind race a little bit –– because its the Depeartment of Mysteries, the real fucking place, and June Norwood. As far as Aster is concerned, June is a fucking hero. So bright, so smart, changing the damn world in cool and secret ways. Okay, so, its kind of unfortunate that her and Becca are linked so intimately, so strangely. Family. So she would probably hate Aster, because Aster can imagine Becca talking bad about her to everyone. 

God, she hoped June didn’t hate her. 

She was engrossed in the file when Julián came over to her, grabbing her attention. Her lead here. She really didn’t know what to think of him, hadn’t taken much time to pay attention to the finer details of his life. He didn’t seem to have many friends –– maybe that meant he was difficult to work with, maybe he just kept people at arms length. Vesper Branwen treated him like he was amazing, though, and maybe that meant something too, because he seemed to care about them in equal measure. 

“This might be the best thing that’s ever happened to me,” She says, with an ease that surprises her. And then, a little bashful. “I mean, actually. This is super serious and we’re going to solve it in no time, before reality as we know it gets messed up beyond repair.” 

“But like, it’s also super cool.” She rests her elbows on the desk, looks up at him. Excited more about the case than about anything else. Time turners, so much at risk, and probably the coolest place on earth to explore. “How do we start?” 

Other than what he’s observed about her in passing, the recruit—no, that’s not right, she was promoted the week before, along with little Savage, wasn’t she?—the cadet is mostly a new face to him. He rarely gets paired with recruits, which, in Lin’s defense, is probably wise. There are better role models on the Squad than him; he’s never been cut out for that kind of mentoring. But recruit or not, Montero is excited in a way that shows off just how green she is, and he has to admit, it’s endearing as he watches her try to school her excitement for just a moment, and then turn quickly back into it.

She’s right; it is exciting. And that eagerness, that energy, is just what they’re going to need to solve this thing. She’s got drive; any auror that young and already on a Squad like this one has to, but it’s clear in her eyes, the ambition, and more than the ambition, the passion. Something warm and burning about it, worlds apart from the cold, clinical ambition of people looking for power, people like Hattori, or Rafael. 

Yeah, June is definitely going to love her.

       “Well,” he says, giving her half a smile. “We should probably start by talking to June Norwood. It sounds like we owe her a thank you, for doing half of our work for us, at the very least. She used to be like you, you know? Squad auror, straight out of the Academy. Before moving onto bigger and better things, and all of that.”

She probably knows that. He really cannot keep track. 

      “Anyway, Anchorage it is. I don’t know that we can apparate in, but there’s a direct floo line.”

[jdelacruz]

aurorcaro​:

He meets their gaze, and they’re honestly not sure what in the hell to make of it all. They feel like they’re back in the breakroom again, smacking their shoulder off the side of the vending machine, as they’re caught off guard by a certain nostalgic fondness Julián seemed to be harboring. It all only serves to pull them back into the internal argument they keep having with themself, because he’s not talking like someone who cared so little for them he didn’t give them the benefit of a heads-up before disappearing. But he was that someone, they quickly remind themself, he did hold them in so little regard. 

They felt like they were being pulled around like a rag doll, by the small war in their head, not necessarily due to anything that Julián was doing in that moment, but more having to do with their own self preservation instinct. They cared for him enough that they wanted to try to help him, but not get too close, not close enough where they were going to screw themself over again, and get the wrong idea about this all. 

“We’ll that’s just because I’m a damn annoying little shit,” they huff a laugh, grateful at least that they felt somewhat calmer than they had before. “I’m like a fuckin’ stray mutt, you feed me once, and I won’t leave you alone until you give me a good enough kick.” And damn did he sure give them a good one, but here they were again, ten years later looking worse for wear, but still not able to shake whatever weird loyalty they seem to hold for him. 

They fall quiet again though, as they glance back over to Julián, the mood clearly shifting into a territory they shouldn’t be cracking jokes in. He was being more open with them now than he’d ever had, even in those few years they shared together back in New York. It should be downright horrifying that this is what it took for the two of them to finally actually talk about shit that mattered, and maybe they were a bit horrified, realizing how much really was going on without their notice all this time. 

“Stay until they finally get the nerve to leave,” they reply quietly, “but leave the minute they do”. Without putting much thought into it, because if they did they knew they wouldn’t do it at all, they reach their hand across the table to rest it on his. It was the hand whose grip they had full control over, which allows them to give his a small but firm squeeze. The octopus tattoo on it reacts in kind, its inked tentacles moving and twisting as if it too were trying to gain a grip on Julián’s hand.

“If not for yourself then at least for them,” they shrug, shooting him a half smile, “they’ll be better off knowing you got out of there too, rather than stuck there on your own.” 

They reach out, put their hand on his, and his instinct, sheer muscle memory, is to pull away. He doesn’t, but the muscles of his forearm jump, all the same, tense for a long moment until he wills them to relax again. He looks at their hand, at the way the ink of their tattoo moves across the skin; he can’t look away from it, or anywhere else, as he listens to Lucky talk, voice dropping into something quiet and serious. 

He doesn’t think he could look at them if he tried, now. He didn’t realize he was looking for a specific answer until he didn’t get it—doesn’t even think he wanted the answer he was looking for, not really, except in some desperate attempt to find something else, someone else, to cling to. That he’d woken up miserable and reached out to Lucky out of, what, some sort of pathetic, misplaced hope that there was something to salvage a decade after Lucky had stopped caring about him, a decade after he forfeited the right to their care. 

He realizes, belatedly, that he’d wanted them to say No, Julián, you have me. But of course that was absurd. Of course he didn’t. 

He can practically hear Rafael’s voice in his head, more scathing and pointed and right than it ever really was out loud. The real Rafael would have made some snide comment, sure, but it was only the version of Rafael that lived at the back of his mind and never left that knew enough about him to say they just feel sorry for you, Julián. They pity you. They’re doing this for Vesper. They’re doing it to clear their own conscience. 

      “I’ll see what I can do,” he answers. But he can’t imagine it. It’s been so long, since he was alone, since he was reminded so sharply of how lonely he is, without Vesper. He used to think it was better to be alone than to be with his family, but the truth is he isn’t so sure anymore. Maybe he’s like a stray dog, too, the hunger pangs of loneliness bad enough that any scrap of attention is enough, touch-starved enough that even a kick feels like a mercy. 

[evycarnahan]

Visit Original Link

19/50 musical theater songs you should love: Being Alive | Company

[jdelacruz]

aurorcaro​:

They listen closely when he speaks, because they want so desperately to try to understand this all better, and to actually have some kind of idea just what it was they could do here other than make it worse somehow. He’s not meeting their eyes, which feels like a good representation for the issues they both seemed to be having right now communicating one with another. They feel like they’re trying to solve a puzzle with only half the pieces, because there is still such a large gapping hole in all of this that has left them feeling uncertain of just how to respond to any of it all, because they’re so uncertain whether he even wants anything to do with them or not. 

“I know why you stayed,” they start, their gaze dropping away from him and down to their coffee cup, “if there’s anything here I can understand, it’s certainly the urge to try to shield the kid from as much as you can.” 

They wished they could do the same somehow, instead of letting Julián continue to bear the brunt of it. But circumstances prevented them from doing anything more than what they managed to do last night, for the spare few minutes they managed to sneak Vesper away from the party without attracting the eyes of others. 

“But there’s gotta be an in between here, Julián…”, they trail off, letting out a sigh as they struggle to piece together the right words. “Somethin’ in between leavin’ the kid at the mercy of your family, and takin’ on all of it on your own. This whole time you’ve been helpin’ create an eventual escape plan for Vesper- what with the job and everything, but you’ve gotta make one for yourself too.” 

They finally look up to him then, because they’re afraid they’re starting to cross a line, and step into territory he didn’t feel they had the right to venture in. And they probably didn’t, having made the choice a decade ago to try to no longer think of Julián de la Cruz as someone they had any right to any more. 

But even that thought doesn’t stop them from what they say next. 

“Because none of this,” they add, gesturing to the bare bones apartment around them, “could have been what you wanted when you left.” They say the last part quietly, because up until that point the topic of his leaving had been completely unspoken between them. A taboo subject that was better left in the past, but always seemed to be lurking quietly in the corner of every room they shared.

“No matter what you feel like you do or don’t deserve, you definitely don’t deserve this,” they add, and it isn’t until then do they realize the slight shake to their voice, their nervousness beginning to be more apparent. Taking another sip of their coffee they try to resettle themself before adding, “help the kid, but don’t forget about yourself either is all I’m tryin’ to say.” 

It’s the same thing they said last night, more or less. At the end, when he’d already shut himself down from the conversation, just trying to muscle through the rest of the night as best he could. He hadn’t known what to do with it, then, and he doesn’t know what to do with it now. How had they put it, last night? Managing isn’t living, or something like that? And what is all of this, except for proof that they’d been right. His apartment, sad and a little pathetic. His existence, sad and a little pathetic. But just because they’re right doesn’t mean he knows how to change it, how to do anything else. 

Don’t forget about yourself, they say, and that’s the whole problem. The whole crux of it. He’s spent so long with people telling him that he isn’t worth their time that he’s never stopped to wonder if he’s worth his own time, either. Every selfish, cowardly act of self-preservation, and he hadn’t stopped to think about what it might mean to remove himself from the source of the harm. 

     “You always did think more of me than I had any right to,” he says, finally, after a long moment, finally looking them in the eye. 

He feels torn open, feels about as vulnerable as it gets. Lucky, here in this space that’s hardly his and yet is as close to his as anything he has. Lucky, seeing the full extent of his entire pathetic existence. Lucky, having seen his family, having seen his home, having seen every piece of him laid bare and still, somehow, thinking he deserves more than this. It feels unfathomable. It makes him wonder, for just a moment, what had happened to them, all those years ago, why he’d been so certain his time was running out. 

     “Vesper’s all I have,” he says, but it’s not an argument this time. It’s not a contradiction. It’s a truth he’s been living with for so many years, been so comfortable with for all this time. Vesper had so much more than just him—had friends, had people who loved them, had any number of places to turn to—and of course they did, they deserved it. 

It’s not an argument, this time. It’s a quiet little plea he can’t bring himself to say any other way. 

[jdelacruz]

Pacific Squad office, sometime mid-October, @astermontero​

He’s surprised, but not disappointed, to see his name on the stolen timeturners case that people have been whispering around about, a clear worry among anyone who has heard what happened that something as seemingly unthinkable as the Department of Mysteries being breached. It’s a big case, which is part of why he’s surprised—June Norwood may seem confident that she knows who is behind it, but there’s still a lot at stake here.

That’s the other reason he’s surprised to find his name on the case: June Norwood. He’s worked with her before, a handful of times, on other cases that were tangentially related to the Department she’d founded sometimes in her early thirties. They have, in all honestly, worked fairly well together when called upon to. But there’s the slight detail, the little wrinkle that, well, she hates his guts. 

Still: it’ll be nice to see her. It’s been a while. And it’ll be nice to tackle a case where the risk is not so much bodily harm to his person as much as irreparable damage to the time stream or whatever. 

      “Montero,” he says, leaning back in his chair and looking over his shoulder at their desk, catty-corner to his, where they’re visibly reading the same case file he is, looking attentive and studious about it. She’s a smart kid, a good auror. He thinks Norwood will probably like her. If they don’t already know one another. He can never quite keep track of which of the younger aurors on this Squad are related and all of that. “Have you ever been to the Department of Mysteries before? If not, you’re in for a real treat.” 

[jdelacruz]

aurorcaro​:

They take the occasional bite as they listen to him quietly. So much of what he says though is so foreign to them, it’s hard for them to really comprehend it all completely. The constant fight and struggle to maintain a reputation in a circle of a bunch of a rich assholes, was a far cry from anything they ever lived. They couldn’t imagine getting that upset or put out by the idea of a damn party going the wrong way, or being that scared to look bad in front of everyone. Even before they looked like the genderqueer bastard of Frankenstein’s monster, they weren’t exactly brought into the same circles Branwen and de la Cruz spent their free time in.

They try to understand though, fuck do they try, as they continue to pick at their food as Julián continues. Even as he does, all it seems to do is reinforce the idea that they were completely out of their depth, and had walked into a situation their presence was not particularly welcome, especially as de la Cruz seems to begin to steer back towards the topic from the night before. His tone is calmer now, there was no doubt about that, and he did seem to be giving them validation for their concern now, but they still couldn’t help but read between the lines that he didn’t quiet feel the need for their presence. 

They feel like they want to crawl out their own skin, the unease that’d settled in them growing as they struggle to figure out what to say, if there really was anything to say at all. 

“I’m not exactly an expert on getting out of shit like that,” they confess, because it was the damn truth. They may have an idea what it was like to be a slave, but their freedom wasn’t one they earned themself. “And that was never my intention to act like I had the magic answer or whatever, if that’s what it seemed like.” 

Taking a drink of their coffee, they let out a sigh, before closing the lid of their half eaten container of food, not particularly having the stomach for it anymore. 

“I’m sorry if I fucked shit up for the kid last night- with your mom. I shouldn’t have gone,” they shake their head before glancing back up to him, “but my offer still stands. You don’t deserve any of that shit either. They might be your family, but you don’t owe them fuck all, especially if that’s how things usually go.” 

Lucky sets their food aside, half eaten, and before they’ve even said anything else he can tell he’s messed this up, somehow, said something wrong, because he’s never seen Lucky leave breakfast food left behind on a plate. And suddenly it feels like last night, all over again, like they’re both talking around one another and nothing is sticking, nothing is landing, like they’re both too caught up in their own shit to see eye to eye on anything, to understand what the other is saying. 

     “I’m not—” he starts, his hand flexing against the counter and relaxing again as he struggles to find the words for this, to find a way to explain to Lucky why this is so much harder than it seems like it should be, why it’s not their fault that any of this is so hard. But how do you explain away the years of this, to someone who hasn’t known you in a decade? To someone who never understood it in the first place? How could he make Lucky understand why any of this was the way it was, when Lucky had always seen a different person when they looked at Julián than anyone else had? 

He’d never understood what they’d seen in him, in the first place. It was pure happenstance that they knew him at a time when he could let himself pretend it didn’t matter, when he honestly believed he could fool someone into thinking he was something worth loving. When he could put his family and everything they’d ever said to him away in a little box in the back of his head, for a while, pretend to be a good auror, imagine that he really was the man Lucky seemed to think he was, and not just a constant disappointment. 

Disappointing Lucky had been inevitable from the start. At least when he’d left New York he didn’t have to see it. Now, he’s not sure that he can bear to look them in the eye while he does it. 

     “I don’t think I owe them anything. I don’t do any of if for them,” he explains, trying his best to make it clear to Lucky, hoping desperately that they’ll understand this time. “But I owe Vesper. They’re my family. As long as they’re in it, I’m in it. Because I’ve never been good at very much of anything in my life, but somehow, against all odds, I’m good enough at this to make it easier for them. And I should do at least one decent thing with my life, while I’ve got the chance.” 

He’s imagined it before. Vesper, escaping it all. Getting away. Getting to live the life he knows they’d thrive in, out from under Rafael’s thumb. Taking Pandora with them. Maybe finding someone who loves every part of them. He can imagine Lucky being a part of that—it’s so, so clear how much they care about Vesper. But he’s never imagined there’s a world where he gets to do anything other than bear the brunt of it in their absence. He’d been born to this, and they hadn’t, and all of it would be worth it to know they could have the life they actually deserved, instead of this.

     “I know that’s not the way you think of things. But I made my choice a decade ago, when I decided to love them. I can’t change it now.” 

[jdelacruz]

vesperbranwen​:

The way that Julián takes their hand is more gentle and more welcome than any other touch. Its a rare thing, won from someone like him. Like the moments where he held Vesper, when he sat aside the fact that he doesn’t do things like this and took them into his arms. He was a saint, for times like that, for times like this. Because he must know that Vesper is a tactile person, that Vesper needs touch like they need oxygen. It’s always been true about them –– they’re sure it was true before, as well, in another life. 

Another life that looms larger than ever in their mind. That blank space, static fuzz over so many years of the past. Vesper can go back, through sometimes hazy memories, back to the moment where they were nineteen and scared and couldn’t feel anything else, couldn’t remember a single moment before waking up in that hospital bed and not knowing who they were. They feel choked with it now, the way that they want to know. The way that they’re scared of knowing, deep down, about what might have happened to make them like this. 

“I don’t know.” They say, with a frantic little breath. Because they’ve realised that they aren’t sure. Some of their instincts are screaming to run away, to get away from this and shove it aside. Just go home and be Vesper Branwen. Be someones mother and wife and friend and forget the past, let it fade away. They feel shaken and weak with it. But the other part of them does want to know, wants to know so badly that it kills them. Who they were, before. Who loved them and who missed them. They wanted to know that they were real, not make believe, not pretend. “I don’t know.”

They take a breath, and they look at Julián with soft eyes. The offer is a kind one, and they’re so glad that he isn’t done with them, that he never gets sick of them by some blessing from God. “Home. Home sounds good. Your place, lets go there.” A soft voice, a little pleading, as they glance back at the club. They hold their other hand out, so that Julián can hold both of them and they can apparate back, apparate away from here. 

He takes their other hand when they offer it, pulls them close so he can apparate the two of them together, to the space just outside his wards. Lets them in, unlocks the door—the apartment’s dark, and feels the same kind of awful empty that it always does when he comes home for the night, and he wishes he has something better to offer them, something more comfortable, more homey. A place where they could feel like themself. It’s hard to imagine, when even he doesn’t feel himself here. 

So he sweeps past the uncomfortable couch, the impersonal art, shoulders open the door to his bedroom—clean, the bed made, his favorite pair of shoes by the door. A few pictures, on the bedside table, one of him and Vesper from a few years ago, one of Pandora at three months old, and a small stack of books lined up there. There’s not all that much more to this room than the others, but it’s the space that he thinks feels safest, most comfortable. 

He gives them a hug, too, a quick and awkward thing; he still doesn’t quite have a handle on the gesture, but he knows Vesper will forgive him for that. Even in the soft light of this room, they look pale, look shaken.

     “You want me to get something? I’ve got some scotch, somewhere. Or... there’s ice cream, in the freezer.”

He hasn’t seem them look this shaky, this upset, since just after Pandora was born, the long weeks where they could barely pull themself out of bed, where they always looked a bit like a rabbit facing a predator and trying to decide whether or not to bolt. There’s a touch of a familiar far away look in their eye, the one he’s seen them get when they realize they’ve forgotten something—the nights out they’ve forgotten to turn up to, left him waiting at the bar for an hour or two before giving up on them and going home, or the time they realized they’d forgotten his birthday, not that he minded all that much. 

     “Or I can just stay here. Whatever you want, Ves.” 

[jdelacruz]

aurorcaro​:

There is a small relief they feel as they look back over to him, and find him not entirely off put by the by the small peace offering. This they could work with, they think to themself, as they dump a couple of the syrup containers onto their waffle and bacon strips. It would still be harder than it normally would have been for them, and they’re certain they’ll be thinking about their words much more carefully than they usually would before they leave their mouth, but they can work with it. Or at least they were going to try their damn well best to. 

When he speaks again, they’re already beginning to censor themself. The first thing they wanted to say was, “I know…. I remember”, not to the fact the night was awful, even though they fully agreed, but to his views on what Lucky would easily call their personal favorite meal of the day. It wasn’t the first time they’d heard him say so, but they do recall when he had for the first time, and they shot up from the bed like it was the most ludicrous thing they’d ever heard, before demanding to know just what grievances he held against a good breakfast sandwich- or dare they say a bagel even. 

But they let that memory fade back among with the others, along with the words that lingered on the tip of their tongue. Instead, they focus on the latter half of his comment, regarding the dreaded night before. They’d much rather forget it even happened, just move on, and not bring it up again. That didn’t necessarily seem like the right move though, not when it seemed the whole purpose of this “talk” was to dissect what neither of them had the energy to do the night before. 

“Is it usually like that?” They find themself asking instead, because they are genuinely curious. As much as they thought they knew him before, there were certain things the two of them didn’t ask one another, his family being one of them as he clearly seemed to make a point to not mention them. And for their own part in it all, they made no attempt to try to dig any further than surface level when it came to the older auror they’d found themself attached to. Largely because they didn’t want anything to change, they were perfectly content in what it was, enough so they allowed themself to get far too comfortable in the familiarity of it before it no longer was as such anymore. 

“The kid told me a little bit about it all,” they add, before taking a bite of their bacon. Then they can’t help but snort out a small laugh as they think back on something Vesper had said to them, “they called you a fuckin’ teddy bear, if ya can believe it,” they smirk as they look back up to him. 

Once again they choose to censor themself and leave the comment where it stood, choosing to keep back the tease, ‘it’s alright, they see me as some kind of mentor figure, so we both know their sense of judgement is fucked’, because they’re uncertain whether they had the right to.

He sets his plastic fork down, rolling his eyes at the teddy bear comment—nothing about that was surprising, that Vesper thought it, or that they talked to Lucky enough for them to know, but it’s strange to think about the two of them talking about him, over drinks or at work or wherever they spent their time together. He forgets, sometimes, that he’s a person who exists in other people’s lives and not just his own, a thing people can talk about when he’s not around, a thing people might want to talk about. Forgets even more that Vesper, even if he knows they love him, might say kind things about him and not just for his own sake. 

     “It depends on what you mean by like that,” he says, letting out a sigh and picking the coffee cup up. “Rafael was in rare form; I’d imagine he was off put by his lack of control over the guest list. He doesn’t like unimportant people running around the place, which is why Vesper’s the only reason I’m ever invited to these things. He... takes these parties so seriously, staking his reputation on everything going to plan. I never got the hang of that, really, when we were younger, which I suppose is why reputation’s so... uh, shit.” 

He’d spent far too many years pursuing a reputation like Rafael’s, trying to make people think he was impressive and successful, but the older he got the less important it seemed—though, perhaps that was just that the reality had sunk in that it was pretty much unachievable for someone like him, utterly unremarkable, painfully mediocre, flaws he’d never been able to fix for himself. 

     “But if you mean like that in the more general sense, then yes, that’s dear old mother at her best. In my defense, I usually manage to stop her from making Vesper run away from the party weeping, but Jacinda de la Cruz isn’t happy until someone is in tears.” 

It’s strange, to talk about it; he doesn’t, usually, not to anyone but Vesper, and there’s nothing he needs to explain to Vesper, since they’ve seen it with their own eyes again and again. He keeps family and work as separate as humanly possible, just another part of trying to find something for himself outside of his younger brother’s remarkably large shadow. That, and he isn’t particularly comfortable with people feeling sorry for him, especially about things he toughened his own skin against a long time ago. So he shifts the topic slightly, to something easier to talk about—the whole reason Lucky even cared about all of this in the first place, probably the real reason they were here.

     “Look, I know whatever Vesper told you has you worried about them. And I’m not saying you shouldn’t be—I mean, they were barely twenty when I met them at their engagement party. I’m not pretending there’s anything healthy about that. But unfortunately there’s no easy answer here, or I would have found it already.” 

[theaurorfileshq]

– Stolen Timeturners in Anchorage 

CASE LEVEL: Two

POINTS REQUIRED: One Hundred Seventy 

OVERVIEW:

MACUSA’s relatively newly formed Department of Mysteries has recently opened an off-site headquarters a few miles outside the city of Anchorage, Alaska. The headquarters is heavily warded against no-maj presences, and only those with the highest clearance should be able to find their way to it. It has two entrances, one through a door in MACUSA headquarters keyed to specific personnel only, and one that can be accessed by driving through the several layers of wards that surround the building and gaining access through the locked doors. It was a great surprise, then, when the new head of the Department, Former-Auror June Norwood, reported that someone had stolen several time turners from their storage boxes. The four golden necklaces are some of the most advanced time turners available for use or study in the United States, and in fact most of the world. Since the destruction of the time room in the Department of Mysteries in the United Kingdom, they are only rivaled by those possessed by the Russian Ministry.

June Norwood followed all necessary protocol’s in contacting MACUSA about the theft and the security breach, and has already begun an investigation of her own. According to her last communication, she has narrowed the suspects down to the one most likely –– Emerald McAllistair, an extremely ambitious yet troubled young woman who was recently appointed to the department by higher ups at MACUSA. Emerald denies any involvement in the theft, and continues to show up to work every day to complete her duties. However, several other co-workers have claimed to see Emerald in more than one place at a time. She also has a great interest in more valuable and…top secret artifacts that may or may not be being studied by the Department.  June has requested the assistance of Squad Aurors in proving Emerald’s involvement and recovering the stolen time turners before any damage can be done to the world, or the time stream in general. She has provided Pacific Squad with the necessary information and full access to the Anchorage headquarters for whatever they need in their investigation. 

PERSONS OF INTEREST:

Emerald McAllistair: a new employee at the department, and the most likely suspect when it comes to the theft of the time turners. Emerald has been behaving strangely since the theft, has been sighted in strange areas of the headquarters and is reported by co-workers to be ‘poking around’ in projects that don’t belong to her. 

June Norwood: The head of the new department, and a former auror with a great deal of experience, both in time-related cases and in general investigations. June was awarded the rank of Lieutenant on Central Squad before she left the job and began to focus on magical theory and experimentation instead. It was at her insistent lobbying that MACUSA formed their own Department of Mysteries to expand their knowledge of the unknown. 

Jeremy Salle: The first employee hired by the newly formed Department and Norwood’s loyal second in command. He supports June’s assertions that Emerald is involved in the theft of the time turners, but believes that all employees should be questioned and looked into further, just in case she has any accomplices. 

CHIEFS’ NOTES:

It is very troubling to me that the Department of Mysteries has experienced a breach of any kind, given the numerous dangerous artifacts in their possession. We must do our best to determine where this breach occurred and help the head of the department make sure it never happens again. 

- Chief Lin

Norwood? Fuck, it’s been a minute since I heard that name in the department. I worked on a case with June years back on a prison escape case that crossed squad jurisdictions. You tell her I said hi, yeah? And I’ll get her those thirty galleons I owe her the next time I see her. 

- Deputy Chief Harbird

CASE STATUS: TAKEN

| RPG HOME | PLOT | WANTED CONNECTIONS | OPEN CASES |

[jdelacruz]

aurorcaro​:

There’s a look of what they can only describe as panic on Julián’s features when he opens the door. At first they think they might have over stepped, such as maybe Julián had expected this to be a rather short visit, and not one that’d take the duration of a meal. But then they follow his line of sight to a coffee machine that looks like it came off a space station, and they can’t help but bark out a small laugh.

“The coffee pot this came out of looked a good thirty years older than that one. So I won’t take it personally if you’d rather not take the chance and use your own instead.”

Slipping past him, they head inside and towards a space on the kitchen counter near a set of bar stools. They just about ask him when he moved, because by the state of the apartment they’d have figured it’d have been only recently. They don’t though, for once telling themself to shut up before they hit a nerve they didn’t know was there.

It is a nice place though, all in all, very hotel like, and makes them feel like they were supposed to take their boots off at the door- but it’s nice. It was the polar opposite of their well lived in studio apartment, but that didn’t surprised them. They’d always been opposites to a certain degree even back when they had more in common than they did now.

Setting the plastic bag down on the counter, they pull out the first container and find it’s their’s- a large blueberry waffle with a couple strips of bacon next to it, both ready to be smothered in syrup as Lucky fully intended to do.

They leave Julián’s in the bag for him to get himself if he wanted it. His order was one that was fully a shot in the dark, and based solely on his palette from a decade ago. Back when they had to coax breakfast orders out of him in the early hours of the morning, through his groggy protests as they nipped and kissed him out of his full order, and adding a few unnecessary questions such as pulp or no pulp orange juice before finally letting him sleep again.

As they ready their own meal, they the occasional glance over to him, curious to see how on or off the right track they were. They felt in a constant battle with themself, when it came to their confidence in knowing how he would react to the things they said or did. In some instances they felt like they know him better than anyone, and in others (especially lately) he feels like a stranger to them.

That constant tug and pull had resulted in them unintentionally pissing him off the night before, when their attempt at a joke and to make him laugh, blew up so completely in their face, leading him to accusing them of insulting him in his brother’s home, then asking if they stole anything. And fuck that last one still hurt…. Even as they sit there they feel their shoulders tense at the thought that somehow that’s what they’ve turned into in his mind’s eye, and once again they’re forced to reconsider just how welcome they really were in this space of his. 

“You don’t have to eat that,” they say suddenly, without thinking, as they glance over to him, “I should have asked first.”

He wasn’t expecting Lucky to bring coffee for them, let alone breakfast, but maybe he should have. He’d never been much of a breakfast person, usually skipping it altogether, but he’d eat breakfast more times when he and Lucky were together than he had in probably the rest of his life combined. He doesn’t know what to expect, when Lucky sets the bag in front of him, looks inside—french toast, a side of hash browns, probably not too dissimilar to what he would have ordered if he’d been pressed. 

     “No, it’s fine,” he says, taking it out of the bag; he’s not sure he will eat it, because he feels nauseous with anxiety, but he appreciates the thought, the pseudo olive branch Lucky’s extending after their conversation the night before, something they really didn’t need to do given how badly it had all gone. 

He leaves the coffee he put on there, ignoring it, taking a sip of the one Lucky brought instead, because even if he can’t stomach breakfast, he can still drink coffee as a gesture of good faith here. He... honestly doesn’t know what he’s doing here, doesn’t know why he messaged them or what he wants to say or how he expects this conversation to go. Everything at the party had been so... frustrating, and jarring, and terrible, and Lucky had pissed him the hell off but he knows they hadn’t meant to. 

     “I, um. Yeah, thank you. This is great,” he says, gesturing down at the container of food, moving to pull a plastic fork and knife out of the bag as well, and then he grabs the second stool, pulls it around to the other side of the counter, because it feels strange to sit next to them, easier, somehow, to have the counter between them. 

And once he’s sitting, he finds that, despite the sinking feeling in his stomach, he is hungry, so he takes a bite of the hash browns, and they’re greasy and salty and... good, in a way he didn’t expect, so he takes a second bite, and then a third, reaches over to the little tubs of syrup that Lucky has on their side of the counter and slides one over, opens it up to pour over the french toast when he gets to it.

     “I don’t usually eat breakfast,” he says, by way of explanation. “But last night was... awful, honestly.” 

[jdelacruz]

vesperbranwen​:

Vesper glances, relieved, as Julián perks up and moves to attention, leaps to the defense. He’s a good man, a good brother, and he would never just sit there and watch Vesper freak out, watch some weirdo talk to them like this. There’s a conflict in their heart, about it all. Part of them wants to know more, part of them is too damn scared of what could happen –– of getting their hopes up, of learning things they can’t take back. They feel sick to their stomach. 

So Julián moves, and Vesper focuses on him instead, the way he instantly backs them up and the forceful tone in his voice when he says it. Loyal to the end. They swallow, and breathe past whatever fucking strange panic is swelling up on them, the one that’s telling them their survival instinct might be fright instead of flight. 

The man looks back at them, when Julián insists, and Vesper almost, almost wants to tell him to stay. There is something… it isn’t familiar, but its a gut feeling. Something that tells them this is more than just a case of mistaken identity, something that makes them feel like reaching for a past that they know isn’t there. But they’re more scared than anything else, more freaked out by the grabbing touch and the insistence in his voice, when Vesper’s mind is an empty slate and they have no idea what the hell is going on. 

“You know what, no.” They say, “We’re gonna go. Have a good night, or whatever. And think about not grabbing at aurors in public, next time you have a few drinks.” It’s not calm, their voice is shaking, but its probably more put together than they might have managed if they were somewhere else, on their own, not with Julián, their fucking rock. They slip out and past him –– and he froze at the word auror, as if that was taboo for him, as if he was more scared suddenly. He hisses out a curse and heads away, even as Vesper is shrugging on their coat and making for the door, glancing back to make sure that Julián is following them. 

They shake their head, “You know what. You’re right. I’m telling Ransom that his club fucking sucks.” And then, outside in the cool air, out on the street and away from prying eyes. “What the fuck, J.”  

He moves to follow them quickly, automatically, instinctively, stays two steps behind them at first just to make sure the guy isn’t following, and then falls into step beside them as they step through the door and out onto the street outside. They’re still walking, still moving, clearly trying to get away from the club and not just from the guy, like they’re trying to outrun something else altogether, and so he keeps pace, for a minute, and then stops them, because it’s not a conversation he feels like they can have while they’re both still moving.

He catches their hand gently, carefully, not wanting to startle them, not wanting to grab their arm the way the guy inside had. He waits, until they stop, until they’re looking at him, and then he puts a hand on their shoulder, looks them in the eye.

     “Are you okay?” he asks, a starting point; he’s pretty sure the answer is no, they still look shaken and scared and upset. He can’t blame them, for that, it seems like a perfectly reasonable reaction to a truly uncomfortable encounter. He can’t imagine if it happened to him, someone looking at him with that kind of conviction and insisting he knows them when he doesn’t. And, to his knowledge, he’s never had memory problems the way Vesper has, doesn’t have any more than the normal number of holes in his life.

     “Do you want to talk about it? Whatever you want to do, we can. We can go to our usual place, or... just go home, talk there...” 

It feels a little impotent, honestly, not as helpful as he wants it to be. He wishes he were better at this sort of thing, comforting and caring; he really had to learn how to do it, for them, train his instincts out of a lifetime of the way his family handled problems like this: by ignoring them. But it’s better than nothing, at least, to make sure they know he’s there for them, whatever they want to do about this. 

[jdelacruz]

vesperbranwen​:

Sometimes, Vesper kind of loves when this happens. When attention is leveled at them from a stranger, someone who doesn’t even know them. It’s nice to know that people just think that they’re hot. And they almost have a complex about it, what bodies people like and what they don’t, if they’re better when they’re blonde and tiny. They’re not entirely up for it tonight, even as they shoot a grin at Julián. They get ready to nod along to whatever this dude has to say, to tell him that they’re sure he’s very nice, but Vesper is just trying to have a nice night with their very dear big brother.

They blink up at him, when he approaches the table. Ready to launch in, they already have the words half out of their mouth. “Not interested––” They try to start, and then find themself flinching just a little bit when he reaches down to grab their arm, twisting slightly to look at the tattoo they’ve had for as long as they can remember, the one that almost blends away in their memory for how little they think of it, even though they never try to make it go away. The same tattoo is there, on his own hand, starker against his skin. The white snake, exactly the same, like a harbinger of some kind of doom. And Vesper’s heart starts to pound, just a little. They look up at his face again and –– nothing. He looks at them like he knows them, but he can’t because. Because they don’t know him, even as a strange and twisted feeling grows in their stomach. 

He looks in their eyes, and breaks out in a grin. He looks happy. He looks like he’s found the sun, somehow. It leaves them shaken, still. “V –– babe, shit, it’s really fucking you.” He says, even as they’re glancing toward Julián for some kind of help, here. They shake their head, even as they’re doing it, let out one of their frantic and almost unhinged laughs.

“Sorry –– Um. No. I think you have the wrong person.” They say, almost apologetic with it. He drops their arm, finally, after the lingering touch, and they snatch it away from him even further, press back further into the booth. “Sorry.” 

His gaze turns hesitance, and he looks at Julián with a curious gaze, as if worried that Vesper is only doing this for his sake. “You really don’t remember?” He asks, and they find themself shaking their head again. He leans in, almost frantic with it, looks in their eyes as if he’s searching for something, reaching out for their arm again as if to pull them away, though they pull back from the touch. He looks wounded, looks scared, suddenly. “Come on, V. Let me take you home.” 

And they laugh, again, shaking their head. Suddenly scared. Suddenly shakey. Suddenly freaked the fuck out –– they were already so deep in their own paranoia today, already so scared that the world was out to get them. “No offence, but fuck off.” 

It happens faster than he can react to it, the shift in Vesper’s face from amusement to fear. The guy’s talking in fragments, little pieces of sentences that don’t make any sense to him, like pieces of a conversation he’s only hearing half of, and acting like Vesper is supposed to be filling in the other half. Except Julián can tell that Vesper doesn’t know who he is, can see that in their face, too. Can see that they’re not lying when they say they don’t know who he is, that they’re not pretending to be clueless.

It’s impossible to tell if the guy’s mistaken Vesper for someone else—someone with, apparently, the same strange tattoo—or if... well, what, Vesper hadn’t remembered who they were, when Rafael had found them over a decade ago, saved them and then brought them home, acting like some fucking hero for saving and then bedding some poor helpless soul, and as far as Julián knew, those memories had never come back, were unrecoverable. So it’s possible this guy really does know Vesper, from before all of that. 

But it doesn’t matter if he really knows them or not, not when they look so scared, so shaken, so upset by the whole thing. He doesn’t like the way this guy—best intentions or not—is invading their space, reaching out for them when they’ve already pulled away; he doesn’t like the way this guy isn’t leaving when they’ve already told him to fuck off.

So he sits forward, puts his drink down.

     “They said fuck off, man,” he says, forcefully, and the guy looks surprised, when he turns to acknowledge Julián, surprised and something else... a little vulnerable, too, maybe, his eyes a little wide and worried. Not worried about Julián—worried about Vesper.

     “You don’t understand,” he starts, and opens his mouth to keep going, but Julián cuts him off before he can. 

      “You need to go.”

[jdelacruz]

vesperbranwen​:

They try for a smile, when Julián focuses in on the Becca of it all. She was a sweet girl, and it was nice to think of the kind words she’d had ready for Vesper at the party, for the sweet gift and the way she was so earnest with what she said. That had been one of the nicer moments of the night, even with all of the horrible things that came before, even with the crying mess that Vesper had briefly been reduced to. 

Vesper can’t remember if they actually filled Julián in on that mess, when they saw each other again during the party. Almost certainly not, with the determination they had found to make sure that everybody else just got through the damned night. They had wanted so badly, at a certain point, for it to all be over. They had wanted as well for it to never end, because that would mean that they were alone again. Becca had been some comfort from that, a port in the storm, someone that Vesper could hide with for just a few moments before reality came calling again. Afterwards, Vesper had thought that Julián probably had enough on his plate, and kept themself busy until he could slip home and out of the lions den once again. 

Still, they offer some level of honesty on the topic, rolling their eyes at themself in a brief moment, thinking back on it. “She found me weeping in the dressing room.” They say, with a sigh. “It may have been more to make me feel better than anything else, after what mother said, but I’ll take any win that I can get.”

They soften again, as they always do, looking at Julián and then away again. “We should do this more often.” They muse, thinking on it. As they glance around, they notice a boy at the bar looking at them, between the two of them. A thoughtful, searching look on his face. Vesper looks away, back at Julián, doesn’t want to invite anything like that on a night like this. They mimic Juliáns earlier movement, instead, nudge their leg against his, settle in to a kind of warmth with him. “Well, maybe not this. But the old place. Our place.”

They feel so tired with it, with life, and the tenderness of just being somewhere with Julián is a good thing. Makes them feel, they don’t know –– like they don’t want any of their delicate peace to be disturbed. Someone is approaching, though, from what they can see, and they lean forward with a sigh. Their arms are bare in the heat of the club, and they rest them on the table in front of them, as they lean in toward Julián. “I think one of us is about to get hit on, brother.” 

They seem to have eased into things, a little, not a full smile but at least an attempt at one, and their leg against his returns them to a familiar kind of warmth, an ease he knows they both long for, especially after the long stretches when Rafael doesn’t travel as much as he usually does and Vesper finds it harder to get away from the house for a night out here and there. 

     “I’ll bet the next round that it’s you,” he jokes with half a grin, and then he glances over his shoulder to see who they’re looking at, and merlin, he hopes it’s them, because the kid headed their way is easy enough on the eyes, might have been his type twenty years ago, but way too young for him now.

He sits back, picks up his glass and takes a sip, prepared to watch Vesper humor the guy and let him down easy; it’s far from the first time someone has come over to try to pick up Vesper while they’ve been out for drinks, since Julián clearly doesn’t look like a threat to anyone’s chances, though it happens less at their usual place, the kind of place where most people are just minding their own business. The guy approaches the table and, as Julián expected, his attention is clearly focused on Vesper; he stops next to them, looking down at where they’re sitting.

     “You’re—” the guy starts, but before he goes on he reaches down, grabs Vesper’s arm, and Julián can’t tell what he’s doing, at first, as he turns Vesper’s arm in his hand, and then he sees it. The guy’s looking at the tattoo on Vesper’s arm, the white ink, a snake with detailed scales. It seems like he’s not just looking at it, though, because he has the same one, white ink and everything, the same exact pattern of scales, the snake coiled in the same way, not on his arm but on the back of his hand, its tail trailing down his middle finger, its head just above the jut of his wrist.