the deer on the highway

[lookedinfinite]

꧁ CARRD | INTEREST TRACKER | MEMES | EDITS ꧂

previously  doctordonovan && memoryfaded.       geneticist doctor   maeve   don.ovan    (   phds not medical / not a cop   )   removed from   criminal   minds’   season   8,    studied   by    birdie,       she/her,      25+.     rebooted  20 july  2024.

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holiday queue: running until my return, june 14

[byeloveyou]

꧁ the leaving season - jihyun yun ꧂

[multiversalshenanigans]

Graham sighed, refocusing on the empty road ahead.

"Because of magic, nobody can leave town, and as of yet we haven't figured out a way to get home, so we're staying in this realm for the foreseeable future."

Damn Regina and her curse, but it was what it was.

"Don't you worry though, just because we haven't figured out how to get an entire town out of this realm, doesn't mean we can't figure out a way to get you home."

[lookedinfinite]

getting home wasn't a worry of hers.  sooner or later, whether she wanted to or not, she would be out of here. 

but their situation was fascinating all the same, an unlucky position to be in - not easily solved if magic truly was entirely gone from this land. was that even possible? 

"I'm not worried." quiet reassurance came briefly, glancing out of window again. her own situation was her own problem... no need for it to become stranger's issue too,

"must be a very powerful curse, to manage so much. how did you all manage to find out about it?"

[04k96]

[lookedinfinite]

closed starter | for @dana3vans

"you look exhausted." it's meant kindly, even if maeve knows she's being far too blunt. worried peridot eyes study other all the same: observing with a sharpness that could slice through layers. her steps are always quiet, unimposing, swallowed whole figure in far too baggy jumper. but she knows those around her, knows how to read them. "are you okay?"

[memestockpile]

key largo from the 1948 film. alter as needed.

what gives?

the bar is closed.

think nothing of it.

can i pick them or can't i?

if he wants you, he'll send for you.

i don't plan to stay.

oh, well, why didn't you say so?

did you come on the bus? i saw it stop.

ever been down here before?

how long will you be with us?

then you'll stay overnight.

if i was you, i'd save myself the trouble.

if you can't behave yourself, you gotta leave.

i hope you didn't take offense how we handled you.

more than a year, we'd been planning to come here.

we all swore up and down: no dames!

everything's spoiled, including our dispositions.

just to show there's no hard feelings.

storm signals are up.

it leaves us in the dark about a few things.

i'd be most grateful.

dying isn't very important.

you'd be surprised how much i know about you.

that hollow above the upper lip? before a baby is born, they know all the secrets of life and death. at birth, an angel comes and put his finger right there and seals their lips.

high up, there's what's left of a church.

i'd like to pay a visit to that place. maybe we'll do just that.

thought i might make my living on the sea.

life on land's become too complicated for my taste.

what'd you do before the war?

i've done lots. anything to make a dollar.

where'd you learn about boats?

my first sweetheart was a boat.

you're very happy here, aren't you?

you're never lonely?

i knew lots of people, but i was lonesome too.

before [name/you], my life hadn't made much sense.

i never had much of a home, and i didn't like what i had.

i'm like one of those mangroves.

join me for a little drink now?

in a hurricane, the wind blows so hard the ocean gets up on its hind legs and walks right across the land.

sit in the car and wait.

there are two cons in a cell. one tries to sell the other a fountain pen. and he says, "this pen is guaranteed for life." ...don't you get it? a con. guaranteed for life.

that leaves it up to you, pal.

don't you like me? i'm beginning to think i got smallpox or something.

elevator's busting through the roof. the elevator boy says to a couple passengers: "i told you there was no 11th floor!"

wise guy.

i hear a hurricane blows off roofs and puts the snatch on people. and they all fly around in the sky together. is that right?

easy does it, soldier.

you'd think this rain would cool things off, but it don't.

you haven't got the nerve.

you think that big gun in your hand makes you look grown-up.

i'll bet you spend hours posing in front of the mirror.

now listen. i don't want trouble. with you. with anybody.

what you don't know won't hurt you.

we'll be out of here in a couple of hours. try to put up with us that long.

champagne and pompano. they really go together.

still feel tough?

stop hollering, old man.

what's that? i'm kind of deaf.

this ain't real. you're having a dream.

on the level, are you that dumb?

sure, i was all of those things. and more!

i'll be back up there one day. then you'll really see something!

you little wildcat!

swell hearing your voice again.

i paid you. you do what i say.

i'll blow your brains out.

i'll say one thing, you sure can take it.

your picture would be in all the papers.

listen, hick.

come over here. i'd like to spit on you.

i didn't ask for your advice!

unlock this door, i want out!

honey, have you been crying?

oh, come on. it'll chase the blues away.

i think i'll go to my room.

what i need is a drink.

i thought you knew all the answers.

darling, you've hurt your face.

what's funny? why'd you laugh?

what's worse: a dumbbell or a wise guy?

i was educated only in impractical things.

i see through you.

i had hopes once, but i gave them up.

show them how you're not afraid to die.

looks like you don't want it enough.

you look like you lost somebody near and dear.

want a hero? here's one for sale, cheap!

you knew the gun was empty, didn't you, son? you could tell by the weight.

you were smart, fella.

better to be a live coward than a dead hero.

i fight nobody's battles but my own.

i can't see it your way.

if i believed your way, i'd want to be dead too.

what you're saying now is only to save face.

either you show tonight or the deal is off.

everybody has their first drink.

if i'd known you'd act this way, i wouldn't have come here.

you certainly haven't changed one bit. you're as mean as can be.

i was the rage.

why don't you give us your old song?

i won't make you do anything.

my gowns were gorgeous. always low-cut.

play a little gin?

sorry about the things i said. they aren't true.

maybe it is a rotten world. but a cause isn't lost if someone's willing to fight.

you may not want to be, but you can't help yourself.

what do you know about my life?

say anything, just so it's talk.

you don't like storms, do you?

in a few hours, there'll be little to remind you what happened tonight.

if you decide to stay here with us, we'd be most happy. i'd be proud to have you regard us as your family.

i don't mean to set onto you, son. think it over. don't give your answer right away.

you filth. scum.

you know what'll happen if you don't.

there's no better fishing than what's here.

i didn't wanna say anything. it's not my business.

i wouldn't put it past you!

i killed them both.

haven't i seen you someplace before?

it's sure great to see you again, pal.

when you get outside, run.

your head says one thing and your whole life says another.

if you're a fighter, you can't walk away from a fight.

with you back again, it'll be like old times.

this time, it'll be different.

i forgot to tell you. you're not coming.

please, i love you! i need you!

good luck, son.

i feel awful.

there's just me and you. we'll be partners. what do you say? deal?

you'll get rid of me and take all the money, is that it?

you're not big enough to do this.

i'm mighty grateful to you for saving my life.

i'm the one to blame.

[deficd]

He studies what the veil gives him of her. Not D’Ane’s occupation of borrowed meat, not the invasive grandeur of the thing that wore her bones like regalia— but this narrow, human arrangement left behind. Smaller than memory in all the ways that matter. Fragile-seeming. An ordinary face could likely be built from these lines if one forgot what had passed through them.

Yet he cannot look at her without feeling the contamination of proximity, and the afterimage of D’Ane laid over her like a bruise only he can see.

The vessel remembers too much.

Fragments come apart in him and knit together wrongly: the pressure of alien thought forced through a human cortex; the sweet-metal perfume of opened flesh; Maeve’s voice from another time, thinned by terror, then silenced under the immense and intimate occupation of the symbiote’s will. Such recollections do not arrive as guilt. Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen was not built for that deformity. But there is revulsion, and it is stranger because some piece of it belongs to the host-body, some remnant shudder in the meat that once watched and could not intervene.

“If you are ignorant, then you are ornamental,” the contempt in his voice is whole and unhurried, “Fetch me someone whose function exceeds standing idle and repeating that she knows nothing.”

[lookedinfinite]

she can't help the sharp little laugh - tinged with trauma, with the tenseness that fills her at his presence. just his being in a room makes her feel like a bird in oil again, drowning in the thick and painful memories of all she was used for. d'ane is dead. he will be dead soon too. so why is it that she can't find any relief in that? that she can't be smug or glad. his death (their deaths) do not wash her free of anything that has seeped into metaphorical feathers.

"you're as ornamental as I am right now." his orders are hollow and pointless. there's cameras set up, someone has surely noticed he's awake.

they just don't care enough to come yet. or, worse, they want to see how she'll handle this opportunity to face the worst few years of her life.

if there's anything left of the vessel that carries him, she pities them. her consciousness through her time as preferred outfit is something maeve knows full well will be with her for the rest of her existence. doe eyes stay on her task, on her screens and readings, fingers tapping on a keyboard to avoid how much body craves anxiously fiddling with pen in her pocket. it's cruel to leave her to be alone with him... but when has the military ever cared about kindness? she'd never wanted to be part of this, she'd just been curious.

"look at that. I managed an entire sentence without saying I know nothing. we're making progress." dry mumble followed, a dry joke intended more for herself than for him as eyes stayed glued on screen. "how long have you been in - that body?"

[indie-navarrete]

JACKIE TAYLOR — YELLOWJACKETS // S03 E08: A Normal, Boring Life.

[lookedinfinite]

"what do you see?" from @vallorouslly

in truth? not that much.  but it's not like visions come labelled, and they rarely make any sense... especially when she's fighting them tooth  &&  nail to avoid slipping in any deeper to whatever horrors surely await.  life before her death had been simple compared to how constantly all this might feel like fighting the inevitable. fingers rub her forehead, the pounding of headache only continuing, small hiss escaping between her teeth as free hand clings to nearby table to keep herself upright.

she hates it. hates all of this. "it was just flashes, I don't-" visions are still new enough to her she's learning how to best handle them. "do you have a pen and any paper?"

[byeloveyou]

꧁ maeve && names ꧂

maeve has a lot of ways she shows she has feelings for someone - how she looks at them, how she uses silence and touch to reassure them… how she lets her guard down or is even just capable of relaxing / sleeping near them. yes she’ll say the words ( after a while ) but that’s only after a long time of it being expressed in far more important ways. these don’t always have to be romantic feelings: she does say I love you to her friends, probably sooner than she would to someone it’s a different love for.

but maeve’s relationship with names is important. in general she does use what the person prefers, of course, but assuming she has freedom to work within that. she flutters between using long names vs nicknames - both allow her to be expressive without needing to use too many words.

addendum: maeve’s relationship with her own name is very complicated - it means, truly, nothing to her.

she was born merav delman, and for a bit, that’s who she was. in foster care an unusual name like merav wasn’t really worth much to temporary families: child small and seemingly unable to ever speak… so she offered no protest when she became simply mera.

when the donovans started fostering her, it was her father’s family that playfully nicknamed her ‘little maeve’ after his mother - her grandmother and the person who loved her the most. who understood her the most.

by her adoption at eleven, mera donovan easily started using maeve as a good enough name as any, the papers she had published during her teenage years all credited simply to ‘m. donovan’ genderless, ageless, devoid of a clue who she really was.

at eighteen, she finally legally changed her name to maeve ‘beatrice’ donovan, an ode to both her grandmother and another important figure in her life. so, over her life, she’s had many names and none of them really feel her own. it’s why they mean so much to her with others: they have power because they seem almost magical to her. a being without a true name is unusual and she’s always been odd.

[llibelula]

Chloe chuckles softly, fingers busy gently working brown hair into a matching braid. She enjoys Maeve's silence just as much as she is proud of how far her sister has come even from when they'd met, just two traumatised young girls who learnt how to navigate the world together. It still clings to them, both the quiet and the trauma, just in different ways. "Well, maybe it would be an interesting challenge for you, then. I'd say I'll make you do that but we both know that I'd never stoop so low."

She just smiles at the compliment at first, before raising an eyebrow at sister through the mirror. "Don't make me challenge you to see who wins," she replies, a playful look in honey brown eyes before she returns to her very important work of braiding. "I can be plain. I probably am plain to some people. Or is it purely because I'm tall?"

[lookedinfinite]

it's easy enough to let other work.  maeve doesn't relinquish control easily - she doesn't know how. there has never been anyone to look after her, nobody to take reins. maeve just continues on the best she can, a constant effort, swimming upstream like a salmon. "I'll challenge you all I like, what will you do? put my belongings on a shelf only you can reach?" quiet teasing comes with a pointed glance at her through mirror. "but you're right, of course, I'd likely not win against you. I lack the needed fire." 

she's a peaceful creature, one with a peaceful nature. it's a cruelty she was never meant for the troubles she falls into. "no, it's not because you're tall. you just. you have presence. you're not as easy to overlook as I am. I mean it as a compliment, I know I'm easy to overlook because I want to be."

[7pleiades7]

Ophelia, (Detail), (1902), by Georges Roussin (French, 1854 – 1941) , oil on canvas, 74 х 56 сm (29.1 x 22 in), Private Collection

[lookedinfinite]

closed starter | for @storyborn / hotch

it's late, late enough world is finally quiet. motel in the middle of nowhere is less creepy than a lot of places they've stayed before - and young profiler is certainly used to the rough nature of some of the places they've had to rest. she likes the silence all the same, perched on steps outside, curls for once down as she observes more rural scenery. "if you're going to lead with how I should be asleep, I'll have to point out you're also awake." maeve's good at recognising footsteps, always alert enough that she hears them long before he reaches her spot. 

[bcmbsight]

Independent 𝐁𝐎𝐌𝐁𝐒𝐈𝐆𝐇𝐓 roleplay blog from 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐁𝐨𝐲𝐬 && upcoming 𝐕𝐨𝐮𝐠𝐡𝐭 𝐑𝐢𝐬𝐢𝐧𝐠. Exploring a combat pilot in the U.S. Armed Forces who served in WWII and was given V1 by Frederick Vought. Transforming him into a successful Supe known as Bombsight && granting him superhuman abilities who grows to despise his immortality && the loneliness that comes with it. 𝐅𝐞𝐚𝐭: 𝐌𝐂𝐔 && 𝐗𝐌𝐂𝐔 𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐬𝐞𝐬.𝐎𝐂, 𝐀𝐔, 𝐦𝐮𝐥𝐭𝐢-𝐦𝐮𝐬𝐞 && 𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐲 𝐜𝐫𝐨𝐬𝐬𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐫 𝐟𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐧𝐝𝐥𝐲. 𝐬𝐭𝐫𝐢𝐜𝐭𝐥𝐲 𝟐𝟏+

[afterdecay]

he wasn't angry, truth be told. a bit embarrassed and perplexed. (it didn't help that the lady he'd been trying to get to know had all too suddenly left him on his own – gone with her chaperone.) anthony had reached for a cloth; he'd been beaten by a familiar face. he wasn't overly familiar with maeve, but they'd spoken in the past – perhaps one of the last times they'd spoken had been at her dearly departed's funeral.

❝ you don't have to –  ❞ ah, but it was too late. maeve offered the cloth and began to pat down over his chest and midsection where the lukewarm tea had splashed him. she's right though. he's lucky it hadn't been scalding hot. ❝ i'm hardly one to judge. i just wish there would be less nerves and more … conversation. ❞ truly. his search for a wife this season has proven that what he craves more than anything is one who can hold a conversation and wouldn't be offended if all he could offer was friendship and security. (love was simply out of the question.) ❝ thank you, by the way. ❞ he holds up the cloth with a nod of appreciation, setting it upon the table a moment later. ❝ how, uhm – ❞ was it too soon to ask? inappropriate to inquire? ❝ would you care to have some tea and lemon squares? ❞

[lookedinfinite]

once he took the cloth she moved back, happy to keep her usual distance. it wasn't like her to get involved in others' matters - she has no desire to be at the heart of what will surely be eagerly carried gossip. but empathy is louder than her natural caution. she's lucky most write her off: she'd been terribly young when she'd married bobby, barely out, and now she's just a terribly tragic young widow. it means the usual pressures of her age are delayed - at least for now.

it'd be easier if she and bobby had any children, it'd be a shield to the same old expectations. but dark clothing still protects her with the essence of mourning: people assuming she must be still grieving. the reality of her marriage is her own business, her own albatross to carry. "you'd think, but there's a lot of expectations on a single moment. sometimes people can't handle the pressure." her voice is soft, quiet. more than she usually would speak but her heart aches a little for the nervous little birds that the new debutantes are. how well would she have done if her family hadn't chosen for her, if their lack of faith hadn't selected robert putnam? 

the offer catches her by surprise all the same, but maeve has to assume it's simply to be nice. to avoid the tension of embarrassment. "I'm not one for sweet foods, but I'm never one to turn down tea." 

[fractally]

don't worry about me when I say this but I think in a way being hunted for sport would be a relief. my nervous system would be like, wow. finally, a proportional reaction

[lookedinfinite]

"what's left is what makes us grown-ups" from @lovedunexpectedly / alex

is that all people are?  patchworks stitched up from the little that remains - the little that isn't crushed or destroyed - during childhood? somehow it doesn't surprise maeve as much as it should. they're all a consequence of other's actions, held together with whatever intentions they develop during their survival. yet she answers only in a low hum, walking over to offer one of two hot mugs to other, "it's a fruit tea. I think you have enough adrenaline going through you." 

she's still quiet as she takes a seat nearby, sighing a little as she mulls over the point at hand. "the kids that come to me, especially those who don't want their parents to know... they're in a very fragile part of their lives. I take no joy in it, but if they're that desperate for help with their abilities, surely it's my responsibility to offer what help I can?"