idk if you check these anymore but i read who we are and who we want to be like a year ago and i havent been able to stop thinking about it. i stopped caring mostly for overwatch but i cant stop re reading your take on it. im constantly drawing out the story additions and other things. it could even be its own seperate thing. i just thought id share but i loved it so much. have a nice day. :)
Oh God this must be ancient and for that I’m sorry D;
I’m horrible at keeping to things because of health reasons--namely the diagnosed ADD I’ve just recently been given meds for. I think about that fic from time to time and I DO want to finish it--but I’m not sure if I’d restart or not. I always see a lot of mistakes I made, but I know it got popular and I feel awful for not continuing it!
I wonder if people would mind a quality jump? Again, I just see SO many mistakes there D;
Thank you for taking the time to send this in even though I haven’t been around for God knows how long. It does mean a lot!
Just finished If There Were Ever a Time’s next chapter’s rough draft--it’s 20 pages, a little over 8k words and I did not fit everything I wanted to into it BI
But I guess that’s what happens when u practically novelize something lmao
tumblr user, finding a miraculously untouched packet of frozen pastries in post-apocalyptic america: beautiful cinnamon roll too good for this world, too pure
tumblr user, standing behind thousands of other refugees from post-apocalyptic america, straining to hear the instructions of the volunteer who is giving them their floor space assignments: say it louder for the people in the back
tumblr user, handing out vials —filled with a cure for the plague which has devastated the world— to the remaining people of post-apocalyptic america: spread this like wildfire
tumblr user, about to venture out into a dangerous part of the post-apocalyptic world with a small group of volunteers for whom they care for dearly and are concerned about the mental wellbeing of and the impact the adventure could have on them: if you don’t like this unfollow me right now
tumblr user, trekking on foot across the burned out plains of post-apocalyptic america in search of refuge for what seems like forever: Is Canada even real?
tumblr user, alone and searching for the warmth and comfort of other humans and being jumped by a group of post-apocalyptic american vigilantes: I came out to have a good time and i’m honestly feeling so attacked right now
tumblr user, caring for a nursery of small children, the last children born into this broken, dying world, gently feeding them watery broth: take a fuckin’ sip babes
“He is observing the chaos, taking in the lack of raw humanity
It’s as if the entire world’s fallen in love with their insanity
Hear the innocent voices scream
As their tormentors laugh through all of it
No forgiveness from all I’ve seen
The degradation I cannot forget.”
Write like you have word diarrhea. Just vomit all over the page with whatever comes to mind. Shitty dialogue, too many words, over-the-top descriptions that repeat themselves like just put it down there. Write it like it’s nobody’s business but your own because rough drafts really aren’t anyone else’s business until you decide you need a second opinion.
Getting caught up w/ quality control during your rough draft spells disaster and just saps the fun out of the process. You can’t polish air, friends, so don’t try to write a literary masterpiece from the get-go. Write utter shit instead, then go back to cull out unnecessary words, clarify situations and rewrite dialogue.
You can’t polish air, but you can polish a piece of shit.
CHAPTER TRIGGERS: Racism, Discrimination, Bullying, Child Abuse, Alcohol and Drug Abuse, Child Death (non-explicit), Mentions of Sexual Assault / Rape, some Name Dysphoria if you pay attention.
---
Nate and Nora Campbell were everything to Jo Sawyer. Absolutely everything. When she lost all love for herself, she found it in them, and not a day went by she didn’t thank whatever deity there might be in the sky that Nate’s father had found her when he did, tucked away in her father’s attic of 130 degrees fahrenheit and climbing.
She had been practically starved. Her body was thin and fragile, her skin covered in a shean of sweat she couldn’t feel anymore. She always thought hell would be below the ground, not two stories above.
And when the trapdoor to the attic swung open, she hardly even flinched. Clouds of dust sprang up from the neglected floorboards, a few cockroaches scattered--cockroaches. She wanted to scream but couldn’t; She had a dreadful fear of insects, ever since a widow bit her big toe three years back.
But her throat was too tight, too dry to speak and it felt like the last drop of water in her body seeped into her eyes, dripping down her cheeks when she saw not the face of her father peering through the dust at her, but her friend’s father instead.
A police officer.
“Jesus Christ, someone call an ambulance!” he shouted to someone below as he heaved himself into the suffocating room. He reached out to her, gently, as if coaxing a stray to his porch.
“Jiao? Jiao, it’s me, sweetie,” he whispered. “I’m here--we’re going to get you out of here, alright? We’re going to get you help.”
She was twelve when he carried her down from her two-story hell.
X.X.2063 -- 14 Years Old
Nate’s father let her stay with them until she graduated high school. His name was Nathan, which was why younger Nathan went by Nate instead, for sake of simplicity. He was a man of justice, if there ever was one, and their suppers were often spent listening to to the news or talking about the latest paper headline. And when Nora, Nate’s best friend and their neighbor stopped by with her family on holidays, Jo learned even more about their world and the intricate laws that “precariously held together a society else-wise doomed by human nature”, as Mr. Sue so eloquently put it.
“Laws are in place to protect people,” he had said, his eyes drifting over to where Jo sat, timidly poking at her food because she just wasn’t feeling up for lasagna that night. “And when we as people fail to uphold those laws to their best moral standards...we suffer.”
It was Mr. Sue that had put her father behind bars. She thanked him and excused herself from the table. No one stopped her.
X.X.2065 -- 16 Years Old
She thought Nathan would kick her out for what happened at prom. She thought she’d finally be put into foster care or, worse, sent to the growing internment camps other Chinese-American civilians were being sent to every day. She could feel the lingering red paint tightening against her skin as it dried, and it seemed there was just too much to peel off so she sat in silence waiting for Nathan to pick her up from the Principal's office.
Part of her wished he’d hurry. The Principal’s face was as red as the paint that ruined the dress Nora had bought for her. It had been white, with sparkles, but the other students thought red was more fit for a “commie”.
Nora was already home with her family. Nate was outside, still shouting at whoever had blocked his way into the office, if she could hear right over the Principal’s long lecture of how this was, of course, all her fault.
Then the door slammed open so hard, Jo was suddenly twelve again in her father’s attic with Nathan barreling through to defend her. The Principal didn’t get to lecture Nathan, because no one lectured a war veteran and honored police officer when he shouted in your face like a drill sergeant.
And like a whirlwind, it was over. She felt Nate’s hand on her shoulder, coaxing her from the seat she had been glued to, Nathan’s hand landing on her other shoulder in a protective gesture as they led her through the crowded halls.
“Don’t listen to them,” they both said, hushed but defiant. “Not to a damn word they say.”
But when they got home, it wasn’t words that were spoken that finally made her cry--that finally made her crumple onto their lawn with a scream.
It was the words they wrote across the garage door.
“COMMIES DESERVE TO BURN IN ATTICS”.
The paint was still red.
X.X.2067-- 18 Years Old
She didn’t attend graduation. No one that had known Chinese (or Russian) blood did, she thinks, as she sits on the couch watching the latest news with Mrs. Campbell. Her name was Susan, and she was kind but not as kind as Nathan--there was a distance she insisted on putting between herself and Jo, and Jo never tried to breach it.
Nate said his mother’s brother died to a kamikaze, and Jo figured that was enough reason in America to avoid someone with the first name “Jiao”, even if her father had been
White and a war veteran, too.
“They’re getting closer,” she heard Susan say to her left, from her recliner three feet away. “To pushing the button. It’s just a matter of time.”
Jo wondered if nuclear warheads could really be fired with a single button. Nate told her RPGs were that way, so why not a nuclear missile?
She said “because someone could accidentally push the button”.
Nate’s eyes turned sad and he put his hands on both her shoulders, leaning down so they could make eye contact.
“They’ll do everything they can, when it happens, to insist it was an accident, Jo,” he said, fingers tightening against her skin. “Don’t believe them.”
When he let go, she wondered if she’d be around to believe in anything.
---
Nora was crying and Nate was still leaving. At eighteen years old he decided he had to do something about the war, and the best thing that came to mind was joining it. Nora said she’d never forgive him if he died, and he said that was alright because he’d have to do unforgivable things to buy them a few more days of happiness there in the United States.
Jo was glad they didn’t leave on a sour note in the end. Nora ran up to Nate and wrapped her arms around his neck, planting a kiss on his lips with such desperation someone could have mistaken their shadow as one person. She didn’t hear what they said after that, they were too far away, the van honking to hurry the farewell along.
Nora came back crying a little less, her parents there to soothe her. Susan walked over too, and Jo experienced such a visceral sensation of fear when she suddenly imagined a folded flag being sent back home in place of a body, a letter about a kamikaze on top.
She wondered if Nora would distance herself like Susan had.
She hoped she wouldn’t lose them both at the same time like that. She prayed Nate would come home one day.
X.X.2068 -- 19 Years Old
Jo had a sneaking suspicion the acceptance letter came to her only because Nathan had allowed her to legally change her name to “Jo” once and for all, and maybe because he had a word or two with the head administrators there. Nora’s father, Mr. Sue, probably did something too--but Jo didn’t care, because this acceptance letter meant she would be attending the same college Nora had been at for a year already.
She was going to follow in Nathan’s footsteps--but not in the army, like Nate had (and he was excelling there, to boot). No, she was going to become a police officer and even though Susan tried to dissuade her, Nathan was nothing but supportive.
“The Special Victims Unit. That’s where I want to work,” Jo had said, pointing to the television where a re-run was showing. “I want to help kids like me. How you helped me.”
And that was the first time she felt she had a purpose in her life other than to be a damsel in distress. She had a purpose, and with Nora’s help she dug her heels in deep and refused to budge no matter what any student or teacher dare say to her.
And though it was only Nora’s second year when Jo had arrived, she was top of her class; a prophesized alumni that would have her picture in their hall of fame for years to come. They shouldn’t have been surprised when she worked the system in Jo’s favor for her, effectively firing a teacher less than a month in for using a derogatory slur.
People talked less after that, or at least, talked less to their face. Jo wondered if she’d ever be able to repay Nora or Nate or Nathan, but when she got her first report card covered in all A’s, she thought she was on the right track.
Nathan did too. He sent her a wad of cash as a reward, to “buy herself a cake” with. She saved it instead, and jogged ten laps.
She’d buy a cake to share with him when they could work together as equals.
X.X.2072 -- 23 Years Old
It was Nora who brought the cake. She set it on Jo’s desk, gingerly, as if it could all shatter if so much as a breath touched it wrong. No one else was there--it was late hours. Too late, but no one had dared try to make Jo leave. Not that day. Not October 23rd.
“For your promotion,” Nora whispered delicately, trying to peer under Jo’s hands to see her eyes. Her hands were keeping her head up off her desk, but more importantly they were hiding her tears until they began to drip onto the cold case files below her. The ink began to bleed.
“I don’t want a cake until I find him,” Jo said, her voice cracking, phlegm stuck in her throat. “I won’t eat cake until he’s caught, Nora.”
“I understand,” she said, pulling a chair up to sit in. “...Nate said the same thing. And we’ll find the one that’s doing this, Jo, I swear we will and when we do, I’ll put him behind bars for life.”
“I want death penalty.”
“I never said his life would be long.”
Jo’s last string of self control snapped and she flung the cold case so it hit the wall opposite of them. The files scattered, floating hazardously back to the ground. Six children, one cop--no leads at all.
Nathan had never made it to her graduation, and the case had been stuffed away mere months later when nothing new had been revealed. Nora helped as much as she could, and so did Jo’s older coworker Nick, but the killer was still running rampant and they each had their own cases to attend to. Hell, Jo had a stack she had been neglecting all week.
But it was October 23rd.
“Why don’t we visit him? Nate’s outside.”
She wordlessly nodded, and with Nora’s help she stood, the both of them working to recollect the papers she had thrown. They left the cake in the communal fridge, since they all refused to touch it, and met up with Nick outside hanging by his Jeep.
Jo stopped a good two feet away from him, unable to meet his eye. He closed the distance before she could say anything, though, and when his arms wrapped around her in a tight embrace she lost the ability to speak at all.
The drive was quiet, other than the sniffles Jo tried to stifle as best she could, and though Nate had often complained about the lack of music stations out on the frontlines his hand never once touched the dial to turn his radio on.
When they arrived at the graveyard, it was closed--but the gravekeeper would let them in anyway, knowing who they were and why they were there. So wordlessly they drove through the cramped little streets that wove through grave plots until they got to the back, to the newer graves, and when they stepped outside they migrated to a singular grave that was only slightly off center from its plot.
“Hey pops,” Nate whispered, crouching beside the marble headstone to wipe some dirt from its surface. “We’re here to report…”
Jo stared down at the grave in thought as Nate rattled off all sorts of confessions to the coffin buried six feet under.
She wondered, if her hell had been two stories high, was his heaven six feet under?
Nathan A. Campbell
If There Were Ever a Time
When the World was Alright
It was While this Angel
Was Part of It
June 2nd 2025 - October 23rd 2071
X.X.2076 -- 27 Years Old
In the next four years, Jo would decide heaven didn’t exist.
But Hell did, and she had mistakenly believed it to be an attic during the summer.
Hell was so much worse. It came in the form of lustful hands on children too young to understand. It came in the form of child slaves and little corpses strewn across the walls as a warning--it came as a man in a suit with eyes too clear to claim insanity.
And right now, for Jo, it came in the form of clinking bottles and hangovers and guilt and regret. It came in the headlines that played her up as a saint and condemned her as a killer. It came in so many forms, in so many ways, that she was convinced Hell had been hiding itself under a different alias. “Life”.
And she was tired of Life. She was tired of living and hurting. So she numbed it, to forget what she found with Nick when she broke the case. To forget how late she had been for so many victims, to forget that, to some people out there that hadn’t ever felt the flames of hell licking their heels, that killing a killer was somehow immoral.
Nate had returned at some point while she had been locked up and under investigation, and both Nick and Nora made sure to catch him up to speed at the time. Jo had found his father’s killer alright. but she had found so much more and the system was doing its best to condemn her for killing the man behind it all.
And though Nora defended her tooth and nail--”She shouldn’t have even been on the case!” , “The man would have been sentenced to death anyway!”--it wasn’t enough until Nate got involved.
And when he did, he burst into the police station with such righteous fury Jo thought she was at prom again, with Nathan Sr. coming to her rescue. But Nathan Sr. was dead, and Nate wasn’t about to let the woman that avenged him get punished for it. So he utilized his ties with the army to pull a few favors, and with it he managed to bust Jo out of her cell that night, charges dropped.
The press rioted, but no one was going to challenge a veteran in line for the Medal of Honor.
Which lead to Jo living with Nate and Nora in their little home, surrounded by officers to keep the press at bay drinking beer, vodka and whiskey to drown out her thoughts and the reporters screaming at officers outside.
“It’ll blow over eventually,” Nora soothed, taking a seat beside her intoxicated childhood friend. Her belly had grown quite large the past few months--large enough they had confirmation it was a boy. With all the drama that had been going on, Jo hadn’t really noticed the pregnancy’s progression; Nora should have been on maternity leave, not defending her.
“...I’m sorry, Nor,” Jo whispered hoarsely, pain lining her eyes. “Thisss...shhouldn’t be...how yer pergn’ncy…”
“Oh don’t worry about me, Jo!” Nora laughed, waving a hand dismissively. It was impossible she didn’t notice Jo’s slurred speech, but she made no comment. Jo always slurred her speech these days. “My life was never meant to be simple--pregnancy included. Besides, I’m sure it’ll all make for an amazing story when Shaun’s older,” her hands went to her belly, tenderly rubbing the bump.
“S...ssshaun?” Jo asked, brows furrowing. “Is that...hiss...name?”
“Well, we’re still deciding but...I have a good feeling about that one…” Nora laughed a little sheepishly, her cheeks a tinge of pink. “To be honest...we wanted to name him after you--”
“Nno,” Jo shook her head, her empty bottle rolling from her grip to the floor with a carpeted thud. “Nno--nnnot af--”
“We know, we know,” Nora’s hand reached out for Jo’s and squeezed, despite how clammy the skin was. “And we respect how you feel, so we’re probably going with Shaun--”
“You...hafta’ go wit...Sshaun,” Jo slurred out, hiccuping. A few tears had sprung to her eyes as her own grip tightened on Nora. “You haff to--”
The sound of shattering glass cut the conversation short. Nate ran in from down the hall immediately, shouting profanity as his wife’s scream reached his ears. Jo leapt up from the couch, stumbling so she knocked over the side table, breaking the bottles beneath it.
A rock had been launched through their window, shattering it to pieces, and had struck Nora’s thigh. Any higher and it would have hit her stomach, and the realization processed surprisingly fast in Jo’s drunken mind. Nate was already barreling out the door to find the culprit, Nora shouting after him “I’m alright Nate! I’m alright!”--but he was already involved with the officers outside.
Jo made her way back to Nora, panic swelling inside her. “Sshan--is---are yoou--?”
“I’m fine, Jo, I’m fine--it just hit my thigh--a bruise, that’s all,” she insisted, holding her thigh tenderly. The rock that had hit her laid on the floor, and despite Nora insisting Jo shouldn’t touch it (“Please Jo, leave it there, leave it there for Nate--”) she picked it up anyway.
“HELL IS FOR COMMIES”.
She tried to throw the rock back out the window, but it hit the wall instead and she hit the floor right after.
The victims had been children.
Just children with Chinese names.
---
(This version doesn’t get italics and stuff bc tumblr won’t just copy it over. Also, so this still shows up in search engines, I won’t be linking my Ao3 but it’s Pinkablu, I have it on my profile and a google search would bring it up!)
I’ll be posting it here too, to read, but I’ll link it in this post. Don’t want to link in the next post since tumblr doesn’t show posts w/ outsourced links and all that wonderful jAZZ.
It’ll have a lot of pairings bc poly, but it’s gonna be a slow motherfuckin’ burn I’ll tell you that.
Summary:
“If there were ever a time when the world was alright, I don’t think I was there for it.”
---
Nate and Nora Campbell were everything to Jo Sawyer. They were her pillars when her own had crumbled, they were her saviors in a world that despised Chinese heritage, her family when her own was behind bars.
Nate and Nora were the reason she couldn't die just yet. She'd find their son first, make sure he got a good home like the one they had given Jo all those years ago.
Only then could she end herself, and meet them on the other side, if there was one.
But plans never go according to theory.
---
Latest Chapter Excerpt:
“Laws are in place to protect people,” he had said, his eyes drifting over to where Jo sat, timidly poking at her food because she just wasn’t feeling up for lasagna that night. “And when we as people fail to uphold those laws to their best moral standards...we suffer.”
It was Mr. Sue that had put her father behind bars. She thanked him and excused herself from the table. No one stopped her.
