btw i will forever recommend just. refusing to engage in discourse. its free its easy and you literally arent missing anything LMAO - 99% of discourse on here is just on the most pointless petty shit that literally doesnt mean a single thing to anyone in real life (i am looking directly at you "pRo/AnTi" shippers), and the other 1% is genuinely important shit... that isnt going to be solved in any productive way by insulting '''the other side''' online. arguing with strangers online never changes anyones mind all youre doing is making yourself *and* your cause look annoying as hell :thumbsup: maybe chill out. find a hobby.
dirk’s still got the scar from the fight with the jacks. he never tried to cover it up, really? trust and believe he hates it and thinks it’s very ugly and a reminder that he pretty much almost got himself murdered and probably also traumatised dave (because who cares about dirk ACTUALLY BEING DEAD, certainly not dirk) because he was ~useless~ in the biggest fight of his life, in the fight he felt like he was training for since he could pick up a sword.
it’s thin and pale, and it sticks right out against his skin, especially in the summer. he doesn’t touch it or anything like that, but he’s very aware of it, very aware of when people are looking at it. he comes up with a new dumb story every time someone (an earth c stranger, usually, come to hear stories from the mouth of a god) asks him how he got it. overall, he’s pretty outwardly chill about it.
keeping it visible is some kind of self-flagellation thing, dirk thinks. like, you were caught and killed and not good enough, and this scar will serve as a reminder. he doesn’t really know if he believes that, but its the analysis he chose, and the one he’s going to stick with.
summary: frank can't stay away from you, even when he knows you might be better off without him… he soon realizes he's very wrong.
series warnings: (+18) DEAD DOVE: DO NOT EAT, smut, stalking, obsessive behavior, gaslighting, emotional abuse, emotional dependency, and big etc. please, look at the first part to see the rest.
contents of this part: self-harm. stalking. reference to sexual abuse. harmful relationship. swearing. obsessive behavior.
word count: 10k
pairing: frank castle x f!reader
clarification: english is not my native language, so i apologize in advance for any mistakes.
PART TWO
Frank had never been particularly good at staying away from you for too long, though he had spent years convincing himself that distance was something he was supposed to be good at. It had always seemed easier when he was younger, before he understood how quickly a person could become attached to the smallest pieces of another life. Leave before anyone could ask him to stay, disappear before anyone could expect him to come back, and there would be nothing left to lose when he inevitably had to walk away again. That had been the logic he'd lived by for most of his life, and even now, after everything that had changed in the months since meeting you, some part of him still followed those old rules whenever he wasn't paying attention.
Except lately, he had been coming back.
Not often enough to call it a routine, but often enough that Frank had stopped pretending the visits were accidents. A few weeks would pass, sometimes less, and eventually he'd find himself standing outside your apartment with his hands in his pockets and some half-assed excuse already prepared in case you asked why he was there. Sometimes he'd call first. Sometimes he wouldn't. You never seemed particularly bothered by either. You simply opened the door, smiled when you saw him, and let him inside as though his disappearance had never been something worth holding against him.
That was what made the silence strange.
Several days had passed since the last time he'd seen you, since he'd left your apartment after spending the night listening to you talk about your book and everything else that seemed to matter to you. He had told himself he would give you some time after that, even though he hadn't really known what he was giving you time from. Maybe you'd needed the space. Maybe you had plans. Maybe you'd decided that letting him into your life had been a mistake and simply hadn't figured out how to tell him yet.
Frank could live with that.
At least, that's what he told himself.
He arrived at your building in the late afternoon, the city already beginning to settle into its evening rhythm as he crossed the sidewalk and climbed the stairs. He didn't call ahead. There hadn't been much point. You'd answered every message he'd sent you before, even the ones that amounted to nothing more than a simple you awake? at an hour when most people would've told him to go to hell. You always answered his calls, even when you were working, even when you were busy, even when you were probably doing something that had nothing to do with him.
That familiarity had become something Frank hadn't realized he relied on until it wasn't there.
He knocked once.
Then again, a little harder.
Nothing.
Frank waited for several seconds before reaching for his phone. Your name was still sitting near the top of his recent calls, and seeing it there made something in his chest tighten for reasons he didn't particularly care to examine.
He called.
The phone rang and rang… then went to voicemail.
Frank frowned and tried again, but still nothing.
“...Alright.”
He lowered the phone slowly, staring at the dark screen.
Maybe you were asleep, maybe you'd gone out or maybe your phone was dead.
There were a hundred ordinary explanations, and Frank knew that. He'd spent enough of his life dealing with real problems to recognize when he was inventing trouble where there wasn't any. You had a life outside of him, and he had no right to expect you to be sitting around waiting for him to appear whenever he decided he wanted to see you.
Still, something felt wrong. Not dangerous. Just... wrong.
He remained outside your apartment for another minute before finally stepping away from the door. He told himself he was leaving because there was no reason to stand there like an idiot, but the truth was that he didn't particularly want to admit how much the unanswered call bothered him.
You had never done this before, not once. Even when you'd been annoyed with him, you'd answered. Sometimes your responses had been short. Sometimes you'd made it painfully obvious that you weren't interested in hearing whatever excuse he'd come up with for disappearing again, but you'd always answered. Sometimes you did it simply because he used the excuse of wanting some information; you both knew it was a lie, an excuse to lose yourself in each other's bodies again. There was always a response from you, never… silence.
Frank could handle anger. He could handle you telling him to fuck off, but silence was different.
He returned to his car and sat behind the wheel without starting the engine, his phone resting heavily in his palm. He looked at your name again before locking the screen and tossing the phone onto the passenger seat.
Maybe you were busy.
Maybe you wanted space.
Maybe you were pissed at him.
That last possibility stayed with him longer than the others. He couldn't exactly blame you if you were.
Frank had walked out of your apartment that night knowing perfectly well that he was leaving something behind. He'd told himself it was for your sake, that you deserved a life untouched by everything that followed him wherever he went, but there had always been another part of him that wondered whether that was simply the excuse he used because it was easier than admitting he didn't know how to stay.
Maybe you'd finally gotten tired of waiting for him to figure it out.
He started the engine.
He drove away.
And told himself he wouldn't worry about it.
By the time he reached the other side of the city, he was already thinking about you again.
Two days was all Frank managed.
He'd spent the first day telling himself that there was nothing to worry about. You had a life of your own, and he had never been stupid enough to believe that being close to him meant you owed him your time or your attention. If you wanted space, you were entitled to it. If you'd decided that you'd had enough of him disappearing and reappearing whenever it suited him, then Frank couldn't exactly blame you. He'd given you plenty of reasons to get tired of waiting.
Except that explanation didn't sit right with him.
You'd known him long enough to understand what he was like. More importantly, you'd understood that he was changing, even if Frank himself still wasn't entirely sure what that change was supposed to look like. The last night he'd spent with you, you'd told him as much. You'd noticed that he was learning to stay, learning to let someone into his life instead of treating every attachment like another weakness that needed to be cut away before it became dangerous. You hadn't sounded angry when he'd told you he was leaving. You hadn't even seemed surprised.
You'd simply looked at him and told him you knew he'd come back.
That should've been enough, but it wasn't.
Two days ago, he chose to accept that you didn't want to talk to him, but that last night together kept replaying in his mind. You didn't see him angry, disappointed, or sad; your eyes shone with that sparkle that made Frank's heart race. It didn't make sense. It made absolutely no sense for you to decide to walk away from him, even when it might have been the best thing for you.
By the second evening, Frank was sitting in his car with your name open on his phone, staring at a screen that had remained silent for far too long. He'd already called twice since the last time he'd gone to your apartment. Neither call had been answered. He'd sent a message afterward, something simple enough that it couldn't possibly be mistaken for pressure.
You good?
Nothing.
Frank stared at the message until the screen went dark. “...Fuck.”
He knew how to find people. That was the problem.
There had been a time when tracking someone down meant finding a name, an address, a photograph and whatever else he needed to know before deciding whether that person was worth putting a bullet through. These days, he tried to use those skills for less violent purposes. Most of the time.
He started with the obvious.
Your social media accounts had always been easy enough to find. You weren't particularly secretive about your life, and you'd never had much reason to be. Frank had seen you post pictures of books you'd bought, songs you were listening to, photographs of the city, stupid little observations that made you laugh when he didn't understand why they were funny. You'd complained about work. You'd celebrated friends' birthdays. You'd recommended restaurants and movies and albums to strangers who probably didn't even know you existed.
You had been alive online, but now there was nothing.
Frank scrolled further down. The last post was from before the night he'd last seen you; nothing about your best friend's birthday, which was strange because you loved posting photos with your friends, especially if it was their birthday; it was easy to tell with a glance at your social media. You were someone surrounded by people who loved you, and you liked to show that love.
He checked again.
Then again.
Nothing.
No new pictures. No stupid comments. No complaints about work. No messages to friends that were visible to anyone who knew where to look.
It was as though someone had simply reached into your life and switched the light off.
Frank leaned back against the driver's seat. That was when the feeling in his stomach changed. This wasn't you needing space, or at least, he didn't think it was.
He spent the next few hours doing what Frank Castle did best when something didn't make sense: he followed the trail until it did.
Your workplace was the easiest place to start. Well, one of your workplaces; you had two.
The music store sat on a quiet street not far from the neighborhood where you'd told him you lived, the kind of small business that looked almost unchanged no matter how many years passed. Frank parked across the street and stayed inside his car for several minutes, watching the windows.
He'd told himself he was only checking to make sure you were alright. That was all.
Then he saw you. You were standing behind the counter with a stack of records in your hands, talking to someone Frank didn't recognize at first.
A man.
Bear.
Frank knew his name; you took care of that thanks to your Instagram and your words on nights when he let you talk while you were both naked. Another thing Frank knew was that he didn't like Bear.
Not because the guy looked threatening. He didn't. There was nothing particularly remarkable about him at first glance. He looked like an ordinary man working an ordinary job, dressed casually enough that Frank would have forgotten his face five minutes after walking past him on the street. The only remarkable thing was the shirt he wore, which represented the place where you and he worked: Cassell's Music. A white shirt with what looked like green or light blue; it didn't matter.
What caught Frank's attention was you.
You weren't behaving like yourself. At least, not the version of yourself he knew.
You had always been affectionate in small ways, especially with people you trusted, but this was different. You stood far too close to him, close enough that your shoulder remained pressed against his arm while he sorted through the records. When he moved toward the shelves, you followed him without hesitation, laughing at something he'd said even though Frank couldn't hear what it was from across the street.
Then Bear reached for something on the upper shelf and you slipped your arms around his waist from behind.
Frank went completely still. The expression on your face wasn't one he'd ever seen directed at another person. You looked... content, not simply happy; content in a way that made something inside Frank twist painfully.
Bear glanced down at your hands and smiled. You said something to him and he answered. Then you rested your cheek against his back as though there were nowhere else in the world you would rather be.
Frank's fingers tightened around the steering wheel. “...What the fuck?”
He didn't understand. He watched you for another minute, waiting for the familiarity of you to return, but it didn't.
You laughed again when Bear turned around, and when he touched your face, you leaned instinctively into his palm. There was no hesitation, no awkwardness, no trace of the woman who had once sat naked against Frank's chest while talking about books and dreams and the life she wanted to build for herself.
This wasn't the woman who had looked him in the eyes and told him that she knew he was learning to stay. This wasn't the woman who had smiled when he'd told her to write her book.
This looked like someone who couldn't stand to be more than a few inches away from another person.
And the worst part was that you seemed happy.
Frank hated that. He hated himself for hating it. Because if you were happy, wasn't that supposed to be enough?
He had spent years telling himself that he didn't deserve a place in anyone's life. That people were safer when he stayed away from them. That whatever warmth he brought into someone's world eventually turned into ashes. Maybe this was proof, maybe you'd finally found someone better.
Someone normal.
Someone who didn't disappear for weeks.
Someone who didn't carry a graveyard around inside his chest.
Frank looked at Bear again. The man leaned down and said something close to your ear, you laughed and wrapped your arms around him again.
Something cold settled beneath Frank's ribs. He couldn't hear what they were saying, but he didn't need to. He could see the way you looked at him.
He'd seen that look before.
He'd felt it directed at himself while your fingers traced the scars across his chest, while you listened to him talk about things he rarely told anyone, while you smiled whenever he returned after another disappearance as though his coming back mattered more than the time he'd spent gone.
Except this wasn't simply affection. It was excessive, almost desperate.
You followed Bear when he walked away. You touched him whenever there was an excuse to do so. When he stopped to speak with another employee, you remained close enough that your fingers continued resting against his arm, your attention fixed almost entirely on him.
Frank watched all of it from across the street. The logical part of his mind kept trying to find an explanation: maybe you were dating, maybe you felt bad for being late to Bear's birthday party, maybe they'd always been close and Frank had simply never known.
Maybe the two of you had fallen in love sometime between his last visit and this one.
The thought hurt more than he expected. But none of those explanations accounted for the strange desperation in the way you clung to him.
Frank knew what obsession looked like. He'd seen it in people he'd hunted. He'd seen men destroy themselves because they couldn't accept that someone didn't belong to them.
What he was looking at now wasn't exactly that, it was worse in a way he couldn't name. Because you didn't look trapped, you looked willing. You looked as though you needed Bear beside you.
And Frank had no idea why.
He remained in the car until the store closed, watching the lights go dark one section at a time. Eventually Bear walked outside with you beside him, and you immediately slipped your hand into his.
Frank looked away. He couldn't watch anymore.
His jaw clenched as he started the engine, but he didn't pull away immediately. His eyes remained fixed on the two of you through the windshield until you disappeared around the corner.
For the first time since he'd met you, Frank wondered whether he'd actually been too late.
Maybe you'd never needed him to come back. Maybe you'd already found someone else. And maybe the worst part wasn't losing you.
Maybe it was realizing that he had no right to ask you to choose him.
The sight of you with another man had stayed with Frank long after he had driven away from the music store, and he hated himself for how difficult it was becoming to let it go. He had no claim over you. He had never asked for one, and he had certainly never given you enough reason to believe that he intended to stay for good. He had spent months appearing in your life whenever he felt like it and disappearing whenever the weight of everything he carried became too much, and the last time he'd left your apartment, you had looked at him without anger and told him that you knew he was learning to stay. You knew him well enough to understand that his leaving didn't necessarily mean he was leaving you behind, and Frank had believed you when you said you knew he'd come back.
That was why seeing you with Bear shouldn't have hurt as much as it did.
It should have been easier to accept that while Frank had been busy convincing himself that he was protecting you by keeping his distance, you had simply continued living your life. Maybe you had met someone else. Maybe you'd decided that waiting for Frank Castle to figure out how to be part of your life wasn't worth it anymore. Maybe Bear was the kind of man you could actually build something with, someone who didn't disappear for weeks and then show up at your door expecting you to let him back inside as though nothing had happened.
Frank understood all of that. He just couldn't make himself walk away.
There was guilt in it, certainly. He knew he was being selfish by continuing to watch you when you had given him no reason to believe you wanted him there. But there was something else beneath the guilt, something he couldn't put a name to and couldn't ignore either. Something about the way you behaved around Bear had bothered him from the moment he'd seen it. He had spent enough of his life trusting his instincts to know when something felt wrong, even when he couldn't immediately explain what that something was, and every time he saw you with Bear, that same feeling returned.
So Frank kept watching. He told himself it was only until he understood what was happening.
The first thing he noticed was that you had stopped working at the magazine.
Frank remembered how often you'd complained about that job, how little the money had been compared to the hours you spent writing articles that barely covered your rent. You'd never stopped loving the work itself, though. You had talked about writing a book one day with enough conviction that Frank had believed you would eventually do it, even if you had to work three jobs to get there.
Now you weren't working there anymore. Your only job was the music store… and Bear worked there too.
Your schedules matched almost perfectly. You arrived together, left together, and there wasn't a single day Frank observed when one of you seemed to have plans that didn't involve the other. It wasn't simply that you were dating. That much Frank could understand. It was the extent of it that made something inside him remain uneasy.
You went everywhere with Bear.
When the store closed, you left with him.
When he went somewhere, you followed.
Eventually, Frank followed the two of you after work and discovered that you weren't going home.
You were going to Bear's apartment.
The first night, he assumed you'd stayed because it was late. The second night, he told himself you'd probably fallen asleep there. By the third, he had stopped lying to himself about what he was seeing.
You were sleeping at Bear's place. More than that, from everything Frank could tell, you had practically begun living there.
It should have been obvious that the two of you were together, and in a way, it was. Frank didn't need anyone to explain what he was looking at. What he couldn't understand was why your own apartment still looked untouched.
Your clothes were still there.
Your books were still on the shelves.
Your things remained exactly where you'd left them, as though you had every intention of returning eventually. There were no boxes, no bags, no sign that you'd actually moved out. You had simply stopped going home.
Frank found himself returning to that detail more often than he wanted to admit.
If you had chosen Bear, why hadn't you taken your things with you?
If you were living with him, why did your apartment still look as though you lived there?
He had no answers.
The more he watched, the stranger it became. You were never apart.
Frank began to notice how you reacted whenever Bear moved away from you, even if it was only for a few minutes. You always seemed to follow him with your eyes. Sometimes you physically followed him, finding some excuse to remain close even when there was no reason for you to be standing beside him. It wasn't the kind of affection Frank had seen between couples before. There was something almost compulsive about it, something that made him remember the first time he'd seen you together and wonder whether he'd been wrong about what he was witnessing.
You didn't simply want to be around Bear, you seemed to need to be.
Frank hated that he noticed. He hated even more that he couldn't stop looking.
Then, one rainy afternoon, he finally saw something that gave him the opportunity he'd been waiting for without realizing he'd been waiting for it.
The rain had been falling steadily since morning, turning the windows of the music store into sheets of grey and making the people walking outside hurry beneath umbrellas. Frank sat across the street with his eyes fixed on the store, half-hidden beneath the shadow of the building beside him. He had been there long enough that he had begun to question what the hell he was doing with his life, but then Bear moved toward the back of the store with another employee, and Frank's attention sharpened immediately.
You watched them go. It was subtle at first. You continued standing behind the counter, but your gaze followed Bear toward the back room. When he disappeared through the doorway, you took a small step after him before stopping yourself. Frank could see the hesitation from across the street, the way your body seemed to lean in the direction he'd gone even though you hadn't moved any farther.
Bear turned back, he said something to you.
Frank couldn't hear the words through the glass, but he didn't need to.
You nodded.
Bear gestured toward the front of the store, apparently reminding you to stay there in case a customer came in; you remained where you were.
For the first time in days, you were alone. Frank stared at you through the rain-streaked windshield.
You looked uncomfortable, not frightened, not upset. Just… wrong.
Your attention remained fixed on the doorway where Bear had disappeared, and you seemed to be fighting some inexplicable urge to follow him. Your fingers moved restlessly against the edge of the counter, and every few seconds you glanced toward the back of the store as though checking whether he was coming back.
Frank felt that familiar sensation settle beneath his ribs.
There it was again. That feeling that something wasn't right, he couldn't explain it. He couldn't prove anything, but he'd learned a long time ago that instincts were often the only warning a man got before things went bad. And for the first time since he'd started watching you, there was no Bear standing beside you.
Frank opened the car door. The rain immediately soaked through his jacket as he crossed the street. He kept his eyes on the store as he approached, already aware that he was crossing a line he had promised himself he wouldn't cross.
But he'd been watching you for days. He'd watched you disappear into another man's apartment every night. He'd watched you stop living the life you'd spent years building. He'd watched you become someone who couldn't seem to tolerate being away from Bear for more than a few minutes.
And now, finally, you were alone.
Frank pushed open the door to the music store, the small bell above it ringing softly as he stepped inside. The warmth of the place immediately surrounded him, carrying the faint smell of old wood, dust and vinyl records, while the rain continued tapping steadily against the windows behind him. He closed the door and remained there for a moment, letting his eyes adjust to the dimmer light before looking toward the counter.
You were there.
Frank had imagined this moment more times than he cared to admit during the last few days, though none of those versions had prepared him for what he actually saw.
You were standing behind the counter, but there was something strangely absent about you. Not physically. You were there, breathing, moving, doing what you were supposed to be doing, but your attention seemed to exist somewhere else entirely. Your fingers moved restlessly against the edge of the counter, tapping lightly against the wood without any particular rhythm, and every few seconds your eyes drifted toward the doorway at the back of the store.
The same doorway Bear had disappeared through.
Frank watched you do it again.
Then again.
It was almost mechanical. Your eyes would return to the counter, your fingers would continue their restless movement, and after a few seconds your attention would inevitably return to that doorway as though some invisible thread were pulling it there. It reminded Frank of a computer trying to load something that wasn't coming, the screen frozen while the machine waited for whatever it had been programmed to receive.
Except you weren't a machine. You were a young woman who had always seemed too full of life to behave like this.
Frank knew you. Maybe not every part of you, but enough.
He knew how easily you could become distracted when talking about something you loved. He knew how you tended to gesture with your hands when you got excited, how you would interrupt yourself halfway through a sentence because another thought had suddenly occurred to you. He knew you could be stubborn, confident and painfully direct when you wanted something, and he had seen you challenge him without hesitation more than once.
You had never been timid. You had certainly never looked like someone waiting for permission to exist. Yet here you were, standing behind the counter with your fingers twitching against the wood while you waited for Bear to come back.
Frank felt something tighten in his chest. He stepped farther into the store, the floor creaked beneath his boots, and you looked up. For a moment, your expression didn't change. It was almost as though you hadn't registered that someone had entered. Then your eyes found him.
Frank stopped.
There it was; something in your eyes. He couldn't explain it, and maybe that was what bothered him most. The rest of you looked almost normal. Your face was calm, your posture relaxed enough that anyone else might have walked into the store and assumed you were simply doing your job.
But your eyes didn't match, they were too quiet, too distant.
Frank had spent enough years looking at people to know when their bodies were lying for them. He'd seen men insist they weren't afraid while their hands shook beneath a table. He'd watched soldiers pretend they weren't hurt because admitting it would mean admitting they couldn't keep fighting. He knew what fear looked like, what guilt looked like, what grief could do to someone's face when they were trying to hide it.
What he saw in your eyes now wasn't any of those things. It looked almost like recognition struggling against something else.
You stared at him for several seconds before your lips parted. “Frank?”
His name sounded familiar coming from you. Too familiar.
He swallowed, forcing himself not to react to the relief that immediately moved through him. “Hey,” his voice came out rougher than he'd intended.
You continued looking at him.
Frank took another step toward the counter, his eyes never leaving yours. “I've been tryin' to get ahold of you.”
Your fingers stopped moving. For the first time since he'd entered, you looked directly at him without glancing toward the back room.
Frank noticed that too, he noticed everything. “Your phone's been off,” he continued. “I went by your place.” A pause. “Didn't find you there.”
Your expression remained strangely blank, but something moved behind your eyes again. It was so subtle that someone who didn't know you wouldn't have noticed.
Frank did. He'd seen that look before. Not exactly like this, but he'd seen enough moments when you were trying to figure out what to say, enough times when your eyes revealed something your mouth hadn't decided to admit yet.
He leaned one hand against the counter. “What happened?”
You blinked. “What?”
“What's goin' on with you?”
For the first time, uncertainty crossed your face, it lasted only a second. Then your gaze drifted toward the back of the store again.
Frank followed it, the doorway remained empty. When he looked back at you, you were already staring at him again. And there was something in your eyes that made his stomach sink.
Because Frank suddenly had the uncomfortable feeling that you were trying to tell him something.
You just didn't know how.
“What happened?” Frank repeated, his voice not harsh, but gentle. Just for you.
You looked at him as though the question itself confused you. “Nothing happened.”
Frank didn't move. “Don't bullshit me.”
Your fingers began moving against the counter again, the same restless tapping he'd noticed when he first walked in. You glanced toward the back room almost instinctively, and Frank followed the movement with his eyes before looking back at you.
“Where's Bear?”
You smiled. There was something about that smile that made Frank's stomach tighten.
“He’s working,” you said, with that same smile that didn’t seem like yours.
“I can see that.”
“He'll be back.”
Frank studied you carefully. “That's not what I asked.”
You seemed to think about the question for a moment, although there shouldn't have been anything to think about. “He's just getting something from the back.”
“Yeah. I know.” Frank leaned against the counter, keeping his voice low enough that you wouldn't feel cornered, even though every instinct in him was telling him that something was seriously wrong. “I asked where you've been.”
“Here.”
“Here?”
You nodded. “With Bear,” the answer came too quickly.
“Because we're together.” The words sounded so simple coming from you that, for a moment, he almost accepted them.
Almost.
Then he remembered the way you'd behaved when Bear walked away, the way you'd watched the doorway as though you were waiting for something essential to return to you. He remembered your apartment sitting untouched while you apparently slept every night at another man's place. He remembered the fact that you had stopped writing, despite how important that had always been to you.
Frank lowered his voice. “You quit the magazine.”
Your smile faltered. “Yeah…”
“Why?”
You shrugged. “I don't need it anymore.”
“You told me that job mattered.”
“It did.”
“Then why'd you leave?”
You looked at him. “Bear thought it was better.”
Frank felt something cold move through his chest. “Bear thought?”
You nodded. “He knows what's best for me.”
The answer came with such certainty that Frank almost laughed, except there was nothing funny about it. “Does he?”
“Yes.”
“You sure about that?”
Your expression changed, only slightly, but Frank caught it immediately. You looked toward the back room again, and this time there was something almost anxious in the movement. “He's good to me.”
“I didn't ask if he's good to you.”
“He loves me.”
“I know.”
That made you look at him again.
Frank held your gaze. “I can see that.”
Something flickered across your face. It wasn't the sweet expression you'd been wearing when you'd talked about Bear before. For a second, you simply looked tired, not physically… Something deeper. Your shoulders dropped almost imperceptibly, and your fingers stopped moving against the counter.
Frank noticed and he leaned closer. “Look at me.”
You did, and for the first time since he'd walked into the store, Frank recognized you. It was there in your eyes: that familiar irritation, that stubbornness, that little spark that had always appeared whenever someone pushed you too far.
Your lips parted. “Frank…”
His heart stumbled. You looked frightened, not of him… For yourself.
“Please…” The word was barely audible.
Frank straightened immediately. “What?”
Your eyes darted toward the back room. “I need… I… Don't let him—”
The change happened so quickly that Frank barely understood what he'd seen; your expression emptied. The fear vanished from your eyes as though someone had simply reached inside your head and switched it off. Your shoulders relaxed, your mouth curved into a soft smile, and when you spoke again, your voice carried the same warmth it had when you'd been talking about Bear.
“Don't worry about him.”
Frank stared at you and you smiled wider.
“He's taking care of me.”
His pulse had begun to pound. “What did you just say?”
“I said he's taking care of me.”
“No.”
You blinked.
Frank pushed himself away from the counter. “You said somethin' else.”
Your smile remained. “I don't know what you're talking about.”
“Yeah, you do.”
He stepped closer. “You said, 'Don't let him'.”
You laughed softly. “I was going to say don't let him worry. That's all.”
Frank stared at you, that wasn't what you'd said. He knew it and you knew it. But the woman standing in front of him now didn't seem to know it anymore. Or perhaps you did, and something had decided you weren't allowed to remember.
Frank's eyes moved across your face, searching for any sign that the frightened woman he'd seen seconds earlier was still there.
Nothing.
Only that strange, affectionate smile.
Only those words about Bear.
Only the certainty that he loved you and that he knew what was best for you.
Frank swallowed. “You're not acting like yourself.”
The smile disappeared for half a second, but then returned. “I'm happy.”
“That's not what I said.”
“But I am.”
“Are you?”
Your eyes softened. “Yes.”
“Then look me in the eye and tell me you're happy”
You did and Frank waited. “I love Bear.” His stomach dropped, you said it without hesitation. "I love him more than anyone. I love him more than anyone in the world," you said, all with that smile that seemed so unnatural.
Frank couldn't breathe for a moment. There was something wrong with the sentence, not because you couldn't love Bear. But because you sounded as though you were repeating something you had been taught rather than telling him something you had discovered for yourself.
Frank had heard people lie before. He had heard people convince themselves of things that weren't true.
This wasn't either.
This was something else.
Something he didn't have a name for.
And when you reached across the counter and gently touched his wrist, smiling at him as though you hadn't just terrified him, Frank realized that whatever was happening to you had already gone much further than he'd imagined.
“Don't worry about me, Frank,” you said softly. “I'm exactly where I want to be.” Your fingers tightened around his wrist. “And Bear will be back soon,” a pause. “I'm exactly where I want to be,” you repeated.
You said it softly, almost tenderly, as though there could be no room for doubt in something so simple. Your fingers remained wrapped around Frank's wrist, warm against his skin, and for a moment he did nothing to pull away. He was too busy looking at you, trying to reconcile the woman standing in front of him with the one he'd spent the last few days watching from across the street.
“I love Bear,” you continued, and there was something almost rehearsed in the way the words came out, each one placed carefully after the other. “I chose him. I want him. I want to be with him.”
Frank's eyes narrowed. “You sure about that?”
“Yes,” your grip tightened. “I love Bear.”
“Alright.”
“I chose Bear,” your fingers dug harder into his wrist. “I want Bear.”
Frank's expression changed. “Hey.”
You didn't seem to hear him. “I love Bear. I chose Bear. I want Bear. I love him. I chose him. I want to be with him.” The words began to lose their meaning the more you repeated them. They sounded less like an answer and more like a defense, as though something inside you had decided that if it said the same thing enough times, it could force the rest of you to believe it.
Frank could feel your nails pressing into his skin with a force that wasn't yours, a force he didn't know you possessed. “Jesus Christ,” he reached for your hand. “You're hurting me.”
You blinked. For one brief second, you looked confused, then your eyes filled with tears.
Frank froze.
The tears appeared so suddenly that they seemed almost wrong against the smile that still lingered on your face. One slipped down your cheek, followed by another, and yet you continued speaking as though nothing was happening.
“I love Bear,” your voice trembled. “I chose him,” another tear rolled down your face. “I want him.”
Frank stared at you. “Stop.”
“I love him.”
“Hey, look at me.”
“I chose him,” you said, your voice trembling with fury, fear, and conviction. It was so contradictory.
“You're crying.”
“I want to be with him.”
“You're cryin', sweetheart.” The endearment left his mouth before he could stop it.
Something in your face twisted. For the briefest moment, Frank saw you again. Not the smiling version of you that had been standing in front of him for the last several minutes, but you. The woman who had sat beside him in bed and talked about books until dawn, the woman who had laughed at his worst jokes and never seemed afraid of the darkness that followed him around. Your eyes met his, and there was terror in them.
Frank tightened his hold on your hand. “Tell me what's wrong.”
Your lips parted, no sound came out.
Your breathing became uneven. “I…” you swallowed hard. “I love—” your entire body jerked. “No.”
Frank frowned. “What?”
“No,” the word came out again, louder this time. “No. No, no, no!”
“Hey, hey—”
You suddenly tore your wrist from his grasp and then… you slammed your forehead against the counter. It was a strong, violent movement in every sense of the word; the sound was sickening. Skin directly against hard wood that received your forehead with enough force to knock out anyone else.
Frank's blood ran cold. “Jesus!”
You did it again, it was so fast Frank barely had time to react; the wood decorated your forehead with another wound. The blow was violent, dry, and he swore he could hear the natural stickiness of your head filling his ears like a cursed ballad.
“No, no, no,” you kept repeating.
Frank grabbed you before you could do it a third time, one arm wrapping around your shoulders as he tried to pull you away from the counter. “Stop! Stop, sweetheart!”
“No!” Your voice broke into something that barely sounded human. “No! No! No!” You fought him with a strength that didn't make sense, twisting violently in his arms as though the only thing in the world that mattered was getting back to the counter.
That wasn't your voice, it didn't belong to the natural cadence with which you spoke; it sounded like it came from somewhere else, another plane that made Frank's skin crawl. It wasn't your voice, it wasn't you.
Frank held on tighter. “You're gonna hurt yourself! Please, baby!”
“No!”
“Look at me!”
“No!” You slammed your hands against his chest, tears streaming freely down your face. “No, no, no, no—”
The door where Bear had disappeared opened violently.
“What the fuck is going on?”
Frank looked up.
Bear stood near the entrance to the back room, the other employee right behind him. Both of them stared at the scene in front of them, shock spreading across their faces when they saw you struggling in Frank's arms.
Bear's expression changed immediately. “Get away from her!”
Frank barely had time to react before Bear rushed forward.
“I'm trying to stop her from crackin' her head open!”
“What did you do to her?” Bear almost screamed.
“I didn't do shit!”
The other man was already reaching for his phone. “I'm calling the police.”
Frank looked at you, you had stopped fighting for a moment and then your eyes found his…
You screamed.
“Frank!” His name tore out of you with such desperation that the entire room seemed to go silent around it. It was so loud it surely hurt your vocal cords, it was drawn from the very depths of your being, leaving you trembling and breathless. You screamed. You screamed, not that horrible voice from before.
Bear grabbed you. “Come here.”
You recoiled at first, but only for a second. Then your body seemed to fold into him, arms wrapping around his torso with a desperation that made Frank's stomach twist. “I need you,” you whispered.
Bear held you tightly.
“I need you,” you repeated, clinging to Bear as blood trickled from your forehead. Your expression… now seemed calm, as if you had gotten what you wanted, as if it didn’t matter that part of your face was open and bleeding in front of three people. You didn’t care, you didn’t care about your wound, the blood on the wooden counter; you smiled, yes, you were smiling as blood trickled down your face in an almost macabre way.
Frank stared. The tears were still running down your face, mingled with the blood. Violence mingled with helplessness. You buried your face against Bear's chest, repeating the same words beneath your breath as though they were the only thing keeping you together.
“I need you. I need you. I need you.”
But Frank couldn't stop thinking about the way you'd screamed his name. It wasn't an accusation, you weren't screaming because he'd hurt you; it sounded more like you were calling for him. Like somewhere beneath all of this, you had known he was there.
He looked at the blood beginning to gather where you'd struck your head against the counter, then at your trembling hands clutching Bear's shirt, and something inside him settled into a certainty that had nothing to do with jealousy anymore. Something was wrong, he didn't need a fucking genius to know something was terribly wrong. Frank didn't understand what, he didn't know how, but he knew you; whatever was standing in front of him now wasn't all of you.
“Dude, it’s the fucking Punisher…” the other man whispered, almost trembling.
Frank took a step backward and Bear's eyes followed him. “You need to leave. Call the police!” he shouted.
Frank didn't argue, not because he agreed, but because there were too many eyes on him now, too many questions he couldn't answer, and staying would only make it harder to get back to you later. His status as the Punisher made things worse; he was a fugitive, and the last thing he needed was a squad coming now, taking you even further away, or putting you in some kind of protection program against him.
He turned toward the door, before stepping outside, he looked back one last time.
You were still holding onto Bear. Still crying with a smile, still whispering that you needed him, but your eyes were on Frank.
And for one terrible second, he saw it again: that same frightened look, that silent plea. Then Bear pulled you closer, hiding your face against his chest, and it disappeared.
Frank walked into the rain. The cold water hit his face, soaking through his clothes almost immediately, but he barely noticed. His mind was already working, pulling apart every detail he'd seen, every strange thing he'd dismissed because he hadn't wanted to believe his instincts.
Your unanswered phone. The apartment you no longer slept in. The job you had abandoned. The way you couldn't seem to stay away from Bear. The way you had looked at Frank as though you were trying to speak through a mouth that wouldn't obey you.
And then that scream.
Frank.
He stopped beneath the awning across the street and looked back at the music store. He had spent days telling himself that he had no right to interfere with your life, that if you'd chosen someone else, he needed to accept it. That he had no claim over you.
None of that mattered anymore. Whatever was happening to you, you had tried to tell him. Maybe you hadn't even known how, but Frank had heard you and he wasn't going to make the same mistake twice.
He had walked away from you once because he'd convinced himself that leaving was the only way he could keep you safe. Yes, it was true that he was going to come back; it was a certainty you both shared that night… but you had asked him to stay that night, that rainy night when intimacy had deepened. You weren't angry when he decided to leave; you knew he would return.
Only he didn't come back in time; he left at the wrong moment, it seemed.
He wasn't doing it again. Not this time.
Frank got into his car, his fists clenching tightly on the steering wheel as he felt something forming inside him. It was unpleasant, a terrifying fury, a fear that didn't just chill him to the bone, but seemed to set him on fire.
He would come back. Whatever the fuck was happening to you, whatever Bear had done, whatever he had yet to understand, Frank would find out.
And when he did, he was going to get you out of there and make sure that whoever did anything to you would pay with their life.
By the time night settled over the city, the rain had already passed, leaving the windows of Bear's house covered in a thin veil of moisture that distorted the lights outside until they looked like distant stars drowning beneath the surface of dark water. Inside, however, there was nothing particularly remarkable about the room; the bed was still disheveled from the hours they'd spent together, clothes had been abandoned wherever they had fallen, and the faint smell of soap and antiseptic lingered in the warm air, mingling with the more intimate scent of two people who had just finished sharing a bed. If someone had walked through the door then, they might have mistaken it for the aftermath of an ordinary night between a couple who loved one another, who chose each other, and perhaps that was what made the scene so unsettling, because ordinary things had a way of becoming grotesque when you looked at them long enough.
You sat against the headboard with the sheet gathered loosely around your waist while Bear moved around the room, talking about nothing in particular as he searched for his clothes. He told you some meaningless story about the music store, complained about the rain, laughed at something one of his coworkers had said earlier, and continued filling the room with his voice because Bear had always been uncomfortable with silence, especially the kind that left too much room for thought.
You listened because you were supposed to listen, occasionally answering him when he looked at you, while the bandage above your brow remained slightly crooked where he had treated the wound himself. He had cleaned the blood away, pressed gauze against the injury, and assured you that you didn't need a doctor, and you had accepted his word without questioning it because questioning Bear had become increasingly difficult, not because you were afraid of him, but because some part of you had begun to understand his wishes as though they were your own.
When he finally headed toward the bathroom, you stood from the bed almost immediately and followed him, your feet carrying you across the floor before you had consciously decided to move. Bear stopped when he noticed you behind him, turning with an awkward little smile that almost made him look embarrassed by the attention.
“You don't have to come in,” he said, giving a small laugh as though the situation were nothing more than a harmless misunderstanding. “I'll just be a minute.”
You looked at him, then at the bathroom, and nodded. “Okay.”
That was enough for him, not for you. You wanted to be with him. You needed to be with him. Maybe Bear needed you to remind him how much you loved him. But you didn't want to upset him, you didn't want to hurt Bear. So you listened.
You were a good girlfriend.
A good you.
The door closed, the lock clicked into place, and a moment later the shower began to run, its steady rush filling the apartment with a soft white noise that seemed to swallow everything else. You returned to the bed and sat exactly where you had been before, your eyes settling upon the closed bathroom door with an attention so complete that it almost seemed as though the rest of the room had ceased to exist. You did not reach for your phone, did not look toward the window, did not even glance at the clothes scattered across the floor; you simply watched the door behind which Bear had disappeared, waiting for him to come back as patiently as a creature waiting for the return of something essential.
Your hands, however, had begun to move without you.
They reached toward the backpack resting beside the bed, opened it, and searched through its contents until your fingers closed around something familiar. When you pulled the notebook free, the sight of it seemed to awaken a memory that had been buried beneath layers of something thick and suffocating, because you recognized it immediately. It was yours. The cover was worn from years of being carried everywhere, the corners softened and bent, and the pages inside contained the scattered remains of a life you had once been determined to build for yourself: fragments of stories, observations about strangers, ideas for articles, sentences you had written in the middle of the night because you were afraid they would disappear by morning, and pieces of the book you had always said you would write one day.
Your book.
Your words.
A record of the person you had been before everything had become Bear.
You opened it without looking away from the bathroom door.
The wound beneath the bandage had begun to bleed again, perhaps because the makeshift treatment had never been enough, perhaps because you had struck your head harder than you remembered, or perhaps because you moved the homemade bandage to dig your nail in with some force. The reason did not seem to matter. Once with the wound exposed again, this time you slowly inserted your finger into the viscosity of your being, your fingertip pressing into the tender skin until it came away wet with blood, and there was something profoundly unnatural about the complete absence of pain on your face as you watched the red gather against your skin. You did not wince or frown or even blink; your gaze remained fixed upon the bathroom while your blood stained the pad of your finger, and then, with the same strange calm, you lowered your hand to the open notebook.
The first letter appeared on the page in a dark, uneven stroke.
F.
Your breathing did not change.
The second letter followed, then the third, each one forming beneath your fingertip with the slow certainty of something being remembered rather than written.
R.
A.
N.
K.
You stopped.
For the first time that night, your eyes lowered from the bathroom door to the page, and there it was, written across your own words in blood as though the name had been waiting patiently beneath everything else for an opportunity to surface.
Frank.
The name seemed to carry a weight that the other words on the page did not. It belonged to another life, another room, another version of yourself that had once existed without needing permission to breathe, and for one fragile moment the memory came back with such clarity that it almost hurt. You remembered Frank's voice, rough and tired, the way he looked at you when you talked about your dreams as though he genuinely believed you would accomplish them, and most of all you remembered that last night when he had stood in front of you and admitted, in the only way Frank Castle knew how, that he was learning to stay.
You had told him that you knew.
You had told him you knew he would come back. Not with these words, but with your manner. You knew he was coming back.
And he had. He had found you.
You had seen him standing in the store, and for one brief, precious moment, something inside you had recognized him so completely that the world had seemed to split open around the recognition.
Then the bathroom door opened. The memory disappeared so violently that it was almost as though someone had slammed a door inside your skull.
Bear stepped into the bedroom with a towel around his waist, rubbing his hair dry as he glanced toward the bed, and his eyes immediately landed on the notebook. He followed the open pages until he saw the blood on your finger, and then his gaze settled on the name.
Frank.
There was no dramatic realization on Bear's face, no sudden transformation into the kind of villain who understood the full horror of what he had done. Instead, there was a brief tightening around his mouth, an uncomfortable flicker of recognition, and then the same pathetic discomfort that always appeared whenever reality threatened to become inconvenient. So this was the man. The man whose name you had screamed at the music store, the man who had apparently occupied a place in your life before Bear had decided that he wanted to occupy all of it.
Bear could have asked about him.
He could have asked who Frank was, what he had meant to you, why you had written his name in your own blood, or why you were sitting there staring at the page with tears beginning to gather in your eyes. He could have looked at the wound on your forehead and remembered how violently you had fought against yourself earlier that day, could have allowed himself to wonder whether the thing he had wished for had gone somewhere it was never supposed to go.
Instead, Bear looked away.
He already knew enough.
He knew something was wrong with you, even if he had never been brave enough to put the thought into words, because he had seen you hurting yourself and had heard the terror in your voice when you screamed Frank's name. He knew that you sometimes stared into empty spaces as though waiting for someone who wasn't there, knew that you followed him from room to room and became visibly unsettled whenever he disappeared from your sight, and he knew that none of this was how you had been before.
But knowing was not the same as caring. Not when caring might mean admitting that the thing he had wanted so desperately had come at a price.
Bear had gotten what he wanted. That was all that mattered. He was thinking about you, he cared about you, and you were okay now, just… a little strange.
The wish had never asked him to make you happy, and it certainly hadn't asked him to become a better man. It had asked for something much simpler and much uglier: for you to love him more than anyone else in the world, and now that you did, Bear had no reason to examine what remained of you underneath that love. Whatever pain lived beneath it could be ignored. Whatever pieces of your old life still tried to claw their way toward the surface could be pushed back down. Even Frank could become nothing more than an unpleasant name written in blood inside a notebook.
“Don't worry about him,” Bear said eventually, his voice softer than it deserved to be.
You looked up at him.
He walked over and gently took the notebook from your hands, and you released it without resistance. He closed it over Frank's name, hiding the evidence beneath the cover as easily as though he were putting away something embarrassing that neither of you needed to discuss.
“You don't need to think about that anymore.” There was almost tenderness in the way he said it.
That was the most terrible part.
Bear did not look like a monster. He looked like a young man who had finally gotten the person he wanted and was desperately determined not to look too closely at what possessing her had done to her. There was no grand cruelty in him, no sadistic pleasure in watching you suffer; there was only selfishness, small and human and ugly enough to be believable, the kind that allowed a person to see another human being breaking apart and decide that looking away was easier than admitting they had caused the fracture.
He placed the notebook on the nightstand and climbed back into bed beside you, pulling the blankets over your body with the same gentle care he might have shown you on any other night. You let him. You always did now.
When he turned off the light, the room fell into darkness, and the only illumination that remained came from the thin strip beneath the bathroom door, a pale line cutting across the floor like the last visible remnant of a world that still belonged to you.
Bear fell asleep beside you.
You did not. Your eyes remained fixed upon that line of light, waiting, listening, your body still and obedient beneath the blankets while somewhere inside you another version of yourself continued to remember a name that had been written in blood because ink had not been enough.
On the nightstand, the notebook remained closed. The page remained stained.
And beneath the cover, where Bear could not see it and perhaps where even you could barely reach it anymore, Frank remained written in your own blood, a tiny and almost insignificant act of resistance that no one had witnessed and no one had been there to save.
You didn't fall asleep, not you. The one who observed everything, the one behind the body that responded in extreme moments. You stayed awake, your body unresponsive.
You thought of Frank. Both of you. One with anger and fear, the other… the other with hope.
Hope was enough, at least for now. At least in these moments when the other seemed more focused on not resting because it knew that in moments of sleep… you had opportunities to escape.
notes: hi! there was quite a bit of frank in this chapter, i know, but it was necessary! part of the idea behind Obsession (2026) is to almost never see nikki's point of view, so i wanted to play with that a bit until the end… clearly, I couldn't leave the 'reader's' POV out.
I hope this part wasn't boring! I promise things keep escalating. >:
In Fate's Crosshairs: What Susie Isn't Talking About In Chapter 5
Perhaps My Most Confident Theory Yet
A couple people have been pointing out that Susie has been acting... weird, in this chapter. Trying to accept ribbons, ignoring (most of) Flowery's "princess" comments, neglecting her bond with Kris in favour of Noelle... Any one of these on their own could be excused as... sideways? character development? But all together, they have people throwing up eyebrows, some even going as far as to question Toby's writing.
While I have more faith in Toby than that, I'll admit... these accusations are hard to deny. I haven't seen an explanation that convinces me, but it's clear there needs to be one. What could possibly have caused such a drastic shift in Susie's behaviour?
Fortunately, I have an idea on what it might be. And it involves something else that's strange: What Susie Isn't Talking About.
(Deltarune Chapter 5 Spoilers, Really Long Post, Substantiated Opinions)
The Unspoken Inevitable
It is actually CRAZY. How little the Prophecy came up in this chapter. Like, I think it was only alluded to by Ralsei two or three times, and I'm not sure the WORD. PROPHECY. Was even SAID in the whole chapter. Like, correct me if I'm wrong, but the fact I'd have to check frankly says enough.
She tried to hide it, but we know Susie was haunted by what she saw of the Final Tragedy. It should be sticking in her mind, impacting her thought process, weighing on every decision. Instead, the thing on Susie's mind...
...is Noelle. Her love. ...Riiiiiight???
The Final Tragedy
Before Chapter 5, I made a prediction on what I think the Final Tragedy might be, and while I doubt I got it word for word, I think I'm on the right track. If you don't care to read that post, here's the prediction:
THE GIRL'S LOVE MUST MEET ITS GRAVE.
If Susie is "THE GIRL", which... you know, probably, then whoever her "LOVE" is is in narrative danger. Previously, I proposed that Susie is worried it could be Noelle or Kris, but honestly, I was being conservative! Susie just learned about polyamory the night before, it could be Noelle and Kris! Hell, why stop there? For all Susie knows, her "LOVE" could constitute any number of people she cares about! Kris, Noelle, Ralsei, Lancer, Toriel, Tenna? What counts!? Could you define "LOVE" real quick!? 'CAUSE THE PROPHECY SURE DIDN'T!!
So what's Susie gonna do? We know what she's like at this point, she's not gonna let anybody die because of her. So, she hatches a plan...
Susie's Idea (Derogatory)
Now, if you're following my logic so far, it might sound like I'm proposing that Susie is focusing all her "LOVE" on Noelle to pin the death flag on just her, which... no. Not quite.
As I was struggling to put all this together, I remembered an odd thing Susie said to Noelle at the lake. Something that I think is the lynchpin that explains all of her strange behaviour.
...That's weirdly... broad, right? She submitted a blank cheque. FOR A LOVE CONFESSION. That's kinda weird. And I KNOW she can do better than that; did you SEE her rizz at the hammer game!? Girl has an incredible talent for making people feel SO LOVED.
No, Susie had a reason to say that. To declare her and Noelle's feelings for each other as equal. Equivalent.
...Interchangeable.
Do you get it yet? Susie is trying to game the Prophecy, to swap her and Noelle's roles so she'll be the one that dies instead of Noelle.
And she's doing it with Noelle specifically because Noelle is her only "LOVE" that can fill the same roles as her; Kris and Ralsei are already in the other hero roles, and, you know, aren't girls (obviously Ralsei is trans, but Susie doesn't know that), so "THE GIRL" has to be Noelle.
And that means making Noelle a hero. Susie's previous apprehension in telling Noelle about the Dark World is completely gone, and while she missed her chance to tell her at the lake, she's got Castle Town going all out to give Noelle a warm welcome and induct her into the Delta Warriors.
All so Noelle can be "THE GIRL, WITH HOPE CROSSED ON HER HEART.", and Susie can be the "LOVE" that "MUST MEET ITS GRAVE".
Susie's gearing up to sacrifice herself. Because of course she is.
Evidence (20%TP)
With this in mind, a lot of things Susie says, that didn't seem very like Susie to say, take on new, disturbing double-meanings.
As much as she can... however little that ends up being.
Her relationship with Noelle... or her plan to save her? Can someone like Susie fill the same role as someone like Noelle?
As far as I can tell, Susie never fully breaks out the L-word for Noelle. She wants to love her... but she's scared. Scared of putting Noelle in the crosshairs of fate.
Blue likely meant "love" in the normal and cool and gay way (The flowers don't seem to be clued in on the deeper goings on besides Flowery), but all Susie's hearing is how she can best shape herself to take a bullet.
With this framing, what appeared to be uncharacteristic levels of yearning are revealed to be the coded words of a very scared girl. A girl that's scared to mess up, scared to lose someone she loves... and scared to die.
The best days she can have... however few that is.
Susie's sprite does this a LOT in this chapter, even in happy moments like the lake where it otherwise doesn't make much sense. She isn't saying it, but she's really struggling. And she's struggling alone, because she knows if she tells Ralsei or Kris or Noelle what she's planning, they'll probably try to stop her. And she can't allow that. Nobody else is dying because of her.
Bound In Ribbons
Now, one part of Susie's behavioural shift that is notably not explained by this theory's base premise is her trying to wear ribbons.
Ribbons have been a common armour since the start of the game, and are filled with metaphorical significance. They're signifiers of femininity, and how each party member reacts to them tells us more about their relationship to femininity.
Ralsei is shy but joyful, Kris can't object or approve, Noelle gets nostalgic... and Susie refuses them. She doesn't like 'em. That ain't her. And she hasn't been reprimanded for this, by her friends or the narrative. Her gender-non-conformity is representative of her will to defy fate and resist tyranny.
So for her to suddenly 180 on all that and not only accept, but insist on wearing ribbons, through audible discomfort... it's a red flag. And her reasons for doing it... aren't all that convincing.
Like, come on, Susie. Noelle isn't into you for your femininity, and you know that!
And her immediate reaction to wearing one demonstrates my point aptly: she was forcing herself to ask to wear the Ribbon, and resorted to a technicality when it turned out she couldn't stomach it.
But why? Why is it suddenly so important to her that she's wearing a ribbon?
Considering all of her other behaviour shifts are explained by it, I think it's a reasonable assumption to propose that something in the Final Tragedy also inspired this. Perhaps the accompanying image featured a collapsed figure wearing a ribbon, or something like that. Something that ties wearing ribbons to being the "LOVE".
A Small Aside
Sharp-brained readers might remember that Ralsei said that Susie is "supposed to wear ribbons". While he might have just meant this in the sense that Susie shouldn't be refusing to wear things she's given by "Kris", it's also possible he meant that Susie specifically is supposed to wear ribbons, which would tie (heh) wearing ribbons to "THE GIRL" role in the Prophecy, instead of the "LOVE".
Now, while I personally lean towards the former explanation, it is possible that I have the roles backwards, and that it's "THE GIRL" that dies rather than her "LOVE". This would require the Final Tragedy panel to also imply that Noelle is the true "GIRL", and while that's a lot more convoluted and might muck up a few of the "evidence" points, it... works. I guess.
Ultimately, though, it doesn't really matter which way around the roles are. The point is that Noelle is in the role that dies, and Susie is trying to swap them so she dies instead.
Beat to the Punch (That Looks Like Blood)
Now, there's a small issue with Susie's little plan, here:
I'm pretty sure Kris is already doing the same fucking thing, because OF COURSE THEY ARE.
As I've pointed out previously, as vigilant as Kris has been in being a good vessel and not expressing themselves, they've had no such restraint when it comes to Susie, and I don't think that's just because of how cool Susie is. No, I think that Kris intends to be "THE GIRL'S LOVE" to save Noelle, and has been actively pursuing Susie to achieve this.
And it's at least somewhat working. Susie doesn't use the same words as she does about Noelle, because she's trying to push her framing, but the way she talks to and about Kris makes it obvious how much they mean to her. Their talk on the way home is just one example.
But Kris's plan has hit a snag, in the form of Susie suddenly being all over Noelle. And they want to be supportive, but...
They can't. Because it's supposed to be them.
Because they promised.
This might be the true purpose of Kris & Carol's conspiracy: to save Noelle from the Final Tragedy by making Kris Susie's "LOVE", and keeping Noelle and Susie apart to keep their "LOVE" from flourishing.
Although, speaking of Carol, if she found out what Susie is planning, I could honestly see her being tempted to switch gears and make Susie "THE GIRL'S LOVE" instead. I mean, then Kris gets to live, too! And Carol likes Kris! Kris is family! Carol loves her family! Now, the only person that has to die is the town delinquent who nobody will miss.
(Wouldn't be the first time Carol's nearly jeopardised the plan with stupid, sentimental decisions. Like seriously, why was the code in that guitar!?)
But even without Carol getting greedy, the conspiracy is now in trouble, because the central piece - Susie - is going off-script. A battle of wills is spilling out over Noelle's fate, threatening to squander all of their efforts.
And you wanna know the worst part of all this?
I Don't Think It Was Ever Going To Work
I don't think Susie or the conspiracy will succeed. I don't think the Prophecy can be negotiated with in this way, and I don't think Noelle's death can be stopped... not anymore. If there is a path where Noelle survives (and I think there is)... we've already passed it.
And that's because none of these bozos have realised why Noelle is going to die, and why her death is what saves the worlds.
...
But that... is an explanation for later, because this post is already way too long. Seriously, I had to start combining screenshots because I hit the image limit, that's never happened before
For now, I invite you to reinspect Chapter 5 with this theory - which I'm dubbing Fate's Crosshairs Theory - in mind. And please, let me know if you spot any glaring holes in my thesis or smoking guns that I missed in the Evidence section.
Join me next time, when I talk about how I think the Normal Route will end and tie all of this back into my DEVILRUNE THEORY.
That's right! This was a DEVILRUNE THEORY post all along! It was all a ploy to support my headcanons! MUAHAHAHAHA!!
(Read DEVILRUNE THEORY from the beginning!)
(Previous/Next)
(Screenshots sourced from so many Youtube videos I've lost track, sorry)
i apologize for the really long ask but i really wanted to share my thoughts and i would make my own loa blog but i dont have it in me to deal with anons so i fear i will dump them all on you 😔 first off i want to say THANKKKK YOUUUUUU you literally changed my manifestation journey i used to be really into manifestation back in 2021/2022 and i was trying to manifest my dream face but it never happened no matter how much i affirmed or listened to subs or anything so i was just like fuck it this manifesting stuff isnt real imma just move on with my life and thats how i went about my life until you popped up on my dashboard a month ago and usually i would click not interested on any loa content but i was like you know what lemme give this stuff a chance again bc i did try the non manifesting route and it didnt work out bc when i tell you my life went DOWNHILL i used to protect myself from negative experiences by having the belief that i was simply the exception to terrible stuff but the moment i left the loa behind and was like no thats unrealistic anything can happen well guess what!! so many bad stuff happened in my life the last 2 years its genuinely crazy. so i was like lemme try this again and i went through your blog and really tried to materialize everything you were saying and read it with the attitude that what you are saying IS real instead of the doubting attitude i had towards loa advice/info back in 2022 and things really shifted for me.
so the first thing i learned is that MANIFESTATION IS REAL and more importantly NOTHING IS IMPOSSIBLE what i went through these past two years was proof to me that manifestation is real because once i adopted that negative mindset and dropped any positive beliefs i had my life became a nightmare and all those terrible thoughts manifested right before my eyes. for example i used to believe that i always looked pretty no matter what, this was just something part of my belief system but when i abandoned the law and everything i told myself no thats crazy i cant mAniFeSt looking pretty its unrealistic if im not pretty then im just not and bro when i tell you i was at my lowest appearance wise I WAS AT MY LOWESSTT my classmates at school would come up to me and tell me i looked so different and so dull even my mom would say the same stuff to me and tell me i changed i also noticed a difference when i looked in the mirror. the reason why i felt like manifestation wasnt real was because it just seemed really crazy to me, i felt like things materializing out of nowhere and appearances changing drastically was just like something fantastical and just not possible here in the real world. well i am here to tell you that is NAWT THE CASE! the world is not logical and im gonna tell you why. most of us here have grew up religious, and whats more illogical than religion? there are so many stories in the bible where illogical stuff happen like youre telling me some guy can turn water into wine? doesnt that sound like something out of a fantasy movie? but it happened, right? you believe in the bible so you believe in all the stuff that happened in it even the magical stuff. and another thing with growing up religious is that we always hear stories about miracles where for example a neighbor who was really sick suddenly woke up completely healthy. and we also were taught that we can ask god for anything and that god can make anything happen. i remember when my dad would teach me about religion he would say that god can make the grass is purple if he wanted to. it isnt just in religion but also in another spiritual communities and stuff they also have their own stories where things that dont really make sense logically happen. this goes to show that the world and humanity were never logical and that illogical things can happen, they've been happening since the dawn of time. people just came up with their own explanations. so get that thought that you cant change your entire face because its too crazy out of your head because it isn't. anything is possible. we literally live on a rock and we somehow move and speak and talk and somehow atoms exist so pls get with the program aint nothing logical in this life and the sooner you come to terms with that the better. nothing is too crazy because existence itself is crazy.
the second thing i learned was that MANIFESTATION IS NOT A PROCESS. i used to hear this all the time back in 2022 and it never made sense to me i was always like what tf are yall talking about???? my understanding was that manifestation is the act of trying to get something, but i was so so wrong. everything changed for me when i started approaching manifestation with the attitude that i was reminding myself of what i have, not trying to get what i want. basically stop thinking of manifestation as manifestation if ykwim. to really understand this im gonna have to talk about the whole "decide that you have your desire > affirm that you have it > keep presisting" thing and break it down.
so what do people mean when they tell you to decide that you have your desire? does it mean saying out loud "i have __" and then a few seconds going "alright wheres my ___?" no. it means you in your mind decide that its ALREADY YOURS and that you ALREADY GOT IT. i dont know how to word this any differently because its so simple its literally in the words. im gonna try an example. im assuming that youre reading this with your eyes so you have eyes. are you trying to 'manifest' having eyes? when you say "i have eyes" are you using an affirmation to get eyes? is having eyes a desire youre trying to 'manifest'? no because you literally already have eyes bro how else are you reading this with your bootyhole??? so when you say "i have eyes" you arent manifesting via affirming, youre just saying it to remind yourself because well you have eyes. you arent trying to manifest eyes because you already have them. thats what it means to decide that your desire is yours. it means to stop treating what is yours as a desire because its literally yours. stop seeing it as something youre trying to manifest because you already have it, wtf do you need to manifest for? do you get it? don't think of doing this as you tricking your mind into thinking you have your desires because AGAINN you arent tricking anything you literally already have it. when you say "i have eyes" and you have eyes are you trying to trick gour brain? no. that sounds silly. im sorry that this is so repetitive but its literally that simple idk what everyone else is doing complicating the most simple thing ever.
and now, what do people mean by affirm that you have it? does that mean using affirmations to manifest your 'desire'? (i put desire in quotations bc you already have it since you decided you do) no. it simply means reminding yourself that you do. ill go back to the eyes example. if you were to say "i have eyes" right now would you understand that as some woo woo manifestation affirmation technique? no because you already have eyes. what youre doing is simply stating a fact and reminding yourself of it for funsies. you arent trying to manifest anything because you already have it. affirming doesn't mean tricking your brain or your subconscious that you have your desire or whatever, its just you reminding yourself.
and finally, what does it mean to persist? does that mean fighting for your life trying to convince yourself that you have your desire? no. because you already have it. it simply means that everytime you ask yourself "oh why isnt this showing up in my 3d?" you tell yourself "bro what tf are you on about were not manifesting anything we already have it are you crazy?" that's all. going back to the eyes example, you know you have eyes, so if someone came up to you rn and was like "hey did your eyes come in yet?" you'd probably think they hit their head or something because your eyes are literally right there its how youre seeing their dumbass. that's the same attitude you have to have towards your 'desires'. stop thinking of your 'desires' as desires, stop thinking youre trying to manifest anything, stop thinking you have to wait for anything to show up in the 3d or that the 3d is lagging behind or whatever, stop seeing manifestation as manifestation, stop imagining yourself sending in success stories asks when you get your desires, basically just stop dawg. you already have it. "dont contradict yourself" (although again you arent contradicting anything bc you already have it im just running out of ways to simply something thats already so simple). thats what it means to manifest instantly.
anyways thats all i wanted to say. im so sorry for the horrendously long ask i would make it even longer by talking about my success now but i think you would beat my ass if i did. bye bye love u
!!!!! you ate this whole thing up. y'all better come read this.
