This second “epilogue” of sorts is a gift to those still actually reading this angst monster. I thought you could use a little fluff after all that tragedy.
You may need to read chapter 12 again to understand where this one comes from, but it should still make sense on it’s own.
~*~*~*~*~*~
“Raphael.”
That snaps him back. His eyes spring open and he gasps like he’s been holding his breath. He looks confused and… scared? The nerves on the back of my neck perk up immediately. Raph never lets his fear show so openly. Whatever’s happening right now is serious.
“Leo?”
“You alright?” I try not to coddle, not wanting to make the situation worse. But the way his voice sounds—so lost and frightened—is freaking me out. I actually wish he’d go back to shouting at me instead.
“What… What happened?”
He still looks like he’s about to collapse so I lead him over to the bench and help lower him down—he doesn’t fight my assistance so now I know something is wrong. I make sure to keep my voice even as I explain. “You were in the middle of cussing me out for following you tonight when you suddenly stopped talking and closed your eyes. You looked like you were about to pass out.”
As I say it, I move quickly to check his eyes and forehead for signs of illness before he fully comes back to himself and pushes me away. “You don’t have a fever, but your eyes look a little red. Is it a headache?” I stand back slightly, fully expecting him to swipe my hand away and storm off or shout at me to stop worrying or something of an explosive nature. But he just keeps looking at me with wide, frightened eyes.
I can’t stand seeing that look on his face.
“Raph.” He doesn’t answer and my gut is getting twitchier with worry by the second. “Raphael.” His eyes move to my stomach, fear and pain from an unknown source plainly displayed for me to see. It scares me to see him like this. I don’t… I don’t know what to do. I want to help, but I don’t know what’s wrong. I’m about to go running for Sensei when something stops me dead in my tracks.
Tears start streaming down his face. He’s crying. Raph is crying. And I suddenly want to burn the world down to find whatever has done this to my brother.
“Raph.”
I breathe deep to keep my own emotions in check as I kneel in front of him with a hand on each shoulder, giving a firm squeeze while I try to catch his eyeline. I don’t care if he’ll be angry, I just want him to know I’m here.
“Is there anything I can do?”
I don’t know what’s hurting him, but I do know Raph hasn’t cried in front of me since were kids. Whatever this is… I want to help. I have to—
“Why?”
His voice is broken. My chest clenches tighter at the sound of it. I try to be as calm and even as I can. “You’re crying.”
I don’t think he noticed. Still doesn’t seem to. He just stares at me, eyes piercing my own with their pain.
Without thought, I wrap my arms around him, pulling him close as if my embrace could leech the pain from him and onto me. It’s an instinct as old as we are. Older brother instinct to hold onto him as tight as possible until the fear goes away. “I’m here, bro. Whatever’s going on… I’m here.” I squeeze a little tighter, more for my own desperation than his. “I’ve got you.”
His body starts shaking.
“Dammit, Leo…”
I hold firm, pulling him closer.
“Dammit Leo!”
I don’t know what else to do!
“Dammit! LEO—”
“I’m here, Raph!” I’m shouting now too, my own desperation slipping into my voice because I’m suddenly certain that if I let go I’ll lose my brother forever. I squeeze even tighter as my voice tries to reach through his pain. “I’ve got you.”
It was like strings on a marionette suddenly snapping; his arms shoot out like being annexed from a cannon, wrapping around me with enough intensity to match my hold and then some. He buries his face in my shoulder and silently sobs, and it’s all I can do to keep from tearing up myself.
I can’t remember ever seeing Raph like this since passing out of childhood. And I’m terrified at how powerless I am to help him.
So I just hold on, hoping that whatever has broken him, I can keep him together.
Suddenly there’s something in front of me. An apparition of my brother, or an echo or faint copy. He’s still in my arms, still clinging to me for dear life and crying into my shoulder. But his figment is also there. Staring at me with wide, frightened eyes.
No, not frightened. Daunted. He looks at me as though I’ve betrayed him; so much pain and horror in his eyes that it rattles my very soul.
“LEO! NO!”
He reaches for me, but before I can attempt to reach back, he’s gone. Disappears like smoke in the wind.
The silence of the room is crushing. I don’t understand what’s going on. I hold my brother tight, afraid he’ll disappear too. Whatever this is, whatever is happening, I won’t let it take him.
“Raph,” I place a hand on the back of his head, still refusing to release my other arm from around his shell. “Talk to me. Tell me how I can help. Please.”
The door to the dojo is abruptly flung open loudly and without care. I turn instinctively, placing myself between my brother and the entrance, still holding him close. My hand moves from his head to my katana—why? We’re at home, there’s nothing I should be afraid of. But Raph is crying and I can’t help him and none of this makes sense!—but my panic fades when I see who steps into the doorway.
“Sensei?”
“My son!” Even from afar I can see the fear in his eyes. Had he seen the apparition of Raph too?
“Sensei, I don’t know what happened. He just suddenly—”
But our father isn’t staring at Raph, he’s staring at me. The same mixture of terror and anguish in his features that Raph has.
A frightening sense of dread starts to crawl up my shell unbidden.
“…Sensei? Are you alright?”
He stares a moment longer, reaching up and cupping my face with his hand. The tender gesture coupled with the tear that leaks from the corner of his eye only deepens my worry.
“Leonardo…” He pauses, finally noticing the concern on my face, and takes a moment to compose himself, clearly tamping down some strong emotions. “Are you alright, my son?”
I’m not entirely sure how to answer that. “…Hai, Sensei. I’m fine. But…” I look down to Raph, still clinging to me tightly with his eyes sealed shut and fully closed off to the world around him. I haven’t the first clue how to explain this. “Raph just—I don’t know what happened but he…” But Sensei is still focused on me and I can’t stand that look of terror in his eyes. “Dad, please… What’s wrong?”
I need to know what’s happening. I need to know how to protect my family.
“I… I am not entirely certain.” He speaks slowly, processing as he goes. “I was reading, when I felt a pain appear from nowhere. A gaping hole in my spirit that I have only known once before… when I lost my family.” His face wears his pain plainly.
“I don’t understand.”
“You were gone, my son.” He looks me in the eyes, an intensity I can’t name shimmering brightly as he speaks. “I cannot explain it, but I knew for certain that you were no longer of this world. You had left us. It was so potent, so real…”
He reaches again to cup my cheek, and all I can do is stare with wide confused eyes.
“I am just so grateful I was wrong. You are still here, still—”
“I’m fine, Sensei.” I’m trying to be as reassuring as possible because I know he wouldn’t act like this for no reason, but it’s so strange to be in this kind of spotlight. And I’m really not the one he should be worried about right now. I look down at Raph again and Splinter finally follows my gaze.
He breathes deep, placing a hand on Raph’s shell. “My son, did you feel as I did? That something had happened to Leonardo?”
But Raph is either unwilling or unable to answer.
I pull him in a little tighter. “We were talking and he suddenly stopped and… He looked like he was about to pass out.”
I’m not explaining this right. There was so much more to it. But I don’t want to betray his trust by blabbing to our father that he’d been sobbing like a frightened child.
“Raphael…” Good, he’s got his comforting tone that can pierce through anything. ”My son, please… can you tell me what has happened?”
Silence falls, thick with worry. But Sensei sits with pure patience, his hand rubbing soft circles on Raph’s shell to let him know he’s here and willing to wait as long as necessary.
Meanwhile I’m quietly going out of my mind.
Raph is still clinging to me like if he lets go he’ll die, his body is still quaking, and there are remnants of tears trickling down his cheeks. And every second that passes without helping him, without doing something to take away his pain, is rapidly eating away at me.
There has to be something I can—
But I know my brother well. I know if I try to force him to open up, he’ll close off even more. Like Sensei is doing, we have to let him come to us on his own terms, in his own time. So I keep my desperation to myself, keep my hands firmly clamped around him so he knows I’m not going anywhere, and silently pray for this all to be over soon.
I’ll happily listen to him cuss me out again if it just means he’s okay.
I focus on my breathing, keeping it calm and steady so Raph can’t tell I’m silently panicking. Though I’m pretty sure Sensei is picking up on it. His eyes meet mine again and I see the fading remains of his terror, but he offers his most reassuring smile and it helps settle me a bit. Sensei can help him. Whatever is going on, Sensei can—
“Raphael.” Splinter speaks softly as my younger brother finally stirs, pulling away from my grasp with his eyes fixed squarely on my stomach. “Are you alright?”
He mumbles a stifled “M’fine” as he turns away and wipes the tears from his face. I try not to stare, I know he get embarrassed about this sort of thing, but I can’t take my eyes off him until I know he’s alright.
“Can you tell us what happened?”
Sensei’s tone is endlessly patient, and yet void of patronization. Someday he’ll have to teach me how he does that.
He almost starts to speak, but his eyes clip mine and he clams up again.
“I can go,” I offer, despite everything in me not wanting to. “so you two can talk.”
Raph doesn’t say anything, but he stares at me intently. There’s clear desperation in his body, I just can’t tell if it’s for me to stay or leave.
“Perhaps—” Sensei doesn’t get to finish his sentence before there’s a loud, horrified shout, coming near the dojo door.
“LEO!? Leo where ARE YOU!?!”
“In here.” I call, noting that his voice is getting more terrified with each word. The minute he spots me, I see the same anguish. The same heart-stopping pain that the others had. He’s radiating it. “Mikey…”
His eyes are already filled with tears. My chest tightens at the sight of him.
“LEO!”
He stumbles into the room, tripping over his own feet as he falls down beside me, immediately clamping his arms around my neck and hugging for all he’s worth.
It takes a good amount of effort not to fall over, but I keep us both upright as best I can as he squeezes the oxygen right out of me. “Can’t breathe, Mikey.” I’m fully expecting him to come back at me with a quip or a joke of some sort, but he doesn’t say anything. He just kneels beside me, arms wrapped around so tight I can’t move, and sobbing into my shoulder so hard you’d think his whole world just collapsed. “Mike…”
“L-Leo… You… Y-You’re here. You’re… Y-You were—” He blubbers incoherently between sobs.
I want to comfort, but I still don’t understand what’s going on. Maybe words aren’t what he needs right now. Maybe he just needs big brother. I fold one arm around his shell and place my other hand on his head, holding him close and letting him weep. “It’s okay, Mikey… I’m okay.”
I take a deep breath—or as deep a breath as I can manage with my baby brother coiling around me like a snake—and let it out slowly, continuing the pattern in the hopes that Mikey will follow suit and calm his crying a little. It takes a few more minutes, but eventually it works. And after a few deep breaths and trailing whimpers he releases his strangle hold and grasps my shoulders, pulling back to look me over with tears still pouring from his eyes and sobs only barely held at bay in the back of his throat.
“Are you okay!? Are you hurt!? Don’t you dare try to hide it, if you’re hurt you have to tell us now!”
“I’m fine.” But he’s not listening as his eyes fall to my stomach, staring at it with horror like it’s the source of all his worst nightmares.
Just like Raph.
I reach my hands up to cup his face and force him to look at me. “Mikey, I’m okay. Nothing happened to me. I wasn’t even overexerting while training. Here—” I place his hand on my neck so he can feel my pulse, making sure it’s nice and steady despite my concern. “See? Perfectly healthy.”
His eyes are still wide and worried. “You’re sure? You’re not… You’re…”
“I’m fine. I promise.”
He doesn’t even hesitate for a moment. The words barely leave my lips and he buries himself in my chest, arms wrapped around my shell in a vice grip again as the tears fall freely. I’m hoping this time it’s more relief than anything else.
I stroke his shell like I do to soothe him when he’s sick. It takes another few minutes, but he eventually calms down and relaxes into a gentler hold.
I glance beside me to see how Raph’s doing, but he immediately averts his eyes to floor. Anywhere but on me. There’s something in his body language that’s bothering me. Something he’s trying to hide or doesn’t want to admit. Something… guilty?
“What happened, Leo? Why did it feel like you were gone?” Mikey whispers, his voice heavy with fear.
“We have asked that very same question, my son.” Sensei, thankfully, answers first.
“You guys felt it too?”
“Yes.” Sensei nods grimly. “It came out of nowhere, but it was incredibly… real. The fact that all three of us felt it so potently means it cannot have been a figment or a trick. But what could cause such a sensation?”
Mikey looks to our angrier brother and prods gently. “You too? You felt Leo… go?”
Raph doesn’t reply. Just folds his arms in front of his chest and glares deeper at the floor.
“Was it his stomach?”
Raph’s eyes whip over to Mikey’s with intensity and fear rippling through them.
Mikey only nods solemnly, apparently getting all the confirmation he needed from that reaction. But neither of them elaborate, so I have to ask.
“What about my stomach?”
“I don’t know.” Mikey lowers his head back to my chest as he talks, like he’s listening for a heartbeat. “I think… I think you were hurt there. I remember seeing blood on your stomach. Or feeling it? I don’t… I don’t know… it was so real, but so vague at the same time. The only thing I knew for sure was that you were…” His arms tighten around me as his voice trails off, unable or unwilling to finish the thought.
I pat his shell to reassure him I’m still alright, but I’m too lost in my own thoughts to comment or comfort. None of this makes any sense. We don’t have any enemies that can toy with our emotions like this, so it can’t be an outside force. And all of them felt the same thing at the same time, so it can’t be a hallucination or something internal.
Even if it was, that still wouldn’t explain the apparition of Raph that I saw. Reaching for me with desperation in every muscle and terror in every feature.
I shake my head. Clearly this isn’t something we can solve at the moment. But I can still try to take the fear from them. Distract them from it. At least for a bit. “Well whatever it was, it’s gone now. I’m okay,” I pat Mikey’s head to make sure he looks at me as I say it. “we’re all safe, so I say we take our minds off it all with a movie marathon. Mikey’s choice.”
That perks him up a bit, though not as much as I thought it would. And he’s still not letting go of me.
“Marvel movie marathon?”
He asks, only a hint of excitement in his voice. This sort of thing would normally get him completely riled up.
“An excellent idea, my sons.” Sensei places a gentle hand on Raph’s shoulder, his voice back in that space of understanding without sounding patronizing that I can never achieve. “Would you join us, Raphael?”
He still doesn’t say anything—hasn’t said a word this entire time and it’s making every nerve in my body stand on edge—but he moves to stand, I think waiting for us to go first.
“Come on, Mikey.” I say as I gently remove my baby brother enough so I can stand. He still keeps his arms glued around my torso, but at least I can move. “Which one do you want to watch fir—?”
I don’t get to finish because there’s a large flash of light in front of us that comes out of nowhere. I pull my brother behind me and stand in front of my family, my katanas unsheathed in an instant. With my nerves as on edge as they are, it takes a few seconds for me to recognize the person who steps out of the light.
Mikey makes the connection first, stepping from behind me with an understandable amount of surprise in his voice. “Renet?”
“Oh thank the multi-verse, you’re all okay!” She lunges in to hug Mikey while I step away and sheath my swords. “I’m so sorry! I’m so SO sorry! I swear I didn’t mean to! Can you ever forgive me!?”
Mikey looks to the three of us who all shrug in unified confusion. He pats her back. “Uh, sure! What are we forgiving you for?”
My nerves finally calm enough for my mind to think clearly. “That was you? You’re the reason they all thought I was dead?”
Sensei had clearly already put it together, but the other two stare in shock. Or in Raph’s case, anger.
“Yes.” She says sheepishly as she pulls away and rubs her arm, obviously embarrassed and upset by the whole thing. “It was an accident, I swear! I never meant for the two to touch, and it was only for a second! I wasn’t even sure you guys would feel anything, I thought maybe you would have thought it was a dream like the other guys did, but as soon as everything was aligned again I came right here to make sure you were alright, and—gosh, I’m so so sorry! That must have been—I can’t even imagine having to feel all that when you’re not—I’m so—”
“Ms. Renet,” Master Splinter thankfully interrupts her tirade with a calm tone, gesturing towards the door. “Perhaps you could explain in full over a cup of tea.”
She scolds herself again before turning to Sensei with another apology in her eyes. “Yes, I’m sorry, I’m ahead of myself again, aren’t I? Tea would be great.”
We all head towards the kitchen, Mikey moving in step beside me so he can latch onto my arm again, fear of whatever Renet did still clearly lingering in his mind. Raph follows behind, head down and eyes wide, too curious to stay behind but too embarrassed—or frightened or… something—to make any sort of eye contact.
Just keep calm. I’m sure it wasn’t a big deal. Everyone will be back to normal within the hour.
I can’t get Raph’s tears out of my mind…
~*~*~*~*~*~
“I was only trying to take a closer look, but I must have bumped the timeline ever so slightly. It shifted and overlapped with yours for a second. Simultaneous fixed it right away, but by then I guess you guys had already felt the effects.” She taps the side of her tea cup nervously, apology number twenty five about to leave her lips, when Mikey cut in.
“So… what we felt… it really happened? In that other timeline?”
“Yes.”
“Then they… they were really feeling all that. The other us’s. In that world, they were feeling all those things we felt.” His voice is so tentative, had I not been looking, I never would have guessed it was Mikey talking. “Because something happened to their Leo… right?”
Renet takes a long moment to think. Unusual for her, but I’m guessing she was trying to avoid causing any more trouble by answering things she shouldn’t. Finally, she nods her head.
I have so many questions about the whole thing, but I know better than to ask. I know what I need to: the others felt something I didn’t, which means they were all alive in that other timeline to feel it. So whatever happened, they were safe.
That’s all that ever matters to me.
Mikey grips my hand, pulling me from my thoughts, as he asks the question he’s been trying to ask for ten minutes. “Is… Is their Leo dead?”
I think we all know the answer, but there’s still a palpable tension as we wait for Renet to respond. She only nods her head solemnly, but the solid confirmation still seems to steal the air from the room.
Suddenly everyone’s eyes are on me and I can feel my skin crawling from the attention. But I don’t say anything. Not even as Mikey moves my arm to wrap himself around my torso in a hug I doubt I’ll be free from any time soon. Whatever they need for comfort, I want to be here. Even if I hate how they’re looking at me…
“How did it happen?”
It’s the first time Raph’s spoken since the dojo. Renet shifts uncomfortably in her seat, clearly still warring with how much information to tell and how much to hold back. “I don’t think I should—”
“How?”
Raph’s tone doesn’t exactly brook room for an argument, but I don’t think we should get into details. Mikey’s going to be having nightmares as it is. “Maybe it’s best if we—” but I stop as soon as I catch Raph’s gaze. He needs this… he needs to know. I don’t know why, but if it’ll help… “—just get the basics. We don’t need any details.”
Renet gives me a look, silently asking if I really think she should. I honestly don’t want her to, but this isn’t about me, is it? I give her a subtle nod.
“He…” She begins quietly, looking at everyone before she speaks as if waiting for an objection. “He was shot. By a Purple Dragon.”
I glance around to see everyone’s reaction. Mikey flinches like he could feel the bullet himself. Sensei breathes out a long breath, like he does when he’s trying to keep calm. Raph doesn’t react at all. His eyes fall back to the floor and his whole body tenses, but it was almost like he… anticipated the answer.
Renet waits a moment to allow it all to sink in before gulping in a deep breath. “I really should get back.” She stands, bowing to everyone. “I’m so SO sorry! It will never happen again, I swear!”
“Please Ms. Renet, do not apologize further.” Sensei comes beside her and pats her shoulder. “We do not fault you, it was an accident. And we appreciate you coming to explain. It is a great weight off our shoulders to not be left wondering what it was.”
That seems to relax her a bit, but one glance back at Mikey and Raph puts the regret right back on her face.
“Thanks Renet.” I can’t stand with Mikey gripping me like he is, but I offer her a sincere smile. “Circumstances aside, it was nice to see you again.”
“You too.” She smiles back, waving to everyone once more before activating her scepter and disappearing without a trace.
Silence descends on the lair again. Everyone too lost in their thoughts to speak.
I just feel… relieved. Morbid though it may be, It’s incredibly comforting to know that my brothers are all safe, even in other worlds. That I’m the one to be taken, not them.
I’ll never say it out loud. It would only upset them.
I wait a few more minutes for everyone to process before placing my hand on Mikey’s head to get his attention. “Hey, why don’t we make tonight a camp out? We can pile our beds in the living room for our movie marathon and sleep there tonight.”
“Together?”
I nod, noting the fear still radiating from him.
“Can we order pizza?”
“It’s not a camp out without pizza.”
He’s still distracted, still gripping my am like he can’t let go, but his eyes light up a bit. “I call dibs on picking the first movie!”
“You’ll have to be quick then,” We all start moving to the living room, away from the conversation with Renet. “I think it’s Don’s turn to—”
We all suddenly gasped in a breath, freezing in our tracks.
I’d been so preoccupied with—I hadn’t even thought of—
“Where is Donatello?” Splinter asks, keeping a composed face.
“April’s.” Mikey pipes in quickly, long past not trying to be frantic. “He said they were working on some new formula or machine or something.”
I take a subtle breath trying to collect myself before calming the room . “Let’s not panic. Maybe he didn’t feel it like you guys did. Maybe you had to be in the room or something.” I’m not even convincing myself. “Otherwise he’d have tried to call one of us.”
I left my phone in the dojo when I went to confront Raph, so I look to my two younger brothers intently.
Mikey feels around himself. “I think I left mine in my room.”
We turn to Raph who has already reached for his phone, the screen blank and black. “I… turned it off before I left the lair.”
So I wouldn’t be able to call him, I’m sure. Not the time for that now.
We wait entirely impatiently as he turns it on, the screen lighting up and taking eons to load.
Thirty-two missed texts.
Seventeen missed calls.
“Oh god, Donnie…” Mikey whispers with worry engulfing his tone again. “He must think you’re…!”
Again, he doesn’t finish the sentence.
I no longer have patience enough to sit here and wait. “How long has it been since this all started?” Maybe I can catch him before he leaves Aprils.
“Thirty minutes or so.” Sensei replies. He places a hand on my shoulder, reading my mind the way only he can do. “Let us give him a call first. He may already be on his way home.”
I don’t want to wait. I want to make sure he’s alright. But I feel guilty arguing with any of them after the night they’ve had, so I nod and turn back to Raph, hoping he’s already dialed.
He doesn’t even get the number punched in before there’s a loud, desperate, cry from the garage entrance.
“LEO!”
“Don, I’m here! I’m—”
He rounds the corner into view and my chest lurches at the sight of him. He looks haggard and exhausted, eyes red, cheeks stained with tears, and puffing like he’s just finished running a marathon. His eyes lock on mine immediately, shock and terror still plastered there for all to see.
“Leo!”
I think he meant to run to me, but his legs collapse beneath him as soon as he moves. I barely have time to stop him from unceremoniously crashing to the floor with my shoulder under his arm and my hand on his chest. “Whoa, Donnie, easy! Take a breath.”
“You’re here! You’re—”
He’s cut off by a sudden sob, and I can tell he’s been holding it in for a while. I should have thought to call him earlier. The way he’s looking at me with such pain… I can’t…
My arms grip him in a solid hug, both to hold him up and to let him know I’m really here. I won’t let go until he’s ready. Until he’s let his panic wash through him.
Sensei lets us have a moment before coming beside Don and placing a hand on his shell. “Your brother is alright, my son. It was not his loss you felt.”
Don’s clearly not convinced. He suddenly pulls from my grip, grabs my shoulders with both hands, and begins scanning every inch of me for injury. “What happened!? Why didn’t anyone answer their phone!? Was it something to do with wherever Raph ran off to tonight?”
“No, nothing like that.” I notice Raph flinch away at the accusation but remain quiet. Odd. Normally he’d opt for a more audibly defensive reaction. “I’m sorry, Don. It was—”
“Where are you hurt? What was it, a gun or a knife? What…” His voice trails off as his gaze falls to my stomach, staring the same way Mikey and Raph had earlier.
“It’s okay dude.” Mikey pipes in, maybe he noticed the same look. “It’s a crazy story, but it ends with Leo being okay. Well, our Leo…” His eyes fall a bit as Don blinks in confusion.
“Our Leo?”
“Let us have a seat.” Sensei ushers us into the living room, encouraging Don to take some more deep breaths before Mikey launches into a full explanation. It’s a lot to take in, but Don seems to follow with no trouble. He listens intently, his eyes flitting across all three of us, and always landing on me. I can tell he’s fluctuating through a gambit of emotions, but by the end of the tale there’s at least a small hint of relief.
Though not as much as I had hoped.
“That makes sense, I suppose.” He finally replies, his gaze landing on me for the umpteenth time. He sits in silence a moment before asking. “What happened to their Leo?”
Everyone’s eyes seem to find the floor at the same time. Not mine. I don’t mind saying it. Though I try to sound as delicate as I can, for their sakes. “He was shot during a mission. Apparently he didn’t make it.”
Again, Don does the same thing Mikey did, his eyes finding my stomach and staring.
I stand from the couch. “I am not him. I am perfectly fine. So I’m going to go order the pizza. You guys can get the beds set up.”
I leave as quick as I can without drawing attention, subtly avoiding Mikey on my way out so he doesn’t have a chance to glom onto my arm again.
I need a minute away from their looks of pain and fear.
I need a minute to breathe without them staring.
I need them to be okay again.
~*~*~*~*~*~
By the time I get back with pizza in hand (thanks to a very concerned April, who stayed behind in the kitchen to hear the explanation from Master Splinter) the living room is piled full with futon mattresses, mounds of pillows, and just about every blanket in the lair.
Mostly Mikey’s doing, I assume.
Don looks like he’s getting the TV set up, albeit with less dexterity than usual.
And Raph doesn’t look like he’s moved. At all. He’s just sitting there, staring at the floor again, shoulders hunched and fists tense. He looks like a rubber band about to snap. But it’s not anger tensing his muscles—I’ve seen that enough to know the difference—this looks more defeated. Guilty. And for the life of me, I can’t figure out why. Is he embarrassed about crying in front of me? Did the events of tonight make him feel bad about running off before hand?
I want to ask. Whatever weight has settled on his shoulders that’s holding him down like this, I want to take it. But I also don’t want to poke the bear, so I hold my questions for another time.
“Pizza’s here.” I announce, not at all excited to have their eyes back on me. Mikey doesn’t leap over furniture to nab the first slice and if that isn’t an indication of how down they still are, nothing is. “Movie ready?” They nod, but no one offers any further comment and shell I wish I could just snap them out of this. “Which one did you go with?”
“Iron Man. I like it when Don points out in detail the corrections needed to make Tony’s suit in real life.” Mikey says, more mechanically than anything else. No enthusiasm or mockery in his tone at all.
“Sounds like fun.” Patience. Give them time. They’ll forget about this and get back to normal soon. Let them process.
I sit in the middle of the couch, fully expecting Mikey to want to cuddle and Don to be close, if not touching. They do, sitting on either side of me, Mikey not hesitating to wrap around my arm and snuggle in.
Raph doesn’t move from his spot.
I can’t help a small sigh. Patience.
The movie starts and I send a silent prayer to the universe that this is enough of a distraction for them to return to some semblance of normal.
Please. Just wipe the pain away for a while.
But my pleas go unanswered. We’re fifteen minutes into the movie and not a single person has said a word. Don hasn’t corrected any of the science, as was promised, Mikey hasn’t laughed at a single quip, and Raph seems to have one eye on the movie and one on the ground, bouncing between the two. I know for a fact I’ve never watched a movie in total silence before. Not with my brothers around.
I glance around at all three of them, not even having to look close to see the pain and fear still wiggling along the lines in their faces.
I can’t take it anymore. I have to do something.
“Okay, enough.” I announce loudly, pausing the movie and standing to face them. “Clearly we need to talk about this. There has to be something I can do to make you all feel better.” They look away and it takes far too much effort than it should for me to keep from shouting.
My patience is quickly unravelling into maddening worry.
There’s a long pause before Mikey—probably sensing how out of my mind I’m getting—speaks up. “We’re just… scared. That feeling was so real. It really felt like… like you were gone.”
“I’m not.” That came out a bit too curtly. I try again, softer. “I’m right here. And I don’t plan on going anywhere. So stop looking at me like I’m dying.” They all flinch at the word. “Please.”
It takes a long minute, but Don speaks up this time. “It may not have been you, but it’s very much something you would do.”
“What do you mean?”
“Leo, can you name a single mission where you haven’t done something risky to keep us safe?”
“Yes.”
Even Raph checks in long enough to fix me with a dead pan stare on that one.
“It’s not every mission.” I qualify, because I don’t appreciate the assumption that all my missions fail at some point. “But I get your point. What of it?”
“I’m just saying,” Don continues, a little more assertive this time. “That what happened to that other Leo isn’t out of the ordinary or the possible for you. You’re just as protective, just as thoughtless of your own life when we’re involved. So seeing it happen to another you—”
“How do you know I—he—was protecting you—them.” This is starting to give me a headache.
Don pauses to glance at Mikey who pulls his head back, like he hadn’t considered that. “I… I don’t know. You were on a roof, and you were shot in your…”
They all stare at my stomach again and it’s all I can do to not sigh loud enough for them all to hear.
“I don’t know how I know, I just do.” Mikey says firmly. “I know it was awful, I know it hurt so much I wanted to die, and after feeling all that, I know that if it happens to you, I’m never going to---” His voice cracks as tears brim in his eyes and my heart drops instantly.
Don scoots over on the couch to pull Mikey into a half hug, his own face a half-masked mirror of the pain now dripping down our baby brother’s cheeks.
I don’t know what to say. We’ve had this conversation before—alternate dimensional families aside—and there’s nothing more I can say on the matter. They’re my little brothers. I’m the eldest. The leader. And if I have to jump in front of a bullet to keep them safe, then I’ll absolutely do it. No regrets. And hearing that it happened to another me somewhere out there in another world doesn’t change that.
If anything, it solidifies it.
But none of that is what they want to hear right now.
I slowly release the breath I’ve been holding, crouching in front of Mikey on the couch. “I’m sorry,” I keep my voice as level and soft as I can. “I’m sorry you all had to experience that. And I’m sorry I can’t make you feel better about it. Because you’re right, I absolutely would do what that Leo did if it meant keeping you safe. That’s my job, my top priority, and I don’t begrudge it even a little bit. I’m sure he didn’t either.”
Mikey chokes on another sob and Don gives me an annoyed you’re-not-helping look.
Get to the point, Leo.
“But right now I’m here.” I place a hand on Mikey’s shoulder to draw his attention. “I’m here, I’m safe, and I plan to continue to be for a very long time. Until we’re old and hobbled and Don has crazy white hair like Einstein and Raph’s idea of a workout is climbing the stairs to his room.”
He chokes out a surprised laugh as Don chuckles and I smile at the small victory.
“You promise you’ll be around that long?”
Mikey’s using his big puppy eyes because he knows I have troubles saying no to them.
But I don’t want to make empty promises just to make them feel better. “Mikey, I can’t promise. Bad things happen whether we want them to or not. Especially in our line of work. But you can’t live your life in fear. I’m constantly terrified that you’ll all get hurt on a mission, but that doesn’t make me keep you from going on them.” Once again Raph sends a glare my way, so I add a resigned “Mostly.”
“What I can promise,” I continue. “Is that I will do my best to keep myself safe. I will keep martyrdom and self-sacrifice as an absolute last resort option only.” They still don’t seem convinced, so I give Mikey’s hand a light squeeze and sigh before admitting. “Contrary to popular belief, I don’t want to leave you either. I’d miss my brothers. Even the loud angry one over there.”
“He means you, Don.” Mikey jokes and they both smile again.
Then Mikey slides off the couch and pulls himself against my chest, his arms wrapped tightly around my shell. I wasn’t expecting it, so it takes a moment for me to relax into the touch and let my arms fall around his shoulders. “We love you, Leo. So much.” He squeezes a bit tighter.
I don’t get a chance to reply before Don joins us on the floor, cloaking himself around my shoulders. I shift one arm to hug his shell as he says, “We’re so glad you’re still here.”
A smile creeps across my face, unbidden. I feel my brothers’ affection radiating like a heat wave. It’s immensely comforting, despite my distaste for this type of attention.
Only my brothers can make me feel this wonderful. This special. This necessary. I pull them in a little closer.
“I love you too, little brothers.” I look over to Raph, who is at least looking at us and not the floor. “All of you.” And his eyes fall away again.
One battle at a time.
Our group hug lasts a little longer than I’m used to, but I don’t dare break it. I don’t even want to imagine if I had felt one of them going…
Eventually we settle back on the couch and resume the movie. When Splinter and April join us, we’re half-way through, both Mike and Don chatting away as they usually would, and the world is finally feeling right again.
Mostly.
I peek in Raph’s direction to see him at least looking at the movie, if not really watching it.
As the night goes on, April heads home after a phone call from Casey (who had apparently been asleep and thought the whole thing was a crazy nightmare) and Sensei heads off to bed. He runs a hand fondly over my head on his way out, offering me a smile that just gushes relief and love. I send a silent smile back.
Around the time we start our third movie (Thor, since Mikey insisted we watch in order) we’ve shifted to laying on the mattresses and pillows. Mikey promptly falls asleep laying across my lap like a cat. Not the most comfortable position for me propped up on some pillows, but I’m not going to complain. Don follows suit shortly after, leaning against my left arm with his head on my shoulder and his hand on my wrist, like he’d been keeping track of my pulse. Only one brother remains, and he still hasn’t moved from his spot on the couch.
Now’s my chance, I suppose. “Do you want to talk about it?”
“No.”
His body language affirms his response, his arms folding tighter and his shoulders hunching higher. I want to let it go, let him work through it however he wants, but I can’t get the image of him crying in the dojo out of my mind. There has to be something I can do. There has to.
So I walk into the lions den.
“I’m sorry… that you had to go through all—”
“I said, I don’t wanna talk about it.”
“Okay.” I give it a moment. “You know I won’t tell anyone about—”
“Dammit Leo!” He stands, his hands already curled into fists and anger rippling through his shoulders. “I don’t wanna talk about—”
“Okay!” I use a forced whisper and gesture with my free hand at our two sleeping siblings before giving him the ‘shh’ finger. “I just think it would be healthy to discuss it now rather than later. But if you’d prefer to brood, then go ahead. Just be quiet about it.”
He doesn’t sit back down.
The movie continues and I do my best to at least look like I’m staring at the TV and not Raph. He’s moved beside the couch so I can’t see him in my periphery now, but I can still feel his tension looming. Can almost hear his muscles tensing.
I should back off. I’m clearly not helping. But he hasn’t stormed off yet. If he really didn’t want to talk, he’d have stomped off to his room, knowing I can’t move with our brothers asleep on top of me.
Maybe just one more poke.
“If you won’t talk to me, you should at least talk to Sensei—”
“For the love of— I don’t want to talk about it! Ever! I don’t want to relive it, okay!? Not with you, not with Sensei, not with anyone!”
“Okay.” His defensiveness is different. Less angry and more fearful. And there’s that underlying current of something again. Guilt, maybe? “But—"
“What!?” He interrupts, probably expecting me to lecture.
“Just… I’m here. If you need to talk or vent or anything… I’m here.”
I shift enough so I can partially see his face and it’s pale, like he’s seen a ghost. His eyes go wide, his hands clench tight, and he looks like he wants to run screaming from the room.
Oh shell, is it happening again!?
Before I can ask, he closes his eyes, grits his teeth, and snarls in a long breath, turning away so I can only see his shell. “Still here…”
A long stretch of silence follows. I don’t dare speak. I can see his fists trembling ever so slightly.
“It’s what you said…” He finally says, his voice rough and jagged, almost quaking like his hands. “What he said to me—the other me—before he…”
I want to ask the obvious question, but I wait, almost holding my breath while silently wishing to calm his.
“It was my fault.”
His voice is so small, guilt like a tidal wave almost drowning it out.
“I could only get pieces of it, but I saw… You were protecting me. You—he—got shot protecting me—the other me.” He rubs a hand down his face in frustration before sighing roughly. Sadly. “It was my fault. And I…”
He finally turns to face me, his eyes finding my stomach and staring intently. His face is laden with pain and fear and heartache, just like it was in the dojo earlier.
Oh Raph.
“You protectin’ me when I didn’t ask for it is nothing new.” He continues, slowly, deliberately. It’s clearly taking effort to get his emotions in check. “But I never… I never thought you’d… because of me… I never… I mean what if it had happened tonight? What if you following me got you…” He turns his back to me again. “The guilt and the pain, I felt it all through him. The other me. I felt it… and I know, I couldn’t live with myself if—"
His voice cracks and it takes every ounce of control I have not to wiggle out from Mike and Don and run over to him.
He’d probably hate that anyway.
Silence settles over the room.
I can feel Raph from here, feel his fear radiating out. He’s really scared. For me. My stubborn, angry, closed off younger brother, was crying in the dojo because he’d thought he’d lost me. And he thought it was his fault.
“I’m sorry.” I face forward again, distracting myself with the movie as I speak. “I’m sorry I do that. Play martyr, I mean. Jump in front of danger.”
He scoffs. “No you’re not.”
“I am. Not for being protective,” I think I’ve made that very clear. “But for not thinking about how much my choices would affect you all. I guess… I guess I sometimes…” I pause, not really wanting to admit to this at all. But he’s had to be open with me today, seems only fair to return the favor. “I sometimes forget that you all care about me as much as I do you.”
I can’t see his face, but I hear the sharp inhale he takes. He’s either angry, shocked, or both.
Maybe I shouldn’t have said anything. “I’m not trying to point fingers or say you don’t show it. I know you all care. It’s just… I spend so much time playing leader with you all—making sure Mikey trains, making sure Don sleeps, making sure you don’t run off—that I sometimes forget that I’m also a brother. That you guys want me for more than just leadership.” Even now that voice of doubt wants to creep in.
“Leo…” Mikey whispers in his sleep, almost on cue, as he shifts in my lap. I put a hand to his shell to help settle him, let his subconscious know I’m still here. The movement prompts Don’s hand to squeeze mine tighter while still lost to slumber. The way they both cling to me now, the way they looked at me before…
I can’t believe I ever doubted.
“I have no desire to die, Raph. Not anytime soon, anyway. I’d be too afraid of being without you all. I…” The day must be getting to me, because I feel tears welling in my eyes that I quickly pat down. “I really am nothing without my brothers. I’d miss you… all of you. Desperately.” I don’t know if I said that loud enough for him to hear. But it felt good to say it out loud.
Raph is silent.
I turn to find the space where he stood now empty. He must have had enough and gone to bed. Can’t say I blame him. I hope he’s okay… I hope some of what I said got through.
I just want him to be—
Suddenly something removes the pillows from behind me and presses against my shell. I turn enough to see Raph’s bandana tails on my shoulder as he sits shell to shell with me on the mattress.
It takes a long moment for him to speak. And when he does, it’s soft and quiet. Like he’s hoping I won’t hear it. “We’d miss you, too. You. Not your leadership or whatever… you. We need you, Leo.”
I take a moment to let that sink in, my shoulders releasing some of their tension.
Raph abruptly raps the back of his head against mine, his voice back to it’s usual gruff gravel. “If you think we’d be okay without you, you’re an idiot.”
“You’d manage.”
“We’d hate it.”
“I know.”
Another long silence follows, and I can feel Raph relaxing more and more against my shell. I lean into the contact.
Glancing down at Mikey and over to Don, a smile tugs at my lips as I feel a warmth spread readily through my chest. Pragmatic as I am, I’m not always one to see the positives in a situation (I look to Mikey for that), but I will never not be grateful for the family I’ve been blessed with. For my brothers. They can be annoying, mean, and a downright pain in the shell, but they are truly the greatest gift I’ve been given.
I love them more than I know how to say.
And moments like this, moments when I see they love me just as much, are the moments I feel most unworthy. Most grateful.
I lean my head back to rest on Raph’s, one hand on Mikey’s shell and one held by Don, and I breathe deep, my smile growing wider as I close my eyes to everything else.
“We’re glad you’re still here.”
“Me too, guys. Me too…”
~*~*~*~*~*~
Previous
Ze End. Hopefully. I’ve said that before with this story and it continued for 17 chapters and 2 epilogues. Ha.
Thank you to all who have stayed with this story, and especially those who comment (few though you may be). I’ve very much needed your kind words to get through these last few years.
Here’s hoping the next story is easier. And maybe less angsty?
This is certainly not the update you all were hoping for, but I've put a lot of thought into it...
Unfortunately, I've decided to finally put this game to rest. While I have written more for the update I said I'd get to and post around Thanksgiving, I just can't seem to wrangle the story in the way I originally planned.
My writing style has changed, the things I want from stories has changed, the state of the world has changed, and while I had some truly exciting and ambitious plans for the this story, ultimately I have changed too much to feel good about continuing this game. I want to give you a game that's fun for you, but also that I have fun making, and I've unfortunately spent too much time fretting about it to feel good about it anymore.
I am sorry to disappoint and have dreaded quitting this game for so long because I did put years and years of planning and thought and effort into it. Perhaps one day when I know how to rewrite things to get them in the direction I want, I'll pick this back up. But I'm making no promises, and that's a huge 'perhaps'. As I said, I've changed.
Feel free to ask any questions; I'm happy to answer them. Even spoilers for where the story was going. I had such plans.
Thank you so much for your support over the years. You're all wonderful people who helped my confidence in sharing my work grow. I hope you'll all be there for the next project I bring to the table, and I've learned so much from this experience, so I can only hope my next one is even better!
Summary: Interconnected shorts featuring Sam Shepard and Kaidan Alenko, in the years before the Normandy. The slowest of slow burns.
Chapter Summary: Endings and beginnings.
This is it - it’s finished! Thank you so much for reading and flailing and living this story with me. It means more than you will ever know.
Thank you to @nightmarestudio606, @n7zachammer, and @urrone, for betaing!
Art by @xla-hainex. The crew of the SSV Myeongnyang, from top to bottom: Captain Anya Oseguera, Service Chief Clay Beaudoin, 1st Lieutenant Kaidan Alenko, Lieutenant Commander Sam Shepard, Corporal Kara Pendergrass, Private Muriel Aslany
Chapter 18: Belong (Ao3)
02 December, 2182, Arcturus Stream, Arcturus, Arcturus Station
The N7 emblem on Shepard’s dress uniform is crooked again.
Kaidan glances at it out of the corner of his eye and scowls, but it’s Pendergrass’ turn to walk on stage and get pinned, so the crooked N7 will have to stay crooked for a little while longer.
The auditorium the Alliance uses for promotion ceremonies is always stuffy, especially in full dress uniform.
Putting on their dress uniforms had been about as complicated as getting in their armor, quite frankly, especially since they practically had to break out the instruction manual. Remembering where the hell Pendergrass’ salarian military commendation pins go, ensuring that the decorative chain on Shepard’s uniform is black instead of gold, to signify being an N. And on and on.
All that work for something that none of them, not even Shepard, who looks natural in anything, are comfortable in. On Kaidan’s right, Aslany sits so straight in her seat that you’d think she’d been starched instead of the uniform. Pendergrass won’t stop scratching. Beaudoin, who’d only dolled up under duress – specifically Aslany’s duress – sits in the back, but he keeps tugging at his waistband like it’s too tight.
“I’m not even getting promoted,” he’d protested before they left the ship. “Why the hell do I have to be here?”
“Because you’re proud of us,” Pendergrass had replied, and he’d just clapped her on the shoulder and said nothing more about it.
She walks on stage now, officially receiving a Specialist designation. Captain Oseguera does the honors, and Pendergrass grins so wide Kaidan can see her teeth from several rows back.
Shepard, seated to Kaidan’s left, tugs at his collar. The N7 pin gets more crooked. When Pendergrass is safely off the stage, Kaidan reaches over and straightens it again.
Aslany leans in and whispers, “He’s doing it on purpose.”
Kaidan raises a skeptical eyebrow. “He is not.”
“I fucking watched him.”
Kaidan’s gaze darts back to Shepard, who now wears a smirk. And a crooked pin.
“You’re the worst,” Kaidan mutters. “Don’t you dare walk up there like that.”
“Trying to order me around, Staff Lieutenant?”
“The worst.”
Pendergrass returns to her seat beside the newly minted Corporal Aslany, whispering excitedly under her breath. Kaidan does his best to ignore the crooked pin, but when they finally call Shepard’s name he makes a last-minute lunge. It’s straight by the time Shepard gets past him, and Kaidan takes a little solace in the fact that Shepard has to cover his laugh with a cough.
But all traces of laughter vanish when he gets to the stage.
Captain Anderson was supposed to pin him as a Staff Commander. Shepard had been craning his head around looking for him ever since they sat down. But the person who greets him on the stage isn’t Anderson.
“Who’s that?” Aslany whispers.
Kaidan’s never seen her before, but that doesn’t keep him from recognizing her. They have the same build. Same posture. Same eyes.
“Captain Shepard,” Kaidan says under his breath.
Read from the beginning | Read the rest on Ao3 | The Cantata Playlist
(The following is a really long post both on my thoughts on the end of the novel and what it means to me personally, as well as my plans looking into the future and where you’ll be able to find me from here.)
First of all, I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart for reading and coming to the end of this fic. It was a monster of a project and I’m both sad and relieved to see it come to an end. It started out just as an idea that would not leave my mind, inspired by a song I somehow came to associate with him, playing on repeat over and over again the same way I pictured him brooding over his fate and exile.
Images of him staring out over the canyon and thinking on the castle, a place he might have once loved and lived in, as he watched the king raise armies and the Divine Beasts that would only serve to seal his doom. How Astor, knowing this, simply watched it all happen, beholden to his own part in the prophecy, destined to take his part against him, like something on a giant chess board the two of them were forced to play out.
Ever since December of 2020, I have wanted to do that picture of him justice, and while the story evolved to put much less focus on the mental chessboard between Astor the king - the makers and defiers of prophecy - I found that truly a lot of set-up and explanation was needed in order to build a world in which Astor would inhabit, love, and be doomed to destroy. A man who is destined to have everything stripped away from him in the name of Ganon must have something to strip away in the first place.
It also started from a point of observation for me, something about the world in BOTW and the Legend of Zelda franchise as a whole I had been mulling over long before we met Astor. And that is, in their world: it seems like there is no free will. Zelda must awaken her power despite her own desire to focus on Sheikah tech, Link is chosen by the King, and then the sword, and simply must fight because he is destined to be a hero, and that is what heroes do. There is so much focus on fate and prophecy in the LOZ series as a whole, and the more you think about it, if prophecies are always meant to be true, and some people have no choice in being heroes, others must then have no choice in being villains. People in prophecies are “chosen,” they do not choose, and even on a meta level, as this is a video game franchise, the player is literally controlling every aspect of the character and their movements. Their actions are not their own. They are being puppeteered.
I played through BOTW the first time and progressively thought about how unfair it all seemed - the very same thing had happened 10,000 years ago, and how it was rearing its ugly head again. Did Rhoam, like many a tragic Greek figure, actually fulfill and exacerbate his doom by trying so desperately to work against it? These are the very same questions that plagued my mind when I began the fic, posed by Thelem at the end of the book. I use my writing to explore concepts, ask questions and discover the answers for myself through the process of writing a book. And in the almost two years I spent to write Exile//Vilify, I found myself ending with just as many questions as I had at the start, with not a single one of them answered. No knowledge gained, nothing completely worked through. The same doomed prophecy as it was at the start, and nothing anyone could do about it.
But by the end, I realized that it didn’t matter. I wrote 150k words about a life to be stripped from - a life we all knew the ending of from the beginning - and just like many of the characters kept repeating, it was about the moment. The process. Loving and fully living in each moment even if you fail, even if you know where it will end. Failure is something I fear desperately in my own life. I have great anxiety about putting so much time and effort and love into making my dreams come true, only to have them fizzle out and stripped away from me in the end. What if I fail despite how hard I try? What if I am destined to fail, what if I have no say in whether I fail or not? And while this book by no means made me overcome that fear, it did draw my attention to it, which I should have recognized from the beginning when I joked about Astor being such a failure as a villain. Unlike Astor though, I am happy I get to live in a world with free will, where even if I do fail, I can try again, and make choices on how to respond, and know my life is mine to do my own with.
Astor is not as fortunate.
I know I’m not alone when I say that I felt robbed of Astor as a villain. He seemed so interesting, to have such great potential, and yet he was hollow and near pointless in his existence. I wanted so badly to fill the gaps, to do justice to an otherwise eschewed character. I love doing that in my work - focusing on the stories that lie between, that other people may write off or ignore. My writing of this fic was an act of appreciation, in a way, or a proposal for something that could have been, something we - all of us - had the freedom to create after being given such a one-note villain who will be nothing but thrown away and forgotten in a spinoff game. It doesn’t matter, because he matters to us, and that is what makes the difference.
I’ve been told multiple times this fic has been viewed as “the bible” in our small but mighty Astor community, and I can’t tell you what this means to me. It means a lot for me to be viewed as someone who had that kind of influence on our collective idea of this character. I’m certainly not claiming to be an authority, but I’m glad my fic has come to have its place in our literature and that so many people have come to recognize and enjoy it. It’s a gen fic with no major romance about a side character in a side game, there’s no way it was ever going to reach the levels of big mainstream loz fics out there, but that doesn’t matter, because Astor matters to me, and he matters to us, and the nearly 4k hits and 150 kudos the fic has at the time of writing this - along with all the comments - are more than enough for me.
But now that the fic is over, what do we do?
I’ll admit I’m still going through the writer’s mourning period/withdrawal after finishing a book, but I can feel the recovery coming on soon. I have a few smaller ideas already on the table (along with Trouble Will Find Me), one regarding an alternate route I almost took for Astor in Exile//Vilify (more explicitly as a reincarnation of Ganon’s seer). That would be a very small one-shot fic. I do still have Stories from Exile for you to read and will occasionally update (have a lot of ideas still on my list there). However, that said, these are no longer my top priority in the same way Exile//Vilify was. Because until I started writing Exile//Vilify, I hadn’t really considered myself part of the loz community at all. I was a Pokémon writer, and I have a trilogy that I took a detour from in order to get this fic out of my mind. I’m going to set my focus on returning to that series now, although like I’ve said, I do still plan on popping into this community. I’m not going to ghost you all, I’ll still answer asks, stay active, and post every now and then. You, and this fic, have meant too much to me over the course of this journey for me to go away like that.
So please, don’t be a stranger! Your thoughts and asks and messages are always welcome. If you want to make art or other fics inspired by my worldbuilding, please do. I thought this was clear, but I’ve never explicitly stated it. You’re fully welcome to use my ideas as long as I get a shoutout - mostly just because I also want to see it :). I worked too hard on this for too long for other people not to use it for ideas. Please do. Show me your art. Show me your things. I want to love them.
So where can you find me now? Here on this blog, of course, although tumblr seems to have not necessarily “shadowbanned,” but blocked some of its functionality after the ios ban. So if you’re not checking here, you can reach me on my main @silverjirachi.
If you are interested in my pokemon series (focusing on the hoenn region and hardenshipping, Archie and Maxie) you can follow @the-dead-sea-trilogy and @hoenn-pride, my pokemon side blogs, the first of course for my fic related things and the other for general pokemon things.
And of course, you can still find the rest of my work by browsing my author page on AO3. I’ve posted WIP wednesdays and previews of my coming fics there.
Also-
In the coming weeks or a few months into the future, I may be making a special offer regarding a physical release of this book. I get all my fics hard-cover bound for my own personal collection, but I’ve already had a few people ask me about having copies of their own. Keep your eyes open for an update on when/how this will happen if you are interested. It will be a very small, one-time thing to friends and close fans as, naturally, it’s going to be a gift coming from mostly my own wallet.
I’m going to conclude by dropping a bit of music here. (Slight Exile//Vilify spoilers, so if you haven’t read the ending yet, please do). But, as you might have figured out by the ending, Thelem is somewhat of a narrator character. He was my way to ask questions of the fic - the questions he asks at the end - and acted as a guardian angel of sorts of the book. He is my representation of my love for the story, and of the story of Astor as a whole. It was very, very early on in my writing process when I realized what would have to happen to him by the end, and I cried and was frustrated about it when I realized, but somehow that made me grow to appreciate and love him even more, strengthening his role in the novel as a whole. There was one song by The National - who also wrote the song Exile Vilify (The National, weirdly, has inspired all my fics thus far) that I came across around this same time that somehow I came to associate with Thelem.
The lyrics, though indirect, speak to me of a man resigned to yet content with his place in life, and how that place is flooded with this melancholy sort of love informed by the pain of the reality around him. This is in such stark contrast to the way we see Astor throughout his life - who knows no peace with the weight of prophecy that weighs over his head. I kept turning the lyrics, “Sorry I hurt you, but they say love is a virtue, don’t they?” over in my mind, like this man knew how things would end and let it happen anyway - out of love. He knows what he has to do is painful, but he does it because love - devotion - is a virtuous thing that is not always happy. And so as much as the song Exile Vilify is the namesake and first inspiration for the fic, Sea of Love has been its secret, underlying theme. It followed shortly after, and has always informed my perspective in writing it, knowing where it all would end, and I’m glad I can finally share that with you.
Because while I thought I was writing a book about prophecy, about the inherent “fucked-up”ness of being a chosen one, in a weird way, the fic was written about, and at its heart, is about love. Love of the character, love of the process, love of the story, and the twisted, distorted love of prophecy. It’s about how all those things affected the courses each of their lives - both for better and for the worse - at the time of Astor’s demise. It’s not the ending, it’s the moments shaped by love in between. Because, as Thelem says at the end of the book - love, while painful, still lessens the fall of everything.
And so that is how I will choose to end. Once again, thank you so much for all the support, for making me feel like I was part of a community, and for reading my story of Astor to its ending. It made such a difference to me, and I’m looking forward to the next things on the horizon.
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
Chapters: 6/6
Fandom: Ghosts (US TV 2021), A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue - Grose (1785), SHAKESPEARE William - Works
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Nigel Chessum/Isaac Higgintoot, Jay Arondekar/Samantha Arondekar (background), Isaac Higgintoot/Edward (one-sided), Beatrice Higgintoot/OC, OC/OC, Isaac Higgintoot & Beatrice Higgintoot, Isaac Higgintoot & Alberta, The Ghosts & The Ghosts
Isaac's not just a footnote in history—he's a queer footnote in history. Here's what happens after.
Final Chapter!!!
Thank you to everyone who’s read/kodos’ed/commented/messaged me for this fic! Hope you enjoy reading it as much as I’ve enjoyed writing it!
Chapter Summary:
Hernández, J., et al. (2026). Men of Honor: Captain Isaac Higgintoot (1740–1777) and Queer Community Development. Journal of Early American History, 16(1), 3-25.
Sam held up a stapled booklet. “Look what I have!” She grinned at the sitting room’s gathering.
I just want to say that I’m so thankful to have had all of you on this ride. I seem to say this a lot with my Zutara fics, but Ten Strides in the Right Direction really took on a mind of its own and turned into something so much more than I expected. Honestly, I never expected to write Zutara set in Book 3 because I love the concept of them growing together after the war so much. (I am really a post-canon fix-it type of person.) But... Here we are.
Originally, I just wanted to fill the gaps left in Zuko and Katara’s relationship by canon. But by the time I wrote Chapter 3, I knew where this was going. I knew what the last sentence of this fic was going to be. From Chapter 4 on, I was writing towards this particular ending.
I treasure every single reader who has undertaken this journey with me. All of you mean more to me than you could ever know and I hope that you’ll explore some of my other works and stick with me for future projects. ❤️
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the
Organization for Transformative Works
I’m not very good at keeping up with life updates. I don’t know why! I never have been!
Carol moved out August 9th, about a week extra over the original two months we’d agreed on. She got an apartment about five minutes away, which is about 40 minutes from her job. I recommended getting an apartment closer to her job to ease the commute, but she said she strongly preferred being near to her friends and the city center. (She also had the option of a $650/mo lease for a year or $1100/mo for a six month lease at this complex, and opted for the shorter lease even though she couldn’t afford the $1100. She also insisted on a two bed 1.5 bath apartment instead of a much cheaper one bed one bath, and I don’t know why. Her financial choices continue to bewilder me.)
I helped her move, because she has a number of physical disabilities and a fairly total inability to accurately predict the scope of a job like this. She insisted to me multiple times that all she was picking up from her estranged mother’s home was a few books, a desk, a chair, and a small round end table. She came back with a fifteen foot Uhaul packed top to bottom with dozens of pieces of (often very heavy) furniture, tubs upon tubs upon tubs of books (not small boxes, like 40 gallon tubs immobile with books) and a lot of...I don’t know how to describe it.
Honestly, it reminded me of a hoarder’s home from those TLC shows. She had so much stuff, and almost all of it was...garbage. Like, stained, discolored, moldy, dirty, dusty furniture and blankets and clothes that were covered in mouse droppings and bird crap. An ancient armchair that she called “antique” but was made of very cheap very damaged veneered pressed wood and whose upholstery was of an indeterminate color because of how stained it was. A “display piece” of an old suitcase she picked up in some thrift store that was locked shut with what felt like twenty pounds of bricks inside, but the outside wasn’t even attractive - just an ugly brown box with no care or craftwork that was scratched and torn and stained with mouse poop. It honestly made me uneasy to touch it, and she was putting it in her apartment to use.
I don’t know how she thought she was going to be able to get all of this stuff down the half-flight of stairs to her apartment by herself. I helped her unload for four hours before I had another obligation, then came back after that finished for another hour or two of unloading to get it in her apartment securely. It was...very tiring, but also very exhilarating to be physically closing that chapter as well as mentally. I don’t intend to do it again.
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My job (professor) started back in person on a regular basis the following week in August. We’ve now been in class for almost two months and no students that I directly interact with (my 46ish 2nd year students) have had any exposures or at risk scenarios. A small handful of 3rd and 4th years have had exposures, and I think one student actually tested positive, but none of the exposures or positive results were from our clinic or labs; they were all from community transmission (wife/husband/child/roommate caught it from somewhere else, student had to quarantine).
I have been almost draconian with my 2nd years about the thin line we’re walking in being allowed to have even our minimal, limited in-person labs, and have warned them that if we have an exposure breach in our clinic, there is zero chance they graduate on time in a few years. They seem to be taking it extremely seriously, which I like a lot. All students, staff, and faculty are given new surgical masks daily, and everyone who interacts with patients gets a new n95 mask every 10 days. We have decontamination stations throughout the building, temperature guns, digital “passports” that they have to update daily to be allowed on campus, and plenty of spray bottles with high level disinfectant for surfaces and hands. It’s honestly as safe as we can make it, and I feel we’ve hit a good balance between staying safe and getting them actually trained on real human beings.
That said, we are having more students than I’ve ever had fail exams and practicals across the board, and I honestly think it’s an artifact of the remote lectures (all lectures are remote unless specified for particular reasons, and then they only take place in distanceable classrooms, which are at max like 70% of the class). God knows I wouldn’t have learned as well at home - I’d have been on my phone or playing games and kind of half listening in the background, and if nothing else this has made me more of a proponent of mandatory attendance once it’s safe again to do so, because the drop I’m seeing is almost precipitous. Either this class is unusually full of students incapable of completing the program, or COVID’s striking again. I’m pretty sure it’s the latter.
On the other hand, we’re FINALLY making up the Injections course material that got stopped dead in spring, and the first run of it went very well last Saturday. I unequivocally resent that I have to give up an entire Saturday to do so (and will have to do so thrice more to get all the students done this semester), but it’s at least one chunk of incompletes that are now passes (and in fact, mostly As).
We just got the notification that hybrid courses will continue through spring. It’s so exhausting. We can do it safely, and we are, but it’s so hard.
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Went to get a drink last night before bed and noticed the tea was a little warm. Went to grab some ice cubes from the freezer and discovered the ice cube tray was full of water, and the chocolate ice cream in the door had melted and spread across the entire unit.
Managed to get a repair guy out this afternoon, who charged $228 to replace the ...relay overload array capacitor, or something. He showed me what it was--a little black and white box that he said was bottom of the barrel cheap from China, which I fully believe, and installed a new one then and there while I had a remote test review with a student over Zoom. I put on headphones for her privacy, but she cried several times. It’s usually a pretty rough awakening when students who never had to study in college realize how difficult this program is and the study time required to pass, let alone succeed.
Anyway, the freezer’s chucking out cold air like it was made for it, and the fridge seems to be slowly working its way back down. Had to throw out everything from the freezer (chicken, steak, ground beef, bacon, veggies, frozen meals--and some pizza rolls) and I’m not looking forward to the grocery bill it’ll take to restock the fridge either, but at least it seems to be functioning again.
I just checked; the freezer’s made six ice cubes in the last three hours. I’ve put them all in my tea to celebrate.
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Edit: just checked again and the fridge is slowly cooling off, thank goodness! Of course, I somehow managed to fall down the four stairs of the hall between here and there and bruise the royal bejeezus out of both hips and somehow the inside of my left foot, so I’m ordering in for dinner, because nuts to that.
