Dark Writings

"This is my number. Is that app you mentioned something I can sign up with my own number, or should I download it now so I can give you whatever the number it picks is?"

"I can show you how to set it up," Bryce offers, and walks Archer through the process, which is more confusing than it has any right to be. He pulls out his own phone and enters the information. Roman is still and silent throughout. Bryce pushes back his concern. Roman is breathing quietly under his hand, not wildly panicking. That's something, at least.

"This will alert that you have a message, but won't show it to you until you open the app, and enter the passcode you set up," he tells Archer. "If you enter 0000 instead, it shows a spam message. Either way, it will be deleted five minutes after you read it." And then he lowers his voice, softens it, and turns to Roman. "K— Roman? Can you handle a little more water?" Are you here?

"I can show you how to set it up," Bryce offers, and Roman listens absently to him walking Archer through the process.

"This will alert that you have a message, but won't show it to you until you open the app, and enter the passcode you set up," Bryce tells Archer. "If you enter 0000 instead, it shows a spam message. Either way, it will be deleted five minutes after you read it." And then he lowers his voice, softens it, and Roman can hear the difference as Bryce turns to him a bit. "K— Roman? Can you handle a little more water?"

He doesn't want to be here. He doesn't want to pick his head up.

Still, Bryce sounds... worried. And Roman feels worse than ever. He picks his head up, pale-faced, and takes another drink of the water in front of him.

There's an impulse to say that he's fine— to try and relieve even a little of the worry, but... he's so incredibly not fine. He doesn't want to say he is, and Bryce wouldn't believe it anyway.

Roman puts his head back down.

"... Roman?" Archer's voice is careful. Roman hears his chair move back and then feels his brother's hand on his back as he crouches next to the wheelchair. "I..." Archer pauses, like he's trying to figure out what he's supposed to say. Or maybe how to say what he wants to.

Roman makes himself turn his head to look at his brother, and Archer looks so much better than when they were kids... Those tired circles under his eyes are gone. There's worry in his expression now, but... that's probably not usually there. He seems so much stronger, now... not just physically, but... He's stopped shouting. He never used to be able to calm back down and continue a conversation... It was always shouting the whole way through, once it started, or he would stop talking altogether.

"Roman, I did look for you." Archer finally says. "I... you know Luke didn't leave with the rest of us that took off. He kept me in the loop about... about things he could see. That you were still with mom and dad. That you... well... that things didn't look on the outside like they had changed much."

Yeah... it looked like everything stayed the same after Archer left because nobody was allowed in the house, which was always where the worst bits happened.

"He told me when you left, and I tried to track you down after that, but I couldn't find you, and I just... I thought maybe you hated me. Maybe you didn't want me to find you."

"I didn't hate you. I don't hate you." The words are out so fast, Roman doesn't have a chance to put them through any sort of filter, scared that the way he's just acted today will only reinforce that belief. If he hated Archer, he wouldn't care whether or not he was involved in this mess.

Archer doesn't look any less worried, though. "Yeah, well... you probably should... None of this would have happened if..." Archer shakes his head, and Roman doesn't know what to say to that. None of this would have happened if a lot of things. If Archer had stayed, sure, but also if Roman had left sooner, maybe, or left later, or been more careful, or a million other choices had or hadn't been made.

Luckily, Archer only pauses for half a second, and Roman doesn't have to figure out what to say. "I love you, and I know you aren't safe, but are you at least okay? Do you really trust this guy?" He nods vaguely in Bryce's direction. "He hasn't hurt you?"

Is he okay? Not really, a lot of the time... "I do trust him. And no, he hasn't hurt me." Roman manages, voice still weak, as he chooses to only answer the last two questions, hoping the first will be forgotten.

remember everyone...

thursday watch: the conditions for thursday are here, but a thursday incident has not yet been confirmed

In a world where living weapons are commonplace, and there's a lot of them, they'd likely have their own culture. Because I'm a worldbuilding nerd as much as I'm a whump writer, I started thinking about what that could look like.

Here are my thoughts:

Obviously, loyalty and strength would be highly prized, particularly loyalty to the organization and to the handler.

If the living weapons work in teams or units, they would probably put a lot of emphasis on unity and working together.

Whereas a world where living weapons work alone would likely have a more competitive living weapon culture.

Weapons might view pain as something good, something purifying.

Maybe conformity is a virtue, being exactly like your neighbor means that you can all do the same job perfectly.

Failure hits harder in a culture that values perfection. Maybe the handlers use that to motivate their weapons. "You fail this mission, you fail your people."

Honestly, the idea of handlers and trainers using the virtues and vices of living weapon culture to influence their weapons is whumpily wonderful overall.

My father finds gay men uncomfortable.

He's told me before that it's like a knee-jerk for him. Something he doesn't consciously control. He sees two men behaving romantically, and his body reacts with mild discomfort.

In the 1960s, when he was in high school, most of the boys in his form thought he was gay on the simple fact that he wasn't homophobic. He wouldn't participate in insulting queer people, he didn't care if someone was gay, he wouldn't have a problem hanging out with gay people. So people thought he was gay. That's how prevalent homophobia was in his formative years.

When I was 10, my dad told me very seriously that Holmes and Watson were gay. That it was obvious from the literature and the time period that they were meant to be a gay couple. When I was 14 and I came out to my parents as bi, when my mum was upset my dad ripped into her for it. Told her that she was being stupid, that it was my life to live how I wanted to and that she needed to get over herself.

My dad formed my views on censorship: that being that it was completely ridiculous and thoroughly evil. He didn't believe in censorship of any kind. If I asked him a question about sex, he answered it honestly. When I was 12 and I asked him about homosexuality, still young and uncertain, he told me that there was nothing wrong with it. That it was just how some people were. That there was likely an evolutionary reason for it. And that for some people it was uncomfortable on an instinctual level.

He taught me that just because you're uncomfortable with something, doesn't make it wrong. He also taught me that most people don't understand this.

I see a lot of this on the internet as of the last few years. The anti shipping movement, the terf movement, the anti ace movement. It all stems from discomfort that people have crossed wires into believing means wrong. Really every -ism and -phobia out there stems from this same fundamental aspect of humanity.