summer days

You can't die from hunger or thirst or lack of medication etc.

It doesn't matter which books you've already read. You have to read them all, starting from now.

Whams thank you for this !!! Mwah mwah <3

I tried second person's POV please be gentle with me <33

~~~~~

It starts with a patch of carrots.

It's trivial. And sort of dumb. And you know 'dumb' isn't a word anyone has ever used for you, friends or foes alike. You've done nothing to prove them that you're capable of that title. But now you're there, with hands lip at your sides in front of a carrot patch. You've seen carrots before. You've eaten then in many forms- raw, mashed, steamed, boiled. But your eyes are glued. Like a trance.

It reminds you of her.

And you stare and stare at it. Imbibe the colour until your rods and cones have worked their fullest to recreate the hue perfectly for your memory. A sight truly for sore eyes. You stare until the phone rings in your pocket and you hastily pick it up. You give one last glance before heading back to Ray. You try not to think about the possibility that this might be the last time your sight catches such a shade.

It doesn't get easier after that.

You see orange dresses on display at a boutique. You see emeralds twinkling on jewellery. You catch whiff of petrichor after rainy days. You catch sight of ropes hanging on trees and children climbing them. You see letters being written. You see cup phones at the playground outside an elementary school. You observe a lot and think about it even more until you’re so deep in that you can’t even comprehend your surroundings anymore.

Maybe it's Universe playing tricks on you, throwing you all these hints in forms of reminders of what you have lost and may or may not get back. Maybe it's not all connected to her but your mind is under conditioning of folly hopes and desperation. And that doesn’t make a bunch of sense.

You remember Isabella saying that love isn't defined by logic or wits or any of those parameters.

You’re surrounded by people, all the time; but you look at things that remind you of her and suddenly you feel like you’re the only person that has ever existed. There is a gaping hole in your heart that makes itself acutely known. It aches; aches enough that you hold your chest and wrinkle your shirt. Enough that you have to bite your lip and stop tears from brimming in your eyes before anyone else finds out.

You’re in the bed with Ray. He’s the only one you trust blindly to see all the ugly and all the vulnerability and all the weaknesses you hold. It’s much better than sleeping alone. The sound of someone breathing next to you, the feeling of warth right beside you, it’s something you never knew you craved when the sun went down and it was quiet enough to hear your thoughts.

Ray’s not asleep. He’s reading on his e-reader. Something about business management; it’s part of his cirriculum. He keeps looking at you, and you know he’s sensing something. Maybe that’s why he’s up long after sleeping hours and has only covered a grand total of two pages ever since they’ve gotten into bed.

There is a flower in your pocket. It’s wild and medicinal. You’re familiar with it. You remember white bedsheets, a pleading whine, two pairs of hands embracing you, and the flower on your forehead, woking more wonders that it was biologically capable of (it wasn’t the flower, you know). The flower currently in your pocket it probably in a worse state, has probably shriveled up and wilted after hours of being plucked. It weighs lighter than a feather but feels heavier than diamonds.

You think you’re catching a fever again. Your eyes are burning and you’re feeling the typical drowsiness you feel when you’re down. You give a long sigh and Ray looks over at you.

You unearth the flower from your pocket. Ray deserves to see this. Deserves to relive memories with you. And you kind of need him to. Right now, he’s the only one who’s been through thick and thin with you in majority of these trials and tribulations. He’s the only one who can look at it the way you look at it.

The flower is definitely wilted and but it didn’t lose colour.

Tears abscond your eyes and you are only known of them until they’ve dried on your skin. Then you cry. You finally break after a year of keeping this in. You cry before you even see Ray’s reaction or hear what he has to say. It’s selfish. But now you’re lose and you can’t bring yourself to stop.

It’s a sort of blur after that. There is nothing tangible, but you do make out a pair of arms wrapped around you. You also make out a light peck on the top of your forehead. And gentle strokes on your back. The strong thrum of heartbeat. There is whispering against you ear.

“It’s alright” Ray says, pressing himself closer to you. You hold onto him like he’s the last lifeline on a sinking boat. “It’s alright. You’re not alone. You never were alone”

You sleep listening to her gentle words in his gentle voice and it’s the deepest sleep you’ve gotten in a long time.

(in chronological order - it’s sort of a canon timeline but also I was hungry)

Shared food is one of the ways that Dick and Tim are often shown bonding.  And by “shared food,” what I mean is, Dick finds food for Tim.  Please enjoy my ten favorite examples.

1. Dick makes dinner in Prodigal 1

(My favorite part of this panel is Tim’s weird smushed-face of amazement in the second panel.  “Wow!  A WHOLE PLATE OF FOOD!  Just for me!”  My second favorite part is that I have no idea what food that’s supposed to be.)

This panel comes from the Prodigal arc - Dick and Tim’s time as Batman and Robin - which is when Dick begins a long career of keeping Tim fed and when the two of them first really get to know each other.

Up until this point, their major previous interactions have been three variations on “Tim tracks Dick down in NYC and an initially-skeptical Dick reluctantly agrees to help him with whatever” (Lonely Place of Dying, New Titans 64, Showcase ‘93 11) and “Dick and Tim and Bruce fight Azrael” (in Knightfall).

But they’re about to get a whole lot closer in Prodigal.

Bruce and Alfred have both left the country (Bruce’s back is broken, and Alfred’s quit), so Dick and Tim are alone in the Manor.  Or, well, Tim technically has his own home and family, but apparently he doesn’t eat there, as we discover in Prodigal 1 when Tim hangs around the Manor long enough that Dick makes dinner for him.

2. Orange juice in Prodigal 5

Dick’s still living by himself in the Manor, and Tim’s living next door and sneaking over to be Robin.  Tim is apparently still not eating at home, though, because Dick has started stocking the fridge for him:

3. Pineapple and andouille pizza in Detective Comics 698

After the end of Prodigal, Dick moves from NYC to Gotham for a while.  When the deadly Clench sweeps through Gotham and Tim gets infected, Dick saves him from an angry mob.  Shortly after finding a cure, they investigate a case together.  

Over Alfred’s grumpy objections, Dick orders pizza for the two of them:

(Alfred does not consider this real dinner.)

4. Soup in Nightwing 6

After that, Dick moves to Blüdhaven to investigate a series of murders, and Tim’s his first visitor.  Dick’s self-conscious and defensive (he feels like he hasn’t been accomplishing much), which makes him initially kinda hostile, but he softens quickly.  Dick takes Tim along on his stakeout and starts confiding his anxieties about his stalled investigation in Blüdhaven, and since it’s cold, he shares his thermos of soup:

(The soup is no longer Dick’s.  It is now Tim’s.)

5. Pizza again, in Secret Origins 80-Page Giant

It’s when Dick’s living in Blüdhaven that these two start to get really close.  In this comic, shortly after the Gotham earthquake, Tim’s hanging out in Blüdhaven again, and by this point, the comics are implying Tim comes down to visit regularly - both his “Day in the Life”-type comics in Young Justice involve spending time in Blüdhaven while his teammates are spending time with family.  This is also around the time when they’re going trainsurfing.

It looks like Dick has bought pizza again - those boxes on the floor say “Blud Pie.”

This is the first comic in which Tim is teasingly nicknamed “little brother.” <3

The "Sassy" Core 4 are my babies. WHAT DO YOU MEAN THEY ARE WELL BEHAVED?

One of my favorite things about the series is how it doesn't shame any of the characters for crying, regardless of gender.

(Chapter 55)

So I think Silent's ire is rooted in the simplification and sanding down of her character in order to more easily facilitate stock narratives/scenarios rather than the act of Emma crying at all, especially when it's such a significant moment of "The Day Emma Cried" short story from the first light novel (released back in 2018) that it's the focus of the title and it's laid out plainly in the text itself as something that both Norman and Ray recognize.