#i included...........footnotes...........

did you want something horny? because i wrote something sad. 

16. – in dreams || annie albright x ricardo ortega | 1175 words [prompt list]

cw: medical horror, and i’m serious about that.  buyer beware. 

Here is tonight’s nightmare:

She is tied down so tightly she can hardly breathe. Thick strips of plastic are tight across her chest, ribs, arms, hips. This is a delicate process. They can’t risk her squirming. Her head is practically screwed into place.

A lot of things broke when she hit the pavement, a lot of things that still aren’t quite fixed. Things that will never be fixed. And the straps dig into the still-bruised skin, into still-healing cracked bones, every time she inhales. It would have been easier to put her out for this. There would’ve been no chance of her moving, no need to strap her down. But they don’t. They need to know whether they’ve fucked something up in her brain, so they need normal function to compare it to. Normal, awake function. And maybe they think the pain is good – what she deserves, making them go to all this trouble.

She had flinched a little at the sound of the razor, because it had been unexpected. She hadn’t known why she was here. A heavy gloved hand had come down on her shoulder, silent warning. They’d run the razor across her head, and her hair, big dark ringlets, had fallen to her smocked shoulders, to the floor. One of the assistants had swept it up. Then they’d fixed her head in place, to keep her still. She hadn’t flinched at all at the sound of the drill, because she’d expected that one.

It makes sense. It’s easier to reteach than unteach. Easier to start from a blank slate than try to salvage what obedience is left in her, because they’ll never be able to make her perfectly compliant again. Not without removing every memory she has of ever having been free and human. This is a factory reset.

It makes sense and it knocks the breath out of her when it settles over her.

The walls in this room are clean white, slightly reflective. She can see the light they’re shining into her head, but not her face, and not their faces. Moving shadows. She’s dying, effectively, isn’t she? What is a man but the sum of his memories? What is left of her when everything she is is erased? Nothing. Dead.

She knows it won’t help, but tied down, head-blind, she has no avenues of resistance. So she wills it to work, anyway, and she thinks hard, like if she just concentrates enough, her memories will stay with her, despite it all.

First of her name, and the woman who gave it to her, who touched her hair and smiled warmly and called her Annie, she looked like an Annie, curly hair, so pretty. How rebellious, to be named. How powerful.

And then of Billie, of the Holiday variety. In the car with the woman who named her, in the deep darkness of the nighttime Mojave desert, this eager heart of mine was singing¹ on the car radio. In the kitchen (“my kitchen, your kitchen,” ² poetry books on the shelf in the hall) and she’s cooking, reducing down wine and lemon juice in a saucepan, chicken frying on the other stove burner. like bubbles in a glass of champagne ³ from the front room. Strong hand – warm, comforting, confident – on her hip, pulling her away from the stove and close to him. Her bare feet on linoleum. The smell of food and his cologne in conflict.

Bile rises in her throat. Ricardo, Ricardo, how badly she tries not to think of him. How she waited for what must have been weeks, waited for alarm bells to sound, for the compound to go on lock down, because the Rangers were here, Ricardo was here, he wouldn’t forget about her, wouldn’t let them take her.

And how the alarms never sounded.

Everything she’d felt for him, all the admiration, the love, the trust – it all twisted into anger, or grief, or something more complex that she didn’t have a name for. Something buried in her chest that hurt and hurt, worse than anything they could ever do to her.

Rubber gloved hand on her shoulder again. No words spoken. No words needed. Stop thinking, it says. Accept what is happening.

She retreats from Ricardo like a hand over a stove burner. It will be any second now. He left her to this fate. If she’s going to go, it’s with Lady Day, and not him. How did it go? Baby, I don’t cry over you. ⁴

 –

Annie punches him square in the jaw with surprising accuracy and strength for someone swinging blindly, and he lets go as quickly as he scooped her up, falls back on his elbow and rubs his race with his other hand. But he doesn’t look hurt or angry, just concerned. A little scared.

“I’m sorry,” he says immediately. “I – you started thrashing and I didn’t know what to do.”

“Well, not fucking that.” Lying on her side, she tucks her head against her chest, presses it against the sheets now damp with sweat, and she breathes. Chemical laundry detergent, fake linen scent, a little. Mostly Ricardo. Her heart’s hammering as hard as it can and she’s near paralyzed, waiting for the panic to recede, swallowing down vomit.

“Are you alright? Are you going to be sick?”

“Just give me a minute, will you?”

And he does. He falls silent and lets her breathe, until her arms start working again, until her spine stops tingling in panic. The feeling is coming up again, that hurt, that ache, how he let it happen. She has to remind herself, patiently, like the mother of a fussing toddler, that he didn’t know, that he would’ve tried to find her, and would’ve gotten himself killed trying, had he known. And that she would have suffered either way.

And she did suffer. They hadn’t been able to reset her. They never acknowledged it. Never theorized why, at least not within her earshot. They just closed her back up and reprogrammed her the hard way.

She doesn’t – she can’t – dwell on it. She shoves the memories down, blinks back tears. She feels Ricardo’s hand on her ribs, tentative this time, gentle and warm, and when she doesn’t shove him off, it slips to her back, skates up it, across scars and silky tattoos. And it helps, somehow. Despite the myriad emotional conflicts when she’s around him, the simplicity of being there and being loved by him… helps.

Annie finally looks up at him, and he smiles, just a little, soft and genuine. “I’m sorry I hit you,” she whispers. “I – I –”

“I know,” he nods. “I kind of deserved it.”

“You didn’t. You were trying to help.”

“Hey, I’ve taken worse hits trying to help people I care way less about.”

She nudges his shoulder. “That doesn’t make me feel any better, stupid.”

Ricardo laughs. “Right. Sorry.” He leans forward and kisses her forehead, right between her eyebrows, and when he pulls back, it isn’t far.

_______________________________

¹ billie holiday, lover come back to me

² anne sexton, for john who begs me not to enquire further 

³ billie holiday, you go to my head

pick an author and a title!

Look, we need to talk about how criminally underrated the Tim and Duke duo is. They’re so different but somehow they just work together.

You’ve got Tim, the strategist, always five steps ahead, solving puzzles in his head before anyone even knows there’s a puzzle to solve. Then you’ve got Duke, who can literally see in darkness and read Gotham’s shadows like a second language. While Tim’s putting together all the pieces of a case, Duke’s already got his instincts fired up, scanning the city like he’s got his own Bat-radar.

But what makes them so great? It’s how they complement each other.

Tim is the guy who can tell you the how and the why. He’ll map out an entire mission, know where every player is going to be, and anticipate what move to make three days from now. Duke? He’s the guy who doesn’t need the map. He reads the moment. Tim trusts Duke’s instincts so much that sometimes they don’t even need to talk during patrol. They just know.

The Batfam doesn’t give them enough credit, but Tim and Duke have this unspoken bond. Like when Duke senses something off and Tim just adjusts his whole plan without missing a beat. They’ve got that effortless teamwork, no drama, no spotlight—it’s all about getting the job done and protecting Gotham.

Plus, can we talk about how chill they are? Tim’s all about getting lost in his work, and Duke’s the guy who’s like, “Hey, let’s take a breather,” but in a way that Tim actually listens. It’s subtle, but Duke keeps Tim grounded in a way the others don’t always manage to.

currently exploring the wide & wonderful world of rote in academia

[from history in the margins: epigraphs and negative space in robin hobb's 'assassin's apprentice', matthew oliver. transcript under the cut.]

Idk, maybe everyone just put on their media literate glasses and didn't tell me or breezed over this one because of the timing, but at [22:38] in MCARG but the Protag. is a Speedrunner, when Admin4 shows up, the screen is highlighted with a white overlay as text displays⁽¹⁾ and hear corrupted audio play.

Then, later, at [27:35], we hear a button clicking an iron door open, see that white overlay again⁽²⁾, and hear corrupting audio yet again, before the characters find themself in the Mis-Existant Organ Infestation realm.

This combined with the convo we literally see Andre's chat having right before this, pointing out how it is dangerous for them to be at the doors⁽²⁾, and Assimilation themself addressing the fact they are being hunted along with being confused seconds later by the teleport, more or less confirms that Admin4 did this, and it wasn't Assimilation's doing or anything. (Also including the fact that Assimilation's teleportation style is different.)

Then real question in my opinion is then just, what the fuck is the "Mis-Existant Organ Infestation" anyway? Something he whipped up to force Andre's programming to shut down? Or something else entirely?

Personally, I like to think it is just another Entity that the admins were holding, like the Victim we see in Zac's video, "MINECRAFT CREEPYPASTA: Gridworld" at [5:07].

Admin4 just did some quick thinking and went, "what's the easiest/simplest way to get this over with," and threw them at another entity they were studying that would happen to comply with Andre's programmed objective.

Having implicatively worked on P1 himself, he probably knew Andre wouldn't be able to resist going after the dragon, no matter how obviously suspicious it was, and he was right.

(Screenshots/Footnotes under cut)

The essential bits of this new AU, as will, eventually, appear in the author's note at the start of the story:

1. Percy Jackson does not appear in this story. At all. The MC’s of this story are Jason and Annabeth. 

2. No Character Bashing. Jason and Annabeth still have the basic personality characteristics as in canon, but Annabeth grew up with someone who pointed out when she was crossing the line, and Jason has never been pigeon-holed by a Roman Legion. They are completely feral, a lil bit sociopathic and very stab happy, but they are MC's who are also likeable in their own prickly way.

3. So, so many OC's. And all but 3 exist solely for background flavour. You get 3 that are more prominent. 2 are camp adults. One is a demigod. I won't be telling you which of my cast of 115 demigod campers during the TLT summer is the important OC. Have fun trying to work it out!

4. This is not Weirdest Prophet remixed. I re-use the occasional name and physical description, but this is an entirely separate universe with its own rules.

5. Other than what remains in mortal history, Rome no longer exists. All Latinised names of places and people of the divine world are now transliterated Classical Greek. E.g. Apollon not Apollo. Hephaistos, not Hephaestus. Khimaira, not Chimera. Only Chiron gets to stay Chiron, for very plot relevant reasons that are discussed extensively/

6. Gods, monsters, locations, religion, and religious rituals have been adjusted to more closely match their myth counterparts, rather than Riordan’s caricatures. I have spent tens of hours researching myths and primary sources, trying to strip the Roman influence and find the older Greek version. My pagan and hellenistic readers are in for a treat!

7. I still do not write romantic relationships. There will be no Percabeth, no Jiper, no Soleangelo, and most definitely no Caleo. If you’re waiting for characters to kiss, you’ll be waiting a very very long time. (For my ace and aro peeps, I promise a romance free zone, though there will be plenty of quips and jokes about dating bc this is still a camp full of teens. But still no actual romance, and so much found family, sibling dynamics and battle bonded people.)

"If you intend to be this way It does the more enrapture me And even so I still remain A lover in captivity"