Am I The Only One Who Thinks Leonard Is Kinda Like JD In Some Of His Actions? 'cause I Do

A Window in Time by Ivalee

Pairings/Characters: Merlin/Arthur, Gwen, Morgana, Gwaine Rating: T Word Count: 29,676

Geophysicist, Arthur Pendragon, receives a grant from his sister’s company for a research venture in a newly discovered cave. His first day on the project, Arthur follows a mysterious voice into a small cavern. He finds himself talking with Merlin, who claims to be a sorcerer from the 14th century. Arthur becomes so enamored with his new friend that he won’t leave the cave, which naturally concerns his sister, and not just because she needs his research to increase profits. When Merlin is captured for using magic, Arthur is desperate to rescue him, but how can he help someone 700 years in the past?

We finally meet Echo! :)

I didn't have as much time as I thought I would this week, so have a sketch with some colors slapped over it... sorry :|

Also, I think I settled on a name for the fic. Does "Raising Dominoes" sound okay? In any case, here's Chapter 5 - Echo, I hope you enjoy!

Prologue: 00 Previous Chapter: 04

Summary: Rex and Fives visit Echo in the ICU.

CW: Implied/referenced child abuse, missing limbs, hospitals

Chapter 5 - Echo

The waiting room was packed with people. Even though he had told Cody to go home earlier that morning, Rex made a quick scan for him, but it was too difficult to see over the hordes of visitors and patients. Fives was also looking around the room fervently.

“Rex, sir?” The boy asked straightening up and squaring his shoulders to address Rex.

“Yes, little soldier?” Rex joked, guiding Fives towards the front desk.

“I don’t see Echo.”

“Echo is in one of the rooms back there,” Rex explained, pointing to the door leading to the rest of the hospital. “This is the waiting room. It’s for people waiting to get help or people waiting to see friends or family in the hospital.”

“Do we have to wait here to see Echo?”

“We’ll see,” Rex said as he approached a young man behind the desk.

The man looked up and smiled, “Hello, how may I help you today?”

“We’re here to get Echo,” Fives piped up in a slightly more authoritarian tone than Rex would have expected from him.

“Echo Se, we’re here to see him,” Rex clarified, ruffling Fives’s hair.

“Right, of course, sir,” The man behind the desk nodded, but paled a bit and shifted forward in his chair to see Fives over the desk.

“Problem?” Rex asked, raising a brow.

The man smiled nervously, “We don’t allow children under the age of 12 to visit patients in the ICU, sir.”

Shit. Rex hadn’t thought about age limits on visitation. He looked down at Fives, then gritted his teeth and leaned in closer to the man, “Look, they’re twins, and I promised he’d be able to see him today.”

“I’m sorry, sir,” the man replied still hiding behind a false smile. “It’s hospital policy. For the health of our patients and your sons, I can’t make an exception.”

Rex sighed, moving away from the man. He was right. It would be bad if Echo got sick in his condition. But, had Cody not said Kix thought they could visit? Maybe he could drop Fives off with Cody and visit Echo and have them face time, or-

“Rex!” A familiar voice cut through his thoughts.

Rex’s eyes shot up as a lean man with an intricate buzz cut pushed through the doors leading to the ICU, “Kix!”

Kix’s white coat billowed out behind him as he strode over to the desk and smiled down at Fives, “And this little one must be Fives.”

Fives tried to mirror Kix’s cheery expression but fell short as his attention turned on the door swing shut behind the man. To quell any temptations of running off through the ICU looking for Echo, Rex put a hand on the boy’s shoulder.

Kix walked behind the desk and leaned down to whisper something to the man. The clerk’s face turned a little pale as Kix pulled away to smile at Rex and Fives, but he nodded and began typing away on his computer.

“I cut a little deal for you two,” Kix said, motioning for them to follow him through the door.

Fives looked up at Rex and Rex nodded his permission to follow Kix into the ICU. The boy smiled and ran to catch up.

Rex looked over at the clerk. He was deliberately avoiding eye contact and his hands trembled at the keyboard. Rex sighed out a sympathetic “thanks” to the poor man before following after Fives. He sometimes forgot how scary Kix could be.

The ICU was full of doctors, nurses, technicians, patients and visitors, and others Rex couldn’t quite place. Most moved with purpose and didn’t give the trio a second glance, but a few workers shot Kix inquisitive looks. None of them approached them though.

They took a few turns before Kix stopped outside a bathroom and ushered them inside, “We have to get all cleaned up before we see Echo.”

Fives nodded in understanding and began washing his hands at the sink. Rex and Kix joined him and soon Kix was ushering them back out the door.

“Now Fives,” Kix started as he stopped again outside a room. “I know it’s going to be really hard, but it’s important that when we go in to see Echo you don’t touch anything, okay?”

Fives nodded.

“No touching any of the machines and definitely no touching Echo.”

Fives looked up at Rex before turning back to Kix and nodding again.

“It’s because he had a lot of surgeries and if he got sick or hurt right now, it would be really bad, so we don’t want him to get sick because we spread him our germs.”

Fives nodded again.

“And it’s really important if you start to feel sick that you leave the room as soon as you can and try to make it to the bathroom.”

“Okay,” Fives said in a small voice.

Kix nodded and opened the door, walking in before Fives could sneak his way past, and situating himself in the far corner of the room.

After Rex shut the door behind him, he was met with a dim room, the only light coming from behind closed blinds and the lights on the countless machines hooked up to a small body lying on the bed under papery white sheets. Fives stood motionless at the foot of the bed. Rex made his way over to the boy and put his hand on his shoulder. Fives looked up and Rex saw tears spilling down his cheeks.

“Here, come here,” Rex said softly, picking up the boy carefully.

As soon as Fives was in Rex’s arms, he wrapped his limbs around him, holding on for dear life and trembling with each sob. Rex stepped over to a chair at Echo’s bedside and sat down, carding his hand through Fives’s hair as he held him.

At Echo’s bedside Rex had a much better view of Fives’s sleeping twin. They looked identical, the only differences being Echo’s slightly shorter hair and the noticeable lack of lumps under the covers where his legs and right arm should have been.

Fives sobbed into Rex’s shirt loudly and Rex grimaced, “How are you feeling, Fives? Do we need to step out for a bit?”

“N-no!” Fives shouted, squeezing Rex harder.

At Fives’s shout Echo’s whole body seemed to convulse and Rex looked to Kix, thinking maybe the boy was having a seizure. Kix didn’t look up from Echo’s body, but he also didn’t move to help, so Rex turned his attention back on the boy in the bed. His eyes were open now, but looked glassy and unfocused, staring towards the ceiling. He looked dead.

Fives’s turned his head from Rex’s shoulder to face his brother, “Ech- Echo?”

Echo’s eyes didn’t move, but he did open his mouth in response, and panicked but hoarse and weak words spilled out, “We- we need to get to the wall to escape the citadel. No. I’ll go first. No. No. No! N-”

“Echo,” Rex interrupted softly as Fives buried his head back into Rex’s shirt and let out a wave of fresh sobs.

The boy stopped babbling, but his breathing became more and more labored.

Rex wanted to pull the injured boy into his embrace as well, but refrained, “Fives came to see you. Fives is here.”

Rex extracted Fives from his torso and turned the boy around so he would be facing Echo before placing him back down in his lap.

“Fives…” Echo said drowsily, almost as if he were in a trance.

“Echo, I’m here,” Fives said tenderly, though his voice was still shaky from the tears.

“Fives.”

“I’m here.”

“Fives?” Echo shifted his head and locked eyes with his brother.

“Eh-Echo!” Fives tried to reach out to his brother, but Rex restrained him. “You’re okay!”

Echo flinched away from the noise and Fives looked from his brother to Rex with a hurt expression.

“It’s too loud for him,” Kix explained. “Sometimes that happens when you hurt your head. We just need to be quieter.”

“Sorry,” Fives whispered.

Echo turned back to Fives, brow scrunched and eyes searching his brother’s face, “What- what happened? Where are we?”

“You got hurt,” Fives supplied. “We’re in the hospital.”

Echo began to look panicked.

“It’s okay, you’re safe now,” Rex said. He needed the boy to hear that, even if he probably didn’t believe it yet.

Surprisingly the words seemed to calm the injured boy down, so much so that he drifted back off to sleep.

Fives twisted to look at Rex, confused, “W-why’d he go back sleep? He- he just woke up.”

“He has to get a lot of sleep right now because his body is healing.”

Fives turned back to Echo and Kix walked over to the bed and adjusted the blankets to fit around the boy more snuggly.

“Should we let him get his rest?” Rex asked the doctor.

Kix nodded, “We can talk in the waiting room with Cody if you want.”

“Cody’s still here?” Rex said incredulously, standing with Fives in his arms to follow Kix out the door. “I told him to go home and get some rest.”

Kix shrugged, leading them out into the hallway, “I told him the same thing.”

The trio made their back to the waiting room quickly and found Cody dosing in one of the corners.

“Cody,” Rex said as he sat in the free seat next to his brother.

Cody woke with a start, then locked eyes with Rex, “Sorry, I must have fallen asleep.”

Rex shrugged, “I told you to go home anyway.”

“Didn’t want the kid to be alone.” Cody looked from Rex to Kix, “How is he?”

Kix crossed his arms in front of him and leaned against the wall, “All things considered, he’s doing really well.”

Fives looked up at Rex from his perch on his lap, eyes full of hope.

Kix continued: “The good news is so far the surgeries seem to have gone successfully and he appears to be on the mend. We have him on a morphine drip for now to keep him comfortable, but I’m hoping we can get the dosage lower soon. The broken ribs and concussion all we can recommend is rest. For the legs and arm, once he’s feeling well enough that he can stay awake for more than a few minutes at a time, we’ll start physical therapy. It’s going to be a long and painful road to recovery, and even with the best of the best, there’s no guarantee he’ll ever walk again.”

Rex and Cody nodded simultaneously with matching grim expressions.

“When can we- When can he leave?” Fives asked, looking to Rex for the answer.

Rex looked to Kix, who responded to the boy in an even tone, “We’d like to get him moved to the regular part of the hospital in a few days. Then he’ll probably stay there for around another week if things continue to go well. After that he’ll be able to go home.”

“Can we see him again?” Fives asked in a small voice.

Kix smiled, “Once we move him to the hospital you can visit him any time you like. Does that sound okay?”

Fives nodded.

“Do you have any other questions?”

The boy shook his head slowly.

Rex had so many, but he was not sure all of them were suited for Fives’s ears, so he kept his mouth shut and shook his head, “Thank you, Kix.”

“Don’t mention it,” Kix smiled cheekily. “It’s my job.”

Cody snorted.

Kix pointedly ignored Cody’s obvious eyerolling, “If anything comes up, you already have my number.”

As Kix weaved his way out of the waiting room Cody stretched back in his chair and turned to Rex, “How’s everything going with you two?”

“Good,” Rex said, looking down at the small boy in his lap. As Kix would say, all things considered, things were going surprisingly well. Fives seemed to trust him—as long as he wasn’t yelling at him—and was fairly easily calmed down with physical contact. Rex could tell Fives was a good kid and already knew he would do anything for the boy’s happiness.

Cody nodded, then turned to Fives, a slight upturn to his lips, “He treating you okay?”

Fives nodded vigorously, “He let me sleep in a real bed and we made pancakes! Do you know what pancakes are?”

Cody’s eyes flicked to Rex’s for a millisecond in what Rex could only assume was horror, before they focused back on Fives, feigning innocence, “No. What’s a pancake?”

Five’s face lit up, “It’s a food that you make from a box. You mix it all up and then pour it in a pan and you get to flip it! Then you eat it when it’s done. And you get to put syrup on it!”

Fives was breathless by the end of his choppy explanation.

“Was it good?”

Fives nodded in an exaggerated movement.

“I’ll have to try it sometime then,” Cody said, standing from his seat.

Rex stood as well, depositing Fives at his feet, “Echo’s in good hands, you should go home, Cody.”

Cody nodded, “What’s your plan for the day?”

“Give you a ride back to the station, then I think we might go to the store and get Fives and Echo some things they’ll need.”

“Sounds like a good idea,” Cody praised as they walked towards the exit. “If you need any help, Kix said Hardcase is suspended again this week. Give the kid something to do.”

Rex searched Cody’s face for any hints on what possibly could have happened this time, but Cody just shook his head sadly.

Rex sighed, “We’ll pick him up on the way to the mall.”

@marierg @stressed-cherry @ffdemon @renton6echo @bambambunny @tearfulsolace @rndmpeep @brokenphoenix99 @nerdy-valkyrie @xylionet @tazmbc1 @eyayah123

Ben, through Klaus: dying sucks ass, how do you idiots cope with mortality?

Diego: violent outbursts

Klaus: general slutiness

Five: due to denial I’m immortal

At the end of everything Percy chooses to be on Luke's side, not Kronos's, not the gods' but Luke's. Luke, who was just a kid forced to grow up too soon, Luke, who has been angry his whole life, forced to protect people he cared about without any resources, forced to go on the run, forced to flee to a place that's supposed to be safe only to find out it reeks of generations of kids who were abused and mistreated by parents who didn't care, taught that love was transactional, taught that glory is everything and forced to reach for an impossible standard of glory to achieve that love.

I think ultimately Percy is the child of the prophecy because he was taught from a very young age that love should be unconditional, but he also learned from a young age that not all love is. He WAS Luke. The same anger towards the gods, the same desperate need for change, the same feelings of helplessness. Luke sees himself in Percy, and I think part of the reason Percy made the choice to give Luke the knife is because he sees himself in Luke. Everything Luke has ever said about the gods, about demigods, about the system, Percy has said those same things. Out loud.

The difference is that Luke consistently chose anger over love. From the very beginning of his story, he compromised the safety of those he was supposed to protect by picking fights, and he turned to a darker force to combat the helplessness of his existence, maybe he still cared about Annabeth and about family at the beginning but it didn't take much time for that to change. He discards Annbeth's life; the one person he promised to stand by and protect, he's careless with the lives of other half-bloods, he's cruel.

I love the effort that they are making in the show to portray Percy as a mirror to Luke from the very beginning, way before new viewers even know what's going to happen at the end. Percy is saying, "The gods have done nothing for me, they have done nothing but hurt the people I care about, we would be better off without them". Luke is undoubtedly the villain and the choices he made were his own, but at the same time, he was just a kid who felt helpless and alone. Because of that, he chose the anger he felt towards the gods over the love he had for his family, and that's where Percy is different.

Athena once said to Percy that he would let the world burn just to save a friend. His love and his loyalty are so strong that he couldn't sacrifice anyone he cared about if it meant saving the world. Unrealistic or not, there is something beautiful about the idea of someone who cares enough about you to think that a world without you in it isn't a world worth saving at all.

Kronos tries to paint loyalty, family ties and love as a weakness, when we all know that it was the only thing that had any power against him. Luke allows himself to be corrupted to the point where he sees those things as weaknesses as well until Kronos loses everything because of one little girl and what she represents. Annabeth's reminder of Luke's promise was the one thing that gave him enough strength to take control. The reminder that he loved someone and that he promised to be her family has the power to break him from the control of the most powerful evil.

It's the reminder of the love he had before he chose anger that gives him the strength to defeat that anger. And it's the love he always had for the demigods seeping back in that gives him the strength to stay alive long enough for Percy to promise to protect them.

I don't know that he would have had the strength to destroy Kronos without the knowledge that Percy would be there to finish the fight that he had lost sight of. He spent years fighting Percy, and he watched him choose the half-bloods over and over again, Luke saw how much anger he had, and saw him choose love instead. Luke knew that Percy would be able to do something that he had never been able to do, choose to protect the people he loves before hurting the people he hates. Everything Luke did, he did to punish the gods for the way they treated their kids, and everything Percy did, he did to protect those kids. Luke couldn't have destroyed Kronos if he didn't know that someone who cared about those kids as much as he did would be there to protect them the way he tried and failed to.

The Wailing Woman Part One

Pairing: Diego x Reader

Content/Warnings: Sweet Klaus and a slow burn baby, slow burn

Words: 2355

I’d do anything for this soft boy 💘🔪 If you want to be added onto the tag list for this, let me know ☂️

When Klaus gets a phone call in the middle of the night he doesn’t hesitate to help his friend out. After all, who better to help with the dead than the seance himself?

or

Reader is one of the 43 who roommates with Klaus and gets dragged into helping with the apocalypse. The world is ending, so whats the harm in a slow burn?

Lees verder

We should start calling white people, people of color. Not only because there are more people with dark skin and thus are different, but also because white is all colors mixed while black absorbs color.