Also this is a similar conversation to one Noa has back in '83 or '86 when Namor flooded Manhattan.
Anyway, in other news… I'm sorry for the delay on the chapter, folks. I keep sitting down to write and immediately losing the will to do so. Bleh.
I'll try to burn through it this weekend. Or this week. It seems to be a very slow week at work, which is… spooky? I had all of two "actual work" cases today, and the remaining five are "okay the client wants us to fix the error for them", which is a 3-5 minute "click the boxes" issue thanks to our godsend of a case management software. So maybe I'll try to write at work… I have a Bluetooth keyboard and my phone…
After a long day at the office, complete with concerned and worried glances from all but Matt, all I wanted to do was go home. Go home, unfreeze some of the last batch of bolognese, boil some pasta, and veg out in front of the TV as I heckled the rerun of last week's Law & Order episode that I'd missed, in prep for tomorrow's.
That was what I wanted to do.
That was not what happened.
Instead, I got in the door to see another pair of shoes in the entryway, and a coat that wasn't mine hanging on the coat rack. I recognized both of them; hell, I'd just bought them a few months ago. And seeing them here meant that their owner was back.
Lorna was here. Lorna was… home. She was home.
And I still didn't know what to say.
"I'm home!" I called out into the condo, even as I took off my winter coat, pulled off my knit beanie hat — carefully, so I didn't get any of the yarn caught on a horn point) — and let my tail relax from around my waist. Then I unclipped my pager from the waistband of my skirt (now was not the time, my clients could wait), shoved it in my purse, and headed into my home proper.
Lorna was sitting there on the loveseat, bundled up with a blanket, TV on mute as she watched me approach. The remote was on the opposite end of the coffee table, but I had no doubts she didn't need to touch it to change the channel, a suspicion that was proven correct when the TV turned off once I sat down on the sofa.
I just… sat there dumbly, not sure what to say. Or what I even could say. I didn't know how to handle this situation. I'd never dealt with anything like it.
"Have you eaten yet?" I asked, mentally slapping myself once the words came out of my mouth. For fucks' sakes, Noa, why is your immediate instinct to go full Yenta…
"Y-yeah," Lorna said, shrinking deeper into the blanket. "There, uh. There was pasta and meat sauce, so I um. Heated it up on the stove?" I blinked, a little surprised at this. "D-don't worry, I already cleaned the pan and put it back and everything! A-and put the dirty bowl and fork in the dishwasher! They were from the right side of the kitchen too, I checked and everything!"
"N-no, it's just—" I cut myself off, trying to put my thoughts into words. "I didn't think you were comfortable using the stove yet."
"Well, you're a good teacher?" she offered. I felt myself starting to blush, that telltale heat building in my cheeks, and I grabbed the tip of my tail out of the sudden need to do something with my hands.
"Thanks, hun." I sighed. It was clear one of us had to bite the bullet here, and it may as well be me. "I wager you have a few questions for me. Or just things you want to know."
"I…"
Lorna trailed off for a bit, clearly thinking over what she wanted to say. And as five seconds passed, then ten, then twenty, the silence rapidly grew unbearable.
"I-I'm sorry," she began. "I was mean, and and and cruel, and what I did was horrible and, and wrong, and—"
"Lorna," I interrupted. "I'm not going to sugarcoat and try to say it was all okay, because it wasn't. It did hurt. It hurt a lot. But what you did wasn't 'wrong'. You were scared, and you didn't know what to do. What you did and said was ignorant, not malicious."
I took a deep breath, and looked my goddaughter in the eye.
"So, I accept your apology. It's okay. I understand."
Lorna didn't reply with words. Instead she lifted herself up with her powers, blanket bundle included, and floated over to the sofa, and plunked herself down right near me. Which was about as good a sign as I could get, really.
Lorna's eyes were fixed on the tip of my tail, which I still held between two fingers.
"Um… could I…?"
Oh my God. Oh, this was adorable.
"Yes, you're allowed to touch my tail," I said, letting it fall from between my fingers and extending it in her direction. "Just go base to tip, the edges of my scales can be a bit on the sharp side."
I could see Lorna get up on her hands and knees, even ensconced as she was within her blanket cocoon, and reach one tentative hand out of the fluffy fabric towards my tail. The tips of her fingers made contact with my scales, and I was only mostly able to suppress the squeak I made at the feather-light touch.
"Ah!" Lorna jerked her hand back, looking at me in concern.
"I-it's okay!" I told her. "Sorry, sorry, I'm just very, very ticklish. Should've warned you."
The sudden mischievous gleam in Lorna's eyes did not go unnoticed, but I let it slide for now, even as she extended her fingers once more. This time I was more prepared and didn't squeak, nor did I flinch and accidentally spike her (or the couch!) with my tail.
"So, um." Lorna spoke up again, not looking up from her focus on my tail. "When… um, how, I mean… uh, you—"
"How did I know I was gay?" I asked, completing the question that I knew she was trying to ask.
Lorna froze, then nodded, and retracted her hand back into the blanket mass. She didn't create any more distance between us though, so I took that small win for what it was.
"Well as a preface, let me just say that my situation was a bit different from most." I raised a hand and, with a small spark of magic, brought forth a small mote of light. I grabbed it between my fingers and stretched it between them, making it almost like a small pane of glass. "So, my power lets me hide how I really look, yes?" As a bit of demonstration, I waved my hand behind the pane of… well, glamour-glass.
"Mhmm?" Lorna murmured, letting me know she was following along.
"And while that works, it, well…"
I poked the glamour, then pushed a tiny bit. It shattered into shimmering staticky fragments before dissipating into nothingness.
"Too much physical contact, and suddenly everybody sees that I have horns, scales, and a tail. And if you think that it can be hard for mutants now, it was substantially worse twenty years ago." I sighed, running my fingers on the outside of a horn to help calm myself down. "So I had to be very careful not to let people really touch me, or else I'd be outed. Then, well, I started thinking about situations where it would be, well, okay if I let someone touch me. Where it was okay if I got outed, and then my thoughts just… sprung out from there."
"Okay, but how do you get from there to kissing other girls?" Lorna asked. And then she seemed to realize what she'd said, and started turning red. "I-I mean—"
I couldn't help but giggle, which seemed to pull Lorna from her growing embarrassment.
"No, no, it's okay, really!" I assured her. "Anyway, well. I sorta knew when all those thoughts, as it were, defaulted to being about pretty girls. And every attempt to tell myself that that was wrong, that I needed to be thinking about the boys instead?" I shook my head with a laugh. "Yeah, every time I tried to imagine being in that kind of position with a boy, I got nauseous. So, suffice to say that I am very much not the best example to go off of here."
"O-oh…" Lorna trailed off, and had that slightly awkward look again.
"Hey," I said, grabbing her attention. "If you have questions, feel free to ask. You lose nothing by asking."
"Oh, um, then!" Lorna brightened up, and then immediately fell back to awkwardness again. "I, uh, asked who 'he' was and what was 'he' like, um… is it okay if I ask what she's like instead?"
"... well actually, you might know better than I do," I murmured, flicking my tail a little. "I mean, it depends how long Betsy's been helping out at Xavier's, but…"
I trailed off as Lorna's face took on a delightfully poleaxed expression, and as with the last few times she'd been struck dumb, she began to float.
A few moments later, my goddaughter was floating on the living room ceiling, blanket cocoon and all, and I couldn't help the giggle fit I fell into as a result.
All in all, I… I'd been scared of this. Of how this conversation could have gone. And to be clear, it wasn't over. There would almost certainly be more pain points, more issues that came up as we went along. But for now?
For now, well, things were okay. Okay enough, at least.
… I hadn't taken off my work clothes yet, had I?
Thursday, January 3, 1991
Do you want to know the one thing I had to consistently report other attorneys at LL&L for, both senior and junior? No, it wasn't sexual harassment, though that was a frighteningly consistent one. No, it wasn't for drinking on the job (and that's also one we all sort of just… agreed to look the other way from, particularly since it really only happened after a hard loss). And no, it wasn't for cocaine – that was the second most common, with sexual harassment being a distant third.
No, the most common thing I had to report other attorneys for was a failure to do some basic due diligence.
Horrifying, right? That the most common problem other attorneys at a Manhattan Big Law firm was the failure to do the most basic aspect of their job correctly? Well, Sam Lieberman thought so too, and had apparently been deducting from those attorneys' end-of-year bonuses every time I properly reported one of them for it. Which meant that Sam's division had the lowest incidence of fuck-ups on that front… but I digress.
I brought up due diligence because that's what I'd been doing all day: verifying my information, figuring out what laws applied to this scenario, writing up a plan of attack for everything… and last but not least, I was going to try and get outside information that could either verify or debunk what I'd been given.
Mr. Dukes came to me with information about a specific incident, set in motion by organized crime, and which constituted his 'last straw'. I had no idea who would be able to confirm or deny that this had occurred, and none of the leads I'd chased down myself had borne fruit. So instead, I decided it was time to go to somebody else.
And sure enough…
"Yup, sounds to me like it might've had something to do with a bout of bullshit on the 145th Street Bridge," Jonah said, flipping through papers. "Now granted there's some flavor of stupid on that bridge every other week, and this coulda happened in the vicinity as opposed to on the bridge itself. Not like I have cameras all over the goddamn place, and the locals don't much like talking to some uptight asshole with a camera and a smug smirk."
"And what about… hang on, let me look at my calendar." I opened up my drawer to double-check last year's calendar, checking for the date I wanted. "Okay, right between Christmas and New Year's, though I wager it might've gotten drowned out by how crazy law enforcement's everything gets during that time."
"... huh." I could hear Jonah's cigar bouncing from one side of his mouth to the other by the sound it made when brushing against his mustache. "Nothing. Zero. And the bridge had been quiet for three weeks already, so it was definitely due for something. And it just had something happen two days ago. My boys heard something on the police scanners going there, but we haven't been able to get anything from our usual sources."
"That's… hm." I tapped my pen on my legal pad and thought. Dukes had told me that… but it had specifically been with regards to… okay, while that did add up, it was honestly a bit convenient. The more I turned it over in my head, the more perfectly it all fit together, like the pieces of a puzzle.
And that worried me, because crime didn't work like that.
"What about if we go back a few more weeks?" I asked. There was something in the background on Jonah's end, but since he didn't say anything, I didn't pay it any mind. "Not even necessarily on the bridge, but in the surrounding areas? Any chance whichever journo you have working that beat found something to do with—"
"PARKER!" Oh. Well, that explained what that sound in the background was. "Get the hell outta here, I'm on a goddamn phone call!"
"Hold up, don't send him away yet, put him on speaker!" I yelled into the phone.
"What!?" Jonah bellowed, making me wince as I pulled the handset away. Ow, that was loud enough it made the sound go tinny… negative of better-than-human hearing, making these speakers output higher volumes produced sounds that were utterly unbearable to me, eesh. "Alright, fine. Parker, it's Schaefer."
"Good afternoon Peter," I began, writing in a note before continuing. "Question since I have you here, and one to pass along, too: has Spider-Man said anything about crime acting odd up near the bridge between Harlem and the Bronx?"
"Uh, why are you asking me?" Peter asked, though I could practically hear the extra bit at the end: 'why are you asking me when Jameson is right there?'
"Because you're Spidey's photographer of choice, and he'd tell you to stay away from somewhere that he thought was dangerous."
My reply hung in the air, the question winding its way through Peter's and Jonah's separate understandings of the situation. For Jonah, it was working to try and reinforce the idea that 'maybe, just maybe, Spider-Man isn't actually that bad, perhaps, possibly, just a little bit'.
And for Peter, it was me asking where he might be acting as Spider-Man that he couldn't realistically get pictures from, whether because it was too dangerous, or more importantly for me: because he didn't want to risk getting spotted due to the shutter sound or light glinting off of the lens.
Now, there was always the chance that the subtext went over Peter's head – he was 18 years old – but I hoped that he was smart enough to figure out what I was getting at.
"Not lately, no," Peter said. "I mean, he said something about some other guy muscling in on things up there since about halfway through last year, and he can barely even use a disposable camera, so I don't have any photos of him either way. But maybe that other guy knows something?"
… so Peter was avoiding Harlem because that was Matthew's backyard. Or more accurately, Spider-Man avoided Harlem because that was Daredevil's stomping grounds.
Ugh… great. Hard and fast confirmation that Matthew was going out and doing his own street-level heroics already. How long would it be until I got a phone call in the middle of the night from a bloodied and broken Matthew, desperately in need of healing? A week? A month? I was honestly surprised I hadn't gotten one yet, especially after I helped his broken jaw heal in a fraction of the time.
Back to the point, Peter's answer both helped and didn't. It confirmed an ongoing pattern, but it meant that I still had an information black hole that I didn't know how to fill. And that scared me, because as much as I preferred being able to trust my clients?
When dealing with criminal defendants, there was one adage you had to live by: everybody lies, especially when they say they're telling you the truth.
"Alright, that's… about what I expected, actually. I do know how I can get in touch with the 'other guy', as you put it, but that's going to be substantially harder than I'd like," I lied. He was just over at Columbia University, sitting in his Constitutional Law seminar. And I'd already spoken to him, but came up empty. "Don't think I have anything more for either of you, sorry. Jonah, please let me know if something comes up, and as per usual, any scoop I run across gets run by your desk first, assuming it doesn't have to go to law enforcement beforehand. Peter, steer clear of Harlem for a bit, and tell Spidey to do the same."
"Good talkin' to you again Noa," Jonah said. "Stay safe. Now, Parker! Tell me you have some pictures of Spider—"
I put the phone down with a sigh and rubbed my temples.
Nothing. Bupkus. Zilch. Zero. Nada.
It was so, incredibly, frustrating. Every lead, every connection, every source of information I had access to… all of it had come up frustratingly empty. And the worst part was that I knew there was another pair of options available to me, the theoretical nuclear options. I could always just… ask Xavier to read somebody's mind from half a state away. Or ask Erik to just find me what I needed while pointedly not asking how.
And the problem was that as time went on, each of these options was going to grow more and more tempting. The more I saw of this issue, the more I wound up thinking that everything going on with Fred Dukes was just scarily convenient...
I shook my head, and put it out of mind. I couldn't let myself fall into a doom spiral here. I needed to just… do something else. I still had more work to do today, more cases to follow up on, another three or four motions that I needed to proofread before tossing Sophie's or Karen's way to file with the court. I still had the rest of the day, then all day tomorrow. And then…
I pulled a little piece of notebook paper out of my briefcase, couldn't help the slight smile as my eyes roamed over the writing there, and let out a happy little sigh.
Then… something I'd been looking forward to all week.
Well, uh, this was a significantly shorter chapter than last time. Significantly shorter than my average.
And it took me, like... way, waaaaay too long. I, uh. I'm sorry about that. Life is an obnoxious, miserable thing sometimes, and while it's had its ups and downs, it's just been busy as heck. Doesn't help that I've been getting busier at the firm — I've gone from having three main regular duties to SIX, AND have found myself helping train one of the other attorneys in one of those that, realistically, she probably should've been trained in earlier... anyway, I digress, sorry.
First thing's first, I'm going to do my level best to get the next chapter out for this fic's anniversary, on July 16. Chapter 35 is going to be another of those single-large-scene chapters, and... is actually gonna be what was supposed to be the third scene of this chapter. So, fingers crossed I can get my stupid ADHD brain in gear for it, I do have friends helping NUDGE me, but we'll see.
Second, though. And this one is more important.
Now, y'all know I occasionally do shameless shoutouts and plugs. This is one of those, but it's in a different vein.
And some of y'all will remember when I was still in the misery that was job hunting, and had a Ko-fi. This is in a similar vein, but it's not for me.
My buddy @industrious is currently battling cancer — for his own words, just... click [HERE], then [HERE] (note, this one links to SB, didn't get a crosspost), or if you don't want to click a link, open the spoiler-in-spoiler:
POST ONE (3/11/2024):
Due to circumstances completely outside of my control, I'm going to be skipping over the next chapter of Shoganai. The plan was to have a powerful scene involving Naruto and/or the rest of Team Gai plus possibly a few others calling out Nobunaga and dealing with that, as well as another scene with Kurenai. A proper bit of falling action. Naruto would also be revealing that he and Nobunaga have shared Uzumaki heritage during this conversation.
I won't be able to write those scenes - not now, maybe not for months, maybe not at all.
What I can write is the chapter after that. And while this bit of subplot is going to be unfulfilled, that's honestly a small price to pay to be able to continue to write the fic overall.
And the reasons for that are... well.
On February 19th, I found an odd lump during a self-examination. The next day, I spoke to my primary care physician, who scheduled a same day ultrasound just to be on the safe side. I was worried but she didn't seem too concerned; I'm young and healthy, after all
By the 21st, I was scheduled for surgery the next week, as quickly as the doctor would allow after having seen a specialist.
Stage 2 Testicular Cancer. The exact size of the tumor, though, was so small the urologist was surprised that I'd caught it so early.
I'm changed, for life. And I'm... dealing with that. Adjusting. Physically, I'm recovering well enough with the support of family, both blood and found.
Emotionally, I'm kind of spent. This was supposed to be prime job hunting, dissertation writing time; I haven't been able to be any kind of productive in three weeks, and am not going to be graduating in May like I was on track to be. Plus the dysmorphia, and while I am healing, I am not healed. I went to the grocery store on Friday and had to lie down for three hours afterwards.
Before people panic, the doctor was pretty confident I'm cured. I'm going to be getting CT scans for the rest of my life, but... there are worse alternatives. I'm going to continue writing fanfic, because I've always found posting and getting support and feedback to be extremely affirming. Hell, there was even another fic, a dual SI in the works before all of this happened. We'll see whether or not that got derailed utterly by this, but Shoganai should be mostly intact.
I've, uh, set up a Ko-Fi here to deal with expenses. I really hate doing this, nobody should feel obligated, but... yeah. Surgery and recovery has really set both myself and the wife back considerably. I have health insurance, but I'm also a broke student.
To all of my XY individuals: check yourselves regularly. It probably saved my life.
So remember when I stated that the doctors were confident I was cured but I'd be getting surveilled forever?
Well... I start chemo in two weeks. Three cycles. So... yeah. Wish me luck. Prognosis according to my doctors is still good and both my primary and secondary believe that I'm going to come out of this just fine. Once again, it was caught very early and very small, and this type is very responsive.
Nonetheless, I'm going to be putting Shoganai on hiatus until mid-July at the very earliest. Having to think and plan according to the outline and overall themes is a bit too much for me at the moment.
I will be writing some drabbles and one-shots and other assorted power fantasies however, which will be put into their own thread here. Purely popcorn stuff but... it's good for my mental health to get some writing done.
Anyways. As a result of this, and the expected results of, well, suddenly having to deal with a disabling illness, funds got a little tight, so he started up a ko-fi.
Now, a lot of y'all were.. exceedingly, absurdly generous when I opened mine up, and I cannot even begin to overstate how much everybody's help was CRUCIAL in getting me out of unemployment & to have as few issues as I do now. And, yeah, it's a little – scratch that, it's VERY presumptive of me to just come in here and try to ask more of anybody.
But I'm not asking for ME. I'm asking for one of the best people I have ever been lucky enough to befriend.
So if any of you feel like lending a helping hand, a link to Industrious' Ko-fi is [HERE].
And if you'd rather throw your support behind him in some other way? Well, just. Click on the above link to his profile. Check his signature. Go through any of his past works, and if you enjoy his writing at all, drop some like bombs his way.
Thank you, everyone. I really, really appreciate it.
With any luck, and a little help wrangling ADHD Brain (tm), I'll see y'all back here for more next week on Tuesday.
I feel like the term 'doom spiral' would have different connotations in a Marvel universe. Instead of a downward spiral of catastrophizing and depression, a DOOM Spiral is working yourself up from some perceived slight into doing something ill-advised and self-destructive. Like trying to take over the world to prove your genius, or putting on a scalding hot, metal mask out of fury and impatience.
"Alright, that's… about what I expected, actually. I do know how I can get in touch with the 'other guy', as you put it, but that's going to be substantially harder than I'd like," I lied. He was just over at Columbia University, sitting in his Constitutional Law seminar. And I'd already spoken to him, but came up empty.
