Post Mortem

[MadGastronomer]

Screw pens in the bathroom. I'm crying. A lot.

...Actually, that was kind of cathartic, even if it did clog up my sinuses even worse. Funerals exist for a reason.

[jimsmyth]

Dear PTB.  Thanks.

I'll be over on the Where Did All This Soggy Kleenex Come From? bench.


Also, that last line?  Creepy.

[MadGastronomer]

They are totally gonna run away and form the Brotherhood of Mutants.

Also, massive ECR re: Chaz and Nikki.

[Edmund Schweppe]

Screw pens in the bathroom. I'm crying. A lot.

::offers virtual hugs::

::wishes I could offer real ones::





::wishes I could get real ones. Clearly I left Fourth Street too soon::

[Emma Bull]

*gives Ed hug she planned to give him for a goodbye, except she was off flaming out and falling off walls at the climbing gym*

[glinda_w]

Oh ghods.

Is there enough kleenex in the world for this?

[eschatonic]

That was lovely, in a weird spiky-hurty kind of way. um. ECR?

I wonder how much Danny did tell Tricia. And how much he's told Gray, who apparently at least knows Hafidha exists (in a hospital?)

Also, that was one of the best-written sex scenes ever. Their blunt honesty with each other made it totally real. And it gives me a hint of how the team will recover it's integrity as a unit, and how easily Brady and Nikki will pull Chaz into their bond. It won't feel to him like they're trying to replace what he had with Daphs and Hafidha, because it will have a different character. Daphne was his sister. Nikki and Brady are soldiers, who've had their hearts broken in complicated ways they don't talk about much. Chaz can look at how long their recoveries took (like a decade for Brady, yeah? and now Chaz has discovered that Nikki's still healing), and see for himself that he's going to be lonely and miserable for a while, and that other people have lived through similar pain. And gotten better, and been able to make friends and trust people and laugh at dumb jokes. And forgotten for hours and then days at a time, even when they were still grieving, that the pain is still there and they can't get back what they lost.

[saoba]

Oh ghods.

Is there enough kleenex in the world for this?

No.

I cried. I expected that. I cried more than once, yeah, no surprise there. I said "oh, <insert name here>" more
than once too.

I cried over Tiger the bunny. There is possibly not enough single malt in the world right now.

[glinda_w]

I cried over Tiger the bunny. There is possibly not enough single malt in the world right now.

So did I, and there isn't.

This may belong on the threads discussing the episode, but it fits here as well I think; at least this is where the thoughts about it all showed up for me. I've re-read the episode and DVD extra at least three times, the last time yesterday. And then reading Post Mortem, the re-readings have me thinking about just how powerfully it's written, how deeply we get pulled into it. I think that... gah. words. people who hadn't been following Shadow Unit at all, could read the episode, the DVD extra "Fair", and this, and get the same reach-into-our-chests-and-grab-hold-of-our-hearts-and-squeeze-them reaction, the writing, the characterization, all of it, is just that powerful.

I think there's going to be a bit less in the bottle of Tullamore Dew veryvery soon. (Like maybe an entire shot; usually I just put a couple teaspoons in the glass.

[I started to type "a couple teaspoons' worth in the..." and lost it. Oh ghods...]

Changed to add: I'm taking that small bit of Irish whiskey to bed, to sip while I'm surrounding myself with a snuggly cat and some guaranteed-to-make-me-feel-better reading - I've managed to acquire for my sweet little Lexy (short for Alexandria; *look* at all the books I've got on her already) Kindle the Anne of Green Gables books, through to Rilla of Ingleside, with a couple of later collections as well.

[zxhrue]

well.  that was...complicated.

minor point of interest that chaz has trouble controlling the mirror, but perhaps it's more the circumstances than the activity?

the conversation between reyes and sol is both understandable for the characters, and somewhat worrisome from a foreshadowing aspect.  makes me wonder, come the show-down, which one is going take the hit or if they are both gonna die.  knowing the PTB, perhaps we should start a pool.

[eschatonic]

minor point of interest that chaz has trouble controlling the mirror, but perhaps it's more the circumstances than the activity?

I think it's circumstantial. We've already seen that his control tends to slip when he's sufficiently upset, whether due to anxiety or anger or fear or whatever. Abrupt adrenaline spikes still seem to present problems for him.

Although...if he was with someone who trusted him enough maybe he could do it on purpose? Two-for-one sale on orgasms! I doubt the Bug would let him do that though.

[InkRose]

I read this on my morning walk with the dog. Thankfully no-one else was about.

Oh, so beautifully told, all of it, heartwrenching but uplifting. Cathartic, in a word. And most of it filled me with so much awful hope that I feel guilty about it when the loss of Daphne is still so near.

And the bits with Wabbit? So cruel, but so true and so necessary, and no easier to read because of it. Those cut me deep, they did. And even THEY give rise to hope, with the level of compartmentalization Hafs has going on nowadays re: the bug. It makes me fear that the long cherished hopes-against-hope of Hafs eventually returning to the team - or at least being given a lot more trust and involvement in cases - might come true not that far in the future, because that is bound to backfire in some mountainously ECR-y way.

ETA: And I actually missed the mirroring on my first read. Guess I was caught in the moment.

[tylik]

Damn. That was excellent.

(And I'd been just wondering how/if things were going with Stephen and Cassie. Yeah, that just sounds wrong, but calling him by his last name and her by her first tweaks me.)

I, too, am creeped out by the stuff with Hafidha. I wonder when we will hear the next update re: Eddie and Dyson. (Because I can see this pushing Hafs into trying the procedure. Especially if the initial results are promising. And I don't really see any other way forward that isn't awful.)

Gods, I really like Tricia. I wish we'd gotten to know her better before. I find myself afraid/certain that she's going to fade back into the background, because, well, what else is she going to do?

Tuna casserole. Ambrosia fruit salad.

Bah. Thank you, Brady.

[VCorvidae]

That was good closure. I think I needed that. I'm right now trying to hide the fact that I'm crying from J., who is sitting next to me watching Mickey Mouse Clubhouse. He wouldn't understand.

And may I just say that the parallels between this wake and Eric's scare the crap out of me? I don't want to consider TRICIA cracking...

[kakiphony]

No whisky for me since I read this sitting on my couch, fresh out of the shower, getting ready for Monday. No tears either, but for the same reasons. Had I read it last night, I think my carefully maintained fourth wall (which I have always actually sought to maintain here because I actively don't want to care that much -- I have enough ECR in my life!) might have crumbled.

I noticed the mirror, but then talked myself out of it being the mirror. "He's a profiler," I told myself, "Reading people is what he does. With and WITHOUT the mirror."

Everyone here is broken. But everyone seems to have paths to healing. Except, we didn't see any real healing or moments of grace for Reyes or Sol.  Just more guilt and sadness.