#*looks out a window* all doomed to play a role in tearing this world apart huh

[imminent-danger-came]

"Even if it all leads to pain—it's ours!" and "Whether it's better or worse, we only get to find out because of you." has been in my head all day

[shireness-says]

I have yearned for you (and I still do)

Summary: “There’s an irony, she thinks, to the situation they find themselves in now - he, the man who has it all together, and her, an increasingly hot mess.” Sometimes the things you need are right back where you started from. ~10.6k. Rated T for language. Also on Ao3. 

~~~~~~~~~~

A/N: For @welllpthisishappening​, who doesn’t want to talk about the revival, and @snidgetsafan​, who does. Behold: my pining-type thoughts! Thanks for your patience and encouragement as I stressed over this instead of working on my WIPs. 

Post-revival, if that’s an issue for anyone. Title from a Frank Turner song yet again, because that’s how I roll. Extra thanks to L for her beta skills.

Enjoy, and let me know what you think!

~~~~~~~~~~~

Jess is the one who comes up with her name. In retrospect, that was probably a sign.

Actually, that’s not entirely true. From the moment the sonogram tech had announced congrats, it’s a girl , it had kind of been a done deal that she would be another Lorelai. Something something tradition. But with the reigning Lorelai still alive and well and so obviously having dibs on the full name, it’d been obvious that some sort of nickname was going to come into play. 

There’d been a suggestion box in the diner after no small amount of twisting Luke’s arm, suggestions of how the heck they were supposed to shorten Lorelai, and then a follow-up poll of the options Rory had actually liked (because she was not calling the kid “Loreo, like Oreo!��, thank you, Cesar). It’d been nice, actually, and a good way to channel the collective energy of the denizens of Stars Hollow without being stopped on the street every three minutes when her feet already hurt like hell. 

Anyways. In the polling, “Elle” had won, and Rory had actually really liked it. Something the kiddo had a chance to grow into - feminine, delicate yet strong, a name that would fit a little girl or a grown adult. And, c’mon - in the Gilmore household, they’ve always liked Legally Blonde anyways. There’s worse role models than Reese Witherspoon being unapologetically herself. 

But. 

The thing is, as much as Rory had though it was cute back when the kid was an unrealized idea, just a little mooch taking her energy and appetite for normal things, it’s a very different thing to hold her baby for the first time - her tiny girl, here and screaming and with wisps of the softest blonde hair. And she just can’t do it. It feels too on the nose, to call this little blonde baby Elle - like she’s about to doom this tiny person to a lifetime of not being taken seriously. She deserves better than that. 

She doesn’t go nameless; it’s easy to fill out the birth certificate Lorelai Richard Gilmore , even if the nurse casts a funny look at the choice of middle name. She’s never been a staunch traditionalist anyways, and Rory had wanted to honor her grandfather regardless if the baby had been a boy or a girl. He would have loved having a great-granddaughter to spoil in the way he and Grandma had been denied when she was a baby - and besides, even if Emily shakes her head about the unconventional choice, it makes her smile fondly too. 

Still - there’s a difference between what someone is named and what someone is called, and the latter for the youngest Lorelai is still a great big question mark. Rory runs back through the list of runners up, but nothing fits .

“I was supposed to have this figured out by now,” she whines to Jess when he drops by to visit and meet the baby. He’s been a huge help as she tries to write her book, and after years of awkward “what the hell even are we”, Rory feels like they’re finally back in a good place, back to being friends. She likes being friends, like him being one of her people again, even if the 2nd trimester horniness and wanting to jump his bones never really went away. But she’s not really in a place to think about that right now. “Aren’t I supposed to be able to just, like, look at her and know what her destined name is supposed to be?”

“Yes, because motherhood automatically grants mystical powers,” he replies wryly. “I think that whole thing is a myth, Gilmore.”

He looks good holding a baby - surprisingly comfortable too. It makes her realize, not for the first time, that he built himself a whole life she doesn’t know about while she ran around the world, trying to figure out what would make her happy - a life with a business and a purpose and probably friends with kids. Not at all the boy she met more than a decade ago. 

(It is something she tries not to focus too much on, for fear of where it might lead - to the realization that she may not really know him at all, or more dangerously, the realization that she wants to.)

“Ivy,” he says out of nowhere. “You should call her Ivy.”

“Ivy?” It hadn’t been one of the names any suggested before, but in a weird way, it fits. Something soft and strong and neutral, a name that could become anything. A name she can make her own.

“Yeah. I mean, she’s Lorelai the fourth, right? Lorelai the fourth. Lorelai I-V. Ivy.”

And it’s - well, the name is so right, but the logic behind it is so Jess. Because he’s always been clever like that - not even aware that there’s a box he’s thinking outside of. She likes, too, that now that he’s made the suggestion, he doesn’t try to backtrack or explain anything away, try to tell her she doesn’t have to listen. He knows she knows that. Jess has never been one to fill a silence just because it exists.

“I like that,” she finally says. “Ivy Gilmore.”

“Then congratulations - it’s a name.”

———

Telling Logan had been hard - harder than making herself take the test, harder than telling her mom. Because they’re not an item anymore, you know? They’ve gone their separate ways, ended whatever dynamic they’ve had going the last couple of years, and under normal circumstances, it would be easier to keep her distance. No contact, end it all firmly and definitively and for good .

A baby complicates that, and throws that possibility straight out the window.

She can’t really say she’s disappointed in Logan’s response, not when it plays out pretty much exactly the way Rory assumed it would. Nothing changes; they don’t get back together, and he doesn’t leave the French heiress. Rory isn’t certain she’d want either of those things anyways. He’d offered to support her in whatever decision she made, and that was more or less it. He’s never been great with emotions, and having a kid doesn’t show signs of changing that. 

(Rory hadn’t expected him to be a hands-on partner in this - not even remotely - but it still aches, knowing this is the beginning of what will be a pattern in their child’s life.)

Now, all these months later, Rory texts him a picture from the hospital once the parade of visitors has gone home. Even in the midst of that disappointment, he deserves to know.

Lorelai Richard Gilmore IV. 7 lbs, 2 oz. We’re calling her Ivy.

His reply comes through a half hour later. Congrats, Ace - she’s beautiful, just like her mother. 

(She’ll never admit it later - but when she receives his response, it takes everything in her not to cry.) 

———

It’s nerve-wracking, bringing Ivy home from the hospital and back to her mom’s house - like Rory shouldn’t be trusted to leave with such precious cargo. The hospital had been safe , and the big wide world out there feels full of dangers as she carefully steps out into the June sunshine, the baby carrier in hand. It’s this moment, of all times, that makes Rory feel like a parent for the first time - like it’s her sole job to protect and nurture this tiny person that she made.

Lorelai and Luke’s is just a temporary stopping place, just until Rory can get her feet beneath her in this whole motherhood thing. It’s terrifying, knowing that she’ll have to be doing this on her own soon enough. She’s taken the classes and read countless books and websites, but it’s a very different thing once you’re handed a tiny, wrinkly baby and are expected to figure it out. 

“How did you do it?” she asks her mom that first night, sitting in the kitchen together while Ivy nurses and Luke’s asleep upstairs. “I mean, I don’t know what the hell I’m doing, and I’m in my thirties. You were sixteen .”

“I did it because I had to, babe,” her mom replies, reaching across the table to tuck a lock of hair back behind Rory’s ear. “I knew I wanted to give you the best life I could, so… I had to figure it out. Looking back now, Mom and Dad would have helped, and they tried, but I didn’t want that. I mean, we’re okay-ish now, but I didn’t want you growing up under the same pressure I did. So I went out and figured it out because I had to. You were the making of me, kiddo. And I’ll tell you now - that kid’s going to change you in ways you can’t even imagine now. And it’ll all be worth it.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. I look at you every day, and I’m so proud - and I made that. Pretty cool, huh? And each day as she gets older, you’re going to get to do that too. You’ll figure this out. I know you will. You’re going to be a great mom.”

By the time Lorelai is done, Rory feels tears trying to form in her eyes. Something something hormones. “Thanks, mom.”

“Anytime, hon.”

———

She’s living in Luke’s old apartment above the diner. It’s the illusion of independence - it doesn’t feel like she’s living with her mother any more, especially now that she’s got a kid of her own, but she’s not paying rent either (no matter how much she had offered). The truth of the matter is that, except for Ivy’s things, she’s living out of boxes. There hadn’t been any sense to staying in New York, not when her income stream is so up in the air; besides, as much as Rory had loved the city for herself, she isn’t sure she’d want to raise her daughter there. Stars Hollow may be a bit loony, like a place out of a YA coming-of-age novel, but there’d been love in every single corner. She’d wanted that for Ivy, even when she was just two lines on a test stick - to grow up with this whole zany extended family. Rory’s own blood family is tiny, and even if Logan was eager to be involved, his isn’t much bigger; Ivy can use all the proto-aunts and -uncles and -grandparents she can gather. 

(Rory does feel some guilt on the rent front, but Luke wouldn’t hear of it. He’d waved it off in that grumpy way of his, some excuse about being too old to have a crying infant disturbing their sleep in the Queen Anne where Rory had grown up, but she remembers the way Luke had once called her a little bit his . This is his way of quietly looking after his grown almost-daughter - and looking at it like that, there’s no way she’d turn down the offer.)

(She knows for certain it’s all an excuse after Ivy is born, when Luke turns into every inch the doting grandfather, bouncing and cooing at the baby every time she expresses even the mildest displeasure. Too old for crying infants , her ass.)

The apartment is the same as ever, from the block letters on the door to the dark wood furniture inside. Honestly, it looks like the only thing Luke has updated in the past decade was replacing the refrigerator, and Rory doubts that was just on a whim. There’s a comfort to that same-ness - of knowing that some things never change, and don’t have to. She has so many memories up here, especially from that period when she and Jess had been dating. The blankets on the spare bed are different now - lavender and spring green for April, instead of the bachelor plaids Luke had scrounged up when Jess had moved in - but the couch is the same, and the kitchen table where they’d pretended to study, and the tiny closet of a bathroom where she’d try desperately to straighten her hair before heading home. A simpler time, in some ways - but a more complicated one too. Rory had been the town princess then, the perennial good girl , and for all of his brains and sarcastic charm, Jess had been a mess in many ways. Now, things are a bit more grey - where Rory doesn’t quite have her act together, and Jess is the one with a life and a career and a calling. She’s proud of him in so many ways, but it leaves her feeling off balance, and as much of that is about her own adrift state, there’s no denying that part of it is about this unexpected reversal. So much will never change in Stars Hollow - but somehow, this has. 

———

Logan finally comes stateside, to Stars Hollow, when Ivy is a little over five weeks old. 

They meet at the Dragonfly, because it seems the most neutral spot. Lorelai may have capital-o Opinions, but she’ll keep them to herself if Rory asks, and it’s still better than pulling him through the diner up to the apartment, where overprotective townies will glare and Kirk might try to challenge him to a duel for her honor or something. No one ever knows with Kirk. 

Logan meeting Ivy is… he makes all the right moves in the moment, you know? He smiles and bounces her and looks at her like some sort of precious mystery. But Rory can see too, already, from years of experience, that he’s got the makings of another Christopher. As much as she knows that he’ll love the kid they made, and do his best to take care of her, he’s not ready, and Rory can’t force him to be. Even in his thirties, Logan has a lot of growing up to do. 

“I went ahead and set up a fund for her college,” he makes sure to say before he departs, flying out of Boston that very afternoon to take care of some business in LA, “but you’ll let me know if she needs anything, right Ace? Or if you do?”

“I promise. Scout’s honor, cross my heart.”

“She really is beautiful, Rory. Thanks for this - letting me be a part of it.”

And then, before she knows it, he’s gone.

(She’ll never regret the times they were together, not when it brought her their daughter, but Ivy has made it all too obvious why they never would have lasted. Rory has long since stopped wondering what things would have been like if she had said yes, all those years ago when Logan had proposed. This is proof enough - a life spent hoping for something he’s not willing or able to give, and watching him climb onto an airplane over and over again.)

(In some moments, Rory almost thinks Logan’s absence is for the best when she remembers the utter horror that is his family - the way his mother doesn’t care about anything but her creature comforts, and Mitchum doesn’t care about anything but himself and his impossible standards. Rory may feel guilty about it, but sometimes, she’s relieved that Logan’s absence means that Ivy will never have to face their condescension the way Rory had to with Straub and Francine. It is a small blessing to be found in the tragedy that she’s afraid Logan’s involvement, and lack thereof, will turn into.)

When Jess comes by later to talk about the book and probably watch a movie, he finds her crying in the kitchen, trying to keep quiet so as not to wake Ivy. He pulls her into his arms seemingly without a second thought, and Rory lets herself melt into the hug, just for the moment. 

“It’s leftover hormones,” she tries to excuse, but they both know better. They’re both products of absentee fathers, after all, both know the ways that can shape a child. Jess knows full well what happened today; it’s probably why he’s here tonight, to pull her from the worst of her self pity. They both know her tears aren’t for herself, for the death of a relationship that’s long since ended; they’re for Ivy, and a relationship that maybe won’t start. 

“She won’t be alone,” he makes sure to tell her once Rory’s calmed down enough to be rational. “I mean, even beyond you and your mom and Emily, there’s Luke and Lane’s husband and a whole host of other guys who can step up. Hell, Kirk in all his weird glory has probably got some qualification to adopt her. And you know I’ll be here, as long as you want me to be.”

“Yeah?” Rory’s throat is still clogged, but she’ll take it as a win that she didn’t sniffle. It’s too significant a moment to mar that way. 

“What can I say, she’s cute enough to hold my attention.”

“You always were a sucker for a Gilmore,” she laughs, trying to lighten the mood. 

“Yeah, well, someone’s got to make sure you’re aware vegetables exist.”

And just like that, even as Rory’s tears are still dissipating, the mood is lifted into safer territory. That’s Jess, though, isn’t it? All that emotion, hidden behind a front of sarcasm. After all of the mistakes of his youth, he’s grown into a man people can count on; he’s proved that these last couple years, as Rory has found herself floundering.

They’ll be lucky to have him in their lives.

———

After that last night on the town with Logan and his friends, Rory expected to never see any of the members of the Life and Death Brigade again. They’ve had their fun together, over the years; Rory will certainly never forget all the crazy shenanigans they all got up to together. But as much as she’s enjoyed their time together, those have always been more Logan’s friends than her own. 

It comes as a surprise, then, when all of them - Finn and Colin and Robert, the three musketeers or three amigos - all make a point to call and text and, eventually, drop by. They’re a little fascinated by the baby, this sudden proof that someone in their sphere really has grown up. As nervous as it makes her at first, to let these crazy, careless men sit in the diner and take a turn carefully holding Ivy, it’s cute and funny to see the way they handle her like some kind of unknown, volatile science experiment. 

It’s funny, really, how differently they all react to the various daddy issues in their life. With Logan, it’s made him eager to live up to Mitchum’s impossible standards, no matter how much he tries to claim otherwise. With the rest of the Brigade, it’s somehow had the opposite effect. They all run away from responsibility whenever it gets too close, and Rory isn’t remotely in denial about that, but they’re somehow desperate to love and be loved, too, all of them. They’ll never be the guys she calls for babysitting, not if she wants Ivy back in one piece, but Rory thinks they could be the fun uncles instead - not a constant presence in Ivy’s life, but the kind of figures who will send a dozen roses and maybe a singing telegram to a kindergarten graduation or gift an impractical car for her sixteenth birthday.

(And in the empty space Logan seems determined to leave - Rory will take whatever she can get.)

———

Jess has been around a lot more than Rory anticipated, really. It’s not that he’s stayed away from Stars Hollow in past years; his life may be based in Philadelphia now, what with Truncheon and all, but she knows he’s made a point to drive up a couple of times a year to see Luke and Liz and his little sister, Doula. Since Rory’s come back to town, though, he seems to be around at least once a month - checking in, offering support with the book or anything else, and generally being a friend. It’s not something Rory’s particularly inclined to question, happy just to have him back in her life, but it doesn’t go unnoticed, either. 

“He’s been around a lot,” Luke comments pointedly. “Know anything about that?”

“He’s helping with the book,” Rory explains wearily. It’s an explanation she’s made a lot of times, to a lot of people, though she never figured Luke - level-headed Luke, who usually runs from gossip and emotions like an Olympic sprinter - would be one of them. 

“Whatever you say, Rory.”

Only the delivery of her burger had stopped a full-blown debate - something Luke had likely known. You don’t live with a Gilmore Girl for a decade without picking up a few tricks. 

(She’s trying not to read too much into it - the way he keeps showing up to sit in an empty desk at the Gazette office and listen to her talk until she works out her own writing blocks - but others apparently don’t have that same compunction. Then again, Luke has never been called subtle .)

By the time Ivy is born, Rory thinks the book is maybe two-thirds of the way done, thanks in large part to Jess’ encouragement. At least halfway, for sure. It’s a different kind of writing than she’s used to, after years of news articles and five-page magazine spreads, but it’s the good kind of challenge. There are days the words just flow out of her, memory mixing with prose to create something wonderful, and there are days she stumbles more. The personal nature of the project accounts for most of her hold-ups. Rory knows what makes for a good story, what will best illustrate the points she’s trying to get across, but it’s about her , and her mom, and all the other people in this crazy town that she loves. There’s not the same distance that she might find if she was writing about post-apocalyptic teens, or whatever other kind of fiction is in vogue these days. 

“Why did I decide to do this?” Rory groans, sitting on the couch in the apartment with Jess and her laptop, watching as Ivy pedals her arms and legs on her playmat on the floor. “Why did you talk me into writing this? This is your fault, you know.”

“Yes, I’m an evil genius forcing you to write a book. Absolute cruelty,” he snarks back. “Talk to me again tomorrow or next week when you figure out what needs to change for your current hurdle to make sense.”

“Why do you have to be the voice of reason?”

Jess’ face is unusually earnest when he turns to look at her - or as least as earnest as Jess ever gets. “Because I know you can do this, Rory. You might be the most determined person I know - if you want to write a book, it’s going to happen. I’m just here to listen to you whine until you’re ready to get back to the grindstone.”

“An invaluable service, really.”

“Damn straight. I’m an expert in that field.”

And he’s right - because a few days later, Rory busts through her block and gets back to flying through sentences and paragraphs. 

(She’d tell him what that kind of encouragement does for her - but then again, he probably already knows.)

———

Rory doesn’t have a regular job, per se, at least not right now; Ivy takes up so much of her time, and in between she’s desperately trying to put her book down on paper. She’s still the editor and primary contributor of the Stars Hollow Gazette, but it’s hard to call that steady work. There’s not enough going on in this little town for that, and most months accounts of the latest town meetings and whatever festival or fundraiser is being held in their little hamlet take up the sparse pages. It’s work that lets her feel like she’s accomplishing something - but in any other circumstance, one where she’s not simultaneously taking care of an infant, it wouldn’t be nearly enough to do, with the skimpy compensation to match.

It’s a shock when she gets a call out of the blue from Headmaster Charleston, asking if she’d like to come back to Chilton to head up a weekly journalism class. Privately, Rory suspects her grandmother of meddling; even if she now lives in Nantucket, content to build a new life and new purpose, Emily’s years of networking and most of her connections still stand, and she’s still not above pulling on those strings for what she believes is the benefit of all. It’s all too easy to accept the offer when she’s not in much of a position to say no. There’s the argument, too, that maybe this will help Rory figure out what she wants to do; perhaps teaching is her real calling.

(Somehow, Rory doubts that.)

As much as she loves Ivy, marvels at all the little changes and developments that come so quickly in these early months, it’s nice to have a standing appointment every Wednesday to get out of the apartment and out of Stars Hollow and put on real pants for a change. Chilton is the same as ever, all tall gothic arches and meticulously pruned shrubs, but somehow it seems less intimidating than it did when she was a student. Not smaller, like all the high school reunion cliches, but less… weighty. It’s no longer some mountain she has to climb like it was back when she was a teenager; it can be just a building and a repository for her memories. 

Rory finds that she likes teaching the class, actually, even if she can’t see herself making a career out of it. It’s nice to keep this just as a side gig, coming to campus once a week, only committed to teaching the one ninety minute class. She knows for certain that she’d go insane if she was committed to teaching three or four periods every day of the week, but this? This is sharing her knowledge and her passion with a small group of students who want to be here, who signed up for this elective on purpose. It’s like revisiting her own time as a student - covering the evolution of the profession and talkabout all the things she wished she knew when she first started at the Yale Daily News. With only one class, too, she doesn’t feel bad about seeking out one of the coffee shops she used to go to, back when she went to Chilton, in order to grade homework without distractions before she has to pick Ivy up from her mom at the Dragonfly.

It’s not her calling - but it’s a nice distraction. 

———

Most afternoons, Rory camps out at one of the tables by the bay window down in the diner with her laptop and tries to write. Tries is the operative word, of course; this is a social town, and not to be too vain, but she’s a popular lady. It’s still easier to take the baby monitor downstairs while Ivy’s napping, as the open floorplan of the apartment makes it difficult to do anything without waking the baby. 

(Yeah, she knows she’s supposed to sleep when the baby sleeps and all that - but clearly, whoever came up with that catchphrase wasn’t trying to write a novel at the same time.)

Today, a quiet Tuesday afternoon at the end of the lunch rush, her distraction has nothing to do with catty townsfolk. Today, Luke roped the visiting Jess into filling in for the usual waitress, and the sight is… something to behold. Jess has filled out since they first met, no longer the skinny, lanky kid she knew in high school; that much has been obvious for the last several years. But there’s something about the rolled up sleeves today, the way his arms keep flexing as he delivers and clears plates, that leaves Rory unable to look away. 

“When did you get built , Mariano?” she teases as he comes around with another coffee refill - still decaf, much to her chagrin, but what are you going to do.

Jess slides into the chair across from her, snagging his own mug off of an empty set table to pour his own cup of the brew. With an exaggerated glance down at his own arm, he shrugs. “Dunno. Took up boxing a couple years ago. Why, you see something you like, Gilmore?” he finishes with that cocky little smirk that’s always made her all fluttery. Some things really haven’t changed over the years. 

“What can I say, I’m a red-blooded American female.” After a moment, the first part of his response catches up to her tired brain. “Wait, you said boxing? Like - ”

Jess groans. “Do not make a Rocky joke, Rory, I swear to God - ”

“I’m just saying, you live in Philadelphia! Maybe you’ve gone native! I mean, I would have pegged you for obnoxious cheesesteak opinions instead of this, but to each his own - ”

“This is not some weird ‘gone native’ thing,” he scoffs. It’s evident he knows she’s teasing him, though, in the way the side of his mouth struggles not to quirk up. It’s nice, reminiscent of the banter they used to toss back and forth. “This is… it’s good exercise, ok? And a much better outlet for my frustrations than whatever self-destructive spirals I used to get into.”

Rory gapes, struck speechless for a rare moment. “Jess Mariano, did you go to therapy ?” 

A little bit of color flushes on his neck, but he otherwise keeps his composure. It’s not that she has anything against him going to therapy - frankly, they’re both prime candidates for a doctor’s couch, regardless of whether they want to admit it. It’s just surprising, somehow, to hear that Jess of all people is seeing someone, talking things out. Good for him, honestly - for the therapy and for being open about it. It’s another sign of how far he’s come since they were still those idiot teenagers. “Heard it was the trendy thing to do these days.”

“And you’re nothing if not a hip lemming, always following the crowd.”

“Yes, that is the one thing that people have always said about me. I’m such a follower.”

Somehow, she can’t help but grin at this, the way they sass each other back and forth. So often these past months, since Ivy was born, Rory has felt too tired to keep up with her usual self, to dish things out with the speed and array of references that she’s used to. It’s a relief to reclaim that, even just for a moment.

Before the moment can blossom any further, Babette waves Jess down from across the diner for her own refill. “Try not to get distracted by the gun show, alright, Rory?” he jabs as he stands up in his dry, teasing voice. “That book won’t write itself.”

(And if she sneaks another handful of glances before she hears Ivy start to fuss on the baby monitor - well, he’s good enough not to mention it.)

———

In a weird way, having Ivy brings Rory’s friendship with Lane into perspective.

Rory doesn’t remember a lot of the first year of Lane’s twins’ lives; the fact of the matter is that she hadn’t been around to make those memories. She only realizes now just how much Lane was on her own - Rory had been off following the Obama campaign, and Zach had been on tour for months at Lane’s insistence. Some days Rory feels like she can barely keep her head above water, and she’s only got the one baby to contend with; it’s a miracle Lane didn’t snap while having to care for two on her own. 

“I really admire you, you know,” Rory tells Lane during a lunch date at the antique shop while Kwan and Steve are at school. Lane sits across the table, same as it ever was, happily making faces at Ivy in her arms. 

“How’s that?” Lane asks.

“Because… I don’t know, I feel like I’m losing myself in the mom-ness of it all some days. I don’t get how you made it through that first year without Zach here most of the time and still stayed… Lane .”

“I mean, I wasn’t fully alone,” Lane points out. “I had my parents. Mom especially. Having her help with the boys really finally healed that relationship, which I’m not sure would have happened otherwise.”

“Yeah, that’s true. But, I mean, you’ve still got the band and you still keep up with all these up and coming music acts and - I don’t know. Maybe this is just baby brain, but I have trouble thinking about all the things I’d normally like to do. Seeing movies and new TV shows and whatever else. It’s like… all the Rory bits of my brain are just being taken over by Ivy bits.”

“It gets better in time,” Lane assures her, shifting Ivy to cover Rory’s hand on the table next to the rice cakes neither have touched. “She’ll get older and more independent, and you’ll have time again to be Rory. Besides, you’re not alone either,” she adds. “Not only do you have your mom and Luke and a whole town of affectionate maniacs, but you’ve got me. You can drop this cutie with me, her godmother, anytime you need a break.”

“Didn’t you reject religion years ago?”

“That’s a good point - but also, I’ve decided it’s not relevant right now.”

———

Motherhood, as a whole, is rewarding. There’s something magical about the way Ivy looks at her and looks like her, something earth shattering about the kind of trust she exhibits every time she smiles or reaches for Rory. It’s purpose, in a way that Rory was never entirely sure that she wanted; now, like every cliche ever written, she can’t imagine life any other way. 

For all of the magical moments, though, there are moments like this - hours and days where Ivy won’t stop crying, refusing to be soothed no matter how long she’s held or how much she’s bounced and swayed. It feels like Rory’s tried everything - the changing, the feeding, the singing, the music, the lighter clothes. Everything. None of it works, not even for a moment, and Rory’s at her wit’s end, practically in tears herself as she bounces around the apartment with her tiny banshee in her arms. 

“Please stop crying, baby,” she pleads, stroking the wisps of reddish fluff at the top of Ivy’s small head. The blonde hair had fallen out at six weeks, much to Rory’s guilty relief, and was growing back in a shade reminiscent of Emily’s natural shade. Not that she can focus on it right now. “I’ll do anything , baby, just… I don’t know what you want. What do you want ?”

Ivy doesn’t answer though, too young for anything but these screams. The never ending screams. The screams that leave Rory feeling more desperate, more on-edge than ever in her life. 

It’s not a great time for someone to knock at the apartment door; frankly, it’s probably a miracle that Rory even hears it. Under more normal circumstances, she might care that Jess sees her like this when she opens the door - unshowered, exhausted, barely holding it together - but she’s reached a point where she’s incapable of caring about anything but stopping the crying. 

“Were we supposed to meet?” she asks, tears rising to the surface as the very prospect proves just one too many things to handle. “I’m so sorry, Ivy’s been fussy all week, I completely forgot - ”

“No, I know,” Jess interrupts. “We didn’t have plans, Luke mentioned you were having a rough week. I figured I’d come up, give you a bit of a break.”

It doesn’t help. “I’m - it’s ok, I can handle this. You think I can’t handle this?” The words come out more frantically than she would have liked, but she’s not thinking straight anymore, and Ivy’s still crying —

“You know I don’t think that, Rory,” he says, in as much as a soothing voice as Jess can muster. He’s never been much for displays of emotion. “I just want to help. Let me take the howler monkey for a couple hours. You can have a shower, get a nap, come back thinking clearer. Alright?”

Her pride demands she say no - to not ask for help. It’s a streak so reminiscent of her own mother. But she’s so tired, and her ears will be ringing from the cries and screams for ages to come, and it’s too tempting an offer to deny. Resignedly, she nods, handing over the baby. “Ok. Yeah, ok, thank you. Let me get you the baby bag, and the carrier, and - ”

“Nope,” Jess interrupts, already starting a half-conscious bounce to try and settle Ivy and waving off all of Rory’s attempts at protest. “Look, I spent a lot of time here way back when, helping Doula make it to her first birthday. I know the drill. You’re veering towards Liz-level crazed, so go take a moment for yourself before it becomes permanent, alright?”

Somehow, Rory finds herself nodding, though she can’t help but try and reclaim a bit of the banter - or a bit of normality, more like. “You can’t really call her a howler monkey, though. She’s not howling yet.”

“Yeah, well, I don’t know that screaming monkeys are a thing, so we’ll make do. And the operative term is yet .”

As much as it hurts to admit, he’s right - after a shower and a couple hours’ nap, Rory feels… not quite like a new woman, but at least prepared to enter the fray for another round. Lately, that’s enough of a win. When she wanders back downstairs, Jess sits outside on a park bench with Ivy shaded in her carrier from the worst of the summer sun. His foot absentmindedly rocks the carrier back and forth periodically as he reads a well-worn paperback whose cover she can’t make out. 

He looks up as soon as the bell on the diner door jingles, putting the book aside when he sees Rory stepping down. Blessedly, Ivy’s cries have ceased for the moment. “Don’t get too excited,” Jess cautions her. “Think she just cried herself out for the moment. I’m not remotely confident she won’t start again once she wakes up.”

“I’ll take what I can get.” Rory gladly collapses onto the bench beside him, caving to the urge to lean into his body and rest her head on his shoulder. “Thanks for this. I clearly needed it.”

Jess just hums in response at first. They sit in silence for several minutes, just soaking in the day and watching preparations for whatever the carnival of the month might be in the town square, before he finally uses his words. “That’s not your fault, you know,” he assures her. “Babies are just like that. They go through spurts where it’s all crying all the time. You know that, from Lane’s and Paris’ kids.”

“I know,” Rory sighs. “I just didn’t realize how… helpless I’d feel. All the sleep deprivation and parental instinct and everything combining into straight up panic. I just felt like it was something I had to figure out, you know? I mean, this probably isn’t the last time.”

“Yeah, but you don’t have to do it on your own. Call your mom, or Lane, or Luke, see if they’ll give you a hand for a couple of hours. Hell, give me a call, I’ll drive up if I have to. You don’t have to do it alone.”

“I know.” The moment sits between them as Rory processes. He’s right, of course; so often these past years, he’s been the voice of reason when she needs it most. “Thanks, Jess.”

“Not a big deal.”

Rory finally finds the light way out of this, and she takes it. “So, did Miss Patty or Babette happen to see you during your babysitting adventure?”

He groans. “Put it this way: we both should brace for some real creative comments in the next few weeks, and I for one plan to make myself scarce.”

———

She thinks about her grandfather a lot.

Richard had been such a steady figure in her life since the age of 15; for all of the heart and health problems he'd had in that time, he’d always seem invincible. Timeline - like he’d always been there, and would always be there. His death had been a shock, no matter how much it shouldn’t have been. Grandpa had believed in her so strongly too, that she could do anything she set her mind to. Of course, Rory thinks he probably never would have guessed she’d wind up here, after a life with everything so carefully planned.

“What do you think Grandpa would have thought of this?” she asks her grandmother during a more vulnerable moment. Emily’s Nantucket cottage isn’t even remotely as grand as the Hartford house had been, but there’s something more homey about it, and there’s still plenty of room for Rory and Ivy to come stay a few days over the October break. The sea breeze and change of scenery has sparked words in a way Rory hadn’t anticipated, but fully intends to take advantage of, and Emily loves the chance to spend time with her great-granddaughter, even if the ‘great’ makes her nose scrunch up in a very particular way. It aches a little for Rory to watch, knowing her grandmother probably wanted this back when Rory was a baby; then again, knowing the way Emily had wanted to raise Lorelai in their upper crust image, and gladly offered some of those same trappings to Rory, maybe this is for the best. Richard’s death has fractured Emily, but it’s softened her too, as much as that’s possible for Emily - made her loosen up, live in the moment more and worry about appearances less. 

(Emily has offered, more than once and in a way veering towards insistence, to host Rory and Ivy here at the cottage for as long as they liked, but Rory keeps finding ways to turn her down. As much as she understands and accepts Emily’s desire to be involved in her great-granddaughter’s young life in a way she couldn’t be involved in Rory’s for so long, Rory understands, too, all the reasons why Lorelai set out on her own in the first place. She doesn’t quite understand where she’s going right now, but Rory knows that’s something she’ll have to figure out for herself. Emily, for better or for worse, wants the best for those she loves, and has always believed the best is a mirror image of the life she leads. That life now is different in so many ways from the one she was living before Richard died, but the urge is still there - and Rory isn’t sure she’s ready to spend her life in Nantucket, talking about whales. No, for now, a series of short visits is much better.)

“What do you mean?” Emily asks absently, comparing the look of two vases on a sideboard that look entirely identical to Rory. 

“I mean, this probably isn’t where he saw me going. I can’t imagine what he’d think about me writing a book about the way I grew up. I just… do you think he’d be proud of me?”

Her grandmother sets both vases down with a gentleness that is contradictory to the way she crosses to Rory with determination in every movement. “Rory,” she says, placing her hands on Rory’s sweatshirt-clad shoulders, “your grandfather was always proud of you. Always . Even if we didn’t imagine this would be the path you’d take, I don’t think there’s anything you could do that would make him anything less than proud, and delighted you were his granddaughter.”

“Yeah?”

“Of course. And I feel the same way.” With a last squeeze to Rory’s shoulders, Emily lets go and crosses back to her decorating with a smile. “Of course, after those years teaching, he would have edited your manuscript with a colored pen in hand. I’ll do you the favor of declining that form of editing.”

Rory laughs, knowing her grandmother is right; Richard had loved teaching those econ classes, and had taken to it like a duck to water. He wouldn’t be able to help himself. “I like remembering him like that,” she admits. “Excited to learn and share. I loved having those moments with him.”

Emily smiles fondly, sadly. They’re all slowly learning how to live in a world without him. “I did too.”

———

I want to drink in a bar. My kitchen feels depressing , the text from Paris demands. Let me know your schedule.

(She’s never been much for requests.)

Tact and lack thereof aside, it’s good to see Paris; Rory is more-or-less glad to consider her old schoolmate one of her best friends, inexplicably, but they’ve always both been too busy to really keep up with anything more than the occasional text, conversations often winding up spaced out over the course of several days as both get pulled in every-which direction. Even if Rory doesn’t have the same work demands now, Paris definitely still does. While she’d been an invaluable resource while Rory was pregnant, insisting on providing her with the names of the best doctors out there, they’ve both been too busy with their own lives for more than the occasional call since. This is well overdue - especially with Paris’ kids with Doyle for the week and Ivy at Lorelai’s for the night.

They go out to New Haven and hit the bars around Yale in what is probably some kind of misguided attempt to reclaim their youth. It’s been ten years; they’re obviously not students anymore. But it’s fun to sit in a grimy bar for the night and pretend they’re not thinking about all the terrible terrible substances that have been spilled on every surface. 

They try to keep conversation light, to talk about books Rory’s read lately and Paris’ latest crazy client and all the little milestones their children are hitting. Albums they want to listen to and movies they want to see. Paris’ lengthy opinions about the bars near her in New York. All the little nothings that somehow form a lasting friendship. Maybe it’s the venue, though, or maybe it’s just an inevitability, but somehow they find themselves talking men over a third drink like they’re 22 again.

“I miss Doyle,” Paris confesses. “I miss my Doyle, not this cool screenwriting asshole he wants to turn into. He was a neurotic bastard, but he was my neurotic bastard, you know?”

“That’s the best description of Doyle I’ve heard in years,” Rory replies, examining her drink. It’s a garish blue - something that had seemed fun half a glass ago, but just seems questionable now. “So what, then - you guys going to get back together?”

“I don’t know. I mean, obviously I can’t bring that up. He’s the one who changed and suggested the stupid separation, he’s gotta be the one to fix it.”

(Rory isn’t entirely sure that’s how it works, but she knows better than to get into it with Paris when she’s stubborn about something.)

“What about you, though?” she continues, flagging down the bartender for a refill of her cosmo. “You aren’t still going to try and mend things with Logan, are you?”

“God no. I mean, obviously there’s love there, or there was, but that’s over. He’s not really… ready for all of this. Growing up in a way that doesn’t mean just following in his father’s footsteps.”

“I never really liked him, you know.”

Rory snorts. “Bullshit. You loved the banter.”

Paris toasts a concession. “Fine. But I never liked him after the bridesmaids debacle.”

“Fair enough.”

Rory thinks that’s it, as Paris reaches for the nachos on their appetizer platter. Well, not quite an appetizer platter; they’d just ordered all the finger food that was available and let it take up most of the table. Paris is full of surprises, though. “What about Jess?”

Rory tries not to accidentally inhale an ice cube. “What about Jess?”

“I mean, he’s been around, right? And looking hotter than ever.”

“Oh my god , Paris.”

“What? I’m just saying. No one would blame you. Or, you know, be surprised about you getting back together with your high school love who just happens to be an author. That’s better than any shitty script Doyle could come up with, even if it is a bit trite. I mean, he’s there all the time. And he’s still got that hair, right?”

“It is good hair,” Rory admits. Probably a sign she needs to switch to water. “Can we drop this, please? Nothing is going to happen.”

“If you say so, Gilmore.”

( Did you know that Paris has a thing for your hair? she texts after the fourth drink - in hot pink this time. 

What can I say, she’s a woman of taste , he responds.)

(And if Paris shoots her a smug look from the bar - well, she’d drunk texted Doyle too, so she has no room to judge.)

———

Some nights, they do nothing more than sit in the darkened diner with leftover pie and a coffee or beer, chatting the night away. It feels like old times, back when they were just a couple of idiots. It’s nice to pretend for a couple hours that they’re still those teenagers, and not a single mom still trying to figure out where she’s going and an acclaimed author ignoring his next deadline. There’s an irony, she thinks, to the situation they find themselves in now - he, the man who has it all together, and her, an increasingly hot mess. It’s not how anyone would have expected they’d end up. 

She mentions it to him one night, only for Jess to snort in amusement. “Ok, you are not a hot mess,” he tells her. “Not even close.”

“You sure about that? Because it sure feels like my life is a disaster most days.”

“I’ve seen hot mess Rory,” he tells her. “This isn’t it. You go big or go home. Last time you descended to a genuine hot mess, you stole a fucking yacht .”

“It wasn’t a yacht, it was a boat,” Rory mumbles in protest, even as she smiles behind her mug of decaf. 

“It was a yacht, and you know it. You stole it from a marina that wouldn’t accept anything as mundane as a boat . I can break out the dictionary if you want, but you know I’m right. My point is ,” he plows ahead before she can interrupt, “you are not nearly the disaster you think you are right now. This is just… a stumbling block. You’ll figure it out.”

“I’ll have to,” Rory replies with a sly grin. “No yachts to steal in Stars Hollow.”

(As much as she may laugh it off, and he may let her, it strikes Rory’s heart in some particular way to hear the confidence Jess has in her, the way he’s so quick to assure her that she’s not entirely off track and adrift - that this is just a detour. There’s something different about hearing it from him, and not from her mother or grandmother. Jess always seems to be the one to steer her back on track - and this seems to be just another case.)

———

Rory has never been one of those obnoxious new year, new me! types, but she’s veering dangerously close this time. After a year of so much change and uncertainty, it feels like a chance to turn over a new leaf and rediscover so much of the direction that she’s lost. 

Though it feels like she still might jinx it, it feels like things are finally coming back together. Chilton has contracted her to teach her class in the spring semester again, and she’s picked up some work writing book reviews for an online publication. That feels a little like coming back to her roots, in a way - she started at a little online setup, and now, after years of chasing glossy magazines and newsprint, she’s back here again. But the assignment is enjoyable, and money is money - especially since she’s got her eye on a small house for rent near where Lane lives, in a neighborhood of quaint bungalows. She’ll always be grateful to Luke for his generosity in letting her live above the diner for so long, but it’s not workable long term. Ivy is growing every day; while Rory’s homecoming back to Stars Hollow has brought into focus that this is the place she wants to raise her daughter, they both need more space. Ivy deserves her own room, maybe a backyard to run around in, and Rory deserves a door she can close while her baby is napping. 

Most exciting of all, Rory finishes her book in early February. At least, in the moment, it feels most exciting of all - it’s been months of blood, sweat and tears, but it’s done . There’s a feeling of relief as the last period hits the page, even if she consciously knows there’s still so much editing to do. Writing the book, about her and her mom and the way they’ve lived, had been emotionally draining and emotionally freeing all at once, and calling it finished feels like an accomplishment like she hasn’t found professionally in so long. 

The next time Jess drives up to town, Rory practically dances around the kitchen in anticipation, waiting for him to knock on the door. There had been so many people who supported her during this weird time in her life, and then when she decided to write this book, but Jess sits high on that list. The idea had originated with him, and he’s prodded and encouraged her the whole way; it feels right that he see it first, even if he’s made her promise this whole time to shop it around to bigger publishing houses instead of just asking him and Truncheon to publish it. 

“Someone’s happy,” he comments when she opens the door with a huge grin. “Do I even want to know, or did your mom share another convoluted sex joke?”

“You’re going to want to hear this,” Rory promises. “And no, it’s not a joke. Sexual or otherwise. Close your eyes.”

Jess rolls his eyes first, but he complies and even smiles a bit. For full dramatic effect, Rory had printed the book onto real paper - dozens and hundreds of pages, all off the Gazette office’s ancient printer over the course of a day that she’ll probably wind up paying for in some way later. It’s worth it , to stand here with all those pages in a binder clip with a red pen. With a final flutter of nerves, she shoves it all into his chest.

Jess’ arms close around her offering on instinct; his eyes open to actually see what’s going on a second later. Looking at the pages in his arms, comprehension dawns slowly, and his own rare grin spreads. “You finished your book?”

“I finished the book!” Rory squeals, not caring nearly as much as she should about disturbing her currently quiet daughter.

Uncharacteristically, Jess sweeps her into a hug - a big, swooping thing where her feet leave the floor and he spins her about a bit. Those arm muscles, you know. “I’m so proud of you,” he says. “This is amazing . You’re a genius, Rory.”

“You haven’t read it yet,” she laughs as he sets her back down. “It could be absolute trash. I could have slandered your good name. I could have —”

“Yeah, but I know you didn’t. You’re Rory Gilmore. Obviously it’s going to be great.”

There’s a moment there, where he looks at her with pride and awe and so much shared joy that Rory thinks it would be so easy to lean up and kiss him. And maybe it’s the moment, the adrenaline, but she wants that. Not letting herself think too much, she starts inching upwards, as he starts inching down —

And then Ivy shrieks from her playpen - a happy sound, likely picking up on the joy bouncing around the room, but enough to shatter the moment.

“I’d better check on her,” Rory says weakly. “But go nuts. Tear it apart, tell me what I need to fix. I want to hear what you think.”

“Included the pen and all,” he tosses back. If Rory’s not mistaken, his voice is a little uneven. Did she do that? God, she did that. She can’t do that.

So, like so many times before - Rory bolts to avoid talking about what just almost happened. 

(Even if it’s just to the other side of the room.) 

———

“What should I do?” Rory begs her mom in the aftermath, pacing back and forth in the living room while Lorelai scrolls through online sewing patterns. She’s never been entirely confident in affairs of the heart anyways, having maneuvered herself into a mess a few too many times - with everyone but Jess, that is. Maybe that’s why she needs advice so badly; not only is there Ivy to consider, but her and Jess’ relationship is the last one she hasn’t outright screwed up yet. 

“Well, what do you want to do?” Lorelai asks. Like a normal, reasonable person, who also maybe hasn’t had to think about this for the past ten years since she figured out her soulmate was right in front of her face. Rory’s never been so frustrated with Luke than in this moment, knowing he made the kind of commiseration she’s looking for impossible. 

“I wanted to kiss him!”

“Then you should! Next time you see him and the moment is right!”

“But I can’t!”

Lorelai dramatically closes the laptop. “Are we circling? I feel like we’re circling. Why are you asking for advice if you know what you supposedly can or can’t do?” When that produces no useful response, she plows forward. “Okay, new tactic. Why can’t you?”

Rory sighs. “I just feel like… I’ve barely got things figured out, you know? And he does. I don’t want to fuck things up for him. My life right now is a mess .”

“Ok, I’m going to stop you right there. If he thinks you and Ivy being in his life is anything less than a damn miracle, then there’s your answer, that’s my opinion, do not pass go, do not move forward with this.”

“But it’s Jess.”

“Right, it’s Jess. And as much as it might pain for me to admit, I have gotten to know Jess a lot more in the past few years since he got his act together, and I have trouble believing he’s that particular brand of asshole. That guy’s been around, and happy to be here, since the moment you moved back home. Job or no job, kid or no kid.”

“But what do I do with that?” Rory whines. 

Her mom sighs. “With full awareness of me, queen of avoidance, telling you this - you talk to him, Ror. I know you’ve got plenty of words, my darling daughter, my mini me, my legacy. Use them, for the love of all things holy. Comprende?” Rory nods, not capable of much else. Especially when the solution is supposedly so simple. “Cool. Now sit down and convince me that I have enough on my plate and don’t need to try making baby clothes even if they really are stinking cute and the whole matched ruffle trend in the kids stores drives me nuts.”

———

When Lorelai suggested that Rory and Jess talk, she probably imagined a calm, planned, adult conversation. For better or worse, though, this is Rory - that was never going to happen. So instead of easing into the topic carefully, she blurts out it out in the diner, the last night before Jess drives back to Philadelphia in the morning. 

“I want to talk about what happened the other day,” she all but demands when Jess gets up to make more coffee. 

His steps falter with the carafe in hand, before moving again to get fresh water. “What do you want to talk about?”

“Well, I mean… we almost kissed.”

“I know. I was there.”

“So what does that mean? ”

That finally gets him to set the container down, bracing both hands on the counter. “I don’t know Rory. I don’t know. I’m not going to stand here and pretend I don’t feel something, because I do, but you are… You’ve been through a lot this year, and I don’t know that I want to be the guy that you latch onto because you’re lonely and I’m here. I don’t think I can do that.”

Rory is struck speechless for a moment at the very idea. She’d never even thought of that; these feelings have been percolating in her for so long, but she’s never given him any indication of that. Of course he thinks this is coming out of nowhere. “Jess…”

“If you want to be something, give this a second shot, yeah, of course. I’m there, I’m all in. I’m your guy. But I want you to be sure about that, Rory. I… I haven’t been yearning or pining or carrying a torch or any other bullshit you’d find in a romance novel, but I figured out a long time ago that I like my life with you in it. I like that I get you and you get me. I love your kid and I mostly like your mom. So I’m sure. But if this is just because I’m available and here —”

“But don’t you see? That’s part of the point!” Rory interrupts. “I mean, you’re making it sound like such a bad thing, but that fact that yeah, you’re here - that’s huge . And it’s not the whole reason I want to get into this, but - I mean, you’ve been supporting me through this book. You are entirely unphased by the fact that I have a kid with someone else who isn’t here. You’ve got this faith me I still don’t fully understand, and… Yeah, I want this. I want this because you’re a more mature version of that brilliant, sarcastic bastard I fell in love with as a teenager, but I want it too because you want to be here.” She finally pauses for breath. “Does that make sense?”

Jess nods silently. Nothing more.

Time to babble - by far the worst trait she inherited from her mom. “So… is any of that a deal breaker? Because honestly, I wouldn’t blame you, that was definitely a lot to dump all at once. But also, you should know what you’re getting into, you have almost fifteen years of experience listening to me word vomit, so if you didn’t think that’d continue —”

In the time that she runs her mouth, Jess crosses back to her side. “Would you just… shut up for two minutes?”

And he kisses her - takes her face between his hands and brings their mouths together, like she’s fantasized about more than she’d like to admit. It’s like falling back in time in the best way, relearning the shape of each other’s lips and the way they fit together. No chicken pecks here. Rory gladly twines her arms around his neck to pull him as close as possible as his hands readjust, one sliding back into her hair as the other drops to grasp at her hip. When he gently nips at her top lip, she can’t help but giggle - giggle, like a teenager again! - before diving back in to deepen the kiss. Like so many things with Jess, this feels right , like they’ve been leading back to it forever. 

They finally break apart only when Rory becomes aware of the fact that they’re still in the closed diner, perfectly in view of the darkened street.

“As good as you remember?” she asks cheekily.

Jess leans his head down to rest his forehead against hers. “Better.” They take a moment just to enjoy the shared space before he continues. “Any regrets?”

Rory smiles. “None. I’m sure. I think I’m exactly where I need to be.”

And for the first time in forever - she knows that’s true. 

[windup-dragoon]

【Ｗａｔｅｒｌｉｌｉｅｓ】

Hien x Kiri

Goddess of the Sea AU 

Word Count: 2868

Brief mentioning of @windupzenos​‘ Octavia. 

“You swore an oath to me, Goddess!”

“Not this drivel again.” 

“From your very lips you gave me your word! Now release me!” 

“And ya’ thought you’d control the sea? Everyone knows the sea is fickle, my dear prince. Now shut yer damn trap!” 

Anger boiled his blood, his heart drumming harder in his ears than the pounding of his fist against the wooden door to the captain’s quarters. He could hear the hinges creak and groan beneath the strain, even rattling when he threw his shoulder into it. Yet it remained sealed despite his desperate attempt at escape. 

“Kirishimi!” His voice was hoarse from shouting her name. This time he would go unanswered, the sound swallowed by an abrupt roaring all around him. The ship rocked violently, slamming him against the door. He could hear the maelstrom worsen just beyond the wooden planks that barred him from the goddess out on the decks. Wood snapped like thunder claps that sent quakes throughout the hull of the ship; the sails hissed as their fabric was torn in the blistering gales; and if he listened, hard and close, between the chaos ensuing beyond his prison, the faint ring of metal sparking against metal. 

This was his fault. 

Hien felt as if he may begin sinking. The din outside faded beneath the weight of his thoughts and thundering heartbeat. He slipped to his knees, forehead to the splintered door and eyes loosing focus on the intricate knots of the floorboards beneath him. With each tug and pull experienced by the ship, the sway and lull as it crested tide after raging tide, he felt neither here nor there. 

All of this would be on his hands. 

While his search for the goddess had yielded grand results, his people restored and brought home to live in peace once more, he had doomed the goddess herself. A viper in his company had used him. A mere plaything to be discarded once he had fulfilled his role. How had he been so blind to it before? 

Of everyone in his crew, all but two had been his own kinsmen. While his own men were ready to cast aside their lives in search of a fantasy woman, she who spoke with the churning tides and sang with the gulls, these two hired hands had business of their own to tend to. And all the while he busied himself with the goddess, telling her stories of his country and admiring the way her eyes lit up with every shared laughter, he was dooming her to certain death. 

His heart ached at the wretched thought. Those nights spent on an eerily calm sea, watching stars mirror themselves on the oceans glassy surface as if a blanket of jewels while in her company... And she would die for his blunders. 

“They’ll tell stories of you,” The woman had snarled at him before drawing her weapon against the goddess. A monstrosity of an axe against a trident. “A sappy love story, to be assured. Poetic, as the bards have habit of making everything out of tragedy. ‘Land and sea dying together.’” Octavia gave a helpless shrug, as if to apologize for poetry not being her forte. 

Meanwhile, trashing in the maelstrom, Leviathan snapped his ship swallowing jaws at her companion, the crowned prince of metal and steel. In large arches blood dotted the stormy skies, a shower of scales and thick ichor. The prince seemed to have little trouble dealing blow after blow to the creature. Hien could do naught but feel his stomach twist with guilt with every pained cry from Leviathan. 

Words could not convey his regret for having ever brought this upon the goddess. 

Before tears could well in his eyes and blur his vision all together, the erratic movements of the ship had ceased. The brewing storm and angry lashings of waves to the ships hull began to fade. A glimmer of light briefly shimmered through the windows around him giving the prince reason to once again rouse from the floor. 

“Kiri-” His hands, scrambling for purchase at the door, were met with no resistance now and the door swung wide. The prince stumbled and spilled onto the deck. 

Sunlight showered the ship, setting pools of gathered sea water sparkling and glittering. It was near blinding. With raised hands to shield his eyes he surveyed the damage wrought upon the ship, jaw slack with dread. 

The masts were all shattered at their base, their tree like limbs completely gone without a trace; railing that he once noted to be intricate and heavy with artistic design were little more than bursts of splinters and broken lumber. The only thing he could visibly see that survived had been the captains quarter. Not a single glass pane had shattered while he occupied the room, nor had a lantern fallen amid the chaos. Surely this was intentional. 

“Good. Yer alive.” The voice of the goddess grabbed his attention, reeling him back from his dumbstruck awe over the unreal serenity of the moment. The oceans rage had been quelled at the cost of her ship. And no Octavia or her prince in sight. 

Hien followed the sound of her weakened voice finding her just behind the thrown open door he had lurched through moments ago. Her jacket, of such deep ocean blue and decorated in the finest pearls and lost jewels, little more than shreds at her arms. White hair a frazzled mess from the howling winds of hurricane gales. Her lips, bruised and bloody, curved ever so slightly before the woman sank against the wooden wall at her back. 

The prince threw himself at her, one arm around her shoulder while the other tenderly touched at the various cuts along her cheek. 

“What? Catfish got yer tongue?” She gave an echo of a laugh. 

“Shocked.” Hien brushed his thumb over a gathering bead of blood at her jaw and arched a brow. “I thought a goddess would not bleed red like the rest of us.” If this was the worse of her injuries, perhaps he could at last fill his lungs with a breath of air. 

“Heh, only when we’re close ta’ dyin’... does it turn to gold.” Despite the splits in her lips, Kirishimi smiled at the prince and drew her hand along her side. When she pulled it away Hien choked on a gasp. Her fingertips glittered beneath the afternoon sun now that the storm clouds had vacated. The ichor that set rivulets down each length of her fingers and pooled in her palm was ethereal to say the least. Never had the prince seen such color. Gold melted down, touched with the rainbow shimmer of pearls and glittered like stardust. 

His mind went blank at the realization. All at once it felt as though the world had stopped moving, his blood ran as if ice filled his veins, the darkest waters of the abyss drowning his lungs and smothering his heart. His hands felt numb as urgency filled his muscles, tearing away at the remains of her waterlogged jacket. He raised her arm, distantly hearing her muffled groan in retaliation to the pain. 

Along the curve of her side and splattering the deck spilled more of this unusual blood. A long gash had been torn into her from the cage of her ribs down across her abdomen. Hien’s throat tightened and vision blurred. 

“Don’t’cha look at me like that, mate.” She urged, an unusual softness to her tone. “I held my part o’ the bargain, didn’t I? Yer folk are home safe and yer still kickin’.” 

Hien shook his head. It was suddenly impossible to look her in the eyes. Those beautiful sapphire and crimson eyes. “At what cost? I’ve murdered a goddess.” 

“Oh? And which one o’ these injuries of mine belong to you? Don’t see yer sword in my gut or a knife in my back.” 

“Octavia and Zenos were apart of my crew. I had damned you from the start.” 

“Speakin’ of which. They should be crashin’ against the cliffs soon. Levi gave ‘em a tsunami bath. Teach them for steppin’ foot on my boat.” Kiri attempted more laughter, tried with all her strength to stay smiling for the prince at her side, but choked on a welling of blood in her mouth. 

She coughed and he leaned closer. “Kirishimi-...” 

As he moved closer, the goddess took his hand and pressed an object into the heel of his palm. It was sticky with blood, ichor that made his mortal skin feel alight with a warm flame of a candle. Miscolored eyes looked up to his, searching his pained expression. “Call Levi for me? I want to go home...” 

The item in question was an ocarina, he had seen her use it late at night, playing haunting melodies to the stars and the moon. But it’s make was hardly alike any  he had seen before; it was carved into the shape of a fiddler crab and painted with scarlet red for its body with claws of ocean blue. 

“This summons Leviathan?” He questioned, already knowing the answer. “W-Wait, what do you mean by ‘home’? If Leviathan can take us to land, surely a doctor or a healer could see you!” 

“Just play a tune for Levi, will ya’?” Mismatched eyes began to flutter against the sunlight. 

“Kiri, wait!” 

- - - 

The young prince had seen many things in life. He had seen war destroy homes and villages over night, witnessed life at birth and at death, even met the goddess of the sea. But this? This was a marvel in of itself. 

An entire city deep beneath the waves. Not a thriving metropolis like he would have suspected if one had made mention of a lost city; but one of ruin. Statues depicting once living people had begun to crumble from the oceans currents; limbs missing here and there or faces having fallen away to sink to the sea bed below. Every so often he would catch the glimmer of light sparkling off what was once beautiful stained glass, only to be swallowed by the darkness of the ocean as they slipped by. 

What stunned him beyond belief however was the place the goddess called home. Not a castle or throne room decorated in lavish pearls and sunken jewels. But rather a library. Fully intact at that. 

The building itself was nestled into a slope of earth beneath the tides, an air pocket preserving the library as if it were an underwater cavern. Parts of walkways had long since been submerged by rising waters, but the library itself towered high; lined every which way with tomes and books galore. 

The architecture resembled that of the sunken city; built in stone with towering columns and crumbling railings. Along several walls he could see motifs etched into the stonework. Beautiful depictions of a serpentine creature, each scale embedded with sapphire or cerulean blue tiles. Everywhere he looked he saw similar artwork. Leviathan. All of it was a dedication to Leviathan himself. And at the very center of the library, just feet above the ocean water that claimed the walkways, stood a fountain lined in the same tiles and jewels as the creature had been. The statue that still functioned, pouring water from a vase dusted in gold, was the goddess herself. Or at least the prince could only surmise. 

Her face had spiderweb fractures, pieces of her cheek having fallen into the pool at her feet centuries ago. And where the goddess, currently cradled in his arms unconscious, had short hair, the statue was given hair that fell to her pedestal and into the fountain itself. 

“A mortal?” Echoed a voice from one of the many tiers of flooring that made up the library. 

Hien had to squint against the faint light that weaved throughout the railing, it looked as if fireflies were encased in the stonework itself to provide soft light. “A-Aye! The goddess is injured! Leviathan has brought her and myself here! Please, if you could offer us succor, her life could yet be saved!” 

Somewhere behind the prince, lounging in the caverns opening, Leviathan let out a gurgled hiss before resting its beaked nose against the half submerged staircase that made the libraries entrance. Hien had felt pity for the creature, only it’s head could fit. Leviathan, despite the injuries sustained, had bore them both to the bottom of the sea without qualm. Another miracle, Hien thought now, that the creature could conjure an air pocket for his riders while they descended to the depths. 

The voice overhead squeaked, a sound of books clattering to the floor soon followed. “Oh my! Quickly now! Place her in the fountain! Go!” A shuffling told Hien that the voice had departed, perhaps to reach them. 

Hien held the goddess closer, her head lulled against the crook of his neck. When she wasn’t barking orders or giving attitude, she almost seemed at peace. Though the prince knew not to be swayed by her looks alone; this was hardly sleep but death approaching. He could see it in the way her cheeks twitched as she grimaced, or the flutter of her closed eyes. 

With gathered strength he trudged forward, descending a small set of stairs where water soon swelled up to his knees. The stonework had begun to crumble here and there beneath him, he could scarcely make out the dark blotches just beneath the murky water. He picked his way through carefully, first feeling with the tip of his foot for purchase before moving forward. The water still rose, up to his waist before another small set of stairs appeared, leading up to the fountain. 

The fountain was larger than he would have guessed from his earlier position. Several goddess’ could have been laid beneath the glittering water with ease. Even the statue loomed over him, taller and far more detailed than he had given credit for. Each fold in her dress was clear as day, he swore he could even see the stitching in the stone. 

But the time to admire such craftsmen ship was gone. Hien shook his head, sitting himself down on the lip of the fountain. His eyes trailed to the goddess in his arms, absently sparring a moment to brush aside misty white hair from her cheek. Carefully he leaned over and lowered her into the water. 

Golden ichor spread throughout the fountains pooled water, shimmering and swirling like galaxies beneath the ripples. Her form sunk against the tiles, the pool swallowing her entirely. 

Hien watched impatiently as her blood bled into the fountains water. Had he been expecting a miracle? Magic to suddenly encase her and instantly heal her? 

“It’ll take some time, lad.” A voice once more called to him. Wadding in knee deep water, along one of the other pathways that lead further into the library, stood what Hien could only comprehend as a standing tortoise. A creature that looked human in the way he stood, two legs and two arms, but had a shell adorning his back encrusted in gold and jewels. Even his head seemed more turtle aspect than man. The creature ran a hand through a length of beard at his chin before chuckling. “Never seen a Kojin before? C’mon, let’s leave her alone to recover. You can regale me with how this all happened, eh?” 

Hien found himself shaking his head, too dumbstruck to register what the man had said at all. Was this tortoise truly speaking to him? Had he gone mad while traveling the ocean? The more he considered the thought, the more it made sense. Libraries do not just sink to the ocean floor. They do not make homes for a goddess. And what, he is supposed to believe she enjoys reading? Or Leviathan for that matter, who had snarled and hissed at him upon their first meeting, now a snoozing kitten at the entrance of this grand forgotten place. 

“I’ve lost my mind.” Hien wheezed, holding his head in his hands. “Ocean madness truly exists.” 

“You’re only mad if you insist on staying in wet garb all day, lad. You’ll catch a cold.” Snorted the Kojin as he began his retreat, climbing a staircase out of the water. “I’ll put on tea if you change your mind.” 

Loathe as he was to admit, this cavernous library was hardly warm. He had felt himself shaking with chill as they arrived, though in part it was worry that shook him. Fear that the goddess would die cradled in his arms. If she had passed, who then would he tell stories to late into the night? Of fabled cities that dotted the landscape just out of her reach? She seemed to love his storytelling... Maybe she did invest time into reading? 

Hien rose suddenly, curiosity filling his chest. This was home to the goddess herself. What other strange and interesting things did she keep secreted away down here? The prince, with new urgency, stood up to follow after the kojin. He spared only one glance back at the sleeping goddess and gasped. 

The fountain had filled itself with a rainbow of waterlilies. 

[castellankurze]

Warhammer 40,000: The Ophidian Knight

Holy crap.  Two pieces of 40k writing in under a month; I’m on fire.  Much like On the Shoulders of Giants this is an idea I’ve sat on for a long, long time and could never quite get it to come together until recently, but it’s simple enough in form: you know what we don’t see very much of in 40k?  Heel-face turns.

--------------------------

I am Alpharius.

I wear a thousand faces. I live a hundred lives. I am male. I am female. I am the one beside you. I am the one across the way. Ten thousand years have I fought my long war against the corrupt and rotting Imperium.  I have been a force of thousands, I have been a squad of five, and when I strike, I strike with the force of a legion.  Worlds beneath my touch have seen their fate altered radically as the wheel of the cosmos spins onward, turning, turning.

Reality is mutable.  Truth, as they say, is amoral.  Time is but a flat circle.  In the end, all things return to that most singular of statements:

I am Alpharius.  

One amongst many.  Many, made one.  I am legion.

Fate reaches out.  The wheel spins.

I am summoned, as one of five, to stand in readiness.  A mission awaits.  A crucial breaking point in the grand webs of fate.  We, five bodies of one will, are called upon to serve the greater part of ourselves that is our warband.  A singular opportunity, delivered unto us by many years of hard labor and the peculiarity of chance.

A Deathwatch kill-team - captured, interrogated, executed.  One of them, a member of the Black Templars chapter.  We are thus given a perfect window to rid ourselves of a particularly troublesome foe.  Within the greater area of the segmentum exists a splinter Crusade of that chapter of space marines.  A particularly large one: seven fighting companies strong - six now, thanks to recent losses.  In their wandering they have turned doomed last stands into narrow victories, secured worlds that would otherwise have been lost, and unbeknownst to them, they have stymied many of our efforts to undercut the strength of the Imperium in the local group.

For years the warband has worked in secret to prepare a trap for the Templars, seeding tales of a heretic foe and staging attacks to set the waters a-churn with fear and rumor of an unknown, unglimpsed threat.  The trap was set, the bait dangled.  What we had lacked was the proper lure.  Until now.

The kill-team had been en route to a watch fortress when they were intercepted.  The Inquisition knows naught of their fate.  To pass up this chance would be more than indolence - it would be vile sloth.

"Which of your squad is the best infiltrator?" asks the leader of the warband - who the ignorant would term a Lord.  I am indicated.  It is true, and I nod.  "Be warned.  The role you play will necessitate...permanent disfigurement," he states.

A cruelty of fate - but a necessary one.  Nothing is gained without price, and the wheel turns once more.

Our volunteering is a matter of course, and an intensive preparation follows.  It is known amongst the warband as the Becoming.  Hypnotherapy and study are alternated with psychic imprinting and modification.  The first of us becomes a son of the Great Angel, with lustrous hair and intense blue eyes.  Two others are modified into the pattern of Guilliman, faces reconfigured with aquiline and haughty features.  The one of us with the most implants is a natural fit for a descendant of the Gorgon.

For me, the process is especially rigorous.  The others will have cover as members of the Deathwatch, scions of other legions.  As a Black Templar I will be the lynchpin, the one upon whom the scrutiny will fall most acutely.  Everything must be accounted for.  The bio-mancers amongst our warband work their magics, bursting individual cells and growing new ones so that my skin tone is lightened by a hairsbreadth, my face rendered weathered, crows' feet inserted at the corners of my eyes.  My shaved scalp grows a short mane of dull, mud-colored hair, with grey clinging to my temples.  A stubble takes shape on my chin.  My eyes burn as they turn a pale shade of brown.

The changes are not all external.  Surgery removes the Betcher's Gland, the holdout weapon of the Astartes that enables the spitting of acid, which no son of Dorn would possess.  My vocal cords are damaged as a byproduct of the procedure, rendering my voice gravelly and leaving a scar at the side of my throat.  The Sus-An membrane is likewise removed, a procedure which underscores the gravity of the mission - if things should go badly, there will be no retreating into the deepest sleep to await healing or reinforcement.  I must succeed or die.

The final step of the Becoming makes use of another implanted organ.  A frozen cask is brought forth, and from it is scooped the still-bleeding progenoid gland of the Templar whose into whose life I shall step.  Rich with the genetic codes of Rogal Dorn and the lifesblood of the Black Templar, it tears readily between my teeth so that the Omophagea absorbs the fullness of the information stored within its genomes.  And with it...

I am Brother Viaten of the Black Templars.  

I am one hundred and thirty-seven years of age.  I have hunted traitor and mutant and xenoform all my life.  I have been seventeen years amongst the Inquisition.  I am a fine swordsman, as befits a follower of Sigismund.  I am dutiful, serious, and earnest.  I am pious as well, a disposition which sets me apart from my fellow kill-team members, but which nevertheless I must embrace if my mission is to be successful.

We are granted fine armor and weapons.  The Ordo Xenos does not stint in the arming of their pet space marines.  A great relic sword is granted to hang amongst my wargear, a fine bolt pistol accompanying it.  It is an enviable - though not, in form, unusual - armament for a man of the Eternal Crusade.  We will use our status as ambassadors of the Deathwatch to nestle close to the heart of the Crusade and gain proximity to the Marshal, and whatever officers accompany him, and when the moment comes, our masterfully-crafted weaponry will strike the head from their shoulders.  In the confusion that follows the warband with slaughter them to a man.  Upon such moments, the heartbeat between life and death, does the great wheel turn.

A minor cruiser spirits us into the night while the warband turns their bows towards a distant world, there to make ready the trap that will crush the Templar crusade and leave the Alpha Legion the unknown, yet undisputed, masters of the local reaches. The transit time is time for practice, for the final moments of preparation in battle and behavioral drill to make the lure seamless.  Upon our shoulders rests the full weight of the operation. Ten thousand years of history rests behind us.  Infiltrate. Overcome.  Conquer.

They say no plan survives contact with the enemy.  Ours does not last even that long.

Word had been that the orks had been broken, driven into full retreat across the surface of the shrineworld following a heroic efforts by the Templars.  But even in the waning moments of battle, death lurks behind every passing second.  The ork ships have broken beneath the Templar fleet, but as they flee ahead of the Astartes' bows, a ramship takes the chance presented and rapidly turns to intercept our cruiser and slams into our starboard side.  Pandemonium erupts.  Men dressed as Inquisition soldiers battle with the greenskins as the crew fights to prevent a catastrophic destabilization of the power core.

The foul xenos cannot be abided, but the mission is paramount.  We have a thunderhawk, and we escape the burning ship to make for the Templar fleet, blaring warnings of an urgent message.  The cockpit has room for four - pilot, copilot, navigator, gunner - and I am related to the forward hold, strapping myself into the crash webbing as the remainder of the kill-team bring all their considerable skill to bear on the task of extricating ourselves from the dire situation.  But it is not enough to escape the sudden birth of a celestial inferno as it blossoms behind us, and the dropship tumbles like a ration tin kicked down a cliffside, the hull white-hot.

It is supremely difficult to make an Astartes black out, but the disaster in the void accomplishes the task, and when I regain consciousness I am in a hangar bay with a man in the white armour of an apothecary bent over.  The cross of the Black Templars is painted on his shoulder.  When I manage to clear my throat and ask about the kill-team, he looks at me with cool eyes and informs me that I am the only one left.  The others are laid out nearby, shrouds covering their bodies - or what remains of them, extracted from the crushed cockpit of the thunderhawk.

I fight to my feet.  "I must speak to the Marshal," I say.

The apothecary rises with me, his wizened face closed of emotion.  "He is en route.  He would speak with you, as well, brother."  The 'brother' is added carelessly, as if nearly forgotten.  Despite his cool manner, he leaves me in peace to mime praying over the fallen members of my kill-team.  O capricious fate! That I, the key to our mission, be the only survivor!  From the beginning the plan had turned upon having a friendly face to ensure the Templars would heed the urging of the Deathwatch.  All might have been lost upon a few seconds' difference.

There is another part to my good fortune as well, with reasons that I have not chosen to reflect upon since the Becoming.  Had I been amongst the dead aboard the thunderhawk the Templars might have tried extracting the precious gene-seed of Dorn from my crushed body, an effort they clearly undertook with one of my fellows before abandoning the cause as lost.  Of all the implanted organs the progenoid glands are far and away the most precious, for it is only through them that the Astates may regulate our transhuman bodies and propagate our ranks through the march of history.

In the Alpha Legion, this is taken to its natural conclusion, the recognition of each Legionnaire as but a small piece of the whole, a cell in a great body.  I am Alpharius.  We are, all of us, Alpharius.  As I kneel over my squad - my fallen selves - I cannot help but touch a hand to the breastplate of my armor.  The Templars will think that I continue my prayers, and that is well enough, but beneath the ceramite a plate of adamantium is stapled into place beneath the hollow of my throat, attached to the Black Carapace implanted beneath my right pectoral muscle.

It looks like another war-scar.  An unfortunate blow from missile shrapnel, perhaps, or a strike from a plasma gun.  Beneath it, where the progenoid gland would have attached itself to my tissues, there is only scar tissue.  There is a primary progenoid, buried deep within my torso, but it could only be extracted in the event of my death.  The secondary progenoid, extracted once every ten years, is used in the implantation procedure that creates new space marines.  Its removal signifies a gelding, of a sort.

I am Alpharius.  Alpharius lives within us.  But succeed or fail in this mission, I will contribute no more to the greater whole of the Legion.

I am called.  I am Brother Viaten of the Black Templars, and I go to meet the Marshal of the Jorian Crusade.

The Marshal listens to my warning, in the company of the officers of the Crusade.  Amongst them is the apothecary, whose gaze remains flat and suspicious.  Does he suspect?  Is the scar upon my throat, the one upon my chest too coincidental?  He remains closemouthed, however, and permits me to present my case.

The argument for the Black Templars' intervention is a masterwork.  The Deathwatch kill-team had identified an uninhabited world - mapped as Tanas-335 - which lay just outside the furthest inhabited reaches of the segmentum.  A pirate band is suspected of sheltering there, staging attacks on isolated planets where the Imperial defenses are thin.  Upon investigation, the kill-team made the decision to approach the Templars for backup as more firepower is needed to oust the renegades from their stronghold.

The planet's existence - true.

The attacks upon the Imperium - true.

The rumors of a piratical group - true.

The Deathwatch's investigation of a distant world - true.

The request for the Templars' aid is the sole lie, and crucially it is one that cannot be disproven, as the decision is said to originate with the kill-team captured and slain by the Alpha Legion.  Were they still alive, my squad would each step into the role of a Deathwatch member, expanding upon the false circumstances of 'our' investigation.  As it is I must carry this burden myself.

The Marshal's name is Holst, and he is silent throughout my recitation, allowing his subordinates to pepper me with questions and demands.  I know this tactic well, a basic interrogation technique used by the Inquisition, and I do not let it sway my balance.  In the end, he lifts a hand mid-sentence to bring silence.  "I would have preferred more time to secure Gond, but the lion's share of the war is over.  The Guard and the Argent Shroud will handle the mop-up.  Disseminate orders that the fleet is to prepare for warp transit.  I want us ready to jump by week's end.  The Crusade moves on."

And that is it.  With as much ease as the snapping of a set of fingers, the Crusade fleet begins making its preparations.  I am astonished at the credulousness of the Black Templars.  A mere question-and-answer meeting and their faith in a man wearing their colors is such that they are prepared to shove off to war.  No extended interrogation, no astropathic queries for validation, not even a perfunctory mindsweep by one of the chapter's librarians - but I forget, the Black Templars do not employ such powers, thinking them the province of mutants and witches.

How is it that such fools have not only survived but thrived for ten thousand years?  It is a miracle I can only subscribe to capricious fate.

Similarly, I am added to the Marshal's retinue with hardly a second thought.  A Deathwatch veteran is a valued fighter and counsel, and without a ship of my own it is as well I travel with the headquarters of the Crusade.  It is insane.  I am a dagger poised to strike at the heart of their leadership, and they welcome me in with open arms.  I am invited to try blades against my fellows, in which I hold my own respectably well thanks to the intense conditioning of my mission prep, and I am even permitted a seat at the flagship's feasting table in the company of the chapter's Sword Brethren.  All is as it should be.

Except the apothecary.  He keeps me at arms' length, speaking respectfully but never warmly, his eyes suspicious whenever he crosses my path, and I cannot shake the concern that he has some inkling of my true nature, despite my efforts.  His name is Jaromir, I soon learn, and he is one of the longest-serving members of the Jorian Crusade at just over three hundred years of age.  A man - Astartes or not - does not live so long without a canniness, and I am tempted to eliminate him, but in the three weeks' travel between Gond and Tanas-335 there is no opportunity to quietly remove the threat.

Tanas-335 is little more than an ugly hunk of rock in space orbiting a dull brown dwarf star.  In composition it is not unlike the great forge world Mars, save its color is more a dingy brown-grey unlike the striking red of the Adeptus Mechanicus homeworld.  A thin jacket of gases clings to the planet as the barest excuse of an atmosphere.  As the Templar fleet closes there are reports of a base built into one of the planet's mountain ranges.  The base is real - discovered by the warband in centuries past, once a mining station of some manner long since abandoned.

The reports are troublesome nonetheless.  As the Crusade draws near and prepares for deployment, there is no sign of life on the surface.  The warband had intended to leave the appearance of a skeleton crew, a minimum of machinery running to suggest an unprepared, unprofessional clutch of renegades.  There are no ships reported in orbit either, which is equally troublesome - the warband had intended to leave a sacrificial lamb or two above the planet for the Templars to enjoy pouncing upon, thus leaving them open to reprisal.

Strangely enough I am not alone in my misgivings, though the exact reasons are of course not shared.  The Templars are suspicious of a trap, exactly what was not supposed to happen, and a few questions are shot my way which I must hasten to field.  I do know how why the facility seems so dead.  Perhaps the renegades are off pillaging somewhere and we have caught them while away from home.

In the end the Templars make the choice to close in and drop their companies onto the surface of the planet.  I accompany the Marshal's fighting company, silently waiting for the time to strike.  The surface of Tanas-335 is as dead as it appears from orbit; lifeless rock and dust.  The same goes for the station, machinery inert and life support below minimum levels, suggesting a deactivation of a week ago or more.

Ten thousand years past, the words were spoken: 'you are my space marines, and you shall know no fear.'  And yet my blade is at the ready as we move deeper into the facility, past living quarters and storehouses into the older mining construction beneath the surface levels.  It feels as if someone is observing me, and an itch develops between my shoulders as if anticipating a shot from behind.  

I am Alpharius.  I am well accustomed to improvising when plans go awry, but nothing here is as it should be.

There is a sudden burst of vox chatter as the fighting companies make the descent into the pit beneath the station, and a neophyte comes running to report to the Mashal, bearing a shocking find - the helm of a space marine, or at least part of one.  It is the upper-left quarter of a Mk.IV helm, iridescent blue.  It has been sheared away by an impossibly sharp blade that has left behind a perfect cut in the metal, without scrape or shard.  A horn juts from the curvature of the helm in the fashion of many a self-styled warlord of the renegade fleets that plague the Imperium.

It is immediately recognizable to the Templars as the color of the Alpha Legion.  And it is further recognizable to me as the helm of my own commander.  Something has gone terribly wrong.

As if the finding of the helm were some manner of silent cue, weapons fire erupts and reports of movement and attackers begin to flood the vox.  They come boiling up from the depths of the mining like a swarm of hornets, glistening steel insectoids with eyes that glow a bright green.  They are followed by monstrosities of steel and gleaming metallic warriors that appear almost skeletal in nature, armed with weapons that fire searing blasts of energy and poisonously green lightning.

I cannot help but feel I am made mockery as the wheel turns once more.  Fate, so fortunate, so kind, to leave me alive to see the mission through, only for my warband to fall to the supreme irony that the trap we had devised for the Templars was all along waiting for us to set our feet into the snare set out years ago by a sleeping Necrontyr dynasty.

The thought of it is enraging, and I hurl myself into battle alongside the Templars themselves.  My relic sword is a priceless weapon on par with the finest creations of the Inqusition, and it cleaves through the living steel of the Necron warriors with a roar and a crackle of flame everywhere it strikes.  It is all to easy to imagine that this unthinking, unfeeling machine-creature slayed this member of the warband, or that this one slayed that.  I roar vengeance, unafraid that my motives be questioned in the heat of battle as I strike down one after another.  There are more of them, however, always more, a sea of silver skeletons in which to drown.

A hand at my arm hauls me back.  The Black Templars are in retreat, withdrawing in the face of the threat posed by the waking Necron tomb.  The dreadfully advanced weaponry of the Necrontyr reaps a fearsome tally from the Astartes even in the span of a few minutes' fighting, and their numbers only swell as more and more of the xenos boil up from the depths.  There is no glorious stand to be made here, no heroic turning of the tide.  There is only a withdrawal, an ashen taste in the mouths of the fanatical crusaders, and it is equally bitter on my tongue as we draw back from the facility.  Somewhere along the way, I dash past a Templar attempting to hobble along on a single leg, the other having been shot out from under him, and it is a matter of a moment to grab hold of him and haul him bodily back towards the drop zone.

We flee the planet, carrying our wounded and our dead, and the Crusade fleet unleashes a devastating bombardment of lance and magma cannon upon the surface of Tanas-335.  The fleet carries no cyclonic warheads, but the concentration of sheer firepower upon one point soon turns the facility to molten slag and bores a hole almost thirty kilometers deep into the planet's crust.  The unleashed energy of the bombardment actually shifts the planet's orbit slightly and alters its day/night cycle, such is the fearsome wrath of the Black Templars.

Amidst the bombardment, a xenos ship is seen lifting from some manner of cavernous hangar beneath the planet's surface.  A great crescent in shape, it accelerates with truly staggering velocity and passes through the Templar fleet within minutes, swatting one Gladius-class escort as contemptuously as a man might swat a fly, and the minor damage inflicted by the repisal is scant comfort.  The alien ship disappears from the fleet's scopes as it flies from the system with impossible speed, leaving us to collect ourselves and count our dead.

In the days that follow a few fragments of capital ships are found amidst the barren system, and the final fate of the warband is put to rest as victims of the Necrontyr.  As a single, self-sufficient compartment in the whole of the Alpha Legion, the warband will be written off as a loss.  There will be none who suspect my survival, and I do not know how to contact them.

I am Alpharius.

For the first time in my life, I am terribly alone.

As Tanas-335 smoulders, the Crusade performs its last rites for the dead and turns its bows back towards the greater Imperium, making for an agri-world which reports invasion by the alien hrud.  The Templars pray and exercise their blade-work in preparation for another fighting action, looking forward to a more fulfilling combat than the one which we have left behind.  And amidst the preparation, Marshal Holst comes to find me.

I am seated in the quarters given to me - little more than a cell, spartan and stripped of anything but bare utilitarian needs.  The most I can offer the Marshal is a spare seat, which he takes, referring to a data-slate he holds in one hand.  "I have ordered our astropath make contact with the nearest watch-fortress of the Inquisition," he tells me.  "They are informed of the loss of their kill-team and the confrontation at Tanas-335."

I nod.

"I am given to understand that you were once a member of the Vaelson Crusade, before your secondment to the Deathwatch," he goes on.  "At last word, two years past, they had entered the Segmentum Pacificus and were engaged in battle in the Perseus Arm."  He deactivates the data-slate and looks into my eyes.  "Viaten, it is not in this Crusade's ability to despatch a ship more than three-quarters of the way across the galaxy to return a single marine to his proper place.  I have sent word to the Inquisition and they have acknowledged it is best you remain here.  Begin the rites to repaint your armour.  Your time in the Deathwatch has ended.  You are a Black Templar once more."

I nod again.

Holst tilts his head slightly.  "I had expected you to be more enthused."

What to say?  "My thoughts dwell on my brothers," is all I can think to dredge up.

He nods as if in understanding.  "You served with them for the better part of two decades," he says, thinking I mean the kill-team.  "It is well that you mourn them.  See the chaplains if you feel in need of counsel."  Then he reaches across the space between us to touch my knee.  "But as we speak of brethren lost, I have a request to make of you, Viaten.  The losses on Tanas-335 necessitate a redistribution of our fighting men, and I have several stragglers yet to be assigned.  If you would have it, I intend to see you made sergeant, and put them under your command."

I blink, once.  "Why?"

He smiles slightly.  "Your experience, for one, and your wrath against the xenos.  And your rescue of Brother Rudi.  You have the makings of a fine squad leader.  Think on it for a day," he urges before he rises and departs to leave me alone once more.

I spend some hours in thought.  What is the longer game?  This bait is too much, too easy.  No sane man would grant such a boon so generously to one he barely knows.

I walk among the Templars for a day.  The air is yet thick with the frustration of retreating from the Necrons, and the halls ring with sword-drill and prayer.  Amidst it all, a few call me by name, to compliment my tally against the foe.  Can these men, members of a chapter who has evaded the attention of no less paranoid an organization than the Inquisition, truly be so guileless?  It is displacing, and I wander deep below decks to one of the quieter chapels, and there sit alone for some time.

In the end I accept the offer, and a ceremony is conducted in which I am named Brother-Sergeant of the Jorian Crusade, and a clutch of space marines assigned to my command: Ernst, a reckless swordsman, Andreas, who is quiet and more strategic in his thinking, Hagop, who was born aboard ship and habitually responds 'aye, brother-sergeant,' to orders, and Otto, a lascannon-wielding veteran.  And Brother Rudi, young and eager even as he adjusts to his artificial leg.

It is difficult to adjust to such an eclectic mixture of humanity.  Unlike in the warband, where conscious effort would be made to erase any threat of distinction between selves, the Black Templars are open in their humours, not only recognizing but even making sport of the differences between man and man.  Still, when called to fight they become a finely-tuned machine, covering one another's weaknesses with their strengths.

They are bloodied soon enough, as the Crusade moves to turn back the hrud invasion.  Those of us with blades protect Otto and Hagop, who lay waste with lascannon and flamer.  By this time the old coats of paint are scrubbed from my armour, Deathwatch silver and...anything from before that replaced with the proper ebon of the Black Templars, the great cross taking up residence upon my shoulder.  This time the Astartes are the weight that carries the Imperial defenses to victory, scattering the hrud before us.

As we celebrate there is a hand at my shoulder, and I turn to see Apothecary Jaromir, his gaze no longer ice-cold.  "I have seen too many men, Astartes included, go to serve the Inquisition and become too much like the lords they serve," he admits to me.  "They become paranoid and mistrustful, seeing threats in every shadow, and they cannot return to the bonds of brotherhood that once filled their lives with meaning, and instead they see nothing in using their brethren as so many playing pieces upon some cosmic board.  Forgive my wariness, Brother-Sergeant, it is good to see you so well in the ranks of the Crusade."

"It is of no consequence," I assure him with a clap upon the shoulder.

I am Brother-Sergeant Viaten, and with the Eternal Crusade do I hunt the foes of humanity, without pity, and without remorse.

And without fear.

[casey-mitchell]

PROLOGUE (OR AN ODE TO HEARTBREAK) / SELF PARA

Dust gathers where it always does.

In things left untouched, mostly. Things that have become either of no use or simply forgotten in the advent of something new to take its place. Things such as his suitcase which, for his lack of travels, had been sitting underneath his bed for two years, trapped between the warm weight of him and the cold linoleum of the floor that, if it had just opened up enough—bore its fangs enough—could have swallowed him in his sleep.

And he’s almost sure it did. At some point, he must’ve fallen into a great abyss and woken up in a place so similar to the one where he was born into that the strange has been mistaken for the familiar, like a clever illusion played to trick his mind into living a life that didn’t belong to him. Talking to people he didn’t really know but could somehow utter their names with the practiced ease that came with making someone’s acquaintance. Touching what was meant to be intangible but he could feel it, right there, at the tips of his fingers— the glass finally breaking between himself and a very real, very possible world.

And he’d taken to this world quite well.

Such a world where he could see the sun rise from his window and not feel the immediate sadness of a day that would end. Where the rustling of the leaves on the trees greet him in a hymnal duet with the birds that have made their homes on its branches, much like how he’s made a home of this town over the past two years. And he’s grown to like it so much more than the Other Place, where the same people lived in the same houses along the same streets he’d grown up in, just that in this version of home, he could not only hear the birds singing; he could see them, too. And not only can he see the sun, when it rises, when it sets, but he feels it— warmth tickling his skin until it fades into the billowy moonlight rubbing soothing circles on his back in the wake of a nightmare.

He’d been the same way to most other things. The feeling of it, that is. He was startled with the realization that there were, in fact, other lives apart from his own, leading to his discovery of empathy, the genuine form of it, and has learned to speak in the same language as everyone else did. He learned to respond when he was asked; not with answers that he was told to repeat, but his own truths. He learned how to ask questions, too, and not only because it was integral in his nature to be curious, but more than that, he learned to care. To ask if someone was in pain, and if so, to point to where it hurt. So he learned to offer his comfort in ways that not even a bandage could fix. He learned to give more than what he’d previously been willing to lose: he cut off his fingers until he began to sever his own limbs, and when a piece of his heart wasn’t enough, he eventually carved the whole of it right out of his chest.

He learned to see past the fog of his own confusion— ultimately, it was only through experiencing the human complexity, breaking his bones and tearing his skin apart, that led to this understanding.

There were certain, very specific pains that had taught him such valuable lessons. The kind that just sends you into sweat-breaking agony and reduces you to tears while you spill your guts on the bathroom floor, or perhaps while you try to suffocate yourself with a pillow until you ultimately, and unfortunately, only fall asleep.

Heartbreak was the prime of it.

Heartbreak was the most of it.

It was a horrifying reflection of his cruelty. His grotesque, almost inhuman deformities. His spiteful self.

It gawked at him, its presence appearing on every surface where he could see it. It mocked him and it reminded him that his heart was tainted and impure and because he’d given so much of it—all of it, as a matter of fact—he may never get it back. And if he would, if he could, it will never revert to its original form, that which allowed him the capacity to love in the way most people could only attemp to, but ultimately fail.

He tried to drive Heartbreak away. Screamed insults and profanities at its face until it finally turned its back on him.

But when it knocked on his door, he offered his hospitality with a warm beverage and a place to sleep for the night. And if it wanted to, if it needed to, it could stay for however long it would like.

This was how Heartbreak made itself comfortable in his home.

In the mornings, he would wake up next to it, naked and glorious as it wrapped its arms around him, until its hands fitted around his neck, choking the life out of him. You deserve this, it said, before sending him off and giving him a kiss goodbye.

When he’d come home at night, he would find it in the same spot where he’d left it. He’d slide underneath the covers and feel its cold fingers tracing lines over his back until its nails would dig deep into his flesh, rip him apart, reach in, and break his spine. God, you deserve this. Biting his tongue to hold back any sound, he knew Heartbreak was right.

Some days, he would wake up first, nagged by the thoughts of killing Heartbreak in its sleep. He would hide a knife underneath his pillow, prepared to do the unthinkable when morning came. The closest he’d come was holding the sharp edge against its throat, but he couldn’t do it.

Once, in an act of desperation, he tried holding it against his own

He couldn’t do it. Not again.

He was in a time of prolonged moments of despair when he managed to look up and see the sun one day. It was always there, just that he’d somehow forgotten. And the birds, though distant, he could hear them. Faint echoes of his small, feathered friends calling him. It was when he knew.

He could no longer feel the sun here. And the birds were nowhere to be seen.

He pulled his suitcase underneath the bed while Heartbreak was asleep. Quietly, carefully. He blew the dust off its handles and gathered his things to carry with him for when he leaves.

The truth should’ve been acknowledged a long time ago, and the truth was this: he ruined this place. Not only for himself, but for those who came here looking to escape their own Heartbreaks. He didn’t think he could stay where he knew he’d played a similar role as his menacing lover, still in its quiet slumber on his bed. He couldn’t stay where he knew that to someone else, he was their Heartbreak.

He’s not very sure where he goes from here. The fissure on his floor underneath the bed was gone. And even then, even if he could go back, he wasn’t sure where he’d come from. It was a wide range of possibilities, an endless list of dimensions and other realities he could’ve been a part of. He could’ve still been in his childhood bedroom in his parents’ house, fantasizing about his very uncertain future. He might still be dreaming in his lover’s bed in the city, concealing a covert romance. It was also quite possible that he was still in a hospital bed in New York, doomed to eternal rest.

He might never even have been here at all, only existing as a character to a figment of someone else’s imagination that satisfies their fascination for beautiful macabre.

But wherever he is, dust gathers in the crevices of his footsteps along the places he’d walked, wedged in the seams of the clothes he’d worn, marking the traces of his dreams on the pillow where his head used to rest. Because dust gathers where it always does, and as it always does: in things left untouched, and in the simple, though unfortunate truth of it, may never be touched again.

[sid71blog]

Some upcoming films:

Apples are not the only fruit. I think that tomatoes are too, but I'm not sure; I'll look it up.

  Swirly Fortescue (Bobby Ball) is an ageing gay fella living in San Francisco with his younger lover Busty Hamilton (Dean Gaffney). The local government has decided to bulldoze the entire area that these two live in so that a lucrative bingo and whist drive hall can be built, and, due to Swirly having bet all their savings on Sunderland staying in the Premier League, they are totally skint, and have no choice but to move in with Busty’s homophobic, beer-swilling older brother Bruck (John Goodman). What follows is a moving look at the breaking down of barriers and prejudices, as Bruck slowly begins to appreciate musicals, John Barrowman, washing his pits and genitals EVERY day, and arty black and white posters of blokes with their big cocks out dotted all over the walls of his home, whilst simultaneously teaching them about indoor plumbing (not a euphemism), the correct belt fitting on your jeans so that just the right amount of bum-cleavage shows on the building site when you bend over, and farting into your mate’s pint in the pub when he goes for a shit.

  No-one came back alive; not even me.

  Drudge Hanktankerson (Clint Eastwood), is an old-timey sort living in a retirement home in California. Over time this cantankerous old codger befriends the young nurse L’il Sue Sugarstick (you won’t know her; crackin’ tits though), and eventually he begins to regale her with the harrowing tales of his time during World War Two. You will cry with her as he tells of his eighteen year old friend Brank Guthammmer dying screaming alone in a shell-hole, after a Stuka blows both his earlobes off; you will laugh as Drudge regales her with lighter battlefield moments, such as the time the lads painted a hand-grenade to look like a tin of Skol, and gave it to “Simple Dave” to pull the ring-pull; you will cry again as the lads bury Simple Dave ten minutes later; and you will have uncomfortable feelings, and mutter “this bit’s shit” to your girlfriend, during the bit where the young soldiers skinny dip in a French river.  

  Cropper.

  In this long-overdue Hollywood blockbuster based on the Coronation Street character, Channing Tatum is Roy Cropper, a man slightly flustered one reasonably busy Tuesday afternoon, when a minibus full of pensioners stops by and cleans him out of baps. In a performance already creating a strong Oscar buzz, Channing displays the full gamut of Roy’s emotional range, as we watch him ring Rita (Meryl Streep) to see if she has any baps in stock, and ask Gemma (Elizabeth Hurley) to mind the shop for a bit while he nips to the Cash and Carry. 

  Deaded to Death.

   Steven Segal (no way!) is Bronson Masticator, a retired UFC bigbone-weight world champion, down on his luck after gambling and drinking away all of his fortune. He now ekes out a living as a human panda in a shit zoo in the rough part of a rough town in a rough, intentionally vague South American country. He also bounces for a share of the tips and all the Fray Bentos pies he can eat at a local titty bar, run by the shady gangster Fuego “the castrator” Del Monte. One night Bronson witnesses a couple of Fuego’s heavies manhandling Paula Shane, the massively-popular drag tribute to Hi-de-Hi actor Paul Shane, currently on a massive stadium tour of South America, into the back of the club. Upon waking up the next morning in his rusty old caravan, he turns on his cracked old black and white television to see that the news is devoted to a $50 million ransom demanded for the return of Paula, and he must decide whether to do the right thing and take on his boss and assorted henchmen and free Paula, or keep his mouth shut and keep the Fray Bentos flowing.

  Paedon't you want Me?

   Gareth Possibly is a shy, thirty-four year old hamster-herder from Wolverhampton, who forms an attachment to Samantha Alannsuger, who moves in next door with her mother. A sweet bond unfolds between the pair of them over one long, hot summer, with Gareth slowly emerging from his brittle shell in the company of this talkative giggler, but complications inevitably set in as feelings go unreciprocated, and the nursery threaten to call the authorities if he doesn’t back off.

  Blood of the Chaffinch.

   Even eighteen year olds are advised to watch this accompanied by an older adult, so frightening is it rumoured to be. In Argentina forty two women fainted just upon seeing a badly-bootlegged t-shirt bearing the lead chaffinch hanging on a washing line, and at the premiere in Los Angeles one woman went into labour in the cinema, despite not being pregnant when the film started. The baby came out covered in BLOOD. Due to these haunting stories, the film has gained notoriety even before its world-wide release, and many reckon that it will do for chaffinches what Jaws did for Great Whites.   

  Cold cold Heart.  

   This Inuit romance wowed the critics at the inaugural Macduff film festival, causing many of the film critics to pretend to shed a manly tear, in the hope of a sympathy tug in the bogs afterwards.  Wee Beely Johnson is a lonely Inuit igloo salesman, doomed to a solitary life spent ploughing the snowwoman he has built most nights, or trying to convince himself that the three month old seal carcass in his front room is a comely mermaid. One night he finds a woman trapped by her leg in a bear trap he has set, and as she slowly recuperates in his igloo conservatory, feelings grow. It takes him four hours to feel his way through all the layers of fur, but eventually the relationship is consummated, and they live happily ever after. Well, until she starts to rot, being a fucking bear corpse that the mad old cunt has been shagging in the delusion that it’s a tidy bint.   

  The wrong Trousers.

   Hollywood live-action remake of Wallace and Gromit, starring Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson as Wallace, and Andy Serkis as a motion-capture CGI Gromit. In this slightly-tweaked story Wallace is a grizzled cop who doesn’t play by the rules, and Gromit is his loyal German Shepherd police dog. When investigating a drug deal the pair come to the attentions of the powerful drug lord “El Capitano”, who kills all of Gromit’s closest relatives, and blows up Wallace’s opulent beach-front property; that he can somehow afford on his policeman’s salary. The pair must hunt down El Capitano and put him out of business before he does the same to them, something not helped by Wallace’s alcohol problem. Also starring Charize Theron as the love interest. For Wallace, you sick bastard. 

  "Sorry Dad, you're breaking up, I'm just heading into a fudge tunnel". 

   This hilarious comedy stars Zac Efron as Billy Fronc, an eighteen year old who lives for partying with his friends. Mark Wahlberg is his seventeen year old buddy, “Stoner” Crud Mazzwick, and Adam Sandler is twenty year old layabout Freez Dirklange. After losing a bet with Crud’s older brothers Broxton and Steele, the three must spend a Saturday night at the city’s notorious gay club Oooooo, Get You! Initially reluctant to mingle in case they catch gay, after a few rounds of confidence-boosting and trouser-slackening tequila they are soon dancing up a storm on the dancefloor with their new friends.  Well, apart from Wahlberg’s character of course; he had it written into the script that he won’t let any “bummer” near his meat and two meat (no girly veg for Mark), and in fact his character gets into a fight with three burly homosexual men after one of them gives a lascivious look in the vague direction of Mark’s ashtray.

Mark wins.

Obviously.

   No room at the inn for Jar Jar.

   This sombre, black and white documentary follows what happens to Jar Jar Binks, after his unpopular starring role in some shit prequel or other. A sobering look at the American dream gone wrong, we follow a desolate Jar Jar as he repeatedly auditions for further acting roles, only to be turned away time and time again. We watch his slow descent into alcoholism, every drink punctuated by his sobbed mutterings of “Meesa fuckwit”, as he tortures himself watching a worn-out DVD of his only major role over and over again.

  No tulips in December.

   Sally Algernon (Dot Cotton) has been living in the old people’s home of her quiet part of Boston for seven years now. Her husband long dead and her children busy washing their hair, besides exchanging pleasantries with the nurses she has little to fill her days, apart from an ongoing feud with Gertrude Begonia (Honor Blackman) over who gets to sit in the best chair in the TV room. All this changes when a new gardener, Bowl Funterton (Russ Abbott), begins tending the gardens of the home (again, not a euphemism). Seeing his shirtless exertions, with his darts-honed physique and rippling liver spots, awakens feelings in Sally that she had thought long dormant. Soon she is flirting suggestively over a plate of Hobnobs, and being “accidently” caught walking cardigan-less in front of her window, with its deliberately open curtains. Unfortunately, there is a spanner in the works in her attempts to attract his attentions: she is surrounded by young, attractive NURSES, so she could ride a unicorn whilst juggling the Arsenal youth team and farting the theme tune to EastEnders perfectly, and she still wouldn’t be able to drag Bowl’s eyes away from young Samantha’s shapely arse.  

  A banjo for Billy.

   Cuthbert Faintlyaromatic and his wife Cynthia are dealt a crushing blow when, after seven years of trying, they finally have a child, only for young Billy to be born with the rare disease Kenny Loggins’ contraption. With knees for eyes, hairy teeth, a hunch-back AND a hunch-bum, continuous flatulence, an ingrown penis (on his tongue), and an allergy to his own nostrils, there is as yet no known cure for this horrible affliction, and those first few months tested their partnership to its limits. Just when things seemed totally desolate, a kindly doctor rescues them from despair, when he hands over an old banjo of his Grandads in exchange for Billy, as he needs something to lay on the floor in front of his living room door, to keep the draught out. Oh, did you think that maybe Billy would grow up and find meaning in his existence with the discovery of a musical gift or summat? Sorry. 

[aion-rsa]

The Umbrella Academy Season 2 Goes Back to the Past

https://ift.tt/eA8V8J

The world is running out of ‘60s clothing. 

The Umbrella Academy costume designer Christopher Haragon shares this news as he walks through a warehouse containing capri pants, floral-print dresses, and a large muscle suit costume with the $29.99 price tag still attached. It turns out that no textile lasts forever. 

“I know some people have started tearing up upholstery just to get the designs,” Haragon says. 

The 1960s have never really felt that far away for pop culture. Countless movies, TV shows, and comic books have returned to the dramatically fertile ground of the turbulent decade so often that it still feels inexorably tied to the present. But time marches on—buttons fall off of shirts, tie-dye patterns fade, and moths feast on fabric. Soon enough, all the tangible sartorial ties to the ‘60s will be gone. Before they are, however, Netflix’s premier superhero series is set on putting them to good use.

The Umbrella Academy finished its charmingly weird first season with a temporal cliffhanger. As super-powered (adopted) siblings Luther (Tom Hopper), Diego (David Castañeda), Allison (Emmy Raver-Lampman), Klaus (Robert Sheehan), Five (Aiden Gallagher), Ben (Justin Min), and Vanya (Ellen Page) Hargreeves prepared to teleport away from the moon-based apocalypse they wrought, it was unclear where… or when their jump would take them. As the costume department at Cinespace Film Studios in Toronto makes clear: the show had a very specific timeframe in mind for the Hargreeves. 

“I really loved the time period of the early ’60s,” showrunner Steve Blackman says. “There were incredible things going on in the country. And the assassination of Kennedy is just rife with conspiracy theories. So that’s why I decided to narrow it down to that window.”

Yes, you read that right. The Kennedy assassination, Dealey Plaza, and the grassy knoll are all prominently involved in the second season of a major Netflix superhero property. As Blackman describes, the Hargreeves arrive in Dallas this season in the early ‘60s but each is dumped out of the time stream in a different year. Klaus and Ben arrive as early as February 11, 1960, Five in November of 1963, and the rest fall in-between. That’s how The Umbrella Academy must brave both time and Dallas itself to find one another before a certain motorcade in the winter of 1963 brings on…another apocalypse. 

The Umbrella Academy season 2 is loosely based on “Dallas,” the second volume of the original comic book series from Gerard Way and Gabriel Bá. Just like “Dallas,” the second season of the show is funnier, bolder, and stranger than the first. Each member of the titular team, One through Seven, is happy to explain why. 

Number One – Luther is No Longer a Spaceboy

As Luther was fond of telling just about anyone willing (or unwilling) to listen in The Umbrella Academy season 1: “Dad sent me to the moon!” In ‘60s Dallas, he finds himself the same distance from the moon but metaphorically lightyears away from where he used to be. The hirsute, superpowered lug gets a job as a driver for a powerful Texan and puts those ape-arms to good use as an underground bare-knuckle brawler. Despite the violence (or perhaps because of it), Number One may never have been happier. 

“I think it’s quite interesting because Luther’s on his own path to begin with. I don’t think he’s as bothered about the Academy and having to be a leader anymore. He just has to learn to live in the real world,” Hopper says. 

Of course, traveling to the ‘60s means that the dead man who metaphorically haunted Luther and his siblings for all of season 1 is not currently dead. 

“He’s still dealing with the daddy issues he had from season 1,” Hopper says. “And bear in mind that his dad is around somewhere in the sixties. So there’s an element of him wanting to connect with his dad to have words with him.”

Given that the death of Reginald Hargreeves was the inciting moment for much of the action in The Umbrella Academy season 1, “Reggie” (Colm Feore) appeared sparingly. In season 2, however, the enigmatic industrialist is in the prime of his life and is 26 years away from learning about the mysterious, simultaneous birth of 43 super-powered children. 

Reginald continues to loom large over the Hargreeves kids, and according to Hopper, that dysfunctional family tissue is what makes the show work. 

“What I love about The Umbrella Academy, and the reason why I signed on to the project in the first place, is that I read these scripts thinking, ‘I’m not reading a superhero script, I’m reading a family drama.’ That’s at the core of this show. And that’s why I find it so much more interesting than actually than a lot of other superhero TV shows.”

Number Two – Diego and Lila

Of all The Umbrella Academy members, perhaps no one gets a more fantastic ‘60s glow-up than the sullen knife-thrower Diego. While season 1 found  Reginald’s Number Two with a crew-cut vibe, Diego of season 2 gets to let his hair down a bit… literally.

“Well, he’s never really felt like he fit in, so it’s not so much out of his comfort zone to be in a different era,” Castañeda says. “In the first one, he’s kind of trying to stay away from the Umbrella Academy. In the second one, he’s almost trying to bring them all together.”

Joining Diego in that mission to reunite his brothers and sisters is one of the season’s several new characters. Ritu Arya portrays Lila, a young woman who Diego meets in a mental hospital and then can never quite seem to shake afterwards. Diego and Lila frequently interact in the way that Diego seems to prefer to interact with everyone: through fighting. 

“Oh, man. She’s a badass,” Castañeda says of both Lila and the actress playing her.

Aryu’s character has no analog from the comic series but she quickly proves to be an invaluable part of the show’s universe and potentially an important piece of its lore. If nothing else, she certainly helps contribute to season 2’s increased investment in physicality. This batch of episodes ups the ante in terms of action. Castañeda even took some time in-between seasons to travel to Thailand and pick up a little Muay Thai so that he could be a more active participant in the season’s many fight scenes. 

Still, despite the intensified focus on fistfights, Castañeda has an unusual comparison to make for season 2. 

“I binged 10 seasons of Friends in five months this year. You can look at each character in Friends and they’re so relatable to the characters in any successful TV show. You can write it, but can you put the pieces together with the right people and actors to come in and bring those relationships? Based on the first season and what we’re doing now in season two, that formula of ‘there’s love underneath all of this chaos’, I think it sells.”

Number Three – Allison and the Civil Rights Struggle

The Umbrella Academy season 1 came with a refreshing commitment to diversity. Though the comic book team is all-white (which is almost a statistical impossibility given the premise that 43 babies were spontaneously and randomly born around the world), the Umbrella children in the show come from many different backgrounds. 

The Hargreeves’ racial and cultural identities play a major role in season 2. For one thing, it means that the family’s sole Black member, Allison, now finds herself separated from her siblings in Texas at the height of the Civil Rights Movement. This presents an opportunity for Allison that actress Emmy Raver-Lampman doesn’t take lightly. 

“We find Allison in kind of a tricky pickle,” Raver-Lampman says. “She arrives alone and in an era and in a place that’s really dangerous for a woman that looks the way that she does. I think she’s having to quite literally fight for her life in many ways.”

Allison Hargreeves has arguably the most potent power of all her siblings. The things she says tend to come true. By simply opening a sentence with “I heard a rumor,” Allison can manipulate reality to a stunning degree. Her brother Five has described her powers as God-like on more than one occasion. Still, Allison is famously reticent to use the full extent of that power. And the intense social situation she finds herself in may make that reticence a little more frustrating for viewers. Still, Raver-Lampman sees the logic behind Allison’s fear.

“(Her power) has always backfired maybe not immediately, but in the long game. She sees them as more of a curse than a blessing. How she’s using them or if she’s using them or when she wants to use them is a part of her process this season is. Am I going to try to just be Allison or am I going to be this superhero version of Allison?” 

Number Four – The Cult of Klaus

There is some absurdist humor inherent to The Umbrella Academy. One of the main characters is essentially a gorilla-person after all. But while the show premiered on the same day as its spiritual cousin Doom Patrol last year, it’s hard to argue that Doom Patrol didn’t defeat it in the “outright madness” column.

That dynamic may change in season 2. As for why, look no further than Klaus’s arc. Yes, as the promotional material has suggested, Klaus is indeed a cult leader in this show’s version of the ‘60s. It’s undoubtedly a joy to see Number Four in flowing robes and Manson-esque hair. For actor Robert Sheehan, however, there’s a logic to Klaus’s journey beyond mere novelty. 

“We were like, ‘how do we make him keep changing?’ He’s this kind of amorphous creature,” Sheehan says. “We did talk about the idea of starting a cult because so often you have a suspicion that at the top of a cult is somebody who’s letting on like they have answers, wisdom, knowledge, and they can see beyond the veil, but in fact they’re playing a role just like the worshipers are.”

Klaus is in an unusual position among his family as, apart from Five, he is the only one to have time traveled back to the ‘60s previously. That sort of thing (along with a lifetime of drug abuse) can make a guy pretty confident… confident enough to start a cult. 

Number Five

One interesting development of The Umbrella Academy’s trip back through time is that Number Five is now not the only seasoned time traveler in his family. In fact, Five spends the least amount of time in the early ‘60s as any of his siblings, with the timestream booting him out in late 1963. Still, it’s not like he doesn’t have enough experience with the decade already given that season 1 reveals he was the time-travelling assassin originally charged with killing Kennedy, something he opted not to do. 

“I don’t really think there’s too much of an adjustment on Five’s part in terms of being in the sixties,” Aiden Gallagher says. “Everyone’s been here for a long time, so they’ve had time to evolve, but for Five, it’s just been like a few weeks. He’s still in the schoolboy shorts.”

Even in those schoolboy threads, however, Five remains a threat to any of his family’s potential enemies. The Umbrella Academy comes up against Commission interference this season, this time led by a crew of silent pale-haired killers known as The Swedes. As such, Gallagher once again gets to paint Five’s cherubic visage with blood from time to time. 

“There are a lot more fight scenes this season… a lot cooler fight scenes. I think the best summary for what season two is and how that affects all the actors is that it’s the same show, but a lot bigger.”

Number Six – Ben, The Deathly Time-Traveler

The Umbrella Academy is the kind of show that leads to some truly unique questions. A necessary question for season 2 is “wait… can ghosts travel through time?” It’s a tricky metaphysical concept that even Ben actor Justin Min can’t quite wrap his head around. 

“Very good question. I’m confused most of the time I’m here,” Min says.

Rest assured, Ben makes the trip back to 1960 with Klaus and the pair get to continue their living and the dead buddy comedy routine. 

Ben was undoubtedly a breakout character from The Umbrella Academy season 1, which was unexpected given that his character doesn’t appear in the flesh (or the ectoplasm) in the original comic series. Blackman and the writers decided to put Klaus’s ability to commune with the dead to good narrative use and include the Hargreeves’s fallen brother as a more consistent character. 

Though Ben remains in his black “ghost hoodie” and doesn’t get to partake in the same colorful ‘60s stylings as his siblings, he nevertheless gets an expanded role this season. And for that, Min credits The Umbrella Academy fandom. 

“My role last season was quite secondary and to see the fans rally behind the character was more than I could have ever hoped and imagined. I think it’s one of the main reasons why I was able to be propelled into this season with a little more agency because I think they felt like that’s what the fans wanted.”

As a gift to those same fans, Min also offers up one hell of an endorsement of this season’s finale. 

“I screamed for a very long time after I read the final scene. It was nothing like I ever expected or imagined. And I say that in the best possible way. It tops what happened at the end of season one, because I don’t think anyone will expect what happens at the end of the season.”

Number Seven – Vanya  Finds Herself

Speaking of endings: What’s in store for The Umbrella Academy’s resident world-ender this year?

Vanya (with an unhelpful assist from Luther) was the source of the apocalypse in season 1, so thankfully the only way to go from there is up. Vanya loses her memories on arrival in Dallas (it’s not as lame as it sounds) and is taken in by Sissy (Marin Ireland) and her son Harlan. 

“I think she finds a nice sense of peace and solace,” Page says of her character “Because we ended a season where so much came to the surface for her, Vanya is definitely much more comfortable in her skin. She’s more confident. It’s freed her in so many ways.”

Page occupies an interesting position on The Umbrella Academy. Though Number Seven in Reginald Hargreeves’s heart, the well-known actress is number one on the callsheet. And in the second season of this endearingly goofy comic book adaptation, she seems more assured within the world, successfully lobbying the costume department for Vanya to dress “more masc,” and staying positive during a particularly tough scene. “You’ve been tortured before clearly,” someone on set notes as they adjust the restraints on a chair holding Vanya down. Page is also more comfortable shouldering the responsibilities of the show’s most explosive character.  

“The power is fun and exciting, especially in terms of how it manifests and some stunts and stuff this year. Playing someone whose power is connected to their emotions, and what happens if we aren’t being mindful of them, I think that’s what’s so exciting. Also: being able to fuck people up. That’s fun.”

“Fun” is the operative world for The Umbrella Academy season 2. The hard work of world and character-building is mostly out of the way. And while the Hargreeves family and the actors who play them find themselves in a new environment, at least they have each other this time… eventually.

Per Umbrella Academy lore, on October 1, 1989, 43 women around the world suddenly gave birth to extraordinary individuals. Reginald Hargreeves found seven of them and through sheer force of his odious will made them into a team. On October 1, 2019, The Umbrella Academy team took a moment after a hard day’s work of filming to commemorate their “birthday” with a cake.

View this post on Instagram

on the nineteenth hour of the first day of october, 2019, we all wished the hargreeves siblings a very super birthday 🖤☂️🔪🐙

A post shared by The Umbrella Academy (@umbrellaacad) on Oct 1, 2019 at 4:00pm PDT

Of course, being a member of The Umbrella Academy comes with its own occupational hazards. As Emmy Raver-Lampman explains, sometimes even a special occasion is preceded by an explosive incident involving fruit all over your priceless ‘60s clothes.

“We all got covered in pineapple and then it was our birthday.”

The post The Umbrella Academy Season 2 Goes Back to the Past appeared first on Den of Geek.

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[tortuga-aak]

The best multi-platform games you can buy

The Insider Picks team writes about stuff we think you'll like. Business Insider has affiliate partnerships, so we get a share of the revenue from your purchase.

The Insider Pick:

Whether you have a PlayStation, an Xbox, or a Windows PC, you can play any of these great multi-platform games. Our favorite titles include “Doom,” “The Witcher III: Wild Hunt,” “Resident Evil 7: Biohazard," “Metal Gear Solid V,” and “Overwatch.”

The game industry is at an interesting crossroads right now. PC gaming has become hugely popular over the past decade or so, with many people even building their own custom machines. As a result, consoles makers have increasingly had to compete with stronger and more regularly-updated computer hardware. Many gamers still prefer consoles due to their lower cost and convenience of use, but there’s no arguing that these systems, by their nature, lag a bit behind PCs when it comes to delivering a bleeding-edge graphical experience.

Since the Nintendo Entertainment System, game consoles have typically followed generational releases with new ones coming out every five or six years. We may be witnessing the end of this traditional launch cycle, however. In an attempt to close the gap between gaming PCs and consoles, Sony and Microsoft have offered more frequent hardware refreshes with machines like the PlayStation 4 Pro and Xbox One X. These units, while still technically falling within the current console generation, boast beefed-up hardware that allows developers to push them further and stay up-to-date with modern trends like 4K and VR – features that have been available on PC for a few years now.

This ongoing arms race between console and computer hardware has also seen a notable decrease in the number of system exclusives. The PC, Xbox, and PlayStation each have their own libraries of unique games that are particular to each platform, but we’re increasingly seeing games released across multiple systems. Compare this to a decade or two ago, when the vast majority of games were exclusive to one platform and these “multi-plats” were far less common.

If trends hold, then more frequent console hardware updates and multi-platform gaming appear to be the future of the industry. This is good news for PC and console gamers alike: Players who love the pick-up-and-play convenience of consoles don’t need a beefy custom computer to play the latest AAA titles at high resolution, and dedicated PC gamers now get to enjoy many franchises, such as Final Fantasy or Metal Gear Solid, that were just a few years ago confined to specific platforms like Nintendo or PlayStation.

The sheer number of multi-platform games available today makes it difficult to narrow it down to just five. And although things like DLC and micro-transactions have caused their fair share of controversy in the modern industry, one thing is clear: There have been some truly awesome titles coming out recently from developers around the world, and the past few years have been great for gaming.

In this guide, we’ve done our best to smoke out what are arguably the five best multi-plats available on the PC, Xbox One, and PlayStation 4 so you can enjoy them all no matter what system you prefer.

Read on in the slides below to find out why we love “Doom,” “The Witcher III: Wild Hunt,” “Resident Evil 7: Biohazard," “Metal Gear Solid V,” and “Overwatch.”

The best first-person shooter game

Id Software

Why you'll love it: Id Software’s 2016 “Doom” delivers all of the insane and over-the-top FPS gameplay that made the original famous, offering the classic first-person shooter experience that gamers have been craving for years.

There are few games that can be called “legendary,” and id Software’s 1993 classic “Doom” is certainly one of them. Although it wasn’t the original first-person shooter, “Doom” remains perhaps the biggest pioneer of the genre and has sold more than 10 million copies to date.

The game is still revered today for many reasons: Its intense high-speed run-and-gun play style, its sprawling open level design that encouraged exploration, its famous silent protagonist (known only as “Doomguy”), and, naturally, its over-the-top violence, which was relatively unique — not to mention extremely controversial — at the time.

Id Software has developed a number of successful sequels and re-releases over the years, but the studio’s pledge to return to the original formula made 2016’s “Doom” the most ambitious of them all. “Doom 3” was the most recent release before then, and while it earned high praise from gamers and critics, it traded the high-speed shooter gameplay for a more fleshed-out narrative and a brooding survival-horror atmosphere. In contrast, the new “Doom” was built from the ground-up to capture the spirit of the golden days of first-person shooters, and at this, it truly excels.

A full reboot of the franchise, 2016’s “Doom” once again takes place at a research facility on Mars where a portal to Hell has been established. Doomguy (now referred to as the “Doom Slayer”) is a legendary demon hunter who has been trapped and kept asleep by the forces of the underworld. After the armies of Hell invade, you, as the Doom Slayer, are awoken and tasked with repelling the incursion and sealing the portal. All the classic ingredients are there: Familiar demons, familiar weapons, and the familiar fast-paced and violent gameplay.

But “Doom” is more than just an old-school FPS with a new coat of paint. This pony comes with a few new tricks all its own, like vertically-oriented level designs that take advantage of Doom Slayer’s new-found jumping and climbing abilities — a far cry from the original game where Doomguy couldn’t even look up and down, let alone jump around. The open stages encourage exploration in true Doom spirit, standing as a refreshing counter-point to many modern shooters which send you running from cover to cover down long corridor-like levels.

Another new combat element is the “Glory Kill,” which allows you to perform brutal melee executions on wounded enemies which yields extra ammunition and health bonuses. There are no recharging shields or health packs for you to rely on here. Instead, Doom Slayer heals his wounds only through violence. There is also no cover system that encourages you to hide behind obstacles or avoid fire – everything forces the player to keep pushing forward, making for a fast and furious experience that harks back to first-person shooters of decades past.

“Doom” stands as a gory, adrenaline-fueled triumph of old-school game design and is proof positive that in a sea of modern shooters, sometimes all players want to do is rip and tear.

Pros: Fun and fast gameplay exemplary of the glory days of first-person shooters, an intense metal soundtrack, and excellent level design that rewards exploration

Cons: Somewhat repetitive campaign, a lackluster multiplayer suite, and the extreme violence may be too much for some

Buy "Doom" on Amazon for the Xbox One, PlayStation 4, or Windows PC for $29.99

The best action role-playing game

CD Projekt Red

Why you'll love it: A great story, excellent combat, and a breathtaking open-world make “The Witcher III: Wild Hunt” one of the best action role-playing games of all time and easily the best entry in CD Projekt Red’s award-winning series.

The Witcher series has had an interesting run. The action-adventure role-playing franchise, developed by the Polish studio CD Projekt Red, came out of nowhere in 2007 with “The Witcher” (the studio’s debut), which became a sleeper hit.

It went on to spawn two successful sequels: “The Witcher II: Assassins of Kings” greatly expanded upon the original, adding an enhanced combat system and more dynamic open world, while “The Witcher III: Wild Hunt” masterfully perfected these elements, earning its place as one of the greatest gaming achievements in recent years.

CD Projekt Red has stated that “The Witcher III” will be the last game to feature Geralt of Rivia — the titular “Witcher,” or monster-hunter — as the main character, and it’s the perfect game to cap off the trilogy. The plot of the series is based on popular fantasy novels by Polish author Andrzej Sapkowski. The player, as Geralt, is tasked with bringing down a myriad of dangerous otherworldly creatures as he tries to find his daughter, who is herself being hunted by a supernatural force.

“Wild Hunt” drops you into a wide-open world — more than three times larger than that of “Skyrim” — and lets you tackle the main storyline at your leisure, giving you plenty of freedom to explore and complete the many side-quests available throughout the game. You control Geralt from a third-person perspective, duking it out with enemies both human and non-human utilizing a variety of melee and ranged weapons along with a number of magical attacks. The hack-and-slash action-adventure gameplay is layered with an RPG system that lets you level up your character, strengthening your skills and unlocking new abilities.

The gameplay is fluid, fun, and challenging, but where “The Witcher III” really stands apart is in its epic world design. With “Wild Hunt,” CD Projekt Red set out to redefine sandbox games by creating an organic, breathing, dynamic world that “lives apart” from the player character and his actions.

It worked: The realm of the Northern Kingdoms feels more real than ever before, equally dark and beautiful, and it truly comes alive with changing landscapes, ecosystems, and human communities. You don’t just feel like a character who was dropped into a static game environment of pre-programmed NPCs, but instead like a smaller part of a larger, truly active organic world that moves and evolves around you.

The breathtaking visuals, wonderfully-designed living world, great action-RPG gameplay, and well-written story are all capped off by a fantastic soundtrack executed by the Brandenburg State Orchestra using older instruments to create an authentic late Medieval/early Renaissance sound.

“The Witcher III: Wild Hunt” is also a meaty game: The main story alone will take you around 40 to 50 hours to complete, but all of the side quests, included DLC, and ample opportunities for exploration (which you will find yourself doing a lot) can keep you busy for well over 100 hours.

Pros: A huge and dynamic open world that truly feels alive, compelling story and character writing, excellent action-RPG gameplay, breathtaking graphics with masterful art direction, and a superb orchestral soundtrack

Cons: Some bugs and optimization issues (although this has mostly been patched), too many minor “fetch” quests that interrupt the main story, and the violence and sexual themes are not suitable for young players

Buy "The Witcher III: Wild Hunt Complete Edition" on Amazon for the Xbox One, PlayStation 4, or Windows PC for about $27.99 on sale or $59.99 originally

The best survival-horror game

Capcom

Why you'll love it: “Resident Evil 7: Biohazard” represents a true return to fundamentals for Capcom’s long-running survival-horror series, delivering all of the atmospheric terror that defined a whole genre while still managing to put a modern spin on a classic formula.

In 1996, Capcom released “Resident Evil,” a classic that defined an entire genre of survival-horror games. Many developers attempted to imitate it with mixed success, and after a few well-received sequels, even Capcom grew weary of the standard formula it had created. “Resident Evil 4,” while massively popular, signaled a major change in focus for the series away from brooding slow-paced gameplay with a focus on scavenging and survival towards a faster, more action-oriented style that felt more like popular third-person shooter games.

A few lackluster sequels to “Resident Evil 4” were met with a lukewarm reception from players and critics. Gamers increasingly clamored for a new entry in the series that was true to the experience of the originals, and thankfully, it seems Capcom finally took the hint. Enter “Resident Evil 7: Biohazard,” a triumph of game design that heralds a much-needed return to the fundamentals of survival-horror that Capcom had largely pioneered.

As popular and beloved as the original Resident Evil formula was, it was not without its criticisms. The third-person view with pre-rendered environments came with a control scheme that felt clunky and awkward at times, especially during combat.

For “Biohazard,” Capcom instead implemented a first-person view (the first main entry in the franchise to utilize this, although a few unsuccessful spin-offs had tried it before). This goes a long way in addressing the problems with the old control scheme while greatly enhancing your immersion into this terrifying game-world.

The setting of “Resident Evil 7” will feel instantly familiar to fans, dropping the player into an old mansion that harks back to the setting of the first title. Instead of zombies, however, this house is inhabited by the bizarre Baker family along with bizarre humanoid creatures known as the “Molded.”

The player, as a man named Ethan, must use whatever means available to survive — stealth, caution, and escape are the focus here rather than combat, although you do get a number of melee weapons and firearms. Ammo is precious, forcing you to scavenge for it along with first aid supplies, adding to the tension and to the oppressive sense of danger and fear.

The return to the slower pace and exploratory gameplay also sees the return of the classic puzzles that the player must solve in order to proceed, but sadly, these are sparse and easily overcome. The boss battles also leave something to be desired, although this is not enough of a detriment to mar the fantastic atmosphere and edge-of-your-seat gameplay. “Resident Evil 7: Biohazard” is a true sequel, not a reboot or re-imagining, and some familiar faces appear near the end of the story to help out Ethan.

The final scene even alludes to the existence of a re-formed Umbrella Corporation, so it’s safe to say that Capcom is far from finished with this series or its story — and as long as the devs stick to the excellent formula of “Biohazard,” then fans of Resident Evil have a lot to look forward to.

Pros: Immersive and terrifying survival-horror atmosphere, a true return to the classic roots of Resident Evil, a great VR mode, and the new first-person perspective works extremely well

Cons: The puzzles are too easy and too few, the boss fights pale in comparison to the rest of the game, and it’s definitely not recommended for the faint of heart

Buy "Resident Evil 7: Biohazard" on Amazon for the Xbox One, PlayStation 4, or Windows PC for $49.99

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[princebxte-blog]

Chapter 3 || Mon sort

т r a n ѕ f o r м d

It had been a full year since I had last seen my mentor, less then a year since the strange woman came to visit and my appearance had changed rapidly I couldn’t breathe, because of what I had become. My life was a mess in more ways than one. I could no longer properly conduct myself in the role that was passed down to me through my parent’s lineage. Everything had been spoiled, and I failed this witch who cast a spell on me. Her conditions proved to be too great for me to match up to, and I knew that I was doomed. I even attempted to throw a ball on Christmas, but because of the rumors… No one dare attended. It was all a matter of time. But then, nothing… My servants offered me gifts to lift my spirits, for they were also afraid… Not quite understanding what all was happening, but knowing that the others had disappeared… I merely scoffed disapproval, but the only reason I was such a brat was because I was afraid… The minutes had ticked down to the very second of a full year, I closed my eyes expected to die…To feel pain. But then nothing. Nothing happened My panic quieted and I was relieved… Perhaps… Maybe this spell was not real? Maybe my servants had been disappearing for other various reasons and I had not looked into it… Maybe this was all just simple folly. My court composer offered to play me a tune for the season and I commended him to play. As he did so, I began to think that I was played a fool and this was all a joke. My servants might even be in on it, and my mind was beginning to tell me that everything and everyone was a lie. They all just wanted to get close to me to torture me and take pleasure in tormenting what was left of the stone cold heart I had. They didn’t know what they were dealing with… Making a comment about the song Forte was playing A sudden knock was heard at my door. What is this? It can’t be… That minutes have passed… Maybe another stranger in the night. This time it was the chilling dark shadow of a specter. My eyes widened as on long bony finger lifted to point at me accusingly. Making my heart bang around in the cage my ribs formed within the concave of my chest. Just like that…An immense feeling of stretching overcame me. I looked down at my breast, grasping at the tunic I wear, tearing it away so to see what was transpiring. Complete horror filled me at what I was able to witness. My own organs began pushing against my flesh from the inside, frightening me to the core. I was going to die! It felt like my entire body was going to implode on itself with each transforming part of my anatomical form. How could this be happening to me??My doom was past due. The voice in my head was nothing by laughter, like it had won some prize. What is this? Why are you laughing? This is no joke, this is nothing to celebrate. But it felt almost animalistic, inhuman… unreal and uncontrollable. This part of me was not I I think… That part is what was the most frightening of all…. I was not me. I was never me… Am I a prince now?

M o n S o r т

You know I never chose to be like this… I ... I never wanted this I never wanted anything but my own … mind It’s like trying to swallow knives, what sort of torture my body and mind went through… Trying to cycle through and expel these large metallic pieces that do nothing but cut through me, and make me bleed on the floor. The years were a blur. Endless streams of darkness, reminders… Mirrors, and reflections. Fragments of light taunting me, and the terms of my conviction became perspicuous during the days of the sun, when my world would cast a more definite shadow than the bleakest of days. I could no longer maintain my hair, my clothing, my body or my mind for all went rampant, and the witch that did this to me… Was more right then a judge or jury combined. I was imprisoned here, with no way out all because of my foolish ways that could be no one's fault but my own. No pity was expected, nor was it desired. I wanted to find no comment on my face, for it was as ugly as the heart that I had. This was a hopeless spell with no why to cure, and even if it was described to me in multiple fashions I was doubtful. For who could ever love a Beast? My fate, was that my entire castle, my servants-family, everything that I had associated with at that current time would become a part of the guilt that would weigh on my heart, and of course the spell that was on myself. They would all forever be as it was made to be because of me. The fate of everyone and myself was the spell unless I could come to terms and risk it to find someone to love me. Though, I would never leave my forsaken fortress where I found sanctuary and solitude at once. How would finding anyone to love me in that way that of a couple in matrimony where I am stuck here in this dark place? But of all things, what human would love me in such a way as the way I am? Impossible Is what I’ll tell you… There was no way anyone could ever know of my castle for it was stated thati n the spell, my kingdom, my presence, life and the lives of my servants were all forgotten. No one knew of us, and they went on living ten years in ignorance. At the same time I had been gifted the lovely reminder of not only my reflection in mirros and waters, but the reflection of my time in a rose. It was the delicate symbol of my hopeless chance at finding my perfect match… If any petal fell, it was to signify the passed time in which I had a chance to meet the end of this curse, it was also said that if the rose was made to die in any way… I too would die… If any outside force were to wreck the beauty of this fragile life… I would be as a Beast forever, and the rest of the castle would be as it was in result of my actions. Almost like it were within another dimension Am I a prince now? I immediately dismissed this. All of it. This rose will die, and will kill the humanity in us all before I could find a special someone to be the savior to our curse… If anyone were to find there way in the castle, I’d have them suffer with me the cold fate my life was destined for. Even so… The curse could not be complete without another poor reminder. A window. A mirror… Reflection. Holding a mysterious and great power, this relic was gifted to me by the same one who cursed me, as a window to look into the world I had missed that had forgotten me. The people were all so complacent, and ignorant. Of course they had forgotten, but no one… Not one person could wonder what things were the way they were… Always the same. Stuck in the same life.

M a n and M o n s t e r

This was 10 years. Day after day… I began to forget the man and the beast. I began to forget what I was, and started to become the voice in my mind. The voice that drove me to animalistic instincts. This thing within me was possessing over my thoughts, my muscles and desires. Everything was about survival. The primitive instincts, and of course the need to make things suffer. I regret to say the sort of things I did as the chimera-like animal I was. Lurking in the shadows where no one could see my hideous form, but free within the woods of the black forest. Hunting, smelling and taking in the land as if I were the king of it. It was somewhat liberating in a sense, to be like this… But the human part of me yearned to have more, and then there was the regret and agony of never getting what I truly desired as a human all because of my mistakes. There were plenty of days where I tried acting normal. Tried dressing myself, feeding myself proper meals, drinking tea, sitting in chairs. What I did most was sit in front of the fireplace, gaze into the smoldering embers and the flicker of the flame… mesmerized by it’s dance in hopes that it might distract me from the other side of me that wished to run from it. I also daydreamed. Even if it were an awful means of torture. I would live in the pictures along the halls, and the architecture that was once designed to portray a small piece of heaven yet now seemed to have changed to a striking resemblance of what it might be like to live in hell. Whenever I day dreamed and saw myself as a man, I’d get angry, and tear apart whatever I could put my claws on. My claws… I lived in hell The voice told me I’d never escape this fate I agreed and listened to it Every day I put a scratch mark in the wall of my bedroom… This room become filled with scratch marks, and I could count a year… It felt like my once well educated mind had dumbed down to nothing. Perhaps it was because I dare not try to play a piano. Lest my nails scratch the beautiful ivory…. I forgot how to read… I forgot how to do a lot of things as each day… each year passed… I would let down my diploma for I forgot all things I learned in school. I think I even burned my diploma. I don’t even remember, the raging beast within me took up my actions. But what I do remember is that during this time I became obsessed with the rose. With it’s glow and it’s representation… I remember seeing the first petal fall… Sweeping it away to keep the table clean, it might be the only thing in the entire castle that was not dingy and dusty Not only that, but I was terrified of it. I had waited one year as a child to become this…. thing Now here I am… Waiting for the inevitable death of humanity that was still in this place, but also curious to how it would feel to be nothing. Without a mind or a life… to think only in terms of a Beast that may never find it’s mate. My days as a prince were short, but my days as a human were now numbered. Was I ever a human?

F A T E F U L || D A Y

This one night might have been the second most bleakest of all compared to the night before. It left the mountains filled with snow and animals hungry, looking for prey to feed upon. For even the tiniest scrap to sustain upon was better then nothing. This very same night, was one that brought a lonesome traveller to my door. I was aware of his presence, but let my housekeepers believe in my ignorance. My balcony had the perfect view of the main bridge that leads to the mainland, where the forest greets the others side. And when I noticed a pack of rampant wolves at my gate, then I knew there must be something on the other side… The inside that lead to my castle, on it’s way to get in. He had no horse, and I was rather curious as to what happened to his transportation. Seeing as their patterns in hunting only seek out an individual that is deemed the weakest to take down. His horse must have gone astray, and if it were a smart horse. It may follow back down the trail whence it came. I wanted to roll my eyes at the thought of another man using my things. It made my blood boil with anger, but of all… This was a human, for once here… A human has arrived, but of course… Not the one he so wished to have as the emancipator for his turmoil. The old, portly old man would be of no use, and he has already lived a long and probably joyous life considering his state of being. He seemed rather healthy… So why not give him hell like I had so learned? A scare… Perhaps. . The poor old man… He didn’t know what was coming till the sounds of my voice hushed the flames of the fireplace into nothing but smoke. My mere presence extinguished any hope there was inside that room, and I dragged him to the tower where he would become my prisoner for a few days. I did not feed him, I didn’t nothing… I left him to die there… To rot as I would rot and feel as I would feel. A prisoner with no hope, not light to be saved by… But then There was someone else at the castle quickly to follow. Looking for him. Surely no human was as good in heart as this. To risk coming to my castle through the black forest infested with blood thirsty wolves, to search for this pitiful old coward… But I was wrong. Oh … So very wrong. A girl, a young woman came searching for this older fellow. I guess you could say I was shocked, but equally attempted to frighten her, like I had with the man. Convincing her that no matter what she did she couldn’t take him home. He was to be my prisoner forever Quickly realizing it was her father, and what puzzled me the most was that she urged me to make a deal with her. Her life for his. What? Who does this? She was young with a full life ahead of her, free to do whatever she wanted, even without a father to restrict her. This older fellow was past 50 and had seen enough days that me and this young woman combined… And yet…. She wanted to trade herself for him. I thought humans were supposed to be these cold creatures incapable of feeling for others. Especially such a gentle love. I never felt this before, not enough to recognize it within myself. Maybe the whisper of a dream of what I thought was a tender touch. From a mother… A father… A friend… A teacher? No! I hardened my heart, but managed to let her pleas get beneath my pelt. Allowing this deal to take place, while also thinking about the curse and the slight possibility that she might be the one to break it. Of course… She would never A part of me wished it were possible, and just as I accepted and sent her father away before she could say goodbye… I realized that this really could be my chance, and I was now making bad marks to start our relationship off, but she was my prisoner now… Special prisoner…