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consumedkings-archive · 4 years ago

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WITCHING HOUR, a john seed/deputy fic.

chapter eight: the living sea of waking dreams

word count: 10k

rating: m for now, rating will change in later chapters as things develop, tags will be updated accordingly.

warnings: emotional manipulation/some weird humiliation tactics (joseph is a fucker), some weird/uncomfortable relationships getting dredged up, john is a jealous little shit. some spooky scaries go on, blood and body horror (i think? tagging just to be safe).

notes: we've got some ~things~ going on here in this next chapter. i feel really excited about where this story is going and how we're going to get all these little threads put together, but mostly, i hope you enjoyed this chapter! we've got a lot going on but i promise, it will all (hopefully) be worth it in the end. and also, a tiny reprieve: some soft elliot, as a treat, because we deserve it.

thank you to everyone reading and giving me your feedback!! i love hearing from yall <3 special thanks to @shallow-gravy and @vasiktomis for listening to me slog through this chap : ))))

“Knock-knock!”

Isolde took in a deep breath, closing her eyes and willing patience to the forefront of her mind. It had only been an hour or so since she’d left the chapel, Joseph’s words ringing in her head, a death knell.

Not after the things I’ve done for you.

Even still, even now—he knew how to get under her skin. She thought she’d never wanted to kiss and throttle someone in equal amounts, in the entirety that she had known them; to think that once, she had let Joseph take her in an embrace, sweep the hair from her shoulder and bury his face in her neck and whisper sweet things into her skin.

He wasn’t the same, anymore. And neither was she.

“Come in, Santiago,” said Arden, from where she had set up her little space across the cabin’s modest room. The heater on the floor rattled laboriously, clicking and chugging away. Isolde swept her eyes over Arden’s space—a small makeshift bed on the couch, the table stacked with a few books and a notepad she was scribbling dutifully on. Isolde had politely offered her the bed, even though she didn’t want to, and the woman had waved her off and said it was no trouble at all, that she often fell asleep on the couch at home anyway.

It was still weird, thinking that someone was—with Jacob. For a long time. But, she supposed if there was any Seed boy she thought would be in a long-term relationship, then—

The door to the cabin swept open, revealing the dark-haired boy from before. Well, perhaps not boy, but young man. Certainly too young and good-looking to be wasting his time with the likes of Eden’s Gate, wasn’t he?

“You don’t have to babysit me anymore, do you?” Arden asked, not once looking up from her writing.

“No, no. Unfortunately, our time together has drawn to a close.” Santiago lifted his arms, spread in defeat. His eyes, a vibrant blue, turned to Isolde. “I am actually here for you.”

“Me?” Isolde’s eyes narrowed. “For what?”

“Joseph has asked me to fetch you.”

“And you’re a good boy, so you do whatever he says,” she replied tartly.

Santiago flashed a grin that was all teeth-pearly, perfectly bleached teeth. He was far more groomed than any of the others she’d seen trawling about the compound. “I am nothing if not loyal, princesa.”

Isolde sighed, passing a hand over her face as a headache began to fester and bloom behind her eyelids. She thought she might have been more willing to kick up a fuss if she thought it was worth the drama—but it probably wasn’t. As much as she didn’t want to admit it, Joseph was right; she couldn’t be of any help to them if she was being contrary just for the sake of her own spite. Even if she didn’t know where Joseph got off summoning her like she was part of the peasantry.

“Coming,” she sighed, picking her coat up off the bed and sliding it back on over her shoulders.

“A sweet word, coming from even sweet lips.”

“Alright, Romeo.”

She trudged out after Santiago in the snow, casting a quick glance around the compound. Though evening had fallen, the fluorescents surrounding lining the edges of the compound cast a cold, brutal light across it, highlighting every single pore of the place, every ragged inhabitant shuffling into their bunkhouse as watch switched and folks went to retire for the evening. Some of the roofs sagged with the weight of the snowfall, which trundled on without any kind of end in sight. Isolde couldn’t remember when she’d seen real, unadulterated sunshine last. In Georgia? Had it been that long?

None of it was anything like what John had told her. Of course, she had expected some differences—the man liked to embellish, to be sure—but the members of Eden’s Gate seemed to have lost their fire. They were wayward, adrift at sea, among waves of freezing cold water and what now seemed to be a resurgent threat that they had hoped to be rid of.

And Joseph, having comforted them so very little.

“Icy,” Santiago warned, offering her his hand as he opened the door inside with his other one. “Careful.”

“Thanks,” she muttered dryly. She took his hand anyway, pulling herself into the sputtering warmth of the chapel where—at the front—the silhouettes of Jacob and Joseph stood.

The two of them were suffused in a warm amber glow, but there was nothing warm about the mood in the room; the closer she got, she could hear Jacob’s insistent words—the firm, assertive gestures of his hands, the words, just didn’t feel like it was pertinent at the time, coming out of his mouth—the more she thought, I shouldn’t be here for this. Whatever they’re arguing about, whatever it is that’s gotten them to this point, I’m not supposed to be here.

Joseph didn’t respond to whatever it was that his brother was saying, but instead turned to look at her as she approached down the center aisle of the chapel. Despite the rattling warmth coming from several heaters placed throughout the chapel, Isolde felt a chill sink deep into the marrow of her bones.

“Thank you for coming,” he said by way of greeting. He lifted one hand and beckoned her forward when her feet slowed.

“I just hope this is something I need to be here for,” Isolde ventured cautiously, her gaze flickering to Jacob’s face. The redhead’s expression was drawn tight and hard, and not the way it normally was; it wasn’t calm and focused, but strained, like he was holding himself back from saying something to Joseph that he thought he might regret later.

She had never known Jacob to bite his tongue very much, but from her own experience with Joseph, well—he was apt at bringing out the worst in people.

“Did you know?” Joseph asked when she had finally come to a stop. “About my brother’s...” He wet his lips for a moment, his gaze darting across the empty space of the floor as he looked for the word he wanted to say. And then he landed: “Pursuits?”

Isolde blinked. “If you mean the woman he says is his partner—”

“Yes,” the blonde interjected, before she could finish—a thing he knew that she hated but he seemed unable to refrain from doing. “I do.”

Sol’s eyes narrowed. When she turned her gaze from Jacob to Joseph, she was greeted with the typical unreadable expression; as untroubled as the blue sky over a sunny sea.

But there were storm clouds. Somewhere, in there, on a horizon Joseph would not let her reach now and perhaps had not ever.

“I only knew of her today,” Isolde replied after a moment. “After we saw our little hunter out in Fall’s End, I imagine he felt it pressing that he retrieve her sooner rather than later.”

Joseph made a low noise. It was like a hm, but threatening. Hm, he said, interesting, that. But what it was he felt was so interesting about that particular line of information, Isolde couldn’t only venture a guess; and if she had to venture a guess, she would have said that it would probably be that he felt it was interesting that something was going on that he had not been aware of.

If there was one thing that she knew about Joseph, affirmatively, it was that he did not like not knowing.

“Isolde, why are you here?”

A familiar spark of anger lit, hot and fetid, in her belly. “Pardon me?

“Why are you here? In this compound? In Hope County?” Even as he spoke, Joseph’s gaze was fixed on the eldest Seed, the lines of his face peaceful and serene despite the idle venom burning in the timbre of his voice. “What did John send you here for?”

The anger burned up into soot, into dread, and sat just there, curled at the base of her neck. Isolde could not shake the idea that she had been brought in here to make a point, and that she really shouldn’t be there—that this was something Joseph and Jacob needed to settle between themselves, but that was never how Joseph had operated: fair had never been a stratagem in his playbook.

“Isolde,” Jacob said, his voice a low caution when she looked at him, shaking his head very slightly. It’s not worth it, he was saying, fighting, it’s not worth it.

“Joseph, this,” she plunged on pointedly, “is not something that I need to be a part of. I’ll go, so the two of you can—”

But when she went to depart, Joseph lifted his hand and pointed at her and ground out between his teeth, “Stay. Put.”

The poison in his voice was so potent it almost made her flinch. Almost. And then the indignation started to bloom: who do you think you are, to be talking to me like that? But they wouldn’t come; the words wouldn’t come, because when she lifted her gaze to Joseph’s and saw him looking at her, it was—

“I want you to say it, out loud, in front of Jacob,” he continued, the muscle of his jaw flexing viciously. “Tell him why John needed you here.”

Jacob said, raising his voice a little, “We all know why—”

“Because you are useless unless you are aware of what’s happening. Every detail. Isn’t that right?” he prompted. “Isolde?”

She felt her molars grind. It was clear, now, why he had asked her here. “Yes.”

Joseph turned his gaze to Jacob. “Is that what you want us to be? Want me to be? Ill-informed?”

The redhead was silent for a long heartbeat. He sucked his teeth, and said, “No, Joseph, I don’t—”

“No. More. Secrets.”

The blonde’s voice had pitched so low that she nearly couldn’t hear him, so close and low and intimate was it that he was speaking to his brother, so little space between them. Joseph looked to be controlling himself quite tightly; so very little of the leash available to himself, digging the choke chain deeper and deeper into him in an effort to remain intact.

“Joseph,” Jacob began, “I only—”

“A whole year?” the blonde bit out viciously. “An entire year you spent devoting your time to this—this—”

Isolde was familiar with the precipice at which Joseph was teetering. Right on the edge of saying something vicious and mean and unendingly cruel. She had pushed him there a few times before, in their brief few months together—had seen the way he pulled himself back time and time again, seconds away from grinding out some wretched insult.

“I won’t,” Joseph bit out, lifting a hand as though to temper himself, “tolerate it, Jacob.”

Silence stretched between the three of them for a moment, pulled taut as a rubber band. Though she knew why Joseph had wanted her here—to make a point, but also to put someone there to witness the verbal lashing—looking at the two of them now, she felt more than ever like an intruder on a world she knew so very little about.

John had done nothing to prepare her. He had given her the rosy version of the story, and even that included the cult and the killing and the residents of Hope County. It still hadn’t been enough.

The silence broke when Jacob said, “I understand, Joseph.”

For a second, there was nothing; just Joseph, sweeping his gaze over Jacob for a long moment, like he was trying to wring out any deception or sign that Jacob was being disingenuous—and of course, he could find none, and that meant there was only the tense, uncomfortable silence wadded up between them, in their own fists.

Finally, Joseph said, “That will be all,” and turned, tilting his face to the lukewarm light of the candles at the front of the chapel and closing his eyes.

The eldest Seed lingered for only a moment longer before he left; his eyes met with Isolde’s for a heartbeat before he made his decision, turning down the center walkway and heading for the doors. It wasn’t until they clicked shut that Isolde felt a tiny bit of relief—if only because the source of Joseph’s ire had now departed, and she could get a better look at him.

It was her job to make sure things were under control. John had asked her here for that exact reason—and this kind of in-fighting would be the kind of thing that would, eventually, be their unraveling if they didn’t get it under control. She had only seen Joseph so angry once before, almost over a year ago now, back before he was the Father of Eden’s Gate. Back when they had been—

There are things that I want to accomplish, and they’re best done with a wife—

“Joseph,” Isolde said, leaving the memory somewhere else—somewhere dark and deep she would never find it again, “what’s going on?”

The blonde did not open his eyes when he replied, “I cannot have secrets kept from me.” After a moment, he added, “And in that vein of thought, I should get in touch with our wayward brother.”

“Do you really think it’s that big of a deal?” she prompted again. “To have started a fight with Jacob over a woman that he—”

“Even before a word is on my tongue, behold, O Lord, you know it altogether. You hem me in, behind and before, and lay your hand upon me.” His eyes fluttered open, the flicker of dark lashes illuminated by the amber glow, and he tilted his head to look at her. There was a hardness in his voice when he said, “God is perfect in knowledge, and I cannot be less. Not when He speaks directly to me.”

An unpleasant little thrill crawled down her spine when his eyes fixed on her, darting over her face like he wanted to savor her. “Then don’t use me as the whip you want to lash your brother with,” she snapped. “I’m not a humiliation tactic. You do know better than to do that to me.”

Joseph let out a little sigh. The corners of his mouth ticked upward, the shift in mood almost palpably changing the energy in the chapel—just like that, it was different. Not lighter, not better, but different.

“You’re right,” he agreed after a moment. “I do know you better than that.”

Isolde’s mouth pressed into a thin line. Deciding to forego that comment, she took a step forward, cinching her jacket in more securely around her waist. “You know what you cannot be, Joseph?” she asked. “You cannot be fighting with your brothers. Especially not the only one that’s here. Your people out there are disgruntled, and scared, and you can’t afford to be picking fights with the people who are the most loyal to you.”

“They are all,” Joseph replied, “loyal, Isolde." And then, after a moment of watching her: "Is this what you want to be doing? Herding us? Mothering us?”

“My professional opinion is that the image of your convent is severely lacking,” she bit out, once again ignoring the bait, “and the last thing you need to do is have them noticing that there’s a rift forming between the ones in charge. And yes—that is the only thing I can do for you lot at this point, and like an idiot, I agreed to come here and do it.”

Because I can’t say no to John, something tired inside of her said. Because I couldn’t say no to any of you, even if I wanted to.

The blonde reached up, and it took that gesture for Isolde to realize how closely they had drifted—it was so little effort, so little time between the movement of his hand and the time at which his fingers made contact with her cheek, brushing the hair away from her face and tucking it behind her ear. He moved so confidently and leisurely that Sol couldn’t think to pull back; and when she didn’t, the calloused fingertips trailed down the pillar of her throat, his eyes following their journey.

It was intimate; too soon her brain said, even though it had been so long since they had been in the same room, let alone regarded each other in even a passive capacity. But it was too soon enough that her brain fizzed out, the air moving thick as molasses in the journey between her mouth and lungs, the violent flashback of their closeness overwhelming her.

She said, “Joseph,” in a don’t kind of voice, and he dropped his hand from where it had come to a stop at the juncture between her neck and shoulder.

“It was smart of John, to ask you to come and shepherd us in his absence,” Joseph said, blithely ignoring the desperate little barb in the way Isolde said his name.

“I always thought you’d make a perfect Mother.”

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

It had been several days since their conversation in the hallway that night, and John had barely seen hide nor hair of Elliot.

Honestly, it would have been impressive how quickly she could make herself inaccessible, were it not so frustrating. He couldn’t help but wonder what the implications there were—had she known she could do this all along, and had been indulging in him for some reason? Had she simply decided to be done and that was it, meaning that she hadn’t been done before?

Not that she was done now, anyway. Not if John had anything to say about that. But for a few days, she barely spared him a glance—passed him in the hallway when she got home with a muttered greeting on occasion. She woke before him, left to the stables without him, and left him alone in the house. Left him alone without her venom, without her eyes on him. With her mother, no less.

Scarlet was, on paper, exactly the kind of woman that John felt confident in his ability to charm. Single, wealthy by inheritance, a little older and always with a martini in hand by ten? If he couldn’t impress her, he had to be doing something wrong. But in a way that seemed to be very typical of the Honeysett women, Scarlet remained veritably unimpressed and even disdainful of his presence—even though she had insisted he stay with them.

More and more, he was becoming convinced that it was not going to be to his benefit.

“Good morning, Mr. Seed,” Scarlet greeted him from where she sat at the table, perusing her magazine. Not once did her eyes lift to meet his, and not once did an ounce of enthusiasm enter her voice. “You are missing from the stables again today, I see. Not a horse person?”

“I might find myself to be one,” John replied with a leisurely sort of bitterness, “if Elliot would only allow me to come.”

“Yes, it’s very annoying, isn’t it?” The blonde mused idly, over her cup of coffee. “To not be handed exactly what you want when you want it?”

He sucked in a sharp breath, pouring himself a cup of coffee and trying to remind himself that this was all temporary. This house, this town, Scarlet and Sylvia and Wyatt—it was all temporary, and soon enough they would be the least of his concerns. All of his time and attention would be wrapped up in Elliot and the baby, and what their lives would look like once the end had come.

Because it would come, and then she would see. She would understand that everything he’d done had been for them, for her and their baby and—

“I only want to spend as much time with her as I can,” he replied, managing to keep his tone pleasant. “Before I go back home.”

“And when are you?” Scarlet idled. “Going, I mean?” And then, in what he could only think was a stretch of graciousness: “Not that you’ve overstayed, because I am sure you would never, and Delia is quite taken with you—”

“Surely.”

“—as is Elliot, despite her best efforts to act otherwise.”

“What?” John’s head snapped to where Scarlet was still browsing her magazine, and he cleared his throat at her arched brow to try and gather his scrambled thoughts. “What I mean is, has she—said anything to you about me?”

The blonde at the table, swathed in her silk robe and curls primly pinned back away from her face, made a sound that might have been amused. Might have been, anyway, had he not turned to look at her and seen the way her face remained serene and unexpressive.

“I am not blind, Mr. Seed,” Scarlet idled. “It takes very little investigation to find that my daughter is fond of you, against my wishes and her own.”

Before John could open his mouth to respond—and press for more information while his stomach did victorious little somersaults—she turned her head to the window, when the sound of a vehicle rolling up the drive spurred Boomer on to barking in the front room.

“Oh, would you look at that,” she murmured with a little sigh. “My prodigal child, returned home at last.”

He glanced out the window to see an unfamiliar car pulling up, a black truck that took the fresh snow of the unplowed drive to the Graves-Honeysett home with ease; from the driver’s side hopped a familiar face.

“Didn’t Elliot drive there this morning?” he asked, frowning as he watched Wyatt jog around to the passenger side despite Elliot’s waving from the front for him to stop. The man had been nothing but polite—even enthused—to meet him at the bar the other night, but that didn’t mean John had forgotten the way he’d gotten comfy enough to try and touch Elliot’s face and her hair. Even now, the man grinned, all sunshine, as he opened the passenger side door for her and offered her his hand.

Scarlet replied, her attention already having departed the window, “What a silly question to ask out loud, Mr. Seed. You're not stupid, so I would beg you—try not to give me that impression.”

His eyes darted to Scarlet for a moment, briefly grateful that she wasn’t looking at him to see the spark of irritation winding its way across his face; he could feel it furrowing his brows, drawing his mouth into a hard, tight line. Setting his coffee cup on the counter, John made his way out the front door just as Wyatt and Ell were nearly there.

“Oh, hey John!” Wyatt greeted him. His eyes swept over him briefly. “Boy, you’re really put together any chance you get, huh?”

“You can never be overdressed,” John replied as amicably as he could. “Watch the steps, Ell, they’re—”

“Icy, I know,” Elliot said. She puffed out a little breath of air and brushed his offered hand aside, instead favoring the railing with one hand and the top of Boomer’s head with the other, still refusing him the courtesy of meeting his eyes. It had been days. She had never once held such a grudge against him—not really, not where he couldn’t at least get her to give him the time of day.

“Where’s the Jeep?” he asked, his voice coming out a bit tighter than he would have liked as she brushed past him. “Surely you didn’t have Wyatt ferry you out here for fun.”

“Tire’s flat,” she snipped. “Would you prefer I walked?”

“You could have called.” He took in a sharp little breath, willing the accusation away. “I would have been more than happy to pick you up, Ell.”

“Don’t have a cell phone,” Elliot replied flatly. “And Wyatt was already there.”

“It wasn’t any trouble,” Wyatt interjected hurriedly, smiling at John with pearly whites on display. “I had to come into town anyway, and it was gonna be hours before the mechanic could get out there.”

“Well, it was very kind of you all the same,” John said with a smile that felt like it pulled too tight across his face, a smile that was harder and harder to maintain with every passing second that Wyatt West put his baby-blues on Elliot. And that was often; the blonde looked a little sheepish when his gaze met John’s, drawn away from the redhead who was readily retreating into the house.

“Like I said, wasn’t any trouble. Always happy to help,” the blonde insisted, hands tucked into his jacket pockets.

“Yes,” John replied pleasantly, “I can see that.”

Wyatt blinked, flushing. “Anyway, uh...Have a nice day, John. And you too, Freckles!”

He waved before turning on his heel and heading back to the truck. As soon as the driver’s door closed and he was starting to pull away, John turned to see Elliot watching him, her eyes narrowed.

“‘I can see that’?” She scoffed. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Oh, are we talking now?” His brows lifted, head tilting. “So kind of you, to grace me with eye contact when you’ve been storming around the last few days—”

“Don’t be a fucking baby,” Elliot snapped. “My life does not revolve around you. Especially when I can’t seem to figure out why the fuck you drove all the way here just to sulk around.”

“Perhaps it should at least be in my orbit,” John replied tersely, “considering that we are having a child together.”

“You—”

Elliot sucked in a sharp breath, clamping her mouth shut as she looked at him. There was a very brief moment where she looked like she wanted to say something, and very badly, but instead, the corner of her mouth ticked upward and she turned on her heel to walk inside without saying a word.

“It’s a cute nickname,” John continued tartly as he trailed after her. Don't walk away from me, don't, you owe me at least your attention. “Freckles. Do you prefer that one over Miss Honey?”

She closed the door behind her, promptly and without hesitation, letting it rattle in the door frame and in his face. He sucked in a sharp breath, passing a hand exhaustedly over his face.

Impudent. Surly. Ferociously, viciously, wretchedly stubborn. He knew this about her—had known this about her—and yet at every opportunity, she proved his idea of her correct, and he found himself getting more and more frustrated. It wasn’t fair, that even those moments of her attention still felt good, that the sting of her venom held some satisfaction for him, like he was addicted to it.

If she would just, came the thought, rolling over and over. If she would, if she would just, if she would just—

But just what? Just stop being that way? Would he have even liked her if she were not this purposefully obstinate problem to solve?

“No,” he sighed to himself, raking his fingers through his hair. “No, I wouldn’t.”

The reward would just have to be all that much sweeter in the end.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Three hours later, Elliot had forced herself to come to a decision.

She waffled on it for a while—going back and forth as she showered, scrubbing her hair and trying to let the hot water ease some of the growing aches and pains—and did her best to ignore the way something a little wicked chattered happily inside of her at the knowledge that John’s eyes had been sparking with jealousy. It felt immature, to like watching him squirm; more apparent than ever, too, was that old habits died hard.

There was a sick kind of satisfaction that came with finding John’s buttons and pushing them. It had felt the same way, back in Hope County—when he’d been burning with irritation and jealousy that Joseph had gotten her confession, not him, that she wouldn’t tell him what it was, pushing and pushing and jamming her finger into that button until he finally snapped and—

Kissed her.

That’s not what I’m trying to do, she thought, a little defiantly as she looked at herself in the mirror of the bathroom; tracing the WRATH scar, looking down to realize that there was, in fact, a baby bump. Oh, God, wasn’t that something fucking dreadful? Too real, but even still she’d known it was coming—worn looser, heavier clothes. She’d tried so hard not to look at herself in mirrors as of late that doing so now made her feel like she was looking at a stranger.

I’m not trying to get him to kiss me—the opposite, actually, I’m just trying to get him to fucking lay off for a minute—

And yet, as she found herself standing outside of the door to John’s room, her chest felt a little tight and her heart was doing that funny thing it liked to do when he was around; fluttering, leaping against her ribs, begging for attention. Elliot could have argued that it was just muscle memory at this point, that she had spent enough time around John letting him touch her and kiss her and say sweet things into her neck that her body was only working off of its basest instincts, and that was why she was feeling this way.

Clearing her throat, Elliot knocked on the door and said, “John?”

There was the sound of shuffling on the other side, and then his voice drifting to her: “Yes, Elliot?”

“It’s time for my appointment,” she managed out lamely. It felt even more stupid, saying it now, after she’d made such a big show of marching off after he’d committed to his display of jealousy. “Since the Jeep’s still waiting to get the tire fixed, do you think you could—”

The door swung open; John’s eyes flickered over her for a moment, his head tilting just before his mouth curved into a pleasant little smile that was two parts triumph and one part spite.

“What’s this?” he asked. “You need my help with something?”

Her mouth pressed into a thin line. “Don’t be an asshole, John.”

“I would never.” He propped himself up against the doorframe, folding his arms. “Wyatt’s taxi services currently unavailable?”

Already, she was regretting her decision—it had felt important, to have him along, but now she thought maybe she had been too forgiving for having forgiven anything at all.

“The appointment might be the one we figure out the baby’s gender, fuckface,” she snapped, “and since Wyatt’s not the baby’s father, I figured maybe you’d want to come in for this appointment, because it wouldn't feel right not to at least ask if you wanted to. Don’t worry though, I wouldn’t dream of inconveniencing you.”

“Wait!” The exclamation stopped her mid-turn from his door, the feeling of his fingers brushing the palm of her hand making her jerk out of his reach instinctively. John exhaled through his nose, and when she looked him with narrowed eyes and her arms crossed, he said, “I do want to—I want to come.”

“You sure aren’t acting like it.”

“I—Ell, I haven’t heard the baby’s heartbeat a single time,” he insisted, a little frantic. “I’ve respected that you didn’t want me there the last time, and you know, when I wasn’t here before is another thing, but finding out the gender and getting to hear the heartbeat—” He stopped, sighing. “I’m...”

Though there was a bit of pain stinging in the cavity of her chest at his earnesty, Elliot steeled herself, keeping her expression tight. “You’re what, John?” she prompted. She half-expected another blow-up; I’m the baby’s father, that baby is mine, I deserve this, it’s mine.

But instead, John’s mouth twisted and he said, “I’m—sorry.”

Elliot blinked. Had she ever heard John apologize? For anything, ever? And sincerely? She couldn’t recall a day or time in memory—and though her memory was spotty at best these days, she thought for certain that was something she would have remembered. Even when they’d been going to bury Joey, she wouldn’t let him get the words out.

“Uh,” she said very intelligently, “what?”

“I’m sorry,” John repeated, appearing a little frustrated at having to repeat himself. He shifted on his feet. “I want to come to the appointment. I mean—” And then, in what surely must have been pure agony: “Please let me come to the appointment.”

It felt so odd to hear the words coming out of his mouth that she could only blink rapidly and say, “Um, okay,” before turning and quickly heading down the hall and to the stairs. It had been her intention all along to ask John if he wanted to come to the appointment, to see the baby on the screen and find out the gender together—because despite his petty jealousy over someone he didn’t need to be concerned about in the least, and despite his insistence that he was the only person capable of loving her, she did see him making an effort instead of yanking her all the way to the other side. Even if it was a minute, tiny effort; it was an effort nonetheless.

“We’ll have to take your car,” Elliot said uneasily over her shoulder, pulling on her coat quickly. “And it’s soon, so—”

“Making haste,” John agreed from beside her. He reached over her shoulder to pull his own coat off of the rack. It wasn’t lost on her, then, that weeks ago he had gone to reach for her shoulder and she’d about jumped out of her skin; now, the smell of his cologne and his voice close to her ear was almost comforting, in an entirely self-indulgent way.

If she just broke it down to the piece of John she loved the most—his voice and the way the cologne smelled when it was on him, and the way it felt when his hands traced the scars on her hips, and the boyish grin he’d flash her—then maybe it could work. Then, maybe, things would have been fine.

But that’s not love, something inside of her said, as she made her way out the front door and to the car. John says he loves all the wretched things about you. Did you forget?

No. No, she had not forgotten the way John had kissed her when she had blood on her mouth, or the way he’d said, I would’ve fucked you there, or how it felt when he buried his face into her neck and said her name in a voice so broken she thought she might be holy.

“Too hot?” John asked, and she realized she was sitting in the car—that she had checked out halfway out the door—and they were now down at the end of the drive.

Elliot swallowed. Her face felt hot, and now it was not only because of her mind’s wanderings but also because she had been caught daydreaming.

“No,” she said, sinking back against the passenger seat. “No, it’s fine.”

He watched her for a moment before pulling out of the driveway and onto the street. She took a quick glance around the car; it was older, and sort of a beater. The kind of shitty Honda civic she’d see peeling out on the highway at 3AM because some idiot teenager thought she wouldn’t pull them over if the roads were empty. He’d probably lifted it on his way out of town to keep a low profile.

Her foot nudged something solid as she stretched out. Over the sound of the radio rattling and fuzzing tiredly, she heard a dull thunk. She squinted. It was a book. Unconditional Parenting.

“Jesus,” John muttered, “for a town this small, this traffic is a nightmare.”

“What?” Elliot asked, quickly averting her eyes from the book, feeling like she’d just rifled through someone’s personal drawer. “Oh, um—it’s a tourist town. People come here for the Christmas lights. They do like a whole lighting festival with that big tree in the square every night for weeks before Christmas.”

“And that’s why I can’t find parking.”

“That’s why you can’t find parking.”

He shot her a wry smile, taking a second loop around the square and a bit slower this time. Elliot turned her attention back out the window, but she couldn’t stop thinking about it—Unconditional Parenting. How long had he been reading baby books? Why was he so confident he’d get the chance to be a parent, anyway?

When he finally pulled into a parking spot, he let out a breath of relief. “How are we on time?”

Ell glanced at the car’s radio. “Ten minutes early,” she replied after a moment. “Right on time.”

“Great.” John paused. When neither of them moved to get out of the car, he cleared his throat and said, “So, what do you think?”

“About?” Elliot prompted. “The lighting festival?”

“What do you think baby is?” he clarified. Absently, he worried his thumbnail into the rubber of the steering wheel. “The lighting festival in a tourist town is the last thing on my mind right now.”

“Well, it should be on your mind,” she replied, a little petulant. “I think it’s nice, for the record. All of the vendors come in from out of town and even though the traffic’s a nightmare, it’s good business for the town and everyone’s always been respectful of it. Plus, the lights are nice.”

She paused, and when she looked at John, he was grinning at her. He seemed to be enjoying her firm defense of the lighting festival.

“And I think baby is a boy,” she added after a minute, pulling at a loose thread on her sweater. “Just my gut feeling.”

He seemed pleased by her answer, but if he actually was she couldn’t have said why; it was nearly impossible to read John sometimes, but especially in moments like this, in uncharted waters for them both. She lingered for a moment before she unbuckled and said quickly, “Anyway, we should probably go,” pulling herself out of the warmth of the car and into the chilly afternoon.

She wanted to go back to being angry. She wanted to go back to hating John, to being disgusted by him, to relishing in making him suffer, even just a little—but it was like her brain had reverted back to her neanderthal roots. Baby daddy reads parenting books, makes him a good father.

The sooner the moment was over and done with, the sooner she could go back to wallowing on the ways John had wronged her, instead of the ways he made her happy.

By the time they were back in the room, Elliot sitting on the end of the little bed and John in the chair under a pregnancy poster—Pregnant or thinking of getting pregnant? 3 things to discuss!—she had nearly steeled herself. If she just sat there, and replayed the last three months in her head, and reminded herself of all the reasons why she had left John behind in the first place, she would be just fine.

And then the door opened, and Dr. Harding stepped inside, and looked between Elliot and John with surprise.

“Hello, Elliot,” Harding greeted. “I see we’ve a guest today?”

“This is John,” Elliot said, trying not to sound too miserable given the riotous state of her brain. “This is the, uh—he's the father.”

John stood quickly, holding out his hand. “John Seed.”

“Nice to meet you. I’m Dr. Harding,” she said, reaching out and shaking his hand. “Excited? Elliot’s told you we might find out the gender today, yes?”

“Yes and yes,” John confirmed, sounding more and more like the kind of man she had fallen for and less like the egotistical psycho she’d turned in to the government. Right, the one that had lied, and coerced, and perhaps knowingly drugged her. She couldn’t afford to forget that bit.

As Elliot went through all of the normal questions—have you been eating well, yes, I see you haven’t lost weight, yeah, how is the sleep, it’s fine—she held on tight to that little thread of knowledge. John was here because she was letting him, not for any other reason, and it did feel good to know that this whole time he’d played by her rules. As much as he could have, anyway, showing up at her house unannounced.

She settled back against the propped back, grimacing as she shimmied the hem of her sweater up and Harding put a generous amount of gel on the swell of her stomach. Between doctor’s appointments, it was easy to pretend like maybe she wasn’t pregnant. The morning sickness had faded, her appetite had come back, she was getting fine enough sleep; if she didn’t look at herself in the mirror, if she ignored the pervading aches and pains, the roundness to her features then she could pretend like things were normal.

But then John pulled the chair over to the side of the bed, his fingers brushing hers, and nothing felt even remotely close to normal.

“Alright, let’s take a look at baby, shall we?” Harding said, settling in as she began to glide the instrument across Elliot’s stomach.

“Okay,” Elliot said, feeling uneasy. John’s eyes flickered to her, and while she chewed the inside of her cheek, her fingers curled around his—a thoughtless, absent-minded gesture, like she was a heat-seeking machine and the only heat that would do was his.

He didn’t say anything, but laced their fingers together just as Harding said, “Oh, there’s baby!”

The dull, steady heartbeat echoed. When she stole a glance in his direction, John’s eyes were transfixed on the screen as Harding went over where the features were, pointing them out on the screen to him.

“Your little one is about the size of a peach right now,” Harding was saying, “and let’s just see here...”

Oh, God, she thought, feeling her stomach roll. It was so real. Too real, to be laying there, after all of this time feeling so disconnected from her own body—like a vessel, but now with John’s fingers tangled with hers and the baby’s heartbeat and a fruit analogy regarding the size it felt too real. She could no longer act like it wasn’t happening.

“It looks like we’ve got a perfectly healthy baby boy,” were the words coming out of the doctor’s mouth when Elliot’s eyes drifted from John’s face. “It might be a bit early, but that's my educated inference. Congratulations, Elliot. And daddy too, of course.”

A boy. A boy. I’m having a boy.

A perfectly healthy baby boy.

The room felt a little like it was swimming, her throat tight and a steady burning behind her eyes and nose. She sat up a little and swallowed thickly. John had come to a stand too, to get a better look at the screen, but when she squirmed and moved he looked at her.

“Ell?” he asked, sounding very far away, or like he was talking to her underwater. His hand not interlocked with hers came up to her face, and she couldn’t find it in herself to pull away—not only because of the effort it would take, but because of the way it felt to have him right there when she thought she needed him the most. “What’s wrong? Hey, baby, are you—”

“I’m okay,” Elliot managed out, her voice thick and wobbly. “I’m f-fine, I just—um—”

I’m having a boy. Oh, God, it felt so fucking real, too fucking real, but in a good way—for once, her nerve-endings felt alive, and not with anxiety and dread but with happiness.

Sounding panicked, John tilted her face up and asked again, “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” she said, a wet, raspy little laugh bubbling out of her, “nothing’s wrong, I’m just—I’m just really happy—”

It took his thumb sweeping wetness from her cheek for her to realize that she was crying. Some unshed emotion hiccuped in her chest, and she swallowed thickly, fingers wrapping around his wrist in what she understood too late was an effort to keep his hand there; skin to skin, pulse close to pulse.

I want a home with you, she’d said to him, that night, and he’d looked at her and said, You have it, Ell, I told you.

He’d said, I’m all yours.

He’d said, Take what you need from me.

Dr. Harding was saying something, speaking softly to John. It was another reminder that it had been idiotic not to let him come in the first place—there was something so inherently endearing about John mmhming and nodding along, listening raptly as the doctor went over what they would be expecting in between this appointment and the next while his thumb swept affectionately over her cheek. She was sure that she heard the reaffirmation that she needed to be getting good sleep, staying as relaxed and unstressed as possible, but she couldn’t think about that. Her brain was going on loop, on repeat.

I’m having a boy, she thought, a perfectly healthy baby boy. My baby.

When Harding patted John’s shoulder and said, “I’ll give you two a minute,” before exiting, she felt John’s fingers threading through the hair at the nape of her neck; in a gesture that was painfully intimate, his forehead pressed to hers.

“Holy shit,” he whispered. “I can’t believe that—”

“I know,” she said, sniffing. “I can’t either.”

“You were right.” He grinned, their noses brushing, giving her hand a squeeze. So close to a kiss; she felt her lashes fluttering, the warmth of his hand spreading along the slope of her neck. “We’re having a boy. My God.”

Yes. We are having a boy. A perfectly healthy baby boy. Without her permission, the thought populated, permeating her brain.

Our baby.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

“Yes, I have him right here.”

Staci blinked. A quick intake of his surroundings reminded him that he was sitting in the cab of one of Eden’s Gates trucks—lifted from the F.A.N.G. Center. Footage of him with the cultists—the other cultists—would now be available. Footage of him walking past the corpses of Jacob’s gutted chosen would now be available.

Jacob is going to kill me, he thought, lifting his eyes from the back of the seat to look at Helmi. The woman was watching him as she spoke on the phone, with Dani sitting next to him on the backbench. Helmi had been on the phone with someone for quite a while; he’d stopped paying attention what felt like eons ago. If he just let his brain drift off, he wouldn’t think about the bodies. Fucking God, their bodies—

Jacob’s going to fucking kill me.

Helmi's hand moved. On instinct, Staci flinched, and she rolled her eyes.

“Say hello, doggy,” she said, shoving the phone against his ear. He fumbled with it for a minute before he swallowed thickly.

When he looked at Dani frantically, she frowned, her brows furrowing, and she whispered, “Don’t embarrass me, Staci.”

“Um, h...” His mouth was painfully dry. “Hello?”

“Hello. Is this Staci Pratt?”

The voice on the other end was painfully pleasant. She had the same kind of accent Dani did—Norwegian, maybe, or Swedish—but her voice was a bit deeper, a rich timbre to it.

“I am,” he replied uneasily. “I-I mean, yes. It is.”

Helmi had faced forward in the driver’s seat again and started pulling away from the F.A.N.G. Center, turning the heat down low. As the truck pulled out onto the snowy highway, she flicked the headlights off and slowed to something close to a crawl.

“S-Sorry, but—”

“You do not have to apologize to me, Staci.”

“I just don’t know—um, who you are,” he managed out. As soon as he said the words, Dani dug her elbow into his ribs; he barely stifled the yelp, looking at her as she mouthed something he couldn’t understand.

She hissed, “I told you, she is—”

“My name is Kajsa. Helmi, and your Dani, and many of our brothers and sisters are...” Her voice trailed off, and she made a thoughtful hum. Pratt tried to ignore the way she said your Dani made his heart jump in his throat. “They are my charges. It is my responsibility to take care of them.”

“Oh,” Pratt said. “So what...What do you want with me?”

“Helmi says that you have made a very good impression,” Kajsa replied sweetly. “You have important knowledge, and I want to make sure that you are safe, and taken care of. Just as I would any of the others.”

He fought back a grimace. The words sounded sweet and enticing, but he couldn’t shake the way Dani had looked at the gutted corpses on the screen and said delightedly, It will happen to us all. If we are lucky, Helmi will be the one who does it for us.

Pratt’s gaze darted up to the front. Helmi’s dark eyes fixed on his in the mirror, like she had been watching him all along.

“It is my understanding that the Seeds have not endeared you to their cause? That you know what your colleague did, that your friends have left?”

“No,” he replied quickly. “I mean—that’s right. Um, I was working for Jacob, but it was more like—”

“Do not trouble yourself with recounting. I believe you,” Kajsa interrupted. And then, gently: “It must have been horrible.”

His chest tightened. Oh, no, he thought, shaking his head and pressing the heel of his hand against his left eye. No, fuck no, don’t listen to her, Pratt, you fucking idiot.

“By now you must have some grasp of what is going on,” the woman continued, “but in case you do not, I will tell you. Are you listening, Staci Pratt?”

Pratt’s head pressed against the back of the seat. He didn’t want to; he didn’t want to listen to her sweetness, her sympathy, the way she clicked her tongue and the timbre of her voice warming him down to the marrow of his bones when he felt like he’d been freezing this whole time.

“Yes,” he whispered. “I’m listening.”

“We are well-armed. We are organized. We have a common enemy with you. And a common friend, too.” She paused, and he thought that he could hear a smile in her voice when she said, “I can tell that you want to live, my darling. That you don’t want me to have Helmi pull over and gut you open, leave you for the crows and the wolves and the woods to take you.”

Opening his mouth did nothing to inspire the words to come out of him. Nausea rolled violently in his stomach—but there was nothing left to puke up, even if he’d wanted to.

He did want to live, but not like this. Not terrified. Not. Like. This.

“I want you to live too,” Kajsa murmured on the other end.

“But you’re going to have to do something for me.”

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

When Elliot opened her eyes, it had gotten dark outside.

It took her a minute to collect her bearings, sitting up in a bed in a dark room. At her feet, Boomer huffed and sighed at the disturbance, and then she remembered; she was in her bed. Back at home. John had driven the both of them back to the house, and she’d said that she needed to lay down—and he’d let her, without protest or complaint. He hadn’t even tried to insinuate she could use a napping companion.

Pulling herself out of bed, she rubbed her eyes tiredly and glanced out the window. Everything felt a little foggy. How long had she been sleeping? Had she really been out until late into the night?

She reached absently to her bedside table, blindly fumbling for the lamp switch; after what felt like an eternity of not being able to find it, Elliot sighed and skimmed her hand over her face, looking out the window. The night outside was brighter than it had been in a while, with no clouds in the sky and the moon illuminating the snowy landscape in an unforgiving blue-white, stretching out far and far and far until it hit the treeline.

Something darted on the horizon. She blinked rapidly, taking a step closer to the window and pushing on the glass pane until it started to slide up, grinding laboriously. The longer she looked, the longer Elliot thought maybe she had just been zoning out—but then she saw it again; a flash of something, pale and long, like spider bone-white in color skittering up the dark wood of a tree in the distant treeline.

A glimpse of pale limbs. Tangled, dark hair—she couldn’t make out the color, it was too dark—but it looked wet, it looked matted, like someone had hurt it. Like someone had blown its skull open.

Something metal rattled. The trash can, she thought, her attention snapping to the front of the house. When the sound of metal crashed in the night, the motion-activated light in the front kicked on. A shadow stretched along the snow, cast long and deformed by the warping of the light.

“Hey!” Elliot shouted, but the shadow did not twitch or move in response; just the sounds of rustling, like whoever it was found themselves too preoccupied with digging through the trash can. Her heart was pounding violently in her chest; the terror that had been knotting in her stomach was doused by something hotter, redder, angrier.

Rage.

She pushed herself away from the window and out the door into the hallway. As her feet hit the stairs, there was almost no noise—just the rushing of her movements as she pushed the front door open and hurried down the front steps, turning the corner to where the garbage can sat.

“Hey, listen to me!” she snapped, propelled by the anger when she saw the figure hunched over the garbage can. “You can’t be in—”

The figure lifted its head. From the back, her eyes swept over what looked like fur, a tail, up and up to the back of a head that had two ears perched on it, until the figure’s head turned—

Fury disappeared. It was now only dread, only pure, cold dread and terror sitting in her, gutting her, washing her out as the dog with a man’s face turned and looked at her and smiled.

The square teeth, gapped and pearly, oozed with the same dark liquid as she had thought she’d seen before. In the yellow light from the porch, it glittered dark as garnets, dropping into the snow and spreading out crimson.

Move, she thought, I have to move, I have to fucking move, I have to go I have to run I have to—

“Hey!”

It was her voice. It was her voice, but it wasn’t coming out of her—it was thrown, echoing from somewhere in the trees, the dog with the man’s face spreading its mouth wider. Somehow, she knew deep in the marrow of her bones that It was making that sound.

“Hey? Listen to me?”

The pitch was all wrong. Elliot felt a moan bubbling up in her, and It turned on its hind legs, feet hanging loose around its ribcage, and faced her fully. She managed one step back before It tilted its head, as if to say, where are you going?

“Hey, listen to me!”

There was something else in its teeth. Something else, wiry and golden, and even when she willed herself a step back

(whereveryougowhereveryourun)

her body would not move; she was trapped, frozen, watching as It stepped closer

(ItwillwaitforyouItwaitsforusall)

she realized that it was hair, in It’s teeth

(ITWAITSFORYOUITWAITSFORUSALLITWILLHAVEYOU)

her hair.

A hand landed on her shoulder, and she screamed.

When she lurched and twisted around, she was not met with a familiar face. It was a woman, hair dark and bundled up in winter clothes, watching her with concern furrowing her brows as the headlights of her car made Elliot squint. She immediately jerked away.

“Are you alright?” the woman asked, her hand dropping back to her side. She was tall—she had to be at least six feet tall, and her face was sharp and angular, her eyes nearly black without any light to show their color.

“Where—” Glancing around wildly, Elliot forced a swallow. She was not in front of her house. She was not even close to the front of her house. She was all the way at the end of the drive, standing in the—

“—found you in the middle of the road,” the woman said, the lilt of her accent jarring Elliot back to reality. “I was on my way home when I nearly hit you. Are you quite well?”

Her gaze snapped back to the woman. The dog; where was the dog with the man’s face? Where had she—

Every nerve-ending felt fried, like they had become pure static; she felt like she was vibrating. She stared at the dark-haired woman with the strange, rich accent, wondering why it itched at her. Weyfield was small. Too small for her to not know about someone with an accent living there.

“Who are you?” she asked after a moment, nails digging into her palms. “You don’t live around here.”

A smile stretched across the woman’s face. She had pearly teeth, and the kind of full mouth that looked pretty, sculpted—but in the smile, Elliot only thought, broken glass, her smile looks like broken glass.

Vaguely, she was aware of John’s voice; he must have heard her scream, or seen her down the driveway, the headlights of the unfamiliar car illuminating her in the dead of night. And yet, she couldn’t shake the feeling. Paranoia spread along her spine, worming into her lungs, a most effective parasite.

“I know you don’t live here,” Elliot managed out, her voice trembling as she took a step forward. There was a tiny pinprick of relief when she realized she’d regained her mobility. “Why are you driving around this neighborhood? Who are you?”

The woman turned and headed back towards the driver’s side of her car, hands tucked politely into the pockets of her coat.

“You should be more careful of your sleepwalking. Someone else might not have been so kind as to stop,” she called over her shoulder. “And—”

The woman paused, the smile still rooted firmly on her face as she opened her car door.

“I hear stress is bad for the baby.”

Something wretched and vile twisted in her stomach, hot as a branding iron. The panic that shot through her system was so vicious, so potent, that for a second she felt like the air had been sucked out of her lungs; it crashed over her in a wave so powerful that her vision swam and she thought, I’m going to pass out.

But there was another thought, too, squirming around in there, blinking its little emergency light:

My baby, my baby, you stay away from my baby.

“Ell!”

John’s hands landed on her before she thought think to pull away, even if she’d wanted to, as the headlights of the woman’s car turned away and began to drift down the drive. The idea that she ought to chase the car down occurred to her, but the tremble in her legs and the hitch of her breath reminded her that it would only serve to make her feel worse.

The brunette frantically checked her over, panting and out of breath as though he’d just sprinted down the drive; when his hands finally came to a stop, they were cradling her face, his eyes searching hers. Over his shoulder, she watched the receding red light of the woman’s car drifting in the dark, aimless in a sea of inky black, and she wanted to throw up.

“I heard you scream,” he said, breathless as his brows knit together at the center of his forehead. “What are you doing all the way out here? Baby, look at me, what’s wrong?”

“She knew,” Elliot managed out. Her voice felt like sandpaper grinding out of her lungs. “She knew I—she knew about our baby.”

“Who?” John looked over his shoulder, and then back at her, his thumbs smoothing over her cheekbones. “Elliot, who?”

I don’t know, but the words wouldn’t come.

I don’t know who she is,

but she knew about our baby,

and she has a smile like broken glass,

and a mouth as red as blood.

#my writing #fic: witching hour #john seed x female deputy #john seed/female deputy #far cry 5 fic #fc5 fic #tw blood #tw body horror #uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh #ch: elliot honeysett #ch: john seed #ch: isolde khan #ch: joseph seed #ch: jacob seed #s/o to santi and arden one day your time in the sun will come #also: poor staci #that is all i have to say on THAT #: )))))))#thank u thank u thank u!!!

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angeloncewas · 3 years ago

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dont wanna make this ask long bc i am tired and dont have the energy to be a well spoken (?) person rn but it probably will be long anyways, so sorry!! but like. as somebody who has hyperfixated on both idubbbz and schlatt (along with a plethora of other problematic content creators, i really know how to fuckn pick em!!) they absolutely foster a dogshit community, at least outside of platforms like tumblr, where like. you cant really avoid fandom culture like you can on twitter or ig, if that makes sense. on here, if you wanna post about your favorite youtuber, whether you tag it or not, other fans will likely see and if you say some bad shit, you will likely get called on it, whereas on ig basically only your followers will see it even if you use a hashtag and on twitter its like if you arent in a subtwt/fandom then you basically dont interact with any subtwt at all unless its an accident, ya know?

so like. i think what im trying to say here is that while ive met a lot of fans of both these creators, especially schlatt, who are great people as far as i can tell, i am also specifically on the fandom side of things and as soon as i step out of that space i realize that a lot of people who watch them are not actually minorities like me and my mutuals who can catch on to satire or who watch their more behind the scenes stuff where you can see them act like a decent person or even call out people for the things they usually joke about which just. fucking sucks. it sucks that, as much as i do believe schlatt is actually a good person (and sort of idubbbz, although i dont really watch him much anymore for a plethora of reasons, mostly related to the fact that i cant stand his jokes anymore even if he is playing a character as he's said before), he also keeps doing terrible fucking things and im really glad his actual friends have been calling him on it recently, especially after that jackbox video (which is a whole other thing on its own bc it literally seemed like nobody wanted to be there basically the entire video?? like as somebody who watched all the jackbox videos before that one, it was really fucking off in that call and the jokes were next level fucking upsetting), but sometimes it's just kinda like. exhausting. bc his community is already fucking bad now, you cant undo accidentally fostering a community of fucking racist homophobes who dont get that you're playing a character, unless you kinda drop off and build a whole new community from that, which would be stupid to do at this point in his career. not really sure where i was going with this tbh, but i thought i would chime in on this discussion as a viewer of mainly schlatt, but also a past idubbbz viewer who is basically a seasoned fucking vet at dealing with shitty fanbases because of him and many other dumb youtube white boys

(also, note on that anisa thing: ian's main fanbase was definitely pissed just bc she does sex work and a lot of them are too fucking young or just too fucking dense i guess to clock the fact that he's putting on an act bc, like i said before, they either dont watch his behind the scenes content, or they do and they kinda just miss those moments between still trying to entertain where he gets genuine. that being said, a lot of people outside of his fanbase were also pissy bc anisa is a less than spectacular lady if you really do your research on her, kind of a bad person but it's not something a lot of people know about, especially since one of the few videos made on it was by fucking creepshow art)

sorry for the rant again, i feel like i do this every other week now and i apologize, you just seem to have the best discourse and i enjoy partaking <3 hope you have a good rest of your day/night/whatever time you're reading this!

—🦷

Thank you for the input (don't mind the rant !) and I hope you have a good rest of your day too <3 For post length, I'll answer under the cut :)

Yeah, I get what you mean (I think ahdsufsd). Fandom as a concept is pretty... I don't even know how to describe it, but it's the kind of thing that I feel like white male Redditors would think of as pussy shit, y'know? Like the Ricegum gang isn't a fucking "fandom" they're a... well, a fandom, but they're not gonna admit to that. So when you step outside of a community like Tumblr (the queerest place on the internet TM) you come into contact with the faces of the fandom you're dealing with and oftentimes they're a lot less like you than you might've thought from the similar interest. It's like going to a Weezer concert and realizing you're surrounded by incels (this is a JOKE).

Satire's a rough topic because some people don't think it should exist at all. Like any words that can be directly interpreted as bigoted or problematic should not be uttered. I disagree with that, I think it's one of the most interesting forms of both social commentary and comedy, but I do see the problem. There are people who watched Filthy Frank (to take an example from that other anon) and didn't know or care what the point of his actions were (I don't know what they were tbh - I never watched him, but it sounds like he's a pretty decent dude) and instead read his jokes as-is. There are thousands upon thousands of people who aren't gonna get satire and that's a problem because if they're already bigoted they're gonna see people like Schlatt and iDubbz and whoever else as truly validating.

(Largely unrelated but yo, is iDubbz still going? Are the views alright? Is the adsense popping? Has he just kept going with Content Cops? I haven't heard about him since the girlfriend thing dropped.)

"you cant undo accidentally fostering a community of fucking racist homophobes who dont get that you're playing a character, unless you kinda drop off and build a whole new community from that"

I think this is what's pertinent when it comes to discussing Schlatt. After the Jackbox video (for me at least, he might've been there before) he put himself at a crossroads. If he'd apologized, said "sorry, I took it too far, that was a mistake" - yeah, plenty of people wouldn't have forgiven him and plenty of bigoted fans of his would've said that the apology was just to placate the snowflakes on Twitter, but to the sort of in-between people it would've shown that he's able to recognize and reconcile his mistakes. He could've transitioned into content that's A) actually good (when I say that the video was bad I don't just mean in terms of racism, I mean it straight up was not entertaining) and B) less "edgy" for the sake of. I wouldn't expect him to go uwu squeaky clean, but he's already reeled in the bad people, so if he really wanted to foster a good, progressive audience, he has to do something significant to show that.

But he didn't.

Maybe for the sake of his career, maybe because he likes those bigoted fans, maybe because he just doesn't get it - I don't know. I don't think we'll ever know. I spoke earlier about doing what is right over what is easy and in the case of Schlatt it just feels like he really did take the easy way out. Whoever he is in his personal life doesn't change how he's perceived online and the kinds of people that are idolizing him for it.

(And yeah I saw the video on Anisa when I Googled her to check if they were still dating, but then I saw who it was made by and I was like oh well whatever avhfdfkj)

#this is kind of rambly but oh well #angel answers #🦷 anon #discourse #negative #cc critical #idk how to tag this stuff just telae jsfkbg #long post

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moth-and-raven · 4 years ago

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CHAPTER FOUR

The rest of the day passes in a haze. Loud cheers met Nadia’s announcement and Portia slipped into the rush just in time to board the carriage, tear-stained but determined to fight through it.

I must have been imagining things. I don’t want to think poorly of Julian, but I have to face facts: people will do and say anything to keep themselves off the gallows. He’s smart. He’s charismatic. He knows I’m working with the Palace. I can’t help but think he was just trying to endear himself to me, taking advantage of how obviously attracted to him I am. I can’t blame him for that. It’s my own fault for chasing what was a pathetic pipe dream from the start.

I retreat to my room after we return to the palace. It’s not unreasonable, considering I haven’t slept much in the past few days. From my bed, I watch spots of sunlight creep across the ceiling until I fall asleep. At least it’s dreamless this time.

Portia comes to get me for dinner in the late evening, when the sky’s turned purple. She’s itching with curiosity, peeking at me from the corner of her eye the whole way to the dining hall. Before we enter, she clears her throat.

“So, um.”

“It was nothing.” If I keep telling myself that, maybe it’ll hurt less. “Did you—?”

“Safe and sound. At least as much as he can be.”

“How long had it been since—?”

She pulls her bottom lip between her teeth just like he does. “Ten years, give or take. The last time I saw him was right after his apprenticeship. He came back to Nevivon for a few months while he was figuring out what else to do. I was only sixteen, so he must’ve been… twenty-five?”

The same age I am now. I didn’t realize he was that much older than me, though I suppose it makes sense. He’s lived quite a life. Yet more reason for him to see nothing of interest in me.

Portia pushes on: “What will you say to—?”

“I’m not telling her anything.” I shake my head and look away. “I don’t have anything to tell her anyway.”

That’s not a lie. I may know more about him now, but nothing pertinent.

“She’ll ask.”

“I know.”

I must not be doing as good of a job hiding my sadness as I thought I was, because Portia rests her hand on my shoulder and squeezes gently. I don’t have it in me to say that whatever she’s imagining isn’t true.

I can’t do this.

“Could you tell Nadia that I—” Humiliated, I choke on my tears. “I'm— I’ll be in the library.”

I’m already around the corner by the time she agrees. I don't know what I’m going to do there, but at least I’ll be alone. Again.

I may not remember beyond the last three years, but I know in my heart that I’ve never been loved like I am in my dreams. I probably never will be. With all the beautiful people out there, who would choose me, the fat twenty-five-year-old virgin so gullible she falls for every man who looks at her twice? What could I possibly offer someone like him?

Nothing.

Painful, empty nothing.

I end up at the library eventually. At least I can navigate the palace better than I could the South End. My tears have almost stopped before I feel the metal arc of the crescent moon still hanging around my neck and break apart again. I manage to reach an armchair, nestled in an alcove near a half-flight of stairs, and curl up in it as best I can to weather the storm.

I’m so ugly when I cry. Thank god no one can see it. No one ever should.

When the waves settle and my breath doesn’t feel so foreign in my lungs, I press my palms to my eyes and sigh heavily. I have a headache now, as I always do after I cry like that. I know I should be hungry, but I’m not. I don’t know what I am.

But I made a promise. To Nadia and to Julian. Even if I never see him again, I’ll help him as much as I can. And with all of his research, all the palace staff who knew both him and Lucio, all the magic echoes swirling around waiting for someone to hear them, I think I can help him a lot.

------

I was always more comfortable at night. I sleep a little bit, curled up in the armchair, but it’s not very comfortable and I wake up sore. I’m glad I came to the library, though: Julian’s desk is a mess of torn papers and marked-up books, underlines and strikethroughs and question marks in the margins, and I have so little time to piece it all together. If I hadn’t slept yesterday away… yesterday. I shouldn’t be thinking about yesterday. It was nothing. It is nothing.

He’ll be nothing if I can’t figure this out.

Portia brings me something to eat in the very early hours, right before dawn. Without saying a word, she draws up another chair and starts sorting through things too. She can read his handwriting much more easily than I can.

And Count Lucio’s name shows up. And again, and again. Lucio’s temperature rising. Lucio says wine tastes metallic. Alchemical fluid in Lucio’s prosthetic turned red, wouldn’t survive replacement. Observations in clipped clinical speech, but scrawled with ever-increasing desperation. Lucio spitting up blood. Lucio not sleeping, complaining of bad dreams. Lucio too weak to eat, still alive.

Notes on the dissection of a beetle, a cross-section of a human brain, a map of the palace with large red Xs over half the rooms in the east wing. Peeking over my shoulder, Portia points at them.

“That’s the Count’s Suite. He had the whole wing, actually. No one goes up there anymore.”

I straighten up, my joints crackling from the hours I've spent hunched over. “Why?”

She shrugs. “Nadia had the whole thing blocked off. It’s really dirty, from the— all the ash and stuff. And people say it’s haunted.”

“By Lucio?”

“I guess. One of the other housekeepers swears they saw the ghost of a weird guy at the top of the stairs once. That it looked right at them with spooky red eyes. I think they’re full of shit, but maybe it’s worth a look?”

There could be a thousand things worth a look. If I had more time… “I don’t know. I have a couple spells that might be able to pin down a ghost, but I’ve never actually tried them.”

“If it is Lucio, though, wouldn’t he be able to say who killed him?”

“Hm. That’s true. Is the wing locked?”

Portia grins and fishes in her pocket. “Not if you have keys.”

The main staircase is close to the library. I feel the air get colder as we approach, and the hairs on my arms and the back of my neck start to stand up even before Portia unlocks the corridor that leads to Lucio’s bedroom. It’s eerily quiet, all gray and black, luxury gone to ruin in the wake of a disaster. I’ve seen reproductions of burned-out buildings that look like this, after heavy battles. It crosses my mind that destruction of that caliber had taken extremely powerful magic to accomplish, not the actions of a single man weakened by pressure and long hours in the midst of a plague. Julian can’t even do magic. He said as much during our long conversation at the Raven. I can’t imagine anything else that would do this much damage without bringing the entire palace down.

Interesting.

Cinders crunch underfoot. Charred paintings watch us pass. A primal fear creeps along just behind us, whispering then asking then screaming at us to flee. I can feel my heart in my throat and adrenaline in my blood, every sense heightened. Tattered curtains move at the corner of my eye: I’m terrified to look and even more terrified not to.

But I can tell without bringing magic to my hand that there’s nothing here. At least nothing that wants to make itself known. There’s just a spark of pure rage somewhere deep inside the wing, but it doesn’t want to be seen. No ghosts, no goats, no ghost goats. No spooky red eyes. Just soot and smoke stains and three years of neglect. The fear lurking in the back of my mind isn’t supernatural, just the normal human mistrust of the dark and abandoned.

We go all the way to the end of the suite to no avail. Part of me thinks I should stay, but I’m getting tired now and the idea of sleeping in these rooms isn’t appealing. Portia takes my sigh as an admission of defeat and pats my arm. It was a distant hope anyway.

Near the end of the corridor as we leave, a small glimmer catches my attention. If I hadn’t been looking that way to start with, I never would’ve noticed it.

“Hey Portia, what’s in there?”

She lifts up the lantern and peers into the room. “Bath chamber, I think.”

We see it at the same time, as the light catches the red gleam again: falling from the sink are drops of blood. More of it trickles across the floor. The walls are stained from it, up to the window.

“What the fuck?”

My sentiments exactly. What is this? It can’t be actual blood, can it? This is the top floor of the palace. Is it bubbling up through the plumbing?

“Nadia’s gonna want to know about this,” Portia says in a small voice.

“Wait. Let me check it out first.”

She turns to look at me, pale in the lantern’s glow. “This is way beyond whatever my brother might have done. It could infect the whole palace!”

“Do you think it’s infectious?”

Portia frowns. “Did you… Were you in Vesuvia back then? During the Plague?”

There’s no point in lying. “No.”

“Neither was I, but I heard about it. Before I left Nevivon, some sailors docked and told everyone what they’d seen. People died so quickly, there wasn’t space to keep their bodies. And they were all red, their eyes and their fingertips, everywhere you could see veins.” She shudders. “I can’t believe Ilya worked with it and… and…”

She must’ve been so scared, knowing that he could die any day.

“You know that big ugly crematorium out in the bay?” she asks.

“The Lazaret.” Everyone knows about that. You can see it from shore, a jagged silhouette reminding everyone of the toll the Plague took on the city. I don’t like looking at it: it makes my heart ache.

“Yeah. Even with that, there were too many bodies. So many people… There was a rumor that the Palace stored the extra ones, until they could be burned.”

“Where would they have been able to keep them?”

“Dunno. But there’s a huge tunnel system under here, all the way down into the cliffs. And the dungeon’s really big.”

I’d wondered how Julian could escape the prison cells, when the only way out was through the palace itself. Tunnels would explain that, I suppose. “So do you think there’s still something tainting the water?”

Her eyes are wide in the dark. “There might be. Kinda like here, no one’s been in the dungeons for ages. Probably since then.”

I frown. It’s unlikely, but I can’t deny the evidence right in front of me. I take another step into the washroom and trace the flow towards the wall. Some of the stones are loose now, after years of water damage. There’s more than enough room for it all to drain away between them.

Weak dawn sunlight floods the horizon as I stand up and glance out the window. I can see most of the city from here, out across the harbor to the Lazaret and down through the South End and directly into the lush gardens below.

And beyond the gardens, flowing from the palace along the channel of an aqueduct, is a stream of blood red.

------

Nadia scowls at the dripping red water, then summons her bodyguard to her side and dispatches them with a whispered order. Both Portia and I follow her out of the wing, but Portia splits off at the base of the stairs to see to her duties while Nadia invites me into the dining hall for breakfast.

A massive, gaudy painting hangs over the table, eyeing us as we pick over the array of egg dishes and sliced fruit. It depicts a celebration scene, I think, presided over by a muscular blond man with his arms spread wide over a crowd of adoring citizens. Nadia notices me looking at it and chuckles.

“Admiring my late husband’s art sense, are you, Reyja?”

I don’t want to offend her, but I think Count Lucio should’ve stuck to partying. “It’s, um, very vibrant.”

“That was typical of him,” she laughs. “Ostentatious to a fault.”

People don’t talk about Lucio much, unless they��re cursing his name for all the damage he did to the city with his warmongering and overspending. I’m trying to solve his murder, but now that I think of it, I don’t know much about the man himself. “What was he like?”

Nadia grimaces. “Much as you’ve heard, I expect. Loud, brash, insolent. Committed to his life of luxury. I would not have married him, had I been sober when he proposed.”

She must catch my surprise, because she fixes me in her dark eyes and raises a brow as if daring me to judge her.

Of course I won’t. “How did you two meet?”

“He was visiting Prakra,” she says. “To present himself to Empress Nasrin, my mother, as the Count of Vesuvia. He had been in power for some time by then, as I recall. I believe he told me that he’d first come to this city nearly twenty years before, on a mercenary contract.”

“He wasn’t from here?”

“No. He was of the Southern tribes.”

That’s confusing. “How did he get to be Count?”

“The former Count grew quite fond of him. Lucio was named his heir shortly after he arrived, and took the throne shortly after that. He spoke often of the battle in which he lost his arm—” She points at the painting. Lucio’s left arm shines, gilded in gold leaf. “—the same in which Spada was killed.”

Lucio may have been bloodthirsty, especially fond of the fights to the death at the coliseum Vesuvia used to be famous for, but everyone knew his roots as a successful mercenary. Even in his forties, when he died, he was strong and virile.

Which was why his death came as such a shock. Who would’ve thought such a man would die in his bed, ravished by sickness and weak enough to fall to an unskilled assassin?

“What about the Plague?” I ask quietly. People talk about Lucio a little bit, but no one discusses the Plague at all, as if the mere mention of it will cause its return.

Nadia nods. “It appeared nearly overnight, five years ago. No one had seen its like before. To my knowledge, nothing like it has been seen since, either.”

“Do we know where it came from?”

“I’m afraid not. Little is known of it, save that it killed thirty thousand of my people in two years.”

Her people. Nadia may have been Prakran by birth, but this was her city now.

“I had been visiting my sisters when it struck,” Nadia continues, gaze unfocused as she looks back through her memories. “As such, I was forbidden from returning until we were certain it had passed.”

I remember the parade that welcomed her back, but I didn’t realize she’d been gone that long. It’s been less than a year: she must be so busy, trying to pull Vesuvia together again. No wonder the search for her husband’s murderer hadn’t been her top priority until now. “I’m sorry.”

She tilts her head, looking at me. “Understand this, Reyja: if the Plague has not truly left the city, and what you and dear Portia discovered today is proof of that, then the search for Doctor Devorak must be set aside. I am eager to see justice done, but one man’s life, when weighed against the lives of thousands, will not tip the scales. I hope I may rely upon your services regardless of that outcome.”

Her visit to the shop feels very far away. I’m attached to this now, however big it gets. “I’ll be here.”

“Thank you. I have sent Yazakh to fetch an expert on the Plague from their estate. I hope they will return soon, but in the meantime, I urge you to rest. We may have much to consider in the coming days.”

I take a small pastry with me when I leave the table and make my way back to my room. I don’t doubt that she’s right, but even with this additional set of problems, I can’t keep my mind away from Julian. Thoughts of him cloud my head as I lay down for a nap and they’re still there when I wake up. My stomach isn’t happy with me, swirling with guilt and humiliation and anxiety, but I don’t know what to do about it.

The expert still hasn’t arrived when I go up to Lucio’s suite to check. I pass the library on the way back and my fingers fly to the silver moon pendant still around my neck, following the divot Julian’s own nerves wore in the metal. I suppose it wouldn’t hurt to look through his notes while I wait, if I can concentrate enough to get anything useful out of them.

I can’t.

When the sun sets again, I give up. Another day gone, and I’ve only discovered more things to do. I need something to focus on, something with a solution, something… something that might distract me from the fact that I’m no closer to clearing Julian’s name.

I can follow that water, if nothing else. I don’t know where it’s coming from, but maybe I can learn where it’s going. And I can get out of the palace, maybe work off some of this nervous energy. And I won’t be surrounded by pieces of him, distracting me from my mission. It’ll be perfect.

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

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#the arcana #the arcana fanfic #reyja north #julian devorak #moth & raven

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jiminthestreets-bonesinthesheets · 4 years ago

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Slash Fiction - Ch 4

Title: Slash Fiction��

Fandom: Supernatural

Series: Supernatural

Pairing: Destiel (there will be more)

Rating: Lemon (for the series as a whole)

Tags: fluff, angst, pining, canon typical violence and gore

MASTERLIST

AO3

SERIES LIST

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Chapter Four

“Dean,” Sam whispered as Sera walked around the body hanging from the roof, same as the last.

Dean heard Sam, but couldn't register anything. He felt his heart rate increasing as he looked at the poor man in front of him. Familiar trench coat hanging around him, blue tie, dark messy hair… blue eyes.

“I know those guys said he was dressed like Cas, but Dean, he… he looks exactly like-”

“Yeah, I know, Sam!” Dean snapped, then quickly turned away from the body, not able to look anymore, and walked down the hall.

Sam and Sera shared a quick, knowing look between themselves as they watched Dean stop a few feet away and pull out his phone.

He couldn't help it. Normally this sort of thing didn't bother him too much anymore, it came with the job, but the fact that he was practically looking at Cas hanging from the ceiling made his stomach turn. He had to be sure, he had to ease his mind even though he knew he was being ridiculous, but he had to dial the number anyways.

The phone rang for what felt like a lifetime before someone picked up, and Dean sighed as the familiar voice hit his ears, “Hello, Dean.”

“Hiya, Cas,” he smiled, relieved.

“Is everything alright?”

“Yeah , I just…” He ran a hand down his face, “Just a rough night I guess, wanted to hear your voice.”

“Do you want me to come to you? I can fly in, just tell me where you are.”

“Naw, it's alright, I know you're busy helping Bobby with that vamp nest,” Dean risked a glance over his shoulder, seeing Sera and Sam still investigating the scene then turned back, “just hearing your voice is enough.”

There was a pause for a moment before Cas said, “As long as you're sure you're alright…”

“I'm fine, Cas, promise, just…” He closed his eyes tight, focusing for the moment on Cas’s voice in his ear, “Just distract me for a few, tell me about your job with Bobby.”

~~~~~~~~~~~

“I would love to know what the hell’s going on,” Sam said as he circled the body once, “I was two feet away from what was clearly a spirit and there was no EMF at all. Maybe you're right, it must be broken.”

“It's not broken,” Sera replied, deep in thought when Sam looked at her in question.

“Do you know something?”

She hummed in response then said, “I’ll get Dean then we need to head back to the motel, I'll tell you everything when we get there.”

Sam nodded to her as she made her way down the hall towards Dean. He was still talking on the phone with his back to her and his head down, she didn't have to ask to know who he had called, who he would need right now.

“Yeah, Cas, I’ll call you if anything else comes up, maybe…” Dean scratched his head, “Maybe you can stop by the motel once we figure some things out?”

“Of course, Dean,” she heard Cas say through the phone.

“Great, I’ll shoot you a text when we’ve got some time.”

There was a moment of silence between the two of them as she stood back and watched as Dean shuffled nervously from foot to foot, “Hey, Cas, I…”

“Yes, Dean?”

Dean shut his eyes, pinched the bridge of his nose, and huffed, “I gotta go, I’ll text you later.”

“Right…” She could hear the disappointment in Cas’s voice through the phone, “Text you later.”

“Bye, Cas.” And before Cas even had a chance to respond Dean hung up the phone. It didn't take a rocket scientist to know that Dean had already planned on not calling Cas when they got back to the motel. That as soon as those feelings started bubbling their way up, Dean would do anything to tamp them back down again, despite the fact that right now he clearly needed to see Cas.

She shook her head, then Dean turned to be face to face with her. He quickly stuffed the phone back in his pocket and completely ignored the fact that she more than likely just heard everything he had said, and instead asked, “Anything?”

She nodded, “I might have something, I'll explain back at the hotel.”

“Good,” he grumbled as they started making their way back towards Sam.

“So,” she began cautiously, “is Cas coming by?”

“I don't know, maybe.”

She nodded, pursing her lips before adding, “He should. It might be good for you to see him for a while.”

He stopped walking and looked at her for a second as she kept going, then he shook it off and changed the topic again, “We need to call the cops and report this, get a coroner here.”

The change in topic definitely did not go unnoticed by her, but she allowed it, for now. “Sam’s calling them, and I’ll get Vincent to gather everyone in the lobby.”

They made it back to Sam who was just finishing up with the police on the phone as she asked, “Do we know his name, any ID on him?”

“It's Erik.” She turned to Dean who still refused to look at the body. “His boyfriend’s downstairs looking for him.”

No words were said between them as they all knew this was a huge hit for Dean. He wouldn't admit it but there were a lot of factors to this particular piece of the puzzle that were too close to home for him.

Still not looking, he shook his head angrily and exclaimed, “We need to gank this bitch, now!” Then turned and walked away from them.

~~~~~~~~~~~

About ten minutes later the cops arrived, along with the coroner soon after that. Vincent had since gathered the rest of the players in the front lobby and informed them that due to unforeseen circumstances, the game was unfortunately ending. And with the promise of a red lobster gift card for every player, courtesy of Chuck, the small group left the building, except for two other boys who had been asked to stay behind.

The three stood back and watched as the police informed Erik’s boyfriend of his death, and as his heart shattered, Sera and Sam watched as Dean’s did too. They all thought back to the boy hanging from the roof, to how much he truly did look like Cas. This one was a little close to home, and they were all so exhausted from it already but clearly had more work to do.

“Hey, Sera.” She laid her head back against the wall and rolled it to the side to look at Sam. “How did you know to go to the third floor?”

She turned away from him for a moment and then pushed off from where she was leaning against the wall. Without a word she made her way back up to the second floor with the boys on her heels, both curious but neither voicing it, and followed her up.

When they stepped out of the elevator she turned down the small hidden hallway and knocked on the office door. “Amanda, it's Sera.”

The door opened a crack and Amanda peeked out. Upon seeing it was Sera and the boys, she opened the door and let them in. “Agents, what's going on? Who was that woman?”

Sera eyed Natasha who was off to the side doing homework again, then leaned in towards Amanda. “Another man was killed.” Amanda covered her mouth with a gasp as Sera continued, “That woman has something to do with it, we just aren't sure what yet. But she vanished before we could get to her.”

“Oh my god,” Amanda moved to sit in the chair behind her desk.

“I also need to take Natasha’s laptop.”

“Why?”

“While I was reading her story earlier some information popped up on her laptop that could be pertinent to the case,” she shifted her eyes to Natasha then said, “so I need to take it in for evidence.”

“Is… is Natasha in trouble?!”

“No, not at all,” Sera assured her, “in fact, Natasha more than likely had no idea that this information was on her laptop. But myself and these agents are going to do our best to find out how it got there and why, so we can stop this from ever happening here again.”

Amanda couldn't even say anything, she just nodded as she tried to hold the tears back.

Sera sighed, then turned away and headed towards Natasha, placing a hand on her shoulder. “Sorry, Natasha, but I have to take your laptop for a few days.”

“Why?” She turned back to Sera, “I have to finish homework.”

“Myself and these two guys are federal agents, and we are currently investigating some pretty strange things,” she thought how best to say it without scaring the poor girl too much, “so we're just checking everyone's computers in the area. I promise I’ll bring it back. And if you don't get your homework finished on time I promise I'll talk to your teachers about it, alright?.”

“Alright,” she handed the laptop to Sera, “but you have to bring it back, I have school work on there, and my book!”

“I promise,” Sera held a hand up and Natasha nodded.

The three then said a quick thanks to Amanda and quietly left the building.

~~~~~~~~~~~

PREVIOUS NEXT

A/N: I know its been a long time but here is the next chapter and more to come soon I promise, its already all finished! And I am so sorry this took so long! I mostly just write this series for myself but if there is someone else out there who likes it too, then I am always happy to share and hear your thoughts! XD <3

And if you or anyone else you know would wanna be tagged, just let me know!

Tags: @kitsunecastiel

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rolorules · 4 years ago

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Okay, the sticker function does not really convince me.

Administrator's Note / Blog Update

Maybe today is a good day to talk about this little blog of mine. No worries, I currently have no plans to sacrifice my life for my big brother (me being an only child anyway) and I have no intention of killing off this blog either. On the contrary, I very much wish to keep it alive. However, this day, August 17, the day when episode 19 of Code Geass R2 was aired, has once again caught me more or less uprepared and has reminded me of the fact that I really have to invest more time and effort into this blog once again.

When I started Rolorules on a whim in August 2012, I had the ambition to publish at least one post a day, on average. After a few years, I had to curb this due to a lack of time and also material, but it is still my goal to post something pertinent at least on the non-otaku holidays (Christmas, Easter, New Year's Eve, Halloween, occasionally Valentine's Day) and on the days most relevant for Geass lore and Rolo in particular (Rolo's and Nunnally's, Lelouch's and (if possible) also Suzaku's birthday, Rolo Day on June 6, August 17 of course, and also September 28, the day of Zero Requiem.

For these, I'll try to come up with short stories or some other stupid ideas of my own, and I intend to keep relying on commissions (which I have not been able to get this year up to now, due to conventions being cancelled). I will also have to keep reblogging images, but I need to check a bit harder, it seems; when browsing my archive I noticed various double posts and even one triple post. I hope this does not hold true for today's posts. (Some of the video links also don't work anymore, but I doubt I will be able to do something about this any time soon,)

Then I had those essays about Rolo's (dysfunctional yet strangely lovable) personality titled How Rolo Rolls. Since they were more or less an analysis of his behaviour in the episodes, I do not have much to add, maybe there will be another special if I find the additional picture drama that was on the latest collector's edition blu-ray of R2 on YouTube (yes, I own it, but MINT CONDITION is important!). Something that I also own are the recap films and the new one, Code Geass: Lelouch of the Re:surrection, but I must admit that I have not yet mustered the courage to watch them because I fear they might diminish my enjoyment of the series. As far as I am concerned, Code Geass was virtually perfect, and how can you improve perfection? Anyway, what I have watched are the additional scenes of the recap films, so I think I got a solid idea of how they treated Rolo's character and story arc. This is something I will definitely have to write about.

Finally, there were these essays about Rolo merchandise titled How Rolo Sells. One of them is still set on private because I never finished it to my satisfaction. One has to say that despite the avalance of merchandise that accompanied the recap films, there was not much noteworthy Rolo Lamperouge merchandise, mostly buttons, straps and keychains, basically merchandise for which you only needed some images (not even new ones in some cases) and a printer. Still there is enough old stuff left to keep the series going, so this is also something that's on my to-do list.

If you have actually read all this, thank you so much. Also thank you for your loyalty and continued support. Feel free to mail me if you like. Suggestions and constructive criticism are always welcome. Take care!

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rannadylin · 5 years ago

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Character Interview: Lenneth

Another Watcher for Watcher Wednesday today! Once again I’ve lost track of who else (if anyone?) tagged me for another of these, and that means that I’m also open-tagging anyone and everyone! Got an OC who hasn’t done the interview yet? I’d love to read it!

Lenni’s chibi art, just as cute as Violet’s, is also by @artpigeons!

name ➔ Lenneth Morelli

are you single ➔ Nope! I have laid claim to one very handsome wizard!

are you happy ➔ Hey, I make the best of things.

are you angry ➔ Not usually.

are your parents still married ➔ I think they still would be if they weren’t dead, yeah. Pretty sure Dad died of a broken heart after Mom died, anyway.

NINE FACTS

birth place ➔ Rauatai, a town on the coast.

hair colour ➔ Brown with a bit of red to it

eye colour ➔ Hazel with a bit of green to it

birthday ➔ So fun story, over the years there’ve been about five different dates I’ve claimed as my birthday for, uh, various reasons pertinent to my goals of that moment. So I’m gonna have to not actually commit the real date to writing at this time.

mood ➔ Easily amused!

color scheme ➔ I like greens.

gender ➔ Female.

summer or winter ➔ Summer! Easier to travel then.

morning or afternoon ➔ Guess I’m more of an afternoon person, but I don’t really have a problem with mornings.

EIGHT THINGS ABOUT YOUR LOVE LIFE

are you in love ➔ Am I ever!

do you believe in love at first sight ➔ It sounds nice in the novels, but it’s usually not worked out that well for me in real life. Not that I didn’t think Aloth was cute from the start, because he sure is and I sure did. But he grew on me.

who ended your last relationship ➔ See, this boy I was running the streets with, a few towns back, more or less double-crossed me and made off with all the goods, so I guess he ended it in a sense.

have you ever broken someone’s heart ➔ I try not to get that connected with a mark, it’s just unprofessional.

are you afraid of commitments ➔ I…well…I do move around a lot. And I wear enough masks to know better than to trust easily. But I really want to make this one work. For as long as possible.

have you hugged someone within the last week? ➔ Have I? *thinks* Hurry up with the interview, I’m gonna go hug the first person I see just to make sure!

have you ever had a secret admirer ➔ I…well…ha! I wish. Actually I do get weird letters like that at Caed Nua sometimes but I’ve got people now to screen things like that for me. Weird, huh?

have you ever broken your own heart? ➔ My heart’s pretty good at bouncing back. And moving on.

SIX CHOICES

love or lust ➔ Little of column A, little of column B…

lemonade or iced tea ➔ Lemonade. Unless you’ve weighted the tea down with plenty of sugar? That’s good too!

cats or dogs ➔ I’m more of a dog person but cats are cute too!

a few best friends or many regular friends ➔ Normally I’d say many – it’s good to have connections – but I’ve made a few friends lately that feel like something bigger than I’m used to, and that’s…really nice, turns out.

wild night out or romantic night in ➔ I’d say both but I can hear Aloth groaning as soon as I even think it, so we’ll compromise with In. 😉

day or night ➔ Night’s great for my line of work.

FIVE HAVE YOU EVERS

been caught sneaking out ➔ Not all cons run smoothly, sad to say. But I think “times caught sneaking in” still outweighs “sneaking out”, though that’s not really saying much in my favor either.

fallen down/up the stairs ➔ *outburst of laughter culminating in gigglesnorts*

wanted something/someone so badly it hurt? ➔ Oh, yes. Every day. I…mask it with laughter sometimes, if I’m honest; and sometimes that’s not a mask, it’s just me clinging to what joy I can, but some hurts never go away.

wanted to disappear ➔ Both for professional and social reasons, oh yeah.

been involved in a fight you thought you couldn’t win ➔ Ha! I do not hold the record of “most times dragged back to consciousness post-fight by my party members” for nothing. Good thing they can win them without me when that happens!

FOUR PREFERENCES

smile or eyes ➔ Smile! I love when I can tease a smile out of him, too.

shorter or taller ➔ Taller! Look, I’m kinda short even for an elf. Not saying I wouldn’t date a dwarf or an orlan under the right circumstances, but taller looks real good right now.

intelligence or attraction ➔ I mean, why stop at one?

hook-up or relationship ➔ I’m liking the serious relationship thing these days.

FAMILY

do you and your family get along ➔ It’s complicated. I think my parents and brother are too long dead for the Watcher stuff to help with that now. We got along as well as any ordinary family when I was a kid, though. And after our parents died, my siblings and I were as close as can be – had to be, to survive. My sister and I…well, it’s been a while since I talked to her, actually. I think that’s on me, though. All she did was settle down, and I’m realizing lately…that doesn’t mean she doesn’t need her big sis any more. I really oughta go back and visit.

would you say you have a “messed up life” ➔ It is a little weird, isn’t it?

have you ever ran away from home ➔ Not ran away so much as got evicted after Dad died and the landlord got tired of letting three jobless kids stay there. Okay, and there was one time when I was real little and Bree was just a baby that I got annoyed with not being the only child any more and went and sulked by the creek all night. Mom and Dad were so busy with the infant they…didn’t exactly notice right away, so I was stuck there till morning wondering just how dumb it would look to crawl back, when Dad came looking for me finally.

have you ever gotten kicked out ➔ …of a few rentals we couldn’t make rent for. Also of a few towns my cons got seen through in. Yeah, there’s a reason I stick to the road so much and it’s not just because I love seeing the sights (but I do!).

FRIENDS

do you secretly hate one of your friends ➔ There were some “friends” I used to associate with in the con artist days that were more like allies of convenience. And I guess there are some nobles I have to act like friends with when they come calling at Caed Nua on business. Don’t hate them exactly, but they sure are boring.

do you consider all of your friends good friends ➔ Of course! I am a people person! And I make sure to ask everyone as many questions as I can think of to show just how much I care about them! (Seriously, Aloth, I’m not just trying to annoy you!)

who is your best friend ➔ Edér. He’s as solid a friend as can be, and gets my sense of humor like no one else.

who knows everything about you ➔ I try not to unload too many secrets in one place (I’m a complicated soul! Don’t wanna overwhelm anyone!) but I also try not to hide them from Aloth anymore. He probably regrets that sometimes, but he’s very kind about it.

#watcher wednesday #pillars of eternity #watcher lenneth #lenneth #character interview #from the desk of ranna #lenni is such fun to write XD #hope you enjoy her as much as i do!

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fragiledewdrop · 5 years ago

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High school Newspaper Shenanigans

I don't have a lot of good memories about high school, but today I found a dusty copy of what passed for a "newspaper" in my school and it brought me back to when I was 16.

The girl who had been running the school newspaper for as long as I could remember was graduating that year, so she had to prepare for the final exam and university and she did not have time to edit anymore. My friends B., C., and I, in what was probably a fit of madness, decided to try our hand at it. And so I found myself co-editor of a newspaper. I had no idea what I was getting myself into, but it would be one hell of an adventure.

The paper was called "Up!", after the Disney movie, for...some very creative reason I cannot remember. The first thing we did was change the title to "Up patriots to arms!"

One of the first things we had to cover was a very important, popular, yearly student strike,which would have been fairly easy, if not for the freaking tension between the two student organizations in our city. The biggest one, the "Rete" , was basically left wing - although many people didn't know or care about their affiliations- and they constantly butted heads with the student block, a group of self proclaimed neofascists who dressed in all black, used smoke bombs during protests and were always surrounded by the police.

We decided it would be a grand idea to interview the respective leaders to get both opinions on the matter.

The president of the "Rete" came to meet us after school. The highlight of the interview was when he said that his was a "non political organization", at which point we looked at each other in disbelief and asked him:"Really?"

The answer was "Yeas, although of course many of us are registered in different parties along the whole spectrum, such as..." and he started listing all left wing parties in the country, from communists to centrists, because apparently that's what he meant by "variety". Anyway.

It was time to interview the leader of the Block. He told us to wait in a square until someone would come get us.

B. and I were getting very nervous.

A guy with a shaved head and a black leather jacket came towards us. "You the journalists? Follow me"

We followed him to the lair. I mean headquarters.

(By the way, we realized we knew this guy. He was a lamb. I had no clue what he was doing there.)

The headquarters' walls were legit covered in swastikas and pictures of Mussolini. Yikes.

The leader was also very nice. Didn't stop me wanting to throttle him when he said that poor Mussolini was just misunderstood.

I had to ACTUALLY stop B. from doing something rash. No picking fights with the fascist dudes in he fascists's lair, please.

They straight up told us, I shit you not, that they were a brotherhood and, as a very effective bonding experience, they put on music and danced in a circle while whipping each other with leather belts. I AM NOT MAKING THIS UP. Maybe they were, but it didn't seem so. That didn't make it into the article, but it's forever etched into my brain.

I was shaken, but the double interview turned out great. #journalism

A while later we were sitting at a school assembly in the local movie theater. Everybody was complaining about the fact that our gym's roof had collapsed the year before and nobody was doing anything about it. We were taking the bus every week to a public gym, but we had to pay for it and were Officially Not Happy About It.

It was then that B. went : "You know what would be great? If we could interview the mayor about this"

I lit up. "Oh my god! We could ask him so many things! And not just about our school, but about the Linguistic High school that had to be evacuated and about [all the other schools that were literally falling to pieces. You know, Italian things]"

But the consensus was that, while we could try, it would be almost impossible for us to get an interview. So we sighed and sat back.

C.cleared her throat. "Guys." "Yes?" "You know how the mayor is a lawyer?" ".... Yes?" "Well, my dad is a lawyer. He knows him."

We dragged her to the bathroom

"We are not leaving here until your dad gets us an appointment" (poor guy)

He did

For that same night. At the town hall. At 8 pm.

We cleared our afternoon to come up with pertinent questions and practice and freak out.

At 8 we were at the town hall.

There was a red banner on the balcony with a slogan on it, that would be there for months afterwards, because...

... that same night a group of workers had occupied the town hall to demand better pay and better working conditions

Good for them

Bad for us

We were about to leave, but they assured us the mayor would be with us shortly

We waited three whole hours

During which, obviously, an old council member came to talk to us about how, if we wanted to do some real journalism, we should investigate the presence of the Illuminati in our town

Not gonna lie, we were kinda interested at that point

Around 11, the mayor called us in

I am going to concede that he must have been tired

But he was still a slimy son of a bitch

Extremely condescending

When we brought up our problems, he told us our schools were the Province's responsibility

(the Province would of course later tell us we were the Mayor's responsibility)

It was a train wreck

But eye opening

The article we wrote was extremely passive aggressive

He told C.'s father that he really liked it

I don't know if he was impermeable to sarcasm or just a politician.

Fast forward a few months. While our math teacher was talking, a giant piece of plaster fell from the ceiling, missed her by millimeters and crashed on the floor. We went on, business as usual, but that was kinda scary. And it was not the first incident of that kind to happen in our school.

We decided to do a reportage

Armed with notebooks and a camera, we went from classroom to classroom, asking students and teachers about problems with the building.

It was like opening a can of worms.

We got everything from "Oh yes, don't you see those huge holes in the ceiling and in the floor?" to "Yes, every time it rains the classroom gets flooded" to "See this giant wooden piece of tent rod? It fell on my shoulder last week. We don’t even have tents!"

Everyone had something to complain about. The teachers. The janitors. It was scary, to be honest. Especially considering we were repeatedly told ours was the safest school structure in town (what with having been standing since the end of WWI and all)

One day, while we were trying to get on the roof to evaluate its conditions, the headmistress called us in her office.

She said that she had gotten wind of what we were doing (duh)

And she hoped that we wouldn't give a bad impression of her "to parents and important people"

Because after all her hands were tied

It was the responsibility of the Mayor and the Province

(Just who the fuck was responsible for us?)

She smiled sweetly, leaned in towards us and whispered "You'll be careful now, won't you?"

She looked at me and said my name

Hoping I'd be the responsible/most easily intimidated one

(I had beef with that woman, mmmkay? But that's a story for another day)

I smiled and I told her: "Of course. We are just taking pictures of what we see. We'll let the truth speak for itself"

We did

No commentary

Just very objective descriptions and pictures

We really felt like heroes of the free press and free speech, at the service of the people despite the threat of power. (Yes, it sounds dramatic. It's because we were teenagers)

And then there were the other, less momentous adventures:

That one time when, after days of editing, we had to fill a little blank space at the bottom of the last page and nothing fit. We were frantically searching through our notes, the articles other students had sent us, drawings, everything, and we were slowly losing hope, until B. unearthed one of my notebooks and said : "What is this? 'Requiem. In memoriam termosifoni malati, ego ista verba pronuntio..." I was horrified. "NO" I yelled. "That's just a joke. We are NOT publishing that. NO WAY!" It was really a silly thing, you see. There was a radiator in our classroom that didn't work very well. Sometimes it was scorching hot, sometimes (on the coldest days, obviously) it was icy. So my friend E. and I had decided that the radiator was "sick", and we wrote its last will, its epitaph, parodies of famous poems like "La fontana malata" (The sick fountain) by Palazzeschi or "All'amica risanata" (To the healed friend) by Foscolo (can't find translations, sorry). It was fun. B.had found my silly attempt to write a "Requiem" in...kinda dog Latin I guess? But the grammar was correct. In any case, IT WAS NOT MEANT TO SEE THE LIGHT OF DAY. But we were desperate, so I relented. On one condition: it had to be ANONYMOUS. And that was the best decision I ever made in my entire life, because when we distributed the newspaper I saw a bunch of Latin teachers analising the fucking thing in front of their classes. "Mmmmhhh I am not sure an accusative was the best choice here. I would have gone with a dative." Then write your own pastiche poem, Marta! One of them had even copied it on the blackboard and was trying to figure out the metric! That was the equivalent of a 3am shitpost, not fucking Catullus, people! I have never been so embarrassed in my life! At least my friends were having a field day with it. Oh, and my Latin and Greek teacher figured it out. She read it and told me : "This was you, wasn't it?" I wanted to disappear. But she said it was funny, and that was the end of it.

All the times we had to edit what other students gave us and it was WILD, you guys. The grammar alone...The choice of topics....We got quite a few articles about UFO sightings over our town, so that was a thing. (We got to see a lot of really interesting and creative stuff, though)

The times we absolutely lost our cool, because it was hard work, okay? "Federica, your Isabel Allende analysis is a bit too long. Maybe if we cut the Scheherazade comparison..." "YOU ARE NOT CUTTING THE SCHEHERAZADE COMPARISON, B." "But.." "That is the backbone of the whole thing. The structure would collapse without it." "It's only a metaphor!" "No! I won't sell myself and my principles for a chance to be published" "Guys! CALM DOWN! It's just...essentially a book report." "SHUT UP C."[........] "I think we need to eat something" "Yeah. Should I make pancakes? With chocolate chips or without, B.? "

The time we got stuck at school because it was snowing, and C. wrote a beautiful piece called "The agonizing mesmerism of snow", and our friend P.,who was a wizard with a pencil, made an earie and amazing drawing for it that almost made me cry. Coincidentally, it was the day pope Ratzinger resigned. We thought it was a joke while still at school, then later on agreed that it was the reason it had been snowing in the first place. None of us wanted to write about the pope, so we asked the guy who was always sending us articles about the occult and arcane symbols hidden in churches. It turned out great.

The time a bunch of our more "troublesome" classmates started making hilarious dirty jokes based on Catullus' double entendres and B. promised them we would publish them (anonymously) if they wrote them down. They did, and the result was a page titled "Surrealism" full of the dirtiest "poetic" stuff in existence that made everybody laugh themselves unconscious, with the exception of some teachers who somehow didn't get the jokes.

The time we interviewed our student representative (a classmate of ours), whom B. had always thought was too full of himself and needed to be brought down a notch. So we "accidentally" misspelled his name in the article. Nobody noticed except him. He was fuming and it was glorious (not my proudest moment, but what can you do)

The time another brilliant classmate wrote a piece called "The pathologic mysoginist" that absolutely enraged some of the guys in our school. I stan her to this day.

That time I wrote a long article for Woman's day about the abuse and mistreatment of women in our country and across the world. I thought it was nothing special, really, but then Maria the janitor (the sweetest lady in existence) stopped me in the corridor and teared up a bit and said that she hadn't known about a lot of the things I had discussed, but she thought it was important to talk about them and that she felt represented as a woman and that she wanted to bring the paper home to read it to her husband. It touched me so deeply I still get emotional when I think about it.

Anyway, all of this and more happened in one year. Then we, too, had to worry about university admissions and exams and we passed the burden on to "aliens and occult" guy (who was amazing too)

But I remember the passion we poured into it, the willingness to take risks, the feeling of defying authority for the "greater good". We were idealists, all of us, and so full of hope and a will to change things in every way we could. Maybe a high school newspaper means nothing in the great scheme of things, but it meant something to us. It made us brave when we didn't think we were. It made us defiant. I wonder if that part of me is still sleeping, somewhere deep inside.

#Memories #High school #Journalism #I guess #High school newspaper #Adolescence #Adventures #Funny #I am so full of feelings right now #We were crazy #About me #Long post

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alj4890 · 6 years ago

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Chapter 32 Where Is She?

The Royal Romance Fan Fiction (Liam x MC*Riley) (Maxwell x OC*Amanda) (Drake x Olivia) (Hana x Rashad)

These characters are from the amazing writers of Pixelberry's Choices stories: The Royal Romance and Red Carpet Diaries. The only character of my own is Duchess Amanda Bridgerton of House St Orella.

Masterlist for The Other Friend

Chapter 32: summary: Liam questions Bastien about any information he has on the location of Savannah. Drake and Maxwell begin to try and piece together what they think happened to Savannah.

Chapter 32

Liam had been trying to find out what his father knew about Savannah. He knew how important this was to Drake. Liam wanted to do this for his best friend. He had seen the toll it took on him when she vanished without a word. He, Maxwell, and Amanda had their hands full when trying to comfort him when it first happened.

Drake had gone into a downward spiral. He had stopped hanging out with them and had begun to drink heavily. Each one of them had tried to reach out to him on their own. Liam had taken him horseback riding. Maxwell took him out for a night on the town. Amanda had dragged him to the movies. Nothing they did seemed to work. Lord Nicholas was the one to help save the day.

He invited all of them to St. Orella. Drake would always go for him since he had helped him during the time his father had died. They all arrived and got settled. Drake told everyone that he was going to rest a while. Lord Nicholas had gone to Drake’s room and sat in the chair facing his bed. Drake sat up and looked at the noble.

“Drake?”

“Yes, sir?”

“What are you planning on doing?”

“What do you mean, sir?”

“About Savannah! What are you going to do right this very moment?”

“Sir, there is nothing I can do. She didn’t leave any information of where she was going or anything. She doesn’t want me around, I guess.”

“I see. So your goal is to make sure she never wants to be around you again? Is that correct?”

“What?! No! I want her to come back and be with me.”

“Really? Because I don’t know too many people who want to be with someone who gives up on life and crawls into a bottle. If you can’t find her right now, the least you can do is to be someone she wants to be around and knows she can depend on.”

Drake sat there staring at the noble that usually reminded him of an older Maxwell. There were often times that he surprised them all with his wisdom. This was one of those moments.

“I...I guess you’re right. I don’t even want to be around me right now.”

Lord Nicholas focused his hazel gaze on Drake for a few moments. “I believe you will find those that love you waiting to help you want to be around yourself again. I think your sister is going through something that she wants to take care of herself. We younger siblings sometimes want to prove to the world and ourselves that we can make it without our big brothers. I know I did. You have been an excellent big brother to her. She will be back when she is ready. You take this time to prepare by doing all you can to be the brother she will need.”

Liam smiled as he remembered a sheepish Drake coming downstairs and trying to apologize to everyone for pushing them away. He had worked so hard to get back to his old self. He deserved to find her. It had been a year since they had last seen her. Now that Liam knew that his father had investigated it, he wanted to give the information to Drake. He had to obtain it first.

Bastien came into the sitting area that was reserved for Liam and Riley, bowing to his king. “You sent for me sir?”

“Bastien, it has come to my attention that my father conducted an investigation on the whereabouts of Savannah Walker. I would like to read the file and see what was found.”

Bastien stood there a moment, looking concerned. “Sir, I do not have the file anymore. The King Father is the one who has it.”

Liam remained calm. “I see. Well, is there anything you can tell me about the investigation?”

Bastien continued to look uncomfortable. “The only thing I remember is that we traced her to Paris. She was also in a hospital there for a short amount of time a few months ago. We were unable to retrieve her medical records, so we do not know why she was there. I do not remember the street number or any other pertinent information.”

Liam studied his guard for a moment. “Very well. Thank you Bastien for your help. If you recall anything else that you believe to be helpful, then please bring it to my attention.”

Bastien agreed and left with a bow.

Drake and Maxwell were sitting in Maxwell and Amanda’s room on the train. They were discussing what events preceded Savannah’s disappearance.

“Alright. She was fine when she was completing her degree online. She didn’t want to attend graduation, but she was happy about getting it.” Drake sat there trying to recall everything.

“We threw a party. She was happy and having a good time. She disappeared towards the end of the evening, but we all saw her to say good night.” Maxwell was writing all these thoughts down as they talked.

“We came home and everything was as it always was. After a couple of weeks, I noticed she was tired a lot. I would catch her taking naps or just laying on the couch. She seemed sad, but nothing to be concerned over.”

Maxwell nodded. “She came out to our estate and talked to Bertrand alone. I saw her rush out with tears falling. I tried to get her to open up to me, but she refused and ran off. That was the last time I saw her.”

Drake grimaced. “I saw her that evening. She was crying again and she yelled at me when I asked her what was wrong. She said to leave her alone and she slammed the bedroom door. The next day I got up early and went with Liam to some court function. When I returned, Savannah was gone. All her things were taken with her. There was no note and she had deleted all her social media accounts.”

Maxwell reread their list of events. Nothing was popping out at him as to why she disappeared. “Do you think Bertrand had anything to do with it?”

“What do you mean?”

“I wonder if her conversation with my brother caused her to want to leave.”

“Did he ever tell you what they talked about?”

Maxwell shook his head. “He wouldn’t tell me. He said it was none of my business and then proceeded to eject me from his study. He really has been an amazing brother,” he said with a dark look.

Drake nodded in sympathy. He had personally never liked Bertrand. He could easily see him being a jerk to everyone, especially Maxwell. Why he treated him the way he did, he would never understand. Maxwell may have his faults, but he was always standing by ready to do whatever anyone needed. Just like now. He couldn’t ask for a better friend, other than Liam and Amanda.

“Do you think we should try and pump him for information?”

“Who?”

“Who! Who else? Bertrand.”

“Maxwell, do you really want to face him right now?”

Maxwell stood up and tucked the paper with events in his pocket. “This is not a time for personal vendettas to get in the way. We need to find Savannah.”

Drake grinned. “Thanks Maxwell. I will never forget this.”

Bertrand’s room on the train was a few cars from where they were. Along the way, they bumped into Madeleine. She stopped and addressed them. “You two seem to be up to something. Why are you over here? Both of you have rooms in another car.”

“Thank you for that delightful bit of knowledge. Now kindly step aside.” Drake had a hard time keeping a straight face as Maxwell poured on the sarcasm.

Madeleine narrowed her eyes and stared daggers at them. “I refuse to let you continue toward our rooms. I don’t trust you to not try and start something.”

“Madeleine, get the hell out of the way!” Drake was done being polite, well as polite as he felt towards a viper.

She glared some more. “If I notice anything touched, I am reporting the both of you.” She walked by and left the train car.

They finally made their way to Bertrand’s room. He answered it after the first knock. “What could you possibly want?”

“Look, we were wondering if you could tell us what happened when you last met with Savannah.”

“There is nothing to tell since it is none of your business.” He moved to slide the door closed when Drake stuck his foot in between. “Listen, your grace, we are just trying to see if anything pointed to where she went. Can’t you tell us what you discussed. You don’t have to go into any detail, I need to know.”

Bertrand stood there a moment and shook his head. “No. That meeting was personal. Besides, you were the one to perform the marriage ceremony for Maxwell and Amanda. I don’t feel very charitable at the moment towards those who betray me.” He slammed his door shut and locked it.

Drake and Maxwell left before they kicked the door in. “Sorry about that being a bust,” Maxwell said. Drake shrugged. “I honestly didn’t expect him to tell us anything that would be helpful anyway.”

Liam was on the other side of the train about to face his father. He walked into his room and saw that he was receiving more medication. He waited until the nurse left before speaking. “Sir, I need the file on the investigation you did on Savannah Walker.”

Constantine sat there, breathing somewhat loudly. “Now is not the time Liam.”

Liam squared his shoulders. “Yes. It is. Tell me where it is and I will retrieve it and allow you to rest.”

Constantine chuckled. “I destroyed it.”

Liam took a step back in shock. “What! Why?”

Constantine’s gray eyes turned to ice. “I told you if you did not marry Amanda that Drake would never find out what happened to his sister. I destroyed the file the night of the Coronation Ball. You were warned and decided to live with the consequences. This is one of them. Now shut the door on the way out.”

Liam was shaking with rage. “As your king, you will tell me all you remember from the investigation.”

Constantine shook his head. “Sorry. But due to all this medication I am on, my memory is not what it used to be. I can’t recall a thing written in that file. There was a lot of papers in it too. Such a waste. Oh well. At least it isn’t my sister.”

Liam left the room. He needed to hit someone or something before he blew up. He made it back to his sitting room and found Drake and Maxwell waiting on him. He told him what he had found out from Bastien and that Constantine had destroyed the file. Drake relayed what he and Maxwell had been doing and how Bertrand refused to talk.

Liam sent for Bastien again. He told him to do another investigation on Savannah and to let himself , Drake, or Maxwell know as soon as something was found. “Oh, and persuade Duke Bertrand to reveal what happened when he last saw Savannah. Tell him his king demands it.”

Liam put his hand on Drake’s shoulder. “We will find her. I promise you that.”

Maxwell nodded in agreement. Drake felt hope, knowing they would be by his side during this process.

@fullbeaumonty @darley1101 @cocomaxley @katurrade @hopefulmoonobject @mynameiskaylabella @umccall71 @annekebbphotography @museofbooks

#choices trr #trr #trr maxwell #the royal romance #trr drake #trr liam #choices

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psi-psina · 7 years ago

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The Hounds of Baskerville read-through

Pt two, Dartmoor. [pt one]

(this post is a direct continuation of pt one)

Credits to Ariane DeVere once again for her transcripts.

They head to Dartmoor in silence, and begin by scouting out the area to get an idea of what they’re dealing with here. John points out Baskerville and Dewer’s Hollow, and Sherlock asks what the skull and crossbones are. A minefield? “Guess they’ve always been keen to keep people out.” …Clearly.

Sherlock…I’m begging, why do you keep lining your hearts with explosives. 😩

They work at a distance from each other, Sherlock high above on the rocks, John alone on the ground. Playing on this thread in series 2 of a literal GULF separating the two of them, simultaneously calling back the mirror-case of The Hiker & The Driver, and foreshadowing Sherlock’s suicide off Bart’s.

Then they arrive at Cross Key’s Inn. On their way in they pass a small group of tourists gathered around young Fletcher as he goes about his business of selling them on the lurid idea of the Hound escaped from Baskerville. They share an awkward moment as Sherlock protectively adjusts his coat as they pass the group and John gives him the Eyes before looking away.

John and Sherlock enter the inn, and Fletcher dons the monster mask to excite the tourists as, elsewhere, Henry grimaces as he remembers during a session with Lousie. Another very thematic transition, as Fletcher’s lighthearted joke turns into Henry’s nightmare. Louise is positioned in this scene identically to John in 221B, in a mirror, dressed in matching colours:

Mirrors. :)

Henry (Sherlock) just says that that part of the memory doesn’t change. It’s always the same. But there’s something else now; two words. Liberty and In. Sherlock himself will complete this phrase for his mirror shortly:

Liberty in death, the only true freedom.

Back at the inn now, finally some John action! John is taking care of practicalities and getting them a room at the bar as Sherlock loiters in the background eavesdropping. I love this scene sooooooo much.

Look at this:

…Cocks

sldkjfnas Look they are the ones who do this all the time I am just observing. Anyway, with all the nice background undertones about food and meat and.... . cocks creating a nice ambience (and the nice phallic beer taps?? lmao) as John get’s them a room, it’s not hard to guess what...what might be on John’s mind at this prospect of sharing a room with Sherl. So of course, Gary warmly says he’s sorry they couldn’t do John and Sherlock a double room, and John starts to say (and perhaps remind himself) that things aren’t like that between them, but Gary just smiles knowingly and John gives it up and pays him. They mirror each other with their “Ta’s”, and while Gary’s back is turned John spots an invoice for the. . . . . . meat supplies.

The meat supplies for the gay owners of the vegetarian inn for feeding their (secret) ”hound” sdkjfnaksdf. John nicks the invoice for later.

Now, Billy and Gary are simple romantic mirrors for Sherlock and John, but MORE PERTINENTLY they are CLEARLY conduits for Messer's Mark Gatiss and Steven Moffat, like...The curly Scottish bloke and his partner, the camp gay ginger! Not the culprits per se, just some blokes jumping on the opportunity to add some spice to their business! Playing on the local legend! Lovely amiable fellows who are nonetheless lying through their teeth about the ‘Hound’ right to the very end! The audacity! These shameless self-inserts! Also like, just more evidence that John is Steven’s self-insert and Sherlock is Mark’s asdkjf.

Anyway, John moves the subject to Baskerville (❤️) and the skull and crossbones out on the moor, hopefully asking Gary, “Pirates?”

MYCROFT: “My brother has the brain of a scientist or a philosopher and yet he elects to be a detective. What might we deduce about his heart?” JOHN: “I don’t know.” MYCROFT: “Neither do I. But initially, he wanted to be a pirate.”

It’s the skull and crossbones that baby Sherlock wears...when he plays pirates...

;___; JOHHHNNNNNNN. IT IS PIRATES!! He loves him!! He knows!! He just doesn’t know that he knows!! 😭 ALLOW HIMMMM!!!

But, nothing so sweet or soulful to be found at Baskerville. :( Right now, this shit IS a minefield. Gary says No no, it’s the Great Grimpen Minefield, home to the Baskerville (❤️) “testing site” that’s been going on so long unchecked that no one really knows what the hell’s in there anymore. :( Ugh, tell me about it. John takes this in and asks, a bit more warily, “Explosives?” And Gary warns him, oh no no, not just explosives, break into that heart and if you’re lucky, you just get blown up. In case you were planning a nice wee stroll. :( And unfortunately, John is not one of the lucky ones.

So…to start with this is literally ALL that is on John’s mind this entire season, he is completely obsessed and pining to DEATH because he is being tormented by some VERY strong misgivings and conflicted feelings about Sherlock which are sadly both sensible and very well founded:

SHERLOCK (rolling his eyes): Yes, if I wanted poetry, I’d read John’s emails to his girlfriends. Much funnier.

SHERLOCK: Yes, good. Skipping to the night that your dad was violently killed. Where did that happen?

SHERLOCK: ...and then there was the one with the spots; and then the one with the nose; and then ... who was after the boring teacher?

SHERLOCK: The shade of red echoes her lipstick – either an unconscious association or one that she’s deliberately trying to encourage. Either way, Miss Hooper has lurrrve on her mind. The fact that she’s serious about him is clear from the fact she’s giving him a gift at all. That would suggest long-term hopes, however forlorn...

And this is just a few examples from these two episodes, this isn’t even getting into the shit Sherlock does in series one that this is building off of, and this is also BEFORE Sherlock starts doing REALLY fucked up shit to him like attempting to drug him and gaslighting him in a lab experiment, or making John watch as he commits suicide off a building and allowing John to mourn for two whole years. Sherlock emotionally humiliates John, he humiliates other people in front of him, he manipulates him and is downright cruel to him at least once in basically every episode bar probably the first two, in which Sherlock more just takes him for granted and swings kinda relentlessly between pursuing and then rejecting him. John desperately wants Sherlock to be the the warm-hearted, caring, playful, funny (pirate ;_;) person he sometimes glimpses behind the facade, but he’s increasingly convinced he’s kidding himself, and just seeing what he wants to see because he’s besotted and lonely.

Anyway, Gary goes on to say that all that morbid Baskerville stuff buggers up tourism a bit, scares people off, so thank god for the demon Hound. God bless Henry and his hound from hell, made them a nice little industry off it. :) John then asks Gary if he’s ever seen the Hound and Gary says he hasn’t, but goes on to say that Fletcher has, motioning right at Sherlock, and by extension Fletcher who is standing just behind him in the entrance.

“He runs the walks, the monster walks.” “That’s handy. For trade.”

“Did wonders for Devon tourism.”

This gets Sherlock’s attention and he exits the inn to go after Fletcher. John is looking a bit distracted, eyes wandering around a bit as he gazes after Sherlock’s retreating figure with a rather amorous look…

God…But as Sherlock exits John’s line of vision a clear warning pops into focus:

Beware the Hound, John. Keep those wandering thoughts (and eyes) in check. Don’t want to get savaged. :(

Young Billy, the camp Sherlock mirror to John’s Gary, appears behind the bar and he and Gary start bantering their Hound (the cheek!!). John looks down and smiles to himself at their easy intimacy. Billy teases Gary about his snoring then asks John, “Is your’s a snorer?” And John immediately asks if they have any food. Crisps? Anything? It’s not like all the scenarios running through his head at the idea of sharing a room with his beau wasn’t bad enough, now he’s thinking about Sherlock softly snoring...in his arms…ugh that one made him hungry. He gets a drink to wash his chips down with (presuming he can get any...he never has much luck with food), since he’s halfway through a stout when he joins Sherlock outside. Needs a stiff drink after…all that.

Back with Sherlock, he takes a gamble on Fletcher being a gambler, he gets into ‘disguise’ and approaches Fletcher as a skeptical but intrigued tourist, attempting a blasé demeanour but just coming off as awkward as he tries to broach it, like he’s a bit scared Fletcher might actually have something. Fletcher gets very cagey and Sherlock asks if he has any proof which is enough to scare Fletcher off, until John appears and Sherlock turns it all into a game, which Fletcher can’t resist. He pulls out his phone and shows Sherlock a pic of an ordinary dog, which Sherlock sneers at, and taunts “Sorry John, I win.” Then Fletcher starts going on about the hollow, much like Henry was in 221B, but Sherlock still remains unconvinced. That is, until Fletcher tells them a Ghost Story, and pulls out a plaster cast of a large paw print. Sherlock is spooked now, and shies away from it a bit, eyeing it resentfully as he’s obliged to pay John. John takes another swig of beer as he eyes off Fletcher, and happily takes Sherlock’s money.

Approaching Baskerville, we are bombarded with signs signalling danger and secrecy, dogs roaming around, and men with guns. Baskerville has some strong parallels to Sherrinford, another top secret "facility” cum heart-dungeon that’s home to an escaped mayhem-causing monster that Sherlock has to confront. Sherrinford? Baskerville 2.0 tbh. Sherlock uses Mycroft’s ID to get them inside, which is absolute nonsense because Mycroft’s face is clearly on the ID lmao. Mycroft, of course, has full access to Baskerville (❤️) and “all areas” because he’s that aspect of Sherlock; The Clever One, the brain without a heart, the iceman persona, the detached puzzle solver, order, rationality, Mr. Caring-is-not-an-advantage etc. And this is the guy who’s In Charge. For fuck’s sake, Sherlock. Thank god he starts to reject alla that nonsense in The Sign of Three.

Anyway, John is anxious about all this, and quips

JOHN: Caught in five minutes. “Oh, hi, we just thought we’d come and have a wander round your top secret weapons base.” “Really? Great! Come in – kettle’s just boiled.” That’s if we don’t get shot.

John (rightly) does not anticipate any hospitality in Sherlock’s ‘ole heart, and is rather worried they might just get shot.

They drive on in and hop out of the car both seeming a bit trepidatious and are swiftly met by Corporal Lyons, who is a bit flustered by their presence and immediately asks if they’re “in trouble”. Because Baskerville (❤️) just doesn’t get inspected you see. It just isn’t done. John’s eyes wander over the attractive young Corporal and he swiftly pulls rank, getting them inside easily as a contrite Lyons scuttles to obey and give them the ~full tour~ and Sherlock is unable to completely hide his appreciation for his…Captain John Watson.

They go inside and Lyons takes them underground into the main lab. Sherlock asks Lyons about the animals they keep down here and gets all ominous about it as the ‘monsters’ inside Baskerville mill all around the lab.

“Phone Lestrade! Tell him there’s an escaped rabbit!”

FLUFFY FRIENDS. I like the way they frame the monkey’s and rabbits to look monstrous, really adds to the utter absurdity of it all. As the boys look around, Frankland exits the gas chamber and approaches them, all smiles and affability, hidden in plain sight, just like Moriarty.

FRANKLAND: Ah, new faces, how nice. Careful you don’t get stuck here, though. I only came to fix a tap!

SHERLOCK: James Moriarty is for hire. PROSECUTING BARRISTER: A tradesman? SHERLOCK: Yes. PROSECUTING BARRISTER: But not the sort who’d fix your heating. SHERLOCK: No, the sort who’d plant a bomb or stage an assassination, but I’m sure he’d make a pretty decent job of your boiler.

Lol. Frankland (Moriarty) only came to Baskerville (❤️) to fix a ‘leak’ but then…he got stuck in there…and now he’s a full blown virus 😩 Frankland gets some ominous villain treatment as he retreats and John then asks Lyons what it is that they actually do in this place;

LYONS: I thought you’d know, sir, this being an inspection. JOHN: Well, I’m not an expert, am I?

Lyons dodges John’s questions by acting like he should already know all that, then answers as imprecisely as possible. They head further on into Baskerville, now entering a lab in which they meet one Doctor Stapleton, another John mirror and one of my favourite instances of John’s bisexual coding lol. She’s another Doctor, same physical type, fair-haired, wearing a button-down cardigan and has a young daughter.

Sherlock asks what her role at Baskerville is, to which she snorts in amusement and says she’s not free to say, to which Sherlock reacts rather strongly?

Like even John is bewildered. Why do you suggest she remains that way Sherlock, hmm? Hmm? I have no idea if this is just a coincidence, but the phrasing along with Sherlock’s response just stuck out to me, especially since these are both Mark’s episodes.

She then says

STAPLETON: I have a lot of fingers in a lot of pies. I like to mix things up – genes, mostly; now and again, actual fingers. SHERLOCK: Stapleton. Knew I knew your name. STAPLETON: Doubt it.

This quip about Stapleton’s (= John’s) name happens right after she ambiguously says she “likes to mix things up”. Genes mostly but also, actual fingers. Has a rather, wide field, you might say. And she’s (required to be) very secretive (private) about it.

And then we get to the crux of the matter, Sherlock quips dramatically about coincidence then holds up his moleskin on which he’s written…Bluebell.

In the end, Sherlock breaks into Baskerville to find out why Bluebell had to die.

SHERLOCK: Why did Bluebell have to die, Doctor Stapleton? JOHN: The rabbit? SHERLOCK: Disappeared from inside a locked hutch, which was always suggestive. JOHN: The rabbit? SHERLOCK: Clearly an inside job. STAPLETON: Oh, you reckon. SHERLOCK: Why? Because it glowed in the dark?

“Why did I have to die, John?” CLEARLY AN INSIDE JOB. OH YOU RECKON. Sherlock’s halfway there, but we'll return to this later on, as this isn’t pertinent until John speaks to Stapleton after he’s drugged. This is just set-up for that. For now, Sherlock looks at his watch and hightails it outta there with a very indignant and confused John on his heels.

JOHN: Did we just break into a military base to investigate a rabbit?

Well…………….yeah. You did. :(

Elsewhere, the ‘security breach’ slowly makes it’s way to Mycroft who apparently receives word of this ~national security breach~ via text message and literally just rolls his eyes at his phone and sends Sherlock a text. Like, I’m laughing my ass off, did people really ever think this show was ‘realistic’. It’s NONSENSE. No one but Mycroft is involved or even notified because this is all a dumb heart-metaphor, which is also why the only action Mycroft takes is to send down Sherlock’s ‘handler’ to look after him lmao. The only thing they have ever cared about are their dumb metaphors (that I love! So much!). Sherlock just laughs at the text and says Mycroft’s getting sloppy (has he ever NOT been though…this is the question) as they rush toward the elevator, in which they conveniently bump into Frankland again. Back on ground level, they run into the stern and impressive Major Barrymore, who is quite outraged that Sherlock has staged an inspection.

BARRYMORE: The whole point of Baskerville (❤️) was to eliminate this kind of bureaucratic nonsense... SHERLOCK: I’m so sorry, Major. BARRYMORE: Inspections?! SHERLOCK: New policy. Can’t remain unmonitored forever. Goodness knows what you’d get up to.

“The whole point of Baskerville (❤️) was to eliminate this kind of bureaucratic nonsense...” Like...is this some meta-fictional yelling on Mark’s part about the heartrooms or what :/ And like, I get it, the heartrooms etc WERE no doubt intended to subvert the ‘bureaucratic nonsense’ that would inevitably swamp the first gay Holmes adaptation and allow them to tell the story they wanted to tell relatively undetected, but I’m with Sherlock on this one lmao. These fuckers have been running around unmonitored for TOO LONG and they can’t keep getting away with it! Enough is enough! Um, anyway, they’re interrupted as Lyons sets the heart-alarms off despite the intruders being like, right there with them, and just says ‘ID unauthorised’. Sherlock hands over Mycroft’s ID and just as Barrymore is about to skewer them, Frankland intervenes and is able to persuade Barrymore that Sherlock is in fact Mycroft Holmes (I guess. Since Mycroft is basically just The Brain anyway), and get them off the hook. This scene is a clusterfuck to me and one of the few where I can’t really tell if there’s anything going on because there’s no context and I can’t stand watching it because of the alarms. Like the scene with Jaqui, I feel like it’s mostly just setup for the second trip to Baskerville.

Frankland walks them out and seeks to ingratiate himself with them and insert himself into the investigation although Sherlock is clearly still on edge. He gushes about the hat, saying Sherlock’s almost unrecognisable without it (tell me about it) as Sherlock crankily says that stupid hat wasn’t his hat. (I take it anyone reading this is familiar with the meaning of the hat, but if you haven’t seen it the tjlce video explains it well). He then compliments John on his blog, “the pink thing” and “that one about The Aluminium Crutch”*[1] and with the mention of THAT debacle Sherlock abruptly changes the subject. Frankland says he knew Henry’s dad better than Henry himself and that he had all sorts of “mad theories” about Baskerville (❤️) but was nonetheless a good friend. He gives Sherlock his number, and says to give him a call if he can help with Henry.

Frankland throws some shade at Stapleton after they joke about killing Sherlock again and then they part ways. As soon as they’re alone, John immediately asks Sherlock what all that about the rabbit was, and Sherlock doesn’t answer. He smirks to himself knowingly, then flips his collar up and pulls his coat protectively around himself (in my opinion). His acts of defensiveness are so tiny, man, it breaks my heart. John, (pining to DEATH!) already wound up from being led down this rabbit hole blind, blurts out

JOHN: Oh, please, can we not do this, this time. SHERLOCK: Do what? JOHN: You, being all…mysterious with your, cheekbones, ’n turning your coat collar up so you look cool. SHERLOCK: I don’t do that! JOHN: Yeah you do.

John is simultaneously endeared and exasperated by this behaviour, but mostly he’s just dying of frustration with all his own pent up desires for his friend.

But Sherlock doesn’t really take well to stuff like this, because he think’s John’s straight. And he hates himself, so obviously he’s never gonna see affection in being teased like this (at least, certainly not the kind he wants) by a ‘mate’ with whom he’s secretly in love. I’m quite sure all he see’s here is the blokey prodding, y’know; posh boy public school with your cheekbones and high collar. A joke. A laugh. It grates at him. These micro-misunderstandings? Death.

The sexual tension continues as they sit in the car together, making awkward eye-contact and immediately looking away from each other before John brings up Bluebell again. Sherlock speculates that Jaqui made Bluebell glow with a fluorescent gene and concludes that as we know she performs “secret experiments” on bunnies, the question is now whether she’s been “working on something deadlier than a bluebell”. As we know, the answer to that question is…no. So John makes a joke.

“To be fair that is quite a wide field.”

John cracks a bi joke RIGHT THERE…AT Sherlock…he’s flirting at him again! Twice in less than five minutes! Sherlock is stumped and perhaps kinda suspicious of another joke at his expense and John just looks away and smirks to himself. I am sorry but I love this so much, John is just like, I’ve had enough of this mysterious asshole it’s MY turn to be a cryptic bitch for once! Aksjndf.

Likes to mix things up….has quite a wide field…dis bisexuelle coding, Mark! ❤️

They arrive at Henry’s house and there is a pertinent moment here that’s been deleted from the episode (perhaps because it’s too obvious), but the script snippet is included in The Sherlock Chronicles:

Sherlock asks John for his money back while they wait for Henry to answer the door, and John rebuffs him, claiming Sherlock owes him. >.< You can see Sherlock is kinda crabby when they cut to him as Henry opens the door:

Uh...tense. They head inside and John looks around, quite surprised, and asks Henry a bit tactlessly,

And this is Sherlock’s reaction:

Hooo boy. TENSE.

In the kitchen, Sherlock helps himself to Henry’s sugar as Henry tells them about the words he remembers, Liberty In, and Sherlock supplies the complete phrase. Henry asks “What now then?” and Sherlock supplies them with The Plan, as he tries to drink his sweetened coffee, which he’s having some trouble swallowing. :(

It’s not to his taste! He just doesn’t do coffee ok.

SHERLOCK: We take you back out onto the moor. See if anything attacks you.

John laughs and acts peeved about Sherlock’s recklessness and Sherlock snaps at him quietly. Got any better ideas? He concludes that if there is a monster out there, the only thing to do is find out where it lives. Time to face his fears at the scene of the crime.

*[1] - writemeastoryofsolitude’s meta “The Mystery of The Aluminium Crutch, or How Sherlock Holmes Fell in Love” has a lot of great insight’s about this particular blog post, I haven’t read it in years and from what I remember I certainly wouldn’t parse it like that myself, but it gives you a pretty good idea. :)

tagging any interested parties again :) @sarahthecoat @impossibleleaf @northstargrassmaiden @devoursjohnlock @gosherlocked @love-in-mind-palace @221bloodnun, @johnlockiseternal, @tjlcisthenewsexy etc

#sherlock #tjlc #johnlock #sherlock meta #my meta #the next part (umqra)...is my fave

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ellenembee · 8 years ago

Text

The Revelation of All Things - 33. In which old habits find new meaning

Read the full fic here on AO3.

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Sometimes the fight itself exhausted him. After morning exercises, he drank tea. After looking over final plans for the Western Approach, he took a draught. After drills that afternoon, he took another, higher dose of the draught before sitting down to go through reports. Each time, the ache dulled for a time. And each time, the pounding came back stronger than before even as the itch in the back of his brain grew more insistent. The lyrium song told him he could be well, be strong again - for her, for them all. His eyes drifted to the wooden box on his shelf, but he growled and turned away again. An unfortunate messenger entered his office at that moment and escaped a few minutes later shaking in his boots - but with the requested report in hand.

In an attempt to work through the pain, he'd turned his attention to the ball at the Winter Palace. Blueprints of the building were strewn across his desk, and he'd already drawn up several possible routes and methods to get the soldiers and their weapons in the right place at the right time. But as the guard called out the eighth hour, he simply couldn't focus anymore through his blurred vision.

He leaned his head against the back of his chair and closed his eyes. In the past few months, he'd disciplined himself not to think of Evana outside of Inquisition business because his thoughts tended to turn... inappropriate. But now they were together, he allowed his mind to linger on her from time to time. And right now, thoughts of her were infinitely better than the insidious need that would otherwise overtake him.

Everything about the last two days had been nearly incomprehensible. He'd woken up this morning certain that the previous day had been some sort of lucid dream. Only the shy but knowing look in her eye as she'd walked into the meeting had convinced him otherwise. After that, he'd had trouble waiting until the end of the meeting to wrap his arms around her and kiss her senseless.

Yesterday was no dream, today had certainly not been a dream, and he was forced to admit he couldn't have dreamed such an amazing reality anyway. He'd have never dared to.

The pounding faded to the background as his mind wandered over the thousand little things he'd tried to memorize as they held each other the previous evening - the softness of her skin, the feel of her hands and lips on his body, the tiny gasps and sighs she'd made as they kissed... He groaned softly as he remembered the feel of her body pressed against him, the feel of her skin under his fingers. It had taken all his discipline and willpower to prevent their passion from taking its course. Maker, how he wanted her...

Taking a few deep breaths to calm himself, he forced his brain to focus. He didn't just want her. He loved her. And they both had things they needed to work through.

A deep shudder ran through his body as he thought of the ways he could hurt her if his withdrawal worsened. Men had gone mad from this. He couldn't be sure he wouldn't eventually follow. On the bad days, he could almost feel his grip on reality bending as the vivid memories arose and pulled him back to the Ferelden Circle at Kinloch Hold. What if he one day began seeing things that weren't there? Or thought he was someplace else? What if he thought she was someone - something - else? He'd rather the withdrawal killed him. She might mourn him, but at least he wouldn't be able to harm her.

Which brought him to his other, more pertinent reason for taking things as slowly as possible - eventually, as their relationship progressed, he would have to be more open about his past. He would have to tell her about what happened to him - what happened there in the Circle tower. Every part of him rebelled against the thought, but if things progressed in the way he hoped, he couldn't - he wouldn't - keep anything from her, especially not something that had so fully shaped and directed his life to this point. To truly understand him, she would have to know the basics at least. After all, it was only fair that she know what a broken man he was, only fair that he give her the opportunity to come to her senses and run as far from him as possible before they did anything she would regret.

Maker, I am so incredibly unworthy of her. It nearly made him want call it off. But he was too weak for that. He'd allowed it to begin, and if it were to end - if they were to end - it would have to be her choice. He could not conceive of giving her up voluntarily... which made him even less worthy of her if possible. If he truly wanted what was best for her, he never would've admitted he cared for her in that way. Because someone like her could do so much better than him - a man who had been complicit, knowingly or not, in the abuse and murder of innocent mages.

He lifted his head from the back of the chair, buried his face in his hands and growled in frustration. No! No, no, no. Those were the old thoughts. Dark thoughts. The thoughts that dragged him ever back to Kinloch and haunted his dreams. Thoughts that had kept him isolated from others and locked in his own, self-inflicted hell. He needed to move past them. He was here because he wanted to make things right. Or at least make an attempt at atonement. He would work to be worthy of her, and perhaps when the day came to tell her of his past, she would see who he'd become instead of who he'd been.

Or she would leave him and find someone better. Someone worthy. Someone whole.

The dark thoughts caused the war hammer in his brain to increase in intensity, driving specter nails into his temples and eyes. His muscles briefly tensed in apprehension as his stomach roiled for a moment then settled again.

Move on. Think of something else.

Eager for a reprieve, his brain gravitated back to Evana. Since she'd told him of her marriage - her bonding - he'd picked up several hints that perhaps it hadn't been the best relationship. His first clue had been her statement that they'd been happy in their way with a healthy dose of hesitation on the word "happy." She never mentioned her bondmate, Hanir, being an exception to her clan's general ambivalence about her. And she'd often talk about something as a new experience that he assumed she'd already... that someone with a partner should have experienced already, such as her admission last night that he looked at her in a way no one ever had before. He knew that couldn't be true. But even if she were too self-conscious to recognize it in others, if she could see it in him, shouldn't she have been able to see that from Hanir?

Unless Hanir had never looked at her with appreciation or desire. The very idea boggled Cullen's mind.

Even her admission that she'd never been happier in her life than she was with him - while flattering - made him uneasy. He knew where his own happiness came from. His life as a templar had been one disaster after another, and the Inquisition had given him a new chance at life and, quite unexpectedly, love. But for her... the small things were beginning to add up, including the feeling that he'd struck some sort of nerve by stopping their progression last night. He understood she might be confused, but based what he knew and had experienced of her, her reaction had been atypically emotional. He didn't want to assume the worst, but...

How could he ask about it? Would that even be appropriate? Should he wait for her to bring it up? After their initial conversation, she'd avoided any mention of that part of her life. He only knew that she blamed herself for the deaths of Hanir and the other clan members. Did she feel the same about that day as he did about the events in the Hold? If so, he felt slightly ashamed that he had yet to open up about his experiences when she'd already told him so much about herself. He just couldn't talk about it... not yet. He dismally wondered if he'd ever be able to move past it.

Suddenly, a small boyish voice whispered in his ear, "They didn't hang you there. You can walk away."

Cullen whipped around to see Cole hovering beside him. Unsure of what to make of the cryptic words, he fell back on his natural response.

"Cole!" he gasped, his voice filled with irritation and pain. "What are you doing here?"

"Uldred marked you, but didn't make you. You stayed you. The center never changed - safe, like the coin in your pocket."

Cullen's eyes widened. Uldred? How did he know...?

A knock on the door as it opened interrupted them, and Cullen suddenly found himself wondering what he'd been doing. Had he been talking to someone? A soft voice he knew well followed behind the knock, and he forgot about everything else. She'd come to see him. She pushed the middle door open enough to slip in and then closed it with her foot.

"Good evening, vhenan. I didn't see you come through the hall, so I thought I'd bring you a little bit of dinner."

He noticed then she was carrying a plate of food. However, instead of increasing his appetite, the aroma of food that wafted toward him as she approached sent another roiling wave of nausea through him. Oh, please, no... not this... not in front of her.

"Good evening, Evana. I appreciate the thought, but I'm afraid..."

He tried to think of an excuse, but his pain-muddled brain wouldn't cooperate. The look on his face must have given him away.

"You're not feeling well today."

He sighed. "I can endure it, but the food... perhaps we could leave it and walk the battlements instead? Fresh air might do me good."

She smiled and set the plate on the far edge of his desk. "Of course. Whatever you need."

He stood gingerly from his chair, careful to not jostle around too much, and he saw her try - and fail - to hide her worried expression. They stepped outside into the dim torchlight, and the pain behind his eyes lessened slightly. Cullen inhaled in the crisp mountain air and brushed the back of his hand against hers as they walked. The next wave of queasiness barely caused him any distress, and he breathed a sigh of relief.

"Feeling a little better?"

"Yes, thank you. How has your day been?"

"Full. Cassandra made me practice escape moves for two hours this morning in the armory. And I practiced dancing as well as how to fake being a snobby Orlesian noble with Josephine and Leliana." Cullen snorted in amusement but said nothing, so she smiled and continued. "Leliana also passed me those reports from the scouts in the Emerald Graves. If there's time, I'd like to stop by on the way back to see if I can find anything about the red templars. Which brings me to the little bit business I needed to discuss with you..."

He chuckled. "I suppose that's why Cassandra originally brought me here, after all."

He saw her smile in the dim light. "I wanted to ask you more about what you know of Samson."

Cullen held in a sigh. Samson wasn't exactly a pleasant topic, considering the reason for his former bunkmate's removal from the Order. However, Evana needed information, not details about what he'd allowed to happen in Kirkwall under his watch.

"As I've told you, we found that the red templars were coming from Therinfal Redoubt. The knights there were fed red lyrium until they turned into monsters. Samson took over after their corruption was complete."

"How do you know Samson?"

"He was a templar in Kirkwall until he was expelled from the Order. I knew he was an addict, but this... Red lyrium is nothing like the lyrium given by the Chantry. Its power comes with a terrible madness."

"Yes, the red templars we faced in Haven were proof enough of that."

"We cannot allow them to gain strength. They still require lyrium. If we can find their source by investigating the caravans being smuggled along trade roads, we can weaken them and their leader. But please be careful. Anything connected to Samson will be well guarded."

She nodded and then paused as if considering her next question. "If you don't mind me asking... you and Samson seem to have a personal history..."

It wasn't really a question, but he knew what she meant. Apparently she did want details.

"When I arrived in Kirkwall, Samson and I shared quarters. He seemed a decent man, at first. Knight-Commander Meredith later expelled Samson for 'erratic behavior.'" Cullen debated whether or not to be more explicit, but decided against it. The pounding in his head reasserted itself as if in silent punishment for his cowardice. "He ended up begging on Kirkwall's streets. He committed further crimes, but managed to evade the Order's justice. Now he serves Corypheus as his loyal general."

"Why do you think Samson chose to serve Corypheus? It seems like a pretty big leap."

"He had a chronic lyrium addiction. He spent every last coin buying it from local smugglers. Perhaps Corypheus flattered his vanity, gave him purpose as well as lyrium? Perhaps that's all it took."

Evana shook her head. "It sounds like Samson had a miserable life."

Cullen couldn't be so sympathetic. He could regret the reasons for kicking Samson out of the templars without condoning his affiliation with Corypheus.

"The Order expelled him, but he had choices. He could have found another path. What I don't understand is how he became so powerful. Even with red lyrium, Samson's glory days are long behind him."

She shrugged. "I don't mean that I excuse his behavior - nothing could - but sometimes when people are in desperate situations, they can't always see the way out. Even if it's right in front of them."

Her understanding and capacity for empathy never failed to amaze him. Cullen took her hand and pulled her gently to a stop. He faced her and gave her a hard look before speaking again.

"You are right about that. Sometimes I... have difficulty feeling sorry for people like that."

She moved in closer to him, placing her free hand on his breastplate. "That's because you probably never take the easy way, do you?"

He reached out to rest his other hand on her hip, pulling her even closer. "Maybe not, but I'm fairly certain you don't ever take the easy way either, and you are still far more sympathetic than me. I'm just a callous old man."

She laughed at him, and he heard a murmur go up from the guards on duty. If they hadn't been watching before, they would be now. He realized they were close to the same location where they'd shared their first kiss, and all thoughts of red templars and Samson and guards on duty flowed out of his brain. Lifting his hands, he pulled off his gloves, and the slow, seductive smile she gave him in return sent goosebumps racing across his flesh.

This morning in the war room, she had shyly shared with him her mini obsession with his hands. He had returned the favor by explaining - while kissing her repeatedly - how her lips drove him to distraction.

The gloves fell to the stone with a soft thud, and he greedily threaded his fingers into her hair as he cupped her face. His other hand returned to her hip to pull her closer to him. He rubbed the pad of his thumb across her lower lip, and it suddenly became a bit harder to breathe. The reality of her there with him - that she had truly chosen him - was finally beginning to set in, and he knew instinctively he should share this feeling, regardless of how poorly he'd likely manage it. Bending his head down, he brushed his lips across hers before moving to whisper in her ear.

"I- I need to tell you... I must tell you how lucky I feel to be with you. I'm in awe of the way you try to see the good in people, even when they do horrible things - in awe of your unfailing faith in your friends... in me... I don't deserve it... don't deserve you."

Before she could respond, Cullen dragged his lips back across her cheek and captured her mouth in a full, hungry kiss. She sighed and leaned into him, her lips molding to his, somehow softer and sweeter than he remembered. His hand curved from her hip around to her lower back, fingers deftly finding the edge of her tunic and moving underneath to slide along her waist as he pulled at her bottom lip with his teeth. She trembled under his touch, and his own hand trembled to feel the smoothness of her skin again. The silk under his fingers could easily become an addiction. He already ached to touch more of her.

He pulled her back into a darker corner of the battlements, his fingers swirling around the small dimples in her lower back, then caressing her spine, then kneading into the muscled flesh of her back. As his mouth left hers to trail kisses down her neck, the thought of her journey - that she would likely be gone for a month or more - made him hold her that much more tightly. She clung to him in return, gasping softly into his ear as he kissed his way across her neck.

The appearance of a guard on their section of the battlements finally forced them to part, but he took and kept a firm grasp on her hand as he reached down to pick up his gloves. They walked hand-in-hand back to his office, but as they entered, the brighter light caused waves of pain to wash over him again. He stumbled slightly as he closed the door and then turned around to lean on it, giving her a wane smile. At least the smell of the food no longer made him want to vomit. The candlelight felt like daggers to his temples, and he closed his eyes against the yellow glare.

"Ma vhenan? Are you alright?"

He opened his eyes to find her standing next to him, her face awash in concern. She reached up to put the back of her hand against his forehead.

"You're burning up, Cullen. Are you ill? I mean... more ill?"

"I don't... think so. I've never really paid attention to whether I had a fever or not. I suppose it could be normal."

She stood awkwardly for a moment. "Can I get you tea? Or a draught? Or I could... I mean, I've been practicing healing spells..."

Cullen's gut wrenched involuntarily and not because of the symptoms. She was offering to help him. He knew it. How could he really say he trusted her if he didn't even give her the opportunity to try? The idea sent a shockwave of anxiety ripping through him.

"The teas and draught haven't worked well today. I... I suppose..."

He struggled to get the words out. He needed to show her he trusted her. He needed to get over these old fears. He did trust her, didn't he?

"I suppose we could try it."

She smiled reassuringly. "I promise I will use as little magic as possible. In your state, though... you should probably sit down."

Cullen walked over and sat down in his chair with as much grace as possible under the circumstances. She moved to stand behind him, and he tried to push away his burgeoning fears, working furiously to keep his breathing under control.

"I'll cast a calming spell first, just to help with muscle aches."

He closed his eyes, and suddenly the bodies of his friends from the Ferelden Circle, mangled and broken by the abominations, flashed through his brain. His eyes flew open, and panic rose up in his chest. Just as he was about to stand up again, a feeling of utter peace covered him like a soft blanket. It felt much like the effects of a full mug of her calming tea but without the sleepiness. The tension in his muscles eased considerably, and though the fear still lurked in the corners of his mind, the calm helped him see it for what it was - an overreaction. A justifiable one, considering his past. But still, an overreaction. She wasn't an abomination. She was Evana... first his friend and now his lover. She wouldn't hurt him. He closed his eyes to the glaring candlelight once more.

"Now I'm going to do a simple heal spell that should at least reduce the symptoms. It will take some time, so...um... try to relax."

As if he could do anything else. Soon, he felt the war hammer pounding on his skull turn into a dull hum at his temples. He opened his eyes and found the light didn't bother him as before. He even felt cooler. She appeared in front of him looking hesitant and rested her hand on his forehead as before.

"Any better?"

He smiled warmly. "Yes. Thank you. The headache has dulled quite a bit."

Suddenly, his stomach growled, and they both laughed weakly. After filling and placing his kettle on the fire, she retrieved the plate of bread, cheeses and cured meats she'd left on the corner of his desk.

"Luckily, it's nothing that will be worse off for having waited to eat it."

He made short work of the plate while Evana sat on the edge of his desk looking through a few of his half-finished requisitions and recommendations for the Crestwood and Storm Coast agents and soldiers.

"I take it our troops in Ferelden are doing well - maintaining stability?"

He nodded as he chewed and then swallowed. "Except for the loss of our patrol on the Highway, we've had little trouble in those regions after you put the fear of the Maker... errr... Creators in them."

She grinned at him. "I thought it was the fear of Andraste?"

His smile turned lopsided. "Maybe so."

She looked back to the reports for a moment and then set them down again. Her eyes turned to watch him, gazing at him pensively. Finally, she leaned forward.

"Would you mind singing me a chant?" One corner of her mouth quirked upward slightly. "I know you can sing. I remember hearing you with the others after Haven."

Cullen stopped mid-chew and just looked at her. Is she serious? She smiled shyly.

"If you're feeling up to it, that is. And after you're done, of course."

After swallowing his last bite, he took a drink of water and slowly scooted his chair until he faced her as she sat on the back edge of his desk. She leaned back on her palms and crossed her ankles as he looked at her warily.

"What sort of chant do you want to hear?"

"Maybe one that you think would help me understand why you follow - why you believe?"

He felt a bit embarrassed by her request, but then he remembered the night in Haven when she'd sung to him. Perhaps she simply enjoyed songs. And she'd always seemed at least open to his religion, even if she didn't really believe in it.

"I don't know if it really adequately describes why I believe, but this is one of my favorites..."

He began, hesitant at first. However, as he moved through the verses describing those faithful to the Maker, his voice strengthened but remained soft and low. After all, he was singing this just for her. Their eyes locked, and he couldn't help singing as much for her as for Andraste.

"Many are those who wander in sin, Despairing that they are lost forever, But the one who repents, who has faith Unshaken by the darkness of the world, And boasts not, nor gloats Over the misfortunes of the weak, but takes delight In the Maker's law and creations, she shall know The peace of the Maker's benediction. The one who repents, who has faith Unshaken by the darkness of the world, She shall know peace."

When he finished, she drew in a deep breath and then exhaled as she jumped off the desk to grab the kettle. "That was beautiful. You have an amazing voice, Cullen."

He blushed but nodded to acknowledge her compliment. "Ah... thank you. Here, let me help you."

Standing up tentatively, he noted with surprise that his normal muscle aches were barely a twinge. He felt the underlying desire for lyrium and knew it would amplify once she left - it was always worse when he was alone - but she had truly done a marvelous job with the outward symptoms. She opened one of his tea pouches to pour leaves into a couple of mugs.

"Better add a little extra to mine. I think I'll be turning in early tonight. I'd like to be up to see you off in the morning."

A pleased look crossed her face. "I'd like that... not that you don't usually." Her expression turned thoughtful. "Have you ever missed seeing me off on a journey?"

His brows furrowed in thought, and then he shrugged and looked down as he poured water into the mugs. "Not that I can recall. It's almost a tradition at this point."

"Well, it's a nice one for now, but I hope... I hope eventually we won't have to be parted quite so much."

His breath caught in his throat at the implication in her words, and he slowly raised his eyes to meet hers. He tried to maintain an even tone as he responded, but his heart raced wildly. Such words from her made it easier for him to speak the truth of what he felt.

"I hope for that as well."

Her cheeks flushed pink as she took the mug he offered her and resumed her spot on the edge of his desk. He sat back in his chair, gazing at her lovely face as she stared into her mug and bit at her alluring lip, and tried to avoid thinking of how much he wanted to pull her into his lap. Someone could walk in any of the three doors to his office at any moment, but he almost didn't care. Maybe a conversation with Harritt was in order. Surely no one would blame him for wanting to secure his office with a few locks. There were, after all, Inquisition secrets just lying there on his desk for anyone to see.

He hummed softly at the thought, remembering the would-be assassin in the tavern. Perhaps there really was reason to install those locks beyond his desire to retain some privacy with Evana.

"Something wrong?"

He shook himself from his thoughts. "No, I was just thinking about..."

What could he say? That he'd been thinking inappropriate thoughts about her and at the same time worrying about Inquisition business? That was certainly romantic. He took a large swig of the tea, then, thankfully, remembered his request to Josephine earlier that day.

"... About a few adjustments I might make to the office before you return."

"Adjustments?"

"Yes. You should have a place to sit besides on my desk. I've asked Josephine to get me a nice, comfortable chair for any guests I might have."

"You already asked her?"

Cullen tried not to let the anxiety show through on his face. "Should... should I not have?"

"Oh, no... I mean, it's fine. I mean, it's your office, after all." She closed her eyes and let out a small huff of amusement. Then, she took a deep breath and opened her eyes once more. "What I mean to say is... I'm not used to people spoiling me like you do. You seem to anticipate my every thought. Are you reading my mind, vhenan?"

Relief cascaded through him as he chuckled and shook his head. "No, I don't believe so. I'm glad it pleases you, though."

"I just think it's amusing. You keep saying how you're not very good at all this. I'm not seeing much evidence of that so far."

He gave her a wry look, complete with sarcastically raised eyebrow. "Give it time."

She just laughed at him and drank her tea, and he marveled again at the turn his life had taken. How in the Maker's name did I get so incredibly lucky?

Cullen pulled a little more violently than normal on the final buckle of his vambrace as he exited his office and took the stairs down to the stables. A messenger had interrupted their quiet night with an urgent message, and they'd been forced to take their leave of each other in a rather chaste manner. Now, he could only think of the weeks ahead without her. It had always been difficult to watch her leave, but now more than ever, he wished he weren't tied to his desk. If she had to go - and he knew she did - at least then he'd be able to follow and protect her. He envied her companions in that. The only comfort his job offered was the ability to bury himself in his work. It would make the time pass a little more quickly.

In the pre-dawn light, he could see Bull and Varric had already saddled their horses. They sat against the stable wall chatting softly, waiting for the others to join them. He nodded at them as Evana came out of the stable with her horse. Without a word, he took a bag from her and walked around to attach it to the other side of the saddle. He could just see the top of her head from that side, and he was reminded again how small and seemingly fragile she appeared. He forced himself to remember all those reports - the ones in which she immolated entire groups of bandits at once. She only looked fragile. It helped, but only a little.

When he finished, he joined her again on the other side and found her still trying to adjust the bag on her side. Standing behind her, he reached his arms around either side of her to help with the buckles she couldn't quite see. Then he wrapped his arms around her waist and buried his face in her hair. It hung past her ears now, the strands smooth like silk against his cheek. All the things he wanted to say passed through his brain - I love you, I will miss you, come back to me - but he couldn't seem to force them out.

"Be safe," he whispered instead.

She turned around in his arms, and in the dawn light, he saw her eyes glistening with unshed tears. "I will."

He didn't care who saw. He reached up with his ungloved hand and gently cupped her face. In the dim light, his eyes raked over her features, trying to memorize every line, every curve, trying to say with his eyes what he couldn't seem to with his voice. Then, leaning down, he kissed her slowly, a farewell and silent plea for her to come back to him well and whole.

#dragon age #cullen rutherford #cullen x lavellan #cullavellan #tooth-rotting fluff #dragon age fanfiction #cullen x inquisitor #Cullen x Evana #commander cullen #da:i #DA: Inquisition #relationship building #quiet moments #comfort #lyrium withdrawal #troat

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captivesrp · 6 years ago

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Frustration. Murchadh is filled with it. None of the older tribe members will talk with him about the hunt or current politics. His information sources have been cut off. He is not allowed in the hut with the scrolls, he is not being taught new dialects, and most Gwaedwn are nervous about talking to him at all. However, Fuldryn is still giving him star-charting lessons when the skies allow it, and tonight promises to be a clear one; maybe tonight Murchadh can get some answers.

In fact, the sky is only mostly clear: occasional clouds pass over the stars and interrupt the lesson. Murchadh, using one such pause, asks, “Fuldryn, you told me once that only a few tribe members stuck with Symbre. Who were they?”

Fuldryn regards Murchadh seriously. “Myself, Noè, Arial, Máerl, Caffain, Cemedwn, Dulan, Sylbrech, Brennwgan, Gaddurac, and ol’ Hwff, of course. Oh, and Effric. By the time the other Old Gwaedwn had left, though, we were already expanding our ranks. We’ve never been below two score members. At our peak, and this was something like three or four generations ago, we numbered nearly three hundred. Anything else you need to know?”

Murchadh nods along with the list of names, not surprised by most of them. “What is the chain of command?

Fuldryn arches their eyebrows. “Everyone is an equal part in the tribe.”

Murchadh shakes his head to indicate his disagreement, and at Fuldryn’s look explains, “We are not all equal. I have to listen to and obey everyone. I want to know who I should really be listening to.”

Fuldryn’s eyes start to dance as they usually do when they enter into a sparring match of wits; Murchadh knows the look from other star-charting sessions where they had gotten lost in dialogue together. “If things really are unequal, then perhaps I do not have to share my knowledge with you.”

Murchadh smiles, springing his trap. “True, but then you are admitting you lied to me, proving me right. And if there is a chain of command, then it follows that everyone should know it so that we can have order . . . unless you like chaos?”

“The discerning tribesperson should not have to be told the hierarchy,” says Fuldryn, eyes twinkling in starlight returning to the skies. “What question do you wish to bring forward that you do not want to ask Symbre?”

Murchadh had been hoping the verbal sparring could disguise the seriousness of his avenue of inquiry, but it seems Fuldryn has seen through him. “I survive by knowing everything I can about those around me,” he says seriously. “Who to side with to stay out of trouble, who to befriend to gain protection; I have survived on wits, not muscle---unlike most of the ‘equal’ members of the Gwaedwn, who I imagine don’t need to ask sensitive questions in order to survive.”

Fuldryn looks at him searchingly. “What question must you ask for this purpose? You are a blood member of the tribe, like any other; you are safe here.”

“Not like any other.” Murchadh’s tone turns accusatory. “You know what has been going on in camp. There is unrest, especially since the death of Alaric. He is the second hunter you’ve lost, and the Gwaedwn have noticed. It doesn’t just affect us children anymore. There is tension in the village, and I would like to know where everyone stands in relation to Symbre.”

Fuldryn’s eyes are lost in the direction of the village. “I shouldn’t be surprised that you’ve noticed.” They focus back on Murchadh. “Who have you been listening to?”

“One adult and another,” says Murchadh with a shrug. “I’m not blind or stupid. Did you think that I could not see that the rites you led for Alaric were an act to appease the tribe, not to honour the fallen? Your hunters are not worth anything to you; why should I side with powers that do not consider me valuable?”

“You were not compelled to take the oath,” mutters Fuldryn, but Murchadh pushes on:

“With those who would happily let me die to get what they want? Show me I am valued, trusted---just a little. Tell me who I can trust so that I am trusting the right people, otherwise I may be putting my life in the hands of those who would push me into the path of a charging boar.

“Do you even care? I came to you, the one person I feel I can trust for the right answers---who actually might know. If you told me who I could trust, I would believe you.”

“I will not speak against my blood-people, Murchadh---there is no quicker way to ensure a tribe’s downfall. Do not think to trap me in a war that is not yet necessary; I will take no sides nor will I draw any lines.” Fuldryn regards Murchadh for a long moment. “You know who to trust, young one. Your friends, your family---whoever that is to you. But know that if it does not mean the Gwaedwn, you will be on the wrong side when or if lines are, in the end, irreversibly drawn.” They fall silent and look up at the glittering expanse above.

Murchadh studies the tribesperson for a time, but the silence that has fallen between them is cold. Fuldryn will likely never answer his questions again.

* * *

The next day is even more isolating. By mealtime, Murchadh has still not had a real conversation. Taking his food, Murchadh heads towards a fire where he suspects he might find Symbre. He is not hopeful for much, but wants to know where he stands in her opinion. He finds the leader of the Gwaedwn nursing a mug of something hot, sitting by the fire. He nods at her, saying, “I was wondering if you were willing to share any more stories about the creature we are hunting.”

Symbre regards him coolly. “I’m surprised you’re still looking for me; I hear you’ve been dragging tales out of anyone who gives you a moment.”

Murchadh sighs and sits down a short distance from her. “I wish to capture the prey, and my father always taught me to know my quarry well if I desire a successful hunt. Is it wrong to try my best to hunt this creature, which will bring glory to my tribe?”

“Your father was a wise man,” responds Symbre. “But what more can you learn from old legend that we have not shared with you already? You know everything that is pertinent to your hunt.”

“I need to learn how this creature thinks. It knows it is being hunted, and it has always seemed to know we were coming before we even left the village. I need to know how it knows this, and then where it will likely move next, to catch it. Each time I learn a new legend I learn something new about the creature.”

“Do tell.”

Murchadh’s eyes glimmer darkly in the firelight. “The first thing I learned was that you do not need necessarily to be a child to kill the beast, only innocent of bloodshed. The second is that you can flatter it; almost every story has an element of flattery; in fact, it is usually the cause of the creature’s demise.”

“Very good,” responds Symbre. “I hope you can use this information on your upcoming hunt. Your flattery could use a little work, however---I understand you have not made many allies among your tribe as yet.”

Murchadh presses his lips together. Symbre has turned to another Gwaedwn and he knows she is finished discussing this matter with him. He walks away in a foul mood, feeling disconnected from his peers in the tribe.

* * *

Even Tyree avoids him in the next few days; Murchadh’s cousin sends him a few sympathetic glances over the next few days, but Murchadh is alone in his village duties of hunting and cleaning. He meets Asgell at the archery range one day, but she does not engage with him, packing up and leaving shortly after his arrival, saying only a few words as she passes him by.

Murchadh turns once again to the forest to find acceptance, but finds himself out of touch with it. Its sounds, smells, sights embrace him, but his instincts feel slow and his mind dull to its nuances. Five days after the first hunting group had left---now slated to return---Murchadh slips into the forest before sunrise, nodding to Ungant on watch. He finds a spot to focus; sitting down, he closes his eyes and begins a breathing exercise his father taught him. Slowly, he expands his awareness from his mind to his head and shoulders, to his torso, then to his legs. From there, he works on reading the forest around him with touch, taste, hearing, and smell. Feeling the ground he is sitting on, tasting the air, smelling the flora and fauna, listening to the minute sounds of the forest. As he does this, Murchadh is puzzled. Before, even in his first days of woodcraft, he could feel the forest being absorbed into him; he became part of the forest as it became part of him. Now, he feels his own effort alongside nature’s, to hold on, but the grasping is like a hand trying to hold onto water; Murchadh feels the forest moving through instead of in him.

It is well past sunrise when Murchadh finally feels the connection he had been seeking all day. As he gets up from the turf he feels much more alive than he has for a long time. His senses are tingling and he feels heavier. As he moves slowly back to the village, he is absorbed by the forest; he feels himself vanish in the dappled shadows as he glides over the ground.

When he arrives in the village, he hears that the hunting party has returned; he hustles to Symbre’s tent to listen to their report.

“. . . we were two days out and hadn’t seen the ancient guardian yet---the big tree marking the end of Crow-watcher’s riddle,” Cydwag is saying as he enters. “We camped in the early evening, as we didn’t want to encounter the ‘fell wisdom’ that the riddle told us to beware of after dark. I went hunting and . . .” Her eyes flicker to Ffrewgí and back to Fuldryn, who seems to be leading the inquiry. “Both Ffrewgí and I experienced something that night; something weird. It might have been the creature---anyway, we don’t really remember what it was, only that it was something incredible. The next day . . .”

Murchadh listens closely as the hunter describes the remainder of the expedition; Ashrille contributes a brief chapter where she and Wyddryr---who Murchadh notices is not present in the tent---had set off in the night to search for the creature by the riddle-marker of the ancient tree. Wyddryr had been seriously wounded by a monster there, which explains his absence.

After Cydwag has detailed the group’s trip home, Ashrille tells Fuldryn that Cydwag had claimed to have seen Archora the night she and Ffrewgí had encountered the mysterious presence. Neither Ffrewgí nor Cydwag seem keen to discuss this portion of their experience; understandably, thinks Murchadh, but that Cydwag saw at least a representation of a living Archora makes him wonder about the hand that had been on the spear in the center of the village.

After a few more questions from Fuldryn, the hunting group is dismissed. Murchadh is thoughtful as he leaves the tent. It seems like the creature is getting bolder; Murchadh expects it really had been the creature Cydwag and Ffrewgí had encountered, which means it made an effort to speak to them. Interesting. Murchadh does not think the creature is evil, but it must have its own goals, and who can say what such goals might entail.

Murchadh sees Ffrewgí, head down, walking towards the captives’ complex. He catches up with him. “How are you doing?” Murchadh asks.

Ffrewgí responds darkly, “I can track a hunter in the dark now, if that’s what you mean.”

“I was meaning how you’re holding up. It has been rough for you. I want to help, if I can,” Murchadh responds gently.

“Do you think it was Archora? That Cydwag saw?”

Murchadh pauses to think. “I don’t know if it was Archora or not, but I think it means she is alive, if nothing else.”

“I don’t know,” says Ffrewgí quietly, but Murchadh thinks the boy is standing a little straighter.

* * *

The next morning, Murchadh and his hunting group are roused for their hunt. Crow-watcher gives them their riddle in the village this time around, outside of the outfitting tent where they receive their equipment. Murchadh leads Ainsley, Anwen, and Heulwen off in the direction indicated obviously in the first stanza of the riddle. He feels the eyes of the mystic follow them all the way to the edge of the woods but does not give him the satisfaction of a backwards glance. Murchadh wonders, though, how much of his dreams can Brân Crow-watcher detect. The thought causes Murchadh to shiver.

The day goes by with little event. Everyone keeps to themselves. Camp is set up, people go to sleep. The next morning, too, is quiet. Ainsley seems a little absent when he comes back to the camp from a morning supply hunt, but does not open up. By midday, they have traveled a good distance and step out of the forest onto highland plain. They cross a disused footpath while still in view of the forest fringe; a marker mentioned in the riddle. On its far side, they take a short break, and Murchadh is startled to realize that he knows this place. Despite the cool air, a heat shimmer forms along the bare ground and Murchadh suddenly sees forms passing along a well-trodden highway, their shapes indistinct. Before they can form up fully, Murchadh shakes his head and they disappear, leaving beneath their feet nothing but a thin dirt track almost lost in gorse and heather. He can hardly identify which of his worlds is real anymore, but he knows he needs to focus on this one.

By nightfall, they can see the shadowy line of a high bluff half a day’s-journey to the east. Somewhere along is a waterfall, the end of their riddle; Murchadh can already hear it faintly in a stirring breeze. They set up camp; tomorrow is time enough to search the area. That night, Murchadh is drawn into a deep sleep.

* * *

Murchadh wakes as if pulled up from a sea of fog. As he collects his bearings, he realizes that he still has a short leg and a curled arm; he is disappointed by this for some reason. He stands, looks about. He sees near him another version of himself, a hunter latticed with scars and carrying a collection of weapons. Behind that Murchadh, another, unscarred and whole. Murchadh realizes that he is in the middle of a small audience of versions of himself---not just versions, either; the other members of the crowd are as much himself as he is, but from different times and places. Many of those around him are nearly indistinguishable from him, but he can somehow sense their differences of experience, emotion, perception.

Another Murchadh steps onto a small wooden stage in front of the audience; Murchadh somehow knows that this is not actually himself from any time or place, though it looks and moves precisely as he does. This Murchadh-not-Murchadh motions for the crowd’s attention and begins to orate in a traditional style of legendry.

“Every creature lives within two realms, and each realm is bordered by naught but the thinnest wall. The first realm a creature knoweth is Within. This be the realm of dreams; it is the first to be known by our kind, and sooth, it is the first forgotten. The second realm a creature knoweth is Without. This is the realm of the crawling creatures, those who art chained, in which we live. The realm Within is that of the birds and beasts of the air; we cannot live there without sacrifice, for verily our kind cannot dwell fully in two worlds at once. For one of our kind, to live Within and travel the red pathways is to lose grasp of the realm beyond that thinnest wall, and to drink the fluid of dreams is to lose the stomach to eat Without.”

Murchadh focuses on the words, burning them into his memory. There is something here he needs to figure out. He does not doubt this is somehow a vision from the Gwaedwn’s creature. The question is, why?

The Murchadh-not-Murchadh is suddenly looking right at him. “The dark cat killeth not Without, Murchadh. It dwelleth Within, and killeth by drawing you to it. Its followers feeleth not the wind Without, forsooth have they chosen the red paths and feel the passage of visions instead. Their battle is a lure.”

This resonates with Murchadh. He recalls battles in the dream-world, how he cannot be killed nor kill his enemies there. But the danger . . . why did his golden friend not warn him of it? Can he truly lose himself to that realm? Murchadh remembers how odd it had been to feel the forest move through him, beyond him, the other day, and how long it had taken for him to rediscover the connection that had once been innate to him. There is definitely truth here; Murchadh just needs to figure out why he is being warned.

The thing on the stage continues, “There art gifts outside the Blood, Murchadh. Do not thou let the feel of flight draw thee away from the gifts of the earth, for upon earth is where thy friends dwell.”

With those last words Murchadh feels the world fading around him. He looks at the warrior beside him, who returns his gaze and nods at him with a smug smile faint upon his face, and then everything disappears into blackness.

* * *

Murchadh wakes with a start. The stars are bright in the sky; it has only been a movement since the moon rose. Murchadh walks softly away from camp and gazes intently at the stars. The creature is close---it must be---but Murchadh knows he can do nothing; he has blood on his hands.

What is the creature’s motive? Why send him a dream? Murchadh loses himself in the stars wheeling above him, returning to sleep closer to dawn than dusk. Just as he lies back on the soft highland moss, a familiar shape blacks out the stars directly above him. Murchadh rests his head back and wonders if he is seeing through the veil or if his golden friend really has a presence in this realm. Turning that thought over, Murchadh falls asleep.

Murchadh wakes the others early the next morning and outlines the plan for the day: to search for the creature near the waterfall after they break their fast. Heulwen and Anwen head off in different directions to forage a quick meal, Ainsley disappears below a ridge hunting for some meat, and Murchadh is left alone to start a fire. Heulwen returns first, with handfuls of autumn berries. The sun is well clear of the horizon when Ainsley returns. Anwen is late returning, and Murchadh becomes concerned. He gathers his things, strapping on his archery brace. Heulwen accompanies him as he finds the missing girl’s trail without much trouble and follows it east, towards the waterfall. He pushes forward, quicker and quicker, Heulwen pattering along behind him. Then he sees her, along the banks of a stream a stone’s throw down a slope from them.

Suddenly remembering Anwen’s recent coldness towards him, Murchadh comes to a stop and suggests Heulwen go and check on her. As the tiny girl heads down the decline, Murchadh sits between two taller shrubs, breathing in and seeking to center himself here as he does in the woods. The land is wilder here, more uncontrollable. He feels the wind crack through the dry twigs of the shrubs, looks up absently and watches ragged clouds race each other towards the northern horizon. An eagle circles high above him. Slowly, Murchadh can feel his surroundings absorb into him---and then through him; again, the connection is transient, unwilling to remain in him. But it is better than the other day. He sighs and stands, moving to where Heulwen and Anwen are.

“Are you okay?” he asks Anwen as he approaches.

Anwen looks dazed. “Yes,” she starts, but a confused look crosses her face. “Yes, I am okay.”

“What happened?” Murchadh inquires gently.

“I wanted to be alone . . . and---I think---” Anwen loses her thought and struggles to grasp onto words. “There was something.”

Murchadh suggests they make their way back to camp, where they all have breakfast around a fire started by Ainsley. Then Murchadh asks Ainsley and Heulwen to look for tracks by the stream they found Anwen, thinking there was something suspicious about Anwen’s responses---alongside his dream, he has a feeling the creature is involved. When they are gone, he moves next to Anwen. “Hey,” he starts, “I know you don’t like me much right now, but I---” he pauses, searching for words. “Well, I want to help you if I can. I know losing someone is tough.”

Anwen regards him unseeing for a long moment. Focus comes slowly to her eyes. Eventually, she starts, as if just realizing that he is waiting for a response. “Um---thanks. I . . . I’m sorry I haven’t---” she falters and starts again. “You helped me so much, when Alaric was sick, and . . . I just---pushed you away. I’m sorry.”

Murchadh looks at her softly. “It’s okay. I know how hard it can be. When my father died I pushed my entire tribe away---permanently.” He pauses to think. “What is the best way for me to help you now? I know something happened to you this morning; the creature gave me a dream last night.”

“A dream?”

“Yes, it gave me some advice.” Murchadh considers something. “Regarding what, it would take a while to tell you. I can tell you later. Right now, I just want to make sure you are okay. What happened? At least, what can you remember feeling, seeing---anything like that. If you met the creature, like the others did, you probably won’t remember much---just enough to have lots of questions,” he adds wryly.

Anwen looks unsettled. “Other people have seen it, too?”

“The last group,” explains Murchadh. “Cydwag said she saw something and so did Ffrewgí, but the most they could remember was a light, or something. How about you?”

“I don’t remember what I saw. But there was something there and it . . . talked to me. About Alaric, and how I miss him.”

“Did it say anything unexpected?”

She considers the question for a moment. “It knows that we’re hunting it.”

“Yes, it probably does.” Murchadh smiles. He allows the silence to rest for a moment, then, “Is there anything you would like to tell me? Anything I am doing wrong, or anything you just . . . need to get off your chest?”

Anwen is quiet for a moment. “Did you get to know Alaric much?” she asks.

“He never wanted to talk. I wish I could have known him better.”

Anwen looks down and whispers, “I really miss him.”

Murchadh moves closer to her and carefully puts his arm over her shoulder. “Tell me about the man you knew.”

Anwen takes a deep breath and sighs. She then begins to tell Murchadh about Alaric: who he was, how he struggled, and how he died. The sun has dried the drew from the leaves by the time her words are exhausted. Murchadh lets silence reign for a few moments, then suggests they join Heulwen and Ainsley in the search even if they know the creature will not be found.

From the first hunting group’s report, Murchadh assumes there will be no tracks to find and, as he and Anwen arrive at the streambank his guess is proven right. For the sake of their own report, he figures they should all make an effort nonetheless. Ainsley and Heulwen have combed the near bank and up the incline by the time Murchadh and Anwen join them, so Murchahd suggests they scour both banks all the way to the waterfall. Anwen and Ainsley hop the thin waterway and trace paths there while Murchadh and Heulwen tackle the near bank. It is high noon by the time they arrive at the waterfall. An incredible roaring fills Murchadh’s ears; the fall rises higher than he can see at its base and is as wide as ten people abreast. Despite the glittering mist, it is surprisingly warm, and Murchadh suggests they stop by the pool to cool down and hydrate.

While his companions are refreshing themselves, Murchadh moves to the rockface beside the waterfall. He leans his forehead against the rock and tries to feel the land around him again. This time it immerses him. The sound of the waterfall rushes through him, washing his mind and soul clean. The solid rock allows him to feel the vibrating pulse of the land around him. He breathes it in, and the feeling holds inside him. He opens his eyes and sees prints by his feet, leading down to the pool; the cloven hoofed prints of a great stag. Murchadh does not know why he had not seen them before. He kneels to feel the grit in which a print is formed. His fingers brush the gravel, but the print remains untouched; he realizes suddenly that its shape glows slightly. Murchadh looks down at the pool, sees the tracks hovering on the surface of the water---then they vanish.

“Well,” mutters Murchadh to himself, “it makes sense: magical creature, magical tracks.”

The hunting group explores the area for a few movements; Murchadh chooses to keep his vision to himself. Long before dusk, they head back to their camp for a leisurely dinner and early sleep. In the morning, after they eat a foraged breakfast, they begin their journey back, and the two days of their trek pass without notable event---even Murcahdh’s dreams are stilled.

They arrive in the Gwaedwn village with light still in the sky and report to Fuldryn, Logain, and Symbre in the chief’s tent. Murchadh takes the lead in the retelling of their experiences, but the others chime in occasionally. Fuldryn asks him about his dream.

Thinking they already suspect his experience with dreams, Murchadh explains without hesitation, “I was with a bunch of versions of me from different points of my life. A copy of us stepped out onto a stage and warned me to be careful how much time I spend walking in my dreams---that if you spend too much time across the veil you lose substance on this side of it. The world within versus the world without.”

“Why might you need that warning?” Fuldryn inquires.

Murchadh looks them straight in the eye. “Crow-watcher may not be the only dreamer in our tribe. In my dreams, too, I am whole; life is better without . . .” he lifts his curled arm, “without the gimp. Anyway,” he says, jumping back into the narrative of their hunt, “we reached the waterfall, but there were no physical signs of the creature.”

“No physical signs?” asks Fuldryn with a hint of an edge. “What about signs that aren’t physical, dreamer?”

Murchadh smiles. “I saw a vision of large stage tracks by the fall. They were spectral; I could not alter them, and they seemed to glow. But then they faded. I doubt they were the tracks of the creature but merely part of the game it is playing.”

“Very interesting,” remarks Fuldryn. “And they simply appeared to you?”

“No,” says Murchadh. “I was taking some time at the waterfall to center myself, to sync with the environment, and was thinking about the creature---what it knows about us, how it has been playing with us since the first hunt.”

Fuldryn’s lighten with sparks of humour. “No vision of birds, or bird spirits?”

“That was all you saw?” interjects Symbre.

“Then we turned back and returned here.”

A silence falls in the tent as the adults exchange significant looks. Murchadh waits to be dismissed. Finally, Logain ushers them out and closes the tent flap behind them. Murchadh heads back to his own tent, for the first time glad that no one in the village has been talking to him. He is wanting to have a very serious conversation with his friend on the other side of the veil; there are some answers he needs.

#murchadh #chapter ten

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