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englass · 5 years ago

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Hold Her Tight (And Don’t Let Go)

Pairing(s): John Seed X F!Deputy

Warning(s): Yandere, possessive/obsessive behaviour, soft but unstable John; he has a very warped idea of things; mentions of blood and physical wounds.

Word Count: 2,963

Gifted To: @seedlingsinner

A/N(s): A gift for my darling Sinner; I really hope you enjoy this, hun. I tried to keep it soft, but... well, you know me haha. I can’t quite help myself sometimes. And look! I finally found a fic for that title; I knew I was saving it for something special haha. But seriously, I hope I got this right; and that I did her justice. Thank you by the way hun, for not only allowing me to write this for you, but for putting up with me and being an amazing friend. You really are a blessing hun, I hope you know that; and, before I forget: Merry Christmas, poppet! 💖 💖 💖

- - -

There is a hush over the land, a chilled lull that hints to the ending autumn just as much as it does the falling night. Early rays of tired light making the still dark sky blush with the faintest dusting of pink, colours catching in the reflection of crystal-clear dew drops as the night steadily inches towards the dawn. A new day quite literally on the horizon.

It’s peaceful, the yawning night slowly being sung to sleep by the bird’s melodic hymns, as many continue to wander dreamily within the landscape of their own minds. Unconcerned and unaware of the many battles that will no doubt erupt once the dawn finally breaks and this day officially begins; the same as any other, yet different nonetheless.

Deputy Rook knows this routine better than any; always the first to rise, to shed and spill blood in the name of her chosen faction – to drown her conscious deep below the water's surface as she fights in the name of a tarnished and frail justice, morals abandoned under the bodies she recklessly leaves behind – and the last to put her rifle down and let the temptations of sleep snare her into a fitful slumber. Yes, Rook knows her daily routine rather well.

Yet the days are still different, and on those rare days where the mould has been broken Rook would typically revel in the change of pace. Would let herself get lost in empty thoughts as the morning fog rolled in, taking in the sights of ghostly meadows and mist-drowned woodland as she slipped free from the collar of her obligations. The world an enclosure where she was the only occupant; a beautifully lonely solitude.

Today, however, is far from such a day.

There is a tension in the air; a wire worn thin by bitter exchanges and pulled too tight by vengeful encounters. Fear turned aggressive on the precipice of its snap, battlefield dusted as the two that tug and stress the wire to its fullest foam and snap like rabid dogs. Cruel jabs and nasty words constantly exchanged like devoted love letters over shifting radio waves.

Really if she was in a better condition Rook would continue this little game of theirs, reflecting every petty snark he threw at her right back like an ever-present mirror; would help to demolish this suffocating pressure and that infernal wire that strangles the Valley with a flourish. Or maybe even a good punch to the bastard’s face. That would be something; but sadly, you can’t have everything.

Especially when you are in Rook’s position.

“How are you feeling?” John asks, a sea of troubled blue staring intently at the injured deputy. Gaze occasionally flicking down to her exposed bandages, fingers twitching restlessly in his lap. “You’ve been out for a while now…”

Rook shifts uncomfortably, hand pressed loosely over her side as she weakly moves up the bed and away from John. Jaw aching as she grits her teeth against the sharp twist in her side at every wrong move or too deep a breath.

At her silence John swallows thickly, his Adam’s apple bobbing with the movement. He hesitates, lets the silence carry as one of his hands comes up to lay habitually against his chest, absently smoothing over the lettering of his displayed sin. A soft concern lighting his ocean eyes, strangely aglow under the lamplight.

“I was honestly starting to fear the worst. You should really take better care of yourself, Deputy.”

Despite his touching, if not completely unexpected, worry Rook finds it easier to keep quiet. To rebel by denying him her words and, by extension, her compliance.

Admittedly, a part of her wants to question him – ask why she’s here, in his home and a bed, instead of incarcerated within his bunker, but she refrains. The fear of his answer holds her tongue; keeps the bravado muzzled and the curiosity leashed. Her self-preservation a blaring warning that on this occasion she cannot afford to ignore or misread.

John can be a loose cannon, unpredictable at the best of times; feathers easily ruffled and fangs quickly bared; and Rook is vulnerable, at his mercy even. It’s a match made in hell; a pairing far out of her favour; and sadly, this time there’s no wheelie-chair to be her saviour, nor no gun-wielding priest to come to her rescue.

She’d be surprised if anyone thought she was still alive after what had happened; she could only imagine the wreckage that had become of her plane after that crash. Hell, even she was surprised she was still alive; impalement was definitely not the way she envisioned dying, least of all to a piece of stray shrapnel, let her tell you that.

Although, she guessed she had John to thank for not making that a reality. For what it was worth anyway.

A sigh taps at the tension, the soft sound of shifting fabric trailing it as The Baptist shifts; turns to better face her and move a sly inch closer. Free hand gripping at the duvet beside her leg, just shy of touching her through the cover. Although she has no doubt that he’s likely considering it anyway.

“You know, this could have easily been avoided if you had just taken me up on my offer. If you had just listened to me and put that filthy pride of yours aside then you wouldn’t be here-” his eyes narrow, expression tightening as he amends his words with a strained, but hushed, “you wouldn’t have gotten hurt.”

For some bizarre and completely unexplainable reason, not at all brought about by past and recent experiences, Rook sincerely doubted that. If it hadn’t of been that plane crash then one of his men would have hurt her instead; shot her like a poor doe during the hunting season no less. Which, considering the way they address and mock her over the radio, is a rather disturbingly accurate way of putting it.

Regardless of his offer, of what he had attempted to try and promise her, Rook didn’t believe for a second that her blood wouldn’t be spilt in some way or another.

She was the enemy – she is the enemy. She needs to atone, as he so likes to continuously remind her. And if she had learnt anything from her last little rendezvous with the man it was that atonement wasn’t without pain. She hadn’t swam across that ocean yet; she wasn’t free from the burdens of her apparent sins without braving those dark waters first; without being courageous and giving him that ‘yes’ that he so desperately craves and thirsts after.

And she didn’t plan to.

So, forgive her for not exactly having faith in him when he says that she wouldn’t be hurt. When he promises her sweet, pointless salvation all for the measly price of her freedom and subjugation and… and something else she wouldn’t give him.

Rook didn’t trust his words then, didn’t believe them even, and she definitely didn’t trust them now.

John takes a steadying breath, finally giving into the urge to touch her as his hand finds purchase just below her knee. Pressing his weight onto her as he moves closer, swallows and pulls away the hand at his chest to reach over and grab her own smaller hand; the one pressed delicately against her injured side.

Despite Rook’s protest, a ‘don't you dare’ hissing scathingly between her teeth, the seething threat that it’s intended to be wavers. Her voice weakened by the pain that throbs through her like a second heartbeat; composure fraying under the stress like a noose with too much weight to bear.

John hardly pays her words any attention as he pries her hand away from the bandages as gently as he can, fingers lacing between her own and squeezing. A sweet act of reassurance; a sour display of dominance. A sharp inhale following at the sight of the vivid red that has started to bleed through the once clean bandages again; a muttered beration on his tongue.

The hand at her knee moves, practically skims up her leg until it’s hovering over her side, absently fiddling with the partially unbuttoned shirt that she had woken up in. That he had changed her into while she was out cold; while he took care of her. Pools of ocean blue glazing in contemplation as he eyes the covered wound; critical and thoughtful.

The hand behind her, vainly supporting Rook’s weight and efforts to create some form of distance between the two of them, claws into the sheets; grips them savagely as the anger clashes with fear and festers with audacity. The nerve of this man; what on Earth is he playing at…

“I know you don't exactly think highly of me, Deputy. That you don’t trust me,” John starts carefully, eyes briefly – shyly meeting Rook’s, “or anything I may say or do for that matter. But I need you to understand just how serious I was being, the last time we spoke. That my offer was serious. I meant what I said, you would be safe here with me, dear. No harm would come to you, I wouldn’t allow for harm to come to you. I wouldn’t…”

There’s a shakiness in his voice, an urgent fragility that has Rook leaning back ever so slightly; brow furrowed and eyes wide.

“I can protect you; I know I can. I can give you a life outside of the barbarism that is your so-called Resistance. I could give you anything you ever wanted, anything – name it and it’ll be yours. It’ll be ours.” There’s an upturn to his lips, small and hopeful as his eyes sparkle up at her through his lashes, blue impossibly bright and innocent and-

And then it’s gone. Erased by a quick swallow; eyes ducking back down to her bandaged waist with a new veil cast over them. Something indescribable, unreadable shifting the colours of his eyes in ways Rook can’t understand; the lamplight casting shadows that make the ripples in the water of his eyes all the more sinister; all the more focused.

“I know I was perhaps a little… forward in my intentions when I proposed, a little hasty even,” he laughs nervously, almost boyishly, “but I meant it. I would never lie to you about such a thing, darling. When I asked you to be mine, I meant every word. I’d do anything within my power to keep you safe. You have to believe me when I say that.

“You believe me, don’t you, Eleanor?”

Rook – Eleanor – doesn’t respond. She doesn’t know how to respond. She knew John to be a bit off the rails, what with the things she’s heard and seen herself, but this… this definitely wasn’t what she expected. She didn’t even know he knew her name, let alone that he was so serious about that deal of his; that poorly described ‘proposal’ as he called it. She thought he was joking, that it was just another ploy to try and lure her in, no matter how stupid it sounded. She thought he was joking…

She wishes he was joking.

Her silence is answer enough and John fidgets, knee coming up onto the bed as his other knee comes over his ankle. The hand playing with the corner of her shirt – his shirt, twisting the fabric anxiously between his fingers.

“I… I don’t understand, dear. I don’t…” There’s a sudden distance in his eyes, a strange vacantness that turns the water darker. Thoughts lost as he searches her; eyes darting between her own before they fall back to her bandages, expression twisting; a realised emotion, an acquired answer, dulling the shine in his vibrant eyes.

“Am I so void of love,” he reaches out then, eyes lost in the ocean of a newfound vulnerability, “am I…,” he hesitates, the pads of his fingers brushing against her skin, lingering over the apple of her cheek, “will I ever be good enough? Would you ever want me?”

The question rings like a bad omen, air bitter as Eleanor stares speechlessly back at him. His hand falling back down to the corner of her shirt as she silently shakes her head at him; a muttered ‘you’re insane’ slipping heavily off her tongue.

“… That’s not a ‘no’.”

‘That’s not a’- oh, for fuck sake, “Then what the hell do you want me to say?”

John laughs, a broken sound that fractures like glass.

“Isn’t it obvious? I want you to say ‘yes’. I want you to take me up on my offer. I want you to want me; just like I want you.”

There’s a weighted pause.

A slow and drawn out: “That’s never going to happen.”

“Oh, I don’t know about that,” John counters with something soft in his tone; something free and teasing; something dangerous. “Tell me, have you ever heard of co-dependency, Deputy? I know our relationship isn’t quite to that degree yet, what with how you constantly refuse my help and affections, but you have to admit it comes awfully close. We both rely on each other so much as it is. Our jobs, our lives, revolve around each other. So why not make it a bit more permanent, hm?

“Take me up on my offer, Eleanor. Accept it, accept me, and I will happily take care of everything. Rely on me, just as much as I rely on you, and I promise that you will never have to raise a weapon again. Depend on me and I promise you that you will be kept safe. Love me, and I swear on God himself that I will do anything for you; anything. I vow it to you, love.”

Eleanor can do nothing but stare at him, skin pale in the wake of this warped confession. A moment passing by far quicker than it feels before she tenses, winces at the pain her physical resolve causes, before she replies with a daring, but avoidant, “I will never depend on you for anything.”

“On the contrary, darling,” he says with a blooming smile, “you’re about to depend on me for everything. For you see…” he licks his lips, the hand holding hers pressing lightly into the bed, stroking over her pulse point, “I’ve wanted you for a while now. It’s why I made you that offer. Why I asked for you to stay with me, by my side.

“You denied me, yes, but that’s because you couldn’t see. Because you were scared of the truth, of what you would find if you were to stay with me. If you were to stay and explore this connection we have. But now…” he stops fiddling with the corner of the shirt Eleanor’s wearing, fingers gliding sweetly over her bandages with an absent caress, “now I have a way to make you stay.”

Just as dread chills Eleanor’s spine, a question crawling fearfully on her tongue, there’s a striking pressure and she chokes – gasps as John’s palm comes down harsh against her wound, fingers pushing and digging violently into her until it bleeds.

Her hand buckles under her; body falling, back arching on the bed as John rears up and over her, following so his hand keeps pressure against her bleeding wound as she screams. Head thrown back and vision blurred, tears cascading quickly down her cheeks and onto the bed as she frantically grabs and claws at his wrist with her free hand; the other still pinned and helpless against his assault.

Her legs kick out and then seize, the pain paralysing as she wails brokenly into the early morning. It’s sharp and it burns and she desperately wants to curl up into herself, to roll over and huddle into as small a ball as she possibly can to protect herself; but John is still hanging over her. His face right over her own, peppering her wet cheeks with chaste kisses and gentle hums and coos.

The hand pressing into her wound, now covered with the blood that quickly bled through the bandages, pulls away. Stops applying pressure only to stroke lightly over the sullied bandages and reopened wound; rubbing her stomach gently like one would while comforting a sick lover.

It’s a disgusting imitation of intimacy.

“Y-you,” she stutters with a sob, body shivering and stomach twitching as raw ice floods her veins, her teeth bared in a snarling grimace as a vile curse tumbles free; a vain and pitiful act of defiance.

“Oh sweetheart,” John coos airily, cruel and mocking, until a delirious laugh scratches at the edges of his words; an unseen frenzy colouring his eyes and rattling within his voice. A bloody thumb coming to swipe shakily, but affectionately against Eleanor’s tear-stricken cheek; the final jab in this long-played game of theirs, “it’s okay. It’s going to be okay. I've got you. I’ve got you. It’ll hurt for a while – I know, I know; shh, shh – but it’s okay, that’s fine. That’s good. It means you can stay. It means you can’t get into trouble anymore. It means you’re away from those, those heathens and blasphemers.

“It means you’re mine.

“Oh, I promise, I am going to take such good care of you, darling. I honestly can’t wait. I am going to be so, so careful with you. I wouldn’t want for you to misbehave and make this wound of yours worse after all, now would I? It would be an awful shame if it wasn’t to heal correctly because of your needless resistance…

“Hm? Now, what is that look for? There’s no need to look so frightened, my darling. You don’t have to worry about a thing, I’ll look after you. I’ll take very, very good care of you…”

#i still hate dialogue #but i hope you like this hun!#also #asmr boyfriend roleplays had no influence on this whatsoever #nope #none at all #yandere john seed #john seed #yandere john seed x female deputy #john seed x female deputy #fanfiction #fanfic #my writing #fc5 #far cry 5 #yandere

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wammys-house-a · 5 years ago

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Page 359 – Lead;

Awoke - 3:41.

Nothing.

Not dawn, not footsteps, not B's hollow cackling.

I surface from a dreamless sleep.

Sitting upright, I can't discern my shadow from the ivory sheets in the dark, everything beyond the points of contact with my body is as imperceptible as the midnight sea.

As my skin habituates to the pressure, I sense myself floating, without depth; a blind castaway in black infinity. The boundaries of my body gradually erase.

Only the breath against my palate remains to anchor me, cool and oscillating, soft as a whisper — It's all I can hear over the chronic, distant hissing, like a virgin field in late October. It rings in my ears, I cannot resolve whether it's coming from within me or beyond the walls, this space that's been most familiar to me is now alien and disorienting

But my identity is consolidating itself beneath my skin, Who I am is surfacing through slumber's anesthetic.

Disappointment fills in the gaps of my sleep-clean slate...

I can sense my lips materializing in gentle sensations, the weight of reality settling into my expression that I'll wear the rest of the day. But, I'm still only partially a part of the world and I want to cling to the liberating sense of not-quite-being...

— Reaching into the darkness, I precariously lean out into sightless void with blind faith, imagining gravity inverting, my body hanging weightless from the ceiling... I can almost sense the blood collecting in my brain, feel the placebo-vertigo, the tease of fright.

— I make gentle contact with his warm shoulder.

His skin is supple, warmth beneath a cooled surface. He is the last piece of me I need, the one that stirs, sighs, groans, returns gravity.

"Hey- I'm stepping out. I'll be back."

He won't remember this.

Trouble is simmering just beneath the surface of this interaction like volcanic vents beneath a calm sea and my bed is capsizing nightly, bringing me into hot, dense depths, that leave me tossing restlessly in my sleep.

On some level, he knows. — intuition, not telepathy.

I'll never tell him the whole truth.

He has a way of knowing things no one should.

But, he's wrong this time. I'm not belligerently self reliant, destructively martyrial, rigidly distrustful...

I know there are more conventional ways of sorting out turmoil; in white walled rooms with prepackaged tissues, between bruising kisses in dark stairwells, in locked confessionals with latticed windows separating you from softly simpering adults sworn to silence.

But, the cost of someone mismanaging my honesty is quite high... Though, I don't believe the intention was for counseling to become a tool for successor pruning, there's an idiom that the road to hell is paved with good intentions, and I've come to find it's often true.

I’m selective with my confidants, I have to be. Mine can harbor no secrets, displace no blame, prove no dishonesty ...

So, this is what keeps me up at night —

The key turns in the lock.

For the first time in seven months I hear the click and whine of the hinges. The cavernous silence that has hung heavy in my bones splits with the piercing sound and sets my teeth.

— Unexpectedly, you close it behind you. Turning the lock. Leaving us Alone.

Together.

You're too young to be the new tenant. — Looters don't need keys. They don't come carrying tiny grey boxes, they don't unfold petite pressed gloves from their coat pockets. But, when you pull the drapes and move to the next room, I know this visit is covert.

I watch you

- moving into the kitchen, opening drawers, cabinets, swatting at famished flies as they lick your warm, salient skin . . .

Mine crawls as you pull the duck tape from your tiny ashen box. It's ripping-hiss echos in the spaces between my teeth. I'm so familiar with it that I've forgotten I've been tasting adhesive since December.

Others arrive with their lives compartmentalized, boxes labeled 'kitchen', 'Christmas', 'Abigail'... pieces of who they are they carry with them wherever they go.

But, not you. Not this box. It unfolds under the white, piercing spotlight in your left hand, the dust caught in it's stream entering your lungs imperceptibly — pieces of my existence pulled into you.

I hold my breath, peering over your shoulder. Pressed between your fingers are photographs of the room as it was a year ago, before the eviction, the evisceration of movers.

You don't notice the walls moving as we sigh. You're murmuring something to yourself, paging though the pictures, tonguing soft susurations, I lean in close to your mouth.

The whisper of my presence hovers against your temple like the crevices of conch shell.

— " Who are you ? " My words roll out like waves, crashing into the world.

— You turn, startled. Your eyes wide and searching.

The hammering of your heart replaces the suggestion of my voice in your ears.

You tell yourself,

it's only the house settling.

But houses like this never settle.

That's why it's just us, alone.

Together.

— Do you know the people who lived here before? The ones that left with dark circles and the dining room chairs, or the man that lived here when we moved in?

He took with him nothing but his crippled body; leaving us for a retirement home where his days are spent being spoon feed sedatives — his appetite still blade-sharp, his body too weak to sate it.

— If you don't know them, you won't know us.

Our boxes are small and singular, like yours, but contain nothing of the past, just the suspended present, sealed shut, soundless.

History's fugitives,

No names, Only numbers. Something else defines us, now.

What defines you?

Is it your name, your history, or the reason you're here ? Your box is empty but you carry pieces of what made you wherever you go, scars just beneath the surface, everyone does.

The expectation behind the trembling of your body as you stare out into the darkness — it isn't so mysterious,

you brought it here with you,

from somewhere, from someone.

I know that feeling. - alone, exposed, afraid of what's waiting for you. Darkness makes me restless, reminds me how much it can hurt here...

But, the taste of fear coming off you is all that can satiate my fury. — Maybe you don't deserve it. But, waiting beneath his bed, so I can soak into his dreams, has never left me satisfied. - One day, he will tie a noose from the sheets and drop his weight into it, then there will be nowhere left to h i d e.

You see, time never healed me, winter didn't numb the rage consuming me, it cauterized my identity until there was nothing left but Seven ... and this hunger to steal back my autonomy, for someone else to know my misery — to purge it through their body, pierce their illusions of immunity, tear control from their feeble fingers, press my fury into their straining throats,

Feel them breaking open under my touch.

I want to be the one inflicting, renaming, reclaiming what doesn't belong to me simply because. I. can.

I want to be the one doing the hurting this time.

— But before I can thread my fingers into your clothes, an electric buzzing breaks the looming stillness. You withdraw a slender phone from your coat and look down into it's glowing face.

... I watch fright fade from you, replaced with a gradually cooling trepidation, a quiet disbelief...

You smile, softly - into it's luminescent shadow.

I drink in the warmth of it,

like the poison that brought us here.

You smile amnesiacally, like you've forgotten the world, unsullied, ungrateful like the adolescent boys that lived upstairs — laughing, slamming their doors, sharing the same world where, as they lay blissful in their sleep, I lay voiceless in plastic sheets.

I watched them too.

I'll never know what 18 feels like.

I'll never go to college, never find my purpose, never make someone forget the world and smile in a way that I'll never see... I'll never share my secrets or my sins, I'll never makelove - I have had sex. Disgusting, soul-murdering sex. But, never find love, never marry, never move so far away that I can be free of who I'd spent 17 years being...

Regret has teeth.

They never stop growing, driving themselves deeper into you until you're rearranged around them like a bullet they just couldn't pull out. It becomes a part of who you are, how you define yourself.

— 50% Missing person, 50% Metallic regret.

As the phone slips away, your shoulders fall into a gentle slope and the veil of ease replaced by distant weariness, it makes me wonder how much of the weight you carry is lead.

Your eyes trace the muted wall paper, white daisies yellowed by humid summers and cigarette smoke.. Your gloved fingers press down cautiously, sliding over the smooth surface with a nearly affectionate care.

You're so close now,

I know you're holding your breath too.

You pause.

— Your brows gently furrow.

Your gaze tightens-

The light in your hands dies,

And darkness pours over us.

I watch you track the invisible outline, long rectangles broken by an emaciated cross — it's barely detectable. You glance over your shoulder to the window above the faucet.

— recognition seeps into your face.

You lift the photograph, the light flickering back to highlight the captured past. — It is not that it is missing, it is that it always had e i g h t panes.

I watch as your fingers begin to crawl — searching for the lower edge, plucking at it's boarder - and, I realize why you're here.

If only I could tell you.

It was the weeping of our bodies that permeated the walls. Tears of rage, of regret, of blood began to peel the wallpaper from it's foundation. You had arrived too soon, the sun needed one more summer to bleed the colour from the spare that came to replace it.

Your fingers catch on the broad edge and p u l l ; — I knew eventually the end was coming, I saw it, but now it is here - it arrives with a screeching snap like the ripping of a tourniquet or the splitting of living wood, - thready, crackling r e l i e f.

Strings cling to the skinned drywall, a blotched slate, sanguine stains like dying stars in ivory-white space.

And single, black bullseye

— A tiny opening, a weeping hole.

My coppery, wet fragrance permeates the air.

— I am here.

Wrapped in my translucent shroud, the molecules that made me up returning to the universe as a black fragrant sap, bleeding from pierced sheetrock.

My liquefied body eating through the lining like acid rain.

You cover your nose and mouth.

Oh, God- , I hear you say.

Oh, G o d ...

My finger, chipped down to it's bone, grey and porous, points out at you, as though you've been chosen - but God had nothing to do with this.

This began decades before my fingers forgot how they felt and bled, in an era where secrets stayed within the walls of your home, like a festering wound beneath the facade of preformed virtue, asbestos beneath the varnish of daisies in lead paint.

Sabbath sweaters and grass stained knees wouldn't have given away what he'd been taught in hissing autumn fields, caressing the stem of his brother's throat, hands bruised and weathered — trails of hot blood blooming in black earth where they buried their sins in secrets and soil, never spoken of again.

Maybe the man his brother became doesn't remember being the stepchild of a family death forged, the second-hand sibling that would cut into him with subtle invectives, hewing him into cruel compliance — but fragments of his wrongdoings are embedded in his soul - knowing there's something to repent for, too afraid to discover it.

He made him and he made us.

— Eleven skeletons, twenty one femurs, no tongues. - one thigh crushed under the weight of a collapsing wall, the thought of such an insult, being turned to dust, erased, sets me on fire.

I watch you begin to remove your glove with an unclear intention . . . - your hand hesitates, suspended mid-motion, hovering bare, the decision halted like a hitching breath caught in your throat then, slowly trickling out -

a shaking finger extends towards the open wound.

The contact.

- my blood s t i c k s ,

my flesh thaws beneath the touch,

damp bone to your soft, warm fingertips -

— Why are you doing this ?

The residual fear fades, as I watch your frame grow heavier under an imperceptible weight. Where before comfort formed resolve, there is a quiet, indecipherable ache... and, I realize what you're doing

you're saying goodbye, because no one else could.

Acting like I matter now

Outrage swells within me. If I had breath to carry it, ribs to cage it, I would scream - you're an interloper, a uninvited guest to tragedy that you can't possibly understand, how dare you offer me sympathy for loss that you can't even comprehend

— How dare you, when you live and I die,

When there's no justice in the warmth of your blood or the ice in mine -!

But, as I seethe in silence ... I can sense our molecules, yours and mine, diffusing back into the universe, slipping like sand between our fingers, cycling through time into other beings, pulled together from the metallic fires of stars and sulferous swells of the seas to form us only for a short while — and I realize, they never belonged to us — that through the centuries, we might have crossed paths, tiny pieces of the universe seeing itself for the briefest glimmer of time- and then you're not such a stranger to me anymore.

— A strange sensation emerges from the density holding me together, a rift drawing me open, siphoning my venom.

You whisper something so softly, I hear only the hiss against your teeth. I lean in - ... but you begin to blur at the edges, your words overcast, undefined, disintegrating into a tender hum like electricity in the air. Clutching live-wires of revelation tightly to my heart like a fresh cut bouquet, I watch the world gently slip just beyond my reach, growing distant, pulling with it my memories as it fades into the night

— Time is now moving too fast, the last of the sand through the hourglass - I press against my plastic coffin and I seep right through - What's left of me is coming apart at the seams, untethered, slipping away into the ether - eternity is pulling me like a castaway to the tide

Panic seizes me

NO! Don't ! I try to scream

where is my mouth, my voice, my identity,

my home, my life, my legacy,

my scars are coming unwound,

— I’m free

I'm not ready!

I don't want to leave!

This isn't fair!

Why did this happen to me?!

... Why didn’t any of it matter

#death note a #Death Note #entries #tw: murder #tw: dark themes

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ray-rabies · 2 years ago

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Bonsoir! Not sure if my last one sent, so I’m just sending a new one, cause Christmas is shortly approaching, and soon my identity will be revealed! I can feel the Christmas noose beginning to tighten (to quote a movie I’ve never seen). Christmas is tomorrow for me, 2 days for you, are you ready? Stupid question, maybe, living in Atlanta, have you ever experienced snow down there? If not, then we will both be experiencing a snow free Christmas. Have you wished for anything specific under the Christmas tree? Do you have any Christmas traditions on the day of?

What’s something you’re particularly passionate about atm?

Bonne journée et à bientôt! - SRS

I got it I just haven't had time to make playlists yet but Lou Reed Ponzi Scheme seems most doable, talk about mlm. 1. No Money Down, 2., we'll see.

I've seen that one a couple times but once was enough. I've certainly experienced snow several times here including on Christmas, I made a snow tarantula, because I had lots of sticks and snowmen are passe. It just doesn't snow often, most places it spends several weeks above 90F.

I've wished for boring things mostly! Blackout curtains, new shoes- mine have holes in them. And yet I still wear them everyday. I wear them til they fall off.

#Srs22 #No traditions im dull #Board games i guess

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sykewarddropout · 2 years ago

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I can feel the Christmas noose begin to tighten...

#Elf #2003 #blue christmas

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peaky-yamyam · 7 years ago

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The Other Shelby - Luca Changretta

- SPOILERS FOR SEASON FOUR -

37 with a Shelby reader x Luca

“I tried my best to not feel anything for you. Guess what? I failed.”

Tommy had tried his hardest to exclude me from everything regarding the war with the Changrettas. Not that it surprised me, but I had expected at the very least, after John’s death, he’d be a little more cautious of keeping us all safe. Of course though, Tommy being Tommy was more concerned about when he was next going to be able to get his cock seen to and his damn gin.

I’d been lucky not to end up with a noose around my neck next to Polly, but that luck had nothing to do with Tommy and I know without a doubt that he would he hung me out to dry like the rest of them if it had come down to it. So I’d taken matters into my own hands, not that I’m proud of myself for it, or even that I thought it was a good idea, but as soon as I’d realised Polly had a plan I’d decided to follow her and found myself at a swanky bar, hidden while she chatted to Luca Changretta; the man hunting our family. As she’d sauntered away, confident she’d pulled the wool over Luca’s eyes and convinced him she’d give up Tommy if he spared her and Michael, I'd been unable to stop myself from stepping in and stealing her seat next to Luca.

He’d sat with an air I’d never seen before; his confidence so strong that it seemed to radiate from him. He didn’t need fancy words and metaphors to intimidate, or sarcasm and violence, his mere presence was enough to establish that he was not a man to be messed with.

“Evening,” I’d said, taking the drink that Polly had left.

“Must say I’m surprised to see you sat here Miss Shelby,” he’d replied, barely lifting his gaze from the match between his fingers.

“Well, I wanted to make sure that Polly had mentioned my name in her little deal.”

He’d glanced at me then and quirked his eyebrow, almost impressed that I’d figured what was going on.

“Can’t say she did.”

“I’m not really surprised if I’m honest.”

“You seem calm,” he’d said, twisting then in his seat so his knee bumped against mine.

I’d shifted my skirt a little, drawing his eye to the contact and he’d smiled slightly; that same half smile Tommy had perfected.

“When everything goes wrong, you know where to find me,” I’d said, finishing the last of the drink and hopping from my seat.

He’d grabbed my arm roughly and the goosebumps that it elicited had clued me in then that whatever this little interaction was, it was the beginning of something. Something exciting.

“What do you mean, when it all goes wrong?”

“When you need someone who’s actually going to give you Thomas, I’m sure you’ll know where to find me,” I’d clarified, standing my ground as his grip had tightened around my arm.

After a second he’d released me and nodded his head, mumbling something in Italian as I’d flounced from the room, taking the same path that Polly had.

That had been a few weeks back and since then I’ve been waiting for Polly and Tommy’s plan to unfold and the inevitable knock I’d get at my door. Almost like clockwork, Tommy calls a family meeting - no doubt to tell everyone how he and Polly have conspired behind everyone’s backs again - and Luca Changretta appears in my house.

“You should really keep that door locked,” he says, pointing the match in his hand over his shoulder.

“Well, I knew you were coming.”

He nods to my silk pyjamas and robe. “It don’t look as if you knew I was coming.”

He reclines in the armchair, one long leg folded across the other as if I’m the guest in his house. “Polly stitch you up, did she?”

Luca doesn’t answer, just places the match stick back into the corner of his mouth.

“I did warn you.”

That garners a smile. Although there’s no trace of humour in it and my stomach turns.

“You did. You did warn me, you also promised a solution. So here I am.”

“I didn’t ever mention a solution, maybe I just invited you here for a social visit. Maybe I find you intriguing and I want to know more about you…”

“Dangerous game to be playing when I’m out to kill your entire family, Miss Shelby.”

“That’s a nice suit,” I say, nodding towards the tweed ensemble he’s donning. I know he’s only wearing it to fit in, the sharp suits he’s used to wearing acting as a beacon on the outskirts of Small Heath.

He glares at me as he folds the lapels over his stomach. “Miss Shelby I’m not here to chat-“

“It’s a little out of fashion for the season though don’t you think? And I probably would have gone for a different tie-“

“Miss Shelby, you better have something to offer me,” he interrupts, his voice still calm despite the flicking of the match in his mouth.

“The hat’s a bit off as well, but then maybe I’m too used to seeing those fucking peaked caps they all-“

Luca drops both his feet to the floor and leans forward. “I’m beginning to lose patience n-“

“Would you like a drink?” I interrupt again, and in a flash Luca has shot from his seat and is stood over me.

“Get to the fucking point. Now,” he growls, staring into my eyes, trying to read my thoughts before I voice them.

“Am I making you angry Luca? Because if I’m making you angry, then the solution to all this is really going to wind you up.”

He relaxes a little at that, at the promise that I have something for him but he doesn’t return to his chair.

“Did you want a drink?”

“Just tell me what your solution is.”

“I’ll get us some tea,” I say, trying to hold back a smile as Luca looks off to the side, his jaw quirked as he works to keep himself calm.

When he offers no verbal objection I wander off into the kitchen and take my time readying a tray with a teapot, some biscuits and just for good measure, a bottle of whiskey.

Luca touches none of it though, but he sits back in the chair and watches and I pull my legs next to me on the sofa, the bare skin of my calves peeking from beneath the silk robe.

“I’m curious as to why you’re offering to help me Miss Shelby,” Luca says, buttoning his jacket with one hand, the movements of his slender fingers exaggerated. “You’re clever enough to know that you aren’t really any of my concern, you have nothing to do with the Shelby business. In fact, I don’t even think you were living in Birmingham when my father was murdered.”

“That’s right.”

“So this ain’t about keeping your name off my list.”

“Not entirely, although I would appreciate the comfort of knowing me, Finn and Michael are safe.”

Luca smiles, another stomach churning smile, and pulls the match stick from his mouth. “Making demands now are you?”

“Finn’s just a kid, so is Michael really. But they’re poisoning them, ruining them and I won’t let it happen.”

Luca nods, logging that information away, filing it for when he might need it - exactly the same way Tommy does. “I killed your brother.”

“You did. On Christmas Day as well.”

“I’m the reason you’re back in this, this-“ he waves his hand looking for the appropriate word.

“Shit hole?” I offer and he flicks his finger in my direction.

“This shit hole.”

“You are.”

“So why are we talking like this?”

I take a cup from the tray and take my time pouring tea into it before lounging back in my seat, ensuring that a little more skin is on show. It amuses me, the expression on his face that he tries so hard to hide, the little glimmer that hints of the distraction I’m offering.

“Tommy’s a bad person. And Arthur. And John. They weren’t always, but the war changed them.“

“You Brits and the fucking war,” he mumbles, shaking his head and popping the match back into the corner of his mouth.

“Yes us Brits and the fucking war. Us Brits and the fucking war because nothing has been right since. Tommy, Arthur and John, they’re my brothers but at the same time, they’re not. Arthur killed a fucking kid in the boxing ring, pummelled his face in and you know what Tommy did about it? Gave the boys mother some cash. But, you already know about that. John started this whole fucking war because Tommy couldn’t keep his dick out of other people’s happiness. And the best of it all, the fucking icing on the cake, he let them all get arrested! They had those nooses around their necks and it was fucking chance that Tommy managed to get them out. You know what he’d have done if they’d have died? Nothing. If he can’t shoot it, fuck it or throw money at it he doesn’t give a shit about the problem unless it’s about him. So I’ll give you Tommy and Arthur and Polly, because they’d as soon as throw me in the shit as anything if they had the chance.”

Luca listens while I rant, teacup forgotten in my hands, his expression calm and unreadable until I finish. “And you believe that?”

“You don’t think I should?”

He shrugs his shoulders. “Who am I to comment on family business? You, Michael and Finn will be safe. What is your solution?”

I place the teacup back on the table, frustrated that I allowed myself to fall so far into my festering anger and display my intent so clearly. However, it seems to have served me well and something about the look in Luca’s eyes tells me that our deal will be honoured. It’s hardly a compromise on his part, as he said, I’m none of his concern, neither is Finn, and Michael’s death only serves to repay Polly for her betrayal. Something I’m sure can be overlooked with the dispatch of Tommy and Arthur.

“Alfie Solomons.”

“The Jew?”

“Yeah. There’s a boxing match soon, Alfie’s nephew and some lad Tommy’s taken on. The whole family will be there along with a load of Alfie’s men. He’s betrayed Tommy before when it suited him yet Tommy still trusts, more than he should. He’s your best bet and I can get him to see you as long as you have something to offer him.”

“You think he’ll betray him again?”

“Maybe. He wants him rum shipped to America, the more sway he gets at the docks over there, the better.”

Luca nods slowly, his focus on the other side of the room as a plan formulates rapidly in his mind.

“He’s a little shit though. He’ll try and get under your skin, he’s famous for it. Just don’t let him intimidate you-“

Luca scoffs and whips his gaze back to me. “You think he’ll intimidate me?”

“You’ve never met him. Don’t let him get the upper hand but don’t try and belittle him or insult him. It won’t work and he will make you look like a fool.”

I almost wish I could watch their inevitable meeting unfold. It’s clear that Luca isn’t taking my warning seriously, but he’s warming to the idea of having Alfie on side, he’s seen a way to get at Tommy again at little expense to himself.

He stand from his chair and holds his hand out to me. “We have a deal. Set up the meeting.”

I shake his hand but before I can pull it away he dips low and presses his lips to the back of it, lingering for a second as he holds my gaze. “See you around Miss Shelby,” he says, turning quickly on his heel and disappearing through the door.

I spend my time on the outskirts of Small Heath on the off chance that Luca might sought me out. I have no way to contact him, no idea where he’s staying, so making myself readily available to him is the only chance I have of another meeting. It seems such a stupid idea to be making myself so vulnerable to the man who wants my family dead, but I can’t stop thinking about him. About the composed way he holds himself, about the low rumble of his voice when he speaks. Gangsters have never impressed me, the assumption that they’re attractive for the danger they bring has never worked on me, until now.

With nothing to distract myself with I find myself spending dark evenings with my thoughts on Luca’s hands and the ways they could explore my body and as much as I try to convince myself that trying to meet with him is to find out about his potential deal with Solomons, it’s clear that my interest in their partnership is minimal; what I really want is just to see Luca again.

“Miss Shelby,” a low voice says one of those dark evenings, making me jump as it rips me from my sordid daydreams.

“Fucking Christ!” I hadn’t heard the door open, however I’d taken to leaving it unlocked until I finally turned into bed.

“Expecting me were you?” Luca says with a smirk.

“You just startled me is all, hanging around in the dark. How did it go with Solomons?” I ask, folding my arms as I lean against the kitchen counter, attempting to show some kind of composure.

Luca snorts and swipes a finger across his nose, his eyes flicking to the side as he replays the meeting in his head. “He was… testing.”

“Did you make him angry?”

“A little.”

“Did he call you a fucking wop?”

“And a cunt.”

I can’t help but grin, although not my cup of tea Alfie has always impressed me with his attitude and it’s clear by the look of disgust on Luca’s face that he’d very much managed to ruffle his feathers.

“I won’t say I warned you, but you know, I did tell you…”

“You did,” he says, taking a step towards me.

“I also warned you about Polly.”

“You did.” He pulls the match from his mouth and throws it to the side.

“Maybe, Luca, you should start listening to me.”

“Maybe…” He takes another step towards me, his body so close to mine now that there’s no way I could move from the counter.

I drop my arms, removing the last barrier between us and he slides a foot between mine, pinning me in my position.

He trails a finger down my arm, watching as the contact leaves a line of goosebumps across my flesh.

“You know,” he says, leaning in so his breath tickles my ear. “You are something else.”

I try to raise a brow, give off a look that says it’s all cleverly calculated, that I knew this would happen and I’m not surprised. But my stomach bubbles with excitement and nerves as every inch of skin tingling awaiting Luca’s next touch.

He presses his lips to my cheek, gently, slowly. Lingering before moving towards my jaw and neck, where he unleashes his attentions. “I tried my best to not feel anything for you. Guess what? I failed.”

#peaky blinders imagine #peaky blinders fanfic #luca changretta imagine #luca changretta fanfic #peaky blinders fanfiction #luca changretta fanfiction #peaky blinders spoilers #peaky blinders series 4 spoilers #series 4 spoilers #spoilers

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rudderless-in-an-ocean-of-stars · 8 years ago

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of faults and fissures, part one

Find it on Ao3 here:

http://archiveofourown.org/works/11206920/chapters/25031505

In the aftermath of the Daxamite Invasion, Lena Luthor thinks it’s time she came clean to her best friend about her role in it.

Some changes to canon- Kara did date Mon-el, but there was no huge declaration of love or anything like that when she put him in the pod. She took him back but wasn’t really into the relationship, slowly coming to the realization that she’d simply gone along with it because she felt like she owed it to him to not leave him alone the way she’d been abandoned by Kal-El. Basically, it was a pity-dating thing she was planning to break off before the untimely Daxamite invasion. And, oh yeah- she definitely does not give him her mother’s necklace. Lena’s under the impression Kara was genuinely dating him, though, so three cheers for the angst up ahead.

The first time Kara Danvers really sees Lena Luthor, she’s taken aback by just how small the other woman actually is.

Outside of work, stripped of her impeccable updos, perfect makeup, and six-inch heels, Lena Luthor is downright tiny.

She’s standing right on the Dr. Who-themed doormat that Winn had purchased for her last Christmas, dressed in a loose, oversized sweater, well-worn jeans, and honest-to-goodness scuffed sneakers.

To her credit, Kara manages to keep the gaping and stuttering to a minimum as she ushers her unexpected houseguest into the living room. Lena perches carefully on the couch, tucking her dark hair behind her ear as she smiles hesitantly up at her, and Kara instantly decides that she likes this look best for the typically designer-dressed C.E.O.

With her hair down and her face free of makeup, Lena looks younger than she ever has, appearing more like the untroubled twenty-something year old she should be and less like a woman carrying the weight of her entire family’s sins the way Atlas had shouldered the weight of the sky.

It’s still there, the invisible weight that never seems to allow Lena to sit perfectly straight for more than a few minutes at a time- she always retreats into herself ever so often, hunches inwards like she’s afraid to take up any space at all- but here, now, it’s less.

Like the burden has eased, somehow, or she’s found the strength to actually push back instead of simply allowing it crush her completely.

Kara knows a thing or two about guilt- surviving an entire planet’s destruction is bound to leave some scars, no matter how well the wounds may have healed over time- and Lena all but wears hers like a noose.

Lena virtually encourages the people of National City and beyond to treat her as their own personal whipping boy in Lex’s stead, and it’s something that’s disturbed Kara since their very first meeting, when she’d peered into her green eyes, emerald pools of desperation flickering with the barest hints of hope in their depths, and recognized a bit of herself shining back.

She’d been lost like that too, once.

The Phantom Zone had kept her trapped in the endlessly repeating memory of Krypton’s death for close to a quarter of a decade.

If it hadn’t been for the Danvers, if it hadn’t been for Alex…

She shudders at the thought and silently offers thanks to Rao for those blessings.

“Can I get you something to drink?” She asks, already moving towards the kitchen on autopilot. “I’ve got tea, coffee, juice… Though, mind, the tea is bottled and store-bought…”

“Really?” Lena teases, and Kara falls a little bit in love with the faint, little laugh she hears behind her.

Kara tosses a sheepish grin in Lena’s direction as she pulls open the fridge. “It’s raspberry Snapple. Don’t judge me- I know it’s 90% sugar, but their slogan doesn’t lie, it really is the best stuff on Earth.”

Lena’s eyes widen comically at the sight of the large plastic bottle Kara sets down on the coffee table along with a pair of mugs. “I didn’t realize Snapple came in quart-sized bottles.”

“Neither did I, until I stopped by the convenience store down the road from my sister’s apartment in search of ibuprofen and ice packs after she went and got her ribs bruised,” Kara says, fondness fairly oozing from her voice as she pours a liberal helping into both glasses. “It’s the only place that I’ve ever seen stock bottles this size, but hey, I’m not complaining.”

A cautious sip brings a bright smile to the brunette’s face. “Neither am I. This is great!”

Kara’s jaw drops open in horror as she clutches her chest, clearly affronted. “Don’t tell me you haven’t tried Snapple before! It’s literally in almost every vending machine in National City!”

Lena ducks her head in shame, a weak chuckle issuing from the back of her throat. “I’ve seen it around, of course, but… We-e-ell,“ she says, drawing out the ‘e’ for several seconds as a blush begins to spread across her cheeks, “I just… I never…”

Her face clouds over as the silence between them goes from teasing to strained, something Kara notes as tendrils of apprehension begin to wrap around her heart and squeeze.

Lena can barely bring herself to finish the sentence.

“Lillian was always very conscious about my eating habits,” she finally mumbles, tongue nearly tripping over the words in her haste to get them out.

The slack-jawed expression on Kara’s face is burned away by a look of pure anger and fierce protectiveness as the implications behind Lena’s words sink in.

For a moment, Lena thinks, Kara looks very much like the Kryptonian whose presence she has found herself entertaining more and more on her office balcony. She pulls herself free from that particular train of thought with a vehement shake of her head.

No, Kara couldn’t possibly be Supergirl. Kara would never keep something as big as that a secret from her, would she?

The tiniest trickle of doubt bleeds into her veins as a tiny voice in her head snidely reminds her of her last name.

You’re a Luthor, the voice sing-songs almost triumphantly, sounding far too much like her brother for her to not be unsettled, why wouldn’t she?

“Lena?”

She looks up and shoots the other woman a practiced, apologetic smile. “Sorry about that. It’s just so easy to get lost in my own head sometimes. I just came over to see how you were doing, after… Everything.”

God, she can’t even bring herself to say it.

The Daxamite Invasion.

The one she had ultimately kickstarted.

The one she had helped managed to avert- at the cost of her best friend’s boyfriend, not to mention the innocent lives already lost in the first few waves of attack.

And it was all because Lena was too stupid to see past the façade that Rhea had so easily manipulated her into believing.

The price of Lena Luthor’s loyalty always had been and likely always would be love.

Love that she’d never had the time to get from her birth mother, love that had been wrenched away by her brother’s madness and the shame of being his sister, love that she’d never received from the woman she’d called family for over two decades…

Rhea had seen that easily, seen past Lena’s hardened shield of capable businesswoman right down to the unwanted orphan girl she was underneath.

Rhea had seen that easily, and just like everyone else in her life except for her secretary and the woman sitting in front of her, she’d used it against her.

“I’m fine, Lena, really. You didn’t have to come all the way here just to check up on me.” Kara actually laughs, then, and the sound of it pulls the breath from Lena’s lungs in a way that isn’t tingly, or endearing, or any of the other adjectives she’d come to associate with the feelings that Kara’s laughter usually induced.

How could she be so happy sitting across from the woman who had robbed her of someone she’d cared about?

“I-I…” Lena’s fingers tighten around the glass in her hand as she struggles to keep her tears at bay.

Spit it out, she rages, mentally shouting at herself. Tell her the fucking truth already. You came here for a reason.

“It was my fault.”

She closes her eyes before she continues, unable to maintain Kara’s unwavering gaze. “I built the portal the Daxamites used to get to Earth. I helped their queen transport her armies here. I built the device that irradiated the atmosphere with lead and poisoned all the Daxamites, including Mike- I mean, Mon-El. I did this.”

The words fall flat between them, landing somewhere in the invisible, gaping chasm that now somehow clearly splits the room apart.

“It was my fault,” she repeats, a little louder this time, as though an increase in volume could help her words make the leap over the miles stretched out between them, miles she hates but knows she’ll never make a move to cross.

Because she deserves this.

She deserves whatever look of hatred or betrayal or accusation that’s surely filling Kara Danvers’ eyes right now at her confession.

She deserves whatever words are going to come spilling out of Kara Danvers’ mouth at any second, probably laced with anger and disgust, all of which will be justified.

But again, for the umpteenth time in the past seventy-two hours, Lena Luthor finds herself mistaken about the people she thought she knew best.

She gets only silence.

Pure, pin-drop silence.

Lena doesn’t dare open her eyes to look at the woman sitting on the couch across from hers- and even if she wanted to, at this point, she’s not sure she even can.

Everything seems to be catching up to her now, at the worst possible time for the shock of it all to wear off and finally let her feel something other than the numbness that she’d managed to reach with surprisingly little aid from alcohol.

The world is shaking- or maybe she’s the one shaking- but either way, she can’t bring her limbs to move or her eyes to open or her lungs to breathe.

She can’t bring herself to do anything at all but sit there and silently beg the universe to simply let her disappear.

to be continued…

let me know what you think ;)

#SuperCorp #fanfiction #Lena Luthor #Kara Danvers #Supergirl #SuperGAY #CW #angst #feels #rudderless writes

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scriimgeour-blog · 8 years ago

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‟ ‼ ♜ ✒››› in it darkness, darkness, darkness,

a character study. ~8K words.

trigger warnings: violence, torture, mental illness, alcohol, gore, blood, death, parental death, self harm, drowning mention, anxiety, fire, panic attacks, sex, nudity, depression, blood, euthanasia, suicide

27 DEC 1979

––––––– “ HOW MUCH ARE YE WILLING TO PAY FOR IT? ”

The shopkeeper’s inquiry cut through his silent pensiveness like a gunshot, and Rufus started suddenly. Borgin and Burkes was never full to begin with, but the unusual quiet of the shop had lulled him into a false stupor, and he cursed himself for letting his guard down to begin with. The shopkeeper, a good head shorter than he, leered from behind an oversized pair of spectacles; wiping his hands on an apron that looked suspiciously stained with blood; at the sight, Rufus swallowed, hard, and clenched his fist at his side to avoid reaching for his wand then and there. He’d come to Knockturn for a reason, after all - what good would jinxing the clerk do, anyhow?

“What, this?” He asked instead, evenly, gesturing to the faint mirror he stood in front of. Strange, hypnotic shadows darted in the glass, and as he watched, one reached its long, corpulent fingers over his shoulder, close enough to touch, close enough to reach into his throat and carve and cut and take and bleed….

He shook his head, turning his attention away from the glass. “Nothing. It won’t match my decor. Pity. I quite liked the framing.” The brass along the edge was particularly nice, but he wasn’t actually looking for decorations, then, was he? The recent attacks had left him shaken; after putting off his research for nearly two weeks around Christmas, he couldn’t help but feel that his lack of progress could be the cause of future attacks. As there was nothing he liked less than feeling listless, he’d taken the notes he still had and decided to visit Knockturn. Perhaps the seedy underbelly of the wizarding world could give him more answers.

The shopkeeper shook his head. His yellow teeth protruded from thin, pale lips, and, as Rufus watched, his eyes took on a menacing glint. “No, boy. Not the mirror. That.” He turned, and pointed accusingly across the small room. A necklace lay atop a velvet jewelry stand, glinting in the low light. Opal, the sign had read; as Rufus watched, the necklace seemed to be watching him.

“I saw ye looking at it earlier,” The man continued, oblivious to Rufus’ internal struggle, or, more fittingly, reveling in his fear. “Spent an awful lot of time over there, too. Ye almost touched it, before ye heard me coming and sprinted off. A good thing too,” He chuckled, but the sound was almost more terrifying than the necklace itself. “You’d be a goner if you did.”

“A goner, eh?” Rufus repeated. He crossed the room in several long strides, returning to his position overlooking the necklace as he studied it pensively. “Touching the glass causes death, then? Interesting. And why would you chose to sell-” Abruptly, he swung around, almost hitting the silent shopkeeper, who had crossed the room while he mused, as he did.

“To sell to you?” The shopkeeper finished. His grin only widened. The air in the shop seemed to ebb and flow with the man’s very movements. The shadows in the abandoned mirror floated aimlessly in the glass, but Rufus had the sense that they were listening. Somewhere, a floorboard creaked beneath no weight.

“I don’t ask questions in my line of work,” He revealed, taking pleasure in savoring each syllable that passed his lips. “If ye protect the skin, the necklace shan’t harm you. If not, well,” He left his threat unfinished. Somewhere, Rufus swore that he heard the sound of maniacal laughter.

The necklace glinted and shone. Rufus thought that, if it could, it would’ve bathed in the sound. He swallowed. Hard. “How much are you asking for it?”

But the man only smiled, and smiled, and smiled, and Rufus knew his price.

ii.

3 FEB 1972

––––––– “YOU NEED TO IDENTIFY THE BODIES”

The man’s voice is steady, but all Rufus hears is the roar of an aboveground train as he kneels before the remains. He feels dizzy, lost, his collar is too tight and his head is too loose and his brother hasn’t talked to him in months and sometimes Rufus feels like holding his head underwater until his lungs burst and he isn’t sure why.

“We really hate to do this. But Bernard didn’t respond to our letters, and Claire, well, we didn’t want to risk her losing the baby.”

The man’s voice is steady, but all Rufus feels is the tightening of a noose and the fire licking his skin, corroding away the outer layer of hair and swear and ripping right down to the viscera and bones and burning him alive. If this is what it feels like to be godless, he’ll take every martyrdom twice over, feeling something close to alive even as they tear him in two even as they feed him to the lions even as he strikes himself a match, anything but this emptiness bursting into his chest.

“Son? Are you alright?

There are maggots crawling on his parents. There are maggots burrowing into what once were his mother’s eyes and furrowing through his father’s hairline, through his nostrils through his jaw and finally out the gaping wound in his chest. Rufus smells smoke but can’t find the fire; listens to the sound of his decaying parents and watches as their skin flakes away in clouds of ash, everything they had ever planned on being up in smoke, and Rufus feels the train coming closer, its wheels churning to the rhythm of youneedtoidentifythebodiesyouneedtoidentifythebodiesyouneedtoidentify

“Take a minute. It’s alright. No rush. They aren’t going anywhere, heh?”

There are words in the English language to describe losing your parents but there are no words to describe how it feels burying them.

iii.

1 MAY 1974

––––––– “DON’T FOLLOW ME”

The postscript appears in her neat handwriting below a paragraph of text pressed into the thin parchment as if the writer sought to physically present her script with every ounce of rage and callousness present in the text. He runs a single finger across the paper, feeling the mountains and valleys of her raised print, and once again finds, without thinking, the simple signature on the bottom of the page: Claire. No love, no yours, no sincerely, even. Her name, stark and plain in the wilderness of the white paper. There is no love in her writing.

In his mind, he sees the letter, and its author bending over her work at whatever seedy hotel or apartment she’s taken to calling ‘home’ lately, her name blank and her identity a delicate lace scarf she can replace as it suits her mood. She’s changed her name so many times over the past months, shedding identities as she moved from state to state, that frankly, he considers it a miracle that his owl was able to find her at all. But, as her letter makes perfectly clear, she no longer wants to be found.

“Rufus,” It begins, and this is the worst part: he tastes his own name in her mouth and its bitterness repulses him. It tastes acidic and foul and it rots beneath her lily-white teeth. There is something dead in his name, and it’s killing her.

“I’m writing only at your insistence, and I trust this letter will find you.”

He sees her at the piano, home for Christmas, her lithe fingers tracing over the ebony and the ivory. She’s playing Beethoven at his insistence, though she prefers Mozart, and has told him so in no uncertain terms. He leans his head on his sister’s freckled shoulder, and she smells of cinnamon and hope.

“I have to ask you to stop trying to contact me in America. If I had wanted you to write, I would have written first.”

He sees her on the station, waving goodbye as he leaves for his fifth year. She’s running to keep up with the train, making him laugh despite the pit of fear in his stomach, yelling the words to an old drinking song in her comically oversized glasses because she knows the intimate crease between his eyebrows and his mock-chagrined eye roll is the only thing that will make leaving him behind any easier.

“As it is, I don’t have any need for your letters. Nor do I want them.”

He sees her in her bedroom with her knees pulled up to her chest and thunder booming mercilessly overhead. He’s six; she’s nine and the bravest thing he’s ever known, and he’s scrambling over himself and his too-long pajamas to curl up beside her in the midst of the hot summer storm, and she rolls her eyes but lets him fall asleep with his arms around her waist and her teddy bear pressed against his cheek. When he wakes the next morning, there’s a rainbow lighting the warm summer sky and she’s downstairs with Bernard sipping from identical mugs of hot cocoa. “Where were you?” Their brother asks, and Rufus shrugs, and Claire sips her cocoa and winks at him from over her cup.

“There is nothing new you could possibly tell me. I will burn all future correspondences.”

He sees her cross herself kneeling over their parents’ grave, her long locks blowing in the wind and her lips painted the same stark red as her hair. “Don’t,” is all she says as he takes a step towards her. “Leave me alone, Rufus.” She refuses to look at him, and he watches as tears stream down her face in waterfalls of black mascara and saltwater, and he wants to hold her, to absorb some of the grief she’s bearing, but she presses her open palms into the dirt and bows her head before the granite grave markers. She isn’t speaking, but he knows the source of her fury, knows that she wants to claw his eyes out and blames him for their corpses and the worst part of it all is that he knows she’d be right. (He leaves her, sobbing, and something inside him feels cold.)

“I’ve made my peace. Don’t come looking. - Claire.”

The signature, scrawled neatly beneath her taciturn response. The final denouement. The curtain call, of a relationship his entire life long; the only family he still has evaporating into smoke.

His breath comes in sharp gasps, and he wants to rip into his own skin and tear himself in two, rip open the scar tissue and bleed himself dry rather than face this loneliness he thought had healed after the funeral

He tosses the letter into the fire, watching the last remnants of his sister disappear into ash and float away on the midnight sky. And, he thinks to himself: wounds heal, but scars do not.

iv.

29 NOV 1977

––––––– “ I NEED YOU TO GET IT TO ME BY IMBOLC ”

His voice is low and purposeful, and he swallows the glass of whiskey he’s nursing and sets the empty glass on the chestnut wood of the bar with a steady thunk. It’s his fifth of the evening; not nearly enough, he muses, as he gestures to the bartender for a sixth and, seeing the judgment cloud her features, adds an additional galleon to his tab because the night is long and he doesn’t want to end it alone with his thoughts.

His contact suggested The Sankt Birgitta, a muggle bar on the outskirts of town with a reputation among locals for minor hauntings, and so there they sit with the lighting fixtures overhead swaying ominously in an unseen breeze and the electricity flickering with every motion of the chandelier. Pixies, Rufus thinks, watching the motion out of the corner of his eye. Cornish, most likely. Muggles; fools, the lot of them. Why, if he watched closely enough, he could almost spot the flapping of the effervescent wings stark against the darkness of the wood ceiling.

“What’s your price?” The woman questions, her hood drawn taut so her face lay in shadow. A part of their agreement to assure his confidentiality; throughout the entire evening, he hears only the clipped Scottish tones of her voice; even then, she may have spelled it so her true identity lay hidden. Rufus casts a dubious look about the bar; aside from the bartender currently smoking a cigarette, they were entirely alone.

“1000 galleons.” He lays a small drawstring bag on the table, where it lands with a faint clanking of coins. The thief eyes the bag - at least, Rufus thinks that this is what her slight change in posture means - and fingers the bag slowly. Her fingers are covered with a layer of thick leather, but she spits in disgust as she tosses the parcel back to him and crosses her arms over her thick traveling cloak.

“Too low. 2000.”

2000 galleons? She must be joking, Rufus thinks to himself, as a scowl crosses his features. “1500,” He counters, “Minimum security with my help, and you get to keep whatever else you find.” For a moment, she pauses, and the air hums with electricity. Outside, a muggle jug band has already begun to play Christmas jingles, despite the thin inch of snow currently coating the mossy ground, and the sour notes of a badly-tuned trumpet coat the already strange evening with a layer of absurdity.

“1500,” She concedes after a chilling pause. “But you’ll pay me 1000 now.” Crafty girl, Rufus muses. Even if she couldn’t recover the Cup, she’d still have the original payment and none would be the wiser. Despite himself, he smiles. He could appreciate cleverness.

“Fine.” He shrugs as he tosses the bag back to his partner, who catches it midair with her deft left hand. “Keep the bag.” He downs the whiskey the bartender had long since replaced, sets the glass again on the tabletop, and stands purposefully. His boots thud against the creaking floorboards, but the sound doesn’t bother the man who’s quite certain he won’t be followed, and turns back to his associate only to mutter a curt “Imbolc, you hear? Leave an unmarked package at my office. You know the address,” He adds as he crosses the bar in several long strides.

“Mister Scrimgeour,” The thief’s voice was slightly curious - or is it just his imagination - and the sound she stops him in his tracks. “It’s a very dangerous artifact. What exactly do you want with it?”

He stops. He pauses. He clenches his left fist and their faces pass beneath his closed eyelids: and then rage, rage, rage, and nothing more. Despair. Darkness. He was a rat, and he knew he was in with weasels, but the knife against his left thigh felt cold and sharp and it reminded him to breathe.

He calms his racing pulse. He turns. And, with a coy but closed smile, he says:

“I don’t believe that’s any of your business.”

Here, he lost a little more every day.

v. 31 OCT 1975

––––––– “ BLESSED SAMHAIN, RUFUS SCRIMGEOUR”

The girl’s voice is teasing, flirtatious even, as the sensual rhythms of the drums pounds against his eardrums. He hadn’t heard her approach over the wailing of the musicians or the crackling of the fire, and so he starts to feel her soft hands against his skin, reaches for his wand - and then the beautiful face comes into his periphery and he relaxes at the sight of the costumed entertainer.

She’s dressed as a Druid; fitting, as this is a Celtic High Holiday that they’re purporting to celebrate; even if he hasn’t ever seen a Druid baring so much cleavage, he hardly thinks he minds. Her skin is cool and smells of rose petals, and as she presses her fingers into his skin, he’s reminded of lavender incense and spices. He watches the curves of her hips, the softness of her lips, the long hair she wears loose about her shoulders, and despite himself and his purpose tonight, a smile comes to his lips.

“Blessed Samhain, beautiful. You know me, then?” He asks, eyebrow lifting in mock-surprise. “That’s hardly fair. You have some knowledge of who I am. I,” And here, his voice lowers suggestively. “I have nothing about you.”

The girl giggles. She can’t be much older than twenty, he thinks to himself, but her eyes, lined with kohl, betray a hidden maturity unseen in witches twice her age. “Oh, a name is hardly knowing, Mister Scrimgeour, especially one worn as freely as yours” She teases, her Dublin accent lilting with each sliding syllable. “Powerful to the wee folk, but not to the spelling sort. There’s much more I could get from you, yet.” Her lips, reddened to match the rogue on her cheeks, twist into a smile as she presses her body into his. Oh, he’s going to like this very much.

“What more could you get from me, then? And how?” His voice is low; joking, even, but he swears he sees her eyes glint with deviance in the light of the fire. He takes her hand, small and light and her birdsong bones delicate in his grasp, and they walk together away from the revelry of the night’s bonfires into the cold, black night. “And who’s to say that I wouldn’t be a fully willing participant?”

And here, she giggles again, her pert nose crinkling with mirth. “Willing or not, Mister Scrimgeour, I’m sure I could coax it out of ye. I’m,” She lowers her voice, as if he’s being let in on a particularly scandalous secret. “Ye see, I’m a diviner.”

A diviner? She’s one of a dying breed, then. He hasn’t come across a genuine diviner in nearly a decade, since Claire brought home that Sybil girl she liked so much. Skepticism clouds his… aesthetic appreciation and, determined to sort out the truth, he scoffs. “So it isn’t just a costume, then? I’m not sure if I believe you.”

The moon is full, round, and white in the dark sky. A full moon on Samhain is perfect conditions for divining, and he can practically shape the words in his mouth before she pleads: “Let me tell your fortune, then.” She takes his arm, elbow-in-elbow, and looks up at him with wide, long-lashed eyes. “ I have a tent just outside the festival. I won’t even charge ye if I can’t manage one ye like.”

Charge him? He hadn’t ever planned on paying, but judging by the curve of her cheshire cat grin, there’s a lot more that ten galleons could buy him than a cup of tea leaves. He follows her, already imagining the swell of her breasts beneath her dress and the musky scent between her thighs, and, judging by the way she tugs on his arm as they gallop through the fields of wheat, the idea hasn’t entirely been discounted by her, either. They sprint through the fields; her laughing, him struggling to catch up. The air is full. The realm is thinner tonight.

“Tarot cards, I think,” She says, breathless, after she’s seated him across from her and said the proper blessing. Her hands toy over the black embossed deck, one she’d pulled from her trunk with the air of a magician revealing her beautiful assistant, and she shuffles the deck with her pale hands, coating in henna dye and as many rings as she could fit on her lithe fingers. She handles the deck deftly, and Rufus wonders what else her hands can do.

He leans forward, pressing the deck to the table in one deft motion. “Or we could skip right over the present into the future,” He purrs. “I’m not diviner, but I can foresee some fireworks in your future, miss”

The girl starts; shakes her head playfully; frowns in mock-annoyance as she rescues her cards from under his grasp. “No, no, pretty boy,” She chastises him gently. “ I want to do this right.” And, without waiting for his reply of consent, she fans out the deck for his choosing. Dark symbols twist and morph on the faint parchment of the cards, bobbing and weaving with magical intensity, and the cards shimmer beneath her deft touch. There is no light in the tent besides the faint flickering of an overhead lantern, but Rufus can see each outline clearly, each shape as if it were tattooed beneath his lids, the faint pursing of her lips as if the room shone with the light of a thousand splendid suns. It’s otherworldly, and he shivers, wondering for the first time if he’s gotten himself into something he doesn’t entirely understand.“Pick three. Any three.”

He shrugs good-naturedly as if unperturbed by his own unawareness about the subject; points to three cards at random and watches as she, with deft, experienced hands, plucks them from the deck and catches them in her palm.

“The Hermit,” The girl lays the first card face-up on the stiff silk of her tablecloth. She makes an amused noise in the back of her throat as she examines the picture. “Represents change, isolation, loneliness. There’s going to be a sharp introduction in yer life in the near future. A woman, I think”- and here, she looks up from the cards, her red lips curving into a grin. “Ye haven’t got some fiancee ye’ve neglected to tell me about, have ye?”

(And here, Rufus laughs, a sharp bark of a sound. “Merlin, no” He says, sounding more at ease now that the cards have gotten him so terribly wrong. “Not now, not ever.”)

“Five of Cups,” The girl continues, the mirth in her eyes returning with the shift in mood. “Grief, departure, and depression.” Her smile wavers. “Ah, that one can’t be true, can it? Yer a right cheerful bloke. The cards must not be working today, yeah?” And, before he can interrupt, whether to concede or argue the point, it is moot: she turns over the third card.

When Rufus thinks of this moment, he’ll picture her skin paling supernaturally at the sight of the design scrawled in thick, black ink. He’ll picture the stilling of the winds and the howling deep, deep within his own soul. The girl trembles. The girl mutters indistinctly to herself; the girl turns over the card with shaking hands.

“Death.”

It is a pronouncement. It is a prophecy. It is a statement, it is a maxim, it is his life. Rufus falls silent, his motions stilling, the nerves in his body fired with adrenaline. His mind is racing a mile a minute; he tries to ration out just what exactly she sees reflected in the Grim staring up at the two of them; he opens his mouth, but the girl is moving too quickly, the jewelry on her arms clinking with her overexcited movements.

“No, no, this can’t be right,” The fortuneteller lets out a sharp breath. Her eyes frantically drift from the cards to her companion, before returning to the cards, and she turns them over with shaking hands, as if to ensure that the truth they have revealed is accurate. She shakes her head. “Separate, they mean nothing, but together? Aye, no, they must not be working. One way to check, though-”

(& this is the worst part, he thinks, before he can react or place a single shield he feels her reach out and probe the corners of his memory, feels her dip her hands in the waters of his youth and taste the sweetness on her lips, feels her dig her nails into his cerebellum at pull at the brain tissue until truth came loose; real truth, not the truth he presented with a cocky grin and a mouth full of blood. & she swallows them, rips them from him, searches him for meaning when her own reality gives her none, and he feels lightheaded at the shared mortality between them, feels weightless as she effortlessly slips into his skin.

& as soon as she has reached out, she pulls back. her skin is covered in a thin sheen of sweat)

The birds are not singing.

The wind is not wailing.

Nothing but dread silence.

“I- I have to leave,” He begins, but she catches his arm in her palm, and beneath the low light he can see that she’s crying. Crying for him, presumably, for the scared little boy who lost his sister and his parents in a single bloody day, for the scared little boy he buried the day he buried his father and cloaked in a thin layer of dust. She’s crying, tears rolling down her cheeks in thick streams of salt water and black kohl, and her scarlet hair and low-cut dress make him feel sick to his stomach, somehow, now.

“Oh, you poor, poor boy,” She gasps. She holds his hand in her own, less like a lover and more like a mother comforting her only child; traces her thumb over his palm, and he starts at the intimacy of that one, simple motion. “You poor, lonely boy.” She feels remorse, he gathers, but there’s something close to fear in her pitiful gaze, and he starts, wondering what else the Legilimens discovered when she probed his memory. Did she see the kills he authorized, the spies he tortured, the deaths he commanded for the sake of the greater good? Did she see the sadism he worshipped, the evil he spurned, and the shadows reaching across the table as he stirred his morning coffee? Or did she see even the dark of his soul, the part of himself that lies dormant, waiting and watching like a beast in the night?

Too much, he decides, and he reaches for his wand. Her low accent betrays her lack of station. She won’t be missed. He raises the wood slowly, fully prepared for what needs to be done.

But the girl speaks, and cuts his entire train of thought off at the station. “Lonely boy,” She laughs. It’s a watery sound, and as her eyes crinkle, more tears drizzle down her skin. “You’re not alone.” It almost sounds as if she’s pleading with him now, and he watches her with wide eyes. Something stirs deep within his chest, but he watches her with a heavy tongue. “You have so much love in your heart. You will never be alone.” She shakes her head indignantly. “Survival is hardly something to be ashamed of.”

Her words echo for years.

“Let me help you, please.”

He never sees her again.

“Let me in, lonely boy. Let me in.”

He raises his wand, and mutters a simple spell, his heart cold as he does: “Obliviate”

The girl slumps forward, her eyes lifeless, as her skull hits the table with a loud, dead, thud. She does not move for several hours, and, when she wakes in the morning, her head throbs and she takes the evidence of the empty wine goblet at her feet as signs of a hangover. She does not remember him. She may never remember him again.

(But, when he watches her linger in St. Mungo’s, dying painfully for years of a yet unidentified disease, he comes to her bedside in the night and mutters a soft Avada Kedavra. He holds her hand as the life leaves her veins, and as she breathes her last, he can almost hear her breathe a soft thank you, lonely boy.)

For now, with a single glance at her dormant form, he grabs her tarot cards, stuffs them in the pocket of his robes.

And then, with his hood up over his head, he’s running, running, running.

vi.

6 JUN 1973

––––––– “ I DON’T CARE, RUFUS.”

Bernard, his fist thudding into the vinyl of the tabletop, the skin meeting harshly on impact and the glass of his signet ring scratching away the protective outer layer of the chestnut-colored paint. He’s clutching a thin sheet of parchment in his free hand and gesticulating wildly - he’s inherited their mother’s taste for the dramatics, along with her inquisitive hazel eyes (and here, as Rufus gazes from Bernard to Claire, mirror images with their freckled frames and sharp-toothed smiles, seeing Claire bearing their mother’s nose and thick eyebrows, seeing a woman he barely understands immortalized in her favorite children; wonders how it could be fair that the perfect children fit like puzzle pieces and he alone has edges that never fit.)

Rufus sighs. “One of you needs to take the house,” He explains, as if he’s speaking to petulant children rather than his successful older siblings. “I don’t want it.” As an afterthought, watching Claire’s lips purse in a comical attempt of a concerned frown, he adds: “ They wouldn’t have wanted me to have it.”

( His muggleborn mother, clad in a silk nightgown, wandering the house late at night with a glass of white wine and a long black bathrobe flapping in an unseen wind. She’s taken to doing this lately, and he’s taken to following her. Six years old, he watches his mother pace the house until, by chance, he steps on a loose floorboard and she looks upwards to the banister, fear making her expression almost comical. “Rufus, darling,” She calls. “Go back to bed. It’s late.)

“I don’t care what they bloody would have wanted,” Bernard, thundering. Claire, silent, watchful. “Do you think you’d know, anyhow?”

( His muggleborn mother, cooking the kitchen and chopping the stalks by hand because sometimes she feels like burying the knife deep in her forearm and cannot understand why. She’s happy. She has everything she’s ever wanted, and sometimes she feels so sick of it she could scream. Rufus is home from daycare early, and as she turns to greet him, the knife slices across her palm. “Mama!” Rufus shrieks, and the blood drips so peacefully she stares at it for a long moment before she goes to the sink to clean it. )

“Do you ever think of anything but yourself?”

( His muggleborn mother, listening to the taunting of his father’s coworkers, calling her a slut because she married a man ten years her senior and ignoring the way his eyes wander at dinner parties. She stays home from work galas, now, because the Sacred 28 have no time for whores and interlopers and sometimes her necklaces feel too tight and she wonders if she should just tighten the noose and get it over with. )

“Listen to me, you bastard. Listen to me.” Bernard is inches from Rufus, his eyes alight with unearthly fire, and Rufus is once again glad of the six centimeter height difference between them, though Bernard, the stockier of the two, looks ready to crack his jaw and Rufus, unwittingly, takes a step back. He crosses his arms over his chest and examines the eldest surviving Scrimgeour with cold disgust.

“Which one of us was home and which one of us was off galavanting in Bulgaria?” He asks, and Claire takes in a breath sharply, her eyes darting between the two of them worryingly, like she’s watching a tennis match and can’t decide who’s ahead. Rufus senses her hand go to her wand, ready to cast a protective shield between the two of them at a moment’s notice.

But Bernard only scowls. “Maybe you shouldn’t’ve been home,” is all he says, but the words unspoken cut worse than a knife.

Maybe their blood wouldn’t have been on your hands.

vii.

10 OCT 1963

––––––– “ MISTER SCRIMGEOUR. COME IN, COME IN”

Albus Dumbledore’s voice is quiet yet warm as he calls from behind the halfway-open door to his office. He sounds almost amused by the predicament Rufus has found himself in, and as the young Slytherin crosses the threshold of the headmaster’s office, Rufus is surprised to find that the benevolent elderly man is smiling from behind his enormous desk. In fact, his cold blue eyes glint with a degree of mirth that Rufus, as of yet, has never seen.

He clears his throat, and his hands go to to adjust his tie; anything to prevent them from trembling. Is Dumbledore laughing at him? Is this some sort of joke? What’s the protocol for these sorts of visits? His eyes go the the floor, fixating on the pattern of the tiles, and his cheeks redden horribly, despite his best efforts. “I’m sorry, sir, to disturb you and all,” He begins nervously. His throat is so dry it’s as if he swallowed hay. “It’s just…” He trails off; breathes deeply; makes eye contact at long last with the headmaster, and blurts in one long breath: “ I think I was placed in the wrong house.”

Dumbledore’s expression never changes. Rufus had expected some irritation, or at least, worry, but the headmaster shows no outward sign that he cares a jot for what Rufus said. In years to come, Rufus will realize that he could’ve shot off fireworks in the headmaster’s office and Dumbledore would’ve politely thanked him for their display.

“The wrong house?” He questions, looking at the scared Slytherin boy over the top of his crescent-moon shaped glasses. “Mister Scrimgeour, the hat has not made a mistake in over three hundred years of existence. It’s highly improbable that you were placed into an incorrect house”

Highly improbable. Rufus latches onto the faint glimmer of hope buried in the phrase. “I know that, sir,” He admits, tentatively, spurred on by the possibility that he has, in fact, been incorrectly sorted. “ I just, I think it might’ve, somehow? With me, I mean.” There’s a chance, he thinks to himself, the hope welling within him and spreading throughout his entire body. His breath catches -is this it? Will Dumbledore let him be resorted?

Here, Dumbledore raises his eyebrows. He leans over the desk towards Rufus and clasps his hands together. His voice is gentle, but Rufus feels probed, somehow. “And why do you believe so, Mister Scrimgeour?”

And here it is - the reasoning behind the weeks of self doubt, the long nights of restless dreaming. Rufus, before he can over think any further, blurts: “It’s just - I’m not evil.”

The statement hangs in the air for a long moment. It’s blasphemy, to say what they’ve all been thinking, but in the presence of Dumbledore, Rufus feels emboldened. He watches the headmaster expectantly - he expects Dumbledore to agree - the headmaster, after all, is a Gryffindor alum. Surely, he understands why Rufus can’t live in a house with villains.

But Dumbledore simply shakes his head morosely. “Slytherin house is not an evil house, Mister Scrimgeour,” He chastises the young boy. “Ambitious, yes; cunning, yes, but capriciousness and cruelty are not requirements.” As an afterthought, he smiles benevolently. “Merlin himself was an alum of your house, you know.”

Merlin? Was he truly a Slytherin alum? Somewhere, Rufus suspects that he knew this information, inherited from his Ravenclaw mother and her peculiar talent for absorbing strange bits of information without rhyme or reason. However, the realization that his house was home to the greatest wizard of all time does anything but comfort him. Unlike Bernard and Claire, he has no magical talents. He barely manages to perform basic magic at the best of times. The idea of being surrounded by future politicians and obliviators fills him with despair.

“But -why me?” He pleads. “I’m not cunning. I’m not clever. I’m just…” He feels his eyes fill with tears. “Rufus. I’m not special.”

Dumbledore makes a clicking noise with his tongue, but his voice is soft and slow when he comforts the young boy. “I would have to disagree.I believe that you are a perfect fit for Slytherin house.” Rufus looks up at the headmaster, fully believing that the man’s simply trying to assuage the concerns of a terrified first year, and is surprised to find genuine kindness remaining in his features. “You chose to come and see me,” Dumbledore continues, “revealing great self-promotion and ambition.”

Years later, awaiting his NEWT results that will determine whether he studies as an auror or as a magical law enforcement agent, Rufus remembers Dumbledore’s parting words:

“It is our choices, Rufus, what we truly are, far more than our abilities.”

Rufus blinks, slowly, fully aware that Dumbledore won’t let him be resorted, despite his pleas, but feeling strangely lighter after the experience. There’s something Dumbledore knows; something he isn’t telling him, and Rufus is determined to find out just what exactly the headmaster recognizes, but before he can even open his mouth to utter another question, Dumbledore has returned his attention to the plethora of papers spread haphazardly across his desk.

“Now, run along,” Dumbledore commands, with a impish glint in his eye. “I’m afraid that I can’t keep you any longer, or Professor McGonagall will have my head. Do take a lemon drop on the way out, though,” He adds as an afterthought. “They’re quite invigorating.”

And Rufus does, sucking on the candy the entire long walk back to Transfiguration. The sour taste stings his tongue.

He feels hopeful.

viii.

12 JAN 1977

––––––– “MY SON, WHERE’S MY SON?”

The woman is howling as she beats her own breast in grief. He can barely hear her, barricaded behind his office door as he currently is, not above the typical din of the ministry and the grief of parents who have lost their children in the greatest attack on the Ministry since Grindelwald’s reign of terror in the 1940s. They’ve come seeking answers and, Rufus, a coward, has left his sprightly young secretary out to defend him from those that security couldn’t capture.

“I’m sorry, m’am,” She says, and unlike Rufus, she embeds every repetition of the sentiment with sympathy for their grief, “but Mister Scrimgeour is out at the moment, there’s nothing I can do for you now.” She’ll repeat it over and over, like a record stuck on a single phrase, while Rufus buries himself in his office and listens to the sounds of death.

“My son, where’s my son?”

( Claire, her expression unrecognizable as she ties her black hair back from her tanned, blank face with a long silk scarf, smelling like cheap gasoline and whiskey. She’s on the border between Scotland and England, driving a stolen corvette with contraband in the passenger’s seat when he finds her, or at least, he thinks he finds her, though it’s hard to tell as the car ricochets across the pavement at 110 kilometers/hour, but he sees her watch him as they pass on the highway and something about her reeks of rot. )

“My son, my son, you have to find my son.”

( Bernard, clutching his children in his arms a little tighter after their grandparents leave, hearing the screams of his parents on the wind whenever he goes to close the window, hearing his name on his father’s lips as the life left his eyes, buying a cottage in Northern Ireland because the spark never fades, only the embers, and Rufus returning home defeated with a mouth full of blood because Bernard wouldn’t even deign to speak to him. )

“I’m sorry, m’am, I’m sorry -”

(Alone, alone, himself, always alone. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I‘m sorry...He keeps tripping over apologies and his own tongue because there is never enough forgiveness, he does not deserve forgiveness)

Later, when the chaos has died and they’ve retreated to his office, he’ll ask his secretary: “Who was that woman?”

She sighs, pushes back a lock of blonde hair, and clutches her coffee mug a little tighter, though her tone is anything but. “Philippa Merryweather.” He vaguely recognizes the name, but, seeing his look of blank confusion, she continues, with a pointed look in his direction to get him to read his memos: “Her son Apollo’s one of the missing. The husband died a year ago,” She shakes her head morosely, her voice quiet and thoughtful. “Poor love. She’s all he’s got.”

She’s all he’s got.

It’s a refrain he repeats as he stays late, searching through records, obituaries, coroner’s reports, and newspaper clippings for any mention of Apollo Merryweather. He finds him after the third hour of searching. Dead in the first round of fighting.

She’s all he’s got.

No, not anymore.

( The next morning, Phillippa Merryweather wakes to an additional 50,000 galleons in her savings account, courtesy of the ministry as compensation for her loss, a payout for an insurance policy she didn’t remember taking out. It’s not much. And it will never bring back her son.

But it is all he still has to give. )

Sometimes, he thinks he can still hear her screams.

ix.

1 SEPT 1960

––––––– “ YOU’D BETTER WRITE TO ME, CLAIRE.”

There is a boy, and his voice is quiet as he stares up at his older sister with wide and terrified eyes. She’s been packing, unpacking, and repacking for nearly an hour as she wraps her long underwear around a complete set of Sherlock Holmes novels, the boy watches and waits and realizes that this may be the last time they live together, and it fills him with so much fear that he physically trembles in his striped pajamas.

There is a girl, and her hair turns bright pink as she studies her younger brother because it makes him laugh when she transforms in front of him. “Of course I will, little red,” she chastises him, though he sticks out his tongue at the nickname, and she sticks hers out in return.

But this isn’t enough and, as the girl returns to her packing, the boy pouts at her admission. “Every day?” He asks, prodding his favorite sister for a promise he realistically understands she cannot, or will not, give, Claire has never been fond of letter writing, not the way Bernard is, truthfully, but he doesn’t want to read his brother’s letters. Filled with talk of Quidditch and his latest boyfriend, it’s not as if his letters will contain any mention of the dragons and castles of his imaginative, flighty sister’s.

But Claire surprises him with a glance. “Every day,” she replies, and he thinks she’s joking because of the curve of her lips twists upward, but he’s scared of their house, never a home, without her lively laughter to make it feel less cold and his voice grows deathly quiet.

“You promise?”

He is her brother. He adores her, completely and utterly. And here, she stands, runs to her brother, and collapses on top of him, squealing with delight as she wraps her arms around the young boy. He’s squirming, protesting her attacks, but she mutters: “I won’t ever leave you.”

He waves her goodbye at the station the next day, every year like clockwork, until at last it is her turn to wave him off. She’s promised she never leave him, every year, just the same.

But she did.

27 DEC 1979

––––––– “ YOU NEED TO LEAVE ”

The voice was a growl from behind his left ear, and his hand was on his wand before he could fully react. Rufus had left Borgin and Burkes, necklace intact in the case he wore at his belt, but the footsteps had followed him even long after he paid the blood price for the artifact. His research direly needed a test subject if he was to discover the source and mysteries of death, like his sister before him. He felt the cloud of chaos swirling about his skull - no matter how shining his victories, he only plunged himself further and further into darkness.

“Who says I’m not on my way?” He asked, without turning his head, though his grip on his wand betrayed the tension in his taut muscles. He was a tiger, a panther, he was poised to strike and rip and tear, and he fantasized about his teeth on a neck, biting through the jugular, swallowing hard as blood ran down his throat.

But the man only laughed. “We don’t like your kind around here,” he growled, his voice the rumble of a passing train. Behind him, Rufus heard footsteps, and came to the sharp realization that his guest had not come alone. Nor had he come to negotiate. He slowed. He concentrated. He counted the footsteps internally, listening for the thud as they hit the ground, counted two, three, four - one of whom was over six feet, judging by the heaviness of his step. Goons. Thugs. Or something else entirely? His hand stilled.

“Then I suggest you find a new stomping ground,” He hissed and, before the man could react, Rufus had whirled around, pressed the wand to his temple, and muttered “Fracto calvariam” With a sickening crack, the hooded figure fell to the ground, a thin trail of blood dripping from his nose and his eyes vacant and lifeless. His flat palm fell open, revealing a knife in his grasp. Rufus had been right. They hadn’t been looking to talk at all.

They’d been savages out for blood.

When he woke in the hospital the next morning covered in a thick layer of his own viscera, he remembered a sharp red blur and the feeling of giddiness as men hit the pavement. He didn’t remember their faces, their names, their voices, or how they died, only that a single curse to the chest had nearly taken him with them.

But in the moment, he was running, sprinting, casting a hex to the left and a jinx to the right, with a flash of green light across the cobblestone alleyway and the death rattle of a man who breathed his last hitting the pavement. A hex made contact with his forearm and he gritted to avoid hissing in pain as his skin broke and fired back an equally powerful jinx.

“Come back here, you bastard,” one of them cried, and Rufus sprinted away, enjoying the thrill of the chase as he rounded the corner and they followed in hot pursuit. Why they’d chosen him as a target, he wasn’t entirely sure - and if he reasoned with himself, the entire situation was suspicious - the necklace, Knockturn, all of it a whirlwind of light and energy, and he was made with it, alive with it, bloody hell he was alive.

But he spoke too soon. And the elusive hex finally made contact with his heart. The pain of it was overwhelming, immense, and tears sprung to his eyes as he felt a rib crack in two. Blood, blood, all of it, blood - and as he fired off a single, final hex, watching his assailant drop the ground, he knew, in that moment, exactly why he’d been followed.

He was a fool.

Rufus pressed a palm to his split side. His hand was red when it came away. Amelia, he thought. Edgar, Amelia, Alastor, John-, I’m so sorry. His skin was trembling - the pain flooded all of his senses. Claire, oh Claire, oh Claire, he thought, croaking out his sister’s name only once before, with a final gasp of agony, his vision went white.

And he collapsed.

#[god this was a fucking ADVENTURE to write i'm like physically exhausted now]#ofc: drabbles

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yuhdongsaeng · 8 years ago

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office parties and painful memories

pairing: yoongi x reader word count: 2.4k → listen i don’t know what this is. i can’t defend it. i have no idea. this is a shitpost. this is a circus of a fic. the worst. the absolute worst. i don’t know what this is. it’s specks. yeah, specks.

The first time Yoongi sees you, you’re standing by the piano with his mother in your navy blue dress and red shoes that sparkled so brightly that it always looked like you were walking on stars. He didn’t know yet, but he’d grow to love the bouncy pigtails that rested on your shoulders and your big eyes, which were filled to the brim with wanderlust and a childlike curiosity.

“Yoongi plays the piano?” you asked his mother, shyly tracing the bars of white and black.

“He’s very good, too.” she confirms, smiling empathetically before turning her head to the doorframe, meeting the deep, shy eyes behind raven locks. “Yoongi, you’ve come downstairs. This is Y/N, her family just moved in next door.”

His eyes only meet yours briefly before panic bleeds into his dark eyes.

All girls had cooties.

But not you.

There was a fair chance that going to the party wasn’t a good idea. The mere knowledge of the full tub of ice cream in your freezer taunted you endlessly as you went through dress after dress, annoyed huffs and sighs parting your lips ever so often.

The understanding of seeing him had crawled through the web of thoughts in your head, and you wondered how your heart could still speed up, how it could still twinge at the sight of his name on a table card.

It had been quite a while, after all.

Dress after dress slipped through your fingers until the specks of navy appeared.

”It sounds absolutely dull, doesn’t it?” Yoongi doesn’t make eye contact with you, but looks as though he’s studying the stars intently.

“I like to hear it.” you smile, re-adjusting your head on his shoulder before closing your eyes peacefully, knowing that all the stars above you will still be there when you open them next.

“It’s rotten.” He spits. “The words are pale in comparison to how I’m feeling.”

If you didn’t know better, you’d think he was mad. Perhaps he was, a little. You contemplate opposition, but exhale instead before humming.

“Say it.”

There’s a brief pause before you hear his lips parting, and the words fall like silk from his tongue.

“I love you.”

You stay composed in your little flat until you realize it’s time to pick your shoes, and the red heels are the first to fall out when you finally open the closet.

The fluttering in the internal archive of memories is almost overwhelming as you reach the one of a nervous Yoongi standing on a small bridge as he awaits your arrival.

“I got you these.” he almost stuttered, and your heart fluttered at the sight.

Granted they were much shinier then, but as were many things that weren’t anymore. Life had dulled, and it seems that your mother was right about shoes being a parting gift.

But you were sure Yoongi didn’t intend to mean it like that.

There’s a metaphorical noose that tightens around his neck whenever you tell him you love him, is what he’d spill through lingering whispers, his eyes comfortably hiding behind a thick fringe.

“Love,” he’d say. “It’s terrible, and I can’t breathe.”

You’d hum lightly in response, partially to humor him and partially because your words weren’t painted in the colors of thick, tan rope, at least not intentionally. It was 4AM now, dawn tiptoeing around the world before it dared show.

“But I chose the color of it,” he’d continue when he saw how the veins on your lids looked like lightning. He almost lost himself when your fingers almost intertwined with his and a yellow spark reflected off the parts that touched. “Perhaps I chose the fabric, too…”

This time, you didn’t reply. Instead, your gaze fixed on the yellow spark, and you wondered how the two of you could emit electricity. However, you believed you could. You’d just seen it, you thought. His lip stretched sadly with a slow blink and he sighed before letting his bones rest besides yours. It was late, after all.

“Sometimes I even think I tied it myself.”

The clock was ticking down.

His name almost sounds unfamiliar when you first hear it all those years later, and a momentary whiplash of heartache journeys down your spine as you raise your head to see the lips who dared carry his name.

“They haven’t been together for a long time now.” Jin spoke to some blonde a few feet from you, a blonde whose nose never belonged in your business. “It’s odd that you’d mention it.”

It irked you, and you almost lifted yourself from the wall you were leaning against, but restraint kept you at bay and a pathetic sigh parted your lips. It was not your business anymore, it seemed, when it finally dawned on you that your love with Yoongi was no longer just art, but a museum to anyone interested.

The annual anniversary parties at Big Hit had not been very eventful for years now, but courtesy was courtesy and if you ever forgot, your dad would be sure to remind you of the importance of a good reputation within the firm. Bang Sihyuk had raised his glass in your direction once or twice by now, and your sips had fractionally enlarged with each polite cheers – Bang Sihyuk getting more and more blurry in the process.

You must’ve looked pathetic, standing against the wall, finishing your fifth glass of exquisite red wine (it all tasted the same to you, though) in your uncomfortable clothes, but navy looked good on you, and if you were going to be pathetic, you were going to be beautiful, too.

Your eyes kept rocketing towards Jin throughout the night no matter how many times you forced it away, perhaps hoping to hear his name again.

He looked beautiful in his suit, but his shoelaces were untying.

Yoongi realized he could want you so bad it hurt him when he walked in on you that one night, restlessly spread across the field of silky whites in nothing but lingerie, which lazily clung to your hipbones. He felt it piercing in his jugular vein when his gaze landed upon your bra, folding and lifting in all the places it was too big. His breath hitched when he continued his journey down your waist and a slow burn spread across his breastbone, and he almost considered stopping. Turning his gaze. He didn’t dare imagine what your elevated hip would emit, how the pink lace almost got a voice and the whispers turned to spiders down his spine.

However, mostly of all, and he hoped he could evade this part; it was the momentary flash of sparks in your eyes when your gaze lifted to him as he shut the lights off that really hurt him.

The steps towards you were erratic and frantic, yet he kissed you carelessly - but the ashen skin was merely a cover for the consuming Christmas tree that was growing inside of him.

“Yoongi,” fell from your lips in your own dazed manner, and although you breathed into his mouth, it travelled down his throat until it reached his ribcage, and began pounding from the inside out.

You needed to stop, he thought, biting into his tongue to prevent him from spilling all the light out from his chest. Your eyelashes needed to stop resting on your cheeks so mockingly, if Yoongi was going to have any chance to make it out alive.

He glances up towards you, your gaze follows, and he wonders how you could feel it so differently. How love could be a congealing matter to you, a solid, tangible point, which you could mold and discipline to your liking – yet to Yoongi, it was a consuming liquid that radiated everywhere within him until you filled up all the empty spaces of his body.

Finally, a shaky hand made its way to your hair, and he brushed a few stray curls away from your complexion.

“Yes, my love?” he asked in a strangled, asphyxiated voice, making sure he didn’t slip any of the love that boiled through his blood and filled him to the brim.

It was a nervous manner in which the words left your mouth, fear lathered like a film on top of your skin.

“We’ll never survive this if we keep this up.”

He kissed you then, perhaps to shut you up and perhaps simply to savor the taste of you. Yoongi had come to realize how far your mind and heart could wander, because you were quite obviously elsewhere, whilst he was right there.

It was heated and your bra was coming undone.

The firmness of Jin’s voice rings through your thoughts as you sift through the archives of memories titled ‘Yoongi’, not once stopping to realize how misplaced you were at the event. Your internal journey down memory lane trickles to a halt when his voice emerges again, and you glance towards him to see the same blonde in front of him. There’s a slight recognition that she might be in PR.

“He really loved her,” he shifted uncomfortably on his feet, as if the weight of the words were too heavy for him – perhaps they didn’t belong in his mouth to begin with. “It shocked us all.”

She plastered a sympathetic smile, stretching her ivory skin and the wrinkles around her eyes suddenly show for the years that have passed.

This time Jin sees you, standing against the wall across the room, your navy blue dress making you look uncannily elegant. He blinks twice to make sure it’s you before his eyes widen in the color of shame, and his gaze automatically strays. You lift your lips in a tight line before bowing your head towards your glass, acknowledging exactly how awkward the situation was.

It’s odd how old friends can become strangers again, and you wonder if the opposite process can happen twice.

You take another sip of your wine, with which you’re reminded to pour yourself another.

“I’m just trying to let you know that he isn’t good for you.”

Perhaps you had heard the words one too many times for your blood to boil, and instead you sunk into your slouched position in defeat. You didn’t necessarily believe it, but fighting your own mother was never the easy route.

“Yoongi treats me well, mom.” you reiterate with your fingers crossed beneath the dinner table.

“That’s not what I meant and you know it, sweetheart. His plans don’t align with yours.” she stresses the last syllables as if she didn’t know the stabbing pain she inflicted.

You hoped that your silence would be enough to end the conversation, but it only induced a continuation.

“What are you going to do when he debuts? When he’s too busy to text you even once a month?” she raises her eyebrows in question. “When the only thing he can do for your family is send monthly checks to cover the bills?”

Your brows furrow and you tell her the only thing you know to be true.

“We love each other, mom.”

The heart doesn’t forget the love it once held. You’re still unsure at what point in the night you learned this, or perhaps you just accepted it, but it became clear when you started playing with the thought of greeting Yoongi upon his arrival, and you realized you’d sprint to his embrace a thousand times, in a thousand lifetimes.

The sulkiness was beginning to weigh on your shoulders, and you put the glass away to disrupt your string of tipsy thoughts. Yoongi was a memory now, a love that once were but was not anymore.

Your eyes had paced to Jin again when you realized you didn’t know what to do with your hands anymore.

He had just finished shooting the music video for Fire when he put the fire between you out.

“I guess not.” was what he replied when you asked him if he loved you, his voice more baritone than you had ever heard it. You barely recognized him, but truthfully, it was the first time you’d heard him lie, too.

Yoongi pretended that he didn’t end a lifelong string of love, pretended that he ended a relationship like any other young man could and would – but the heart never forgets the love it once held.

The thing is, Yoongi didn’t know love when it wasn’t embellished in your name.

His eyes burned like hell as the tears begged to be released, but he never granted them a pass.

“So it’s over.” you almost raised your voice in question, a slight disbelief painting your face as the features of the love of your life became muddled, less recognizable.

Yoongi merely swallowed before bumping his shoulder into yours when passing.

He would’ve combusted had he stayed another second, and he knew within himself that it was a fire he had to put out – no matter how terribly wrong he was to do so.

You don’t quit on the people you love, and it was Yoongi’s regret to carry.

It was lackluster. Life was lackluster. Your navy dress, the wine, Jin and the blonde. Lackluster. All was lackluster but the memories.

He climbed the flight of stairs with a heaviness, his fingers tapping his thighs in anticipation. He hadn’t seen you for a while now, but he knew you would be there – Jin made sure to text him so.

Was he wrong to feel excited? Was he deserving of the butterflies that bloomed in the pit of his stomach?

He wasn’t, he knew he wasn’t, but he couldn’t stop it once it started.

There was no doubt in his mind when he saw you; you were the one even when he could only see your back. His eyes only briefly met Jin and the dreaded blonde from PR he’d been avoiding since he stepped foot in Big Hit.

He wasn’t deserving of your voice, nor of your eyes. He couldn’t have you look at him even for a second, he knew this much. He almost left before he saw you turn, and he convinced himself he could steal a single glance – just one, and then he’d go.

Nobody knows, but you know, and Yoongi knows.

Your eyes meet and it all unravels.

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howmuchchildrens · 5 years ago

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gingerbread

gets kinda boring after making it 3 days in a row

#gingerbread #...more cookies #i can feel the christmas noose beginning to tighten #the Christmas noose has tightened

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carbonlilies · 8 years ago

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48.1 Our Autumn 2016 Haunted Walks

[Lana] As you may have seen from a few of our previous posts, we enjoy our history on the darker side and if that telling takes the form of a haunted walk... that is all the better. In October and November, we had the privilege of going on two separate tours both run by our friends at the The Haunted Walk.

Our first outing for the 2016 fall time, was on October 15th at the Hallowe’en season special tour at Black Creek Pioneer Village in North York/Toronto. You may remember that we went to this locale for Christmas by Candlelight during the 2015 yuletide season; during Hallowe'en, there is an entirely different atmosphere. The buildings, while familiar, take on an ominous quality that is not entirely hidden at Christmas but merely dormant... as though lying in wait for the time of year when the veil between worlds is at its thinnest.

[John] Lana is right… there is a spooky atmosphere all the time at Black Creek but at Hallowe’en – whether it is our imaginations or not – it is much more intense.

John reluctantly agreed to a photo...

[Lana] While many tragic stories are tied to the histories of the buildings and the denizens of the area, the majority of the ghostly tales come from the staff (past and present). Even some of the guides from The Haunted Walk, who only have a limited amount of time at the Village, have their own stories and experiences to share.

I must say, that out of all the buildings we visited that night, one stood out more than the others by far. The Manse had a creepy vibe the moment we went inside. We circled around our storyteller (Claire – who was excellent, by the way) and as luck would have it, John and I were the two with our backs exposed to the only other dark room in the building. I was constantly checking over my shoulder into the darkness behind us, even before the stories began. Multiple passes with our complimentary flashlights revealed nothing in the room behind us but that feeling of being watched was there nonetheless. Then there was the staircase...

Claire, our tour guide.

[John] *Shudder* That staircase… I didn’t like it at Christmas and I liked it less after hearing the stories of the building.

[Lana] One of the rules put in place by Black Creek Pioneer Village is that no one is allowed to go up to the second floor; determined after a couple of incidents of people being pushed by an unseen force from the top of the stairs. Looking up from the bottom of the stairs, you can see a spot on the wall where an old picture had hung years ago. The stain on the wall looked reversed from what we had expected however...like the fading had happened in the wrong place. Maybe that is just my imagination though. I did remember looking up these stairs at Christmas and feeling the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end just like they were doing at this very moment. Even one of the most level-headed and dare I say skeptical of the Haunted Walk guides, Margo, gets an uneasy feeling at the Manse. She told us she hadn’t had this type of feeling on a tour in quite a long time. It’s nice to know it wasn’t just me.

[John] Or me.

The Manse - staircase.

[Lana] I was really glad to have had the opportunity to partake in one of the special Hallowe’en Haunted Walks this season. It is a pleasure to attend those limited functions that aren’t available all year long and I am looking forward to attending more of them in the future.

[John] Same here! Hey Margo… thanks for reconnecting and chatting with us after our tour! It was so great to see you again!

Black Creek Pioneer Village.

A beautiful night.

[Lana] Let’s jump now to November 10, 2016 and 390 kilometres away from Toronto to Ottawa, Ontario. Although our main purpose for the trip was to witness the Remembrance Day ceremonies (which we will also be writing about so please watch for that upcoming article) in our nation’s capital, we decided to also take advantage of our time there and take in another Haunted Walk. There was only one tour open to the public that evening due to group bookings that night, so we gladly and quickly signed up for the Ghosts and Gallows tour, which is highlighted by a visit to the Carleton County Gaol. This is the same tour we took in 2014 (to read about our first visit, please click here). We knew that we would be revisiting one of the tours we had already taken but what we hadn’t expected was to be guided by Elise again, who was our guide for the same tour on our first night there during our 2014 trip. Knowing that there are hundreds, if not thousands of people that go on these tours, we didn’t expect to be remembered but it was nice to know that our social media interactions were recognized and, by the end of the night through recollections of the experiences we had on our previous trip, we were in fact remembered.

Carleton County Gaol

[John] I’m sure we weirded out Elise at least a smidgen at the very beginning, when we said hello and discovered she would be our guide. She was definitely surprised to see us – and on the same tour as in 2014, no less. Gracious though, and welcoming, Elise was lovely again and we thoroughly enjoyed our time.

Elise, our tour guide.

[Lana] The tour itself was similar but there were a few minor changes mostly due to it being after the Hallowe’en season. We had time this year to enter the cells and feel the confinement that the prisoners would have felt even if it was only for a few moments for us. I had wondered, and hoped, if we would have some kind of unexplained experience like we did last time, but it was not to be this time.

The shadow of a cell.

[John] Standing in one of these cells brought me a deep sense of empathy for the prisoners. I cannot imagine spending much time in a confined space like that. Touching the walls, I was overwhelmed with a sense of confusion and sadness, as well as a bit of anger. My chest tightened and I really just wanted to scream and cry. I simultaneously felt like running away while also not wanting to leave at all. I wanted to sit down in the cell and close my eyes and connect, somehow, to what I was feeling. Alas, I had to let other tour participants experience the cell for themselves, so I quickly turned and walked back out, trying to calm the feelings swirling inside of me.

As we neared the end of our tour and had time to look at the gallows, with a prop-noose hanging for dramatic effect, I had a strange feeling of fear wash over me. It was similar to a memory, though it felt foreign at the same time, and I felt fear from standing in there with a rope around my neck and the floor about to give way. In my mind, I could feel a wind hit me - a cold blast to my face. My chest tightened again from the anxiety and I had to shake my head and continue quickly down the stairs to meet up with the rest of the group. Be it my imagination or something else, this night met me with more than I had expected.

An uncomfortable feeling.

[Lana] I enjoyed this tour almost as much (if not just as much) as the last time. That is a testament to not only Elise’s ability as a storyteller but also how entertaining these tours are in general. It certainly inspires me to want to go on more haunted walks. There are so many more out there that we haven’t gone on yet and that isn’t even including the other companies that offer dark history tours. It also makes us want to spend a night at the Ottawa Jail Hostel. I, for one, would love a chance to explore that place outside of a tour setting just to see if anything would happen. That is an adventure for another day however.

[John] An adventure that I have finally decided I’m definitely up for and looking forward to. I highly expect we will have a fun night of waiting for something to happen and leaving somewhat grateful that nothing (likely) happened and somewhat wishing we had experienced something major. Perhaps I’ll be proven wrong and we will have the night of a lifetime. (If we can make it happen and stay at the Jail for a night, while Lana does his investigating I will likely sit still and quiet, listening to the stories within the silence… trying to be a brave girl.)

Thank you to our friends at The Haunted Walk, for always making us feel welcome and for sharing your stories and the stories of our Canadian history, in a way that truly involves us and excites us… always leaving us wishing for more and looking forward to our next adventure with you.

Carleton County Gaol

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atlaswriting · 6 years ago

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“We aren’t waiting for Jason?” I ask and I can’t tell if the hitch in my voice is because of relief or remorse.

Nodding slowly, I have to force my grip to loosen on my suitcase when the driver tries to pry it from my hands, “I can sit in the front!” I offer, enthusiasm spilling out of my mouth and like some sick magic trick pulling my shame with it. “I know you must have missed Abram, you’ll want to catch up.”

Gigi is quick to grab my hand and stop me from reaching for the handle, “I wish I could,” she says sadly, “riding in the back of cars really messes with my menopause. I hope you don’t mind, though, Elise?”

I part my lips to question how the two were related, but Gigi wasn’t the type of woman you questioned. Instead, I harden my shoulders to keep my visible disappointment at a minimum. My knees shake a little too much as I slide across the seat, pressing my body as close to the door as possible. When Abram sits beside me, I tighten my legs together.

“What’s wrong?” Abram cocks his head to the side, using his right hand to pull the car door closed, “I don’t bite.” There’s a hint of menace that twitches at the corner of his lips. And I swallow hard, the memory of what that mouth can do haunts the hallow of my skull.

The entire drive to the airport my shoulders are rigid, fingernails dig into the palm of my hand and the sharpness is a welcomed, controlled sting.

“I hear you and my grandson are getting on well,” Gigi slows her gait to match mine as we head toward the chartered plane. I watch absently as our luggage is loaded into the under carriage and wait for Abram to disappear before I compel myself to walk faster.

“He told you?” My heels skid on the pavement and my hand tightens around my phone with such vitriol I’m afraid it will shatter in my hands, “It was one time—no, sorry, merde, it was twice but—,”

She laughs and nudges me up the stairs, “I was talking about Jason, dear girl.” Before I walk into the cabin, she reaches for my elbow, “Do I have to mention that pesky tangled web or should I trust that you understand?” Her voice is low, threatening in the most terrifying sense, but the smile on her face conflicts the acidity in her words.

I swallow hard, searching for the right thing to say—something that wouldn’t place me on the Missing Persons list, “I understand,” I tell her, “it’s less like a web and more like a noose.” I admit.

Her eyes flicker over my face and her mouth splits into a maternal smile, pulling me flush against her chest, “I assure you that noose only gets tighter the further you jump.”

♡ ♡ ♡

We arrive in Paris and are greeted with a calming snow fall. Flurries that would be romantic had the anvil of regret not dropped heavily into my belly. I pull my jacket tighter around my thinning frame, realizing then how little I had to keep myself warm.

Our home in Paris is beautiful. Dark red bricks encased in vines. It had once been an apartment complex, but Cerise decided it was too lowly of her to have to share her home—she decided, against my father’s wishes, to buy the entire building, informing all the tenants ( personally ) that they had until the week’s end to move out.

I wonder how often she thought about that and felt proud, felt powerful.

“Elise, there you are,” Cerise rises from the couch, back pin straight and lips puckered tightly together. She wraps her arms around me, mechanically and pulls me—with a thud—against her chest. Her mouth just barely presses to both of my cheeks, “chérie, je peux à peine tenir mes bras autour de toi,” she whispers.

The smile on my face becomes too strained. Malachi comes from behind my mother and pulls me into a hug I wouldn’t describe as tender. Abram is next—all I can do is watch as his fingers dig into his sons’ shoulder, a warning to not step out of line.

I feel the shout rise in my chest, but bite it back when I feel my mother’s hand tug me away.

“Unfortunately,” she begins, “We have an unnecessary visitor—,” her words darken and it’s hard not to notice the rage that boils behind her eyes, “don’t go getting excited, Elise—she isn’t going to stay long.”

There’s a familiar weight in the tapping that grows closer and I can feel my heart leap into my throat. “Anais!” I shout, hardly giving her time to enter the foyer before I throw my arms around her. She hugs back, winding so tightly around me I can almost feel the broken pieces of me shift into place. “You’re back from Italy!” I rest my head under her chin and inhale the comforting scent of lavender and sandal wood, “tu m'as manqué,” I say quietly.

“And I, you, little one,” She pulls away to cup my cheeks and presses a kiss to my forehead.

Anais makes her way around the room, blatantly skipping Cerise and Malachi, she brings Gigi into a hug, “I’ve heard awful things about you,” she awards the matriarch with a kiss on her cheek, “and I love them all.”

Anais’ gaze eventually falls onto Abram and she pulls him in, “Is this the young Rose boy I’ve heard so much about?” She runs her thumb over his cheek, grazing the yellowing bruise under his eye, “Much more handsome than you’ve described, sœur,” She doesn’t need to look back to notice my mother’s scowl, “You look nothing like your father,” leaning close Anais drops her voice, “quel chanceux êtes-vous.”

“Actually,” Cerise starts, voice cutting through the moment, sharp as any knife, “that’s Malachi’s bastard, Abram. Elise’s beau is off with his mother.”

“Ah!” Anais says nodding, pulling away from Abram who seems uncomfortable under the heavy gaze of my aunt, “A bastard! Even better… Les meilleurs d'entre nous sont.”

The silence that follows is palpable, broken up only by Gigi’s laughing.

I’m careful not to meet my mother’s watchful eye, afraid of what I’ll find if I do.

♡ ♡ ♡

“You wrote to her?” Cerise finally corners me into a guest room hours later, after the twins arrive and dinner was finished, after liquid courage had been pumped into her veins. Her fingers’ encircling my wrist is painful and I wonder where all this rage has come from.

I’ll be the first to admit that I inherited her black anger, a decaying sore that spreads throughout our body—but I’ve never seen her like this. “Elise Beatrice, how selfish of a girl are you?” she demands, teeth exposed, tiny sharp things that threaten to bite through me.

An unamused scoff leaves my barely parted lips, “I’m selfish? For wanting to spend Christmas with my aunt, mother, I fail to see your logic.”

Her fingers recoil, turning her back to me, Cerise runs her hands through the tangle of dark brown hair before reaching down to her wine glasses and swallowing what was left. “Anais has no business here—in this home—and you had no business inviting her.”

“She’s my aunt! She’s your sister—,”

Cerise throws the wine glass against the wall, “Family isn’t always blood, what don’t you understand? She is no more my family than your father is yours.”

I bite the inside of my cheek to keep from crying. I try to steel my spine, harden my heart at the mention of that word, but the little girl in me beats her fists against my chest and a few rogue tears fall down my cheek.

At the sight of this, my mother rolls her eyes, “Crying? I raised you better than that. Je ne t'ai pas élevé pour être faible,” she says coolly. Slipping her sweater off, I notice the light bruises that litter her bicep. My eyes follow the violent trail down across her elbow and land on her wrist.

“I don’t think you’re mad at me for inviting Anais here,” I tell her, finding my voice. Bitterness poisons my words as I bite them out through clenched teeth, “You’re afraid your sister will see you as the mess you are. You’re terrified she’ll see that once again, you’ve found love in a man whose fists beat louder than his heart.” Her brown eyes stare back at me, horror mixed with something more—something malicious I had never seen before, “You’re afraid that this will be it—that Anais will finally be better than you at everything.”

Cerise delivers a resounding smack to the right side of my face—so loud that my ear is ringing long after she pulls her sweater back on and disappears into the hall, swallowed by the dark.

I don’t know what makes me cry more—the violence or Abram standing in the door seconds later.

“Abram, just go,” but he doesn’t. I try and stoke the fire in my chest but all my fight has become embers—a ghost of the flames it used to be. Instead, I stand in the middle of the room, shoulders hunched staring at the boy who despite all the warnings, keeps running toward my storm.

In this story, Abram can’t help but become Icarus.

In this story, it’s only a matter of time before I burn his wings.

“Why don’t you ever listen to me?” I fight through his silence, holding my arms up to keep him at a distance—but as usual, he disregards my walls, knocks into me—a one man wrecking ball. “Leave me alone,” I beg with a little less feeling.

He catches me before my faulty knees give into the shiver, before I crumble into a mess on the floor. He falls with me; arms wrapped tight even as I struggle ( half-heartedly ) to push him away.

I find my anger in my throat and I yell for him to go away—to leave me alone. I yell that I hate him and when there isn’t anything left in my lungs, I lean in to him. Let the comet that has become of my heart hurdle into my ribs so cruelly I can hardly breathe.

#thread: ablise #thread: all

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