#I can’t stop thinking about the silly Victorian men

[imaginingmoonlight]

Hastie Lanyon was a Dead Man: a Lanyon/Jekyll oneshot

Word count: 1485

Notes:

Guess who’s been fixating on silly Victorian men? ME! Yeah I had fun with this. I’m so sorry it will get a bit angsty. This is up on ao3! My account is under the same name as here :) Warning: major character death.

Hastie Lanyon was a dead man. These shaking gulps of air, these slow and rhythmic heartbeats would be his very last. He could feel it- his life slipping through his fingers like water off a duck's back. It would be gone soon, gone like the sunlight slipping into the horizon or clouds whisked away by the wind. Would anyone care? Would anyone notice? Would anyone miss him once he was gone? Utterson, perhaps. He was a good chap. Loyal, he was, albeit a little dull. Hastie had always considered the lawyer to be one of his closest friends, whether the feeling was reciprocated or not. He had even visited a day ago, the very second he had heard of the illness. That was hard. Oh so hard. To know you were dying? That was one story. To admit it aloud? That was another story entirely. Lanyon remembered how the tears had stabbed at his eyes, how his chest had tightened, how his hands trembled with fear. Utterson was patient, sympathetic, even a little teary himself. But when he had mentioned Jekyll...

Jekyll.

Where would he be now? Was he even Jekyll anymore? No doubt, that Hyde character had probably taken over completely now. Lanyon was considerably more upset at the thought than he should have been. He hated the man, don't get him wrong. The very thought of him made his blood boil and his skin crawl with an army of spiders. Yet... the thought also made his heart swell. A swell of memories, joy, happiness, love . Jekyll, before his downfall, had been much more than a friend. Much, much more. "Just a friend" wouldn't stay up until first light drinking wine and talking about their deepest, darkest secrets. "Just a friend" wouldn't brush their knuckles against yours while walking just a little too often to be accidental. "Just a friend" wouldn't share a kiss, soft and tender, with you in a moonlit study. No, Jekyll was not a friend, not by a long shot.

When was the last time he had seen him, before the incident? Well, it must have been winter, at least 9 or 10 years ago. They were much younger, of course. Reckless. The two were in Jekyll's house, sat huddled together in the same armchair. It was cold outside, deathly cold, yet they were heated by the hearth both in the centre of the room and the ones hidden in their hearts. It was silent, but a comfortable silent. Silent like the calm right after a storm. Silent like the early morning. Words were whispered, lingering on steady breaths and gentle gazes. It was a perfect night. Until it wasn't.

"Hastie?" Jekyll's voice had a shaken quality behind it, the usual sweetness cracking. Immediately, Lanyon could tell something was wrong.

"Yes, dear?" He had replied, pretending to be none the wiser while the worry gripped his gut like a vice.

"Do you ever think about... You know,"

"No, I don't know. Go on?"

"Running away?" The words could barely be heard as they escaped his lips. Lanyon had been taken aback. What were you supposed to say to that? What could he possibly answer?

"Well, no, not really." Why would he? Life here was perfect. He had a blossoming career. He had a blossoming love. What more could he ask for? What more could he want?

"Not really? Not once?"

"I have no reason to. I have everything I need right here." He leaned over to rest his head on his partner's shoulder, fighting to keep his tired eyes open. Jekyll had smiled, genuine and warm, but there had been a slight sadness hiding at the very corners of his mouth.

"Of course. Of course. But what about freedom? What about the liberty to be ourselves out on the streets? We have to hide from the public eye every day, Hastie. Why should we? Why should we have to cater to a world that looks down on us?" Oh. Lanyon looked down at his feet, shoes still on from a day working.

"Because that's life, Henry. Not everyone will accept us and that's okay."

"How can you be okay with hiding this? Surely you can't bear to live the rest of your life hiding a secret? Hiding the most beautiful truth to exist?"

"Henry, we can't just leave. That's absurd."

"But is it?"

"Yes, it is." Lanyon sat up straight, gaze hardening ever so slightly. It was enough for Jekyll to see, though; he recoiled a little, flinching with a grimace. "What about our jobs, Henry? What about our lives?"

"Hastie, you are my life!"

"Then why isn't this enough? Why do you want more?"

"You know why. I may have you but we'd still be shunned if we so much as linked arms in public. Is that the life you want to live?"

“I-“ the words wouldn’t come out.

“So come with me!”

“…I can’t.” He choked the sounds out, barely a whisper. “I can’t just leave my life’s work.”

Jekyll shook his head. The disappointment and anger and hurt grew in his eyes, a distant inferno swirling in his irises.

“Henry, I’m so sorry-“

“No. It’s fine.”

And with that, Henry Jekyll had strode out the door.

It would be years until he heard from Jekyll again. It had gotten worse over time. It turns out time doesn’t bring fondness; like a grape in a barrel, it brings bitterness and sucks the sweetness out. Lanyon could barely take hearing Jekyll’s name in public again. Ever since he’d left, the man had completely thrown himself into his work. Immoral work. The devil’s work. Utter scientific balderdash. This didn’t really bother Lanyon too much, of course, but at least he had an excuse to publicly hate the scientist. No one had to know about their… past relations.

But oh, how he missed him desperately.

One can forgive. One can move past. But one can never forget. And god, he’d never forget those nights, just the two of them, spilling secrets like water through open fingers and sharing sweet, lovesick looks lit by candlelight. They were the best nights of his life. And they were gone now.

At least, that’s what Lanyon thought. Then came that December night. The night was suffocating, a thick fog laying over the city like a distasteful throw. A thick air of mystery loitered. That mystery only built when a letter was delivered to his door. A letter from none other than Henry Jekyll.

So eagerly had Lanyon sliced open the envelope and delved in. So quickly had his heart skipped a beat or two.

“Dear Lanyon, You are one of my oldest friends; and although we may have differed at times on scientific questions, I cannot remember, at least on my side, any break in our affection. There was never a day when, if you had said to me, ‘Jekyll, my life, my honour, my reason, depend upon you,’ I would not have sacrificed my left hand to help you. Lanyon, my life, my honour my reason…”

Lanyon had hardly been able to read the rest with a clear head. His life. His honour. His reason. Did he really still mean that much to him after everything that had happened? So of course, without a doubt in his mind, Lanyon followed the cryptic, quite possibly dangerous instructions detailed.

He so desperately wished he hadn’t.

He had driven straight to Jekyll’s house, despite every ounce of reason screaming at him from his core. He met with Poole, got the drawer and went straight back to Cavendish Square. Even when that strange little man- Mr Hyde- had shown up, he still pushed aside any doubts and focused on the task at hand: saving Jekyll’s life. However that may be. It was all so confusing.

He hadn’t expected Mr Hyde, after promptly taking that potion, to transform into Jekyll. It was horrific. Such horrors he had never seen before. Every time he shut his eyes, all he could see was the way that man’s features had grotesquely contorted, agonisingly slow, into the face that once brought him the most comfort in his life. He felt no comfort then. Just fear. Pure fear, raw and acidic in his stomach. It had scared him half to death. Quite literally. Now look at him. He was laying on his death bed, slowly fading away. Wasted. Lost. Soon he would be gone forever. He had so many regrets. He should have just ran away with Jekyll when he had the chance. Maybe then the man never would have turned to such horrific experiments.

"Jekyll? If you can hear me-" his words sounded so pathetic, so weak, hanging limp in the air of his room.

His answer was silence. Still, he continued.

" I love you."

And just like that, a lantern flickering to darkness, Hastie Lanyon was well and truly a dead man.

[allwaswell16]

I’ve been working my way back through your fics, rereading them, some for probably the 10th-plus time, and I just have to write to rave a bit in your direction. What strikes me most about your writing is not just the consistently high quality, but also the breadth of the types of stories you tell and the characters in them. There are different time periods, from present day to Victorian era to the War of 1812; there are comedies, dramas, and thrillers; there are a wide range of au’s, including soulmates, A/B/O, supernatural, royalty, and non-famous reality; there are professions of EVERY kind - pirates, students, lamplighters, models, construction workers, real estate agents, assassins, glaciologists; there are high schoolers to middle aged men and everything in between; and while it’s mostly H&L, there’s also Lilo, Tomlinshaw, and Louis rare pairs. And this is far from exhaustive. To sit back and look at an overview of all you’ve done, and done well, it’s really amazing. Thank you!

And I can’t stop without a plug for my favorite hidden gems— Smitten, an adorable ficlet where they’re 20-somethings working at an insurance agency in Kansas, and Unraveled, a political thriller where they’re in their 50’s and Louis is the prime minister facing death threats and Harry is the MI5 agent who comes out of retirement to protect him. BREADTH!!!! ❤️❤️❤️

Oh my god, anon, this is for sure the nicest ask I've ever received. You have no idea how wonderful your timing is...I just made a tag post saying I was going to try and answer a couple asks because they've been piling up. My anxiety is really bad right now, and I need my meds tweaked because I haven't had it be like this in years. I see my dr on Monday though so should have relief soon. Anyway, I clicked on my inbox and this is the first thing waiting for me 🥹🥹🥹🥹🥹

I'm writing my 100th fic right now, and I was writing so much until this stupid anxiety knocked me down a little. Usually writing helps my anxiety though, so I'm gonna answer a couple more asks and then I'm going to open my wip back up.

Thank you so much for going back through all my fics and rereading and noting the ones you think of as hidden gems! I honestly couldn't figure out what Smitten was at first lol! I was like Kansas?? But then it came back to me...the person I wrote it for was living in Kansas at the time. And Unraveled is one I'm pretty proud of actually. I really wanted to capture a certain mood and pacing and I feel like I did.

I love to write and sometimes I'll write things that are similar to something else I've written...obviously I enjoy a silly animal fic. lol. But for me, the most fun part of writing is writing something new to me. I enjoy the challenge of trying something new and it just keeps things interesting for me as a writer.

Thank you so much for sending this, anon! It has really brightened my day!

[nightashes]

Hi! Okay I wanted to send a prompt (but it's fine if you don't have the energy or anything like that to write it!) How about some fluffy logicality with "See I told you that I'd always be here for you"

When I’m with You, I Glow

a/n:  Thank you so much for the prompt! This was so fun to write! I hope the wait wasn’t too long. <3

summary: Victorian-ish era. Logan has some big news to tell his boyfriend, Patton. They take a walk in the evening and share their love.

warnings: none that I can think of but let me know if there is anything you’d like me to tag.

ao3 version - writing masterlist

Dusk is approaching. The warm tones of the sunset chase away the cool blues of the day. The streets are beginning to empty as Logan walks down the lane. His shoes hit the stones with a satisfying tap. Tap. Tap. He smiles at the sound. If he were a different person, he would be skipping. But Logan is a professional. He is content to simply listen to the heel of his shoes clicking against the pavement.

The lamplighter nods as he passes, working his way along the road, lighting each streetlamp one after another. The faint flames do not do much to illuminate but they do add to the romance of the dusk. Once true night sets in, they will be invaluable. Until then, they were at least pretty to look at. He feels a warmth in his heart at the thought. In the past, he would not have given a second thought to the aesthetic value of street lamps. But Patton, his beloved, his burning flame, has a way of finding the joy and the beauty in the simplest of things. He supposes that some of that optimism is beginning to rub off on him.

He hopes that Patton will want to walk with him. He does have something quite big to talk about with his beloved. And it would be nice to share the evening with him.

Approaching the apartment of his companion, he gives a quick one-two knock. Banging the knob of the knocker against the door with a pair of resounding thuds. The sound of hurried footsteps precedes the opening of the door and the arrival of his friend who was more than a friend could ever truly be. The grin of the man before him revivals the beauty of the sunset and the enchantment of the fire-lit street lamps. This is the fellow that has managed to steal Logan's breath away with each new meeting. This is the fellow that has managed to make Logan feel as if he wasn't just a scholar but a person of value. And Logan knows without a doubt his heart beats louder because of the man before him.

His professionalism melts away. It always does around Patton. How could one be stoic around a person that could exude the warmth of the sun with a simple laugh and a pat on the arm? The gentleman’s eyes twinkle with mirth. "Good even'n, Logan. How are you on this fine evening?"

"Hello, my dear," he smiles somewhat nervously. "I was just in the neighborhood and I was hoping that you would maybe join me on my walk," Logan requests. His fingers nervously playing with the chain of his pocket watch.

"Oh, now wouldn't that be lovely. Just let me grab my hat and I'll be right out." And with that Patton once again disappears into his apartment.

Logan stands on the step, straightening his tie, brushing dust from his jacket. Staring around him at the potted plants that stand beside the doorway. He checks his watch. Patton is taking longer than usual. 

“Patton!” He calls. Knocking his knuckles softly on the wood. “Have you found it yet?”

The door swings open to a beaming Patton… without a hat. “Shall we go?”

“But… Patton, your hat?”

“Hmmm?” The smiling gentleman questions, patting his head. “Oh, silly me. I’d lose my head if it wasn’t attached.” He grabs it from the nearby coat hanger and hurries out the door, quickly locking it behind him. 

Turning around, Patton’s hand immediately finds his own. Interlacing their fingers together. It warms Logan’s heart. A gentle squeeze of the hands and a tender kiss, Logan whispers to his sweetheart, “I’ve missed you today.”

Patton’s laughter is sweet honey to his ears. “I’m here. I’ll always be right here for you.”

The worries of the day feel small in comparison. And though they still need to have a talk, he feels like he can handle it. With Patton he can handle anything. 

They walk down the lane. Patton swinging their hands, talking about his day. Pestering Logan with questions about his own. “Oh, don’t you just love the night air! Something about it just makes you feel so… alive!”

“It’s because the air is cooler. The molecules in the air slow down when it is colder, producing less smells and tricking us into thinking the air is more ‘crisp’ and ‘pure’ than it is in say the afternoon.”

He can feel Patton’s eyes on him as he speaks. He knows he is beginning to slip into his teacher mode again. But unlike his students, Patton stares at him as if mysteries of the universe were unfolding before him. Logan can feel the heat in his cheeks rise from the attention. He stutters to a stop. “At least that’s what I have read.”

Patton takes both of his hands in his, standing before him he whispers. “It’s amazing. Each day we spend together and yet you never run out of new things to teach me. Have I told you how much I love listening to you lecture.”

Logan smiles, but a thought continues to beat at the back of his mind. They still need to talk. “The park is near. Come along,” he attempts to steer them towards the entrance. 

Patton, though, Patton is not having it. He stands steadfast, his hands still gripping both of Logan’s. 

“You’ve got something on your mind.” Patton states simply.

“You’re right. I do have something on my mind. It’s you.” He leans in to place a kiss upon Patton’s brow. “You’re always on my mind.”

“Not ready to tell me?”

“No. It’s just big news. I was hoping we could discuss it sitting down.”

“Alright. The park it is. But you know whatever it is I’m here to support you.”

Logan nods in understanding. Wrapping his arm around his sweetheart, he steers them towards the park. The crickets are loud now. Their repetitive chirps fill the otherwise silent evening. The glow of the setting sun has lessened, but what remains paints the trees golden. It surrounds the couple in a warm glow as they move to a nearby bench. Settling down, they nestle into each other's side. LIke a pair of turtle doves taking shelter in a storm.

Logan fumbles with the chain of his watch once again. He knows Patton is waiting for the news. But, he is so patient. He simply leans his head against Logan’s shoulders and whispers to him about the trees. Asking Logan to explain how they grow so big from such small little seeds. 

He can’t hold it in anymore. “Something really big happened at work today.”

His beloved smiles up at him expectantly, waiting for him to continue.

“After my class, I was approached by two men from Rivance. They wanted me to come and lecture at their school. It’s… It’s an opportunity few have been offered. They’re very selective and I would be foolish to turn it down. But it would mean leaving Nelaian, leaving my students, and well… I mean I wasn’t sure if you… If you would.”

“You wouldn’t want to leave me?” Patton finishes softly, his fingers tracing the lines in Logan’s hand.  

“It’s a long way and it would be unreasonable to expect you to come. But, I don’t want to be apart for so long.”

“Logan, I have a confession to make.” Patton looks up, staring intently into his eyes. Logan can feel his jaw clench and his heart stutter at that look. 

Patton withdraws a crinkled envelope from his pocket. Handing it over he continues, “you see, I was actually there at your lecture this morning. I had time before my shift and I was missing you. So I sat in for the tail end of it. I saw those men approach you. I knew all about it.”

Nothing is written on the envelope. Logan flips it around. Carefully, he removes the contents. Pulling out two pieces of paper. Two tickets. Boat tickets. To Rivance. 

“Two tickets. For me… and you?”

“See, I told you that I’d always be here for you. I’m coming with you and that’s final.”

“But, this is a whole other country. A whole other continent. To leave everything behind, just like that. For me. I can’t ask that of you.”

“You don’t need to ask. I’m with you until the end.”

“Patton, I… I don’t know what to say?”

“Say what you feel.”

“I’m happy. I’m so so very happy. And I.. I love you, my firelight.” 

“Well then kiss me, you dingus.”

The gold of the evening is beginning to fade now. A shadow has been cast over the scenery. But the fire of the streetlamps glows brighter in the dark.

awesome people to tag: @stop-it-anxiety @hexatrash @ollyollyoxinfree @battlebunnyteardropsinthesun @leiasolo77 @arya-skywalker

[nerdzzone]

Light After Dark: Chapter Four

Summary: Brooke Harris was trying her best to be grateful. As the world tackled the COVID-19 pandemic, she was healthy and safe and so was the rest of her family, but her dreams had very quickly been crushed by the economic fallout. Trapped on the quaint island of Jersey with nothing, but free time to wallow in her mistakes, Brooke’s mental health was taking a hit, but when she collides with a handsome stranger she starts to realize that the future might not be so bleak and there might still be a light at the end of the tunnel.

Pairing: Henry Cavill x OFC

______________

Once the ice was broken, the floodgates opened. Despite the fact that neither of us had much going on in our lives of quarantine, we spoke almost every day. Sometimes on the phone, but mostly by text. It felt so natural with him. I wasn't sitting around for hours trying to compose the perfect message, I didn't stress about whether or not a certain text was worth sending. He put me at ease and it was making the whole lockdown experience much more interesting.

April. 20. 2020

Me: I've started watching your show

Henry: And what do you think?

Me: I'm only about three minutes in. Is it going to scare me? That was a very intense start...

Henry: It has some unsettling moments, but I wouldn't say it's scary

Me: If it gives me nightmare then you better be prepared to talk to me in the middle of the night when I'm afraid

Henry: Ha ha I promise I will, but it's not that bad. There's some gore, but not much that will haunt your dreams

Me: Alright, I'll keep going then

Henry replied with a thumbs up emoji and I returned my attention back to the show, but I was messaging him again before much longer.

Me: You look so different with that hair

Henry: Different in a good way?

Me: Well it's not a bad look, the whole rugged thing is quite sexy

Henry: I'm glad you like it 😉

Me: Not a huge fan of those eyes though

Henry: The contacts were awful to wear, but it did make it easy to get into the role with how different I looked by the time I was done hair and make-up

Me: I can imagine. Were those pants as uncomfortably tight as they look?

Henry: Well...We did go through several pairs...because they kept ripping...

Me:

Me: Careful Henry, I'm trying really hard to rein in my thoughts before I start objectifying you...

Henry: 😂

Henry: I won't tell anyone if you do 😉

Me: Stop distracting me, I'm trying to watch a very serious show

Henry: Alright, but just wait until you get to episode five

Me: Why?

...

Me: Henry? Why?

...

Me: What happens in episode five?!

****

April. 25.2020

Henry: My mother would like to know if you do savoury baking as well as sweet

Me: You told your mother about me? How cute

Henry: I wanted to get ahead of any rumours of assault that may have come out after our first meeting

Me: Are you sure you weren't gushing about the amazing woman who knocked you off your feet?

Henry: I believe it was me who knocked you off your feet

Me: Physically, yes. But emotionally, it was definitely the other way around

Henry: And what makes you think that?

Me: Whisking me up into those big strong arms trying to impress me, wanting to check over my ankle as an excuse to get your hands on me. Clearly, you were enamoured

Henry: Ah, yes, you've caught me. When I meet a woman I'm attracted to, the first thing I want to do is touch her ankles

Me: Back in the Victorian times that was quite a treat

Henry: Men tend to aspire to a bit more than that these days 😉

Henry: But I will admit you captured my attention as soon as you stopped hyperventilating

Me: Not my best first impression...Perhaps you should raise your standards

Henry: Well, it's quite flattering when a woman literally forgets how to breathe at the sight of you

Me: Ha ha very funny 🙄

Henry: Are you ever going to answer my question?

Me: Yes, I do savoury baking as well from time to time

Me: I actually made calzones tonight

Me:

Henry: I like your dinosaur apron

Me: Ha I forgot I was wearing that

Me: It would seem the best gift for a baker is novelty aprons, I have a whole variety of them

Henry: Very cute. You and the aprons 😉

Me: Awe, shucks. You're sweet. Anyway, why did your mum want to know about what I bake?

Henry: She was trying to make focaccia bread and had some difficulties

Me: I told you bread was hard

Me: Best tip for focaccia is to not over handle it. Don't knead it too much because you want to keep the air in. Letting it rise in the pan you're going to bake it in helps so you don't have to move it

Henry: Great, I'll pass that on. Thank you

Me: You're welcome. I'm here for all your baking kneads 😂

Henry: Very funny 🙄

****

April. 30. 2020

Me: I finished your show

Henry: And what did you think?

Me: Let's just say I'll be sneaking into your house to steal that script

Henry: 😂

Henry: I'll make sure I hide it somewhere safe then

Henry: But I'm glad you liked it!

Me: I did! Honestly, I don't watch or read much fantasy stuff, but it was really intriguing

Me: And I did enjoy episode five 😉

Henry: I thought you might 😉

Henry: I had to dehydrate for three days to look like that

Me: ...what? are you serious?

Henry: Yes, it makes your skin super thin so it just sits on your muscles and they look extra toned

Me: Okay, I don't like it now! That sounds super dangerous

Henry: Ha ha well, it's not absolutely no water for the whole three days, you taper it off

Henry: But it does get quite miserable by the time you're ready to shoot on the fourth day. You can practically smell any water nearby 😂

Me: 😒

Me: I still don't like that

Me: I've seen you in person and I very much doubt that those muscles don't look sufficiently massive on camera without silly tricks like that

Henry: It was a small price to pay for such an iconic scene

Henry: It's right out of the video game. I should have had my feet up on the front, but the bath was the wrong shape and that would have gotten a bit too graphic for our rating

Me: Ha! Not a fan of full-frontal?

Henry: I'll admit I've come quite close, but no, no full-frontal

Me: When did you come quite close?

Henry: During the Tudors there were quite a few racy scenes

Me: Hm, which episodes exactly?

Henry: Ha ha you'll have to figure that out for yourself I'm afraid

Me: Darn, well it was worth a try 😉

Henry: It would hardly be fair for you to see that much of me without returning the favour

Me: There might be a few videos floating around the internet that you could track down

Me: Kidding, by the way. Just realized that we probably don't know each other well enough for you to know I'm not that kind of girl

Henry: Would it be wrong if I was a little disappointed?

Me: Yes, don't be a dirty old man

Henry: Old?!

Me: I did some research, you're going to be 37 in five days 😲

Henry: That's hardly old and, not to be rude, but you can't be too far behind

Me: Never try to guess a woman's age, Mr. Cavill, it gets you into trouble

Henry: I said I wasn't trying to be rude!

Me: I'm 30, I'll be 31 in August

Me: Practically a baby still compared to you

Henry: You keep telling yourself that

Me: Careful what you say or you won't get the amazing birthday cake I have planned for you

Henry: Sorry, sorry, I'm old and you are far more youthful

Me: 😚

[sherrybaby14]

I Watched You Change

This is for YoungMoneyMilla’s 9k celebration.  Congrats darling!

Prompt:  Change (in the house of flies) by the Deftones (This song reminds me of Queen of the Damned, but I am too scared to write for Anne Rice so I went with the next thing)

Summary:  Dracula AU.  Victorian England.  After being neglected by your fiancé a certain vampire sets his eyes on you

Warnings:  Angst, Dub-con, Mind Control, Cheating, Blood, Death

Pairings: Vampire!Bucky x  reader, Clint x reader

A/N:  This story has 2 endings.  You get to choose your own adventure.  They are marked!!  

                  The air in your lungs burned, your body not wanting to release the oxygen. This was important, you had to talk to him, you could do this.  Right before you were about to pass out from holding in your breath you straightened your back and lifted your chin, releasing the air as you strode toward your fiancé.

                 “Clint, I have to speak to you.”  When you opened the door to the parlor you were not surprised to see the faces of four shocked men.  

                 Women were never to interrupt, but you’d had enough.

                 “Y/N.” He rose from the couch.  “Now is not the time.  I will find you later.”

                 The other men went back to looking at the papers on the table.  Dr. Banner not hiding his annoyance with you.  

                 “There is no time!” Damned the proper etiquette. “You’re never around, and when you are it’s with these men.  We are supposed to build a life together and I have no clue what yours is anymore.”

                 A glance to the papers on the table showed a drawing of a fanged creature, some maps, and medieval-looking weapons.  A hand was around your arm and you looked into the face of your fiancé, his lips turned into a scowl as he dragged you out of the room.  

                 “I am working toward ensuring that life is one of purity and safety.”  He spoke through gritted teeth as he led you back into the hall.  “One where I can protect you.”  

                 “Protect me?”  You pulled your arm away.  “From what?”

                 “There is evil here.” Clint looked over his shoulder, almost ensuring his partners couldn’t hear. “I fear that the minds of women can’t grasp this level of danger.  I need you to trust me.  We are closing in on the beast.  Once he is killed we will be wed.”

                 “Beast?  Killed?” Your head started to swim with his cryptic words, let alone the insult against your gender. “What are you talking about?  You sound mad.”

                 “I’ve said too much.”  His expression melted into pity as he cupped your cheek.  “We have to return to the city for a few nights. It’s safer for you here.”  

                 “Now you’re leaving?”  You supposed it didn’t make much difference since he was never around either way.  

                 “When I return, things will go back to how they were.” He placed a kiss on your forehead. “Promise me, you won’t go outside after dark and wear your crucifix?”  

                 “Mr. Barton.”  Dr. Banner appeared in the doorway. “If we wish to act on this lead, we must prepare.”  

                 You glanced around your fiancé and swore you saw Tony Stark brandishing a crossbow.  Your mouth hung open as you looked up at Clint, desperate for an explanation.  

                 “Patience Y/N.”  He gave another quick kiss before leaving with Dr. Banner, shutting the door to the parlor behind him.  

                 At the start of summer, you thought it was kind Mr. Stark offered you a room at his country estate.  Memories of your arrival and how vibrant Clint had seemed further away than the ten weeks they were.  

                 Once Dr. Banner arrived it was like all the men had gone insane with some private obsession.  Clint no longer snuck into your bedroom in the evening, showed up for dinners or teas, and he halted all talk of your wedding plans, which you’d hoped would be set for some time in the early fall.  

                 Again you found yourself alone.  In a big empty estate.  You debated on finding one of the servants, but they did not hide their annoyance at your presence and refused to treat you like their equal. That drove you nuts, especially since you were nowhere near the class of Tony Stark.  

                 The tears of frustration were starting to pool, but if Clint saw you cry that would only feed into the stereotype he had recently painted you into. The sensitive woman who must be shielded from everything.

                 The suffocating feeling returned.  You grabbed your hat and purse from next to the door before yanking it open and walking out into the summer sunshine.  

                 A walk would do you good.  Calm your rage.  The town was only a kilometer away. Maybe seeing the faces of some people not obsessed with ‘beasts’ would help.

~~

               Clint’s words kept circling you as you tried to make sense out of them. The minds of women can’t grasp this level of danger. More like the mouths of men can’t explain what the hell was going on. You brought your hand to your lips at the thought.  

                 Such immoral words would never leave your mouth, but you couldn’t help picture the look on Clint’s face had you spoken them out loud.   There would be a rage in his eyes, he’d never hit you, but probably think about it as his jaw clenched.  For some reason, the image of the reaction excited you.  

                 “Excuse me Miss?”  A voice shook you from your fantasy.  

                 You looked up at a striking man.  He had long brown hair slicked back, he wore thick sunglasses and a proper suit with a hat that looked tailored enough to rival one of Mr. Stark’s outfits.  But the most peculiar thing was his sun umbrella in his gloved hand.  You hadn’t seen many men carry those.

                 “I have just arrived and I was looking for the solicitor’s office?  Could you point me in the right direction?”  The man’s glasses made it difficult to tell where his eyes were looking, but his voice sent a chill down your spine.

                 You realized you were starring and looked down the street, more than familiar with the layout of the few shops and businesses in the small country town.  

                 “Yes.  It’s the third building on the opposite side of the street.”  You started walking.  “I am headed that way actually.”

                 “Is there a bookstore?” The man followed you.

                 “Excuse me?”  You didn’t know what he was implying.

                 “You look like someone well read.  In town unaccompanied, I assumed it was for a new book.”  He gave you a smile.  

                 “There is a bookstore, but unfortunately, I have read everything I care to that they have.”  You thought about his unaccompanied line.  

                 You were an engaged woman, maybe it was inappropriate to come to town by yourself.  What would Clint think? You walking down the street with another man. Internally you rolled your eyes, he was too busy hunting some beast to be worried about you.  

                 “That is a shame.”  Your companion stopped at the solicitor’s office.

                 In the window was a sign that read ‘Closed until Monday’.

                 “Would it be forward of me to ask you to accompany me to lunch?  I did notice a café down the street and I hate to eat alone?”  

                 His invitation made your mouth hang open, how brazen?  What did he take you for?  Some harpy?

                 “I do not believe my fiancé would appreciate that.” You started to turn.  “Good day sir.”  

                 “Apologies.” He called out before you got a step away. “I meant no harm, to you nor your fiancé. I am new to this country and clearly lacking in its social normalcies.  I understand women are all too aware of potential dangers around them.”

                 His word choice made your heart stop beating for a moment as you froze and turned back to him.  

                 “What did you say?  About dangers?”  You could not remember the last time you were so interested in an answer.

                 “As a species, women are much more practical when it comes to the evils in this world.”  He stepped toward you.  “And thus I clothe my naked villainy.”  

                 A smile spread to your lips as you let out a little laugh.  When was the last time that happened?  A smile or a chuckle?  

                 “Richard III.”  You nodded. “I’m impressed.”  

                 “And I am Count James Buchanan.”  He offered you an arm. “It was never my intention to offend.”

                 “I may have overreacted.”  You took his escort.  “Maybe a light lunch would be appropriate.  Especially if the conversation is about Shakespeare.”

                 “What is your favorite work?”  The Count asked.

                 You smiled, happy for once your brain wasn’t preoccupied with thoughts of your maddening fiancé.  

~~

               The lunch flew by as quickly as the conversation. You lost track of time as the world faded away with the sun.  It was only when the sound of thunder shook the café you were jarred from the Count’s attention.  

                 “Blast!”  You rose from the table and looked out the window as the rain pelted down.  “I am afraid our afternoon must come to an end. I promised my fiancé to return by dark.”

                 “Wise man, obtaining such a promise.”  He looked out the window with you. “It was a pleasure meeting you, Miss. Y/L/N.  I believe your fiancé must be a very wise man for receiving your affections.”

                 The meaning of his words was not lost on you and again brought on shivers.  When you glanced over at him he finally removed his sunglasses and eyes too blue to be natural starred back.  It almost made you gasp, the handsomeness of this man.      

                 “Thank you for the company and compliments.” You didn’t look away from his hypnotic gaze.  “I was hoping I could ask you for a favor Count Barnes?”

                 “James.” He gave you a knowing glance. “And whatever your heart desires.”  

                 “Could I borrow your umbrella?”  You gave a half smile. “I walked here, and would hate to catch a cold in the rain.”

                 “No.”  His response surprised you.  “I have a carriage.  I will drive you home.”  

                 Before you could respond he was outside, waving his hand to the end of the street.  The horse and buggy arrived right when you walked out.  

                 The driver did not jump down as James held open the door for you.  It would be rude to decline, and with the weather, you were sure Clint would want you to accept the ride.  

                 “I’m at the Stark estate.”  You told James as you sat against the plush leather.  

                 “Anthony Stark, I didn’t realize he was engaged. Won’t he be thrilled when he finds out I’ve spent the afternoon with his fiancé.”  James took a seat next to you.

                 “He is not engaged.  Clint Barton, he’s an old acquaintance of Mr. Stark.”  You felt silly for not explaining yourself earlier. “But you know Mr. Stark too?”  

                 “Of course.  He is the reason I picked this countryside town.  He and his friends practically chased me out Romania to get me here, your fiancé included.”  He gave you a wink.  “Mr. Barton. I’ve never had the pleasure of meeting him in person, but I have heard he is quite strong and reputable.”  

                 “He is.”  You wanted to say ‘was’, but bit your tongue.

                 “It’s a strange coincidence.  After dropping you off my plans were to head to the Stark estate.” James removed his hat. “That solicitor has the keys to my new estate.  It appears I am homeless until Monday.  I was hoping Tony wouldn’t mind boarding me for the next two nights.”  

                 Even you didn’t call Mr. Stark Tony.  It made your eyebrows rise at the informalness.  

                 “Unfortunately Mr. Stark went to London for the weekend.” You gave a frown.  

                 “Is your fiancé acting as master of the estate in his stead?”  James’ confidence didn’t falter at the news.

                 “Actually, I am the only guest at the moment.”  You bit your lip.  Was it your place to offer Tony’s residence to the Count?

                 “I see.”  James nodded. “I am sure that there is an inn I can find a room at.  I would hate to put you in that position.”

                 “Nonsense.”  After how kind he had been to you, and the fact he called Mr. Stark Tony, there was no reason to make him stay at that bug infested inn.  “You are more than welcome to stay at Mr. Stark’s estate.  I will have one of the servants makes up a room for you as soon as we arrive.”  

                 “Thank you.  I am sure Tony would approve of your hospitality.”  James’ eyes flashed with his own approval.  “Does that mean we will be dining together this evening?”

                 Your heart fluttered at the thought, not over the food or the man himself, just the idea of company.  It had been so long.  

~~

               Dinner was just as pleasant as lunch, if not more so and you drank in every word your new friend spoke.  Some of the servants raised an eye while serving the food, but nobody objected to your offering the Count a room.

                 “Would you like a nightcap?”  You rose from the table and started toward the parlor.  

                 “I really would.”  James stifled a yawn. “But I fear I am in need of sleep after today’s activities.”

                 “Of course.”  You felt foolish, forgetting your guest’s travels.  

                 “In fact, I will likely sleep through the day tomorrow I am so exhausted.  Please forgive my rudeness if that occurs.”  James stood up and left his seat, walking with you.

                 “Very understandable.”  You tried to hide your disappointment, knowing it was selfish but you wanted company again.  

                 “But I was hoping, tomorrow evening, the two of us could have a formal dinner?”  He offered you his arm as you walked through the hall to the staircase, which you gladly took.  “I’ve brought my dress coats and I would love to experience an English formal.”

                 “For two?”  You smiled. “I’m not sure you will get the entire experience.”

                 “Humor me.”  James climbed the stairs, leading you up.

                 “I suppose I’ll check with the servants in the morning.” You had a feeling they would jump at the chance, at least the chef. She’d been bored stiff whining about making quick meals all summer.  

                 “Well good night Miss Y/L/N.”  James stopped outside his bedroom, you hadn’t realized you’d walked this far, much passed your own.  

                 “Y/N, please.”  Your eyes didn’t leave him as his lips touched the top of your hand.

                 A lump came in the back of your throat and you swallowed it down.  

                 “Goodnight Y/N.”  James dropped your hand.  

                 Every nerve in your body flared for some unknown reason.  Tingles spread across your shoulders as you spun to walk to your room, muttering a goodbye.

               Thoughts went to tomorrow’s dinner.  You could distract yourself with getting ready and maybe the workers would let you help set the table or something, but they would probably fight you off wanting to tame their own boredom.  

                 At the back of your brain, there was a clawing this was wrong.  You shouldn’t be excited about dining with anyone but your fiancé.  But you told yourself you would be dining with him if he were here.  And besides, as the only current guest of the estate, it was your job to entertain Mr. Stark’s friends.  

~~

               He meant to murder her the second they were in the carriage.  Leave her dead body on the side of the road for the men to find as a warning, but she proved to be much more than the delicate flower her husband talked of.  

                 And the way she smelled, Bucky could only imagine how good she must taste.  He ran his tongue over his lips as he undressed in Tony Stark’s mansion.  He imagined how enraged the would-be vampire hunter would be if he knew.  

                 Dr. Banner was responsible for this, bringing him here into poor Y/N’s life.  They should have left him be, but his arch nemesis thought if he got a gang together maybe he would stand a chance this time.  The poor mortals had no clue how powerful Bucky really was and he had no intention of giving them a demonstration.

                 Still, they had to be taught a lesson.  Killing vampire hunters tended to create more vampire hunters.  Usually hunting loved ones was enough of a deterrent, but it seemed nobody else had any family but Clint Barton.  His fiancé death would send the perfect message to the others, but Bucky didn’t want her dead any longer.  He wanted something more.  

                 He was certain she was asleep by now.  It had been hours since they parted, but she was still on his mind.  There was a risk in using the hallway, he was certain the staff was already suspicious of him.  So he went to the window and with minimal effort crawled across the stone siding toward her room.  

                 The warm summer air meant the panes were open and he went inside with the breeze.  There she was in her bed, a light sweat on her forehead as she tossed among the sheets.  Her nightgown was simple and white, clearly lacking in the wealth of this house.  He enjoyed how thin it was, as it stuck to her skin, the outline of her curves apparent.  

                  He couldn’t help himself as he dipped into the bed next to her.  Her lids started to flutter and he couldn’t have that.  

                 “Shhhh,” he ordered. “Sleep.”  

                 There was a relaxation to her body as Bucky position her between his legs with her on her side.  

                 “What are you dreaming of Love?”  He brushed her hair back and inhaled her intoxicating aroma.  

                 “You.” There was no hesitation in her response.

                 “I like that very much.”  Bucky ran his hand down her bare arm until he got to her gown and started to bunch it up.  “What about me?”  

                 “Kissing you. Touching you.” Her lips puckered at the last word.  

                 “Touching me?”  The white thing gathered around her waist, leaving her beautiful cunt open for his hand.  “I have a better idea.”  

                 She let out a moan as his fingers worked between her folds.  Bucky smiled at how wet she was for him, eager and inviting.   He teased her entrance with his finger, and she lifted her hips.  

                 “The first time I enter you there it won’t be with a finger.”  Bucky dragged along her slit, eliciting a disappointed whimper.  “That doesn’t mean I will leave you wanting.”

                 He pressed down on her tender bud and she gasped as her hands scratched at his chest.  She started rocking against him, grinding down on his hard cock with her movements while he circled and rubbed her clit.    

                 “Cum for me.”  He cared more about her release than his own, a strange occurrence for him. “Tell me what you need.”  

                 “You.”  There was a coo to her voice, but she rocked faster against him.  

                 Bucky increased the pressure and his motions, harder and faster.  Soon the gasping came again and the features on her face tightened.  She was close and he planned on tasting her ecstasy.  He opened his mouth and bared his fangs.    

                 The second her climax came over her Bucky removed his hand and flipped her on to her back.  His thigh pressed against her apex while his teeth sank into her neck.

                 He tasted her orgasm, a rush of pent up repression and denial mixed without any shame or remorse.  It was enough that he felt his cock spasm in his pants as her blood rushed down his throat.  

                 Her death would be a waste.  Bucky knew right then and there he had better plans in store for her.  

~~

               “Miss.”  There was a handshaking you.  “Miss wake up.”  

                 You struggled to open your eyes.  The room seemed extra bright and you shielded your eyes.

                 “What time is it?”  You begrudgingly lifted yourself up on to an elbow.  “Who are you?”

                 “Count Barnes told us about the dinner tonight.” She wore one of Tony’s uniforms. “I am here to help you dress.  It’s 5 pm. Dinner is at 7, so we should get started.”

                 “Five pm?”  That made you jolt up in bed. “I’ve slept the day away.”  

                 “You do look a little ill.”  The woman tapped your neck. “And it looks like a spider may have taken a bite.”  

                 You stood up and went to the mirror.  There was an air of tiredness to your features and two strange puncture marks on your neck.  It must have been a huge spider.  

                 “Please don’t cancel the dinner.”  The girl appeared behind you. “The staff has been dreadfully bored and Count Barnes is paying all of us a very generous additional sum for tonight.”  

                 “I am tired, but I feel more relaxed than I have in months.”  It was like all the tension in your body ran out.  “I wouldn’t dream of canceling on the Count.”  

                 You would have to thank him when you saw him, especially since you said you would inform the servants.  

                 “He had a special dress sent over for you.”  The maid went to a bag hanging.  “I don’t even think Mr. Stark knows how to have something made so quickly.”  

                 She lifted the bag to show the most exquisite piece of clothing you’d ever seen.  It was the right color for you and the details were extraordinary.  

               “I think we should do your hair up.”  The main went on for her plans for you and you nodded along, eager to participate in the night’s festivities.  

~~

               When you saw James he looked more handsome than you remembered, his suit the finest you’d ever seen.  

                 Dinner was another perfect conversation where it felt like he hung on every word you said.  

                 “If I ask for a nightcap will you accompany this time?”  You rose from the table.

                 “Only if you ask nicely.”  James stood as well.  

                 “Please, won’t you join me for a drink?”  You waited for him to offer his arm.  

                 “I must say, that dress looks stunning on you.” He looked you up and down. “Mr. Barton is a lucky man.”  

                 Hearing your fiance’s name made you cringe. It was the first time you’d given him any thought all evening.  

                 “Yes.  You will come to the wedding I hope?”  You looked at James and saw a twinge of disappointment, making you feel even guiltier.

                 “I hope to play a large part in your wedding.” The disappointment vanished.  

                 “Oh.  Of course. I forget you’re acquaintances with all the men.” You walked into the parlor and left James to go pour the drinks.

                 There was a scratching sound and then music filled the room.  You smiled as you looked over your shoulder at James with phonograph.  

                 “It’s a wonderful invention.”  You turned and handed him a drink.  

               “Dance with me.”  He took both glasses from your hands and set them down.  

                 “I don’t think…”

                 “Please.”  He held his hand out.  

                 You knew it was wrong, but you found yourself accepting his proposal and slipping your hand into his, while his other went around your waist and brought you closer.  

                 “You’re very special Y/N.”  James led you as you swayed.  “More than any human recognizes.”  

                 “I’m just a girl.”  You felt a heat growing in your heart between his compliments and the way he was touching you.  

                 “No.”  His had left yours and went to your chin, nudging it so that your eyes were on his. “You are much more than that.  You are a delicacy. One I would very much like to taste. Again.”

                 Hazy visions of laying on top of James, his hand on your most private areas.  The release the ecstasy, the bite on your neck.  

                 “What are you?”  You were curious, not scared, not angry, nothing else.  

                 “I am the only one who can satisfy you.  Give you what you crave.  Knowledge, equality, travel, the world.”  He leaned in closer.  “All you have to do is join me.”    

                 “You’re the beast they’re hunting.”  Things fell into place.

               The crossbow, the picture on the table of the fanged creature, the sun umbrella, the sunglasses, sleeping all day, the puncture marks on your neck.  

                 “You’re a vampire.”  You understood why Clint was acting so mad, had he told you the truth you never would have believed him.  “Am I under your spell?”

                 “Not at the moment.” The music stopped but you continued to sway.  

                 “Then why am I not scared?”  You kept your eyes on his, having no reason to trust him but doing so anyway.  

                 “Because you’re different.”  His gaze did not falter. “Leave with me, tonight.  Let me take you into the darkness.”  

                 He was asking, but you knew he didn’t need to. A mountain of feelings came toppling down.  He was a monster, you were engaged.  He was interesting, you were lonely.  He excited you, you were amazed by him.  Would a no mean death and did you even want to say no?  While your thoughts continued to scramble your heat knew the answer.  

                 You opened your mouth to speak when the door to the parlor flung open.  

                 “Y/N GET BACK!” Clint held out a giant crucifix.

                 James let out a screech and moved you behind his back.  Clint wasted no opportunity jumping forward, a wooden stake in his hand.  It came centimeters to James’ heart when he let go of you to defend himself.  You fell to the floor with a bump and scooted back against the wall.  

                 The two men struggled with each other.  The wooden stake going closer to James before another blow pushed it away.  

                 “STOP!  You’re hurting him!”  You screamed out from the floor.  

                 Both men looked at you.  

                 “Y/N run! Get out of here.”  Clint went back to trying to kill James.  

                 “Y/N you have a choice.  Make it.”  James didn’t sound nearly as winded as Clint.  

                 That’s when you realized this was all a show for your benefit.  James could have snapped Clit in two if he wanted.  That’s where this was headed.  Clint’s death.  James wanted you to do it, but could you?  

                 Two lives danced in front of your eyes literally. One a happy dutiful wife in the sunlight, the other a literal monster.   You knew the correct choice.  

                 Ignoring the faux struggle you walked over to the crossbow, the one Tony must have chosen to leave behind for some reason. It was loaded, all you to do was pull the trigger.  Without hesitation, you went over to the duo.  Neither of which were paying attention to you.  

                 “I wish there was another way.”  You sighed as you lined up and took your shot.

                 In an instant the struggle was over as the body hit the floor with a thud, your life forever changed.

 A/N:  We are going into a little bit of a choose your own adventure.  If you want to be a bad girl skip all the way to ***  

[Begin ending 1]

               “Y/N.”  Clint looked at you with shock.  “Thank God.”

                 He ran to you and tucked you against his chest, the entire time your eyes were glued to James, the arrow sticking out of his heart. His body started to shake and decay at a rapid rate, the beautiful face disappearing.  

                 “Where are the others?”  You didn’t notice the vampire hunting gang.

                 “London.  I just had a feeling that you needed me.”  Clint kissed the top of your head. “That it was wrong to leave you alone.  And I was right.”  

                 “Is it over now?  That he is dead.”  You pulled away and looked up at Clint.  

                 “It’s over.  Our lives are safe.”  He started to lead you out of the parlor.  “The others won’t believe it.”  

                 “Will you tell me the story?”  You looked at Clint. “Why was he here?”  

                 “For another time love.”  Clint squeezed you tight.  “You have had quite a night.  I’m sure you need some rest.”  

                 “To sleep, perchance to dream.”  You were still in a haze.

                 “What?”  Clint asked.

                 “Shakespeare.”  

                 “I’m not familiar.”  He tightened his shoulders as he led you to the stairs, away from what could have been.  

 ***

                 [Begin Ending 2]

                 A failed grunt came out of Clint as he tried to reach for the arrow in his back.  It was short lived as he collapsed dead.   You lowered the crossbow as James stepped over his body.  

                 His eyes bore into yours with pride and amazement. When he reached you he cupped your cheek and lifted your chin, pressing his mouth to yours.  You dropped the weapon and put your arms around his neck, returning the kiss.  

                 “What a choice.”  He broke the kiss as he hoisted you in the air,  your skirts going to your waist as you wrapped your legs around him.

                 “There was never a choice to make.  You would always win.”   You went back to kissing him.

                 This was the kissing you’d always dreamed of, deep and unbridled passion.   You would spend eternity with someone capable of making you feel this way.  

                 You squealed when there was a sharp pang on your tongue,  followed by the taste of copper, then something else, something warm and tangy. James had bitten both of your tongues open and your blood swooshed together in your mouth.  

                 It made you moan as he set you down on the couch. He moved faster than your eyes could keep up with, undressing and then you.  It was dizzying to be naked so quickly, but in a second he bared his fangs and sunk them deep into your neck.

                 A moan left your lips as you felt your blood dripping down your back.  Warm and so filled with life.   Your head started to lull to the side as your soul slid into James’ mouth.  With it all your hang up and pretentions.  

                 Then he pulled your head away and looked at you as a nail ran across his chest, spilling his own.  You didn’t need instructions as your mouth went to him, lapping it up and taking as much of him in as you could.  He tasted like love.   Something you could never get enough and never quite understood how it felt.

                 He spun around and pulled you across his lap, straddling him.   You’d never been in such a lewd position before and loved it as he lined up his cock with your cunt and lowered you down.  

                 James tilted his head to the side and again ran a fingernail, opening up his vein.  You wasted no time dropping your head to taste him again while your body bounced up and down his shaft.  

                 Soon his teeth returned to your neck, crunching down again.   It made you cry out and lose your concentration on your own feeding.   But then the tingling in your pussy began to grow in a way you never experienced before.  

                 James was guiding you, up and down, back and forth. You started gasping, desperate for the release.  Certain that you were going to burst into nothingness.  When the pleasure came it made James suck down harder and you moaned uncontrollably.  Your orgasm was soon met with his own and he stilled your movements but continued to drink from your throat.  

                 Finally he lifted his head, showing his blood-soaked chin and lips.  You imagined you looked much the same when he pressed his mouth to yours, his cock softening inside of you.  

                 The deep kiss turned into a little peck and you fell forward, resting your head against James’ chest, the blood drying.  

                 “We have to get out of here.”  He kissed your head and slid you off of his lap.  “The others won’t be far behind.”  

                 “Where will we go?”  You weren’t sure you were capable of standing as sleep started to tug you down.  

                 “Wherever we like.”  He gave you a devilish grin and kissed your forehead.  “Sleep now.”  

                 You had no clue where you would be when you awoke but were ready to follow him into the night.          

[ugly-crying-over-bucky-barnes]

Burned Part 16

Summary:  Alfie Solomons is in need of a secretary. Tommy Shelby mentions a young woman in need of employment. From there the two step into a dangerous dance together.

16: The sound of joy and gladness, the sound of a groom and the sound of a bride.

           My Dearest Alfie,

           Tuesday is our wedding day. I’m anxious to see you. I wonder if you’re happy yet nervous like I am. But there’s nothing to worry about. I know I’m truly marrying my soulmate. My best friend. The man who makes me feel so special.

           I love you,

           Soon-to-be Mrs. Solomons

           Alfie smiled and read through the letter a few times. He studied her familiar handwriting, the swooping penmanship that danced across the page. Looping letters and embellished swirls to finish them off. Ishmael had delivered it to him that night, the night before the wedding. The week had dragged on and it was hard to bear another night. But the reward for his seldom-practiced patience was worth it. Absence truly did make the heart grow fonder.

           Alfie picked up the framed picture of Louise that always sat on his desk in their Camden home. Her soft smile shone even in the black and white photograph. His thumb grazed over the glass frame and he couldn’t wait to see her in white the next day.

~~~~~~~~~~~

           Louise never imagined she would wear a wedding dress. When she married Daniel, she wore one of her everyday dresses for the legal ceremony. But she assumed it was love so she was content. After realizing her mistake, she didn’t see a way out and that meant she would never really find the man she was meant to be with. When she met Alfie, she couldn’t have guessed he was the one for her. Even when she fell for him, she didn’t imagine herself marrying him until he admitted he loved her. Now the seemingly impossible was coming true.

           She had the wedding dress made to reflect her mother’s dress. Lily and Robert’s wedding portrait hung in the parlor of Inglewood. Lily wore a Victorian style gown with a train that trailed out of frame; the front was a typical ball gown skirt with a gathered front. The fitted corset and long sleeves were very outdated. So Louise enlisted the help of Nessa, a skilled dressmaker in Camden.

           She’d cried when she first tried on the dress. The skirt of the dress was much slimmer than her mother’s but it ended in a similar train. The bodice was fitted with quarter sleeves to both honor her mother and keep it modest. It was simple but beautiful and Louise was overcome with happiness.

           “Did you sleep at all last night?” Evelyn asked as she carefully took out the curlers in Louise’s hair. “I heard you get up a few times.”

           “Sorry, I didn’t mean to wake you.” Louise winced. “I just kept tossing and turning, I thought it would be better to walk around.”

           “S’alright.” She smiled. “I can imagine you’re excited.” Her delicate fingers made sure every curl was perfectly in place.

           “I’m sure you’ll be just as excited the night before your wedding with Ishmael,” Louise replied coyly.

           The young woman blushed and shrugged. “If he ever proposes. My mother is getting more impatient than I am.” She giggled and gathered up the curlers to put away.

           “He will soon.” Louise knew this for a fact. Alfie had heavily hinted to his driver that he should grow a pair and propose. This included several threats that if Ishmael hurt Evelyn, Alfie would beat the shit out of him. But that was to be expected.

           Evelyn smiled and sat back down to pin the veil into Louise’s hair. “I can’t wait to see Mr. Solomon’s face when he sees you.”

           “I can bet what he’ll say.” Louise laughed softly as Alfie’s voice echoed in her head. The same phrase he used whenever she showed him a dress or lingerie piece that he found particularly pleasing. Fucking hell.

           “And you’ll be off to Paris tomorrow morning! How exciting.” Evelyn sighed softly and made sure the veil hung perfectly.

           “I’ll make sure to buy you something nice,” Louise promised and ran her fingertips down the lace veil. She took Evelyn’s hand to stand up, making sure she didn’t step on the hem of the dress. “What time is it now?”

           “Just after noon.” She answered and knelt down to adjust the train of Louise’s dress. “They should be ready downstairs soon. I think Alfie's greeted all of the guests.”

           Louise had greeted the guests earlier that morning. An array of people, some she knew and some she had never met before. They were all gracious in their blessings even if Louise wasn’t the typical Jewish bride. She had a feeling that those who really had a problem with it either wouldn’t show up or wouldn’t say anything in fear of Alfie’s reaction. They gave her wishes in Yiddish, some of which Louise started to pick up on. She hadn’t mentioned it to Alfie, but she’d tried to learn the language of his parents and Russian as well. It was slow because of the unfamiliar alphabet, but there were three words she learned by heart. The words she would say to Alfie a million times over.

~~~~~~~~~~~

           Inglewood’s garden was bursting with colors. Birds fluttered around the lawns and bumblebees buzzed from rose to rose. That afternoon, the hum of wedding guests joined the calming but joyful noise of the countryside. It was a warm day, not a cloud in the sky and hardly a breeze to feel. It was as if Alfie had threatened Mother Nature herself to make the day absolutely perfect for his bride.

           But he was still nervous. He fidgeted in the front room, waiting to see Louise and perform the Badeken. An older man employed by Alfie was officiating the wedding so Jewish traditions had to be adjusted. At that point, the gangster was too anxious to marry Louise that he hardly cared what people thought about the event. He was just itching to tie the knot and escape to Paris with her.

           The door opened and Evelyn nodded for her employer to come into the parlor. The veiling was a tradition that he wanted to share alone with Louise. But it was tradition to have family members around. So Evelyn and Ollie stayed in the parlor as Alfie entered. Louise was standing near her parent’s wedding portrait. She positively glowed when she smiled.

           Alfie stopped dead in his tracks. His chest tightened and he inhaled sharply. Everything about her looked like a dream. He had no idea she looked so perfect in white. For a brief moment, he wondered if he was still awake and being visited by an angel.

           “Fucking hell.” He whispered.

           Louise giggled softly and reached out a hand to him. “You look so handsome.” She murmured.

           He had to remember how to move his feet to approach her. He took her gloved hand and kissed the satin over her knuckles. “You look fucking gorgeous, love.” He shook his head in disbelief. “Can’t believe you’re marrying me.”

           “Who else would I marry, you silly man?” She touched his cheek. “I only love you.”

           “Say it again.” He pled softly. He needed to hear those words from her. There was no way in hell he'd ever get tired of hearing them come out of her mouth.

           “I love you.” She repeated herself in Yiddish.

           His lips parted and his eyes widened in shock. “Where’d you learn that from, clever lass?”

           She only shrugged and smiled coyly. It was a little surprising that he hadn’t seen any of the books she’d been sneakily reading to learn the language.

           He laughed and kissed her forehead. “I love you.” He echoed in his native tongue. He touched his forehead to hers for a moment, savoring the quiet moment with her. “Are you ready?”

           She nodded, her skin brushing against his. “More than you’ll know.”

           He smiled warmly and reached up to place the veil over her face. He kissed her hand one more time. “See you out there, then.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~`

           “The sound of joy and gladness, the sound of a groom and the sound of a bride.”

           Most of the wedding guests had never seen Alfie Solomons smiling so much. They were much more accustomed to the hardened man. But he softened considerably when he was standing beside Louise. Not that he was paying any attention to the people around him. He only had eyes for his wife. And once he shattered the glass under his foot, he realized he was a married man. Everything his mother had ever wanted for him was starting to fall in place.

           ‘Mazel tov’ echoed across the lawns of Inglewood, adding to the joyous summer afternoon.

           Alfie lifted Louise’s veil and touched her cheek. Her hazel eyes were warm and shining in the sunshine. He said fuck it to tradition and kissed her so everyone could see. The world needed to know that Louise was now his and he was hers.

~~~~~~~~~~~

           While the reception commenced, Alfie and Louise retreated to their bedroom to observe the Yichud tradition. But he promised her that the first time they made love, as a married couple would be in Paris.

           “Mr. Solomons?”

           “Yes, Mrs. Solomons?” He beamed and shut the door behind him. A few of his men stood guard at the stairs to keep the rest of the wedding party at bay.

           “Everything was perfect.” She drew him close and kissed him deeply. The day had brought her into such a state of bliss. There wasn't anything else to think about other than how much she adored her husband. It seemed Inglewood had the ability to completely remove her from the chaos that was London.

           He took her face in his hands, indulging in every sensation that rushed through his bloodstream. When they parted for a breath, he affectionately stroked her cheek. “Nothing but the best for me wife.”

           “Will you finally dance with me tonight?” She asked hopefully. “I think you’ve kept me waiting long enough.”

           He chuckled and brushed a curl away from her face. “Men and women usually don’t dance together at Jewish weddings.”

           “Then dance with me here.” Louise didn't want to have Alfie go through any more grief than he already had about his interfaith wedding. A few men teased him about it and he nearly blew up. Some of his mother's friends scolded him. But he wasn't swayed.

           “Can’t hear the music from up here.” He shrugged. “Guess we’ll have to dance downstairs in front of everyone.”

           “Alfie, your friends and family will never let you hear the end of it.” She sighed and shook her head.

           “Well, it’s our fucking wedding, innit? They can all go home if they don’t like it. N’fact we could just sneak away now and go to Paris early.” His eyes lit up with mischief.

           “We have tickets for the morning, not tonight. You’ll have to be patient and entertain your guests until then.” She scolded teasingly. Her arms looped around his neck to keep him close.

           “Rather be entertaining you, love.” He growled playfully and scooped her up in his arms.

           “Mr. Solomons!” She squealed. “I’m a married woman!”

           He laughed and set her down on one of the sofas in the master bedroom. “Have to say though, we’ve neglected one of me favorite English traditions.”

           “And what would that be?” She tilted her head to the side as he knelt down in front of her.      

           “S’a little scandalous for this lot, but I’ve got you all to myself, don’t I?” He slyly slipped a hand under her skirt.

           Louise jumped a little in surprise but didn’t stop him. “Alfred Solomons, are you attempting to steal my garter?” She accused in faux shock, pressing a hand over her heart.

           He replied by hooking her leg over his shoulder. “Was patient this week, weren’t I?” He grinned and continued to run his fingers up her leg, just barely grazing over the sheer stockings.

           “I suppose you were.” A deep red blush spread over her cheeks. Electricity shot up her spine and made her shiver. “You stayed in Camden like you were supposed to. I half expected you to show up before the week was over to come and see me anyway. I guess you really restrained yourself. I know you probably missed sleeping next to me.”

           “Yeah, instead I had Cyril taking up most of the fucking bed." He shook his head. "And after this, I hafta go out and entertain this lot. And I ain't really looking forward to it, right, 'cause s'fucking dull, innit?” He pulled a bratty face until he reached her garter, snug against her thigh. With a smug smile, he tugged it down to her ankle. Taking care so it didn’t snag, he guided the lace garment over her heel.

           “Are you going to put that back?” She cocked an eyebrow.

           “Nah, love.” He stood up and pocketed the garter with a sneaky smirk. “S’mine now. Finders keepers and all.” He flashed a grin and held a hand out to her.

           She took his hand to stand. “Cheeky.”

           “You wouldn’t have me any other fucking way.” He kissed her hand, his blue eyes looking up to her. “C’mon then, I’ll show you how fucking awful of a dancer I am.”

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

           To save some face, Alfie and Louise ducked out of the reception and into the cool summer night. The sun had just fallen and the sky was dyed a lovely shade of rose and lavender. The celebration was in full swing, loud cheers of congratulations bounced back and forth even though the bride and groom had snuck off. It seemed Alfie’s community would give him shit about the marriage a little later. That night was reserved for having fun and enjoying the company of friends and family.

           The bright lights from the newly furnished Inglewood lit up the patio a bit. The music could be heard from outside and the sun had left a lasting warmth.

           Alfie drew his wife close, resting a hand on the small of her back and the other holding her hand. He made sure there was little space between them. He pressed his cheek to hers, the touch intimate and affectionate.

           “I think today might just be a dream.” Louise murmured as they began to sway back and forth together. It was a little offbeat from the music but they were more focused on each other’s touch.

           “Well if we wake up tomorrow and it’s a dream, we’ll have to do it again.” He smiled.

           She laughed softly and cuddled into his chest. “Alfie, you’ve made me so happy. I just want you to know that.”

           “You’ve made me happy too, Lou. Never thought I’d be married, yeah, let alone married to someone as perfect as you.” He kissed her temple and ran his fingers up and down her back.

           They danced for a bit in silence, content to only listen to each other’s heartbeats. After a song or two, Louise picked up her head and glanced over Alfie’s shoulder.

           “Oh, look!” She gasped softly. Her eyes lit up in joy.

           “What?” Alfie turned as she drew away from his arms and walked past him. He followed her into the garden. “You see something?”

           “It’s a lightning bug!” She made her way past large rose bushes, making sure her dress didn’t snag on the thorns.        

           Alfie stooped down to pick up the train of her dress. He was sure she didn’t want it to drag through the dirt but she seemed too thrilled about whatever she’d seen. “What’re you after, silly girl?”

           “Sh, you’ll scare it away.” She reached out into a thatch of foxgloves, cupping her hands over something Alfie hadn’t noticed yet. She turned and let him peer into her clasped palms.

           Inside a black bug began to light up. “Bloody hell, don’t see those in London.”

           “In the summer, my father and I would bring out jars to capture them in. Only for a little while, just to see them glow a bit.” She smiled warmly and watched the insect light up a few more times. “You knew it was summer when you’d see them in the gardens.” She opened her hands to let the lightning bug fly away.

           They both watched as it marked its path, blinking every so often. “I’m so happy to be back here.” Louise murmured and took Alfie’s hand. “Especially now that you’re here with me.”

           He lifted her hand to kiss her knuckles. Surrey was beautiful, the countryside was a great change of scenery from London. But Alfie knew that he could live anywhere as long as Louise was by his side.

~~~~~~~~~

           Louise was thirteen the last time she had seen Paris. She often dreamed of visiting again. Daniel scoffed and said it was a waste of time and money. What was there in Paris that wasn’t in London?

           Alfie seemed to appreciate the city much more. Frankly, he was just happy to see his wife in awe of all the sites. There was much to see and do, but shopping, museums, and the nightlife could wait.

           Alfie and Louise made themselves at home in the luxurious hotel suite that had a stunning view of the Eiffel Tower. Anticipation built as Louise took her time to freshen up after the journey. Never a patient man, Alfie did his absolute best to wait for his wife. When she finally came out of the bathroom, he found it was well worth the wait.

           Louise was wearing a silky lilac slip with lacy stockings. The number was feminine but the short skirt added a note of mischief that had Alfie reeling.

           “Fuck…” He uttered in a low growl. “Look at you.”

           “Amethyst.” She chewed on her lower lip and turned in a small circle to show off the little number.

           He dragged a hand over his mouth and walked towards her. “Yeah, can see that.” He lightly rested his hands on her hips worried he would tarnish such a delicate beauty with his calloused hands.

           “Don’t be gentle with me now, Mr. Solomons.” She purred. Her hands rested over his to make him assert his hold on her.

           “Oh…Lou.” Alfie groaned and captured her lips. Heeding her prompt, he didn’t hold back. He picked her up and pressed her against the wall.

           Louise’s lips bruised against his as she wrapped her legs around his waist and knotted her fingers in his hair. There was little to nothing holding them back at that point. They were alone, married, and far away from London and the bakery. The rest of the world could fuck itself.

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

           The newlyweds tested their limits, hardly breaking apart for the rest of the morning and afternoon. Finally, it took Louise’s hunger and Alfie’s sore hip to bring them out of honeymoon bliss. Alfie let his wife rest while he went to get her a late lunch from a café across the street. She ate in bed while he dozed off for a bit. Once she was satiated, she lazily kissed Alfie’s jaw and neck until he woke up.

           “Will you take me out for some fun, Mr. Solomons?” She murmured.

           “’Course, love.” He kissed her softly and sat up. “Fuck, where did the sun go?”

           Indeed, the sun had started to dip below the horizon. The night air rolled in, breezing through the open windows.

           “That’s what happens when you waste the day away with your wife in bed.” Louise teased and got up to get dressed.

           “Oi, ain’t a waste. In fact, I think fucking you is the best use of my time.” He grinned.

           She rolled her eyes. “Well, if I don’t tire you out with dancing then you can have another go at it tonight.”

           That was more than enough of a temptation to get Alfie up and out of bed.

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

           Alfie knew he had everything in the world. Used to be he was never satisfied. He always craved more power, more money, more control. But now, he felt content with what he had.

           Louise turned heads and Alfie was delighted to have her on his arm. She wore a gold dress influenced by all the new styles. Short fringe gathered around her waist and beads adorning the bodice. She wore a sparkling headband with feathered accents, heels, and the glow of a newlywed. Before they’d left, Alfie had slipped a diamond necklace on her. Yet another wedding gift and not the last one by any means.

           Paris was dazzling at night. The city stayed awake with the bustling nightlife. Loud jazz music could be heard from nearly every door they passed. After dinner, they wandered around, taking in the artistic night scene. They ended up by the Eiffel Tower in a small park, with a lawn overlooking the monument. It was a bit quieter than the streets, so they found a bench to sit for a while.

           Louise felt like the city was perfectly in sync with her own heartbeat. She glanced up at Alfie smiled warmly at him.

           “What?” He murmured softly.

           “I’m just very happy.” She replied.

           He kissed her forehead. “It’ll stay like this.” He promised and took her hand in his. “Everything I can do, yeah, to keep you happy, I’ll do. This bit with the Changrettas, I can deal with. But I won’t be doing anything to harm you.”

           Louise was content on ignoring that looming worry during her honeymoon. But it was difficult to turn a blind eye to something that could send London and Birmingham into chaos. She didn’t want to get caught up between the Shelbys and the Changrettas. And she didn’t want Alfie picking a side. But she was still unsure how the game was really played. “I know you can’t just step to the sidelines.” She looked down. “I know they’ll try to use you.”

           “Ain’t no one gonna use me, love.” He ran his thumb over her cheek. “They sure as hell ain’t fucking using you either. You’ll be protected.”

           “I’m not worried about that.” She shook her head. They were safe in Paris; hardly anyone knew they were there. But it was hard to shake the feeling that they were being watched by potential foes. “I’m worried about what will happen to you or the company.”

           “Lou, nothing’s gonna happen, eh?” He tucked his fingers under her chin so she would look at him again. “I just don’t this to make you regret marrying me, s’all.” He admitted sheepishly.

           “That won’t make me regret marrying you.” She studied his blue-green eyes. There was a hint of guilt in them that she couldn’t ignore. “As long as you’re honest with me I won’t ever regret this. We’re stronger together and I know we can weather any storm.”

           Alfie sighed lightly and rested his hand over hers. His wedding band glinting in the streetlamp light. “Well, won’t hafta worry for the rest of the trip.” He straightened up and steered the conversation away from London. “I want you to enjoy yourself, right, else it wouldn’t be a holiday would it?”

           Louise smiled and nodded. “I’m already enjoying myself. Although I think I’ll be rather sore in the morning.”

           He chuckled and wrapped an arm around her shoulders to pull her closer. “Well, it’s a honeymoon, innit? Got to get in all the fucking we can ‘fore we become an old married couple.” He teased.

           “Think we’ll ever lose the spark?” She rested against his shoulder and looked up to the top of the Tower where the French flag flew.

           “Nah.” He shook his head and kissed the top of her head. He knew that for a fact. Any morning he would wake up next to his Louise was a reminder of how kind God could be. But it was also a reminder of the things he could lose.

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Masterpost

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[lady-divine-writes]

All the Beautiful Pieces (Rated NC17) Chapter 10

Blaine Anderson is spending the summer after graduation flipping houses with his brother for Cooper’s total home renovation show. The show features the worst houses Cooper can buy, with Blaine playing the role of lackey so that Cooper can torture him in front of his viewers. The last house Blaine has to renovate is an original Victorian House in San Diego, CA, which is in terrible condition. But this house turns out to be more than just another job. It was once owned by a famous Vaudeville ventriloquist by the name of Andrew Smythe. It houses a very interesting collection of items - among them, two life-sized puppets. Blaine isn’t sure exactly why, but he’s drawn to them - especially to the one with the beautiful blue eyes. He convinces Cooper to give him the puppets, and Blaine starts to restore them. In the course of the restoration, Blaine finds out that neither puppet is simply a run-of-the-mill puppet, and Andrew Smythe was hiding a secret that will be the key to saving two lives.

Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7

Chapter 8 Chapter 9

Chapter 10 (7470 words)

A/N: Warning for a few dated homophobic slurs. I am determined to take the time during this quarantine to complete this re-write and finish the story. I hope that you join me on this little adventure. :)

Driving with Kurt turns into a major distraction for Blaine as the blue-eyed puppet stares up at the sky through the open window and sighs every five seconds.

“Oh, Blaine” - Kurt closes his eyes against the wind as the minivan breezes down the highway - “it’s nothing like I remember it.”

“Is that a good thing or a bad thing?” Blaine asks, sneaking a peek at the puppet pulling his head in from the open window.

Kurt presses the button to close it, shutting it half way, then presses it again, lowering it an inch. He has developed a fascination with the buttons and switches that control things in the van – the door locks, the window switch, the seat adjuster. It had been adorable to watch Kurt spend the first five minutes of their trip swaying back and forth and up and down as he adjusted and re-adjusted his seat over and over.

“Both,” Kurt concludes after a pause. “I mean, I’m all for progress, and highways and tall buildings are a part of human civilization moving forward, but I don’t know …” He gazes out at the edge of the highway, where store after store and building after building blurs by. “There’s just something to be said about driving slowly down a dirt road and hearing the gravel underneath the tires, the birds flying overhead, seeing houses surrounded by green grass, cows grazing, and a chicken coop in the front yard, white picket fences, laundry hanging from a line …” Kurt sighs again, probably his hundredth sigh in the last half hour. But it’s peaceful, and Blaine knows he’ll never get tired of it. “I think I’m just an old-fashioned, silly romantic. The world has changed so much since I last saw it. I think I’m going to spend a lot of time playing catch up.”

Blaine wants to reassure Kurt that playing catch up in this new time period will be easy, but he bites his lip to stop himself. It won’t be easy for Kurt. Blaine knows it. And patronizing Kurt won’t change that. He comes up with something instead that he hopes will mean more to Kurt, give him something more substantial to hold on to.

“However long it takes,” he says, “I’ll be here to help you.”

Kurt’s glass eyes reflect the sunlight and blue sky overhead, making them look like they’re swimming with unshed tears. “Really?”

Blaine smiles. “I promise.”

As they turn onto Harbor Drive, Blaine’s eyes shift periodically to Kurt’s face, trying to gauge his reaction to returning to the house where he had been trapped for so long. But as they approach the old Victorian, Kurt settles back against the headrest and closes his eyes.

Blaine doesn’t ask. He understands.

Kurt isn’t ready to see it.

Gary’s U-Haul is parked by the curb out front. Standing beside it are Gary and two other men he brought with him to help. The first guy, Ted, Blaine knows. He’s a few years older than Blaine and studying occupational therapy at San Diego State University. Ted met Gary years ago when Ted was on the search for a porcelain doll for his mother for her birthday. It turned out that authenticating vintage dolls was a hidden hobby of Ted’s, and the day he walked into Gary’s shop, he rescued Gary from spending a fortune on dolls that turned out to be incredibly well-made counterfeits.

The other gentleman – an older man – Blaine doesn’t recognize. He’s standing off on his own reading a hefty, leather-bound book, while Gary and Ted talk over their game plan for the rest of the toys in the house. This man couldn’t be any more different from Gary and Ted if he tried. Where the other two men are wearing polo shirts and jeans, this older man is wearing a three-piece suit. He’s trim and tall, with generous flecks of silver interspersed in his stark black hair. Narrow reading glasses sit perched at the tip of his long, thin nose. His lips move as he reads, ignoring the other two men and their constant jabber.

From the looks of things, only Gary and his crew have arrived so far, which means everyone else would be showing up later on, while Blaine is inside the house and Kurt outside. Blaine hadn’t anticipated that. Usually everyone on the renovation team gets to a project house early. He doesn’t want anyone bothering Kurt when they arrive.

Blaine leans over to Kurt’s seat. “Okay, I’m going to be a couple of hours, but I’ll be in and out, so I’ll check in on you to make sure you’re alright.”

Kurt doesn’t open his eyes but he smiles, turning his face in the direction of Blaine’s voice. “Oh, Blaine, you are a gentleman. But don’t worry too much about me. I’m sure I’ll be fine.”

Blaine looks at Kurt’s face, serene and sparkling in the daylight. He’s staring, he knows it, but he can’t help it. Kurt is such an attractive puppet. He has such a kind and honest face. There are many compliments Blaine could give to Kurt in that regard that, unfortunately, wouldn’t be compliments at all. Blaine could say that Kurt is beautiful, which he is, but that might be more a comment on the masterful way he was made, and therefore a compliment to Andrew’s workmanship. Blaine would rather cut out his tongue than compliment that monster. Blaine could say that Kurt is handsome, as he was in all of those black and white photographs Blaine saw, but that would be a compliment to the person he was.

A person who doesn’t entirely exist anymore.

Whoever Kurt is, whatever he is, whatever miracle brought him to be, Blaine adores him - shamelessly so.

Of all the crazy, outlandish, off-the-wall things that could happen to Blaine, he has a thing for a puppet.

Go figure.

“Blaine?” Kurt whispers, his smile growing wider. “Are you planning on leaving anytime soon, or are you going to stare at me all day?”

Blaine’s cheeks go from tan to scarlet in award-winning time.

“I was … I was just wondering … uh …” He clears his throat “… if you’re going to be okay sitting here, or if you need a book to read or something.”

Blaine clamps his jaw shut when he remembers the only things he has in the van to read are the journals in the trunk.

“I’m fine,” Kurt assures him, “except …”

Uh-oh … he does want to read. Shit!

“Except …” Blaine repeats anxiously.

“If you can maybe find me some paper and a pencil? I would like to sketch.”

“Sketch?” Blaine mentally breathes a sigh of relief.

“Yes. I design clothes.” Kurt sounds contrite, like he’s apologizing for this thing that he enjoys, and Blaine longs to ask him who might have given him the impression that designing clothes was a bad thing. Kurt’s mother doesn’t sound like the type to discourage her son from a hobby like sewing, and Andrew, for all his faults, included a sewing machine in Kurt’s room, so it couldn’t have been him.

“Of course,” Blaine says, opening his door. “I’m sure I can dig some up. Give me a moment.”

“Mm-hmm.” Kurt hums as he reaches for the button to recline the seat. “Take your time.”

Blaine hops out and shuts the door behind him. Cheers and applause go up from Gary and Ted, who wave his way, hooting and hollering like the over-excited fools they are. Blaine smiles and waves back, heading for his trunk.

“I’ll open up the house in a second,�� he calls out, knowing that Gary is drooling to get his hands on the rest of those toys. Blaine admires Gary really. He’s living his dream - he owns his own business, makes enough to support himself in an expensive city like San Diego, and most importantly, he enjoys what he does.

If Blaine can achieve half of that, he’ll consider himself fortunate.

Blaine knows he has a notebook somewhere in the trunk, but with all of the things he’s packed and unpacked in the last few days, he doesn’t know where it ended up. He rustles through the usual automotive junk – first aid kit, jumper cables, a bottle of Armor All. He comes across a roll of paper towels and a half used bottle of Windex that he doesn’t remember ever seeing , but there it is, and it reminds him of the posters hanging in the kitchen – the ones with dust caked on so thick Blaine couldn’t see through it. He pulls them out, keeping a hold of them while he keeps looking. Underneath the backseat he finds his notebook, with a pencil shoved inside the spiral rings. He grabs it along with the three journals, hiding them strategically between his body and the cleaning supplies. He closes the trunk and walks over to Kurt’s window.

“Here you go,” he says, laying the notebook on the lap of the resting puppet.

“Thank you, Blaine,” Kurt says with eyes still closed. “Now go. I’ll be fine. I promise.” And he blows Blaine a kiss.

Blaine feels it land against his cheek as if it were a real, palpable thing.

“Alright, Kurt,” Blaine says, noticing how Kurt’s smile grows when he says his name.

Blaine heads to the house, gesturing to the other men with one wide wave. All three men look at Blaine’s van as they pass. Though none of them are close enough to peek inside and see Kurt stretched out in the front seat with his eyes shut, they must have caught a glimpse of him because he’s the first thing Gary mentions as Blaine starts unlocking the house.

“So, you’re driving around with them, Blaine?” he asks, sounding disturbed but amused by Blaine’s choice of company. “Is this a legitimate obsession, or just an attempt to defraud your way into the carpool lane?”

Blaine decides not to argue with Gary, knowing he’s mainly teasing him.

“You know, Gary,” Blaine says, sticking a key into the front door, “as an adult man who plays with dolls, I would think that you, of all people, might understand.”

“Wait,” Ted says. “You guys aren’t kidding, are you? You brought the puppet with you, Blaine!?”

Blaine turns and shoots Gary an accusing glance as the door swings open and he leads the trio inside.

“You told him?”

“I’m sorry, Blaine,” Gary says, not sounding sorry at all. “It just … came up.”

“What in the world were you guys talking about that the subject of my puppets came up in conversation?” Blaine props the door open, then starts pulling the drapes.

“Cheeseburgers,” both men answer in unison, leaving Blaine to shake his head.

“You took one of the puppets?” the older man sneers, speaking for the first time.

“Blaine” - Gary steps in before a potential argument breaks out - “this is Alex Norton. He specializes in Vaudeville culture, and he’s very interested in the puppets.”

“I purchased two of the puppets,” Blaine clarifies to the man staring him down through the wafer thin lenses of his spectacles, “from my brother, who owns the house and everything in it.”

“So, you purchased them without knowing what they’re worth?” The man’s nostrils flare with contained anger.

“I paid quite a bit for them,” Blaine says in his defense, swallowing a comment about the loss of his paycheck. “I’m pretty sure my brother got what they’re worth.”

“Like I said,” Gary interrupts, “he didn’t buy any of the franchised puppets, just two handmade puppets that were trashed in the basement.”

“Made by the original owner of the house, yes?” Alex over-enunciates each word, unnecessarily in Blaine’s opinion. “Andrew Smythe?”

Blaine bristles at the name. “What difference does that make?”

“That makes the puppets of historical significance.” Alex straightens, pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose. “Therefore, I will need to see the puppets.” Alex stares at Blaine, waiting to be lead out to his van, Blaine assumes.

“No,” Blaine says.

“No?” Alex repeats contemptuously, his glasses beginning to slide their way back down his nose.

“No.” Blaine stands firm. “You are free to see any puppet in the house, but those two are my personal property. They’re not available for you to see.”

“They are the only existing examples of Andrew Smythe’s attempts to make human-sized puppets,” Alex argues, leaning in in an attempt to intimidate him.

“Too bad,” Blaine says. “You can’t see them.”

Alex stares at Blaine and Blaine stares back, the air between them electric, waiting for a spark to set it off.

“Okay, guys,” Ted intercedes, hoping to diffuse the tension, “we have a lot of work to do. If Blaine doesn’t want to show off his puppets, he doesn’t have to.”

Alex’s upper lip curls, baring his teeth. He knows he’s lost, but his eyes darken nonetheless.

“Fine,” he says, the word a growl inside his locked jaw. He stands up straight, fixes his glasses on his nose again, and walks off as if he knows where he’s going.

Blaine watches him carefully, concerned with how comfortable he seems in the house.

“I apologize about that,” Gary says. “He’s … really passionate about his work.”

“Apparently,” Blaine says, thankful that Kurt is safe in the minivan outside, and that even Sebastian is securely locked up in the beach house.

“Come on.” Gary claps Blaine on the back as he eyes the man heading for the hallway. “Let’s get to work so I can get these glorious tin toys back to my shop.”

Blaine peeks out the window to make sure Kurt can’t be seen, then heads off down the hallway himself. He holds his head high as he passes Alex on the way to the dining room, barely giving the man any berth as he hustles by. Alex grumbles something beneath his breath, but Blaine doesn’t pay enough attention to pick up the remark. He heads straight for the posters hanging on the dining room walls and begins spraying the glass with Windex. He puts his books and supplies on the table and waits as the blue liquid cuts through years of grease and grime, spreading through the muck like fingernails scraping it off. He sprays each poster frame a few more times before he starts tearing paper towels from the roll and wiping, cleaning the glass completely before he steps back and takes a good look at them.

He was right in assuming they were theater posters – twenty in all, each one hung in order showing the rise and fall of “The Great” (a superlative he adds in his head with a sarcastic snarl) Andrew Smythe. The poster on the far left starts with Andrew’s act listed at the bottom in the tiniest type conceivable. As time progresses, Andrew’s listing on the bill rises. His act becomes ‘Andrew and Sons’, written in larger and larger typeface until bam! There he is - his face big as life. And even though his act is still titled ‘Andrew and Sons’, the picture on the poster is of him alone with a puppet sitting on his lap – Sammy, more than likely. A couple more posters have his face on them, but then a new face takes its place and his act, now listed as ‘The Great Andrew Smythe’, shrinks back down the list of names until it’s barely legible.

“Ah. The demise of The Great Andrew Smythe,” a nasally voice echoes through the room. “Tragic.”

“Yes,” Blaine says, “if you believe Andrew Smythe was great.”

Alex tilts his head and stares at Blaine aghast.

“He was one of the greatest performers of his time.”

“Maybe, but he was a crap father.”

Alex jerks back, scrunching his nose as if he’d smelled something offensive when Blaine opened his mouth. “How could you possibly know that?”

Blaine shrugs, crossing his arms over his chest, his eyes flicking subconsciously to the journals on the table. “I’ve been doing research.”

“Well, did your research tell you that being a good parent wasn’t a pre-requisite for being an excellent performer? Nobody in particular cared how he treated his children.”

Alex makes this statement with such an absence of emotion that it feels like a slap in the face.

“To be perfectly honest, I couldn’t care less about Andrew Smythe or his precious act.”

“And yet you apparently spent a considerable amount of money to purchase two of his rarest puppets, which are now so important to you that you won’t let anyone see them.”

“That’s my business,” Blaine says, wanting a quick end to this so he can find a quiet spot and start reading the journals.

“And what about these posters?” Alex asks, pointing to the walls. “Are they to become victims of your indiscernible personal collecting habits, too?”

“No. They’re being donated to the San Diego Historical Society for their exhibit on Vaudeville,” Blaine says with a sardonic twist to his lips. “I hear it’s excellent. Very informative. You should go check it out.” Now would be nice, he thinks. He picks the journals up off the table. Alex watches him, zeroing in on the books in Blaine’s hands as if he recognizes them.

“What are those?” he asks, reaching out a hand like he’s planning to grab them away, but Blaine pulls them towards his chest.

“Homework,” Blaine answers sharply as he brushes past, heading down the hallway and back toward the living room. He decides to plant himself next to the living room window and wait for the other members of the team to arrive. With Alex in the house, Blaine needs to keep an eye on Kurt. He can’t see Kurt from the window because the puppet is lying back in his seat, but Blaine’s not taking the chance of Alex slipping out unseen and harassing him.

He leans his head against the glass and looks at the journals, trying to decide where he wants to start first. Figuring that going in order will be less confusing in the long run, he opens the journal dated 1924.

March 5 -

Dear Margaret –

Our little nine-year-old is quite the recluse. He also has one hell of a left hook, and because of that we are no longer with the Henderson and Co. traveling show. That’s alright, though. I always thought they were stealing from the till, anyhow. So what if it took their little bastard Billy getting a black eye for us to leave that roadside freak show? I know that traveling can be hard on Sebastian, but I think it’s just because he misses you that he acts out this way. He needs a friend. Hopefully we can glom on to another traveling show that has kids down the line. Who knows what will come our way? I love you and miss you always.

July 6 –

Dear Margaret –

I think I might have found the solution to the problem with our Sebastian … and his name is Kurt Hummel. We just finished a show in Columbus, and on our way through Lima, we found him. Well, Sebastian found him. He’s not much more than a slip of a boy, with the thickest head of brown hair you’ve ever seen, but he’s clean and polite and has a voice like an angel. If I didn’t know better, I would say that Sebby was quite taken with him. He was probably just blown away by this kid’s talent like I was. But there’s something different about this boy. He’s special – not only his voice, but the way he behaves, as if performing isn’t something he does, it’s something he is. I’m hoping that his father will let the boy come with us. I introduced myself, told him my piece, but the man became suspicious as all get out. I could just let the matter be, but I really think having Kurt in our act would be a God send. Wish us luck, Margaret.

July 30 –

Dear Margaret -

By golly, it worked. My sweet new acquisition has tamed your unruly son. The two rug-rats are thick as thieves. It’s almost like having you back here with us, Maggy. He cooks, he cleans, he sings all the time. From morning to evening, he fills the house with music. I feel bad for his papa though - losing a wife and now a son - but I promised the man I’d raise his son proper. Maybe with his talent in the mix we’ll finally make it to Europe like we always planned. Can’t you just picture it, Maggy? Headlining in Paris?

“Hey, Blaine,” Gary calls, his arms wrapped around a box filled with carefully wrapped metal toys, “aren’t you supposed to be filming us or something?”

Blaine doesn’t look up from the journal when he reaches a hand into the pocket of his pants and pulls out his webcam. He switches it on and points it in Gary’s general direction. Gary chuckles.

“You know, Cooper’s going to be pissed,” Gary says, adjusting the box in his arms and heading for the door.

“Yeah, well …” Blaine lets the comment die off as he closes the first journal and opens the second one.

March 14 –

Dear Margaret -

Boy, that Kurt is sharp as a pin. Every day he spends with us, I learn something new. Here he’s been with us for almost a year and I didn’t know he spoke French. Says his mom taught him when he was little. She must have been one hell of a woman, just like you, Maggy.

August 21 -

Dear Margaret -

I was a little worried taking Kurt on that he’d be sort of … delicate. You’d understand if you saw him. But he’s no nancy, I’ll tell you that. Kurt and Seb got themselves into one heck of a tussle the other day – the two of them against four older boys, all of them a foot taller, and boy oh boy, did Kurt lick ‘em good. Of course, I told them that I wouldn’t stand by fighting, not while we’re trying to make a respectable name for ourselves in the higher paying houses in town. And I disciplined them. I didn’t lay a hand on Kurt. It don’t feel right giving a hiding to another man’s son and besides, I’m pretty sure it was Sebastian’s mouth that got them into all that trouble, so he got a few extra lashings with the belt to teach him. But you would have been so proud to see that boy handle himself.

Blaine winces as he reads. He knows that Kurt, Sebastian, and Andrew lived during another era, in almost a completely different world. The twenties erupted in the middle of a turbulent time in American history, but that’s no excuse for the way Andrew treated his son – or the fact that he replaced him.

Blaine switches to the last journal – 1928. He does the math – if Sebastian was 10 in 1924, he’d be around 14 in 1928.

February 22 –

Dear Margaret -

Those two boys are inseparable. They go everywhere together, and they’re so similar, they could pass for brothers. So I call the act ‘Andrew and Sons’ now. It’s worked out well for us so far. The burlesque houses hire us for their matinees. It’s good to have a family act to offset the bawdier performances. With our name on the billboards, it keeps the Fuzz off their backs and we get a higher percentage of the pot.

Blaine skims through a few entries, stopping off and on when real life intervenes. He’s interrupted first by a phone call from the storage company, rescheduling again for the following day, and then by Alex when he boldly tries to read over Blaine’s shoulder. Gary swoops in and rescues Blaine by telling the dreadful man that he and Ted are ready to pack up the puppets and they need his help with the values. Alex gives Blaine a stern glare before he hobbles off after Gary and Ted.

Blaine turns to the back of the book, trying to find an entry that he saw earlier and thought looked promising.

October 15 –

Dear Margaret –

I wish you were here. It was the darndest thing. I went out to the shed behind the house and saw Sebastian kissing Kurt. It wasn’t brotherly nor friendly neither. It was a real, honest-to-God kiss. I’m not surprised with Kurt. I kind of suspected that his tastes tilted that way, so that doesn’t bother me. He’s a smart boy, and if that makes him happy, then so be it, but not Sebastian. I’m not raising a cake-eater. But it’s an easy fix. I’ll whore it out of him. I know you wouldn’t approve, Maggy, but there’s nothing else I can do. He turns fifteen come January. I’ll plan for then. In the meantime, I’ll have to find a way to keep them apart.

Blaine closes the journal. He’s had enough. He blinks his eyes, spots and shapes dancing in front of him as he recovers from Andrew Smythe’s wretched penmanship. He looks out the window in time to see Kurt raise his seat. From this distance, Kurt doesn’t look like a puppet. With his head titled, his eyes shut, a small smile curling his mouth, he looks like a human boy.

Blaine sees a car from another pawn shop pull up out front, and he runs to meet them with his webcam switched on. After Cooper’s demeaning phone call, Blaine isn’t too concerned with getting all the shots he claims that he needs, so he plans on only taking enough to keep his brother off his back. He ushers the men into the house and directs them down to the basement, filming as they look over the large tools and equipment, deciding what they can realistically sell. It takes a while to interview these new guys since they’re so focused with the job of rifling through the power tools, plugging each one in to see which ones work or not. As soon as Blaine gets the bare minimum of shots that he needs, he races back up the stairs, taking a brief shot of Alex discussing what looks like the last of the puppets with Gary and Ted, and then heads for Kurt sitting in the van.

“Hey,” Blaine says, trying to sound nonchalant while panting uncontrollably, “I came out here to make sure you weren’t getting too hot or anything.”

“Do you know how long it’s been since I’ve felt the sun on my face?” Kurt sighs. “Or the wind?”

“I can only imagine.” Blaine cocks his head. “Do you feel it now?”

“Not really,” Kurt says, the smile on his lips taking a wry quality. “But I can remember them better when I’m outside than when I was locked up in the dark.”

Kurt’s comment tugs at Blaine’s heart. Tears prick his eyes at the thought of this beautiful boy locked up, shattered to pieces on that cold, damp floor, and he has to look away. He glances down and sees the notebook he gave Kurt open in his lap, the pencil stuck back in the spiral spine, two sheets of paper covered in drawings. Kurt didn’t sketch clothes like he’d said, but the living room and dining room of the house, drawn the way they might have looked when Andrew bought the place. Blaine stares in awe at the intricate details of the embossed wallpaper, the grain in the wood floor, the furniture, down to the tiny touches – portraits on the walls, statuettes on the mantel, books in the bookcase, and the tools by the fireplace, arranged so purposefully that Blaine can tell which one gets the most use by how it leans slightly while the others stand perfectly straight. Even the light streaming in through spaces in the drawn curtains gives hints to what time of day it is.

“Kurt … your drawings … are they of this house?”

“Sort of.” Kurt closes the book, keeping his eyes staunchly shut, and hands it to Blaine. “It’s a combination of the house we lived in with Sebastian’s dad and this one the few times I saw it.”

“They’re amazing,” Blaine says, thumbing through the pages. Kurt has sketched each upstairs bedroom, a bathroom, and also (Blaine discovers) a few outfits. They’re an older fashion, a match to the time period Kurt lived in.

“Thank you,” Kurt says.

“I’m close to wrapping things up in there,” Blaine mentions, setting the notebook back on Kurt’s lap. “We’ve probably got around another hour or so. Did you think about where you might want to go after this? The movies, maybe?”

Kurt raises one eyelid and peeks at Blaine.

“Do you think there’s some place we can go and see the sky?”

Blaine nods.

“I think I know the perfect place.”

***

“I’ve missed the beach so much,” Kurt says, sitting cross-legged on the retaining wall. His eyes travel up and down the shoreline, watching the white caps of the tide curl into the sand.

“Me, too,” Blaine agrees, his own gaze following Kurt’s.

Kurt turns and looks at Blaine. “But, don’t you live here?”

“No.” Blaine coughs, the confession he should have made before tickling the back of his throat. “Actually, I’m from Westerville, but I live in Lima.”

Kurt gasps, throwing both hands over his mouth. “You’re kidding!”

“Nope.” Blaine takes out his cell phone and opens his photo gallery. “Here. Take a look.” He scoots closer to Kurt so that he can better see the pictures on the screen. “These are a few of my friends from high school.”

“Where do you go?”

“McKinley.”

“Hmmm … must be new,” Kurt says, watching Blaine swipe the screen and change the photo.

“This is the Auglaize River last winter. The Glee Club went skating there over break.”

“That’s quite a handsome young man you’ve got your arms around,” Kurt remarks dryly, eyes darting away from the image of a tall blond grabbing Blaine from behind. Blaine smiles at the jealousy plain in Kurt’s voice.

“That’s my best friend Sam. He’s just a friend,” Blaine explains.

“You look close,” Kurt says, noticeably unconvinced.

“We are,” Blaine admits with a smile that slowly takes over his entire face.

“Quite.”

Blaine switches the photo, bypassing a few others with Sam in them. He wants to tease Kurt with the knowledge that he garnered from those journals, how Andrew had hoped Kurt could settle Sebastian down, how the two boys were so fond of each other, but it seems like a cruel memory to bring up. Kurt might not remember it that way and besides, thinking about that closeness starts to plant a seed of jealousy in Blaine’s mind.

Especially that kiss.

Blaine shows Kurt a few, more generic, pictures – the farmer’s market where the Secret Society of Superheroes Club held a food drive last Thanksgiving, the Lima Mall, The Lima Bean coffee shop where Blaine goes pretty much every day after school. Kurt looks at these photos like he’s absorbing the images into his brain, imprinting them there.

“It looks so different now,” he says. “I don’t think I’d recognize it if I went back there.”

“Do you want to go back there?” Blaine asks, closing the photo gallery and pocketing his phone.

Kurt looks at the ocean, sadly shaking his head. “No. There’s nothing there for me now.” He wraps his arms around his torso, runs his hands up his exposed skin.

“Do you want to leave?” Blaine assumes Kurt has caught a chill, forgetting for a moment that Kurt can’t feel the cold.

“Not yet. You know, back when I …” He stops. He stares off at the distance, then he shakes his head. “Do you think it’s more fitting to say when I was alive? Or should I say when I was human? I mean, if I’m speaking of the past, what do I say? How do I address it?”

“That’s a good question.” Blaine wraps his arms around his bent knees and squeezes. He’s definitely catching a chill, but he has no intention of mentioning it. “I would say that you’re alive. And I like to think of you as human. Maybe you don’t need to make the distinction.”

Kurt looks at his hands, turning them over front to back, examining them beneath the moonlight. As well made as they are, as much time was put into them, they don’t look like human hands. They glisten unnaturally, and his knobby knuckles reveal the fact that his digits separate, each piece held together by wire, every time he bends them.

He may be alive, if this is what alive is, but he’s far from human.

“What’s going to happen to me now?” he asks, looking at Blaine with his hands splayed in front of him. “I’m a puppet. I’m made of porcelain. I can’t have a normal life like you. I know you said you would help me, but how? What can I do?” Kurt drops his hands in his lap, helpless, and Blaine sighs. He feels just as helpless. He doesn’t know exactly how Kurt feels, but Blaine is human and still, most of the time, he has no clue what he’s doing. He can’t fix this, not completely, not right now. He doesn’t even know where to start. So he puts an arm around Kurt’s shoulders and holds him close, and together they watch the waves chase each other down the beach.

***

Blaine and Kurt return to the beach house late. They’re not covered in sand, so Blaine doesn’t rush to shower right away. He takes Kurt to his bedroom and sits him down on the bed.

“Okay,” Blaine says. “I had a thought. Hang out here for a second. I’ll be right back.”

Kurt nods, watching Blaine disappear out the door. He crosses the living room and heads for the opposite end of the house. These rooms Blaine doesn’t go to usually with the exception of the kitchen. Where his room and his brother’s room are situated side-by-side on one end of the house, the master bedroom and his parent’s library mirror them on the other.

It’s the master bedroom that Blaine ducks into.

When Blaine was younger, his mother used to sew a lot. It was a hobby that inspired him, but that she kind of grew out of the more “adult” she became. He can’t remember exactly when that happened, it just kind of did. She kept a basket of sewing supplies in the bottom of the closet, along with a few old fashion magazines, so Blaine always had hopes of her picking it up again.

To date, she hasn’t.

On their last visit here, his father, who is tall and thin like Kurt, left clothes hanging in the closet. He had planned to pick them up on their next summer trip, but there never was another one. Blaine looks them over, frowning at how out-of-style they are, but he hopes that Kurt can do something with them. Blaine pulls the clothes off the hangers, grabs the basket of supplies and a handful of magazines, and races back through the house, ignoring Sebastian with each pass.

“Here we go.” Blaine slides into the bedroom on his sock-covered feet and drops the supplies onto his bed. Kurt sees them and goes from sullen to ecstatic.

“Oh, Blaine.” He picks through the clothes and the magazines, smiling so brightly that Blaine thinks Kurt might burst into song. “Did you bring all of this in here for me?”

“Yeah. Well, I thought these clothes might fit you better.” He opens the basket of sewing supplies. “And if they don’t, you could alter them, maybe? And …”

Blaine stops when Kurt kisses him on the cheek. It’s brief, innocent, but it makes Blaine’s entire body tingle.

“It’s wonderful,” Kurt whispers. “Thank you.”

“Yeah? Oh. I’m glad you like them.” He stands and backs up toward the bathroom door while Kurt continues to sift through the items on the bed. “I’m just going to take a quick rinse, and then …”

“Are you going to work on Sebastian?” Kurt’s expression seems genuinely hopeful, but Blaine still has trouble interpreting that wary tone in Kurt’s voice.

“Do you really want me to?” Blaine asks.

Kurt pauses a second.

It’s a second in which Blaine thinks Kurt might say no.

“Yes,” Kurt says in the same unsure tone. “Yes, I do.”

***

Blaine’s shower is basically a dip beneath cold water to get his head straight before he jumps back out and joins Kurt for what could turn out to be a long, exhaustive night of repairing Sebastian. He has only been at it for fifteen minutes, but already he wants to throw in the towel. Sitting in a chair from the dining room that he pulled up in front of the loveseat, Blaine struggles to get Sebastian’s arm seated correctly. Whereas Kurt’s body felt magnetic, his broken limbs pulling together, longing to return to their body, Sebastian’s body feels like he’s repelling these pieces away. Maybe Sebastian doesn’t want to be put back together, Blaine muses.

Or maybe he doesn’t want help from Blaine.

If Blaine had the money to send him to a professional repair person, he would. At least it would get Sebastian out of the house for a few days. The longer he sits on the love seat staring blankly into space, the more unnerving it feels having him around.

Blaine wrestles with the piece, eventually fitting the arm in its socket. He threads the wires through, twisting them together and tying them, but they snap before he can finish. The sharp end recoils and hits Blaine on the arm, leaving a long scratch. Sebastian’s arm falls off his body and onto the love seat.

“Dammit,” Blaine screams, dropping Sebastian to look at his smarting wound, which sends the loose arm tumbling to the floor.

Kurt puts down his sewing and runs over to examine Blaine’s injured arm.

“Is it bleeding?” he asks, looking on with concern.

“I don’t think so,” Blaine hisses, “but it hurts like hell.” Blaine reaches for a box of tissues on the table while Kurt bends over to retrieve Sebastian’s arm.

“Blaine!” Kurt exclaims, getting on his hands and knees. “You didn’t tell me you had a cat!”

“I … I don’t.” Blaine leans to the right and peeks over Kurt’s shoulder. “Oh, is it a tabby cat?” he asks, remembering the fugitive cat that scared the living daylights out of him. “Apparently he’s found a way in here.”

“No!” Kurt gasps, pulling a furry body out from underneath the love seat. Blaine eyes the unmoving animal and groans low in his throat.

Great. The cat broke in again just in time to die in my dining room.

But what Kurt has in his hands isn’t the dead body of a tabby cat. It’s the puppet of a tabby cat - the same tabby cat Blaine had seen in the house before. It has the same inquisitive green eyes, the same ripple pattern to the fur.

“Abigail,” Kurt murmurs, gently stroking the animal’s coat.

“Abigail?” Blaine slides off his chair to kneel on the floor beside him.

“Yes.” Kurt smiles affectionately at the realistic-looking feline puppet with the silky fur and the sparkling green eyes. “Sebastian made her. His dad was teaching us to make puppets, and Abigail was Sebastian’s.”

“But why would Abigail be here?” Blaine asks. “I didn’t bring her here.”

“Abigail was the first,” Kurt says, petting the cat as if he expected it to spring to life any second.

“The first … what?”

“The first puppet that Sebastian’s dad tried the spell on,” Kurt explains, each word forming as if the memory comes to him in the instant that he speaks.

“A spell?”

Kurt’s eyes grow wide as he starts to remember.

“Sebastian’s dad bartered for a spell from the Calhoun family. A favor for a favor. It was supposed to capture any lingering soul and put it into the vessel of your choice.”

“But, why start with the cat?” Blaine asks. It sounds far too fantastic to be real.

But then again …

“Abigail wasn’t just any cat.” Kurt holds the animal up to his nose and stares into its eyes, trying to coax the creature to come alive for them. “She was Sebastian’s cat. His best friend back before I joined their group. She was a stray. Andrew didn’t really let Sebastian keep her. She followed them around because Sebastian fed her, and they couldn’t get rid of her. After she died, Sebastian said he always kind of felt her around. He swore he would see her dart out from behind corners, or feel her curl up next to him while he slept. She was always hiding under things and scurrying beneath toys and such, looking for mice …”

Blaine’s mind conjures up the sounds of scurrying he heard in the Victorian house when he first entered it, wondering if they might have been made by Abigail hunting around the piles of trash.

“He got the spell to bring us back, but he tried it out on Abigail first.”

“So, he was able to bring her back because she stayed behind? So that means that you stayed behind?”

Kurt puts Abigail down beside Sebastian on the love seat, moving the cat close to his friend’s body so that they can finally be together again.

“I couldn’t leave him,” Kurt says, giving the cat puppet one last pat on the head. “He was like a father to me. And he felt so guilty … I had to make sure that he was going to be okay.”

“And Sebastian?” Blaine bites his tongue. The answer is obvious, but Blaine doesn’t want to let on that he harbors secret knowledge of the motives of Andrew – or Sebastian - Smythe. After what Blaine read in those journals, he knows that Sebastian didn’t stick around for his father. No way. There’s only one person he would have stayed around for.

“He stayed around for me.” When Kurt turns and looks at Blaine, it’s with the ghost of tears in his eyes – tears that don’t exist but are as real as any others, brought on by emotion that Kurt can feel but can’t fully express. “That’s why you have to promise me you’ll put him back together.” Kurt wraps his arms around Blaine’s torso. “You have to fix him. Please? For me?”

“I will,” Blaine says, holding Kurt just as tightly in his arms. “I promised I will, and I will.” With his cheek resting in Kurt’s hair, he looks Sebastian over. He should fix Sebastian – at least give the poor guy another arm or a leg. He did promise Kurt. Sebastian’s puppet is made of wood and the pieces are not as extensively damaged as Kurt’s were, but fixing Sebastian feels like the last thing he should do.

He has a feeling that if Sebastian wakes up, he has the power to take Kurt away from him for good.

***

There must be rats somewhere beneath the floor. Or possums. Or maybe Abigail is up and roaming about the house, chasing dust bunnies or pouncing on her shadow. Either way, in his sleep, Blaine can hear the scrape, scrape, scrape of something moving across the wood floor.

Or maybe it’s a gnawing. He can’t tell in his half-asleep state.

His mind swims with dreams of Kurt: Kurt sitting on the sand at the beach, staring off into the water; Kurt dancing beneath the moonlight, arms outstretched to the sky; Kurt lying beside him where they fell asleep together on the living room floor, their fingers intertwined.

Kurt’s blue eyes, his smooth skin, his pink lips.

Blaine feels a tickle on his cheek, bothering him awake. He opens his eyes with a smile, expecting to see a tuft of orange fur, or maybe blue eyes staring at him from an already awake Kurt.

He hopes it’s eyes – stunning blue glass eyes.

Blaine’s eyes open slowly, holding on to as much dream as he can, even though he’s eager to spend another day with Kurt.

He focuses through slits. It’s eyes that he sees alright, but this time they’re not blue.

They’re green.

And they don’t belong to Abigail.

Blaine’s eyes snap open, realization propelling him awake.

Sebastian is lying out on the floor in front of him, nose pressed against his, wooden mouth split into a startling grin.

“Well hey there, tiger,” Sebastian says. “Don’t I get a kiss hello?”

[thenightling]

Friends in the Dark (A Sandman fan fiction)

Friends in the Dark:

Disclaimer:  This is a Sandman fan fiction.  The Sandman belongs to Neil Gaiman and DC Comics.

This fan fiction is inspired by the currently circulating idea of Hob actually being the one to rescue Morpheus from his imprisonment after Morpheus misses their centennial meeting.   In the new Netflix Sandman series Morpheus’ captivity has been extended from seventy-two-years to about a hundred and ten years.  That means Morpheus would have missed his annual meeting with Hob Gadling.

  Art work by @artwinsdraws​​ 

  This fan fiction may be read as a pseudo-sequel to the fan fiction titled “Time will Crawl” however, this fan fiction can be read completely on its own without any difficulty.  

 The title is from a song that technically doesn’t exist yet except in the dreams of Aurelio Voltaire.  The lyrics are currently housed in the library of The Dreaming but should reach The Waking World within the next year.  I know them because I heard a short live version of the refrain on Youtube.  

 “You can sit in the cold dark night, And just hope for a spark. You might make your way in the day, But you’ll need friends in the dark.” – Lyrics by Voltaire.  

   Friends in the Dark

 Friends in the Dark

  Chapter 1:

 Friends will be friends:

               “What do you mean you can’t find him?”

           “I mean... If he is who I think he is, he will only be found if he wants to be found.” The old man replied in a tone that sounded like an effort at gentleness.  

           “I didn’t tell you he was anyone other than my friend.” Robert Gadling said in exasperation. He was tired and frustrated.   The man he was talking to was supposed to be the best in his field.

           “Look, the man you described…  He’s not quite a man.   He’s… How do I put this?  He’s the Oneiromancer.  He’s Morpheus.   King of Dreams and Nightmares.  And if you angered him-“

           “I may have wounded his pride but I know him.  I know he would have come.”

           “How can you be so certain?”’

           “I told you, he’s my friend.”

           “Creatures like that don’t have any friends.”

           “If you can’t help me just say so and stop wasting my time.” Robert said in annoyance.

           The man sighed.  “You don’t have anything that belongs to him.   If you had something maybe we could cast a tracking spell, but he could obscure himself against things like that if he doesn’t want to be found.”

           The man’s expression changed.  It was subtle but it was troubling.

           “What?  What is it? There’s something you’re not telling me.” Robert said.

           “No one’s seen The Sandman in over a century…  There are rumors from The Underworld that something may have happened…”

           Robert was growing impatient and now worried.  Few things could really surprise him and right now he felt like he could be told anything and handle it in some stride.  He reached into his old coat and pulled out the torn fabric of dark velvet Victorian Jacket.

           “What is that?”

           “I accidentally tore it from his coat when he was having his little tantrum the last time we spoke.  Is that enough to track him with?”

           “And you kept it all this time?”

“At the time I worried I’d never see him again.  …I thought it might be the only memento, proof he was real…”  He felt silly and sentimental.  

“So there is a chance he’s deliberately avoiding you?”

Robert’s face was reddening.  “Look, I haven’t survived seven-hundred-years purely on my good looks.  I trust my instincts.  If he doesn’t want to see me, fine, but I have to see him first.  I have to know for sure.”  

Saying something like that to anyone else might have looked completely insane but Robert Gadling knew the old magicks.  He understood sorcery and he knew the old man was aware of his true age.  

Robert (Hob) Gadling had been born in the fourteenth century of England.  He looked like the average middle aged man but he had long ago decided not to die and had somehow succeeded in this endeavor, whether by sheer will, or the invention of Death herself, it was hard to say. But he believed it was by his own will that he refused to die.  At least that was the explanation that enabled him to sleep easily at night. Death, on the other hand, knew better…

 Currently Robert was clean shaven though he had worn facial hair in the past.  He had light brown hair and brown eyes.  He was light skinned as many English men of his original time were.  He figured he was a little short by modern standards but that didn’t bother him.   He had been tall by common standards in his own time.   He wondered how strange he’d seem in other people the centuries to come.  

Robert (or Hob as he was sometimes known by those old enough to remember Hob as a nickname for Robert) was wearing fairly mundane clothes.  He had a plain button down shirt and blue jeans. The clothes were generic enough that he could have been wearing them in the nineteen sixties or nineteen nineties and no one would have questioned it as being out of place.   You live long enough and you learn what fashions will survive multiple decades without too much scrutiny.  And it becomes far, far easier to do simple clothing shopping.  

 During Hob’s last encounter with his friend, Hob had made the bold move of admitting to Morpheus that he knew the reason they met every century was because he (Morpheus) was lonely.

  Morpheus had not taken that well at all. In fact Morpheus had taken offense to that notion.  With his pride wounded, Morpheus had said “You dare?  You dare imply I might befriend a mortal? That one of my kind might NEED companionship?  You dare to call me lonely?”  

Hob was not technically mortal.  He had not been mortal in a very long time but his friend had a way of looking at anyone who had been born human (even if they became something else, or gained immortality) as “mortal.”   His prejudice was showing along with wounded pride.  

Hob had stood his ground.  “Yes. Yes, I do.”

As Morpheus had stormed off in his anger Hob had called after him.  “Tell you what.  I’ll be here in a hundred years’ time.   If you’re here then, too-- It’ll be because we’re friends.  No other reason.  Right?  …Right?”

 At the time he had feared Morpheus might not return for their centennial meeting. He hoped he would return.  But Hob had also feared Morpheus would not.  

 Hob felt foolish and almost like a stalker in wanting to track him down now but his seven-hundred-year-old instincts were telling him that something was wrong.  And if Morpheus was avoiding him he would apologize and they could go their separate ways once and for all but if there was another reason…  He had to know for sure…  He needed… closure at the very least.

       The older looking man was starting to look thoughtful.  “You keep things like this and out-right say the Lord of Dreams was having a temper tantrum?” The old wizard let out a wheezing laugh.  Perhaps he was reading Hob’s thoughts, his very memory of the last time he and his friend had spoken and parted ways.  

“If you’re not his friend you’ve got balls.”  He shook his head.  “Even if you are his friend you’ve got balls…   Follow me.” He seemed to admire Hob on some level and this shifted into respect.

             Hob and the old wizard walked from the dimly lit, and very cluttered, occult shoppe’s main room.  They entered a private back room that served as a magical laboratory.   The laboratory was no less cluttered than the main part of the shoppe.  There were books in chaotic little stacks and piles.  There were bottles of potions and powders on the shelves in a variety of colored jars and containers.  Some glass, some modern plastic Tupperware and labeled with white tape or stickers with writing done in black, felt-tip, marker.  There were odds and ends of magical trinkets and crystals.   And on the far side of this room was a small “hot plate” device plugged into the wall with a rather large cooking pot on top of it.   A make-shift modern cauldron.

           The old man carried the torn, old, velvet over to the cauldron and took up a crystal that was wrapped in a black cord.  He set to work on the tracking spell.   The contents of the cauldron, which was murky and brown, began to bubble from the heat and then the bubbles began to rapidly and probably unnaturally increase.   The crystal was spinning, spinning faster and faster as it dangled from the black cord.  

           Something was reaching its crescendo.  

             The old wizard set down the crystal on the edge of the cooking pot with the cord it was attached to.

           He grabbed Hob’s arm. “GET DOWN!”

           Hob had lived long enough to not question the command and instead, by pure reflex, descended into a crouch under the wooden table with the old man.  There was a crashing sound as bits and pieces of crystal went flying everywhere.  

           “Gadzooks, Man!   ...That’s not good, is it?” Hob asked, stating the obvious as he slowly lowered his arms from where they were over his head to protect against crystalline shrapnel.

           The old man shook his head and politely seemed to ignore the near-comedic use of an archaic exclamation.  “He’s either blocking the spell or-“

           “Or someone’s blocking it for him…”

 __________________________________________________

  Chapter 2:  

 Time:

             Time will crawl…  And crawl, and crawl, and crawl…

 Come!  Come! Come!  

 Morpheus had felt the words as surely as he heard them, faint and echoing in the void. Old magick.  It had felt it like a tugging at his very soul.  He was too weak to resist the pulling that dragged him down, down, down…  Forcibly pulling at his essence.  

 He had fallen forward and slammed into hard flooring.  He had been disorientated at the sudden presence of gravity.  He could feel the magick of the binding circle sealing him in, closing him off from all those who had a psychic link with him within his realm.  He saw them, the mortal occultists, in their dark robes, as they moved to get a closer look at their prisoner.  They moved like a swarm of insects.  He blinked his completely-black eyes behind the tinted lenses of his helm. The tiny star pupils being the only hint that there was more than mere darkness to be seen in his eyes.

  He lay there, stunned and …and so very tired…  He had never felt so weary in his long life…   He had struggled so hard against the summoning magick and after that he could barely keep his eyes open.  Someone had grasped at the helm he wore.  Someone grabbed at it with both hands. Someone tipped his head, against his will, to carefully remove the helm.  They took full advantage of his weakness and disorientation.  Someone pulled the helm free from his head.  He had felt his own dark fall around his bone-white face. His cloak was taken. Without the cloak he actually felt the cool, damp of the cellar in English summer time. Never mind about the cloak.  That could easily be replaced.  He could conjure another… as soon as he was free he could conjure another...  

 He blinked.  The ruby amulet was snatched and finally the pouch of infinite dream sand was snatched away. The pouch was something he loathed to be without.  He felt more naked without that pouch than without raiment.  That he could not allow.  He summoned what strength he had left and sat up to reach for the pouch. He stopped as if there was an invisible wall in front of him.  He could not pass the edge of the magical binding circle, which was on the ground around him, and he knew it.  His belongings were just out of reach…

The attempt to cross the circle was as impossible as asking a mortal simply leap over a building.  It was just impossible for him.  

 So tired… So very tired… The room was growing dim and the floor was strangely inviting.   He fainted…

    That was as close as he had ever gotten to true sleep.  He did not, by nature, sleep…    

 Trapped. Observe.  Threats.   Patience.   Patience…   Patience…

 It had been many years since that first night in nineteen sixteen…

 When Roderick Burgess had died not much had changed for Morpheus.  Roderick’s son, Alexander, was the one holding him captive now.

  At some point, relatively recently, he had over-heard someone mention the year as being twenty nineteen.  

  Morpheus made no show of his feelings to his captors. He simply sat there on the floor of his crystalline cage, staring out at the two guards.

           In nineteen sixteen The Dream Lord had been drawn down, summoned and trapped with their (as he saw it) “petty hedge-magicking.”   What year was it now?   Close to twenty-twenty, he suspected.  It was hard to tell.  

 Mortals tend to have this naive fantasy that time moves differently for creatures such as himself, being ageless and (for all intents and purposes) immortal. Unfortunately that was not the case.

If only he could just blink and it would seem a century had passed.   No. Sadly, this fantasy was merely that, a fantasy.  As mortals age they perceive time differently from when they were children.   In childhood summers would seem to go on and on. As adults, however, whole decades seemed too short and so they imagine that is how time must be for immortals, an ever increasing sense that this or that passage of time was too short and so nothing to them.  If only that was the case…

 No. He felt time. He felt time the way mortals do.  Time moved no differently for his kind as it does for mortals.  And in prison it crawled at a snail’s pace.  Perhaps it was even worse for him because, as the living embodiment of dreams, he usually did not sleep.  That meant the third of the day that human prisoners could escape their bonds by entering his realm, he could do no such thing.  There was no relief.

             Imprisoned time moved agonizingly slow, like the crawling of a snail.  And unlike mortals he did not have that blessed release of sleep.  He was, after all, the lord of Dreams.   He never dreamed, himself…  

           No. He never dreamed.  All he could do was remember…

             He remembered his own wounded pride on the night he stormed off from his friend. How he longed to set that right.

         He sat on the floor of the crystalline cage that they had long ago placed around him.  The curved glass of his crystal prison reminded him of a fortune teller’s crystal ball only just big enough to hold a full-sized human man.  How menacing the mortals managed to seem when looming over him, just outside of the crystal, where light and size were distorted from his quartz-crystal prison and shadows hung heavy over the glass.  

 Quartz crystal has innate power.  It could contain and confine magick.  It held him as surely as the binding circle around his cage- as firm and unyielding as stone or steel to a mortal’s prison.  

 The mortal captors had been clever to make his cage out of crystal.  Everyone knows most mineral and glass come from sand. Burnt and reshaped sand.  The thing that he used to sculpt dreams now worked to trap him.  

The binding circle that they had drawn on the floor held his spiritual essence while the crystalline prison held his physical form.  Both of these traps would need to be broken or opened for him to be able to truly escape.

 He was hungry.  They had never thought to feed him in all the years he had been their prisoner.  They just assumed that he did not need food. And he did not need it per se.  He would not die without food but he still felt hunger, nevertheless.  A great and terrible, gnawing hunger.   And he was not about to ask for food.  He was far too proud for that.  And he would not give them the satisfaction to show them that he suffered for not eating. It would not kill him but he still suffered for it.

He tried not to think about the hunger, that aching, hollow feeling chewing away within himself.  Eager to eat just about anything.  Even a baked potato would have been nice.  Do the English still bake potatoes? He wondered.

He could imagine the taste.  The potato’s skin cooked so thoroughly that it was like parchment around the soft white inside that could be crushed by the pressing of a fork.  Flavored with salt, pepper, butter, sour cream.  Perhaps some mild cheddar cheese and crushed bacon…

He wasn’t one for heavy meals but this simple one that he imagined seemed divine.  He could practically taste it.  No.  He would go mad if he let himself think about the hunger too long.   Try to think about something else…

 He thought of Hob.  He thought of the smell of the Kerosene lamps and the candle wax in the late Victorian pub. The strange sense of warmth and that feeling that was the direct opposite of being lonely.  He missed that warmth.  That sensation of… not-lonely.  

He missed Hob…  

He thought of his own wounded pride.  The anger he had felt when Hob had suggested that they (Hob and Morpheus) were friends.   How foolish he had been to not return to Hob sooner.  Would he ever see his friend again?  

He longed to set things right- to do or say something subtle to admit to Hob that he was right without actually saying the words that his pride did not want him to speak out loud.   He thought of the clever ways he could perhaps acknowledge that yes, they were, in fact, friends without uttering an apology or acknowledgement of being wrong.   He couldn’t dare admit, even to himself, that he was wrong.  And it was Hob’s own fault, wasn’t it?  He was the one who had to spoil things.  He was the one who had to go and poke at the situation and demand confirmation.  Why did he have to spoil it by making him have to call their situation a friendship?

He missed him so much…

  Morpheus blinked.  He was no longer in the pub, storming away from Hob.  He could no longer taste the discarded wine still on his lips.  His memories were as vivid and real to him as dreams are for most people.  It was as close as he could get to dreaming… remembering…

He was back in his cage.  Staring at the two guards just beyond the glass.

             What time was it?  Guessing from the two particular guards and the wrist watch that one of them wore, it was close to three in the afternoon.  It was hard to tell from his little prison.  He had not seen the sun (or stars) in over a century.      

           If only he could sleep as mortals sleep.   If only he could experience that sweet, temporary release, just once. To simply know what it was like to lose oneself to a third of the day in The Dreaming…  Mortals had no idea of the treasure that they had, the gift that he, himself, usually provided.  A gift that he, himself, could never know… had never known… ________________________________________________

  Chapter 3:

 What Dreams may come:

 Hob Gadling pulled to the side of the road, in the red nineteen seventy-three MGB convertible.  He had owned this particular automobile since the days when it was new.  Today he figured it would be considered a classic. Yeah, a classic, all right… Polished up nice but rusted in all the important areas and a serious petrol guzzler.   The car looked nice but it was about as functional as any old jalopy or puddle jumper.   He only chose it today because it was a car he wouldn’t mind abandoning in a field if he had to.  

             He was parked about a quarter of a mile from Fawny Rig in Wych Cross, Sussex England.  The paperback copy of an occultist’s memoir sat on the passenger seat beside him.   It was some self-published nonsense about The Order of Ancient Mysteries but it was Hob’s first real clue about what happened to his friend.

             For over thirty years he had searched.   And he had found one dead end after another, including a few attempted cons and scams from people who thought they could take advantage of a mad man trying to find a character from a faery tale.  

             The book had been the first major clue.  It had been written by some dead occultist who had claimed that he and the rest of his order had succeeded in invoking and trapping the King of Dreams.  The book had been vague and full of strange claims about archaic powers and curses and nonsensical and far-fetched boasts about demon invocations and boogeymen.

He would not have believed any of it until he had read the description of the creature they had caught. The bone-white flesh, the solid black eyes, the messy dark hair.  It had to be him.  It just had to be.

              The book hadn’t said where they had captured the being (whom Hob angry noticed they kept calling “it” when referencing the capture) but Hob had learned that The Order of Ancient Mysteries was once run by a Magnus Roderick Burgess and this had been his home estate. It now belonged to his son, Alexander Burgess, whom he had fathered very late in life.  Alexander would have been quite old by now, himself.  

If they had him, his friend- if they had Morpheus- what were they going to do to him? Pass him along through the generations like some strange inherited pet?  Who would get him next?  The butler? As far as he knew Alexander Burgess had no children of his own.  Would they seal up whatever dungeon they had him in and leave him to rot?

           This was still a long shot but Hob had to know.  If he was there he couldn’t just leave him at the mercy of these charlatans.  And if Hob got arrested for this- well, breaking-and-entering was not the worst crime he had ever been arrested for.  He could handle it.  

Hob took the old colt revolver out of the glove compartment.  This was also an antique and would have been difficult to smuggle into England today but he had brought it into the country in eighteen ninety-one, so it was long before modern firearm restrictions, and back when smuggling was far easier.

 Hob had lead a very colorful and long life.  At one point he had even been a slave trader, something that Morpheus, himself, had chastised him for.   Hob regretted that now.  He regretted that more than anything. He would spend the rest of eternity making reparations for that if he could.  How could he have ever been so callous to another human life?  

Morpheus had seemed so revolted.  “You take pride in treating your fellow humans as less than animals?” he had him.

Hob had tried to shrug it off with “Like I said, it’s a living.”

But Morpheus would not let it be.  “It is a poor thing, to enslave another.  I would suggest you find yourself a different line of business.”

Morpheus was right.  It was wrong to hold another like that. And if Morpheus was in there he had to get him out now.          

           Hob checked to make certain the colt revolver pistol was still loaded.  Each chamber of the six shooter held an old bullet. He had tested it only the night before to make certain it still fired.  He loathed the idea of having to use it but he knew it would be stupid to go in unarmed, especially since he didn’t practice magick, not really.  All he could do was hope a pistol was enough.

               _____________________________________________

 Chapter 4:  

 Locked within the crystal ball:

              It was early evening.  It was hard to tell from where he sat on the floor of his cage but he knew it was early evening.  One guard was reading a newspaper.  The other had a Stephen King novel.  Though Morpheus knew nothing of the technology, the men knew that their wifi devices would not work down there.  The rural setting combined with the thick stone walls made it impossible to get a good signal in that dungeon of a cellar.  

           There was also the concern of the residual yet powerful magick in the air, which by its very nature, interfered with sensitive electronics and could even cause them to short out.  They had been specifically ordered not to use their mobile devices down there and so they had to kill time through other means.

             Morpheus watched them with cold contempt.  He was measuring how long it took for the one with the novel to turn his page.  The other occasionally fidgeted.  Morpheus could tell by the man’s eye movements that the fidgeting one was not actually reading the newspaper.

The man was just seeking out a long word to play a childhood game of seeing how many smaller words he could make with the letters of the longer word he found. It was some kind of time-killer he had learned from spending too many childhood hours in doctor’s offices before wide-spread cellphone and Internet service.  

             Morpheus understood nothing of Internet, or mobile phones, but he understood the restlessness of a bored mortal.  How often did these restless people eventually drift into his own realm when they got like that?  He almost felt jealous of the bored mortal.

             There was a noise from above.  It was faint as the walls were designed to be soundproof but even in his magick resistant prison Morpheus could hear the scuffle.

           “Hey!  You’re not supposed to be here!  What are you doing!?”  Came one voice.   There was a sound of crashing furniture.

           “Someone get Maguire!”

             The two guards finally realized something was amiss when the door to the hidden room opened with a heavy creaking sound.

           The one set down his paper, the other- almost in unison-set down his novel. They stood up from their folding chairs.

                         At first Morpheus thought he had been psychically touched by his youngest sister, little Delirium, and madness was finally upon him or perhaps his memories were somehow seeping into reality, confusing past for present like psychic imprints and echoes of long ago events.  

He stared in wonder at the familiar yet disheveled appearance of Hob Gadling.

            Hob was wearing a casual suit and open, light colored blazer jacket.  It was slightly rumpled, as if he had been wearing it for more than twenty-four-hours and rather restlessly.

           Morpheus was not aware that the suit was over thirty-years-old and very likely the suit Hob had worn to the pub for their centennial meeting that he was now extremely late for.  

Whether consciously or subconsciously, Hob had (on some level) chosen to wear this suit on purpose now.  

 Morpheus hadn’t even noticed that he, himself, had risen to his feet.  The guards rushed toward the man who seemed both frightened yet determined.

 _____________________

  Chapter 5: The Rescue:

 As Hob had raced down the stone staircase, hoping his gut instincts were right, he nearly couldn’t breathe once he entered the dimly lit room.  He was panting for breath but then the shock of what he saw caused what air was there to get caught in his throat.

There were two men rising from folding chairs to meet and / or attack him- more likely the latter.  And behind them, just barely in view… There he was!  Naked and locked inside what looked like a ridiculously over-sized, novelty, snow globe paperweight.

 Hob couldn’t hold back a gasp when he saw him.  “Gadsbudikins!”  He was glad no one was there to comment on the archaic exclamation that had worked its way into his, proudly modern, vocabulary.  

He had never seen Morpheus in such a state.  He knew his friend was skinny and pale but to see him like this was something all-together different.  

Morpheus was emaciated.  The ribs protruding so that he could see each one incased in milk-white skin.  He was entirely naked.   He knew his friend’s pride.  He could only guess at the humiliation that, alone, must have brought to him.  How long had he been in there?  Whether a day or a century, ether was too damn long.        

            He was distracted briefly by the pitiful sight so he was caught off guard by the punch from the first guard. The other guard was trying to grab his arm.  

           Morpheus was barely aware he had placed a hand to the cold, crystalline, glass. When was the last time he had actually touched the wall of his cage?  He didn’t leave any fingerprints as he did this.  

             In the struggle the first man, the one who had thrown the punch, pulled a knife.   Morpheus’ own expression had shifted to one of genuine fear for Hob.

             He watched helplessly as the knife pierced the belly of his friend.

           There was a clanking sound as the bloodied weapon fell to the floor.  

Hob doubled over in pain.  For a brief moment Morpheus thought he was witnessing his friend’s corporeal end from this extended life- but no.  His older sister, Death, had seen to this long ago.  

           Hob was in considerable pain but he struggled his way free and staggered back into the mouth of the entrance into the hidden chamber.  One of his hands held his wounded belly, the shirt slowly becoming saturated in his red blood.  

           A well dressed, older looking, man was coming down the stairs, following the same path Hob had taken.  The two guards were readying the next assault when Hob turned, and fumbling, he drew out his pistol.  His hands were shaking but he managed to steady himself.    

             Paul Maguire (husband to Alexander Burgess, Morpheus’ owner…) raised his hands slightly and took a step back. “Sir, I don’t know what you want but the police have been called.” Paul bluffed.

           “With what you’ve got down here?   Yeah, right.  Tell me another one.   I’m taking him out of here.  If anyone tries to make a move…”

Hob was improvising.  He grabbed Paul and drew him close, holding the pistol to the side of Paul’s head, maneuvering to separate himself from the guards by using Paul as a shield.  Hob had lived many lives, not all of them honorably, and this was not his first unfair fight.

           “You’re going to open that…  Whatever the Hell that is.   And let my friend out.”

           “Your friend…?” Paul asked in confusion.

           “Did I stutter?!?”  Hob had always wanted to deliver that line, or at least he had ever since he had seen it written on a meme on Facebook.  “YOU HEARD ME!  Now!”

                Paul carefully, slowly, drew out an antique looking key from his pocket, moving very slowly to show he was not armed, and with trembling hand passed the key to the second guard.  The one that had not punched or stabbed Hob.

           Morpheus took a step back.

The guard walked to the crystalline cage and put the key into the discrete lock in the base.   The crystalline glass slid away at a near invisible seam, creating an opening.  Hob shoved Paul, forcibly, back against the first guard.   He walked to the cage’s opening.  He saw Morpheus just standing there.  He took off his own jacket for modesty’s sake.  “It’s all right.  I’m getting you out of here.  Come on.”

           Hob’s foot lightly brushed over the binding circle.  It was hard to tell if it was deliberate or not but the deed was done, the circle was breached.

           Morpheus stepped toward him.  And for the first time in over a century he spoke out loud.  His voice partly psychic, heard in the mind and audible at the same time, seemed feeble and weak from lack of use.  “Hob…?  Hob Gadling?” he asked as if not entirely certain he was really there.

           “Yeah.  It’s gonna be all right.   Come on.”

             The two guards and Paul seemed uncertain of what to do next.  They hadn’t exactly fully prepared for anything like this despite the years of meticulous care to make sure the prisoner did not escape.

           As soon as Morpheus was out of the cage and past the edge of the binding circle, Hob draped his jacket over his narrow shoulders.  

“Cheese and crust!  What did they do to you?”

           Morpheus opted against answering but he held the offered jacket tightly over himself.

Hob, holding the pistol in one hand, placed his other arm around Morpheus, escorting him up the stairs and outside the house, no one tried to stop them. Morpheus stumbled weakly but he steadied himself each time this happened.

             As soon as they were off the Fawny Rig grounds, just past the old iron gate, Morpheus stopped in his tracks, barefoot and mostly naked, but oblivious to any chill.  

He was staring up at the stars.  He hadn’t seen them in over a century.  Hob simply let him look.  They certainly were beautiful.   The stars gave the illusion of permanence.   But for all the change that might happen there were still stars in the darkness, even if one burnt out and another was born, there they were- always and forever.  Maybe that’s what immortality really was, the willingness to be ever-changing and yet ever constant, like the universe itself.      

           After some time Morpheus spoke, his voice still weak.  “I have to…   I have to return to…”

            Hob looked down at the weak, semi-skeletal figure that he was supporting.  “Return to where you originally came from?”

           He nodded.

           “Okay.  How do we do that?”  

           “You must sleep.”  He said simply, clutching the jacket around himself.

  _____________________________________________

 Chapter 6:             Rest:          

             They walked for some distance. Every so often Morpheus lost his footing and almost toppled but each time he stumbled Hob caught him.

           At one point he was certain Morpheus was looking at the blood on his shirt in concern at the stab wound.

           “It’s nothing.” Hob assured him.  “I’ve had worse.  I don’t think they’re chasing us but we really need to keep moving. ”

             When they finally reached the convertible, Morpheus stared at the automobile blankly.

“Oh, that’s just a horseless carriage.  We call them cars now.”

“I see…”

Hob opened the passenger door for him and pushed the book off the seat.  Morpheus understood to climb inside onto the seat. After he got in, Hob shut the door behind him.

Hob went to the driver’s side and climbed in, seating himself.  After shutting his own door he started the engine (which took several tries, as the car looked pretty but lacked functionality) but soon they were on the road away from Fawny Rig.  

Hob didn’t bother to tell his companion to put on a seat belt.  Any sort of restraint seemed like a bad idea right now, as if it was something that could potentially trigger post traumatic stress.  He already half-imagined that Morpheus would develop some kind of permanent claustrophobia after that long captivity and that seemed perfectly reasonable to him right now.  So he didn’t ask him to put on a seat belt.   And it was not likely either of them were about to die from a car crash.  

 After a quick stop at small convenience store they continued on the road for some distance and finally they reached the hotel parking field.

             Hob looked at his friend, trying not to show the pity he felt.   Instead he reached into the glove compartment and took out the small bag with the new bottle of extra strength Unisom sleeping pills he had just purchased at the convenience store.  

           He aligned the arrows on the child safety cap, removing the cap easily, and then punctured the seal with his thumb, taking out several small capsules into his hand.

He then removed the cap from the small bottled caffeine-free Coca-Cola he had also purchased and had been in the bag as well, with the bottle of Unisom sleeping pills.

“Well, bottom’s up.”  He raised his bottle as if it was a wine glass and then gulped down the five or so pills he had in his fist with a healthy swig of the soda.  

 Hob wasn’t certain if the amount of sleep aid capsules he had just swallowed was enough to potentially harm an ordinary man, but he knew he was not an ordinary man.  And his adrenaline was too high right now.  There was no way in Hell he was going to sleep without chemical assistance.  

 “Hob?” Morpheus looked as if he wanted to say something.

“Not now.” Hob said. “I’ll never get to sleep if you start chatting.  Save it for when we get you home.”  He said this as if Morpheus had ever been the talkative one. He knew he wasn’t.  

 There was a trace of a smile on Morpheus’ face.  “Thank you…”

“No problem.  What are friends for?”  He half expected the old tantrum to flare up but there was not the slightest hint of that now.  Morpheus leaned back in his own seat to wait.

 “I’ll… Turn on the radio while I wait for this stuff to kick in…” Hob said this to break the awkward silence that was threatening his drug-aided nap.

  By some twisted irony the song Mr. Sandman by The Chordettes was playing.  Hob gave an uneasy laugh. “Bet you hate that song, don’t you?”

The sudden music with vocal accompaniment seemed to startle Morpheus at first but his tension faded with Hob’s own nonchalantness about it. “Actually… I have never heard it before…”

“It’s about you… I think…”

“Is it really?”

 _________________________________

 Chapter 7:

 Home:

   The song wasn’t even over yet when Hob found himself standing in a dimly lit pub in the fourteenth century.  And there was his friend, quite naked, and seemingly indifferent to his own nakedness. Hob figured Morpheus must have left the jacket in the car.

 His friend was crouched in front of the fire place, tearing into a leg of mutton from someone else’s plate.  Curiously the tavern was empty except for the two of them, and yet several tables were loaded with untouched drinks and dishes of food.    

Some of the food didn’t really belong in this time period as they had not been invented yet- like chimichangas, New York style pizza, Kentucky fried chicken, and Twinkies.   These anachronistic snacks and meals were the first give-away that he was dreaming.

 Morpheus helped himself to the diverse array of strange foods.  A little of this, a little of that, he was gobbling as much of it up as he could. He seemed famished, eating as much as he could, as fast as he could.

 “Hey… Maybe you should take it easy?” Hob said in concern.  “You know when humans are starved for a long stretch of time they have to slowly reintroduce their body to solid foods.   Maybe start with some soup?  …Or you could just eat the entire bucket of KFC… Sure.  Why not?”                  

 After he had his fill Morpheus stood and seemed to be concentrating.  Slowly something swirled up around him like dust… or sand.  Yeah, it was glittering, golden sand.  

From that sand dark robes were taking form on his body.   Seamless and not quite stylized in any particular way.   Hob felt that at the moment the feebly conjured clothes vaguely resembled a black Snuggie.  

 With some cold determination Morpheus walked out the door of the pub and into a surprisingly beautiful night, with a sprawling nebula smeared overhead like oil paint.  

Hob hastily gave chase “Hey!  Hey, where you going?!”

 Outside the pub there was a beach.  Funny.   There was never a beach so close to the pub before but then Hob remembered this was a dream.   Morpheus was kneeling in the sand, gathering some of it.

“Hey, what are you doing?”  He caught Morpheus’ wrist.

Morpheus did not shrug him off.  “I have to get my revenge.”

“Revenge on who?  Roderick Burgess and his crew are dead!”

“His son yet lives.”

“His son?  You’re going to go after his son?!”

“You disapprove?  His son could have freed me.  I would have shown him mercy if he had let me go.  Instead he kept me as his father had, threatened, insulted, and tormented me. He must pay.”

“He didn’t know!   He didn’t know what to do and you probably scared him.  I’m not justifying it but I’ve lived long enough to know revenge isn’t going to make you feel any better.”

“But I… I waited so long…” He sounded uncertain.

“You’re sick.   You could barely stand.   You’re still recovering.  I’m pretty sure you don’t want to be wandering around in a half-finished Snuggie. You’re going to waste what little strength you have getting revenge on someone whose biggest crime was apathy and being a jerk?”

“What is a Snuggie?”

“Never mind that.” Hob said with a shake of his head.  “Revenge isn’t worth it.  You’ve got to forgive him.  You know as well as I do revenge isn’t going to bring you any real satisfaction.”

“Who are you to tell me what will satisfy me or not?”  Morpheus said angrily.

“The man who just saved your life!  That’s who! You can listen to me or not, that’s up to you.”  Hob let go of Morpheus’ wrist. “But the way I see it...  You need rest.  You need to recover.  And you need to learn to forgive.  Going after Burgess’ kid, who inherited you like a pet parrot, isn’t going to make you feel better.  You’re weak and you need rest.  Is there any where I can take you where you’ll be able to do that?”

“You’ll be waking up soon…”

“So hurry up then and tell me.”

 Hob walked beside his friend, down the twisting. dark path, surrounded by gnarled old trees.  Up ahead was an old house, probably eighteenth century or early Victorian.   And next to that house was a graveyard beside a similar, somewhat larger house.  “You sure this is where you want to go?”  Hob asked.  

Morpheus nodded.

“It looks like The Crypt Keeper lives here.”

“Something like that…”

 It was the pudgy one, Abel, who opened the door to the house of Mystery.  The thinner one in the pince-nez spectacles, Cain stood behind Abel.  Both looked stunned at who was at the door.

 Hob stood with the weakened Dream King leaning on him.   Behind them was the dopey eyed, dog-like, big, green, gargoyle that had followed them as soon as they entered the gate.

“Can you two look after my friend?  I think I’m starting to wake up….”

 Before Hob could get an answer he found himself back in the driver’s seat of the parked car.  He looked to the seat next to him. It was empty except for some glittering dust and his jacket.

He noticed something else too.  The pain in his stomach, where he had been stabbed, was entirely gone.  He would have healed on his own, mind you.  A wound like that couldn’t kill him, but it took hours, if not days to recover from such an injury.  Now it was as if the wound had never happened at all.  

Morpheus had heeded him about not wasting his energy on futile and cruel revenge. Instead he had spent his energy on something far more important.  He had used what little strength he had to heal his friend…

 ______________________________________

 Chapter 8:

 You’ll meet friends in the Dark:

  The funny thing about having a friend who is the King of Dreams is it’s hard to tell when something really is just a dream.  He worried that the part about delivering Morpheus to that old Haunted House to be tended to was just in his own mind, a fevered and addled dream from injury and over-the-counter sleeping pills.  

             Hob sat nervously at the pub.  The meeting was now some decades late.  He sincerely hoped the part of his recent adventure that took place in dreams was real.   That sounded silly to him upon reflection:  “the part that was in dreams was real...”

 Nervously he sat, worried his friend was not coming.  And then he saw him as if he had been there the whole time.  Morpheus stood in a modern, long, leather jacket. His messy dark hair slightly more stylized.  His skin still bone-white, his look still improbably slight, features still gaunt, and thin. The eyes were black but the tiny star-like pupils in the middle of that blackness seemed more alert, twinkling with old power.

“I- I wasn’t sure you’d be coming.”  Hob said.

“Really?”  Morpheus was smiling.  It was a small smile but it was there just the same.  “I have always heard it was impolite to keep one’s friends waiting. Would you like a drink?”

    The End

[smoliboops]

the egos as different (new who) incarnations of the Doctor: revisted

(havent written an analysis type of thing in a while, miss sharing ideas with people in general aha :’D)

originally 2am thoughts/concepts that i might draw aka revisiting the concept of the egos as different regenerations of the doctor (debate and additions are welcome):

schneeplestein- nine

(first regeneration after the time war and as such major guilt and lonliness from being the sole survivor who also had to be the one to end it. this paralleling to schneep’s 9 month disappearance and his possible guilt resulting from the events of say goodbye and moreso kill jse (as well as schneep probably doing risky things in the name of stopping anti). other things including, sass, calling humans “stupid apes”, rational, angry sometimes, but can appreciate the ancient human music that is tainted love, saving their friend/companion and telling them to live a good life as they head off to face their longtime enemy,the pain you see on his face when he gets compared to said enemy (”you would make a good puppet dalek), bananas being good source of potassium)

chase- ten

(is kind of a mess but a cool mess, generally the most emotional/human of the incarnations, starts off as a cool, charismatic type of guy but slowly goes downward into a spiral of sadness and lonliness as everyone he loved leaves (ya see the connection im getting at?), loses the girl he loved and missing the chance to tell her he loved her, ”im fine” he says as he just lost his best friend and is now alone standing in the pouring rain, accidentally quoting the lion king and harry potter but also “no second chances im that kind of man,” loves little shops and making things that go ding and silly made up words like “wibbly wobbly timey wimey”, literally Human Nature/Family of Blood shows how much he wanted a human life with a wife and kids and the episode "the doctor's daughter" where he finally gets a kid and loses her, the hero who goes from saving the universe with all his friends around him to him dying alone not wanting to go, literally called “the man that regrets” in dotd, listen to love don't roam on YouTube)

jj- eleven

(the doctor with the most confusing timeline, child-like wonder and the look of a young lad hiding the tired eyes of an old man who has seen and gone through so much, very protective of his fond family/people he loves, he literally snuck into a charlie chaplin film in s6′s immpossible astronaut, also stayed in Victorian london for a time which would be jj's aesthetic tbh, can be silly and clumsy and starry-eyed while also being capable of becoming the oncoming storm, “ Good men don't need rules, today is not the day to find out why i have so many.”, great with kids, like weird/unique hatwear, b o w t i e s, g o g g l e s, just wants to go home even if it’s the long way round, “every lonely monster needs a companion” (you can’t tell me jj probably would still feel like a monster cos of how closely related he is to anti), and also theres puppets in two episodes of his, despite the darkness and loneliness it just made him kind, the optimist, the hoper of far flung hopes and the dreamer of improbable dreams )

marvin- twelve

(recognizing gender as a concept far beyond them obvs, he’s literally called a magician half the time lol, avoiding death by rocking out in the 1500s with an electric guitar on top of an army tank, “can you hurry up before i hit you with my shoe”, as a morally gray character that many theorize whether he’s good/bad, marvin relates well to twelve’s whole journey of questioning if he was a good man and willing to learn the extents of what that means, tried his best to not only do right but to try to help those who weren’t good people who he knew needed help, would fight robin hood irl with a spoon and have a sign saying “go away humans”, not totally great with social cues but he tries and that’s what counts, seemingly cold and harsh and grump but take time to know him and he’s actually warm deep down, "do you think i care for you so little that betraying me would make a difference?", wiliing to "go to hell" for their friend, not only protective of the people he loves but is also willing to to things like repeatedly die over 8 billion years and almost cause the destruction of the universe for the sake of saving his friend, would sacrifice himself recklessly in the name of standing up for what he believed in)

jackieboy man-thirteen

(total ray of sunshine who also recognizes the dangers of being close to them (i.e. dying, forgetting, getting trapped in another time or parallel world, getting converted and dying, etc) and as such keeps those they love at a distance, literally not talking about who they truly were for a whole series cos they didn't want to wrap their family up into their own troubles they faced, adorably socially awkward/anxious but still perseveres in the face of danger and certain doom, "darkness never sustains, even though sometimes it feels like it might," would build their own gadgets, g o g g l e s, would eat dirt and bone dust for analysis, would save the day by becoming best friends with a sentient universe in the form of a frog, always tries to have a flat team structure but in reality "this team structure...it isn't flat. It's mountainous, with me, in the stratosphere, alone, left to choose. Save jack the poet, save the universe. Sometimes, even i can't win.", P U N S)

Bonus content: anti as sacha Dawhan's master

like *chefs kiss* (LITERALLY pretended to be the doctor's friend for years until revealing he actually killed him before she met him and took his place (that gif is him just throwing away that dude's minituraized dead body btw), the kneel scene, his s m i l e, maniacal g l e e as he destroys everything and kills people all to cover up the pain and sadness and anger he feels inside because of her *cough a piece of SPOILER being inside him and him not being able to stand it is definitely anti/jack vibes cough*, also imagine this small exchange but between jackieboy man and anti:

The doctor: "proud of yourself?"

The master: "Definitely."

The doctor: "all this death...Finally made you happy?"

The Master, smiling: "Ecstatic."

The doctor, closer to his face: "And has it calmed all the rage?"

The master, pausing and looking away: "...I don't think anything will ever do that."

Also pls watch that spyfall pt1 reveal scene (basically the whole ending tbh), again it's just *chef's kiss*

Ok that's enough blabbering from me. Still debating on drawing the egos as the doctor (ooh maybe a screen cap redraw would be fun if some people have suggestions for an ep to ref for each one (granted who knows if I'd have time to draw them all but I'm curious anyway lol)) ok time to head out *yeets*.

[lizziestudieshistory]

Books of 2020 - March

Enforced isolation made me read a lot... Here are the 10 books I read!

The Way of Kings - Brandon Sanderson (The Stormlight Archive #1)    We all know I adore this series - I reread it every year after all. This time I read it to annotate the text and do a proper deep-dive into the world Sanderson is creating in preparation for Rythmn of War coming out later this year.

The Binding - Bridget Collins    I still don’t know how I feel about Collins’ book. It’s a historical fiction novel with a subtle hint of magical realism through the concept of Binding - using some form of magic (I’m not entirely sure how) to turn real memories into books. This concept is what made me and my uni friends buddy read this novel in the first place; it sounds fascinating, especially to bookish people like we us! However, this book is not really about book binding - it’s a love story between Emmett Farmer and Lucian Darnay.

If I’m honest the part two, which covered the original courtship of Lucian and Emmett, was the most interesting section of the novel. I thought their relationship was a bit cringey (as befits teenagers) and incredibly sweet. The romance made the novel. But it wasn’t the book we signed up for. I was expecting a book about the secrets about Binding - maybe a bit of a thriller/mystery but with beautiful writing and an ethereal setting? I was definitely expecting more information about Binding. Instead we got a angsty romance, endless cutting and gluing of endpapers for books and ONE scene of Emmett book binding that didn’t tell us what the process actually is.

For what the book actually is, which is an angsty gay romance in a very subtly magical alternate ‘Victorian’ society, it’s a decent book. If I’d known this I probably would have read it and considered it a lovely cutesy read. However, it’s not the book I was sold and it left me disappointed. I’d recommend giving it a shot, but it’s not a book I would necessarily read again...

The Scarlet Pimpernel - Baroness Orcsy    This was a ridiculous, over the top, and melodramatic classic adventure story. I had so much fun reading this! The Scarlet Pimpernel is a mysterious English aristocrat who, with his band of devoted fellow gentlement, travels to France during the height of the Revolution to rescue innocent French nobles from the guillotine. However, the French are at their wits end and Chauvelin blackmails the ‘cleverest woman in Europe’, darling of English society, and French wife of Sir Percy Blakeney, Lady Marguerite Blakeney, to find out the indentity of the Scarlet Pimpernel. 

From there we go on a wonderfully melodramatic romp through 18th century England and France, and watch as Marguerite tries to save the Scarlet Pimpernel. It’s a silly, over the top, novel in a similar style to The Three Musketeers and The Count of Monte Cristo. I’d highly recommend it as an entry into classic literature - or just as a ridiculous fun story!

Reticence - Gail Carriger (The Custard Protocol #4)   My last full length parasolverse novel was A LOT of fun. I adored Percy and Arsenic’s slightly cringey but incredibly sweet romance bloom, alongisde the exploration of the supernatural in Carriger’s version of 1890′s Japan. The Custard Protocol was my least favourite of Carriger’s three main series (plotwise at least) but Reticence was a beautiful homage to the entire parasolverse! I adored the cameos (or just the entire wedding scene, let’s face it!), silly humour, and Percy’s happy ending.

My small niggle with this novel was the plot. As with the rest of the Custard Protocol novels I felt the plot wasn’t spectacular. It was a bit thin on the ground, particularly in the first half... This series is about character, and I love all the characters, but I wanted a little bit more from all of the novels. I wanted to see a bit more of each country (and spend a little bit less time on the Spotted Custard whilst travelling through the grey...) Nevertheless, I think Reticence was the strongest of the four Custard novels and I really loved it. Carriger’s world is my comfort blanket, it makes me smile, and I adore the world she’s created - and for that I will be forever grateful to Miss Gail!

Poison or Protect - Gail Carriger (Delightfully Deadly Novellas #1)   This novella was a lot darker than I was expecting from Carriger. The plot and on-screen action was just a silly and entertaining as I was expecting (Preshea goes to a house party to prevent the assassination of the Duke of Snodgrove, and stop his daughter marrying a gold digger, whilst falling in love with a dashing Scottish captain.) However, Preshea’s backstory was much darker than we usually see in the parasolverse, the only comparable one I can think of off the top of my head is Rodrigo’s abuse from the Templars! She suffered through years of abuse and neglect at the hands of her father and husbands, leaving her damaged and shying away from all relationships. 

The actual romance in Poison or Protect left me a little but underwhelmed. Gavin was actually what I was expecting from Connal Maccon in the Parasol Protectorate, and I’m much more on board with his ‘gentle-giant’ style romance with Preshea. I’m personally not a huge fan of the stereotypical kilt-wearing, enormous Scottish bloke... Just not my thing...but good for Preshea if she likes that! I just wasn’t that invested. 

Personally, I would have loved Preshea’s book to revolve a bit more on her relationships with women, not romantically (she has never read as bi or a lesbian) but platonically. In the Finishing School Preshea held herself aloof from the girls around her, never really having a proper friend or friendship group. Instead she was like a vampire queen surrounded by her hive - beautiful, deadly, and set above everyone around her. Preshea herself comments on it in the book! Because of this I would’ve really loved the novella to focus on Preshea learning to be friends with other women, not see them as enemies or competition, and maybe getting her man on the side. We did get this growth as a sub-plot with Lady Flo and Mis Pagril, but I think it was more important for Preshea with her Finishing School background and the abuse she suffered to find herself with other women before jumping into bed with husband number 5...

The Wilful Princess and the Piebald Prince - Robin Hobb (Realm of the Elderlings)    This was a fun little novella that expanded the backstory of the Six Duchies and explained why the Witted and Wit magic are so feared in the Farseer and Tawny Man Trilogies. It’s not Hobb’s finest work, but it did flesh out the history of the Six Duchies a little bit more. The story isn’t incredibly important to the main series but I’d highly recommend for fans of Hobb’s Realm of the Elderlings and it’s best to read the tale either before of after the Tawny Man Trilogy.

Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert   A disappointing classic. Madame Bovary is supposed to be selacious and scandelous. I found it tedious and irritating. Emma Bovary was one of the most uncompelling heroines I’ve read outside of Dickens - she was a selfish snob, with no redeeming characteristics for the reader to latch onto. She’s adored by her husband, but bored in her marraige because Charles is only a middle class, mediocre doctor... She is manipulated by the men around her (both lovers and the guy who lends her money, I can’t remember his name) but is also incredibly stupid in her decisions, particularly around money and her last fateful decision at the end of the book.

The language (both French and my English translation) was dry, and the pacing was off. Important parts of the novel went by in a whirl, but then there were long stretches where almost nothing happens. I’ve read similar novels that were much better with similar themes, plotlines, and much more interesting characters. I am glad I’ve read it but Madame Bovary is not a book I would read again, nor would I recommend it unless you want to cross it off your list of classics. 

Winter’s Heart, Crossroads of Twilight, and Knife of Dreams - Robert Jordan (Wheel of Time #9, 10, 11)    This post is incredibly long and I’ve spoken about this series at length already so I don’t really have any new criticisms to rasise. However I am slowly making my way through the rest of the Wheel of Time and I’ve now reached the end of the books solely written by Robert Jordan himself. Winter’s Heart and Crossroads of Twilight really were the height of the slump, however, I did manage to read through them both quite quickly with the amount of time I have at the moment. Both books were quite slow but had hugely important moments in them for the entire series.

Knife of Dreams was a return to form for Jordan before he died and we got the resolution to several tedious plotlines that had been running through the last few books (Perrin and Faile, Mat in Ebudar, Egwene travelling to the White Tower.) Personally, I loved Elayne’s struggle to claim the Lion Throne, however, this is one of the plotlines people tend to dislike and it had a particularly satisfying conclusion at the end of KoD. I’m incredibly excited to the series conclusion that I can see coming and I can’t wait to jump into the installments written by Brandon Sanderson in April! 

Currently Reading

I’m still working through Fellowship and the Companion... It’s fallen by the wayside slightly but I am still working through it.

A Tale of Two Cities - Charles Dickens    This is my buddy read book for March/April, but it’s also a reread for me (as we know from my turbulent relationship with this book from 2019) We have just finished Book 2 Chapter 5.

The Priory of the Orange Tree - Samantha Shannon    I’m not a huge fan of this book so far, however, I don’t hate it. I think the plot and world building is quite shallow (circa. 200 pages in anway), and the writing makes me feel like I’m watching the characters through a glass screen. Hopefully it will pick up a bit, but at the moment I think it’s overrated. (I don’t think it’s helping I’ve been reading a lot of brilliant epic fantasy at the moment...)

[mirkwoodshewolf]

The Magician; Brian May x reader

*Author’s note*

Okay guys here we go with the final part of my Hallowqueen series. I apologize if the whole story feels rushed, I sorta struggled trying to make the sweetest guy of Queen into a dark fictionized magician but I hope I still made you guys happy.  Thank you all so much to everyone who gave this mini series a chance and I hope that in the next couple of days, you all have a happy and safe Halloween. Enjoy my lovely darlings and I hope to have the next part of my Aladdin queen series back up hopefully this weekend ;)

Warnings: DEATH, drugs (not like drugs drugs but like poison drugs) hints of dissection, and yeah just some dark themes with this fic.

Link to intro

Taglist:

@psychosupernatural​

@plethora-of-things​

@ixchel-9275​

@waddles03​

@geek-and-proud​

@mexifangorl​

@queendeakyy​

@precioustyler​

________________________________________________________

While walking through the circus you soon find yourself bumping into someone.

“Sorry.”

“Why don’t you watch where you’re going!” the man hissed at you.  You look to see a rather mean looking adult.  He was at least twice your age and had multiple piercings as well as a tattoo across the left side of his face.

“I said I was sorry.”

“But clearly you’re too stupid to even look up to see that someone’s in front of you!”

“What’s going on here?” a voice soon called out. You both turned around and soon coming up was the curly haired magician.  The pierced man then tried to make himself look like the victim.

“Well I was just minding my own business when this hussy out of nowhere tried to assault me.”

“What?! No I—”

“Simon you’ve tried this before back in Montreal and Vancouver. And quite frankly I’m sick of it, so apologize to the lady and kindly remove yourself from the circus, less I lay the message to Freddie about this.” At the mention of that name, the man turned pale.  But he turns to you and said in a snappy voice.

“Sorry.”

“It’s okay.” He then stormed off.

“Simon can be a bit of a handful. Honestly I don’t know why he keeps coming in. We’ve tried to have tighter security against him since he’s caused some problems in the past. You okay though love?”

“Yeah, I’m—I’m fine. But it was kinda my fault I—I wasn’t really paying attention to where I was going.”

“True, but Simon shouldn’t have been so cruel to someone who apologizes, especially if they are a woman. I can’t stand men who treat women with disrespect.” Wow, a true gentleman huh? “How about I make it up to you with some tea in my trailer? If that’s alright with you of course.”

“Oh I couldn’t impose.”

“Nonsense love, I insist. Besides it’s getting cold out there, at least drink something warm before you leave.” You ponder on the offer and you begin to think it wouldn’t hurt, plus it’d be free tea and you could also get to know the handsome curly haired sorcerer a bit more.

“Only if you’re okay with it.” He smiled a wide but warm smile as he said.

“I would be honored.”

“I’m (y/n).” you introduce yourself.  The magician takes your hand and says his name.

“Brian. Brian May.” He then kisses the back of your hand and you could feel your heart skip a beat as you stare into those beautiful blue eyes of his.

He then guides you into his trailer and has you sit down on the blue couch and you can’t help but admire some of the things he has inside.  A telescope, a mini bookshelf with all kinds of spell books as well as astronomy books and physics books.

He comes back and hands you a beautiful crafted Victorian teacup that was white with pink roses painted along the entire cup.

“I hope you like it, it’s herbal tea. Good for the soul.” You thank him and you take a sip but can’t help but taste something bitter.  You try to hold in a grimace but he seems to notice it as he says, “Do you not like it?”

“No, no it’s just—never really had herbal tea like this before.”

“Well I tend to make my teas differently because I use true organic materials and raw herbs without all the pesticides teashop owners use nowadays.” He says.

“And there’s nothing wrong with that. So by saying that I’m gonna take a guess that you’re also a vegetarian.” He fiddles around with his teacup as he says.

“I know Roger and Fred mock me for it, but I just think it’s cruel to eat animals when they’ve never done anything to us.”

“Wait so you’re also an animal activist too?” you ask as you turn fully to face him.

“In my downtime. At least before I joined this circus I was a part of many animal rights groups. Was about to star my own organization before Fred found me.”

“Oh my god I never thought I would meet another animal right’s activist here.”

“Wait so you’re…..” you then show him your bracelet which was an organization for Badger conservation. “You help out badgers?”

“Been working with these guys since high school. We help rescue, rehabilitate, and release badgers once they’re done recovering.” You say proudly.

“That’s amazing love, badgers are one of my favorite animals.”

“For real? Mine too. I never met another person who loves badgers.”

“Well here I am.” The two of you laugh and that’s when he asks you.  “So how did you get involved with the badger program?”

“Well like I said it was when I was graduating high school. I always wanted to be a vet technician but not for just domesticated pets, I wanted to do the exotic animals like wolves, badgers, hedgehogs, foxes, bears.”

“And did you become one?”

“Well I would’ve but then the math got too hard for me so I ended up failing college at the time.  After a couple years I went back and made my major to English. Kinda stupid huh?”

“No not at all. There’s nothing wrong with an English degree. What was your area of study?”

“Folklore and mythology.”

“Really? That sounds fascinating.”

“It really wasn’t. I mean at least the courses I was required to take weren’t. There was hardly any courses on the real mythology that I could take at my college. Anyways it was then I saw a flier for rescuer volunteers for this organization. I gave them a call, did the interview and here I am 10 years later.”

“That’s amazing. How many rescues were you apart of?”

“Well I didn’t get out onto the field till 18 months after my training. But if I remember correctly I think I’ve done 100 rescues.”

“Wow.” Brian said in awe as he kept his eyes locked right on you.

“Yeah. My recent rescue was a pair of hedgehogs. They got swept up by the river from the recent storms we’ve been having.”

“Aww the poor little things. Are they alright?”

“Yeah, they’re currently being incubated to get their body temperatures up. But nothing serious was damaged, just a little cold, wet and scared. At least the siblings didn’t get separated from each other.”

“Yeah. There’s nothing worse than when animal siblings get separated from each other.”

“Right. Alright I’ve bored you enough with my stories.”

“Oh no love not at all. I find your story very interesting. I mean if anything I think I’ll be the one boring you if I were to tell you my story.”

“Well I’ve got all night Bri.” You don’t know why you called him that so you quickly apologize. “I’m sorry I-I-I-I just…..”

“It’s alright. In fact all my friends call me that. Plus it—sounds lovely when you say it.” You couldn’t help the slight blush that came across your face, and it only seem to grow darker as you felt his hand take yours and you can feel his calloused thumb stroke the back of it. “Well to make a long story short besides animal loving, I’ve always just been fascinated by space and the wonders of the universe. As a sorcerer I get a further in depth look at what lies beyond the cosmos, and actually bring it before an audience.”

It was then his hand began to glow a soft blue color and soon all around the trailer was a mini-version to the galaxy he had presented earlier that night.  All the constellations coming to life in their pictured form.  Pisces the fish swam around you while Leo came up to you and nuzzled your head.

Orion the hunter stood before you and bowed in respect almost like he was greeting a Queen.  You smile and bow back to him before he dissolves back into the stars.

“Oh Brian this—never did I imagine the cosmos could be so beautiful.” You whisper in awe.

“I may hold the cosmos and everything regarding the universe in the palm of my hand, but I see a far more beautiful sight in front of me.” You turn and see that he’s looking at you with such wonder and warmth.  

At his pickup line you can’t help but bashfully lower your head but he lifts your chin up so that he can look at you properly. He stands up and holds his hand out to you.

“I normally don’t ask this but—would you like to dance?” you look up at him and you couldn’t explain it but there was something just pulling you towards him.  You take his hand and he helps you stand up.

“Uhh Bri?”

“Hmm?”

“I—don’t know if a trailer is a good place for dancing.”

“Oh right, silly me.” With a wave of his hand, the trailer almost seemed to disappear and all that was surrounding you was nothing but starry skies. “Is this better?” he asks you.

“Yeah.” You muttered.  He takes your hand in his and slowly almost kinda sensually wraps his other arm around your waist, making shivers and sparks of electricity run up your spine.  He then leads you in a gentle sway.

You both stare into each other’s eyes and that’s when Brian says to you.

“(Y/n). Has—anyone ever told you that your eyes sparkle like the stars themselves?”

“No one but you Bri.” You confess.  He leans his forehead against yours and you can’t help but surrender to his touch as you close your eyes and lean closer toward his lips.  Soon enough your lips meet with his and you end up kissing him.

At first you had no idea why you were doing this and one part of your head was telling you to back away and stop it, but then there was this other part telling you to keep going.  You feel his hand gently cup underneath your jawline which caused the kiss to go deeper.

You moan as you quickly fall under the spell of Brian’s kiss.  If he wasn’t magical before then there was definitely something about him because you just couldn’t stop kissing him, nor did you want to separate from him.

Suddenly you felt this agonizing pain in your stomach. You forced yourself to break free of Brian’s kiss and embrace and the room turned back into the trailer.

“(Y/n), love are you alright?” your vision started going in and out as you pant.

“I—suddenly don’t feel so good. God my—my head’s spinning like a top.”

“Perhaps some more tea will help you?”

“No, no…..” you try to walk away but all you ended up stumbling around the trailer, knocking things over. “Air….I need air….” You somehow finally managed to reach the doorknob but a hand covers your own. You look up and see through your blurry vision, three Brian’s.

“You’re too sick to go out my dear. Please rest. I can take care of you.”

“No, no I…..” he picks you up bridal style and takes you into what looked like a bedroom.  He sets you down on the black bedsheets and the next thing you feel is a cold rag being dabbed across your sweating face. “Wha—the tea….”

“You’re mumbling love. I can’t understand you.”

“The tea tasted bitter—what did you put in it?”

“As I said before it was freshly grown herbs, tea leaves, a teaspoon of honey.”

“No you—you poisoned it…..somehow. I…..” you groan in agony and that’s when you hear.

“Well. There was one more thing, but it wasn’t poison. A special potion I brewed up myself. Amortentia.”

“Wha?”

“Think of it as a—love potion of sorts. It increases pheromones in the body as well as estrogen. It’s not harmful once digested, just increases your hormones a bit.” This didn’t make any sense.

If the tea wasn’t poisoned, the why did it feel like you were dying? You groan in agony again and you could hear Brian’s gentle coos and shushing as he lay down close beside you, stroking your cheek and kissing around your face.

Wait; unless—no it…..it couldn’t be that way.

“Figuring it out now love?” his voice suddenly had a darker tone to it.  You look up at him and he just grins down at you darkly as he chuckles in the same dark tone. “At first I didn’t want to believe Freddie but I guess it is true that one kiss can seal someone’s life.” He brushes the hair out of your face and walks over to his dresser.

He then holds up what looked like a stick of chap stick but as he opens it he says.

“With a bit of nigh shade berries and a dash of arsenic, it does become quite the concoction for a—toxic kiss.” Ahhh shit! How could you be soo foolish to accept the tea? That’s always the first thing people poison whenever it comes to a murdering or killing, so why were you so stupid?!

He comes back over to you and tells you as he hovers over you.

“Now don’t get me wrong love. It’s nothing personal, and nothing against you. In fact—you are beautiful. Too beautiful in fact to be in this body. You are a true star that should belong in the cosmos. So allow me to help you get there. Well—it’s not like you have a choice in the matter anyways.” He chuckles once more before pulling something out of his drawer.

“Please……don’t do this.” You whisper with your last breath. He looks down at you and cups the side of your face and whispers.

“No need to be afraid love. And no need to be embarrassed. Your body is beautiful. And I will enjoy every second of this.” He then shows you a scalpel.  You wish you could scream but the only sound you could hear was the sound of your heartbeat slowly stopping.  Your vision goes dark and soon all you feel is numbness before you finally draw your last breath.

Within a week in Paris, Brian now stood before the audience showing the audience the beauty of the cosmos.

“So you see monsieur’s and mademoiselles. The stars show us what lies beyond our universe. And sometimes, we can see those we love amongst them.” It was then a formation of stars came down before Brian and they morphed into a young woman with (h/l) hair and her eyes were replaced by two of the brightest stars ever imagined.  “Hello my love.”

Her arms wrapped around Brian and she leaned up against his chest and clung onto him like a child needing comfort from their parent.

[searchingwardrobes]

Self Promo Sunday

My next fic disappearing from Ao3 is another speculation fic from before season six featuring Hyde as the bad guy in a Prince Humperdink scenario. It’s kind of silly, to be honest.

Summary: Mr. Hyde is forcing Emma Swan into marrying him. But Hyde has never seen the Princess Bride. Emma has. She knows how this ends.

Rating: G

Words: just shy of 2,000

On Ao3 until 11/10/19

Tagging the usuals:@snowbellewells @jennjenn615 @kday426 @let-it-raines @teamhook@kmomof4 @bethacaciakay @profdanglaisstuff @resident-of-storybrooke @thislassishooked @tiganasummertree@whimsicallyenchantedrose @snidgetsafan @delirious-latenight-laughs​ @winterbaby89​ @distant-rose​@shireness-says​ @xhookswenchx​ @optomisticgirl​ @spartanguard​ @branlovestowrite​ @welllpthisishappening​ @hollyethecurious​ @stahlop​

In this day and age of modern, independent women, you would think dreams of princesses, castles, and balls wouldn’t even enter girl’s minds anymore. And yet … how does one explain the continued popularity of Disney princesses? Sure, maybe some parents are playing into gender stereotypes, but plenty of moms in sensible suits making six figure incomes are more than willing to plop down 75 bucks for one of those top of the line dresses at the Disney Store. And even if some women try to deny otherwise, why are so many women still swooning over Mr. Darcy? (Or, secretly, Flynn Ryder, smolder and all.)

Emma Swan was no different. By day she hunted down scum bags in sensible knee high boots. But by night … Well, let’s just say she was no stranger to Ben, Jerry, or Mr. Darcy. (As for Flynn Ryder, she would deny that one to her dying breath. She had no kids, so she had no excuse for watching Tangled to begin with).

But Emma’s favorite was The Princess Bride. Sure, Buttercup sometimes got on her nerves (What?! NOW you choose to pick up the damn branch! Help the man, girl!), but Emma couldn’t help but be moved by Westley’s utter devotion to her. Every time Westley declared to Buttercup that even death couldn’t stop true love, Emma would pause with her breath caught in her throat, spoonful of rocky road paused halfway to her lips. If only men like Westley were actually real.

Then she found out Disney princesses were, in fact, real. So were their princes. There really were fairy tales with true love and happy endings. But a real Westley? Doubtful. Until … there he was, the man in black. Lopsided grin, mesmerizing eyes, and a quick-witted tongue. She tried to suppress the schoolgirl fantasies, swearing even when she hauled him in for a kiss that it couldn’t possibly be as good as she dreamed. But the kiss was. And he was. What she had dreamed. “As you wish,” and everything. Even “death can’t stop true love; it can only delay it for a little while.” Yes, even Westley was real. Only his name was actually Killian Jones. And his more colorful moniker, instead of Dread Pirate Roberts, was Hook.

If she was living out her little fantasy, Emma should have anticipated a Prince Humperdink and a forced marriage at some point. Yet she hadn’t. They had done the whole death thing. A Prince Humperdink seemed rather anticlimactic. However, enter from stage right … Mr. Hyde.

Yeah, figures. Her Prince Humperdink was Mr. Freakin’ Hyde. I’ll take psychopaths for two hundred, Alex. Apparently, there was some prophesy about the child of the savior, so Hyde wanted to father it with her. Thankfully, his Victorian sensibilities required marriage first. Thank god.

Emma knelt in front of the door of her locked room, her tongue poking out of the corner of her mouth as she attempted to pick the lock with a hair pin. She may be Princess Buttercup in this little drama, but she wasn’t just going to sit around and wait. She had already tried her magic. Her non-existent magic, apparently. She wasn’t sure what Hyde had done, but she wasn’t able to use it. Just when Emma thought the lock had clicked open, a jolt sent her falling backwards onto her rear. Emma swore under her breath as she got to her feet. So much for picking the lock. She turned instead to the window. Bars. It was a stark reminder that she was being held captive in an asylum. No castles for Emma Swan. No sir. For her story, it was an asylum. Fitting.

Emma stood and began pacing; gnawing on her fingernails as she racked her brain for a plan. As she did, the door swung open. Emma lowered her hand quickly and squared her shoulders. No need to let Hyde see any nervousness or fear. Yet it’s a servant girl, not Hyde who shuffles into the room, a white wedding dress draped over her arm.

“Pardon me, Miss,” the maid says shyly. “I’m to get ye into yer gown and fix yer hair.”

Emma crosses her arms smugly over her chest. “I’m not putting that dress on because I’m not marrying the psycho.”

The maid – Mary, if Emma remembers correctly – looks around nervously. “The master told me ye would say that. He says he’ll put it on ye heself if ye refuse me help.”

Emma narrows her eyes, marches forward, and snatches the dress out of Mary’s hand. She knows, unfortunately, Hyde’s super-human strength from her run-ins with him in Storybrooke. “I’ll put it on myself,” Emma mutters. She stomps behind the dressing screen in the corner. “It also doesn’t mean I’m marrying him.”

Emma puts the dress on as quickly as she can, but needs Mary’s help in buttoning up the back. As the maid works the buttons, Emma speaks, a tilt to her chin. “Killian is coming for me anyway.”

Mary says nothing at first, simply steering Emma towards the vanity. Emma examines the dress as she sinks onto the velvet stool. Hideous. Huge. And the bows! What is this? My Big Fat Greek Wedding? Mary begins deftly working on her hair, a dreamy smile playing on her lips. “Yer pirate is rather dashing, Miss.” Emma meets Mary’s eyes in the mirror. The maid ducks her head before continuing, a blush coloring her cheeks. “Eyes like the sea after a storm …”

Emma gasps. This maid has never been to Storybrooke. So that means … Killian is here! This Mary girl has seen him (hence the blushing). Emma’s hand goes to her breast without thinking. Resting there, hanging from a chain around her neck, is the garnet ring Killian gave her in Camelot as well as the engagement ring he gave her just a week ago in Storybrooke. Emma had feared Hyde would take it, so she had slipped it onto the chain with the other ring. Luckily, the high Victorian neckline of the dress conceals them well. Emma smiles and exchanges a glance with the maid. He’s here!

Mary finishes with Emma’s hair. Though the dress is an over the top mess, Emma’s hair, thankfully isn’t. Mary has expertly pulled a little back from the sides and top with pins, letting the rest cascade in soft curls down her back. Mary lifts something from a mahogany box atop the vanity table and sets it on Emma’s head. A crown. Not a tiara. A full-on crown. Just like Princess Buttercup’s in the movie.

“Um … “ Emma wets her bottom lip. “Don’t you think it’s a little … much?”

“Oh, law, Miss!” Mary exclaims. “Yer a princess, Miss! And a bride. A princess bride.”

Emma suppresses a chuckle. The girl would think she was making fun of her.

Mary suddenly stiffens as Hyde strides into the room. She curtsies quickly, mumbling that the bride is ready, and hurries from the room. Hyde stands behind her, awkwardly placing his hands on her shoulders. “Nervous, my dear?”

Oh, so he wants to play out the whole scene? Fine. Emma knows it by heart.

“Why? Should I be?”

“I’m told bride’s often are.”

Okay, now this is just getting downright eerie. Still, Emma plays along. She rises smugly from the stool, flipping her hair over her shoulder.

“I do not wed tonight. My pirate will come for me.”

****************************************************

Emma wonders at the crowd in the asylum chapel. Are these people here by force? Do they know she is marrying Hyde against her will? She tries to catch someone’s eye as she walks down the aisle, looking for a familiar face, or perhaps an ally. But everyone averts their eyes, avoiding her gaze.

When the priest steps forward, Emma half expects “Wuv, twue wuv” to come out of his mouth, but it doesn’t. He does wax on a little long about the sanctity of marriage. Rather ironic, if you ask Emma. Halfway through his spiel, Emma thinks she hears shouts in the corridors of the asylum. A grin lights up Emma’s face. She turns to Prince Hump – er – Hyde.

“There is my Killian, now.”

Hyde’s face, as usual, remains stony and impassive. “Impossible.”

Emma is really getting into the scene now. “Then why is there fear behind your eyes?”

“Do you have the rings?” the priest interrupts, and Emma can’t help the chuckle that bubbles up from her throat. She could have sworn he said “wings” instead of “rings.”

The sounds outside of the chapel grow louder. Not just shouts, but the sound of clanging steel. Perhaps the “woosh” and “twang” of arrows? A vein in Hyde’s forehead twitches. “Skip to the end.”

“Do you, Emma Swan –“

“Man and wife!” Hyde snaps through gritted teeth. “Just say man and wife!” The priest shrugs. “Man and wife.”

Emma grins and winks at the priest as Hyde grabs her by the elbow and hauls her out of the chapel’s rear door. They head down one short corridor and Hyde opens the door to a room more opulent than anything she has yet to see in this dark, foreboding place. The honeymoon suite, apparently. How nauseating. Hyde shoves her inside. Emma stands in front of the doorway, smirking.

“You’ve never seen The Princess Bride, have you?”

Hyde practically growls in frustration, slams the door, and locks it. She hears his heavy footfalls echoing away down the hallway.

“I’ll take that as a no.”

Emma falls to her knees in front of the locked door, pulling a hair pin out of her wedding ‘do. She has just begun fiddling with the lock when she hears a voice behind her.

“Need a hand with that, love?”

Emma hasn’t even turned around yet when she cries out his name. “Killian!” She rushes to him, throwing her arms around his neck and covering his mouth with hers. She then peppers kisses across his face. “I knew you would come!”

Killian leans back with a smile on his face that quickly fades to a look of concern. “Am I too late?”

Emma laughs and shakes her head. “Hyde has obviously never seen The Princess Bride.”

A grin spreads across Killian’s face. “Ahhh, I see. Forgot the vows, did he?”

Emma beams up at him, her Westley. “Yeah. He’s a regular Prince Humperdink.”

Killian gives her his best smirk, pulling her even closer against him. “Well then, lass, to the Jolly Roger, shall we? If you wouldn’t mind.”

Pounding is coming from the other side of the door.

“But Killian, Hyde is blocking my magic somehow!”

Killian cocks an eyebrow. “You doubt me love? That was Regina’s mission. Now, poof away.”

Emma isn’t sure if the best line is “As you wish” or “I will never doubt again,” so she says neither and just flicks her hand. Sure enough, when the smoke clears, they are on the deck of Killian’s ship. She’s quickly enveloped in hugs from her parents and Henry. Regina shows her affection with snark, as usual. “What took you two so long? Were you testing out the bridal chamber?” Emma just rolls her eyes, smiles at Regina, and thanks her.

As they sail away, with the sun setting in the distance, Killian comes to her side. As he takes her in his arms, she’s reminded of a scene at the very end of The Princess Bride.

In the history of kisses, there have been five rated the most passionate, the most pure.

This one left them all behind.

[hearthhhh]

✧Hello! I'd love a matchup! INFJ,Panromantic Asexual,Female, Virgo. I'm incredibly awkward, because of that I tend to mess myself up a lot. I have a stutter which I myself find annoying. I tend to be shy when meeting people but when I open up I'm frankly a whole other person. I don't have much of a filter with my friends. I enjoy Artsy things, and I tend to be highly critical of mostly everything involving art and generally anything I'm interested it. I'm quite picky, not to mention obsessive.

I pair you with...

🥢 Spoilers for V3 ahead! If this is a problem feel free to leave another ask!

🥢 This ask was a bit more difficult because of the whole V3 plot and the ending and all that. I thought about it and just decided I'd write this ask as if you were a member of the trials as well.

🥢 Kaito is really uplifting and loves getting along with introverts, and originally gets closer to you due to your shy nature! He likes trying to bring up your mood, and is really supportive of your insecurities. Kaito would even try to pay attention to things you're insecure about so he could come off as encouraging as possible.

🥢 Once you start opening up to him, he’s pleasantly surprised, and really excited that you’re feeling more comfortable around him.

🥢 Both you and Kaito rarely have filters around each other. You speak your minds, and enjoy the honesty you two share. It helps that Kaito basically runs on his moral compass, which is pretty sound and easy to understand and agree with.

🥢 You and Maki would get along well! Instead of her becoming Kaito's love interest, you and Kaito would become one of her very good friends! You're less violent and also an introvert, so there're aspects of you two that are pretty similar and could lead to a pretty solid platonic relationship.

🥢 You two stick together pretty close. Kaito is very attuned to making plans, and tries to understand people and their emotional capabilities as well, trying to take off as much emotional loads as possible. So he'd come up with several ways to hang out with each other, seeming as innocent, but really just a way to keep an eye out for you. He's really scared something will happen to you, but he doesn't want to come off as possessive or stress-inducing.

🥢 He really likes your obsessive nature, because Kaito is the same way! When Kaito likes something he's got it set in stone, even if it's just a small whim, he pursues all his goals and wishes really passionately. So Kaito likes seeing people who are just as passionate as him, and is really supportive of your art and will listen to you rant for hours if you'd like, maybe even debate if you need to.

🥢Kaito wouldn't ask you out. He knows he's dying, he can't put you through the emotional turmoil, it'll crush you. As much as Kaito wants to distance himself, he can't, and he thinks it's selfish of him.

🥢 You have to ask him out. It's scary, but so are the killing games. You never know if one of you will die and you need him to know about your feelings.

🥢 When you tell him I'd imagine your stutter taking over. Your shyness takes over but Kaito understands exactly what you're trying to say. He's torn but on cloud nine at the exact same time.

🥢 The days before Kaito's death you spend cuddling and spending time alone, distancing yourself from the others as much as possible. But he disappears into the bathroom for extended periods of time, sometimes Kaito would even leave you alone in one of your rooms claiming to be getting food but coming back empty-handed and forgetting entirely why he'd left in the first place.

🥢 There's a high level of trust in your relationship, there has to be when you're dating in the middle of a killing trials. So you wouldn't expect him to be a killer, only worrying about his safety.

🥢 Then there’s the whole trial business, and the only person you have left is Maki.

I pair you with...

🥢 The Victorian Era was very well known for its artistry, so you'd be able to get by easily as an artist. Especially because you're so critical, I'd imagine it'd make you pickier about what you'd paint, and you'd be able to grow renown pretty easily. Artists that are introverted also create a sense of mystery, so people would become more intrigued.

🥢 Also, I researched career paths for INFJ. I actually found that there are many people with that personality type who run non-profit organizations.

🥢 I got this idea that you'd have an auction for some of your paintings, then give a portion of your earnings to people in need.

🥢 This auction would make you even more well known. So I'd imagine you're a spectacle in the artistry world.

🥢 Because you're so important, it wouldn't be surprising for you to have some pretty high up contacts. That would include Earl Ciel Phantomhive.

🥢 You'd meet Prince Soma at one of Ciel's parties. It's a small get together between others of higher positions, and it's pretty great.

🥢 Except the music's loud, the people there aren't that entertaining, and you don't really want to take to them. You only came to keep up appearances, and you kind of felt like you had to.

🥢You meet Prince Soma and Agni in one of the hallways trying to make it outside for some fresh air. He's really nice, and you two get along very well. After he shows you the doors, the two men stay with you for a bit to talk.

🥢 Prince Soma enjoys being of use to others, and is excited he's able to help you even if it's something as small as showing you the exit. But he's also easily intimidated. So he'd seek comfort in your timid nature, and would try to see past your introverted shell and try to make you more open.

🥢 Once he gets to know you more he's thrilled! Prince Soma loves people with a sense of humour and seems to like yours a lot.

🥢 You two meet more along the streets and stop to talk whenever you see each other. Until you give Soma your address, and tell him he's able to stop by anytime. He takes the invitation up eagerly, and is over almost daily.

🥢 You're surprised he didn't know you were an artist. When he sees several paintings around your larger than average house he's immediately intrigued. And when you tell him of your fundraisers, that's when Soma starts to grow feelings for you.

🥢 Soma really admires you at this point. He'd always seen himself as the mediator of your friendship, a guide. But now he respects you as someone equal.

🥢 As you two start going out more, Soma asks for Agni to accompany him less and less. Then it gets to the point where Soma and you would always spend time with each other alone, usually in the comfort of your home.

🥢 Eventually, Agni has to tell Soma to tell you about his feelings. They're pretty obvious at this point. Soma actually hadn't even realized he'd liked you until it was pointed out. He just really liked being around you.

🥢 I feel like there would be like… a whole system to get into a relationship. Prince Soma was probably the type to be expecting an arranged marriage, maybe even to meet his bride on their wedding day. So I'm not quite sure what traditions would be in place, if this makes sense.

🥢 But anyway! I feel like Soma would be the type who's really excited to get into relationships, so he'd tell you very soon after his realization, if not immediately. He's like a fucking puppy in the best way possible.

🥢 You know exactly what he's trying to say before he even opens his mouth. He asks you in your kitchen as you're making breakfast.

🥢 Being in a relationship with Prince Soma is great. He'd spoil you silly, and Agni would be like a big brother to you. While Prince Soma loves alone time with you, it's important to him that you and Agni get along well. While he wouldn't say it aloud, Soma is always really happy when he sees you two interacting.

🥢 Soma is one for cuddles! He loves to have an excess of pillows and blankets, and builds the best pillow forts.

🥢 You find a lot of your time would be taken up by Soma. He really likes being around you and gets lonely really quickly. While you paint he likes to talk to you, but sometimes gets restless sitting down for too often. He admires you for having the patience to paint for so long.

🥢 He'd be really goofy! Your senses of humour would minimize uncomfy things like getting sick or being sad, and would create the baseline for trust and vulnerability! Basically you two would just be so comfortable around each other and you wouldn't feel like there are any barriers between you two. You'd feel like extensions of yourselves.

🥢 Okay the fluff here made up for the angsty Kaito matchup woo!

I pair you with...

🥢 So aside from Zen's obvious immediate flirtatious nature, I feel like he'd become interested in things that you're insecure about! Zen's all for being uplifting and encouraging self-betterment, but feels bad when people are downright self-deprecating. He just wants people to be the best versions of themselves they can be, but things you can't change about yourself are fine just the way they are. They make you unique in Zen's eyes.

🥢 Zen loves your art! Send! Lots! Of! Pics! He's the cheerleader everyone needs honestly. Zen also loves when you talk about art, and admires how passionate you are. He'd even compare your passion for art to his passion for acting. In short, Zen really respects your talent and passion.

🥢 When you start to open up to the chat a bit more Zen is super excited and really supportive!

🥢 I feel like after you start opening up to the chat more is when Zen starts to develop real feelings for you. He'd show this by flirting a little more, but other than that there isn't any indication at first. It's just the same old flirty Zen.

🥢 Zen's always saying how he'd like to meet you in person, so eventually you do! You two send lots of pictures to the messenger, going shopping and to dinner or lunch afterwards. You two have a lot of fun, and later go on more outings together.

🥢  You and Zen go on outings as friends, though. Even Yoosung tags along sometimes, and you three are constantly trying to get Jaehee to come out and have some fun. Seven and Jumin usually decline your requests if acknowledging them at all.

🥢 Zen's feelings grow the more time you two spend together. It's almost unbearable to be so close to you, not being able to hold your hand yet be able to say such sweet things without your suspicion.

🥢 Eventually Zen invites you out for lunch over call, very different from the public planning you two would do on the group chats. But you don't think too much of it because it's Zen, and you've always been closest to him.

🥢 He really wants to make you feel special! But he doesn't want to make you uncomfortable with too much attention. So he takes you to a secluded café that gives off a really homey yet romantic vibe. He asks you out over hot chocolate and cookies, and spoils you rotten that entire day.

🥢 Zen's very clingy but certainly not as clingy as Prince Soma. He loves being around you and cherishes your outings, probably having a huge folder full of aesthetic pictures of you. He'd also definitely screenshot every picture of your art you send and keep it in a folder. He mentions it to you casually one day on a date, showing that your art style has improved pretty well from the first piece you sent to the group chat to the most recent.

🥢 Zen is all for really cheesy and mushy romantic stuff. He texts you a lot throughout the day to tell you that he misses you, is thinking about you, loves you, etc. He's just so sweet and really cares about you and needs you to know.

🥢 Zen loves how shy you are. He finds it cute and endearing, and fondly mentions it many times. You also notice he speaks very softly to you, and his tone is so much different. It's almost as if he's trying to pour every once of love that he can into every syllable. 

[gorjee-art]

Advice

This is just a short story I’ve made for classes and whatnot, but I ended up liking it as a story so, for good practice and a lil bit of fun, I give you this. Hope you like it! Feedback is appreciated! 

Through twisting and turning hallways of a castle, echoed a voice of a giggling woman, as a light beams through the darkened tunnels, shining like a heavenly gateway. Inside was a royal bath, bubbles floated everywhere in the room with a ceiling revealing the night sky, lit by hundreds of warm candle lights dancing on the marble walls decorated with potions and bottles meant for cleansing, with a heated pool in the center, bubbling with suds. A slim woman with fair skin and hair made of a twilight sky swirling with pink and purples shimmering with starlight, cupped a handful of the foam as set her palms near her pink lips and blew to make the foam break apart into a cloud of bubbles to make it all float back in the skies above her. She giggled once again, seemingly amused with floating spheres above her, legs splashing in the warm waters, happy like a child to be observing what was above her. As she gazed, she lost herself in thought and had an idea to spin herself a tale.

“At last, the Sandman sets his stage, the scene framed with curves and twists of shimmering gold. Upon the rooftops, his foot placed on the tops of chimneys like a marble statue, the moon shining down on his porcelain skin, a spotlight made for the star, in a galaxy of his own childish mind.”  

Her tone was almost as though she was entertaining an audience, her voice dancing with energy and whimsy, with her hands playing along with setting a scene; her body spoke more than her voice for what she told.

“A mischievous creature, his aura demanding attention for those who saw him in their dreams, staring with eyes filled with curiosity and whimsy for he meets them with his own maddened gaze, a Cheshire in their wonderlands, painting his own twisted versions of fairytale and myth. For the fools that dare come closer to the man encrusted with gold, would lose their minds as he once did. For the King of Dreams never liked the concept of order, but would rather prefer the beauty that is chaos, and as a man that starved affection and attention, with an innocent smile, he’d display his work with pride, with the feeble mind of humanity that couldn’t bear to look away. His subjects would forever be in his imagination, keeping him company as they slept their days away. Henceforth, he was known by his name, for they took his title as “The Sandman”, he kept his audience, that cherished the thought of Willing Madness and welcomed them with open arms, with a promise of tea, sweets, and tales told by bold men and a man of his word, many have awoken happily. For each morning, the curtain will close, leaving the King of Dreams to sit alone in his throne…”

She finished, her hands laid on her chest and bowing her head with her eyes shut closed as if to end a scene.

“Ahem,” Her purple eyes shot open to focus upon a young lady, clasped hands hiding away her blacked claws posed in the center of a golden Victorian dress, her face bitter as her frown revealed orange tusks. The pair locked eyes, the lady’s own amber stained spheres met of those belonging to a goddess.

“I hope I’m not interrupting anything, Gorjina.”

Her voice was filled with grace and patience but a hint of strictness and a respect for her ancestor. That seemed to please to whom was “Gorjina Star Nebula”.

“Not at all, dear.” She said with a smile “What is it you need? Or, would you rather join me for a bath, you look…tense.” She eyed the maiden with a cunning grin, making it well known to her that she was teasing the girl’s stress ”Every girl needs a spa day these days, especially you, Norma.”

Norma rolled her eyes at the remark and raised a brow,

“I’m not interested, I just-“ she paused, a moment of silence to chase her train of thought. Her expression faded from an annoyed sneer to a look of worry but quickly shook it off to set back to a tone of professionalism “I just need some advice.”

Gorjina stared and questioned her moment of silence. Concerned, she waited to hear her darling descendant’s woes, raising her hand and fluttered it as if to say, ‘go on’. Norma neared closer to the pool her eyes jutting away from side to side.

“Be honest…” Her voice softened “ do you… consider me as an awful person? Are you haunting my mind as a punishment?”

The final word was said with hesitation, as if it was a truth never meant to be revealed, with guilty eyes she struggled to look Gorjina face to face. However, the goddess stared back with shock,

“She couldn’t have, she wouldn’t, she couldn’t be this…moronic” she thought to herself.

With eyes wide and jaw agape, she laughed a wicked laugh, it was so loud that it screamed up to the heavens above, Norma quickly shut her ears closed and her face crinkled with anger and fury, black smoke spilling out from her gritting teeth.

“What’s so funny? Why are you laughing?” Norma spat with clear insult.

“You are merely pathetic! Not a monster! If you so consider your misdeeds as sin, then I would be Lucifer himself! You haven’t killed, stole, lied in front of a crying child, do you even HEAR yourself?” Gorjina continued to giggle, gasping for breaths of air as she fanned her weeping tears away

“A punishment? A PUNISHMENT? How low do you think of me Norma? I would be insulted and turn you into a useless doll if wasn’t so funny. Please, you’re only but a serpent living in the caves on top of a pile of gold you so greedily keep to yourself, yet you never bother anyone and they don’t bother you. How could you be horrendous, Norma? Please, I’d ADORE to hear how your mind would come up with this idiocy.”

Norma continued to sneer and growl at the woman who lived in her mind, with anger blinding her judgement.

“Then why does no one come over? Why is everyone that surrounds me takes a good look at me and runs away in a couple of seconds, look at me Gorjina I’m a freak! They’ve hurt me! I’m nothing but a parasite amounting to NOTHING!” As the outburst ends Norma heaves for breath as the smoke subsides, with a few tears sliding down her cheeks.

“What is… my purpose? Who am I? What’s the point in anything? Was I really meant to be an artist? Does my life have meaning?“ “Slow down, dear.” She lets out a sigh, letting the tips of her fingers pinch the bridge of her nose as she processed the questions given,  “Your purpose is achieving your goals and making yourself happier and more fulfilled as a person. You are Norma Kit; you decide what is the point. You’ve already gone this far, why stop doing what you love? And everyone has some meaning and impact on the Earth so long as you’re not some parasite more useless than the ground you’ve walked on, by which you’re not. What’s gotten into you? These are idiotic sentiments; they have no use for you.” She hissed.

Norma sighed, with a look of defeat she buried her face in her palms. With a flick of a wrist Gorjina fashioned her a couch before Norma could sit down. Gorjina with a feeling of pity, swam across to her broken apprentice to make sure that she is comforted. She rested her arms on the edges of the pool and looked up at her.

“That’s it, let it all out…” Gorjina said in a soft whisper, with a snap, her own sorcery made fictional “servants” come to life, made with odd shapes and colors they had no identity besides being what Gorjina meant for them to be. One pet Norma’s caramel hair to soothe her woes the other released the bow that kept her hair in a bun and tidied it up.

“You should cease your little habit of hiding away what makes you human, you could burst one day.”

“I know.” Norma said admittedly.

“Then why continue dear? I’m tired of reminding you that you are my flesh and blood, yes you may be strong, but you are also fragile, I’m here to aid my family and these choices you make in life are…”

Gorjina bit back her tongue and re thought her choice of wording

“…silly. Why close the doors of which are in front of you?”

“I don’t know.”

Feeling slight disappointment for her descendant, she sighed, rolled her eyes and asked a simple question.

“Why are you really here, Norma?”

“I just wanted to be sure, I suppose. It’s been getting to me again. It bothers me that these thoughts come around so…often. I needed just, an answer I can be sure is true.”

“It’s normal, darling. Humanity is known to push themselves and question life to do remarkable things. However, these questions about yourself will grant you these thoughts, and it has simple answers. So stop it before you waste anymore of my time.” She said with a huff and a raised nose, as she turned her back to Norma, sinking into the bubbling water submerging her body. The servants disappeared with her, fading into colorful bits of shimmering smoke, as Norma realized this, she fell on to her knees to call for her.

“Wait, wait, wait! No, you get back here! At least tell me how I stop it!”

Gorjina stopped for a moment, and looked up at her young apprentice, raising her hand so her chin may rest on it, and with no amusement she asked:

“-And what do I get in return for this favor?”

Norma thought for a moment and reached for her ears, removing two pearl earrings and set them in the palm of her cupped hands. “Here, you can have them. Just fix me.”

Gorjee stared at what she put in place, chuckling to herself, “I’m afraid I can’t accept your offer.”

“What?! But these are real pearls! Don’t bail out on this!”

“Oh, I know they are, and they are quite lovely,” She raised her hands from the water to shut Norma’s cupped hands, “but you need to keep them.”

“I’m…confused.”

“You need to keep those that simply cannot have a price. That should end your troubled thoughts. Look how you gave them away with no thought, no love for these lovely treasures. So desperate to let someone fix you, when the answer was right in front of you.” After a bit of thought Gorjina raised a brow and chuckled. “Besides, dear. I’m an artist.” With a quick flick of a wrist and a sudden puff of smoke, she was covered in encrusted jewels, pearls, gems, and treasures alike. “I can make my own, don’t you know…?”

“But- But you- I.”

Gorjina quickly hushed Norma, “To put this simply, you focus on those that don’t desire your presence, and you get hurt by it. So you hide away to a place that you believe no one will ever harm you, when your mind is your worst enemy. Thus, I stay here and you’re not alone, and many of us would be delighted to help you with your journey of life, and I’m afraid you don’t have much time as you think you do. You’re fragile, stop making these gray hairs for yourself.”

Norma looked at her earrings and looked back at Gorjina with a smile and an eased expression, as Gorjina looked back all the same. Displaying a love only a mother can have for their child.

“Now shoo, I’ve done enough for you.” As Gorjina turned away and exited her bath, quickly covering herself in robes of silk, both looked up to see the moon starting to set and the sun rising with birds beginning to chirp their own songs.

“It’s time to wake up, dear. It’s going to be a beautiful morning” she chuckled, and snapped her fingers.

Suddenly, Norma was in a modern room, laying on her bed and staring up at the ceiling. No dress except for a t-shirt and hair a ratty mess she groggily, turned her head to look at her clock for it to be 10:34 am.

“Not so bad.” She thought to herself,  with a few stretches and popping bones she sat on the edge of her bed to face her window. A beautiful day, as Gorjina had predicted…

“Meh.” she said with a gruff and closed the curtains and buried her face on the pillow with a smile.

“You’re an absolute disgrace, you understand that right?” her head echoed.

“Mm…you love me.”

The voice sighed and chuckled “You at least understood something, Norma.”

[gold-from-straw]

Enough - ch6/8 (possibly 9...)

AT LAST! Erik arrives, half way through the fic! On the plus side, this is now ACTUALLY and officially a Cherik fic since they are at least on screen together. on the down side... this is not going to make it any less angsty, I’m sorry!

Read from the start on AO3!

Charles regretted being out in New York on the day of the protest. The streets were crowded with mutants and allies, and behind them trailed the counter protesters, the ugly hum of anger thick in the air, pressing on his temples and making him flinch at shadows.

He hurried down the side street. His errand was over, another student booked to visit the school in a week. Luckily this one had supportive parents who wanted to look around as well, make sure their child was going to be well cared for while they learned to hone and control their teleporting powers.

He heard the minds before he saw the men, before he heard their feet pounding on the tarmac. Run quick round here Trask’s waiting we’ll get him fuck he’s fast run!

Charles flinched back as two men raced past. Even with the loud projecting, they were both surrounded by a haze of fear, but unlike someone just running away, they were also saturated with anticipation… even excitement.

Seconds behind them, legs and arms pumping, came a tall, furious looking man, projecting determination, and righteous anger, and Charles knew with a horrifying certainty that he was running into a trap. “Wait!” he yelled, and tore after him.

He could hear the voices ahead of him, the first men had doubled back and were standing with a trio of other minds, and in a panic, Charles reached out into the pursuer’s mind and cried out again, wait!

The man stopped and spun on his heel, glaring at Charles. “Was that you?”

Charles caught up to him, breathing hard, and held his finger to his lip. But it was too late - the other minds were coming closer, anticipation a tingling zing to the edges of their minds. “Please, trust me?” he asked the tall man.

The man curled his lip up, but before he could retort, the ambush arrived.

Charles gripped the man’s elbow and concentrated hard, pressing his fingers to his temple in his old childhood crutch. He reached into their minds, a part of him already bemoaning the loss of his morals, yet again, and simply cut himself and the man out of their awareness.

“Well, where the hell is he?”

“He was right here!”

“What are you--”

Shhh! Charles insisted in the man’s mind, and oh God he had such a beautiful mind, it was all he could do not to reach in, brush against all the sweeping lines, the architecture of it. It’s harder if you talk.

“You said he was following you!” snapped one of the ambushers, a bulky guy in combat trousers and black boots.

“He was,” insisted the second runner who’d passed Charles. He was almost pleading with his boss.

“Well he sure as hell ain’t here now,” yelled Combats. “You fucked up, that’s what happened. You were supposed to piss Lehnsherr off enough that he’d have to follow you, and now what? What are we going to do with the transport we’ve hired?”

The man at Charles' side, Lehnsherr, tensed at this, radiating a fury so powerful that Charles was amazed the attackers couldn’t feel it.

“I swear, boss, he was following us,” whined runner number two. “He should be here.”

“He was, definitely,” nodded runner number one, nodding. “We hit that blonde bitch with the dart, and we made sure he saw us - he was definitely coming after us.”

Combats threw his hands up. “Well he’s not here now, is he?”

The two runners looked at each other and shuffled their feet like naughty schoolboys as their boss ranted and raved. Charles was considering pushing them to leave, making the decision for them, when Lehnsherr reached out his hand. The metal of the fire escapes whipped out like cobras, curling tendrils around the three men’s arms and hauling them up, trapping them against the wall. Lehnsherr grinned, all his teeth showing in vicious glee, and stepped forwards out of Charles’ grip, lifting a huge rubbish skip in front of the screaming, writhing captives.

For a moment, Charles was staggered by the overwhelming beauty of his mind as he used his powers, aurorae dancing around his senses, reaching out and limning all the metal in the immediate vicinity with a twisting light. He lost his grip on the men’s minds as he stared and soaked up the incredible presence.

Then he yelled and rushed forwards, standing between the men and Lehnsherr. “Don’t! You’ll kill them!”

“Yes, that’s rather the point,” he said dryly.

“You can’t just kill them!”

“It’s better than what they’d have done to me, isn’t it? I bet they’d take you, as well, a powerful telepath like yourself. Where did you have in mind, boys? Some lab somewhere in the wilderness? Pump me full of drugs, see how far you can push me, how much it’ll take to tear away my powers, how much it’ll take to make them explode uncontrolably? Why do you think I should let you live?”

His mind was sharp-edged with fury and grief, but Charles held up both his hands and took a step closer. “Because you have it in you to be the better man.”

“We already are the better men,” he snarled. “These… these baselines are the Neanderthals of the present, they know they’re in the presence of the next stage of human evolution, and they’re fighting their own extinction.”

Charles rolled his eyes so hard it hurt. “Oh, and you were doing so well! Don’t tell me you’re still subscribing to that utterly Victorian notion that evolution is a linear process with some sort of optimum species in mind. And here I was thinking you were intelligent - your mind is so beautiful, how can you still believe that Homo neanderthalis was in any way inferior to Homo sapiens? You do know that nearly all people of European origin have approximately two percent Neanderthal DNA, and that Neandertals and Homo sapiens populations lived side by side for centuries, interbreeding, until finally genetic drift and climate change and the end of the megafauna spelled the end of them, don’t you?”

The alleyway was silent. Water dripped in the corner.

Charles cleared his throat. “Anyway. What I’m saying is that… umm… just don’t use biology as your excuse for bigotry and supremacist leanings.”

Lehnsherr bit his lip, creases forming at the corners of his eyes. “Two percent, hmm?”

“Yes,” said Charles primly, crossing his arms.

“Well, that’s very interesting information, Mr…?”

“Xavier. Charles Xavier. Now, are you going to put that skip down?”

“Skip?”

“Garbage… thing. Whatever you Americans call it.”

“I’m not American, I’m German.”

“Well, I don’t know what you call it in Germany- look, are you going to put it down or are you going to discuss linguistics?”

“I’d much rather discuss biology,” he said, lowering the skip to the ground and completely ignoring the squirming, yelling humans still pinned to the wall behind them. “Say, over coffee?”

Charles blinked rapidly. “I… I beg your pardon?”

Lehnsherr held up his hands. “Sorry, I mean… platonic coffee would be good too. But if my gaydar is correct...”

“You want to take me out for coffee?”

“If you want to accompany me, yes.”

Charles opened and shut his mouth, completely lost for words. He bit his lip, and Lehnsherr flicked his eyes down, and back up to his eyes. “Ummm… your, uh… your gaydar’s correct,” he said at last, weakly.

Lehnsherr grinned, shark-like, and his mind sparked at the edges, like flint on steel. “Excellent. Oh- I do still want to hear more about Neanderthals, of course. I’m not just asking you out because you’ve got glorious blue eyes and the most fantastic mutation I’ve ever seen.”

Charles’ butterflies didn’t know what to do with themselves. He felt himself breaking into a wide, utterly silly grin, and goodness knows what he would have said if the captives hadn’t spoken up just then.

“Oh, Christ, they’re faggots as well.”

Charles turned and narrowed his eyes at them as Lehnsherr lifted the skip again, making them shriek and howl in fear. He held out his hand to Lehnsherr. “Wait, I’ve got a better idea. One that won’t send you to prison.” He pulled out his phone and dialed. “Hey, Moira? Yes, we’ve got three men here who just attacked my friend and I. If you come down to…” he looked around. “Cortlandt alley, I think? I’ll check and text you my location anyway. We’ve got a lovely little trio, armed with tranquilisers and suppressants, and a van somewhere they’ve been planning to use to transport their victims. Oh, perfect. Thank you, Moira, I owe you one.” He glanced up at Lehnsherr. “I think my friend and I will clear out before you get here. It’s still a bit hairy for mutants in this area, if you know what I mean. Yes, thank you. You know how to get hold of me.”

He hung up and smiled sweetly at the men, straining at their bonds. “You’ll never get away with this, mutie scum,” snarled one of them.

Charles pursed his lips and tutted. “Oh really. This isn’t Scooby-doo. And I have very good links with the local police. And quite exceptional lawyers, as well.” He turned to Lehnsherr. “Shall we?”

Lehnsherr raised an eyebrow, mischief twinkling. “I still say we should kill them.”

Charles shrugged. “Well, as I said, my lawyers really are very good, so…”

He laughed, throwing his head back, and Charles felt shockwaves of desire rushing through him. He pushed them back, trying to stay pragmatic. He would enjoy this for as long as he got, but at some point this gorgeous man, this beautiful mind, would remember what he was, what he could do, and he’d move on. But first, maybe there would be coffee…

[intergalactic-zoo]

I decided, apropos of nothing, to put on Joss Whedon's Zack Snyder's "Justice League" while doing some work today. I discussed the movie when it came out eleventy billion years ago, and thought it was fine. It's not good, but grading on the curve of every DCEU movie up to that point, it was a solid B-. Sitting in 2021, I remember bits and pieces of it—Steppenwolf looking like he stepped out of an XBox 360 cutscene, the decent cell phone video of Superman that was marred by the terrible attempt to CGI out Cavill's moustache, all the characters sounding like their rough counterparts in "The Avengers"—but not a lot of details.

Obviously the intervening years have altered my perspective on the film, both through the revelations about the behind-the-scenes racism and abuse and through the fanatical and also frequently abusive behavior of the fans clamoring for this version of the film, which absolutely definitely existed and was finished years ago and also needed an additional $70 million dollars and reshoots to complete. 

That perspective has not been altered for the better. 

Against my better judgment, I'm going to watch the Snyder Cut sometime, probably this weekend, so I figured it'd be good to see how it deviates from the theatrical release, like I did for the Lester and Donner cuts of "Superman II" so very long ago. I don't expect to enjoy either one; my feelings on the superhero movies of Zack Snyder are well-documented, and even under the best circumstances, four hours is too @#%*$! long for a superhero movie. But four hours of nihilistic spite dressed up in cinematic deepities and CGI with a sepia-toned overlay is unlikely to be the best of circumstances. 

Will it be better than two hours of the extremely generic re-skinned "Avengers: Age of Ultron" that got released to theaters? There's only one way to find out!

Boy, the New 52-ass character designs in the DC logo opening sure didn't age well. When was Rebirth, like, the year before?

Pretty neat that it's got Mogo and Jessica Cruz in there, though. 

That cell phone scene was a lot better in my memory. Like, the kids with a podcast are kind of charming, but I remembered it being a good Superman moment, when it's really just kind of nothing. Certainly not enough to justify the extremely bad CGI. And is the negative space on the S-shield supposed to look so gray?

Gotham City looks like the background of a Robert Rodriguez movie, but I actually like it here. It feels grimy and a little uncanny, the way Gotham should. A big building with "JANUS" on it in glowing letters and big coal chimneys out of Victorian London are what I want to see in Gotham, along with copious brooding gargoyles and enormous iron statues of Greek gods that you could drive a car on. 

A building that is continually being robbed by either Two-Face or Maxie Zeus

"Batman Forever," for comparison

Ben Affleck's Batman rasp is at least as silly as Christian Bale's. Batman can just talk in a voice, my dudes. I watched bits of "Batman & Robin" and "Batman Forever" to track down the right screenshots, and it's so much better when Batman is a guy with a deep voice rather than a guy who sounds like he's gargling gravel and sand. 

The crook asking "where does that leave us?" because Superman's dead is a little weird given that Superman was a public figure in this universe for literally a year and a half. In 2021, it's a bit like asking how we could go on if Billie Eilish died, except Billie Eilish hasn't, to my knowledge, ever been involved in a fight that leveled a major city.

The maudlin mourning sequence probably should have come before Batman backflipped over a snarling Kirby monster and "Mindhunter's" Holt McCallany hopped around on a rooftop, because I laughed out loud at the unhoused person's "I Tried" sign and I do not think that was the intended reaction. 

And then the Leonard Cohen cover gives way to the Danny Elfman score, and it sounds like "Batman" '89 again. God, this movie really is a mess. 

I appreciate Wonder Woman explaining her powers like she's in a Chris Claremont comic. How long until we get a superhero movie with a proper reference caption? I just want to see a box in "Into the Spider-Verse 2" that says "*It happened in Spectacular Spider-Man #206, True Believers!"

I really wish superhero movies could stop having the scene where superheroes talk about how stupid superheroes are. It feels so self-conscious. Just embrace the concept without being ashamed of it, please.

I also wish we could have dialogue less on the nose than everything Henry Allen says. He talks exclusively in clichés about movement—"running in circles," "standing still," "find your own path." We get it, he's talking to the Flash.  

I keep forgetting that this movie is a fetch quest. It could have worked if we'd seen more than Themyscira before. This could be like that sequence in "Avengers: Endgame" where we go on a little memory tour of the previous films, but instead it's a return to Paradise Island, our first brief, boring glimpse of Atlantis, and a nuclear plant cooling tower. This is one of the problems with setting the "let's get the team together" movie before you've met most of the team or established most of the set pieces. 

The boom tube effect is pretty good. It's a shame Steppenwolf looks so much like a character from a Zemeckis film. I do appreciate that Joss had enough restraint to avoid dropping "Magic Carpet Ride" or something when he showed up. 

Fus roh dah!

Also, I realize the ship has largely sailed on this, but the Amazons are supposed to be an incredibly advanced society; maybe we could stop depicting them as exclusively armed with bronze-age weaponry. 

You know, it's hard to see Lois Lane so...despondent? Demoralized? Even in the wake of Clark's death. Like, Lois was pretty weepy for a few issues of the comics after Superman died, but within two months she was accosting cops and breaking into Cadmus in a wetsuit and punching dudes in the teeth. Lois Lane is a stone cold badass, and the only film in this erstwhile trilogy that came close to understanding that was "Man of Steel."

The frustrating thing about the dialogue is just how obvious it is that Joss knows how to write exactly as many characters as are on the Avengers. Batman just sounds like Tony Stark, Wonder Woman banters like Black Widow until she needs to exposit like Thor, it's just so lazy. 

And so is the backstory of the Mother Boxes. I actually really like the "all the races of man joined together with the gods and the Green Lanterns to repel Steppenwolf" angle, because it makes this idea of uniting as a League into a theme that you could build a movie around (that movie was "The Fellowship of the Ring"). Unfortunately, they do it by stripping the Mother Boxes of anything that made them interesting as a concept and turning Steppenwolf into a low-rent Thanos. Thanos is supposed to be a low-rent Darkseid, get it right. 

I was going to rag on Bruce for comparing Flash's suit to "the space shuttle" in the present tense, when the space shuttle program ended six years before this movie came out, but I suppose Bruce Wayne is a cranky old guy in this movie, so it kind of works. 

Man, poor Ray Fisher, in addition to everything else, having to read this warmed-over Bruce Banner dialogue. 

Not gonna lie, hearing the Elfman Batman theme is pretty great. It's nice that Batman and Wonder Woman have really solid, recognizable motifs in the score, even if they had to reach back 30 years to find one for Batman. It's a shame the other characters don't get anything so clear and distinctive. 

Casting J.K. Simmons as Commissioner Gordon was a pretty good move.

Our first full glimpse of Cyborg is a bit uncomfortable. Up until this point, we've seen him in sweats, so seeing him without clothes...it's like that bit in "Cats" where Idris Elba takes off his coat and even though he's covered in CGI, you can't help but think "okay, he's naked now," a thought you only have because he was wearing clothes before. 

Batman does his "disappear while Gordon has his back turned" bit, and it becomes a gag because only Flash is left behind. Except that we've seen that Flash perceives things at a higher speed than others, so why would he be caught off-guard? Wouldn't their disappearance have happened in basically slow-motion to him? Why did Wonder Woman and Cyborg disappear when Batman did? How did they know to do that? The only reason Flash is left behind is for the gag, because he's the comic relief character right now, but it would make more sense for literally either of the others to be the one in that position. It feels like a "kill your darlings" moment. Like, they decided that this gag was more important than making sense, when they could easily have done a different gag—like Flash noticing that Batman was leaving and stopping him in the middle. 

The Nightcrawler is a bad idea. It doesn't really make sense as the thing Batman would bring to this fight with Steppenwolf, and it's loaded up with guns, which...come on, guys. It doesn't even get a clear enough spotlight to be properly toyetic. 

If you needed any confirmation that Joss saw how much better Quicksilver was in "X-Men: Days of Future Past" than in "Age of Ultron," the Flash is here in this battle to make it obvious. 

God, the "Flash is awkward about being on top of Wonder Woman" gag feels like it lasts a thousand years. It's like something out of a "Big Bang Theory" episode.

It physically pained me to hear crappy Steppenwolf quoting New Gods #1. 

I know there's pathos to Cyborg's character, but, like, is this really the version that they thought people wanted to see? Is this just the Brooding League? I thought a part of the reason for bumping Cyborg up to the big League was to bring in people who love the version on "Teen Titans," but there's nothing of that character here. 

On the other hand, they've sidestepped the modern problem of making Barry Allen act like Wally West by instead making Barry Allen act like Bart Allen with a head injury. 

I really like Bruce Wayne in a vest. 

There's so many things that would have made this movie better, but honestly? I think Superman should've stayed dead. Obviously I love the character, and I even love Cavill's performance, but a movie about  a superhero community coming together and being inspired by Superman's example to be better—you know, the thing Batman says at the end of "Dawn of Justice"—would have been a lot better than a movie where two characters we just met dig up Superman's grave to MacGuffin him back to life. It still wouldn't make that much sense that Superman would have such a massive impact after just a year and a half of public superheroing (come on, Snyder, if you're going to do the Christ allegory, why not give him three years?), but it would have been a better way to showcase what the character means to this universe and to these characters. 

This runs into something I said way back when I first saw "Man of Steel": You shouldn't make General Zod your first-movie villain. I've been comparing this film to "Age of Ultron" a lot, but I'm starting to realize that the entire DCEU—with the possible exception of "Wonder Woman"—is made up of the second movie in each character's respective franchises. Zod should have been the villain Superman faced after he was established, to raise doubts about the character's allegiances and present him with a seemingly impossible threat. Batman should have fought Superman after a movie where we established what Batman's deal is, how he got to be so angry and bitter. The Justice League should have faced an enemy too big to fight without Superman after the movie where a threat and Superman's legacy inspired them to unite together. Heck, even "Suicide Squad" would've been better if they'd saved the "one of our own is a traitor" plot for a sequel, where we might have some emotional attachment to some of the characters. 

Boy, Barry Allen attempting a fist bump with Cyborg and then laughing off the rejection with the phrase "racially charged" hits real bad in the wake of Ray Fisher's discussion about the environment on-set. 

One thing to appreciate about Cavill's Superman is how much he exemplifies the hairy-chested, dimple-chinned version that Dan Jurgens draws. 

And Elfman works the John Williams theme into the score. The motif works well the first time, less so the second when he's trying to kill the Flash. Hitting it in a more minor key would have been nice. Again, it's a shame they had to go literally forty years back in time to find a recognizable Superman theme when there were two Superman movies leading up to this. 

This fight between Superman and the League is bad and unnecessary, but the bit where Superman reacts to Flash in super-speed is well-done, marred only by the incredibly doofy look on Flash's face. 

God, Cavill doing the gravel-voice, asking "Do you bleed?" might be the worst part of this movie. Although Lois Lane entering the plot for the first time in an hour so she can say "the sun's gettin' real low" to Superman is a close second. Why isn't she involved in the formation of the League? Why wasn't she a major character in this?

Batman's "something's definitely bleeding" comedy bit feels like something out of a View Askew movie, and not only because it's Ben Affleck. 

Clark's discussion with Lois, "it's itchy," it's yet another jarring tone shift from what we saw immediately before. And the greenscreen work on the farm (reshoots, I expect) is somehow worse than the moustache removal. 

The bit with Aquaman baring his soul because he's sitting on the Lasso of Truth is the closest one of the comedy bits in this has come to actually working for me. 

And then, adding to the "Age of Ultron" comparisons, we're back to fighting an enemy in a small Eastern European nation. The red skies are a nice touch. The Batmobile's 50-caliber cannon and chainguns, less so.

Did...did the Flash just say "oh snap"? 

And Aquaman saying "my man" to Cyborg with the exact same inflection as Bradley Cooper in "Get Out" is another one of those real uncomfortable moments. 

And then Batman gets a laser gun, because why not? 

Superman asking "how can I help" and then rushing off to save civilians is maybe the best moment for the character in the entire DCEU. It's also nice that Superman gets a moment to help more or less each character with their individual missions. 

And then Wonder Woman drops the "I work with children" line, which is the best line Black Widow gets in this movie. 

Cyborg gets his "booyah" moment, which feels forced but at least makes some sense with his character arc. Flash gets his fistbump. Not-Sokovia gets to be the setting for a Jeff Vandermeer novel, and the team gets their triumphant moment in the sun. 

We're on to denouement, and Lois gets the closing narration, which is mostly fine. It would work better if she weren't basically a cameo in the movie. I do like that it ends on "look, up in the sky," and that Cavill finally gets a chance to do the shirt pull. 

Except that's not the end. First we get the beginning-of-credits scene with the Superman/Flash race, which is cute but unnecessary. And then a truly awful cover of "Come Together" before the post-credits sequence where Lex Luthor meets up with Deathstroke and his truly ridiculous dye job. 

In summary, Joss Whedon's Zack Snyder's "Justice League" is a bad movie. In fact, it's several bad movies stitched together into a shambling bad movie Frankenstein. And tomorrow I'm going to watch Zack Snyder's Zack Snyder's "Justice League: The Snyder Cut," which is getting surprisingly positive reviews. I do not expect to enjoy it, because I really don't think my problems with this movie will be fixed by making it broodier and longer, and my track record with enjoying Snyder's films is basically nonexistent. But I'm watching it, because I'm a glutton for punishment, and at least if I do it while I'm still on vacation from Twitter, I won't be tempted to join in the undoubtedly toxic discourse.