#If Scars Were Flowers I´d Have a Garden | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

wintersongstress · 1 year ago

Text

A Dream’s Winding Way

Part II — The Weaver and the Loom

Pairing: Arthur Morgan (high honor) x Female Reader

Summary: For as long as you could remember, you dreamt of falling in a love so whole and pure it was worth enduring the many griefs in your life. But the world, cold and cruel as it was, robbed that dream from you, and you believed you would forever be broken until you met a man who was scarred in his own way.

Word Count: 10.8k

Warnings: sexual assault trauma responses, murder, canon-typical violence.

A/N: Arthur will make his appearance at the end here ♥ thank you THANK YOU @the-halo-of-my-memory for beta-ing 💞

Part I | ao3 link

~ II — The Weaver and the Loom ~

Snick.

The bolts inside the cabinet lock slid free. Between your finger and your thumb, the tarnished key in your grasp opened a long-latched door, a swoosh releasing dormant air. Inside the stale cell, relics of the past awaited, felty with dust. A chatelaine belt rested on the shelf, ornate with filigree, alongside a satin pouch, a crystal hat pin, silver spurs with brass rowels, and a wedding bouquet, its once-white roses shriveled and decaying. You paused once, running your fingers over the cool rivets of a sapphire brooch, and overlooked it all, instead retrieving a new vase for the kitchen table—one that would not shatter into pieces when it fell—and a tattered recipe book.

With the book settled in your lap you opened it with a crack. Antique, creamy pages inked with words fluttered past your fingers, food stains mottling the margins alongside cursive pencil scrawls. A flattened sprig of poppy bookmarked the page for an oatmeal pie recipe. You tucked it back in for time to keep safe. A few gentle turns later you found what you were looking for and rose from the floor of your grandmother’s room, relocking the cabinet, and shutting the door behind you. You donned an apron and began your work.

The rugs, the curtains, all were taken down and rolled up, flapped outside, and beaten with the handle of your broom. You swept the floors of broken vase shards and stray leaves, replenished the oil in the lamps, trimmed the candle wicks, tossed out last night’s dinner, laid a new tablecloth, filled the silver ewer from your grandmother’s cabinet with water and fresh flowers, and scraped the ashes out from the fireplace. Wood clopped as you piled it up in a canvas carrier outside and lugged it in. Soap suds splashed your wrists as you scrubbed the dishes spotless. All the while the clock ticked on, from hour to hour, the day waning, until you could no longer prolong the inevitable, and commenced your grisly task.

You propped your family recipe book open on the counter and fetched a large stew pot from the wall rack. The cutting board hosted the full spectrum of ingredients you needed, so you set the pot over the stove flame and warmed a dollop of butter and olive oil. The yellow onions you chopped sizzled as you added them in, and, using a knife, you deployed your special ingredient from the cutting board. A few dashes of salt and pepper joined the mixture next, and once the onions popped their flavor, caramelizing, teaspoons of dried sage and thyme hand-picked from your garden snowed from your hand with clumps of chopped garlic.

Stirring, mixing, curdling, after a few minutes a pour of red wine and a splash of vinegar came next, making the soup bubble fragrantly. You scraped the copper bottom with a wooden spoon, stirring the browning bits of onion and garlic around, and drowned it all in three cans of beef broth from the general store. Two bay leaves fluttered in last before you covered the pot with a lid to let it simmer.

The Sheriff would have a fine last meal.

When the first three stars appeared in the evening sky, your cottage was aglow with soft light and welcoming with the scent of a rich dinner. Fine dishes and silverware sparkled on your table with a basket of bread in the center beside a lit candelabra. A fire warmed the hearth, and the alluring shimmer of dusk slipped in through the clean curtains. All was set. You sat in your armchair and waited, staring at the flames.

Hoof beats. Sweat chilled your palms as the sound drew nearer and you stood to peer out the window. The dot of a lantern bloomed in the distance. You tucked your shirt into your belt and clutched your shawl tighter, holding your heart to tame its wild beating, fingertips bumping the band of your mother’s ring, still hanging around your neck from a chain. The most important thing for you to do was breathe, slow and even, so your blood could thrum throughout your body as it was supposed to and give you strength. It flowed into your heart and you closed your eyes.

“Ease up,” a voice called. His voice.

A horse nickered, blowing out its nostrils. Leather creaked as he dismounted from his saddle and the bit tinkled as he hitched the reins, whistling. You could imagine it all, him fixing and grooming himself as he walked up, expecting a girl who would be so happy to see him and enamored with him that she made her home all nice to welcome him after a noble day of hunting outlaws.

The jingle of his spur was as foreboding as a snake’s rattle as it marched up the flagstone path. You positioned yourself in front of the stove, bending over the pot with a spoon and stirring the flavorful broth, a smile schooled on your face.

“Honey pie, you home? It’s me.”

The picture of a perfect wife, you thought, standing in your inviting home in a cooking apron. He would only see what he wanted, blind to you being capable of anything else.

“Door’s open!” You chimed, and the doorknob turned.

Some change at once went through the room. In a heavy, dominant rush it all came back, like the strong winds the night before that rattled the window panes and made the trees plunge and bow. You spent all day distracting yourself from the flashbacks of his lurid words, the fondlings, and the sound of his labored breaths. Anguish seized your throat at the footfalls entering your home once again and the pillar of strength you constructed within, had leaned upon, began to crumble.

You had a hangnail on your thumb. You discovered this while squeezing your fist tight, tethering yourself to the present. It was a welcome, soft twinge of pain for you to focus on and you picked at it, fixing your eyes on the window. The candle before it illuminated the glass, and you watched the sapphire heart of the flame waver, heard the little hiss of it, and glanced beyond. A sky wistful with waning blue, a sunset throwing gold on all that was green, a hush of wind passing through the leaves, and your reflection blending in between. To take it all in brought you forward in time, to a crackling fire and a bubbling soup, and a purpose hanging over your heart.

It is not happening again, you reflected. And it will never happen again.

You were safe, you reminded yourself, safe in the present, grounded, and irrevocably turned to face the man who hurt you in a way no one ever had. You looked at him without seeing him, a dish towel in hand.

“Come on in, I have some dinner on the stove. It'll be ready in a jiff if you want to hang up your things.”

“I would be delighted,” was his reply.

He took off his Stetson, hung it on the hook. The sound of his coat being tugged down his arms and his gun belt unbuckling made your heart beat fast and your fingers curl into your palms again. Shaking, you gripped the edge of the counter. Steam from the bubbling pot kissed your cheeks.

A chair scraped across the floor. “It smells delicious, sweetness. I’m downright famished.”

You breathed in and out slowly. He folded his leather gloves beside his table settings and you prepared a dish for him. With a gulp and a clench of resolution, you dipped the ladle deep and unearthed the chunks of vegetables, pouring them artfully into a bowl, spoonful after spoonful.

“Any luck tracking down that gang?”

He sighed, deep and tired. His elbows knocked on the table as he reached for the loaded bread basket.

“They slipped through our fingers last night, but we almost had ‘em.” Pulling the loaf apart, he ripped a piece and tucked it into his mouth.

You rounded the table and laid the baleful meal on his place setting, in a daze as he happily snatched up his spoon.

“Oh my,” he marveled. The polished silver of the utensil disappeared in the broth and came back up replete with the softened wild bulbs.

“These onions are quaint,” he commented.

The lie came to your tongue easily. “They’re called pearl onions. I have them growing in the back.”

And with a pleased grin, he feasted. You sat across from him with your own bowl, your spoon a special porous one so you could pretend to eat alongside him. He dipped his bread in the soup and drained his glass greedily, refilling it himself from the pitcher you set on the table earlier. Before long he scraped the bottom of the bowl and you replenished it.

You tried not to pay attention to his sordid aspect. The way he sniffed loudly and chewed openly, the dirtiness of his face from riding, the grease slicking his unwashed hair and the matted tips of his mustache, his eyebrows also unkempt and overgrown. You fixed your eyes to the grain of the wood instead, ate your bread with a slice of cheese and a handful of walnuts, munched on the salad of spring greens you prepared, all the while waiting for time to take its natural course as the toxins of the ostensible pearl onions invaded his system.

“You’ve been quiet,” he observed. His hunger appeared to sate as he scraped up the last dregs of his supper, affording his utmost attention back to his hostess. “Why won’t you look at me?”

You lifted your chin from your palm. Something in his expression shifted with awareness.

“Is this about last night?” he went on. When you remained simmering in your silence, he deflated. “Listen, I–I didn’t mean to get so rough with ya. I was drunk, and I’m sorry.”

Your insides twisted and flamed, refusing to be quelled. You shot up, turning your back to him and crossing your arms as you faced the window.

“You’re sorry?” you seethed. A drum pounded in your ears; it was the mad pulse of your heart. Tall in your judicial resolve, you whirled and directed your fury towards him in its full magnitude. “Not a bone in your body is capable of being sorry,” your voice shook, low in its tenor. “You saw an opportunity to take advantage of me and seized it. The way you spoke to me—degraded me—it’s impossible for me to believe you didn’t enjoy every moment of your vulgarity.” Split flew as you scoffed at him. “Regret is not within you. Not when I see now that you planned it. All along.”

He broke into a laugh of disbelief and leaned back to survey you. The worst kind of smile distorted his face, as if your fit of temper delighted him.

“Yer actin’ like you didn’t want it. Like your cunny wasn’t drippin’ wet for me–” you lunged forward, vision red and nostrils flaring, ready to seize his neck in your hands and crush his windpipe like the frail stalk of a vegetable, but stopped, grasping the back of your chair instead. You despised the idea of having to touch him and were reminded that you would not have to get your hands dirty to kill him. But you were prepared to. How much longer could you stand his gloating and his shameless iniquity? The wood of the chair’s cross rail creaked beneath your unforgiving knuckles. The Sheriff smirked at your little display.

“I think you’re just ashamed and don’t know how to admit that you liked it,” he argued, pointing his finger at you; then he shook his head. “What nerve you have, bein’ a little cocktease with me. But I didn’t treat you like those whores in town, no, I went out of my way to…to enamor you, bringin’ you flowers while you greeted me in your garden in your lace and your pretty smiles, a pie coolin’ on your windowsill. You know my dear Carolynn never blessed me with a child, and here you were,” he gestured to your frame and the home around you. “Takin’ on the responsibilities of housekeepin’ all by yer lonesome. All you needed was a man to take care of you, and I could be that man. Honey, I want to marry you. I could make you happy! Can’t you picture it?”

Flushed from his diatribe, he pleaded with you, half-rising from his seat until you thrust out a hand in warning. Surprisingly, he heeded your tacit command. Disgust curled your lips into a sneer.

“Marry you?” you echoed, hollow with disbelief. Your vision blurred and you blinked against the mounting tide of revelation washing over you. His mindset, his reasoning, it was unfathomable, and you struggled to piece together a sentence. “This whole time…that was your object? And you thought that by—by trapping me, and giving me no other choice, that I would accept you?”

His eyes rolled heavenward and frustration flashed across his oily face. “Lord knows I’ve been patient,” he gnashed his teeth, voice raising a note higher. “I didn’t want any other man to have you. What, you think you’re meant for one of those half-witted grangers in town? They don’t know the first thing about women, let alone how to keep one as pretty, smart, and pure as you. You know it’s downright sinful to keep such gifts to yourself.”

His words were worse than his touch. You had not one to describe your own sensations; the shock of his inflicted on you completely suspended your power to think and feel.

“Sinful…” you wandered over his meaning. “You’re a hypocrite.” Releasing the chair, you stepped away a few paces and shook your head, huffing to contain your brimming despisal for this man. You refused to listen to him any more. All throughout the day strands of thought had weaved through your head, firmly knotting into what the shame made you believe about yourself. That you were ruined. That you were worth less. He must have thought he was paying you some kind of compliment, saying what he said. The refutation rose in you to a forbidding height, like the dust before a whirlwind, and your lips parted to release your final judgment of him.

“You don’t know the first thing about me: about what I want, or what I need. What you did was assume. You assumed I wanted someone to come around and sweep me off my feet, save me from my solitude, and you assumed that I wanted you. A gluttonous, arrogant, entitled pig who can’t take responsibility for his own actions, who would rather blame them on the beast at the bottom of the glass,” you spat with venom. Emotion began to wrack your voice, lifting and dropping it like the swell of a wave, but you plowed forward, pinning him to his seat with the fearsome gleam in your tear-stricken eyes.

“The worst part about it is you could’ve made your intentions clear! I could’ve been spared from all this pain if you had only the stones to be straightforward. But I guess the prospect of your hurt pride was too much to endure. Deep down, you knew the only way you could have me was unwillingly.”

Your hand clutched at your breast, wrinkling your shirt and tangling in your necklace chain. You let go and charged forward again, and this time, the chair rail snapped in your hands at your final word.

“You had no right. You’re the most pathetic excuse of a man I’ve ever seen, and I’ll be glad to see you drop dead.”

At the crack of wood he sneered. No longer tolerating this speech, he stood, and for a fleeting moment you shrunk back. Until his hand—his fat, pallid hand, still bearing a wedding band—braced itself on the tabletop and he wobbled on his feet. Blood rushed to his face and a delta formed in his forehead as he blinked at the ground, as if his vision was filled with spots while his legs drooped unsteadily beneath him. He clenched his gut and groaned.

A griefless laugh croaked from you. “You know, they say that wishes and dreams have a winding way of coming true. It looks like you are gonna spend the rest of your life with me, Sheriff.”

His sight fixed itself on the bowl in your place setting, at the spoon resting in it, and how none of your portion was consumed. He had the look of a man who realized something too late. The vein in his neck fluttered and his breaths sawed in and out of his lungs. Sweat dotted his temples and a thread of saliva spilled from his wobbling lip.

“Wh–what did you d-do?” He choked out.

The compass of your soul spun and whirred, before the ruby-tipped point settled decidedly south.

“What I had to.”

As his knees gave out beneath him, the Sheriff clutched the table’s edge, and the peaceful, law-abiding chapter of your life ended. The scent of bile fouled the air as he retched and retched, his body rejecting every morsel of the Death Camas he had stomached, and the pallor of his skin colored to that of fish’s belly before the monger’s crude knife carves it open. Not a twinge of sympathy or regret rippled inside as he fell helpless to the floor. Not at his struggle for breath, at his uncontrollable muscle spasms, or the chunks of undigested food dangling from his chin. He would lie there, wheezing and convulsing in a mound of his own vomit, until his heart stopped. You had no desire to watch, and you had no desire to wait any longer for your meteoric flight from this tainted place of grief and despair.

You unlatched the trunk in your bedroom and sifted through your belongings. Two saddlebags quickly filled. You packed the essentials: bedding and a camp outfit, medicine and provisions, clothing for severe weather, and valuables to fence. Rummaging through the kitchen, yanking open drawers and cabinets, you moved mechanically, occupying your mind with a plan moving forward, all the while a man lay dying on your floor, twitching and choking, sightless and inert. His breath was a mere rattle as you dressed yourself for travel and long riding, laying your necklace with your mother’s ring inside a sack for safe keeping. This was not the time for thoughts and moral ruminations, it was the time for action.

It would buy you time–and perhaps forego a bounty altogether–if you buried the body. His absence from town would not go unnoticed, but—Oh, yours would not either. Regardless, your next course of action began to formulate itself. You would need a shovel, a rug or a blanket, and a lantern, for the sun had dipped below the horizon and would not light your path.

As the night closed darkly in, the sunset folded its wings over the rib cages of clouds; the last pulse of color on the shore of the world a glowing, molten shade of marmalade. Insects clacked and clicked in the dusk as you stepped out in your hunting jacket, hoisting your supplies over your shoulder on the dirt path to the stable with a lantern swinging in your free hand. White moths flittered around the light and followed in your grim, resolved wake.

You hung the lamp on a hook behind the creaking door, illuminating the hay-strewn space. Bridles, bits, and martingales populated the wall inside the stable, with rakes and shovels propped up from the ground. An empty wheelbarrow served as a temporary home for your provisions, setting them inside so you could perch yourself on a stool in the corner to strap on your spurs.

Willa shifted on her hooves to adjust to the weight of the various sacks and pouches you affixed to her saddle, but she complied with a trusting snort. You spoke to her kindly, stroking her forehead, knowing that she was listening in her own way and understood her importance to you. Without her, you would be alone. Without her your future, your freedom, it would all be infeasible. You led Willa out into the night, a shovel tucked under your arm and your lantern restored in hand.

An owl hooted and a pack of coyotes yipped and yowled, the sound carrying throughout the valley. Willa’s keen ears flicked, along with her long tail, and you gestured for her to wait behind the cottage, hitching her to an oak sapling. You intended to trudge through the muck of the funereal situation as quickly as possible while the night breeze slipped cool fingers through the forest and snuffed out the last tendrils of daylight. You marched back into the firelit house for the last time.

The stench hit you first. Foul and nose-wrinkling, you tugged your collar up against the smell and regarded the log of the Sheriff’s body, lying rigid. In death, he soiled his pants, as all men do. The body releases everything and the muscles stiffen and lock, blood stagnates in the veins, the skin purples, the tongue lolls out, and the eyes fix wide open to meet the unknown. Nature takes its course. Flies are drawn by some promising whiff of a feast in the air and consume the dead flesh in a quivering swarm of greed. Time passes. Maggots crawl. And bones will be all that remain, until, some day, they are dust for the wind to claim.

He was the one you rushed to when you found your grandmother cold in her bed. He was the one who arranged for the church to collect and prepare her body for burial beside your parents in the local graveyard. He was one of the persons who offered you words of comfort during the funeral.

He was the man who hurt you most in the world.

And he was no more.

It was a yawning, black moment, the one in which you stood, hesitating on some windy pinnacle, reflecting on not what will be, but what, long since, has been. Your throat choked around nothing. What has become of you? The future stretched out before you gray, interminable, and desolate. Thoughts crowded thick and fast in your mind, and you imagined carrying out the rest of this act—covering his body, dragging it across the floorboards, the weight of it, the slack look on his face, the creases of his fat fingers outstretched from his limp hand, and you knelt to the floor with a gathering horror of your deed, a tremor pulsing in your throat, your heart crumbling to the same ash dropping in the dim fireplace.

A numbness possessed you to pull up the corners of the rug, to nudge his body to the center of it with your foot, to wrap the carpet around his form and tuck him inside. To do what needed to be done. Your mind turned off. It had to, for it was the only way to endure. There was no choice left for you. But you wished you had listened. To the night, to the change in the wind, for the footsteps of fate and the creeping shadow of the terrible god of chance stepping into your doorway, eclipsing your hope of escape from this dire strait. A darkness was gathering in the hush; the kind something crouches within.

Fate is a weaver, poised at a loom; the spider over your garden gate. It works silently and unseen, amidst an intricate and silvery web, attaching invisible strands of possibility along a path leading to an inescapable epicenter. Fate, with its nimble clutches, spins and entwines, pulls one thread, wends the other, until the time comes when the unwary traveler reaches a pivot point, the moment when their life goes down one path or another, and the spider strikes the grappling victim caught in its web.

Back first, you dragged the carpet bearing the Sheriff’s body outside your door. His boots stuck out from the roll, thumping along the ground as you grunted with the effort of transporting him, using the strength behind your legs to shuffle farther along. The light from inside spilled out along the flagstone path, and as you stopped to establish a stronger, more efficient grip, your ears pricked at a pair of unfamiliar spurs clicking and scuffing to a halt behind you.

A pin-drop silence encased the air.

Your heart froze. Ice enveloped your ribcage and crystallized the blood inside their elaborate vessels, each breath serrating through your chest like a razor. For a time, only the stars moved with their twinkling. Slowly from the ground, inch by inch, you turned your head and your sight rose to the face of the intruder, the sole witness to your grisly act, and you almost laughed at how twisted fate could be.

A faltering deputy was fixed in place on the path, taking in the undeniable scene before him. He was no stranger. You recognized him in that slant of dandelion light by the curled tip of his nose, his ruddy cheeks, and the cleft in the middle of his chin. His beard was strong, a shade darker than his hair and not so red as his skin, and he had grown into his jaw, the line of which had become more pronounced and square. He wore wrinkled pants tucked into worn, dusty boots, with his lanky frame swallowed by a long duster, a vest beneath it buttoned all the way, and a gun belt sagging around his hips. Ungloved hands hung at his sides, fingers that long ago squeezed the curves of your budding body dangling emptily.

Though he scarcely looked it, he was the boy from the orchard with russet hair and dimples all those years ago, whose mother treated you like her own; but he had grown since that uncomplicated beginning. How a broken collarbone led to a friendship, which ripened into an affection and concluded in bitter resentment, was unforeseeable at the time. You never guessed that the two of you would end up like this.

“Gideon,” you breathed. “What are you doing here?”

The hungry, sweeping motion of his mouth against yours invaded your mind. In the blink of a moment like this, despite the current of the years that swept past and weathered away the discomforting, stony edges of the memory, you could relive the minutest details of your past with him: the sloppy tangle of tongue and teeth and the scratch of an adolescent mustache; the mopey, beseeching expression on his face, begging for more of you. A chill crept across your skin at the remembrance of his neediness and desperation, making it hard to look at him, shame rooted so deeply in you.

He uttered your name in the same stunned tone, his mouth agape until he swallowed his alarm. “It’s been a long time,” he said, and his eyes, murky, silver, and cold—like a pond in winter—cut to the sagging roll of carpet in your arms. An unmistakable pair of boots stuck out. “And I see much has changed.”

None of your muscles moved—but the weight of the deceased tired your arms and you ached to rest them. You slowly lowered the rug to the ground, your eyes never leaving one another’s.

“This isn’t what you think it is.”

A disbelieving scoff left him. “What I think it is,” he echoed. “I’m thinking that better not be who I think it is. I’m thinking ‘she went from breaking men’s hearts to stopping them altogether’,” his long legs carried him forward and your spine stiffened. His face came into the light. You shrank back. “Something tells me you don’t have one of Dutch Van der Linde’s boys wrapped up in there. See, I knew the Sheriff would be here tonight, and that’s his horse hitched there,” he jerked his thumb in the direction of the animal. “You have five seconds to produce the man I’m looking for alive and well or I’m taking you in.”

You wished to heaven you could think of a way out of this. What vestige of freedom you could still secure was within your grasp and it made your teeth grit that the bitter waters of life would surge high once again at this crucial hour. It figured; the final wave for you to overcome came in the form of Gideon Taylor, the pouty boy who you had no remorse for jilting. Your fists clenched beside you and you lifted your head, standing tall, measuring and meeting the danger of his presence.

Holding his stare unblinkingly, you pitched your voice low, words growing frost. “You should leave.”

Though he had a gun and lasso on his hip and an inflated sense of superiority to empower him, Gideon hesitated.

“I will, once you tell me where the Sheriff is.”

His spurs jangled. He spoke to you cautiously, as if you were a skittish animal about to bolt for an impenetrable thicket, the flit of his eyes gauging your every move, and his hand rose out to you while he subtly reached beside him.

Before you a narrow avenue of escape flickered, shrinking smaller and smaller like the last sliver of the moon in the dark of an eclipse.

When lightning flashes, the precise amount of moments that pass between the initial burst of light and the thunder that follows measures the distance between the strike and the listener. A blink, a heartbeat, a slow breath. That was how much time you had to act, before the thunder came and the earth trembled. In that slow, blinking, beating instant, you knew how this would play out.

When his gun began to clear leather your instincts kicked in, quick as a snap. You leapt backwards into the house, throwing the door shut. Fumbling with the bolt, the rusty metal bar slogged its way through the lock, making you cry out in frustration as you strained to jiggle it forward. The bolt slid home the instant Gideon’s shoulder rammed against the boards.

Your teeth rattled at the battering of the frame. He charged against it repeatedly and your eyes, in darting about the room, snagged on a buffet table. Praying the old lock would hold, you rushed to push it in front of the door and the furniture groaned as you shoved it in place, only for Gideon’s attempts to break in to cease.

“So, we’re doing this the hard way?” Gideon yelled through the door. Your heartbeat thumped in your ears and your face grew hot at the rushing of blood. You moved to extinguish all the lamps and candles, flooding the room in darkness and the lacy scent of candle smoke. His voice came again a moment later.

“Shit, what the hell did you do to him?”

The body. Beyond the threshold. He must have peeled back the rug, looked upon the Sheriff’s vacant eyes and felt his clay-cold cheeks. A leaden weight sunk into the pit of your stomach. There was no escaping what you did. But a small chance remained to evade capture. You could sneak through the back window and mount Willa quietly, get a head start before Gideon gave chase. You could lose him in the woods near Lady Face Falls and follow the water north—

A bullet crashed through the window. You dropped to the floor. Moving forward, you crawled towards the bedroom, covering your head with your hands whenever glass shattered and chunks of wood flew. Along the way your foot slipped through a sludge of the Sheriff’s vomit and your knee banged against the wood. You bit your cheek so as not to cry out in disgust and pain and shuffled slimily onward by the heels of your hands.

Gideon fired off six shots in total before you made it safely to the other room. Quietly, tortuously, you unlatched the window and pulled it up by the handles in increments to prevent any sound while outside Gideon cursed to reload his weapon faster. You winced as it gave a squeak, but the noise was muffled by the breaking of a window in the front room. A heavy stone’s thump followed after.

Gideon called out in the dark. “Are you gonna come willingly or do I have to shoot you? There’s nowhere to go!”

The night air beckoned. Without another thought you swung a leg over the sill and ducked out, making a break for Willa. Behind the cottage, you slid down a slippery bank of pine needles until you reached your moonlit mare, grasping the smooth horn of the saddle and clambering astride to get a move on.

“Ya!” With a kick to her flank, Willa gave a jolt and a toss of her head before starting forward. Moments. You had bought yourself moments to escape, merely. Snatching up the reins, you seated yourself properly and urged Willa through the grove of trees, hunching low to dodge the lash of branches.

She moved with a swift determination beneath you. With hooves heavy upon the earth, she sensed your urgency. Twigs snapped and spears of moonlight shot through the pine canopy as you wove through a wide belt of trees, your breath coming hard and fogging in the air.

The lane of a meadow came into view and you burst through the tree line, into the moon-bright open. Willa vaulted over a fallen log and landed in the muddy grasses, your rear hitting the saddle hard while pellets of ice flecked your cheeks as she scudded over a sheaf of unmelted snow.

“Go, go, go!” Crying out, you nudged her flank again, and Willa obeyed, breathing hard. The prospect of speed and gaining distance from your pursuer outweighed the risk of exposure, riding in the open like this. Her pace transcended into a gallop. You clung tight, blinking against the cold air as it pricked your eyes. The thunder of her feet matched the beat of your heart and the landscape became a blur of stubby trees and boulders smudging past you. In the wind she made Willa’s mane flowed, and you trusted her completely to deliver you from danger.

A gun fired off in the distance. You were forced to let up, arming yourself with your father’s hunting rifle, the stock firm against your shoulder as you peered down the sight and readied your aim. A quarter of a mile off a glint of moving light came from a lantern, and it struck your heart with a pang to do it—to fix your sights on the pulse of it and fire with violent intent. The sound split through the valley. The empty cartridge ejected.

Astride his horse, Gideon shouted as it reared up. Your round pierced the dome of his upheld lantern and sent glass and kerosene raining. In the briefly purchased interval you prompted Willa onwards, back into the ponderosas that environed the open meadow and the darkness their bristling boughs afforded before he and his horse finished screaming.

The farther into the woods you ventured the thicker the trees crept in, until you were forced to a walk. Into the silence of the night you listened, straining for any sound of pursuit. Nothing, only the cold shadows, dim moonlight, and scaly bark of pines passing by your knees. You propped the rifle against your thigh and loaded another brass round into the breech before hopping down from your mount. If the necessity rose again, it would be easier to aim on solid ground rather than swiveling on horseback.

Pine cones and fallen twigs scattered at your step, and you took care to prowl lightly through the snowmelt. You held Willa’s bridle in one hand, her bit jingling, and led her until the murmur of flowing water pricked your ears. Miserable cold began to set in. At every rustle and riffle of leaf and breeze your eyes snapped to each corner of the woodland on high alert. More than anything, you wished for the warmth of your hearth—to be nestled in your favorite chair like any other evening spent in the solitude of your home. Not gripping a loaded gun in a dark forest, heart racing for your life.

But at home, you remembered, lay the body of a dead man. To return to such a place was to hold to your ear a shell from the sea of the past, filling you with the hollow echo of what once was and no longer is. Those chapters from before fluttered away—as the seasons did.

The soil turned mossy and spongy from the lush influence of the river, with trilliums springing up between tree roots and felled, sun-bleached logs. You let Willa walk on ahead, and the music of the water dampened the far-off sounds. Your breath came out slowly as you surveyed the wooded area behind you.

How smart had Gideon grown in the past few years? Could he track you, undetected? Was he stalking you through the woods, with the patience and guile of a hunter? In truth, you had no idea what he was capable of, and it made your fingers twitch towards the trigger. Then again, what were you?

The treetops stirred. A gale whistled down from the mountains, hauntingly cold, and spliced through your jacket, meanwhile the starlight twinkled on. The moonlight turned the river iridescent. Willa drank her fill of water and you settled back into the saddle to trudge downriver. Gideon would lose the tracks you had no time to cover once he reached the stream, but could easily piece together your route. You stowed your rifle and formed a grip over the reins, knuckles over, and moved to fit your boots into the stirrups to give Willa a kick.

You wondered how you could not have heard it: the low, whisking sound of a twirling lasso. By the time it dropped around your shoulders, it was too late. With a violent lurch you were dragged backwards from your horse into the numbing, snow-fed water. Hard and unforgiving rocks bashed into the side of your face as you slammed into the streambed, the taste of coins flooding your mouth as your teeth cut through your lip and tongue. You wrestled with the unyielding hold of the rope amidst the water flowing around you, the shock of which soaked ice in your blood instantly. Black flowers blossomed behind your eyes. A hard yank snagged the air from your lungs and pulled you free from the chaos of the current.

Coughing, spluttering, blinking and gasping, twigs and gravel scraped your palms and before you could brace your hands against the silt someone else’s pinned them together and pushed you on your stomach.

“You’re not gettin’ away now,'' a voice hissed. You remembered those hands on you years before, stronger since, and contempt flamed up in you, compelling the fight in your limbs to kick and scramble beneath Gideon’s hold.

“Quit makin’ this harder for me than it already is!” he snapped. With force, he wrapped the rope around your wrists in a tight bind. All that was left to fight him with was your ankles and you thrashed your knees to shake him off, but the solid weight of him prevailed.

“No,” you groaned, and it took all of your strength to. The rope bound your feet together, and a stupor sludged your limbs from the shock of the cold water. You were flipped onto your back, flinching at a face you were loath to look into. Gideon shook you by the shoulders and your eyes rolled.

“Tell me why! Why did you kill the Sheriff?!”

The river still roared in your ears. Water dripped down your neck, bunched in your lashes. You thought they might turn into icicles, like the great big ones that hung from the cottage roof in the wintertime. Senses dulled and dazed, you could hardly see from the blur of tears and cold, but you caught the echo of his question, and the vial of indignation within you overflowed past the chatter of your teeth and the shivering of your limbs, unable to contain the seething words any longer.

“You have no idea–” a cough interrupted your speech. “What kind of man you are defending.”

Blood from the cut inside your lip spattered onto his face and he only blinked as if it were water. His astonishment was beyond expression. By the moonlight, the dark of his eyes narrowed, and you wormed beneath his glaring sneer.

“He was a great man. Everyone saw the good he did. But you–” he yanked you up from the rocky bed by the elbow, your head lolling. “You were all he talked about. And I tried to warn him about you! You know what he did? He just laughed at me and said I wasn’t man enough to handle you.”

His statement stunned you into silence. Upright, your senses were slow to sharpen with the fog accumulating in your head. The idea of the Sheriff boasting about you to his fellow men sickened you more than the memory of his touch almost. But you had no time to harbor the thought before Gideon dragged you to his mount like a lamb to slaughter.

Within the narrow, binding circle in which your ankles could shuffle you were pushed along, stumbling over pinecones and driftwood. You were too cold and cut up by the rocks to fight him, but you dug in your heels as you approached the tan horse’s flank, the gelding’s tail twitching.

You rolled your shoulder as he shoved you harshly forward by the center of your back and searched for your horse desperately. Willa had taken off during scuffle, trotting down the opposite side of the riverbank. You whistled for her, and her head swung in your direction.

Gideon lost what little patience he had and pulled you up by your underarm. “Do I need to gag you as well?” You braced your arm against his horse’s side to keep your footing. “I think I should, since you’ll be savin’ your confession for the judge.”

“Gideon, stop. Please,” you wheezed. “There was a wrong done to me.” You hoped the pain in your voice would make him pause and see the misery in your eyes, think about the weight behind your words. Maybe he would remember the girl you used to be, and recognize that she was gone, wondering what took the light from her heart. A minnow of doubt darted across his face and his grip nearly faltered, until the breeze blew cold and snuffed any flame of apprehension sparking inside him.

“And you call what you did makin’ it right? Killing a man is against the law,” he elucidated. His spit sprayed across your cheek and you flinched. “But I’ve heard all that I have an ear for. You’re spendin’ the night in a cell.”

Gideon crouched and lifted you from around the legs, hefting you onto your stomach over the horse’s rump. Blood rushed to your head as your weight gravitated to your abdomen and your muscles strained to support it. The steed’s legs shifted underneath you and you lifted your head with a painful effort to speak your mind as he rounded the horse.

“The law doesn’t tell you what’s right and what’s wrong; it only says there’s a price to be paid for certain actions,” you snapped. Disdain pulsed through your veins, your blood humming with contempt.

“Yeah?” Gideon’s feet slotted into the stirrups and he gave a kick, gripping the reins and flicking them to the right. “And you are gonna pay—with your life. What’s that tell you?”

You balled your fists and squirmed, the weave of the rope digging into your wrists. Gideon started forward, roughly, back into the darkened forest. Your chin knocked against the horse’s hide and you held your head up again. “Men like the Sheriff bend the law in their favor whenever it suits them to get what they want and never pay that price. The law doesn’t protect those beneath it.”

“Spoken like a true degenerate.” He tossed you a look over his shoulder and scoffed. “God, if my mother could see you now.” At the memory of Mrs. Taylor and her old warmth towards you, you flamed up again, voice coming out in a growl.

“Oh, you don’t have room in your head for more than one idea!”

“I know better than to listen to this. I know you. A man’s heart is your joy to play with–”

“And it’s your joy to play the victim! Even now you can’t fathom why I despised you. You filled me with shame. Men like you and the Sheriff, all you care about is what I can give you. My heart, my feelings, they don’t matter. In the face of your desires they mean nothing. They don’t so much as cross your mind. The Sheriff took advantage of me and he would do it without a second thought over and over again unless I stopped it!”

“Shame?” Gideon turned back to you. The cold pinked the tips of his ear and nose, his knuckles also red from their place on the bridle. He went quiet for a moment before going on, the scenery passing by vaguely in shadows and shafts of moonlight. Your sternum ached at the pressure accrued from resting on it, and every time your head bounced along with the rhythm of the horse you glimpsed your bound feet on the other side.

He spoke softer this time. “You must not remember how sweet I was on you when we were together. But the way you turned so sour so suddenly, when I could’ve sworn you liked me just as much…it made my head spin more than anythin’. I didn’t know what I did wrong.”

The confession strummed a somber chord within you, twisting your expression grimly. You stepped out of the present, back into the years, while Gideon emerged from the cover of the woods and picked his way onto a pale ribbon of trail that wriggled ahead like a snake. A sign post at the fork heralded the one mile marker to the main road into town, painted white and chipping.

“We were so young. We were children, Gideon. It wasn’t love.”

It struck you that, at the age you spoke of, you did not know how to say no—the word not being something girls were taught. What you knew of women’s’ relationships with men was the expected role they fulfilled: giving. Giving affection, pleasure, children, companionship. In theory the rationale was not so terrible. Love was a dream. To be in love was everything. But your tryst with Gideon acquainted you with a breed of men who were used to taking what women were expected to give. Your kiss, your touch, your embrace and your body, these were all special to you; a gift to be bestowed, the chance to do so reveled. Not things you were expected to surrender to the first boy who looked at you lustfully, unconcerned with your true, inner value. You wished you knew that then.

The train of thought led you, for a glimmer of a second, to believe you could have stopped the worse act inflicted upon you by the hands of the Sheriff. As quick as it came it died. He would have found a way to get what he wanted, regardless of pleas, or strength, or precognition. You were not to blame. Bad people would always exist in the world and take advantage of others, and it was no fault of yours.

Gideon shook his head, sighed, and muttered to himself. Pivoting, he looked down on you with a pinched mouth, his eyes hidden in the shadow cast by the brim of his hat. “Yeah, well. We still knew what we were doing.” The cutting edge of his words dismissed you and he spurred his horse into a faster trot.

I think you’re just ashamed and don’t know how to admit that you liked it. A ghost whispered. The soft choke of his death rattle gripped your memory and you flinched from it.

The hardheaded hold Gideon held on his grievances made your teeth clench. If only the perfect string of words existed to compel him to release them, you would draw the strands from the air, thread them together into a net, and cast their influence over his mind to pluck his heartstrings and make him remember the boy he once was; the one who looked upon you so fondly. But the notion came to a halt at that, for was he ever a boy capable of thinking beyond his own wishes, considering the thoughts of others?

“You’re so selfish. You’ll never change,” you found yourself saying without thinking. But he did not catch your words, and you spoke up as your despisal surged anew. “Maybe you knew what you were doing when you groped me, and ground yourself against me, and kissed me slovenly, but I didn’t. Because maybe you’ve forgotten, but I just sat there. You only ever cared about making yourself happy.”

He scoffed. “As much as I know you’d like to think it is, this isn’t about what happened between us. I stopped thinking about you in that way a long time ago, along with asking myself why. What you offered—” Gideon cut a withering look to your frame and grunted. “Wasn’t that special. There’s plenty of other girls out there. I’m just glad I didn’t end up in a goddamn carpet.”

Further and further away your hope slipped. Your heartbeat pounded in your head, making it throb and ache as you hung over the horse’s side and your feet grew numb. Inevitably, water pricked your eyes. A chill breeze brushed past your nose and snot began to dribble from the end of it while your vision blurred and your voice broke.

“There is no getting through to you, is there?”

In reply, Gideon only spurred his horse to trudge an incline in the road and leaned back in the saddle, steering away from the deeper patches of snow. A knot formed in your throat as you choked down useless tears. He owed you nothing. His nature was not understanding, or reflective, or critical of himself. It was self-righteous and vindictive. The conviction rested in his eyes as unyielding as the laws of justice. An ounce of sympathy from him was as likely as drawing blood from a stone.

Bitterly, your head fell, and you sucked your quivering, gashed lip. One last time, you tried to implore him. One last time, you sought your freedom, because it was the only thing you had left to lose.

“You can let me go. I’ll never come back here! Whatever you’re trying to prove, you don’t have to–”

And he slapped you across the face to shut you up.

The strike stung like nettles and your ears rang. Shrinking away, your mind blanking with static and noise and blinding white despair, fresh blood spilled from your lips from the slap and your trembling body remembered how cold your dip in the river had been. Worse was the wind, billowing down from across the distant mountain peaks, and the shivers set in deep. The trot of the horse went on, up a hill and off the trail through the terrain once more.

In silence, in anguish, in defeat, you wept. Over the side of a horse, bound, slapped, and subdued, you wept and embraced the taste of salt. For your lost girlhood. For the grandmother who raised you and the mother who did not have the chance. For your life, for the ruination of your dreams, from the unfairness of it all. Was this the harvest of all that had been planted for you? Bone-weary, you slumped against the animal’s hide and let yourself rock with each step. If only sleep could take you. You were ready for all of this to be over, to be a dream you could wake from in a sweat and try your best to forget. Bleeding and shivering, you longingly ached for something to fetch you out of your present existence, and lead you upwards and onwards, but you had no heart left for anything.

Glancing up at the sky, a bank of clouds enveloped the moon. Over wood, over water, the flood of its silver radiance receded, the ensuing darkness weaving a mystery in every drop of dew and creaking branch. An owl hooted, but its mate did not answer. The stars did not have any either as you searched for them.

The tall trees rustled, violently unsure, and the night breeze carried a sickly sweet scent in its passing, as if stirring something hidden under rotting leaves. As Gideon passed beneath them, the ragged shadows cast from the spruces closed in, and in the gloom an old stone rose from the earth like a grave. It may as well have been your own. Darkened by the color of moss and damp, the granite ledge presided over the forest, sundered by some glacial movement from the mountains eons ago while death and rebirth churned in the woods all around.

Unable to face what was to come, you turned your head. But in so doing, you caught sight of Willa trailing you from a short distance, the spot of white on her forehead unmistakable, and your tears subsided. Your heart glowed and lifted; a wobbly smile dimpling your cheeks. Graceful and poised, steadfast and resilient, she trotted in the passing shadows like she was of its fabric, her coat the same shifting shades of moonlight while she moved like a river, the sinews of her forearms and chest a changeful, inky black above her socks of white. Her hooves were too soft to hear in the spongy dirt.

Willa’s softly brown and gleaming eyes held a star in them. Every journey you embarked on, she was beside you. She carried your bushels of burdock root and feverfew and fireweed back to your cottage without complaint, conveying you home through the forests and switchbacks countless times, and in turn you took care of her since the day your grandmother bought her from the livery.

The events which occurred in the past day loosened your foothold on your sense of self. But in that moment, pondering Willa, it came back to you. You remembered who you were, and what you believed you were meant to be. A girl brought up to respect the Earth and revere it, who kept hope in her heart always, and dreamed that she could be loved. With crystalline clarity, your mind broke free from its chains and a wind stirred a flame back to life inside of you.

From a drained well of will, you gathered your strength, braced yourself for another struggle and one last trial of endurance. While you raced to think of a way to cut your binds, Gideon’s head snapped around, and you stopped. His revolver was drawn in a flash and his horse whinnied and raked its hooves. He fixed his eyes on the tree line and you strained for any telltale sound while his gelding started to canter to the side uneasily. Something spooked it.

“What is it?” you hissed. He ignored you.

A twig snapped close by. “Who goes there?” he called out. Not far off, a ribbon of campfire smoke wove up into the night air and you squinted at the shadows.

Gideon tugged the reins hard to the left and clicked his spurs, venturing to investigate and evade the open clearing. Your head joggled with the movement and you grunted. A patch of ground ahead, though sideways from your point of view, appeared odd, misshapen, the thick carpet of pine needles too obvious to be natural. But Gideon was not watching his tread and aimed his horse’s walk right over it.

A dire creak made you freeze.

“Look out!”

It was too late.

A shrieking snap, and next, the wind was in your ear as the earth gave out from beneath. With a cry, the horse stumbled and reared and everything went upside down. Your heart seized during a timeless, weightless, airless second as a lattice of concealed logs collapsed beneath the load of Gideon and his horse, and you all fell in an outcry.

The sap and pine scent of fresh wood rushed up your nose as it cracked all around you. Unable to reach out for anything or protect your face, the sharp edges of branches snagged at your clothes and stabbed at your sides, needles scraping and stinging your skin. When the slamming force of the ground ended it all, a spike of wood tore a scream from you as it impaled your thigh.

The tumult fizzled to a static in your ears. You roiled on the dirt floor of the manmade pit, curling into yourself like a pill bug at the hot, pulsing throbs of pain in your leg surrounding the intrusion. You cried out at the unbearable and debilitating burning shooting throughout your body. Throat raw, vision white, breath sawing raggedly, your senses came clear enough for half a moment to observe Gideon, still astride his hysterical animal, gripping the bridle and urging the horse out of the pit. He kicked it harshly to vault over the rim back to solid ground.

He spared you one glance before riding off, and left you.

Tears stung your eyes and you wailed out your pain freely. Scratching at the rope around your wrists was useless, your nails only drew blood. All over, your body ached with bruises and fatigue, and it depleted all of your strength to focus on your breathing alone. Frustration and pain tangled in your chest like a mass of snakes, warring each other, and all you could to do alleviate the pain was roll onto your uninjured side. Your leg gushed like an oil-well.

Once everything started to fade, time ceased mattering, and you slipped in and out of consciousness. You blearily wondered why you were still fighting. A cold sweat chilled your neck and your chest palpitated unbearably.

Sounds from afar, beyond the pit, invaded your ears. There were hoof beats. The shouts of more riders, pursuing Gideon most likely. He would be rounding up what was left of the Sheriff’s posse, going after this gang that has been troubling this valley the past few days. No doubt this pit was dug by them, a trap for someone who got too close to where they were camped out. The whole town would be in a frenzy, meanwhile you...fading, languishing in the dirt…no one would find you in time…

With a quavering sigh, you began to let go. There was only so much your body could take; it would so much easier to sink into this grave than crawl your way out. To breathe became like listening to a lake lap a shore with its waves, growing fainter, quieter, and more still.

The moonlight was serene, and the coolness of this cavity of earth was welcome. Tree roots poked from the stratified layers of dirt, worms and centipedes clinging to the moisture therein. Above, a scuff of needles and a snort announced the presence of your most trusted friend.

Willa whickered, eyes finding your curled form in the pit. She paced around the edges. What remained of your hope ached. Through a glaze of tears you tried to speak, to soothe her, but no sound broke from you other than a whimper. But you were not alone. Never alone…in these woods…these mountains…with these familiar stars above…until unknown, male voices dispelled the cloud hovering over your thoughts.

“I’m telling you, I heard something. Someone in pain.”

Footsteps, a pair of them. You fought to stay awake, aware, but your willpower was slipping like the final sands through the waist of an hourglass.

“It’s probably another one of them law boys,” someone grumbled. “Maybe we caught one.”

“As soon as Dutch gets back we need to skip town without kissin’ the mayor goodbye.”

“You’re telling me. We should’ve left after that business last night.”

A haze began to drift over you again, sweeping you under the blessed numbness unconsciousness promised. Your eyelids were so, so heavy.

Willa nickered, the white of her eyes showing as the pair of men presumably approached her.

“Whoa, easy there.” One of the men regarded her, gently shushing and calming her in a matter of moments. In a way only you could—

“Look.”

“It’s a girl. Tied up like a steer.”

A gun being holstered, a thump of feet, and you were no longer alone. A shadow passed over the moonlight on your face. It was too dark to see, to know if you were about to be saved or damned by whoever was crouching over you. Dimly, you hoped you looked too powerless and broken to be mistreated.

“Pl—please,” your weak words tasted of copper. The apricot glow of a lantern warmed your face, and you looked up into a pair of eyes you trusted instinctively.

“What happened here?” The man who asked you this was older, with graying blond hair swept beside his temples. You had never seen him before. He had deep lines beside his shrewd eyes and his mouth was grim, but a kindness of understanding softened his countenance. It had been such a long time since any sincere compassion had looked at you through eyes other than your grandmother’s.

“Deputy—was bringing me in—left me here—“a spasm of pain interrupted your slurred speech. Wincing, you gestured to your thigh with your chin, seeing the pool of red darkening your pant leg for the first time. “Can’t move.”

The older man’s companion joined him in the light of his lantern. He was younger; tall and well-built, with a gun belt slung across his hips replete with ammunition, the brass of his bullets shining. A satchel hung from his side and he unsheathed a hunting knife attached to his belt. The quick gleam of it filled you with uncertainty.

“Easy, miss,” he raised his hands. “We don’t mean you any harm. I’m just gonna cut you free. Hold still.”

In a few saws of the blade the rope loosened its pitiless hold over your limbs; the relief of clutching your wound with your own hands was enough to make you sob. The men grew quiet, considering your condition. All of the blood was draining from your head, like it was all racing to escape out of your leg. The chunk of wood was buried in it, likely holding back a gushing torrent of crimson like the river miles and hours back. You wanted nothing more than to yank it out. It had not gone all the way through.

“We need to take her to a doctor,” the older man asserted, and his companion made a noise of protest. “I don’t know if Susan and Bessie can patch this up.”

“No—“ you cut him off, as forcefully as you could. “I can’t—I can’t go back there,” your breath began to labor and dizziness crept in as you moved to sit with your back against the packed dirt wall of the pit. “They’re gonna—gonna hang me, for killing that awful man.”

Clutching the wound, the blood oozed out warmly between the webs of your fingers, the dark, iron scent of it pungent in your nostrils. Air hissed out sharply between your teeth.

The two men looked to each other in mute discussion.

It left you in a sad whisper: “You should just leave me here.”

“We’ll help you.”

“We will?”

“Arthur.”

The fading began in earnest. You were incapable of protesting what came next. A pair of hands grasped your elbows, guiding you to your feet, which only stumbled because there was no strength left in your legs. Boneless, a broad chest caught you, your head lolling in the pillow of an arm, your nose grazing the fur of a jacket, and you burrowed into the scent of smoke and forest with a groan.

“We need to get back.” The lantern flame was doused, and the arms surrounding you lifted you in their hold. Your lashes fluttered to catch a glimpse of him, the man who held you, but his hat cast a shadow over his gaze and the night around him was dark with blue.

“You’ll be safe with Arthur, miss,” a voice said, but you were far away, lost to memories and hollow dreams. They dragged you down deep with pictures of bluebells in a water puddle, of lightning flashes through a curtain, of useless wrists beside you.

Your last awareness was of a sky made of woods and branches, with all of its stars perishing.

#arthur morgan #arthur morgan x reader #arthur morgan x female reader #arthur morgan/reader #rdr2 #rdr2 fanfic #red dead redemption 2 #arthur morgan fic #red dead redemption x reader #red dead redemption fic #rdr #rdr fic #arthur x reader #a dream's winding way #*my writing

132 notes · View notes

not-5-rats · 4 months ago

Text

It's been days since my last question/scenario post, bet ya'll thought you were safe lol

Questions/Scenarios for the best bugs in the land 🫶

1) Mafia! AU

Has your Bug got another job to try and hide their job in the Mafia?

2) How expressive is your Bugs face?

3) What's a sign somebody has upset/ irritated your Bug?

4) Something people often misunderstand about your Bug?

5) Swap! AU silly lil scenario :D

"I can't believe they've bloomed, I thought I planted them too late in the season!"

Chez had dragged Bug out to the garden...again, a clutter of iris' sat infront of them, clearly having bloomed very recently. Chez was clearly surprised he was so sure he had missed his time for growing them but luckily he had just made it :D

Chez began to ramble about the glorious, purple flowers infront of them. Bug tried to listen but this happened so fucking often, like dude how much do you know about these plants-

They sorta zoned out...but then they felt something brush against the back of their leg just below their knee. It felt kinda like a super fluffy cat strolling past. They were kinda started so looked down only to see Chez's tail softly curling around their leg.

It was like he was giving them a hug but when they looked at him with a confused look he was still talking abt the iris'...he didn't notice. Chez never really spoke his mind, he never said if he liked/ trusted somebody or not but this was clearly a sign that he trusted Bug, trusted them so much that even his subconscious knew they were a safe person

What do they do?

6) Anotherrrr scenarioooooo

(cw (mentions of): child abuse, alcoholism, ableism)

Bug was sat in the living room, they were minding their own business attending to a hobby so they didn't really notice when two young girls came and sat on the living room floor.

Both of the girls had some paper and began to doodle with a large box if crayons sat between them. Daisy was humming to herself whilst Fran sat in silence, Daisy asked Fran if she could talk to Bug multiple times but Fran signed at her that Bug was clearly busy so no.

But then Fran said she was going to get a drink and make the two of them snacks so Daisy took her chance to strike. She stood up, ran over to Bug and began to chat their ears off. At first Bug wasn't really listening but then she said something that caught their attention

"Is it weird that Fran doesn't speak? Dad used to get really angry when she wouldn't talk, he would throw his bottles at her. They smashed all over the floor then we had to clean them up. Look!"

She shoved her hands into their face showing a million different scars and scratches, most of them healed up but still clearly quite sore

"Dad said Fran was a freak, that she just wanted to cause problems and embarass the family, he said lots of other things but Chezzy says I'm not allowed to say those. And its not just Dad, loads of people call Fran bad names"

She pauses for a second staring at her hands, all the reminders of the actions of their deranged, drunk dad. Then she stared Bug right in the eyes as she asked her final questions

"Is Fran a freak? Why do people hate her so much just cause she doesn't speak?"

(For context Fran has Selective Mutism, she physically can't speak when she's around people she doesn't know/ is in a stressful/ uncomfortable/ new situation)

Tags -

@rozeliyawashereyall @willowve01 @asmrbrainrot @kaiamtt @iistxrmyskyii @insignificant-anarchy @stxph-artist @aspenm00n @keyaartz @fangsshadow @rustycopper4use @piffany666 @dreamyshape @idontevenknow7878 @lunaritychuwolf @littlesiren79 @castbracelet240 @strayharmony943 @proxdragon @tiefling-chaos @threeweekinsomnia @recated @wilderrorcard @diamondzoey @fennaboysenberry @lunnats @lightdragon789 @pinkcocopuff-aqualoid @astralbulldragon13 @reefhastoomanyaccs @kaydenskiwi @greaysharkboi @itzscribz @blingzyya @ccstiles @puffin-smoke @fruity0salad @takashishihoin

#the questions are back 🔥💥🔥💥#i adore swap au #bug army #gator boys #the bug army #obsidian lantern #mage bunkshelf #capital m audios #daysprite #swap bug au #mafia au #asking thingssss

11 notes · View notes

captainqster · 8 months ago

Text

B A S I C S

Name: Solis Nola, formerly had the title of pyr

Nicknames: None

Age: ~23 ish

Nameday: Noooo idea. Sorry babyboy, you don't have one. Would probably be in the equivalent of January if I had to choose (yes he's a Capricorn)

Race: Pureblooded Garlean

Gender: Male

Orientation: Bisexual, heavily male-leaning

Profession: Formerly an optio in the Garlean military, served as the assistant to a Centurion and worked in communications. Was stationed in Doma. After defecting he can probably be found in Ishgard doing hunts and other work to earn a living for himself

P H Y S I C A L A S P E C T S

Hair: Pale pink, soft, voluminous, the kind of hair that rich asshole you hate has. Slight curl and bangs that conveniently hide his Third Eye (I was specifically looking for that feature and what I found does too good of a job)

Eyes: Jade green

Skin: Sort of fair to medium toned

Tattoos/scars: No tattoos. The scars under his right eye and across his nose were given to him by other soldiers the night he defected. So was a nasty scar that runs from his left shoulder blade to his right hip.

F A M I L Y

Parents: Both alive and well. His father might have been a quaestor, aka a minister of state finances, while his mother was a well-educated trophy wife. His family is well off and Solis is their only child. They had high expectations and put him through quite a few extracurriculars such as piano, martial arts, violin (didn't stick), boxing etc. Their minimum expectation was that he serve as a decemvir and work his way up from there. That uhhh didn't happen (Note: Solis looks like his mother)

Siblings: None

Grandparents: Hasn't come up, probably just as privileged and insufferable as his parents

In-laws and Other: Unmarried. Has made an Au Ra friend who carries him around like a sad wet cat

Pets: None

S K I L L S

Abilities: Being pureblooded Garlean means no aether manipulation. He is adept with shooting (gunblades, rifles, pistols), piloting aircraft, and unarmed combat. He also has a punchable face and a knack for drawing negative attention

Hobbies: Piano, reading, eventually gardening. Maybe sewing but he'll hate every moment of it

T R A I T S

Most Positive Trait: Impeccable manners, eager to be taught new skills, wants to do the right thing (or what he deems to be right)

Most Negative Trait: Sees relationships as transactional, stubborn, lowkey manipulative

L I K E S

Colors: Spring and jewel-tone colors. Soft green, pale yellow, sapphire, ruby

Smells: Roses, tea, fresh laundry

Textures: Furs, silk, flower petals

Drinks: Coffee, tea, wine

O T H E R D E T A I L S

Smokes: Never

Drinks: Socially

Drugs: Nope

Mount Issuance: None

Been Arrested: No but he should be. And not for the murder, just because he's Like That

Tagged by @wpip-raham, thanks so much! It was a joy getting to read about your hansom catboi

I'm gonna hold off on tagging specific people because I think a lot of rp blogs have details like this spelled out in their pinned posts. *However*, if you have an OC you've been dying to chat about please do this! It gave me a good excuse to think through some recent findings with Solis, who's not nearly as established as my bunboi Ilya

#rp #oc #solis #did this for my garlean defector bc he's considerably newer than my viera #reusing a former gpose bc i just don't have the energy to make a new one

14 notes · View notes

zeloinator · 8 months ago

Text

I was tagged by so so many wonderful followers but i do not have enough spoons to gather everyone I’m so so sorry, thank you so much for the tags 🩵

B A S I C S of Zee

-Name: Zee Zalinos

-Nicknames: ‘Zee’ is such a short name she doesn’t often get nicknames.

-Age: 28

-Nameday:

-Race: Raen Au’ra

-Gender: Female

-Orientation: Bisexual/Pansexual

-Profession: White Mage, traveling healer, crafter, and carer of disabled creatures~

P H Y S I C A L A S P E C T S

-Hair: Thick, slightly wavy, white hair. Once she had pink highlights, but around mid-Shadowbringers they were completely bleached away and have never grown back in. She chopped her long hair to chin-shoulder length hair around the beginning of Endwalker and has been wearing it in its much more free-ly/naturally styled way than before when she took tedious care of straightening and putting it into different long hairstyles.

-Eyes: Zee’s left eye is a blue-green color and her right a bright pink with light blue limbal rings around each. Her limbal rings turn white white she is casting magic and their glow intensity growing stronger the longer she’s been without performing the ritual to release the pooling of aether within her.

-Skin: Light cool blue~

-Tattoos/scars: her biggest scars are the one from her two amputations, her left arm stump and her right leg stump (with her right leg having the most prolific and obvious scaring which is why she always keeps it covered).

F A M I L Y

-Parents: Thought to be deceased / disappeared (more about them coming soon I’ve been working on Zee’s family lore)

-Siblings: Thought to be deceased / Disappeared

-Grandparents: All dead but her grandmother on her mother’s side was very close with Zee as a child and taught her so much about healing magics. That grandmother was the same one to encourage her dreams of traveling and cooking.

-In-laws and Other: Sadu Dotharl and Erenville are Zee’s main two significant others~

-Pets: Calling them her pets would NOT be something that Zee does but her island sanctuary is filled with tons of disabled creatures from all over the world! She cares for their needs and builds them mobility aids for their needs with the help of her friends.

S K I L L S

Abilities:

~Able to store up aether over time, if she isn't careful this can result in an aether ‘bomb’ where the stored aether explodes out when she cannot handle anymore in her body. (By ‘store up’ its more of a water balloon type deal, she can carry over a certain amount of aether but once she becomes to ‘thin’ in places she will pop)

~Created the ‘Blood Lily Rage’ spell which allows her to enter a raged state using her own blood to fuel her boost in strength and ability. She is faster, able to cast everything near immediately, and her mind is blanketed in a haze that covers up her pain, feeling and most of her personality.

~Has been learning how to craft magic accessibility items for those who need them but are unable to travel to the big cities (or at all) to get the items they need. Zee works with a good friend of hers, Ellaeuxlynn, for crafting mobility aids and other more personalized accessibility items.

Hobbies:

-Crafting for others in her spare time

-Gardening and cooking with what shes grown!

-Zee isn’t very good at taking time for herself so her hobbies are mostly other jobs she does to keep busy and distracted from her pain.

T R A I T S

-Most Positive Trait: Caring, if there is one thing that Zee is she is caring, a ‘natural’ healer and hero

-Most Negative Trait: Self Sacrificing, she will give up all of herself if someone she loves asks her to.

L I K E S

-Colors: Pastel Blue, Midnight Blue, (in the past her favorites have been pastel green and iris pink as well)

-Smells: Petricore / rain, citrus, musk, flowers (specifically lilacs, honeysuckle, and hyacinths)

-Textures: soft and plush, smooth and sharp, the roughness of stone and the smoothness of silk.

-Drink: Hot teas mostly

O T H E R D E T A I L S

Smokes: No~

Drinks: Rarely, and when she does she barely drinks any

Drugs: Zee often deals with her chronic pain with shrug usage~ Zee and Erenville can often be found sharing a smoke in the middle of the night under the stars.

Mount Issuance: Her beloved chocobo Ariadne has been getting more and more rest and treats in her stable as Zee is often flying with Ehll Tou while not doing her Warrior of Light duties and spending her time crafting. But she can often be seen riding a blue and white mechanical flying horse in her battle armor as well.

Been Arrested: Nope~

#Zee Zalinos #ffxiv wol #ffxiv oc

17 notes · View notes

fashionablyfyrdraaca · 1 year ago

Text

Owlcatober 2023 + Memory

Hi everyone! Here's my submission for prompt #9 Memory. This is my first time taking part in a monthly event like this. :D

Game: Pathfinder Kingmaker

Characters: Maegar Varn, Varn's General (Isanne Kanmir)

Rating: G

Wordcount: 1,257

Summary: Maegar Varn's life is close to its end and his General Wife has some reminiscing to do on all the adventures they've had together. Warnings for death and mentions of pregnancy.

You can read it here on AO3 as well!

In the years since the Queen’s encounter with the Lantern King, Varnhold has grown robust and peaceful. The Varnling Host patrol the plains of Dunsward, assisting the common folk and the Nomen centaurs. Many hours had its leader, Maegar Varn, present in the throneroom of Tuskdale, advising and perhaps fighting with the Queen. For this service, his retirement was well protected and ensured. Now his final adventure was about to begin.

The large four-postered bed lay shrouded in furs and fabrics. Censers heavy with incense fill the room, hiding the scent of illness. The heady smoke hides the walls and windows from her view. With a shaking hand outstretched, Isanne Kanmir-Varn finds her way to the chair set beside the bed. Here she sits herself down with a crackling back.

Once robust, Maegar Varn is now withered and pallid. It is the shadow of his 84th year. Their children have been born and grown in what felt like a blink to her, but was really the breadth of his natural life. His grandchildren had even blessed them with their births, sprouting up like little flowers in the garden of their hearts. Both had contributed to the deep smile lines on his face. Much of the white hair that lays haloed around his head had come from many hours of chasing the children around the village and the ensuing shock of childish actions.

His breathing comes low and belabored. Clerics had come and gone, shaking their heads and offering empty platitudes. Isanne sighs as she watches him. The time to call the Priest of Pharasma comes soon. She leans over and grips his hand. Maegar’s skin is clammy.

“My love, can you hear me,” Isanne calls out to him.

With a groan, Maegar opens his eyes and looks at her. His brown eyes are now bloodshot. A weak smile comes to his lips.

“Do you want me to call the priest,” she asks.

“Nay. Isanne… tell me something cheerful. This room is driving me mad.”

She shifts in her seat, thinking back to all the adventures they’ve had. She has been at his side since he was a young man. When they first met, his face was clean of the scars that now riddle it. Starting there would be good.

“Do you remember when we met in Pitax?”

That weak smile broadens.

“You were drunk on Liacenzan wine. It made me happy I left Vikke at the inn. She was four then. Too small for the japes of men.”

Isanne pauses, envisioning in her mind’s eye her daughter; the only child she had had that was not by Maegar. Now the younger woman was somewhere in Absalom, seeking her own fortunes. It had been difficult saying goodbye to the child that had followed her across the world and into war. It should not have come as a surprise that a soul so alike her own would also seek adventure.

“I remember you comparing me to some bodice ripper heroine you had read about.”

“Kigelia the Lusty Elven Washerwoman,” Maegar adds, voice weak, but full of humour. Isanne rolls her eyes at the name. In his drunken stupor, he had made the grave error of assuming one elf had to be alike all of them. Especially if they looked similar to the crude drawing on the front of the book. It was not something he would have said had he been sober, but she hadn’t known that then.

Isanne continues to describe the resulting duel; how she had taken her anger to the streets. Her kinetic blade of stone against his dual daggers. The way her eyes had trailed to his form, a strongman’s body - a mixture of protective fat and sharp muscle rippling underneath. Even at that first awkward meeting the attraction had been strong. It had come so naturally for her to ask who he was and what he did. The fact that he led the Varnling Host was a pleasant surprise; she had already decided she needed to know him without that.

“I am glad you didn’t hate me for that one,” Maegar whispers, his eyes growing heavy.

“Should I let you rest, my love?”

He weakly shakes his head and then tilts it like a puppy, glancing at her out of the corner of his eye.

“Nay, tell me more. Give me more stories for the road.”

With tears forming, she regales him with more stories of their time as mercenaries. Tales of lizardfolk trophies distributed, boggards slain and even the tale of Noose, hiding between Rostland and Issia. Her heart pounds in her chest and her leg bounces with the fear of what is coming. Still she continues on. The story of Lostlarn Keep brings a frown to his face and she switches the story to the Queen’s rescue of her. She remembers waiting in the Beer Mug Inn with Linzi, convinced that Maegar was dead and the Queen a liar. Both halflings, Queen and Bard, had beamed when Isanne had run straight into Maegar’s arms at his arrival to the small tavern. She remembers the desperation of the kiss marking their reunion.

“I thought you had died, you know,” Isanne says, shaking her head with the bitterness of the memory.

“I could say the same of you! I thought I had finally found my Lady Varn and off you went without me.”

Isanne laughs, the only cheerful sound the room had heard in weeks.

“Hmmm. You must remember our wedding then, no?”

A hint of mischief enters his voice, “I remember the night then especially well.”

That memory is a pleasant one. The wine had been like a river; the cakes and pastries like mountains. The Queen and her companions had attended as well. Linzi had harassed Ekundayo before scribbling details in her book. She remembers the citizens discomfort at the little goblin Nok-Nok who had stuffed his face eagerly. Fortunately the amenities of the party had been enough to keep the tension from growing. There had also been the Queen, shifting back and forth from enjoying the company of Octavia and Regongar to sitting with the quiet, mysterious tiefling Kaessi.

Their twins had come along nine months later; the first of what came to six. Every birth had stressed out Maegar to the point where he followed her like a little, lost kitten. Then when the child’s cries filled the air, he would immediately come to her side, fawning over her and the little one. Yes, they had many happy years with their children. Reminding him of little moments spent with them brings a smile to his tired face. Eventually he stops responding, eyes closed and chest rising and falling shallowly. She tells him about how much their children will miss him. She asks him to say hello to Cephal for her when he makes his way into Pharasma’s Boneyard. Isanne lays her head against his chest, listening to his fading heartbeat.

It happens in the quiet hours of the night. She awakes with a start, upset at having fallen asleep. Looking over to his face, Isanne realizes he is gone. That the end had come while she slept feels like a rock in her gut. Tenderly, she moves the hair from his face. Then she leans and brings his hands to a rest on his chest. Before leaving to get the cleric for Maegar’s last rites, she whispers close to his ear.

“Thank you for loving me, Maegar. If I could do this all again, I would pick you every time.”

#owlcatober 2023 #pathfinder kingmaker #maegar varn #isanne kanmir #fanfiction #miss shania talks too much #oc stuff

10 notes · View notes

dentess2 · 2 months ago

Text

Rant post about my frustrated feelings

Greetings! :D

I usually write down on my journal, or draw something to deal with my feelings, and soothe them. That's not doing it for me anymore. I feel like this is my last bullet on the clip.

This is the story of the uppest and downest I've been in years.

A few months ago i was doing my best sorting my ungrateful life when i found that my family actually owns a mansion. It was huge! Had a ton of rooms and stuff. It actually a ton of history behind it, and a lot of people we're ogling it, for good and bad reasons.

And thats cool and all, but i don't really have an use for a whole mansion. And that's ok. Now, this mansion had a garden...

And i loved plants! I loved flowers and vegetables. Tea plants too (idk what they're called. Herbs?) I loved the company they provided, and the utility. Gardening. I wanted to have that skill too, like other people did. But it felt like whatever i touched, died. Kinda like water on burning oil. It was a nono mix. I didn't 'thought so'; I was sure of it. It felt like the plants were better off never having met me.

Sometimes i managed to keep one alive, but most of mine i barely kept alive from my high-school years. I could do gardening back then! hell yeah. But i kinda lost it in me. Now i was just preventing them from dying too fast. No growth.

So. I was looking through the mansion, looking for something useful, when i was tempted by the garden. The feeling usually went like this:

I felt an urge to garden, but a terrible fear of killing some poor plant that had nothing to do with me. I was also scared of touching someone else's plants and ruin their work. Also was afraid of ruining a garden so much, people would stop going there. Which makes sense. I'd choose one singular plant to try my best at, and give it a go at taking care of it. Talk to it, and listen. Then it'd either die, or not die. I never saw any improvement with them.

Sometimes friends would try and cheer me up, saying "Hey, there's a flower bud here! it wasn't here before you touched it." or "I learned to take better care of my crops because of you". Or "I'm glad to have you taking care of my plants". Which felt terrible. It felt like pity compliments. Like, 'are you really so stupid that you can't see that your plant was gonna be fine without me? that you had it? Do you have any eyesight issues? that plant looks like trash.' And i really believed that.

"Its an old mansion. If anything bad happens I'll just hit the road and never try it again, lol". I thought, ye? I'm kidding. I'd always keep trying to garden. The few plants i had were my most precious treasures. And i loved them; Wanted more.

So i gave it a try. Got some tools, looked up stuff on the internet, and went to say hi to them. I'm gonna be honest and not skip too much, but lets just say i stayed there for a long time. Sitting in the garden, looking at the plants. It felt excruciatingly stressful, i would think about them for hours not knowing what to do: When you're so close to finally succeeding it is really stressful. A few months later, after a ton of self discovery, a lot of pain and crying, and a few dead plants, I came out alive at the other side. Scarred, more mature, and with a few new plants to my name. My experiments. My dearest friends. My most valuable treasures. And i loved it. It was paradise. I felt blessed with flora that could tolerate my presence. Folks would come about and point out my good work. It'd be silly to no admit i did better than the previous times. But i never fully admitted it.

In the back of my mind i knew that these plants would die. That they were going through so much effort to stay alive despite me, that it wouldn't be a slow shrivel this time. It'd be a painful death. I was willing to leave them alone, if it'd meant to keep them alive. I was ready for it.

Then something happened.

Wandering through the huge garden i stepped on something. I wasn't expecting anything there, for it was an empty spaces but a few weeks back.

In the middle of that garden a phenomenon so extraordinary popped up you'd think I'm tweaking telling you this. it was a bright orange bush, with a beautiful, alien structure that spread all throughout the garden. Swaying and breathing. It's vines didn't draw nutrients, but provided for the other plants! Pulling water from somewhere deep within the ground; or within itself. I apologized profusely at my mistake, and awaited its death. But it didn't die. —"Its ok" — It said. What?

Whatever alien this was, i had never seen anything like it. What began as an apology turned into a short and sweet conversation. It was very interesting.

I went to water it, but it didn't need any more watering. Nor trimming. Much the opposite! While working the garden, it'd support me! "Remember to drink water!" "Watch out for the heat!" "You're doing a great job!". "You're a great gardener, and are really important to this garden."

... I was terrified.

This plant could take care of itself. Could take care of me. Could take care of other plants. I was just a piece of It's own garden. I felt small, fragile, and vulnerable. Felt inspired and jealous at the same time. My mad desperation led me to talk to it more. And the more i talked the more i noticed that the bright orange bush was a gardener itself. It told me a story of It's past. I told one of mine. It played with its thorny bits, and hurt me. And apologized. And i forgave it. And i played around with my tools and my still terrified gardener skills, and hurt It. And apologized. And the bush forgave me.

Slowly i started taking my gloves off around It. Ditched the garden tools, and the boots. It could see my scars and my insecurities, and i felt glad to me able to show them to It. Our relationship felt empowering. It felt like having super augmentations. It felt like fusing with Garnet, from Steven Universe. It felt like i finally did something good.

...But there was something strange about it all.

Sometimes It would call my name—My real name, mind you.—And ask me to trim it a little. I did it, fully expecting it to die for my mistake. Still alive, it'd ask me to take care of It's soil. To remove bugs from time to time. Or simply talk to It.

They were specific requests. Measured.

It took some time, but slowly, the bush taught me how to garden.

And garden i did. I followed Its instructions and built confidence. Many times some thorn would puncture deep into my skin, but that wouldn't stop me from trying. Didn't matter how much It hurt. Sometimes my touch would wither one of its petals, and with effort, we'd put ourselves together. I called it love. True love. 'I'll marry you' love.

And as time went on It showed me though it could take care of itself, It was in terrible need of care. It told me stories of how it was once a beautiful tree, and how that tree, struck by bad luck, was made meek by circumstances beyond its control; Beyond anyone's foresight. These circumstances, materialized as disease, bothered It deeply, and killed it slowly. It told me its weakness and utmost secrets. It told me it feared It might never go back to being a tree, no matter how much it tries. I volunteered to try.

—"What if it takes so much effort to take care of me that you'd end up neglecting every other shrub?"— It asked. — "And then you'd have only a stupid bush to your name" It'd be worth it. It'd be worth to lose all other life, to see this one grow!

I would never look at another plant ever again, if that's what it took to keep this one alive! —"Just, don't die on me". — A requirement i declared.

I asked It if It would like to be taken care by a gardener like me. And It agreed. So i began preparing. Planning soil, concoctions, and conversation topics to use while spending time with the last and best plant I'll ever take care off!

And then it died.

...

In the middle of the garden lied a shattered plant pot, decorated with a circle of detached vines that once fed all other life in the garden, with some sap still inside. Around it lied its orange petals, very still. And right in the middle of that mess of dirt and graveled concrete lied a small hole.

It might've as well had been a whole in my chest. A lack of nutrients to my veins. A still in my heart.

My first-aid were insufficient. And i lay there looking at it. Dying too.

I bargained with that deep, infinite hole in the garden. It bore its grim expressionless dark walls at me. I could hear the hole laughing at my attempt. I could also hear a regretful crying. But truly, i could not hear anything at all. For it was an empty hole amidst the mess of dirt and graveled concrete, in the middle of the garden...

The garden!

Deathly sick and hollow, i stood up to gaze the garden. Green and healthy. And alive.

An infinite wave of pain hit me, and settled into a thick, muddy bog: "They'll die too." The thought landed on me like a spider, and then followed me like a vulture. "They'll all die now. You can't garden for shit, you know that, right?" My head snapped sideways, looking to take that view away from me.

I gritted my teeth and focused on the plants i could take care off. The ones that had nothing to do with any of this. Deep breaths. There were no tears then. I stood proud and plastic as to not scare the plants with my wound. Using everything i learned, leaving out the personal bits. I felt like i could care for plants now.

...

And this is where my writing skills ultimately fail me. The bush left, but it was a bush. Believe it or not, i never got any confirmation that this bush was actually a tree or not, or if any of It's stories were true. Or if it was real at all. When we exchanged scars and naked displays of vulnerability, there's no guaranteed that It was as barren as I was. Or as real as i was. All of its stories could've been made up folklore. Looking back at it, it feels like a fever dream; The only thing sobering the whole thing being the other witnesses that were there with me.

Its with that in mind that i ask you: What do i do with my newfound gardening skill? I still love gardening, and i still kill some plants by accident. Can't care for them all, nor do i have to. But when i look back at all my learning journey, only for it to end so bitterly... I feel like all the experience i gathered got tainted. I sure can tend better to these plants, but is this normal? I feel pretty confident about it usually, but will this hollow i feel really pale in comparison to the growth I'll have? Is life supposed to bruise you this hard? i feel cobbled together. Will the ones after me have a better experience? Is it possible to leave pain behind? Am i being stupid by fighting so hard?

Will i ever look at the color orange the same?

#Rant #personal rant #short novel #my art #my feelings

1 note · View note

ao3feed-erasermic · 1 month ago

Text

If Scars Were Flowers Id Have a Garden

Use the related link post to read If Scars Were Flowers I´d Have a Garden on AO3 at https://archiveofourown.org/works/59782579 by d0ntdrinksav0 1-C has a few traumatized kids, let´s adopt them!! Hitoshi and Izuku meet at UA, but they also meet Shota, Hizashi and others who seem to be keeping an eye on them and their behaviour. Words: 878, Chapters: 1/?, Language: Chinuk Wawa Fandoms: 僕のヒーローアカデミア | Boku no Hero Academia | My Hero Academia (Anime & Manga) Rating: General Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Categories: M/M Characters: Midoriya Izuku, Midoriya Inko, Todoroki Shouto, Aizawa Shouta | Eraserhead, Yamada Hizashi | Present Mic, Shinsou Hitoshi, Shinsou Hitoshi's Family Relationships: Midoriya Izuku & Shinsou Hitoshi, Aizawa Shouta | Eraserhead/Yamada Hizashi | Present Mic, Aizawa Shouta | Eraserhead & Midoriya Izuku, Midoriya Inko & Midoriya Izuku, Midoriya Izuku & Yamada Hizashi | Present Mic, Shinsou Hitoshi & Yamada Hizashi | Present Mic, Midoriya Izuku/Todoroki Shouto, Shinsou Hitoshi & Todoroki Shouto Additional Tags: Siblings, Protective Siblings, Friendship, Friendship/Love, aroace shinsou hitoshi, Adopted Shinsou Hitoshi, Adopted Midoriya Izuku, Protective Aizawa Shouta | Eraserhead, Protective Yamada Hizashi | Present Mic, Fluff and Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Self-Harm, Past Child Abuse, Past Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, past bullying, Past Domestic Violence, Bullying, Quirkless Discrimination (My Hero Academia), Quirkless Midoriya Izuku, Quirkless People with Extra Toe Joints Wear Custom Sneakers | Red Shoe Theory (My Hero Academia), Quirk Analysis (My Hero Academia), More tags to be added (probably) Use the related link post to read it on AO3 at https://archiveofourown.org/works/59782579

#ao3feed #erasermic #eraserhead #present mic #aizawa #yamada #mha #bnha #If Scars Were Flowers I´d Have a Garden

1 note · View note

daddyd0nt · 7 months ago

Text

I climb out the window of the pale pink bedroom that hasn’t been painted since Mom brought me into the world in a kiddy pool in the backyard. She’d sent you trick-or-treating up and down the street for valium later that night. I was never very well behaved, always stressed everybody around me out.

The streets of Sorlen are lined with identically-built one-story ranch houses, all occupied and in various stages of decay. Some have rotted away to skeletons, dripping roof shingles onto the brown scar in the grass where a garden should be, rain gutters hanging like broken limbs.

The smashed windows of some stare into the street like paranoid eyes. The missing front doors of others are replaced with bed sheets, which flutter on windy days and let you see into the mouth of the building where families are slowly being digested. Some can’t stomach what goes on inside, and vomit all of the furniture onto the golden grass, sofa cushions and folding chairs and checker tables crawling toward the safety of the curb, whole living rooms assembled just beyond the front porch.

The houses with kids in them are usually the best-looking, with week old sidewalk chalk artwork coloring the torn-up driveways and finger paint handprints smeared across the siding. The ones that are owned by lonely old ladies are usually either cobwebbed and falling apart, like Halloween mansions, or pathetically neat.

One across the street from my house is particularly sad. Mrs. D lives there. She’s got a flowerbed of origami tulips, which she colored by hand with half-melted crayons and held erect on popsicle stick stems, to replace her real garden. It’d withered away in the heat.

When I was a kid, she had real nice flowers. I walked across the street one day, and picked them all for my mom. I tied them together with a shoelace, and put them in a little glass tea-kettle on the kitchen table, and waited all day for her to get home and see them. When she finally did, she got the belt from off the hook in her bedroom, and screamed and shouted and tanned my ass for stealing them, and made me march across the street to Mrs. D and confess what I’d done to her garden.

I knocked on the door, crying until my little eyes were as red as the Devil’s dick and gave the flowers back while my mom apologized. Mrs. D was real nice about it. She said to make up for it I could help her plant new ones.

I went over every morning that week instead of watching Tom and Jerry and she made me iced tea from a can and told me stories about the carnival that used to come through the town back when you were just a baby.

They had clowns, she said.

They had a Ferris wheel and game booths, and a giant metal caterpillar that went around in a circle. And when the weekend was over the whole carnival folded up and turned into trucks and drove away down the highway.

They stopped coming the summer I was born, when the whole swings machine decided on its own that it was time to fold up again. Mrs. D said it fell in on itself sort of like an umbrella. She said that four people, all grown-ups, were killed right away when it toppled over and smashed through the caramel apple booth. Three fifth graders got thrown into the parking lot still attached to their swings. Will Stanton’s oldest brother said that when he and his friends rushed out to see if they were still alive, it looked like somebody had taken trash bags full of spaghetti-o’s and dropped them from a helicopter.

They had to clean the other ten people, the ones who weren’t lucky enough to get thrown, out of the gears of the ride once they managed to unfold it again. The families all went in on a cremation since everything was real mashed up and they couldn’t agree on which parts belonged to who.

She said that the carnival never came around again and neither did anybody else.

Later that night, when my dad got home, he yelled at me some more and told me I had to go to bed early. Then he took the belt and went into your room, because you should have been watching me closer and you shouldn’t have let mom get so upset while she was pregnant.

I put my ear up against the wall and listened.

Frankie stutters, I think, because we let Mom get so upset.

- "Little Heck" (coming to e-readers everywhere this summer)

#novel excerpt #novel preview #indie author #horror #transgressive fiction #my writing

1 note · View note

sugusat0us · 1 year ago

Text

aftersome \\ g. satoru

synopsis : in which you, a self-proclaimed poet, and gojo satoru, a renowned photographer, cross paths. little did you know he'd leave just as quick as he came. to cope, you write him letters he might not ever receive.

wc ≈ 2k

content : manga spoilers, written from readers pov, implied fem reader, modern!au, no curses!au, mentions of blood and a lifeless body, hurt no comfort, angst, lots of figurative analogies, open-ended ending

notes : hbd gojo satoru. . . this was very spontaneously written and i might look back at it in a months time and take it down (´｡• ᵕ •｡`) take this while i run away ahhhhh

i remember the first time i saw you, standing among the cherry blossoms with your camera in hand. you appeared so serene, but there was a cloud of mystery that hung over you.

it was as if you were trapped, just like the blossoms themselves. i couldn't help but think that you were also meant to be a flower, but something was holding you back.

if only i had done something sooner, perhaps things would have turned out differently. i can't help but feel responsible for what happened.

you have filled my lungs with the same blossoms that seemed to consume you. i wonder if you ever wanted to be a blossom yourself.

☆*:.｡.

i have always envied your ability to find beauty in everything.

i remember one time we had planned a picnic, but a rain shower suddenly came over us. i was upset because i had been looking forward to the supposedly sunny day. but, you just looked at me and smiled, saying, "let's dance in the rain."

and so, we did. people around us thought we were crazy, but i was too busy admiring how beautiful you looked to care.

i even asked you what your favorite flower was, and you replied,

"tulips. white tulips."

i remember looking up their meaning and discovering that white tulips symbolize forgiveness.

i couldn't help but wonder, on that rainy july afternoon, were you trying to hint at what was going to happen on that cold, cold december night?

☆*:.｡.

after meeting you, i discovered so many things about myself.

the only real reason why i became interested in poetry was so that every time you took a photo, a poem would go along with it.

sooner or later, you became one of the world's best photographers and i became a somewhat "known" poet.

did you know that i hated the spotlight?

i hated people wanting to be friends with us just so they could get attention.

but i never blamed you for any of it.

i never blamed you for anything, 'toru.

every time you won an award, my biggest reward was seeing that crooked smile of yours spread across your face when you’d lock eyes with me in the crowd.

thank you.

after i met you, i started to see the beauty in everything - in my eyes, in my scars, and in myself.

☆*:.｡.

the first time i saw you angry was on a strangely quiet september night.

you were upset because i hadn't shown up to one of your award shows.

i tried to explain, but you just kept arguing with me. i sat there, staring blankly at seemingly nothing.

the one thing i wish you did was listen.

it wasn't until the next day, our first anniversary, that you realized the significance of the date.

our anniversary. the beginning of an indescribable relationship.

looking back, i realize that our relationship wasn't always filled with smiles. it was too perfect, almost unreal. i was the one who made it seem that way.

if i were to describe our relationship like a poet, i would say that i tried to grow a flower in a world that was painted to be perfect.

but now, i see that i didn't water that seed enough for it to bloom beautifully.

if i were to write that poem again, i would make sure to give that seed the care and attention it needed to flourish.

☆*:.｡.

you and i once discussed our shared interests in photography and poetry, but we also talked about other things we enjoyed.

one of those things was gardening, which i have always been fond of because of my grandmother.

do you remember what we decided to do? we decided to start a garden in the middle of fall, thanks to your own accord.

i knew that the plants wouldn't have enough time to fully grow, but seeing you happy made it all worth it.

your button-like nose and chubby, dimpled cheeks would turn red as the cold air would tickle them, and they became even rosier when i would call you “handsome.”

but, i can't seem to forget the moment when your bloodied frame resembled the color of your cheeks and nose, ruining what could have been a beautiful photo.

you would always brush off my concerns with a simple "i’ll be okay," but i knew deep down that you wouldn’t.

i just couldn't believe that you were in danger, with your once rosy cheeks now flushed grey.

☆*:.｡.

you.

you always were on my mind.

you were like a never-ending day dream, love. a dream i hoped would never end.

but, with every night's rest, comes a morning rise.

when i first had seen you, i didn’t know what i was looking for in life. i didn’t even know if i was even looking.

but, i now realize that it was you.

you and only you.

your eyes held the power of destruction and healing.

only masterpieces can make such things possible.

you were truly a masterpiece.

my masterpiece.

please, just come back.

☆*:.｡.

it’s been getting bad.

i keep forgetting that you don't live in your old apartment, and the new residents keep reminding me that you no longer reside there, their expressions filled with sadness.

it's only getting worse. i pity myself a lot these days.

the last image i have of you is in our shared bedroom,

tears staining your beautiful, rosy cheeks.

but instead of looking like a beautiful flower, you resembled an array of colors painted with agony.

i can't express how much i long to say your name, kiss your lips, and for you to see me again.

but i doubt you wanted the same.

for fuck’s sake, you were the one who called it quits!

you were the one who died!

i find myself getting less and less sleep every day, and when i do, you're always in my dreams.

and for once, i hate it.

could i have changed your fate?

☆*:.｡.

i can't take it anymore.

i can't leave my desk or the sheets that still smell like you.

i hate seeing the sunlight pass through my blinds, hearing kids laugh, and hearing the birds chirp.

stop

stop stop

STOP!

every time i try to write, it always ends up with me screaming and sobbing, being mad at you. at myself. at god.

why’d you have to go? why’d you not stay when i begged you to? you’re so selfish!

you could've still been here!

the hands that used to hold you when you were cold are now up in flames. i can't take it.

i ripped up my poems and threw away your beloved photos.

i feel like a shell of myself.

☆*:.｡.

i hope you can hear me up there.

my poems will always be in my journal, on top of the left side of our bookshelf.

your photos will always be under the bed, in that one box we'd use when we'd pick apples.

our playlists will always be on those tattered CDs in your black impala 64, and our hoodies will always be in the closet.

just in case you come down from "partying with the angels," as you liked to put it, they will always be here.

i mean, at the end of the day, blossoms don't always bloom and july nights aren't always happy.

with lots of love,

tags : @yunymphs

#angst ☆#jjk fluff #gojo fluff #jjk angst #gojo angst #gojo satoru angst #jujutsu kaisen angst

44 notes · View notes

600shekels · 1 year ago

Text

2 Chronicles 1: 13-17. "The Chariots."

13 Then Solomon went to Jerusalem from the high place at Gibeon, from before the tent of meeting. And he reigned over Israel.

Gibeon at the High Place is the "Perpetual Fountain." It is none other than this Tanakh.

14 Solomon accumulated chariots and horses; he had fourteen hundred chariots and twelve thousand horses,[a] which he kept in the chariot cities and also with him in Jerusalem.

15 The king made silver and gold as common in Jerusalem as stones, and cedar as plentiful as sycamore-fig trees in the foothills.

16 Solomon’s horses were imported from Egypt and from Kue[b]—the royal merchants purchased them from Kue at the current price.

17 They imported a chariot from Egypt for six hundred shekels[c] of silver, and a horse for a hundred and fifty.[d] They also exported them to all the kings of the Hittites and of the Arameans.

The 600 Shekels are the reincarnated souls of the newly freed People of Israel after they left Egypt, so filled with hope. As we are aware, things did not exactly go well for them. The world drew the curtain, cut off the light of the Holiest of Holies from itself and this absence of vital radiance has warped the soul of the modern Jew.

The reason I named this forum 600 Shekels- 600.000- is after the reseating those Jewish souls who wrote this Tanakh so long ago, and assist them in restablishing the Open Light of the Most High at the center of all human experience.

At root level, the Torah and the souls are one (Zohar).

For every Torah, there is one Jewish soul, and in the Time-to-Come each will know Torah according to the explanation that corresponds to the root of his soul. In the Garden of Eden, after a person has died he will understand all of it.

If so, why should one toil to understand the Torah in this world? The answer is, the more one learns and the deeper one understands, the higher level he starts learning at in the after life.

Chariots and Horses are not the kind that chased the Israelites from Egypt but the opposite, they are the vehicles of noblemen which we will learn more about in a moment.

To make silver and gold common and build an arbor city that has features of the natural world is to recreate Kiriath Jearim, using human capital and our accumulated knowledge instead of bees and flowers.

The key, the secret to this since unheard of level of peace, order, and prosperity is in the verse that says Solomon exported his way of life to the Hittites, "the terribles" and the Arameans, "the learned" alike.

So long as even one low-born man or woman espouses the tenets of the uncivilized to the rest, the world is at great risk. The complete eradication of tyranny and the seeds of tyranny is the goal of any good politician or crown as this is the best way to secure long life and happiness for their constituents.

Just as the hives that keeps us alive are unseen in the forest, so are the ones that could kill us if they are allowed to thrive.

To send ones chariots and horses abroad is to ensure the roots of oppression, tyranny and poverty are torn out.

As for the one chariot and horse the king kept for himself, we turn to the Gematria:

What Is The Meaning Of Solomons Horses Were Imported From Egypt And From Kue The Royal Merchants Purchased Them From Kue At The Current Price They Imported A Chariot From Egypt For Six Hundred Shekels Of Silver In Gematria?

If Your Sons Take Heed To Their Ways To Walk Before Me In Faithfulness With All Their Heart And With All Their Soul There Shall Not Fail You A Man On The Throne Of Israel.

The value In Gematria Is 9935.

As for the Low Born:

Pay attention, memorize this, speak of it always: Persons like George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Trump and their colonies, they must not be permitted to spread their pollen.

They are antichrist and their wiles have scarred the world. This anathema to God's Torah must not breed, it must be erased, it must never sprout again.

0 notes

bbiemochi · 2 years ago

Note

ahah I was searching all over trying to see if you write for Scaramouche when the fic I saw was through Scars tags 😀 might be the sleepiness,,but your theme is so satisfying to look at

Scara& Albedo with a s/o that appears cute and/or pretty from afar though has a quick temper - just headcanons of how'd they react at first and probably how they deal with that :D?

𝚜𝚞𝚐𝚊𝚛 𝚠𝚒𝚝𝚑 𝚎𝚡𝚝𝚛𝚊 𝚜𝚙𝚒𝚌𝚎?! | scaramouche & albedo

[an]: hey, lovely! first of all, thank you for requesting, mwah! <33 the title was a little not creative but at least i tried my best ToT

summary: who knew that the sweet and adorable y/n would be the next thing everyone fears the most when angered…

pairing: scaramouche & albedo x g/n!reader! [ separated ! ]

genre: fluff!

***

scaramouche

• so, how did this happen?

• well, scaramouche had always thought you were more on the soft side

• everyone did ! don’t get me wrong

• you were just this optimistic and enthusiastic person, who loves flowers.

• a lot from the fatui also seemed to have a liking towards you because of your kindness and gentleness

• not to mention you were also very pretty

• you were pretty loving, something scaramouche (probably) needed

• scaramouche viewed you as some ball of fluffy sunshine that landed to him unexpectedly

• turned out that you were the opposite from the inside, when you two decided to have your first date on the garden you both visit all the time to meet.

• the garden was wide, it had a variety of different flowers in which every petal was your favorite

• this was where you and scara met for the first time

• you saw him lying on the grass, his hat covering his face and he was napping pretty soundly

• when he started to visit the garden more frequently, that’s when you both become acquaintances, from friends, to becoming a couple once he realizes his feelings for you

• when the two of you decided to visit this place again for him to rest, he lets you off on your own to pick some flowers like you always do to send to your grandmother along with a letter he watches you write

• the afternoon breeze was relaxing, it made scaramouche easier to fall asleep and rest, forgetting about all the stress he felt while working. to which per say, it had been a long time ever since he felt this

• he was awoken when he hears a loud thud from your direction, and he was quick (but irritated) to walk over to see what happened to you

• the next thing he saw was a huge rock landing hard on a tree, almost half of its branches falling off due to the impact of the throw

• he was bewildered, turning over to you, he sees your all adorable and perfect face now retrieved with an angered expression, you fists balling together while a couple of wild animals ran off to the opposite direction

• now this…was something unexpected. of course he was shocked. he never knew somebody like you could get tempered so quickly.

• even though he was confused, he kinda liked this side of you. almost something that related to him. and here he thoughts you both were on the “opposites attract” mode.

• at first scara asked to you what happened of course, and when you replied a couple of foxes and squirrels ruined your lovely flower garden, you just went full rage since it took a long time for you to finish that garden

• new discovery, it also seemed like your quick temper was no exception for animals as well. he was wrong about calling you a fluffy ball of sunshine 🥹

• after the discovery, he was careful with his words a bit, he never knew you could be so scary when you’re mad

• never the less, this discovery made him more in love. of course..

albedo

• now this was something what the chief alchemist didn’t expect

• but who was he to blame? what that citizen did was not proper at all

• everyone in the knights of favonius had all agreed that you were the most adorable thing ever next to sucrose and klee.

• you were one of mondstadt’s most prettiest people.

• and when you established to be in a connecting relationship with the knights of favonius’ chief alchemist, it was a shocking discovery.

• everyone knew you as someone who is cheerful, helpful, and attractive.

• however this seemed to change when one day while the knights were celebrating in the tavern, albedo and you decided to come along since the traveler had recently returned from their journey to inazuma, even if you both don’t drink heavily.

• the night was heavy, and you and albedo were laughing of how drunk kaeya and rosaria both were, pissing diluc off of his counter.

• all of a sudden, an unfamiliar individual behind you started to flirt with you, they seemed to be drunk, so you ignored them even though the only reply you had was scooting closer to your boyfriend’s side.

• the person…however…didn’t had any intention to stop their actions, not knowing they were making you…mad. and this caused albedo to fume of course, catching the others’ attention including the bartender.

• when the drunkard didn’t really stop, diluc was ready to walk out of his counter and drag the person out himself, but then…

• kaboom

• the next thing everyone knew was your fists cracking the wall next to you, your face still had a smile plastered on while albedo and including the drunk person backed away a little from your presence.

• even diluc was frozen on his place, barbara was hiding behind her sister while the traveler and paimon both wore surprised looks on their faces with wide eyes and mouths.

• hurriedly the drunk person scattered out of the tavern, and the night continues with the new discovery.

• albedo had never been so surprised ever in his life. and here he thoughts you were somebody so kind, charming, and very alluring. just to know that when tempered you were the complete opposite. even more scarier.

• diluc was a little mad at you for breaking the wall, however he didn’t made you pay for it since “the damage wasn’t that big.” even if the hole you left was so visible. your strength feared the others. paimon added you to her list of people not to make fun of.

• albedo made sure that you were alright at times when you visit his lab.

• extra blankets, winter equipment and some food with water to help warm up one individual were now stacked in his lab supplies just in case you visited.

• he hears that people get easily frustrated when the weather was too cold. now imagine if it was you..he begged to barbatos that he didn’t want any of his supplies breaking.

• even when physical contact, albedo made sure every move he makes is in your comfort in any way to make you feel calm :)

• he still loves you <33 in every aspect of yourself.

***

a/n: first time writing headcanons with no below scenario ToT

requests: now opened!

#lucy’s works 📚✨#genshin impact #genshin x reader #scaramouche x reader #albedo x reader #💌. lucyanswers #fluff #lucy works 🍕💗

399 notes · View notes

the-broken-truth · 3 years ago

Note

The dimitrescus, Donna and Mother Miranda x 👨 reader. Reaction when reader is working out shirtless? (Love your works by the way, can't stop reading all of it!💕)

Broken Truth (Looks at Ask): This is interesting...LET'S GO!!!

- Alcina Dimitrescu -

Alcina was walking around the castle, looking for her lover.

When she woke up - he was not in bed.

When she went to the kitchen - he was not there either.

She searched the garden (He loved tending to the flowers), the library (He would read there with Bela), the armory (Daniela loved showing her father figure all the weapons she had), and the study (He would pat with Cassandra) - he was not in any of those places and none of the girls had seen him.

Then she remembered that her lover had been having a hard time lately when Mother Miranda commented that he didn't look like much and wasn't worthy of being by Alcina's Side.

He spent most of his money on him - none of Alcina's - to purchase metal contraptions to 'become worthy of his wife'.

He had been in that room for hours on end for about 5 months now.

'He might be in there.' Alcina wondered as continued down the hall to her Husband's Workout Room.

The closer she got to the room - the door was open and the light was on the room - the sound of grunting and metal clanking together got louder and louder.

She ducked her head a bit and walked into the room - holding her hat to make sure it didn't fall off - and rose to her full height. She opened her mouth the speak but once her sight was no longer obscured by the brim of her hat, her jaw dropped, her face began to warm up, and her body tingled.

Before her - her husband stood: his back was to her and he was wearing nothing except his boxers - his very tight boxes; she would see his defined butt and it was amazing.

In his hands were large weights that he lifted and flexed his muscles - Alcina could see every muscle flex.

His skin was shining with sweat and the smell of his musk was driving Alcina crazy - she wanted to jump his bones. So very bad.

What she didn't know was that her beloved had developed a sense to detect her and knew she was watching him...so he decided to tease his Lady and Mistress.

He dropped the weights in his hands and raised one of them opened palmed to the sky before summer suiting forward and landing on that hand to where his feet were pointing to the ceiling before beginning his set of one-handed push-ups. This time - facing her.

Alcina's eyes widened at her lover's chiseled body - the drops of sweat flowing through the cracks of his abs and biceps...then she made the mistake of looking up and saw the large bulge in his tight underwear.

That's it - she had enough.

"Beloved." She called out, making the man look at her with a smirk - her face was bright red and she was biting her bottom lip.

"Alcina, My Love. When did you arrive?" He asked faking confusion.

"That doesn't matter. I need you to accompany me to our bed chambers. Now."

"Our Bed Chambers?" The man asked as he flipped him to stand upright. "It is breakfast time, is it not?" He raised an eyebrow as he walked closer to the tall woman - his scent flooding her nose.

"Well..." Her eyes glowed dangerously, "I'm having Blood Sausage for breakfast."

She grabbed his wrist and marched to their room with him in tow, locking the door, and refused to leave that room until she was pregnant with the Latest Dimitrescu Spawn.

- Bela Dimitrescu -

Bela was bored and in need of some cuddles so she went looking for her lover - the only man-thing her mother and sisters approved of.

She looked at the grandfather clock and saw it as around 9:45 - her lover would be in his workout room to burn off any extra energy before showering and going to bed.

She floated down the hall to her husband's workout room and walked into the room without knocking - it was her man and she could do whatever she wanted regarding him.

What she wasn't prepared for was the sight on the other side of that door.

Her Husband was boxing with the sandbag.

In nothing but his boxers.

She could see everything - from the singular drops of sweat that ran down his sculpted body to every single flex of muscle with every move he made.

If the sight didn't have her done it - it was his smell.

The room was filled with the smell of musk that he was giving off and it was intoxicating - it radiated power and it was making her hungry.

"Darling?" His deep voice returned her from her fantasies of all the ways she wanted him to rock her world but the fact she could see his imprint from his shorts sent her mind back into the gutter. "Bela, is there something wrong?"

"Do you always...working out like this at night?" She questioned as she walked slowly to her man.

"Yes, it's hard to move in clothes; I keep my boxers on just make sure I don't scar any maids."

"Scar Them?" Bela tilted her head with a dangerous gleam in her eyes. "What do you mean by that?"

"Well...the one time I worked out naked, a maid came in without knocking and she looked like she saw a ghost."

Bela was pissed.

"A maid saw you naked?!" She hissed. "Where is that harlot?!"

"Your Mother turned her into wine 3 nights ago."

'Good, I won't have to kill her myself. As for you..."

"NGH!" He clenched his teeth as Bela's hand wrapped around his throbbing manhood.

"You're going to learn to lock your door when in this room...and punishment for failing to inform me about that whore."

The Next Morning - Bela & [Y/N] weren't at breakfast.

- Cassandra Dimitrescu -

Cassandra would already be with her beloved because they were each others' sparring partners.

Cassandra would be doing push-ups while her beloved would be jumping rope.

She would look at him and smirk - she loved the way his body moved during intense workouts and the smell he gave off was perfect; it made her hungrier and hungrier with each passing moment.

When it would be time for the spar - her lover would use one arm to test himself more than he needs to for he wanted to be worthy of dating a Dimitrescu Daughter.

While sparring - Cassandra would try to pin him and have her ay with him - whether that would be drinking his blood or having him devour her like a full course meal.

This time - it was different.

She threw a punch at him but it was grabbed by his free arm and used against her to wrap around her neck, once he was behind her, he used his knees to the back of hers to make her fall to them and then lay on the mat.

Once his other hand was free, it snaked around her body and into her shirt, where it grabbed and twisted one of her nipples - making the girl squirm under him.

"D...Darling? What are you...?" She began but was cut off when his teeth locked into her neck.

"Every time we train, you make me submit to you. This time - you're mine, Cassandra Dimitrescu."

And his was exactly what he made her.

Daniela walked down the hall looking for her sister when she heard moaning coming from behind the door leading to the training room - she leaned in to listen and went to find her mother.

"Mother?"

"Yes, Dear?" Alcina asked as she looked up from the book she was reading.

"Why didn't you tell us Daddy was coming to visit & he brought presents?"

"Darling, you don't have a father."

"Then why did I hear Cassandra saying "More, Daddy! More!" in the training room?"

Alcina went wide-eyed as the glass in her hand shattered and the one thing she thought was...

'I'm too young for grandkids...'

- Daniela Dimitrescu -

CHOMP!!

"OW!!!"

She smelled something delicious and followed that smell to her lover's training room and found him completely naked with the exception of his undergarments, shadow boxing himself.

He looked like a full snack with the sweat making his body glaze and his muscles looking like beefcakes - he was just begging to be bitten and that's exactly what she did.

"Daniela? What was that for?" He asked her as he looked over his shoulder at his wife - who was clinging to his back like a koala with her fangs in his shoulder blade.

"I couldn't help it, love. Your scent was driving me crazy and I was in the mood for a snack." Daniela tried to say but her fangs were still in his skin.

"Dani, I was training, and as much as I would move to be your mid-morning meal; I need to get back at it if I want to keep the form you love so much."

"I love you for who you are - the body is just a plus. I don't want you to train, I want you to take me to bed and cuddle me."

"But..."

"Do you love me?" Dani asked.

"Yes, without a doubt." He answered.

"Would you do anything for me?" She asked again.

"Without question." He said.

"Then I want you to stop training and take me to our bedroom so that we can cuddle and make little vamp-babies."

"...Okay."

- Donna Beneviento -

Donna would be walking around Beneviento Manor - looking for the man who stole her heart. Who accepted her and her dolls and loved them all equally.

He wasn't in his normal spots but she did remember that he recently got interested in getting in better shape and asked her if there was anywhere in Beneviento Manor she would be alright with him making it into a workout room - she gave him one of the rooms on one of the floors under the house floor.

Donna walked down the hall without Angie as she followed the sounds of something grunting in effort echoing down the hall's walls.

She reached the opened room but didn't want to just walk in and disturb her love so she peeked around the corner and her eye widened while she let a gaspy moan escape her lips,

Her lover was laying on the weight bench with a long metal bar in his large hands - giant iron circles on each end.

She looked closer at the circles - 500 Pounds. That made her shiver - she knew he was strong but to be able to bench that much was...alluring.

She looked at his shining skin.

Listening to her man's grunts with each lift of the bar.

The define lines in his muscles with each movement he made.

It made her hot. She rubbed her legs together before she hid behind the wall completely and pressed her forehead against the cold wall.

She needed to get a hold of herself - she was like she had no control of herself but when she was around him, it was like she forgot all she was and wanted nothing more than her man.

She was so focused on keeping herself from relieving herself right then and there that she didn't notice she was no longer alone until a familiar weight pressed against her back and she was completely pressed against the wall.

"It looks like you have a very serious itch, My Love." his voice growled as his hand moved closer and closer to her throbbing organ.

"I...I can explain..." She blushed in her weak, gasping voice; she was embarrassed but having her lover so close with his body radiating power made her weak.

"Let me...help you with that, My Lady." He growled before one hand reached the buttons on the top of her dress and the other was cupping her womanhood while she bit her lip in hopes of being silent.

A few moments later - he had her on that same bench that was still drenched in his sweat and scent, her hands gripping the metal poles that held the long rod over her head' sweat dripping from her body as she was stretched apart.

She was pleading for him to continue to Beneviento Bloodline with her.

Begging him to make her family's bloodline stronger than it ever was before.

Crying for him to make her a mother.

Who was he to deny his lady what she wished?

- Mother Miranda -

Miranda stood n her lab, looking at the results from the latest experiment and possible host for Eva but once again - it wasn't good enough and it makes her angry.

Once again - so close but so far away.

"Miranda? Love?" A familiar male voice called out to her.

She looked up at was met with the shirtless, bare-chested, sweaty body that was the man she entrusted her heart to.

He stood there in the doorway with a towel around his neck while one hand used an edge of the towel to wipe the sweat from his face.

The Village Leader blushed but then looked away from him to keep from looking upon her face.

"[Y/N]. Darling. I thought we talked about you walking around the lair like that. It's rather...distracting." She said.

"I do hope you'll forgive me but I sensed that something was bothering you and I wanted to make sure you were alright." The man said as he walked over to her, wrapping his arms around her stomach and pulling her back into his bare chest.

"Your...concern for me is welcomed, Darling, but I must return to work. Please, do prepare yourself for dinner; I shall be down in a moment." Miranda said as she reached for a book, only to her lover's hand to stop her.

"Miranda." He turned her to face him - worry and compassion in his eyes. "You've been working on this for over a week straight; you haven't taken any time for yourself...or for me." He was sad - afraid his lover had forgotten about him.

"My Love, I'm sorry I have made you feel this way but...I'm so close, Darling. I can return her to us and...MPH!" She was cut off by a deep kiss. She melted into it before he pulled away from her.

"Enough of this for one night, My Love. Let me take care of you...and make you see you don't need to Cadou for a child. Just...me" He kissed her again and she wrapped her arms around him; submitting to his command and desire.

It would be a year later that Miranda would invite the Lords to meet Eva and Ethan Winters arrived in the village - only for his wife and child to be given back to him and escorted out of the village; never to be seen again.

#resident evil 8 #donna benevient x male reader #alcina dimitrescu x male reader #bela dimitrescu x male reader #cassandra dimitrescu x male reader #daniela dimitrescu x male reader #mother miranda x male reader

405 notes · View notes

sukunarii · 4 years ago

Text

Pairing: Yandere! Sukuna x Reader

Warnings: (Sukuna’s Era!) Yandere | Unhealthy relationship | Murder | Blood| This fic is much darker than my usual style! Please beware when you read it.

Synopsis: In the early morning, you would play your koto in your garden. It was a show for one audience: a stranger that refused to step out of the shadows. A stranger that perhaps grew too fond of you.

Wordcount: 3.0K

A/N: A koto is a Japanese instrument kind of like a harp. Also this fic might be very historical inaccurate. This fic is inspired by a poem by William Blake titled “Song: When early morn walks forth in sober grey.”

The sky was gray on the day you first spoke to him. It was early morning, you were in your garden, under the gazebo as usual where you go to practice playing your koto. You enjoyed it, for it was one of the only times where you could feel absorbed in your own world, in your own solitude and tranquility. However, you have noticed that lately, you were not so much alone.

"Behind the willow tree, I know you're there," you called out. You could see the shadow shift, but the person behind did not step out into your view.

"I see you have noticed me," a masculine voice replied. It carried a hint of playfulness.

"Of course I have, you've disturbed my peace for a few mornings now," you replied.

"Am I not welcomed?", he asks.

"What brings you here?", you asked back immediately.

His answer did not come as quick as yours, as if he chose his words carefully "I was captivated by the music you played," he complimented you.

You were flattered, you had to pause and recollect your thoughts for a moment. If he is just here to listen....well there's no harm, right?

You let out an airy laugh, "As my only audience, I supposed you are welcomed to stay."

You resumed to playing your koto. From behind the willow tree, Sukuna stole a few glances at you. Along with the beautiful music you created, you looked so effortless and absorbed in your own world while playing. A world that Sukuna could step a foot into by observing you from afar but felt too delicate for him to disturb. You were like an angel while he was a curse— a monster. He shouldn’t have any business with a girl like you.

Yet you called him, 'My only audience'...he liked the sound of that.

You were playing for him only, and he was glad that he did not even have to capture you for this. After all, a caged bird does not sing the same.

However, the serenity of dawn was disturbed by the loud and abrupt chime of the bell.

With a jolt, you stopped playing.

"Ah, that was the wake up call for the village, I got to go now," you said and got up.

From his shadow, you see him stand up too. You hesitated but decided to ask anyways, "Will you tell me your name?"

He laughs lightheartedly, "A musician does not need to know the name of their audience."

The buds on the dull brown branches were blooming into beautiful flowers that decorated the garden. Summer was approaching. It became routine, he would come to your little concert every morning. It was romantic even. You did not know who he was, but sometimes you would carry little conversations with him. You knew that he was not from the village, he said he travelled up from the valley every morning to visit you.

Knowing that he was not from the village also gave you a sense of security as you could tell him anything and everything without worrying that he would spread rumours. Afterall, you were the daughter of the richest man in the village, from suitors to enemies to your family's reputation, there was so much that you had to keep to yourself. You've learned to express these thoughts into the music you played, but being able to say them out loud in words was relieving.

He was your audience and you were his musician.

Nonetheless, most of the time, very few words were exchanged. It was just you, him, your music in the air and the garden in the surroundings.

You were wearing a purple kimono the day you asked him if you could see him. He gave you the same response as the day you asked him for his name, "A musician does not need to know the appearance of their audience."

You sighed, disappointed, "How about if I ask you as a friend?"

From the flickers of his shadow, you could tell he hesitated. Your heart started racing, in hopes that you will finally see your mysterious friend. But, you were left disappointed, "Not today, my darling. You're still not ready yet."

You looked at his shadow quizzically, what did he mean by not ready? Did he have self-esteem issues? Or a scar? Or was he really ugly...? Not that you would have minded of course, you pouted, "That's not fair. You get to see me all the time."

He chuckles, "I think this is for the better."

The urge to show himself to you or even take you for himself was very strong. However, he had to hold himself back, he didn't want you to be afraid of him. For one, you just called him a 'friend'. And he knew that if he did show himself however, this friendship would be over. You were an angel. He was a curse. Sometimes fate was cruel that way.

The green leaves that fell from the trees were fluttering in the summer breeze. Lately Sukuna has been observing you more and more throughout the day. Instead of rampaging the nearby villages, he would spend more time observing you from the outskirts of your village.

The more he observed, the more he noticed the amount of unsolicited male attention you get when you stroll in the village. Had he not been a curse, he wished he could be strolling by your side and indicating to all of those nuisances that you were his.

The village was not very large, thus, Sukuna has come to recognize most of the faces. However, one time there was a strange man with black hair that appeared in the village. Not that Sukuna cared much as long as he didn't try to flirt with his little darling — except the man did this very thing: he stopped you.

Sukuna could not hear what the man said to you, but he could certainly feel the rage rising in him. The urge to kill this man was very strong. In fact, in the heat of the moment he feels like he could kill everyone in this village to prove his point. Seeing another man try to talk to you so intimately enraged him. He has held himself back multiple times from rampaging your village and taking you home with him. Taking you as his. But for your sake, he has managed to suppress these dark thoughts. But not this time.

He approached you, or specifically the stranger menacingly...with killing intent. But once he was in hearing distance, he heard you tell the man firmly,

"I'm not interested."

The man paused. But insisted again, "Why not? I can treat you right."

"I'm interested in someone else," you told him.

Sukuna paused. Were you talking about him?

"What? No way, who might this be and how come I've never heard of this before! You're just making up lies to turn down my love," he argues back condescendingly.

You shot him a dirty look and you tried to leave but he grabs your arm, “Hold it there girl, I’m not done talking yet.”

That’s it. You slapped him. Not a weak slap, a hard one. The man's face flipped towards the other side.

"That is none of your business. Now if you would excuse me," you said angrily and turned around and left.

Sukuna smiled, 'That's my girl.'

He didn't even have to do anything.

You ran your hand through the calming blue water of the pond in your garden. You have strained your hand from playing on the koto for too much, they were sore and calloused. You tried inviting your friend to come feel the water too but he refused, insisting on remaining well hidden from your view.

"He is from this powerful family, the Zenin clan I believe. And he seems really interested in me."

Sukuna didn't answer.

"But I'll keep rejecting him, I don't like him and don't care for his advances," you rambled on, then sighed, "However I can't say the same for my parents. They are interesting in getting a hold of the powers of the Zenin clans."

"Why don't you leave the village with me?" he finally answered you.

You didn't think he was serious, but you entertained his idea, "They're not just your normal powerful families. They are very powerful as in even if we leave the village, there's nowhere left to run."

"Then I'll just kill them. Everyone of them."

You laughed bittersweetly, what could he possibly do against them when he was too shy to even show himself to you? The Zenin clan was one of the most powerful sorcerers of the eras!

"Haha, yeah that would be nice. But with all of the curses rampaging the nearby villages, we really need the Zenin clan's protection. It really sucks but they're powerful jujutsu sorcerers, it's a miracle that our village is not destroyed yet unlike the our neighbouring villages,” but swiftly, your fake optimism fades. You couldn’t play your koto today, but this stranger was your friend and talking to him gives a sense of comfort. He was listening to you and he was trustworthy.

You say softly, “If only something happened to their third son so that he would stop trying to woo me all of the time...." then, you laughed sheepishly, "Of course I'm just joking haha, I mean it's awful to wish death on someone..."

But Sukuna only heard the first part.

With summer abruptly coming to an end and winter approaching, sunrise came later every day. The sky was still black the morning you broke down crying to him. It was moonless.

"I-I know I said I wished he was d-dead, but I didn't mean it f-for real," you said between your sobs, "I just didn't w-want to marry h-him, but he got killed by a curse and I f-feel like I cursed him."

"Wasn't that what you wanted?", the intonations of his voice came out as cold as the autumn air. However, you were too absorbed in your sadness to pick up these nuances.

"No! I would never truly want anyone to die! That’s awful!”

“Now you won’t have to worry about unsolicited attention anymore,” he answered briskly

You hugged your knees closer to your chest and buried your face into them, “It didn’t make a difference...the Zenin offered their s-second son instead..., so it wasn't cancelled regardless..."

"What wasn't cancelled?", Sukuna asked.

"The wedding...”

Sukuna's jaw tightened. He was upset. Furious. You’ve mentioned that the Zenin family was interested in you but you’ve never mentioned that there was anything official. He didn't like that you didn't mention this to him at all.

"Leave with me."

This time it wasn't a question. It was an order. Yet, you refused it again.

"I can't. I can't leave my family behind like that...if I run away, the Zenin clan would bare a grudge against them, who knows what they’ll do..."

For the first time, Sukuna finally stepped out of the shadows.

But you didn't notice, nor did you see him, the obscurity of the lightless sky hid him from your vision.

"Pathetic, why would you care about family that are selling you off to strangers? This is why you humans are so weak. Being emotional for things that do not matter," he says, words dripping with menace.

Your eyes widened, alerted by the swift change of mood. Tension high in the air. He did not sound like the friend that you knew. It’s as if he was a real stranger.

"That's not true! It's wrong to be selfish, they're my family. I have to listen to them and it's for the best of the village," you tried to reason but you were worried that he could hear the slight fear in your trembling voice.

"Oh yes because the Zenin clan will protect your village from curses. You think too highly of them. When I killed that nuisance, he was crawling and crying, begging for his life. He may be a little stronger than your average jujutsu sorcerer but he was still a weak human." Sukuna was tired of keeping up his calming and human-like demeanour. He topped off his statement with a sadistic laugh.

However, you didn't answer him. Not immediately at least, you were soaking in the words he just said. You gasped.

"Y-You mean you killed him?!"

You took a step back in shock and fear. You were told that he was killed by a curse...if this stranger you've befriended was a curse and one strong enough to kill someone from the Zenin family....you were in deep trouble.

Sukuna continued laughing, "Ah, yes I killed him. I sliced his body into pieces but I preserved the head so he could be recognized. It was a masterpiece, you should of seen the expression of anguish on his decapitated head!"

All of his efforts of wanting to preserve this friendship, fearing to taint your innocence, and scared of not being delicate around you, all thrown away in the heat of the moment. It didn't matter anymore, not when annoying jujutsu sorcerers were going to get in the way and take you away from him.

You screamed, "Get away from me, you monster!"

Your fight or flight instincts kicked in, this man in front of you— no this curse in front of you— was not a friend. You have befriended something much more sinister, he was a killer. A powerful killer and from the enthusiasm in his voice, he was a sadistic one too. You turned to run back to your house.

To your surprise, he didn't follow you. He watched you and even if you can't see him, you can tell that he was smiling.

You didn't dare to leave the house the days before the wedding. You were also too scared to tell anyone about your foolish encounter with a curse. Instead, you urged your parents to push the wedding earlier. The earlier the better, much to their delight.

Luckily, you did not hear about him and it seems that things have returned to normal. But your instincts say otherwise. If you play with fire, you ought to get burned. And you seemed to have attracted the attention of something very ominous.

You were wearing white on the day of the wedding. A veil covering your face. As per tradition, you were patiently waiting for your groom in another room, waiting for him to lift the veil off your face and take you to the main ceremony room to present you to the invited guests and families. Then allow the head of the households to pronounce you as husband and wife.

Maybe it was your nervousness, it seemed that every minute went by slower. Almost as if the ceremony has been delayed. But with your eyes covered by the veil, all you could do was wait.

Then finally, you heard someone approaching you. You feel a hand gently lift the veil off your face. To your surprise, the person who brought you out of the darkness was not the second son of the Zenin family. There he was, the powerful curse that rampaged villages: Sukuna. You might be the only person who has seen all four of his arms and eyes up close and lived to tell the tale. Not that you would have anyone to tell this to.

He was covered in blood. You were not sure who's but from the silence and the lack of wounds on him, you can formulate a pretty good guess. You drew in a sharp breath and jerked away from his touch, hoping to crawl away even.

"Help!", you shouted out hoping that anyone would hear — anyone at all....wasn't half of the Zenin household here? What were they doing?

"Shh, I was late because I had to take care of some trash, but don't worry, I'm here now," Sukuna says to you. You recognized his voice right away.

You were so terrified that you didn't even notice tears started coming out of your eyes. You struggled to get away from him, you clawed at him, tried to push him away, but it didn't work. He didn't even flinch.

"(Name), stop that before you anger me," he warned you.

You didn't listen.

"You're a monster," you spat at him and you tried to slap him but he stops your hand midair, the blood on his hands imprinting onto your white kimono.

"I'm not like those pathetic Zenin, you'll have to try harder if you want to hit me," Sukuna says with a taunting voice.

Despair washes over you. He was right, if even the Zenin couldn’t win against him, then what could you do? There was no way you could win this nor escape him.

When he carried you bridal style out towards the main room of the ceremony, you’ve stopped struggling. The room was plastered with blood. You recognize some of the body limbs on the ground, the remains of the guests, of your family, of the Zenin family. They were barely remains, mostly just little pieces. You had the urge of throwing up. No one was coming to save you.

It was just you and Sukuna.

Sukuna laughs, he can hear the whiplash of the puddles of blood as he steps over them. He was proud of his work, "Just like usual, only you and me. I'm your only audience."

The blood that covered him stains onto your previously white kimono.

Sukuna always compared you to an angel. And he was a curse—a monster. You two were not meant to be, fate was cruel like that. But Sukuna can be even crueler.

You are his bride.

And it was a red wedding.

#sukuna #sukuna x reader #jujutsu kaisen #jujutsu kaisen x reader #jjk #ryomen sukuna #yandere sukuna #yandere sukuna x reader #ryomen sukuna x reader #jjk x reader

1K notes · View notes