#WHERE DID THEY GET A HANGING GALLOWS FROM?!? | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

ilium-ilia · 3 months ago

Text

In Limbo

simon "ghost" riley x fem!reader | mafia!au | masterlist

Chapter Twenty: ouroboros

tw: non-con mention, heavy emotions, hurt/comfort

Simon feels sick.

He feels sick in the way that medicine can’t cure and alcohol can’t numb. This condition is a life long affliction that’s been hiding dormant beneath his skin, patiently waiting for the perfect moment to sprout up and ruin him. Fire is the only thing that can purge the feeling that hangs over his head like a noose waiting to string him up in the gallows. Feet dangling, trachea crushing—would it be enough to cleanse him?

It’s been nearly half an hour since you last said anything, though the passage of time in his mind would convince him that it’s been days. Your voice has not rattled his ear drums in so long that he fears he might never hear anything from you ever again, and the arms that wrap around you to keep you held close to him urge to squeeze you. Maybe if he compresses you tightly enough, he can get you to coo and smile like you always do.

Instead, Simon’s eyes focus on where his hand still rests on your upper arm. His stomach churns at the sight, and he feels bile poke and prod at the thin lining of his stomach as his body recalls the way your hands pushed at his chest—how your voice cracked when you looked up at him—the terror in your eyes brands him a monster.

Did he go too fast? Did you see his playful teasing as something more predatory? The tightness in your throat, the desperation in your voice—was that fear instead of desire? Did you not want his hands on you?

Can you even stand the touch of him now?

Solicitude getting the better of him, Simon shifts beneath you, rocking your body to the side. His heart skips a beat when he hears your disgruntled whine as you nuzzle closer to him. Your arms snake around his torso. Face buried into his ribs, you attach yourself to him like a parasite—some lesser creature who would crumble without the aid of a host to keep you on your feet.

“Chip?” His susurrus is a soft rumble against your cheek, but you can only bring yourself to respond with a grunt. “Baby, what’s goin’ on?”

You swallow and it’s thick like molasses in the back of your throat. The pounding terror in your chest has dwindled over the last little while, but you still feel the way it lurks throughout your abdomen. It nudges its nose against the chambers of your heart and bites at the quivering muscle with venomous teeth. It injects the worst recollections into you. Mint breath. Blood flowers. Green eyes.

“I dunno,” you mutter.

Simon attempts to move again, but your constricting grip only grows more firm around him. Nose against his side, you don’t think you could stand looking at him—at him looking at you. If you pull away from him now, he might see the blood that’s been leaking out of you since you were sixteen.

His hand moves up from your arm to cup the back of your head. “Did I do somethin’ wrong?”

“No.” Your answer is quick—decisive. “No, it’s not you.”

Your adamant denial offers Simon only minimal reprieve. “Talk to me, baby. What’s goin’ on?”

His begging is only met with more silence.

“Please, Chip. Let me help you.”

Ouroboros—that’s what this feeling is. You haven’t been able to place your thumb on it until this moment despite the fact it’s plagued you for most of your life. This cycle of pain. Of remembering. You’ve been forced to devour yourself whole, even the blackened rot and decay of your skin. Every time someone finds you with your mouth full, they always beg the same thing.

But you cannot clamp your maw down to cut yourself off any more than you can spit your body back out.

Still, your core engages—you’d at least like to try.

“It’s Marco,” you say, timid voice fracturing. Your words are incomplete. Broken. You try to spew them out anyway. “I… dunno how to say it.”

Simon’s muscles twitch beneath you. “Did he say something to you?”

“No. Well, yes, but-” You cut yourself off with a frustrated huff.

“Hey, one step at a time,” Simon says softly, grounding you. “Take it slow. Start from the beginning.”

Your lungs expand with breath so violently that your diaphragm shakes and stutters with the movement. Oxygen burrows into the alveoli where it stings with a pain that quiets the wicked humming in your brain.

You step into that kitchen again.

Blood on linoleum—you breathe it in—

“I… didn’t tell you everything about… the day Marco killed my mum.” It’s the first admittance of your sin. Of the wrongs that were forced upon you that day. Still curled against Simon’s side, you feel your muscles liquify as if you’re about to deliquesce into the couch. “It’s really hard to say.”

“I’ve got all day, sweetheart,” Simon soothes as he presses a soft kiss to the top of your head.

Nodding, your eyes focus on the coffee table in front of you. Something tangible. Stagnant.

“It was the last day of school before the end of term. I had just got home when I found mum’s body in the kitchen. I still see her like that, sometimes. Or I dream about her. Hunched over below the kitchen sink. Marco had… had stabbed her. I remember just being so in shock at her body and just- like, none of it made sense. So I just sort of froze, and I didn’t hear Marco when he came up behind me. He pinned me against the wall and he had this knife that he kind of kept up to my throat and stuff so that I wouldn’t move or fight him.

“He… he was the worst. Grinning and chuckling about killing my mum, and talking about my dad dying too. He was just so fucking arrogant. Like he thought he was untouchable or something. But he explained sort of what was going on and was pressuring me into paying off my dad’s debt, and I just agreed because I was too afraid to die but… he said he would make a deal with me.”

Spittle clogs the back of your throat and you cough. Instinctively, Simon pats your back—your eyes squeeze tight at his touch.

“He said that if I… If I had sex with him, he would cut the debt a little. O-Or that if I was a virgin, he would cut it in half. And he just started—like—to put his hand up my skirt and I just- I-”

Your body screams. Despite the overall callosity that taints your skin, that terror still nettles in the back of your mind. If you think about it too hard, you can still feel the way his hands defiled you that day, and your stomach twists worse than it did the night Andrei pulled his knife out on Simon.

“I just remember thinking to myself that I was glad mum is dead,” you admit with asperity. “Like—I know it sounds crazy—but I don’t think I could have lived with myself if he had raped me in front of her, you know?”

Each word you speak has Simon’s body growing rigid. You feel the way his muscles harden into iron and stone as he holds you close—you hear how his heart thrums away in his chest like a drum calling soldiers to wage war. “Did he?”

“Rape me?” you confirm. “No. He stopped when I told him that I would pay it.”

Simon’s head rocks against yours as he nods. “You said this happened at the end of term… were you in uni?”

“No, I was in secondary school. I was… I was sixteen,” you reveal. “Marco knew I was in school, so he told me he was going to be nice and wait until I was old enough to get a job to start paying things back. And like, I couldn’t have ever gone to uni like that. Working enough to pay for housing, and the costs, and paying Marco? I just went straight to work as soon as I could. Never got a degree; never got a job that would actually pay me well enough to live…

“But I made do. You know, I made the payments as best as I could all while keeping on top of things for the most part. It helped that I was living with Aelin and John for a little while, so I didn’t have to worry about rent until I was like, nineteen. But Marco, sometimes he… uses it against me.”

The more you speak, the more enervated you feel. It nestles into the marrow of your bones until your body feels twice as heavy. Nothing feels real. Nothing feels tangible. Except for maybe Simon’s bare skin against your own.

“What does he use against you?” he prods, pushing you to further explain.

“He’s always kept that offer hanging over my head. About me having sex with him.” Chapped lips rub up against one another and you find your tongue darting out of your mouth to wet them before you continue. “Like… that time you and Andrei fought in the alley? He said that he was going to have to raise my monthly payments because of that, since it was kind of my fault that Andrei’s nose got broken… fifteen hundred a month. I got so frustrated that I started crying because there was no way I was going to afford that so he… kissed me. We were in the middle of the laundromat in broad daylight and he just held me on that bench a-and when he was done he said he would only make me pay twelve-fifty instead.”

“He did that to you?” Simon is apoplectic. His hatred bleeds into his tone as your voice trails off at the end of your spiel. It grows as unbridled rage beneath his skin until his muscles are twitching.

“He’s done worse,” you dismiss.

“Like what?”

The temptation to prevaricate gnaws at you like a dog with a bone as sour memories tickle the back of your mind. Your toes prod at the edge of a threshold. There is a line that you’re not sure if you want to cross or not, but the veil that tickles your fingertips promises relief. The temptation whispers that if you can muster the bravery to toss yourself to the other side, you could—even if only for a moment—find some sort of peace.

“You don’t have to say it if you don’t want to,” Simon hums when your silence begins to stretch.

“No, I want to. I need to say it,” you assure. “It’s just… hard.”

“Take your time, baby. I’m right here.”

Your body requires a few more deep breaths before your brain feels quiet enough for you to sift through the monstrous amalgamation of memories Marco has forced upon you throughout the years. They weave through the grey matter in your brain. They root and feed on the most vulnerable parts of you until they shoot through your cranium and strangle you from the inside out.

You have to purge it, lest it consumes you.

“Before Marco moved our meeting place to the laundromat by my apartment, he had us meet at a pawn shop,” you say. The strength it takes to keep your voice from quivering is exhausting, but you push through the pain like you always do.

“Tsar Trading.” He says it like it’s a statement rather than a question—as if he already has the exact shape of the building memorized beneath the pads of his fingertips.

You nod. “Yeah. Tsar Trading. Usually I would just go up to the counter and drop off my payment to him, but this one time when I was maybe nineteen, soon after I started living on my own, I didn’t have enough. I had gotten really sick and wasn’t able to work, so my pay wasn’t as much as it usually is. I tried asking for an extension, or offered to pay the missing amount and more with my next payment, but he told me to follow him into the back of the shop.

“The building doesn’t look that big from the outside, but when he brought me back it looked sort of like a warehouse with these shelves and just—like—these people walking around and I just… he brought me to this chair. Just a simple plastic school chair, and he m-made me sit in it. And I just remember noticing all the blood stains around the cement and thinking that he was going to kill me. I had messed up, and he was going to kill me just like he killed mum.”

Always dripping, more tears begin to leak from your eyes where they wet Simon’s bare skin, cementing your cheek to his side. Sniffling, you do your best to wipe the moisture away, but it’s never-ending. Eventually, you give up. Simon does not make mention of the moisture on his skin, and keeps quiet as he lets you pull yourself back together.

“But as I’m sitting there, he reaches for my hand and… and he—like—makes me… he makes me t-touch him through his clothes, and he tells me that I’ve got two options. That I can—fuck… I hate this. He says I can either use my mouth, or use my hand, and so I just do it because I dunno what else to do and the whole time he’s just- he’s just talking so much. Saying how he wishes I’d let him fuck me and that I wouldn’t have to worry so much about the debt if I’d stop b-being a choosy minx about it and—oh my god, Simon—so many people were just- they just watched!

“They all watched him do that to me! And they’d whistle and tease, and Marco, he would keep stopping so that it would last longer. I couldn’t even cry. I just tried to push through it until he was finished and then he kisses me and tells me not to worry about the rest of the money for that month and sends me on my way like he didn’t just- just…

“I-I’ve been—fuck—I’ve been so afraid to ever have sex because he always holds me being a virgin over my head like he can help me, and I’ve never told anyone about any of this. Simon, I-I feel so bad. Like I’ve been hiding something terrible from you. I’m so sorry, but I just- Simon I’ve never felt about anyone like I feel about you! You make me feel so good—so loved—and I was worried that if you ever knew what Marco did to me t-that you wouldn’t like me anymore because you’d think I’m gross, and I’m just s-so scared all the time, and I just—fuck!—I don’t know what to do!”

Pulling apart at the seams, your old scars regress back into open wounds, and you spill out of yourself—both the destroyer and the victim. Simon’s body shifts beneath you as he pulls you closer. Arms like sutures, he stitches you back together as he holds you firmly against him, refusing to allow you to fall apart past the point of no return. His body heats against yours as vitriol warms his skin and sends his heart pounding into overdrive—his knuckles itch. His fingernails yearn for the color of ichor to soak their cuticles. Each phalange that twitches in his fingers craves the sharp crack of cartilage to pop beneath their grasp.

Simon’s tongue prods his teeth—he’s checking how sharp they are. He’s gauging how hard he needs to bite to end Marco’s life.

And still—even with all this rage nipping at his heels—he snuffs it out in favor of holding you. Vengeance can come later. It can come when you’re no longer crumbling in his grasp.

“I’ve got ya, baby,” Simon whispers, voice hardly cutting through the sharp squeal of your wailing. You feel impossibly small in his arms—like this is the first time he’s held you and realized just how fragile you are. “I’m not goin’ anywhere. I’d never leave you.” A culmination of fury and frustration constricts his trachea, and his voice grows tense with each word that he speaks. “None of that was your fault. You hear me? None of that.”

“It feels like it is,” you confess, anguish heavy on your tongue. “I feel like I’m just prolonging the inevitable.”

“It’s not your fault,” he reiterates. “Marco’s not gonna lay a fuckin’ hand on you ever again.”

Your silence is the only proof of your doubt that Simon needs to witness, but there are other hints. He feels it in the trembling of your body—how you quiver and pulse beneath him like a writhing animal lying in wait of unforgiving teeth and greedy claws. It’s painted all over your skin—how you refuse to look at him; like you can’t stand being seen.

“This doesn’t change anything,” Simon whispers. He’s cradling your head, lips pressing against your skull as if he wishes to hold you properly. Not even his arms are large enough to embrace you whole; sorrow and all. “It doesn’t. This doesn’t change how I feel ‘bout you. It doesn’t make me love you any less.”

His words get your head to perk slightly. Your eyes are raw—your cheeks stick to Simon’s ribs as if your bodies have begun to meld together. “You mean that?”

Simon nods. “I do. I swear it. I’m so sorry, sweetheart.”

Neither of you say anything for a long while after that. Your words are spent. Your body is spent. Still curled into Simon’s side, you are stuck in a terrible state of the in between. Chained to purgatory. While you feel his body against yours—the way he kisses the top of your head, and how his heat bleeds into you—your mind is elsewhere. Severed from your physical form.

You are in that kitchen. You are in that warehouse. You are in that car.

The past haunts you with casual smirks and the huff of a breath across the apples of your cheeks. All it does is linger—all you can do is remember.

So you remember. It washes over you the way shame burns the layers of your epidermis, or the way a kiss sours in your throat. You remember until the firm pulse of Simon’s heart beats it out of you. A fist against your jaw, each throb immolates the pain until it is numbed—until it’s small enough to tuck away beneath your tongue where it can wait to grow and choke you once again down the road.

For now, it sits and waits. Patiently. Quiet enough for you to forget about it.

You are the lightest you have felt in years.

Ouroboros—you’ve finally managed to snap your jaw shut and swallow down the parts of you that you always thought you never could.

“I think… I think I wanna take a bath.” It feels like the first thing you’ve said in years; the first thing you’ve said with this new body of yours.

Simon nods. “Okay. Yeah. I’ll get one runnin’ for you, sweetheart.”

It takes Simon ten minutes to get the water to the right temperature. He’s not used to taking baths—he can’t even recall the last time he even had one that was by choice. By the time he’s satisfied with the steam that emanates from the spout, his heart squeezes so violently in his chest he’s certain he’ll pass out right there on the bathroom floor. But he doesn’t. As always, he persists.

Though he doesn’t have any soap fit for a bubble bath, he does his best with what he has, and decides to add some of your shower gel into the water. He froths the bubbles up by hand, swirling his arm through the water until there’s a decent layer and the scent hangs heavy enough in the air for it to make a difference. Simon stares at the way it swirls in front of him—he hopes he hasn’t tainted it by touch alone.

He tries to leave the room so that you can bathe by yourself, but he stays when you ask him to. Your voice is timid—impossibly small—when you ask him to turn around while you undress, but he follows your wishes without a second thought. You attempt to meet his gaze in the mirror before you sink into the water, but his eyes are shut tight.

The sight makes your heart flutter.

Once you’re settled into the bath, Simon sits on the floor with his back against the tub. Still shirtless, you catch the way his skin tightens from the cold enamel, but he doesn’t even hiss at the feeling. The water swaddles you with steam and a tingling burn that makes you hum as your head leans back against the wall. Somehow, your mind feels completely void of any thoughts. You are empty—a blank slate waiting to be reformed and filled.

“Do you work tonight?” You don’t know why you ask it, but the question slips past your lips anyway.

“I can call out,” Simon says, perking his ear toward you, yet refusing to look over his shoulder.

“No, that’s okay,” you hum. Limber fingers weave through the water as you play with the thin layer of bubbles along the surface. They sizzle and pop like a fryer as you move, and you close your eyes as you enjoy what little sounds you can hear. “I feel… surprisingly fine. I’ve never… talked about that before. To anyone. I always thought it would feel like the end of the world, and it sort of did, but now it… doesn’t.”

He nods. Knees bending, he rests his arms out on them as he stares at the cabinets in front of him. The pale paint is peeling on the corner a little, and he notes how they could use a good scrub due to the water stains. “I’m sure it wasn’t easy. I’m glad you shared it with me. You can tell me anythin’ you want to; I swear it won’t ever change anythin’ between us.”

Unsure of how to respond, you allow yourself to sink deeper into the water. Your knees poke further out of the surface as your neck is consumed in a mess of bubbles and soap. Before your brain can cook up a coherent response to Simon’s affirmations, he shatters the silence with his croaking voice.

“I’m sorry ‘bout movin’ too fast. I didn’t mean to make you feel uncomfortable.”

“What?” Your voice fractures in your confusion and you find yourself staring at the back of his head. “Simon, no, no I- you didn’t do anything wrong. I really wanted it. Like… I feel a little pathetic about how badly I wanted it—wanted you.” A chuckle bleeds past your lips, and as the sound reverberates off of the tiles around you, Simon feels it crash straight through his chest. “It was… the mint.”

Simon’s confusion visibly forms in the tension of his shoulders. “Mint?”

“Yeah, like… This is going to sound dumb, probably, but… Marco, he… always smells like mint. Like his breath? It’s like he’s always chewing on gum or something like that,” you explain. “And I just—I dunno—I smelled it on your breath and it just sorta… my brain just sort of freaked out, like I couldn’t make sense of anything.”

As you speak, Simon’s eyes begin to wander up. They focus away from the cupboard door in front of him and onto what little he can see of the countertop. He sees his toothbrush. His toothpaste. And then yours.

Kids fruity toothpaste.

No thanks. I… erm… don’t like mint.

“It’s not your fault,” you add in a panic. “You couldn’t have known about that, it was just sort of one of those things, and I’ve never really mentioned it before, so-”

“It’s okay, baby,” Simon interjects softly. “I know how nuanced this shit gets.”

A soft, dainty breath exhales from your lungs as you let go of the words that had built up in your throat. Simon’s mind is swirling. You can see it in the muscles that line his spine and the twitching in his jaw. He stares at his hands as he picks at his short-cut nails, body curled forward like a dog with his hackles raised.

Water sloshes around you as you curl forward. The edge of the tub is lukewarm against your cheek as you rest your head on it, and you sigh as more of Simon’s face comes into your view. Careful fingers rise out of the water as you trace a line along his shoulder, leaving a layer of glistening moisture to shine beneath the vanity lights.

“Si?”

He does not hesitate to look at you when you beckon. Neck craning, when he looks at you, his eyes dilate, forcing his pupils to swallow the sweet warmth of his irises. He focuses on the small curve of your lips—weary, but still there—and when your hands wander up to his face, he leans into your palm.

“Thank you. For everything. I… don’t know what I would do without you,” you whisper.

Body twisting, Simon brings a hand up to cup over yours, keeping you pressed against him for a short moment before pulling you away. Then, with a softness he can’t remember ever having mustered before, he kisses each of your knuckles before rubbing his thumb over them.

“I’d do anythin’ for you,” he says. “I mean it. Anything.” He swallows. “I love you.”

There is still that twitch in his fingers—that buzzing electricity that jolts through him, urging his muscles into action. His lungs expand as if pushing him to run, and his knuckles yearn to feel that familiar ache that always follows after they’ve kissed soft flesh or jutting bone. All that tension and virulent desire melts away the moment Simon sees the warm smile that graces your lips at his confession.

He realizes that he can put away those bad habits and macabre desires if it means he gets to see you like this—even if it’s only temporary.

“I love you, too.”

follow @mother-ilia to be notified of updates | get early access to chapters here

#ilium writing #sr ilia #in limbo #simon riley x reader #ghost x reader #simon ghost riley x reader #female reader

205 notes · View notes

the-mpreg-guy · 2 months ago

Note

I’m a regular and I wanna crawl into your brain, please rec your TO DIE FOR favorite fics

Thank you for giving me the opportunity to yap about my favorite transformative works. This is gonna be a long rec list, so be prepared. (I also have an ask sitting in my inbox for post-canon fic recs/angel grace smut, so stay tuned for that rec list.) None of this is in any cohesive order regarding genre or length, so lets just get into it.

The Girlfriend Experience is prime early season Destiel studies. Imagine you're Dean Winchester and season five is happening, but you're also giving a half human angel brojobs on the side. And both of you are developing feelings. That's The Girlfriend Experience.

Dean Winchester's Take Two might be my favorite time travel fanfiction EVER and I did at least five years in the Doctor Who fandom which? Their entire premise is time travel. Dean Winchester immediately post confession gets yeeted back to his grave in s4. The Destiel is beyond immaculate. The dynamic between s4 Sam and s15 Dean is literally to die for. I cannot recommend this fic ENOUGH.

The Obeisance of Memory okay so this is a harder sell because it's an ff.net fic. I know, I know the format looks yucky to us now bc we're so used to AO3, but the fic is the reason I'm a Deangirl/have been in and out of the fandom on and off for the past decade. This is not a Destiel fic rec, but somehow the author completely and perfectly captures their friendship. The Dean studies go fucking CRAZY in this fic which is why I'm holding you all at gunpoint forcing you to read it. S4 Dean wakes up in his grave with no memories. That's it, that's the fic. It's s4 with amnesic Dean and it FUCKS.

Tolstoy a devastating oneshot about Dean and Castiel in the bunker kitchen being sad and soft with each other.

anamesis 'verse POST CANON GO BRRR (this is gonna end up on my other rec list btw), but basically it's a "what if the finale was another one of Chuck's games that Dean and Sam are trapped in." Time loop shenagains and Destiel pining for the win. There's also a Saileen onshot in there that makes me ship them almost as hard as I ship Samwena.

Games of Skill and Fortune OH GOD so like what if Dean popped down to the cage and let Michael possess him to get rid of OTHER Michael. Listen, I find Michael to be one of the least interesting angels in spn, but this fic got me on board. Insanely good characterization from literally everyone. Also Michael and Dean have a shared gambling addiction which is funny.

everyone knows the year doesn't start until april INSAAAAANE FANFICTION!!! Late seasons Destiel having been together a week being very soft and loving to each other on a hunt. The Dean studies go crazy. The Castiel studies go crazier. M-rated but for some reason feels sexier than explicit smut.

Put up your Dukes HAVE SOME SMUT. Dean can't sleep and human Castiel is trying to seduce him. For five chapter straight. Takes place in the good version of s8.

by your ancient names Castiel study. Everyone read right the fuck now.

a happy place to dream about you ever wanna read something so fucked up it changes your brain chemistry? Okay so what if Chuck got weirder about Dean. Yeah that's the fic.

AmItheAssholeNatural this is exactly what it sounds like. TFW won't stop taking their problems to reddit.

The First Thing There Is Michael possession arc AU where they wipe Dean's memories and he thinks he and Cas are together. Jesus Christ.

then, to lebanon, oh god do you ever wonder, like me, what would have happened in s4 if Dean had come back a little too late to preserve his humanity? Demon Dean and Ruby have a buddy comedy in this and I can't stop thinking about it.

Gallows Pole post Michael possession trauma series. Some of my favorite Dean studies.

The Grocery Store Conveyor Belt Thing EARLY SEASONS SAM AND DEAN HANGING OUT YEAAAAAH

a steady aiming at a tomb post finale psychological horror. I was on edge this entire fic and it didn't disappoint.

Double Happiness s15 Dean and Sam studies.

Not All Good News another Michael possession fic (starting to realize I have a Thing for that arc). Incredibly LONG fic, but I'm obsessed with Dean and Jack's relationship in this one.

i'll see you on the dark side of the moon Sam, Interrupted AU. Extreme non/con warning.

The Soul Burns Brighter Than The Sun THEEE post canon fanfic (this will end up on the other rec list for sure). It has pretty much everything I want from the pining to the soul sex to tying up loose ends that the show forgot about.

#spn fanfic #spn fic recs #athena.txt #otp: we're making it up as we go #my best friend castiel #the first omega

146 notes · View notes

toaarcan · 11 months ago

Text

As the dust settles on Downfall, I think I remain pretty much where I was before in terms of Ludinus' plan and whether it's justified.

(It's not)

Aeor pointed a gun at the gods, and the Prime Deities' overall first goal was not to retaliate with equal force, but to disarm them. They tried to protect themselves without killing everyone on Aeor, even as every step they took through the city's streets showed it to be a hellscape that killed the faithful for no other reason than said faith. Because they saw the bright side of it, the innocents that lived there. They looked at a city that hanged their followers for believing in them, built an ornate fucking gallows to do it with, and still wanted to spare it.

They did their level best to save everyone they could. Only three people in the whole city knew how to make the Factorum Malleus. Remove those three and destroy the weapon and all knowledge of it, and the problem is solved.

And then a human wizard beamed the knowledge of the Malleus into the brain of every other wizard in the city.

It was Selena that doomed Aeor, turning a defeat into devastation. They had already lost, the gods breached their defences, revealed the location of the city to Kord and Bahamut, easily made their way to the Genesis Ward, destroyed all of the major divine wards and most of the minor ones, and killed most of the defenders.

In that one moment, it looked like the Primes would get what they wanted: Safety for themselves, while still managing to spare Aeor.

And then that one last Wish spell destroyed the hope the Primes had, and forced their hand. The only way they could ever be safe was to smash Aeor into the ground before anyone with fresh knowledge of how to build a second Factorum Malleus could get off it.

As for Aeor's side of things... look, if you build an Instant Genocide Gun, and put it in the core of a flying population centre, you don't get to complain if the people you want to wipe from existence turn up to swat you out of the sky in self-defence.

Like bruh, what were the gods supposed to do? Sit there and let the Malleus go off?

#Critical Role #Critical Role Spoilers #C3E101 #Critical Role: Downfall #Downfall Spoilers

154 notes · View notes

sha-brytols · 2 months ago

Text

got reminded of my hysterical version of the tale of the champion and why esther fucking hates it so much heres all of the shit varric just blatantly made up to make her sound like a much more dignified and gallant hero than she really is:

esther bravely and heroically staking her home in kirkwall (it took her 4 years just to stop lying to herself that she was ever going home and another 3 before she finally got comfortable there)

bethany willingly going to the grey wardens (she begged esther not to make her go and literally never talked to her again except to say she's alive after the joining)

he literally omitted her relationship with anders entirely from the book (cassandra's the only one who even knows about it)

there was no "leandra comforting hawke as she dies" moment in reality thats something he put in as a sort of attempt at giving esther closure and leandra a dignified death (she was already dead when they got to her)

additionally her grieving process was so much more messy she was literally banned from the hanged man for a year because she kept going to try and get drunk and start fights

the arishok battle was not this badass heroic legendary duel for the ages she got impaled and then just literally started biting him like a gotdam dog

i'm like 50% sure charade is completely made up in an attempt to write in a version of esther's story where she isnt terminally family-less idk i'll have to get back to you on that one

in his book he goes with the friend route depictions of her relationship with all her companions to make her seem less like a pathetic asshole

hawke acting like the most hysterically clueless mf on tbe planet during anders' act 3 quest was just varric downplaying esther's involvement in the explosion. half to keep the seekers off her back and half because the truth that she really was that pitifully desperate to cling to the last remaining shred of love she had left in her life was like. yeah maybe lets omit that

mentioned this before but orsino didn't actually go mad with blood magic and turn into an abomination esther murdered him in a blind rage after he offhandedly mentioned his involvement in quentins murders

consequently. before the book came out esther was NOT seen as a hero to the mages in fact the ones at the gallows were actually terrified of her after what she did to orsino. like half of them got killed by templars trying to run away from her.

#anyways so remember how i said veilguard esther has amnesia and her entire identity is built around what was said in varrics book .#esther hawke #worldstate stuff

41 notes · View notes

comfortless · 1 year ago

Note

hi syl! omfg i cannot believe we are mutuals, i love your works so much. but have you heard of the midieval concept called “marriage on the gallows?” basically, a person who was given death penalty can still be saved when someone promises to marry them. all i can think about is könig going to a live hanging/ burning at the stake and using marriage on the gallows to have a wife.

not like she was framed or anything, right(????) but don’t worry, könig promises to make her happy and alive now that he’s her husband. or maybe knight! ghost was the one who was about to be killed but y/n is like “I CAN FIX HIM” and marries him instead.

chanting Torta, Torta, Torta hi!! i am hugging you for this. <3 i have heard of it! but never did i think to apply it to König and now here we are… ^^

content/warnings: forced marriage?, vague religious imagery, injury, threat of public execution, vague smut.

When you sell your soul, really sell it, you’re cutting away from the umbilical cord that tethers you to whatever waits in the darkness of the afterlife. You kneel, you pray, you bathe yourself in sacred water and parrot divine words, but you don’t realize you’ve become obscured in invisibility, a shadow, a husk.

He’s clipped her wings and the only thing left to do is end her flight, let her go tumbling down into a pit of sulfur from the rope lead tied to her neck: to die before a sea of jeering faces, horse shit and fine wine, gilded paintings and the darkened splatter of blood, dried and crisp against a wooden stage.

König knows something about that, because there’s a dense, thorny guilt curling in his chest as he looks up at the little sparrow led up to the rope with her face pushed down by a hand that doesn’t belong there.

She’s done no wrong; smiling sweetly at a man like him shouldn’t have resulted in this. His heart shatters when he hears her begin to cry, her battered face wrenched up to face the crowd by the hangman’s cruel hands.

A little, flightless bird like this could never have done what he did to get her here. Gentle, sweet things knew so little of the very blood that pulses in veins, of what a man’s innards look like spilt out on a thick blade.

But of course they will believe anything— she’s a commoner, no special asset to the village. They needed their farmers, their tailors, and men like him— the blacksmith they all shunned as though he had risen from the fiery pit he worked away at himself. They didn’t need her.

Only he did.

So when he steps through the crowd of vultures to watch as the rope is tightened around her delicate neck, his voice comes in a roar. He propositions the hangman that he will take her as his wife, haul this devil back to his shack at the village’s edge and ensure that she— he will spill no more blood.

She weakly raises her head to eye him, recognizing him immediately as the man who had accused her of murdering that stable boy only two nights prior. Her stare is not judgmental or accusatory: she doesn’t have a clue of the lengths he has went to- would go to- to tether her to him.

A fortnight later, the woman becomes his bride.

She doesn’t know what brought her such a malison, how she came to be the wife of a man who once cast his accusations toward her, but she’s grateful to the man who’s cursed her to suffer him.

There’s no celebration, no flowers or dancing. There’s a kiss she nervously leans into at the chapel, shy, while his heart bursts into flames.

She isn’t blessed with meaningful vows, only a pleading profession whispered into her ear when his kisses reach from her neck to the curve of her jaw.

It’s consummated in that darkened shack, not a candle lit where smoke has painted the walls black with ash and dust; a place where she curls her arms over him sweetly and breathes her thanks against his shoulder, where his fingers commit every curve, dip, and ridge of her to memory. His words are lost in her hair, her shoulder, her chest as he devotes every remnant of himself to her entirely. He isn’t gentle, but he tries when her tight whines and whimpers fill his ears, drowning out even his lamentations.

She tolerates him four times over before he can will himself to pull away from her warmth. The guilt is replaced by a sense of purpose, a certainty that all he’s done has been entirely for her. She tells him that she would never hurt another thing, and he whispers against her skin, “I know.”

His flightless engel does not remain downtrodden.

Each morning she wakes him with giggles, face warmed in memory of the night’s prior rapture. She bakes for him, sweet things that he’s never thought himself worthy of prior while he buries himself against her, yearns to pry apart her ribs and bury himself in her softness for all time.

He kisses at what remains of the scars along her neck when she finds him melding down steel for a new weapon, takes her into his lap just to watch the flames dance in her eyes.

#asks!#könig x reader #sorry this is so short!!

189 notes · View notes

arcane-vagabond · 2 years ago

Text

Fool's Fare: Chapter Four

Pairing: Jake "Hangman" Seresin x Reader

Summary: Captain Jake "Hangman" Seresin had come close to swinging from the gallows more times than he would care to admit. He's stolen, cheated, even killed. The worst thing he's ever done? Broken the heart of a woman. Having broken the heart of the woman whom Davy Jones himself had fallen for six years ago, Jake is now cursed to live as something not dead, but not alive. He's doomed to live a half-life for the rest of his existence unless he manages to obtain the treasure Davy Jones deems most valuable. The problem? He has no idea what it is, and he only had seven years to obtain it.

Triggers: Serious discussions, Flirting, Language, Falling overboard. I think that's it.

Word Count: 2.7k

A/N: Hey! Long time, no see kind of. I know it's been a HOT minute since I've updated this story, but I'm hoping to update it a little more now that Don't Hang'em Til Noon has basically wrapped. Hanging By a Moment will be out probably sometime in the next month, but we'll see! In the meantime, enjoy! Anyway, it's a little shorter than my usual chapters, but I'm trying to get back into the swing of this story a little bit. As always, reblogs and comments are greatly appreciated! 18+ ONLY!! You can also find me on AO3 under arcane_vagabond where I post my updates as well!

Series Masterlist || Moodboards || Playlist

Your head was pounding something awful as you came to. The light was blinding as the sun filtered in through the window, the crash of waves echoing up and through the room. You were nestled comfortably against a plush pillow, your body cradled by the soft mattress beneath you. You let out a groan as you moved to sit up, pressing against your temples in the process.

“Well, good morning!”

You whipped your head around to look at the source of the voice, wincing as the sudden movement caused a flash of pain behind your eyes. Natasha sat perched on the bed opposite yours, a grin stretched across her face as she watched you.

“What?” You muttered, squinting your eyes at her in confusion. “What’s going on?”

You didn’t remember much from the night before, just the faint memory of tears and two different feelings of shock mixed in with passing faces and jeers.

“You had a lot to drink last night, Guppy,” she smirked at you, one leg propped up to lean against as she studied you, amusement still shining bright in her eyes. “Came up from the galley to find you asleep in bed with Jake sitting there right next to you. It was a sight for sure.”

You groaned once again as the events of the night before came rushing back to you, hiding your face in your hands. The reveal of your father’s past. The ale the men kept handing you. Bradley’s betrayal. Jake knowing who you were all along. The feel of his hand on your cheek.

You peeked through your fingers to look at the other woman. A smile ghosted on her lips, widening the longer you looked at her.

“You’ve nothing to be embarrassed about,” she assured you. “Everyone on this ship has done something they aren’t proud of after too much ale.”

“Nonetheless,” you muttered, dropping your hands back down into your lap, “I’m sorry you had to see that. I’m not usually like that.”

“I believe you,” she smiled. “It must have been quite the shock to get all of that information in one go.”

“It was.”

“So,” she hummed, her smile shifting into a conspiratorial smirk. “Why’d you do it?”

Your brow furrowed in confusion. “Do what?”

“Why’d you sneak on the ship?” She scoffed, leaning back against the wall, rubbing her thumb and forefinger together as she continued to watch you.

“Oh,” you murumured, glancing away and towards the window. It had to be almost noon with how bright it was outside. How long had you been asleep? “I did it to make sure Bradley stayed safe.”

She quirked an eyebrow at you and you sighed, fidgeting with the blanket in your lap.

“He’s the only family I have left,” you whispered, fighting back the tears that threatened to make an appearance. “I would never forgive myself if something happened to him and I wasn’t there to stop it.”

Natasha didn’t say anything for a moment, instead moving to stand, walking over towards her wardrobe on the other side of the room. You watched her rummage through, pulling out several different pieces of clothing.

“Here,” she said, tossing some of the pieces to you. You caught them, looking at her in confusion. She chuckled before starting to change. “I figured you’d want a change of clothes. You’ve been wearing your old ones for a while now.”

You eyed the clothes in your lap before moving to change as well. Once the two of you were decent, she headed for the door with you hot on her heels. Her hand hovered over the door knob as she turned to look back at you.

“Guppy?”

“Yes?”

“What you did was really brave.”

“You idiot!” You shrieked, throwing your shoe with all of your might. It launched across the deck, hitting Bradley squarely in the shoulder as he flinched, his hands shooting up to try and block the offending item.

“I know, but why?” He hollered, looking around for any way to escape. Several of the men on deck watched the scene with amusement, some already cackling at the large men cowering in fear as you stalked towards him.

“They all knew, Bradley,” you hissed, punching the meat of his arm once you were close enough. He winced, rubbing the spot lightly as he glanced from you to the rest of the crew.

“Knew what?”

“Knew that I was a girl,” you growled, placing your hands on your hips as you glared at him. He stared at you for a moment, mind struggling to catch up. Another moment passed before a light of realization sparked in his eyes, and he looked around wildly at the crew, some nodding and shrugging.

“They knew?” He breathed, eyes darting to your smaller form hesitantly.

“The whole time, in fact,” you groused, now crossing your arms over your chest. He swallowed thickly, a sheepish smile crawling onto his face.

“Oh,” he chuckled nervously. “Oops.”

You landed a solid punch to his upper arm, causing him to cry out.

“Would you stop that?” He snapped, dodging your next blow and maneuvering so that he held your forearms in his hands. “That hurts, you know.”

“Good!” You shot back, still glaring at him. “You deserve it after everything.”

“It was an honest mistake!” He reasoned. “How was I supposed to know the disguise wouldn’t work?”

“It’s not just about the disguise, Bradley.”

His face went slack at your words, a mixture of regret and guilt flooding his brown eyes as the effect of your words rushed over him. No one on the deck spoke or moved as the two of you stared each other down.

“Alright you lot,” Javy called out from the upper deck. All eyes turned to where he stood, a stern expression on his face as he looked over the crowd. “Get back to work. There’s still lots to do before we dock tomorrow.”

Your eyes darted from him to meet the green ones already on you. Jake had a bemused expression on his face as he watched you while leaning against the rails, a twinkle of something that you couldn’t name shining in his eyes. A smirk tugged on his lips as you stared at him, shooting a wink your way before standing up straight and turning to move back towards the cabins. You felt your cheeks warm, glancing back at Bradley who was already watching you with a knowing look. Your irritation with the man was renewed and you pushed at him with all your might, sending him stumbling back a couple of steps.

“You lied to me.”

“He didn’t want me to tell you, Guppy,” he sighed. “He didn’t want you to know that part of him.”

“So instead,” you seethed, “I had to find out from strangers instead of my own brother.”

He had the good sense to look ashamed, and he looked away from you and out towards the sea. “You shouldn’t have found out about it like that.”

“You’re damn right I shouldn’t have,” you huffed.

He peeked over at you, watching you from the corner of his eye.

“I’m sorry.”

It was your turn to watch him now. Bradley was your brother, and no matter how much of an idiot he could be at times, you still couldn’t stay mad at him for long. The anger drained from your body, replaced with a calm sense of acceptance as you turned to look out at the sea with him.

“Are you hungry?” You asked. He shook his head, grimacing.

“No, not at all.”

You turned to look at him again, worry now etched across your face as the wind whipped your hair about.

“Bradley,” you started, “when was the last time that you ate? You didn’t eat much last night.”

He gave you a noncommital shrug, avoiding your eyes as he answered.

“Guess it’s been a while.”

“Are you not feeling well?” You hummed, reaching over to feel his forehead. He shirked away from you, eyeing you warily.

“I’m fine, Guppy, really.”

“If you aren’t eating, then you aren’t fine,” you scowled. “We’ll have to go see a doctor when we dock.”

“Guppy-”

“No buts,” you said firmly. “We’re going in the morning.”

“You know, you’ve caused not one, but two scenes on my ship now.”

You whirled around to meet a familiar green gaze. Jake’s lips were tugged into his signature smirk as he regarded you. Your cheeks once again warmed under his gaze, and you pursed your lips as you gazed back at the water before you.

“Sorry about that.”

“Don’t be,” he chuckled. “It’s fun having a fiery little thing like yourself on board. Keeps things from growing monotonous.”

“I’m glad I could at least serve as your entertainment,” you muttered with a roll of you eyes. He appeared beside you, resting up against the edge of the ship as he continued to watch you. It was just the two of you on the deck, the rest of the crew having moved down into the galley for dinner. You had stayed behind to bask in a rare moment of solitude, but now you welcomed the company.

“It’s better than nothing, I suppose,” he hummed thoughtfully.

“I want to be treated like a regular member of your crew, captain.”

He threw his head back with a hearty laugh, his voice almost echoing off the walls.

“Pretty girl, that is the last thing you want.”

You turned to him with a scowl. It grew deeper as his smirk widened, and you felt the creeping coolness of night crawl across your skin as the sun began to sink below the horizon.

“And why is that?” You demanded, raising your chin at him in defiance. His gaze dropped down for a moment before he locked his gaze back with yours, leaning in closer. He was so close that you could feel his breath tickle the skin of your cheeks, and you sucked in a breath.

“Because,” he drawled, his nose brushing yours. “If you were one of my men, I’d have you walk the plank for even sneaking on here in the first place.”

You snorted, but sobered when his face remained impassive.

“You can’t be serious.”

“As the dead, darlin’.”

He pushed away from you, sauntering over to pick up a board lying off to the side. With a grunt, he lifted it, placing it at the opening where the gangway would normally sit. He secured it down, and once he was sure that it was steady, he turned to you expectantly. You stared at him, unsure of what to do, and he raised an eyebrow at you.

“You want to be treated as a regular member of the crew, don’t you?” He taunted, the faintest hint of humor still in his eyes. You pursed your lips, throwing your shoulders back as you marched towards him. You eyed the wooden board warily, glancing back at the blond who looked at you expectantly. You turned back around, taking a hesitant step onto the board.

“You’re not going to back out?” He called to you as you took a couple more steps, now standing precariously over the water. You glanced back at him.

“Not on your life, captain,” you smirked. “I want to be a member of this crew.”

The humor was gone from his face as he watched you take another step, his lips pressed into a thin line. You were at the edge now, and you looked back at him with a brow raised in challenge.

“Dammit, alright,” he grumbled, eyes darting between you and the water below. “You’ve proven your point. Just get back over here.”

You smiled triumphantly, carefully maneuvering to turn around and head back when a sudden gust of wind knocked you off your balance. You stumbled back, but there was nothing there to catch you and you caught the briefest glimpse of Jake’s eyes widening in shock as you plummeted to the depths below.

The water was cold, shocking you when you hit the waves. You were suspended for a moment, panic not having set in yet. Swirls of blue blurred your vision, nonexistent shadows reaching up from the deep to grab at you.

You scrambled towards the surface, kicking your legs in a desperate attempt for air. You felt a hand wrap around your upper arm, dragging you upwards until you broke the surface. You sucked in a lungful of air, eyes darting around until they landed on Jake’s form next to you.

“Are you alright?” He asked, looking you over. You nodded, not entirely sure if you were or not, but knowing that you were still alive. Jake breathed out a sigh of relief as he turned to look back at the ship. You heard the distant sound of shouting, becoming hyper aware of Jake’s arms wrapped around you as the two of you bobbed with the waves.

“Lucky for you,” he continued, “Javy saw you fall and moved the crew to action while I dove in after you.”

You didn’t say anything, starting to shiver as the adrenaline caught up with you. Without thinking, you rested your head against his chest, seeking out the warmth he gave off. You could have sworn his grip tightened, but you heard the sound of one of the life boats hitting the water, and relief sank over you.

Moments later, Reuben was reaching his hands out to grab you, Jake passing you to him as he helped lift you into the boat. You tumbled onto the floor, landing at Mickey’s feet as he scrambled to wrap a blanket around you. Jake landed next to you, waving off Reuben as he began to inspect you more thoroughly.

“I’m fine,” you muttered as he ran his hands over your arms. He ignored you, brow furrowed in silent concentration. When he was sure that you were fine, he nodded at the two other men.

“Let’s get back to the ship.”

Humiliation washed over you as you were once again standing on the main deck. Bradley was front and center, dashing over to you to conduct his own investigation into your well being. You pouted, eyes refusing to leave the floor. You could feel the stares on your drenched form, and you struggled to keep from shivering in the cool night air. A rustling came from behind you, and you jumped when a heavy coat was draped over you. Jake must have shrugged it off before diving in after you because it was still dry as it sat on your shoulders.

You turned, seeing Jake fixing the crew with a glare.

“What are you all staring at?” He asked coldly, leveling each man with a stare. “Get back to work or out of my sight.”

The rest of the crew quickly scrambled to obey, none of them daring to give you another look as Jake rested a hand on your shoulder. You burrowed into the warmth of the leather, inhaling the scent that lingered. Clean linen and a hint of musk. It should have worried you how it set your mind at ease almost instantly.

“Guppy, what were you thinking,” harped Bradley, brushing wet strands of hair out of your face. You stared at him, feeling Jake stiffen behind you. Refusing to meet the brunette’s eyes, you offered him a slight shrug.

“Must have leaned too far over the railing, Roo,” you muttered, your fingers fidgeting with the ends of the coat. “It won’t happen again.”

Bradley didn’t seem convinced, but didn’t say anything as he glanced up at Jake.

“Thank you.”

“Don’t mention it,” Jake grumbled, his hand tightening slightly on your shoulder. You watched him gesture towards someone, and Natasha popped up to stand beside you.

“See to it she gets some rest,” he told her, his eyes glancing to you before landing back on her. She nodded, wrapping her arms gently around you as she began to guide you towards the cabins.

“Guppy.”

You stopped, turning back to look at him. His sea-green eyes wandered over you, his jaw flexing like he was mulling over what to say. He locked eyes with you, and you once again caught a flash of swirling blue before it disappeared. You frowned, wondering what you just saw, but Jake shook his head, letting out a sigh.

“Get some sleep. You’ll need it.”

#ff #fool's fare #jake hangman seresin #jake seresin #jake hangman seresin x reader #jake hangman seresin x you #jake seresin x reader #jake seresin x you #jake hangman seresin imagine #top gun hangman #jake seresin fanfiction #jake seresin imagine #hangman fanfiction #hangman x reader #hangman top gun #hangman imagine #hangman seresin #hangman x you

192 notes · View notes

notsofunsenpai · 3 months ago

Text

♡Smt smt Sampo Smut smt smt ♡

MDNI 🔫

The male ran his fingers through his now unkempt dark blue hair,calling you multiple times. He had fucked up big time,more than usual,"Come on baby." He says to Noone but himself while he paces back and forth outside the house. He had forgotten about date night.Actually,It wasn't just any date night it was your guys anniversary night, and he was out and about. He curses to himself,quickly sending multiple texts to you. He had earlier went to the share house, but you weren't there, but you did leave a 'kind' note to him about how you were going out with some friends. He also knew when you get mad like this, you wanted to be left alone, so the chances of hanging out with friends weren't usually high, so he's just gonna figure you're by yourself.

"You're so stupid,Sampo." He mumbles,his thoughts that were so put together was now scattering everywhere at once trying to figure out how to fix this. He takes a breath before exhaling,"I got this,somehow. " He said as confidently as he could,trying to convince himself. He puts his phone in his pocket before quickly going off to buy some flowers,"Okay,Sampo think... you got three hours till the day ends. If I was my lovely amazing partner who's also mad at me, where would I be..?" He questions,holding the red roses in his hand. He smiles,"Aha! I'm a genius sometimes. Somewhere that has food!" He immediately went to your favorite food cart. He sees you eating by yourself, but his heart breaks when he notices your eyes are also red. He takes a deep breath before walking up to you,giving you a tight hug from behind,slightly crushing the flowers. "I'm sorry, my love. I didn't mean to forget." He apologizes,kissing the side of your face. You were annoyed at him,"I reminded you so many times yesterday and the day before that." You scolded him harshly,"I even reminded you this morning!" You felt overwhelmed with some many emotions you didn't know how to process it.

"I know,I just got.." Sampo stops himself,no excuses he could use would make this situation better, especially this late on when you put so much effort and work into today. He frowns,hiding his face in the crook of your neck for a moment. He's a prideful man, but even himself,someone as amazing as he is, can have his slip ups.There was an awkward silence. He gathers his thoughts quickly before speaking up,"You're right,I messed up big time. I'm sorry. I shouldn't have forgotten it.

Sampo Koski is the worst person alive.I deserve to be sent to the gallows.," He dramatically says,hearing a small chuckle from you, making him smile. "There's my sweet, wonderful lady."

"You're still sleeping on the couch. " You remarked,taking the flowers from him,sniffing the sweet smell of the roses. You heard a gasp,"My heart is broken. How could you banish me to the couch, my love? I'll be so cold and lonely without you next to me!" He whines, embarrassing you in front of the vendor who came back from his smoke break. You quickly hush your husband,"Come on, let's go." You gently push him away, making him pout as you headed home with him quickly following behind you. You unlock the door,heading inside and turning on the lights. You went to the kitchen to put the roses into a vase,"Baby,I can make us something to eat if you like. I, the amazing Sampo, is a great coo -"

"No thanks,already ate." You cut him off,placing the vase onto the kitchen table,admiring them.

Ouch. That stings,at least you were still talking to him,"How about a massage then my love?" He questions with a smile,hoping you'd say yes.

"I think imma turn in for the night." You said when you both know you usually don't sleep this early unless you had to do something. You walked past the man who was giving you sad puppy dog eyes as he follows you once again.

You almost give in but you had to teach him a lesson so you did your best to keep your distance. You went to the room to grab some clothes then head into the bathroom where you started the shower.

His eyes lit up. "Great idea, love, I can scrub your ba -

"I think I wanna shower alone tonight." You watched as his eyesbrows furrowed with a sad look on his face,which crushed you, but you quickly shoo him away.

The male felt defeated as he was shooed out,he grabbed a blanket and a pillow,"I'm to bed early,with no cuddles or kisses,just all alone by myself! I hope I don't get any back problems from the couch!" He pouts when you didn't respond. Truthfully, you had to hold a laugh when you heard him say that. He pulls the couch out into a bed it already had a sheet on it from a previous friend staying over the other night. He flops down onto it while being wrapped into the blanket as his head rests on the pillow,"This isn't fair." He sulks,"I still deserve cuddles." He then mutters out,closing his eyes before clapping his hands to trun off the lights in the living room.

You walked out of the bathroom,dressed for bed just wearing a long shirt and some underwear. You dried your hair off with a towel then brushes it,"Hey Sampo- oh yeah.." forgetting he was in the living room,maybe you were alittle harsh but it was his fault he forgot but why do you feel so bad? You shooked the thoguth away,finishing brushing your hair as you climbed into bed. You turn on the TV as you turned off the light,it felt lonely while watching this random romcom where you and your lover would make fun at them. You watched it till you fell asleep,but you didn't sleep for long,maybe an hour or two at the best. Your eyes slowly open as you sat up,rubbing them with your hands then got up without really thinking and went to the living room. Barely awake you almost trip a few times but made it to the couch,hearing soft snores. You climbed onto the bed,feeling a shirt and pants next to the sleeping male. You toss them to the side as you took some covers from Sampo who groans in his sleep because of the cool air hitting his skin. You get close to him,snuggling against the man who was on his side facing you. You gently place your lips onto him,placing your hand onto his face,caressing him gently with your thumb. You kissed him a few times,"I was a little harsh today, huh?" You gently said,tiredly staring at him."I'm sorry." You added.

"Hm?.." a tired Sampo questions,his half lided eyes stares at you. You kissed him once again,"I'm sorry." You apologize.

You fell his arm wrapped around you,kissing back while making small noises,"I should be apologizing, not you. You didn't nothin..i forgot and i should have been more mindful." He was trying to make it up some how ,"I'm so sorry."He says sweetly,kissing your jaw down to your neck. He leaves bites and hickies onto your neck,"I was so stupid today." He slowly got onto you,wrapping his muscular arms around you.

"Sampo." You whined,having your arms around his waist as he kisses you silly,"I have something to do tomorrow." You weakly said.

He pretends to think before smiling softly down at you,"Simple,cancel your plans." He states as it was obvious on what to do.

It was your turn to pout,as you wrapped your legs around him,"I can't just do that." You reply as he chuckles tiredly.

"No worries.. you're amazin husband will do it for you." He yawns,sliding his slim fingers into your underwear.

"I can't let just do th-at!" You moan softly feeling a finger going into you. He feels how wet you are along with the way you clenched yourself around his finger.

"You can, baby,you can." His voice like honey as he feels his dick throbing inside of his boxers that he wore all while he adds another finger in you. Your soft cries were like music to his ears,feeling him going deeper into you,feeling him finding a certain spot.

"Ah! Sampo!" You cried out, feeling your legs tighten around his waist.

He lets out a throaty grunt,"Let me take care of you." He bends down,kissing the shell of your ear,"Let me make up for today." He adds,fingering you a little faster."Wanna make up for being such a bad husband." He tsked at himself, basically. You, on the other hand, were losing your mind, feeling his fingers skillfully pumping themselves in and out of you,hitting all the rights placss. Pretty moans escaping your lips,"St-still mad- ah!!" You gasp loudly, feeling yourself cumming onto his fingers as you arch your back. You heard a snicker from above you,then the feeling of fingers leaving you.

"Still mad?" He mocks slightly,kissing your neck as he pulls his boxers down some to take out his dick. He gently grinds against your wet cunt,with both of you moaning softly,feeling him go up down,up down then around then up again

Oops,he accidentally slips himself in then takes himself out to go back to grinding against you,making you whine.

"Aw,is your loveable husband being mean hm?" He grins lazily,capturing his lips with yours as he continues to tease you with his repetitive movements.

"I-if you keep ..teasing me." You feel yourself trying to grind against him,trying to think of words," You'll be on the couch for a week.."

"Now you're the mean one." Feeling him pout against your skin as he slides into you. He mently curses himself as he feels you sucking him in,he groans lowly as you grabbed the sheet of the mattress. His hand goes to yours,squeezing it tightly,"Making me go crazy." He bites his lip and then wraps his arms around you again. Your eyes slide back of your head,feeling him going deeper,nails digging onto his back. He starts moving his hips quickly ,you felt so heavenly,always have that he can never get enough of you. He was quick to find your g-spot,hitting it repeatedly as you squealed as he takes one of his hands and pressed down where his dick was striking the very bottom of your pussy. You cried out,wanting him to do it again which he tsked at you.

"So greedy,spoiling you too much." He huffs out but complys as he hits his favorite spot over and over again.

Puffs of air escape your mouth,feeling like you're on cloud nine,"th-there m'close!" You cried,squeezing your legs around him.

"Me too, darling." He grits his teeth together,having no thoughts of stopping or slowing down. You felt dizzier and dizzier with each second. You closed your eyes tightly,clenching around your husband's dick tightly and came. He hisses at the tightness mix with the feeling of nails digging into him as he comes,fucking through both of your highs,not realizing he was holding his breath while his eyes closed tightly with his jaw clenched. His arms almost squeezed the air out of you slightly,but you didn't mind as you kissed him gently. You feel him relax some,taking a loud, sharp breath as you feel his chest rise up and down while he was calming himself down. He mumbles something before staring at you with a dumbstruck look on his face,"I promise not to forget again. I love you."He kisses you,"I love you." He says again while his lips were on yours still,"I.Love.You." In between kisses,making you feel smile and stomach flutter.

"I love you too." Happily forgiving your husband.

#my fanfic writing #fanfic #sampo koski #hsr sampo #sampo koski smut #Sampo x reader #Sampo Koski x reader #sampo koski x reader smut

31 notes · View notes

coltermorning · 1 year ago

Text

Of Love and Loss Ch. 17 (RDR2 Fanfic, Arthur Morgan x F!Reader, 18+)

Summary: Out of options, you decide to attempt to save Arthur from the gallows yourself.

Author’s Notes: This is where the graphic depictions of violence tag comes into play. There are some gruesome descriptions of gunshot wounds, a hanging, and death in this chapter. Also, the lyrics in italics are from the song Devil’s Backbone by The Civil Wars. It is so incredibly fitting for these two, and I recommend giving it a listen if you haven’t already heard it. Chapter seventeen of this one.

Tags: Arthur Morgan x reader, high honor Arthur Morgan, minor character death, loss of parents, blood and injury, grief/mourning, survivor guilt, strangers to lovers, slow burn, eventual smut, graphic depictions of violence

AO3 Link

Of Love and Loss

Seventeen: Purging Innocence

Word count: 4782

Oh Lord, oh Lord, what have I done? I’ve fallen in love with a man on the run Oh Lord, oh Lord, I’m begging you please Don’t take that sinner from me

In the low light of new day, you readied yourself. You remained outside of town, blocking out the cold bite of the wind as you loaded your gun. Nothing mattered but this—the knowledge your father had instilled in you. Caring for a rifle in the same manner of respect owed to the very animal you hoped to bring down. Today’s prey would be a different sort, but you couldn’t think about that. Not as you weighed the gun in your hands, put it up to your eye. All that was left in you was the need to protect and provide. Letting anything else in would result in so much feeling it would boil over, blocking out any chance you had of doing what needed to be done. So you gauged the wind, how it would change your shot. You felt the weight of the world in your hands. And with it and your innocence intertwining, you let them go.

You strapped the gun over your shoulder and headed into town, keeping to the outskirts. With the rifle and the revolver weighing at your hip, you were nothing short of the strangest sight any of these townsfolk had seen of a woman, so you avoided them. You had one more job to do before it was time to set your sights on the gallows, and you wouldn’t let anything keep you from it.

Wearing your hat low over your eyes, you barely caught sight of the very deputy who had confronted you the night before. He was just inside the door of some place with a scantily dressed woman in his lap. The sight didn’t surprise you, and for once, it didn’t scare you either. Your focus was razor sharp, and not toward some deputy you had been worried about only hours ago.

Passing the buildings one by one, you quickly approached the taller, well-kept hotel. After hearing all the marshal had to say about the hotel owner, you felt the need to confront the man. It didn’t make sense that he had been bribed into the marshal’s pocket only to keep from telling the deputy you were a woman. That was a crucial piece of information that would have had you caught within the hour. But he hadn’t said anything, and why? No matter the reason, it was your turn to secure his silence—you couldn’t have him knowing your face, telling the law just who to chase out of town and, God forbid, across the state. If you were to build any kind of life in Nebraska, you couldn’t leave this loose end. That is, if you ever made it out of town alive.

You rushed the steps and pushed in the door, drawing up short when the very man you wanted to confront sat just behind his desk like always. He stared at you, and you stared at him. Then you shut the door behind you and backed into it. You didn’t have much time and couldn’t risk anyone else coming in to hear this.

“Why didn’t you tell them?”

The hotel owner cocked his head, like he didn’t understand. You knew full well he did, but that didn’t stop him from choosing ignorance. “Who? I don’t get your meaning.”

You huffed a breath of frustration. “You know who. The deputy. He was looking for another man to bring in last night.” You took a step closer, being sure to listen for anyone’s approach through the door at your back. “You didn’t tell him he shouldn’t be looking for a man, but a woman.”

He looked a little dumbfounded, then shook his head. “I don’t know what you’re on about, miss.”

Enough of this. For the first time, you took Arthur’s gun out of its holster and aimed it at another human being. He threw his hands up. “Whoa! Now, hold on a minute!”

“Tell me what you’re up to, or I’ll shoot.” You had no intention of doing so, but he didn’t have to know that.

“Nothing! I ain’t up to anything!”

You cocked the hammer. “I know about your little deal with the marshal. If you’re so loyal to him, why didn’t you sell me out?” He hesitated, his face going slack. Caught dead to rights. “Answer me!”

“Okay! Okay, I didn’t…he’s…the man’s a crook. I didn’t want to believe it, but he is. He came in here and paid me to stay quiet about that man you were with being here all night, and I didn’t want to believe the marshal was no better than that brother of his. So I did what he said but…I left you out of it. My way of spiting him for it, I guess.” The man looked dejected despite the gun pointed at his face. You believed him. You brought the gun back down.

“Why just help me? Why not mislead the deputy away from both of us?”

He shook his head. “They would have sniffed that out real quick. Then I’d have the marshal on my tail. And as for you, I’m certainly regretting it now, but I thought you were…you came in here that first day looking- well, looking pretty incapable of something like this. I felt sorry for you. Now I don’t.”

You uncocked the gun and holstered it. “You shouldn’t. But I appreciate your discretion. Can I count on you to keep that discretion going forward?” You stepped up to his desk and lowered your voice. “Or am I going to have to do something much worse than that crook of a marshal?”

His eyes narrowed, but you swore you caught the edges of a grin on his mouth. “You’re certainly not what I thought.”

“Answer the question.” You didn’t know where all this authority was coming from, but you felt it coursing through your veins like it had been lying there dormant all along. Like it took the threat of something much greater than your own life to bring it out. “Because if you don’t keep me out of all this, I won’t be the only one you have to worry about.”

“Your friend,” he muttered. “Just what are you planning?” Shit. You’d said too much. But you couldn’t give in now.

“Something better left unspoken. And I suggest you keep it that way, lest I have to pay you another visit.” You patted Arthur’s gun. “Or worse, my friend does. He won’t be too happy to hear you helped frame him.”

The hotel owner paled a bit. Legitimately paled over the thought of Arthur coming back for him. You knew just how intimidating the man could be, but that look alone had you swelling with pride. And it was time to go keep said pride alive.

“Are we square?”

The man nodded.

“Good.” You gave him one last, long look, then took your hand off the revolver. You turned on your heel and left before he could do anything more to stop you. You would let no one stop you from what came next.

Rushing to get to the place you had decided on, you kept to the shadows of the still-dawning day. In the case the hotel owner did decide to intervene, you needed to be well hidden hours in advance of the scheduled hanging. You also wouldn’t risk any chance of being late, of them moving the hanging up an hour, anything. So you arrived at your decided-upon spot, scaling the nearby building’s stairs, jumping onto the adjacent balcony, and hauling yourself onto the roof. The early hour kept anyone from noticing you, but the gun at your shoulder still weighed you down like a promise of death to come. There would be no relief today. Not until Arthur was free of a rope he had never deserved in the first place.

The hours went by slowly. All you could do was sit in silent stillness and watch the town stir. It was mostly uneventful, but you could tell the townsfolk knew of the hanging. The gallows you’d settled yourself across from drew more eyes than yours. And when the tenth hour neared, a crowd gathered. It was then that your nerves set in once more. That quiet determination that had kept them at bay was a result of the job that had to be done, but now you were thinking of Arthur. Of what these people would soon be cheering for and demanding of that despicable town marshal. It was sickening to think about. Especially because nothing could be done to change their minds, not even the truth. So when words weren’t enough, force it would be. You’d never imagined your life would lead you to an act so savage. In fact, you had been wishing all night you weren’t as savvy with a gun, weren’t as confident in your abilities, anything to get you out of doing what needed to be done. But Arthur would die if you didn’t help him. He may die anyway. All you could hope was that this little bit of skill you had would get you far enough for him to save himself. Whatever came of you was another matter. It would be worth it, to expend your life for his. You wouldn’t even be here if it weren’t for him anyway. So when the nearby jailhouse doors came swinging open and out walked the very men you had been waiting for, you gritted your teeth and steeled your resolve. It was time.

Arthur’s mind turned thought over thought like lightning, never stopping its mad descent. He always figured his mind would be blank before his death. He thought he would be filled with determination somehow, that he would go out fighting. Not like this. This was much worse. He had every moment to be thinking about regrets, about the gang and how they would wonder about him, about Mary and his son, about you. About what would happen to you without him. He couldn’t bear it. And yet he found himself complying, walking along dutifully, because what other choice did he have? His hands were quite literally tied, and the only thing that could stop this was a distraction the likes of which his gang used to pull. But there would be no Dutch or Hosea or any of the others to save him this time. There would be death, painful and likely not so swift, and just enough time for him to regret all the hell he had raised, as it would likely shape his afterlife into the very same. If there even was one. He couldn’t stomach that thought on top of everything else, so when he approached the nearing crowd and the gallows, he began to look for you. Even if it was just so he could see you and speak to you one last time when they allowed him his last words, if that piece of shit marshal even granted him that much.

The crowd started cussing at him, spitting at his feet as he walked by, hungry for a guilty soul to punish. It didn’t matter that they all detested George Lawrence just as much as he had. In fact, in searching the crowd, Arthur recognized some of the very men who had glared at the late Lawrence in the saloon just two days ago, all piping mad at him now instead. So be it. So long as he had one person in the crowd who believed in his innocence. Someone who cared for him enough to be here. But maybe you weren’t, and that was probably better for you anyway. Your odds of surviving would go up tremendously if you left him behind. How funny that was, since the opposite used to be true.

Arthur spiraled downward into memories of you, of this harrowing trip made better by your presence. He met the stairs and was led on by the deputies, but he didn’t balk. He didn’t shy away from his fate. He had known it would be something like this sooner or later. And when Marshal Lawrence joined him on the gallows and spoke over the crowd about his guilt, Arthur didn’t fight him on it. He didn’t say a word against the man or even look at him as the noose was slipped over his head and tightened around his neck. It was a suffocating feeling. Arthur panicked, his breathing hitching in his chest—his body’s last feeble attempt at survival. He barely heard when Lawrence asked if he had any last words. But then he remembered you and the slim chance you were watching. So he gathered his courage and looked out at the crowd of faces, only speaking to one in particular that he still had yet to see.

“I’m…sorry. I’m sorry I got us into this.” He couldn’t risk exposing you, so he switched tracks. And said the last words he would ever utter. “May God favor the innocent.” He looked the marshal straight in the eye. The man stared hard back. Fuck that bastard. Arthur grinned.

“Pull it,” Lawrence spat.

Arthur braced himself for the loss of the floor, for the drop, for the pain of a broken neck. He heard the wrenching creak of the lever at his side. Then he fell. The sky boomed with sound, and he never stopped falling until his feet hit the dry, hard earth below.

Give me the burden, give me the blame I’ll shoulder the load, and I’ll swallow the shame Don’t care if he’s guilty, don’t care if he’s not He’s good and he’s bad and he’s all that I’ve got Oh Lord, oh Lord, I’m begging you please Don’t take that sinner from me

Your gun cracked louder than thunder, making the crowd duck in panic. It left the perfect pathway for you to watch as Arthur’s rope snapped in two—your shot was dead on. He hit the ground below the gallows with half a noose hanging from his neck like a dead limb. He looked around in disbelief for all of a heartbeat before he bolted. Good. You had other matters to attend to.

The marshal was shouting, and the deputies were scrambling, all of their guns drawn. One spotted Arthur rounding the corner of the building and took aim. But you were faster, the gun already at your eye. You put a shot in close enough to scare the deputy senseless. If you could draw their attention to you, you could keep them off of Arthur’s back.

They searched wildly for the source of the second gunshot, either too dumb or too disoriented to look up. So when one made to run after Arthur, you put a third shot in at his feet, drawing him up short. It was then that the marshal spotted you.

“On the roof!”

All heads not busy ducking away under nearby awnings swung to you. You didn’t care. Let them look. You trained your sights on the marshal, ready to kill him if he so much as thought about going after Arthur. The others, Arthur could escape from, but a quick draw would be tricky to outrun. So you had vowed this morning that you would help Arthur escape Marshal Lawrence by any means necessary, even if it meant killing the man. You would do it for Arthur without a shred of doubt. So you kept your sights on the marshal while shots rang out in your general direction and he found cover and barked orders, even when he sent two of his deputies in the direction Arthur had gone. You’d given the outlaw enough time to get away. Those ropes binding his hands would be a problem, but you had no doubt he could find a good hiding spot in the meantime and solve that problem himself. Now, all that was left was for you to either escape or die trying. And from the look on that determined marshal’s face down the spine of your gun, escape would not come easy.

Once you were sure Arthur was in the clear and only had two deputies after him, you shouldered your gun and fled the roof. Instead of going the way you had come—the obvious way—you flung yourself over the back edge of the building and scaled down the steep roof of the first story. You were half-running, half-falling down it when you heard the unmistakable sound of footsteps in hot pursuit from where you had just come.

“They’re getting away!” a man yelled, and it was all you could do not to be overcome with terror when a shot rang out and struck the roof right beside you. You leapt over the edge, your knees buckling completely when you hit the ground just as another shot came raining down, barely missing you a second time. You wouldn’t risk turning and fighting how many men you had seen in pursuit, so you were immediately up again, gun at the ready, keeping under the roofline at a steady sprint. You turned a sharp corner and kept on, knowing all the banking turns would keep that deputy off your back. It really was a shame for the lawmen that they hadn’t built their gallows on the outside of town. Now all you had to do was hide in one of the many buildings surrounding you, stash your weapons and gun belt, and look as frightened as the rest of the town if you got caught.

You made turn after twisting turn, keeping the general direction of where you were headed. You didn’t run into anymore lawmen, just other fleeing townspeople, but you knew this wasn’t the hard part. The hard part would be getting out of town later. So you kept on, head down, hands steady. You could do this.

You heard occasional shouting, likely by the remaining deputies or angered townsfolk, but none too close. You finally found the perfect spot to stash your things—behind a wall that turned back on itself. You got behind it, threw your rifle down, and began unstrapping Arthur’s gun belt when a hand wrapped around your mouth and yanked you backward. You started to scream, panic paralyzing you.

“Shhhh,” came a deep voice you knew, his hand still covering your mouth to keep you quiet. “Just me.”

You spun around and pulled Arthur into you, crushing him to you. He laughed with the same quiet relief you felt. “It’s okay. I got you.”

You savored the feel of him hugging you back, alive and whole. Warm to the touch. You felt tears form in your eyes, spilling down your face.

“I got you,” he repeated. “Thanks for the save, by the way. That was a damn fine shot, hitting that rope.” He pulled away and looked down at you, smiling. It was the most rewarding sight in the world.

“I thought I- I didn’t think I would ever see you again.”

His close-lipped smile turned into something softer, something more caring as he said, “As much as you probably wished I would, I ain’t leaving here without you.”

You shoved him in the chest and laughed. That humor of his you loved so much, still here for you to enjoy. It took you until then to notice his hands were free, and the noose around his neck was gone.

“How’d you get rid of the ropes?”

“An outlaw can’t reveal all his secrets,” he said, winking at you. You felt a familiar flush of warmth within you at the sight. You thought to kiss him but couldn’t before he said, “You got a plan to get out of here, then?”

“I tied up Boadicea and Harriet outside of town behind some shed next to a house. We need to get to them before Marshal Lawrence and his deputies find them. I thought it would be best to wait until nightfall.”

Arthur shook his head. “They’ll be expecting that. And better prepared. I say we go now and hope we ain’t too outnumbered.”

“Sure.” You watched a plan form behind his eyes and felt pride like none other come alive within you. More than pride. Something nearly tangible it was so strong.

“Okay,” he said, his mind made up. “I think it best we-”

You spotted movement and shoved Arthur aside. A man with a badge stood not fifteen feet away, already aiming his gun. You reached for the only one you had within grasping distance—Arthur’s—and shot it at him. The gun kicked, and the man’s head exploded with red, the bullet digging into his eye and out of the back of his skull. You hadn’t- didn’t-

“Shit,” Arthur said, taking the gun from you. Not even a second passed, and the gun was pried away, and the man’s body was falling limp to the ground. There was so much blood. Bits of the inside of his head scattered around him, showering the brick of the building behind where he had stood. Not to mention the awful sound that was ringing through you, repeating, that unraveling of bone and blood and eye that should have been whole. You killed him. You did.

“We need to leave,” Arthur said. You could barely hear him, could barely feel his hand where it grasped your arm, tugging you on. “Now. That gunshot’ll draw anyone near.”

Arthur was right. You knew he was right. And still, you couldn’t pry your eyes away. So he pulled you away himself, grabbing your rifle and starting in a run. It was all you could do to follow.

The sight of the man dying flooded your vision. Arthur shoved your rifle in your hands, but you would be useless with it. He had his own gun back, and that was enough for you to replay that moment over and over again. You could stand to kill that awful marshal, but an innocent deputy?

“This way,” Arthur said lowly, turning a corner. The way beyond revealed the edge of town, and you could hardly believe escape was so close, like part of you didn’t want it anymore. Didn’t deserve it.

You followed Arthur along by more instinct than anything, as he asked you where your mounts were tied, and you couldn’t even say it. You pointed instead, revealing the house midway out of town. He tugged on your hand and headed for it.

The pair of you reached the house without running into anyone else. Arthur was rounding the corner of the house toward the very shed your molly and his mare waited behind when out stepped none other than the marshal, a despicable grin splitting his face.

“Going somewhere?”

Arthur shoved you behind him. All thought of the recent past fled at the sight of the present. From the looks of it, the marshal was alone and thereby outnumbered, but you were too distracted by what you had just done to even think about ending another life. That left the two of them. Arthur was quick with a gun, but quicker than the marshal?

“How’d you get here?” Arthur demanded.

“Seems the fine folks who own this place grew suspicious over the two extra equines behind their woodshed. They were all too happy to pass along the information.”

Time stood still a moment, and that loathsome noise of a skull cracking open began repeating again. But Arthur managed to stall it when he said, “All right. What do you say then, Marshal? Quickest draw walks away?”

“Arthur,” you hissed. Now wasn’t the time for such confidence. Not when all the two of you had risked to get here was moments away from unraveling.

“It would be my pleasure,” the marshal responded, that nasty smile returning. “Or, I could always haul you back in. I’m sure the town would be interested in having you back in its clutches, awaiting another hanging. You and your partner there.” He eyed you for all of a second. “A woman, no less.”

You grabbed Arthur to make him look at you. “Arthur, no. This is exactly what he wants.” But he wouldn’t look at you, eyes set on his opponent, jaw sharp with tension. You had half a mind to cause some sort of distraction no matter the consequence, but Arthur was sealing his fate before you could.

“This is between you and me, buddy.” To prove it, he pushed you away from him, never taking his eyes off of Lawrence.

“Arthur!”

Too late. He had already settled his gun at his side, mimicking the marshal, their stances ready.

“On three?” Lawrence taunted.

Arthur nodded sharply, and all thought of what you had just done got whisked away in the heat of the moment. He couldn’t do this to you. Not now.

You watched without breathing as the marshal began counting. They both stood stock still, waiting. And when three was shouted, they moved so fast that you staggered back, praying for mercy. Especially when two more men came rounding the corner of the woodshed, guns held high, badges flashing in the sun.

Watching, unbelieving, you were taken back to that day on the ridge outside of town, running scared while Arthur took on five men. You were taken back to Arthur mowing down those wolves while you cowered inside a tent. You could see it all clear as day now, because he had done it all, and now you knew how.

Before the marshal could even lift his arm, Arthur’s gun was firing, ringing out another harrowing note for you to dread. But you didn’t have to dread it for long, as any worry that his aim was off was crushed when the marshal went flying backward, that same splattering noise from before resounding. The report of the gun didn’t have a chance to echo before two more joined it, cracking again and again. You watched every moment of Arthur’s absolute determination, his perfect aim. He took all three men down with three shots. None of them had time to pull the trigger.

When the relentless sound ceased, all you could do was look to the three bodies now dead on the ground, in complete awe over Arthur’s ability. He wasn’t just fast—that was the work of legend. That was instinct and skill bound together so tightly no man could ever hope to rival it.

“Let’s go,” Arthur said, already ushering you toward the back of the shed. Every step nearer revealed the sound of nervous horse and mule, but you couldn’t even think about relief. Not as the smell of blood filled your nose, that sound of man dying plaguing you once more.

Arthur had his gun at the ready this time when he rounded the corner, but all that was revealed was Harriet, Boadicea, and three other horses—the lawmen’s.

“Last chance for a horse,” Arthur said, already at Boadicea’s side and digging through his saddle bag.

“No,” was all you could say. You stepped up to Harriet and ran a hand down her neck. She sniffed you in return, her wide eyes at all the commotion calming some. “Easy,” you murmured. And just like that, she grounded you. Centered you within the here and now. For as terrible as the day had been, she was here, alive as you were. So was Arthur. And when you watched him mount his horse and proceed to reload his gun faster than you’d ever seen a man do, you realized it wasn’t fear you were feeling. Not fear, or hopelessness, or even that nagging regret. You weren’t scared of Arthur and the things he could do. You were amazed. You were caught up in wondering how you had ever come across a man as fine and talented as this. And how you had ever won his favor. It lacked all notion of sense. But you shook the feeling off and vowed to put this town and all its evil behind you, at least until you were out of it. You put your foot in the stirrup and swung over Harriet.

“Ready?” Arthur asked, having Boadicea already pointed away from town. Without looking back, you nodded at him. He gave his horse a kick and a loud, “Yah!” and was off. You hesitated all of a breath before following him, wind whipping past, your molly running hard to close the gap between you. Like she knew wherever Arthur and Boadicea were, the two of you would never be far behind.

_________

Chapter eighteen is here.

tag list: @nayomi247 @ultraporcelainpig @photo1030 @spiritcatcherxo @calcarius445 @meet-me-backstage @marygillisapologist @formula1mount @oziozzioslo @lunawolfclaw

#arthur morgan #arthur morgan x reader #arthur morgan x female reader #high honor arthur morgan #rdr2 arthur morgan #rdr2 fanfic #rdr2 #fanfic #writing

57 notes · View notes

astraphone · 2 months ago

Text

the stubborn grace of being loved regardless

2.2k, blackwall/amber cadash. for as long as they’ve known each other, blackwall and inquisitor cadash have been keeping secrets from each other and from the world. when blackwall’s secret comes to light, amber feels it’s only fair to reveal a truth of her own.

Inquisitor Cadash is no stranger to lies.

Before she was the Herald of Andraste, before she was anyone at all, she was a kid in the slums of Ostwick trying to drum up whatever extra coin she could from unsuspecting passers-by. She was always a charmer, with a knack for convincing anyone that whatever useless trinket she was selling was worth buying. It was all but inevitable, for a surfacer with few other prospects, that her talent would catch the attention of the Carta, using that honeyed tongue to smuggle and sell lyrium to the highest bidder.

Not much has changed in the Inquisition, really. She’s still selling lies to anyone who will listen, just packaged differently and with much higher stakes: yes, I’m the Herald of Andraste. Yes, I’ve been chosen by your god, and yes, that makes me someone you should follow.

She’s not particularly proud of it. But she’s learned by now that what she believes is much less important than what the people around her do. Trick them into thinking you’re something holy, and they’ll move mountains.

As any good liar, Amber knows another when she sees one. She’s always known that Blackwall harbors some dark secret, and of course she’s wondered, but she’s never been one to trouble herself much with people’s pasts. There has always been an implicit understanding between the two of them—one without which she doubts they could have ever attempted a courtship—that their pasts are their own business, and she’s been content to leave it at that.

This, of course, all changes when the bastard goes and turns himself in.

When she goes to see him, he won’t look at her. He glances up briefly as she approaches his cell, just enough to see that it’s her, then returns to staring at his hands from where he kneels on the floor.

A cold panic has been building within Amber since she stood in the crowd before the gallows and heard his confession. He’s going to hang. He’s going to hang for something he did years before he met me, and he’s here on purpose, and he never said goodbye. Some of it recedes as she stands before him, the worst-case scenario of him being lynched by a mob of angry Orlesians not yet come to pass, at least.

“You weren't supposed to find me. You were just supposed to think I was gone.” His voice is a ragged, utterly broken thing.

“So I gathered. I wasn’t supposed to know where you went, or what happened to you, or why you abandoned me in the middle of the night without a word. Too fucking bad, Blackwall.” She’d intended to come in with more empathy for the man who’s certainly having one of the worst days of his life, but her worry for and fury at him have been warring in her mind since his disappearance.

He flinches as though she’d struck him. “I never wanted to hurt you. For what little that’s worth. I thought you’d be happier thinking I was a noble man, a Grey Warden, instead of this.”

She takes a careful step forward and sits cross-legged in front of the bars, easily close enough to touch him. She doesn’t, but he shrinks back anyway, like he’s afraid she might. “Well, I’m here now. You may as well tell me the rest of it.”

He sighs, visibly relaxing by a fraction when she makes no further move towards him. “I suppose it can’t get any worse.”

She sits silently as he tells her all of it. It’s a long story, and her focus slips once around the middle, but he knows the signs of that well enough by now, waiting patiently for her to regather her attention.

When he runs out of words, she’s quiet for another moment, not speaking until something like a plan has formed in her mind. “Okay. This isn’t ideal, but we have a few options. Storming the jail outright is probably unwise, but doable worst-case. Leliana could probably sneak you out, but… I know people who make a living off jail breaks. We’ll just need a delay on your execution, which I’m sure Josephine can arrange…”

She trails off as she realizes that Blackwall is staring at her, disgusted disbelief written plain across his face.

“Are you mad?” He jerks forward, rattling the bars of his cell. “Haven’t you been listening? I deserve to rot in here.”

There’s something almost feral in his eyes, but she doesn’t back away. “Listen to me, Blackwall. Or—” she falters, silently cursing her memory as she struggles to recall the unfamiliar name.

“Rainier,” he mutters.

“Rainier. Whoever. You came here to stop an execution. And that was very brave, and you succeeded, and you dying here isn’t going to make a single thing better. So now I’m going to get you back to Skyhold, and we’ll figure the rest out from there.”

She hadn’t for a second considered doing anything else. This isn’t the first friend Amber has had to break out of jail, or the first lover who’s confessed a crime to her. This, after all, is why she agreed to join the Inquisition—leverage to keep her people safe, no matter the circumstances.

“There’s nothing to figure out,” Blackwall snaps. “You know it all now. There’s no future for me outside this cell, and I was a fool to ever pretend there was.”

Every time he’d warned her they had no future together, she’d assumed he’d been referring to the Warden’s Calling. She’s almost insulted as she realizes that it’s been this all along—this, as if she doesn’t also have blood on her hands.

“You think you’re the only murderer here? I spent twenty years in the Carta. Would you see me hang for it?”

“You left that life behind.”

“So did you.”

“I ran from it, like a coward, and I left my men to die in my place.” He rises suddenly, like he’s unable to bear kneeling in front of her anymore. She stands with him, though he’s so much taller that she has to crane her neck to look at him properly.

“And I didn’t leave the Carta until an opportunity fell into my lap.” Despite her best efforts, her voice is rising to match his. “Let me be clear. I am very fucking angry at you right now, because, again, you left me and went off to die without a damned word. But I know what it’s like to have a past you’re not proud of. Maker, Blackwall, I married into one of the worst Carta families there is. You think I’d turn my back on you over this?”

“As I understand it, your marriage didn’t work out.”

“Because of the future she wanted. Not the past she’d already lived.”

“I’m not a good man, my lady.”

As if she’s a good woman. As if that’s ever been a prerequisite to her heart. “I love you. I don’t care.”

She’s never told him she loved him before, at least not in so many words. She’s certain he already knew, but he flinches again anyway. “You should care.”

“Well, tough shit! Is that a problem?”

“It’s not right! You would drag yourself down with me. You would drag the whole Inquisition down with me if you allowed me to return. You’re better than that, better than using your criminal ties for a traitor and a killer.”

“You—you—” She’s starting to stammer, as she tends to when she’s agitated, and she can’t help the tears of frustration that well in her eyes. She forces a breath, pulls her words together. “You put me on a fucking pedestal, you always have, and you’re wrong. You talk like I’m corrupting the Inquisition for my selfish means, but the Inquisition was built on my selfish means. Do you—do you want to know a secret, Rainier? You told me yours, so it’s only fair. This whole thing is a sham.”

In the end, it’s far easier to say than she thought it would be. One frustrated outburst, and the truth she’s guarded so closely all these months is out there in the world, no taking it back.

“What do you mean?” Blackwall asks slowly after a few agonizing seconds of silence.

“I don’t believe in any of this.” It’s a relief to finally say it out loud; some of the pressure in her chest that’s been there since the Conclave eases, just a bit. “I don’t believe in the Maker, I certainly don’t believe I’m the Herald of Andraste. I’ve been lying since I woke up in Haven, because I saw a chance for a better life and I stole it.”

“But you've always—” Blackwall’s eyes go distant, likely recalling everything he’s ever heard her say about her so-called faith. “What, truly?”

“Truly. And now you’re the only one who knows. So, what will you do? Expose me for a fraud? I won’t stop you.”

“No, I—of course not. I’m just…”

“Rethinking every conversation we’ve ever had?”

That, of all things, gets a snort out of him. “You know the feeling, do you? What a pair we make.”

“Frauds and liars both.”

He sinks back to the floor of his cell, his manic energy apparently spent, and she follows him back down. They sit there quietly for a moment, watching each other from either side of the bars. She wants, so badly, to reach out for him, but she keeps her hands at her sides.

“Was it to get away from the Carta?” He asks finally.

She nods. “I didn’t agree to stay until Leliana promised to bring Ingrid to Haven. I thought being such a… prominent figure would give us some protection if they came looking for us. I never expected it to go this far.”

“You wanted a better life for your daughter. There’s no shame in that.”

“Sure, fine. My reasons were good. But I’m, I’m important now, right? The things I say have weight in the world. And I’m pretending that’s a gift from a higher power and not dumb luck.” She shrugs. “Not saying I mind it, necessarily. Or that I wouldn’t do the same again. But I’m not going to pretend it’s noble.”

“What you do now is noble, though.”

“That’s my point. Look, you told me once that you signed on to the Inquisition because of the person I am, not who I was. One liar to another, maybe that’s what matters. Who are now, and who we want to be.”

And damn it all, she does want to be something better than she was, doesn’t she? However this whole mess started, she’s in too deep to back out now, and she doesn’t think she would if she could.

“You didn’t kill anyone for your lie.” Blackwall, stubborn ass that he can be, is still trying to argue the point.

“That’s not really true, though, is it? People follow me into battle because they think I’m blessed by the Maker. Some of them don't come home.”

“People follow you into battle because they see a woman worth following.”

“And if I weren’t the Herald, they’d see a lyrium-addled Carta thug who can’t think straight half the time.”

He looks aghast. “Surely that’s not how you see yourself?”

“No. But I know how people looked at me before all this. And I’d rather them see something else, even if it’s built on a lie.”

Blackwall’s hands twitch, like he’d been about to reach for her but reconsidered at the last second. “Your people adore you, and not just because you’re the Herald. Your mark closes rifts, but it’s not what makes you a leader, and they know it. Andraste herself could disavow you, and they wouldn’t stop believing in you.” A pause. “I wouldn’t stop believing in you.”

“See, you say things like that to me, and then you wonder why I want you around.” She says it lightly, but he scrubs a hand over his face like he’s just barely holding himself together.

“I—” he breaks off, voice strangled, “I didn’t want to leave you. But you deserve better than this.”

“Damn what I deserve,” she says fiercely. “I want you.”

The sound that comes out of his mouth at that is half-laugh, half-sob. Tentatively, Amber reaches her hand up through the bars to touch the side of his face. He closes his eyes, leaning into the touch.

“You are remarkable, my lady,” he says, barely above a whipser. “And you’re doing good, no matter the reason why you started.”

“So are you.”

He reaches up to take her hand in his, pressing a kiss to it before releasing it back to her. “What happens to me, if you get me out?”

It’s not quite acceptance, but it’s close enough for her to work with. “I haven’t thought that far ahead,” she admits. “But I’m not leaving you to die here.”

“That might not be your choice. Whatever you may want for me, Val Royeaux wants my head on a pike.”

“I wouldn’t worry. I'm the Herald of Andraste, remember?” She winks at him and he finally, finally, gives her a ghost of a smile. “I tend to get what I want.”

Whatever happens next, there are two fewer secrets between them today, and despite the rest, she feels lighter for it.

#dragon age: inquisition #inquisitor cadash #cadash #blackwall #blackwall x inquisitor #blackwall x cadash #dragon age fic #oc: amber cadash #cleo writes #ANYWAY. fraud4fraud: the fic has been simmering in my brain for years #so this was fun #couple things alluded to here:#Ingrid is Amber’s stepdaughter from a prior marriage who she adopts after her ex dies at the conclave #& the mentions of focus/memory/speech stuff are the result of a severe lyrium exposure incident pre-game #not really a place to explain either of those in the fic but they’re both big parts of her character so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯#cadashwall

18 notes · View notes

dcdreamblog · 5 months ago

Note

So Uncle Sam you're powered by belief in America right? Considering current events I'm not sure you're getting much belief huh.

(As this is the first question, gonna lay down some background. I want this to be as semi professional as I can make it) I met Sam on my lunch break where he normally hangs out, bringing my phone, my notepad and hopefully some questions from you all (I hadn't checked). Sam insisted it would be better if we did this someplace private. Bringing me down into the lower levels, past the labs where I sort artifacts into a disused conference area. He clicks the light switch in a specific rhythm which he tells me will disable the listening devices and cameras (we don't know what, if anything, the Perisphere's security is still feeding data to but putting a pin in that paranoia) He sits across from me at the table. I pour him a cup off coffee, I don't touch the stuff but he thanks me and I pull up my phone to the first question. Uncle Sam(US): "Should have known that it would be something contemporary..." *He crosses his arms and folds his legs, his lips tighten back and forth.* Me: "We can skip this one if you don't want t-" US: "No, no, it's a fair question. Being the way I am it's only right folks have got questions." *He tugs at his beard and sighs* "My friend. The untidy balancing act of my life is that both sides of the aisle think I'm rootin for the other guy." Me:"You mean the left thinks you're right. And the right thinks you're left?" US: "That's the modern way to say it, sure enough. To the progressives I'm a conservative icon. An image of the American empire, the army and congress and Tammany hall. To the conservatives I'm a naive softy, an idea for pinkos and reds and god knows what else. I don't know how to explain myself other than to repeat it for the 100th time." Me: "This is on the record, I'm certainly not going to stop you." US: *He sighs* "There's a lot more belief going around than you think. The fire at the base of my belly-" *He jabs himself in the sternum with his thumb* "Is the commandment "all men are created equal, endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." *He tips up his hat with his thumb, scratching the edge of his hairline* "Now I know the verbiage there is downright old fashioned. I can't apologize for it anymore than I can change it, but the heart of the matter is where it is. If you're out there, fighting to improve and hone and reforge the American experiment. You're fightin' with my hand on your shoulder." Me: "That sounds fairly progressive to my ear, but that might just be me." US: "Oh hell, the whole idea was radical back when we were throwing tea in the harbor. When John Brown stood on a gallows and showed half the country its ugly side. When a whole sprawl of folks stood on the national mall and said "I Have a Dream". It's just..." *He bites his lip* Me: "Some progressives are beyond that point now." US: *He sits up, nodding* "Same as it ever was. Using the right cause as an excuse to burn the whole thing down and spill a lot of blood along the way. That I won't never abide. Not in my nature. I saw revolutions to that effect. Saw where they lead. From a vantage not a lot of other folks get to have. Scares the sam hill out of me." *He pauses, waving the thought off* US: "Ah but those kinda folks'd never listen to me anyhow. Short answer turned long and then short again, I'm eatin' plenty, every time people keep that faith. On a march, in a parade, just help someone at risk with an open hand. Just...maybe believe there's some life left in this old Red, White and Blue? For me, folks?"

#dc #dcu #dc comics #dc universe #superhero #comics #tw unreality #unreality #unreality blog #ask game #ask blog #asks open #please interact #worldbuilding #usqna

20 notes · View notes

thatsmzbitchtoyou · 7 months ago

Text

The Witch and The Doctor Chapter 3

Bucky thought he could make a difference, getting a medical license and trying to change people’s minds. But the 1600s New World is a harsh place with cruel people. After being accused of witchcraft he makes a run for it, facing the dangers of the woods and the rumored witch that lives within them.

Warnings: violence; animal attack; mentions of death; smut; language

Previous chapter Next chapter

A few more weeks later they started the trek to the nearest village. It was a two day walk, Y/N and Bucky taking turns on the horse that was pulling a cart filled with the tinctures and some goodies and gifts Y/N had made for the children. In the afternoon of the second day they reached the outskirts of the village. Bucky slowed down considerably as the small houses came into view. He was still wary of people ever since his near death experience. Y/N reached down from the horse and held his hand. She gave his hand a squeeze and shot him a reassuring grin before urging the horse on.

Excited shouts sounded as they entered the outer edge of homes. Children started coming out from the houses, wide smiles on their faces as they ran down to the other homes and some further into the middle of the village to alert the adults. Some of them ran alongside them, trying to look into the cart for what she brought, many of them giving Bucky strange looks. When they came into the main center Y/N stopped the horse outside a long wooden building and Bucky helped her hop down from the horse. The children immediately walked up to her, giving her hugs and pulling on her cloak.

“Y/N!”

“You’re back!”

“The witch is here!”

More adults started to walk forward, watching with polite smiles. “Hello, my little darlings!” Y/N greeted them. “It’s been so long. Is that you, Peter? You’ve grown so much!” She reached out and touched their hands and faces, Bucky seeing small, glowing blue dots that appeared where she touched them that quickly faded. “Let me get settled, then I’ll present gifts,” she winked at them and they all giggled or cheered. She turned to Bucky. “Man the cart, or else they’ll nick them all,” she said seriously, and he nodded dutifully. He got the horse settled and fed as she walked into the long building, then sat on the edge of the cart, watching the children as they milled around it, trying to sneak peeks of what she brought.

“Who are you?” a boy asked.

“My name is Bucky,” he introduced himself.

“Why are you here with Y/N?” a girl asked.

“Well, she helped me a while ago, and I’ve been staying with her ever since,” he said, not wanting to give away too much information. “And now I’m just here to help her.”

“How did she help you?” another one yelled out.

“Um…that’s a long story,” he said with a tight smile.

“We’d like to hear it,” one of the adults chimed in.��

“Alright, well, it’s a dangerous story,” Bucky started, giving the children a smirk and a cocked eyebrow. They all moved closer to him, hanging on his every word. “Many weeks ago, I was woken up in the middle of the night by people grabbing me and pulling me from my bed,” he started, leaning forward.

“Why?” a little boy asked.

“I’m a doctor,” he continued. “But they didn’t understand that what I was doing was to help them, so they thought I was a witch,” he whispered.

A collective gasp came from the small crowd. “Like Y/N?”

“Yes,” Bucky nodded. “But I’m not a witch. Just a doctor,” he said. “They tried to take me to the gallows to be hanged.” Another gasp. “But I escaped and ran into the woods. I kept running until I got lost. And then,” he paused, leaning forward again. The children were staring at him wide-eyed. “I came across…a bear!” They all gasped again, a few of them crying out. “It chased me! I ran further into the woods, trying to get away, but it was gaining on me. I found a clearing through the trees and saw a house and called for help,” he said, getting more animated as he told the story. One of the small children near his legs was clutching at his knee. “I tried to trip up the bear, but I fell, and then it came up behind and swiped at my back!” he said, making a kind of claw with his hand and swiping it through the air. The adults looked just as intrigued as the children, wide eyes and mouths agape as he told the story.

“I was sure I was going to die, that it would eat me. And as I tried to crawl away, I heard a scream pierce the night,” he said dramatically. “A ring of blue fire separated me from the bear, and a figure stood in front of me, scaring the bear off,” he said quietly. “Do you know who it was?”

“Y/N?” another child asked just as quietly.

Bucky nodded, a smile spread across his face. “Y/N saved me from the bear. She took care of me, and helped me heal. And now I’m here,” he perked up. “Helping out wherever I can.”

“Do you have scars?” a boy asked, eyeing him suspiciously.

“Yes,” Bucky nodded.

“Can we see?” a man asked.

Bucky looked around at everyone, all of them nodding their heads, wanting to see the evidence of such a tall tale. “Uh…yes,” he said. He slowly stood and removed his overcoat, then turned so his back was facing everyone. He pulled up his shirt enough so everyone could see, and another collective gasp was heard among the crowd of people as they gazed upon his scarred back, the four long, jagged scratches from the bear’s claws reaching from his left shoulder down to his right hip. He let them all look for a moment before letting his shirt fall and turning back around, putting his coat back on.

“Did it hurt?” a girl asked.

“Yes, very much,” Bucky nodded.

The children were all awestruck at the story as Y/N came back down the stairs from the long building. “Scaring the children already, Bucky?” she teased.

The children all turned to her. “You saved him from a bear?” “Did you use magic?” “Did you kill the bear?”

Y/N’s eyes widened as she looked at Bucky. She smiled at him conspiratorially. “I did save him, no I didn’t kill the bear, and yes, just a little magic helped,” she said, walking up to stand next to him. “And now he owes me a life of servitude.”

Bucky laughed and bowed to her. “Yes, my lady.”

Y/N nudged him playfully. “Now, darlings,” she leaned down, “gifts?”

The children all cheered and she smiled. Bucky helped her give out small bags of goodies, filled with small carved toys, warm socks for the winter and treats that were hard to come by out in rural areas like theirs. They were all excited, the adults giving her wide smiles and thanks as she gave them all out.

“Will you be trading again?” a woman asked as she herded her children away from the cart after they got their gifts.

“Yes, starting tomorrow morning,” Y/N nodded.

The woman nodded, seeming pleased. As the crowd dispersed Y/N got the cart unloaded and the horse tied up in the stable next to the long building, then she and Bucky brought the rest of the things inside the building. When they walked in he saw it was a lodging home, a bar running along one side of the building with a kitchen in the back, and the other side a hallway leading to individual rooms. The people inside were eating already and Y/N led him through the tables of people to a room in the corner of the lodge. She unlocked the door and he followed her inside. It was a small room, with just enough space for a bed. They put the tinctures and other things she’d brought for trade in the corner, and put their personal things in another corner. Bucky smiled to himself at the idea of still sharing a bed with her here.

“Hungry?” she asked, taking off her cloak and tying up her hair, turning to look at him.

“Starving,” he answered.

Y/N laughed and led him back out to the bar. They ordered some food and sat at an open table to wait. Bucky looked around the lodge, watching the people talking to each other, observing the layout and the homey feeling as the large fireplace kept it warm and toasty. After a while the food was ready and they ate together, talking about their day and the children and how tomorrow would be as they traded in the market. Once they finished they went back to the room.

Y/N sighed heavily. “Well, I’m going to try to get some sleep,” she said. She turned and started to rummage through her bag.

“I’ll do the same,” Bucky added, shedding his boots and starting to take off his coat.

They had changed in front of each other before, but had always turned away to give each other privacy, but in this tiny room there was nowhere else to hide. Bucky kept his eyes down as he traded his pants for the warmer pair that he wore at night. As he took his shirt off to trade it for a night shirt he looked up and saw Y/N was changed into her nightgown, already looking at him with a strange expression.

“What?” he asked.

Her eyes traveled down his torso then snapped up to his eyes. “Nothing,” she squeaked.

Bucky eyed her as he shook out his shirt. “Uh huh,” he said unconvincingly.

She quickly looked away. “It’s been a while since we looked at your scars,” she said quietly.

Bucky stopped. His back had overall been healing well, but every once in a while when he stretched or was doing harder labor a sharp pain would sting through his back. Otherwise it was just generally sore or a little tender along the scars some days. “It has,” he agreed slowly. “Do you want to check on them for me?”

Y/N looked up at him again. She nodded and he nodded back. He stepped to the bed and sat turned away from her so she could look at his back. He felt her sit behind him, then her fingers touching his skin lightly. She ran her fingers along the scars slowly, and Bucky could see a small blue glow coming from his peripheral as she moved. The tender spots that he still had were starting to relax at her touch, the soreness in his back lessening everywhere she moved, making his head hang low in relief. He sighed as she traced down from the top of his shoulder to his hip, a shiver running down his spine.

“Does that help?” Y/N whispered.

“Yes, very much,” he whispered back to her.

Y/N’s fingers seemed to twitch against his hip, then he felt the bed dip a little as she leaned forward. He froze at the feeling of her lips kissing the spot in between his shoulder blades. “Good,” she whispered again, her breath tickling his skin. She pulled away and Bucky slowly turned to look at her. She wasn’t looking at him but instead stood quickly and started turning down the bed.

Bucky stared at her for a moment, his mouth agape in shock, until she laid down in the bed and he quickly put his nightshirt on. He moved to settle down next to her, and she instinctively snuggled closer to him as he made sure the blanket covered them both. He held her close as she nuzzled his chest. They said nothing as they drifted off to sleep.

***

The next morning Bucky woke to Y/N cuddled in his arms. It was like neither of them had moved all night. She was breathing deeply, her eyes moving behind her eyelids. He watched her sleep, smiling at the peaceful look on her face and her snoring. He gently moved some hair away from her face and tucked it behind her ear, the movement making her slightly squirm in his arms. He closed his eyes and cursed himself for waking her up as she hummed and started to stretch. He felt her shift in his grasp, yawning and moving to sit up on her elbow. She was quiet for a moment, then he felt her finger softly and slowly run down from his forehead to the tip of his nose.

“Bucky,” she called out quietly. He pretended to wake up slowly, opening his eyes and looking up at her. She smiled at him. “G’morning,” she greeted him.

“‘Morning,” he said, smiling back at her.

“Come on, let’s get going,” she said, climbing over him to get dressed.

They quickly got ready and then went out to the bar area to get some food. After they finished they loaded up the tinctures and other things and brought them back outside to the cart. As Bucky fed the horse Y/N got everything set up. The people started coming up to her quickly, trading fabrics, food, a new knife, clothes, and some types of money or trinkets that she could use to pay the lodge for her tinctures.

“You must come to the solstice festival tonight,” one of the women was saying to Y/N as Bucky walked back to the cart to help.

“Wouldn’t miss it,” Y/N smiled at her.

The woman turned to Bucky. “And you, too, storyteller.”

“Of course,” Bucky smirked. The woman smiled at him then nodded to Y/N and walked away. He turned to look at her. “What does this solstice festival entail?”

Y/N sat on the cart. “Music, dancing, lots of mead, and a little magic show,” she said, a mischievous smile on her face.

“A magic show?” he asked, his eyebrows shooting up. He took a step toward her, leaning down so no one else would hear. “Do these people know you have actual magic?”

Y/N gave him a reassuring smile. “Yes, Bucky. We’ll be fine. I told you, they don’t ask too many questions. I’m just the lady who brings them nice things to trade.”

Bucky eyed her warily before nodding. “If you feel alright about it, then so do I.”

Y/N hummed. “You sure you want to trust the witch in the woods?”

Bucky laughed and put an arm around her shoulders. “I’m still not scared of you, witch,” he murmured, kissing her hair.

“Oh, but you should be,” she chuckled, squeezing the hand that was over her shoulder.

Later that night, after all the tinctures were bartered or sold, the village was bustling with people bringing out handmade decorations and food and setting up tables and seating. In the middle of the center stood a tall pole with ribbons attached to the top in all different colors and a bonfire close by. Bucky was helping set up a table as Y/N came out of the lodge in a new outfit he hadn’t seen before. She was wearing the cloak he saw the night she saved him, her hair braided and tied up with ribbons, a long dress the color of cherries, embroidered with rune designs in a gold thread and hemmed with fox fur. He gawked at her change in attire as she approached him.

“Close your mouth, Bucky,” Y/N smirked at him.

He shut his open mouth and blushed. “You look…beautiful, lovey.”

Y/N’s eyes widened and a blush painted her cheeks at the pet name. “Oh, thank you,” she said quietly.

“Where were you hiding this?” Bucky laughed, trying to lighten the heavy moment as he reached out and fingered the hem of her sleeve.

Y/N laughed with him. “It’s only for the winter solstice. It’s Yule,” she smiled. “Time for a celebration.”

As the night wore on and the people wrapped the ribbons around the tall pole, set alight a yule log on an altar, decorated some of the trees around the edges of the village and shared food and mead, the children started to surround Y/N.

“Magic! Magic! Magic!” they chanted, looking at her expectantly.

Y/N gave Bucky a cocked eyebrow then nodded to the children who all cheered and ran back to their families around the ribbon pole. Y/N walked out to the middle by the pole, the people clapping and cheering for her. She raised her hands and they fell silent. An eerie quiet crept over the crowd, interrupted only by the crackling of the fire. A moment later Y/N let out a scream like the one Bucky heard that night she saved him, then dropped her hands and the blue ring of fire encircled her. A few shouts and screams rang out, Bucky watching on in awe. She started to move her hands in specific ways, circles and twitches of her fingers, muttering something under her breath, and the blue ball of light appeared between her hands. She threw it into the crowd, and it bounced along the ground to the tables and on top of people’s heads, making the children laugh. They chased the ball and it hopped along as Y/N created more shapes and colors. The orbs turned into outlines of animals, a glowing fox that ran around the bonfire, a deer that pranced into the woods, a wolf that howled and disappeared into the night air. Y/N was dancing around the ring of fire and started singing a song that the people joined in on.

Bucky felt like she was working them into a frenzy and he couldn’t help but hum along to the song he didn’t know. The blue orb that danced around the children got bigger and bigger and started bowling along the ground, getting faster and faster. They dodged out of its way as it hurtled around the ring of fire until it joined in the fire, making it a large blaze. The flames engulfed Y/N, and Bucky became worried. The fire licked around her cloak and her hands, but she didn’t stop dancing and singing. Finally at the end of the song Y/N screamed again and raised her hands, the fire rising above the ground and into the air above them all. Her hands were shaking as she brought them closer together, then with a grunt she clapped her hands together. The flame ascended like an arrow shot into the sky, then exploded and became a recreation of the northern lights, flowing through the sky and around the clouds in waves that seemed to sparkle above them.

The people all cheered, a chorus of “oohs” and “ahs,” whistles and clapping erupting in the forest clearing, the children all running up to Y/N and hugging her and laughing in delight. Bucky’s eyes widened as the lights above lit up the forest around them, and he smiled at the joy she brought them all. As if his love for her couldn’t get any deeper, he felt himself melting at the scene in front of him.

Y/N hugged the children and slowly walked back to Bucky. When she reached him he opened his arms to her, and she gladly accepted his embrace. “You are amazing,” he whispered into her ear.

Y/N shivered at his breath on her ear. She looked up at him. “It’s just a little magic,” she breathed.

Shortly after the festival ended, the people put the tables away and walked back to their homes, dragging their children back from the festivities. Y/N and Bucky helped clean up before walking back to the lodge. As they walked through the opening to the hallway the lodge owner called out to her. “Y/N! You must honor tradition!” he called out.

She turned to him confusedly. He motioned above her head and she looked up to see a small garland of mistletoe above her. Y/N laughed as Bucky looked up at it next to her. “What is this?” he asked.

“Mistletoe,” Y/N said. “If you walk underneath it with someone you must kiss them.” Bucky looked at her incredulously. She smirked up at him and suddenly grabbed his collar, pulled him down to her height and kissed him. Bucky froze at first, hearing a cheer sound from the people in the lodge, then quickly kissed her back. After a moment Y/N pulled away as the people near them all laughed and clapped, and she stared up at him in wonder.

“Happy Yule!” they chanted. She quickly let go of his collar and turned back to them, smiling and bidding them a “Happy Yule” before turning to their room. Bucky followed her, still in shock, a few of the men near him giving him a pat on the back. When he closed the door behind them he watched her quickly shed her cloak and start unbuttoning the solstice dress. She didn’t look at him, keeping herself busy as he stared at her.

“That was…unexpected,” he finally said.

Y/N finally looked at him as she finished unbuttoning her dress, pulling at a few strings and shedding it until she stood in front of him in her underdress that left very little to the imagination. Bucky quickly looked away, turning to give her privacy. “Well, tradition is tradition,” she replied quietly.

“What happens if you don’t?” he asked.

“Bad luck in marriage,” she said, and he heard her getting into the bed. “At least for me, not so much for you.”

“Why?” he asked as he turned back to look at her.

“Because I am a woman, so I must obviously want to marry eventually,” she sighed. “But I also don’t want to upset the people and their traditions.”

Bucky’s brow furrowed. He shook his head and quickly got himself into his night clothes and got into the bed next to her. “Will we be leaving tomorrow?” he asked quietly.

Y/N yawned as she settled in. “Yes,” she said. “Don’t want to overstay the welcome.”

Bucky frowned again. “I think you underestimate how much these people actually like you,” he said. “Not just the children for your magic.”

Y/N stared at him for a moment, seemingly stunned by his words, her eyes flicking back and forth between his eyes. She slowly smiled at him and looked away bashfully. Her expression made Bucky laugh and he tickled her neck, making her squeal. After a short fit of giggles she snuggled close to him. “Thank you, Bucky,” she said quietly.

Bucky embraced her, cuddling her close. “You’re welcome, lovey.”

#marvel #smut #bucky barnes #bucky barnes x reader #bucky barnes fanfic #series fanfic #doctor!bucky barnes #witch!reader #chapter 3 #puritans #1600s

27 notes · View notes

stenshale · 3 months ago

Note

What if they weren’t too late………. kanders 😈

i know you added a devil emoji anon but this is like, 2% angst. sorry

(prompt from here!)

“So,” Varric started, leaning back on his palms, the very picture of nonchalance, “how’s your assistant?”

He knew his name, of course. He’d tried to give him a nickname of his own- Thumpy, for the force magic, or whatever it was- but Blondie had gotten weird about it, all cagey and huffy, so it was dropped. Now, he was Blondie’s Assistant.

Varric had no sense for magic- less, even, than most dwarves, he’d wager, and that was saying a lot- but he could practically feel the ripple in the healing spell as Anders’ hands twitched above the arrow wound in Varric’s hamstring.

“He’s fine.”

“Just fine, huh?”

Anders shot him a scowl. “Varric.”

He held up a hand defensively, still leaning his weight on the other. “Just making small talk. No need to bite my head off.”

He glowered for a moment longer, then dropped his gaze back to Varric’s injury. He was silent for a few long minutes, and Varric could hear the comforting sound of The Hanged Man slowly filling with patrons downstairs. Whoever it was that did the whole dinner bell thing with his Mabari would get a kick out of the way the distant starting of drunken arguments made him drowsy.

He had nearly fallen asleep in the time it took for Anders to speak again.

“I’m glad we found him when we did,” Anders murmured, not looking at him. “He hadn’t gotten my last letter. The templars must have intercepted it.”

Templars and secret mage correspondence was a recipe for disaster, true. Varric nodded, but didn’t speak— Blondie wasn’t the talk-to-fill-the-silence type (and Varric wondered if that was due in part to the extra passenger in his skull causing its own racket, though he’d yet to ask), but if you got him going, he’d usually keep it up for a good while.

“There’s a mercenary group that was heading further north, and he was supposed to go with them. Got the coin together for it and everything.”

“He wasn’t keen on the mercenaries?”

“He wasn’t keen on leaving.” Maybe it was just the angle, but Varric could swear he saw Anders’ face soften, lips twitching by scarce degrees. “He’s the smartest idiot you’ll meet. He all but reinvented force magic from the ground up, but he can’t figure out when it’s time to run.”

Varric shrugged. “You can let the bird outta the cage, Blondie, but you can’t make it fly.”

“It’s like he doesn’t care,” and, oh, that would certainly work. If there was one way to get Blondie talking, it was by getting him nice and angry. “He can’t even leave the clinic for fear of the templars. It’s like- it’s like he traded one prison for another, and he’s pretending to be fine with it.”

“Maybe he is fine with it. You consider that?”

Anders scowled for a moment longer, then he slumped forward, boneless, running one hand over his face. “...We can’t just pick up where we left off. Fuck, the first time he saw the outside of Kinloch Hold and was old enough to remember was when they sent him to the Gallows. The world is so much bigger than that, and he deserves to see it. And I’m not… I’m not the man he- knew. If not for Justice, maybe, but…”

“It’s not as big as you’d think. Being everything to each other in a little world still means being a whole lot in a bigger one.”

“No one said anything about everything.”

“Didn’t need to. Every time I come to the clinic, he’s giving you those big, sad puppy dog eyes.”

“He is not.” Anders was still covering his eyes, but Varric didn’t miss how the tips of his ears started to turn red. Speaking of precious.

“You wouldn’t know. He only does it when you’re not looking.”

Anders grumbled something, then shook his head and rose to his feet. “You should be alright to walk.”

“Thanks, Blondie.” Varric flashed his most winning, toothy smile. Anders just nodded, starting towards the door.

“Hey.”

Anders turned halfway, looking at Varric out of the corner of his eye. “Hm?”

“Talk to him, will you? Worst that happens is he leaves, and you’re trying to drive him away anyway, right?”

Anders turns back around and lets out a long, drawn-out sigh. “...Maybe. There's a lot of work to be done.”

Without another word, Anders was gone. Varric stretched, leaning back onto his pillow and letting out a breath he hadn’t realized he'd been holding.

#joy.doc #dragon age #anders #karl thekla #varric tethras #kanders #also a lil side helping of vanders because i know what im about #i might write a follow-up to this its compelling me rn #i think karl's known he was in love with anders for a long long long long time. but it takes anders a while to get there #he just keeps coming up with new excuses for why it wasnt love. and they are all wrong of course but he keeps making them

19 notes · View notes

mads-weasley · 21 days ago

Text

27. The Cost

Hvitserk Ragnarsson x Eira Torsteinsdottir (OFC)

Series Masterlist

Main Masterlist

Word Count: 1.1k

The Seer's hut was far behind him, but his words followed Hvitserk like a shadow.

"A hand reaches for you in the dark...It knows you are afraid."

Hvitserk pulled his cloak tighter around his shoulders, though it did nothing to ward off the biting morning air...or the gnawing unease curling in his stomach.

The Seer had given him nothing. Just more riddles, more questions, more things he didn't want to think about.

"A choice between the path that was given to you... and the one you are afraid to take."

What did it mean?

And why, out of everything the Seer told him, was that the part that clung to him the most?

He exhaled sharply through his nose, trying to shake the thoughts loose. The streets of Kattegat were beginning to wake: the clatter of market stalls being set up, the low murmur of early traders, the bleating of goats, the distant clang of metal from the blacksmith's forge. Everything was normal.

But something felt wrong. It started with the way people moved.

As Hvitserk neared the square, he noticed the stall vendors, townsfolk, and shieldmaidens passing through. They weren't stopping, but they weren't acting exactly right, either. Some walked faster than usual, heads ducked, eyes flicking away from something up ahead. Others stood in small clusters, whispering.

Hvitserk slowed his steps, his brow furrowing as he followed their gazes.

And then, he saw them: bodies hanging in the square.

Hvitserk's feet stopped cold before them. Three men. Each dangled limply from the gallows, their faces covered in frost and blood. His gaze swept over the bodies quickly, only to flick back to the one in the middle.

His heart fell to his stomach as dread filled him.

Arne.

Hvitserk focused on his face. It was barely recognizable...swollen from a beating, smeared with dried blood, his skin stretched from the rope around his throat. But he knew. He knew by his figure, his dirty blonde hair, the wedding band around his finger.

He had been right.

"You know what will happen when they get caught."

His own words echoed in his mind. He had warned Eira, but she had believed they could change things.

And now, Arne was dead. A rebel's fate. The price for defying his brother.

Hvitserk clenched his jaw, grinding his teeth as frustration and guilt twisted in his chest. He had known this would happen, but knowing didn't make it easier to see a familiar face hanging lifeless from a rope. He swallowed hard, his throat painfully dry.

Where was Eira?

He turned abruptly, scanning the crowd, his eyes darting from face to face. She wasn't here. Her pain-filled eyes flashed in his mind along with their conversation about losing people they loved. And in the night, another name had been added to her list...but she didn't know that. Not yet.

He needed to find her. Now.

Hvitserk moved through the streets without thinking, his feet instinctively carrying him to the place they always did. He couldn't get his mind to calm its frantic and jumbled thoughts.

Eira had lost another person she loved.

His brother had taken another piece of her life.

The thought made his stomach twist.

Arne wasn't just a rebel to her. He had been a friend, someone she trusted and believed in enough to defend his actions even when Hvitserk warned her it would end like this.

Did she regret it now?

He knew loss, and so did she. They both knew the weight of it, how it could break something inside you that would never be whole again. She had already been carrying so much, already mourning Vali. And now, his brother had made sure she had one more grave to visit.

Would she blame him?

He wanted to believe she wouldn’t...wanted to believe she knew him better than that. But when she looked at him, would she see Ivar?

Would she wonder if he had told his brother? If he had stood by and done nothing while Arne was dragged to his death?

She knew where his loyalty had always been—even if he hated it, even if it sickened him, even if it pulled him apart at the seams.

He could already imagine her voice, could hear it: sharp, biting.

"Did you know, Hvitserk? Did you do nothing?"

Gods, he would deserve it.

He hadn't told Ivar about Arne, but he hadn't stopped this either. Hadn't done anything to prevent it. And wasn't that the same thing?

Hvitserk dragged a hand down his face, exhaling harshly. His pace quickened and his boots struck the ground harder.

Eira wouldn't cry.

He knew that much. Not in front of anyone. Not even him.

And when she finally did let herself feel it, it wouldn't be with tears. It would be with anger.

Would she turn it on him? Would she look at him the way people looked at his brother? Would this be the moment when she finally pushed him away?

The Seer's voice echoed in his skull—low, rasping.

"A choice between the path that was given to you...and the one you are afraid to take."

What if this was the gods telling him his time was up?

What if Eira was the last thing holding him to this place, and after today, he had nothing left?

Hvitserk forced himself forward, each step faster than the last.

He had to find her, but he wasn't quite ready for the look in her eyes.

Knock.

No answer.

Knock.

He huffed sharply as worry shot through him. That was it.

Hvitserk pushed the door open. "Eira?"

Nothing.

His eyes scanned the room and searched for any sign of her. But the bed was empty, her cloak gone, his plate and cup still sitting on the table from earlier. It was clear she hadn't been home since he'd left. But where was she?

A panicked thought ran through his mind: What if Ivar had her? What if they connected her to the rebellion?

No, no, no—

His panic tightened its grip around his throat, and he turned sharply, nearly stumbling as he returned to the door.

And then, he heard it.

A scream.

Not just any scream...a woman's scream. Piercing. Agonized. Heartwrenching. It came from the direction of the square.

Hvitserk froze, his blood running cold. For a heartbeat, he couldn't move. His mind spiraled into the worst possibilities. Then, instinct took over and he bolted towards the sound.

He had been right about Arne.

But Gods help him—he didn't want to be right about this too.

"No matter what you choose, the gods will take their due."

tag list: @purplerose291 @heyitsayjayy @severesharkkid

A/N: message or comment if you want to be added to the tag list! <3

12 notes · View notes

lizadale · 10 months ago

Note

Sorry to bother, do you have any writing of research arc? The drawings of the Shadow Queen meeting look so exciting!

i have like.......the beginning of the arc i can post, i guess. since i haven't posted anything of dimigi au in 62 years. it's only 3000 words though, don't get excited

[]

You despise sea travel.

Getting to Rogueport will be the hardest part of this undertaking, you hope. You are already thanking whatever star is watching over you for allowing you to be born an Ancient of Way, so you will not need a repeat of traveling while half-slung over the starboard railing of a rickety boat.

“Doesn’t floating in midair kind of go the same way?” Luigi asks, sympathetically holding your hair back.

No, it doesn’t. When you put yourself in the air, you’re controlling the air currents and making use of them. The ocean waves are not controllable, and just the thought of getting lost in them was enough to almost turn you away from this journey. There is too much at stake now, but only because Luigi’s dominant element is water did you resign yourself to the one available route to this abhorrent place with the feeble assurance that if something where to happen to the boat, he might not let you drown.

You never actually vomit, but you constantly feel like you should be. It’s a nausea that permeates your core and makes you wobble even when you get to solid ground; Luigi dutifully picks you up and carries you under his arm out of sight of the pier. You close your eye and tip your feet upward for some semblance of equilibrium until the wave passes out of you, and he sets you down on something wooden. He rolls you onto your left arm and sits beside you patiently.

Even when you start to recover, the smell of the town doesn’t exactly provide any relief. Even Earth didn’t smell this bad. You crack your eye open, but Luigi is sitting so close to you that all you can see is the dark denim of his jeans, so you roll onto your back. Directly above you hangs a loop of thick rope, swinging gently in the sea breeze.

“Oh, this is charming,” you drawl as your head clears.

“Are you feeling better?” Luigi leans back on his hands and peers down at you, like the both of you resting on a gallows is an ordinary activity, like it’s just a normal piece of furniture. “Mario says you should lay on your left side if you’re nauseated. Something about where your organs are located.”

“People die here,” you remind him, if only to measure whether he knows where he’s sitting.

He pats the wood almost affectionately. “Nah,” he says. “It’s just a threat.”

You sit up and pull your hood over your face when you see how many bystanders are milling about. No one in Rogueport seems to have any real agency, from what you can tell. One might classify them as professional loiterers. Still, the sight of two people lounging around a noose will always cause some odd looks.

The reason Luigi chose the gallows as a seat, you discover by looking at your surroundings, is most likely because it is the least dirty spot in this square. There is trash everywhere, from solid plastic or metal waste to decades of grime lining the eroding cobblestone, and yet the wooden structure in the middle of town remains eerily pristine, like everyone is afraid to sully it. A threat, he said.

“You can tell?” you ask with interest.

Luigi stands and checks his pants for splinters. “Fear leaves a strong residual,” he says. “It’s pretty easy to tell what’s been used to kill someone.”

Which is an entirely irrational thing to say unless you’re the Moon, you suppose. You do not envy empaths.

You let him grab your hand and haul you up off the wooden steps and toward the edge of town, where the buildings begin to look more and more dilapidated, but you always have had trouble stemming your curiosity.

“So, if someone handed you a gun,” you start, wondering if this is similar to when he somehow knew by touching the sofa that Merlon had been in the house, “you would know how many people were killed by it?”

He has the gall to look confused. “Uh, have you ever seen a gun? The bullet is the part that kills people. I mean, unless you pistol-whip someone to death—”

“A sword, then,” you offer, refusing to let him bypass the question by being obtuse.

He huffs, annoyed at the conversation topic. “Not how many,” he admits. “Just if it had been used that way. It gives off an…unpleasant feelin—Oh. Hey, now.”

You pass under an archway as you talk, and at this point a bandit attempts to pickpocket Luigi by pretending to accidentally shoulder check him as he hurries past. Unfortunately for said bandit, Luigi has intimidating reflexes. The bandit’s hand barely makes it into the back pocket of his pants when Luigi slaps his hand over it to keep him still, resulting in the reprobate getting yanked backward with misplaced inertia.

“If you’re gonna touch my ass in broad daylight, can you at least offer me a drink?” Luigi complains. “You’re gonna give me a reputation here…”

Looking horrified, the bandit jerks his hand back and skitters into an alley so quickly he trips at least twice along the way.

“Flirting with strangers makes them less likely to steal from you,” Luigi offers in place of any sane, logical reasoning, and you really wish you didn’t want to kiss him for spending the last five minutes acting absolutely unhinged.

Because this town is far too filthy to kiss anyone in, and also because even though he might not realize it you are wearing his socks, you point out, “That doesn’t work on me.”

“That’s why I said strangers.”

He brings you to a pipe, and more so than with the threat of the rolling ocean you feel as if this stunt should be aborted immediately. The look on your face does not pass inspection.

“It’s not that bad,” he tells you, exasperated. “I told you it was underground. And this was your idea.”

“And it’s a good one,” you insist, trying to convince yourself more than him. You motion toward the offending obstacle. “Go on, then. I’ll meet you there.”

He rolls his eyes at you and then hops into the pipe. You wait for a minute to pass, and then you blindly teleport the same way you did in Shiver Valley, promptly landing in a jumble of limbs on a hard stone floor.

“Do you have to warp directly on top of me?” Luigi groans, extracting his elbow from under your head and checking for bruises.

“That is how it works. My destination becomes wherever you happen to be existing at any given moment.”

“Can we get that fixed?”

You sniff. “You wish to rid yourself of my benign graces?”

In response, he shoves you off and you nearly roll down a set of stairs.

The underground isn’t at all what you expected; there is a whole other city buried underneath Rogueport, and it wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say it’s in better shape than the newer additions. The passageways are carved carefully, still solid and ornate despite the obvious signs of aging. Some of the iron fencing remains, there are small alcoves that resemble what may have been housing at some point in time, and other more complete structures that look to be either repurposed or currently occupied.

“I think we want to go this way,” Luigi says, heading down the stairs. “Mario made it sound like it’s at the bottom.”

You tear your eyes away from the ruins, with some difficulty. Did she do this? All by herself?

“This place,” you start hollowly, and Luigi turns and tilts his head.

“For someone who wanted to come here, you sure act like you don’t know a whole lot about it,” he murmurs suspiciously.

“I told you I have never been here. I only have a vague idea of the history—”

“But you know enough about the Shadow Queen to think she has something that can help us.”

—Urk. This is not how you wanted the subject broached. “I know that, before Blumiere touched it, she was the previous owner of the Dark Prognosticus,” you say carefully. “And I’ve heard that she had a massive library of stolen books that could be relevant to your plight.”

That last part is a bit misleading. You know she had a massive library, both of books and relics, many of which were too dangerous to go near. In particular, you know the witch had a grimoire. She often left it open and unattended on a lectern in said library, daring others to touch it; and that is how you knew that you absolutely under any circumstances should not even breathe in its direction.

There is no necessity, you think, to disclose to Luigi that the Shadow Queen has any sort of relation to you. In truth, she really doesn’t. She simply owned the house you grew up in, and maybe taught you a few choice spells should the need arise for you to kill someone on her behalf. You were raised mostly by her Sisters, and you dutifully referred to your caretaker as ‘Mother’ at her behest, but you would argue that doesn’t really mean anything. There was no sentimental value between the two of you; had there been, she might not have abandoned you in the Tribe of Darkness to fend for yourself.

And, anyway, she tried to take over the world and was sealed for it. There’s no reason to bring it up now.

Luigi stops at the bottom of the first staircase and gives you a hard look. About ten paces behind, you also stop, disconcerted by the sudden intensity of his eyes.

“So, you don’t know for sure,” he says flatly. “We’re not doing this.”

Cold panic flashes over your skin for a moment. “Why not? This is the best lead we’ve had—”

“You’re approaching this on a hunch.”

“It is a very good hunch!”

He folds his arms. “Sure. But it’s not like you. You don’t function on instinct, Dimentio. That’s why we argue so much.”

“Yes, well, my normal tactics aren’t working now, are they?”

“I just wanna make sure you know what you’re getting into,” he says pointedly. “This bitch traumatized my brother. That’s not easy to do.”

Anyone who goes against her is traumatized. That’s how she works. “Yes, I’ve heard it was an event. Also caused by people who had no idea what they were getting into, by the sound of it. If you met her, you would understand why even the Sun would be affected.”

He just stares at you for a moment. Then he says, incredulously, “I was here.”

You tense; Merle did not bother to mention this, and you are not sure how to feel about it. “In…in what way?” By the sound of it, it sounded like another typical Mario solo-mission.

“I was in town,” Luigi grits out. “When she was freed, I was standing in front of the inn. I felt her hideous soul, all the way from who knows how far underground. I knew she had to be a spirit, because no living body will let your soul extend that far. Mario can’t fight spirits. The only reason he could is because she took Peach’s body. I know the kind of monster we’re dealing with here—but do you?”

Saying anything else would be damning. “Do you feel her now?” you ask.

He sighs, realizing your angle. The sound echoes eerily across the spacious catacomb. “No.”

“And if you do, what will you do?”

His mouth twists, and it’s maybe the most genuinely angry you’ve seen him yet.

You continue down the steps, patting him on the shoulder as you pass by, hoping it is quick enough that he won’t feel the minute trembling of your fingers. “You will tell me, and then I will get us out. It really is that simple. And, as I said before, you can even stay here and I can go alo—”

“Were you listening to a thing I said?” he snaps, stomping after you. “I’m not letting you go in there alone. That’s the stupidest thing you’ve ever suggested. Why are you being so reckless?”

“Because murdering you to stop the end of the world would be too much of an ordeal,” you hiss, “and also perhaps it would make me a bit miserable.”

The two of you keep heading down. There is no other way to put it, really, than a steady descent. Water flows through the corridors in a maze of conduits. The smell of it is clean, meaning that whatever city stood here centuries ago still has a functioning series of aqueducts. In places where a warp pipe crops up, Luigi gives you a pointed look before jumping down entire sections most people would have to scale or leaping across wide canals. Really, you are kind of annoyed that he dislikes you teleporting into him so much that he’s now avoiding having it become a necessity. You can feel that he’s still miffed about the situation, so you continue in silence until you reach a door that precedes a massive hall, at which point someone is blocking your way.

A Shaman with an impressive moustache stands squarely in the middle of the doorway.

“It has been mentioned to me,” he says gruffly, “that you might come this way. I didn’t believe anyone was foolish enough.”

“Merle is a tattletale, I see,” you comment, making a mental note to remind him so later.

The Shaman regards you, and then turns to Luigi, who stiffens. Apparently, Luigi reacts in the same way to all Merlons he encounters, just out of principle. “You did not come alone, at least,” admits the Shaman with some amount of chagrin, and to your relief he steps aside. All Merlons, conversely, seem to react the same way to Luigi.

Luigi pauses warily before passing through. “Will this get you in trouble?” he asks you.

“Most assuredly,” you reply, noting with surprise that this Merlon’s eyes hold the crimson glow of a Curser. A Curser being chosen as a Merlon speaks volumes for the delicate state of balance of this place. He would definitely have dragged you back up to Rogueport if you did not have an escort, you think. “Why did you think I have not been dressed for work?”

“I trust you know exactly what our cause for worry is,” Merlon calls after you severely, very deliberately regarding your cloak, and you know he was planning to fight you if he needed to. Not even if he needed to, maybe just if Luigi wasn’t here.

“Do you believe me stupid enough to turn loose a registered cataclysm?” You click your tongue, becoming annoyed at your supposed reputation with the Shaman community. It is not an unfounded fear, maybe, but there are some lines even you would never cross. “I do value my life, fortunately for you.”

Honestly, the mere suggestion of possibly encountering Mother again terrifies you. To think they assume you are here to free her is maddening.

“Why are you wearing that?” Luigi asks, always on-point when it comes to asking all the questions you never want to answer.

Conflicted, you look down at the white, hooded cloak you took from the old manor on a whim. The brilliance of the deep red diamond-shaped gem cinching it together has clouded over years of neglect. It still bears a thin crack along the beveled facets, damage from the encounter with Blumiere’s father that set this whole mess in motion.

“I did not want to bring my poncho into this dirty place,” you say instead of the myriad more-accurate reasons for wearing the wretched thing.

You have been vibrating since you got on the boat, but it is becoming harder and harder to hide it. And now, as you step down into the deepest pit of the earth under Rogueport and see the ornate door that looms toward a high ceiling, you again find yourself weighing this decision. In front of it is a platform sporting the dulled remnants of a magic circle—and if there was any hope in your mind that the Shadow Queen and Mother were not the same entity, it would be dashed now. You would recognize that style of spell anywhere.

The door, however, does not bear her markings. It more closely resembles the traditional work of Ancients, meaning that this is what the Shamans in this area are tasked with protecting. The entrance is all they have control over.

Luigi approaches the door with little fanfare and shoves it open. It creaks but gives absurdly easily for what it is supposed to be safeguarding. “I—wow,” he says. “I thought that was gonna be a lot heavier.”

You give the platform and its circle a wide berth as you join him at the entrance. For having laid dormant for a thousand years, there is no hint of dust on the elaborate, plush carpet. The ceiling remains high, and the walls decorated with glimmering sconces and stained-glass windows. The pattern of them is indistinguishable, being underground with no light to filter through, but you are sure they are the same as the ones from the house you grew up in. Everything is so familiar somehow, and you continue forward with fraught tension.

“Dimentio,” Luigi says sharply, and you nearly jump out of your skin with how his voice ricochets around the empty hall. You turn around and blink at him. His fingers flex restlessly at his side as he glances around the foyer. “Can you teleport from here?”

That is a fair worry, and you hate that you didn’t consider it. Experimentally, you pop yourself to the other side of the door and back again, finding no resistance. The fact that Luigi thought to ask, however, is unnerving you. “Do you feel something?”

“There’s just a lot of magic in here. I don’t know how to concentrate.” He grimaces. “I don’t feel her, though.”

You look back at the door, still ajar with a fair sliver of the ruins visible, a beacon of white walls casting a slant of brightness into a room whose flame sconces only create the illusion of light. A large part of you wants to lodge something into the doorway to assure that it doesn’t close and trap you inside her tomb.

Instead, you exhale shakily. “Let us be off, then.”

[]

#my writing #dimigi au #research arc #cw mentions of death/murder #2:30am posting ✌️

53 notes · View notes