#abandoned steelyards

[onegirlthinktank]

08302021 Part Deux

I want to report wherever adventure tells me to go

[apoapsis]

@dimensionalspades // ♥ [jack]

                     Jack’s opportunistic retreats regularly drew a sobering degree of awareness to the weathered soldier’s situation. Rarely much more than a tactically advantageous position, a fleeting moment of cover in a maelstrom of strife, SIGMA finds them woefully subject to the location's temperatures every time he attempts to settle in for visitation. Despite this, however, he enjoyed the unpleasantness of it all– experiencing it with Jack. It was something to commiserate over, moments of what would have normally evoked complaint from the scientist made so meaningful through mutual discomfort.

Today seemed to be the worst in recent memory– he really shouldn’t have opted to stay, made apparent by the way the fickle, overcast sky had worsened, releasing a frigid, torrential downpour of rain just after Jack had slipped out in the earliest hours. But he had been so comfortable, left to doze so peacefully within the residual warmth left for him in Jack’s absence– leaving it much too easy for the old man to stubbornly power his holopad off to avoid any disturbances. By the time he bothers to properly awaken, several hours have been utterly wasted, surely, judging by the lack of light that filters through the disintegrating iron structures of the abandoned steelyard. Ice cold rain drums against the corroded alloy of the structure, spilling through various breaches of the rafters to collect within the sundry of receptacles set about in favor of keeping their sleeping area relatively dry– offering a rather comforting drone of background sound to cancel out some of the interference within his mind, while he clings to what little warmth remained within the shoddy bedding and undersized blanket.

                He really can’t imagine what it must be like when Jack’s here all alone. 

When the other returns, he’s sat cross-legged upon the makeshift bed, with the little blanket pulled tight around his shoulders in an effort to keep the worst of the chill out. “-- Ha! So you’ve returned…!” SIGMA chimes contentedly, limbs stiff and joints popping noisily as he lurches from his rigid position in an attempt to coax him towards himself. “Oh, you must be freezing!” He croons, using gravity to assist in the removal of the wetter outer layers of his clothing– and, once certain they’ve gotten Jack somewhat drier, at least, SIGMA almost immediately takes hold of the soldier’s frigid hands, rubbing and cupping them within his own gloved ones in an earnest attempt to quickly warm him. He doesn’t even bother asking about what may have been brought back– instead, he entirely preoccupies himself with accommodating the soldier; showing a degree of authoritative tenderness he didn’t often display.

                “... There. How is that…? Does that feel any better?” He coaxes further, opting to press the backs of the soldier’s broad knuckles to his cheek affectionately as his voice drops to a soft drone. “-- I would have had something warm prepared for you to drink, but, ah… Well, I thought it would be a waste of your resources to prepare it prematurely…! Would you like to sit down in the meantime, Jack…? My goodness– you must be utterly exhausted!”

[deerlyloved]

she’s sleeping

under cut: an explanation of what happened to my fallout 3 oc, clyde, in the pitt

They threw him in there. They threw him in there to die.

The steelyard, someplace with more than its share of dead bodies around every corner, and trogs where there were none. The rot clung in the air and burned his nose even when he was in Downtown, like just being in the Mill and any closer to it than a mile had soaked the smell into his skin. It was dangerous, the most dangerous place in the Pitt, and Clyde would personally take the repercussions for back-talking a raider rather than go running through that bleak death trap.

And that’s why he threw himself towards the raider when Midea was grabbed to go in. He begged them to take him instead, pleaded, said he’d do anything. It didn’t take much convincing, and Midea was thrown back with a look of shock and bleak acceptance over her face as she realized she couldn’t argue.

All his found family watched helplessly as he was dragged away to his death. He didn’t blame them, and he was happy they stopped. A few looked confused, Clyde had been stoic and near uncaring ever since Ashur himself threw him in Downtown as a child barely 13, and the outburst must have made no sense in their minds. It almost didn’t make sense in Clydes, but once he looked past what he was told, what Ashur taught him, what he knew he was there for, he understood. He always understood. 

It was hard to remember he was human when the raiders beat the concept of being a weapon into him.

He spent weeks in the steelyard. Maybe a month. Maybe months. He couldn’t keep track, the second they opened the door and threw him in, he was fighting for his life. Barely 17, draped in torn clothes and holding no weapons, he remembered trying to find anything of use as he tip-toed around the first few feet in the steelyard, feeling fear for the first time since he can remember as he heard the trogs hiss and scurry around just around the corner. He managed to pick up an ax, sharp and strong, something to swing as hard as he could.

Creeping around was the worst part. The trogs attacked him the second they caught his scent, and the hissed ‘delicious…!’ that they screeched at him as they charged made his stomach churn to even think about. He ended up finding his way into the air vents, surprising the mutants was easier than trying to take them on from the ground, and soon enough he lived up there. He knew all he had to do was find an ingot, something to earn his way back into the Mill, back into Downtown, but for all his searching the trogs always ran him off, or the wildmen drew his attention from his search.

The air started to do something for him. He didn’t notice it at first, the changes, but soon enough the normal radiation scars on his arms got redder and redder, his voice cracked more often, his hair fell out in clumps. He knew what was happening. He knew it even before he found a corpse and his stomach growled and he didn’t even think twice. He knew it before walking on all fours became the easier way to get around for him.

Clyde didn’t want to be a trog.

So he found a way around it. He searched with a renewed vigor, using his air vents as an advantage to search room to room in the building he found, mostly cleared of trogs now from his previous searches. He finally left the building, taking too long to find his bearings on two feet again as he explored.

And just as quickly as he was thrown in, he found his way out. An ingot sat in a pile of rubble beneath a hulking container of debris, and his hands found it with little care for his surroundings. Clyde would never run that fast again in his life, making a beeline for the exit door. He flung it open, hearing the raiders just behind the gate all stand and draw their guns before he heard them.

They remarked at how surprised they were to see him alive, one commenting on how much his appearance went to shit since they last saw him, and Clyde had to agree, the heat of the Mill made his scars burn fiercely, he could feel just how wide-spread they were now. Right then and there, Clyde knew what he had to do.

Midea was happy to see him, she hugged him and just like always, he didn’t hug back. For all anyone knew, Clyde was still him. To the slaves, he was the poor boy abandoned by the bastards in Uptown. To the bastards in Uptown, he was their personal little weapon, there to snuff out any hope of rebellion.

And so Clyde fought his way to the top. His hair began to regrow once Midea forced him to start eating again and he was allowed the little rest he could get in between the raiders barking orders. The scars that covered nearly every body part he had went back to their usual sickly color instead of red, and the rest of the mutations that began were slowed, reversed, and eventually gone after a few weeks. 

During those weeks, he used everything he had learned in the steelyard to try his luck in The Hole. Moving around unseen, even if he was just spotted, where to aim the killing blow with his axe, when to attack… He looted the bodies of those he killed, and before he knew it Clyde was the new champion, his axe and his new shotgun his best friends in his fights.

To the slaves, he was Clyde. To the raiders, he was a weapon. Both were right.

The slaves seemed betrayed as Clyde took his spot back in Uptown, and a few of the raiders remarked about his disobedience. ‘You were supposed to watch them, dumbass!’ was a common one. A few threats to restart his ‘training’ until he learned his place again. He remembers clear as day walking around Haven, the gnawing feeling of doing something wrong as he’d never been allowed to walk the area without a master nearby, and being grabbed suddenly.

Krenshaw has him by his throat in a second, eyes narrowed, teeth barred like he was some kind of animal. ‘What do you think you’re doing?’ was his question, though Clyde couldn’t tell if he actually wanted an answer or not. The grip on his throat tightened, and Clyde’s vision went starry for a brief moment before he was released. ‘Go see Ashur, boy. You’ve really fucked up this time.’ oh, he saw Ashur alright.

As he walked into Haven, eyes half-lidded, memories of the ‘training’ he’d been forced to endure for the sake of Ashur’s slavery business flooding back. Every hall in the building had been the keeper of Clyde’s own blood at one point or another, either knocked from his mouth or dripping from his nose if he wasn’t quick enough with a ‘yessir’, not quick enough to respond to an order. Saying no hurt now, it made his teeth ache from the memories, like something was trying to pull him back in time to remember, and just the thought of not following an order made his skin crawl and his body want to curl in on itself as he remembered what happened if he said no.

Ashur was Brotherhood once. He mentioned it throughout the training. Said having an inside agent would be good for the cause. Said Clyde was a good soldier like a terrified child would be proud to be tortured daily. He had truly lost his mind.

And that’s why Clyde didn’t go to Ashur. He found himself in a room he wasn’t allowed in even when he was in training, and he could only imagine how much he wasn’t allowed in it now… But he knew what he was doing. Wernher had told him.

The slaves saw him as an ally. The raiders saw him as a tool.

Clyde walked into the room he’d been denied access to for so long, and there stood a woman he’d seen around Haven before. She always seemed sympathetic to him, but always agreed that it was for the greater good. Ashur’s wife, Sandra. She didn’t notice him, her back turned to him as she worked on something, writing frantically as she murmured to herself. Clyde felt wrong being in there, especially with his blood-stained skin and muddied boots.

Leather armor clung to his skin, hot and cracked from the fighting he’d done to get this far, and the smell of rot still clung to him from the steelyard even after all this time. Everything on him, from his skin to his armor was filthy, covered in rust and grim and blood, and in the clean room around him he was made ever so aware of just how bad the conditions the slaves were kept in were.

His skin felt hot, even in the relative coolness of Haven, and he couldn’t tell if it was from not knowing anything but the fire of the Mill and the sting of radiation, or from the layers of grime in scars on his face.

His hands found the edges of the baby’s creche, leaving what was no doubt dirty marks in the place of a spotless bed. The young baby stirred briefly, eyes fluttering before she turned her head and fell fast asleep once more, and Clyde felt his heart do the same. She was a cure to the radiation that caused the marks on his face, something to help end the slavery that existed just beyond the walls of her home, the daughter of the bastard that told him the brainwashing and torture of a child was neccesary so the slaves he kept didn’t overthrow him.

She was a means to an end.

There was a beeping noise from a terminal near Sandra, and she tilted her head to look at the screen. Just a second later, she whirled around, eyes wide and face full of fear as she opened her mouth to say something. Nothing came out, and she then moved forward, hands extending and one word finding its way out.

‘Please.’

He remembered saying please. He remembered saying please a lot. He remembered looking to Sandra in fear and her turning her head and walking away. He remembered Ashur telling him he would be an amazing soldier one day. He remembered the beatings, the manipulation, the brainwashing, he remembered blacking out because they gave him a trigger word and he didn’t even realize, and he remembered coming back to reality with a gun in his hand and a dead slave feet from him. Clyde remembered.

So he reached out too, snatching Sandra’s wrist and narrowing his eyes at her. ‘Don’t wake the baby.’

The slaves saw him as an ally. The raiders saw him as a new threat.

Clyde walked out of Haven with an infant in arms, cradling her close to his dirty leather armor, a trail of death behind him and two dead parents gored in their own respective offices. He walked from Haven and into Downtown, eyes cast downward onto the infant as she stared confused at all the noise and the earmuffs Clyde had placed on her head, glancing up only to shoot himself a clear path through.

The slaves saw him as a hero. The raiders saw him as a monster.

Both were right.

[wilhelmjfink]

The Great Divide - Chapter 9

Previously: “If y’all are just gonna sit at this table n’ pray for her, to hell with ya. I ain’t gonna wait around for him to spill his guts n’ if y’all don’t let me beat it outta him, then I’m gonna go find her my damn self.”

And with that, he stormed out of the room, slamming the heavy door loudly behind him.

Riley was given a dusty old cot in the corner of room thirteen. The mattress was stiff and musty, but she didn’t even remotely care: it wasn’t a cold, hard concrete floor in an old jail cell and she took comfort in that she had Lidia on the opposite side, and it didn’t take long before her fear and sadness had her latching onto the older lady like a lifeline. She radiated hope and safety and Riley had quickly learned that the others had looked to her for the same reasons: she was almost like a religious figure in their lives and offered advice and warmth and love when The Divide continuously proved that it lacked anything remotely humane. Of course, this kept her on the radar for the Slavemasters at all times. But she didn’t seem to care.

“I’m not doing anything wrong,” she’d argued. “There is no rule against loving, even as scarce as it is around here.”

However, Riley had a hunch that the medical supplies she’d previously used to patch up her burn wound were smuggled; and she didn’t have to ask to know for sure. She’d witnessed a brief exchange in the crowded room when one of the other workers, a fragile woman around Riley’s age they simply called Bee shuffling them into Lidia’s hands subtly like a drug deal. But Riley ignored it and opted to keep out of the situation entirely, wanting her nose to stay clean and remain uninvolved. It was probably her best safest option.

Most of the others seemed to feel the same way, avoiding eye contact and communication with one another. She didn’t blame them. It sure as fuck wasn’t a summer camp.

The ones who did offer advice all spoke softly and always remained on edge, eyes shifting and constantly in high alert. They quickly filled her in on the routine The Divide had set for them and the first thing Riley was to expect come morning was a job assignment.

The idea had anxiety sitting in the bottom of her stomach like a rock, and she couldn’t shake the crippling fear of what it might hold.

Most of the women, however, seemed to get relatively harmless jobs: cleaning, cooking, sewing, all that might be considered non-strenuous if they weren’t worked endlessly, sun up to sun down, with no breaks in between and no days off to recover.

But others weren’t so lucky. Rumor had it that, depending on where they’d ‘acquired’ you from, as they’d charmingly put it, and what you were doing at that time determined what your job would be. If you were strong, they utilized you to the best of your abilities. If you weren’t — and they didn’t just kill you off — they put you to work in easier ways and took advantage of whatever useful skills you’d had before.

Lidia was older, helplessly waiting for her husband when they’d found her, so she got to cook.

Bee was hiding up in a tree, starving and terrified, when they’d found her. So she got to be a tailor, sewing armor and repairing uniforms.

Allison was hiding under a car half dead after losing her group to a horde of walkers when they’d found her, so she simply cleaned sun up to sun down.

Most of those women, they were pathetic.

Riley’s heart pounded in her chest at the realization that she’d almost killed their scout out on a run, appearing to be alone, in relatively good health and state of mind. There was nothing pathetic about that.

Her story had quickly spread through the Slavemasters like gossip in high school and when they came for her, yanking her from the barracks and dragging her through the courtyard while others watched helplessly or avoided looking at all, she knew that she was not in for preparing dinner that night.

“Kitty’s excited to see new girl at work today,” the abrasive woman dragging her sneered over her shoulder. Her hair was buzzed except for a narrow patch that ran down the center like a Mohawk, silver rods piercing through her nostrils and her cheeks with a chain linking a golden lip ring to a gauged ear. Her armor was leather, a deep dark brown, though her arms were exposed; and they were littered with both old and fresh tread marks and somehow that made Riley even more nervous. She tried to ignore the massive military-grade gun on her back. “Kitty’s heard a lot about new girl.”

Riley was too afraid to ask who Kitty was, so she continued stumbling in front of the woman, trying to keep up the pace she was being pushed at.

“Tell me your name, new girl.”

Her mouth was dry and she swallowed thickly, having difficulty forming the syllables for such an easy question. She hesitated one second too long because before she could answer, the butt of the hefty gun was shoved so harshly into her back it forced her forward onto her hands and knees. It narrowly missed her burn but she cried out anyway, both in fear and pain and confusion before trying to scramble back to her feet.

“Kitty asked what your fucking name is! New girl will fucking speak when new girl is spoken to! Do not make Kitty repeat!”

Riley swallowed the whimper that lodged itself in her throat, falling back into motion. “Riley! My name is Riley.”

“Riley...” The woman who apparently was Kitty smiled sinisterly. “Very nice, Riley. Riley will do well here.”

It had taken mere days for The Divide to shatter everything Riley had built up within herself: her confidence, her courage, her fight, her will... it all crumbled at the hands of these strangers that yanked her from her world and dropped her into this foreign place that seemed nothing less than some fictitious form of Hell somebody just made up inside of their head.

She was terrified at the thought of her name being talked about amongst the Slavemasters. What did they know about her? It had given her the impression that maybe they’d sought her out, having watched her from afar long before she’d crossed paths with Warner in the woods. The thought sent a chill down her spine and she buried it, not wanting to believe it, not that it mattered anymore anyway. It was too late to regret anything now.

Whatever they’d discussed couldn’t have been good. Kitty seemed cocky that wherever she was taking Riley was going to be suitable work for her, but she had absolutely no idea what to expect. 

As she was marched further and further from her corner that she’d found the most comfort in during her short time there, her drive lessened and lessened. Her moral, her attitude and her motivation all seemed to dwindle away with each step and her heart felt cold and heavy, like stone inside of her ribs. And she found herself wishing that whatever work they were going to force her to do would be enough to kill her quickly, as she was positive death would be a better alternative to whatever it was life at The Divide held for her future.

But Lidia’s words rang in her head over and over like a broken record: you can’t give up on Daryl.

At first, she’d almost laughed. Her give up on Daryl? What was she going to give up on him? How? It made no sense and she couldn’t understand it though the words still somehow managed to spark a minuscule little light of hope inside of her somewhere. And the first night in her barracks where she lay awake all night in anticipation of what morning held gave her plenty of time to think it over before she realized that it meant that she simply could not give up. Not on Daryl, but for Daryl.

Her family, they had a way of accomplishing things that seemed impossible; crossing bridges that seemed nonexistent by putting their heads together and building a fucking bridge and reaching the other side stronger than they were before.

And if Daryl ever managed to find her here only to learn that she’d just given up after the first couple days... she didn’t even want to think about what it might do to him.

So she marched on.

Her feet were blistered and her back screamed in agony deep down into her tired bones, but she wouldn’t quit. She couldn’t. Not now, and not when it got worse — and she knew it was going to get much, much worse.

Riley observed the old train yard around her, covered in rubble and trash and piles of bricks from broken down building structures. Shards of metal pipes and steelyard junk littered the areas around her feet and she followed them toward makeshift, rickety ladders and bridges connecting platforms above her heads composed of old two-by-fours and chain link fences. Walkers meandered aimlessly around abandoned train cars and over the rusted tracks.

Kitty still had a hold onto the collar of her tank top in her fist, though they’d stopped walking while Kitty was speaking to somebody through a walkie-talkie she had clipped her to the top of her leather vest. They seemed to be speaking in code and Riley couldn’t decipher what it was they were discussing, so she tried not to focus on it, but rather scanned the area she’d been dragged to and get a head start on whatever it was she’d be doing there.

“Okay, new girl, listen to Kitty very closely.” Riley glanced over at the woman who was grinning at her with her yellow toothy smile, a glint of mischief in her eyes. The fear of not knowing was gnawing at Riley’s insides but she was straining to not show it, afraid that Kitty might try to exploit that fear if she could see it. But at the same time, she was concerned that if she acted too tough, they might abuse her courage. There was no foreseeable light at the end of the tunnel and all Riley could do was bite her tongue and hope that her job wasn’t anything she couldn’t handle.

“Masters need eleven ingots for production,” Kitty began explaining. “Ingots are all in the steelyard. Bring all the ingots here for workers to melt.”

Riley’s heart dropped into her stomach. 

“Eleven ingots?” She asked quietly for clarification, earning her a rough smack on the back of the head.

“Did Kitty fucking stutter?” She barked. “Eleven steel ingots! Can new girl count?”

Riley sighed to herself, burying the desire to snap on the psychopath that held her prisoner, safely decided against it, and began to hold her breath and count, forming a game plan in her head.

Steel ingots. They were probably heavy, and she was unarmed and hardly clothed. And there were walkers everywhere. It surely would be a losing battle.

It might not have been too difficult of a task otherwise but throwing the walkers into the mix would slow her down significantly. They weren’t anything she couldn’t handle in small numbers and armed. But she didn’t have either of those in her favor and her heart was pounding in her chest, fear coursing through her veins, turning her blood to ice and strangling her with its cold and clammy hands. Teetering on the verge of a panic attack, she forced out one breath after another, slowly and evenly, desperately hoping to calm her heart rate before she entered.

The barbed wired gate towering over her was pulled open with a loud screech and Riley was shoved in. When she turned around, the gate closed much faster than it had opened.

“Kitty will be back to check on new girl in one hour.” She shouted, her voice echoing from all around as Riley wasn’t able to see her anymore. “If new girl can last that long!”

Her words faded and all Riley could hear was the distant moaning and slow shuffling of the dead. And the longer that she stood there the more vulnerable she was. So she scanned the surrounding area quickly for any place to hide; burning barrels and piles of broken steel frames and discarded wood, military-esque forts made of sandbags, train cars...

She snuck over to the nearest line of railcars, careful of where she stepped in bare feet, grasping the rusted handles the best she could with her weakened hands and pried and pulled until finally the third car door she tried broke free. It screeched open initially and she halted, then trying her best to go slowly, carefully, as not to alert the surrounding herd to her presence. And once she determined that the cart itself was empty of any unwanted company she yanked the door open just far enough for her to squeeze through and climbed up, weaseling her way in.

It was almost pitch black inside the car, and would’ve been impossible to see had she not left the door open a crack to let the light of a nearby flame aero through. Old pieces of metal furniture were stacked around her: desks, chairs and tables, shelves and frames, odds and ends and miscellaneous pieces stacked together. She carefully walked to one end, paying attention to the filthy floor beneath her feet, and felt around blindly for something to use.

Her fingers grazed over corroded pipes and rods, most of which were too thick or heavy for her grasp. She held her breath in anticipation, hoping, praying to come across something light enough that she could wield as a melee weapon for her time here — it was the only way she stood a chance.

Eventually she reached a wooden crate, coarse against her soft skin, and she felt around for a corner or an end that suggested it might already be opened for her. And when she found a splintered end she latched onto it, ignoring the biting splinters against her hands, and hoisted the lid up, slightly taken back about how much lighter it was than she had anticipated. In fact, it was so light, that she pulled it up so quickly that something toppled over the side of the lid and fell at her feet, directly in the narrow line of light that she had.

Reaching for it, Riley about wept with joy when she recognized the cold metal object in her grasp.

A crowbar.

Maybe she stood a chance after all.

sorry this is a little bit of a filler chapter but it’s important later.... poor riles. poor daryl. poor everybody!!

KITTY is based off of a character named ‘LULU’ from the video game this whole story is based off of......... still waiting patiently for somebody to guess what it is ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) 

chapter 10 on friday!! thank u for reading!!! xoxoxo

[killminus]

1000th post. The Russian woodpecker, steelyard, Duga 3. The most inspirational tangle of iron and steel. #jj_urbex #decay_nation #urbex_europe #urbex #abandoned #abandonedplaces #urbex_utopia #urbexworld #urbex_supreme #kings_abandoned #decay #ig_urbex #urbexphotography #urbanexploration #lostplaces #abandonedafterdark #urbex_rebels #abandoned_junkies #urbex_disciple #huaweip9plusleica #pripyat #ukraine #chernobyl #ukraine_blog #chernobylzone #припять #чернобыль #україна #ukraine_recommends #ukraine_blog https://ift.tt/3auGPYN

[nicksstoryvault]

{Crossing Bridges}

See you in a minute…'

It felt inevitable to cling onto a fraying thread of damnable hope. Each moment of resistance he salvaged was dismantled-cleaved apart by cosmic synthesis of damning energy -there was no assonance of valor crescendoing in his steeled heart; he lost the fight: lost everyone he loved when the Mad Titan hammered the Infinity gauntlet down, razing souls of his best friend and teammates into morphic sifts of dust by the scythe of his massive hand- his sadistic-vatic will ravaged the cosmos-fashioning a steelyard of instant termination. The world had gone into shutdown against the eclipsing shadow of unwarrantable grief-heartache while being on the unprecedented fringe of a spirit-razing Armageddon.

There were no echoes of warning, beckoning him to look back; everything happened with the voltaic speed of a firebolt strike. The distant resonances of valor felt like white-noise against his grievous heart. The world he fought to defend; the chivalrous oath that that cemented him into a defiant stance was ravaged by a careening lance of infinite heartbreak.

'We lost everything…Now we have to fight to get it all back.'

Despite his reserved efforts to stake down a tumult of raging vengeance , Steve couldn't quash down the inexorable onslaught that bankingly pulsated through errant trek of blearing tears as he fiercely clutched the sterling arrow pendant against his roughen palm; trying his damnnest to purge out the soul-tearing anguish he guardingly stowed back as his world became eradicated at the five seconds he registered the disconnection. He felt stagnant to reality, trudging over emptiness and gazing at his reflection morph into a vagrant drifter.

Nothing eased-he wanted to seize all those unbearable moments back against a retraction of unbidden hope—just one moment of visceral urgency would be enough for him to stack down. The arrow pendant that Barton mailed to him was the only anchor of reality that gripped him against soul-gouging upheavals of unendurable heartache that was desperately rigged up with an incendiary pulse of detonative vengeance that he starved for.

The suicidal mission on Vormir-the measures of high cost were direly rivaled against a prevalent choice of a martyr-his best girl—Natasha had willingly offered her soul to the ritualistic energy of the cosmic sphere—an interminable unity that would never be broken: the only way to bring their world—family back out of conjured oblivion. 'I never had anything to look back at…Until we started this dance…'

Bolstered in a semblance of impassiveness that kept him grounded in a vigil of reserve, Steve tearily steered his bleared azure irises at the ripples of moonlight captured the elemental serenity of the forested bordered lake, incessant dissonance of crickets echoed against rushes of briny humidity. An opalescent moon breached over masses of storm clouds, as spastic flashes of lightning forked the darkening horizon. The last sconces of daylight were contrasts of amethyst and rose-quartz gleamingly arced over the fading horizon- an empyreal barrier that reached further out earthen vistas. Staring passively outward, he couldn't shake the perpetual- concussive defeat that warringly grappled him—nothing ebbed.

The Stark's rustic cabin had been a harboring refuge point that Pepper Potts generously offered him, precious little Morgan and her relocated back to Manhattan, where Happy Hogan took on the full guardianship of the newest generation of the Next Avengers. The everlasting legacy of Iron Man— the hard core-mantle of being Earth's defender was undoubtingly bequeathed onto the web-slinging kid from Queens. His old teammates were divided by a promise of relevance to herald a new rebirth; Bucky had found his homestead- a sanctuary in the Wakandian outposts of the Border Tribe; adapting his new identity conceived by T'challa's generously fostering redemption-White Wolf. He engaged covertly infiltration missions with his lethality beautiful kitten, he never missed live vid-chats on Friday nights; hologramed by synced kimoyo beads with Steve that always ended with: until next time, punk.

Sitting on the edge of the dock, Steve achingly staved onrushing tumults of emotions that corraled him into grievous thralls, resurrected heartache throbbingly clashed in his veins, as he consciously angled his bristled chin up; tensing the glide of his fingers over threadbare denim that sculpted over his muscled thigh, reining the intolerable urge to release—every indefensible variance of soul-cleaving agony that he stowed back. There was no escape—no accelerant of solace; he felt unremittingly knocked down against leaden gravity.

"It should've been, me…"

Against reigned sense of despairing betrayal, Steve narrowed his gaze of feverish azure blearily down at the pendant with a feigned measure of adamant resolve, Steve unshakably brandished possessive apparitions, starkly relenting against blinding command to not lose his safeguarded grip, to cherishingly keep on holding onto her—he owed her that salvaged promise.

Letting his puffed eyelids fall against a mounting surge of unwarranted tears: a deadening effusion that painstakingly launched him back to the vividness of tactile memory; just a stoking ember of mirrored long-denied echoes of desire that grew shiveringly intense, beckoning a heady chasteness of phantom heat fusing into compromising reverence.

He craved for unwavering closeness of their bodies feverishly alighted on the equal ground of papable trust, gooey scent of peanut butter wafted off prepared sandwiches left on the cluttered desk, the only cheapened rations they preserved against the escalating desolation, heaps of mulched ash-remnants of humanity dusted sidewalks, abandoned husks of vehicles barricaded alleyways, spawning an illusion of No Man's Land—they were stationed to exist as underground soldiers of a conquered battlefield that measured pulses of resistance like a trip-hammer against the black-out horizon with no promise of daybreak.

The Avengers were dismantled-Wakanda's reign of the Black Panther was short-lived with no heir of the wears the vibrainium claws. How to avenge the fallen-to rebuild foundations of insurmountable hope when survival was measured by a precarious line? How many collected souls became dirt-smeared memories that hauntingly left dark haloes over the earth?

A modicum of retriggered pain shunted through Steve's heart with needle-sharp precision-he was inexorably raided by a contractive throb of soul-racking failure, by all torturous accounts to stack against Thanos's calamitous gambit, Steve wished it was him that vanished into the Soul Stone-not his Brooklyn brother-not Bucky. Every day he tamped down the cadency of a despondent mantra, allowing the vitality of his soldiery endurance to numb against the bone-drilling injection of defeat that punishingly felt akin to liquid nitrogen careening in his veins."M' sorry, Buck…"

"Let me guess you came here to do laundry, Rogers?" A quirking lift of a retractive smirk tugged over his plush-chiseled lips as he disarmingly registered the grated huskiness of Natasha's low-pitch undertone, smokily edged with unadulterated remorse. Keeping himself consciously distance, as he braced the corded width of his garbed shoulder against a steel bookshelf, Steve unguardedly regarded the defective Red Room operator-his dance partner of combative dynamic, alluringly leaning with feigned nonchalance while unerringly she utilized contrasts of shadow-a restrictive tactic to disguise her tumultuous heartache that was stowed for her renegade best friend: Clint Barton.

The cost of detachment left Natasha compromised, living in half-awake in a groundless after-life. Barton was her snarky echo of relevant humanity when she became destructively unbreakable granite-carbon steel in the fringe of resurrected demons of her surgically unforgiving past. She was in the red-zone. This wasn't her first rodeo to become saddled down by grief-to balance on a frayed tightrope that was electrified by callbacks of her fractured resistance.

The encompassing installation of a carious reality that was orchestrated by the cosmic-harvesting Titian was steering her towards the knife-edge wasn't charitable-ignited stokes of reckless vengeance felt weaponized and she just needed to find the right direction of trajectory to deliver a Soviet hailstorm before the high stakes of existence accelerated.

Every day with a caliber of mortal preservation, Natasha stealthily collected more intel on night digit social security numbers; hacking into surveillance feeds on the grid, jotting down names on waterlogged missing persons' reports trussed on crosswalk poles-just banners of lost memories. She needed a crusade of redemption-answers to bridge her to Clint's detected location. None of SHIELD's hardware gave her leads, she was chasing a shadow hawk.

Pressing her lithe palms against her delicate nose, Natasha quashed down raw tension, unblinkingly driving her indifferent grayish-teal irises back at Steve, holding back feverish rush of phantom tears. "At least you're better company than the furry space raccoon…" she quipped snarkily as he reactively arched his brows with abashed poise. In a variance of casual ease, deftly, Natasha lifted a peanut butter sandwich off a plate; giving him a subtle nod of genuine invitation while taking a hearty bite- an evade of stalled distraction that he viscerally recognized. "It's nice to value simple things, reminds us of what still exists…" she rasped under breath, tersely. "Living on the back-burner, Rogers, never gives you the luxury of having a good meal…"

"Yeah, it's always good to appreciate a peanut butter sandwich… " Steve boyishly quipped back the masculine sculpt of his plush lips quirked up into a half-hearted smirk, staving off a bone-deep ache that razed through his veins, unhesitantly approaching the counter, the rampant gentleness of his controlled prowess was honed to pursue a chance to resurge that struck a chord; in the casting darkness, her tousled copper-platinum tresses draped enticingly over the cool fineness of her alabaster features, more defined with raw-edged maturity as she teasingly fleered him a beckoning smirk, while Steve kept his gaze sheepishly downcasted. "How 'bout I make you somethin' a bit different tonight…" He offered to her attentively in naked urgency, edged with tactive intent sonorously resonating in his drawled timbre. "If you want me…"

That underlying desperation tamped in his stammering pitch tantalizingly caught her off guard, stiffly, Natasha made no attempt to break distance, the earthy vetiver of his sensuous Gucci Guilty aftershave-the rustic infusion of motorcycle leather inadvertently soothed down her core agony-those virile scents effused her into throes of an intimate stupor. "I think you already know my answer…" she huskily coaxed, against a rush of urgency.

Nothing wavered between them, Steve approached with tentative measure, his large hand bracketed her wrist in clash of disarming heat; his thumb caressingly traced a feathery glide over her bruised knuckles, telltale evidence of her routine kickboxing. She didn't pull back-not this time. He was ruggedly boyish Adonis, heavy bands of graven muscle harnessed enhanced vitality under his black shirt, blonde tresses were unkempt over his corded nape. The convenience of his proximity was anticipated as Natasha braced fittingly against the rigid tautness of his masculine heat, every flexing contour of sheathed muscle fevered with telltale strain. He breathed deeply, allowing banked desire to reign. "Y'know I do owe you a dance…" he murmurously urged in throaty pitch, inextricably grazing his bearded jaw over the suppleness of her cheek. "A part of me wants to live for tomorrow again…"

"Don't say anything, Steve…" she raspily entreated in dismal hitches, staunching the bleeding-ignitable heartache that revealingly gouged her deep; she needed to find Clint, cement their unbreakable friendship before he vanished into the crimson rain that his unstable-chimeric retribution hailed.

It was flatline of racked connection; Natasha knew that he would stray further into darknesses, a betrayed warrior harboring no code of honor, using his spycraft caliber to eclipse a wake of the execution by trading his soul away: penetrating demon hordes of his former enemies.

Clint had turned his back voluntarily on the avenging light of salvation-he was tragically mutating into a wraith of his own vengeful thirst. She needed to become his deterrent -give him a sense of home again before his ledger steeped in blood. His SHIELD file -Hawkeye identity was measured by a gunshot. Despite, that Natasha was immune to retractions of betrayal, she felt damningly akin to a weak-defenseless kitten shoved behind hell's gate, rigged with a zero-day trigger. The ephemeral-solid reality of Steve's muscled form had become a harbor in the tempest, mirroring a contrast of intimate stillness.

The instinctive nakedness of their chaste gravity divested pulses of shivery reluctance-nothing felt expandable against her sirens call. The flexing pressure of his invincible solidity commanded her ardent reaction, she flashed her gaze up, meeting cool azure- a piercing oceanic depth of hawkish intensity that she clung onto. "Just let us have this…"

As he became passion-driven, Steve rested the bristled curve of his knifing cheekbone, delicately pillowing against her flushed temple, he felt her eyelashes flit under the broad thickness of his jaw; despite that everything they loved was smeared on the scythe's edge, he just wanted to recapture one moment with her. Readily, in a slow accord of tactile precision as he reeled back, he stared adoringly into her shadowed teal irises, angling his jaw, with a fervent slant of his lips, dizzyingly surging a headier thrust against her yielding mouth, flavorous pressure ghosted over their heated flesh, breathlessly aware of a bruising drag over his teeth over her lush-swollen lips with fiercer heat, her answering cadence tempestuously increased with rivaled tenor. "Nat…

That wanton fringe of addictive contact became an urgent riot of clamorous hunger, Steve burningly remembered arcing through his starved veins-igniting his dormant arousal. It had been evocative surrender that could be banked-down. The flexing pressure of her lithe fingers unerringly kneading a rapt demand over the broad planes his beard-roughen cheeks. The sleekness of her twined palms bracketed his angled jaw to a rushing tempo of mirrored- rhythmic pace; she blindingly eased him with dexterous feminine tenderness, anchoring him into sensuous—paradisaic depths the edge of their deepened kiss was fueled by need incarnate that grew volcanic in crescendoing. Everything imploded into variances of real-glorious ecstasy against surrendered pressure.

A rapturous succession of their gliding lips. Both of them headily reaching for another visage of an exhilarating thrill. The cushioned swell of her thrusting voluminous cherry lips that ardently melded against his with gracing-wet- heat to breathless unison as he quakingly clung to an edge visceral restraint that he assuaged, their contrasts of surging fusion bodily ratcheted them into a boneless nova of abandon. It had been a sensuous moment to live for; until the cataclysmic pulse of the dreich—Thanos purged world recalled them back.

'Nothing lasts for forever…'

"Having a rough day, are we, Army...?" Registering that sardonic cockiness of a distinctly feminine voice breaching his isolated proximity, with a cautious turn of his neck, Steve raptly felt a half-hearted smirk unabashedly tugging at his chiseled lips as he bated a long-drawn breath. The Proton-enhanced jet-trooper -maverick of the Pegasus F-16 ranks advanced on the dock boards in brazens variants of commanding prowess that belied delicate tack of a sledgehammer: Carol Danvers was a supersonic Galatic warbird-a true invincible marvel that Agent Fury underhandedly kept close to his chest.

As an F-16 fighter-pilot, Danvers challenged her piston-driven limits and never allowed fear to steer her away from a dogfight. Encroaching her palpable distance behind him, the feminine solidity of her athletic form was jazzily garbed in her vintage Aviator leather jacket, her tousled blonde-ombré highlighted tresses loosely draped over her lithe-tone shoulders, as she knowingly leveled the blaze of her greenish-hazel irises at the arrow pendant clutched in his bruised hand. "So this is what you do all day, sit around and wait to be called back into the danger zone..." she murmured with a brisk edge teeming stringently against her raspy undertone."That's not how it works, Army..." Underlying a telltale clash of raw tension, she guardingly crossed her arms over the unzipped leather, saddling him down with a reserved glare. "I know it's hard but don't let this back you against a wall..."

The forthright brazenness of her words careened at him at point-blank range, Steve tensely clenched his bristled jaw, as he admonished back in hard-nosed pitch, "Yeah, I know..." His steeled demeanor grew broodingly evident to a furrowing pinch notched on his brow, and easing his fisted hand to firm arch of his lips, heatedly squeezing the sterling pendant tighter, using that remanent as his motive force. "It's kinda hard to move on when I know the fight isn't finished..."

"Okay, so let's gather up a team and go finish it..." Carol murmured out bluntly, squaring her toned shoulders readily into a defiant stance; not wavering the dynamite intensity of her gaze off the shadowy full moon above them. "We can't stay grounded forever, Army, war never ends up there..." In the unshakeable grip of coaxing tactile steadiness, she palmed the sculpted breadth of his garbed shoulder. "I know some Kree drifters that might help us figure the right stuff out..."

Extending out his hand with a beckoning pulse of his Brooklyn warrior spirit, a thunderous cacophony of lightning bolt sailed over the darkened lake, blindingly the Asgardian hammer forged by the Dwarven element -uru- Mjolnir-propelled into Steve's opened clutch like a careening baseball fitly hitting the catcher's mitt; forked strobes of bluish energy conveyed from an incandescent vortex.

Stern-faced with an invincible union of effusive torrents of his charged vitality, the glacial rawness of his steeled azure irises electrifyingly flashed voltaic-white as Steve determinedly paced to the dock's ledge; adamantly hoisting the Noric hammer up like a victorious knight, answering the cosmic knells of battle's impending requiem. Captain America was coming up to bat again. "Good because M' gonna quit until we do..."

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A prevalent restlessness clashed over the bustling streets of Lower Manhattan; chimeral-telestic energy felt unparallel against barriers of mortality. A rift was imploding warningly beneath the city's foundations. An execrable reality was infringing from the Multiverse-a astral gateway where conjured forces of time had become a deterrent. The airwaves felt distorted by white-noise frequency—euphonious-crescendoing volumes of stygian carnage that was banking for a seismic breach. A nascent ambiance of chaotic malice encroached with carrion-vampirish spawns cloned from the deconstructive Dark Verse, demonically thirsting to ravage on mortality.

Cementing his nonchalant stance deceptively under the iron-welded girders of Queensborough Bridge, Doctor Steven Strange maddeningly felt the arrestive-sorcerous pulses emerging in rack fruition-a miasmic cavalcade of the ghoulish blight that disturbingly hungered for soul vitality. He would make damn sure the resurrected denizens would be on the receiving end of an unwelcome—New Yorker homecoming. Being a mystical sentry in neighboring sectors during every midnight hour was inevitable to discard; he obstructed dimensional abnormalities and raptures that unleashed demonic hordes.

Lasering a hawkish glance of penetratingly draconic intensity melded in his grayish-azure irises, Strange casually eased a plastic cup of an expensively brewed Starbucks Caramel Macchiato from his quirking, goatee-fringed lips. "Just your average night for occultic pastime," he grumbled humorously, in scabrous pitch, his brusque timbre was underlying a deadpan.

Shifting with a defensive pivot on his Monolith leather boots that were fashionably embellished with Chinese Neolithic blue silk, he levelly drove an indignant glint at the baldheaded ex-curator of Kamar-Taj: Wong. "Don't tell that we're betting on this again…" he stifled back a ranting breath, as the Asian Mystic guardian's impassive semblance didn't even unnervingly fracture with an amusing grunt. "Is there an incantation that I utilize to help you crack a smile like a real person?"

"We must stay focus, Strange," Wong gruffly answered without breaking stoic resolve and kept his pudgy hands cuffed unflappably against his garbed back. "Any breach must be contained before the astral energy invades our realm…"

Taking precautionary–vital measures of the vigilance, Strange warringly detected assonances of operatic volumes euphorically amplifying —infectious purge had grounded humanity on a faultline, high players-zealots of the Mystic Arts were decking irrelevant stakes of a disposable reality. Tonight's imminent onslaught was a cacophonic extension of a vengeful reckoning—that would irrevocably lance through the Dark verse. 'The bill comes due…Always'

After voluntarily using Doctor Bruce Banner's quantum–dimensional machine with the fusion of Pym particles, launching himself back into the anchored year of 2012–Strange had placed the collected Infinity Zones back at the right moment of revelation–each one of those cosmic elements became a beacon to ultimately spawn infancy of replayed existence. He didn't gamble altering the nexus paradox while he was transhipped over a bridge of astral gateways.

The stone viscerally conceived by a sacrificial–votive choice on the edge of planet Vormir entombed a feminine–tragic soul that needed eternal release. That interstellar synthesis would only be surgically extracted if the stone was held by a new guardian-sentinel of the –Yggdrasil crossway. When he was station in the Andromeda Galaxy quadrant of the barren husk of Morag; Strange had vividly discovered primordial mezzotints etched one of the Temple Vault's wall, a runic Titan-like visage of the Celestial Entities: the Eternals.

"So I'm guessing no late night tuna runs for you," Strange retorted back to him snarkily, angling his goatee chin up with a smug play of indifference while strobing red sconces of a passing NYPD cruiser flashed off his Infinity amulet: the Eye of Agamotto; not considering that he evaded high surveillance points. He was furtively on an occultic stakeout while quashing down interminable vexations of boredom that rode through him akin to a tumultuous undercurrent. "You know you're really starting to become the bane of my existence…" he gratingly huffed, the smooth chiseled planes of his hawkishly serrated features tensely pinched, evident to an implosion of banking frustration. "Oh do amuse yourself…."

"I amuse myself when I'm listening to you grumble, Strange," Wong murmured back tonelessly, his dark irises glinted with availing sternness at the penetrating cast of the derisively irritable sorcerer's azureous crystalline depths, as he unwaveringly stifled back a throaty chuckle. "You're still learning on the value of patience…" He steered a glance towards Queensborough Bridge, the dotted lights glaringly reflected off dark fathoms of the Hudson River.

"Each horizon is an Eldritch gateway to our world…What comes out carves to mutate a targeted soul…" He removed a scrap of frayed paper out of his reddish-bronze tunic, adorned with an Egyptian-pharaonic sigil of an inked jackal's head- Anbuis-bordered with petals of a dark aster flower. "I have a hunch a reckoning will come to us..."

With an urgent motion of his gloved hand, blindingly in a variant of surgical efficiently Strange grasped the paper out of Wong's clutch, flitting the inscrutable-raw intensity of his collective gaze undeviatingly at the mantic runes that exhibited an incarnate-morphic rebirth of canine severance: a monstrous harbinger of the netherworld plane. It was an imponderable revelation that wouldn't be abandoned by an instinctive uncertainty-a sorcerous maelstrom of bestial vitality would consumingly suffuse the victim, chastening down the stymied essence of humanity into vacuous-mutative oblivion. The archaic incantation was a cursive ritual of lycan transfiguration.

"Looks like we're heading to Cario…" he snarkily addressed, gazing at the stark amber lunar scones that were hauntingly forming into a hemmed eclipse—incandescence of obscured chasmas from the transcendental plane were acceleratedly converging for an atmospheric unity of the branching extensions of Yggdrasil—the bridges of the Nine Realms. Pivoted on his boots with a measure of phantom ease, Strange piercingly tossed a knifing glance at nonplussed Wong over his garbed shoulder. "Do pack light..."

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The arrestive stench of vodka had been disturbingly prevalent throughout the Parisian avant-garde casino that was a harbor site of the profitable black market enterprises - arsenal sectors that were once notorious Ulysee Klaw's clandestine playground of sell-off points. The high glamorous- imperious aristocracy of Paris garnered alacrity, flaunting sequestered jewelry from uncrackable vaults, unrelentingly indulging on gluttonous expense as variegated scones of crystal-prisms gleamed over chalcedony environs of the congested banquet hall. Everyone was maddeningly gaudy, posh-faced. The installation of tactical subtlety was imperative to utilize in a fashionably deceptive performance.

After engaging an infiltration raid sanctioned by Agent Maria Hill's 'greenlight' order at the mining deposit in South Africa where parasitic spawns of Klaw's fixated interests comparatively hoarded stacked military armaments that were dispatched by a notorious-hypercautious Jarbai arms trafficker by cargo freight to a harbor port in slum-desolated Lagos outposts- an operational pipeline of omega radical insurgency; another cheap run of staking dominion over Wakanda's borders. Play-grade weaponry to fuel guerrilla extremists caravans to barricade divisions of Wakandian resilence. The practical charade of smug masculine elegance was vital for the mission. His objective of interest needed to be on sight.

Clutching onto a delicate stem of an overpriced champagne flute, with tolerable ease for the umpteenth time in feigned nonchalance, Bucky Barnes rigidly braced the heaviness of his bulked weight against a marble pillar, vexatiously isolating his position from the boasting successions of immaculate, offensive arrogance that became a contagious pandemonium to evade. Electronica symphonic beats were resonating blaringly from the mounted speakers above: a techno-dubstep immersion of the passionate classic La Vie en rose. He was unquestionably running the gamut on the razor-edge of collapsible restraint against modernistic style.

The lasering the steeled intensity of his grayish-ultramarine irises stormily at faux couples teasingly dipping lavish strawberries into an artisan fountain of Belgian fudge, Bucky felt like a damn stray deviant: a vermined fugitive riding on a speed-train of un-derailed calamity against the macabre contrasts of his bloodstained past. 'Blood always washes out... It was a fool's errand to believe that he would ever be nothing more than an amnesic-unstable beast machine.

For seven unthawed-horrific decades of being surgically lobotomized to comply with HYDRA's parasitic-conditioned severance that agonizingly dissected his resistance; Bucky was a reactivated scalpel of lethal precision to cut all loose ends in the murderous wake of instrumental termination, leaving bloodied silhouettes to contrast under his wraithlike shadow.

The possessive tentacles of HYDRA choked out his soul when Armin Zola's viscerous mania raided execrably through him. The chemically enhanced infusions of the Beta serum ferally weaponized him into a mechanicalized operative hybrid: a sniper wolf unremittingly conceived in a Siberian missile bunker. He never saw new daybreak, just a frozen nitrogen haze of being dragged back into a cryonic stasis.

Vremya dlya ostanovki, soldat ...(Time for shutdown, soldier...)

Now, he was treading on the curb of redemption's high road; the inventive virtuosity of his spunky impish friend Princess Shuri's genius-leveled algorithmic frequency of sonic cryosurgery of remedial bio-scanners conceived by nanotech eradicated the hypnotic-destructive scourge of the reactivated mantra that was surgically rooted- interwoven by limbic alterations like a hacking virus of Zola's cerebral -dehumanized torture that excruciatingly winded him up like a mechanical toy soldier, murderously driven to comply for sniping missions of undetected termination. His dispatched victims were just fleeting shadows on the wall.

Unbeknownst that soon he would engage a reckoning of a sorcerous onslaught heralded by the western gateway, that would irrevocably usher the prophetic ascent of vengeance clashing against his world; scowlingly Bucky caught a reflective glimpse of his cleaned-up-hunky visage on a polished serving platter that was the waitstaff had recently placed on a vacant table.

The wolfish length of his dark-chestnut tresses was roguishly knotted into undercut ponytail, errant strands curtained over the rugged, graven planes of his bristled knife-edged jaw, not detracting from the boyish hunkiness of raw virility that his shapely-bow lips smirkily belied when colliding desirous glances of lecherous guests. He was heart-stoppingly-breathtakingly gorgeous with a variance of predatory menace; akin to a rebellious prince, garbed in black tailor-cut black Armani that fittingly sheathed over the broad width of his shoulders, delineating enhanced muscle bands that readily flexed against feverous pulses.

Flashing a toothy smirk cockily at statuesque platinum-blonde decked in a risqué aqua sequin gown, furrowing a tense pinch of his brows, Bucky registered her unpalatable, flirtatious intent of overpoweringly wading him into her carnal thrall, he questioningly admitted she was prettily eye-catching with distracting polished beauty, easy to make a disarmed man swoon off the feet; but he was anchored down. Nothing ever challenged to those indescribable moments of visceral reverence-freedom that always left a shivery phantom caress over his fusing lips when the beckoning heat intimately captured him into mirroring duel of imploded surrender when the world deafened out against the blinding urgency of breathless tempo. 'Not gonna happen...'

Unceremoniously to his stoked chagrin, Bucky quashed down the devilish urge to deliver an intimating swagger of wolfish grace in his menace-honed paces. No fine dame rivaled the exquisite vixenish beauty of his kitten...His Lina. From his tactical position, the smokiness of his aquamarine irises unwaveringly glanced with revving intensity at the ravishingly—lithe Gotham siren clad in a sleek black Valentino dress of an Itailanesque contrast that intoxicatingly epitomized the curvaceous laced décolletage that plunged to exquisitely reveal the swelled curves of her cushioned voluptuous breasts.

Against a headlong depth charge, Bucky rampantly felt heart suddenly trampolined with skyrocketing momentum when his riveted gaze chased sconces of haloing light capturing the pearlescence of her freckled shoulders, every sleek curve of toned flesh, shadowed by tousled mahogany whorls cascaded down the svelte, delectable planes of her supple back. Distractingly he gazed at the cherry-hot lushness of her full-bowed lips that sheened Ferrari red, quirking into a jaunty smirk, beguilingly highjacking the naked rawness of his steeled focus; he felt the crystal glass crackling to shatter under his bionic clutch.

"Hold it together, Barnes..." he rasped in a graveled murmur, fiercely dragging out a tactful breath. His sniper vision was cunningly aware of background convergence of tuxedo-clad bodyguards imposingly stationed at the exit points of the vast banquet hall, apparent to warrior-honed steadiness-an extension of traitorous Gorilla insurgents. Time slot to engage was limited. "Gotta stay focus-"

Crestfallen, broodingly in a play of deceptive casualness, involuntarily Bucky kept himself isolated from barricading throngs of rapacious guests, rushingly enforcing a conscious measure of restraint. The ancestral Wakandian relic that his royal friend T'challa required him to secure was a vibrainium carved spearhead--the Fang of Anubis—a preserved— occultic remnant of the pharaonic dynasty.

From the lastest extraction-thieving stint in Cairo, Bucky recalled gazing at twined granite sculptures of jackal sentinels of a tomb-raided excavation site; arcane guard-dogs of the netherworld cavalcades. Knowing the inevitable Jarbai threat wasn't going to waver on a hairbreadth from a rancid chance to overthrow Wakandian-the Golden Tribe's monarchic dominance.

With imperative countermeasures of practical infiltration, T'challa wanted perseverance of archaic treasures of ancient 'panther' kings; radical insurgents that syndicated with Klaw's maniacal obsession thirsted for reign over Wakanda; the full measure of the 'cloak and dagger' charade was to stealthily retrieve the Egyptian spearhead with a clean break to the rendezvous point.

Evicting a racking impulse that seized his veins, Bucky grazingly nipped the well of his taut underlip, he begrudgingly stifled out a vexatious breath, his glacial depths tellingly narrowed at the motorcycle half-sheathed over his cybernetic hand, poised with stoked ferocity.

Latent variances of his beastly-hostile strength flexed with a combustive implosion, Bucky drove a sidelong glance towards a heavily muscled Jarbai mercenary, standing impassively near open access to a staircase. "Huh, that be good..." he grimacingly quipped in throaty murmurous pitch, furrowing his brow into a concentrative pinch, as his dark pupils slit warningly against the razored-edge vision of his unblinking aqueous stare, ruefully. "Hell, they never make it easy..."

"Getting bored already, handsome?" The velvety smokiness huskily edged in Selina's lyrical murmur through a com-plug lodged in her ear, as she flirty kneaded the sleekness of her lithe palm distractingly over a Gucci-besuited shoulder, feigning her collective revulsion; she unnervingly felt out of sync with the jowelly rich stiff's tottery motion of his tactless cadence of mirroring her balletic graces; he was a shrewd Russian binary encryption architect-a high roller of gambling with Black Market profit with rogue HYDRA conspirators, infinitely hemorrhaging his clients harbored investments.

The extensions of corruption gambit were becoming transmissible, leaching off despaired families-staking profit by forging armories to sate their own paranoid indulgences. Nothing was free. Evidently, Selina gritted her teeth against the bracing lurch of his jerky knees-a maddening demand for her seductive awareness.

Smirking with a kittenish quirk, patent to devious light fused in her dark irises, she coolly altered their smokescreen banter, desirably with a breathy Italian undertone. "Almeno non hai le mani piene ... (At least you don't have your hands full... )" she purred, sultrily, while fluidly arching the cushioned swells of her delectable breasts against his bunching shirtfront." Proviamo a partire senza graffiare questa volta, Barnes. (Let's try to leave without a scratch this time, Barnes...)"

"In and out, darlin'. Isn't that what they call it?" Bucky asked with a wry smirk while gazing upon the collection of hostiles ahead of them that so far appeared deeply immersed in their work to notice the motorcycle driving couple on the outskirts. "In that case, when have we ever been THAT lucky?" Time and again Bucky could recall heading into the jaws of death alongside people he trusted from Steve to Natalia and his kitten Selina. Things never turned out as smoothly as one hoped they would, but the price of completing their mission was one that in the end strengthened their resolve.

The Jabari were brutal, tactless and would stop at nothing in their pursuit of power; to dominate the Panther Tribe and seize control of Wakanda and then the world. "I don't know about you, but I'm starting to get really annoyed by all these magical trinkets turning up, and the bad guys who want em'. This Fang for all we know be one big bad rabbit's foot that gives nothing but good luck to whoever touches it, and bad once they lose it." He surmised. It wasn't his most ridiculous theory but then again he had to thank Sam for showing him all those paranormal tv shows that made the darkness of their own crazy world look like a children's playground in comparison. "Do you think Jabari know what it is if even we don't?" He asked worriedly.

The grated edginess of his timbre was underlying definite vehemence, challengingly evoking a thievish flare to Selina's jeweled brandy irises in the visceral succession-a thrilling revelation of being on the penetrating fringe of intense-dynamic combat. Vengeful machinations were inexorably at play with blackout operations of Jabari radicals; King M'baku's dynastic alliance-brotherhood with T'challa-forged on the edge of Warrior Falls ushered a conquest of peace. Gorilla and Panther mantles of leadership were restored- honor among friends cemented. "The price of interest depends on where it sticks, handsome..." she retorted, sardonically, angling her jaw tautly with repelled ease as her ruttish dance partner's wanton lips vulgarly ghosted a breadth over the svelte length of her graceful neck. "This won't be an easy spoil to trade up, whoever is rolling the dice behind the curtain doesn't want to stretch his wallet..."

In that ratcheting-detonative moment of aggressive instinct driving the lethal pulse of her deceptive intent, Selina blindingly clutched his wrist like a viper strike, rotating the seized bones with a numbing rush- the lush sensuousness of her full crimson lips deviously became silkier against the Russian's choked yelp that ensued under her bruising touch. "Lucky for our friends in Wakanda I know what angles to curve back..." she gritted out with an irate rasp, tonelessly.

For the umpteenth time that night, Bucky had to remind himself that they were on a mission. Weird and completely unorthodox as it was, it was still a damn mission that they had to see through without getting distracted by their surroundings...and each other. Selina played the game of mystique and intrigue better than any social elite that attended these gatherings. Bucky knew that absolutely no one would be looking at him tonight if he happened to slip away. But it didn't make the job any easier. Not when Selina's lavender perfume made him feel over-the-moon intoxicated. Not when she felt so warm and good in his arms. His hands instinctively tightened on her waist and hand, keeping her close as he fixed her with a charming smirk.

"Careful who you show those angles to, darlin'. I might just not leave if it means I have to fight off any punks who think they can swipe you away from me." He breathed in her scent near her hair, closing his eyes and restraining the urge to turn his head and seek out her plump lips. "Our window is openin'. Will you be all right till I get back?"

Against the saccharine cast flitting over her elfish features, Bucky's murmurous timbre smokingly ignited a clamorous rush through her veins; Selina felt the metallic caress of his leather-sheathed palm flexing on an evocative accord of sensuous tempo invested with feather-light pressure of his bracketing clutch, rousingly over the sleek curvatures of her garbed back.

The variant nakedness of her feminine-decadent contrast, made his shapely-bow lips quirked up the curvily-an unabandoned revelation of a headier promise of visceral havoc. The reverent precision of his kneading bionic fingers pulsed with branding heat-she became ardently captive against the intimate tracery of virile heat; the corded muscles of his chest edged with bestial vitality. "Very suave move, coming to my rescue, Barnes ..." Selina purred silkily against the bristled heaviness of his dimpled chin, listening to a breathless chuckle strain fervently in his throat. "Don't worry about me, handsome, I might have some fun playing down here..."

Bucky steeled himself against the thought of walking away and leaving her to fend for herself among a party of wolves eager to devour weak prey. But Selina wasn't weak and she certainly wasn't incapable of fending for herself at these sorts of functions. Though he was wracked with concern for her well-being, he knew a larger part of him just didn't like the idea of anyone else trying to sweep her off her feet. Something visceral and primal pulled at him, the irresistible urge to stake a claim to what he perceived was his. It was a dark emotion that he wasn't beyond feeling. Rather than let it cloud his thoughts, he absorbed the purer aspects of his feelings and brushed his lips across Selina's. Sweet and chaste with a promise of something more to come later once this mission was over. It was sudden and he smirked at the surprised look on her face. "Kiss for luck, darlin'. Something tells me I'll need it more than you." Giving her a wink, Bucky turned, straightened his collar and disappeared among the flock of guests in search of his objective.

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The manic succession of the estate's dissonance became unknowingly hazardous; mirrored Jabari sentries were impassively in neutralizing position on the stairwell, the white-chalk paint of the dishonoring Gorilla paw adorned savagely over dark corded muscles of their bulgy arms, their combative honed stances were reserved to engage once the radio-com order was acknowledged.

Advancing in measure of tactical stealth, Bucky paced up the alabaster steps, utilizing distance of breakneck prowess as he ghostily passed an unguarded balustrade, involuntarily thrusting his cybertronic hand up to a smooth edge; with a variance balletic momentum of bestial agility infused in his muscled calves, he propelled upward against rushing adrenaline. The wolfish length of his dark chestnut tresses dishevelledly curtained the hard-edged planes of his ruggedly boyish features, as he vaulted over the balustrade without stalling the cadence of his arcing graces in the undetected wake of his phantom intrusion.

It was easy and disturbingly convenient that Bucky found himself falling back into his old training, ingrained in him by operating for decades as the Winter Soldier. There wasn't a shadow he couldn't blend into nor a trace he would leave behind. Bucky ducked into an alcove as he watched two guards shuffle by on their way into another corridor to conduct a perimeter sweep. At the corner of the wall, he could see a camera cycling in rotations. This owner of this residence spared no expenses when it came to security. Bucky mentally timed its loop and briskly rolled across the floor once the camera's field-of-view was shifted away from him. The polished marble floors were more than sturdy and left no sound to give him away. If this were any other field operation, Bucky wouldn't have hesitated to take a more forceful incursion, but this was a stealth mission involving a high-stakes item that could spell disaster in the wrong hands. Bucky, like T'Challa, wasn't gonna risk the Jabari using it to inflict anarchy and destruction.

As he snuck through a pale-lit corridor, decorated with fine Renaissance-Era paintings and old African sculptures, Bucky entered a wide and elaborate grand-staircase room with a wide-berth that allowed multiple guards to patrol the upper-level and observe the ground floor below. At the far head of the room was a pair of double-doors with a single armed sentry in front. The room was lit by pale light of day breaching the windows which left little to no shadows for him to slip into. Bucky knew his options were limited, short of causing some form of distraction. If even one guard spotted him and got to his radio, the mission would be over so fast his head would spin.

"Told you, Steve. It always ends in a fight," he muttered to himself with a resigned sigh. He waited with baited breath for 3 of the 12 sentries to leave the area on their rounds. He estimated it would take a minute for them to clear the area before they were too far to hear any commotion that might follow behind. Bucky's tactical mind ran rampant as he studied the other guards. They wouldn't take any shots that might disrupt the party unless he came in guns-blazing. He carried only a knife sheathed at his ankle and he wasn't in the mood for spilling blood tonight. "Time to get creative." He muttered. Gazing around, he spots a trolley at the edge of a room with used dinner-plates...and a bucket of ice and wine. A smirk curled at his lips.

The Jabari guards were nothing if not bored as they shuffled in the same position they'd been standing guard for the past several hours. They were disciplined and focused, but still human. Many of them wished for nothing more than to spend their time on weapon's training and courting beautiful women at the socialite party. It was to their utter confusion yet relief that something interesting finally wormed its way into their midst when they saw a bedraggled looking man stumbling into the area on the upper-level, brandishing a bottle of champagne. Bast-help them! A drunk.

"Linah! Where's the car, darlin'. We need to find more water, this bottle is empty!" The drunk raved as he took a long drink of the aforementioned champagne, spilling its contents down his chin and into his shirt.

One of the guards named Eido growled as he marched towards him. "You there! You're not supposed to be in here. Go back to the party or you'll be escorted off the premises!" He ordered none-too-gently.

"That'sss no sss-way to address a Romanian Prince!" The drunk shrugged as he teetered on his feet, perilously close to the ledge of the upper-level which sparked the attention of the other guards who began to group up should this man prove to cause a mess.

"You are drunk, sir. Leave now or I will put you down!" Eido yelled. By now the other eight guards began to surround the drunk who looked around at them with a completely blasted expression that conveyed no sense of understanding. That was until the drunk deliberately dropped the rest of the contents of the glass on the ground with a focused expression.

"Now you made me spill my drink." Bucky deadpanned. No sooner had he said these words did he smash the bottle against Eido's face, sending shards exploding through the small space of shocked Jabari guards. Bucky's mind zoned in on what he liked to call "Soldier-Mode". A winding fist to the bloodied Eido's stomach and then another to the face knocked him out cold. The other eight guards reacted, some reaching for their weapons, the others for their radio's. Bucky reacted faster.

The guards with the radios were his priority targets. He used one as a shield when another guard got a random shot with a pistol. Bucky dropped the human-shield and smashed his fist into the armed guard's face. He twirled like a swan on his heels, spinning like a whirlwind of destruction as he rained kicks, jabs, and elbows across the circle of guards. One was sent flying off the upper-level where he crashed onto a table below. Bucky headbutted a guard attempting to radio for reinforcements, causing the guard to bite his tongue and groan in pain. Bucky mercifully subdued him with a sleeper while two other guards scrambled for their weapons.

Bucky charged at them, dodging a gunshot, leap-frogging off of a banister smashing his booted-foot into the guard's chest, sending him crashing against a wall. The last guard wielded a knife, a savage gleam in his dark eyes. Bucky felt a smidgen of sympathy for the guard's choice of weapon. "Ready when you are," he beckoned the guard.

This guard was bigger than the others and it was clear to Bucky he would be no push-over. He held the knife in his hands with steel-like strength that promised a painful death. The guard released a beast-like roar and charged at him. He was strong but not very fast. Bucky used his vibranium arm to catch the guard's knife-hand, blocking the lethal overhead thrust. The guard sneered and pushed. Bucky felt his footing become challenged but he wouldn't let the knife anywhere near him. Once the guard realized his strength wouldn't overpower Bucky's, he grappled and charged Bucky, tackling them both into the double-doors of main study. They rolled along the ground, Bucky managed to find his footing and grabbed the closest blunt object he could find-an Etruscan shield mounted on a pedestal.

The guard lunged with the knife only for it to be blocked by the shield. Not missing a beat, Bucky slammed the surface of the shield against the face with inhuman strength. The guard toppled to the ground motionless, the knife falling from his hand.

"Shuri really needs to give me my own shield," Bucky mused with a tired sigh.

In the contrast of the dim lit room impelled to retrieve the Wakandian relic, with enhanced vigilance in sync of his methodical stride, cautiously, Bucky neared a glass display cabinet that housed a collection of hoarded pharaonic relics; his glacial aquamarine flashed unblinkingly down onto an obsidian anthro jackal statue appeared demonically untouchable behind a glass barrier, the broad sculpt of the torso was of human-masculine contours and the canine head was molded with pointed ears adorned by a golden pharaonic headgear.

In between the 12-inch jackal's arched paws was a distinct vibranium javelin spearhead: the Fang of Anubis. "Okay, it can't be that easy..." he quipped in terse pitch, snarkily, his evading paces became derailed by a hostile aura that breached the isolated room; in a rapid measure of seconds, a careening projectile blindingly stuck a wall in ferocious trajectory of a point-blank earshot - a black carbon steel Kpinga blade-a hunter's throw. A Jabari enforcer was a warrior-powerhouse of a ruthless opponent; they were bred to deliver the jungle's reckoning. Fueling by mechanized readiness of predatory intent; Bucky instinctively crouched low on his haunches, gritting his teeth against a threaded snarl. 'Damnit...'

A grunting resonance of Xhosa deafeningly breached the penetrated room, with approaching intimidation in his driven momentum, the mercenary enforcer thumped his fists in taunting unison against his Kevlar garbed chest evident to hostile glint in his dark irises- banking assonant of elemental-jungle- combat. "Ingxube encinci yeTchalla ingxweleni (T'challa's wounded little jackal is on the prowl...)" he demeaningly uttered.

Any disarmed motion of their challenging stances would betray a raze of lethal supremacy. Restraint had become a short fuse; glaring with a razorlike intensity of his steel-blue irises, Bucky waveringly reeled his evasive paces back, the cybertronic vibrainum of his arm pulsed in the tempo of mechanized reaction as he aggressively deflected a feinting strike with an elbow block while he surged his left foot, catching the enforcer's armored calf only to feel bodily careened back against the wall into knee- buckling submission.

"You guys just don't quit, do you?" Bucky grunted as he took cover from another lethal throw of a blade being aimed straight for his head. He respected spirited people who never quit, but he was reaching the end of his rope on this stealth mission. He needed to get that spear head and get out before everything went downhill. "Too bad for you, I don't give up neither." Bucky bounced back to his feet as the enforcer charged at him. A mountain of muscle and mass, the Jabari smashed his fist into the drywall where Bucky was standing. A vibranium fist collided with the enforcer's stomach, barely winding him as Bucky began a frontal assault.

"Outsider. You will not lay hands on our treasures!" The enforcer snarled at him with a livid look. Bucky ducked another fist aimed for his head but couldn't stop the hard knee that landed in his abdomen. The breath from his body was sucked out by the explosive contact. Another blow landed, this time it connected with the side of his face. Stars danced in his eyes, distracting him from the oncoming train of devastation that sent him crashing into the glass display case, showering shards all over the area.

Bucky landed on his back and heard something heavy and metallic land beside him. He couldn't see, and could barely hear beyond the ringing in his ears. But he could feel sharp pieces of glass all over the floor. He carefully feels his hands along the ground, searching for a solid surface to press his human hand against. His fingertips touched something cool and smooth, but it surprisingly filled him with dread as if it were the button to a warhead.

He gasped and coughed with pain, but somehow still managed to retain his equilibrium in the face of overwhelming odds. He couldn't afford to pull his punches here.

"Shouldn't have done that, punk." Sneering, Bucky caught the arm of the enforcer as he made to hit him again. With a flick of his wrist, Bucky heard a sickening pop follow by a howl of pain. "And I really don't have time for this." His retaliation was quick and effective. He pulled the enforcer towards him, turned him around and snapped his neck. The sound triggered an onslaught of grim memories that made him grimace with self-loathing. He hated killing; but it was an inevitable outcome for a soldier.

"Right, the spear." Bucky shuddered from the sight of the dead Jabari and focused in on the glass case...It was the same case he had been tackled into and shattered. Which meant the spear… He had touched it on the floor.

An ethereal convergence of vitreous white-hot energy lucidly pulsated from the runic spearhead; alarmingly in a strenuous grip, Bucky registered a vociferous manifestation of feverish implosions arrowing through his stunned veins. A contractive numbness rampantly channeled the corded heaviness of his rigid muscles; gnashing his teeth against a breathless heave, he reeled bracingly on his flesh and metallic palms, using traction of his bridged thighs to drag his bulked mass towards a wall.

Sluggish variances of his warring resistance became throbbingly splintered against morphic tension that became half-paralyzing-deadened in a cacophonous-phantasmic onslaught. He couldn't release his clutching hold on the neolithic spearhead, the pointed edges were cutting painstakingly into tauter flesh of his bruising palm. "Grah..." he railed out throatily in a vicious cadence fringing harrowingly into an animalistic-ferine snarl; under tousled disarray of chestnut tresses, his aquamarine irises grew blankly wide at the disturbing trek of blood starkly ribboning over his whitened knuckles. Against a vertiginous tension, in conscious reaction, he forcibly braced the muscled sculpt of his quaking forearm over sweat-drench Armani of his shirt. "What's happenin' to me..." he croaked, slurringly.

The question raced through his mind like a speed train with no end in sight. Round and round he was carried by a wailing storm of sickening discomfort that spewed dread and pain throughout his whole body. As alarming as it was, it didn't compare to the harsh realization that the fight had unknowingly triggered the spear's power and it was now sinking its vicious tendrils into his body. He forced himself with clenched teeth to release his hold on the spear-head, sporting a bloody palm that burned white hot. The glowing vibranium weapon clattered harmlessly on the table the case was set upon while Bucky fell backwards to the floor, sweating profusely and filled with stifling exhaustion. He breathed in deep, his vision dazed as the world spun. He could see a form entering the room, lithe with porcelain white skin.

"S-S'lina?" He murmured sluggishly, trying in vain to stand as loud heels raced to him.

Driven by a surge of resurrected-visceral panic liquifying her veins, conveying a sense of controlled poise, Selina rackingly skidded down on her knees at her sniper wolf's laden side with the athletic momentum of accelerating of a undeterred lissome baserunner; the colliding pressure of the granite floor jolted her rigid bones as she pinched nostrils against the miasmal stench of ghoulish decay sickeningly wafting off Bucky's fevered-slick flesh—a scrouging mechanism of reigning punishment that was inexorably dragging him down into unwarranted throes of infectious vulnerability-an onslaught of occultic mayhem.

The inert hulking mass of a dispatched Jarbai enforcer was heaped atop of clustering glass shards. "Had a little slip-up, did we, handsome...?" she teasingly snarked, her coffee irises narrowingly gazing at his knife-edged features grimacing with a rapt stretch of telltale-clamorous pain. She detected a morphic cadence of aggression-a possessive heat. Kneading her lithe thumb achingly over the bloodied gouge etched in his palm, Selina felt the length of his roughen fingers twin with hers into an urgent clasp of bone-searing desperation, blindingly anchoring her closer to him with straining ardency melded in the luminous-predatory depth of his glacial aquamarine irises, as her fingers reverently threaded his curtaining tresses, brushing the curve of his ear with soothing ministrations. "We're in this together, Buck," she gritted throbbingly against a choked sob, inadvertently resonating in a breathless pitch. "You and me..."

She wouldn't lose him-not again when the world became suffocatingly devoid without pulses of hope against the cosmic scourge of the Infinity Stones. Everything went into catatonic shutdown while she was on the rising edge of a soul-harvesting, insuperable Armageddon; drifting further into a vengeful cast of shadow. There was nothing to go back to, not when the prevailing existence of humanity was measured like the grainy sand of a tipped hourglass.

During those five years of grievous anguish stowed for her beast machine, Selina weaponized heartbreak, using every throb of detachment to fuel an incendiary reckoning of mortal vengeance within the kinetic barriers of Wakanda-defending the elder tribes from parasitical rogue scavengers; she carried on the extension of mission that Bucky had staked down. 'Wakanda Forever...'

"I like the sound of that," Bucky murmured through closed eyes, trying to ride out the waves of dizziness and nausea that moved through him like a virulent poison seeking to consume him. He shuddered and grimaced, daring to open his eyes and gaze on the only thing that would give him strength in this moment. "You're my darlin' angel, Selina. Think you can carry me outta here with those wings of yours?" He joked with good humor, trying to reassure her as much as he wanted to regain some semblance of composure. The dry look she gave him told him his quip wasn't funny but well received. "Hey, it's not often I get to be the damsel here. But I think my leg is aching bad." He gestured to the back of his calf where he felt something white-hot sticking inside of him.

With a flit of her mascara curved lashes, Selina fixedly glared at a shard of embedded glass that pierced surgically deep in the corded length of his garbed calf. Responding to his play of devious Brooklyn-boy charm, with adept exactness; she tactilely caressed a deft flex of her fingers over the blood-slick gash in his muscled flesh-Bucky unabashedly caught his pouty underlip with his gnashing teeth. Emitting a throated groan, the metallic coolness of his bionic palm unerringly braced over the supple-tone muscle of her freckled shoulder; voicelessly Bucky nodded for her to swiftly yank the jutted piece out. "Careful Barnes I might enjoy this..." she rasped breathily, her undertone pitched with a wicked cadence, as she glided a finger distractingly of the shard's edge. "Face it, handsome this isn't the worst scratch you've gotten from a fight..."

"No. And if history has taught me anything, it won't be the last either," Bucky shrugged as he made to rise up to his feet. He was taken by surprise the moment he found his footing, he realized the piercing pain he had felt in his calf was suddenly gone. "Weird, I can't even feel the pain now." He checked his calf and the exposed flesh through his torn pants-leg. Both he and Selina were alarmed at the sight of clean unbroken flesh. "I don't usually heal this fast," he looked up at Selina, a myriad of thoughts waged through him about what this could mean. Part of him dismissed the notion that this was in any way incidental, but a festering of dread in his gut permeated his mind and with it, the thought of what that spear-head might've done to him when he touched it. His gaze flicks from Selina over towards the Fang of Anubis, still sitting on the table where he had dropped it, drips of his blood staining the surface.

It appeared unremarkably life-less and insignificant. But somehow, the longer he stared at it, the more fixated he became with its design. The vibranium hummed a soft tune to him, ominous and foreboding, but he couldn't ignore its allure. He was drawn in by the sound as it guided him across a field of stars. He saw images and sights long-past. Golden temples built by devout hands of Egyptians and the slaves they commanded. Statues of bronze and obsidian were erected to honor the old gods. They rose, they clashed, they fell, they slumbered. In the midst of the cosmic fields, he thought he saw a pair of eyes watching him, red and horrifying, commanding him to obey…

For an ephemeral moment against the eclipsing paralytic shadow, pressingly, Selina felt a symphonic mantra that made the glacial fire of Bucky's mesmeric aquamarine irises grew stuporously vacant against chimerical effusive arcs of chaotic energy haloing over his torn calf.

The sharpened angles and broad planes of his roguish features jutted against a possessive raze of sorcerous infancy. Easing her delicate palms with reverent pressure over his stubbled cheeks, Selina kept the immobilized solidity of him bolstered down as a wetted trek of drool repulsively fringed over dimpled notch of his slackened, bristled chin. "James, look at me..." she urged in breathless pants, whisking off drenched brunette tresses that feverishly hung over the shapely arch of his tremulous lip, and unblinkingly stared at his canine incisors extending into a pointed length of mutative fruition. "James-"

A shadow fell over the room despite the interior being the pale might of midday. Bucky's eyes glazed over as he finally fell free of the trance that had enraptured him into an unending spiral of ancient history. The light of his eyes appeared darker when they opened, gazing at Selina with confusion for a moment. "I-I think-" And then he was lurching over. A strangled groan escaping the tightness of his lips. His eyes were wide and piercing, his pupils dilated in a mixture of horror and anticipation that he hadn't anticipated. "Gaah! S-Selina…" He slammed his fist into the ground, staggering to regain his feet while Selina shouted and tried to get him to sit down.

He felt magic, cold, vicious and powerful seeping into his nerves, twisting his muscles and limbs. His ears rang with a blaring noise, his head throbbed but he was dimly aware that his ears were extending into pointed tips. His teeth ached as if they were being pulled by pliers, but in reality, his canines were extending to the point they poked his tongue. "S-Something's happening…" His fingers closed into fists, unaware that the very act proved painful due to his nails having grown longer and sharper. His disheveled wolfish-mane clung to his sweaty brow. His bearded chin grew thicker, his muscles beneath his clothes grew tighter.

He could hear Selina shouting at him as she straddled his waist into a chair, holding his head, trying to get him to focus on her and only her and not the force that sought to control him from afar. On the table, the Fang glowed purple with dark intentions.

"That damn Wakandian piece is rigged," Selina hissed out seethingly, the raw bleariness of her tigerish-coffee irises were glaring down at sheathing chestnut furrily melding over his taut fleshed knuckles- his steely-aquamarine irises flashed owlishly wide in naked panic-an unprecedented revelation that he was exponentially being grappled into bestial depths of a blood curse-his banked vitality evolving against a chimeric riptide of sorcerous infusion."Things are going to get more complicated for us, Barnes..."

He knew the Fang had done something to him the moment he touched it. Though the question of how and why went unanswered. Bucky felt fear where he normally felt courage. It was like being subjected to the reconditioning all over again. Feeling his mind, his body being undone and molded to fit someone else's will. The pain in his body made him angry and dreadful. He reached up with his hand, feeling the foreign surface of his ears that were no longer smooth and circular, but had the pointed edge of a wild animal. He tongue brushed against his sharp incisors and he could no longer contain the cry that ripped from his throat.

"I-I'm turning. To...a monster," he groaned. He didn't want to turn into a weapon, a beast-whatever the power that controlled the spearhead had in mind. His trembling body was uncontrollable. It was as if he were shoved down an unending hill and could do nothing but constantly roll and shake. He looked up at Selina with tearful eyes. She looked strong, beautiful but also barely worried. It said much. And in this moment, Bucky felt nothing but a longing to share one final moment with her before he urged her to run. "You gotta go, Lina. Take the spearhead...run!"

A snarling resonance crescendoed teemingly with eruptive volume, unflinchingly Selina didn't reel back; amethyst runes of the vibrainum spearhead pulsated in mechanized sync as cybertronic plating of Bucky's arm deafeningly whirred in amplified-robotic unison with no avail. His metallic fist hammered into a floor in against morphic pressure. "T-This is bad...Argahh..."Hunching over on vertiginous traction, evident to his floored momentum, convulsively gnashing the jutted edges of his fanged-incisors, as he quivery pinched his eyelids shut.

Bucky consciously enforced a variance of phantom resistance tellingly against the divesting barrage of morphic penetration distressingly stunting through him in a rapid wake of heart-thrashing agony that overpowered him to choke out hitches of panty breath.

The bilious reek of neasous sweat rancidly breached her nostrils, effectively, Selina clutched the litheness of her palm over the rigidly of the delineated bulge of his garbed bicep with a pacifying flex of her dredged up feminine resilience against contractive strain, murmuring in a desperate pitch. "I'm not leaving you to fight this damn makeover alone, handsome..."

Bucky would've insisted more stubbornly if he had enough willpower to force himself to. His mind was fractured between pain and awareness. The magic from the spearhead seeped into his nerves, stealing his sense of focus as his senses were assaulted by the constant feeling of his body changing. Selina wouldn't abandon him. For that, he both loved and feared for her. A selfish part of him was glad she wouldn't, and he latched onto that reality like an anchor to keep him strong, to keep him afloat. "Damn it, Lina." He said, both with exasperation and adoration.

He let his selfishness take over and if there was one thing he wanted-he needed —more than anything, it was the feeling of her warmth washing over him. He pulled her towards him and captured her lips in a desperate kiss. It was wet, urgent and emotional as if it would be the last time they would feel each other like this. It began firm and stiff but quickly grew heady and passionate. The taste of wine on her lips sent licks of fire through his fur-sprouting skin. The coolness of her breath tempered the heat of his tongue, he drank in her soft sighs while his hands held her close-tight, clinging and loving.

Holding themselves grounded against inevitable throes of ascending surrender, the reverent chasteness of his sensuous-wide lips arrestingly edged the kiss deeper into liquid heat as he angled his head as his lengthy tresses slickly feathered her cheeks and thrusted his lips in a pacing cadence of breathless ferocity; impulses clashed against their heartbeats; moaning through the edging intensity of the kiss. Catching her breath, Selina responded to his sweet demand invested in his untamed urgency that made her throat searingly ache, fluidly like heated silk melding with steel, she arched the cushioned swells of her exquisite breasts voluptuously in smooth flexion against steel bands of corded muscle swelling heavier with virile strength under his Armani-clad torso, igniting scything pulses of gladiator-honed tension.

The flavorous taste of decadent cherry enticingly melded against his throbbing lips, bracing her possessively against the muscled length of him while his robotic palm anchored her svelte waist in shivery contrast, beckoning her lithe hand to guide that evocative pressure, lingeringly sliding over the black velvet over the sleek planes of her supple back. He needed to feel the beautiful vividness of her unbreakable devotion; to become a captive without a promise of infinite release.

His gaping lips breathlessly melded with bruising pressure as he roughly dragged her lips into sensuous tempo with his; blinding reverence drove him as he surged his mouth wide with thrusting pressure of his bristled jaw, headily recapturing her lips edging her further into a searing onrush that galloped through her veins. "Damn, I needed this..." His deep-timbered voice huskily suffused into her veins, as serrated points of his fang-teeth chillingly grazed a dragging pinch over her beautifully plushier underlip, bankingly unmistakable to ardent fierceness of raw mania--feeding renetless stokes of aphrodisiacal fire. A slight whimper became achingly trapped against their stretching lips. He gasped into those delicate volumes as if he was hammer-punched, trying in effect to reel back--he couldn’t force pain onto her--not his kitten.

mesmerically as his metallic hand gripped with clenching possession over taut flesh of her shapely curve. Skin to skin —their bodies aligned in deeper intimate cadence.

Throatily, in a half-lidded onslaught, Bucky gnarred as his metallic arm fully braced against her head tipping back in fervent motion as his elbow banged against the wall; his alloy-metallic fingers threaded roughly through her silken whorls, messy tangles, angling her delicate jaw up as the firm heat of his parted lips intoxicatingly throbbed over the delicate curve —rampant wet heat hungrily echoed his aggressive command as his kiss-bruised lips bitingly tugged on the fullness of her recaptured lips with blinding thrusts of his broaden jaw.

He felt his threaded control splintering against the euphoric pressure of a sensuous tempest he wielded; the beckoning addictive—naked fusion—the escalating need as he captured shockingly her into a maelstrom of shadowy heat-beyond the breaking point of saporous intimacy that was addictively dragging him under-a fevered implosion rushed through him in shivery quakes. Ratcheting duels of heat and desperation irrevocably mounted with an electrified acceleration of their rhapsodic joining—they deserved on last moment to dance in the crosshairs.

A coupling moan feathered achingly out of them—hungry and urgent, the fusing pressure of his lips supped as her mouth stretched breathlessly, feeling the intimate contrast of their jaws align in mirrored variance, she shivered against his gracing heat, as his nose scrunched against hers in a drifting wake of riotous fusion as their vision became robbed by the shadowy contrast of amorous intensity-passion was tempestuously driven in their stoking veins —intoxicating against every rhythmic throb—an eruptive deliverance that  fierily anchored them into throes of addictive ecstasy; their kiss-swollen lips fused accord as Bucky demandingly tugged hungrier with aching suction —never opening his eyes, just falling deeper into wonderous heat as their bodies surrender to reality.

He felt wetness on his cheeks and didn't know if they were his tears or her own. What he did feel for certain was the building pressure in his spine that led to a tail sprouting from his lower back. Against the splicing divergence infectiously racking in his tautened bands of enhanced muscle, scrunching up his graven features in breakneck reaction, Bucky growlingly felt contractive tractions of bones dislocating in morphic cadence; heralding the furred extension of a lengthy canine tail eeling uncontrollably out of  the material of his torn backside with a snaking lash over the heaviness of bulk sculpting his thighs. The encompassing depth of insurmountable agony was becoming unquenchable to stave off. "L-Lina..."

[storiesof2018]

Crossing Bridges

‘See you in a minute…’

It felt inevitable to cling onto a fraying thread of damnable hope. Each moment of resistance he salvaged was dismantled-cleaved apart by cosmic synthesis of damning energy -there was no assonance of valor crescendoing in his steeled heart; he lost the fight: lost everyone he loved when the Mad Titan hammered the Infinity gauntlet down, razing souls of his best friend and teammates into morphic sifts of dust by the scythe of his massive hand- his sadistic-vatic will ravaged the cosmos-fashioning a steelyard of instant termination. The world had gone into shutdown against the eclipsing shadow of unwarrantable grief-heartache while being on the unprecedented fringe of a spirit-razing Armageddon.

There were no echoes of warning, beckoning him to look back; everything happened with the voltaic speed of a firebolt strike. The distant resonances of valor felt like white-noise against his grievous heart. The world he fought to defend; the chivalrous oath that that cemented him into a defiant stance was ravaged by a careening lance of infinite heartbreak.

'We lost everything…Now we have to fight to get it all back.’

Despite his reserved efforts to stake down a tumult of raging vengeance , Steve couldn’t quash down the inexorable onslaught that bankingly pulsated through errant trek of blearing tears as he fiercely clutched the sterling arrow pendant against his roughen palm; trying his damnnest to purge out the soul-tearing anguish he guardingly stowed back as his world became eradicated at the five seconds he registered the disconnection. He felt stagnant to reality, trudging over emptiness and gazing at his reflection morph into a vagrant drifter.

Nothing eased-he wanted to seize all those unbearable moments back against a retraction of unbidden hope—just one moment of visceral urgency would be enough for him to stack down. The arrow pendant that Barton mailed to him was the only anchor of reality that gripped him against soul-gouging upheavals of unendurable heartache that was desperately rigged up with an incendiary pulse of detonative vengeance that he starved for.

The suicidal mission on Vormir-the measures of high cost were direly rivaled against a prevalent choice of a martyr-his best girl—Natasha had willingly offered her soul to the ritualistic energy of the cosmic sphere—an interminable unity that would never be broken: the only way to bring their world—family back out of conjured oblivion. 'I never had anything to look back at…Until we started this dance…’

Bolstered in a semblance of impassiveness that kept him grounded in a vigil of reserve, Steve tearily steered his bleared azure irises at the ripples of moonlight captured the elemental serenity of the forested bordered lake, incessant dissonance of crickets echoed against rushes of briny humidity. An opalescent moon breached over masses of storm clouds, as spastic flashes of lightning forked the darkening horizon. The last sconces of daylight were contrasts of amethyst and rose-quartz gleamingly arced over the fading horizon- an empyreal barrier that reached further out earthen vistas. Staring passively outward, he couldn’t shake the perpetual- concussive defeat that warringly grappled him—nothing ebbed.

The Stark’s rustic cabin had been a harboring refuge point that Pepper Potts generously offered him, precious little Morgan and her relocated back to Manhattan, where Happy Hogan took on the full guardianship of the newest generation of the Next Avengers. The everlasting legacy of Iron Man— the hard core-mantle of being Earth’s defender was undoubtingly bequeathed onto the web-slinging kid from Queens. His old teammates were divided by a promise of relevance to herald a new rebirth; Bucky had found his homestead- a sanctuary in the Wakandian outposts of the Border Tribe; adapting his new identity conceived by T'challa’s generously fostering redemption-White Wolf. He engaged covertly infiltration missions with his lethality beautiful kitten, he never missed live vid-chats on Friday nights; hologramed by synced kimoyo beads with Steve that always ended with: until next time, punk.

Sitting on the edge of the dock, Steve achingly staved onrushing tumults of emotions that corraled him into grievous thralls, resurrected heartache throbbingly clashed in his veins, as he consciously angled his bristled chin up; tensing the glide of his fingers over threadbare denim that sculpted over his muscled thigh, reining the intolerable urge to release—every indefensible variance of soul-cleaving agony that he stowed back. There was no escape—no accelerant of solace; he felt unremittingly knocked down against leaden gravity.

“It should’ve been, me…”

Against reigned sense of despairing betrayal, Steve narrowed his gaze of feverish azure blearily down at the pendant with a feigned measure of adamant resolve, Steve unshakably brandished possessive apparitions, starkly relenting against blinding command to not lose his safeguarded grip, to cherishingly keep on holding onto her—he owed her that salvaged promise.

Letting his puffed eyelids fall against a mounting surge of unwarranted tears: a deadening effusion that painstakingly launched him back to the vividness of tactile memory; just a stoking ember of mirrored long-denied echoes of desire that grew shiveringly intense, beckoning a heady chasteness of phantom heat fusing into compromising reverence.

He craved for unwavering closeness of their bodies feverishly alighted on the equal ground of papable trust, gooey scent of peanut butter wafted off prepared sandwiches left on the cluttered desk, the only cheapened rations they preserved against the escalating desolation, heaps of mulched ash-remnants of humanity dusted sidewalks, abandoned husks of vehicles barricaded alleyways, spawning an illusion of No Man’s Land—they were stationed to exist as underground soldiers of a conquered battlefield that measured pulses of resistance like a trip-hammer against the black-out horizon with no promise of daybreak.

The Avengers were dismantled-Wakanda’s reign of the Black Panther was short-lived with no heir of the wears the vibrainium claws. How to avenge the fallen-to rebuild foundations of insurmountable hope when survival was measured by a precarious line? How many collected souls became dirt-smeared memories that hauntingly left dark haloes over the earth?

A modicum of retriggered pain shunted through Steve’s heart with needle-sharp precision-he was inexorably raided by a contractive throb of soul-racking failure, by all torturous accounts to stack against Thanos’s calamitous gambit, Steve wished it was him that vanished into the Soul Stone-not his Brooklyn brother-not Bucky. Every day he tamped down the cadency of a despondent mantra, allowing the vitality of his soldiery endurance to numb against the bone-drilling injection of defeat that punishingly felt akin to liquid nitrogen careening in his veins.“M’ sorry, Buck…”

“Let me guess you came here to do laundry, Rogers?” A quirking lift of a retractive smirk tugged over his plush-chiseled lips as he disarmingly registered the grated huskiness of Natasha’s low-pitch undertone, smokily edged with unadulterated remorse. Keeping himself consciously distance, as he braced the corded width of his garbed shoulder against a steel bookshelf, Steve unguardedly regarded the defective Red Room operator-his dance partner of combative dynamic, alluringly leaning with feigned nonchalance while unerringly she utilized contrasts of shadow-a restrictive tactic to disguise her tumultuous heartache that was stowed for her renegade best friend: Clint Barton.

The cost of detachment left Natasha compromised, living in half-awake in a groundless after-life. Barton was her snarky echo of relevant humanity when she became destructively unbreakable granite-carbon steel in the fringe of resurrected demons of her surgically unforgiving past. She was in the red-zone. This wasn’t her first rodeo to become saddled down by grief-to balance on a frayed tightrope that was electrified by callbacks of her fractured resistance.

The encompassing installation of a carious reality that was orchestrated by the cosmic-harvesting Titian was steering her towards the knife-edge wasn’t charitable-ignited stokes of reckless vengeance felt weaponized and she just needed to find the right direction of trajectory to deliver a Soviet hailstorm before the high stakes of existence accelerated.

Every day with a caliber of mortal preservation, Natasha stealthily collected more intel on night digit social security numbers; hacking into surveillance feeds on the grid, jotting down names on waterlogged missing persons’ reports trussed on crosswalk poles-just banners of lost memories. She needed a crusade of redemption-answers to bridge her to Clint’s detected location. None of SHIELD’s hardware gave her leads, she was chasing a shadow hawk.

Pressing her lithe palms against her delicate nose, Natasha quashed down raw tension, unblinkingly driving her indifferent grayish-teal irises back at Steve, holding back feverish rush of phantom tears. “At least you’re better company than the furry space raccoon…” she quipped snarkily as he reactively arched his brows with abashed poise. In a variance of casual ease, deftly, Natasha lifted a peanut butter sandwich off a plate; giving him a subtle nod of genuine invitation while taking a hearty bite- an evade of stalled distraction that he viscerally recognized. “It’s nice to value simple things, reminds us of what still exists…” she rasped under breath, tersely. “Living on the back-burner, Rogers, never gives you the luxury of having a good meal…”

“Yeah, it’s always good to appreciate a peanut butter sandwich… ” Steve boyishly quipped back the masculine sculpt of his plush lips quirked up into a half-hearted smirk, staving off a bone-deep ache that razed through his veins, unhesitantly approaching the counter, the rampant gentleness of his controlled prowess was honed to pursue a chance to resurge that struck a chord; in the casting darkness, her tousled copper-platinum tresses draped enticingly over the cool fineness of her alabaster features, more defined with raw-edged maturity as she teasingly fleered him a beckoning smirk, while Steve kept his gaze sheepishly downcasted. “How 'bout I make you somethin’ a bit different tonight…” He offered to her attentively in naked urgency, edged with tactive intent sonorously resonating in his drawled timbre. “If you want me…”

That underlying desperation tamped in his stammering pitch tantalizingly caught her off guard, stiffly, Natasha made no attempt to break distance, the earthy vetiver of his sensuous Gucci Guilty aftershave-the rustic infusion of motorcycle leather inadvertently soothed down her core agony-those virile scents effused her into throes of an intimate stupor. “I think you already know my answer…” she huskily coaxed, against a rush of urgency.

Nothing wavered between them, Steve approached with tentative measure, his large hand bracketed her wrist in clash of disarming heat; his thumb caressingly traced a feathery glide over her bruised knuckles, telltale evidence of her routine kickboxing. She didn’t pull back-not this time. He was ruggedly boyish Adonis, heavy bands of graven muscle harnessed enhanced vitality under his black shirt, blonde tresses were unkempt over his corded nape. The convenience of his proximity was anticipated as Natasha braced fittingly against the rigid tautness of his masculine heat, every flexing contour of sheathed muscle fevered with telltale strain. He breathed deeply, allowing banked desire to reign. “Y'know I do owe you a dance…” he murmurously urged in throaty pitch, inextricably grazing his bearded jaw over the suppleness of her cheek. “A part of me wants to live for tomorrow again…”

“Don’t say anything, Steve…” she raspily entreated in dismal hitches, staunching the bleeding-ignitable heartache that revealingly gouged her deep; she needed to find Clint, cement their unbreakable friendship before he vanished into the crimson rain that his unstable-chimeric retribution hailed.

It was flatline of racked connection; Natasha knew that he would stray further into darknesses, a betrayed warrior harboring no code of honor, using his spycraft caliber to eclipse a wake of the execution by trading his soul away: penetrating demon hordes of his former enemies.

Clint had turned his back voluntarily on the avenging light of salvation-he was tragically mutating into a wraith of his own vengeful thirst. She needed to become his deterrent -give him a sense of home again before his ledger steeped in blood. His SHIELD file -Hawkeye identity was measured by a gunshot. Despite, that Natasha was immune to retractions of betrayal, she felt damningly akin to a weak-defenseless kitten shoved behind hell’s gate, rigged with a zero-day trigger. The ephemeral-solid reality of Steve’s muscled form had become a harbor in the tempest, mirroring a contrast of intimate stillness.

The instinctive nakedness of their chaste gravity divested pulses of shivery reluctance-nothing felt expandable against her sirens call. The flexing pressure of his invincible solidity commanded her ardent reaction, she flashed her gaze up, meeting cool azure- a piercing oceanic depth of hawkish intensity that she clung onto. “Just let us have this…”

As he became passion-driven, Steve rested the bristled curve of his knifing cheekbone, delicately pillowing against her flushed temple, he felt her eyelashes flit under the broad thickness of his jaw; despite that everything they loved was smeared on the scythe’s edge, he just wanted to recapture one moment with her. Readily, in a slow accord of tactile precision as he reeled back, he stared adoringly into her shadowed teal irises, angling his jaw, with a fervent slant of his lips, dizzyingly surging a headier thrust against her yielding mouth, flavorous pressure ghosted over their heated flesh, breathlessly aware of a bruising drag over his teeth over her lush-swollen lips with fiercer heat, her answering cadence tempestuously increased with rivaled tenor. “Nat...

That wanton fringe of addictive contact became an urgent riot of clamorous hunger, Steve burningly remembered arcing through his starved veins-igniting his dormant arousal. It had been evocative surrender that could be banked-down. The flexing pressure of her lithe fingers unerringly kneading a rapt demand over the broad planes his beard-roughen cheeks. The sleekness of her twined palms bracketed his angled jaw to a rushing tempo of mirrored- rhythmic pace; she blindingly eased him with dexterous feminine tenderness, anchoring him into sensuous---paradisaic depths the edge of their deepened kiss was fueled by need incarnate that grew volcanic in crescendoing. Everything imploded into variances of real-glorious ecstasy against surrendered pressure.

A rapturous succession of their gliding lips. Both of them headily reaching for another visage of an exhilarating thrill. The cushioned swell of her thrusting voluminous cherry lips that ardently melded against his with gracing-wet- heat to breathless unison as he quakingly clung to an edge visceral restraint that he assuaged, their contrasts of surging fusion bodily ratcheted them into a boneless nova of abandon. It had been a sensuous moment to live for; until the cataclysmic pulse of the dreich—Thanos purged world recalled them back. 

'Nothing lasts for forever…’

[thestoryreadingape]

Bucolic abandon

Another tale from Tallis Steelyard of Port Naain 👍😃

[onegirlthinktank]

08302021 Part 1

A desert in the city

[wilhelmjfink]

The Great Divide - Chapter 11

A/N: sup. sorry to all like 4 of you that follow this story that i was m.i.a. this week. where i’m at it’s getting to be racing season! and i’ve been in and out of town training horses and they’re some looooong fucking days man... anyway this chapter isn’t that exciting but crazy things are coming!!

There was a period of stillness that Riley took to her advantage, leaping from the train cart to the nearest set of dilapidated metal stairs and climbing them as quickly as she could with them loudly shifting beneath her feet. She’d spotted two ingots at the top of the platform and further it lead to the top of a rail car, giving her another vantage point where she could see everything around her. And walkers were always too dumb to climb stairs if they could avoid it.

A decomposing body lay next to the two steel blocks, tattered clothing similar to Riley’s draped over its protruding ribs and hip bones and she shuddered, knowing that it was likely another slave that had been put in that exact situation as her but didn’t make it. But she refused to meet that same fate.

The ingots were heavy. Dropping her crowbar she strained to carry both of them, already drained from the last few days of no food and hardly any sleep, but managed to balance them on painstakingly on her shoulders long enough to carefully descend the staircase and drop them loudly in front of the gate she’d originally come through.

The sound echoed throughout the whole train yard and she cursed to herself, opting to head back toward the second story platforms and search there instead of ground level with the walkers all over.

Retrieving her crowbar, she exhaled deeply. She had already grown tired long before and her feet were aching, the thick layers of calloused skin she’d built up doing little to protect them from the gravel and dirt underneath them, almost in her favor.

So she pressed on.

There were three more ingots behind a makeshift fort of metal sheets next to a fire pit that was blazing in the middle of an old tire. It worried her, the idea that there was something other than walkers lurking in the shadows, watching her every move. Walkers were doable — people, not so much anymore.

She gauged her distance from where she stood to the entrance and frowned at the thought of having to carry three of those beams back down the flight of stairs and to the gate. But if she had to make three trips, she would do it; there were many things at stake and she didn’t want to die at the hands of a walker and wind up rotting, half eaten and carelessly abandoned in this dark steelyard.

If it had used to be a yard for loading coal and steel, there had to be an easier way to move it all. Crowbar clutched tightly in her grasp, she crept across the rusted platforms as quickly and quietly as she could manage, keeping her eyes peeled for potential threat and more ingots as well, her tired body struggling to keep up with her somehow still live-wired brain.

Ahead of her, two more ingots. Maybe this would be easier than she’d thought.

One miscalculated step on a corroded bar beneath her sent her right foot down through it, the thinned metal shattering under the weight. With a gasp she fell forward, clutching onto her crossbar in fear, the world seeming to still for several seconds before she was sure she hadn’t fallen through and was plummeting to her death below.

However, the rusted frays were sharp, and as she carefully extracted her leg, they left long red scratches up her bare leg, already inflamed and tender when blood began to trickle down them.

They stung and Riley clamped her eyes shut tight, reminiscing in the pain of the burn on her back in hopes it would make that pain seem minuscule in comparison. And it sort of worked, though she couldn’t shake the sound of her mother’s nagging voice in her head, reminding her of the dangers of Tetnus...

But while mom scolded her, she slowly pushed to her feet and, once she safely navigated to the opposite side of the bridge, she found exactly what she was looking for.

In a stroke of unbelievable luck she’d found thick cables wired around a simple wheel, the long strands dropping all the way down to a manual train cart.

She couldn’t fight the smile that broke out on her face. Was it too easy? How many had gone before her and failed? Kitty seemed sure that Riley wouldn’t make it an hour. But she told herself they’d poorly underestimated her, and that she was strong, resilient, and she was a fighter. And she would make it out of this hell hole and back to her family, even if she died outside the gates of Alexandria.

By the time she’d lugged nine ingots to the crate attached to the pulley system, she was sweating, breathless and exhausted. The crowbar would fall comically from her grasp every time she tried to pick it up and her worry overwhelmed her knowing that if she were to be attacked by two or more walkers at that moment, she didn’t have very good odds.

And on top of that, the maze of gates and metal sheets she searched didn’t seem to hide any more ingots, which meant she needed to return to ground where they all lurked.

Mouth dry like sandpaper, eyes stinging from smoke and smog, she heaved her crowbar over her shoulder with stinging, calloused hands, and made her way slowly back towards the stairs.

If she could just weasel her way between them or even under them, she might make it.

The sounds earlier of the ingots clanging into the crate on top of her noisy steps that rattled the old metal above the yard stirred up the horde and they were more frequent than when she’d arrived. Luckily, only a few seemed to be meandering around the gate that would possibly interfere with her. She just hoped it stayed that way.

Sluggishly she descended shaky step after shaky step, lowering herself back down to solid ground, her eyelids heavy and bones and muscles screaming and burning. Two more, she told herself. Two fucking more, and I can get out.

Would they make her come back tomorrow? Was this her whole life now?

Tearing her from the thoughts she fell forward, tripping when bony fingers clasped around her ankle and sent her tumbling down the last two steps into the dirt.

She hadn’t meant to yell; it instantly drew the attention of the others wandering in circles around her. Jaws snapping, yellow teeth barred, groaning and moaning several walkers shuffled toward her with outstretched arms. Closing in, like a cheesy zombie movie.

The stairs which the initial walker had grabbed her through skewed its arm awkwardly but enough to inhibit its grip on her ankle. She pulled herself free and managed to clamber back to her aching feet, stumbling once more before a surge of strength coming from the adrenaline coursing through her body allowed her to retrieve her crowbar and straighten up.

But spinning around to seek out the first offender that had fucked it all up to begin with made her an easy target for another walker that approached her from her peripheral vision, and in the blink of an eye, had her in its reach.

The tool in her hands was still painfully heavy in her sore arms but she managed to hit the walker in the face with just enough force to knock it back, but not kill it. Regardless it did bide her enough time to twist her body and lodge the flat end into its skull, stilling the corpse beneath her.

But of course -- and she hadn’t thought about it during the chaos -- it was nearly impossible for her to dislodge the crowbar from its head.

And when she finally did yank it free, she stumbled backwards right into another pair of open, decayed arms.

The proximity of the growls to her ears had her hair standing on end, and drove her to utilize every last ounce of strength she had remaining in her body. It allowed her to ground herself and swing the emaciated monster that held her back and forth, it’s skeletal feet dragging behind it, until she broke free from it’s ineffectual grasp and reached quickly for it’s arms, pulled foward and tore them right off.

There was a split second of relief before the first walker that caused it all untangled its way from the stairs and crawled towards her; but she was prepared enough to bring the blunt end of the crowbar down once, twice, three times until she weakly, finally, managed to smash its head in.

And then it was still.

Three walkers would normally have been relatively easy, if she’d only had strength and energy and her machete on her.

But she didn’t. She had what she had, and she was dealt a shitty fucking hand; and no matter how pissed off she got about it, it wouldn’t change the situation so she decided to buck up and finish the fucking job. More walkers were coming, and she knew she could’t handle them.

Kitty was waiting at the main gate, a loud and unsettling grin on her face, when Riley slowly tugged the heavy cart behind her with the ounce of energy that she’d had left. She thought she’d been on the verge of breaking down with exhaustion several times but she’d proven herself wrong -- among other people. Eleven ingots, a bruised leg covered in dry crusty blood and cuts but missing the crowbar that she’d opted to ditch in a hiding spot should she have to return at a later time.

“Two hours!” Kitty sneered. “Kitty was worried after the first hour. But then she saw you up on the rooftops, and she knew new girl would be just fine.”

Her normally sinister, mischievous grin turned into a genuine smile, like she was truly proud of Riley for surviving the job. Slapping what should have been a congratulatory hand on her shoulder, Kitty sent Riley forward to her hands and knees with a grunt, losing her balance and allowing her limbs to give out beneath her and catch her breath and finally just take a fucking second to chill.

“Come on, new girl! ... Well, Kitty supposes she isn’t new anymore. Asher is very pleased with Riley. Riley is the first one to make it out of here alive in months, Riley should be celebrating! Riley is a bad ass!”

She was still on all fours, huffing and coughing as she faced the ground and closed her eyes in an effort to stop the world around her from spinning in every direction, shifting beneath her hands and feet. She should be celebrating, she supposed -- if anything. And fuck it, she was proud of herself. Even as she remained on her hands and knees caked in dirt and dust and sweat and walker guts, her throbbing shin burning and itching, she was fucking proud. Riley is a bad ass! Despite how tired she was, how thirsty she was, how much her body screamed at her to rest, how bad the newly formed and opened blisters on her hands and feet stung like the fire that produced the smoke that still burnt her fucking watery eyes, she was fucking proud and she even managed a fucking smirk.

“You’re god damn right she is.”

ya bby girl you get ittttt! so proud of riley :,) 

next chapter tomorrow b/c i owe it to those who read this....... xoxoxo

[killminus]

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