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alwaysmarveling · 3 years ago

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To Be Seen

Pairing: Natasha Romanoff x gn!reader

Warnings: Hints at neglect

Word Count: 3.5k

Summary: All superpowers seem to have a downside to them. Invisibility is no exception.

You got your first pair of glasses when you turned seven. The black frames were a birthday present of sorts. You had your eye set on a transparent blue pair, or honestly any of the many colorful options that lined the shelves, but your mother had grabbed the black ones without a word to you and placed them on the counter. Then the two of you went home, back to the always busy house, buzzing with the sounds of your siblings’ chatter and the television that entertained your constantly preoccupied father. There was no cake, no other presents, not even a “congratulations” or a “happy birthday,” but that was okay. That was okay because you had already gotten the gift of sight.

“Happy birthday, Y/N,” you whispered to yourself that night, your younger sister already sound asleep beside you while you looked up at the glow-in-the-dark shapes taped to the ceiling. The glasses turned the green fuzzy blobs into actual stars, their points clear and easily counted as you drifted off to sleep with the lenses still on. “You can see now.”

---

You found out you could make yourself invisible on the day you hit ten years old. When you woke up, the first thing you did was look at yourself in the mirror, trying to see if you looked any different from the day before, when you were nine. Double digits should mean double the change, right? But there was no change from when you weren’t in the mirror to when you were.

At first, you thought it must’ve been a prank from your older brother, but one look in the bathroom mirror told you that this was something else. It took you about half an hour before you somehow managed to become visible again, but when you did, you walked into the kitchen to find everything the same as it was the night before. No one hung streamers around the house or left a card on the counter, but that was okay. That was okay because you had a gift.

---

On your twenty-seventh birthday, you were recruited to be an Avenger. Three years ago on that exact day, you had quit your office job and joined SHIELD, only as a trainee, but you made your way through the ranks. You had the advantage of a mastered superpower—turning invisible came useful on the countless days you wished the world would just swallow you whole—but you still had to learn to use it like an agent. You were never remarkable, never being praised as the top of your class nor critiqued as one of the worst. You were always in the middle. Always just… there.

But Fury had seen something in you, and now here you were, packing your things to move into the Avengers Tower. You honestly weren’t sure what he saw in you; no one did. There were other SHIELD agents with far more useful powers and much better combat skills, yet he had picked you and no one else, making you the third SHIELD agent to join the Avengers since Clint Barton and Natasha Romanoff.

You looked around the empty apartment, scanning for something you and your imperfect vision might have missed, but saw nothing. Was that what others saw when they looked at you, thinking they had packed the whole room while you were standing right in front of them, arms waving in their face and voice begging for them to acknowledge you? No matter. Fury had told you Natasha would be picking you up at 2, meaning you had just over thirty minutes before she got here. Life moved on, and so would you.

Just like in years prior, there were no claps on the back, shiny bows, or patterned gift wrapping, but that was okay. That was okay because you had gotten the gift to protect and serve others.

---

You laid into the punching bag, twenty-eight non-stop uppercuts for your new age as of today. You brushed one hand across your forehead to interrupt the sweat droplets that ran from your hair, Bruce doing his best to praise you in the meantime.

“Good work, Y/N, yeah. Um, stronger than the ones you’ve been doing in the past. Better form too. I think.” You were sure you weren’t meant to hear his last sentence, but a roll of Natasha’s eyes next to you was enough to make you laugh it off. It wasn’t like you could blame him. Training others wasn’t his forte. You weren’t even sure if he trained himself.

Fury’s interest in you had been short-lived, it seemed. To be fair, you were lucky he recruited you in the first place and even luckier that he let you stay on the team. Still, you’d be lying if you said you weren’t disappointed in how you turned out to just be a new puppy to him. With your novelty now wearing off, you became the responsibility of people like Bruce, who never quite wanted you in the first place.

You had nothing against the gentle and kindhearted scientist, but Steve, Nat, or even Clint would’ve been much more obvious choices. Yet somehow the scientist was who Fury appointed. Maybe he was just the only one who accepted the task, the only one not bold enough to deny Fury’s orders outright. Strangely enough, Nat always showed up, but you weren’t entirely sure why, seeing as she usually sat there silently for most of it. She’d occasionally lean in to whisper something to Bruce, but she rarely said anything to you.

Much to Bruce’s—and maybe Natasha’s—relief, Tony strutted into the gym, his charisma already filling in the awkward gaps between you guys that never seemed to disappear, no matter how much time passed.

“Bruce, Nat, just the people I was looking for! It was great to see you guys at the party last night.” You pushed your glasses back up the bridge of your nose before going back to the punching bag; obviously, he was not here to speak with you. As you beat into the bag, getting lost in the rattling of the chain and the rhythm of the combinations, you thought back to last night, when you heard the Avengers’ laughter as they prepared for the gala.

You sat in the living room watching a movie with the tiniest but fiercest hope that someone might see you and ask you to come along. This was a party for the Avengers, after all, to celebrate the success of a mission that you had been part of. It had been up to you to cut the power and incapacitate the leader. Somehow the credit had gone to Clint, all the news stations celebrating the archer and his amazing feat. It was fine, whatever, just another chip to brush off of your shoulder—a teeny, tiny chip, really, honestly probably more of a scratch—but you thought you would’ve at least been invited to the party. Yet there you were, your posture slowly drooping as you sank into the leather sofa while your teammates gathered in the elevator to head up to the party. You had taken your phone out and opened the camera app, checking to make sure you hadn’t somehow triggered your invisibility, but, nope, you were very much there. The tears that fell were very much there.

“Alright, Tony, I’ll be there for Movie Night tonight, but you gotta go. I need to get back to my training duties.” It was then that Tony finally seemed to realize your presence, turning around with a surprised look on his face.

“Oh, hey, Y/N. You, um, you should come tonight too.” All of his charm was gone, the relaxed smile only hanging on by the tiniest lift of the corner of his mouth. So you did your best to reassure him with a small nod. The smile came back immediately. All was well; Tony Stark does indeed have a heart.

Later that night, as you sat alone on the three-person couch, you drew the blankets closer to you. The same movie you had watched last night was playing on the TV. The original plan had been to watch Jaws, but Sam was delighted to find the DVD box to Space Jam on the coffee table, insisting that he’d been wanting to watch it again and how it was such a coincidence it was already out. He wasn’t saying that last night when you asked if anyone wanted to watch it with you, but at least you weren’t watching it alone this time. You looked around at the small groups the Avengers had formed on the other couches, some of them even sitting on the floor—there wasn’t enough space, you guessed—before letting out a sigh. There were no party hats or festive noisemakers, but that was okay. That was okay because… A tap on your knee brought you back to the present moment. You looked down to find the outstretched arm of a familiar redhead, a bowl of popcorn in her hand.

There was no time for wallowing in self-pity. That was okay. You were okay.

---

The harsh sunlight woke you up in time for your thirtieth birthday. Or maybe it was the stiff and lumpy mattress that did it. Either way, you were hoping you’d be able to sleep through it. The rational side of you knew that wasn’t possible—what with being on the run from the US government and all—but one can always hope, right?

You’d stuck with Natasha during the Avengers’ split, pushing for the team to stay together even though you’d never really been part of the team. It wasn’t about you though; you’d seen the amazing things the Avengers could do when they were together. The world needed them.

Well, that line of thinking got you here, in a small cabin in the woods with all the Avengers who had followed Steve, Natasha joining the group later. Happy birthday to you. Although to be fair, it wasn’t like any of your past birthdays had been much better. Once your childish naivety had faded away (which probably took much longer than it should have), the day became something you dreaded, something you hoped each year you would forget about but never quite could. This time, though, you had a small plan. It was going to be different this year.

Your knees cracked as you stood, announcing to no one in particular that you were heading off to bed. Rather than heading straight down the hall to your room, though, you cut through the kitchen and grabbed a few things.

Your shoulders dropped slightly as you closed the door, and you allowed yourself to study the contents of your hands: a lighter, candle, and one of the leftover store-bought cupcakes from Steve’s birthday. The cupcakes weren’t great, but no one had the time, energy, or ingredients to make a cake, and, let’s be honest, most of the people here couldn’t bake anyways. Plus, this one had frosting in your favorite color, so you couldn’t complain, especially since it was more than you’d had for your birthday since you could remember.

The wooden bed frame creaked as you shifted to place the candle in the frosting and light it. For the first time that day, you were grateful the windows had no curtains, as they allowed you to see the stars that dotted the sky.

“Happy birthday,” you murmured to yourself, your eyes never leaving the constellations, instead darting around to watch in awe as more and more of the twinkling lights showed up the longer you cared to look.

Just as you tore your eyes away to blow out the candle, a knock rang out against the door. Were you guys spotted? Did you have to leave? You immediately ran to open the door, running through a list of things you’d have to pack the second you heard the order. You weren’t exactly surprised to see Nat standing outside your door, but you were surprised to see her holding a small rectangular box and a bottle of champagne.

“Hey, um, sorry to interrupt.” Your cheeks immediately heated up when you noticed her eyes dart to the cupcake still in your hand. You must’ve forgotten to put it down in your rush to open the door. At least the candle’s flame had gone out. “I get it if you don’t want to celebrate with anyone, but I figured you still deserve a treat on your special day.”

Natasha’s brows furrowed as your head tilted slightly.

“What special day?”

“Um, well, isn’t it your birthday?” You nodded, still not quite understanding what she was asking. Not to mention, the spy’s continued use of filler words surprised you. Sure, the two of you hadn’t interacted with each other much, but a lack of familiarity didn’t usually make her this uneasy. Were you really that invisible that she felt uncomfortable around you despite having known you for three years? But you couldn’t dwell on it with Nat speaking again, her voice pulling you out of your thoughts. “And, um, I noticed the only alcohol you drink is champagne, so… this is for you.”

You stepped back slightly as she nudged the objects towards you, but the spy misunderstood you, taking your surprise as an invitation to enter the room. Before you knew it, you were asking her to sit next to you on the mattress. It wasn’t like you had much of a choice, though; keeping her standing would be rude, and there were no chairs in your room. The two of you sat at least a foot apart, both of your spines straight and neither of you quite meeting the eyes of the other.

“So, um, do you want to open the present first or have your cupcake? Or we can open the champagne if you want.”

“This is a present?” You eyed the brown box she held in her hand. You weren’t sure what it could be. Based on its size, maybe a watch or a pocket knife? But Natasha laughed, simply pushing the box towards you.

“Of course it’s a present. Open it!” So you set the cupcake down on the unstable bedside table, making sure the dessert wouldn’t fall due to the furniture having one leg shorter than the rest. You cast one last glance at Natasha, who gave you a reassuring yet pointed nod, and with that, you lifted the cover.

It took everything in you to prevent the tears springing in your eyes from overflowing. You lifted the goggles with shaking hands. You had to touch them to make sure they were real, to make sure this wasn’t some sick and twisted dream your brain had forced on you to make you remember how disappointing your past birthdays had been.

“Do you like it?” The blonde asked you softly, her lower lip caught in between her teeth. Had you been thinking clearly, you would’ve been surprised at how apprehensive she sounded, how unsure she was. “I thought it could be something you might want to wear on missions. I noticed your other ones kept slipping down or breaking, and um…” Both of you became antsier as Natasha rambled on, you at how she was being more intimate with you than anyone ever had, and she at how she just couldn’t seem to stop talking despite the fact that, in her opinion, she was digging herself into an increasingly deeper hole. “It’s a lot more sturdy, and there are some other features that I think you’ll appreciate. I had Tony and Bruce make it for you… before, you know, this whole thing happened. And I brought it with me when I left.”

The frames reminded you much of the glasses you had first wanted as a kid, the ones your mother had looked past in favor of the plain black ones. They matched your combat suit, though, even having a small carving of your symbol on the side. You nodded as you choked down a sob, forcing yourself to meet the former assassin’s gaze to try to thank her properly.

“I love it, Natasha. Thank you so much. I- it’s… it’s amazing.” Nat dipped her head as if to nod, but you didn’t miss the way her cheeks flushed red or how a hint of her characteristic smirk appeared.

“Of course. It’s the least I could do.” Your eyes returned to the glasses in your hand. You’d try them out the second Natasha left. “So, cake now?”

“Yes, right, of course,” you nodded immediately, shaking your head at how you had managed to forget about the one thing you had planned to do for your birthday. Before you could reach for the frosted dessert, Natasha relit the candle and handed the cupcake to you as she began to sing “Happy Birthday.” When she reached the last note, you could hold it in no longer, and all the tears immediately began to flow.

“Oh my god, Y/N, I’m so sorry. Is my singing really that bad?” The redhead wasn’t sure whether to pull you closer or move away as she ran a hand through her hair, but she felt slightly comforted when she noticed you shaking your head.

“No, no, it’s just…” Natasha hesitantly began to rub your back in an effort to calm your sobs, “No one’s ever sang that for me before.”

“Ever?” She winced slightly at how her voice cracked, betraying her emotions to you despite her attempts to remain composed.

“Well, there used to be a video of it from my third birthday, but… I was three. So I don’t really remember it.” Natasha thought back to the many birthday celebrations the team had held, none of them being for you. The door to your room was always closed on your birthday. She’d always thought you had just gone out with friends and family, people outside of the Avengers, and who was she to get in the way of you and those you loved? But it had been the opposite. You had been hiding away in your room, and she hadn’t helped matters at all by waiting for three years to do anything. If only she’d gained the courage earlier, she could’ve helped ease your pain much sooner.

But all you saw through your tears was the way her head was cocked to the side, her spy training paying off as you couldn’t even begin to predict what she might be thinking. Your confusion slowed your tears somewhat, but that didn’t last for long as your mind shifted gears. You were ever the fool for sharing something so vulnerable with someone you barely knew.

So it was much to your surprise when Natasha finally reached her hand toward you, using her thumb to brush off the last few tears that made their way down your cheeks.

“You’ve never been invisible to me, Y/N. I see you. Always.” And with that, without responding, you turned away from her with a sniff to blow out the candle. “What’d you wish for?” the spy asked lightly, hoping the joke would help lift your mood.

“Nothing. This was more than I could’ve ever asked for.” Nat nodded slowly, keeping her eyes on you as she reached to take out the candle. Your eyes remained on the cupcake as if it would be ripped away from you if you turned away for a second. With her hand returned to your back, you began to dig into the cupcake, your eyes closing as you savored the taste. A cupcake just for you, on your birthday. Sure, it was a leftover cupcake, the frosting a bit too sweet and the cake itself dry and somewhat stale, but that didn’t matter. It was still the first in thirty years.

That night, you lay in bed with the stars overhead, a smile on your face as you thought about the day’s events, your best birthday ever.

And maybe it was naive of you to believe what Natasha had told you earlier that day—it wasn’t like the thought hadn’t crossed your mind several times in the few hours since she told you that—but then you thought about the champagne and the glasses she’d given you. You thought about the way she’d examined your apartment with you one last time before she brought you to the Avengers Tower, about the way she gave you an encouraging smile during training when you became exhausted with Bruce’s cluelessness, about the way she’d shared her popcorn on movie nights with you and only you.

And in the room next to you, Natasha thought about your confusion, your tears, and the way desperation, hope, and amazement filled your face when you looked at her right before you blew out the candle. It was then that she made a vow to herself, to show you that you’d never be invisible, especially not to her.

“Happy birthday, Y/N,” she whispered, “You are seen.”

-----

🏷 : @vancityfire13 @007giu

#natasha romanoff x reader #natasha romanoff x gn!reader #natasha romanoff x fem!reader #natasha romanoff x you #natasha romanoff imagine #natasha romanoff #avengers x reader #marvel #mcu #I wrote something #alwaysmarveling

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bibliocratic · 4 years ago

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I was going to write this for the Aspec Archives week, but I got overexcited, so here we are.

AU: Mythical creatures. OG Archive team.

Some CWs apply, see tags.

The sea is more than water, her elder brethren taught her, warned her, chided her. It is home and harm and hungry, and you should not face it alone. Her siblings were older, ever knowing better, boisterous and boasting braver, but even they worried, scolded and fretted when she swam out too far alone into deep waters.

It will love you, but it will not always be kind, her eldest sibling bit out, snapped to mask their anxiety. There can be no bearings, in the deep-deep down, no anchors to denote where the sky lies.

When her people sleep, they rest wedged into some secure rock or crevice, tails looped around tails so no one is lost while dreaming.

You cannot be a shoal of one, my dearest, my youngest and bravest, the oldest of their shoal had said, when she told her she was planning on taking the rising when the waters warmed. Ascending landward on the tide swell, letting the shimmering scales of her tail split into skin.

She had not used the name Sasha at that time because that was a landward name she chose with care. Her folk gather names like a garland of pearls, to be constantly strung longer through life as age advances them; names for qualities, for momentous events, for hopes and desires. Her first name, gifted by her shoal, was guttural. It starts at the back of her throat, trails off into a susurration through gills. Mer is a difficult language to learn, though not impossible.

Tim tried. There is no one singular language of those who skirt the deepwaters, so he attempts to mimic her dialect. His pronunciation stumbling, he makes tentative sentences with the butchered grammar of fry. Martin’s grammar is even worse, though he picks up the eddies and waves of the sounds easier.

Jon, like most things in life, takes it as a challenge. One day, almost stubborn with nerves, to perform his task to perfection, he pushes out a juvenile approximation of her first name. Clipped and textbook and the stress in the wrong places, but Sasha smiles, showing her sharpest teeth in delight. Instructs him where to hold the hum at the back of his throat, how to roll the third phoneme upwards like an air bubble. Jon repeats it and repeats it, quietly smug and pleased at his achievement, and the sea in her soul rocks fondly at the sight.

She broached landward in the rising two moons after her age of maturation. She was one of a handful to come to shore. A sibling in Brighton who she phones every week, another two in Holyhead. Her first shoal traverses to warmer waters when the season shifts, and she would feel the rock-hollow absence of them if it was not for Tim, inviting her to participate in a hundred-and-one inane activities that keep her from feeling swept out; Jon, with his libraries of questions and intrigues, his quick-silver tongue; Martin, who sometimes swims a little further out from them but who finds her small knick-knacks in charity shops and craft markets and leaves them on her desk for no reason other than he has thought of her.

She makes three necklaces, plain with a strong chain, a single pearl attached. And on a day where her folk traditionally string garlands of seaweed and mangrove roots and colourful plants from coral reefs in a celebration of family – there is no one word in her language for this idea; it poorly translates into hierarchies like sibling and brethren and elders, but these are not concepts that fit it exactly – she gifts them to the shoal that will anchor her in the depths of the sea, and bestows upon them names. Most Mer names are wishes for quick fins, calm waters, safe shores, and so she wishes these for them in a language they are not quite proficient in yet.

Her landward shoal is smaller than is traditional. But she loves them as treasures of her heart, and thinks she understands what her siblings told her, about anchors.

His parents, both harpies from local nests, are perplexed when his wings start coming in.

Must be a colouring from your mum’s side, his dad hums thoughtfully when Tim’s primaries grow in long and shining like struck bronze. He runs a careful finger down the central line of the rachis, and the wing shudders and jumps, the feathers still sensitive, and Tim complains that it’s ticklish. His wings are too small to fly away as his dad dives in, captures him in careful arms, corkscrewing upwards a little off the ground with Tim squirming and squealing and squawking in play, but they flutter and flap nonetheless.

The wing span’s from your dad’s side, no-one from my nest ever went more than five foot, his mother says, rubbing at the dark brown of his downy secondaries. Tim stretches them out wide, eager to boast at their length, the tips of his longest feathers reaching past his arms held out wide.

Danny’s wings are smaller. Magpie like, bold lines of white broken up by blue and black, the same as his parents. Tim’s wings, broader, a colour like beaten brass that tips into gold at the ends, draws attention, but he’s never been embarrassed. His family never treated him differently, so he didn’t dwell on it.

He can fly, though he doesn’t often. After his parents died, and after… after Danny, he moved to London, where there’s tighter airspace regulations and permits involved, so he mostly doesn’t bother. This doesn’t mean never, however. He has learned, while working in the Archives, that from the ground, his wings have enough lift to pick up both Jon and Sasha by at least a foot. He thinks he could probably manage Martin as well, if it wasn’t for the unfortunate fact that Martin is mildly allergic to a whole host of things, including feather dander, meaning he gets a bit watery eyed whenever he gets too close to Tim’s wings, and he’s a sniffing, red-eyed mess come moulting season.

Anyway, he can always fly when he leaves the city. When it’s been too long since Sasha’s scales touched seawater, she invites him out to the coast. Jon apparently has had enough of the coast to last a lifetime, and Martin gets funny about large bodies of water, so it’s often the two of them. She swims out, the greenish scales of her tail catching the sun-struck water, and he, above, feeling the breeze brush through his cramped wings, follows her wake. When she breaches the surface in a playful arc, he swoops down, trying to catch her at the same time as she tries to splash him.

“You never thought to look into it?” Jon asks. Always brewing with questions. Tim is obligingly holding out one of his wings, and Jon, who takes everything like a project, has books out and webpages up but with no further clue as to why his colouration and span differ so from his parents.

Tim shrugs. “Doesn’t matter really, does it?”

Jon hums, clearly not agreeing, and Sasha rolls her eyes fondly, and that is the end of that.

Marysia had hoped her child would not take after her husband. She’d lit candles and attended masses during her pregnancy, worn the beads of her rosary smooth. Her child had been born on land, miles from shore, and her husband had been a grounded man, who had folded up his pelt on their wedding night for her and swore to wear no other soul than his human one.

But then her husband leaves, the box where he kept his second soul empty, and Martin is eight years old, and he wakes up one morning glassy-eyed and complaining of nausea, his lip bleeding from where his sharpening teeth have ripped the skin, and she knows her prayers were not answered.

It is not unknown, for the second soul of some folk to flourish later. But it is a rough awakening, to have one’s body grow a new skin out of itself, and Martin is off school for over a week, riddled with fever and fervour, constantly parched, crying and sweating out salt-water.

She watches his skin prickle with grey and black fur, blotching with white over his stomach as he coils up under his covers, throws them off only for his limbs to reduce to shivering. His brown eyes have gone black-shot, his cries a mix of language and barks, and Marysia fears she will lose her only child to the sea.

It will be hard for him to fit in, she tells herself. It would be best to choose one, and he has his friends and family and her on land, and who knows where his father is now, and surely it would be cruel, an unnecessary agony for him to endure some other foreign pull away from all he knows.

She does what she thinks is a kindness, though that is neither excuse nor forgiveness. After nine days, his fur has come through, sleek and soft, his whiskers twitching, and she helps him peel it off as one would do clothes, revealing sweat-sheened limbs, his eyes slipped back into brown again. His gaze still distant and feverish, he tries to cuddle into her, and she soothes him while she finishes stripping off his pelt and folding it neatly.

While he sleeps, she burns it in a fire in the back yard.

When he comes back to himself, she lies and tells him that he’s been sick with a bad fever. And he trusts her, and never questions it. He doesn’t understand that she’s burnt a part of him up, scattered the ashes to the winds, but it was for the right reasons. To keep him safe, and happy, and with her.

He grows up human-limbed and cloven-souled, and she never tells him the truth.

Sasha floats in an ever-dark, stolen away and hidden. There is a knot, a cage-trap around her legs, which have fused into her tail although there is no water. The sea, far away, like the wail in a conch shell, throbs in her soul as she strains and shouts and snarls in the wrapping of spider’s webs.

The sea is the only thing with her in the dark.

Sound has a particular quality, underwater. She hears it first, an echo that shivers through her, like being thrummed on the backdraft of some shallow wave. And then it is a wash of insistence. A command.

The compulsion uses her names, landward and seaward and it pulls and demands her attention, and she shrieks and cries back, struggling in the depths. She is being called home, up up up to breach the surface, and she cannot help but answer.

There is a crack and the sea splits, and she is choking on cold and dusty air.

“Sasha!” someone is saying. “God, is she – she’s not – ?”

“Get that stuff off her, come on. Sasha. Sash, love, can you hear us?”

A series of thuds as she splutters. A twisting, gnarling screech, and several swear words.

“Jesus!”

“Shit – shit, get her out of the way.”

“Boss, move, give me the – ”

The screech degrades into a glitching, warping scream. There is the multi-layered sound of compressed air, and crackling fire,the woosh and stench of something burning.

In time, she cracks her eyes open to the punch of light. Her tail flaps weakly. Someone is pulling great strands of silk that has clumped like poorly soldered iron around her limbs, making visceral noises of disgust. She’s cold-stream shivering, surrounded by broken wood and chippings.

“Hey, hey, we got you. We got you. You with us, Sash?”

The faint scratch of feathers against her cheek. Furnace-warm arms are holding her.

Jon is kneeling down in front of her. Holding an axe and stinking of smoke, and she knows, she knows, that it was his voice she heard, although she doesn’t yet understand why.

Martin throws a blanket over her as she shivers, her tail shrivelling and bisecting into legs. He has silk in his hair, and his fingers are trembling, but his face is broken with a look of such relief.

“It’s you,” he says, and his hand touches at his throat, at the necklace she made for him. “It’s you. It’s really you.”

It’s Martin in the end that carries her out of the tunnels, tucking the blanket completely around her. He is talking in the scatter-gun way he does when he is anxious, babbling, and she can’t bring herself to listen. He smells of soot and saltwater, and she’s never noticed that before.

She falls asleep, curled up into his hold, drained and shaken, but feeling utterly safe.

Jon is human. Completely, one hundred percent, although Sasha had joked once that way way back there must have been some Spinx in the family. Tim’s long suspected that Martin’s not quite human, no matter how he presents, but that’s Martin’s business, not his. Some folks have lineages that are rare, or mistrusted, or misunderstood, and Tim’s not one to pry.

Jon, though. Human through and through. Which is why he’s so worried.

“I shouldn’t have been able to do that,” Jon says. Martin’s with Sasha, making sure there’s no nasty side effects to her imprisonment in the table. Jon’s had a face on him for a while which means he’s Worrying with a capital W, and it’s taken hours for him to untangle himself into a blustered declaration to the rest of the class, spiked with nerves. “That place, it had her. It shouldn’t have… I don’t know what I did, but I told her to leave, a-and she could. And she shouldn’t have been able to.”

“And you think that you did that?”

“I – I know I did that, Tim, I felt it, o-or. I mean, I felt something!”

“Ok, alright. Alright. Let’s, let’s calm down and look at this logically.”

Jon goes over what he said while they struggled to rescue Sasha from the deep. It was something he said, he’s sure of it, which is why he is sitting cross-legged on the floor of the main archive office space with Tim, his trousers getting dusty and his temper scraping frayed, getting increasingly frustrated when he tries recreating exactly what he did with his voice, going through questions and commands and instructions and inquiries. And while Tim answers, it’s clearly not what Jon’s looking for, and he’s rubbing the hair at the back of his head in the way he does when he’s getting increasingly frustrated and is too bull-headed to walk away.

Then Jon, rolling his eyes and seething in annoyance, asks him a throwaway question, one of many he’s been trying – what’s your favourite colour? (seriously, Jon, that’s what you’re going with?!); What did you do at the weekend? (you know what I did, you and Martin were with me!).

“Why did you join the Magnus Institute?”

They both sit, frozen and horrified as Tim’s mouth opens and his words trip over his tongue in their eagerness to leave his mouth. As his eyes grow wide and water with tears as he cannot stop speaking about Danny, about the Covent Garden circus and Joseph Grimaldi. As Jon sits, ramrod-backed and cannot stop listening, a muscle jumping in his jaw. His expression wars between frantic and panicking and hungry.

Tim feels wrung out and hollow once he’s finished. Jon’s manic with apologies. It takes both of them a long time to calm down.

“Maybe… maybe you’re a siren or something?” Tim suggests, but Jon is shaking his head.

“It’s this place, Tim. It’s those statements, when I read them. It’s … I – I think they’re doing something to me.”

Tim looks at Jon and the light strikes off his eyes in a way that it shouldn’t on a human.

He touches Jon’s arm.

“We’ll sort this,” he promises. “We got Sasha out, didn’t we? The four of us, we can get to the bottom of this, yeah?”

Jon nods, and gives a small fragile thanks, and that’s human enough for Tim.

Marysia told herself she was not a bad mother. That her son was simply a hard child to love, that he had all the worst trappings of his father, his brown eyes perpetually caught with a far-away look that doesn’t know where to place its longing. But even as she sickened, and he sloughed off every facet of himself in a pathetic attempt to please her, she couldn’t find anything but sorrow in her heart to look upon the man grown over familiar in face, a growth that grew deep-set and fungal into contempt.

She almost spat the truth out to him. Once or twice, with the thought that confessing might bring them closer. She wished he’d chosen the sea instead, so she wouldn’t have to look upon her amputated, half-formed child who would always be lost.

But she never did.

And Martin finds out alone, cornered in an unlocked office, his hands dropping the lighter as a thousand eyes open and watch satisfied as they pour his mother’s choices down his throat to choke him.

It starts when Martin starts sleeping in archive storage. When Tim watches worms burrow into Jon’s skin at the same time as they latch and gnaw and wriggle under his own. When they get Sasha back, and find Gertrude’s corpse and Jon leaves and gets hurt and hurt and hurt again, and the world around them gets smaller and meaner and there is nothing Tim can do.

He takes to storing food in their desk drawers. Nothing that will go off, or won’t keep. Tins and dried goods and non-perishables. He lines the walls of Martin’s storage room with fire extinguishers of different types, fire blankets, and spare first aid kits bulging with plasters and bandages and antiseptic wipes. He buys blankets and pillows and rope and penknives. He stress-moults constantly, and tucks his feathers out of sight, irritated and embarrassed at the sight of them, and it occurs to him that nesting is not a healthy way to deal with this.

He wants his family safe. He used to think it was such a small thing to ask for.

He thinks about that when the bomb goes off.

He burns, and he is dying.

His rage and fear burn off into a different fury. That it has come to this, his family so threatened, that all he has to his name is his sorrow and trauma and frustration and vengeance.

Tim wants nothing more than to live. To see them safe. To rail and rage against what seeks to harm them. So he burns and he burns and burns, his wings aflame and his mouth twisted in a scream, and does not die.

They dig him out breathing from the rubble. His skin stained grey with ash and soot.

His new wings stretch out red as the sunset.

#tma #the magnus archives #fic #alternative universe #mermaid!sasha #pheonix!tim #selkie!Martin #regularOGhuman!Jon #with added Beholding spicyness #cws for implied child mistreatment #cw fire #cw burning #cw canon typical violence #cw compulsion #ask to tag

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ahsokasanity · 4 years ago

Text

Chapter Ten

A Court of Shadow & Ribbons Wanna start at Chapter One?

Mor apologised the moment they entered the sitting room.

“I’m sorry for the subterfuge, but Azriel knows about me and he…..”

Emerie had not let go of Mor’s hand and as she spoke, Mor found herself being turned toward the female who had captured her attention at the party, and even before that. Mor was staring into Emerie’s hazel green eyes and losing any capacity to finish her sentence.

Emerie said “Now, I know too” and kissed her. Not a passionate kiss, a request of a kiss. Mor sizzled and held tight to Emerie’s hand, putting her other around her waist to hold her there. She didn’t let Emerie move back from that touch, Mor licked her lower lip and went back for a more intimate meeting.

Emerie sighed and felt herself going pliant and loose. She stepped toward the lounge, pushing Mor backwards to sit facing each other, stroking her hands in Mor’s hair, around her waist and over the perfect lines of her cheek and jaw.

“Oh I’ve never known what this felt like”

Mor stopped kissing Emerie’s ear lobe

“Just you wait” she whispered, Loving the shiver that ran through the female with her

“I just want to feel you and have you here with me, but tell me what you want” She hadn’t stopped touching and feeling and kissing, and Emerie’s eyes were closed when she murmured

“More of this for now, please don’t stop”. There they stayed, on the lounge as the sun rose and they discovered each other. Mor stopped at one point to ask if they should move from the sitting room

“Nope, this is it for now, I want to fall asleep here with you Mor” Emerie answered. So they did.

The training ring was pink with the streams of sunrise when Azriel landed. He found the rose with it’s chain in his pocket and strode into the house and his room. He couldn’t believe that Nesta and Cassian had not fallen asleep yet as he heard the low murmur of Cassian’s deep voice followed by a higher demand from Nesta. Mother save him from having to hear much more of that.

The house seemed to respond with some modicum of decency and muted the increasing sounds from their room. As Azriel closed his door, the moaning was left behind altogether.

He went to his armoire and opened the furthest right bottom drawer. In to it, he placed the jewellery beside a small cedar box. The only item that he kept from his childhood – a gift from his mother created when he was discovered to be a shadowsinger. She had placed a few items in it as he grew, even when he was imprisoned and she was unable to contact him. A lock of his hair, a note she’d written and a tiny dagger that she hoped he’d be able to learn to wield as he matured.

He picked it up for a moment. Re-promising that his children would be loved in person, daily, and never would come to hurt whilst he breathed

He closed the drawer with his foot and changed into training gear. His body screamed at him for some sleep but he kicked back at the need and told himself “after training”.

Most of the girls were already at the roof by the time Azriel arrived. Emerie was of course not there, nor were Nesta and Cassian. Apparently you do not have to train the day after your mating ceremony. All of the others were there including Lorelei and Roslin who had perhaps drunk more alcohol than they should at the celebration.

Those who had not attended the festivities were happily listening to the stories from the ceremony. Many of them had heard the tale of Gwyn’s singing and were congratulating her as they warmed up.

“Gwyn”. Azriel got the attention of the entire group. He indicated that Gwyn should join him at the front and she was nervous.

“We are a little short on instructors and members today, so I thought it might be nice if Gwyn led us in a warm up”

“Phew” Gwyn sighed inwardly and took a big breath. The best moves that she and Nesta and Emerie had found to get moving everyday were easy. She felt comfortable with the trainees and not pressured by Azriel. She could see him out of the corner of her eye correcting stance and core strength movements.

Everyone was flushed and perspiring by the time Gwyn finished the last rhyme. Azriel broke the females into three groups of three and had them sparring with staves, the third person of each group was the watcher to help with their feet and defence in-case anyone was having a particular problem.

Funnily enough, that left Gwyn and Azriel. Azriel handed her a heavy shield and led her to the area with a little more room.

“Sometimes, you won’t have a weapon but you may have some protection. Learn to use it to stay alive longer against an armed opponent”

Gwyn stood awkwardly holding the wooden metal plated implement on her left arm. Azriel attacked with deliberate slowness, signalling where he was going with each strike of his staff. Gwyn dodged and held, shuffled her feet and moved her weight to take every blow. Azriel sped up and reduced his warnings until they were both running with sweat and one of the other groups had stopped to watch them.

Azriel did not yell as Cassian could sometimes drag on his General’s mask, he merely indicated with a hand and “Ladies” -for the females to gather to watch.

“You see how you can fight without fighting? Defence can be the best way to stay alive until help arrives or until you are able to locate something more like a weapon”

Gwyn stumbled as Azriel spoke, attention lost in a memory of desperately waiting for help to arrive. Too late. Help came too late, even in the form of the winged assassin standing before her now. She dropped her eyes and Azriel continued to address the others.

“Get into a line and you can each have a moment to attack me with your staff, one at a time. Let’s go.”

The Idisi formed up immediately and began an assault on Azriel, giving Gwyn space to step out of the ring to get a drink. Why couldn’t she just get over this? How could the mention of being in danger make her stop thinking? Stop fighting? It had not happened on Ramiel. She thought that she was Valkyrie and unstoppable. Breathe she told herself, just breathe.

Once her heart rate had calmed both from the exercise and the panic, she returned to the line of staff wielding priestesses. It was time to have her revenge on Azriel’s earlier attempts at her. She would not be cowered and would never again be simply left waiting for help to arrive.

Azriel looked pleased to see Gwyn reach the front of the line and the others had begun to stretch and to drink water before the cool down.

“Apologies if I triggered something there, you were doing really well”

Gwyn stepped right then left and slammed the staff toward his exposed left wing. Azriel ducked and laughed at her audacity, but got his shield up in time to block the next blow.

“Now that was serious” – he blocked a third hit, but with effort and when Gwyn spun and angled the staff at his shins, he had to jump back to protect himself.

“You’d better give Azriel, I can do this all day” She grunted as she threw another two-handed attack at his neck and shoulders. Her feet were actually getting faster as she became more comfortable with the longer weapon. Azriel knew he could out manoeuvre her without a time limit, but she was so strong, so resilient he knew working her to exhaustion today would not be helpful. She needed this confidence and she needed more training and further fitness, but Cauldron was she a warrior.

After a resounding clash of staff and shield, Gwyn aimed a particularly good weight at his upper arm and connected. It was not enough to take Azriel out of a sincere fight, but it was a move that deserved reward.

“Give. I give” Azriel admitted freely. He was not winded, while Gwyn was pink and panting slightly. She knew without commenting that Azriel had forfeited. She didn’t mind. She had hit him after all!

They both drank greedily and Gwyn wondered if she was doing anything useful toward gaining Azriel’s affection. He was just the epitome of trainer today, although he’d focused on her a bit more than normal. She looked over at him and smiled, he gave her a nod of appreciation and she lowered her eyes.

“Form up Idisi” Azriel’s voice carried easily across the rooftop.

“Gwyn, please lead the cool down?”

Gwyn stepped out of the line sideways and began the relaxation chant.

Azriel stood sentry still, but took it all in, tensing and relaxing different muscle groups as the trainees breathed steadily and stretched. He was just nodding off, his wings held slightly open and his eyes closed. A stiff breeze nearly knocked him over and he realised that he was asleep. Thankfully he had no more appointments for the day and could just wash and sleep.

The females were saying goodbye and thank you to him and Gwyn was storing the staves and shield and tidying up around the ring as Azriel went to enter the house. He called out

“And thank you Gwyn for your help. And for reminding me to protect my upper arms!” He smiled at her and she grinned.

“Anytime. You are certainly training me to keep up my guard”

He turned again to look at her and she made a face like she had not meant to say that.

“Oh. You’re doing really well, so, you ah, you should feel good about that. I’ve gotta go, I haven’t been to sleep yet. See you tomorrow”

Gwyn nodded and headed off, embarrassed that she had dragged that information out of him. Where did he go after he dropped her here? He must have been back by dawn, he had got changed for training. Did he go to the nightclub? Did he hook up with someone? Gwyn cursed herself for a fool. He’s an experienced male who is your trainer. Why would he curtail his fun just because you spent some time with him? Why indeed when she’d given the gift back?

She used the library to forget all about thinking and re-thinking through last night and her memories of Azriel. The other priestesses, especially Merrill, wondered where she got the energy to run from place to place and help others with heavy tomes.

She just wanted to be exhausted by dinner time. Just wanted to sleep with no tossing and turning.

Azriel slept. No dreams, no startling awake. He drifted off hearing Gwyn singing in his head and woke up having barely moved. It was pitch black outside so night had fallen, but it was hard for him to surface from the total relaxation that he’d found. He merely checked his windows and his connections to Rhys – no emergencies, and stretched his wings. Laying on his other side, he fell right back to sleep.

#acosf #acotar #sjm #Mormerie #Nessian #Gwynriel #Angsty #training #valkyries

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yesloverboy · 5 years ago

Note

Can you write for Madison and her “reader” girlfriend please

At the coffee shop where you work, it isn’t unusual to get a little ruckus here and there; the espresso machine always whirred noisily, the milk would froth with a hiss, and there would always be a steady crowd typing or chatting away incessantly. This ruckus, on the other hand, was something entirely different.

You had been assisting with restocking the back, storing bags of coffee beans and tubs of pastry cream into organized little groups, happy to be away from all the clutter and commotion of the lounge area. Everything was business as usual– until the shouting started. At first, it didn’t seem like all that much to worry about, being a high-end coffee shop in West Hollywood celebrities of all types would breeze in and out through the day. Each visit would either be punctuated by the staccato of demanding orders, or the sound of flustered employees running out the back exit to take a rather emotional “smoke break”.

Either way, when the shouting began you hadn’t even so much as raised an eyebrow in interest. From within the stockroom, you couldn’t hear the specific conversation, but the muffled squabble seemed to be getting more and more agitated by the minute. So much so, that you even debated popping in an earphone just to cushion it from your weary mind.

Before you could officially cave in and make a run for the cluster of employee lockers, a particular voice screams through the previous scuffle and straight into the back room.

“Don’t you know who you’re talking to you fucking slut?!”

Your blood runs ice cold in your veins. That’s a voice you would know absolutely anywhere, and yet you almost can’t even imagine the possibility that she would come here in the middle of the day. Swallowing thickly, your nervous footsteps carry you through the stockroom door and into the back of the kitchen, just a stone’s throw away from the counter where one of your co-workers was, without a doubt, getting verbally assaulted. Now that you’re finally within earshot there is absolutely no mistaking that demanding, glacial voice any longer.

“I said, if you don’t let me see her right now I will turn your musty ass into a pile of dust before you can even–”

Without giving it a second thought, you round the corner and make a leap for the register, desperate to rescue this poor employee from the inevitable hell that’s about to rain down upon them.

“Madison!” you declare loudly, blood rushing to your face as every pair of eyes in the shop becomes trained on you, “What are you doing here? I, uh, thought you had an interview today.”

Despite the puzzled looks and wandering eyes from both guests and employees alike, you can’t help but be struck by Madison all over again. You can’t help yourself, each time you see her feels like the first time, yet somehow you find yourself even more dazzled as the days ticked by. Today she was a complete vision in baby pink Chanel, the tweed material of her mini dress cling-wrapped to her slender frame as her serpent black eyes hid behind a large pair of sunglasses– sunglasses that probably cost more than the poor cashier’s car. Suddenly, you feel pathetically underdressed in your department store sundress and shoddy black apron.

At the sight of you, Madison’s icy posture melts a little. “Kitten,” she huffs, unlit cigarette drooping precariously between manicured fingers, “I’ve been trying to reach you all damn day, but it kept going to voicemail so I figured might as well spill the beans in person.”

Your eyebrows shot up at the way she used her pet name for you in public. When you and Madison had first got together, she made you swear to keep it a secret. It wasn’t that Madison wasn’t proud to have you, or even ashamed to have a girlfriend, she just didn’t want the tabloids to rip you to shreds at a moment’s notice. Part of you always believed having you keep the relationship a secret also meant that, if things didn’t work out, no one would ever have to know Madison’s greatest fear– that no one would ever love her enough to stick around.

Madison didn’t love easy, and she sure as hell didn’t make it easy for others to love her. She was mean-spirited, high maintenance, manipulative, and desired to make everyone’s life around her as difficult as possible. But it was the good in Madison that always brought you back. The Madison you knew was fiercely loyal to those she loved (although they were few), clever as the devil, and was never ever afraid to take whatever she wanted, when she wanted. And the knowledge that she wanted you, of all people, made your heart leap in a way you’d never felt before.

“S-spill the beans?” you watch stupidly as Madison’s confident smirk turns into a blinding, kilowatt smile.

Madison pulls her expensive shades off with a free hand, her sultry eyes lined with a smokey ring of gray. “Well, what I was trying to say before this dumb fuck refused to fetch you for me is that you can officially quit your job! You’re going to be living with me now, full time, if you know what I mean,” she gives you a wink at the slight innuendo.

The cashier makes an attempt to nod his head to the ever-extending line of angry customers, but your girlfriend is having none of it. “You hear that dipshit?” she clips, head swiveling pointedly, “That means we’re gonna fuck. Every. Goddamn. Day.”

You should feel bad for him, really you should, but you can’t help but be completely elated (albeit a little confused) at Madison’s unabashed proclamations of your relationship. All you ever wanted was to scream your love for Madison Montgomery from every flattened rooftop in Los Angeles; and now, here your girlfriend is, all but shouting it from the counter of your workplace.

Feeling brave, you take Madison’s hand in yours, the blood-red manicure on her ivory hand glimmering playfully in the California sunshine.

“Mads, this is incredible!” you squeal, unable to contain the thought that everyone in the shop wasn’t just seeing you and Madison, they were seeing you and Madison together. “What on Earth changed your mind?”

Madison rolls her eyes as if you had asked her why the sky was blue. “I got into the interview today and when they asked if I was seeing anyone I thought, fuck it! I love her, so why not?”

Your breath hitches in your throat at Madison’s words.

I love her, so why not?

You had spent nearly a year with Madison and she had never said, not once. Sure she implied it. Each and every time you professed your love she would either seal it with a kiss or have some abused assistant deliver three dozen roses to your door. Madison didn’t admit love, she showed it. Except now, she had just admitted it to the entire world.

“Oh god, I know that look,” Madison groans, “Don’t cream your pants, okay? It’s not like you didn’t know.”

“I know, I’m just proud.”

“Proud of what?” Madison nearly sounds accosted by the idea that anyone could be proud of her.

Now it’s your turn to roll your eyes. You pull her flush against you, the chunky gold chain of her purse clattering noisily as she stumbles gracelessly into you. With a satisfied grin, you notice that her cheeks have a smattering of pink across them as her deep brown eyes soften beneath your gaze.

“Proud to be yours,” you hum, pressing a chaste kiss against Madison’s rose petal lips.

Madison allows herself to melt into you, if only for a moment. It isn’t long before your emotionally stifled girlfriend realizes just how public this display of affection is and pulls away. Most people would be offended by this kind of behavior, but you can only laugh to yourself as Madison makes a show of straightening out the pleats of her already perfect dress.

“Yeah, yeah yeah–whatever,” Madison grumbles as she shoves her sunglasses back onto her face, “Now turn in that filthy dishrag you’re wearing so we can get the hell out of here.”

Tugging the apron up over your head, you shoot Madison a confused look. “And where exactly are we going?”

“Shopping,” she states matter-of-factly, “If you’re gonna move in with me you at least have to have enough clothes to fill your half of the closet.”

Your half.

Madison had been planning this all along.

#listen it's been a while since i've seen coven #so lmk how i did on this one pls #madison montgomery #madison montgomery x reader #american horror story #american horror story coven #ahs #ahs coven #coven #emma roberts #emma roberts x reader

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winchest09 · 5 years ago

Text

Our Virtual Lockdown - Lowdown

Hey everyone!

Our lockdown livestream was once again one fulled of fun, laughter, fic recs, games and...one unplanned round of charades! Ahaha!

6 hours we were talking...SIX and again, I loved every single second. It was so nice to see so many gorgeous faces, and I’m so happy that so many of you joined us! We had 18 in our party at one point! I just hope that all of you had a blast and enjoyed yourselves.

Me and @katehuntington love holding these events and we are already planning the next live stream (date to be announced) but it will be in this month (May).

This is the lowdown for the third lockdown party!

Below you will find:

Everyone who joined - their tags, what’s coming up fic wise and their masterlist.

A Challenge to join

Blogs who want to help with your writing

Fic Recs

Supernatural DnD

Announcements

Q + A’s with the writers.

So without further ado… *cracks fingers*

To everyone that joined...

You are the guys that make it the live stream what it is. So below is a list of everyone who was on the chat last night accompanied by their masterlist and what they have coming up soon! In no particular order…

@katehuntington: Kate is currently working on the next instalment of Ride With Me, All I Want and a two part commission. We will see this on her blog soon!

Her masterlist can be found HERE

@flamencodiva: This babe is currently working on Call of the Ocean, A revoluntionary war fiction, an ABO Greek Goddess fic AND an untitled angst filled fic including Dean, a girlfriend and secrets! She is also rewriting Underworld and Legend of Van Helsing.

She’s one busy gal and we LOVE IT. <3

Check out her masterlist HERE

@whatareyousearchingfordean: Alex is currently writing the ending to her Jensen fiction Et Cetera and she already has a sequel in mind! At the moment she’s trying to decide her next move...Firefighter Dean OR Secret Service Dean? Head over there and let her know!

Her masterlist can be found HERE

@talesmaniac89: This beaut also has a lot that she’s working on at the moment. The next instalments of The Man in Apartment 43. The next chapters of Lost (which is a little darker), a fluffy Dean oneshot and a Castiel comfort fic.

Behind the scenes, she’s also working on a Heist AU, Another ‘Choose your own adventure’ fic and a Ghost Writer AU.

Check her out guys, her masterlist is HERE

@superfanficnatural: This babe is currently working on the next chapters of The Bringer of balance as well as the next chapters of The Choice! He’s posted a few oneshots in the past two weeks and is writing Male!Reader fics!

Behind the scenes he’s currently working on an RPF called Matchmaker, A reader knight of hell/demon dean fic which is a love hate relationship as WELL as a Marvel SPN crossover. OOFFT.

A new writer that is nailing it! Go and give him some love, his masterlist can be found HERE

@emoryhemsworth: This beaut is currently working on a series which is based off of an album called ‘Losing Sleep’ Each song will be a chapter and we’ve already been treated to some of her plans! She also has some other goodies on her masterlist.

Check our her masterlist HERE:

@anathewierdo: Is yet to create a masterlist but she is currently working on Call of the Ocean with Flamencodiva. Not only that, she’s also working on a Princess Diaries AU, a Serial Killer AU and after the livestream...a gunshow fic!

By gunshow we do mean The Winchester’s muscles.

*drools*

@girl-with-a-fandom-fettish: This wonderful lady joined us briefly on the live stream and although she left before we could find out what she has coming up!

Check our her masterlist HERE:

Me: I’m currently working on two series, Life for Rent and Man’s Best Friend! I also have a couple of Dean series being worked on in the background as well as a couple of oneshots…watch this space!

To the new writers...

These guys were all new to the live stream this week and were welcomed with open, loving, spn fam arms! After speaking to these babes, we know that they are fairly new to writing to the supernatural fandom. They all have AMAZING idea’s when we played our prompt game and hopefully all of them will bite that bullet and post their ideas soon.

Remember guys - we’re all here to love and support you! My inbox is always open if you want to talk fics, want me to look over one etc.

Go and follow and give them some love!

@janicho88 @queenbeesback @imjustadrummer @malfoysqueen14

and to the readers that joined…

@leissa1287 @waywardbeanie @dawnie1988

We love you, we thank you for reading and we thank you for all the support and love you give us constantly. Thank you for joining the chat and we hope you had an amazing time <3

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CHALLENGE TIME

Ohhhh yes! One of our amazing writers, the darling @flamencodiva is holding a celebration in regards to reaching 1700 followers!

Congrats babe!

Not only is she hosting a character take over on her blog she’s also posted a writing challenge for all us writers out there!

Check it out HERE

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Need Help with a fic?

We’ve got you covered!

Need to has out a plot with someone?

The lovely @malfoysqueen14 has offered herself up to be a plot buddy to anyone that needs it. Stuck on a plot point, want to talk through a story line with someone? Give her a message! She’s here to help <3

Need help writing those all important fight scenes?

Give our babe @imjustadrummer a message! They are filled with knowledge and even give us a demonstration on how to punch correctly on the livestream! Definitely one to have on your contacts list! <3

Need help with research for a fiction?

The most wonderful @waywardbeanie has offered herself up to be a researcher for anyone who wants help with their fiction. She has been a die hard SPN fan forever and she’s like the Ellen of our live stream.

Need a researching buddy? Give her a message! She’s a doll <3

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Fic & blog Recs!

In our live stream, we want to highlight what we’ve been reading and the amazing authors behind the words. So below is a list of all the fics that we recommend for some good ol fic binging!

@deansdirtylittlesecretsblog: We were told of this lovely little gold mine by Alex and we just have to include it on here! This writer has so many fics on her masterlist...you’re gonna be there for a while!

Check them all out HERE

When You Least Expect It by @coffee-obsessed-writer

Summary: After a hard breakup, Jensen decides to throw himself into organizing a Music Festival in Austin that is meant to raise money for a few of his most cherished charities and organizations. As he throws himself into planning it, he stumbles upon a spirited, undiscovered performer, who he convinces to come aboard to help plan and coordinate the event with him.

What transpires after that takes both Jensen and his new friend, by surprise. But when their respective pasts come back just before the event kicks off in Austin, they will both have to decide if the unexpected feelings are worth perusing, or if they should just walk away and go on with their lives.

Dear Dean by @smol-and-grumpy

Summary: After taking Saint Lo, by sheer dumb luck, Lieutenant Dean Winchester from the 29th Infantry Division, Baker Company, received a truckload of replacements for his platoon that was falling apart. Little did he know, that one recruit would change his life forever.

Almost Paradise by @amanda-teaches

Summary: Dean finds himself looking at pictures of old loves. Will he ever be able to find that paradise again?

Turned Sideways by @crashdevlin

Summary: (Rockstar AU) When Y/n gets an opportunity to meet her favorite band backstage at their concert, she assumes they won’t even ask her name. But when she impresses the front man, Dean, with her voice and knowledge of their entire catalog of songs, it launches a chain of events that is sure to change her entire life.

Crash Into Me by @crashdevlin

Summary: Dean meets and befriends a witch in NW Florida. This is their interactions over the course of season 8 through season 14.

Midwife Crisis by @ellewritesfix05

Summary: (Elle hasn’t written one it appears but in my words) - You were heavily pregnant with Dean’s child, hormones raging and Dean was receiving the brutal end of it. Needing a break, he fakes a case to get away. When your good friend Gabriel hears of this...he decides he needs to teach Dean a lesson with a little help from is prankster ways...

PHEW! I definitely think we have enough fics on here to last us for a few days…don’t you? ;) Please guys don’t forget to give these writers some love when reading their fics, comments, reblogs, asks. It means the world.

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Interested in roleplaying & DnD?

@imjustadrummer is setting up a Dungeons and Dragons campaign set in the Supernatural (main) universe!

If you’re into role playing, fancy bringing one of your OFC’s to life or just wanna be badass yourself...why not consider joining?!

All the information you need on this is HERE

Make some new friends, live out your dreams of being a hunter, angel or demon and HAVE FUN!

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ANNOUNCEMENTS!

We have three wonderful announcements to make this time! We have THREE blogs celebrating followers!

A massive congratulations to:

@flamencodiva: This beautiful mama has reached 1700!

@whatareyousearchingfordean: This absolute babe has reached 1000!

@superfanficnatural: This beaut has reached 200!

WOOHOO!

*pops the party poppers*

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Q & A With The Writers!

During this live stream, we asked everyone to join in and ask questions to the writers you want to know more about...the write up is below :)

- If you could collab with any other writer on here, who would it be? Alex ( @whatareyousearchingfordean) : @superfanficnatural because of the male reader aspect/sides of things!

Emory (@emoryhemsworth) : I’d like to collab with @winchest09 (Tabby)

- Has anyone ever guessed the plot twist of one of your fics before you posted it?

@talesmaniac89 : This did happen once and what was once a fluffy ending got turned into a bad ending because it was guessed. It happened once that they managed to get it so i changed it.

- What was the last line you wrote?

@katehuntington : “The cowgirl smirks and gently pushes him into the tack box in order for them both to be out of sight. Once they are safe from Bobby’s eyes, she kisses him, short and sweetly, but it’s enough to make Dean’s head spin”

- Have you ever cried whilst writing a fic?

@superfanficnatural : I cried to one last time, the angsty fic i wrote. I was trying to get into the mood, i was mad, so went fuck it i’m gonna break peoples hearts. And then i cried haha.

- Can you tell us what writers you really admire?

@emoryhemsworth : All of you are included in this live stream, that’s a given but I am going to talk about people who aren’t in here. @impala-dreamer, @kittenofdoomage, @supernatural-jackles, @ravengirl94 are just a few. In regards to Rhi (Kittenofdoomage), everything she writes is just gold. She’s not written anything that’s bad! For Beka (impala dreamer) I just love her as a person. Oh and @bringmesomepie56, her fics are just amazing.

- Have you ever amended a story due to criticisms you’ve received after posting it?

@flamencodiva : No, not really. My stories tend to evolve in the writing process. Underworld princess and Call of the Ocean were meant to be super different than what they are now. We realised we had changed certain plot points as we were writing but that was before we started to post it.

- Are there any stories that you wished you’d ended differently?

@winchest09 : Yes and no. I’ve had stories which were originally meant to end a certain way and they changed over time. Sometimes I do wonder what the reactions would have been like if i had gone with the original ending for Shatter Me and if hadn’t have gone down the angsty road for Yesterday but then I think fics choose their own path as you write them. It felt right at the time.

- What is your favourite genre to write for?

@malfoysqueen14 : Angst. Never mind the fluff, the smut, the crack, it’s all about the angst. The angst is my ultimate goal.

- Where do you get your inspiration from?

@imjustadrummer : A daily situation, or films. If the kids I worked with have said something weird i’d be like…”oh yeah, hey that can be a fic!” A lot of different places really!

- Funniest story you’ve written?

@queenbeesback : It was an online thing, where they met online and it took a while for them to meet up. That was quite light hearted.

- What is everyone's favourite ships?

Everyone: Dean and Donna. Benny and Dean. Sam and Eileen. Dean and Jo. Charlie and Alex. Sam and Gabriel

- What’s your favourite trope to write?

@anathewierdo : Friends to lovers and enemies to lovers

- Which part of your upcoming fic was the hardest to write?

@imjustadrummer : Trying to work out all the clues and cleverness to it. Like codes and things, working out how to put in all the easter eggs in my upcoming fic. It’s like a treasure hunt so I need to ensure there is cleverness in there.

- If you could write only angst, fluff or smut for the rest of your writing life, which would it be and why?

@superfanficnatural : Oh that’s...ok...most definitely...Smuuuuttttt (pretty much how he announced it)

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I think that’s it!

Thank you so much once again to everyone who joined the chat, we had 6 hours of laughs and i cannot wait to do it again. I’d appreciate it if you could share this to spread the love of the fics and authors on here!

Keep an eye out for the next date for our next livestream! It will be in a couple of weeks, date to be announced. If you guys have any idea’s or want something included, let us know. If you want to be tagged when we announce, let us know!

@deanwanddamons - tagging you babe as you asked so you can catch up on what we talked about <3

THANK YOU.

xox

#winchest09andkatehuntingtonslockdownparty #the lowdown #spnfamily #spread the love #dean winchester #sam winchester #supernatural fanfiction #share the fics #happy reading #we love you

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talldarkandroguesome · 4 years ago

Text

4th of Sun’s Dawn, Turdas

Nabine knows me altogether too well.

Unlike Avon, who tries to keep festivities for my name day to a discreet location and reigned in, Nabine has little care for such notions. In fact, she hired out a great number of the workers of The Den to give me a start into celebrations starting at sun down and going into the night.

There was a nostalgia in knowing that we loved one another and understood the power and enjoyment of group escapades. We indulged in a few bets and some competition over who could bed particular sorts.

It is not as though only the hired Den workers were in attendance. Nabine also invited a few of her friends and acquaintances. She had additional toys and furnishings to set the mood for different scenarios. There were themes that took place at different points in the evening.

As a special treat, which I know Nabine always used to reserve for special occasions such as this, she told me to use my birthgift on her and others as part of the fun. She made sure to inform everyone invited as to what it was I would be doing. Everyone had given her verbal permission, which was echoed again before we started each activity, with some safeties in place should someone change their mind throughout.

I know how hard it is for someone like Nabine who prefers to be in a dominant role to let another be in control. I think that is part of why she likes me to use my birthgift during activities where she wishes to play a more submissive role; she has a tendency to slip back into that role regardless, just out of reflex.

Or perhaps some part of her does like the idea of letting someone else take control from her, though it is hardly something she seems comfortable with in the long-term.

There was feasting and dancing and music and room after room of oiled bodies intertwined. At times it was hard to tell exactly how many people were making use of each part of your body or who exactly you were engaged in what with.

I could almost hear Avon’s voice asking me if it was safe to simply let yourself be part of the mass of people seeking pleasure from whatever source it came from. I could have laughed. He has never understood, being that he takes so long to form physical attraction to other people and has such a diminished libido.

Not that I would see this as a negative. It is exactly what is best for him. Though I could hardly live the same way.

So long as the body is not in too uncomfortable a position for too long, there is a sort of sensation that can only come from such activities. It is almost as if you are not a person in a crowd so much as you are one part of something bigger. A group that has become one, a single goal, a single purpose. Everyone working towards that great, building sensation. Everyone working hard, not only for their own pleasure, but for those around them as well. And when one is satisfied, they often continue on, as eager to bring others pleasure as to receive it. People of all races coming together with a shared vision.

Those who do not experience such attraction or who have not participated might find difficulty understanding that uniquely spiritual feeling that happens in such large groups. And, as I often found myself in the middle again and again, I got to feel myself being pulled and pushed, the group of our bodies moving as if a single organism. Several times I was suspended above floor or furniture by the ministrations of the other celebrants. Perhaps that is the same feeling as levitation, though I think I had far more fun that a mage levitating around.

As dawn arrived, Nabine had me find a place to sleep off the alcohol and told me she had more prepared for when the full day had arrived.

I kissed her in a way I have not kissed in since she left me for the cult. I was so grateful for her being back in my life, back in my arms.

She laughed and told me that I better not use this as an excuse to skip my mage training or she would be cross. I laughed and followed her instructions.

I was not quite sober when I arrived to class. It made things easier, I could relax, concentrating primarily on the spell and less on the judgement of those around me. With a few bit of advise from the instructor, and half as many tries as the day before, I managed to complete my lessons. The teacher said I was clearly working hard. That although I was slower and getting the spells to work, I had such a deep pool of magicka that once I learned the basics, I would probably excel at a more rapid pace than my peers. It was encouraging to hear.

I almost ran back to The Den. I was excited to see what my beloved Nabine had in store for me.

On my arrival, she tossed me a pack and told me that we were going on a hunting trip.

Now, I was worried about how foolish I would look shooting a bow besides a master bowmer like Nabine. But I knew she likely put in a great deal of effort to make this happen, so I followed without either complaint or question.

We took roads through the treetops. Unused to such travel, having done it only the once, and then we were taking major roads rather than the side passages that Nabine moved through, I often had to teleport to keep up. It was tiring, but she is so fast and she did not wait for me to catch up.

Finally, after several hours moving southeast, Nabine stopped. I looked around and then down. There was a small cart besides the firepit of a camp: two Altmer and a Bosmer, sitting around the fire were talking, the two Altmer loudly complaining, their Bosmer companion trying to placate them.

Nabine turned to me and asked me if I was ready for a fun performance. I smiled and asked her what type of hunt was this going to be,

She grinned and licked her pointed teeth. Leaning in she told me that I was to pretend to be a good Dunmeri slave boy and to put on the clothing in the pack.

I opened it up and found a silk veil for my face and even less for around the rest of me. Mostly it was jewelry designed to attach chains to. Nice mammoth leather collar and cuffs with big bone loops.

When I was dressed, Nabine took some makeup from her bag and painted me up appropriately and then sewed in more hair so that I had a long ponytail atop my head. Then we made our way down.

As we approached, the Bosmer in the camp turned and then back to her companions, informing them that their wait was finally over and the entertainment had arrived.

The Altmer grumbled and asked what their money had been spent on exactly.

The Bosmer said that she had secured a rare Dunmer slave, raised as a performer, but forced to fight for the Pact, but after seeing the rages of war, turned coward and ran, only to be caught by a lieutenant who had the eye to recognize what was before him.

The two Altmer came round to inspect me. I made sure to keep my eyes lowered and my posture submissive. Then pawed at me, checked me over for health and unsightly marks. I wanted so bad to slit their throats. I would have been a mount or beast checked before being sent to the slaughter. The irony of knowing what fate was to bring.

When the Altmer had given their approval, the Bosmer finished their arrangements, collected coin and told them to enjoy me as long as they would like before dawn. That my handler was there to make sure that her property was not going to be damaged beyond healing.

I was asked to dance. So I began to do so, the careful precision of the Deif Indkhes dance.

As I made sure to exaggerate each movement, they shouted at me for song. Some kind of music. That is when I knew I had them.

There is a sort of siren-like song that accompanies the dance. And as I began to sing, they pulled off the clothing I wore so that I was bared before them, using both my my body to entice them and my voice to call them. It took little to work, I could see the lust grow in their eyes. I was an object, a curiosity they wished to possess. It was just what I had hoped for.

My song continued, I willed for them to come close, to join me, to use me. All that was in return was to offer me that which I no long had, but which they possessed. And they responded by eagerly following my instructions.

As I began to service them both, I glanced over to Nabine. She was watching the situation hungrily. In all meanings of the word.

She gave me the signal that meant she was ready to go on my queue.

Just as the Altmer reached their height of pleasure and began to climax, I took the one in front of me and reached up as though to steady my hands upon their shoulders. Only, in each hand was a small needle. I made sure to hit veins on both sides, so that the poison would travel that much faster.

As the Altmer in front of me began to struggle, the one behind me seemed to wonder what their friend was doing.

They had little time to contemplate, for I heard the familiar sound of an arrow forcing air out of a body. I pulled the veil from my face and wrapped it around the mouth of the Altmer in front of me, pulling them back where they struggled. Then they tried to scream, but I pulled hard, keeping them from doing so.

When that Altmer was dead, I turned to see Nabine already field dressing the other. She scolded me for poisoning the other one, preventing her from being able to do anything with the other.

Then we stages a scene to look like bandits and Nabine pushed me down on the ground, her body still covered in the Altmer’s blood. She looked so beautiful.

We made love right there in the camp,

And when we had finished and repacked, we headed back to her home where we could bathe and get the children ready for bed.

I must say, it has been a while since I have so thoroughly enjoyed my name day. I just wonder what else Nabine has in store for me over the next few days.

#ESO #TES #RP #Dunmer #Elder Scrolls Online #The Elder Scrolls

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ericsonclan · 4 years ago

Text

Trimming the Tree

Summary: Omar loses a bet with Louis and has to fulfill Louis' unique idea for Christmas decorating.

Word Count: 1884

Read on A03:

“Alright, everyone, I have an announcement to make,” Louis stood in front of the picnic table, his hands proudly pulling upon the collar of his coat. “I’m sure everyone remembers the bet I placed with Omar back in October, the one where he said there was no way I could bag five rabbits singlehandedly for us in one day and I did.”

“I remember the bet,” Omar replied calmly, setting aside his stew bowl. “It’s one I’ve begun to dread considering the fact that you still haven’t called in that favor you won from me,”

“Well fear no more, Omar, for today is the day I call upon you for that favor,” Louis declared, a cheeky grin on his face.

A frown pulled at Ruby’s lips as she looked up at Louis. “Now I know I don’t have to tell you not to choose anything stupid. And by stupid I mean dangerous,”

Louis raised his hands in self-defense. “Why, sweet Ruby, I would never! What I have in mind for Omar isn’t dangerous at all. For you see, the favor I am asking for is that Omar be a tree,”

Clementine’s brow quirked at that line. “A tree? What do you have up your sleeve, Lou?”

“Only a deck of cards, my dear,” Louis replied with a wink.

Omar looked unimpressed. “You want me to be a tree. What does that involve, standing completely still for an entire day?”

“Ah ah ah, not just any tree, Omar,” Louis lifted a finger. “You see, the tree I want you to become is… a Christmas tree,”

That got a reaction out of the kids. None of them had had a Christmas tree for Christmas since before the world ended. There were pine trees that grew in the forest, but they were a great distance away and most were far too large to carry. The one year obtaining a Christmas tree had been attempted back when they were young teens, they’d almost lost a kid in the process. Having a human stand in for the Christmas tree was an interesting prospect to say the least.

Omar crossed his arms, eyeing Louis evenly. “And what exactly will I be doing as a Christmas tree?”

“Why being decorated of course!” Louis quipped. “There’s a box full of decorations in the basement that the school used to use. You’ll stand in place in the music room and the rest of us will dance around you and put decorations all over your clothes and hair,”

“You know,” Aasim cut in, “There’s a perfectly reasonable alternative to this which is building some sort of artificial tree ourselves. I think-”

But Aasim had already lost the attention of the others before he started. Most of them were quite excited at the idea of decorating Omar, the little boys already abuzz with ideas and inspiration. Omar looked rather conflicted at the thought of being a stand-in for a tree but upon seeing the joy in A.J. and Willy’s faces his expression softened and he gave Louis an approving nod.

“It has been decided!” Louis declared, dramatically drumming upon the table. “Tomorrow we shall convene to decorate the music room and Omar!”

---

The next day after all the chores had been completed everyone gathered in the music room to begin decorating. Prisha, Violet, Willy and Ruby had grabbed the decorations from the basement while A.J., Clementine and Louis had gathered together all the paper and craft supplies they could carry in order to make even more decorations. Omar and Aasim tidied up the music room in order to prepare it for its Christmas transformation.

Once they were all gathered and had everything ready, Omar took his place at the center of the room, standing in as the tree. Ruby put one of the few Christmas records they had on the gramophone. “Rocking Around the Christmas Tree” began to play and everyone bopped their heads softly to the music.

Louis rooted through one of the boxes of decorations, clearly looking for something in particular. “What better way to start our decorating than with… tinsel!” The dreadlocked boy threw the silver strands into the air with a happy cry watching in glee as they came to rest all over Omar’s afro. A.J. immediately followed Louis’ lead, grabbing his own handful of tinsel and throwing it directly in Omar’s face.

“Not the face, goofball,” Clementine instructed, coming over to join them by the boxes. Fishing inside the nearest one, she grabbed a simple ball ornament and stepped forward, gently dangling it from Omar’s ear.

That seemed to be the signal everyone had needed to really get started. Violet and Prisha grabbed a length of garland made from red tinsel and began to circle Omar with it, smiling at each other as they did so. Willy had gone crazy with the ornaments, trying to place them on any possible place they could stay: Omar’s other ear, his nose, each one of his fingers. He wanted to take off Omar’s shoes to decorate his toes too, but Aasim put a stop to that.

The Indian boy had been working mostly with Ruby on other ways in which they could decorate the room for Christmas. Colored candle holders filled the room just as they had the night of the hootenanny, but now paper snowflakes had been added to the mix, decorating the walls and being scattered across the top of Louis’ piano. Paper chains crafted by Clementine and decorated by A.J. also did their part to brighten up the room as well as joining the garlands wrapped round and round Omar’s form.

Omar tried his best to stay still, a soft smile on his face as he watched his friends get into the Christmas spirit. Blowing a stray piece of tinsel away that was tickling his nose, he looked over at Louis who was in the mist of trying to make a paper crown as a “tree topper”. “You know, Louis, if this was your plan all along, shouldn’t you have made the bet with someone taller, say, Aasim or Prisha?

Louis smiled, looking up from his cutting. “If that had been my plan from the beginning, then certainly. But it wasn’t. I just made that bet on a whim and inspiration didn’t strike till later. But boy, when it did, I just knew I had to make this happen. You may not be the tallest tree, but you’ve certainly brought our Christmas to life,”

The boys looked around the room together, smiling at all the joy that was present there. There hadn’t been a true Christmas celebrated here in quite some time. Last year they’d been in the midst of healing from the Delta attack with Clementine and Violet still recovering from their injuries. The year before, well, they hadn’t known it at the time, but Marlon had been too busy hiding the truth about what happened with the twins for any Christmas celebrations to happen at all.

And even the years before that the kids had all been so focused on survival, just barely scraping by each winter, that it had never felt like Christmas was something worth celebrating. Now things were different though. Things were peaceful, they were safe, and the reintroduction of the greenhouse and the additions of a vegetable garden and rabbit hutch meant they had quite a bit of food stored up for winter. For the first time in a long time they were all happy, really truly happy.

Eventually the decorations had all been used, the room was fully decorated, and Omar was covered from head to toe in tinsel, ornaments and garlands. The kids took a step back, admiring their work proudly.

“Great job, team,” Louis declared, tugging on his collar once more. “Before we call it a night though, there’s one more surprise for everybody. Well, everybody but me and A.J. that is. You ready, buddy?”

“You know it!” A.J. ran over to Louis’ side, bouncing excitedly. “Is it time to tell the secret now? Can I, can I, can I?”

“Just a second, little man,” Louis chuckled, fondly ruffling the boy’s afro. “How ‘bout we show instead of tell them?”

“Right!” A.J.’s eyes lit up with joy and he rocketed out of the room, Louis close behind him. It took a few minutes, but soon the others could hear the pair’s footsteps shuffling back towards the room. Louis backed through the door with A.J., both boys carrying something within their arms. It only took a moment for everyone to recognize what it was.

“A tree!” Willy shouted, his mouth wide open in awe. “A real live Christmas tree!”

It was indeed a Christmas tree, but a much smaller one than the full-grown pines that grew so far away from them. It was about A.J.’s height and had been placed inside a large planter which the pair now placed upon the floor.

“That’s right,” Louis smiled proudly. “This was the source of my inspiration: a pint-sized Christmas tree we can plant and grow in our very own yard!”

Everyone oohed and ahhed at the tree, stepping forward to get a closer look and touch the tiny branches for themselves.

“Louis and I found the tree a few days ago,” A.J. explained, standing beside the tree. “But when we found it, Louis told me we should keep it a secret, a scallion secret,” he raised a finger to his lips and looked at Clementine with a smile. Clementine returned the gesture, happy to hear the Disco Broccoli line from him.

“Wait a minute,” Aasim raised an eyebrow. “If you already had the tree, then why did you convince Omar to stand in as a fake tree instead?”

“Because this is our outdoor tree. Omar served as our indoor tree – duh,” Louis said dismissively in a way that caused Aasim to roll his eyes. “Although once we have this little beauty planted, we can probably transfer some of Omar’s decorations over to it,”

“You expect me to stand still like this for the rest of the day?” Omar asked evenly.

Louis thought on the question for a moment. “Well, per the rules of the bet I could require you to uphold the favor for the entirety of the day as I originally stated, but in the spirit of Christmas I will graciously declare the favor fulfilled,”

“Wonderful,” Omar immediately reached up to remove the ornament from his nose then got started on taking off the rest of the decorations. The others helped him until only the paper crown and a few stray strands of tinsel lay upon his head. Omar knelt down and picked up the box that had been refilled with the decorations once used to adorn him. “Well, what are we waiting for? Let’s plant this tree,”

“The party continues outside!” Louis crowed, moving to pick up the tree once more. “C’mon everybody, let’s head outside!” With that he was off, A.J. scurrying alongside and helping hold up a corner of the tree. Everyone else followed closely behind, their conversations picking up once more as they left the decorated music room behind and headed toward the outdoors. Christmas wasn’t contained in just one room; it was all around them.

#twdg #twdg louis #twdg clementine #twdg omar #twdg aj #twdg privet #rusim #ninja fam #fanfic #twdg christmas #ericsonclanchristmaschallenge

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outlaws-of-anarchy · 5 years ago

Text

Tainted Love (Chapter 5 - Finale)

Warning's: Mention of a broken heart, profanity, alcohol, drugs, happy ending for all

Words: 3,144

1 YEAR LATER

Ringed fingers drummed idly along the table-top, an icy gaze directed to the prospect who was working bar. Music hummed in the background, nearly drowning out the multiple voices that echoed into the air. The clubhouse was busy, filled to the brim with patched members, old ladies, crow eaters, and of course sweet-butts. The celebration of Abel’s 1st year was upon them, and there was no better way to honor his life than by drinking and getting high. Who knew what shenanigans he would get into later, as of now, he was busy watching the prospect.

He hadn’t sponsored this particular new blood, but he still needed to make sure that he was doing his job. “Ay prospect, give me another beer.” Tig order.

Despite having plenty of other people to serve, the prospect knew better than to ignore Tig’s orders. The kid grabbed a Budweiser before cranking off the cap and sliding the bottle down to the curly-headed member without hesitation. Tig grabbed ahold of the beer before gingerly bringing it to his lips and taking a greedy sip.

As he was turning to head towards Happy, Jax, and Clay, something, or perhaps someone had caught his attention off in the distance. Everything around him seemed to slow down, the music and the voices fading out as the pace of his heart beat picked up and began thumping in his ears. His eyes swiveled in between the crowd of women and men, until his gaze gently landed on Y/N who was entering the clubhouse with Tara.

At first glance, he barely recognized her, something was different and it wasn’t her appearance. She looked exactly the same, still stunningly beautiful. Ethereal, and so unaware of how she could light up a room with the simplest of smiles. Whatever it was, he could sense it, he could see it in the way she carried herself. Like a weight had been lifted off her shoulders. There was a sparkle in her eyes, one he had never seen before, not with him at least.

There was a genuine smile etched into her lips as she whispered to Tara. It wasn’t forced and it wasn’t fake. It touched her eyes, even enunciating the little wrinkles besides her lower lids. It was at that point that he realized just what had changed, and it was her. She was happy, she wasn’t being brought down by his stupid bullshit. She didn’t have to worry about where he was when he wasn’t with her, all she had to worry about was herself. The factor that played so enormously into her happiness was the fact that they weren’t together anymore.

To say it didn’t fuck him up, would be a lie.

When he was ready to settle down and just be with her, it was already too late. The childish bullshit he had been pullin’ was enough to push her away, and for good. His mind wandered back to their last conversation.

Tears slowly began welling up before pushing towards the corner of her eyes and dripping down her cheeks. “I’m sorry Tig, but let’s face it. We weren’t ever going to last, you’re wild and free and I enjoy that about you, but I’m not the one who’s gonna tame you. I’m not gonna be the one who makes you want to stop fucking everything with a pulse. I’m j-just sorry.”

He looked down at her face, concern briefly flashing across his visage as he watched her silently cry. She was clearly in pain, not physical, but emotional. She felt guilty for what she had done with Kozik, and it was noticeable. She wanted his forgiveness, even if she couldn’t have his whole heart. She could settle with that, to just be forgiven for her betrayal. Yet, he wanted to be forgiven too, he wanted to give her his whole heart.

All the emotions he had developed over the months, were terrifying. But only because they were real because they came from a place inside of him that he thought had died off a long time ago. She wasn’t perfect, but neither was he, and he continuously had hurt even if she had never verbally said so.

He could always see the disappoint in her eyes when she found hickeys on his body that didn’t belong to her. Or when he would openly flirt with numerous women in front of her, knowing damn well she wouldn’t leave. He had hurt over and over, and she had stayed. She didn’t give up on him, she didn’t call him names, she didn’t do anything, just accepted it because she knew who he was.

But he didn’t want to be like that anymore, he wanted her.

“I’m what’s best for you pussycat.” He said before crushing his lips into hers.

She had let that kiss happen, and even told him she would always love him, but she couldn’t do it anymore. He wasn’t the person she wanted to be with anymore, because she didn’t expect him to change, not now, not ever. He had been that person his entire life, and nothing would change that, not even her.

And just like that, she had left his life, not even with a hopeful glance backwards. Now here she was, a year later, acting as if nothing had ever happened between the two of them and it was pissing him off.

Grabbing ahold of his beer, he would disappear amongst the mass of people, looking to get some fresh air.

▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬

He was seated at the picnic table, taking long drags of a cigarette when he heard the clubhouse door open and bang shut. He hadn’t bothered to look back and see who it was, he was too wrapped up in his own shit.

“Tig.” A soft, sweet voice said from behind him, making his shoulders tense.

It had been a year since he had last seen her, last heard her voice, but he knew it was her. The energy in the air had changed the moment she came outside, and it made him anxious, nervous even, and that wasn’t something he was used to. He still remained with his back to her, focusing on stubbing out the cigarette in the ash tray that was placed on top of the table.

“Can we talk? Please.” She asked, her voice steady, unyielding.

He snorted before finally rising to his feet and turning to face her, he thought he could do it, but the moment he did, the air left his lungs. Looking at her had brought up old feelings, something he thought he had stuffed down a long time ago, feelings he thought he had gotten rid of... Snapping back into reality, his walls came shooting upwards, guarding his vulnerable heart.

“What do you want to talk about pussycat? You did all the talkin’ last time, remember?” He replied with a snarky tone, trying to keep her at a safe distance.

Despite how hard he was coming across, she didn’t budge, she remained steady, facial expressions neutral. “I know you must hate me, and I don’t blame you. But I need you to hear this, because when I needed to hear it from Kozik, I never got it, and it ate me up and I don’t want you to end up like me. So, please, hear me out.”

Tig softened up at her pleading, although he wanted nothing more than to be pissed off at her. He still had a soft spot for her, even though she broke his heart.

His voice came out bland, almost emotionless. “Say what you need to say and be on your way.”

Y/N looked up at him with soft, feminine features, trying to coax him in. “When Kozik left me, it broke me. Completely. And then there you were, cleaning up a mess that wasn’t even yours. You took care of me, and I will forever be grateful to you for that. But you couldn’t offer me the one thing I needed to feel okay, and that was closure. Kozik never gave me the closure I needed to let him go, even though I desperately tried to. It felt like unresolved business and when he came back, it didn’t feel like he and I were through. So, I’m here, to offer you the closure you need so you can move on... What we had was beautiful, and I was very much in love with you, but you hurt me. You couldn’t just have me, you had to have everything and everyone else, and it made me feel like I would never be enough.”

Tig growled out with irritation. “But you were enough!”

The sudden outburst from him made Y/N take a cautious step backwards. “I was enough for you once you didn’t have me anymore. I’m not here to place the blame just on you, I made mistakes, I hurt you in the process too, but you need to understand we weren’t good for each other. We weren’t made for each other, and it took a long time to realize that Alex. I just wanted you to hear that it’s okay that we didn’t work out, that we didn’t overcome the odds. I will always, and I mean always, love you, from the bottom of my heart, but we are two entirely different people. And that’s okay, it hurts now, but it won’t always hurt. I hope one day you can forgive me like I’ve forgiven you.”

Tig could only stand there, absorbing everything she had to say. He was a stubborn man and he wasn’t ready to forgive her, not yet anyways.

“Is that all?” He asked spitefully.

He watched as she inched closer, nearly consuming his personal space with her own. She rose to the tips of her toes before her lips brushed slowly across his cheek. “Goodbye Alex.” She whispered before pulling back and disappearing into the clubhouse once more.

▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬

The time Kozik had arrived at the clubhouse, it was already dark out. The drive from Tacoma had been a long one, but he wouldn’t have missed Abel’s 1st birthday for anything. He rolled his Dyna into park before switching off the headlight, side-stepping off the bike and rising to his full stature. The chain that hung from his jeans rattled audibly, a hand gliding along the metal machinery before grabbing ahold of the Dyna’s keys. Subconsciously he stuffed them into his front pocket, beginning to make his way to the clubhouse’s front door.

His movements stalled when the sound of the rusty chains of the swing set began creaking. Blue eyes maneuvered over to the small kiddy jungle gym, catching sight of Tig. He lifelessly teetered back and forth on one of the swings that was clearly too small for him. He looked defeated beneath the single street lamp, Kozik had wondered where Tig’s infamous spark had gone to.

The two men weren’t on speaking terms, and hadn’t been since the incidental shootout regarding Y/N. But the Sons were a brotherhood, and Tig, despite everything, was his brother and he would lie his life down for each and every single one of em.

He wasn’t sure what made him move in the direction of the jungle gym, but he didn’t fight it. His boots crunched loudly over the pebbles that littered the lot, making Tig’s head pop upwards, glancing at the approaching man. His lips turned upwards into a sneer, and it could only make Kozik chuckle.

At least he wasn’t the only who wasn’t happy about facing the other.

The dirty-blonde outlaw took a seat on the opposite swing, allowing the silence to fall over the two of them. His gaze moved towards the sky, noticing how many stars were out.

“What the fuck do you want Koz?” Tig snapped, clearly riled up by something.

Situating his eyes onto his brother in arms, he would gently rock back and forth. “Wanted to come piss you off some more.” He replied, a smirk sprawled along his face.

“Beat it, ya dick.” Tig replied.

This was the most the two of them had spoken to each other in over 12 months. It wasn’t much, but it was progress, it was something.

“She’s here.” Tig said, feet planted firmly on the ground beneath him.

Kozik exhaled a breath he hadn’t known he was keeping pent up before nudging at Tig. “That why you’re in such a shit mood?”

An icy stare was fixated on the blonde next to him. “Man, Kozik, you’re a genius.” He remarked with a sarcastic tone.

Laughing faintly, he would shrug his shoulders before focusing forward. “Shit happens for a reason brother.”

He could sense Tig’s temper was spiking, whether it ended in blood-shed or not, was up to the firecracker beside him.

“You don’t get to say shit to me. You got her in the end.” Tig ruffed out.

A moment of confusion took over the Tacoma outlaw, before it finally dawned on him. Tig thought that Y/N had chosen him. Little did he know, he wasn’t picked either. They were both left in the dust while she moved on, finally not needing either one.

“What are you talkin’ about idiot? Me and Y/N aren’t together, the day she called it quits with, she called it quits with me. I haven’t seen her in a year.” Kozik replied.

Both of them stared at each other, unsure of what to say next. But the silence was quickly broken.

“Well if you didn’t pop back up, I wouldn’t be in this god damn situation.” Tig growled, his gaze growing icier by the second.

Kozik could only roll his eyes before rising to his feet thus making Tig rise up, the two squaring up. The Son from Tacoma shook his head in disbelief, taking a step back to clear up the space in between them.

“I loved her ya know.” He said.

It hadn’t dawned on either of the men on how much they both had cared for Y/N. She was something hard to come by in the life, and they both had fucked up their opportunities. There was no one to blame but themselves, and they knew that. But the loss was still surreal, and it stung like hell.

“We both did, brother.” Tig ground out before looking towards the ground.

▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬

“How did it go out there?” Tara asked Y/N, handing her a glass of whiskey.

Y/N looked towards the good doctor before offering a small smile. “As well as it would go when it comes to breaking a Son’s heart.”

After that, Tara didn’t say anything else, and instead took a sip of her own drink. While Tara was talking to Gemma about Abel, Y/N had lost herself in memories of the two men she had given up.

Deciding that both Kozik and Tig weren’t right for her, was harder than she could have ever imagined. But she knew that things had changed between all three of them. In some twisted way, Kozik’s return was what she needed. It lit a fire under her ass and made her see that the decisions that she had been making, were not right. She knew that there were always obstacles and hardships in relationships, and had sacrificed enough for both Kozik and Tig. Yet what did they ever really sacrifice for her? What did they give up for her? Nothing. They had remained the same, only expecting her to adapt and change to their life styles.

Both men had put her through so much and asked so much of her, that she could hardly recognize herself anymore. Physically she was the same, but mentally, and emotionally she had transpired into someone she didn’t know. The love that she held for both men was real, it was genuine, but the love they held for her, she wasn’t sure if it truly existed.

Love was not easy, but it wasn’t supposed to make you miserable either, and it had made her insane. It had made her forget her value, and that it was okay to be just another woman on a list of several others. She forgot how strong she was in the midst of all the chaos. Leaving them behind had not been easy, it had been dreadful. It had eaten away at her, making her question if she had made the right decision. She wondered constantly if she should have chosen Tig, or Kozik. But each time she thought about it, the answer was always the same.

That neither of them, deserved her. They expected to hurt her and use her, and when they got bored of themselves and their new toys, they could go crawling back to her and she would take them back. And for a while, she did let it happen. But the night she finally chose herself over them, she realized that their love was a toxic love.

It was real to them, but they didn’t know how to love properly. They only knew what they were taught and brought up around. And she had learned to accept it, because she would always love the two of them. That would never change.

It was just time to love herself, and love her the way she deserved to be loved. Because at the end of the day, all you really had was yourself.

The sudden sound of cheering from the front of the clubhouse caught her ear making her turn and try to figure out what the commotion was. Kozik and Tig had strode in, Tig’s arm thrown over Kozik’ who comfortably stood beneath the weight. They were smiling, seemingly all was well between the two finally.

They both spotted Y/N, a flash of sadness flooding their visages before they both nodded towards, silently letting her know that all was forgiven.

A silent ‘thank you’ was mouthed towards the two of them before she returned her attention back to Tara.

All three of them had overcome many obstacles, all three of them had loved someone so entirely that they forgot what it was like being on their own. And being on their own, wasn’t too bad.

They could move on now, and maybe, just maybe, find the people they were truly meant to be with.

#samcro #soa #sons of anarchy #tig trager #tig trager fanfiction #herman kozik #juice ortiz #chibs telford #jax teller #happy lowman #opie winston #fanfic

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mxrcayong · 4 years ago

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avatar series: 01.19

masterlist.

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Exiting the crumbling arena, the group was greeted by the rising sun. The early hours of the morning were characterized by the usual red and orange sky, but unlike usual – an invisible and often ignored worries about the Equalist party have evaporated. Kilari swore she never realized how much her worries impacted her day; but as she saw Amon in handcuffs, her heart lifted.

“Good work on the back exit, Mr…” Lin turned to look at Jisung as she continues to constrain Amon in his cuffs.

Jisung was fumbling over his words at her recognition – this is the woman he always looked up to, who happens to be the daughter of his major idol. “Mr Park, Jisung Park, Ma’am General.” Lin chuckled to herself at her own impact on the flustered kid.

“The police in front just messaged me it’s surrounded by media,” Lin sighed, her eyes turning to look at one of the very few people she considers family unconscious and potentially… Lin can’t even think about it. “Tari would want to keep her identity hidden.” She looked up gently at Sukiara, “Can you tell me when she wakes up?” When Sukiara let out a hum of agreement, The general let out a solemn nod before dryly coughing. “Now, I got to take this asshole to the cameras, c’mon.” She was quick to hide her emotions, giving everyone a nod as she drags Amon’s weakened self away.

But Amon turned around. “This isn’t the end.” He sinisterly laughed, “The Equalist party is strong, we have people on the inside, we have-“ Lin gave him a particular hard shove, making him quiet down.

“We need to bring her to the infirmary.” Sukiara noted, motioning to Tari in Johnny’s arms. “If an Avatar passed out after Avatar State, it only lasts a few minutes.” She explained, “…but this so far is the longest time an Avatar is unconscious after exiting the state.” The guardian tried to hide her emotions through a stiffer demeanor, her hands behind her back and her shoulders wider than usual. She was giving herself more ground and, in a sense, give her more stability. It’s her usual public speaking stance to keep her nerves in check. It wasn’t working, unfortunately, as whenever she looked at Tari – she felt her knees bend into itself.

Yuta and Jisung were entranced by the arena. Their home away from home have crumbled into pieces, collapsed into itself. It was as if it was a biscuit, crumbled in the hands of Amon, and here are the crumbs. They would spend hours and hours here, training and practicing. Hell, this is where they met.

Sonan noticed them lagging behind as Kilari, Johnny (and thus Tari), and Sukiara climbed onto the flying bison. Their eyes were like a puppy kicked to a curb, pleading that this was not real. They looked harmed and broken, despite the events of last night. “Let’s get a move on,” Sonan mumbled, comfortingly placing her arms around their shoulders. “We should get Tari to an infirmary.” Jisung and Yuta had to tear their feet away from the ground they stood on, climbing onto the bison that patiently waited for their presence.

Johnny refused to let go of Tari. Even when they were on the flying bison, Tari’s head was on Johnny’s lap as he stroked her hair comfortingly – more to himself. From stroking her hair, Johnny could feel some movement – he could sense the fact she was breathing. It reminded him he wouldn’t lose her.

But throughout the ride, everyone’s eyes either fell asleep or stared at Tari – praying her eyes will open soon. “Avatar Aang passed out temporarily when he first entered the Avatar State, Tari should wake up in a few more minutes.” Sukiara reminded as if a way to comfort everyone, mumbling loud enough for everyone awake to hear

But minutes became hours, and Tari was eventually back at Bak Mei with no sign of regaining consciousness. “Uhm,” Sukiara stared at her feet, unsure how to comfort Tari’s friends or herself. She didn’t want to lose Tari either; as much as she tried to be distant, Tari was like her daughter. This is the longest time recorded for an Avatar to be unconscious after the Avatar State and Sukiara didn’t know what that could mean. “Everyone should get changed into new clothes and just get ready…uhm, the canteen people are preparing food.”

The rumbling of stomachs soon followed the mention of food. They didn’t even realise how hungry they were, the feeling being pushed aside by their concern. “We’re no good if we are weakened ourselves.” Yuta mumbled under his breath and everyone seemed to nod in agreement, except Johnny.

Johnny’s hands wrapped around Tari’s hand as she laid on the infirmary bed, hooked up to a number of IV fluids. The group was half way out the door by the time Sonan noticed Johnny stayed behind. Johnny couldn’t hear her over the beeping of the heart monitor; the only thing he listened to – as she told the rest of the friends to continue going.

“Johnny,” Sonan sighed, putting her hand on his back, “What would Tari say when you haven’t eaten?”

“Nothing.” Johnny scoffed. “She’d just continuously push food towards my plate until I see her….” He trailed off, as he looked at Tari’s face for the hopeful glimpse of the same eyes who would beg him to eat.

Sonan chuckled, looking down at her chosen family. She has never felt more uncertain than this; she felt like she was on the cliff edge, waiting to hear the news. “Don’t make me do that to you.”

The canteen wasn’t a better distraction. The hall practically echoed the silence back at them, the only sound amplified being the slurping of soup. No one wanted to speak with the fear that once they speak and Tari wasn’t there to make snide comments, that it’ll all start to feel real.

Luckily, an ‘urgent and mandatory’ newscast came on screen – the silence now replaced with the static of TV. The screen took up the whole wall; a familiar sight was shown in front of them; The NCT Arena in ruins. Mayor Roddin and Senator Zhong stood on top of the broken building, the unmasked Amon in cuffs behind them being held by Lin and two of her guards. Tenzin was beside them.

“We are standing here at the NCT Arena where it was learnt that the illegal underground bending fights were occurring, hosted by the previous internationally renowned pro-bending group Big Bang Crew.” The lady announced, a lady Johnny recognized from his company although vaguely. “It was also the location of the mandatory bending event that was planned last night by the Mayor, Senator, and Equalist party leader. We are here to hear the public speech made by the mayor and senator about the attacks that happened here the night prior.” The screen cut to a closer angle of the officials. From the background, it was obvious this was filmed around the same time they left the mainland.

“My name is Mayor Roddin and this is my colleague Senator Zhong.” Mayor Roddin spoke into a makeshift-podium’s microphone, Senator Zhong beside him staring down at his feet. “Over the last few years, we have been manipulated and tricked to believe a vengeful individual. We have believed every word he said and last night, we learnt that he was the true danger to society.” A video footage Amon, now in chains appeared on the screen, before cutting to the shot of him behind them. “He was fueled by revenge. His father committed a crime; he bended blood bending, the forbidden and inhumane bending that is the most powerful of them all. The Avatar Aang then took it away. Since, he was looking for revenge. To take away all bender’s powers.”

Senator Zhong took over the podium, “We apologize to all benders we have harmed, hurt, or belittled. We have to take a look at the history. Benders were family members who’d go out to hunt for food in the Spirit Wilds, they were the ones granted the power to give them safe journeys. Yes, not everyone can bend – but benders are not much different than non-benders.” They sounded sincere and genuine. “We offer our sincerest apologies. We know that may not be enough to help the harm we have caused, so we’d like to announce that Mayor Roddin and I are resigning from our seats in government. Mayor Roddin will be replaced by Chief of Police Lin Beifong who aided the Avatar last night in saving thousands of lives and my senate seat will be replaced with a non-bender.”

“We hope to see future change and acceptance for the benders.” Mayor Roddin took over again. “We wouldn’t be here today without them. We also like to extend our deepest and warmest gratitude to the current Avatar, who helped get Amon in prison.” The two government officials exchanged glances before looking at the journalists lined up in front of them at the press conference. “Any questions?”

It wasn’t long before journalists were left with many variations of the same question; “Who is the Avatar?” The questions were ignored and discarded, the now officially resigned officials just smiled and told them that information will remain classified.

“I can’t believe its all over.” Kilari let out a breath, sudden tears coming from her eyes. Johnny’s arm immediately jumped to wrap around her shoulders, feeling much more connected to the fire bender since they spoke at the bench. “We can finally breathe.” Kilari’s eyes went wide with happiness as she directed her comment to the other benders at the table.

Yuta was at a particular loss for words.

“This feels unreal.” Jisung comments.

Tari’s eyes fluttered open, noticing where she was. She was hooked up to a ton of medical equipment.

Beside her sat Sukiara, who practically leaped to her feet with excitement at the slightest movement from Tari. “What happened?”

“You did it.” Sukiara celebrated, “You did it, Avatar Tari.”

sorry this kinda sucks!!! ive been super busy the last two weeks with my internships and some family stuff. im not the most proud of this chapter but i gotten to a point where i wasnt wanting to write because of this chapter, so i wanted to get this chapter out of the way. something about htis chapter just messed with my mood. so! one more chapter until book one is over, but there’s a book 2 coming up!

request anything for future parts / penny for your thoughts here

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pitiless-achilles-wept · 4 years ago

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How to Endure: Cancer in the Time of Pandemic

[Originally posted March 28, 2020]

Hi all, Welcome to a very special birthday post from me in which I mostly think about what it's like to have cancer in the time of a global pandemic. As a way of topping my last year's celebration--where I was just about to start chemo--this year the world is sheltering in place under quarantine orders as an unprecedented public health disaster unfolds around us. (Sorry if my prediliction for dramatic narratives is in any way responsible for this fact...) I've been trying to work up the energy to post and let you know that I'm doing ok in this time of a global emergency...as ok as anyone I guess. I should say right off the bat that I am not, right now, immunocompromised, although I am at risk for it. We can all hope my system keeps bouncing back as it has done to keep me out of the most vulnerable group. (I do also have lung tumors, so a respiratory infection would automatically come with complications.)

Mostly, I spent a lot of the past two weeks wondering not if but how the pandemic was likely to affect my cancer treatment and I finally have enough information to confirm that, as of now, I'm still able to stay on the study and get chemo as planned this coming Thursday (April 2nd). I had been scheduled to get CT scans on Tuesday, March 31st to assess whether the treatment I started at the end of January has worked well enough for me to continue on the clinical trial. Although I get so many that it has perhaps come to seem routine, "scanxiety" is a very real phenomenon because these are how you learn whether things are going well (or well enough) or whether the disease has "progressed" and you have to regroup and try again with a new treatment plan. It had been since October that I had had a positive scan, with November showing a halting of improvement and December and January documenting the reversal of recovery. So obviously I was anxious and wanted them as soon as possible. Hearing reports of "non-essential" treatments being canceled, my Penn oncologist and I decided to try to move my scans up. After many phone calls and the efforts and good will of a number of doctors and hospital staff I was able to get them on the 23rd in Princeton (avoiding both the drive into Philly and the potential for exposure there). I'm glad we did because I learned yesterday that the treatment has been working fine; not great, but well enough that a) some tumors got somewhat smaller, b) no tumors got bigger, and c) no new metastatic sites were observed. Clinically, that's ruled as "stable disease" b/c in order for it to be a "partial response" you have to have your cancer go down by at least 30%. But reversing the trend of growth is still a win, and perhaps more time will see more results. And crucially, I do not have to investigate a new treatment option or try to change in the midst of what is soon to be the crest of the pandemic wave of cases. It's only relatively lucky, but I will take it! I have also seen reports in the cancer community about people having their chemo canceled as non-essential, which was shocking to me. I wrote last year about feeling like cancer should always be a "red ball" case that gets rocketed up the chain for testing, insurance approval, etc. and being shocked that it just wasn't. I understand that in some cases where a cancer patient is immunosuppressed, even attending a treatment at a hospital may pose greater risk than delaying it because the risk of infection is such a threat. But that is an extraordinary statement to make, amidst a daily barrage of extraordinary statements. Not all the stories were that clear-cut, though, so I was glad to hear from my doctor that as a stage 4 patient my scheduled treatments will not be bumped. I cannot have any visitors (and it's a pretty rough thing to do alone), but I can and will get through this. We all will. Because we all have in us more than we know. *** Shortly after my beloved grandma died (suddenly, from complications during surgery) my dad told me that one of the last things she said to him was that she would be ok because, "I'm a warrior." And she was. From a tiny place in the woods of east Texas, as a teenager she ran her family's store during the Great Depression and cared for a mess of brothers. When my daddy was eight years old, she and my grandfather picked up and moved away from a community where they knew everyone and had for generations to Dallas--an unfamiliar big city--because his younger brother had been born deaf and they wanted to send him to a special school. She founded and ran her own school, an income she supplemented with other jobs while my granddaddy was away walking pipeline for an oil company. When I knew her, late in her life, she had lost her sight but continued devouring books on tape and listening to the clues on "Jeopardy!". I was the first and only grandbaby and I was adored (not to say spoiled). The only times she actually saw me, before she was blind, I was just a few months old, chewing clean laundry in the basket in which someone had deposited me. As I grew up, she would feel my face, my hair, my ever-increasing height (and joke each time that "I'm going to have to saw your legs off!"). She would listen to my voice on Sunday phone calls; do crossword puzzles with me, as I read clues while lounging on her velour sofa; offer a "piece of Hershey" or a stick of spearmint gum from the same blue tin on the table in which she kept her cigarettes. She could still piece quilts by feel, even though she couldn't see the fabric, and advised me on the 1ft patchwork square I made for my doll's bed. She was weakened, exhausted, blind, and often in pain (which she tactfully never mentioned with me around). Except when she changed to a polyester pantsuit for visiting the doctor, she wore carpet slippers and housedress with a pack of Marlboros in the pocket that she lit from a gas burner, leaning on her walker by an ancient stove. No one knew quite how old she was when she died--our best guess is eighty-three--because she was also the kind of Southern lady who told no one her real age. She was a warrior in that, despite all that had happened in her life and all that was happening to her body, she kept on going. She endured.

When I search for inspiration to continue with treatments that make me feel worse than the disease, to fight so hard to save a body that's betraying me, to stay in an increasingly terrifying world that's betraying all of us, I think of her last words. I'm a warrior. I will endure. Believe it or not, you are also and you will too. In our struggles to continue with our lives in the face of monumental uncertainty and paralyzing anxiety, our greatest achievement is to keep on going. We fight (each of us different things) so that we may endure. It is not pleasant. It will reduce you to tears. You will exhaust all your emotional resources. But you will triumph. I have been fighting, existing in crisis mode, for 14 months and that is how I know that you can do it. You must grieve (and allow yourself time for it) for what you have lost, including a sense of safety or normalcy. But as you press on, you will find that inner strength or resiliency. I'm sorry that this is being demanded of you. It is not fair. But that will not change it. You may grieve, cry, fight, and struggle but, ultimately, you will accept that your way forward, your treatment, is to endure. I've reflected a lot on social media about how living with stage 4 cancer accidentally prepared me for the experience of the pandemic. I wrote a coda to an essay that will be published--likely this May--about the "Body as Data." Since the coda itself will probably change by then, the situating evolving as rapidly as it is, I thought I would share it here. Thank you for being with me and providing that community that has been the saving grace of treatment. Love, Bex *** As of writing this essay, it’s been 14 months since my diagnosis. I have tried three different treatments, two of which were clinical trials, one of which I am still enrolled in. It is approaching my thirty-sixth birthday [it's actually today - March 29th] and everyone is sheltering in place because of the coronavirus. I have lived more than a year now tolerating the same kind of existential uncertainty and fear of an alien invader in the body that the world as a whole is now experiencing. I have played my own doctor, watching my body for signs that a treatment is working, or that it is not, in much the same way. I have tried to anticipate what will happen if I become immunocompromised (as I currently am not, but am at risk for) and given up many of the pleasures that made my life better before (traveling, going out with friends) in the name of my health. I have offered my body up as data to research scientists with the goal of furthering not just my own treatment but the survival prospects of future patients. I did not know that throughout this year I was in training for a time when we would all of necessity be regarded as bodies with the potential to produce valuable data about the spread and effects of COVID-19. We are starved for numbers, for data on infections and recoveries and for statistical models that may relieve us of the uncertainty we feel about the future. I cannot provide that. But I can tell you to be cautious readers of data and statistics that speak with any pretense to authority right now, even though I crave them too. Cancer is invisible and so are viruses. This particular virus can inhabit the body but produce no symptom and live for days on surfaces. It may be in us. It may be in those we love. We are in the middle of the data. We are the data. Susan Sontag wrote in Illness as Metaphor that “Everyone who is born holds dual citizenship, in the kingdom of the well and in the kingdom of the sick. Although we all prefer to use only the good passport, sooner or later each of us is obliged, at least for a spell, to identify ourselves as citizens of that other place” (3). A pandemic transcends borders but does not do away with the kingdom of the sick. As someone already resident, I can say to you: welcome. The hardest thing about being here is the grief for what we have lost, including a sense of normalcy. The best thing, though, is what we may find: community in a time of crisis.

#my life as a cancer patient #clinical trials #covid and cancer #quarantine life #mbc #metastatic breast cancer #stage 4 #my family

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artistic-writer · 5 years ago

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Love Finds a Way :: CS Jurassic World AU :: Ch 8

Title: Love Finds a Way by @artistic-writer

Summary: Emma Swan is the Head of Operations for David Nolan’s exotic adventure park, Jurassic World. She has a son, Henry, and is loved and respected by her colleagues. Her life was perfect until a new dinosaur the park created, Indominus Rex, decided to escape. Oh, and her one night stand, Killian Jones - he’s there to help contain the asset. Just to complicate things even more. Jurassic World AU.

Rating: M (for people getting eaten)

Also on: AO3 - FF

A/N: HAPPY BIRTHDAY KRYSTAL! I hope you like this little bit of excitement and accept it as my gift to you on this glorious celebration of your birth! Welcome to 21 again! ;) And thank you to @resident-of-storybrooke for your eyes <3

Taglist: @hollyethecurious @kmomof4 @resident-of-storybrooke @cocohook38 @sherlockianwhovian @wordsmith-storyweaver@winterbaby89 @kymbersmith-90 @killianmesmalls @killian-whump @nonnyj @jennjenn615 @thislassishooked @searchingwardrobes @doodlelolly0910 @cs-forlife @darkcolinodonorgasm @mariakov81 @xemmaloveskillianx

Please show your appreciation for my writing and artwork by buying me a Ko-fi. If you are unable to do that, then please enjoy it and show your appreciation with a reblog. Or leave me a comment, i’m a sucker for that. Any feedback welcome :D

——————————————————————————————

“Emma, should we talk about this?” Killian finally broke the silence between them as they headed towards the raptor compound.

“About what?” Emma asked dumbly as she stared out the window into nothing but rolling green fields. “We kissed,” she shrugged.

“Aye, we kissed, and then you said ‘we’,” Killian clarified. He took his eyes off the road for a second to stare at her profile. “‘We’,” he repeated a little louder in the hopes she would look at him.

“Did I?” Emma turned to him, finally, a smirk playing on her lips.

Killian knew she was teasing him as soon as he saw her eyes, still a little wide from arousal and excitement, her lips slightly plumper than before as they framed her teeth in a grin. He had been holding his breath and without even realising it, he exhaled hard in relief, loosening his vice like grip on the steering wheel. If he still had any doubt it was all washed away when Emma reached across the centre console and rested her hand on his thigh, brushing her fingers over the fabric of his jeans.

“I said we can wait,” Emma smiled softly but with a more assertive tone. “I’m sorry, but my priority is Henry right now.”

“Of course,” Killian agreed. He dropped one hand from the wheel and laid it over hers, curling his fingers around hers and giving the digits a little squeeze. “Did Liam say if he was alright?”

“God, no, what if he is hurt?” Emma suddenly panicked. “I didn’t hear his voice. What if he,-”

“He’s not hurt,” Killian assured her, squeezing her hand again. “I promise you he’s not hurt.”

“You saw that Gyrosphere,” Emma snapped. “And Graham’s…”

“Hey, love, stop that now,” Killian soothed, releasing her hand and putting both of his back on the wheel. “Liam said he was safe and besides,” Killian said quickly, leaning forward to inspect the imposing concrete wall that loomed in front of them. “We’re about to find out for ourselves.”

Without even knowing it, Emma and Killian followed the exact same road up to the raptors compound that Henry had taken. The two roads intersected not far from where they had found the Gyrosphere and it seemed that not many people had taken notice of the old road in such a long time it had been thoroughly overgrown until Henry had plowed his Jeep through the tree covered gates. As soon as he arrived at the compound, Henry had drawn a detailed map for security who had resecured the gate following Liam’s orders in an attempt to minimise any more assets escaping.

Guards already had the gate open when they saw Killian’s vehicle approaching, but it hadn’t even come to a full stop before Emma was jumping out of the passenger seat and rushing for her son when she spied him across the courtyard. He was standing next to Liam, who looked up when he heard the vehicle’s engine and the crunch of gravel under tyres, but he had no time to announce their arrival before Henry was taking off towards it.

“Henry!” Emma shouted as she ran towards her son across the gravel, her heels catching in the stones and twisting her ankle sideways. She ignored the misstep, thighs burning with exertion as she propelled herself towards her son, nothing able to stop her, least of all the warm breeze as it whipped at her face.

“Mom!” Henry cried out, rushing towards her with twice as many steps, his little legs working faster than they ever had, arms outstretched in readiness to embrace the one person he wanted more than anyone else in the entire world.

When their bodies collided, Henry knocked all of the air out of Emma’s lungs with the energy at which he jumped into her arms and trapped her waist with his legs. She had to swing around to compensate for the force, arms wrapping around the boy so tightly she didn’t realise at first that she might be squeezing him a little too hard. Henry wriggled after a few minutes of Emma combing her fingers through the hair on the back of his head, a hefty sigh audible to all of the crew currently working in the compound when she got a whiff of his scent from his hair.

“Oh, Henry,” Emma apologised quickly, setting the boy back to the ground. Her hands continued to roam over him beginning on his head where she even looked behind his ears. “Are you hurt?” She fussed, pulling the cartilage forward and noticing a few scraps down his neck.

“Mom,” Henry groaned, trying to move his head out of her reach. Emma ruffled the hair that had fallen over his forehead, exposing another long slice along his eyebrow that had sealed itself shut with some caked on mud. “Mom, I’m fine.”

“Just let me look at you,” Emma told him, her voice trying to sound calm but the quake in her words giving away her anxiety. She and Killian had come close to the Indominus Rex, but as the crushed glass sphere and Graham’s leg had attested, Henry may have come closer. “Just quickly,” Emma promised, dropping to her knees and running her hands over Henry’s torso.

“He’s alright, aren’t you, Henry?” Killian announced a little louder than he should have from behind her. When Henry spied him over his mother’s shoulder he grinned, pleased to see his friend. Killian gave him a wink and a sideways smirk. “Let the lad be.”

“I’m okay, mom,” Henry told her, catching her eye when she looked back to her. He gave her a boyish smile, one of his chubby cheeks painted with yet more scabbing. Emma ran her thumb over it, softly so she didn’t hurt him but so that he knew she cared more than she had done over the past few years.

“I’m sorry about Graham,” Killian offered Henry with a look cast down to his boots as they scuffed at the stones under his feet. He knew Emma wouldn’t know how to approach the subject, and they never had to tell Henry the gory details of what they had found, but when the boy gave him a small nod, wise beyond his years, Killian returned the gesture.

“I should never have let Graham takes us off the track in the Gyrosphere,” Henry said solemnly, lowering his head. “I knew we would get in trouble.”

“Not your fault,” Emma told him sternly, cupping his face in her hands and lifting his watery gaze to hers. “You hear me? No one is in trouble.”

“Your mother is right,” Killian told him, stepping closer and laying one hand on the young boy’s shoulder. “This isn’t anyone’s fault.”

“Did you see that dinosaur?” Henry asked Killian with a hint of fear still lingering in his voice. “It was so big, like no dinosaur I’ve ever seen. What was it?”

Emma got to her feet and looked at Killian, silently pleading with him to not tell her son what the Indominus was, or what had gone wrong, and most definitely not how she had been responsible for almost getting him eaten by it. Killian sucked in a breath, trying to buy himself some time to think of an answer that might sate Henry’s inquisition but not also terrify him enough to give him nightmares for the rest of his life. Although, Killian wasn’t sure that damage hadn’t already been done.

“So, it escaped?” Henry inquired, leaning forward from the back seat of the vehicle they currently all occupied.

Emma had insisted on heading back to the comms centre, to what end Killian wasn’t sure, but she was convinced that it was the safest place on the island. “Kind of,” Killian offered with a thought.

“And it can camouflage? Like a chameleon?” Henry peppered the question at no one in particular and Emma and Killian shared a look. They had told him the jist of the general story, leaving out all of the ACU carnage, but true to his nature, Henry was hungry for more knowledge.

“Sort of,” Emma replied, seeing the disappointed look in his eyes from the rearview mirror.

“She clawed out her own tracking chip too,” Killian told him as he shifted down a gear to ascend a particularly steep hill on the road back to the comms.

“Why are you impressed with that?” Emma asked him in a hushed voice with a narrowed stare.

“It means she is clever,” Henry told her before Killian had time to answer. “Dinosaurs are not known for their brains.”

“Exactly!” Killian agreed, even if he didn’t totally agree with the thought process of a ten year old. The Indominus wasn’t doing anything out of malice, or because she was trying to get back at the human population of the island. She was simply trying to find where she fits into an already complicated food chain, further intricate by her very existence.

Emma glared at him. “God, I am so fired.” Killian had no time to respond before Emma’s phone rang again, her heart jumping into her mouth. She fumbled with the device before realising it was Ruby on her caller ID, probably with even more bad news that she was sure could wait until she reached the comms centre. They were already halfway there but nevertheless, Emma answered after a sigh.

“Ruby, I’m on my way back to the comms room,-”

“That’s a bad idea,” Ruby whispered, her voice muffled under her palm she was using to conceal her cell phone.

“What? What’s going on?” Emma demanded

“Walsh is what’s going on,” Ruby growled. “He’s taken over, had David escorted out by security, and In-Gen is taking over emergency ops.”

“What the fu,-”

“Emma, listen,” Ruby shuffled further into the corner she was hiding in when one of In-Gen’s men swept by her with some more equipment. “He has this insane plan to use the raptors to hunt the Indominus.”

“What do you mean, ‘use the raptors’?” Emma repeated with a frown, one finger in her ear as she struggled to hear over the sound of the tyres on the off-road terrain.

“Son of a bitch,” Killian muttered, overhearing Emma’s exclamation and slamming on the brakes and stopping Henry from flying forward with am arm across the gap between the seats.

“You shouldn’t swear,” Henry told him but before Killian could scold him for not wearing a belt, his words were almost drowned out by the sound of helicopters overhead.

They all looked up, military helicopters thundering across the sky. Killian tightened his grip on the steering wheel, his jaw muscles ticking with the mere thought of Walsh touching his raptors. Killian wasn’t an idiot. He knew that he was expendable to In-Gen’s research. All they needed was to see one successful run of raptors obeying commands for them to think it was a good idea to release them, and Killian had already shown them that.

“He’s heading to them now,” Ruby told her in a low voice. “Tell Killian-,”

“I heard you, lass. Fucking Walsh,” Killian growled louder than usual so Ruby could hear him.

“You shouldn’t say fuck,” Henry muttered.

Yanking the gear stick into reverse, Killian peered over his shoulder and gave Henry a look, nodding towards the seatbelt he should have already been wearing. “Seatbelt, Henry,” he scolded gently as the red faced boy scrambled to secure his belt. “And hold on.”

Walsh had done it. He had successfully acquired the ability to control people, and all it had taken was a little hot headedness a the hands of David Nolan. For years he had played the underdog, skulking around in the shadows of others, gaining repute as high as his status would allow. When the Jurassic World gig had come up, not many people put their names forward to go and work on the island, but Walsh had not faltered where others had, signing up and flashing his passport to the nearest superior.

He wasn’t going to lie, he had thought it would have been much harder than it actually was to get someone as influential as David Nolan to lose their temper. Normally a man of resolve, Nolan had cracked way earlier than Walsh had anticipated. His jaw hurt but it had been worth it. All it had taken was a little jab here, and a little nudge there, combined with a slight towards a woman who David obviously held feelings for, before the Mughal had toppled.

The days had been long, the nights no cooler than those days, but Walsh was finally where he wanted to be. A little bit of small print said that in the event of a massive security risk that was unable to be contained by the in house security teams, In-Gen officials would be assigned to minimise the risk to life by, and here is the important part, any means necessary. As far as Walsh was concerned, four apex predators loose on an island where the majority of the human population was already contained in one place was a risk he was willing to take.

Who knows? He might just be the next big news story.

Walking along the line of raptors, all four of them enclosed in their huge metal muzzles, made him feel big. They were in his control now. So what if he needed Jones to instruct them. Walsh would credit the man, in tiny writing underneath a photograph of himself with the beasts, preferably one where Jones had been cropped out due to a misprint in the scientific journal he was sure his decision would make.

His team were busy fixing cameras to the reptiles, the headband on all of them as tight as they could make them in order to stop them losing the expensive equipment. One mercenary, dressed heel to toe in black, operated the tablet like device that offered a live view of what the raptors were seeing, whilst the other fiddled rather nervously with the optics. Walsh managed to walk past two raptors before the one they called Delta began growling, almost dog-like at his approach, so he stopped with a smug grin.

“Hey! Hey!” Walsh crouched to eye level with the raptor, ignoring her snarls as he snapped his fingers to get her attention. “Right here,” he yelled in her enclosed face. The mercenary beside Delta snorted a laugh and turned the tablet he was holding around until Walsh could see himself on the screen. His maw stretched with glee at the sight and he turned back to the cat eyed reptilian. “Yeah, right here.”

“She looks at what she wants,” Liam told Walsh as he came up behind him. The man didn’t even turn away from taunting the raptor and Liam shook his head with a grin. “It’s usually what she wants to eat.”

Walsh didn’t have time to retort as he watched the curl of the raptor’s lips, her jaw muscles twitching in its cage before they both heard the sound of a vehicle approaching. Whoever was driving had their foot to the floor, the engine screaming out for a gear change, and when Walsh stood upright to see what the commotion was, he spotted Killian behind the wheel. The vehicle splashed through a puddle, obscuring the driver’s view, but Walsh could still see the contempt in Killian’s eyes as the car ground to a stop with a screech of its brakes.

“Oh good,” Walsh sneered, planting his hands on his hips. “Daddy’s home.”

“Let me handle this,” Killian snarled as he pushed the door open. He hadn't even let the car stop fully before he threw himself out of the cab and stalked towards Walsh, leaving his door open and the engine still running.

“I don’t think so,” Emma snorted, hopping out of the vehicle after him. She slammed her door and shot Henry a look which he knew meant he was to remain still and where she could see him.

“Jones, finally-,” Walsh began with a toothy grin.

Killian strode forward, angered even more by the smirk on Walsh’s cocky son-of-a-bitch face, and pulled back his arm ready to strike. Walsh had no time to register what was coming before Killian’s balled fist connected with his nose, splitting the skin there straight down the bridge of his nose, reopening the blood vessels inside that hadn’t fully healed from Nolan’s punch.

“Get the hell out of here, and stay away from my animals.” Killian was livid, his hand flexing at his side from the impact with Walsh’s bones, his knuckles instantly hot from the punch that hadn’t, thankfully, opened any of his own skin. Walsh stumbled backwards, only just stopping himself from falling into the wet dirt, both hands clutching his nose as he let out a cry of anguish.

“Walsh, you wanted this to happen, you son of a bitch,” Emma added to Killian’s threat, standing slightly forward of him in case she needed to separate them.

“Oh, Christ,” Walsh scoffed at them both, rubbing the side of his jaw. “How many more people have to die before this mission starts to make sense to you, huh?”

“It’s not a mission,” Killian growled through clenched teeth.

“It’s a field test,” Liam finished for him, appearing beside Emma.

“You’re both wrong,” Walsh snapped, looking between them before focusing his attention of Emma. “This is an In-Gen operation now.”

Emma rolled her eyes. “Please.”

“There are going to be cruise ships to get everyone off this island at first light. You’re all going to watch the news tomorrow and it’s going to say how you all saved lives, no no, better yet.” Walsh took a breath, his cheeks rubying from anger, and took a step towards Killian. “About how your animals saved lives.”

Killian didn’t care about the news, and he didn’t care about Walsh, but what he did care about was the thousands of people potentially at risk on the island. He didn’t know where David was being held, but there was no way that he could get to him and stop Walsh from executing his diabolical plan in time. Walsh was a fool, but maybe Killian was even more of a fool for thinking that training dinosaurs to obey commands in isolation was In-Gen’s only end game from their field testing. The idea to release them was ludacris, and with the Indominus heading straight for the main visitor’s centre, more people would die.

Killian looked toward Liam who gave a sigh and planted his hands firmly on his hips as he read his brother’s mind. “They’ve never been out of containment.”

“Aye,” Killian agreed.

“It’s madness!” Liam told him.

“Aye,” Killian nodded, looking down at his feet.

“This is happening with or without you, Jones,” Walsh spat. Killian looked up to meet his gaze and Walsh saw the muscles in his jaw tighten in frustration, but ultimate resolve in his eyes. “Good,” he smirked. “Let’s make a plan.”

For a team that was supposedly taking down an entire animal, the measly eight man team didn’t fill either Killian or Liam with much confidence. They had seen bigger teams defeated by this dinosaur. She was smart and she was ferocious, and they knew that she was learning by experience and adapting to compensate. There wasn’t much more they could try that would surprise her, but she needed to be stopped. Killian had faith in his raptors, even if he didn't have much in the gaggle of shaved heads and bushy beards in from of him.

“We know she is in sector five and heading towards the visitor’s centre,” he announced to the group. They were huddled around a huge desk, a map of the park spread out before them. Two corners were held by two of the men and two more had surrendered their weapons in order to weigh down the paper.

“This is a game we call hide and seek,” Liam told the room, standing arms crossed next to his brother. “It’s essentially a scenting exercise.”

“We’ve done it about a thousand times with these animals, so when they get on target, and they will,” Killian reiterated, eyeballing each man. “You must wait to engage.”

One of the In-Gen mercenaries snorted like he knew better, drawing both of their attention.

“Velociraptors are pack hunters,” Liam snapped. “They like to herd their prey into a kill zone, and when they do that, it will give us a clear shot.”

“Wait for my command before you fire,” Killian asserted. “And give her everything you have. We have one huge fucking target here, gentlemen,” he told them, locking eyes with each and every one of the scarred, battle worn men who thought they knew better. “Do not shoot my raptors.”

“Please,” Liam added quickly.

After the briefing, to give the men time to gear up, Killian walked out to the paddock where the raptors had already been prepped. He walked between them, sorrow and remorse on his face as he looked at each of them in the eye with a silent apology. Charlie, Delta and Echo got instantly excited at the sight of him, knowing that just like when they trained, Killian was the one who fed them at the end of a good exercise. Blue, on the other hand, began to claw at the wall behind her confines, and Killian wondered if she knew that this time things would be different.

“Easy, Blue,” Killian soothed his beta, the dinosaur clearly annoyed at being in her confines when she knew that being so meant a new hunt was about to begin. “Easy,” he whispered, his fingers bumping over the ridges of her skin in an attempt to calm her. Blue’s blinking went from rapid to slightly slower, barely noticeable to anyone else, but Killian saw her acceptance of his words. “There’s a good lass,” he smiled at her and Blue made the affectionate sound of chirping in her throat. “You don’t scare me,” he said softly, adjusting the camera angle of the raptor’s live cam.

“Killian?” Henry’s voice made him straighten up and spin around in the caged area he was in, a sudden panic that Henry might have followed him rushing through him. Henry was standing just outside the bars, dirt covered arms resting against the metal and a look of contemplation of his face. “Is this safe?” Henry nodded to Blue over Killian’s shoulder as he approached. “Setting them loose, I mean.”

Killian heaved a sigh. “No, it’s not.”

The look on Henry’s face made Killian rethink his words, or at least the way he had delivered them, but it was too late to take them back. The sight of the raptors clearly had a different effect on Henry now that he had come into close contact with the Indominus, something that Killian hadn’t failed to recognize. The lad had lost his zest for them, instead content to skulk behind barriers and at a more than safe distance whereas before he was less happy to do so.

“Listen, Henry,” Killian added gently as he let himself out of the compound and pulled the boy into his side as he walked away. “You and I both know this might not work,” he admitted. “Gods, you and I are probably the only people on the forsaken island who know this might not work.” Henry chuckled a little. “But I am going to do everything within my power to keep you safe.”

Henry stumbled a little, squashed so close to Killian, who held him up as they walked.

“What about my mom?” Henry asked shyly.

“I’ve arranged a safe place for you both, you just have to get there.” Killian nodded ahead to where an armoured vehicle was waiting. The huge, thick walled truck was similar to ones that were used to transport money, only this one was clearly used to island purposes now. Killian reached the doors and twisted the handle until the lock sprang free and released the almighty weight of the door. “You just have to drive there.”

Henry looked into the truck. It looked safe, clean and hardly used and as Killian lifted him up into it, the sounds from the mercenaries and world outside seemed to fade away with how thick the walls were. A toolbox at the end was handy as a makeshift seat, and Henry sat down after he had crawled his way to the very back of the truck, right next to a cab window where his mother would talk to him as she drove. A sudden screech from one of the raptors made Henry jump clean out of his skin, his whole body stiffening and his eyes going wide with sudden fear.

“Nothing’s getting in here, right, Killian?” He asked tentatively.

When the boy looked back to him, Killian saw real fear in his eyes, the whites pricked with red where he had obviously, at some point today, sustained a blow to the head. Or maybe it was when he had been thrown over a waterfall into a lagoon of unknown depth. Or maybe it had been when he was busy trying to repair a Jeep twice as old as he was to get back to his mother. To safety. The point was, Killian felt like the boy had already had his fair share of terrors for one day.

“Do you remember that time when you came to my trailer, and you thought there was a predator outside?” Henry’s silence prompted him further. “When you heard that noise from outside and was scared we were going to be eaten?”

“It was the generator,” Henry told him with a pout.

“Aye, it was, but I told you I would protect you.” Killian climbed up into the truck after him, kneeling down in front of the boy who was so busy studying his palms in his lap. “I protected you, right?”

“You mean, how you made a fort out of some pillows and told me that nothing would be able to penetrate the keep as long as I stayed inside,” Henry recalled.

“Aye, lad.” Killian’s lips twitched into a small smile at his own recollection of that incident, when, despite his young age, Henry had been babbling on with the sage of an old soul, until the very moment his generator had made a high pitched cry, just like a raptor, and Killian had remembered his true mentality, including all of the trepidation that comes with having such a young imagination. “See, nothing is going to get you whilst I’m around, alright?”

Henry’s smile faded and Killian wondered what he had said when the boy returned to studying his hands so intently. “But you’re not always going to be around,” Henry mumbled. “My mom-,”

“Yeah, well, leave your mother to me,” Killian said with a reassuring smile. “We’re friends, Henry, and we’ll always be friends, alright? Nothing is going to change that.”

The youngster took a second but finally looked up again when Killian patted him on the knee. “No matter what?” He asked quietly.

“No matter what,” Killian nodded.

Henry launched himself forward without warning, wrapping his arms around Killian and holding on like he might fall if he let go. Killian swallowed a lump that had formed in his throat, the compassion he felt for the boy more than anything he had ever felt for anyone he wasn’t related to. He smoothed his hands over Henry’s shirt, giving him a quick pat on the shoulders that indicated they should part, before ruffling the boy's hair in a final act of affection.

Hopping down out of the truck, Killian kept his smile until the huge doors locked back into place and he wasn’t so sure he would be able to keep his promise after all.

The raptors scuffled around in each of their boxes like hounds in a trap waiting for the bell. They snorted and sniffed through the door thick mesh grilling as Killian walked up and down the line of them holding out the chunk of flesh the Indominus Rex had clawed out of her own body. The tracking beacon was no longer working, but the skin and tissue around it held all the information the raptors would need to find their quarry, all of them already beginning their myriad of chirps and communicative noises they would need to hunt as a pack.

Flood lights on a pursuit vehicle behind them lit up with a buzz, both Jones brothers bathed in the iridescent white the spotlights provided as Killian made his way to the front of the entourage of vehicles. It wouldn’t help, because the second the doors were triggered and the raptors were released, only Killian would be able to keep pace on his motorbike. All of the other support vehicles, including his brother and second trainer, Liam, would fall behind because of the weight of their vehicles, and Killian would be alone.

“You ready, brother?” Killian shouted over the rumble of engines, giving his brother a look over his shoulder.

“No, are you?” Liam replied, giving his brother a nervous look, his hands gripping the handlebars of his quad bike tighter than he should be.

Killian just exhaled, his toes digging into the dirt beside his bike, feet barely touching the ground as the machine inched forward because he was holding the throttle so constantly tight. He watched his breath dance in front of his face, the island falling much cooler tonight than any other, but it would be no help with a cold blooded prey that could thermoregulate. Killian looked off to the left where the new boy who had almost been eaten was perched up high above the raptor boxes, thumb hovering over the warning and release buttons, waiting on the command.

Killian nodded and the warning button was pressed, a siren sounding that indicated the doors were about to open. Killian revved his bike a few times to flood his carburettor with more fuel to warm the engine, before he gave the boy another nod and the boy looked over the railing, nervously watching for the four beasts to emerge as he pressed the button. The doors all sprung open at the same time and the raptors flew out, barely visible in the darkness as they screeched like baying hounds who had just found the scent of a fox.

#jw au #cs ff #cs au #csff #jurassic world au #killian jones #emma swan #henry #not sure on his surname here #happy birthday Krystal!

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fivebrights · 5 years ago

Text

The Convergence of Sorrow: Memorial

The Brand takes Vemyen from Ziya. It also offers her the chance to make amends. Based on the Branded djinn/Elegy side story in Jahai Bluffs; Vemyen/Ziya, PG-13, 4.3k words.

“This is how they find themselves, sooner or later. The luxury of rivalry they save for better years; these are dark times.”

---

“Vemyen’s late. To his own emancipation.”

The djinn of the estate are gathered in the courtyard, numbering a half dozen. They look at one another.

“You don’t have to wait for him, Ziya,” one points out.

“Hmph,” Ziya folds her arms; first one set, then the other. “If someone doesn’t wait for him, he may not even realize he’s free from these humans.”

Several of them shrug.

“Give him our regards,” says another. One by one, the djinn vanish into the ether. To freedom.

Ziya waits in the courtyard alone, tapping her fingers against her arm, until a man steps out of the house. Ziya’s impatience spikes. She vanishes before she can be questioned.

She continues unseen around the house. And there’s Vemyen, sitting placidly in the yard among some young humans - the children of the masters plus a few of their playmates - reading a book aloud while his other hands busily knit.

Ziya’s anger flares. She reappears.

“Vemyen,” she says. “How much longer were you going to keep me waiting?”

“Ziya,” says Vemyen, surprised. He glances around at the children, puts down his things, and rises. “Excuse me,” he says to them.

“‘Excuse me?’” Ziya repeats, aghast. She turns as he passes. “‘Excuse me?’”

Vemyen beckons to her. He is finally leaving these humans, but now Ziya doesn’t follow.

“What are you doing? Why are you being polite to them?” she asks, loudly.

“Ziya, please,” he says. He takes her by the wrist. “Let’s speak elsewhere.”

The young humans stare after them. One asks where they’re going.

“Not far,” Vemyen tells them. “It’ll just be a moment.”

Together the djinn vanish from human eyes and reconvene in the small cultivated oasis that is the garden. Here there is the respite of Ziya’s element, and a lack of eavesdroppers, but she does not feel more at ease.

She pulls out of Vemyen’s already-loose grip against the part of her that warns her not to let go. “You’re not under any obligation to lie to them now,” she says, irritably.

“Nor to tell the truth,” Vemyen responds, “but I have chosen to.”

Ziya points to his broken shackles. “You’re free,” she says.

Vemyen watches her carefully. “Yes,” he says. “I’m free.”

“Then it’s time to leave,” she emphasizes. She feels like she’s explaining this to one of the children.

“I may,” says Vemyen, “in time. But I’m fine here now, Ziya. There’s no need to wait for me.”

She gapes at him. “What have these humans done to you? Wanting to stay--that’s a symptom of something.”

“Of freedom,” he says. “Ziya, let me choose.”

“How is it even a choice?” she demands. “Until yesterday, these were our captors. We suffered under them, Vemyen!”

“I know,” he says. “But I’m willing to forgive them.”

Something bitter rises through Ziya’s stomach and into her throat and then into her head.

“Then you’ve forgiven what they’ve done to me,” she snarls, and teleports away before she can see or hear his response.

She doesn’t forgive them, and she’s not sure she can forgive Vemyen, either.

---

Ziya leaves Vemyen, her entire essence consumed with rage. This was supposed to be a day of celebration, and Vemyen has ruined it.

She thinks Vemyen just needs time, but nothing changes. His fascination with humans is unabated, and he stays in their company. He assures her that he still has no attachment to any particular place or person. He still insists he’s free.

No reasoning, pleading, or ransoming moves him. No amount of pestering or leaving him alone changes his mind.

Ziya tears up Vemyen’s books, pulls apart his yarns, uproots his flowers, throws away his coins, shouts at him for being a traitor.

She betrays him for his own good.

Ziya takes care when she chooses the bottle she traps him in. Something not so ornate that someone would be tempted to pick it up, something not so plain that someone would be careless enough to break it.

Something easy to overlook. Something cramped and a little crooked, so Vemyen would remember he wasn’t there to be comfortable.

Ziya hates how calm Vemyen’s voice sounds when it later emerges from the bottle, how it stands above the anger and urgency that are also in his tone. She hates how he asks her to think about what she’s doing.

“I’ve thought about it plenty,” she snaps, and then corks the bottle.

She goes to a cave and buries him there. Then she floods it, just to be sure.

She wanders the valleys and weeps until dawn, now that Vemyen has no way of witnessing it.

---

Not that she has any reason to feel guilty, she decides. Ziya almost forgets about him, even, until war comes. Then word spreads of three djinn protecting humans and centaurs under one of the largest trees in the desert.

Foolishness doesn’t die, Ziya scornfully thinks.

She has too much pride to press for details or to see for herself. But a suspicion comes to her and won’t leave, and for the first time she returns to the cave where Vemyen is buried.

The floodwaters have long since receded, and parts of the cave have been disturbed. This Ziya expects, after nearly three centuries. Even so, she checks for Vemyen’s bottle. For her own peace of mind.

The earth is damp and not difficult to pull away. There is some rock, too, but Ziya digs around it. But where she expects to touch Vemyen’s vessel there is nothing. She frowns and digs around a little more, although she has no reason to doubt her memory.

Ziya floats up to the cave’s ceiling, flicking dirt out from under her nails, studying the walls of the cave. They are all familiar, more or less as she left them. This is not one of the places that has been so touched by the movement of the world.

Ziya goes still, as if the realization approaching her might pass by like an oblivious predator if she simply doesn’t move. It does not. Panic fills her, and then rage, and her shouted curse roars like a waterfall.

She knows exactly where to find him.

---

Vemyen is beneath the Ancestor Tree, and he is alone, although Ziya can see humans toiling in the fields some distance away. Vemyen looks well; certainly none the worse for wear after centuries of imprisonment. Ziya can’t decide whether that’s a relief or just infuriating.

She pushes aside her fear that Vemyen may have not forgiven her and materializes directly in front of him.

“Vemyen! How did you get out?�� she demands.

Vemyen looks up calmly, as if he’s been expecting her or known she’s been there all along. But Ziya knows him well enough to catch the guarded ripple that swirls among the molten patterns of his skin.

“Hello again, Ziya.”

Ziya wants to savor his caution, the tacit acknowledgement of the possibility she could bottle him again. Instead, she just feels even more irritable.

“All these hundreds of years, but you still haven’t learned, have you,” she scowls.

Vemyen gazes out across the fields towards the humans. “And neither have you.”

Ziya wants to scream. All of her suffering, all of this time apart, and still—

“You’re welcome to stay,” Vemyen says, still without looking at her.

“I don’t need your permission,” Ziya retorts, and after a pause long enough to sate her pride she haughtily settles down underneath the tree’s magnificent boughs.

For a time there is no conversation between them. Ziya has little interest in watching the humans, so she side-eyes Vemyen instead. Vemyen has no knitting with him today, no books--he seems content to just watch the life that is unfolding around the tree.

Ziya looks up. She thinks about the water it must’ve taken to produce the Ancestor Tree’s strong roots, thick trunk, and wide branches. As her gaze travels back down, she notices two machetes leaning against the tree, too large for human hands. The blades aren’t particularly polished and there are nicks in them. They can only have been used to defend what Vemyen loves.

“How have you been?”

It’s Vemyen who asks. To Ziya it’s too friendly, too banal, too clueless of a question for the painful interim of his absence.

“Just fine,” she says, shortly.

Vemyen finally looks at her again. Then, to Ziya’s surprise, he comes closer - close enough for the tattered edges of their sarongs to brush one another - and cups two hands over one of her shackles.

“You still wear these,” Vemyen says. “I’m surprised.”

“So I don’t forget what the humans did to us,” Ziya growls. “And to remind them that I am a free djinn.”

“I have thought about removing my own,” Vemyen admits. “Although it is easier said than done. I don’t suppose you would help me.”

Something in Ziya’s chest stutters. “No. Get one of the humans to help you.”

Vemyen strokes his thumbs over the shackle. “I wish I could unbind you from your hatred.”

Ziya finally pulls her hands away, rubbing her wrist above the shackle. “I don’t,” she snaps.

“Ziya.”

“How can you prefer humans over us?”

He looks at her critically. “You still want me to choose a side.”

She looks away in disgust, still rubbing her wrist. Vemyen’s hands slide away from her and into his lap. When Ziya looks back, he is once more watching the humans till the land’s sparse and arid fields.

“I just don’t see what’s so special about humans,” Ziya mutters, trying to keep her temper in check.

“They’re so…fleeting,” Vemyen says, and there’s a wistfulness to him. “There’s so little time to get to know a human soul.”

Ziya thinks of all the human lifetimes Vemyen missed inside that bottle. The people he may have known before he disappeared without a word or a trace. All dirt and dust and bone powder now, their lives marked with little piles of stones or splintered stakes of wood.

“I’m not going to apologize,” she says, stubbornly. She finally lets go of her wrist and shakes out her hands, and the chains jostle and chime together in soft, discordant notes.

“That’s all right, Ziya.”

Ziya glares. “You should be more upset,” she accuses.

Vemyen smiles at her, and then he says something that Ziya finds very strange.

“It’s funny,” he muses. “Not long ago, an outlander came to me and said you would come to regret your treatment of me.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Ziya scoffs. And truly, she doesn’t. What outlander?

“You don’t need to. I know when you’re feeling sorry.”

Ziya grimaces. Then Vemyen gives her the kind of look he gives when he needs her to understand something.

“No,” Ziya begins to say, but then he reaches out and touches her bandaged lips. The reverence with which he does it makes her realize that this is not a gesture to quiet her.

“Ziya,” he says.

The longing in Vemyen’s voice breaks open the dam of Ziya’s own loneliness. She grips his arms, stunned.

“You can’t care for me and for humans,” she blurts.

“Ziya.” His fingers fall from her lips. It’s all the prompting Ziya needs. Her other hands frantically pull the bandages from her mouth and then Vemyen’s.

She arches herself against Vemyen and another welcoming gasp of her name floods from him. She claws at his hollowed cheeks and frantically kisses along his jaw, unwilling to interrupt his mantra of hummed “zee”s and breathy “ahs.” His hands dig into her, a hot anchor.

She is taking him back, she thinks. Taking him back with his precious humans not far away. The feeling is sweet.

---

When Vemyen eventually asks her to return his things, Ziya doesn’t know why it stings, but it does.

She grants his request. She leads him to where she has kept all the items she has taken from him over the years, tells him to take everything and get out.

Years on she finds herself kissing Vemyen on a bed of all those returned things: among the coins, the pressed flowers, the journals, the unspooled yarns.

This is how they find themselves, sooner or later. The luxury of rivalry they save for better years; these are dark times.

“Ziya,” Vemyen sighs into her ear. “Touch me.”

“Hmph,” says Ziya. She props herself up with two arms, and her other hands stroke his face and hip. “Better me than a human.”

Her own words plant an ugly seed in her head. She stares down at him. “Have you ever allowed a human to touch you?”

Vemyen’s molten skin ripples. “Ziya. I am not enjoyable to the touch.”

“That’s what you think.”

She knows what he likes. She squeezes his hip until the steam rises from it while the fingers of her other hand curl along the side of his jaw. His skin ripples again, this time in relaxation. He groans softly.

“I’ve taken one of your rings,” Ziya tells him, a bit smugly. “As a souvenir.”

Another squeeze distracts Vemyen. He groans again. “Which one?”

“You’ll have to figure that out.”

“Hmm.”

Ziya grasps the fabric that cascades through the metal loop of Vemyen’s garment. She runs her hands through the fabric a few times, then yanks him closer.

“Ziya,” Vemyen sighs again, and the rapture in his voice quiets her jealousy.

---

“Ziya,” Vemyen gasps, but this time his voice is mangled with agony.

What is here, hidden away in a cave deep in the Brand, is no longer a fire djinn. Vemyen’s skin has crystallized, and his veins are shot through with violet lightning. Even his voice is corrupted; when he speaks it sounds like shattered glass.

“Look at me,” he rasps. “Open your eyes.”

Ziya thinks he’s pretending. Hadn’t he pretended that he was going to come with her when they were released from servitude? Hadn’t he been pretending, for all these centuries, that he was free when he stayed by the side of humans?

“A convincing illusion,” she sneers. “You want me to pity you.”

With a shout, Vemyen barrels right into her, forcing her out of her shield and to the ground. The defense dissipates.

The two hands not holding swords drag Ziya up until she’s inches away from Vemyen’s face. His head is impaled with Brand crystals. How is he even alive?

Ziya sees her own fear reflected in Vemyen’s eyes.

“Ziya…” The breaths Vemyen takes are jagged. “Don’t...linger. The Brand...makes me--”

“You let yourself be shackled again,” she retorts, frantically trying to think of a way to somehow get them both out of this mess, “and this time by a dragon. Shame on you, Vemyen!”

“I’m going to kill you, Ziya,” he rasps, but it’s the thrum of grief in it that chills Ziya more than his certainty.

He’s still holding her. He raises his swords.

Instinct overrides hesitation. Ziya blasts him backwards. He rolls in the air, rights himself, and slams both of his swords to the ground.

Crystal erupts from the earth. Ziya spins upward, but then Vemyen barrels into her again. The impact sends her crashing back to the ground.

“Vemyen,” she groans, on her back.

“Ziya…Ziya,” Vemyen’s voice rattles over her. His swords come down on either side of her head. He leans on their hilts, struggling within the grasp of the Brand. “Defend yourself!”

“What else do you think I’m trying to do?” she snarls back.

“You’re trying-- to help!” He yanks the swords free and raises them once more. “There’s nothing more you can do here. Accept it!”

She was always stronger, faster, smarter. The only thing that had kept Vemyen sharp at all was his willingness to defend others in times of crisis. But the Brand has done things to him she cannot know, and before Ziya can get out from under him he drives the rusty, jagged blades into her.

She screams. The creatures of the Brand howl in response, and with their voices is Vemyen’s.

---

The outlander arrives then, a half dozen allies at their side. Ziya can’t tell if the distraction momentarily brings Vemyen back to his senses or if it’s just instinct that makes him switch targets, but he pulls the swords from her and defensively crosses them in front of himself as a barrage of spells and weapons fall upon him. Ziya teleports a short distance away, survival instinct making her mobile against the agony of being run through.

Vemyen’s swords - those machetes that leaned against the Ancestor Tree so long ago - are uncorrupted by the Brand, and it’s Ziya’s saving grace; she’s badly wounded, but she feels no crystal corruption spreading through her body.

The outlander is fighting as Kralkatorrik’s fury comes down around them. Ziya lets her form unravel once more, putting what little she has left into a Brand shield while the outlander and their companions command Vemyen’s attention--darting, parrying, and sometimes stumbling out of the way.

“Begone!” Vemyen shouts raggedly at them. “Leave me to my fate!”

Vemyen brings his swords down on the outlanders in a mighty swing, but they do not make contact. Instead the blades drive into the earth, so deeply that Vemyen is forced to abandon them with a roar of frustration.

He flees then, but not far: the Brand turns his ties to the land into chains. Ziya sees the corrupted magic streaming from the shackles that Vemyen, like her, never fully removed. They feed into large, resonating crystals that buzz and claw at the very ether she is made of.

“There’s a resonance!” she calls out, and armed with that knowledge, the outlander hero shatters the crystals.

Vemyen collapses. To Ziya’s relief, the outlander and their companions don’t try to land a killing blow. She hastily pulls herself out of her shield and comes to his side, ignoring the deep ache of her own closing wounds.

Vemyen is hunched over, still heaving jagged breaths, his fingers clutching the corrupted land beneath him. She can see in his silhouette that his form disintegrating; he is already slipping away.

Djinn aren’t supposed to be Branded, Ziya thinks in disbelief. Vemyen’s not supposed to be dying.

“Ziya…Ziya…” Despite it all, no one has ever said her name as much and as fondly as Vemyen has. Now it will be the last time. “You always were the clever one.”

“About time you admitted it.” Smugness keeps the grief at bay, if only for a moment.

“Take the staff,” Vemyen rasps, weakly gesturing toward the cave he had hidden himself in. “Keep the ring. Thank you….”

Then he convulses, hideously, and crumples. Within moments he is nothing but a scattering of purple sand.

“No, wait!” Ziya stammers. “You can’t do that! You’re not supposed to… We’re not supposed to….”

She sinks down and closes her hand around what remains. “Vemyen….”

Ziya can feel the sympathy radiating from the outlander. She doesn’t want them to see her grief; she lets her palm open, composes herself, accepts their invitation to Sun’s Refuge. The grim determination that fills her is one she hasn’t felt since she was convinced Vemyen would leave the humans for her.

Ziya throws herself into her work, sometimes literally--pushing herself into her shield, trying to find ways to imbue her resistance to the Brand in the sands the outlander has brought back for her from across the Crystal Desert. She keeps Vemyen’s old, tarnished ring on her finger.

Ziya loses track of time. At some point, the outlander comes by and asks some strange questions about Vemyen. To honor his memory, she tells them. Sharing Vemyen’s story is not as painful as she had anticipated it would be, but as soon as the outlander leaves again Ziya is quick to immerse herself once more in her work, letting its complications and intricacies consume her every thought and waking hour.

The Refuge is safe, but it’s busier and more claustrophobic than Ziya’s used to. When she hits an impasse with her work, she ventures out into the Bluffs to ruminate on solutions, watchful for the Branded rifts that sometimes arrive as suddenly as a squall.

She wanders the paths to the north of Vanta Pass, often taking the road up through the ruins, other times choosing to head eastward until the path reconnects with the main road that threads its way back to Yatendi Village.

Today, a convoy of soldiers and machinery are marching up the road, and Kralktorrik’s forces are responding in fierce numbers. Ziya watches at a distance, deciding whether or not to intervene in the chaos of crystal and spells and gunfire. She made a promise to Vemyen, but that’s no use if she too winds up Branded or dead.

And so it relieves Ziya to see the outlander’s forces clear a path through the Branded and continue their push towards the staging grounds, but she decides against following in their wake; she needs peace and quiet to think. She considers the path back to Sun’s Refuge, and then the one that leads to the Ancestor Tree.

She has been avoiding the Ancestor Tree. It’s not the memories that keep her away, Ziya tells herself; something about the magic around it feels eerie and menacing. She doesn’t trust it, and so when she approaches the unnatural dome of magic surrounding the Tree, she stays a safe distance.

Until, between the shimmer of the magic surrounding the area, Ziya is certain she sees Vemyen. Vemyen, as he was: uncorrupted and whole.

---

Vemyen is beneath the Ancestor Tree. Before Ziya can announce her presence he looks up, as if he’s been expecting her or known she’s been there all along. “Hello again, Ziya.”

“Vemyen,” Ziya says, feeling strangely at a loss for words. She feels disoriented and isn’t quite sure why.

Vemyen says nothing after his initial greeting, resuming his watch over the humans Ziya can distantly see working the fields. She settles down next to him underneath the Tree’s boughs without waiting for an invitation.

For a time there is no conversation between them, and together they watch the humans toil. From this distance Ziya can’t see the details of their features, but they are distinct in the way they move. Several stoop low, large baskets on their backs. One carries a child in a sling. Another pushes forward dolyaks, tilling the fields.

When Ziya takes her eyes away, she notices Vemyen has stopped watching them to watch her. He is smiling in that semi-private way he does.

“Fine,” Ziya snaps. “They’re possibly a little interesting. Maybe.”

Vemyen folds his hands neatly in his lap. “It’s funny,” he muses. “Not long ago, a strange outlander came to me and said you would come to regret your treatment of me.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Ziya scoffs, but something about what he says sounds familiar. “I haven’t spoken to any outlander,” she adds, to clear up her own confusion, but it feels wrong somehow.

“And yet here you are. You even have my ring.”

Ziya rubs where the ring rests on her finger. It feels strange there. Why is she wearing it now and when did she take it from him? She can’t remember.

“I never said I was going to give it to you,” she deflects. “Maybe I’m just here to taunt you a little more.”

Vemyen looks out across the fields again. “They’re so…fleeting,” he says. “There’s so little time to get to know a human soul.”

The bandages across Vemyen’s mouth tighten as he smiles then, though the look in his eyes remains solemn. “I take you for granted, Ziya.”

The admission startles Ziya, but she hides it.

“You most certainly do,” she huffs. “But I’ll admit it goes both ways.”

She doesn’t know what provokes her to say that, and Vemyen looks at her, also surprised. Then his brow furrows.

“What?” Ziya grumbles.

“Ziya,” Vemyen lays a hand over hers. Time fractures around him. “Did something happen?”

---

The unpleasant hum of the Brand fills Ziya’s ears. Vemyen is gone, and she is alone under the Ancestor Tree.

Except she is not really alone--the Branded are converging on this place, and quickly. The air is laced with violet electricity.

Ziya’s confusion fades. She can’t stay. She flees, and when teleportation fails her she carves through the Branded in her path with sweeps of summoned ice.

Ziya returns to Sun’s Refuge, and where there was once anger, out there under the tree so many centuries ago, there is now only a deep sorrow.

She can’t give Vemyen back the years she stole when she trapped him in the bottle. She can only return to the Ancestor Tree--to what she comes to know is just a looping moment in time.

Ziya kisses her apologies to Vemyen when she visits, presses into his hands a few items she’d secretly never returned. She ignores his curiosity and deflects his confusion. She tries to impress herself onto Vemyen so deeply he’ll remember all of this in the future that’s already come to pass.

Ziya reminds herself that it’s not even Vemyen, just an echo of him. But he feels real, sounds real. He knows her. The visits are never a perfect repeat, and it’s what draws Ziya back, time and time again.

She fears exhausting all the possibilities, but she fears more that she’ll miss something if she doesn’t.

“I forgive you,” Ziya says abruptly. It’s maybe the second time she’s done so, of all the times she’s visited. And this time, Vemyen responds with more than just a look.

“You don’t need to forgive me, Ziya,” he says.

Ziya is taken aback, and then indignant. She opens her mouth to demand what he means by that.

“But thank you,” Vemyen says, “for understanding.”

His sincerity quiets Ziya. Together, they watch the humans in the fields until the moment fades. Then Ziya returns home to the Refuge once more, outpacing the Branded that encroach upon the tree every cycle, and begins her work on her memorial to Vemyen anew.

#guild wars 2 #gw2 #fanfiction #tyriaslibrary #djinn #cw: romance and some violence #happy 1yr anniversary to the jahai bluffs release I'm still not over it

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kalluun-patangaroa · 5 years ago

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Brett Anderson: ‘I was trying to look at myself as a specimen’

by Helen Cullen

The Irish Times, 28 September 2019

Suede singer discusses his second memoir and how it swings from candour to euphoria

Brett Anderson’s book avoids exploitation of those that travelled within his orbit, with no trace of gossip, blame or exposé. Photograph: Paul Khera

Here he comes: the beautiful one, with the book in his hand he vowed never to write. It was inevitable. Those who read his first memoir, 2018’s Coal Black Mornings, the bildungsroman which so elegantly deconstructed the childhood, adolescence and ultimate creation of the artist, will understand why it was so irresistible for him; Brett Anderson is a poet who discovered songwriting first.

Renowned for lyrics that elevate the banal, bleak ephemera of ordinary life to something extraordinary, Anderson says he finds “the iconography of mundanity inspiring. I look at a chain link fence and see romance there.” On this occasion, he has taken something extraordinary – cultural superstardom – and made it uniquely ordinary with its grounded presentation.

Once he had embraced the opportunities that writing his own memoir gave him; reclaiming truth from the tabloids, re-evaluating perceived successes and failures, creating the official record of Suede’s history, and all with the precision prose and eclectic turns of phrase that were synonymous with his lyrics, he was destined to keep going.

The first book was written for his son so that he would know his father in a way that is profoundly difficult for most of us. This time around, the book exists because Anderson loved writing Coal Black Mornings so much. “I thought it was really interesting what I did with it,” he explains, “so I couldn’t resist picking at the scab, although I know the experience of publishing this book will be different because of the period of my life that it deals with.”

Charting the ascent of Suede in the 1990s through the halcyon moments of appearing on the cover of Melody Maker before ever releasing a single, to the gut-wrenching ultimate implosion of the band, Anderson doesn’t shy away from either the glorious or the gory. The book ends backstage at the Graham Norton show with the band splitting up; the perfect moment to close as Anderson is unafraid to hold failure up to the light. As he says, “Sometimes it’s not the sparkling moments that define us but the darker ones leading up to them.”

Absence of exploitation

And yet he manages to achieve something unique for the realm of rock biography; the book exhibits a total absence of exploitation of those that travelled within his orbit, avoiding any trace of gossip, blame or exposé. All the revelations are his own; the secrets just his to tell. As such he is dispirited in anticipation of the inevitable trawling through by some for salacious quotes to satisfy a greediness for controversy.

“I know that a gossipiness is going to be projected on to it and that every review will focus on Britpop even though the whole point of the book was to try to talk about something other than that,” he says. “It was slightly naive of me to think that I could write about these things in a more interesting way without it being dragged back to that agenda, but I hope when people read it they will understand what I was trying to do.”

“I was interested in understanding what the industry did to me . . . out of fascination with how it all worked.”

In chapter one, Anderson explains his ambition was “to use elements of my own story as a way to reach out and reveal the broader picture, to look at my journey from struggle to success and to self-destruction and back again and use that narrative to talk about some of the forces that acted on me and to maybe uncover some sort of truth about the machinery that whirrs away, often unseen, especially by those on whom it is working, to create the bands that people hear on the radio.”

The result becomes a masterclass in understanding the emotional and practical infrastructure of the 1990s music industry. The micro level of Anderson’s unique personal experience is positioned within the macro in an illuminating and thought-provoking manner that contextualises their trajectory.

Amoral industry

“I was trying to look at myself as almost like a specimen,” he says. “The industry is completely amoral. It’s not deliberately trying to romanticise drugs or damage anyone but these things grow out of it. I was interested in understanding what the industry did to me, not by way of complaint, but more out of fascination with how it all worked.”

Reading Anderson’s account of the darkest days of his addiction is harrowing; it’s difficult to reconcile his past self with the refined, intellectual and incredibly warm gentleman waxing lyrical before me on a sunny September morning in his west London bolthole. More than anything, it is a relief that he survived.

The memoir manages to avoid, however, pandering to the cliches surrounding the drug-fuelled mythology of rock stars that Anderson admits being seduced by. Instead it raises questions about the consequences of mining your own self as the muse. If you become personally invested in the dangerous myths that surround creativity – so you must keep perpetuating behaviours that might destroy you in order to create – how do you ever break that cycle and find a new way to work?

Looking back now, Anderson acknowledges that “justifying indulgences is a function of that myth but you do learn that isn’t the only way to create and that you don’t need an external stimulus to generate ideas – that in fact it can have the opposite effect”.

The importance of tenacity within the creative process is a major, and refreshing, theme of the memoir. It is poignant to hear Anderson recount how a fear of returning to the poverty of his childhood drove him to persevere with the band when others might have surrendered. Although many would disagree, it’s clear that Anderson does not consider himself an artistic visionary but rather someone with a great work ethic.

“I was brought up in a very poor family, aware of the narrow limitations of my parents’ lives. Not wanting that for myself and my own family still drives me,” he explains. “A lot of great art has been created because of that fear and there’s nothing wrong with that. I don’t give up and I like how hard I work, that I keep throwing ideas together and in the jumble occasionally good things pop up.”

Press caricature

Anderson’s account of how his persona was curated by the media at the height of their celebrity is compelling. Although his essential self was always driving their creative decisions, the press created a caricature of him that he lost control of and resulted in three decades of a man bridging the gap between his authentic self and a stage persona.

Brett Anderson and Suede: “It doesn’t matter what else I do now or how many great records I make because I was most influential as an artist during a certain time.”

“It wasn’t something I was conscious of doing at the time but I definitely made choices that fuelled it and the press exaggerated it further and ran with it,” he explains. For all music fans, and the Suede tribe in particular, the book offers these delicious insights into all aspects of the band; their image, songwriting craft, business decisions and relationships with the press. Did he feel any anxiety about stripping away that protective veneer now and allowing the fans and beyond to visit Oz and meet the wizard?

“There was definitely a fear that I might be undermining my own mystique to its detriment but I’m at the phase in my career where it doesn’t matter anymore. If I’d done this 15 or 20 years ago I think it would’ve affected how people see me but by now my image is too set. It doesn’t matter what else I do now or how many great records I make because I was most influential as an artist during a certain time and I can’t ever get away from the perception formed then. It’s galling, irritating, frustrating but I just have to accept that.”

In this, Anderson may not be right. This memoir has a profound capacity to alter the way music fans perceive the industry, their idols and the creative process – and to challenge any fixed ideas they may have about the man himself. In the wake of their eighth studio album, 2018’s The Blue Hour, and the incredible documentary, The Insatiable Ones, produced by Mike Christie that charts 25 years of the band, Anderson is experiencing a cultural renaissance that signifies him as an artist still in his prime. In the memoir he describes Suede as being like “a pram that’s been pushed down a hill” but his legions of fans will be relieved to hear it is finally parked up safely. For now, at least.

Afternoons with the Blinds Drawn is published by Little, Brown on October 3rd

#suede #brett anderson #press #the irish times #2019 #afternoons with the blinds drawn

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glorious-spoon · 6 years ago

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all the broken hearts still beat

Title: all the broken hearts still beat Link: On AO3 Fandom: Shadowhunters Pairing: Alec Lightwood/Magnus Bane Warnings: None Rating: Teen Other Tags: Outsider POV, Established relationship, Pride, Future fic Summary: Weird shit tended to happen at Pandemonium.

Really, Shawn should have just gone back home after the parade ended. It was swelteringly hot outside, he had an early shift the next day, and the chaos and the press of bodies was starting to feel oppressive instead of celebratory, which just made him irritated and sad. Last year, with Cody, this had been so much fun. Of course, that was before Cody decided to go fuck some bartender in the East Village like the perfect fucking cliche that he was, so…

God. This just utterly blew, but Jamie and Bryn had dragged him into their favorite club with the explicit plan of cheering him up, and he didn’t quite have the heart to ditch them just yet. At least there was air conditioning inside. And alcohol. And Jamie was buying the drinks, which was sweet even if it was just because she was trying to talk him into finding some random stranger to take home and slake his broken heart with, or what the fuck ever.

He took another morose sip of his drink, vodka and artificial blueberries cloyingly sweet on his tongue, as Jamie nestled against his side, scanning the crowd with all the shrewdness of a buyer at a horse auction. Finally, she nudged him with one sharp elbow and pointed toward the far end of the bar.

“What about him? He’s cute.”

Shawn followed her gesture. The guy was pretty hot, at least if the drab paramilitary look was your thing: tall, dark-haired, a spiky, abstract tattoo half-visible on the side of his neck, disappearing into the collar of his plain black t-shirt. He was holding himself like he was expecting to get attacked at any minute, arms folded, expression closed-off as he scanned the crowded bar, looking like nothing so much as a blot of dark ink in the middle of the cheerful whirl of color that was Pandemonium at the height of Pride.

Shawn grimaced. “No way. Look at him, he’s probably a cop.”

“You’re such a cynic,” Jamie said.. “Maybe he’s just shy. Or closeted.”

“A closeted cop,” Shawn said. “Thanks, but I’m pretty sure I can do better. I’ll just enjoy the eye candy from over here, where I can make a quick escape if he breaks out the handcuffs--don’t even start,” he added as Jamie opened her mouth, a puckish gleam in her eyes. “Please. We agreed not to mention that.”

“I never agreed to anything,” Jamie said, grinning, but she let it go. “Okay, fine. We’ll leave Mr. Tall, Dark and Broody alone.”

“Thank you.”

“But I am getting you laid.” She slipped an arm around his waist and he let her, dropping a kiss on the top of her head, where her short hair was stiff with spray-in glitter. “You need to stop moping over Cody and get back out in the game.”

“Please don’t bring up the C-word.”

“Cody, Cody, Cody… Shawn, it’s been a month and a half. I’m done watching you cry into his old t-shirts. You need to move on.”

“I shredded his old t-shirts, actually. It was therapeutic.”

“I’m proud of you,” Jamie said, only a little condescendingly, and slipped away from his side. “Fine. I’m going to go find Bryn and make sure they haven’t decked anybody yet.”

“You mean you’re going to go find Bryn and drag them into a dark corner to make out,” Shawn said. She shrugged like that was more or less the same thing, which, yeah, it probably was. It was also a tacit apology, and a more tactful one than Jamie usually managed. He waved her off when she made an apologetic face. “Go, go. Have fun. I’m just going to stay here and mope a little more.”

“You break my heart,” Jamie sighed, but she leaned up on tiptoe to kiss his cheek before slipping into the crowd, making her way toward the dance floor where Bryn was holding court, the matching glitter in their hot pink Mohawk sparkling under the rainbow lights. He watched as Jamie slipped in between two cute leather-clad boys to loop an arm around their waist, as Bryn grinned huge and sweet and pulled her into a kiss, and then he looked away before his battered heart could implode entirely from jealousy.

Tall, hot, probably-a-cop guy was still standing by the end of the bar, still as stiff as if he’d been ironed and then strung up on an invisible clothes hanger. There was a deep furrow between his brows as he peered into the chaotic crowd like he was looking for something in particular. Something, or someone.

“Excuse me, excuse me, thank you darling.” Somebody jostled Shawn hard enough to spill most of his drink over his wrist and arm. There was a shivery slide of silk against his bare skin, and the man who had just bumped him turned, placed a warm hand on his elbow, just briefly. He looked like a kaleidoscopic dream in the uncertain light, glitter smeared across his cheeks and an intricate tangle of chains falling over his bare chest, diaphanous silk draped across his shoulders like a robe. It was no stranger than any of the other outfits Shawn could see in the press of bodies, but something about him seemed ethereal, otherworldly, too vivid: like a painting that had been clipped out of its frame and pasted into this dull reality. He blinked, stared, and then the man patted his arm, said, “Excuse me, my dear, I’m so sorry,” and slipped past him into the crowd.

Shawn blinked after him, then looked down at his drink, then blinked some more. A moment ago, it had been the dregs of vodka and blue syrup and ice in a flimsy plastic cup. Now, his fingers were wrapped around a crystal Collins glass, frosted and filled to the brim with something that shimmered lazily where it caught the light. His sleeve, which had been soaked through an instant ago, was entirely dry.

What the fuck?

There was a peal of laughter from the other side of the room, and he looked up in time to see his mystery man come to a stop in front of the guy who was, actually, probably not an undercover cop from the way his face was softening, from the way he reached out and settled a palm against the other man’s cheek, smiling like he was in on the best kind of joke. Shawn hadn’t particularly been attracted to him when he’d looked like a scowling statue, but now—

“Magnus,” he was saying, half-laughing. “What is this? How much did you have to drink?”

“Oh, it’s a celebration.” The other man--Magnus--snapped his fingers, and there was suddenly a glass in his hand that Shawn hadn’t noticed before. “Now. Try this, I promise you’ll like it.”

“Like the last three, you mean?”

“No, no, this one’s perfect. I promise.”

“I really don’t trust you,” the man said, laughing, but he accepted the glass.

“That hurts me,” said Magnus, but he was smiling, watching avidly as the other man tipped the glass up to his mouth, took a drink, then licked his lips. “Well?”

“It tastes very… blue.”

“Blue.” Magnus’s mouth was twitching, something that was both amused and frustrated building in his handsome face. “Alexander, my love, you are perfectly infuriating sometimes.”

“I’m serious,” although he was grinning, a wide, happy smile that made him look like an entirely different person all of a sudden. “Here. You want to try?”

“Of course.” But when he reached for the glass, it was only to set it down on the bar top. Then he cupped Alexander’s face between his bejeweled hands and drew him in to kiss him, deep and thorough. When he finally pulled back, he tapped his mouth thoughtfully, then said, “You’re right. It does taste blue.”

Shawn snorted, dropping his gaze to his own cup, which, yeah, was still made out of glass and still full of something that was definitely not the cheap mixer that Jamie had bought him.

Weird shit happened at Pandemonium. Everybody knew that. It just wasn’t something anybody talked about. Sometimes you’d see people with horns slipping into the VIP lounge, the layout shifted without warning and with no sign of ongoing construction, the bathrooms were always clean and the music was always just what you wanted to hear and occasionally--every once in a while--you might wind up with a drink that didn’t look like anything you’d ever tried before without quite meaning to get it, and it would be absolutely perfect.

Bryn had once told him, only half-joking, that the owner was a wizard. At the time, he’d laughed at them. But now—

He glanced up again. The two men were slipping away toward the back room, but the shorter one, the one who’d been called Magnus, glanced back at him and smiled. For a moment, just a moment, his eyes seemed to gleam an inhuman, draconic gold.

It might have been a trick of the light. Maybe. Before he could get a better look, they were both gone.

Still, Shawn found himself smiling, something loosening a little in his chest as he turned back to the dance floor. Bryn and Jamie were grinding together to a song he didn’t recognize, something with a dark driving beat that he could feel in his bones. He’d been thinking about heading home, but maybe he’d stay a little bit longer. Maybe he’d even go dance.

He lifted his glass to his lips and sipped; it tasted like frozen sunshine, sparking on his tongue and spreading warmth through him.

It was Pandemonium, after all. Anything was possible.

#shadowhunters #malec #shadowhunters fic #malec fic #my fic

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