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narratorstrash · 3 months ago

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Cotard Syndrome

A GKM au drabble for my mutual

(Warning; some disturbing descriptions, mental illness, $uicidal ideation, near-death experiences, mild swearing, revival & disrespect of nature, exploration of character undeath, headcanon that Harumi had permanent issues & scars from dying, like ‘chronic illness’ kind of issues)

When she had been sucked into and violently spat out of a mergequake, something had happened to Harumi. While she had hit her head rather hard when she landed, that wasn’t what felt wrong.

Rather than being happy that she had survived, a building sense of dread had dug into her weak soul and began festering. Slowly, as she began trekking through this strange, large world she’d been thrown into, she grew sicker and sicker. Certainly not a simple cold or fever as it only got worse no matter how much rest she got. She had spent a whole damn day trying to sleep off the horrible feeling, but it didn’t work. It only seemed to slow the ache.

Despite the illness dragging her down like vengestone shackles, she pressed onward. She had finally found a river, and rivers always led to civilization eventually, so she had set a course along its shore. An added bonus was that it was a fast flowing stream, so she could stop for a drink whenever she needed.

Yet the further she went, the more drained she became. Even when the silhouette of a large, shiny city rose triumphantly across the horizon, no second wind pushed her forward. She was left with heavy feet and a deep, aching hunger gnawing at her empty stomach, threatening to start eating itself. The pain only grew, spreading like blood in water from her legs, to her back, and creeping up her neck to her skull.

Everything ached, screaming for her to just give up— it would be so much easier if she did. And still, she pressed on until her legs finally gave out on her. Even then, she refused to stop, she refused to die like this. It was a death unbecoming of someone with her determination and iron-will, but even she couldn’t keep going if her body decided it was done.

She fell to the sandy ground, barely giving a grunt of pain when she landed heavily. The earth had turned from cool dirt to blistering sand hours ago, the limited comfort offered by foliage having disappeared into a massive swath of gold.

It was so hot even the river she had been following didn’t help. She felt so unbearably warm and tired and hurting everywhere and she just wanted to rest. She desperately needed food and sleep, but she knew she would surely perish if she so much as blinked too long. But it was so, so tempting. The cool mistress of death disguised as a short nap called her to rest where she lay, lulling her with the promise of peace— the peace of an afterlife she never got when she had gone down with the building in Ninjago City.

In truth, that’s all she wanted now. Ever since her revival by the Overlord’s twisted claws, her only true desire was to return where she had fallen, where she had sacrificed herself to save a little girl from the same pain she had experienced. At least when she had died, she’d done so for a selfless reason. Her life had ended on a somewhat decent note, helping a random family avoid the heartache she had suffered— though it didn’t overshadow her numerous other crimes.

She had at least accepted when she died, crushed under tons of concrete and drywall, body never to be found no matter how hard the green ninja had searched. And then the damned Overlord had to find her and decided he still had use of her. Sure, she had agreed to his terms for a second chance, but nothing could have prepared her for the horror that came with that new life.

It had started with her soul being slammed back into her physical form like a truck, a startled gasp filling her lungs and sending a sharp pain shooting along her broken spine. Yet that pain was nothing in comparison to the sheer agony that overwhelmed her mere seconds after.

Throughout the reconstruction of her body, she felt every moment of it in horrific detail. The invisible stitching of her skin, the forced healing of her punctured organs, the sudden resetting of her numerous compound fractures— it was a fate she would only wish upon the Overlord himself. While it only lasted a few seconds, it was without a doubt the longest, most excruciating experience any being could undergo.

When it was finally completed, she was forced to escape her impromptu tomb with her bare hands and a small push from her master. Then, she was left with vague instructions every-so-often and plenty of scars to show for the disrespect to the natural order she had become. For a long time, every breath she took burned like fire and the beat of her heart felt like a stuttering palpitation, her joints ached like an arthritic’s and her skull pounded with the strength and devastation of an earthquake.

In essence, being alive was somehow more painful than simply dying under the rubble of a collapsed building. Life always found new and interesting ways to be cruelly ironic.

Unfortunately, the moment she stopped fighting to think, she fell into the trap she’d been trying to avoid this whole journey. Her eyes slowly drooped closed, unknowingly falling asleep, and she stayed that way for a long time.

•.~.•

She didn’t know when exactly she had closed her eyes, but when she did, she had rightfully assumed that was the end for her. Yet not only did she awake, she awoke in a soft bed with air conditioning blowing her way from an unseen direction. A rickety bedside table held up a glass of water, a sandwich, and a bottle she could only assume was pain medication.

She blinked a few times, soothing her dry eyes, and breathed deeply to force back the chronic headache she’d been dealing with for months now. The burning in her lungs took her mind off the pain in her skull for a minute— a small win she would accept— so she focused on commanding her limbs to respond. Water would certainly help her situation, so she methodically flexed the muscles in her arm until she could feel it again and guided it to the table. With painstaking effort, her hand closed around the glass, the coolness of it acting as a slight balm to her calloused palm.

“Hey, you’re awake!”

The unknown voice startled her far more than she would willingly admit, causing her to clench her fist with a panicked strength that shattered the glass with frightening ease. The shards bit into her skin, but she didn’t acknowledge it.

“Who are you?” she snapped, immediately demanding answers, “What do you want?”

“Oh, I guess we haven’t actually met,” the ginger removed his headphones as he spoke, “The name’s Aaron Fox.”

Harumi glared at him, suspicion high; just because this man gave her a name didn’t mean it was really his own or that he was honest in nature.

“Not much of a talker huh?”

Only then did she realize he was holding out a hand, expecting a friendly handshake. She refused it with great prejudice, huffing a quiet laugh.

“I don’t talk to strangers,” she turned her nose away haughtily.

“I mean, I’m the stranger who saved you from dying slowly in a desert, but okay,” Aaron shrugged, glancing to the water dripping off the side of the table, “What’d you do to your glass?”

Harumi looked down at her injured hand, making a tsking sound of disapproval, “What does it matter.”

It was more so a statement than a question and it clearly confused the man before her.

“It kinda matters ‘cause you need water and there’s glass in your hand.”

She didn’t respond, pointedly ignoring him to instead bring her other hand up to pick the shards out of her skin. It stung a little, but no blood followed from the tiny wounds— unsurprising to her considering the state of her current existence. You can’t exactly bleed if your heart doesn’t pump blood correctly. Last she had checked, her heart would only beat once every five minutes or so and every time it felt wrong in a way that was difficult to describe.

“I’ll getcha some bandages,” the man excused himself, leaving her to slowly remove the particulates.

It was a slog to complete, the thick, small droplets of blood oozing from the tiny puncture wounds at a snail’s pace. Most people would have started bleeding the moment the glass embedded itself, but she didn’t count as most people anymore. By the time ‘Aaron’ came back, she had piled the shards onto the table and was putting pressure on the injury with her safe hand, hissing at the slight sting.

“Man, can’t believe you stomached doing that by yourself,” he cringed, placing a plastic cup on the table and rolling up the small damp towel in his hands, “Especially with how tired you must be. Your temperature was crazy high when I found you!”

He brought the towel close to her forehead, to which she smacked his hands away.

“What are you doing?”

Aaron blinked in surprise, “Trying to help with your heat stroke? Your fever was still really high before you woke up.”

Harumi glared, distrusting of this random man who decided to save her. In the end though, she was far too tired and in pain to keep her walls up forever. Honestly, she couldn’t keep them up for a minute longer. She finally gave in with an exasperated grunt and let him place the rag on her forehead. Almost immediately, the fabric began slowly absorbing the heat from her skin, allowing her to cool off faster than she would on her own. She lay back to keep the rag on her head without holding it, reluctantly relaxing to some degree.

“I got some bandages too,” he pointed out, “I need your hand.”

Despite her initial misgivings and wariness, she let him take her hand to disinfect and wrap it to keep any infection out. When he was done, he took the rag back, finding it no longer cold.

“Wow, already warm. You want me to-“

“Yes.”

“Okay then.”

He left with the rag, closing the door to give her some semblance of privacy. When he was gone, she sat up and looked out the small window across the room. She had thought about escaping when she first spotted it, but with her condition and having no clue where she was, that would likely do more harm than good.

So she chose to stay— not that she had much choice in the matter anyway. Her stay wouldn’t last very long though. She would make sure of that.

#random #rambles #tee hee #real #writing #GKM au #greenknightmonkie au #drabble for my mutual <3 #first time I’ve written about Harumi so don’t judge too harshly please #ninjago harumi #nexo knight aaron fox #read the warnings

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jamiemackenziefraser · 4 years ago

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All that Was Fair

Chapter 5: You Can Never Go Home Again

Chapter Summary: Jamie and Claire deal with the fallout of her revelation.

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Read chp 5 below the cut:

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Chapter 5

“What do ye mean, ye canna go home?” Jamie asked as his own concern began to ramp up in earnest.

Claire was trembling again, her hand anxiously squeezing his and her free arm still wrapped tightly around herself. Drawn to comfort her, Jamie gathered her into a one-armed hug and pressed her against him. He could feel her distress pulsing through her like an electric current.

She rested her temple on his collarbone— deflated by the enormity of what she was saying and desperate for safe harbor— and then she finally expanded.

“I don’t know anything, Jamie, really. But if I’m right, the only way I could return to my plane of existence— to my realm and the seelie court— is to go back through the stones. But I can’t do that, Jamie, I can’t. I think it might kill me.”

During her revelation, a flurry of emotions was swirling inside Jamie so vehemently that he lost hold on the present for a second. His heart was breaking for her. The thought of being forever stranded in an unfamiliar place— away from her home and people— the terror and loss must have been debilitating. At the same time, some secret part of Jamie was rejoicing. Losing her so soon after she’d dropped into his life and changed him forever would have crushed him. But if she really couldn’t go home, that meant that she would stay with him….

Jamie could only dare to hope about the possibilities.

But as soon as that thought surfaced, he began to feel guilt twisting in his middle. She was quite obviously suffering. Her body was shaking against him, overcome by the gravity of the realization, and here he was delighting in her news.

Hooking a finger under her chin, he raised her face to look up at him and saw her eyes were glittering with tears.

“Listen to me, mo nighean donn, ye’re no’ alone. I’m right here wi’ ye, and I willna let anythin’ happen to ye. If this is true, ye can stay wi’ me for however long ye choose, and I will care for ye and see ye safe.”

Tears dripped from her face and onto his hand where it remained rested gently under her face. She nodded a little against him, lips wobbling as she tried to hold back the tide of her emotions. His heart broke for her all over again.

“Come here,” was all he could say, and then he was wrapping her fully in his arms.

She went willingly, all but collapsing onto his chest. Both of her hands clutched one of his arms and she buried her face into his shoulder. The moment their bodies made contact, she began to cry. Hitched sobs escaped her as she tried to contain the onslaught.

“It’s alright, mo Sorcha, let it out,” he murmured into her hair.

She did, and simply cried against him as the reality and weight of what was going on truly hit. And all he could do was hold her.

He didn’t like seeing her like this. Ever since she’d woken up in his arms while he was carrying her down from the stones, Claire had been so incredibly brave. She’d been taking everything miraculously in stride. Curious and inquisitive, she was bold in her explorations and delighted in the human world. Now though, she seemed thoroughly broken. More than wary, she was fearful of the unknown she’d been thrust into without any possibility of return to what she knew. It was one thing to explore, he supposed, but quite another to be condemned to a life of the unfamiliar.

In that moment, Jamie promised himself that he’d make this world safe for her so that she’d never have to feel this kind of fear again.

And if she’d let him, he’d walk beside her through it.

“We’ll sort it out,” he whispered, “no matter what. Together.”

She nodded against him, tear-soaked face pressing against his shirt. It would surely be stained and damp, but it was of no import.

He brought a hand up to her neck, cupping the tiny curve of the base of her skull, and began to knead his thumb in gentle circles there. At the same time, Gaelic started to flow instinctively from his lips, and he made shushing sounds in between the mindless reassurances. It’ll be alright. I’m here, mo nighean donn. Dinna weep. All of this and more he whispered into her hair, his lips barely brushing it as he breathed the words.

A whimper escaped her as she cried, and if his heart wasn’t already shattered into a million pieces at seeing her like this, that tiny sound would have obliterated it.

He had no idea how long he stood there— holding her as she cried for the life she had lost— but it felt like hours to him. Finally, she began to calm. Her crying subsided and breathing slowed until she went quiet against him.

Carefully, he drew back to look down at her. The bonny face was streaked with tear stains and her lips looked somehow a deeper color than usual. Her golden-eyes held grief, ringed with red, and moisture beaded on the long, dark lashes. But behind it all was an incredible strength. A determination held in those whiskey depths.

He cupped her face with both hands and began to gently smooth his thumbs over her cheeks to clear away the tear tracks.

“Ye’re sae strong. I ken ye’ll be okay no matter what happens,” he told her with complete conviction.

That brought another single tear rolling silently down her cheek. She held his gaze as it made its slow trail downward, as if pleading for him to make it all better. He wished to God that he had that power. But there was nothing he could do, save perhaps distraction.

“Here, I have another thing to show ye that I think ye might like,” he said as a thought struck him.

Letting go of her face to instead take her hand, he led her across the room to the counter where a box of tissues lay. With his free hand, he withdrew one, and then gently used it to clean her face as he explained, “we use them to dry tears and such.” As he wiped away the moisture on her cheeks, one of her hands raised to take the edge between her fingers and rub cautiously.

“It’s soft,” she commented with a tremulous laugh and a watery smile.

The way she said it— a hint of her usual delight and awe creeping into her voice despite her sorrow— made Jamie indescribably happy.

“That’s what I thought ye’d say,” he chuckled fondly.

It seemed to have been just the thing to help her, because once he’d finished drying her face, she straightened up and mustered another smile for Jamie.

“Will ye show me more things?” she asked. Her voice was still thick with emotion but she seemed eager to gather herself.

“Of course,” he said, his tone still laced with soft understanding.

Jamie’s thoughts raced as he tried to come up with the best thing to show her that would take her mind off things. The TV came first to mind, but he quickly dismissed that as being just a bit too overwhelming for this moment. They’d have to work up to that. Jamie thought about everything he knew Claire liked, and suddenly the perfect idea came into his head.

“There’s somethin’ I think ye’ll like verra much in the basement. That’s eh— the level below this.”

His house’s basement was small— just a carpeted room with a couple odd couches, his old tv, and Adso’s litter box haphazardly arranged. Jamie didn’t spend much time down there, and as a result, didn’t bother cranking up the heat enough to warm it much. Being low as it was, it was always cold.

He led Claire by the hand down the steps. She seemed a bit wary of descending but simply clutched his hand and followed. When they emerged downstairs and he flicked on the lights, her gaze swept over the room. She looked at him inquisitively, obviously wondering what exactly he was going to show her here (it was admittedly quite unimpressive, apparently even to a faerie).

Giving her a smile, half to reassure her and half in excitement for the kick she was likely to get out of what he had to show her, he strode over to the little machine that lay in between the couches, pointed it toward Claire, and pressed the “on” button.

“This is called a space heater,” he announced proudly.

It was a small, portable one, about a foot tall and with one opening so the heat all went in one direction, but it created a remarkable warmth.

The moment Claire felt the heat emanating from the machine and blowing onto her legs, her face spread into a wide smile. She eagerly leaned down, hands outstretched toward the machine in fascination. A laugh bubbled from her as she delighted in the feel of the hot air.

But Jamie noticed that she was reaching even closer, and quickly caught her wrist before her fingers could make contact with the heated grate.

“Dinna touch it, it’s too hot,” he warned, “but ye can be jes’ by it.”

She gave him a single nod, looked back at the machine, and then suddenly plopped down to the floor. Crossing her legs, she scooted as close to the heater as she could and hovered her hands in front of it, just like one would warm their hands in front of a campfire.

“It’s so warm!” she squealed, and wiggled her fingers, luxuriating in the flow of hot air.

Jamie was patting himself on the back for how well he was beginning to know her. As much delight as she was getting from the wee contraption, he was getting just as much— if not more— from seeing the carefree happiness return to her bonny face. The smile that lit up his life was turned up toward him as Claire looked for his response.

“Aye, I believe I have ye all figured out, Sassenach,” he teased, “the way to yer heart is all things soft and warm.”

She playfully narrowed her eyes, a glimmer of humor there that reassured Jamie immensely.

“I think I may still surprise you yet, my lad.”

Jamie laughed. “Och, I dinna doubt it.”

As Claire turned her attention back to enjoying the space heater, twisting and turning her body so that the warmth touched every part of it, Jamie thought about what to do next. His mind just barely started to leap to long term implications— Christ, his job! He had to work tomorrow. And she’d need clothes. And—

He had to stop himself before he went mad. What he needed to do was to focus on taking things one step at a time. At some point when Claire was well and truly occupied, maybe when she went to sleep for the night, he’d sit down and try to think through everything. But for the time being, he just wanted to continue to distract her so she didn’t fall back into that horrible despair.

When his eyes refocused on the scene in front of him, Claire looked like she would have been hugging the machine to herself if she was allowed. She was huddled as close to it as she possibly could be, absorbing every bit of warmth.

“Do ye want tae see more? I could show ye the rest of the house so ye feel a wee bit more comfortable. Ye could ask me all yer questions…”

Just as Jamie was finishing making his offer, Claire’s hand shot up, grabbed Jamie's, and tugged him down. Startled as he was, he went with her pull, and plopped down on the floor next to her.

“Just another minute...” she purred, and he could only laugh in response.

Since Claire was cuddled so close to the space heater, her body blocked any heat from actually reaching Jamie. He didn’t mind, but settled himself slightly further back so that he was behind Claire and comfortably resting back against the bottom of the couch as he waited for her to finish basking.

To his surprise, Claire scooted backward, shoving her way in between his splayed legs so she could recline against his chest. Jamie was so taken aback— as he always was when she touched him so brazenly, making his mind spin— that he simply complied when she took both of his arms and wrapped them around her. He found himself hugging her from behind as she let out a contented sigh and rested her temple against his jaw.

There wasn’t a single thought in his head about what he was doing as he instinctively turned his face just a bit to press his lips to the soft skin of her temple.

She didn’t seem to mind at all. She didn’t even react. But the second after he did it, a wave of guilt surged over him. It wasn’t his right to kiss her like that; Claire wasn’t his to kiss. Sure, she’d initiated all this contact that made his heart flutter, and sure he was absolutely falling for her, but he’d known her for only two days. Her entire world has just crumbled out from underneath her feet, and he was her only anchor. He couldn’t possibly take advantage of her with his romantic inclinations. Not to mention, she wasn’t even human. Although for some reason that argument didn’t dissuade him as much as the thought that Claire might feel obligated to return his affections in exchange for his help. He couldn’t do that to her. It wasn’t fair.

He wanted to run away from her, to withdraw himself and put some distance between them so he could finally think clearly. He wasn’t entirely sure that he’d be able to control himself when she nestled up so close to him like this. But the thought of withholding physical comfort which she so clearly desired, even needed… it was intolerable. So he stayed put.

Claire was completely unaware of the turmoil going on in Jamie’s mind, and she sighed contentedly against him. He could feel the rise and fall of her chest as it nudged his with each inhale and exhale. That feeling of closeness did nothing to help the clenching of affection in his heart.

Damn it, Fraser, pull yourself together. You can be her friend— her guide— her protector— but leave foolish notions of anything more out of it.

She tilted her head to peer up at him.

“Are you alright?” she asked, apparently seeing the expression on his face that must have been something close to heartbreak as he agonized over her.

“Jes’ fine,” he mustered a smile, “have ye had enough warmth now tae get ye through a wee walk about the house?”

She chuckled at that, and it sent vibrations through her that Jamie could feel reverberate through his own body.

“I don’t think I could ever get tired of this, but I’m ready for what else you have to show me.”

***

#All That Was Fair #update #outlander fanfiction #claire x jamie

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hiimsociallyawkward · 4 years ago

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the darkest hour pt 2

i'm back with my bs. this is for my bestie @lady-ofmagic-andstars. basically, all of my dumb thoughts while i watched 'darkest hour pt 2', 04.02 of merlin. in case you weren't aware.. ✨spoilers✨

right off the bat i'm sad

ok when i first watched this i was really confused. i mean, you see others when they interact with the dorocha have that perpetual frost on their face right? all of them, every single one. so imagine my surprise when merlin has no frost on his face, and he's miserable yea- but he's not dead??

like tbh, watching this again, ik why but when i first watched this, i was SO confused.

arthur looks so worried slkdjfalskfsd

him being willing to abandon the mission to get merlin back to camelot to be treated 😔🤪😎🤤🤩 lots of emotions

LANCELOT. of course it's lancelot. santiago is perfect. actually.

merlin looks so SICKLY. it physically pains me to see him like that

okok hahaa. the scene where percival is carrying merlin. i have several notes on that.

1) ik it's supposed to be all 'noble' looking. yk? them walking in slow mo, percival carrying merlin like he's been slained in battle. knights looking knightly

ALL I CAN FOCUS ON IS THE LACK OF PROPER NECK SUPPORT FOR MERLIN. PLS TELL ME I'M NOT THE ONLY ONE.

like pls

second note, idk why this remind me of hagrid carrying harry back

idk maybe that's just me but it feels oddly reminiscent

colin is SO pale my heart is actually hurting for him what the heck

asf;lsdjfa;lsdfj 'take me with you' stop.

dude they ACTUALLY care about each other. i just love them. arthur is so worried rn and while i'm like 'alsjfalsdj i don't want arthur to be sad and worried' we can see just how MUCH arthur cares about merlin.

like yea, we KNOW that they care about each other. but arthur is the prince and merlin's a servant so arthur can't have friends, but they're friends, and they care, and it makes me happy

ok it's sad and everything that merlin's basically dying but is it bad of me that i chuckle at merlin SLUMPED over on his horse?? probably.

but i mean, merlin is already raising himself up so he can sit more comfortably on the horse. ik that doesn't mean that he's in the clear yet, but he's doing a LOT better than the other people who ran into the dorocha. idk where i'm going with this

to quote the destiny and chicken podcast (who i love btw, if you want an awesome merlin podcast, check them out), they stay on arthur's face for SO long after merlin and lancelot leave.

i feel EVERYTHING that arthur is feeling in this moment. he's so pretty

there's another beautiful landscape. i'm not even sorry i'm gonna attach them ALL.

tell me that's not gorgeous

LMAO WHAT IS GWAINE DOING IN THAT TREE.

gwaine is the EMBODIMENT of 'boys will be boys' when he sticks his hand into that tree and gets swarmed by bees.

he's adorable and i love him

ok but also, someone tell me why capes are so hot. someone TELL me.

separate from the episode but on the note of capes being hot, i want a cloak SO BADLY. like the whole gist. floor length, big hooded cloak. why?? it's not like i'm sneaking anywhere but still. ✨cloak✨

ok the line where leon goes 'if anyone can get merlin back to camelot, it's lancelot' and arthur's face?? idk what to make of it. someone help me pls.

ok actually this probably isn't the best reaction shot but someone please help

the only thing i can think of is that arthur momentarily forgot and was reminded that merlin was in danger bc of him?

another thought is that he thinks he should take merlin back instead of lancelot?

ik for a fact you guys are better at analysising this stuff than i am so pls, thoughts?

i love lancelot so much. first time i watched this, i was CRUSHED

him carrying merlin to the lake(?) pond(?) area and then covering him with his cape? i love it

ok idk why but i love the idea of merlin instinctively going towards the water

it makes me think back to how he's made of magic and basically everywhere, espeically nature, has magic and instinctively- he wants to connect with nature as much as he can so his body just puts his hand in the water

a dumber thought i had, his hand is ✨sparkly✨in the water HAHAH

omg when the water called lancelot i deadass thought it was freya. i'm actually dumb i have WATCHED this before and i STILL thought it was freya

'a future that has been written since the dawn of time' makes me so proud but also so sad at the same time

it's like, yes, merlin is going to 'save the world' but it's like he's there just to do that. anyways, i just want him to be happy

MORE SPARKLY

these water spirts are op but also MORE SPARKLY. hehe i thin kthat's so funny

also, i'm literally only like 7 mins in. buckle yourself in

l;askdjflskdjf arthur going into the tunnels with the wilderons?? i miss merlin ouch. AND THE GAJA BERRIES. arthur misses merlin.

ok percival tackling gwaine?? cuties ;))

heheheeh gwaine kicking a skull and then running directly behind arthur for protection?? pls stop. i already love you

HAHA OK. THEM WEARING THE GAJA BERRIES ON THEIR FACE REMINDS ME OF THIS FACE MASK . THAT'S LITERALLY HOW I LOOK WITH THAT THIS FACE MASK ON HAHAA

yes im dumb, but the 5 of them slowly peeking over the rock and then ducking back down?? i love that so much they're so cute

omg what's wrong with me. not these knights literally FEARING their lives and me going 'they're so cute'

ANYWAYS

gwaine you absolute dumbass. smh merlin just took it but you just HAD to stab it. #cancelled

FRICK. YOU. AGRAVAINE.

YES. i have a love hate relationship with gaius, but BUST into the council room. king energy right there

smh gaius you pUSH over.

I LOVE GWEN RIGHT HERE

YES

FIGHT FOR WHAT IS RIGHT

DON'T LET ALL THOSE SMELLY OLD COUNCILMEN PUSH YOU AROUND

THIS IS ACTUALLY QUEEN SH!T RIGHT HERE EVERYONE ELSE CAN LEAVE

stfu agravaine 'gueniviere'. ST F UP

ok gwen. pop OFF

you KNOW that arthur would've fought agravaine on this. GO GWEN for speaking her mind

oh look at me with anotehr fic rec. sort of, not really. ok but this scene with gwen talking about all the villagers remind of this fic called To Love, Honor, and Piss Off by @thenerdyindividual .

ok so it's basically a fic where basically merlin and arthur have this 'arranged marriage' type thing for 3 years, and merlin is arthur's 'common consort'. what that means is that arthur marries merlin as a show of good faith and to learn more about what it means to be a commoner- merlin giving arthur the tea about commoner life

anywAYS. check that our if you want, but i loved it

stfu 'i feel the pain as much as you' agravaine. hop off my dick

YES. GWEN. PLANT THAT SEED OF DOUBT THAT AGRAVAINE MIGHT NOT BE ALL THAT HE SEEMS. i love gwen :,)

wow when she's intellegent with her speaking so everyone HAS to side with her but also respectful so NO ONE can get mad at her?? i stan. i ACTUALLY stan

santiago is so pretty

the PANIC in his voice. i stan.

HAHA AND MERLIN'S SNARKY 'SHH'

merlin is ready to GO. he's like, sorry for almost dying. that was ill advised of me.

i'm actually soft for any displays of friendship ever. what does that mean about me 💀 KIDDING. anyways..

i love the *swing* *duck* 'yea, not as quick as arthur

sa;kfs;akdfj lancelot insisting that merlin go back to camelot and merlin just nOt

LADS

stop rn. lancelot's face when merlin turns away. i am in pAin. I AM SO SAD OVER LANCELOT. PLS LANCELOT.

this isn't exactly, but morgana's paleness from here on out reminded me of merlin when he was literally DYING.

anyways, that's my note on that

like, yes- i get it- morgana is evil now. but idk should i feel bad for her? she looks so pale and ghasty and just :(

aksfhaskdjfas;ldf morgana

HAHA MORGANA IS SO EDGY IN THIS MOMENT. 'I'D RATHER DROWN IN MY OWN BLOOD THAN SEE THAT DAY' SO DRAMATIC. WHY IS SHE SO EMO/GOTH. LIKE IK I SHOULD BE SCARED FOR WHAT THAT MEANS BUT I CAN'T STOP LAUGHING

stfu don't kill gwen i'll KiLl you

agravaine literally needs to die

stop. i am literally SCREAMING when agravaine is asking gwen to meet him in his chambers. PLS. STOP. STOP STOP STOP. I NEED A WHISLTE. I BITE MY THUMB AT AGRAVAINE. HE NEEDS TO SACK THE HATEFUL MANSION. BETTER YET I'LL BURN HIS MANSION

again, someone tell me why capes are so hot. especially these red ones?? i'm in love with them.

ok see this guy?? he just died with the forst on his face. not merlin?? he started getting better. surly that should've tipped them off that merlin was different

merlin's little head quirk when he does magic. ALSFJASLDFJAS MERLIN. NO ONE SAID YOU WERE USELESS. AND IF THEY DID I WOULD BEAT. THEM. UP. GIVE ME ADDRESS RN.

wow. seriously. i'm gonna attach all the pretty landscape pictures

morgana's like 'i'll cut a b!tch'. ok ik morgana's evil and everything, but morgana flinging that guard against the wall is bad ass

oh this is weird but gwen telling agravaine to 'show courage' but the whole room tinted green? ik this isn't harry potter or anything but idk i thought that was interesting. i'm not abt to go into if i think agravaine is a slytherin or what but still

STOP. GET. YOUR. HANDS. AWAY. FROM. HER. I ACTULALY HATE HIM. SHE'S SO UNCOMFORTABLE. BACK THE FRICK UP AGARAVINE.

morgana :( smh you can't deny that morgana and gwen carried for each other and morgana flinging gwen away is making me sad. don't touch me

asldjfasldasd 'you're never alone' elyan i love you

lancelot and merlins being lads. omg no them talking about gwen

lancelot is SO noble. stop this reminds me of Die for you in secret by @emrysofmagic so much right now. not gonna lie. your fic LITERALLY lives in my head rent free and sometimes i think of it and my heart just HURTS in those last few chapeters. PHYSICALLy. i am in pain. anyways.

stop the trope where it's like "i love them, but i just want them to be happy. it doesn't matter if they're with me or not. i just want them to be happy"

I WAS LITERALLY SCREECHING AS MERLIN WAS CALLING KILGHARRAH i'm not even capping

ok so it's been like a month ish since i've watched merlin bc i was waiting for @//f-f-podcast 's destiny and chicken podcast, so i don't exactly what terms kilgharrah and merlin are at right now

still i think it's very sweet of merlin to bow slightly when kilgharrah looks at him

'the bravest and most noble of them all' 🥺

aw. merlin is really saying good bye right now

ok this scene is weird bc like i said, i don't rlly remember how merlin and kilgharrah are right now but it still makes me sad

asldjfslakdjfasd merlin and kilgharrah are old friends now. that makes me happy but sad at the same time

ok the 'it will be an empty world without you, young warlock' kills me.

obviously, we know that even though they butt heads, kilgharrah and merlin both care about each other

not only is kilgharrah being forced to let merlin go right now, but he's making peace with the fact that he'll be alone

the last dragonlord is planning to die. and kilgharrah is going to be alone again, like he was in that cave.

another thing is that if merlin died rn then we would never have aithusia. i'm kinda going on a tangent now but idk this scene is sad

this forest is so pretty

literally just lancelot's face and lancelot in this whole episode.

that's my note

HAHA GWAINE BURNING IS SOCKS

LADS BEING LADS

I LOVE THEM

omg i always see posts about this.

like merlin and lancelot planned that lancelot was going to walk in first and trick them and THEN merlin walked in

that's so funny to me. they're SO dramatic HAHAH

merlin looks so happy

BRO

ARTHUR

JUST HUG

HIM

PLS

STO

JUST HUG HIM WHAT'S YOUR PROBLEM

Tell me why they actually look MARRIED here. PLS

🥲🥲 SELF SACRIFICING IDIOTS I LOVE YOU BOTH YOURE BREAKING MY HEART

LADS I LOVE THEM

🤠🤠 arthur wanting Gwen to be happy is KILLING ME. He loves her so much

This is so pretty. Honestly like how

Who let merlin have this many pretty landscapes

HOENSTLY

Lajs;dlkfajd buds in a boat together.

This reminds me of going to amusement parks and there’s always that boat ride

They’re the cutest

Ok so they also have this picture. It’s actually 3 pictures spliced together because the episode pans down and it’s really badly spliced (sorry) but LOOk how pretty that is.

WTF

Omg not me literally copying merlin with his slow mo head flick at the wyverns to make them go away

;sldkfjasdlkjasd leon percival and elyan and my heart.

Ok i’m not even gonna try to lie. They all have my heart

Frick you cailleah

Omg i was like ‘gwaine you dumbass’ jK i love him. Pls don’t come for my neck

Asldjfasldjfka ‘i’m prepared to pay whatever price is necessary’

HAHA CAN YOU NOT. WHAT IS WITH THIS CREEPY ‘COME HITHER’ HAND MOTION MS CAILLEAH

Stopp rn. ‘It’s my density

STOP. I AM HOWLING. LANCELOT

WHY

COME BACK

NO NONO PLS. YOU CAN’T DO THIS TO ME.

stop rn merlin is all alone.

PAN TO ARTHUR WHO IS LITERALLY SURROUNDED BY EVERYONE.

Stop they all look so sad. I’m so sad.

merlin looks like he’s cried

I’m not sure abt arthur with his ‘no man is worth your tears’ type business but still

I am ✨sad✨

I screamed at this picture. I am depressed

Anyways

Gwen’s face is killing me

I’m so sad i don’t even want to write commentaries

Arthur realizing that lancelot only died because he loved gwen

Gwen standing in front of the fire

Aslkdfjasldjfa im so sad

HER STANDING IN FRONT OF THE FIRE ALL ALONE.

I. AM. SO. SAD.

STFU THAT THRONE IS NOT “RIGHTFULLY” YOURS MORGANA

STOP PLS GET AWAY

WHAT IS WITH THIS WEIRD TENSION

PLS DO NOT STAND WITHIN KISSING DISTANCE

IK YOU’RE NOT TECHNICALLY BLOOD RELATED BUT STILL.

PLEASE.

STOP.

I HATE AGRAVAINE

✨we hate agravaine in this house✨

😭😭 not merlin having ANOTHER secret. I’m so sorry bby

Anyways! I’ll be back next week to rant more about the wicked day so I’ll see you then! thanks I love you bye

22 notes · View notes

unnecessaryadversaries · 5 years ago

Text

LOVE & DEATH [Alucard | Adrian Tepes x Death]

Summary: After Dracula’s passing, Death (also known as Mistress) returns to his castle to mourn. When discovered by Alucard the two of them find solace amongst one another. As their friendship deepens into something more, Mistress Death and Alucard learn to overcome ghosts of their past and challenges of the future.

(A/N: This idea has been brewing in my mind for months after I finished season 2 of Castlevania. The character Death hasn’t been adapted from the games yet, so I took it upon myself to do it in my own way. Btw, this is only the first chapter so if you like what you read, the rest is posted on Ao3 under the same title.)

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I killed him… I killed him. My father, my flesh and blood.

I saw him. I heard him groan in agony as his body disintegrated before me. His blood still stained my gloves, and the smell of decay never left me. The ash from his burnt body still seemed to cling to my hair, and sometimes I'd catch myself flexing the hand that held the stake which pierced him as if it were still in my grasp.

I miss my father. He’s dead. I miss him.

So why then do these accursed memories plague me so? Why then do I see him there, clutching my mother’s portrait in his hand? This is no memory; this is no ghost…is this really my father? He’s dead. Has he returned? He’s dead. I killed him, he’s dead.

What is this?

“Who are you?” Alucard demanded.

Earlier in the night, Alucard had left the castle to wander the grounds in search of an animal to hunt. When he returned, an unsettling chill set into his bones as soon as he stepped foot in the foyer. It made him shiver and gave him goosebumps; it was as if this chill constantly crept down his back, making his hair stand on end. There always seemed to be some sort of quiet, ambient noise that echoed throughout the castle, however now it was unnaturally quiet as if time had stopped. Even his footsteps seemed too loud as he searched the halls for an intruder. The echo from his boots unnerved him, so he decided to levitate instead. As he approached the open door to his father’s study he gasped.

A tall, dark figure loomed by the lit fireplace; it wore a dark, hooded cloak and its back was facing Alucard. Its head was dipped to stare at the portrait of Lisa Tepes, which is held in its hand. It was as still as a statue. The outline of this figure was too sharp, it's body too solid to only be a memory or a spirit. Alucard fell silently to his feet and his mouth fell open with the intent to speak.

Is this my father? Tears brimmed his eyes and threatened to spill. Has he returned?

He hardened his expression and placed his hand on the handle of his longsword, ready to unsheathe it if necessary.

“Answer me, who are you?”

The figure lifted a hand to softly trace the outline of Lisa’s face with a long, pointed fingernail. It raised its head at the sound of Alucard drawing his sword and turned slightly to face him. He narrowed his eyes and posed to strike.

“Speak,” he ordered for the final time.

The figure sighed as if out of breath and lowered the portrait, then slowly turned to face him. His eyes widened slightly as he realized that this figure is… a woman? From what Alucard could tell she stood a few inches above him and she wore what appeared to be a floor-length, hooded black robe with long medieval sleeves. Underneath was a long, form-fitting, velvet dark blue dress that almost appeared black. The neckline of her dress was high and straight, hitting right below her collarbone. A three chained, silver belt hung loosely on her wide hips and tiny human skulls hung like charms from the lowest chain. An intricate, round silver amulet hung proudly from her neck; a red, cracked gemstone sat in the center. Her hood shrouded her eyes and nose in shadow and her full lips were downturned at the corners. Alucard gripped his sword tighter.

Who is this woman?

She made no further movements and only seemed to stare him down. Her stillness caused his stomach to turn. An odd and uncomfortable fluttering sensation permeated his gut; a sensation he hadn't felt since he had encountered his father with the intent to kill him. His hands started to sweat as the memory of that fateful night flashed through his mind once more, and his body began to involuntarily shake. The woman tilted her head slightly to the side as a corner of her mouth lifted into a small pitying smirk, "hmph.”

She brushed him off and walked towards the desk where the portrait hung above. Carefully, as if fearing to damage it, she lifted the painting, placed it back on the wall, and continued to stare at Lisa. He bared his teeth as irritation stirred within him. He felt humiliated, ignored, and he cursed himself for succumbing to the overwhelming unease this woman evoked. From her eerie silence to the unnaturally smooth way she walked —as if she were gliding across the floor— it set him on edge. She was unearthly and seemed far too detached from even the most otherworldly creatures he’s dealt with before. It alarmed him how nonchalantly she ignored him, like how a man would ignore a line of ants beneath his boot: too indifferent to pay them any attention but confident in the fact that he’d crush them in an instant. The thought made Alucard shudder.

He watched as this woman lifted her hand to caress the cheek of Lisa’s portrait longingly. His eyes widened and his mouth fell agape. What the hell?

The way she touched his mother’s portrait seemed far too intimate for his liking. His confusion quickened to rage as he imagined this horrid woman touching his mother like that when she was alive, and he grimaced at the thought. Despite his discomfort, his anger was enough to steel his resolve. He gripped his sword tight, raised it, and quickly lunged towards her. In the blink of an eye, he had pierced her heart from behind deftly. He paid no heed to whether she was too slow to react or simply did not care to put up a fight. She grunted and slowly turned her head. Alucard stared in horror as he watched her head begin to rotate at a perfect 180-degree angle to face him. Before she had a chance to completely turn her head towards him, he plunged his sword deeper, to the hilt, inside of her body. This caused her head to swivel back quickly, her head bowed as she hunched over and braced her hands on the edge of the desk.

He spoke gravely, “You come into my home unannounced and have the gall to touch my mother’s portrait like that.”

He leaned towards her by a few inches causing the added weight to push her slightly forward against the desk. She exhaled shakily. “Your presence confounds me, woman, and your disregard angers me, so I ask again, what is your business here!”

Silence filled the room once more apart from the crackling of the fire. Alucard’s chest rose and fell with the heaviness of his breathing, his eyes were narrowed, and his patience was beginning to fade. He felt his sword waver slightly as the woman’s body began to tremble and he almost couldn’t believe he began to hear light sobs and hiccuping.

Is she crying?

“To mourn,” she replied. Her voice was soft and barely above a whisper.

His brows knitted in confusion, “what?”

She quickly turned around causing Alucard to lose his grip on the sword and stumble back.

“I said—!” Her voice boomed.

Suddenly a mysterious force snuffed the fire out and the room was bathed in a thick, dark shadow that seemed to wrap itself around every corner. All at once the high-pitched whistle of a strong, howling wind resounded throughout the room, it’s screeching deafening. Alucard could not tell from which direction this wind blew, nor what caused it, but it’s iciness bit at his skin, chilling him to the bone; and its force blew his long hair around wildly. Without warning he was overcome with an overwhelming feeling of dread and distress; it was as if a heaviness had settled upon his shoulders. He staggered back and fell helplessly onto his rear. He could feel his heartbeat wildly in his chest; the thrums of this beating pounded on his chest and rattled his rib cage.

Bumbumbumbumbum!

He struggled to breathe and found it hard to swallow because of how dry his mouth had become. Panicking, he clutched his chest and choked. An ambient droning sound— akin to the buzzing of a multitude of flies— grew louder and louder in his ears, and static seemed to cloud his sight; invading from his peripheral vision and closing in towards the front, his line of sight becoming narrow. The figure of this woman loomed above him imposingly and he looked upon her in fear. He felt his nose begin to stuff as warm tears ran uncontrollably down his cheeks.

What’s happening! Am I going to die?

However, these sensations and the darkness were gone as quickly as they came, too quickly in fact for Alucard to process. It was as if nothing had happened. The fireplace was lit once again, bathing the room in an orangish glow, and the snapping of firewood filled the otherwise silent room once more. His chest expanded widely as he gulped down lung fulls of air. He dropped his head in his hands and carded them through his hair to tug on the roots.

Was that real? Did I almost die?

Alucard quickly realized that this woman was more dangerous than he’d originally believed, and he felt anxious at the thought of her harming the villagers who lived far beyond his castle. He released his hair and lifted his head to steal a glance at her through his parted fingers. He was afraid to stand, not wanting to seem like a threat. When he noticed that her head was bowed, he lowered his hands and cautiously raised his head to view her fully. She was trembling slightly, and she clutched her amulet in a tight fist.

“I—I said…” she began with a sad voice.

Hastily, Alucard scooted back as the woman walked forward to unsheathe herself from his levitating sword; it dropped to the ground with a clank! The woman followed suit, falling to her knees with enough force to shake the ground.

“…to mourn.”

Her sobs began again as she curled in on herself; Alucard’s eyebrows raised in disbelief.

To mourn? He looked at Lisa's portrait. She was mourning my mother?

It was then that he felt a slight tug on his heart. He hadn’t thought anyone else, besides his father and himself, had dealt with the pain of losing his mother. After killing his father, bearing the weight of loss became something he had carried himself, and it was such a heavy burden. At that moment Alucard had wished things were different, and that his mother’s love was enough to completely eradicate his father’s hate towards humanity. Maybe then he wouldn’t have needed to kill his father. Maybe then he wouldn’t have been so drastically alone. He yearned for the presence of his father, and much more than that, his mother. These were desperate and grieving thoughts, ones he had thought he was able to subdue, but they clawed their way from the recesses of his mind and attacked him once again. His throat tightened and he chastised himself for losing control of these wild thoughts, ones that used to keep him up for days at a time. To calm his mind, he closed his eyes and inhaled deeply through his nose, then exhaled through his mouth; he repeated this technique a few more times before opening his eyes.

He steeled himself and spoke with a gentler tone, “I do not know who you are and yet I empathize with you. If you truly came here to mourn my mother, then please…tell me who you are.”

The woman's sobbing stopped gradually, and she exhaled deeply once she was finished. Next, she sat back on her legs with one hand splayed behind herself for support and the other still clutched her amulet, albeit with a much softer grip. Most of her face was masked from Alucard, so he couldn’t see the forlorn look she had in her eyes when she raised her head to look at him.

He looks just like her, she thought.

Fresh tears brimmed her eyes, but she was too exhausted to stop them from flowing.

She released her amulet to grip her hood, “very well.”

Frozen, Alucard didn’t blink as he finally saw this woman’s face. Her skin was a dark shade of brown and the richness of it was emphasized by the warm glow of the fireplace. This was contrasted by her wide eyes which were framed by thick, black eyelashes. The entirety of her irises and pupils were a blue so pale they almost blended in with the sclera, oddly there seemed to be some sort of inner glow that shone through, furthering her ethereality. Much to his surprise, they held a deep sadness that Alucard also saw in his own and momentarily reminded him of his father’s eyes moments before his death. Long, white, loosely waved hair cascaded down her back and echoed the same glow in her eyes. Though she looked to be in her early thirties, her face did not betray age-old wisdom.

Alucard gulped, she was beautiful.

Despite her grief, she lifted her head proudly and said with confidence, “I am Death, but you may call me Mistress.”

94 notes · View notes

kinsbin · 5 years ago

Text

Still Yours [Xena/Darth Maul]

Title: Still Yours Pairing: Xena/Darth Maul [SI/Canon] Word Count: 3358 Rating: T [violence, cursing, angst, mentions of blood]

Summary: [SPOILERS FOR SEASON 4 OF THE CLONE WARS] Years after Obi-Wan Kenobi had killed Darth Maul, Xena has been a part of the Jedi’s forces for a long while, and has only finally been able to accept the death of her loved one and previous master... Until a run in with another Zabrak proves her wrong, and she is able to reunite with Maul, however broken he may be.

A/N: I AM EMOTIONAL OVER DARTH MAUL AND THIS FIC WAS WRITTEN BECAUSE I WANT TO BE THERE TO COMFORT HIM EVEN IN HIS MADNESS. I might write a sequel to it later but I am sleepy now so you get this for now! )b

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He was dead. He had been for a while now.

It was a fact that Xena, eventually, had to find herself accepting.

Obi-Wan Kenobi and Anakin Skywalker had been gracious in their received of her, of course, but she knew they were weary. She could sense it in the lingering threads of their force when she poked and prodded at it as carefully as she could manage, like a researcher examining a wild beast up close. Sedated as it was, she knew it was still volatile. Still shaky at best as the two claimed her Force Sensitivity in favor of the Jedi who hoped that, one day, she might be ready for the training it took to fully embrace the sight of the light.

It made her laugh. Light... Dark... Neither of those things mattered in the end, did they? Her neutrality could not be removed from her sense of emotion that was for certain, but, Obi-Wan certainly took it upon himself to try at a near constant rate. It bordered on near annoyance each time the two of them found one another alone in their company.

He could, without a doubt, sense the vaguest harboring of hatred deep in Xena’s heart for what he had done to the man that she loved so many years ago, but, there was only in the present a sense of... acceptance. Of moving on as he might want her to and a particularly deep talk with Kenobi after having a few too many glasses of alcohol at a local bar they had stopped at for information ended with her confessing just that to him. Granted there were a lot more tears and throwing up in the morning, but the point was gotten across as the Jedi Master brought her pain killers the next day alongside a glass of water and a nod of appreciation for their heart to heart.

How annoying, Xena thought, but she had accepted the water anyways.

Just as she had accepted that there was no more Maul.

It still hurt. Just because she had accepted it didn’t mean that it hurt any less to think of it for too long, just as she was doing as Anakin finally brought the edges of their ship to a safe landing along the edge of a diner she couldn’t recognize the name of. Ahsoka complained somewhere in her peripheral as Anakin declared himself tired of army rations and hurried to get out of the cramped machine, only to find them surrounded with sirens going off in soft, hurried motions as they meandered accordingly to protocol. Xena sat up, suddenly aware of the situation, and her mouth dried for a brief moment in a combination of annoyance and fear.

“Xena,” Anakin’s voice was in that dark tone he always used when he ordered her around, “Stay out here with the ship. See what information you can gather form those passing by, maybe they saw someone leaving.’

She didn’t answer with words, only a nod as he and Ahsoka entered the diner without her. As the door closed she gazed around, the sweeping of her stare intense through the frames of her glasses as she observed the world around her as she was good at doing. She had been good at doing it before she was involved in all of this ‘Jedi’ and ‘Sith’ business. Before she had met Maul and before she had flown off of the planet of Tatooine. She was still good at it now. When the Clone Wars Ended and the galaxy fell apart, she would STILL be good at it.

Which was why, when her sharp eyes and ears picked up the sound of footsteps all too fast to be a casual movement, her head snapped to the side and her eyes narrowed into slivers at the sight of an alleyway.

The cargo within it was still being moved as it shifted and pushed against itself in heavy metal crates. When she found herself sliding between each squared off pile, her gaze held fast to the dust that coated each one. She took note of the way it was blown, windswept, across the fronts and how some of them (only some) had small markings. Divots of where fingers had dipped and rubbed before passing by with extreme haste. She was no tracker, certainly, but you didn’t need a lot of experience to tell that whoever was moving was doing so with a desperately needed speed.

She followed, more and more, until she came upon it. A massive cargo ship, pulling its fresh haul as the doors had begun to close on its loading dock. A sudden sharpness tugged in her heart, making her gasp as it squeezed around the organ with a desperate, snake-like movement before tugging and tugging and TUGGING as hard as it possibly could against her skin and her body moved without her permission, running fast and calling upon the force she did possess to jump just quick enough to squeeze tightly into one of the edges of the closing platform on the cargo bay, cementing her fate inside the hold for... well... whatever it may offer her.

The inside was quiet save for the cursed mutterings of something in the cockpit. The pilot, likely, and her heart skipped a beat as she realized just where she was.

Just what she was doing.

Without Ahsoka and Anakin.

Oh she was going to be in so much trouble.

The thought had to wait, however, as she ducked herself as quietly as she could through the sliding door and closed it with equal speed, keeping herself low to the ground behind a small out cove in the wall as she listened with careful patience in her hiding spot, stopping her breathing in the fear that it might alert the massive being before her as he stood, hulking and serious, alongside the annoyed pilot.

He was big. Golden even in the light of the cockpit and the markings upon his body were so distinctly Darthomirian in nature that she barely even needed to look up at the horns crowning his head to know that that was exactly what he was. A Zabrak. A Night Brother.

She frowned as her brow furrowed with confusion. What was a Night Brother doing so far out in the galaxy and alone at that? Maul had talked little of his origins with her, but, he had said enough for her to understand the basic matriarchal society that the brothers lived in. Biting her lip, the tug on her heart echoed again. This time, however, it was stronger. Angrier. Something more fierce than she had experienced in a very long time and, oh, the burn was something so nostalgic that it almost made her want to cry as she covered her mouth with a hand to stop the echoing sob.

“Soon, Brother, I will find you.” The Zabrak finally spoke, his voice deep and his words causing a spur in her heart. A hope that pushed her up as her eyes widened.

“Brother? Who is your brother?”

The Zabrak turned, anger in his eyes, and Xena paled as he pushed towards her without hesitation. In return she ducked, her smaller stature helpful against his larger one as she rolled off to the side, causing the pilot to jostle himself slightly with a curse that fell from his lips. She sidestepped the next touch too and tried her best to gaze at the strange medallion that hung from her attacker’s neck. So soft it was... and yet her heart continued to pull at it with a frantic sort of desperation...

The hand closing on her neck, crushing her windpipe with an angry grip, was enough to draw her from her stupor and she gasped for breath. She gazed down at the Zabrak with fear meeting his fearsome stare. He hesitated only when the device around his neck began to glow in and out of existence with a frantic, pulsating movement, as if trying to get his attention. Looking down at it, his brow furrowed in confusion before he held it in one palm to hold it up curiously to her form. Once close enough to her, the device let off a long... steady glow.

Immediately the being put her down, letting her gasp for air as he glared at her with a confusion written so clearly across his face she might have laughed at it if her windpipe wasn’t moderatley bruised.

“You,” He growled as his hand found the top of her head and tugged hard on her skull, her hair cut too short to provide any leverage with his claws so he simply HELD, “You are not who I’m looking for and yet... It reacts to you. Why?”

“Maul,” the first words fell from her lips in a choked desperation, “I-Is the Brother you’re looking for... Is it Maul?”

His gaze held disbelief. The demand of how she could have possibly known that clear on her eyes as she swallowed hard:

“I... Was his apprentice, once... And I still am loyal to him. So, please... Please take me with you if you’re going to find him. That’s all I ask.”

“Make your decision quick,” The pilot hissed as he lowered them into a suddenly unfamiliar planet, “We’re arriving.”

The Zabrak looked down at her, distrust still in his eyes but with the begrudgingly slow acceptance of her status in the situation. Xena took a breath, flexing and laxing her hands as she chewed on her lip and decided, one last time, to put a foot forward in hopes of being brought along on this journey that she prayed would give her life meaning once again:

“My name is Xena.”

“... Savage,” He answered with an accepting nod, “Let’s go, then.”

And her heart nearly wept.

Because this meant he wasn’t dead at all.

----

It was how Xena had ended up with Savage beneath the ground of Lotho Minor, the calls of her companion echoing with chilling distance across the deep, endless caves they had found themselves within.

Every movement filled her body with anxiety. With a unique sense of dread that echoed itself so deeply in her veins that she could feel her hairs stand up from their follicles to the tip with every movement she forced herself into. Keen red eyes traced the world around them, but not even her sight could pierce that impending darkness that swallowed them. Savage, as if sensing her insecurity, paused in movements only to reach out and touch at her shoulder, gently guiding her to a small pile of rocks just before a step in the path they were taking.

“Stay here, Little One,” The nickname hurt even from another Zabrak’s lips, “I will go ahead.”

“I can take care of myself.” Her snap was defensive as she pushed against his grip, but it held firm as he watched her with something akin to frustration and protection in his eyes. She wondered if that was just an emotion she had evoked in the species, and the muse was hilarious enough to bring a smirk to her lips at the idea of any male Zabrak filled with the sudden urge to guard her in one way or another.

And then the attack happened all at once.

The creature flew from the shadows with a force she could not have expected from its massive body. Agile limbs like that of a spider’s ripped forward to snatch Savage from her side and drag him into a fight, the echoes of screams and broken laughs piercing against rusted metal and the smell of loose soil.

Xena froze as she watched the struggle, her body shaking in terror as she watched Savage fight the being. The tug on her heart and her mind was now giving her a headache as it bit its teeth into her skin. Into her blood and very heart as though it were trying to rip it straight from her chest. Her limbs shook as her breath picked up and that medallion around his neck glowed, glowed GLOWED with every tug until-

His face was revealed, worn with hunger and madness as his eyes were filled with nothing but the dark. When Savage spoke, he fled, backwards into the cave with screams that ached on her ears and nonsensical blabbering that signaled just how far he had fallen.

Oh hear heart tugged.

And oh her heart hurt.

Savage moved forward, as if to say something, but was stopped as Xena pulled herself from the shadows. He cursed something under his breath as he opened his mouth to fully warn her of her movements, but a hand upwards silenced him as she shot him a careful look. A desperate one that seemed to mimic how the tug on her heart felt. When he closed his lips, her hand fell to her side and she continued forward. Towards the web of broken shards and metals and the being that clung to it with shaking, clawing hands as he whimpered and writhed.

She was in front of him now, his taught body the same one she had loved years ago and, oh, still did. Even as the edges of starvation made his ribs shine through his dehydrated skin, the marks were the same. He was still the same.

Reaching out, her hand found his face and he froze, eyes widening in shock at the sudden close contact. She could feel his entire body trembling. Shaking like a leaf in the wind as she drew circles in patterns with her thumb and bit her lip, tilting her head to one side to examine him. His hands had, eventually, fallen to the side. They hung limply with the rest of his arms and he simply stood there, in front of her, with wide eyes that gazed into her own. She simply held his face there, close to hers...

And she smiled, weakly, but a smile.

“Maul...” She whispered, her voice hoarse with emotion, “... What did they do to you?”

He tried to form words but found nothing in them, his quiet clicking and murmurs nothing in her ears as she simply focused on his being. On his existence as the two of them stood like that. Slowly, then, a hand rose up. Reaching out to her own, he held it. His palm was cold and clammy, weak and dirtied with the ground he had been living in for... For so, so long. Too long. Her heart ached again and, this time, she felt the pull of it forward to connect with his own. Invisible threads entwined to create a whole circuitry again and, for the first time in years, she felt something close to alive.

“... Little One?” He spoke with disbelief in his tone as her nickname, gentle and unsure, fell from between his shaking mouth. She laughed then, tears in her eyes as she nodded her conformation and leaned forward.

Pressing their foreheads together brought with it the rough scrape of horn to soft flesh but she didn’t care. All she cared about now was the man in front of her, broken but alive and still there as he pressed his forehead back and something of a sob ripped from his lips, shaking and weak with appreciation for the presence of something that made him feel so complete again. He repeated her nickname over and over again. A chorus of ‘Little One’ echoed against the edges of the chambers and she didn’t dare to move herself away from him as he embraced her close.

“I’m here, love,” She gasped as tears flowed freely from her eyes, “I’m here, I’m back. I promise. I absolutely promise that I’m here.”

She only pulled away when Savage cleared his throat. The two gazed up with sharp eyes at the additional presence they had all but forgotten about.

“It’s time we leave this place,” Savage’s voice was unsure of his presence in the situation, “Unless you two are happy living here.”

Xena couldn’t stop the laugh before she turned back to Maul. Reaching out, she took his hand in her own and squeezed with a careful, reassuring grip that made him startle but focus back on her as he watched her with those angry, deep eyes.

“It’s time to go, Master Maul,” She shuddered at the use of his name on her tongue, “Will you go with us now?”

To her relief, he nodded.

----

Maul clung to her the whole ride back. His arms wrapped tightly around her form and tugging her close to his body as he nuzzled into her and she kissed at his messy face with a smile to her lips, laughing at the way his spidered limbs tickled her sides as they tried to grab and pull. To cling and absorb her into his entire form as he whispered gentle phrases of ‘mine’ and ‘little one’ in a slow chant as if to himself.

Savage’s presence wasn’t welcome to say the least. Each time he checked on the both of them. Maul would pull her closer, curling around her form like an animal as he bared his teeth with a frustrated hiss deep in his stomach. Xena could only watch with an apologetic look at their traveling companion, who was growing ever-so irritated by the feral behavior of his supposed Brother. Xena could only offer small comforts as Maul slowly released his hold on her in favor of allowing her arm up to his horns to touch and massage at their bases. It urned a lull of his head against her shoulder as he hummed.

“Maybe don’t come back until we’ve landed,” Xena mused apologetically, “He’s... territorial right now.”

“He’s not an animal.”

“At this point in his psyche? He might as well be,” Xena smiled sadly, “They broke him down so much there... Can your Mother Talzin really repair him? Make him what he was?”

“She can do it,” There was no hesitation in Savage’s voice as he nodded fiercely, “I... Will leave you two alone, then... Do you... Are you sure you’re-”

“I’m fine,” She whispered the gentle tutt as Maul’s teeth grazed her neck and then he went on to nuzzle at her again, making her reach up to continue the strokes of his horns she had offered him before. An eye cracked open and narrowed at Savage for a long, dangerous sort of moment as he pulled her close to him again and scuttled away into the darkest corner of the cargo freight he was able to locate, making Xena stifle a giggle as she watched Savage roll his eyes and give up, exiting the room for the final time until they were landed.

“Mine,” Maul cooed again, pained and choked as he let his hand reach out to touch her face, thumb petting her cheek as he admired her with almost despair-ridden eyes, “Lost... you were lost so many moons ago... So many there’s no way to count now it’s all gone and... You still pull at me. You still tug at me and are still mine. Still mine...”

Xena felt her smile grow on her lips, sad as it was, and she leaned into his touch. She kissed the palm of his hand and nuzzled at his grip until he brought her close and the two of them pressed their foreheads together once again in the darkness of the spaceship they hid away in.

It was then she kissed him. It was long and soft and careful, willing herself not to push him. Not to break him more than he was as they shared their momentary quiet in reunion and his hands held her closer with a surprised shudder at the closeness of another being after so many years. When they pulled away, she kept her head close. She kept herself near because, gods, she was not going to leave him anytime soon. Not when he was alive. Not when he was HERE.

“Yes,” Xena whispered that promise in the form of her tone as she hugged him close:

“Still yours.”

#self insert #self shipping #self ship #selfship #star wars oc #oc/canon #darth maul x oc #kinley writes #of kindness and evil #I MIGHT WRITE A SEQUEL TO THIS BASED ON WHEN HE GETS HIS SANITY BACK BUT UNTIL THEN #I WANT GIANT MAD SPIDER MAUL TO HUG ME AND NUZZLE ME AND GET ANGRY WHEN I GO ANYWHERE TY

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max-is-tired · 6 years ago

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Somewhere Off In Outer Space

Pairing: Analogical, Royality, platonic Logince, platonic Moxiety

Characters: Virgil Sanders, Logan Sanders, Patton Sanders, Roman Sanders, Remy (mentioned), Emile Picani (mentioned) Nate/slow-mo guy (mentioned)

Words: 1.694

Warnings: alcohol mentions, the rest is pure tooth-rotting fuff.

Notes: YES HELLO THIS IS ALL @introverted-happiness‘ FAULT. This is all fluff. All of it. No angst, no tears, just fluff.

... those are words I never thought I would write. Vic, I blame you for this. Anyway yeah, hit me up if you want to be added to the taglist and let me know if you liked this, reblogs, comments and asks are always welcome!

Read it on AO3!!

“LOGAN GET YOUR ASS OUT OF THAT CHAIR WE GOT A PARTY TO ATTEND!”

Logan barely flinches at his roommate’s sudden entrance, eyes still glued to his Physics textbook.

“Don’t know if you’ve noticed, Roman, but I’m quite busy at the moment.” Logan points out, writing down some notes. “Why don’t you go bug your cousin? You know how much he loves parties.”

“Already tried, but Remy’s got a date with Emile tonight.” Roman groans, flopping down on Logan’s bed. “Logan, please! Nate told me Patton will be there and I’m in dire need of moral support.”

Logan finally looks up and raises an eyebrow, fully aware of Roman’s big, gay crush on the sociology major. “Are you finally planning to ask him out? It would be quite the time, you’ve been infatuated with him since high school.”

“He’s just too cute, Logan!” Ah, here it is again. The hopeless pining, as Virgil calls it. “I can’t deal with it. He makes me act like a fool, I swear. A fool! Me! He just needs to smile at me and boom! I can barely remember my name.”

“I don’t know, I remember you acting like a fool even before you started having feelings for Patton.” Logan quips, not quite able to stop himself. Roman shoots him an half-hearted glare, chucking a pillow at him.

Logan easily catches it, rolling his eyes. “Please refrain from throwing my pillows around.” He says, slightly annoyed. “And I’m afraid I can’t accompany you. As you can see, I have to study.”

It’s Roman’s turn to raise an eyebrow, scepticism written all over his face. “When is that chapter due, Logan?”

“Next Thursday, why?”

“It’s Friday, Specs!” Roman exclaims, throwing his hands up in the air, “Come on, live a little! You have all of next week to study.”

Logan sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose in exasperation. “You’re not going to leave until I agree, are you?”

Roman beams at him, not even a little bit apologetic. “You know me so well.”

“Roman?”

“Yeah?”

“Fuck you.”

Virgil grips his beer tighter, trying to ignore the loud music blasting in his hears. “Remind me why am I here again?”

Beside him, Patton grins, holding up his own cup –non-alcoholic juice, since he’s very lightweight and they don’t want a repeat of the last time Patton was left unsupervised near alcohol. “Because Nate invited both of us to this party and you didn’t want to let me go alone?”

“More like, I didn’t want to leave you on your own in a room with that idiot of Roman’s cousin and alcohol present at the same time.” Virgil grumbles, “Once was more than enough.”

“Oh, come on kiddo! It wasn’t that bad.”

“You were crying over a frog you had found in the park because you thought Princey had been cursed by, and I quote, ‘an evil Dragon Witch jealous of his outstanding beauty’. I had to stop you more than once from kissing it.”

Patton has the decency to look a little embarrassed at that, looking away with a faint blush on his cheeks. “It was a very cute frog.” He mumbles, pouting.

Virgil smirks, taking another swig of his beer. “Sure it was, Pat.”

They keep on the sidelines of the party for a while, content with sipping from their cups and occasionally chatting.

“I still don’t understand why you wanted to come to this party so much.” Virgil points out after a while, “I know Nate invited us, but he’s barely acknowledged us and I don’t even think he would have realized if we didn’t co-”

Beside him, Patton –who’s obviously barely been listening to him, too busy restlessly scanning the room- suddenly lights up, head snapping towards the entrance with a big smile stretching on his face.

“Roman and Logan are here!” he exclaims, basically bouncing on his step. Startled, Virgil follows his gaze and sure enough, he spots the two guys entering the crowd of drunk college students. After a quick sweep of their surroundings, Roman seems to catch sight of them, immediately grabbing Logan’s arm and starting to make his way towards them.

Realization dawns on Virgil, a little smirk appearing on his face. “Ah, so that’s the reason.” He drawls, eyes shining with mirth as he watches Patton’s cheeks redden considerably.

“Nate may or may not have told me Roman would be here,” He sheepishly admits, “but hey, Logan is here too!”

“That he is.” Virgil muses, watching as Roman approaches them with the astrophysics major in tow.

“Patton, Virgil!” Roman exclaims, smiling broadly at them. “What a surprise to meet you both here!”

Still bouncing, Patton greets them both with an excited hug and a blinding smile –which seems to immediately turn Roman into a puddle, as the gay mess he is. As for him, Virgil simply lifts two fingers to his temple in salute and flicks them away from his head, still sipping his beer –he’ll need all the alcohol he can get if he wants to not die from second-hand embarrassment while watching Roman and Patton hopelessly pine for each other.

Not even five minutes later, both Patton and Roman are nowhere to be found in the sea of people packing the house, leaving Virgil and Logan standing awkwardly on the sidelines.

Virgil shoots a glance at his friend, taking in his stiff stance and overall how uncomfortable they both seem to be, and pointedly drowns the last of his beer.

“Wanna get out of here?”

“Please.”

They end up walking aimlessly through their little college town, only the two of them. They’re near the library, where nobody else ever is that late at night–least of all on a Friday, when most of the student body only wants to have fun and forget about books and looming exams.

They’ve stopped talking for a while now, but it’s not awkward or unpleasant. It has always been like this, between them –they revel in each other’s silence, much more content with keeping each other company while working on their own thing, undisturbed.

Now that Virgil thinks about it, that’s probably one of the reasons he likes Logan so much.

“May I ask how did you end up at that party?” Logan suddenly speaks up, snapping Virgil out of his thoughts. “You don’t look like somebody that enjoys that type of thing.”

“Patton dragged me there.” Virgil explains, sighing, “Apparently Nate told him Roman would be there and there was no way in hell I was going to leave him unsupervised near alcohol and Roman’s cousin. I learned my lesson last year.”

“Ah, yes. The frog incident.” Logan nods, not quite able to hide his amused smirk at the memory. “Roman did quite the same to me, actually. He barged into my room and demanded I accompanied him.”

“Couldn’t he ask Remy?”

“Apparently he was otherwise occupied in an outing with Emile. I knew he would not have left me alone until I agreed, and here I am.”

Virgil lets out a little laugh, more than familiar with Roman’s dramatic antics. “I’m honestly surprised you didn’t end up hitting him with one of those textbooks. He would have deserved it.”

Logan shrugs, looking away to try and hide his amused grin. “Sadly, if that were the case, I think his thick skull would have protected him from getting injured. It would only be a waste of books, I’m afraid.”

“Still, I think it would have been hilarious.” Virgil snickers, before looking up. It’s a clear night, the moon shining undisturbed with no clouds in sight, and yet the city lights prevent him to see most of the constellations littering the night sky. It’s little things like this that make him miss his home the most, the little house in the countryside he was forced to leave behind when he moved away for college.

“You know…” Virgil sighs, something sad and disappointed flickering in his gaze, “sometimes I really miss being able to see the stars clearly.”

“They’re quite the sight, aren’t they?” Logan hums, but he’s not looking at the stars. He’s staring at Virgil, eyes so soft and open as he admires him. Virgil doesn’t notice, too caught up in his own thoughts, so Logan takes his time, drinking him in with a soft smile on his lips. Then, he closes his eyes, taking in a steadying breath and releasing it slowly to calm his pounding heart.

There’s something Logan has wanted to do for a long time now and maybe, just maybe, he has finally found the courage to take the next step forward.

“You know,” he finally speaks up, eyes flickering to the side when Virgil turns to look at him. Logan knows that if he meets those beautiful dark eyes he’ll never be able to carry on with his plan, and he can’t let that happen –not like all the times before, when a single look had sent shivers down his spine and almost transformed him into a stuttering mess, words dying on tip of his tongue and thoughts tangling in his head. “There’s a place just outside town where I often go if I want to stargaze. We could go together, sometime.”

Silence stretches, and Logan finally turns to look at Virgil. “Only if you’re interested, of course.” He adds, rather sheepishly.

Virgil blinks, Logan’s words properly processing in his head, and then lets out a little laugh. “Why Logan, are you asking me out on a date?” he teases, cheeks growing just a little bit warmer.

Logan’s eyes widen just a fraction, something akin to panic flashing in them –but it’s gone as soon as it came, a determined fire replacing it and yup, Virgil is totally gone for this boy. “It depends.” He muses, a blush faintly dusting his cheeks. “Do you want it to be?”

Taken aback, Virgil blinks. And blinks. And blinks. Then, when the meaning of that question finally registers and he realizes that wow, Logan really is serious about this, a smile slowly stretches across his face, hand moving to interlace his fingers with Logan’s.

“…Yeah. Yeah, I’d really like that.”

Taglist: @noodlesforlife13 @keithkhoegane @introverted-happiness @virgilmydarkstrangeson @sidesroleplayblog @im-patton @creativity-killed-thekitten @heck-im-lost

Also @teacupfulofstarshine bc I know Starmom is analogical trash.

#sanders sides #analogical #royality #platonic logince #platonic moxiety #virgil sanders #logan sanders #roman sanders #patton sanders #fluff #tooth-rotting fluff #no angst I swear #tw alcohol #fanfiction #sanders sides fanfiction #maxiswriting

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evilblackcat13 · 7 years ago

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Nurcing Leon’s Wounds

Leon is no stranger to getting severly injured. But what would each injury mean to his body realisticly. Before i get annoying by repeating myself, in most cases of injury, it would have been too dangerous and too lethal to even survive any of it. With that out of the way, Let’s begin!

1998: Shot in the chest.

In one of the most infamous sacrifice Leon has done, He takes a bullet to his chest to protect Ada. So what would this injury translate in reality? First of all let’s look at his uniform.

However, unlike what would most people think, a “bulletproof jacket” isn’t exactly bullet proof but more “bullet resistant”. According to the National Institute of Justice’s Ranking of armors, his RPD unifrom should be a level 2 soft amour bullet proof vest. If we assume it’s an 2A level, it should normally be able to stop 9mm ammo heighting at max 124grams for 1225fps. It also includes a shot of a .40 Smith and Wesson bullet at 180grams going at 1155fps.

Looking closer at Annette’s gun, it seems to be a desert eagle.

So, that would mean that Annette’s weapon could be a .50 Action Express ammo magnum. So if it’s truly the case, the ammo should be able to pierce Leon’s armour.

If we compare Leon’s chest to an anatomy dummy :

That would mean the bullet fractured his shoulder blade and could have pierced his lungs. At worst, even ribs can be fractured. Plus, an injury like that is prone to hemorrhage and infection. At the moment of the injury, he’d have chest pain, problem breathing and it be reduced as well.

However , if we apply Ada’s bandaging to a real life situation, that wound would have not worked in the slithest! In an emergency, it is a prirority to bandage the wound to aid breathing since blood and mucus can be inhaled. So, the bandages needs to be closer to the body and be sterile.

Leon should have been dead. ( Good Job , Ada. )

2004: Falling into Wooden Forein bodies

This one instance could have given serious damage to Leon. First of all, the fall would have hurt like hell. Second, that throw was enough to break the closet. There is no doubt that there could have been splinters entering anywhere on his body. I can’t imagine how hard must have it been for Luis to not only be knocked onto the closet by that blow AND be crushed by 78.2 kg or 172.4 lbs (Leon’s weight) on top of that.

2004 : Cut To The Face

Here’s is the BIGGEST mistake Leon as done at that moment: wipping off the blood off his face.

Keep in mind that Leon as contracted loads of stuff that could have contaminated to wound such as anything in the village, las plagas , mud, contaminated water, shattered glass, ect. Not to mention that LEON HIMSELF commented on how vile and dirty the place was :

Seriously, there is too many things that could have infected that cut with this one swipe.

Not only did he never washed to wound properly (like with ointment cream or rubbing alcohol) but it never accured to to him to even bandage it up! According to specialists "New cells have to migrate to the appropriate areas to help with healing. Keeping your scrape covered and moist facilitates this process. Exposing wounds to air does not."

Sure he could have gotten worst injuries from any of the weapons held by a Ganado since, unlike Krauser’s knife, most weapon could have rust. Ence there’s more chance is chance of an infection. But there is an equal chance of infection if the cut was deep.

Here’s what could happen to his wound if it is infected :

The Redness could persist

The Pain wouldn’t subside

The Pus could turn green or get smelly

The wound could get swollen

Leon would feel sick afterwards

2013: Walking on Metro Railways

It should come as no surprise but it is extremely dangerous to walk on a metro’s railway. Doesn’t help that some metros around the world, like the Montreal’s Metro, pretty much showcases that the rails are 750 volts.

Around 10 and 1000 volts would generate around 15-20 amps which means extreme pain and contraction of muscules. Namely he wouldn’t be able to let go of the rails. At 100 to 10000 volts, the amps would be between 100 and 300. Which means ventricula fibrilation ( disturbance to the cardiac rhythym) that could cause his heart to stop, burns, permanent damages or death could happen.

There could be a chance that he could have evaded it because of his dress shoes.

Looking closer at the shoes, they appear to be some Oxford shoes. The likely materials of those shoes is leather and rubber which are poor conductors of elecetricity.

However, keep in mind that, before he reached to metro rails, he walked in the sewers. Unfortunately, it turns out that dirty water could be a good conductor of electricity. Also, running around would cause him to sweat. Since sweat is relatively salty, salty water is also a good conductor of electricity.

Leon would have died even before reaching the Tall Oaks Catherdral.

2013: The Bus Crash

There is many factors , minor or major, that could have injured him! For example, glass, metal and rock chards could have been lodged or scrape him.

The fall itself could have been enough to cause many factures and even concussions.

With this brightened image of the bus, we could have a good idea of how tall was the cliff. First of all, i need to find which bus it is. Thank god there is not much of models for school buses. From looking at multiple references, IC Bus of the BE-Series. We can estimate that the bus is 102 inches wide (2591 mm),and overall weight to be around 10000-36000 lbs (4536-16329 kg).

According to this screen shot, the bus would fit around 7 times. So that would mean that the hill is around 59′5″ or around 18.14 meters tall.

Now that we have the approximate height of the cliff, now we can move on the the impact of the 18 wheeler.

According to my research, i can estimate that the max speed of this truck is 120mhp and it’s minimum weight is 80000 lbs :

So to calculate the force of impact , i need to do 2( mass (36287.39 kg) times velocity ( 53.6448 m/s) ) divided by time of impact ( 0.5 seconds). The impact should be at 3893259.56 newtons of force.

Now to look at the fall! I’ve timed the fall to be 5 seconds ( and 3-4 seconds is slow-mo -ed ). To calculate the velocity of the fall, i need to calculate the distance divided by the time. Which means 18.14 meters divided by 5 equals a velosity of 3.628 m/s. For the kinetic energy, i need to calculate 0.5 x m 3.6282. To make it fair, let’s say it is the average weight of a school bus ( 23000 lbs or 10432.5 kg ). That would mean the fall was of 68658,29 joules of force.

That would mean Leon’s bones would likely shatter if not fracturing his skull. Sorry to say this but i don’t think i’d survive that!

BUT WAIT! THERE’S MORE!

Now to cover the bus exploding!

Unfortunately, the bus crashing and exploding is just an hollywood myth and has been debunked. Or should i say... BUSTED! I remember clearly from my favorite show of all time , Mythbusters , they tested the myth and the car only crashed and nothing more as shown bellow :

The way they made it explode was with their favorite explosive : C4.

However, let’s assest was would it mean to be so close to an explosion like this one even if it would NEVER HAPPEN. To be safe from an explosion like this one, you’d have to be around 3,750 feets away or 1,143 km. But Leon is too close to the explosion. He’d fall around the 1m to 2.7m from the blast of the following chart :

He’d be super dead if a car exploding was a thing. Nevertheless, in a realistic setting, the bus would have NEVER exploded in the first place. You would think people would have pointed that out in quality control and especialy with school busses of all things.

2013 : Flashbang

Sure it looks like nothing but let me asure you that there IS some damage related to a simple flashbang grenade.

Although described as a non-lethal weapon, there is some major downside to those on the recieving end. Namely, 170 decibels at detonation. That is louder than firecrackers at 140 to 150 dB. This would lead to pain and ear injuries. At worst , it could lead to a permanent hearing loss. Not to mention fragmentation of the grenade itself and probably dangerous smoke inhalation is part of the dangers of a stun grenade.

2013: Shot by Derek C. Simmons

First of all, let’s estimate what is the projectile thrown by Simmons. From the shape of it, it seems to be ribs. Here’s the overall range of lenght of any human ribs :

Let’s say Simmon’s ribs are as fast as an M16A1 rifle. The M16A1 fires around 800 round per minute. That would mean around 13.333 rounds per second. I’ve timed the shots to last 2 seconds. So at least 26 ribs as been fired towards Leon. I’m looking frame by frame how many hit him and it seems to have only missed Leon 5 times. So he could have been hit 19 times.

The biggest projectiles would be equivalent of anti aircraft / anti-tank artilery rail gun such as the 8.8 cm Flak 18-36. The smaller projectiles would be equivalent to an anti-aircraft/multi-purpose autocannon such as the Bofors 40 mm gun. Such projectiles could cause pronctures and rips to vital organs and internal bleeding, factures of bones and skul and massive hemorrhaging. That would mean Leon could have died by either the shards hitting his skull, punctered any vital organs or the ribs hitting so hard that it could have severed any celebral nerves.

There is no doubt that Leon took one hell of a beatting that in most situation could have killed him. And i’ve only touched the games and there’s probably some i’ve missed but for now that’s what i’ve been able to muster up into this digital forensic morge. I’ll probably touch on the films as well. NOT THE LIVE ACTION ONES! THE REAL GCI ONES ( so Degeneration, Damnation and Vendetta). But for now, i feel like i ranted for too long and here’s what i’ve been able to come up with.

#resident evil #resident evil 4 #resident evil 2 #forensics #resident evil 6 #leon s kennedy #leon scott kennedy #damage #injury #injuries #long post

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qqueenofhades · 6 years ago

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Starlight & Strange Magic, Chapter 20: In Which The Best Laid Plans, Etc., Etc.

Rating: M Summary: Lucy Preston, a young American woman, arrives in England in 1887 to teach history at Somerville College, Oxford. London is the capital of the steam and aether and automatonic world, and new innovations are appearing every day. When she meets a mysterious, dangerous mercenary and underworld kingpin, Garcia Flynn, her life takes a turn for the decidedly too interesting. But Lucy has plenty of secrets of her own – not least that she’s from nowhere or nowhen nearby – and she is more than up for the challenge. Available: AO3 Previous: In Which A Daring Rescue Mission Is Launched NOTES: Warning for some slightly gory medical scenes in this chapter. Nothing too bad, but our Garbage King has definitely done a number on himself.

As the transformation completes, as the creature that was formerly Wyatt Logan hits the ground on all fours and its jacket and trousers tear away, it lifts its head and lays its long ears flat back, its teeth bared in a frothing snarl. Its eyes burn with a hungry yellow glow, and it sniffs the cold air in hoarse gulps. It may be the first time that Wyatt has ever actually fully transformed, if he’s been on stiff anti-lycanthropy medicine to this point, trying to keep the furry little problem under control in hopes of a more permanent solution. In that, he’s almost surely deluding himself, since while medicine can control the condition, it can’t cure it. Only strong old magic has a chance, and certainly not Matija Korvin’s. Matija’s magic was made to destroy these creatures, scions of his mortal enemy Dracul, and if this is Wyatt’s first complete transformation, this is somehow – impressively – even worse. Older werewolves can regain some sense of themselves over time, but young ones, blind and terrified, given over fully to the monster, have no chance.

It’s Flynn’s first, long-conditioned instinct to shoot, even though he doesn’t have his special heavy revolver with silver bullets and thus might as well be throwing twigs. He also, of course, doesn’t have any wolfsbane, because it’s otherwise known as aconite and is one of the deadliest poisons going, to human or were-creature alike. Flynn’s bad leg is not going to hold up much longer, and there are too many people that he needs to get out of the way. The only one he can really see, however, is Lucy. He still doesn’t know if she set him up to be captured, though the vehemence of their reunion (he does not intend to think about that right now or possibly ever) would suggest not. But there is a werewolf on the loose, he can’t protect her, and it turns his battered, weary, bleary brain almost blank with terror.

There is no time for calculations of risk or sophisticated stratagems. As the werewolf decides on the nearest humans – Lucy’s adventuresome friend Rufus and an unknown lady companion, from the looks of things – as its most convenient targets, Flynn gathers his haunches clumsily beneath him and throws himself into an almighty leap. He hits the werewolf from behind, locking both arms around its neck, and it utters a horrible, strangled squeal as he wrestles it down. They roll madly in the snow, claws slashing at his legs, jaws snapping and slavering as he desperately tries to hold them away. If he gets bitten, he’s fucked too.

Flynn fumbles blindly for a soft target, somewhere on the underside, though he’s fairly sure the beast won’t feel it. He hammers his best attempt at a punch in anyway, which seems to make it mad more than anything. Flynn is a highly trained monster hunter and it’s not the first time he has had to fight one of these things mano-a-mano, but he has also spent the last twenty-four hours locked in a small box, lost a significant amount of blood, and hasn’t exactly been fed or tended to in that time. He has a lurid memory of tangling with the revenant, which he also took on himself rather than let it go after Lucy, as he grabs the werewolf by the ears and drags its head back, trying to expose its throat long enough for someone to get off a shot. It won’t kill it, but it might stun it, and then they can work out something else. “HEY!” he roars. “NOW!”

It is quite hard to see anything in his present predicament (so, similar to his last one in that respect, though the lack of a blood-maddened werewolf is making the box sound not that bad in comparison). He can hear yells and running footsteps, and a blast of blue energy sizzles overhead as someone, possibly Lucy, decides to see if tocker droppers work on werewolves. The answer is that they don’t, but they make their fur very frizzy, send an electrical charge jolting through Flynn that briefly stuns him, and he jerks his head aside in the nick of time as jaws close ferociously where it just was. Sparks sting between his fingers, and he sees double. If the ravens are here to help him, they really should bloody think about doing that right now.

Flynn doesn’t say that aloud, mostly because he can’t for obvious reasons. But the next moment, he hears a rush of wings, and the ravens descend on them in a swarm. They pluck and peck and tear at the werewolf’s muzzle and eyes, as it thrashes madly trying to dislodge them, and Flynn almost loses sight of his opponent in the whirl of black wings. It’s just enough for him to crawl out from beneath the beast, bleeding and breathless, and grab a dismembered iron arm off one of the broken tockers sprawled nearby. As the werewolf turns blindly toward him, Flynn winds up and swings it with all of his strength.

It might not be silver or any other special sort of weapon, but even a werewolf notices when it gets bashed very hard in the skull with a solid piece of metal. Its eyes roll back and it collapses in the snow with a crash, paws splayed and black blood trickling from the gash in its fur. It’s unconscious, at least for a few minutes, and Flynn can’t waste any of that time.

He lunges for the tocker, economically guts it of its piano-wire innards, and strips away the copper insulation to find as much of the exposed silver as he can. It’s sharp enough to cut his already-lacerated hands, but he doesn’t feel it. He used this trick once on an assignment in Montenegro, which held it long enough for him to get to his gun and finish it, but that is a fairly major missing piece in this case. He tangles the wire around the werewolf’s front and back paws, and yanks a winding mechanism out of the chest of another tocker, feeling like a mad scientist cannibalizing corpses for parts. He is, in a way, though these corpses are mechanical, not mortal. But some of the more upscale tockers have fancy silver clockwork, rather than common pewter or bronze, and he feels a brief and absurd relief that Rittenhouse sprang for the nice ones to serve as prison guards on the train, rather than send their own people up into this desolate frozen asshole. Flynn jams the silver clockwork against the werewolf’s throat, holds it in place with more piano wire, and yells again at Karl and the nearest members of his gang that he can see (Karl came to get him? Karl? He may have to give him a pay raise), “HEY!”

To their credit, the men run over, though they are justifiably extremely leery about getting too close to a werewolf, even a semi-conscious one. Following Flynn’s terse instructions, they drag it toward the ruined train, throw it in the most solid half of the crushed coal tender, and heap the heavy parts of the ruined tockers over it. It will serve as a makeshift prison, but not for very long, and does not address the question of either turning Wyatt back into a human or getting them the hell out of here. It is only as a thundering silence falls that Flynn realizes he is in fact bleeding a lot, and sits down heavily in the snow, losing his balance. He doesn’t think any of it is a werewolf bite, but that is not exactly helpful right now.

“Flynn?” Lucy runs over to him, kneeling down with a very worried look on her face. He appreciates her concern, even if he is still mildly stunned by its existence. “Flynn, are you – ”

“Just… give me a minute.” It hurts ferociously when he breathes, like a hot knife jamming under his ribs, and even in his eventful career, that one was too close for comfort. “Where is – are the Sokolovs here? How did you – ”

“The Sokolovs – ” Lucy jumps back to her feet. “Wait. Wait here.”

It’s on the tip of Flynn’s tongue to ask where she thinks he’s going, but given his last day or so, that’s a reasonable request. He duly waits as Lucy and the others return to the smashed-up locomotive of the train that they evidently used to pursue him here (that sounds like a fascinating story, but one for later) and pull an unconscious Anton and Gennady Sokolov from the wreckage. At least Flynn thinks they’re only unconscious, given the anxious way that everyone is treating them, which presumably would not be the case if they were already dead and past help. He feels rather numb and detached from the whole thing. Just a few hours ago, he was still locked in that metal cage, en route to Siberia for some horrible and unknown fate. Now he’s sitting in the middle of a snowstorm with two wrecked trains, a werewolf, two dozen broken tockers, the recent manifestation of the Raven King, and Lucy Preston, apparently of her own free will, just kissed him. It’s fair to say he’s a little stunned.

Once the Sokolovs have been carried into the train car out of the wind and Rufus and his lady friend are doing something to them there, Lucy returns to Flynn and crouches down, trying to pull his arm over her shoulders. “Can you stand up?”

“Mmm.” Flynn doesn’t stop her from doing it, but he also can’t get up the volition to help either. It strikes him that he might have more than a little hypothermia, the way the world turns milky and dreamy, groggy and slow, and if you don’t wake up from that pleasant reverie, you won’t wake up at all. “We need to get the trains off the tracks. This is the Moscow-Arkhangelsk line, there will be another service running through here tomorrow. If it hits those – ”

It’s plain that that would be an epic disaster (so, another one, then), but it’s also not clear how a ragtag group of less than ten people, none of whom are freaks of nature and several of whom are badly wounded, are going to get two wrecked trains off the line. For that matter, it’s not clear how they’re going to get out of here. The locomotive from Flynn’s train might still be somewhat operational, since it was the farthest away from the site of the crash, but the Sokolovs appear to be the closest thing anyone had to engineers, and they’re both unconscious. Flynn, still chivvied by Lucy, finally tries to get to his feet, then grunts and goes down, almost pulling her with him, as his leg gives out. “You go on,” he manages, grimacing. “Go on, just go and – ”

“You think I’m leaving you here?” Lucy looks absolutely ferocious, in what Flynn can dimly make out of her face. “After I came this far? Come on. Come on, one – two – three – ”

She heaves with strength out of all proportion to her size, ignoring the fact that she too has a gimpy leg, and somehow, Flynn rises up like a snowy phoenix, leaning heavily on her as they stagger toward the train. Its broken-out windows are blank and black as blinded eyes, the wind scouring it with an eerie, spine-chilling keen, and the presence of a bound-up werewolf in the coal tender doesn’t exactly provide any impression of a warm or welcoming refuge. Flynn heaves her over the tilted step, she reaches back down for him, and their cold fingers almost slip free. He crawls up, pushes the door open into the compartment where Rufus, the Sokolovs, and the others have taken refuge, and nods at it. “You go in there, I want to try something.”

Lucy looks at him anxiously, but decides to do as he says. She goes into the car, and Flynn, groaning every time he puts weight on his leg and having to grope his way along the crazily tilted walls, makes his way along the track to the locomotive of his train. It may be roughly functional, but the boiler fire has gone completely out, and he sees no way to get it going again. So that’s it, then. They just all get to sit here in the darkness and slowly freeze, or wait for the werewolf to wake up and kill them all.

Flynn gives into a moment of sheer and desolate frustration, shouting curses in all the half-dozen or so languages he knows, banging his hands on the iron plates and achieving nothing except bruising them up some more, and sliding to the floor of the cab, sitting in a crumpled huddle and wishing that he would wink out of existence on the spot. This wish, to his vast annoyance, is not granted, and after another few moments, he crawls forward, fighting the now-agonizing pain in his leg, and lies flat on his face. “Matija,” he mutters. “Matija, you brought us this far. Don’t leave now. Matija Korvin, Gavran Kralj, king of the darkness and the wild, of the night and the stars, the snow and the wood. Matija, moj gospodaru, help us.”

The silence remains deafening. Flynn stares into the abyss that he first discovered the depths of after Lorena and Iris died, after he spent several nights contemplating whether to just take his own gun and finish it off, to go and be with them, at peace, rather than face the hell of trying to exist without them. He came close a few times, but his burning need for revenge on Rittenhouse would not allow him to do it without a fight, to lie down and let them win. A monster hunter who missed the biggest monster of all, who has to make it right, and now –

He doesn’t know what this is, or what he is, any more. He doesn’t know if he even wants to keep fighting, other than that he knows no other way to live. He remains facedown, breathing in pained, wheezing gulps. He knows the Raven King will not come on command, like a dog being called to perform tricks, and you might anger him if you importune too repeatedly or frivolously for his assistance. But Flynn has believed in the man and his legend since before conscious thought, from his most fundamental beginning, and he has seen that power in indisputable action tonight. He knows that Matija’s magic is incompatible with technology, that in all this iron and steel and steam, there might simply be the impossibility of its existence. And yet. And yet.

Nothing tangibly changes, and yet, something does. Flynn has the brief, shadowed sense of someone stepping over him, though when he looks up with pain-bleared eyes, there is still no one else in the cab. Nothing more than a whisper of an old robe, vanishing around a corner. The next moment, he hears a strange rattling from the boiler, like coal being shoveled in, but there is still no heat or light from it. The whir sounds like a drone, like wings, as if the ravens are flying madly inside it, circling, circling, and slowly at first, then faster, the locomotive starts to move.

There is a jerk and a jolt as the momentum is transferred badly down the line of crushed cars, like a tangled wooden train on a string. Flynn doesn’t have the strength to get up and see if it includes the one that Lucy and the others are in, but somehow he does it anyway. One of the rear cars tumbles sidelong off the track with a horrible screech and thunder, sending up sparks as it somersaults into the snow, and he crawls in agony, hand over hand, down the length of the train to the carriage they’re in. He can tell that the coupler is tenuous, that they need to get into the next one, and jerks the door open. “Move!”

Lucy looks up at him, startled and white-faced. “What?”

“We need to get out of this car, it’s going to break loose. There’s an intact one a little further up.” Flynn braces himself on the wall. “Come on, hurry up. Now!”

Rufus, Lucy, Karl, and the others hop to their feet. It is a hair-raising production to heave the unconscious Sokolovs through the narrow door, across the gap between cars with the ground now going by fast beneath, and for Flynn to pull them into the next carriage, but they manage. Rufus and his lady friend crawl across, Flynn grabs their wrists and heaves them as well, and then Karl takes a running start, leaping clear, as the coupler is starting to rattle in an alarming fashion. That leaves just Lucy on the other car, and they have maybe thirty seconds before it breaks off. “JUMP!” Flynn bellows, holding his arms out. “LUCY, JUMP!”

He can see abject terror on her face – it’s not the easiest thing to do, in the dead of night and snow, with a good five feet to clear and the fact that she’ll instantly be dragged under the train wheels and crushed gruesomely to death if she misses. But sparks are starting to fly as the ruined car is dragged free, and she has no time to think about it. She backs up, lowers her head, then breaks into a full sprint, throwing herself into thin air, as he sets his feet and prays.

The next instant, Lucy hits him like a ton of bricks, knocking him backward into the carriage, as he wraps his arms around her and she wraps hers around him and he can feel both of them shaking like leaves, as he buries his face in her freezing hair and can hear her sobbing into his shoulder. He staggers back, still holding her, as the other carriage breaks away and likewise flips off the track, spinning down the embankment and blowing up in a spectacular fireball fifty yards below. Flynn kicks the door shut, rams in the bar, and doesn’t let go of Lucy the entire time. He staggers back, then collapses with her on one of the broken seats, the hard, ancient green velvet upholstery feeling almost as comfortable as a featherbed.

Wyatt is trapped in the coal tender, presumably (and hopefully) still unconscious, so that makes all of them, albeit in very bad shape, as they gain speed, rolling into the whirling snow. Flynn’s hands are cut from the wire, his leg badly damaged, and he has a splendid collection of bruises, cuts, contusions, and other decorations from the beating he took while getting captured. Lucy has done something unpleasant to her leg as well, the Sokolovs are still out, Rufus has managed to escape relatively unscathed but was not in tip-top shape to start with, and the rest of the gang has likewise taken weather from the train crash and the fight in the snow against the automatons. Rufus’ lady friend turns out to be named Jiya. Flynn struggles to recall if Lucy mentioned her before or not. He feels like she might have, but cannot pin the precise instance to mind. Everything is turning rather hazy.

Flynn hopes that they don’t barrel through some crossing too fast and cause yet another accident, or anything else of the sort that could occur when a bunch of injured people are trapped in a train essentially careening out of control, but he decides to leave that to the ravens. Lucy is curled up very close against his chest, it’s cold and dark and they have just been through a terrifying experience, and Flynn can’t summon the necessary volition to push her away. He reminds himself to do it later, then – finally, blessedly – passes out.

He has no idea how long it has been when he stirs, then immediately wishes he hadn’t. Everything aches from head to toe, with a nerve-shredding, eye-watering savagery, and he struggles to catch his breath. The inside of the train car is filled with wintry, watery grey-pink light, and they do not appear to have been gruesomely dismembered, whether by a werewolf or by another crash. Flynn struggles to get his thick, cottony tongue around a question – he is dying of thirst, will probably have to go melt some snow – and then through the frosted window, sees the train chugging slowly past a wooden sign, the Cyrillic characters half-obscured by icicles. Арха́нгельск. They’re here.

Flynn sits up, realizes that Lucy is missing, and has a sudden moment of panic, casting around to all sides and almost scrambling to his abused feet before hearing voices from ahead. The train rolls beneath the handsome iron portico of the Arkhangelsk railway terminal, venting blasts of steam, and hits the buffer with a thud that Flynn feels in his teeth. For once, after two days of chaos, the dull, ever-present clack of the train wheels and the hiss and blast of burning coal, there is silence. It rings in his still-ringing ears.

After a few moments, the compartment door unlatches, and Lucy limps in. Someone has fashioned a makeshift splint for her leg out of broken wood and handkerchiefs, which does not look comfortable, but at least it is allowing her to keep going. “We’re in Arkhangelsk,” she informs him, unnecessarily, breath gusting silver in the pearlescent half-light. “Can you walk?”

Flynn thinks about that, isn’t sure he wants to hazard it, and finally Shitmouth and Robert Taylor are called in to assist, hauling him upright and helping him hop the length of the car to the door. There are two platforms in the station, of which they are occupying one, and the other train must be awaiting its departure to Moscow shortly. Lucy goes to find the station master, and since he is the only Russian speaker who is either compos mentis or mobile, Karl has to go with her, which Flynn hates with his entire heart. This time, however, Karl refrains from anything ill-advised, and the station master appears with a look of alarm at multiple injured, scruffy, dirty men (and two women) suddenly descending upon his otherwise peaceful hamlet. “Who are you people? Where on earth did you come from? The service from Moscow does not arrive until much later.”

“We were… unscheduled,” Flynn answers, suddenly wondering what the werewolf situation is, if removal from the affected area of Matija’s magic has reverted Wyatt to human form. He needs to have a good shout at Logan for keeping that secret later, given as it very nearly killed the lot of them, though he grudgingly supposes that Wyatt could have had no way of knowing that that was going to happen. Poor bastard. It’s not a pleasant fate, and anti-lycanthropy medicine may be in short supply around here. They’d better bloody hope he doesn’t wolf out again.

It takes a while, and the requisitioning of several porters to help with all the walking wounded, but they finally get everyone off the train. The answer to the werewolf question is that Wyatt in fact human again, but has a nasty goose egg where Flynn clobbered him with the tocker arm, is naked and half-frozen, shivering and disoriented and confused, and the porters considerately fetch a quilt to wrap him up in and throw censorious looks at everyone else, evidently thinking that they kidnapped him. Flynn wants to explain that he is tied up in piano wire for everyone’s best good, including his own, but that takes too much effort. There’s a British diplomatic office, bank, and guildhouse in Arkhangelsk, due to the long-established Anglo-Russian trade through this port, but given their status as British fugitives-in-chief, that does not seem like a place from which they should expect succor or assistance. Maybe they can assist in getting Lucy (and Rufus and Jiya) back to England. Other than that, who knows. Flynn has given up guessing.

In fits and starts, lurching and staggering, they make their way out of the station. Arkhangelsk is bathed in that eerie pink-grey light like the inside of an oyster; they are too far north for the sun to get more than a few degrees over the horizon. They’re not quite at a high enough latitude to have total polar night, but the days are only a few hours long, and still have another month to go in getting shorter. Flynn devoutly hopes that they will not be here for another month, or even much time at all, but they are too battered to immediately race off again, and if Rittenhouse was bringing him here, there had to be a reason for it, something they need to find out. Despite the lack of sun, the day seems brighter than it is, thanks to the vast streaks of gold that dance and swoop in the sky. Aether in its purest, strongest form. The deposits around here must be unbelievable. That alone would get Rittenhouse’s attention, if they’re mining it.

Anton and Gennady are dispatched to the sailors’ hospital on the waterfront, since they’re more hurt than can be easily cared for, and Lucy wants Flynn to go as well, but he resists. Those places are usually of the rough-and-ready school of medicine that involves swift treatment (or amputation) of grisly wounds, and he doesn’t want them to get any damn ideas about hacking off his leg. Finally, he, Lucy, Rufus, Jiya, and Wyatt (since Flynn can’t think what else to do with him, doesn’t want him close, but also not out of his sight) find a boarding house that caters to the British merchant clientele, with a proprietor who speaks some English and proudly shows them the portrait of Queen Victoria in the hall. As his last memory of this woman is jumping out her drawing room window while her Munshi stabbed him in the arm, Flynn can’t help but choke.

Nonetheless, everyone is at the end of their rope and needs to collapse, and fortunately, news of the Buckingham Palace break-in does not seem to have gotten this far north. Wyatt is untangled from the piano wire and sent to the bedsit in the cellar, Rufus and Jiya take one room at the end of the hall, and Flynn and Lucy find themselves in the other. It is more comfortable than their bare-bones overnight setup in St. Petersburg, with handsomely papered walls, thick velvet curtains and a whitewashed fireplace, and a four-poster bed with a counterpane that looks as soft as a cloud. Flynn wants to fall into it and sleep for a hundred years, but he is absolutely filthy, and wonders if he should limp outside and empty several buckets of freezing water over himself first. If he could even make it that far. Just now, it seems unlikely.

After Lucy has shut the door and turned the key with a click, she removes it, puts it on the night table, and they finally turn to look at each other properly, which they both immediately appear to wish they had not done. A slow, dull flush steals up Lucy’s cheeks, she coughs, and then finally says, “So. We, ah. We’re here.”

Since this is obvious and does not require response, Flynn merely grunts. He supposes he should thank her for saving him, but he also wants to know what happened back in St. Petersburg. Either way, he’s not going to be able to do it standing up, so he sinks into the poufy chintz armchair, wondering if the owner’s grandmother decorated this place. They eye each other for another horrendously awkward moment. Then Lucy says, “I’m sorry about what happened at Sibley’s office. About John Taylor. I didn’t – I never meant for that to – ”

“Never meant for that to happen to him, but did mean it to happen to me?” Flynn isn’t really in the mood to beat around the bush. “Is that what you wanted?”

“No.” Lucy’s cheeks deepen a few notches in color, but she doesn’t take her gaze off him, cool and even. She’s apologized once, but she isn’t going to grovel or waste time on regretting something that is done and over, and Flynn is forced to respect that. He did just see this woman take on a Siberian snowstorm, a train full of tockers, a werewolf, a fell enchantment, and Christ knows whatever else, and it astonishes him all over again what a sheer force of nature she manages to contain in that slight frame. “I didn’t set you up on purpose. I didn’t know that Rittenhouse was going to be there. I should have, perhaps, but I didn’t.”

“Mmmf.” Flynn’s leg is hurting too much to think of a witty reply. Lucy’s eyes flicker to it, the crusted bullet hole and dried blood, the redness and swelling from – to judge from the thousand veins of fire in it – several hairline fractures, and the purplish-black bruising on his ankle and up the back of his calf. She visibly flinches, and Flynn feels a stupid masculine impulse to tell her that it isn’t that bad, he’s fine. Fortunately, he manages not to.

“You really should have gone to the hospital,” Lucy says. “Your leg’s a mess. I have a few field-medic skills, but I don’t think I can fix that. And after what happened with Wyatt – ” She hesitates. “Did you – know? Before?”

“No, I didn’t know before.” However much he may deserve it, Flynn is still rankled at the implication that he would let her run around in close proximity to a dangerous monster, and never utter a word of warning. “I did tell you that Dracul’s children can pass as human, even to someone like me, who used to hunt them for a living. I wondered once or twice if he was under some sort of spell, but I didn’t know for sure until he started changing. Matija Korvin’s magic must have forced him to do so, a sort of allergic reaction.”

“So that’s why he wants a cure,” Lucy says softly. “He came to this reality to retrieve you for Connor Mason, stumbled into a place under Dracul’s curse and was turned into a werewolf, and now he can’t go home unless he finds some way to get rid of it forever. He can’t go back to Earth – ours, our non-magical Earth – as a werewolf, or feel like he can properly find his wife and reunite with her while he’s – he’s this. Is there anything you know that could help him?”

“As I said, there’s medicine to control it, but nothing to cure it permanently.” Flynn, obviously, does not like Wyatt Logan much at all, but even he can admit that this is nothing to be envied. “You were the one researching how to disenchant a revenant. Maybe you saw something useful.”

“All the magic for that was Matija’s,” Lucy counters. “Since as you said, he was the one who made revenants in the first place, in order to fight Dracul’s children. Anything we could find from the Raven King would probably be meant to destroy Wyatt, not save him.”

Despite the pain and grime and other deeply undesirable aspects of this situation, Flynn finds it extremely arousing for Lucy to be standing there calmly talking about the Raven King and his magic and whether or not it is of any use to the monster they have become unexpectedly saddled with. She has learned a lot, he thinks, remembering her in Oxford, scoffing at the idea of anything actually being otherworldly or powerful enough to take seriously. Then he thinks again of her mouth on his, hungry and raw and wet and open, and swallows hard, reminding himself that that was just a euphoric, spur-of-the-moment reaction, helped along by the dark and the snow and the thick strands of enchantment that hung around them both. He tries to avoid looking at her lips, or entertaining any notion of a repeat. Why is she still so beautiful, hair down and face dirty and dressed in battered old men’s clothes, after the literal night from hell? It dries his throat and skips his heart like a rock pattering along the surface of a lake, over and over, over and over, until it falls. Her face is set and carved and bold and burning in the reflected aether glow through the window. Arkhangelsk. He’s suddenly not so sure it’s Michael.

“Maybe,” Flynn says, after a too-long moment, struggling to remember what they were talking about. Right, Matija, and whether his magic would be any good for Wyatt. “The full moon was recently, we shouldn’t be in immediate danger as long as there isn’t another incident, but we need to get our hands on some of his medicine. I’m not risking another train trip with the possibility of a total transformation. Especially since he has no idea how to control it.”

Lucy looks as if she’s not that eager to risk it herself, all things considered. There is another brief pause. Then she says, “If you won’t go to the hospital, I’m going to find you a doctor. I’ll take Karl. You stay where you are.”

“Karl?” Flynn still doesn’t like that. “There has to be a servant in the house you can send, or you could ask the proprietor. You don’t need to go off alone with that – ”

“Karl’s welcome to try something.” Lucy gives him a slightly feral smile. “We’ll happily see how that works out for him.”

With that, leaving Flynn frankly more shaken than ever, she whirls on her heel and exits the room, as he leans back and blows out a long breath. The proprietor comes up with some tea, which Flynn sips slowly, and he drifts in an uncomfortable haze until Lucy returns. She has indeed brought a doctor, a young, sandy-haired gentleman who sucks in his breath in horror at the sight of Flynn’s leg, enquires of Lucy in broken English if perhaps she would like to leave while he sees to her husband, and is oblivious to the blushes that result on both of them. The doctor sets down his bag, unpacks his things, and gingerly cuts away the ruin of Flynn’s trousers, as if not even sure where to start first. “How did you do this?” he asks in Russian. “Were you run over by a train?”

“Not that far off, actually.” Flynn grimaces. Lucy has taken up a position next to his chair, apparently intending to remain in the name of moral support, and he is about to tell her to go, like the doctor suggested. But he can’t quite do it, and this is going to be awful enough. If she wants to get some grim satisfaction out of seeing that he has in fact suffered for all his bad decisions, she might as well.

Suffering is, Flynn has decided ten minutes later, a gentle way to put it. He’s not altogether sure that he is not in fact dead, in hell, and the doctor is a cunningly disguised junior demon getting started on his eternities of torment. He has to first scrub down the leg with warm water and soap, trying to remove some of the calcified layers of grime, before he can get to work. Then he has to fish the bullet out, cauterize, clean, irrigate, and stitch the entry wound, and pack it thoroughly with gauze and bandages, as Lucy is drafted in as an extra pair of hands to cut thread or hold the raw edges of Flynn’s skin closed while the bastard stabs him repeatedly with a needle. Once that is done, the doctor is leery about the multiple fractures in Flynn’s tibia, which he has really managed to mess up, and warns him that unless he stays off his feet for at least a fortnight, he runs the risk of doing permanent damage and being lame for the rest of his life. Flynn is not enthused to hear that, but needs must. It feels like the Raven King could magically swoop in and fix that too, but he’s probably used up his miraculous intervention for several decades.

Flynn is even less enthused about the fact that the doctor decides that they’ll have to fully break the fractures, then re-align and set them cleanly, rather than having them jam together and knit badly. At that, he decides that his tolerance for letting Lucy get vicarious satisfaction out of his misery is at an end, and turns to her. “Go. I don’t want you to see this.”

“No,” she says. She helps the doctor lay his leg out straight, fix it in place with an iron collar, then returns to him and takes hold of both of his hands. “No, I’m staying.”

Flynn debates about that, and yet doesn’t have the will to force it. This is going to be more hell as it is, and she does seem worried. “Fine. But it’ll be ugly.”

Lucy has a pale, set look on her face as if she’s seen ugly and it doesn’t faze her, as if she has gotten well used to it, and doesn’t answer. The doctor removes his mallet and wedge, finds the displacement of each fracture, and places the wedge against it. He gives Flynn a knotted handkerchief to bite down on, promises that this will be quick but is really going to hurt, and then hits the wedge with the mallet.

Flynn lets out a strangled, roaring gargle, as it feels exactly as you would expect someone deliberately breaking your fucked-up leg with a chisel to feel, and hot red-blackness fizzes at the edges of his vision. Lucy has one hand in his hair, cradling his head against her stomach, her other hand still tangled in his, as he gulps and heaves and tastes bile in the back of his throat, trying not to throw up all over her. The doctor cuts strips of his skin back in order to properly align the broken fragments, drills in a few small steel screws that he assures Flynn will grow into the healing bone, and then sews the skin back into place. If nothing else, Flynn has become almost desensitized to the pain at this point, since his nerves have just up and quit, and he’s practically able to fall asleep from exhaustion as the doctor finishes his work and washes the wound thoroughly with a perhydroxic acid solution. Then he splints the leg, bandages it up until it looks like a mummified white club, and finally gets to his feet. “Well,” he says, taking off his glasses and wiping his face with his arm. “I advise a stiff drink and a long rest.”

“Thank you.” Flynn still feels like he’s about to die, and would not mind at all if he did, but he is able to recognize that the doctor did a very competent job under challenging circumstances, and might in fact have saved him from permanent crippling. “If you want to be paid, I have money. Not right now, but I can find a way to get it to you. However much you’d like.”

The doctor assures him that whenever he can find the money, that is suitable, and to send his wife by again if the wound worsens or develops any complications. Neither Flynn nor Lucy bother correcting him at this point, and he packs his things back into his bag, washes his hands, and removes a small, stoppered black vial from his pocket. “Laudanum,” he says. “You’ll want it. Good day, sir, ma’am.”

With that, as the door shuts behind him, Lucy steps in, slings Flynn’s arm over her shoulder, and helps him hop to the bed. She tugs the covers back and helps him underneath them, undoes his belt and unbuttons his dirty shirt, and he supposes there is some impertinent remark to be made about her tearing his clothes off, but he is weak as water and suspects it would backfire on him anyway. She eases him down onto the pillow, he wonders if it’s worth it to deny the laudanum when she offers it, and then decides that it isn’t. He takes a few foul-tasting droplets, chokes it down and dry-retches as his stomach revolts, but manages not to bring it back up. The world is already fading into a haze, and within moments, he is gone.

Flynn has tormented poppy hallucinations that flash in and out like carnival mirrors, until they finally subside long enough to let him properly pass out again. His waking from this seems destined to be even more unpleasant than his waking on the train, if that’s possible, but at least it doesn’t hurt right now, and he wanders in the opium mists without any sense of time or space or conscious form. Unlike his visions as a prisoner, where he saw the ghosts of Lorena and Iris flitting in and out, nobody is here at all. He is standing in the middle of a grey moor, the wind blowing hard in his face, the boggy ground giving way beneath his feet. He does not remember when he came here, or how he arrived. Doesn’t know if this is a dream, or if he has somehow been plucked out of bed in Arkhangelsk and carried on the wind.

After an indefinable passage of time, short or long or neither, Flynn becomes slowly aware that he is not, in fact, completely alone. There is someone standing on the far side of the fog, someone waiting for him to come to them. Black leaves twist and scatter, leaves that look like wings. He can hear a distant caw, and he knows who calls.

Slowly, step by step, Flynn crosses the moor. His leg does not pain him; it is of no concern at all. He is not in a place where the limitations of his physical body can touch him. He wades through the peat water, which slops murkily around his ankles, and climbs up on the far side. He can see the edge of a robe, the one that he glimpsed vanishing around the corner and into the train boiler, right before the locomotive began to move. This time, however, it is more solid, not merely an ephemeral scrap or half-seen shadow. It is embroidered in ancient runes that speak the language of stone and sky and field, of stars and moon and tree, and it rises up the body of a tall man, who stands there without a word and casts a shadow as vast as a forest.

Flynn looks up into the pale, carved, handsome face, the eyes as black as onyx beneath thick brows, the long hair somehow untouched by the wind, the mouth like a seam of granite and the iron crown that rises in sharp, elegant points. If he is honest with himself, he should have known this was coming, and he drops smartly to his knees, bowing his head and lifting the robe to kiss. “Matija Korvin,” he says. “Moj gospodaru, moj kralj. Pozdravljam te.”

Garcia Flynn. It is not quite a spoken voice that answers, but something like the sound of far-off thunder, somehow recognizable as words. It is an older dialect of Croatian, antique and formal, but understandable. You called me by the old ways and placed yourself at my service. I have come, I have delivered you from your enemies. Do you now pay the toll?

“Yes.” Flynn can feel the cold droplets on his face, the taste of salt on his lips. “Whatever you ask of me, you may have it. As I swore.”

You make hasty promises, boy. Matija Korvin sounds amused. Are you sure you would give anything I could ask of you, without a single thought or question? You are in my debt. The magic spent for you was grave and strong. I will need it back.

Flynn is aware of a chill that does not come from the wind, that seems to cut him to the bone. He is reminded of the reason why you only call upon the Raven King in the darkest hour, and of his earthly nickname, Matija the Just. He will give you what you need, but he will expect fair recompense, and he will not be swayed by pleading or petty mortal concerns in what he asks. He is old and fey and very strong, and Flynn has to fight a sudden and consuming terror. What if Korvin asks for not something, but someone? Is Flynn willing to defy his own gods, his ancestral master, the flesh and bone of his country’s existence and magic and pride, all the legends ever told and all the songs ever sung, and the debt that he clearly does owe, to be so insane as to withhold the King’s tribute from him? It is said that the Raven King must sometimes find a Raven Queen to rule Faerie with him, and Flynn has seen for himself what Lucy is. What if –

I will tell you when I have set my mind, Matija Korvin says. Then you will bring it to me, and the account will be settled. Call upon me again, and a second payment will be owed. I shall, however, strengthen your leg, as you will need it. You may thank me for this gift.

“Thank you, my lord.” Flynn takes the offered bone-white hand and kisses it, next to the black-stoned ring with a raven carved in its face. “I am your servant.”

Do not forget it. Matija Korvin’s rumble is becoming deeper, farther away, and his body is starting to become one with the mist, as the leaves twist and whirl and leap around his feet, spring from the moor and become birds taking flight. We will speak again.

With that, all at once, he is gone, and Flynn is aware of the grey field falling away, the world turning to darkness. When he slowly stirs back to consciousness, he is aware that he is lying in bed, his leg still hurts but not nearly as badly as before, and he is once more physically back in Arkhangelsk, if indeed he ever really left. He grimaces, pushes himself upright, and looks around. The room is quiet. Lucy isn’t there, but someone has left a tray of food, in case he feels up to eating. He considers, then decides that he does. According to the clock, it is four-thirty PM, and has probably been dark for at least an hour.

Flynn is polishing off the supper, and wondering if he feels up to hauling himself out of bed and to the WC, when the door opens and Lucy returns. She looks cold and windswept, as if she has been out for the day. “I’ve been to visit Anton and Gennady,” she says, by way of explanation. “They’re awake, they should be all right, but they were hurt fairly seriously, they’ll have to stay at least a few days. I managed to find a little medicine for Wyatt, I hope it’s enough. Rufus and Jiya are mostly all right, if banged up and confused. I sent a telegram to Ada in St. Petersburg to tell her that we’re alive and we rescued you, but I had to be very roundabout. Our last entanglement with telegraph operators in St. Petersburg going how it did.”

Flynn nods, thanking her for the explanation, and is yet again impressed at what she has managed to do within a few short and dark hours of being dropped into this place. “Sit down,” he says gruffly. “You’ve been running yourself ragged.”

Lucy looks about to protest, then for once, thinks better of it. She shucks her dirty cap, jacket, and shoes, sits in the chair, and lets out a long sigh, rubbing both hands over her face. Flynn manages to get out of bed and hop awkwardly to the loo, do his business without killing himself, and hop back, aware that the roles have been reversed in terms of who is in the bed and who seems self-conscious about sharing it. Maybe Lucy does not want to cuddle too close to his grimy invalid carcass, for which she cannot be blamed, or maybe she is already regretting the kiss. He should not have been so forward, the way he kissed her back with such starving, forceful insistence, the one thing he knew he would do if he let himself give in. She might feel sullied, assaulted, preyed-upon, though he does get the sense that things are different, socially speaking, for men and women in her world. But he isn’t sure he could bear the shame, the guilt, if so.

It continues to get darker, and Lucy gets up to light the lamps in the room. The window glows with green-gold light from the aurora and the aether streaking in great gouts of color across the night sky, more beautiful than the stars, and Flynn half-feels that he could stare at it forever. Lucy disappears into the bathroom, the water runs for a while as she evidently has a proper wash, and Flynn tries not to chase his head in circles. Should he ask her if she is all right? Apologize for his impropriety? Lucy is clearly a woman who is not affronted or shocked by the things that would cause other well-bred Victorian ladies to swoon, and Flynn doesn’t want to insult her by insinuating that she couldn’t handle it or must have been a fragile flower. But at the same time, he’s increasingly terrified that he did hurt her somehow, inside or out, and she’s been pushing it aside for the sake of taking care of him. He could offer for her to sleep down the hall, with Rufus and Jiya, or on the sofa. No, he should sleep on the sofa. Even if it means limping downstairs to freeze, he probably –

Flynn’s progressively more panicked rounds of self-recrimination are finally interrupted by Lucy opening the door and emerging from the bathroom, pink-cheeked and damp-haired, wearing one of the nightgowns from the wardrobe. She looks at him a little shyly. “There might be some hot water left in the boiler. I don’t think you could have a proper bath with your bandages, but I could find a sponge or a handkerchief.”

Some removal of his exoskeleton of filth sounds nice, even as Flynn is briefly unsure if she’s implying that she should wash him, and doesn’t respond for fear of choking on his tongue. He finally manages to answer that that would be good, thanks, and hops to the bathroom, waving off her offered assistance. There is a hand towel that he can use to scrub, and he hastily declines her suggestion that she fetch one of the gang from their lodgings a few doors down. He is not having them see him like this, or expected to act as a nursemaid for the boss.

Once the door is shut behind him, Flynn strips off the rest of his ragged clothes, climbs very carefully into the claw-footed tub, and picks up the towel and the bar of rosemary-scented soap. The water is lukewarm rather than hot, but he doesn’t begrudge it to Lucy, and with grunts and curses of pain, he manages to get the most egregious mess off. He has to prop his bandaged leg awkwardly on the rim of the tub to avoid getting it wet, and wonders what exactly Matija did to it, or if it’s a bad idea to go rummaging around trying to find out. He’ll take it not hurting like the son of a bitch for now. Everything else is gravy.

Having finished his makeshift ablutions, Flynn heaves himself painfully out, dries off, and discovers that a folded nightshirt has been left on the shelf. He shrugs into it; it’s slightly too small through the chest and shoulders, and clearly made for a shorter man, so that he feels afraid of inadvertently flashing passersby if he bends over too quickly. Not that anyone is likely to be passing by except Lucy, but flashing her would definitely be mortifying. Among other things.

Flynn opens the door and hobbles out, to discover that Lucy has curled up in the bed in his absence, but seems set to vacate it upon his return. “No,” he says quickly. “No, you can take it. I’ll – ”

“There is no way you’re going to walk downstairs and sleep on the sofa,” Lucy says. “None whatsoever. We’re just cutting that off right there.”

Flynn is miffed that he is apparently predictable, but relieved that he doesn’t have to make the trek down to a cold and empty parlor. Even he doesn’t think he could manage a night on the floor in his present state, so he gimps over and climbs in with a grunt of effort, assisted by Lucy. They end up very close to each other, his hand alongside her thigh and their noses almost brushing, and briefly get lost in the other’s eyes. Her hair has tumbled into her still-flushed face, and his fingers ache with the urge to brush it aside. To run his fingers along the fine bone of her cheek, to cup her chin with his thumb, to curl around her ear and draw her mouth to his. But that would take a determination, a conscious effort, a decision that he does not know if he can make, and he refuses to toy with her or jerk her around. Their gazes remain locked, and he can hear her breath hitch in her throat. It is a small, hungry sound, which seems to suggest that she would not necessarily be averse to what he has just imagined (or more), and it is murder on his self-control. How can she, how can she possibly, have done this for him? It is unfathomable. He has done nothing to deserve it. And yet, heart-shatteringly, unbearably, here she still is.

After an anguished moment more, Flynn pries his eyes off her, moves his hand back, and carefully, slowly lies down on his back. He settles his head on the pillow, letting out a jagged sigh, and after a brief hesitation, glancing at him through lowered lashes, Lucy lies down as well, curling herself into his side and nuzzling into the crook of his shoulder, the way they slept that night in St. Petersburg. She doesn’t ask permission, not that it would once occur to him to refuse her, and he wraps his arm instinctively around her. She lowers her head, and rests on his chest.

At that, Garcia Flynn’s fragile heart almost breaks altogether. He wants to take this moment and put it in glass, somewhere small and perfect and remote from the rest of the world, from all of time and eternity, and keep it safe. He knows it beyond all dispute, it slashes him like a knife, and only incidentally less painful. He loves, he loves, he loves, he loves her, and he can never let her go. Unless she asks, unless she tells him to, and if so, somehow, he will have to find the strength to watch her get into her machine, however she came to this reality in the first place, and leave it forever.

(He can’t, he can’t, he can’t. His heart and his head flee wildly from even the possibility of imagining it. And yet. He has always known she would not stay. Could not.)

Lucy closes her eyes, the exhaustion swiftly pulling her under. Flynn is just as tired, and yet he feels tempted to stay awake a little longer, to look at her like this, boneless and utterly trusting and fast asleep in his arms. He shifts a bit to be able to hold her with both, tugging her closer against him. When he is absolutely sure that she is soundly out and will not stir, he brushes the lightest, most gentle of kisses against her tangled hair, the soft skin of her temple and her cheek, and hopes they may stay there as an offering. God. His heart shakes.

Something drifts past the window, outside. Something neither snow, nor wind, nor passing traveler of the night. It fills Flynn with something closer to foreboding than relief, something more terror than gratitude. For he knows very well, as he has all along, that it was a raven.

#timeless #timeless ff #lucy x flynn #garcy #garcy ff #starlight & strange magic #steampunk au #and the people said Welp

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sheusedtobesassier · 3 years ago

Text

Day 10,785

172 days until I hit my thirties.

So. An assortment of 172 good memories from my twenties.

001. Addey hype mumbo jumbo singing along with Moana before she was really talking.

002. Being asked to say the big thank you at SOE graduation.

003. Isaac’s face when he peeked at Omar’s new shoes at the East Towne Starbucks.

004. Drinking Mike’s honey moonshine while we played Euchre in his starry cicada humming backyard.

005. Taking Mama on the water taxi rides when she visited me in Chicago.

006. Grandma Kathy calling me, “My pink haired granddaughter.”

007. Sneaking into camp with the Hines girls to write up collaboration glass bottle poems in the Prayer Chapel.

008. The slow and steady hike up to the Hollywood sign.

009. The night I kidnapped Mini Farm kittens to snuggle for a movie and accidentally left the gate open releasing the rest to the Wisconsin wild.

010. Sunday afternoon sipping Stella Artois in the perfect sunny front room of our Albany Park apartment.

011. Zoë giving me all her wallet cash so I could buy bare minimum groceries.

012. Taking turns reading The History of Love aloud in our Winter Staff Forest Springs apartment.

013. The Halloween/Hillside round of Murder in the Dark with All Stars only.

014. Acting a fool in the unfinished Lodge room filled from floor to ceiling with Tempur-Pedic mattresses.

015. Doug lounging in the giant crate of laundry bags in the laundry room.

016. GUBS INSIDE JOKES.

017. St. Patrick’s Day 2021, hahaha.

018. Beyoncé: Lemonade in the empty downstairs apartment with Mary.

019. Accidentally getting kayak drunk from a backpack bottle of Ménage à Trois.

020. Daylight skinny dipping with Amber to inaugurate the new pool.

021. The perfect stray cat that came around the second half of 2018.

022. Renate being the first to cry with me post breakup. Bill supplying sparkling water to prevent dehydration.

023. Doing drag makeup in Bekah’s bathroom while her and Marissa giggled at each other in the tub.

024. Every kitchen island conversation I’ve ever had with Steve Hines.

025. The perfect colors the night we snuck up on the helicopter landing pad on that Dallas hotel.

026. FACILITATING THAT SAME WEEKEND’S GAME OF ASSASSIN, BEFORE IT GOT UGLY.

027. Becoming buddies with all four Williams brothers.

028. When Mercy told me I’m her favorite Williams brother.

029. Hahaha the Camp Clean Up I put Elliot on my crew for my own amusement and told him his only responsibility was to walk around with me the whole time.

030. The time Blaine and I were avoiding the long lunch line together and Nimanim was like, “Wait so this is like an actual friendship huh?”

031. Tanner enthusiastically reenacting Gandalf’s YOU SHALL NOT PASS as I came up the path.

032. Will realizing I’d Facebook stalked him without sending a friend request.

033. Magically finding Pop Rocks the morning of my perfect 22nd birthday.

034. My perfect 26th birthday weekend in Minneapolis with my dreamy local girl gang.

035. Tauri’s blossoms on the Sky Lodge trees in the spring.

036. Encountering and becoming completely enthralled by the Enneagram.

037. OLIVIA FUCKING GATWOOD APPRECIATING MY PINK HAIR.

038. Clementine von Radic writing that Greyhound always loses her luggage too.

039. My stretch of obsession with Hemingway’s love interests.

040. Becoming friends with Fat Boy Tucker pup.

041. Becoming friends with rescued best dog Star girl.

042. The night Doug was my ride from the airport and he pulled his truck over so we could take a good look at the gigantic moon.

043. That hilarious flirtatious moonlight wander of the horse trails with Omar and Edith and Caleb.

044. Jake Nelson giving me a surprise scoop of chocolate custard as a peace offering after his grumpy bedtime attitude.

045. THE DISCOVERY AND CAPTIVATION OF HADESTOWN.

046. Getting to have Alia in every day for a while there.

047. Les Mis at Overture Center because Ally bought our family tickets.

048. Pat Coakley telling me I don’t know how special I am.

049. Spit handshake with Janelle swearing we’ll never think any boys are cooler than we are.

050. Marissa picking me up without explanation to take us on a quiet sunset drive of her favorite county road.

051. Jayden imagination playing with Blue, Guy, and a motorcycle for a whole night then waking me up with them the next morning.

052. Genevieve asking to borrow my lavender romper for her rehearsal dinner.

053. Getting to be Cali’s sidekick the week leading up to her wedding extravaganza.

054. Houston YMCA hallway phone call from Justin’s dorm room asking me clarify which of the boys was Nick, Schmidt, and Winston.

055. The absolutely ludicrous old woman I got drunk with in the Amtrak dining car.

056. The absolute ludicrous glass skull light up cocktail I drank at Freehand’s hotel bar.

057. When Dan Hartke told me I’m a mother hen.

058. When the most beautiful Sora from Korea told me, “You always flowers.”

059. Hannah’s hand me down Steve Madden sandals.

060. Runaway trips with Amber Bamber to watch Shakespeare in the woods.

061. Storytelling with Jack Thomas.

062. Drunk bar darts after Corn Fest with Marissa’s gang.

063. Leaving the reception with Emmy to go curl up in Amber’s bed and giggle about how it was the last place she slept as a virgin.

064. The night Riana and Zoe and I took turns putting our heads out the car windows to howl like wolves.

065. Falling asleep on the couch with Zelina and Chelle beer buzzed watching Jersey Shore.

066. That perfect little basement Thai place a couple blocks from Emmy’s apartment dorm.

067. When Dan forced me to get out of his car and left because I’d annoyed him too hard on our library trip.

068. Vicki suggesting we go live together overseas.

069. Depop photoshoot with Taurilyn.

070. Mykenza bluntly declaring true things I couldn’t confirm or deny.

071. Norm announcing to the full room he was teaching that I was a rascal.

072. Zochella.

073. Noah Gundersen and Brett Dennen at The Majestic.

074. Every damn time we ate beautiful food at High Rock Cafe.

075. The nights I felt capable at TOCHI.

076. LENA DUNHAM’S GIRLS.

077. Jordan suddenly ballroom dancing Genevieve around the kitchen.

078. Staying up late crying to my mom about trying to take good care of the lesbian teenagers at Sky Lodge.

079. The night Caleb very suddenly showed up with a bowl of sangria then tried to leave a dozen times but we convinced him to stay.

080. Rachel swearing that the man in the Wrigleyville bookshop had love at first sighted me.

081. Making the list of how many musicals I’ve been affected by.

082. Discovering weirdo La Llamada then driving straight to Carlsons’s to immediately watch it again with them.

083. Writing heartfelt correspondence back and forth with Kat for a few years.

084. All the funky cards I’ve received from Amber.

085. Finding that PERFECT dress at Goodwill for Tauri’s Winter Ball.

086. An actual friendship with Paul Bierdeman.

087. COUNSELOR MEETINGS.

088. The night Emily Holverson and I stood outside the Lodge trading sincerity about Sky Lodge and the complications of ministry.

089. Blunt conversations with Josiah, hahaha.

090. The Lower Lakeview round of Murder in the Dark when I killed every single person playing before anyone could call, “Dead body!”

091. When I suddenly caught him listening to my singing in the tunnel.

092. Putting together outfits from Lolita’s wardrobe.

093. Driving into such an unexpectedly lush part of Missouri.

094. A nighttime surprise of Big Ben and The London Eye and Buckingham Palace and St James Park in the falling snow.

095. MY PERFECT ABODE IN ST. LOUIS, MO.

096. OUR PERFECT ABODE IN ALBUQUERQUE, NM.

097. Becoming one of Steve’s best friends.

098. The evening Elorine and I didn’t go with and REALLY talked.

099. THE UNDENIABLE INHERENT GOODNESS OF MERRY’S KIDS.

100. Farrell’s crying apology on the sidewalk outside of Maple.

101. Alex’s irregular sudden extreme compliments.

102. The females I’m close with over the internet due to mutual admiration.

103. Lars from Hinge, hahaha.

104. Sitting at the end of a long table with Janelle making a napkin list of our all time favorite manic pixie dream girls.

105. The handful of LotR marathons we’ve accomplished.

106. When Kat told me she understood the Harry Styles crush but that maybe he wasn’t right for me.

107. Reading so many Donald Miller books and getting others to read them too.

108. Kisses on the cheek from Esther.

109. Getting raspberries for Mike’s turtles as an apology for making death threats.

110. Tipsy dancing alone with my eyes closed for like a hundred songs at Sheryl’s Club on New Years 2021.

111. The flattering comparison to the wonderful Harley Duke.

112. Aw omg, our happy hammock stacks at Observatory Hill.

113. Telling slumber party stories on stage for Women’s Retreat.

114. BEING THE MIME FOR LIFE GROUP’S FAVORITE.

115. Fatigued watching The Kissing Booth and laughing harder than ever.

116. Spastic goofing around with Ashley AND Brittany the day we moved Amber into her new home.

117. Sitting on my closet floor showing crying Riana baby videos of singing piano playing Janelle.

118. Giggle running through Piggly Wiggly parking lot at closing with Rene with like $400 of alcohol on Ally’s birthday.

119. Fireball shots ALL NIGHT with Jeremiah and his uncle on Christmas Eve.

120. Listening to the delicious details of Emmy’s Europe romance.

121. Zion giving me his Adidas crewneck as sentimental goodbye gift.

122. Arguing with Austin over our differing zombie apocalypse ideologies.

123. Drunk Discord/Among Us with Hunter and Bekah and Nick and Marissa.

124. How soft Kenny’s absurd speeches made my heart.

125. MINUTE LONG VOICE MEMOS STACKS WITH ROSIE. ♡♡

126. Listening to Lizzy McAlpine in an afternoon candlelight bath.

127. Listening through John Mayer’s The Search for Everything mowing the ball field.

128. Emotionally painting my old house in Birmingham.

129. Being really damn good at that Heads Up game with Omar.

130. Compiling worthwhile stuff for Foreman training.

131. GROWING MY PLANTS.

132. The stretch when Bryanna was usually wrapped in my blanket.

133. Talking about going to Colorado with Alex.

134. The notorious reputation of knowing everybody at CCCA.

135. GETTING ALL DRESSED UP FOR DINNER THEATER.

136. Calling Ally from a parking lot at Emmy’s bachelorette party because I was SO CONFIDENT I was a hot person that I had to talk to her about it.

137. Playing the stupidest laughingest game of The Floor Is Lava with Jackson when I came to visit them all in Dallas.

138. Feeling really really really at home in my apartment at Sky Lodge.

139. How Ryan Boon would struggle to talk through his laughter.

140. Belonging to myself at Fiddleheads Coffee in Cedarburg.

141. THE UNDENIABLE IMMEDIATE CHEMISTRY BETWEEN ME AND COURTNEY HART.

142. Big Falls County Park. Every time.

143. Kayaking down Blue River with Duke, Jeremiah and Addey, Hunter, and Hunter’s friend.

144. That perfect burger at Pier Burger in Santa Monica.

145. Riding The Brown Line down to The Loop and all the way back up.

146. Aw. Welp. Every lengthy truthful phone call with Sam.

147. The four seasons I was compiling four second videos.

148. Ashley’s and my perfect roommates stretch, featuring our perfect couch.

149. The night we forced so many to come to our Blackfish showing then sign our petition opposing Sea World. Hahaha. #emptythetanks

150. The night Ben and I sat in the corner giddy burning through TriBond cards.

151. The night I showed up at Doug’s and Lueck’s door losing my damn mind over The Dress.

152. Community Soccer at the local elementary school gym.

153. Frigid stranded in the Chequamegon National Forest with Mary and Caleb on our return drive from our nightmare trip to Duluth.

154. The final night of being “cats in a bag” sleeping in Janelle’s bottom bunk.

155. Filling up the broomball courts under a negative degrees meteor shower.

156. Getting another wonderful summertime of Delala.

157. The Sunday service the pastor wouldn’t quit snapping his fingers and a bunch of us were txting each other like, “OMFG NO AHHH HOW DO WE MAKE HIM STOP????”

158. Oomph. The perfect veggie omelette (no cheese) at Sparks.

159. Dad’s soft voicemail about his admiration for Adele.

160. Their neighbor lady Maddie’s outfit for the Christmas cantata and her disappointment with the unfamiliar song selection.

161. Raquel’s completely irresistible fun streak.

162. Listening to folklore with Jayden and the girlies first thing when I woke up every morning for a while there.

163. Going through Met Gala looks cuddled up with Omar.

164. The way it felt reading Anthropology of an American Girl.

165. The giant primary colors crochet blanket mom made for me.

166. Noah scooping me up in that hug in the Waterloo parsonage kitchen.

167. When Omar completely surprised me with what he can do to a piano.

168. Deciding I am a Pinot Grigio girl.

169. Omfg, the Nest Night we intensely debated our way through a Staff Wives wrestling bracket.

170. Dismantling multiple purity talks and dress codes like it’s my calling.

171. Laying on blankets in the middle of many fields in different places for the sake of being very very very very sunkissed.

172. Regularly running into Bill at Kwik Trip.

#personal

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arwaaxxi · 7 years ago

Text

Why me?

Summary- Having Daryl confess his feelings for you, was the only thing you ever wanted in this ruined world. But what happens when Negan shows up and everything changes.

[PART TWO]

[Previous Part] [Next Part]

Characters - Father!RickxReader. DarylxReader. NeganxReader.

Note- it’s going to be a series.

Warnings- Smut in future parts, maybe? Violence. Abuse.

Number of words - 2044

I fucked up

I shouldnt have done this. I shouldnt have done this.

crap, crap, crap!!!!

I’m dead. they will kill me and kill everyone here because of me.

I’m so stupid! thats why dad never lets me do anything.

thats why daryl never noticed me

oh crap, Daryl!

I looked at him from the corner of my eyes.

his eyes were wide. everyone’s eyes was wide.

i had 200 guns pointed at me.

I’m going to get everyone killed.

I should have listened to Gabriel and stayed home.

“Let them go!” I said, trying to hold my grounds. trying to appear strong. keyword- trying!

“Wellll, Helloo there!” Negan said in a singsong voice

“Do you think you are cute? I will blow your brains out!” I said my voice raising. I pressed my gun harder into his head “Now!” I screeched and he raised his hands up in surrender.

“This, is sooo, not cool!” Negan said greeting his teeth.

“I said. LET. THEM. GO!” I said each word dangerously low.

“I say, how about you drop the gun, before someone gets hurt sweetheart?”

“If your men, take another step, from there place, I will seriously blow you all up!” I said, my voice fluttering in the end.

“You will regret this!” Negan said angrily.

“Y/n, drop the gun!” Carl said, his voice wavering with fear

“Y/n, get out of here” Michonne said

“Y/n, please.” Daryl said and thats when I half turned to take a good look at him. he was bleeding, oh god

“Y/N!” Dad’s voice yelled.

Before I could react, Negan had turned, and flipped the gun out of my grasp.

Everything happened fast.

The yelling, the kick I received in my abdomen, my hands being twisted behind my back and my hair getting yanked upwards and my face getting shoved in the ground.

Well, fuck!

“What do we have here!” Negan said as he squatted next to me looking at me.

Someone yanked my head up and now I came face to face with Negan

wow. if this wasn’t the time, i would totally tap that! but he was a maniac. who had my family on their knees and the only thing I’m going to tap, is my knife through his face.

“You are a kid!” Negan said amused

“Depends on your defenation of kid, asshole!” I spat

“Well, i give you A for the effort, sweetheart! but what you did here wasn’t cool, oh so not cool and I cant just stand for it. oh i certainly would not!”

“Just let us go, and we wont kill you!” i hissed at him, and the fucker holding my hair yanked it down and up again. i shut my mouth, trying to not hiss in pain

“Y/n, shut up!” Rick hissed and i rolled my eyes

“I dont think you realise who has the upper hand here, sweetheart.” Negan smirked

“Well how about you tell your minions to let me go and give me back my gun and we will see about that, asshole!” I snapped at him

“Y/n!” Daryl warned

Whats wrong with everyone, why is no one fighting. is this our end?

“I like your spirt!” Negan chuckled “Get her in line, with the rest!” Negan said and in a second i was yanked up and thrown in line next to Dayl

“What the hell were you thinking?” Daryl hissed at me, as he gave me a deadly glare

“You’re welcome!” i snapped back

“So what was I saying before I got interrupted?” Negan asked

“Picking who gets the honor.” A guy, with his hair combed back spoke

“Right!” Negan chuckled “I gotta say, this shit is hard!” he said as he started walking

Oh no. he was going to Carl, not Carl, dont you dare.

“You got one of our guns!” he told him as he kneeled in front of him “Lighten up, at least cry a little” he chuckled

“Leave him alone!” I said annoyed and some one hit my back with a gun

i fell on my face, fuck this was embarssing.

i looked up and it was the half burnt face dude, what was his name again? Elite? Blite? Dwight?

Dwight!

“Sweetheart, next time you cut me off, I’m going to do something you wont like!” Negan glared at me and i scoffed

“Next time you call me sweetheart, I’m going to do something you wont like. you know what, coming to think about it, I’m going to do something you dont like just to piss you off” I glared back at him and he smirked

what the hell?

why is this bastard smirking? I’m bloody serious!

he ignored me and went to Maggie

oh no, not Maggie

i turned to Glen, he was freaking out!

shit, shit shit

i showed have kept my mouth shut

if he hurts her because of me? oh god no

“You look like shit! let’s just keep you out of your misery right now!” he said as he raised his bat, swinging it. I closed my eyes shut, tight. I cant see this

“NO, GOD, NO!” Glen’s voice made me snap my eyes open

he has crossed to Maggie, lying in front of her. Dwight the fucking asshole was standing above him, with Daryl’s crossbow.

I’m going to get that crossbow back, and i will burn Dwight and Negan together at the stake, like they do to witches

Negan rubbed his jaw, his face turning serious “Nope, no! get him back in line!” he said annoyed, Dwight dragged Glen back, glen was whimpering.

“No, please no..” Glen sobbed

“Listen” Negan said “Dont anyyyy of ya, do that again!” he said as he swung the bat in front of everyone “I will shut that shit down! no exceptions! first ones free, its an emotional moment” he said “I get it!” he said cheerfully, flashing Glen, a hundred dollar smile.

what a fucking maniac!

Rick was sweating, his eyes tearing up. Maggie was swallowing her pain. Glen was sobbing. Eugene was terrified. Daryl was bleeding. Rosita didnt seem to register what was going on

And just now, it hit me. this might be our end.

i could be cocky and try to get his attention to keep him away from everyone else, as much as i wanted. but it wouldnt make a diffrence. we all were dead

he walked to Carl, oh no, please not again. kill me first before you touch anyone, please.

“He is your kid? right?” he said pointing at Carl. looking at Rick thoughtfully and then looking at Carl again, before turning to me “She is yours too!” he snickered. crap! “They are defiantly your kids!”

“So stop this!” Rick yelled

“Hey!” Negan yelled equally loud.

Fuck!

“Dont let me kill the little future serial killer, dont let it be easy on me!” Negan said pointing at Carl before turning to me and winking

what?

what just happened

“I gotta pick somebody! everyone is waiting for me at the table waiting for me to order!” he said as he started walking and whistling

how is he even this calm

“I got an idea!” he jumped excited. like he lost something and suddenly found it.

I’m going to kill this son of a bitch.

“Enie, Menie, Minii, Mo” he sang

WHAT THE FUCK

IS HE SERIOUS

Everything happened so fast, Negan choosing his victim, my hands shaking, my body stiffening, i wanted it to be me. i tried to speak, tried to volunteer, but I couldn’t find my voice, just Daryl’s hand holding mine tightly

“Anyone moves, anyone says anything, cut the boy’s other eye out and feed it to his father!” he smiled. he is sick. disguesting. I dispise him “And then we’ll start! you can breath, you can blink, you can cry. hell you all will be doing that!”

he said as he smashed the bat in Abraham’s head

I couldn’t turn, i couldn’t shut my eyes. I saw everything happen in front of me.

Abraham stood his grounds, not like he just got hit by a bat, through his brain.

Abraham is like my big brother, he thought me how to fix cars. he shared with me his secretes, his conflict emotions, his love for Sasha and the guilt he felt for leaving Rosita. Abraham is my big brother.

Everything started so fast, but Negan smashing Abraham’s skull went so slow, i saw it in slow motion, as if the universe was laughing at me, taunting me. I couldn’t breath. i tried to move but Daryl gripped my hand tight.

Michonne was the only person between me and Abraham, Michonne was the only barrier between us. Michonne do something. someone do somthing.

Sasha was whimpering, Rick was shivering. Rosita was crying.

Abraham was smiling softly.

he accepted this

i didnt accept this

“Oh look at that!” Negan’s voice echoed. Rick turned his face “Taking it like a champ!” he whistled. no…

“Suck… my… nuts!” Abraham’s chocked words came out

Negan swung again, and again, and again, and again.

“Did you hear that!” Negan laughed “He said suck my nuts!” he repeated as he started hitting a dead corpse.

Abraham was my big brother.

Rick tried to get up, but his legs seemed to fail him

Maggie was shivering.

Eugene was crying big fat tears.

“Guys! look at my dirty, gurl!” Negan smirked

He walked towards Rosita, and i felt Daryl stiffen next to me.

he pointed the bat towards Rosita “Look at this!! he smiled "Damn! were you two together? that sucks! but if you were, you should know there was a reason for all this, he just took six or seven for the team!” he yelled the last part and I could feel Daryl shift next to me, letting my hand go.

oh Daryl, I wont let you.

“Take a damn look!” he said “TAKE A DAMN LOOK!” he yelled making Rosita flinch.

Before Daryl could move, i shoved him back, and jumped on Negan, swinging my fist at his face.

if someone else was going to die today, it wont be you, Daryl. i wont let it ever be you.

I reached for my leg knife as i pulled it out as fast as i could, trying to stab Negan, but he pushed me off of him as easy as you shoved a book.

Two men shoved me to the ground, one of them stood on my hand, crushing it under his weight, making me let go of my knife. I’m ready to die, just leave Daryl alone.

“NO!” Negan yelled as he shoved the bat right in front of my face “Oh, no!” I could hear Daryl curse, I could see Rick’s tears fall, I could see Carl fall back scared, I smiled at him. its okay little brother. take care of Judith.

I sent my silent prayer to anyone who is listening

Negan walked away from me laughing

“Oh my! That!” he said smiling at me “That” he repeated as he squatted next to me, just like he did before as his men shoved my face in the dirt "Is a no, no! The whole thing, not one bit of that shit flies here!“ one of his men moved away and Dwight approched me with Daryl’s crossbow, pointing it at me

"Do you want me to do it? right here?” he asked Negan.

“I’m going to kill you, and take that back!” I spat at him and he pointed it towards me head, Negan chuckled.

He took my hair in his rough big hands as he yanked it, not so hardly up. studying my face he looked back at Dwight

“No” he smiled, and i could see that this bastard has dimples

cause god went like, ‘Sure why not make a crazy phsyco manic, hot. wait lets give him dimples for extra measures, so that if his gun runs out of bullet he can kill with his bloody looks’ yeah thanks god!

“You dont kill that! not until you try a little” he said, what? he wont kill me? why?

His fucking men dragged me back in line, tossed me like i weight nothing.

i will have to eat more

“Anyway, thats not how it works, now i have already told you people first one is free! and when i said i will shut that shit down! no exception!” he said as he walked towards us, shooting me a gloating smile “Now i dont know what kind of lying assholes you have been dealing with but first impressions are important” he said as he stared at me for a couple of seconds before he turned his gaze away “I need you to know me” he smiled as he raised his bat in front of him, smiling evilly “So, back to it!” he said as he swung his bat.

he hit Glen

Maggie screamed

My eyes were open, wide

“Maggie….” Glen chocked

Negan made a remark but i didnt listen. I did this. i killed Glen

“I will find…. you” Glen chocked out

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hells-mansion · 8 years ago

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And, in that slow-mo shot, we can actually see Mr. Satan’s skull being crushed and his brains getting squashed~

#Toonami

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clan-fuildarach · 8 years ago

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birb story chapter 7

i actually forgot to post a chapter yesterday whoops. anyway have some exposition

Westport looked almost exactly how she remembered it. She'd arrived there on the train, fresh from Dublin, her bags packed full of her archaeology notes and textbooks. It was small, compared to Dublin and Galway, anyway, and very pretty, flowers bursting from each street corner and from above the rafters of the picturesque pubs. It glowed brightly, music spilling from the open doorways of trad bars and from the windows of the sleep spa hotels.

Her hood up to hide her face, Nuala strode down the side of the tree-lined canal. Since the car belonged to a dead woman and was covered with occult bloody symbols, she'd decided to dump it before actually entering the city, abandoning it in a small stand of elderflower trees.

A laughing couple strode past on the pavement beside her. One tossed a beer can into the canal with a lazy flick of the hand. Nuala glared at his back as she passed, her own sore, cut up hands balling into fists in her pockets.

Shadowy movement on the nearest roof made her glance around, her heart pounding. But it was only Nit, moving with as much stealth as it could with both wings out. Apparently, balancing with only one wing was difficult. As she watched, it pressed itself into the shadows under a bank of chimneys, only its pale horns visible.

Neither of them knew how far exactly they could move apart before whatever shielding protection their connection granted faded away. In the compound, Nuala had rambled all over the bogs without worry, but that was before Nit had woken up. Presumably, things were different now.

The city seemed strange in the dark, the streets shorter or longer than she remembered. She stuck to the well-lit avenues, trying to navigate to the bus station while only really half-remembering where it was.

Nit kept pace with her on the rooftops. It moved mostly in silence, apart from the times it had to brave a wide jump from one roof to the next. The clatter of wings always made Nuala glance around in alarm, terrified that somehow Nit was being attacked.

It seemed incredible, but they made it to the bus station without being attacked or accosted. And, even better, they arrived just in time to catch the final bus to Galway. Nuala ran for it, terrified that it would leave before she bought a ticket, and pounded on the door.

With a soft hiss, the door slid open. The bus driver watched her expectantly.

It was a good thing she'd chosen to swap her own rain coat for one of the ones she'd found in the back of Emily's minivan. Only a faint smudge of soot on the side of Nuala's face betrayed what she'd been through earlier that day.

She passed over the money, grabbed her ticket, and chose a seat. There were plenty available – apparently, the midnight bus to Galway wasn't exactly popular. As she settled into a seat, she heard the dull clatter, and the faint thud on the roof overhead. Hopefully, Nit would find something secure to hang onto on the roof during the journey.

As the bus pulled out of the station, and a pleasant gloom filled the warm cabin, Nuala finally allowed herself to relax. She stretched out her arms, wincing as cuts pulled tight all over her body. Closing her eyes, she settled back in the soft seat, suddenly completely exhausted.

She dreamed about the forest again. Trees taller than most buildings stretched up to the sky, leaves of the canopy rustling and drifting like clouds. The gentle, earthy smell of leaf mould pervaded the air.

Her hands stretched out, brushing the curling fern fronds. As the wind picked up, slow but powerful under the canopy, the fronds dipped and bowed. She smiled. It was nice.

Strangely quiet, though. She glanced around, her eyebrows rising slightly. Where were the birds, the wildlife? The entire place was silent, apart from a very distant and familiar clatter of wings, like a wood-pigeon taking off from the branches overhead, and the deep hum of a bumblebee.

The hum cut off. Nuala turned just in time to see a sapling explode open. An enormous creature smashed through, pulling its wings in close to avoid clipping the nearby trees. It was a blur of tawny bars and stripes with a white underside, its hands and feet bare of feathers. They were bright yellow, like the feet of an eagle, and the talons were huge and black, cruelly curved. Its face was brown and dappled, its eyes huge and acid-yellow. Its horns were like the ears of an eagle owl, feathered points.

Clutched tightly in one of its hands was the arm of a much smaller creature, one that struggled and tried to pull away. Compared to the tawny monster, this one was much smaller, maybe about six feet tall, cloaked in neat, sea-green, scale-like semicircular feathers that flashed with a brilliant iridescence. The smaller creature's wings were crushed behind it, against the larger creature's front, and its dark face was contorted with pain.

Coming to a shuddering halt, the larger creature hurled the smaller one at the ground. It spoke in a low growling voice, in a language that Nuala definitely did not understand. Somehow, though, she knew what it meant.

“You sold us out!” the large creature snarled, flicking away the scraps of iridescent feathers that had caught in its hand scales.

The smaller of the two struggled to sit up, gasping. Its wings still looked odd and bent. Up close, Nuala realised, the creature was absolutely beautiful. Its body was brilliant turquoise, patterned with cream lines and large orange-red spots, like the eye-spots on a butterfly's wing. Its skin was greenish blue, its eyes sharp and red. It had four ears, for some reason, each sticking out from its head at a slightly different angle. Compared to Nit, Haamiath, and the enormous owlish monster in front of it, the brightly coloured demon's wingspan was minuscule, less than fourteen feet.

The feathers of its arm were dark and matted with vivid green blood.

“It wasn't me, Mizrael!” it cried out, scrambling backwards as the larger creature advanced threateningly.

“Then who? The humans are killing us with this new knowledge, and they didn't learn it on their own.” Mizrael kicked a clump of broken wood aside, its wings flaring furiously.

“I don't know,” the smaller demon said. “I don't, I promise. But, um... I think I saw Nithanael talking to Mac Tíre-”

Mizrael froze. Its eyes widened. “Nithanael?” it said slowly. “What did you see, Hakamiath? Tell me or I'll tear your worthless wings out.”

Hakamiath swallowed, its ears flicking nervously. “She was gathering reeds and baking them. Nithanael was with her, I think it was eating something.”

Mizrael drew itself up to its full height, which was roughly eight feet. It glanced sharply away, through the trees. “Of course. That creature would do anything for human food, even betray its own kind.” It spoke of food as if eating was a worthless, foreign concept.

A loud thrumming buzz filled the clearing, a thousand times louder than any bumblebee. Hakamiath's wings were beating. The feathers a blur, it used the lift to struggle up to its feet. Its wings shimmered back into the visible spectrum, and the thrumming faded away.

“We need to kill Mac Tíre,” Mizrael said.

“It's too late,” Hakamiath said. “She has probably sold the secrets to every prophet in the world, future and present. We can't retrieve that knowledge.”

Mizrael's eyes blazed. “You coward. So you think we should surrender? She. Will. Kill. Us. And she'll teach every other human to do it, too.”

Hakamiath hesitated, clearly unwilling to disagree with Mizrael any further. “I suppose. What will you do about it?”

“What will we do about it, you mean,” Mizrael said, turning around. Its wings ruffled and flared, but with the trees so close it hadn't a hope of taking off. Hakamiath, on the other hand, was small enough to fly in the forest. Like an enormous, gleaming dragonfly, it lifted off and hovered for a moment before settling down on a nearby branch, level with Mizrael's head. It watched Mizrael expectantly, a greenish pallor settling on its face.

“We can't allow the humans to spread this knowledge any further,” Mizrael said. “So maybe it's time the entire wretched species went extinct. They've had their time in the sunlight, and now they think Eden belongs to them.”

A new voice called through the forest, carried by the rustle of leaves and wind. Both demons turned.

Mac Tíre was so small, compared even to Hakamiath. She was about five foot three, Nuala's modest height, and wreath of twigs wrapped around her head like a crown. Her face was hidden by her skull mask, though this time the skull had been painted with some kind of magic circle, in the middle of its forehead. Her shoulders were cloaked with grey wolf fur. Scabs and cuts ran down the light brown skin of her bare arms, some still oozing blood.

She leant against a tree trunk, watching the pair of demons. But when she spoke, Nuala didn't understand, even though she spoke the same language as Mizrael and Hakamiath.

Whatever it was that she said, it must have been pretty incisive. Mizrael rounded on her with a roar, baring its fangs. Hakamiath leant away, shocked.

Mac Tíre waved her hands, her voice rising mockingly. Her thumb moved to one of the bleeding cuts on her wrist. Slowly, with exaggerated movements, she drew a blood circle onto the tree trunk.

Mizrael seethed. It surged forwards, its deadly talons outstretched.

Mac Tíre stood aside, and the enormous creature missed its first strike. She drew another stroke into the circle, twisting symbols that Nuala struggled to memorise. Mizrael reached for her with a hand larger than her head. Nuala almost cried out, unable to look away.

Just at the last moment, Mac Tíre spread blood over her palm and thrust her hand at the circle. She sidestepped just in time – and Mizrael's hand smashed through the tree, destroying the circle.

Mizrael fell to its knees. Red-brown blood exploded from its abdomen and sprayed from its mouth. An enormous wound, so huge it all but ripped the demon in half, opened up in its torso. Mizrael crumpled.

Mac Tíre turned away, dismissively, and faced Hakamiath.

The hummingbird demon was already in the air, the tip of its glittering tail vanishing through the trees. Mac Tíre licked blood off her palms, then reached down. A wolf trotted out from the undergrowth and nudged at her hand, giving it a curious lick. It sniffed at Mizrael's lifeless body and backed away, growling.

Mac Tíre turned. She faced Nuala. Stared straight at her. Then, beckoning to her wolf, she turned and vanished into the undergrowth.

#birb story 2017

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