#and matthew is...well. he's not entirely ''supposed'' to be there but friend of a family leveraged a connection.

[the-everqueen]

have i thought about a serious 1920s corimatt human au where the corinthian is dream's troublesome ward and matthew is the new visitor/tutor/secretary of the estate who gradually falls for him? of course i have, i saw assad zaman in the gifs of hotel portofino like all of you.

[spirits-having-flown]

“matthew, it is with heavy heart i say goodbye. the times we had together are honestly among the favorite times of my life. it was an honor to share the stage with you and to call you my friend. i will always smile when i think of you and i’ll never forget you. never. spread your wings and fly brother, you’re finally free. much love. and i guess you’re keeping the 20 bucks you owe me.” - matt leblanc

“i am so grateful for every moment i had with you matty and i miss you every day. when you work with someone as closely as i did with matthew, there are thousands of moments i wish i could share. for now here's one of my favorites. to give a little backstory, chandler and monica were supposed to have a one night fling in london. but because of the audience's reaction, it became the beginning of their love story. in this scene, before we started rolling, he whispered a funny line for me to say. he often did things like that. he was funny and he was kind. 🤍🕊️" - courteney cox

“oh boy this one has cut deep... having to say goodbye to our matty has been an insane wave of emotions that i've never experienced before. we all experience loss at some point in our lives. loss of life or loss of love. being able to really sit in this grief allows you to feel the moments of joy and gratitude for having loved someone that deep. and we loved him deeply. he was such a part of our dna. we were always the 6 of us. this was a chosen family that forever changed the course of who we were and what our path was going to be. for matty, he knew he loved to make people laugh. as he said himself, if he didn't hear the 'laugh' he thought he was going to die. his life literally depended on it. and boy did he succeed in doing just that. he made all of us laugh. and laugh hard. in the last couple weeks, i've been pouring over our texts to one another. laughing and crying then laughing again. i'll keep them forever and ever. i found one text that he sent me out of nowhere one day. it says it all. matty, i love you so much and i know you are now completely at peace and out of any pain. i talk to you every day... sometimes i can almost hear you saying "could you BE any crazier?" rest little brother. you always made my day... ❤️🕊️” - jennifer aniston

“matty, thank you for ten incredible years of laughter and creativity. i will never forget your impeccable comic timing and delivery. you could take a straight line of dialogue and bend it to your will, resulting in something so entirely original and unexpectedly funny it still astonishes. and you had heart. which you were generous with, and shared with us, so we could create a family out of six strangers. this photo is from one of my favorite moments with you. now it makes me smile and grieve at the same time. i imagine you up there, somewhere, in the same white suit, hands in your pockets, looking around— "Could there BE any more clouds?” “ - david schwimmer

“shot the pilot, friends like us, got picked up then immediately, we were at the nbc upfronts. then... you suggested we play poker and made it so much fun while we initially bonded. thank you for that. thank you for making me laugh so hard at something you said, that my muscles ached, and tears poured down my face every day. thank you for your open heart in a six way relationship that required compromise. and a lot of "talking." thank you for showing up at work when you weren't well and then, being completely brilliant. thank you for the best 10 years a person gets to have. thank you for trusting me. thank you for all I learned about grace and love through knowing you. thank you for the time i got to have with you, matthew.” - lisa kudrow

friends cast remembers matthew perry 🤍🕊️

[confusedraven1]

i absolutely love that jim is the one to keep the heart of stede’s crew alive while ed did everything he could to destroy it.

one of the first comments ed makes to stede’s crew in season 1 is “everyone’s covered in rope!” so what does jim do? literally covers themself in rope, to remind ed that, as long as they’re alive, that hope and love isn’t going anywhere.

not only that, but, in the bible, rope is a symbolism for trust and security. jim became a secure place for the crew to tie themselves to while just trying to stay alive.

of course, i then had to look into why they have a fishing net around their shoulders as well, and found The Fishing Net Parable from the Book of Matthew (13:47-52):

"Once again, the kingdom of heaven is like a net that was let down into the lake and caught all kinds of fish. When it was full, the fishermen pulled it up on the shore. Then they sat down and collected the good fish in baskets, but threw the bad away.”

“This is how it will be at the end of the age. The angels will come and separate the wicked from the righteous and throw them into the fiery furnace, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”

jim amputates izzy’s leg, despite having never done it before. they quite literally separate him from the rotten bits to save his life.

jim says, “he was your friend.” they separate ed from who he was before from who he’s allowed himself to become, not to punish him, but to remind him of the consequences of his actions.

jim tells izzy point blank, “you’re in an unhealthy relationship with blackbeard.” they aren’t trying to break them up; they’re just bringing to light whats true so things can (hopefully) get better.

jim shows archie that, just because pirating is normally done a certain way, doesn’t mean it has to—they separate archie from the toxic belief that “that’s just how things are, it’s just life,” and “why save him if he’s a dick?”

jim tries to separate the idea from the crew that ed is fine, because they immediately recognize that things are about to get much worse: “so, do we think he’s better?” “FUCK no!”

jim immediately says, “wasn’t the wedding thing a bit over the line?” they know they’re all pirates and have questionable morals anyway, but knows it was fucked up of them to massacre a wedding, an event that’s supposed to be joyful and full of life and beginnings, not death and destruction. they’re, again, dividing up the way things are vs. how they could (and should) be.

ed tries to pin them all dying on jim cause they wouldn’t kill archie, but they bite back with, “you would’ve done it anyway!” they know exactly where the lies are, and separates them from the truth, and ed can’t deny it.

jim separates themself (and olu) from the bounds of monogamy through their honesty. olu is still their best friend and lover and family even though they found and did things with someone else.

jim holds out their hand for olu to take when they’re escaping the red flag. olu’s interest in zheng yi sao isn’t bad and jim’s not trying to separate them, but is trying to keep together the things that are good: their family.

(later addition, edit) jim is also the one that “kills” ed. they’re the one to make that final choice, to say, “it’s you or us.” jim’s actions and choices entire first two episodes led them to that moment, like it was the “final judgment” of blackbeard.

jim is the rope and net of the crew. they’re trust and security and honesty, everything that stede was trying to get the crew to understand from day 1, everything stede is always trying to embody (and i dare say is starting to succeed at).

[annieqattheperipheral]

tw: grieving

I keep getting waves of omg he's really gone. Like really really. We know there are going to be a lot of pregame tributes but like how you gonna do that and then expect anyone to do their jobs after without the entire arena from fans to teams to staff erupting in tears, times 32 rinks across the continent and probably flames and cbj's ahl teams and other teams too. agh. Grieving is so much. I'm glad we have our supports here with each other. Whenever i need to let something out i might post here (always tagging so you can step away, filter if you ever need to knowing what you can or can't handle that day).

It's important to me that i try to grieve as healthily as possible. When my best friend/cousin passed 3yrs ago (not covid) my unhealthy family was and is not open (stigma? suicide? accidental od? medical issue?) and made it impossible for me to mourn her properly ("don't cry. pray." and other such unhelpful advice and actions). So then when another friend passed 7 months later (not covid) i leaned hard on her family's wonderful family and friends to finally process. They were so open with what happened, how they were feeling, and completely welcomed me into every stage of mourning and then celebrating her life. It was transformational to experience a family like that.

And so when johnny and matty's spouses each posted about their husbands this weekend.. i was amazed. And happy. I mean as i could be. Because it meant that they were being taken care of, they were supported so well they had no inclination of going inward and isolating. (I mean i withdrew so hard after i hit so many blocks with my family. I didn't post until a month later, informing so many ppl in my life.) Instead the gaudreaus were so open and sharing and that filled me with so much awe of the love and care within their family. Johnny and matty were so . well . loved.

Matthew Tkachuk is one of the few players i keep notif on for and he was the one i learned the news from and every time he posts he proves yet again how incredible his family is, that he is being taken care of as well. That's a guy who has let us into his grief and i can't thank him and other players posting enough, that it's not radio silence. That we're sharing in this pain. Incredibly grateful.

I still struggle a lot and I'm certainly not who i was before i lost two important ppl in my life, exactly my age, far too young, ppl i grew up with and was supposed to grow old with. but i am progressing thanks to therapy and finally getting antidepressants and then finding the correct dosage-- depression i really should've had diagnosed and treated very very long ago.

I'm not great and most days i cannot try at all so i exist. And these hockey dumdums of ours, they crack me up. They're rly so very very ridiculous. how do they do it. Feral children on the ice, ludicrous weirdos off the ice. Anyhow thanks for listening I'm feeling light after writing this all out. I hope if you need to, you feel this space is for you as well💕

[strwberrymist]

DRDT Père Noël AU

idk how to describe this, evillious is my special interest and drdt is a hyperfixation, let's just go

i've also tried making this intelligible for people who aren't familiar with evillious as well... at least i hope so

Apocalypse - The Predecessors

In resistance to the highly oppressive government of Hope's Peak Kingdom, Mai Akasaki founds the organisation Apocalypse. She intends for them to take radical action against the government, with minimal harm to civilians. An early recruit is one David Chiem. He is a Ghoul Child, created by a certain scientist from another world, Charles Cuevas. David is less concerned with the safety of civilians, and gradually starts gaining more control within the organisation. Eventually, he's able to expel Mai from it entirely, becoming its new leader. He's known by the public as "the Master of Malice". Mai begins trying to prevent Apocalypse's harm, with little success.

Other members of Apocalypse include fellow Ghoul Child Veronika Grebenshchikova. She is highly skillful with magic and is known as "the Witch of Merrigod". She also serves as David's right hand man. Ace Markey is a Ghoul Child too, but is only in Apocalypse briefly. Xander "Red Fiend" Matthews and former priest Nico "Black Baron" Hakobyan are the leaders of Apocalypse's two armies. Hu Jing is not a formal Apocalypse member, but occasionally assists them as she is a friend of David.

Hope's Peak Catastrophe and End of Apocalypse

cw: brief mention of pregnancy and miscarriage

Hope's Peak is aware of their imminent doom and so they set in motion "Project MA", to reincarnate The God of Luck in a human form. In its first iteration, Mai Akasaki is selected as Divine Mother, as her magic is powerful and her past with Apocalypse is not publicly known. She miscarriages. The next attempt is of Veronika Grebenshchikova, who Charles Cuevas helps hide the identity of. She successfully births a child, but not a divine one.

In a final attempt, four candidates are left: Hu Jing, noblewoman J Rosales (her magic isn't all that powerful but is considered thanks to her family's bribery), Ace's sister Eden Markey, and Eden's fiancée Teruko Tawaki. In order to guarantee the spot, Eden kills Hu and J. Teruko, knowing Eden will soon turn on her as well, holds a ritual so that the God of Luck reincarnates directly to her rather than needing to birth it. This fails, so much so that the entirety of Hope's Peak Kingdom is burnt to a crisp. Only two survive.

Teruko is pitied by the God of Luck, whose soul fuses with hers, granting her immortality. Charles finds Eden dying and gives her a dog/cat-like body so that at least this one Ghoul Child will live on. He himself dies shortly afterwards. In this new form, Eden can temporarily possess people and use them as vessels.

Teruko is directionless, but when she realises Eden's fury at her and vow to enact revenge, she decides to dedicate her now infinite time to preventing Eden's evils.

Père Noël

(yes, finally, what this was supposed to be about in the first place but i got sidetracked in backstory-)

Decades pass. Inspired by the Apocalypse of old, Eden, now going by the surname Tobisa, founds the organisation Père Noël along with her newly appointed apprentice Arei Nageishi. Its members are as follows:

1st, Santa Claus - Eden Tobisa

The founder and leader. She utilises a vessel similar in appearance to her original form. In her day life she is a well-respected businesswoman in Avenir city.

2nd, Dealer - Arturo Giles

Handles smuggling of goods. Comes from a family which used to be of lower nobility. Joined Père Noël for the money. In his day life, he is his wife Rose's manager.

3rd, Sleep Princess - Rose Giles (maiden name Lacroix)

Handles poisons. Was aware of Père Noël for some time before joining due to her husband, but only joined when Shadow offered her a position. In her day life, she is a somewhat successful painter. A common motif in her art are dolls.

4th, Shadow - Arei Nageishi

Handles espionage. Miss Santa's apprentice and co-founder of Père Noël. Her origins and background are unknown. She's only informed of the basics of Miss Santa's motives and enemy.

5th, Pierrot - Whit Young

Handles assassinations. Miss Santa deeply trusts him and treats him as if he were her son. Publicly he is stated to be her nephew whom she adopted after him being orphaned. In his day life he is a student.

6th, Venom - Levi Fontana

The "cleanup guy". In his day life he is the assistant to Miss Santa. Joined Père Noël out of admiration for her.

7th, Magician - "Nikki Udacha" (Teruko Tawaki)

Handles magic. Took on this disguise to infiltrate the organisation, however she is not very cooperative. She's body-swapped with a descendent of Veronika Grebenshchikova and so Miss Santa does not recognise her.

8th, Sniper - Min Jeung

Handles guns and occasionally assassinations. She is Magician's apprentice, studying magic. She's aware of Magician's past with Miss Santa, but does not have much personal investment in it, only focusing on learning magic.

...............................................................................

So that's it, this took way longer to write than it should've... Even then it's only focused on Sloth arc and some of Original Sin Story but I will NOT make the fucking entirety of Evillious fit with this (maybe).

Please let me know anything you think about this or any questions you have (especially if you're not Evillious brainrotted, I am very willing to infodump /lh)

Bye-bye!!!

[fayestardust]

for bob tours: was there a moment (or more than one) at a place where you felt ~connected to a scene from bob/the real events?

All the tours I’ve been on have special moments, though some more than others. Thank you for asking me about this, as I love recounting these memories. Some of this is actually what you asked for; the rest is just me being sappy.

Okay, ready? Behind the read more because it's SUPER long.

Eindhoven tour, April 2022

This was the first WW2 tour I’ve ever been on and the first of We Happy Few 506’s Band of Brothers tours. Special for that reason alone. It was a one-day tour with a Q&A the day before, and only four out of six actors who were supposed to join actually made it over to Eindhoven. First up: Matthew Leitch (Floyd ‘Tab’ Talbert), our fierce leader on all of the tours so I won’t mention him every time. He co-founded WHF506. He’s kind of a very annoying older brother to me now. Also there were Tim Matthews (Alex Penkala), Doug Allen (Alton More) and Mark Lawrence (William H. Dukeman).

I enjoyed the Q&A, though at that point was far too insecure to ask anything about Band because the room was filled with much bigger WW2 nerds (at the time, I’ve now caught up) who all seemed to ask very profound questions. I also shied away from taking any photos with the actors because people pretty much swarmed them, and I’m slightly claustrophobic.

I was making art already at that point, and for this trip had managed to draw Matt and Mark. See here a moment of joy for me.

The next day was the day of the tour, and I was pretty nervous about it because I’d never done a bus tour before, but in my experience, buses aren’t particularly wheelchair-friendly. Such was the case here, too, but the moment I approached the daunting steps of the Megabus, guests (special and not) flocked over to help me up them. All doubt evaporated. I got appointed the spacious back-of-the-bus seat, with my cousin on one side and Mark Lawrence on the other.

I’ll single Mark out for this tour because our conversations on the bus were very real and important to me. But also because one of the most moving moments on the tour happened when we visited the Crossroads. This is where Mark’s character and the real Dukeman died. If you ever get to visit... the Crossroads in the show looks exactly like the real location. Easily one of the most true-to-life set locations. And Mark had never been to the Netherlands. It tore him up. We all sniffled, watching him cry. The thing you have to realise is that he feels like he owes his entire life to the show. He met his lovely wife because she saw him on tv, and they fell in love. He has Dukeman’s service number tattooed on his body. And he’s the kindest, sweetest soul.

Later, months after the tour, he called me up to sing me happy birthday at six in the morning.

Both Doug and Tim remain my friends to this day. I’m perhaps most grateful for the connections made on these tours. Some of the other guests are now also like family.

Bastogne tour - part 1, November 2022

Bastogne is a magical place for me. I took one of my geekiest friends on this second tour. Special guests were Freddie Joe Farnsworth (military advisor on both BoB and the Pacific) and Phil McKee (Strayer). Not the most well-known people in this fandom I think. But interesting. And funny. 

This tour was led by Reg Jans, and he’s THE guide who knows everything you could ever want to know about the Battle of the Bulge. So, during this tour, I feel like I learned a lot more about that, beyond what we see in Band.

Of course, we also visited Easy Company’s foxholes in the Bois Jacques. There was no snow (stay tuned for that on a later tour), so it’s not like it is in the show. But the woods are eerily quiet. I don’t know if I believe in anything supernatural beyond things like intuition, but if I were to start anywhere, it’d be there. Freddie Joe explained the consequences of sleep deprivation for your brain to us, to help us understand the soldiers better. Sometimes, they were their own worst enemies. They were freezing, underfed, underdressed and barraged by artillery, and most of the time, could not even see the Germans.

We also visited where John Julian was pinned down by Germans for hours. It’s still unclear what exactly happened to him, or when or how he died. We only see seconds of it in the show. It's like that with many things in the show actually. All the battles took a long, long time.

This tour isn’t my favourite - there’s a better one right after this, but this did solidify the idea that I would go on these tours just to see the people I’ve met while there. 

Bastogne tour - part 2, January 2023

Here it is, my favourite tour. Barely two months after the last one. Bastogne in the very dead of winter. Let me tell you: it was COLD. But it would have been, for the soldiers of Easy.

The special guests on the second day of the tour were Shane Taylor (Eugene ‘Doc’ Roe), and Lucie Jeanne (Renee Lemaire). Doug (Alton More) was also there, and it was lovely to see him again. But as you can guess, having Doc Roe and Renee on the tour in Bastogne is pretty amazing. Eugene and Renee never actually met each other, one of the few dramatisations of the show. It serves a purpose, though, so it’s mostly seen as acceptable. Renee’s story is quite tragic, and she died very close to where she had lived with her parents and her body was wrapped in the fine silk of parachutes and brought back to them. 

There were also some good hugs at the 'Nuts' bar! But the absolutely most amazing part of the tour happened without them. Our second day started really, really early. We got up at 5 am, got on the bus, and drove to the Bois Jacques. It was still pitch black when we got out, freezing cold and fresh snow crunched underneath our sleepy feet. 

Reg Jans was on this tour again, and he had something truly haunting in store for us. We all stood in a circle around him with our (mostly just purchased for this trip) head torches on as he recited a prayer by Lt. Col. Robert L. Wolverton, commanding officer of 3rd battalion, 506th PIR. 

Here it is.

Men, I am not a religious man and I don't know your feelings in this matter, but I am going to ask you to pray with me for the success of the mission before us. And while we pray, let us get on our knees and not look down but up with faces raised to the sky so that we can see God and ask His blessing in what we are about to do: God almighty, in a few short hours we will be in battle with the enemy. We do not join battle afraid. We do not ask favors or indulgence but ask that, if You will, use us as Your instrument for the right and an aid in returning peace to the world. We do not know or seek what our fate will be. We ask only this, that if die we must, that we die as men would die, without complaining, without pleading and safe in the feeling that we have done our best for what we believed was right. O Lord, protect our loved ones and be near us in the fire ahead and with us now as we pray to you.

And into the woods, we went. You have to remember, there are no cars at this hour. It’s dark. It’s quiet. We were told to be quiet. We were told to sit in the foxholes in the snow. We switched off our lights. No one was shooting at us, but we felt, in part, what the men of Easy Company would have felt. And then we watched the sun come up. It’s the closest thing to a religious experience I’ve ever felt.

I met one of my favourite people in the world on this tour, too. He took these wonderful photos of me and inspired me to take up photography again, myself.

Normandy tour, June 2023

This tour was a bit of an odd one out. It felt chaotic because it was scheduled around D-Day, which made Normandy really poorly accessible. It’s so busy, so our tour was mostly improvised around areas with the least amount of traffic jams. 

It did have its moments, though. Normandy is a cool place. And we had the amazing Pete McCabe (Donald Hoobler) with us. 

The day before the tour, I actually got to meet three Normandy veterans. Humbling, to say the least. I also met several more Band actors (Peter Youngblood Hills, Alex Sagba-Brady, Christian Black, Nolan Hemmings) and Scott Gibson, who played Captain Haldane in the Pacific. We still keep in touch. Christian Black is now a Still Photographer, and mostly shoots Tom Cruise’s movie stills. He also took this photo of Nolan Hemmings, this painting of him and little old me. 

I was really glad to see many friends again. And I brought my own camera and took amazing pictures (teehee). We saw most of Easy’s known landing spots in Sainte Mère Eglise, like Winters’ and Lipton’s, to name a few.  

Our guide here was Paul ‘Woody’ Woodadge, an English guy married to a French woman. He’s nice, but critical of Easy’s fame, not so much on account of Easy, but mostly because Easy was just one of the many companies that did incredible things. We visited the area around Brécourt Manor, where we learned that other company Paratroopers cleared the way for Easy’s famous mission.  It doesn’t make it less impressive, but it adds loads of context.

Another thing that I found incredibly moving was the reading of Lt. Meehan’s last letter home. It’s easy to forget how young these men were. And how wise. Meehan’s plane crashed in a field, and nearly 80 years later, you can still see where it landed because while the field is fully planted, there’s a part near a hedgerow that remains barren to this day. Haunting. 

We also visited Marmion Farm, where many famous Easy Company photos were taken (it’s where they more or less come back together after the jump).

One of my favourite stories, though, is that of medics Robert Wright and Ken Moore of the 101st Airborne. They treated 80 injured American and German soldiers and a child in a church in Angoville-au-Plain. There are still bloodstains on the pews. 

So, as you can tell, not everything had to do with Easy, because we also went to Omaha Beach, where I got out of my chair and walked. Just to walk where these brave men had walked and really feel the history.

Eindhoven/Arnhem Market Garden Tour, October 2023

My second favourite tour after Bastogne in winter. Our guest here was Mark Huberman (Lester Hashey) who was meant to come on the original Eindhoven tour but couldn’t. He’s delightfully Irish, and had the best anecdotes from the set. Also absolutely hilarious.

Many of my friends weren’t on this tour, so going on to it, I couldn’t have guessed it would rank among my favourites.

It was split between two things. Some Easy Company sites and stories (some repeats from the first tour, but often with a slightly different angle or experience), and the British side of Operation Market Garden!

By the way, did you know that Hoobler picks up the Luger that ends up killing him in Bastogne, at the Crossroads? I think they changed it in the show to let the story flow better.

Anyway. I loved this tour. We visited Schoonderlogt and the Crossroads again. This time I sat in the grassy field while everyone else did the famous run across. It’s such a long way!

But the stories of the British troops were perhaps even cooler to me. Because that all happened right on my doorstep. I knew the bigger picture, but we had Reg Jans on this tour again, which is synonymous with really personal stories. So for our British troops day, we followed in the footsteps of leaders and soldiers alike, until we met them again in their final resting place in the military cemetery. A really rewarding journey. Mark also read a letter by Ivar Rowberry, which I posted about here. There’s an audio recording of it too, which is well worth a listen. 

If you want to read more about any of these tours (I’m a bit tired of writing so much, check out my actual - non tumblr - blog over here. There is an entry for each one, there.

[grey-rambles]

Of First Loves and Second Chances

Chapter Two

Words: ~5.5k

Warnings: Some swearing, but nothing else so far as I can remember for this chapter

Notes: Chapter two!! This chapter is the first one that I worked on about a month after Techno had passed, so if there’s inconsistencies in tone, that’s why.... Should I make a taglist for this fic? Do enough people want that for it to be worth my time?  Please let me know.

< Previous Chapter | Next Chapter >

Masterlist | Requests

Seven Years Ago...

It had been a couple of weeks since Techno’s abrupt disappearance from your meeting place, and everything had gone back to normal starting the next day. You had almost forgotten about the whole thing, to be honest.

On your way out the door to run some errands down in the market (and maybe pop in to visit Techno at his family’s bookstore...), your mother called out to your back from where she was seated in the parlour, “Oh, darling, hurry back! We’re having dinner with your betrothed's family tonight, and you need to look your best!”

You whirled around to face her. “WHAT?! You chose someone? And you didn’t even think to tell me in advance??”

You mother smiles slightly and takes another sip of her tea, apparently entirely unbothered by your outburst. “Well, darling, it is traditional for it to be kept secret until everything is set in stone,” she says with a small laugh, “Plus, have some faith in your father and I; we think you’ll be quite pleased with our choice.”

Staring at your mother for a moment, taking in her secretive (and somewhat smug) expression, you determine that she wasn’t going to break and tell you anything, so you don’t even bother to try. You turn back around and continue out the door.

Heading towards the market, your thoughts are racing to the point that you barely register your surroundings. Almost on autopilot, your body makes its way to Techno’s family’s bookstore, where you step inside and immediately make your way to the desk at the back.

It isn’t the figure you expect that greets you at the back. Fairly recently, Techno’s dad had brought on a young man, Alex, to assist the family in running the shop, and it’s him that’s standing behind the desk when you walk in.

“Um,” you begin hesitantly as you approach, “is Techno around?”

He shakes his head. “Nah, the whole family’s out today. Said they had some big event to get ready for or something.”

Silence falls for a moment, awkward and stifling, before Alex continues, “Can I... help you find anything?”

You shake your head, turn on your heel and walk out, trying to keep frustrated tears from welling up in your eyes. As you go about your errands, your thoughts ricochet wildly between two trains of thought; who your betrothed-to-be was, and what special event Techno’s family could have been preparing for.

Your parents knew you well enough that there’s no way that they would have gone with Jeremiah or Marjory, right? You had certainly complained about the two of them enough. Although... both of their families were fairly wealthy, which would have made them more appealing candidates. Caleb or Matthew wouldn’t be so bad, you supposed, and neither would Josephine or Lillian, although you had never been friends with or spent much time around any of them. The only person you could imagine enjoying spending the rest of your life around was currently missing....

Actually now that you thought about it, what could Techno’s family possibly be getting ready for? To your knowledge, there were no special events going on in town today, no celebrations at any of the temples. Techno was an only child, and you knew for a fact that it wasn’t his birthday, nor his parents birthdays. Could it be his parents’ anniversary maybe...? No, that wasn’t until the fall. A mystery indeed....

Shaking your head to clear it of the spiralling thoughts, you set course for home, errands now complete.

Upon arriving inside the front door of your home, you were approached by your very frazzled looking mother, who immediately chided you for having been out so long, before thrusting you into the bathroom to begin getting ready for dinner. A part of you wanted to snark back that it was only 1pm and that there was no way you would begin eating before six, but you didn’t think that it would be received very well, so you kept it to yourself.

After bathing thoroughly in the bathroom, you proceed back to your bedroom, where your mother has laid out some clothes for you to wear. You put them on slowly, grimacing at the fancy fabric and high collar, so unlike your usual comfortable attire. Taking a glance in the mirror, you’re comforted to find that the clothes fit well, and compliment your colouring; if you can’t be comfortable, at least you look nice.

Your mother enters then, and you allow her a couple of minutes to fuss over your appearance before you shrug her hands off. “It’s not gonna get any better than this, stop it.”

Your mother lets out a sigh, eyes misty. “I just want everything to be perfect for tonight, Gods, my little one, all grown up,” she sniffles, “Now come, darling, let me fix your hair, it’s in a right state.”

You suppress the urge to groan, taking a seat at the desk in the corner and allowing your mother to get to work.

Time passes by both incredibly slowly and far too quickly, and before you know it, you’ve been polished top to bottom, and your mother is leading you down to the parlour to meet your new fiancé. Your father meets the two of you outside the doors, a broad smile overtaking his face at the sight of you.

“You look wonderful, my dear,” your father says, “He’ll be blown away, I’m sure.”

You take a deep breath, steeling your nerves. “Let’s just get this over with,” you say, and your father obliges, pushing open the door. You file in at the rear, gaze on the floor. One last deep breath in, and you bring your eyes up to look at your future head on.

Your heart stops.

“Techno?”

Because that was certainly who was stood before you, looking a little awkward and uncomfortable in his formal wear, his parents flanking him on either side, much like your own were doing for you. His hair was styled in a much more intricate braid than usual, jewellery glinting on his throat and wrists, and his plain poet's shirt was topped with a waistcoat of brilliant blue. That the colour complimented your own attire was not lost on you.

“Uh,” he began awkwardly, all eyes on him, “surprise?”

You could do nothing but stare in shock at your best friend in all the world, and also, suddenly, your fiancé? A static sound filled your ears. Everything was suddenly overwhelming, the scent of dinner wafting from the kitchen, the feel of the high collar around your throat, choking you, the sight of those red eyes.

Feeling nothing other than the urge to get away, you turned and bolted out the door.

Hearing the shocked cries of your parents behind you, you pushed your body to move faster, to get further away from the overwhelming situation you had found yourself in, body moving almost on instinct out the front doors and into the street, towards the only place you had ever felt truly like yourself.

Seeing it come into view, you begin to slow. Walking the last few yards, you collapse to the ground underneath the tree atop the hill, legs like jelly. Eyes gazing over the river unseeingly, mind reeling, you finally allow yourself to begin processing what had just happened.

You weren’t necessarily... unhappy with your parents decision. The biggest thing, was that Techno had kept it from you. Or had he not known either? He certainly seemed to know ahead of time with the way he had responded to your shock. You trusted him completely, and tradition be damned, he should have at least let you know that his family had put in a bid! Did he not trust you to keep a secret?

A few minutes of silent contemplation later, you hear familiar footsteps approaching behind you.

“Thought I might find you here,” Techno’s voice comes gently from behind you. You keep your gaze resolutely forward, on the last vestiges of the sunset on the river, as he walks up beside you and has a seat. You deliberately move a little further away from him once he’s seated, still keeping your eyes locked on the water, and he sighs.

“I take it you’re unhappy with the situation then?” Techno asks, voice uncharacteristically serious, “I can ask our parents to call the whole thing off if you’d prefer. I just thought you might be happier with it being me than some stranger that you--”

“It’s not that,” you interrupt him mid sentence, still refusing to look at him.

“Well, what is it then?” he says, exasperated. “How am I supposed to fix it if I don’t know what’s wrong?”

Finally, you turn to face him. “You knew.”

He blinks, clearly not expecting the conversation to go in this direction. “Uh, yeah?”

“You knew, and you didn’t tell me? I’ve been agonizing over this for weeks! Did you not trust me to keep it a secret?”

“To be fair,” Techno says, awkwardly scratching at the back of his neck, “I didn’t know that the bid had been accepted until this morning.”

“But you never told me that there was even a bid in the first place!”

“I didn’t want to get your hopes up okay? If I had told you we were bidding, if I had given you that hope, and then someone else won, you would have been crushed! I didn’t expect things to move so fast once everything was sorted out, I thought I’d have a chance to let you know privately before the official first meeting!”

At your stony silence, he continues on, far more emotional than usual, “Look, I’m sorry for keeping it from you okay? But you just... you seemed so sad and stressed out when you told me about the whole thing, that I thought if I could convince my parents to bid, then at least there was a chance you wouldn’t end up marrying a stranger that you weren’t even sure if you liked.

“And besides,” he continues on, a little quieter, a little more steady in tone, “my parents were starting to talk about looking for a match for me too. It just made sense to suggest you-- at least I actually like you, which is more than I can say for pretty much everyone else our age around here. And I think--” here he pauses and takes a deep breath-- “I think that I could learn to love you. Like, romantically. I don’t right now, but I think that I could, if you’d give me the chance.”

You stare into his eyes, and find nothing but open honesty there.

Looking away, you mutter, “Alright, fine. We’ll give it a try.” You can practically feel Techno relax next to you.

You scoot a little closer to him, your sides almost touching now. Still looking at your lap, you begin to fiddle with the lace edging on your sleeve as you speak again. “I think I could too. Fall in love with you, I mean.”

Techno puts a hesitant arm around your waist. “Th-that’s good,” he says.

A comfortable silence falls over the two of you for a time, as you lean your head against his shoulder and return your gaze out over the water. After a time, Techno shifts around beside you and moves to stand, offering you his hand once he’s up.

“We should be getting back, it’s almost dark and I’m sure our parents are worried.”

You sigh, but knowing that he’s right, you accept his help to stand, then the two of you stand and begin to make your way back down the hill and towards your house.

After only a couple minutes of walking, Techno clears his throat, prompting you to look over at him. Refusing to meet your eyes, with cheeks flushed a very fetching shade of pale pink, he awkwardly forces out, “You, uh, you look. Really nice. By the way.”

You feel a matching flush spread up your own face. “Oh, thank-you. Um. So do you.” He nods stiffly in return, and you lapse into silence.

Nothing else is said as Techno and you make your way through the city back towards your home. You’re walking so closely together that your hands are brushing every few steps, and after the third or fourth time this happens, you take the initiative and simply grab hold of his hand, lacing your fingers together. You assume that he mustn't mind this, seeing as he didn’t say a word against it when you had first grabbed his hand, and the fact that when you had looked to him to confirm it was okay, you found his face flushed red.

About a block away from your house, Techno abruptly stops and tugs you into a secluded little alcove. It’s dark, only illuminated by a single lamp and a couple dim lights from the surrounding houses.

“Tech? We’re almost back, why did you stop us here?”

He fiddles with something in his pocket for a moment, eyes downcast, before abruptly thrusting a small square object towards you. “I just. Here.”

Taking it from him slowly, he continues on, almost seeming nervous. “It’s traditional to do this in front of family, but I thought you might like something more private. Once you take a look, I can put it back in my pocket and we can pretend that you’re seeing it for the first time once we get back. I just... hope you like it.”

Suddenly, you realize what this is. Slowly and with bated breath, you open the small box. Inside, as you expected, is a ring. Taking a step towards the light to see it better, you give a small gasp when the piece of jewellery is illuminated.

It’s made of silver, gleaming under the light of the lamp. In the centre sits a moderately sized ruby, vine like protrusions surrounding it in elegant swirls. The ruby has a small chip of diamond on either side, nestled in the twists of the vines. On the inside, you can see an inscription, and you tilt the box further into the light until you can read what it says; “For my Starling”.

Techno walks up behind you, appearing relatively nervous. “Alex—you know, the guy who my parents hired to help at the shop? Well, his dad is a silversmith, so he helped me out with making the mould and casting it. I designed it mostly by myself, with some input from Alex and his dad, and--”

You cut him off. “You made this for me?”

“Uh. Yeah? It’s traditional to gift a ring for a betrothal, but if you’d prefer, I can take it back and recast it into a necklace or something.”

“No!” you exclaim, clutching the box to your chest, “It’s beautiful, I love it.” Thrusting the box abruptly into Techno’s hands, you say, “Put it on me, please.”

His eyes widen. He takes the box from you and pulls the ring out of the cushion it had been resting on. The ruby glints where the light hits it; it almost matches Techno’s eyes.

“Are you sure you don’t want to wait until we get back for this part?” Techno asks you, “Our parents might be pissed that we went against tradition and did this without them.”

“Screw tradition. I’ve never wanted to wear a piece of jewellery more in my life, and if you don’t put it on me in the next ten seconds, I will rip it from your hands and do it myself.”

“Okay, okay. Message received, loud and clear.”

Techno gently takes your left hand in his own. He slips the ring onto your ring finger, where it sits, smooth and cold, against your skin. You take a moment to admire the way it looks against your skin, before a thought occurs to you.

“Hey Techno?”

“Yeah?”

“If you didn’t know that your bid had been accepted until this morning, how come you have a customized ring?”

It’s hard to tell in the dark, but you think he blushes again. “Uh, well. I was kinda planning on giving it to you regardless of who your parents chose...?”

This startles a laugh out of you. “What do you mean?”

“Well, like I said earlier, I can’t really see myself with anybody else in this town, so if your parents had chosen anyone other than me as your betrothed, I was going to ask you to run away with me. We’d get married in the next town over, and never have to worry about it again.

“Thankfully,” he’s quick to add when he sees your expression, “it didn’t come to that, so all’s well.”

And with that, he grabs your hand again, and practically drags you out of the alcove and over to your house. His ears, the only part of his skin you can see, are crimson in the lamplight.

Your parents are less than pleased with the whole situation, both you having stormed out earlier, and the fact that Techno had given you the ring without them present. Listening to your mother rant about “the gall of you young people, besmirching tradition like that”, you catch Techno’s eye from across the room, where he’s getting a similar talking to from his own mother. He rolls his eyes subtly, and you have to suppress the urge to smile.

Once everything has died down a bit later, you find yourself seated next to Techno on the drawing room couch. Moving close enough that your arm is pressed up against his, just barely, you look down at your ring again. The ruby almost dances in the firelight, and you think to yourself that you’ve maybe never been happier than in this moment.

Looking forward to your future, you were excited to spend the rest of it with Techno by your side.

It’s a shame you only got a little over nine months before everything fell apart.

The next couple of days pass in a blur of packing. Niki, a bubbly young woman who works for the army, has been by your side throughout, helping you to organize everything that needed to get done before you could leave this place behind. You were very grateful for her help, certain that you wouldn’t have been able to accomplish half of what needed to be done without her assistance.

Throughout it all, you had seen only glimpses of Technoblade. He was busy helping them break down the main military encampment, Niki explained when you asked her, which you supposed made sense, but that didn’t mean you had to be happy about it. He stopped by briefly each day around noon hour to check in on the progress you were making, but with so much going on, you didn’t have any time to exchange more than pleasantries with him.

There were so many questions that you had for him, namely, what had happened to him after your separation, but this was far too public of a venue for you to even consider asking him about it, so you resigned yourself to waiting until you could be alone.

On the dawn of the fourth day, you found yourself out of bed as the sun was rising, just as you had been instructed. The few personal belongings that you couldn’t bear to be without were packed into a small bag waiting by your feet.

You could see a horse approaching in the distance, though it was still too far away to clearly make out who the rider might be. After a couple more minutes of waiting, it became apparent that it was Techno, and you felt your stomach swoop.

He urged his horse to stop in front of you, before dismounting and shooting you a grin.

“Good morning, Starling. Are you ready to leave this place behind?” At your nod, he offers you a hand, which you don’t hesitate to take. He quickly helps you up into the saddle of the horse, getting your feet situated in a set of stirrups, before vaulting himself up to sit behind you.

You feel your face flush as his body settles against your back, pressed tightly together from shoulders to hips. Techno reaches an arm on either side of you to grab the reins, effectively boxing you in, and you feel your blush deepen, suddenly glad there’s no one around to witness your departure.

“All set?” he murmurs in your ear. You can do nothing but nod as goosebumps rise up on your arms.

Techno urges the horse into motion, and soon you’re trotting through town at a decent clip. Having never ridden many horses before, you’re having a hard time not getting jostled around too much, and it seems that Techno notices this, because he once again leans in to speak into your ear.

“You need to let your body move with the motion of the horse. Stop trying to hold yourself so rigidly, just relax.”

Taking his advice to heart, you slowly relax back into him, until you’re leaning your back quite heavily against his front. It is more comfortable to ride this way, you’ll admit.

You can hear the smile in his voice as he says, “There you go, that’s it.”

Pretty soon, you’re hitting the edge of town, and Techno urges the horse into a canter. The countryside flies by around you, turning quickly into woods, before you come into a clearing where the military camp had been.

The last of the tents look to be coming down upon your arrival, and a few men call out greetings as they pass by, though no one stops to chat. The whole place is alive with noise and activity; it’s a little overwhelming.

Techno navigates the horse through the chaos to the centre of the encampment, where he dismounts quickly and hands the reins to a passerby, before offering you a hand to help you down. You miss his warmth against your back immediately.

Just as Technoblade opens his mouth to speak, a smaller figure scurries up behind him and jumps on his back, screeching, “Surprise, bitch!!”. Techno barely moves with the impact, only to let out a long-suffering sigh.

“Tommy, get off of me.” He jostles the boy a few times until he jumps back down to the ground next to Techno, grinning broadly. “Go grab Phil and Wilbur for me, there’s someone I want to introduce you to.”

“No need for that mate,” a new voice pipes up from behind you, and two more strangers come and join your little circle, “We’re already here.”

“Is this them? The infamous Starling?” The brown-haired man peers at you curiously, almost uncomfortable in its intensity. You shy back from his unwavering gaze, just a little.

Techno must notice your discomfort at the scrutiny, because he’s immediately stepping over to you and pulling you close to his side. “Wilbur, back off. You’re making them uncomfortable.”

Suitably chastised, the brown-haired man takes a step away, raising his hands defensively. “Sorry, didn’t mean to make anyone uncomfortable. But you can’t blame me for being curious, ol’ Techie here has been talking about the mysterious Starling for years!”

“Don’t call me that, please,” Techno sighs out, already seeming done with this interaction, “before I regret deciding to introduce you in the first place.”

The others all laugh. You take a moment to observe their appearances, and it’s with a start that you notice that the shortest of the group has absolutely massive, black-as-night wings protruding from his back.

Noticing your stare, the older man smiles and says, “How’s it going, mate?”

“You have wings,” you blurt out, then cover your mouth, mortified. Across from you, Tommy breaks into snickers, which abruptly taper off after getting a glare from Technoblade.

“Yeah, I do,” the man replies, an amused grin on his face, “I’m Phil, by the way. Official advisor to his Royal Majesty here.” He gestures with his head towards Techno, and your eyes go wide.

“Wait, what?” you whirl around on your old friend. “What does he mean, Royal Majesty?”

Techno looks decidedly awkward now, bringing a hand up to scratch the back of his neck. “Um.”

“Did he not tell you?” Wilbur asked with a laugh. At the look of confusion on your face, his manic grin grew even wider. “Oh, this is too good!”

“I was going to tell them,” Techno protested, “But everything was happening so fast, there just wasn’t a good time...”

“Tell me what?” you demand, growing irritated with being in the dark. Pushing out of Techno’s grip, you whirl around the circle the four of them are standing in; nobody makes eye contact with you. “Will somebody please explain what’s going on here?”

Techno takes a deep breath in and takes one of your hands, looking you in the eyes. “I’m the Emperor of the Antarctic Empire,” he says seriously.

You let out a short laugh. “No you’re not.”

He blinks. In the background, Wilbur snorts into his fist, only to be promptly elbowed by Phil. Tommy, meanwhile, just looks confused and slightly offended.

“But... I literally am though,” Techno says slowly. You shake your head. Do they really think you’re dumb enough to buy this?

“No seriously,” he says, holding out his hand. There, on his finger, sits the insignia of the Royal House of the Antarctic. The boar’s head etched in gold gleams in the early morning light, and you suddenly feel quite faint.

Looking up to meet Techno’s eyes, you see in their depths mostly fond amusement, but also a hint of... uncertainty?

Taking a deep breath in and giving Techno’s hand a squeeze of reassurance, you utter the words, “Technoblade. What the fuck.”

Tommy bursts into laughter behind you.

“How? How is this possible??” you continue on, ignoring the antics of everyone else present except for your betrothed. He seems uncomfortable with the scrutiny, but still you press on. “What on earth have you been up to since I saw you last?”

Techno chuckles a bit. “It’s kind of a long story.”

“I trust you’ll tell it to me sometime,” you reply, and he nods to you in affirmation, a hesitant smile on his face.

“Let me introduce you properly to the three stooges here,” Techno says, pivoting around to face them, arm dropping back around your waist.

“You’ve already been introduced to Lord Phillip Craft, my most trusted and closest advisor.” The winged man gives you a little wave and says “Please, just call me Phil.”

Gesturing his arm out to the tallest among them, Techno continues on, “This is Lord Wilbur Soot, my head diplomat. He helped secure the peace deal that granted us your city without siege.” Wilbur smiles at you and extends a hand to shake. When you take it, he instead brings the back of your hand up to his lips for a kiss.

“Pleasure to make your acquaintance,” he says with a smirk, eye-line fixed not on you, but on the man standing rigidly next to you.

“Wilbur please,” Techno says, long suffering. At these words, the man’s smirk only widens. You pull your hand away, face blazing, and tuck yourself more firmly into Techno’s side.

“Moving on,” Techno begins, only to be interrupted by Tommy’s exclamation of, “Yeah, my turn, bitch!”

Unperturbed by the interruption, Techno continues on, “This is Tommy Innit--”

“The absolute biggest man ever!”

“—my personal valet.”

Tommy wilts at the description. “You make me sound so uncool, man!”

“It is an accurate description of your job, I don’t see the problem here,” Techno replies. Despite the callousness of his words, there’s a small but undoubtedly fond smile on his lips.

“It’s lovely to meet you all,” you speak up for the first time in a while. You would have said more, but you’re interrupted by the arrival of a man on horseback.

“My Lords, Your Highness,” the man says, bowing as best he can from on horseback, “the camp has been broken down and your carriages are ready if you’re ready to head for home.”

“Thank-you,” Phil says, “we’ll be right over. You’re dismissed.”

The man bows again, casting a curious gaze over you as he rides off.

Techno turns to face you. “Shall we go, then?”

You nod, and your group begins to head towards the edge of the clearing, where two carriages await.

“Can I ride in with you, Techno?” Tommy asks, wide eyed, hanging off of Techno’s arm. The man in question barely seems to notice the added weight, moving along with his eyes forward and a look of fond exasperation on his face.

“No, Tommy.”

“Aw, but why not? You wouldn’t mind, would you?” Tommy turns his big, blue eyes onto you, and you feel yourself being swayed.

You turn to Technoblade to say that you wouldn’t mind, and he rolls his eyes at the look on your face. Turning back to Tommy, who’s looking on expectantly, Techno says, “Fine. But if you pester them too much, I’m kicking you out.”

Tommy cheers, throwing his hands up in the air, and you can’t help but smile at his antics.

You get loaded up into one of the carriages to wait while the others finish up some last minute preparations before you’re off. Techno slides into the carriage across from you, Tommy throwing himself onto the seat next to him; you assume that Phil and Wilbur are riding in the other carriage.

Tommy keeps up a nearly ceaseless stream of chatter, while Techno busies himself with a hardback book he’s pulled out from somewhere. You can’t help but smile at that—some things never change.

Tommy spends the next couple of hours chatting to you about life in the Empire, and about all the places he’s seen while traveling with the Emperor. He talks a little about how he came into service of the Royal House, though it’s fairly obvious to you that he’s skipped out on some of the details, and a lot about his two best friends back at the palace and the antics that they get up to.

Other than disputing some of Tommy’s wilder stories with a snort or a head shake, Techno remains silent, eyes focused on his book. It’s obvious that he’s listening, however, due to how rarely he’s turning the pages.

Tommy’s come to a natural pause in his rambling when his eyes alight on something on your lap. Lightning quick, the boy leans across the carriage cabin and picks your left hand up to examine it.

“Yo!!” he exclaims, eyes alight with excitement, “Your ring is sick!! Where did you get it? Is that a real ruby?”

Technoblade’s head snaps up from his book. The ruby glints in the sunlight, just as bright as the day you received it, and he stares at it with a strange look on his face.

“You still have it,” Techno says blankly, almost seeming surprised.

You blink, uncertain. “Of course I do. I never take it off.”

Tommy looks between the two of you, visibly confused. He opens his mouth as though to ask a question, when the carriage abruptly shudders to a stop. Wilbur peeks his head through the window, saying, “Time for lunch!” brightly, before vanishing from sight again.

After retrieving some bread and cheese from the cook’s wagon, you retreat again to the safety of your carriage. As you’re finishing up your meal, Techno once again joins you. This time, instead of sliding in across from you, he sits stiffly on the bench next to you, arms just barely touching, and you’re instantly transported back to your parents' drawing room on that night seven years ago, back when you first received your ring.

Leaning further into Techno’s side, you rest your head on his shoulder and twine your fingers with his. He relaxes minutely against you, and pulls his book back out from a pocket in his cloak. As he’s opening it up, Tommy pops back into the carriage, and makes a face at the sight of you.

“Wilbur! I’m riding with you guys now, these two are being all gross and shit!”

You feel Techno huff out a laugh, before he finds his place in the book and begins to read aloud. Shifting around to get more comfortable, you end up nestled under Techno’s arm with your head on his chest as he leans against the side of the carriage; he never falters in his recitation during this, voice remaining even and soft throughout.

You close your eyes and allow his words to paint the picture of the story on your eyelids. This, accompanied by his heartbeat and the gentle rumble of his chest as he speaks soon lull you into a state of drowsy contentedness.

As you allow yourself to drift off to sleep, you once again think to yourself that, much like the night of your betrothal, you’ve never been happier than you are in this moment.

I hope you liked it! The next chapter will be up around the same time next wekk! So, that’s Sunday evening around 5:30pm EST. All feedback is appreciated :)

[writeyouin]

Dream (Morpheus) X Male-Reader – Sleepless Prisoner - Chapter 3 - Recovering From Isolation

A/N – Guys, please comment on this chapter. I work so hard on these stories and barely get any recognition. Just one word or an emoji would do it. Please.

Warnings – None.

Rating – T

Although you were free for the first time in a century, you still felt terribly alone in the dilapidated realm Morpheus had taken you to. Granted, you now knew Lucienne and Matthew but neither of them was around to converse with you. Lucienne was busy maintaining the Dreaming and could not be disturbed, and Matthew was by Dream’s side as he should be, though he occasionally returned to pass messages on to Lucienne. Without knowing anybody else, you missed your only friend, if you could call Dream that. Before, you had an inkling of what he was, but there was so much more to him than you thought. Did Endless need friends? Did he desire them?

Ultimately, you decided that he likely didn’t value you in the same manner that you did him, but if he had brought you to his realm then he must at least trust you in some manner. You hoped it was for friendship but without the opportunity to talk to Dream, you wouldn’t know.

There were other things you wished to speak about with him as well, such as what he had done with your family. It wasn’t that they deserved redemption for what they had done, but you would like to think that they hadn’t suffered for their actions. An eye for an eye left the world blind, and although revenge was hardly uncommon, you didn’t see much point to it; it only led to more suffering than was necessary.

You also wondered just how much the world had changed since you had been kept away from it, and if Dream would return you to it. You hoped that he wouldn’t; it wasn’t so much that you wished to stay in the Dreaming, but rather, you were afraid of what the world might have become. Such cowardice might have shamed other people, but you knew who you were, and admitting to your fears seemed the only reasonable thing to do. You were scared and you didn’t want to leave the one person you knew, even if you didn’t really know him at all; he was all you had left now.

Yet, while Dream was away, you supposed that you should do something. Although you were also scared of what you might find in the dilapidated realm, you felt that there was nothing else for you to do but explore. You weren’t usually the sort for exploring or adventuring but if this was to be your home, then you felt that you should at least look around; besides, being alone was awful, but being alone whilst moving and taking in new scenery was marginally better.

You set off from your position in Morpheus’ throne room, where Lucienne had left you before rushing off to attend to more important matters. It would have been wonderful to say that you were awed by the magical sights of the Dreaming, or that you discovered a great many things on your journey. However, Dream was still only at a fraction of his power and had yet to recover his artefacts. As such, Dreams and Nightmares alike were missing, everything in the realm was in shambles, there were entire locations that were simply Empty… Like something had been there once, but now there was only Nothing. It was as if some areas had once been grand portraits, which had been painted over entirely in white; the real painting was underneath waiting to be restored, but Dream was an artist without his tools, despairing till he could fulfil his purpose and restore what once was.

So, on you marched through the Nothingness, skirting past the rubble and avoiding the blank spaces. The Dream realm held itself together, using the flagging vestiges of Dream’s power, some of the gaps filled in by the imaginations of those who still had hope. It was run by children wishing for Santa Clause, writers thinking of new novels, daydreamers who wished for a better world to escape to, and desperate souls who had nothing left except for dreams.

Eventually, you found that you were entirely lost. You couldn’t go back the way you came to reach the Palace, for that way was gone, having shifted into a different location. It made sense that such a thing should happen. After all, the human mind was always shifting, changing, and evolving; why wouldn’t Dream be any different? The realm was him and he was it; henceforth, it would likely evolve, changing where things were and adapting into something new, though you supposed that in his current state, Dream wouldn’t be adding anything new until he got his tools back and that the different location behind you was something that had been in the Dreaming for a long time and had opted to move of its own volition… if places could do such a thing.

You stopped your walk, feeling that you might be going quite mad if you were already concluding that a place could not only have free will but also move. Besides, you weren’t sure where you wanted to go next. Without knowing your way back to the castle, either direction would have been a safe bet, but the problem was that you didn’t feel safe.

Behind you, there was a dark forest with eerie trees that looked like eager hands hoping to get their claws into you. The trees, though leafless, had a covering of lichen that promised to rub up against you, soaking you to the bone and scaring you when you least expected it. On the other hand, if you went in the opposite direction, you were faced with a cemetery full of graves. No two graves were fully identical, but they all looked similar as if the wooden crosses had all been crafted by the same person.

After 100 years, Death should probably not have scared you so, but since you had been robbed of your regular life, it terrified you. You almost opted to try your chances with the forest, until you heard the welcoming call of a creature that had spotted you. It didn’t take you long to spot the thing, tiny though it was, for it was the only splash of welcoming colour within the cemetery, sat next to a grave and wagging its tail as it looked at you, inviting you to play.

It had golden, scaly flesh, a bulbous head that it had yet to grow into, large black eyes that sought friendship, and wings that protruded from its back. Your first assumption was that you had found a baby dragon, and without anyone to tell you otherwise, you stuck to that assumption.

“Hello,” You proffered, taking a few tentative steps forward, careful to avoid the masses of graves.

When it seemed apparent that the creature wasn’t a nightmare in disguise, nor was it lost, awaiting rescue from a bigger, stronger counterpart, you felt a little more at ease.

The creature chirped happily at you, holding up its arms and then falling backwards, a victim to its young age and rotund belly, both of which saw it unbalanced.

“What are you doing out here alone?” You asked, a smile tugging at your lips as you bent down to greet the creature.

It vocalised again, evidently unable to speak in your language, but eager to see you all the same.

“Yeah, I suppose that I’m alone too. The thing is, I don’t know anyone here, and well… I suppose that makes me quite a lonely person. In fact, you’re only the fourth being that I’ve talked to in just under a century, and that’s saying something because you’re a dragon.”

For a moment, you were at ease in the cemetery, speaking with a creature you had only just met, however, that moment was short-lived. You screamed as an arm plunged through the earth from the grave that the creature had been guarding. You scrambled up, tripping over immediately in your panic. You tried desperately to recover, your breath coming out in rapid pants that didn’t serve you well until, slowly, a bespectacled man dragged himself out of the grave.

He shook himself off and then regarded you with a warm smile.

“Hello,” He greeted you, offering his hand to help you up.

Your hand shook violently in his grip as the shock coursed through you.

“I didn’t mean to frighten you,” He said amiably. “I was just digging my way out and I heard you talking to my friend Goldie here. He’s a gargoyle.”

Goldie chirped and the man looked down warmly at his adopted friend.

“I’m Abel. Nice to meet you, ah…”

“(Y/N),” You stammered your name in response, slowly recovering from the shock.

“I see. You look pale, (Y/N). Would you like to come to The House of Secrets for some tea? Me and Goldie would love to have you.”

“I- I suppose so,” You replied, finding no end to the strangeness of the meeting.

“That’s wonderful news. I miss having friends over for tea, but when Lord Morpheus went away, so did all the Dreams. This way, we’ll both get some company, and you can even meet my brother, Cain.”

“Cain? You’re Cain and Abel?”

“Yes,” Abel smiled patiently at you. “We’re the first story,” He proclaimed proudly.

And with that, Abel began walking, leading the way to his home. Despite the odd meeting with someone you had known your whole life yet had never met, you felt that going with him was a good idea. For the first time in a century, you were recovering from isolation.

[angelicgilbert]

@retrograderesemblance (townsend)

melody fills the air, birds chirping softly as gentle winds rustle the canopies of trees and soldiers move about the estate. she does well to remain out of the way, reading or working on mending the tear in her blue dress. there were others who could do such a thing for her, yet she refused to allow anyone else's hands upon the garment for it had been the last dress her parents had gifted her and she had not grown so much since. today, however, she ventures into the sun thinking upon why her uncle had decided to subject her to such travel. he hadn't asked her aunt to accompany him-- though she rather believed such had to do with her care of little meggie. not that she did not see the opportunity such an excursion could present if only she held the means of communication for such a thing. she knew the names of a few supposed traitors (in her uncle's eyes) her uncle showed distaste for whenever she mentioned her hometown and he went into a tirade about those who had left and joined washington's cause and the families which had muddled the minds of her parents. that did not mean she held any reasonable means to know of their whereabouts or if they even continued to remain in their granted positions. she was only privy to what she had overheard and was vastly kept far away from the reaches of anyone who might show any sympathies toward patriots.

it was a dangerous game she sought to embark upon which called her own character into question, for should she remain loyal to an uncle who held such reverence for the side which had taken her parents or should her loyalty lay with those in the grave? it mattered not to the moment. her attention drawn within many places at once. a man walked up the path to her left, one she recalls her uncle informing her earlier that day was the son of the estate's owner and captain smallwood diverts his course upon spotting her to the far right. her features tighten in frustration, a hope in the back of her mind that her uncle was not seeing fit to place them into the same space as some recuperance for matthew's death. how vile and how positivity frustrating he failed to understand how brutish smallwood was. she makes her choice quickly, thinking upon the thought that if only a canon ball could find it's way toward tyler she might have a day's peace. it wouldn't even have to land upon him. she'd be content if it had merely rolled over him.

such thoughts are pushed away as her stride meets the man not far from her, townsend, she believed. a soft and bright smile offered. "mr townsend, how great it is to see you again!" the comment emits with enough projection she believes smallwood might hear, before she quiets her tone and peers at the confused man before her. "my uncle, general maxwell, spoke of you earlier, pointed you out." a pause as she moves to stand next to him as if they are friends and entirely too expectantly of him to fall in line with such plans. "perhaps it is not proper for me to say but the captain over there is a brute of a man. please do me the honor of pretending we are already acquainted so that i might avoid him just a little longer."

[merrock]

CHARACTER INFORMATION

face claim: Matt Czuchry

full name: Lucas Matthew Browning

nickname(s) / goes by: Luke, Uncle Luke, Lukey, Lulu

pronouns & gender: he/him & cis man

sexuality: heterosexual

birth date: April 2nd, 1980

birth place: Merrock, Maine

arrival to merrock: Entire life

housing: The suburbs, small house on the corner of the street.

occupation: Surgical resident

work place: Hospital center

family: Divorced - Natasha Browning, Parents,  Two Siblings - Cordelia Browning - Niece - Rosalyn Browning

relationship status: Newly single

filling connection: Cordelia Browning’s brother

PERSONALITY

 Luke has always been around to help, and be the one who comes to the rescue. Extremely over protective of his family, especially his siblings. Really big golden retriever energy. Type of guy who is down for a drink, or a deep conversation, or throwing a punch at a gym. He tries to treat everyone with respect, even when he thinks they don’t deserve it.

WRITTEN BY: Kay (she/her), est.

BACKGROUND / BIO

TW: infertility, divorce

Born and raised in Merrock, Maine. The Browning family was one of the founding families. Lucas grew up in a pretty normal family. Parents who loved their kids. Siblings that he became protective of, and the small town life you see in movies. Luke was the usual golden boy. He got everything he wanted in life. Well, mostly. He did well in school, the quarterback on the football team in high school, straight A’s, and had the prettiest girl in school on his arm. He got the perfect small town life, and married his high school sweetheart right out of high school. Luke was the one to show up with flowers, give forehead kisses, and make sure his friends drank enough water at the end of a night of drinking.

Lucas proceeded to go to college to get his degree in finance. He was good at numbers and realized he could make a life out of these numbers. Four years happened to go by in a quick flash. His life was pretty great. Four years of happy marriage, buying a house, and getting a job as a financial advisor. He didn’t mind the advisor aspect, but it wasn’t where his heart was. About a year out of college, and a year into working full time, he realized he wasn’t truly happy. He wasn’t really sure what could make him happy. At this moment in time, Luke and his wife, Natasha had started trying for a baby. They were always asked when they would have kids, because they married so young, but Lucas wanted to make sure that he was financially prepared and graduated. They were having a rough patch for the past year, and both of them had maybe thought bringing a baby into the world would make their love stronger, not only for each other but for this little bundle of joy. He had always loved kids, and absolutely wanted some of his own.

After about a year of trying, and multiple negative pregnancy tests, they finally went to the doctor. They found out they were infertile, and the chances of having a kid were slim to none. Obviously crushing both of them, they both grieved in their own way. The news didn’t make them closer, but made them drift farther and farther apart. Luke had come to the realization that maybe he needed to do something else with his life.

He knew he wanted to help people, so he went back to school. School kept him busy enough where he didn’t have to be home with his wife, and he could be hands on and focus on something else. Slowly and slowly, his relationship with his wife started to get more and more strained. They just lived together, and considered each other as roommates. He couldn’t come to terms with filing for divorce. He wasn’t that type of guy. He was supposed to have everything in life. What everyone wanted. He didn’t want to be a disappointment if he filed for divorce.

His family had a huge falling out with his younger sister but that didn’t matter to Lucas. He was going to continue to stick up for his sister, and her beautiful baby girl. Part of him aches when he holds his niece, Rosalyn, but he knows he’s going to be the best uncle in the world.

Currently, Lucas has decided to take his life into his own hands, knowing that he's going to have to start from scratch. He set in motion to get a divorce after 15 years, and bought a smaller house in the suburbs. He works at the hospital center, as a surgical resident, slowly trying to figure out his life at 42 years old. 

[holdmymonahand]

I haven't been here in years but this felt like the right place to let out the emotions I've been feeling all day. I apologize if this isn't coherent or well put together, I just felt I wanted to say something.

Johnny Gaudreau was the reason I fell in love with hockey. I was 13 years old, in the Dome watching Game 6 of playoffs against the Canucks. The young star Johnny Hockey was the reason I became such an avid hockey fan, why I loved the Flames with my whole entire heart.

He was silly and goofy. He had the diet of a child and was a part of our dynamic duo. I remember him scoring the game winning goal in overtime against Dallas in game 7. He was our hero, the one we could always count on. The Saddledome was shaking with excitement and we all were thankful for our Johnny.

He gave us fans so much for years. I loved our precious Johnny and losing him feels like losing a part of myself. I never would have experienced the epic highs of Flames hockey without him, and I would never have become the person I am today with him.

It feels a bit strange being affected by the loss of a person who never knew you, but I knew him and I cherished him so much. When he left our team, I was hurt. I was hurt because I love him, this city loves him, and losing him makes me realize how much he impacted our lives. It is terrible that losing someone is sometimes what it takes for you to realize what that person meant to you. But to me, he was someone who gave me so many amazing memories.

I cry everytime I think of his kids not growing up knowing what an amazing man their father was. I cry everytime I remember him moving closer to his parents because they were getting older. I cry everytime I remember him and Monahan were supposed to reunite on the ice this year. He gave everyone so much happiness and now he's gone. He was such a kind and caring soul.

We love you so much Johnny and Matthew. My heart goes out to his family and friends. I cannot imagine what they are going through.

Rest in peace Johnny Hockey. Rest in peace Matthew.

<3

[openingpandorasbox1]

Part 3 - Alcohol

Melissa was one of the worst people I’ve had in my life, and that’s saying a lot considering I’ve had a lot of fucked up people in my life. She was extremely deceitful and untrustworthy, she would bend the truth just to have other people believe her or to turn on another person. I feel like she only wanted to hang out with me so she had someone to drink with and when she had someone else to drink with, she didn’t want to know me. She would ring me up pleading to go out and drink with her, she always wanted to drink. I had other friends with who I did non-alcoholic things, such as shopping, going to museums, and things like that - just random things. Melissa was the only friend I had who wouldn’t do something if there was no alcohol involved. If we did do something with no alcohol, it would be only for a short time only and she would want to drink straight away afterwards. Of course, I liked drinking alcohol so I didn’t mind drinking with her on occasions, we both liked to go out drink, and socialize, but she found it difficult to do anything without alcohol involved. People were so drawn into her bullshit and at one point I was as well. She was somebody who loved drama and creating drama, I like drama as well, but only in movies or in a TV series, I don’t want it in my actual life. I suppose you could say that alcohol was a factor in Melissa’s behaviour, but I can’t blame it entirely on the alcohol that she drank. She knew what she was doing and would orchestrate things.

                Matthew liked to drink and would get drunk every now and there were times he would have fun but other times he would become so depressed and listen to the same song over and over again in a mental slump.

                Autumn told me that her brother Samuel would only drink at home; she said he would only drink when he was at home and not when he went out. I think that would be worse because you spend more time at home than you do when you are out (out in a social situation). It is better to drink when you go out because you don’t go out that often, well I don’t. When I went out with friends we would only go out socializing once a fortnight, once a month, or once every three or four months - so there wasn’t much drinking involved. Alcohol isn’t Samuel’s problem, he’s a P, it’s sick, Autumn knows about it, Claire knows about it and I’m sure there are other people who know about it and no one is doing anything about it. There are so many fucked up people out there.

                My mum drinks Southern Comfort, my mum acts drunk when she hasn’t been drinking but she’s a bit out there. I don’t like Southern Comfort it tastes like dead ants.

                My dad drinks a bit but not too much. He likes wine, he’s into poshness.  

                Usually the only time people see me is when I am in a social situation so they jump to the conclusion that I drink all the time when in fact I don’t. I’m actually a boring person who doesn’t drink when I’m at home or any other time. Most of the time I am sober, reading, or writing, working, running errands, and just being a normal person. I drink 1 to 5 drinks a year, at the most. If I go out, that is the only time when my family or friends see me. They don’t see me in my normal environment. If I drink, I don’t get drunk and act likes an idiot, I just act like I do when I’m sober. I’m extremely observant and I notice mostly everything that is going on around me. Not on purpose, that’s just what I’m looking normally. I can’t help being like that though, that’s just the way I am. I pick up on things. I don’t drink alcohol that much, most of the time I’m drinking water and orange juice. I can’t drink alcohol when I’m at home or in my normal daily life because I enjoy writing and reading and I can’t do those if I’m drinking or if I’ve been drinking. I need to remain sober all the time in order to concentrate to be able to read and write. It’s about concentration, I don’t like distractions, and alcohol can be a distraction.

[arcadevalorie]

Rating Books I’ve Read This Year So Far

(No one asked for this but in order to be free you must first be cringe.)

Of note is that these are all the horror genre because nothing else hits.

RING by Koji Suzuki

A hood classic of course. Loses some points because it starts at a crawl and doesn’t really improve from that pace for a good while, and the main character’s friend isn’t very likable (He’s not a token “annoying friend in a horror story” character, but I can’t explain him being unlikable without a slight spoiler)

8.5/10 A bit dated but I recognize that a lot of “tropes” hadn’t been done before and some of the parts about Sadako herself are just a product of the time and country from which the work originates. Solid and I completely understand how it laid the groundwork for a horror icon

—

Cows by Matthew Stokoe: I miss the person I was before I read this. I will not be taking the plunge into “extreme horror” ever again and “splatterpunk” books are off the table. A lot of this is gross in the intrusive thought way and I don’t mean the meme intrusive thoughts but ACTUAL intrusive thoughts. I have a strong stomach so I never gagged or anything but honestly? If I respected books a little less I would’ve burned this after I finished reading it. Instead it sits on my shelf as a monument to never having to read it again. 😌 I suppose I cannot rate it just one way because it wouldn’t be fair

Enjoyment: -100/10 As someone who has seen REAL GORE and worse, I was “what the fuck”-ing the entire way through and felt genuinely dirty. Not in a “whoa, good horror!” way. In a “is the author okay?” way. Also I think the author hates fat people or at least his portrayal of the main character’s mother (named only as “The Hagbeast” for the entire book) certainly makes it seem so.

Dead Dove Principle: 10/10 “Well, I dunno what I expected.”

—

The Vegetarian by Han Kang: classed as horror but it’s not scary, the horror is in how tragically sad everything is and makes really good use of Korean societal norms and taboos as a vehicle for it all. The arguments are genuinely infuriating due to both hypocrisy and an obsession with control because (spoiler) somehow your daughter scarcely eating due to gruesome nightmares is more shameful than trying to force feed her meat after she wouldn’t touch anything at the family dinner because everything on the table is animal products.

7/10 Starts slow but with the interest of taking place from the titular vegetarian’s husband’s point of view. The point of view of a man who hates his wife. Not that he would ever SAY he hates his wife, but whenever this man speaks about his wife it is only to talk about things he dislikes about her or things he’s ambivalent to but wishes she was more like other women about. By his own (internal monologue) admission this man is with a woman he finds so mediocre because he recognizes that he himself is MID. (If this is setting off red flags for you, the author is a woman.)

—

Winterset Hollow by Jonathan Edward Durham: Surprisingly not too graphic even though there is violence and of course death depicted. I actually appreciate that a lot because the story not dwelling on the manner of a death really does reinforce that while there is personal stake in it for the characters doing the killing, it’s not a thoughtless murder spree. It’s a hunt.

7.5/10 Main characters were likable even if it was a slow roll, only really picking up in the last act. Kills were…efficient. Antagonists were actually very sympathetic and while their anger is 90% misdirected I won’t say it’s misguided.

—

House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski

9/10 HOO BOY this one took me a good while. First, to work up the courage to crack it open. Then it was a slog to start because the entire prologue is just about Johnny Truant who is at certain points the weakest part of the story.

There’s lots of ado about nothing, I must admit I started skimming his sections the further in I got because, sir, this is a Wendy’s Drive-Thru. There’s only so many times I want to hear about your day drinking, doing drugs or getting your dick wet. (A lot of his later writings also read like they were written by a person who’s completely hammered.)

He is a vital part, however, because the book itself is practically an ARG and once you actually get into The Navidson Record proper, Johnny’s footnotes help kind of ground it, and LORD do you need grounding with how trippy things get.

Certainly not for everyone, not just because of the length and formatting, but because there’s layers to the suspension of disbelief required, and while I personally like media this dream-like, not everyone is going to enjoy that sort of thing.

—

The Troop by Nick Cutter

6/10 This one was…really tame, to be honest? It took a LONG time for me to give a shit about any of these characters, (I honestly can’t tell if the characters are supposed to be likable) largely because the main cast is 4 teenage boys from a small town. And they act like it. I think I was supposed to feel sorry Kent because of how miserable he was in the end but…he acted like a teenage boy raised by a cop and it IS his own fault that he died. Ephraim was kinda my favorite of the group because he had probably the least egregious personality although Max was fine and Newton was just a fella.

(It does earn points for getting me to dry heave at the description of a character hacking up a “scallop of worms and mucus” and rolling it around in his mouth. Intrusive thoughts had me looping that imagery in my brain and I actually put the book down for a sec because I couldn’t stop gagging. I gagged while typing that out, too. Nice one.)

[s00h]

Red Strings

"Let's follow each other, no matter what."

M-0

"I'm taking too long?" The voice in the man's earbuds suddenly said, seemingly to nobody. "I didn't take you for the impatient type."

"Are you... talking to me?" He couldn't help but sound a little annoyed. "I didn't say any—"

"Just get to it already."

"For someone your age, you sure act childish." The voice cut him off.

The man was taken aback. Sure, he wasn't acting with the expected maturity of someone in their thirty-somethings, lying on his bed with his feet up in the air like a little kid. But she was in no position to judge him, this was his time and money.

"What's that supposed to m—"

"But this is soooo boring."

"What are you, a little girl?" The voice's judging tone made the man's legs flop flat against the bed. She couldn't have been talking to him, right? "You should know it's no fun just getting right into it."

"Hey, who are you talking to?" The man half-yelled into the phone, and was surprised he wasn't interrupted this time. The girl didn't respond. He couldn't see her face, but he felt judged nonetheless. Was it him she was talking to, after all?

"Look, if you're not going to continue what we had planned tonight, don't expect me to pay you again. You can't just stall for this long and not give me what I—"

"Not you."

The man was taken aback. The girl's voice, usually full of that cutesy, flirty flair that had him coming back time and time again despite never getting to see her, was now completely indifferent. It was obvious that she had been ignoring him the entire time. "Who are you—"

"I'm so sorry, dear. Are you unhappy with me?" The usual tone of her voice was back, so abruptly that the man questioned if he'd been hallucinating.

"I—"

"I know you are. You paid extra for this, after all." The girl's voice was understanding. Her calming words seemed to wash the thoughts right out of his mind, and with them, any traces of anger.

"Yes, yes. I did. Now, let's pick up from where—"

"Now?"

"Don't worry. I know what time it is." The girl had cut him off again, but he wasn't mad. It sounded like she knew exactly what he wanted, and he couldn't wait another second to see the fruits of all these weeks of late-night calls. A wide grin grew on the man's face as he kept his bloodshot eyes glued to the small screen.

"Let me do something that..."

A hand brushed past the man's left ear and pulled out his earbuds. Before he could react, the same voice whispered directly into his ear:

"...Will make it all worth your while."

E-1

"...And as the tree that once stripped man of divinity extended its branch to the twins, the two made a decision with a single glance between them. Reaching out and grasping a golden fruit, the children of man took their first step into the realm of the divine." I gestured dramatically, waving around a piece of sausage as I proudly presented the story to my friend across the table.

"But, Professor Enoch?" He raised his hand and shook it around as if he was in a class, drawing some glances from the tables around us.

"What is it, Matthew?" I responded accordingly.

"Weren't there two trees in the Bible?" He asked.

"I can take some creative liberties here and there, can I not?" My arms, still held up in the gesture I ended my narration at, dropped back onto the table.

"Yeah but what about the implications?" "Whaddyamean?"

"The fruit from that tree is supposed to give immortality, right? Isn't that like, pretty bad to just eat without giving it a second thought?

"Is it?" I thought about it for a second, then followed with: "But doesn't it make sense given their situation? They've got nothing left in the world."

"Why would you take immortality if you've got nothing left?"

"Uh...?"

"I mean, wouldn't it just be worse if they've gotta watch all their friends and family grow old and die before them over and over again?"

"Well, Matt, I think people nowadays overthink immortality." I sat back, preparing in my mind something truly profound. "Even with the rest of the world moving at a different pace, they have each other. I think the real spectacle is being able to see it all play ou—"

Bzzt... bzzt...

My profound thought was interrupted by the vibration of a muted notification against the table. Matt glanced at his phone and suddenly stood up.

"Oh, shit." He shoved the phone into his pocket and patted at his pants to check if he had everything. "I've got a meeting."

"For?"

"So you know that string of really weird murders that's been going around since the start of the year?"

"What?"

"You don't know?" Matt looked at me like I'd just killed his dog.

"About what?"

"The Red Strings of Fate? The murderer that's been killing a bunch of people with almost no correlation to each other in super gruesome and almost physically impossible ways?"

"Red Strings?"

"It's just a name the internet gave them. Probably something about how none of the cases seem related at all. Y'know, kind of like some invisible string of fate connecting a bunch of random people?"

Matt then proceeded to ramble on about a bunch of past cases that I didn't bother to listen to.

...Is immortality really that bad of a concept?

"...And this time, it's some middle-aged dude that's been sliced up and laid out like deli meat in his own apartment. It's some really fucked-up stuff. You've gotta have been seeing this shit in the news at least, right?"

"Doesn't ring a bell."

"You should come with me, then!" He suddenly grabbed my arm. "Me and some friends are trying to solve this thing, and we're like, further ahead than anybody else. Even the officials! Just imagine your name in the history books. It'll be awesome."

That, I thought, sounds like a pain in the ass.

"Nah, I've gotta keep working on this." I tapped at my notes.

"Your loss, I guess." Matt let go, nearly bouncing up and down in place with excitement. "I've gotta go. There's new info that came out and everyone's waiting. Uh..."

His eyes drifted to his half-eaten pancakes.

"I'll cover the bill," I said.

"I'll pay you back next time."

"Don't bother, that's a pain."

"Okay, thanks dude!" Matt practically sprinted out of the door, leading to a lot of weird looks directed at me from the other patrons.

I waved a waitress down for our check, then looked through my notes one last time while finishing my drink.

Maybe... A loud slurping noise from my straw told me that my cup was empty. My fantasies aren't something people will want to read.

E-2

It all began with a pair of orphans, raised in a church.

The kids were twins, with locks of shimmering gold for hair and beads of radiant emerald for eyes.

The priest named the two, and raised them like his own children.

As the twins grew, so did their curiosity. Until eventually, the walls of the small church could not contain them any longer.

Without so much a word to the Father, the two snuck out under the cover of moonlight, their eyes glowing with curiosity and smiles as wide as the waning moon.

— — —

While Matt had taken an olympic-speed sprint down the road to his meeting, I leisurely strolled back to my apartment and started working on the story I had been writing at the time. I liked to keep it all handwritten, so a few dozen pages were scattered across my desk at all times.

Though, they felt a bit more organized than I was used to keeping them. Maybe I had the sudden urge to tidy up the night before, or something.

Matt was an energetic guy, but I had never seen him start talking so fast that he was practically speaking chipmunk by the time he'd run off. It made me wonder, just a little, how interesting this murderer could have been.

I turned my TV on to the local news. There it was, with a big scrolling headline at the bottom: "The Red Strings Claim Another Life: Office Worker Killed In String of Serial Murders." Sure enough, it was definitely a thing.

"...no information about the case has currently been released, but a detective is currently on the scene..."

I did some quick googling. "The Red Strings of Fate," the internet called this killer. After months of investigation, nobody could even agree if it was one person or a group of them. A case like this probably had all those true crime fans frothing at the mouth anticipating the outcome, or maybe the lack of one.

I could already see the video titles: "Twisted Genius: How The Red Strings Fooled an Entire Nation."

I chuckled. It really did feel like something that ridiculous. I guess for a guy like Matt, who loved to get to the bottom of everything, a mystery like this would be the absolute greatest.

But definitely way too much effort for me.

Now, what to do... I didn't really feel like writing any more, and I sure as hell wasn't going to join Matt in researching some random murder case. It was one of those nights where that sudden motivation comes on, but I had no idea what I wanted to do.

I closed my eyes for a moment, soaking in all the little things happening around me. It was something I liked doing to go back through my memories and gather my thoughts. A soft wind whistled past my window, the A/C unit shuddered as it turned on, and a light breeze chilled the area around my ankles where my pants were just a little too short to cover while I was sitting...

A... light breeze?

My eyes snapped open and locked onto my window, where the curtain was fully pulled shut. I stared at it for a second. It was moving. In and out, like waves on a calm day at the beach.

I pulled the curtain aside. Sure enough, the window was wide open.

I paused.

I would never keep my window open, and this was the 6th floor. Who the hell was going around climbing into people's windows and not even taking anything?

I slid the window closed and checked the lock, nothing was wrong. I was probably overthinking things. I mean, it could have just been me opening it and then forgetting to close it. Glass isn't exactly the most visible thing, and my memory wasn't exactly the most accurate about little details.

It felt off, but nothing else was wrong. It was best not to dwell on it.

I grabbed the curtain to pull it closed again, and an odd metallic glint caught the corner of my eye.

On the windowsill, waving around in the wind with one end stuck in the tracks of my window, was a single, long strand of silver-white. Not quite stiff enough to be a stray wire, but much too long and thin to be a part of the insulation that had just come loose. It looked almost like hair.

Almost like my hair.

E-3

"A pair of twins sat in a large, empty room. The sister, Mary, stares out of the window in boredom as her brother scribbles away on endless sheets of paper. Mary sighs. She kicks her feet onto the table, much to her brother's disgu—"

"What are you doing?" Michael's hand shot out to move his inkwell before Mary's feet could land on top of it.

"I'm bored," Mary said. "So I'm trying my hand at narration. Maybe I'll write a book, or something."

"You, write a book?" Michael pretended to hold back a laugh. "The day you sit down long enough to do that is the day these stupid aristocrats stop trying to marry you."

"Isn't that a good thing?" Mary asked.

"Doesn't mean it's any more likely."

"Hmph." Mary shifted her feet, shaking the table and causing Michael's perfect handwriting to waver ever so slightly.

"Be careful where you're putting those." Michael moved his inkwell further away, annoyed.

"Those?" Mary feigned offense. "How rude."

"Ink's annoying to clean off the table."

"The servants can do it."

"Spoiled brat."

"Grandpa."

The two fell back into silence, the only sound being the scratching of Michael's pen on paper.

"What are you writing?" Mary asked.

"Letters."

"Boring."

"You want to end up as some random rich guy's fourth or fifth wife, then?" Michael tapped his pen against the table, barely lightly enough to not split the nib. A splotch of black ink flew onto the polished, reddish-brown wood. "Because rejection letters should not be my job to write."

More silence. Mary's boredom became more and more apparent in the tapping of her fingers against her arm as she stared at the ceiling.

"I'm bored," she complained."So it seems."

"Play with me."

"Busy."

Mary sat up and glanced at Michael's writing. Suddenly, a mass of golden strands pulled the pen from Michael's hand, and began scribbling away at where his writing stopped. In just a few seconds, the pile of papers had all been filled with writing from front to back and were neatly stacked on the other side of the table. Mary dropped the pen back in its inkwell.

"Still busy?" She raised an eyebrow at her brother.

"Show-off," He scoffed.

— — —

"It just makes no sense," Matt said over the phone. "It was on the 9th floor. 9th."

"What was?" I asked. He'd called me in the middle of the night, at an hour that I'd rather not admit I was awake at, and immediately started ranting with zero context.

"The murder! How did they kill a guy on the 9th floor and leave absolutely no traces on the cameras?

"Tampered with?"

"Nope. No signs of that, and the window was locked too."

"How do you even know this much?"

"Hehehe," Matt chuckled smugly. "I have my sources." "Mhm."

"But like, it makes no sense. How does someone even go up that high and leave a scene that nasty without any traces of themselves?"

"Vents?" I was just throwing the first word that came to mind at him, still a little too lost in my own thoughts to really be listening.

"Vents? Dude, Enno, you've been playing too many video games."

"Ow."

"And the officials arrived on the scene before—" Matt stopped himself.

"Before...?" I was so zoned out that I didn't even question it.

"...Before any more information got out, and then they locked it all down." Matt said. "There's like nothing for people like us to work with, man." "It is their job."

Matt sighed, "Yeah, I guess."

"Gonna give up?"

"What?" Matt sounded almost offended. "No way, this is what makes it fun. You really should join us next time." "I'll pass."

"Pleeeeeaaaaaaaase?"

"Nope."

"You're no fun."

"Don't you have classes tomorrow?"

"Sleep is for the weak," he proclaimed. "Plus, if we can figure this out, I think we'll be well on our way to cracking the rest. And well before the officials do!"

"The sun is literally coming up."

"I'll talk to you later!" Matt hung up.

I stared at my phone's home screen. Motherf...

I put my phone down and walked over to my window. Sure enough, the hair-looking strand was still there, flapping around in the wind.

I unlatched the window and pushed it open, sending it flying off into the breeze. I watched as it fluttered away into the darkness.

Guess I'll go on a walk.

E-4

A field of green stretched from one end of the horizon to the other. Mary's long, golden hair flowed with the wind as she cheerily skipped along. Michael walked alongside her with a disgruntled expression.

"Where are we going, again?" Michael asked.

"Dunno!" Mary didn't even look back at him.

"That place was fine. Why are we even leaving?"

"I was bored."

"You were bored? Of what?" Michael raised his voice. "We had everything. You had people at your every beck and call. You didn't have to worry about food, sleep, security, anything. What in the name of God made you want to tear all of that down?"

"It was boring. There was nobody interesting. Everyone was like a zombie, just doing the same thing every day, all the time."

"And what is wrong with that?"

"It's boring!"

"If you maybe treated them like people, they wouldn't have been so boring."

"I did treat them like people."

"Then try acting like one, yourself."

"But people are soooo boring."

Michael let out a sigh and stopped walking."Hm?" Mary turned around. "What's wrong?"

You, Michael thought. You are.

"Nothing."

— — —

"Hey, kid! Isn't it past your bedtime?" A slurred voice shouted at me as I walked past a bar. I kept walking, not even bothering to look towards the sound.

I didn't really think I looked young enough to be called a "kid" by any right, but I guess drunk people will be drunk people.

As I walked past all the closed street stalls and clothing stores, I took in the cool night air and peopleless streets. A wave of cheering from the bar I had just passed blew past on the wind, one of the only signs of life so late at night.

I walked along the edge of the sidewalk, avoiding the people sleeping bundled up in their jackets and blankets on the side of the street. The city was very different this late, it felt kind of eerie. Even with the bars blaring sports commentary and the sound of the occasional drunk stumbling around some alleyway, all of it became eclipsed by the sheer calm of the darkened sidewalk as I kept walking.

At the center of the city was a park. A large rectangle of grass with a playground, a tennis court, and a few picnic tables scattered around. During the day it was filled with bored parents and hyperactive children, but nobody stayed on the grass after sunset. It wouldn't have been much fun, anyway, since only the area around the playground and tennis court remained lit after hours and the field of painted green grass was clad in pitch blackness. I could imagine a bird's-eye view of the city at night would be somewhat akin to a rectangular donut.

Dead grass crunched under my feet as I walked onto the field to cut across to the lit areas on the other side. Being in the darkness with all these bright, tall buildings around always felt kind of cool to me. A little like stepping into a hole in reality.

It was just about the only place that was truly silent in the city. I could hear every step I took, every rustle in the trees made by some nocturnal animal, and every late-night taxi speeding past, carrying a passenger barely sober enough to still say their own address.

As I neared the playground area, the loud buzzing of the lights meshed with the chirping of bugs to create some truly unpleasant white noise. I stepped onto the perpetually damp wood chips covering the floor of the playground, grabbed onto the fireman's pole, and pulled myself up into the structure with a healthy dose of exaggerated swagger. It was something I'm willing to bet a lot more people would be doing if the place wasn't taken up by kids all the time.

I always liked hanging around on the playground whenever I was out late. It was the best place to just settle down and think. I would stand with my arms dangling over the plastic arch that went over the slides and stare out at the sparkling buildings, high and low, that looked a little like stars in the distance if I squinted hard enough.

Kids would always try and fail to run up those slides for some reason. I guess it's the same urge that they get when they see an escalator going the opposite direction that they're going. Though, when you're older and you can just walk up and down them, the act of doing so ends up feeling kinda empty.

Or, maybe that's just me. Those things weren't really around when I was a kid.

I stared out over the expanse of darkness that I'd just traversed, and let out a sigh towards nothing in particular. From behind me, another sigh came seemingly in response. I spun around in surprise.

A girl, who looked to be around the same age as Matt, sat there on top of the tube slide with her legs hanging over the opening of it. The shadow of the little pyramid-shaped roof over the slide darkened all but her white sneakers, which were nearly glowing in the light. How had I not seen her?

We stared at each other for a second, probably going through the same thought process in our heads.

"Hi there." I spoke first, managing an awkward smile. "Didn't think there would be anybody else here."

"Yeah," She spoke softly, almost whispering. "She didn't either."

Did she just refer to herself in third person? I glanced around quickly to see if there was anyone else that I'd failed to notice.

She totally did.

More awkward silence. She eventually turned her head back away from me, so I did the same. I guess neither of us really wanted to question why the other was on the kids' playground in the middle of the night.

The tube rumbled. I turned around, the girl had started walking off towards the darkness that stretched out in the opposite direction from where I came.

Figured. I wouldn't want someone else intruding on my late-night thinking session either.

I started to turn back the other way, but a strange familiar glint in the corner of my eye grabbed my attention.

I didn't see it before because of where she'd been sitting, but now that she was right under the bright lighting, the vaguely metallic glint of her white scarf immediately grabbed my attention.

It struck me as a strange choice, since it wasn't exactly scarf temperatures, even at night. But I figured anyone going around calling herself "she" was going to be a bit weird, and I was just glad to be left alone, so I didn't question it past that.

E-5

"Michael, Michael!" Mary shook her brother awake, much to his annoyance.

"What?"

"I know what I want to do."

"That's not an exciting thing to hear when you say it every day."

"But I actually do this time!"

"Spit it out, then."

Mary took a step back, allowing Michael to sit up and look at her. She walked to the window across the room, swung it open, and spread her arms wide.

"...What?" Michael tilted his head.

"All of this!"

"You want to take over the world."

"Noooo~," Mary turned around to face her brother. Her hair became a bright, golden outline around the silhouette of her figure standing with the rising sun between her shoulders. Michael could barely see her face against the harsh glare behind her, but he knew exactly the kind of glowing smile that had formed across her face.

"Let's become gods."

— — —

"The Red Strings Strike Again: Owner of Popular Breakfast Spot Murdered in His Own Store."

I blinked at the headline on my laptop. Wasn't the last one literally a day ago?

Almost on cue, Matt's face pops up on my screen with the goofy ringtone I'd set for him. I drew in a deep breath and picked up.

"DUDE!" Matt screamed a single word, and then hung up. My phone buzzed with text notifications.

"1728 N. Yorns Ave."

"Meet you in 20."

I dropped my phone, letting out my breath in a deeper sigh.

"That's such a pain," I said to my ceiling.

"It's boring!"

The familiar sentence echoed around my room, even though it wasn't spoken out loud.

"...Fuck."

– – –

Matt was waiting for me in front of the taped-off cafe, bent over his phone at an angle that was surely uncomfortable.

"The officials aren't gonna come back for a while, so we have some time." Matt snapped back upright like one of those slap wristbands you'd get at an arcade.

Or, actually, I guess the opposite of one of those.

"Some time to...?" I asked, confused.

"Check it out ourselves, of course!" Matt pointed at the alleyway a few feet away. "They didn't lock the back."

"You-"

"...and the officials arrived on the scene before-" His words from yesterday suddenly made sense in my head.

I limply slapped my own forehead, dragging my hand all the way down my face before I continued talking.

"You've been sneaking into fucking crime scenes."

"Well..."

"Wait, how did you get up and down from the 9th floor without getting caught?"

"Okay," Matt pressed his fingers together. "Technically, I didn't..."

"Go on."

"I might be friends with one of the detectives on the case..."

"That sounds like so many different levels of illegal."

"Look, it doesn't harm anyone, okay?" He pulled me into the alley, glancing around like people were listening. "Nobody's gonna leak it."

"Except you, apparently." My sarcastic tone was lost in my attempts to not gag at the stench of the alley. God, I thought they stopped throwing their shit out of windows in the middle ages?

Matt turned to look at me with the best puppy dog eyes he could manage. "Don't snitch?"

"Had no intention to."

"Okay, let's go." His usual energy came back.

I felt like I was being suffocated by the stench of... whatever was in that alley, so I just let him drag me through the back door of the cafe.

Huge mistake, because the inside smelled worse. And the lights were also all on. I guess dead men pay no electricity bills..

"What are we even looking for here?" I asked in a dumb nasal-sounding voice, probably because I was holding said nose.

"Anything that'll give us a clue." Matt pulled a pair of gloves from his pockets, and handed me one. "Try not to leave your fingerprints on anything."

"You're gonna expect me to search through a crime scene with a rubber glove." I gave him the most deadpan expression I could manage with my fingers still pinching my nostrils shut. "Have you ever even watched a movie?"

"Can't hear you over the sound of me cracking this case." Matt zipped off towards the other room where, presumably, the body was. I chose to stay in the back for the sake of my own sanity and searched through the employees' lockers instead.

Most of them were locked, so I had my excuse for doing nothing at the very least.

Matt had made plenty of noise rushing off into the other room, but the door squeaking open was the last sound I'd heard from him.

Well, he was in a closed-off crime scene while the officials weren't there. Maybe he was better at being sneaky than he let on.

"Matt, it smells so bad in here I can taste it," I yelled towards the other room.

No response.

"I'm gonna head out if you've got it handled." I stuck my head through the doorway. Sure enough, Matt was standing there, right in front of the other room, completely frozen. "Matt?" I grabbed his shoulder, and he nearly jumped over me in response.

"Oh... it's just... you..." Matt said in-between rapid breaths, the fear in his voice was completely unlike the ecstatic tone he had just a few minutes prior. "I think we should get out of here. I'm not feeling too good."

Was it really that bad? The guy was all pumped up and ready to commit some trespassing not even 30 minutes ago.

I turned and looked into the room. It was so covered in red, I couldn't even tell that it was all organic at first. In fact, nothing in the room even looked like it was disturbed. I almost thought that somebody had just decided to paint a room red for fun.

Well, that very well could have been the case here, too.

A fully intact skeleton sat at the desk, poring over the completely stuck-together papers before it. It was as if the poor guy had just exploded like a water balloon in the middle of doing paperwork. Little bits and pieces of guts and brains were sticking out of the thick, reddish-brown mixture pooled on the ground. Other than that, there was no way to tell if it was even real.

Well, no way except the horrid smell, of course.

What the hell was he killed by, a blender?

I couldn't take my eyes off the scene. It was, for some reason, kind of satisfying to look at. Almost like a perfectly shaped cube of jelly, or one of those tinfoil balls.

My eyes took in every inch of the room as I stood there, frozen the same way Matt was. In one of the pools of congealed liquid on the ground, a thin strand of something stuck out of the red. A hair? But it was way too long to be from the same guy whose picture was shown in the news article. It was stained almost completely red, but the ends of it looked almost... metallic.

Ding!

The sound of the front door opening froze both of us right as we started to walk back where we came. Matt and I reflexively turned to look at the source of the sound.

A dark-haired girl dressed in a police uniform and a scarf that was definitely not regulation stood in front of the door, which had been taped up to prevent any of the inside from being visible. She was looking directly at us.

Wait, isn't that...

"Aren't you—" I started, but Matt's shaky voice cut me off.

"Arles?" He said. "But didn't you say—"

His friend, I assumed.

"Matt?" The girl—Arles—didn't look surprised. "I told you, you being here messes with the actual case. That's why I..."

She paused and looked at me without even a hint of recognition, then back at Matt. "Who's this?"

"I'm Enno." I raised my hand in a slight wave.

"Sorry, Arles. I got too excited when you told me the place was going to be empty." Matt apologized weakly. "But we were just on our way out. I don't think I should've come."

"Well, yeah, you shouldn't have." She didn't seem to pick up on his distraught tone, or maybe she just chose not to. "What if someone else came to check instead of—"

She paused, tilting her head as if listening for something. An earpiece, I guessed.

"Sorry." Matt apologized again.

"I need to talk to Matt." Arles turned to me. "Enoch, was it? You can leave first. You better not tell anyone what you saw here."

Enoch?

"No problem. My lips are zipped shut." I said, making the zipping motion with my fingers.

Matt nodded in response. I'd never seen him look so out of it before.

I looked back into the red-covered room as I turned around. The hair I'd seen earlier was nowhere to be found.

Weird.

Maybe the smell was playing with my eyes.

Arles made a shooing motion at me, so I hurried out the back door and through the alley, sucking in a deep breath of air after I'd made out onto the sidewalk. Smoky city air had never tasted so damn good.

I stood against the front of the cafe for a moment, letting all the thoughts sealed off by the stench flow into my mind.

Last time I checked, there wasn't anything in the world that could do that to a person and leave the room they're in intact. Whatever I saw back there, a human shouldn't have been able to do.

Not anymore.

E-6

Golden rays of sunlight came through the tree's leaves, creating pillars of light that appeared to hold up the mass of branches that hung far from the trunk. The twins couldn't help but stare at the sight as they stepped through the giant, pearl white metal and stained glass gates.

"Woah..." Mary exclaimed, mesmerized by these swaying lights. "Have you ever seen a tree this big?"

"Anything you haven't seen, I haven't either." Michael replied, rather uninterested. "It has been here since the beginning of time."

"Why do you sound so bored?" Mary looked at her brother. "Aren't you always the one that goes 'history is so cool,' or something?"

"I've never said that." Michael sighed. "And this is an amazing sight, I'd probably be able to appreciate it a lot more if I didn't know what you were planning to do with it."

"Don't be so boring." Mary said, her eyes fixated on the golden fruits hanging from the branches. "You came with me, didn't you?"

Michael didn't say anything, watching as Mary reached for the nearest fruit. Her hand stopped just short of grabbing it.

"Michael?" Her voice sounded strained.

"What?"

"I... Can't grab it." Her arm fell back to her side. "It's like something's pushing my hand back."

"Maybe you're just short." Michael reached up, and touched the fruit with a finger. "See?"

"You grab it, then."

"It's not like I'm the one who wants it."

"Just shut up and get it for me."

Michael stood there for a second, thinking.

"Fine." He plucked it from its branch.

Mary held her hands out for the fruit, making little grabbing motions like a child who knew they were getting a new toy.

Annoyed, Michael tossed it at her. To both of their surprise, Mary jumped out of the way, letting the fruit hit the ground. It rolled a short distance back towards Michael, completely undamaged.

"My body moved on its own."

"I can see that." Michael picked the fruit up again, holding it out towards Mary. She reached for the fruit, but stopped just short again.

"Why can't I touch it?" Mary furrowed her brow. "How am I supposed to eat a fruit I can't touch?"

"Maybe you're not supposed to eat it, then?"

"Well that's stupid." Mary pouted, dropping onto the grass. "After we came all this way, too."

"Oh, well." Michael shrugged, dropping the fruit. "Want to start heading back?"

"'Head back' to where?" Mary asked. "We can't just leave the Garden."

"I don't see why not."

"Just look at this place!" Mary gestured at everything around them. "It's where everything started, where we're the closest to the divine. Can't you just feel it?"

"So... What? You want to just stay here?"

"There's got to be some kind of hint to why I can't touch it." Mary stood back up. "Let's look around."

Michael's left eye twitched. He bent down and picked the fruit back up. "You know what, how about I just eat it?"

He brought the fruit up to his mouth. Suddenly, Mary's hair shot out and grabbed his wrist, pulling the fruit away. Drops of sticky, golden liquid dripped off the fruit from where Michael's teeth had nicked it.

"I..." Mary's hair was shaking, its grip barely strong enough to stay wrapped around Michael's wrist. "I don't know why, but I don't think you should do that."

— — —

I sat in my apartment, staring at the ceiling with the pages of my story scattered all over my desk.

Maybe this isn't something people would read, either.

I sighed, sliding all the paper together into a messy stack and placing it to the side for me to worry about later. As soon as I did, a different question occupied my mind.

Just what is up with that detective?

It kind of made sense that I'd run into her sitting on the playground in the middle of the night if she was the detective Matt was talking about, since I'd imagine these unsolvable cases would cause more than a night's worth of worrying. She was a bit young to be a detective, but it wasn't completely unheard of. What really bothered me was that...

She didn't have anything in her ear.

She was definitely acting like someone was talking to her. I doubt Matt caught it since his eyes were glued to the tile floor the entire time. That, and the piece of hair that I spotted just disappearing from the scene felt a little bit off. Especially with all the silver-white I'd been seeing recently.

Matt was better than me at this conspiracy theory shit, so I decided to call him.

I looked at the clock. Enough time had passed that Matt should have gone home already. I pulled up his contact on my phone.

Ring... Ring...

"Hey, Enno." His voice was still uncharacteristically timid.

"Hey, man. 'Solve the case?"

"I... dunno. I took one look into that room and just felt... Overwhelmed?" He was speaking slowly, as if choosing his words carefully. "I don't think I was all that cut out for actually seeing that stuff up close."

"Flew too close to the sun," I said. "What did you and that detective talk about?"

"She just told me to stay out of crime scenes, and that she would handle all the hands-on stuff."

"So just what she's told you before, huh?"

"Yeah."

"Oh, yeah. About her, by the way."

"Mm?"

"Do you know why she wears that scarf all the time? It doesn't exactly scream 'detective.'"

"I don't really know. I've never seen her without it."

"Did you ever ask her?"

"She always brushed me off, so I just stopped."

"Fair enough."

We sat in awkward silence for a second. I wasn't used to driving the conversation with Matt, since he'd usually go off on his own tangent.

"Hey, uh, I'm still not feeling too great," Matt said. "Can we talk later?"

"Oh, one last thing." I quickly said before he hung up. "She called me Enoch earlier. Did you tell her my name at some point or something?"

"I don't think I—"

"—Did anything of the sort." A female voice came across the line, followed by the sound of the call ending.

I jumped up. That wasn't normal.

Without thinking too much, I bolted out of my apartment and down the stairs.

Explained why he was talking like there was a gun to his head.

E-7

Michael stood atop his sister, the heel of his shoe pressed against her throat. Spears of silver light shot through the leaves above and pierced into the ground around them.

Mary's eyes met her brother's with a single, silent question: Why?

"I'm sorry, Mary." Michael spoke softly. Moonlight outlined his silhouette, concealing his face in a veil of darkness. "It might be better if you stay asleep. For all of us."

Mary opened her mouth, but no sound came out. She tried moving her arms, but they were bound tightly to her sides. Michael pressed his heel down even harder. Mary's hair swirled together into two pseudo-limbs, wrapping around Michael's ankle, but his foot did not budge no matter how much strength she used. Mary's eyes widened as she watched her hair unravel and fall away from Michael's leg.

A faint, sweet-ish sour smell met Mary's nose as the strength continued to drain from her body. A golden fruit dropped onto the ground beside her head, a bite missing from its juicy, perfect flesh. She twisted her body in an attempt to reach it, stretching out her tongue to hopefully get even a taste of the liquid dripping from the wound. But just like before, she stopped just short of touching it.

A harsh gust of wind brought with it the distant rumble of falling metal and shattering glass. Before Mary's very eyes, a leaf from the mass of branches above them came loose and fluttered to the ground, allowing more moonlight to pierce through the gap it left and landing on the fruit as if taunting her.

Her eyes drifted back to meet Michael's again, two emerald orbs filled with outrage, confusion, and betrayal. The harsh moonlight behind him and her own rapidly dimming vision darkened Michael's face, but the shiny, silvery droplets rolling down his cheeks made his expression all too clear.

"Sleep well," Michael's voice caught on itself. "Sis."

— — —

"Matt, you in there?" I slammed my hand against the door to his apartment. "Oy, Matt!"

No response. It was very possible he'd answered my call from elsewhere, but his apartment was the only place I could have thought of going.

"Matt, if you're asleep, now's the time to wake up." I banged my fist against his door again.

Nothing. I put my ear against the door, and the muffled sound of a female voice came through it. I couldn't quite make out what was being said, but it sounded like she was having a pretty casual conversation despite there only being one voice.

I moved my hand down to the handle.

Unlocked.

I threw the door open. The sharp scent of iron immediately reminded me of the scene Matt had dragged me to earlier. The voice promptly cut itself off.

Shit.

The lights flicked on without me even touching the switch. Matt's apartment had been unorthodoxly reorganized. His sofa was all ripped up and laying on its side, with his TV and coffee table thrown on top of it. In the middle of his living room, in the space that had been cleared out, Matt was strung up by a web of thin, red-stained strings. His arms were stretched out in a T-shape, his head tilted a little to the side, with a bright, glowing smile stretched across his face. His shirt had been stained with a flowery pattern of red similar to tie-dye, and his jeans had a few more tears in them than they came with. His hands were turned forward with fingers outstretched, as if he were showing off a masterpiece.

"All of this!"

An unmistakable chill ran down my spine as her voice echoed around the inside of my head.

Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit.

"What do you think," A white sneaker stepped out from the kitchen. "A little too tacky?"

Arles stood behind this web, in the doorway to Matt's kitchen. Her scarf was a lot shorter than when I'd seen it last. The end of it had unraveled into the strings that were now soaked in red. The rapid pounding inside my chest paused, then kept going, as if it was just as confused as I was.

"You're not her." I murmured, taking a step into the room and letting the door slam shut behind me. "Who the hell are you? That's not something a human should be able to do anymore."

"You say that as if you aren't one." Arles stared back at me with a smile. "Weren't you always the one closer to them, Michael?"

Michael.

Michael never existed.

If she's calling me that...

I stood staring at the girl before me, processing just what, exactly, she meant. No matter how I tried to spin it in my mind, her calling me that could have meant only one thing.

My fears were not unfounded, and that made me feel no better.

All these years, all that time...

— — —

"Enoch." My sister tapped her heel against the log she was sitting on.

"Hm?" I glanced over from my position on the ground, through the flickering campfire that sat between us.

"What would you do if you were immortal?"

"Having second thoughts?"

"Just curious."

I thought for a second.

"Sounds pretty painful, to be honest."

"Painful?"

"Watching time pass without you, everyone you know and love growing old and dying right before your eyes..."

"I'm not gonna die, though?"

"Lucky me."

— — —

I laughed. I threw my head back and let out all of my despair in waves of laughter.

...for nothing.

"You read it." This time, I met her grin with one of my own.

"Sorry for leaving your window open." Her smug expression showed no signs of remorse. "Hope you didn't mind."

I ran my finger along one of the strings closest to me. It came away sliced clean to the bone. The wound closed quickly as soon as I pulled it back.

It was ironic, really. The only person who would end up reading my story was the only person who already knew what happened in it.

"Also, for... Digging into your past." Arles tugged at her scarf. "She didn't seem to mind, though."

"I doubt she would have." I said. "But it's been awfully long for such a sudden comeback, don't you think? The last guy only took 3 days."

Arles snorted at my joke, then tilted her head as if listening for something.

"She got bored, she says." Arles relayed.

She often did.

"So, what does she want?" I asked. "Revenge? Because believe me, that isn't exactly going to be easy anymore."

Arles paused again.

"Fun," Arles said.

"What?"

"She wants what she's always wanted. To have fun." She turned back towards me. "And I'm doing just that."

I blinked. That was a stupid reason to be killing people.

But oh, how that was just like her.

"I always wondered how long it'd take her to reach that point," I said. "So Matt was just that to her? Entertainment?"

"You don't sound very upset for someone whose best friend was just murdered." Arles pointed out.

"Attachment's not really my thing."

"I see," she looked over her shoulder with a hint of mock pity. "Must be a boring life."

"I manage."

"To answer your question," Some of the strings strung across the room retracted, letting me step through. Matt's left arm dropped back against his side. "She wanted to get to you."

"And what did she want to say to me, exactly?" I asked, taking another step forward and out of the way of Matt's empty, unblinking gaze. I reached up and slid his eyelids closed. "What did she want to tell me so badly, that she'd trample over everything I'd gone through to keep her from this world?"

That she would break the one rule we always had between us?

Arles spun around playfully on one foot, her scarf regaining its length as the strings around the room retracted. Matt's body fell to the ground with a loud thump behind me. Arles took an energetic step—almost skipping—forward, placing her foot directly in front of the other as if balancing on a tightrope, and stretched out her hand with a nostalgic, radiant smile plastered across her face.

"Let's become gods."

[lavishresilience]

topanga  hated  to  see  the  way  that  shawn  thought  of  himself.  he  was  so  much  more  than  this.  so  much  more  than  what  he  thought  was  true.  because  in  her  opinion?  it  was  the  absolute  furthest  thing  from  ever  being  true.  at  all.  topanga  wouldn't  know  what  he  was  going  through  because  she,  of  course,  didn't  live  it.  or  live  with  the  abandonment  he  faced  day  in  and  day  out.  the  way  he  felt  was  not  his  fault  in  the  slightest.  it  came  out  of  what  he'd  been  put  through.  he  should've  never  had  to  go  through  this  from  his  parents.  the  people  that  are  supposed  to  love  you  the  most  in  the  world.  only  to  toss  you  aside  and  make  you  feel  so  little.  shawn  deserved  to  be  given  a  better  life.  a  stable  family  who  only  wanted  to  see  shawn  succeed  and  do  good.  because  he  was  capable  of  it.  even  if  he  didn't  think  he  was.  topanga  saw  that  deep  within  him  it  could  of  been  possible.  if  only  he'd  been  given  that  chance. ❛❛   you  know  shawn.  .  .  i  think  you  may  only  be  doing  that  to  protect  yourself.  to  keep  yourself  entirely  away  from  the  possibility  of  being  hurt  from  those  around  you  that  you  care  about  and  that  care  about  you.  ❜❜   topanga  watched  and  intently  listened  to  shawn  speak  to  see  if  there  was  someway  she  could  help  him  ─  maybe  even  offer  him  some  sort  of  comfort.  ❛❛ shawn,  you're  not  pathetic.  you  were  put  through  a  lot.  more  than  anyone  should  have  to  go  through  in  their  life.  you're  not  the  one  in  the  wrong  here.  you  know  that,  right?  you're  just  trying  to  figure  it  out  all  on  your  own  and  it's  hard.  you  don't  have  to  go  through  it  alone,  either.  ❜❜ topanga  didn't  want  shawn  to  feel  like  he  had  to  continously  blame  himself  for  the  abandonment  he  faced.  for  going  through  things  a  child  shouldn't  have  to  go  through  because  of  a  parent  not  knowing  how  to  be  one.  oh,  it  was  okay.  she  knew  that  cory  was  his  best  friend  for  years.  and  knew she mattered to him. she  loved  how  they  cared  about  each  other.  there  was  never  a  time  where  she'd  come  between  it.  topanga  cared  for  the  both  of  them  which  meant  that  he'd  always  have  a  friend  whenever  he  needed  one.  maybe  her  words  did  feel  like  anything  but  the  truth  but  a  lot  of  the  things  she  said  she  wouldn't  of  if  she  didn't  mean  them.  shawn  deserved  a  lot  more  than  what  he  was  given  to  deal  with.  and  she  wished  so  badly  that  there  was  a  way  she  could've  gave  him  that.  he  wasn't  responsible  for  the  actions  of  somebody  else  ─  let  alone  his  own  parents.  chet  was  going  to  do  what  he  was  going  to  do  and  it  wasn't  shawn's  doing.    ❛❛ it's  not  your  fault.  it's  not  your  fault  that  your  dad  couldn't  stick  around  for  you.  it  isn't.  if  he  wants  to  miss  out  on  the  children  he  has  and  their  lives?  that's  his  decision  to  make.  if  you  ask  me?  he's  making  the  biggest  mistake.  ❜❜  topanga's  heart  felt  like  it  was  about  to  break  as  she  heard  his  voice  suddenly  crack.  ❛❛  you  never  deserved  this.  .  .  you  didn't.   you  are  more  than  enough.  you're  enough  for  me.  you're  enough  for  cory  and  the  entire  matthews  family.  and  if  anyone  has  anything  to  say  about  that?  well,  you  can  just  tell  them  to  get  lost.  ❜❜ topanga  voice  turning  quite  fiesty  and  annoyed  for  him;  but  never  at  him.

shawn knows that topanga is just trying to help him feel better . maybe even trying to help calm his racing thoughts or shield him from the self hatred that plagues him on a daily basis . it's no secret to anyone that loves and cares about him that he thinks so little of himself . but on the other hand , he truly believes that not a single one of them could fully understand what he's going through because they haven't personally lived through it . least of all jack , who didn't have to grow up with chet hunter as a father and had a normal , stable family to come home to all those years . jack , who had parents who loved him , and supported him , and cared enough to stay and be in his life . parents that wanted the best for their child . shawn never got that .

" no , but i am ! i'm him . i — i — i hurt everybody that i care about . i push them all away . i can't keep a stable relationship to save my life . i run when shit hits the fan . i'm my father and i let him mold me into this — " he stumbles over his words , hands motioning towards himself in clear disgust for the guy he turned out to be . " . . . this pathetic person that i don't know how to unbecome . topanga , i — i don't even know who i am anymore . why am i like this ? why did i ever think this was just okay to be ? "

of course it matters , he wants to say . shawn needs topanga to know that she means just as much to him that cory does ( okay , maybe cory won out a bit more ) . she is one of his best friends and she's an important part of his life . that remained true , even as her words felt like anything but the truth to him . but then she says it and it hits him like a ton of bricks to the chest , knocking the air from his lungs ; you are not responsible for him leaving time and time again . you never were . he'd spent night after night as a child just wondering if he'd been the reason his father would never stick around . he's always known it to be his fault . " how do you know that ? " shawn's voice cracks , betraying the tough exterior he's been trying to maintain despite his crystal clear oncoming breakdown . " why wasn't i enough for anybody ? "

[lam-ila]

accidentally blurting out “i love you” during a conversation with Matthew Tkachuk (I can't remember the emoji, sorry!)

ik this was supposed to be a blurb but i had too much fun with this and i’m not sorry for this turning out to be a full fic

Word Count: 885

NHL Masterlist

Warnings: none

please let me know if you find any that i should add

a/n: this is gender neutral. hope you enjoy this! feedback is appreciated

part two

LIKES ARE GREAT, REBLOGS ARE BETTER ♡

You met Brady Tkachuk in middle school when you moved to St. Louis. You two instantly became best friends and were often invited to each other’s family events. You and Brady were inseparable, and were constantly spending every free moment with each other.

Spending time with Brady meant spending time with his siblings and you became acquainted with Taryn and Matthew, creating a sibling-like relationship with Taryn and an interesting relationship with Matthew. Was semi-flirting with your best friend’s older brother considered normal? If it was, then your relationship with Matthew was completely normal.

Years passed by, and you continued to be best friends with Brady and siblings with Taryn. Your semi-flirting with Matthew turned into fully flirting which caused you to pine over him without being able to tell your best friend. As much as you would love to, you just couldn’t bring yourself to tell Brady. Matthew was Brady’s older brother- he wasn’t who you were supposed to be in love with.

When the first round of the 2022 Stanley Cup Playoffs arrived, you tagged along with the Tkachuk family; travelling country to country to be in the arena of every single game the Flames played. You enjoyed yourself, spending most of your time with Taryn while Brady went ape shit crazy being a good supportive younger brother.

On May Fifteenth, Matthew and the Flames won their first series, with Matthew scoring the game tying goal and assisting the series winning goal. You were ecstatic and so was the Tkachuk family. You and the Tkachuk’s were waiting outside the locker room for Matthew, when you suddenly felt two strong arms wrap around yourself. Upon realizing that it was Matthew, you accepted the embrace and leaned into him.

After pulling out of the hug, you were able to say what you were planning on saying before Matthew crushed you. “You played so well! I’m so proud of you.”

“Thanks,” he responded, quickly being stopped from saying more as Brady tackled him with a hug.

Before you knew it, you were in a car on your way to a restaurant to celebrate the series win. You took two separate cars, Brady and Taryn going with Matthew in one, and Chantal and Keith going in the other. Despite the pleas from the Tkachuk siblings, you went in the car with Chantal and Keith, still processing the moments after Matthew walked out of the locker room. He hugged you first before any of his family. He didn’t even acknowledge they were there until Brady tackled him.

“I know you love him.” Chantal said, knocking you out of your thoughts.

“I don’t love Matthew,” you quickly rebutted.

“I never said Matthew’s name,” Chantal replied, insinuating that you unintentionally admitted that you did love him.

You thought about what Chantal said the entire dinner and refused to look over at Matthew, fearful that one look at him would make you fall deeper in love with him. You excused yourself from the table after eating, using the typical excuse that you needed some air. Chantal lightly nudged Matthew after you left, signalling for him to follow you outside. Once outside, you took a long, deep, shaky breath.

“Hi,” Matthew said, jolting you out of your thoughts. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you.”

“It’s okay, don’t worry about it,” you replied, trying to avoid his glance, which didn’t go unnoticed by Matthew.

“Are you okay?” Face full of concern, he reached out to hold your hand.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” you pulled your hand away from his grasp. “Enjoy your night. Don’t worry about me.”

“It’s hard to enjoy my night when you’re not with me.” And there it was, what you’ve been attempting to avoid all night: something that made you fall deeper in love with your best friend’s older brother.

“Oh come on, you just moved on to the second round of the Stanley Cup Playoffs, your family is here, you scored the game tying goal, and you assisted the series winning goal. This is literally the most perfect night, so quit worrying about-”

“I love you,” Matthew harshly blurted out. Taking a regretful sigh, Matthew continued. “I said that out loud, didn’t I?”

“Yeah, you did.”

“Well,” he took your hand, hoping that you would let him hold it for longer than a millisecond. “it’s true. I do love you.” You aggressively pulled your hand out of his grasp for the second time that night.

“We can’t-”

“Why not?”

“You’re my best friend’s older brother, it’s not allowed.”

“Says who? Brady?”

“No, he’s never said anything.”

“So who says that?”

“Everyone,” you scoffed. “It’s against the rules.”

“What rules?”

“The rules that are present when your best friend has an older brother.”

“Y/N, I hate to say it, but you sound so childish right now,” Matthew chuckled. “We’re grown adults, there are no ���rules’.” Not knowing what to say in response, you leaned forward, gently pressing your lips to his and smiling into the kiss. After you pulled apart, he looked at you with a glint in his eyes and a soft smile spread across his lips. “I love you.”

“And I love you,” you finally admitted. “although we should probably head back inside to your family.”

“They can wait longer,” Matthew said, leaning in for another kiss.

——————————

Maleeha’s Graduation Party

——————————

NHL taglist: @readyfreddy @jostystyles @whimsical-daydreams @tysonjost-taylorsversion @2manytabsopen @11livpangburn

join my taglist here