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late-to-the-magnus-archives · 7 months

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Yellow City, Chapter 15 - a Malevolent AU

This happened sometimes, when Parker was working on more than one case. He got so focused on the one in front of him that the other seemed to solve itself. That the other, in fact, fit together like puzzle pieces, and he just hadn't noticed.

Chapter fifteen of Yellow City. Note: this chapter is not explicit, but the fic is.

AO3

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Parker hadn’t really spent much time in places with lots of books. He still recognized the smell.

Weird.

His nerves still buzzed, a deeply unpleasant echo of something bad, but he didn’t feel sick, didn’t feel infected, and the horrible sense (familiar, hated) of his own body putrefying was gone.

Even weirder. He managed to open his glued-shut eyes.

Huh. Some room he’d never seen in his life. Human-sized bed (funny how tiny that felt after all this time). A door. A little dresser. A table by his bedside with a sandwich and a glass of… was that milk?

Tucked just underneath the sandwich’s plate lay a neatly folded piece of paper.

Welcome back, Mister Yang. You are in the Scriptorium. Tabby healed you, and I left you some food on the table. There are fresh clothes in the dresser; I had to guess at your personal style. Please, help yourself. Call out to me when you would like to talk. —The Keeper

Huh.

Being awake and alive was weird enough. Why’d she do all that?

Wouldn’t be the first god who’d done something unasked-for. The Defiler did it to obligate him. Hastur did it to please Arthur. The fuck was this for?

Parker searched his memory. He couldn’t think of anything he’d done that might prompt all… this.

And he knew the feeling of what he’d been hit with. Knew what The Defiler had used. That spell was horrifying, and Y’golonac had never even bothered to clean up after attacking with it, but just rotted Parker to the bone and then dragged him back again from the dead.

Had he died? The note didn’t say he’d died.

Parker salivated. The sandwich looked good. Milk, too. “Fuck it,” he said, and ate. While he did, he studied the note. Yeah… yeah. He wouldn’t like to talk yet. Getting dressed held more appeal.

The clothes—dear gods, clothes. Actual pants. A shirt. Socks. Socks! He almost moaned as he pulled it all on. She’d even included boxers.

For a moment, fully clothed, he lay back on the bed and stretched, just feeling it all and absolutely relishing it. This was nice. Even if it didn’t last, it was nice.

He still didn’t want to talk. Maybe after he got eyes on the place. Yeah.

Arthur’s description of the Lady’s home had made no damn sense. Sounded like black cobwebs the size of buildings all along the walls, and coffin-bookcases, and about six hundred arms reaching around corners. Couldn’t be like that.

Moving very quietly, Parker opened the door and peeked out.

So the good news was it wasn’t a trick, and not Y’golonac’s palace. The bad news was it didn’t look too far off from what Arthur described.

Dark. Kind of drapey. Light way up high, like moonlight peeking through windows too inset to see. Enormous, still shapes that maybe were coffin-bookcases, though coffins for what, he didn’t know. Sure looked to him like a few Hasturs could stand in those things, one on top of the other.

Right. So it was back into the nice, cozy room… or learning the truth of this place.

He was an investigator. He stepped out of the room and quietly closed the door.

It wasn’t quite as dark as Arthur had said, at least. There was a rug under his feet, absorbing sound. He kept to the wall, counting steps. No one bothered him. No acolytes, no guards, no servants. Hastur didn’t have any, either, but this was so much bigger than his temple. Parker could feel it.

He couldn’t resist getting over to one of those coffin-shelves to see what he could see. Books. Just books? None in any language he knew. The letters weren’t even ones he recognized half the time.

They weren’t in the condition Arthur had described, though. Dusty, sure; but Arthur had made it sound like they were water-logged, burned, and ruined.

They were fascinating. He’d honestly never imagined so many books. He wondered what they said.

He wondered if “Keeper” meant “keeper of books.”

He put the book carefully back and continued exploring.

How the fuck big was this place? A tiny child-like part of him wanted to shout and hear the echoes.

A light ahead. Warm. Flickering firelight, humanly comforting.

Well, that was obviously where they were. And there was no way they didn’t know where he was. Fuck it. Nothing to lose today. “Lady!” he shouted, louder than needed, so he could hear the echoes and get her attention at the same time.

“Hello, Mister Yang.” Her voice was huge in this space, like it was coming from the walls, the ceiling, all around him. “How are you feeling?”

His echo was good. Hers was better. “Okay,” he said, which didn’t mean much, but he wasn’t great with words. “Uh. You?”

“Tabby is safe, my guest has regained his consciousness and his health, and I am well. Thank you.” She let out a low, soft chuckle. “Are you still hungry? I assumed you would prefer me not to hover, so I left something that wouldn’t spoil. Except the milk, I suppose, but I did a tiny enchantment on the glass to keep it cold.”

Was she checking to see how he valued it? What he’d trade for more? “It was good. Milk was good, too. Haven’t had that in a while. So what do I owe you?” Might as well get to it.

“It was complimentary. I view it to be poor form to charge a guest who had no choice in his visit.” She let out a rumble that he more felt than heard, but it wasn’t a bad noise. “I appreciated your efforts, you know. It was very kind of you, particularly since we had just met.”

Sure. He wasn’t buying this. Why not say it? He’d already faced down one god today. “You’re a god. This shit’s always transactional. You don’t gotta schmooze me.”

“I find transactional relationships distasteful, Mister Yang. Whenever possible, I prefer to avoid them.” She let out a sigh. “I do not need humans the way my cousins do. I like humans, make no mistake; I would not have gotten involved if I did not, regardless of how nicely Arthur Lester asked me. But I need no gratitude from you.”

Okay. There was much to untangle there. Parker chose what thread to pull. “They need humans?”

“Correct.” A creak, and a bookshelf shifted near him, and a long, multi-jointed arm clad in black silk and a lace glove ( holy fuck ) picked through the books and pulled one off the shelf. “The Great Old Ones and the lesser gods are part of the same cosmic ecosystem that humans are. As humans grow, and flourish, and multiply, you create billions of little moments of magic and choice and tenacity; and these are the building blocks of what the Dreamlands used to be.”

More clues, falling into place. “Sounds like we need each other.”

Another hand folded down from the ceiling, impossibly high, and opened the book; inside, a portrait of a tentacled horror and a human interfacing in what looked like worship decorated the page. “We do. In return for what humans create, we gods help form the world you live in, both metaphysically and literally. We take the threads of reality that Yog-Sothoth wove when he created matter and space and time, and make them habitable. Some are deities of life and growth, like the Great Mother, Shub-Niggurath. Some, like a certain bastard who deserves no further mention, are deities of rot and death. And there are others; deities of music and madness, like Hastur, deities of fire or magic or knowledge or any number of other things. In times before, we co-existed, barely registering one another save for the machinations of certain sects. The Dreamlands was self-sustaining with its own discrete populations of humans, not to mention the incredible variety of minor gods and demigods and half-humans, and all of them a font of creativity, of magic, of will that shaped the Dreamlands and kept it mostly stable, and beautiful, and constantly fueled when a human from one of the other worlds dreamed something totally new into existence.”

Did she always share so much? Was like a year of classes in here. “It ain’t like that now,” he said. “Gods’ve died. I’ve seen the pieces the witches collected. I’ve seen the busted statues in that Contract pavilion. And people… there’s a lot fewer of them, too. So the balance is off, and not just in the Dreamlands.”

“You’re quite discerning,” she said. “The Fires of Y… I don’t know that I can properly express the amount of blood spilled, Mister Yang.” She sighed, heavy. “The ones who died when the bombs fell were lucky; their death was instantaneous. The ones who did not fell to a slower, crueler fate; starvation, disease, their bones decaying within their body from the radiation—think of it like a kind of magic that damaged the fundamental building blocks of your body. And by the time any of us knew about it, it had happened, and…”

She let the word trail off and it was like the spare light in the Scriptorium dimmed, like the bookcases hunched over him. One of the hands, a left one, sagged. There was a ring on it; on its left ring finger, a glittering red jewel set into the silvery band.

“They are lucky the witches begged Shub-Niggurath to intervene. She is the most powerful of us, at least the only one who is willing and able to help; she was able to stop the complete destruction of humanity. But I imagine you know that story already.”

Parker exhaled slowly. “Some of it. Asenath said there were lots of worlds. That somehow this fucking… fire happened in all of them at the same time. That true, too?”

“It is true.” The bookcase shifted again, fanning out, and the ring-bearing hand began to poke through the titles. “When the Dreamlands were still whole, my Scriptorium was based in a place called Leng. It was a crossroad for many worlds, chaotic and dangerous, but it enabled me to gather knowledge from many places and many different universes. Timelines. For whatever reason, somehow, some way… The one who shared the information regarding the Fire of Y did so in every single timeline, and every single timeline had fools arrogant enough to bring about the devastation of those bombs.”

Weird. That made a lot more sense than a lot of the piecemeal versions of this he’d been told. “So they’re all like Cloud City?”

“They’re all gone, Mister Yang. All that remained was gathered to one world, one place and time, and sustaining that stability requires more than we have to give.”

Yeah. That tracked, too. He breathed for a moment, considering. Then he nodded. “Two things.”

“Ask away.”

“So, one. Seems to me like one small population on one Earth can’t sustain you guys forever. Am I right?”

“Correct.”

“Yeah. Two.” He took a slow breath. “I don’t think they all know that, but I think Hastur does.”

“Hastur most certainly knows; I cannot truly speak for the others.” She sighed once more. “Since the Fires, the only god I have spoken to is Shub-Niggurath. The others… Well. I believe you are very familiar with those who approach with empty hands and harsh words.”

“Uh.” Parker stared blankly at the nearest hand. “Nothing… good happens to those guys?”

“Yes.” And this sound was most certainly not a happy one, and the bookcase shifted again; and these books were…

A book shouldn’t have a presence.

“Hm… Ah, yes.” She pulled one off the shelf, one of the dozens that sat in a neat row. It had a beautiful green leather cover, the pages within a gentle cream, and something that looked disturbingly insectoid reinforced the spine. “This, Parker Yang, is what remains of the god H'chtelegoth.”

And the sound that came out when she opened it split the air, split his ears, split worlds—

“Holy shit!” Parker gripped his ears.

She snapped it shut, just as quickly. “H'chtelegoth came to me demanding the Parchments of Pnom, an item that I had in my collection. In exchange, he was ‘willing’ to give me back Sor—one of my acolytes.” The god paused, then, and it was like she was steadying herself. “Something you must understand is that these Parchments… They contain a genealogy, of sorts, for us. On its own, harmless; like how most of my collection is, on its own, harmless.”

One of the hands trembled.

“My acolyte knew better. She knew what he intended to do with them; he intended to use them to gain allies, to form a coup and enable the harvesting of the rest of the humans. Part of what keeps many of the Great Old Ones on a level playing field is not knowing who may or may not be more powerful; it is a risk to enter into a territory war. But enough gods who have been convinced they are descended directly from my ilk stirring the pot, and you may have a problem. She… She died to ensure I knew.”

Holy shit .

So being descended from an Outer God was important. And also, pissing the Keeper off meant getting turned into a screaming book.

Fucking gods.

He had to keep a grip on himself. Casually, he began to pace.

It felt really good to have his hands in his pockets while he paced. Familiar. Easier to think. “So when the gods finally fuckin’ die out because the Dreamlands go to hell, humans will too, right?”

“It is certain.” She replaced the terrifying book onto the shelf. “If all of us were to fall… well, reality itself will begin to erode. Humanity may crawl onward for a time, but matter itself will fall apart. The protections that were put in place to hold back the radiation would fail, and in time, the last human would breathe their last breath. A slow, sad end to a very sad story.”

Yeah, no shit. “Gimme a minute. Okay?”

“Take as much time as you need. I can wait.” The shelf of books-that-were-not-books slid upward, away, gone, protected.

He resumed pacing.

He didn’t want to know this. When a guy knew things, big things, he had to act on them. That’s how it worked. At least, for him.

He knew it wasn’t really on his shoulders. She wasn’t asking for help. Didn’t matter, though. Now, it wasn’t just save the miserable world from the gods. It was fix it or everyone dies.

It wasn’t fair. His god had betrayed him. Everything he’d believed had been ripped away. Justification for the bad things he’d done had been burned to ash, and now, this. This.

“Fuck,” he whispered. “Fuck,” he said louder. “Fuck!” And he spun and punched the blank wall between shelves.

“FUCK!” The Keeper howled, rattling distant windows and making those fucked-up person-books shiver.

That was startling as hell. “Whoa, what? What?” His eyes were huge. “You fuckin’ felt that?”

A silhouette appeared at the distant firelight. “Keeps?” Tabby called. “You good?”

“Oh!” The hands jerked backward a bit. “I… Alright, first, yes, I did feel that, but it didn’t hurt, and I didn’t take it as an aggressive action towards me.”

Parker stared at Tabby, his eyes huge. “I punched her! I… I didn’t know she was the wall!”

“Oh, Keeps, you big baby,” Tabby scoffed, jogging over.

“I didn’t swear because of that,” the Keeper protested. “I got caught up in him swearing, because you’re right, Parker: it’s fucked.”

“Sure, sure. Like this wasn’t a ploy for my attention.” Tabby rolled her eyes, patting one of the hanging hands as she walked to the spot of wall. “Here?”

“Stop it.”

“So you don’t want me to kiss it better?” Tabby aimed her gaze somewhere ceiling-wise.

The Keeper paused for a guilty moment. “He is very strong,” she said. “I am terribly wounded.”

“You mean your pride is wounded,” Tabby said, pressing her lips to the spot on the wall.

“I assure you, it is not.”

Tabby snorted. “It should be. This is embarrassing.”

One of the hands reached down and ruffled the girl’s dark hair, and Tabby stuck her tongue out at the other.

Parker did not know how to handle that casual affection. At all. At least the power dynamic and occasional sadism of Hastur and Arthur (even with all the new, weird changes) made sense to him. This did not, was dangerous, and threatened ( Charlie) the comfortable it didn’t happen like you thought story he told himself.

So he shelved it. “I got something to say.”

“It had better be an apology,” Tabby said mock-sternly.

“Be nice to him,” the Keeper said. “Please, Parker—unless you prefer Mister Yang. But please, speak.”

He stared at Tabby for a second. Like hell was he apologizing for a god being the wall . “Look, how long would it take to… no, that’s the wrong way to do this.” He bared his teeth for a moment. “Sorry. I suck at talking. Okay. Hastur’s got this plan. He’s got a plan for Carcosa that includes shrinking it three times and, I think, still working solid. How much time you think that’ll buy everybody?”

“You need not apologize, Parker. I quite like hearing your thought process.”

Sure.

“As for this plan, I haven’t seen it, but…” The god clicked her tongue a few times. “Guessing on what Hastur would do, given the fact he reportedly has a brain… I’d say another two centuries the first downsize, assuming he reduces Carcosa by about a third. If he reduces it up to half, maybe three. Perhaps another century on the second. As for the final… It depends on who is left.”

Parker licked his lips. “I’m goin’ off incomplete information here. All right? So. Bear the fuck with me.” He was back to pacing. “If the gods got… fed better, or whatever the fuck they get outta dealing with people, could that slow down more?”

“In essence. We either need fewer gods or more humans, or a better way to deal with the Contracts.”

Tabby made a face.

“I know.”

“I’m guessing here,” he said. “Contracts. Asenath said the Mother tried to make that fair, but… still… weighted toward humans. Right? Best she could, while still putin’ the squeeze on you assholes. No offense.”

“None taken. I can’t Contract, Parker. Outer God.”

“But he’s right,” Tabby said.

“Can’t Contract,” said Parker. “But you sure as fuck ended up speaking through her out there. Did you get fed by that? Whatever you get through that?”

“I am fed by the natural chaos of the universe, Parker. It is my nature, as it is the nature of my siblings.” Somehow, the hanging hands managed a shrug. “As for our sojourn… That was a necessity, if I am to attend the vote.”

“Keeps can’t leave the Scriptorium.” Tabby leaned against the nearest bookshelf; another arm appeared, pulling a quite-nice armchair out of nowhere and set it next to her, and tapped the girl on the shoulder until she sat in it. “It’s a whole thing. Long story that we don’t know the answers to yet.”

“Your friend asked for my vote,” the Keeper said gently. “I’d spent a long time avoiding getting involved in anything like this. I had never even thought about it. But I decided, since my participation in the vote will bring my cousins’ attention to me whether I desire it or not, it’s time for me to do my part in helping fix things. And that started with getting eyes on what was happening.”

“And testing how much power I could hold until I exploded,” Tabby added, “and monitoring my blood sugar levels so I didn’t pass out, and scribbling down all your observations of how excited you were to be outside, and—”

“Yes, thank you Tabby, I’m sure Parker understands.”

They were getting off track. “I understand more than that,” he said. “Asenath said the Mother helped you do it. Right?”

“Correct. She provided me with an artifact that allowed me to siphon off most of… I’m not sure how to describe it.” She let out a low, sheepish laugh.

“I can,” Tabby said eagerly.

“Tabby.”

“It won’t even be a truly heinous sex joke, I promise.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“You shouldn’t. Anyway. So gods are big—big bodies, big souls, big magic. Keeps especially is huge, because she’s an Outer God and all of them tend to be pretty cosmic in scale. You take something that big and try to put it into something small, something’s going to have to give.” And for a moment, her face flickered, grew grim. “You may recall, uh, what was going to happen to Arthur if Y’golonac’s ritual succeeded.”

“Yeah.” Low. He knew his shame. There was no point in pretending otherwise.

“That is the reason many Great Old Ones can’t Contract, either, and no Outer Gods can; it is rare for a human to possess the power of will to harbor even a piece of them.”

“I know. It’s why I didn’t even consider it might be fucking Hastur calling himself ‘John,’” Parker said. “Assumed a servitor. Never thought it’d be an equal to the Defiler.” He sighed. “If I had… dunno. It would’ve gone down different. But the Defiler didn’t think of it, either, so. There’s that.”

Not much of a comfort.

“The artifact the Great Mother gave me allows me to, in essence, tether myself to Tabby’s soul to enable my consciousness to leave the Scriptorium. It is easily done, given that our mark connects us as it does, and that I am quite motivated to not burn her out; for the vote, I will need to do more, but the artifact should allow me to keep Tabby’s soul tethered to my own while I occupy her body. We just… need a bit more practice.”

“It’s not perfect yet, but I’ve got the smartest and prettiest girl in the whole wide universe on my side,” Tabby said, batting her eyelashes at the ceiling.

Fuck, these two. He stuffed more into that shout about it later box. “Okay. So. So.” He gripped his hair. “Back on track, okay? I know our population’s shrinking. Fucking Wastes take more every year. Arthur’s town—Harper’s Hill—there’s lots like that, that got sort of… eaten. Okay. So. If the gods…” He had to say this right . “If the gods were able to do more, hold back the Wastes, make the Lake and the ocean not just fucking wet death , humans could… make more of us. Right? The population could grow again. And if that could happen, they could feed more fucking gods. And if that happened, the gods could… protect humans more, and we could expand even more. Re-open places like Harper’s Hill, I dunno. Something. Right?”

The two said nothing for a moment, but Tabby was grinning. “I told you, Keeps, he and I are the same person.”

“That is what you said.”

“I can smell it. I'm on some fuckin’ wolf shit right now with how good I sniffed that out.”

“You were right,” the Keeper said primly.

“What?” said Parker, because what?

“What you’ve said is… an idea, yes,” the Keeper said. “A fascinating theory—one that makes sense, but I do not believe I would have reached it quite as quickly.”

“Yeah, well, being mortal makes you skip a few steps,” he muttered.

This was the kind of reasoning the Defiler had always praised, too, but that… that praise hadn’t been true. It hadn’t been enough for his god to even like him .

That wasn’t important now. “Pretty sure fucking King in Yellow’s already on board. He likes complicated bullshit.”

“You seem to know him well.”

“I do.” Parker paced. “K’thanid will be on board. Nath-Horthath wil, too. Those guys are big hitters.” And he sighed. “I fuckin’ hate it. I’m not… into this. Get me? I hate this. But I want us to survive, and we can’t do that without you people . But you can’t survive without us, either. It’s gonna take investment on your parts before we can give back.” And he breathed heavily. He had to get this right. “So if we’re gonna do this, vote first. Then that Contract system’s got to be updated. Fuck. Fuck. Maybe whatever the Mother gave you can work for other gods, too. The rules’ve got to change, don’t they? How the fuck…” He sighed. “Does it make a difference if bigger gods get to do it? Does that… I dunno, help the gods under them? Maybe mean less Contracts needed? I’m gettin’ ahead of myself. Sorry. Words ain’t my strong suit.” He’d talked too much. He knew he had. It never went well when he did. He clenched his jaw, dropped his head, and paced.

“You were utterly wasted on Y'golonac,” the Keeper said, voice low.

“Oh, you’ve got her in a mood now,” Tabby said, and winked at Parker.

Parker closed his eyes tightly for just a moment. “Naw. Got all the blood he wanted spilled. Arthur was just better.”

“He used you as a hammer when you were a surgeon’s blade. That worm-brained fool—did he keep you in the dark? He must have kept you on a very short leash. I imagine you would have been impossible to stop if you'd been allowed to act of your own volition.”

That was a load of horseshit.

Though she wasn’t completely wrong. There had been no wriggle room, no space for failure. And he’d only failed once.

Once had been enough. He swallowed and didn’t answer.

Her voice was full of wonder. “Gods, I hate him. The petty cruelties are one thing, but to waste such potential. Abhorrent.”

“He—” There wasn’t anything to defend. Nobody had said anything like that before.

Or… maybe they’d said some of it. Asenath (who was biased). Arthur (who was nuts). But this was coming from someone without shared history, who stood to gain nothing from it.

Reality called. Gods didn’t care for him. This praise was suspicious , no matter how… nice… it would be if it were true. “He promised things and did them. Kinda hard to argue with that.” It wasn’t an answer. Too bad. “Just tell me what you want outta this, talking to me, telling me shit. I want it laid out going in. No surprises.”

“From you? Nothing, at least at present; in the future, who knows? I believe you have promise; I believe you’re a wickedly smart man who was willing to sacrifice himself to protect my marked, not to mention bold enough to challenge me, one of the most powerful creatures in the universe, directly to my face when you felt I was speaking out of turn.” She laughed, light and pleasant. “Though I will say, I don’t believe you were aware at the time. At present, Parker Yang, all I can offer is a choice. Once Hastur has finished tearing Y’golonac a new asshole and the riot has dispersed, you may, of course, return to him and to Arthur. Or… If you wish, you may stay.”

Oh, what the fuck was happening now? “Stay?”

“If you desire, you do not have to go back to Hastur. You could stay here, in the Scriptorium, under my protection; not as a priest, or an acolyte, but merely as yourself. You may dress as you please, spend your days reading or learning or doing nothing at all—you would be able to meet the others who dwell here, under my protection.”

“No more collars,” Tabby said.

Parker stared.

“Consider it thanks for your efforts to ensure my wife was safe when Y’golonac attacked,” the Keeper said, voice gentle. “You need not answer now; you may even change your mind, if you decide to leave, and I will… what’s the metaphor? Put a foot in the door?”

“No. I think you want ‘keep the light on’ or ‘keep the door cracked’, or something like that,” Tabby said.

“I demand no Contracts, no pledging of your soul, no worship. Merely a ‘yes’ or a ‘no.’”

“Kind of like it was before,” Tabby said, very quietly.

“Before… My acolytes came and went as they pleased,” the Keeper said quietly. “Perhaps, once things are better, you may as well.”

Parker straight-up didn’t believe this.

Come on. This kindness? This generosity? From a self-proclaimed one of the most powerful beings in the universe? Bullshit.

But he heard her. And the fact that she didn’t demand an answer right now was more important than sandwiches or boxers. “Thanks.” He knew that was abrupt. Not enough. Too bad. He was out of words. “I think I need to go back. Arthur… I wanna see where that’s going.” He needed to see this through.

He needed to see Y’golonac defeated.

He needed to go home.

“I understand,” the Keeper said, and it felt like she knew Parker meant more than he said. “Do you want to leave now? Or… Would you like some time to center yourself? Time will only pass for us.”

He frowned. “How long I been in here?”

“With us? About… nine hours. Out there? Maybe ten minutes. Long enough for the mayhem to have finished.”

He stared. He’d been in here nine hours. “Took a while to fix that shit, huh?” he said thickly.

Tabby made a face that said everything Parker needed to know. “Yeah. Had to get some backup from Keeps.”

“Healing is not my forte, but power I have in spades. Tabby was able to channel quite a bit of it, and at last we were able to purge the infection from you.”

“It was worth it, though.” Tabby grinned. “Keeps cried.”

“I did not.”

“You pulled through, though. Might have been through the power of spite, though, especially since it looks like you shook off whatever lingering hold he had.”

The truth popped out without warning. “He killed me lots of times with that.” Parker found himself shaking a little. “I really didn’t die this time?”

“I was not going to allow that to happen. Anything worth fixing is worth fixing correctly. Would you like to sit down for a bit?”

He would not like that. Maybe needed it, but would not like it. Nope. Limit reached. Feeling red-faced, he said, “Can I go?” Fuck, he wasn’t trying to be rude.

“As you wish. If you decide you wish to speak to me again, let Hastur know.” She paused. “Actually… Let Arthur know. I have a good feeling he’ll be able to call upon me if he needs to. I would give you a more direct egress, but I would rather avoid Hastur barging in.”

“Yeah, that’s a good idea. He’s always digging in everybody’s drawers,” said Parker.

“I’ll see you out,” Tabby said, hopping out of her armchair. “Sorry.”

“For?” He tensed.

“It was a lot.” The girl put her hands in her own pockets as she walked, leading him through the bookcases effortlessly.

“Oh.” Maybe his scale for “a lot” was off. “Not really.”

“Nah. I recognized that look on your face; same one I had when I first got shoved in the Scriptorium more than seven hundred years ago.” She shook her head. “Pretty sure, anyway. Didn’t have a mirror at the time.”

“Fuckin’ old for a human.” Said slightly aggressively.

“I know. I look good for my age, huh?” She grinned at him.

“Yeah. But you didn’t die?”

“No. I was sort of…” She paused, scrunching up her face as she thought. “I guess ‘portaled’ is correct, though it was more of a… I had a friend who, as it turns out, was one of the Mother’s witches, back before the fires. One day she just… She said she hoped I would understand, and gave me a shove, and I ended up in the Woods.” She laughed, low, flat. “It was a pretty big surprise for me. I was a psych major.”

“A witch saved you?” And he took a moment. “What is a ‘sike major?’”

“Oh, shit, right—you guys don’t really have higher education.” And that made her look sad. “I was in school; I went to a place called Miskatonic University. I studied psychology, which is understanding how the human mind works. I…” She paused. “I wanted to help people. But it wasn’t a discipline that had anything to do with magic. Fuck, I thought magic was pretend, you know? Stuff you read about in books, that didn’t really happen, and though my friend called herself a witch I assumed it was in the sort of ‘let me read your cards’ and ‘this crystal clears negative energy’ sort of way, not a ‘I’m going to portal you to a freaky eldritch forest and see if you’ll worship my god, which by the way is also a real thing you have to contend with.’”

Crystals and cards were tricky magic he went absolutely nowhere near, but it sounded like Tabby hadn’t known they held power.

Or maybe they hadn’t, in her world. She’d lived a life without magic. She’d known a world without gods… and it had still burned.

He couldn’t go there yet, but chose another thread to pull. “A doctor for the mind?”

“Yeah. That exactly.” She smiled. “I, uh… I had it really rough as a kid. I wanted to… I wanted to help other kids not end up like me.”

“A head-doctor. Shit. That sounds useful. And yeah. I get that desire. It’s why I became a cop. None of them fuckin’ helped me as a kid, so.”

“The road to hell is paved with good intentions, I suppose,” Tabby sighed. “I… I’m sorry it was so shitty for you. Especially if it was shitty enough that you decided to be a cop, yeesh. No offense.”

He shrugged. “Well, it meant I’d be above the law, too. Needed that, for what I was doing.” And he blurted it: “Beat the fuck out of a few child molesters, though. So that felt pretty good.”

Tabby whipped around at him and beamed. “Fuck yes! That’s the shit cops should do!”

He looked at her. “You too, huh?” he said, getting right to the heart of why someone, an adult, would have such a passion about that particular crime.

For a brief moment, she froze. A series of microexpressions flitted across her face; surprise, confusion, realization. Sympathy. Grief. “Yeah,” she said, flat. “...Yeah.” She started walking again. “Sort of… Sort of hoped the gods had done away with that one. Like they did homophobia and stuff. Cultural bullshit. But… Well, I mean, fuck. Predators everywhere, I guess.”

So many threads to pull. “Predators always think they can get away with shit, human or god.”

She looked at him. “You aren’t wrong.”

He was too tired to be delicate. “Bet you’re glad that radiation your wife-god mentioned happened to yours.”

“Sure fucking am. Couldn’t have happened to a nicer person.” She let out a soft laugh. “...Did you… Were you able to get yours?”

“Some.” Even. Flat. “One died of old age. One was gone, fuck if I know where. One I fucking murdered on the dock, and that’s the one Y’Golonac used to get my attention. I stopped caring after that. Had other things to do.”

“...I haven’t thought about it in a long time. Funny how that sort of happens, huh?” She shrugged. “Is that why you got so prickly at Keeps at the Hall of Contracts?”

“When was I prickly?” he said, prickly.

“When you called her out about that Contract—what’d you say? ‘It’s more than most of these shits will ever do?’” Tabby clicked her tongue.

His shoulders relaxed. “Oh. That. In part, yeah. Just. People like to make noises at things they don’t approve of without fucking offering any other options.” He shrugged. “Dunno. Rubbed me wrong. Sorry.”

“You don’t have to apologize, man. It was deserved. You called her on it, and she admitted it.” Tabby gave him a playful punch in the arm, earning a startled look. “She… It’s kind of different, for them, but she knows… What happened, with me. And she had a similar experience with one of her brothers, though he more wanted to… I dunno. I was trying not to go insane and die at the time.”

Parker stopped dead and stared at her. “That can happen to gods?”

“He wanted control of the Scriptorium.” Her lips pressed into a thin line. “She was barely over a hundred; it was just over a year after the Fires. He was older, thought he was smarter and stronger.” She let out a soft breath. “Might have been outside it, fuck, I dunno. We don’t really know exactly how this place works, just that she’s tied to it.”

“She felt it when I punched the wall. Uh.” He looked a little sick. “We’re—”

“Oh, right, all that. Pfft.” Tabby rolled her eyes. “I’m sorry she freaked you out when she shouted like a lunatic. Just so we’re clear: you absolutely didn’t hurt her. She was being a drama queen. And she gets excited when people yell, and likes to join in, so it was a prime opportunity for her. Yeah?”

Parker stared at her. “We’re inside of your wife-god. Maybe I’m not gonna think too much about that.”

“Yeah, I don’t recommend it. It’s complicated. But she can also, like…” Tabby stuck out her hands, as if trying to manipulate something Parker couldn’t see. “She can also like… not be in places, in here? She is it, but she isn’t. It’s all deeply within the realm of what she and I both call ‘Outer God bullshit’ and it is also something that I had to deal with when she and I weren’t on the best of terms.” Tabby paused. “Or, well… When I wasn’t on the best of terms with her, I guess. Another long story.”

He had reached his limit and gone beyond it at this point. “I need to go home.”

“Yeah, yeah. Workin’ on it. Need to go just a touch further… there. That’ll do it.” She reached into her pocket and pulled out a doorknob. “Hey, just in case you decide not to come back: it was nice to meet you. You’re fun to talk to.”

He wasn’t sure how to respond to that weirdness. “Sure. Dunno about your wife-god, though. No offense.”

“None taken. I’ve had a long time to get used to her, you know?” She laughed, holding the doorknob out to nothing, and a large set of wooden doors sprouted from the knob’s handle.

Someone on the other side was calling his name.

That felt weird. So weird. Calling for him, trying to find him, like it mattered he was gone? Really?

For him?

“Sounds like your ride’s here. Y’know… Keeps likes you. Even if you decide not to take her up on the offer, it’d be cool if you visited. You can bring Arthur too, if Goldenrod lets him go.”

“I… yeah. Maybe.” Probably not. Arthur was… one did not bring Arthur places. Arthur went places, very much on his own.

There was nothing left to say, so Parker gave her a nod, and stepped through.

Hastur grabbed him before his feet even touched the churned-up ground.

This place was absolutely fucked. It had been the Contract pavilion. Now, it was rubble. Rot ate the grass and melted the stone; chunks of statuary lay where they’d been exploded, and a black groove in the ground announced where something large had been forcibly pushed right out the entrance.

Hastur was…

Hastur.

Was.

Angry.

Hastur was so fucking angry. Parker had never seen him truly angry, and hadn’t realized that until this moment. Petulant, ridiculous, fussy, demanding… but this. This was angry, and Parker suddenly realized that even at their worst moment, he had never gotten Hastur like this.

“You’re okay!” Arthur cried from below, and he sobbed. “Fuck… fuck, I thought he got you.”

“‘Kissinger’ did not win,” said Hastur in a voice like thunderstorms at sea, and any words Parker had left dried up and died like plants never watered.

He trembled. Hastur was so angry.

Hastur picked up Arthur (who reached for Parker, reached, with both hands, and Hastur brought them together without hesitation), and then flew.

From above, it was clear where the fight had happened. It was like some kind of pointed fire, like an aimed explosion, burning the ground and ruining the part of Carcosa that served to give gods access to the human world.

And suddenly, that mattered. Suddenly, that was important, because it wasn’t just what gods wanted to do , but something they needed , and no one was really safe to be around when starving, and if they all fucking killed each other now, there’d be no chance to save anyone, ever.

“Fuck!” Parker said. He couldn’t stop shaking.

Arthur held him.

Tentacles trapped them both, shielded them both, and kept them together.

Arthur’s tears cooled on Parker’s neck. “I thought he fucking got you.”

He couldn’t handle this. No one could handle this. What in fuck was this? “He did get me. Fuckin’ Keeper made it better.”

Hastur growled.

Oh, no, all the other angry sounds had been play growls , nothing serious, nothing like this sound that warped the air and ached like old wounds and made Parker cry out and made his eyes water and—

Arthur raised his face and kissed him. Deep, intimate, without hesitation.

Not expected. Nope. Acceptable response not found. Parker’s gaze rolled to Hastur, who had to react badly to this, who had to respond with crushing rage, who would hurt him so much that he’d wished he had stayed in the spooky library with the crazy ladies.

It did not happen.

That growl happened, low and scary, but not at him . Parker could feel it. Parker knew it. “He will pay for this,” Hastur threatened.

Arthur breathed, forehead against Parker’s, and he was still leaking tears. “Don’t fucking scare me like that again. And sorry. I should’ve asked.”

“I…” He what? He fucking what? “I don’t get it.”

Arthur met his gaze, and Parker stopped breathing because this man was sane. “You’re an idiot,” Arthur said. “You could’ve just fucking walked over to us, or waved, or anything other than what you did. I thought he fucking killed you.”

Hastur still wasn’t hurting him? “I… no. He didn’t. For once.”

Arthur’s voice shook. “Fucking hell, Parker.”

Carcosa looked fine. Normal. Like it always did: stupid, showy, uneven, pieces given over to other gods with no sense of symmetry. “Where is he? Where’s the Defiler?”

“In his temple,” Hastur said, low, dangerous, “and he will stay there tonight.”

The concept of consequences now—after all this time without, after complete certainty that they could do anything they want at any time—filled Parker with something akin to joy. “He’s… in lockup?”

“He is awaiting trial,” Hastur thundered. “And tomorrow, he will have it. ”

Damn. “Because of the pavilion?”

“Idiot.” Arthur sighed, so close they shared heat. “He attacked someone else’s possession. He attacked a human, and we’re so fucking rare. He fucked up the Contract system for everybody. His fucking… filaments were everywhere, almost fucking invisible. Nobody saw them but you.”

“So it… it’s good?”

“The Contract system is down,” said Hastur, grim. “Firmly down. It will not be easy to repair in a hurry.”

And Parker now understood why that was bad. “Fucking hell.” And he knew how Y’golonac worked, knew exactly what had gone down today: “He wanted you to attack him. He wanted to blame you for it going down because the violence is obvious.”

Hastur’s rumble was…

Oh, the god was still angry, yes, so furious, but that right there was a pleased sound, and it struck Parker as every inch as dangerous as rage. “Yes, little traitor,” Hastur said. “That is correct. It seems your former master had laid a trap.”

“It would’ve been so much worse,” said Arthur. “Hastur was supposed to be weaker when it happened. Thanks to you, it happened early. We can handle this because of you .” And his lips touched Parker’s ear. “He kicked the Defiler’s ass. It was fucking great. ”

They’d clearly been going through a time in the ten minutes since the Defiler tried to kill him. “Uh-huh.”

Arthur rested his forehead on Parker’s shoulder.

It had been ten fucking minutes! Parker looked at Hastur.

That rage still loomed, still bloomed, still blossomed, but it had… gentled. “You no longer smell of rot.”

What? “Sure.” He swallowed. “You gonna kill me? He… Arthur’s touching me.”

“Arthur has done more than that in the past. He has taken you into himself, and amortization is overdue,” said Hastur, amused. “You were attacked. You vanished under a writhing tangle of hideous growth and filthy putrescence. Then… the Keeper responded.”

Amori-fucking-what? “I was gone ten minutes, ” said Parker helplessly.

Arthur met his gaze. He was so close. “I thought we lost you.”

Too close. “You’re gonna get me killed.”

“No,” said Arthur. “You’re our partner.”

“Wait. I…” Puzzle pieces, fitting together just fine, only he hadn’t been paying attention. “Wait. You… but… wait, Hastur is… uh.”

Hastur… laughed. Low.

“You’re our partner, ” said Arthur again.

Had they always meant—

Wait, this wasn’t—

They were at the temple. “Fool,” said Hastur fondly (and still definitely laughing at him), and then they were inside. And the evening was beautiful, and the night was cool, and he slammed the doors behind them. They gonged, loud, metallic, final.

Parker shuddered. He didn’t know where to look.

Hastur was back to growling. It rattled decorative vases and bowls, made incense sticks dance in their basins, sent ripples along the surface of the bath to splash against the far lip. “He will pay.”

“He will.” Arthur stroked his arm. “He will.”

Everyone needed a bath. Hastur was covered in soil and what might be pieces of god-flesh. Arthur was dusty, grass in his hair, smears of mud or something worse. Parker was…

Parker was in clothes Hastur did not like, and Hastur growled as he plucked at them.

“No!” Parker shouted, clutching his sweater to his chest. “No. A gift. From the Keeper.”

Hastur actually sniffed imperiously. “Remove it. I cannot see your flesh.”

Oh, the fuck was all of this?

“Sorry, again,” said Arthur. “I should’ve asked.”

Whiplash. Talking to any of these guys was whiplash. “What?” said Parker, frozen.

“I kissed you. I don’t think you’re ready yet.” And Arthur unhooked the big (ruined) skirt thing and slipped out of his boots.

Parker stared.

“Off,” Hastur rumbled.

“The fuck do you care?” Parker blurted at him, because Hastur was safe to yell at, because Hastur wouldn’t get sad eyes like Arthur could.

“I want to see you,” said Hastur.

“So it ain’t just putting me in things because I complained, after all?” Parker snapped.

Hastur… froze.

Caught. Caught! He was caught! Parker pointed at him. “You lied to me.”

“I teased you,” said Hastur. “Also, I did not lie. I merely withheld some of the truth.”

“I’d so fucking have you in lockup for a night if you were one of my guys,” Parker found himself saying because he’d apparently gone mad.

Hastur cupped under his chin with a thin and flexile tentacle and raised his face. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you? Power… over me .”

Oh, dear gods, the way he’d said that —

“Parker. That stuff might not do so well in the water,” Arthur said gently because Parker was still clothed (and Parker was glad he was clothed because things had responded right the fuck away and this was just too much on top of everything with the Keeper and—)

“Yeah,” Parker verbalized, and took off the Keeper’s gifts.

Hastur watched him.

It wasn’t like Hastur ever fucking blinked, but Hastur didn’t fucking blink, and the power and penetration of that gaze was so different from Y’golonac’s and Parker was still stuck on power over me and—

“How did she help you?” said Arthur already in the water.

Focus, Yang, he thought. “She… her, uh. Wife. Healed me, somehow.”

“I will repay her,” Hastur rumbled.

“No. Lady said it’s because I tried to save her wife when the Defiler attacked, so I paid for my own care, apparently,” said Parker who could do nothing about his almost painful arousal, and so just went into the water.

Arthur went under, scrubbed himself, and straightened, water streaming, puffing, and steaming in the cool night.

Parker stared at him, distractedly washing his arm. “Partner.”

“Yeah?”

“I mean. I mean I’m partner.” He paused. “I sound like a fuckin’ idiot.”

Arthur laughed softly. “Yes. You are partner.”

“You meant…” Parker waved vaguely.

And he could see the strain, see the effort of will to give as clear an answer as possible: “I mean… you’re partner with us. Whatever that looks like. You’re staying. You’re safe. You’re… you’re ours, and we’re yours.”

“Dunno that’s so much of a ‘we’ thing,” Parker muttered, and turned to look at Hastur.

Hastur looked so damned amused.

Parker narrowed his eyes and turned back to Arthur. “What’s all that fucking mean, Lester?”

“Whatever it means as we figure it out.” Arthur squeezed out his hair and headed for the edge of the pool.

“I don’t do so good without fuckin’ boundaries!” Parker shouted after him.

“So we’ll make them. You don’t want to be touched, you don’t get touched. You don’t want to be partners, you can back out.” Arthur looked at him over his shoulder, sane, sober, shockingly steady. “But I don’t want you to. We, you and I, are part of something. Hastur was part of it because he was part of me. It’s all changed, now. It’s a mess. But I think we can… we can fix this, Parker. The three of us.”

Okay, maybe not so sane at all. “Fix this? Fix what? What the fuck?”

“Just think about it.” Arthur grabbed a towel and left.

“Food,” said Hastur.

“Ugh,” said Arthur.

“Food,” said Hastur.

“FIne,” said Arthur, and they were behind the silk screen and out of sight.

Parker sat in the water up to his chin and went quiet for the next hour.

They let him. Let him sit in there, stewing, perhaps literally and figuratively. Let him think, let him take his time, and try to find words again now that they’d all gone up like magician’s flash paper.

He could see now that he’d misunderstood… well, a whole fucking lot. That once Arthur was marked (and Hastur was sure he couldn’t be “taken away”), once Parker had apologized (and Hastur had approved), and Arthur continued to heal and they actually talked in the mornings… yes. He could see it so clearly.

It seemed so obvious now.

And it was terrifying, because it wasn’t how he’d thought… families? Partnerships? The fuck would he call this? Well. This wasn’t how he thought they happened at all.

He’d literally gotten into a fight when he met Charlie the first time at a crime scene, because Charlie was trying to take photos, and Parker thought he’d fuck up evidence. But then Charlie had spoken smart, and spoken soft, and gotten Parker calmed down if not quite laughing, and then taken him out for coffee and pie, and…

And they kept going out for coffee and pie, and it was really obvious, and Parker knew he wanted that man from the moment Charlie Fucking Dowd stood up to him in front of a dead body.

Charlie had gotten to him, but he’d known Charlie would. Known, because what Charlie said hit home, because when Charlie smiled Parker smiled, when Charlie cried, Parker wanted to kill whatever made him do that.

That wasn’t this.

Parker had always known when he was attracted to people. That part was easy. He hadn’t expected… this. He hadn’t known he felt like this. None of this.

He wanted to be partners, and it had snuck the fuck up on him like a silent cloud, the kind bringing rain so quiet and light that he didn’t even know it was going to rain until he was in it.

Yeah, he thought. That was the right comparison.

He already was partners here . He didn’t want to live with the Keeper. He wanted to live with them.

He wanted to touch Arthur back.

Fuck, he wanted to see what Hastur would actually let him do, how far he could go.

Parker Yang realized he wanted to stay, and he hadn’t known he did, and now that he knew, had no idea what to do about it.

Just stay, of course, not really being an option. It was too complicated for that. Wasn’t it?

Arthur: complicated. Very complicated, guilt and hope tangled up like some knot that would just have to be cut or it’d always stay tangled.

Hastur…

Would be his god. Not Arthur’s god. Their god.

Parker realized he was shaking when he noticed the ripples sliding away from him to splash against the sides.

Complicated. And on top of all of this, the Dreamlands were failing, humanity was dying out, and the only way to save anyone was a wild play, a one in a million chance, with everyone working together, and completely reworking the damned Contract system—which had been smashed to shit, so. Maybe they could make it better.

What would it be to do that with them instead of alone?

He’d assumed alone. Sure, alongside the Keeper, and alongside other gods willing to do shit, and with Arthur peripherally, but this wasn’t that. This was… together.

Side by side, not just facing each other across a room.

Safe. With a god who actually wanted them to live?

Arthur’s kiss lingered, and Parker raised his fingers—soapy and perfumed—to touch his own lips.

He could hear those idiots talking over there. Hastur’s low rumbling and Arthur’s sweet tenor, and he knew he could just walk right over and join them.

But then what? What came after that?

Parker had no idea how to do this.

Whatever it means as we figure it out, Arthur had said.

Maybe… maybe he didn’t have to know how to do this.

That was a big fucking risk to take. Go into a thing without knowing how and you could blow that whole thing up.

But what if he didn’t?

“I don’t deserve some fucking relationship ,” Parker murmured into the water, and then thought, so? Lots of people got shit they didn’t deserve.

But if this wasn’t going to last… if it was all going to go to hell at once because of this trial, or wasn’t going to survive what came after, was it worth it? He clenched his fists. He didn’t know. Who would know? That was too big a thing to know.

Parker startled badly as Hastur lifted him from the water.

“You are getting wrinkly, little traitor,” said Hastur, still so damned amused like all of this was funny and not just the craziest shit Parker had ever tried to juggle.

“You don’t say that name the same way no more,” Parker accused.

“Whom you have betrayed has changed,” Hastur said. “Food.”

Whom he had betrayed had changed. Wow. Wow. “Really don’t wanna eat, big boy.”

“You will eat.”

Parker decided to ask the Keeper if he could have time off from eating, because this was stupid.

He also decided he wouldn’t answer the partners thing tonight. Much as he might like some of the outcome, he wasn’t ready yet. Not yet.

But maybe he’d push a little.

After some spicy soup with bits of egg in it (grudgingly admitted to be delicious), Parker decided he wouldn’t lie on the edge of the bed tonight, which he usually did when Hastur was in it with Arthur. Not tonight.

He glared, daring, challenging , before climbing over this ridiculously huge mattress toward them.

Hastur did nothing.

Parker got up behind Arthur, who smiled at him before lying down.

Hastur did nothing.

Parker lay right behind Arthur, curved against him, and slid one arm around his waist, glaring daggers at the god the whole time.

Hastur… fucking purred . “Yes,” he said.

Arthur made a happy sound and was out. Asleep. Parker would never figure out how in hell he did that so fast every night.

“You have made the wise choice,” said Hastur.

“I ain’t made no choices yet, buddy,” said Parker, daring, pushing.

Hastur chuckled at him, a low sound that pulsed through his purr like some kind of engine.

Fuck, thought Parker. I am in over my head.

But somehow, he fell asleep soon after.

----------

Notes:

Keeper and Tabby cameos thanks to @sepiabandensis, who brought her ladies in for this one.

#parker yang #malevolent #malevolent au #malevolent fic #cloud city #yellow city #arthur lester

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jollybirdtheorist-new-art-blog · 2 months

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My made up lore on Ninjago's dark matter/condensed evil

Yooo so I was both bored and very unsatisfied with Ninjago's extreme lack of lore soooo *coughs this up before scurrying away*

Dark matter, otherwise know as condensed evil is considered an enigma by many including Ninjago's top researchers it's usually referred to as condensed evil, dark matter, demons blood, the nightmare virus and many other names depending on the region where it's recognized and the people speaking about it since different cultures in ninjago come up with different names for the same thing due to their culture and how it has developed .

Condensed evil is typically a dark and ominous mystery to Ninjago's inhabitants. It's appearance is that of a dark viscous substance similar to molasses and it's properties are almost akin to that of a virus or mindless parasite.How dark matter functions Dark matter works by contaminating an environment,a food source or bodies of water. Once an environment is contaminated by condensed evil the malevolent substance will proceed to infect a living being by either being absorbed by the skin or ingested via contaminated food or water. Condensed evil's corruption is not bloodborne due to its primitive state and cannot be spread through reproductive body fluids or inherited by parents. It can however be transmitted via saliva, scratches and mucus (similar to rabies but not half as deadly).

The symptoms of corruption caused by condensed evil and condensed evil's potency depend on the amount of exposure a living being has been subjected to and what the quality of the condensed evil is .If only a living being is exposed to condensed evil via skin to skin contact for at least 5 minutes they will begin to feel minor discomfort and a mild burning feeling around the skin that has been exposed causing rashes and inflammation as well as a strong itching sensation, the subjects mood will be akin to that of an annoyed teenager.

If a subject's skin is exposed to condensed evil for 20 minutes the rashes formed on the skin will become an angrier shade of red and medium sized sores will be formed on the flesh as the inflammation begins to get worse, the mild burning sensation will begin to get worse similar to that of boiling water and the victim will begin to experience lightheadedness and a mild level of nausea, the subjects mood will be stressed, angry and mildly violent.

If the victim's skin had been exposed for 30 minutes or more the sores will proceed to get worse and become similar to 30 degree burns, the reddening of the flesh will become a reddish purple due to the inflammation becoming worse and constricting the victim's blood flow, the burning sensation will go from that of boiling water to being set on fire. Lightheadedness and nausea can and will get worse as well as the victim's mood as they begin to froth at the mouth and become both extremely violent and aggressive. At this stage it's too late for the victim as they are turned into a weak minded puppet for the corruption.

Additional note: the effects of condensed evil strongly depend on the quality of condensed evil. The quality of the condensed evil used in this data set was medium quality . Low quality will have weaker effects (however it's still important to get the condensed evil off ASAP since time is of the essence if you desire to save the victim.) high quality condensed evil is extremely dangerous and has faster and more serious effects and side effects.

This is the conclusion of page 1/3 from condensed evil research file

Also yep I'm incorporating the lore I just coughed up into my freaking au and you can't stop me cause.....well I made it and I can bend my creations to my will.

#astral explorer #ninjago #Astral explorer au

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iantimony · 11 months

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almost no longer tuesdaypost

listening: I FINISHED TWILIGHT MIRAGE !!! AND THE POSTMORTEM!!! it was so good. i'm powering through the road to partizan episodes right now, i'm in episode 4! i AM listening to them on 1.3 speed to get through them a little more expeditiously, and i'm also not letting myself backtrack if i miss a line or two, just kinda absorbing the vibes before slamming into partizan proper!

reading: flight of a one-winged dove, bloodletter, post canon sangcheng, mind the tags, i'm not normally a sangcheng girly but this really really hit. never knew i was a dancer, isozyme, modern AU lesbian sangcheng, maybe i AM a sangcheng girly now?? anyways mind those tags etc

watching: cowboy bebop with boyf :) we're on episode 22, we'll probably watch the movie soon ...? was told around here is a good spot to do that, so as much as i always like watching things In Publication Order, will probably do that soon

making: i have frogged and restarted that stupid star stitch laptop case like six times. i am committing to it now. i really didn't like the original shape of the object i was creating using the spruce crafts tutorial that comes up immediately when you google "star stitch tutorial", but i found this one (has one less double crochet on the ends) and i like it a lot better. so i'm working through that now! i also had a moment a few days ago that was like. ok i want to restart it. but before i do that i should wind the skein into a ball so it's less annoying. ah shit my ball winder is winding it really fucked up and wonky, oh i googled it and i can take the top off and pop the gear back into place and that should fix it! gotta find a screwdriver for that first -- so tl;dr i fixed my ball winder, wound the skein into a ball, and started the project again. huzzah.

also, started another fanfic! what if harrowhark was the abhorsen-in-waiting. she's actually been the abhorsen for about a decade, the previous abhorsen died ages ago but she's been pretending that her father is in seclusion or something and has just been sending her out on his behalf. gideon was mysteriously dropped off and raised alongside harrowhark for reasons unknown. the kingdom is ruled by lich-king john gaius, a member of the royal bloodline who has dipped too much into free magic, transcended death and, while not malevolent specifically, has really started to cock things up kingdom-wide re: the dead. ianthe is a free magic sorcerer. i just think there's a lot of tasty potential there.

misc: i am once again On An Antibiotic [confetti] if i am not patient zero for the next antibiotic resistant bacteria it will be a goddamn miracle. anyways. onwards. hopefully this is the last one for a while…!!

#tuesdayposting

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jjdogasaur · 1 year

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Prismatic War Prologue - Broken Peace

Okay so before getting into this, I'll have to lay down some things. 1. There is going to be some possibly upsetting content in later chapters, so I will tag them up here and down in the tags.

2. The Prism Gate in this au is an entity of its own and is malevolent, but anything else that comes from the prism dimension (Whiz-bang, Glowbes, Prismatics) aren't inherently hostile.

3. Technology is more advanced in this Continent but is still monstrous. Some characters will have given themselves prosthetics, tools, or weapons that may have not appeared in the actual game.

Okay I think that's it alright let's go

It was just another nice day in The Continent, when strangely, the Prism Gate had opened and closed abruptly. This was odd behavior for the astral portal, as previous documentations had displayed it either enticing an innocent monster into its colorful entrance, or forcefully pulling one in, and releasing it suddenly. Even stranger, the gate began performing the act again, again, and again. Airborne monsters had analyzed that prismatic monsters were being dropped at rapid rates in high amounts, why was the gate doing this? Where was it obtaining so many monsters, and how? Panic slowly began to set in as hundreds of monsters began emerging from the Teleporter. Some were sobbing, some were hyperventilating, some had even passed out as soon as they exited the Teleporter. This had highly concerned the various monsters who had stayed behind on The Continent to either watch over monster young or had no desire to live on the Outer Islands.

“Are you okay?! What in Great Galvana is going on?! Why is the Prism Gate here?!” Pickle, a Riff replied, quickly gathering a group of frightened baby monsters into a nearby shelter.

A Bowgart that appeared to have been injured by debris from the suction of the Gate replied with a horrified expression.

“The gate… That wretched Gate… It just appeared and began sucking in monsters before we even knew what was happening! Even those who had tried to hold on to whatever they could were consumed by that thing!” Pickle was horrified, but confused. Wouldn’t the prismatic monsters that entered the gate, willing or not also have evacuated? Where were any of them?

“Wait, if it just started absorbing monsters, wouldn’t Prismatic monsters that were affected by the gate have also left? What were they doing?” The Bowgart continued their speech in terror. “Those who were a;ready affected didn’t even care about the carnage that was happening around them. While everyone was in a panic, trying desperately to not be consumed, those perilous Prismatics just laughed, cheered, and even encouraged us to stop resisting. They danced around the portal, before being absorbed into its soundless void like the rest. Oh Blasoom, they’re coming!”

Before Pickle could fully process what was happening, barricades were being shoddily made as monsters began flooding into the castle. The Outer Islands had been completely abandoned, and all of the young monsters were shrieking and crying out of fear. What’ll happen next now?

#my singing monsters #msm #Prismatic War #fanfic #msm fanfic #msm ocs #Pickle #Disclaimer Pickle isn't the main character but she is relevant to this story

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azurevi · 4 years

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3 halloween tales (cater, jade & vil)

This is really random, but the ssr cards for the halloween show have given me many au ideas, so here are my self-indulgent stories inspired by them. The Cater one is especially long because I got a lot of ideas about it. For the Vil one.. it's pretty disappointing how it turned out, but I hope it's not too bad. PLEASE READ THE WARNINGS!

WARNINGS : death (all), mild mention of gore (cater), war + mild possessiveness + violence (jade) [let me know if there're more!]

the heart and its eternal weight

Cater is a cemetery caretaker. It isn't that he really loves it, but his father was one. He feels like it is only right to take after his steps.

He isn't into superstitions. Some people find distaste in his job, but it's something crucial for Cater. People, even after they're dead, should still be honored, and so deserve a hospitable place to rest.

Everyday is a routine for him. Sometimes, though, the families of the passed talk to him about their stories and their emptiness once their loved ones are gone. Cater finds the beauty and softness in humans by hearing these stories, and it makes him even more dedicated to his job.

It's natural to him, dying. His father was killed in an unintended accident, and sometimes it seems like his death could have been avoidable just as much as it was inevitable. He just wishes that he had had more time with him.

One of the lessons his father taught him about graveyard caretaking is to beware of ghosts. Those who recently died are more visible and intimate with the world of the living, and so they might appear before humans. Some are inhostile, of course, but there are malevolent ones.

Lore has it that some ghosts prey on hearts. It is said that the heart is the most important part of a human, as it is accountable for life, death and emotions. People believe that ghosts can be revived with a fresh, still-beating heart, and as a result the human giving up their heart will die in place of the ghost. Basically, the heart can also create ripples in the fabric of space-time.

Because of his job, he isn't all that popular among others, and he only has a few life-long close friends, his mother and sisters by him. So even if he has a crush on the most admirable person he's ever seen, he still won't make it known in fear of rejection. He figures that he still has time to figure it out.

And he's wrong. News about your tragic death spread around quickly like wildfire, and he's devastated. It feels wrong to even feel so, because he has never been acquainted with you in the first place.

Your body is buried in his cemetery, and a lot of people come to your funeral that day. Some of your family members are so heartbroken and pitiable, and so Cater offered to be their listener.

All he can hear is about the great work you've done, the care you put into everyone you met, the warmth that radiated off you while you were still alive. It breaks Cater how he's never had the privilege to know you, to experience all your graces with his own perspective.

One night, the moon is lit and hung up high in the sky, so close that it seems to be prying on Earth and the people roaming on it. Cater is patrolling with his lawnmower when he hears quiet and uncertain sobs.

He is creeped out, yes, but he's also curious. He's never seen a ghost before, and it could be a human for all he knows.

He's proved wrong once again, as he discovers your opaque body behind a giant tree. You are hugging their legs close to your chest, and a rotting hole's visible where your heart should be.

There's no way you can be hostile, and you certainly won't kill him for his heart, so Cater decides to approach you gently, tentatively, like you're smoke that will disperse the moment he intrudes.

To his surprise, you can hear him clearly, and even invite him to sit down with him. It's so bizarre -- a ghost asking for a conversation! But Cater doesn't mind as he pops down beside you. He notices how although you were no longer solid, it still feels like tense when his hand passes through you. Certainly it's because you've been dead not for long.

And so the two of you indulge in heartful conversations, and Cater finds himself regretting even more about how he never gathered the courage to go up to you. Mid-conversation you tell him about all the things that you wish you could've done and all the ideas you wished to spread.

Cater probably shouldn't have, but he is so absorbed in your ambitions and kindness that he offers to carry out all these great things for you. After numerous confirmations, you agree too to let him carry out your thoughts.

And so Cater works in his neighbourhood, sharing campaigns and donating, taking care of lost pets and cats and partaking in environment improvement. He's never felt so fulfilled before, and it's the first time he feels like he's genuinely making a difference in the world.

In times he's not representing you, he brings you up on the little hill behind the cemetery where the moon and stars are so close and vibrant, where they all dance in the dark ballroom and pulse in excitement of being seen. He wishes he could show you more hidden gems, but your spectral spirit cannot be too far away from your body.

But it's enough.

A month passes and Cater notices subtle change in your behaviour as well as appearance, like how you're responding with less enthusiasm and how the hole in your chest is growing bigger. When he finally asks about it, he's told that ghosts generally only stay in the world of the living for 49 days, and their heart will rot away in this period. After that, they will have to go to the underworld, never be back again.

Cater is certainly shocked that the lore is more than a children's makeup story. He is well aware of the significance of the heart in relation to the soul and life.

He asks if you'd like to have his heart instead, so bluntly and casually. You seem to return to their original intimate self when you refuse.

"I'm already gone. It's you, the living, who should be making changes,"

So he pretends that you're not getting more and more unresponsive and less and less generous. He turns a blind eye against your wavering figure and how you can't be seen at all in the sun. He plays dumb when in reality, you're slipping away before his very own eyes, heart rotting away like nothing more than a fruit.

It hurts finally knowing and understanding someone and having to lose them.

On the 48th day, you are already but a still, soulless shadow, leaning beside your gravestone and fresh, white flowers. Cater can still see you. Sometimes he thinks that you chose to be seen.

And he can't bear to see you go. To see your dreams go into flames, to watch such a pretty soul just - vanish.

So he gives you his heart. Alive and beating and sentimental. It doesn't even hurt a bit.

You wake up immediately, your eyes glowing and body solidifying.

"What have you done?"

"What I can do to make a change,"

Time is starting to rewrite itself. Cater is going to die in your place. The space around you was warping and folding into itself, softly and rightly like a lullaby.

Just before you slip into darkness, you gather up a whole bunch of rose petals and desperately stuff them into the hole in Cater's chest, as if they can give him life in lieu of a heart, and you are sobbing and clinging onto his still warm arm, never wanting to let go.

It's all Cater wants, to save a wasted soul and to make a difference.

And so he cradles your face, and leans in the moment everything goes black. When he wakes up again, he's weightless in the cemetery, where a bunch of well arranged roses lie on his buried body.

a melancholy specimen

To Jade, beauty needs to be preserved to be constant. It's just like flowers. They die away without proper care.

Just when he thinks he's seen all the beauties of the world and is getting bored of it, he meets you. A blooming flower sparkling in the bland, old boring world around it. He's immediately captivated - how a person can still manage to flourish in such a rotten world where everything is depressing and all man is for themselves!

You're the most elegant piece of art he's seen, and that's something considering that he owns a museum. Innocence lies in your eyes and bravery sings itself between your lips.

You find him just equally amusing -- gentlemanly, insightful and just a touch of flirtation. The two of you fall in love like Alice down the rabbit hole - amused and unstoppable, fascinated by the wonders evolving about.

But the world doesn't give a damn about love, nor do they understand your dreams of a bright future where everything is close to hearts. They call you both madness and nonsense.

"Their souls are tainted with war and sorrow. They are beyond the point of rescue. Victory and glory are all that can feed their ego,"

Jade is disappointed. War has gouged people's eyes out and filled them with wails and ash.

The two of you are the only stars in the night sky, still fighting for salvation, yearning for a better future where trees grow and flowers yearn for the sun. You promote and do your best to lift the veil of darkness off the world.

But the sun doesn't understand either. War keeps going on and on, and people never have the time for aesthetic relaxations. It refuses to shed light on its pitiable humans.

"We should evacuate, Jade. They say a bomb is dropping tomorrow,"

Jade doesn't care and can't care. The most paramount thing is to open his eyes to the beauty of this world. He doesn't want to become one of those barbarous men, tasting dirt and blood on their tongue while they glorify violence and brutalness.

He stays behind while his neighbourhood dies away. You are the only ones yet to leave.

"Please don't leave me, Y/N. You're the only light in my life,"

You can't bear to leave him, and so you stay. The bomb is dropped, and it's too close. Too hot. Too cruel, too inhumane. It ravages everything in its way, burning all the darkened things to the ash and bringing the only beauty left in this world with it.

Jade wails. Broken cries are engulfed by nearby explosions and the cackling of flames. Your soulless body lies amidst the destruction, just another wilted flower in the slit of a rock, deprived of water and sunlight.

He finally understands. Nothing can save the world anymore. It's gone way too far, and it will never recover from malevolence. All he can feel is pity for his world as his heart ache with spite.

Bandages around his hands, he wraps your corpse up completely, preserved underneath the layers. You will be his reminder that there was once a flower in this drought, an anchor keeping him from becoming one of those barbarians.

lifeless silhouette in the dark night

You can never recognize directions. You find yourself stumbling upon a seemingly inhabited mansion in the middle of the woods. Cold and bruised, you knock on its door.

Welcoming you is a tall man with blonde and lilac hair called Vil. His skin is unnaturally white, and his eyes seem to glow like orbs that eat your souls. But you are too tired to make notice of all these details, and he's kind enough to let you stay for the night.

He treats you with ravishing cuisine and a grand bedroom that was as grotesque as the rest of the house. Afterwards, he leaves you to rest, but not before warning you not to get out of the room post midnight.

You oblige- for the first half hour. Then you start to hear wails and footsteps that amplify and disappear. It's impossible to sleep.

The next morning, you confront Vil about it. He refuses to face the questions as he ushers you to get going, and so off you go.

You spend another day lost in the woods, then somehow come face to face with the mansion again. Vil is beyond shocked to see you, but then he breaks into a deep smile.

"It's almost as if you belong here,"

Weirdly enough, you could agree, There seemed to be an invisible force pulling you towards Vil. After dinner, he orders you not to leave the room again before making his leave.

Broken wails. Recurring footsteps. You can't bear it any longer, and you also wonder if Vil is aware of this. He properly is, and thus tells you to stay safe inside the room.

But dumb curiosity gets the best of you, and you open the door and step into the endless corridors.

The wails come from the host's room, where Vil is supposed to be. You're closing in when its door is suddenly flung open, and out runs a panting Vil.

"Vil? What are-"

His eyes are bloodshot and there's red stain in the corner of his mouth. Sweat dots his forehead. He looks disheveled and the complete opposite of how he was during dinner.

"You shouldn't be here. Get back - get back in!"

His voice booms in your skull, and you're running back to your room before you notice.

It's another sleepless night.

To your luck, Vil doesn't wait for you to bring the incident up.

"Don't be creeped ou by it, please."

He seems very uneasy about it, but he's obstinate to give you an explanation.

Turns out that he is a vampire. One that has lived for 500 years and is waiting for his eventual death. He's seen everything in this world and lived through the best and worst of humanity. He understands people's fear about vampires, and so he resides in the remote part of the wood. He only ever drinks the blood of small animals that he hunt, and never has he once killed a man.

He knew nothing about what'd happen to him when he became a vampire. If he'd known about the repercussions, he'd never have become one in exchange of eternal beauty. Now he has to turn someone else into a vampire to end his immortality. It is only a cycle.

Every night the moon rises and spills into his room, and he has to fight his urge to go out and taste the sweet blood of humans.

There are times when he slips and loses control, but he always manages to get back to his senses. But it seems that your presence here in the mansion is awaking his desire to suck you dry.

You're bewildered to say the least, and frankly horrified. But at the same time you feel pity for him, for he is just a man who can't ever do anything as atrocious as hurting people.

And so you offer to end his suffering. Of course Vil disagrees. He just talked about how he never wanted to take a life, and now you're offering yourself to him? He'd never allow it.

But you're even more persistent. You keep staying in his mansion, and his sanity slips a little more every night. And you know that he's contemplating too, for he never tries to kick you out of his mansion.

"You deserve a rest, Vil. For your love and selflessness. For all the unspoken kindness you bestow on others. It is only fair that you get to rest,"

Vil has lived a life. He's but a mere walking corpse now, and a rest -- a sleep -- sounds just like what he needs.

And so he rests. Vil falls into a deep, serene sleep while you endure each and every dark night.

#twst x reader #twst headcanons #twisted wonderland #cater diamond #jade leech #vil schoenheit #sie writes #twisted wonderland imagines

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dwellordream · 2 years

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“I accidentally bought two zonbis in Haiti. My zonbis are not the walking dead but rather the common, everyday spirits of the recently dead, zonbi astral. The spirits were captured from a cemetery in a mystical ritual and then contained in an empty rum bottle. I did not do the capturing and containing; this feat was achieved by a man named St. Jean, who made his living (in the face of chronically high unemployment) as a bòkò, or sorcerer, in a neighborhood near the cemetery in downtown Port-au-Prince.

I had gone to interview the bòkò, and when I complimented a colorfully decorated bottle that sat on his altar, he asked if I would like to have one like it. In agreeing, I got much more than a decorated bottle. My encounter with the sorcerer turned into something far more complex than the commission of what I took to be an art object. When I returned to pick up the bottle, St. Jean performed a complex ritual that infused human life into the bottle and transformed the container into a living grave, housing a human–spirit hybrid entity.

The essence of the zonbis’ spirit life emanates from shaved bits of bone from two human skulls. The zonbis in the bottle cannot properly be understood as souls but rather as fragments of human soul, or spirit. In Afro-Haitian religious thought, part of the spirit goes immediately to God after death, while another part lingers near the grave for a time. It is this portion of the spirit that can be captured and made to work; let’s say, a form of “raw spirit life.” The bòkò performed a spontaneous ritual, which began when he popped a cassette tape into a player.

Our soundscape was a secret society ceremony to which he said he belonged. He put these skull shavings into the bottle, along with the ashes from a burned American dollar and a variety of herbs, perfumes, alcohols, and powders. Robert Farris Thompson spelled out the logic of this sort of “charm” in his work on minkisi (containers of spirit) from the Kongo culture, which are surely one of the cultural sources of the zonbi: The nkisi is believed to live with an inner life of its own. The basis of that life was a captured soul. . . . The owner of the charm could direct the spirit in the object to accomplish mystically certain things for him, either to enhance his luck or to sharpen his business sense. This miracle was achieved through two basic classes of medicine within the charm, spirit-embedding medicine (earths, often from a grave site, for cemetery earth is considered at one with the spirit of the dead) and spirit-admonishing objects (seeds, claws, miniature knives, stones, crystals, and so forth).

In my bottle, the spirit-embedding medicine includes cemetery earth, but also more to the point, the skull shavings. At some previous time, St. Jean had most likely prepared the skulls in a sort of spirit-extracting ritual, treating them with baths of dew, rain, and sunshine. The skulls had been given food (which they absorb mystically, as spirits in the invisible world generally do) and had been baptized with new, ritual names. Their names would have been cryptic phrases, such as je m’engage (I’m trying) or al chache (go look). Each skull would have been charged with a specific strength, job, or problem to treat.

Presumably, these skulls were activated with the ability to enhance luck, wealth, and health. “Spirit-admonishing medicines” instruct the zonbis in the work that they are being commanded to do on my behalf. Ingeniously, this technology of good luck zonbi-making involves dressing the zonbis in the very instructions and work directions the maker intends them to perform. The mirrors around the center of the bottle are its “eyes for seeing” and will identify any force coming at me with malevolent intent. The scissors lashed open under the bottleneck are like arms crossed in self-defense.

The dollar bill in the bottle instructs the zonbi spirits to attract wealth. The herbs are for the zonbis to heal me of sickness and disease, while the perfumes are to make me attractive and desirable. St. Jean created for them a magnetic force field by placing two industrial magnets as a kind of collar on the neck of the bottle. This object is now swirling with polarity, intention, and life. It is what Stephan Palmié has called “a life form constituted through ritual action.”

This zonbi bottle refuses the Western ontological distinction between people and things, and between life and death, as it is a hybrid of human and spirit, living and dead, individual and generic. In Afro-Creole thought, spirit can inhabit both natural and human-made things, and what is more, this force can be manipulated and used, often for healing and protection, sometimes for aggression or attack. When I later interviewed the bòkò, I learned about the deep moral ambiguity of the zonbi astral.

St. Jean told me that the zonbis were trapped in the bottle until the time when, as with every person, their spirits would go on to God. The bòkò instructed me to ask the zonbis for anything I wanted, because, captured and ritually transformed, they were working for him, and now, as if subcontracted, for me. I realized that I was effectively in the position of a spiritual slave owner. Besides being dismayed and upset, I found it puzzling that people would practice the enslavement of this “raw spirit life” considering that their ancestors suffered extreme brutality during colonial slavery in Haiti, where the life expectancy of an enslaved person on a plantation was only seven years.

Planters fed and inaugurated the modern system of Atlantic capitalism through dehumanization, starvation, and torture; these were the routine ways of extracting production value to fund the obscenely lucrative sugar trade. But, then again, the living take charge of their history when they mimetically perform master–slave relationships with spirits of the dead. The production of spiritual (and bodily) zonbis shows us how groups remember history and enact its consequences in embodied ritual arts.

The slave trade and colonial slavery—whose modus operandus was to cast living humans as commodities—are quite literally encoded and reenacted in this living object. Just as slavery depended on capturing, containing, and forcing the labor of thousands of people, so does this form of mystical work reenact the same process in local terms. It is, as Taussig famously put it, history as sorcery. Under slavery, Afro-Caribbeans were rendered nonhuman by being legally transposed into commodities.

Now, the enslaved dead hold a respected place within the religion. In what might seem counterintuitive, Randy Matory recently argued that in Afro-Latin religions, “instead of being the opposite of the desired personal or social state, the image and mimesis of slavery become highly flexible instruments of legally free people’s aspirations for themselves and for their loved ones.” He notes that in these religions, the slave is often considered the most efficacious spiritual actor.

The relationship between spirit worker and the dead is inherently unequal and exploitative, yet it is nuanced in fascinating ways that give the spirits of the dead some agency. Usually the dealings between people and the zonbis are just that—economic affairs, caught up in a system revolving around money, work, captivity, predation, and coercion. I did feed the zonbis a ritual meal of unsalted rice and beans, feeling somewhat sheepish the entire while. But I was determined to operate in as ethical a manner as I could toward this bottle, which its maker understood to be a living thing.

Who was I not to take care of my obligations to the zonbis? I was haunted by a comment made by the scholar Luminisa Bunseki Fu-Kiau at a conference. “When you put our ‘charms’ and ‘fetishes’ in your museums,” he said, “you are incarcerating our ancestors.” I did not want to get in trouble in any way, either with the living or the dead. I had been privy to a case of sorcery involving a malevolent zonbi. I watched while Papa Mondy, an expert healer in spirit work, diagnosed a teenager who had taken sick and was acting strange.

After extensive consultation and divination, Papa Mondy informed the boy’s mother that someone with bad intentions had voye zonbi (sent a zonbi) against the teen and had “sold” the boy mystically to a secret society. The teen had been captured mystically in the unseen world, and his life force was being “eaten.” In a family drama of sickness and healing, once again the transactions of slavery were at play. This diagnosis reenacted the capture, sale, and exploitation of the life of a person, here in the unseen world of everyday Haitian life.

The cure—and the teen was cured, at least in the semipublic neighborhood narrative—involved a complex process of ritual freeing, negotiating, and buying back: an unraveling and undoing of the spiritual enslavement. The director of this healing ceremony was Papa Gede Loray, himself a spirit of a former colonial slave—considered the best “worker” among the spirits—who came to possess the priest Mondy for most of the proceedings. The teen was ritually buried, lying down (up to his neck) beneath a light layer of earth in a symbolic grave, and the zonbi was tricked and forced to remain in the grave when the boy was lifted out.

The zonbi was quickly covered up with earth then bound and tied to the spot with a rock and a rope. These Haitian spirit workers once again performed some of the actions famously used against the African enslaved— tricking, capturing, binding, and shackling—but this time the ritual actors were the present-day descendants of slaves, enacting the commodification and traffic in humans through the ritual vocabulary most salient to their history, in what Connerton called “the capacity to reproduce a certain performance.” The boy was freed of the zonbi, but he still needed to be “bought back” from the secret society.

Since it was unclear (as it often is) who sent this misfortune, the crucial redeeming deal had to be made with Bawon Samdi, the spirit-in-chief of the recently dead and the ultimate authority over the cemetery. We were going to buy the boy back from the cemetery, before the cemetery swallowed him up. We went, quite late at night by now, to an intersection of two roads where diplomatic spiritual protocol necessitated that the family make a payment to Met Kalfou, the spirit of the crossroads. Si kalfou pa bay, simitye pa pran, goes this important principle: “If the crossroads won’t give (way), the cemetery won’t take (accept).”

When we got to the cemetery, Papa Mondy set up shop next to the tomb of Bawon. An elaborate series of ritual exchanges ensued. Mondy gently ripped the boy’s clothes from his body until he wore only his underthings and then laid the boy on top of the tomb. To the accompaniment of prayers and prayer-songs, Mondy swept the boy with a broom to remove any remaining negativity. He entreated Bawon to buy back this boy from those who wanted to steal him and stood pleading with two arms outstretched while the rest of the small group sang behind him.

First he spoke to the afflicted boy, but really to us, to the dead, and to the evil-doer. “Now you are known by the cemetery. Now you are like one of the dead. How can you kill a dead man, mon cher? They can do nothing to you.” Next he addressed Bawon: “You are the one with power over death. You are the only one who can kill him,” said Mondy. “I sell this boy to you, and you alone are buying him. It is you who will determine the day he will die.” Papa Mondy knelt down and threw down a small package wrapped in brown paper, held together with pins. He deftly poured rum over the whole thing and lit a match.

A hungry blue flame engulfed the clothes, the brown paper, and the precious four hundred and twelve dollars that were inside. With this monetary sacrifice, Bawon was paid and the boy was bought. Mondy stood the boy atop the tomb and dressed him in clean white clothes. He told the boy he would no longer be under the influence of other humans or spirits who wished to harm him—only Bawon “owned” him. That night in the cemetery, the teen boy was literally, and with Haitian currency, sold to a moral and powerful guardian, in order to escape being owned by a malevolent and exploitative one.

In this case, selling a person was an act of redemption, a far cry from—and yet also an echo of—the Atlantic slave trade. One cannot help but notice the various profound ways that layers of historical events and conditions are remembered and mimetically enacted through ritual, from the slave trade to the current patronage system of politically powerful “big men” and their more vulnerable followers. This religious logic also bears a parallel to the Christian notion that Jesus pays the debt of sin for the believer, whose soul is bought and paid for through the blood of the crucifixion.

In both cases, a supernatural entity can buy the spirit (or soul) of a human and become that person’s mediator with the unseen world and the afterlife. Some Vodouists understand Jesus as the first zonbi. This myth holds that Jesus’s tomb was guarded by two Haitian soldiers, who unscrupulously stole the password God gave when He resurrected Jesus. The soldiers stole the password, sold it, and the stolen secret is now part of the secrets of sorcerers. If we examine the story carefully, we see that the buyer of people (Jesus) is victimized by people rebelling against him.

The ordinary folk—the soldiers—are stealing from God, who after all set the terms of all negotiations. In this story, the sorcerer acknowledges his opposition to (Roman Catholic) Christianity, which, in its affiliation with landowning elites, has not always served the interests of everyday Haitians. Yet insofar as being made a zonbi is a terrifying form of victimization, this story also sympathizes with Jesus. In a beautiful ironwork sculpture by Gabriel Bien-Aimé, cut and hammered from a recycled oil drum, Jesus with his crown of thorns is being taken down from the cross with a chain around his neck.

At the other end is the sorcerer controlling him. Like the colonial slave, or the oppressed worker, zonbis also possess the potential for out-and-out rebellion. There are plenty of stories of people who ask these “bought spirits” for wealth, land, or political promotion and who cannot provide the food demanded in return. Then the zonbis are said to rise up to attack their owners, consuming their life force as payment. Eating them through magic, the zonbi becomes more and more powerful as its master wastes away through sickness.

St. Jean himself was said to have been “eaten” in this manner, consumed by his own enslaved zonbi, turned cannibal in response to St. Jean’s voracious greed. Perhaps that process is what is described in this mural, painted on the interior wall of a Vodou temple. Here, a sorcerer (indicated as such by his red shirt and by the whip in his hand, a tool used to “heat up” ritual and activate spiritual energy) is attacked by hundreds of skeletal figures while facing a tomb.

Taussig, the Comaroffs, and others have written about the ways such sorcery narratives are provoked by, and are a rendering of, the basic mechanisms of capitalist production, that is, the creation of value for some through appropriating and consuming the energies of others. Haitian spirit workers have redescribed this aspect of capitalism in religious ritual.

Seen this way, zonbi-making is an example of a non-Western form of thought that diagnoses, theorizes, and responds mimetically to the long history of violently consumptive and dehumanizing capitalism in the Americas from the colonial period until the present. Zonbis can be understood as a religious, philosophical, and artistic response to the cannibalistic dynamics within capitalism and a harnessing of these principles through ritual.”

- Elizabeth McAlister, “Slaves, Cannibals, and Infected Hyper-Whites: The Race and Religion of Zombies.” in Zombie Theory: A Reader

#zombies #haitian #horror #slavery #history #elizabeth mcalister #religion #vodou

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ofstarsandskies · 1 year

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Comprehensive List of All of Ludger's AUs

Because we always ascend jokes here (and mobile users getting a bone), this is an all-encompassing list of every AU for Ludger featured on this blog. This list will get updated as I add new AUs because God has cursed me for my hubris and this problem grows with time.

Xillia 1 & 2 Canon-Related Verses

Ale Zawiodlem -- Failed Bad End: Ludger kills Gaius, is defeated, and is imprisoned to await his death sentence.

Ulegly Wiceprezes -- Post-Bad End: Ludger serves as acting president with Rideaux, who wasn't used for Bisley's Soul Bridge, as his adviser.

Presidential Protection -- Sub-Verse of Ulegly Wiceprezes: Vera assigns Asbel Lhant to act as Ludger's bodyguard and hopefully inject a little life back into Ludger.

Otherworldly Refugee -- Xillia 1+2 AU: Ludger ends up in Orda Palace just as Jude and Milla escape Laforte Labratory. He's jailed with Jude and eventually escape to try and follow Milla.

Brother of Thieves -- No-Curse & Thief AU: Ludger's a fanboy of Phantom Thief Crown and ends up helping Leia try to prove Crown's innocence for Striborg Train Incident. Later gets entangled in a four-way race against Julius, Victor, and Spirius to gather the "Waymarkers" to the mythical "Land of Canaan".

Silent Lamento -- Mute!Pre-Xillia 2: Trauma from watching Claudia die renders Ludger 100% mute and he takes a job as an inn chef instead.

An Ordinary Life -- Modern AU: Ludger is a graduated culinary school student who works at a small cafe in Trigleph and gets kidnapped by Kresniks' Mafia Boss, Victor.

Unfortunate Stowaway -- Pre-Xillia 1: Brothers Ludger & Julius are aboard the Zenethra as it passes through the Schism. Ludger's desperate to find his big bro.

The Star Which Shines Brightest -- Bad End+ Angelic Layer AU: Spirius hosts a game called the Spyrital Layer with special Spyrite models to encourage their adoption over Spyrix. As President, Ludger must play using his real name for transparency purposes.

Other Tales of Game Verses

Malevolence Absorber -- Tales of Berseria Verse: The Kresnik clan make a pact with Innominat to absorb malevolence into themselves and wield it into what they call the Corpse Shell.

Mute Oathkeeper -- Tales of Zestiria Verse: Maotelus becoming the new Empyrean leader forces the Kresnik clan to swear Oaths as a means of strengthening their pact with Innominat's strength.

Knightly Dreams -- Tales of Graces Verse: Ludger trains at Barona's Knight Academy with Julius as his instructor. Julius sabotages his exams to flunk him out, but gets dismissed from duty after discovery and Ludger eventually graduates as Cedric takes power.

Krolewski Pomocnik -- Tales of Link Verse: Ludger takes several odd jobs due to a million gald's worth of medical debt. He's secretly friends with Gaius and helps him out for "special favors".

Original/Unaffiliated Verses

For What is a Clean Office -- Julius Detective Verse: Ludger is an orphan who is later adopted by his half brother Julius and his mother Cornelia. Julius opens up his own detective agency that Ludger helps keep clean for an allowance/paycheck.

Incompetent Summoner -- Apprentice Wizard Verse: Star is an apprentice wizard who tries his hand at demon summoning and ends up summoning a Ludger from another dimension who went to hell instead of Canaan's reincarnation cycle.

Demon of the Bells -- Medieval Verse: The Kingdom of Elympios attempts to destroy the Kingdoms of Rieze Maxia using experiments on those born with a “Chromatus” to go berserk upon an external stimulus.

LOL Zombies -- Zombie AU: Ludger meets Elle on the road after he gets separated from Julius once zombies raided their shelter. Seeks to find his brother and possibly another group to help keep them both safe.

Fire Emblem Verses

Hymn of Lost Days -- FE Fates Verse: The Kresniks are descendants of the ancient Mage Dragon Kresnik who live way up in the mountains of Nohr. Bisley plans to train the clan to kill the Nohr Royal Family and take over.

Time Betrays -- FE Three Houses Verse: Kresnik is a Nabatean who has limited control over time who survived Nemesis’ slaughter by fading into obscurity. Bisley hands Ludger & Julius over to TWSitD as per the plan to wreck the church for not recognizing Kresnik as part of the 10 Elites.

Ephemeral Warrior -- FE Awakening Verse: Ludger is a member of the Shepherds who is mainly there to die in battle because his older brother died protecting him.

ETC. Games/Anime Verses

Replacement Third Vessel -- Genshin Impact Verse: Ludger is created to serve as Istaroth's new vessel as the original "Kresnik" (consisting of Julius & Victor both) is cursed for disobeying Celestia.

Journey to Remembrance -- Honkai Star Rail Verse: Kresniks are followers of Fuli who seek to become memokeepers. Ludger seeks to fulfill all his childhood dreams before shedding his body behind alongside his brother.

Demon Lab Assistant -- SMT: Devil Survivor Verse: Julius is named a terrorist after the Lockdown and Ludger gets a job at a lab attempting to resummon demons into Tokyo after Song of Hope ending.

Fate of Twin Stars -- Yugioh 5Ds Verse: Ludger and Julius are chosen for Spirius' "Satellite Reformation Program" where they're granted citizenship to Neo Domino as long as they fulfill the program.

Nicaea Paranoia -- Devil Survivor 2 Verse: Ludger and Nova become demon tamers unrelated to either faction as they search for where Julius may have gone missing.

London’s Finest Soup -- Code:Realize Verse: Ludger and Julius run a diner in Lower London that Julius pays for using money from working with Twilight.

Rudonya -- .hack//G.U. Verse: Ludger is an newbie invited to a guild called the Twilight Brigade run by Crown (Julius) with his sub-captain, Maxwell (P!Milla).

Overcoming Sadness -- Fragile Dreams Verse: Ludger is a wandering, non-hostile ghost who tries to help those who are still alive survive. Meets and swears to Seto he won't pass on until Seto finds another living person.

Test Subject -- Portal Verse: After Julius is converted into an AI, Ludger is made a test subject in an attempt to better tame JuliOS. Refuses to leave even after the research team is neurotoxined to death.

Misaimed Trust -- PsychoPass Verse: Ludger watches Julius kill his mom after she tries taking Ludger hostage for ransom. Julius' low psychopass and Bisley's bribery lets Julius go scott free, which Ludger agrees with. He then moves in with his brother.

What Makes a Heart Beat? -- Granblue Fantasy Verse: Kresniks are Primal Beasts whose "wings" are an impregnable armor infused with chaos matter. Pair Ludger and Julius are sent skyward to develop and eventually slay the archangels.

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k7l4d4 · 3 years

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Luz SMASH!! (Just Kidding!) An Owl House AU Idea!

Hello all, this here is an AU Crossover Idea for, you guessed it, the Owl House! This idea crosses the Marvel Universe with that of the Owl House, helped by the fact that both are run through Disney, it isn’t a full on crossover, as only specific elements are supposed to be relevant. Now, on to the background information and premise! Everybody clap your hands!!

First off, in the Marvel Universe, Gamma Radiation, the highest known form of radiation and incredibly deadly besides, comes in a third variant that possesses Mutagenic properties, causing Superpower bestowing mutations in those exposed to it, and live that is. This third form is the emissions of an ancient existence known as “The One Below All,” a malevolent mindless monstrosity that sits below all of existence, and is the gestalt of all hate, pain, negativity, and suffering, as well as the physical embodiment of the concept of destruction itself. For all that The One Below All is dangerous, it lacks both a mind and a personality of its own, needing sufficiently malevolent and outright evil individuals to act as hosts for it and give it a mind and personality to work with.

But I’m getting sidetracked. One of the big themes of The One Below All is that those who wield powers from his Radiation, known as Gamma Mutates, are incapable of truly using their powers for good. I call bull on that. Destruction isn’t evil, it just IS, nor can The One Below All decide how those who wield his power decide to use it, and while certainly some have chosen the path of wickedness, others have counted themselves among the most powerful of heroes, such as the Hulk himself! As I see it, destruction and creation are intrinsically linked; for something to be created, their must be room for it to inhabit, ergo, something must be destroyed. The power of the Gamma Mutates is the power to create Change, whether for good or evil is irrelevant. So, I thought, why not give the power of a Gamma Mutate to someone already known as a harbringer of change, chaos, and destruction of the prior status quo. I’m talking about Luz Noceda ya’ll!!

Luz's Home Earth is a variant of the Marvel Earth, minus the Mutants who are one world down the metaphysical scale, and she's well acquainted with the unusual, the bizarre, and the super, if only due to TV and the Internet filling her in. This version of Luz has always had her head in the clouds, being slightly off-put by how little the Supernatural events going on in the world touch her home town. (After gaining her abilities she gets a little more appreciation of why that sleepiness is usually a good thin) Luz gained her Gamma Mutate abilities due to her mother, Camila, helping with a Gamma Radiation-based clinical trial years prior. For the longest time, Luz's latent abilities lied dormant, only emerging when she enters the Isles, and gradually at that, only becoming noticeable when she tries to free the prisoners in the Conformatorium and actually making slight headway before her arms give out. Luz's Gamma Mutate abilities manifest, at first, as a form of absorption and emission, allowing her to take in energy and emit it as her own, with a Gamma Charging twist. The big issue is two-fold, in that Luz both has very poor control over the ability and cannot reliably absorb or emit at will just yet, and she also personally dislikes her powers, as she feels they undermine her dream, as well as her goal, of being a Witch, often looking for excuses not to use them or practice with them. When she finally manages to get over her hang-ups, Luz also discovers that she has the power to temporarily convert others into Gamma Mutates themselves by emitting raw Mutagenic Gamma Radiation directly into their bodies. By temporarily, I mean it lasts from around a minute to an hour, depending on how strenuous their activity is, and she has no control how their Mutate Status will manifest in the slightest. Her absorption ability only works in the form of directed energy, such as a flame, light, or electricity, things of that nature; she absolutely CANNOT absorb another person's energy directly from their body, and trying to do so causes her body to emit large amounts of Gamma uncontrollably as a result. Her distinctive signature trait that marks her as a Gamma Mutate, that is to say the Green coloration the vast majority of Gammas typically have in some form, manifests in her skin and hair, but does so in an odd way, fluctuating in response to her energy stores, causing her to become more green in color the more overall energy she has absorbed into her body so far, and fading back to normal the less she does. Because she can absorb Light as an energy source, Luz always has a slightly green tint to her skin and hair, even when at her absolute lowest energy store, but most people can't actually tell, only being able to note that something is off about her appearance but can't figure out WHAT it is.

Luz’s powers have a REALLY bad habit of kicking in at literally the worst possible moment, such as releasing a sudden burst of energy out of nowhere when she or her friends need to be stealthy, or accidentally absorbing a very much needed spell cast by Eda or one of the others when they are in a pickle.

Like in Canon, Luz lies to her Mami about going to Camp, but makes a better effort of staying in contact with her in a more meaningful capacity than just passing emojis at her. She also reveals the fact that she is a Gamma Mutate to Camila, in the hopes of gaining an explanation as to HOW she’s one, as well as any advice she can give on keeping herself or others safe.

Other MU elements are most definitely present, for one thing, do to some of the chaotic events resulting in conflict between known heroes, magic is a known force on her Earth, so Luz KNOWS magic is possible, she just doesn't know how, and her mother has been adamant about her not trying to learn on her own, mostly out of concern for her safety. I would say that Eda is familiar with Doctor Strange and other Earth-born Magic users, and may even have some practice with their methods, if only to stick it to Belos and only in the form of Cantrips and the like, as well as being more familiar overall with Earth and Human Culture, as opposed to her just above baseline knowledge that most Boiling Islanders have canonically. She's still not totally savvy, but she's heads and shoulders above her Canon self, in that she genuinely knows what the things she's selling actually are, but still sells them as random garbage anyhow just because the weird and insane explanations she gives are more likely to get her sweet, sweet profits! Eda, in addition to her Con-Woman gig, was tasked by the Magical Orders of Earth to monitor and intercede with Magical Matters on the Isles as price for allowing to keep her portal and her scams running, as well as charged with keeping the Portal as far from Belos' grubby mitts as she can.

If you all have any questions, comments, or anything, feel free to let me know!

#the owl house #owl house au #Luz SMASH (Not Really) AU #marvel #marvel comics #hulk #gamma mutate #luz noceda #eda clawthorne #camila noceda

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scriptaed · 5 years

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ink nemesis. 05

Genre: Angst/Fluff || paparazzi!au; fake dating!au;

Pairing: Reader x Yoongi

Length: 7.8k

Synopsis: As an aspiring writer drowning under the public’s radar, a click of the pen is all you need to accept your supervisor’s offer to co-write an article for the SS - Secrets Spilled, a regular section of your company’s weekly tabloid; but fabricated stories and invasive details aren’t all that you write when you discover Min Yoongi’s dirty little secret.

Help.

The ones who need it the most, speak it the least; not you, though, certainly not. You’re an exception, a loophole in the system they call humanity and its fragile emotions. Stone cold, apathetic, incapable of sorrow—somehow, under the cruel hands of reality, you’ve conjured a facade, a true master of a weighted heart and a bottled mind.

No one knows you. No one understands you. No one wants your company unless you’re needed.

Rather, you won’t let anyone know you, you won’t let anyone understand you, and you won’t let anyone take advantage of you.

Because how could you dare enable them to belittle you? You’re a self-proclaimed warrior in an army of one, fighting for the dignity of one, dying in the name of one: yourself. To wage a war against the rest of the world with a weapon fractured by faults as to be named honesty is to submit defeat; so you conceal the cracks and force in whatever you can to provide a temporary fix with permanent damage.

You’re strong, you’re intelligent, you’re independent.

Ill spite, malevolent comments, self-absorbed requests, they could never faze you.

You’ve cultivated this art yourself, see? Your chest no longer aches, your mind no longer lingers, and your heart is numb but nonetheless persists to beat blood into your flesh. Emotions are mere words you could once sympathize with in the days of yore now overtaken by the present you.

Frozen cold but begrudgingly living, you’re still a human.

Are you human?

Your end lies after this frosted, forsaken era, a time you had sworn to never allow to be shed the light of day; but you had underestimated the addiction that vulnerability entails, for in the presence of him, you find yourself coveting for more.

One moment, one touch, one kiss at a time, he disassembles the stone wall of your own prison. You could still remember it clearly. The graze of his touch thaws your icy skin, from your fingers to your arm, forming a trail of swirling, mystical circles. The warmth of his delicate, slender fingertips and the comfort of his palm resting on your cheeks elicit a fervent burn to your already rosy cheeks. The gaze of his secure, intent eyes that meet your wavering ones convey a thousand words more than any picture could.

It’s okay to be weak. It’s okay to not understand. It’s okay to rely on me.

It’s okay to hurt. It’s okay to cry. It’s okay to admit defeat.

Even if they try to stomp on you, even if the entire world parades in the aftermath of your end, with me, you’ll always be okay.

It is only now, as you lie on the bed side by side to this man whom had only been an infinitely distant star, do you believe that soulmates in the midst of countless constellations could truly coexist.

He is the star whom you had always wished to whisk across your dull skies, after all.

There’s no doubt about it. He’s shy and a tad awkward, but in this very moment, he doesn’t dare take his eyes off his celestial pair and neither do you. The scene still electrifies your very being. Your insides stir at the vivid memories of his hand clutching yours after the two of you exit the daze in the aftermath of your kiss of faith and hastily leading the retreat back into your apartment.

You could still whiff the petrichor along with his faded hint of minty, fresh cologne intermixed with the musky scent of his studio. You could still hear her gasp accompanied by the thud of her grab onto the concrete. You could still catch sight of her familiar silhouette, fading farther into the distance as he whisks you away, the two of you stumbling into the elevator and impatiently jabbing at the button to enclose the doors as well as your privacy, giggles, and breathy, fleeting kisses; even if the following hours of confiding in the silent embrace of another all occurs in a blur, you could still live vicariously through a moment too dreamlike to be true for an extinguished star like you.

On this bed and on this very night, serene on a high of this surreal spur of the moment, you finally believe you could reveal your authentic self.

You hate your work.

The coworkers who only acknowledge you in search for aid after you had outscored them on monthly evaluations, the authorities who only take interest in you when you churn out works that rode the waves of ephemeral trends, the public who forgot you within the blink of an eye because you could not serve their exact orders, and the company that keeps you within the confines of your damn contract despite being promised freedom as a creative writer—all of your insecurities come flooding before your eyes.

As you turn to divert your attention from the ceiling to the now asleep boy, you wonder how you could halt the return of ice that creeps along your melted chambers.

Would Yoongi treat you the same? Would he discard you when his interests prove to be fleeting and you could entertain him no longer? Had you fallen for the genuine him or had he put up a facade like your own?

Is it okay to be happy? Is it okay to be in this unrealistic and unhealthy relationship between yourself, the predator of a paparazzi, and him, the prey of a star? Is it okay to love elsewhere outside of writing? The subconscious squeeze of his hands that wander over to yours subconsciously in the midst of sleep tells you: it’s okay.

Like each other’s liquor, finely aged by the warm embrace of another lonely soul passing by the cold, cruel skies, you’re gracefully lulled into deep slumber, wondering, wondering, wondering...

A chaste kiss held to your forehead as he holds both sides of your head securely, whispers of his trek to work, and tucks a blanket over your cradled body were only enough to stir you gently in slumber; for when you awaken by the sunlight that floods through the curtain you had drawn open along with the windows at dusk, a rarity in this chamber, the plush of his lips are as ethereal as last night.

A hoarse groan follows your lengthy yawn when you discover you had somehow slept through the violent buzzing of your phone. One eye just barely peeled open and the other kept tightly shut in the blinding wrath of your screen, you reenter the interwebs with inadequate precaution so unlikely of you.

The dozens of messages from clout-chasing coworkers whomst names you didn’t even know until the news between you and Yoongi had broke out were one thing. You had been so desensitized to the nagging idea of being used and tossed to the side at the convenience of others that you roll your eyes and scroll past without a second thought.

The messages you receive on your personal writing blog, however, are a different matter.

[Anon 7:01 PM] When is the bots update?

One minute right after you posted your longest work up to date of which you had poured your heart and soul into. Not even a single nod to its existence. Not even a courteous waiting period of five minutes.

One minute.

[Anon 8:20 PM] Put your god damn works under the read more line. It’s so annoying to scroll past

It isn’t your fault the “read more” option malfunctions on various devices.They wouldn’t care to listen, though. You’ve explained a myriad of times but received radio silence in return.

[Anon 8:03 AM] OMG i can’t believe you finally updated bots! i won’t lie, i was upset when i thought it was discontinued. welcome back, writer!

Welcome back? Writer?

You had never left; and even if it had been several months since the last update of said series, it had never been indicated as discontinued. You had been here, writing, and interacting every single day of the past two months. Where, why, how would they assume you had left unless updates were the only factor to the status of your blog?

You have a name. Maybe you’re just looking into things now, surely. Perhaps it’s the grogginess of the morning haze that has left a bad taste on your tongue, but writer? Your name has been plastered all across your blog. It’s the very first line of your header on the top of your page, for Heaven’s sake!

You had to have been overthinking things and conjuring conclusions that had never been implicated between the lines in the first place; but you couldn’t help it, not after your hours upon hours of work had been discarded, ignored, and kicked aside. No one is obligated to read all of your works. No, but all you desire is mere acknowledgement. You want to believe this is a rare mistake, yet why is this just one of the many incessant, perpetual trends of your blog as of late?

Is this your fault?

And why are you feeling so guarded, accused, betrayed, victimized, and so utterly frustrated, when, clearly, someone is supporting you?

The pain gnaws at your constricted chest, so you handle it with the only coping method you know: writing.

[Reply] first off, thank you for supporting bots :”) i’m glad to know of your enthusiasm for this series. however, as much as i know you didn’t mean any harm with this comment, i do have to confess that this comment kind of irked me;; i get it if you’re upset because one of your favorite series hasn’t been updated in a while (2 months, really, which isn’t as long as i’ve seen some other series go without updates), but i’ve already said multiple times that the series is not on hiatus. i’ve already said i was working on it, and if i wasn’t, it was because i was busy with life and academics, which are my utmost priorities, or i was investing time on other fics.

which leads me to say, i didn’t come “back” with the update of bots. no, i’ve always been here and i’ve always been writing. in fact, i posted a 33 THOUSAND words long oneshot for namjoon just 4 weeks before updating bots. and it’s not just bots, it happens for every ongoing fic that somehow overshadows all of my other side works.

again, i know that these aren’t your intentions and i’m definitely reading into some comments, but with all the messages i’ve received, the interactions i’ve faced between my various fics, i feel like i have to voice my thoughts on my own blog.

i’ve held back and bottled up my own emotions on this blog for almost 3 years now, but i’m just going to say this: i am a writer and i am human. i am not a writer of just one fic, of just bygones of the sun, of just the labyrinth, of just paper hearts, etc. i am NOT defined by just one work. i am so utterly grateful for the support any of my fics receive, and i’m not saying that people need to read all of my works (you’re obviously not obliged to and i’m thankful if you read even just one work), but i’m just asking for you guys not to just acknowledge my existence/worth only when your favorite fic is mentioned.

At the end of your spill, when all is said and done, you fail to publicize your heart by the simple click of a mouse like the many times before. It’s revitalizing to finally put the amassed angst in your chest into words, but the guilt of burdening others with concerns that no one deserves to bear plagues you on the daily; so there it stays, hidden and buried in your drafts for the long years to come.

With moments of dread like these, however, there never fails to be dozens upon dozens more that awaits to whisk you away into brighter days within the comforts of your inbox. There were countless readers who would send you unconditional support through thick and thin. You could never understand how kindhearted they were to you, someone they’ve never seen, heard, and sometimes never even spoken to. Were they trying to take advantage of you? Are they trying to coax you into a perpetual cycle of writing absent of rest? Why were you always searching for a fault when so many have displayed nothing but patience, love, and understanding to you?

Just why could you not let anyone in?

It’s an ongoing battle between you and yourself, one proven to be fruitless a myriad of times before. You let out a hefty sigh, persisting to express your gratitude, genuine and cautious to omit one half the truth, when a certain comment sends your heart racing.

[MP3 7:56 AM] The pianist sounds like an enigma. Reminds me of this one girl I’ve been crushing on lately. Can’t wait for the story, genius.

The ear-to-ear grin adorning your lips don’t come to attention until your phone rings and the butterflies in your stomach scatter as you’re snapped out of your short-lived reverie. A relieving yet oddly disappointing name plasters across your screen.

“Yes, Solji?”

“Y/N? Where are you right now? Are you home? Where’s Yoongi? Is he next to you?” you can hear the shaking of her head as she forces an abrupt halt to her blurted questions. “What I mean to ask is are you okay?”

“Whoa, calm down, are you using me as a guinea pig for your future child or something? Ooh, someone must have got it on lately,” you hope your wiggling brows could be captured by the suggestive tone of your voice. “Don’t worry, I’m doing fine—” you sigh “—you’re the only one who actually worries for me at work. Thanks, I’m at home right now. Yoongi should be at work—wait, how did you know he was with me?”

“The paparazzi somehow caught you two last night in front of the apartment and now pictures have leaked and literally everyone’s talking about it at work. You’ve been living under a rock the entire last night, haven’t you? Or did you two…” she gasps.

“No!” you exclaim almost to vehemently. You clear your throat and repeat with a lowered voice, “no, we didn’t do anything last night. We just...”

Your cheeks burn red, despite the truth in your statement.

“Girl, you better give me the entire story in full detail later,” she presses as the excitement manifests in the squeak of her voice, “but for now, you should drop a visit to the company as soon as possible. Even if you’re on a break, boss still wants you to attend our monthly meetings.”

“Ew, you mean those gatherings filled with passive aggressive jabs and snotty, arrogant colleagues?” you groan grotesquely. “I guess I don’t have the luxury to be fired just yet. Fine, whatever pays my rent.”

“Don’t worry,” Solji’s familiar laughs envelop you with warmth, “I’ll be there too. I got your back.”

“Thanks, moooom,” you drawl. “I’ll see you soon.”

“Byeee,” she adds in a quick tease, “oh, and don’t forget: no glove, no love—”

—she hangs up.

Well, at least one person still remembers you, even if it’s to nag you about something that you would never even dare to fathom in the first place. Shaking your head, you laugh to yourself when your phone starts ringing again.

This time, however, the name doesn’t disappoint.

Your thumb accidentally accepts the call way too soon and you find yourself on the line with the very person who had your blood pumping just a second ago.

00:00:01… 00:00:02…

“...hello?”

His voice tangles your throat and you’re forced to clear it before hesitantly raising the phone to your right ear. You can’t sound too eager nor nervous, otherwise that would send the wrong signal—damn it, since when did you pay any attention to Yoongi’s impression of you?

“Yeah, what do you need—” oops, that’s too rude “—I mean... is something up?”

“Oh, uh, yeah,” he struggles to get his words out, “I, uh, left my… jacket at your place.”

You quickly scan through the mess of your apartment only to find his jacket neatly folded and conveniently placed right before you at the end of the bed.

“Oh, found it. Do you need me to bring it to you—”

“—no,” the abrupt silence after his adamant refusal catches the both of you off-guard, “no, I can just… come over and grab it. Or, uh, you can keep it.”

You could just imagine him shrugging his shoulders nonchalantly, gradually catching onto his antics.

“Okay, I guess I’ll just keep this hundred thousand dollar jacket here,” you chime.

“Oh?” you could hear him kicking his feet onto the desk. “You’re keeping my jacket as keepsake?”

“And why would I do that?” you scoff.

“Because you miss me.”

His firm statement comes with ease and oozes with so much irking confidence that you force yourself to hang up before the fluttering in your stomach overtakes your very being… that is, until the phone rings again.

“What?” you groan. “I told you I’m keeping your jacket and not because I miss—”

“—did you check your blog today?”

“Huh?” he takes you by surprise. “Yeah, I did. Why?”

A momentary silence befalls his lips. “Oh, well, did any comment stick out to you?”

“Hm…” you play along. “No, not really. Is there a specific comment you’re referring to? Have you been checking my blog, Min Yoongi? Hm? Thinking about me?”

“Yes, I’m referring to the comment I made under ‘MP3,’ you dumbass.”

“In that case, yes, I did,” you snicker before hanging up, “maybe you should check my response later.”

Your phone rings again.

“Ugh, what now? You’re being so clingy—”

“—are you free tonight for dinner?”

“Dinner?” you repeat, taken aback. “Dinner as in… date dinner or just dinner dinner…?”

“Well, I was just thinking dinner dinner,” he mulls, “but I guess we could call it a date if you so want.”

“Shut up,” you can’t help but laugh, “it’s a date then. I have something to do at work but I’ll let you know where and when to pick me up later.”

“Oh,” he pauses and follows up with concern, “do you need me to come with you?”

“No, it’s not like I’m getting fired or anything,” you snort, “thanks, though… it means a lot. See you soon.”

The phone rings again right after you hang up.

“What?!”

“Nothing, I just missed your voice,” he says nonchalantly and probably shrugged before murmuring darkly, “oh, and, I’m the one who gets to hang up.”

The dial tone fills the silent air.

Oh, how had you ever forgotten the pain of commuting to work, especially when making an unexpected detour under time constraints?

[Xiao Lin 1:29 PM] Hey Y/N! Sorry for hitting you up out of the blue but can we meet up really quick? I have something important to show you.

The acquaintance’s text had you nearly sweating bullets, for she had persistently insisted on meeting this very moment—an hour prior to work; because according to her, whatever she has in her hands could be a pivotal moment in both his and your careers.

What could she possibly have and were you right in suspecting her friendly mien?

Your toes scrunch in the tight fit of your pointed heels, fearing for dear life at the pace you were striking the ground. Incessant gusts of wind from passing cars and buses dishevel your hair but you pay no mind to the distractions, striding down the bustling streets with tunnel vision settled on the coffee shop a few blocks from work.

A series of bell chimes capture the attention of the girl who had sat in deep contemplation with eyes under her jet-black bangs, staring at nothing and mind evidently elsewhere.

“Y/N, you’re here,” she gives you a small, gently pressed smile, beckoning for you to sit in the chair across the table. “How have you been doing lately?”

“Hey, doing just fine,” you prim, quickly shuffling into the seat. “So what is it you wanted to tell me?”

Her eyes widen at your haste, blinking blankly for a few seconds before reaching into her purse perched to the chair beside her. The long, luscious locks of hers fall gracefully into curtains that shield you from glimpsing at whatever she’s pulling out. Your heart is suspended at the brink of a cliff when she suddenly pauses, stares at the cards in her hands, and takes a deep, determined breath in and out.

Alas, she unveils her weapon.

There, spread neatly across the table, is a series of photos capturing the intimate moment you had accidentally intruded on during that fateful night.

“This girl here,” the white paint of her nails highlight the silhouette beside Yoongi on the balcony, “is the CEO’s daughter that I mentioned to you before.”

Xiao Lin’s gaze peers at you from under her bangs, intently observing your every movement.

You gulp. You struggle to breathe. You don’t want to give her anything that could jeopardize your career and most importantly… him.

Why, though? Why are you protecting someone whose photos elicit the painful drop somewhere deep within you? Why are you conveying nothing but jealousy and insecurity from the flashbacks that play right before your eyes? Throughout the fantasy that has been the last few months, somewhere along the way, you had let him slip through a fault in your defenses, even under the once so vigilant watch of yours.

“Okay,” you finally muster the courage to lift your gaze to meet hers, “and why are you showing this to me?”

“Y/N, aren’t you dating Yoongi?”

Well, are you?

“Yeah, but these don’t have any context to them. For all we know, maybe this photo is old and she could just be his ex.”

“I’m afraid not,” she presses her lips into a frown. “This venue is the same day the news about you and Yoongi broke out. They’re wearing the same attire as in their press, as well.”

Your brows furrow at her persistence. “Where did you get these photos anyway?”

“One of my sources happened to snap a shot and showed me just last night… including this picture,” she slides forward a familiar scene you had bore witness to—your hands cupping his cheeks, his back facing the camera as he leans into you, and the woman’s figure watching from afar. “Don’t worry about it, though. I made sure to delete the photos from all her devices, and even if she slips, no one’s going to believe someone without previous credit to back her up.”

“Well—” you’re completely petrified by the attack “—I’m sure there’s a misunderstanding.”

“Y/N…” she says hesitantly under her breath, “did you know about this…? I’m required to report everything to my company by contract, especially since this involves relations to our CEO, but I’m telling you this first because I don’t want to hurt one of my only friends.”

Friend? How could she call you her friend after cornering you like this? She must have something up her sleeve. She must.

“I don’t there’s anything I could add,” you deadpan with eyes glaring at her. “People are gonna take those photos and run away with whatever wild stories they can capitalize off of anyways, regardless of my commentary.”

“That’s why I’m asking you… do you not want me to release these photos?”

“You’d do that…?” you frown, cautious in wading the waters. “Why risk your career for me?”

“I’m not so dirty as to throw my friends under the bus without a thought,” she laughs and pretends to zip her lips shut. “Alright, my lips are sealed, then. Oh, also another thing…”

You keep her under your wary watch, still dubious, “yeah?”

“I’ve heard through the grapevine that Bang PD has been in talks with the company an immensely popular tabloid, SS, writes under… which, from what I remember, is your company. I heard there’s a certain writer there whose stories they want to use for BTS’s concepts.”

“Oh,” you cock your head, “and why are you telling me that?”

“I’m just saying,” she leans back into her chair as she watches you gather your things, “be careful no one’s taking advantage of you, especially after those photos.”

“Alright, well,” you scramble to find a safe response in the mess of your state, “thank you for having my back, but it really isn’t something you should be meddling with. I really have to get going now—”

“—wait,” a delicate hand clutches onto yours before you could depart and you whirl around to peer down at her. With orbs reflecting the sun rays in its dark chocolate hues, she speaks. “You know I’m putting my entire career at risk by working behind my company’s back.”

“...yeah,” your eyes narrow at her, “I’m thankful for that.”

“But you know the kind of industry we work in, right? People aren’t afraid to stab others in the back as long as it profits them, so we always have to be vigilant.”

“So…”

“So,” her words never linger on her thoughts, “I’m saying I need assurance from your side that you won’t turn your back on me, either.”

“Lin,” you let out a breath of disbelief, “why in the world would I tell your CEO about this?”

“I don’t know,” she says firmly, “but that’s the thing, we never know until we’re on our knees, regretting every decison we’ve ever made.”

“Lin, please—” you’re at a loss for words “—please don’t hurt Yoongi. Don’t release those photos. Please. I’d do anything.”

“Anything that gives me leverage, Y/N.”

Her stern gaze bores into yours.

What could you possibly tell her? That your relationship with Yoongi is fake? That would only be throwing Yoongi and the entirety of BigHit under the bus. You can only imagine the despair that would come from betraying him like that.

“I don’t have anything, Lin,” your voice cracks on the brink of tears. “I seriously don’t have anything. Please let him go. Just this once. Please—”

“—Y/N,” she murmurs with those pleading eyes, equally desperate as yours, “I’m sorry, but I can’t.”

Yoongi. BigHit. His members. The company. Solji. SS… you could tell her about SS.

“I’ll—” you hesitate with bated breath “—I’ll tell you my real pen name.”

“Your pen name?” her eyes widen at your suggestion, accepting the weight of your proposition by the wavering of your breaths. “Okay.”

With your career, past, heart, tears, and soul, your every being is encompassed by these two words. Should you let her have her way? Hand over the key to control your state of mind? Let the potential infiltration of outsiders to intrude on your one companion in life?

Should you give it all up for him?

“Ink Nemesis,” you mutter, feeling your heart drop. “My pen name is Ink Nemesis.”

The recognition of your alias in the tabloids manifests in her brightened expression and you had never struggled to inhale with such magnitude like you did at this moment.

“Alright, nice to meet you, Ink Nemesis.”

She smiles.

Something smells in this meeting room. It’s a perpetual stench that reeks your surroundings that you would do anything to bolt from your chair.

Bullshit.

“What’s with the long face?” one of the girls asks you with fake concern plastered all over that overly done face of hers. If it weren’t for the incident just an hour prior, maybe your thoughts wouldn’t have been so malicious; but you can’t help but wonder how you had ever put up with her attempts to get on your good side when monthly evaluations were just around the corner.

“Nothing,” you mumble, sitting even more upright when you notice her own pretentious posture.

“Aww, did someone wake up on the wrong side of the bed today?” another girl bumps your leather chair with hers. “Mr. Min Yoongi’s, perhaps?”

Oh, there’s the other girl who never really cared for your existence or anyone’s except her so called “squad” for that matter… until someone’s work garners enough momentum to be worthy of her attention, that is.

“Yeah?” you snap and everyone jumps at the raise in your voice. “Well, whose bed did you wake up in this time?” The silence is overbearing enough to have you mentally regretting your temper in guilt. “Haha… just kidding.”

The group of girls force a nervous laugh before rolling back to their respective spots and gathering their files.

“Ooh…” Solji mumbles under her breath beside you. “It’s 2019, Y/N. Slut shaming isn’t acceptable anymore.”

“I know,” you grunt, storming out of the meeting room as Solji follows in your trek. “I messed up, okay? I’m just having a shitty day.”

“Oh?” her playful expression immediately transitions to one of concern. “What’s wrong? Is there anything I can do to help?”

“No, unless you, their supervisor, can tell them to shut the hell up and stop acting so fake,” you roll your eyes and punch your timecard. “It’s just that they’ve never cared for me as a person until my works did somewhat well, and the only time that happened is when I hop on the bandwagon and write because I want to be praised and receive attention and not because I want to write. I can’t even be creative because then no one will ever even read my shit.”

“Is that why you’re still writing for SS?” Solji quickly punches her timecard and paces after you as the door slams behind you.

Cars honk at every corner, buses puff at every stop, and lights beam in all orientations of the city as night befalls it. Her questions lingers in your mind, even as you march through the sidewalks and into the neighborhood a few blocks from the company.

Why are you still writing for SS? Sure, the stream of comments are addictive not to say the least; but what you’ve always vied for is the euphoric rush of anticipation, the power that runs through your veins, knowing just how much control you had at the tips of your fingers. You had exclusive information and everyone is all ears. You could release a simple audio and set millions abuzz.

At long last, the world is yours and you’re not theirs.

“No, not exactly,” you finally answer.

“Good then,” Solji huffs when she finally catches up with you at the end of the block, “because you should stop updating SS. I don’t want you involved with it anymore. I’ll have someone else in charge or maybe I’ll even pick it up again, just not you—”

“—what? No,” you vehemently shake your head, “no, why?”

“Because he’s your boyfriend, Y/N. Did you forget that all of a sudden or something? It’s unhealthy to be writing as a paparazzi for your boyfriend. Does he even know about this?”

“Yeah, he knows I’m one…”

“For the SS?” she articulates.

“...no,” your voice is nearly inaudible until you erupt in protest, “but you can’t do that. You can’t just take it away from—”

“—yes, I can,” she raises a brow at your behavior, “it’s my tabloid.”

A sharp intake of breath cuts your words off as you submit to a temporary defeat in silence. A breeze passes by, carrying your locks gently in its waves along with the dampened traffic in the distance.

It seems like the entire world is stripping you of your joys; because even Solji, the one motherly friend you could always rely on, is turning her back on you now.

Your colleague senses the tension in the stagnant air and speaks once again, “what’re you doing here anyway—”

—a black car pulls up and you don’t hesitate to enter when you recognize the familiar silhouette of his through the tinted windows.

“Do you always enter any stranger’s car—”

—Yoongi’s remark is interrupted by the shrieks belonging to a certain someone at the curbside. You had almost forgotten the reason SS was even created in the first place.

“Oh my GOD! I’m-I’m such a big fan, I’ve loved you since you were a trainee a-and, I just can’t believe!!!” Solji manages to shrill as she jumps up and down, completely overjoyed.

“Do you know her…?” Yoongi whispers, slight concern intermixed with bashful gratitude adorns his face as your supervisor continues to jump in circles.

“Yeah, she’s, um,” you stubbornly give in despite your grudge, knowing fully well how much this moment must mean to her, “she’s like a mother to me. She’s a huge fan. Probably your first, actually.”

Solji’s head violently bobs in agreement and Yoongi could only chuckle at her enthusiasm. Removing her hands from her cheeks that are streaked with her tears, she manages to scavenge through her pocket to find a notepad and pen. She wipes away the mascara streaks and fruitlessly attempts to regain composure. “I’m sorry, I really didn’t want to act like a crazy fan. I mean, I’m not a crazy fan, but could you… if it’s not too much of a bother… sign this…?”

“Yeah, of course.”

It’s difficult for you to hide the grin twirling at the corner of your lips as he reaches over you to further fuel the elation Solji must have been squealing over. Once the star finishes his business, Solji ducks to meet the two of you on eye-level, continuously expressing her gratitude to her idol for his time when, out of the blue, she redirects her remarks to you.

“Thank you, Y/N. Please understand I’m doing this for your own good,” she presses a bittersweet smile, even if you avoid her gaze by looking straight out the windshield. Chortling, she takes a few steps back onto the curb and waves you two goodbye, “have a nice date!”

The engine purrs to life as the window scrolls up and you’re left comfortably alone with Yoongi—until Xiao Lin’s voice echoes in the back of your mind. You had just given your entire life for this man whom you don’t even completely understand just yet. Lin has a point: who is that woman to him and why hasn’t he told you about her?

Could you really trust the last remaining figure, a man of many secrets, in your life?

“What does she mean ‘doing this for your own good?’’ he quirks an inquisitive brow while keeping his eyes on the road.

“Nothing really,” you mumble, looking out the window at the skyscrapers blurred by the warm golden streetlights.

“Really?” he muses. “She seems like she really cares for you. I’m grateful.”

“Grateful? Who’s this cheesy man and where did you take my Yoongi?”

Yoongi chuckles at your retort before reaching behind your seat to reveal the bouquet of pastel colored flowers. He tips the adornment in your direction, beckoning for your acceptance. “Congratulations on being fired.”

“Ah, yes, there he is,” you roll your eyes briefly, despite the apparent smile that stretches from ear to ear as you take the bouquet into your hands. You could tell he must have ordered for an excessive number of flowers because the ribbon hangs on for its dear life to keep the bouquet unified. Your eyes flutter closed and you relish in the fresh, floral scent.

But he’s lying. He’s keeping something from you.

Alarms sound off to interrupt the ephemeral moment of genuine bliss. It always does this. You always do this. Why can’t you just take things as it is? Why suspect him? You’d be better off living in ignorant bliss. Or is it your innate method of preventing the dreadful anxiety that comes with the painfully endless falls off the highs?

“Yoongi.”

“Hm?”

“Do you…” you struggle to speak, tongue-tied. “Do you… know anything about your CEO and how he’s coming up with your concepts?”

“Him? Coming up with our concepts?” his voice raises in surprise. “The boys and I come up with them ourselves. Why?”

“Nothing.”

Your attempt to conceal your utter relief is in vain.

“That’s a whole lot of nothing’s today,” he chuckles, catching a glimpse of you sniffing the bouquet before deciding not to press further. “Do you like the flowers?”

“Yeah, they’re pretty,” you turn to meet his cheerful gaze illuminated by the flood of red from the traffic light. “Why’re you suddenly acting like you’re my boyfriend?”

“Am I not your boyfriend?”

He returns his attention to the street when the red shadows on his skin flicker green.

“You never explicitly said anything about it.”

“Why should I?” he muses as his hands find yours by the gear stick. He then intertwines his fingers with yours. “I feel our connection. You feel our undeniable connection. Do we need any words to define us?”

Words to define us. Words to commit. Words to omit the truth in the wake of a lie.

“We do,” you firmly state and he turns to cock a brow at you. “I need to know who I’m with. I need the complete truth or else I can’t give my all in this relationship.”

“Okay—” the both of you could feel the drop in temperature and the rise in tension “—what do you need to know?”

“Do you know the daughter of the CEO who sponsored your movie premiere?”

“What premiere?”

You raise your voice, “the night we met.”

“Oh,” the firm grip of his hands go limp and something mercilessly hammers against your chest, “no, I don’t know the CEO’s daughter personally.”

Lies. Utter lies. He’s fucking lying.

Why? Just why?

Do you tell him you know more than he thinks you do? Would that be a foolish tactic?

“Are you sure?” you press.

I’m giving you one last chance.

“What’s up with you, Y/N?” Yoongi frowns, brows knitted.

“Nothing!” you nearly yell. Yoongi doesn’t react in the least bit. He retains that damn stupid cold facade of his, even as he lies. “Look me in the face and promise me you’re going to give this your all.”

Because I gave you my all.

“Y/N, what even,” he mutters under his breath, turning to stare at you straight in the eye. “There’s nothing going on between us—”

“—turn the corner,” you demand lowly. “I want to go home.”

“Y/N, is there something I need to know?” he exasperates, groaning when you fail to meet the frustration in his eyes and obliges to your orders. “What the fuck is going on—”

“—what’s going on is that you’re fucking lying to my face!”

Your screams stun him into silence. His lack of a response boils your blood.

“I told you to tell me the truth! I literally shoved the answer to your face and gave you multiple chances to confess!” you struggle to catch your breath, chest heaving up and down. “At least say something damn it!”

The car comes to an abrupt stop. He doesn’t waste a second and shoots a stern gaze your way. His once cool temperament has been replaced by the fire set ablaze in the grinding teeth of his, jaws jutting and eyes darkening. One hand of his still clutches the steering wheel so tightly you could see veins popping under his white collared shirt.

Both participants evidently fear the heated argument soon to erupt.

“I don’t have any feelings for her,” he enunciates. “I only like you. I swear.”

“You still lied to me.”

“I’m sorry,” he takes a deep breath and sighs, eyes never disconnecting from yours. “I’m really, really sorry.”

“Do you know—” you pause in a fruitless attempt to save yourself from breaking out into tears; instead, you choke over your sobs and despise the look of concern adorning that fake frown of his “—do you know how much I gave up for you? Do you know how much I left behind to protect you?”

“What do you mean—”

“—I gave up my career, Yoongi!” you bellow. “I belittle myself, I’ve become hooked on the idea of fame, I’ve become the very person I feared. I’ve bargained away my only companion for you and you betrayed me!”

“Y/N, just tell me what happened and I can fix it.”

He sounds genuine, but is he? Can you trust him? Can you trust anyone but yourself?

Can you even trust yourself?

“You can’t,” you fail to inhale silently in an attempt to conceal the shaky breaths of yours.

“And why not?”

“You can’t because,” your hands rummage through your purse for your phone so hastily that you almost cut yourself with your own nails, “because I told the one person I warned myself over and over not to trust but did anyways all because I loved you.”

The both of you are taken aback by your sudden confession; and if it weren’t for the condition that you’re in right now, maybe this would have been a monumental moment you would’ve spent hours and hours reliving and relishing through your memories.

“I loved you,” you repeat, eyes shaking,” and you hurt me.”

He hurt you. Maybe he didn’t mean to. Perhaps this is partially your fault for neglecting to fill him in on your side of the argument. This could be the moment you tell him about that night you caught sight of him with her on the balcony or about how you had just revealed your pen name and signed your career away if Lin were to use it against you for his sake.

But he hurt you.

People have trampled over you and you’ve had enough.

How do you hurt the people who have hurt you?

How did Yoongi hurt you?

You don’t realize the blinding screen of your phone where your blog and its eight tabs are on full display until Yoongi squeezes your left arm. The imprecise, hasty jabs of your fingertips at the screen render your phone unresponsive, only furthering your fueling frustration as you clutch the device to the point of numbing your hands.

Delete. Delete. Delete.

“What are you doing, Y/N?” he seems to have collected himself in comparison to your wrath.

“I’m deleting my shit,” you grumble through gritted teeth.

“I know you are,” he emphasizes, “but why are you? I know how happy your blog makes you. Why are you doing this? What’re you going to do about all the people who love and support you?”

“Why do you care?” you snap, stopping momentarily to shoot a death glare at him. “It’s not always a source of happiness for me. To tell you the truth, you brought me happiness when this blog couldn’t. You, Yoongi. How am I supposed to trust them if I can’t even trust the one person I thought would have my back?”

He’s silent. He’s holding back.

“How am I supposed to handle all this… all this pain? How do I—” you pause “—how do I get back at the people who hurt me? How do I regain control of my life?”

Silent, again. He’s biting his tongue.

“I take back the one thing I had that they wanted from me. The one thing they can’t have. Then, I’ll finally be in control again—”

“—what kind of fucking control is that?”

“Excuse me?”

“I said,” the flames in his orbs have ice crawling along your skin, “what kind of fucking control is that? How can you call yourself in control when people have literally forced you into taking down the works that provided you solace? How can you call yourself in control when you’ve allowed people to get into your head and push you to this state of darkness, to the point that you want to hurt? You have this stupid fucking complex about you and I get it. I really get it, but do you ever plan on acknowledging it or do I have to shove it in front of your face for you to understand?”

“What? What is it that a successful boy like you could understand about a girl born with nothing like me? Huh?”

Yoongi doesn’t hesitate to bring forth reality. Cold, cruel, just like your world.

“You think the whole world is against you and you’re nothing but its poor victim; but have you ever stopped to think that maybe, just maybe, others are suffering under your hands as well? That, maybe, there are people who are genuinely kind and those people deserve so much more of your fucking time than those dumbasses who don’t deserve the light of day. Won’t you trust in the people who light up your world like you’ve lightened mine? Won’t you?” he flinches at the waterworks that stain your cheeks. “Are you going to love yourself by accepting yourself or are you going to keep picking at the faults of others and acting blind in front of your own? When will you let down those walls, Y/N?”

An epiphany dawns upon you when you find your gaze fixated on his, locked and challenged; and for a second, it’s almost as if you’re staring at an older self in the mirror.

“You’re right,” you grab your purse and phone, kicking open the door. “There’s nothing left to love, not even myself.”

“That’s a lie,” he shakes his head, “at the very least, you should love yourself.”

“How can I?” you give him one last tilted, pressed grin before slamming the door. “How can I when even I have lost sight of myself?”

You can tell his heart shatters by your confession. His face turns pale, his lips part but fail to utter a single word of assurance, and he simply lets you go. Turning your back on him, you smile to yourself and take long, painful strides toward your front door.

Why does it hurt so much to bring him pain like you so wanted?

You’re on your way to self-discovery. All you need is to be alone again, like you’ve always told yourself to be, like you’ve always known would be best for you.

Your mind works on autopilot, as if distancing yourself from others is merely second nature to you by now. The accursed picture still haunts you even as you shut your eyes.

[99% uploading]

Now, finally, surely, you’ll be a hundred percent free from burden and the hands of……..

...

409 notes · View notes

gelenka-daria · 4 years

Note

Halloween's coming up so maybe you could write something to go along with the spirit for Manwe and Melkor? Werewolf AU? Vampires? Fairies? Anything? :D

i don't know what happened

Rain and thunder rattle against the window after the first bolt lights up the sky, but that isn't what awakes him.

The screaming sounds distant, remnants of a fever-induced dream, little more than a hallucination. Manwë almost believes it is.

It takes him longer than appreciated to come to, for his blurry vision to clear. He shifts, sore limbs protesting when he attempts to lift himself off the bedding, succeeding with no little effort, before looking about his bedchamber, dim save a few strings of silver moonlight trickling through the window.

He frowns. It's quiet, unsettlingly so, and it drags on long enough for him to question his state of mind. Perhaps that, too, had begun to deteriorate alongside his body.

But then, as suddenly as it went, a commotion breaks the silence, haphazard movement in the hall behind his door. Frantic footsteps up a stairway, another blood-curdling scream, terrified and terrifying and the hairs on Manwë's arms stand on end, goosebumps prickling his skin as his eyes widen at what sounds like hysterical begging right outside his chamber before the cries are cut short, replaced by wet gurgle.

Manwë freezes, feeling a wretched twist of fear in his chest, his heart in his throat, in his ears, loud, but not enough to drown out the sound of something heavy hitting the floor, followed by footsteps against worn wooden boards, each step accompanied by the low creak of ancient woodwork, deliberate-like and slow, getting closer.

It springs an abrupt reaction from him, but his weakening knees buckle right as his feet touch the floor and he crumbles, pain shooting up his bones the second his body collides with the worn wooden boards, hissing at the harsh contact. Manwë tries to get his joints to function as he attempts to hitch himself up, but even that seems to be too much effort on his weakening form. It's when he's finally up on his knees, fingers clenched around his bedding and stopping to take a breath, that it dawns on him. The abominable, godawful quiet. Nothing but the faint pitter-patter of rain and his own stuttering breaths.

Something terrible presses down on his chest; the icy cold creep of fear across his shoulder, the surge of panic that makes him feel sick to his stomach. It's then that he realizes that he isn't really alone in his bedchamber, that something else is sharing his space with him, lurking in one of the shadowed corners. A silhouette, shifting darkness.

Manwë looks despite himself, peering over his shoulder between pale, limp hair. It takes him a second to absorb his surroundings— his room looks strangely unfamiliar when the blue lightning reaches every niche, the corners empty, nothing hiding in them, but that's only because whatever thing had prowled its way into his home was standing there, mere feet from him.

It all makes sense, suddenly.

It looks human, Manwë can't help but notice, struck rigid and staring wide-eyed at it, but he can sense it, its otherness, glowing golden eyes staring back through shadowed features, the steady drip-drip sound of something dribbling down clawed fingers before lightning comes again, and a face comes into view, equal parts terrifying and beautiful, red streaking down a defined chin.

Manwë loses grip on the bedding and falls face first onto the floor. Ignoring his useless legs, he sets on a frantic, pointed crawl to where the bedside table harbors a silver dagger. His health might be failing, but he refuses to concede to such a death without fighting for his life.

He reaches it by some miracle, the creature uninterested in stopping him for whatever reason, yet what frail, little hope he'd fostered in this short period of time fades when the drawers turn up empty, his only means of defending himself nowhere to be found.

"Looking for this, perhaps?" A deep, velvety voice resonates through Manwë's bones and he wants to cry at the impossibility of it because no, no, it cannot be. Except it is, the blade a glaringly bright gray in one uncanny hand when he struggles to turn his head and look.

A sharp grin reveals sharper teeth, gleaming in the bordering darkness, and it slowly tips its head towards Manwë's study where he now remembers having left it laying prior to the days he became bedridden. It takes everything in him to stop the tears from coming. The creature tuts, "such carelessness over such precious things." Before dropping the dagger into Manwë's reach, the sound of it clattering against the floor too loud on Manwë's ears.

"Go on," it says almost enticingly, stepping closer, "you are welcome to try."

Manwë swallows with difficulty and grits his teeth, his trembling fingers barely secure around the blade don't stop the frisson of horror curling in his belly. What good is a weapon, if he doesn't have the strength to wield it?��

"I had heard talk amongst townsfolk, of how the lord of this manor had succumbed to the spreading plague," it says, as it steps closer, voice holding the detached curiosity one would spare for a particularly interesting insect, "I can smell the disease on your skin, I hear it in your lungs. It should suffice to deter me, a well-nigh corpse is of no use to me, I ought to leave you to perish, however," boot-clad feet come into view, "Mercy is no virtue of mine, and yet you look so pitiful, it has gotten me in a charitable mood, I might spare you such pain, grant you a quicker death, my bite need not hurt so much."

Laying there in helpless despair, Manwë can't help but scoff, incredulous, might as well. "How gracious of you," his voice is watery and bitter, "I wouldn't presume you to have extended the residents of this house the same courtesy."

"Ah, are you grieving your servants?" it sounds almost spiteful, "worry not, you shall join them soon."

Manwë hisses when the creature digs the tip of its boot into his side, pressing into his ribs and flipping him over, as though he were a mere carcass in decay on the side of a road. Once he's on his back, he keeps his eyes to the ceiling, his hands tightly gripping the iron hilt of his dagger, held close to his chest, a feeble measure of security. The thing crouches next to him, its presence too cold and Manwë can hardly bear to look at its too human features in fear of being lured into a false sense of normality, that maybe this was someone he could reason with.

He jolts when cool, bloody fingers hover over his forehead, moving whatever's strayed of his hair out of his face, before its hand cradles his pale, sunken cheek, smearing the scarlet print of its hand upon Manwë's face. Manwë makes the mistake to look, and meets the creature's gaze, its eyes feverish and pinning him down more effectively than if it had used brute force.

"However," it says, tone unexpectedly light as Manwë falls prey to sudden burgeoning interest, a horrible, horrible darkening to its eyes, a wolf gone hungry, "I might be inclined to change my mind."

Manwë doesn't care for an explanation, as he takes advantage of the proximity and unforeseen regard. He takes aim, plunging the dagger upwards with all he has, his one chance, the sound of a single slice sharp in the near silence. And he hits his mark, he thinks, hands shaking around the hilt, both horrified and delighted and all kinds of frantic. He looks up, into black, wide, astonished eyes and for a second there relief floods him. Any minute now, the hands gripping his wrists should loosen. Any minute now, the flesh and bone around the blade should start to fray away.

Any minute now.

Except, none of that happens. The surprise fades out into unsettling mirth and it cackles hoarsely, throaty tones vibrant with devious delight as it raises its head and pins him with an ancient stare. "Why, you did try. Such endearing determination." Cutting fangs come into view from under a likewise grin. Manwë's hands slip off the hilt, falling limp at his sides as he watches the creature yank the dagger out, dripping tar-dark blood, with not so much a flinch, and tossing it aside. "Had there been a chance of such a thing ever posing a threat, I never would have handed it to you, sweetling."

Manwë flinches at the endearment, his fingers digging painfully into the wood bellow, blood welling from under his fingernails. The creature sniffs, its grin softening. "There," it sighs, deceptively gentle, as it leans ever closer, "underneath the stench of death, you smell utterly delectable."

Ah, Manwë thinks, defeated, what little strength he had left bleeding out, I see.

The creature tsks. "No need to look so glum, precious, I'm of a mind to preserve your life, not end it." It says into the minuscule space between their lips, dark, pitch-black eyes switching to a malevolent carmine. "Twould be a shame," a thumb sweeps across Manwë's left cheek, "such a lovely face, wasted to mortality."

"No," Manwë says, rejecting the heavy implication. He would much rather die.

It blinks. "No?"

"No." Manwë affirms between gritted teeth. "I would prefer to die on my own terms. I refuse to become like you, either leave me be or kill me."

"How gullible," it cradles his head, fingers burrowing into his hair, nails scratching lightly at his scalp in a manner that, in any other circumstance, would have eased him into comfort. "To think you have a say in the matter."

Dread fills him as he breaks into cold sweat. He looks at it, the blood-spatter across its face, so beautiful, so horrible, devoid of warmth. Further from anything Manwë wishes to ever be. Tears prick the corners of his eyes. "Please."

"You should be groveling at my feet in thanks," it lifts Manwë's upper body off the floor, slow and careful, the other hand brushing his hair out of the way, its breath cool against his collarbone, "for the gift I am to bestow upon you."

Manwë shakes his head, his shivering hands reaching up to grip its shoulders, intent on pushing it away, yet all he can do is hold on.

"Shhh," it breathes against his neck soothingly, "I assure you, in no time, you will be loath to part with me."

One cold kiss to his skin, and it's over.

A low growl coils in its throat when it draws blood, demonic, feral, possessive, frightening. Manwë can't find it in him to make a sound. The teeth in his throat don’t even hurt. Sharp bright sensation, flesh parting at the join of shoulder and neck, an obsidian dagger splitting him open from sternum to skull—his consciousness reforms and he feels—he’s whole, he’s whole, he’s bitten open and bleeding out but somehow he’s whole for the first time in his life.

His eyes are wide and unseeing, blinded by the sudden rush of power, so intoxicating that he clings, wraps arms and legs around this thing, ignoring the distant screaming of you don't want this, you don't and draws him closer for more give me more, close enough to hear a yes purred into his own blood, until the scalding light fades and there's nothing but darkness.

#not a whole lotta consent here anon just a heads up #i really don't know what happened omg #i was aiming for romantic and it took a life of its own and turned into THIS #in fairness i did have a similar idea in my head for a long time so 🤷🏻‍♀️#melkor #manwë #prompt #tolkien #melkor x manwë #it’s not even halloween anymore #anonymous

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late-to-the-magnus-archives · 11 months

Text

Never Tell, chapter four - a Malevolent AU

John was weird. John was a weird baby. He didn’t cry right. It almost sounded like an adult pretending to cry, or trying to recall how, using baby vocal cords. He didn’t look around and absorb the world like Faroe did. He just watched Arthur, if Arthur was in view, and it was hard not to feel a little judged.

Fortunately, Faroe was so charming that she covered her brother’s weirdness up.

Chapter four of Never Tell, a Malevolent Bella-lives AU.

AO3

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The horrifying bruise on Arthur’s arm healed by the time Bella came home. It was mean, that injury. That was the only word for it—not just purplish red, but practically rope-burned, as if it hadn’t been enough to just cause him pain, but the dream-demon had tried to scar him, too.

On the day Bella came home, Arthur got a letter at their front door. In a thick, creamy envelope, sealed with actual wax, it terrified him for no reason he could place. He absolutely refused to open it, but was too spooked to throw it away, so it sat in the kitchen, mocking him to his face, while he and Bella tried to figure their new life out.

Arthur ignored it. He had to. He had no other choice. Besides, babies took time. So did father-in-laws with something to prove that no one, including him, understood. Daniel stuck around for a solid week. The babies needed something constantly. Arthur questioned his life choices.

The creepy guy did not reappear. So. That was good.

He couldn’t talk to Bella about all that. Whatever happened at the hospital left her thoughtful and distant, like she was considering something big. It felt like she had before she’d admitted to him she preferred women, two years before. That kind of big.

Well, pushing her wouldn’t produce results any faster (the opposite was true, in fact), so he focused, and took more gigs, and tried to make them money, and tried to be a dad.

Being a dad was hard, and they weren’t even fucking talking yet.

Fortunately, Faroe was so charming that she covered her brother’s weirdness up.

She was the best baby. The perfect baby. Her little sounds were amazing; holding her, feeling her wriggles and her warmth, did something to Arthur’s heart that he lacked words to express. When he held Faroe, and smiled and sang to her, the world seemed like a better place.

Holding John was an experience, too, of course; it wasn’t as though he didn’t love his son. He just felt constantly like he was failing some daily test.

“I’m doing my best,” he informed his boy as he struggled with the romper they’d just been given by a kind neighbor. “How the fuck does this… oh. I see. Legs.”

The little dresses had been so much easier. This thing had leg-holes. Why? It just made them harder to change.

“Who designed this shit?” Arthur said.

John looked at him glumly.

“Yeah, tell me about it,” Arthur said, and finally got him buttoned.

“How’s the Bean doing?” said Bella, approaching.

Bean was John. Peach was Faroe. Arthur had yet to discern why. “Scary as ever.”

“Scary!” Bella grinned and scooped up her son, taking a moment to coo at him and touch her nose to his. “Scared of a newborn. I swear, Arthur Lester.”

“He knows I don’t know what I’m doing,” said Arthur.

“Derision from a kid who doesn’t know what he’s doing, either? Hooey,” said Bella, bouncing John a little (and there could be no damn doubt he didn’t look at her the same way). “You don’t know. First time baby, yes you are! Figuring out this whole son thing, and lemme tell you, Bean, I got my eye on you,” she said, working on her shirt. “A little help?”

Arthur fiddled with her shirt so the kid could have his meal. “He’s not crying. How can you tell he’s hungry?”

“Because it’s time to feed them,” said Bella, and John got to work.

John had given Arthur looks before when doing this. Not today; he suckled hard, messily demanding.

“Hey,” said Bella, soft. “I’m razzing you. You know that, right? You’re doing fine.”

Arthur tried to pretend he wasn’t tearing up, but he’d never been good at hiding things like that from Bella.

“Aww. Buddy,” said Bella, and patted his arm while John hungrily worked. “You’re okay. We’re figuring it out. And kids are made of rubber. Look at you and me; we’re okay, and if anybody was gonna get screwed up by their folks, it’d be us.”

“Mine are dead,” Arthur said intelligently.

“Yeah, and you’re about as kooky as I am, so I’d say it didn’t make that much of a difference.” She tilted her head, pointed chin raised.

Arthur laughed softly and picked up Faroe, who squealed with joy. “I guess you’re right.”

“I’m right. So. Did you open that fancy letter yet?”

No, Arthur had not opened the fancy letter yet. “It’s not from the government, or anything, so we shouldn’t have to.”

“Shouldn’t have to?” Bella’s fingertips stroked John’s whisper-soft hair; he was determined to drink more, but falling asleep, fighting a losing battle between open-mouthed unconsciousness and demanding suction. “We should want to! I mean, what the heck? Maybe you’re inheriting some castle from some rich cousin you never knew about.”

“More likely, some weird rich cousin’s found out I’m a fairy and decided off with my head, and it’s a summons to an execution,” Arthur muttered, and swapped babies. He burped John (who sleepily protested the indignity) while Bella fed Faroe.

“Come on,” she said. “Let’s at least know what it is.”

It was two weeks old. Surely, if it had been important, he’d have gotten another. Or coppers at the door. Or something.

Arthur sighed. “Come on, Arthur,” said Bella softly. “I know you’re scared.”

“I guess I just keep waiting to get caught,” he said, still avoiding that weird dream (or whatever it was) he’d had. “So many raids lately. So many arrests.”

“Yeah,” she said, low, because it was true.

“I’m just afraid of losing everything we have,” he said. “The freedom to talk in my own home. These little guys.”

“If you’re afraid of losing them, it’s not so bad,” Bella pointed out.

Arthur managed a smile. “I guess not. Just crazy. Babies.”

“Well, enjoy it while it lasts, because we are not doing this again,” said Bella, burping Faroe.

Arthur laughed. “Gods, I hope not.”

“Will you open that weird letter already?” she needled.

Her grin gave him courage, and he went to see what it said.

It was scented; something herbal and smoky, something rich, hints of a scent he might have picked up in some of the swankier clubs, though he’d never seen who wore it.

It wasn’t paper inside. Too thick; parchment, maybe, smooth, and written on in dark, floral handwriting.

To Mister Arthur Lester, of 26 Cornflower Avenue, Boston: Greetings and Felicitations!

It is my pleasure to invite you to join a contest of peculiar skill to be held from May to December in the year of our Lord 1924, in which you have earned a spot due to the success of your song, So Queer.

This contest carries a prize which we know you will appreciate: an annual salary of $2,000.00 a year for the rest of your life.

This contest, called the Vulgtmog competition, is five hundred years old, hosted by the Stanczyk family—a prestigious musical clan who have been great supporters of the arts for generations. Let us reassure you, Mister Lester, this is no joke; as proof, we include train tickets for you and your family to Old Port, Maine, from where we will provide transport across the sea.

The contest lasts several months, and we are aware this is a serious investment on your part. Therefore, no matter whether you win, you will be paid for your time $100 a week for the duration of the contests, and expenses for you and your family will be covered. You will also be given recommendations that should help you acquire whatever position you need in the industry thereafter.

Again, Mister Lester, this is not a joke. Your music charmed the Stanczyk scion, and he asked for you by name.

We hope you will come. For questions, you can call the Syha'h embassy in New York City at MU 7-2678. Please accept this invitation. We look forward to your participation.

Sincerely,

Mason, Underhill, Coombs, and McFarlane, barristers and solicitors for the Stanczyk family, First of Their Name, Heirs to the Bygone Throne, Merciful of the Hand of God.

Arthur stared at it. “What the fuck?” he said so loudly that he startled John awake, and then had to deal with him crying before he could handle reading this weirdness again.

“But it’s got to be a joke,” said Bella, staring at the four train tickets, which certainly felt real, and were printed with a reserve date three years in advance. “I just can’t think of who’d go to all this trouble to pull one over on us. I mean… this cost money.” She held up the letter. “This is fucking vellum. I felt it when dad sent me to that weird nun’s school for a year.”

Yeah, the all-girl school because Bella had been caught kissing a girl. Arthur shook his head. There were times Daniel’s reasoning escaped him. “I don’t know anybody who’d do this. I’ve also never heard of this contest, or this family.”

“That’s it,” she said, standing. “I’m going to the library. I need answers.”

“So do I!” Arthur protested.

She understood the cause of his panic. “They just ate. They’ll rest. You’ll be fine. And besides: I’ve got the dimple.”

Arthur snorted, then couldn’t help his laugh. It was true: she smiled like a pixie with a perfect right-cheek dimple, and so far, no one was immune to it. “Are you sure?”

“I want to walk, anyway. I’m really sick of being convalescent.”

He sighed. “All right. It’s fair. I was out last night. And I… I need to be more careful.”

“Those raids,” said Bella, and shook her head. “The fuck is wrong with everybody?”

“I don’t know, but we both need to be careful.” Good people who’d never done a wrong thing in their lives were getting dragged to jail. It was horrifying.

Bella went on her toes and kissed his cheek. It was a sweet moment, warm; encouragement from the one person who knew him best. “Don’t fear the babies. They already love you.”

Stupid eyes, watering again. “Be safe.”

“Always.” She winked, grabbed her scarf and coat and hat and purse, and left.

Faroe was out, and he was grateful. He sat with John, who seemed to be trying to communicate purely through eyebrowless stares and pursed pink lips.

“Think you’ll like Europe? It won’t be my first time in the Old World,” Arthur said. “Not that I remember England all that well. Also, I have no idea where Syha'h is. See-hah? Sai-yah?”

John huffed as if to say neither was right.

“Sai-yuh-hah,” Arthur said, being silly.

“Ah!” John said, evidently liking how that sounded.

Arthur laughed. “Sure. Why not? Syha'h, with more sounds than letters. Makes up for Worcestershire, doesn’t it? Not to mention the entire French language.”

And John… laughed? Maybe? It was a laugh, but it couldn’t have been in response to that joke.

“That’s right,” said Arthur. “Your dad’s a genius.”

And that was the driest look anyone had ever given anything in the history of the world.

“Oh, stow it,” Arthur said, grinning, and yawned. “I’m putting you next to your sister, we’re all going to get a nap, all right?”

“Ah,” said John as though conceding a point.

Faroe slept on (happily), and John didn’t fuss at being put down. Arthur lay on the table next to them, cheek pillowed on his arms, and tried not to feel bothered that John unblinkingly watched him fall asleep.

Syha'h, it turned out, was a tiny monarchist country tucked away in the Carpathian mountains, near Romania. It was ancient; it survived various takeover attempts because of its unassailable location; and exported enough gold that it was a freakishly rich little nation.

That was about all she could find.

“Damn it,” Bella muttered, shoving the enormous book further away on the table. Nobody knew anything about it. Vaguely Christo-pagan like much of Eastern Europe, it kept to itself and didn’t really bother its neighbors. The Stanczyk family had sat the throne for generations (and nobody knew why it was called the Bygone Throne, either), and she could find nothing on this supposed music contest.

At least the country was real. It was also so obscure that she couldn’t honestly believe this letter was a joke. Baffling. So Queer had been good, absolutely, but had it been that good?

Well, it had made her cry, a little. Ostensibly about a regular couple breaking up, she’d known what it really was: the cry of Arthur’s heart, lonely.

He’d sung it so much better than Hoagy Carmichael. And while the check from that song-rights purchase took the boot off their neck for months, still. She felt robbed, that instead of putting Arthur’s version on the radio, the studios bought it off him and left him uncredited.

Just wasn’t fair. Arthur was a good kid. He deserved better.

She was distracting herself. Bella shook it off. They had three years to decide if they were going to do this. That was plenty of time to figure it out. Funny, though, she thought as she headed home, her walk brisk and perky. They’d sent four tickets. The fact that they knew there were two kids, in fact, was… not great?

The kids were weeks old. Surely something like this took longer to set up? How did they know there were two kids? Why would they assume no more would show up in the next three years?

Maybe it was just standard to send four tickets.

She stopped on the way home and scrounged some emergency coins to call the embassy in New York. Which was useless. The heavily-accented voice on the phone sounded like some advertising agency and swore up and down the contest was real, and the country was friendly, but couldn’t give more details. So that was that.

Frustrated, Bella went home.

Months went by, and they had this down. Bella was even able to pick up some work from someone who didn’t assume being a mother meant she wasn’t good for anything else. Old Moseley let her clean his fancy-schmancy mansion and paid her under the table. He was nice, if lecherous. Neither of them gave a fuck if he watched her ass while she dusted as long as he paid, and he did.

Arthur was glad they hadn’t taken Daniel up on any of his offers. Owing someone wasn’t how he wanted this life to be.

But none of that mattered right now! Tonight had been planned for a while. He hummed as he shaved, hummed as he carefully styled his hair, hummed as he added cologne.

If only John wasn’t so damned fussy. He wouldn’t calm down. Yelling at Arthur, a tantrum of vowels, losing his tiny mind if Arthur stepped out of sight. Just not John’s normal behavior at all. Even Faroe seemed baffled.

Arthur walked with John, bouncing him lightly. “I really am going out tonight," he said, turning it into a song as he spun, dipping John with a grin. "You’re gonna have to get used to it sometime. Your pop’s got needs. You’ll understand someday.”

John cried.

“What the heck, kid? Come on… it’s okay, you’re okay. Are you sick?” He didn’t seem to have a fever. There were no diaper rashes. “Come on, John…”

John clutched him, tiny fists wrinkling his freshly-pressed shirt.

Arthur sighed, and maybe he was nuts, and maybe he was overtired, but he jumped to a conclusion he’d been worrying over for weeks, and who could say which of them he was trying to convince? “I know it’s been scary out there. I know.”

John’s eyes were huge, and his head wobbled as if trying to nod.

“John…” Arthur sighed. “This club is safe. They’d never raid it. A senator goes there. They’re not going to arrest a senator. It’s the safest drag club in Boston.”

John sniffled; his little rosebud lips trembled.

Arthur felt uneasy. “I’m telling you, it’s fine.”

“Ah!” shouted John, gripping Arthur’s index fingers with his little hands.

“Have I lost my marbles?” said Arthur, softly, because he found himself inclining to listen to his newborn son’s warning.

Warning? It wasn’t a warning! He was a clingy baby, that’s all!

John scowled. “Aaaaah!” he commanded.

If Arthur hadn’t already felt uneasy, it wouldn’t have mattered. If Arthur hadn’t already been afraid, he’d just stubborn his way through. But this…

John was a weird kid. He was; and the scar on Arthur’s arm from whatever that guy had done was still dark and red.

Arthur swallowed. “You don’t want me to go tonight.”

John stared daggers.

“What do you know about it? You don’t even have teeth,” Arthur said pejoratively.

John huffed at him.

The unease in Arthur’s chest did not settle. “You want me to give up one of the only nights off I get.”

John just looked at him.

Arthur sighed and found himself jumping into insanity head-first. “If you’re wrong about this, and nothing happens tonight, I’m never listening to you again. Deal?”

“Ah,” said John as solemnly as a wedding vow.

“Lost my damn mind,” Arthur muttered, but John calmed down. Right down. Arthur wasn't going, so apparently, everything was fine.

He had both babies in a happy place when Bella finally came home. “Ding ding ding!” she said, lofting a bag. “We got steak!”

Arthur did a double-take. “What? Steak? Since when?”

She grinned. “Since old Moseley decided he had too much, and I was just too skinny, and so he gave us two whole steaks to take home for dinner.”

Arthur laughed. “Seriously?”

Bella waggled her hips.

They couldn’t afford steak. The way prices were these days (and getting pricier), even buying bread was getting painful. “Incredible. How rich is that old coot, anyway?”

“Come on! You’re not due to go for a couple hours yet. Help me cook this.”

Arthur snorted. “I can’t cook for shit. Last week’s chicken was inedible.”

Bella peeled off her outer garments and tossed them cheerfully to the sofa. “The edges were inedible. The center was fine!”

Arthur laughed. “You just want me to be the wife.”

“Like you don’t want to be the wife.”

Boy, was that full of meaning. “Can’t happen,” he said, grim.

She refused to let his mood sink them. “Come on, pretty boy. It’s time to learn how to cook meat, not just play with it. You and me? We’re gonna eat tonight like the queens we are.”

He couldn’t say no to her. The dimple was all-powerful. “You know what? We are. Fuck the world.”

“Now, you’re getting it. Fuck ‘em.”

His jacket and tie joined her coat and scarf on the sofa, and they retreated together to their tiny kitchen.

Too full, he’d said.

Not tonight, he’d said.

I can go next week, he’d said.

But he couldn’t. The Lavender Club was raided, and the senator arrested, and the book thrown at every single nance because an example had to be made.

Arthur lost friends, good friends. He wept, staring at the newspaper, his fingers dimpling the cheap print. Bella kept her arm around his waist, comforting in silence, scared into a quickened heart rate. What the hell was happening in this country?

John was a fucking baby, and couldn’t have understood, but Arthur absolutely knew that was relief on his face, and though Faroe joined Arthur crying just because of baby reasons, John did not, but held Arthur’s finger as if trying to provide another anchor, trying to provide what comfort he could.

Arthur still didn’t tell Bella about that weird guy, or the scar, or this warning. He couldn’t. It felt like if he did, he’d wake up, and life outside this horrible dream might be even worse.

That night, they slept cuddled—just for comfort, not remotely sexual—and the babies stayed quiet. The entire Lester family slept better than they had in weeks, all of them exhausted.

In the kitchen, that weird letter sat, tickets and all, and dangled its promise of an unknown future.

#malevolent #malevolent fic #malevolent au #bella lester #arthur lester #faroe lester #john doe malevolent #kayne malevolent #never tell fic

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