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barbarianprncess · 3 years ago

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did you mean it?

read on ao3.

It’s a total of 3 significant events that led to this, her forehead knocked against his, breaths heavy and mingled, eyes wide and hearts bleeding.

The first event isn’t really an event at all. It’s a prologue, necessary context to truly understand the monumentalism of this moment. It’s the memory of her eyes, piercing and reproachful, being the first thing that he saw after losing his mother. It’s shared trauma and oreos while they’re young and naive. It’s truces and training and growing up too soon together. It’s stargazing and stupid jokes saving eachother in every possible way. It's the culmination of the years Percy spent growing, learning, and being with Annabeth, and the unknown and therefore repressed feelings that came with it. Feelings are like the sea in that way, they don’t take well to being restrained. Percy has found that you cannot box in oceans or sentiments, they always find a way to spill over and out, with no regard for the destruction left in its wake.

The second event is Dionysus deciding on a whim that the inhabitants of his camp are ‘uncultured pests’ and taking it upon himself to set up a field trip for campers to the Ancient Greek Cultural Center in New York. (Percy thinks it’s really just to distract kids that were still shaken up about the battle at camp and the losses it caused. But, Dionysus would never say so. He’s far too proud to admit to caring for the children he’s been assigned to look after.) Argus loaded all the kids he could fit into the strawberry vans, as Chiron listed all the reasons this was a terrible idea. As it turns out, his worries were in vain as miraculously, no monsters attacked, and no mortal asked too many questions. No, instead, the only hitch in his plan was the glaring inaccuracies of the Center sending Dionysus into a fit of rage. He ranted for so long, their 2 hour long field trip ended up lasting until the place closed.

Event the third is the ridiculously long line leading to the mens room at the rundown gas station they’ve stopped at, causing Percy to traipse into the woods, deep enough to know that no one other than the squirrels were watching, and pee there. Unbeknownst to him, Annabeth had decided to take a quick walk in the forest as well, (in the opposite direction of his peeing endeavor) with the purpose of clearing her head. Both returned to the parking lot after 10 minutes, with no truck in sight. The gas station lights are turned off on the inside and the door sign has switched decidedly to closed. They look at each other in disbelief.

“Percy?”

“Yeah?”

“Uh...did they…”

“They didn’t. They wouldn’t.”

“I think they would.”

“They would never-”

“I have pretty solid evidence to the contrary.” Annabeth deadpans, casually letting her hair loose and hopping on top of the miniature gas machine for motorcycles.

“But, how did-”

“No Argus.” Which means, no all-seeing eyes to double check the headcount. Percy begins to pace.

“Okay, but-”

“Two trucks.” Both of which are probably assuming Percy and Annabeth are on the other.

“Oh.”

“Yeah.”

“Oh, gods.”

“Leave them out of this.”

“Those fuckers.”

“Which ones?” She asks. He looks up and she’s fighting a smile. He pointedly doesn’t notice the way her mouth curls up, or the way her hair falls around her shoulders and down her back, or how pretty she looks lit up by the neon red lights of the gas stations prices, which apparently doesn’t turn off when they close.

“Do you know something I don’t?”

“I know lots of things you don’t.”

“Ha-ha. I mean about how to get out of here.”

“Ohhhhh, let me think.” She wrinkles her nose in faux concentration, tilting her chin up towards the sky. Percy is too annoyed to think it’s adorable. “Nope, not a clue.”

“Your phone?”

“Left it on the truck.”

“Iris message?”

“Percy, it’s dark as shit.” The laughter she’s been holding in comes pouring out. Nevermind that he feels his chest sigh in relief at hearing it for the first time since their quest, this is serious.

“You’re laughing.”

“Just a little.”

“You’re telling me, you don’t have a brilliant plan to get us on a truck.”

“Yes.”

“So, we’re stuck here.”

“Yes.”

“And you’re laughing?”

“You’re just really funny when you’re stressed.” She giggles. He can’t remember the last time she giggled. He missed it. He hates her.

“Oh my gods.”

“Okay, okay, look, I’m sorry. We’re halfway to camp right?” He nods. “I’m sure they’ll figure out we’re missing before they get all the way back to camp, but let's say, worst case scenario, they don’t-”

“Not helping-”

“And they make it the rest of the way back to camp. It took us four hours to get to the center, which means camp is two hours away, so if they make it the two hours back to camp before they realize we’re missing, and they drive back up-”

“C’mon ‘Beth, you know I suck at math.”

“We’re stuck here for five hours at most.”

“Five hours?”

“And that's if no passing cars let us use their phones to hurry the process up.”

“Five hours.”

She’s laughing again. “Seriously, what is so funny?”

“It’s just-” Her cheeks are red and she’s very poorly attempting to suppress her smile. “You’ve been calm in so many life or death situations, and being stuck at a gas station is what finally breaks through.”

“It’s nighttime.” She stares at him for a moment and then she’s laughing again, full bodied real laughter, and he's laughing too.

And it’s as if this gas station became their own personal Ogygia, an oasis, a resting place for them to be stupid kids again. And they don’t talk about the battle, or Rachel, or the volcano, or any of the million things set on tearing them apart. They talked about his mom getting serious about his new boyfriend, about Tyson’s underwater adventures and Grover’s searching shenanigans.

They smack talk with no real heat about who the better fighter is (Oh please, Seaweed Brain, I've been training since before you could tie your own shoes.), and argue about which ancient hero had the greatest journey (Hercules, are you kidding? Did you even read the myth?). They break into the gas station for snacks (What the fuck, Annabeth, where’d you learn to pick a lock? No, I wouldn’t prefer you break the glass, you psycho. Oh my gods, can you really break the glass?), and dissolve into giggles as they try to fit five drachma into the cash register.

They end up back outside sitting on the gas machines facing one another from three feet away.

“Your mom called me the other day.”

Percy, who’d been lazily squinting up at the murky sky, searching for any sign of stars, whipped his head to look at her. “What?”

“She called me on the phone. We talked for a bit. She said she wanted to make sure I was alright.”

“That sounds like something she would do.” He sighs and hops down from the machine, turning away from her, hoping to hide his blush from the dim light. “She cornered me on one of my off weekends, asked what was going on with us.”

“Oh.” He hears the shifting of fabric and assumes she followed him in sliding off the gas machine.

“Yeah.” It’s silent for a long time before she responds.

“What did you say?” She asks, her voice smaller than it was moments ago. He hears her scratching at the flat metal top of the machine. “When she asked, what did you say?”

He runs his finger through his hair, and one gets caught in a particularly large snarl. “Doesn’t matter.”

“It matters to me.” She whispers and gods he’s terrified but he really doesn’t have a choice when her voice wavers like that. Her words shake and every ounce of his being tells him to do whatever it takes to soothe it.

“I said we were fighting. That there wasn’t one sole reason for it, just a bunch of little reasons. I told her that I scared you when I….went away for two weeks last summer. And that you didn’t like bringing Rachel on your quest. I told her that we….. disagree about how to best handle Luke. That I probably wanted to protect you more than I wanted to listen to you.” She laughs softly and he blames what he says next on her laugh. It is the catalyst for everything that follows.

“I told her that we’d be okay. Because no matter what happens I’m always gonna love you.”

He hears her breath catch. He doesn’t have to look back to know she’s turned to face him fully. “Did you mean it?” She calls. He doesn’t answer. The words haven’t caught in his throat, they’ve spontaneously combusted in his vocal chords and he doesn’t think he’ll ever speak again.

The sound of gravel crunching gets closer until suddenly she's beside him, and he didn’t tell his torso to twist toward her, he thinks she might just be his center of gravity.

“Did you mean it?”

She’s looking up at him, and her hair smells like lemons, and her cheeks are pink, and her eyelashes go on for miles, and her sunspots are better than stars. And it’s as if she pulls the words right out of him, he’s hypnotized by everything about her.

“Of course I meant it.”

She exhales and closes her eyes and while he mourns the loss of the sight, his body moves on it’s own accord again and he’s edging closer and closer and she opens her eyes and here they are.

Their noses brush, and this time he closes his eyes, and their noses brush just so, and…

Whoa.

He was wrong, it wasn't just those three significant events that to her forehead knocked against his, breaths heavy and mingled, eyes wide and hearts positively bleeding. It’s clear he’s been waiting his entire life for this moment at this shitty gas station.

Waiting for this. Waiting for her.

They kiss for a moment or an eternity, and they fit. His hands are on her hips and hers clutch at his shirt before sliding up to his throat, and it’s like his soul is whispering, oh there you are.

And then she’s pulling back, so she has just enough space to shake her head without disconnecting from his forehead.

She's breathless when she whispers, “This is a bad idea.”

His hands trail up and down her forearm of their own accord, and when he whispers back he’s breathless too. “Yeah, really bad idea.”

Her hands slide up from his chest to his shoulders, and then she’s kissing him again, with purpose, and he’s kissing back like his life depends on it because he thinks it might, thinks if he lets go of her he’d die on the spot.

It seems his theory might get tested when she pulls back again just far enough to whisper against his lips, “Is it always like that?”

He kisses her again, once, twice, because he can’t help it and whispers back, “I don’t know, you were my first kiss.”

He’d released any serious hold he had on her the moment she hesitated, but then she’s rocking back up to meet him halfway and his entire body thinks thank the gods. He actually sighs his relief into her mouth, as his hands desperately reach for her face, some fingers tangling in her hair, and their lips are magnets, opposites that don’t have a choice but to pull together. Despite how much he wants to keep doing this forever, he has to tell her.

“I don’t wanna lose you, again.” He means not ever, but he figures she understands the severity in his voice. She’s running her hand through his hair, and his slide up and down her back, and she knocks her nose against his as she answers, “I know, me either. I’m confused, this is confusing me.” And she tilts her chin just so, like she did a million years ago, and this time he kisses her.

They kiss for an infinity, he gets to taste her laughter when she giggles at the absurdness of it all, and it’s better than ambrosia. He kisses her until he doesn’t know anything else, until his entire universe is Annabeth Chase, with her cheeks and her curls and her lips. She is everything.

And then headlights penetrate their universe, voices bring an end to their infinity, and Chiron is speaking but it’s nothing, it’s all white noise because she’s no longer in his arms, and his center of gravity is being ripped away and he hears someone ask, “What’d you guys do?”

He’s still looking at her face when she answers, “You know, tried not to strangle each other mostly.”

But, she looks back before she turns all the way around and her gaze is charged and her lips quirk with the secret they share.

He is so screwed.

#so i wrote this in like two hours and its probably a mess but. here you go ig.#aoah ch 3 will be out soon but in the meantime #heres this lol #percabeth #percabeth fic #my fic #my writing #if you comment or rb i will die for you

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thingwithfeathers · 4 years ago

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tag 9 people to learn more about their interests

tagged by: @enniomorricone :)

MUSIC

fave genre? indie/alternative rock, and pop but not really current pop more like 80s/90s.

fave artist? bastille, twenty one pilots, fleetwood mac, the clash, the smiths, abba, probably a lot more i can’t think of right now.

fave song? my joint favourite songs are ‘with or without you — u2′ and ‘landslide — fleetwood mac’

most listened song recently? 'song for zula — phosphorescent’ it’s become one of my favoure songs ever.

song currently stuck in your head? any abba song because i was listening to them a lot earlier.

5 fave lyrics?

“It’s a hell of a long way to fall just to learn to get up” — the mess, the naked and famous.

“But now it’s just another show / and you leave them laughing when you go / and if you care, don’t let them know / don’t give yourself away / i’ve looked at love from both sides now / from give and take and still somehow / it’s loves illusions that i recall / i really don’t know love at all.” — both sides now, joni mitchell (this entire song though! really hard to choose lyrically because it’s a masterpiece).

“See, honey, i saw love / you see it came to me / it put it’s face up to my face so i could see / yeah then i saw love, disfugure me / into something i am not recognising / see the cage, it called, i said come on in / i will not open myself up this way again / but my heart is wild and my bones are steel / and i could kill you with my bare hands if i was free.” — song for zula, phosphorescent.

"Oh, mirror in the sky, what is love? / can the child within my heart rise above? / can i sail through the changing ocean tides? / can i handle the seasons of my life? / well, i’ve been afraid of changing / ‘cause i’ve built my life around you / but time makes you bolder / even children get older / and i’m getting older too.” — landslide, fleetwood mac.

“And then you put your hand in mine / and pulled me back from things divine / stop looking up for heaven / waiting to be buried / and all their words for glory / they always sounded empty / when we’re looking up for heaven.” — bastille, glory.

BOOKS

fav book genre? just fiction in general. i’ve kind of grown out of young adult so i don’t really read a lot of that, and have been reading classics lately. just any books that make you really think and are written so beautifully that you can highlight quote after quote. i’ve also been reading a lot of non fiction spiritual books lately.

fav writer? recently, taylor jenkins reid. i’ve read two of her books and they’re incredibly gripping. love the simplicity and warmth of benjamin alire saenz as well, the care that ari & dante was written with. and also emily dickinson, especially her letters in particular to susan are just gorgeous.

fav book? aristotle & dante discover the secrets of the universe, wuthering heights, little women, a little life, and recently the seven husbands of evelyn hugo.

fav book series? i don’t really read book series, so the only thing coming to mind is harry potter which i only read for the first time about five years ago now.

comfort book? little women and aristotle & dante.

perfect book to read on a rainy day? any easy read, probably several i listed above.

fave characters? aristotle & dante, jo & beth march (little women), mina murray (dracula).

5 quotes from your fave books that you know by heart?

“You teach me now how cruel you’ve been — cruel and false. why did you despise me? why did you betray your own heart, cathy? i have not one word of comfort. you deserve this. you have killed yourself. yes, you may kiss me, and cry; and wring out my kisses and tears: they’ll blight you — they’ll damn you. you loved me — what right had you to leave me? what right — answer me — for the poor fancy you felt for linton? because misery and degradation, and death, and nothing that god or satan could inflict would have parted us, you, of your own will did it. i have not broken your heart — you have broken it; and in breaking it, you have broken mine. so much the worse for me that i am strong. do i want to live? what kind of living will it be when you — oh god! would you like to live with your soul in the grave?” — wuthering heights, emily bronte (i could choose so many from this book but this is the most underrated one in my opinion and deserves more recognition).

“I will love you forever, whatever happens. ‘til i die and after i die, and when i find my way out of the land of the dead i’ll drift about forever, all my atoms, ‘till i find you again. i’ll be looking for you, will, every moment, evert single moment. and when we do find each other again we’ll cling together so tight that nothing and no one’ll ever tear us apart. every atom of me and every atom of you... we’ll live in the birds and the flowers, and the dragonflies and pine trees, and in the clouds and in those little specks of light you see floating in sunbeams... and when they use our atoms to make new lives, they won’t just be able to take one, they’ll have to take two, one of you and one of me, we’ll be joined so tight...” — his dark materials (amber spyglass), philip pullman. (don’t talk to me, this quote makes me actually ache)

“I wanted to tell them that i’d never had a friend, not ever, not a real one. until dante. i wanted to tell them that i never knew that people like dante existed in the world, people who looked at the stars, and knew the mysteries of water, and knew enough to know that birds belonged to the heavens and weren’t meant to be shot down from their graceful flights by mean and stupid boys. i wanted to tell them that he had changed my life and that i would never be the same, not ever. and that somehow it felt like it was dante who had saved my life and not the other way around. i wanted to tell them that he was the first human being aside from my mother who had ever made me want to talk about the things that scared me. i wanted to tell them so many things and yet i didn’t have the words. so, i just stupidly repeated myself, “dante’s my friend.”” — aristotle & dante discover the secrets of the universe, benjamin alire saenz.

“There are many beths in the world, shy and quiet, sitting in corners till needed, and living for others so cheerfully that no one sees the sacrifices till the little cricket on the hearth stops chirping, and the sweet, sunshiny presence vanishes, leaving silence and shadow behind.”— little women, louisa may alcott.

“And so i try to be kind to everything i see and in everything i see, i see him.”— a little life, hanya yanagihara.

hardcover or paperback (paperback for general reading and hardback for special editions!) | buy or rent | standalone novels or book series | ebook or physical copy | reading at night or during the day | reading at home or in nature (i love nature and want to be able to read outside but i cannot be in nature without being hypervigilent of bugs so wouldn’t be able to concentrate) | listening to music while reading or reading in silence | reading in order or reading the ending (i also used to read the last line of a book first for a long time but i started to piss myself off when it wasn’t vague enough) | reliable or unreliable narrator | realism or fantasy | one or multiple POVS | judging by the covers or by the summary (i can’t help it, i love pretty covers) | rereading or reading just once.

TV AND MOVIES

fave tv/movie genre? disaster/post apocalyptic, drama, sci-fi, documentary, occasional fantasy. i’m pretty on board with most things, other than horror but even that has some exceptions.

fave movie? titanic, shaun of the dead, little women (1994), eternal sunshine of the spotless mind, wuthering heights (2009 tv movie), portrait of a lady on fire, practical magic, the greatest showman, finding nemo, the grinch (2000).

comfort movie? finding nemo, little women (1994), shaun of the dead, all my favourite christmas movies which are too many to list.

fave tv show? friends, charmed, golden girls, gilmore girls, the walking dead, new girl. currently: 911.

most rewatched tv show? friends. i watch it almost every day and it would be impossible for me to count just how many times i’ve watched it from start to finish.

5 fave characters? all the friends on friends, piper halliwell (charmed), tara chambler (twd), glenn rhee (twd), maddie buckley (911).

tv shows or movies | short seasons (8-13 episodes) or full seasons (22 episodes or more) | one episode a week or binging (i’m conflicted because i miss the event of catching a show every week but at the same time once you binge watch you can’t go back) | one season or multiple seasons (but shows need to know when to stop) | one part or saga | half hour or one hour long episodes (depends on my mood) | subtitles on or off | rewatching or watching just once.

tagging: @bettyhofstadtdraper / @kubrickking / @koningen / @urispatty / @marmaladepotion / @mixye + anyone else that wants to do this, feel free to tag me to read :) !

#thank you for tagging me in this! it was really fun #i enjoyed reading your answers as well #:) <3 #enniomorricone #;

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starmakerdotcom · 5 years ago

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summary : solar congratulate botanica for debuting and welcome them to the dorm building by throwing a party for them.

characters : all of solar + botanica ensemble

genre : comedy / fluff

warnings : swearing , they literally just make fun of each other the whole time . but mostly it’s just a lighthearted piece . it’s also the most chaotic piece i’ve written . oh my god they’re so annoying i hate them so much they’re just kids whose internet should be taken away . it’s also all over the place so if it’s hard to follow lmk

words : 3.4k

[ july 2019, 3:58 pm, botanica dorms ]

“do you think this is too much? they’re just moving in.”

“of course not!”

the party planning committee- which consisted of yongmi, elizabeth, and hyesoo- stood back and admired their work with the other five members behind them. the three of them did surprisingly decent with the small amount of space in the dorm’s living room and kitchen area and the probably under $30 budget they’d pooled from all their pockets and wallets. multicoloured streamers hung from multiple points on the wall and ceiling, bowls with assorted flavours of chips were placed artfully on the coffee table, and a big banner hung above the door that was obviously originally one of those “happy birthday!” banners, but the birthday part had been covered up and now said “happy debut!” because it was no one’s birthday. at least forty balloons were strewn out across the floor- which yongmi almost busted a lung trying to blow them all up- they were gonna get more helium ones but because of their tight budget they’d only managed six. which was fine, six balloons for six boys, right?

“it looks like an eight year old’s birthday party,” minjung said.

“hey! we had thirty dollars, i’d like to see you do better with that,” hyesoo replied, shooting her a glare, which minjung shrugged in response to.

“are they coming soon?” honghui asked, which yongmi responded to not with words but with an expression that clearly stated she didn’t know. meanwhile elizabeth was occupied with her phone seemingly texting someone.

[ new message from : DONT ANSWER//kim sangWHORE ]

[ DONT ANSWER//kim sangWHORE : are we allowed to come up yet ]

after quickly typing out a response, elizabeth announced, “they’re on their way up!”

“quick! hide!“ hyesoo exclaimed, frantically searching the room for a hiding space.

“it’s- it’s not one of those parties,” yongmi replied quietly while hyesoo spotted a nice hiding spot behind an armchair, completely ignoring yongmi’s words.

while elizabeth adjusted the chip bowls and pop bottles on the table for the twelfth time in the last ten minutes, the door opened slightly to reveal baekhan cautiously peeking in.

“are we- is this good can we come in now? are we good?”

elizabeth gave a thumbs-up in his direction, “all set! MINJUNG! get the door!”

minjung sighed, “i should be the one bossing you around,” but despite her comment, she complied and got the door for the six boys.

“so... we did the best we could, we had a tight budget,” yongmi explained as the boys made their way inside, completely ignoring or just not noticing hyesoo jumping out from behind the armchair and yelling “surprise!”.

“kinda reminds me of a little kid’s birthday party,” elliot laughed as tian dashed past him in a beeline for the chip table.

“that’s what i said!” minjung exclaimed.

“elliot! don’t be rude!” baekhan hissed, swatting him in the side of the arm, but not enough to hurt him, even though baekhan was the leader, elliot was tall and strong enough to punt him across the room if he so wanted. and baekhan wanted to set a good example and not make his group look like a dysfunctional mess in front of their seniors.

“i think it’s nice,” jaeyi said, “thanks for doing this, there was really no need.”

“i know,” beth shrugged, “just felt like throwing a party, y’know?”

jaeyi suddenly looked down as he felt someone poking his stomach, and there stood hyesoo, the one poking him, looking up at him with an expression that was a sort of weird mix of amazement, jealousy, and confusion.

“hey you!” she called out with wide eyes, “why are you so tall?” hyesoo was short on a normal day, but her 5’0 figure compared to his 6’2 absolutely dwarfed her, and jaeyi had to keep it together and try not to laugh at the tiny girl in front of him.

“oh my god hyesoo! at least use formalities or something!” minjung snapped at hyesoo, who turned around and looked at her with an innocent expression, then promptly turned back to jaeyi.

“would you rather me call you oppa?”

jaeyi shook his head, “not really, no.”

“good! me neither! i’m gonna go talk to someone else now, talking to you makes my neck hurt.”

jaeyi nodded awkwardly as hyesoo skipped away to the chip bowl, and elizabeth clapped her hands together loudly.

“isn’t it time to actually get this party started?” she announced, only earning a few scattered “heck yeah!”’s but continuing anyway.

“come on! let’s go!!”

“so, min, i have a question,” baekhan sat on the couch with his hands clasped together underneath his chin, and minjung sat next to him with her legs crossed, listening intently. “how do you do it? honestly, how do you cope with being the leader, i want some advice.”

“let me let you in on a little secret,” minjung said, and baekhan leaned in closer, “i don’t.”

“no way!” he jumped back in surprise, “same!” minjung laughed and soon, baekhan followed.

across the room, standing next to the chip table, elizabeth and jaeyi had started talking.

“soooo, how do you feel about debuting?” elizabeth asked in a light, giggly voice, twirling a strand of hair around her index finger.

“it’s... a lot, but i think i’ll get used to it,” jaeyi answered, completely oblivious to elizabeth’s cheesy early 2000s disney channel romcom style flirting attempts.

“how old are you, anyway? you don’t look that much older than me,” she asked, batting her eyelashes.

“i’m- uh- 21,” he answered simply, “why?”

“just wondering,” elizabeth replied, “i just turned 18, so you aren’t that much older than me-“

she was suddenly interrupted by elliot coming up behind jaeyi and exclaiming a little too loudly, “jae, man! there’s this really cool... pop bottle that i need to show you real quick,” he clapped a hand on the taller boy’s shoulder and leaned into his ear to whisper, “i’m saving you, man.”

“i can hear you!” elizabeth huffed, crossing her arms across her chest.

“yeah, stop flirting with my bro, it’s fuckin’ weird, man,” elliot responded in english- albeit not proper english, obviously, but being raised in america such as the former, elizabeth understood no problem.

“what makes you think i’m flirting with your bro?” elizabeth said.

“maybe the whole- oh my god, hi jaeyi! how are you? how old are you? just making sure i’ll be able to get in your pants without you catching a case!” elliot mimicked in a high voice, complete with the hair twirling and eyelash batting.

elizabeth rolled her eyes.

“just watch it, okay?” elliot said, and began walking away only to immediately bump into minjae after a few steps of obviously not watching where he was going.

“oh shit sorry,” he said quickly, still speaking english.

minjae looked up at him, not exactly understanding what he said so instead he simply replied, “hi.”

“hi,” elliot echoed, “mj, right?”

minjae nodded, “i like...” he reached up and touched his hair as he tried to find the correct word in english, a language he was in no means fluent in, “...your hair.”

elliot chuckled, “thanks,” and in realizing the other didn’t speak english well, he said, “you know i can speak korean, right?”

“oh! yeah, okay, that’s better,” minjae said with pink cheeks, obviously much more comfortable now speaking in his native tongue. “elliot, right?”

elliot nodded, “i’m fine with whatever, elliot, eli, hanryeol is my korean name if that makes it any easier for you.”

minjae nodded, “hanryeol... i like that. but what if i call you... yeollie?”

he’d never admit it out loud, obviously, but minjae’s little gesture of giving elliot a cute nickname sent his heart up into his throat and painted his face a bright shade of red. so instead he chuckled again and covered it up with a little nonchalant “...cute.”

“isn’t it? and i came up with it on the spot too.”

minjae was just as adorable as the nickname he’d given elliot. when he smiled or spoke, his eyes lit up like he was admiring a star filled sky, and without thinking, elliot blurted, “almost as cute as you.”

he didn’t really think about what he had said until he saw minjae’s smile drop and his face go red, regret set in immediately. “oh god- not like that-!”

“weren’t you just telling off that other girl for flirting with jaeyi? and now look at you two!” a voice behind elliot called causing him fly around, bringing a hand to his chest so his heart didn’t bust out of his throat for the second time in the last minute. when he saw sangwoo standing behind him with a shit-eating grin, he quickly raised a fist like he was getting ready to punch him, and sangwoo retreated.

minjae rolled his eyes at sangwoo, and surprised at his reaction, elliot asked, “you two know each other?”

he nodded, “we were on a dance team together a few years ago, we’ve never really gotten along. i mean, no offence or anything if you like him.”

elliot shrugged, “nah i get it, he’s a bit of a bitch sometimes.”

“i am literally right here,” sangwoo said, laying a hand over his chest like he was offended, even though he knew full well that he was indeed a bit of a bitch sometimes.

elliot scoffed, “get lost.”

when sangwoo eventually left to go annoy someone else, minjae leaned in closer to elliot’s ear and whispered, “i don’t actually hate him, he’s just annoying and he gets on my nerves sometimes. i don’t have the balls to say i hate someone.”

“it’s all cool,” elliot laughed. “anyways i should probably- go over- there,” he jabbed a thumb somewhere behind him.

“no- yeah- you go do that i’ll- see you around,” minjae replied just as awkwardly, and the two split up and went in separate directions.

elliot ended up at one of the snack tables next to daniel and tian, the latter busy with a bowl of chips and the former watching elliot fumble for a plastic cup and a pop bottle with a slightly exasperated look. daniel took one look at his flushed face and knew exactly what was going on.

“simp,” he snorted.

“i’ll fucking hit you,” elliot threatened, not taking his eyes off the cup he was pouring for himself, but it was all too evident that his cheeks were burning a brighter shade of red than they had been before.

“no, i get it, cute little guy, isn’t he?”

“stop trying to fit in, hetero,” elliot said in a sweet but condescending voice, looking up to meet his eye and taking a sip of his drink.

“YO!” they were suddenly interrupted by a voice, and when they looked over to see the source of the voice, hyesoo was standing on top of the kitchen counter with one of those cheap plastic megaphones. “WHO THE FUCK WANTS CAKE?!”

there were a couple scattered cheers, followed by a “HYESOO! get down from there you’re gonna hurt yourself!” from minjung.

“they bought cake? damn, they really went all out,” daniel commented, but elliot wasn’t listening, he was already walking over to where the party planning committee was bringing out a big store bought cake with icing flower decorations and the words “HAPPY DEBUT” written across it in pink icing.

“i think... peach should cut the cake!” yongmi said, “he’s the leader, he should get to do the honours.”

baekhan shot up at the mention of his stage name, and immediately his cheeks went pink and he mumbled out a quick, “ah, no... i’m not good at cutting cake,” in response.

“nonsense!” yongmi exclaimed, “how bad can you be? get over here?”

baekhan reluctantly moved up to the front, where they had the cake set up on the table. and to his (and the rest of his group’s) surprise, he didn’t mess up too bad, and the party planning committee cheering him on didn’t seem to help much.

“you guys really went all out on the eight year old’s birthday party theme huh?” elliot commented, “here- i’ll help hand it out.”

“so have you talked to anyone else yet?” honghui asked tian, who sat next to him with a mouthful of cake.

“not from my group? yeah, i talked to the girls over there that put this all together, they seem nice enough,” tian explained, “i mean- obviously i’d like to get to know you guys better, we’re gonna know each other for a while i’m assuming.”

honghui laughed, “yeah, once you get to know them you might not like them as much. they’re kind of annoying sometimes, but i love them.”

“trust me, i know annoying,” tian replied, “have you talked to eli or clover yet? then you’ll know annoying..”

“i know sangwoo,” honghui said, “i used to-“

jihoon sat down next to him with a piece of cake, cutting him off with a loud, “WHEW!” minjae sat down too, but not as loudly. “so anyways,” jihoon said as he shovelled a forkful of cake into his mouth, “what’s up?”

“tian and i grew up in the same city, isn’t that neat?” honghui said excitedly.

“big city,” jihoon replied simply while shovelling more cake into his mouth.

“talk to anyone else?” minjae asked.

“yeah! peach and jaeyi,” honghui explained, “they both seem like super genuine people, you can tell baekhan is really good at being a leader. jaeyi reminds me of myself in some ways.”

“ah, a simp? and a pussy?” jihoon said.

“a- a what? i don’t know english slang, jihoon-“ honghui replied, furrowing his eyebrows, “but anyways, they’re both super nice.”

“i’ve talked to... yeollie and sangwoo a bit,” minjae said, trying not to roll his eyes at his own mention of the latter’s name.

“...yeollie?” minjae’s eyes widened when he realized honghui’s confusion, and he quickly corrected himself.

“i- i meant eli!”

“you’re already giving each other nicknames?” jihoon exclaimed, tian snickered beside him as he got up to go get more cake.

“well- i mean- i just did that to make his name easier to remember,” minjae mumbled, shoving a large piece of cake into his mouth to try and distract from the flush creeping up his face. he then immediately started choking on said piece of cake.

“MINJAE?! oh god, oh fuck-“ jihoon exclaimed in a panic. he seized minjae around the shoulders and started yelling at him, “ARE YOU CHOKING?! ARE YOU CHOKING?!”

“he can’t respond if he’s choking, dumbass!” honghui yelled back at him, “stand up and put you hands up! i heard that helps somewhere.”

around this time is when tian came back, a plate with two more slices of cake in his hands, and immediately froze. minjae stared at him with his hands in the air, looking like he was silently pleading for help.

“do you think i should- should i go and get someone, or something?” tian said.

“NOPE! we got this!” jihoon exclaimed as he hit minjae on the back, “i took a first aid course with boy scouts when i was in fourth grade, i don’t need help!”

honghui sighed, rubbing his temples, “they’re gonna need help.”

but just as soon as tian was about to get up and call for someone, minjae managed to yell out “i’m good!” and sat back down again. jihoon patted himself on the back.

as he sat down, minjae pulled something out of his mouth, “oh! that’s probably what-“ but then he stopped when he was it was a small slip of paper. he could make out a phone number quickly jotted down in purple ink, as well as a short message below it.

call me

- yeollie

“so that’s why he offered to help with the cake...” tian glanced over to the cake table where elliot was standing with a bright red face. he saw tian staring in his direction and immediately looked away. “what a dumbass!” tian exclaimed, “does he not realize that he could’ve just asked for your number?”

“the mind of a teenage boy works in strange ways,” honghui replied.

“word,” jihoon added.

“i mean... if he wanted to be my friend he could’ve just asked,” minjae said, to which tian laughed loudly.

“this is elliot we’re talking about?” he said, “if he just wanted to be your friend he wouldn’t go through all that. he thinks you’re cute, mj.”

“ooh shit!” jihoon exclaimed as minjae sat there, red faced and staring at his hands.

“YO! LOOK OVER HERE!” they heard hyesoo yell once again, and they looked over to see her standing on the counter with her cheap megaphone. “I NEED ALL THE BOYS OVER HERE. THE NEW BOYS. DON’T CARE ABOUT MY THREE. GATHER ‘ROUND THE PARTY PLANNING COMMITTEE.”

tian looked over to hyesoo, confused, but reluctantly got up and made his way over, but not before telling the other three at the table to not touch his cake. jihoon stole a bite as soon as he turned around anyways.

“so, since we’re gonna wrap up the party soon because we don’t wanna be here too late, we’ll give this to you now. we have a present for you!” hyesoo explained, now sitting on the counter with her legs swinging in front of her, “it’s handmade because we’re great artists if i do say so myself, and we put a lot of time and emotion into it.”

yongmi pulled a medium sized canvas from behind her back. on said canvas was what appeared to be- when baekhan leaned forward slightly to get a better look- a macaroni portrait of the six of them. surprisingly well detailed for an art piece literally made out of noodles, who knew.

sangwoo was the first to speak, like usual, “that’s-“

“i know,” elizabeth cut him off, “we were on a budget, we could only get the cheap macaroni.”

“no, it’s not that,” sangwoo continued, “why macaroni?”

“it’s the best for art pieces,” hyesoo replied confidently.

“i think it’s cute-“ daniel said quickly before sangwoo began to speak once again.

he sighed, “no i mean- why macaroni and not, like, actual paint or something?”

“feels more personal this way,” hyesoo said, sticking her nose up in the air, “and if you have a problem with it then i guess we’ll keep it.”

baekhan lightly shoved sangwoo back so he wasn’t at the front to say something possibly rude without realizing. “i’ll take it- thank you guys, i can see all the effort you put into this.”

“where the fuck are we gonna put it?” sangwoo called from over baekhan’s shoulder, who cringed internally and desperately hoped he wouldn’t say anything else that could leave a sour taste in the mouths of the other three girls. who very obviously put in the effort they could into this party and the gift with the budget they had.

baekhan sighed, knowing he had a lot more to do to try and humble sangwoo. “i’ll take the macaroni thingy.”

jaeyi looked to sangwoo, sensing baekhan’s frustration just a little bit. “what’s the big deal? i think it’s really cute. and considerate, they already threw a party for us and gave us a present.”

“this guy gets it!” elizabeth exclaimed, throwing her arm up to gesture in his direction.

“i mean- we would’ve gotten something more extravagant if we had a larger budget,” yongmi said carefully, “but anyways- since we’ve basically done everything we were planning on doing should we start to clean up? we don’t wanna be in the way of you guys settling in here.”

while the party planning committee were talking, tian was tugging on baekhan’s sleeve trying to get his attention. when the shorter male turned to him, he asked, “can we order something? maybe pizza? we didn’t eat dinner.”

“what are you talking about- i just saw you eat three slices of cake,” baekhan whisper-yelled back.

“that wasn’t dinner,” tian replied simply, “you should know that everyone has a dinner stomach and a dessert stomach.”

baekhan sighed once more, knowing arguing with tian was essentially pointless. “does anyone want pizza?” he asked loudly, “you guys can stay for some if you want.”

yongmi slowly looked around the room, waiting for someone to respond before her. hyesoo and elizabeth looked like they wanted to say yes, honghui, jihoon, and minjae were sitting in the same spot as before, looking like they didn’t even hear, and minjung and yeonwoo sat on the couch, yeonwoo staring at them in anticipation and minjung looking confused, probably didn’t hear either.

“i’m down for pizza,” yeonwoo finally said, followed by a jumbled mix of agreements from the rest of the people in the room.

“alright!” elizabeth exclaimed, “change of plans, the party isn’t over yet!”

“what are you talking about? the party never ends when we’re here,” daniel said, playfully winking. the rest of botanica groaned in unison as baekhan dialled the number for a nearby pizza place.

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caspers-arthur-morgan-imagines · 5 years ago

Text

One of a Kind

This is a requested one shot from @rexburn12 I hope this is along the lines of what you wanted! I loved writing this little piece and hope you all enjoy it!

Summary:

Someone has been hunting down KKK members and other gangs. The van der linde gang grow worried they’ll run into this threat soon. Whilst out around the area of Rhodes, Dutch and Arthur encounter the creature responsible.

Word count: 2155

____

The saloon was bustling with life. A man sat at the piano playing upbeat tunes that merry, drunken men sang along to. The bartender kept busy with serving the crowd in the building. Working ladies appeasing to some of the lonely gentlemen in the bar and disappearing with them up the stairs. Arthur and Dutch sat among the merry men and women. Both enjoying a drink and a laugh at the fools around them.

“I tell you son, these in-bred lot are something else.” Dutch chuckles before downing his glass of whiskey. Arthur chuckles in response and finishes his drink too.

The pair stand to leave the saloon, calling it a night to head back to camp. Neither man noticing the gaze that followed them as they left. A swig from the bottle and then its slammed back to the table as the figure stands and leaves the saloon out the back.

“Can’t wait to hear the nagging Miss O’Shea is going to give me this time.” Dutch grunts as he mounts onto the Count. Arthur chuckles as he mounts Walker, tapping his neck before they began the ride home.

“I’m sure half the camp is wondering that one, Dutch.” Arthur grins. Earning a side glare from the older gentleman.

They’re ride was smooth and quiet. The night sky full of stars and the full moon. All acting as their light on the road, leading them back home. With all the worries and stresses that had been going around the camp, the pair had enjoyed one evening drinking.

“Hey! Stop right there!” From the treeline appears four men in dirtied uniform. The stink alone from them made Arthur and Dutch pull their horses to a halt to avoid getting closer to them. The four men pointed their guns at the pair as they created a circle around them. Lemoyne Raiders.

“Now gentlemen, I’m sure we can make an agreement here.” Dutch begins. Raising a hand up to try and calm the situation. Arthur kept a keen eye on the two men beside him and in front of him. They were outnumbered by two and would have to think of something quick to get out of this.

“Which one of you have been killing our men?!” The man who spoke before shouted. His gun switching between Arthur and Dutch. The two men give one another a look of confusion. So there was something else hunting down gangs. But it certainly wasn’t them.

“Gentlemen there seems to a case of mistaken identity here.” Dutch chuckles as he looks at the man who spoke. “We are simply two friends enjoying the country-“

“Boss! Something is moving back here!” The man behind Dutch hollers as he turned to the treeline. A wave of panic seems to pass through the four men that surrounded Arthur and Dutch. Their horses were spooked by whatever the man claimed to be between the trees. Arthur patted Walked on the neck, trying to calm him down before he was bucked off.

“It’s the beast!” The man yells from behind Dutch. It is followed by a scream as a black figure dragged him into the shadows. This time Walker does buck Arthur off his back. Causing the man to crash to the mud with a grunt.

The remaining three men were firing round after round into the trees. Trying to save their friend from whatever had him in its clutches. When they stopped to reload, it was silent. Dutch had dropped from the Count to help Arthur to his feet.

A growl tore through the air. All three men tensing and freezing in their place. Arthur and Dutch turned to look at the tree line.

There within the branches were two molten eyes. Burning into the three men that were now scared shitless. Another growl – or was it a roar – came from the creature. The three remaining Raiders started running. Dutch and Arthur still frozen in their place as the beast emerged from the shadows.

The colossal beast was stood on its hind legs. Black fur covered its frame, some standing on end along it’s back and arms. Three thick lines ran down its face, crossing from the right side, over its nose and to its mouth. The mouth parted, baring its teeth in a snarl. It leant down onto all fours, growling in warning as Dutch reached for his revolver. He quickly raised his hands in surrender. The beast turned its head in the direction the Raiders had darted away. A small huff of a satisfaction came from it before turning its eyes back to the two men in front of it.

The beast howled. Tilting its head towards the sky and arching its body. Arthur and Dutch stumbled backwards from the shock it sent through them. Then when the howl started to die down, their eyes widened as the beast before them began to slowly shift. Like smoke had surrounded the beast, entangling itself around its frame and shifting its bones into a new alignment. The creature shrunk half a foot in size, still towering over the two men. Its claws retracted to hands; its snort pulled back into a human face. The black fur reseeded itself behind the flesh of the man. Until it all stopped and before Arthur and Dutch stood a man.

The man stood bare before them. If they hadn’t have just seen this man change from a beast to man before their very eyes, they would’ve averted their eyes from his naked form.

“Relax. I can smell the fear dripping from you.” The man gave a deep chuckle. He slowly retreated to the trees, bending down to pick up trousers from the ground.

“The name’s Miller.” The man introduces himself as he steps into the trousers. “Logan Miller.” He gives a pleasant smile to the two dumb struck men. Dutch is the first to come out of their confused haze, trying to get a grip on what he had saw.

“Dutch van der linde.” He speaks, still keeping a close eye on Logan. “Mind giving an explanation, son?” Logan laughs at his words as he pulls a brown shirt over his shoulders.

“Gladly. Just don’t call me son again.” Logan chuckles and buttons up his shirt. Arthur was now coming out of his haze as well. He stood on the defensive, knowing he still probably couldn’t take on the man.

“Ever hear stories as child about the men who howl at the moon?” Logan asks as he slips on his boots. Dutch and Arthur look at one another again.

“Literature. Fiction.” Dutch responds.

“But very much real.” Logan sighs as he walks closer to the men. Logan was taller than Dutch and Arthur. The scars that lined his face were prominent and jiggered. His dark hair hung over his forehead and his sapphires were warm and welcoming. A complete contrast to the seven foot monster he just was.

“You the one that been hunting and killing folk?” Arthur speaks up. His voice wavered but didn’t crack with the unsettling fear that pooled in his stomach. Logan’s smile disappears and a frown takes its place.

“Only those who killed my kind. Or those who seem to think its okay with hurting innocent people.” He explains and crosses his arms over his broad chest.

“There’s more of you then?” Dutch inquires with a raised eyebrow. Logan shakes his head and a sadness washes over his features as he looks to the moon.

“I’m the last of my kind.” He mutters then looks back to Arthur and Dutch. “My pack was wiped out years ago by hunters. I haven’t come across any of my kind since.”

The air was solemn then. Arthur and Dutch at a lost for words whilst Logan watched their reactions.

“I’m sorry to hear that.” Dutch nods his condolences with his words. Logan smiles and then his attention is drawn to the approaching woman on a horse behind the two men. Dutch and Arthur turn to see Sadie riding up to them with a rifle at the ready.

“You men okay? Heard the gunshots from camp.” Sadie says as she comes to a halt.

“Perfectly well, Miss Adler.” Dutch assures her and then gestures to the man beside him. “This young man saved our lives.”

Logan had been fixated on Sadie as soon as he saw her coming. A heavy feeling in his chest and a gravity pulling him towards her. Sadie climbed down from her horse and closed the distance to join by Arthur’s side.

“Logan?” Arthur and Dutch both snap their heads towards Sadie as she recognises the man before her.

“Miss Adler.” Logan smiles down at the woman. Arthur and Dutch share a look of confusion once again.

“Wait a damned minute.” Arthur speaks up. “You know each other?” He points between Sadie and Logan – who had suddenly become a bashful idiot under the gaze of the woman.

“Yeah. He saved my life when I was a kid.” Sadie replies and smiles fondly at the memory of the wolf that had saved her from a gang that terrorised her family. Logan seems to remember too as he looks down at his boots and scratches the back of his neck. “What are you going out this way? Thought you preferred the grizzles?”

“Followed a familiar scent out this way.” Logan replies and then points to the two dumbstruck men. “Led me to these two. I was quite disheartened when it wasn’t you.”

“Son,” Dutch clears his throat when Logan turns his attention to him. “If I might be so forward, would you care to join us back to camp? Maybe you and Miss Adler can make up for lost time.” Logan smiles at the offer and looks back at Sadie.

“Happily.” He replies and follows them to their horses.

***

It was easy say that Logan didn’t leave the gang after that night. Having found a pack that he could protect again made him feel whole once more. No longer lonely with the fact he was the last of his kind.

The camp was also very welcoming to him. A few of the women – Karen and Mary-Beth – swooned over him.

“Who wouldn’t swoon over that beast of a man.” Karen had said one morning whilst sat with the other ladies mending clothes. Watching a shirtless Logan chopping wood as though he was slicing butter.

Sadie and Logan were very much attached at the hip. Logan following her anywhere that she would go. A lost puppy following its new owner, as Arthur had put it.

The camp were especially pleased when Logan had revealed that Micah had ratted them out to the Pinkertons. Logan never liked Micah from the moment he stepped foot into the camp. Something had seemed off about how he was sulk about and then disappear. Logan followed him one night and saw him with Milton and Ross and was immediately enraged. He spoke with Dutch and it led to the man putting a bullet through Micah’s skull.

They all celebrated that night.

Logan was also the first to notice Arthur’s illness and offered to change him. He gave Arthur time to think it over and in the end, he accepted. It took some time for him to adjust to the changes that he was going through, but with Logan’s help he got through it.

It wasn’t long after joining camp that Logan and Sadie shared their first kiss. The attraction between them was almost suffocating and when they finally acted on it, it was heaven. Sadie also asked to changed. This took Logan sometime to consider, but he finally did, and they were soon mated.

The camp had become family to Logan. They were willing to become wolves after seeing Arthur and Sadie go through it. Logan was the alpha, with Hosea, Dutch and Arthur as his Betas. He finally had a pack again.

Years down the line, the Pinkertons had given up their search for the van der linde gang. They were freed from the previous life they knew. Some chose to become ranchers, like John, Abigail and Jack. Arthur would stay with them and his mate, Freya. Who he had saved from some gang out in the grizzles one winter. Some wanted families of their own and would go looking for their mate. Logan remembered when Tilly came back with a man that she was head over heels for and when the man wasn’t scared of what they were, Logan knew that he would change him for Tilly.

Sadie had given birth to twin boys, Noah and Henry. They were adventurous and brave like their father but compassionate and loving like their mother.

Logan was happy that he had followed Sadie’s scent that day years ago. He had finally gotten the family that he had always longed for. Things were finally okay again for the lone Alpha.

#Red Dead Redemption #Red Dead #red dead redemption 2 #red dead redemption 2 imagine #red dead remdemption #arthur morgan #dutch van der line #van der linde gang #hosea matthews #john marston #abigail roberts #male original character #werewolf #sadie adler

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galadrieljones · 6 years ago

Text

The Lily Farm - Chapter 27 (Arthur x Mary Beth)

AO3 | Masterpost

Rating: M (Mature) - sexual content, violence, and adult themes

To help her process Sean’s death, Mary Beth asks Arthur to take her on a hunting trip, somewhere far away. He agrees, and on their journey to the north, they find quietude and take comfort in their easy bond. They’ve been friends for a while now, but life, like the wilderness, is full of uncertainty and complications, and in their desperate search for meaning together, they endure a number of trials, some small, some big, all of which bring them closer to one another, as well as to their future. But they’ve fallen in love during hard times. With the gang tipping dangerously close to a breaking point in a changing world, Arthur must make a difficult choice. Can he escape his past, as well as the outlaw life, in order to start a family of his own? With Mary Beth by his side, one thing is certain: redemption and second chances finally seem within his grasp.

Chapter 27: American Mothers

They rode hard on their way back to Shady Belle, but even still. Kieran lost his steam in the evening and could no longer hold himself up on the back of Arthur’s horse. He seemed to have some cracked ribs or something, and this made it hard for him. They camped out near the river, right on the cusp of the swamp, and they put him in the tent, and he liquored up for the anesthetic properties. Meanwhile Arthur and Mary Beth set their bedrolls up outside, near the fire, under the stars. It was a fine break.

But Arthur was in some kind of pain. He was a little more beat up than he had let on to Mary Beth the night before, and now, with the adrenaline wore off and the night looming ahead, he was finally feeling it. He had the shiner on his cheek but it had come from throwing hands with the great big psychopath who had been guarding Kieran in Colm’s absence. In getting the gun away from him, Arthur endured a boot to the chest and a lot of gut punches. On one occasion, he had nearly lost consciousness and got a loud ringing in his ears when thrown hard into the stone wall of the cellar. Charles had come and dispatched of the man with his sawed-off at that point, and this is when they untied Kieran and got the fuck out of there. In any case, his entire body hurt. It felt like there was a ton of dull grit in his joints, and he thought his jaw might be a little loose. There was little blood, just black and blue, and he didn’t want to worry Mary Beth. So he tried to stay hushed about it that night when they lie side-by-side, sleeping on the hard earth, but she was canny and she noticed something was wrong nonetheless. She started asking him about it as soon as they heard Kieran start to snore from inside the tent.

“Arthur, how hurt are you?” she said, getting up. The crackling of the fire was all you could really hear.

“I’m fine,” said Arthur, lying flat on his back. Like a slab. “Leave it be, Mary Beth.”

“Sit up.”

“I ain’t gonna sit up.”

“Why not?”

He opened his eyes, turned his head a little to look at her. “Because. I’d prefer not to sit up. Not right now. If it’s all the same to you, my lady.”

“What happened?” she said. “Tell me, Arthur. Just because we’re getting married that don’t mean you get to start hiding stuff from me. That ain’t how this works. We’re still friends. You ain’t protecting nobody with that act of yours.”

He gave her a look. “I ain’t acting.” He took a deep breath then, winced. “You wanna know what happened?”

“Yeah.”

“I took a bad beating back there, at Lone Mule,” he said. “A big guy, he got a piece of me. No guns, no blood. Nothing like that. Just bruises. And I’ll be fine.”

“Why didn’t you just say so? About the beating?” she said.

“Because it ain’t life threatening,” he said. “I ain’t much of a complainer, and you don’t need to worry about it.”

“But you’re hurt, Arthur. I wanna know.”

“Why? So you can coddle me?”

She stayed quiet.

He sighed after this, feeling bad. He hadn’t meant to hurt her feelings. He turned toward her and it caused him pain to do so. He grabbed his side but didn’t linger and shook out his head to snap himself out of the pain. It was dull, he knew, and nothing was broken, and it would all subside in a week or so. “Mary Beth, I will always tell you the stuff you need to know. Understand?”

She shrugged. “Yes.”

“I can see that you’re overly worried,” he went on. “And I mean overly. As much as I am grateful to you for caring about me, I need you to try to take your own advice this time, just a little bit.”

“My own advice?”

“Yes. Just because we’re getting married, that don’t change what was,” he said. “Once, we was just friends, and I’d come to you in all manner of harm and distress and it was none the difference per our interactions, unless I said so. It’s one thing if I’m bleeding from the head, or if I’m shot, like what happened a few weeks ago, back up north. You will know when I am in more pain or danger than I can manage, but try to remember what’s remained. I ain’t no delicate specimen. I have dealt with a lot of…bodily misfortune over the years and if there is one thing I know better than anything about myself, it’s that I can handle a goddam beating. I’m okay.”

“But—”

He held up his hand, stopped her cold. “I’ll live. Please stop worrying.”

She sighed. She lay down again, on her back, staring up at the sky and fussing with the ends of her hair. She seemed off.

“You okay?” he said, softer now. “You seem…anxious. Is it about last night still? Colm?”

“Probably,” she said, too quickly. She looked a little annoyed for another minute, but then, out of nowhere, she seemed to reset, and she smiled in her regular habits of misdirection, and this was perplexing.

“What’s funny?” he said.

“Nothing,” she said. She looked at him.

“What is it?”

“When we first got back from that trip up north,” she said, “and you was out, talking to Hosea on the balcony, Abigail stole me away and made me tell her everything about us.”

This defused the argument. It was completely amusing to him. “Well, that sounds about right.”

“Anyway,” said Mary Beth, still fussing with her hair. “We ended up talking about you. She told me a story about this one time…this time before I got here, when you got so drunk in a saloon, you punched a hole in a piano.”

Arthur blinked. He had forgotten all about that. “Shit,” he said. “Abigail remembers the piano?”

Mary Beth shrugged, still smiling. “I think you was in a bad way when you did it. Still. It was kind of a funny image. Picturing you, so big and drunk and just like, swinging your arms around, landing a hole right in a piano. I ain’t making fun. Just…the idea. It’s like something out of a moving picture show.”

Arthur laughed at this, low and deep in his chest. He was lying on his back again with his eyes closed. “Yeah. I’d seen better days. Better years in fact. I was an idiot.”

“You was heartbroken,” she said. “It’s okay, Arthur. Everybody does stupid stuff when they’re out of their right mind.”

Arthur opened his eyes, looking up at the long, stretching galaxies and the milky way. He spotted the Big Dipper. He thought about Dutch.

“Arthur?” said Mary Beth. “You fall asleep?”

He looked at her again. She was very pretty in her mild, freckled way. “No,” he said. “I was just thinking.”

“About what?”

“About Dutch,” he said. “And what you told me. How he said it was for them, when he killed Colm. You think—you think that could mean she was pregnant? Annabelle? When Colm killed her?”

Mary Beth curled up toward him, got closer so she could smell the smoke on his clothes. “Yeah,” she said.

Arthur took a very deep breath. “Jesus.”

“Poor Dutch,” she said, shaking her head. “Why wouldn’t he tell you? All those years ago?”

“My guess is he didn’t wanna talk about it. Talking about it, that makes it real. I never told no one about Isaac who didn’t already know, not until I told you a few weeks back, Mary Beth. That’s just…that’s just the way it is sometimes, you know?”

She nodded, seeming distant all of a sudden. “Yeah, I know.” she said. She went back to fussing with her hair, taking the plaits apart. “I’m sorry, Arthur.”

“For what?”

“For pressing you before. I trust you. I know you’ll tell me if something’s bad. I guess I was just feeling anxious, like you said.”

“It’s okay,” he said. “I know it’s coming from a good place.”

She smiled.

They heard talking then, from the tent. They both turned to see but it was just Kieran, babbling something about horses, and raccoons, on and on in his sleep.

Arthur looked completely miffed. “Does he do that regularly?” he said.

“How would I know?”

“I don’t know,” said Arthur. “You seem to know a lot of stuff I don’t know.”

She laughed, looking up at the molten sky.

The next morning, Arthur was up early. His body was still stiff, but he was on his routine, heading out into the shallow wilderness, and he shot a couple rabbits for their breakfast. When he got back, it was just coming past dawn, and Mary Beth was still hard asleep in her bedroll, her hair flung to the pillow as a kind of masterpiece. He went down to the water a little ways. He sat on a heavy piece of driftwood and rolled a few cigarettes and tucked them into his pocket, and then he lit one and smoked as he began to skin and dress the rabbits for roasting. It was repetitive work, but it was satisfying. Arthur wasn’t really the kind of man who yearned for complexities in his daily life. He had enough going on inside his messed up brain, stuff he was only just coming to terms with in recent months. These sorts of quiet routines made him happy.

At some point, Kieran came down. He looked worse for the wear but also somehow better than he had the night before. The sleep had done him kindly.

“Morning,” said Arthur.

“Good morning, Arthur,” said Kieran. “Mind if I sit?”

“Of course not. How you feeling?”

“I’m okay,” said Kieran. He nodded, looking out at the water. It was kind of silvery. “My chest still feels like I ran into a damn elephant, but my head feels better.”

“Well that’s cracked ribs for you,” said Arthur. “I been there. You’re gonna need a month, at least, before that pain subsides completely. Just try to take it easy. You’ll be okay.”

“Thank you,” said Kieran.

They sat for a little while. Arthur finished up with the rabbits and stuck them onto a couple spits. He was thinking now about coffee.

“So,” said Kieran after a little while.

It was kind of loaded sounding, like he was meaning to get something off his chest. Arthur cleared his throat.

“You and Mary Beth,” Kieran went on, wringing his hands a little bit. “You guys are, uh…you’re getting married, huh?”

Arthur sighed. He took a couple mint leaves out his front pocket to chew on. He offered some to Kieran, but Kieran declined. “Yeah,” he said. “That, we are.”

Kieran nodded, shifting his weight, though this seemed to cause him pain. He bit it back. “Well, congratulations,” he said, drawing a little somber. “I mean, I knew you guys was close. I guess I didn’t know how close.”

Arthur shrugged, and then he looked right at him, squaring up. “I’m sorry,” he said.

“Sorry for what?”

“Well, I’m not sure,” said Arthur, scratching his head. “I know—I know you was sweet on her. Or, at least it seemed that way.”

Kieran kind of laughed to himself. “Yeah. I mean, it wasn’t what you think. It ain’t hard to be sweet on Mary Beth.”

“I get that. I just—you know I didn’t intend to—when we went on that hunting trip. It surprised me, too.”

“Oh, I’m not surprised,” said Kieran.

Arthur looked up from his boots. “You ain’t?”

“Not at all,” said Kieran, oddly gracious. “I mean, Mary Beth is…she’s real nice to me. She was nice when not many folks was. I mean, you know how shocked I was to see Sadie, showing up guns blazing to save my ass?”

Arthur laughed. “Yeah, well, I hate to burst your bubble, but I think Mrs. Adler came more for the O’Driscoll blood than the rescue mission, but that’s just my interpretation.”

“Anyway,” said Kieran, glancing at his hands. They were bandaged around the palms. Colm had burned them. “Mary Beth is nice. She’s teaching me to read. She’s a good listener, and she gives me the time of day. Plus, she’s real pretty. And know I don’t mean no disrespect by it. It’s just true. But…I know she’s out of my league. I ain’t—she was always gonna go for someone more, well, someone more like you, Arthur.”

“Like me?” He spat the mint leaves into the sand. “How do you mean?”

“I mean, like, a hero,” he said. “Chivalrous-like, good with girls. Real in charge. Tall. Strong. Like the kind she reads about in her books.”

Arthur took a deep breath. “I ain’t no hero, son.”

“Well, you saved my life today.”

“And you saved mine,” said Arthur, “months ago. You didn’t know me but for a man who had hogtied you in the snow and let you stay tied to a tree for days. Starving, suffering, and still you saved my life. I regret my actions.”

“It’s okay, Arthur.”

“No,” said Arthur. “No it ain’t. I see things…different now, Kieran. Mary Beth, she has that effect, but it ain’t just her. She draws it out because she believes in me, but this…feeling. It was already there. I got strung up and tortured not too long ago, just like you, and by the same piece of shit no less. The way I see it, we’s equals. And I know that, because I got something to lose now, and that’s changed me. I ain’t a hero, but I am trying to be a better man than I was before. And in any case you desered rescuing from the O’Driscoll gang. You’re one of us now.”

Kieran was looking on, sort of speechless. “I—I don’t know what to say.”

“It’s okay,” said Arthur, lighting a cigarette, handing it to him. Kieran took it without question. “You don’t gotta say anything. We’re square now. You and me. Comrades, okay? I mean it. For once.”

Kieran didn’t smoke the cigarette. He just held it, like in solidarity. This, all of this seemed to make him tremendous with relief and joy. “I got it,” he said, bucking up. “Comrades.”

“Good,” said Arthur.

After a minute then, they got up to fix the rabbits on the fire. Kieran started making the coffee. Mary Beth was still sleeping, spectacularly so. It had been quite the ordeal, the night before, thought Arthur. She must have needed it.

“How old are you anyway?” said Arthur. “I’m just curious.”

“I’m twenty-one,” said Kieran.

“My word,” said Arthur.

“What’s that?”

“I just mean—you learn how to read, and then you need to get yourself out of this mess. You’d be a fine a ranch hand somewhere. You don’t need us.”

“It ain’t always about need, Arthur,” said Kieran, closing the cap on the percolator. “I don’t much like being alone.”

Arthur thought on this. It rang with him in an unsuspecting way.

“Where do you wanna get married?” said Kieran in another couple minutes. “In a church, maybe? In front of God and all?”

“Maybe,” said Arthur. “A church would be…good. Something like that would be real nice, I reckon. I ain’t never really been religious. But I think Mary Beth was raised Protestant.”

“Well, that sounds fine,” said Kieran.

Arthur cleared his throat then. He had begun to turn the rabbits over the fire. “Hey Kieran,” he said. He looked up at the early morning sky. It seemed filled with birds.

“Yeah?”

“You do a lot of good work with the animals around camp. That’s something I especially appreciate.”

“I know.”

“Do you got a horse of your own?”

“No,” said Kieran. The coffee was just about done now. Somewhere nearby, there were the sounds of shuffling livestock, but you couldn’t see nothing. It must have been over the ridge. “I been saving though. Almost got enough.”

“Well, when we get back to Shady Belle, why don’t you keep Diana? At least for the time being, until you can afford a steed of your choosing.”

“Really?” said Kieran.

“Yeah,” said Arthur. “Why not. She’s clearly taken to you, and she ain’t the fastest, but she’s a good girl, real brave, and she deserves a good rider. She’ll serve you well.”

“Wow, I—but wait. I ain’t seen her since Rhodes. What if—what if something happened?”

“She’s fine,” said Arthur, waving him off. “She turned up at camp all by her lonesome. It’s what tipped us off you was in trouble.”

This seemed to bring him considerable relief. “Well, thank you, Arthur. That’s real generous of you.”

“You’re welcome.”

Mary Beth stirred then, in her bedroll nearby. The sun was up, and she must have smelled the coffee and heard the talking. She sat up, and she had a great big leaf in her hair. “Morning, y’all,” she said. “Is that coffee?”

Arthur smirked when he saw her. “Sure is. Good morning, sleepy head. You dream well?”

“I did,” she said. “The stars, they agree with me. Hey, Kieran.”

“Hey, Mary Beth,” he said. “You know, you got a big leaf in your hair.”

This surprised her. Arthur laughed to himself. “Oh,” she said, picking it out. “Thanks, Kieran.”

“Of course.”

“You should put it back,” said Arthur, still with that smirk. “I liked it there.”

“Yeah well, you would, Arthur Morgan.” She tossed the leaf into the sand.

When they got back to Shady Belle that afternoon, it was a comfortable scene. Many were sprawled out in the hot sun, taking naps, and Javier played his guitar down by the swamp’s edge while Karen sang. John and Abigail were out rocking on the front porch, a book shared between them. John was giving her some light lessons on reading.

“There you go,” he was saying. “You got it, Abbie.”

She blushed every time he encouraged her. “Oh, please,” she said. “I’m terrible.”

“You are not,” said John. “Just a little practice. That’s all you need. You’re doing great.”

She shoved him, playful. “Be quiet, John Marston.”

When Arthur and Mary Beth came up the yard with Kieran, they closed the book and came rushing. They were relieved to see everybody okay, but almost as if premeditated, Abigail had scooped up Mary Beth and drug her inside. “You’re telling me everything,” she said. Mary Beth was confused. In any case, she went along anyway, and the two of them were gone as quick as birds off the wire.

Meanwhile, Kieran was beat. Arthur eased him onto one of the old cots inside the mansion, the one where Mary Beth had used to sleep. Tilly came in, happy to see he was okay. She offered to keep a watch on him for a little while that afternoon. Pearson did as well. Hosea was sleeping in his room with all the windows open. Apparently, Miss. Grimshaw was on some sort of a tear with Dutch still at large. Most were eagerly looking to avoid her wrath.

With Kieran taken care of and the girls upstairs, Arthur and John went outside to the back porch to have a smoke. John seemed agitated.

“What’s with you?” said Arthur after a little while, lighting a cigarette from his pocket, handing it over to John. He then let one for himself. “And what’s with Abigail? Whisking Mary Beth off like that? Something going on?”

John took a quick drag, scratched at the scruff along his jawline. “Charles and Sadie stopped through this morning,” he said, “on their way into St. Denis. With Colm O’Driscoll’s dead body.”

“Yeah. Dutch killed him,” said Arthur. “Can you believe it? They’re going in for the bounty. Ought to be a nice little sum for us.”

“I guess,” said John.

Arthur took to eye-balling him then, trying to figure him through. “Something else on your mind, John?

“Yeah,” said John, huffing. “There is.”

“Okay.”

“Sadie said you was engaged,” he went on. “You and Mary Beth. You’re getting married?”

Arthur sighed, flicked the cigarette. It figured, that’s what Abigail was on about. “Sadie,” he muttered, surveying the lividity of the swamp, smoking.

“Jesus Christ,” John said, “were you gonna tell anyone?”

Arthur gave him a look. “Of course.”

“Then why didn’t you?”

“It happened like five days ago,” said Arthur. “We was just keeping it between us, just for a little while. A couple can’t share a goddam moment between them? We gotta paint it on a banner, wave it all over town?”

“No,” said John. “But you could’ve...you could’ve told me. I’m happy for you. And I wanna...I wanna know things.”

“You wanna know things.”

“Yeah,” said John, almost growing defensive. But then he calmed down, nodded, looking out at the swamps with his chest puffed up. “Yeah. I do.”

Arthur smiled. “Well, ain’t that nice.”

“Shut up.”

“Okay, okay. I’m sorry. But you gotta understand. It ain’t been a lot of quiet moments since we got back.”

“I know,” said John. “And…it’s okay. I just—congratulations, brother.”

“Thank you.”

They smoked. They listened to the haunted noises of the trees. It was windy.

“So,” said Arthur, adjusting his hat. “You teaching Abigail how to read?”

“I’m doing my best,” said John, shrugging. “I mean, I ain’t you. I don’t do…poetry. But I can hold my own. We’re reading Huckleberry Finn.”

Arthur nodded. “You know, I think you might like poetry, if you just gave it a shot.”

John looked at him, real earnest. “You think so?”

Arthur smiled, became serious. “It’s a real thoughtful thing, you teaching her to read. She appreciates it. Even if she don’t say so.”

John sighed, looked around, still seeming a little stressed by all this. This husband stuff, father stuff. “Well, I’m trying,” he said.

“You’re doing fine.”

“What about you?” said John. “How are you doing? Charles said there was some bad business with Colm. That he threatened Mary Beth?”

“Yeah, he did,” said Arthur. They could hear Jack now, like he’d just woke up, yelling for Abigail out front. “She’s okay.”

“Are you okay?” said John.

“I’m fine,” said Arthur. “A little banged up, nothing serious.”

“No, I mean—I mean with Mary Beth being in danger. I know how you get.”

“How I get?”

“Yeah,” said John. “You get worried. You’re a worrier, Arthur.”

“I am not,” said Arthur, knowing full well he was lying. “Anyway. It’s okay now. And I need to talk to Hosea about some things but then me and Mary Beth, we’re thinking of heading up north for a little while. Leaving tonight, for a couple weeks.”

“Up north?” said John. “Where to?”

“We got a place we’d like to visit, just the two of us, in the Roanoke Valley. But then we plan on swinging back down through Emerald Station to stay at a bed and breakfast there. You and Abigail and the boy, you should come meet us. In about ten days time. We could go fishing, shoot the shit a little. Relax.”

John was surprised, scuffed his boot across the porch wood. “Meet you in Emerald Station?”

“You don’t have to,” said Arthur. “But we know the people who run the place and they’re real nice. They know we’re outlaws and they don’t make no fuss so, that’s good. Anyway it was just a suggestion. I thought maybe you might wanna get them outta here, even just for a couple of days. We’re still planning on leaving, on that permanent basis we discussed, but I think Mary Beth would like to know that we are not leaving too much chaos in our wake. I’m not sure I agree. But I’m compromising, for the time being, as long as things stay quiet.”

John seemed to think on this, nodded. He looked around. Out by the water they saw Pearson with his bucket and his rod and reel. He was getting into the canoe there. “Yeah,” said John. “Maybe. That might be nice. Meeting you all.”

“Let me know,” said Arthur. “Talk to Abigail. Like I said, just meet us there in ten days—from tomorrow, if you do decide. Either way, I’ll mark the place for you on a map. It’s a big homestead with a lot of rooms.”

“Sounds real good,” said John.

Meanwhile, upstairs, Abigail holed them both up in Arthur’s room and was trying to get Mary Beth to tell her all about Arthur’s proposal. Mary Beth was distracted. She didn’t much feel like talking, but she was trying to humor Abigail. She liked Abigail very much. She was glad they were becoming better friends. She looked forward to a life in which they got to do this everyday, safely somewhere else, with the boys nearby and the air so clean—all of it so clean.

“He just…asked,” she said, shrugging. She sat down on the bed. She was taking her braids out and then putting them back in again. “Or, more like, he suggested. We was lying here, and tired, and it was the end of the day, and he said, ‘Marry me.’ It was romantic in a quiet sort of way, in his way. Arthur ain’t a man of grand gestures, and I appreciate that. I think—I think I been living my life for a long time on the fictional pretense of grand gestures. So much books and stories. And I love stories, but this felt real. It felt like it should feel. Like it’s made to last.” She sighed, shrugged. “I don’t know, I’m doing a bad job explaining.” She looked down at her boots.

“I think you’re explaining just fine,” said Abigail. “You got such a beautiful way with words. It’s beautiful. I’m so happy for you.”

“Thanks,” said Mary Beth, straightening the pillows. “That means a lot.”

“What’s the matter?” said Abigail, coming to sit next to her. The small bed creaked beneath their weight. “Ain’t you excited?”

“Of course,” said Mary Beth. “I love Arthur.”

“Then why you seem so glum?” said Abigail. “Mary Beth? Is it because of what happened? I heard it was bad. I heard it was Colm O’Driscoll back on his shit. Fuckin asshole. But he’s dead now. Old Dutch saw to that. You don’t have to be scared no more. You’re safe.”

Mary Beth smiled at this. She was playing with the hem of her skirt now where the threading was coming apart. “I know. I ain’t scared of no O’Driscolls, Abigail. He wasn’t even much to see. I been in tighter spots this very month.”

“What is it then?”

“I just—I got a lot on my mind.”

“You can tell me,” said Abigail. She scooped up her hands. She had such a warmth about her. You’d never know till you got close enough.

Mary Beth took a deep breath. She met Abigail eye to eye. “I’m running…kind of late,” she said.

“Late?”

“My period. It’s late.”

Abigail got quiet. She straightened up real good. She lowered her voice. “How late?”

“Like a week, maybe a little more? I just know it shoulda come by now.”

“How you feeling?”

“I feel fine,” said Mary Beth. “Why?”

But then, they heard Arthur. He was coming up the stairs, his familiar footsteps, and he opened the door. “Mary Beth?”

“Hey,” she said, smiling, teeth and all.

“You almost ready, baby doll? We should ride if we’re gonna make it past the marshes by dark. Otherwise I wanna wait till morning.”

“Sure,” she said. “I’ll just—I’ll be one minute.”

“Okay,” he said, looking bright. “Hey, Abigail.”

“Hey, Arthur.”

He smiled then and went away and closed the door behind him.

Mary Beth sat very still. Abigail was blushing. “Baby doll,” she said, mimicking his deep voice. “That’s your baby’s daddy, Mary Beth. Boy oh boy he loves you. Old sad eyes Arthur Morgan. I never seen him so goddam happy.”

Mary Beth nudged her. “Shh,” she said, her stomach doing backflips.

“When are you gonna tell him?” said Abigail.

By now, Mary Beth’s hem had come completely loose. She’d have to resew it by hand. She took a deep breath, nervous for some reason she could not put her finger on. It wasn’t the possibility of the baby making her nervous. It was something adjacent to the baby, but it wasn’t the baby. What was it? “Not till I know for sure,” she said.

It brought the whole world down into perspective for Mary Beth. Very, very fast.

#red dead redemption 2 #rdr2 #arthur morgan #rdr2 fanfic #arthur morgan x mary beth #arthur morgan x mary beth gaskill #mary beth gaskill #mary-beth gaskill #kieran duffy #john marston #abigail roberts #the lily farm #john teaching abigail to read #kieran and arthur have a nice talk #mary beth comes to some realizations #lots to unfold...#^.~

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greetingsfromrivain · 7 years ago

Text

Witching Hour, part 2/3

It’s 9:27 Dragon, and Kiera and Carver Hawke are sneaking off in the middle of the night. And their younger sister is very curious as to where they’re going....

Part 1

Content Warning: rated T (canon typical violence)

Hawke and Carver made their way through the grass that stretched between them and their home, the cool air condensing into morning dew while the still-dark sky shone with starlight.

“And then when you just-!” Hawke made a pantomime of an uppercut, and laughed, “He never saw it coming!”

Her loud cackle echoed throughout the field near the farm. Carver shoved her. “You’re going to wake mother with all that witch cackling!” he hissed.

“I doubt anyone could hear anything over all that silver you’ve got!” Hawke said, shoving him back. He rolled his eyes, but smiled.

“But you’re right, well, half right,” she looked thoughtfully up at the night sky, stretching her arms out and folding them behind her head, “We may not wake mother, but we might wake-” Hawke stopped herself as Carver stopped walking, staring at the far away but visible front door of their home, with Bethany sitting at the front steps.

As the two of them got closer, fully aware even from a distance that Bethany was looking right at them, they noticed Bethany’s wiry black hair sticking up and out of her short pigtails, her red eyes, and her pout of a frown. She wore only her night shift and her faded, deep brown cloak.

Hawke smiled and opened her mouth to speak, but Bethany beat her to it.

“Every three nights,” she said, in a tut-tutting way that made her look just like mother, “I thought I was imagining things, but every three nights for the past two weeks you were both gone from your beds. I thought, what could they possibly be doing?” She tilted her head at them both, giving a moment’s pause. Carver stood straight, looking her in the eye but not saying a word.

“We’re a part of underground fighting at the old farmhouse south of the highway.” Hawke said. Carver turned his gaze to her and glowered.

Bethany blinked. “Underground...”

“Fighting, yes. We’ve got the silvers to prove it!” She pulled out a small pouch of coins from her cloak, and tossed them to Bethany, who, while startled, managed to catch it with both hands. She stared at the contents of the pouch, and stared back at her siblings.

“You really shouldn’t be calling so much attention to yourselves, especially now that father’s....” Bethany swallowed, trailing off. She looked over at Carver imploringly, but Carver refused to look her in the eye this time, instead glaring at the ground.

“I don’t see the problem. In fact...” Hawke’s eyes lit up, and she knelt down to look Bethany in the eye properly. “You should come with us next time!”

“What?!” Bethany and Carver spoke in sync, both with the same startled expression, and Hawke couldn’t help but laugh.

“I don’t mean you should fight.” Hawke shook her head, still laughing a little, “Maker, no.�� But you can come see the fights! It’s all very exciting. And really, Beth, you staying out here all the time will cause far more talk than engaging in a little rebellion.” Hawke grinned, putting her hand on top of her sister’s head with a quiet thump. “So, what do you think?”

Bethany narrowed her eyes, then looked over at her brother, who was shuffling his feet in the dirt, still avoiding her gaze. She looked back at Hawke. “I’ll....” she started firm, but immediately began to falter, “I’ll....think about it.”

“That’s the spirit.” Hawke patted Bethany on the head, making Bethany bat her hand away. She got up from the steps and walked back into the house, closing the door behind her and leaving her older sister and brother outside. After a few moments, silent other than the song of crickets and the whistle of the wind, Carver finally spoke.

“Did you have to tell her?” he groaned, “She wouldn’t have told mother.”

“Oh, Carver, relax. It will be a good experience for her. Just like it is for you!” She attempted to ruffle his hair as she did Bethany’s, but Carver ducked under her arm and reached for the door, closing it on her.

“See, you’re getting so much faster!” Hawke whispered after him.

Hawke, Carver, and Bethany stood close as they made their way past the windmill to the Imperial highway, the moon barely a crescent and only the stars providing even the slightest light. Bethany walked with her head held high, but she clutched her brown cloak tightly. Carver walked briskly, with his shoulders tense.

“Oh, come now,” Hawke said, “You two look like you’re going to a-” she cut herself off immediately, but was unable to come up with something else to say on the spot.

“How badly hurt do people get in these things?” Bethany asked as they made their way up the ramp of the Imperial Highway.

“Oh, barely.” Hawke said with the wave of her hand. Carver snorted before he climbed down the other side of the stone structure, and Hawke ignored him, “It’ll be fun, you’ll see.”

They made their way to the cellar door, with the broad man still standing there as he always, did, his arms crossed. He looked over at Bethany suspiciously, but said nothing more than his usual.

“The work of man and woman, by hubris of their making.” He said, looking back at Carver and Hawke.

Hawke scratched her head, and before Carver could speak Bethany spoke instead. “The sorrow a blight unbearable.”

The man nodded, and gestured at the crate. Hawke put her dagger in and waved to the man. “Thank you,” Bethany said to him quietly, and Hawke could of sworn he’d looked amused.

The cellar seemed even more full than usual, the young men and women packed in closer to one another, cheering and laughing and shouting. The torch lights flickered and the smell of watered down beer and dirt filled the air. Hawke grinned as she made her way into the crowd. She looked at Bethany, whose shoulders were practically at her ears, and Carver, whose shoulders had finally dropped and his eyes alight. Hawke locked eyes with the group of young girls and called out to them. The girls practically swarmed.

“Beth!” Peaches yelled, “I never thought I’d see you here!” She pulled the much taller Bethany into a hug and then the girls dragged Bethany by the arms, one putting a mug in her hand and the others giggling.

“You had to throw her to the wolves.” Carver said, shaking his head and smirking.

“I’m sure you wouldn’t mind if they took a bite out of you.” Hawke said. To her surprise he laughed.

“Caaaaarver and Kieeeeera Haaaawke!” Harrold yelled, causing a cheer from the crowd. Hawke threw off her cloak into the crowd, waving at everyone, while Carver rolled both his shoulders and his eyes.

Hawke didn’t recognize the two other fighters in the circle. They looked about her age, one a man with mousy brown, curly hair and scruff, and the other a woman with a long black braid and broad shoulders. Both dressed far better than such an event called for, though the man’s clothes seemed ill-fitting. She tilted her head and squinted to see if she might recognize them, perhaps they were younger the last time they met? But her memory couldn’t place them.

“Harrold, who’re they?” Hawke muttered.

“They were passing through,” Harrold muttered back, “Every once and a while folks passing through get invited, but they usually don’t want to fight. Makes things interesting, yeah?” He grinned, and Hawke grinned back.

Carver took his position, legs apart and fists close to his face, and Hawke mirrored him. The other two opponents followed suit, the woman with an adequate stance, and the man with his long, skinny legs too close together.

“Switch sides with me,” Carver whispered, “He’s too pathetic.”

“Not on your life!” Kiera whispered back, “I might actually get a challenge out of this one.” She looked over at the dark haired woman and winked. The woman smirked back at her, while the man looked at Hawke and glared.

“Ugh, fine.” Carver whispered

“Threeeeeee, twooooooooo, ooooooooone!” Harrold shouted, and the match began.

The two opponents went immediately out of sync, the woman moving forward and the man moving back into a defensive stance. Hawke jerked her head in the man’s direction, and Carver nodded.

The woman moved quickly, less like a brawler and more like a duelist. She used her legs far more than past opponents, using high kicks and jabs that seemed calculated. Hawke blocked the kicks, forearm to foot, in what would most definitely bruise later, but in the moment could only be exciting. Hawke finally grabbed hold of the woman’s foot, and used it to push her back.

“You’re really very good!” Hawke shouted as the woman staggered, “But maybe try getting your hands a little dirty!”

The woman expelled a breath from her nose and narrowed her eyes. Hawke smiled playfully as the woman made her way towards her, arms back up and rolling her neck. She looked out of the corner of her eye to see Carver dodging the young man and the young man stumbling. Carver punched the young man’s back as he stumbled past him.

The young man turned and made a sound that was almost like a growl. He threw a punch at Carver that, to Hawke’s surprise, had so much force that Carver staggered backward, almost crashing into the young women in the crowd behind him. They cheered even more loudly for him, Bethany included, though her brow was furrowed.

Hawke couldn’t help but smile. “Who knew he had it in him!” she laughed as she dodged the woman’s jab, grabbed her wrist, and pushed her into Carver’s direction. “Switch!”

Carver barely had enough time to get his balance back before the young woman nearly crashed into him. The woman, however, used the momentum of the push to charge towards him, elbow up as if to break his nose. He dodged just quickly enough for her to nearly trip past him, and punched her side. She fell to the floor, but picked herself up again almost as quickly as she’d fallen, rounding him on him like a predator.

Hawke focused her attention back to the young man, whose clumsy attempts to punch her led to her dodging looking more like a dance. She got him to the center of the circle, continuing to dodge him and looking Carver in the eye for a split moment. Carver nodded, and continued to try and get the woman exactly where he wanted her, occasionally taking a hit or kick if he knew it would place her where she needed to be.

Hawke weaved from under the young man’s arms, and weaved back out again. She opened her mouth to taunt, but instead found herself getting punched in the face by him, with such power that she practically slid back, hitting the heels of her boots against edges of the wooden panels that had been ripped out to make the circle. She exhaled sharply.

The crowd screamed out, some cheering for the newcomers but most shouting words of encouragement to Hawke and Carver. She looked across the circle to Bethany, who was desperately making hand motions. A pushing movement, a point at the young man, a pushing movement, and then pointing at herself.

“What?!” Hawke mouthed, making her way back into the circle proper.

She couldn’t hear Bethany’s exasperated groan, but she could definitely see it. Bethany pointed at the man, and then wiggled her fingers on both hands.

“Oh!” Hawke said aloud, and then looked the young man, a smirk on his lips but his eyes full of wrath. “Oh.” she repeated, realizing. Without thinking, she ran at him like a bull and headbutted him. The young man crumpled to the ground.

Gasps and sympathetic sounds of pain rose from the wild, screaming crowd. The young woman turned as Hawke herself stumbled, somewhat dizzy from the maneuver. Hawke made her way to the young man, his nose bleeding and broken. “Do you y-”

The woman punched her in the head, her movements relentless. Hawke dodged, though more slowly than earlier, her thoughts swimming. Behind the woman she could see the young man stand, blood still streaked on his vicious expression but no longer actively bleeding. He made his way towards her as well.

Carver came at him, in a stance that suggested that he’d try to break the man’s nose again, but the man put his arm out and shoved Carver away from him. A shove with far more power than even someone twice his size could have mustered, as Carver went flying toward the wall behind him, his head hitting the wall with a worrying thud.

For the first time since Hawke had been there, the cellar grew absolutely silent. Then it grew almost unbearably loud. People shouted over one another, pointing at the young man. Some left, running and elbowing their way through the crowd, but most began to make their way into the circle, surrounding the four of them.

“Let’s not all jump to conclusions-” Harrold’s booming voice was cut off by others in the crowd, “Are you magic?” “Where are you from?!” “Is the girl magic too?!”

Hawke made her way back to the center, now a much smaller space, where the young man bowed his head below his shoulders, pleading that he was no mage, and the young woman attempted to push the crowds away from him. A member of the crowd pulled her long braid to bring her to them. She rounded on him and punched him.

“Oy!” Hawke yelled, pushing through the crowd to first check on Carver. She saw Bethany, who was squeezing her way through the back of the crowd to him, shoving some of the spectators. She shoved a man who turned on her and grabbed her wrist, but before Hawke could respond Bethany punched him. He reeled back, but Bethany was shaking the hand she punched him with, wincing in pain but making her way to Carver ever quicker. Hawke nodded in their direction and turned toward the crowd, pushing some of them away from the strangers “Could everyone just-”

She smelled it before she saw it. The smell of something burning.

“Fire!” screamed one of the young girls.

The crowd began to part from the strangers like a tide receding from the shore. Hawke looked around wildly, finding her cloak on the ground and attempting to put out the fire by beating it, but it only seemed to make it grow more quickly. She threw the cloak around her shoulders and snaked through in the opposite direction of the crowd. Bethany met her halfway with a half-conscious Carver’s arm around her shoulder. Hawke grabbed Carver’s other arm around her own shoulder as they ran as quickly as their legs could carry them. The fire seemed to grow exponentially, but the cellar stairs were wide and the crowd quick on their feet.

Smoke billowed out into the night air as Hawke and Bethany clumsily made their way up the stairs with Carver in their arms. The broad man held the door open and they ran past him. He yelled past the cellar door for anyone else.

Hawke almost stopped to turn around, but she heard Poppy and Harrold run up the stairs, telling the man that they were the last. The building proper had caught fire too, the crackling and whooshing sounds of flames deafening in the quiet of the night. They made their way to the Imperial Highway.

“We can’t climb,” Bethany said, jerking her head toward Carver and lifting her own swollen hand. Hawke sighed, her breath shallow and her eye in far more pain than she’d realized before. “We’ll have to just follow it to the crumbling parts,” Hawke sighed, “We might have to do a little wading-”

She felt a severe jerking motion, as if being scooped up by an invisible hand. Before she could understand what was happening, she was on the Imperial Highway, landing painfully on her feet in a way that made her knees buckle. She looked to her left and saw Bethany and Carver, Carver leaning against the highways walls and Bethany still holding on to him. She looked to her right and found the young man and woman.

“Um, thank you.” Hawke said, still breathing heavily, “No hard feelings about the...?” she pantomimed punching, making the young woman snort. “We are sorry, for all of this.” The woman said, with an odd accent, like a mix of Fereldan and Antivan, “Right Alphonse-?” But the young man looked past her, and over to Bethany.

Bethany was staring out at the old farmhouse, the embers starting to spread fire past its walls and to the grass. She took a deep breath and closed her eyes. The young man, with a limp, walked over to her, and stood by her side. He did as she did, closing his eyes and syncing his deep breaths with hers. The fire seemed to flicker with their breathing, growing less and less immense with its pulsing, until in moments that passed like eons, the fire was completely out.

The young man opened his eyes. “Thank you.” Bethany said, and he smiled.

“Alphonse?” The young woman took a step toward him, eyeing the highway and then town proper with a well-earned wariness.

Alphonse looked her way, warmth in his eyes. He limped back to the young woman, and she put his arm around him. With no other words they turned.

“Wait!” Hawke called after them.

The two of them winced at her loudness, their shoulders tense, but turned back around. Hawke reached into her cloak pocket and tossed her small pouch their way. The young woman caught it with one hand. “Be more careful.” Hawke said. She made an attempt to wink with her left eye, but then remembered the injury. “Ow.”

The two looked at the pouch, stunned, and then back at Hawke. “Maker watch over you.” The young woman said, and the two began to walk again, following the Imperial Highway, until they disappeared in the distance.

I know I said this was going to be two parts, but in my defense, it’s not lying if I thought that was true once :P

#da100 #fanfic #da2 #carver hawke #hawke #bethany hawke #kiera hawke #custom hawke #a place by the fire #my writing #the kids are alright tag #lol remember when i said this was originally going to be a one shot?#oh past me you're so funny #three guesses who my Hawke ends up romancing in da2

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daily-dose-of-naruto · 8 years ago

Note

For the 500 follower giveaway: The Walking Dead Crossover with Kankuro scenario! ❤️❤️❤️❤️

This is soo long overdue, and I hope you can forgive us for this late scenario. But I wanted to combine the idea of Kank telling an friend he had known for a long time with the Walking Dead, and it took a long time with school getting in the way. So I’m sorry, I hope this is up to par. ~Admin Shadow

Kankuro in the Walking Dead Scenario

An acrid stench of rot and death lingered in the air and clung to the walls of the cramped cell Kankuro had been given. For the fifth time he rolled over on his side trying to get comfortable, but it was hard to get cozy on a broken prison cot.

The sound of Beth’s voice singing ‘The Parting Glass’ resonated off the walls as she attempted to lull Judith to sleep, and it was helping him immensely. He could hear Glen talking to Maggie in the cell next to him, reminding Kankuro that he wasn’t alone anymore. He was part of something bigger, a community now.

He cracked his eyes open just a little as the light of the afternoon filtered through the dirty windows. An old 1950’s pinup girl was staring him down; she had been here when Maggie had asked him to take the cell at the end of the block. He didn’t mind at all, as he stared at her plump lips, mischievous glaze and amble curves. Oh, it brought dirty thoughts to the forefront of his mind.

He quickly pushed them aside because he had a very different person that he couldn’t get out of his head. For the last few months Kankuro had developed strong feels for a member of their group – a girl he had known for quite some time. She had joined Gaara, himself and Temari early on in the apocalypse. Only in the last month had they been fortunate enough to stumble upon Rick’s group at the prison after months of being nomads barely getting by.

Kankuro couldn’t get her out of his mind, even now, as he fantasized about her beautiful features. She had thick hair that flowed down to her shoulders, but she hardly ever had it down for too long – usually it was up in a messy, disheveled bun. Her eyes had a starry look to them; they were mesmerizing and if you looked too long you might get cast under her spell. And when she wasn’t paying attention, he had been lucky enough to appraise her nice ass.

They had both been put on night guard duty, together. She had been pretty reserved the first few weeks around him, even though they had been in the same group for months. He had felt some distrust lingered like a plague, but slowly she had started laughing at his jokes and easing to his nonchalant attitude.

She had become trusting enough to even tell him her backstory. It had taken a bit, but he had coaxed out the truth – that she was a lone survivor. Her family had died all in a very short period from a hoard of walkers in the very beginning.

He couldn’t imagine what she had gone through, just the thought of losing Gaara and Temari made him physically ill. Their father had died early on in the apocalypse since he had been in Washington DC. The politicians had been some of the first to get it, and being a senator had put their father in harms way. The saddest part was it really hadn’t bothered him – their father had always been very distant and even slightly cold and corrupt because of his work in politics. It really had always been him, Temari and Gaara watching out for each other.

Everyday in this new, fucked up world was a struggle and you never knew which day was going to be your last. Especially with the impending threat of this new man that called himself The Governor. So Kankuro had been debating if saying something about how he felt to this this girl was worth it.

With the lingering threat of death always dangling above them, was it worth getting attached to someone? If she died it would just leave a numbing sting that would ache and linger and he wasn’t sure that pain was something he wanted to invite. Temari had been trying to convince him that a life without risk or love wasn’t a life at all.

He had been pretty resilient to the idea at first, but now – now he was seriously considering the possibility. The thought of remaining alone and not knowing how she felt about him was corroding away at his sanity piece by piece. Maybe he should take a chance, tell her how he felt. The worst she could do was say no, well that wasn’t the worst that could happen in an apocalypse, but still.

Kankuro rolled over on his side trying to avoid the light of day that was streaming through the gaps between the bars of his cell. He only had a few more hours to try and get some sleep before his shift, and he internally decided tonight would be the night he was going to tell her. What the hell did he have to lose?

The ground was bathed in weak moonlight, causing the dewy drops on the grass to shine like intricately placed diamonds. The sky was a black void tonight with brilliant speckles of stars, and the moon was giving the forest outside the prison a white, heavenly luster.

Rick handed over his AK to Kankuro and gave him a lukewarm smile and a pat on the arm. It wasn’t unusual for their misfit group’s leader to be brotherly.

“Keep your eyes open, with the Governor as a new threat we have to be vigilant,” Rick muttered to him, his voice remaining low so none of the new people they had recruited last week could hear them.

Kankuro gave the former sheriff a smirk. “Don’t worry, Rick. I got it covered. I won’t let anything happen on my watch.” He kept his voice cool and even, but internally he was a little anxious about being on duty with her.

Rick tipped his head to the side and nodded his approval. “Yeah, can’t be too careful. I trust you and your siblings. Gaara has been doing some good work with us, helping to fortify the gates. You guys have earned your place here.”

“It’s no problem Rick, were just doing our duties, you have nothing to worry about,” Kankuro assured him, but he couldn’t keep the pride and light arrogance out of his tone.

Rick gave another nod and pushed passed him and headed back to the prison. The night was quiet, except for the sound of some walkers that were aimlessly grasping at the fence and shaking it.

Kankuro looked across the concrete fenced in yard to see her talking to Daryl. The bowmen was handing over a pistol and he had his normal, unreadable expression fixed on his scruffy face. Kankuro turned his back on them and decided to focus on his guard so he could get his thoughts together – he wasn’t going to back down from the challenge of telling her the truth. No, not today.

An hour passed, and Kankuro hadn’t seen anything out of the ordinary. His fingers clutched tight to the automatic rifle in his hands. His guard duty tonight had proven uneventful so far, and he wanted to keep it that way. He had been frequently stopping to think about what he was going to say when their paths crossed, but ended up just having such murky thoughts. He felt like he wasn’t getting anywhere, so he had decided this was just going to be impromptu and he would do what he normally did, which was go with the flow.

He ended up heeding Rick’s words more than he usually did, as his eyes scanned out toward the woods and along the fence with pure dedication. He felt his heart tighten in his chest as he saw something moving toward him.

His eyes trained on someone in the distance walking at him in the dark. He could just make out their outline, it was a woman, and he knew it was her. Kankuro felt the muscles in his legs tense and freeze, and suddenly the oppressively hot Georgia air became impossible to breath.

“Hey, have you seen anything yet?” She said as she approached him, her eyes sparkling in the meek moonlight.

Kankuro realized he had been gawking at her and he was quick to close his mouth. “No, I haven’t seen anything yet, but knowing my luck something will pop out.”

To his relief she chuckled softly, before replying. “Just pay attention. You can’t be too careful, especially not with that lunatic, the Governor who is out there. You never know when your last moment will be.”

“Yeah.” He agreed, and shit he was refusing to back down, he was going to do this. He sucked in a deep breath, because he was going to tell her how he felt. Kankuro had never heard his heart thunder so loudly in his ears. And this was harder now that she looked completely celestial in the moonlight.

“We’ve known each other for a while, right?” Kankuro said almost as a offhandedly comment and he felt like an idiot for saying it, but he could see her teeth glint in the full light as she unleashed a smile.

“I would say so, why?” She inquired.

“Well, you mentioned you never know when things are going to end, so I wanted to say this before my time was up.” He paused for a second before he forced the words out, and he wished he could have been smoother in his confession.

“I’ve always had a crush on you, and I was hoping you considered me someone worthy of you.” He looked directly at her, and he couldn’t fully make out her expression. “Ever since we got here, I’ve been thinking about everything we have been through and I don’t think I trust any one here more than you and my siblings, and I was hoping you felt the same about me.” He let the words out, and it felt like a dam had been let loss. He feared that her hesitation was a sign of her distaste for his words, as he waited patiently for an answer.

But after a few seconds of silence, she finally responded. “It took you long enough. You have no idea how long I’ve waited to hear those words,” her voice was hardly louder than a whisper.

She took light, uncertain steps toward him, and Kankuro was surprised when she wrapped her arms around his torso. Her arms around him felt warm, inviting and almost as if it was something he had been craving, yet unaware of.

He reciprocated by pulling her against him, fully encompassing her in his embrace. She seemed to nestle herself against his chest which made his confession worth it one hundred times over.

And that’s when she said anything so unexpected, and it made his heart sore. “This world is hell, but it’s nice to know that things might look up, with you being here.”

He wrapped his arm around the back tighter, and squeezed her. “I’ll always be here for you, I can at least promise you that.”

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duckybeth99 · 8 years ago

Text

The Moonlit Ship (Pirate!AU)

im aware I have a bunch of other next parters to finish with fics but I promised this one for @genjis-girlfriend so I gotta deliver,, the Esther pirate au continuation will come back, as will the part two to the normalverse neva fics I was writing. I have a lot of ideas it’s a matter of getting the willpower to finish them. that being said this does take place after Esther has been saved so. thumbs up

—

Legends told of monsters swarming the seas that pirates dared to tread. She knew they were real, after having seen Moirin sing to mermaids. But what other monsters laid in their path?

Beth had rushed into Captain Red’s office that morning, and read the passage from Neva’s diary aloud to her friend. Her gentle but excited voice read crystal clear the delicate cursive writing, “…‘and past that cave, when the moon was high and the stars were right, the ship appeared. I boarded alone, insisting on doing so in fear that if more approached the ghost ship, it would vanish. It was easy to cast the waters wrong and gave the ship vanish, after all. I met the captain and told him I meant no ill will and wasn’t pursuing his treasures. He couldn’t recall his name, so I gave him one. He seemed fond of it. I befriended him and told him, my crew and alliance could always be companions of his, but his boat and soul were cursed to remain where they were. He told me to go, fearing I was turning too cold, and I told the other captains of all I saw’…”

Beth looked up from the leather bound diary, placing the strap back around it and looking at Moirin. “So?” the teen asked, “Is it true?”

“Aye,” Moirin nodded. “Your mother was a brave one, going alone to see the ghost. We wouldn’t have believed it if we didn’t accompany her crew on the Songbird. We all stared at that ghost ship and I hoped she would come back safe. She did, but she was freezing. That water has ice bergs strewn through it. It’s dangerous waters.”

Beth looked at the diary in her hands and a smile grew on her face. Moirin frowned and shook her head.

“Now lassie,” she began, “that’s a dangerous trip. Worse than some of our others. I know you’re trying to go to all the same places your mother did, but it isn’t safe enough for you to board alone, and we still don’t know how he’ll respond if he sees too many people.”

“Then why don’t we find out?” Beth asked with a bright smile. “Please? Moirin, you know how to find all these places! Please, help a girl find pieces of her mom again.” Moirin chewed at her lip then sighed.

“You’ve got those same begging eyes as hers,” she chuckled. “She gave me those same begs and pleads to go when she first found out. Alright, we’ll set sail tomorrow. But be ready. It’ll be a long and tiresome trip.”

“I understand,” Beth nodded. Moirin smiled and kissed the girl’s head.

“Now off with ya,” Moirin teased, “go get ready for supper. Jonathan and Junior will be back soon from helping the kids unload the ship.”

———

The sail presented the crew with storming rain, seas that were rough and angered, and air that sent the friends aboard the ship to have their teeth chatter wildly and shiver in huddles together.

Beth, with her long and dark cloak on, leaned close to the edge of the ship, her eyes pealed for the ghost ship. Johnny helped wrap part of his large cloak around Esther to help keep her warm. The young lady cuddled close to him, the young man offering a kind smile. Ghost stayed close to Moirin, uncomfortable the whole time with Beth’s wish.

“She can’t go alone,” Ghost murmured. “A ghost pirate—who knows what he could do to her!”

“I’ll go with her,” Moirin smiled gently. “I might not have gone with Neva, but you know I can keep her safe.”

“No,” Ghost said. Moirin crossed her arms, raising a brow.

“You think I can’t protect her?”

“No, no, it’s not that!” Ghost stammered. “Mo… she’s my responsibility. She’s my daugh—uh, ward, I suppose. And besides, I’ve almost lost you so many times. A ghost pirate—no, no. I’ll accompany her.”

“And who will protect you then?” Moirin pursed her lips. Ghost fiddled with his pipe to light it, anxious and refusing to answer. “I’ll be keeping a close eye on you, alright? We don’t know what he’s like. Neva only knows. She says he was kind, but a little skittish. I don’t know how he’ll respond to the both of you. So we’ll be close.”

“Captain!” Alex called from the crow’s nest, telescope in hand. “We’re here!”

“Understood!” Moirin called back up. To the rest of the crew, she moved to give her directions. Ghost watched Beth, staring out.

There, in the dark waters, stars decorating the sky, a full moon covered by a cloud and the waves almost turned still in one spot. The cloud slowly moved, at once the light of the moon hit the still water, the ghost ship appeared.

Ghost felt his heart almost stop and his face grow pale.

“Climb aboard,” Alex smiled at Beth, getting the small rowboat read. He held his hand to her and she gently took it as he helped her climb inside. Ghost rushed over and cleared his throat.

“Excuse me,” he nearly shoved Alex aside, “but I’ll be joining you, Bethany. This is a dangerous trip, and I refuse to allow you to go alone.” Beth gave an annoyed frown, but it slowly turned into a smirk.

“Fine,” she said, as he sat down. “Then you paddle.” She handed the oars to Ghost. He grumbled as Alex lowered the boat, but did row them to the ghost ship.

As they grew closer each time, the boat became more clear, more solid and real. A rope dangled down from the side of the ship, down to he small boat the two were sailing in. With a brave and determined smile, Beth murmured, “C'mon,” to her steward, grabbed the rope and began to climb. Ghost frowned as he followed.

“You seem—hrgh—to know how to—uhn—climb very well, Bethany,” Ghost raised a brow, climbing much slowly after Beth. The teenager grinned.

“I did learn a lot in living with the alliance so far,” she said. Ghost frowned.

“I know you climbed the roof of the manor when you thought I wouldn’t notice, my lady,” he said. Beth grew a slight blush but still smiled.

Pulling herself over the railing of the ship, then Ghost, the older man looked in disbelief at the transparent ship below his feet.

“This can’t be happening,” he mumbled. Fear was in the back of his throat that he hoped Beth wouldn’t notice.

“Um,” Beth called, “hello? Is anybody here? We aren’t here to hurt you or steal or cause trouble!” Ghost looked around, Beth doing the same.

Ghost paled at the sight of something and began stammering.

“I don’t see him anywhere,” Beth sighed, her back to Ghost and what he was staring at. Ghost’s hand gripped the air behind him as he tried to find and hold onto Beth.

“Beth!” Ghost turned the girl around, “Look!” She frowned at Ghost’s force but quickly went silent and blinked at the actual ghost before her.

He was all blue, with torn remains of a pirate captain’s hat and clothes. Beth stared up at him wide-eyed. Ghost was silent and his mouth moved frantically to try and find words that wouldn’t come out. The ghost stared at them silently, floating closer. Ghost placed his hands firmly on the girl’s shoulders.

“Who are you,” his sorrowful, corse voice asked. Beth stepped forward, holding tight to her sapphire necklace.

“I—I-I’m Lady Bethany Collins,” she began. “And I’m here to—”

“Collins,” the ghost growled, “him and his damn son. They ruined the lives of pirates. Tried to slaughter us—” the ghost reached for his sword from his side, his form turning white and angry, unstable. Ghost backed away and pulled Beth behind him.

“Don’t you dare hurt her—” Ghost began.

“Who are you,” the ghost repeated. Ghost cleared his throat and stood straight.

“My name is Jonathan B—” Ghost tried again. The spirit glared at him and shoved him away.

“You are nothing,” he grumbled. “But she… well, how will those Collins feel if one of their own is killed?”

“No!” Ghost cried.

“Wait!” Beth shouted, “I’m the daughter of Neva! Captain Neva!! O-of the Songbird!” The pirate ghost went still.

“You are… her child… and a Collins…” he murmured. “How is this possible?”

“M-my parents fell in love,” Beth tried to explain. “Th-they kept it a secret. My mother passed away a-and I was raised in the life of a lady, but now I’m following to all the places my mother went.”

“If you’re truly hers,” the ghost began, “then what’s my name?”

“She doesn’t know!” Ghost exclaimed, slowly standing up. “Her mother died in childbirth.”

“She lies!” the ghost screamed.

“No!” Beth gasped, “N-no, I’m not! She is my mother! I have her diary—” Beth patted her cloak but felt nothing. She left it on the boat.

“Lies,” the ghost accused again.

“Y-your name, that she gave you,” Beth stammered, “I-it was… it was…”

“I hate liars,” the ghost drew his sword again, “always have. I cared for my crew. But if they lied, if they crossed me—”

“S-stop, y-you—you, you specter!” Beth shouted. The ghost went still. He slowly slipped his sword back and stared at the girl.

“You guessed what she nicknamed me,” the ghost spoke softly, calm, and returning to his blue state. “Specter. Spect for short.”

“How creative,” Ghost grumbled. Beth smiled.

“It’s nice to meet you, Spect,” Beth spoke gently. “All I wanted was to meet you. Possibly… be a friend?”

“It’s difficult to be friends when you only appear at certain moments,” Spect sighed, “but I would appreciate occasional visits. Neva would visit me, tell me stories and I would tell her some in return.”

“I don’t think I have a story for you,” Beth tapped her lip. A grin crossed her face and her little brown hands slid behind her neck. “How about this?” She slipped off her sapphire necklace and held it out to Spect. He shook his head.

“Oh, no, I have enough treasures—” Spect paused and blinked, looking closer at the necklace. “Oh! This necklace… it came from my treasures!”

“What?” Beth looked up at him in awe. Spect smiled.

“I gave this to her,” he hummed sadly, “after she proved herself to be a true captain—and a good friend. I told her, keep it safe, and if she were to give it to anyone else, be sure they deserved such a gift.”

“My father and Doc said my mother saved this to give to me,” Beth whispered. “She had it off when she died. When the doctor said I was due any minute, she took it off and told them that it would be mine. I’ve worn it for as long as I can remember.”

“You had a very special mother,” Spect spoke kindly, his voice blowing gently like wind. “And I can see you are a very special girl, as well. Keep your necklace. Neva wanted you to have it. I won’t tarnish her wishes.” Beth smiled up at the ghost, then flung her arms around him in a hug. He seemed startled—even afraid—but slowly placed his arms around her and smiled back. He released her, Beth tilting her head up at him.

“Hey… Spect?”

“Yes?”

“Is it… at all possible… my mother might be a ghost as well?”

Spect sighed, his hair beneath his hat sagging more in sadness, “I can’t be sure. Ghosts only return when they have some sort of unfinished purpose. Mine is to warn other pirates, and to lure greedy ones to their demise.”

“Charming,” Ghost mumbled.

“I don’t think your mother has come back as a ghost,” Spect explained. “But perhaps, when I vanish again, I can look and see if she’s around.”

“Thank you—wait, vanish?” Beth raised a brow. Spect nodded.

“When the moon fades, I’ll be gone,” he explained. “You and your… friend, should get back to your ship, before time runs out.”

“Oh,” Beth nodded slowly, “yes, yes. Thank you! Thank you, Spect, for everything.”

“Of course,” Spect gave a little bow. Beth and Ghost climbed down the rope and back onto their rowboat, heading back to the Fairy Wing.

Tossing ropes back down to the two, Alex and Johnny tugged the boat back up and helped the two out.

“Well?” Moirin rushed over to the two, “What did you see?” Beth looked back at the ghost ship, as it faded with another cloud covering the moon. She gave a little smile at it, holding her necklace close to her chest.

“A friend.”

#beth writing #ghosty beth #ghosty blogging #spectler #mcgillicuddy sunshine #ask bloge pirates #pirate au

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lvmcn · 4 years ago

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{brec bassinger, cis female, dc/stargirl} look who is spotted around ha'ina it's courtney whitmore. a eighteen year old human. they spend their time around ha'ina as a college student. the last thing they remember is spending christmas with her friends & family after defeating the isa. and people describe them as bubbly, impulsive, brave.

“life isn’t that black and white, henry. people can be bad, but people can be good too, and kind and compassionate. maybe some of the thoughts you read, maybe, they are bad. i mean, sometimes we’re hurting or afraid and we think awful, awful things. have you tried looking a little deeper? i bet you’d find something better. behind the pain and the fear, it’s all about love. people want to love and be loved.” courtney to henry

basic facts:

full name: courtney elizabeth whitmore

nickname: court

birthday: december 31st

sexuality: pansexual

abilities: peak human condition, master acrobat, expert martial artist, abilities via cosmic staff (stellarkinesis), photokinesis, & flight

occupation: college student

canon up to: defeating the isa

+ traits: kind, talented, loyal, & artistic

- traits: shy, stubborn, naive, & innocent

intro:

courtney is the only child of barbara whitmore and sam curtis. her father was never really in her life. he was always in and out till she was five.

for christmas when she was four, he gave her a locket with his picture in it, that he had a matching locket. then the next christmas, he didn’t show up. it broke courtney since she wanted to see him, but he never showed up, not that day or any other day.

ten years later her mom got married to a man named pat dugan and she got a younger step-brother mike. they moved from valley village, california to blue valley, nebraska.

right after moving there, courtney wasn’t too pleased, not only did she leave all her friends in california, there was no gymnastic team there like there was in california.

then one night she went into the basement where she found a crate and inside was the cosmic staff. pat had the staff since he was starman’s sidekick and after starman’s death he kept it safe.

the staff freaked her out when she saw it glow. then it dragged her away from her house to town where she uses it to do a gymnastic routine, then sits on it and the staff flies through the sky and she crashes in the woods near the drive-in.

there she sees henry and his friends bullying a kid she goes over with the staff to deflate his car’s tires. but when they notice her, the staff helps her fight them off, blowing up henry’s car in the process.

she rushes back home where she is caught by pat. he takes the staff which deactivates when he touches it, he is surprised to see that it worked for courtney since he had only seen it work for starman. he explains what happened to starman and the jsa. and since the only jsa and starman died ten years ago, on the same day her dad disappeared, and since her dad was a striking resemblance of starman, courtney was convinced that he is her dad. pat tries to convince him that he wasn’t, but for courtney the coincidences were just too much.

later that night courtney goes out with the cosmic staff again, as she was flying on it she was hit by a tire and lands in a stack of tires. she was surprised, thinking at first the staff did it, but she soon learned it was caused by an isa member called brainwave.

he tried to figure her out through his powers of telepathy, but the staff knocked him in the chin and he back up. then he starts to throw tires at her using his telekinesis, courtney, with the help of the staff is able to dodge them all and sends a beam of light at him which explodes and he disappears, she goes out to see pat in his giant robot he built.

pat then explains more things about the jsa & isa to courtney and courtney tells him about how brainwave is in the town.

the next day at school, courtney uses the sewing room to transform starman’s costume into one for her.

then while at the school’s open house with her family, brainwave figures out who she is, he was there since he was henry’s father. he threatened to kill her mom if she didn’t meet him at school later that night.

courtney goes because she needs to protect her mom, even though she isn’t equipped to fight him. while she was being beat by him, pat shows up in his robot and helps to fight brainwave.

the staff creates an incredible light at brainwave that it created an anti-gravity ball that floats all around him, with so much energy and force it causes him to pass out and go into a coma.

the next day courtney was walking home from school where she saw a patch on the ground frozen over in the shape of a star and she knew it was caused by icicle. her and pat got to where it was out where they get into a fight with icicle. during the fight, icicle kills a school mate of courtney’s, joey, to not only scare her but to get revenge on the isa member’s who was his father for turning his back on the isa.

the death of joey really affected courtney since she knew that the icicle and the isa were really dangerous if they were okay with killing children. that night pat shows her the jsa meeting spot and all the things left by the jsa after their deaths. later that night courtney breaks in and takes all the stuff knowing the only way to defeat the isa is to create a new jsa.

the first person courtney recruits is yolanda since she is a skilled fighter just like wildcat was. at first, yolanda blew courtney off, but she didn’t give up. together they broke into the hospital where brainwave was to see who has been visiting him, curious if any of the isa was.

after yolanda returns the wildcat suit saying she wasn’t wildcat and goes home. courtney goes to her house and leaves the outfit in her room, later that night courtney sees yolanda outside her window in her costume, which makes courtney smile knowing the plans to rebuild the jsa was working.

on halloween her and pat get stranded and one of courtney’s schoolmates rick walks by. she notices the hourman hourglass glowing when he was around. once he leaves courtney follows him. and tries to explain about the hourglass, but he thinks she is insane and walks away.

when courtney gets home she finds beth in her room wearing the dr mid-nite goggles, she tries to lie about them. but the ai a part of the glasses tells beth the truth. through the goggles they learn that rick is hourman, rex tyler’s son.

courtney, beth, & yolanda go to find rick at a halloween party, knowing that they need him for the jsa. courtney gives him the hourglass and once he sees that it does give him strength he leaves them saying he’ll do his own thing.

the girls all but on their costumes and go to the tree with rick’s parents crashed into it and died. there dr. mid-nite’s goggles show them what really happened that night, it was a car malfunction, but solomon grundy who caused their death. and then rick agrees to join them.

when pat finds out that courtney gave out some of the jsa stuff he asks for it back, not want any of the kids to get hurt or killed by the isa. courtney does not want to tell them about getting the stuff back. but after school she does, they refuse to give it back since it has become a part of who they were. however, they put courtney asking it back aside when they figure out the isa was planning something that night. the all suit up and try to stop the isa members from stealing something from a satellite company.

they get into a fight with sportsmaster & tigress and while they are all much newer than the adults and don’t exactly win the fight, they are able to hold their own and get out without too much damage done.

one day when pat was trying to train them using a course he set up, courtney was impulsive and tried to show off and destroyed the course which upset her friends since she didn’t think about them before doing it.

at a football game that night courtney notices principal bowen leave and she followers her thinking she might be a part of the isa. but before she could figure anything out, she is attacked by one of her classmate cindy, who wants to kill stargirl so that she could join the isa. the two fight and if it wasn’t for the school janitor, justin, courtney would’ve been killed by cindy. pat gets to courtney and takes her to the hospital and lies to everyone that they were in a car accident.

once courtney gets home, cindy shows up, and tells courtney that she knows she is stargirl and that she was going to defeat her. courtney then texts yolanda telling her that cindy knows she is stargirl. she doesn’t hear back so she heads over to cindy’s house, where her friends were. there she fought cindy again and was struggling to fight her, luckily henry saw what was going on and freaked up and used his powers that he was starting to develop to stop the fight and allow courtney to get away.

after that day, courtney tried everything to convince her friends to allow henry to join the jsa, they weren’t convinced that he was good, but courtney believed in him. courtney goes to henry’s father’s hospital room where she knew henry would be to try to recuit him. he figures out courtney caused her dad to be in a coma and caused her to experience a terrible headache, she calms him down, but it doesn’t last long so she has to leave.

that night one of courtney’s classmates, cameron, and his dad and grandparents come over for dinner. it was during the dinner that courtney figures out cameron’s dad, jordan, is icicle after he touches a burning hot pan with his bare hands and doesn’t feel any burning.

after the leave she goes downstairs to get her staff and pat follows, and while they were in the basement with the staff, courtney’s mom walks him and the explain to her everything. she gets angry that pat kept that side of his past from her and got his daughter involved in nonsense.

the staff comes to courtney wanting to go fight, she turns it away because of how mad her mom was. and the staff leaves, when courtney realizes it’s gone and no one knows where it is she goes to her friends. they agree to go to the underground tunnels that they found, where the isa met, to look for it. and courtney is able to convince them to let henry come with them since he wants to save his dad who woke up and didn’t remember anything too bad and was a different person.

in the tunnels they get to dr itos lair and fight his henchman and henry tries to disconnect her dad. after defeating the henchman, dr. ito fights courtney himself and before he can defeat her, yolanda is able to get her the cosmic staff that helps her fight him. henry gets his father off the machine, but they all learn it’s too late, they gave him all his memories back. they run off and meet up with rick and beth. right before they get out of the tunnels they are stopped by brainwave, and henry sacrifices his life so courtney and her friends can get out. it crushes them all to see, but gives them another reason to keep stay strong with their cause.

the next day, courtney’s dad, sam curtis shows up in blue valley to talk to her. at first courtney doesn’t want to believe it’s him since she wanted to believe her dad was starman. but she learns that he is her dad and tries to get to know him. but she learns why he is really there, he wants to sell her necklace for money and it’s when courtney realizes who her dad really is. she gives him the necklace and leaves. at home she cries to pat about what happened.

she goes to the staff, but it doesn’t light up anymore and courtney believes it’s because the staff knows now she isn’t starman’s child, so it doesn’t want her. she tells her friends that she is no longer stargirl because the staff doesn’t want her. at home, she begs the staff to light up and pat tries to reassure her that it wasn’t because she wasn’t starman’s child but because she lost faith in herself. and later him, barbara, and courtney go there they take a deep breath and courtney picks up the staff, it glows brighter than it ever did before because know she believes in herself and the staff choose her because of her and not because she may be starman’s child.

the family starts to pack up knowing that because henry knows who she is that him and the isa would attack their house and they have to get away from the town. tigress shows up at their home while courtney and her mom were packing. courtney was able to stop her before she killed anyone and made it to the safe house where they met up with beth, rick, and yolanda.

while at the safe house they did everything they could to figure out what the isa’s plan was since they didn’t have long left. once rick finally decodes his dad’s journal they use dr. mid-nite’s goggle’s to figure out the exact plan. they learned that the isa is planning on using a machine to use brainwaves ability to control and change all the personalities and minds of millions of adults. they head back to blue valley to stop the isa.

while they were walking through the tunnels, beth was at barbara’s work with her trying to hack into the computer to figure out more things about the isa’s plan and how to stop it. while the ideas they want to change them to are good things like getting rid of hate, it would kill one fourth of the people it affects, if that person has a strong will and fights them reprogramming.

when the machine first starts up, brainwave controls pat to attack courtney since he is in his mind. pat is able to fight it enough to not kill courtney when she calls him her dad. but it causes him to start to die for fighting brainwave, but beth is able to save him by putting the shields the tunnels have back up which makes it so brainwave can’t affect pat anymore.

they all start to fight the isa and once they are able to defeat them, courtney and yolanda head to destroy the machine, they are attacked by cindy. courtney fights her as yolanda goes on and kills brainwave. once courtney catches up with her. courtney destroys the machine by slicing it up into pieces. her and all her friends get out of the tunnels as all the adults snap out of the trance they were in and are all fine.

they all meet up outside barbara’s work and celebrate. icicle comes to attack them, mike hits him with the car, destroying him. that was when they knew they won.

a few weeks later everyone is at courtney’s home enjoying christmas. courtney gives pat the present she kept for her dad since she was five, since she saw pat as her dad. the present was a mug that said world’s greatest dad, pat was so happy to get it. courtney then heads out after they took a group photo and sits on a water tower looking at the beauty and peace of the forest. pat flies up in his robot and sits next to her and they enjoy it together.

that was the last thing courtney remembered before showing up in ha’ina. she isn’t exactly super happy to be here since she doesn’t know why or how she is here and is worried for her friends and family. though she is happy to be able to relax and not worry about villains.

she has the cosmic staff with her and isn’t afraid to use it to help people.

#hainahq:intro #☆•.¸♡ people can be bad but people can be good too and kind and compassionate | courtney muse ♡¸.•☆#☆•.¸♡ sometimes we’re hurting and we think awful. have you tried looking a little deeper | courtney muse ♡¸.•☆

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