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imaginesmai · 1 year ago

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Right around the corner - Azriel

(1), (2), (3), (4), (5)

Plot: four times someone notices something weird about Azriel, and that time someone figured it out.

Remember, I'm taking requests! This Azriel fic is an Azriel x reader, but she doesn't appear yet. Let me know if you want a second part with a formal introduction to the family!

Through the years, Cassian had learned a few things about Azriel. He could proudly say that, even if he wasn’t a spy master himself, he was quite observant. Picked things here and there about people, noticed small habits and routines. For example, he knew that Rhysand liked his coffee boiling hot, that Mor always brought something red from wherever she traveled, and that Feyre ordered the colors she painted with in certain way.

From all of them, he spent most time with Azriel, so it made sense that Cassian knew him. Or thought so.

Cassian knew Azriel sometimes talked to his shadows, even argued with them. The male liked his boots clean and couldn’t stand blood on his clothes. He preferred tea over coffee and liked bad jokes, even if he always scoffed at them.

Cassian thought Azriel was a picky eater. That he hated berries, because he had never seen his friend eat any.

So, when after a tough monthly shopping session for the house, he found a berries box, he opened it without a second thought. It was what he always did – eat from the box before he put it away, infatuating Rhysand, who liked everything in its place.

He only had time to open the box and touch the first berry before Azriel snatched it from his grip, tucking it away.

“Don’t touch it” he grumbled, still focused on putting the eggs away.

“Why not? Rhy’s not here. He won’t mind” he would mind, thought. Not that Cassian had cared about it. “It’s just one berry. I barely ate lunch”

“That sounds like your problem” Azriel gave him a wary look when he tried to get closer. “Don’t”

“They’re berries. Give them to me” Cassian replied, putting his palm up and waiting for his snack.

“You’ll have to wait until dinner”

Cassian frowned, because it might had been one berry, but berries were brought because he liked them and usually ended up in a bag in his room, either way. The only problem he had faced so far was Rhysand disappointed face when he found the empty box laying on the counter.

He rounded the kitchen island until he was next to Azriel. Once more, he reached for the box of berries. That time, he was met with a cold, aggressive grip on his wrist by one of his shadows.

“Dude. What’s with the berries?” he asked, staring at his unmoving wrist with morbid fascination.

“I bought them for me, they’re not for the house”

“You don’t… like berries”

Azriel seemed surprised at the statement, and finally looked at him. And for the first time in a long time, Cassian realized he had surprised him. That he had caught Azriel in a lie, or maybe in an omission of the truth. A truth he didn’t want or feel like sharing.

Maybe, any other day, Cassian would have let it go by. If it had happened with any other food, or with any other person, it wouldn’t have made him suspicious. But Azriel actually looked surprised, and Cassian had tried enough to know it was impossible to catch him in a lie.

“Well, I do now” he shrugged finally. “So keep your nasty hands out of the box”

Before Cassian could reply, the shadow holding his hand curled back into its master and Azriel winnowed away, berries in hand and a soft smile on his face.

Even though Mor didn’t like Azriel the way he liked her, couldn’t love him like he wanted to, she appreciated him as a friend. As a good friend, who was there for her always and through everything. And it was selfish of her, she knew, but she had grown used to the details of being loved. Appreciated, cared for. Wanted.

When she caught his gaze across the room, she was used to watching him blush and look away. When they went out to have fun, she was used to his eyes fixed on her back, not subtle at all. And worst of all, she had been kind of taking advantage of the presents he gave her every now and then.

They weren’t short of money, and Azriel had bought her many things through the years. Something she stared at, something that made him think of her. Multiple things that warmed her heart, not in the way he wanted to.

It was only logical that when she found Azriel at her door with a velvet box, looking nervous and shy, it was just that.

“Az. What a surprise” she tried to smile. Tried not to think about his dejected face once she told him she appreciated the gift but wanted to be alone. “Isn’t it too late for you to be up?”

“Yeah, I… it’s been a rough day” he shrugged.

The first indication that something was different was that he didn’t shy from her stare, nor hid the box behind his back. The second was that he didn’t leave it at her hands like a timing bomb.

Mor raised an eyebrow and waited for him to continue. She had been about to go to sleep, after a long day for herself, and supposed half of Velaris was already deep into it.

“Maybe you want to come in?”

She couldn’t physically let him down, drop his expectations and hurt him. More than once, she had given him false hopes in fear of losing the friendship. And when she opened a little bit farther the room of her apartment, she intended to do that.

To accept whatever he had brought her, to hug him tight and thank him, and to let him know that she was really tired and would see him tomorrow, maybe. Then, she would go to bed feeling like a horrible person.

Mor didn’t expect Azriel to open the box himself, and show her something she knew wasn’t for her.

Inside the box, was a beautiful blue sapphire necklace, encased in a silver tear that shone under the moonlight. Everything Azriel had got her, everything anyone got her, was always red. Because that was her color, that was her soul. Not blue and delicate, like the piece of jewelry he held in his hands.

Azriel didn’t have to say anything else before she noticed the problem.

“It broke and I don’t know how to fix it. It’s… really important for me. And I need it for tonight. For right now” he rambled, like she had never seen him do. “I stayed working late and now the shop is closed”

“It’s beautiful” she whispered, having seen nothing so soft, so beautiful lately. “How did it break?”

“Doesn’t matter. Can you fix it? Like, right now?”

Azriel could have asked her to go through her own jewels and pick the most beautiful to give it to him, and she would have said yes, because she owned it to him. So she nodded and ushered him inside, with her eyes fixed on the necklace.

She didn’t mention that it was too delicate for him, that it was obviously for a woman. Mor ignored her conflicted thoughts about it as she touched the broken chain.

It only took her thirty minutes to find a chain similar to the original one, and another ten to convince Azriel to take it and don’t worry about it. Any trace of sleep erased from her body as she stared at him. At Azriel looking at the fixed necklace with a crooked smile.

“Who is it for?” she asked finally, as she opened the door for him once more. “Anyone special worth mentioning”

“No one. It’s a family relic, from my mother I think” he explained, looking between her and the open air. As if he couldn’t stand staying in the ground a second longer. “Thank you for fixing it. See you tomorrow, Mor”

Two thoughts were on her mind as she closed the door. The first one, was that she knew for a fact that blue was his color, not his mother’s color. She wore green, purple, black. Dark colors, if the portraits were correct.

The second thought, that was confirmed when she looked at her stunned face in the mirror, was that Azriel hadn’t acknowledge her outfit. A thin, black nightgown that barely covered her thighs, and that other nights had sent the shadow singer stuttering apologies right and left before leaving in a rush.

Amren stared with half-closed eyes at her friends, noticing the change right away.

She usually wouldn’t entertain that type of activities, thinking ‘family game nights’ were a waste of time. But since Feyre appeared in their lives, she had to admit she liked her family better. She liked the way Rhysand softened around her, how at ease he was and how relaxed she made everyone.

True to her habits, Amren had chosen the farthest chair and the most expensive wine, and was watching the night unfold in front of her.

At the begging, she had thought it was weird that Azriel, almost as closed off as her, had walked in with a bright smile on his face. His hair had been ruffled in a windless, summer night, his shoulders wider.

It took him almost an hour to identify the new smell in the room, and find the source around his wrist. Almost unnoticeable between all of the scents combined – yet clear enough for her.

She stared at the black rubber band around his wrist, similar to the ones Cassian wore but not quite the same. Amren made it her mission to unfold the different smells and identify the new ones.

Rhysand’s was dark and fresh, like the night. His was intertwined with a sweeter one, Feyre’s, that smelt like vanilla and power. Raw, beautiful power that Amren admired.

Cassian’s was wild and abundant. He smelt like war camps and sweat, but somehow, like home too. Nesta’s scent was there too, even if the female wasn’t around. Amren could identify her just fine – and the new scent wasn’t hers.

After filtering the rest of presences, she finally focused on the band. Azriel was still unmated, that much she could tell. His was like ashes and candles. And behind all of that, she finally found it – baked bread, fresh food, vegetables.

“What are you looking at?”

Her line of sight was interrupted when Azriel pushed his sleeve farther down his arm, covering the rubber band. He knew where Amren was looking, and Amren knew that the question wasn’t rude. Still, Azriel’s voice held an edge she had only heard in Cassian or Rhysand’s voice before.

She smiled lazily at him before answering, making sure everyone was busy trying to guess what Rhysand was gesturing.

“Nothing, boy”

“You were staring quite hard for being nothing” Azriel replied. He fixed his hazel eyes on her, a hard edge on his features.

“I thought I smelt something on you” she purred, enjoying way too much the way the spymaster tensed. “Have you grown a sweet tooth lately?”

Amren usually didn’t stick her nose where it didn’t belong. She liked her life quiet, and minding other people business wasn’t her thing. Every now and then, she did like riling up Cassian or messing with Mor, but she had yet to play with the shadowsinger.

She respected him just as much, if not more, as the rest of the family. Understood the difficulty of his job, the people’s souls he carried behind. Most of their interactions were friendly and cordial, nothing more.

However, that night she felt like she had found something wort digging in.

“Do they know yet?” she asked him when Azriel didn’t answer.

“That I stopped in my way here to buy food?” even if the irritation and protectiveness fell from his face, a muscle of his jaw twitched. “Yeah. Cassian already ate half of the banana bread”

“He did, now?”

They silently stared at each other for a long minute. She dared him to deny it once more, to tell her that the smell under his sleeve was just from a quick stop to the bakery. He dared her to ask about the rubber band and give him an excuse to leave the game night.

Finally, Amren looked away and answered correctly to what Rhysand was trying to represent with gestures. Cassian got up and quickly started an argument about how to gesture correctly, while Feyre just laughed her ass off and Mor scurried off to bring more wine.

The next time Amren looked at Azriel’s wrist, the rubber band was gone.

The clock chimed five times in a row when the door finally opened, and Rhysand looked up from the papers on his desk. Apparently, he had to write a formal apology to the summer court in Cassian’s account, and certainly, he wasn’t any close to writing it than what he was in the afternoon.

Now, at five o`clock in the morning, his worry had gotten the best out of him. Rhysand had promised himself that, if by the time the sun came up Azriel wasn’t back, he would start destroying Illyrian camps until he found him.

“Before you say anything” Azriel rose a bloodied hand towards the high lord, and no matter how old Rhysand was, he felt his heart plummeting to the ground in worry. “Not my blood. Not even a scratch”

“Hard to believe. You’re leaving a puddle of it in my carpet” his voice was stained, his anger and worry mixing together.

“I…”

For the first time, Rhysand watched Azriel lost at words. The male looked down at his clothes, that were indeed soaked in blood and gore. He was still carrying all his swords and knives. And from where Rhysand stood behind his deck, he could see none of them had been left unused.

He had received a note from Azriel a day ago saying he was going to check on some Illyrian camps for illegal wing clipping, and that he would be gone for a few hours. Since then, Rhysand had had to deal with the worry and panic of not knowing if he was alive, since he closed his mind to Rhys.

Azriel looked back at him, and any type of sermon would have to wait until the morning. Rhysand got up and circled the desk, until he was in front of his friend. Who looked at him with sorrow and pain.

Rhysand didn’t let the surprise of seeing the shadowsinger, the spy master, so vulnerable. He only gripped his shoulder tight.

“What happened?”

“They didn’t even deny it” Azriel admitted, his voice tight. “One of the girls in the village was brave enough to show me where they keep them”

“Keep what?” even if he asked, Rhysand had a feeling he knew.

“The wings. They kept all the wings pinned to a tavern’s wall, like fucking hunting prices. Rhys, they were so… so many. So many”

He knew his brother’s history with the camps. Had seen what they do to women for himself, had fought for years against it. Still, Azriel had always been the calmer one. Cassian often went into carnages when he found an illegal clipping, but Azriel was the one to ask first and kill later. To organize trips into the mountains with reinforcements and not take decisions by himself.

The Azriel covered in blood in front of him, with tears shinning on his eyes, was new.

Rhysand was at loss as words, torn between beating him for his stupidity of leaving alone and going back himself to look for survivors and kill them slower.

“What you did… Az, anything could have happened to you” he tried to reason. “You know better than to do this on your own. What happened?”

“I got a strong hold. Knew where to find them.”

“How?”

Azriel didn’t answer, and Rhysand didn’t need to pry into his mind to know he would find it closed. Sighing, he pulled Azriel close. It didn’t matter that he was staining his clothes too, that Feyre was still waiting for him in bed and that he was ready to drop dead from worry.

Rhysand hugged Azriel and let him grip his vest until it wrinkled, until he was ready to talk. He trusted him with his life, and he had a feeling whatever was what had brought Azriel to that camp wasn’t ready to be shared yet.

He didn’t count the minutes that passed by until his body relaxed between his arms, didn’t acknowledge the wetness on his neck.

“I need to do something”

“What? Unless it’s a fucking bath and – “

“No, I won’t – it’s not what you think” Azriel took a deep breath and locked his eyes with Rhysand. The high lord nodded. “I’ll talk about it tomorrow, I promise. But just tonight, I need you not to ask question. I won’t be sleeping in my dorms”

“You need to take a bath and rest”

“I will take a bath and rest”

Rhysand knew Azriel had an apartment, somewhere. He knew where Mor lived, where Amren had bought a house, but his brother had lived as long as he could remember in the wind house, with him. He didn’t have many personal details, but in the room at the end of the corridor he kept his weapons and clothes.

He even kept the horrible scarf Nesta knitted him last year that everyone else had thrown away.

Before he said anything else, something in his soul told him to shut up. To accept his request, the only one he had done in a long time, and leave the details for the next morning.

“I guess it’s time for me to go home too” he smiled softly. “Just – clean off that blood. And don’t forget to report in the morning. We need to talk”

“We will”

Without further explanation, Azriel disappeared between his shadows. And Rhysand was left with the sudden smell of burnt bread under his nose.

What Feyre missed the most about her human life, and from the spring court, were the quiet walks in nature. The smell of leaves and grass, the sounds of the animals and the absence of other voices. Velaris was a busy place, and even if the people were more than nice, she missed quiet.

Nyx had made sure that his mom never knew quiet again.

He was a happy baby, loud and cheerful, and slept less than any person Feyre had known. Always wide awake, smiling and babbling. Before he even turned one, she had grown used to taking midnight strolls down the Wind House like another routine.

That night, Nyx was playing with her tattooed fingers and munching on his pacifier, still managing to babble some words. Rhysand had gone to bed late and was sleeping in their room, unaware of the night walk. And Feyre, who held Nyx tightly against her chest, felt like falling asleep on her feet.

She was considering turning around and letting Nyx lay awake staring at the ceiling when the baby stopped moving.

“Time for a diaper change?” she guessed, used to that type of silence. “I’ve never met a stricter person when it comes to schedule. Most people use the bathroom at day, you know?”

“Bah”

“Yeah, most people sleep at night, I guess” she sighed.

Still, when she felt his diaper, she found it empty, and after a quick inspection of smell, she discovered it was clean. Through her sleepy haze, she frowned and looked at Nyx. He was pointing to the open door to the kitchen, to the table next to the entrance.

As the rest of the house, the kitchen was empty. Not even Azriel’s shadows, who usually snuck around and entertained Nyx for a while, were there.

Feyre walked inside the kitchen as Nyx became more restless, until the baby was close to the object he pointed at. Then, almost dropping from her embrace, he put his chubby hands on the surface and tried to crawl to his destiny.

“Nyx, baby, it’s late. You already had dinner” she sighed, trying to pull Nyx back.

But as soon as she separated his hands from the table, Nyx let the pacifier drop and whined pitifully. He smacked one rebel hand against Feyre’s cheek, showing her his utter disapproval of the action.

All Feyre needed was another slap to the face before she gave in and let Nyx have his way. She let the baby sitting on the counter, and holding his back, she bent down for the pacifier. When she rose again, Nyx had found his prize – something that certainly didn’t belong to their kitchen, since the most complex food she could make was soup.

Large and thin like a fork, Nyx was holding a kitchen tool made of plastic. It ended in soft peaks, similar to a brush. Similar to the baby brush Feyre used with him.

“Did you winnow that here?” she asked Nyx, not expecting an answer. “Please tell you didn’t steal anything”

Lately, Nyx had picked up his father’s power and was starting to conjure things he wanted or needed. It was cute, whenever it was a toy or a plushie. Last month, it was a very distressed Cassian that fell on Feyre, and it was not cute.

But before she could think about Nyx winnowing the tool, she recognized the already familiar smell of bread and cinnamon. Feyre smiled as Nyx brushed its end against his face, and the baby giggled.

During the next ten minutes, she brushed the tool herself against her baby’s hair, tummy and neck. It might had been a little unhygienic and certainly not very mom-like, but it was getting Nyx to drop his eyes and lean against her.

She ended up carrying the baby asleep on her arms, still gripping the new acquisition tight on his fist.

As Feyre let him rest on the crib and tucked him in, Rhysand finally woke up. He apologized softly for not getting up and urged his mate to get in bed with him. Just before he could fall back into a blissful sleep with his family safe besides him, Feyre spoke.

“Remind me tomorrow to wash that thing and give it back to Azriel’s mate. She’ll be happy to know it also works as a baby wand to sleep”

Feyre drifted off with his back to Rhysand as the male got up from the bed, processing the new information.

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therealslimshakespeare · 2 months ago

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|| Strip Search

Summary: having been tipped off by some inner informant, one of the German officer’s attempts an inspection while the women are at their showers- an altercation ensues.

Warnings 18+ contains mild spoilers: despite the title no such search actually happens, however there’s also an array of other hard things in here. Such as, reference to past rape and medical experimentation, brief suicidal ideation, unwanted pregnancy, violence, threat of strip search, death of a guard dog.

Thank y’all for your patience while I worked at this, it’s got a lot more action than I’m usually comfy with so it grew me, hope it is also enjoyable for you. 🥰 and to miss Christi who helped me overcome my writers block

Edited by my exhausted little eyes, have mercy and lemme know if changes are needed

Circa: Feb 1944, previous fic

Maureen is pleased with how faded the bruises are as they wash. It’s late February, water is frigid, there’s no towels still and yet they finally have showers.

For some it took months for their bruises to fade and Maureen took morbid, officerly interest in their progress. For herself the cuts on her own hips look like jagged white bolts of lightning, harmless tokens of a past no longer of consequence, her hands are marred, mildly misshapen with sickening little pits where there should be nails. But they work.

Gale’s twin cuts on his cheeks have turned purple and remain. He had finally told Maureen of them, how they came to be, a week after Benny already had. One for flak, one for honor. He had kissed her after, as if testing whether she’d want him still. His cuts remain and so do the long winter nights she fights not to panic in, but the want remains, for both of them. It is oddly strong in this tired place.

Lu’s face looks smudged most days but it’s the dusky circles under her tired young eyes and nothing more, nothing fresh, her jaw a clean slate once more. Her breast is jagged and lumpy when she runs the soap over it but no longer hot to touch. The Mercury salve that Maureen forced on her day after day must have done its job. It glittered when they did it under a bulb, Maureen and told her to think of it as war paint, silver on bronze, Lu had broken her first grin in weeks and never fought it again. Even mentioned it when Maureen hadn’t gotten to it that day. It’s jagged but it’s not infected.

One of the sergeants has a swastika cut into her hip, she tried hiding it at first but Maureen has watched during showers as it faded from vibrant crimson to a dull, resigned lavender. Just like Gale’s cheeks. Just like everything in this camp, it’s grown tired and worn and pale.

Except for Ida’s child. Maureen is sure her Colonel’s ruse has not worked, skulking in the corner of showers, always wearing her coat, never mentioning the pains and the hunger and the vomiting -Maureen is pretty sure most of the other women know; they simply don’t speak of it. Smith knows; sweet Lu gives Maureen looks as if asking her to help Ida somehow, as does Gale. Bucky and Brady look at her like she’s a threat. Maureen was once hopeful, then she went mad, now she’s tired. Not even the cold showers hold the capacity to make her feel sorry for herself any longer. She’s too tired for that.

No, instead she watches the bruises, she watches Ida and guards her with her own pale, wane and goose-pimpled body. One little barrier of flesh between their officer and the rest. It’s futile and Maureen finds herself sickly fascinated by watching Ida’s form do anything but shrink in this dismal place. Week after week, same shivering soaking in this damp and gritty shower room but the change is always spectacular.

Miraculous. Sickening.

Ida’s hipbones stick out as always, her hips as lean as a boy’s, but her once meager chest is now swollen into plush handfuls that any starlet might be proud of, the effect is ruined by the caved in hunger of her pronounced sternum.

This, her officer, has grown grotesque.

It did not hit Maureen quite so hard before. She had been scared and aggravated and jealous just as Ida’s symptoms had been vague and nebulous. Looking at the terrifying gnarled dome of Ida’s abdomen, Maureen finds herself sickened by a very sudden rush of reality. It is her own worst fear, to be forced to carry a child made in such evil, to have some entity take up residence inside oneself and leach all vitality and strength from her. For one’s own body, one’s shell to be a threat without any consent from that very being. Today Ida looks unmistakably with child, it is not the bloat of hunger or the curves of a more endowed woman, she is emaciated and yet she is enlarged.

And Maureen knows the thing is not swimming dead in there, Bucky Egan lays his hands on that distended stomach nightly and coos in the privacy of the bunkroom about kicks and flutters as if it were a thing to be celebrated. As if he were its father, as if Ida wants it at all, as if it won’t be shot along with its mother as soon as it’s discovered. Or given to the dogs.

Maureen feels her chest squeezing close to unbearable, it’s not a hard thing to do when so very cold. Blood clots form, hearts enlarge. She finds cold discourages nausea. Nothing like a cold pack to the belly on a hot day, a bottle of bubbly pulled straight from the ice pail and held to the throat. Her stomach is settled, her heart constricts.

They have plans, her friends, both the ones who call it a child and the ones who call it “the current most pressing issue.” They have radios thanks to Smith and Gale and maps and provisions. Fritz the guard, by Maureen's own daring and cajoling, has proven an utter subvert, they have papers forged by the Poles and stamped by Fritz. They look legitimate, they look official, they make out Bucky and Ida to be a farmer and his wife. The time to dare is any day now, and Maureen knows it’s not a moment too soon for Bucky’s mental stability, for Fritz’s job security and for Ida’s likely travail.

Maureen is glad of it, she is glad to have aided it in a small way. She’s sick all the same, since it is all so futile. She is late to help and she is sorry for it, but her mind is unchanged.

At night she dreams of Sergeant Forsyth bleeding out on the cement of the prison floor, mauled to death by the dogs, just out of reach of her friends behind bars; every night Maureen dreams of Forsyth and she dreams of Lu’s torn breast and every night the memory mangles itself into imagination until it is of this child.

A Brady. A German. A child. The current most pressing issue. Torn to pieces. Why waste a bullet.

And still, Maureen cannot bear to think of Ida having to push out the child of one of those men. Not even safe and remote in the Polish woods somewhere with Bucky Egan happily receiving the spawn from between her legs.

Those men and their cruelty will haunt her even then. Maureen used to be jealous of the woman, angry at her recommended demotion from pilot to bombardier, grateful she was not so stubborn or so sober herself. Nothing in the world could make her jealous of Ida Brady now, not when looking at the still mottled skin, marred and scarred by the very hands that made that thing, that grotesque belly.

Ida had gotten into a fight earlier in the week. Maureen wondered and Brady accused her of purposefully trying to harm herself. For all her offers of willingness to help, to abort, to erase, Maureen had no real concept of how to execute them even if accepted. She had not been in the end, and her relief was as strong as her worry. And now Ida had turned to this.

“It’s a life and it’s mine.” Ida had told her, and somewhere along the way Maureen had forgotten the woman might think that, and loath it all the same. When someone jumps off a bridge, warms the bath and slits their wrists, writes a note and closes the garage, they don’t deny it’s life. That the life is theirs. They just can’t bear it anymore.

Looking at Ida, freshly bruised and with a belly so taut the outline of her child’s positioning is in stark relief, Maureen can now so easily imagine her unable to take it. It is grotesque, it is Maureen’s worst nightmare, it is hard to look at it or acknowledge but here it is, large and real and possibly will be gone soon. And Ida is having to bear it.

Maureen wonders if she’ll ever even see her colonel again. Bucky either. Or if they’ll show up in the states when it’s all over with a blonde little girl in tow. Bucky insists it’s a girl -John Brady looks at him with utter grief each time.

Ida says nothing those times. She has come to say less and less. She still speaks to Smith when needed, she will tell Bucky to not be rash, she huddles with her brother and they make each other snicker but there are no other words she finds or uses these days unless it is to ask Maureen her worthless opinion.

Otherwise, Ida Brady has gone quiet.

Except for when she sings. Softly and always a little sad lullaby of a song, folksy and homesick. It makes many of the boys fall asleep. It makes Maureen cry with a pillow smothered over her face and Gale’s hands squeezing her forearm comfortingly. It brings Jack and Bucky’s lungs out of disuse to make a harmony. Crank sometimes, too. It’s the saddest thing in all the world.

“If you miss the train I'm on

You will know that I am gone

You can hear the whistle blow a hundred miles

A hundred miles, a hundred miles

You can hear the whistle blow a hundred miles

Lord, I'm one, Lord, I'm two

Lord, I'm three, Lord, I'm four

Lord, I'm five hundred miles from my home

Not a shirt on my back

Not a penny to my name

Lord, I can't go a-home this a-way

This a-way, this a-way

Lord, I can't go a-home this a-way”

“When are you going to try for it?” Maureen asks her now, hushed voice still echoing loudly in the tiled place, poor water pressure hardly making a splash amongst the line of showers. She should wait to ask in privacy, to respect the delicacy of the escape plans, but she cannot bear this quiet or the gingerly tolerance that has grown up between them lately.

“When the full moon wanes.” Ida answers, only her eyes flick up, wary but searching and she instantly adds. “I wish you could come.”

There were not enough papers or chances. Gale is staying, too. Maureen is less happy with that assurance than she was a month ago. She wants Gale out now. She was mad then at his risks, she is scared now at his resignation. She wants them all out before they die here.

“I want all of you out.” Ida’s voice says it at the same moment, it cracks but not from emotion, she sounds ill. Most of them have some sort of congestion from the cold.

The woman hates being the center of so much risk and expense of life, hates being a jeopardy that requires so much sacrifice when she is the officer, the ranking one who should be last to leave the ship. Maureen thought she’d find that more validating, instead her chest hurts and she will, perhaps, be missing her friend soon. Mourning her, grieving even.

Maureen decides to say what she wanted to say when she thought they were going to die, lined up in the muddy square of Ravensbruck, before survival, religion and bellies, the ever increasing madness of forced proximity along with resurfaced memories and dotted amnesia all drove Maureen to become ugly and bitter. “You’re a rock.” she mumbles the compliment to her colonel as she splashes her armpit free of the burning lye.

“I want you all out.” Ida repeats so guiltily Maureen has to harden her heart not to grow worse than tired and become snappish, it hurts so very much. She was going to be better, she promised Benny that. She thinks of his lies, how good he is with the nice ones.

“We’ll get out. Just you wait and see.” she says, they both know it’s lies, they both know Ida and Bucky will likely be shot a few yards out the gate, and no one will follow, “And your brother’ll be the first one I haul out by the scruff of the neck. Trust me.”

“You’ll look after him, won’t you.” Ida asks but it’s not a question; it’s a compliment even if she knows they won’t get out, she knows Maureen cannot prevent what happens to him anymore than Ida herself has been able to, “You always were so brave that way.”

Brazen. Crude. Liberal. Those are qualities Maureen did not anticipate being called upon for triaging hurt men. Boys that she liked, respected even, boys she wanted safe and not even aware of such cruelty. Jack’s bruises do not fade with the others, they start small but grow ugly and larger day after day along his forearms, needle holes festered and lips gone violet. He won’t let Maureen check anywhere further, she wonders if he’s let Ida.

“You know I will.” Maureen swears, because she will try, “Buck said the Kommandant was inclined to intervene.” she adds hopefully and all it does is send the most wretched look across Ida’s face. Lateness in these cases is too late, Maureen would know, she thinks of her own brother, his innocence and his spark and a little late was too late to really matter.

“It’ll be better when I’m out.” Ida rehearses to herself. She sounds so much like Jack in these moments it makes Maureen’s skin crawl. “He’s doing so much of this so we can -can have supplies.”

To escape, to live in the wilderness, to raise a child on the edge of the world.

Maureen comes alongside her, wondering what she’d have liked someone to say to her the day she found she had to protect her brother from her uncle, from her priest, and even her father in some small way. When she found out and yet couldn’t ever seem to manage it like she wanted, she had cursed her mother then, for being gone and she kept on cursing her and the specter of her in every woman since, stranded ever since with the guilt that gnawed where a beating heart should be. “You’ll make good on his trust, Colonel.” she squeezed Ida’s hardened bicep under the spray, an arresting comfort, because Jack was different from Lance and he wasn’t a kid and he wasn’t Maureen’s to fuck up, “You’ll get out of here and we’ll close ranks and he’ll be fine. He’ll make it, too.”

“You been playin’ poker with Smith again?” Ida turns her face to her, hair grown out just long enough to cut across her forehead and temples in ink-like slashes, “You’re getting awful good at bluffing.”

Maureen grins back, “Always was sir, just lost it for a bit.”

Ida regarded her for a minute with a half endeared look Maureen realized with a jolt she had not seen since Thorpe Abbots, not directed at her at least.

“Sorry about your cheeks.” Ida muttered, almost bashful.

Maureen’s hands flew up to her cheekbones out of instinct, the bruises from the book long gone and the incident left behind over a month ago. It was like Ida to let things bother her months later; when Maureen tried imitating her in that exercise she found herself utterly exhausted. “Even, like that,” she nodded to Ida’s swollen belly, “you hit harder than the gestapo.”

Seemed like a good thing to say, the way the remorse left Ida’s face and a wry look of pride warped her lips briefly. She looks painfully like her brother with her swan neck strained in the cold and the chopped length of her hair flopping into her eyes.

“You should let me trim up your hair before you go.” Maureen realized, her hand gingerly darting out to rake the hacked off locks back from her eyes, only to hesitate at the last minute in unsurety if the familiarity was welcome anymore.

Ida simply leans her forehead into Maureen’s palm and the world settles alright and forgiven in her chest: trust.

“Make it one of those chic little cuts?” Ida suggested.

“Chicest farmer’s wife this side of the rhine.” Maureen agreed, “You’ll have everyone wondering why you settled for that oaf, Egan.”

There was the saddest flash of mirth on her face for a brief instant. “Tell me straight then-“ Ida began with a crease to her brow that promised a talk about logistics, but just then a commotion outside drew their attention.

It was not uncommon for whoever was guarding the door to have a spirited bit of chirping with any hapless passersby, sometimes an argument over shower times with some batch of men who didn’t care about giving the women privacy, or worse, a full on altercation over the same. There were no locks on the inside of the drafty room, making the boys’ guarding presence essential, and so far, always effective. It was Crank and Demarco on duty today, and Maureen strained to hear their words as their voices rose outside, more than typical.

“You finish, I'll go look.” Maureen muttered, patting Ida’s arm and going to dress as her paltry shower was in fact complete.

She was shrugging on her sweater, great coat in hand, when she pressed her eye to the slat, a gust of northwestern wind and the sight of guards on the steps giving her a shock. Benny wasn’t letting them by, and that was the only reason they weren’t in here already, and that reason could be put aside with a shove or a bullet. She sees one of the krout officers reach for his sidearm as he goes up the first step, toe to toe with Crank on the second, and that was all Kendeigh needed to swivel round and yell at her girls to dress. She can see their miffed and startled faces, too morosely caught up in their cleanliness to even notice the impending danger. Most of them are stark naked, except for the few who are trying to use the few flight suits left as towels. Ida doesn’t even turn off her tap, she charges towards the hooks on the opposite wall and Maureen realizes the farce is quite over, every single girl here has seen that belly now.

She puts her eye back to the gap in the slats. Crank is closer than last time, his sleeve almost by her eye on the other side of the wall, she guesses he’s trying to hold onto the door handle. Benny is in an officer’s face, baiting death. It’s not a situation that will last peaceably for many more seconds. There’s side arms out, a dog straining at the leash.

Maureen feels a rustling by her side and she could have guessed who it was before an accented voice mutters beside her, “How’re we going to secure this.” Sanchez is shrugging on a coat while keenly eyeing the wooden loops this side of the door, loops usually capable of holding a board as a lock, one on each door, sliding a beam through makes it impressively strong. But like all things in this place, security is absent, there’s no beam, no pole, no nothing, the wooden rings are empty and without the presence of their securing beam they look mockingly like handles.

“Doors open in.” Maureen reminds her. It’s not an excuse, they’ll have to find a way to lock them, keep them closed, they both know that.

Crank can’t hang on when he’s been shot.

That’s a cold truth that simply settles and Maureen once again tastes the feeling of going up, of sitting in the glass nose, rocking her eye against the rim of the bombsight, bruised cheekbones from the jarring turbulence of deathly flak bursts; it's foggy, faint and nostalgic but it’s an enjoyable cocktail nonetheless, one she’s missed: bold flavors of action hitting the tongue, washed down by responsibility, afternotes of terrified vitality.

“They’re onto the belly.” Sanchez is saying, listening to the useless argument Benny is holding with a pistol pointed at his chest, buying time like only a man that brave and that smart can.

The belly, Sanchez says -it’s not a baby here. That’s what Maureen had been trying to say before. She feels like she and Sanchez might’ve been real tight in another life. As is, they're about to die together trying to keep shower doors shut a little longer so that Ida can get shot a little later.

There’s a gunshot outside. It goes through the eaves of the roof and Maureen doesn’t really think when she decides to thread her arm through the wooden rings and makes a fist. Crouched towards the room, and half starved into willowy thinness, she gets the whole limb through there, one wooden ring at her shoulder, another right above her elbow. Her back to the door. Arm as a beam. She saw a picture of a princess doing this for the royal nursery when she was a precocious child, raiding her aunt's library. It comes to her now. The impulse. It’s always fucking childhood, everything she does these days is some gut impulse from some fucking childhood memory.

Sanchez looks at her like she’s mad, then grips Maureen’s wrist with truly maniacal determination. She gets it, Maureen thinks with relief. Sanchez will hold onto Maureen’s arm when they push, and it won’t last long but it’ll be something. “It’ll snap.” Sanchez observes, staring at Maureen’s strained elbow.

She feels the first push of someone trying the door, expecting less resistance. It’s just a cursory push. Maureen braces her back and gets ready for pain. She’d handle it better if half the girls weren’t still naked and panicking.

Including Ida, who’s only managed her trousers and shirt, belly utterly obvious beneath some man’s borrowed drab. It makes Maureen froth with anger.

“No!” Is all Ida says when she notices Maureen’s bizarre configuration as human barrier, rushing at her in horror, “you let me out and I’ll give myself up.” Ida is saying and Maureen cannot believe she’s not gotten her fucking coat on yet. “I’m who they want.”

Maureen thinks she laughs. Because the idea of trading Ida for months in here without Ida is a good joke. The logic of the escape doing the same somehow doesn’t settle. Maureen’s only feeling is rage, her impending sacrifice of a good arm is likely to be in vain if her colonel doesn’t put a fucking coat on soon. Real soon. There’s a pounding on the door at her back.

They’re giving them the courtesy of knocking. Next they’ll shoot at the door. Sanchez actually looks ready to take Ida up on this stupid fucking martyrdom. Her grip loosens on Maureen’s wrists, looking relieved that she doesn’t have to serve as one half of this gruesome, human lock.

“Fucking hold on.” Maureen snaps at her, and Sanchez does, after throwing Ida Brady a look that suggests she is to blame for this and she’d happily serve her on a platter to the thugs outside. That’s about all Maureen’s fuzzy, battle primed mind needs to give her steel in her madness; they didn’t get this far, they didn’t fall apart and glue each other back together, they didn’t befriend German guards and allow German doctors to hurt their best just to roll over when they got tested. “Nobody gets searched, nobody gets handed over. We said not again.” She looks past Ida and directly at Lu Smith, who is actually visibly shaking she’s so scared, and still half naked, but her eyes look like they’re of the same mind.

That’s Maureen’s ticket, she can count on Lu wanting to die with her rather than go through it again. Rather than hand Ida over. “Smith,” he grits out, “get the colonel’s coat. All of you, the hell is wrong with you? — get your fucking coats on.”

Vaguely she can hear the German officer on the other side telling her to let them in, that he can hear them talking in here. That it’s just a customary inspection. She feels Sanchez tighten her grip on her wrist and wonders from afar how many places along her arm will break from this. If Gale will come out to see what all the commotion is about. If the Kommandant ordered this or if this is one of the guards' ideas of being a proactive subordinate.

There’s the rattle of the door behind her back. A push and mounting pressure.

Foggy, fuzzy, somewhere between waiting for it to be over and waiting for it to calm down, because being over never meant it didn’t still hurt, it will hurt just as bad for a few minutes after- Maureen learned that quickly, she learned to stay away after the pain, long enough for the tearing reality to hit less, and so she waits. She’s good at waiting for it to be over. And when it’s over she’ll feel it then, that heady rush of coming back into the body, that nerve wracking and tingly feeling of being aware again and mad as hell about it. It dulls the pain, it collects a terrible collateral of innocent bystanders, but it's better than remembering the thing itself. Until then, she waits and gets ready to float away. And if she screams it’s all lost in the gunshots and Sanchez’ yell and the commotion of everyone else who doesn’t want this to happen.

She hears the crunch, that part she can hear and she can feel others around, finally some fucking help, other girls throwing themselves at the door, pushing back, giving just a tiny bit of room for Maureen’s nerveless arm. They’re all in their overcoats, the ones piling on the door, stepping between her skidding legs, shoving their shoulders into the wood alongside Sanchez. Maureen thinks if she was really here for this, she’d be feeling pride. It’s nice to not be alone, it’s nice to have a pack, it’s nice to know she is not alone in feeling feral and discontent with this sorta of death. This is how she wanted to go in the yard in Ravensbruck when all her friends stood quietly in line and all but allowed it to happen- if that had been the plan. This time she’s not alone, there’s girls with their teeth barred and arms that are braced and solid as steel in their desperation. Dying alone isn’t just about numbers, it’s about mentality, too. It feels rather like when the fort got toasted, knowing they were done for but all of them done for together and none of them wishing otherwise. It was worth staying in a nose-diving B17 to be together rather than jump and die alone in the wide blue sky.

Maureen hears the shot.

She doesn’t know how it is but the ones that hit somehow have a peculiar ring to them, like they’ve got an invisible decibel attached that heralds their purpose. This solitary shot, amongst a load of lead thrown at them was made to strike home. Sergeant Abott, Maureen thinks it is, slumps down beside Maureen, looking unharmed due to the layers of her greatcoat, but her hand pressed to her hip tells where the damage was done. She looks more angry than pained but she doesn’t get to her feet again.

“Sweet Jesus, they've got a gun to Crank.” -Maureen doesn’t know who says it but it explains the sudden lack of agony. She tells herself not to come back yet but the curiosity nags. Cowards! -of course the German fucks would abandon an unlocked door with a bunch of girls behind it to put a gun to a stray Captain’s head.

Dimly through hazed eyesight, Maureen can see Ida speaking to Abbot who's now on the floor, they’re interrupted by Sanchez and then those two go at it, crack for crack and Ida’s rank comes out on top.

Everyone is in their coats. It’s the only comfort for Maureen when Lu Smith grabs hold of her unharmed shoulder and begins to pull her away from her death spot. “Shh, shh we’re gonna bargain it out.” Lu tells her as she tries to fight against the unwanted rescue but Sanchez has abandoned her too, Maureen’s wrist is limp and unheld, hardly attached to her when it threads back through the wooden rings, and Lu keeps ahold of it as it slinks out, boneless and revolting even to herself.

“Kendeigh, hang on.” Ida tells her through the fog that comes when reality tries to come back too soon, and Maureen wants to beg her not to do this, not to give herself up after all this.

Fuck’s sake, Brady, let some sore sucker die for you for once.

Laying on the floor, with Lu’s gentle hands holding her mangled limb together, Kendeigh feels the whipping rush of weather when the door opens, it shouldn’t feel so close to betrayal to see it thrown wide but it hits that way anyway. There’s about five guards on the step, sideways in her line of vision, and Benny is telling Murph, who must be somewhere out of sight, to “go get Cleven. Now!” Maureen’s curiosity regarding the Kommandant is relieved- he isn’t there. It’s just some rogue officer and his little minions, chomping at the bit to invade them at showers.

“What is it that you needed us so urgently?” Ida is tall enough to be toe to toe with the officer on the threshold and it takes the pressure off Crank who’s poor threatened head gets set free. “You’ve shot one of my girls.”

“You resisted inspection.” He returned.

“Because you violated agreed conduct.” Ida shot back. “We were showering.”

The man shook his head, “Others do not get immunity from random searches. Why should you?”

“Because we have been guaranteed such.” Ida was saying as Maureen drew up her legs from beneath her and made a go at kneeling, aided by Lu’s hand at her back.

Demarco had shifted closer on the steps and Maureen met his eyes, the way he clocked her injuries and searched Lu for the same, back down to Abbott who did not rally from her place on the floor. “Smith,” Maureen gritted out, “put some pressure on Abbott’s hip.”

Maureen stood up with difficulty, her entire arm a mass of throbbing flames that hung too limp and heavy from her shoulder, she staggered briefly before one of her girls righted her.

“Egan is comin’.” Benny added to the argument Ida and the officer were having. “Clarke will be right behind. Let’s all just- fucking cool it.” he suggested, pointedly at the German whose position was growing more precarious as attention gathered outside the showers.

The German chose not to cool it, with the short calculation of a very petty and none too bright man, he slipped the leash on his dog before Maureen could even blink. The vicious thing bounded in and latched onto the first overcoat it could focus on, snarling and yanking with its steel jaws, ripping the heavy wool and exposing fragile flesh beneath. Before any of them could do more than jump, Benny was on the dog, hand in his collar like the snarling thing was his own pet, his knees aimed in a devastating strike on its under ribs. The animal gave a wheezed howl from the breakage and let go of its would-be victim, jaws snapping wildly at Benny who was just out of reach.

“The hell is goin’ on?” Egan’s sudden presence in the showers and his bellowed demand shook the group. “Put that fuckin’ gun up, put it up. The hell is goin’ on here?” he addressed the German officer, who stood there with his pistol still half out of his holster and his eyes darting from Bucky’s towering form to the trapped dog beneath Benny’s knees.

He rallied, briefly as if remembering suddenly who was prisoner and who guard, “Inspection.”

“Not durin’ showers, ya don’t.” Bucky volleyed back. “Been agreed, ya little over eager beaver. Shot two of my girls over this?”

“M’not’shhhot.” Kendeigh tried to assure but it came out thick and slurred and likely lost under the noises of Benny’s exertions and the dog’s dwindling whines. The overlapping talking was cacophonous, echoing and surreal in the tiled room. The wind that had been so frigid seeping in through the gaps now poured in through the open door and froze the puddles ‘around the drains as they swirled. Maureen couldn’t feel her arm anymore, she couldn’t feel much of anything.

But Ida was still standing there, right within reach, her coat on, Bucky next to her. It would be alright.

For today.

“The doctor was given a lead-“ the officer protested.

“You obey the doctor now?” Bucky snapped back and before that line of reasoning could be continued, the sound of jackboots crunched outside and the Kommandant himself came in view, Colonel Clarke beside him, lockstep as if mutually offended by this breach of order.

Maureen watched the two German officers level back and forth, their men watching, Hans part of the newly arrived party backing up the commander. The officer’s pistol was returned fully to its holster.

“A misunderstanding.” The Kommandant assured Colonels Clarke and Brady in turn, his observant gaze taking in Abbot and Kendeigh’s bloodied hands and Benny still retraining the snarling dog. “There are rumors, our doctor is concerned. Female issues, ja? Pregnancies. I trust none of you would be so stupid?”

He looked over the women and there was, as if by joint consensus, a violent shudder passing through them in denial.

“Your government fixed you, no doubt.” The Kommandant looked satisfied with his own assurance and it made Lu shoot Maureen a hazed look of shock. “So there will be no trouble, ja?”

“We won’t strip.” Maureen croaked. “If that’s what the inspection’s about. We won’t.”

An irritated look crossed the Kommandant’s face, as if he found the subject more unsavory than truly concerning. “It will not be necessary. This was carried out without authority. Those not needing medical care may go. You-“ he pointed to her specially, “should see our doctor. Her too.” -to Abbot. “Unless you protest even that?”

It hung there, a dare and a challenge. Ida’s face blanched briefly; the doctor an ever sore subject in this place but to Bucky, who had as little awareness of the rumbling subterfuges and threats from the doctor as the cat under their shack, it seemed a perfectly plausible choice. Maureen saw him look at her with exasperated expectancy and steeled herself with his own naïveté. If she refused, it would look bad for them all. If she went, even if the doctor proved himself interested not just in catholic school boys but in used up debutants too, it would in a way be working for them- proving her to be truly infertile. Barren as the ground outside, stomach flat as a pancake. One girl searched, it was better than pushing the point, it would buy Ida time.

“I need a doctor.” she agreed with a grin, trying to flap her crushed arm for emphasis and finding she had very little motor skills left. “Abbot worse.”

“Good.” The Kommandant looked cheered now Bucky had ceased to glower with all the rage of a fury unleashed, the matter resolved with a single clap of the man’s black leather gloves, “Hans,” he addressed the boy, “put that dog down. Colonel Clarke, there will be damages to be paid.”

Maureen watched Benny turn his face away, hand shaking in the collar when Hans' tall boots stopped short of the half dead animal. A single shot ran out, the wheezing whines stopped. “C’mon Lu, it’s over.” she heard a Benny mutter to the girl as he got up with a stiff grunt, sounding like he himself wasn’t so alright either.

“Kendeigh-“. Ida muttered low, sidling up to her, hand on her unmaimed shoulder and a deep concern Maureen had only associated with Gale brimming in her eyes, “That d-“

“I need that doctor.” Maureen croaked back, assuming her meaning, “Abbot even worse,” she repeated, “who’ll you send with her? Smith? Nah, Ida, I’ll go. Fucking testicular humanoid of a surgeon doesn’t even care about us women, you know that. Be fine.”

“I was going to say,” Ida pressed on, eyes looking very steely hazel and even a little gentle under the film of what might have been tears had Maureen any surety in her own foggy observances left, “that door business? More insane than your flying that Stearman under the bridge in Boise.”

Maureen’s world fuzzed a little harder, training memories and the mellowed thrill of a dared stunt coursing diluted but present through her veins, “Oh.” she felt drunk with it. “Oh that.” she knew her face was splitting in a smile, it was a traitor like that, always when Ida was being earnest.

“Stupidest, bravest, fucking idiot.” Ida gripped her once bruised cheeks and shook her with each saying, lean musicians’ hands, hands that could pull a bomber from a nose dive, hands that had wrenched open a jammed door, “I’ll have some of that hooch for you when you get back.”

The thought of liquor and the warm relief it promised made Maureen think life half worth the living again. Poor Abbott could use some, too. Unharmed but oh so cold with her white skin and violet veins and lips of iris blue, Maureen could only think of Ida, how it might tint her cheeks if she had some. She wanted that for her. “Y’shou’d try some.”

Ida gave her a smile, sad but agreeable, like she was thinking of a longer game plan than Maureen could imagine. “Maybe I will.”

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onceuponapuffin · 10 months ago

Text

Fanatic Intervention Part 7!!!

Beginning|| Previous || Next

It will not surprise you at all, dear Reader, to learn that Aziraphale keeps very little in his kitchen cupboards. There is no stove or oven, and the only thing in the fridge is milk (for his tea no doubt). When you start opening cupboards, you find one pack of custard creams, and a second one of chocolate digestives. Well, it will have to do. You find yourself a small plate and fill it half and half before heading back into the shop just in time to say goodbye to Anathema and Newt.

As they leave, you turn to the supernatural entities in the room.

“So,” You say, “If we’re going to the States, then we have a few problems. First, I don’t have my passport or any ID at all, so airport security is going to be fun. Second, I have no money. Third, I’m gonna need a Walmart or something because I don’t even have a toothbrush, my dudes. Fourth, these,” You indicate the cookies, “are fine for a snack, but overall they’re not gonna cut it.”

“You just leave the airport security to us,” Aziraphale replies. You make a note that he glided right past ‘my dudes,’ they’re getting used to you already. Dammit. “As for the rest of it,” Aziraphale continues, “I suppose a trip to Tesco’s is in order.”

Crowley produces a shiny black credit card from nowhere and hands it to you. “We’ll take the Bentley,” he says. He starts to stand, but you shake your head.

“Nuh-uh, you both stay here,” You say. Crowley raises his eyebrow.

“You realize we can take care of ourselves,” he says, “We’ve been doing it for a few millennia.”

“I’m not talking about that,” You say, “Look, what we’re going into is really dangerous. And I know that your pattern is to just wait to talk about things until you’re in the clear, but that’s not a good idea anymore. I mean, I get that I’m not exactly an expert, but I read just as much as you do and I’ve heard a million stories by this point in my life, and in NONE of them do people ever say ‘I’m so glad I never told them how I feel’ - you know? It’s always ‘I wish I would have’ or ‘I should have told them every day.’ So Muriel and I will go ask Maggie to take us to Tesco, and you two need to talk. Please. While it’s safe, while you have the chance, before things get dangerous and possibly deadly.”

Crowley and Aziraphale are silent. You notice that they aren’t looking at each other. Well, you’ve done your best. Now you need to trust them.

At this point, dear Reader, you are probably thinking to yourself ‘well I would snoop and spy on them while they talk! I want to watch them make out!’ But here is the thing – in this world they are real people, not characters. It’s one thing to say that you would creep on them from the other side of this fiction, but when they’re very real and looking at you in person, things are a little different. For one thing, you realize that real people deserve things like boundaries and privacy, especially for sensitive conversations.

And so, you take Muriel over to Maggie’s shop, where you explain that Mr. Fell has sent the two of you on an errand and you need to stop for dinner somewhere and have no idea where anything is. You flash her the credit card and say ‘It’s all on me,’ and she conveniently agrees with a look on her face that says something like ‘least they could do after all that shit they put us through.’

So the three of you go for dinner at the nearest Weatherspoons, where you and Maggie eat while Muriel watches in morbid fascination. Then you all take the bus to Tesco where you buy yourself a small wardrobe, and manage to coax Muriel into some light blue jeans and an argyle jumper so they look a little less like the Beacon of Gondor. You quickly find out that Muriel has an adorable fascination with fuzzy socks, novelty mugs, and coloured pencils. Of course, you enable their fascinations with a happy heart, and as an afterthought, you grab them a small pot of orange daisies from the flower section. It will give them something alive to tend to while you’re gone. Muriel appreciates the thought. All in all, it’s a long but good time.

You don’t know about the talk, and you’re worried about asking when you get back.

THAT BEING SAID

You and I, dear Reader, not actually being in that world, are allowed certain privileges.

The bookshop is silent for a long time. Both of them are thinking, digesting, processing. Feelings are hard to feel, and harder to put into words. Especially when it has been made clear, twice now in the span of a number of hours, that you absolutely need to put them into words.

It isn’t until after Crowley notices you, Muriel, and Maggie heading down the street that he stands up and begins to pace. A few more minutes pass before he speaks.

“So...uhm...are you going to go first or should I?”

“Are we...are we actually going to do this? Have this talk I mean?” Aziraphale has been shelving books to try and take the edge off. Now he puts down the book in his hands and absent-mindedly fidgets with his ring.

“Well, I mean we don’t have to,” Crowley says, aiming for non-chalance and missing ever-so-slightly, “No one can actually make us.”

“Yes, except it feels very much like everyone is trying to.”

“Trying is the key word there.”

“That’s true enough I suppose.”

The silence returns and stretches. It is anything but comfortable. The air is full of words that they have been told they should say, words that perhaps they want to say, but words that have been dammed up with fear and uncertainty for so long now that they’ve become very hard to un-stick. After a while, Aziraphale clears his throat and speaks.

“I, erm, I suppose you had better go first.”

“Me, right, okay.” Crowley clears his throat now and stops his pacing near the desk. He looks down at the scattered papers and books, the pens and photos and newspaper clippings. The assorted clutter of Aziraphale’s life. Looking away makes it easier to start. He takes a breath. “Um..right...well...we’ve known each other a long time. We’ve been on this planet a long time – you and me, I mean. I’ve always been able to rely on you, and you’ve always relied on me,” another breath, “We’re a team, yeah? A group of the two of us. And...erm...we pretend that we aren’t. Always have. Safer that way I guess.” He looks up at Aziraphale. The angel isn’t looking at him, but he nods anyway to show that he’s listening. Crowley continues. “And I mean...I’ve tried not to think about it much before but...but it would be nice, I mean, UGH” He takes off his sunglasses and rubs a hand over his eyes as though he can massage the words and make them easier to say. “I mean, I would like to spend...mmm….I would like to spend the rest not pretending anymore. Be an us. I mean,” suddenly the dam breaks, and Crowley finds the words come tumbling out, “If Gabriel and Beelzebub can do it, we can. We don’t need Heaven or Hell, they’re both toxic. We can be an us, on our side. You and me. What do you say?” He looks at Aziraphale without reservation now. His angel looks back at him, eyes wide. When he does speak, it’s with a smile and a small nod of acknowledgment rather than agreement.

“That was very well done Crowley,” he says. This isn’t an answer.

“Nnyeah, thanks. Your turn though.”

“Right, I suppose it is.” Aziraphale takes a moment to gather himself. After hearing Crowley be so open about this, he feels more resolved himself to do this properly. He faces Crowley and folds his hands to keep himself grounded. “Crowley,” he begins, “I...I wish that this conversation were happening under better circumstances. Although it’s been pointed out that ideal circumstances aren’t a promise that we can wait around for. Well, the thing is that I would like the same thing. Very much in fact. My biggest concern by far is for your safety because, well, frankly I don’t see the point in saving the world again if you’re not around to enjoy it with me. An us, as you said. You and me.” He smiles. Crowley smiles.

“Guess we’d better save the world together then. And try not to die.”

“Yes, quite.”

“Aziraphale?”

“Yes, Crowley?”

“You’re my angel. No one else.”

“And you, my wiley serpent. No one else.”

The shop bell dings.

“We’re baaaaaack!” You sing as you waltz through the door, shopping bags in hand. Muriel follows after you, carefully carrying their daisies. “Did you miss us?”

When you eventually get the courage to ask them about their talk later, you get a “ngk” from Crowley, and a “We’ve said all that needs to be said, for now.” from Aziraphale. And that, you suppose, will have to do.

❤️ ❤️ ❤️ ❤️ 🖤

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sweetblinginrose · 1 month ago

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stay away from me, lestrange!

(Neville Longbottom x fem¡OCLestrange)

warnings: It mentions torture, death, bullying, abuse, evil, distress…

words: 2,5k

a/n: it’s a bit of an introduction, sorry, the good stuff is coming, i promise.

my main language is not English.

masterlist previous chapt. next

━━ ✧♡✧ ━━ ✧♡✧ ━━ ✧♡✧ ━━

Chapter four: Belladona

“I don’t understand how you can keep going to that Muggle house when you could perfectly well live here, with all of us…” Draco commented, his tone hovering between incredulity and reproach. His pale eyes settled on his cousin Morwenna, who remained expressionless, her gaze fixed on the plate of gourmet food in front of her. The tableware, pristine and adorned with intricate gold details, only served to highlight the contrast with her mood. She had no appetite. In fact, she hadn’t felt hungry in weeks, lost in thoughts that had consumed her ever since that day in the library.

She barely paid attention to Draco’s words, which seemed to reach her from a distant fog. Deep down, she knew he was right: life in Malfoy Manor was, at least on the surface, comfortable, safe, and luxurious. But neither safety nor luxury could dispel the knot forming in her chest every time she remembered that argument, those furtive glances, and the secret she still couldn’t share with anyone. Not even Harry, who, incidentally, was risking his life in those absurd and dangerous Triwizard Tournament games. How could she think about anything else when her friend was facing deadly trials that only served to feed the magical community’s morbid fascination?

But Draco didn’t understand—or rather, he didn’t want to understand. He kept badgering her with his opinions, as if he believed he could shape her to his will. Worse still, he had started insisting on something Morwenna found unbearable: Viktor Krum. According to Draco, the famous Bulgarian Seeker was an ideal candidate for her, “worthy of her lineage,” he would say with his characteristic air of superiority. What Draco didn’t understand was that Morwenna neither needed nor wanted anyone deciding for her. And least of all turning her love life into yet another tool to reinforce the Malfoys’ blood purity obsessions.

Tired of her cousin’s words, Morwenna did nothing but keep her gaze fixed on her plate. The meat, perfectly cooked and seasoned, hardly seemed like food to her. The pure silver cutlery in her hands felt cold, just like the light that bathed the immense dining table, a distant light devoid of warmth, seeping into every corner of that place. She toyed with the cutlery, twirling it between her fingers as if it were harmless, but in her mind, a storm raged. As Draco continued speaking, his voice faded into the background like a useless echo, growing more distant and more irrelevant with each passing second.

In that moment, Morwenna wasn’t at that table; she was trapped in her own thoughts, her own ghosts, in a world where neither Draco nor his obsession with lineage had any place.

Morwenna couldn’t shake the firm voice of Neville from her mind. It was like a persistent echo, resonating in her head over and over again. She had never heard him speak like that before. Neville Longbottom, the boy who always seemed shy, almost invisible amidst the chaos of Hogwarts, was no longer the submissive boy she remembered. There was something different about him, something that unsettled her and, at the same time, intrigued her.

As Draco’s words continued to flow uninterrupted, Morwenna drifted again into that memory. Her thoughts soon veered toward something much darker, something she didn’t want to relive but that returned to her with the force of a storm: the Ravenclaw’s hands. She closed her eyes briefly, as if that simple gesture could banish the sensation from her mind. But it was useless. The memory of that moment seemed to have left a mark she couldn’t erase, no matter how hard she tried.

It was only when the clatter of silverware against her plate snapped her back to reality that she noticed Draco was still talking. His usual tone, full of superiority and enthusiasm, was starting to pierce through the barrier of her thoughts.

“… So, what do you think? Should I tell him? I’m sure you two would be the best at the ball!” Draco exclaimed, with a confidence as absolute as it was irritating.

Morwenna slowly raised her gaze, barely focusing on him, while her mind was still struggling to push away the images that haunted her. “Yes, yes, whatever…” she murmured at last, too drained to argue, too weary to contradict him.

Draco’s face lit up instantly, as if his cousin’s indifferent words were precisely the approval he’d been waiting for. “Perfect! I knew you’d see it my way!” he remarked with a polite smile, tilting his head slightly in triumph.

While Draco celebrated to himself, Morwenna let out a soft sigh. Though her cousin was delighted, she couldn’t shake the heavy feeling that enveloped her. Her thoughts, always so insistent, slipped back once again to the echo of Neville’s voice and the shadow of that memory she so desperately wanted to forget. Morwenna stood in front of the entrance to the Gryffindor common room, her expression as cold as the stone walls of the castle. Facing her, with a mocking grin and an air of careless confidence, was Cormac McLaggen—the boy who had recently become the center of countless rumors in the corridors of Hogwarts. One particular rumor had brought her here: the blatant lie that he and Morwenna had kissed.

“Who do you think you are?” Morwenna snapped, her voice laced with a restrained fury that could rival the roar of a lion, even though she wasn’t a Gryffindor. Her eyes sparkled dangerously as she pointed a perfectly manicured finger at him, her nails gleaming under the warm light of the torches.

Cormac, instead of backing down, simply raised an eyebrow and smirked, as if her anger was more amusing than threatening. “Oh, come on, Morwenna, don’t be like that. It’s just a bit of fun. Who’s it hurting, really? A little rumor never killed anyone,” he said, his tone dripping with condescension that almost made her lose her temper entirely.

“I didn’t even know you existed until a few days ago,” she shot back sharply, every word cutting like a blade. Her finger remained pointed at him, as if she could pierce through his arrogant facade with the sheer force of her glare.

For a moment, Cormac’s confidence seemed to falter, but he quickly recovered, leaning slightly toward her with a smile that was meant to be charming but only served to irritate her further. “Really? Well, it seems like now you know exactly who I am. And admit it, the rumor isn’t that far-fetched, is it? It could’ve happened…”

Morwenna felt anger surge through her like an uncontrollable wildfire. She closed her eyes briefly, taking a deep breath to keep herself from completely losing her composure. “I’ll say this once, McLaggen. If I hear you spreading anything like that about me again, you’ll regret it. I don’t have time for attention-seeking children,” she said, her voice icy enough to make even Cormac tense slightly.

Cormac narrowed his eyes, his mocking grin twisting into a scowl of irritation. Morwenna’s defiant attitude no longer amused him; his wounded ego was beginning to show in the way he tilted his head and furrowed his brow.

“Oh, yeah?” he shot back, his voice now laced with venom. “Well, that’s not what some of the guys are saying…”

A chill ran down Morwenna’s spine, but she refused to let it show on her face.

“I’ve heard you’ll kiss just abut anyone,” he continued with cruel satisfaction, savoring each word as he studied her with eyes glinting with arrogance. “And, well… it wouldn’t hurt if I joined that list, would it?” he added, his tone dripping with suggestion as he stepped closer.

That was the final straw.

Before she could even process the disgust rising inside her, her body moved on pure instinct. In an instant, her wand was raised, aimed directly at McLaggen’s face.

“Slugulus Eructo!” she cast, her voice steady and blazing with fury.

The spell hit him squarely, and within seconds, Cormac doubled over, his expression shifting from smug to horrified. A sickening, wet sound filled the corridor as the first slug wriggled out of his mouth, followed by another… and another. His face turned pale with revulsion and rage as he fell to his knees, gagging and retching.

Morwenna watched him with a mix of satisfaction and disdain. “That’s the closest you’ll ever get to kissing a girl, you creep,” she spat, her voice carrying through the corridor with such force that several heads turned.

From the Gryffindor common room, a few students peeked out to see what was happening, while in the nearby hallways, conversations fell silent. A ripple of murmurs spread among those witnessing the scene, stunned by the confrontation—and even more so by the punishment Morwenna had just dealt to McLaggen.

But she was no longer there to hear their whispers or see their stares.

The anger that had burned so fiercely just moments ago vanished in an instant, leaving behind something much heavier, much more suffocating. Something inside her cracked at that moment, something that yanked her back to the memory she had fought so hard to bury.

Cormac’s words, his tone, his arrogance… it all reminded her too much of that day in the library.

Her eyes burned with tears before she could stop them. A crushing wave of helplessness hit her so hard she felt like she couldn’t breathe.

Without another word, without even looking back, she spun on her heel and ran—away from the crowd, away from their stares, away from the pain threatening to consume her.

The minutes crawled by as Morwenna hid in the west courtyard, a secluded corner of the castle where few ever ventured. The cool afternoon air brushed against her skin, but it did nothing to ease the burning in her chest or stop the tremors in her hands. She hugged herself tightly, trying to stifle the sobs that still escaped her lips.

It was a quiet place—almost too quiet—save for the sound of her own crying and the soft whisper of the wind stirring the dry leaves scattered across the ground. But then, another sound made her tense. A crunch. The distinct crackling of leaves being stepped on.

Her body reacted before her mind did. Heart pounding, she spun around sharply, bracing herself to face whoever had followed her.

And she found herself face-to-face with Neville Longbottom.

The shock of it left them both frozen for a moment. He had walked straight toward her without realizing she was there, and now they stood so close that she could see the faint flush spreading across his cheeks. Neville awkwardly stepped back, mumbling something under his breath as he avoided her gaze.

Morwenna, however, didn’t look away. Her tears still glistened on her face, but something in her expression had shifted. There was no trace of the usual contempt with which she treated him, nor the disdain she often had for Gryffindors. Only exhaustion remained.

“Oh… it’s you,” she murmured, her voice dull, but lacking the sharp edge of hatred that usually colored her words.

Neville hesitated, as if unsure whether he should stay or leave. But something in his dark eyes—a mixture of concern and nervousness—made Morwenna, for the first time in a long while, feel no urge to put up her usual walls between them.

Neville took a step back, clearly unsure how to react to the situation. “Oh, I didn’t mean to intrude…” he murmured, turning toward the path he had come from, ready to leave as he had arrived.

But before he could take another step, Morwenna, with an unexpected impulse, stopped him. Her hand settled firmly on his arm, as if she didn’t want him to slip away, as if, for some reason, she needed him there.

“Uh… Neville… I…” Morwenna began, her words breaking, barely audible. It was as if the simple act of speaking to him made her unravel even more. Her words tumbled over one another, struggling to emerge, as the tears continued to fall.

“Thank you… for the library… you know, for stepping in…” she finally murmured, her tone lower now, but full of palpable gratitude.

Neville froze, surprised by the words he had just heard. It had been so long since they had had any real interaction, always wrapped in hurtful words and looks full of disdain. He never would have imagined that Morwenna, the same girl who had insulted and belittled him countless times, would now be thanking him for something as simple, yet significant, as this.

“I… I didn’t know what to say… but… well…” Neville stammered, still processing the situation. His gaze softened, and a small, shy smile tugged at the corners of his lips, as if, deep down, he couldn’t help but be touched by her gesture.

Morwenna stared at Neville, her eyes glassy as she fought to regain control over her emotions. Then, suddenly, the reality of the situation hit her. She realized just how vulnerable she must have looked to him, how exposed she was in that moment. A wave of shame washed over her, and her face turned a deep crimson.

In a sudden burst of discomfort, she pulled her hand away from Neville’s arm quickly, as though what had just happened had no place in her life. Her fingers trembled as they disconnected from him, and she hastily wiped away her tears, desperate to erase any trace of the vulnerability she had shown. She grabbed her bag without looking, taking a step back, her unease visible in every one of her movements.

In her haste, she stumbled slightly on the uneven ground, and dry leaves and dirt clung to her right knee and calf. A sharp sting shot up her leg, but she didn’t even pause to check; her only concern was getting away, escaping the discomfort she felt.

“This never happened! Don’t talk to me!” she shouted, her voice a mix of anger and embarrassment, as if pretending none of it had occurred was the only way to salvage what little of her pride remained.

Without waiting for a response, Morwenna spun around, walking briskly, almost slipping again as she rushed to leave. Her breath came in quick, shallow gasps, and her hands, gripping her bag tightly, betrayed just how nervous and confused she felt. As she walked, the images of the library and Neville’s face kept echoing in her mind, but she couldn’t stop. She needed to be alone. She needed to distance herself from him, from the vulnerability she had just exposed.

The days passed slowly, but everything changed when, finally, the date of the long-awaited Yule Ball was announced. Morwenna, who had been eagerly waiting for that moment, found herself caught between excitement and fear. The ball had always been something she had idealized in her mind, a dream where magic and elegance came together, and in her fantasies, she had always imagined a handsome guy by her side, as if that would be the moment she would meet someone with whom to share her life, someone who would become everything to her. Of course, she thought that way every time she kissed a boy, even though the realities were far less ideal than her dreams.

As the days went by, she began to notice something she hadn’t before: Viktor Krum couldn’t take his eyes off her. Every time she entered the Great Hall, she felt his gaze fixed on her, as if she could feel the weight of his eyes even while he was talking to other boys or training with his team. His presence was constant, like a shadow in her line of sight. At first, Morwenna thought she was being paranoid, but when the glances continued even while he was with others, she started to wonder if there might be something more behind it. She then remembered her cousin Draco mentioning Krum in some conversation, suggesting that he might be a good option for her, though at the time she hadn’t paid much attention to that advice.

The glances became a regular thing, but one day, the situation changed abruptly. Krum approached her unexpectedly, and Morwenna felt her heart race with every step he took toward her.

With his deep voice and sweet Bulgarian accent, Krum sat next to her, making his presence feel even more imposing. For a moment, they both stayed silent, as if the air around them became thick. However, it was he who broke the ice, his words filled with a confidence that took her breath away.

“Hello, beautiful Evangeline…” he said, using her second name in such a natural way that Morwenna blushed instantly. It was one of those small things she hadn’t seen coming, something that disarmed her effortlessly.

“I’ve heard very good things about you, both mentally and physically,” he continued, his tone so direct that it made her cheeks burn with a deep blush.

Morwenna didn’t know how to react, surprised by the boldness of his words, but also by the way he said them, so serious, so intense. Before she could process it, Viktor took her hand with a gentleness that didn’t seem to match his imposing figure, and kissed it delicately. His touch was firm, yet at the same time, as if he wanted to make sure she understood what that gesture meant.

The sensation of his lips touching her skin made Morwenna lose her breath, her face completely red. The power of Krum’s gaze, the intensity of his presence, made her heart race, while an uncomfortable knot formed in her stomach. She tried to process what had just happened, but the words seemed to slip away from her mind.

“V-Viktor, right?” she whispered, her voice trembling, unable to believe he was there, in front of her, speaking to her in such a close, direct manner. The mixture of surprise and a strange emotion she couldn’t identify overtook her.

Krum smiled slightly, never taking his eyes off her, and Morwenna could see a spark of amusement in his gaze. Despite the discomfort she felt, something in her chest, deep inside, was awakening. It was a confusing sensation, as if she were trapped between surprise and the desire to see what else would happen in this unexpected encounter.

Morwenna was so lost in her thoughts, caught up in the intensity of Krum’s gaze, that she failed to notice Neville Longbottom watching her from a nearby table. Her mind was still spinning from what had just happened, from the soft brush of his lips on her hand and the way Krum looked at her with that overwhelming fascination. She couldn’t help but wonder what he wanted from her, why he was behaving that way.

But Morwenna’s focus wasn’t on what was happening around her. Instead, her thoughts drifted, caught between confusion, admiration, and a strange emotion that made it hard for her to process everything she was feeling. What she didn’t see, however, was Longbottom’s gaze, fixed on her from across the room as he sat at a table with Ginny Weasley, lost in their studies.

Neville, upon realizing what was happening between Morwenna and Krum, couldn’t help but feel a wave of disgust. His face tightened, and his brow furrowed so intensely that it seemed as though he might pour his disdain over the entire table. It wasn’t just a look of discomfort; it was pure revulsion. Even though Ginny tried to talk to him, Neville couldn’t take his eyes off what was happening in front of him. Every gesture from Krum, every word he directed at Morwenna, seemed to anger him more. The way the Bulgarian looked at her, so confident, so imposing, not only irritated him, but seemed to stir something deeper, something he couldn’t quite identify.

Ginny, noticing Neville’s shift in mood, cast him a questioning glance, but he barely acknowledged her, so absorbed was he in what he was witnessing. His expression was a mix of frustration and something more profound—an unease that gnawed at him as he watched Morwenna, so indifferent to everything around her, so completely absorbed in Krum’s attention.

Unable to hide his disgust any longer, Neville finally diverted his gaze, focusing back on the books in front of him. But even as he did, something inside him kept stirring, something he couldn’t silence.

The days passed quickly, and finally, the moment of the grand dance rehearsal organized by Professor McGonagall arrived. After weeks of announcements, rehearsals, and much speculation, the day came when all the students of Hogwarts would gather to practice their steps for the Yule Ball. The Great Hall, usually spacious, was now packed with students of all ages. The heat was unbearable, and the buzz of the crowd made the atmosphere even denser. The tables, typically arranged in perfect order, had been rearranged to allow students to line up, but it was still nearly impossible to find space. The air felt heavy, and the discomfort was reflected in many faces.

McGonagall, as always, maintained absolute control over the situation. With her usual seriousness, she began calling students one by one, inviting them to step forward to show off their dance skills. She had promised to award five points to each student who impressed others with their dancing prowess, and as expected, many volunteered eagerly, eager to earn those precious points for their house.

However, what no one expected was that McGonagall, in an unexpected twist, decided that students would not only showcase their solo dance skills but would also have to dance with a partner assigned by her. The air in the hall became even tenser, as many exchanged confused glances, wondering who they would be paired with.

The shock was immense when, amid murmurs and nervous laughter, McGonagall called on Morwenna Lestrange and Neville Longbottom. The professor, with her upright posture and unyielding gaze, paired them together, despite the clear discomfort on both their faces.

Morwenna couldn’t believe what was happening. Her face, usually so commanding and confident, showed a mixture of anger and embarrassment. Her expression twisted into a grimace of distaste as, with a defiant attitude, she tried to avoid the situation.

“Uh… Professor, are you sure I can’t be paired with…?” Morwenna murmured, trying to keep her voice low so no one would hear. She was desperate to avoid the humiliation of dancing with Longbottom, the boy she had always looked down on. However, to her misfortune, McGonagall, with her unrelenting authority, responded to her protest aloud.

“Not a chance, Lestrange. You must respect the pairing I’ve chosen. No changes allowed. Deal with it,” the professor said, her tone firm and final, as she continued organizing the other pairs.

Morwenna, now completely trapped in the situation, could hear the muffled laughs rising among the students. Some, unable to contain themselves, whispered to each other, while others watched with a mix of surprise and amusement. The awkwardness of the situation didn’t go unnoticed, and the curious eyes of others seemed heavy, almost as if they were enjoying the drama unfolding before them.

Neville, for his part, didn’t know whether to feel relieved or more embarrassed by the attention the scene was attracting. Though his expression remained relatively neutral, Morwenna could see in his face that he wasn’t enjoying the situation any more than she was. But what frustrated Morwenna the most was the obvious truth: she was trapped. And the thought of having to dance with Longbottom, someone she had despised and ridiculed for so long, made her feel as if she were losing a part of herself.

The atmosphere grew even denser when Neville, though a bit awkward, placed his hand on Morwenna’s waist. The softness of the contact made Morwenna shiver, as if every inch of her skin had reacted to the touch of Neville’s hand. The reaction was immediate and visceral; she grabbed his shoulder tightly, almost as if trying to avoid any kind of closeness, but her fingers inadvertently dug into his skin, leaving a faint mark from her nails. Neville, surprised by the intensity of her grip, let out a puff of air, the tension between them now palpable.

The music began to play, and without warning, their bodies moved in unison, as if they had become an extension of each other. The rhythm of the melody, gentle yet persistent, seemed to spark something between them, an inexplicable connection. Morwenna, although tense at first, began to feel surprised by how effortlessly their movements matched. It wasn’t that she was enjoying the situation, but something inside her began to recognize the fluidity with which they moved together, as if the initial discomfort disappeared with each step they took.

Despite the tension and surprise, they became more than just two people forced to dance together. The fact that they had never communicated smoothly beyond the sharp and awkward words didn’t stop them from moving as if they had been doing it all their lives. It was a bewildering contrast: he, usually clumsy and shy, and she, used to controlling the situation, now moved forward as if they understood each other without needing to speak.

Morwenna, still uncomfortable, couldn’t help but feel a trace of astonishment as she realized that, somehow, they were perfectly in sync. Their feet seemed to move almost autonomously, and as their bodies spun, she couldn’t help but glance at Neville, noticing a mixture of concentration on his face—and something else. She couldn’t put a name to it, but she felt it. As if, for the first time, the situation was beyond frustration or anger, and was touching a new form of connection.

Despite everything that had happened before, everything she had thought about him, Morwenna couldn’t deny that, in that moment, there was something inexplicably captivating in how their bodies, despite their differences, moved together.

After a series of flawless spins and steps, they were the only ones left dancing until the end of the song. The others, either exhausted or uncomfortable, had long since exited the dance floor, abandoning it in the midst of the music’s crescendo. But they continued, somehow, completely absorbed in the moment. Each movement seemed to flow with an almost magical precision, and the connection between them, which had started as something awkward and tense, was transforming into something so fluid that it felt as if the music itself had possessed them. The movements were not just a coordination of steps; there was something more, a tacit understanding that grew with each turn. It was as if they were both in a shared trance, completely immersed in what they were doing.

However, like all good things, the song came to an end. The final chord resonated in the air, and at that precise moment, a loud round of applause burst through the atmosphere, shattering the bubble they had been in. They both separated abruptly, as if a thunderclap had struck between them. Suddenly, the electricity that had been hanging in the air dissipated, and with it, the moment vanished, leaving them back in the same discomfort that had defined their relationship from the start.

Morwenna quickly took a step back, her face now flushed with the embarrassment and awkwardness of what had just happened. What had once been near-perfect synchronization now felt like an invasion of her personal space. She wasn’t sure what she had felt, but that same closeness that had seemed so seamless before now felt foreign, even strange. As she tried to compose herself, she noticed that Neville, also puzzled, stepped back, his expression mirroring her own confusion.

“Bravo! Spectacular!” Professor McGonagall clapped enthusiastically, her excitement unmistakable as she held the vinyl record, clearly waiting to change it. Her face gleamed with satisfaction at having achieved what she had intended, though the atmosphere between the two dancers was far more tense than she had anticipated.

Morwenna and Neville exchanged a fleeting glance, full of discomfort, before their eyes shifted to the floor, as if that simple gesture would allow them to avoid the inevitable. The break in the moment had been as abrupt as the dance itself, and now, amidst the laughter and applause filling the Great Hall, they returned to their original positions: him, the awkward and shy Neville, and her, the ever-proud and reserved Morwenna. The magic that had existed, even if just for a brief moment, had evaporated, leaving only the echo of what had just transpired between them.

tags

@iyearnyouu @dopetrashlawyerdeputy-blog @potterblog @lazybitch06 @hanihoney88 @certainyouththing @sarawoweeee @scretlololok @staygold162 @that-crazy-skz-stan-uwu @shilphy87 @namiusedbubble @20bombshell04 @nott-my-riddle @iyearnyouu @longbottomlove @josephineable @brooklvn111baby

#fanfic #neville longbottom #harry potter #lestrange x longbottom #neville #neville longbottom fanfic #neville longbottom smut #neville longbottom x you #neville x mc #neville x reader

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child0feden · 7 months ago

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BURN

not important x reader

- nsfw headcanons for some kinks i think not important would have!

i really do just write this shit for myself lol! i often refer to him as nathan but he is not named in this work so you can call him whatever you like <3

- view my video game masterlist here

reading music recommendations: morbid fascination of death by carpathian forest - dragged away by takumi sekiguchi sloan

* 18 + content ahead, please do not read if you are a minor *

choking - breath play

- he knows that he is just so much bigger than you and that he could very easily snap your neck if he really wanted to… and whilst you trust him enough not to do that, the human fear is still there at the possibility of it happening and he absolutely loves having that power of intimidation and fear over you, he will often wrap his whole entire pale arm around your throat and constrict your wind pipe whilst roughly fucking into you from behind

✩ hearing you quietly choke and gasp out for air makes his thick cock twitch like nothing else in the world, feeling your cunt tighten around him like a harsh vice as your body begins to resist against the loss of air and he loves watching you clench your fists as your arms are tied up and unable to push away at his arm… you have definitely passed out more than just a couple of times with him, he just gets a little bit too into it, but you do not mind at all! especially since he always apologises for “ going overboard ” with a semi awkward yet lingering kiss to the top of your head…

branding - knifeplay

- he brands you with his own trusty hunting knife! cutting up the soft flesh of your thighs or your lower stomach, carving both his own name into your skin and disgusting degrading names such as “ pig ” and “ whore ” he does not jerk himself off whilst doing it to you, he just breathes heavily and admires the crimson streams of blood coming from the fresh wounds… he will only jerk off to the sight of your carved flesh when he is done with his work, jerking himself off right over the bleeding slices before painting them white with splatters of his cum as he reaches his high! the sight of your blood mixing with his cum never fails to make his cock harden even more in his hand

✩ he will often have you tied up with rope or even heavy duty chains when cutting you too, he enjoys watching as you writhe and throw your head back against the black cotton pillow of your shared bed, your sinful moans of pleasure mixing with pitiful whimpers of obvious pain… yet you never tell him stop or even think of using your safe word, that always makes him smirk and dig his knife deeper into you, drawing even more fresh blood that will no doubt drip down your body and stain his sheets with blotches of deep red if it has not already…

consensual non-consent - begging

- yeah, obviously, he absolutely loves this! the two of you will often go out deep into the woods late at night, surrounded by nothing but the dark and desolate forest for miles, there is definitely no chance in hell that anyone would catch the two of you doing your thing all the way out there and call the cops, not that he would care much anyways, he would probably just threaten them with his gun or most likely actually shoot them dead on the spot with no care of hiding the body… he will let you run off in front of him like a scared little rabbit in a skimpy little outfit and then come right after you when just a couple of minutes have passed by

✩ when he finds you, you will put on a faux show of “ please don’t ” all different types of begging and crying before he tells you to “ shut the fuck up ” and shoves you down to your knees on the harsh twig covered ground, pulling down his black cargo pants and forcing his rock hard cock down your throat before beginning to roughly fuck your face as you cry out around him, black trails of mascara running down your face and your own juices dripping down your thighs from the excitement

- he will always pull out of your mouth and cum all over your face, watching as pearly drops of his cum drips down your flushed face alongside your watery tears as you cough and attempt to catch your breath… it takes less than a minute for him to shove you down onto your front and get on top of you from behind, shoving your face down into the leaves and dirt below you as you writhe and continue to beg for him to please not touch you! he is so rough with this, he is ripping your underwear away like a feral animal, plunging his thick cock into your aching cunt raw and thrusting into you at an animalistic pace as he groans right in your ear, his big hands harshly gripping your hair in a messy ponytail and pushing your face deeper against the ground as you kick your legs out, screaming out for someone, anyone to help you

✩ hearing you beg for your decency and beg for him to please just let you go, it all turns him on so much! he does not last all that long in these sessions at all due to just how much he loves them…

- but as soon as he has blown his heavy and warm load inside of you, the act almost immediately drops and you are giggling, leaning your head back to press a sloppy kiss on his chapped lips and he whispers against your lips “ fucking whore… ” before letting out a deep chuckle as he feels your cunt clench around him, obviously craving even more

gunplay

- i mean, how could he not have a major thing for gunplay? come on! he absolutely loves pressing the cold steel barrel of his favourite pistol against your temple whilst you suck him off, never ever telling you if it is actually loaded and keeping his finger resting right on the trigger

✩ he definitely makes you suck off his gun too, roughly pulling your head off of and away his cock and pushing your mouth down onto his pistol instead as your eyes widen… he adores the look of clear shock and real fear that comes over your face when you realise just what is happening and what is in your mouth, often smirking down at you with an almost crazed look in his dark, hooded eyes…

#not important x reader #the antagonist x reader #hatred x reader #hatred headcanons #headcanons

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jgmartin · 2 years ago

Text

THE TALL THINGS ARE WATCHING

We can’t leave the house.

They’ve boarded up our doors and windows, started shooting people trying to break free. There are things in the streets. Tall things. I see their shadows sometimes as they run past the wooden boards. I hear the rumble of their feet.

I don’t know what they are. None of us do.

They cut our access to television and the internet when the lockdown began. They even took out the cell tower. Anne said they didn’t want us communicating with the outside world, telling them about what’s going on out here. I think she’s right.

It’s been two weeks since the men in suits came by. They said they worked for government intelligence and that they were looking for a terrorist. They didn’t strike me as government types, personally. They looked distracted. Spaced out. More like Scientologists than CIA agents, but then I’ve never met a Scientologist or a CIA agent, so who was I to tell the difference?

Either way, they said it would be over soon, and they sounded official. More importantly, they had guns. “We’ll need to search every household,” they explained. “We can’t have anybody leaving before we’ve cleared their property, so we’ll have to board you in.”

It made sense, I guess. In a twisted dystopian nightmare sort of way. It made sense all the way up until the end of the fourth night, when the Tall Things started roaming the streets. They were dressed in long raincoats. Hooded. The way they moved gave me the chills, all jerky and snapping, so I stayed away from the windows.

Anne didn’t mind though. She was fascinated by them. Her and our gun-nut neighbor, Old Ty, exchanged theories written on pieces of cardboard, holding them up to the glass of our windows. GOVERNMENT EXPERIMENT, she wrote on hers. ALIEN INVASION, he wrote on his.

At first, it seemed to just be a bit of innocent, morbid fun. Finding some humor in a bizarre situation. Then Anne watched one of the Tall Things kill somebody, and everything changed.

It was an elderly man in our cul-de-sac, Mister Douglas. Anne watched him open his door, hammer down the boards as one of the Tall Things walked by. He shouted at it. Told it to get over here so he could see just what kind of unholy bullshit his tax dollars were being used to fund.

Next thing you know, there’s sirens in the streets. Soldiers rushing his home. There’s a megaphone shouting at him to get back inside. All of it is useless. All of it happens far too late, because the moment Douglas starts yelling at the Tall Thing, it starts to twitch and jerk like it can’t control its own behavior. Like a predator hungry for a meal.

It snaps its head toward Douglas, then tears across his lawn and snaps him up in its long, spider-like hands. It lifts him off the ground. Then, he screams. He screams and he screams until the Tall Thing lowers the hood of its rain jacket, and then Douglas goes pale as a ghost. Silent.

According to Anne, that’s when the skin of his face started to bubble and pop. That’s when he started hissing out steam, smoking as his flesh sizzled beneath his clothes, as if he were boiling alive from the inside out. Next thing you know, he’s dripping onto the pavement. Dripping and dripping until there’s nothing left of him but a puddle of flesh and clothes.

Nobody tries to step in. Not any of the soldiers, not Anne, and not even Old Ty and all his guns. Everybody watches in stunned silence as the Tall Thing finishes its execution and saunters away.

The soldiers roam with them. The soldiers and the people in long white clothes. Anne says they’re lab coats, and the people are researchers studying the Tall Things as experiments, but I think they look more like robes– like clergymen. All of them wear helmets with tinted visors. It’s as though they don’t want to get a good look at the things.

After Mr. Douglas, more people on the block decided to make a break for it. Maybe they realized this was worse than they thought. Maybe they started wondering what the point of keeping us locked away like this was– were we food for these creatures? Were they trying to turn us into them?

None of us knew. All we could say for certain is that the killing didn’t stop with Mr. Douglas. I woke up one morning to see several of my neighbors shot dead in their yards, their lifeless eyes gazing back at me from the grass. Nobody came to pick them up. They were left there to rot, picked apart by birds and stray dogs.

Soon, gunshots were ringing out at all hours of the day. People wanted out, but the soldiers wouldn’t let them leave, and so the bodies began to pile up. Eventually I think Anne and I were the only two left alive in our cul-de-sac. Even Old Ty had seemed to vanish. Probably shot dead in his backyard.

I’d rarely known death in my life, and now the sheer volume of it was numbing me. I couldn’t process it. I didn’t know how. But then, almost out of the blue the government had a change of heart. Or maybe they just shifted tactics. Suddenly they began letting people leave.

I saw it first with a house at the very end of the road. I watched the woman who lived there break out with a baby tucked in her arm and a grade-schooler holding her hand. The three of them darted across their lawn, jumped over their father’s corpse and piled into their minivan on the street.

The entire time, a soldier and white-coat stood only meters away, quietly observing. It didn’t take long for the rumbling to begin– that telltale sound of approaching death, of one of the Tall Things coming to claim its prize. The van started up, backfiring a plume of exhaust into the air. I listened as the woman shrieked for joy, but I knew the joy would be short lived.

See, from my vantage point at the end of the lane, I saw something that she never could. The boot locked around her rear tire. The van rode forward as she pressed the gas, and then clunked to a stop. My heart broke. The look on her face, the desperation wasn’t for her– it was for her children in the back.

The rumble reached a crescendo, and in the blink of an eye a Tall Thing crashed into the van and knocked it over like a diecast toy. I couldn’t make out much beyond that. Nothing but the sound of the monster tearing into the roof of the van and pulling the crying children out one by one while their mother begged for mercy.

If I were a better, stupider man I may have kicked down my door and tried to save them, but I wasn’t. I was a coward. Instead, I fell to my living room carpet and cried. I laid there and listened as their flesh popped and sizzled, as their skin fell to the pavement in long, heavy drips.

It’s a sound I’ll never forget.

The next day, things got worse. The soldiers no longer cared about enforcing the lockdown or even keeping people safely indoors. Now they were breaking them out. Like hungry wolves, they tore down boarded-up doors and kicked in living room windows, dragging families out onto their lawns for slaughter. If the screams were horrible before, now they were unbearable. You couldn’t ignore them. Anne and I cranked our sound system to the max, but it only served as background static. The dying cut through everything.

That night we barely slept. Anne tossed and turned beside me, while I stared blankly at the ceiling fan above. There was an understanding between us. We had been abandoned. There was nobody coming to help us, nobody coming to arrest these monsters and save the day. We were alone.

How long until her and I were dragged out of our home? How long until we became the next experiment chained to our fence, waiting to be attacked by one of those creatures? Maybe tomorrow. Maybe next week. Neither of us knew, and somehow that made it all the worse.

I woke up to sunlight peeking through our boarded-up bedroom window. Anne was missing. I looked all over the house for her before I found her note on the kitchen counter, scribbled quickly.

I know you’re afraid, the note read, but I have to leave. You might think we’ll make it through this, that once they’ve had their fill of guinea pigs they’ll let the rest of us go free, but I promise you they’ll come for us soon. This might be my last chance. Since you won’t come with me, I’m going alone. I wish I could have said a proper goodbye, but I know you’d try to stop me.

Love always,

- Anniebear

She left through the basement hatch. I know this because I spotted her corpse some five feet away through our kitchen window. She gazed back at me, a look of shock painted across her pale face, with a small red dot where the bullet pierced her skull. I couldn’t even muster the courage to step out and bury her. Instead the racoons and dogs took care of her, one piece at a time.

She was right, though. Eventually they did come for me.

It was over a week later. By then I didn’t have the will to resist. I waited patiently at the kitchen table, drunk with a glass of whiskey as soldiers and white-coats dragged me from the house. When I’d seen it happen to other people, it seemed to occur so quickly. Now, it happened in slow motion.

I heard every word from the soldier's mouth. Every command. First, he patted me down and ensured I was disarmed, then he told me this was all routine and nothing to worry about. Together they took me out into my yard. The white-coat asked me if I had lived a good life, if I had been a man of faith. I didn’t know what to say. Maybe I was simply too drunk, or maybe I truly didn’t care anymore.

“It’s not as bad as it looks,” the white-coat assured me. “You’ll be at peace once it’s over, brother.”

In the distance came the growing rumble of the monster’s feet. Of the Tall Thing coming to claim its bounty.

“How many more after this?” the soldier asked the white-coat, his hand painfully gripping my shoulder.

“Sixteen.”

“Then us, sister?”

“Then us.”

The rumbling deepened. The Tall Thing was getting closer, and soon my heart was beating in sync with its stampeding footfalls. Memories flashed in my mind. Memories of Anne, of my dead neighbors, of the mother who lived at the end of the road and her children, now puddles of flesh on the pavement. My hands became fists. Indignation and fury grew inside of me, stoked by whisky fumes.

“Why do this?” I growled. “Why not just put a bullet in my head?”

“Because we love you, brother,” said the white-coat. “You waited patiently. You had faith, and for that you will be rewarded with salvation. You will be raptured.”

The Tall Thing rounded the corner, its legs slapping against the ground in great strides. Its frame eclipsed the moon, casting a shadow across me and stealing the breath from my lungs. It slowed down as it reached my lawn, sauntering this way and that.

“What are they?” I whispered.

“The ones that made us,” the white-coat replied. “Those that gave us life.”

I shrank away as the Tall Thing neared, but the soldier shoved me forward. “Be strong, brother. Show it your conviction. We were brought to this planet long ago, but now our time is served and we’re finally going home. Don’t you want to go home?”

The Tall Thing reached up to its hood. As it did, the soldier’s grip loosened and both he and the white-coat stepped to the side, away from the creature’s view. I would not scream, I told myself. No matter what, I wouldn’t give these monsters the satisfaction of my terror.

It pulled back on its hood, and something grotesque looked down on me. It was as if a hundred different faces had been stitched together, fused into an abomination that seemed to smile from fifteen mouths. “We come in peace,” it said.

My teeth bit into my cheeks, clenching them closed. A whimper escaped me, a whimper and a groan as my stomach filled with a soup of boiling horror. I would not scream. No matter the pain-- I would not scream.

Its long, spindly hands gripped my face. It cocked its head to the side, a hundred different eyes blinking back at me. Then it tugged at the bottom of my mouth.

But I wasn’t going to let it have its way. I clenched my jaw, holding it closed. The creature blinked at me. Then it repositioned its grip.

Crack.

It snapped my jaw like cardboard. I roared in agony, my lower mouth hanging limply from my face. Tears fell from my eyes in a torrent.

“Shh,” it whispered, slipping a finger down my throat. I choked and gagged. It fished its finger around as a hundred different eyes rolled back, and fifteen mouths began muttering an alien language.

I struggled against it, pulling at its arm but it was useless. The monster was too strong. Then a gunshot rang out.

And another. The Tall Thing wheeled around, dropping me onto my lawn as the soldier began shouting into his radio. The next second, a bullet found the soldier in the head. The white-coat shrieked, fleeing around my fence as a round caught her in the shoulder. The Tall Thing shot up to its full height, standing level with the street lamps and then sprinted toward the shooter.

Toward Old Ty.

He’d set up a killzone on his roof, surrounded by rifles and ammo. He’d waited for a moonless night to do his business, and now he was raining lead onto the creature like a blizzard of death. “What are you waiting for?” he bellowed. “Get moving, dipshit!”

I did. I stole away, hiding in shrubs and behind sheds, watching as Tall Things came roaring down streets, jumping over houses and knocking over cars as they tried to reach Old Ty. He only lasted a few minutes. That’s when the shooting stopped, but it was enough time for me to get away.

Maybe enough time for others, too.

It took me three hours to hike through Debby Forest and make it to the next town, and once I did I breathed a sigh of relief. There weren’t any soldiers. No white-coats. Most importantly, there weren’t any Tall Things melting people in their clothes. Just quiet stillness, the thing early mornings were meant for.

I made my way to the sheriff’s department to blow the whistle on what was going on. To explain that people were being shot, that Tall Things were melting people on the street and that we needed to get our ass in gear and call in the National Guard– no, scratch that. We needed to call in fucking NATO.

But as I got to the door of the precinct I stopped. Something gleamed in the corner of my eye, catching my attention. It was there, at the edge of the curb. A puddle.

Strange thing was, it hadn’t rained in weeks.

#creepypasta #writeblr #writers on tumblr #writerscommunity #writerslife #writers #writing #creative writing #writing community #original writing #horror #writblr #writer things #short fiction #short story #sci fi horror #jgmartin #the tall things

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serickswrites · 6 months ago

Text

Lonely Place of Longing II

Master list here (includes bios, summary, and chapter links)

Warnings: captivity of sorts, restraints, torture, unconsciousness, wounds, blood, crucifixion mentioned, collapsed lung, chest tube, medical whump, dislocation, hurt/aftermath, hurt/recovery, caretaker and whumpee

Halle spent the next couple of days just orienting herself to Tectus as she hadn’t yet completely assumed her duties as Dylan’s keeper, her team’s quarters, and trying very hard to not forget everyone’s names. The latter was proving to be more difficult than she initially thought. Everyone really should have name tags.

The one team member she could remember beside Thomas was Dylan. And who could forget Dylan. The living weapon that she was in charge of. She had not spent any more one on one time with Dylan. But that didn’t mean she wasn’t watching.

Dylan fascinated Halle. In a morbid curiosity sort of way. The weapon only ever left his quarters—which Halle figured was a suite of three rooms: a bedroom, bathroom, and med bay—when Thomas and two other team members came to fetch him. He didn’t even leave to take his meals. Someone always brought Dylan his meal and waited outside while Dylan ate.

Sometimes the team member would speak with Dylan, usually gruffly, but Dylan always murmured his replies. He ducked his head low any time food was brought. He never complained when there wasn’t utensils—Halle realized some team members didn’t feel safe with Dylan having silverware—or when the meager portion was cold. He merely thanked the team member and returned to his room to eat alone.

The most Halle observed Dylan talk was when a team member rolled a library cart into the hall. Dylan was a voracious reader. Halle supposed that was the only thing he could do in his room all day. Dylan gave reviews of each book he returned to the cart whether or not the team member—usually Benjamin—wanted to hear the reviews or not. Dylan made requests each time as well, though some books were harder to get than others.

“I couldn’t find that one here,” Benjamin said as he handed Dylan back the list from the previous week.

“Are you sure? I could have sworn we had the others in our library, perhaps—“

“Well, I couldn’t find it. I asked Thomas to order it. We’ll see when it gets here,” Benjamin snapped.

Dylan hung his head. “Thank you, I really appreciate it.” He took his large stack of books off the cart and retreated back into his room, closing the door quietly.

With a pang of guilt, Halle realized that Dylan had no source of entertainment other than books. He couldn’t go outside except for on missions, he couldn’t roam Tectus, and he didn’t have a TV. These were all things that Halle took for granted.

Halle chased after Benjamin. “Wait!” She called as she hurried after Benjamin.

“Hey, Halle,” Benjamin said as he stopped his cart. “What can I do for you?”

“What was the name of the book?”

“What book?” Benjamin raised an eyebrow.

“The one that Dylan wanted. What’s the name of the book?” Maybe if she could read the book it would give her better insight into the weapon.

Benjamin rolled his eyes. “Oh, that one. Honestly, I don’t know why he wants this book so bad. He’s asked for it about six or seven times. I finally had to put a requisition order in with Thomas. Of course it may take a while for it to come in.”

“What’s it called?” Halle persisted.

“Uhhh Third Star? Or something like that. Honestly, I don’t pay too much attention to what he reads. If we have it, I give it to him. If I can’t find it, I can’t find it. Sometimes someone else finds it. Other times we eventually have to order it.”

“Thank you,” Halle said as she went back to her room. She immediately flicked on her computer and placed an order for delivery the next day for the book. She read the summary—Halle was shocked to learn it was a novel written some years ago about angels and demons and the human that they fell in love with. It wasn’t something she wasn’t interested in reading. But clearly Dylan was.

Thomas came for Dylan late that night. Halle was just climbing into bed when she heard the march of three pairs of boots coming down their hallway. Halle rose quietly and went to her door on the off chance Thomas was coming to talk to her. But no knock came. She cracked open her door to listen, telling herself that she needed to hear how Dylan was feeling and what the mission entailed to better prepare to take care of him.

Thomas’s booming knock echoed in the hall. “Open up,” he ordered. The door opened slowly. Dylan stood shirtless in the doorway, his pale hair tousled with sleep. He was barefoot and bleary eyed. “Yes, Thomas?”

“Put your clothes on, we’re expected to be at the rendezvous point with Bravo Team in,” Thomas checked his watch, “ten minutes.” Dylan’s face sobered instantly. “Am I to know what we are going to be doing or am I just to be dropped in ignorant and blind and expected to survive?” It was the first time Halle heard Dylan use anything but a soft, gentle tone.

“The mission is need to know and you don’t need to know,” Julian sneered. Besides Dylan, Julian was the scariest teammate on Alpha Team. It wasn’t his size so much as his energy, though Julian was taller and broader than Thomas. Halle was glad she was on Julian’s team rather than his enemy because she was pretty sure Julian could squish her like a grape.

Thomas glared at Julian. “The Authority has deemed it unnecessary for you to be briefed at this time.”

“Then allow me to be your blunt instrument to wield as you will, Thomas,” Dylan said coolly, giving a mocking bow. “I will be but a moment.”

“Plan to be gone for twenty-four hours, Dylan,” Thomas instructed.

A whole day. What kind of mission takes a whole day? Dylan returned, stepping out into the hall. He rolled his neck as he walked, cracking each joint loudly. “Shall we?” He was even with Julian and Aubrey. He took care not to touch either team member. That was against the rules, or so Halle had learned. Dylan was not allowed to initiate physical contact with any team member unless the member had previously consented, or it was vital to a mission.

Thomas nodded and Aubrey uncuffed Dylan. “Thank you,” Dylan said softly as he rubbed his wrists as though the cuffs were terribly uncomfortable. Perhaps part of their power suppression was painful. Halle needed to research more about it. Dylan’s eyes flicked to Halle’s door, briefly making eye contact. Dylan’s lips twitched but he said nothing. He strode forward, following after Thomas closely. Aubrey and Julian followed after Dylan, forming a blockade from behind should Dylan attempt to escape.

Thomas and the team members he took with him on the mission did not return that day. Alpha Team quarters were very quiet. Halle knew there wasn’t much to do other than wait. The team members that were left behind seemed unbothered by the tardiness of the team.

“Sometimes they’re late, Halle,” Clay said over dinner.

“You get used to it,” Andrea said as she piled more food on her plate.

Halle could barely eat, she was too uneasy. She could be expected to heal Dylan at any moment. And though she knew Dylan was the only member of the team she was expected to heal, Halle knew she would help whoever needed help.

Loud, aggressive banging woke Halle in the middle of the night the following night. The team still hadn’t returned, but the rest of the team was just as unbothered as they were the day before. Halle’s heart was in her throat as she stumbled out of bed and to the door.

“Halle,” Thomas’s low, gruff voice called through the door. “Halle, wake up!”

“I’m awake, I’m awake,” Halle said as she pulled open the door. What she saw before her had her freezing.

Aubrey and Maximus held Dylan between the two of them. Dylan hung limply between his two teammates. His head lolled back on his neck, revealing his heavily bruised face. His eyes were closed, though Halle wasn’t sure if Dylan would have been able to open his left eye as it was crusted over with blood. Blood dripped onto the floor from his limp fingers. Halle couldn’t see the full extent of Dylan’s injuries, but what she could see were terrible. Both Aubrey and Maximus were bruised, but they would heal.

“What…What happened?”

“Get them to the med bay,” Thomas ordered. “Hurry.”

Aubrey and Maximus hurried down the hall and to Dylan’s suite. Thomas kicked open the door and they hurried through. Halle rushed to keep up. “What happened?”

“We were ambushed. There were too many. Bravo Team’s been decimated. Dylan managed to draw most of the enemy combatants to him. But then he was overtaken.”

Halle listened as she directed the others to lay Dylan on the exam table. Dylan’s limbs flopped as he was moved to the table.

“Carefully,” Halle said softly as she watched the teammates lay Dylan on the table.

Halle began opening drawers and cabinets, pulling out the implements she thought she would need. “I’m listening. Go on. I need to know everything, Thomas.”

Halle listened as she worked, quickly cutting away Dylan’s tattered clothes leaving Dylan completely naked. Halle was sure that Dylan was used to it, and besides, Halle needed to see all of Dylan to determine what wound needed treatment. Dylan was bleeding on his chest and his hands, his pale skin a mosaic of bruises and varying shades of black, blue, and deep purple. Halle was pretty sure one of Dylan’s knees had been dislocated. Dylan’s breaths were shallow and wheezing, but he was breathing regularly enough that Halle felt that could wait. She needed to conduct her assessment.

Thomas’s words trickled in. Dylan had been captured. And tortured by the look of it. “We found him nailed to a wall and left to hang,” Maximus added to Thomas’s narrative.

Halle’s head jerked up. “How long was he hanging for?” She looked around for a stethoscope. She needed to hear.

“Does it matter?”

Halle turned and glared at Aubrey. “Do you have any medical training? Do any of you have any medical training?”

Aubrey’s cheeks reddened. “If you’re saying—“

“What I am saying is I do have training. You don’t. That’s why I’m doing what I’m doing and you’re doing what you’re doing. And you don’t know what is relevant to my job. Just as I don’t know what’s relevant to your job. So when I say I need to know everything. I need to know everything.”

She put her ear pieces in and put the cold stethoscope to the right side of Dylan’s chest. Nothing. There was absolutely no sound. Fuck. She looked at Dylan’s unconscious face, mouth going dry when she realized Dylan’s slightly parted lips were starting to turn blue.

Halle shoved past Thomas. “Maximus, grab the scalpel set from over there. Aubrey, get gauze. Thomas, I need you to hold this very steady while I work. We’re running out of time.”

None of the team moved. “Go. Now!” Halle said exasperatedly as she prepared the chest tube. “Or I won’t be the reason why the unit loses their living weapon. You all will.”

The teammates moved quickly at Halle’s words. “I’m really sorry about this, Dylan,” Halle murmured as she braced to cut. “Normally, we do this under sedation. But I don’t have time and I don’t know how you’ll react.”

And before Halle could lose her nerve, she cut into Dylan’s chest. “What are you doing?” Thomas asked as he watched Halle work. He held out the tube Halle had requested.

“I’m assuming you found him in the midst of being crucified, yes?”

Thomas nodded. “It was sort of a rudimentary one. The combatants had him for several hours before we were able to infiltrate their compound.”

Halle carefully inserted the tube, breathing a sigh of relief as she watched Dylan’s breaths quickly deepen. Dylan never woke, but Halle was relieved. At least she had taken care of the most pressing wound. “Well, he was tortured before you got to him, that much is clear.”

Thomas nodded again. “We figured they wouldn’t want to kill Dylan. They knew enough about Dylan to carry their own pair of cuffs. Whether they were trying to get information or just enjoying hurting a weapon, we don’t know.”

Halle went back to taking inventory of Dylan’s injuries. She really needed to put an IV in and start fluids, but she wanted to be sure she didn’t miss anything else more pressing. “Aubrey,” Halle said without looking up as she placed the IV, “for your information, crucifixion is a very, very painful way to die. And it takes a very long time usually. Victims typically experience dehydration, blood loss, and most suffocate to death because their lungs collapse. Dylan only had one working lung.”

“That was quick acting, Halle,” Thomas said with a smile. “Good work!” He clapped Halle on the shoulder. “You can give me a full report of all of his injuries and how long it will be before he can get back to field work. I need to get these two to the main med bay and check on the others.”

Halle let them leave in silence. She was horrified at what she saw. And even more horrified at how nonchalant her fellow teammates were about Dylan’s injuries. “I’m really sorry this happened to you,” Halle said as she began to dress Dylan’s wounds.

“This is going to hurt, but hopefully you’ll stay asleep. I’ve given you a nice pain killer in your IV. And a sedative.” Halle lined herself up to pop Dylan’s knee back into the socket.

Dylan woke with a scream as Halle set his knee. Halle jumped back as Dylan thrashed beneath her. How was Dylan awake? “NOOOOOOOO! PLEASE! NO MORE!” Dylan screamed as he moved.

Dylan stopped moving as he blinked up at the ceiling, as though he suddenly realized where he was. “Oh,” they croaked as he went still on the table.

“I am so sorry,” Halle said, trying to breathe through her own panic, “I thought I gave you enough sedation and pain killers.”

Dylan shook his head as he heaved another breath. “You probably did. I….I have a high tolerance.” He winced as he tried to sit up again. “I—“

“Need to stay down, Dylan. You’re really, really hurt.” Halle took a step towards Dylan. Dylan was proving to be a very difficult patient.

“I’ve had worse,” Dylan groaned as he managed to roll on his left side. “Oh,” he muttered as he rolled back onto his back. “Maybe I need a minute.”

“Why did you draw all the combatants to yourself?”

Dylan’s answer made Halle’s heart twinge. “Because I knew they wouldn’t kill me. I knew they would hurt me, but they wouldn’t kill me. They would most certainly kill the others. But not me.”

“Because you’re a living weapon?”

Dylan shook his head as he let out a bone weary sigh. “Because they wanted to exact their revenge on me. Well, my kind. I was a good stand in for whatever weapon hurt them before.”

“I’m really sorry that happened, Dylan.” Halle meant it.

“It’s ok. Not your fault.” Dylan stared up at the ceiling with his icy blue eyes. “How long am I out of commission for?” His voice was flat. Halle couldn’t say if that was because Dylan was hoping it would be a short time or a long time.

“Probably a month, maybe more.”

Dylan nodded as he closed his eyes, sighing heavily. Halle could have sworn she saw a tear track into Dylan’s hairline. “Thomas and the Authority won’t be happy to hear.” Dylan slowly sat up. He rose on shaking legs. Halle held out an arm to steady Dylan.

“Well unless they can get me some accelerator, then they’re going to have to deal. You shouldn’t be up.”

Dylan groaned, but took a step forward. “I don’t want to be in here any longer than I have to be. I’d rather be in bed.”

Slowly, very, very slowly, Halle helped Dylan hobble to bed. By the time they made it, sweat poured off Dylan and he was paler than he had been before. Dylan sagged back into the pillows with a quiet moan.

“I’ll be right back.” Halle hurried back to her room and grabbed the book Dylan had requested. She wasn’t going to read it. Maybe it would give Dylan something interesting to do while he was recovering.

“Here,” she said as she put the book in Dylan’s hands.

Dylan stared down at the book in his hands. “How did you find this?” He looked up at Halle, his icy eyes guarded.

“I heard you were looking for it and this came in the mail for me—delivery service made a mistake,” Halle lied smoothly. “But I heard you were looking for it, so I thought you might want it.”

Dylan ducked his head. “Thank you very much, Halle, for everything.”

“You’re welcome, Dylan. Rest well, please. You really need to take it easy.”

“I will,” Dylan said, still not raising his head, his deep voice thicker than before.

He had to be exhausted. Halle quickly excused herself, “I’ll be in to check on you in a few hours.”

“Thank you, Halle. For everything.”

Tags: @beomsstudio @mousepaw @keeper-of-all-the-random-things @eyehartart @corbytheking

@seysposts @cosmic-butterflys @wormjerky @godnessofmagic

@daddyslittlestgirlll

@thatlittlefirestarter @defire @jthecalmone @shook-skull @sagencrafts

@theforeverdyingperson @bilightningwhumper @cryptid-potato @fox-fox234 @deepfriedpan

@4-err0r-4 @half-duck @bigmiki @amberconnverse636 @penguin4473-blog

@abbyreader23 @lateuplight @firelan @octafi @paingoes

@xo7-parad0x @whumpandcomfort @kazekunai @pedro-pedro-pedro-pedro-pe @soul-of-a-local-bard

@dragonkales @kitarajy-kari @carosbee @celestialsoyeon @knightinbatteredarmor

@kay-kayxb177 @alwaysjaywalking @decayanddie @demetercabingreen-thumb @never-enough-novels

@whump-a-bear-workshop @sizzlingtigerwerewolf @urmum-11 @velcrostrip @rattypop

@lexiebiss-blog @whumplump @geozone430

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gumi-writes · 1 year ago

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So. I was in the mood to get my thoughts out on this part of Ais’ profile:

on ais | limits unmet, unmatched

It’s obvious that Ais enjoys a good fight, but the inclusion of how he dislikes ones that are easy is an interesting, incredibly illustrative one. Seeking out violence is one thing, and such reasoning behind it can vary widely, but wanting your opponent to be a match for you is another, far more specific matter.

You’re not searching for someone to dominate, for starters—and in fact the idea bores you to the point where surely the energy spent on such lacklustre opposition would annoy you more than anything else. A waste, and an irksome one at that—there’s no sport in something that doesn’t make him work hard.

And he undeniably likes to work for it. Ais is quick to curiosity (though less in the wide-eyed sense and much more in the kind of scrutiny to intensify an already intense gaze) but even quicker to losing interest. If the novelty of the unknown is lost, then there has to be something else worth the sustained attention, otherwise Ais will move on to the next thing without looking back.

As a result, anything that can capture his attention is likely making it hard for him in some way. It would be beneath him, otherwise—what’s the point in all that tempered strength and honed acuity if it has nowhere to go?

But he does get restless, is the thing. An aspect of disliking isolation is surely the boredom that comes with it, and sometimes you have to make do. So you fight. And you fuck. And if you’re lucky, the person on the other end will make it worth your while. The years of experience you have in reading people might be of actual use, just like the stamina and endurance you’ve built up, and what an exciting thought that is.

Enough to make you search—rather actively—for it. And you can’t search for such a thing without seeking someone to meet your standards. Singular, because I do believe Ais would stop looking once he’s found the right person—while he’s definitely a whore (lol) when it comes to sleeping around, I don’t think he has quite the same mindset when it comes to bloodshed and the act of gratifying himself through it.

For that matter, I have a theory that Ocudeus occupying some part of Ais is a direct consequence of Ais’ hunt for an absolute equal. He definitely fucked around and found out, but it wasn’t what he was looking for, and because Ais is a glutton for particular punishment with absolutely no shame to spare, he hasn’t let it stop him. With reckless, heedless abandon, he hasn’t let it stop him.

Idle hands seemed a fate far worse, and never mind that the alternative made him look like a masochist. Not in the most basic of sense of the word, but how else would you describe his drive to find someone to get entangled with in the most satisfyingly violent way possible? It’s not about the pain, and he is annoyingly not pathetic about it, but Ais is a masochist in how thoroughly he wants his limits tested. He can take it. Have you seen him? He can take it, and—fucked up as he is—he wants to.

Especially since—and this is an additional theory here—Ais either has accelerated healing, hasn’t met anyone that can mark him to any significant extent, or both. This pairs quite well—or poorly—with how his lack of self-preservation bespeaks a morbid fascination with his own mortality, the most curiosity inducing thing of all.

Not that he’s in a hurry to get himself killed, and there is pride preventing him from being an outright deathseeker, but if the right person were to come along…

…then dying at the hands of someone worthy would have been well worth it.

#f: touchstarved #gumi writes #i hate ais. i'm writing this as an aisphobe #if you're wondering why i'm writing this it's because i need to get a phd in ais before i hate him effectively #but ALSO if there are any ffxivers out there ais reminds me of zenos a bit a lol #he's far less theatrical but they have the same drive when it comes to search for an equal

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carlos-in-glasses · 1 year ago

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Thank you so much for the tag lovely and brilliant @goodways @louis-ii-reyes-strand @lemonlyman-dotcom @alrightbuckaroo @orchidscript @whatsintheboxmh 🧡

'Chapter 6: One Tequila, Two Tequila, Three Tequila, Floor' of Where All This Love Comes From will be up on Sunday, and I'm excited! Here, our heroes are about to have another important chat:

Behind the counter, Mandy fiddles with a switch that dims the lights, softening the place now the evening has shifted into true-black night. TK turns to his right, sees their reflections in the dark window appear near-sepia. It’s like he’s watching old, rickety footage of them having this present conversation in the past. Late visits to retro diners will make time feel peculiar. Elastic, electric, glitchy. The big window could be an old TV screen about to blink on and fill with static fuzz.

"He made me eat an entire loaf of bread before mom got home,” Carlos says. “Then I had three Pop-Tarts. Kind of worked wonders."

TK peels away from the window, facing his husband in all his vividness of burgundy sweater, gold-brown skin, black hair, deep brown eyes slightly honeyed in the softer light. "So, your mom never knew?"

"Never. Not to this day." Carlos swings his head and bows it in shame. He faces the pure creamy surface of the table, tapping his finger nervously over the laminate. "And maybe that's why I never told you, either.” He flicks his eyes up for a second. “Because it was just between me and Dad. Our secret."

"I know what you mean."

"It mattered to me. I felt exhilarated in a weird way, even though it was bad."

“Carlos. Look at me.”

Carlos doesn’t. He appears fascinated by the plain, dull table.

“Your dad saw some pretty worrying texts from both Michelle and Iris, and he just…ignored them? He gave you your phone back, like there was nothing going on?”

“Yep,” Carlos says hurriedly. "Probably thought it was some dumb teen drama. Anyway, I didn't get drunk again until I was twenty-one. I don’t know if you ever noticed, but I never drank tequila straight–"

“Oh. Yeah. You’d always have it in a cocktail, if you have it–”

“–until you and I broke up,” Carlos says definitively.

The words ‘you and I broke up’ go through TK like he’s a hollow frame of a man. “Jesus.”

“I got shit-faced.”

These words catch TK in a different way. It’s morbid, but he laughs. His husband doesn’t usually sound so uncouth in public. “Want to talk about that?”

“Don’t know.”

“Come on.”

Tags below! & open!

Tagging with love: @im-overstimulated-and-im-sad @eclectic-sassycoweyes @lightningboltreader @thisbuildinghasfeelings @reyesstrand @welcometololaland @bonheur-cafe @paperstorm @strandnreyes @liminalmemories21 @ladytessa74 @cold-blooded-jelly-doughnut @heartstringsduet @fitzherbertssmolder @noxsoulmate @chaotictarlos @chicgeekgirl89 @taralaurel @carlos-tk @wandering-night19 @inkweedandlizards @jesuisici33 @three-drink-amy @redshirt2 @mikibwrites @herefortarlos @sugdenlovesdingle @freneticfloetry @theghostofashton @sanjuwrites @never-blooms @rmd-writes - if you want to share/haven't already! No pressure ever! ❤️🩷🧡💛💚💙🩵💜

#wip wednesday #Where All This Love Comes From #cig tagged #cig fic #my fic #tarlos fanfiction #tarlos fanfic #flashback fic

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libraryofgage · 2 years ago

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pspspsps come get y’all Modern Steve in 80s Hawkins sneak peak 👀

He’s not in the past yet, but he does meet someone familiar at the library ;)

With a morbid fascination, Steve reaches out to the bookshelf, his fingers brushing against spines as he tries to figure out where to start.

“Well, you’re a new face.”

Steve jumps and whirls around, apologies on the tip of his tongue despite having nothing to really apologize for. He comes face-to-face with an older woman, definitely no more than 60, grinning at him with obvious amusement. “What’s your name, kid?”

“Uh, Steve.”

“Well, Uh Steve, what’s got you staring at the Hawkins Wall of Fuckery?” the woman asks.

Steve blinks, glancing over the woman once more. She’s wearing a jean jacket, a plain t-shirt with cuffed jeans, and converse. Her hair has streaks of gray cutting through its frizz, and her entire vibe seems to be “Fuck with me, come on, I dare you, see what happens.”

Steve already likes her, despite feeling a little intimidated.

“I, uh, just moved here. I guess I wanted to know a little more about the town’s history,” he says, just barely managing to keep it from sounding like a question.

The woman hums quietly and moves around Steve, looking over the books on the shelf before pulling one off. “Don’t believe everything these books say. Especially the ones about Munson. Most of the bastards who wrote them didn’t bother looking beneath the surface,” she says, placing a thin book in his hand. “This one’s not bad, though.”

Steve looks down at the cover that reads Eddie Munson According to Others: A Collection of Personal Accounts Recorded and Transcribed by Nancy Wheeler.

“Thanks, I think,” Steve says, looking back up at the woman.

She waves him off, her face scrunched up in disgust. “Ugh, don’t thank me. I can’t stand young people being grateful,” she says, her tone amused despite her words.

A smile tugs at Steve’s lips. “Fine. I didn’t even want your help anyway. Is that better?”

“Much.” The woman ruffles his hair, laughing when he ducks away and tries to fix it. “Anyway, let me know if you need anything else, kid.”

Steve slowly lowers his hand and nods. “Yeah, sure thing. Does that mean you work here?”

“Yep, I run this place. If you don’t see me at the desk, just shout for me.”

“What am I supposed to shout? Old crazy lady?”

She barks out another laugh, easily waving off the comment as she starts to walk towards the front desk. “Name’s Robin,” she throws over her shoulder before Steve can point out that laughing isn’t an answer.

#Modern Steve in 80s Hawkins #steve harrington #robin buckley #stranger things #stranger things fic

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gerec · 2 years ago

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i’ve had a shitty week so i was just wondering if you could recommend your favorite fluffy cherik fics 😭 i don’t care what they’re about i just need fluff

I'm sorry you've had a rough week Anon and I'm happy to help. I don't really read straight fluff but these are my favorite Cherik fics to read when I want a pick me up and I hope you like them!

One Hundred One Night Stands. by Sophia_Bee

Charles has a rule. Never fuck the same guy twice. When he refuses to see Erik again after a one night stand, Erik goes about trying to get Charles to violate that rule using accents and disguises.

Erik Lehnsherr's Guide to Parenting by keire_ke

Alex disapproves of school car washes, despite the abundance of wet bikinis on pretty girls. Erik doesn’t approve of his son shirking money-making duties.

Humane Society by smilebackwards

Once Erik finally allows himself to decide that Charles is pretty much the best thing since sliced bread, he spends the next week being incredibly bitter that he's Charles' cat and not his boyfriend.

Protect, Serve, Troll by keire_ke

Erik's fire department has a special relationship with the local university. They visit often. Sometimes, there even is a fire.

Not So Much the Teacup by thehoyden

“Charles is basically the bride whisperer. It’s like he can read their minds.” (wedding planner AU)

645 Riverside Drive by smilebackwards

Azazel clearly has yet to understand the shattering power of Charles' disappointment, so Erik takes one for the team, grabbing the cup and downing the remnants of the cappuccino like a shot while Azazel watches with morbid fascination.

Good manners (will get you far) by ximeria

Charles had been looking forward to the performance at the Met for ages. Little did he know, things would not go according to plan.

Oysters and Champagne by listerinezero

Erik is the extremely talented, extremely scary chef at one of the top restaurants in New York, and Charles, the head waiter, is the only person with the balls to stand up to him. Their fights are the stuff of legend, and their argument over the Valentine's Day menu turns into one for the history books.

'tis a far far better thing doing stuff for other people by whichisgolden

The X-Men: First Class Clueless AU that you didn't know you always wanted. Charles is a spoiled Beverly Hills telepath, Erik is his pretentious ex-step-brother, Emma is his best friend because they both know what it feels like for people to be jealous of them, etc.

Other Life Challenges by professor

“Why am I here again?” Erik groans.

“I need you to lift things and glower at people over my shoulder when I tell people that it’s not ‘politically correct’ or a ‘war on Christmas’ to have a non-denominational winter holiday festival,” says Theresa Pryde.

Well, at least those are two things he’s good at.

Making perfect by aesc

As is the case with most trials in Erik's life, this one starts with Charles gazing beseechingly at him and asking him for a favor. Not that their going-on-three years relationship is a trial, even though it started with Charles giving Erik the full benefit of sad blue eyes and asking him if he wouldn't mind opening his car door since he'd locked his keys inside, but still.

love like toy trucks crashing by midrashic

Charles Xavier may be young, but he knows what it means to love.

soul of my soul by ikeracity

You can imprint on your soulmate anywhere — school, work, on the street, in a restaurant, on the subway.

Charles and Erik imprint on each other just in time for the holidays.

#gerec rambles #cherik #fic rec #gerec's fic rec #fluff and crack

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booksrbetterthanpeople · 2 years ago

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Ooh! What are the other students of Dupont like in the Shadyverse? What are their crimes and personalities, and do they also cause trouble in costumes?

Marinette

Poisoned a few customers with her “special” pastries, which sent many to the hospital

No reason other than she found rat poison and wanted to see if it worked on humans

She’s just a tad bit paranoid and always makes people eat her food before her to see if it’s poisoned or not as payback for her crimes

She still likes to sew, but a lot of her designs are based off well known toxins

Alya

Spread rumors that got several people arrested and sent to psych wards

She wants people to hang off of her every word and if she needs to make some of her rumors true to do that, so be it

If there’s an outlandish rumor flying around, Alya probably started it

Incredibly annoyed by her sisters and his not above starting a few rumors about Nora taking supplements and lying about Ella and Etta ruining their mother’s dishes

Nino

Stole and plagiarized music from young musicians and passed them all off as his own while making hundred of euros a week by selling CDs

He’s also known to be quite violent when the right buttons are pushed. Don’t cross him

He hates to do any work for himself and relies on empty promises and gullible morons

He’s got a soft spot for Chris and makes sure to teach him everything he knows

Adrien

Used his connections to have each of his fans stupid enough to put the return address on their fan letters stalked for months

It gets boring as a young model and he needs something to keep him entertained

So, what better way than by seeing how far he can push some poor sap before they eventually break

He even does this to his own parents

Ivan

A bit of physical assault here, some intimidation there

Uses his stature against others to keep people out of his way and give him what he wants

He’s got a soft spot for his sister and will take down anyone who poses as a threat to her

Before you try to get back at him, ask yourselves, “Do I want to die today?”

Myléne

Committed charity fraud and stole over two millions euros to buy herself clothes from companies that everyone knows makes money off of child labor

She’s apathetic towards charity cases and sees them as nothing more than an annoyance

Any time an opportunity to do some good comes up, she looks the other way

Extremely vain and only obsessed with having the best clothes

Rose

May or may not have poisoned a few IV bags in while posing as an intern at a hospital

Rose is a bit like Adrien and Marinette. She likes to conduct “experiments” on others

She doesn’t see the people outside of DuPont as people, just test subjects for her to try her toxin-laced perfumes on

She holds a place in her heart for Juleka, the only one smart enough to known if she’s poisoned her drink or not

Juleka

Stabbed several people at random with makeshift knives

Just to see how quickly they bleed out

Juleka’s always had a fascination with morbid stuff and gets a thrill out of traumatizing people

Luka’s her right hand, posing as the scared good twin looking for help before she strikes

Alix

Sold items in the museum to wealthy buyers for months until the eventually got caught

Alix and Nino share a love for get rich quick schemes and occasionally conspire with each other

She’s never above blaming others for her crimes, including her own brother

If you wordly possession has gone missing, it was likely that Alix stole and sold it

Nathaniel

He used fear and blackmail to make the student body obey him and grovel at the ground he walked on

Back at his last school, he possessed the Butterfly Miraculous and looked through students memories in their sleep to dig up dirt on them

Nathaniel absolutely HATES being seen as second rate and makes sure to let everyone know he’s the one who holds the power

Uses the Butterfly Miraculous for no reason other than to get his way

Kim

Physical assault charges that never stuck becuase everyone was afraid of him

There’s no telling what this guy will do. He’s unpredictable and gets a thrill out of seeing people flinch when he walks by

Makes a show of seeming like a nice guy to people who don’t know him before he does a 180

It’s how he got the Ladybug Miraculous

Max

Hacked into the grade books and ruined everyone’s GPAs just for the hell of it

He enjoys being the best and likes to tear people down in order for that to happen

Is always a step ahead of others. To him, life is only a video game where he knows all the codes

He saw the box sticking out of the old man’s pocket. So, he helped him up and swiped it right while he wasn’t looking

Chloé

Basically what canon Chloé does before season 4 and minus the Akumas

… So, not going into detail, other than she’s not the worst person at DuPint

Sabrina

Framed several teachers she didn’t like so her dad would arrest them

Sabrina got a sick thrill out of using her dad’s positions to gain fear and respect

She’s played the role of the good lieutenant’s daughter actively pointing out horrible crimes, when really, she just wants certain people out of her life

He tricks won’t work anymore, but she can always count on a few suckers

Lila:

Canon Lila but without the… You know

She and Alya are the main rumor mills at school and are actively turning people against one another for the thrill of it

She doesn’t lie to get people to do what she wants out of pity. She just does it to ruin lives

Besides, it’s like a game for her

Marc

Psychologically tortured his classmates and actively threatened just about everyone for the smallest incidents

Marc thrives off of fear from others, even his own family

He’s been Kiran’s main caretaker since he was born, not that he gave his mothers much of a choice and constantly warns him about the dangers of going outside so he can keep his “precious baby brother” all to himself

Now that he’s at DuPont, he can no longer protect Kiran and fills the void with his Senticreatures

Aurore

Kept her family under her thumb for years with all sorts of threats before they finally sent her to DuPont

A bit unhinged, but plays it off as the stressed out “little miss perfect”

No one had any reason to suspect Aurore since she seemed like perfection incarnate, but they never saw what else she did

Aurore can easily get into peoples heads, so watch out for that

Mireille

Was caught cheating in one of Alec’s contests and many others before that by rigging the votes

Extremely confident and selfish, Mireille does whatever it takes to win in life

Similar to Max, she sees life as only a chessboard where everyone is a pawn

Mireille can make even the most confident people question themselves

Cosette

Manipulated her siblings into committing crimes for her and put on the facade of the innocent younger sibling when they try to blame her

One of the school’s master manipulators, they get a thrill out of making others do their dirty work

For years, they made Yvette and Jordyn look like the bad siblings while they were a perfect Angel

Its manipulation won’t work at DuPont, but Cosette has many other tricks

Lacey

Broke into people’s homes with her rock climbing gear and stole any money or jewelry they had lying around

Prone to violence when questioned, Lacey is one of the people you don’t want to mess with

She has a place in her heart for her brothers, and it crushed her to see the hurt in their eyes when she was caught

Dubbed, “Queen of Thieves” by members of her small but active gang of others sent to DuPont for thievery. They look up to her

Jean

Used his looks to get the male students to do as he pleased- Steal, do his homework, take out anyone who poses as a threat to him

Jean is incredibly vain and obsessed with his looks. Becuase when you’re gorgeous, people do whatever you want

His tactics still work at DuPont, and he’s getting away with it all

The only person he’ll ever love is Austin Tomassian, his boyfriend and the leader of the most notorious gang at DuPont

Denise

Beat up just about anyone weaker than them… So pretty much everyone, for no reason other than they could

Denise ruled their other school with an iron fist, constantly hustling students out of their money, starting fist fights, and making no empty threats

They, Kim, Ivan, and any other muscular students are one of the most feared gangs at DuPont

Simon, of course, is safe from any sort of torment unless a certain someone wants to meet Denise’s fist

Simon

Filmed people at out of context moments and posted them on all of his social media accounts to have their lives ruined

Why? Becuase they can.

He’s pretty close with Lila and Alya, but wishes they’d step up their game just a little bit

Lords it over peoples heads that he’s dating one of the most feared students at DuPont

Reshma

Used her family name and bribery to always have her way at school, and made any lower income students do as she pleased

Reshma is a nightmare version of Regina George

She’s in with the gang of rich kids who bribe the other students to entertain them

Still close with Ismael and is not above getting physical with anyone who disrespects him

Ismael

Tried to burn his own house down with his mother still inside

He told everyone she had it coming, but his dad insisted on sending him to DuPont to avoid prison

Ismael has trust issues, and only puts his faith in Reshma, the one who helped him find unscented kerosene

It’s best not to mess with him since he’s got backup from the wealthiest gang at DuPont

Zoé

Used threats and occasional blackmail to make everyone at her last school fear her

Like Nathaniel, Zoé ruled over her school at New York with an iron fist before she was eventually sent to DuPont

Zoé HATES anyone who poses as competition, which is why she made herself the unquestioned leader of the gang of rich kids

Often funds most of Cosette’s crimes. They CANNOT say no to her

As for any of them having the Miraculous, Blood Beetle and Ikati Bleak are working to hunt down the old man they got their Miraculous from, knowing he has more

Thanks to Max’s intellect, they’re able to sneak out of DuPont undetected to cause chaos

While the four of them could easily destroy DuPont and free their associates, special forces will be called in and they’ll all just be shipped to some maximum security prison that’s countries away, so they need to find the Miraculous to give them all powers and even the odds

Plus, Prince Pain refuses to send his babies into battle

#shadybug and claw noir #miraculous ladybug #miraculous #mlb ocs #akuma class #science kids #answered ask #ask me stuff #mlb au

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