#i just got to the part where he watches a wasp crawl up the window

[bodhirookes]

honestly me rereading and annotating the raven boys is just me highlighting everything gansey says and writing “he is such a freak” next to it

[soniabigcheese]

Fluffember 2021 - Cuddle and Rug

Thought I'd combine the two.

It had been a rare moment for the two of them, so Jeff grabbed the opportunity to raid the cupboards, take Lucy out for a drive and surprise her with a picnic along the way.

Just a matter of which place they should sit and eat, without being bombarded by hornets, wasps and their food crawling with nasty little biting ants.

And then he spotted it. Atop a small hill, a beach tree, its leaves just starting to turn orange right at the top. It looked as if the sun was setting ... and was kissing the leaves.

Huffing and puffing, Lucy struggled up that incline and leaned against the bark. This pregnancy, despite still being in its early stages, was really taking it out on her.

So he quickly dropped the rug onto the ground, arranged the containers and plates, and took her hands, slowly lowering her down.

She didn't feel that hungry and started to nod off, the occasional sounds of buzzing bees and flies, along with the unusually soft warm breeze, helped her along.

So he took his jacket off, draped it over her shoulders and slid between her and the tree, his legs either side of her body. With a gentle tug, he pulled her close and they cuddled whilst watching the hustle and bustle of the traffic below.

It had been a dream of Lucy's to visit England and enjoy afternoon tea. But their busy schedules as well as her falling pregnant with their first child, soon put paid to all that.

But ... she was determined - and stubborn - putting her foot down, arguing with her doctor about the travel risks on long haul flights.

And here they were, enjoying a rare sunny autumn day. There had been threats of heavy rain. And she watched from their rental cottage window as dark clouds gathered and then dispersed, leaving deliciously blue skies.

He kissed the top of her head, one of his hands strayed to the small bump where their baby was starting to develop.

She sighed.

"So," she said quite suddenly, breaking the comfortable silence, "what do you want to call him?"

His hand stopped and he hitched a breath, quite taken by surprise. And nothing surprised the great Jeff Tracy.

"Him?"

"Yeah. Got the results back, a couple of hours ago. Just wanted a perfect time to tell you."

"I have a son?"

"Well ... duh ... obviously. And what's all this ... 'we'. I had a major part to play in all of this!"

She was quite indignant, and turned to glare at him. Before giving him a playful push.

"Haven't really thought about it."

"Jefferson Tracy! Seriously?"

"Hey, there's still time. We can figure out his name later okay. For now, I just want to treasure this moment with my beautiful wife."

"Humph, yeah," she grumped, "just wait until I'm a big fat waddling whale unable to put her socks on."

He kissed her again.

"I'll still say you're beautiful then."

She chewed the inside of her mouth thoughtfully.

"Promise?"

"I promise."

@gumnut-logic

[westmoor]

voices from within (a post-halloween special)

(other parts can be found here)

Following the success of his latest novel, Jaskier accompanies Geralt to fulfill a contract. He only hopes to get some sounds on tape, film some furniture moving, get his name out there and maybe catch the start of a new story - but some houses are haunted by more than just the ghosts of former residents.

---

“Oh.” Jaskier’s voice barely rang above a breath. “Oh, it’s gorgeous.” For a moment he stood staring up at the building that was to shelter him for the next twenty-four hours, until the slamming of the driver’s side door snapped him out of it and he turned. “Geralt-”

Geralt only hummed his assent. It was impressive, stately even: When Jaskier had referred to it as a castle, it wasn’t far from the truth. 

Wide and squared and two storeys tall, brick painted a light creamy beige offset by dark brown, a dozen arched lattice windows gleamed in the afternoon light. Had he believed houses had personality he might’ve said this one looked friendly, inviting.

“What do you think?” Blue eyes twinkled at him, clearly pleased. “Do you like it? Think it will meet our expectations?”

He didn’t. He was decidedly less excited than his counterpart by what awaited them, and truth be told he would’ve preferred not to be there at all - or rather, preferred for Jaskier not to be there. It was a rule of his, one he’d reinforced after they had gotten together. He did not allow humans near his line of work.

But the novelist, after the success of the initial story featuring a Witcher, had been the one contacted about the job and had even brokered the contract, holding it over Geralt’s head until they had reached a compromise. He would be given free reign to do what he needed for the night, gather whichever so-called supernatural evidence and material he required, as long as he followed direction and kept a safe distance when told to. He had until dawn.

Still, Geralt couldn’t help the sneaking feeling of foreboding lurking at the back of his mind.

So no, he didn’t like it. He didn’t like the way it loomed behind the lean figure of his partner, deceptively calm, crouched like a beast lying in wait.

Geralt was saved from the attempt to voice his concerns - as brash as his boyfriend could be, he was remarkably perceptive - by a second car pulling in behind theirs.

No outside involvement had been another one of Geralt’s demands, triggering a tirade of protests from Jaskier, who in turn had argued that he couldn’t possibly cover the necessary ground on his own. Not within such a short time frame.

Unable to move his witcher, that particular settlement had eventually been perched on a technicality: No outsiders would join their so-called expedition.

How Jaskier had been able to get hold of Lambert and Eskel, much less convinced them both to join in, Geralt would never know.

Sneaky bastard.

Watching his brothers emerge from the car and approach them, however, he felt the restless beast in his chest subdued. Jaskier drew trouble like a spoonful of sugar drew wasps, but surely even he couldn’t manage to put himself in too much danger, not with three pairs of seasoned witcher eyes at his back.  

Rounding the silver hood of the vehicle, Eskel nodded at Geralt and extended a hand in friendly greeting to Jaskier. The two of them had only briefly met but hit it off immediately, which wasn’t too surprising - anyone with the sense not to balk at his scars would find the older wolf to be good company. 

Still waters run deep though, and his brothers knew better than anyone what it would take for a stranger to work through the layers of Eskel’s polite facade and earn real trust. Luckily for all of them, Jaskier’s openness and frank speech - verbose but earnest - had battered at it in much the same way as he’d broken down Geralt’s own walls.

Lambert, on the other hand - 

“Thought you said this place had ghosts, or whatever.” His hands were buried as deep in his pockets as they would go. “Are we going to go find some, or just stand out here until we join them? I’m freezing my tits off.”

Lambert was an acquired taste.

Jaskier didn’t seem perturbed in the slightest, and eagerly grasped the incentive to get moving. Within moments he had ushered them all up the double stone steps with an authority that probably wasn’t appropriate for a young man to direct at three monster-hunting mutants twice his size, but seemed entirely natural to him. 

Geralt thanked his lucky stars that neither brother commented on the quickening of his heartbeat.

---

If the exterior was impressive, the interior was overwhelming.

Heavy oak doors swung open on well-oiled hinges and they were led through to a lounging area, masterfully decorated to reflect the wealth and status of its original owners, walls practically dripping with frames illustrating its rich history. Past cushioned chairs, rococo sofas and tables on spindly legs, a grand staircase twisted up to the second floor, banister continuing along an interior balcony wrapping around the entrance from above. Beyond, rows of pearly white doors and pastel hallways would carry them into the heart of the manor.

Crossing the threshold felt like stepping through time. Despite the electric lights and vague distant hum of heating units, each piece in sight was as close to original as could be hoped for, selected and maintained with utmost care. 

But there was something else, too. Not so much a smell as a breath, an unmistakable lingering of things long lost.

Neither witcher voiced it, though they all clearly noticed - eyes skimming walls and nostrils flaring momentarily before they discerned what couldn’t be pinned down.

Jaskier slipped seamlessly into the role of the enthusiastic guide, throwing tidbits and details left and right while introducing the trio to the building’s past and present characters. His brothers exchanged glances at the shift in demeanour, but Geralt remained unfazed. He knew the writer hadn’t stumbled into his profession by chance, but lived and breathed for such occasions. Be it in speech or in prose, he was a born narrator.

What followed was a thorough tour of every notable room, nook, and cranny, all with a performative flair and tinged with what Jaskier referred to as reported phenomenons. Geralt hung back. He had already heard the broad strokes of it, but listened nonetheless, the added structure and dulcet tone of his lover’s voice crafting it into a proper story. 

The other two were paying the attention of hearing it for the first time, and his mind revived the question of how they’d been convinced to join in the first place. He might end up having to ask.

Though Jaskier was an entertaining host - and only got them lost twice - an hour had come and gone by the time they completed their loop and found themselves back at the top of the staircase.

“Now, gentlemen!” Clapping his hands, their guide halted in front of one of the large white doors. One, Geralt noted, they hadn’t opened yet. “If you would so kindly help bring in the equipment and start setting up for the night…” His lips quirked in that mischievous way at least one of them had come to know all too well. “I’ve saved the best for last.”

A lesser man would have succumbed to Lambert’s baiting comments and Geralt’s glare, but Jaskier’s penchant for dramatics could weather any storm. 

Only once the car had been emptied of gear and devices, wires stretched and screens installed, and after he’d procured a sturdy meal for his companions through a particularly scared-looking pizza delivery person, were they allowed back near the second floor landing.

“I want to look everything over one more time before we start recording, and maybe move another cam down to the first floor. The maid’s quarter is said to be particularly reliable, lots of people claim to have heard voices - lullabies even - between 3 and 4am.”

It was Eskel, who so far had been the most amenable of the group and asked only the most practical questions, that finally raised the issue that had crawled steadily closer to the surface as they worked. “This seems like a pretty big contract for a few disembodied voices.”

“Ah.” Jaskier’s grin grew wide. “But we’ve only scratched the surface so far. “

“In here,” he tapped the great door behind him, “lies the heart of this little castle, the grand salon, where the original owners would entertain guests. Basically the entire staff claims to have heard sounds coming from here. Music, clinking glass, the clamour of voices, as if there’s a party taking place, dragging well into the night. But when they open the door and look inside…” He snapped his fingers. “Nothing! Dark and abandoned, quiet as a grave.”

“If the claims are true, this is where it all began. There was an accident, you see, a real tragedy, one that cost the master of the house - a mister Lamm - and all six of his sons their lives. His widow, Dora, unable to let go and half mad with grief, prayed day and night to be reunited with her husband and to see her family again. But when religion failed her, as it’s wont to do, she cast her net wider, and gathered every prominent mystic and occultist of her time to aid her quest.”

Geralt stepped closer, the crux of their stay finally about to be revealed to his brothers, who were following the recounting with rapt attention.

“And she succeeded in bringing them back. Not to life, perhaps, but the halls were filled with children’s laughter and the sounds of running footsteps once again. Dora is said to have sat up nightly, listening, speaking to them until dawn. Only, it wasn’t the only thing they brought along.”

Eskel nodded, an idea of which road the story was about to go down, but waited for the man to continue.

“Now, I don’t know that I believe everything -” 

Lambert snorted, earning a sharp elbow to the side.

“- but according to mediums and other visitors who’ve stayed here over the years, the house is open somehow. Like a friction point worn thin. Supposedly whatever leaks through serves as a sort of battery for the rest - the knocking, the voices, the singing - but it’s not just that, either.”

Jaskier’s voice lowered a note as he dropped the theatrical edge, turning serious. “Previous employees say it… changes people. Makes them ill, triggers things. Makes them say and do things and behave in ways they otherwise wouldn’t. Most don’t stay very long. Others won’t leave, even after their employment is terminated.”

“The current owner wants it shut, whatever it is,” Geralt interjected. 

If Jaskier was annoyed at having his flow broken, it didn’t show, and he smoothly picked back up. “And that’s why we’re here! By morning, thanks to Geralt’s ministrations, this place should be as devoid of any spiritual activity as any regular old heap of rocks, and I want to catch it before it goes.”

Silence fell over the group.

“That’s it?” Lambert looked at Jaskier, brows raised. Then at Geralt, and back at Jaskier, who nodded affirmatively. He shrugged. “Okay. Fun.”

Geralt released a breath he didn’t realise he’d been holding, and Jaskier leaned up to the door. 

“Well then, friends, if you’re ready!” He flicked the lock, before stepping back and turning to Geralt, features seeped in expectation. 

“Darling, would you do the honours?”

[halothenthehorns]

TLTNL THE THIRD TASK

Lily sat there, fidgeting in unease before she forced herself to start her chapter, but at least there was the comfort that the last task coming up would be the last of it.

Noticing his wife's hesitation, James gave her the chance to stall for a few moments more as he called to Sirius, "you going to sulk over there all day?" He wanted Sirius in easy smacking distance if he found an excuse to use his name pun again.

Sirius stretched leisurely, eyed his mate for the tone, but then got to his feet and decided it was worth the risk as he flopped back on Harry's side and declared, "Who's sulking? Just because I don't want to sit by your ugly mug all day."

"You've tragically put up with it for years," Remus reminded, "I think you can stand it a little while longer."

Lily actually managed a giggle at the boys picking as she began.

Ron asked if Dumbledore really thought You-Know-Who was getting stronger?

"Why do we keep starting these chapters with Ron recounting stuff?" Lily sighed. "I'd be much happier listening to you all discuss your Charms homework."

"Glad you would," James wrinkled his nose, "I'd rather keep talking about all the ways to get Snape out of that school."

Harry had just finished recounting his Pensieve event to his friends, after first writing it all and sending it to Sirius.

"Finally," Sirius gave a dramatic sniff, "I was beginning to think you'd forgotten about me."

"How could I ever do such a thing?" Harry demanded back in exasperation, "you keep talking in my ear about how important you are."

"He learns fast," Remus snickered.

  The three had been sitting around ever since exchanging all the knowledge they'd gained this year, and Harry's head finally understood what Dumbledore meant about wanting to siphon a bit off.

"You're fourteen, you shouldn't have to know what that feels like yet," Lily sighed.

"I don't know, I had the most thoughts in my head when I hit that age," Sirius smirked.

Lily kept reading, loudly, before she had to hear any more about that.

Ron was mostly stuck on the fact that Dumbledore trusted Snape, though he'd been confirmed as a Death Eater.

Hermione hadn't spoken for a time while Harry and Ron spoke, her head bent towards her knees as she looked like she could do with a Pensieve as well. Her first words were Rita Skeeter.

James began laughing raucously at once, bright eyes shining as he said, "I'm just so glad Hermione has her priorities in line."

"You ever worry about Hermione becoming a wee bit obsessed?" Remus snickered.

"What, her? No, never," Sirius' tone was going to bleed him out of sarcasm with that one sentence.

Ron demanded how she could be worrying about her?

"Worry is the wrong word," Lily shook her head.

Hermione corrected she was thinking about what Skeeter, and Winky had said about what they knew about Bagman. That Death Eater trial where he'd been accused must be it.

"You guys put that stuff together so much faster," Harry sighed.

"Helps to have more than one genius in the room," Sirius smirked.

"Hey!" Harry yelped.

Ron asked if Fudge really thought Maxime had been the one to get rid of Crouch, and Harry agreed Fudge had said so, while Ron did acknowledge they'd never considered her before, and she did have giant blood and didn't want to admit it.

"Well yes, but that doesn't actually have anything to do with Crouch," James rolled his eyes at Ron trying to put every mundane thing together.

Hermione said she didn't blame her, look at what happened to Hagrid, but that didn't mean she had motive. Hermione would lie as well.

"I'll give her that," Lily nodded fairly, "it's practically suicide in this day and age just to go around saying you're a Muggleborn, but I still don't think that gives you the right to throw other people under the bus to protect yourself."

"We don't know that's what Maxime did," Harry sighed in defense of her.

"True, but we can't think of any other ways Rita's getting these interviews without a first person account," Sirius' scowl didn't lessen one bit.

Then Hermione checked her watch and began scolding them all at once for not having done any practice tonight, they'd have to work extra hard tomorrow on their curses. Then she ordered Harry off to bed.

Harry'd made the joke before, but it really was something to hear his friend try to mother him while his mother read that.

While Harry crawled into bed, his eyes flickered over to Neville in the adjacent one. True to his promise, he had not mentioned that lone part about his parents.

Lily's voice hitched into unrecognizable as she forced that out, her hands trembling slightly along the pages as she couldn't get the image of Alice screaming in pain out of her head.

Harry had often received sympathy for being an orphan, but Harry thought Neville deserved it more for having parents that were alive and didn't even recognize him.

"I really don't think anyone should be deciding who gets more sympathy for what they go through in life," James sighed. "You just happen to be slightly more public, but I can almost guarantee if Neville didn't have his scary grandmother around him outside of school, he'd be getting the same thing." His mind lingered on how well known and liked the Longbottoms were, and even Dumbledore saying how the public had been whipped into a panic of what happened to them. It was just as likely the people in that day knew Neville's name as well as Harry's, though he could believe not the other kids their age.

As Harry drifted off to sleep, he thought of all the people that continued to be harmed by the Death Eaters; the Longbottoms, Crouch's son. It was all Voldemort's doing, his existence that continued ruining all these lives.

"It can help to look at the big picture," Remus sighed in agreement.

Ron and Hermione were supposed to be studying for their exams,

"Almost forgot you got exempt from those," Remus said in surprise.

"I didn't," Sirius rolled his eyes, "it's so far the only good thing that's come of this mess."

which would finish on the day of the third task, but they were putting most of their efforts into helping Harry prepare.

"I really love your friends," Lily smiled sweetly.

"As do I," James agreed, "but I don't know why you bring this up now. I'd do anything to stop studying for exams, helping out my friend is just a bonus."

When Harry tried to convince them of this, Hermione just brushed him off, saying this was just extra studying for their DADA class.

Sirius mock gasped in outrage, "how dare Hermione equate practicing useful spells to learning in a classroom, I'm shamed for her."

"I'll pass the message along," Harry chuckled.

Ron agreed this was all good training for when they all became Aurors, while managing to Impediment a wasp buzzing around.

They were all genuinely impressed at that skill, not just anyone could hit a moving target small as a bug.

"I'm believing that more and more as this goes on," James chuckled as he looked to Harry. "You really think you go on to do that?" He emphasized the word think so as not to upset Harry.

He mulled it over for a bit, but only gave a small smile for an answer while saying, "I can see it, but I don't know if that's just me at fourteen still seeing it."

"So how many Auror noses have you seen to change your opinion?" Remus smirked.

Harry chuckled lightly at the joke again, though he did somehow wonder if he ever did meet other Aurors besides Mad-Eye?

The mood in the castle couldn't be more excited as everyone was looking forward to the last task a week before school ended.

Despite the nerves coloring her tone, there was also some palpable relief mixed in. Finally the last task, this really should be the end of their big worries the rest of this year. It didn't matter how stupid it was to be afraid of these things looking at her full grown boy, those tasks were a nightmare.

Harry was practicing hexes at every available moment.

"On who exactly?" James asked innocently. "Just so we can keep track is all."

"Harry doesn't go around doing that like some people," Lily snapped at him before Harry could respond.

James rolled his eyes, but Harry blinked at the pair in surprise. It was foolish to think James hadn't cursed Snape at some point with all the animosity they'd been throwing around, and yes they'd admitted several times now to pranks, a few of which had some bad results, but just how often did his dad go around cursing people for the fun of it? It sounded more like something Malfoy would do for kicks? He'd really always put his mother's comments like that down to her exasperation, but the more she said it, the more sure he was she wasn't really exaggerating.

He was walking into this third task more confident than he ever had for the others as he realized Moody was right, he had faced barriers and enchantments like this before, and he'd even had time to prepare for these.

Harry was immediately distracted by wanting to laugh at his younger self for being an idiot. Something about this task was going to go horribly wrong, he'd been thinking that from day one of rehearing about this, and he still had no clue what.

McGonagall had quickly grown tired of walking in on the three practicing in empty classrooms, and so had allowed them to be using hers while she wasn't.

"Sounds like McGonagall," Sirius nodded along. "Tries to hide her act of helpfulness by saying it annoyed her otherwise."

Harry had quickly mastered a plethora of useful Curses, as well as a handy find called the Four-Point spell, which pointed him north and would help him find his way along in the maze. Now all he was struggling with was his Shield Charm.

"That's a common tricky one," Remus agreed, "instead of one burst of energy to blast a spell, you're expected to hold it up and linger on the magic, very hard for people to learn to adapt to."

He was still stumbling around after Hermione's Jelly-Legs Jinx got through his.

"Now see, wouldn't wiggling ears be better than that," James smirked.

Ron was hovering by the window going over some new lists of spells, and called them over to have a look at Malfoy.

"Nothing good," all the boys muttered at once.

They peaked down and saw Malfoy and his usual cronies all huddled under a tree, Crabbe and Goyle apparently keeping watch and smirking.

"Definitely not good," Sirius corrected.

Malfoy was holding his hand up to his mouth and speaking into it.

Harry's eyes narrowed behind his glasses, for some reason he was convinced now more than ever Malfoy was talking to an electronic bug, no matter how impossible Hermione said it could be, but why now though? What could Malfoy be doing down there?

Harry guessed he was using a walkie-talkie from the looks of it.

"What's that?" James asked eagerly.

"You talk into one end, and you can hear someone on the other end," Remus shrugged, "good for long distance type things, but they do have a range shorter than a telephone."

"That sounds brilliant," at once his eyes gleamed, and they could all guess what he was immediately thinking before he said it. "Wish we had those at school, would have come in real handy."

"Sadly, as I'm sure Hermione's fixing to remind, it wouldn't have done us any good," Sirius sighed.

Hermione again repeated how those wouldn't work here, and then told Harry he had to get back to work on that Shield Charm.

"But we were actually having fun spying on Malfoy instead of vice versa for a change," Sirius sighed.

Sirius was sending daily owls now.

"I am biting my tongue not to make a mother hen joke at you right now," Remus snickered.

Sirius sighed and grumbled a bit, but knew he would have taken it in stride if anyone had, he both deserved it, and thought he was in the right to be doing so as well as everyone else. Even Harry couldn't be too annoyed at his paranoid Godfather, the constant mail and worry was the most support and worry he'd ever got in his life.

They were all filled with warnings to concentrate on getting out of this task and leave everything else for afterwards because it wasn't his responsibility or in his power to do anything for now.

"I don't really think that part was necessary though," James had a fixed smile in place as he really wanted to snap at Sirius for overstepping his bounds, and then having to remind himself Sirius was the only one there setting those bounds. "He's not like you, he doesn't think the outside world revolves around him as much as that castle."

Sirius laughed because he knew he was supposed to, but no one could miss the catch of annoyance in James' voice. To be honest it was the first time Harry noticed it though, and he felt like an idiot it had taken him this long to realize his dad might be jealous of Sirius doing all this. He wasn't really sure what to say though, it felt like an empty promise to tell someone they couldn't be replaced when he'd never met him before, while it would also be downplaying how much he really was touched at everything Sirius did for him.

Sirius promised that after this was all over, they could put their attention on other matters.

"What other matters?" Remus couldn't help but ask even if it didn't help the odd lingering silence in the room. "What exactly do you plan to do with him once this task is over, take him Voldemort hunting?"

"Nah," Sirius waved him off, "more like take him into the forest and give him some survival skills, that seems like much more fun."

"The worst part is, I can't decide if either of you are kidding," Lily muttered as she decided to ignore them both.

Harry was starting to grow uneasy the closer the date began, but it wasn't nearly so bad as the previous two. At least this one he'd done everything possible to be prepared for.

"To be fair, I still don't see how you could have been 'prepared' for the first task. You weren't given anything to work with," James pointed out to sketch out his own feelings.

"Least with this one I wasn't having crazy time jump skips," Harry shrugged, "it finally felt, I don't know, final."

There was something about the way he said that that gave them all a deep chill that even Harry didn't seem aware, he had a faraway look in his eyes when he finished.

The best part was, this was the final one. Good or bad, after this it would all be over.

"There's the bright side," Lily said with forced chipper that didn't seem to get through to anyone, not even herself.

Breakfast of the morning gave Harry a special treat, Sirius had sent him an extra good luck note. It was only a muddy paw print on a page, but Harry smiled as he tucked it away.

Sirius covered the happy feeling that gave him with a snort of mirth, telling Harry, "always good to know what you appreciate, just let me nip out into the rain right quick and I'll be back with a whole room full of mud."

"You'll do no such thing," Lily said at once without looking up, "I haven't forgiven you for singing my rug yet."

Sirius blanched and sat very far back in his seat, dang, she had noticed.

An owl arrived with Hermione's Daily Prophet, and while she began unfolding it and taking a sip of her drink, she quickly spat that in surprise.

"That's an encouraging start!" Remus went bug eyed at once, all of them feeling like jumping out of their seat at once in panic.

Both boys tried to ask what was going on even as she tried to tuck it away,

"Exactly how believable does she think that is?" James demanded faintly.

but Ron was quicker and took it away. His first words were to call someone a cow.

Harry at once guessed Skeeter, while Ron tried for a no more effective plan of putting the paper out of Harry's sights.

Sirius actually did laugh, Harry really had the best friends who were far more alike than they ever would have admitted aloud, both thinking that would work.

Harry was in no way surprised as he guessed it was about him, while both answered no in the same unconvincing tone.

"Should we be worried they're compulsive liars?" Remus rolled his eyes, still forcing himself to remain in his seat rather than trying to take a peek over Lily's shoulder already and find out what this was.

Harry hadn't a chance to argue anymore as Malfoy called from the Slytherin table about how Harry was going to go berserk on them any moment.

"Err," Harry muttered in surprise. Malfoy had used a lot of lame insults on him, but that had certainly come out of nowhere.

"Oh just tell your friends to give you the paper already," Lily scowled hatefully, "might as well get it over with."

"It's not like he can avoid it," James regretfully agreed.

Malfoy had his own copy of the paper in his hands, and all along the table Slytherins were laughing and pointing at their heads and casting Harry looks.

"To be fair, the whole hall was actually looking at me that way," Harry grumbled, "Malfoy just somehow has this way of spotlighting his table."

Lily gave him a small smile for that, happy to see he really didn't just single out that house.

Ron finally handed over the paper and Harry read the headline 'Potter Disturbed and Dangerous'

Lily could already tell someone was wanting to interrupt her with a splurge of anger, but though red faced and furious herself at just the start, she forced out.

Rita Skeeter began her report by stating their Boy Who Lived could possibly be unstable.

"Gets right to the bleeding point with this one," Remus said through gritted teeth.

Evidence had begun appearing about Potter's strange behavior, casting doubts on his suitability to compete in the Triwizard Tournament,

"No one was arguing he shouldn't be in the Tournament!" Sirius blasted.

"Though for completely different reasons than this," Harry shook his head in disgust.

or even to attend Hogwarts.

"Oi!" Harry shouted indignantly at once at that one. Taking digs at him was one thing, but to say he shouldn't even be allowed at his favorite place on earth!

There were reports of him regularly collapsing at school and complaints of head pain resonating from his scar, an old relic of You-Know-Who's attempts on Harry's life.

"Someone in your Divination class really went and told about this?" Sirius barked in disgust.

"But, they're all, well I mean, not one of those kids should have a reason to," James's face was coloring with hurt for his son.

"Well someone blabbed," Lily spat.

Monday Potter had even been unable to complete one of his Divination lessons, the reporter had witnessed him storming out.

"Witnessed?" They all parroted.

"She can't mean that one, it must be an exaggerated detail," Remus said at once. "There's no way she's following you around the school, even if she was using an Invisibility Cloak, someone should have caught her, or something."

"Maybe she's just not doing it anywhere near Moody's class," James offered without hope, as Sirius immediately pointed out the very flaw he'd been thinking in that.

"It still doesn't explain some of her earlier times, like Hermione and Krum, where Moody confirmed Skeeter wasn't anywhere around. She must be using the same method to hear all of this, how many tools can she have?"

"I guess, Remus is right," Lily sounded far too regretful to be saying that in Remus' opinion, "she must have made that detail up to give credibility."

"Or hide her source," Sirius scowled, still thinking an eyewitness to this was the most likely.

Harry chose not to confirm, or deny any of this for fear of the pain it would cause, but he couldn't deny even to himself how sure he was they were wrong, Skeeter had been there...

Skeeter had even interviewed some Medics from St. Mungo's, who had offered another suggestion that the original attack may just be causing some delusions of pain.

Lily was spluttering in shock and hatred before she could even get that all out.

"How the bloody hell would anyone know that!" Remus snarled. "Dumbledore doesn't even know what's going on with Harry's scar, who are they to say what could be affecting him?"

"With any luck it's more of Skeeter making everything up to fit her story," Harry sighed to try and curb them all just a bit, he was still far more distracted with the upcoming task to really bring himself to care about whatever Skeeter said about him.

One even agreed he could be pretending all of this for attention.

James snarled in outrage for that one! Harry hadn't had any say in this article being posted, had hardly mentioned to any more than four people of this pain, who was anyone to call his son that!

Harry did feel an echo of that being said to him before though, and wondered just how popular this article became, how many people believed he'd become attention seeking? Why would they!

The Daily Prophet had found even more facts to be released to the public that Albus Dumbledore never had.

"Because it's private information!" Sirius howled in outrage, already more than sick of watching this ruin his friend's life, now his little pup was next. "Where does this woman get off putting anything about Harry's life without his say so?"

"I think the Muggles have some laws against that," Lily seethed, "and I really want to start looking into it. Normally we have spells that detect when lies are being told about someone on print, and then you have to sign something saying it's not being used for educational purposes if that happens to your work. Clearly the Daily Prophet does not endorse that, and new laws need to be put in place so they do."

"Lockhart found a way around those," Remus reminded, "if he can, I'd believe anyone can."

"I will fund that project," James vowed.

Draco Malfoy had confirmed Potter spoke Parseltongue,

"I'm honestly surprised he's waited so long to tell the press," Harry sighed. "As much as he likes to brag of his father's connections."

"Guess it didn't occur to him until this year how much fun it could be," James thought his face was going to get stuck in that scowl and he still couldn't change it.

Remus was frowning in confusion though, thinking there was no way it was a coincidence Malfoy had been spotted doing something certainly not good, and only a few days later this was coming up. What on earth had Malfoy been doing that day that connected to Skeeter now knowing this?

and there had been a lot of attacks in their second year that all seemed to revolve around Potter who was known for easily losing his temper. It was all hushed up, but this had all come from the same guy who was friends with a giant and a werewolf.

Remus felt himself flush as that really registered. It had never occurred to him what his even talking to Harry could do to him publicly. Not that Harry had ever showed he cared about that, but it certainly wasn't comforting when Remus realized he seemed to have done Harry far more harm than good his one year there, his one lone helpful bit was something that any competent teacher could have taught him after all- "ouch! Merlin's shit Sirius, that hurt!"

Sirius said nothing back, his face absolutely clear saying he'd do worse if Remus started a guilt trip for this, he didn't even tuck his wand away as Lily uneasily kept going.

The article briefly explains what Parseltongue is, and how it was known for only being done by those of Dark Arts.

Harry sighed as he remembered back to even how his family had looked at him when they'd first found out about this, and had no delusions there wasn't a person left on earth who now wouldn't consider him some freak.

"I think it's cool," his dad surprised him by saying with a sniffy voice. "No matter how he got it, I'll give him credit for something unique. People are just jealous."

"I'm so sure that's it," Sirius snickered on his other side, "in fact, you'd think Harry would get some thanks for this, he could start his own service. Any time you have a snake problem, just call Harry, he'll come over and talk the snake out of the house."

James was trying to hide his laughter in his hand, while Lily was forcing herself to keep going around these boys' antics.

A member of the Dark Force Defense League had been quoted saying how he found anyone with the ability untrustworthy and needing to be investigated.

"Investigated of what?" Harry asked in surprise.

"No clue," James rolled his eyes, "but I trust it's nothing good."

"I can't wait until the next article now," Sirius deadpanned. "She's gone from putting you in three different lights now, you think she'll switch back around to one, or try another new angle?"

"Here's hoping Hermione catches her before we have to find out," Lily huffed.

The quote continued by saying that anyone who associated with such Dark creatures as giants and werewolves would be more than likely to have a fondness for violence and this shouldn't surprise anyone.

Sirius still had his wand held threateningly in his hand, as he kept his eye on their werewolf, he'd do it again if he caught Moony thinking like that, idiot that he was.

Remus for his part was grumbling in annoyance and still rubbing his knee where the stinging hex had hit, but at least grateful he hadn't gotten a whole mouthful speech accompanied by James, yet.

Dumbledore should be considering whether a boy such as this should be allowed to compete in the Triwizard Tournament.

"If I actually get kicked out of the Tournament because of her, I think I'll thank her," Harry shook his head.

"I think I'd be just a tad annoyed," James said without a trace of meaning it. "You've come so far, may as well get your last kicks in."

"Wasn't it my suggestion Harry should act like a lunatic to get thrown out in the first place," Sirius said with an obvious look at Remus, waiting to be corrected. "Where's my thanks if that happens to be true."

It was not forthcoming as Remus was now glaring at the fire and obviously trying to ignore them, so Harry filled the awkward silence. "I'll send you a letter."

The public should be fearing Potter using his Dark Arts to even win such a prize on this very night.

"She did a really bad job of posting this so late," Lily sniffed, "if her goal was to get you booted out of the Tournament, they couldn't have pulled it off in time anyways."

"Well darn," James snapped his fingers, "next time she writes something about Harry, I'll make sure it gets forwarded."

Harry was at least laughing slightly at them all playing this off.

Harry was not impressed as he folded the paper and handed it back to Hermione.

"What an underwhelming reaction," Sirius shook his head at him. "I'm sure Ron and Hermione were disappointed, did they expect you to go off the rails when you saw that?"

Harry shrugged and laughed at the idea, wondering for a moment why he had a spot of guilt at yelling at his friends about anything?

At the Slytherin table, Malfoy and his friends were still busy making faces at him and wagging their tongues like snakes.

"I'd imagine they look stupider than they're trying to make Harry look," Lily snapped at the idiots.

Ron was scanning through the article more carefully now, asking aloud how she'd known about his Divination moment.

Harry reminded he'd opened the window, maybe she'd heard it from the grounds.

"There's no way she heard you from the top of the North Tower," Remus disagreed, finally stopping his glaring at Sirius, and probably not even going to get him back for it later.

Hermione disagreed that still shouldn't have made it possible, while Harry asked if she had any updates on this magical bugging thing she had to be doing.

Hermione's face went slack in a dreamy expression.

"Err," the boys muttered, partly in concern, and partly in confusion of what had struck Hermione with that line.

The two watched as she first ran her fingers through her hair, and then brought her hand up to her mouth and muttering into her palm.

The only thing they could work out from that was Lily's muttered, "so, did she figure out what's going on?"

"I have no idea how those two things are supposed to be put together," James huffed, wondering when the surprise would wear off Hermione seemed to know a lot more than them.

The boys exchanged a look as Hermione muttered off into space about how this would be perfect, even Moody wouldn't spot it, and she could have been at all of these places.

"How on earth did that fourteen year old tie all this in together," Sirius threw his hands up in frustration.

"Must be magic we haven't seen yet," Remus scowled in frustration, "we've already seen that at least a few times, you know it's always adapting and new spells are invented every few years. That's the only thing I can think of, Skeeter's doing something we've never heard of."

Somewhere deep inside, Harry wanted to laugh at the idea of the Marauders saying this, but aloud he agreed it was just frustrating Hermione never shared what she was thinking.

Hermione yelped about going to the library to confirm something and then darted off.

"What on earth has that library ever done to her, to possess her like this," James groaned.

"She wouldn't be Hermione if she didn't check her work," Harry shrugged.

Ron called to her retreating back they had a History of Magic exam in ten minutes! Then he turned to Harry in shock, saying how much their friend had to hate her to possibly risk missing the start of an exam.

"It's good to see Hermione's finally sorted out her priorities," Sirius smiled for that one.

Then he asked if Harry was going to spend the test reading?

"I think I just felt my heart break," James declared as he eyed his boy. "Reading, during class, what has come over you?"

"I've nothing else to do," he smirked and shrugged at the same time. "Can't even doodle with Ron since he's the one who's busy, and I got caught last time for trying to practice spells. I'd go crazy if I just had to sit there staring at the ceiling."

"Oh yes, fine," James muttered.

Harry had spent all previous exams doing this, looking up more spells to practice for his third task, and Harry agreed he was most likely going to do so this time until McGonagall approached him.

"Has that ever been a good thing?" Lily groaned.

"Not that I can recall," Remus sighed.

She told him the champions were all meeting in the adjacent chamber after breakfast.

"Why!" Harry practically screeched, wondering if he'd somehow gotten the time stamps wrong.

"Relax, I'm sure you'll ask her then," Lily soothed, not denying one bit she was biting at her lip in worry as well as their semi joke still stood.

Harry began panicking at once, saying the task wasn't going to start until tonight!

McGonagall agreed she was aware,

"She gets so crispy about things being pointed out to her," Sirius couldn't help but utter with an old smirk.

this had to do with the champion's families coming to visit, and they'd be staying to watch the final.

"Err no, actually I didn't know," Harry admitted, wondering if anyone had mentioned this before and he hadn't been paying attention.

He wasn't too surprised when no one around him looked particularly enthused at this kind of declaration, they were all thinking the same as him, it's not like Sirius was going to be there.

She left then, Harry gaping in surprise that she actually thought the Dursleys would make an appearance.

"Somewhere in there is a really good question about whether Muggles would be allowed to attend this," Remus sneered.

"My best guess is still a not," Lily snarled. The only thing she'd ever even heard of coming close to this was a mention of Moaning Myrtle's parents coming up to school, and even then they'd never gotten confirmation of whether the girl was Muggleborn and this would be a problem, and if it was if they would have met outside the school premises...and all of this had nothing to do with the fact that the Dursleys would sooner make an appearance than hug Hagrid.

Ron gave a shrug, but then had to excuse himself to go off to his test.

Harry finished his breakfast slowly as the rest of the Hall emptied as well. He watched his fellow Champions making their way to that door behind the staff table, but Harry wasn't even going to bother poking his head in. He had no family-

Lily's voice gained a terrible hitch, but she forced herself to read past that moment and pretend like it never happened. Her Hare Bare was here with her now, he had all the family he could ever want, and damn these books for saying otherwise.

at least none who would turn up to see him risk his life.

Remus was twisting the sleeve of his robes down so hard, a few loose strings were appearing, that didn't change how bad this hurt. It had only just occurred to him, but he'd never even sent Harry a concerned note about him being in the Tournament. He'd had a million opportunities since his departure, and had never once reached out to try and be any part of Harry's life. There was a better chance of the Dursley's making an appearance than him by this point.

As Harry was finally leaving, thoughts of going to the library himself to do some hex research,

"That's what I always want to do whenever I think of those Muggles," Sirius snapped.

the door opened and Cedric told Harry to hurry up, they were waiting on him.

"They?" everyone repeated in shock, their mind floundering to come up with any good explanations for who this could be, and just as equally hurt that it was so confusing anyone would show up.

Utterly perplexed, Harry changed directions. The Dursleys couldn't possibly be here, could they?

James struggled hard to get the words out, "did you want them to be?"

Harry sat there for a long time in silence, his mind suddenly back to three years old and trying to ask his Aunt Petunia why they never said they loved him like they did to Dudley all the time, and only getting the same response he ever did, 'don't ask questions.' He knew for a long time in his childhood some part of him had wanted to understand why he'd never been cared for, and then he'd gotten his answer, so he responded with clear sincerity, "sure, would finally be able to curse them and not get in trouble."

The honestly unexpected joke caused them all to crack up laughing, hard. Harry making light of this was a blow none of them could gloss over, it would never not incite murder in all of them at the mention of those useless beings, but at least the bright smile he got for making them laugh felt worth it.

Inside was Krum talking to a dark haired man who Krum held similar features with, and a woman, all three speaking Bulgarian. Fleur was off to one side jabbering in French with a beautiful woman who had to be her mother, and Gabrielle.

Sirius opened, then closed his mouth. Remarkably thought about it for a moment, then decided screw it and really did ask, "How exactly is she part veela? I mean, I've never even heard of how Veela reproduce, they're an all female species, so are they asexual unless they sleep with a wizard or?" He watched the others dumbfounded faces for a moment, before cracking a smile and saying, "what, don't tell me you haven't been wondering the same thing. Now I'm realizing, with her dad not being there, well-"

"Please stop," Lily practically begged. "One, it's none of your business Sirius, and two, we've no idea."

She actually paused like she expected, almost hopefully, someone to correct her, because she wasn't pretending to deny it was a good question.

Remus thought about it for a moment, stating, "The only facts I can offer is if you take a hair from a veela's head, they're said to die, but I somehow don't see Fleur speaking of her grandmother like that if she'd been killed, so most likely the veela pulled it out herself as a gift."

"That was not helpful, about anything," James pointed out.

Mrs. Weasley and Bill were standing in front of the fireplace, beaming at him.

Lily felt her voice tying off, equal amounts of annoyance and even hurt rearing up at Molly making an appearance for her baby after all the embarrassment and even idiotic ways she'd acted towards both him and Hermione this year, all while also just a warm flood of gratitude there was still someone out there looking out for Harry.

Her reaction was subtle to Harry's, who flushed in shock and began stammering something even he wasn't quite sure of. An apology to those around him, gratitude being the most dominant thing to him for even though he'd never said it aloud, throughout his years he'd pictured the Weasley's the closest thing he'd ever have to a family, he'd never realized they'd felt the same!

"How would they even have known to come?" James's voice sounded odd, but he genuinely seemed to be trying more for curiosity than what he knew his wife was feeling. "I mean, if the notice they could appear at the final task went out to families?"

"Maybe Dumbledore personally sent it?" Sirius tried, "I've no doubt he knows Harry spends the majority of his time at the Weasley's over the holidays, so kind of as a courtesy thing?"

"All that tells me," Remus was trying hard not to frown, "was that Dumbledore must have a good idea of Harry's feelings for the Dursleys though." His voice came out too sharp, he was still more frustrated with himself for being right about not being there than anything.

They all felt a lot of different things about this moment, but one look at Harry and suddenly they were almost at peace with it as well. This had to be the first time they'd seen that kind of smile on his face this whole time, the only moment that had come close was when his real relation to Sirius had been revealed, and that had been pretty muted compared to the following events. So Lily bit off the head of how she was really feeling about this, put it away in a corner for later, and managed to keep going with a true smile.

Mrs. Weasley shouted surprise at him.

"Understatement," Sirius muttered.

She gave him a kiss on the cheek as she explained they'd come to watch, while Bill asked how he was doing?

"Eh," James sighed, waving his hand vaguely, though Harry thought that was more to do with his actual answer than answering for Harry.

Charlie had told them all about that Horntail and how incredible he was.

"Charlie's the lucky one," Remus muttered under his breath, thinking so far no task had really gone well enough for any spectators to exactly be 'enjoying' these events, but that was probably just his personal opinion. He could only imagine picturing this through someone other than Harry, and it could sound like a bit more fun.

Fleur was eyeing Bill with great interest over her mother's shoulder.

Harry tried very hard to forcefully smother laughter for no real reason he could tell.

She clearly had no objection to long hair or earrings with fangs on them.

"A lot of girls don't," Sirius' grin flipped to saucy at once, "I considered getting one myself, though of course now I'd just be accused of doing it because of Bill."

"Yes Sirius," James said back deadpan, "every woman you meet will think the kid who's more like my babies age absolutely pulled this look first."

Sirius' smile actually brightened all the more.

Harry was thanking them both, muttering his surprise that for an actual moment he'd thought the Dursleys-

Mrs. Weasley cut him off by pursing her lips tight. She'd never said anything about them to Harry, but he always saw her eyes flash when they were mentioned.

"Remind me, how did she take the news of starving and bars?" Lily muttered, but there was no real ill will in there. She knew now like she had then she didn't blame Molly for this in the first place, Harry refused to say much of anything on them really, so Molly had slowly been drawing her own conclusions after that event. If it was even a portion of what she'd conjured up in believing Skeeter's stories about Harry and Hermione, Molly was still only hitting the tip of the iceberg when it came to the Dursleys.

Bill didn't seem to notice, as he began talking about how great it was to be back at the castle, he hadn't been here for five years.

"Wow so he's actually, eleven, now. Give or take a birthday, it's really hard to picture." Sirius said mostly to himself.

"I'm sure a lot of this'll be hard to picture if we ever get out of here," Remus rolled his eyes as just a few instances came to mind.

He asked about the Fat Lady still being Gryffindor's portrait, and Mrs. Weasley said she'd even been here in her time.

"I was under the impression she's always been the Gryffindor portrait," James agreed.

She used to give such telling offs when her and Arthur returned late-

Bill cut his mother off in surprise, asking what she was doing out of bed after hours?

"Well why'd he go cutting her off for!" Sirius yelped in protest. "That could have been some amazing fodder to use against his mother, especially if he passed it along to the twins next time she went off on them!"

"I don't even blame Bill," James shook his head, "remember when my dad tried to tell us about that time he turned McGonagall into a Pekingese. The idea just messed with my mind so much, I didn't want the material."

Sirius nodded in agreement.

Mrs. Weasley just grinned at her eldest, admitting she'd had a few late nights with her husband.

"I can't believe she's answering," Remus already looked traumatized, he got enough stories from Sirius that started like that to predict results.

"She is talking to her kids," Lily's cheeks were starting to tinge a little pink, and Harry no more wanted to know what she was thinking than whatever Mrs. Weasley was going to supply, "I'm sure it won't be explicit."

Arthur had been caught out, and he still had the marks Pringle had given him, that was the caretaker in their day.

"The bloody hell did Pringle do?" Sirius yelped in concern, it was really something when someone made Filch look like a kindness.

"I'm guessing rules were a bit more lax then," James said with honest pity. Arthur seemed like such a nice guy, he didn't want to imagine what had been done.

Bill changed topics by asking Harry for a tour, which he readily agreed to. They passed Amos Diggory and his wife on the way out, Amos stopping Harry.

"Oh not this again," Remus groaned.

"Harry's been neck and neck with him every step of the way," James's smile wasn't at all pleasant, "so he can't even say anything to you this time."

"I'm sure he'll still try to come up with something," Sirius rolled his eyes.

Asking if Harry felt as full of himself now that Cedric and him were tied?

"When's Harry ever been full of himself?" Lily snapped of no one. "If anything, he's the opposite."

Harry chose not to answer, half proving Lily's point.

Harry asked what he meant, and Cedric told him to ignore his father.

"I've been trying," Sirius scowled, "yet somehow I've had to hear him anyways."

"It's much more effective in person when you can either plug your ears or Silencio them," James agreed.

Explaining that he'd been sore about this since that first article when Skeeter had made it seem Harry was the only Hogwarts champion.

That did admittedly put them stumped for a moment, it was a valid point on Amos' part and would have infuriated anybody, but that still wasn't any reason to take it out on Harry!

Amos was being his usual boastful self as he slapped his son on the back, praising him for being so humble he hadn't corrected the papers, and how he had no doubts Cedric would win this thing! He'd beaten Harry once before.

Mrs. Weasley snapped at him that Skeeter was known for causing trouble,

"Well that was rich," Lily sniffed.

"Yet true," Harry also defended uneasily before he stopped to consider. Harry wasn't even sure why he should feel bad about correcting his Mum regarding Mrs. Weasley, but in any case, the only reaction Lily gave was a soft hum before she kept going.

and he should know better.

Mr. Diggory looked as though he was going to say something angry,

Harry looked ready to say something nasty right back, he knew he would not take kindly to anyone saying a bad word about Mrs. Weasley after what she'd done for him today!

but his wife laid a hand on his arm, and he instead turned away.

Then Harry realized that all thought of mothers was slowly starting to be erased from his mind, and instead a thick black pain was starting to trace every inch inside him. Something so bad he didn't even want to consider what it could mean, but it involved the Diggory's...

Harry had a fun filled morning as he strolled the grounds with the Weasley's, who greatly admired the carriage and ship. Mrs. Weasley was personally fascinated by the Whomping Willow

"Should have been torn up long before now," Remus muttered to himself.

and regaled them about the old gamekeeper Ogg.

"Well that's actually fascinating," Sirius said honestly, though it was hard to picture the grounds without the Willow.

"He's most likely the one who trained Hagrid," James agreed, "so I'd kind of like to hear about him just for that."

Harry asked how Percy was doing.

"Harry!" Sirius groaned, "we said we wanted to hear about old gamekeepers, what are you doing changing the subject?"

"I can tell you a few things Mrs. Weasley told me later about Ogg," Harry chuckled at their grumbling even while Lily ignored them.

Bill's first response was to say, not well.

That did catch their attention though. They may not like Percy much, but they didn't want to hear about anything bad happening to him.

He was in trouble at work for not realizing sooner something must be up with Crouch, and should have reported the instructions he'd been receiving and was now being questioned about it all.

"Uh oh," Remus muttered.

"Actually I'm really not sure what to think of that," Sirius ran his hand through his hair in thought. "Crouch was acting like a loon, I honestly think that had to be a progression over time, but really we haven't given this much thought. He's been acting odd for months now, but Percy was insisting he was just hunky dory."

"I think we can put that down to faulty information on Percy's part," James frowned, "for all we know, Crouch really has been acting worse and worse, but Percy was pretending otherwise."

They still had a lot more questions about what was really going on with Crouch, but studying Percy would help no one.

Percy was under a lot of stress and not being allowed to continue Crouch's job, not even as judge tonight.

"So who's going to?" Remus began to ask almost exactly as Lily finished.

Fudge would be instead.

"See, this is what your questions get you," Sirius laughed at Remus' eye roll.

No one yet noticed Harry starting to lose a drop of color at every word spoken closer to the start of this task, now with Fudge there... he was really starting to look terrible.

They went back inside for lunch, where they were joined by the rest of the Weasleys and Hermione. Mrs. Weasley asked Ron how his exam had gone, and he admitted he'd made up about half of it, but all the names were something like Urg the Unclean.

"I am fairly confident that's an actual name," Lily giggled.

"Boys quite brave himself to be admitting this to his mum," Remus agreed.

Halfway through the meal Harry remembered Hermione's sudden Skeeter inspiration,

"I haven't forgotten," Lily murmured eagerly, she'd love Hermione to say this in front of Molly in particular, if just a slight payback for that Easter egg.

but before he could ask Hermione shook her head and looked pointedly at Molly.

"Why wouldn't you tell in front of her?" Sirius pouted at once, they'd waited in suspension long enough for this treat, they wanted Skeeter to fall already, and if they knew anything about Hermione by now, they were sure she was at least onto something!

Harry seemed to have drawn Mrs. Weasley's attention onto Hermione though, and Molly greeted her very stiffly.

They all gave a grumpy little huff for that, how could she stand up to Diggory one moment and then be like this the next?

Hermione gave a friendly enough smile back, which was not returned.

Harry at once told her that Skeeter's story had been ridiculous, Hermione was not and had never been his girlfriend.

Sirius actually began applauding Harry, stating, "Look who can take a hint?"

Harry smacked his hands to get him to stop, but then Remus just kept going with that same smirk in place. "Well he's right, it's really saying something of you for stepping up and saying that, I can think of others who wouldn't have picked up on it."

Harry wasn't sure if he meant his own friends or Ron, but Harry still wanted to ignore the look he was getting so was more than grateful when Lily kept going hopefully.

Mrs. Weasley at once said she'd known that, but from then on she treated Hermione perfectly normal and polite.

No one could deny they were pleased, but it was still rather grating all the same as she hadn't even apologized.

Up at the staff table, all the judges seemed to be having a good enough time, except Fudge who was sitting right next to Maxime.

"Can't pretend to be disappointed," James curled his lip, thinking Fudge deserved it, the arrogant prick.

Maxime was concentrating on her plate, and Harry thought her eyes looked red.

"Should I be worried?" Remus said, and he actually did look it.

"Nah," Sirius tried to wave him off, "I'm sure she's had another lovers spat with Hagrid, and hopefully the big guy won again and he'll be along to dinner shortly." Even he didn't sound as confident as he wanted to, no one really wanted to think about Fudge actually trying to do something against Maxime for the wrong reasons.

Hagrid kept glancing along the table at her.

Sirius would have looked far more superior about being right if he wasn't just as relieved as everyone else.

There were more courses than usual but Harry, who was starting to feel really nervous now, didn't eat much.

"You'd think they'd take a hint," James muttered, thinking back to this time before the stupid tournament had even started and their own comments about how a feast should be held when there was a winner, not stress for all involved.

When the ceiling above finally began ebbing into dusk, Dumbledore rose to his feet, and silence fell at once.

Lily had to swallow very hard around a dry throat and even took a sip of water before she could force herself to continue, her only advantage being that finally this was the last one.

Harry had gone exceptionally quiet, only marginally playing along with the boys like usual, and the longer this carried on and the more sickly he kept looking, the harder it was to convince themselves that this should be an easy task.

He announced the third task would be starting in five minutes, and asked the contestants to go down now with Bagman.

Harry was wished luck on all sides as he joined the others, Bagman catching up to him at once and asking how he was feeling?

"Least this'll be the last time he asks you that," James muttered to himself.

Harry told he was alright, and for once it was the truth. He kept running down the list in his mind of all the spells he'd learned for this, and pleased he remembered every one.

"This has got to be worse than any pre-exam jitters," Remus agreed, though just as impressed that Harry had learned a lot in a short amount of time, all the more proof of what Harry's specialty in magic was in these spells.

Their Quidditch field was now completely unrecognizable, the twenty-foot-high hedge ran all the way around the edge of it.

James and Sirius gave an involuntary flinch at just the idea, wanting to sit and berate this stupid school for hours for using this stupid tournament anywhere near their field! They'd already been denied Quidditch this year, this felt like adding insult to injury! They both kept themselves at bay though because they kept hopping Harry would instead, no matter how obvious it was he was only half paying attention at best.

The stands began filling almost the moment the five were huddled around the entrance, and were also joined by Hagrid, Moody,

Harry felt himself shiver straight down to his bones as too many things tried to align themselves at once. Moody, Diggory's, Fudge, and that maze...

McGonagall, and Flitwick who were all wearing vests with bright red stars on them. McGonagall explained they would be patrolling the outskirts of the maze, and if at any time they wished to leave it they were to send up red sparks.

"That probably falls under automatic disqualification from the Cup though," Remus was clearly saying to himself, "so I cannot imagine anyone doing it."

Harry was wiping some sweat that was starting to appear, trying to get his mind to flip to any good thought, but all he could land on was when Hagrid had first taught him to do this his first time in the Forbidden Forest, and that was only making his feelings worse.

Bagman announced it was time to go, and added the Sonorous charm to his throat so that all could hear.

James muttered something inarticulate about better times at the World Cup, he'd much rather hear that all over again than this crappy version of a Cup.

He spoke grandly to the stands about how the final event of this Triwizard Tournament was coming to a close! Then he listed off the order the champions stood in.

Sirius really wanted to make a pompous remark about his proud school double beating out the others, but it would never erase the annoyance of Harry having to be in this at all.

The cheers and applause sent birds from the Forbidden Forest fluttering into the darkening sky.

"Congratulations," Remus snorted in surprise.

"Why are they holding this at dusk anyways?" James rolled his eyes at the idea, "there's a reason the other events were all held in the middle of the day."

"I suppose they would have put the same charm on the stands as they did during the lake event," Sirius shrugged, "but my best guess is that some of the things they did to the maze may have been time activated, or maybe some of the beasts Hagrid offered are nocturnal."

"Sirius I will make you read this if you don't stop putting ideas in my head," Lily threatened, causing Sirius to zip his mouth shut at once.

Bagman finally announced that on his whistle, Harry and Cedric would be allowed to enter. After a short countdown, the shrill noise rang, and the two were inside the maze.

Lily took another deep breath just as Harry exhaled his own, though both were at complete opposite mindsets by this point. Lily was almost happy to finally be doing this, the problem was nearly over, where Harry was fighting back the urge to scream the worst hadn't even begun.

The hedges were so high they seemed to block the rest of the world out, and either because of thickness or magic, no sound from the crowds came through.

"The second," they all muttered, still eyeing Harry with growing concern, but Remus still tried to keep a casual conversation as he said, "wouldn't want someone shouting and giving directions after all."

Harry vaguely acknowledged him with a hum.

Harry and Cedric were on even until they reached a split, where Harry went left, and Cedric right. Not long after, a second and then third whistle was heard, and all champions were in the maze.

The boys were really starting to get twitchy with nerves, all of them shifting around or fidgeting with whatnot. Harry had this air about him like they should be expecting an attack any second, and wasn't even trying to downplay it for once.

Harry kept looking behind him. The old feeling that he was being watched was upon him.

"I'm sure everyone in the maze feels like that," Sirius muttered.

Harry knew what he meant, but still the idea lingered, thinking he was being watched, but just by one, or maybe just one eye...

When Harry hit his next crossroads, he used his Point Me spell. As his goal was northwest, the wand turned compass pointing him north was the best way to find himself.

"That's brilliant," James's eyes lit, "you remember the direction you headed for when you first met Bagman on the field."

"It was the same time of day too, so that really was an advantage they gave you all," Sirius agreed.

Harry was having a hard time concentrating on a single word they were saying, his hand wrapped securely around his wand and very sure he never wanted to reach the center of this maze.

He took the turn that would lead him in that direction, and made several more without running into anything. He was starting to feel uneasy, thinking he should have hit an obstacle by now.

"I agree," Lily nodded, her fingers turning white she was clutching the book so hard for anything to jump out any second.

"I think it's another tactic," Remus muttered, "lull him into a false sense of security for the first half."

Harry had no idea why he wanted to correct Remus about that, instead something in him was convinced his own path was being altered and helped along, but of course no one would be doing that...

He should have found something by now, but perhaps this was a trap for a false sense of security.

"Hey look, Harry agrees with you," Sirius smirked.

Then he heard movement right behind him.

They all tensed at once with that, a crup appearing right now would have had them all freaking out.

He held out his wand, ready to attack, but its beam fell only upon Cedric,

"Gah," Sirius gasped, massaging roughly at his chest to keep his heart beat in rhythm. "I swear I'm going to kill that kid, he's been driving me cr-"

Harry cried out so loud that Sirius leapt away in shock while James accidentally shot a curse into the wall that caused it to sprout a white fur pelt. Harry noticed nothing as his hands curled into fists pressed against his pounding forehead.

"Merlin pup, I was kidding," Sirius tried to pacify while everyone was left a shaking mess, Harry still not registering a thing as he sat there staring at nothing and panting with exertion.

"Deep breath Harry," James soothed, ruffling up his hair and casting his mind around for any form of distraction. "If I knew Sirius' stupid humor was going to do this to you, I'd have turned him into a terrier already."

"That's insulting," Sirius pouted at him, "I'm a deerhound and proud of it."

"Is that what you tried to transfigure the wall into?" Remus asked curiously as he waved his own to put the pattern back.

"I still have small dogs on the brain," James admitted.

Harry actually managed a laugh for them, something about the thought of a terrier really did put him back in a good mood, but it didn't erase the haunted look behind his eyes.

Lily tried a different tactic, "I'm sure you're just worried about Cedric, perhaps something from your own time like you were with Ginny. Nothing's going to happen to Cedric now." Even to her own ears the words came out flat, it was so incredibly hard to downplay how much pain her baby was clearly in, how odd he'd been acting since he'd even first heard Cedric's name, but the thought of her fourteen year old actually knowing someone who had died during this tournament was nearly unbearable. He was just too young for that to be happening to him on top of everything else he'd been through. Still, he seemed to have marshaled himself, so whatever was fixing to happen she still kept the knowledge alive her baby was fine while she forced herself to keep going.

He came tumbling out of an adjacent path, and his sleeve was smoking.

"Sounds like he's having a blast," Sirius muttered to himself as he sunk back into his seat, trying to keep that one from Harry's ears so he didn't cause any more problems with the mention of this one.

He caught sight of Harry and quickly explained it had been a Skrewt and how enormous it was,

James opened then closed his mouth, a snappy little joke about how he wanted to kill Hagrid for putting those bleeding things into this on the tip of his tongue, but he didn't want to imagine what Harry's reaction could be next.

and just as quickly ran off.

Harry stepped up his pace a bit, he had no desire to run into that. Instead he turned down the opposite way Cedric had gone, and ran into a dementor.

Lily moaned under her breath, her hands beginning to shake as the fear of Harry having to relive that memory returned even if he could summon a patronus to get rid of them, the screaming that would start in his ears would always be an echo of the worst.

Reacting on instinct, Harry quickly summoned up the idea of himself celebrating with Ron and Hermione once this was all over to summon the spell Expecto Patronum.

Remus hummed softly to himself, he always enjoyed knowing what other people's memories were when they conjured that spell, and Remus was more than happy if this became a recurring one for Harry. They were familiar and a common presence in his life, while also always managing to create new and happy memories for Harry, a great bonus as using the same memory over and over had been known to start lacking in use after a time, as if repetitive dementors feeding on the one memory could actually deteriorate an older idea. He was so lost in his own thought he hardly paid attention as Lily went on, absolutely confident in Harry's ability to conquer this.

The silver stag appeared, stampeding down the hooded figure, which began to stumble back.

"Do what?" Sirius yelped in surprise.

"Um," Remus had to blink a moment in surprise to spin his brain back and catch up with what he'd only half herd. "Oh, yes, it must be a boggart then, that's the reaction it would have with a proper patronus on it, simply hovering and considering another attack."

Harry recognized that dementors never did such a thing, and realized this must be a boggart, so instead switched spells to Riddikulus.

It vanished with a loud crack and only a vapor of smoke left.

"Must have been a really weak boggart," James raised a brow at this. "You didn't even have to smirk at it, it simply vanished with the spell."

Harry nodded without answer, that feeling still lingering heavily in his chest about how this was too easy, how he was getting help, and still that extra layer that wouldn't leave him of something concerning Cedric.

The silver stag was already fading, but Harry wished it would stay, he'd have liked the company.

"Why didn't you just cast the spell again then?" Lily offered, "It will linger as long as you keep your happy thought in mind with purpose."

"Never practiced that," Harry said distantly, taking a deep rattling breath as that too seemed to hold some meaning to him, and he was truly going to be sick soon if the feeling didn't fade.

He kept pressing on, often running into dead ends and still going many directions without running into anything but always trying to go as north as possible, until finally he came across some golden mist.

Lily could practically feel her mind flipping through an old fifth year text as she blurted, "It's a good thing you don't have anything in your pockets, that sounds like Limbo Caligo, or Limbo Mist. Easy enough to get through even if you don't know the counter charm, Gravi."

"And how do you do that?" Sirius asked for Harry since he clearly wasn't going to do so himself, he was still too distracted, but even hearing them talk seemed to be keeping his eyes at least darting to each person as they spoke. Plus, not that he'd admit it, but Sirius honestly forgot.

"Determination," Lily smiled sweetly at her son, "you just have to be brave enough to realize this isn't magic that actually turns off gravity." She didn't need to even think if Harry would figure out this second option, any boy who jumped on the back of a mountain troll would certainly gamble the odds that was how this spell could be defeated.

"What about his glasses?" James asked in concern, pushing his own slightly up the bridge of his nose only for them to fall right back down.

Lily did acknowledge that could be a problem if he didn't react quick enough, but thankfully once the spell wore off they'd just fall right back beside him, hopefully undamaged, or at least he knew how to repair them now.

Harry went towards it cautiously, his first thought to put a spell through it to blast it away.

"Honestly, I'd try that first too," James chuckled.

He chose Reducto, but it merely glided through the twinkling haze without disruption.

"Still never hurts to try," Remus shrugged.

Harry tried to consider what would happen if he went through, or if he should double back.

Then he heard the scream.

Harry gave yet another horrible shiver for what that could mean, it was happening so often they were all starting to wonder if Harry was going to fall into an involuntary fit even if he was clearly trying his hardest not to touch his memories. This scream though wasn't the one Harry was fearing this night, and though he twisted in concern for Fleur, she wasn't the one in danger...

Harry called for Fleur, but received no answer. Taking a deep breath, he knew which direction he had to go through, and so began charging the enchantment.

Lily smiled and wanted to smack her son all at the same time. Even if she did know what this Charm was, she hated the idea of him just charging into anything, but also couldn't be more proud her's was a boy that never hesitated to help a person in need.

He hadn't made it halfway across when the world seemed to flip upside down, his shoes now rooted to the grass as he seemed to dangle out into oblivion, his reflexes the only thing saving his glasses from toppling into the stars.

"There's those Quidditch reflexes," James smiled, which vanished at once as Harry still wasn't focusing on anything in this room.

He could feel the blood pumping into his head, thinking that if he tried to move he'd fall off the earth forever.

Remus shivered in disgust, now vaguely remembering learning about this spell himself, but he'd thought about it in the classroom, where it sounded sort of funny to be dangling from the ceiling like this. Harry made it sound terrifying.

He tried to think of some way out of this, but the blood rush was hard to work through, did he dare move his foot?

"I'd really like to think Harry would realize they wouldn't actually put a spell in there that would kill you like that," Sirius sighed, "but now that I know those Skrewts are in there, I don't blame Harry."

He could still send up the sparks, surely someone would see them right side up and get him off this flipside earth.

Harry muttered something under his breath how he was wishing he'd picked that option, but it was at least some form of his communicating again.

He still felt that scream echoing in his head, and so taking one long deep breath, he wrenched his foot free.

Lily's smile widened, she really was just so impressed at her Hare Bare committing to something like that when less brave people would have coped out already. It helped she knew the end results and he'd be fine.

The world flipped right side up again, the moon and stars above having their ever friendly glow while the golden mist twinkled innocently behind him as he ran off.

"The most dangerous things are often the cute looking ones," Sirius grumbled in agreement, thankful Harry hadn't run across any sweet smelling plants from those greenhouses yet.

It was at the next junction he hesitated again, wondering why he'd never seen any sparks after Fleur's scream. Had she fought off whatever had caused it, or was so injured she couldn't reach her wand?

"Oh I'm sure it's not that bad," James twitched in unease.

Even as he kept through the shrubbery, in the very small back of his mind, he heard himself think 'one down.'

That caught Harry's attention full force, as he looked shameful and tried to utter an apology.

"Nah," Sirius waved him off, "I'm confident she's just fine, I'd be celebrating too."

Harry felt warmed and slightly more in control that his first instinct was finally to agree with that good news.

The cup had to be close by now, and for the first time since he'd heard about all of this, that image again appeared before his eyes. Rising from here in victory in front of the rest of the school...

Then Harry choked and instantly lost whatever small bit of color he'd gained, and no one could deny any more how confused and terrified they were at all of this. What the bloody hell happened in this maze that was affecting him so bad? Lily didn't want to keep going, it was clearly going to be traumatic for him to relearn, but then she comforted herself at least she was here now to help him through it, he was going to be fine, she had the proof in front of her.

Another long stretch of time passed again before he found his next run in, a Blast-Ended Skrewt.

"Oh joy." Remus meant to say that with sarcasm, anything that sent Cedric running like that couldn't be anything actually good, but he'd never deny his thirst for more knowledge about beasts, especially a new one like this. It was clearly bigger than the last time Harry had seen it, which meant more to hear about.

Cedric had not been exaggerating, it was enormous. Ten feet long, it now resembled a headless scorpion with a curled tail over its back.

"That is the scariest pink thing I have ever imagined," Sirius nodded to himself.

He at once shouted Stupefy!

"Stunners starting too nice," James frowned at the idea of anything that size approaching Harry.

It rebounded off the carapace and Harry only just ducked in time, but could still smell burning hair.

"Bloody hell, Hagrid really knows how to create some monsters," Remus' eyes widened even further.

"Maybe it has the same kind of weaknesses as acromantulas, and it's best to hit them on their underbellies," Sirius offered.

"Let's see if Harry thinks of that," Lily said with hope.

It had singed the top of his head.

"So fire can come out of both ends?" Remus sighed.

"Unless it tried farting in Harry's face," Sirius agreed.

"Nope, it fireballed me," Harry told, making all of them actually smile. It wasn't a happy image, but any normal response from him would be appreciated.

A jet of fire came out of the other end, surging it even faster towards him, and Harry kept trying to shoot off the Impedimenta.

"Well now you're panicking," James groaned, "using the same spell twice."

"Saying it louder hasn't ever made it better," Lily agreed, bite marks starting to appear on her lip from how often she was going at it.

The skrewt was practically on top of him when the spell finally landed a hit on its underbelly. Harry began edging backwards, then turned tail and ran as fast as he could, knowing that wouldn't last long.

"That is true," Sirius agreed, "but major credit to you, you've learned a very important lesson about a lot of creatures. Their weakness is usually their belly."

"I'll keep that in mind," Harry promised, wiping more sweat from his temple at another sharp stab telling him this would come back to him sooner than he'd think.

Harry lost track of his way a bit and had to carefully back track to be heading north again, when he heard another scream, this time much closer by as Cedric demanded what was going on.

Krum's voice rent the air as he yelled Crucio!

"K-Krum!" James yipped, entirely sure he'd heard wrong.

"I, wow he-" even Sirius looked stunned at this turn of events, his suspicions of Krum's headmaster really hadn't even lead him to believe the guy would use an Unforgivable Curse!

Harry was frowning so much deep lines were starting to appear in his face. Now he knew there was something off going on, something just plain wrong with this scene, and it wasn't the curse being used, but something to do with the real person giving it.

A horrible yell tore at the night from just one hedge over, but Harry kept sprinting up and down and couldn't find a way through! Finally he used the Reductor Curse, which only caused a very small hole to appear, but after much forcing his way through, he broke into the new path.

James was temporarily surprised to realize Harry hadn't just been doing this all along, he could have been blasting his way right to the center of the maze like that. Now wasn't really the time to be thinking about that though.

What he saw was Cedric, twitching on the ground, with Krum standing over him.

Lily's voice was quivering over every word now, after recently learning what would happen to Frank and Alice, that spell took on a whole new level of horrifying to her, something she hadn't previously thought possible.

Harry at once tried to put a spell on Krum, but the moment he caught sight of Harry, he tried to run.

"Run?" Sirius demanded brutally. "How do you curse someone like that one second and run the next, you'd think he'd just turn on Harry."

"Isn't everyone in the crowd watching this?" Remus reminded, "He should be disqualified immediately already. Merlin, someone could set a case for him being sent to Azkaban for using this, all for a bleeding Cup."

James was as blasted as the others at this turn of events, they'd really had nothing to see this coming, but even still he pointed out, "well it's good to know Krum really is a scumbag in on whatever plans been going around Harry this year, but I don't buy it Krum's behind everything, so let's let Lily stay on track."

Harry was saved yet another wave of pain from what he was sure was an inaccurate statement from his dad by at least being comforted by the end and agreeing.

Harry shot Stupefy

"That was a kindness," Sirius said darkly, but he supposed he'd be even more shocked if Harry had used anything else. He'd proved time and again he was too good a person to be throwing curses around, even to someone's back after they'd just used the worst kind.

which hit Krum in the small of his back. He face planted the grass while Harry ran to Cedric and asked how he was.

Harry made a soft whimpering noise he didn't even seem aware of, his body's way of trying to warn him he wouldn't have long to wonder just how bad that spell could hurt.

Cedric agreed he was fine while he uneasily got to his feet. Harry asked if he'd heard Fleur scream earlier as well, and Cedric thought Krum was responsible for her as well.

"I'm sure it was something else," Remus said instantly, "and she's still in the game." None of them wanted to consider otherwise, even Krum wouldn't Crucio someone into submission and leave them to die...right? Had they, and Hermione, and everyone been fooled so well?

Then Cedric suggested they should just leave him here and press on, but Harry corrected he was going to put red sparks above Krum, lest a skrewt eat him.

"There are worse fates," Sirius sneered even if he knew he wouldn't have disagreed with Harry.

Cedric muttered how he'd deserve it,

Sirius gave a soft laugh, he hadn't expected to be mimicking someone he'd been threatening so much lately, but still a bit pompous his point had been repeated.

but did indeed raise his own wand and put the sparks up. Then he turned to Harry and suggested they keep moving.

Harry was surprised for a moment, their having come together against Krum had temporarily distracted him they were opponents.

"Um, wow, yeah." James had to blink a few times to realize he needed to move past this moment no matter how badly it left a taste in his mouth. "Congratulations, Hogwarts won."

"That's all we wanted in the beginning," Lily sighed, wondering where all that good mood had gone, and how long it would take to come back.

The two went off together again, but split at the next fork. Harry traced his way through now very distracted, trying to understand why Krum would risk a sentence in Azkaban just for this tournament.

"I wouldn't have believed so," Remus agreed, wondering if Harry just wasn't putting together what they were thinking, Krum had been a part of the idea from the beginning of putting Harry into this task to hurt him...but then why hadn't he turned on Harry in that moment? Why had he in fact done the opposite?

He almost ran smack into a sphinx.

"Oh boy," James sighed.

"I never had the patience for these things and their riddles," Sirius agreed.

Remus hushed the other two, undeniable excitement lighting him as he got to hear about one of these in a new way, hear one of their riddles in as close to in person as he'd ever get.

It mostly resembled a lion in body, but with the head of a woman. The whole thing combined was eerily pretty.

Harry hesitated to raise his wand, as she was not crouching to spring,

"She won't do that until you get it wrong," Sirius muttered for Harry, who had gone back to only half listening again, Krum weighing back on his mind just like Cedric, and whatever was coming at the end of this.

but instead blocking his path.

She spoke to him in a throaty voice of how close to his goal he was, and Harry politely asked her to move.

Lily couldn't stop a surprised giggle busting out, quickly followed by all but Harry, who snapped back to here with a roll of his eyes. It had been worth a shot.

She instead explained how this would go. He could hear her riddle, and if guessed right, he could pass. If wrong, she would attack. If he gave no answer, she would let him leave without question.

"I wonder if someone like Dumbledore made a deal with this sphinx like he had the mermen," Remus mused. "In the wild, they're much less known for forewarning you like this, they simply see you, spring the riddle, and if you don't guess right they pounce."

"I can imagine that," Lily agreed happily, "so when she says she's going to attack you, she's most likely just going to chase until you send up the sparks."

Aside from that dragon, this Tournament really hadn't been as bad as they'd all been fearing. In fact it was the stuff outside of it which had really been the worst, could that be what was bothering Harry? Not the maze itself, but whatever happened after he got out? It wasn't exactly encouraging, but Harry was watching his mother with some delight again as she finished, "well never the less, I am hoping Harry at least hears the riddle, I love figuring those out."

Harry felt his stomach twist in concern, it was Hermione who was good at this type of thing.

"Sadly this isn't a buddy challenge," James gave a small smile, his mind going back to Harry's first year, and Hermione solving Snape's riddle. He hoped Harry had at least picked up some tips from her in the meantime.

Harry decided he wanted to hear the riddle, with the option in mind he could leave if he wanted to.

The sphinx took a seat and recited:

Insert sphinx riddle

Lily was actually smiling by the end, much to everyone's annoyance.

"I will never understand how you enjoy riddles and poems," Remus shook his head at her. "Sometimes the answers are so contrived."

Lily ignored him as she reread the riddle again to herself, then out loud, shushing whoever tried to speak up as she turned it all out, before speaking aloud, "well the first part's a bit hard to find an exact match, it seems broad but doable if you find at least one other part. The second is one I've seen hidden in other riddles, the letter d. The last bit is facing the same problem as the first, you need some kind of information to string them all together for the final answer. I'm wondering if it might rhyme with kiss, but no, the riddle feels complete by rhyming with this. Hum, so perhaps building from there, err something you wouldn't want to kiss with a d in it regarding a liar as well as a noise, no wait, err, person could be an actual-"

"Lily," James finally begged. "You know I love you, and honestly I'd love nothing more than to sit here and watch you puzzle this out, but don't you want to see how Harry does?" James had honestly meant it, he'd been sitting there with an old fond expression his friends had seen more times than they could count in school as he'd watched the love of his life go through all this in her own way. He had no doubts she would get there in the end, but Harry was starting to look sickly again at watching her even as he was smiling along.

Lily sighed, but gave in with minimal dispute.

Harry asked for it again more slowly, and his first response to something he didn't want to kiss was a Blast-Ended Skrewt.

Remus snorted with laughter even as Sirius got over his cackling and agreed, "Hey, it even fits the answer, the middle of middle and end of end, both could link into the name of that thing."

"I don't think so," Lily said critically, not at all laughing as she was still hovering over what this could be even as she read. "I don't see that being the answer."

James kept laughing all the harder for her taking this so seriously, but quietly enough she was ignoring him.

Still, he didn't feel that was actually the answer, so he began working out the clues, first thinking aloud how a person in disguise could be a liar, like an imposter, then quickly shouted at the sphinx that wasn't his guess!

"Yeah, it's probably safe to keep that clarified," Remus agreed.

Offering a few more options as well as a spy.

Lily hummed at the idea with approval, though wasn't entirely sure herself, and was glad Harry was tackling another one instead.

He had not a guess for what the second part could mean, and erred to himself aloud what the last thing of mend was.

Lily's mind finally gave a click as she uttered that noise aloud, putting all three pieces together, and suddenly beaming as she kept going, sounding happier right now than she had during any combined Tournament moments.

Then he asked for the last line.

"That second one really is easier to figure out if you're looking at the actual words instead of just saying them," Remus agreed over Lily's actually happy reading. They were all watching her with amusement now, as they realized she'd gotten it, but didn't bother asking her to share, if she was going to she would have.

Harry kept saying err aloud as he tried to figure out a sound he'd make for a hard to find word, then realized the exact noise he was making, err was a sound!

"You certainly say it enough," Sirius quipped.

Harry stuck his tongue out at him.

He tried tying his first and last clue together, muttering about a spy-er, spy-er, then yelping the answer spider!

"Don't you ever again try to say you're not smart," Lily praised, "that was brilliant love."

Harry was flushed at the praise, meeting her eyes and still never growing tired of watching the color match back. There was some small part of him, even underneath all the dread anger and fear he was holding for this night, that left him in no doubt that this one moment where he was sitting beside his father being praised by his mother would mean something incredibly special on this June night as well.

The sphinx smiled at him, and then stepped aside.

Harry thanked her as he dashed past, baffled at his own brilliance.

James threw his head back and laughed hard at that one, he'd had his own moments of that in his school when he'd come up with some brilliant on the spot moves, but nothing as clever as this.

Harry turned one last corner, and there it was at last, the Triwizard Cup gleaming on a plinth yards away.

Harry watched those around him light up, and for just that one moment he let himself feel that too. The feeling that this was all over, Harry had won, he was about to walk out victorious against all odds.

Suddenly a dark figure hurtled out onto the path in front of him.

Sirius snarled in frustration, there just always had to be that one more thing.

Cedric had arrived as well,

"Oh bloody hell," James yelped in outrage, he knew he'd be beyond furious if Cedric took this win now! Harry had come so close, he shouldn't have even been in here, yet despite everything he honestly deserved it more for all the crap he'd been through. Where were the brooms when you needed them? Harry'd have him beat in moments.

his legs were longer, he had the further advantage, and Harry realized that cup was lost.

"Then stun him!" Remus blurted as he bounced in place.

Harry just shook his head, realizing the thought wouldn't cross his mind, for that one moment he'd been going to let Cedric win...which flooded him with so much worry in that moment Harry knew he should have done just that, done everything in his power to stop Cedric getting to that Cup. Harry wasn't that petty though, he shouldn't care that much about winning...

Cedric only had eyes for the cup, and as Harry watched his precision, he saw what Cedric had not, a dark figure scuttling along about to collide right with him.

Harry called out a warning, and Cedric only had just enough time to dart to the side as a gigantic spider was on the path.

"Gah!" Lily screeched. "That blasted riddle was as much a warning! Curse Hagrid and those bleeding spiders." She kept reading too fast for anyone to say otherwise even if they'd wanted to.

Harry shot Stupefy at once, but all this achieved was drawing the arachnid's attention.

"Oh but there's the bright side, you got it coming towards you now!" Sirius mock cheered.

"Harry has an awful knack of doing that," James groaned.

Harry kept shooting curse after curse, but it was doing no good, and without a moment to run the pincers caught him up by the waist and began lowering him towards its mouth, and Harry screamed in pain.

Lily's voice was starting to hurt it was pitching so high in fear. It was such a contrast to how happy she'd been moments ago and seeing Harry's win in the light the differnce left them all lagging in shock of a proper emotion.

Harry could hear Cedric trying the same spells he had, to the same effect, so Harry desperately tried Expelliarmus.

"Credit for originality," Remus muttered, "I don't think anyone's ever tried disarming a spider."

The Disarming Spell finally did something, Harry was released, only to sail to the ground and crash on his bleeding leg. Being half under the creature's mandibles, he aimed for the belly and shouted Stupefy just as Cedric did the same.

Spells combined, the spider finally keeled over and crashed through a hedge.

Lily felt herself shaking back into the cushions in relief. This had to be over now, she couldn't imagine anything worse protecting the Cup.

Cedric called for Harry in concern, asking if the spider had landed on him?

"Cedric really is such a good guy," Sirius shook his head in fondness, "I can think of a dozen other people who would have gone on for the Cup. The moment he touched it the Tournament would have been over, it would have done Harry just as much good as sticking around helping him while also giving him the win."

Harry felt a sudden stinging in his eyes, unable to understand why he was happy for that one moment where Sirius had finally admitted he'd liked Cedric.

Harry called back at least that hadn't happened, while he inspected his leg. It was bleeding freely, and a black thick substance surrounded it were the pincers had torn the flesh.

"That would be the beginnings of a paralyzing secretion," Remus shivered, "so tell Cedric to hop along already and get you out of there before it sets in."

He tried heaving himself to his feet, but his ankle wouldn't support him, he'd certainly at least sprained it in his fall.

Cedric was weaving his way through the legs to Harry's side, while Harry demanded what he was doing, telling him to get on with it and go grab it.

Cedric took a deep breath,

"Oh he's not," James' started to smile.

and told Harry in thanks for saving Cedric twice in here, he'd let Harry have it.

"Oh but he is!" Sirius barked in triumph. "Finally, some proper payback for that dragon tip!"

Harry was rubbing at his leg as he remembered that pain, ignoring the both of them as he was now running an internal monologue of regret that he didn't leap at this opportunity on the spot and do just that, instead he just knew he'd argue the point with Cedric, and Cedric would pay for it.

Harry snapped back that wasn't how this worked. His leg was hurting him more every second, he pulled himself up and only stayed that way by support of a wall, full of regret Cedric had beaten him in this as much as he had with asking Cho to the ball.

Lily gave a soft sigh, wanting to give her son a hug for feeling so seconded by Cedric all year, and now was certainly the worst time.

Cedric tried to say otherwise, but Harry insisted he couldn't even try a race on this leg, it was Cedric's. Still he said no.

Remus couldn't help it, he was starting to laugh a bit at this exchange. When, in the Cup's history, had two champions ever reached it and then argued over who deserved it more? He thought both boys should take it now, it honestly seemed a way to make everyone happy.

Cedric pointed out how he wouldn't have even made it this far if Harry hadn't helped him out with the dragons.

"I'm positive no one would have," Sirius grumbled.

Harry snapped back he'd had help with that too, and that favor had been returned with the egg.

Cedric confessed he'd had help with that as well.

Harry felt like he was standing inside a church bell as it was being rung his head hurt so bad, he closed his eyes tight to try and convince his brain not to be the death of him for how badly he was aching because of all of this, but that helped nothing. It was much more soothing to keep his eyes open on his mother, a small smile lingering on her face as she kept going. No one seemed that surprised Cedric had gotten help in the first place, clearly everyone in the Tournament had been getting help from someone, it seemed perfectly natural to them.

Harry still pointed out that made them square.

Cedric wasn't having it, insisting he should have acted like Harry back in the second task and stayed behind for the other hostages, Harry should have flat out won that. Harry insisted he had just been the only one thick enough to take that song seriously.

"Now what did you go calling me thick for?" Sirius demanded, and was instantly concerned when for the first time Harry didn't smile at that. His eyes were glassy, his lips trembling as he was clearly using all his willpower to repress saying something. They were all starting to feel the beginnings of panic set in, what could be so bad about this? Lily was starting to rush a bit in getting this finished, hoping the problem once they got out of there really was something they could help Harry cope through.

Cedric still refused, walking farther and farther away from the prize, and Harry realized he was serious.

"No, I am!" Sirius tried again a little desperately, anything to snap Harry out of it, and it seemed to work for just a second as Harry glanced at his godfather, but it helped nothing with whatever was eating the poor boy alive. Was that guilt?

He was actively walking away from Hufflepuff glory the house had never seen, all while insisting it should be Harry's for the taking. He crossed his arms and met his eyes, absolutely decided.

"Well now we're all doomed," James tried to pop some humor as well which fell dead flat around him.

Harry looked past him to the cup, for one second the image again in his eyes of being lifted into a cheering crowd, Cho's shining eyes only on him and that gleaming cup.

"If Cho dumps Cedric for you, just because you won, I honestly won't approve," Lily grumbled to herself.

Just as quickly though, Harry blinked it all away, telling that they both would take it.

Harry moaned, tears trickling out of the corner of his eyes as he shook his head desperately, knowing he'd give anything to take that back.

Lily made to put the book down and go to her son, but Remus caught her and reminded her what always seemed to help him best when this was eating away at him. Get the memory over with. She didn't agree, nothing they could be getting to would make any of this feel better, but she saw just how little she had left, and she honestly wanted her completion to be done just to have the thing out of her hands.

Cedric at first could only splutter in surprise, but Harry insisted on the idea. It would still be a Hogwarts victory, they'd helped each other every step of the way, they both deserved it.

Cedric's eyes lit with delight, and he agreed to the idea, offering Harry a shoulder over to their prize. Harry took it, and the two awkwardly made their way into the slight glow, each grasping a handle.

Harry felt as if his world was crumbling down around him, that one last moment he had left of seeing that smile on Cedric's face, the triumph gleaming in his eyes as his fingers grasped that at the same moment as Harry's. A million regrets tumbled through him of why Harry hadn't just touched it one moment sooner, why he'd let this happen-

Instantly there was a jerk in his navel. His feet had left the ground. He could not release the Triwizard Cup; it was pulling him onward with Cedric at his side.

Harry lost his thin tether he'd been holding, and vomited.

HPHPHPHPHP

Just before anyone asks, I'm not going to bring up the 'why didn't they just put the portkey spell on any object' plot hole up until the end of the book, where there's just going to be a whole chapter curled around the many aspects of this particular book. If you send me a suggestion of what you want to see in said discussion, there's a chance I'll slip it in if I don't already have a better spot for it.

I recognize the next three chapters all kind of go together, and since they're relatively short compared to what I've been working with lately, I promise I'm not completely a monster. I will do my very best to get them up even quicker than my normal updating, so with any luck the next one will be up Tuesday.

Completely unrelated side note, has anyone else taken the WOMBAT test? If not, see

www. hp-lexicon source /other -canon/ jkr /jkr -w2/

The commentary on these questions is hilarious, and I usually chose John/Steve's answers because they're sarcastic little shits like me, but Belinda embodies me a lot too.

[gumnut-logic]

Sky Candy

Okay, this one is for ‘shits and giggles’ :D Literally. It grew out of a discussion with @onereyofstarlight​ this morning and I managed to both start and finish it today :D Just a bit of fun.

Spoilers & warnings: This is actually based in the Kermadec Universe created by my fic ‘We’ll Be Home For Christmas’, but it barely relates to that fic and it can be read without it. Maybe mild, mild spoilers for that fic. There is a tiny amount of Scott/OC ship in this, but it is minimal. Low level language, 4490 words.

Many thanks to @onereyofstarlight​ for the inspiration, support and the read through. And also to @scribbles97​ for a read and encouragement.

I hope you enjoy it :D

-o-o-o-

Living on an island in the middle of the ocean had Virgil fairly used to birds. There was a colony of Kermadec Petrels on Mateo that he liked to keep an eye on since apparently, they were ‘native and uncommon due to past ecological interference in the area’ and Mel had glared enough at his father to let it sink in…particularly when they were building their backup generator over there. The fact the little island had nearly been blown up by the Hood had given him nightmares for weeks. A firm discussion with Kayo and a change to the WASP protocol had been enacted since.

But so close.

There were the lone albatrosses that occasionally visited, their vast wingspan visible far above the island. Virgil had been known to just sit and watch them until they disappeared to the horizon or behind Tracy Peak. There was something so calming about them.

Of course, then there was the time a huge gull had taken up residence in the pool…while Gordon was in it. There was such a ruckus at that, even Virgil had been dragged out of bed. Alan had been eating breakfast when the bird landed and had caught a good chunk of it on film. One sodden, screeching aquanaut tangling with a much put out gull provided entertainment for Christmases to come.

But this? This was unprecedented.

Thunderbird Two had been left on her runway overnight due to a small fault in her module retrieval system. No module meant no wheels and a ticked off pilot. He had lowered number four to the tarmac at 2am and used a pod to push it into the hanger, but Two had to stay outside.

Gordon had not been happy and Four couldn’t deploy without help from Two at this point, but at least the craft had been safe inside overnight.

Two on the other hand…

Virgil crawled out of bed at 6am, drowned himself in coffee and stumbled out into the morning.

Fortunately, the weather was blue sky and the wind almost non-existent. The palms were still and the foliage on either side of the runway was just lighting up as the sun slowly crept over the horizon beyond the villa. It was all quite beautiful.

It was a relief. With the exception of last night, the last week had been full of nasty weather. Not enough to stop a Thunderbird launch, but dark, grey, windy, wet and depressing.

Virgil took a moment and let his shoulders drop and closed his eyes. Okay, he was overreacting. He was tired. Yesterday had been hell and the fault had appeared just as he was finally able to leave the last rescue site. It meant a crawl back to Tracy Island and Gordon stuck in the module and his ‘bird the entire way.

The vitriol over comms hadn’t helped.

If they had been near land, he would have paused to collect the aquanaut out of the module, but the rescue had been in the middle of the Pacific and it was pitch black and, god, he just wanted to go home.

The fact he was separated from his brother by a comline that could possibly be muted was a reassurance of his sanity.

Did he mute it?

No.

But the possibility was there. It really was.

It was over. He was home. The morning was beautiful and he should be able to fix the problem easily enough.

The petrels over on Mateo were squawking up a storm. A glance in that direction and, yes, the sea eagles were out looking for breakfast.

Living on the Island was a twenty-four-hour nature documentary sometimes. Without the editing.

Two was exactly where he left her, squatting on her struts. He took a moment to just stop and gaze at her. It wasn’t often he was able to see her outside without having to dash to or from an emergency.

She was lit up by the sun, her green hull glowing with its satin shimmer. Her big number two emblazoned and glowing on her tail. He was able to appreciate just how big she was and just how beautiful.

His heart swelled with a little pride and, if he was to admit it, blatant affection.

She was just perf-

He frowned. What the hell was that?

A white glow on her front windows where there should be no highlight with the sun this low on the horizon.

He took a step sideways, moving the angle of reflection.

You have got to be kidding me.

He didn’t have his uniform on, just his service harness, wrist remote over his flannel and an old pair of jeans. He was planning on using his onboard tool kit and killing two birds with one stone by checking the equipment at the same time.

He ran to the hatch, lowering it without thought and waiting impatiently for it to rise up into the cabin. The moment he could, he dashed forward to his pilot’s seat.

Across the forward windows was sprayed a large splat of white something.

Virgil’s brows cut a furrow into his forehead that almost cleaved his skull in half. If the white mess wasn’t so huge, he’d think a bird had eaten Grandma’s cooking and had a bad night. But it was massive. The streaks spread over several windows.

If Gordon had used paint on Virgil’s ‘bird as a prank, fratricide was a possibility.

Grabbing a safety line, Virgil hooked himself in and raised the hatch. Lips, pursed he climbed out onto Two’s hull and lowered himself down to her windows.

It was bird shit.

One massive bird shit.

It encompassed plexiglass and cahelium hull and was a spray of at least a couple of metres across.

How the hell? Anger was frozen as his brain attempted to account for how it got there.

It wasn’t there last night. Hell, if it was, there was no way he could have missed it. So, it had to have happened overnight.

The problem was, as far as he knew, there was nothing on Tracy Island big enough to do such a thing. Except maybe Gordon. Anything was possible with Gordon.

Gordon. Yeah, it had to be Gordon.

Climbing back into his ‘bird, he hunted down enough cleaning equipment to remove the mess.

Once it was cleaned up, he turned to the task he had come out there for and fixed the faulty retrieval hydraulics.

-o-o-o-

Virgil had mostly forgotten about the issue by lunchtime. Having his ‘bird out in the sunshine gave him the opportunity to air out her life support systems and do some general cleaning. He even got one of the bots to hose her down and climbed out and polished up her windows and external lights. For an hour or two he lost himself in the job, his mind wandering over yesterday’s events and processing as his hands worked on familiar surfaces.

Gordon wandered out onto the tarmac at one point to check on him. His fish brother may claim to be carefree, but if one of them wasn’t acting normally, he was known to chase them up or alternatively poke and prod if they weren’t responding in a Gordon-acceptable manner.

“Hey, Virg, whatcha doin’?”

It was yelled up as Virgil was hanging almost upside down above Two’s port wing polishing his third number two for the day.

“Cleaning.”

And yes, that was an arched eyebrow from his little brother. He couldn’t see it, but he could hear it. “You gonna wax and polish your entire ‘bird?”

“Just the important bits.”

“You do know we have bots for that.”

“Yes, Gordon.”

“Then wh-“ A wet splat interrupted his brother. “A-aaaargh!”

Virgil spun so fast, his safety line shifted and he found himself falling forward and off the edge of the wing.

Hanging in mid-air only gave him a better view.

Gordon stood on the tarmac, face absolutely disgusted, somewhat distraught and covered in white bird shit.

Virgil immediately looked to the sky, but from this angle half of it was obscured by the cliff face and the rest of it was blue, empty and glaringly full of sun.

“What the hell?!” Gordon stood like a frightened scarecrow, white uric acid in his hair, on his shirt and hands. His fingers flicked white all over the asphalt.

Virgil kept a wide berth as he rappelled down the side of his ‘bird.

“You okay?”

“Do I look okay?!”

Virgil bit his lip. “Well, you’ve looked better.” And if his phone camera was suddenly in his hand, it wasn’t like the fish wouldn’t do the same if he had the chance.

The expression of disgust on Gordon’s face was one for the record books. An accusatory glare at the phone, he spun on the spot, careful not to touch any part of his body with his filthy hands, darted between the ferns and clambered down the cliffside.

Virgil unclipped himself and ran after his brother, only catching sight of him as a pair of sand shoes flew up the cliff and landed on the asphalt. Gordon took a leaping dive into the lagoon.

Well, that was one way to get rid of it.

Virgil watched him purely for safety’s sake as his fish brother skimmed below the surface towards the deeper blue at the centre of the caldera. As always, Virgil marvelled at how fast Gordon could move underwater. Goofy above, powerful below.

And now madly trying to scrub the mess out of his hair. Words which Grandma would not approve bounced around the bay.

A figure in blue appeared at the edge of the villa cliff staring out at the splashing in the middle of the lagoon. That was an explanation waiting to happen. He was surprised there hadn’t been a squawk from comms already.

A glance at the empty sky and he returned to the question of what the hell would be capable of doing this.

Virgil was no orthinologist, but he did have a camera and an interest in the wildlife around him. They were in a rather privileged position just north of one of the world’s largest wildlife sanctuaries, and if his photos were of use to the scientific team on Raoul Island a few hundred kilometres south of them, well, it didn’t hurt to help where he could.

Mel, the leader of the team had him grabbing rough counts of the Kermadec petrels on Mateo every now and again, plus the sea eagles in the cliffs. With the tui in the forest and a number of other species, Virgil was pretty sure he had encountered just about every type of bird on the Island.

And none of them were big enough to make that mess.

Gordon was heading back and no doubt, the words were not going to be pleasant.

He was spitting chips before he even climbed out of the water.

“What the hell was that?!”

His soaking wet brother climbed the verge, hair sticking out in all directions, bare feet nimble despite the sharp rocks.

Virgil opened his mouth, but another voice interrupted. “What happened?”

Blue eyes, dark frown, Scott had already walked half the length of Two’s runway. “What’s going on?”

“Relax, Scott. Gordon just had an encounter with some bird poop.”

His big brother stopped walking. “You’re kidding. All that,” and he waved his hand towards the lagoon, “was for a little sky candy?”

“Candy?” Outrage was one word. Bedraggled was another. Gordon was shoving damp feet into his sand shoes and having a doozy of a time with it. “A bird shit on me, Scott. A pterodactyl sized bird. Possibly an elephant with wings.”

Virgil rolled his eyes. “If it was an elephant with wings, you’d need a shovel.” Though at this point, he was willing to entertain the pterodactyl theory.

Another wary glance at the sky.

Perhaps it would be a good idea to get Two undercover.

-o-o-o-

The video captured by Virgil proved to be highly popular that night, particularly once it was thrown up on the main holoprojector. He knew he was risking dye in his shower rose, but it was a change from being the subject of joviality and it really was harmless. It was also a rare day when they hadn’t been called out, so everyone was relaxed and there was laughter which was sorely needed after yesterday.

There was less laughter the next morning when Scott walked out onto the main balcony at five in the morning and slipped on a wet patch.

The mug of coffee in his hand went flying, splashing boiling hot water on his shirt as he fell, and it was only years of sparring with Kayo that saved him from cracking his head on the hardwood.

As it was, by the time a worried Gordon dragged Virgil out of bed, there were a number of nasty bruises sprouting on his big brother.

“Well, you are staying home today.”

“Virgil, c’mon. I just fell over.”

Wrapping the scald on Scott’s hand, Virgil shook his head. “Nope, you slipped. On a non-slip balcony, by the way. What were you doing out there in the dark?”

“It wasn’t dark.”

“The sun wasn’t up and you didn’t see what you stepped in.”

“Giant bird poop isn’t usually a problem, Virgil.”

No, it wasn’t. The sight of the white splash on the hardwood, large enough to overcome the non-slip surface was like a taunt.

Virgil cleaned up his big brother while listening to Gordon whine about the shit in his hair that apparently hadn’t washed out, ocean or three showers later. After that, he dropped a line to Mel on Raoul and asked her if she knew of any local birds that could do that much poop in one evacuation.

Apart from the snort of laughter from the blonde ecologist, the answer was only ‘maybe an albatross’. Apparently, that was the biggest bird in the Kermadecs.

He sent her the video in thanks.

The howling laughter that followed was worth it. He couldn’t help but grin at the sound of Sam in the background.

Oh, yes, Gordon was going down.

Virgil spent the rest of the afternoon securing everything he owned and rigging some protective security.

Gordon would likely get him anyway, but no need to make it easy.

Scott, of course, refused to acknowledge the burn or the bruises and went about his usual activities. If strangling him wasn’t counterproductive to his preferred outcome, Virgil may have considered it.

“I’m fine, Virgil.” The bandaged hand waved in his direction begged to differ.

The sun was setting and Scott had been at their father’s desk for most of the day. At least they hadn’t been called out.

“There’s someone on the runway!”

Virgil jumped as Alan tore up the kitchen stairs.

“What?”

Young blue eyes were earnest and not a little worried. “There is someone on the runway!”

Scott’s response was immediate, swiping aside paperwork and bring up the Island’s security network. Views of the runway, now almost in darkness flickered past, all empty of life, until a screen came up blank.

“Camera Five is transmitting, but there is no image.”

Scott thumbed his comms. “Kayo, we have a possible intruder on Two’s runway and a camera down. Could you please check it out.”

Their sister’s efficient FAB bounced back over comms.

“I’m going with her. Gordon jumped off the couch where he had been lounging for most of the afternoon and threw himself into his launch chute.

“John, we have a possible intrusion and a blanked camera. Can you give us extra eyes on Two’s runway.”

Another efficient FAB bounced down from orbit and the transmission in Scott’s hands changed to the massive sensors employed by Thunderbird Five.

There was nothing on the runway.

Virgil stared at it. “Alan, what did you see?”

His little brother was standing beside him. “Movement. A head maybe. It was too big to be anything else.”

Kayo appeared on the display, followed by Gordon. They both sketched out a search pattern.

That ultimately proved unfruitful.

They did discover why one of the cameras wasn’t working properly.

“More bird shit.” Gordon’s disgust was a physical thing.

Virgil turned the unit over in a gloved hand. It was designed to withstand a cyclone, yet here it was coated in enough uric acid to simply block any light from entering it.

The thing was, this wasn’t the first time this camera had had an issue. The way it protruded out of the cliff made it a perfect perch and it had seen a few birds over the years. Consequently, it was maintained and checked regularly. It was fine yesterday.

Now it was not.

Coated in one big bird turd.

“You know whatever the hell this is, it obviously has a stomach issue.” Apparently, Gordon was on the verge of declaring whatever it was to be his personal nemesis.

“We’ll need to work out a way to deter the birds from this camera.”

“Bird, Virg. One great big honkin’ bird.”

“That we have yet to see.”

“Well, we have cameras and sensors all over the island. Let’s use them.”

-o-o-o-

They were called out before they could do anything. China. A flood. Three days of drudgery and misery.

It was bad.

Bad enough for Grandma to shut them down for forty-eight hours after they finally made it home.

Virgil was limping with a twisted ankle and a cranky commander who had witnessed him making the jump responsible for the injury. It nearly ended up so much worse,

An aching ankle was worth the life of the two children he had in his arms at the time. He’d be fine.

After fourteen hours curled up in bed, he crawled downstairs and hunted down his coffee. It was midmorning, but the house was quiet. The weather was still holding out and despite a long night’s sleep, he still felt exhausted. Hopefully coffee and breakfast would help.

Sun would be nice. He grabbed a bagel, limped out onto the pool deck and found himself a lounger.

-o-o-o-

Coffee or no, he must have fallen asleep, because he woke to a whisper on comms.

“Virgil, stay still.”

“Wha-?” He mumbled and rolled over, blinking against the sunlight.

And came face to face with an alien.

What the f-?

Dopey brain, adrenalin, and he was floundering backwards, landing hard on the concrete. The lounge flipped over and collapsed on him.

A massive pair of black and white wings spread and flapped, agitated. They backed off, but not without grabbing his neglected bagel first.

Virgil stared as his brain booted.

It was a pelican. A very large pelican.

The bagel was gulped down a huge pink beak.

“Virg! It’s a pelican!” Gordon sounded excited, his whisper over comms almost a shout.

“I can see that.” At least they now knew where all the poop had come from.

Virgil eased the lounger off his back as quietly as he could.

“Virgil, are you okay?” Scott, of course.

“Fine.”

“That is a very big pelican.”

Virgil resisted rolling his eyes...just. “I noticed.”

The bird was eyeing him. Virgil edged backwards a little only for the lounger to rattle behind him.

Those black wings spread again and Virgil froze.

Several feathers were missing from those wings and there was a small smear of red amongst the white on the bird’s right side.

Aw, hell. “Gordon, it’s injured.”

“Damn. How bad? I can’t see from here.”

Virgil looked up and found both Scott and Gordon on the balcony above watching him.

“I can’t tell. We will need to capture it.”

“Reckon you can grab it?”

Virgil eyed the bird. It was over a metre tall and had a beak to match. “Possibly.”

Any other thought on the matter was suddenly vetoed as a familiar hiss lightly disturbed the surface of the pool and Virgil found himself covered in netting.

Kayo and Shadow.

The pelican did not appreciate it and struggled, tangling itself.

Virgil held still and tempted to calm it with soothing noises. Then Scott was there, dragging him out from under the net. Gordon was gathering the huge bird, hands and words desperately trying to calm it.

Thumb on comms. “John, get me Mel. We need her help.”

-o-o-o-

“Well this is a first. An Australian Pelican all the way out here.” Mel stood watching the injured bird stalk about its cage. “You sure he didn’t hitch a ride on one of your Thunderbirds?”

Gordon snorted. “Virg tried to bring home a polar bear once.”

“That was not intentional.” Okay, so it was a sore point. Alan could have been seriously injured simply because Virgil hadn’t closed the module door.

“Well, you did.”

“Did not.”

“Alan would disagree.”

“I did not!”

A hand landed on Virgil’s shoulder, its partner landing on Gordon’s. “That’s enough. Mel, is he going to be okay?” Scott’s voice was authority deep.

The blonde ecologist tilted her head to one side and shrugged. “I’ve done what I can. I think so. He should still be able to fly, but there is no way he is making it back to the continent by himself. I’ve contacted Birdlife Australia. We’ll make an estimate of where he might have come from and take him home.” She smiled up at Scott. “I might need a lift.”

A lopsided smirk. “You’ve got one.”

Gordon rolled his eyes.

“Thanks, Mel.” Virgil held out a hand.

She eyed him a moment and took it. “I see you’re the walking wounded again.”

His eyelids dropped into a flat glare. “Just a twisted ankle.”

She smirked at him. “Look after yourself.”

“Oh, for gods, sake, Mel, isn’t one of my brothers enough?” Gordon groaned.

The ecologist shrugged and Scott frowned. The moment Mel spotted the frown she burst into a grin. “Something wrong, Commander?”

Scott’s glare was flat enough to level the Island. “Not a thing.”

Mel’s grin just got wider. But she reached out and took his fingers in hers. Scott’s shoulders relaxed just a little.

She stroked the back of his hand. “Good.”

Both Virgil and Gordon rolled their eyes at that.

“I’m going for a swim.” Gordon skipped out of the room.

“I’m going to go finish my breakfast.”

Neither Scott or Mel noticed.

The pelican stared him down.

Virgil flicked his eyes towards the ceiling, turned and left.

-o-o-o-

Scott wanted to borrow Thunderbird Two for the delivery. Virgil offered but the Commander claimed he was injured. Virgil told him where he could shove that, listing off a burn and a maze of bruises from a few days earlier as far more injurious than a twisted ankle.

Scott resorted to whining after that.

The fact Scott actually whined like his littlest brother had the engineer staring at his big brother like he’d grown an extra nose.

“How old are you?”

“Virg, please.”

“You’re kidding me, right? You want to borrow my car to take out your date because your jalopy can’t do the job.”

That got a more familiar reaction. “It has to be Two to lessen the trauma to the pelican.”

“Fine, I’ll take him to Brisbane.”

“Virg!”

An arched eyebrow. Okay, he had to admit this was a little fun. “Something wrong?”

“Virgil! I could order it.”

“Sure, you could.” I dare you.

Blue glared at him fit to bust a vein. Virgil held those eyes calmly with his own, doing his best to hold back his grin.

Ultimately, he failed.

“Damnit, Virgil.”

A snort. “Fine. Bring her back in one piece. No aerobatics.”

His brother’s grin was worth it. Who ever thought Scott Tracy would be so eager to fly the family cargo carrier?

The pelican left Tracy Island along with Mel and his brother the next morning.

Virgil did not fail to notice that there was a night before that morning and Scott was positively chipper before he left.

The engineer stood out the front of the villa and took the opportunity to watch his bird lift off with a familiar roar and bank towards the south-west.

He couldn’t help but smile just a little more.

His brother was gone all day and it was no surprise. Virgil was not worried, despite Gordon ribbing him about it for a good part of the day.

The artist hid in his studio.

And painted a pelican.

Eventually, the familiar sound of his ‘bird returning to the Island drew him out and he met his brother on his way back from the hangars.

Scott was obviously preoccupied and didn’t see him approach.

“How did it go?”

The man nearly jumped out of his skin. “Virgil! Give a guy warning next time.”

Virgil stared at him. “You okay?”

“What? Yeah, sure.” The commander pushed past him towards the lockers.

That didn’t sound right. Virgil turned and followed. “Did you have a good time?”

That had a better result. Scott straightened and grinned. “Definitely.” The man was obviously seeing pleasant memories in his mind’s eye.

“So, what’s wrong then?”

The grin vanished. “Er, nothing.” He unfastened and lifted his baldric up and over his head. He looked at anything other than Virgil.

“And you say I can’t lie.”

Eyes caught his. “You can’t. You’re crap at it, Virg, always have been.”

“Well, you’re failing big time today. What happened?”

His brother’s shoulders dropped. “I’ll help you clean her. I promise.”

Virgil’s eyes widened. Oh, god. “What did you do?” He turned and ran towards the hangers.

“Virgil! I’ll fix it. It was an accident.”

“What the hell did you do?!”

He burst into Two’s hangar only to be met by Gordon grinning like a loon. “Big Bro is in trouble.” The fish managed to sing that.

Virgil shoved him out of the way so he could see his ‘bird.”

His jaw dropped. “Oh my god.”

Scott stepped up beside him. “Honest, I didn’t know.”

Virgil held out his hands to his beautiful Thunderbird as if in supplication. One desperate word. “How?”

Scott sighed. “Local fishing fleet docked while she was parked on the beach. Apparently, it is an event that all the local birds gather for. Two unfortunately made a great perch.”

There was bird poop from one end of his girl to the other. She looked diseased. Her green hull mottled with white and brown.

“I’ll clean her. I promise.”

Pelicans. There were pelicans. Likely gulls as well.

“Virg? I will, I promise.”

Bird shit all over his ‘bird.

“Virg?”

“I think you broke him, bro.” Something waved in front of his eyes, interrupting his view of his girl. He swiped at it.

“Well, we have movement at least.”

“Shut up, Gordon.”

“Virg?”

He turned on his big brother and shoved a finger in his face. “You are going to clean every single turd off my ‘bird.”

“Yes, Virgil.” Those blue eyes were very wide and Scott was leaning backwards.

“Good.” Virgil spun on his heel and stormed out.

Stupid birds.

-o-o-o-

FIN.

If you would like to see the possibilities of what can happen with these birds, please have a look here and here :D

[thenarator]

Speak of the Devil

a little thing i wrote for my motw game group. idk i was bored and i thought if y’all are also bored you might like it.

It was getting close to Christmas, and Daniel was getting close to desperate.

These were perhaps not perfectly honest assessments of the state of affairs. Christmas was still a few weeks off, though judging by the state of the town’s decorations it might as well have been tomorrow. The Excellence Holiday Planning Committee had done their work well, and there were lights or wreaths or tinsel on every street light, road sign and traffic signal. There was a general sense of cheer in the air, so Christmas seemed to be just around the corner.

Daniel, for his part, had passed desperate some time ago. He existed in a general state of extreme anxiety, and Father Constantine had been his rock since coming to town. As long as Constantine was alright, Daniel felt a little bit more like he could be alright. Currently, Constantine was not alright, and it set Daniel so on edge it felt like at any moment he could jump out of his own skin.

Constantine had been distant since the battle against Father Birch’s coven. He’d cloistered himself in the back rooms of the church, mostly emerging to do his duty as a priest, but had spent most of the rest of his time in silent contemplation. Daniel didn’t blame him for that, discovering that one was technically the Antichrist had to be taxing on one’s relationship with God, but on the rare occasions when he saw Constantine the man seemed deeply listless. He barely ate, by Daniel’s estimation, and rarely slept through the night. He stared off into space as though not really seeing what was in front of him.

He had also -- Daniel noted with a deep, gnawing sense of guilt for even thinking of it -- not offered his blood to Daniel since that fight. Daniel knew he had no right to ask for or expect such a thing, but its absence was almost as unbearable as the thought of inquiring after it.

In short, Daniel was growing more uncomfortable by the day, and he didn’t know what to do about it.

It was at this point, a few weeks from Christmas and after an unbearable, interminable length of time since things had been normal, that Constantine stopped eating. It was after a visit from Lucifer -- and wasn’t it strange to be considering visits from Lucifer so casually -- which had left burning hoofprints on the church floor, the devil in good spirits, and Constantine pale and drawn and deeply morose. It was Friday, two days before a sermon needed to be given, so when Constantine locked himself in his office and refused to come out it had seemed at the time as though there was a natural endpoint to his isolation. Then Saturday came and went, and when it came time for the Sunday service Constantine still refused to make an appearance.

“Please,” Daniel pleaded quietly at the office door, “please come out and get ready. People will be here soon!”

“Go away,” came Constantine’s gruff voice, tired but insistent.

“What am I supposed to tell them?” Daniel begged, nearly whispering through the door as though he were afraid of being overheard. He did not know who he thought might overhear. Perhaps God, or the devil, or both.

“Tell them their sins could not possibly damn them any more than listening to me defile the name of God,” Constantine replied, and Daniel didn’t know what to say to that.

Daniel did his best to cover. He had locked the church doors before anyone arrived, unsure whether it was a good idea to have people inside when Constantine’s state was unknown, and now he poked his head out a window and explained that they were having problems with the heat. Some penitents turned right around to go home, but a few of the old ladies stood stalwartly outside and many of the town followed their example. No matter how Daniel insisted that it wasn’t fit for man or beast inside the church, they still were unmoved, until he hit upon the idea of telling them that the heat was too high, rather than too low, and had made the church an ideal nesting ground for an entirely fictitious species of notoriously aggressive wasps. That thankfully sent the remainder of the congregation grumbling for their cars, and allowed Daniel to draw himself back inside to consider what to do next.

After nearly an hour’s contemplation had produce no solution, Daniel’s thoughts were interrupted by his phone ringing.

“Hello?” he asked cautiously. The number had flashed up as Unknown on his caller ID, so he hoped it wasn’t one of the church ladies Constantine had for some reason given his number to.

“A little birdie told me services got cancelled today,” said Lizzie-Jean’s voice, sounding unconvincingly bored and disaffected. “I was totally going to come. I got all dressed up and everything.”

“Yes,” Daniel admitted, curling in on himself from where he’d been sitting against the wall a few yards from Constantine’s door. “Father Constantine is, uh, in silent contemplation of-”

“It’s me Daniel,” Lizzie-Jean cut him off flatly. “You don’t have to lie.”

Daniel let out an undignified little whine. “He’s locked himself in his office, and he won’t come out!”

“What hornet’s crawled up his shorts?” Lizzie-Jean asked, with her usual brazen lack of respect. “Get a visit from daddy dearest from down below?”

“Yes,” Daniel admitted quietly. He knew his voice must sound very small.

“You seem upset,” Lizzie-Jean realized, a note of seriousness creeping into her tone. “What’s standard procedure for this? Is it not working?”

“There is no standard procedure!” Daniel protested wildly. “He’s not usually . . . I’m not the one who . . .”

I’m not the one who fixes things, Daniel thought. Constantine is the one who makes everything alright again.

There was a pause on the other end of the phone, then Lizzie-Jean said, “Hang tight, I’m coming to you,” and hung up.

Daniel wasn’t sure what ‘hang tight’ was supposed to mean in this scenario, but if Lizzie-Jean was coming to the church then it seemed prudent to unlock the door. The girl had a habit of barreling through any obstacles placed in her way. This proved to be the correct decision when Daniel noticed out of one of the high windows that Lizzie-Jean was cresting the hill not far from the church on her bike, and then a few minutes later the heavy double doors flew open and banged against the front wall.

“Oh Father Constantine!” Lizzie-Jean shouted, marching into the church with long, confident strides as the doors creaked closed behind her. Her voice echoed off the high ceiling, giving the impression that her small body somehow filled the whole room.

“He’s still in his office,” Daniel said uselessly, locking the doors behind Lizzie-Jean and falling into step behind her.

Lizzie-Jean reached the part of the floor where the old stone entryway met the less-old dark green carpet of the rest of the church and paused, looking down at the dark hoofprints down the center aisle.

“How long has he been in there?” she asked, transferring her weight to one foot and giving a little hop until she was standing one-legged on the first hoofprint, her worn leather boot completely covering it.

“Since Friday,” Daniel replied, watching nervously as Lizzie-Jean continued to play hopscotch with Lucifer’s hoofprints, muttering indistinctly to herself.

Curiously, when she took her foot off a burnt patch of floor it suddenly looked exactly like the floor around it, and it took Daniel several of her steps to realize that the burn marks were being overgrown by moss, the exact same color as the carpet. He stepped experimentally onto a patch of moss to find that he barely noticed the slight rise in the floor where it bloomed, and it released a fresh, clean scent when he lifted his foot. It was quite impressive, actually.

Eventually Lizzie-Jean reached the last of the hoofprints and resumed her dauntless stride into the back rooms of the church.

“What are you going to do?” Daniel asked as she approached the office door.

“I’m going to get him out,” Lizzie-Jean said simply, then raised a fist to pound loudly on the door.

Daniel winced at the noise, but there was no immediate answer.

“DAD!” she screamed through the heavy wood. “YOUR WIFE AND CHILD REQUIRE ATTENTION! COME OUT OF THE GARAGE AND SPEND SOME TIME WITH THE FAMILY!”

Before Daniel could parse out what in Heaven’s name she meant by that, Constantine’s voice growled, “Go away!” through the door.

“I will smoke you out, you old devil, don’t think I won’t,” Lizzie-Jean threatened good naturedly.

“Poor choice of words, child,” Constantine said, but there was something of his old bite to it now. “And if you set fire to this church I will end you.”

“You think you can kill me?” Lizzie-Jean asked, amused.

“No,” Constantine admitted, “but I can tell your Aunt.”

“Firstly don’t think i can’t make smoke without fire,” Lizzie-Jean argued, “and secondly don’t think all smoke is literal.” She smiled, showing teeth, though only Daniel could see the threat display and be suitably intimidated by it. “Through God and my magic all things are possible.”

“God doesn’t live here,” Constantine said grimly.

“Well I do,” Lizzie-Jean said, apparently choosing to interpret ‘here’ as Excellence, Michigan. “Its cold and boring and dangerous at night, so come teach me how to fight with a sword.”

“You can already fight with a sword,” Constantine countered sourly.

“Not as well as you,” Lizzie-Jean said, and Daniel might have wondered how her pride let her admit to such a thing, if he didn’t know her need to be contrary far outstripped it.

“I am not fit for-” Constantine began.

“Speak!” Lizzie-Jean shouted over him, and suddenly she was holding an antique sword. “Don’t make me pry this door open Connie.”

There was a pause where Constantine said nothing, and Lizzie-Jean stood with sword poised to dig into the space between door and doorframe. Then there came a rustling of movement, the sound of footsteps, and a loud scrapping as though a piece of furniture were being shifted away from the door. Then the door opened to reveal Constantine, looking grumpy and disordered and a bit like a bird with its feathers ruffled, but at the very least alive, upright and glaring at Lizzie-Jean with a very un-apathetic vitriol.

He also, Daniel was horrified to note, had stubble. Constantine was usually not one to neglect shaving, but he didn’t grow much facial hair even if given the chance. The three days growth on his face had, however, taken on a most unfortunate shape.

“You’ve got a satan goatee!” Lizzie-Jean howled, her sword point falling to the floor as she nearly doubled over in laughter.

“Silence brat,” Constanine grumbled, which did nothing to stem the tide of Lizzie-Jean’s joyful giggling.

“It doesn’t look that bad,” Daniel said consoling, and quavered when Constantine turned his glaring eyes on him.

Daniel hunched his shoulders, curling up small under Constantine’s piercing gaze, and Constantine’s face softened. “Thank you, Daniel,” he said, quiet enough that Lizzie-Jean likely couldn’t hear over her own mirth.

“Ok, ok,” Lizzie-Jean said, leaning on her sword as she wiped tears from her eyes, “go get cleaned up. You look ridiculous, and I’m not taking sword fighting lessons from Mephistopheles.”

Half an hour later Constantine was showered, shaven and dressed warm enough for the cold December day. Daniel had stayed close at hand while he groomed himself, not wanting to be alone with Lizzie-Jean any longer than he could help it, and he helped Constantine into his winter coat before the two of them traipsed outside. Behind the church was the old cemetery, the headstones aged and crumbling, many of them crooked as they stuck up from the ground. Lizzie Jean had somehow managed to use her red chalk to make a circle on the dry grass, the outside of which was lined with symbols in her strange, arcane language.

“Summoning something?” Constantine asked, leaning heavily upon his cane as he stood just outside the circle.

“Just creating a space,” Lizzie-Jean said nonchalantly, smacking her hands together to get chalk dust off them.

She stepped into the circle, seeming to step through some invisible barrier that resisted her movements, like she were walking through molasses, or something behind her was pulling her back. It seemed to take a lot out of her, as when she was finally standing inside the bounds of the chalk her breathing what somewhat labored, and there was a light sheen of sweat upon her brow. As Daniel looked at her he couldn’t shake the impression that she was reduced somehow, like some of her boundless energy had deserted her.

Nevertheless, she smiled brightly at Constantine and Daniel. “Magically sealed off,” she said cheerfully. “No magic can get in, so no one has an unfair advantage.”

“You certainly do use your magic to compensate for your lack of experience most of the time,” Constantine said, and stepped into the circle. He did not seem to have any trouble crossing the boundary, but once he was inside Daniel thought he too looked somewhat reduced, like he had lost something as well.

Daniel tried not to think of what that something might be.

Lizzie-Jean walked toward the middle of the circle and pulled Speak from where she had driven it into the hard packed earth. “Have at you then!” she crowed, swinging it playfully. Daniel was surprise to note that, however she used her magic to assist in combat, it certainly wasn’t helping her lift the heavy sword. She must have shoulders like pythons under that coat.

“Your stance is atrocious,” Constantine began, walking around behind Lizzie-Jean and kicking her legs further apart.

Lizzie-Jean accepted the correction without complaint, and let Constantine adjust her grip without even commenting on the brief moment when his side was pressed against hers. Then Constantine took up position opposite her and drew his sword, tossing aside the rest of his cane for the moment. Then Lizzie-Jean ran at him, screaming in mock fury, and he easily parried her swings and had his sword at her throat in a matter of seconds.

“Not so wide,” he said simply, and they began again.

After a few rounds of this had gone by without requiring anything from outside the circle Daniel perched himself awkwardly on a headstone to watch. Within the half hour, as though drawn by their congregation, Theodore showed up in full pillow-stuffed tuxedo and skull mask splendor. He was thankfully alone, without any of the vampires that lived in his house, and he didn’t seem the slightest bit surprised to find the three of them out back. He stood on the sidelines, shouting bits of advice to Lizzie-Jean that Daniel doubted the wisdom of but didn’t know enough about sword fighting to contradict. After a while Richard turned up, wandering around the church with a bug sprayer in hand, having come ready to combat the fictitious wasps. Once he had been briefed on the situation he went back to his car and returned with a golf club, declaring himself ready to take Constantine’s place if the priest needed a breather.

They stayed like that for most of the day, Richard and Constantine trading off when one of them got too tired to continue, Lizzie-Jean’s youthful exuberance never flagging no matter how many times she was knocked to the ground. When Richard took over Constantine took to calling advice to both of them, and in this way Richard somehow became even deadlier with a golf club. Theodore seemed to have nothing better to do, and was apparently perfectly content to spectate as long as they practiced. Despite the cold ground beneath and the freezing stone at his back, Daniel too found himself growing oddly comfortable with watching.

By the time Lizzie-Jean finally grew tired the sun was beginning to set, bathing the cemetery in golden light. Constantine dragged his foot over the chalk circle as he left it, and Lizzie-Jean gasped as for a moment she seemed to be buffeted about by a high wind, nearly lifted off her feet by the forces vying for position in and around her. She glared at Constantine once she had righted herself, and he laughed sharply at her expense.

“Bastard,” Lizzie-Jean growled.

For a moment Constantine stiffened, his features hardening like ice, and Daniel wondered if a single word could undo all the day’s work. Then Constantine smirked in a manner the untrained eye might have thought cruel, and chuckled menacingly at Lizzie-Jean.

“No more so than you, brat,” he said viciously.

Lizzie-Jean stuck her tongue out at him in apology.

Daniel followed Lizzie-Jean out front to where she had left her bike, and stood shuffling from foot to foot as she picked it up from where she’d abandoned it to lie on its side on the grass outside the church. She swung her leg over it, standing balanced on her toes with her center of gravity poised over the seat, then looked back at him.

“What?” she asked, sounding perfectly unconcerned.

“Um,” said Daniel, wondering what to say, before he realized there was only one thing to say. “Uh, thank you. For that. For today.”

Lizzie-Jean rolled her eyes and sat down on her bike. “Whatever,” she said dismissively, and began pedaling leisurely back toward home.

[unfortunate-stranger-losers]

Six Baudelaires AU, Part One {AO3} {Read from the Beginning}

Chapter Thirteen → in which Monty receives a New Assistant

“Nick,” Lilac said, peering into the room, “You need to tell Solitude that she’s allowed in other rooms besides this one.”

“Tell her yourself.” Nick said, glancing over at the corner, where Solitude was laying on her stomach, staring at the two-headed lizard, which was scampering around a small area, looking for an insect that had gotten loose. The toddler hadn’t moved from that spot for several minutes.

Their first week with Uncle Monty had gone by in a blur for most of the children; Violet had settled in first, getting permission to tape blank paper all across her wall, so that she could sketch out invention ideas, even if she got them in the middle of the night, and every day she’d rush downstairs to grab whatever breakfast she could find before going into the Reptile Room and sitting at the table with the snake traps, taking them apart and putting them back together, her hair pulled back as tight as she could tie it with her ribbon. More often than not, Lilac would join her after checking in on her other siblings, or she’d find an empty cage to tinker with, or a journal to read through, or she’d spend her time watching over Sunny, who wanted to do little more than play with her new best friend, the Incredibly Deadly Viper.

Klaus put himself in charge of reading up on Peru, and he’d usually take a stack of books up to his and Nick’s room, where he’d sit by the window until long after night had fell, using a large brass lamp to keep enough light for reading until he fell asleep, still curled up with a book on the Peruvian rainforest open in his lap. Nick, meanwhile, was reading up on every kind of herpetological study, from both Monty’s journals and other books, and that was mainly because it was all Solitude wanted to do; Nick would read aloud to her as she played with one of Monty’s safer reptiles, very carefully petting them and being very careful not to hurt them, something a bit unusual for a child of her age. Whenever she occasionally tugged too hard on a tail or poked too unexpectedly, she got incredibly upset and apologetic, and Uncle Monty would come in to show her and Nick- and whoever else happened to be in the room- how to properly handle the animal. Solitude seemed to learn this information at a speed that rivaled Nick’s memorization, and at night she’d babble to Klaus what they’d learned that day while he read, or she’d tell Sunny over lunch, and Sunny would tell her about what she and the Incredibly Deadly Viper had bitten that day. While Solitude was slightly jealous that Sunny had befriended such a large snake, she had her own pet; she’d named her tiny frog Babbitt, and the small animal tended to jump onto her shoulder or into her dress pocket whenever they had the chance.

And when Uncle Monty wasn’t showing Solitude how best to handle the Dissonant Toad or the Inky Newt, he would still be in the Reptile Room, taking care of his reptiles, showing the children who weren’t doing anything else how to feed and care for them, or telling them more about the different animals. And often, Monty would segue into stories about his travels, and all the people and animals he’d met on his journeys and adventures they’d had. Nick and Violet were fascinated by the tales, while Lilac would only occasionally listen, usually drowning out the noise with a fixation on whatever she was repairing, and Klaus would mostly just sit somewhere with a book, though sometimes he did move over to listen, and sometimes, when Violet and Nick started telling Monty their own stories, he and Lilac would join in, while Sunny would play with the Incredibly Deadly Viper and Solitude would sit by a reptile cage to observe, with Babbitt curled up on her skirt.

Currently, while Solitude busied herself with the two-headed lizard and Nick read aloud about alligators, Klaus had taken up the table with a bunch of blueprints and charts, while Violet and Sunny sat on the ground, trying to feed the tortoise.

They heard a moan, then, sounding similar to the sentence Woe is me.

“Cheup!” Sunny called to the crocodile in the corner of the room. “Don’t be sad! Uncle Monty will be back soon!”

“Sun! Cor!” Solitude called, meaning, “Sunny, the broken-hearted crocodile just sounds like it’s saying ‘woe is me,’ he’s not actually sad at the moment.”

“She knows that, Soli, she’s just being playful.” Violet said.

“I wish he’d go back outside.” Klaus said, flipping a paper. “He’s annoying.”

“Klaus, don’t be a dick.” Nick said.

“Language.” Lilac said.

“Be nice to the crocodile.” Nick said. “We were just reading about them-”

“You were just reading about alligators.” Klaus said. “They’re different.”

“Not really.”

“Sinensis.” Solitude said. “Klaus is right, actually.”

“Traitor.” Nick said. Soli stuck her tongue out at him.

The broken-hearted crocodile let out another Woe is Me, and Klaus snapped, “Woe is you? We’re the ones whose parents are dead, and now we’re being tossed from place-to-place like hot potatoes!”

“Klaus!” Lilac said quickly. “Klaus, it can’t understand you-”

“I know that!” Klaus shouted, slamming his hand onto the table. They all jumped, and upon seeing his siblings so startled, Klaus quickly said, “Sorry! I’m sorry, I…”

Slowly, Lilac stood up, walking to stand beside him. “Klaus,” she said, glancing around at all of her siblings, “Listen. We’re always going to miss our parents. But, well… Monty’s been a good guardian so far. I think we’re safe here. I think… I think he really does care about us.”

“Lilac.” Klaus said, looking over at her. “He said he knew our parents. They never mentioned him, never took us to visit. I thought we knew all of our parents’ friends, I thought we knew everything about them.”

Lilac bit her lip, sharing a look with Nick. “I’m sure they had their reasons.”

“You think it was the same reason they sent us to Briny Beach?” Violet asked, glancing up as Sunny reached out to pet the tortoise.

“Or the same reason they had a cylinder-thing with the same Eye that’s fucking everywhere?” Nick asked.

“Oh!” Klaus reached for a paper. “Speaking of which-”

“Bambini! Baudelaire Bambini!” called Monty, from down the hall, using his favorite term for them.

“In here, Uncle Monty!” Violet called, looking up excitedly.

Monty entered the room, smiling brightly. “There you all are! How was your day?”

“We fed the reptiles!” Lilac said quickly.

“I polished the tortoise!” Violet said.

“I’ve been reading through these herpetological journals.” Nick said.

“Corwin!” Solitude cheered. “And I’ve been listening!”

“Very good!” Monty said. “I have some final supplies to procure in town before we leave for Peru- wasp repellent, toothbrushes, canned peaches and a fireproof canoe- but my new assistant, Stephano, should be arriving today. I hope you will make him feel welcome, should he reach the house before I do.”

“Of course.” Lilac nodded. “I’ll lock Nick in the attic so he can’t say anything.”

“Shut up!” Nick yelled.

“Make me!”

Monty laughed, used to the sibling bickering by now, and he added, “Tonight, we will all go see a movie together! How does that sound?”

“That’d be amazing!” Violet said. “Sunny and Soli have never been to the movies before, but we’ll make sure they behave.”

“Serpe?” Sunny asked, looking over. “Can we bring the Incredibly Deadly Viper?”

“Unfortunately, no.” Monty said. “The theater does not allow pets.”

“So we’ll have to leave Klaus.” Nick said.

Klaus glared over at him. “I’m going to throw you out the window.”

“You couldn’t lift your own bookbag, Klaus, there’s no way you’d be able to do that.”

“I will find a way.”

“What movie are we seeing?” Lilac asked, interrupting the argument.

“We won’t know until we get there!” Monty said.

“I’ve never heard of a movie theater that doesn’t tell you what movie is playing.” Klaus said.

“Well,” Monty said, “Klaus Baudelaire, I have a feeling that there are many things you’re going to see that you’ve never heard of before. Life is a conundrum of esoterica. Goodbye for now!”

After he left, Violet asked, “What did he mean, ‘Life is a conundrum of esoterica?’”

“Well, ‘conundrum’ means ‘mystery.’” Klaus said, reaching for the paper again. “And ‘esoterica’ are obscure objects or documents.” He finally unrolled the paper onto the table, and said, “Come look at this.”

Nick and Violet stood up, walking over, while Solitude simply turned back to the lizard and Sunny crawled over to the tortoise. The four older children crowded around the table, and Klaus placed his cylinder on the edge of the paper so that it would stay in place.

“These are the original blueprints for Uncle Monty’s landscaping.” Klaus said. “This, right in the middle, is the hedges outside, and they make up a labyrinth. And if you look at it from the top-”

“It looks like the Eye Tattoo.” Lilac said.

Indeed, the blueprints clearly showed the hedge maze making up the familiar eye.

“I know what you’re thinking,” Violet said quickly, “And no. Uncle Monty can’t be working with Count Olaf.”

“If this Eye is just a symbol for Olaf,” Nick said, “Than our parents were working with him, too. They had the Eye on that cylinder thing.”

“There’s no way our parents would associate with him!” Lilac said.

“Whatever it means,” Klaus said, “It means that Monty’s not telling us everything. Why would he keep this a secret from us unless it was bad?”

“Monty’s too nice to be wicked.” Nick said.

“He seems that way.” Lilac sighed.

“And people aren’t always what they seem.” Klaus said. “Something strange is going on here.”

Lilac suddenly reached forwards, snatching the blueprint away, and the cylinder clattered to the table. “Well,” she said quickly, “We can’t very well figure it out by standing here bitching about it. Nick, keep reading to Soli, and Klaus, go through Monty’s journals. Violet, help me feed the reptiles so we can take more journals once we’re done.”

“Who put you in charge?” Violet asked bitterly.

“I’m the oldest, so I’m in charge.” Lilac said.

“We should vote.”

“We’d just all vote for ourselves and you know it.” Lilac said. “Go clip the iguana’s toenails.”

Violet flipped her off, but did head towards the iguana cage. Klaus went over to the bookshelf, and Nick hesitantly went back to the book he was reading. “Alright, Sol,” he said, “Wanna hear more about alligators?”

Solitude nodded excitedly, her entire face lighting up as she lifted the two-headed lizard, gently toddling over to Nick, who sat on the floor, and placing it on his knee. As he read, and Klaus picked books off the shelf, and Lilac and Violet got to work, Solitude walked over to the corner of the room, where a harmless snake was sleeping on a table. She picked it up, before walking back and draping it over Nick’s shoulders.

“Soli,” Klaus said quietly, flipping a page in the journal, “Stop piling reptiles onto Nick.”

“No.” Solitude said, before going to pick up a frog out of a terrarium on the floor and walking back to put it on Nick’s lap, followed by a very confused Babbitt.

They continued like this until they heard the ring of the doorbell.

They looked up, surprised a moment, before Lilac said nervously, “That must be Monty’s new assistant.”

“We should let him in.” Klaus said hesitantly.

“Should we all go?” Violet asked.

Lilac considered a moment, before saying, “Uh, yes. Yes, we should all go say hello- actually, you know what, Nick, stay here.”

“Hey!” Nick said.

“You and Soli put those reptiles away,” Lilac said, “And we’ll get Stephano settled in.”

Nick and Solitude sighed, but she picked up the animals she’d placed on him and helped put them back as Violet picked up Sunny, Klaus put his books away, and Lilac managed to coax the tortoise into its pen. Then, as Nick and Soli continued taking care of the reptiles, the other four children headed towards the door, feeling dread build inside, though they weren’t entirely sure why.

Lilac reached the front door first and, carefully, she grabbed the doorknob, and swung the door open.

And she immediately wished she hadn’t.

Because when the door opened, and they all looked up at the man who stood before them, it slowly dawned on them who it was.

Ahead of them stood a very tall, very skinny man. And though he had shaved off his eyebrow and now wore a thick beard, they recognized his shiny eyes, and they recognized his pale face, and they recognized his voice, even through his obviously fake accent, as he said, “Hello, hello, hello.”

Lilac froze over, and Sunny leaned into Violet, who backed up in order to stand in front of Klaus, who looked very, very angry.

“I am Stephano,” said the man they recognized, “Dr Montgomery Montgomery’s new assistant. If you could help me with my luggage-”

“We will not help you with your luggage.” Klaus spat. “You’re Count Olaf.”

The man simply looked at them, before finishing, “-it would be very helpful. The ride along that smelly road was dull and unpleasant.”

“If anyone deserved to travel along Lousy Lane, it’s you.” Violet said.

“We will not help you with your luggage,” Lilac said, moving forwards and grabbing the door again, trying to slam it shut, “And we will not let you in this house.”

Before the door could shut, moving quick as a flash, Olaf pulled a knife from his pocket and stuck it into the wood, holding the door in place. Lilac jumped back, instinctively throwing a hand in front of Violet, Klaus and Sunny.

“Well,” Olaf said, dropping his ridiculous fake accent and pushing his way into the foyer as he removed his knife from the door and pointed it towards the children, causing Lilac to push her siblings farther behind her, “I see you children haven’t changed a bit. Still annoyingly clever.”

Lilac pushed her siblings some more, and they raced backwards towards the staircase, keeping their eyes locked on the knife. None of them had a plan, but they understood quickly why they were heading upstairs; it would keep him far away from the Reptile Room, where Nick and Soli were still, probably unaware of what was happening. Olaf kept following them, his knife swinging between them, as they stepped onto the stairs.

“Lilac,” he said, “You’re stubborn as ever. Violet is still as rude as ever. Klaus, you still have your idiotic glasses from reading too many books. And little Sunny still has only nine toes instead of ten.”

“Uh-oh.” Sunny whispered, glancing up, and Violet held her a bit tighter as they went farther up the stairs.

“What are you talking about?” Klaus asked angrily. “Our sister has ten toes, like the- the vast majority of people.”

“Really?” Olaf said. “That’s odd. I could’ve sworn that she lost one of her toes in an accident, when a man was so upset at being called the wrong name that he dropped a knife onto her foot.”

“You wouldn’t dare.” Lilac said, pushing her siblings to move quickly as they reached the top of the stairs, stopping slightly underneath a wall of photos.

“Let’s not discuss what I would and would not dare do.” Olaf said. He glanced at the pictures, and then tapped one with a knife. “Let’s discuss your poor, unfortunate parents. Very brave in their days. But their days are done.”

“That’s not a picture of our parents.” Klaus said, glancing at the photo. “That’s a piano.”

“Yes it is, they’re inside the piano.” Olaf said.

“How would you know that?” Lilac asked, once again pushing her siblings a bit more behind her.

“I took the picture.” Olaf replied. And as the siblings jumped, shocked, he continued, “Now all that’s left of them is their enormous fortune, and that- wait.” He stopped, scanning them. “There were more of you. Where are the other two?”

The siblings froze, and Lilac glanced behind them, at the second set of stairs. They could run down, but Olaf would follow, so they’d have to have a good head start to get to the room, they just needed a distraction…

At that moment, they heard what sounded like a reptile’s screech- only it was very, very loud. Olaf jumped, turning to look down towards the source of the noise, but Lilac didn’t bother, instead whipping around and pushing her siblings towards the staircase. Violet moved fast, holding Sunny close and almost leaping down the stairs, followed closely by Lilac, who turned around once she realized Klaus had fallen behind slightly. She froze, horrified, as she saw Olaf reach forwards and yank his arm, but thankfully Klaus managed to rip himself away. As he did, the cylinder in his pocket fell out, clattering onto the stairs, and Lilac grabbed onto it with her right hand and grabbed Klaus with her left, pulling him behind her as they ran back down.

When they reached the bottom of the stairs, they saw Violet away, with Nick and Solitude standing at the landing, waiting for their siblings. As soon as they saw each other, the Baudelaires raced into the Reptile Room, shutting the door tight behind them.

[megsblackfirewrites]

Keep Yourself Alive

Mortars fell from the sky and the ground evaporated beneath them. Jack yanked one of the German soldiers behind cover and covered their body with his. He felt heat rush over his back and he grit his teeth against the pain.

“You okay?” Jack yelled, feeling his eardrums throb as they tried to repair themselves.

“Shaken, but good,” the soldier shouted back. “Where’s the rest of the squad?”

Jack reached up for his earpiece and pressed down on the piece of tech. “Morrison to Squad B. Come in Squad B.”

“Squad B,” a muffled voice replied. “Good to hear your voice, Morrison. Thought we lost you after that last bombing.”

“I’m with Hasenkamp,” Jack said. “Where’s the Commander?”

“Reyes here,” a familiar, comforting voice shouted over the comms. “Looks like we got split into three different groups. I need a head count.”

“Two,” Jack said.

“Three,” the muffle voice said.

“And two with me. Fuck.”

Eight soldiers left from the twenty that went in. Jack reached up and push a hand into his fuzzy hair. He looked at the ground between his boots and felt bile rising in his throat. That was over fifty percent of their team gone. That was a lot of firepower gone in one fell swoop. Damn these omnics to whatever hole they crawled out of.

“We need to pull back,” Jack said. “Get who we can out of here.”

“Retreat’s cut off for almost everyone,” Gabriel said. “It’s going to be a fight to get back to base.”

“What about the Crusaders? Can they cut a swath for us?”

“Reinhardt’s three cities over,” Gabriel said. “No way he’ll get here in time.”

“Can command drop anything on us?”

“No.”

“Squad A?”

“No response.”

“C?”

“Three miles back dealing with OR-10s.”

“Wonderful,” Jack growled and looked up. “And I see dropships coming in for another round.”

Gabriel swore loudly. “Okay, I want a full retreat, understood? Do what you need to do, but we need to regroup with Squad C. I’m going to try to get a hold of Command, but there’s no guarantee about anything. No stupid risks. Get. Out.”

“Hoorah,” Jack snarled before he grabbed Hasenkamp’s arm. “Let’s go, bro. On your feet.”

Hasenkamp hauled himself to his feet and spat a mouthful of blood onto the ground. Jack had a moment of panic, but Hasenkamp shook his head.

“Chew the inside of my cheek when I get stressed,” he said. “Sorry. I’m good.”

“Just stay close,” Jack instructed. “We’ve got at least three miles to cover. More if Squad C’s been pushed back.”

Hasenkamp nodded and they bolted for the next cover. Jack kept his speed in check, vaulting over fallen debris with ease, but making sure that his slower companion stayed right behind him. He had to haul the exhausted soldier over whatever he could, watching their back as the dropships started swinging overhead.

“Bombs incoming,” he shouted over comms. “Get to cover!”

Hasenkamp dove under what must have been a car at one point and Jack followed him. He covered the other man as well as he could, both of them curling up as the bombs started falling. The explosions deafened him, leaving a terrifying ringing in his ears. He felt blood trickling down his jaw, but resisted the urge to wipe it away.

Hasenkamp was sobbing beneath him, wailing under Jack’s chest. Jack couldn’t blame him; he would be screaming too if he wasn’t so focused on keeping the other man alive. His hand tightened in Hasenkamp’s jacket and he shifted, drawing his knees up to make a better bubble over him.

The ground stopped shaking and Jack lifted his head. Dirt, dust, and smoke wafted through the air. He could smell something burning and knew that they had to move. He crawled out from under the twisted heap of metal and hauled Hasenkamp to his feet.

“We need to move,” Jack shouted.

Hasenkamp made a desperate motion with his hand before looking at the sky. “I can’t hear,” he shouted.

Jack nodded his head in understanding. He pointed towards the road and mimed running. Hasenkamp nodded and they took off as fast as they could. Jack watched the skyline, looking for any sign of falling ORs. Hasenkamp’s face was a mess of dirt with tear tracks rolling down his cheeks, but he moved like a trained soldier. He hadn’t been knocked down too far, at least.

Jack darted into a building and Hasenkamp slipped in behind him. Jack made a few quick signs and Hasenkamp pulled his helmet off. Jack popped the lid off of a stimpak and jabbed it into Hasenkamp’s arm, watching the desiccated flesh bounce back.

“Hear me?” he asked.

“Through a tunnel,” Hasenkamp shook his head. “But, yah.”

“Good,” Jack said as he pulled the stimpak away from the man’s arm. “Won’t repair much, I’m afraid, but it should get you to the field medics.”

Hasenkamp said something in German before he rubbed his face. He looked up at Jack and his brown eyes were swimming with tears. Jack pulled the man into a tight hug, squeezing harder as Hasenkamp clung to him.

“We’re going to get through this,” Jack murmured.

“Shouldn’t make promises like that,” Hasenkamp mumbled against Jack’s chest. “Can’t keep them.”

“I can if you are willing to follow my lead,” Jack smiled.

“I shouldn’t be crying like this,” Hasenkamp said as he tried to pull away.

“Maybe not, but you’re stressed and scared; I am too,” Jack said. “Seen worse reactions than just crying.”

Hasenkamp tightened his hands in Jack’s jacket before he pulled away. He wiped at his face and shook his head. He grumbled in German, looking around before he set his hands on his hips.

“So, where to from here?”

Jack looked out the window, remembering which way they had come a few hours before. He mapped it out in his head before pointing away from the building that they were in.

“That way for another mile,” he said. “At least.”

“Haven’t seen any omnics,” Hasenkamp said. “Think they’re just going to drop bombs and hope that they get us?”

“I’d wager at least one more run and then they’re going to drop on top of us,” Jack said. “That’s what they did in L.A.”

“Not so great,” Hasenkamp sighed and rubbed his face. “How are we going to survive this?”

“Hard work and pure, dumb luck,” Jack sighed. “Come on.”

Jack counted five soldiers from Squad B and grimaced. “Get medical,” he ordered as he shooed the limping soldiers along. “You haven’t heard anything from Commander Reyes?”

“Not since his orders,” Garret said as he leaned on his buddy’s shoulder. “Sorry, Captain.”

Jack shook his head and shooed them along. There was no reason for them to worry about the Commander; that was his responsibility now. He reached up and pressed a hand against his comm.

“Reyes, come in,” he said.

Static came back. He growled and repeated himself. He walked in a tight circle, glancing over at the commanding officer for Squad C. The woman shook her head and walked over.

“I haven’t heard anything either, Jack,” she said. “Should we pull back?”

“Get the others ready for transport,” Jack said as he looked to where his gun was being serviced by a technician. “I’m going to look for him.”

“You don’t know where to start,” the captain grimaced. “And if we lose you too….”

“You’ll have Reinhardt, Ana, and Torbjorn to help,” he said as he headed for his gun. “If you don’t hear from me by tomorrow, let high command know that we’re both KIA.”

The captain stared at him as if he was nuts as he shouldered his rifle. He left as quickly as he could, knowing that if he hung around too long, someone might try to stop him. He was not going to punch anyone in the face if he could avoid it, but he was not going to leave Gabriel on the battlefield to rot.

He ducked under the gate that kept the omnics out and headed for the heart of the city. Bombed-out shells of cars and buildings greeted him. Charred bodies reduced to pieces of discarded black extremities were strewn about, either the remains of the citizens or the soldiers that had been sent in ahead of them.

He forced himself not to think about how Gabriel’s corpse could be part of that number. It would still be burning if it was, so either Gabriel was still alive or he was dead further along.  He had to find him, either way. Gabriel’s family deserved to at least have his body.

He heard the rapid percussion of shotguns and veered towards the sound. He pushed on his earpiece, trying to get Gabriel to answer him. All that spat back at him was static until he rounded the corner.

“Motherfucker!” he shouted before diving out of the way. “Don’t shoot me, you fucking moron!”

“Sorry,” Gabriel snorted. “Little surrounded, in case your country bumpkin ass didn’t notice.”

Jack fired off three helix rockets and the omnics were reduced to scrap. He hurried to Gabriel’s side, spotting the dying bodies of the other two soldiers. He grimaced at the sight, wishing there was something he could do for them.

“Stay close,” Gabriel growled as he fired on the advancing omnics. “They’re like fucking ants!”

“Ants?”

“There’s a lot of them, okay.”

“And you didn’t think of wasps?”

“No. No, apparently, I think of annoying little, hardworking ants instead of fuck-off wasps.”

“At least your sense of humor hasn’t gone anywhere.”

“Small blessings, Jack, small blessings,” Gabriel snorted. “Duck.”

Jack threw himself to the ground as Gabriel started spinning. He didn’t know how Gabriel could fire his stupid shotguns that fast, but he wasn’t complaining as the omnics fell to pieces around them. He saw bullets blast through Gabriel’s torso, but he shrugged them off until the last omnic fell sparking to the ground.

“Gabe.”

Gabriel shook his head before stumbling over to one of the dying soldiers. Jack watched Gabriel kneel down and grab the man’s jaw, wrenching his head up and around to look at him. Bile burned in his throat and Jack looked away, unable to watch as Gabriel stole the life from the man’s body.

“Glad you’re still alive,” he said as he heard Gabriel groan in pain.

“Glad you came along when you did,” Gabriel grunted before he stumbled over to Jack and dropped down on the ground. “Those that you killed would have overwhelmed me otherwise.”

Jack nodded and reached out to pet Gabriel’s head. “Should head back,” he said. “They’re going to be looking for us.”

Gabriel sighed heavily. “I need a few minutes, Jack,” he said. “I managed to heal the wounds but I’m exhausted.”

Jack settled down beside Gabriel. He nodded and reached up to touch his earpiece. He managed to get a hold of Squad C and told them that Gabriel was alive and that they’d head for the extraction point when he could move. When he got the confirmation, he set a hand on Gabriel’s head and started gently massaging his scalp.

“I’m glad you made it,” Jack said.

“Me too,” Gabriel said before he slumped against Jack’s shoulder. “Watch my back.”

Jack smiled a little before he lifted his head to keep watch.  

[cherry-slushie-cosplay-blog]

Freshman Year Quotes

Ok so I did a list of all the stupid shit I heard in my Freshman year of high school. Enjoy.

(T) - Teacher (AP) - Freshman Assistant Principal

FRESHMAN YEAR ----

"Any weeb brethren, see me after class I want to be friends." *class is totally silent* "*loudly* I have a seven inch penis." "I'm a farmer bitch I will throw my crops at you." "You can teach tiny cil- chilr- chilud- chiluden, wait what?" "I'm telling Jesus!" "Jesus already knows." "(T) Use your 5 sols! Haha, get it? Like soul?" "Bold of you to assume I have any at all." "HE CALLED ME THE N-WORD, HE CALLED- oh shit you're a girl my bad I'm just messing around trying to get someone in trouble. Have a nice weekend!" "Eins, zwei, drei, vier, fünf, sechs, sieben, acht...FUCK!" "How do you make an equilateral square?" "I think my back has scoliosis." "I've got a bag of chicken." "Why do you have a bag of chicken?" "Because. Why do you have a bottle with mangos on it?" "This- this is mango-flavored tea!" "AND THIS IS CHICKEN-FLAVORED BAG" "...and some condoms have spermicide which kills off the sperm. Don't ask me how I know all that, Mrs. ********." "Are you from Russian?" "Sit your ADHD-filled ass down." "If we were in hell, do you really think I would be here?" "(T) Yes." (T) "Is stupid written on your forehead?" "I don't know, is it written on yours?" "His forehead's big enough for it." "That looks like an orgy pile over there." "Why do you guys always sit behind me?" "If we want to kill you, you won't see it coming." "Is this what Julius Caesar felt like?" "You're so tiny! You look like a doll!" "And you look like a cock-riding motherfucker." " Technically, time is a construct." "Technically, none of this matters and we're all gonna die soon." "Will you two shut up please?" (T) "My 2019 has been completed, I made a student cry." (This was January 10th btw) (T) "As long as you do your best and turn that in, you'll be fine." "What if my best sucks and I get a bad grade?" "Ok that was good I'm gonna give you that." "I'm gonna put on black lipstick and go to sleep." *Aggressively singing Dream Daddy For Me* "What's that?" "A grapefruit." "Bitch that ain't a grape." "No, grapeFRUIT." "It looks like you put Kool Aid in an orange." "Dude it's called a grapefruit." "No, fuck you and your Kool Aid orange." "I ate a mouse dongle." "Why the fuck would you do that?" "I don't know, I just did." "Racism is my bitch. I bend racism over and take it from behind." "A function is an input and a function...oh wait hold on I messed up- stop laughing at me I got this." "James Charles did one of Bob Ross's tutorials on his forehead." "So he has a big forehead-" "Shut the hell up ***** no one cares." "The answer was D! D as in 'Dinosaur chicken nuggets'!" (T) "What are the first ten amendments?" "I know the ten COMMANDments." "No one cares, we're not in Christian school." "YES WE ARE HAIL MARY" (T) "Do your work or the Lord may strike you." *this was at the religious girl from the previous quote* "What time is it?" "It's fuckin uhhhhh noon o 5." "Noon o 5?" "I forgot the word twelve." "I SEE HEADLIGHTS" "Hm?" "Headlights is nipples." "If this is a test I'm gonna throw myself out the window. I was about to go to the hospital this weekend and I'm still gonna make it happen." "I won't T-Pose for dominance but I will screech and make your eardrums bleed." "Does anyone remember Llamas With Hats?" 4 people: "caAAARRLLLLL" "Pagans terrify me." "Why?" "Every pagan I know of is a furry." "sKeDaDdLe SkAdOoDlE yOuR dIcK iS nOw A nOoDlE" "NO NOT IN MATH CLASS" "Doodlebops." "shUT THE FUCK UP" "I watched that yesterday, I have it on DVD." "WHY THE FUCK DO YOU HAVE DOODLEBOPS ON DVD" (T) *random Chewbacca noise* "My brain is smaller than my dick." "If you feel stupid, you should." "What about King Solomon?" (T) "What has Solomon ever done for America?" "What have YOU ever done for America?" "Nothing should be in your mouth unless it's a banana." "What type of banana?" "A yellow one, duh." *laughter* "Or a green one, whichever you like more." (T) "For the people who I'm signing these for: are you going to the farm-" "YES WE FINNA BE COWBOYS" (T) "What y'all playing over there?" "Chess." (T) "I hope you lose." (T) "If you're stupid, it's your fault." (T) "Let's go guys!" "hoLD ON I'M SAVING MY POKEMON GAME" "There's people taking pictures down there - should I pour Monster on them?" "When you gave me my pencil I was like 'I like Zoe, she's nice' in my brain and then my brain somehow connected that to 'You tryna smash?' and another part of my brain said 'No, stop, she'd cut your dick off'." "That's the strangest intrusive thought I've ever heard from a friend." "How many of y'all think I'm gay?" *about 6 people raise their hands* "Ok then." "May I please go to the bathroom?" (T) "You just have to get out of here at any chance you get, don't you?" "I'm serious, I'm really hungry, does anyone have any food?" "I have lotion." "Fuck you." (T) "OH MY GOD SHE HAS TAP SHOES CAN YOU DANCE???" "...no" (T) "YOU STILL LOOK GOOD" *watching Sorcerer's Stone* "Who's at the window?" *ta-da it's Malfoy* "Oh it's a blonde-headed lesbian." "Shit fuck goddammit bitch pussy fucking Jesus Christ." "I have ibuprofen, you know." "Nah, I'm good." "I'm a lil loli short and flat~ My head is for pat- wait fuck what was it" "Hello~ my fuCKING HIP OW" "Are you ok?" "I popped my hip...Hello, my name is Elder Price~" (T) "Here, it's legal to marry your 2nd cousin twice removed." "I'm doing it." (T) "******** no-" "Fuck (insert name of school district), man. On my mom." "I wanna fucking die I hate this class." "No. I look like Jesus, I'm telling you no. Therefore, Jesus says no and you're not allowed to die." (T) "How else could we have solved this?" "With a calculator." "Did Diego steal his money from Dora?" (T) "I don't know, moving on." "All y'all talking about how your souls are dark black, mine is baby blue. It's brighter than your hair." "uwu my stomach hurts" "I'm serious I'm not on my phone." (T) "Oh really?" "I swear to GOD she wasn't!" (T) "Oooooohhh" "Holy shit Zoe you're gonna send **** to hell." "You were staring at me for like 20 seconds before calling on me!" (T) "No, my glass eye was staring at you. My real eye was over there seeing that stuff, and over here I didn't see sHIT." "I heard there's G-Spots in your ass, why don't you shove it up there and have some fun." "How about no?" "Suit yourself." "I don't like raw fish — it makes me sad." "100 senators!! Come ON, Sen - a - tors!" "Shut up go stick your head in a dick." "I want that Mormon Milk." "I'm begging you to stop talking." "I'm salivating for that salvation." "Shut the fuck up."

BONUS: SCHOOL'S POWER OUT

"My god that sun is brighter than Kirishima's smile." "Zoe is turning into Trina." "I'm breaking down~" "Come over here anyone who wants to take 'Golden-Hour Mental Breakdown' selfies and/or get Pocky." "Anyone who refuses to let their anxious child come home will be personally smacked by me with Zoe's copy of 'Half-Blood Prince'."

NORMAL SCHOOL

"Stab me in the ovary or whatever you said." "CORRODED ARTERY YOU ARE MALE" "Same difference." "Perfect boy lookin-ass- no homo." "What the fuck" "People think that Sherlock Holmes isn't real because he was written in a book. God was too but you don't see people denying HE exists, do you?" "Ok do a burpee." *burps loudly* "No a- you're a fucking idiot." "Heyyyyy Zoe, can we- holy shit is that Pornhub?" "How do you make a baby crawl in a circle?" "I don't fucking know." "Ok...do you know how to make one stop?" "When did you get here!?" "Couple minutes ago." "???" "I'm quiet and people generally don't notice I'm here." "...do you need a hug?" (T) "What'd you do this weekend?" "Some sewing." (T) "What'd you sew?" "Robes…" (T) "For what?" "*increasingly embarrassed* A costume." "From what?" "*very red by now* Harry Potter…" "Which character?" "*wanting to crawl into a hole* Draco Malfoy…" "*polite clapping from entire class*" (T) "He's on the road to alcoholism." "I'm doing a 21-Day challenge of not talking, if I do - punch me." (T) "Oooohhh this is gonna be fun." *knock at door* (T) "*presses face against door window* What's the password?" "bitCH GIVE ME BACK MY CAPRI-SUN" "It's not Capri-S-" "IT'S BOOTLEG CAPRI-SUN GIVE IT BACK" "Holy shit you turned the Jesus-freak gay." "What happens if you don't deletus the fetus?" "Then the abortion isn't completus." (T) Can you see where I'm going?" "To hell." "Oh look, a wasp." "KILL THAT SHIT" "Oh man I can't hear my eardrums." "How the fuck would you hear your eardrums?" "That's the POINT." "I like a p p l e s ~I like 'em big and juicy-" (T) "NO." "Everyone raise your hand if you want Mr. **** out of the room." *80% raises their hands* (T) "Even you?" "What do you mean 'even me'!?!?" "******? ******!!" "What?" "If I ask you a question will you be a douche?" "Probably." "Understandable." "What the hell am I reading?" "Words." "Mr. **** do you like donkey ducks?" (T) "I'm not even going to answer you." "I'm scared of homophobes." "Homophobophobia." "If gay is a slur does that mean that African American is a slur?" "Who has my mcfreaking phone? WHOMST HAS MY PHONE" (T) "Ooh free charger! *wraps cord around neck like a scarf*" "Whee whee mone me jam apple laff-yeti" "If someone is being homophobic, give them dyslexia." "Troom Troom life hack: if someone is harassing you — eat them." "Troom Troom banana hack: if someone is harassing you — shove a banana up their ass." (T) "Take that hat off." "I'm a gangsta." "I'm never gonna use this shit. Do you think I'm gonna go to McDonald's and say something like, I don't know, 'Oh riddle me dubious'? NO." "I'm gonna meticulate you until you get dyslexia." "What the fuck does that even mean?" "I'm gonna meticulate your rectum." "Please stop." (T) "See that girl? She likes bad boys." (T) "Ask her, she has tape." "What the hell has made you think I have tape?!?" "I don't care if you have 106% in this class, you can kiss my fat ass!" "No, PICasso." "I like Costco-" "No." "Holy shit *points at red train in movie watched in class* it's the Hogwarts Express." "Stop it." "Choo choo bitch we goin' to magic school." (T) "Guys Mr. ***** is in here, quick make it look like you're doing math." "3 + 7 = 9!!!" "Are you serious?" "MOVE IT, MUNCHKINS!" *shoves us apart and runs off* "Excuse-moi, I'm gonna beat her ass." "Oh my god someone's weave is on the floor." "Only at (insert school name here)." "THERE'S MORE THEY THREW IT OUT THE FUCKING WINDOW" "*handing out books* Take this dick, *throws book on student's desk next to me* and here you go. *places book gently on my desk*" "waIT TAKE THAT BACK I WANT A 'HERE YOU GO' WTF" (T) "-and so the corn salsa would be 20...thaaaat's not one of the answers oh no." "You fucking whore, happy birthday." (T) "How do you know you are college and career ready?" "Because Jesus loves me." "Last time I shit my pants was in middle school." "rePEAT THAT?" "I'm gonna show up tomorrow with AIDS." "Did you just say you'd show up with AIDS?" "Yeah." "Why??" "Cause HE put his spit on me." "I'm borrowing your chair. To sleep." "I'm straight as a line." "Oh? *makes loop-de-loops in the air* You mean THIS line?" (T) "I will decimate you. I will wipe your name from the earth." "Is the government making us take this test?" (T) "No, the district is making us take it." "Well the district can suck my ass." *calling every white person in a certain scene of Ernest Green a toothpick* "Is it just me or does ******** seem like he'd end up having a job at Chuck and Dale's?" "GIVE ME BACK MY PHONE I WANNA WATCH MERLIN" (T) "You boys don't know how to chop down a tree, do you? You wouldn't be able to do that." "Yes I would, I do it in Minecraft all the time!" (T) "Ok, remember to put your name on your paper." "No. I have no name. She-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named. Voldemordita." "Stop it." "Shut up, both y'all gay, always smackin' each other's asses in class." (T) "Easy, Luigi, we're not watching a movie." (This was a sub for Civics class and he had just walked in 2 minutes prior. The student's name was not Luigi) "Hold on I'm gonna be Oprah: YOU GET A CALCULATOR, YOU GET A CALCULATOR!" "Y'know ***** still needs one." "F R I C K" *girl walks into a desk* "There's a desk there ****." "I KNOW fuck OFF" "I feel like we need to warn her about everything when she walks." "Watch out for life, ****." "Can we do it on paper?" (T) "No, this is not Burger King." *leaving the room* "Remember, cocaine is not your friend. I'll kick your ass." (T) "Wow! It's Good Friday, and you're talking about your baptism and stuff like that, and you said 'oh my fricking god'? For shame." (T) "I'm on a lot of drugs and alcohol right now and I can't feel anything." "Oh my GOD USE A YARDSTICK" "No." "MR. ******** I'M GONNA HURT HER" "Gonna stab her with the yardstick?" "I need bail money." "I need money PERIOD." "DRAW. A STRAIGHT.  L I N E." "NO, FUCK YOU" "You know you're gay when it takes you 3 tries to draw a straight line." "DON'T TAKE MY JOKE" "You definitely know you're gay if it still isn't straight after 3 tries." (T) "What would you do if someone came into your neighborhood?" "Who's neighborhood? Mr. Rodger's?" "I have 15 pets." "I have 13 siblings, does that count?" "No but it does mean that your parents need to learn how to use a fucking condom." "Hi my name is J. Michael Tater Tot welcome to the Dairy Dome." "Dyslexia? I thought you said...cannibalistic tendencies." "What?" "I couldn't think of anything that rhymed." "You need to flex seal your anus closed." "If you don't fucking shut up I will shave off your eyebrows using my toenail as a razor you cunt." "Sippy Cup looks depressed." "Sippy Cup, you going through some shit?" "Hit or Miss, I guess they never miss, huh? You got a boyfriend-" "Yep." "I bet he doesn't kiss ya!" "Haha nope." "Ew I look like Casper." (T) "...and we're going to write a paragraph." "Oh you're FUNNY." "I think I'm switch. Like, I'm good with being sub, but I'd like to dominate my bitch too. Like F.B.I get on the ground open your legs." "Ms. ******* that's really bright-" (T) "YOU'RE bright." Video: *talking about how important this song is to them* (T) "I don't care stop talking." "I peed on the desk again." "Key word: AGAIN???" "You should send ****** and I to get them." "That is a HORRIBLE idea." "What do you mean it's a horrible idea? You don't know me!" "What do you mean 'I don't know you?' We have gone to school together for almost 4 years." (T) "Look, I know you're obsessed with me, GET TO WORK." "He's harassing me." "You harassed me first. It's not harassment if you do it in self-defense." "You can have the benefit of my middle finger." "It's the progression of the climb of the rocket." (T) "Oh my GOOODDDD JUST SAY IT LIKE A NORMAL HUMAN BEING" "Fine. The speed." (T) "ExACTLY." "Oh look a firetruck's outside." "Whee whoo whee whoo- oh my god you're serious. Oh god it's (crappy fire department) jesus christ." "I think we need to potty train our classmates again." "AGAIN???" "Well, yeah. They're supposed to be." "'Supposed to' and 'are' are two different things." "Mr. **** can I put mascara on you?" (T) "No." "Whyyyyy?" (T) "Do I look like a Barbie doll?" (T) "Mascara girl is the one who's talking." "You act like I don't have a name!!!" "Do you?" "What the hell are you doing?" "It makes your eyelashes look nicer." "Yeah; easy, breezy, beautiful: Covergirl. Get with the program." "James Charles is QUAKING." "Sister shook." "Give me my paper." "Bitch I'm gluing my fingers together, I didn't fucking take it." "Do you have a charger?" "No, but I have a notebook full of English notes." "I don't have any round characters, all of mine are gay and sad."

BONUS 2: BIRTHDAY

"I'm sorry I don't have anything for you for your birthday all I have is Reese's and duct tape." "Wait it's your birthday??? HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO-" "NO STOP SHE DOESN'T WANT THAT" "Thank you." "You're welcome." (T) "Pay attention my dudes." *collective groaning from entire class* "*asking for tampons*" (T) "*holding a marker* I can throw another red one at you." "I don't get it. *sudden realization*" (T) "***** pick your jaw up off the floor, I was joking." "I'm tired of the word 'domain'." "Oh yeahhhh me too, cause we hear it a lot in physics now." "Domain, domain, domain; I hate it." "I'm in a domain of hating myself." "I'm joking, I love you." "I'm not joking, but I love you too anyways." "**** don't lose your Crocs again." (T) "Get that earbud out of your ear." "No, this is keeping me sane." "Why is my name 'desire'??? I put it as 'pee pee poo poo'!"

NORMAL SCHOOL

"I've finally done a fraction! I flipped it over, turned it around, smacked its ass and had it call me daddy." "PARDON???" "What?" (in Physics talking about electricity) "Ok positive top, negative bottom-" "ME?" "He said you can't learn if you burn but you do learn. You learn fire is hot. Also the sensation of being burned alive as you are consumed by flames." "*shows Thanos smut* Spoilers for Endgame that no one asked for." "Legend has it that if you work at the Dairy Dome, you get free tickets to Domegame." Have a marvelous Monday, a Terrific Tuesday, a Wonderful Wednesday, a...Thesis Thursday. I couldn't think of anything." "You look like a frog." (T) "And you look like a squid." "Someone today said I looked like a drug dealer magician. Would you like *sweeps off hat* MARIJUANA??? Or...*pretends to pull something out of hat* COKE??? Perhaps some *flourishes* *whispers* acid???" "I'm gonna Detroit Smash him to hell." "LGBT, let's get this bread." "My hero academia as in Aizawa can shove my ass up his head- wait hold on" "*talking about Ariel* She's hot but that doesn't excuse the fact that she put her entire species in jeopardy for some dick." (T) "Does anyone not have medicine in their bag that ******* cannot have while I look down at the floor because I dropped my pen?" (T) "*reaches for paper*" "Ah ah **** no swipin'." *in science class* "Nothing's happening but I saw that bitch SPARK and I'm terrified." "I'm basically teacher today, your assignment is to do nothing. YOU get an A." "SHUT UP MOTHERFUCKER I'LL EAT YOUR ANUS THEY DON'T CALL ME RECTUMUS PRIME FOR NOTHING" "EXCUSE ME" "What was the word again?" "David Hasselhoff?" "What, no???" "This is why you shouldn't scratch yourself, here." "*instantly shoves necklace in mouth*" "I wouldn't use that as a chew fidget, I got it off the ground in Louisiana." "*chews even more aggressively*" (T) "Don't mess with me I will throw something at you, I played softball for 14 years." "Really???" (T) "Yeah. I was the captain biatch." "James Charles looks like the dragon from Shrek." "***'s touching my wenis." "Gay fantasies don't really matter." "Yeah, I mean, did you see the way that Tony and Cap looked at each other in Endgame?" "When he was, a young boy, his father, took him to the dark lord, to kill the principalofawizardachool" "He said son when, you grow up, will you b-" "HE SAID WILL YOU, GETSHANKEDINABATHROOM-" "Watch out: I have peanut butter and a knife!" (T) "All you need is at least a 60% to pass the test-" "BOI I GET 40S AND 30S IN YOUR CLASS AND YOU KNOW IT" (T) "So you used to go to (other school name)?" "Yeah. But people growling and barking at me was a little much." (T) "Were they furries?" "Dude, tornadoes in Kansas are no joke." "But you go to Oz." "THERE AIN'T NO YELLOW BRICK ROAD AFTER A TORNADO" "Uh, yeah! Yellow brick road to HEAVEN." "Toto isn't god” "You awakened something you didn't want to awaken." "Is it god??? Is it Totoro? Remember to pay your taxes or Hong Kong will come eat you." "Today's weather is cloudy with a chance of rectal prolapse." (T) "Who's at the door?" "It's ***." (T) "Who's ***?" "***. Your student." (T) "*opens door* Who are you?" "I'm nobody." "Who is commander in chief of the military? My  p e n i s" "Are those grandma shoes??? Can I  e a t  them???" "She sounds like a fetus screaming for extra guac at Chik-Fil-A." "WHAT DOES THAT EVEN MEAN" "*singing the Boku No Pico theme off-key in a loli voice*" "I will hit you." "I'd feel bad for you but you have a 69% and that causes you to get a D and I can't look that over." "Do you ever wonder where babies come from? Cause I don't. All you have to do is pee into a lady's Digornio." "rePEAT THAT??" "Don't forget to degrade your dog." "Imagine a world: where you have 2 fetuses hanging from your eyebrow."

BONUS 3: GIANT, END-OF-THE-YEAR CIVICS TEST

"Why the fuck is Christmas a national holiday???" (T) "Ok, the president during WWII was...Roose-" "-A PARKS" (T) "Are you even paying attention?" (T) "What happened on September 11th, 2001?" "9/11!" (T) "We're gonna need you to be a little more specific, buddy." (T) "What's a state that borders Canada?" "I deadass was about to say Arizona, I need sleep." "WHAT is your name?" "*****." "WHAT is your quest?" "To clap the best pussy out there." "*through laughter* What is your favorite color?" "The color of the next pussy I'm gonna crunch." "I got a Voltage from the ROTC room, and I dropped it and someone said 'OOH', picked it up and yeeted with it." "WHAT THE FUCK I'D SHIT ON THEIR HOUSE" "Can we play a song after our presentation?" (T) "As long as it's not like 20 minutes like an Allman Brothers song." "Huh?" (T) "You know how when you have an acid trip, people tell you to listen to the Allman Brothers?" "..." (T) "I'm old." (T) "If this eye starts drooping, there was something in the brownie." (T) "*teaching us Piccolo Mini*" "You just made me feel dyslexic." "YOU GUYS WANNA KNOW THE TEA??? I'M THE REAL HOE" *applause from class* "BITCH WE BEEN KNEW" "*unintelligible*" (T) "What?" "*still unintelligible*" (T) "I still didn't hear you." "You talk like your handwriting." "I WILL THROW THIS CROC AT YOU" "I will literally pay a dollar for one." "I will literally eat these." "Petunia is not a phone." "Electronic device, then." "She's not an electronic device, I gave birth to her." (T) "**** that's the whitest you've ever sounded." "My dingaling is messed up." "Mine too." (T) "Ok so say you wanted aides-" "I DON'T WANT AIDS WHAT THE HELL" (T) "IN THE CLASSROOM. CLASSROOM AIDES. HELPERS. "Can we talk while doing this?" (T) "No, this isn't Burger King." "What is your obsession with Burger King????" "HE'S SPRAYING IT DOWN. HE'S SPRAYING IT DOWN. HE'S PUTTING THE WHITE NECTAR ON THE RAMEN SINK" "Have you ever seen a 14 year old looking badass?" "Have you ever seen a beaver chomping down on a carrot? Cause I wanna see that." "I don't wanna go to Papa Louie's Arcade, Papa Louie can pop a cap in your ass." "Micheal does a Thanos Snap in season 14." "Cas, I don't feel so good." "NO" "Your Crocs are in sport mode." "My cock is hard." "THAT IS NOT WHAT I SAID" "It's ok lil diglett I'm gonna evolve you." (T) "Stop it." "I'm gonna evolve you it's fine, you're weak but you're gonna get better. *throws stress ball at teacher*" (T) "******* looks like Ted Bundy" (T) "He's falling asleep. Hey, ****, are you sad you can't have an abortion?" "What???" (T) "If you don't like high school relationships, who's that guy you keep making out with in the hallway?" "*pointing at random places on the map in the civics classroom, threatening to deport each other to random places*" "You're jiggling my titties." "*half the class is singing I Write Sins Not Tragedies*" "I love you!" "Shut it, I'm doing a presentation." "I love you!!" "Stop." "I love you!!!" "God damnit, *******, I'm gonna hit you." (T) "If you drop any f-bombs during the presentation, I'm gonna kill you." "Bottom, take the apple." "I'm not black, I'm O.J." "Balls. That was the word." "HOW THE HELL DID YOU GET 'BALLS' FROM 'THE BUCKS ARE WINNING THE FINALS'??" "Who's this? Tom? No I don't wanna streak with you. Stranger danger." "Why is it called Field Day if it's only 2 periods?" (AP) "I- That's actually a good question." "ALRIGHT THIS IS WHAT WE NEED TO DO-" "*gets literally kissing distance from him* *salutes* Yes sir?" "We're playing cornhole." "Stop laughing, how is cornhole inappropriate?" "Mr. **** this is the type of yardstick that could take your kneecaps. Do you want me to take yours?" (T) "I'd like to see you try." "Is that Ratatouille?" "Ratatouille isn't the rat. That's Remy, you insolent fuck." "I'm gonna call you the 'G' word." "What's the 'G' word?" "Jew." "That's…porny." "...send it to me." "Where you going?" "To hell." "WHY" "*shrugs* Seems fun." "You see, this is why I need to work with you. I'm your insurance."

BONUS 4: FIELD DAY

(T) "Are you part 1 or part 2?" "Uh…" (T) "Top line or bottom line?" "Bottom- no, top- uhhhhh…" "He looks like a top." "I still don't understand why we fucking dropped Bohemian Rhapsody for a song from fucking  T W I L I G H T." (T) "*throws a marker at the Assistant Principal*" *various cheers and "OHHHHHH"s from the class* (AP) "Are you actually serious." Not a quote but in the 2nd to last week of school, we spent almost the entirety of 4th period Algebra (including the teacher — he started it) throwing dry-erase markers at each other and didn't even stop when the AP (seen above) came in. (T) "*walks through the middle of the room*" "FIRE" *8 people pelt markers at him* "Wait you guys realize he's gonna throw all of those back, right?" "I have a D I'm hanging on the edge my dudes." "I did a math? I did a math!!!" "You did meth?" "YES!!!" "*gets head shoved out of window* OW! FUCK, ****** MY TIT" "You exude strong Kenny energy." "Why?" "Cause you die a lot? Cause your heart was replaced with a baked potato? Cause your family's poor?" "*laughing so hard we can't breathe*" "*leaves the cafeteria to calm down from laughing too hard*" "I'm having elementary school flashbacks." "Shut your social justice warrior ass up." "You ok?" "I stabbed myself." "Sorry, only girls get it. Also, this is my last customer today." "Hold on, if it's only girls, why does HE get it?" "Hi." "OH SHIT YOU'RE A GIRL MY BAD"

NORMAL SCHOOL

“Did I just witness a drug deal?” "Why do you look like a dad?" "I need some weed in my system again, I'm fucking drained." "There's a fucking big-ass run in my tights — I'm gonna eat my own ass and then some." "Hi I'm ***** and Mr. **** can suck my 13 inch dong. My Long John Silver." "This ignorant pickle of a person can die." "This cashew of a long dong. Cashews look like telephones." "A shirt says Mr. **** can suck my magnum horse, my stallion." "His mom should've fucking swallowed." "Spit his ass in a Dixie cup." "I will tattoo my eyes shut." "I'm talking about this mongoose man that's called Mr. ****." "Can you speak some Spanish?" "Hola, como estas, sugma." "Sugma?" "Suck my fuckin' balls lmao" "It's your sugar daddy. *shows picture of Andrew Jackson*" "It's Mr. **** as a woman." "That's fucking Christopher Columbus." "*howling laughter*" "I was just thinking 'have it stop raining so that I don't have to walk in it', but then I remembered I have work today so it should keep pouring. The more the sky cries, the less I cry. Unless I'm on drive." "Excuse me sir, *raises leg* my penis has fallen off." "I pray you get AIDS." (T) "Please throw away your sheet music, it's illegal to copy sheet music and I don't wanna go to jail." "*loud smack* I am so sorry, I didn't mean it to be that loud! Come here baby boy, let me give you the sweet taste of my mother milk." "It's not mother anymore, it's daddy now." "Dude what if you were born with a set of words that if said, would implode your testicles." "Bomb go boom, Mormons go extinct." "MR. **** YOU TOOK OUR NOODS" "DON'T TAKE THE NOODS" "NOT THE NOODS!!!" "****, I thought you were Catholic." "The pencil's black." "Like my ass-cheeks." "Someone stole it!!!!" "Like ****'s virginity."

BONUS 5: WATCHING INSIDIOUS (FOR SOME FUCKING REASON)

*kid falls off ladder* *various banshee screeches from students* "They're kissing AGAIN. This movie is NOT appropriate." "I'm hearding weeeesssst~ I don't know what to dooooo~ " That's not how you make a superpowered baby. You kill the mother and put her on the ceiling." "Wait, pause. What the hell?" "F.B.I, open up." "IT'S DALTON." "PUT A CHAIR ON THE DAMN DOOR" "HOW WOULD A CHAIR WORK AGAINST THE DEMON" "He's in a deep sleep. Wake him up with true love's kiss." "It's a pedo-demon! Everyone run!" "He's cheating on her." "What if this was linked to Supernatural?" "Ooh she's echoing now." "My legs are shaking bruh." "Is that blood on the window?" "No, it's a tree." "SMACK THE CHILD"

NORMAL SCHOOL

"I figured out why I'm so quiet today." "Oh, really?" "Yeah, *shows trembling hands* I'm on vibrate." "I can't wait to go to church."

BONUS 6: LAST DAY OF SCHOOL

"The first thing I ate when I came to this country, it was in the airport and it was Doritos." (T) "They gave me the shortest teachers' gown they had. I have a baby gown." "That isn't a happy little bush." "IT'S. TREE." "Hello ladies, *winks* *blows kiss*" "I'm GAY." *I Will Survive playing really loudly* "******* you're not in our friend group so get the FUCK OUT." "Now I can swear! FUCK Y'ALL BITCHES I'M GOING TO EAT YOUR KNEECAPS" "Oh shit it's an end of the year fight!" Four kids got into a fight at the same time and one got tazed."

[sugarsnap-caely]

Silence

Note: Before you read I recommend checking out one of my other stories: Ego Origins: The Mute as there are points here that relate back to things mentioned in it. 

The steady drum of rain hitting the roof echoes through the house. The beat wrapping around the living room provided a sense of calm. The rhythm followed a hand as it placed a card down in its game of solitaire. The hand belonged to Jameson Jackson as he sat on the couch.

A pair of footsteps came down the hall and James heard the sound of Henrik muttering, “...keys, vallet...I sink zat is everysing.” Henrik turned to the couch, addressing him. “Are you sure you can handle sings by yourself?”

James frowned and him, putting his hands on his hips.

The doctor put his hands up, “Sorry, sorry! I’m just a bit nervous is all…”

James smiled as he rolled his eyes. Honestly, he could handle things on his own. He was an adult. Besides, if he could handle the fact that the Internet was a thing (even if it sometimes scared him), he could handle anything.

“Vell, iff you need any help just text any of us, okay?”

He smiled, nodding his head and Henrik walked out the door. James looked back down at his game, picking up another card and placing it. He closed his eyes briefly as he listened to the rain. It was a sound he always enjoyed and he recalled jumping in puddles when he was younger.

The water would arch up and onto his trousers but he never minded. He always loved how every splash made a unique shape; similar but never the exact same. He would laugh as he made another running start toward another puddle.

He was pulled from his memories as he heard the sound of shuffling feet from the hall. He peered over the back of the couch and saw Robbie making his way over. The zombie had not been here long, only about a month, and much like him, he still had a lot to learn about the world.

He smiled at the zombie, waving his hand to him. When Robbie made it to the front of the couch James patted the seat next to him.

Robbie sat down and hugged a pillow, “Hi...Jay…”

A speech bubble appeared over James’s head, “How are you?”

The zombie blinked his milky-white eyes as he read the words and thought of an answer. “Don’t...know…” James nodded in understanding, going back to his game.

A flash of light silhouetted the window followed by a loud crash of thunder. Robbie yelped, curling up on the couch and attempting to hide behind the pillow. “Robbie scared...Rain loud.”

James scooted closer to Robbie and gave him a hug. He felt his decaying muscles relax. “Better?”

Robbie snuggled closer like a child. “Uh-huh.”

“Do you want to watch a movie?”

Robbie’s eyes brightened. “Movie...Robbie like movie.”

James smiled, giving him another squeeze. “Do you want to pick?”

Robbie squinted, trying to make out the words. “Robbie...pick?”

James nodded. Robbie stood up from the couch and walked over to the movie shelf, still clutching the pillow. He watched Robbie rummage through the shelf, prepared to help him if he needed it.

“Got!” The zombie held up a movie: The Land Before Time. James recognized that one. It was one Chase had shown him once when introducing him to the movies of the 20th and 21st centuries. He had liked it, and he had the feeling Robbie would too.

He helped him put the movie in (thankful he remembered how this time) and the two of them sat back down on the couch.

“Papa Jamie?” A small voice echoed through the air. Before long the tiny translucent figure of a child floated in front of them.

The figure was known as Estelle. She had short, straight hair that flowed about her head like water. She had two antene that protruded from her hair and bounced as she did. Her waist tapered off into a tail that curled behind her. A golden glow surrounded her form.

She looked up at James, her hands fiddling in front of her. “May I join?”

James smiled warmly at her, “Of course you can.”

Estelle beamed, growing to the normal size of a child and snuggling up to his other side. “Thank you.”

He nodded, putting an arm around her.

Although James was not Estelle’s father she still insisted on calling him Papa Jamie. In reality, he had no idea where she had come from. She had taken residence in the pocket watch he owned ever since he found it. It wasn’t until about a month after his arrival that she introduced herself for she had been too scared before then.

In fact, she was the reason he was even here and that he had these cartoon-ish abilities. Neither of them knew how it worked though, sometimes coming and going at random. Hopefully they could learn something from Marvin or at least learn to control it.

He sighed as he settled into the couch and pressed play.

They finished their third movie and Robbie yawned. James took this as a sign and pulled out his pocket watch. “Golly, it’s late!” James stretched his arms over his head. “I think we should all get some shuteye.”

Estelle nodded, blinking her eyes sleepily. She floated to the pocket watch. “Goodnight, Papa Jamie.” She hugged him and disappeared into the tiny clock.

James stood up from the couch, picking up the watch. He made sure Robbie got to bed before heading to his own room.

His room was a decent size: not too large and not too small. It was cozy, just the way he liked it. The furniture consisted of antiques that he had found or the others had given him. It made him feel more at home, adding to the overall comfort. There were only a few items that were more modern. There was the bed of course, but there was also a bean-bag chair in the corner. They were so comfy.

James walked over to his dresser and pulled out his pajamas. He unbuttoned his vest and dropped it into the basket next to his mirror. He pulled off his shirt and hissed as a tag rubbed against a certain part of his back. He turned his head to look at it in the mirror.

A long pink scar ran along his shoulder blades. It had been there since he arrived alongside his various other wounds. Henrik had said they would heal in time. This had proven true for the cuts and even the burns; the tissue was either healing or a scar had formed.

He was worried about his back though. While a scar had started to form at the edges he swore it stung just like the day he had gotten it. In fact, it seemed to hurt worse at night, making it difficult to sleep sometimes. He was probably just paranoid. The result of a nervous imagination.

James put is PJ’s on and stretched. Yawning, he walked over to his bed and set the pocket watch down on the nightstand. He crawled under the covers and made himself comfortable. With the sound of the rain in his ears he drifted off into slumber.

James stirred as he woke up, feeling stiff. He must have slept in an odd position if that was the case. He moved to stretch his arms.

He couldn’t move.

His eyes snapped open as he desperately tried to move. He couldn’t see very well in the dark, but he could feel that he was tied to a chair. His eyes darted about in a panic. Where was he?

A bright light flashed on, blinding him, and he heard a sound like the buzzing of flies. He opened his eyes and was met with two different smiles: one was filled with sharp, dangerous teeth; the second was flowing red; both were wide and unnerving. His gaze moved up and met two glowing, green eyes.

They were hungry.

And he was scared.

“Ẁ̴̡e͏̕l̨̛l, l̡͜͞o̵͟ǫ̵͢͠k ẁ͟͞͠ho f͏͟͏͘i̶̵̴͝ǹ̵͜a͜l̢̢͘͜l̡͟y͡ d̀́͟e̡̡c̷͡i̵̧̛dȩ̸̛d t̢͞o̕͢ waḱ̨͠͝e̢͜͞ ų̶̧͠p͡.” The voice was filled with wasps. The sound made him wince; it was like nothing he’d heard before.

“W-who are you?” James asked.

The figure stepped back, allowing James to see more of them. The figure wore all black: a t-shirt and pants covered in rips and holes. Their hair was an unnaturally green color with brown at the sides. And now that he wasn’t so disoriented he could see something that shocked him.

They had the same face.

Granted, the hair was different and there was no mustache, but sure enough they looked alike.

“W̢͏̷̕e̛l̷͢͝͝l̢, í́̕̕sņ̸͝͏’t t̶͞h̷͏̴a҉̀̕t c̷̵̕͞u̢r̨͝i̢͢͞o͘͏us.” The man poked at something above his head. James looked up at the speech bubble.

“H̸̷̨͏o̸̢͟͡w̡̛ d͡͏́i҉d th̴̶̛at̶̀͢͡ ǵ̸̛e͏̀t̷̴́ t̀͟h̵̸̨͡ȩ̶re̸?” The figure asked.

James shook his head; he had no idea how that had gotten there.

“N̵͠o͘w͟, to̢͢ á̷͡n̴s҉w̵̧͟͢er yò͟͠u̴r qu̵̶̴͢e͏͠͏s̶̶̢͘t̨́͞i͟on…Y҉̷͢͞o҉͏u’l͝҉͘͜l̸ k̶̛͘͞n͘͏̢́o̡͞w̴̧ i̡͡n͟҉ d̨͢ue̡̕͢ t͝͝í̀͢͞m͘e̴̛͟.” The man gave a laugh, the pitch dropping.

James shuddered; the voice gave him chills. It was simply unnatural. Everything about him was unnatural.

Suddenly, the man twitched, tiny dots surrounding him, causing James to jump. He yelped as the binding pulled at his arms. Looking down he saw that it was not rope, but a sort of red string made of god-knows-what.

“What...what do you want with me?” James watched as his captor paced, gulping down the tension in his throat.

The person—no, it wasn’t a person—the thing stopped, turning its head to look at him. It giggled, twitching again. “A̢̢ll͏̢ I̡͏̷ w̵̢͜͢ą̶́͜nt i̷̴ş̕ t̢ó̷ g̷̷͝et̢ to̵͠͡ kn͏̵̧͡oẁ̧͢ y̶͏̸́o̵̢͢͠u. W̴͢͟el̴̢͞l̀͜͝…a͡͝t lȩa̸̶͟͡st͜ m̴̵̢͡ǫ́re̡͘͢͡ t͘ha̷̕͝n I̛̕͜͏ ąļ̛̕ŕ̸̛ea͢͝͝d̛͢y d̨͟͟͏o, Ja̵̛mę͝͞s͠͡҉o̸̧̡n̶̕͢͞ J̧à̴̧c̸̶̡k͟͡͞son̴̕͡.”

James stared as the monster moved closer, towering over him in the chair. A chill went down his spine as a large, sharp knife appeared in its hand. Instinct took over and he tried to flatten himself in the chair. The monster came within a few inches of his face and he could smell the copper.

The monster grinned, growling in his ear, “L̢̡é͏͏t̡́͢’ş̸ h̴̡͞a͟v̷͘è̸ s̛͏̶͝om̴̡̕e͝ f̷u͟͞n̡.”

James’s breath hitched and he shut his eyes as the tip of the knife dug into a spot on his forearm. The sting moved down, spreading out like a puddle on the ground, and making him squirm. He tried to pull away, only making it worse. He breathed through clenched teeth, watching as the monster pulled the knife, dripping in his own blood, away from his arm.

He barely registered the slashes to his leg and check, only feeling the pain spread out. He dared not open his eyes, afraid the pain would spread there too.

His eyes were forced open, “P̶̧̀͜a̴y a̸̧̡t̀͘͜t̷e̛ǹ̴͘t̶͏ì͡o̧҉ń̵̢͜ p̛̛͡͞upp҉̵̧̛et.” The monster frowned at him, its eyes black as tar. “I̡̨ w̡a̷n̴t̢̨̢͜ y̴ó͟u͟ t̢͝͡ơ s̴͞ee̢͏ o̡̕͠u̡͢͜r g̴̨͢a̵҉m̧̢͠҉e̷̕͠͠.”

His head slammed back against the chair as the knife sliced on his shin. He watched it assault his leg like someone walking through quicksand, slowing down and sinking deeper as it went.

Tears trickled from his eyes, his mouth open in a silent cry as he stared at bloody shin. It shook and vibrated and trembled and longed for relief.

The monster stepped back to admire its handiwork. It beamed as it observed James’s distress. “T̷̡oo ba͢҉͠҉d͟ no̢͏ o̴̧͟͠n҉̕͝ȩ̕͞ c̀͝a̷͏̸n h̵̷̛ę̕a͡҉̀͡ŕ̸̸̕ yo̧͟u̸̢̡͟ c͘͟ál̨͏l̛͜ f͏͏͘or͘͠ h̛̛́͞el̶̕͞͝p̡̛̀͡,” the monster growled, “Ì̕ g̨͏u͘͢͝es̴s̕͏ yoù̴̵͞ s͠͡ḩ̛͞oų̵̛͢l̵̡̧d͝n’t̀ h̡̢av̵̸͘͞e̢͡ bee̕͢͜͝n҉̴͢͝ b̴̡́͢y y͝҉o̶̴̕͝u̡̕r̛̀̕͠s͟el̷̕f͜.” It circled James, making him flinch as he felt the flat edge of the bloodstained blade against his skin.

“A̢͏fţ̛̕͏e͏̶́͠ra̡ll, pu̵͘̕ṕ̢͟ṕ҉e͜t̸͞s c̴̶͝a̵͠n̡’t d̶ǫ an̡ỳ̧͜͡t͏̛͟͝h̷í̷͝n͢g o̡̨͘͢n҉̛͝͠ t͘h̵͘e͘iŗ̴̧͟ o̧͏̷͡w҉͟͢n̷̛͜…” The monster flicked one of the red strings, making them constrict his body.

“Y̕o̷̵̢̨ù̧̀͜ k͟͞҉ǹ͡͠o̴̡̧͞w͠, sṕ̷̧͢e̡ak̴͟͜in̨͞͞g̀̕ ơ̵̢f pú͏̧́p͢p̛͠͡et̀͝͠s̛…” The monster stepped in front of James, giving him a sidelong stare. “I̶̡’v͢e̴̷̴͞ se͠e̢̛͜͞n̨͘͟͠ t͜ha̢̕͢t̵̀͟͡ s̨̕͢͡om̵̛͡e̴̴̛ p͏̨͘e͟op͡l̢e҉ l͞͡͞͡iḱ̷͠e͝ ţ́o͏̡ t̨hi̕͟͞͝n̸̢͜͟k̕͠͏͝ o̷̧̢̧f͢͏ ỳo̷̸̵̢ú̧͜ à̷̢͏s a̸̧͞ l҉i̧͏͡ttl̕͟e͜ wo̶ó̸d̶̀͟én p̡͘up̀͘͝p̵e̕͏͜͡t.”

James was confused. What was the monster talking about? Why would people think of him as a puppet? And even more nerve wracking was wondering where the monster was going with this.

“I̷̵̕ w̴̴̛o̶̕̕͢nḑer͠͠ i̴͟͡f t̷͢͝h̢̨e̵̢y̷ w̢͞e̛͜r҉͏e͏̸͝ r̷i͡g̕͟͏̡ht̴.” The monster’s eyes glowed, and it gave James its crocodile smile. Suddenly, something began to glow in his hand, the knife having disappeared. “L͘e̸̡t̡̀’s ś̵̡e̡͏҉e̴ if̸͟͟ yoú̡’r̨̀͝e͠͏ mad̢ȩ̛ o̶̡̧f̡͘ w̢͡oo̷͘ḑ̀͠.”

Black flames flowed from the monster’s hand.

“L̡̡̛͘et͠’s̛̀ s̶̨̕͟ee í̵̢f̷́ y̢͠҉͟ou̴͘ b̴̸͘u̵r҉̀́͠n͝.”

The pain tore through James’s hand, crashing it’s way up his arm and to his head. It started to fog his brain, making him see white.

His hand clenched and unclenched like some creature trying to escape. The red string tightened in his struggle.

His vision came back and he saw his skin bleeding, bubbling, smoking, dying.

He let out a pathetic, voiceless whimper and the monster laughed. It latched onto his shoulder and held.

It held and held and held.

James’s vision faded from white to black.

James gasped, sitting up in the dark. His breath came in wheezing gasps as he tried to get his bearings. It was pitch black and he couldn’t see a thing.

He wobbled to his feet, afraid he would not be able to stand. When he found that he could he felt around for a wall. He had to get out of here. He had to get out of here and go home.

His hands hit a wall. It felt round and uneven. As he rubbed his hands over it he identified the material to be stone. Feeling the hope rise in his chest he followed the wall.

As he walked along the edge of the wall he heard the sound of dripping. It echoed off the stones. He wondered if it was a way out, yet he did not want to move away from the stone. So, he turned away from the sound and continued.

The dripping picked up speed as he continued to walk. One of the drops landed on his face as he looked up. Only he realized it was not water; it was thick and sticky.

The strong scent of copper invaded his nostrils. He gagged, feeling his heart rise to his throat. Keeping his hand on the wall he ran, trying to get away as the dripping turned to rushing.

He felt the blood run over his hand as it ran down the wall. He yanked his hand away, panicking, and regretted it instantly. He couldn’t find the wall anymore and ran blindly.

The blood started to soak his shoes. Panic overtook him; it was lightning, coursing through his veins hot and electric. It propelled him forward and he sprinted as hard as he could. He could hear his feet splashing, echoing against the stone he could not find.

His foot slipped out from under him and he fell to the ground. The blood pooled and rushed around him as it rose. It wanted to consume him.

He tried to stand but his feet could no longer touch the floor. He floated, trying to stay above the surface. The blood was too thick as it rose over his head.

His arms flailed about in a panic as he desperately tried to find the surface. He could not tell where he was, his senses numb to the viscous fluid. The only thing he felt was the growing ache and burn in his chest. The feeling crawled its way up to his throat, begging him against all odds to let go.

Bubbles floated past his face, the air finally escaping him. He felt his body go limp and his nose stung as blood seeped its way in. It filled his lungs, making them burn.

He felt his mind sinking, sinking, sinking.

James gasped, feeling oxygen fill him. He coughed and wheezed and gagged. There was nothing in his throat. It was dry. He cried out as the pain from his injuries came back all at once.

Bile threatened to climb up his throat, but he pushed it back down. Not now. He didn’t want to have anything in his mouth, afraid it would drown him.

“T̡̕͟h̴͢͟at̴̢͞ ẁ͜͝a͡͝s a go̸̶͟͡ǫ̴͠d w̢̡͜a̸̷̧rm͜ u̴̵̢͡ṕ̡̕͝.” The monster leaned over him, smiling.

Had the monster done that to him? Had it been real? Or was it merely a nightmare? Either way, the monster’s presence continued to bore down on him making him shudder again.

“W̨͟͢h̨́y d̡͘͢͡o͘n’t̷̕͝ w҉e t̛̕͜͏r̨y̧̛̕ s̕͏o̕҉m͟èt͞h͏͘͟҉í̸̛ng͢͝͝ e̛͢lse͏?” The monster tilted its head, twitching, as if it were actually asking a question. James knew though that he had no say in anything anymore.

“Ho̴̡̕w͝ a̷b͟͞ó̷̢͠u̡ţ̶̀͜ w̧҉̢e̴ ma̸̧̡k̀͘͜e̷ i̛t̴̀͘ m͏̸̛҉or͟͠͠͞e̸̡͠…” The monster was in James’s face again and he could feel its hot breath. “Pȩ҉ŕ̵̢͜s̛̛͡͞onal…” The monster hissed and another shudder wracked through his frame.

The monster’s hand grabbed his throat and his world darkened once more.

James stood in the dark again, blind to the world around him. All was quiet until a thunderous boom sounded in the dark. The sound was muffled, almost as if it came from outside a room. Another boom made itself known. The ground shook, causing James to stumble as dirt and dust rained on his head.

Then it hit him.

They were bombs and he was in his aunt’s basement. He had to find his aunt. He looked around the vast darkness. He wanted to call out to her but he had no voice. He wanted to cry.

There was another explosion and the ground rumbled. He stumbled backward, falling into a pit. He was no longer in the basement.

His eyes widened with fear. He was in what he could only assume was a trench. The strong scent of death permeated the air and he gagged on it. His hand brushed up against something and he jumped, turning to look at it.

He saw the corpse of his older cousin staring at him. He was horribly mangled. One of his legs was missing, having been blown away by god-knows-what. The right eye dangled from its socket like a fish on a hook. Chunks of flesh were missing from his arm and torso almost as if they had been bitten off.

James backpedaled away from the body that had once been his cousin. He wanted to be sick. He wanted to shut his eyes and look away but he couldn’t stop staring.

His head snapped to the sound of someone screaming. It was a voice he had not heard for a long time now. James looked at his screaming father. He was crouched on the ground, his hands over his head, almost in a corner.

James knew this scene. It was one his father did often. James watched; watched like he always did. Watched and did nothing for there was nothing he could do. Watched like the worthless child he was.

A shudder wracked through him, forcing him to look down. He screamed, his uncle’s horrible picture flashing in his mind.

Large holes riddled his now bare feet.

Reality flooded back to James and he vomited, hearing that wicked, buzzing laugher. His shoulders shuddered as he cried. Why couldn’t he just go home?

“Ẁ͡h̡̨a̡t̷’s̴ w̴̴̷r̢̨̢͜o̴ń͟g͟ p̢͝͡ưp̴͞pe̢͏t̡̕͠? D̡͢͜id̴̨͢ t̵҉hat̷̸ ư̢p̴̧͟͠s҉̕͝ȩ̕͞t̀͝ y̸̷̢̨ó̶͟u̷͏̸?” The voice mocked him as James kept his head down. He didn’t know how much more of this he could take. His hope had fled a long time ago.

“Lo͞҉̛ơ̵̷k̨̕ a͡҉̀͡t m̧͟e̸̢̡͟ w͘͟h̨̛̛҉ȩ͜҉ń̨̢̛ Į͏ t̛͜a͏͏͘lk͘͠ t̛̛́͞o y̶̕͞͝o̸̧͠ư̷, p̡̛̀͡ù̕p̨͏p͘͢͝et̴!” James gritted his teeth as the monster forced his head up. James stared into those cruel, burning eyes knowing their hunger: their hunger for his suffering. They could never be satisfied.

James continued to stare as the monster’s knife appeared once more. The monster raised it before those eyes gleamed, the smile soon following it, as an idea was formed.

"Ỳ̴̡o͏̕ų̛ kn̡͜͞o̵͟w̵̨͢͠ wh̀͟͞͠at?" The monster said as James shuddered in his chair. "Į t̨͢͠h̷i͏͟͏͘n̶̵̴͝k̵̀͜ w͜e̢̢͘͜ s̡͟h͡ò́͟u̡̡l̷͡ḑ̵̛ ma̸̧̛ke̸̶̢ th̶̷̸͝is̢͞ m̕͢orę́͠͝…i̢͜͞n͡ter̡̧̨̢é́̕̕ş̸͝͏ti̶͞n̢g."

With that horrid sound of insects he was suddenly tied down on the floor; his shirt was gone. He struggled even though he knew it was pointless.

The monster was on top of him now, it's hand digging into his shoulder. He saw the glint of the knife as the monster brought it down slowly.

The knife was pushed into his chest, just below the shoulder.

He heard himself scream. He had a voice. Somehow he had a voice.

The monster giggled, "À̴̡h҉̢̀h͏̕, m̨̛us̡͜͞i̵͟c̵̨͢͠ tò͟͞͠ my ęą͢͠r̷s͏͟͏͘!" The knife tore down at an angle to his lungs. He was still screaming. He was not drowning in his own blood. None of this was natural. None of this was right!

The knife was brought up to his throat, and it pushed again.

Pain.

Pain. 

Pain. 

Pain.  

PAIN. 

PAIN. 

P̶̵̴͝À̵͜I͜N̢̢͘͜.

He wanted it to end. 

He wanted to die.

The monster wouldn't let him. The monster would never let him.

All at once, it stopped. Everything stopped. James's screaming started to die down into hoarse sobs and whimpers. 

This was it, he was going to stay here. He was going to stay here forever as this monster's toy. To be played with whenever it wanted and to be tossed out when it got bored. This is where is life ended.

His vision was cloudy, and he felt himself being turned over onto his stomach. "D̴̡̀o҉̢̀n͏̕'t̨̛ th̡͜͞i̵͟n̵̨͢͠k I'm dǫn̨͢͠e̷ w͏͟͏͘i̶̵̴͝t̵̀͜h͜ y̢̢͘͜o̡͟u͡ y̡̡e̸҉͢t̡̧ p̷͡ư̵̧pp̸̧̛et." 

James barely registered the voice over him. He was so tired.

"I̢͞ s̕͢tiĺ̨͠͝l̢͜͞ h̶̨̧͠a͡ve a̡̧̨̢ g̢͏̷̕i̢ft́́̕̕ to̸̧͝͏ g̶͞iv̷̵̕͞ę y͏̸o̢ų͝…"

A what…He received his answer as a sharp pain dug into his back. It burned and he found what little voice he still had screaming once more. He could feel the cuts being made. 

They were letters.

A

N

T

I

James's body quaked, watching the monster covered in his own blood come into his vision. "N̢͢͞o͘͏w iǹ t͟h̸̷̨͏e̴̶͟ dar̴̶̛k̸̛n͜ess̴̸͜ ơ͟͝͠f̀͟ nì̶͢͡ǵ̸̛h͏̀t̷̴́ ę̵̸͡v̶̧er̸y͘͡͡͏o̶̶͜n̵͠e͘ w͟il̢͢ĺ̷͡ k̴n҉o̵̧͟͢w yoù͟͠ b̴elo̵̶̴͢n͏͠͏g̶̶̢͘ t̨́͞o͟ m̴̵̀͞e͠͡."

James's vision began to fade. He saw the glimmering of the watch and reached out for it.

"S҉̷͢͞e̕̕͝͠e̴͏̧̕ y͝o҉͏u s͝҉͘͜o͠o̸n̶̛͘͞," the monster finally said as James touched the pocket watch and slipped into unconsciousness.

James bolted up in his bed, gasping in a silent yell. He was drenched in sweat. He wrapped his arms around his body and shuddered. In a decision of haste he stood up from bed and turned on the light. Slowly, he looked at his body.

The only evidence of wounds were the scars that had been there since he had arrived. At first he was relieved it had been a nightmare. But then, the dream had seemed so real. Almost too real…

His mind raced. He started to put pieces together. But it had been just a dream, it had to have been a dream! His breath quickened and he dug his hands in his hair.

"Papa Jamie?"

James jumped at the sound of Estelle's voice.

She shrunk for a moment, "S-sorry. Are you ok Papa Jamie?"

James reluctantly nodded, "I…I'm alright."

She nodded too. "Can…can I sleep with you?"

James nodded, a weak smile forming on his face. She had no idea how happy he was to hear that. He walked back over to the bed as Estelle landed on it, clutching a pillow.  He lied down next to her and soon enough she was asleep.

James was anything but. He had calmed down some, but his mind continued to buzz. The matter of his voice bothered him more than anything. He had been sure he never had one, and yet he had one at one point in the dream. Was he for certain with his life anymore? He was sure he had never spoken vocally before.

One question irked at his mind as he tried his best to close his eyes.

Had he forgotten, or was he just too afraid to remember?

H͘͏̢́a̡͞p̴̧p̡͡y͟҉ B̨͢i̷͝rt̡̕͢h͝͝d́̀͢͞a͘y̴̛͟ J̢̢am͏̢e̡͏̷s̵̢͜͢

[coffeetoxication]

the link to ch 9 of without hesitation doesnt work :( btw love your fanfic so far!! i adore the characterization that youve put in

With the witching hour rolling in and Ren being wide awake due to the number of naps that he’s had today, he was playing around on his phone while Stimpy is fast asleep. After their little fun that they’ve had in the bath including having a long make out session in the shower, Ren couldn’t really get Johnathan out of his mind. He hasn’t really texted him ever since this morning and he was starting to worry if he was making Johnathan feel left out. With a sigh, he got out from the bed quietly as he could and went downstairs towards the kitchen. He was debating if he should make some coffee or not. Though he didn’t want to be too wired, he pulls out his messages to see if Johnathan messaged him yet.

Of course, nothing.

Putting his phone down on the kitchen counter, he peeked through the blinds of the window to look to see if there was anything going on. To his surprise, nothing. However, he did notice …. something just across the street. No, it was someone. Someone leaning against their car with what seems to be a cigarette in his hand. Considering that the guy was right under the street light, his hat had completely overshadowed his face. This was creepy beyond Ren’s comfort levels. The fact that this guy was just …. standing there and possibly staring right at him made his skin crawl. The guy probably knew that he was in there. Ren thanked himself that he didn’t turn on the living room lamp on. Though making sure that all windows and doors are locked is a must.

“Creepy fucker.” Ren mumbled to himself as he quickly went to make sure that all doors and windows were absolutely shut and locked.

God only knows of what this guy wants. Frankly, Ren didn’t WANT to know.

Kitchen, bathroom, living room, guest room, … everything seemed locked and untouched from the first floor. Now, the last room to check was upstairs bedroom and bathroom. Looking up, he suddenly hated on how the stairs looked. Dark and ominous. Letting his imagination get the best of him like a scared child. Thinking such irrational silly things like hands coming out of the walls and underneath the stairs and drag him away.

“ … run up the stairs you fuckin’ pussy …” Ren tells himself, taking a deep breath and closes his eyes tightly.

Just like that, Ren ran up as quickly as he could, almost tripping a couple of times.

Reaching upstairs, Ren felt the relief overcome him. Knowing that Stimpy was in the bedroom practically snoring made him feel calm for once. Tip-toeing around the remaining rooms, Ren felt something that was rather … off. He really couldn’t put his finger on it, but it felt as if he was being watched. He didn’t dare to think that there were more of them out there. God, he had hoped and prayed that the one by the street light is just the one.

Making sure, and very much sure that he was going to regret it, he goes by the bedroom blinds and goes to check outside carefully. The worst part of it was that it was completely dark. Not even the street lights were bright enough to pierce the darkness of their backyard. In a way, it kind of relieved him. If it was too dark to see outside, it would be too dark for anybody to see anything from the inside. It was possibly his own paranoia that was making him feel this way. He was contemplating about calling the cops, but the guy would’ve been far from gone by the time they get here. What would he tell them? That some creepy fuck was outside his house and he had no idea of what he looked like? Yeah. Sure.

With an exhausted sigh, he got into bed slowly and crawled inside the covers. It was hard to believe, but Ren was scared. Very scared to the point where he began to shiver.

Feeling Stimpy’s warmth radiating from him, Ren scooted himself closer to him. Even tightly wrapping both of his arms around Stimpy’s. Closing his eyes tightly. Ears picking up the clanks and creaks of the house resting making him think it was someone lurking around.

“S-stimpy …?” Ren whimpered, “S …… stimpy?”

With a few shakes and even a good harsh nudges with his knees, he finally got him to wake up and to cease his obnoxious snoring.

“Mmmmm, hmmm?” Stimpy groaned, one eye peeking at Ren.

“I … I can’t sleep …….” Ren whispered.

“Oh? …..” Stimpy rubs his eyes, almost on the verge of falling asleep again. “How come?”

Ren wanted to tell Stimpy about the man he had seen. However, it would probably turn out to be one of those cliche scenes where he would say something and then the man would be long gone by now. Ren didn’t really know of what to say. He was conflicted if he should tell another lie or tell Stimpy of what’s really going on for a change. Did he really need to worry about it? Would he really understand? Probably not.

“N-Nevermind, … I’ll tell ya in the mornin’.” Ren mumbled, pulling the covers over him.

“Mmmm, …. okaaayyy …” Stimpy yawns as he wraps an arm around him.

From there, Ren felt an immediate sense of security. Stimpy pulling him into a sleepy embrace made him feel so stupidly warm and fluttery inside. Letting Stimpy do whatever he wants, he closes his eyes to drift into a calm sleep.

*~*~*~*~

With the remaining hours left before sunrise, Johnathan remained awake in the home of Mr. Horse. The environment around him was … overwhelming. He wasn’t used to being in homes that were filled with expensive furniture, antiques, and bookcases larger than himself. All he’s ever known was cheap hotels, trailer parks, and beat down apartments. Everything was a struggle. To do what he had to do to keep a roof over himself along with his father, it didn’t matter how filth-ridden the place was, it was home.

He’d be lying if he said he wasn’t envious. To be in a high-class house like this, it was like a dream. A dream that was his a long time ago back in college. How all of his hard work studying and working long-shifts would pay off. How life would owe him in the end.

But life has it’s own set of rules. How cruel and unfair it can be. Johnathan understood that reality. If only his father would. If he knew then of what he knows now, none of this would’ve happened.

However, …. there’s no point dwelling on it now. Johnathan was far too tired to really cause his body anymore stress. He didn’t want to bother to look at his phone either.

Maybe a book would help. It’s been a while since he’s really picked up a book. Not that he wanted to. Just never found the time.

Getting up from his bed in the guest room, he makes his way towards the living room as he turns a lamp on. The hardwood floor cold beneath his feet, it was oddly comforting. The room itself had a cozy atmosphere. An unlit fireplace with a widescreen t.v above it, two leather reading chairs, a couch that looks to be soft to the touch, a mahogany book case that was filled with a variety of books it seems, and finally … a simple rug in the middle of the room. Letting out a content sigh, Johnathan begins to scan through the book case with the tip of his index finger. Psychology, sociology, psychopathology, neuropsychology, philosophy, some written by independent authors about their experiences as therapists, and … even some poetry. H.P Lovecraft, Tennessee Williams, Sylvia Plath, and even Edgar Allan Poe. Haven’t heard that name since high school, he thought. Feeling nostalgic, he pulled out the book of which contained all of Poe’s notorious writings and poems.  

Johnathan remembered how he had to do a report about Poe and what writing of his influenced him the most while Ren had Emily Dickinson. The echoing voice of Ren’s complaining ringed in his ears.

“Seriously, how am I supposed to understand this poetic shit? If I really wanted to be THIS depressed I would’ve gone through my ol’ man’s ‘secret’ stash.”

“The whole point of understanding these poets, Ren, is that they’ve used this type of writing to expel their anguishes even if may seem out of the norm. Not a lot of people back in those times really understood depression or how to properly deal with it.”

“Okay there, Mr. Analysis, no need to go all out on me. Ya might choke. Who you workin’ on?”

“Edgar Allan Poe.”

“Hmm, never heard of ‘im. Is he just as depressing as dickson or whatever the fuck her name is?”

“Well, I wouldn’t say that, but he has a unique style of writing. He kind of adds a little bit of horror in his works which gives it an extra edge to it, but I guess if I had to pick any of his works that I can relate to in a sense, is ‘Alone’.”

Alone.

Flipping the pages of the book, Johnathan had found it.

From childhood’s hour I have not beenAs others were–I have not seenAs others saw–I could not bringMy passions from a common spring–From the same source I have not takenMy sorrow–I could not awakenMy heart to joy at the same tone–And all I lov’d–I lov’d alone–

“And all I loved … I loved alone …” Johnathan whispered to himself, frowning as he did.

The nostalgia he felt now were tugged heart strings. Feeling the repressed pain that he had felt all those years were now swarming like a dropped wasps nest. This was not how he wanted to spend the rest of the night. Being all melancholy in a home that wasn’t his.

Deciding to put the book away, he started to look for something less depressing.  

While searching, his ear caught the sound of the floor creaking only to realize that someone was stepping inside of the living room. It startled him as he swiftly turned his head to find Mr. Horse by the entrance way. With his heart racing he stepped back from the bookcase as if to say “I wasn’t touching anything!”. However, seeing a small smile on Mr. Horse’s face made him relax.

“I see that you have taking a liking to my collection here …” He said, his voice hoarse as if he had just woken up.

“Y-Yeah, … I c-couldn’t really sleep, so I thought that reading would help. I … didn’t wake you up, did I?” Johnathan looked down, rubbing his arm in embarrassment.

“Of course not. I suppose you can call it an intuition. I always know when one is restless, so my body acts accordingly.” Mr. Horse shakes his had, placing a hand on Johnathan’s shoulder.

Johnathan can’t really have himself to forget on how gentle Mr. Horse with. The way he talks, how soft his touch is, and the welcoming aura around him makes Johnathan wish that he knew more people like him.  

“So, … may I ask of what is troubling you?” Mr. Horse took a seat on the couch, patting the spot right next to him.

With a deep sigh, Johnathan sat right next to him as he drooped his head. Elbows resting on his thighs with his fingers holding his chin, he wasn’t sure on where to start.

“Just …. everything. Me questioning of my own sanity, my … fucking dad, the thought of the mafia looking to serve my ol’ mans head on a silver platter to the head honcho, and ya know … asking myself of what the fuck I’m doing here.” Johnathan said, “Why ….. did I have to come here ….?”

Lowering his head even more, Johnathan felt as if he was tearing apart inside. He felt so lost into everything that it was hard to really try to tackle all of these problems at once. Johnathan had always had this sense of pride that he could try to outcome any situation even if it meant life and death. However, one could only handle the same situation multiple times to where they have come to the end of their rope. Johnathan, … was very much at the end of his …

“My dear boy, ….” Mr. Horse starts, “It doesn’t take a therapist to know on how much you’re currently going through. How emotionally and mentally straining everything is on you.”

Johnathan could only scoff at the obvious, not that Mr. Horse was wrong but just how true his words are.

“If I may be so bold as to give you suggestions to make it easier not only for you, but for your father as well. In return, you have to do something for me.”

“ …. Suggestions?”

“Yes. Now, listen carefully …”

[play-read-write]

The Nightmare

Tried something different for my writing today. Original and not fandom. Based on this writing prompt from @writing-prompt-s.  You are an unpopular superhero. The reason: You can materialize the fear of those around you.

Word Count: 1225

Fear was a powerful weapon. Being able to scare your enemies, watching them cower before their greatest fear, even the bravest would take pause. Even more powerful was the ability to actualize that fear, to pull it from someone’s mind and make it reality, to control it and turn it into an actual weapon. It was a dark power, the kind of power used to rule lands, but that is not how it was used.

Clothes blacker than the darkest night that writhed even on the stillest of days, as if trying to move on its own. A face as pale as moonlight, gaunt and sallow and skeletal. Eyes pure red, not a hint of white or even pupils to be seen. A shadow encompassed them at all times, as if light was parting so as not to stand in their way. Of course one could not forget the cape, like a nightmare weaved into fabric, when the wind blew one could hear whispers of faint voices, tortured souls from beyond.

Nightmare was their name, and just like light people too parted ways when they walked. Their powers radiating an aura of fear, no matter who was around them. Even without knowing who they were the effect was the same, ideas and memories burst to the forefront of the mind, all the darkest fears and greatest threats. They could see them too, read them in people’s heads like looking through a grocery store, and then manifest them into reality. In the presence of Nightmare your darkest fears weren’t just ideas, they were a concept waiting to burst forth.

None knew where they came from or who they were. They were never asked questions, never interviewed, and never sought for autographs. The world thanked only any and every god, goddess, and other worshipped beings that they were on the side of good, but that was as close as they ever were to thankful.

People ran, scattering and screaming, as a masked man walked down the street. Maniacal laughter echoed down off the buildings as they fired energy from their hands, smashing buildings to bits like they were made of wet paper. “Come one, come all, I’m waiting for you. Send your heroes, I shall fell them all!”

The crowds ran in fear from him, at least at first. “Huh?” He asked when people stopped running from him and changed direction, running towards and past him. “That’s not fun.” He says and fires in opposite directions, cutting off escape. People stop running then, cowering in buildings and pressed against them. Nearby someone vomits in fear.

Footsteps, slow and at ease, approach from the center of the street. “A hero after all?” He asks, “Who have we here? Hyper force? Stone Soldier? No, too small. I don’t believe I know you.” He says, “Too bad, I wanted to beat someone worthwhile.” They tilt they’re head curiously, “Who… who are you?”

Nightmare stopped, facing them, silent. They looked around at the people trapped between fear itself and a madman on a rampage. As usual, the fears of all burst forward, fruit ripe for the picking. A child clung to her mother’s leg, a couple cowered in a corner, a small family hid in a building nearby, an elderly woman watched from her window, all were fuel. A snap of their fingers and like a blanket thrown over the sky day turned to night.

“What in the world?” The madman asks, looking around. “Is that all you’ve got, a bit of shade?” They draw back to fire forward before they hear it, a howl in the night. Looking up and around he sees them, on the rooftops and a few streets, large masses of muscle and bloodlust. Werewolves under the full moon. They jump from the rooftops and charge from the streets, seeking nothing but his end.

“Stupid mutts!” He cries and fires off blasts, punching large dents into the beasts that left bloody messes. “A little cliché isn’t it?”

Nightmare looks them over and closes their eyes for a moment. Before the madman can complain they open them again, only this time there are no eyes. Crawling out of the eye sockets come wasps the size of fingers, swarming forward at him.

He fired again, large blasts that crashed into buildings, breaking off chunks. They seemed to do nothing though as the wasps swarmed around him, stinging and buzzing. “That is enough!” He cries and draws his arms in and then throws them out, a spherical blast taking out all of the insects. Once again he draws back to strike at Nightmare directly, before a massive crashing sound comes from behind. He turns around to see the cause. “Now what is- by Grabthar’s hammer!” He exclaims.

Towering over him was a beast nearly thirty feet tall. Pulling itself along with large tentacles, its beak visible beneath it, color shifting over its skin, a kraken out of the water. Nearby a young girl screamed in terror as it raised up one large tentacle before bringing it down on the street they were on.

“Oh hell no!” He cries out and throws up both hands, a large blast firing out and disintegrating the appendage. Panting now he fires again as one sweeps from the side, simply severing that one. Bracing a foot behind himself he draws both arms in. “Take this!” He cries out as his hands glow before throwing them forward, two beams merging into one in the air and piercing through the gigantic beast before slicing upward.

A bit of sweat on his forehead was barely visible in the moonlight now. Breathing heavily he spun around. “Oh that is- Ahhh!” He cried out as he came face to face with another manifestation. This one was transparent, floating in the air. It looked almost human in a twisted form, rotting skin clung to angular bones were covered in tattered white cloth, large empty eye sockets gazed out, and a circular mouth filled with sharp teeth sucked shifted as it looked down.

Firing again the beam went right through the thing, clipping the roof of a building. He went to fire again but instead it drew back like it was taking a breath, and then wailed. The scream pierced through the air like red hot razor blades, cracking the pavement around him as he clutched at his ears, his own screams drowned out as if silent.

As it let up he writhed in pain, shaking and taking fast, panicked breaths. Moving one hand away from his ear he found it bloody. Turning to look back, finally with true fear in his eyes he saw not one but two of the things looking down at him. “Nooooooo!” He cried out, trying to scramble away. They merely swooped down upon him, one each grabbing his wrists and pulling him up into the air. “Please, no, don’t let them have me!” He begged as they flew off, taking him away, his cries fading into the distance.

Nightmare looked around, at all the people and the buildings. Raising one hand they snapped their fingers and for a moment absolute darkness engulfed the place. A second later and light returned as the day was restored. Buildings were fixed, light shone down, the messed bodies of the werewolves had vanished, and the Nightmare was over and gone.

[wordsturnintostories]

4/ Nothing in the Mirror

Part One | Part Two | Part Three | Part Four | Part Five

Masterlist

Summary: A lot can happen on a late spring day, especially on a bus. A lot more can happen if the ride ends before you’ve reached your station. If you end up in the Avengers Tower without memories, things have either taken a very good or a very bad turn of events. Too bad you have no clue who you are.

Warnings: sadness, confusion and isolation.

Word Count: 1606

_Author's Note: I'm sick at the moment, so here comes a chapter that doesn't have too much action, but still brings up some new questions. As all the other chapters, dedicated to @buckyslion. She is just the kindest. Make sure to leave some feedback!

Russian. Were you Russian? Did you grow up there? Did the KGB train you? Did you have ties to Hydra? Were you a mercenary? Who was your target? Did you even have one was the real question, but nobody asked that. Were you an agent of SHIELD, supposed to deliver secret intelligence? Hundreds of questions were fired at you, some logical, some redundant, some sounding completely crazy and some that you would’ve liked to ask yourself too. You could answer all of them at once. I don’t know. Buck stopped interviewing you when he noticed your hundred-yard-stare that went right through him. He left you cuffed to the table, the pen still sticking out of his thigh. They hadn’t had time to look after his leg yet. They were all busy with digging the bullet back out of your shoulder. Which they wouldn’t have had to do if they hadn’t shot you in the first place.

„We don’t know what to do with you“, he admitted, his voice turning softer again. It didn’t make sense to ask all these things. He looked a little indecisive, just like Steve. Of course. Either you had played them, pretended to have amnesia, or you weren’t faking it and everything was just a very weird coincidence. But it would make you even more unpredictable. He was wary but tried to treat you nice. Someone else stepped into the room, a dark man with a memorable goatee. They'd called him Tony before and apparently, he was mad at you. His first words at you had been „So you're the one who wrecked… everything“, paired with an exaggerated wave at everything, and Buck had stated that the building belonged to Tony, so his anger was probably justified. Now, he just looked right at you, his gaze making you much more uncomfortable than Buck’s because his eyes were actually boring into you. He started talking, but not to you. „Ran every facial recognition and every database on this planet. Wanna know how much Jarvis found? Nothing. Why is that an issue? Because this is the seventh secret soldier these past two years. That’s six too much. You, Barnes, I can take. Thanks to Zemo, the others are dead. I’m done with this shit. Officially done.“ Bucky raised his eyebrows, his silver arm glinting on the table. „You weren't listening, again! Tasha and I told you that was bound to happen. I mean, your databases failing.“ „Yeah, well, I was too busy watching Romanoff steam. I’ve never seen her like that.“ „What are you gonna do with her?“ Buck pointed at you. „Lock her up. We’ve got room.“ You remained uninvolved and uninterested in their talk, so you shifted your gaze towards the colorful sunrise beyond a window behind a few other windows. Their voices faded into the background. Only when something snapped in front of your face, you pulled back. „She doesn’t even care. Do you at least know who I am?“, Tony mustered you sharply, searching for any kinds of a bluff. „You're …Tony?“, you offered and he grinned. „Now we’re talking, sweetheart. First name basis already, huh?“ You could see Buck burying his face in his hands in the background. Was that a wrong answer? „What else do you know about me?“ You just shrugged, unsure where he was heading with this. He offered suggestions. „Iron Man? The suit? Saving hundreds of lives?“ Buck huffed and Tony turned around. „Don't be stupid, Barnes.“
 His dark head turned back to you, expectations high. You probably looked like a question mark right now, with your face scrunched up like that. „It's a strange name“, you whispered with a half-shrug, sending a side glance to Buck, who started grinning. Iron Man. Suddenly, it dawned on you. The building belonged to him. He must be a millionaire, you figured. „I forgot“, you started, but it sounded more like a question than an answer. You just tried to pull up any information possible from the few things you knew about the man. „You're in the mining industry.“ All color left Tony’s face. Well. Maybe he wasn’t comfortable with that part of his life. Iron Man. He turned around, facing the brunette, who’d almost choked on the other side of the table and only suppressed his laughter for Tony’s sake. „How hard did you hit on her again?“ Buck stood up and rolled his eyes. „You’re hilarious.“

They brought you into some kind of confinement room, a relatively nice one, with a bed and a lot of space. Behind you, the doors closed and you were alone. There it was again, the feeling that you needed to leave, that it was dangerous to stay. You didn’t question it, because well, now, it was indeed dangerous in here, with a Russian spy eager to have your head for what you had done in your earlier life. But this room consisted of expensive technology, definitely keeping you put. This time, you couldn’t control your emotions, your body leaving you alone with the sadness, not concealing anything like it had before. Your shoulders started shaking and suddenly, tears ran over your cheeks, falling into your lap. They made you feel broken, but you didn’t care. They also made you wonder how much you could cry because the salty stuff kept coming in rivers. Your head was empty, nothing left of the information about yourself. The bed by the wall looked very inviting all of the sudden and you crawled into it, hiding your body underneath the warm blanket. Nobody could see you here, this was your space, in which you hadn’t killed anybody, in which you could trust yourself before all else.

The day passed and food was given into the cell and taken out of it. You didn’t eat. Your ears perked up every time you heard voices through the glass. Did they find out who you were? Why you did - well, anything? But they left again and you didn’t care. Underneath your blanket, you pretended to have found peace, although you had merely switched your cell for an even smaller cell, one that you controlled, that no one else had access to. You knew that you would get out, but you’d have to work for that. So you decided to give them what they wanted. They wanted you to not do anything. So you didn’t - no food, no waving from behind the glass, no activities. Soon, it’d show who could play this game longer. You really didn’t want to hurt yourself; you’d lost your mind, not your will to live. They’d pick you up if they noticed something was wrong. They always did. Your eyes went wide. How did you know that? It disturbed you to have these thoughts coming up in your mind, the ones that seemed to come from experience but you just couldn’t believe any normal person to have. You sighed, closing your eyes in frustration. This day would end and another would begin. You knew that. Maybe that was the only thing you could trust right now. And you held onto it.

You went through the days with a hole in your stomach, hunger gnawing on you. Your body handled it very well, though, drawing more energy from the water you drank than you'd imagined possible. The day before, you’d discovered the switch that allowed you to darken the windows, letting less light in and since then, they were dark. Maybe everyone on the outside could see through them, but there was no reason to care. They probably monitored you anyways, with cameras and other stuff. Nobody had come into the cell, although it had almost happened one time, probably at night (you had lost your track of time in the constant dark), when they assumed you were sleeping. Back then, there had been a muffled, but audible conversation relatively close to the glass and you could swear there had been a hand on the surface as well. But they had sounded dull and there was no way to tell who the voices belonged to. You bet it was Tasha, still trying to sneak behind Buck’s and Steve’s backs to get you. You had a feeling the redhead would do that.

When the door finally opened, it was ripped open, hectic. The handle clanged on the glass as the door crashed against it. The blanket over your head disappeared. Cold air attacked you. A metal hand grabbed yours. You were yanked out of bed and crashed into a wall. Not used to the sudden movement, your legs wobbled. Your tired body crashed into a panicky Buck, who wasn't pleased. He looked like he’d been running. There was a cut on his cheek, too. „Listen to me“, he ordered and you smiled at him, a little dizzy. „I know you feel like crap - you are so stupid - but talk to me, okay?“ 


His eyes wandered over your face when yours looked unfocused, he searched for your attention. With your legs still itching like a hundred wasps stung them and your mind slow as honey, this was what you supposed being drunk felt like. „Buck“, you drawled out. „I'm listening.“ He nodded, but he didn’t look sure if you really understood the urgency of this situation. He grabbed your chin, pulling your face a little closer, so your eyes found his. What is he doing? I’m not gonna smooch him. Not because he’s the first one joining me in here. He should’ve thought this through.

„You need to tell me. Why is there a SWAT unit outside, preparing to invade the tower?“


Again, with the questions.

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[newstfionline]

When Twenty-Six Thousand Stinkbugs Invade Your Home

By Kathryn Schulz, The New Yorker, March 12, 2018 Issue

One October night a few years back, Pam Stone was downstairs watching television with her partner, Paul Zimmerman, when it struck her that their house was unusually cold. Stone and Zimmerman live just outside Landrum, South Carolina, in an A-frame cabin; upstairs in their bedroom, French doors lead out to a raised deck. That week, autumn had finally descended on the Carolinas, killing off the mosquitoes and sending nighttime temperatures plummeting, and the previous evening the couple had opened those doors a crack to take advantage of the cool air. Now, sitting in front of the TV, Stone suddenly realized that she’d left them open and went up to close them.

Zimmerman was still downstairs when he heard her scream. He sprinted up to join her, and the two of them stood in the doorway, aghast. Their bedroom walls were crawling with insects--not dozens of them but hundreds upon hundreds. Stone knew what they were, because she’d seen a few around the house earlier that year and eventually posted a picture of one on Facebook and asked what it was. That’s a stinkbug, a chorus of people had told her--specifically, a brown marmorated stinkbug. Huh, Stone had thought at the time. Never heard of them. Now they were covering every visible surface of her bedroom.

“It was like a horror movie,” Stone recalled. She and Zimmerman fetched two brooms and started sweeping down the walls. Pre-stinkbug crisis, the couple had been unwinding after work (she is an actress, comedian, and horse trainer; he is a horticulturist), and were notably underdressed, in tank tops and boxers, for undertaking a full-scale extermination. The stinkbugs, attracted to warmth, kept thwacking into their bodies as they worked. Stone and Zimmerman didn’t dare kill them--the stink for which stinkbugs are named is released when you crush them--so they periodically threw the accumulated heaps back outside, only to realize that, every time they opened the doors to do so, more stinkbugs flew in. It took them forty-five minutes to clean the place, at which point, exhausted, they dropped into bed and switched off the lights.

Moments later, something went barrelling across the room, sounding, as stinkbugs do, like an angry and overweight wasp. The couple jumped up and turned the lights back on. Looking for the stray bug, Stone pulled a painting off the wall and turned it around; dozens of stinkbugs covered the back. She opened a drawer of the dresser: dozens more. That’s when she and Zimmerman realized that they were going to have to treat their bedroom “like a hazmat situation.” “We stripped everything,” Stone said. They took the sheets and pillowcases off the bed and emptied the upstairs bathroom. They inspected the drapes by the doors and found hundreds more stinkbugs clinging to the folds. They thwacked off as many as they could, then took the drapes down to wash them. After that, they tried several more times to go to sleep, to no avail. “Literally, the instant it was dark,” Stone said, “we’d hear four or five more come out and we would turn the lights back on because they were hitting the wall above our heads and dropping onto us, which was even more horrifying.”

In the end, it took the couple almost all night to make their bedroom habitable, but since then they have never lived entirely free of stinkbugs. The day after the infestation, one flew out of Stone’s hair dryer. A few days later, she pulled a hoodie over her head, then frantically yanked it off again upon discovering multiple stinkbugs burrowed inside. Some time after that, she tacked up a horse she’d been training, jumped on, and immediately sprang back off: stinkbugs were pouring out of every crevice of the saddle. She has flicked them off the pages of books she was reading and pulled their corpses out of her jewelry box; they have crawled across the table during dinner and, drawn to the heat of the water, edged steadily closer to her in the bathtub. As she was telling me her story, one made its way across her cutting board, while another survived a swipe from her kitten.

Pam Stone’s experience is not unique. Indeed, in the annals of brown marmorated stinkbug invasions, it isn’t even all that extreme. The species is not native to this country, but in the years since it arrived it has spread to forty-three of the forty-eight continental United States, and--in patchwork, unpredictable, time-staggered ways--has overrun homes, gardens, and farms in one location after another. Four years before Stone’s encounter, a wildlife biologist in Maryland decided to count all the brown marmorated stinkbugs he killed in his own home; he stopped the experiment after six months and twenty-six thousand two hundred and five stinkbugs. Around the same time, entomologists documented thirty thousand stinkbugs living in a shed in Virginia no bigger than an outhouse, and four thousand in a container the size of a breadbox. In West Virginia, bank employees arrived at work one day to find an exterior wall of the building covered in an estimated million stinkbugs.

What makes the brown marmorated stinkbug unique, though, is not just its tendency to congregate in extremely large numbers but the fact that it boasts a peculiar and unwelcome kind of versatility. Very few household pests destroy crops; fleas and bedbugs are nightmarish, but not if you’re a field of corn. Conversely, very few agricultural pests pose a problem indoors; you’ll seldom hear of people confronting a swarm of boll weevils in their bedroom. But the brown marmorated stinkbug has made a name for itself by simultaneously threatening millions of acres of American farmland and grossing out the occupants of millions of American homes. The saga of how it got here, what it’s doing here, and what we’re doing about it is part dystopic and part tragicomic, part qualified success story and part cautionary tale. If you have never met its main character, I assure you: you will soon.

Of the five-thousand-odd species of stinkbug in the world, the brown marmorated kind is the most destructive, the most annoying, and possibly the ugliest. It is roughly the size of a dime, although thicker, but its head is unusually small, even for an insect, which gives it an appropriately thuggish look. Its six legs prop its shield-shaped body up in the air, as if they were pallbearers at the funeral of a Knight Templar. Its antennae are striped with bands of dark and light, while its eyes, should you get close enough to gaze into them, are the vivid red of an alarm clock at night. The “marmorated” in its name means “marbled,” but “mottled” is closer to the truth. It looks as dull brown as its own frass, the technical term for insect excrement.

The defining ugliness of a stinkbug, however, is its stink. Olfactory defense mechanisms are not uncommon in nature: wolverines, anteaters, and polecats all have scent glands that produce an odor rivalling that of a skunk; bombardier beetles, when threatened, emit a foul-smelling chemical hot enough to burn human skin; vultures keep predators at bay by vomiting up the most recent bit of carrion they ate; honey badgers achieve the same effect by turning their anal pouch inside out. All these creatures produce a smell worse than the stinkbug’s, but none of them do so in your home.

Along with cheap yoga pants, mass layoffs, and the recent surge in nationalism, the brown marmorated stinkbug is a product of globalization. It is native to East Asia--mainly China, Taiwan, Japan, and North and South Korea--where, kept in check by various natural predators, it has coexisted with the rest of nature in relative tranquillity. But then, on September 21, 1998, a gentleman from Allentown, Pennsylvania, deposited several specimens of a mystery insect in the office of Karen Bernhard, an entomologist who works at Pennsylvania State University’s Extension Service.

At first, when Bernhard sent her specimens off for identification, she was told that they were a native stinkbug, Euschistus servus, but something seemed off. Although those bugs do sometimes make their way indoors, they are not normally household pests, yet all the people calling Bernhard were asking about insects they had found in their homes. In the fall of 2001, armed with a new batch of identical specimens, she contacted Richard Hoebeke, an entomologist specializing in invasive species, who was then at Cornell and is now at the University of Georgia. Within weeks, Hoebeke had determined that the specimens were brown marmorated stinkbugs, the first ever identified in the Western Hemisphere.

Not long afterward, Hoebeke travelled to Pennsylvania to see the new species in situ. “It’s kind of burned into my memory,” he said. Hoebeke had seen plenty of stinkbugs in his time, but never in such quantities. “They were flying everywhere--in the air, around people’s window screens, everywhere. I had my windows open, and so many were getting in my car that I had to be really careful that I wasn’t going to transport them back with me. I was utterly amazed at the numbers.” He eventually determined that the first verifiable specimen appeared in Allentown in 1996, most likely via a shipping pallet from China.

That was the beginning of the grand American journey of the brown marmorated stinkbug. The first sighting outside Pennsylvania came in 1999, in New Jersey. By 2003, stinkbugs had arrived in Maryland. By 2004, they were in West Virginia and Delaware. By 2007, they were in Ohio and New York. These days, it’s considerably easier to name the states where, for now, stinkbugs haven’t been found: Louisiana, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Montana, Wyoming, and Alaska. (That’s before we even get to their global reach. In the past few decades, the brown marmorated stinkbug has also migrated to Canada, Chile, Bulgaria, Russia, Georgia, Abkhazia, Serbia, Romania, Hungary, Greece, Switzerland, Spain, Italy, and France, where it is known as the Devil’s thumbtack.)

Needless to say, stinkbugs didn’t arrive in these places under their own steam. They are impressively resourceful hitchhikers--or, really, stowaways, crossing state lines concealed in automobiles (inside, outside, crammed into the rubber sealing in between), tractor-trailers, freight containers, overhead compartments, and anything else that moves. Biologists have arrived at stinkbug conferences in distant states only to open their suitcases and watch in horror as one crawled out.

Although concentrated urban areas like Manhattan have, heaven knows, problems of their own--bedbugs, subway rats, cockroaches so big they could register for kindergarten--they are seldom the target of large-scale stinkbug invasions. But smaller cities, towns, suburbs, exurbs, and rural areas all strike stinkbugs as prime real estate, because they enable the bugs to do what they do best. In the fall, winter, and spring, brown marmorated stinkbugs take up residence in private homes, sometimes by the tens of thousands. Then, in the summer, they quietly let themselves back outside, into nearby gardens, orchards, woods, and farms, and steadily set about destroying them.

The brown marmorated stinkbug will eat a stunning range of things. For instance, it, will eat ash trees. But it will also eat birch trees, juniper trees, cherry trees, tulip trees, maple trees (fifteen different kinds, including sugar maples, big-leaf maples, and vine maples), buckeyes, dogwoods, horse chestnuts, black walnuts, myrtles, magnolias, willows, sycamores, hemlocks, elms, and oaks. That is just a sampling, of just the trees. In other domains, it will eat a lot of things you probably eat, too: broccoli, asparagus, tomatoes, eggplants, okra, chard, cabbage, collards, bell peppers, cucumbers. It will eat pecans and hazelnuts. It will eat hops and grapes. It will eat apples and pears, raspberries and blackberries, apricots and peaches and nectarines. It will eat, like a medieval princeling, figs and quinces. It will eat, without apparent discomfort, horseradish and cayenne pepper, habaneros and jalapeños.

All of that amounts to just the hors d’oeuvres. So far, scientists have discovered more than two hundred and fifty plants that the brown marmorated stinkbug will consume. Together, those plants represent every major agricultural and horticultural sector of the American economy: vegetables, fruit trees, berries, nuts, ornamental plants, and row crops, including sweet corn, cotton, soybeans, and virtually every other legume.

The brown marmorated stinkbug presents a serious problem for American crops. In 2010, Tracy Leskey, an entomologist with the U.S. Department of Agriculture, formed a task force dedicated to figuring out just how serious--that is, to studying the biology, ecology, and impact of the brown marmorated stinkbug, and to developing environmentally and economically sustainable strategies for managing it. At the time, the stinkbug had just reached outbreak levels in the Mid-Atlantic, and the results, Leskey said, were “far beyond anything I had experienced working in ag for twenty years. I wish I had a metric I could give you to tell you how many bugs were in people’s crops.” In orchards, they were crawling by the hundreds on every tree; so many had invaded corn and soybean fields that farmers had to turn on the windshield wipers in their combines while harvesting. Afterward, it wasn’t uncommon to find stinkbug damage on every single ear of corn.

In the years since then, stinkbug populations have simultaneously abated somewhat in their earliest haunts and expanded into countless new places across the country. Those fluctuations, combined with the sheer range of plants that stinkbugs eat, make it difficult to assess their economic impact. In 2010, federal scientists asked apple growers in the Mid-Atlantic to tally their losses; the resulting sum topped thirty-seven million dollars, in an industry whose annual profit in the region is less than two hundred million. That year, Pennsylvania peach growers lost almost half their crop to stinkbugs, a fifteen-million-dollar blow, while some in Maryland lost up to a hundred per cent. In New Jersey, which is the fourth-largest peach producer in the nation, losses ranged from sixty to ninety per cent of the harvest.

No one has quantified the total loss to sweet corn, soybeans, tomatoes, bell peppers, and green beans, but no one disputes that it is significant. And the toll will almost certainly rise as the stinkbug takes up residence in other places. In California, South Carolina, and Georgia, where the majority of American peaches are grown, stinkbugs are a relatively new arrival, and how much damage they will do when and if they reach a critical mass in those places remains to be seen.

In general, it’s often difficult to notice the damage done by stinkbugs, at least at first. Unlike, say, locusts, which simply raze entire fields, stinkbugs wreak their havoc insidiously. The injury they do to corn, for instance, is invisible until the ear is husked, at which point certain kernels--the ones into which a stinkbug stuck its pointy mouth--will reveal themselves to be sunken and brown, like the teeth of a witch. Similarly, stinkbugs suck the juice out of apples through nearly invisible punctures, leaving the exteriors Edenically enticing; only later, when the empty cells start to collapse, does the fruit begin to darken and dimple. The resulting scars, known as cat-facing, also appear on peaches, tomatoes, and other fruits. To add insult to injury, the sugary substance weeping from those wounds attracts other noxious insects, including yellow jackets.

And as it turns out, the brown marmorated stinkbug is exceptionally hard to kill with pesticides. Peter Jentsch, an entomologist with Cornell University’s Hudson Valley research laboratory, calls it the Hummer of insects: a highly armored creature built to maximize its defensive capabilities. Its relatively long legs keep it perched above the surface of its food, which limits its exposure to pesticide applications. Similarly, it eats from the interior of plants, where, for obvious reasons, pesticides are not meant to penetrate. Theoretically, it could inhale a fatal chemical through small breathing pores along its abdomen, but so far the only ones that reliably knock it out are broad-spectrum compounds, which farmers prefer not to use, since they also kill beneficial species. A class of pesticides known as pyrethroids, which are used to control native stinkbugs, initially appeared to work just as well on the brown marmorated kind--until a day or two later, when more than a third of the ostensibly dead bugs rose up, Lazarus-like, and calmly resumed the business of demolition.

But what is not fatal to a brown marmorated stinkbug is terrible for American farms, farmers, ecosystems, and consumers. According to Raupp, the arrival of the stinkbug in this country “basically reversed three decades of environmental and economic progress in terms of managing pests.” After a long and steady decline, pesticide use in some places shot up fourfold, as growers who had previously relied on infrequent treatments in conjunction with other pest-management strategies suddenly found themselves spraying weekly. Those high doses cut back on stinkbug damage, but they were far too time-intensive, chemical-intensive, and expensive to be sustainable. Since then, somewhat better strategies for coping with the problem have emerged, but, to date, the only force that reliably gets a brown marmorated stinkbug off a food source is one that poses a whole different kind of problem: the urge, at the end of summer, to go inside.

It is not that the brown marmorated stinkbug can’t survive the winter outdoors. But, given sufficient proximity to artificial structures, it will readily spend the cooler months inside instead.

Often enough, they simply come in through doorways, around which they tend to congregate in autumn, but they have dozens of other ways of entering: down chimneys, around utility pipes, underneath the flashing on roofs, beneath cracks in the siding, through the vents in air-conditioning units, via imperfectly sealed windows, in the gaps below door sweeps. Studies have shown that, despite their relative heft, stinkbugs can crawl through any crevice larger than seven millimetres, which means that, no matter how much caulk and weather-stripping and patience you possess, it is virtually impossible to stinkbug-proof a home.

After a stinkbug breaches a building and finds a spot it likes, others join it, apparently attracted by the same aggregation pheromone that the bug uses to summon its friends and relations to dinner. (Dismayingly, for homeowners, that pheromone remains detectable to other stinkbugs for up to a year.) Once additional stinkbugs start arriving, they will stick around until late spring, and can assemble not only in incredible numbers but with incredible density. The instinct to do so is known as thigmotaxis: the tendency to move toward physical contact--in this case, not only with other stinkbugs but with almost any surface. Thigmotaxis is why stinkbugs are so often found between layers (beware the quilt left folded in a window seat) and underneath seemingly flat things (brace yourself before picking up that stack of newspapers beside the recycling bin). It is why Pam Stone found so many behind her paintings, and why Doug Inkley, the biologist who counted upward of twenty-six thousand stinkbugs in his home, could pull them out of his attic by the handful, like popcorn.

Mostly, though, the problem with stinkbugs indoors is not so much expense as disgust. Overwintering stinkbugs navigate like nine-year-olds in bumper cars, making as much noise as possible and banging into everything in sight: walls, doors, windows, humans. Unlike household pests such as ants and fruit flies, they are not particularly drawn to food and drink; then again, as equal-opportunity invaders they aren’t particularly not drawn to them, either. This has predictable but unfortunate consequences. One poor soul spooned up a stinkbug that had blended into her granola, putting her off fruit-and-nut cereals for life. Another discovered too late that a stinkbug had percolated in her coffeemaker, along with her morning brew. A third removed a turkey from the oven on Thanksgiving Day and discovered a cooked stinkbug at the bottom of the roasting pan. Other people have reported accidentally ingesting stinkbugs in, among other things, salads, berries, raisin bran, applesauce, and chili. By all accounts, the bugs release their stink upon being crunched, and taste pretty much the way they smell. (They are also occasionally eaten by household pets, though seldom twice. One of my cats recently ate two at once, and promptly vomited them up.)

A further perversity of stinkbugs in the home is that they are simultaneously extremely easy and extremely difficult to kill. On the one hand, in the face of mortal danger they do not have the sense, or the speed, to flee. On the other hand, dispatching them by any of the traditional methods--smashing, squashing, stepping on--means that, like good Christians, they will triumph even in death, in this case by leaving behind a malevolent olfactory ghost. Worse, they will die with the sublime stoicism of a soldier who knows that ten thousand of his compatriots are lined up behind him, ready to take his place.

If you want to avoid the stench while also eliminating the stinkbug, your options are limited. “I’m probably not the only one who’s thought of burning their house down just to kill the stinkbugs,” one Internet commenter observed. Another suggested trying miniature silver bullets, or tiny stakes driven through the heart. What you should definitely not bother trying is insecticides approved for interior use; in the home, as in the field, stinkbugs are relatively immune to chemical assault. You can flush them down the toilet, but that’s a huge waste of water. You can vacuum them up, but the smell will be noxious; also, if not disposed of immediately, stinkbugs have been known to crawl back out again. The experts recommend building a contraption out of an empty soda bottle, filling it with soapy water, and drowning the stinkbugs inside, but I am dubious. For one thing, I have personally pulled a load of clean clothes out of the washing machine and discovered a stinkbug at the bottom, alive. For another, those same experts suggest collecting stinkbugs in Ziploc baggies, then placing them in the freezer for several weeks until they expire--somewhere, I suppose, between the pint of ice cream and the frozen peas.

Thanks to intensive research, scientists now know a tremendous amount about the stinkbug’s most fearsome enemy back home: the samurai wasp, which deposits its eggs inside those of the stinkbug, leaving its larvae to emerge and consume their host. In East Asia, the samurai wasp parasitizes between sixty and ninety per cent of brown marmorated stinkbug eggs, thereby almost single-handedly keeping its population under control.

Like the stinkbug, the samurai wasp arrived in the United States by accident, and a small number have lived here since at least 2014. Now, though, entomologists hope to breed and release it in sufficient quantities to curtail the stinkbug population. Their logic is compelling: the stinkbug poses a serious threat to billions of dollars of American agriculture, while the wasp, which is tiny and does not sting humans, destroys those bugs in huge quantities and, according to studies spanning more than a decade, appears to harm only one native beneficial species.

Nonetheless, it’s impossible to contemplate this plan without worrying about the law of unintended consequences, which has governed the realm of introduced species before. The cane toad, brought to Australia to control the native greyback cane beetle, proved to be largely ineffective at that job but horribly effective at killing other native species (sometimes by eating them but mostly, because it is extremely poisonous, by being eaten). Today, the two hundred million cane toads in Australia constitute a pest far worse than the one they were meant to control. Similarly, the Asian multicolored ladybird beetle was introduced into the United States to control aphids; it did that, but it also displaced most native ladybird beetles and proved to be, like the stinkbug, a home invader.

Still, as Peter Jentsch points out, you have to pick your poison. Or more aptly, in the case of the stinkbug, you have to decide whether to pick the poison.

If there is comfort to be had in any of this, it is that old, familiar refrain: things could be worse. As damaging as the brown marmorated stinkbug is to agriculture, it has nothing on the boll weevil, which cost American cotton farmers billions of dollars in its heyday, or on the Rocky Mountain locust, which, prior to becoming extinct, could sweep through in swarms the size of California and destroy millions of acres of crops within a matter of days. Likewise, as annoying as the stinkbug is in the home, it does not bite, sting, transmit disease, or gnaw through foundations.

In a way, then, we got off easy this time. The difficulty is that there will be a next time, and a time after that, and a time after that. Prior to the era of planetwide transportation networks, species routinely took millennia to establish themselves in new places. Today, thousands move around the world every day--by ship and plane and freight and pallet and packing crate, by business meetings in Switzerland and military deployments in Pakistan and tourism in Hawaii. At present, this vast influx of new species costs the United States about a hundred and twenty billion dollars a year.

[tolkienissenpai-blog]

The Cave

The door is locked.  He cannot get in. As I write this, my hand quivering with fear, I am reminded of the revolver hidden beneath my mattress . I will not let this thing take me over. I refuse to let it make me like him.   My brother is not right. He is banging on the door . His force shakes the single light bulb hanging from my ceiling , making shadows dance across the walls. A sick squelching noise, like raw meat being worked on, is heard at every slam of his fists. I do not know what is causing this.  I never thought it would come to this. We were only playing around . Who knew what lie hidden inside those caves? Father told us to leave their darkened depths undisturbed . He always got a strange look in his eye when he told us this. The blood would leave his face, and his hands would begin to quiver. This should have been a clear sign for us , that the danger was real. In hindsight , we both knew this, but in all honesty neither of us could fathom what we would encounter.  Here in our two bedroom cabin, my family has eked out a living for my entire life.  Brother and I have always assisted with menial tasks, while father has been the one to get the food. I’ve lost count how many animals we have gutted and skinned from a hunt, and I am not one to balk at the sight of death or blood. But the caves were something else. Upon entering , my brothers flashlight dimmed instantly. Strange , considering it has sat unused for months, the batteries always freshly charged in case the generator gave out. It was midday though, and our eyes slowly grew accustomed to the darkness. As we moved deeper into the caves, the light no longer reached us, and the only thing guiding us was the flickering glow of our electric torch. We came upon a fork . Both sides identical in nature, with the exception being a metallic odor coming from the right side, reminiscent of old coins we had found buried in the hills a few times. A sense of dread filled my entire being at this smell, and I could not tell why. It felt like all instincts within me, that had been bred into my genes over thousands of years of human experience , were screaming at me to leave. The flashlight began to quiver violently , and I glanced at my brother to see him visibly shaking , his eyes wide with the same fear I felt screaming inside of me .        “Dont be s-s-so scared!” , I manged to  force out. “Let’s t-t-take that right path, we’ll probably stumble upon some p-p-poor miners skeleton and gold!”  At my words, my brother shook as if being released from some spell, glancing at me and giving me a nervous smile , and nodded.  We proceeded down the path, the smell growing more potent the farther we went. Earlier , the walls had been clearly dug out by man, uniform in shape and showing nothing but brown earth. At this point , roots began to show, forcing their way through the walls and ceiling. Some were as thick as my chest, and many hanging from the ceiling were practically vines if not for their clear wooden form. These grasped and tore at our clothing, at one point forcing us to remove the packs we had brought, as the tunnel narrowed to a point where we were on our knees.  Throughout all of this, there was that sense of dread deep withing me. My body would be overcome with irregular spasms , and many times I had to force myself to breath slowly , lest I turn around and flee , leaving my brother alone.  I have never experienced this sense of fear before . I wish I had ran. ... The banging has stopped .  I’ve loaded my revolver now. That dread has returned . I have moved my bed in front of my door . My desk and chair as well, and I continue to write while sitting on the ground. The light is still on , but the hanging light bulb seems too bright in my white washed room. I wish I had a window to see if the sun has risen. I am rushing to finish this tale, because if that THING gets me, I want others to know where it came from, and to purge those caves of that abomination . We had been going down this tunnel for some time, I would like to say for half an hour, but the state of constant dread I was in makes me feel as though it was days. Eventually, the roots around us grew thinner and more sparse , and then an opening appeared ahead of us. My brother, upon reaching the hole, disappeared from sight, his screams filling the enclosed space around me. I crawled quickly to the opening, terrified of the darkness that now engulfed me, and as I crossed the threshold I tumbled down a steep incline of earth , onto my brother.  As we both composed ourselves , helping each other to our feet, it dawned upon me how massive this cavern that we had just fallen into was. We pointed our flash light, its flickering luminescence giving clear signs it was on it’s last legs, towards the direction we came from. The walls around us all sloped up, and as we passed the light all around us, we came to the conclusion we were in a giant bowl, with roots sticking out everywhere again. Skittering centipedes , at least a foot long, burrowed away from the light, and we realized that there was a constant chattering and clicking filling the room , not deafening , but a sign that disgusting elongated insects were all around us.  Then the smell hit us . That metallic scent of old coins, but now it was overpowering. It was difficult to breath  with that smell, and the air felt thick and ... Wrong. We felt crawling at our feet, and both jumped and shrieked at the thought of massive centipedes crawling into our boots , my brother accidentally flinging our light.  The flash light flew across the room , a good 10 feet away from us , seeming to teeter on the edge of some small hole in the center.    I always carried a flip lighter for lighting fires , and quickly pulled it out , the flame  banishing the darkness around us. The insects fled as the flames appeared, and we saw at our feet a mosaic of roots leading towards the hole in the center.  I grabbed my brothers arm , and I could feel him shaking . He head jerked around to look me in the eye. There was nothing but fear in his eyes. “We need to leave now.” He said. His mouth trembling , slowly speaking each word , leaving emphasis on the last.   I nodded fervently, and we ran quickly towards the hole to grab our flash light, for without it we wouldn’t be able to get out of this hell. And then the insects went silent. I tripped over a root , slamming instantly to the floor, and feeling my nose burst with blood upon hitting it on another root.  I tried to yell out to him, to stop him, but that fear filled me again, and my body was frozen stiff. All I could do was watch as my brother drew closer to the opening in the center of the room, and that’s when I realized what that metallic smell was. It should have came to us the moment we smelt it. We have been up to our arms in that stench almost every day of our lives. Blood. A black form slipped out of the hole, knocking the flash light farther away. I felt the roots around me tremble , and they began to pulsate and recede towards the hole. I felt myself being dragged towards the center, and somehow I was able to goad myself into running towards the tunnel we had came from. As I desperately  clawed my way towards escape, I realized my brother was still down there. And thats when it emerged.  I have no frame of reference for what it could have evolved from. No words for what exactly it was, for it was a conglomeration of insectoid parts ; its flesh purple and glistening like the innards of some animal , with the roots , clearly a part of it, weaving their way through its entire being. It had many legs like a centipede, but its head resembled a wasp, with hundreds of antennae from which dangled small glimmering lights .  It bathed the room in a deathly grey haze, and it turned its gaze upon my brother. I watched in horror as my brother, frozen in fear, stared up at the creature. Roots around my brother began to wrap around him, slinking their way into his boots, his pant legs, and through his jacket sleeves. The beast leaned down quickly , spewing some sort of bile all over my brother. I heard the chittering of insects begin again, and saw as millions of centipedes and earwigs swarmed their way towards my brother.    He began to scream as they descended upon his body, nibbling at his flesh and covering his entire being. The roots holding him flexed and began to move again, as I lost all bravery that was left and I fled up to my freedom. He began to scream louder and more violently , begging me for help , to not leave him in the dark. His words became muddled and choked, eventually silenced. Wondering what happened so suddenly I turned , at the precipice of the exit, and also began to scream. Roots had begun to slither their way inside his ears and mouth, stretching the flesh , blood pouring from the wounds. I crawled as quickly as I could through the tunnel, now devoid of all the previous roots we dealt with. I laughed and cried hysterically the whole way, and when I could finally stand, I clutched the nearest wall and began to scramble through the dark tunnels, hoping the scent of clean air was guiding me out. When I finally saw the light, I vomited until I was dry heaving, got up and ran home. ... 

The generator just went out. I am now writing by the light of a candle.  I hear them again, the centipedes . The banging has started again, but this time, I hear my brother screaming outside my door, begging me to help him. Father must be out hunting for the night since he hasn’t come home yet. Maybe the beast killed him. I’m so scared. I dont wan’t to die like that. I don’t want to be taken back to that cave. To that THING. Father if you find this letter, I’m sorry for the mess.

[jbankai89]

Fic: The Light Behind Your Eyes

My good friend and braintwin @kuriquinn suggested I try posting my actual fics on Tumblr, rather than just linking them, so I'm giving it a try. For those of you following my work on AO3 or AFF, these will be reposts until I'm caught up and everything is posted. :)

Title: The Light Behind Your Eyes

Author: JBankai89

Status: Complete

Chapters: 1/1

Rating: R

Fandom: Harry Potter

Pairing: Harry Potter/Draco Malfoy, Harry Potter/Lucius Malfoy, Implied Harry Potter/Various Death Eaters

Achievements: None

Warnings: Rape, Violence, Sexual Violence, Gore, Stockholm Syndrome

Summary: Harry has spent a year in the servitude of the Death Eaters, captured after he is abandoned by his friends and family. Voldemort is now the only constant in his life, the only one he can truly trust. But when he is sent to the Malfoy Manor, will the presence of an ex - schoolmate be enough to shift his loyalties?

Word Count: 6617

Other Links: AO3, AFF, LJ

Notes: Technically a drarry, but do mind the warnings if you are of the olden faith. (my obnoxious way of saying if you're one of those Purity Wank people, your bitching will be ignored)

The Light Behind Your Eyes

Malfoy Manor was as grand Harry expected it to be, not that it made being there any easier. He looked up at its may shuttered windows, expansive grounds and iron-wrought gates, and he felt a wave of sick fear wash over him. 

“Move,” Harry stumbled as he was shoved forward, and he walked as best he could with his wrists tightly bound and his ankles encased in short-chain shackles. Behind him walked two men in dark robes, not Death Eaters, but just as bad. Voldemort would never send Death Eaters to move Harry—the once golden boy of the rebellion—now little more than a household pet, his name and body a ruin of its former self.

Voldemort had refused to kill Harry when he had been brought to his knees several months before. It was not by Voldemort's hand, or even a well-placed Death Eater, but instead by something more sinister. Harry had to give them their due, they had thought it out. Several doctored photographs and well-placed rumours later, the Chosen One's friends turned on him, and the belief that Harry had gone over became even more universally accepted than the Daily Prophet's attacks on his mental stability some years earlier. Even those he had trusted implicitly turned on him, and he was left friendless and alone.

The memories hurt, but it was nothing compared to his life would become after Voldemort's inner circle of Death Eaters had caught up with him.

Harry shuddered as the recollection washed over him, remembering the words that sealed his fate, 'I've thought of a better use for you...' and Harry suddenly found himself at the mercy of every Death Eater that wanted him, any Death Eater he had wronged, every Death Eater Voldemort ever felt like rewarding. Memory overlapped memory, and his battered body carried with it marks of his current life in the form of scars. Harry could no longer where specifically he had received them or from whom, he had long ago stopped keeping track.

And now it was Lucius Malfoy's turn. He had no idea what to expect, but at this point he no longer cared, not really. He would be used, abused, and maybe he would finally have the courage to take his own life before things got too bad. But it seemed no matter how destroyed he became, both physically and mentally, he seemed incapable of letting himself just die. Voldemort had been all too happy to revive him from near-death more than once, to allow his suffering to continue unabated.

He was thrown to the ground and a boot pressed into the side of his throat to keep him from getting up. Harry could see little from this vantage point, save for a pair of expensive-looking dragon hide boots someone—Lucius, he assumed—was wearing. He felt emotionally exhausted, and it did not even have it in him to summon forth the fear that simmered just below the surface.

Distantly, he could hear voices, but he had completely blocked them out. To him, they sounded like little more than an inane buzzing. Early on, he had listened carefully to these conversations, as they concerned him, but after a while he realized that despite the fact that they were discussing him, he had no say in the matter one way or the other.

Like when Avery hung him from the ceiling, and cut off his hands with a penknife while he was conscious.

Or when Nott implanted a wasp nest in his chest cavity.

Or when the Carrows sealed him in a soundless, windowless room, and allowed him to succumb to hallucinations the seclusion and sensory deprivation had caused him.

This was not including the Death Eaters who were simply content to rape him nightly, and somehow, these instances were worse. His body was nothing but a thing to them; a thing to grind into the dirt, a thing to take from, and thing to destroy, and then remake whole. No matter what had been done to him, Voldemort healed his wounds, and he was new again. The words, 'thank you, My Lord,' would tumble from his lips as he kissed the hem of his robes.

Surely death was preferable to this endless cycle of pain, agony, and shame, but what could he do? He had lost everything. Voldemort and his followers was all he had left.

Movement.

Someone grabbed him by the hair and lifted him to his feet. The pain was searing, but he did not react to it. Fleetingly, he saw the men of the Malfoy family watching him with matching expressions of indifference, but Narcissa was curiously absent. He was dragged from the resplendence of the main levels of the manor, and into the dark of the dungeons.

He was stripped and a thick iron hook was twisted with the bonds of his wrists, and he was hung up from something chillingly similar to a meat hook. A second later he gasped in shock as he was drenched in ice cold water.

Harry's body was scrubbed roughly, his minor wounds tended to, and he was redressed in clean clothes. He was only dimly aware of this, and he felt something close to amusement flare up in his mind for a moment, as the man who washed him was unwilling to meet Harry's dead, blank stare. He lived, but he often felt more like a reanimated corpse. How many times had he been revived from near death? He had lost count. How many times had his mind been assaulted before it finally broke? Responding was something he had forgotten, just as he had forgotten the sound of his own voice—save for the sound of his own screams.

The cold of the stone floor bit into him as he was thrown into the cell, and the clang of it shutting and locking felt oddly final to him. Harry crawled to the back of the cell and pressed his back against the wall, made of the same cold, solid stone as the floor. He crossed his arms and closed his eyes, and allowed a feeling of peace to wash over him. The calm before the storm, waiting to see just what Lucius and his little shit of a son had planned for him.

It did not take long for Harry to be approached by his new captors, and while he heard the steady footfalls of someone approaching, he did not react. No fear was in him, he was far too exhausted to care enough to feel the fear. He heard the jangle of the person banging against the cell door, and he opened his eyes to see Draco Malfoy standing there, a familiar cold look in his eyes. Based on how he was standing and the redness of his palms, Harry supposed that he had hit the heels of his hands against the cell bars in an attempt to scare him.

Harry knew how he probably looked to Malfoy—with his battered body and the blank, indifferent expression upon his face. He was every part the victim, but accepting his fate with no fight, no complaint probably seemed wildly out of character to the other boy. He had seen reactions like Malfoy's before, brought on largely by his insouciance they reacted with anger, trying to get a rise out of him. The problem was, he couldn't find it in himself to care.

He didn't care what happened to him, not anymore. He would be left here for a few weeks, or months, and what was left of his body would be shipped back to Voldemort. He would be revived and healed as necessary, and the cycle would begin again.

Malfoy gritted his teeth, watching him much like a frustrated child watches a sleeping zoo animal, impatiently waiting for it to wake up. “Say something Potter,” he said, more anger than scorn in his tone. Harry watched him in silence, not allowing himself to react. Aside from the repercussions of rising to the obvious bait, he had no desire to get into a pointless, one-sided tiff with the youngest Malfoy.

Harry took a moment to shift his gaze and look him directly in the eyes, green meeting jewel-bright blue, then he closed his eyes and returned to his repose. Distantly he heard Malfoy mutter in annoyance and stalk off.

~

For the first few days Harry was left alone which brought out of him a feeling of unease. He was fed some kind of gruel twice a day which was pushed through a narrow, horizontal slot in the bars. Malfoy came down to visit him often. Honestly, Harry had no idea what Draco felt there was to gain from heckling him like this, but as with his first night, he felt no desire to react to the jibes. This seemed to infuriate Malfoy even more, though Harry noticed that no matter how often or how long he stayed to pester him, he no longer could met his eyes.

This was not an uncommon occurrence. Coupled with his lack of desire to do—well, anything, it had been said that looking in his eyes was like looking into the eyes of a corpse. There was nothing there anymore, no emotion, no reaction—nothing. At some level, Harry speculated that this was the root cause of the Death Eater's desire to torture him to such extremes, to make him react in some way that proved that he was actually alive. Not that it helped all that much, the extremes the Death Eaters had gone to trying to make him feel had only cause the opposite effect, and Harry's consciousness seemed to fold in on itself, unable to cope with the outside world any longer.

After what Harry had estimated to be about five days, he was summoned. His wrists were rebound behind his back, not by a house elf, but by a human servant. He was ushered up to the second level of the house. He looked straight ahead, trying to summon an emotion to his mind. Fear at what was to come, wonder at the grandeur of the manor, annoyance at how his bonds itched—but he felt nothing. As ever, he felt empty.

He was led to an ornately carved oak door, and beyond it was a bedroom. The servant bowed and left, and Harry shifted his gaze to see Lucius reclined slightly on a large bed, adorned with rich materials of angora and silk. It did not take a genius to work out what Lucius' intended role for him here was. He kept his gaze focused resolutely forward, though he was not looking at anything in particular, his eyes behind his glasses unfocused as though he was in a daze.

On the edge of his peripheral vision he saw Lucius shift into a standing position in one fluid motion, and the heels of his boots clicked against the wood floor as he approached Harry.

“Let me look at you,” he said in his familiar slow, drawling tones. His hand grasped his chin and Harry's gaze was forcibly shifted to the older man. In such close proximity to someone he despised, he felt the faintest tendril of fear in the pit of his stomach. He forced it down, not allowing the emotion to show upon his face. “I see, it is as the others have said,” he seemed curious and vaguely amused, rather than angry. “Are you even in there anymore, Potter? Or are you simply a shell?” Harry did not avert his gaze nor allow it to change. Lucius had gotten closer to the mark than most of his cohorts, but he felt there was no point in responding to the words or the unsettlingly gentle touch of the man's soft fingertips that brushed against his jaw and throat.

The muscle in Lucius' cheek twitched into what was almost a smirk, and he moved Harry to the bed and bent him over.

Harry pressed his cheek into the smooth coverlet and stared at the wall. It was wallpapered with a pattern of deep crimson and silvery oak leaves, and following the design was sufficient in distracting him while he felt his trousers being pulled down, something cool being slicked over his backside, and the dull pain that followed.

~

Contrary to what he supposed Lucius had intended, Harry found life at the Malfoy Manor to be quite peaceful. He was largely left alone in the dungeons, his solitude punctuated by visits from Draco in which he tried to get a rise out of his once-classmate. The insults the younger Malfoy shot at him rolled off like droplets of water, but no matter how infuriated he got with Harry's brushoffs, he never used his wand against him. This actually surprised Harry, as he had grown quite used to being on the other end of the Cruciatus Curse for failing to react.

Lucius took him to his bed at first only occasionally, but as time went on he was summoned with greater frequency. He learned from overheard snatches of conversation that the reason he had not seen Narcissa was due to the fact that she had left Lucius some six months before, something about catching him shagging the gardener. It explained her absence and Draco's anger towards Harry at the very least. Perhaps seeing Lucius using him as little more than a sex toy had made him feel as though Harry was some kind of physical representation of the thing that drove his mother away.

Though Harry would never admit it, he had begun to look forward to Draco's visits. It was a blessed reprieve from the blank nothingness his mind had become. Listening to Draco attempt to berate him, get a rise out of him, anything, then storm off only to be back an hour later to try again. He also enjoyed the act of trying to figure him out. Why did Draco feel the need to continually come down to the dark and dank of the dungeons only to pester Harry, before disappearing again? At some level, Harry felt as though there was something more going on than just deep-seated enmity left over from their school days, but as with all things that crossed his mind in the last months, his curiosity was fleeting, and he would quickly allow his mind to go blank once more.

Coupled with his sporadic encounters with Lucius and Draco's frequent visits, Harry noticed that something in himself was different. At first, he couldn't pinpoint what it was, but then he realized that a veil of some kind had begun to lift; he could feel again. Slowly at first, then with greater frequency. He felt as though he was experiencing the first hints of spring after a particularly hard winter.

Harry was uncertain what this meant, and he didn't know if it was exactly a good thing. To feel meant he could hurt, and he was so tired of being hurt. In the dead of night his memories assaulted his mind, and he wept silently, no sound ever escaping him.

Lucius did not fail to notice this change in him. He never spoke of it, but it was apparent as he called for Harry with greater frequency, though he was still as silent as a doll. The renewed life the Death Eater could see behind his eyes seemed to have an aphrodisiac effect upon him, and he began to take his time, turning their ten-minute tussles into more drawn out experiences. Harry's body reacted to Lucius' touch readily, and while he was still mute, he could no longer stop the flood of tears that his orgasm would cause.

It seemed to unnerve Lucius somewhat, and he would lie next to Harry and watch the motionless, expressionless young man, the only indicator that he was aware of the world around him being those tears. In these moments, through the glaze of his silent anguish, he could almost see Lucius' expression soften—almost.

As with Lucius calling upon him more frequently, Draco, in turn, came to pester him more often as well. However, it had become clear early on that Draco was not the same petulant child he had known in school. Something had changed within him. For better or for worse, Harry did not know for certain. With each visit, Draco's anger seemed to ebb slightly, each time his tone softening, his words less cutting. Each visit ended the same, with an outburst of frustration at Harry's silence, and he would storm off.

~

After several weeks within the Malfoy Manor, Harry had begun to wonder when his ownership would change hands. It had to be soon, most Death Eaters that had laid claim upon him grew bored of his presence after a short time, and it would be on to the next sadist. But each time Harry expected to see a human servant come down to retrieve him for such a purpose, he could barely conceal his surprise when he was led, once more, to his master's chambers.

As strange as this was to Harry, it was nothing compared to the peculiar changes he saw in Draco. As the seasons shifted, so did he. He had come to Harry almost every night, leaned up against the bars of his cell—and talked. Somehow, Gods knew why, Draco Malfoy had decided that Harry was the best candidate to be his therapist.

At first, Draco spoke of trivial things—his frustration with his father, how, despite the fact that he was conversing with him civilly, how he hated Harry too. As time went on, his words turned to stories of his childhood.

“I don't even know why I'm telling you this, Potter,” he would say, punctuating his monologue as though trying to understand for himself why he suddenly felt so comfortable divulging his secrets to his sworn enemy. “But my father always talked about how great and powerful the Dark Lord was—is. How close to a perfect world we had achieved with him standing above us, Master of All, but...” he paused, his words seemingly frozen in his throat. Harry leaned forward despite himself. “—it doesn't feel that way.”

Draco's own daring seemed to unnerve him, and Harry did not see the boy again for a long time.

~

Harry was uncertain whether his imprisonment without Draco's presence was better or worse. He had to admit, if anything, it was peaceful. But the long hours he was left on his own had become agonizing in their silence. Harry had almost begun to look forward to his time with Lucius, because if anything, it was a welcome distraction to the memories that plagued his mind.

When Draco next reappeared, it was winter.

Harry couldn't know this for certain, but the temperature in the dungeons had dropped dramatically, and a servant had given him new, warmer clothing to wear.

Draco's appearance had startled Harry out of a daydream by way of jangling keys. He looked up in a daze, then shook his head to make sure his eyes were not cheated by some spell. Yes—Harry realized, there was Draco, and clasped in his hand was a wide ring of old, tarnished keys. Draco looked at him with a calculating look that did not befit his character. As he stared Harry down, he lowered one of the keys to the lock on Harry's cell door.

With a loud clunking sound, the door unlocked and it swung inwards. Harry watched, his back pressed against the wall of his prison, his knees bent and his arms twined around his thighs in a lazy, relaxed posture. The moment filled Harry with a mixed sense of dread and confusion. What was Draco trying to accomplish? He wasn't sure.

“Why don't you run?” Draco asked after a moment of tense silence. It was not a suggestion, but a question. He seemed genuinely curious as to why Harry felt absolutely no desire to flee. Harry watched him, uncertain whether Draco was worth breaking his silence.

“Where would I go?” Harry's voice was a hoarse whisper, and he barely recognized the sounds coming from him. After spending so long in darkness and silence, it was strange that the person that had dragged him into the light was Draco Malfoy. His question seemed to confuse Draco as much as the sound of his voice startled him, and he elaborated, trying to ignore the tickling ache in his throat as he spoke, “you and yours killed my friends, my family, my teachers. Everyone I ever cared for. Those you didn't murder, you turned against me. I have nothing. So where would I go?”

It was more talking than Harry had done in a very long time, and it made his throat hurt. He watched Draco, masking his emotions into a blank stare. He felt a faint surge of anger bubbling just below the surface, but he felt that he had little to gain by bringing it out. As he spoke, he thought he had seen a flash of remorse cross those fair features, but a second later it was gone. Harry probably imagined it. He turned his gaze from the boy, and he heard the heavy sounds of the door slamming and the lock scraping into place.

Draco never did answer him.

Harry counted five days since his last contact with the outside world that did not involve him bending over like a bitch in heat. It was just as harrowing as every other experience as Lucius' personal sex toy, but Draco's absence unsettled him more than he'd like to admit. The fact that Lucius had no desire to leave too many marks on him was a small mercy, and while his gait was still distinctly bow-legged, it wasn't as uncomfortable to pace in his cell as it could have been.

Harry couldn't remember exactly when he abandoned his silent contemplation for a near-unceasing desire to move, but he couldn't tell which he really preferred.

It was not entirely unexpected when Draco returned to the dungeons a few days later. Harry had returned to his corner, relaxing in a semi-meditative state, wilfully emptying his mind to prepare himself if he was called upon. It was so much easier to go through the motions of what he was expected to do when he didn't have to think about it.

“Potter,” there was none of the usual sneer in his voice.

Harry looked up and shifted his gaze to Draco. He had reverted back to his trademark stoicism, finding peace, rather than chaos in the simple act of keeping his silence. Draco seemed slightly unsettled by his silent stare, and he could only hold the captive's eyes for a moment, before averting his gaze. Harry watched him in silence, his eyebrows raising in surprise when instead of the expected typical cutting remarks or gibbering confessions, he slid to the floor.

He angled himself symmetrically with the bars of Harry's cell, and leaned against them. Harry's eyes widened in surprise—he was amazed that Draco would willingly want to sully such expensive clothes. The dungeon wasn't unsanitary by any means, but the act in itself still surprised him. He watched Draco in silence, and while the boy never once lifted his gaze to meet Harry's, he recognized the panicked look in his eyes all too well—the 'what the hell am I doing?' look. Harry felt the corner of his mouth twitch slightly.

~

The new camaraderie between the pair was by no means comfortable for either boy. Each evening, Draco would appear, sit next to the bars of Harry's cell, and in equal silence Harry would shift and sit next to him—the iron being the only barrier between them. Harry was not entirely sure what Draco felt he was to gain from these quiet evenings together, but he appreciated the company all the same, even if it was his sworn enemy from his schooldays.

More than once, Harry spent his days trying to work up the nerve to ask Draco just why he was coming down to see him every night. Was he doing it at his Father's request, or did he feel pity towards Harry? The former seemed likely, but he secretly hoped that in the time between the end of Hogwarts and this moment, maybe Draco had finally grown a conscience. By the time Draco had made his evening appearance, Harry once again lost the nerve to ask the other boy, and they spent another evening in companionable silence.

The following morning, Harry woke with his cheeks pressed against the bars of the cell door. He grimaced as he lifted his head, massaging the indentation in his cheek, and found that once more he was alone. He could not recall Draco leaving however, and he supposed that he had left sometime after Harry had nodded off.

Harry stood and stretched, grimacing through the stiff pain in his muscles, and moved to the back of the cell, stretching out his legs and pressing his back against the cool stone. Above him, he could hear the distinctive tones of Lucius and Draco. The voices were loud and full of emotion. The words themselves Harry could not distinguish, but it was apparent that the father and son were having a very heated argument. He was not entirely sure why, but he had a suspicion that Lucius had discovered where Draco disappeared to each evening.

Harry's suspicion grew more pronounced as the day went on, in particular when no one had bothered bringing him his meagre breakfast meal. His stomach rumbled loudly in protest, but he forced himself to rest, and ignore the hunger pangs.

That evening, his visitor was not Draco, but one of the human servants of the manor. He looked particularly grim as he forced Harry to stand and bound his wrists behind his back. This alone made Harry's unease worsen, as he had not been bound when being summoned since his first evening at the Manor. He stumbled slightly as he followed, unused to staying balanced without the help of his arms, and he was led not to Lucius' bedroom, but to the sitting room.

At first, Harry was confused. Ahead of him he saw Lucius sitting by the fire, his lips pressed together in a thin line and his eyes flashing dangerously. Out of the corner of his eye he could see Draco, but he didn't dare look in his direction. The servant pushed on Harry's shoulder, forcing him to his knees in front of the older Malfoy, and Harry tilted his head forward. In part because he knew it would be expected, and to use it as an excuse to conceal his fear from the man.

“Draco,” the musical, low tones of Lucius filled the room. Harry suppressed a shiver, as within that voice he could all but feel the venom, the quiet anger that was waiting to erupt. “You seem to have developed a soft spot for our half-blood chattel,” Harry bit the inside of his cheek, forcing himself to stay silent and still as the man's fingers raked roughly through his hair. “I do believe you understand the...awkward position that puts us in. The Dark Lord will not be pleased if he hears of you treating this creature with any form of kindness, no matter how misguided it may be.” Harry could not stop the soft gasp that escaped him as Lucius grasped the hair on the back of his head in a painfully tight grip, and threw him roughly onto the stone floor.

With no way to prevent it, Harry felt his cheekbone scrape against the stone hearth, while the plush rugs that lined the room did little to cushion his fall. Harry squirmed in an attempt to pull himself back up, when he felt Lucius' boot press into his throat, hard. He struggled to hide his grimace of pain, but he was not entirely sure how successful he had been, as he heard the man sneer softly. “Draco, come.”

“Father, please—” Harry heard pain in the other boy's voice, almost anguish. It shocked him, but also he felt a prickle of fear lance through him. Whatever Lucius was planning, he knew he'd be limping back to the dungeons tonight.

“Draco, you are a pure-blood wizard from one of the most ancient bloodlines in Great Britain. It is high time that you learnt our ways. Now come.” Harry distantly heard the sound of a chair scraping against stone, followed by the soft footfalls of Draco's approach. Harry heard him stop just short of where he lay, but from the angle he could not see the boy. “Now, Son,” Lucius said softly, almost lovingly, “like we practised.”

Harry heard the boy sigh heavily as though bracing himself, and he tensed, bracing himself for what he knew was coming.

The Cruciatus Curse hit him like a thousand shards of glass in his veins, hot coals against his skin—Harry gasped, because as soon as it had started, it stopped. Lucius' boot still pressed into his throat, and a fine sheen of cold sweat had begun to prickle his skin.

“Fool,” hissed Lucius, his anger more present in his tone this time, “you have to mean it. Crucio!”

Harry screamed. His body seized and shook, and he struggled to escape the burning, endless pain. He gasped and wheezed around the pressure of Lucius' boot, only distantly aware of the tears that streaked his cheeks, and after what felt like nothing short of a lifetime, the pain stopped.

Harry lay still, his body soaked with cold sweat, his skin bone white, and still pinned to the ground by Lucius. His breath came in short gasps, but he didn't bother attempting to regain his composure—Harry knew all too well that this was just the beginning.

“Draco,” Lucius said, his voice barely above a whisper, but carried the same implied threat of what would happen if the boy did not obey. Harry kept perfectly still; save for the short, shallow gasps of his breath, he could have been mistaken for dead.

“Really, Father, this is unnecessary—” Draco's voice seemed to be attempting to return to its haughty, natural tone, but the faint quiver in the words left no illusions to his fear both for his father as well as his reluctance to hurt Harry.

Above him, he heard a faint pop and a soft sound of Draco hissing in pain, followed by the heavy sound of the boy hitting the floor. The way Lucius' boot dug momentarily into Harry's throat, he assumed that he had cast a curse of some kind at his son.

Harry drew into himself at that moment. It was not an unfamiliar reaction, one that he had grown accustomed to performing when the outside world proved too unpleasant for Harry to cope with. The dead of his mind made him feel safe, even if it was temporary. He could still feel pain, but somehow it did not matter. Nothing mattered.

This time however, Harry found himself wholly incapable of coping with the knowledge that someone was trying to protect him. It alarmed him, primarily because the last time he had put his trust in anyone, it had been Voldemort. He could trust that Voldemort would heal his wounds, he could trust that He would wipe away the hurt His Death Eaters caused him. But this trust—it was tenuous, at best. Harry had learned firsthand that the trust of friends and of family could be broken as easily as a twig. He had not even been aware of the trust he had developed for the younger Malfoy, but here he was, unwilling to cause him hurt. It scared Harry more than he liked to admit.

The pain came then. He could hear himself crying out, but it seemed muted somehow, as though he was watching it happen to someone else. He could feel the pain, hear his own hoarse screams, but somehow it no longer mattered. Harry was no longer even aware who it was casting the curses on him.

~

Harry felt cold. His cold sweat had soaked through his clothing and clung to him uncomfortably. He shivered. It took him a moment to realize that he was back in his cell, and completely alone. He sat up, wincing as he did so. Every movement reminded him of some ache that had been inflicted upon him. Though he had no mirror to assess the damage, he could feel some unknown substance clinging to his face, and upon closer inspection flecks of dried blood rubbed off his chin. Aside from this, he could find no external damage, save for what felt like a bruise in the shape of a boot on the side of his neck.

While his body ached too much to walk properly, he shambled to the left side of the cage, and pressed his back against the cool stone, his cheek resting against the iron bars. It was far from comfortable, but the cold of the metal felt good against his burning skin.

Harry had no idea what time it was, but it felt late. The silence above him felt heavy, as though it carried actual weight. He was too exhausted to bother looking around him, or he may have noticed the near-invisible movement of something approaching him. The rustle of a cloak near to him startled him out of his daze, and he saw Draco Malfoy emerging as the Disillusionment Charm was lifted. Harry watched him warily, much in the same way an abused animal may regard its human owner. However, Draco's characteristic cool indifference was gone, and instead his expression was riddled with guilt.

He fell into an awkward sitting position next to Harry, and he lurched back fearfully. He immediately regretted the movement, as he gasped in pain. Draco winced as though he had been struck, and he reached through the bars, and laced his fingers with Harry's. “I'm so sorry,” he whispered.

Draco asked nothing of Harry—at least not verbally. He sat down next to the boy's cell, not even looking at him, but he kept his fingers lightly laced through Harry's, giving the other boy the option to pull back if he wanted to. His thumb traced light circles on Harry's palm, the gentle touch making him tremble slightly, almost fearfully. He was unused to tender contact like this, it had been too long. The touch instead made him shiver with fear.

The boy offered Harry no verbal reassurances, nor did he give Harry any reason to distrust his motives. Instead he continued to rub the captive's palm, trying through light touch to soothe him. Slowly Harry felt the knotted muscles relax, and he feebly squeezed Draco's hand.

Draco did not stay long, and cast another Disillusionment Charm upon himself before disappearing back to the main level of the house. In his absence, Harry felt as though the boy had taken a little piece of himself with him.

~

Lucius' treatment of his catamite had steadily become more violent, seemingly no longer content to take him for his own pleasures, but now to use as something akin to a stress toy for the man to take his anger out on. Each encounter left Harry with deep welts on his back and chest, twisted muscles, and the dull ache that followed Lucius' forced entry to his most private of places. He was careful to never cause any wounds that would leave permanent damage, and left Harry in his agony for several hours before he ordered his servants to heal him.

Without fail Draco would come to him after every beating. He never spoke, and often he looked as bad as Harry felt. His eyes had gained a haunted look, as though his emotional trauma was equal to Harry's physical afflictions. Draco would sit next to the cell bars, lace his fingers with Harry's, and they drew strength from one another.

Harry had forgotten that everything has its time, and everything dies.

He had dragged himself back to the corner and he was waiting for Draco to come. Lucius had been comparatively gentle that evening, and the broken bones in his legs were hardly noticeable—provided he didn't move. The effort of dragging himself from the centre of the cell to the corner had caused his skin to dot with sweat from the exertion, and his stomach lurched, dry heaving as a reaction to the pain.

Draco came then as he always did, his silent promise to Harry. Tonight felt different; Harry could see it on the youth's face, he didn't even need to ask. He looked pained, as though someone had died. Considering what was going on beyond the walls of the Malfoy Manor, it was entirely possible that someone actually had. He fell to his knees next to Harry, and stared at him as though he was seeing him for the first time. His eyes told the story, his voice seemingly chased away. Something terrible had happened. In spite of his pain, Harry extended a hand through the bars, and clung to his agemate.

All thoughts of dignity lost, Draco allowed a single tear to streak his cheek. He reached through the bars with his free hand and cradled Harry's cheek. Draco guided Harry's head forward and kissed him delicately, as though afraid any motion of force would cause the boy to shatter.

Harry could taste the boy's tears on his lips, and felt the aching loss the boy was experiencing, though he seemed unable to vocalize it. He did not push—he never did, and instead squeezed the boy's fingers reassuringly.

The next day, Harry understood.

Much earlier than he was used to being called, he awoke to one of the human servants descending the stairs to the dungeons, the man's expression unreadable but something in it made Harry uneasy. He was dragged to his feet and he yelped in pain, his legs buckling under his own weight. The man huffed, and flicked his wand and levitated Harry upright, his toes just barely grazing the stone. Using his wand, he conducted Harry's body up the stairs and into the sitting room.

Draco and Lucius stood side by side wearing matching stony expressions. Sitting in the chair the older Malfoy usually occupied was Voldemort. Harry felt the charm lift, and he collapsed in front of the Dark Lord, utterly unable to even kneel in his broken state. “Oh, Harry,” his high, cold voice lanced through him, and he fought back a shudder.

A cold, white finger hooked under his chin and forced his gaze up to meet the serpentine red gaze.

“Look at you, so broken...it must hurt terribly,” Harry's eyes watered, the excruciating pain of his legs coming back in full measure. His breathing was laboured, but he didn't speak. Voldemort released his chin and his gaze fell to the carpet, gasping as he struggled to kneel, though it was next to impossible.

“Dear boy, we cannot leave you in such a state. My Death Eaters get carried away, you understand...” Harry's breath hitched as a warmth filled him, as though he had sunk into a hot bath. He could feel his welts left by Lucius knitting together and fading, his bones returning to their normal state, and the haze of damage to his mind caused by Cruciatus clearing.

Harry dragged himself to his knees, pressed his hands to the ground, and crawled forward. He kissed the hem of his robes and murmured, “thank you, My Lord.”

He was all Harry had.

finis

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