#i miss soap

[arabellarileysworld]

i hate hate hate "insecure!ghost" so so much. (kind of mwiii spoilers lolll)

you cannot convince me that that man is not fine as hell, and he knows! he knows! do the people who write him like a crazy insecure man not understand he literally said he wasn't ugly when talking w soap? (come home bae the kids miss u)

he wouldn't start screaming and crying if someone ripped his mask off, he'd get angry, yeah, because the person is being disrespectful but i truly don't think he would care that much. yes he'd get self conscious at points but who doesn't? and if he did i wouldn't imagine him showing it.

also gotta say that hes got brown eyes, idc what anyone says, hes blonde w brown eyes 🫰🏻

(only small thoughts but anyways)

[imjustinsanee]

Is it just me who just CANT read Soap fanfics, especially Wattpad ones? I actually feel like if lost a family member or a friend, Like they all end in his death, obviously. You do have some good ones who just skips the whole pointless death part and we end up having a nice happy family on a farm in Scotland, getting married, always having fresh milk from cows, no one bothering, no deaths, children and then more children. Like it should be.

[ramvur]

good morning

[yooo-lets-go]

Johnny, you with me?

[eric-makes-art]

I was feeling SAD when soap died right in front of me when I was playing mw3

[wombywoo]

retired 🩶

[fixfoxnox]

This is beginning to look less like a fic and more like Canon lads /j

With every "Roach is ghosts dead fiance 🥺" or "Roach sent soap for ghost 🥺" I grow stronger. And one day, I will have enough strength to write a purely vindictive fic where SOAP is ghosts dead ex fiance and ghost falls in love with ROACH.

I'm gonna pull a switcheroo on them

Anyways GhostRoachSoap for the win

[gomzdrawfr]

🍰 Cafe AU ☕️

[arualthefirst]

Squished🙂‍↕️

[s3rrrpentine]

grabby hands

comm is back on baby ദ്ദി ˉ͈̀꒳ˉ͈́ )✧

[s0fter-sin]

thinking about the way ghost doesn't hesitate to start killing shadows when graves betrays them but soap only takes one hostage

you can almost hear the voice in his head telling him it doesn't have to be this way; they can still talk it out

"i'm calling shepherd"

his first instinct when confronted with betrayal is to play it by the books: to go up the chain. that goes against everything we've seen him do. he bucks authority at every chance except for the one time he's confronted with the barrels of his allies' guns

he wants a peaceful resolution; for the first time we've ever seen, he doesn't want violence to be the answer. there has to be another fix, a solution that doesn't end with him killing the same men he's been working with; his friends

nothing's happened yet

it doesn't have to go this way

but ghost has been betrayed before. he knows the way this ends; either with him six feet under or his enemy

he doesn't hesitate

it's only when they knock alejandro out that soap shoots; when they spill the first blood and cross a line they can never come back from

only when ghost orders him to run and he has to cover his retreat

and somewhere along the line, between civilians’ screams and taunting voices, between his shaking breath and ghost steady in his ear, that naivety is stripped away; his trust turned to teeth that he uses to sink into throats of men he'd have given his life for

"be careful who you trust, sergeant; people you know can hurt you the most"

he's learned the price of trust

just like ghost did

but unlike ghost, he has someone to guide him through the aftermath

"good advice, It"

[deathblossomm]

new found video of Neil posted on October 31 on Fort Irwin's Facebook page

[stuffeddrawer]

cw: sex pollen, insanity?, lots of swearing if you're not into that. omegaverse reader is a sub alpha, tf141 are dom omegas bc i say so word count: 1497 MDNI

(divider by @cafekitsune)

You fucked up.

It’s not even a big screw up, not yet. It’s not even world ending, but the tiniest inconveniences drove you up the damn wall and your mind was already distracted with a thousand other things. You find it hard to believe that people’s minds are usually quiet, are supposed to be quiet – yours has always been loud.

This isn’t what’s fucked up.

You’re in the middle of a deployment, started feeling off a few days ago but you brushed it off. Fool. Your brain chastises you. Should listen to your gut more often. Now look at you. Huffing and puffing and—

You noticed this off feeling a day before you went off on your mission – even that was supposed to be simple. Truly – get in, get out. Done. Supposedly.

But even that was still messed up.

You thought you tracked your cycle correctly, thought you had everything prepared, thought this mission wouldn’t overlap with your cycle, thought thought thought—

You picked at your gear, growing increasingly frustrated with every buckle, every strap. Every single piece of gear on your person, right down to your extra pair of gloves, was beginning to irritate you. You fucked up.

Your groan was loud enough to be heard when you couldn’t put your silencer on fast enough. You were already frustrated with your upcoming rut, skin flushed and warm, vision already tunnelled and now the sudden influx of hostiles did nothing to soothe that roar in your chest, the ringing in your ears. It did nothing to calm that angry alpha in your brain.

You were so frustrated with everything and everyone that you didn’t immediately smell something sweet in the air, something sweet enough to make you dizzy, discombobulated, your mind honing in on one thing and one thing only. That sweet, sweet omega smell. It took a moment, but your mind swam, vision blurred, growls and huffs leaving your mouth, desperate for someone to sink your teeth into, for someone to use you, for you to use someone. You didn’t care.

You fucked up.

You shouldn’t have gone on this mission, not when you knew you could go into a rut at any given time. You knew, you knew, and you still went. You knew this wasn’t going to end well, knew that something was going to happen. Fool. Knotted with anxiety and stress and you still should have trusted your gut. You wanted to wonder what the hell was wrong with you, that you could have sworn you had an extra day or two to really make sure you had everything you needed, but with that roar in your ears, the desperation seeping into your bones, you just don’t fucking care.

You pad over to where you thought the door was, rolling your eyes when you find it’s been locked. Shit. Your stomach growls, you think you growl, your blood rushing in your ears too loudly for you to understand just what the hell is happening. That smell is so sweet, like some pretty omega you just want to sink-

You huff, trying to take deep breaths once you realise what happened, just what exactly they’ve gassed you with, the room they’ve locked you in. Your cycle was forced to start, your gut was telling you this was going to happen. Your mind is racing and you just can’t keep up. You growl, yell, scream, throw yourself against the door, desperate to get it open, but it won’t budge. Like your stubbornness and inability to listen to what your body’s telling you, the door doesn’t open, doesn’t so much as whine when you press your weight against it.

You think you cry out when you move, the ache in your bones growing, the heat pooling between your legs almost burning now as your knees crash against the concrete beneath you. It hurts, it hurts, it hurts. Or does it feel so fucking good when you start to palm yourself? You don’t know. Your mind is so twisted and hazy, solely focused on one thing, and to have that thing denied to you? You think you’re going insane. Your grip on reality feels like it’s starting to slip.

You can’t even hear your radio sparking to life, can’t hear Price demanding a check in, can’t hear him repeating what he said, this time more urgently, a hint of fear perhaps? You really can’t tell if it’s just the blood in your ears rushing south, your entire body aching and on fire, or if he’s actually talking. You feel like you’re going insane. Going feral.

Your body writhes on the floor, equal parts bliss and agony, stars bursting in your eyes but you can’t tell if it’s from the pain or the pleasure. Or both. Sometimes it’s both. This time it just fucking hurts. Or does it? You don’t know. You don’t care. You fucked up.

You didn’t want to fuck the seam in your pants or your hand, you just wanted to get this mission done and spend your cycle surrounded by your packmates, surrounded by the people you trusted the most, people you knew would take care of you. God, it fucking hurts.

You want Kyle against your back, holding your arms behind you, whispering sweet nothings and cooing into your ear. Johnny to tease your nipples, bite and mark up your throat. You want John and Simon to make your legs shake, want them to use you as their own toy, want to be left mindless and fucked stupid, satisfied with your pretty omegas at your side, purring and content. You want Johnny and Kyle to clean you up, lick you clean, you want all these things, but you’re left on the floor in the middle of fuck-ass nowhere, desperate and borderline feral.

You shift your hips back and forth as you practically grind on your hand, on your knees now, groaning into your arm with your eyes screwed tight. You wanted someone to take you for all you had, make your legs shake and throat raw from how you practically cry out their name, treat you right like they’ve always treated you, how you’ve always treated them.

You fucked up and were now writhing on the floor, entire body shaking from the pain in your system, a small puddle of drool forming on the floor from how you’re sat – knelt? Bowed? You peek your eyes open, try to take a look around the room, try to find another way to escape, to free yourself, to eat and be eaten. Your vision is too hazy, too fuzzy for you to make anything out. You can’t focus on anything other than the ache between your legs.

The whine that fills the room – you think fills the room – is nothing short of desperate, angry and loud. Your chest hurts from how heavy you’re breathing, you can’t think past the ache in your bones, you think you cry out again, your finger pressing a button – buttons? You don’t know – your mind’s slipping away from you faster than you can catch it, like trying to hold fog. You don’t even feel scared anymore, just so fucking horny, desperate, pleading for someone to use you and for you to take your time with them, please, please, please.

God, you’re so hungry, your entire body shaking, growls and huffs leaving your lips as it feels like the walls are closing in – it hurts, it hurts so fucking good. You hump your hand faster, angry, but it’s still not enough. You want to feel your packmates’ hands on you, want to feel every inch of them, want them on you, in you, you don’t care – you want them in the worst way, but you fucked up and you’re stuck here, growling at nothing. You draw your hand back, hand slick with your arousal, room heavy with the scent of an alpha starting their cycle, forced to start it. You try to move, throw yourself against the wall to break yourself out of this trance, out of your own mind, but it only makes your brain break faster, sanity slipping like sand through dry fingers.

That stupid omega sweet scent drove you insane, you want more, crave more, are aching for more. Your mind felt like goo, like every sense of You was long gone. You think you hear the door open. Too late.

You’re too fucked up to recognise him, too feral to notice the boonie hat, the three other men standing behind him – you snarl at whoever walked in. Your body’s tense, more tightly wound than anyone’s ever seen. Your gaze is hungry and angry, and fucking famished. You’re starving, you’re angry, you’re so desperate for an omega to fuck, you’re—

You leap, your teeth barred and mind blank, snapped like a dry twig in the middle of a sweltering summer.

The task force’s now-feral alpha is knocked out before their teeth can do any lasting damage to their captain.

[furiosophie]

((zombie ghost this, zombie ghost that, what about eldritch!soap who came back wrong??))

[niccolites]

green cliffs: lessons in mortality. chapter five

highlander!johnny x fem!reader. cw dubcon and period typical violence. read on ao3 here.

You assume that Johnny will get bored of you now that you are officially married.

In that slow ride back to the Keep, you imagine that it was all about the chase for him. Catching you as you fled, the snap of teeth at your heels. There is nothing for him to run after now, you were suitably caught, on your back with your soft belly up. The picture of defeat.

You were wrong. If anything, Johnny is hungrier than he was before. The first night that you are back, he barely lets you stumble into his bedroom before he is on you. Discards your dress like it’s a personal offence, saliva slicking your chin with how he kisses with his mouth open against yours.

He doesn’t even let you reach the bed, bucks into you on the floor until he spills into you with a whine that you echo. You protest at the ache in the muscles in your back from being on the stone floor.

He makes it up to you, lifts you onto the bed and seals his mouth over your cunt until you howl.

It’s relentless, you watch him constantly out of the corner of your eye, waiting for the moment that he loses interest, when he decides that you bore him.

It doesn’t come, you aren’t running but he’s still nipping at your heels. Pulling you back into him so he can grind his erection into your backside in the corridor. Tugging you into alcoves so that he can hitch your skirts up and wrap your legs around his waist.

You think he is trying to eat you alive. His hands are always just too tight, clenching around any give in your flesh. His tongue in your mouth, all the way to the back of your throat while he groans, vile and titillating.

It’s dizzying, leaves you on edge before he pushes you over it and you let him.

You seem to fascinate him, more so now than you did before. You wake up in the morning and find him studying the strangest parts of you. His chin on the curve of your belly, smoothing his thumb over where the skin of your breast disappears into the skin of your side. Other times it’s the slide of his hand up your throat, tilting your head back until his thumb frames the curve of your chin into your throat. A delicate hollow of flesh, the heel of his hand digging in as if to make it wider.

He frightens you, but you’ve also never experienced being under someone’s attention like this. You bask in his affection at times, flattered at his open adoration of you. Then you shy away later, when his attention is too much, a sun that burns you and leaves you red and raw. It doesn’t seem to matter either way, there isn’t far that you can get with Johnny following you there.

“I’m gettin’ a ring forged fer you, later,” Johnny announces, popping up in the doorway to the kitchen and spooking you. By the grin on his face, you suspect that was his intention.

“A ring?” you query, giving him an irritated look before you look away again, pulling more linen into your basket.

“We’ve been married fer a few weeks, but we have nothin’ to show fer it,” Johnny continues. He slides his arms around you, tugging you back into him. You are swallowed up in the breadth of him, thick forearms crossing over your stomach.

You hum in response, continuing to sort the dirty linens to wash. Most of them were the sheets from Johnny’s room, which is why you insisted on washing them yourself.

You hadn’t thought much of the physical show of your marriage. Johnny’s father had accepted Mrs Duncan’s nephew as a witness, and the two of you had shared a room since. You were referred to as Mrs Mactavish, something that you forgot to respond to half of the time. In your village there was the exchanging of rings, but that was usually if a family had a family ring that had been passed down, or could afford a strip of metal to mould into a ring. It wasn’t something that you had thought much about.

“Dae y’want a ring?” Johnny asks, suddenly quiet. His head next to yours as he watches your hands, temple to temple. You feel the inhale of his chest against your back and mimic it, subconsciously.

“I hadn’t thought about it, honestly,” you answer, hands hovering in the air, pulled to a stop. You were used to Johnny being brash, pulling you to where he wanted you to be. His sudden moments of contemplation always left you uncertain. He had never raised his hands to you, but looking down at the thick of the back of his hand reminded you of the violence that he enacted when he wanted to. “My mother had a ring, but my father buried her with it, so I barely remember it.”

Johnny smoothes his hand up your side, warm even though your stays and your shift. You turn your head and see a slight frown on his face, his eyes faraway, but he blinks, focuses on you. “Hello,” he murmurs, his arms squeezing you, making you wheeze slightly, which makes him smile. He turns you around, still not allowing for any room between the two of you. Picks your left hand up and frowns at your bare skin.

You stay silent, studying him in return. He shaved just after your wedding, after you complained too much about the burn on your thighs, but it was growing out again. The hair peeking out of the collar of his white shirt seems darker as well. You had pointed it out once, delirious after he had worn you out. “Makin’ a man oot of me, angel,” he had responded, grinning as he pulled you closer to him.

You tilt your hand into his, linking your fingers between his own. Your movement is clumsy, unpractised, but it knocks the frown off of his face anyway. “Hello,” he repeats, knocks his nose against yours, fingers squeezing yours.

“I need to wash these sheets,” you say, which he barely seems to notice. “I was going to go down to the stream.” You know that he will take it as an invitation, in the way that he does with all of the closed statements that you say.

“I’ll come wae y’,” he answers, kissing a wet trail down to your neck, sucks a little at your pulse point which has you jumping. He laughs, a buzz in the column of your neck. Everything you do amuses him, like you are a puppy that is trying to bark at him but can only yip.

“I need to go now,” you say, unlacing your hands but not getting far before he catches your wrists and wrestles them to the table behind you.

“I’ll be quick,” he answers again, licking at your collarbone before he drops to his knees and hikes your skirts up.

“Johnny,” you hiss, kicking him in the shoulder and only get that same laugh pressed into the curve of your knee. “You can’t do this in the kitchen.” You try to wriggle away, but he has you pinned to the table, hands shoved up to catch your hips and press you back.

“Sure ah can,” he responds, his words muffled beneath your skirts. You try to shove him off and you get a bite on your thigh that makes you squeak. “Keep still and let me get my fill.”

You shudder, staring anxiously at the door as Johnny pushes aside your shift and coos at the sight between your legs. “Johnny -”

“She’s achin’ fer me, angel, just look at this,” Johnny murmurs, voice muffled beneath your skirts. You see the lump shift, almost frown at how silly this must look before your knees buckle as he presses his mouth against you.

His hands are there, tight on the back of your thighs, hoists you up so he can pull himself in deeper. It’s vile, his mouth wide open against you. Saliva slicks until it drips, but he doesn't seem to care.

He kisses your cunt like it's a mouth, laves his tongue up until he sucks. It’s not the first time that he’s done this, but usually you can see him while he does. Make sense of what he’s doing through sight if not touch. You feel jumpy, legs kicking like a startled rabbit. His teeth make you gasp before they are gone, replaced by the loving slide of his tongue.

“Johnny, I can’t,” you whimper, arms shaking as you cling to the counter that you are leaning against. He pulls one of your legs over his shoulders and you feel split. A tear that Johnny wrenches his fingers into, always so greedy when it comes to you.

He doesn’t seem to hear you, or more likely chooses not to hear. He hums, sucks a kiss against the top of your sex that has you trembling. He leaves one hand on the back of your standing leg, but uses the other to slide a finger inside of you. You hear the groan he lets out as your flesh parts for him, feel ashamed as you also hear the wet noise that comes from you even through the fabric.

It’s messy, his tongue pressing around the split of your cunt around his fingers, like he’s trying to cram his mouth in there as well. You turn your head to the door, praying that no one comes in, or worse, that someone can hear the way that you're whining - worse than Johnny is.

Sickness blooms in your stomach until it takes, a split that becomes a cavern. One of your hand drops from the counter to the lump that you think is Johnny’s hand. You hold him there as you cry out, hips bucking out. You sob as he keeps going, fingers relentless even as your flesh wrings out everything that you have to give.

You collapse back, chest heaving. Johnny doesn’t move, and you think he would keep going if you didn’t thump the back of your foot on his back to get him to stop.

He pulls your skirts out of the way, and stands up, grinning at you. His stubble is wet and you would flush with embarrassment about how unabashed he is about it. He grins, hunches over you as he takes in your sweaty face.

“Go wash your mouth out,” you mutter, cringing as he pushes his nose into your cheek and you feel his skin stick to yours for a moment.

He snorts, his hand cupping your chin as he drags you up to meet his mouth. It’s a perverted rush that slinks up your spine as he kisses you the same way that he kissed you between your legs.

He seems content enough, with his tongue in your mouth. Forced relaxation upon you, muscles un-knotted enough to let him smooth his hands up and down your spine.

You jolt, caught again, as grinds his cock against your hip. Your mouths separate with a wet noise as you rear back. He grins down at you, unrelenting. “Cannae blame a man for this, not with those pretty noises that y’were just singing fer me, angel.”

“Johnny, I should really clean these sheets,” you start, trying to lean back.

You’ve misstepped, you know it in the way he suddenly frowns. Not in the usual way he might, before he purses your mouth with his hand and coos at how sweet you look. Irritation is a dark mask that cracks across his face, leaving him scowling.

“Oh, ah see,” he says, towering over you. “Yer allowed to use yer husband as y’wish, but God forbid he ask anythin’ in return fae his wife.”

“I never asked you to -”

“But you were happy enough tae take it, weren’t y’?” he snaps. The blunt edge of his teeth hides the pink of his tongue. Hard to imagine that the same mouth was pressed against the tender spot between your legs moments ago.

He’s working himself up, angry like a bull. You picture standing your ground, fantasize about spitting in his face.

You wouldn’t. You don’t. His hand is guiding on your shoulder and you kneel in front of an angry god.

-

You get your ring later, sat atop a wide stretch of fabric of the same red that his plaid is made with. An arasid, in your husband’s colours.

The ring is barely on your finger before Johnny pins you down and huffs like a beast, his eyes on your hand when he comes inside you.

-

Johnny doesn’t let you hide within yourself for long. There is a retreat in a recess of your mind, where you can let him pull you around as he wants, a haggard doll that he is a little too rough with most of the time. And you rest, separated from it all, aware enough to hum and gasp as he wants you to, but apart, dreaming of open fields and a bed you wake up alone in.

You thought that you had been getting away with it, but Johnny is intent, a bloodhound for every bit of you.

“I love you,” he tells you, his hands cupping your face, thumbs pressed into your temples. He’d been sitting at his desk when you had approached him, asking him if he wanted to come down for dinner. Now, his fingers cradle your skull, wide enough that you think he could separate your head from the rest of your body if he wanted to.

You blink back at him, still. Prey animals know when they are caught, and you’ve been hanging from this wolf’s mouth for a while now to know when his teeth are especially sharp.

“You love me?” he asks, half a question, half a demand. Fingers press into the skin of your scalp, thin like he wants to press into your mind and form the words for you.

“I-” you start, helpless. He inhales as you speak, as if to taste the words as they sit in the air between you. You can’t continue, mouth working silently. You’ve only known this man a month, you think. You will spend the rest of your life with him, if he doesn’t get tired of you. These are already impossible to reconcile before you start to wonder how you feel about it.

He steps closer, presses his forehead against yours. He’s usually unintentionally rough, fingers bruising in his haste to pull you where he wants you to be. Instead he’s slower, his hands soften as they frame your head. Nose rubs against yours, gentle.

“Tell me,” he murmurs, eyes hot on the curve of your mouth. One hand slides down to cup your jaw, as if to aid the forming of the words he wants to hear. “Tell me, please.”

Something trembles inside of you, an ancient ache that you think started up the moment that you saw him. You can’t do it. It is one thing to let him touch you, burn his hands on you until you give in. It is entirely another to lie and let him infect everything about you, even the parts of you that he can’t parse his hands over.

His hand tightens on your jaw, the hinge giving at his grip. You remember those Englishman, his own man that he beat into the ground. All for you, back when he didn’t know you, then when he knew you and you didn’t want him anyway. You don’t love him, you know this. Not the way that you’ve come to know love, steadfast and consistent. Some viscous expression is creeping across his face, the longer that you stare up at him, quiet.

You don’t love him, but he frightens you sometimes, even when he doesn’t mean it. And sometimes when he does, a satisfied glean in his eye after he gets what he wants. A lie, just for you, to cradle like a newborn. “I love you,” you murmur, give it life.

The snarl on his breath gives way to a sigh, and he presses even closer. “I love you,” he says, louder than you did. He says it, over and over again. Your lie is suffocated in the air, strangled in his confession.

You suspect that he knows it’s not true. The same way that his brow smoothes over when he reaches for you and you hesitate for a moment. Flesh stiff and unyielding in his palm as he passes over it. You tell him what he wants to hear and he goes soft, but his eyes look like ice, a tension around them that doesn’t fade even as he smiles at you.

He exhales like relief against your mouth, eyes boring into yours.

You thought that being unchewable would make you discardable. Unwanted, half-digested and ruined. Instead it seems to make Johnny more intent on you, teeth sharp as he digs into you further.

“Say it again,” he demands, sitting back in his chair, his hands wide on your hips. He presses his face into your dress. You don’t understand it, he seems to know that you’re lying, but he wants to hear it anyway.

Either way, it’s easier to admit it to the open air in front of you. Unbidden, your hands cup the back of his neck, feel the way he shudders, fingers flexing. “I love you,” you murmur, voice brittle.

“Ah know,” he responds, tugging you closer until you’re half in his lap. Unbalanced, caught with his desk digging into your back, the rest of your weight on the edge of his knees. Your hands cling to his shoulders, nails biting which makes him grin. “C’mere, angel, ah love you, ah do.”

More intimate to let him vow this to you than it was to stand in that church and have him bind the two of you together.

You let him kiss you and grunt at the graze of his teeth.

He bounces you on his lap, his fingers in your mouth. Right to the back of the throat, as if to touch the words before they even form yet. Takes that from you as well.

-

The journey back home isn’t long. Memory has elongated it into an endless beast, as if it were multiple nights and days. Endless and snapping like something wild.

You’d let the dust settle for just over a month before you approached Johnny with your desire to go home. It sat like an ulcer on your tongue, polluting the air around you. The stinking pull to leave. Johnny always seemed to know, always quick to skip past it, drag your mouth up to his, or hike your skirts up. Anything to push it back until it sat like a lump in your throat.

Finally you’d found the courage to suggest taking the trip back to your village to meet your brother, half-expecting Johnny to decline it outright. After all, your last attempt to go home had involved leaving Johnny behind.

Johnny surprised you, agreeing to go but had snapped his hips in yours sharply afterwards, as if to leave you a reminder of where you belong now.

It ends up only taking a single night that you spend in a village rather than the woods this time. “Nothin’ but the best for my bride,” Johnny grins, teeth pressed to the column of your neck. It is on your mind to point out that when you were unmarried and vulnerable, he’d slept with you on the forest floor and spent himself on the back of your skirts. The idea that he will march you back to the Keep if you anger him is what stills you.

The next morning and you are on the edge of your village, finally recognising some of the hills and the bends of the path.

You murmur to Johnny, telling him stories of the daffodils that you would pick in spring, the cow that you only had for a few years, the dogs that Ian had to keep in check because you were always a little too soft.

It’s likely the most that you have ever said to Johnny, but you feel the need to justify yourself, to justify why you want to be here. Johnny seems largely indifferent, as if you could be going to any village, and you want to start leaving the groundwork for future visits here. You aren’t silly enough to think you could come back permanently, but if it went well enough, you imagined a future where you could come back whenever you could.

You leave Cerberus tied to a tree and walk with Johnny when you reach the edge of your village. The way that you’ve come, by path rather than wildly through the woods, your home is on the opposite side, so you have to pass through the rest of your village before you can reach it.

Everything is as it was the same few houses are still standing in the way that they did before you left. Everything has stayed, even after you have left and came back changed.

There is a post that is used for whipping, standing in what made the rough centre of life here. You remember the man who was tied there for stealing money from some passing Englishmen, how they had painted his back red until he collapsed and they finally untied his hands from the stand.

This treatment was not granted to the man that was tied to the post. He’s been left to rot in the sun for days, weeks likely. The birds have been at him, picked away, most of his flesh gone. Rotted, down to the bone.

You’d know your brother in death, though. The same shock of hair as your own, dangling above what’s left of him.

You stare at him, unable to comprehend what you are seeing. You wait for him to stir, to look up at you and witness your return.

The wind blows and his hair stirs before it stills again.

Johnny murmurs your name, tries to reach out and catch you when you step forward. You dodge his hands, try to dart forward but he catches you around the waist.

You howl, mindlessly trying to force yourself forward again. A woman stops at the sight of you, and you barely recognise her. Animal brain at the forefront, any cognition capable of calm conversation has been buried.

She gives you a sad look, exchanges some words with Johnny that he barely responds to. His hands are full, as you try to scramble forward again. You need the truth beneath your hands. Your sight has failed you, you will only accept that your brother is dead if you can feel his dead flesh beneath your palms.

Johnny tugs you forward, but past the post and up towards your childhood home. You reach a futile hand out, only brush the post. Soaked in blood but dried so it doesn’t even stain, but you imagine it can.

Johnny lets you go when you step foot on your property, as you stop struggling to get back to Ian and instead throw yourself into your cottage.

The door is swung open and you force yourself inside, stopping in the kitchen. You look at everything in here, the cups washed and left off to the side, ready to be used again.

Everything is tainted, all of it is ruined. You had expected to come back and find your brother in here, to let him scold you for running off, feel the moments before those Englishmen dragged you outside and changed you.

You’ve turned back time, but no one is waiting for you here. The house that you grew up in is empty, and you are an intruder in it.

You sit on the chair by the kitchen table and stare down at the floor. There’s blood here, spilled from Johnny’s wound on his calf. You stare at it until your vision blurs and you cry until you feel wrung out.

You sob into the table, barely able to get a breath in. Johnny must come in at some point, because suddenly there are hands smoothing down your arms, trying to tug your hands away from your face. You howl, nails digging into your face. Johnny suddenly yanks your hands down, restrains them by your legs with one hand before he pulls you out of your chair and into his lap.

You let him comfort you, let him tuck your face into his neck and cry there until his shirt is wet with tears. He lets you sit like that for what feels like hours, until you manage to speak, wrung-out and ruined.

“I killed him, it’s my fault,” you croak, not lifting your head from where Johnny cradles you. You don’t deserve any comfort, but you soak it up anyway. Johnny has warped you, made you something greedy.

He shushes you, rocking you back and forth. “That would’ve been you up there, if ye’d stayed,” he tells you. Voice hardening at the end, fingers digging in just a little too much. Angry, at even the idea of it. “Ah couldnae let that happen. No’ tae you.”

A life traded, in a bargain that you didn’t want to make. Here is the knife, here is Johnny’s hand on yours, guiding it down until it sinks into flesh. Who is the one holding the knife?

“My fault,” you murmur, suddenly cognisant. Forehead pressed to Johnny’s pulse point. You are finally telling the truth, but it is stripped of meaning now. Weeks too late, your words no longer have any weight to them. Coming back here is stripped of meaning, a fruitless endeavour that has only left you sick.

Johnny pets his hand over the back of your head, down to the nape of your neck. Hand wide there, swallows up the vulnerable parts of you.

You expect Johnny to start shifting impatiently, maybe stand you up and announce that you have to leave. He doesn’t. He is still beneath you, kneels and holds you to his front. His knees must be sore in this position, you can feel the tension of his thighs beneath yours, but he stays silent. Just pets the back of your skull in his palm, until you feel trance-like, lulled into complacency.

You stir finally and stand up. Johnny follows behind you, a warm wall at your back.

You feel scraped out and empty. Look around the kitchen, unable to reconcile that this was once yours, that you once sat here and ate breakfast. Step outside into the yard, all of the animals gone, likely taken by the English.

Everything is empty and unlivable, but you shouldn’t be surprised. You were the one to leave dead men in the yard, and let their blood pollute everything.

You turn to your right and look at the pitchfork left in the hay. You know it was you that left it there now. Careless, and unthinking.

You walk over, and pull it out. It’s rusted, left out here. This is why Ian was always scolding you to put it back in the shed. The handle is uncomfortable and flaking in your palm but you endure. Walk the few steps it takes to put it back where it belongs, hanging in the bare shed. The rest of the tools that once hung here are gone. Gutted, as well.

You fix it where it used to hang. Futile and yet all you have left to give.

Johnny watches you, face still, except for the slight dip of a frown across the cleft of his brow.

There’s nothing left for you here, now. You leave the rusted pitchfork and walk back over to Johnny. Let him take your hand and smooth his thumb over your ring.

Time folds and presses into each other. This is the same moment as when he first saved you from those Englishmen, everything in between is squished and flattened until it is now. A month is nothing, it was all already decided. Futile to fight the tide that pulls you into his side and presses his face into the crown of your head.

You’ll let Johnny guide you back to Cerberus and you’ll go back to the Keep. You’ll most likely fall pregnant soon, and then you’ll have that child and then the next one after that. Time is nothing, this might have already happened, you can feel it unfolding in front of you now.

Johnny steps back and you echo his movements exactly. You step into the future and force it into the present, shudder with the ache of it.

Both of your feet kick up red dirt. Maybe in the coming seasons it will grow green again, but you won’t be there to witness it.

[webrollus]

grand slams