#i think also because i started rereading treasure island and Words

[heartsings]

we all agree that clearly giles and ethan rayne were like, a thing, right?

[phantomarchive]

A couple years ago, I wrote a starter for a friend who RPed as Nate, and now I’m posting it here. It also functions as just a piece of (hella long) writing, but ultimately takes place during UC4 under the assumption that Elena doesn’t go back for Nate, but is still concerned about him, so Sully gets in touch with Chloe to see if she’ll go find him and make sure his dumbass is safe. We’d had a whole plot planned, but alas.

Anyway, writing under the cut!

Victor is damn lucky he catches Chloe when he does.

His call comes late in the afternoon, after she’s been passed out for hours after a too-long flight home. The job in Kagoshima was quick, nothing to get too excited over, in and out within four days and hardly even a scrape to her knuckles. Easy. She loves the job, though, regardless of how short it is, of how little danger there is, of minimal risk and moderate reward, but still it feels good to be back in a warm bed, in a temperature controlled apartment, with locks on the door and eight floors of residents below her to act as a buffer between her flat and anyone potentially trying to reach her. The thrill of the adventure can still, at times, be outweighed by the comforts of home. Of familiarity. Of the quiet hum of the air conditioner soothing her ears after days of near perpetual gunfire when things go bad (and so often do they go bad; it’s almost not enjoyable if they don’t, to a degree).

She can’t sleep on flights, though, never could, and when she finally landed back in Key West after three layovers and too many in-flight movies, her eyes too heavy to even read her notes anymore, she managed to wrangle a taxi ride home, barely making it out of her jeans and onto her bed before sleep won and she slipped into a series of meaningless dreams for a solid eleven hours. It isn’t unusual for her to crash so hard after a job, but it’s the flight that really took it out of her this time. For the amount of trans-oceanic flights she takes, she thinks she should be used to all of this by now, might know how to relax and shut down on a flight - and yet here she is, pushing her mid-thirties, more than half her life spent in the business, and still unable to to do more on a plane than close her eyes and slow her breathing and try to imagine the thrum of the engine is her air conditioner at home, but to no avail. Frustrating, but it’s why she plans a few extra hours on either side of her trips for the red-eyes and long flights.

She hadn’t planned anything after this job. Maybe a couple weeks off to let her aches recover, to start working on selling some relics from recent jobs, maybe start poking around for her next one. So when she’s woken up by her cell phone vibrating near violently beside her pillow, Victor’s name illuminated through the spiderweb of cracks in the screen, she knows it’s one of two things: an invite to drinks, or something with Nate. Both of which end up being time consuming, and he’s lucky he caught her now.

Her mouth is thick with sleep, and she has to clear her throat a few times before she can clear the hoarseness from her voice, but even then she still sounds tired.

“Victor?” She tries to sound alert, or at least more so than she actually is, pushes herself onto her elbows to clear her head, blinking sleep from her eyes. But it isn’t anything she does that has her mind snapping to attention and her heart pounding so hard it might break through her ribcage. It’s what he tells her. It’s Nate, because of course it is. It’s been a long time since this brand of call has come through to her, but she can’t say she hasn’t been expecting something like it eventually.

She can still remember the last time she’d visited the Drake household, the look on his face when she mentioned where she was headed next - Uruguay, at the time, to look into the credibility of La Luz Mala. The way his eyes widened slightly, brightened, and she could damn near see the wheels turning in his head as he already tried to figure it all out, where he’d start, what clues would fit, historical facts and tidbits they had once spent countless days and nights poring over together - and how those wheels slid to a sharp stop when he forced himself to change the subject. He can’t follow that train of thought. He has a wife and a house and a relatively normal job. He’s left the life of fortune hunting behind in favor of the normalcy he didn’t get growing up. It broke her heart to see the light dim when he moved on to other topics and pushed a smile into place. He’s happy, but he’s also not, and the lure of adventure is a tempting mistress they’ve both spent their lives giving in to the siren song of.

He resisted, but she knows how goddamn easy it is to go back.

“You mean…even more stupid than usual?” A pause as she listens, and she forces herself into a sitting position, dragging her hand over her eyes, down her face, back through her hair. She tries to play it off like a minor annoyance, but the truth is, she knows the recklessness that can come with spending time away, and she’s terrified for him. Keeping herself under control is easy, even in the vulnerability of the aftermath of sleep, but she feels the rising panic make her chest ache. Her only audible sign of it is the sigh she gives, heavier than she’d intended and carrying more worry than she could put words to.

“Of course, Victor,” she says, pulling a pen and whatever scrap of paper she has towards her to take down the notes. Coordinates, last known location, where he’s headed, the destination itself - Avery’s treasure? She damn near scoffs into the phone. Son of a bitch went looking for it without her. Another sigh. “Yeah, I’ll go drag both Drake asses home.” The phone balances between her cheek and shoulder, tongue pressing against the flats of her teeth as she scribbles notes to herself. She falls silent for long seconds, rereading everything, ensuring she has it all before speaking again.

“I’ll leave as soon as I can catch a flight out.” Another short pause. “Love you, too, Victor.” She pauses, then lets the phone drop to the bed, hearing the audible beep of the call disconnecting.

And then she lets herself feel everything she tried not to on the call.

Fingers tremble only slightly as she books the flight, paying extra to land in a small, out of the way airport that’s closer to the island Nate’s headed to, and good god, what has he gotten himself into? She knows Sam’s at fault here, no one else it could be, but that’s a strange recent history of prison visits and delivering rare books on pirating to him behind the corrupt backs of bribed guards (and learning about him was something else entirely, a series of six-degrees-of-separation connections that led her to him, and fucking hell, Nate, a brother?). She’d thought Sam was just bored, but apparently he’d been serious about the lost treasure. She should’ve been more suspicious of the calls he made to her in the middle of the night, his attempt at casual still sounding panicked, but she’s had a little too much on her own plate to worry much about his.

And now it involves Nate. (And Avery’s lost treasure, christ. She’ll find time to be more annoyed about that later.)

It takes less than hour for her to pack a spare change of clothes and basic toiletries into a travel bag and get to the airport. Waiting for the flight only adds to the stress itching her skin, and it’s sheer willpower that keeps her from pacing in the terminal until it’s time to board. She sits instead in a chair at the end of a row of chairs, fingers pulling at a loose thread in the hem of her shirt while she holds a compilation of what notes she has about Avery in her other hand. Brushing up on her knowledge of the man barely holds her attention, her eyes steadfastly focused on the pages though her mind is far from rapt, focused instead on Nate and what the hell he’s doing. It’s been a good while since she’s seen him, and she’ll be damned if the next time she sees him is dead, not unless it’s both of them dead together. (A stupid promise made five beers deep in the middle of the night when humidity wasn’t the only thing keeping them warm. A stupid promise, but a promise anyway, right?)

At this point, it’s become routine to suppress her feelings, move on and not acknowledge them anymore. Years of pretend and fake smiles until it was too much to bear and avoidance became her best ally, and even that gave way to caving in and seeing the entire crew again. They’re her friends, dammit, and she can���t lay claim to many of those. So she pushes it aside. A semblance of ‘moving on’ she’s never quite reached. And it’s things like this that bring it all back to the surface. Chloe doesn’t get these calls when it’s a simple fix, or when Nate is in just a spot of trouble. She gets these calls when it’s gotten bad, and even if getting bad is fun, there’s a line that even she doesn’t want crossed, and she can’t help but feel that this is one of those lines Nate’s leapt across with both feet.

Her hand abandons the loose thread and instead her thumbnail fits between her teeth, brows pulled in, eyes not even comprehending the words on the page, and fucking hell, is the plane leaving yet?

It takes too long, too long, before the flight starts boarding, and she should’ve taken Victor up on his offer to fly her there, but she’s here now and waiting in line is frustrating, and she has to remind herself not to clench her teeth and to take deep breaths to stay calm. She has a several-hour-long flight ahead of her, and she’s really only thankful that she slept as much as she did beforehand. Not that she’d take any rest after she lands, not with everything that’s waiting at the other end of this all, but at least she won’t be dealing with tired eyes and the irritation that sets in when she’s awake for too long. Small mercies.

She finds some sort of solace in steady breathing and the knowledge that she’s on her way, she’ll be there to help him soon. He’ll be with her, where she can know he’s safe. It’s a small comfort, but it allows her mind to settle as she finally gets to her seat and waits for the plane to take off.

———-

If nothing else, on landing, she’s learned more about Henry Avery and his connections than she knew going into all of this. Her resources were limited on the plane, but she’d packed her phone with anything she could download on the taxi ride to the airport, and even the unreliable sources had some entertainment value, even if they were incredibly inaccurate. Part of her would eventually find it suitable to be annoyed that he’d figured so much out already, that the connections were made without her, but that can wait. A storm is brewing and the little plane she switches to is barely fighting against the growing winds. He gets her as close as possible, but the landing isn’t as soft as she’d like, and somehow she thinks it’s drier in the ocean she landed in than in the rain insisting these islands join Atlantis.

“Dammit, Nate,” she sputters as she pulls herself ashore, barely, the water pulling at her boots and jackets as if reluctant to let go of her. The travel bag secured around her is waterproof, but she’s sure everything inside will be drenched when she checks. Of all places, of all times, the storm hits now.

“You better be alive.” He has to be. He’s survived a hell of a lot of shit until now, there’s no chance a mountain and a storm could take him from her. (From them, she corrects herself.) It’s a promise she repeats to herself as she starts the trek through wet grass and mud until she has to start climbing. The rocks are slick, and he’s definitely alive. Her hand slips a few times and she has to take it slowly, carefully, and he has to be alive.

The path isn’t easy to see, but she knows his style well enough to feel confident in the path she’s taking. They make sense, even when the ledges are small. Nathan Drake may not always take the easiest routes, but he takes the ones that make sense, and she can see the handholds he would take as if he were pointing them out to her himself. It’s a slow process and the storm refuses to let up. In fact, she’s positive it’s gotten worse, though how to tell through sheets of rain so thick she can barely see her outstretched hand, she isn’t sure. It doesn’t show signs of letting up, though, and it drives her to move just a touch faster. Careful. But faster.

How long has he been here? Has he been wandering through the storm at the same time as she has? How much of a head start has he had? Is Sam impatiently trying to make him go faster, or are they taking it slow together? Concern buries itself in her mind, and she presses on. Mud and rain and battered knuckles and bruised knees, and it’d be like old times if Nate was here with her and they eventually took refuge from the storm in one of these small caves, bandaging up wounds as best they could while resting weary limbs.

He’d better be alive, dammit.

She loses sense of time as she moves determinedly forward, one hand in front of the other, boots securely in place before shifting weight. Her arms and stomach ache, legs are exhausted, and it’s been a while since she’s gone long enough to wear her down like this. Nothing could have prepared her for this, and for long moments, she clings to her handholds, fingers numb and bruised, legs shaking, and she clenches her teeth to keep herself strong. She’s so tired, though. Surely Nate would’ve called things to a halt soon, right? Had she missed him? The wall ahead looks broken, and she’s eyeing for a path across - and she sees him. Below. Unconscious and on his back, and that’s a hell of a ways to fall. The panic she’d manage to suppress earlier rises in her chest again, heart hammering and hands trembling, and she lowers herself as carefully as she can to where he is.

“I swear to god, Nate, if you’re dead…” She leaves the threat open-ended, fights back the stinging in her eyes, and has to drop the last six feet down to get to him, the bend in her knees making the fall easier, but there’s no waste of time in rushing to his side. One hand above his mouth, the other pressing two fingers against his neck and pausing, waiting, feeling for any sign of life-

And there, a slow heartbeat, strong beneath her fingertips. He’s alive, he’s alright, and she lets out a laugh, leaning her forehead against his chest as relief sweeps through her. “Bloody hell, you asshole,” she breathes, taking only a few moments to gather herself. He’s alive, but he’s also freezing and in direct path of the rain. He isn’t a light man, years of muscle compounded on that frame of his, but she hooks her arms beneath his, lifts, and drags him into a dry section of the cave, beneath an overhang. No way to make a fire, but that’s why she wore the bigger jacket over her own. It’s wet, but he’ll warm it up. She drapes it over him and sits close, pulling her arms into her own jacket and tucking the sleeves into the pockets to keep cold air from getting in, and she settles in for however long it takes for him to wake up.

“Remember that time in Colombia?” she asks softly, her voice barely carrying over the rain. Not that he can hear her anyway, but that isn’t the point. Maybe the point is to keep herself calm while he rests, to keep the concern from working its way deeper in case he doesn’t wake up. “It didn’t rain this much, but it sure could give this place a run for its money.” A pause and a sigh, and she tucks her mouth and nose into the neck of the jacket.

They’d taken refuge in a cave there, too. Ground level, entry hidden by plants, rain so thick they probably wouldn’t have needed the plants to keep them out of sight of the small group of mercs hunting them. It’d been dark tucked in the back corner of the little cave, the sky almost as dark outside. They’d sat side by side, legs and arms touching, heads leaned against each other. The sound of her breathing a steady rhythm to the quiet story he told her. The warm press of his lips to her temple, to the the curve of her cheekbone, to the smile that so easily crossed her face when she was with him. It’d been different then, the feel of his hand in the curve of her waist familiar and comfortable, and did it still feel the same now?

Stupid, Chloe, she thinks with a deep sigh. She tucks her face a little deeper into her jacket, but keeps her eyes on him. “Don’t die on me,” she demands of him, determines she’ll be pissed if he does.

———-

The rain eventually stops its attempt at flooding the entire island, and she puts her arms back through her sleeves and stands, stretching the stiffness from her legs and walking around a bit. The sky is starting to clear up, still not visible, but also not deep grey, either, and she squints slightly as she looks up at the sky through the hole Nate fell into. Where the hell is Sam? In her worry for Nate, she forgot that Sam was supposed to be with him. Had he left him behind? Chloe barely knows the man, isn’t sure what kind of person he is. Would he abandon his brother in the middle of a storm in search of Avery’s gold? Chloe could have her moments of abrasiveness, but to be that cruel? If that’s the case, Sam had better hope Chloe doesn’t catch up with him, or there’ll be a different sort of hell to pay.

She’s starting to muse over how serious she is on that threat, when she hears movement behind her. Turning, she watches as Nate slowly pushes himself up, grunting through the aches from the fall, waiting for his eyes to land on her. Gives him a friendly smirk when they finally do. “Morning, love,” she says as she moves the six steps it takes to get to him, and now that she knows he’s alive, that he wasn’t injured so badly he wouldn’t make it out of this cave, she can’t help but to let her mild bit of annoyance at what he was even doing here in the first place seep in.

“You know, if you wanted to get yourself killed while looking for Henry Avery’s lost treasure, you could have at least called me beforehand.”

[damagedspinach]

“Imaginary Friends” Preview Chapter 2

CHAPTER TWO

Adrian’s World

September 4th, 1999

On that same day, before the two boys met, Adrian Carter was sitting in the front of his dad’s car, running his hand back and forth across the window, increasingly bored and in desperate need of a stretch. To compensate for the long drive, his dad had let him pick the music, but eventually switched to NPR when he could no longer take listening to Smash Mouth’s “Astro Lounge” for the collective 48th time. With his one silver lining revoked, Adrian took it upon himself to count every cow they passed, as this was both mildly entertaining and clearly something the world needed. By late afternoon, when they’d arrived at the old farmhouse Mr. Carter had purchased, he’d counted at least seventeen, but might’ve missed a few while he was rolling his head back in sheer road trip agony. Adrian was all too eager to step out of the car and race around in the fresh air, but before he could get too far, his dad grabbed him around the waist and propped him up on his shoulders.

“Are you excited?” Mr. Carter said. “This is our new house!”

He gestured to the vast farmhouse in front of them. It was tall and decaying in some areas, but mostly alright, and had a wide front porch protected by a glass screen. With no fence, Adrian could spot a large barren tree in the backyard, as well as a peeling white barn just north of that. Past the barn was a forest with a wheat field to its right. Adrian couldn’t think of the words to answer his dad, so he just responded with, “It’s old.”

“That’s why we’re gonna fix it up!” Mr. Carter set his son down. “Why don’t we take a little break and eat something before we unpack the essentials?”

“I want pastrami.”

“We have turkey.”

“Bleh.”

“Oh, come on, you like turkey. That’s all you used to eat.”

“But now I don’t like it.”

“My finnicky son. What your mother would’ve thought of you, I’d like to know. Okay, here’s my compromise: you eat the turkey now and I’ll take us out for dinner later. Deal?”

“Burger King.”

“Burger King again? But we’ve eaten at Burger King twice in the past two days!”

“I’ll eat the turkey if we go to Burger King.”

“Fine. Shake on it.”

Mr. Carter rubbed his palm across his cheek before extending his hand to his son. Adrian did the same and shook it. This was the Carters’ alternative to spitting on their hands to make a deal. Once that was settled, they both gave huge stretches and ate the turkey sandwiches from the cooler in the backseat. Both father and son sitting atop their white Ford Taurus, Adrian thought he saw something rustle in the wheat field but figured it might just be his overactive imagination at play again. Of course, we know who exactly was in that wheat field, but in his five-year-old brain, Adrian wagered that it could also have been a ghost or a spirit haunting the land. And while most children would be frightened stiff by that notion, Adrian Carter was not.

As he was helping his dad by dragging the sleeping bags across their leafy lawn, Adrian spotted the figure again, this time exiting from the back of the house—though his vision was partially obscured by the sleeping bags drooping over his right eye. He put both beddings on the porch and ventured off to find the ghost and befriend it. As soon as he did so, however, his dad appeared and redirected him back to the car to finish unloading what he could. Once that was over, Adrian jumped right back into his original goal and wandered away to the wheat field. He stepped carefully forward, thinking of what one might say to a ghost to make sure it didn’t vanish upon initial interaction, hoping that it was a friendly spirit and not an evil one. Imagine his surprise when, instead of a ghost, Adrian ran into a small ginger-haired boy rummaging around in the dirt. Their eyes connected, and Adrian could see his pupils were a strange shade of crimson. This was not at all what he’d prepared for—yet, in a way, he’d ended up with what he wanted all the same.

#

March 28th, 2010

Easton was the first to fall asleep, as he usually did when the rain started to weather down on the rooftop. He was so peaceful-looking curled up in his bed that Adrian couldn’t help but stare at him from his own. Adrian did this sometimes when he couldn’t sleep: just laid down and memorize the freckles of his best friend’s face from across the room. When he’d first started doing it back in middle school it felt sort of creepy, but that feeling had long since passed and a passive contentment had settled in its place. In his dreams—more frequently than he’d like to admit—he would be laying in Easton’s bed instead of his own, nuzzling him from under the covers, their bodies pressed together as he wrapped his arms around his friend while they breathed to the rhythm of the rain.

But these were the dreams Adrian would wake from with tears down his cheeks, for even unconsciously he knew that fate’s cruel hand would never allow such a treasure. He’d wipe the despondency from his eyes, smile wide, and meet his best friend at the bus stop where the bus would come and pick Easton up first, then Adrian a minute later. He’d go to school, do the ear scratch that signified waving to each other in the hallway between classes, kick around the soccer ball afterschool during practice, then walk home and meet Easton at their usual spot in the tree. Easton would read to him a passage from whichever book he was currently reading (or rereading) while Adrian would challenge his friend to whatever game he’d come up with during study hall. Or sometimes they would just play Name That Tune.

That was a typically uneventful day for Adrian. Or at least it had been. Right now, he was feeling a small distance from his best friend, who’d been acting a bit more emotional lately. But as he stared at his fifteen-year-old roommate who turned away from him towards the window, illuminated by the occasional bolt of lightning, Adrian couldn’t help but feel a bit empty. How could he be filled with such joy and such erosion at the same time? This, dear friend, was because life, despite common misconceptions, is not all or nothing: it is all and nothing. Adrian loved Easton with all his heart, but nothing would change the fact that they were on two separate islands, each barely visible from across an ocean, seeming only a mirage to the other. And unfortunately, my friend, asking for help was a futile task, as life will continue to be unswayed towards the feelings of those in longing.

#

September 4th, 1999

A few moments after Easton had left for dinner at whatever nearby house he lived at, Adrian heard his dad hollering. He walked out of the wheat field to find Mr. Carter frantically jogging around the estate, looking for him. When they spotted each other, Mr. Carter ran over to him and clutched him to his chest. Adrian could feel his dad’s heart beating fast against his right ear.

“Oh, you scared me, son!” Mr. Carter broke away from Adrian. “I’ve been calling you for thirty minutes.”

“I didn’t hear you,” Adrian replied, which was true.

“Where were you?”

“I was playing with my new friend.”

“New friend?”

“Yeah, Easton. He lives ‘round here.”

“Huh. That’s strange. I haven’t seen a house for miles. But be that as it may, you can’t go wandering off just yet. I’m not comfortable with you being out of my sight for right now.”

“Okay. I’m sorry…”

“Well, there’s no use dwelling on it. Once I’ve surveyed the area, I’ll let you know where I think it’s safe for you to play, alright? In the meantime, it’s starting to rain, so let’s go inside and unpack those clothes!”

“What about my bed?”

“Uncle Jesse’s bringing it by tomorrow with the rest of our stuff. Don’t you want to explore your new home? I’ll show you your room!”

Adrian nodded, and they headed into the house through the backdoor, which was unlocked. As soon as they entered the bare kitchen, the five-year-old started looking around with curious eyes. The inside was much like the outside, yet it held a certain charm to it. It was cozy and contained, if not incredibly spacious. It wasn’t particularly clean though and, as Adrian stepped forward, he left a trail of footsteps in the dust. Mr. Carter took notice of him looking back at them and said, “Don’t you worry. I’ll be doing some tidying up tonight.”

“Where’s my room?” Adrian asked.

“Come on, I’ll show you.”

Mr. Carter led him upstairs to the fourth door at the end of the hall. Opening it, Adrian walked inside and saw that his room was fairly large, even for adult standards. The grey curtains on the windows, like the rest of the house, were drawn, but he could hear the rain starting to thump against the glass. He opened them and peered outside to find a slightly blurred view of the leaf-stripped tree in the backyard. He turned around and looked at his dad.

“I like it!” He smiled. “Can we get Burger King now?”

“Alright…” Mr. Carter sighed. “Let’s go.”

Due to the moving boxes and other things blocking the front door, the Carters left the way they came in. The storm had taken no time at all in becoming unruly, so they had to race to the car while unavoidably getting soaked. Young Adrian laughed as he did so. Once they were buckled up and safe from the downpour, Mr. Carter revved the engine and backed out of the muddy gravel driveway and onto the main road. They had to drive all the way out to Altus to order from the closest Burger King and consumed everything within the seven minutes it took to get home. The rain showed no sign of letting up, so Adrian and his dad, again, sprinted for the backdoor, tracking in mud from the bottoms of their shoes.

“Let me find a towel for you to dry off,” Mr. Carter said, and went into the living room. He returned with a folded towel and a change of clothes for his son, who promptly made use of them. While he was doing so, out of the corner of his eye, Adrian spotted another figure scampering upstairs. Perhaps it really was a ghost this time! He left his dad, who was still drying off, and tiptoed towards it, excited at the prospect of finally meeting an otherworldly being. But when he arrived at the second-floor hallway, he found his surroundings wholly empty.

Adrian walked into his room, disappointed again by the results until he looked down. On the floor, staring at him with the same red hue in its eyes as Easton had, was a pearly white cat with a mess of fur grooming itself. This development delighted Adrian. Where had this cat come from? Was this old farmhouse its home? If that was the case, he certainly couldn’t send it out into the rain. Evicting it from the place it already resided simply because they’d moved in was a cruel notion, even if it was the American way. Adrian resolved to care for the poor thing right then and there, slowly sitting down as not to frighten it. The cat, however, seemed unaffected by his presence and continued cleaning its fur.

“Here kitty,” said the young boy. “Come here.”

At this, the cat looked up at him and gave him a hard stare. It was almost as if he was seeing straight through Adrian to something behind him, but Adrian knew there was nothing there. (Unless his dad had come up, but he hadn’t heard any creaks in the floorboards.) Then, quite unexpectedly, the cat darted from its place on the dusty floor and sped past Adrian with the force of a bullet. This caused the young boy to spin around and immediately look up at the person standing in front of him. It was the boy he’d met in the wheat field, Easton.

“What are you doing in my room?” they said together.

For a moment the two kids could only stare at each other. Then, without a word, Easton ran off. He returned moments later, his hand outstretched as he seemed to be dragging something invisible alongside him. Adrian stood up as Easton threw his other arm out and glanced expectedly at the empty space beside him.

“Huh?” said the boy. “But he’s right there!”

Adrian tilted his head, mystified. “Who’re you talking to?”

Easton turned to him. “My brother!” Then he turned back to the empty space. “He’s not imaginary! Touch him!” The red-haired boy grabbed at something in a sort of pantomime, and moved it towards Adrian, stopping when his hand was only a fist’s length away. His eyes went wide. “What…?” Suddenly, Easton let go of what he’d been holding and shoved has hand into Adrian’s chest. His fingers stuck through to the other side. Both boys jumped back, startled by this development.

Adrian’s face lit up giddily. “Cool!”

Easton on the other hand looked frightened for his life and ran off again. Confused, but utterly enthralled by this strange wonderment, Adrian just stood there, smiling, as he didn’t know what else to do. After all this time of imagining something greater, he finally had the unexplainable to indulge in. It was a good thing too, as if he hadn’t had that mindset, the two might never have found the secret to this bizarre happening.

“Dad!” Young Adrian cried, misinterpreting things. “I just met a ghost!”

But of course, we both know that things were not that simple and couldn’t be fully rationalized by two five-year-old brains. For the best of mysteries take years to wind up and a lifetime to unravel. And for Adrian and Easton, a lifetime it would take.

Author: @besttardywrites (Best Tardy)

[autisticthatthouknowestthine]

🔥 BLACK SAILS

unpopular opinions for black sails:i thought that the eleanor and madi sisters thing was a bit hackneyed. while i believe eleanor might have remembered madi as a sister, siblinghood is, statuswise, a peer group, and, as mr scott's interactions with the guthries revealed, he, quite reasonably, was very aware of the fact that he and his family were enslaved. especially with the strong sense of self madi has and how clever she is, i think she would have picked up on that. i want eleanor to have had to face the music on being a slaveholder, i want eleanor to have had conversations with the maroon queen, i want flint to have had to come face to face with the person he had allied himself with for years had been a slaver, and that he'd been okay with it. i want that to have taken a chunk out of his credibility. i want his credibility to have been reliably in doubt.obviously, i think the ending is bullshit. black sails already positioned itself as an alternate history, and imo, having the show end with flint stripped of his agency and imprisoned with the person who taught him so desperately to value freedom seems a little cruel? i think that john silver became irredeemable as soon as it became clear that he had information about thomas that he was keeping from james, and i think that the show should have ponied the fuck up and let flint's war happen. they don't have to show the war, in fact i think the genre of the show *precludes* the seasons of war. but maybe show an epilogue. a rereading of treasure island that permits for the happiness of all its characters.i think the showrunners robbed the show by cutting down rupert penry-jones's scenes down to what they were. he said he has a *much* larger role in the original drafts of the show, but after the reveal of flinthamilton the showrunners panicked at the homophobic viewers' responses. thomas hamilton was such a fun character and his relationship with james mcgraw was so good. so many of their scenes were mediated by miranda hamilton though, perhaps because, as we see through the film, james can't speak of thomas. the past is a block in his throat, and that inaccessibility of of the love in his past is as much a source of his rage as anything else. the inability to speak about what he lost is one of the most tragic aspects of james's character, and what makes the lack of dialogue in his reuniting with thomas so *so* good. i think max should have told flint that she thought silver knew something, told him about the orglethorpe plantation, that silver's treachery and the fact that he was holding it over flint's head should have been blasted wide open and it should have left him exposed. it shuld have robbed him of madi's support, of flint's, of max's and through her, rackham and vane's. the last season being the trial of john silver would have been so much more poignant than whatever the hell it was.miranda should have been a wlw, and we should have seen some of her life in london independent from james and thomas. it's only fair if she was to be a character independent from them, and if they were to be characters independent from her. as it is, it's an interconnected, knotted mess, with miranda as the one steering the recollections. james only takes the helm during the silent montage where we see him happy because, as we saw, james's apocalyptic rage blots out any sound further back. the only times he's steering are during his introduction to thomas hamilton, when he takes thomas to a hanging, "i want you to talk me out of it", and "i'm going to get him out of there", and even then, throughout the flashbacks, it's miranda's narrative voice that emerges through it. she is the one dictating flint's life back to him at all the wrong slant and flint, as a man who has devoted his *life* to the pursuit of something approaching justice, deserved better than to have the death of the love of his life narrated to him by the woman who reads *richard guthrie* from the book that thomas left for him. miranda's words overwrite thomas's in every space, and i think that's a terrifically unfair narrative device to foist on either of them. thomas deserved his own part, miranda deserved better than to be his living obituary, and james deserved better than to be caught in a future where he cant even speak his own past. and the *one time he does* it's to a man who goes on to imply his earnestness has caused his own suffering, and then conceal the alleviation of that pain as a way to ensure his survival and escape from the riptide *he chose* to step into.i'm so fucking angry about this show. also like, with the role miranda plays, why are the only nightmares of james's that we're shown about her? the plot warps around miranda because it doesn't want to let james steer the gay love story into what it could have been. miranda's recollectings are never proved wrong, even though they are shown to be false. her hurting james is never shown to be wrong, just painful and misguided. miranda should have taken the fall for her actions long ago, and in doing so, she should have been cut free of james to be the fantastic and interesting character she is on her own. the show should have stuck to the rules it gave itself the first season, the irreverence. it should have cared as much about its female characters from the start as it later came to, god knows the first few seasons were a mess, but like, in the later seasons silver's treated like darwin aboard the fucking beagle, but he isn't there to chronicle the lives around them, he acts to disrupt them for his personal gain and his rapidly polluted set of morals and priorities. the trial of john silver should have been the exoneration of the others who had been exploited by him. instead the exoneration of john silver saw the imprisonment, betrayal, and disenfranchisement of those who had already lost enough from trusting that *bastard*.

[themadlostgirl]

Not Dead Yet (Part 45)

*Okay kitties I really like this chapter! I have read and reread it about a dozen times making minor tweaks here and there and I am excited for you to read it. I hope you like it and please do not be shy to leave a comment. They make me smile and motivate me to write more. That’s all. Love ya!*

Pairing: Reader x Peter Pan

Warnings: language

“Good morning, pet.” Peter plunked himself down on the branch above me the next morning. I was sitting in his Thinking Tree enjoying the morning silence before training. “What brings you here?”

“Just relaxing.” I pulled myself up so we were sitting on the same branch, “Where’d you go last night?”

“Was scouting another town looking for the Truest Believer. Now that the curse has slowed down I can finally get back to finding him myself. I feel renewed. I have a feeling we are going to find him soon.”

“Well that is a relief.” I reached out and brushed a blush of dirt off his face. “Now that you have your strength back to normal you’re just going to have to take me flying like you promised. You didn’t forget, right?”

“Me? Forget?” he plucked a leaf from my hair and tickled it under my nose, “Never.”

I blew the leaf out of his hand and watched as it floated down to the ground far below. Peter gave a mock frown before pulling me closer and threading his fingers through my hair. He had certainly gotten into the habit of playing with my hair whenever we were sat close together. I didn’t mind. It had kept him placid when the worries of his curse got to be too much.

It looks like he cares about you more than just as a friend or lover...

Tigerlily’s words reverberated through me. Why had I let her get in my head? Peter and I are friends and lovers but to think that this murderous codfish could care about someone more than himself was expecting way too much of the git.

“We should be getting back to camp.” I dropped from the branch to the one below away from Peter’s arms.

“What’s the rush?” he followed after me grabbing my hand and holding up a vial of pixie dust. “We could go for that flight right now. What do you say?”

“Maybe another time. We shouldn’t be wasting pixie dust so frivolously anyways.” I detached my hand from his and kept climbing down. Peter followed right after me usually teleporting just inches from me so he was almost always touching me.

“Is something wrong, pet?” he asked about halfway down.

“No. Why?”

“You’re acting like I have the plague. What’s wrong? Did I do something to offend you again?” he raised an eyebrow at me.

“No. Nothing like that.” I leaned myself away from him as far as I could without it being obvious, “It just seems silly to use up such a valuable resource on something that doesn’t need to be done.”

“But I want to.” he leaned forward the more I backed away, “It’s like riding but instead of mounting a horse you’re riding the very wind. I know you’d love it, so why are you so reluctant all of the sudden? You were the one that reminded me.”

“I already said--”

“Is it because you’d be so high up? You know I’d be right there to catch you. I would never let my Lost Girl fall.” he smirked and my heart gave a wild flip in my chest.

“I know…” My desire to close the space between us and kiss him was rivaled only by the sudden desperate urge to jump out of the tree altogether.

“Y/N,” he moved in to kiss me and I pushed his face away.

“I’m hungry. Let’s go get some breakfast.” I rushed the words out faster than I was moving down the tree. A pit of shame and regret resting uncomfortably in my stomach.

~~~

What had that been about? Peter watched Y/N stumble clumsily down the tree in a haste that was much faster than just that of a hunger fixation.

“Waiting for an invitation, Pan?” she called up when she must have noticed he hadn’t moved. He blinked down to the base of the tree and waited for Y/N to catch up.

Had he done something to her recently? Said something? He couldn’t think of anything that would warrant this. Perhaps he was just reading too much into it. She was allowed to be strange once in awhile. If she wasn’t she wouldn’t nearly be as fun. He found himself smiling once more by the time she made it to the bottom of the tree. They walked back to camp in a less than comfortable silence. If something was wrong she was bound to tell him sooner or later.

It wasn’t until well after they got back to camp that it hit him. Did she call him Pan earlier?

~~~

“Hey Y/N, I uh, I wanted to give you this.” Isaac held up a silver necklace with a small gem of sorts about the size of a coin hanging off it.

After training that morning I had gone down to the pond to wash away the sweat and grime along with some of the other boys. Isaac had followed the group but hadn’t jumped in the water like the others. Unlike Devin and the rest I doubted he was used to girls walking around naked without any shame so he had stayed off to the side staring down at the ground the entire time. The other boys heckled him for being embarrassed but I thought it was kinda sweet. The boy had some sense of propriety in him that he wasn’t as comfortable or perverted to blatantly ogle me in my nude glory. He only approached me well after I had put my clothes back on.

“I remembered you mentioning that you lost your old necklace and thought that you would like another to replace it.” Even though I was fully clothed he still refused to look at me. He’d get used to the rather uncouth happenings of the island soon enough.

“Thank you,” I took the necklace gratefully, “Where did you get this?”

“I found it. I suppose it must have fallen out of a treasure chest or something.” he shrugged.

“Well we lug it around to hide often enough I wouldn’t be surprised.” I clasped it around my neck. The precious metal was much colder than I was used to from my old leather string pearl necklace. “It’s great. Now I’ll have something to fidget with again.”

“I’m glad you like it.” he scratched at the back of his neck. A small pink blush coming up to cover his face once more. “I should go. Some of the boys said they’d take me out hunting. See ya.” He bolted away and I let out a short laugh as he did. He’s a bit of a naive kid but I still stand by my choice. He has promise. I can’t figure out what it is about him but he’s different from the other boys in a way. There’s some real potential under all that stammering and blushing. We just needed to fish it out.

Later that night I was laying in Peter’s tent pleasantly basking in the post-coital afterglow. The worries from this morning just a distant memory. Why had I been so freaked out before? Stupid Tigerlily messing with my mind. That’s all it was.

“Where did this new bauble come from?” Peter pointed to the necklace resting against my sternum. “I thought you didn’t like pretty trinkets like these.”

“Normally no I wouldn’t but it was a gift from Isaac. He wanted to replace the one I lost.” I rolled off the cot and started to collect my clothes from the ground.  Ever since he put the silencing charm over our tents we hadn’t needed to go out of camp for our fun. Still it was strange to think that the boys were only a couple feet from us. Strange but also kind of exhilarating in a dangerous/naughty kind of way. As nice as it was though there was always the matter of leaving. Having to shift around the tent grabbing clothes and shimmying them on while the other watches was weird.

“Another wide-eyed simpleton following you around like a dopey pup? How is it you have such influence on my boys?”

“He isn’t a pup. He’s my brother now and I’m his sister. It was just a kind gesture.” I bent over to pick up my shirt when it disappeared before me. I turned around to see it in Peter’s hand.

“I am not leaving here topless. Hand it over.” I reached to snag it from him.

“You know I never pegged you as the sort that was satisfied with just one round. I thought my Lost Girl had more stamina than that.” he tossed the shirt aside and grabbed me before I could dash for it.

“I have plenty but you get tuckered out so quickly.” I tweaked his nose, “I rather thought it was you that didn’t have enough energy for more.”

“Still so naive.” he pinned me beneath him once more, “Perhaps I should demonstrate my actual prowess.”

“I’d be disappointed if you didn’t.” I latched onto him again and after what had to be hours more we fell asleep completely satisfied and lying in each other’s arms.

~~~

“Hm?” I squinted my eyes open. Why am I awake?

I looked next to me and saw that I was in fact still in Peter’s tent with him asleep next to me. Dammit. How could I be so careless?

I shifted to leave and one of his hands snapped out to grab me. I held back my surprise when I saw he was still sleeping. But it didn’t seem to be soundly. His face was tensed and he was muttering things under his breath.

Peter Pan has nightmares.

The hand holding my arm was shaking so slightly and his breathing was becoming erratic. Carefully I touched my fingers to his brow and his jaw locked. I ran them through his hair and his breathing became easier as I continued to pet him. “Shh.” I whispered, “It’s alright, it’s just a bad dream.”

He let go of my arm, his face relaxing once more. I kept whispering soothing words until his breathing evened out completely. I looked towards the tent flap before staring back at the boy who had rolled closer into me. “To hell with it.” I mumbled under my breath as I laid back down and wrapped my arms around his torso. “Sweet dreams.”

~~~

I didn’t bring up what happened last night, not that he would have remembered anyways. I doubt it could have made the morning when we woke up any less awkward. We were used to each other naked and leaving each other's tents but not like this. At least I wasn’t.

“You know you have to leave sometime.” Peter said.

“Yeah, I know. I was just planning on doing it sometime tonight when the boys are all asleep.” I shrugged.

“You knew this was gonna happen when you stayed last night.”

“Well it wasn’t exactly on my mind when I agreed to.”

“Oh really?”

“Shut it. I’ll go in a minute.”

“Whatever. Do what you like.” He left the tent leaving me alone. I really am going to have to leave sometime.

Why was I acting so worried about this to begin with? It was almost common knowledge that Peter and I were sleeping together. But we had made it such a point to keep that part separate from our lives with the boys that to leave like this was cementing every rumour. There’s a lot of new blood that doesn’t respect me like the others do. How can I possibly prove to them that I am a girl to be respected and feared if they thought the only reason I was here was because I was sleeping with the leader?

But that’s not true. I have been here for years. Worked like hell to make my body a lethal weapon and brought down anyone who dared to stand in my way. I am the girl who outsmarted an entire ship of pirates. I’m the girl who spoke out against Peter when he was being unjust. I am the girl that commanded his respect and made him earn mine! I was a forced to be reckoned with and some puny little maggots that couldn’t bruise a peach were not going to make me feel inferior. They were not!

With a sudden surge of confidence I left the tent. I was feeling good and no one was saying anything. Maybe I really was freaking out over nothing. No one probably even saw me leave the tent, much less cared that I did.

I saw Nick staring off into the distance and decided to scare him. I crept up behind him and jumped on his back. “Nicky!”

“AH!” he staggered on his feet. “Y/N, really?”

“You know you love me.” I jumped off his back. “Bored?”

“What gave it away?”

“The thousand yard stare. Let’s go play.”

“As the lady wishes.” he smirked and made a ridiculous show of proffering up his arm.

“You’re such a dork.”

“You know you love me.”

“I believe that’s my line.” I took the arm and we went to find something to do. “Can we stop at my tent for a second? I forgot my dagger.”

“Sure.” we walked back to the outskirt of the camp where my tent was located. When we got there though things were far from how I left them last night. My entire tent was just gone leaving only the cot in its place.

“My tent! My clothes! My club! Everything is gone!”

“Who would take your stuff?” Nick asked.

“I don’t know. Everyone knows better than to touch my stuff.” Most do at least. “Nick, things are about to get bloody.”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa!” he pulled me back “Whoa, whoa! Think you may be overreacting a little? It’s just a harmless prank.”

“No. I don’t think it is and I’d much rather prefer to nip this in the bud.” I marched into the center of the camp, stealing a spear off of one of the boys that I passed. I must have looked downright terrifying because I had one boy jump out of my way at the sight of me.

“Listen up!” I shouted to the camp and all eyes that weren’t on me already shot to me. “Someone here has taken my tent and all its contents. Hand it over now and there won’t be any problems. Got it?”

The camp was filled with mutterings but no one said anything of importance. “Okay, let me make this more clear.” I hurled the spear where it dug into the trunk of a tree without slipping. “Where are my things?”

The mutterings simmered down into silence. Then I heard it. A small, quiet chuckle. Everyone turned towards the noise where one of the newer Lost Boys stood with a crooked shit-eating smile. He made eye contact with me and didn’t so much as flinch when I glared at him.

Him. What was his name? Verne or something stupid like that. It had to be him that took my things. Him and the others that were sniggering behind him.

“Something funny?” I snapped at him. I was not going to deal with Slightly Part Two.

“Yes,” he sighed as he got nose to nose with me. “You say that you want your things but why do you even need them?”

“Because they are mine and I kind of need them. How would you like it if I took your things?”

“Again, I think you’re mixing up needing and wanting.” he said, “You want your things because it makes you look like you belong here. We left what you really need.”

“A cot?”

“Well spending all that time on your back probably isn’t as comfortable on the bare ground.”

Crack!

I nailed him hard in the face. He spiraled back clutching his bleeding nose. I wiped the blood off my hand. “Son of a…” he groaned in pain.

“Someone has quite the temperament.” one of his friends laughed, “Bet it took quite some smooth talking to finally get you to open your legs.”

The others laughed and I felt my ears burn with anger. I couldn’t believe this. I just decked a boy so hard that his nose broke and they were laughing. They were laughing at me! The other Lost Boys were not as stupid and backed away slowly from the laughing boys. Smart move.

“Come on, sweetheart. What is it about you that Pan finds so endearing?” one of them smacked my ass. I swung to elbow him but someone else beat me to it.

An invisible force blew my harassers back against the ground. Peter strode up to them with a hand outstretched threateningly. The camp grew silent at the appearance of their leader. “I say you all mind your own business because it is no loss to me if I have to kill you. Understand?”

The boys nodded terrified. “Good, now get out of here.” The boys rushed to their feet and ran.

I looked to Peter but he turned away without meeting my eyes. “Devin!” I called and he was at my side in a second. “Get Nick and Ben, give those newbies hell for me will you? Normally I would but I’m a little busy at the moment, you understand.”

“Already on it.” he whistled and Nick followed after him with Ben in tow.

I backed away into the jungle and was soon met with Peter. “You handled that well.”

“I agree.” I twisted the necklace at my throat, “I was doing just fine until you came in. What was that about?”

“You just sent your own little posse to rough up some new boys and you’re questioning my motives? I ended it didn’t I?”

“You didn’t need to! How am I supposed to look those boys in the eye after your little stunt? I don’t care if they know we’re fucking but I don’t want them thinking that you’re giving me special treatment for that, Pan!”

“Y/N!” he snapped and I bit my tongue to keep from snapping back at him. He regarded me for a moment before letting out a long sigh. “Would it make you feel better if I explained?”

I nodded. I wasn’t sure what that look before was about but decided not to dwell. Peter is an unusual sort, who could tell why he did anything?

“I don’t like seeing them touch you like that.” he whispered, “I know that you could have and would have handled the situation your own way but I felt like I needed to step in. You are my...Lost Girl and they shouldn’t feel like they could get away with such disgusting behaviour. They’re lucky I just threatened them. Part of me wanted to chop off their hands.”

The confession caused my heart to spasm in way that was both pleasant and disturbing. I swallowed back any nerves and flashed him a smug smirk. “Is someone jealous?”

“Jealous? No. Jealousy is for saps that are scared they’ll lose something. I’m merely territorial.”

“Territorial?”

“I protect what’s already mine.”

Again my heart spasmed.

“I belong to myself. Not you.”

“Yes but you’re also mine.”

“What did I just say?”

“Never heard of sharing?”

“You are such a--”

“Imp? Codfish? Pain in neck?”

“How about all of the above?”

“Sticks and stones, pet.” he pulled me close so our noses touched, “Don’t worry, I’m just as much yours too.” And with that my heart stopped completely. I had barely grazed his lips when we were interrupted.

“Y/N? Y/N!” I pulled my face back as Isaac stumbled across us. His pale face turned crimson upon spotting us. “Oh, I um--I’m sorry! I wasn’t--I mean I was just--uh…”

“Spit it out already.” Peter snapped at him. He made no move to let me go or even pull back so I was still pressed flat against him as he stared daggers at Isaac.

“I saw what happened back at the camp and I…” Isaac’s words trailed off and he stared down at the ground, “I just wanted to make sure you were okay, Y/N.”

“I’m fine. Not the first time I’ve dealt with pigs like them and it won’t be the last. Thank you for your concern.”

“Of course.” He glanced back up giving me a small smile. He peered back at Peter and dropped his gaze again. “I’ll just be going now.”

“Good.” Peter grumbled.

Isaac took off back the way he came. “Do you have to be so short with them?” I turned my attention back to Peter.

“I was in the middle of something and he interrupted. Anyone would be upset with that.” he lifted me up by my bum and I wrapped my legs around him on instinct. “Now where were we?”

“I believe you were saying you were mine.” I whispered against his lips. The thought more pleasant than alarming now that I had caught my breath.

“Anytime you want, precious.” His mouth overtook mine leaving my thoughts scattered.

~~~

She took the necklace?

“Yes mother.”

Good. Very good.

“Mother?”

Yes my son?

“Do we have to…do we have to hurt her?”

Yes! She is the focal point of my plan. Her pain is your revenge. Do not be fooled by her outward behaviour. She would kill you without regret if told. Do not fail me as the last one did.

“I won’t. I’m sorry.” Isaac sniffed back tears.

Do not snivel my child. Our time grows near. You will have all that you have wanted in no time at all. Now smile and return to your games.

(First) (Previous) (Next)

[theonewhobroughtyou]

@favoredfcrtune

Victor is damn lucky he catches Chloe when he does.

His call comes late in the afternoon, after she’s been passed out for hours after a too-long flight home. The job in Kagoshima was quick, nothing to get too excited over, in and out within four days and hardly even a scrape to her knuckles. Easy. She loves the job, though, regardless of how short it is, of how little danger there is, of minimal risk and moderate reward, but still it feels good to be back in a warm bed, in a temperature controlled apartment, with locks on the door and eight floors of residents below her to act as a buffer between her flat and anyone potentially trying to reach her. The thrill of the adventure can still, at times, be outweighed by the comforts of home. Of familiarity. Of the quiet hum of the air conditioner soothing her ears after days of near perpetual gunfire when things go bad (and so often do they go bad; it’s almost not enjoyable if they don’t, to a degree).

She can’t sleep on flights, though, never could, and when she finally landed back in Key West after three layovers and too many in-flight movies, her eyes too heavy to even read her notes anymore, she managed to wrangle a taxi ride home, barely making it out of her jeans and onto her bed before sleep won and she slipped into a series of meaningless dreams for a solid eleven hours. It isn't unusual for her to crash so hard after a job, but it's the flight that really took it out of her this time. For the amount of trans-oceanic flights she takes, she thinks she should be used to all of this by now, might know how to relax and shut down on a flight - and yet here she is, pushing her mid-thirties, more than half her life spent in the business, and still unable to to do more on a plane than close her eyes and slow her breathing and try to imagine the thrum of the engine is her air conditioner at home, but to no avail. Frustrating, but it's why she plans a few extra hours on either side of her trips for the red-eyes and long flights.

She hadn't planned anything after this job. Maybe a couple weeks off to let her aches recover, to start working on selling some relics from recent jobs, maybe start poking around for her next one. So when she's woken up by her cell phone vibrating near violently beside her pillow, Victor's name illuminated through the spiderweb of cracks in the screen, she knows it's one of two things: an invite to drinks, or something with Nate. Both of which end up being time consuming, and he's lucky he caught her now.

Her mouth is thick with sleep, and she has to clear her throat a few times before she can clear the hoarseness from her voice, but even then she still sounds tired.

“Victor?” She tries to sound alert, or at least more so than she actually is, pushes herself onto her elbows to clear her head, blinking sleep from her eyes. But it isn't anything she does that has her mind snapping to attention and her heart pounding so hard it might break through her ribcage. It's what he tells her. It's Nate, because of course it is. It’s been a long time since this brand of call has come through to her, but she can’t say she hasn’t been expecting something like it eventually.

She can still remember the last time she'd visited the Drake household, the look on his face when she mentioned where she was headed next - Uruguay, at the time, to look into the credibility of La Luz Mala. The way his eyes widened slightly, brightened, and she could damn near see the wheels turning in his head as he already tried to figure it all out, where he'd start, what clues would fit, historical facts and tidbits they had once spent countless days and nights poring over together - and how those wheels slid to a sharp stop when he forced himself to change the subject. He can't follow that train of thought. He has a wife and a house and a relatively normal job. He's left the life of fortune hunting behind in favor of the normalcy he didn't get growing up. It broke her heart to see the light dim when he moved on to other topics and pushed a smile into place. He's happy, but he's also not, and the lure of adventure is a tempting mistress they've both spent their lives giving in to the siren song of.

He resisted, but she knows how goddamn easy it is to go back.

“You mean...even more stupid than usual?” A pause as she listens, and she forces herself into a sitting position, dragging her hand over her eyes, down her face, back through her hair. She tries to play it off like a minor annoyance, but the truth is, she knows the recklessness that can come with spending time away, and she’s terrified for him. Keeping herself under control is easy, even in the vulnerability of the aftermath of sleep, but she feels the rising panic make her chest ache. Her only audible sign of it is the sigh she gives, heavier than she’d intended and carrying more worry than she could put words to.

“Of course, Victor,” she says, pulling a pen and whatever scrap of paper she has towards her to take down the notes. Coordinates, last known location, where he’s headed, the destination itself - Avery’s treasure? She damn near scoffs into the phone. Son of a bitch went looking for it without her. Another sigh. “Yeah, I’ll go drag both Drake asses home.” The phone balances between her cheek and shoulder, tongue pressing against the flats of her teeth as she scribbles notes to herself. She falls silent for long seconds, rereading everything, ensuring she has it all before speaking again.

“I’ll leave as soon as I can catch a flight out.” Another short pause. “Love you, too, Victor.” She pauses, then lets the phone drop to the bed, hearing the audible beep of the call disconnecting.

And then she lets herself feel everything she tried not to on the call.

Fingers tremble only slightly as she books the flight, paying extra to land in a small, out of the way airport that’s closer to the island Nate’s headed to, and good god, what has he gotten himself into? She knows Sam’s at fault here, no one else it could be, but that’s a strange recent history of prison visits and delivering rare books on pirating to him behind the corrupt backs of bribed guards (and learning about him was something else entirely, a series of six-degrees-of-separation connections that led her to him, and fucking hell, Nate, a brother?). She’d thought Sam was just bored, but apparently he’d been serious about the lost treasure. She should’ve been more suspicious of the calls he made to her in the middle of the night, his attempt at casual still sounding panicked, but she’s had a little too much on her own plate to worry much about his.

And now it involves Nate. (And Avery’s lost treasure, christ. She’ll find time to be more annoyed about that later.)

It takes less than hour for her to pack a spare change of clothes and basic toiletries into a travel bag and get to the airport. Waiting for the flight only adds to the stress itching her skin, and it’s sheer willpower that keeps her from pacing in the terminal until it’s time to board. She sits instead in a chair at the end of a row of chairs, fingers pulling at a loose thread in the hem of her shirt while she holds a compilation of what notes she has about Avery in her other hand. Brushing up on her knowledge of the man barely holds her attention, her eyes steadfastly focused on the pages though her mind is far from rapt, focused instead on Nate and what the hell he’s doing. It’s been a good while since she’s seen him, and she’ll be damned if the next time she sees him is dead, not unless it’s both of them dead together. (A stupid promise made five beers deep in the middle of the night when humidity wasn’t the only thing keeping them warm. A stupid promise, but a promise anyway, right?)

At this point, it’s become routine to suppress her feelings, move on and not acknowledge them anymore. Years of pretend and fake smiles until it was too much to bear and avoidance became her best ally, and even that gave way to caving in and seeing the entire crew again. They’re her friends, dammit, and she can’t lay claim to many of those. So she pushes it aside. A semblance of ‘moving on’ she’s never quite reached. And it’s things like this that bring it all back to the surface. Chloe doesn’t get these calls when it’s a simple fix, or when Nate is in just a spot of trouble. She gets these calls when it’s gotten bad, and even if getting bad is fun, there’s a line that even she doesn’t want crossed, and she can’t help but feel that this is one of those lines Nate’s leapt across with both feet.

Her hand abandons the loose thread and instead her thumbnail fits between her teeth, brows pulled in, eyes not even comprehending the words on the page, and fucking hell, is the plane leaving yet?

It takes too long, too long, before the flight starts boarding, and she should’ve taken Victor up on his offer to fly her there, but she’s here now and waiting in line is frustrating, and she has to remind herself not to clench her teeth and to take deep breaths to stay calm. She has a several-hour-long flight ahead of her, and she’s really only thankful that she slept as much as she did beforehand. Not that she’d take any rest after she lands, not with everything that’s waiting at the other end of this all, but at least she won’t be dealing with tired eyes and the irritation that sets in when she’s awake for too long. Small mercies.

She finds some sort of solace in steady breathing and the knowledge that she’s on her way, she’ll be there to help him soon. He’ll be with her, where she can know he’s safe. It’s a small comfort, but it allows her mind to settle as she finally gets to her seat and waits for the plane to take off. 

If nothing else, on landing, she’s learned more about Henry Avery and his connections than she knew going into all of this. Her resources were limited on the plane, but she’d packed her phone with anything she could download on the taxi ride to the airport, and even the unreliable sources had some entertainment value, even if they were incredibly inaccurate. Part of her would eventually find it suitable to be annoyed that he’d figured so much out already, that the connections were made without her, but that can wait. A storm is brewing and the little plane she switched to is barely fighting against the growing winds. He gets her as close as possible, but the landing isn’t as soft as she’d like, and somehow she thinks it’s drier in the ocean she landed in than in the rain insisting these islands join Atlantis.

“Dammit, Nate,” she sputters as she pulls herself ashore, barely, the water pulling at her boots and jackets as if reluctant to let go of her. The travel bag secured around her is waterproof, but she’s sure everything inside will be drenched when she checks. Of all places, of all times, the storm hits now.

“You better be alive.” He has to be. He’s survived a hell of a lot of shit until now, there’s no chance a mountain and a storm could take him from her. (From them, she corrects herself.) It’s a promise she repeats to herself as she starts the trek through wet grass and mud until she has to start climbing. The rocks are slick, and he’s definitely alive. Her hand slips a few times and she has to take it slowly, carefully, and he has to be alive.

The path isn’t easy to see, but she knows his style well enough to feel confident in the path she’s taking. They make sense, even when the ledges are small. Nathan Drake may not always take the easiest routes, but he takes the ones that make sense, and she can see the handholds he would take as if he were pointing them out to her himself. It’s a slow process and the storm refuses to let up. In fact, she’s positive it’s gotten worse, though how to tell through sheets of rain so thick she can barely see her outstretched hand, she isn’t sure. It doesn’t show signs of letting up, though, and it drives her to move just a touch faster. Careful. But faster.

How long has he been here? Has he been wandering through the storm at the same time as she has? How much of a head start has he had? Is Sam impatiently trying to make him go faster, or are they taking it slow together? Concern buries itself in her mind, and she presses on. Mud and rain and battered knuckles and bruised knees, and it’d be like old times if Nate was here with her and they eventually took refuge from the storm in one of these small caves, bandaging up wounds as best they could while resting weary limbs.

He’d better be alive, dammit.

She loses sense of time as she moves determinedly forward, one hand in front of the other, boots securely in place before shifting weight. Her arms and stomach ache, legs are exhausted, and it’s been a while since she’s gone long enough to wear her down like this. Nothing could have prepared her for this, and for long moments, she clings to her handholds, fingers numb and bruised, legs shaking, and she clenches her teeth to keep herself strong. She’s so tired, though. Surely Nate would’ve called things to a halt soon, right? Had she missed him? The wall ahead looks broken, and she’s eyeing for a path across - and she sees him. Below. Unconscious and on his back, and that’s a hell of a ways to fall. The panic she’d manage to suppress earlier rises in her chest again, heart hammering and hands trembling, and she lowers herself as carefully as she can to where he is.

“I swear to god, Nate, if you’re dead…” She leaves the threat open-ended, fights back the stinging in her eyes, and has to drop the last six feet down to get to him, the bend in her knees making the fall easier, but there’s no waste of time in rushing to his side. One hand above his mouth, the other pressing two fingers against his neck and pausing, waiting, feeling for any sign of life-

And there, a slow heartbeat, strong beneath her fingertips. He’s alive, he’s alright, and she lets out a laugh, leaning her forehead against his chest as relief sweeps through her. “Bloody hell, you asshole,” she breathes, taking only a few moments to gather herself. He’s alive, but he’s also freezing and in direct path of the rain. He isn’t a light man, years of muscle compounded on that frame of his, but she hooks her arms beneath his, lifts, and drags him into a dry section of the cave, beneath an overhang. No way to make a fire, but that’s why she wore the bigger jacket over her own. It’s wet, but he’ll warm it up. She drapes it over him and sits close, pulling her arms into her own jacket and tucking the sleeves into the pockets to keep cold air from getting in, and she settles in for however long it takes for him to wake up.

“Remember that time in Colombia?” she asks softly, her voice barely carrying over the rain. Not that he can hear her anyway, but that isn’t the point. Maybe the point is to keep herself calm while he rests, to keep the concern from working its way deeper in case he doesn’t wake up. “It didn’t rain this much, but it sure could give this place a run for its money.” A pause and a sigh, and she tucks her mouth and nose into the neck of the jacket.

They’d taken refuge in a cave there, too. Ground level, entry hidden by plants, rain so thick they probably wouldn’t have needed the plants to keep them out of sight of the small group of mercs hunting them. It’d been dark tucked in the back corner of the little cave, the sky almost as dark outside. They’d sat side by side, legs and arms touching, heads leaned against each other. The sound of her breathing a steady rhythm to the quiet story he told her. The warm press of his lips to her temple, to the the curve of her cheekbone, to the smile that so easily crossed her face when she was with him. It’d been different then, the feel of his hand in the curve of her waist familiar and comfortable, and did it still feel the same now?

Stupid, Chloe, she thinks with a deep sigh. She tucks her face a little deeper into her jacket, but keeps her eyes on him. “Don’t die on me,” she demands of him, determines she’ll be pissed if he does. 

The rain eventually stops its attempt at flooding the entire island, and she puts her arms back through her sleeves and stands, stretching the stiffness from her legs and walking around a bit. The sky is starting to clear up, still not visible, but also not deep grey, either, and she squints slightly as she looks up at the sky through the hole Nate fell into. Where the hell is Sam? In her worry for Nate, she forgot that Sam was supposed to be with hi.? Had he left him behind? Chloe barely knows the man, isn’t sure what kind of person he is. Would be abandon his brother in the middle of a storm in search of Avery’s gold? Chloe could have her moments of abrasiveness, but to be that cruel? If that’s the case, Sam had better hope Chloe doesn’t catch up with him, or there’ll be a different sort of hell to pay.

She’s starting to muse over how serious she is on that threat, when she hears movement behind her. Turning, she watches as Nate slowly pushes himself up, grunting through the aches from the fall, waiting for his eyes to land on her. Gives him a friendly smirk when they finally do. “Morning, love,” she says as she moves the six steps it takes to get to him, and now that she knows he’s alive, that he wasn’t injured so badly he wouldn’t make it out of this cave, she can’t help but to let her mild bit of annoyance at what he was even doing here in the first place seep in.

“You know, if you wanted to get yourself killed while looking for Henry Avery’s lost treasure, you could have at least called me beforehand.”

[jixiani]

In defense of fanfiction

I’ve been thinking about fanfiction lately, (really I’ve been thinking that I should really be taking some of this time to write more, but that’s another post) AO3 just had their yearly fundraiser so of course the old discourse over the site and its history was dragged up again and then Sarah had brought it up this morning and well, I have a lot of strong feelings on the subject. Let’s start with a little personal background: I have been reading and writing fanfic since the late 90’s. It started out as something silly my best friend introduced me to and we would sit in her mother’s computer room and giggle over ‘speculative fan fictions’ and participate on months-long roleplay scenarios on chat boards and take turns passing notebooks full of handwritten stories back and forth which were every bit as terrible as you’d think two 14-year-old girls could come up with. Unfortunately, we were in the Vampire Chronicles fandom so we had a front-row seat for the Anne Rice and her lawyer's debacle that will from here on out be referred to as “The Dark Times”. We watched our friends’ work get pulled, our RP sites close down, we feared that we’d get a cease and desist letter, we hid our notebooks and dreamed up our stories exclusively verbally.  I was deeply ashamed of my secret love of fanfic for years. I kept writing, but I kept it secret, I kept reading it but would never admit to it. Fanfiction was something shameful, taboo, some terrible sin akin to watching porn, and not the good socially acceptable kind of porn. But time moved on and fandom moved on and fanfiction started to be more acceptable. I joined Fanfiction.net, I wrote some stuff on Livejournal (although I still kept it set to private). I read A LOT of fanfiction, jumping fandoms, and leaving reviews. People I admired came out as liking and writing fanfiction. Of course, then the purges hit. Strikethrough and the like. I’m not going to get into that here, because that’s a rant all its own. Anyway, those were also some dark days as fandom searched for somewhere to land. I stumbled over Archive of our own a few years ago and I aggressively support them whenever I can because they fight for the fandom. Now I speak out in defense of fanfiction whenever possible. I’ve attended panels at conventions about fanfiction, I support and share posts about it from my favorite authors, I let everyone know that I’m proud of my fanfic (although I still don’t post it, that’s because I tend not to finish things and I don't’ want to get someone excited for something I know I’m going to abandon in a month, not because I’m ashamed.). So let’s talk over some points because Sarah brought up a good point today. Why is fanfiction such a shameful thing in the fandom community, and in the writing community? One of the people on my friends list who I admire and is a professional, published author once rolled their eyes and scoffed when I said that I wanted to go to the fanfiction panel at a convention. Yet, no other facet of fandom is treated this way. I brought this up on Sarah’s post and I’m going to reiterate it here. Fan artists are not scoffed at, people flock to their tables in artist’s alley. Fan-made comics and doujinshi have led to careers writing and drawing comics and scripts for the same series their fanwork was based on. No professional costumer or prop maker sneers at cosplayers, in fact, there are now professional cosplayers. Fans wait in line for hours to watch masquerade skits at conventions. Fan-dubs like Dragonball Z Abridged and Nescaflowne are hugely popular and have led to professional voice acting gigs and production studios. But if an author dares to mention that they got their start in fanfiction? The horror, the outrage, the hate mail. Yet so much of our media could arguably be called fanfiction. Dante’s Inferno? John Milton’s Paradise Lost? The Aeneid? Classics? Yes. Fanfiction? Also yes. Joyce’s Ulysses is just an AU of the Odyssey. Anything written about or based on myths? Anything involving King Arthur? Sherlock Holmes? Shakespear...Oh you can cry adaptation all you want. Let’s face it if it’s written by some old white guy it’s literature and a classic and an innovative reimagining but really it’s just fanfic and it’s everywhere. West Side Story is a fanfic of a fanfic since Shakespeare based Romeo and Juliet off a poem by a similar name. My Fair Lady? Pygmalion AU. Hamilton? Real Person Song Fic! 50 Shades series, Mortal Instruments, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, Jean Rhys' Wide Sargasso Sea, hell there are literally hundreds of published Jane Austen fanfictions. John Gardner’s Grendel is a retelling of Beowolf. The Wiz, Wicked and the rest of Gregory Maguire’s books? The Wizard of Oz doesn’t enter public domain until 2035. The Magnificent Seven? Kurosawa called and he wants his seven samurai back, he’d also like to reclaim Yojimbo from A Fist Full of Dollars. Speaking of tv, how about Black Sails? It’s a fanfiction prequel to Treasure Island. Any comic book not written by the original creator. Any book series based on Star Wars, Star Trek, Dungeons and Dragons, World of Warcraft, etc. I could go on all day. So why is it, when so much of our popular culture consists of what basically boils down to fanfiction, that fanfiction is seen as a shameful indulgence, as “cheating”, as trash?Part of it boils down to sex. Read any article that brings up fanfiction and there will invariably be a line where the author distances themself by saying something along the lines of they don’t personally read it, or how slash fic isn’t their thing but to each their own. (Both quotes from some of the sites I pulled the above list from) A lot of people seem to think that fanfiction is just porn, and while yes there is some fanfiction that is porn and some of it is very good, the same can be said for regular fiction as well. People don’t blush and giggle over Lord of the Rings, yet when I say that I’ve read fanfic that’s longer than Tolkien’s trilogy I may as well be talking about how I read Aragorn/Boromir slash fic regardless of what the actual subject matter was.  Yes, there’s sex in fanfiction. A lot of it is gay sex. You can read Lolita in school but Harry Potter fanfic? Gasp, think of the children! Even if that fanfic happens to be about what if Petunia loved Harry like a son instead of pushing him away and neglecting him. There is some really fantastic fan fiction out there. Some of it has sex, some of it doesn't. Some of it deals with queer characters and experiences, some of it doesn’t. There’s nothing inherently wrong with erotica and it’s an entirely separate issue. Not every fanfiction is a 50 Shades-eque erotic rewrite of Twilight, and even if they were, so what?  A lot of fanfiction has to do with wish fulfillment. You want to know what happens next, or what would happen if this had happened instead, or if there was this character. You want to see someone like you in your favorite fandom. I had wanted to adventure with Bilbo when I was a kid. I wanted to go on adventures and fight and ride dinosaurs. These desires don’t go away just because we grow up. I got into roleplay and larp and gaming because I still enjoy make-believe. I write for a lot of the same reasons. Everyone wants to be the main character. Fanfiction gives you that chance. You can write yourself into a story, you can write someone that’s like you, you can write someone that’s nothing like you but what you want to be. So, let’s discuss our old friend Mary Sue. She gets trotted out as an example every time someone brings up fanfiction (or any uppity female character ever). Mary Sue was born in the 60’s. She is an actual character from a Star Trek Original Series fanfiction. Yes, fanfiction existed in the 60’s. Mary Sue was the brightest and prettiest girl to come out of Starfleet, she managed to be in all the right places at the right times to save the ship and capture the heart of Spock. Self insert fics and Mary Sues are at the heart of why we should be terribly ashamed of our fanfiction habit. Except, what was Luke Skywalker if not George Lucas’ self insert Marty Stu? There are countless male characters that are as bad or worse than your typical Mary sue and they are never called out for it. Seanan brought this up in a post once about her character October Daye, her editor had said that the character was too competent, too cool, and that it was unrealistic and she should tone it down. She had him replace the character’s name with “Harry Dresden” and reread the story and suddenly it was fine. There are a great many articles and essays about our friend Mary Sue and I implore you to read some of them. She is not the enemy we make her out to be. Fanfiction, on the rare occasion that it is accepted, is seen as some sort of training wheels, or baby’s first writing. It’s amateurish, it’s juvenile, it’s just not very good. If we are not ashamed of it, then it’s expected that we are only using it as a starting point to hone our writing and move on to professional published works. It’s either that or something terribly self-indulgent that should be kept to ourselves. Some fanfic writers do go on to become “real” writers. Seanan McGuire has always been very open about how her agent first approached her after reading some of her Buffy/Faith fanfiction. Some “real” writers also write fanfiction. Neil Gaiman won a Hugo for his Chronicles of Narnia Fanfic. Ursula Vernon and Mercedes Lackey write fanfiction in their spare time. Some fanfiction writers never become published authors, not everyone wants to. Some are happy to have a dozen 150k fics about their favorite fandom, or maybe just one 500k epic, some, myself included, may only have one short fic posted somewhere. There is nothing that says that you have to use your hobby to turn a profit. (By the way, for reference, War and Peace is 561,304 words, Dune is 187,240 words, you cannot make the argument that fanfic writers don’t put time into their craft when they have more words than Tolstoy under their belt.)Some of the ‘training wheels’ analogy is true. Fanfic is a terrific gateway to writing. It teaches pacing, plot, character development, how to take criticism. If I ever do write something professionally I will not be nearly as afraid of the red pen as I am of bad reviews. Anonymous readers are the most ruthless critics. May the literary gods preserve you from ever having your fanfic read aloud as an example of how terrible and ‘cringy’ fanfiction can be. There is a lot of fanfiction out there that is written by teenage girls, and it reads like it was written by a teenage girl, but the only way to get better at something is to practice. Fanfiction allows budding writers to do that. There are no rules, no one standing at the gates to bar entry, and entire communities of people willing to give advice and commentary. Sometimes it’s less helpful than harmful, but there is something about posting a new fic and waiting for that first ‘like’ or ‘kudos’ or a review. There’s something to be said for instant gratification. I have read a lot of really terrible fanfic. I have slogged through stuff that would make Mary Sue herself cringe. I have read about the ½ vampire, ½ werewolf, ½ fairy long lost princess. I have read grammar that would make your eyes bleed. Not all of it has been confined to fan works. I have read fanwork that has had me convulsing with silent laughter to the point that I wondered if I would die. Dialog that was ten times better than anything I had read in a professional novel. Fanfiction should not be judged by its worst offenders. We don’t hold Dune to the same standard as Twilight. Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is not terrible and cringy because 50 Shades of Grey overuses the phrase “Oh my.” There is some absolutely terrible fanfic out there and there is some pretty terrible published fic as well, but we don’t hold that against most novelists, so why do we hold it against fanfiction writers?I guess that brings us to the elephant in the fandom. Sexism. Fanfiction has historically been something written by and for young women and there is nothing more shameful than something liked by a young woman. Boybands? The color pink? Horse Girl books and Sparkly Vampires? Society hates them. We mock them. It is not acceptable to enjoy them. Sound familiar? How many times is something considered cool until a woman decides that she likes it? We as a society hate women and hate the things they enjoy and we hate teenage girls the most. Think of how much people hated selfies and duckface and instagram. How much hate was directed at Britney Spears, One Direction, Taylor Swift and Justin Bieber? Whether it has a basis in something or not, we hate them, we make jokes, we share the memes. We write them off as having no substance, as being stupid, not worth our time. Belittling of teenage girls for their interests and fandoms isn't a new phenomenon. Remember Mary Sue? Not only that, but a lot of fanfiction is gay. Women and gays are still the punchline to a lot of jokes and we can’t ignore that that plays a big part in people’s hatred of fanfiction, even if it’s not on purpose. Fanfiction has always been a bastion for people that couldn’t find stories about them in popular fiction. A lot of mainstream main characters are straight guys. A lot of fanfiction main characters are young women or gay men. Now, I admit that I’m oversimplifying this, and especially in recent years as it is becoming safer for people to come out as other genders and queer and as having mental illness or not being neurotypical, you are seeing more of that reflected in the fanfiction community. I don’t want anyone to think that I am purposefully leaving anyone out of this. The fanfiction community has not always been so great at being inclusive of people of color or transgender, it’s getting better, but I’m not going to stand here and pretend we’ve always been perfect. In the last several years I’ve seen a lot more inclusion. As I said, fanfiction has always been a home to the “Other”, as that expands to include more individuals so too does the community. Fanfics provide us with a place to work through issues and present perspectives that we don’t get to see anywhere else, without having to create an entire world from scratch. It’s accessible to everyone. I’ve spent the better part of an afternoon researching and writing this. I hope that I was at least partially coherent and I got you to at least take a look at why you feel the way you feel about fanfiction. I’m not sure if I exactly got across the points I was trying for, there’s a lot more eloquent, well thought out arguments out there from more knowledgeable people. Check out Seanan McGuire, she’s got a lot to say on the subject.