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sukorakurai · 3 years ago

Photo

@snarkyship is a true genius. I commission this Stark Family Portrait and I couldn’t be happier. I wrote a little fic to accompany this fabulous Picture. hope you all enjoy.

Stark Family Picture Day

By Sukora Kurai

Tony sighed over the counter in the communal kitchen. He had been there since dawn when he asked Jarvis what day it was. Then his trusty AI informed him of an importance of this month. Now he was stuck with what to do now.

“Hey Tony what’s got you down?”

“Hey Capsicle, I’m doomed.”

“Oh come on Tony, it can’t be that bad you are an Avenger.” Steve smiled as he got out food to make omelets for the Team, and greeted the in coming members. “Morning Nat, morning Bruce.”

“Morning Steve, what’s wrong with Tony?” Bruce greeted heading to the stove to put the kettle on for his morning tea.

“Not sure I found him like this.” Steve stated cracking some eggs into a bowl.

“His and Loki’s anniversary is this month and he has no idea what to get him.” Nat answered pouring a large mug of coffee.

Tony shot up in his seat and stared slack jawed. “How could you possibly know that?”

“It’s my job as a shield Agent and Pepper’s PA to keep tabs on you. So it is well documented when you clumsily asked Loki to be your boyfriend during the Lord of the Rings Marathon where you bought out the AMC Theater for the day.” The Spy shrugged ignoring the fact that all her team mates stared at her in horror. All were now wondering what she had on them in those SHIELD files.

“So Tony, you have and anniversary coming up? Have you though about what Loki might like?” Steve coughed drawing the conversation back to the main topic.

“No, I don’t. What does one give a god especially one that has magic and can make anything appear out of thin air?” Tony waved his arms in frustration.

“That is a tough one but I’m sure anything you get him will be fine. Loki loves you Tony.” Bruce tried to be supportive.

“I hope you will be putting more thought into the gift you give me next month for our anniversary.” Nat gave the Gamma Doctor a pointed before wandering out of the room to start her routine before heading out to work.

“Ha, I’m not the only one in hot water now!” Tony crowed at the look of devastation in his science-bro’s face.

“Tony, knock it off. Now in my day it was the thought that counted most. You should find what Loki cherishes the most. You find that then you can present to him in a meaningful way. It’s true he’s a prince and probably has had his other lovers throw jewels and meaningless expensive trinkets at him to win his affections. You know Loki better because you love him and he loves you.” Steve pointed out.

“Yeah, Lokes complains a lot about his life in Asgard and that there were many who wooed him just to get to Thor. At night when it’s just the two of us and RC snuggled between us he sighs soft and says what a perfect night it is. He never elaborates but I think it means that he likes just the quiet nights with us.” The genius eyes went glazed as he recalled the many nights he cuddled with his god. Then the idea hit him. “Hey Spangles, can you paint or do you just draw?”

“Huh,” Steve was caught off guard and almost dropped the omelet he was flipping. “I paint from time to time.”

“Don’t lie babe you are in your studio whenever can get the chance.” Bucky laughed entering the kitchen. “All the paintings in our apartment Stevie did.”

“Great! Can you do a portrait if I get you a picture?” Tony asked digging in to the ham and cheese omelet.

“Yeah, it might take two weeks maybe less depends on if we get called out or if SHIELD needs me.” The captain estimated placing another plate in front of his boyfriend.

“As long as it’s done before the end of the month we’re good. Jarvis start looking through my photos and pull out any possible portraits.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Delicious breakfast as usual Capsicle. I’ll get you the photo as soon as I find one.” Tony dumped his empty plate in sink and ran off to his lab.

Two hours later…

“None of these are good enough J.”

“Sir, might I suggest you take a new photo of you and Prince Loki.”

“Yeah and RC too, because she’s our baby. We can’t have a Family Portrait without all the family members. Where’s are RC now?”

“She is currently with Alpine in his play room.”

“Cool, I think I got the perfect outfit in mind.” Tony grinned as he ran to his emergency closet in the lab. Tony had put in the closet when he realized he destroyed a lot of his clothes during his inventing and building phases. Also there was a suit or two for the days he forgot he was supposed to be in a meeting and had to make a rush to the board room.

In the penthouse…

It had been a quiet morning with no call outs, no calls to Asgard and no need to go anywhere. Loki decided to enjoy the peace and quite lounging in his soft Asgardian casual clothes on the couch reading his mother’s spell journal.

“Hey there, Bambi! It’s Picture Day!”

“Anthony, what are you on about?” The prince looked up from his book to see his lover carrying their cat into the living room.

“Well Picture Day refers to the day school kids take pictures for the yearbook and photos are bought for family distribution. Anyways I want to have a family picture that was honest. I never had that growing up because Howard was an asshole and Maria, my mother, was frail. She loved me but she couldn’t express it because she was always ill. Now we have our own little family and I want a picture to put in the lab.”

“You want to take this picture now? Anthony, I look a mess and how did you get the bow on the cat?”

“Aww, you look gorgeous, love, as always. Anyways, I put a bow on our baby because RC loves to look pretty for her daddies. Don’t you sweetie.” Tony scratched under the kitty’s chin as they sat on couch next to the god.

“Mew,” RC purred.

“Fine, you win, where would you like to take the picture? Also what are you wearing? I don’t believe I’ve seen that outfit before, and what is on your feet?” Loki set his book aside and took in his lover’s appearance.

“Oh you like? I dressed in red and gold to match my shoes. I had these shoes made based on my Iron Man suit. I thought maybe putting them on the market for kids but I liked them too much to share. So I have a life time supply in the lab. If you want I can have a pair made for you.”

“No thank you. They clash with my outfit. Now let’s take your picture.” Loki said taking the cat in his arms.

“Okay, okay. Let me get out my phone.” Tony fished his Stark Phone out of his back pocket and held it out to make them all fit in the frame. “Okay say cheese!”

“Click”

“Okay let’s see how that one turned out.” Tony looked at the photo to see him smiling a black blur and a bland look on Loki’s face. “Nope we got try again. This time smile Loki and RC you need to stay still so we can see you.”

And it went picture by picture they have yet to take a family portrait.

“Shit I only got half your face.”

“Anthony your thumb is on the lens.”

“RC Stay still!”

“Achoo! Ow! I dropped on my foot!”

“Do not eat my hair you Retched Creature!”

“Okay I set it up on a tripod. Now say cheese.”

“CHEESE BROTHER!” Thor popped up between the two men who stared at shock at the blond god.

“Next!” Tony rolled his eyes as Loki vanished his brother to where ever. Tony didn’t ask where the Loki sent Thunder god. He rather liked staying in the tower and wanted to keep it that way.

“Meow!”

“No RC! Don’t chase the bunny!”

Three Hours Later…

“Okay, this is it I can feel it. Now Jarvis is going to take the picture the bunnies are secure in their room. The penthouse is locked down, so no unexpected guest and RC is filled of milk to keep her calm and relaxed. And I promise after we get this picture I will have Jarvis order you favorite meal from the Thai Palace down the street and I’ll rub your feet, while we watch you favorite Harry Potter movies.”

“Oh Anthony you spoil me. I love you.” Loki sighed as a soft smile graced his face and he leaned into his lover as Tony joined their hands together. RC who was seated now on the god’s shoulder leaned in and purred soaking up the love of her people. The genius couldn’t be happier in that moment as he had his to precious family members with him and the grin on his face was wide and bright.

“Click.”

Two Weeks Later…

“Sir Prince Loki and Mr. Odinson have returned from Asgard.”

“Great, I got everything ready. Tell Loki that I have dinner ready and waiting.”

“Yes, sir.” Tony had the table set with Loki’s Favorite food from the five star steak house, they go to. He paid extra to have the chef come over and cook for their anniversary.

“Ding.”

“Thank you, Jarvis. Evening Anthony, never in my life had been so glad to leave Asgard. He talked for hours at the council over stagnant topics. What’s all this?”

“Well my hard working God of Mischief, today is our one year Anniversary and I have planned the perfect evening. Dinner, a bath and I installed a movie screen in our bathroom so we can enjoy the movie of your choice during the bath and then I plan on us making love until dawn.” Tony pulled Loki over to the dinner table, watching as the god’s magic removed the armor and replaced it with comfortable Asgardian wear.

“You lovely little man, you spoil me so; I don’t deserve it or you.” The Raven pulled the billionaire into his arms and planting kisses all over the man’s face.

“Yes you do, because I love you and I got you something, well I got Cap to make it, but it was my idea.”

“You didn’t have to, dinner is more than enough.”

“No, I wanted to. Now close your eyes and I’ll get your present.” As Loki closed his eyes Tony ran out of the room and grabbed the portrait from where he hid it. He placed it on the wall then Jarvis turned on the lights illuminating the painting. “Okay open them.”

“Oh Anthony! It’s wonderful.” Loki’s eyes became all misty seeing their little family together and there was so much love radiating from painting. “It’s perfect.”

“Happy Anniversary Reindeer Games.”

“Happy Anniversary, my Man of Iron.” Loki whispered pulling Tony in to the sweetest kiss they ever shared. They didn’t hear the click sound of Jarvis capturing the moment with the sunset background. Another memory to save for another day.

The End.

#fanart #fiction from fanart #iron frost #frostiron #ironfrost #Iron Man #tony x loki #loki x tony #loki #random black cat #tony stark #Avengers #Marvel MCU #Family Portrait

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edenmemes · 4 years ago

Text

the witcher 3: wild hunt starters

including quotes from the dlcs hearts of stone & blood and wine

❝ you were always an unruly child. i adored that about you. ❞ ❝ mmm. yes. of course. the excuse you resort to when you’d rather not talk about something. ❞ ❝ how many have you killed? how many more might you still? ❞ ❝ you know who i am. and why i’m here. ❞ ❝ you're a madman and always have been. a cruel, cold-blooded killer. ❞ ❝ a man should frame his wishes carefully. it forestalls disappointment. ❞ ❝ no argument. you knew what you were signing up for. ❞ ❝ maybe once, in a different time...i’d have helped. ❞ ❝ don’t train alone, it only embeds your errors. ❞ ❝ wanna get drunk off my ass. and it’s gotta be on cheap wine. ❞ ❝ you’re a heartless bastard. ❞ ❝ try to trick me anyway, anyhow, you won’t go anywhere, you know that. ‘cause i’ll take your head off right where it meets your neck. ❞ ❝ sorry. i don’t want to talk about it. not now, at least. ❞ ❝ we are more like a family. we support each other and help each other survive tough moments. ❞ ❝ so how’s it feel to be the village witch? ❞ ❝ realize, please, that you were made for great things. ❞ ❝ folks say a curse has fallen on that place, a dark power brought down by the bestiality of the murders it beheld. ❞ ❝ so, now you’ve threatened me and all...are you in or are you not? ❞ ❝ i know it must sound foolish, but in the dream - well, it was all too real... ❞ ❝ we may not survive this. in fact, our chances are slim. ❞ ❝ it’s always been about you. only you. ❞ ❝ i remember finding your sense of humor both groan-worthy...and somehow endearing. ❞ ❝ kings die, realms fall, but magic endures. ❞ ❝ i detest banquets. vacuous conversation, food portions fit for a mouse, drinks that taste like piss... ❞ ❝ despite what you’ve heard, i don’t lunge at every monster i see, sword in hand. ❞ ❝ each day’s more dangerous than the last. ❞ ❝ it’s folks like you that restore my faith in humankind. ❞ ❝ my power lies in possessing knowledge, not sharing it. ❞ ❝ the rotten smell brings back childhood memories. ❞ ❝ awfully noble of you, showing so much concern for the needy. ❞ ❝ no need to thank me. always glad to save your ass. you’re welcome. ❞ ❝ i may be inhumanely beautiful, but i don’t have super human senses. ❞ ❝ anyone can be made to talk, even a corpse. one must simply know how. ❞ ❝ we’ve done the hardest part. only got the pleasant bits now. ❞ ❝ there are few causes worth saving. even fewer men. ❞ ❝ don’t treat me like a child. ❞ ❝ there’s strange men lurking outside the house. watching me. ❞ ❝ you must be careful what you wish for lest your wish be granted. for there are consequences. ❞ ❝ shall i be free of the suffering? the sadness? ❞ ❝ i wish to gaze into those eyes, eyes the devil would be proud to have. ❞ ❝ you were born with a great gift. and only you can decide how to use it. ❞ ❝ any other words of wisdom? or can we go? ❞ ❝ what i need is an ally. and something tells me i shall find none better than you. ❞ ❝ i can see no row can occur here without your participation. ❞ ❝ i and what concerns me have not been a concern of yours for some time now. ❞ ❝ if you’d not arrived in time, things might have ended considerably worse. ❞ ❝ if they can bleed, they can die. ❞ ❝ a man must display some madness from time to time --- it helps him feel alive. ❞ ❝ i was deeply troubled. you’ve no idea. ❞ ❝ done that so many times, but...it felt like our first kiss to me. ❞ ❝ don’t need to play tough on me. ❞ ❝ i've lost too many mates already. i won’t risk it, i can't. ❞ ❝ there’s just not enough of us. it’ll be a hard fight. ❞ ❝ in lonely woods, screams carry long. ❞ ❝ things used to be simpler. monsters were bad, humans good. now, everything’s all confused. ❞ ❝ as for your missteps --- i don't rightly see why i shouldn't laugh if they're amusing.. ❞ ❝ i’ve no gold to offer you in reward...but i shall be ever so grateful. ❞ ❝ if you’re scared, turn back. i’m gonna go on. ❞ ❝ if anything happens, i’ll defend you. ❞ ❝ once you say "i love you," a kiss has to taste differently. ❞ ❝ maybe we should sit? you look a bit dazed... ❞ ❝ drink it off, sleep it off, whatever it takes...just get yourself together and think things through. ❞ ❝ i shall join later, if it’s no trouble. i don’t yet feel strong enough to venture out. ❞ ❝ awake at last. you writhed like a squirrel caught in a snare. ❞ ❝ again you plan without even asking what i think! ❞ ❝ come to see how i’m feelin'? thanks, not bad. ❞ ❝ i remember that day quite well...there was a light drizzle, yet the cold tore right through you. ❞ ❝ you gotta keep your eyes peeled wide open. someone’s taken an interest in your work. ❞ ❝ oof...for a minute, i actually thought we were doomed. ❞ ❝ you shouldn’t worry yourself --- it tarnishes your beauty. ❞ ❝ i’d even embrace you...were you not covered in blood. ❞ ❝ guess i could’ve been someone worse...just a shame i had no choice. ❞ ❝ facts interest me. not fairytales. ❞ ❝ hm, odd smell. blend of alcohol, blood and monster stench. ❞ ❝ i’m old and i am wealthy. i may say what i please. ❞ ❝ now, be so kind and leave me to my thoughts. ❞ ❝ in your shoes i’d pack it up and go hide somewhere far away. ❞ ❝ forgive me, but that's the blatherin' of someone who clearly can't snap out of it after a tragic loss. ❞ ❝ that all you gotta say? i saved your life. ❞ ❝ i swear on all that is holy: we shall be together forever. ❞ ❝ think of me as part of the decor. ❞ ❝ anyone who’s bold enough to fight is already a hero. ❞ ❝ if this is a trap of some sort... ❞ ❝ you can count on me, you know? always. ❞ ❝ you don’t know how much it means...to have someone you can rely on in this fucking city. ❞ ❝ i know you. you have no heart. ❞ ❝ no room for friendship in this business. ❞ ❝ evil is evil. lesser, greater, middling, makes no difference. the degree is arbitrary, the definitions blurred. ❞ ❝ hands off, or i'll cut them off. ❞ ❝ i’ll need to clear my head first. after those deranged dreams, i feel it’s full of cobwebs. ❞ ❝ on your way? or will you stay longer? it’s far safer with you around... ❞ ❝ really sad story, but something’s not right. got a feeling you’re not telling me everything. ❞ ❝ gotta admit, there’s something about you. you’re...different. ❞ ❝ with each arrow i shoot, i think of my dad. he’d be proud, i think. ❞ ❝ i merely know when to indulge my pride, and when to swallow it. ❞ ❝ you were born to greatness. ❞ ❝ these’re dark, grim times. no room for knights pure of heart or happily-ever-afters. ❞ ❝ a life without liquor’s like loving without licking. ❞ ❝ my certainty i walk the right path grows strong as iron, firm as steel. ❞ ❝ few make me feel awkward, but in your presence, i feel anxiety, discomfort. ❞ ❝ some men have got good reason to fear their own shadows. ❞ ❝ some men cannot admit defeat. some keep fighting from beyond the grave. ❞ ❝ stare into their eyes, feast on their terror. then go in for the kill. ❞ ❝ forget not that you are a person right and honorable, devoted to doing good. ❞ ❝ ash shall fertilize the soil. by spring, the valley shall bloom once more. ❞ ❝ there’s lots of wraiths here. i hear them whispering every night. ❞ ❝ no one has the courage to face this threat! yet we must kill them, or sooner or later we will all die. ❞ ❝ you are a step away from losing your head. speak the truth and you might yet keep it. ❞ ❝ you carry within you the weight of a terrible tragedy. you are a good person, but lost. which is why you come across as grim. ❞ ❝ if i understand you correctly, you would rather help a monster than kill it? ❞ ❝ discouraged after a mere eight attempts? ❞ ❝ easier to pat someone on the back and hope things will work out than it is to face the truth. ❞ ❝ know that they can’t teach an old dog new tricks? ❞ ❝ my, you’ve grown beautiful. ❞ ❝ my swords a promise --- if i reach for it, heads will roll. ❞ ❝ one condition: no one dies. that clear? ❞ ❝ patience happens to be my weakness. so dispense with the dramatic pauses and talk. ❞ ❝ you proved today you can take care of yourself. ❞ ❝ you under the delusion you’ll complete your tasks, live happily ever after? ❞ ❝ i will not sit and twiddle my thumbs. i'm sick of waiting, sick of hiding! ❞ ❝ glad you know who i am. haven’t introduced yourself, though. ❞ ❝ i’ve seen a great deal --- cruelty, cynicism, greed. ❞ ❝ you tempt fate, because at heart you are unhappy. ❞ ❝ we had our chance, but...let it go. ❞ ❝ come now, you didn’t expect it to be that easy, did you? ❞ ❝ promise me one thing --- you’ll stop risking your life for others. ❞ ❝ instead of dwelling on the future, i’d rather live in the moment. ❞ ❝ i adore love stories. especially the ones that end happily ever after. ❞ ❝ we are drops of rain that together make a ferocious storm. ❞ ❝ the path to freedom is paved in blood, not ink. ❞ ❝ we’ll get our happy ending. one day. ❞ ❝ i’ll never forget what you did for me...and what we had together. ❞ ❝ don’t meddle in other people’s lives. ❞ ❝ i don’t get attached to places. just people. ❞ ❝ it’s dangerous, there are risks involved. understand that, don’t you? ❞ ❝ and here i hoped someone would finally take pity on me. ❞ ❝ seen a lot of dead in my time, but that must’ve been hard. ❞ ❝ air is strange...like dropping into a deep cellar on a hot day... ❞ ❝ wouldn’t carry a sword if i didn’t know how to use it. ❞ ❝ take it you didn't summon me to reminisce about the good old days, so... ❞ ❝ i was attacked --- had to defend myself. ❞ ❝ guards have never stopped me, you know that. ❞ ❝ treating the ill and wounded...it’s my calling. ❞ ❝ you think it’s enchanted? ❞ ❝ there are times when a woman should simply not explain her decision. ❞ ❝ won’t find too many comforts, but try to feel at home. ❞ ❝ i was looking for you...sometimes i thought you were just a step away. other times, i felt like i was going around in circles. ❞ ❝ i’ll remember you. always with a smile. ❞ ❝ i’d rather you not make anymore trouble --- for yourself, or us both. ❞ ❝ got the stench of corpes on you. ❞ ❝ you stood to gain --- that is why you saved me. ❞ ❝ sages invariably have hidden agendas. altruism is simply not part of their constitution. ❞ ❝ the gods have abandoned us. the mighty of this earth care not for our fate. ❞ ❝ is that admiration i hear in your voice? ❞ ❝ i started off heading in the opposite direction, but then turned around. ❞ ❝ i’m fed up. i won’t have others deciding for me behind my back. ❞ ❝ where’d you get this idea? what’s gotten into you? ❞ ❝ i don't expect you to commit now. think it over, what you've heard, what you feel. ❞ ❝ head torn clear off...takes incredible strength. ❞ ❝ desperate fathers have been known to do a lot to find their daughters. ❞ ❝ you cannot kill me. you know this... ❞ ❝ "i give you my heart”? what kind of spell is that? ❞ ❝ i’d go anywhere with you. ❞ ❝ why? because i am a woman? in a frock, rather than plate? i can take care of myself, i assure you. ❞ ❝ everything we discussed here, hope you’ll keep it to yourself. counting on it, in fact. ❞ ❝ trusted you once. won’t make that mistake again. ❞ ❝ shut up. i’ve heard enough of your bullshit. draw your weapon, let’s get this over with. ❞ ❝ exaggerating for effect, right? ❞ ❝ well, well...when cornered, you can bite. ❞ ❝ you cannot win...even if you kill me. ❞ ❝ you know i’m good at accomplishing the impossible. ❞ ❝ it’s nothing, really. you’d have done the same for me. ❞ ❝ you are not ready. you do not control your powers. ❞ ❝ you’re a tool in their hands, even if you don’t see it. ❞ ❝ i’d do anything for you, i would. you know that well. ❞ ❝ this is a land where the fantastic is normal, and the impossible occurs daily... ❞ ❝ know when a legend becomes a prophecy? when it gain believers. ❞ ❝ i thought you’d become a stranger to me. that i’d look at you and not feel a thing. but it’s not like that at all. nothing’s changed. ❞ ❝ to be honest, i just wanted to go on a walk with you. ❞ ❝ what i really want is to be with you, to...to be together and... ❞ ❝ this is not the kind of offer one refuses. ❞ ❝ despair devours you like maggots devour a corpse. ❞ ❝ before long every soul will kneel before you. ❞ ❝ i run into dilemmas all the time. situations where it's hard to judge, hard to know what's right, make a decision. this is not one of them. you disgust me. and deserve to die. ❞ ❝ you know me. i’m rare to praise, but when i do, it’s sincere. ❞ ❝ i'm not a thug for hire. ❞ ❝ i like being on adventures, sleeping under the stars, waking up with dew on my face. ❞ ❝ the dream's within reach now. i’m not about to let it go. ❞ ❝ unlike you, killing gives me no pleasure. ❞ ❝ can't speak for the world you inhabit, but in mine, nothing is ever black and white. ❞ ❝ you cannot possibly imagine how much i detest this place. ❞ ❝ stones you’ve got. but i didn’t think you’d have the stomach for a massacre. ❞ ❝ the dead man --- looked like a monster attacked him recently. ❞ ❝ finish all your business before you die. bid loved ones farewell. write your will. apologize to those you’ve wronged. otherwise, you’ll never truly leave this world. ❞ ❝ i've had nothing but nightmares lately. pretty horrible. ❞ ❝ i was wandering through the forest, breathing deep the air, and then i heard a strange sound, unsettling. ❞ ❝ had a few nice dreams. for example, in one we sat around a fire, drinking good wine, and all around people danced and laughed. ❞ ❝ they’re all dead! mountains of corpses. yet here i stand alone. all alone. ❞ ❝ this isn’t a game. men have died. ❞ ❝ if you wanna listen, listen, if not --- i'd rather you spared me your wit and throw me out now. ❞ ❝ you fed me, cared for me, had my wounds looked after. we're even now. ❞ ❝ you’ll return, you shall. our fates are bound. ❞ ❝ i’ve nothing left. not a fucking thing. ❞ ❝ i don’t question your abilities. i simply don’t trust you. ❞ ❝ what foolish things men sometimes do. ❞ ❝ dare harm me, and against you will rise all the powers of nature. ❞ ❝ did you destroy the evil powers? have you brought peace to my domain? ❞ ❝ well, perhaps i shall tell you about it one day. one day, but not today.. ❞ ❝ times like these, you never know what tomorrow will bring. ❞ ❝ you worry too much. what will be, will be. ❞ ❝ have you gone completely mad? we must leave here at once! ❞ ❝ time eats away at memories, distorts them. sometimes we only remember the good... sometimes only the bad. ❞ ❝ you don’t need magic to strip men of their humanity. i’ve seen plenty of examples. ❞ ❝ if i’m to choose between one evil and another, i’d rather not choose at all. ❞ ❝ see what i’ve got on my back? wolves fear it. kings do, too. ❞ ❝ i missed those awkward compliments of yours. ❞ ❝ sometimes i think it’s all too lovely to be true…that something’s bound to happen, another war or some other horror. ❞ ❝ took you a while. did you run into trouble? ❞ ❝ i just travel a lot. and i don't always happen upon such good and civil company. ❞ ❝ what can you know about saving the world, silly? ❞ ❝ done my share of fighting. wouldn't carry a sword if i didn't know to use it. ❞ ❝ all right, perhaps i wasn’t completely honest. ❞ ❝ ever thought this day would come? me and you...peace and quiet...bees buzzing, birds chirping. ❞ ❝ i detect a shadow of impatience in your face. ❞ ❝ took me a long time to find you. wasn't an easy road to travel. ❞ ❝ wipe that frown off your face, or i might think you don’t like me anymore. ❞ ❝ always believed attack was the best defense. ❞ ❝ once it’s all over, if we survive ... i wish to leave, go far away. and i’d like you to come with me. ❞ ❝ naturally, you suspect me of the worst. i don’t deserve that. ❞ ❝ we can fight another time, in another place, where the walls have no ears. ❞ ❝ once i was free...i shall be free once more. ❞ ❝ believe me...a tavern, mulled wine, our boots drying by the fire --- i’d like nothing better. ❞ ❝ prove it. kiss me. ❞ ❝ the prophecies do not lie...you cannot survive this struggle. ❞ ❝ i know you better than you think. ❞ ❝ you know me. nothing i like more than breaking rules. ❞ ❝ what’s happened? it’s so quiet, all of a sudden. ❞ ❝ thank you, for coming with me. ❞ ❝ i cannot do everything for you. use your head. ❞ ❝ i'm angry and tired. had to kill a lot of people along the way. ❞ ❝ we’ve come a long way, and i’d be damned if we’ve come to fail. ❞ ❝ i sense your pain. i see your fear. ❞ ❝ how’s this for an answer: kiss my ass. ❞ ❝ how many have you already killed? how many more might you still? ❞ ❝ i'm quite alive and extraordinarily well. better than i've ever been in this rotten life of mine. ❞ ❝ i like it when you smile. come here. everything will be all right. ❞ ❝ ugh. don’t fall in love with me. ❞ ❝ i don’t like you. in fact, i feel like slapping you. ❞ ❝ i'm too old to play the blushing bride...unless you ask nicely. ❞ ❝ that bit of my life --- forgotten it already. ❞ ❝ the world doesn’t need a hero. it needs a professional. ❞ ❝ next time you wonder why i’m so bitter...well, there's your answer. ❞ ❝ nothing wrong with having a drink in good company. ❞ ❝ i want you behind those rocks. and keep your mouth shut. ❞ ❝ nice of you to worry...but i've made my decision, and i won't change it. ❞ ❝ this is my story, not yours. you must let me finish telling it. ❞ ❝ after all that toil, i believe we deserve a bit of a rest. ❞ ❝ i was afraid you were dead. ❞ ❝ we’ve all some stain on our conscience. ❞ ❝ leaving the castle walls means certain death. ❞ ❝ right good jest. had us a laugh. now fuck off. ❞ ❝ i’ve heard about you. you bring trouble, or thus far have, always. ❞ ❝ ah, you’ve struck a raw nerve. memories of a time long past to which i’d rather not return now. ❞ ❝ we meet again. and it seems you need my help. again. ❞ ❝ got a relative i can talk to? someone - how do i say this - a smidgen less irritating? ❞ ❝ miss the target, you owe me fifty push-ups. hit it, you owe me twenty. ❞ ❝ oh. serious talk coming. ❞ ❝ i feel like one more lie'd be the last bitter drop in a chalice full of sorrow. ❞ ❝ romantic? thought we came here as friends. ❞ ❝ you’re hiding something. and that’s one thing i can’t stand. ❞ ❝ tell me, how do you do it? always manage to pull yourself together, focus, no matter what’s happening? ❞ ❝ i go wherever i please, whenever i please. ❞ ❝ uh oh. i know that look. ❞ ❝ sounds tempting. so tempting i don’t think i can refuse. ❞ ❝ so, what do you say to a moonlight ride on horseback...and dinner? ❞ ❝ perhaps...perhaps you’d stay just a bit longer? ❞ ❝ how are you feeling? sleep well? ❞ ❝ such a gloomy subject to broach... simply shouldn’t have. ❞

❝ such a gloomy subject to broach...i simply shouldn’t have --- not during our romantic dinner. ❞ ❝ got it. a bit of blackmail --- just your style. ❞ ❝ it’s the crack of dawn. where do you wanna go? ❞ ❝ shut up before you wake someone. last thing we need is a crowd. ❞ ❝ watch what you say. the trees have ears. ❞ ❝ no bow at hand, no spear. my sword was all i had. ❞ ❝ never expected you’d take such an interest in my private life. ❞ ❝ i’m special. always was the rare beauty. ❞ ❝ damn. been ages since we last saw each other. ❞ ❝ some charming orchards nearby. in bloom, even, so you almost can't smell the corpses. ❞ ❝ you know me. nothing i like more than breaking rules. ❞ ❝ man spends his whole life learning. ❞ ❝ if only i was as skilled with my words as i am with my blade. ❞ ❝ i wished to know what was going on in that head of yours. i thought perhaps i could help. ❞ ❝ i can tell something’s bothering you. ❞ ❝ dangerous times. each thinks five times before sticking their neck out. and i can’t blame them. ❞ ❝ now i care not in the slightest how you think or feel. ❞ ❝ i no longer know if i still hate you. ❞ ❝ i see how you look at me, and i see you wither. ❞ ❝ one last bit of advice --- find a new tavern. everyone here knows you. ❞ ❝ you won. no point bothering with ‘what ifs’. ❞ ❝ it’s time i took fate into my own hands. lived life anew...and truly, this time. ❞ ❝ ahh, 'cause you thought you'd killed me that time. surprise, sur-fucking-prise. ❞ ❝ who...who’s that? gods, i’m hallucinating. ❞ ❝ it’s no exaggeration to say i’ve never met a warrior like you in my life. you’re lithe as an eel and strong as a bear. ❞ ❝ i’ve a heart again, yet all it feels is grief, sadness and defeat. my life is a ruin. ❞ ❝ sought only to protect myself. in doing so, i put you in harm’s way. forgive me. ❞ ❝ there’s a charming grove nearby where kisses taste sweeter than anywhere else in the world. ❞ ❝ you’ve handled tougher situations. you’ll figure this one out. ❞ ❝ who you are and why you’ve come matter little. for you’ll not leave this place alive. ❞ ❝ i’m not panicking. just trying to be realistic. ❞ ❝ hahahahaha...i can’t believe you fell for that! ❞ ❝ i was actually going to recite an anthem praising your glory, but if you’re not in the mood... ❞ ❝ lying didn’t always come so easily to you. ❞ ❝ everyone wants to rule. i can do that better than any monarch. ❞ ❝ tell me what you want already, and make it quick. ❞ ❝ what a mess we made of it all...if i’d only known then how it would end... ❞ ❝ seems a faded dream now, but there were a time where i was happy. ❞ ❝ why’d you leave me? you claimed you loved me. ❞ ❝ never liked boats. not one bit. ❞ ❝ you must be mad. i’ve no intention to make things easier for you. ❞ ❝ i don’t wish to look at your face any longer than i must. ❞ ❝ please, no. i can’t stand spells. ❞ ❝ we agreed not to keep any secrets from one another. we promised. ❞ ❝ that i like! a man who boldly dares, damn the risks! ❞ ❝ i thought you bowed before no man. ❞ ❝ smile a bit wider. ...you were meant to smile, not bare your teeth. ❞ ❝ is that blood? have you hurt yourself? ❞ ❝ no reason to trouble the guards. i’ll go willingly. ❞ ❝ look at me. promise you’ll stay out of it. ❞ ❝ the minute we’re in trouble, you make me responsible for getting us out. ❞ ❝ they say they don’t fear the wrath of the gods. and you, do you fear it? ❞ ❝ i’ll let that pass. i know grief eats at your heart. ❞ ❝ we all lie sometimes. but lying to yourself is running away, whereas there’s really nowhere to run. ❞ ❝ don’t need your sympathy, just your help. ❞ ❝ your loss -- it must hurt, bad. but there wasn't anything we could do. ❞ ❝ i wish to leave, go far away. and i’d like you to come with me. ❞ ❝ i trust you have an explanation for this. a very good one. ❞ ❝ lot of bitterness in you. ❞ ❝ i assure you, you’re excellent at covering your tracks --- though not terribly subtle. but i’m even better at uncovering them. ❞ ❝ glad to see you happy...but i don’t think what we did was right. ❞ ❝ i look at you, and...and feel like i am exactly where i am supposed to be. at long last. ❞ ❝ i’m no coward. i'll not run this time. ❞ ❝ yes, i know you’ve trained with swords. but you’re still shit with them. ❞ ❝ how many innocents have you cut down? ❞ ❝ problem is, you’re not ordinary. you were born to greatness. ❞ ❝ not too late to surrender. ❞ ❝ men turn honest when they feel a blade at their throat. ❞ ❝ i'm not gonna drink. why dull my senses when i’m in such pleasant company? ❞ ❝ it’s bound to come in handy, and each time it does, you’ll think of me. ❞ ❝ lie still or you will bleed to death. ❞ ❝ your life is yours, exclusively. you choose who you are. ❞ ❝ for a minute there, was almost sure you’d leave me to die. ❞ ❝ there is never a second opportunity to make a first impression. ❞ ❝ it’s all because of that secretiveness of yours. ❞ ❝ plead the gods spare us, for without their favor we shall most certainly perish. ❞ ❝ i must say -- seen a lot, but nothing like this, never. ❞ ❝ you don’t look like you can get home on your own. i’ll walk you. ❞ ❝ all’s in the past, never to be restored. ❞ ❝ you know full well i never hold a grudge. i forgive you. ❞ ❝ the good gods sent you to me. ❞ ❝ and the guilt, the responsibility of all this, lies with me. ❞ ❝ you’ve only been here five minutes, and you’ve already managed to offend me twice. ❞ ❝ you will certainly fetch me a higher bounty alive. ❞ ❝ what's wrong with my beard? always thought it added to my dignity. ❞ ❝ if i’m to die today, i wish to look smashing for the occasion. ❞ ❝ i was stupid. stupidity costs a lot. ❞ ❝ even your humblest requests seem like threats. ❞ ❝ your motives do not interest me. only results. ❞ ❝ and you laughed, oh, how sweetly, how brightly you laughed! ❞ ❝ you don’t know how it is. to see someone you love die. because of you, for you. ❞ ❝ to have a scapegoat --- that’s the key. ❞ ❝ no need to fear me. ❞ ❝ sorry, but -- your life story? just not interested. ❞ ❝ with you...it was love at first sight. ❞ ❝ gotta understand. you don’t betray people like me. ❞ ❝ i struggled long to find a place where i’d feel safe, needed. until i finally arrived here. ❞ ❝ just don’t faint on me. ❞ ❝ could never be there for you everyday. but i’m happy to see you always. and today, i’m all yours. ❞ ❝ what others think...your image...that’s all you care about. ❞ ❝ in these foul times one must be wary, even of their friends. ❞ ❝ come on, don’t get angry - it’s not good for you.. ❞ ❝ so, apart from the sword play, you know potions and all that? ❞ ❝ i actually envy your sense of wonder --- common in children, and morons. ❞ ❝ a lot of misfortune for a small village. ❞ ❝ who are you? do you seek to hurt me as well? ❞ ❝ the hand that feeds can also strike its wayward wards. ❞ ❝ shh. eat now. we’ll speak once you’ve rested. ❞ ❝ brother has turned against brother, the land is soaked in blood. evil reigns stronger than ever before. ❞ ❝ good looking and clever. where’ve you been hiding? ❞ ❝ doesn’t bother you, having monsters for neighbours? ❞ ❝ stay here --- no matter what happens. ❞ ❝ i never told you this, but i’ve always felt it: i love you. ❞ ❝ listen to me this once -- don't take matters into your own hands. ❞ ❝ love these moments. the air before a battle -- nothing smells as sweet. ❞ ❝ they tried to get in through the main gate. i’m afraid they could succeed next time. ❞ ❝ too many claim you’re evil. ❞ ❝ why are you so eager to help strangers? sit your ass down or there’ll be misfortune. ❞ ❝ you'd never have managed without me, would you? come, now, admit it. ❞ ❝ for those who remain, death should never take precedence over life. ❞ ❝ thanks for coming. thanks for risking your life for me. ❞ ❝ don’t force me to speak of it. no more, please. ❞ ❝ when doubt plagues your mind, follow your instincts. should they steer you wrong and land you in muck, you'll land at peace with yourself. and that's most important. ❞ ❝ just know that i know you're here. one misstep, one error...you'll make a mistake, it's inevitable...i'll be the first to learn it. ❞ ❝ i do not know you. i’ve done you no harm. ❞ ❝ try not to panic...just doesn’t suit you. ❞ ❝ we’ve come a long way, and i’ll be damned if we’ve come to fail. ❞ ❝ had i known what would happen here, i'd never have come. ❞ ❝ i can say i’ve seen it all now. ❞ ❝ these scars have long yearned for your tender caress. ❞ ❝ i don’t fall victim to curses. i cast them. ❞ ❝ come outside. we can hold hands and stare at the sky. ❞ ❝ we’ll work well together --- i can see that already. ❞ ❝ from the first moment i set eyes upon you that fateful evening, my heart has only beaten for you. ❞ ❝ i trust you as much as you trust me --- not at all. ❞ ❝ you’ve gone all red in the face just for talking about it. ❞ ❝ wake up. it’s just a dream. wake up! ❞ ❝ i still don’t believe everything that happened. ❞ ❝ i never miss twice. ❞ ❝ bit too old to believe in bedtime stories, aren’t you? ❞ ❝ you humans have...unusual tastes. ❞ ❝ didn’t think it worthwhile to tell me, warn me of your plans? ❞ ❝ i think you will not attack one unarmed. ❞ ❝ the deeper i get into this, the more i gotta wonder...why’re you even helping me? ❞ ❝ to live in peace, we first must kill. ❞ ❝ at times fate muddles our path, and life turns toilsome, hard to bear. ❞ ❝ i fight for whoever’s paying the best. or whoever’s easier to rob. ❞ ❝ do not let my beauty distract your aim. ❞ ❝ i’ve seen what is to come, i know destruction approaches. ❞ ❝ the war awoke an ancient power. an evil one that feeds on bloodshed. ❞ ❝ guess you’re no stranger to fury, either. ❞ ❝ think i’m gonna fall for that? no chance, you’re wrong. ❞ ❝ gotta admit --- you do pretty well with a sword. ❞ ❝ you dare tell me to calm down?! you?! ❞ ❝ let's say i go about my business, and when there's coin to be earned, i don't readily turn it down. ❞ ❝ i wish to know the truth...be it sweet, be it painful, i wish to know. ❞ ❝ men, the polite ones at least, would call me a monster. ❞ ❝ even i grow ill at the sight of you. ❞ ❝ i’m going on a walk. or is that not allowed either? because i could break my leg? ❞ ❝ plan’s crazier than it is sane...but there’s an irrestistible charm to it. ❞ ❝ unbelievable! you said something romantic! you! ❞ ❝ we may not survive this. in fact, our chances are slim. ❞ ❝ if anything should happen to you... ❞ ❝ there’s not been a dark cloud yet that didn’t have a silver lining. ❞ ❝ those are some fresh lookin’ scars you’ve got there. ❞ ❝ no. no more about the battle. just hold me. and say something nice. ❞ ❝ stay. this is the only home we’ve ever had. ❞ ❝ you’re so charming when you try to be funny. ❞ ❝ not proud of it...yet i considered all the options and found none better. ❞ ❝ i look far different from when you last saw me. ❞ ❝ i admire your optimism. wish i shared it. ❞ ❝ and...try not to draw any attention to yourself. ❞ ❝ nightmares haunt our nights and days. folk sleepwalk from their homes, never to return. ❞ ❝ forgive me. it couldn’t be avoided. i truly am sorry. ❞ ❝ well i’ve departed, escaped, been forced to flee so many times…yet i always returned. you ought to be used to it by now. ❞ ❝ the human mind is as wild and unexplored a place as any land far beyond the sea. ❞ ❝ you think you’ve won. you are wrong. i can’t die. ❞ ❝ you’re something more. something more. ❞ ❝ barely nicked me, i’ll be fine. ❞ ❝ it’s just that i felt...stifled, in your shadow. i’d have suffocated had i stayed. ❞ ❝ come, don’t just stand there. i want a hug. ❞ ❝ it’s lovely here! i could stay forever. ❞ ❝ do what you will, but leave me out of this. ❞ ❝ we should end this discussion -- before i say something i'll regret. ❞ ❝ you all right? you’re as pale as death. ❞ ❝ let’s get back to the hut. i’ll protect you along the way. ❞ ❝ not to keen on talking about it, are you? ❞ ❝ it’s better to die than to live in the knowledge that you’ve done something that needs forgiveness. ❞ ❝ i was afraid you were dead. ❞ ❝ at times one must use reason, rather than blades. ❞ ❝ need some peace. gotta prepare. ❞ ❝ i suspected it might not be the best idea, but i was desperate, had no choice. ❞ ❝ so tell me how it happened. step by step. ❞ ❝ it was a bit of a lark, a jest. i meant to bring it all back, i swear. ❞ ❝ if i wanted to kill you, you'd be long dead by now. ❞ ❝ that is precisely one of the reasons why i abhor your world. your senseless brutality. ❞ ❝ i won’t let them take you, you know that? ❞ ❝ magic...childish hocus-pocus. it’s just not interesting. what i find fascinating are true tales of true human lives. ❞ ❝ save your praise for others. i couldn’t give a shit. ❞ ❝ well, well, i am impressed. doubted you still had it in you, frankly. ❞ ❝ i like you. don’t make me hurt you. ❞ ❝ you know very little can hurt you being immortal, so you take wild risks, chase extreme sensations. there comes a point you’ve done it all, and all seems boring and monotonous. ❞ ❝ with you i finally feel...harmony. a calm. feel like things are the way they're supposed to be. ❞ ❝ i'm afraid the dishwater’s as good as it gets in this establishment. ❞ ❝ sorry to take so long, but i had to deal with the guards. ❞ ❝ i’d never miss a chance to spend a pleasant evening with you. ❞ ❝ you know too much. yet one more reason why you must die. ❞ ❝ or perhaps you seek to trick me. ❞ ❝ if you acknowledge any gods...start praying, now. ❞ ❝ it’s very simple. you either deceived me...or not. ❞ ❝ i am known neither for my sense of humor nor for my patience. ❞ ❝ naturally, it would be easier with your help, but...you irritate me. ❞ ❝ love questions like that. am i holding up? what, my dick? ❞ ❝ we never hunt in these woods. not even if it means the whole village starves. ❞ ❝ we’re only ever the ones to know the truth about ourselves. ❞ ❝ you’re insolent because you believe i cannot afford to hurt you. and you’re right. ❞ ❝ i detest graveyards, especially wandering them alone. ❞ ❝ you know too much. you impede me too often. and i find your arrogance an annoyance. ❞ ❝ i know it’s wartime, but try not to be a hero, all right? ❞ ❝ i don’t know that i’ll make for engaging company. in truth, i rarely talk to men. ❞ ❝ you know...had a dream about you recently. ❞ ❝ i thought i could at least count on you to treat me seriously. ❞ ❝ don’t ask questions you know the answers to. it makes you look stupid. ❞ ❝ you’re nosy. starting to piss me off, you know? ❞ ❝ what did i do to deserve this? have i given you cause to doubt my intentions? ❞ ❝ don’t fret about me. i always get by somehow, right? ❞ ❝ i wanted to go with you --- that was my idea. ❞ ❝ i shan’t stray a step from your side. ❞ ❝ if that’s what it takes to save the world, it’s better to let that world die. ❞ ❝ what’s that supposed to mean? that a threat? ❞ ❝ i’m offering a great and true adventure, an experience like no other, the fate of only the chosen few. ❞ ❝ that’s like choosing between pestilence and the plague. ❞ ❝ what’s it matter? i only ever thought of you. ❞ ❝ did you know you’ve gained twenty-seven new scars since we’ve last saw each other? ❞ ❝ i need to know the details if you want me to get my hands dirty. ❞ ❝ don’t know you. go away. ❞ ❝ ever vigilant, even in your sleep. quite vampire-like, in fact. ❞ ❝ gotten used to people treating me like a freak, an outcast. ❞ ❝ we share a cause, then. just like the old days. ❞ ❝ ever considered becoming a burglar? skill like that’d come in awful handy. ❞ ❝ there’s never been a frown that couldn’t be turned upside down. ❞ ❝ honesty's an attribute of the truly brave --- and thus the privilege of the very few. ❞ ❝ you do not have a monopoly in altruism, my friend. ❞ ❝ great love demands great sacrifices. ❞ ❝ i believe it wise at times to share one’s secrets, unburden oneself to those one can trust. ❞ ❝ it would be nice from time to time if you could sit back and enjoy life, instead of going around solving everyone’s problems. ❞ ❝ we shall dance until the break of dawn! ❞ ❝ a man could lose his head for a lass like you. ❞ ❝ don’t have to come if you don’t want. wait here. ❞ ❝ never seen this side of you. ❞ ❝ i’m to kiss the ground you walk on, is that it? but you just did your duty. ❞ ❝ the day you give me a smile...that moment, that’s what i’m waiting for. ❞ ❝ i need a soul intelligent and clever, an individual who fears no dare. someone like you. ❞ ❝ if i was you i’d catch some shut-eye, not go on flapping my tongue. ❞ ❝ the plan is simple...which does not mean it will be easy to execute. ❞ ❝ sometimes you really get on my nerves, you know. ❞ ❝ you shall not turn on me, use what i say against me? you shall not tell anyone? ❞ ❝ gave you a chance. should’ve taken it. ❞ ❝ always better to do a bit more and even gain nothing by it, than to do too little and face regret. ❞ ❝ it’s lovely out here. the birds singing, the bees buzzing...blissful, really. ❞ ❝ what a lovely dress. the color suits you exquisitely. ❞ ❝ pretty fantastic tale. hard as hell to believe. ❞ ❝ it’s time you discovered my romantic side. ❞ ❝ you gotta understand the whole world doesn’t revolve around you. ❞ ❝ can you not see i am out of my mind with worry? ❞ ❝ every rose has its thorn, and there are no happy endings. ❞ ❝ pretty quick to reject help. why is that? ❞ ❝ don’t need to like each other. just gotta do our jobs. ❞ ❝ frankly, if i can do something for you, i'll do it, willingly. ❞ ❝ you were hired you kill me, were you not? ❞ ❝ what’s it like, going toe to toe with a monster? knowing you’ve only two options --- to kill or be killed? ❞ ❝ this place --- there’s evil here. death hangs in the air. ❞ ❝ intellect counts as much as strength. ❞ ❝ i run back inside, hasp the doors, and then i hear it --- someone whispering my name. ❞ ❝ you know i like you. unlike the rest of this lot, you’ve got a good head on your shoulders. ❞ ❝ if you love somebody, set them free. ❞ ❝ if you hate me so deeply, why don’t you tell me to my face? ❞ ❝ i’m afraid you’d not realize which way the wind was blowing if you pissed straight into it. ❞ ❝ that was courageous. i'd never expect it from you. ❞ ❝ i am not easily impressed, but i must admit you have succeeded, my dear. ❞ ❝ kill me if you must. i’ve nothing to live for anyway. ❞ ❝ aren’t you an extraordinary beauty. ❞ ❝ never suspected you believed such things. ❞ ❝ wait...you want to go with me? out of the question. ❞ ❝ used to it. not the first time i’ve been hunted. ❞ ❝ enough of this hesitation, this fretting, these feelings of guilt! ❞ ❝ strange working with you. strange, but great. ❞ ❝ give me a moment. i must don something more appropiate and concealing. ❞ ❝ killing comes as naturally to me as blowing my nose. ❞ ❝ ...... another tale of a life compromised and ultimately claimed by greed and ambition. ❞ ❝ in the future, though, remember this --- i can look after myself ❞ ❝ you'd really worry about me if i went on alone? ❞ ❝ you have many merits. you merely hide them from the world very diligently. ❞ ❝ is it true virtue always trumps villainy? ❞ ❝ watch my movements. i’m spry as a cat and sly as a fox. ❞ ❝ ah, if only this could last forever. ❞ ❝ few i can rely on like i can on you. kinda hoping you think the same of me. ❞ ❝ you are angry at the whole world. you feel inferior, feel pain, though you mask this with confidence, arrogance, even. ❞ ❝ there exist worries for which there quite simply is no other medicine. ❞ ❝ your bones look thin, your breathing’s wheezy. afraid one punch might kill you. ❞ ❝ to love is to build a house of cards, or play a game of chess, but one word or ill-thought move and you must start it all afresh. ❞ ❝ i’m doing what i ever wanted to do, being who i wanted to be. i believe that’s one definition of happiness. ❞ ❝ you’ve not an ounce of refinement in you, have you? ❞ ❝ pain rules the body, but fear is born in the heart. ❞ ❝ either i get burned, or i’ll burn all else down. no other options. ❞ ❝ should you decide your sword is the sole solution, i shall not stand in your way. ❞ ❝ c’mon, come closer. ❞ ❝ would you prefer i treated you like the lying manipulater you are? ❞ ❝ i regret nothing. one lives but once. ❞ ❝ i just hope this tale has a happy ending. for me, for you. for everyone. ❞ ❝ just gonna go our seperate ways? no parting words? ❞ ❝ you still stand to be quite useful to me. ❞ ❝ i suppose you wanted to frighten me...alas, you didn’t in the least. after all, i’m a monster too, am i not? ❞ ❝ i trust no one. learned that long ago. ❞ ❝ it cannot be! you actually have a sense of humor. ❞ ❝ didn’t ask for a lecture on probability. need a simple answer --- yes or no. ❞ ❝ another word, and i shall spill even more blood. yours. ❞ ❝ you feel resentment, i understand, but we shall work through all the unfortunate matters of the past. ❞ ❝ stop playing dumb. i know everything...your plan. ❞ ❝ honestly can’t see what all those dames see in you --- you’re a stick in the mud. ❞ ❝ not showy, lovely location...perfect for romantic getaways. ❞ ❝ i hope you’re not upset i came like this, without warning... ❞ ❝ i’m still a long way from mastering anything. but i am trying. ❞ ❝ now i know how you do it. just annoy your opponents to death. ❞ ❝ word on the street is there’s a hefty bounty on your head. ❞ ❝ for a few days now i’ve been having dizzy spells. ❞ ❝ i’ve always had a way with ostensibly dangerous types. ❞ ❝ wound doesn’t look good. patch that up quick if i were you, before it starts festering. ❞ ❝ always seemed to me you were a very complicated creature, by nature. not one to resort to such simple methods like drinking your worries away. ❞ ❝ may i be honest? yes, i’m nervous. i really would prefer to just run off. ❞ ❝ father always said a wise man learns from others’ mistakes, so here i am, learning from his. ❞ ❝ ever since that horrid night...everything has changed. ❞ ❝ what’s wrong? afraid? gut feeling queasy? ❞ ❝ used to bother me, all your secrets...now i know if you have something to tell me, you’ll tell me. ❞ ❝ i so don’t feel like going anywhere. sit here a while longer? ❞ ❝ there’s something i’d like to know...how can you be so damned calm? ❞ ❝ my knees quake like a carnival rattle. ❞ ❝ honestly didn’t think this’d work. doubted anything would happen. ❞

#roleplay starters #roleplay meme #long post for ts /

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herenortherenearnorfar · 3 years ago

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This Tornado Tolerates And Respects You

A little story about Gothmog and orcs that I’ll probably put on other sites later. But for now, a tumblr exclusive! CW for the terrible reproductive politics of evil (implied reproductive coercion, forced childbearing, light eugenics), orc awfulness, disdain for incarnates, radiation poisoning, chemical weapons, Fingon’s fate, mentions of cannibalism, malnourishment, ear cropping, and all of the above with the implied harm to children.

Orcs, Lord Melkor’s special pet project, a blasphemy first and a strategic asset second, didn’t make the best troops. They could swarm over a target in a useful mass of bodies but they lacked skill and drive. For the Captain of Angband’s own force of fire and shadow, spirits sprung free from the tyranny of the Valar, orcs were a sea of troublesome bodies, cluttering up the field of battle. More flesh to whip through, barbed wire quick, more lungs to choke with lime gas. An annoyance, not an ally.

He didn’t have very high expectations of them as a source of soldiers and there were very few individual orcs who he respected. Gorfaunt was one of those rare exceptions.

They’d fought on the same battlefield under the taunting stars, in those blissful days before the heavens changed, and he’d been impressed by the orc commanders ability to marshal troops. Very few in that division ended up trampled beneath Balrog feet. Even the retreat was prompt, almost orderly, without sacrificing that wild spirit which was one of the orcs’ few redeeming qualities.

When it came time to capture the stripling-king of the elves he’d requested Gorfaunt’s orcs in particular. Once again they’d proven their mettle and the commander had become of of the Captain’s favorites. If orcs had to be stationed next to their betters it was preferable that it be Gorfaunt’s orcs, who knew how to comport themselves and could fight near Balrogs without dying in droves.

Now with the latest glorious battle (and another successful collaboration, the Captain still glowed at the memory of the Noldor’s latest king cracking open to spill his red insides over his silver banner) behind them and Lord Melkor demanding Nargothrond and Gondolin, they met once a month to strategize, share intelligence, and complain about everyone else. To an outsider they might have passed as friends. There was less formality between the two of them than another high general of the iron fortress might have demanded, they sat at the same table and spoke freely.

(The Lieutenant still asked commanders to bow before him; that was why even his own troops called him Sauron behind his back. Gothmog was a superior appellation, less insulting, more fearful, but he still didn’t hasten to encourage its use.)

Despite their surface level amicability and the handful of tried-and-true inside jokes—mostly having to do with how enemies had died— they could bat at each other, they knew very little about each other’s lives. Meat and smoke only mixed when making a brisket, trying to relate two such different ways of being seemed impossible.

But when he saw Gorfaunt waddling into their monthly kvetch with a belly round and swollen like a tick’s, the Captain felt driven to say something. He was the marshal of Angband, he couldn’t let his king’s forces go to seed.

“Are you ill? Cursed?”

Gorfaunt managed to pull out a chair, made for a Balrog three times the size of an orc, and hoist themselves into it with rangy arms. “No? Just five months with a baby kicking around in my insides. The little bugger’s finally starting to show itself.”

That took a second to decipher. “You’re having a baby?”

Of course the Captain knew the basics of how incarnates made more of themselves. It was a topic of great fascination in the old days, when Yavanna was first figuring the system out, and of course the Lieutenant would prattle on about warg breeding to anyone who’d listen. They had sex— another thing that did not come naturally to beings of spirits, though some Maiar had made astounding progress in the field, for pleasure was pleasure and even Nienna’s acolytes sought catharsis and comfort—then there was lots of squishy biology on a level invisible to the incarnates themselves, then a little parasite was somehow blessed with Erú’s fire, to be nurtured until it could nurture itself.

He also knew that orcs, like elves and dwarves, had little distinction between men and womenfolk. Useful when it meant you could channel your entire adult population to battle. Startling when you realized that a key ally had been quietly pregnant for months without you, a greater being able to perceive stalactites growing and the scales on insect wings, noticing.

In truth he’d been doing a lot less noticing of late. His senses were dulling. Perhaps it was the light of the cursed gems, which painted everything in blinding, indistinguishable holiness. Or he was just losing his touch.

If he focused now he could see it. It was easiest to sense on the plane of wraiths. There was Gorfaunt, a guttering candle; wheezing, weak. All orcs had that fire, however dim. No one had managed to fully extinguish it though it had been much suppressed. Tucked against her, nearly imperceptible, was a little spark. Not much yet but given tinder and carefully fanned it could grow. “You’re having a baby,” he marveled.

Gorfaunt’s face was… orcs were hard to read at the best of times, bubbling over with noisy pain and anger that obscured their true emotions, prone to skin diseases and horrendous eye infections that muddled their expressions. She didn’t wear her gas mask around him anymore, though most were quick to cover up around any Maia of Morgoth. It helped little, her face was still opaque as the mountain itself. “Yep, Captain.”

“Good?” You congratulated an ally on a new weapon, a new bond, a promotion. Which one was an infant classified as? What was the correct form?

“Hopefully it’ll be over and the little goblin will be in the caves with the old’uns by the time we find either of the cities.” Gorfaunt provided, only barely contextualizing his felicitations. She was chewing on the inside on her cheek; sometimes she would gnaw until she spat black blood. “Terrible time for it. Terrible time. But the high ups are worried about reinforcements down the line, I suppose.”

Orcs came from orcs. It was a fact so simple it barely bore considering. Another department handled it. The new ones just showed up, springy and long limbed, faces still soft and unmarred. “Goblins” he’d heard older orcs call those fresh pale creatures. Barely even monsters, more like stunted, crepuscular versions of the elves and dwarves they fought.

“How much longer?” They had a few good leads on Nargothrond, a promising word about Túrin Turambar. The Captain could not sack that city himself, the honor had already been promised to the sulfurous worm. Apparently they wanted to test the mettle of these dragons. But Gothmog could assign a few good orc commanders to supervise, make sure the worm was not overstepping his bounds.

Dark blood trickled out of the corner of Gorfaunt’s mouth. “Five months, I’m told. Could be more, could be less. Then I have to wait until the thing is independent enough to leave alone, that’s another few months.” She was probably counting months as the orcs had started to, by the moon. Wretched traitor, Tilion, who’d laughed with them at the idea of running away then turned his face when the time came to flee for freedom. They hated it as much as everyone else but in their hatred they were aware of its cycles. They rejoiced when it went dark.

“You’ll still be able to manage your underlings?” Orcs, and freed Maiar, were fractious. They did not respect a leader who lacked the strength to force them to obey. It could be exhausting. And Gorfaunt was already so round. The Captain did not wish to lose her support over one orcling.

“I think so. So far… in old days you’d den up somewhere for a year, avoid everyone prowling for blood, but I don’t want to fight my way up the ranks again. I’ve got an ax and I’m using it.” Despite that she sounded tired.

Long heartbeats stretched between them, that exquisite embarrassment of two coworkers suddenly forced to talk about private affairs.

“This is your first,” the Captain didn’t reach the tone of a question with that one.

“Yes. The recruiters were getting growly so I grabbed a fellow. I’ve been avoiding it for too long.”

“You don’t want a child.” Again, not quite a question. He was feeling it out as he goes along. This is the longest conversation about orc reproduction he’s ever paid attention to, for the Lieutenants diatribes we’re always dull.

It was no matter to him, except that this was the only orc commander he could tolerate working with and she was chewing through her own cheek in discomfort.

“They take something from you,” Gorfaunt admitted. “Dame and sire both, but worse for the dame since she has to carry the clot. You go… stretchy. Bleached like old bone. I’ve seen soldiers and after twenty children they’re not good for anything but shoving onto a line of pikes. Raw meat for the wargs.”

That didn’t make sense to him, but he was never a scholar of flesh or spirit. He knew how a skull split and how a soul fled, how this matter-sprung life withered, how it died. That was all that counted. He also knew how to value a resource.

“There won’t be any after this,” he said firmly. “Not if you don’t want them.” If need be he’d escalate to Lord Melkor, frame it as sapping strength from their command structure and propose making officers off limits from breeding programmes.

“As you command, Captain,” she said with a bowed head, but she looked gratifyingly relieved, and their conversation could finally move on to the latest stories of occupied territories and the search for the hidden cities.

The next few months Gorfaunt somehow managed to get bigger and bigger, until she was no longer able to swing herself into a chair and had to take their meeting standing. Her leather armor no longer fit and with just a thin layer of rags over her distended stomach it was easy to see the squirming creature inside.

Ferocious little animal. It would go so still and then kick out again, as if it could burst free of its creator by force of will alone. The kernel of its mind was forming too, a hazy bubble of sensation and half formed emotion. He could see what had the Lieutenant fascinated. It wasn’t his field but it was morbidly interesting, seeing the shape of something new and moldable come together right in front of you.

But he had not been made a sculptor or a craftsman. He’d been born a wild thing, a tornado, a volcano, every disaster meant to fell cities, and though he had not known the words yet he’d sensed in his core, seen in glimpses in the song, that he was a creature of war. Like many other wild things—Ossë, the simpering coward tied up in Uinen’s tresses, excluded— he’d found his way to Melkor in the end. Oh, he’d idled for a time with Vána, heard Námo’s dolorous call, but it was Melkor who he came back to and Melkor who he picked in the end.

Melkor taught him so many more ways to be. The smoke, the blood, the screaming not in sorrow but in anger. He taught the others who came to him as well. In the Captain’s little squad alone there was one who learned the slaver’s whip and the threat of fire, one who learned the ooze of pus and malodorous air, one who came to appreciate the ravenings of rabid beasts. From the dragons in the treasure-caves to the cat in the kitchen to the vampires in the highest towers, they were all Melkor’s creations.

Gorfaunt, born and raised here in the shadow of his ancient power, was even more Melkor’s than most. This was how the Captain rationalized his continuing fondness for her as she weakened, his interest in her spawn. Works of the same maker might gravitate together. They could see parts of themselves in each other, the way he could once see himself in other Ëalar born of the same bit of song.

When Gorfaunt came in four months after their revelatory meeting with a sagging belly and a bundle nestled against her chest he was excited to finally see what had been made.

It took a bit of coaxing to get her to show him the baby but no orc would outright refuse an order from anyone stronger than them, they knew better than that. The newborn was dutifully unwrapped and presented, though Gorfaunt’s expression suggested that she considered this all a silly waste of time.

It was a rumpled wet creature; mostly skin and bones, with a cranium as big as its rounded torso. Small too, barely bigger than Gorfaunt’s hand, and Gorfaunt was smaller than all elves and many humans; based on overheard complaints failure to grow was an ongoing issue with their kind. When it was unswaddled sticklike limbs flailed out and began batting at the air ineffectually. Despite this wriggling its face remained in a sleepy scowl. It wasn’t until Gothmog moved one cherry-hot finger closer to it that it opened its hazy grey eyes and tried to focus on him. Even then the dismayed frown stayed put.

An unscarred orc was always an interesting sight; for it revealed the scale of their reworking. How much orcishness was self-replicating, as the Lieutenant liked to claim, and how much had to be beaten in? This one had a droopy brow bone and already peeling corpse-grey skin but it did not look much like an orc besides that. It even had hair, which most orcs lacked (aside from a few lank patches). The fine red down covered its whole body, thickest on the head and face and arms.

“It’s supposed to fall out,” Gorfaunt said, “Everyone says it’ll fall out soon. Even the prisoners lose their hair after a while, especially in the deep mines.”

That was probably because of the miasma of decay that emanated from the ores of Angband. Not macro-decay, of skin and bone (that came later) but the infitesimal decay. Every piece of metal— every piece of existence, when you got down to it— was made of little stars. There was a gaseous center of energy and little orbiting specks around that, spinning in probabilistic loops. Like stars some were bigger and some were smaller and some were ready to collapse. Ilmarë loved to speak of supernovas. The yellow and blue metals below the mountain were full of little stars collapsing, reforming, giving off energy in great sums as they did so.

The Captain had noted the negative effects of this energetic output on incarnates some time ago. Elves sickened and humans just died— Lord Melkor had moved the man he hoped would give him the location of Gondolin far from those mines for a reason. A few of the spirits with natures inclined towards metal, salt, and industry had already incorporated the burning energy into their signatures. The Lieutenant doubtless had some wicked little experiment running with it. It was a part of life here, that background hum of a trillion crumbling particles, and the Captain never thought of the effect on orcs, though they were exposed from birth.

Now that he focused he could see the little crumbs of decay glancing off the baby.

Hmm.

It would probably be fine.

It was already rubbing its eyes and going back to sleep, one hand curled next to a crumpled, not-yet-cropped ear.

“Are you recovered?” he asked Gorfaunt.

“I’m fit enough to fight,” she said shortly, defensively, as if afraid he’d snatch her command from her. “I’ll be better soon when this thing is gone.”

The Captain’s huge palm hovered over her infant. He knew better than to touch; his ability to change forms was not what it once was, he could not stop being a bipedal avalanche, to strong, too close, too dangerous. Even just containing the noxious gases— the pustulent yellow and choking green— simmering inside this war shaped body was difficult. If he kept a few feet distance the chaotic heat of his skin faded into the air and the baby wriggled contentedly in the ambient glow, like a little lizard.

“And how long will that be?”

Gorfaunt’s hand twitched. Another few months, till it can manage worm meal and listen to the grands.”

It seemed impossible that anything could be big enough to leave alone in such a short time; but incarnation was not the Captain’s specialty. “And that’s the accepted practice?”

“A little young, but safe now that the master put a stop to the baby eating problem.”

“I wouldn’t want it to be a concern,” the Captain said very seriously, even though his fingers curled slightly around the baby’s limp body. “We can make modifications if the child must stay longer.”

Gorfaunt glanced down at her sprawled offspring. “I don’t— I don’t want this to last any longer. I’d rather have my life go back to normal.”

That, at least, he could understand. It has been a rather troubling experience overall. Revelations are not always useful and though he’s gained some knowledge it’s not very practical stuff.

“One more question, commander, then I’ll drop the matter. What is it named??”

That nascent mind bubble had sharpened with time and experience but was still comprised mostly of sensation. He could not even grasp at a basic sense of self. The child’s mother should know what if calls itself, if anyone did.

(He wanted to remember the name, for forty years from now, when he needed more good orcs. All those rants about the fundamentals of inheritance left him with some ideas about how incarnates develop traits. Another Gorfaunt would be a helpful tool to have on hand.)

The question left Gorfaunt unimpressed. “It doesn’t name itself anything yet, it hasn’t got the common sense. And no one’s given it a name because it hasn’t done anything interesting.”

“It has an interesting look” the Captain pointed out, “Tell them to call it Red Cap,” he slipped into the elf tongue, which had better color words than the one the Lieutenant devised, and in the process accidentally named the child after a former king of the Noldor. “Or something like that.”

Gorfaunt apparently had a better memory for politics than he gave her credit for, or perhaps just a distaste for the elf cant, because she quickly translated it back into Angband’s crackly tongue . “Rotbint.”

“Yes.” A Balrog, even the chief of Balrogs, could not give much to something so soft and incarnadine. A name, incorporeal, existing in the plane the Captain knew best, was the only thing he could offer. “Now, to business?”

Gorfaunt wrapped the little creature away— it woke halfway through the rolling to stare at them once more— then tucked it against her chest.

The Captain was sad to see it go, though he couldn’t say why.

He remembered that he had come to this physical world for a reason once. He had wanted to see all there was to see, to feel and taste everything, chew chunks of Arda up and spit it out new. Disasters hungered as much as anyone. Yet all he’d had lately was war fare; blood-soaked mud and rage-tinged fear.

Deprived of fresh experiences, he clung to the potential, the novelty, of new life.

Perhaps Gondolin would see him out of his funk, he thought. It couldn’t hide forever.

“We’ll find it, Captain,” Gorfaunt assured him stubbornly. “And we’ll tear it down brick by brick, raze their gardens, fill their streets with blood.”

Even with a baby trying to gum her collarbone her firm tone allowed no questions.

Orcs were, as a rule, bothersome, unruly, walking corpses. Fractious, ugly, difficult, bothersome, recklessly stupid. The Maiar serving under the Captain were sometimes stereotyped as simpleminded brutes but at least they were able to perceive the world around them, even if few bothered to use that perception. In comparison orcs were stumbling around in the dark. They were inefficient as well, you needed three of them to take down any decent enemy. But when they were well made they were well made. Those were the ones that made it all worth it.

It had to be worth it. This was freedom, after all.

#the silmarillion #gothmog #orcs #silmarillion fanfiction #angband #fanfic #Sauron gets some mentions

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spideymarvelws · 5 years ago

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The Dark Of Night - Part Two (Peter Parker x Reader)

Main Masterlist / Series Masterlist

Summary: Your past seems to catch up with you and spider-man is there to help you out

Word count : 1.6k

A/n: if you haven't you should read part one or you wouldn't really understand whats going on in this part so go check that out if ya wanna \(^-^)/

The brush laid on the canvas, paint hidden between the bristles only to be revealed when released by the movement of your hand as it made its way delicately across the board. The dull red covered the surface, blending with the darker red painted on before. Stepping back, you placed your brush back into the cup semi filled with water, before grabbing a smaller brush with a thinner head of bristles and began to neaten up the painting you had taken too long to complete.

Adjusting the headphones that sat snugly on you head, you stepped back one last time, checking for any flaws that needed fixing. Dropping the brush into the cup, you let out a sigh of satisfaction.

A beautiful mural of iron man stood tall and proud against the wooden stand you set it upon. The one and only tony stark stood adjusting the cuffs on his suit with his latest nano tech armer rising up his legs. Behind him the shadows of the advancements of his suits from mark I to his current one that you saw his flying around in once in a while.

The arc reactor on his chest sticked out, contrasting with the different shades of red used in the background and the grey on his jacket. It had taken the longest to perfect but in the end you loved it more and more the longer you looked at it.

While admiring the piece in front of you, you felt a tear fall from your eye and end at the tip of you nose, falling off and landing on the floor.

“shit,” you cursed, moving around the room, trying to find a tissue.

After wiping away he excess tears, you quickly packed your supplies of paint and brushes onto the makeshift shelf against the only wall of the room that wasn’t painted.

The so called home you lived in was an house on the outskirts of New York that was in good enough shape for you to live in. It only had three rooms but contained all the things that you needed and that’s all you could ask for.

Of course, you’ve only lived there for four months, the longest time you’ve ever stayed in one area but you couldn’t leave.

Its not like the walls you spent most of your time in was new too you. Before you ran away from home, this house was your escape when things got too overwhelming. You were also glad that all your art supplies were there, including every art piece you’ve painted or drawn in one of the three rooms, taking up most of your space.

As you waited for your newest piece to dry, you decided to take a walk. Grabbing your leather jacket you put it on along with a beanie. Stepping out of the door, you walked and walked and walked, getting lost in you thoughts and the beauty of the ground you stared at most of the time.

TWO YEARS BEFORE

“You want to what?!” your father shouted, raising up from his seat near the kitchen counter.

You stood next to the door frame, you hand placed against your opposite elbow, rubbing it up and down. You stared down at he marble floor waiting for your him to continue.

“Let me see if I’m hearing you correctly, you want to drop out of school,” he said, his voice much softer than before, more confusion than anger laced his tone.

“Not leave dad, just switching schools.” you said, lifting you head look at you dad.

“do you not like it there, its one one the top science schools in new york-”

“that’s the problem!” you shouted, covering you face with the palms on your hand,” I don’t want to do sciences, I don’t want to follow in your footsteps, I don't want be someone mi not because I’m the daughter of the notorious tony stark, I want to be able to be myself without everyone telling me I’m meant to be someone else especially since everyone around me expects the best when I’m not.”

Tony stood there surprised at my sudden outbreak. His face was red with anger and disappointment. He turned around placing his hands on the counter, taking a deep sigh he grabbed his coffee mug and took a sip.

The silence was unsettling, you looked around the room but settled to staring at the floor once again.

“I’m sorry dad i-” you began but was quickly interrupted.

“You’re not going to a different school, you’re not going to drop science. Your going to continue school, finish school and continue this families legacy do you understand?”

You stared blankly at your father, his back still facing you. You could feel the anger starting to boil inside of you.

“I don’t want anyone to know about this conversation, as far as we know, you love what you’re doing. This isn't a choice y/n, you’ll grow to love it, it’s in your blood.” your father finished, standing straight to walk out the door but you stopped him before he did by violently grabbing your bag from the couch nearby.

“do you not like it there, its one one the top science schools in new york-”

The silence was unsettling, you looked around the room but settled to staring at the floor once again.

“I’m sorry dad i-” you began but was quickly interrupted.

“You’re not going to a different school, you’re not going to drop science. Your going to continue school, finish school and continue this families legacy do you understand?”

You stared blankly at your father, his back still facing you. You could feel the anger starting to boil inside of you.

“what are you doing?” tony questioned

“I’m going to blow off some steam because apparently I’m a stark and it’s a priority for me to be just like you I’m sorry that ill never be good enough for your standards and I’m sorry that the public would go insane because Im horrible at physics, or chemistry. I’m sorry I’m not the perfect daughter for you. Ill just go out and learn to love the things that I hate. I’m sorry for letting everyone down tony,” you said, voice filled with rage and hurt

After you walked out, you never walked back in. Tony didn’t bother in following you out the door, its not like it was the first time this argument has ended this way and every time it did you always came back the next day or the day after that.

At this point, tony was tired of explaining why you couldn't not follow his line of work. He knew that whatever you were going through was a phase and sooner or later you would learn to love what he put you through just like he had.

But after a week of not seeing you, he began to panic. Spending hours trying to find you but without success. Tony would admit that he was smart, but when it came to things he has never experienced personally, he could never understand why you were so against the path he had set for you.

After two months of no progress, tony stood in front of the door to your room. He always respected your privacy and after he took you in, he’s never seen your bedroom apart from quick pop ins to check to see if you were doing your work.

Opening the door, he walked into your bedroom. The walls were covered with paintings and drawings. In place of a lamp that he knew was in the room when he gave it to you, was a six foot sculpture made of all the tech that he gave you to fix and get use to using. Your desk was filled with various pieces of tech from his lab along with thick textbooks that adorned the table closed, and still looked very new. The sheets on you bed where made, the pillows looked untouched and in the middle laid a rectangular box warped in red paper with a yellow bow on top.

Walking slowly up to your bed, tony picked up the box, inspecting lightly. He was still in shock and overwhelmed from the amount of artwork laid all over your room, something told him that this wasn’t just random artwork you found and printed, it was made from your hands and mind. He cautiously ripped the paper and the sight he was met with brought tears to his eyes.

It was him I his iron suit flying in the air above stark tower. The painting was so detailed, he couldn’t find a single mistake in his suit or the building that he stood in currently. This was the piece brought him to tears. This is what you wanted to do, this is what you where leading to every time you brought up the topic but he never let you because he never thought of the differences that you and him may have.

For the first time in his life he felt stupid and he knew that he failed as a father something that he promised himself that he would ever do. He was too blinded by the fact that your last name was stark, but your first name was your own person.

Tony never thought that a single painting would make him realise so much. His daughter had a talent that he had told her directly was useless and unnecessary to who you would grow up to be, not thinking that who you were now was a person too.

But the one thing that hit him the most was that he treated you, the same way his father treated him.

Running out of your room, painting still in hand, he ran to his lab and shut himself inside.

“Friday, bring up everything you have on Y/n Y/l/n,” he quickly said, placing the painting down on an empty table carefully.

“Don’t you mean y/n Stark?”

“No, y/n y/l/n,” he responded, “ I need to know who my daughter was before I forced her to be who she wasn’t,”

Tony whispered the last part, letting out a deep sigh, he continued, “and while you’re at it, make a call to an old friend,”

Taglist: @jadegill @shirukitsune @tom-lan

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theculturedmarxist · 5 years ago

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Ramsey Orta and Eric Garner were deciding where to eat when the police approached. Orta immediately raised his cellphone and hit record. He’d been doing that a lot lately. Many living in the Tompkinsville neighborhood of Staten Island felt they lived under constant surveillance by the 120th Precinct. Orta and Garner had often talked about how just leaving their homes meant expecting to be followed, stopped, searched. Orta knew from experience that anything could happen during these interactions. And so for him, it had become a form of self-defense to film the police.

Orta’s video — soon to be seen by the world — showed Garner trying to explain that he’d done nothing wrong. Then a police officer wrapped his arm around Garner’s neck, gripping him in a chokehold until he collapsed. The video showed Garner saying eleven times that he couldn’t breathe. It showed the officers ignoring Garner’s distress, pushing his head into the pavement, letting him lose consciousness there, die there.

Now, near midnight, Orta was in his apartment, the door locked behind him. His house was dark. His family was asleep. He went to the window, looking for the black Crown Vic that had tailed him as he’d walked home. He checked the security of the locks on the door, then checked again. He got into bed, but sleep wouldn’t come. Images from the day swirled above on his dark ceiling.

The police killed my friend, he thought.

Suddenly, Orta’s bedroom filled with light. Disoriented, he wondered if he’d fallen asleep without realizing it and had woken to the dawn. He rose. It wasn’t daylight but a spotlight blasting his home from outside. The metal bars on his windows cast back on him as a grid of shadows. He ran out to the street and saw police cars parked in front of his house, the silhouettes of faceless officers watching.

They’re here for me, Orta thought, because I have proof of what happened.

Orta believed the video would guarantee justice for his friend. He would be wrong. The officer who choked Garner, Daniel Pantaleo, would not be indicted by a grand jury. But in the weeks to come, the footage of Garner’s killing would travel far and wide, and the haunting echoes of “I Can’t Breathe” would become a rallying cry for the Black Lives Matter movement, a phrase emblazoned across the chest of LeBron James, a lasting reminder of a plea for help ignored.

Someone will have to pay for this, Orta thought, looking at his phone, not realizing that someone would be him, not knowing that the cops would exact their revenge through a campaign of targeted harassment, that within a year he’d be in prison and facing constant abuse, his enduring punishment for daring to hold the police accountable. But looking out into the final dark minutes of July 17th, 2014, watching the police cars drive away, Orta believed he held an important key that would bring justice, one that would force change.

There is no way to ignore this video, he thought. And he felt something close to hope.

A cloth backdrop covered in faded pink hearts hangs on one wall of the prison’s visiting room. It’s February, a few days before Valentine’s Day. Over the year I spend visiting Ramsey Orta, I see many families pose for pictures in front of these backdrops, which always display cartoonish renderings of idyllic scenes — a lakeside picnic, a Christmas hearth, a clean and gleaming cityscape.

Deja, Orta’s girlfriend, walks immediately to an ancient vending machine in the corner. The thunk of her falling quarters echoes in the nearly empty visiting room. She had been stiff with anxiety for much of our six-hour drive from Staten Island to the Gouverneur prison facility. She makes this trip each weekend to see Orta, but this visit would be different. He is serving a 60-day sentence in the facility’s Security Housing Unit (solitary confinement), which means his visiting privileges are limited. He will be shackled and kept behind a metal screen instead of being able to hug Deja, hold her hand, and sit with her at a table.

“I just can’t see him in chains,” she tells me. “I need to keep my mental image of him positive, to believe he’s OK.”

In tone and temperament, Deja is gentle. I rarely hear her speak above a whisper. On the drive, she’d told me about her on-again, off-again five-year relationship with Orta. After every fight, every breakup, they’d found their way to forgiveness and now she was committed to “doing his time with him.” But the commitment is difficult. Public transportation from New York City to upstate prisons is scarce, forcing Deja and others in her situation to take often unreliable, crowded passenger vans that drive visitors through the night. The stress of the trip can cause symptoms related to Deja’s multiple sclerosis to flare, leaving her bedridden and in pain for days. But the hardest part of her commitment to Orta is her fear of the phone ringing and someone on the other end telling her he is dead. Orta has reported constant abuse and harassment from correctional officers since he’s been locked up. He claims he’s been threatened, beaten, poisoned. He and Deja both live in the constant fear that he’ll never return home.

At night, Deja dreams she’s arrived at the visiting room just as Orta is being killed; in the dream she can see it happening, can hear him call for her. Awake and asleep, she is worried. She has a habit of adding, to the end of painful statements, the phrase “But it is what it is.”

I ask her about this and she shrugs, then whispers, “No other way to get through this shit.”

We hear a voice say, “My girl.”

Deja doesn’t turn around but smiles and jams more quarters into the vending machine, faster now, punching buttons, piling food on a nearby table.

I know this voice, too. I’d heard it rise from behind the camera at the beginning of the Garner video to say, “Once again, police beating up on people.” At first that voice is weary, resigned — the scene he’s capturing is his everyday life. But it quickly changes, fills with concern, when Garner falls. Orta whispers, “He can’t breathe.”

Orta, the son of a Puerto Rican mother and an African American father, stands framed by a window of cross-hatched metal bars. He is cuffed at the wrists and ankles, smiling. Orta is shockingly thin. His cheekbones jut from his pale gray skin. His hair — buzzed short in pictures from before his arrest — sticks wildly from his head in clumps.

The guard who led him out says, “Jesus, Orta, couldn’t find a comb?”

“You won’t let me tie it up!” Orta replies.

Orta calls for Deja again. He looks sidewise at the correctional officers, and when he is sure they aren’t looking, he puckers his lips to fit them through the iron grid separating him from her, and they kiss. Soon she is back at the vending machine.

“She always does this,” he tells me. “I won’t eat in here, so she’s worried I’m starving.” The circles around his eyes are so dark, the whites of his eyes shine as if from the bottom of a hole.

“Do you want a sandwich?” Deja asks him. The only time she can be certain he’s eating is when she buys his food herself during visits. He agrees to a burger, and she buys three. They are dispensed frozen and I offer to heat them in the microwave, wanting to give Orta and Deja a minute alone.

A correctional officer approaches and tells me the microwave is broken. I see its power cord pulled from the wall and jammed behind a toaster. I plug it in, push a few buttons, and it buzzes to life.

“I told you it’s broken,” the CO says.

I’d crossed an invisible line. The door of the microwave reflects back our distorted image. I can see the CO standing behind me, waiting.

When I return with the still-frozen burgers, Orta explains: “They fuck with my food. They know I won’t eat what they give me, not since Rikers.”

In February 2015, Orta had been arrested and sent to Rikers Island. At intake, everyone knew his name. He told me the COs taunted him about the Garner video. “You’re ours now,” he claims they said. “Not so tough without your camera.”

The threats continued. When his cell block was put on lockdown, his anxiety spiked. Lockdown meant Orta was restricted from participating in the preparation of his own food. On March 3rd, 2015, Orta’s cell block was served a meal of corn, cabbage, bread, juice, and meatloaf. He didn’t touch it. He’d fallen ill a few times after eating the food at Rikers and was convinced he was being targeted and poisoned.

“Eat, inmate,” a CO commanded, banging Orta’s cell with a baton. The guards were all standing too close, watching too intently as the others ate. This kind of attention was unusual. He saw others from his cell block staring down into their meatloaf, forks frozen in midair.

“We’re not going anywhere until you eat,” a CO said and entered Orta’s cell. He hit Orta with his baton, hurled slurs, promised a citation for refusing orders. “How many days in SHU you want?”

Orta rattles his chair as he tells me this part of the story. “He tried to bend me up,” he says, then shows me how, miming his arms being twisted behind his back.

Some of the prisoners had eaten everything quickly, and now they had strange looks on their faces. Orta could see a man in a nearby cell. He opened his mouth and Orta leaned forward to hear what he had to say, but instead of words, blood flowed from the man’s parted lips. He was vomiting blood. Others were vomiting blood; some were on the floor of their cells, clawing at their own bodies.

Later, in depositions, the affected would say their stomachs were on fire. Some felt pain in their chests and worried they were having heart attacks. Others were so dizzy they couldn’t stand. They writhed on the floor of their cells. Some claimed the guards walked by, watching, laughing, flipping them all the bird. The stench of vomit and feces permeated the cell.

No one was taken to the infirmary. Orta had wrapped up his meatloaf in a napkin, hoping it could be tested for the poison he was certain was there. When he looked closely at the meatloaf, he saw the top was a speckled bluish-green.

Court documents filed six days later alleged that the prisoners had suffered and continued to suffer from “nausea, vomiting, pain, dizziness, aches, headaches, stomach/intestinal pains, dehydration, diarrhea, nosebleeds, throwing up blood, diarrhea with blood, and/or an overwhelming sense of illness.” The symptoms were consistent with human consumption of rat poison, and when the tainted meatloaf was finally tested, the results found that the blue-green pellets visible in the meatloaf were brodifacoum, the active ingredient in rodenticide.

After this, Orta stopped eating. He refuses to eat anything other than what has been sent in packages from Deja or is available in his commissary. Deja tells me packages are often returned to her ripped open with items destroyed or missing.

Orta claims he is constantly ticketed by the COs for petty or falsified offenses. One night he was having stomach troubles and requested a pass from the facility’s nurse to sleep on the bottom bunk, to be closer to the toilet. A CO woke him and ordered him to sleep on the top bunk. Orta explained that he had a sick pass, and the CO wrote him up for disobeying a direct order. Tickets like these trigger the loss of privileges, like the ability to receive outside packages of food. Or worse: the ticket that had landed him 60 days in solitary was for smoking a cigarette in the wrong part of the prison.

Orta says he’s been threatened, called racist names, beaten. He talks about these incidents in a measured, almost casual way. He’s been locked up before and possesses fluency in a prison’s violent rhythms. But there’s one form of harassment he describes at length and with visceral anguish. In the process of inspecting his cell, the COs routinely crush to dust his Pop-Tarts, chips, ramen packets. This is the food Deja sends him, the only food he feels safe eating.

“You understand?” he says. “They know this is how to kill me, by getting me to kill myself.”

On August 2nd, 2014 — the day after the New York chief medical examiner officially ruled Eric Garner’s death a homicide — Ramsey Orta was running errands. He was a few blocks from his house, passing the Hotel Richmond, when a van pulled up beside him. Bodies tumbled from the van, rapidly approaching Orta with cameras. He’d been in the media a lot recently. He’d given interviews and had been photographed at protests and vigils, joining many others in the public grief and outrage in the weeks following Garner’s death. He was seen by some as a hero, whose lens had captured a horrific but galvanizing injustice. Many people had taken his picture.

But the men in the van were not reporters. Orta heard a sneering laugh and a voice say, “Smile, motherfucker.” They surrounded Orta, holding cell phones inches from his face, filming him. Then they pulled his hands behind his back and arrested him.

This is the way Orta tells the story, in the impressionistic language of trauma. He tells me he dreams that he’s been released from prison and is walking in the daylight when suddenly bodies burst toward him from the shadows, engulfing him. He’s drowning in them, suffocating, trying to claw his way out. It’s hard to know how much the reality he remembers is melded with the nightmares.

The NYPD report paints a different picture. It claims that officers were staking a known drug location. They observed Orta briefly enter and then exit the Hotel Richmond with a young woman, seventeen-year-old Alba Lekaj. When the officers approached, they saw Orta stuffing a .25-caliber semiautomatic pistol down Lekaj’s pants. The gun recovered from the scene had no bullets, no clip, and no fingerprints. It had been reported stolen in Michigan in 2007.

Marijuana was found hidden in Lekaj’s bra and, in his telling, Orta admits quickly to selling to Lekaj and moves on. It isn’t the important part of the story. Orta never attempts to portray himself as a squeaky-clean victim. He’d been arrested for selling marijuana and pills before. He’d also been arrested, then released for selling fake MDMA to an undercover cop. Drugs had been around his whole life, he says.

“My grandfather and grandmother sold coke until the day they died. They ran prostitutes who stayed with us sometimes.” He recalls the women chasing him when he was a boy, threatening to pull down his pants to see if he was hung like his grandfather. He remembers that the apartment was always crowded, with strangers appearing at all hours, disappearing in back rooms, reemerging somehow changed. This was normal to him. It took him until he was a teen to understand exactly what he’d been born into. And then he started selling drugs himself. He’d moved PCP on Staten Island for a while, but quit after he’d tried it himself a few times with bad results.

“I like weed, I like ecstasy. That’s it now,” he says. “Nothing else.”

Orta’s family moved to Staten Island when he was thirteen. Before that, he grew up in the Baruch Housing Projects on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. As a kid, he played sports at the Boys’ Club on Pitt Street. One summer he hurt his back during a swimming competition. It seized completely and he couldn’t move. He began to sink and was certain he would drown. There were so many kids in the pool, he didn’t think anyone would notice him on the bottom. Someone from the crowd jumped fully clothed into the pool to pull Orta out. His mother gave him Vicodin for the pain, and when the pain subsided, an addiction had bloomed in its place.

“I lost the summer that way, on Vicodin,” he says. Orta was nine years old. He started taking other pain pills, mixing them with Seroquel, which he’d been prescribed to treat his depression and mood disorder.

When he was ten, members of the Bloods recruited him into petty thefts. He was small and could kick out window air conditioning units and squeeze through the space they left. For a while, he tried to stay out of trouble by spending all his free time in the safety of the Boys’ Club, but it shut down in 2003 when Orta was eleven. When his family moved to Staten Island, he didn’t move with them. He was locked up in Spofford Juvenile Detention Center, a facility so notorious for detainee abuse that it was forced to close forever in 2011.

I ask him how he’d ended up in Spofford. “I brought a knife to school and held it to some kid’s neck,” he says.

Why? Had he threatened you?

“Nah, I never got bullied because I was a Blood. I’ve just always had one of those short-guy complexes. I used to think I had to let everyone know what I was about. So, no, that kid never messed with me. I just put my knife on him.” Orta was 13.

In Spofford, he learned skills that help him to survive in prison.

“You learn how to fight with the tools you’ve got,” he says. “Like, there’s one hot pot in the kitchen that boils water. If someone is fucking with you, you fill it with baby oil and throw it at them.”

Why baby oil?

He looks at me incredulously, my lack of imagination further proof of my privilege.

“Hot water will burn you,” he says. “But baby oil sticks to you, and when you try to wipe it off, your skin comes off, too.”

Ah.

“Look, the point is, I’m smart about certain things. I’ve been on the streets doing my dirt for a long time,” he says. “So you have to understand how ridiculous this gun charge is. There’s no chance I’m dumb enough to give a girl a gun out in the open like that. The cops had been following me every day since Eric died, shining lights in my house every night. You think I’m walking around with a stolen gun that now they say wasn’t even loaded?”

Orta says that when he was arrested on the gun charge, the officers told him it would be better to kill himself before they locked him up with their people. At the station, he began to have a panic attack and had to be taken to the Richmond hospital for a psych evaluation. There was a phone call to his mother, allegedly from the hospital, telling her that he was a suicide risk.

But Orta believes that the call was really from the 120th Precinct, that they’d allowed him to go to the hospital to establish a paper trail, so that when they killed him, they could make it look like a suicide. Orta posted bail, and as soon as he returned home, he made a video saying that if he died, do not believe that he’d done it himself, and know it was murder.

Orta posted bail and pleaded “not guilty” on the gun charges. In the early morning hours of February 10th, 2015, Orta’s apartment was raided. The police stated they had months-old recordings of him selling drugs to an undercover cop. They held that they’d captured nine sales, a charge that came with the possible sentence of ten years per sale.

For a police department claiming not to be targeting Orta for his filming of Garner’s death, they sure brought it up a lot. New York City Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association president Patrick J. Lynch released a statement saying: “the arrest of Ramsey Orta for criminal possession of a firearm only underscores the dangers that brought police officers to respond to a chronic crime condition in that community. Sadly, in the effort to keep neighborhoods like Tompkinsville safe, a tragedy occurred. But that doesn’t change the fact that police officers routinely risk their lives for the benefit of the community and that they have earned their support and understanding.”

At his arraignment in Staten Island for the drug charges, an anonymous police source told the Daily News, “He took the video, now we took the video.”

The police claimed to also have Orta’s mother, Emily Mercado, on film aiding in the drug sales. She was also arrested in the February raid. At the arraignment, Mercado was traumatized, weeping. Orta was never shown the video and had initially wanted to fight the charges, but when the DA offered him a plea deal that included dropping all charges against his mother, he took it.

“She’d die in here,” he says. “But me, I know how to do the time. I’ve been locked up my whole life.”

Video was supposed to be a solution. If people didn’t believe that police brutality existed, you could record it — the technology was in everybody’s pocket. How could a jury deny proof, an act of killing? And yet they did.

In New York state, a grand jury returns a true bill of indictment if a bare majority — 12 of the 23 sitting jurors — believes there’s enough evidence to proceed to a criminal trial. Daniel Pantaleo’s grand jury sat for nine weeks. Ramsey Orta was the first of 50 witnesses to testify. His video, along with the medical examiner’s report, provided clear evidence that Pantaleo had used an illegal chokehold on Garner. A “chokehold” is defined in the NYPD patrol guide as “any pressure to the throat or windpipe,” which hinders breathing. Orta’s video showed that Pantaleo had continued to apply pressure to Garner’s windpipe after Garner was on the ground, subdued, and had repeatedly said that he couldn’t breathe. Still, the Staten Island grand jury declined to indict Pantaleo.

The ruling further reinforced the reality of the tremendous authority police officers have to determine a necessary use of force. Barely a week prior, a St. Louis County grand jury declined to indict Darren Wilson, the officer who shot and killed Michael Brown, an unarmed black man, in Ferguson, Missouri. A year later, a grand jury would come to the same decision in regard to Timothy Loehmann, the officer who — after only two seconds on the scene — shot and killed an unarmed black child, Tamir Rice. No charges were brought against the officers involved in Alton Sterling’s death in Baton Rouge. Officer Jeronimo Yanez was charged with second-degree manslaughter for the death of Philando Castile, only to be acquitted. The trials for the Baltimore police officers involved in the death of Freddie Gray ended in a mistrial and more acquittals.

In 2014, President Obama requested millions in federal grants to fund the expansion of body-worn cameras for on-duty police officers. The move was supported by many across the political spectrum as a chance to improve transparency and accountability in law enforcement and to ease tensions between police and the communities they’re tasked to protect. But President Obama was smart enough to know that more video — more proof — wasn’t going to fix anything. “There is a role for technology to play in building additional trust and accountability, but it’s not a panacea,” he warned.

In 2015, Officer Ray Tensing shot and killed Samuel DuBose, an unarmed black man, during a traffic stop. Tensing claimed that he “feared for his life” after DuBose started his car and began to drive away with Tensing’s arm caught through the driver’s window. His bodycam footage directly contradicted this account. He was indicted, but the charges were dismissed. In 2017, Betty Jo Shelby was acquitted in the shooting death of an unarmed black man, Terence Crutcher, despite police video showing Crutcher with his hands up in compliance. When asked why she fired her weapon, Shelby said, “I feared for my life.”

In 2016, jurors were shown bodycam footage that clearly depicted Milwaukee resident Sylville K. Smith running from police. Cornered, Smith gave up the chase, threw his gun over a fence, and put his hands up in surrender. Then police officer Dominique Heaggan-Brown shot Smith, killing him. The defense attorney told the jury Heaggan-Brown acted out of fear for his life. The jury found the officer not guilty.

After Pantaleo’s trial concluded, Esaw Snipes, Eric’s widow, said, “There’s no doubt in my mind or the mind of all the people out there in the world. What we saw in that video cannot be disputed. How they disputed it, I don’t know.”

Why is video evidence not enough in any of these cases? How is it that we can argue and erase what can be plainly seen with our own eyes? History has repeatedly given us the answer: America’s protected ideal is power, not justice. State power is consolidated by maintaining the authority to determine what counts as an appropriate use of force. For police, this near-total authority is protected by our judicial system.

In 1989, the Supreme Court case Graham v. Connor established a “reasonableness standard,” which is a powerful weapon of defense for police in excessive-force cases. The case involved Dethorne Graham, a black man from North Carolina, who had suffered a broken foot and other injuries after police officers mistook his diabetic shock for drunken belligerence. Conservative Chief Justice William Rehnquist’s delivered opinion put forth the precedent that the Fourth Amendment be used to determine whether “officers’ actions are ‘objectively reasonable’ in light of the facts and circumstances confronting them.” When evaluating the reasonableness of the action taken, one must take into consideration that police officers are “often forced to make split-second decisions about the amount of force necessary in a particular situation.”

Jurors in excessive-force cases now are given explicit instructions to think from “the perspective of a reasonable officer on the scene,” keeping in mind that the nature of police work requires these “split-second decisions.” When the officer testifies that they acted out of fear for their lives, the Graham v. Connor decision requires jurors to try on that alleged fear and to view the incident through the eyes of the officer, not the victim. This is a powerfully empathetic, imaginative act.

Humans are inherently, psychologically motivated to reduce the discomfort of cognitive dissonance, and fewer things will create more painful cognitive dissonance than watching those sworn to protect shoot and kill a civilian who posed no threat to them. Our minds protect us, often without our realizing it, by latching on to narratives that can reconcile such tragic opposing facts. It is easier to see the victims as one-dimensional criminals, threatening the fearful police, and therefore deserving of whatever comes their way.

And so it becomes easy — for jurors and the public alike — to trust authority and leave the dead confined to the margins of our imagination. The victims are gone. They can’t testify. They can’t tell us of their fear for their lives.

Via New York’s Freedom of Information Law, I’m able to review the records of Orta’s citations and grievances filed while he was in custody. The stack follows a conspicuous pattern. Orta is cited for petty offenses until the number of tickets triggers the loss of privileges, including access to phone calls or the commissary, often for 25 or 30 days. As soon as the penalty expires and his privileges are restored, the ticketing cycle begins again.

“What you’re seeing with Ramsey — the incessant petty tickets — that is not something that we see frequently. That happens to people who are specifically targeted,” says Adriano De Gennaro of the Prisoners’ Rights Project of the New York City Legal Aid Society. “However, falsified tickets, inflated charges, petty tickets, that’s par for the course. The State Department of Corrections uses tickets as a cudgel against people who are in custody. But the sustained pattern of these petty tickets is at least somewhat unique to Ramsey.”

No matter how minimal the charge may be, these citations accumulate to devastating effect. Multiple tickets can mean a loss of Good Time, which can push back release. Orta has lost his earliest release date, extending his sentence by a minimum of six months.

De Gennaro’s colleague Dori Lewis adds, “When investigations happen in response to grievances or claims of harassment, those investigations are conducted by security staff at the prison. Basically they’ll consist of asking the officer, ‘Hey, did you do this?’ and they’ll say, ‘No, I didn’t’ and that’s it. Investigation closed. Sometimes the grievances never even get submitted.”

Orta’s grievances have all been denied. He lists the names of dozens of other prisoners as witnesses to his harassment, but the official forms claim they all refused to participate in the grievance process.

“When the witnesses ‘refuse,’” Lewis says, “it’s hard to know if they were ever asked or if they refused out of the fear that if you testify against correctional staff that you’ll be harassed next.”

Grievances can be appealed to the superintendent of the facility, and in turn to higher-ups in Albany. But it’s unlikely that a new investigation would occur. The grievances are kicked back to the facility, and sometimes the staff in charge of investigating the incidents are the same ones involved in the incident. It’s a closed circle, a clenched fist.

Orta wrote a letter to Mary Vann, the superintendent of his new facility in Altona, New York. “Please help me,” he wrote. “I fear it will only get worse and my well-being might be in danger.”

The same day, I received an email from Deja to Orta’s remaining support system: “This is just overwhelming. I don’t know what to do. I feel at this point I just am drained… He wants to be in protective custody. Ramsey is traumatized… He needs help badly.”

Orta’s support system has whittled down to five or six people, none of whom has the power to stop the harassment he says he receives in custody. Concern combined with hopelessness sometimes causes his supporters to lash out at one another. A member of the group emailed in all caps: “WHAT CAN WE DO? ... EVERY TIME WE DO NOTHING AND HIS CONDITIONS GET WORSE.”

The frustration is understandable. Orta and his supporters are caught in a loop. What he needs, he can’t get. His current lawyer has stopped returning calls but isn’t officially dropped from his pending appeals, making it very difficult for a new lawyer to take up his case. Support from activists, who in 2014 lauded Orta as a hero, has dwindled. In theory, Orta could pursue litigation against the Department of Corrections for mistreatment, but petty abuses don’t count for much legally. They don’t matter enough.

“Even if you could prove the abuse, what injunction could we win?” Lewis says. “The law already states that COs are not to beat people up gratuitously. So what can you say other than: please follow the Constitution.”

De Gennaro sighs. “This is a long way of saying that there really isn’t a lot of recourse for people who are in custody and are sustaining recurrent harassment and retaliation.”

In July, I visit Orta at Altona. The area is in the midst of a heat wave that, 30 minutes north in Quebec, will kill 33 people. There’s no air conditioning in the visiting room, and the power keeps going out. I jump a bit each time the room goes dark.

“It’s just the power,” Ramsey says, shrugging. “Cuts out all the time.”

His hair is pulled back into two tidy French braids. I try to imagine him sitting patiently, having someone in the prison so carefully tend to his hair.

He is on edge. He’d recently been cited for having contraband in his cell. Orta draws to manage his anxiety and had asked for a small staple, which he’d stuck into a pencil’s eraser. He showed his CO how he’d use it to make etchings, and the CO had seemed to approve. The COs, Orta explains, were sometimes lenient, sometimes friendly, which lulled him into a temporary confident feeling. I am struck by this. From a very young age, Orta’s fundamental sense of safety, of protection, has been chaotically disordered, creating within him an abyss where trust should be, and yet here he is explaining that he still tries to trust his COs.

“There are good ones,” he says.

Days later, Orta’s cell was tossed and, in the citation documents, the tool was referred to as an illegal tattoo gun. He was sent to solitary. Orta filed a grievance, explaining that a CO had given him permission to use the tool. The CO denied it and the case was closed.

Some of his supporters have encouraged him to stop writing these grievances, to stop speaking to the press, to stay as quiet and docile as possible to avoid further harm. Deja tells me she worries Orta will continue filming the police after his release. His parole could last for three years, and any violation — like being arrested at a protest — could land him back in custody. Every act of resistance is mediated by the fear of retaliation and the pressure to stay quiet, to hide out, to disappear from the scene, comes not just from the police or his COs, but from his loved ones. In this way, the people who want to protect him unwittingly join the effort to silence him.

I am 10 minutes from Altona when Deja calls me. As soon as I’d left, Orta was given a ticket for his braided hair, which was apparently not in regulation. This meant a possible 30 more days in solitary.

“They’re mad when he talks to journalists,” she says. But of course I hadn’t told anyone at the prison that I was a journalist.

“Look in a mirror. They know why you’re there.”

Is this my fault? I think. Am I putting him in danger, just by visiting him? I hear myself promise to visit him again, and then I stop. My fear, too, can become part of the punishment.

Orta could be released as early as December 2019, but if the cycle of citations continues, he could lose that date and remain incarcerated until July 2020. The most common question Orta asks is: “Why can’t I be left alone to do my time?” As I searched through the stack of his grievances, I kept looking for a complicated set of answers to this question, for evidence that the ticketing is incentivized in some way, much like the exposed quota structure in the NYPD. Later, Dori Lewis tells me I’m looking at the problem the wrong way. “The motivations are much more obvious,” she says. “There’s abuse of the authority coupled with the implicit or explicit racism that pervades the system.” These twin evils — dominance and racism — are framed clearly in the Garner video. A death at the hands of the police is like a stone thrown into water: rings ripple outward over a vast space, touching all who survive. The death doesn’t end when the court cases are settled or when the press moves on. We can try all we want to resolve the cognitive dissonance that arises as a result of watching these many videos, but we can’t unsee them. Once we know that we are not all safe, we can’t unknow it. We are forever disrupted. This disruption, not justice, is the legacy of Orta’s video. But at what cost?

In April 2015, while Orta was in Rikers, a white North Charleston police officer, Michael Slager, shot and killed Walter Scott, an unarmed black man. The official police report stated that Slager feared for his life as Scott overpowered him in a fight for control over Slager’s police Taser. Slager didn’t know that the incident had a hidden observer, a young man named Feidin Santana, who had secretly filmed the shooting. But Santana did not immediately release what he’d recorded. Having followed the Eric Garner case, Santana knew Orta had been incarcerated. He knew justice was rare and witnesses were in danger of police retaliation.

The video is chilling. It shows Slager carefully line up his sights, take a breath, and fire eight rounds at Scott as he runs in the opposite direction, posing no threat to anyone. Five bullets struck Scott. As he lay dying on the ground, Slager approached, handcuffed him, and dropped his Taser, which had always been safely within his control, next to Scott’s body. Slager was later indicted on federal charges and sentenced to 20 years in prison, but only after multiple attempts to prosecute. The jury in his first trial — who had been shown Santana’s video — deadlocked, forcing a mistrial.

Santana has said in interviews that he held on to the video because he felt his life would be in danger. He considered deleting it and leaving Charleston altogether. He had reason to believe that the video wouldn’t secure justice for the Scott family, as Orta’s had not for Garner’s family. It took Santana three days to find the bravery to come forward with the video. How many others would not? Have not?

Orta has been asked many times by journalists, lawyers, and supporters if he regrets filming and releasing the Garner video. His response changes with his situation and mood. Sometimes he speaks to the pride he felt standing up for what he knew was right, defending his friend, aiming at justice. Other times he’s fed up, beaten down by all the suffering that’s come his way.

“Finally, I’m trying to do something good with my life, something good for my community. And that’s when I really get in trouble?” he asks me, searching my face for answers I don’t have. “Not the drugs, not the gang stuff, the video?”

He looks away from me. Then he tells me he wakes in a panic in the middle of every night. He’s certain someone is in his cell. Sometimes he thinks he can see someone, but when he stands, there’s no one there. He inspects his cell to see if anything has changed while he’s slept. Sometimes the day stretches on as if he’s still in a dream. He tells me he can’t feel the ground when he stands; it keeps shifting below him. He shows me small burns on his palms and tells me he brings the embers of his cigarettes close to his skin, just to see if it will hurt, if it will leave a mark, proof of whether or not he’s awake or still sleeping.

Paranoia and fear form their own prison, one Orta is likely to live in for the rest of his life.

Do you wish you could go back and do it differently? Not take the video?

I’d waited a year, known him a year, before I asked this question. He looks away from me and lowers his head.

Finally he says, “What does it matter?”

#kill all cops #acab #ramsey orta #injustice #injustice system #nypd #all cops are pigs #eric garner #tamir rice #michael brown #alton sterling #philando castile #freddie gray

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babywarg · 5 years ago

Note

Drpepperony Prompt: In her search for a way to help Tony, Pepper finds a very unique group of people in Nepal.

Hi @mistressstrange! Thanks again for another lovely prompt. This one went on a bit long, but I hope you like it 😘

Er, it pretends Iron Man 3 and the Doctor Strange movie happened at around the same time frame 😺

[8/22/2019: Have to put up this obnoxious note again: NOT ACCEPTING NEW PROMPTS AT THE MOMENT. Thank you for understanding 💕]

***

Anxiety, said the therapist she’d had to consult in secret, because Tony reacted badly when she suggested he see a specialist himself. Panic attacks. Possible PTSD.

She immediately recalled the time Rhodey told her about the “freakout” Tony had at the restaurant (“Please don’t tell him I told you - knowing him, it’ll freak him out more.”) That time she tried to wake Tony from a nightmare, and the Iron Man armor pinned her to the bed, sensing her as a threat.

The time when Tony’s Malibu house was blown up. The final confrontation with Killian, and Extremis.

All those times when Tony couldn’t sleep, and when he slept he had nightmares, even after Extremis had been eliminated.

Rest, the therapist said, when Pepper asked what he needed. Lots of it. And an arsenal of relaxation methods. He should learn how to recognize the signs of anxiety so he can better manage it.

She tried to get him into yoga, visit support groups, meditate…but all of it bored him. Pills were ineffective and made him feel “wonky” besides. He cut his caffeine and alcohol consumption, which helped some, but he also became irritable and depressive.

In short, despite her best efforts, he showed no promising signs of recovering.

She had said they needed a break…she had been hoping she and Tony could take that break together. But he refused, claiming he couldn’t imagine he’d be able to rest if he were taken away from his work.

So she took a week’s leave from work, to try and seek a cure by herself.

Pepper didn’t know exactly what was plaguing the man she loved.

But she was damned if she was going to lose him to it.

***

She heard there was a guru in Kathmandu, a “miracle worker,” who could get even the most tensed-up person in the world relaxed.

She flew into Nepal to meet him herself, and found him a complete and total quack.

So, no guru to bring back to see Tony. With days to spare, she decided to take some time for herself, and see the city.

It was what she did when she was younger, before her busy years in Stark Industries: she would travel, then break off from her tour group and wander alone, taking in the sights and sounds and enjoy just being somewhere different.

It was refreshing. No one knew her there, and no one expected anything of her.

Until she found herself herded by two shady men into a dark alleyway.

She could hold her own, that was true. But the two she thought she had whupped had come back with support, and six against one was simply more than she had trained for.

She was starting to get overwhelmed, when he heard a deep male voice yell for her assailants to stop.

At first it was just one person - a white guy around her age, with a scraggly beard, wearing very plain brown robes and a monk’s hood.

The other was a man in blue robes, but who wore a hood as well. He hung back until the first man cried out:

“Mordo! A little help?”

Then the other man smirked. “Looks like the two of you don’t need any,” he remarked, before unhurriedly jumping into the fray.

Unfortunately, though they were fated to win, given that her two new companions appeared to have above-average martial arts skills, Pepper was already winded by the time they arrived, and could not defend herself well.

One of the assailants had a knife. It tore a mean gash on the inside of Pepper’s forearm.

Unnamed guy noticed it only after all the attackers had been soundly knocked unconscious.

“Mordo,” he breathed, as he inspected the gash, “she’s wounded. She has to come back with us.”

“No,” the man exclaimed, seeming to know exactly what he meant. “Strange!”

Before Pepper’s eyes, a glowing portal appeared out of nowhere.

And the man leapt into it, with his arms around her.

***

Pepper shut her eyes as they entered the portal, and found herself in a sort of monastery.

She would have had more time to observe her surroundings, but she was already being half-dragged down a corridor by the man, who had not released her.

“We have to move quickly. You’re losing a lot of blood.”

She wasn’t sure what the man meant. She wasn’t feeling any pain…

But that was when she realized the man also had his hand on her arm…and that hand was glowing.

Glowing.

And shaking at the same time, though that was perhaps to be expected, given how bad those old scars on it looked…

Was the glowing what was stopping the pain?

Mordo, who had followed through the portal, was striding behind them. He seemed upset.

“We don’t just let outsiders in the way you did,” he was telling the first guy. “The Ancient One won’t approve of this.”

“I’ll deal with the Ancient One later,” was the level-headed response. “In the meantime, please get the medical supplies from Wong.”

With a final glare, Mordo left to do as he was bid.

Pepper took a bit of time to realize she was being herded by unfamiliar men a lot in this city - was she just taken to a secondary location? Was she unsafe?

But all thoughts of being unsafe fled her mind when the man sat her down on a large, ridiculously comfortable pillow, and raised her entire arm, applying firm pressure both on the wound and on a vein in her upper arm.

This guy knew what he was doing.

“Relax,” he said to her, “I’m a doctor.”

A doctor whose hands could glow and who could defeat armed opponents while completely unarmed himself, and open sparkly portals that could take him from one place to another in a heartbeat?

…Okay.

“You saved me,” she remembered to say through the confusion. “Thank you.”

He looked up into her eyes briefly, and she was stunned.

What a strange, captivating color…

“No need for that,” he replied, almost smiling. “But you’re welcome.”

***

As it turned out, she needed the next few days to recover.

Doctor’s orders.

She was in some sort of monastery…forbidden to go to certain areas, which she really wasn’t driven to explore anyway.

She really had lost a lot of blood. The day after the attack, she just wanted to stay in bed, eating the sparse but healthy fare she was given, and enjoying the view.

Her room had a brilliant view.

She had booked a decent suite for her journey, which promised a good vista of the city…but what she was given there was nowhere near as majestic as the one she got in that monastery.

“Lovely. Isn’t it?”

She turned and saw the unnamed man from last night, standing at the doorway with his hands behind his back.

But the man was looking at her. Not the view.

She wasn’t creeped out, however. It didn’t feel as if he was checking her out, or radiating any sort of ill intent.

She felt safe and relaxed in this place, in his company.

“I know people who’d pay a pretty penny for a view like this,” she confessed.

“Well, donations are always appreciated,” he disclosed. “But not compulsory in the least.”

“Not even after you saved my life?”

The man snorted. “Please, you could’ve taken them all by yourself.”

It was a joke, she was aware, but a well-meaning one. Which made her smile.

“I honor my debts,” she said, offering her hand for him to shake. “And I’m in your debt, Doctor…”

“Strange.” He took her hand. “But you can call me Stephen.”

***

As Pepper regained her strength, Stephen showed her around the unrestricted parts of the large monastery - which she learned was called Kamar-Taj.

Strangers who didn’t come for religious purposes were uncommon there, but not unwelcome. And she learned she was allowed to stay by their leader, the mysterious and reclusive Ancient One, who was out of grounds at the time and was not available for her to thank personally.

The monks lent her a cell phone for making international calls, and Stephen lent her his laptop so she could tell people about her whereabouts. She sent out a mass email saying she had an “incident” and would be staying a bit longer. She was canceling her flight home, but rebooking.

When?? was everyone’s frantic question.

When? was Tony’s weary, sleepless, desolate inquiry. I miss you, Ms. Potts. A hell of a lot.

“As soon as I can, Mr. Stark,” was her immediate reply. “I miss you a hell of a lot, too.”

All through everything, Tony remained foremost on her mind.

As they spent more time together, Stephen came to vaguely explain the magic that they learned in Kamar-Taj - about how they weren’t exactly secret, but weren’t exactly public knowledge, either.

Pepper got his meaning off the bat. She had been around people with superpowers, and understood the need for a measure of secrecy.

He also told her a little about himself. His life in the States. His old practice. His accident. How it might have been the best thing that happened to him, though it still gave him pain, in more ways than one.

(That last part reminded her of Tony as well. The ordeal in the desert, from which he emerged a changed man. The pain from the scarring that he would not - could not - let go of.)

In return, Pepper told Stephen about her boyfriend. The one she’d come to Kathmandu for. The most important person in her life.

And Stephen listened. Patiently. Until she found herself apologizing for talking his ear off.

“Please don’t be sorry,” Stephen said calmly. “Before, I never really appreciated the privilege of hearing someone talk about the things that matter the world to them. Now I do. I can tell you’ve kept all this in for a long time, and I’m honored by your trust.”

She liked him. A lot.

She wished she could take him back with her.

“I think you could do him a world of good, actually,” she thought aloud.

Stephen frowned. “You mean, because he needs a doctor?” It sounded like he was preparing for an argument.

Pepper smiled.

“No,” she assured him. “Because he needs a friend. Someone who may understand what he’s been through. Someone he’ll listen to.”

***

“You seriously think that’ll get me interested?”

“All right, then, enough about being friends. Now I’m asking you to see him as a medical expert.”

“Not that kind of doctor.”

“Just once! What’s the harm?”

She had to use her powers of persuasion to get him to agree to her request to join her on her trip home. It took a few days, too. He was stubborn, almost as stubborn as Tony…

But as with Tony, she could tell he liked her, too. In a way that meant there was a limit to how long he could say “no” to her.

“Fine,” he groaned eventually. “I’ll meet him. Just once. For a medical examination. Then I’m coming back.”

It wasn’t what she wanted, but she was going to take it. She’d convinced him there wasn’t a doctor in the world she trusted as fully as she did him.

Which was, in a way, true.

She’d talked to Tony about him, as well. From their phone conversations, he seemed genuinely interested in Stephen. But of course, that might just have been because he saw Stephen initially as someone who saved Pepper’s life…

But he didn’t take kindly to the notion that he was going to be given a medical examination. He’d avoided seeing specialists all that time - he was doubtful that a “doctor” of vague expertise, who could do magic, could be what he needed.

Pepper sighed. Their first meeting was probably going to be strained. But it was still worth a shot.

On the day they were due to leave, Pepper waited for Stephen at the monastery’s gate. She was surprised to see him for the first time in Western clothing - slacks, a jacket, black shoes, a round-neck shirt.

And with his beard neatly trimmed, into a shape that suited his face well.

Pepper admitted to herself that she possibly, just possibly, had a thing for vain men with meticulously trimmed facial hair.

“Ready to go?” he asked her.

“All set,” she answered. “Got your ticket?” He’d better. It was a pricey ticket. Business class.

He smiled wryly. “Miss Potts…you should get your money back from the airline, before it’s too late for a refund.”

He made a familiar gesture with one hand, and a portal opened in front of them.

On the other side of the portal was Tony’s workshop in upstate New York.

***

Tony was hopped up on caffeine and jumpy when they arrived.

In fairness, a shimmering portal opening out of nowhere was going to make anyone jumpy.

But seeing Pepper cooled his blood instantly. He trapped her in a tight embrace.

“I was so worried,” were his first words to her.

When they broke apart, he cradled her bandaged forearm delicately in his hands, breathed a sigh of relief when he saw that the bandaging was expertly done.

That was only when he paid attention to the other person in the room.

“Dr. Strange, I presume?” Tony looked him up and down.

Stephen stepped forward and offered a trembling hand for Tony to shake.

“Stephen, please,” he said pleasantly.

Tony ignored him and addressed Pepper again.

“So…what, is he staying? Should I fix up one of the spare rooms?”

“No need to bother,” Stephen interrupted, withdrawing his hand. “I won’t be here for long. I’m just here to do what’s necessary, then go back to my training.”

“Oh yeah?” Tony faced him squarely this time. “And what are you training to be, a model for some off-the-rack fashion line for high school librarians?”

Instead of getting puffed up, as Pepper feared, Stephen raised an eyebrow.

“Clearly I’m in the presence of an expert in dressing himself. What’s that, two, three sizes too small?”

They stared each other down. Pepper’s impulse was to intervene, but she was stopped by the fact that she felt no hostility at all between the two men.

Not even a tiny bit.

Presently, Tony started walking past her.

“I like this one,” he said casually, with a casual pat on her shoulder. “Well done, Ms. Potts. I’ll go get his room ready.”

She caught his hand before it slid off his shoulder and he walked past her, out of the workshop.

Stephen watched him go, then sighed. “I gather a medical examination isn’t forthcoming,” he ventured.

“Probably not today,” she answered, smiling. “You could stay the night if you want, or travel back to Kamar-Taj.”

Stephen looked back at the door where Tony had exited.

“I think I’ll stay,” he said pensively.

Something clicked just then. It was going to work out, having Stephen here to check on Tony. Pepper just knew.

She’d gone a great distance to find a way to help Tony.

It seemed she’d found exactly what she was looking for.

#drpepperony #drpepper #pepperony #ironstrange #pre-relationship #tony stark #pepper potts #stephen strange #iron man #doctor strange #iron man 3 #mistressstrange asks

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elsewhereuniversity · 6 years ago

Text

Names have power and meaning, and what you pick says something about you. People tended to avoid commenting on Pandora’s name, as they only understood the surface of the myth and only knew that because of Pandora’s curiosity she unleashed suffering on humans. Fae however, as well as some more historically knowledgeable humans, knew a different myth.

Pandora- the myth- had been explicitly created to open the box and unleash the contents within. Given to the god of hindsight as a gift after the whole fire incident with Prometheus, she had been designed to be a beautiful and cunning opposite to man- Zeus’s revenge. Judgment for the wrongs. She was never curious, she was a weapon.

Fae initially avoided Pandora the student because of the myth, and because they sensed she knew full well what she had picked. But Pandora proved to be a magnet for the strange, and was open to the deals that came with it.

She was better at making deals than initially given credit for. Fae who thought they were clever usually got manipulated out of what they really wanted while Pandora walked away with everything she’d set out for.

What Pandora traded for was considered erratic at best, if you didn’t know her or were unobservant as to what she was currently doing with her time. Large amounts of metals traded at times she was doing large smithing projects, lots of plastic reels for the 3d printers, designs for projects made of wood, hair dye, gems, and at once point just a touch of Sight were known things she’d traded for. (Just a touch, wouldn’t want to see too much)

Pandora liked knowledge best of all, but you’d only know that if you were a fae trading or were someone very very close to her. She came to the school knowing how to 3d print, shape metal, and create wooden projects. She did not come to the school knowing how to conjure items, enchant items, or how to cook. She rarely traded for all desired knowledge to be given in one fell swoop though. She knew better than to lock herself into a path she might find out she doesn’t actually want.

On the side of personality, she was undoubtedly kind, giving luck charms out freely, and giving iron rings out freely like they were candy, but wouldn’t hesitate to throw you to the wolves if you proved dishonest. Understandingly patient, but unabashedly persistent. It was often joked that if you owed her something she would haunt you after her death to get it from you. Nobody was actually certain if she would. Nobody wanted to find out. Even less appealing was to find out was what she’d do to you if you broke a deal. (“Where did she get the knife who’s cuts burn for days after?” “I don’t know, and I don’t want to find out.”)

Her deals slowly went from normal(ish) to what one may expect when someone mentions deals with fae, though they were still largely related to her hobbies and interests. For a hammer who’s strike would never miss, she gave a luck charm specifically enchanted to help prevent injury. For a drill who’s bits would never snap or dull and who would always drill straight she gave a tube of hand cream that would temporarily enhance natural beauty and health. She’s not sure where the gloves that aided in cleaning but would force one to finish the task before anything else no matter what came from. It helps with dishes though.

For all her all her trading and all her cunning and all her skill, what made her powerful was her kindness. The unspoken debts she was owed ranged from her having lent notes on a difficult test to leaving the crows fresh muffins every morning to all the useful gifts she gave. Everyone knew her name and knew that she’d at least listen to a request if you needed to make one. Whether or not she’d do it was determined by her capacity to, and her availability. To a lesser extent what you could do in return was also a factor.

The debts added, and added, and added. It seemed everyone owed her something unspoken because of her kindness, and to other students she seemed oddly content to leave it unspoken and unpaid. She cursed her own kind nature, and knew she was walking a dangerous line. She just didn’t know what line.

And she knew when gifts started appearing that she was stepping over that line into a new realm. A hairbrush that would help keep the color of her hairdye, pretty stones, pretty pins, a new pair of shoes when she’d offhandedly complained about hers being on the way out, the crows bringing her a magic focus as an unsaid thank you for the fresh muffins she gave them every morning, the crows bringing her lots of things in general because they liked her, and so many other things. All non-crow gifts given with a post-it note attached saying “For your kindness”

Her kindness didn’t end, and neither did the gifts. It reached a tipping point when she saw a creature in danger.

A frame made of iron had mysteriously dislodged, onto a fae creature. Its pitiful screams didn’t go unnoticed and she tore it off the form. This was not a debt that would or ever could be politely overlooked. She’ll never admit she immediately regretted lifting the frame if only because that meant she must be paid.

“What would you like? I cannot promise I can give it, but request and we’ll see.” The fae asked, looking at her anxiously. She knew better than to say ‘nothing’, but she couldn’t think of anything appropriate to ask for. So with hesitation she said “I don’t know what to ask for. I’m not even sure what could be considered equal.”

Her hesitation read relatively clear to the fae, a boon for that situation. The fae agreed that it required thought and sat with her for a few minutes, trying to think of a gift to clear the debt.

It looked up at her with a grin. “To clear the scars of past and to prevent scars anew.” It declared. It’s lucky she held no ill feelings towards that gift as it went ahead without further warning. A bright flash, and the fae was gone, as well as every scare, big or small, on her skin.

With hesitation she rubbed a ridge right under her chin. Or at least, there was supposed to be a ridge right under her chin. The slightly puckered flesh from when she’d split it open was flat.

She stood there for a while after, considering the implications. To prevent scars anew…

She didn’t pretend the implications were anything grand. Days later it was proven that her skin could be pierced, confirming that she could be injured. It just wouldn’t scar.

It was a gateway to many other favors. It was like the school sensed it could trust her with such things now, as fae in need of a hand appeared in droves. Fae tangled in vines, fae trapped by cruel students with salt circles, and many others.

Gift after gift after gift. Always glad to save a creature but despising each gift that took her a little further from ‘human’.

Radiant beauty, straightened and whitened teeth, silent footfalls, improved literal eyesight (she admits she needed that one), and far more magic items than she would ever need. And that was on top of the gifts from the unspoken debts.

She would walk and heads would turn. Hushed voices would explain to the newbies who she was. Hushed voices would ask back why she was… like that. Nobody human knew why she radiated beauty, nobody human knew why she could only be detected if she didn’t care enough to hide, and everybody human knew there was something unnatural about her and all the items she carried with. But her name preceded her, and nobody was scared of her. Just cautious. Careful to never be ungrateful or rude, but willing to ask and give.

Isolated in the sea of humans, a goddess among mortals. Nobody dared get too close to her. Even friends kept their distance, leaving only a couple of people who ever knew what was really going on in her head.

There wasn’t one mysterious day where she snapped. It was many days where she was slightly father gone than the previous days. She probably wouldn’t have even started the path if students hadn’t been so cautious to interact with her.

Slowly even her last two friends drifted away. And slowly it was only ever the changelings, the fae-touched, and the outright fae who would interact with her on a level beyond “Do you have notes for the homework?”

These were who she hung around. They’d laugh they’d joke they’d play and they’d watch the newest episodes together. What humanity she’d held tight in spirit only by this point started to unravel.

She was still kind and would help, but cold calculation lay in her eyes. Rumor had it she was rationalizing the value of you and your offer and comparing it to how much she cared, like one calculates a budget. She would disappear and return at random. Taken and Returned at her command, for far too many owed her to Take without permission and to not Return her once she desired to leave. (One brave student asked what fae parties were like. Beyond onlookers amazement that she didn’t smite them right there, they were stunned to hear her laugh and say “Wilder than you can imagine!”)

The final tipping point in the line of dominoes was passing by an argument about a deal. Curious, and having nothing better to do, she got involved. The sides were explained and she came to a decision about the situation. They asked for her opinion, and she gave it.

The argument was immediately resolved. She was right, or at least had a point, and nobody was brave enough to argue anyways. A small enough event, or should have been assuming it had remained isolated.

This time it was the students who decided it. One with such power and outright knowledge was better suited to call the shots. She would hear the argument and her diction was law. Even with her humanity left in shreds she had enough kindness to remain fair. The students knew this too whenever they heard her verdict. Even if they were bitter about how it turned out for them, the could feel it in their bones that this was what was deserved.

A few questioned if it was right, or healthy, to rely on her words. They were ignored. Complicated problems were set before her and then were solved. The gifts never stopped, as it was just common sense to pay the she who solved your problems and came to your aid.

None of the students realized 'it’ until someone finally snapped at her. Her call was very lopsided to one person, though that was for the person being innocent and actually trying to be a kind and understanding person while the other had played an unfair game.

The other had lunged for her, their scream of profanity drowned out by the gasping and then screaming students. Any further words were stopped before they even started as almost every student in sight went to pry the bastard off of her. Days later he would be Taken, but for right then her response shook the school.

She laughed. “You think you can take down Judgment!?” She’d hollered. And as one every heart in the area skipped a beat.

“To tip the scales, to say you’re better than rationality? To attack the one in charge of the outcome? By all means, once they release you, I dare you to attack me again and see how long you survive. See just how many people will pry you off once more!” She shouted, twirling as she motioned to those surrounding her.

“I am but a creature of flesh, this is undeniable, but I hold more power than you ever will because I earned it through my deeds. And through my reason, the students have deemed me their Judge! I am the hammer calling for order, I am the scales of which the values are weighed, I am the Judge who decides!” She screeched.

“I saw your lies all through your Case, and each and every one of them was tallied against you and used to determine the Truth! Your life is ultimately not my business; but I pity those who’d call you 'friend’, for you twist your narrative until you are the victim, knowing you are the culprit.”

“We’re done here. Whatever comes next isn’t my doing, but I’m certain that you’ll deserve it.” She said, turning away and simply walking off with confidence in her step.

And the students watched their Judge walk away in silence, and even the animals had stopped making noise in the presence of her power and truth.

Later that night the one who’d attacked her sat in his dorm, waiting in terror for the invariable Pandora’s Box of horrors he’d unleashed upon himself for challenging powers greater than himself.

#thetamelittlefox #stories #judgement #pandora #pandora was a weapon #deals #long post #submission

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lordshaxxion · 7 years ago

Text

Second Chances

I am in DENIAL.

Cayde-6 was dead. He’d been dead for some time, in fact, almost a year. Almost a year since Uldren Sov had betrayed the City and murdered the Hunter Vanguard where he knelt. Spades had carried him home to the Tower, to the City, but Cidrex had been the one to discover him. He had been the one to find out who had killed him. He had helped to organise the funeral. He had spoken at the ceremony while his arms had burned with the Void of his rage and he had been grave side while they buried Cayde.

Cidrex was now out on a patrol by himself, a full year later, and he was quiet. Normally he’d be talking to Socks, his Ghost, or on the comms with Spades or… Cayde… but instead he was just silent. Picking off Fallen as and when he saw them come across his sights and firing just the one sniper round for each. He watched their heads explode, watched what looked like souls leave them and wondered if anything had left Cayde when Uldren-

“Stop it.” Socks said out of nowhere, almost startling the Hunter. “Stop thinking about that, Cidrex.”

“Sorry.” He muttered, looking up at his Ghost. His mind tended to wander nowadays, drifting back to that moment all the way out there in the Tangled Shore. Thinking up different ways it could’ve gone, all the times he could’ve gotten there sooner if he hadn’t done something else. If he’d been quicker. If he’d been faster. If he’d been focused on that Dreg, not that Vandal. Socks had been there to keep him grounded, to try and stop his thoughts from wandering much farther than the initial ‘what if’. Cidrex needed it, especially with Zavala almost drifting away from him and Spades keeping somewhat to himself. They were all trying to be better about things, they were all making an effort to interact properly again but the gaping hole in their relationship left by a certain Exo was making it all the more harder to just be normal.

Cidrex let out a deep sigh, watched the plume of white clouds filter through the small gaps in his helmet, and picked himself up. He slung his sniper around his back as he did so, clicking the safety on and waiting for Socks to transmat away before he jumped down. The Hunter landed solidly with a splash, the ankle-deep water kicking up with the force and rippling out from him. A tut left him as he realised his long cloak was getting in the water, but he didn’t quite care enough to pull it up as he started walking in no particular direction. That was something else Cidrex had noticed over the months, he’d just taken to wandering. Wandering the apartment, wandering the Tower, wandering the EDZ or the Cosmodrome or wherever else he went. Wanderlonging, Othion had described it as once - a longing for a place you’ve never been. It was almost true, Cidrex supposed, he wanted to go somewhere he’d never been. Somewhere that wasn’t filled with memories one way or another.

There was a small chirping near Cidrex’s head that almost made him spin around, ready to knife whatever was nearby that had startled him. It was a Ghost and it whizzed back with rapidly twitching panels out of Cidrex’s reach. The Hunter scowled under his Iron casque. It was a Guardian-less Ghost trying to hitch a ride with him in the hopes of being taken closer to where it could find its own Guardian.

“Find someone else to travel with.” He growled at the Ghost, “I don’t take strays.”

Cidrex turned on his heel and carried on walking, footsteps making small splashing sounds as he went. The Ghost followed him, silent and not making any sort of sound now. Cidrex groaned in frustration.

“Go away! Seriously! I’m not giving you a lift anywhere!” He snapped, trying to walk faster in the hopes of losing the Ghost. But the Ghost proved stubborn and kept following. How annoyingly persistant. Eventually Cidrex’s temper got the better of him and he turned sharply, grabbing the little frame out of the air and holding it firmly in his hands.

“Stop following me!” He shouted at it, staring into its cyan optic. “Go find someone else who cares! Go find another Guardian to hitch a ride with! Just stop following me!” The Hunter let it go after a moment, watching it drift slowly up but not back away. It wasn’t entirely unusual for Guardian-less Ghosts to follow other Guardians around, but Cidrex just didn’t want this little guy following him around. He had far better things to do with his time than help a lost Ghost get somewhere it didn’t know. Instead, Cidrex just tried to ignore it. If he wasn’t careful with his temper, then he could end up hurting the poor thing and that just wouldn’t do.

So he carried on walking, trying so hard to ignore the little Light until he felt a flutter within his own Light, one that had definitely not come from Socks. The Iron Lord whipped around and removed his helmet, glaring at the Ghost in fury.

“Stop trying to link with my Light. That isn’t your Light to poke with.” The Ghost just blinked its optic. Its familiar, cyan optic.

“It used to be. You still collecting those crystals? Because I grabbed a bunch while I was trying to find you again. You know how long that took me in a frame like this? I know Ghosts are cute and all but this is just weird.” The Ghost finally spoke and its voice made Cidrex’s blood run cold. It kept talking and talking, rambling on about everything and nothing all at once. “I figured you’d be here, EDZ is your favourite place to be and all. I know why, too, so fresh and not too weird to deal with. You remember that field you took me to? When I was in the middle of rebooting once? I miss that field.”

Cidrex stared at the Ghost, his knees feeling weak as he sank into the muddy water. He felt numb, almost ill. This had to have been some kind of sick joke, it had to be. There was no possible way Cayde-6 was a Ghost now, not for real. Bile was starting to build slowly and his stomach churned, his world span. He hadn’t heard that voice in such a long time. Even after the funeral Cidrex hadn’t wanted to go through the videos and recordings of Cayde with Zavala and Spades. He still hadn’t wanted to.

He looked up at the Ghost that had now moved to be right in front of him, almost flinching away from its little blue frame and single white forefin at the top. Now this was just silly. Maybe he was hallucinating?

You’re not hallucinating, Cidrex, came Socks’ comfort across their bond. Well, he wasn’t sure it was a comfort to know he definitely wasn’t hallucinating a Ghost with the voice and demeanour of his dead boyfriend.

“I missed you, Cidrex. A lot. I pulled a lot of strings with the big guy to be here again, even if it’s like this.”

“Cayde…?” Cidrex whispered, almost afraid that saying his name aloud would make the little drone disappear. Instead the Ghost only came closer and cuddled up to him, nestling in his hood and warming against his cheek as tears started to leave the Hunter’s eyes in floods.

“Hey. I made you a promise I wouldn’t leave you, didn’t I?” He said, wiggling a fin against Cidrex’s cheek. A sob almost caught in his throat.

“But that’s not… you can’t be… We buried you, you… you can’t be here!”

“Okay I know it’s basically impossible, but the Traveler did me a… a huge favour, after the lengths I went to to help free her. So she restored me as a Ghost. Couldn’t fix my body up, so this was the next best thing. Don’t you know where Ghosts come from?”

Cidrex was shaking, he was pale, he couldn’t believe this was really happening. His own Ghost, Socks, started to investigate the newcomer whose presence he could feel nudging through his bond with Cidrex’s Light. It hardly seemed possible and yet there they are.

“How’s everyone else?”

Cidrex was quiet for a moment, holding back more sobs as the tears just wouldn’t stop coming. His jaw worked soundlessly for a moment, voice just not at all wanting to engage.

“Zavala took it hard. He wouldn’t acknowledge it at first. Kept talking to the space you used to stand in. Spades… Spades kinda kept to himself at first. We all did, until I dragged Uldren back here by the ankles and tortured him in front of the City.” Cidrex admitted finally, voice cracking a little.

“Heh, I caught that. That was impressive. How’s your Void burn?”

“Still dissipating.”

“Still? It’s been a year.”

“I know.”

“That bad huh?”

“Cayde, you died. You died. Permanently. And I didn’t even get to say goodbye to you, I had to get Spades to carry you back home. You died and we held a service and the City mourned for you! We all did! And now you’re just here, as a Ghost, making small talk?! The Consensus want to make me the next Vanguard in your place! And you’re just here making small talk?!” Cidrex ranted, starting to shout towards the end of it as he grabbed the blue Ghost shell and stared him down with wide, teary eyes. This whole thing was wrong. It was so, so wrong.

“Hey, hey, hey.” Cayde said quietly, his voice taking on that soothing, soft tone it always did whenever Cidrex was getting worked up over something regardless of how trivial it may have been. “Look, I know what happened, okay? It happened to me after all. But what am I supposed to say? It’s not like this has happened before.” He soothed gently, floating out of Cidrex’s grip to look him in the eye.

“Cayde…”

“The Traveler gave me a second chance to be with you guys again. Yeah, okay, it’s a bit weird to suddenly be a Ghost, but it’s still another chance I get to see you all again. I’ll be damned before I turn that kind of offer down.” Cayde said softly. More tears welled up in Cidrex’s eyes, brimming and turning his vision to blurs as he reached for the Ghost shell and held it gently before bringing it to his face and holding it to his cheek.

“Promise me that you’re real.” He rasped, barely holding in sobs of absolute distress. “Promise me, Cayde. Promise me you’re real and you’re staying. I can’t… I can’t lose you again…” The Iron Lord wheezed, devolving into soft sobs.

“I promise, sweetheart.” A snotty laugh almost left Cidrex, more like a strangled noise.

“You only called me that when you were after something.” He accused. Cayde wiggled a couple of fins, chuckling.

“Well, it’s starting to rain and you’re knelt here in muddy water in that nice lookin’ armour.”

“Shut up, Cayde.” Cidrex smiled weakly, eyes still watery as he couldn’t hold back more sobs.

“Shutting up.” Cayde said gently, cuddling into the Hunter’s hands and comforting him with his usual humming.

#destiny #destiny 2 #forsaken dlc #forsaken spoilers #kinda #cayde-6 #cidrex #iron lord cidrex #lord cidrex #ironvanguardians #long post #v long post #sad af #ghost #lots of ghosts #denial ending to forsaken #i refuse #jay writes

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vankoya · 8 years ago

Text

A God’s Blood.

✗ Part of the Across the Multiverse series!

Genre | Greek Mythology AU.

Pairing | Kim Taehyung / Feminine Reader.

Words | 2,501 words.

Conspectus | Not even a God can save her. But oh, does he try his best.

Warnings | Death as a result of illness. Angst with a hopeful ending.

Not much thought goes into the abandoned, neighbouring house on the hill.

Well, until the day Taehyung peers out of his kitchen window and sees the driveway that lays forty-five metres from his own, hosting a shabby car packed to the rafters. Clothing and household items and two women of the same genetics spill out of its doors.

A scowl molds his weary features. The lone cloud that is lazily passing by the sun—smothering its shine—startles and scurries across the early morning stretch of robin’s egg blue, allowing the giant star to douse the scene in its luminous rays. Light swathes the hill in a diaphanous sheet of gold. Now, Taehyung sees clearly that it is certainly a mother and daughter who lift and load, tug and pass, in perfect tandem. Two birds filling their new nest.

It is quite a sight, really, for it is barely eight o’clock and they are both so utterly vivacious. On the other hand, Taehyung is bone tired, and it is most surely showing in the way that the sun lazily ascends, as though it perhaps has something else much better to do. Like staying in bed for another four hours.

Nonetheless, the candescent brilliance glowers at him through the crystalline pane, overlooking the sight of the first sign of human life that he has encountered in about a decade. Give or take.

You should go help them.

Taehyung agrees that it seems the polite thing to do. But before he has had the chance to have his taste buds graced by the heat of his freshly brewed cup of coffee? It could be a bad idea, especially since he is still frowning.

Though another god must be listening in on him, for the younger of the pair suddenly trips on her own feet and sends the contents of the cardboard box she carries flying across the gravel. Some items smash and splinter in a mess of china and glass, while others bounce against the ground and roll this way and that.

Taehyung is already bursting out of the front door, loping down the slope, praying that nobody had noticed the minuscule flare of the sun when the panic struck him like a bullet.

What he does not expect as he nears is for the girl to be coughing, doubled-over, palms pressed to her lips to smother the worst of it. Highly unlike the way that people will loudly expel tight air from their lungs to dislodge whatever infinitesimal particle is stuck to the back of their throat. Rather, she holds it in like she is hiding a secret; something that was never supposed to make itself known to the light of day. She swallows the sound as though she cannot bear for her mother, oblivious to the crash and the outcome inside of the house, to hear it.

Taehyung only understands when the girl calms down, straightens her spine, and her hands come away from her mouth smattered with scarlet.

“Are you alright?” he tentatively calls, five feet away, and she is damn near startled out of her wits, yanking her head around to face him.

The whiplash of how gorgeous she is, all bright eyes and radiant skin, gets him nearly as fierce as her surprised reaction of a shriek.

“Christ!” the girl yelps, licking her red lips and pulling the sleeves of her sweater over her knuckles, concealing the evidence. “What– Where did you come from? Who are you?!”

Taehyung, despite the fact that his heart knocks against his chest, grits his teeth. He should have had that coffee. “I’m your neighbour. That’s my house–” He helpfully gestures up the hill where his home resides, as if they are not the only two buildings within an eight kilometre radius– “Up there. I saw you trip over from my kitchen window and thought I’d come down to help you, but, uh, I guess I saw...”

With the tapering of his sentence, Taehyung’s gaze softens and drifts to her hidden away hands. He flicks his eyes back up to her expression, watching her sigh. Caught red-handed, quite literally.

Suddenly, he feels intrusive. Horribly rude, like he should have never stepped outside of his house in the first place and let his words run so bluntly across the space that separates them. Though such tar black feelings are quick to dissolve when the corners of her mouth curve with a hint of mirth.

“Oh. Well. I apologise,” she speaks gently, something high and beautiful and terrible like the blood stained on her hands. “But I suppose you know why we’re here now. I’m ___, by the way.”

“To spit blood on the hill’s face?” Taehyung, mentally slapping himself, thinks to trap his voice in a box for the remainder of eternity. He deserves Hell for the fact that his first human interaction in years stumps down to him joking about the disease that seeks home within this girl.

Yet her laugh, honey sweet, speaks forgiveness.

“For the fresher air, the warm sunlight.” The girl is radiant, in her words, her tone, absolutely everything. Blood still sticks to the left corner of her lips, yet she is so winsome that it hurts. “To breathe easy and live as content as can be.”

Then, her eyes flick worriedly towards the house; the open door where a mother is about to appear and question who the handsome stranger standing on her brand new front yard happens to be. “Just. Please, let’s keep this little mess between the both of us? My mother knows it’s bad, but she doesn’t know it’s become even worse. Promise?”

Measuredly, Taehyung slides his eyes from the doorway to the girl, staring at her honest, humble face like she is the prettiest possession of a museum. There is a tickle that dances across his lips, something of a smile, and he cannot help but notice the way her eyes widen a fraction. A string of panic is quick to tug at his chest when she does so, hoping to the heavens that he is not accidentally emitting luminesce from his pores. (It would not be the first time.)

“I understand,” he avows, mouth curving upwards as he scratches the back of his head and inclines his chin towards the almost forgotten mess. “My name is Taehyung. Shall we clean this up, ___?”

When she grins in full force at him before turning to the littered items, Taehyung cannot help but think that perhaps, whatever sun he has known and reigned over for the last millennium has been counterfeit. For the real one resides stolen in her smile.

Spring has not seen such extraordinary sunlight in years. Taehyung pulls it from every corner of his side of the world like summertime. They have not heard from the clouds in weeks, and he could not care less about the rotten complaints that the other sky deities spit at his feet.

This won’t last forever, comes the warning he expects. But Taehyung is ignorant; completely blinded by the devotion that spreads in poison ivy throughout his ribcage. All he can think about is the way that she had said the warm sunlight and how those simple words ignited a flame of brilliant determination within him.

Most days, they laze together in the luscious garden that circles Taehyung’s house in a barricade of ambrosia. They bathe in golden light, surrounded by soft pink peonies, blushing carnations, violet anemones; the score to the scenery being the gentle buzzing of bees and her occasional coughing. She never questions him on why he lives up here, how he survives so alone, nor how he can even afford it when he appears to be the same age as herself and has no apparent job to his name.

Instead, the girl stretches out across the neat, green grass. Instead, she pretends she does not notice the way her thin summer dress has hitched up her thighs and has his throat running dry. Instead, she tells Taehyung about the dreams she has when she slumbers forty-five metres from his own bed, and asks him questions that she deems important.

“Would you rather an extra nose, or an extra mouth?”

“If you could name a star, what would you call it?”

“Say I asked you to kiss me right now, would you?”

Four months pass, and the sunlight always stays. Brighter, if anything. Lasting later into the evening, now that summer has made way. She tells Taehyung it is the best she has breathed in years. That the clear, warm air tastes undeniably sweet in her lungs.

When he finally kisses her, he expects sugar and syrup and warmth. Not the taste of iron and salt and a guillotine just waiting to drop.

Taehyung has never wanted, nor needed to save somebody. All he has ever been required to do is bring the illumination to his side of the world. To fill the tenebrosity with handfuls of gold; to tuck light wherever it may fit.

But he has abused his rights, and that is perhaps why the gods are unforgiving at the moment he needs them most.

Her mother is in the town when the world falls to pieces like petals peeling from the receptacle of a withering bloom. Taehyung is the one to bear witness, to have his heart deteriorate alongside her lungs.

A rush, and the clouds flood the sky in a blanket of grey, almost as if they have been waiting for this dent of vulnerability to finally blow. They stream into the soft blue like depraved beasts to watch an end come to the girl who barred them for so long.

“Don’t,” she manages in a rasp, fingers weightless on his wrist, drawing the phone from his ear. “Please, Tae. This– It’s time...”

“It doesn’t have to be,” Taehyung is a wreck, his insides are shattered and his heart is pouring into his lap where he cradles her wheezing frame, utterly helpless. “You still– You can have more time–”

“I don’t–” She coughs, a harsh sound, flecks of crimson spraying onto his throat and collarbones. The tears roll fatter, faster down his cheeks. A sob is lodged in his chest. “I don’t w-want more time. I’m happy... For this t-to be it, Taehyung.”

All he can do is stare, blink furiously to be rid of the tears that smear his vision of her placid features. It had happened much like the day they met, with him observing through the kitchen window. Though this time, love was touching his eyes as he watched her add to the pile of blooms laying severed from their stems, next to where she had knelt in his garden. Above, the sun had watched and protected with its kindly, golden palms resting upon her bare shoulders, gliding its fingers through the flyaway hairs that curl at the nape of her neck.

She had started coughing. Taehyung had thought it would pass, that her feeble lungs would gradually relent as they always do, and he had went to fetch a handkerchief to clean up the aftermath. It was not until he had stepped out onto the grass and found her completely collapsed over the culled flowers that he had realised he never once thought they would give up entirely.

“Tell m-my mother... I’m sorry. That I love her.” Her eyes are glassy, her bones becoming dead weight against his arms. But the faint, tragic smile stained with her own blood remains. “I love you, Tae. So much.”

Something cracks inside of him, the salt waterfalls gush at a greater ferocity. Yet Taehyung is firm and sure when he stares into the eyes he fell so head over heels for and says, “I love you, ___. I will never stop loving you,” and she smiles at him like she is not resting on her deathbed.

“Make the sun shine...” her voice is barely above a whisper, exhaling thickly, lungs full of the scarlet that belongs to her veins and arteries, pumping through her slowing heart, “... one last time?”

The words ground him, tug his bearings back into sense and have his eyes staring widely into her own like the answer to her question hides somewhere within the shards of her iris. A ghost of her smile still draws at her ruby-stained lips. A truth unspoken. An acknowledgment that she made long, long ago, though never felt the desire to pry. Just like she ceased to do with the personal questions that she could have pulled from his bone marrow with her very own teeth if she tried.

Instead, she let him be, and loved him and the sun all the same.

Taehyung cannot bear to peel his eyes from her face, yet he must. Facing the sky, he focuses on the spot of brightness that is barely apparent through the coverage of thick grey.

I will take her. I will keep her safe. It is all that I can do.

Taehyung knows, and he accepts.

Before he squeezes his eyes closed and presses his lips to her forehead, Taehyung takes in her equable expression one last time. His trembling fingertips tuck her hair behind her ear in a gesture so heartbreakingly familiar that a tear gathers at the corner of her eye, passing down her cheek. With a careful lean, his mouth connects to her skin and she sighs, an utterance like relief, acceptance. The last sound that passes from her tender mouth.

In all of its glorious might, the sunlight suddenly bursts through the overcast in a radiance so effulgent, stories of its intense flare on this day carry through to the next millennium. Taehyung takes his lips from her skin to watch as her shining soul lifts from where her heart lays still. At first, it carefully treads, gradually climbing through the air.

Then, the sun gingerly reaches down to collect her.

It is not until months later, once he believes he has been wrung dry of all emotion, that Taehyung notices something different.

It comes the day after a mother has packed the items she and a daughter had unloaded into their nest, little over a year ago, to chug the shabby old car out of the driveway for the final time. Returning alone to the city that they had left together. Taehyung wakes early, drags his feet to the kitchen, and fills the stovetop kettle with water. Placing it over the glowing element, he pads towards the window, just as he does every single day. A routine to keep him sane.

But here, on this particular morning, he is met with a sight that nearly stops his heart.

The slowly ascending sun resembles her soul more than it ever has.

The voice is quick to follow, completely unlike he has ever known it. Yet holding a familiarity that has him grinning through the tears.

If you were able to name a star, would it be after my smile?

Prompt | Nurse Me: I’ll write a drabble about my character healing yours.

Series | Across The Multiverse is a collection of drabbles based around the prompts from this list, each taking place in a different universe. The updates will occur whenever I am inspired by a prompt to write a small piece, most generally done as a warm-up.

#taehyung x reader #bts drabbles #taehyung angst #bts x reader #bangtan bookclub #kim taehyung #bts scenarios #atm #across the multiverse #gukvory #I titled this 'sun prism' in my head for junip #alt title: 'let's kill junip'#tae is apollo btw #and the oc has tuberculosis #/ mcd

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turtlepated · 8 years ago

Text

The Fire and the Flood

*******

Chapter 2:

*******

Credence Barebone stood amid the ruin and rubble of the New Salem church, impossibly, improbably and undeniably alive. A thousand different things to say buzzed through Audra’s mind too fast to process, looking him up and down, assessing his condition. From what she could tell in the light of her wand, he wore much the same ill-fitting clothing he had always worn when handing out fliers on the street corners, but he had managed to find a coat somewhere. It was badly ripped at the shoulder, dirty and frayed at the hems and Audra thought sadly that he had likely found it thrown away in an alley.

His face was pale, his fine cheekbones highly prominent, his eyes circled in deep shadows as though he hadn’t been sleeping well, his cheeks and chin and upper lip studded with weeks of facial hair left unattended. Eyes so white they seemed to glow were fixed intently on her, and though it was difficult to be certain without visible pupils Audra was sure he was staring at the wand in her hand.

Slowly she raised both hands, doing her best to be non-threatening as the Obscurus began swirling more prevalently around him. “It’s all right,” she said softly, sidestepping gingerly until she was close enough to lay her wand on a nearby bookshelf, the glowing tip pointed away from him. “I’m not here to hurt you, Credence.” He didn’t move, didn’t speak, neither did the presence of the Obscurus diminish in any way as she distanced herself from the wand. She could see him trembling, his hands hanging lax at his sides but jerking sporadically as he visibly struggled to keep the parasitic Dark force in check.

Despite her heart thudding in panic, Audra willed herself to smile, to diffuse the tension mounting in the space between them. “Credence, I can’t tell you how happy I am that you’re alive,” she said, her smile stretching wider. And it was strange how sincere she was, regardless of the twisting tentacles of Dark energy that could easily kill her, especially now without her wand, she was genuinely thrilled to have found him. At her words Credence finally responded, sort of.

A tremor seemed to shake his shoulders, his fingers clenching and unclenching as he ducked his head away, chin pressed against his chest, trying to make himself smaller, not looking directly at her. Audra desperately wanted to go over to him, to reassure him, comfort him, tell him everything would be okay, but she didn’t dare. If she alarmed him the Obscurus would almost certainly attack. And after all he had suffered, the last thing she wanted was to cause him any more distress.

Instead she gestured around them, careful to keep her movements slow and calming. “Credence… why did you come back here?” she asked, indicating the dilapidated, half collapsed chapel. His eyes swiveled in her direction for the barest of moments, but he was still clearly disturbed by her proximity. Not that she could blame him, considering that the last batch of magic-folk he’d been in contact with had largely attempted to kill him. Audra tried again, speaking gently, attempting to convey that she was genuinely concerned for him.

“Are you… living here?” she clarified. “Because if you are, Credence, I have to tell you, it’s not safe to stay here.” Again his face turned in her direction, but it seemed unable to make himself look at her. He was murmuring something but she couldn’t make out the words. Audra took a half-step closer, tilting her head toward him. “Sorry, what?”

She could see his Adam’s apple bobbing as he swallowed thickly, waiting patiently for him to build up the courage to speak again. “… I… I d-didn’t have anywhere else to go…” Audra’s throat constricted at Credence’s hoarse, croaking words. She didn’t know what she had expected his reason to be, some part of her instinctively knew that Credence would only have been here if he had nowhere else to turn. But to hear him actually admit it, in that broken, hollowed out voice that sounded as if it were prized from him at great personal cost, was almost more than she could take.

Audra pressed her lips together firmly, taking a moment to compose herself so her voice wouldn’t crack when she spoke next. “Credence, how about you come with me?” she said. Credence visibly shuddered at her suggestion, edging further away, shaking his head emphatically while keeping his gaze trained firmly on the floor. The Obscurus swirled more densely around him in his distress, and Audra could hear him mumbling to himself. After a moment, she realized he was breathing out the word “No” over and over again.

Before she could stop herself, Audra took another step closer, raising a hand in a supplicating gesture. “Hey, hey, it’s okay,” she assured him. “You don’t have to if you don’t want to. I’m not gonna make you.” It seemed to calm him a little, the Dark energy receding until it was barely a halo of shimmering smoke that framed his body. Gradually his shaking stopped and his breathing evened and he shot her a series of fleeting glances. Working to regain their lost ground, Audra tried a different tactic.

“Well, if you don’t want to come with me, how about I just… bring some things to you here instead?” she offered. “Blankets, a better coat… where are you getting food from?” For the first time, the shining whiteness of his eyes dimmed as he further calmed himself. Credence gave a one shouldered shrug, gesturing vaguely to the space beneath the fallen balcony.

“There’s food here,” he mumbled. “Ma keeps…” His reply choked off there, as if it was physically painful for him to think about his deceased foster mother, and Audra reflected that it probably was to a degree. She watched him swallow hard a few times, his hands curled into fists tight against his sides. “Ma used to feed kids in the neighborhood. There’s still some cans left…”

Somewhere in the back of her mind, Audra remembered that Barebone had served the poor and homeless children nearby, only in exchange for their compliance in her anti-magical campaign. Most of her mind was occupied with the thought of Credence; living alone in the devastated shell of his home, where he had suffered so much pain, sustaining himself in the cold and wet with cold and wet canned food. Her heart was breaking as she watched him shuffling uncomfortably, averting his gaze as if embarrassed.

Audra cleared her throat, more as a way to snap herself back into focus than to get his attention, but at the sound Credence jolted minutely and turned to her all the same. She nodded, folding her arms, all business. “Ok,” she said. “So I’ll definitely bring you some more food, too. Anything else you need? A heater?” She felt so stupid, so inadequate, asking a boy living in a derelict building in January if he needed a heater, but if he didn’t want to come with her she would do whatever it took to make him more comfortable.

In response he gestured to the squat, cast iron stove, only slightly dented, that sat against the wall. Coals glowed minutely behind the small grate, and Audra imagined he didn’t dare stoke it enough to put off any smoke that might give him away. She nodded matter-of-factly towards it before turning back to him. “And some more coal for your stove.

“I’m gonna take off for now, okay? I’ll be back soon with whatever I can grab, we can get you some other things later.” At last he met her gaze and held it for longer than a millisecond, his brown eyes wide and fearful and so intent upon her that it almost burned. Audra resisted the urge to squirm under his scrutiny, breaking the moment as she looked away and crossed over to her wand. Credence cringed as soon as she had it back in her hand, but his Obscurus didn’t manifest. His eyes remained brown, watching her guardedly.

As she turned to go, Audra stopped herself, mindful to keep her wand pointed away from him when she turned back to him once more. “Everything’s going to be all right, Credence,” she said, meaning it but not entirely certain she could keep the promise. “I’ll be back soon, okay?”

He gave a jerky sort of nod, shuffling subtly away and his eyes darted from her face to the glowing wand. Offering him a smile, Audra crossed the room and ducked back through the window and stepped out into the alley. Striding purposefully from the church, she Apparated with a whoosh and a crack!

******

Audra Disapparated in an alley and without breaking stride walked out onto Canal, hustling toward the first market that had popped into her head. Bells jangled cheerfully as she pushed open the front door to Mulpepper’s. The proprietrix, one Evangeline Mulpepper (of British extraction) specialized in herbs and plants, but her store was the closest all-purpose establishment Audra could think of.

Mrs. Mulpepper was busying herself restocking shelves when Audra came in, conducting with her wand as crates of glass jars and brightly colored cardboard boxes unpacked themselves and settled neatly on shelves. “Good morning!” the middle-aged witch tittered in her lilting accent, cheerful as the bells on her door. “Anything I can help you find?” Audra availed herself of the store owner’s perky helpfulness, and shortly she had a basket full of non-perishable food items, candles, matches, a thick woolen blanket. Mrs. Mulpepper hummed as she rang up Audra’s purchases, slipping everything into a canvas bag with an Undetectable Extension Charm. “Oh, before I forget,” said Audra. “Do you sell coal? Firewood? Or anything that doesn’t smoke.”

Mrs. Mulpepper nodded, pointing with her wand at a stack of logs against the left wall and Summoning a bundle tied with twisted twine. “Certainly, dear,” she said as it plunked down on the counter next to Audra’s bag. “Specially spelled so that it burns without smoke, perfect for throwing in a fireplace! Came up with the notion myself!” Audra couldn’t help but smile at the plucky older witch, asking if there was a secondhand store nearby where she might find a good winter coat. Mrs. Mulpepper gave her an address, Audra thanked her and departed with her purchases.

Not much later she was heading back to Pike Street, the canvas bag on her shoulder and a thick woolen coat draped over one arm. It was a tad worn, smelled strongly of mothballs, but it was a far cry from the tattered thing Credence was wearing when she left. Ducking down the nearest alley, Audra Apparated to the back of the church, shifting her grip on the bag and coat as she ducked through the broken window.

“Credence?” she called, glancing briefly around as she searched for a flat surface to lay the bag on. “I’m back. Why don’t we go through what I brought, you can tell me where everything goes.” Only silence answered her. Audra stilled, looking at the space under the balcony for any flicker of movement, ears straining for any miniscule sound but there was nothing. Her pulse quickened, a sense of dread slowly creeping into the pit of her stomach as she slid her wand out and paced forward. She called his name once more, not wanting to scare him in case he hadn’t heard her before, but again there was no response.

Audra stood indecisively for a beat longer before stooping beneath the fallen upper flooring and passing through the dark aperture. “Lumos,” she murmured, her wand sparking to life. In the pulsing illumination she could see what looked like a sparse bedroom, largely untouched by the destruction that had ravaged much of the church. A cursory glance told Audra that this had likely been Mary Lou’s own room, a modest bed with iron rails and spartan linens in the far corner, a chest of drawers against the left-hand wall.

She concluded that Credence had been sleeping here, the bed carefully made and the room relatively tidy despite the heavy damage to the main living area. But the room was empty. Feeling the dread freezing into panic, Audra spun and hurried out of the room. “Credence?” she called again, as if he would simply appear if she said is name loud enough. The NSPS church was largely one single room, there was nowhere else he could be. She stood in the middle of the main room, turning in futile circles, looking, listening, but was forced to the one conclusion she most didn’t want to make:

Credence was gone.

Audra’s breath left her in a harsh burst, her hands falling slack at her side as frustration and sadness bowed her shoulders. He’d left, probably the second she Apparated away, and when it came right down to it why was she surprised? By and large he had nothing but bad experiences with magic, how foolish she had been to think that he would make an exception for her, a total stranger with a wand. She leaned heavily against the table she’d righted, tilting her head to the bag of supplies sitting where she’d set them. She swallowed around the painful lump in her throat, abruptly coming to a decision.

She slung the bag over her shoulder again, snatching up the coat and tromping toward the back bedroom. Audra set the bag on the bed, folding the coat as best she could and laying it beside the bag on the faded, modest quilt. Returning to the main room, she scrounged for a bit of paper before plucking one of Mary Lou’s fliers off the floor, dirty and torn after being exposed to the elements and trodden underfoot.

Rifling through her coat pockets, her fingers caught on a ballpoint pen. No-maj writing tools were more convenient in the field than quills. Audra folded the paper over, pressing down against the wall as she wrote on the mostly blank back side. She put the pen back in her pocket and strode back to the bedroom. She laid the paper carefully on top of the bag, backing slowly away as her eyes traced over the words again.

“If you need me, find me here.” Below that, the address for the Book Garden.

Audra took one last look around the derelict room, frowning with equal parts sadness and frustration. She didn’t bother leaving the building before Apparating away.

There was no one there to be upset by it.

Here's Chapter 2!

I would love to make promises about a schedule for updates, but unfortunately I'm all-too familiar with me, so no ETA for Chapter 3 but I'll do my best!

Also, let me just say that you guys have no idea how awesome it feels every time I see that someone out there likes my writing! Thank you all so much for reading and if you'd like to be tagged please let me know!

@imaginingcredence, @mysticalreadingnerd , @cayleewinchester

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#Pate writes #FF2 #fantastic beasts fanfic #credence barebone

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theblackpomegranate · 6 years ago

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Breaks, Kinks and Healing

This isn’t going to be the polished blog posts that you’re used to getting from me, full of self deprecation and witty metaphors about my adventures in kink, laid out like a comic book narrative. Instead, it’s a story about healing.

Since I started blogging, almost five years ago, I’ve tried to write something at the beginning of a new year that resonates with the promise and possibility the new year will bring. Because like most people, I hope that the new year will be better than the last. Around this time last year, I wrote a post about being woke and sex positive in 2018, written with the hope that the year would be full of possibilities and growth for everyone, including me. Little did I know that about six weeks after publishing the post, my year would take some turns and changes that I couldn’t possibly imagine. I’ve had a hard time writing, trying to reconcile last year while looking ahead to 2019. That’s because 2018 was a bit extra.

How the injury happened

I didn’t get upset about my ankle until I realized I couldn’t cut grass. Now, the timing of this realization was odd, after all I was in the lobby of a hotel in February and grass cutting season was at least two months away. But in hindsight, I think grass cutting was part of my mental checklist as my brain conversed with my body, telling it something was very wrong. After all, I’ve cut grass every year since I was 13 years old, the same year I started working out faithfully. How could a simple moment change so many things about me so quickly?

But there I was, watching as my ankle stiffened and swollen to the point I could barely bend it or walk. The reason I hobbled down to the lobby was because my calf hurt when I simply laid down and pressed it against the bed-sheets, which I’d later learn was the result of a fracture. Then the cascade of thoughts came. I wonder if I can lift weights? How will I get around? Won’t this get better in a couple of days? ( The answer to all of those questions was no).

I’ve never really been injured or ill in my life. Sure, I’ve had muscle pulls, that were taken care of with a plunge in ice filled baths. Or the time I dislocated my shoulder, and it slipped back into place, as though my body knew I couldn’t tolerate the downtime. Even in the decade where the stress of care-giving slowly eroded my health, my terse assessment of being “fine” was my mantra, my declaration that I was OK, even when I wasn’t. When my time as a caregiver came to a close, I used steel kettle-bells to restore everything to my body I felt I’d lost to time or commitments. After all, being injured or ill is a fundamental change and that’s something else I don’t tolerate.

A new reality

The year 2018 had its own ideas about what I’d have to tolerate. Everything would be different. I dealt with a high ankle sprain and broken leg and months of recovery. I confronted the raw emotion of how the injury occurred. I was humbled by weakness, pain and fatigue that I couldn’t shrug off. Depression crept in at just the right moment, when I couldn’t elevate my mood with a long walk or push ups (you’d be surprised how hard push ups are when you can only stabilize your body with one foot). As I worked on recovery, my uninjured leg hurt when I pushed too hard, because of an increased load. My conditioning dropped. I got tired (and frustrated easily). I went from being able to balance and walk on iron fences to needing to hold a handrail when climbing stairs.

Because I literally slowed down so much, I began to pay attention to a breathing problem that seemed to become worse, or at least more noticeable because of being sedentary. About a month after finishing physical therapy a trip to another doctor confirmed a tumor that had to be removed surgically. I learned that at least a month of recovery would be necessary. I didn’t mind the prospect of being in pain or the risks of the surgery. What did bother me was yet another thing occurring in my life that seemed like a setback. More recovery would be required from my body, and more patience required from my heart and mind.

Shortly after I began physical therapy, I decided not to do suspensions until I was healed and regained a good portion of my strength back. Learning that you can’t stand and balance on one leg means it’s an inherent risk to try and manage a suspension; that was a risk I wasn’t willing to take.

Of course, other parts of my kink life was affected in 2018. My leg was injured in a kink space, due to someone’s thoughtless, careless behavior. I was angry at myself for letting the injury happen. For not keeping my guard up. I regretted the things I couldn’t do for people I love. I resented the opportunities I missed. I dearly missed my workouts and walks. I’d already developed some nagging doubts about kink before my injury and the uncertainty I faced after being hurt seemed to magnify those concerns. BDSM, something that’s central to my life joined the mental checklist of things I couldn’t do. The people, places and things that once felt like home now felt hostile. What felt worse than the realization I couldn’t do something in kink was the bitter thoughts that maybe I shouldn’t be doing things in kink.

A reboot

So, 2018 was a dumpster fire, right? One that I’m eager to put behind me and solely focus on 2019. I’ll be completely honest, 2018 was one of the most difficult years of my life. I wouldn’t want to repeat a lot of the experiences I had last year. But last year was full of profound growth and healing, despite the rough times.

Granted, I wish I had never incurred an injury, especially one that could have been avoided. Surgery is never fun. Physical therapy was demanding. I lost time and connections with people and things I cherish. Depression and feeling like you aren’t doing enough isn’t fun. Despite this, 2018 gave me as many good things as bad.

For me, last year was like a forced reboot. There was no choice but to take care of my health and body, because circumstances demanded that. I had to reset my values and boundaries. I experienced moments of grace and love. My bonds with the important people in my life grew deeper. Healing my spirit renewed my sense of purpose. I learned that my emotional health required as much work as my physical strength. The labor of healing and recovering reminded me how strong I am. I even managed to cut the grass, albeit fewer times over the summer.

During my time in kink, I’ve probably asked several hundred people do they have any injuries or illness that could affect play or demos. Now I have a greater empathy and understanding when someone tells me about their issues, because I have a more informed perspective. I’m profoundly grateful for that. I’m content with the fact that I removed the person who injured me from an event and have seen him disappear from the kink scene, which hopefully means he won’t harm anyone else. I truly realize the importance of safe spaces in a way I couldn’t have before. I have a renewed commitment to safer, risk aware kink spaces. I’m much more likely to call out toxic practices in kink spaces when I see it. My experience could have driven me away from kink. Instead, it helped me to be better.

Antique illustration of human body anatomy: Ankle foot joint

Now, this isn’t fiction and things aren’t perfect. If it were, everything would be fine and last year would be like a bad dream that’s barely remembered. That isn’t the case. At times I continue to struggle, mostly with my own self judgement and self criticism. The person who used to say he’d never been hurt is learning to make peace with someone can now say he’s been hurt and ill. I’ve had the experience of finally acknowledging that it’s OK to admit that I’m not always OK and that I’m not less than because of that fact. Almost a year later, I still limp a bit if its cold and I push too hard. That’s OK too. Healing is process and that demands its own course and time-frame.

In a couple of weeks, I’ll revisit the the space where I was injured. How will I feel? Have I processed and healed in the right ways? My leg is stronger than ever (I’ve checked). But is the heartbreak healed? Have I replaced the trepidation with contentment? Maybe, but I’m not certain. Ask me in a month.

I’m going to revisit themes from this post (Kink, recovery, healing, safety) throughout the year. Sometimes that will mean personal posts like this one, other times it’ll be reflected in the work I do with Ms. Pomegranate. That’s my promise and possibility for 2019. I hope your 2019 is full of what you need, that your own promise and possibility is realized. Be well, family and keep it kinky.

The post Breaks, Kinks and Healing appeared first on The Black Pomegranate.

from The Black Pomegranate http://theblackpomegranate.com/breaks-kinks-and-healing/

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