#just wondering what would happen if say perhaps it was cleaved down the middle.......................

[ratcandy]

wait I just realized one of my professors is a spider neurobiologist I could literally ask him what the effects would be if spider brain damaged

[themerriweathermage]

Mors Vincit Omnia Pt. 5

Basil stands on trial for his crimes and expects to be punished for it, but his lack of a reaction to his punishment inspires Aro to turn elsewhere.

Series Tag: @the-reformed-ringwraith​ @gossip-girl-of-middle-earth​

Forever Tag: @bonjour-rainycity

A/N:  The ivory blade has a name-- Sanguis. It was forged by Marcus and possesses the power to turn vampires back to mortals. It's part of a trio set-- Sanguis, the blood blade, Mortem, the death blade, and Solani, the poison blade.

Warnings: Torture, Major Character Death

Michael wished that weren’t true. He wished they hadn’t been found. He wished that for all of Basil’s evasion techniques, that one of them had worked. But now, they were standing before the great Triumvirate and all Basil could do was look ahead stonily. His crimes were read from a scroll of rolled paper that was there for show more than anything else.

“Is there anything you have to say for yourself?” Aro asked, smirking. Basil was bound, hands tied behind his back, but he did not dignify Aro with seeing how much it affected him.

“Isn’t it considered the highest of offenses to threaten a royal’s mate?” Basil asked.

“You are no Royal. That title is just for show. Just because you are borne of Marcus does not give you the rank of Master within this coven. You are a Captain and a disobedient one at that.”

“I did only what was necessary to protect my mate.” Basil answered. “Your mistake was sending more after me. You wear their deaths on your hands, but really, I guess you should be used to it. You murdered my mother, after all.” The entire throne room went deathly quiet. Aro was livid.

“What did you just say to me?”

“You murdered my mother.”

“Didyme was my blood!” Aro snapped. “My sister. How dare you accuse me...”

“I invoked my deity. I know the truth. It’s one of the reasons I stayed away.” So, that was the reason for the ritual killing, Michael reasoned.

“You impertinent little...” Aro growled, his very gloved hand on Basil’s throat. Michael snarled and rattled his bindings with this action. “Oh. Oh. ” A delightfully wicked smile edged to Aro’s lips. “Your little newborn pet doesn’t like me touching you. Oh, this makes things so much more interesting. I wonder how he’ll react to your punishment.” Aro gestured to Marcus and the cat o’nine tails laying across the arm of his throne. “Marcus, you can do the honors.” Marcus frowned. His head was reeling with the information that had just been revealed, but other than that, he had been spending his time examining the bond between Michael and Basil, shocked to find that every word Basil said was true. He’d only been protecting his mate. Within the Royal Coven, Basil ought to have had some protection.

“I won’t.” Marcus finally replied. “I won’t do what you’re asking of me. He’s my son.”

“And a traitor, Marcus. He killed six guards.” Aro replied.

“He was protecting his mate.”

“His mate killed an upwards of two thousand people over a month’s time, and Basil let it happen. Basil was sent to stop him, and Basil encouraged him. You know the law; you wrote the law.” Aro pushed the whip into his hands. “Now execute the law.”

So Marcus reluctantly stood as Basil was brought to the center of the room. Basil didn’t even look at him, just stared straight on ahead, right through Aro. “No.” Aro paused the first strike before it descended. “Perhaps you’re right.” Aro changing his mind was never a good thing. “Perhaps I should show some leniency to the members of our coven.” He withdrew a white dagger and pressed it to Michael’s throat. Blood beaded at the tip, sluicing down the front of Michael’s throat. “This one will be trouble if we don’t deal with him first.”

“No!” Basil all but yelled it, lunging for Aro but he was brought down with a sickening crack. His head cracked against the stone flooring with enough force to daze him and Marcus was shaken. Basil was a hybrid; blood began to pool beneath him, and his vision was swimming by the time he could lift his head to see Marcus draw back the whip. Marcus was now faced with a brutal choice; kill his son’s mate or kill his son. He begged for forgiveness and the strike landed true, cleaving flesh from bone from Michael’s back.

The scream that echoed was reminiscent of an animal being tortured. It was born of Michael, but it was also born of Basil, who couldn't even stand to protect him. The second strike came, and then the third, and then the fourth, but the fifth didn't land, because Basil had thrown himself into the path of the whip and let it ruin his flesh. He landed on his hands and knees, half blinded from the blood streaming down his face. He does not have the ability to free Michael from his bonds, but he can hold him, and he cradles his amber-haired mate, his dying mate in his arms.

“Michael. Michael!” Basil pleaded with him to open his eyes and for a moment, they fluttered open. “Don’t you dare give up!” There is far too much blood on his hands, on his gloves, and his fingers only smear it across Michael’s jaw.

“I’m not... I’m surrendering.” Michael whispered. He leaned up, lips claiming Basil’s own, and for a moment, everything was right. But Basil was the god of death, and Michael has walked into it willingly. His head lolled back in Basil’s arms and Basil was broken, gasping out his name in abstract horror.

“Michael? Michael. Michael!” He was screaming by then, shaking his mate and pleading that he would wake, but knowing in his heart that would never again be the case.

“I’d say my work here is done.” Aro purred softly. Never again would Basil step out of line with the Volturi’s directive. He left the throne room, as did most of the others.

[scribblesofanaricat]

Kaleidoscope Icarus

(big thank you to Toni for helping me with parts of this)

Alone in bed. Covers twitch. Clock hands rattle around their beaten path and I count it backwards. A meander towards oblivion.

I see my reflection blink. It must like watching me thrash in blue sleep.

Narrow staircase, no socks, tea bag fossils pinned to the wall, I count them up, all six, any colour I like as long as that colour is yellowish grey.

I inhale indifferent coffee broth with a side order of whichever death cult the screen hunched in the corner is serving up today. Bidding its junkies a good afternoon and then meting out a lethal dose of contradictions. It beats down on me as a sun would: simple, forcible, inevitable, ordained.

I’m not Icarus.

Even so, quick fears still tread on my heels after I kill the show and instead pay a call to the frosted-glass moon low in that blank page of a sky. Shoes dangling over a railway bridge, one a lovely Twitter-blue, lemon laces trailing like a severed leash, the other was once violet. Jaundiced glances from pedestrians and passengers cursing the back of my neck.

They plant themselves beside me because where else would they go? We don’t say much, never do, “our glass roots were love when lilac liquids flowed invisible” and “my powdered soul occurs from sun sight with figure flames and smoke” and “if we lose time by staring freely and counting sound, you’re told about it accidentally”, that sort of thing. And we do submerge our long short hours in staring freely and we do count sound since we’re not the type to move mountains, although young by our own reckoning. We know it - or we think we know.

Amongst foggy vows to meet again tomorrow, they clear off and I’m left with the grains of my own soul, the static in my skull, wearing it like a flannel shirt. House prices. Affairs. Break-ins, breakouts. Blares of ‘protect our free speech, protect our children!’ born from whatever illusory agenda they’re being warned against by the king agenda-pushers this time...another monologue from another plastic jack-in-office here to fuck us around...

Sometimes I could carve it all into my skin with a dirty needle and not flinch.

We end up huddled like penguins in the fug heaving around my room. We’d have thought the dawn of the end times would look different, something that’d be splattered over our calendars and marked in history. Instead we’re met with a whitewashed wall from the screens and newshounds even as we watch it happen in 3D. Nothing to do now but wait.

‘I don’t give a damn.’ They’re flung down on their stomach, right arm stowed under an Everest of pillows and left arm glancing off the carpet. ‘I don’t care, I couldn’t...we’re gonna flatline someday soon and we’ll nosedive into Hell and I’d still take that over this shit…I’ve got to see that ocean again, though...just one last time…’

‘Mhm.’ I’m stiff. Stiff yet floaty. The screen crouches there, rattling off a story from America about some toupeed sore loser being forcibly dragged out of the White House with the boot of millions tattooed on his arse. Let them have their pipe dream, let them have their ocean, their fickle friend with its brackish spray, rolling pulse, delusive serenity, useless but to go to your watery grave in… if I scorn it hard enough, I can almost smell it.

I outstretch my rusty arms, gathering the ceiling in a remote embrace, and begin to narrate. ‘After the downfall from the empty pages of a multitude, myths started to creep back through the gaps in the world we saw. They’d been driven feet-first out of society by the threat of extinction long ago and so they’d had to hide themselves away over the rooms of sighs they found.’ The haze seethes and swirls, fashioning hieroglyphs from my breath.

They shift beside me, breathe it in. Counting sound. I survey it all as they draw it down into their lungs and bloodstream - giants and Lilliputians, fae and demons, sister ships sleeping in spoken hiding places, uman babies feeding off a wolf who bares her teeth at us. And Icarus. Taking to the air, lured by the glare that swallowed all else and eagerly drinking it down, until he fell so far and so fast that nobody could save him.

Not like us. We won’t be led astray. We are not the imperfect sight, crimped, bought with ballads.

‘But their memories were long and their bloodlust ran deep as trembling nails. And whatever scraps of human society were left had their turn to hide, or to pose as something different - pretend to be one thing when they were really another, in case they were in line for the wrath of their former fantasies.’

I recline on my mountaintop carpet in the soupy silence after my short tale gives out, waiting. Waiting perhaps for a flashbulb of understanding or for guesses at regions of dry ideas. The clock shudders into its next aspect. Bonded pattern, distorted mosaic.

‘C’n we go to th’ocean?’ is what they exhale at length. I lie there. Head sagging into my chest. Dead rain of a crowd. And then I patter on about spume and pulse and deceit, and about rock shadows standing full at Phoenician attestations, and by God, it’s like reading a bedtime story (or maybe an aloof comedy) to a toddler and almost as easy.

So we sprout in the bleary armchair of the ocean. Coast and universe falling away like a house of cards beneath our shoeless steps. They ask pinch-eyed if I brought a laptop along with me (of course I didn’t; the world watches us out of the corner of its panoramic eye enough as it is) and seem satisfied with my answer. I droop backwards so the rocks can catch me, mendacious as the water - that slumbering giant - but in the opposite direction, downside up. I have to wonder if the sky could be the same way, or if it’s merely everything and nothing. The aridity of all.

A boat worms along the horizon, eats it up inch by inch. That old static begins to pulsate against the core of my head, guessing at who or what could be in there. The newest pet of the media, pockets padded with the benefits from yesterday’s public-spirited stunt, familiarising themself with the bits of fruit floating in the middle of an etched glass and awaiting the casting call for yet another lone hero who’s the only force insulating their precious homeland from the evils of truth and the nefarious threat of equality.

Maybe a consortium of sallow flesh and bloated eyes, red as tongues of flame yet seeing only in black and white, skin honeycombed with pinprick holes. They give and take manufactured fairy tales that accelerate their enslavement, fire their last magic bullet together in a binding act of mercy.

Or a smoke-bearded fisherman and his helpmate with salt water in their veins, in their stirring times; they haul up their meshwork and inspect its captives. Look at these beauties, they marvel every time, a record dashing against its broken needle like a baby bird against a window. Or something - I don’t fucking know what fishermen talk about. Are there fishermen anymore? I guess there must be.

As I study the vessel, purling with the wind, it metamorphoses fitfully into a whale. Its heaving back is encrusted with arthropods. Plunging its way into nowhere. Watch through unchartered eyes as its tail heaves up into the air, blotting out the sun, before it too plunges beneath the depths, beneath the waves, into the dark, dark blue-grey murmurs and untapped power of the abyss. I wonder what sort of watery graves still dwell there, trapped, locked in and locked out. The corpse of a ship. The corpse of a whale.

The sun dissolves into the horizon, spilling its aureate blood over the sea-shaped cemetery. I drink it in; it comes out in puffs of icy white. The smouldering glare lances across my eyes, burning, gnawing. I close them. I breathe cold.

My wax wings splinter. But will not melt.

Their pixelated face reappears above my own, sun’s gore cleaving to their hair with a shimmer, and jab me with a bone. And we trudge back over clumps of sand, the world brightening and darkening, brightening and darkening. The light parts liquefy like butter in a pan, overflowing, flowing, flowing until there’s no more left to flow. Until it evaporates and its burnished blush is briskly replaced by glitter and dazzle and tiny flickers of rainbow bouncing off little jewels.

I breathe warmth. The radio goes on at me, goes on, goes on, a webspinner sniping its threads.

Time hangs suspended for the lion’s share of the night. Screens paralysed in an eternal moment. The masked puppets on one side, me on the other. They dance, bow, spin on wire strings. They get tangled. They do not move any longer. Asides from the occasional twitch and twist, as weak as that of a dying deer caught in the scheming beauty of the headlights. They do not get free. Eventually they too are still.

I move onwards.

We separate then, me and them. Their fingers dance in the air as the light of the sky slips through the cracks of the earth. ‘We’re completely and irreversibly fucked.’ It’s somewhere between question and statement. I watch them droop away, hands tucked in pockets of woven clouds and leather, until the night embraces them and their shadow melts much like the light had. Tipped-over oil, trickling away.

I watch. I wait. I breathe.

I move onwards.

The wet earth slumps when I step upon it, its cold breathing into the soles of my worn shoes. I look towards the sky, up and up and up, so far that I cannot see. The sun has sunk, withered away. Gone. Gone and perhaps never to return. You never know. Never know.

The moon is rising now, the stars winking like oh so much spilled glitter. I see the sun's reflection here, its beaming glow bouncing off the pale white surface of the small planet as though it were an alien mirror. This is how you know it's there, even when it’s faded away. Gone but never quite so.

But its blazing heat is no longer here to thwart me, even if its glimmer is still present. I spread my wax wings. I breathe, I live, I rise, I die. That wet earth hums its lullaby of little critters, chirping crickets and twittering bats and the frozen old breath of ghosts long dead. Disdainful wind freezes my nose and lips and ears. I soar…

I am not Icarus.

The dark sky cradles me like black ocean water. The shimmers of light are fish, sparkling beneath the waves, the moon their only beacon. My only beacon. I breathe warmth in the cold night air. Prickles of goosebumps along the skin of my arms and legs. I am the warmth, but the cold consumes me slowly.

I float lazily, there and not there, alive and dead, warm and cold. An angel on wax wings, a ghost long dead and gone, a corpse at the bottom of the ocean. Fuck. I breathe a disclaimer of disaster, a rage against the remorseless. I breathe warmth, then cold, then nothing. Just to double check.

The golden-white glimmers of school fish trail past, streaks of astigmatic light. The moon smiles down at me, a comforting glow. A lantern hung by gods of old on invisible chains. The mirror of the sun. The dancing partner of the earth. The lighthouse of the sea.

My beacon in the sky.

It does not melt my wings. I am not Icarus.

I soar. On and on, the sparkling sky, the gentle sea. The land leaves me far behind, the twinkle of city lights fading into nothing but open waters, open skies. Nothing but starlights. Nothing but moonlight.

There is nothing waiting for me. Fuck. They have melted into the shadows, slipped like dry sand between fingers, like dry sand in an hourglass, like water in a hole-littered bucket. It is only me and the star speckled sky. Me and the moon.

I'm not sure how long I stay, floating between schools of sparkling starfish. Slowly, the moon rises…falls…and the sun creeps up behind me like a monster in a cave, turning the sky from black to blue…green…then spilling yellow, melted butter, sunstreaked blood across the horizon, its burning light warming my frozen cheeks…soothing my goosebumps…the black sea once more becomes its sparkling blue-ish green. Fuck. The stars fade like fleeing fish and vanishing ghosts. I breathe cold into the warmth.

My wax wings drip in the light. The sunlight burns my eyes, searing my retina, boiling my cornea. I squeeze them shut. I wobble and sway, a dance in the sunrise. I dance, bow, spin on wire strings and liquid wings. I become tangled. I tumble down a narrow staircase, no socks, teabag fossils pinned to the wall.

Wind sighs in my ears. I see my reflection blink in the waves far below. It must like watching me thrash in yellow dreams. The world beats down on me as the sun is now; simple, forcible, inevitable, ordained. The world crumbles around me, earth cracking, water roaring, sky tearing and tearing like shreds of paper in the hands of scissor-happy children. I am a puppet on broken strings and I am falling with nothing but the frigid embrace of the ocean to catch me, where the whale-ship corpse sleeps. Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck. I breathe and it is cold. The sun blazes like a beacon. It is life. It is the death cult and that fear tingles down my spine.

A shoe of lovely Twitter-blue falls free, lemon laces flapping wildly. I outstretch my rusty arms, as though to catch it like a ball during playtime in the schoolyard, swamped in the too-big uniform of bright purple, a blazer that fell well past my knees. But I cannot catch myself.

I’m falling.

Falling, falling, falling like Icarus.

[the-cookie-of-doom]

A Strange Convergence

Mitch walked past the alley as he had all the others, at first believing it to be empty. He would have continued on in that belief if he had no also struck a match at that very moment, to light a fresh cigarette between his lips. There, deep in the alley, he noticed a slice of pale flesh. The match burned itself down to his fingertips as he stared. Mitch dropped it to the damp ground with a hiss of pain, but his eyes never left that strange, still form. It took him longer than it should to recognize the waifish figure, iridescent moonlight catching on his slender limbs.

Deep shadows cast the alley in darkness. Mitch could hardly make out anything around the boy, that single point of light. There was nothing to see, and yet Mitch found himself stopping to watch. He leaned against the nearest wall so that he would not make too obvious a spectator, backlit by the streetlamps behind. Silver smoke filtered past his lips when he exhaled.

As Mitch watched, he noticed the oddest thing. Stiles’ shadow began to move behind him, a long, twisted thing, writhing as if in unspeakable agony. Yet the boy stood still, his face upturned in supplication. Mitch could not see his eyes, but somehow, he knew that if he could, they would be distant. Like the glass-eyed taxidermy in his uncle’s estate.

Shadows pulled away from the wall, moving with the same fluidity as the move Mitch exhaled. His eyes struggled to focus on the rippling darkness. That liquid absence of light that dew everything in; a starving, ceaseless hunger, consuming all it touched.

Mitch stood frozen with his mountain horror, watching as the shadows reached out to Stiles. It was an impossible sight, there was nothing there, nothing to cast such a sinister image, and yet it was happening right before his eyes. And undeniable, grotesque vision. Stiles’ mouth fell open in a soundless scream and Mitch was helpless to watch as they spooling darkness poured itself into him.

The cigarette burned to nothing between his fingers, the only measure of human time that existed in that alley, suddenly filled with the endless, eternal expanse of void.

Then, just as soon as the shadows had warped, they twisted themselves back into order. A reversal of the entropy surrounding Stiles, filling him, devouring him. Like a marionette with its strings cut the boy collapsed. His limbs fell in a loose tangle, and the spell was broken. Mitch rushed to him.

Already Mitch decided it was some kind of illusion, a trick played by his exhausted mind. Grief over his uncle’s death must have reached deeper than he realized, for his eyes to twist things into such horror. Still, he checked for a pulse, and was relieved to find it sluggishly breathing beneath Stiles’ ivory skin.

***

November 26, 1923

My nightly walks have continued to trouble me. I feel as though I am searching for something, although I do not know what that may be. I find myself walking a strangely familiar path each night, but I am certain I have never walked it before. I haven’t seen these streets since I was a boy; they are as foreign to me as the would be the crowded streets of London.

I feel I am not as along during this excursion as the oft-empty streets would have me believe. There is a… malevolence to the shadows. My own silhouette is alien to me. It responds to my every movement as it should, and yet it is not me. Perhaps it is that my shadow lags behind a second too slow; almost like it must consciously decide to copy me.

Sentient shadows. Not a subject I care to entertain. There is enough occupying my mind as it is. I’ll sound like Hurley before long, and I have no desire to follow his path.

It all comes back to pathways. Those trails we follow through life, forged for us by braver souls. Few seeks to blaze their own way. Fewer still find others to follow in their wake.

For some reason, my path seems to converge with Stiles’ time and again. I find myself inexplicably drawn to him. He has made several appearances of late, although I rarely confront him. Half a dozen times I’ve wanted to shake him and demand an answer: id he him following me, haunting my nights like a specter? Or do I follow him, ignorant of where he leads? Either way, I know not where we are going, only that we seem to be heading there together.

I am… troubled by him.

***

“Such a strange thing.” Mitch traced his fingers over the jagged clay figure, messily sculpted and poorly finished. It was certainly done by a novice; the clay was rough and scratched, not worn smooth by practiced hands. More than that, the geometry was senseless and odd; it made his head hurt to look for too long.

“Do you like it?”

“Christ!” Mitch almost dropped the heavy figure—thought it might be better if he had, to destroy the thing before it could cause him anymore sleepless nights—as he whirled around. Standing just outside the doorway was Stiles, with his big round eyes and his lips downturned into their perpetual moue of discontentment. Mitch set the figure back on its pedestal. As soon as it clicked into place Stiles stepped forward, and Mitch was struck by the sudden impulse to retreat, keep the heavy oak desk between them. He didn’t.

“I made it.” Stiles brushed his finger down one of the arching curves. “Do you know what it is?”

“No.”

“Me neither. It came to me in a dream.” Stiles shuddered and wrapped his arms around himselves, spindly fingers covering the jut of his elbows. “Do you ever have dreams?”

“Sometimes.” Mitch didn’t tell Stiles how more and more, he featured in them. He wondered if Stiles somehow knew anyway.

“Are they good dreams?”

His mind was forced to turn to Stiles; a strange, twisting creature, writhing in his sheets. From fear or pleasure or both, Mitch could never tell. The shadows were too severe over his features to ever fully make out the expression on his face.

“Sometimes,” Mitch answered again, because some of those dreams left him to wake panting and sticky and unable to feel the shame curdling in his belly when desire still ran so hot through his veins. More than one page in his journal was taken with frantic sketches done in the middle of the night, a hollow attempt to commit to paper what Stiles looked like in his dreams. The delicate curve of his breastbone, the rapturous arch of his spine. The open, welcome line of his legs and the soft, plush shape of his lips, always bitten red. Mitch didn’t know what possessed him to immortalize his indiscretions; perhaps if he could not see Stiles in the flesh, he could at least have this crude rendering.

Stiles pulled Mitch out of his mind just as swiftly as he had dredged up those awful imaginings he kept locked away, only to be examined in the dead of night. Mitch realized he was staring too long at Stiles’ lips when he saw them curve into a small, secretive smile. A rare thing.

“My dreams are nightmares,” Stiles said, possible—probably—for the second or third time. “They’re filled with monstrous creatures. They haunt me.” As he spoke Stiles approached, gliding over the floor, until they were almost chest to chest. Only the pedestal crowned with the crude statuette stood between them, little enough distance that Mitch could feel Stiles’ breath ghost against his jaw, second after it left his lungs. Strangely cold. Maybe he should have put the desk between them after all. “Your uncle was very interested in my dreams. He has me tell him about each one, recording them into his little wax cylinders, taking his notes. My draws as well, and my sculptures. Are you interested in them, too, doctor?”

“Yes,” Mitch breathed. There was nothing else for him to say. Anything else would stop Stiles from speaking to him, break this strangely intimate moment between them.

“Maybe I’ll tell you of them, then. Mr. Hurley always wanted to hear about them straight away. While they were fresh in my mind, he said. He even let me stay here for a time, while he conducted his research, holding vigil outside my bedroom at night.” Stiles leaned in a little closer and looked up through his long eyelashes, moistened his lips with his tongue. “Truth be told, I think he would watch me as I slept. Only to note down anything I said, of course. Things I wouldn’t remember come morning. I think that’s would he would have said if I ever caught him.”

“If you thought he was watching you, why did you let him?”

“I liked it,” Stiles said simply. Mischief sparked in his golden eyes, at offs with his deceptive, innocent demeanor. “Knowing he was watching over me made me feel safe. I haven’t been able to sleep since he died; I still feel like something is watching me. Do you think you could help me, doctor?”

Mitch stumbled over nothing. Mistakenly, he tried to catch himself on the thin pedestal and instead overbalanced it. Stiles sculpture crashed onto the ground and broke; too blunt and heavy to shatter, although the delicate, wispy pieces on the edges splintered away. Thich crevasses cleaved apart the heavy core.

“Shit, I’m sorry.” Mitch leant down to pick up the pieces, but the damage was done.

“it’s alright.” Stiles tilted his head consideringly. “Looks better this way. More right.” Stiles left without another word, leaving Mitch to stare after him in bewilderment.

“What the hell was that?” Mitch asked the now-empty room. He picked up the largest pieces of the statuette and tried to fit them together again, to see if they could be salvaged. Mitch couldn’t figure out how to align the pieces. Somehow, the hardened clay was distinctly twisted into a new shape, no longer fitting against itself.

Mitch resolved to throw it away and think of it no more.

[caelenath]

Sweet Child of Thine - chapter 2

Chapter 2 of my pre-canon PRSPD story is up! Cross-posted AO3, FFnet, and caelenath.com.

Length: 1605 words Warnings: concerns child abduction Summary: Jay and Madelaine struggle through their first night with Sky still missing.  

2. zero night

Two PD officers were at the house when Jay arrived. One prowled around the perimeter while the other sat inside with Madelaine. As soon as Jay walked in, Madelaine jumped up and rushed straight into his arms.

"Gene has the entire force on alert," she said, cleaving to him as tightly as he held her. "And he's stopping by later unless we give him a good enough reason not to."

Jay wasn’t inclined to give him one. New Tech City's police chief was a good friend of the family and Jay wanted the chance to thank him personally for throwing the full weight of the department into the search. "All of SPD's on alert too."

"Is there someone trying to get back at you? Someone who might be involved in this?"

"No," he reassured her quickly. "At least, no one we know of. I promise I don't have any mortal enemies I'm hiding." He gave his wife another squeeze, then asked, "Can you show me what happened?"

Madelaine spared a look for the officer still sitting at the table, who said it was fine and busied himself with his notes, before taking Jay's hand firmly in hers and leading him up the stairs to Sky's room. She stopped in the doorway, however, as if she were afraid to go in.

"We got home from his swim class around three and I put him down pretty much right away because he was tired. Of course he fought it for a while before finally knocking out. Around five-thirty, I pulled out a snack for him, then started making dinner, figuring he would be up any minute and hungry. When I didn't hear a peep, I came up to check on him and he wasn’t here.  I looked in all the rooms, then in all the closets, thinking maybe he was hiding even though he's never done that before. I started getting scared when I realized I didn't hear any sound at all, no muffled scrapes or giggles, not even him breathing. That's when I really started turning everything over. I even looked in the laundry hampers and the washing machine. Both the front and back doors were locked, but even if he'd gotten outside, he wouldn't just run off."

Madelaine pressed a fist to her mouth as if trying to stop the rush of words, and Jay rubbed her shoulder soothingly. He looked around the room, trying to spot anything that seemed out of place even as he wondered at the same time whether he'd be able to tell if something was. He generally took for granted that anything in a three-year-old's room wouldn't be in the same place twice.

Against the far wall, in direct view of the door, was Sky's toddler bed with the solar system-print bedclothes he loved. Extra pillows and blankets were piled on the floor beside it because despite the railing guarding two-thirds of its length, Sky still somehow managed to roll out of bed sometimes when he slept.

"Did you move Sky's blankets?" Jay asked.

"No." Madelaine quickly glanced at the bed, then back at him worriedly. "Did I miss something?"

He wasn't sure. Keeping hold of his wife's hand like she'd done earlier, he went for a closer look. The space-themed blanket, covered with the same smiling planets and suns as the bedsheets, was spread over the lower half of the mattress as if there were still a child there to keep warm. Normally it got kicked into the corner or onto the floor not long after Sky fell asleep.

It really did seem like his son had simply vanished into thin air, and the thought sent an icy chill down Jay's spine.

* * *

The boy was clearly capable of communicating, but he had an utterly unique language filled with muddled or nonsensical words that Mirloc could not comprehend. The child nearly soiled himself before he figured out "potty" was a word for eliminating waste. During that harrowing endeavor to the washroom, Mirloc made an interesting discovery—a thin belt around the boy's middle that he had initially dismissed as part of his clothing. On closer inspection, he realized it was a shielding device, a sophisticated one that was light and sturdy but seemingly inactive. The fastening mechanism, in contrast, was a simple one that even an idiot—or a child—could unlock. What good was such a thing if it could be so easily removed?

"Boy." Mirloc gestured at the belt. "Why do you have this?"

The child looked confused. "I have to. When I sleeping."

"Why?"

"So I safe."

"Safe from what?"

"Falling things."

Mirloc wondered if this was another one of the child's lingual eccentricities. "What sorts of things?" The boy shrugged as if such details were unimportant. "If you do not tell me, you cannot go home."

Blue eyes widened and that little bow mouth quivered as the boy spoke. "Things in my room." He could not pronounce the letter 'r' properly.

The look on his face was as much fear as it was a plea, and Mirloc reconsidered his earlier thought. Perhaps this was not a lingual eccentricity, but a deficiency. The child was afraid because he did not know how to answer.

"Why do they fall?" Mirloc asked more patiently.

The boy held up an arm and Mirloc was startled when a rippling blue energy field sprang to life from his fist to his elbow. Immediately the device around the boy's waist activated and the field dispersed as quickly as it had appeared.

The shielding device was not for keeping things out, the mercenary realized. It was meant to keep something in.

When he first agreed to this job, he had only a name and an assurance from his old acquaintance that it would be short work, a quick nab and dash that should be no trouble for a creature with his peculiar talent. Then he discovered the name belonged to a very small boy whose father was a Ranger, and Mirloc figured the motive must have had something to do with that. It was dishonorable work at best, cowardice at worst, to exact one's grievances using a baby instead of facing the aggrieving party directly.

Now, however, he wasn't so sure the boy's father had anything to do with it at all. 

* * *

Jay awoke in the middle of the night alone. He and Madelaine had eventually drifted off separately on the couch after puttering around downstairs uselessly, too afraid to go to bed because then morning would come too soon. They couldn't bring themselves to concede the end of the day with their son still missing, but exhaustion set in and did it for them anyway.

What Jay had really wanted to do was hit the streets, follow every possible lead no matter how tenuous, and if those were lacking, he would physically comb the city, block by block, inch by inch, as many times as it took to bring Sky home. Neither plan was even remotely practical, but at least he would be doing something. The longer he sat here idle, the more suffocating the walls of his own house felt.

But he'd stayed because leaving Madelaine alone right now would have been horribly selfish. Plus, the other Rangers had already set up a 24-hour rotation in which two of them would be actively working on the search at any given time. Nate and Carmen had the current shift, and the morning one had been reserved for Jay because Nate knew that was the only thing he'd be doing come daybreak anyway.

Nate hadn't mentioned Cruger at all, which Jay took to mean the commander hadn't exactly approved of this diversion of the Rangers, but even if he'd explicitly forbade it, Jay knew his team would not have done anything less. For the ten thousandth time, he felt more grateful than he could ever say for whatever forces had brought his team together.

Jay staggered wearily off the couch and went in search of his wife. He found her in Sky's room, asleep beside the little bed, her head pillowed on the mattress and Sky's blanket gathered to her face. Despite how uncomfortable she looked, he hesitated to disturb her. This might be the only respite she'd had in hours, and the only peace she would know until their son was found.

He crept quietly across the room, thinking he might just lay down on the floor beside her, but when he knelt, he discovered she wasn't as asleep as he'd supposed. Her eyes opened and looked at him, red-rimmed and tired.

"He's never been away from us at night before," she murmured, as much to the blanket as to him. "Not once since he was born. Every time I looked, he was right here where he belonged. He was supposed to be safe here." She gripped the blanket harder. "What child isn't safe in their own bed?"

Jay reached for her hand and wrapped his fingers around hers to ease their wringing.

"I'm going out there," he said, which he honestly hadn't planned, but now seemed inevitable. Maybe he didn't know where Sky was, but their house was the one place his son definitely was not, and so he didn't belong there either. Wherever he went in the night, he would be closer to Sky no matter what.

Madelaine nodded and sat up. She pulled him closer, slid her fingers into his hair, and kissed him hard. She always thought Sky looked just like him even though their son had yet to grow out of his baby blondness.

"I know," she whispered.

[ladymaplecourt]

Sinai, Souls, and Celestial Time Warps

I wrote this in the middle of the night so it probably doesn't make much sense but I saw that post by @jewish-kulindadromeus about Jewish Good Omens headcannons and I just had to write this. So, without further ado, ficlet:

The sages agreed that when a person converts to Judaism, their soul... changes. Whether this was part of the Almighty's ineffable plan or was simply spoken into existence by the sages themselves is irrelevant– one thing Aziraphale had learned was that if enough people believed it, even the Almighty Herself couldn't stop it from being just a tiny bit true– but the change was real, and just as ineffable as the plans She had in store for them.

Another thing the sages agreed upon was the fact that all Jewish souls were present for the reveal of the Torah at Mount Sinai. It is interesting to note though that for converts, only the post-conversion, Jewish souls were present at the mountain. Again, this applied to angels and demons as well as humans (why celestial beings would need to convert is a completely different story, one involving the Tower of Babel, a handful of picket signs, and a nosy demon who would not stop asking questions).

But the Jewish souls that were already present in the time of Sinai came exactly as they were. There was no need for their souls to cleave, no time-travelling Jewish neshama gazing up at the mountain while their goyishe soul lounged comfortably across the world. This didn't make much of a difference to the human souls present– human souls are always moving in and out of this world– but for the others, it lead to some... interesting time paradoxes that certainly contributed to the Almighty's joyous mood that day.

Say, for example, a Jewish demon existed in the time of Sinai. He would stroll over to the mountain without giving it much thought, except perhaps to wonder why the demons even needed to go to an assembly organized by the "other side".

But say an angel converted to Judaism centuries after Sinai. The soul in attendance would be the one that only existed after the conversion, leaving the poor angel with two souls in two different bodies, walking the earth simultaneously.

Aziraphale, after 6000 years of observation and a rigorous conversion of his own, knew quite a bit about Judaism. Yet somehow, the concept of the souls and Sinai had escaped his attention. Thus, when he suddenly found himself transported from the lovely Shavuot dinner at Crowley's to the middle of the desert, he had no idea that the Crowley standing next to him was not the one who had just served him cheesecake.

"What the- oh, of course! It's Sinai! Did you do this?" He exclaimed.

"I'm not even sure I'm supposed to be here," Crowley whispered. "I sure as heaven didnt 'do' this."

"No need to snap at me, dear," Aziraphale chided. "This is my first time with all of this, as you well know."

"Dear? Wh- wait, did you convert?" It wasn't unheard of for angels and demons to convert to different religions, especially ones like Aziraphale who had not been assigned any one religion to start with. But Aziraphale wasn't the type to switch up the status quo– was he?

Aziraphale blinked. "Did I... Crowley, you taught me everything there was to know! You..." He lowered his voice, his face a bright shade of pink. "You came with me to the Mikvah. And then afterwards we... Do you really not remember?"

The surprise must have been obvious on Crowley's face, because Aziraphale placed a gentle hand on his arm, looking up at him with concern and frankly some embarassment. Crowley's head was spinning. He had always admired Aziraphale, of course. He found the angel amusing and genuine in a way most celestial beings were not. But they hardly ever spoke: Aziraphale, ever-dutiful, kept his distance from the wily demon. But now he was acting like they were close friends, maybe even...

After a moment, Crowley was able to stutter a reply. "You... You came from the point in time after you converted. I... didn't convert, so-"

"Ah," Aziraphale said slowly, removing his hand from Crowley's arm. "Sorry about that, love."

"It's alright." Love.

"I must have thoroughly confused you."

"I think I... inferred," Crowley said, dumbfounded. "From context."

Again, Aziraphale placed his hand on Crowley's arm, then slid it down until their fingers were laced together. Lightning cracked overhead, and Aziraphale gently squeezed.

"Let's just listen, then, for now," the angel suggested. "I really am excited to hear this."

And so they stood there, side by side, with the other souls who were so captivated that they didn't even give the pair a second glance.

After the second commandment, when things had quieted down a bit, Aziraphale turned back to Crowley.

"Does this happen every year? Coming back to the mountain?"

"I don't know. This is my first time as well," Crowley said, hating the way it sounded like something else, something dangerously close to revealing just how vulnerable he was.

"I'm going to offer you oysters in the future," Aziraphale said. "I'm sorry about that."

Crowley laughed, but there was an edge to it. Aziraphale would be in his future, yes, but it seemed they had a long way to go until... this.

"You said you wanted to hear this," Crowley reminded him.

"Oh yes! Thank you, dear," Aziraphale said.

"No problem, angel," Crowley said.

They stood together, side by side, just enjoying the moment. And then it was over, and the cheesecake was finished.

[vincent-frankenstein]

Shatter

Chapter Eighteen: Kick It Up A Notch

Summary: Logic is a storm. He’s a furious fire, raging deep inside; thunder strong enough to tear the mindscape to pieces, lightning bright enough to take control. And the storm grows with each time he’s ignored or disregarded, each time his so-called “family” pushes him aside. This is a golden opportunity — how could Rage not take it?

When lightning strikes, Deceit is left to pick up the shattered pieces left behind. The light sides are the only ones who can stop Logic and take Rage off his throne, the only ones who can save Thomas. Deceit just has to fix the damage Logic wrought. He just has to bring back the light.

(And maybe, maybe fall in love with them in the process.)

Warnings: violence, manipulation, blood, corruption, sympathetic deceit, villain logan, swearing, dark side ocs, basically just logan and rage being ASSHOLES and hurting everyone including thomas

Pairings: eventual DAMP (starting with Roceit, then Moceit, and finally Anxceit)

{ Read on AO3 | Prologue | Chapter One | Chapter Two | Chapter Three | Chapter Four | Chapter Five | Interlude | Chapter Six | Chapter Seven | Chapter Eight | Chapter Nine | Chapter Ten | Chapter Eleven | Chapter Twelve | Chapter Thirteen | Chapter Fourteen | Chapter Fifteen | Chapter Sixteen | Chapter Seventeen }

@dante1138 @unlikelynightmareconnoisseur @dealings-ofthe-raven @nerdypandastuff @sammy-the-eye @spirits-in-my-thoughts  @c0re0psis @just-a-baby-bee-witchblr @theultimatemomfriend @brownie-aunt @jemthebookworm (lmk if u wanna be added to/removed from the taglist!)

Deceit was warm.

That was all he knew, trapped in that wonderfully diaphanous place, somewhere beyond sleep but not quite awake. Warmth surrounded him on all sides, and he leaned into it with a comforted hiss, darkness and colors swirling before his tired eyes. The warmth shifted to better encompass him, arms curling around his back, a chest rising and falling against his face, and he pushed into it as closely as he could, relishing in the deep comfort it brought.

Wait.

Wait.

Deceit’s eyes snapped open and immediately met the sight of Roman’s muted gray-red sash, pressed up against his face. His gaze travelled up, to Roman’s head, which had been curled around his own, and then down to his own arms, wrapped tightly around Roman’s waist. He shoved away with a frantic, terrified hiss — his foot got tangled in the blankets — and he flipped over the edge of the bed, landing in a panicked heap on the floor. Roman rolled over in his sleep, murmuring something about mashed potatoes.

Deceit’s heart pounded a frantic staccato beat in his throat. His breath hitched just beneath it. The warmth still buzzed through every inch of his body — through every inch of bare skin that had brushed against Roman, and holy hell, it hurt. Fire spread across his skin, burning agony, and he choked on the smoke.

No. He had to get a hold on himself. This meant nothing. He was a coldblooded creature, of course he’d gravitated towards the closest source of warmth. And thankfully, that source of warmth hadn’t seemed to have noticed at all. Roman snored away, completely oblivious to Deceit and his panic.

Deceit sucked in a deep breath, trembling from head to toe, and yanked his lopsided cloak back into place. Already, the warmth was fading from his skin, and the air around him felt suffocatingly cold in comparison. A part of him wished, longed, to climb back into bed and curl back into the warmth, curl back into Roman —

He was out the door before his mind could even finish the thought, his feet carrying him down the empty path to who-knows-where. Revulsion built in his chest and climbed up his throat, stinging in the corners of his eyes. He felt…

Disgusting horrible wrong wrong wrong —

Fine. He felt fine. Roman hadn’t even been awake to notice his little mistake. And if he did somehow remember, Deceit would just praise his overactive imagination and pretend it had never happened.

He sighed sharply, slowing to a stop in the middle of the road. This was exhausting. He thought he knew difficult — he’d been working to reign the others in for 30 years, and that was no easy task — but this was beyond anything he’d ever experienced. He ached from head to toe.

No, no. He didn’t ache. He yearned.

And he hated it more than words could say. All this time spent loathing society and its boogeymen and he still managed to fall into the clutches of the worst of them all: romance. Love. What a wonderful chemical con-job.

He’d watched greater men than him fall to it, and lesser men die for it. Where would he stand, when the boogeyman came to take him for its own? Would he even survive?

He shook his head. He was falling back into that pit of what-ifs, of hypotheticals that he would never allow to come true. And if they wouldn’t come true, there was no use dwelling on them.

He needed a distraction.

The sun had just barely begun to rise over the horizon, spilling light across the kingdom. Roman wouldn’t be awake for a few more hours, at the very least. That left Deceit with plenty of time to kill — time to use to distract himself before these thoughts got out of hand. He spun on the spot, scanning the copy-paste buildings for something, anything to do.

On the edge of town, there were a few unique buildings, just different enough to stand apart from the rest. Deceit hummed thoughtfully, striding towards one to peer in the windows. There were no people to be found, of course — but he could just make out the outlines of objects inside. He pushed open the door.

It was an armory of some kind, completely abandoned — or, rather, never inhabited in the first place. He ran a hand along an empty table and raised an eyebrow at the dust that puffed up at his touch, sticking to his fingertips.

There was a chair in the corner, and an empty fireplace against the far wall, the mantle lined with empty picture-frames. In the other corner was a bin a scrap mantle, twisted and torn into pieces, and above that, several gleaming swords hanging on an ornate rack.

Deceit tilted his head to the side, considering. With nothing better to do, he stood on tip-toes and stretched over the bin, liberating one of the swords. He turned it over in his hand, testing the weight, running a finger down the shining blade. A smile tugged at the corners of his mouth as he stepped back and sliced it through the air, and he grinned as he cleaved through an imaginary enemy, sword gleaming in the growing sunlight —

“What are you doing?”

“AH — what — nothing!” The sword slipped from his grasp and clattered to the ground as he whirled, his heart leaping into his throat. Roman stood in the doorway, arms crossed and eyebrow raised, and Deceit had never wanted to strangle him more. Of course he managed to wake up early that day. Of course.

“Really?” Roman asked. “Because — and correct me if I’m wrong — it looked like you were trying to sword fight.”

Deceit sneered. “Oh, do keep being sarcastic, I love it when you steal my thing.” He stooped to pick up the sword, blushing all the way to the tips of his ears. “That was nothing. I was just bored.”

“Mhm.” Roman gave him a once-over. “Your stance is terrible. Have you ever used a sword before?”

“Yes,” Deceit snapped.

Roman laughed. “Calm down, Salazar S-lie-therin, I’m just being honest.”

“Oh, and you know how much I love that,” Deceit deadpanned. “If you’re such a talented warrior, why don’t you show me how it’s done?”

And then Deceit really, really regretted having the ability to speak, because Roman laughed again and strode over to stand behind him, gently grasping his arms to move them into place. He nudged Deceit’s feet further apart with his own, humming that stupid Steven Universe song the whole time, and Deceit tried to keep his expression neutral as his heart doused his face in gasoline and set it aflame.

“There,” Roman said, satisfied. “Now you look like a true warrior.”

“Great,” Deceit said dryly. Truth be told, he did feel more balanced, but you’d have to kill him before he admitted it. “Now what?”

Roman blinked. “We leave?” he said, raising an eyebrow. “We have to get going. The mindscape isn’t going to save itself!”

Deceit lowered his sword, disappointment blooming in his chest. Roman was right, of course, but… he was not ready for five more hours of silent walking. Not yet. As Roman strode through the doorway, Deceit swiped another sword from the rack and followed him out.

“Fight me!” he declared, with much more gusto than he’d planned. As Roman whirled around to stare at him, eyes wide, he cleared his throat. “I mean — I challenge you.”

Roman’s mouth twitched with amusement. He raised an eyebrow. “Why?”

“Because I’m as entertained as could be,” Deceit drawled. “Totally ready for another five-hour walk.”

Roman raised an eyebrow, taking the sword Deceit offered. He turned it experimentally in his hands, expression growing darker, more clouded, and for a moment Deceit felt cold regret seep unbidden into his bones. Roman’s own beloved sword had only just been broken; perhaps giving him a new one so soon wasn’t the best idea?

But then Roman straightened up, swinging it through the air, and Deceit relaxed. “Alright,” he said, a hint of curiosity in his voice. “I accept your challenge, peasant.”

Deceit gasped in mock-offense, sliding his feet apart to match Roman’s stance. He lunged and Roman blocked on instinct, their swords clashing together in a shower of sparks. Roman twisted his wrist and sent Deceit’s sword clattering to the ground, and Deceit stumbled backwards.

“There, I win,” Roman said, with an infuriating smirk. Deceit blinked, heat rushing to his cheeks, and he scooped his sword back up off the floor. He wasn’t done yet — he hadn’t even started to have fun. Besides, maybe attacking Roman would banish those traitorous thoughts. He could vent his frustrations and be on his merry way.

Unlikely, but… a snake could dream.

“Ah ah ah, not so fast!” he taunted, waggling his finger. Roman raised an eyebrow and shifted back into his stance, boots scuffling along the dirt road. “I won’t give up without a real fight, your highness.”

“I doubt you’d be much of a fight,” Roman scoffed. Then, as an afterthought, brows furrowing the slightest bit: “And I am not much of an opponent.”

“Oh, no, I don’t think so,” Deceit agreed, mischief sparkling in his eyes. Roman blinked, sword lowering.

“Wh —”

But Deceit cut him off with an evil cackle, slipping into his villainous persona without a second thought. He wanted to have fun with this — and he was part of an actor, after all. Plus, giving Roman a reason to fight, a story to bring to completion, a dastardly villain to slay might be exactly what he needed to re-light his fire. “You’re weak, your highness,” he sneered. “With you out of the way, your pathetic kingdom will belong to me!”

Roman hesitated. He seemed caught between agreeing, arguing, and joining the act. “If my kingdom is so pathetic,” he said slowly, as if he hadn’t quite decided what to do yet, “why are you so intent on stealing it?”

Deceit waved a hand dismissively. “’Tis the life of a villain, I’m afraid. Pillaging, plundering —”

“Isn’t that pirates?”

“Pirates are villains!” Deceit said. “And with your kingdom under my control, I shall bring every citizen to their knees!” Another evil cackle, his arms spread wide, amusement swelling in his chest. Oh, how he’d missed acting. Roman lifted his sword, tilting his head as he regarded Deceit.

“And what if I stop you?” he asked. “What if I protect my kingdom?”

“Then you will prove yourself to be the prince I know you are,” Deceit said before he could stop himself, his voice forceful, and genuinely proud. Roman’s expression wavered for a moment, and Deceit cleared his throat. “So come on! Do you dare challenge me?”

Roman paused, lips pursed thoughtfully, and Deceit laughed. He knew exactly was this interaction was missing. “I can see you’re still undecided,” he said. “Allow me to… sweeten the deal. Slay me, and I’ll burn your kingdom to the ground!”

Roman’s eyebrows raised. “Don’t you mean or?” he asked, with growing excitement. “That seems like a pretty crucial conjunction.”

Deceit sighed over-dramatically. “Oh, yes, I suppose. Slay me, or I’ll burn your kingdom to the ground!”

A laugh tumbled from Roman’s lips, and he smiled. Internally, Deceit commended himself on his Disney references. “Alright, villain,” Roman declared. “I accept your challenge!”

Deceit grinned — and the two rushed each other, metal scraping against metal as they brought their swords crashing together. Deceit twisted, raising his sword in a wide arc through the air, and Roman leaped back to catch his blade and shoved Deceit backwards. He laughed as he blocked Deceit’s next attack, and Deceit’s face erupted in heat just distracting enough that Roman was able to knock his sword from his hands.

“Ha! I win again!” Roman boasted, and for a moment Deceit felt his soul leave his body, because holy shit — but then he slipped back into the battle and slipped past Roman, dropping to his knees and grabbing his sword. He lifted it just in time to block Roman’s attack, pushing against it with all his might.

“You fight almost as well as a man,” Deceit purred. Roman laughed again, bright and happy.

“Funny, I was going to say the same thing about you!”

Swords clashing, the battle raged on, and Deceit fell into the rhythm of the fight, blocking and dodging and slicing. He could see why Roman enjoyed this so much; it was a dance all its own, bodies twisting around each other to the beat of their swords. He studied Roman’s movements and copied them, and then —

And then Roman’s sword went flying from his hands and landed with a clatter behind him, and Deceit stood tall, the end of his blade held just beneath Roman’s chin. Silence reigned as the two stared from opposite ends of the sword, breathing heavily. Deceit grinned, and only remembered at the last second that he was meant to be playing the villain. He shoved all happiness out of his expression, replacing it with cold, victorious villainy.

“You lose,” he purred. “What a shame. Say farewell, your highness. Your kingdom belongs to —”

“Not so fast!” Roman declared, his cheeks burning bright red — and Deceit only had a moment to realize that his face was bright red, his face had color, he had color again before Roman darted back and held out his hand, determination shining in his eyes. Sparks flew around his outstretched palm, glimmering in every color of the rainbow as they shot through the air, and Deceit gaped as a sword appeared in Roman’s hand, gleaming.

And before he knew what was happening, Roman shot forward and knocked his sword from his hand, and suddenly his blade was beneath Deceit’s chin, cold metal pressing into his skin just lightly enough that it didn’t hurt. “How the tables turn,” Roman purred, seemingly unaware of what he’d just done, and Deceit spluttered, face bright red, and god, when had it gotten so hot?

Finally, he got a hold of his voice. “You summoned a sword,” he managed, and Roman blinked, his blade lowering.

“I-I did,” Roman said softly, gazing at the sword in his hands like it held all the answers to every question in the world. He ran his thumb along a gemstone embedded in the hilt, engraved with his logo, and then trailed his finger down the blade. It was so much more beautiful than the one he’d had before, the one Logan had broken. A hesitant smile grew on his face. “I did! Ha! Take that, Logan!”

“It’s completely revolting,” Deceit said proudly, gaze caught in the way the sword shone. “I’m not at all impressed.”

Roman’s smile grew into a bright grin, and he lifted his head to look at Deceit, eyes shining. “I couldn’t have done it without you,” he said, and his voice was oh-so-soft, and Deceit’s heart skipped several beats. “You’re not such a bad guy after all.”

What?

What?

Deceit blinked once, twice, three times, and his brain threw out his ability to speak in favor of his ability to scream internally. He opened his mouth and closed it and then opened it again, gaping like a dying fish, his brain blue-screening. Error 404: Deceit.exe has stopped working.

Not such a bad guy, his brain repeated, somewhere between a shocked scream and a taunt. Not such a bad guy, not such a bad guy, not bad not bad not bad —

“Dee?” Roman asked, tilting his head to the side. “Are you okay?”

“I — I am —” He growled, cleared his throat, and yanked his cloak back into place. This was ridiculous. He should be offended! Sure, he wasn’t evil, but Roman couldn’t just come and yank his Bad Guy title out from under him just like that! “For your information, this changes everything,” he said, the words tumbling from his mouth in a rush. “I’m not still a devilishly evil bastard, and I don’t want you to refer to me as such.”

Roman raised an eyebrow. “Got it,” he said, after a moment’s pause, and Deceit was downright incensed to see the way the corners of his mouth twitched with amusement. “Well, devilishly evil bastard, thank you… for everything.”

“I don’t appreciate your tone,” Deceit snapped, and Roman just laughed. Face burning, Deceit stomped his foot and turned on his heel, crossing his arms tightly. “I’m a goddamn asshole.”

“Sure,” Roman said.

Deceit stiffened, swallowing hard. Helping the light sides one time didn’t mean he was one of them. He wasn’t Virgil; he wasn’t going to go native. He was still one of the Others — and sure, he wasn’t as cruel as the rest of them, but he was still a wicked, manipulative liar! He couldn’t be anything else.

Because how could the balance survive, if the gatekeeper himself lost his way?

[dysfunctionalfatherof5]

Lost Memories and Forgotten Pasts

Deep in a forest in a far away land, a boy lay sleeping under a tall oak tree. A low groan escaped the boy as he began to wake up, the bright sun beating down on his eyelids as he rolled onto his stomach in an attempt to hide his face. After a few moments of laying there, the boy shot to his feet, nearly tripping over a tree root as he looked around frantically. “Where the hell am I?!” He yelled, face full of confusion and panic. The boy took a few moments to check himself for injuries, mind racing all the while. How had he ended up here? Where was here anyway? Why was his mind so numbingly blank? The poor boy flopped back down onto the grass with a sigh. He leaned back against the rough bark of the oak tree he had woken up under as his mind continued to race. “Alright, just stay calm Kiri, I’m sure there’s a reasonable explanation for all of this,” he mumbled to himself, rubbing his eyes a few times before starting to look around.

Soon enough, he caught sight of a cream colored scroll, held together with a red ribbon that was almost as bright as his hair. He quickly untied the neat bow and unraveled the scroll, peering at it curiously as a small, palm sized scrap of paper slipped out. He opted to examine the scroll first, since it seemed to be a map of some sort. What kind of map was it though? There wasn't a single label on it! The only noticeable marking on the entire thing was a bright green ‘X’ that was drawn in the middle of a forest. “This. is. so. Stupid!!” He yelled angrily, tossing the map towards the nearest thing in his line of vision, which was simply another tree. How could a map have no labels or markings? Could it even be considered a map?

“Alright, fine. What's this dumb piece of paper anyway?” he grumbled, grabbing the scrap and lifting it up to his face pointedly. Surprisingly, what he had thought was a scrap of paper was in fact a worn looking photograph. The edges were yellow with what seemed to be constant use, but the image itself was crystal clear, not a single smudge present. The first thing to catch Kiri’s attention was the startling bright red of the person’s eyes. They burned with intensity, almost angrily, glaring daggers at the photographer. Spiky blonde hair fell into their face, partially covering the smug smirk that played across thin lips. A calloused hand rested on one hip, causing the photo to give off an almost cocky vibe. Their posture fit well with the feeling of the photo, an almost playful sense of false rage. Even though most people would have assumed that the photo had been taken seconds before disaster, Kiri sensed that this had been taken during a happy moment. A moment of peace among a constant storm of disaster. Not many people would've been able to see the playful intent. Why, out of everything I could have remembered, did it have to be something so useless to me right now? He grouched silently, shaking his head. Even though his mind was practically blank, his heart fluttered as he glanced at the photo again. This person... They were important to him. It was as if this worn photo was the key to his memories, to the questions that wouldn't stop echoing in his head. He had to find this person, he knew it. They held the answers to his questions, the key to his past. I guess it isn't as useless as I first thought. He pushed himself back to his feet, brushing the dust off of his pants and slipping the photo into his breast pocket. Maybe that map isn’t completely useless either. The photo came with it, so maybe… maybe the map could lead me to this person! His brain supplied eagerly, eyes lighting up with renewed vigor as he rushed to pick up the map from where he had thrown it. His eyes carefully scanned over the map once again, much more focused on each detail. “So if I assume that this X is where I am right now, then the nearest road would be…” He began to pace back and forth unconsciously as he read the map, pulling the photo back out of his pocket and focusing on the background instead of the person. It looked like they stood in an outdoor market of some kind, a street-side booth visible behind them. Perhaps this was taken in the city then? From what he could tell, the city wasn't too far away from the forest! Only a day or so journey from what the map seemed to express. With this new information, Kiri decided to start on his journey. He had to make it out of this forest first anyway, so there was no better time to start than now. He rolled the map back up, sliding it into the loop of his belt and looking up at the sun. From what he could tell, it was around 7 in the morning. On the map, the city had been north of the forest... If the sun rises in the east, I should head…. this way.

With that thought, he headed north, mind filled with questions and worries that he hoped to put to rest. He did his best to hurry through the forest, watching the sun closely as he tried not to make any detours or path changes. It was around noon when Kiri finally decided he needed to take a break, plopping down beside a small, clear spring and splashing water onto his face. “Who are you? I’ve never seen your face around here.” A quiet voice commented behind him, causing the red-head to let out a startled yelp and nearly fall face first into the stream. “Woah!! My bad, I didn't realize you hadn’t seen me!” The person said apologetically, having caught his arm with their hands to keep Kiri from falling in. If I didn’t fall in, why is my arm so wet? he wondered in confusion, biting his lip and looking up nervously. He choked on his breath when he finally set eyes on his savior, eyes comically wide and mouth agape. The person, or girl, seemed to be made completely of water, partially transparent, with small fish swimming around in her body. Shimmering, silver blue water acted as hair somehow flowing down her shoulders without merging with the rest of her form. “Have you never seen a water nymph?” She asked curiously, pulling him away from the edge of the stream and helping him sit down on the grass. “N-no, I can't say I ever have. But then again, I can't really remember much of anything… So maybe I have?” He said sheepishly, rubbing the back of his neck as he tried to get used to looking at the transparent girl. “You can’t remember anything? What do you mean?” She asked, sitting down in front of him and offering her hand. “Well, remember this! My name’s Mina, Mina Ashido, don’t wear it out!” Kiri shook her hand nervously, smiling weakly and nodding when she introduced herself. “My name’s Kirishima, but everyone calls me Kiri. I’m trying to find out who I am.”

After a while of talking to Ashido and doing his best to explain his situation to her, he noticed how low the sun had dipped in the sky. “Crap! I was supposed to make it out of the forest by tonight!” He cried frantically, startling the nymph who sat across from him. “Kiri, calm down, you shouldn't be in such a rush! What if you miss something important?” She pointed out, placing a hand on his shoulder and accidentally soaking his shirt once again. “Stay here for the night, let me take a look at the map and the photo. There's always a chance that I might know someone or something that’ll help.” She pleaded, giving him a placating smile and pulling her hand away. He sighed, rubbing his eyes tiredly and nodding in defeat. “Alright, you have a point. Where do you live anyway?” “Just down the stream. I normally just stay in the river, but sometimes I meet travelers like you!” Ashido hummed, motioning for Kiri to follow her before skipping off into the trees. All the poor boy could do was run after her, shaking his head in dismay as he tried to keep up.

“So this is my house! Whatdya think?” Ashido crooned, spreading her arms wide and grinning at the boy who stood panting in her doorway. “Its homey.” He breathed, giving her a sheepish grin and straightening up. It was small, obviously not meant to be used by more than a few people, but still felt warm and welcoming. There was a small fire pit off to the side, and a sleeping cot towards the back, although he seriously doubted it got much use. “Glad you think so! Now how about we take a look at this mysterious map of yours?” She suggested, grinning and sitting down at a stone table in the center of the small cabin. Kiri followed her lead, sitting down across from her and pulling out the map, as well as the photo he had been keeping in his breast pocket, and laying both out on the table.

“From what I can tell, this person has to be the key to my memories. Whenever I look at the photo, my heart starts racing and I get flustered.” Kiri explained, face flushed with embarrassment. He was telling someone he had only just met about one of the only things he could remember, and that thing just happened to be some form of romance. Ashido grinned, eyes glittering playfully as she gently punched his shoulder. “Someones in looooooveeeee.” She teased, dragging her attention back to the photo. “Thats strange though. This person kinda looks like the queen of the neighboring kingdom, ya know? The blonde hair and red eyes? I think those are one of the things only the royal family has.” She murmured, brow furrowed in concentration. “The… The royal family?” Kiri squeaked, eyes going wide as a panicked feeling rushed through him, his adrenaline spiking. I have some kind of history with them, and it isn’t good. The words spun around in his brain, causing him to release a weak cry and drop his head into his hands. Why can’t I remember? Why can’t I remember?! A shaky sob escaped his lips, his body trembling as he tried to get ahold of himself. It felt as if someone was trying to cleave his head in half, the pounding of his pulse practically drowning out everything else. He could hear Ashido attempting to get his attention, but her voice was warbled, as if his ears were filled with cotton. He did his best to raise his head, to reassure her, to do something, but his body wouldn’t comply. His world spun widely for a few moments before everything went black, his thoughts grinding to a halt as his mind gave into the darkness.

To be continued…..

Alright, this is the first chapter of my KiriBaku fic! This is the uhh.... let’s say, rough out, of the whole thing, since I’m still getting a feeling for what’s gonna happen. What I do know, however, is that @satur-nya did an absolute stunning drawing for me of Kiri and Bakugou!

I hope you all enjoyed this so far, More should be coming soon!

[sea-changed]

vermiculated replied to your post: vermiculated replied to your post...

I can't believe I missed this until now! wow! Here I am, here you are, there are books and words between us. wonderful. thank you.

<3 <3 <3

I have to tell you that I read Olivia Waite's new ff and it has exactly this problem. It is as though both heroines are mealy-mouthed and forgettable so that the reader won't be offended by reading a book about women. Their only flaws are caring too much, wanting appropriate twenty-first century style recognition (ahistoricism doesn't bother me but as I was reading it, I thought, @sea-changed​ is going to be livid) and accidentally misunderstanding one another...

also attempted financial abuse. which I mention separately because it added a note of the glass armonica to the music of the spheres. how is ff so inadequate to our desires?

Oh no, this is terribly disappointing to hear; I’d been holding out some amount of hope for this one, though that was probably folly on my part. Why, in a subgenre written by and wholly about women, can the seemingly fairly standard “women are people” concept continually fail to gain ground? I’ll still read this, as it’s waiting for me on my phone and the upcoming semester promises to require mindless stress-reading, but I’ll be extremely irate about it. (I always think I can be magnanimous about ahistoricism in romance novels, which is obviously a lie, but it is good to be known like this.)

re: re: 34, I love the sweeping romantic sentiment because they manage to meet in the middle only when they both understand themselves to be ludicrously devoted. It didn't quite feel like a romance novel, you are correct -- there's a bit of neither fish nor fowl here? I personally feel that the natural second-half plot ought to have been shoring up how Richard and David love one another despite their respective troubled backstories rather than ...

...advancing the political thriller from "A Seditious Affair" and developing a coherent moral world. Which is what novels are oriented toward: why do people do what they do, despite everything? In romance, they do it because they love one another (or they're supposed to) whereas I think more complicated motives such as you discuss are much rarer.

oh, novels!, I say, like I live inside Tony Trollope's vision. I think the book tries to have it both ways and ends up being slightly frustrating for all readers. just write two books, Kimberly! Kimberly is what I call her when I am trying to hector her from afar. dear Kimberly, please have Susan stab Templeton. xo.

“Just write two books” is honestly what it comes down to: it feels like two books, and while I get that the political thriller part allowed David to be David to to requisite degree, after how gracefully it was cleaved to the romance plot in Seditious Affair it felt a bit tacked-on here. And while I’m certainly not opposed to moral ambiguity in my ships, the genre formula seems to require that said ambiguity, if there is any to begin with, be neatly swept under the rug; it’s really the sweeping I have the problem with rather than the ambiguity itself. (Because like, should Richard be fucking his valet? No! That’s a pretty open-and-shut one. Which certainly doesn’t mean I’m opposed to watching it happen, but I’d like fewer bows on my endings, I guess. Did you know Gentleman’s Position was the first book of the series I read, because I thought it had the most interesting-sounding summary? In hindsight this amuses to no end.)

(The accusation that there are similar moral issues and rug-sweeping in Seditious Affair, and that I am simply too starry-eyed over it to complain about them, is potentially quite valid, though because of said stars in said eyes I’m not the one to judge.)

(dear Kimberly, please have Susan stab Templeton --The only way I can see this going down with zero hair torn out of my head, quite honestly.)

re: re: 39, @mysharkwillgoon​ made the unkind (but accurate) observation that this series is always available at our county library because no one likes it. I recognize that I am utterly alone in how much I enjoy this, and am really pleased that you picked it up and felt the requisite feelings. I know you're not a Victorianist by practice or nature, so it's impressive that you returned to this weird book.

HA, I’ve made this same observation (likely about the same library!), which I’ll admit is satisfying to the part of me that thinks everyone should have my taste, though dissatisfying to the equally clamorous part of me that wants to read Seditious Affair for the sixteenth time and has to wait for it on hold. Weird romance seems to be my favorite kind, so I too am glad I returned to it. Not a Victorianist by practice or nature may have to go on my office wall.

A general query: can literary fiction be experimental enough to reach the logical end-point of the genre or are we still pretending that felicity in art is enough? Why must there be meaning in the world? Perhaps I judge the Booker too harshly: it is only a literary competition, it is not an immurement by orange sticker -- yet every book I have wanted to love from the longlist has given me the same depth of emotion that I feel on regarding ...

...a tray of wrapped zucchini at the grocery store: why are we engaging in such resource-intensive craft! (this is not strictly true. I delighted in A Little Life, it was nothing like plastic on vegetables at all.) To continue, is the worst thing that happened to literary fiction the application of irony? I am no supporter of the genuine, the real, the unmanufactured, yet ironic distance can hardly support so much.

It's not a prerequisite. and it looks like smugness more often than it comes off as wit. I read someone recently saying that the problem in Jude the Obscure is "done because we are too menny" which struck me -- a biased Hardy fan -- as missing the point about art: the place where it happens is an artificial one, but it has greater force for that. it's not a bug, it's a feature!

"somewhat poisonous nostalgia" sick burn, I like it.

Speaking of sick burns, “the same depth of emotion that I feel on regarding a tray of wrapped zucchini at the grocery store” has the devastating combination of being both pithy and accurate. I do find myself regularly mystified about what criteria are used to long-list books in general (the Booker being, I think, a particularly frequent and egregious example): it leaves me to wonder whether a) people who judge these things find being left cold and unmoved a virtue in fiction or b) they are led to feel things about writing I find cold and unmoving. (I tend toward the first, though the fact that people have seemingly genuine emotions about Madeline Miller novels would argue strongly for the second.)

The pitting of irony and emotion against one another is, I agree, one of the central failings of the literary genre: Both! Both are good! As you say, being in a constructed hothouse universe is not to be derided (though certainly poked at), and it does not (or at least should not) lessen the emotional validity of the created world. Have faith in your own creations, you dimwits.

I have been thinking all morning about your observation that none of these books are experimental enough: I thought the French were meant to be good at this. Do you think it has to do with our late uneasiness around teenage sexuality, and that writing a sufficently-complicated teenager such that he is entitled to his own sexual preference means that authors no longer sound unique, ...

... but rather like a series of psychology textbooks. Which can be a pleasure (what's UP, Megan Abbott) yet tends to make these books extremely ... putdownable. Thank you for this, there's really nothing better than having a person with exquisite taste on whom one can rely to read books first.

I do think that there is an essential trouble with alienation in YA novels: so many read as false and/or patronizing, because they’re being written to teenagers rather than about teenagers. (Sometimes this is rectified when adult lit writes about teenagers, but mostly it is not, and certainly not in this case. Here again is a case of irony vs. emotion; if you’re not going to give me emotion, you’ve got to be a whole lot better at irony--or in this case more specifically narrative commentary--than this.)

(On the subject of complicated teenagers having sex convincingly, I was recently a fan of Patrick Ness’s Release, which the author describes it as a cross between Mrs. Dalloway and Judy Blume’s Forever; a comment I’ll let stand on its own sizable feet.)

And there is truly nothing better than having someone to dump your own particular long-winded exegeses on, so thank you for that in return.

ps I read Astray and it was so frail! "disappointingly pedestrian" indeed. If I could write like Emma Donoghue, I guess I would labor under the curse that afflicts her plotting.

For being a book that contained so much that I love--an entire collection of extremely specific and well-researched historical settings!--it was so flat. I know Donoghue can write better sentences, I’m at a loss why she chose to not put any in this collection.

[besidemethewholedamntime]

to see beyond it

A/N: I, like possibly every other writer, have been struck into motion by the new content gifted to us and now I share it with you! I hope you enjoy! This is for Jess, @lilsciencequeen because she actually inspired it and she’s a wonderful bean! 

Summary:

"She loves him so incredibly much, misses him so incredibly much. In here, in this dark and dingy chamber with the streak of too red, too much, blood on the window she feels as close to him as she fears she’ll ever be again. She just wants him back. Safe and sound and with her. It’s been months. She’s so terribly tired of fighting." They find the cryochamber and Jemma aches for Fitz. Based on the season 6 promo that has us all aching, too.

{Read on Ao3)

or read below!

It’s too much to process.

It’s her only thought. The only thing that sticks in her brain. This is too much to process. She knows what she should do; rationalise it and break it down into little, bite-size chunks of information that can easily be digested by her poor brain. Jemma just can’t manage it, and this is too much to process goes around and around her head like the saddest carousel in the world.

She can barely make it through the door. They brought the cryochamber here, after they found it, empty and abandoned on what was once presumably Enoch’s ship. It sits in the middle of the space, so innocently and yet not at all. The mere sight of it makes her feel sick and yet she cannot turn away. It’s like when a car crash happens in the middle of the street; by some horrifying curiosity you just want to look, to see what’s going to happen, to know the end of the story.

At this point, Jemma would even settle for the most pathetic piece of the story. They were meant to find Fitz and instead all they’ve found is more questions than there shall ever be answers.

They cut their hair and changed their names months ago and yet she’s never felt more distant from everything she once knew than she does now.

“Come on, Jemma,” she whispers to herself. “You can do it.” And nodding to herself, and steeling her nerves, she takes little steps forward.

It looks so much like a coffin. As soon as she realises, she wants to flee. But she doesn’t, because she can’t, because there’s a pull as strong as there’s ever been that keeps her in place. This is too much to process. This is the last known place of her hus- of Fitz, and that has always been enough to make her stay.

She’s ill. She knows she is. There are blackberry coloured thumbprints pressed into the thinning flesh beneath her eyes, and her clothes hang looser and looser on her frame the more days that pass. Headaches build pressure beneath her eyes and make dots and stars appear at random. If it were anyone else in her condition, she’d make them take care of themselves; make them eat and drink proper and rest at all the right times.

But like the typical doctor which she still technically isn’t, she’s horrible at following her own advice. And some days she doesn’t know why she should, anyway.

With trembling hands, she reaches out to touch it. It’s cool underneath her fingertips. Somehow, in some twisted paradox, she expected it to be warm. Now it’s cold and she doesn’t know what to think about anything anymore. This is too much to process.

Even though she knows it’s only going to hurt her, she looks inside the windows. Empty blackness is the only thing that looks back.

It hasn’t gotten easier. She wants to know why everybody says it does. She wants to know how people can live without their hearts after a certain period of time. She wants to know how and why it no longer hurts for them the way it does every moment of every day for her. She wants to know how the godawful feeling that makes it feel as though she is being cleaved in two in her chest will disappear. She wants to know when it will stop hurting.

And she’s ever so afraid that one day it will.

Because with hurt at least there’s feeling. The pain means she’s still here, still breathing, still alive. After the pain goes there’ll just be a nothingness that she’s not sure she could return from.

Jemma’s seen what that nothingness does to people, what it makes them do. She wants no part in that.

No. All she wants is Fitz.

He was here. She knows that as a fact, but she can feel it in her bones. Every cell in her body vibrates with want, with recognition, because they know as well as she feels that he was here. This is worse than not having him at all. To have this residue, this ‘there but not there’ hurts more in a way she didn’t expect. It reminds her too much of the dark times before, when she had Fitz, but she didn’t have him, lost him to his own head before she lost him for real.

This is too much to process.

She runs her fingers along the edges, jumping backwards in fright when she finds a release catch and the lid pops open a fraction. Cold air wafts out.

Before she truly knows what she’s doing, Jemma pushes up the lid a little more and finds herself clambering inside. It’s a little difficult; she’s no longer as agile as she once was, and when she gets inside, she’s more out of breath than she would like.

She lays down and shuts the lid, leaving it open just enough so that she can get back out again.

It’s dark in here – the window is woefully ineffective. How dark and lonely it must have been. How he must have thought he deserved it.

Jemma sniffs, for her tears will only steam up this already claustrophobic space. This is when she sees it. The streak of blood on the window. This is too much to process. Her heart jumps into her mouth and she wants to be sick.

There is, of course, no way right now of knowing if it is his. It might not be. There might be other explanations. But Jemma knows there’s really only one.

She closes her eyes and feels her tears burn the side of her face. She tries not to let them fall but by God, it doesn’t half hurt. It feels as though she’s being carved in two with a spoon.

She loves him so incredibly much, misses him so incredibly much. In here, in this dark and dingy chamber with the streak of too red, too much, blood on the window she feels as close to him as she fears she’ll ever be again. She just wants him back. Safe and sound and with her. It’s been months. She’s so terribly tired of fighting.

There’s others in this fight. She has to remember that. It is not just her who hurts, not just her who cries at night until there’s nothing left. They are all hurting, in their own ways, for the way things were, for the lives they used to have. For the people they used to have. In the beginning they kept it to themselves, but now, occasionally, they share it and it makes things bearable for a while.

This discovery, this feeling, she fears marks the end. That there is nothing more they can do, now. They have no idea, no leads to follow. She is so desperately afraid that this is it, that this cold and empty box will nearly be all she will have left of him for the rest of her life. This is too much to-

No, she thinks to herself fiercely, allows the tears that have just fallen to be the last. You have never been a quitter. You have never given up. You do not get to start now.

There have been many bursts like these over the months. Many sorrowful and melancholy moments that she has had a burst of energy released at the end, a reminder of who she is and what she stands for. A reminder of what she wants.

But this is the last one, she decides. No more feeling sorry for herself and no more thinking of what could have been. There is more than just herself she needs to worry about now, more than her that is relying on herself to find him. This is the final push, the last hurdle before the finish line, the last storm before the clouds are blown away forever.

Of course, this is not the end. This is nowhere near the end. This is, perhaps, only just the beginning.

[feynites]

could we have more of mana'din and forced to take a body solas please? how is solas different and how is he the same? what kind of person does this kind of change make him?

As Ghilan’nain promised, Pride’s dazedness wears off after a few hours.

By then, Mana’Din has him situated back in Daran. She is not certain if that is the best place for him. But for the time being, it is the safest one she can consider, so that’s where they go. Pride walks carefully alongside her. Illusions and carefully chosen paths ensure that very few people see them, and those that do only do so at a distance. At least until they reach the palace.

Then they earn more curious stares. Mana’Din suppose she wouldn’t have been able to keep this a secret anyway. She takes Pride to her own chambers, and checks them over before sealing the locks. Now would not be the time for some would-be assassin to come lunging out from beneath the bed. But by the looks of things, none have tried it today.

Pride stands in the middle of the room. Blinking, and looking around with somewhat more lucidity.

“You can sit down, if you would like,” she offers. “Are you thirsty?”

The offer and the question both seem to confuse him. After a few awkward, uncertain moments, as Mana’Din tries to wrestle her own feelings into further subjugation, she reaches out and gently guides him onto the nearest couch. And then she goes and fetches a pitcher of clean water, and some glasses, and some travel bars she keeps in her bedroom cupboard.

Just in case the assassins get hungry while they wait.

She pours to glasses, on the hunch that Pride might not even know what to do with one, and could require a demonstration. But once she gives him the water, he does drink it successfully. A little clumsily, but, it seems he grasps the basic concept. The water sloshes and spills into his collar. Droplets stick to his skin, and seem to make its odd smoothness all the more pronounced.

Some distant part of her, that isn’t currently occupied with her internal screaming, wonders who decided on that. Smooth, unblemished, pale skin. Sylaise? Ghilan’nain? Did they think it part of her ‘tastes’, or is it something meant to adhere to Arlathan aesthetics, or is it just easier to make skin that way when starting from scratch?

Pride makes a face, after taking a single sip of his water.

“Is something wrong with it?” she checks, worriedly. Testing her own. If it’s been poisoned...

But, Pride shakes his head. And then winces again, and puts down his glass to cover his face.

“Strange,” he manages. “I... it’s, it’s strange. Sorry.”

“No, no. Don’t apologize,” she insists. “I am the one who is sorry. I had no idea that they meant to do this. I would have stopped them, if I did.”

Pride’s emotions start to filter through, at that point. They already had been, somewhat. But not to a noticeable degree. As the dazedness fades, however, his feelings become more defined and expressive. Confusion. Disorientation. Disgust, and fear, and intense discomfort. Mana’Din lets him sit for a while, and considers their options. Sometimes spirits reject bodies. If it happens early enough in the process, they generally don’t come to harm over it. But they’re well past that point already. 

Still, Pride had been powerful. The more powerful the spirit, the more likely they were to survive strange circumstances. With a murmured apology, she checks him over.

There is a sigil tattooed in vallaslin on his back. Blood magic, and a spirit shard, too. A sliver of Pride - not the spirit she knew, but a fragment from another Pride, by the looks of it. She takes off her mask, and really looks, as best she can. Seeing the currents of magic, the way they connect to the body and the Dreaming, and the spirit housed within.

...It’s the magical equivalent of a barbed trap, she realizes. Trying to pull the spirit away from the body will sink the sigil’s tethers deeper into it, forcing it to either abandon the effort or else break.

“That is the trap,” Pride murmurs, as she straightens back up. He stares at the water in his glass. “The second one, to hold me. The first one caught me. I thought it was too small to impede me, but the second I got close, it grew bigger... and then the Huntress came.”

He sighs.

It’s almost worse than if he’d sobbed. The despairing nature of the breath, as the pain spikes in the air.

“I failed,” he says. “Now I will just be Pride made flesh, forever. It is so heavy...”

Carefully, Mana’Din reaches out, and takes one of his hands.

“We do not know that,” she says. “Pride, listen. This is an awful transgression, what has been done to you. It is a violation and it will be a great challenge to recover. Adjusting to such a monumental change in form is frustrating and frightening, and there will be times when you feel broken. But this is not defeat. There is too much in this world to say for certain what is permanent, or what can and cannot be changed. This is a hurdle, but... you may yet become Wisdom. There is no need for you to stop trying, unless you wish to.”

Pride blinks. His fingers twitch.

He is quiet for a long moment. Long enough that she feels her own ineptness keenly.

“I will help you. No matter what you decide, I will help you,” she promises him, after a moment. Before pulling her hand away.

Or trying to. Pride’s grip tightens as she does, though, and so she stops, and waits instead. Sitting beside him, close enough that his emotions bleed into her own. Until it’s hard to tell where his end and hers begin.

“I dislike this form,” he admits, at last.

She nods in understanding.

“Alright,” she says. “We can start there. Perhaps, we can change it to something more comfortable. Still a body, but... a better shape for you.”

Pride swallows.

Mana’Din can at least suggest one form that might, perhaps, suit him more.

~

Bodies are uncomfortable, awkward, messy things, and Pride dislikes his.

It is a very frustrating prison. Pride’s body does very few things well. It does not like to move through solid objects, and it is resistant to changing its shape. It still does, at least - he is not trapped in a singular form, the way that some are. But it fights him. It is like he is covered in a thousand wet, heavy blankets, that he cannot escape or pass through. Nothing moves the way it should.

He is too short, and his magic works differently, and every time he tries to escape the sigil on his back aches.

And that is only the start of it.

Bodies require fuel. They require rest. They must be cleaned, and the make discharge and waste. Pride finds most of these things easier to manage once he switches from an elven body to that of a wolf. A large wolf, because he dislikes being trapped seeing things from only one angle, but at least when he is tall that angle is somewhat high up. But there are limitations even there, because he must still fit inside of rooms that are built mainly for elves.

The first week, he spends in Mana’Din’s chambers. And then Mana’Din takes him to another set of rooms. These are to be his rooms, though at his request, Mana’Din stays with him there for a while, too. The rooms are spacious and sparsely furnished. They have access to an empty, walled-in garden, and for a long while, Pride spends most of his time there. Lying on the soft earth, sleeping as much as he can.

Sleeping is a relief. In dreams, he feels more like himself again. He can explore and roam and pass as a spirit once more, though even that feels different, too. There are things missing from it. Place he can no longer reach, and depths he can no longer see. The more time he spends awake, the harder it becomes to even recollect what he is missing.

It is hard to articulate.

Mana’Din does not object, though. Pride thinks she is trying to at first, for a while, but then she only explains that bodies cannot sleep for all their days. Not unless Pride wishes to enter uthenera, and if he does, she will not stop him. But that is a choice that must be made before he can properly embark upon it.

Pride... does not wish to sleep forever. Even as he feels compelled to sleep more often than not.

His feelings are hard to articulate. Being in a body makes them hurt, in new and nuanced ways, at times. His throat grows thick and his chest aches. His stomach twists. His temperature changes, fluctuating hot with anxiety or cold with dread. His emotions spill out into the air, and his skin itches with his frustration.

He wants to escape it.

He begs to, sometimes. And that is strange, too, because begging is undignified and unprideful. It should rip at him, but... it does not. As if the body is also somehow keeping any disparate elements from breaking him apart, even as it traps him in place. Pride isn’t sure he can even appreciate that much of it, though, when despair and frustration cleave at him too greatly, and he finds himself burying his head against Mana’Din’s stomach. Whining like the wolf he appears to be, and pleading with her to put him back to the way he was.

She promises that he can find a way to go on like this. And perhaps he can.

But the shameful truth of it is, he thinks he would rather go back to being Pride, and stay that way for always, than carry on like this. Even if, someday, it could lead to Wisdom.

“I know,” is what Mana’Din tells him, in the dim light of the empty garden. “I know it is hard. I know this does not feel like you. But little by little, we can make it feel better.”

Pride whines again. He does not want consolation. He wants it over with, he wants things to be fixed.

And they cannot be.

It is a hard thing to wrestle with. It makes his dreams dark, sometimes. Fills his mind with thoughts of what he could do with his ungainly, messy form. He still has claws. And he has teeth. Great big jaws, and sometimes he dreams of closing them around Andruil and Ghilan’nain’s necks, and snapping them. Making their own bodies leak blood and making their own flesh pain them, until they are just heaps of torn meat and bone.

He does not know what to do with these thoughts. They are powerful, but they are not good. He wants to hurt people. He worries that he is corrupting, until he remembers that he is in a body, and things no longer work in such a way.

It is hard to get his thoughts around.

Sometimes, when he dreams, Mana’Din is there. Sometimes she helps him kill Andruil and Ghilan’nain. She does not seem to think badly of him, for dreaming of that. And sometimes she shows him things. Pathways in the Dreaming that he can still reach, even like this.

He is not sure when he starts to take on the wolf shape in dreams. He does not notice it at first. It is around when Mana’Din brings the first tree to his garden, though. To shade him, as the season grows warmer.

Things change slowly.

But Mana’Din keeps her promise. Bit by bit... they do get better.

Pride likes the tree in his garden. So Mana’Din takes him to another, bigger garden, and to the orchards, to look at more plants, and decide if he would like any for his own space. And then they begin to do the same with the indoor areas of his chambers, too. Pride mostly remains a wolf, but sometimes he changes into his elven form, if a task demands it or if it is more convenient. He picks out furniture for his indoor sleeping space. Blankets and cushions, mostly. He does not want a bed, so they take it out. But he decides that there should be elf-suitable furniture in the main rooms, so that Mana’Din and other guests can be comfortable there.

Most of his guests who are not Mana’Din are spirits, though. Sorrow and Compassion and Curiosity, Frustration and Remorse and even Wisdom, at times. Anger, too, comes and goes as it is draw to. Pride hangs artwork that is interesting for spirit eyes, and he asks for fountains, until he has enough to place one in each room and one in the garden as well. He likes cushions. They are soft and they can make him comfortable no matter what shape he is in, so he gets a lot of them. And he likes rugs with shifting patterns, so Mana’Din brings him some from Arlathan.

He hangs chimes from his ceiling, so that he can hear the wind - it is very hard for him to see it, now. 

And he acquires bookshelves.

Mana’Din says that he can have one on every wall if he wishes. And he does, so this is nearly what happens. Some walls are unsuitable for it. But most can have at least some form of shelving. Mana’Din brings him books, at first. So do the other... the spirits, sometimes. But eventually, he decides that as with the furniture and the plants, he should venture to find some himself. So he goes with Curiosity to the archives.

The elves of the palace treat him differently, now that he has a body. They are much nicer. Not that they were ever cruel before, but sometimes they would chase Pride away, or cast spells to keep him out. Now, though, they seem to always greet him with kindness and some sorrow. Sympathy. Even Elalas is more patient with him, and none of them are impatient with his clumsiness.

He supposes they understand, though. They must have all mastered their own bodies too, at one time.

Also, he thinks Mana’Din has told them all to be nice, and many of them are frightened of her.

Pride has no idea why. But it is something he knew even before he was forced into a physical form. He knows at least part of it is because Mana’Din is powerful, and that makes him think of what she once told him. Of how others might fear him for his power - not for his potential corruption. But for what he might have become simply of his own accord.

Whatever that was, it has been thwarted now, he supposes. There is nothing for people to fear about a wolf who drops things and slips on smooth floors all the time.

Still... he looks for things, in the books he finds. Books are almost like dreams. At first he thinks they are a more limited version, but then he realizes that this is not true. Books can reflect his own thoughts back at him, and provide information. But they also give insights to others’ thoughts and experiences. Just like the Dreaming. He only needs to figure out how to fully work his thinking around it, to appreciate the many different ways in which they do it.

Fiction is very confusing. But... he likes it. It is not a bad confusion, and under the circumstances, that counts as a good thing.

When there are enough books in his rooms that he actually has to start looking for spaces to put them down, Pride’s back stops aching.

By then he has settled upon a standard wolf shape. Rather than changing it as often as not - the one he picks is white-furred, and stands as tall as most elves. A little taller than Mana’Din. It has six eyes, and pale green whorls across the white fur, that look almost like the shifting energy that once made up his form. As an elf, his body changes almost of its own accord. His skin darkens a little, and freckles a lot. His eyes are grey rather than red, but his hair, in turn, becomes more red than brown. His features change. Some of the archivists tell him that he looks more ‘wolf-like’, though it takes him a while to understand what they mean. His face grows longer, and his eyes get higher, and his features become more angular. Less soft and smooth.

Sometimes Mana’Din looks at him, and her emotions shut themselves in tight. When they escape, it usually looks like guilt.

Pride does not blame her for what happened. She did not decide it, nor approve of it, nor even know about it. But Mana’Din feels differently, and he cannot dissuade her of it. Even when she herself asserts that this is not a fate she wished for him - still, there is guilt.

It is another unpleasant aspect of things.

Pride wonders, though... perhaps, in time, that too will ease.

[childrenofhypnos]

Chapter 14: Grimm

They sprinted for the window, praying it was a gateway.

It wasn't.

Emery knew it before they jumped through, when she got close enough to notice that the pressure of the Dream around them didn't let up, when she felt the Dream clawing at her mind for her memories again. She thought of Edgar and Grandpa Al, of sweaters and tea, of cannons and claymores. Even if it wasn't the Sandman's gateway, it was his subconscious, and she needed to be aware enough to find something helpful inside of it.

She hadn't realized how much she'd miss the poppy fields until she and Wes landed on a cobblestone road in the middle of a dense forest. Night slammed down around them. The forest was hung with fog and chirped with the sounds of hidden insects. A wooden fence lined one side of the road, the way marked by yellow lanterns hanging on spindly rods. Through the trees were the lights of a village, and past the village, the turrets of a vicious-looking stone castle perched atop a stone rise in the distance, its silhouette edged in moonlight. A thin layer of green clouds skittered across the sky, avoiding the moon.

"Wow. This is…" Emery looked behind them, where the road tapered off into a smear of nothingness, the edge of the dream they couldn't cross.

"It looks like a fairytale," Wes said.

"I'm not feeling very Disney right now."

"Less Disney, more Grimm."

"What do you think this guy dreams about?"

Wes sighed through his nose and hefted his hammer onto his shoulder, looking weary but determined. "We're going to find out."

~

It occurred to Emery during the walk to the little village through the trees that she could probably start shooting and do some serious psychological damage to the Sandman by ripping his dreams to shreds. She didn't think the appearance of his dream-window meant he was asleep, necessarily--she was pretty sure the dream-windows were there all the time, regardless of whether their dreamers were currently dreaming--but she did feel as if he was still nearby. She wouldn't have been surprised if he really had been following them the entire time they'd been in the Dream. Watching a couple of rookie dreamhunters stumble through window after window was probably hilarious for him.

Small cottages made up the village. Warm yellow light burned in every window and warmth leaked from every chimney. Muddy boots stood by solid front doors. Emery peeked inside a few as they passed and saw families bundled up by fireplaces, parents putting small children to bed. They wore simple clothing: tunics and dresses and thick socks. Emery wondered vaguely what Grandpa Al and Edgar were doing. Probably looking for her. Hopefully looking for her.

She stopped before one cottage not far from the town square and tried the door.

"What are you doing?" Wes hissed.

She rattled the door handle. The latch didn't budge, and the people sitting before the fireplace inside didn't look up. She rattled it again, then banged on the door. They didn't so much as sneeze.

"We can't interact with them," she said. "They're just here for show."

"Then let's keep moving. Something's got to happen."

The town square was hemmed in by several larger buildings, each identified by rough wooden signs in an alphabet they couldn't read, some muddled dream-language that would probably only make sense to the Sandman himself. The lanterns here hung from high poles staked in the ground around a squat stone well at the center of the square. Boards covered the top of the well. A man stood in front of it, his back to them, a hand resting on the well’s lip. In his other he held a rusted scythe, and he leaned on it like a walking stick.

“Hello?” Emery moved slowly toward him, one hand on a revolver. She’d been through enough nightmares where someone turned around and had no face, or had tentacles or crab claws protruding where their eyes should be, or mouths filled with dead rats. And after the villagers in the cottages, she didn’t expect this man to hear her.

He did. He turned, and watched them approach with a wary expression on his fully-formed face. The weight of the blade turned the scythe in his hand. They hadn’t seen any fields on the way to the village, but he must have been a farmer. His clothes were also in finer shape than the other villagers’, and his hair was a crisp, clean blond, combed in a precise swoop from a neat part on the right side of his head. A razor-thin scar cut down his face, over his right eye.

“Who are you?” he asked. Emery started. He had a distinct, contained Southern drawl. A Texan in a German fairytale. Emery had seen some strange things in the Dream, but that took the prize. “Have you come to speak to the scientist? He isn’t seeing anyone now. It’s a bad time.”

That it was the middle of the night and that they were wearing armor that didn’t fit their surroundings didn’t seem to bother the man at all. Emery began to ask who the scientist was when Wes stepped up beside her. “Why isn’t he seeing anyone?”

The man with the scythe paused, looking between them, sizing them up. Then he said, “My name is Daniel. I take travelers to the path in the woods that leads to the scientist’s lab.” He motioned toward the castle spearing over the trees. “The way has always been dangerous because of the Witch of the Wood. We thought it would be safer after the scientist captured her, but since then, none of the travelers I’ve led to the path have returned, and we haven’t heard from the scientist.”

Wes glanced at Emery. Emery stared back at him—had they really just been dropped in a fairytale?—until Wes raised his eyebrows.

She turned back to Daniel. “That’s exactly why we’re here. We were sent to investigate what became of the scientist. We’re well equipped to handle whatever might be waiting in that castle.” She tapped her Peacemakers. Wes had put his hammer away, but he looked intimidating enough without it.

Daniel looked them up and down once again. Emery couldn’t tell if he was supremely unimpressed with them, or if his face just always looked like that. “Aren’t you a little young, Ponytail?”

Emery’s eyebrows shot up into her hair. Now he was mocking them? And when he himself couldn’t have been much older than them.

She smiled to hold in her anger. “We’re quite capable, I assure you. You can lead us to the path or we can find it ourselves; either way, we’re going up to that castle.”

“Fine,” Daniel said, shrugging. “But if something gets you out there, no one will come to save you.”

Joke’s on you, cowboy, Emery wanted to say. We’ve already got no one coming to save us.

“We’ll take our chances,” she said instead.

~

The path through the forest sat behind a blacksmith’s shop. The trees opened up there similar to the Sandman’s gateway and window, two huge oaks framing darkness. Moonlight founds chinks in the armor of the thick canopy overhead and dappled the pathway. Fog crept through the underbrush.

Daniel had brought a lantern with him; it cast shadows over his tanned, angular face. He handed it to Emery.

“Let me give you some advice,” he said. “Don’t leave the path. Look for the knight when you reach the castle. She used to guard the front gate, but I don’t know if she’s still there. If she is, avoid her. She’s a real piece of work.”

“Don’t leave the path, avoid the knight. Got it.” What was the proper etiquette for leaving a helpful person in a fairytale? Emery saluted. Wes cleared his throat.

Daniel shifted his scythe into both hands and backed away. The lantern light left his face, shadowing his eyes. He became two bright curves in the moonlight: the blonde swoop of his hair and the iron edge of the scythe blade. Then he was gone, vanished into the fog rolling across the cobblestones.

Emery and Wes turned back toward the forest. The path was dark.

“Remind you of anything?” Emery asked.

Wes looked grim. “If the Wilmark Fox shows up, I’m going to bash its head in.”

They started walking. This path through the woods was worse than the trails in Wilmark Park. The fog, the density of the trees, and the pressure of the Dream crowded in on all sides, like watching eyes. Past the pressure, Emery was sure there actually was something out there in the woods watching them, the same way she was sure of anything else in another person’s nightmare: the person himself knew it. The Sandman had had this dream multiple times, perhaps not recently, but throughout his life.

She shivered. “We’re walking through his subconscious right now.”

“We’ve been through twenty others. It’s no different.”

“But this is a dreamhunter. It’s so crisp. Everything’s so defined.”

It felt like a real forest, not a dream forest. They probably couldn’t step off the path, but it felt like they could. There was no narrowing of Emery’s vision, no slowing of her legs or scattering of her thoughts.

“He won’t sleep much, since he’s a dreamhunter. This is probably one of the few nightmares he’s ever had that was powerful enough to surface.”

Emery had never had a nightmare strong enough to come into the waking world. Most dreamhunters didn’t; they certainly had the capability, often more than non-dreamhunters, but they didn’t sleep enough to allow the nightmares to become corporeal.

This could have been the waking world, it was so realistic.

Besides the Texan, of course.

The trees ended before they came upon the castle walls. A stretch of moat separated the woods from the stone wall, like a huge sword had come down and cleaved the ground in two. A long stone bridge spanned the gap to a high portcullis, open now onto an empty courtyard. Emery and Wes started across the bridge, side-by-side, Emery holding the lantern up.

The knight appeared the same way Daniel had disappeared, in a roll of fog across the ground, sliding into existence where she had not previously existed at all. Emery wouldn’t have known it was a woman inside the armor if Daniel hadn’t said so; the knight was as old school as everything else around here, greaves and helmet and pauldrons, the whole nine yards. The armor was black, and she stood with her legs braced apart and her hands balanced on the pommel of a massive battle axe. The sharp center tip was planted in the groove between two stones.

“I suppose we should have figured there was no way to avoid her, huh?” Emery said, taking out her revolvers. Wes hefted his hammer in both hands. Emery raised her voice. “We’re here to see the scientist. We heard something weird was going on.”

Emery wasn’t sure they used the word “weird” in fairytales.

The knight didn’t seem to care. She could’ve been a statue if not for a single flex of the fingers of her right hand. The armor made her taller and broader than Wes.

“I don’t know about you,” Emery said to Wes, “but I don’t have the energy to fight this lady right now.”

At least the armor would hide a neat bullet hole in the flesh. She raised her Peacemaker and fired.

The bullet ricocheted off the knight’s heavy breastplate and tore through a chunk of the stone wall.

“Um.” Emery looked at her Peacemaker. “It’s not supposed to do that.”

The knight’s shoulders shook.

“I think she’s laughing at you,” Wes said. “That’s…nice of her.”

“Nice of her?”

“You just tried to kill her. She could be trying to kill you back.”

“Are you going to let us in or not?” Emery snapped at the knight.

With a visible sigh—a slump of the shoulders, a slight lowering of the head—the knight took her battle axe in one hand and started across the bridge. Emery felt the vibration of her steps through the stone, they were so heavy and rattled so loud.

Wes stepped forward. “I can hold her off. You try to get past her.”

“How did it not penetrate?”

“The Sandman has got some strong dreams. Just go. We’ll flank her.”

The knight’s axe slid into place in her hands before she swung it, smooth and automatic, like a machine. It came in a long graceful arc from her heel up to her shoulder, lifting Wes’s hair from his forehead as he jerked backward to avoid it. When it came back down, he raised his hammer and caught her blade on the hammer shaft.

“Go!” he grunted.

Emery dropped the lantern—it tipped and shattered—leaped past the knight’s legs, rolled, and sprang to her feet. Metal squealed on metal. Emery sprinted to the portcullis and turned. Wes was swinging now, driving the knight back a step only to leave himself open long enough for her to surge forward and tackle him against the short wall along the edge of the bridge. Wes locked his hammer with her axe again, but the knight was bending him back, farther and farther, until his shoulders almost touched the top of the wall.

Emery raised a gun to shoot, but thought better of it; if it ricocheted again, Wes was too close. She holstered the gun, fuming, and resorted to the old standby: she dashed back across the bridge and jumped onto the knight’s back, wrapping her arms beneath the lip of the helmet visor and yanking backward. Her momentum pulled the knight away from Wes, giving him the chance to drive the hammer head into the knight’s breastplate. Emery felt the deep thud of the impact. The knight staggered backward, but didn’t fall.

“Stupid—sturdy—scrap—metal!” Emery dug her fingers beneath the lip of the knight’s helmet. They needed a weak point to hit, a soft spot. The knight dropped her axe to grab Emery’s ankles and pry her legs away, but Wes swung for the knight’s elbows and she let go to avoid being hit. The knight stumbled, Emery pulled, and the helmet came off.

A fall of brilliant orange hair lit up in the moonlight.

Wes tried to stop mid-swing and lost his grip. His hammer flew from his hands and crashed into the low stone wall. He gaped.

“Marcia?”

The knight grabbed Emery’s legs and dislodged her. Emery hit the ground with a huff. The knight grabbed her axe up again, then turned, and Emery looked up into the face of Marcia Montgomery.

Her riot of hair fell past her shoulders instead of stopping at her chin, and she looked younger than she should, but it was definitely her.

“Who are you?” Marcia said, glaring between the two of them. “How do you know my name?”

“You’re our—” Emery started, until Wes began furiously shaking his head behind Marcia’s back. “The villagers told us. The one with the scythe. Daniel. He said you were a real piece of work.”

It was enough to turn Marcia into a human volcano.

“Scum-sucking slick-haired coward! Of course he told you! He wants me out of the way, but he won’t even come into the woods himself, oh no. He’ll send others in for him! If he wants to fight me, he should come and do it!”

“Why does he want you out of the way?”

“To get to the castle! They all want to get to the castle!”

Marcia paused, huffing, then scooped up her helmet from the ground and shoved her way past Wes.

“You want to go in, go in. I was here to save you, not to defend him.” She motioned at the castle with her helmet. “If you’re still alive when I get back, I might pull you out. Go inside at your own risk.”

Then she shoved her helmet on and vanished between the trees, taking with her the sudden warmth of familiarity. The loss of it made Emery feel heavier, and it took an extra effort to get back to her feet.

“So, Marcia is in the Sandman’s dream,” Emery said. “She was acting weird about him before. They definitely know each other.”

“They must be close, if she’s such a prominent figure here.”

“Does that help us at all? Knowing that? Maybe we could use her as a defense if he tries to attack us. Like, you know—he’s about to dose us with sleeping sand, and we say, ‘Wait! We know Marcia!’”

Wes looked unconvinced.

“It was just an idea,” Emery said defensively. “Let’s go inside before she comes back.”

   (Next time on The Children of Hypnos --> IT'S ALIIIIIIIIIVE)

[docleech]

Lonely Nights

I may have written a short porn story between Alex and Charles. Mostly, Alex fantasizing about Charles. Because they will be a very, very slow burn with lots of pining but that doesn’t stop moments like this.

ANYWAY. Alex is mine and Charles belongs to a friend who I don’t know if they have a tumblr or not. Soooo enjoy.

Snow was starting to dust the tops of the nearby Elk Mountain range, which meant if they gave it a month - perhaps less - then a thick blanket of white fluffy cold hell would be descending upon the sawmill.

Alex hated snow.

The cold snap had already sunk it’s vicious, unforgiving claws into the mill and surrounding forest. The early mornings always greeted the mercenaries with frost on the ground that was usually gone before 9 AM but the temperatures never got high enough to be comfortable for some. Most of the team wasn’t bothered by it in the slightest, especially folks like Match who was always bundled up in his fire retardant suit and flinging literal flames at people. Remmy wasn’t bothered either but she had already whipped out the house coat and she got to stay in her hunting blind all day, sipping hot tea and popping heads as she saw fit. Alex, on the other hand, felt personally attacked by the change in seasons.

When the cold settled, he could feel it in his bones. An unshakable ache deep in his joints past the muscle that no amount of hot soaks could ease. The cold was a thief that took the breath from his lungs and forced them to burn more as he worked twice as hard just to do the minimal amount for his job. The cold was also a snitch that gave away his position in wispy puffs, even through the cloak, and the past week had seen him run ragged with death after death after death… But it wasn’t always the colds fault that he died, because he had been particularly distracted as of late too.

That rested entirely on the BLU Sniper’s shoulders.

Development with the man was painfully slow, in more than one sense. It had taken far too many close calls with that damnable kukri of his before he stopped lunging at Alex every time the Spy managed to sneak into the hide. He could count the times on one hand that he had sat there with him, at a healthy distance of course, much the same he would with Remmy. The BLU never really had to talk because Alex was more than happy and willing to fill the silence himself with neutral, non-invasive topics. He would hum softly as he adjusted his cloaking device or clean his revolver, listening to the shots from the nearby rifle. He thought it was a gift when the Sniper did want to speak and always listened with his full attention. On the other side of the coin, he couldn’t count the number of times he had shoved himself away into a corner under the blessed covered of his cloak to sit there and observe the man in silence.

He was a curious creature by nature and the Sniper was his newest… obsession.

Alex was so preoccupied with painting a mental picture of who the man was, like a puzzle with a thousand little pieces for him to discover and fit together, that he had been painfully suffering for it. So perhaps it was for the best he couldn’t sneak out right now to go pester him further. It was a night after a long Saturday but also one of the few days that after ceasefire had been called the two travel buses had been waiting for their respective teams to shuttle them down to the nameless, uncanny valley town for their Sunday off. Normally Alex would have jumped at the chance to get out of the base and go be the social butterfly he was but he was stuck in the medbay. To say he did not feel his best was a terrible understatement and all the Medics had left making sure that he was prepared to take care of himself. He was fairly certain he was the only one in RED base this time but he wasn’t complaining.

What he would complain about was being disgustingly hot.

Alex was well aware it was likely a fever by the way he had been ripped from his medicine induced sleep in the middle of the night. The sheets were tangled around his legs and it took more brain effort than he would like to admit to free himself, kicking them away with an irritated huff. Still too hot! So he heaved himself up to sit and peeled out of the sweat drenched cotton t-shirt, flung that to the floor, and then let himself flop back onto the bed hard enough it shifted. That was better. Never mind that the bed was soaked with sweat and it made the thin sheets stick to his skin like the hair that clung to the back of his neck. The cool air against his body was starting to help but now that he was moderately awake he knew he wasn’t getting back to sleep any time soon.

So there he lay, awake and staring up at the ceiling where he could barely make out the overhead lights in the darkness and around him in the room was the low hum of various machines. It was a slightly off putting white noise, as he would prefer the silence to his room, but it was best he stay in the medbay in case he needed quick access to any medical supplies. A long, slow sigh left the Spy before he laid an arm across his eyes, shifting to get comfortable as his other hand splayed across his stomach and he tried to will himself to think about being any other place. It was difficult, the haze of fever and congestion he felt in his entire head was like trying to force his thoughts to swim through slime. Just think about anything, Alex, come on.

The sensation of his own fingers against his stomach was something to focus on. They shifted, moving to press against a particularly gnarly scar of an Eyelander that hadn’t quite hit it’s mark. He was sure the intention had been to cleave him in half at the waist but instead had only hit about a fourth of his body. It had resulted in more gut spillage than he liked to suffer but thankfully the Demoman had doubled back to finish him off. Almost every scar he had, no matter how old and faded, he could remember the incident where he had gotten it. They weren’t nice things to think about but it was where his exhausted brain decided to focus and at this point he wasn’t about to try and change that. He liked the way the smooth, raised skin felt under his fingertips and was content to just lazily trace it back and forth before eventually drifting his fingers to another.

When his fingers graced a new scar on his hip he was surprised by how the electric shock up his spine caught him off guard, a sharp intake hissing through his teeth. It was the aftermath of a sniper round that had probably been meant as more of a body shot but ended up missing that by a good few inches. He remembered he was in tow with Matchsticks, providing him some backup while their Soldier was getting back on his feet, before the literal hip bone shattering impact dropped him on the spot. It was the first time he had ever screamed himself hoarse like that and had been enough of a surprise to both teams it seemed like the fighting stopped for a split second. Match had taken it upon himself to put Alex out of his misery right there, before turning the entire force of his ire on Charles for the rest of the day. What wonderful destruction a fire axe could do to a hatch door to a Sniper blind.

But that was neither here nor there. Alex blinked almost stupidly behind his arm as he tried to slog through what had just happened. He remembered the day after walking had hurt like a bitch and there had been a slight concern he’d limp for the rest of his life, but he managed to shake it off. That… Had not been pain. Actually, that had been the opposite of pain entirely. There was a moment to consider before Alex pressed his thumb more firmly against the scar and was entirely unable to stop the short moan that ripped from him as his heels dug into the bed. Electric pleasure wormed its way up his spine and he shuddered, rolling his lower lip between his teeth. It wasn’t the scar itself but more likely the nerves beneath, trapped between scarred tissue and his hip bone - it was like a hot wire straight to pleasure central.

The best way to break a fever was to get hotter, right?

Throwing any non-fevered sense right out the window Alex huffed as he pressed his head more firmly into the cool, wet pillow and pulled his arm away from his face. It wasn’t like anyone else was around, in his defense. Who would find out his shame? With that in mind he set his free hand to cup himself through overly warm sweatpants and started to trace the scar. Light touches were wonderful but it was those deep presses he could feel to the bone that really started to pick his heart rate up. At first the Spy just focused on the physical pleasure between the sensation of the scar and palming himself through his pants, before wandering fingers finally slipped beneath the waistband to grip himself properly. A shuddery breath left him when he rolled his thumb across the head before starting to stroke, turning his head to press his burning cheek against the pillow. Alex started to wonder…

Wonder if the Sniper had callous built up on his fingers and how it would feel for him to grab his hips.

He pressed the scar and set his jaw at the moan that bubbled up from his throat, feeling a single rivulet of warm liquid dribbling over his fingers. Fuck. That was all it took for his brain to put far more gusto in drawing up more images. Ghosts of sensation, echoed sounds pulled from his encounters with the Sniper… Eyes pinched shut as his hand kept up a steady pace and his fingers alternated their work between feather light tickles and harder pushes.

How warm would the space between them be if the Sniper pinned him down? Would the man grab him by the wrist or by the hair? Would he bite - oh Alex hoped he would. He had seen those teeth from the snarls and sneers, they would feel amazing in the crook of his neck where it met the shoulder. Would he trace the faint scar of the beheading with his tongue? How would the rough stubble of his face feel scratching against paler skin? Alex’s breath hitched and his shoulders jumped at the thought, mouth falling open to help him breathe easier in labored huffs. He lifted his hips enough to shove his pants and boxers down so the waistband could catch beneath his ass, freeing his aching, dripping cock to the slightly cooler air of the room. Hazy, half hooded eyes couldn’t even focus on it completely before he was pressing his head back into the pillow, gasping out a moan -

Would the Sniper growl in his ears? Of course he would, lean close and snarl promises of bodily harm. He had already made good on a few of those during the fire fights, quick and violent but always with an underhanded tone of mercy. But he wanted to hear threats of a fuck so hard he wouldn’t be able to feel his legs. “Nnngh.” the movements of his hand became so much easier with the added slickness from near constant dripping pre. The growing ache of pleasure twisted tight in his stomach but only grew tighter and hotter with each passing second, threatening to tip him over the edge he was teetering closer to. What was it that made his mind imagine how those teeth and lips would feel over every inch of his skin? Bruising pale flesh with subtle marks of “Mine” - was that what Alex really wanted? Or perhaps he would prefer the dig of blunt nails in his skin to be dragged closer to hips he didn’t want to get away from. That press and burn of being stretched; “Fuck.” the whispered word led into a string of hard French curses, each word picking up a pitch as his hand frantically jerked his cock.

The hand that had been teasing the scar fell away to grip at the sheet beneath him and his toes curled to catch the cloth too. He swore he could hear the sound of skin against skin in a frantic rut, hear the growls and moans, smell sweat and hot flesh that was so close he could sink his teeth into. His throat itched with the gasps and whines, shoulders bunching up closer to his ears until all at once, finally, that sweet release came. And it came hard. It was a loud cry first before his hips jerked upwards, all of the already tense muscles along his back locking up to keep him there as he came. Thick ropes of sticky white splashed across his stomach and Alex saw stars behind his eyelids as the feeling took hold, squeezed him tight, and washed out of him like the withdrawing tide. There was a different kind of hurt in his body when he was finally able to collapse back to the bed, chest heaving with each dry breath he took. It was the kind of ache you only got from those nice, powerful orgasms. It took several minutes for the room to stop spinning and Alex blinked away some sweat that had dripped into his eyes. Already he could feel cooling cum on his stomach and it made his nose scrunch, though thankfully there was a box of tissues not far away. Originally meant for the sniffles it made clean up a breeze and he dropped the used tissue on the floor, before he laid on his bed staring at nothing in particular with boneless legs.

Had he really just… to the thought of… Oh boy.

Whatever shame his mind was wanting to put him through would wait as he shoved those thoughts to the back of his brain. The Spy still felt a little bit better. His clean hand was dragged down his face, thumb and finger rubbing gently at the soft skin beneath his eyes as he inwardly groaned. That nagging thought was going to tear him up when it got the chance, he knew it. This whole thing would come back to haunt him any night it wanted and he was just going to be ashamed of himself each time…

Somehow that didn’t stop him from adding two more tissues to the pile through the night. And to say the least, Alex had relatively peaceful sleep well into the following afternoon because of that.