#like dead flies once winter creeps through

[3vocatio]

unprompted but i love seeing people's ocs, especially ocs that are meant to serve as a mc or self-insert in any piece of media! i love seeing how their story unfolds from the one originally lain out, how they affect the characters as a whole, who they are and what they want... and it's exceptionally interesting to pin the patterns together between them and their creators, too. why did things go the way they did? why did you choose this route for them? what purpose does this story serve for you?

and the answers could simply be, 'it makes me happy', 'because i want to witness myself live different lives', 'i want to share my story with others', which are the usual answers, but lovely nonetheless ♡

[pearlsoflongago]

March Days

The Newest Season

Calligraphic Galleon, Ottoman, by Abdul Qadir Hisari

Cargoes

Quinquireme of Nineveh from distant Ophir, Rowing home to haven in sunny Palestine, With a cargo of ivory, And apes and peacocks, Sandalwood, cedarwood, and sweet white wine.

Stately Spanish galleon coming from the Isthmus, Dipping through the Tropics by the palm-green shores, With a cargo of diamonds, Emeralds, amethysts, Topazes, and cinnamon, and gold moidores.

Dirty British coaster with a salt-caked smoke stack, Butting through the Channel in the mad March days, With a cargo of Tyne coal, Road-rails, pig-lead, Firewood, iron-ware, and cheap tin trays.

--John Masefield

Buttonwood Farm by N. C. Wyeth

A Fairy-Tale Spring

And then she danced….

Where are you, Hyacinth? There is a lover waiting for you somewhere, my dear.

It is the first of Spring. The blackbird opens his yellow beak, and whistles cool and clear. There is blue magic in the morning; the sky, deep-blue above, melts into white where it meets the hills. The wind waits for you up yonder—will you go to meet it? Ah, stay here! The hedges have put on their green coats for you; misty green are the tall elms from which the rooks are chattering. Along the clean white road, between the primrose banks, he comes. Will you be round this corner?——or the next? He is looking for you, Hyacinth.

(She rested, breathless, and then danced again.)

It is summer afternoon. All the village is at rest save one. "Cuck-oo!" comes from the deep dark trees; "Cuck-oo!" he calls again, and flies away to send back the answer. The fields, all green and gold, sleep undisturbed by the full river which creeps along them. The air is heavy with the scent of may. Where are you, Hyacinth? Is not this the trysting-place? I have waited for you so long! . . .

She stopped, and the watcher in the bushes moved silently away, his mind aflame with fancies.

—A. A. Milne, from Once on a Time

Lovers in a Landscape by Muhammadi

Spring

VII

O Eyes, go forth the Spring to view, That smiles upon our Plains anew. A Heavenly Child in cradling Flowers, Sweet Breath from Skies unclouded drew. The Morning Breeze his Nurse, that rocked His Cradle, with soft Lullings due. The Baby feigns to sleep, and blinks, Shutting his little Eyelids two. And when the Lids are oped again, The Eyebrows drip with sparkling Dew. The Bees hum round and busy sip The Nectar, and make Honey new. O come, and let the Baby's smiles And Laughter, pierce thee through and through. O come, and leave your wintry Cell, And let Heaven's Light thy Life renew. And build new Cells with honey'd Wax, Plann'd like the Bees' six-sided, true. And warmed by radiant Fire of Flowers, Old Winter's reign of Death undo. Regret is dead; Love lives again; New Life transforms the Landscape's Hue. Bold enter, then, green Spring's loved Haunts, And drink fresh Wine, nor fear to rue. And drinking full Love's sweetest Draught, The glowing Heart new Love shall woo. Love wakes afresh in Earth and Heaven; The Rose in green, the Sun in blue. O Nightingale, behold thy Rose! O Eagle, thy bright Sun pursue!

—Jeláleddín Rumi, translated by William Hastie, DD

Woman with a Spray of Flowers from Safavid Iran circa 1575

[hezuart]

For the @rotgsecretsanta prompt: [No Ship] Reverse AU - Guardians as villains, Pitch as a hero (feel free to add book characters) !!

I hope you like it!

I made this... darker than it probably needed to be, but in this AU, the Man in the Moon chooses spirits of evil to sew discord on the Earth and bring misery to children. Pitch / Kozmotis alone, stands against them.

As for why there are two Tooths? I made two designs and could not decide between the two of them!!!! So I decided to polish up both for the heck of it.

I tried to fuse some of their book designs into this AU to give it a nice effect. For more info on each character, click below!

~~~

Jack Frost

Harbinger of Misery

Jack Frost is a sorrowful, dead-eyed young man who brings misery and dread wherever he goes. He has no memory of who he once was, but he focuses more on the fact that whoever he was, all his friends and family have long since died, and he will never see them again. As he is a spirit, he has no hope of making new friends or family, and the other Harbingers are too stuck in their own heads like himself to really pull him out of his spiral.

A chill follows his path, and those touched by his cold winter frost become ill, lethargic, and depressed upon contact. He is always frowning and dreadful. Other times numb tears stream down his face. His sighs put down everyone around him, as though a heaviness fell on their shoulders and chest. His magic makes people immobile and weak. He seldom flies anywhere; he can’t bring himself to do anything other than walk, slowly trudging through towns or overseas, creeping his way across continents, with rolling storms in his wake. Children are urged to stay indoors to stay away from frost-bitten fingers and toes.

~~~

Pitch Kozmotis Black.

Guardian of Courage

Pitch is a war hero who died protecting his daughter; he fused with the darkness, that of which, is in complete control. He wields the power of both dark and light, freely traveling through shadows and singeing enemies with his sword of light. He has utilized his powers to change the Sandman’s Nightmares into Dream creatures to protect children, making the world a better, more beautiful place in honor of his daughter’s memory. Pitch uses his powers to inspire bravery and courage within children to face their fears. He pretends to be a monster lurking in the shadows, and when a child stands up to him, he recoils playfully. He makes the children feel powerful when such small creatures like themselves are able to scare away a shadow demon. Pitch knows the fears of every child in the world but also knows what it will take to get them to overcome that fear. Pitch is the only acquaintance of Jack Frost. Jack initially wanted nothing to do with the man. But Pitch knows deep down, all Jack really wants is help, friends, and a family. Pitch believes Jack can change his center if he finds the courage, and the meaning, to do so. Pitch himself often finds himself lonely and longing to see his daughter once more, so he understands Jack’s misery. Pitch wants to help Jack see that new friends and family are possible, and that heartbreak later should not prevent you from seeking relations out in the now.

~~~

North

Harbinger of Triviality

North is more Krampus than Santa Claus. He is soldier-like and does not understand the joy of guessing what is in a present since it will probably be disappointing. He rations his food, a habit he continues from his Cossack days, and hates the taste of sugar. He only eats meats and bread, often dried and tasteless. He is a boring old man who only finds interest in power, territory, and wealth. He cannot stand misbehaving children. His large frame and horned fur hat make him terrifying. It is rumored he “punishes” the children that misbehave around him, though what those punishments are, no one is never sure. His elves act as his servants and his yeti are fellow soldiers.

~~~

Tooth / Toothiana

Harbinger of Trauma

I made two different versions/designs of Toothiana and I could not decide which one I liked more.

Teeth hold memories, but some memories have teeth. Some memories are best left forgotten. Memories repressed are taken by Tooth’s fairies, and stored in her shabby mountain palace in cages and caves. As a child, she had been locked away for ransom from her rich family. The incident ended tragically, and she had never managed to get over it.

1. This version of Tooth never leaves her home. She feels safest in a cage to keep her safe, and enemies out. She sends her fairies to collect traumatic childhood memories. She thinks she is doing good by collecting children’s bad memories, keeping them away until the child encounters a similar situation. She activates the teeth when she thinks someone needs help. Repressed memories bubble to the surface, giving the owner anxiety from the trauma they endured. Tooth only wants to help. She thinks they will be safer. She thinks forcing them to relive their memories will prevent them from taking risks, from doing uncomfortable things. She is a Queen of her Palace, overwhelmed by the duty she thrust upon herself. Her color scheme is cool-colored like her movie version, to inspire calm within herself and others, though it seldom works.

2. This version of Tooth WOULD leave her home. With a dentistry tool belt strapped to her waist, she would hunt for the teeth herself instead of letting all her fairies do it for her. She has the same motivations and reasons behind version 1, but her design is closer inspired to the lone warrior she was in the books than in the movie. Her color scheme is more warm-colored, which makes her come across as bright and dangerous.

~~~

Bunny

Harbinger of Despair

Bunny, being the last one of his bunny tribe, was selected as a Harbinger over his absolute despair. No matter what he does, he can never seem to gain a green thumb. Every plant he cares for dies, no matter how hard he tries. Even for those who do succeed, Bunny sees that everything that lives, lives only to die. It breaks him. Eggs in his care rot and spoil. His sighs make everyone and everything around him wither. Children feel like giving up or going into a fit of sobbing. He feels lost and unsure what to do with himself. In his fit of despair, he works tirelessly, creating machines and robots that will never die. He surrounds himself with stone and metal. What he seeks is eternal life. Any children that come in contact with his machines are overcome with worry over the prospect of death. They panic over one day losing their loved ones. Over losing their support, for they are dependent and powerless. They forget that life is a cycle of endless giving, taking, dying, and birthing. They drown in their own despair, just like poor Bunny, who lost his family young and is the only remnant left of his species.

~~~

Sandman / Sanderson

Harbinger of Nightmares

Sandman is a small, creepy little man that naturally produces Nightmare sand, and forms it into deadly creatures under his control. Not only does he prey upon your fantasies while you sleep, but he also targets your life dreams. Your goals. Your desired careers. He shatters them, making children feel self-conscious and inadequate. He makes those dreams appear far away, beyond their reach. He is why children grow up complacent and confused. He is, essentially, a unique twist in an accumulation of fears.

[spacebookettes]

mother

“You’ve weakened yourself” a deep male voice. Mother awoke, suddenly and those words evaporated until she was just left mildly concerned for no apparent reason all morning. Her partner was still away. She had nothing to do. Still no job ‘and me a housewife. Ha.'

Mother had not been too well lately, a little grim around the edges. Not active enough she thought. Went into a spare room and trod the trodder machine. A machine that folds up and just fits in that small space at the bottom of the bed. She is proud of that one.

The little table arrives, finally. It fits in the gap between the rug and the couch. Another perfect place. Mother had the house so fine tuned with relatively inexpensive simple furniture and furnishings. She had wanted to be an interior designer... ‘no an interior decorator' she corrected herself. The small simple house had simple tastes. The garden was a riot; blooms all year around when she managed it. And in summer wild twisting herbaceous over-grown. She liked the plants to ramble and grow how they pleased, not grow how was convenient. So wild untamed gardens, the back wasn’t any better. It did look wonderful a few times a year. Winter was an eyesore. She knew that the insects made homes of old seed heads and dried vegetation. So she left the garden tatty all winter. In spring a display of colour coordinated tulips that really turns heads. The people who walk mother’s street definitely notice the changes in that wild one. All the other houses have neat little gardens, some even have Bare Soil showing.

Words launched from her mouth, rambling incoherent words fast and then awake. A face the only memory mother was left with.

Somethings trying to break through mother laughed to herself. ‘Perhaps better not to entertain it with attention.’

The end

By Peter Stringer

Is Grandma a Witch

That house with the massive black slugs always creeping around the garden; even the birds won’t eat those slugs, broad daylight and giant slugs about their business. “Is she a witch mum"

The house is a normal semi-detached in England. The attached part is always hearing things through the night. Dead on midnight and that older lady starts up the bloody treadmill. A huge black slug with putrid orange underside creeps along the dividing garden wall. The divided family don’t want to make a fuss and they are used to it now anyway.

Halloween the place is lit up like a doom candle; spiders hang in the windows shadows appear manically across the inside walls when viewed at night from the outside. On the roof is a werewolf climbing down the chimney. Luminous skeletons are climbing out of the garden soil. No one goes trick or treating to this particular semi-detached.

Once a moth a little girl jumps out of a taxi and goes into the house... wonderful cake baking smells emerge with her when she leaves.

The older lady isn’t often seen, the gardening doesn’t need much doing, “she doesn’t look like a witch mum.” In fact the lady is one of the night people. When she worked, it was at the local college teaching adult night classes of Judo: now retired the older lady watches kung fu movies, sleeps through the day and goes to Magaluf twice a year to top up her tan. She flies at night.

The end

By Peter Stringer

A Troll Too Far

Mrs MugLiar “ahem it’s pronounced Mugler" gets letters from the lands; the worms recite them to her in her ‘sleep'. Her daughter StewGrinder MugLiar “ahem". Her daughter StewGrinder Mugler keeps mum informed about the discoveries... tales of multi-coloured insects, fluffy giant voles, spiny plants that once pricked make you see spaceships for days (the worms inform her). That sort of thing. And human battles.

StewGrinder is teaching the worms to pass on images as well. A dot with missing dashes can make an image, the first troll fax machine. Mr Mugler has lots of drawings of new tattoos that are amassing on StewGrinder’s many limbs. He pins them all to the larder door. Great leathery animal skins with little dots making patterns poked into them. StewGrinder doesn’t want to kill the furry things anymore; maybe just on Troll Union day.

Mrs Mugler is enjoying the day-stories of temples, Starmids, forests of snapping dragon plants and human battles over old promises and bits of land. These humans sound like they need some troll discipline. And who knew StewGrinder was a Chalk Boarder. She’d mostly only sat night-dreaming before... and all this biotics study, she could teach at the Rockville Chalk Boarding one day. All troll learning is done in solitude, taken up by the adventurous trolls. The Chalk Boardings are where they go to recite what they’ve learned about the none metal subjects. Great natural theatres full of giant listening boulders... and worms.

By Peter Stringer

[soulwillower]

if you’re too shy • richie tozier

(richie tozier x cam girl!reader smut)

[based off the song if you’re too shy (let me know) by the 1975.]

requested: i can't find it lol BUT 🤍anon (i think) requested a fic based off of the 1975′s new song, if you’re too shy let me know !!

warnings: swearing, alcohol use, switch!richie kinda, smut, unprotected sex, a tiny bit of cumplay i guess, mentions of phone sex, oral sex (female receiving), face sitting, a bit of dirty talking, UNEDITED as always

also i wrote this in a different style than usual and idk if i like it much but u can let me know what u guys think,, if its weird i can go in and change the povs since its 3rd person richie

[losers + reader are 21+ in this.]

7.4k words lol

♡

i see her online all the time i'm trying not to stare down there while she talks about her tough time

"h-hey, man, who's that?" the voice from right next to richie makes him damn near leap out of his seat. it makes beverly chuckle a bit as she takes a bite of her apple, shaking her head. "it’s nobody." richie says quickly as he tilts his phone towards his chest and shoots a toothy grin to bill. his friend raises his full eyebrows, "wh-what, so n-nobody was sending you n-nudes?"

"something like that." richie mutters, stomach fluttering as the image flashes in his mind’s eye - the curves, the dark red lace, the plush skin painting a perfect scene in richie’s vivid imagination.

richie looks back down at the photo. his his thumbs hover over the profile picture; he'd found her originally on his instagram explore page, the photos teasing and immediately he had to know more. y/n.

and then a few days later, he'd subscribed to her only fans, which he never quite thought he'd do with anyone, but he couldn't help it. she was so enticing, so perfect and so alluring. it was the playfulness that pulled him in; and he swears he's never lusted after somebody like he has with her. it was kind of starting to freak him out.

"is that o-onlyfans?" bill says and richie shoves bill's nosy face off his shoulder with a panicked grunt. "fuck off, mushmouth."

bill laughs and stan and bev perk up from across the table, staring at the two, interests suddenly piqued. "did you subscribe to a girl's onlyfans, rich?" stan says with a grin, setting his pen down on his notebook. 

richie just smirks and wiggles his brows a bit, enough to confirm his question. bill chuckles from next to richie.

"let me see." bev says, wiggling her manicured nails in a "gimme" motion. richie hands his phone over with red cheeks. normally he wouldn't care about his friends discovering he's paid money just to see a hot chick's bod, but this was different. for some reason, he felt connected to her. god, that thought made him want to slam his head against a brick wall. she doesn't even know him,  for all he knows she could live in the middle of.... montana, or like, ohio.

bev whistles and stan nods, "if i looked like that," bev mumbles as she tosses richie's phone back towards him, "i'd do that too. mad props."

noises of agreement fill the table but richie's just looking at the small smirk that peeks from the corner of one of the photos and he can't help but wonder what her eyes are like in real life. he wishes he could meet her.

girl of your dreams, you know what i mean there's something 'bout her stare that makes you nervous and you say things that you don't mean

it's a cold day when bill and richie find themselves stumbling in to the coffee shop for a drink. bill's muttering about some girl in his creative writing class that gave him head when richie's eyes catch a figure so familiar yet foreign that he stops dead in his tracks. bill turns to him, face confused. "r-richie, what's wrong w-with you?"

richie shakes his head, stammering in disbelief, "that-that's her, bill. the girl, from onlyfans. y/n." he whispers, gesturing with his eyes towards the girl working the register.

bill’s jaw goes slack, green eyes raking over her form and igniting richie’s stomach with boiling rage. as if bill’s doing something that only richie is allowed to do – as if they're not both being total creeps.

“h-holy sh-shit. she’s b-beautiful.” bill mumbles. richie elbows him in the ribs, shooting him a glare that prompts an eye-roll from his auburn haired friend.

richie swallows and watches, his throat feeling like sandpaper as she laughs at something the customer in front of them said. bill nudges richie, "i-i'm gonna get a s-seat. t-talk to her."

he winks and grins as he walks away, leaving richie with his reckless self. he thinks he's sweating through his sweater as he walks up, finding himself face-to-face with her. "hi, how can i help you?" she asks, giving him a smile

holyshitholyshitholyshit.

he might've just came right then and there. okay, he's gotta say something cool, something smooth. don't be a dumbass, tozier. 

"howdy, sugar. i'll have my coffee like i like my women." his mouth blurts as his brain sirens go off, PUT ON THE BRAKES, RICH – "a hot shock to the lap.”

she glares at him, cheeks light pink and eyebrows pulled together in annoyance and yep, richie's probably going to get hard because of that look but he's also probably going to toss his body off a bridge because what the fuck, tozier?

he can hear bill laughing quietly from a ways away and he quickly shakes his head, muttering quietly, "jail. jail, richard."

"funny." she deadpans, clearly not amused. because of course she isn't.

"sorry, i'll have a black coffee, y/n." he mutters, eyes widening to himself when he realizes she was not wearing a goddamn name tag and he just said her name.

this is a disaster. she gives him a bewildered, slightly creeped out look and if richie wasn't panicking, he'd gape at how she still managed to be effortlessly gorgeous even now.

he sighs, shaking his head, the door of the cafe opening and blowing a gust of frigid air through the warm room. fitting - douche chill. 

"look, toots, i don't want this to be weird. i- um, i recognize you." he says, cheeks aflame. she raises a brow, face straight for a few moments, unsure what he means.

it's not long after when recognition flashes over her own face - must have ruled out coffee shop, university and her local gym - and she nods with a tight, almost uncomfortable smile. 

he tries not to think of the livestream he watched last night where she showed all her new gifts and modeled lingerie, and how he’d spent his time to himself with his left hand immediately after watching. his cheeks are red with shame. 

"okay." is all she says, writing down a scribbled order on the coffee cup. her eyes shoot back up and give richie a once-over that really makes his fingers itch - god, why did he have to be this way? 

he almost runs his fingers through his curls but decides against it, eyes opting to focus on her own gorgeous eyes as they meet him. "i'm impressed i have a fan who looks like you, i must say. even if you are a complete jack ass." she purrs and his jaw nearly smacks the floor at its velocity as it flies open.

"what's that supposed to mean?" he asks then with a small grin, flattered at the tiniest of compliments that just barely, in his mind, eclipsed the insult that he so very much deserved.

"i'm saying you're kind of a dick. it's too bad, because you're real cute." she says casually, handing him his change. his stomach flips and butterflies release in his chest, a feeling that he's not felt in almost five years.

but damn, of course he messed up - he got the chance to talk to the hottest girl on earth and he started it by saying an awful joke that wasn't funny at all. of course she though he was a dick, he is one.

he's shocked, though, as he waits for his coffee with bill, who is still snickering into his hand every few moments, to find his coffee cup with extra sharpie scribbled on the white paper. a name.

y/n. and below it is a phone number with a small heart scribbled, and richie can't tell if it's a seven or a one but he figures he'd try every phone number in the damn state if it meant he could fucking text her. holy fuck.

"maybe i would like you better if you took off your clothes i'm not playing with you, baby i think that you should give it a go" she said, "maybe i would like you better if you took off your clothes i wanna see, and stop thinking if you're too shy, then let me too shy, then let me know"

he didn't text her for two days and three hours. yes, he counted it. no, he won't think about why he was obsessing over the numbers - but since the time he'd finally had found the courage to text her today, things have escalated proficiently. 

she'd just mentioned how hot it was in her apartment since her heater had gone haywire - even though the winter winds were cold, she'd claimed she was burning up in what she was wearing.

and the mere mention of her clothing had sent richie into somewhat of a spiral, spending at least seven minutes glued to his phone and scrolling through the saved album he had of those photos of her that she'd posted; his sweatpants getting increasingly tight and his palm suddenly aching to slip through the fabric and find some release.

but, in true trashmouth fashion, he apparently needed that sweet, sweet rejection from a hot cam girl he'd somehow weaseled into getting the number of in order to wank off properly, so he types out a text and hits send immediately.

what are you wearing?

and then he almost vomits in embarrassment – what was she going to think? did he just royally fuck up? oh god, he’s going to have to shave his head and move to canada.

his phone buzzes and he nearly passes out when he lays his eyes upon the image attached – there her body is again, curvy and full and beautiful, her skin glowing in the fading light of what he assumes is her bedroom. and with it:

this. what are you wearing, rich?

and then he pulls his gaze from his phone and stands, breathing heavily because holy shit.

he's gotten nudes before, but.... none from someone like her. holy shit.

he walks to his bathroom, splashing water on his beet-red cheeks. he swallows, staring at himself in the mirror. fuck.

he slaps his cheek once, then winking at himself in attempt to muster any sliver of confidence. and then he snaps a picture, only in his boxers.

and then he has to physically refrain from making a joke about wearing the same lingerie set as her, instead sending a flirty text that he knows any other woman would blush at. he just doesn’t know with y/n, and maybe that’s why he loves it so much. she's keeping him on his toes.

you like what you see?

he sends that one afterwards, shaking his head because oh my god, she's going to respond with "no" and then bill him $40 for the nude she sent him. not that he wouldn't pay, but...

his phone dings and he nearly breaks an ankle running to his desk. 

yeah, i do. but maybe i'd like you better without any clothes on.

he almost yells out loud at this, but he has a feeling that waking up stan in the middle of the night would not be optimal after their 'roommate agreement' they'd made that explicitly states richie cannot scream between 1am - 9am. so instead he smirks to himself, face turning red.

he's getting harder by the moment, and as he stares at that picture she'd sent earlier, he lets out a breathy groan. the lace....

we could face time yk

or we don't have to.

he reads her words in live time, watching the thought bubble appear again and watching it like a hawk. he can just imagine her sitting there with a small smirk as another text comes in and he almost groans as his dick twitches.

like, if you're too shy or something ;)

he stares at the screen for two seconds at that sinful photo she'd sent just before those texts and then sighs, shaking his head and pressing the green face-time call button.

i've been wearing nothing every time i call you and i'm starting to feel weird about it sometimes it's better if you think about it this time, i think i'm gonna drink through it

three days later, richie was undeniably and unequivocally drunk. but, as he's just explained about three times to mike, he knows that it is just easier to not think right, especially about her, right now - and the best way to do that is by getting so piss drunk that even if he tried to "hit her line," as he so eloquently put it, his dick would be too whiskey'd out to make a full appearance.

it's for the best. mike had fake gagged at richie’s cadence with a laugh, but richie was dead serious because he was starting to think he had a real issue.

it was obviously just a fun thing to do between two near-strangers, but he'd found that he was starting to almost pavlov-style condition himself into getting turned on every time the name y/n came across his recent texts or face times, and it was getting to be too much.

especially when her post notification popped up and he cracked a fatty in the middle of his econ lecture. christ, the point of elasticity of markers in the u.s. was not something he pictured when he usually had to quell a pitch in his tent. so yeah, it's too much.

because yes, he loves her fucking body and wants nothing more than her, but in truth he longs for the feeling of her skin against his; to touch her, to kiss her, to make her his. all the time.

but yet, it was just a good way to get off without all the strings and ribbons and yarn and whatever the fuck her soft-looking knit bra is made from attached.

so much for not thinking about her.

but i see her online (and don't think that i should be calling) all the time (i just wanted a happy ending) and i'm pretending i don't care about her stare while she's giving me a tough time

it’s noon the next day and he's laying in (for some reason) stan's bed instead of his own with a blinding, mind-splitting headache and an insatiable craving for a cheeseburger, eyes squinting in lust and something akin to shame as he watches the livestream y/n had just started. she’s in a slip – a very thin, silk and see through slip and it makes him more frustrated than he’s willing to admit.

as he stares at her smooth skin and wonders how it'd be to touch it all, her eyes catch something in the chat and she smiles coyly. "hi, rich." she purrs and richie almost chokes - holy shit, she saw him join.

"do you like my gift i just got?" she asks coyly, snapping the straps of her bra with a small smile and he stiffens almost instantly, thinking of how many times he'd seen her skin in videos and photos that were just for him.

how she'd moaned his name two nights ago on face time, her fingers buried inside herself slightly off-camera. and oh, how he wishes he could see all of her, but they'd not crossed that line yet - anything they'd done hadn't been yet proven visually, only from facial expressions, noises, and the brutal honestly of being together through face time.

he wants her so fucking bad, he needs her like he needs water to drink and air to breathe and it's murdering him as he watches her react to the chat of her livestream, playing with the hem of her black lace panties.

god, he needs a cold shower or something if he's going to get anything done today.

and then he's calling her an a few hours after her stream ends because he just can't wait - he feels his stomach twist with shame as he realizes he should not be doing such a certainly a terrible idea. but she answers after three rings. "richie." her siren voice purrs and he literally feels himself fall deeper into the pit.

"hi there, toots. got any coffee in the pot for me?" he asks, sounding surprisingly eloquent compared to how she normally makes him feel. 

she hums in fake thought, and it makes richie grin. she's fucking adorable. "come to the shop, i have my break in ten." and then she hangs up. he sighs, rubbing his face with his hand as he shakes his head. he's utterly fucked.

he's there in record time, a smirk plastered on his face as he walks in and sees her sitting at a table, lookin' all pretty. just for him.

"what made you think of calling?" she says in loo of a greeting. he sits across from her and wills his eyes to meet hers. "nothin' toots." he says with a half shrug, taking a sip of the coffee placed in front of him that has the the name 'dick' written on it in her handwriting. he rolls his eyes affectionately.

"oh, so it wasn't anything to do with my livestream this morning?" she asks with a look, eyeing him. her eyes are swimmable, they hold so many stories and secrets and maybe richie's just hungover, but he's feeling very flustered.

"we-w, uh, no. what... what are you talking about?" he rolls his eyes at himself inwardly, cursing stuttering bill and his contagious speech patterns. "-i don't know what you're talking about, sugar." he recovers fairly smoothly, if he may toot his own horn. and honestly, he can pretend not to care as long as he doesn't look into that goddamn stare of hers.

he chuckles awkwardly, cheeks aflame as she stares at him with a bored look and a small hum. she still looks perfect and he's even more nervous now, because oh god, oh fuck, he's gonna get slapped in the face by y/n.

it was pretty unspoken since they'd started doing... stuff... that richie probably still watched her content online, but she'd never fully addressed it until today during the livestream in front of a thousand others. 

he's choking on his spit in shame but then a smile splits her face and richie's sure he's suffocated on his own saliva and gone to a sinner's heaven. or maybe hell.

"oh, richie, i'm just teasing you. look at your face!" she says with an airy laugh, pinching his cheeks and making him want to shrivel up as he turns even redder. what the fuck? "-so cute. alright, i've got to get back to work. i'll see you around, rich." she says with a wink, taking her coffee and tossing it into the trash bin as she stalks towards the employee back room.

he gapes as he watches her leave and then gets up and makes his way to the exit, clutching the coffee like it was trying to jump out of his grasp and make a run for it. god, she's too much.

"maybe i would like you better if you took off your clothes i'm not playing with you, baby i think that you should give it a go" she said, "maybe i would like you better if you took off your clothes i wanna see, and stop thinking If you're too shy, then let me too shy, then let me know"

"-babe, you'll have to try harder than that." richie says with a chuckle, watching his phone screen as the beautiful girl on face time gives him a sly, challenging look. she's in a green lace bra, one richie's not seen yet and he can feel himself stiffen as she absently trails her fingers over her chest.

they'd been much closer over the last week since he last saw her in person, enough so that in the three-is weeks of knowing her, he's positive he's head over ass for her in a way that he shouldn't be. and yet, she still comes back every time, still texts him and answers those face time calls. he's baffled, honestly.

"i know you hate me because i'm right." he adds, not even totally remembering what point he's trying to prove as y/n shifts back a bit and more of her body is revealed, her hair glowing dimly in the soft lighting of her room. his eyes run over her curves, her full thighs and stomach and hips that fill over her panties and he almost groans.

"whatever, maybe i'd like you better if you took off your clothes." she says coyly. and richie's half flattered, as usual, but the more he thinks of it the more deflated he feels. he kind of thought they were growing something more than just getting each other off over face time like horny fifteen year olds. he grins nonetheless.

"you say that a lot, you know." richie says breathlessly as he stares at her. she tilts her head ever so slightly and grins, biting her lip as her eyes move around her screen with a conflicted look. "-why?" he adds.

she hums again.

"well. okay, so there's the visual world - like, the internet, onlyfans, instagram- it tells us that everything is amazing. and we should want everything. and it makes us yearn for everything that we don’t have and everything that’s unobtainable. you know, love, a relationship beyond physical. and even physical, it's different when it's online."

her words confuse him much more than they aid him. "you think... that because of the internet, love is unattainable?" he asks with furrowed brows, unsure how somebody so perfect and, quite frankly, lovable, would think that.

"it is for me." she says it with a small sense of forlorning but mostly it's whispered. enough that richie's heart skips a beat and he's, for the first time, not having a hard time keeping his eyes on her face instead of her body.

"what?" he asks dumbly. she just laughs, shaking her head and he stares at her on his tiny phone screen in the dark.

"that’s something that, you know. in real life, person to person, it has a lot of connotations of... trust and vulnerability and connection. doing what i do- and what we're doing… on the internet - it has the opposite of those connotations. like, before you, i didn't- i didn't really do this, i just was selling stuff. because guys don't want to fuck the girl who sells her body online. and you know now, i want to..." she trails off and richie doesn't dare interrupt her because he thinks she's about to say something he's wanted to tell her for a while now.

"i don't know, i guess. exploring someone's body in physical presence isn't seen at all as voyeuristic, or anything apart from...like, an intimate exchange." she says it casually, brushing hair from her face and shit, richie's swooning. he's in fucking love, he knows it, because y/n is so smart and intelligent and he's so fucking trashed for her. as she speaks, her hands move and distract him slightly from her body, doused in blue light from the screen and splayed out for him and only him on her phone camera.

the soft lace on her hips and chest make his body stiffen and it causes him to suppress a groan as she sighs, but richie knows he can’t screenshot this heavenly sight because she’ll definitely notice and she can probably already tell he’s having a hard time not staring at her alluring figure as she talks.

"-whereas, you know. as soon as it happens on the internet, it becomes kinky and cam-girly. and, you know, that's fine. i love doing it. it's just, i'm not sure where the authentic communication even is now. or if i get to have a happy ending." she says and he finally sees her blush for the first time.

he wishes he was there with her, he wishes that he could touch the redness on her cheeks and caress her curvy body and taste her skin on his tongue. he wants to feel himself inside her, he wants to be with her and kiss her lips and yet he can't, so he sighs and shifts in his position, moving to turn up the brightness of his phone so he can see better.

"shouldn't you get to be the one to decide that, doll?" is all he adds. because he feels kind of lost and just as confused as y/n is with this.

he's starting to feel weird about it, because... is this authentic? what makes things like hookups or whatever the hell they've been doing authentic? shouldn't this be easy? it's just phone sex, phone sex with a really hot girl.

a girl who is complex and alive and full of sincerity and richie is definitely falling harder than he should.

she just sighs but makes no other comment. and then they just stare at each other, richie's face illuminated in his dark room by the phone's reflection.

well, i found a motel it looked like the bins i think there'd been a murder so we couldn't get in i need to get back i've gotta see the girl on the screen

"come over and watch a movie with me." he says into the phone, biting his lip. the silence from the other end of the line is deafening as she makes her decision, because they both know she's not about to come over just to watch the shining or psycho. 

they've never done that before, and richie knows if she does come over, then whatever they have will crash down in a fiery mess. and he hates how excited that makes him as he waits in silence for her to drop the ball. so to speak.

"okay." she says, sounding shocked herself, and richie can't contain the excited grin from eclipsing his face. "yeah?" he asks breathlessly, and she's quiet for a little longer. "yeah. text me your address." 

she hangs up after that, and richie's thumbs shake as he types his address and sprints out to where stan, mike, ben, and bill are playing video games in he and stan's living room, wheezing at all of them to get out because someone fucking unbelievable is about to walk through that door.

she's there about an hour later, cheeks flushed when richie opens his door, looking just as nervous and flustered. "hi, chee." she says breathlessly, staring up at him with those goddamn eyes, the eyes that pulled him in the first time. his stomach flips in affection at her nickname and he offers her a drink as she takes in his shitty apartment. he wonders briefly if stan ended up buying that rosé that he'd given him shit for considering, and then prays that stan will stay the night elsewhere.

she's already pouring out glasses of wine when he snaps back to reality, and he grins at her, mumbling in thanks as she passes him a glass that's certainly poured almost to the brim.

"what are we watching, then?" she asks coyly, lifting a brow at him. his cheeks are red, but he tugs her arm down the hall towards his room with a grin, their wine sloshing from their glasses as they move erratically.

"we're watching psycho, y/n/n." he says as he pulls her into his room, glancing back to see she's already swallowed down almost half her glass, a lipstick stain on the side of it. faintly he knows stan will be frustrated if richie doesn't clean that off, but he's more distracted by her lips.

"i like psycho." she says with a nod and a cheeky grin, "the whole 'voyeuristic gaze' thing with hitchcock." she mumbles, and richie recalls faintly learning about that in one of his film classes freshman year and he grins as he takes a hefty gulp of his rosé, figuring he's already given himself away and if she's going to do that, he can too.

he hums, setting down his glass and grabbing hers to set it besides his on the bedside table. he turns around, intending on grabbing his laptop so they could watch the film, but she's so much closer that he'd expected and her hands fall onto his shoulders and he almost shits himself.

unpleasant, but honest. just richie's style.

"can i try something?" she asks with a grin, and richie nods, knowing that she could do anything to him and he'd gladly let it happen and most likely pay out of pocket for the damages afterwards.

and then she's pulling him from her grip on his shoulders, her lips sliding against his and making him grip her hips. his mind almost explodes at with y/n-sensory-overload because he feels her everywhere - on his lips, against his hands, on his shoulders, and pressing against his front.

her lips taste like chamomile and rosé.

she thinks his lips taste like vanilla and cigarette smoke, just as she'd always imagined. he feels so real, pressed against her lips and his body against hers, and she sighs as her tongue slips into his mouth because god, she's needed him for so long. and now she has him.

his hands move, touching every inch of her as their tongues fight for dominance. she pulls back, smirking as she gently pushes him onto his mattress, sliding onto his lap smoothly afterwards, grinding her hips against his slowly.

the moan he emits is heavenly and she could cry because she finally gets to hear it in person and not through the crackling static frequency of the phone.

so she grinds down on him again, eager to feel all of him. he's hardening against her core and she whimpers into his mouth in need as his fingers slip under her top, rubbing circles on her bare skin and making her shiver. she's noticed to this gentleness; it was rare when she did get to enjoy the comfort of another body with her own, and when she did they were hardly half as loving or caring as him.

she's desperate now, she needs to feel him inside her after all these weeks of teasing and waiting, so her hand snakes down to palm him through his sweats. he lets out a small groan into her mouth, biting her lip as he pulls back slightly. their eyes meet and his are hooded with lust, lips parted as she pumps him slowly from outside his sweats. his hips buck up lightly into her palm and she smiles gently, kissing him slowly.

"let me make you feel good, y/n." he mutters, eyes pleading as he stares up at her. her stomach flutters with butterflies and she nods, shocked that he wants to pleasure her.

he gently pulls her off his lap until she's laying on his mattress and he stares down at her, biting his lip as he takes her in. he can't fucking believe she's really here. she slowly pulls off her top, leaving her in her bra and jeans as she stares up at him with a wry, seductive smile. then she unzips her jeans and slides them off, leaving her in his favorite set of hers - black, lacy, and revealing. she looks utterly stunning and he groans, his hands falling to run over the skin, tracing the lace on her breasts. her cheeks are red as she gazes up at him.

"touch me, richie." she orders and he almost groans as he drags his lips over the valley of her breasts, sucking on the soft flesh and admiring the splashes of budding purple and pink that he's created. her heartbeat is quick under his fingertips and he moves to unclip her bra, kissing her skin as the fabric falls away.

she's slightly cold in his room, and goosebumps appear over her flesh as richie leans to catch a nipple in her mouth, flicking his tongue over the sensitive bud. she lets out a quiet whine that has richie rutting into the mattress next to her, his fingers trailing down to dance at the waistline of her underwear.

and then he's pulling aside her panties, his fingers running up and down her slick folds and making her jump in lust. he can't wait, just like her, and he's rubbing her clit teasingly as she pleads, "chee, please."  her eyes are eyes closed in bliss as his finger slips inside her, crooking slightly as he moves it. he presses his lips to the skin of her breast, pumping his finger and then soon adding another, crooking them both in a way that makes her let out guttural moans of pleasure. he marks her breasts with littered pink and red marks, smiling to himself at her figure.

she can't help but swoon as she watches him, his hair in his face slightly until she brushes it back, his fingers curling inside her and making her gasp, pleasure coursing through her body. his thumb softly comes up to rub her neglected clit and she grabs his shoulders to steady herself, the pleasure almost too much.

she's honestly slightly shocked - knowing richie as little as she really does outside of the literal booty calls at two in the morning and the accumulative forty five minutes they'd spent in person, she'd expected him to be... well, good. just good. because there's no way someone so funny, caring, and smart could also be that good in the sheets.

but right now, he's making her see goddamn stars.

"i've been wanting to touch you for so long, sugar." he mutters, eyes raking over her figure as her breath comes in stuttering gasps. she watches him with blown-wide eyes as his demeanor changes right before her, making her fall apart at his fingertips.

"that feel good, honey?" he asks, smirking as she whimpers, clenching around his fingers. "yes, god you feel so good." she utters, making him groan in approval from where he's sat back, watching her face contort in pleasure. she lets out another moan and richie stares at her body, watching his fingers as they fuck into her. he can't take it, then.

"will you sit on my face, doll?" he blurts, and she nearly yelps out as his fingers leave her. it's abrupt, but she's started to notice that this is how he operates - impulsivity is his second nature. and she loves it.

her face burns as she nods, the thought of richie under her making her whimper with anticipation. "yes, richie, please." she moans out again and he's grinning, laying back on the mattress with a wink. "c'mere, need to taste that pretty little pussy." he mutters and she feels herself clench around nothing, desperate for him as she swings a leg around to straddle his head.

immediately, his hands wrap around her thighs, thumbs smoothing over her stretch marks as he stares up at her, eyes glinting with desire. slowly, his finger pulls the seat of her lace panties to the side and his breath hits her bare, throbbing pussy, making her breath hitch. she cards her fingers through his hair and lowers herself slightly, gasping in shock as his tongue darts out to lick a bold stripe up from her entrance to her clit.

"chee," she moans out, tightening her grip in his hair and sending a groan through his body that reverberates and makes her shiver. his lips attach to her clit and fiery pleasure snakes through her body making her legs shake, a moan escaping her lips immediately. he sucks lightly before releasing to swirl his tongue, her moans making richie impossibly harder through his sweats.

"so good, rich." she mutters and he groans, tongue spreading her wet folds and slowly prodding at her entrance, dipping in slowly before pulling out, teasing her.

she can't help but grind down slightly, making richie grip her tightly, tongue sliding into her again and making her yelp. "you taste so good, baby." he mutters lowly before slowly reattaching himself to her heat, her eyes rolling slightly at the sensation as he fucks his tongue into her. one of his hands snakes up to her ass, gripping it tightly and then slapping it, the stinging pleasure making her buck her hips against him, emitting a hiss from her.

"rich, i-" she cuts herself off with a sharp gasp, the pleasure from richie's mouth making it increasingly harder to speak. her toes curl and her head tilts back as his tongue flicks over her clit, teeth grazing it slightly and making her buck.

she's embarrassingly close already, and judging by the way richie's smirking under her, he can tell. "please, please." she mutters, hips rocking on him as his tongue swirls, nipping softly at her clit and making her cry out. "please, make me cum, 'chee." she mutters and his tongue moves quicker, hand slapping her ass again.

and then she's clenching her thighs on either side of him and grinding down as she hits her peak, moaning quietly as she shakes in pleasure on top of him. he rides through her high, lapping at her and pulling away with a grin as she moans his name dejectedly. she's worn out from the best orgasm she's ever had and he gently nudges her so he slides in between her thighs, her back now on the mattress. he kisses her cheek and she keens quietly.

"fuck me, richie." she mutters, eyes still closed. his eyes snap to hers, surprised at the dominance in her voice after how she was two seconds ago.

he moans quietly, kissing her deeply as he ruts against her and relishes in the feeling. he's pulling off his sweats and boxers in record time and then he's pumping himself as he grips her hips, turning her so she's on her stomach, ass propped up slightly. his hand runs over the smooth skin of her ass, snapping the elastic of her panties and making her moan quietly.

then he's lining up her hips with his, pulling aside the lacy seat of her underwear to press against her entrance. he waits a moment as he leans to press a soft kiss to her spine, slowly easing into her. she moans loudly as he eases in, her face pressing against the pillows. she smiles as she smells the scent she'd just recently come to know as his, his cock stretching her and filling her up fully as he buries himself to the hilt inside her.

"so tight, sugar." he mutters and she whimpers, getting antsy as she adjusts to his size. "richie, please, need it so bad." she mutters, bucking her hips back against him in need.

"say that again." he mutters, sounding strangled, and she grins into the sheets. "please fuck me, richie. need it so bad, need to feel you ruin me." she whimpers, chest fluttering in anticipation. his hands grip her hips as he pulls out of her slowly, almost as slowly as he entered, before stopping almost all the way out. she moans loudly in pleasure as he pushes back in, snapping his hips against hers and filling her completely.

she briefly thanks god that his roommate seemed to be out for the night as she moans his name loud enough for the neighbors to hear.

he sets a brutal pace, his cock thick as it fills her up and makes her toes curl. he pushes her hair away from her neck and presses kisses to it as he hits a spot inside her that makes her scream his name. his fingers move to pinch her nipples, rolling them as he fucks into her.

she's completely blissed out at the feeling of him inside her, so glad that he invited her over and that they finally get to touch each other. "rich, oh my god." she emits, eyes squinted shut in complete pleasure.

"fuck, toots, takin' me so well, aren't you?" he asks, hands kneading her ass before slapping her right ass cheek harshly, making her arch her back. at the new angle they both let out a groan and richie knows he'll fucking cum too soon if they stay like this, so without warning he pulls out completely.

y/n whines, breathing heavily as his hands come to flip her around. now on her back, they make eye contact and she bites her lip, pulling him in for a searing kiss that knocks the wind out of both of them. images of richie in his room alone, snaps and late-night face times play through her mind as he grips her and slides her hips down towards him on the mattress and lines himself to her again, pulling her legs up so they're against his chest before pushing in.

he gives no time to adjust to this angle and it makes her moan loudly as he hits a spot deep inside her that pulls her closer and closer to her second orgasm.

his name leaves her cherry lips like a mantra and he can't stop staring at her as he fucks her into the mattress - the way her tits bounce with his brutal pace, the way her face is twisted in pleasure, the way she clenches and spasms around his cock.

one hand grips her breast, rubbing her nipple with his thumb and forefinger as he kisses her again, addicted to her taste as he feels himself coming closer and closer to the edge.

"chee, fuck, right there." she moans out and he groans in pleasure, the feeling of her walls clenching around him making his hips stutter. he keeps his thrusts up, though, as her fingernails rake down his back leaving small trails of burning pleasure in their wake.

her skin is covered with a sheen line of sweat as she looks up at him, hair wild and lips kiss-bruised. "god, don't stop, 'm gonna cum." she mutters and he snaps his hips harder, eager to make her cum so hard all she can think of is his name.

he moves a hand down to rub at her clit and he moans into her neck as she clenches hard around him, her hips bucking spastically. he can tell she's about to cum, and after a hard thrust, she does for the second time, spasming around him and sending waves of pleasure up his body. she's moaning his name, pulling him closer in bliss as she becomes sensitive and god damn it, she's so fucking beautiful.

"please cum, richie." she whispers against his lips, "please."  and then at her will, he's spilling into her, hips stuttering as he pushes as deep into her as he can, loving how she clenches in sensitivity around him. he stays inside her for a moment as they breathe, coming down from their highs and eyes closed as they take in what just happened.

"holy shit." he says because yeah, that's like all he can say right now because he just got to fuck y/n and she's kissing his fucking collarbones right now and its making him blush and his heart flutter.

"that was...incredible." she whispers against his skin and he can feel her smile against his skin. it makes him feel all soft inside as he pulls out of her and flops next to her, kissing her forehead.

his fingers flutter over her sensitive core, smiling as he sees how wrecked she is, some cum dripping down her leg. he then soothes over the lace panties, patting her lightly and kissing her red cheek.

"rich?" she asks, making him look up at her. he hums in question, pushing some of her hair back. "can we still watch the movie?"

his heart swells and he grins, kissing her softly. "of course, doll. you're too cute." he says with a wink, making her roll her eyes. he hands her his shirt and then pulls sweats on himself, mumbling "stay here" and padding out to the kitchen to get her water and snacks,  then returning minutes later to see her holding his phone in her clutch with a smirk.

"what're you doing?" he asks with a smile, but she shakes her head, making grabby hands for him and the snacks. so he laughs, cuddling up with the girl of his dreams and watching a flick, falling sleep with tangled limbs and a lipstick-stained neck.

and after she leaves the next morning with a kiss and a wink, he checks his phone and smirks to himself as he notices the lock screen she'd apparently made last night while he was making snacks.

a photo of her in his bed, wearing his shirt, a soft smirk on her face, neck littered in budding hickeys and a hand between her thighs next to her black lace panties.

god, she's going to be the absolute death of him.

//tag list:  @gabiatthedisco @blisshemmings @simplesammyx @dickology64 @clownsloveyou @emnotm @moon-shine-baby @toziershmozier @daughter-of-the-stars11 @lets-vibe-bro @trashedfortozier @oceandog13 @beauregard-s@finnskindofwoman  @kait-tozier @upamongthestarss \\

[blackssuunn-mandoandyodito]

Your Refuge

Pairing: Frankie "Catfish" Morales x f!reader

Rating: M

Words: 3.7k WOOH!

A/N: Hmm yeah so I wrote this all on my phone and idek where it came from but I love how it turned out so please enjoy it. This is my first with Frankie so yeah, also keep in mind the warnings.

Warnings: angst, mentions of death, mentions of dying, fluff, smut, no condom (wrap it up friends), oral sex (f&m), shyiness, slight dry humping. Let me know if I'm missing anything.

Summary: After the chaos in the Andes, Frankie comes back to you and tells you how he feels.

He knew it was a bad idea. He knew it, felt it from deep inside his chest. He saw it in your eyes when he went to tell you about how he was leaving for a few days, that he wouldn't be able to pick you up from work and take you on the date he promised. He knew it, and still, he went.

The steering wheel feels too harsh to the touch, but still not enough to make him feel grounded, to make him realize that he's finally driving home to you, that he's safe and alive. Instead, it feels as if it was someone else transmitting the sense of touch to him, that some other's hands have the ability to make him feel what they feel but through a filter. And he doesn't want to admit it, but it comes close to not being in his own body. He fears that one day he's gonna wake up and find out he's still trapped in the Andes lifting a dead body and trying to keep himself and his friends alive.

He takes a deep breath, gets carried away by the thought of sunlight, by the heat that the rays make him perceive in his skin when he props his arm on the window. 

He lets himself drown in the thought of you. The urge to close his eyes and stop the tears from falling is strong but not enough to actually do it, he didn't survive what he just went through to die in a car crash. The idea of him dying there instead of Tom and never being able to tell you how he feels grips his heart as the tears fall down his cheeks.

He hasn't seen another car in miles, making the fear of being in an illusion grow. Even the radio is at a low volume, he can barely hear the soft rock music playing. His mind tries to trick him and creeps the idea of only dreaming into his thoughts again, but he refuses to give in. 

The wheels creak as he parks the truck outside your house. Everything around is silent, there doesn't seem to be people getting ready to work or children running to school for their first class. Maybe it's winter break already, he hasn't been keeping track of the days. The streets are still free from snow though, and he couldn't have imagined the rays of sunshine that warmed his arm a few minutes ago.

He feels a million miles away from there, every time he closes his eyes he hears another gunshot, sees another lifeless person lying in front of him. 

He opens the door and jumps out, thinking that it may be close to winter but not there yet, because goosebumps spread all over his skin at the same time his breath comes out of his nose, he can see it but it doesn't feel like his nose might fall off any second still.

He pulls his jacket closed, shivering slightly from the cold. A delusional wish makes him want to have the ability to shake off the cold like it was dirt. He had enough of that for a lifetime.

Without really being conscious of his actions, his feet take him to your red wooden door, with strong steps that differ from how weak his body feels.

A strong fist knocks on your door as softly as he can, trying not to scare you. He waits for a few seconds while noises come from inside your house. There's a door opening and closing, then he can hear how you drag your feet along the way to the entrance. Closer to him.

When he can finally see you as you open the door, with sleep still clinging to your face and wrapped in a thick robe of a kind of cloth he fails to recognize, everything he tried so hard to keep together breaks down.

A sob leaves his lips just as you seem to wake up fully and realize that he's here, he's alive and uninjured and you can touch him and have his body close to yours as you had wanted for so long.

Your skin comes in contact with his when you wrap your arms around his neck, gasping. It surpasses the sensation of even surviving, the first thing he's able to fully enjoy feeling in weeks. Your touch doesn't come through a filter, it feels raw and real. 

He bends down and cries in your neck, failing to put into words everything he's feeling, everything he felt in the days he didn't see you. 

The thing that clings to his heart is how long it seemed when he was living it, how the days seemed to turn into weeks and then into months and then into years. He felt like he hadn't seen you in years.

Your hand flies up to his hair, threading your fingers through it to try and calm him down as sobs and hiccups break his body with his arms wrapped around your shoulders. It's not a comfortable position, but he can't bring himself to move for fear of letting you go and never being able to touch you again.

All the plans he made on his way there are forgotten as soon as you walk back into the house with him wrapped in your embrace. He lets himself be guided because even if he wanted to see where he was going, the tears that flood his eyes wouldn't let him.

The sound of the door banging closed makes him jump, but your voice calms him down, shutting down whatever memory that may have triggered.

"What's wrong Frankie?"

You sound so concerned for him it breaks his heart even more. He wishes he could tell you, but it would probably change completely the way you see him. And he can't lose you.

So instead, he raises his face and tells you the only truth that still stands over everything.

"I'm in love with you"

The silence that follows his words is deafening. The sky is painted blue, and his soul feels close to be that color permanently too.

He only stares at you. At how big your eyes are now that you're looking at him, how soft your skin looks and the creases of concern that show around your eyes. How your eyebrows seem the perfect complement to an already astonishing face that he missed so much, how your lips are slightly open while your mind goes through the options that you can provide as a reaction.

You cup his face in your hands with tears in your eyes and a watery smile showing. He cups one of your hands in his, taking in the heat that your touch provides.

"I know." You simply say, with the most beautiful voice he's ever heard.

And then his face is closer to yours, his fingers grab into your shoulders and it feels like they belong there. 

All your pent-up emotions discharge at once. You press your lips against his, blindly moving through the house like a plane about to crash. His body collides with a lot of furniture, sharp edges hitting his hips, and his tender sides. It feels so real that he's close to crying of relief instead of pain.

The tears mix between your kiss, turning it bittersweet.

Your hands pull his shirt when he presses you against your bedroom's door, the knob digging into your back. He moves to open it, a clicking sound letting you know that he did it when you fall back and he catches you from falling to the floor.

Your touch finally makes him realize that he's not dreaming, he doesn't feel like an outsider in his own body anymore.

It gets replaced by another kind of fear inside him. He's scared that you will regret this, of not being enough for you. He's so broken that his sharp edges may cut your skin and make you bleed, suffer for him when he's not worth it.

But he's so deep in his thoughts he doesn't realize that you'll cure him, that the sharp edges will soon become soft borders if only he lets you take care of him.

And he's so selfish that he will let you do whatever you want to him.

Your steps guide him to your bed, he realizes as both of you fall over it. The sheets caress his skin softly, enveloping him in the warmth that was lacking when he wasn't with you. He inhales deeply when he perceives your scent, clinging to the pillows and mixing with his now that you're rolling on them together.

You rest back into the bed with him leaning over you. Your hands push his face away tenderly, wanting to get a good look at him. It breaks your kiss, but both of you are so breathless it really doesn't bother you, or not too much.

He wanted to shower you in declarations of love, to speak about how you make him feel. But now, saying something feels out of place. 

Instead, he presses himself closer to you, letting his body show you everything he can't convey in words.

Slowly, his tears subside, your touch acting as a balm for a wound that he once believed would never heal. 

He wanted to show you how he shook to his core at the many emotions that ran through him whenever he was with you. 

His gaze travels down your body from your lips and back to your eyes. His hand lowers down to your side, near your hips. But he stops himself, unsure if you're comfortable with him touching you that way so soon.

"May I?" he whispers, hopeful.

His heart skips a beat when you nod, granting him permission to do whatever he desires. 

He situates himself between your legs with his shoulders at level with your knees and moves to pull open the robe, then softly nudges your hips up so he can pull your pajama pants down as he hooks his fingers in the elastic. It comes as a surprise, but it must get cold at night for you to use it. The day you drunkenly admitted to sleeping naked isn't one he'll forget easily anytime soon.

He lowers his face to his hands' level, blushing as he feels the heat radiating from your core. Regardless, his eyes marvel at the glow that your skin seems to radiate while his hands wander from your thighs to your belly, pushing up your shirt with his fingertips barely grasping your body as he takes it off. It sends shivers down your spine, and you close your eyes to try to slow down your heart a little.

Your hands shake slightly as they fly down to grab at the cotton of his shirt. He lets you twist it with your fingers as his thumbs hook over your underwear now, pulling it so slowly you would barely notice if your senses weren't so sharp at every single thing that's happening at the moment.

He lifts your legs up so he can pull it off completely, then throws it behind his back without caring where it ends up. You giggle softly.

His hand moves to draw circles just around your heat, making you jump at the unexpected touch.

You feel so exposed to him, he can see everything as you enclose him between your legs. But if you can't trust him like this, then who?

Shyly, he moves his thumb near your clit and brushes around it, stimulating you enough to make you moan but not as you need.

"Is this okay?" He asks, with his voice so small you're not sure you heard right.

By way of answer, you move your leg to shove his arm and he quickly moves his finger to circle your clit, sending electricity all over your body as you dig your fingers on his shoulders. The shirt starts bothering you when it stops your hands from feeling his skin without any layers.

"Take it off," you mutter, breathless. You whine at the loss of contact when he straightens just enough to take it off as fast as possible, letting you see his softness only briefly. You'll make sure to marvel at him later.

He bends down again, this time resting completely on top of the bed. His hardness digs into it, and he has to bite his lip when his hips give an involuntary thrust against it, seeking friction. 

He resumes his movements on your clit, going red when he moves his face closer and licks up a stripe over your wetness. It amazes him how wet you are, can't understand how he managed to arouse you this much. It only makes him blush harder.

He nudges your legs with his shoulders, moving them up so he has better access to your center. Your legs shake slightly at the change of posture. 

Less shy now, he pushes himself closer to you and laps at your center, drawing circles around your clit with the tip of his tongue while he alternates it with thrusts inside you.

One of your hands grips his shoulder as the other weaves your fingers between his silky locks, groaning with your eyes closed.

"Does it feel good?" he asks, hesitant. You nod, feeling hot all over.

 Covered in a thin layer of sweat, you feel how the bed starts rocking a little as he humps the bed, moaning and gripping your thighs with both his arms wrapped around them. His eyes are shut closed, spreading and fueling your arousal when he starts sucking on your swollen clit. He pulls apart with his lips red and glistening with your wetness, kissing the soft skin of your thighs. 

A shaky breath leaves your lips when his hands disentangle form your legs and move up to pull at your nipples. He rolls them around between his fingers as he moans against you. 

"Frankie!" You cry, arching off the bed to follow his touch.

"You're so gorgeous," he gasps, reverently.

His cheeks are painted pink as he looks up at you through his lashes, lapping at you again with his tongue flat. Your eyes move down to his shoulders, and it pleases you to see he's the kind that blushes all over, from his face to his chest. He's burning up against your palm.

Warmth builds down your abdomen, your mouth falls open as your fingers pull at his hair and he moans, liking the feeling. His humping starts going faster while his tongue thrusts inside of you, and your hips start rolling against his face desperately.

But just as your legs start quivering, when all your breath leaves your lungs and the moans start turning into shouting, just at the edge of your release, he pulls away.

You whimper, about to complain when he stands up and starts fumbling with his belt, trying to get it off as quickly as possible. His urgency makes him clumsy, unable to unbuckle it.

With a short laugh, you smile, push yourself up to your knees and move his hands away, startling him when you do it fast and without any trouble. His pants fall down with a loud clank as the belt buckle hits the floor, making both of you jump. 

His shyness presents itself again when you see the outline of his erection inside his boxers, with a wet patch right where his tip is. His hands twitch to cover himself but ultimately don't. Delicately, you move your fingers to rub through the material and he moans, biting his lip as he looks down to you.

"Can I?" You ask, breathing hard. He nods eagerly, gulping when you pull down his underwear and he steps outside it when it falls to the floor on top of his pants.

He feels overwhelmed, completely undone with your touch when you pull him closer to you and start stroking his length. His world is reduced to this, to your hands roaming all over him. His legs feel close to giving out.

Your head nuzzles between his legs, mouth enveloping the tip of his cock. He feels so turned out he's shaking, trying not to come instantly. A deep groan comes from his chest, vibrating all of his body.

Your tongue trails all the way to the base, it's hotter than anything else he's ever experienced. Then, you take him as far as you can in your mouth, sucking and bobbing your head on it. He curls over you slightly, biting his lips to repress a shout from escaping. 

He feels close to the edge, but he doesn't want this to end so soon so he pushes you away as tenderly as he can, breathing harshly and trying to stop himself from letting go. Your mouth comes off with a wet pop.

He climbs over you again, looking you straight in the eye as he moves to lay you down the bed and hover on top of you. He props his arms beside your head, with his legs between yours. Your bodies are almost completely aligned together, feverish skin that feels familiar and close to light the room on fire.

Your hands fly to the back of his neck, running your fingers through the end of his hair, tugging. 

"A-are you sure you want this?" He mutters, suddenly overcome with insecurities that make his heart tight and his eyes sting.

Your palm caresses his face, smiling so sweetly at him as you nod that something inside his heart completely melts, lets go of everything that stops him from doing as he desires. He wants to please you, to make you happy. The fact that the thing that will make you happy is what will make him happy too brings tears to his eyes.

He bends down to kiss you again, filled with repressed desire and desperate want that increased in his time away from you. 

You run your hands down his sides and splay your palms over his lower back, putting a little pressure behind your movements so he does something.

"Come on," you whisper, opening your legs as an invitation.

With shaking fingers, he rubs the tip of his cock on your wetness and pushes inside slowly, not entering completely. 

The heat that envelopes him feels so good he buries his face in your neck and whimpers, your fingers clawing his back when you gasp. His lips brush near your ear and kiss softly, shuddering as he breathes.

Both of you stay completely still for a while, he gives you time to adjust to him. 

Once he feels how your body relaxes again, he thrusts a little deeper, catching your lips in a kiss that makes a tear roll down his cheek at the happiness he feels. 

Something changes, a barrier comes down once he's buried deep inside you. The sun seems to shine a little brighter, his soul doesn't feel cold anymore. It feels like two pieces of a puzzle clicking together. Even your lips taste different to him.

Like home, he thinks. She tastes like home.

His hips start rotating in slow circles, moaning as warmth spreads through his body. The burning in your insides goes higher, covering you in a white pleasure that makes your throat feel tight and your legs shake.

The circles turn into short thrusts, sending vibrations through your body. You bite your lip when you start thrusting back, meeting his movements halfway. You want more of Frankie, more of him.

 He bites your shoulder, overcome with pleasure and desire. With deep, long strokes, he starts going faster, and you rock against each other, muffling your moans in the other's skin. 

He moves to kiss you, with his forehead on top of yours, eyes wet and closed. Consumed with such a high desire for the other, deep in the desperate pleasure you had never felt before, it feels like flying. 

It was like finding your place in the world, knowing that there's someone who belongs next to you and makes you shine even brighter than you already do. You will shine together now.

Your hand clutches his shoulder, trying to stop yourself from screaming as he pounds into you. With each thrust, he takes you higher and higher, to levels of pleasure you had never felt before. Your back arches off the bed when he slows down but slams harder, gripping the sheets with such force he's afraid he'll rip them apart. 

A surge of heat tires through your bodies, enjoying the sensations that swirl inside your bellies.

At one point, you both think you can't take it anymore, that the love and pleasure mixed together will make you pass out, about to lose your minds. 

If this is the way he's dying, he thinks, then he's more than okay with it.

But as you give a sharp cry, your walls tightening around him and your hands squeezing his skin until it goes red and is likely to bruise, he realizes that he doesn't need to die to know what Heaven is like.

You come together in violent spasms, gasping and shaking while moaning each other's name in ecstasy. 

Kissing each other, his arms start trembling at the effort of keeping his weight off you. He's so breathless he feels light-headed, with your overheated skin against his own as you try to ease your heart back to normal and get your breathing to slow down. 

You kiss his jaw, sending goosebumps all over his body. Then, he turns to lay down next to you, buries his face in your neck, and you stay wrapped around each other for what feels like ages.

The room is getting warmer now, as rays of sunshine sip through the window, lighting your tangled bodies with the sheets barely covering your skin.

Distantly, you hear when he stands up and then comes back to clean you up, tosses something inside the trashcan, and returns down the covers, hugging you.

Frankie's breath, slow now, hits your neck, and calms your heart. He's safe between your arms now. Everything's okay, you can be his refuge as long as he needs.

With a loopy smile, you fall asleep.

[thebibliomancer]

Essential Avengers: West Coast Avengers #4: FINALE

December, 1984

So things are going well for the West Coast Avengers so far, huh?

Well, at least Tigra got out of the ocean and same for Wonder Man and the pool? That’s something??

Anyway.

How have things been going for the West Coast Avengers?

Last times on limited series: A west coast branch of the Avengers was formed on Avengers chairman Vision’s request, head up by Hawkeye and with a roster of Mockingbird, Tigra, James Rhodes Iron Man, and Wonder Man.

Their first team activity was to beat the crap out of the Shroud, a friend of Tigra’s who followed her to the new Avengers Compound under the mistaken impression that she was in some kind of trouble. Then Hawkeye offered to let Shroud join the Avengers for taking a punch so well but he declined. For some reason.

Next, the West Coast Avengers assembled to try to take down bank robber the Blank, who robbed one (1) bank before the city escalated to calling in superheroes. He also personally offended Wonder Man by escaping him but c’mon Simon, you could do better for a nemesis. Although the Blank is still a better one than the Grim Reaper. After escaping the Avengers via explosion, the Blank had Graviton pop into existence right in front of him.

In the previous issue, the West Coast Avengers help Los Angeles deal with the unseasonable winter summoned by the Casket of Eternal Winters over in the Thor book. Since Wonder Man is still bummed over the Blank, Tigra and the Shroud help him track the guy down but find out that Graviton is now the Blank’s boss. Tigra and Shroud get tossed out to the ocean along with the Blank (for being annoying) and Wonder Man is held at the bottom of a pool until he stops blubbing.

How will our heroes get out of their various water themed predicaments??

I don’t know about Wonder Man but thankfully Tigra is exceptionally good at treading water.

She has to hold up Shroud who was knocked out on impact and she activates an emergency signal beacon that’ll summon the other Avengers.

Only god and Tigra knows where she was holding that.

... Maybe pouches aren’t so bad as a costume element.

Also, Blank has gone completely missing after hitting the ocean. He doesn’t appear in the rest of this book but he’s not dead. He doesn’t have any other appearances for twenty-five years but eventually shows up in a Spider-Man #580 (also written by Stern) where he’s up to his old bank and armored car robbing and then getting in over his head with superheroes ways.

In a way you have to admire that he absolutely did not change after twenty-five years and is still doing literally everything we saw him do last issue. In another way, you have to wonder why he would move to New York when he was going to leave LA due to having superheroes.

Rob banks in the Midwest, you fool!

Anyway.

Tigra treads water until Iron Man shows up and scoops both Tigra and Shroud out of the way and wooshes them to Avengers Compound.

After dropping them off, Iron Man apparently went back and tried to find the Blank with sonar scans but couldn’t locate the dope. He speculates that he got caught up in an undertow but don’t worry. As discussed, he just goes underground for 25 years.

Iron Man wants to head off immediately and get Graviton but Hawkeye tells him to settle down.

Hawkeye is the voice of reason against the hot-heads. Its amazing where character development can take you.

Hawkeye: “I’m worried about Wondy, too... But we can’t just go smashing our way into Graviton’s lair! He’s one of the toughest guys the Avengers ever fought! The first time we went up against him, he held ten Avengers at bay... Including Wonder Man and Thor! I wasn’t there, but reading Captain America’s report on the incident made me glad I wasn’t!”

But Iron Man should know this already... he was one of the Avengers in that report.

Iron Man says he’ll need to spend more time going over the Avengers files.

Iron Man: “Iron may have fought Graviton, but I haven’t!”

Hey! Rhodey reveals his identity to the others, just like he considered doing. And just like he was afraid of, Hawkeye begins to treat him like an amateur!

Rhodey counters that he was the Iron Man during Secret Wars and did a good job saving Hawkeye’s ass during that.

But more, Rhodey’s hot-headed attitude reminds Hawkeye of himself during the kooky quartet days and wonders how Cap ever put up with him. So paying it forward, he walks back and says he was out of line to call Rhodey an amateur and that they’ll need his power to take down Graviton.

Assuming that Wonder Man is being held hostage and won’t be able to help, Hawkeye decides that the first order of business is going to need to be finding him and getting him out of whatever trouble he’s in.

For that, they’ll need to plan ahead. So Mockingbird pulls up some landsat maps and Tigra gives them the cool scoop on the layout of Graviton’s mansion.

Later, at said mansion.

Two lady escorts are whispering by the bar about what an awful creep Graviton is. Its pretty great.

Lady 1: “... He’s... certainly a striking figure of a man! But he gives me the creeps! I hate the way he paws me... I’d rather take a bath in a pool of slugs! And if you tell him I said that, I’ll call you a liar to your face!”

Lady 2: “Don’t worry! After the way he handled those super-powered party-crashers earlier, I won’t put anybody on his bad side! Assuming he has a good side! What a bore! At least he pays well!”

Its good to know that even as a super-powered guy taking over organized crime, Graviton still has absolutely no personal charisma.

There’s a wunk thwak at the door so one of Graviton’s goons goes to check it out and gets a gun shoved in his face by some new visitors.

Its popular villain Madame Masque! Head of one of the Maggia crime families! And her goon Louis!

She demands to be taken to Graviton at once and she is because would you argue with a mask with unnecessary rivets?

Madame Masque: “I heard there was new talent in the area -- working to consolidate the Southern California gangs. Talent interests me.”

Graviton: “And is that your only interest?”

Madame Masque: “No, I also love power. I’m told you’re quite a... powerful man!”

Ew.

Graviton brags about his control of GRAVITY and Madame Masque tells him he’d best watch out for the Avengers. She hears they started a new group locally and Avengers means trouble. Especially since her old enemy Iron Man is part of the new team.

He laughs off this warning because he has an Avenger at the bottom of his pool just to show off.

Graviton: “Observe... the late Simon Williams, perhaps better known to you as Wonder Man! His strength was quite remarkable, but no match for my localized gravity fields! It was a simple matter to hold him to the bottom of my pool until he ran out of air!”

RIP Wonder Man. Uh, again.

Actually Graviton mentions that even though Wonder Man has stopped blubbing, he’s still holding him to the bottom of the pool because the fool has come back to life once.

Louis, the goon, reacts in shock at seeing a dead lifeless body in the pool so Madame Masque hauls off and slaps him.

Graviton is very impressed at her management style that he begins to propose something, something salacious if I had to guess, but then some repulsors hit the pool with a KROOOSH.

In this Avengers book, an Avenger arrives to avenge.

Iron Man: “Graviton... and Madame Masque! Now, isn’t this a cozy little scene! Too bad I have to break it up!”

The armored Avengers starts aggressing at the various minions, including knocking Louis into the bushes.

Inside, the bartender takes off her bartender outfit to reveal a Mockingbird outfit underneath. I suspect that maybe this bartender is actually, in secret, Mockingbird.

She contacts Hawkeye and tells him to put phase 2 into operation.

Meanwhile, outside, Graviton uses gravity to slam Iron Man to the ground but for some reason the effort is making him feel light-headed.

Madame Masque notices and asks Graviton whats wrong but he insists that he’ll crush Iron Man but then enter Mockingbird SPANGing her stave off Graviton’s gravity shield and dunking on him.

She also reveals in thinky thoughts that as Bartender Bobbi, she drugged everyone’s drinks. Graviton still being up she attributes to him having the constitution of a moose.

Still, I’m laughing at the West Coast Avengers using their prep time to just up and drug everyone. Even if the big boss has resistance to status effects it’s a hilarious work smarter moment.

Hawkeye’s sky-cycle swoops down but Graviton just knocks it away.

In another hilarious move, that’s not Hawkeye on the Sky-Cycle.

Looks like him but it’s not.

Because ‘Hawkeye’ is a dummy and if Hawkeye came up with the idea to disguise himself as Louis, then he’s no dummy.

And if he’s ‘Louis’ then I’d bet that Madame Masque isn’t the real article either. Process of elimination leads to an obvious answer there.

But again, they put a Hawkeye dummy on a Sky-Cycle hoping Graviton would deflect it into the bushes to deliver Hawkeye’s equipment to him. Amazing!

Meanwhile, at the bottom of the pool, Wonder Man has stirred to life and has been struggling against Graviton’s power ever since Iron Man arrived. His efforts collapse one side of the pool.

Startled by that, Graviton’s concentration slips, giving Wonder Man enough of an opening to claw himself out of the pool and clobber the supervillain.

Graviton manages to cushion against the blow because, sure, gravity can do that. But then Iron Man grabs ‘Madame Masque’ and flies off to start phase three of the strategy.

The villain flies off after Iron Man, still affected by the drugs but fighting through it. Because “can’t let that Avenger make me look bad in front of her!”

Whoever decided to play on Graviton’s ego has a big brain.

Graviton hears ‘Madame Masque’ scream and swoops down to find her alone.

Because Iron Man had to do some prep.

Iron Man: “Welcome to Substation #5! They tell me that the entire southwestern power grid feeds through here! I figure that should give me enough power to beat anybody... including you! So, unless you’ve gotten smart and want to give up -- you’d better make your move, sucker!”

Graviton has not gotten smart.

But the West Coast Avengers’ plan is pretty smart.

They had Mockingbird infiltrate Graviton’s mansion and drug everybody. They had Hawkeye and a ‘Madame Masque’ show up to get Graviton to reveal where Wonder Man is, play on Graviton’s ego and libido, and I assume keep him from going wild if he has a squishy person standing next to him. And they crank Iron Man up on so many watts so he can go toe-to-toe with Graviton if he hasn’t already passed out from the aforementioned drugs.

It’s a good plan.

Probably going to cause some blackouts but... uh... look. Worthy cause?

Iron Man: This is incredible! I can feel the energy surging through my armor! There’s no sensation that even comes close to this! This is what it means to be Iron Man... this is what it means to be invincible!

Of course, Rhodey isn’t Tony. In fact, the West Coast Avengers doesn’t really have a really techy/sciencey person?

Wonder Man used to be one of Tony’s peers but he hasn’t touched science since coming back to life.

Hawkeye invented anti-gravity once but never really returned to that well.

Oh, Mockingbird has a doctorate in biology. But she’s gone full into the spy/costumed adventurer thing.

Anyway, even though Rhodey is able to blast everything Graviton throws at him, the cables he used to link to the substation can’t handle the thousands of mega-volts and begin to melt.

So just as he repulsors Graviton onto his ass, a power surge short circuits the armor.

‘Madame Masque’ runs to help Graviton but PSYCHE ITS TIGRA

She used the little cat trinket established last issue to take on her human form which looks enough like Madame Masque in the sense that she has black hair and a generically attractive body type.

Graviton manages to put up a gravity based force field and fend off attacks from Iron Man, Wonder Man, and Tigra. But knocking them away almost floors him.

Then Hawkeye and Mockingbird come Sky-Cycling by and Hawkeye shoots some tranquilizer gas arrows because, hey, why not pile on more sedatives?

Graviton brags that its a simple matter for him to increase the weight of the gas so its hugging the ground instead of his lungs.

Then he passes the fuck out.

GOOD JOB TEAM!

I honestly never thought I’d see a superhero fight end by sedating a man so much that he passed out and probably should be rolled onto his back.

The U.S. Marshals hauls away Graviton while the news shows up to interview the West Coast Avengers. But Hawkeye excuses the team saying they have another important mission to finish.

Mockingbird: “‘Important mission?’”

Hawkeye: “My barbecues are very important!”

HAH!

Yeah, the Avengers all return to Avengers Compound to finally eat Hawkeye’s steaks.

That was what was truly at stake this whole time.

Tigra says it was lucky that she was wearing a mask because she was as shocked as ‘Louis’/Hawkeye.

Wonder Man says that he can actually survive without food, water, or air but he doesn’t really enjoy it.

And Hawkeye says that just in case things had gone horribly wrong (because he’s a responsible team leader) he’d left word with the New York Avengers to assume that they were all dead if they didn’t call back by midnight.

But when he later did call back, Vision taped a congratulations message to play to the whole team.

... Vision are you so busy that you couldn’t just talk to them?

Pre-recorded Vision calls the team Avengers, cause they are. But apparently it makes Wonder Man and Tigra realize that their misgivings about deserving to be on the team have gone.

Beating up Graviton is a great ego boost.

So that’s the West Coast Avengers limited series! But like the panel says, the team is coming back for Avengers #250. The big 2 5 0, two teams!

And the team will get their own ongoing book in about a year which will go on for 102 issues. Oof. Dunno if I can keep up the two a week pace but I have a year or twelve weeks to think about it.

Follow @essential-avengers​ because West Coast Avengers! Right? Who doesn’t love a second team in a different location? The X-Men have like three or four teams, the Avengers can have two! Also like and reblog because I’d appreciate it.

[adalwclf]

hiraeth; or will there be a home to return to

The territories north of the great Kerouyat River sit buried in a winter of folk legends and witchcraft. The air hums with malice like a devil made both manifest and omniscient, but do they know its shape or how it moves and by what science or method it chooses its prey? The few, remote souls of the region do not and lo they board up and wall the pale against it and the strange chimeras which move out among the pine and the darkness, and against the hideous silhouette that stalks there, lank and spiderlike and towering up into the boughs of great trees; or the packs of strange beasts, foreign to this land, but sick with madness; or the companies of people congregating in the guts of once-abandoned ruins, burning effigies of bulls and crudely-made men; or the deadcart hauled by a father and four, unblinking sons; or the man made of flies or the old sutler in his coat. Or the silence. The animals drive south as the cold thickens and Adalwolf, unknowingly, leads the way. The winter creeps in after him under his skin.

Three days later, he is in a small hamlet by the name of Orchard Ferry. He barters fur for a night in a cramped tavern room with space for a bed and a shelf and nothing more; he barters too much. The tallow candle on the shelf bathes the five-by-eight in light. He has never slept in a place such as this: the drunken roar in the ribs of the tavern below; the dingy walls and the grease stains left by fatty candles; warmth. Warmth in the smiles and the speech and the eyes. Laughter filtering into the room from a pair of children playing out in the streets. Even here, he feels alone, and he misses home.

When night comes, a fever settles in. In the delirium, wild apparitions crawl out from the crack beneath the door or through the slats in the timber walls and up from under the bed. The old man in the coat visits him but says nothing. He is always smiling with eyes like dead stars and Adalwolf learns what true fear is. In the early hours of the morning, the man leaves, and a deep, dreamless blackness follows in his wake. Adalwolf is drowning. When he wakes, he’s in the middle of the woods again and the village is nowhere in sight. Two days pass before he finds the road and another two brings him to another town by another name. The town is alive with gossip. A whole family, the villagers are saying, torn apart by wolves. It was Orchard Ferry, but was it the wolves?

*

“I don’t much like the look of him,” a middle-aged man with a broken nose and no family sneers over his wooden tankard. Unlike other communities where churches tend to be their nucleus, Berwickshire had sprung up around her one tavern as a bordertown between the Shroud and the northern breadbasket arterial to Thanalan. Adalwolf has, for some unknowable reason sitting at the far end of the bar, struck a nerve in Joel, the man who is now fitting him with a withering glare while his leg does a jig beneath the table.

“Leave him, Joel. Reckon the reds’ll sort ‘im out.” His brother, Lester, is finessing a cinch of rope into different kinds of knots. He was a sailor in his youth, but now he has a bum leg and a bad back and can’t finish a full day’s work without the pain putting him up. He occasionally glances to the dark-haired boy but shows disinterest. “We ain’t soldiers no more. It’s not our place.”

“It don’t work like that and you know it. We’re always soldiers.”

“Says you.”

“Yeah, says me.”

His brother pauses with the knot to look up and roll his eyes at Joel. He cranes to spit into a metal bucket at his foot before grabbing his old walking brace and using it to hoist himself onto his feet. He looks at his brother again and then across at Adalwolf. He runs his tongue along his teeth while he thinks.

“Joel.”

“Oh, here we go again.”

“Joel, oh come on, just shut that shithole of yours and listen. You listening? Good. Now, do you remember when we was young – oh probably ten or eleven for you, thirteen for me – and pa was set to take us hunting after the harvest, but, being the ornery, impatient shit you’ve always been you says to me at the crack of some dawn: ‘Lester, let’s go huntin’ and I says: ‘Well now, Joel, you and I both know daddy said that he’d take us first thing come harvest end.’ But you ain’t havin none of that and you’ve got your foot down, like way down, like ‘surprised it didn’t go through the floor’ down and I reckon I could rightly see that so I roll out of bed and slap on some overalls and grab the old muzzleloader, the one fitted with the new bayonet pa’d just picked up from the smith and slapped on, and you and me-- we went out there to do our business. You remember that, Joel?”

“Course I remember that, what’s this got to do with nothin?”

“Well, we found us a big old pig, I took a turn shootin him and then you did with yours and we did some mighty fine work for two lads of our age if I do say so myself, but the pig wasn’t dead and so we followed the stubborn bitch near on two hours if I recall, course the memory ain’t what it used to be, but yeah and we find it just splayed out and lookin like it’s about to breathe its last and you get the idea that you’re fixin to finish it off with pa’s nice, new bayonet. Wanted to break her in, I guess. Still with me there, brother?”

“Yeah, I’m still with you but I don’t see the relevance in none of this.”

“Well, I know, but hold on I’m getting there. So you’re fixin to gut the pig and I’m seein that she’s down but she ain’t out and I’m also seein a mean look in those eyes that says: tread not here. I try to tell you this, see, and again you’re havin none of it cause like I said: ornery, impatient shit. So, you get to the point of just yanking the rifle from me and trudging up to the beast and, well, damn Joel. We both remember what happened then, don’t we? You was bleedin all over the place before I got enough of a sight to pop her in the head. You nearly died that day were it not for the grace of god.”

“What a fuckin day that was, learned my lesson that’s for sure.”

“Well, see, now that’s what I’m gettin at. I’m not sure you did learn your lesson because what I see is that same dumb, ornery piece of shit fixin to jam a bayonet into the gut of a cornered animal who don’t see that the animal is cornered and down but he still ain’t out and that his tusks are still sharp and his eyes are the kind of desperate that makes you mean and makes you dangerous. And I’m seein my brother who I love dearly – you do know I love you dearly, I tells you so much – about to make the kind of mistake that he might not be able to walk away from.”

A thoughtful silence follows the lecture. Lester watches Adalwolf and Joel stares at the toes of his boots beneath the table. His leg has fallen still and he punctuates the silence by spitting into Lester’s spittoon. He speaks first.

“Probably not even worth the energy anyways.”

“Probably not. Course, that’s just my piece. You got a bug well I ain’t gonna stop you. Hell, I’ll throw in with you cause that’s what brothers do, but you know what I figure? I figure that right about now Mary’ll be finishing up supper and you and I know she always makes too damn much, enough for both of us, and that she’d be sure delighted to see you at the table seein as you don’t visit us much no more.”

“Yeah. Suppose you might be right. She does make some mighty fine *pro-vi-sions,* don’t she?”

“God’s truth. Now, hurry up and grab your possibles. Looks like it’s itchin to rain.”

*

The following day, the sky is thick with black and lighting cracks across her surface while the heavens pour down on the small town. Only a few, brave souls go out into the weather. There is a father and his two, eldest sons trudging in the wet and hollering for their kin: a young girl caught out in the storm. A mercenary built of more solid stuff than the folks in the town kicks out through the front door of the tavern and barrels down off the veranda like some truculent and enraged beast, his hobnailed boots sucking in the mud. He wears a weathered, brigandine vest and there is a rill of blood coming out of the side of his head where an ear used to be. He is snarling. His friends call him Charlie, but he doesn’t have any friends.

“Gonna kill the bitch,” he growls back to a comrade who’d stumbled out onto the porch after him. He spits blood out and turns back to stare through his slick mane at Adalwolf, crouched on his haunches some twenty paces across the muddy sprawl. There is blood around the boy’s mouth and none of it is his own. Charlie slides an aged backblade from its scabbard and tosses it between his hands. “You hear me? Gonna split you open, crotch to lip. Make a new tunic of you, boy.”

Adalwolf is still spitting bits of ear out from in between his teeth when he fetches his miseriecorde from a hide sheathe at the back of his hip. He stays low and for every two steps Charlie takes, Adalwolf takes one step back.

“Got claws, do we? Then stop scamperin back, you fuckin mutt. When I’m done here, gonna kill your whole, goddamn family, you hear me, boy?”

Adalwolf doesn’t speak. He’s wild-eyed and something rumbles between his ears. Charlie is grinning and muttering something under his breath as he closes the distance. His body lowers. He says something about Adalwolf’s mother, and some things can’t be put right again. He brings his sword to bear. He lunges.  There is an awful sound of bone and Charlie is screaming. Some have crowded in the doorway of the tavern to watch.

“Unnatural,” a man mutters darkly from a window where he watches and holds his daughter close. It’s surreal: half Charlie’s size, and yet Adalwolf’s snapped his arm at the elbow with ease. He’d gotten too close. Someone vomits at the sound.

Charlie is stumbling away and wailing, his sword stuck somewhere in the mud. A step back for every two steps Adalwolf moves forward; there is nothing intelligent in Adalwolf’s eyes; there is nothing but fear in Charlie’s. He fumbles down with his good hand and snaps a bootblade  forward, shaking.

“I-I’ll fuckin, I’ll fuckin-- just-- just stay back!” He punctuates the air with the narrow blade once, twice, and then on the third stab, Adalwolf brings his dagger around and punctures Charlie’s wrist clean through, sending his last weapon thudding into the mud. 

He shrieks and Adalwolf is on top of him before he realises what’s happening, tumbling into the mud. Charlie is screaming and flailing wildly as hands – terrifying, suffocating, unknowably powerful hands – close over his skull. He feels their crushing vice right before a pair of thumbs dive into the sockets of his skull. Adalwolf doesn’t notice the spurt of blood as he bites down and opens up another with the artery on the man’s throat. He doesn’t notice anything anymore. The screaming turns into gurgling, into wheezing, and then into quiet. His partner watches it all, transfixed as if by some Other’s decree; a cosmic judge lording over some awful but necessary rite. Adalwolf sits astride the man’s hips, unfurling upwards. Arms slack at his sides. Eyes on the ether. For a moment, he looks anointed: a testament to a law older than stone or dirt. He breathes deep of it, and then the moment passes. He hobbles to his feet in a fever-dream that he’s yet to wake from these past two months. He looks to the villagers on the board floor porch, but he doesn’t see them. He looks off into the woods. He bolts.

An hour later, the two boys looking for their sister find their father already knee-deep in a newly-formed river and he is crying over a small body buoyed up among the deluge. The body is still. 

And the night never ends.

[justablobfish]

Snowball fight

Day 5 of my Advent Calender. A new drabble or oneshot everyday until Christmas, following the Continent’s favourite found family and what they’re up to in the winter season. Based on this prompt list

Read on AO3

Day 1, 2, 3, 4

______

It's quiet at the little cottage Yennefer precured for them. Which means Geralt and Ciri are doing what they're always doing when there's some time to spare. They're out back for sword fighting lessons. 

Jaskier closes his cloak tighter around his shoulders and shivers as he watches them. It's gotten pretty cold over the last couple of days to the point that a thick layer of snow is covering the ground. 

Maybe he should have followed Yennefer's example and stayed inside. Though, while Yennefer busies herself with cataloguing all the souls she has stolen from innocent people or whatever, Jaskier would probably just be bored with nothing to do. The clashing of swords and Ciri's cursing when Geralt gets another hit in at least provide ample entertainment. While the swordsmanship still needs practice, Ciri's collection of swear words has become quite colorful ever since the four of them started traveling together. 

Personally, Jaskier thinks it's a sign the girl could use a bit of a break. Whenever she's not training with Geralt, Yennefer has her practice spells without end. Which is, of course, essential if the most hunted teenager in the world wants to stand any kind of chance at survival. However, Geralt and Yennefer seem to forget sometimes that she is indeed only a teenager. 

Maybe there's something Jaskier can do about that whole dilemma, though. 

Geralt and Ciri are sufficiently distracted and pay him no mind as he sets out to prepare his nefarious plan. 

He waits for just the right moment, when Ciri places her foot wrong and gives Geralt an opening to strike. 

Smack

The snowball Jaskier gathered hits Geralt in the middle of his left pectoral. 

Ciri uses the split second of confusion to gather herself and place a strike of her own. 

"Yes! Score!" Jaskier screams excitedly. "Score for the princess! Well done Ciri!" 

"Stop meddling, Jaskier!" Geralt grumbles as he turns to Jaskier and takes a threatening step forward. 

"I have no idea what you're talking about," Jaskier lies through his teeth and dons his most innocent expression. "Ciri won that round fair and square. Are you telling me you're a sore loser?" 

Geralt lets out a deep growl in response, but he does turn back to Ciri. 

"Again!" he huffs and gets back into fighting position. 

Well, that's an order Jaskier is more than happy to follow. 

Once again he waits until it becomes clear that Ciri is losing ground in their fight. Just as Geralt is about to take advantage of an opening in her defense, a pile of snow hits him in the face. A moment later, his sword goes flying and Ciri points her own blade at his throat triumphantly. 

"Jaskier!" Geralt presses out as he wipes the projectile out of his eyes. 

"Yes, darling?" Jaskier grins back as he leans onto the railing of the wooden porch he's standing on. "Is there something you need?" 

Geralt starts trudging in his direction and Jaskier knows he's reached the end of his short life. He has no regrets, though. The look of barely contained glee on Ciri's face is well worth it. 

"Again!" Ciri demands with all the royal authority she can muster. "Or are you giving up already?" she adds with a wide smirk and a wink at Jaskier. 

"Stop meddling!" Geralt orders in Jaskier’s direction before he turns around to pick up his discarded sword and get back into battle position. 

Jaskier let's out the breath he's been holding. Once again he escaped the whims of fate by a hair's width. 

Of course that doesn't mean he has any intention to stop. 

Unfortunately, Geralt can't be fooled for long. This time, he manages to dodge Jaskier’s snowy assault and even disarms Ciri in one swift motion. 

"That's enough!" he snarls as he makes his way toward Jaskier again. 

Oh well. He's had a fulfilling life. There's worse ways to go. 

Smack 

For a moment, Jaskier is confused why Geralt stopped in his tracks again. Then the Witcher turns around and Jaskier can see clumps of white clinging to the dark leather on his shoulder, as well as the guilty look on Ciri's face. Jaskier’s heart warms at the realization that once again, she came to his rescue. 

The whole backyard seems to hold its breath in anticipation of what Geralt's going to do now. What kind of punishment he will distribute for the audacity of interrupting training like that. 

"Fine. Have it your way!" Geralt huffs. 

Before Jaskier can even attempt to beg for mercy, a flurry of snowballs comes flying his way. He shrieks and runs for cover, though most of them hit their mark. 

He darts towards a nearby tree and presses his back to the trunk on the side facing away from the relentless Witcher. A moment later, Ciri bumps into his chest and clings to the flaps of his cloak as if holding on for dear life. The way she's dripping wet from head to toe tells Jaskier that she wasn't faring much better than him at avoiding Geralt's revenge. 

Nonetheless there's a bright smile on her face and she's giggling uncontrollably. 

"Come on," she beams. "Together we can take him down! You attack from the front and I'll circle around to the house so we can flank him." 

"That means I get to draw all the fire while you sneak in position," Jaskier points out with mock outrage. "Alright, fine, I'm in," he adds after a moment and dodges out of the safety of the tree. 

Immediately he's hit in the chest. The next projectile hits his arms which he raises protectively. 

"You're dead, Jaskier," Geralt growls before he launches another one. 

"I'm well aware!" Jaskier shouts back as he tries and fails to get a hit in himself. But he can see Ciri making her way towards the advantage position of the raised porch. 

Fuck, Geralt notices her, too, with a glance over his shoulder. The look on his face is full of pride over Ciri's tactical prowess. Then he spins around and scoops up a handful of snow to hurl at Ciri. 

He misses. 

There's no room for cheers or smugness, though. Because as fate would have it, in that exact moment Yennefer steps out onto the porch. 

For a moment everyone just stares at the clumps of snow sticking to her sternum. 

"What. Exactly. Is going on here?" she asks, excruciatingly drawing out each word. Her voice is barely above a whisper, but it's colder and more piercing than any icy winter wind. 

"Uh oh," Geralt mumbles. 

"It was nice knowing you," Jaskier whispers and takes a large step away from Geralt. 

"Aren't you supposed to be playing around with your silly little swords?" Yennefer demands, head held high in indignation. 

"We uh," Ciri stutters as she stumbles backwards until her back hits Geralt's chest. "We were having a snowball fight." 

"I see," Yennefer returns harshly. "So that's the kind of nonsense you teach the future queen of Cintra?" 

Jaskier gulps. Geralt opens his mouth, then closes it again without saying something. Ciri stares at the ground, face bright red. 

"Well, Ciri," Yennefer continues, though her voice sounds weirdly different now. Jaskier chances a glance at her and catches a wide grin creeping into her features. "As usual, these boys are utterly useless. Allow me to demonstrate some actually useful skills." 

With that, Yennefer raises her hands and the whole world turns white. 

Heavy winds push against Jaskier as snow flies around him in angry swirls. Geralt, who only stood a few feet beside him, has completely vanished from view. There is only the snow storm around him. 

He tries to resist, but soon enough he's pushed off his balance and shoved this way and that until he's no longer certain where left and right are. 

As quickly as it started, the storm subsides again, leaving the skies clear and bright blue. 

Jaskier finds himself sitting at the base of the very same tree he took cover behind earlier. Aside from being drenched from head to toe, though, everything seems to be fine. All his limbs are still attached where they belong. 

He lets out a deep, relieved sigh. 

That's his mistake. The sound seems to be enough to cause the leaves above him to shed their newly acquired coating. An avalanche of snow falls down and buries Jaskier under a large heap of white. 

Cursing and spluttering, he fights himself free, leaving behind a Jaskier-shaped hole. 

He wipes the snow out of his eyes and looks around. Ciri is cowering a few feet away, spitting out mouthfuls of snow. 

And Geralt? Well… 

The only thing visible of the mighty Witcher is a pair of leather-clad legs, sticking up straight towards the sky from a pile of snow. The left leg twitches slightly, but there is no purchase to be gained in order for Geralt to free himself. 

Jaskier hurries over and grabs each leg with one of his hands. He gives them a vigorous tug and manages to produce the rest of the Witcher out of the snow heap. 

"I would have managed," Geralt complains once he's gotten his legs under him again. 

Jaskier ignores him and glances up at the porch, where Yennefer leans against the side of the door and grins smugly at their misery. 

"And that's how you win a snowball fight," she muses. "Now come inside, you lot, I've put up some tea." 

[theanimeview]

My Interpretation of Blackbird by Junji Ito

By: Casea Mhtar | @madamekrow

Mature Content Warning: This post contains content that we at The Anime View do not think is suitable for everyone. The genre of the work being reviewed is Horror. Possible triggers or subjects could include severe mental illness and suicide. By clicking "Keep Reading," you understand that you may encounter such content. Viewer/reader discretion is advised.

Do you feel the cool winds as they blow through the trees? Do you hear the fallen leaves rolling down the street, scraping against the sidewalk as you pass by? Do you notice the air of gloom hovering over you even on a bright and sunny day? We are now in the throws of Autumn, as we creep closer and closer to Halloween. I hope you’re as excited as I am, because for today’s post I will be delving into a story by Junji Ito, who is also known as Japan’s Master of Horror. I feel he needs no more introduction than that, since one google search will immediately prove why he has such an honorable title.

The one I will be discussing is from Fragments of Horror, a manga of short stories. He created this manga after an 8 year hiatus and it certainly appears that he was rusty in terms of storytelling. Generally, this manga has been received as being rather subpar in comparison with his other works. Which is why I chose this story from Fragments of Horror, the only one that stuck with me even years after I had finished reading the book. It often gets overlooked, making it all the more enticing to shine a light on it.

Blackbird

Kume is out birdwatching, the first time he’s done so in a long while, when he hears someone calling out to him. It’s a stranger lying on the ground, pleading for help. This man gets carried away to the hospital on a stretcher as Kume follows behind. When speaking with the doctor we learn that this man, Shiro Moriguchi, had a terrible fall resulting in both of his legs being broken. Not only that, but he also doesn’t have any family or friends to call, and is unemployed. They all wonder how he survived that long and with a stutter, he explains that he rationed whatever food he had in his backpack. 

Later, he begs Kume to stay the night with him and he agrees with mild concern. Moriguchi continues to open up about not having anyone in his life. In fact he never knew his family, expressing that he grew up in an orphanage. Kume replies, “You can talk to me about your troubles. We have a connection now.” before turning over and the two going to sleep for the night. 

Kume is awakened by a strange noise, immediately disturbed by the sight of a woman shrouded in shadow on top of Moriguchi, kissing him. She slips off of Shiro, walks to Kume and smiles directly in his face, then proceeds to calmly walk out of the hospital room. Moriguchi spits out a lump of raw meat and begins to panic that she has come back. Kume asks for more information and Moriguchi confesses to him what really happened during those four weeks of being injured and destitute, how he was truly able to survive. Seven days after his fall, he was running low on food when that woman appeared with her cheeks full, chewing and chewing. She kissed him, pushing raw meat into his mouth as it sizzled on his starving tongue. Leaving without a word, only to return the next day. This time, her kiss produced warm blood to quench his thirst. She is the one that kept him alive during that time, but he no longer needs her help. In fact, the meat lost its delicious taste, and he is left feeling as though he shouldn’t be eating it at all. Moriguchi was terrified, so Kume decided to stay with him another night in the hospital.

Once again, Kume was awakened by the woman feeding Shiro in the middle of the night. Immediately, Moriguchi spits out an eyeball from his mouth while the mysterious woman chuckles and leaves. Kume decides to follow her through the halls and out of the hospital. But right as he touches her shoulder, she turns into a large, black bird and flies off into the darkness.

The following morning they choose to alert the authorities, though they leave out the details of her flying into the night. Without the authorities present, Shiro panics about her being some kind of bird monster. Confessing that when he was an infant, he was abandoned in the corner of a park, alone for about a week or so. It’s a miracle that he survived, making him wonder if she was feeding him then as well, as though he is her chick.

Detectives show up the following day, revealing that the eyeball and meat are both of human origin and from the same person. Shiro and Kume are questioned, but can only answer what they know. This leaves the detectives without much to go on and with no way of knowing who the flesh and eyeball came from. But the woman hadn’t returned since Kume saw her fly away.

At a train station, Kume congratulates Shiro on his full recovery. He asks if Shiro has plans to find a job in Tokyo, expressing that it’s a shame he doesn’t stay since he could introduce him to people he knows. Moriguchi is thankful for the offer but declines, saying that he feels he needs to start anew someplace else in order to escape the shadow of that woman. Though, when Shiro’s train leaves the station, Kume sees a large black bird following behind it. He eventually receives a postcard from Shiro, not hearing anything about the bird woman, in fact he seems to be doing just fine! This allows Kume to brush off what he saw as being a kite or an eagle.

Three years later, Shiro Moriguchi was found dead in a frozen crater on the summit of Mount Fuji. They also discover that the meat and eyeball from earlier matched his own DNA, meaning that during the time of his horrible fall, Moriguchi was being fed the flesh and blood of his future self. His belongings were found near his corpse, including his journal with the details of what had happened in his last few days of being alive and frightened. She entered his locked apartment and started taking bite after bite of his flesh. He tried to move overseas, but she quickly found him and flew him to the summit of Mount Fuji. Cold, distressed, and alone, he passed away.

It appears to be winter as Kume goes out birdwatching in the forest again, thinking about the findings after Moriguchi’s mysterious death; When he hears something rustling in the tree near by. He turns around, startled by the bird woman, perched on a tree branch above him. Kume steps back, and with no more ground left, he falls down a cliff and breaks his leg. She readily flies down with her cheeks full. She feeds Kume mouth-to-mouth, as he notes its unpleasant taste.

My interpretation

I had an entire post planned out, depicting all sorts of theories I came up with. I investigated  the kanji of their names, the meanings, what the backstory could be, even speculating how this bird woman functions based on my findings...

Until I admitted myself into a mental hospital, staying there for seven days and seven nights. It allowed me to look at this story in a different way. I’m sure my interpretation isn’t truly what it’s about, nonetheless this is what it personally means to me. 

It appears to me like the Blackbird is the embodiment of Depression as she only comes to Moriguchi when he is most isolated and defenseless. Technically, since Shiro was being fed meat from his future self, he was the one keeping himself alive. Much like depression, there are times where we can get ourselves through completely on our own, but it comes at the cost of our own lifespan. People with severe mental illness, such as Bipolar or Depression, have a life expectancy of 10 to 25 years less than people without mental illness. Yes, that does include suicide, however this premature mortality is mostly cause by physical chronic medical conditions. People with severe mental illness often don’t get the proper care that they need, as their mental health deteriorates their physical health. I believe Shrio Moriguchi partly expresses these facts. He received wonderful care for his injured legs, but he didn’t get the treatment he needed for his Depression. This resulted in his physical debilitation and mental decline.

Then we have Kume, he was finally able to scare off the Blackbird for some time, as he was Shiro’s only support system. However, Moriguchi continued to distance himself, allowing the Depression to creep in once more. Why did the Blackbird target Kume? Well, relying on one person to be there for you, night after night as the lady shrouded in darkness overcomes you. That person being the only one you entrust with your woes and traumas. They are the only one you depend on to help stave off your Depression. Imagine that person, waiting to read your letters or postcards, making sure that you are okay, only to later find out that you did not survive. You have been taken by the Blackbird, your Depression. That can severely impact someone’s mental health. That is why it’s important to have a support system of not only friends and family (of origin or otherwise), but also of medical professionals that you trust. Kume did his best to be there for Moriguchi, even offering to introduce him to more people, which would allow Shiro to build up a support system. However, Moriguchi did what he thought would be best, resulting in him inadvertently isolating himself further and further into the Blackbird’s grasp. Even in his time of desperation he turned to old habits of writing in his journal, pleading for help in those pages without the intention of reaching out as well. Being trapped in an icy cold hollow atop Mount Fuji is the perfect representation of his severe isolation. 

I know this all too well, the devastation your loved one feels as they watch you deteriorate. You fall deeper and deeper into dysfunction, while they are helpless to do much more than to hold your hand through the nightly crises. Kume was there for Moriguchi, accepting all of his issues and willing to confront the Blackbird, even keeping it from coming back for some time. He was open and ready to carry some of the crushing weight that Shiro had been burdened with his entire life. Thus, falling victim to the debilitating gravity of Depression that Moriguchi could no longer cope with. Falling prey to the Blackbird chewing away at his future self. Little by little, bite by bite; Depression can take days, even years off your life.

Yes, my interpretation is rather… depressing. But I do believe it is important to recognize your unhealthy patterns, the patterns that detail your decline. In addition to reaching out for help when you feel yourself isolating further into the harsh depths of your inner turmoil. Not only that, but it’s spooky week! What is possibly more terrifying than confronting the realities of your mental illness?

Happy Halloween!

Of course I wouldn’t just leave you hanging like that! Here are some links for more information on not only how to reach out, but also what kind of help you can expect in terms of calling a suicide hotline or hospitalization. As well as what type of therapy might be better for you and what your options are if you can’t afford it:

10 Ways to Reach Out in a Mental Health Crisis

Here's What Happens When You Call Into A Suicide Prevention Hotline

What Happens When You Are Hospitalized For Depression?

4 Differences Between Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and Dialectical Behavior Therapy and How to Tell Which is Right For You

What To Do If You Can't Afford Therapy, According To An Expert

[kusunogatari]

[ ObiRyū October | Day Twenty-One | Sacrifice] [ @abyssaldespair ] [ Uchiha Obito, Suigin Ryū ] [ Verse: Of Monsters and Men ]

[ Previous ] [ Next ]

“All right...there we are.” Gathering up the mixture of herbs, spices, and tea leaves, Ryū carefully bundles them in some cloth, tied shut with a ribbon. “Whenever a nightmare strikes, brew this in hot water and drink. It will ease your mind and urge your body to sleep.”

“Thank you...you’re a blessing, you are.”

The woman just gives a soft smile. “Thank the earth and its bounties, not me. I just know how to use them. Take care of yourself.”

Making his way out, the man plagued by ill dreams takes his leave, dipping his hat to another just making his way in. The second figure lingers a bit stiffly in the doorway, his own hat removed from his head and instead nervously wrung in his hands as he waits for the healer to notice him.

“Oh!” She comes up short, turning and seeing him at last. “I’m sorry - have you been waiting long?”

“No, just a moment. I, er…”

“Has it been a fortnight already? My how the time flies…”

“Yes ma’am, it...it does.”

“May I take a look?”

Nodding, the man comes further into the cabin as she flares the lamp hanging from the rafters. With careful hands, she takes and tilts his face to the light to better examine it.

Along one side, horrible claw marks mar the surface of his skin. Half-healed now, they look clean and healthy.

“They seem to be doing well...you’ve been keeping up with them, then?”

“Yes, ma’am. Every night, and every morning. Like you told me.”

Ryū smiles. “Good. I’m sorry I didn’t realize the day, I’ll have to mix it now. Do you mind a short wait?”

“Not at all. The rain forced us back, so I’ve nothing to do until it dries.”

“Yes, the weather has been something atrocious lately...soon Winter will be here.” Moving about in the one-room cabin, she begins pulling ingredients from drawers and cutting them from hanging samples. A mortar and pestle are taken from their shelf, herbs thrown into its groove to be mashed. “I dread the thought, but...it’s as Nature intends. We’ll be thankful come Spring thaw and planting.”

“Do you ever have a sour thought, Miss Suigin?” the man then dares to ask.

She offers a soft laugh in return. “Oh, I do. But I keep them inside so as not to sour the air, too. I’d much rather make it sweeter.”

“Oh you - you do that just fine.” His lips flicker upwards in an uncertain smile. Was that too forward…?

“Well aren’t you just the sweetest thing!” A warm smile lifts her lips, and he finds his chest fluttering. “Mister Uchiha, you’ll make me blush with compliments like that.”

“Well, it’s true! You’re the kindest soul in this little town, and you do well by all of us with your medicines. A kind word is the least I can spare you.”

That seems to leave her without a retort, working at her mixture for a moment in silence. “...I appreciate it. I do dote on everyone. Life out here is harsh, so...any little thing I can do to help folks along is good enough for me. Hardships are easier to face when we work together, and that’s done best with everyone of sound mind and sound body.”

Obito just watches as she goes about her mixing and mashing, wondering for the hundredth time how she knows all she knows. A score of books line a shelf...maybe it’s something written that she follows?

“All right...I think that’s done it. You know enough by now, but I’ll say it for my own peace of mind: take a sample on your finger and run it along each mark until they’re all covered. Let it sit overnight, and for as long as you can stand it in the morning before you wash it off. A few more weeks, and we’ll have those wounds scarred shut. It might not be the prettiest thing, but...it’ll keep the wounds clean and minimize the scarring.” She then gives him a curious tilt of her head. “And the rest of your symptoms?”

“Hardly notice them, ma’am. None of those strange headaches, no flashes of anger. All gone.”

“I’m glad to hear it.”

“Thank you, miss Suigin...truly, I -?”

She waves aside his thanks, having heard it many times before. “I know well enough by now how grateful you are. But save your breath for yourself, and take care. If something goes awry, let me know straight away.”

“I will.”

“Go on, then - get some rest, it will be dark soon.”

Nodding politely, he takes up his medicine and takes his leave. By now the downpour has faded to a light misting, the smell of cold air creeping into the evening. She’s right...Winter is just around the bend, and he still has so much to do before the first snow falls.

Around the corner of the cabin, he doesn’t see a pair of jealous eyes watching him, turning from the window and fading into the dark.

Once home, he lights the lamp by his bed, taking it to the broken mirror he’s got hanging on a wall. Every time he catches sight of his reflection, he has to grimace. Whatever that beast was that attacked him that night...it sure left its mark. But thanks to the village healer’s efforts, the angry red tissue is calming, finally starting to close. The pain is nearly nonexistent now, and the strange feelings he’d felt have all but disappeared.

She really is amazing…

Pushing the thought away as his face warms, Obito carefully unravels the hide the paste she’s made him rests in. It smells oddly spicy, but never stings. Practiced fingers delve into it, watching his reflection to carefully trace it along every mark.

It feels oddly cold...but maybe that’s just because of his prior blush.

Once it’s all in place, he fixes himself some supper to let it dry, lest he smear it on his pillow. The stew he’d left to simmer while out working it’s a bit dry, but edible. The recipes his grandmother taught him before passing have served him well, but...he can’t help but wish he had a wife to do so alongside him.

Traitorously, he thinks again of the healer. Oddly enough, despite what he considers to be great beauty and soothing manners, she’s yet to be married. Part of him wonders if her position keeps most folks at bay, or...if it’s the quiet, lingering superstition about her. While most everyone depends on her concoctions, some find her skill with them...odd. Add in her unique appearance, and some have dared to whisper witch.

But no one has outright accused her, so the clergy of their little village have yet to act. Obito finds the notion ridiculous. Some plants harm, some plants feed, and some plants heal. Knowing the difference doesn’t take otherworldly knowledge, or whispers from the devil. Anyone daring to call her some evil spellcaster would be deeply mistaken. Only has she ever helped the people of their little town, never harmed!

Someday...he might muster up the courage to ask her. But for now, it doesn’t feel proper. His work in the village crop fields earns him a miser’s pay, and his cabin is hardly suitable...it needs work. He’ll only make her an offer once he feels that offer is worthy.

So for now, he’ll sit and sigh at the thought.

He tides up after his meal, gently prodding the poultice to ensure that it’s dry before slipping into bed. He’ll have to do the same routine come morning, then the next night. Over and over until the wounds are fully closed. But he doesn’t mind the effort if it means keeping himself whole.

And getting to see the healer every fortnight for more.

Autumn continues to pass at pace, the weather slowly chilling as Obito and the rest of the farmhands work to bring in the last of the harvests and store them away for winter. Animals too are butchered, salted and dried to cover the long Winter months. It’s often a narrow window that they survive the harshest part of the year. At least one life is typically lost. But they all fare far better together than they would apart.

But two days before he once again needs to visit the healer...something changes.

On his way to the fields, Obito slows as he spots an odd sight. A rather sizable group is gathered outside the local church. It’s not Sunday...they aren’t congregating for that. Then what…?

Trying to weave his way to the front, he realizes the crowd forms a ring around a space just before the doors. And at the center is the pastor...and the healer.

Her face is taut with apprehension. “If I’m to be tried, then I want to face my accuser.”

“So you can hex the poor soul? I think not. They will be kept out of sight for their safety, should you decide to loose the devil upon them. They claim to have seen you practicing the dark arts within your home more than once. These accusations must be heard, and you must be tried for your crimes.”

...oh no…

“I’ve committed no crimes! If mixing plants for a person’s health is a crime, then so is any other harmless task! How many of you have benefited from my work, my knowledge?” She turns imploringly to the crowd, desperation in her eyes.

To Obito’s amazement, not a single soul speaks up, all glancing aside in shame as they refuse to admit it. In his chest, he feels a growing heat of anger.

“Me!”

At once, they all turn to him, parting as he shoves his way forward. “Me, and nearly everyone else! If this woman’s intent was to harm, she would never help us! How many wounds has she patched? How many fevers has she broken? If her intent was to harm...she would never have lifted a finger for us. Half of us would be dead or dying if not for her help. That sounds far less like the work of the devil than it does of an angel.”

Across the gap, her face alights, staring at him hopefully.

“A ruse to cover her tracks,” the priest hisses in retort. “She lulls us into a false sense of safety, of security...while in the dark she conspires with devils and demons! She is cunning...but the eyes of the righteous have seen through her veil!”

Obito’s teeth grit, and he tries to move forward. But arms hold him back, even as he struggles. “Those eyes lie!”

“Throw him in jail to keep him out of the way,” the pastor orders, looking down his nose at Obito. “We cannot let his infatuation with this she-devil interrupt our just and legal proceedings. If God demands a sacrifice to keep our village pure...so be it. Let the trial commence!”

Grunting and yowling as he’s dragged away, Obito does his best to fight back. But it’s one against many, and he’s soon thrown into the singular cell of their little jail.

Hands grip the bars. “Let me out! She’s innocent! Innocent, I tell you!”

The men who dragged him only sneer, turning their backs and shutting the door behind them.

With the slam of the entrance, a sense of finality seems to overcome him. He can hardly escape...and he’s the only one willing to defend her. Surely they’ll convince themselves of her guilt to lay blame on one soul: let her bear their collective sins and be washed away.

No...no!

Slowly, he sinks to his knees, hands still gripping the bars. It’s not fair...how could they do this…?

...he never got to…

The agony of silence and unknowing is torture. The town constable brings him scant meals, refusing to speak as Obito peppers him with questions of the goings-on. A day passes, then another, and another.

That third day, he realizes two things. That he has not been applying her poultice, and that today would have been the day for his next visit. The knowledge clenches his heart. As before, a headache has been creeping up on him, his temper fraying...but that may just be his present circumstances.

He has to get out of here...he has to free her…! But how...how…?!

As the day fades, night slowly blanketing the village...Obito realizes it’s too light. Beyond the single barred window, flickering light begins passing by.

Torches.

Hauling himself up, he gasps as - haloed against the darkness of the woods beyond the village - her cabin goes up in smoke. Hungry flames reach skyward, as if seeking to consume the stars.

“No…!”

Not far from it, a pyre has been erected. And led from the courthouse, fighting and screaming, is Ryū. Hands bound, she’s fitted amongst the kindling and straw to the wooden pole at the center.

They’re going to burn her…!

Rage seems to fill his veins with molten magma, burning from the inside out. Hollering incoherently, he pulls at the bars despite knowing he cannot budge them. Torches are laid at the base of the pyre, and like her home, flames begin to climb.

And then, atop the fiery halo, pale moonlight breaks over the scene as clouds shift aside to bare the full moon.

Like a blow to the head, Obito’s headache reaches a fever pitch. He collapses, clutching his head with a howl of anguish. His entire body seems to pulse with anger and pain. It burns...it burns…!

Outside, the crowd turns to the jail as a ragged wail breaks through the night.

And then, with a shower of stone, the wall bursts forth. Eyes a molten gold, a dark beast crawls from the rubble, teeth bared with a chest-shaking growl.

“Monster!”

“I-it’s come for its mistress!”

Roaring with a flare of spittle and glint of pearlescent teeth, the creature lanches forward as the terrified villagers scatter. He wants to tear, to gut, to destroy!

But first!

With a leap, he reaches the pyre, ignoring the flames and clawing her bounds to shreds. She coughs and wheezes from the smoke, but gestures desperately to the singeing fur of his side.

“O-Obito…!”

But he spares no time for himself, easing her over his shoulder as her form goes limp, too exhausted to stay awake. Lip raised and snarling, he stares down the villagers with their muskets and pitchforks. Oh how he longs to shatter their bones and carve their flesh!

For now, however, there are more important things he must do.

In a half-lope, he lowers to three limbs, one spared to hold her as he flees. A few foolhardy humans try to chase, but he’s swift as the wind, disappearing into the moonlit trees and underbrush. Soon, the only sounds are those of his rushing breath, pluming in the cold as they leave the village behind.

Only once he feels they’re a safe distance does he slow, coming to a stop at the bank of a creek. Gently, he sets her along the sandy shore. A whine crawls up his throat. The hem of her dress is singed, heat blisters along her bare feet where the flames had crept close. As carefully as he can, he urges them into the cool water.

A gasp sounds, and he balks as Ryū suddenly wakes at the feeling. “A-ah…!” Her voice is raw, growling and wincing from the smoke she breathed. Struggling to sit upright, she looks to her feet before her gaze lifts to her companion.

She doesn’t look at all afraid...but rather, sad.

“...I’m sorry,” she whispers. “I thought I could keep it at bay, but...without your medicine…”

He crouches beside her, head tilting.

“...there was wolfsbane in the poultice. It was treating your wounds, but...also the infection of the beast you were marked by. If they’d closed without you missing a dose, then...it would have been held at bay. But now...there’s nothing I can do. With every turn of the moon, you’ll change. It’s all my fault…”

Ears falling, he lets his snout come to rest at her cheek. It wasn’t you...it was them…! He longs to speak, but can’t muster words in his shifted form.

Rather than retreat, she carefully raises hands to hold his massive jaw. “...your burns…!”

Looking at his side, Obito realizes he was indeed wounded...perhaps this hide is too thick to feel?

Ryū begins urging water up to the melted flesh, earning a flinch. “Sorry, sorry...but we need to keep them clean. I think I can find what I need here to make a poultice…” From the plants along the bank she does her best to make a mash with a clean river rock, tearing the hem of her skirt to bind it. “...it’s not perfect, but...it should help. You’ll bear these marks as a man, too. And all for my sake...but...thank you. You saved my life.”

There’s another careful nuzzle to her throat.

“...they were right, you know.”

He pauses.

“I am a witch,” she admits softly. “But not the kind they believe in. I come from the earth, I know its secrets, I bend them to my will. But never could I harm someone. I’m inspired not by the devil, but by the mother of us all. I knew it was only a matter of time before they accused me. Their beliefs always lead them to the wrong conclusions…”

The pair go silent for a time. The creek serenades them with its gentle trickles.

“...I know not where we’ll go. What we can do. But...we are alive. And come morning, when the moonlight fades, you’ll be a man once more. That, at least, is something. But Winter is fast approaching...we’ll need to be swift.” Gentle hands stroke at the coarse fur of his snout. “...will you go where I go?”

Obito brightens, declining his head in a nod.

“...then together we will go.”

     OKAY...I actually really like this one xD It could be longer but I need to catch up dfkjggh - still managed to hit my 3k goal mark though! Hopefully tonight I can get another one done and be back on track lol      We have a proper werewolf this time, not a Nightwalker werewolf xD And he is ANGER! Do not touch his witchy waifu! Also I didn’t use any other characters cuz...I didn’t know who to use so it’s just the duo this time lol so fill in the blanks any way you want!      Anyway, I have irl things to sit and wait for (and...actually do) so I better run for now, but hopefully I can be back in time to get more done today! Thanks for reading~

[foxtophat]

ugh my grammar checker is on the fritz so sorry if i fucked up something somewhere

ANYWAY HEY HOWDY HI guys how are you? boy it’s been two weeks already huh?  time flies when you’re on island time i guess.  SO HERE IS TODAY’S CHAPTER, it’s about john and nick dealing with their emotions, also it’s the first time where we officially touch actual factual canon!!! which is just crazy, my buds, absolutely nutso

i don’t have a lot to say today, i’m kind of tired and i’m dreading going to take my dog for a walk because nobody in this neighborhood understands that they need to stay away from me!!! so i’m gonna keep this simple. i really appreciate all of you, from the humble kudos i recieve from someone who got tired after the first chapter, to the mighty comment chains that you guys indulge me with when i finally get my socially anxious ass up to the task of replying to your beautiful comments. i am so happy that y’all are having fun with me, and i hope that we continue to all have fun together!!!

not much else to say without ruining it, so i’ll just say this: boy howdy, do people just not wear shirts in the apocalypse?

for the non-linkers out there, click the read-more to get straight to this chapter’s text!!! and if you enjoy, consider giving my project a little boost with one of those rebloggy things. you know i love it, and you know i love you!!! be safe buds!!!

Nick and John have spent the last day and a half repairing the fence that once enclosed the whole Rye property. Nick wouldn't bother if it weren't for the return of wildlife after the long winter, but they need to do something to prevent dogs from getting into the yard, and just this week Kim caught a deer trying to get at the planters. The last thing they need is to go another round with mother nature after they just reclaimed their place in her.

It's one of those days where the weather can't make up its mind, alternating between sunshine and shadow as massive clouds roll across the blue sky overhead. It doesn't quite look like rain, but they should be expecting it any day now.

Nick takes a swig from his canteen, waiting on Kim to bring him the box of nails from the hangar. He leans against a newly restored stretch of fencing, which doesn't collapse under his weight.

"Guess we're doing something right," he says to John, who's more interested in finishing the job than talking about it.

Still, he replies, "Don't jinx it." He even gives Nick a distrusting look, as though he's the liability around here.

"It's my fence, I'll jinx whatever I damn well want."

John scoffs. "I have enough bad luck without you making it worse."

"Oh yeah, real bad luck you've got here."

Kim finally returns with the box of nails, which admittedly had been left in a pile with a bunch of other components for later sorting. As she hands them over, she looks around the yard for Carmina.

"I think she's taking a nap," Nick reassures her.

"She's going to be up all night if she is," Kim replies, running a hand through her hair. "Maybe it's time she learns how to mend a fence. She'll probably enjoy it more than doing times-tables all afternoon."

"We still got a ways to go," Nick says. "All four of us might be able to get it done quicker."

With that settled, Kim turns towards the house. "Carmina!" she hollers. She waits a few beats for a response, then sighs wearily. "Alright, I'll be right back."

Nick shrugs away his first inkling of concern as he watches her go. John doesn't seem to care one way or another, ignoring Kim as she heads inside. It's taken a while, but he's finally mastered reattaching the cross-posts, and now he can throw himself into it as mindlessly as digging dirt or hauling trash. Nick used to think he was bad about burying himself in work, but jeeze . Watching John tune out the rest of the world while he works is fascinating, if only in the same way watching Hoarders or My 600 Pound Life had been. The only difference here is that there's no talking head to tell Nick just what John is trying to distract himself from.

"Nick!" Kim shouts, somewhere on the other side of the house. It isn't a scream or cry for help, but there is a deep and worrying concern underlying her voice.

Panic that Nick hadn't realized he had leaps into his throat, a thousand hideous possibilities flying through his mind as he springs to his feet. He forgets all about John, who follows behind him with his hammer still in hand. His mind is too busy coming up with dozens of feral dogs for him to fight off, if not maniacs with guns, or one of those god-awful bears ! He doesn't have time to consider whether or not he's dropped too much of his guard around John when Carmina is being kidnapped by raiders!

Nick turns the corner and sees Kim dragging Carmina across the front yard by her bicep. There's no blood, no screaming, not even a dead wolf in the yard to reveal to Nick the problem. For that, he has to look further, down the dilapidated front drive, where a group of people stands bunched together. They're far enough back that Nick can't see their faces, but the way they mill around worryingly reminds Nick of a pack of angels.

Two people are retreating from the house. Nick only catches their backs, but that's all he needs. It's impossible, after all, to miss the massive, faded black Eden's Gate brand, and while Nick can't read the words carved into the flesh around it, he recognizes them immediately.

Of course Joseph Seed is still wandering around shirtless, even a decade after the apocalypse. He's flanked by some beefy, hoodie-wearing jackass, returning to his flock who are spreading out to eagerly accept him back into the fold, without so much as a backward glance at the house or the people in it. He doesn't even seem to care that he's left his back wide open to them. Like he knows they aren't going to do anything about it.

Nick should shoot him. No, wait, Kim has the rifle, so she should shoot him. Somebody should shoot him!

But they don't. Kim drags Carmina inside while Nick stares helplessly after the retreating cultists, who swallow Joseph's form up in their group before disappearing down the drive the way they came. They're almost out of eyesight before Nick realizes that John's supposed to be standing next to him, but isn't.

He looks around wildly for a second, trying to catch John mid-escape, but the guy has vanished. There's no sign of him rejoining the group leaving their property, but Nick hasn't been paying attention, and John knows the area better now; he could easily be making a loop somewhere out of Nick's sight.

Swearing under his breath, Nick hovers in the doorway, keeping his eyes peeled for the missing Seed even as he desperately wants to check on Carmina. Thankfully, Kim has their daughter cornered by the stairs, so she isn't going anywhere.

Although the initial adrenaline seems to have worn off now that Carmina is safe and Joseph has left, Kim's still jittery and tense, trying and failing to hide it from their increasingly confused daughter.

"What did he do?" she asks Carmina, "Did he hurt you?"

"Who?" Carmina scoffs, "The bearded man? He was just... giving me some food. What's the matter?"

"If he ever shows up here again," Nick snaps, "You come straight to your mom and me, you understand?"

" You said to find food wherever we can!"

"Yeah, well, we don't take anything from him. Not even food!"

Carmina squints so hard that her lips purse. " Why ?"

Nick throws up his hands. He has no idea how he's supposed to explain Joseph to his daughter. He doesn't know how to warn her about bliss-tainted food, or the cult's violence, or all their fucked up brainwashing. He doesn't know how he's supposed to convince her not to go near that maniac when they've been keeping one of his brothers fed and sheltered for half a year!

Kim, lifesaver that she is, takes the burden of explanation onto her shoulders. She turns to Nick, looking to either side before asking him, "Where's John?"

Nick hisses through his teeth in response, unwilling to admit he lost sight of the guy pretty much the second danger presented itself. He should have known better. He shouldn't have let his guard down. If he'd known the problem was going to be Joseph, he would have been more careful!

"Go find him," Kim says. "I'll — let me handle this."

As much as Nick doesn't want to leave the burden to Kim alone, she's right. They can't lose sight of the bigger picture here — and that picture involves Joseph's youngest, most irrational brother, who's probably running through the brush right now to reunite with his stupid, psychopathic family.

Still, before he goes, he points at Carmina and demands, "The next time you see him, you run the other way."

"Go, Nick," Kim tells him, and so he reluctantly does.

Although logically , Nick should be making a beeline for Joseph's last known location, since that's undoubtedly where John has fled, his gut keeps him close to home. Instead of sneaking through the brush to confirm his suspicions, Nick turns to investigate the rest of the property first. He knows he's being naive, and a real idiot, but he needs to make sure John hasn't gone off to find a weapon or alternate escape route. More importantly, he has to prove to himself that John really did flee at the first sign of rescue.

There's no sign of John anywhere in the backyard, leaving the space weirdly empty. After so many months with another person living in their space, there's something strangely lonely about the concept of going back to living on their own. John is a creep, sure, but he had still been better than being on their own. And besides, he'd been getting better as of late — not exactly quality companionship, but at least he's been a little less of a dick and holding conversations for a full two or three sentences longer than usual. Just the other night, he'd managed to eat dinner and say two full words without turning into a morose teenager desperate to go back to his room.

Something crashes inside of the hangar, breaking Nick out of his thoughts. Of course, one paranoia is replaced by another, and Nick approaches the open service door ready for an attack. After all, there aren't a lot of reasons for John to stick around that don't involve beating Nick to death with a length of irrigation pipe.

The hangar is dark and silent. Nick stands in the doorway for a full ten seconds, waiting for some kind of response from the gloom, another noise, John calling out the all-clear... but nothing. He almost calls out, catching himself at the last second and biting his tongue. Since they've organized most everything in here by now, there aren't a lot of places for an ambush, but Nick steps slowly nonetheless, leaning around heaps of scrap metal and carefully edging around wobbly shelves holding boxes of materials. Every time he braces himself for a blow, he winds up wincing at nothing for seconds at a time.

Nick eventually finds John hiding behind the counter in the back of the hangar, pinned down against the wall. Crouched down with his head against his knees and his hands over his neck, he looks braced for another nuclear blast. His teeth audibly grind as Nick steps behind the counter, but if he's got anything to say, he keeps it to himself.

"John?" Nick asks. He's still braced for a fight, but John seems miles away.

He tries again. "John. Hey, John ."

" Yeah ," John hisses through his teeth, hunkered down for the apocalypse, "I hear you."

Neither of them move. Nick, getting increasingly uncomfortable under the tension, leans into his outrage to keep him from stalling out into a panic right alongside John. "What the hell was that?" he exclaims, throwing a hand up. "That psycho brother of yours was supposed to be dead — what, did you all have goddamn contingency plans in case the rest of you fucked up?"

"No," John mutters.

"And you said that goddamn cult shit was over with! Well, I just saw a dozen Peggies lurking around my property with that maniac. What do you have to say about that ? Doesn't seem very dead to me! He's coming around here, trying to pass handouts around, smug sonofabitch —"

John, bracing his feet against the ground, breaks past Nick's whirling anxiety. "Did he see me?" he asks.

"What?" Nick replies, abruptly forgetting about his rant. "I mean... No, I don't think so." He waits a beat for John to relax, to respond, continuing awkwardly when he doesn't. "He didn't look back, I mean."

John exhales, although it does nothing to ease his tension. "Okay," he says, repeating distantly, "Okay."

Nick had been so sure that John was going to try to escape, storming across the yard just a minute ago. But now, looking at the guy now, he's not sure John can even stand up, much less make a break for it. He realizes that despite all his reservations before, he doesn't think John is going anywhere. Not right now, anyway. Whether he wants to be or not, he's stuck here for the foreseeable future.

"You really didn't know, huh?" Nick asks. He lays on the pity thick enough that even he feels like he's being a dick about it, but all he gets is a nonverbal grunt in return. "Well, don't get any ideas," he continues, each word feeling like a step further into uncharted waters. "Just because we've been lax around here doesn't mean you're not still watched twenty-four-seven, you know! I hear you pacing around at night, so I'll know if you try to, uh..."

Nick really doesn't want to keep yelling at the back of John's head. He doesn't really mean to yell at all, letting his motor mouth run for him until he realizes abruptly that nothing he's saying is having an effect.

"John," Nick says again. He wishes he didn't sound as anxious as he does.

" Yes ," John rasps, "I hear you ."

Nick falls back against the counter, resting his weight against it as he watches John's tense form. "You don't even want to look at him?" he asks when the silence gets too uncomfortable.

"No," John mutters.

The next stretch of silence is broken as Kim enters the hangar. Nick wheels around, thankfully able to direct his energy towards someone who will respond to him for once.

"What happened?" he asks her, "Is Carmina alright?"

Kim makes a middling gesture with her hand, coming to a stop at the counter across from Nick. "I tried my best," she says. "I explained that he was the one who — well, that a lot of what happened before was because of him. She's going to need some time to process it, though. It's a lot to think about."

"What's there to think about?" Nick asks incredulously. "It's simple: they're whack-job cultists, and we're not . This is an anti-Peggy household! She isn't going to accept any handouts from Joseph Seed!"

Kim ignores Nick, turning her uncertain frown in John's direction. Honestly, though, Nick is just fine with that, considering that he isn't going to be any help with John's mental spiral.

She chews on her lip as she tries to figure out the best thing to say. "You're going to have to talk to us," she tells him at last. It's not exactly an ultimatum, but there's not a lot of room for arguing.

"I didn't know," John says after the silence stretches out between the three of them. It would be more convincing if he would make some eye-contact, but Nick finds himself believing it anyway. Especially as John miserably continues, "I thought he was dead."

"If there's anything you know that could help us figure out what he's doing here, now would be a great time to tell us," Kim points out, gentler than maybe she even intended. "What's his plan? What is he going to do next?"

John swallows heavily. Nick wonders if he has any loyalty left to his brother, if he has to struggle between revealing information or continuing to live with them the way he has been. Maybe he's just too panicked to think of anything beyond how to get out of this immediate situation. Again, eye contact would really help here, but Nick's not banking on that happening.

"It was so long ago," John mutters finally. "He wanted to start over. Jacob was meant to — to lock the armory. No one was going to need it after the Collapse. He and the faithful would establish New Eden together — without sin, without the unfaithful, and..." He lifts his shoulders, the first move he's made since Nick's found him. "No matter what, they would get it right this time."

"Last thing I heard before everything went nutty, the deputy trashed Jacob's armory," Nick says.

John huffs. At last, he uncurls from his doomsday position, slumping back into the cabinet behind him. "That does sound like them," he says, oddly relieved.

"He gave Carmina food," Kim says. "Should I be worried? It could be contaminated, right?"

"What kind of food?" he asks.

"Bread, I think? Crackers? I don't know exactly."

John shakes his head, scrubbing his eyes briefly. "It wouldn't be Bliss. The heat would kill it."

Kim sighs with relief. "Okay. I'll take your word for it."

Nick almost asks if that's such a good idea, but John doesn't look like he can take another kick lying down right now. "So what are we supposed to do?" he asks instead. "Just let him go rebuild his bullshit back on the island? Reform the cult and retake all the land that we thought he lost when the bombs dropped? Trust him not to have another psychotic breakdown and envision a good reason to get violent again?"

"I don't know," John sighs. He's so pale and tired, as though his panic attack had burned through all of his energy. He works his jaw over some thought or another. At last, he admits to them, "You should shoot him, although I doubt he will ever get close enough again."

Kim blinks, nails scratching the counter-top as she curls her hands defensively. "Are you serious?" she asks.

John takes a deep breath. "Yes," he says. "I am."

"Okay, well, it's something to keep in mind," Kim says, slowly feeling out her own opinion on the matter. "But I don't think that murdering him is going to be the answer. Maybe it was back then, but now... I mean, things change."

"He won't change," John tells her. "He won't."

"That's what everyone thinks about you," Nick points out. He doesn't realize it's a low blow until John bows his head again, leaving him to flounder. "I just mean, you know..."

"I know what you mean," John replies. Nick isn't appreciative of the icy tone, but at least it's put an end to him eating his own foot.

"Right now, we need to keep calm," Kim tells them, disappointedly eying Nick. "I'm going to get on the radio and let Grace know what happened. I'll trust her to tell the right people, so the whole county doesn't turn into a witch-hunt. The last thing we need is for another war to break out and destroy all the progress everyone's made."

"Right. Okay." Nick scuffs his shoe on the dirty concrete. "John, uh. We can keep working on the fence. Unless you... need a break. You can stay here, if you want."

He feels like an ass offering it, but John doesn't let it hang for long. "No," he shakes his head, lifting it again, "I can work."

Nick doesn't think "can" and "should" are the same here, but who is he to judge? All he wants to do right now is focus on something he can get done, rather than sit around speculating. John is probably even more eager to bury himself back into his work, now that he has something he really needs to be distracted from.

Kim doesn't wait for them, taking off for the house at a brisk walk. Nick waits for John to stand, then follows him out of the hangar, setting him to work on the part they'd been working on before. He starts to help, but John seems to have it and he seems to be more interested in spiraling mentally, so Nick sets up a few yards down to work in silence. The entire time, he watches as John goes through the motions, a million miles away as he stops to occasionally stare at the trees not so far away. Nick doesn't know what he's looking for, but even though he wants to ask, he can't bring himself to risk detonating whatever emotional time-bomb is building.

Nick wakes up that night not knowing what roused him. Sleeping for more than a few hours at a time is a miracle most nights, interspersed by long stretches of watching the passage of time from the shadows on the wall. Tonight is no different, and Nick blearily watches the deep, dark blue shadows that fill the room during the deepest hours of the night. He almost doesn't realize that Kim is awake, not until she reaches out to gently shake his shoulder once again.

"What," he groggily whispers, "What's the matter?"

"I don't know," Kim whispers back. "I thought I heard something."

The only thing Nick can hear is the house creaking all around them. He catches a thud from the other room, which usually means John is up and pacing around. It's much more apparent that isn't the case when the second bedroom door slams open, rattling the wall, followed by running footsteps down the hall.

Carmina groans, half-awake as Nick throws off the blankets, leaping out of bed and yanking on his jeans. "Son of a bitch ," he hisses, "That goddamn liar — no, stay here." He waves a hand at Carmina, who groggily waves a hand back, and tells Kim, "Somebody has to keep an eye on her. I'll handle this."

"Nick..."

He doesn't have time to argue about it, so he just bolts from the room and hopes Kim won't follow. He doesn't bother to check the damage to the door, which is hanging wide open against the wall; instead, he chases John's footsteps down the stairs, thundering down them and coming to a brief halt in the living room as he guesses where John has gone next.

The front door is wide open, leaving Nick staring out into the misty dark by himself. It's just thick enough that Nick can't see past the car parked protectively in front of the house, and boy does he not want to go out there. He's exhausted, and the last thing he wants to do is go running around in the mist like it's 2018 all over again.

But he has to, because he can't let John get away. To think he believed that rotten, lying asshole! Of course, the second Nick lets his guard down, the second he decides to believe that John isn't frothing at the mouth to return to his old life, of course that bastard has to go and shove it in his face! He hadn't been able to hold up the act for one night after Joseph reared his goddamn head? What a joke.

It's a wet, cool night, and the mist is thick enough that Nick can't immediately see John as he jogs down the drive, but it doesn't take him long to catch up. John's escape plan seems to come to an abrupt end halfway down the lane as he comes to an unsteady stop on the cracked dirt. Nick picks up the pace, angry enough to jog barefoot after the bastard trying to escape. At this distance, Nick could probably shoot him — that is, if he'd bothered to bring either of the guns with him. If Joseph appears and has his lackeys attack him, he's going to be shit out of luck.

Nick gets within a yard of John and finds himself pulling up short. "What the hell, John!" he exclaims, too tired to notice his voice cracking and far too exhausted to care that he's given up his only chance at a surprise attack. "Are you kidding me with this bullshit, you lying, no-good —"

John whirls around, fist balled up and pulled back like he's actually going to strike at Nick. His face is blotchy and wet, his eyes heavily rimmed with red. "Get the fuck away from me!" he shouts, voice welled with panic, and Nick takes an immediate obliging step backwards. He's run right out into no-man's land without any defenses and he does not want to get caught up in the messy storm of John's emotions if he can help it. He especially doesn't want to get punched in the face for his effort.

As soon as he moves, John drops his fist, run ragged by the burst of adrenaline that got him this far out of the house. He breathes like he's just run twenty miles. His eyes drop to Nick's hands, to his hip where he usually holsters the pistol, up to where the rifle should be strapped to his chest, and then finally he directs his wild eyes to Nick's face.

"What are you doing," he gasps.

"What am I doing," Nick shouts, "What the hell are you doing! You can't just break down the door and go running for your brother whenever you have a — a nightmare, or whatever!"

"You don't now what you're talking about," John hisses.

"I know exactly what I'm talking about! As soon as you find out he's alive, you go running after him! I'm catching you in the act!"

"That's not —!" John's objection is strangled by emotion, pushing past it to shout hoarsely, " He was supposed to be dead ! And now he knows I'm here, he has to, and he's going to come for me and there is nothing I can do about it!" He throws his hands in the air. "Nothing will ever stop him," he exclaims, "And there's no point — there's no fucking point to any of this if he's just going to rip it away from me!"

John is easily twice as strong as Nick, but that doesn't stop Nick from wanting to grab him and shake him until he shuts up. "Maybe you should think about somebody other than yourself, then, you stupid bastard!" He throws a hand back towards the house. "If you go back to Joseph, you're going to ruin our lives . We've been helping you because you said you were done! We promised Grace you were telling the truth! Do you think she's going to forgive us? And how do you expect us to explain it to Carmina when you show up with your goddamn inquisition again? Eventually, you'll come for us, and you'll force Carmina through — and I can't let that happen!"

Nick swallows back the heavy emotion that's threatening to overwhelm him. "Come the hell on, no point ," he finally snaps, voice frayed. "You goddamn asshole."

John frowns heavily. He doesn't have anything to say in response, standing there mutely hopeless for a full thirty seconds before he finally tries to speak. "I didn't think about that," he finally mumbles.

"No, you did not ." Nick sighs, heaving out all of the anger left inside. "Look. You can sit out here all night and wait for Joseph if you want, but you're doing it on your own. I'm not gonna watch you waste your time. If you're coming back inside, let's go."

Nick plays the gambit for what it is, turning his back to John and starting back for the house. He walks slowly, and though at first he thinks John might not follow, he eventually feels John trailing behind him, a ball of tense anxiety right at his back. When they reach the front yard, John comes to a stop, forcing Nick to turn to him.

"I just... need a minute."

"It's way too late for this," Nick groans, "Just — be quiet when you come back upstairs. I don't need Carmina waking up a second time."

John swallows. He looks weirdly desperate as he tries to find something to say, but that's no surprise. He's always perpetually waiting for Nick or Kim to start treating him the way he would treat his own prisoners. "Okay," he rasps, like he might start crying again.

That is Nick's cue, so he darts back inside and upstairs, careful to limit the creaking as much as he can so as to not rouse Carmina. Hopefully she didn't keep Kim up with a bunch of questions about what's going on — those will be fine in the morning, but Kim doesn't get enough sleep as it is.

Kim is still awake, even if Carmina has passed out again. She looks worried, and Nick can't help but wonder how much of their argument had made it through the windows and cracks in the wall.

"Is everything okay?" she asks as he shoves off his jeans and climbs back into bed.

"Who knows," Nick sighs. "He's outside. Don't worry, I locked our door, and the rifle's right here."

"I'm not worried about that," Kim mutters. She brushes some of his hair out of his face as he lies down, following his lead reluctantly. "Next time, let me handle it."

Nick yawns and closes his eyes. "That's crazy talk," he mumbles, although maybe next time John has a meltdown, it would be better for Kim to take care of it. That's a problem for Nick tomorrow, though — right now, his brain is shutting off the lights at a rapid pace, and it's barely a minute later before Nick has completely passed out.

Nick wakes up to the cool, blue-gray light before dawn. It takes a few minutes for Nick to gather the energy to move, but he needs to check and see what happened to John after last night. Hopefully, he went back to bed and Nick will only have to look outside his own door to check on him.

Kim and Carmina are still fast asleep as he carefully climbs out of bed, taking care not to step on the creakiest floorboards as he pulls on his jeans and boots. He's sure that Kim would be glad to do this for him, but she needs to rest and he needs to make sure he didn't put his faith in the wrong Seed brother.

The whole house is quiet. Even the creaks that he can normally hear all night have eased up, leaving Nick's footsteps to echo as he carefully steps out into the hall, closing the door behind him with a quiet click.

John's door is still hanging open. Nick takes a moment to look in, but John's nowhere to be seen; when he closes the door, the broken lock scrapes against the doorframe and leaves it stuck half in place. It'll be easy enough to repair, and Nick knows just the petulant jackass to fix it.

The stairs creak as Nick heads down into the first floor gloom. There's only enough light to clear the darkest shadows, but once the sun rises and they open up the back porch, it'll be fine. For now, Nick heads out the front door and circles around the the backyard. There's a chance that John' won't be found anywhere, that he's given up and gone off to find his family, but Nick can't bring himself to consider it. After everything John said last night — Nick would never be able to believe the man if he turned out to be a turn-coat.

Thankfully, John isn't hard to find at all. He's taken a seat on the empty planter, watching the spinach heads grow. From his pale, haggard face and the dampness of his shirt, it's clear he stayed out here all night. He doesn't outright acknowledge it as Nick approaches, but there's no mistaking the way his entire body tenses for a fight.

It's way too early for a fight, and honestly Nick doesn't think he's got one in him anyway. "Morning," he offers instead, coming to a stop next to the planter. "Guess you didn't get any sleep."

John exhales. "No," he says, his voice rough. He hesitates another second or two longer. "I needed to think."

"Yeah, I figured."

On the right side of groggy like he is, Nick doesn't hesitate to take a seat next to John. He drags his boot through the dirt for an awkward moment, before finally saying, "I guess you decided to stay."

"I was never going to..." John bites his cheek, taking a breath before continuing in a more subdued tone, "I didn't want to leave. I'm well aware that I'm better off here than I've been anywhere else. It was just... a lapse in clarity." He takes a breath, like he might be gearing up for one of those old-fashioned monologues of his, and Nick finds himself weirdly eager to hear it. Kim's curiosity is definitely rubbing off on him.

"I've had these... dreams," he admits quietly. "For years now. They're... intense. So vivid, so real that I used to... They used to consume all of my time." His hand gestures limply towards the ground, as close as he's ever gotten to talking openly about the bunker. "They happen less, now, but I still recieve... messages, warnings from Joseph. When I thought he was dead, they were easier to ignore. But I never could dismiss them outright. And the one I had last night felt so real. So much so that I suppose I didn't realize when I woke up. All I could think about was what he was saying and I... I panicked."

Nick probably shouldn't ask. This is the most John's spoken in months, and he shouldn't interrupt, but he can't help himself. "What'd he say?" he asks.

John looks over at him, his expression complicated and dark. "That he knew where I was," he says. "That no one would stop him from saving me." He closes his eyes, turning his face away. "But he didn't come," he finishes. "He didn't show. It was just a dream. I know that now. I won't make the same mistake again."

There's nothing Nick can say to that, and nothing that John wants to add, so they sit in silence for a minute or so.

Eventually, John looks back to Nick, checking him over for weapons with much less panic than last night. "What happens now?" he asks.

"Well, we still have half a fence to build," Nick points out. "Plus, we gotta start laying out plans for the electrical wiring, so when we get the generator up and running..."

"I meant with me," John interrupts. "I broke out — I tried to escape. Doesn't that warrant — something ?"

"You're going to have to fix the door," Nick replies. "And you're already doing the heavy lifting around the house. You want me to ground you, or something? No dessert for a week?"

John sighs heavily. "You could come up with better than that."

"I don't want to come up with something better." Nick braces his feet on the dirt, but fails to stand at the last moment, even though he wants nothing more than to propel himself out of this conversation. "Life is already hard enough as it is. I'm not going to add to it just to make you feel better."

It's clear from his furrowed brow that John doesn't get it, but that's okay. Nick's satisfied with the peaceful resolution as it is. John might scowl in confusion at the ground, but at least he isn't demanding Nick take a pound of flesh from him or something. It's too bad that he isn't satisfied by simply apologizing, since that's all Nick needs, but he'll get the hang of it eventually. Lord knows he's gotten the hang of plenty else so far.

Nick pushes himself to his feet. He might as well use this extra time to get everything ready for breakfast, even if it's technically Kim's turn to cook. Still, he stops to stand over John, waffling on whether or not the guy deserves some genuine comfort. He's been open and honest enough — Nick probably should do the same. "Look. I, uh, appreciate you telling me. About the, uh, dreams, and all that. I figured you'd forgotten how to talk about yourself." He hesitates, then suggests, "You might wanna go get some sleep before breakfast. We really do got a lot more fence to go over."

John turns his head, following the broken line of fencing that reaches out clear down to the end of the airstrip. "You're right," he says at last. "I should rest."

"Please tell me you don't need me to escort you all the way upstairs," Nick says, mostly joking as they make their way inside. Letting John walk around freely hasn't ended up in disaster so far, but John still seems surprised that Nick's going to let him continue on alone.

"No," he says, "I have it." He stops on the stairs, watching as Nick forcibly ignores him in favor of getting the kindling and cast iron skillet. When Nick fails to stop him, though, he finally turns and makes his way up. Nick tries not to make it obvious as he waits to hear John walk across the upper hallway to his room, the door scraping audibly against the frame as he opens and then shuts it again. Only then does Nick seriously get to work on starting the morning fire, glad to have some small task to distract him from the thoughts that would otherwise pin him in place — thoughts about loyalty, and about what John said, and about his own dreams that have sometimes seemed too real to be anything less than prophetic. Maybe someday, he'll sort all his feelings out, but for now he can build a fire and hold on to the vague suspicion he has that maybe, just maybe, pulling John out of that bunker had been a good idea after all.

[7deadlycinderellas]

If the summer of our lives could just come again, ch29

AO3 link

 The Kingsroad

The Kingsroad is blessedly quiet, as the ice on the trees twinkles. Once the marshes begin, the path becomes some of the only solid ground to stand and walk on.

Most of the travelers huddle around the small fires they can build under the oil cloth tents for something resembling warmth. The north was cold, they all knew it, but being out and exposed like this, feeling it seep down to your bones out of the protection of stone walls, was very different.

Lady and Summer had both trailed behind the party, loyal as ever to their humans, but uncertain on the water and ice logged ground. Swamps were not places for wolves.

Around the fire one evening, Sansa notices Bran and Meera off talking by themselves. It wouldn’t concern her, but their heads are moving as though they’re arguing, and she’s never known them to be cross with each other.

“What’s going on?” she asks as she approaches. Bran jerks in surprise and when Meera shakes her head at him, he responds with, “we’re going to have to tell her eventually”.

Meera won’t meet her eyes again, but she eventually lets tumble out,

“I’m with child.”

Sansa’s words disappear from her throat, her mouth going dry even as her mind makes sense of her thoughts.

Eventually, she manages a,

“Is it strange I almost want to say congratulations?”

Bran lets out a strange, almost hacking laugh, and Meera shakes her head again. Sansa’s voice softens.

“Is that what you were fighting about?”

Meera opens her mouth,

“No. We were arguing because despite that, I still feel like a coward for leaving.”

Bran reaches out to touch her shoulder, and she jerks away.

“I keep telling you, you’re not-”

She cuts him off,

“You’re not the one who’s been followed by the whispers your whole life. Even after all these years, some of the servants at Winterfell still do it. That we prefer to hide rather than fight, and that when we do fight we don’t fight fair. You told me from your vision that my father stabbed Ser Arthur Dayne in the back....It’s hard not to take it to heart.”

She leaves Bran and Sansa at this point to tend to her horse. Sansa thinks of what she could tell Meera later, to try and console her.

Bran speaks first after she’s left.

“We knew before we left Winterfell. We didn’t say anything because I didn’t want anyone to whisper, to think poorly of her. I know the whispers she’s talking about, I hear them too. One of the maids called me a frog kisser once. She called Shireen the same, and I had to explain to her what it meant, I’ve never seen her so mad.”

Sansa feels a smile creep at the corner of her lips. Bran was always the kindest of them.

“So I take it you do intend to marry her?”

Bran looks at her, upwards through the snowflakes. He tucks his knees up against his chest in an attempt to keep warm.

“Provided her father doesn’t just take my head off first. He could.”

Sansa laughs.

“I don’t think he will," She pauses with a grin, "Arya will be angry if she misses your wedding.”

Sansa’s mouth freezes, and Bran nods. They can’t think of Arya right now, still back in Winterfell.

Up in front of the part, she can hear Jojen pointing out things in the trees to Shireen. She can make out,

“Glad that it’s winter. It’s hard to appreciate the place when you’re being swarmed by biting flies everywhere you go-”

Sansa chuckles. She turns to Bran,

“Arya was right, wasn’t she? We’re all headed our separate ways.”

Bran’s eyes are soft, faraway.

“Is that such a bad thing though? It means we’ve moved out from under the shadow of the past.”

He gets up now, and goes to sit beside Meera again, on the far side of the fire. Sansa can’t hear them from here, but she can see as Meera’s stiff posture softens, and Bran lean to rest his head on her shoulder. She is pleased for them truly.

She should tell Meera that it’s not all cowardly to want to protect someone small, someone who can not protect themselves. That, in fact, it is what she’s spent two lives proving she is very good at.

Though, Sansa also muses, that their mother will still probably be horrified. Bran had always been her favorite. At least they can probably be vague about the timing now.

Shadows of the past, Sansa thinks. Now if only she could.

 Winterfell

Ned approaches the breakfast table, only hearing a little bit of the discussion going on. He hears Arya reply to a question from Ygritte with something about “nice one’s do,” while Gendry turns red beside her, and so he coughs.

“Lord Stark,” Ygritte acknowledges him.

“The Last Hearth has fallen,” Ned tells them, and all at once any mirth is gone.

“So that’s maybe a week,” Arya interjects. “We’ll step up the guards.”

The Night’s Watchmen who manage to flee from the Last Hearth bring with them a single cache of wildfire. No one still seemed to know when it was appropriate to use.

“We had dug a trench,” Arya comments, “that we lit last time, but I don’t think we could keep it contained.”

At the moment, Ned decides just to keep it handy.

The days get grayer and the nights get darker.

Jon spends much time in the Godswood, along with Rowan, and occasionally with Ygritte.

Ygritte has found herself in an odd position at Winterfell. It’s not that she hasn’t been welcomed, but sometimes she still feels like she sticks out, a bit of fire against frozen stone.

She had tried to speak with Val a bit about it. Once over supper, she had asked,

“Do you really think you’ll survive here, being a southern Lady and it all?”

Val had shrugged. The white furs she wears already make her look somewhat regal, among the richly dressed nobles of the south. She had spoken to Ygritte a bit about an odd conversation she’d had with Robb the morning after the wedding. She had asked him why, in particular, he was so devoted to Winterfell.

“It’s my birthright,” he had explained, “The north and all the people in it are under my protection, and their lives and livelihoods are my responsibility.”

“But it’s only yours because you were born to the right father,” Val had insisted. Robb had shrugged.

“But I’ve always known I was born for this, and everyone around me too. Everything I’ve been taught has been because it was my responsibility, whether I wanted it or not.”

He had smiled softly.

“I do understand the desire the Free Folk have for freedom. No one telling you what you’re supposed to be. But if not me, the responsibility might fall to someone who’s not prepared for it. Or who only wants it for the power. I don’t want that for my people.”

Val could understamd that.

“They gave me the title and the name, they better accept me as is, cause this is what they’re getting.”

It’s something for her to think about. She has a lot to think about lately. Sometimes she does, sometimes she just shoots arrows and practices with Wild Thing, now with a spear tip made of dragonglass, just in case.

One snowy evening in the Godswood, Ygritte purses her lips and says,

“What are you even asking the trees for?”

Jon looks at her.

“I ask if they have seen anything, it lets us have a heads up on the army of the dead’s location.”

Ygritte cocks her head.

“Why don’t you ask them if they can help us?”

Jon furrows his brow.

“They’re trees.”

Ygritte runs her hand along the carved face of the weirwood.

“You saw the roots of one of these beneath that cave, and that was one that was long dead. Tree roots reach so far, far more than the crown of leaves, and they run straight through the ground underneath us…”

Jon chews his lip in thought.

Later that day, Arya joins him. She sits beneath the weirwood, and rubs her hand in Ghost’s fur.

She looks at him oddly, as though not sure how to say what she’s trying to.

“Do you ever...dream that you’re Ghost?”

Jon is surprised.

“Now and then, but they aren’t always vivid.”

Arya frowns, and continues petting Ghost.

“You should try. Bran can warg Summer as well as he can any of his birds, other animals too. Sansa used to talk about warging Lady so she had eyes in the Red Keep. Sometimes I swear Rickon and Shaggydog are actually one and the same.”

Arya bites her lip.

“I’ve never tried warging Nymeria deliberately...I was never sure if she would even let me in, she’s so wild. But now…”

The wolf pack has been gathering around Winterfell, muzzles clenched and growling in the lean winter.

“If we can get in their heads, it could mean life or death for someone in the vanguard.”

Arya doesn’t have the heart to mention that she’s going to be up on the ramparts with the other archers, she’s too small to be among those on the ground this time. She tries not to think of what Meera told her about chainmail, and finds a set of leather to wear underneath.

Evenings go much the same. Supper, rounds, guard rotations. These are the times when Arya tries to warg into Nymeria.

“I used to dream through her eyes often enough,” she explains to Ned later on that night, “Once, even when I was across the sea in Braavos. But I haven’t in ages.”

Ned pats her on the shoulder.

“I have no doubt you’ll be able to do it if you’re meant to.”

She tries to cling to that, but it’s with the disappointment that she returns to her chamber.

Gendry’s supposed to be up in the early morning to arm the guard, but he’s still awake when she enters.

“No luck again?” he asks when she holds herself stiffly while changing into the shift she sleeps in. All she can do is shake her head in response.

“Is the hammer working out for you?” she asks, sitting on the bed beside him.

“It is. I haven’t been sparring as much as I should have, but smithing has kept the reflexes up.”

Arya’s still unusually quiet, so Gendry grasps her about the waist and pulls her over and into his lap. The night, and the time, and the position remind them both too much of another night and another battle, and a pile of grainsacks instead of a well-worn featherbed.

Gendry rests a hand on her thigh, fingers creeping up under the edge of her shift, seeking her heat and says, “Tell me what you need.” Arya’s heart aches. He’s so strong and gruff and scarred on the outside, that she had never expected him to be so sweet in bed. Sweet, and strong enough to handle her rough edges.

Half of her wants to say, “fuck me until I forget it could be one of our last nights on earth,” and the other “hold me and kiss me and tell me everything will be fine.”

They settle for something about halfway in between.

Then the day comes when Jon rushes from the Godswood and tells everyone,

“Before the end of the day.”

No one was exactly full of brightness before, but if possible the atmosphere quiets even more, as everyone rises and bustles about to get to their posts.

Before she can go to climb the ramparts and join the other archers, Jon grabs Ygritte by the arm, and embraces her.

“Don’t die ok?”

Ygritte shifts in his arms, pressing her cheek against his shoulder. She had secretly been feeling a bit self conscious since arriving at Winterfell, and while she feels she’s hid it well, she is comforted by every public demonstration of Jon’s affection.

“I’m not full of rage this time. So hopefully no stupid children will put arrows in me. Unless they’re dead already.”

She stills, and grips Jon’s hand.

“Be careful yourself too. Don’t lose yourself to the trees.”

She leaves for the ramparts, and Jon has a detour before he joins Rowan and the wildling guard in the Godswood.

Robb, Val and Ned are on horseback outside the north gate, riding with the vanguard.

First, Jon asks Ned about Benjen.

“Safely barricaded in the highest intact spot in the broken tower. High up, hard to climb, and difficult to storm. It’s being guarded too, in case they try and go straight for him like the others said they might.”

Jon nods, and after a deep intake of breath, reaches out and offers Robb Longclaw.

Robb’s eyes are wide.

“Jon, this was given to you…”

Jon shakes his head.

“Arya gave me back Dark Sister when she decided to join the archers, she still has the catspaw’s dagger on her just in case. I don’t need two swords, and you’re going to be on the ground in the thick of things.”

Robb eventually relents, accepting the sword, and trading his scabbard with the normal steel one to one of his men. Jon fingers Dark Sister as he turns to leave. A bastard sword for a bastard, he muses. It suits him well enough.

The only other souls in the Godswood with him are Rowan and a couple of Free Folk who have volunteered to guard them, and Ghost. The wolf is the only of them that has chosen to stay by his master’s side rather than join the pack outside the wall. Jon pets his head, grateful for it.

With a nod to Rowan, Jon sits, and touches the heart tree. He asks it about each of the other weirwoods across the north near the other parts of the army, and then, about the weirwoods that grow wild in the forests of the north.

The answers he receives dishearten him.

Deepwood Motte has been overrun, and it is burning. Only a few souls have remained thankfully, the refugees having successfully sailed to Bear Island. Jon imagines that they might be able to see the burning keep on the horizon. He hopes they can’t.

Some of the other armies in the line run across the land have spotted the armies already, and they are prepared. The trenches have been dug, but only one section has successfully been lit. A snowstorm is blowing, though it does not seem to be slowing down the army of Others.

Outside Winterfell, Jon hears a howl.

Up on the ramparts, the archers are in a line, arrows nocked and held, waiting. The archers up here are mostly Free Folk, so thankfully they don’t have to keep to military structure. The squire tasked with keeping their quivers full and their torches lit is the daughter of one of Maege Mormont’s men, and she doesn’t look old enough to have her moon’s blood yet.

Ygritte jumps a bit when she sees Arya’s eyes go white. Arya gasps after a moment and she returns to herself. Just in time, she thought. It took until now, but it was just in time.

“Did you see anything out there?” Ygritte asks.

Arya purses her lips.

“They’ve nearly made it to the trench, but there’s a rider out in front of them.”

She’s not sure who would be riding in front of an army of inhuman creatures. A mad man is all she can come up with, or maybe a hostage or a distraction.

A few minutes later, Ygritte squints at the horizon.

“I think I see someone,” she tells Arya, and turns to the archer on her other side, “do you see?”

The other archer shakes his head. Ygritte squints harder.

“I see a figure in red,” she says to Arya, lighting her arrow. “Should I take the shot?”

Arya’s muscles go stiff, and lets her mind relax and tries to slip back into Nymeria.

The wolves are mostly standing at attention and Nymeria, even through the snow, can spy the rider, only a few hundred yards ahead of the others. The figure and it’s stead stand on the edge of the trench that had been dug. And the bit of Arya that is still human, feels that she recognizes the figure in the red robes.

Well, she was always so devoted to the Lord of Light, she must know her role here.

Slipping back into herself, she tells Ygritte, “Take the shot.”

She doesn’t even nod before loosing the arrow. It sails across the horizon, untroubled by the snow. The flame is visible enough.

Nymeria sees the arrow hit its target, striking the figure in the neck, causing it to fall from the horse. She sees the flame catch, and spread, seemingly by itself, and fill the trench as though it were full of the most flammable oil known to man. The closest wolves retreat a bit, wary of the fire themselves.

Only Nymeria sees the figure disintegrate before she even hits the ground.

 King’s Landing

Queen Margaery was not having a good day.

Sometimes she wonders why she wanted the throne so badly. Some days she could barely restrain herself and her true thoughts.

True, Joffrey was easy enough to control. Though often frighteningly sadistic, he was still quite childish. Stroking his ego and distraction both worked quite well. Cersei was quite another story, and Tywin Lannister was a volume to himself.

Thankfully, Margaery had discovered an unexpected secret; they could be played against each other quite easily.

The seeds had been planted for months, Margaery’s comments regarding Cersei’s involvement with the growing Faith Militant sect growing in the city having inflamed Tywin, who had ended up ordering Cersei to return to Casterly Rock.

Margaery had almost thought the former queen looked happy to be leaving, and privately, Joffrey had been ecstatic to not have his mother still hovering over his shoulder. Perhaps she should have had him make the suggestion himself.

But still…

Margaery made her way in the early morning light to the nursery, for a few moments alone with her son before the nurse awoke. Nearly a year old, Gerold Lannister looks more like her than his father. While his creation had brought his mother no joy, the same could not be said for his existence. She hopes that his life can be his own.

She rocks her son and thinks about the news that had come over the past few days.

The dragon sighting had been enough, many of the smallfolk across the land swearing to the seven that had seen it crossing the winter sky. Easy enough to dismiss as a flight of fancy.

Then the letter had come.

Joffrey had exploded in rage during the small council meeting, and in their chambers later, he had wrapped his hands around her neck and squeezed, and for a moment, Margaery had been certain she wouldn’t be able to talk him down. Even when she managed, she could still feel his fingers.

She really felt that they should take the contents of the letter more seriously. Joffrey had occasionally over the past years huffed and puffed over Danaerys Targaryen still living. Even Margaery had often dismissed the claims. Then the raven came, laden with the message that Danaerys Targaryen, first of her name, would be returning to King’s Landing to reclaim her throne, but not right away. She wrote of a conflict in the north, of creatures of myth returning, and of a need for all of the kingdoms to prepare to aid the north, or else there would be nothing for anyone to rule.

It was too much, really.

Not that she was even sure she believed anything about the rumors of the Others...but still.

Some days in the capital she missed her grandmother dearly.

She finds an unexpected ally though.

She was in the royal solar, writing a letter to Loras back in Highgarden. She knew that the Dragon queen had sent ravens to all of the seven kingdoms, with the same message and the same plea for aid, and she needed to write to him.

The guard outside that day was none other than Jamie Lannister, and when she asked him to walk with her to the rookery to send it, she looked at him.

“Ser,” she greets him, “Could you accompany me? I’m sending a letter to my brother.”

Pointed. The Kingslayer had been missing his sister dearly, and Margaery knew from whispers that he had had not a single bit of communication since she had left.

“Are you still at odds with your father?” she asks, trying to sound conversational.

“Still doing his best to convince me to leave my post, return and become Lord of Casterly Rock.”

“Nonsense,” Margaery insists, “Appointment to the Kingsguard is life long. Your only duty is to your king,” she squeezes his arm. And by extension, me, she does not say out loud.

She makes a show of selecting a raven and petting it’s head.

“I do wish there was a more secure way to send messages,” she says, “Ravens get shot down so often.”

She turns to Jamie.

“You served King Aerys, what do you think about the words sent by this Dragon Queen?”

Jamie’s face twitches.

“I would fear the possibility of the return of a Targaryen monarch, as I have seen the damage one of them could bring.”

“So you would consider if part of your duty to discover the threat this, so called, Danaerys Targaryen might pose?”

Jame looks at her strangely. She smiles, and presses her message to his chest.

“Deliver this message to my brother in Highgarden. I have asked him to raise a hundred men and ride north. The king has no army of his own, of course. Go north, find if there is truth to this threat from this so called army of the dead...and find out if there have been any more of the ‘dragon sightings.’ we have seen ahead of this queen’s message.”

“My duty is to the king.”

Margaery smiles widely.

“Of course, kings before have extended these protections to their queens, their children, even their mistresses. Though I imagine Joffrey has never done this?”

Jamie shakes his head. Margaery nods, subtly moving her hair off of her shoulders. She wonders if the little purple bruises are still on her neck.

“But…” she starts, “Has he ever specifically told you that you were not to extend this to me? I mean, after all, you performed these duties for the last queen.”

Jamie stands frozen. Margaery passes the paper to him.

“Take this to Highgarden. Do what I’ve ordered. This may be the best thing you can do to keep your king safe.”

She turns away from him, and returns to her chamber. She can only hope that attempting to keep the king safe could also keep her and her son safe.

[orangeflavoryawp]

Jonsa - “A Violence Done Most Kindly”, Part 8

See?  I told you I wouldn’t leave you long without an update.  ;)

“A Violence Done Most Kindly”

Chapter Eight: Sowing Seeds

“The road is too long.  It winds too sharp.  And Sansa cannot see the end from her vantage point, cannot calculate the curve.  She discerns it through faith.  She travels blind, but for her hand in Jon’s.”  -  Jon and Sansa.  Stark is a house of many winters.

Read it on Ao3 here.

Part 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 fin

* * *

It’s a tomb, Sansa discovers.  One long, torchlit, communal tomb.

           She glances down the length of the crypt corridor where she sits and waits with the rest of the fear-rattled refugees, echoes of the battle raging above them, around them, resounding through the walls in an endless, harrowing nightmare.  The ground shakes at their feet, the dirt rattling loose from the walls and ceiling with the thunder of thousands of undead feet barreling through the army above them.

           At some point, Tyrion makes to reach for her hand, a measure of comfort – but for her or himself, she cannot tell.  In the end, he never lights his touch.  His hand stills mid-reach for her, fingers curling back into a loose fist that returns slowly to his side as he opens his mouth, voice a strangled hope. “We must take heart, Lady Sansa. Our loved ones will prevail.  Have faith.”

           “Your queen just tried to ransom all our lives – yours included – for a paltry, hollow crown,” she hisses, the terror making her voice tremble even as she glares.  “Do not speak to me of faith when yours has been so misguided.”  It’s a searing rebuke, her hands bundled tightly in her lap, the fabric of her dress clutched between white knuckles.

           Tyrion blinks pained eyes at her, glancing down to his feet.  He does not deny her – does not challenge her accusation. He simply hangs his head, a tremulous sigh leaving him.

           She watches him quietly, a faint memory teasing the back of her mind – Jaime’s return to King’s Landing after his stay as Robb’s captive up North. She’d watched them from behind the door of her and Tyrion’s newly shared chambers, watched their embrace in his solar, Jaime kneeling down to one knee, Tyrion’s face buried in his shoulder, each of their hands (the ones left, at least) bunched in each other’s tunics, before they pulled back reluctantly, hesitant, shaking sighs racking both of them, Jaime’s good hand reaching up to trail the scar over Tyrion’s face, a question in his furrowed brow, an apology in his salt-tinged eyes.

           But Tyrion had smiled at him, ruined face a mask of ill-kept pain.  “Welcome home, brother,” he’d said, voice breaking.

           Sansa had retreated before she could witness more, before the stain of Robb’s name could light her tongue in abject resentment.

           Looking at him now, this wreckage of past mistakes made flesh, she remembers suddenly the pain of losing a brother.

           The pain of losing many brothers.

           Sansa swallows tightly, the anger bleeding out of her face, brow smoothing out, lips softening in their frown.  She clears her throat gently, looking down to the bunched fists at his sides when she tells him, “Ser Jaime is like to survive the night.  He’s a good fighter, after all.”  She doesn’t know what compels her to say it.

           “Was,” he corrects, a sad sort of humor coloring the words.  He releases a wounded chuckle, eyes finally rising to meet hers.

           They stare at each other for long moments.

           He’d been kind to her, she knows, at a time when the world offered little kindness at all.  But he’s been mistaken in his affections before, and now they host a dragon in their den, owing in no small part to his own imprudent devotion.

           He was never meant to play the knight in her tale, like her favored songs had promised.  She sees this now, in a way she hadn’t when she was still a child, looking for the best in people, holding their small mercies to her heart like precious gems, mistaking lions and hounds for men.

           “But you’re very gracious, my lady,” he says finally, the gratitude choked off at the end, breath hitching with his dread.  He offers her a tentative smile.

           She finds it in herself to return it, in what small measure she can.

           And then a crashing weight falls upon the ground above them, rattling the stone statues.  The crypts go dead with silence.

           Sansa glances up at the suddenly tranquil walls, her heart swallowed down instantly.  Nothing breathes for what feels like an eon, the telltale sounds of battle ceased, the shaking of the corridors stilled.  She does not chance a breath, a word, even a hope.  She flits her gaze toward the heavy stone door they built to barricade the crypts, eyes unblinking in the shadowed hall, torchlight flickering about her like a threat.

           Long minutes pass, almost an hour of suffocating, uninterrupted silence, and then something bangs at the door.  A single, resounding clang.

           Sansa jolts to her feet, chest heaving with her terror, hand already fumbling for the dragonglass dagger fixed to her belt.

           Another clang.  Heavy, terrible scratching.  The slight push of the door in the sodden dirt.

           Sansa’s breath comes quick and shallow, the uneven hilt of her dagger digging into her palm even through her glove, her fingers flexing in their hold, feet planted in readiness.

           The door pushes further in on them, slow and grating, something grunting on the other side.

           Several somethings.

           More thuds against the door, more scratching, the sudden stream of light through a crack in the threshold, and then the muffled sound of a word.

           A word.

           A name.

           “Sansa!” it calls, stifled by the cold stone between them.

           She drops her dagger instantly at the recognition and it clatters to the floor, sharp and resounding in the still corridor.  A small crowd gathers a few feet behind her, too frightened to follow further.  She rushes to the door, gripping at the jarred open edge, sunlight striking her knuckles, a sob already raking through her, the tears sudden and hot on her lids, and she heaves.

           The door breaks open to a blaring dawn, several men – living, breathing men – tumbling through the threshold when the door finally gives from their combined strength.

           Sansa stumbles back, eyes wide, blinking back the blindness, adjusting to the light as she braces an arm over her eyes, searching, needing, frantic, and then –

           “Sansa.”

           That voice again.

           She blinks against the harsh light, his silhouette coming into focus.

           Edmure Tully hobbles through the threshold, one hand holding his side, his other arm lame and bloodied and likely lost, one eye swollen shut beneath a stream of blood.

           She stares at him, mouth parting, lungs clenching.

           A sigh of relief rushes from him, the pain of it clear when he winces.

           It breaks from her like a flood.  She launches herself at him, arms thrown about his shoulders, the sob dragging from her without restraint, and Edmure grunts from the assault, stumbling back from the weight of her, a cry of pain blunted at his lips just before the first wail breaks from her.

           He stills in her embrace, blinking beneath the gush of blood from his temple, until he tentatively folds his good arm around her waist, holding her to him, a cough sounding at her ear, wavering beneath the force of her, weak and trembling and barely standing.

           But alive.

           Sansa whimpers against him, clutching at his soiled tunic, tears smearing into the blood along his neck, the shadow of the crypts at her back, the blinding breach of sunlight at his.

           At the threshold between life and death, light and dark, day and night – they stand.

           Dawn creeps slowly past their forms, illuminating the stifled corridor behind her.

           Not a tomb, she realizes, but a sunlit garden, a place where the dead may offer new growth.

           A place of promised life.

           Winter has always been the herald of spring, after all.

* * *

           They say the dead all dropped at once – an instant, resounding wave, the weight of so many corpses tumbling to the earth at once quite literally shaking Winterfell to its foundation.  

The men keep fighting, swinging at air, even crossing blades themselves, feverish and feral and frenzied, their blood rioting in their veins, hardly noticing the fall of the dead, so lost in their own desperate will to survive, fighting, and panting, and fighting still, the smell of blood and shit all around them, shapes in the shadows, the frantic, blade-gripping, adrenaline-rushing fear still coursing through them, until gradually, man by man, breath by breath, a slow-dawning stillness overtakes them.

For every man standing, there is a litter of corpses at his feet.

An unearthly calm washes over Winterfell, the living barely that.  And then –

And then.

A hesitant, slow rise of voices.  A growing eddy of shouts.  Triumphant.  Glorious.

Crying, and laughing, and shouting.  Hands over blood-drenched faces.  Knees in the dirt. Heads thrown back.  A quaking, resounding exhale.  Blades falling from grimy palms.  Boots squelching through the putrid mess.  And still, a roar of exultation.

“The King in the North!  The King in the North!  The King in the North!”

Jon slips into a coma so deep, they’d thought him dead upon first entering the room.

Davos tells her that he and Jon’s personal guard were the ones to find him – laid out on the floor of her chambers, barely breathing, a pool of blood beneath him, her brother sitting calmly in his chair, blood-drenched dagger still held in his grip.

“Help him,” Bran had said, so quiet it was almost a whisper, almost never there at all.

It takes five men to hold Tormund back from lunging at Bran, shouting his vehemence so vile and hateful the spit flies from his mouth, even as he kicks out, foot catching the wheel of Bran’s chair, jostling him so hard he nearly tips over and crashes to the blood-soaked rug himself.  Bran stares dumbly at the space Jon’s body once occupied, red-steeped palm now empty of the blade that pierced his flesh, hanging limp in his lap, hardly even acknowledging Tormund’s wrestling form inches from him, the wildling’s heated shouts filling the dawn-touched chamber.

Davos tells her that his guard has been sworn to secrecy after taking Jon from the room, only the most trusted of men – those of them left after the battle.

Bran retreats from her solar and into her bedchamber, closing the door behind him in silence once Tormund is dragged from the room.

She stands staring at the closed door, eyes blinking owlishly.  Davos seems of a similar state beside her, perhaps still reeling from his own unexpected survival.  Perhaps still trying to process the scene before them.  Her eyes travel back down to the blood-stained rug that was once her parents’.  

She’s going to be sick.

Sansa reaches a trembling hand for the table edge beside her when the vomit rises suddenly, without warning.  She retches violently, bent double with the force of it, hand slipping against the table edge, trying to find purchase as she heaves and heaves, emptying herself out from the very pit of her.  Her face bursts red with the effort of it, tears springing to her eyes, sickly bile streaming from her lips when she stumbles to her knees, legs finally giving out.

“My lady,” Davos cries, urgent at her side, his blood-slicked gloves slipping over her elbow when he tries to steady her.

She takes a breath, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand, eyes flitting to his red-darkened gloves.  She stares at them, eyes focusing and refocusing, throat raw and burning.  “I have to find my sister,” she says blearily, a ragged whisper breaking across her chapped lips as she struggles to get to her feet.

It’s many hours before she finds Arya.  Sansa walks through the halls in a faint stupor, having left the chamber without another word after Davos’s recounting, unable to look at the dark blossom of blood staining the rug, the bile still fresh in her throat, and she stumbles from the room, a hand steadying herself along the threshold, ignoring Davos’ concerned calls at her back, wondering from the room in a haze.  She sifts through the corpse littered halls, the ends of her skirts dark with mud and blood and worse, tripping over cadavers, her low heels catching in cartilage, trembling hands gripping at the walls for balance, lungs heaving beneath the foul air.

Arya stands dazedly at the end of the corridor Sansa has made her way through.  She blinks unsteadily up at Sansa, a dark bruise swelling up her right cheek, her eye nearly closed from the enflamed skin.  Her tunic is torn at the shoulder, a garish wound stretching over the exposed flesh.  She hardly seems to notice the bleeding.  The fingers of her left hand are bent at an unhealthy angle, broken surely, and Needle shakes in the grip of her other palm.

Sansa stands staring at her, one hand gathered in her trailing skirts, mouth parted on a sharp inhale.

Arya swallows, eyes focusing in the filtering daylight through the hall’s sparse windows.  She blinks.  Blinks again. Seems to recognize her surroundings a moment before Sansa breathes her name.

“Arya.”

And then she’s sprinting, Needle dropped to the floor with a sharp clang, bounding over corpses, slipping along the blood-slick stone, steadying herself, never slowing, breathless, gasping – “Sansa!” – a whirl of soiled leather and crimson-stained skin slamming into her, bundling her in her fierce grip, arms tight around her waist, sob buried in her chest, broken fingers digging painfully into the back of Sansa’s dress, stumbling them back along the ruin-washed floor, breath ragged and worn and desolate when it leaves her small, battered form.

It takes hours to find her.

It takes hours still to let her go.

* * *

Sansa makes her way through the ruined halls of her home, passing straggling soldiers, weaving through the wreckage to the main square.  She breaks into the harsh daylight, but it’s greyed since dawn, a haze of ash and snow blanketing Winterfell.  Arya follows the trail of her soiled skirts as they pick their way around corpses, walking over limbs and debris.

The words she needs to tell Arya about Jon are still lost to her, a vacant, empty wandering having overtaken her instead. Arya keeps her always in sight, a silent shadow at her back.

A blood-curdling wail streaks through the air and Sansa stills, whipping her head to the sound, catching sight of Daenerys staggering across the courtyard toward something, arms outstretched, mouth tipped open in a harrowing, anguished scream.  Missandei is steady at her side, an arm around her waist, holding her frail body up lest the winter wind take her and fling her about like this choking ash.

Distantly, she recalls Davos’ brief mention of the dragons’ fates.

She follows Daenerys’ tear-filled gaze across the courtyard, eyes landing on the form of a mortally wounded Grey Worm, dragging the dead body of Jorah Mormont over the stone and guts and toward his queen. His boot catches on a piece of debris, and he lurches forward, dropping to one knee, half sprawled over Jorah’s body. Daenerys makes it to them then, falling to the ground gracelessly, ignoring the putrid slush of human filth beneath her knees, eyes only for her bear, a desperate, bone-rattling cry ripping from her as she bundles his cold form in her hands, dragging him into her lap, rocking with him, sobbing, tear tracks etched across her ash-grey cheeks. Misssandei takes Grey Worm into her arms similarly and from where Sansa stands, she can see a handful of words tearfully exchanged between the two before Grey Worm convulses - once, twice, a last, jerky spasm – and then finally going still in Missandei’s arms. She bends her head low to touch her forehead to his and Sansa never hears what parting words she grants him, what farewell or peace.

Daenerys’ cries echo around the courtyard, and even still, exhausted, bloodied soldiers mill about as though she were just another corpse beneath their feet.  They pass her like shadows, unbent to her anguish.

It is just another death, after all.

Sansa turns from the sight, the bile returning sharp and pungent along her tongue, but she swallows it back this time, braces a hand to her ribcage, as though to keep the sickness in, as though to anchor it there with her wrath and regret and remorse.

It festers quietly and unobtrusively, settling low in her stomach.  

She turns from the sight of the grieving dragon queen, her pity too marred and eroded by a sharp resentment to taste like anything but ash on her tongue.  Eyes narrowed, jaw tight, she continues on – aimless.

Somewhere between the eastern corridor and the ruined door to the Hall of Lords, Daenerys’ faraway wails finally peter out into silence. Sansa takes a deep breath in, pushing the broken door open with all her might, Arya pushing beside her, and the wood creaks open, splintered beneath the crush of a giant’s maul.  More bodies flood the hall before them, but there are more living here than dead, and somewhere along the far wall, Sansa catches sight of Brienne seated along a step, elbows braced along her knees, her head in her hands, sword tarnished and copper-streaked on the floor beside her.

Sansa makes her way toward her sworn shield quietly, stopping before her and squatting down, braced on her haunches, hands anchored to her knees.

Brienne looks up then, face a ruin, hair matted and dark – no longer that brilliant, sun-lit blonde that had fascinated Sansa once upon a time.

Sansa offers an exhausted smile – half-formed and fleeting as it is – her hands going to Brienne’s cheeks, cradling her face in her palms.

“Jaime’s dead,” Brienne says evenly, without prompt.

Sansa blinks at her, nodding slowly, throat tight suddenly.  She wants to say she’s sorry.  She wants to say how she knows she cared for him, even against all reasoning.  She wants to say at least he died with honor. She wants to say so many things, but she isn’t sure yet how much she means any of them.  And so, she only has this:

“He kept his oath.”  It’s a small comfort, she knows, but perhaps it’s the only kind of comfort they may have.  The only kind Brienne would accept.

Brienne nods, sharp blue eyes blinking back the wetness.  And then her eyes trail to Arya’s form, half hid in shadow at her sister’s back.

Sansa brushes her thumbs over Brienne’s cheeks, the weight a lighter load, instantly – the words easy on her tongue.  “Thank you for keeping her safe,” she chokes out.

Brienne swings her gaze back to Sansa, the edges of a hesitant smile spreading beneath the pads of Sansa’s fingertips.  “She is half your mother’s heart, after all,” she says in answer.

Sansa nods, mouth trembling when she whispers out, “And half mine.”

Brienne reaches up a hand to curl tenderly along Sansa’s wrist, the breath raking from her – exhausted and battered.

Sansa leans forward, bracing her forehead against her sworn shield’s, eyes fluttering closed at the contact.

It’s only once Sansa parts from Brienne, glancing about the hall, that Arya finally speaks.

“Where’s Jon?”

The answer lodges in her throat like a knife, splitting her from ear to ear, choking her beneath a rush of blood.  Her heart hammers out a staccato of sour notes.

Arya stares up at her, just a girl.  Just a lost, wounded girl.  “Where’s Jon?” she asks again, voice infinitely small and hesitant.

Later, when Arya flees from the hall after Sansa tells her, she finds she cannot follow.  She cannot go to him.  She cannot look upon him.

Not yet.

“Stay with her,” Sansa commands Brienne, voice hollow.  “Make sure she doesn’t kill Bran.”

Brienne looks up at her, horrified, standing swiftly. “She wouldn’t.  My lady, she…”

Sansa swings a deadened gaze her way, lips pursed tight.  “She would.” She swallows thickly, eyes drifting back toward the broken door of the hall.  “That boy isn’t our brother anymore.”

Brienne only stares at her a moment longer, nodding without another word, picking her sword up off the stone and following her charge out the hall.

Sansa’s legs finally give out and she drops down to the step Brienne had previously occupied.  She stays there for well on an hour, perhaps two, eyes unseeing.  No one comes looking for the Lady of Winterfell. No one comes looking for the living.

She wonders if it will ever end, or if this is the disillusionment Jon spoke of once before – how war makes a home in your heart and never truly leaves.  She wonders if her father hadn’t also known this.

She wonders if he would have taught her such, of if he’d have let her continue on in the sort of ignorance he never spared his sons.

Sansa sighs.

And so it goes.  

So it goes for many hours that first night, soldiers falling where their exhaustion takes them, sleeping in thresholds and corridors and neighbor to corpses.  At some point, Sansa passes the open door to the kitchens, three famished, too-young soldiers tearing into one of the store’s preserved hams.  She hasn’t the heart to scold them.  The moans of the survivors have turned into a low hum at the back of her mind, never truly reaching her.

In the end, she simply doesn’t know what to do.

It’s Missandei that jars her into movement, coming upon her with Grey Worm’s blood still warming her dress, dark circles already settling below her eyes.  “I need bandages, cloth, clean water,” she says, voice even in a way that seems a disconnection to the tear-filled gaze she sets upon her or the trembling of her hands bunched together over her skirts.

Sansa stares at her, blinking when she recognizes Lord Varys standing just behind the other woman, face a haunt.  “Lord Varys,” she says in surprise, not knowing what else to say.

“My lady, the wounded are many – too many,” he says, sorrow lining his words.  “We need your help.”

Sansa opens her mouth, closes it just as slowly.

Missandei’s mouth trembles, tears brimming along her eyes, though they do not fall.  “Please,” she croaks out.

Sansa blinks at the word, something filling her she hasn’t a name for, and it all comes barreling into her – Edmure’s bleak smile, Davos’ gaze on his boots, Arya’s stony silence –

Bran’s eerie calm – the way his hands hadn’t even shook when he wheeled himself into her bedchamber and closed the door.

She heaves a breath, a hand over her eyes, lungs quaking in her chest as she smothers the sob.  “Yes,” she chokes out, shaking her head.  “Yes, of course.”  She sniffs back the tears, doesn’t let them fall.  Her hand drops from her face and she squares her shoulders, nodding fervently at Missandei.  “Of course, come with me.”

It was wrong of them to call it the Long Night, she finds, arms covered in blood up to her elbows by the time dawn breaks once more across Winterfell.

(Wrong, because it isn’t long – it’s endless.)

And so it goes and so it goes.

Jon is right – it never truly leaves them.

* * *

They never find the Blackfish’s body.  

Sansa asks Edmure at some point, when she finds voice enough to ask the question.  Edmure stares at her with heavy eyes, sitting still for her as she wraps the bandages around his waist.  She stops at his silence, blinking up at him.

He cannot hold her gaze, turning to stare at the far wall instead.  “Saved my life, the old bastard,” he gets out on a gruff exhale, eyes wetting instantly.

Sansa swallows, returning to her wrapping with a renewed focus.

Pack it away, bury it deep.  Take a breath and hold it tight.

She does not cry, mutely winding the roll of bandage round and round his waist, staring at the fresh patch of blood already peeking through the white linen.  Her brows furrow in frustration, the air scraping along her throat with her huff.

Later, she tells herself.  She will grieve for him later.

There is work yet to be done, and Sansa means to do it.

“Your parents would be proud.”

She ties the bandage off with a tight knot.

They never find his body, but then, there are many bodies they never find – Alys Karstark, Lord Royce, Randyll Tarly, Podrick Payne, Edd Tollett.  Sansa remembers each of them anyway.

Building the pyres is slow, agonizingly long work, and there are too many bodies mangled beyond recognition.  The fires burn day and night, needing to be relit several times before the many bones are finally turned to ash.  Smoke clogs her lungs, stains the grey walls with a permanent dark haze, the scent sinking into her flesh until she is rife with it – the dredges of their dead, come to live again in her skin.

Days pass in this manner, and Sansa forgets to sleep, too occupied with the running of a kingdom she never intended to inherit.

Jon remains unconscious, his body like ice to the touch, breath barely discernible.  Ghost is found perpetually curled at the foot of his bed, whining long and low into the night.  Sansa braces her hands to her ears and tries to drown it out.

Bran stays locked in her bedchamber, refusing food, and she has taken to sleeping with Arya when exhaustion finally takes her. Her sister spends that first day after the battle pacing the length of her solar, glaring at the closed door, never even bothering to bandage her wounded shoulder.

“Bran, get out here,” she seethes.  

Silence.

She kicks at the door, howls her rage, sobs and sobs and sobs for her brother to just open the gods-damned door, Bran, how could you, how could you and Sansa flees the solar, braces herself back against the wall in the hallway and tries to breathe.

Arya keeps a steady vigil at Jon’s side while Sansa attends to the wounds of the North, finding much needed support in Lady Olenna and Lord Varys and, surprisingly, the young Lord Arryn. Daenerys keeps to her chamber, only ever retreating from its sanctuary to retrieve a flagon or two of wine from the kitchens, her salt-white, fire-dimmed silhouette casting lingering shadows in the corner of Sansa’s eye.

Davos is true to his word, the harrowing truth behind Jon’s condition never leaving that bloodied chamber.  But word spreads of Jon’s true parentage.  The wounded soldiers, in their beds of straw lining the corridors, whisper it through the halls.

A Targaryen.  A trueborn one at that.

An imposter.

Sansa comes upon one such whispering horde of Northmen just when Lord Glover, with his one missing eye and half-burnt face, grabs a loose-lipped soldier by the collar and drags him up, snarling in his face. “And what Targaryen ever died for the North?” he bellows in the man’s sheet-pale face, shaking him.  “What Targaryen ever bled for us the way Jon Snow has?”

The man splutters in his grasp, hands clawing at the fist at his throat.

“I know no king but King Jon of House Stark,” he roars, spit flying in his rage.  “And I swear, on the old gods and the new, that I will gut the man who besmirches his name, do you understand me?”

The man in his grasp nods sharply, gulping his fear down, sighing in relief when Lord Glover drops him back to the floor.

Sansa stands at the end of the hall, watching with a lung-tingling fascination.

Lord Glover seems to notice her then, dipping into a slight bow at her presence, a hand at his chest.  “My queen,” he says, and Sansa’s breath catches in her throat at the address.

She stares at him, eyes unblinking, hands bunching in her skirts.

He does not move until she nods her dismissal, and then he’s sweeping from the hall, his cloak billowing in his wake. She does not notice the curious stares of the soldiers.  She watches the space he once occupied, heart thrumming in her chest, throat parched.

“My queen.”

Sansa retreats from the hall without further word.

A new whisper begins, this one voiced in reverence.

The White Wolf and the Red Queen.

It spills over the castle, past the walls, echoing from ear to ear – until they are lore, as entrenched in the Northern spirit as snow is to winter.

“I’m sorry he could not be laid to rest at sea,” Sansa tells Yara one morning, the faint pink of the sunrise casting slants of ghostly light across the pyres, now barely embers in the snow.

She holds tight to her chest the memory of Theon’s last embrace, that night before the end.

She holds tight.

Beside her, Yara digs her booted toe into the cinder-lined snow, watching it crest and break before her.  “Still,” she says, voice hoarse, “he did not die away from home. For that, I am grateful.”  She glances up at Sansa with the words.

She dares not speak, throat tight with unspoken yearning.

Yara nods at her, a hard smile breaking across her lips.  “The Drowned God takes even his wayward sons, after all.  Theon is at peace, perhaps for the first time in his miserable life.”

Sansa winces at the words, though not from offense. It’s a willowing regret, memory washing over her.

(His trembling hand in hers as they leapt from the height of Winterfell’s walls.)

Yes.

Peace.

Give him peace, gods, please, if you’ve any mercy left in you – give him peace.

Sansa’s eyes flutter shut, heart carving a hollow between her ribs.

“My brother respected you, cared for you in a way I may never understand, but – ”

Sansa opens her eyes to watch Yara in the slow-brimming light of dawn.

Yara swallows tightly, turning to her fully.  “I wish to honor his faith,” she promises staunchly.  “I swear to you now – queen to queen – the North will have the Iron Islands’ friendship, from now until the waves take us.”

Sansa stares at her, a visage of her lost Theon, in the lines of her nose and the clench of her jaw and the curl of hair sweeping across her brow.  Something aches in Sansa that feels jarringly like the beginning of a long, quiet grief. She releases a shaky breath with her words.  “I would gladly trade it to have him back – even for a day.”

Yara offers a tender smile, something like gratitude passing through her eyes.  “I know. That’s why you shall always have it.”

Sansa nods, feeling the lingering heat of the spent pyres at her side.  Like a promise.

“I would have died to get you there.”

           Yara extends her hand, salt-grimed glove open and waiting.

           Sansa does not let it stay empty for long.  She reaches forward, clasping arms with her fellow queen.  “Sail well,” she tells her, a gentle hope lining the words.

           Yara smiles at her, fingers gripping at her forearm, head bowed in respect.  “What is dead may never die.”

           Perhaps such words might have been a haunt in moons past, the threat of the Night King still a visceral, immediate thing.  But now, the words are heartening.

           Now, they sound like a plea that’s been begging her lips for freedom.

           Now, they are a promise.

(She doesn’t want to be a Red Queen if it’s only to a dead king.)

* * *

She visits Jon on the third day.

           She finds Arya sitting outside his door, sharpening Needle.  It seems a pointless task, but she does not tell her so, because then –

           (Sansa ignores the quiet reminder at the back of her mind that whispers ‘Daenerys’ over and over, like a chant, a mantra.  A dragon without wings is not without teeth, after all.)

She stares down at Arya, watching as her sister stills the whetstone over her blade, eyes a blank mask when she blinks up at her.

           “Will you let me through?” she whispers with an exhaustion she has not let herself feel until now – until she is at his door, merely paces from him.

           Arya cocks a brow her way, leaning back in her chair.  “Took you long enough.”  There’s a sharpness to the words – an accusation.

           Sansa swallows tightly.  She just wants to breathe.

           (She’s been trying to catch her breath since she first saw the stain of his blood along her furs.)

           She just wants to breathe.

           “Will you let me through?” she asks again, the words a strangled whisper.

           Arya narrows her eyes at her, jaw clenched tight.  She nods finally, gaze drawn down.  Sansa slips into the room beneath the whisper of her wool skirts.

           The door slips shut behind her and she’s left staring at him as he lies there, tucked beneath furs, so peaceful she might have mistaken him for asleep any other time.

           She takes a step closer, trembling.  A short, stunted breath leaves her.  Another step.  She feels the horror branching through her lungs – slow and indelicate.  She makes it all the way to the edge of his bed before she manages to breathe his name.

           “Jon.”

           He doesn’t answer.

           “Jon,” she tries again, this time louder, this time with the irrational belief that were she only louder, he would hear her and wake.

           He stays still atop the bed.

           That slow-branching horror, it sinks its hooks, brittles her bones.  It roots her there before him.  She sinks to her knees mindlessly.

           He’s so pale.  So sickly pale his skin tints blue.  

           Sansa blinks, brows furrowing.

           That blue…

           It’s frost, she realizes, a trembling hand reaching out to brush against his temple, feeling the sheen of thin ice beneath her fingertips.  She pulls her hand back instantly, a small gasp breaking over her parted lips.  

           There’s a winter in his veins, freezing him in this moment, keeping him suspended in this hopeless halfway point between life and death.  She fumbles for his pulse, two fingers pressing into the cold flesh at his throat.  His heartbeat wanes, sluggish and faint – barely even there at all.

           She licks her lips, hand retracting.  She takes a moment to look at him, eyes traveling over his scar-lined face, the unruly thatch of beard at his chin, the broad expanse of his chest when she pulls the furs down, riddled with the evidence of his betrayal – twice borne now.  Beads of blood dot the edges of his never-closing wounds.  Sansa frowns at the sight.

           There’s a cloth and clean water at the bedside, and after several moments of staring at the gashes, of trying to discern the motion of his breath, she reaches for it and sets about cleaning him.

           The blood will run again, she knows.  It is a perpetual stain, a constant reminder.  But there is something soothing about dragging the wet cloth across his flesh, wiping the filth from him.  Her eyes catch along the tangle of his dark curls lining the pillow now, brows furrowing. She finds a brush and sets to work, moving on to his beard next, taking a delicate blade to the overgrown hair, cleaning him up as best she can.  She tucks him beneath the furs once more, changes his woolen socks, calls for lukewarm broth from the attending servant girl that Arya sends in.  When the woman returns, Sansa sends her out with an appreciative smile and gentle nod, setting the first spoonful to Jon’s mouth and dabbing up the lost broth that trickles over his chin with a fresh cloth beneath her steady, fine-boned fingers.

           Arya does not come to collect her that evening, and Sansa wakes to find she has fallen asleep against the bed, knees still folded painfully stiff beneath her, Ghost nudging her to consciousness with a wet snout.  She clenches a hand in his fur and buries her face in his neck, breathing him in.

           He smells like Jon, she finds.  Like soiled snow and leather and figs.  She holds him to her for many long moments.  And then she finds the will to face another day.

           She returns after the work of tending the wounded and rebuilding Winterfell is done, after meeting with the remaining Northern lords as they try to contain the aftermath.  They’ve taken to following her rule in Jon’s absence, an unspoken act, perhaps bolstered by such vocal allegiance as Lord Glover’s and Lady Lyanna’s.  Jon’s lineage becomes the insignificance of yesterday, when there are too many walls to rebuild and too many mouths to feed and too many wounds to stich closed.  After all, there is truth to Lord Glover’s words.

           “What Targaryen ever died for the North?”

           They still call him King Jon in their whispered tales, in their fervent pleas to the old gods to heal his ailing body, to halt his perishing.  The stories are vague, blurred at the edges, no one truly knowing the way in which Jon Snow defeated the Night King, only knowing that he had.

           And perhaps that is enough.

           Sansa leaves a tray of food outside Bran’s door each morning and returns to it untouched each night.

           She will not do more.  She cannot do more.

           Not when Jon’s hand sits like ice against her small palm and the bandaged linens round his chest stain with fresh blood each morning.

           Sansa curls her vehemence back behind a still tongue, tasting its tartness with the kind of steely resignation that comes from having buried so many dead already.

           The pyres never seem to stop burning, the sky a permanent grey haze. Sometimes she finds herself staring over the ramparts at the ash-covered hills, the tainted snow of her home.  But yearning is not building, and she has grown used to busy hands.  She does not stare long.

           There is a kingdom to restore.

           She says goodbye to Lady Olenna at the gate, after her half-moon stay in Winterfell following the battle.  The older woman takes her hands in hers, a jarringly public and informal gesture of affection that makes Sansa’s chest grow warm with fondness, with the aching wonder of what might have been.

           “Take care, dear girl.  I fear this winter has only just begun.”

           Sansa nods, eyes falling to their joined hands.  “I think you might be right.”  She doesn’t let the weary sigh leave her, but she thinks Olenna might have heard it anyway.  She blinks back up at her, gaze sure.  “But we are not alone anymore.  Keep sending that grain up North, Lady Olenna, and we stand a far better chance.”

           Olenna pats her hand, a wrinkled smile tugging at her lips.  “Then I shall, Your Grace.”

           Sansa opens her mouth to object to the address, unable to keep her features from showing her startle, but Olenna only shushes her, patting her hand one last time before withdrawing.  She eyes the shadow that Daenerys casts from her perch atop the ramparts, watching the farewell in stiff, darkened silence.  “Take heed, Your Grace,” Olenna whispers.  “This world has not seen the last of dragons, it seems.”  A glint passes through her eyes as they resettle on Sansa’s.  “I wish you good fortune in the wars to come,” she says pointedly, head inclined toward her.

           Sansa does not glance upward at the indication, already feeling the dragon queen’s presence like a hand at her throat, cinching ever tighter.  But she nods her understanding, a faint smile pulling at the corners of her lips.  “Thank you, my lady.”

           Edmure Tully leaves but a few days later himself, his lame arm bandaged to his side, his Tully armor both a comfort and a haunt.  His bow is reserved, the quirk of his smile an affectionate thing when he rises back to his full height, head high.  “You know, you’re quite unlike her, in many ways, and yet, exactly like her in all the rest,” he says suddenly, a thoughtful expression gracing his features.

           Sansa cocks a curious brow up at him, a startled laugh lining her lips with earnestness.  “Oh?”

           “Like Catelyn,” he says, as though it ever needed clarifying.

           Sansa beams up at him, a hand braced to her chest as though to stem the warmth.

           His face takes on a somberness, his eyes a soft-hued blue that makes her ache with memory.  “I miss her, still. I miss her always.”

           Her mother’s brother, she reminds herself.  Her brother.

           She thinks she knows a little something about brothers – the needing of them.

           And the losing of them.

           She reaches out to grasp his gloved hand in hers, a tender thumb running over his knuckles.

           Edmure releases a soft laugh, a flicker of pain crossing his brow when he looks down at the motion, but then he’s smiling again, that Tully blue a familiar comfort now.  “I’m glad I shall not have to miss you, niece,” he tells her.

           Sansa reaches for him, and he goes to her.  They hug in the snow-veiled courtyard, gently and ardently.  She says goodbye to both her uncles, in the hollow of her heart, in the silence of prayers she has learned to always keep inward, in the kind of faith that has only ever been born of blood.

           Her gods wear familiar faces now.  She keeps them close to her heart.

           (Family is the only faith that’s ever seen her through, after all.)

           “I can’t say I’ll miss this dreadful cold, cousin,” Robin tells her upon his own farewell, shrugging his cloak tighter about his shoulders in a motion of discomfort.

           Sansa takes pity on him, moving to adjust his furs with sure, practiced hands, tightening the cross-straps over his chest and smoothing her hands over his startlingly broad shoulders.

           Not a child anymore, she finds.  But then, none of them have had that luxury for quite some years now.

           The recollection makes her softer, makes her worn heart clench just a touch tighter. “Then I shall have to make you a fine, new cloak when next you visit, my lord,” she says, her voice bright in a way it hasn’t been for far too long.

           The excitement that lights his face could not be masked even if he’d tried.

           It’s a small, endearing bit of honesty that brings a smile to her lips.

           “Will you?”

           Sansa nods fervently.

           Robin beams at her, chin lifting, standing just a bit straighter than he had before.  And then a touch of sadness wilts his smile.  “I’m sorry Lord Baelish won’t be able to join me.  I know how much he must have meant to you.”  He worries his lip.  “Arya told me he died in the battle.”

           Sansa returns her hands to his shoulders, smoothing over the edges of his cloak with a motherly touch.  “He died in service to the North.  I could not ask for more,” she tells him, voice steady, not a quiver to be found.

           Robin nods, brows furrowed, face caught somewhere between pride and regret.  And then he offers a comforting smile, dipping into a slight bow in farewell, turning almost fully before –

           He stops, glances back at her, opens his mouth with a line of hesitation worrying his brow.  “Your Jon,” he begins, and Sansa blinks at him, breath tightening in her chest.  “He’s a brave one, isn’t he?”

           Sansa resists the urge to fold the young lord into her embrace, settling instead for a grateful smile and a soft sigh.

           “I should like to get to know him better, when he wakes.”

           Sansa lets the breath flutter from her, a catch to her voice.  “I’ll see to it, my lord.”  She watches the billowing of his cloak when he leaves then, the familiar banners of the Eyrie disappearing behind the main gate with the afternoon sun.

           She returns to the council chambers that same day to find Tyrion waiting for her, standing swiftly from his chair at her presence.

           Brienne eyes him disdainfully at her back, but Sansa only gives him a blank stare.

           He worries a hand at the edge of the chair for a moment, seeming to contemplate his words.  A stilted silence breathes between them, and then he takes a step toward her.  “Your Grace,” he begins, and never gets to finish.

           “’Your Grace’?  Not ‘my lady’?  Not ‘Sansa’?” She keeps the bite tame in her words, the snap of her jaw cushioned by restraint.

           It is still strange and new, this quiet acceptance the Northerners have granted her, this title born of war and its necessities.  Davos is as insightful and stalwart a Hand to her as he was to Jon, and none of the great houses seem eager to dispute her choice, or her rule.  She wonders still, in the back of her mind, if they’d have chosen her in any other circumstance.  Or if she is simply the default now, the only Stark left worth following, with Bran sequestered in her chambers as though in self-imprisonment, and Arya slinking through Winterfell’s shadows in a grief so furious she seems more wolf than human these days.

           (Even still, she remembers the way Lord Glover had looked at her that first night in the hall, and the way Ser Davos inclines his head in deference, and the way silence blisters in the room upon her arrival, fierce and humble in equal measure.)

           Tyrion clears his throat, gaze shifted toward the table so that he does not look at her when he says, “I think by now it’s rather clear you were never my lady. Especially now that you are…”  He clears his throat again, eyes flicking back toward hers.  “Now that you are his.”

           She does not offer a rebuke, but neither does she offer confirmation.  She simply stares at him.  The room seems smaller suddenly, the air tight in her lungs.

           Tyrion’s hand falls from the chair and he takes another step toward her, looking up at her with a plead in his eyes she cannot discern.  “But that’s not why I’m here.”

           “And why are you here, Lord Tyrion?” she manages through pursed lips, tongue sharp behind her teeth.  

           (She was there when they presented Jaime’s gold hand to him after the battle, in the filtering light of a red-hazed dawn.  He’d stared at it with salt-tinged eyes, lips trembling as he bit his tongue to hold the curse, or perhaps the wail.  Eyes fluttering closed, breath raking from him like a gale, he’d finally spoken.

           “Melt it down,” he’d choked out, and then turned instantly, stalking away with a shake to his shoulders that had Sansa bracing a hand over her mouth, the sigh tumbling from her in its wounded release.)

           “I’ve come to offer my services,” he says, fists bunching at his sides.

           Sansa cocks her head at him, eyeing him carefully.  “Has your queen finally decided to rejoin the council?  To venture outside her self-imposed isolation?  Tell me, is she tired of living like a mere guest in a castle that should be hers?”

           Tyrion swallows tightly, his voice hoarse when he replies, “Daenerys is in mourning, but – ”

           “And we are not?” she scoffs.

           “But I am not here for her,” he finishes gruffly.

           Another silence pricks at them, the air bristling with unease, and Sansa tries not to notice the trembling of his fists or the downward tilt of his mouth or the anguished, lonesome look in his eye.

           The last of his name.

           And yet he’s here –

           (not for ‘her’).

           Sansa will not turn away council for spite.  She will not let her people suffer to keep her burning resentment alive. She will not place pride above peace.

           “Please,” he tries again, blinking up at her with barely concealed tears, a face so instantly aged and worn she’s surprised she hadn’t seen it before. There’s a weariness to him that wasn’t there before.  “May I – may I be of any help?”

           “I won’t ever hurt you.”

           Sansa has taken to distrusting such promises in her experience, but there’s the same earnestness in his words now, and she understands what it means to want to believe in simple sincerity – to need it even, especially in an insincere world.

           Sansa finds herself nodding stiffly, just as the door behind her swings open. Lyanna Mormont stops in the threshold, eyeing the two of them in stilted concern.  “Your Grace?” she asks cautiously, hand clenching on the door handle.

           Sansa takes a deep breath, motioning toward a seat at the table.  “Lord Tyrion will be joining us for a time,” she tells her.

           Gratitude lights along the scar-addled lines of his face, a shaky smile pulling at his mouth.

           She does not ask after his queen.  She does not invite the dragon back to the table.

           And he does not urge her to such.

* * *

           Sansa consults with every healer and maester and wildling witch left in Winterfell. Nothing seems to affect Jon.  No collection of herbs seems to make the right salve, no pressure of practiced hands seems to ease the bruising or the wounds, no incantation seems to invoke the gods’ mercy enough to wake him.

           Sansa visits him daily, sleeping either at his side, or with Arya.  She begins her day with him.  She ends it with him, as well.

           She enters the familiar chamber now to find Tormund standing in the middle of the room, staring down at Jon, still as the morning light.

           “Tormund,” she greets, hesitant, making her way around the large man to stand at his side.

           He grunts his acknowledgement of her, never taking his eyes from Jon.

           She bundles her hands before her, fingers clenching and unclenching.  She eyes the clean bowl of water at the bedside table. “Did you come to help me wash him?” she asks tentatively, needing to broach the silence and yet not knowing how.

           He slides his intense gaze her way and she swallows back the words, unable to look away.  He heaves a heavy sigh, a hand wiping down his mouth and along his rough beard.  The motion is so reminiscent of Jon that she nearly takes a step back at the way it knocks the breath from her.

           “Let him rest, little wolf,” he tells her.

           She blinks at him, confusion marring her features.  She glances back to Jon’s unmoving form, before returning her attention to Tormund.  “I…”

           “He deserves the mercy of a clean blade.”

           The panic is instant – sharp at her throat.  Her hand comes up to grab at the hook-and-needle chain lining her collar.  “No,” she croaks out, breathless, staggering beneath the suggestion.

           Tormund turns fully to her, eyes the darkest blue she’s ever seen from him.  “He’s done his part.  He’s won the fight.  Now let him rest.”

           “And were you not there when he rose from death the first time?”

           Tormund grumbles, but doesn’t answer.  

           She takes a daring step closer to him.  “Were you not there?” she asks harshly.

           “Aye,” he grinds out.  “I was there.”

           Sansa stares at him balefully, her hand unclenching from her chain and sliding back to her side.  “You didn’t let him rest then either.”  It’s nearly an accusation.

           “Things were different.”

           “Yes, he wasn’t still alive.”

           Tormund levels her with a frustrated glare.

           “I can’t let him go.  I can’t.”  Her breath catches, her hands gripping at her skirts.  “Not like this.”

           Heaving a sigh, Tormund glances back to Jon’s still form along the bed.  “You know he never was the same – after that death business.”

           Sansa softens at the admission.  She feels the unexplainable urge to rest her hand upon his wide arm.  She resists it – just barely.

           “He was never the same,” he breathes out.

           “I know.”

           “No,” he says, near on a growl.  “You don’t.”

           Sansa blinks at him, mouth pursed into a tight line.  Something rattles in her chest she cannot recognize.  

           He turns back to her.  “You can’t know that.  No one can. He won’t talk about it – about wherever the fuck he went when those bastards closed his eyes for good.  So, no – you can’t know that.  You can’t know how he’s changed because you don’t know where he’s been.  None of us do.”

           She remembers Jon’s heavy breath pooling in the dip of her collar bone as he braces himself above her.  She remembers the quiver that racks through him when she settles her touch at his chest. She remembers the mournful way he mouths her name as her fingertips graze his scars.

           And she remembers how he takes her mouth with his before she can ever ask, his hand stilling her at the wrist.

           The thing is, she’s done quite the same when he’s tried exploring her own scars.

           Ramsay was a form of death himself, after all.  

           She’s never told Jon the depraved things Ramsay used to whisper in her ear when he took her like an animal, or how he brought her to begging by knife-point each night, or even how she miscarried during her escape to Castle Black – staining her saddle with blood, Brienne’s firm, mindful hands pulling her from the horse, cradling her in the snow as she cried out from the pain, a rending, terrible wail that shook the frost from the trees while Theon watched on with quiet, horror-filled eyes.

           (No, never that.)

           Something in her died on her way to him.

           Something in her has been dying ever since.

           Sansa gulps back the memory, frigid in her own skin, a winter’s gale passing through her like a howl.

           She told him to come back – demanded it even – because she has had enough of dying.

Because a collar is just another kind of violence.

Because she has finally learned to bare her teeth.

(Because wolves were never meant to be tamed – even by death.)

“Maybe it’s selfish,” she says, chapped lips parting on the words.  “But I won’t let him go,” she repeats.  “Because I think he deserves to be fought for.  I think he deserves it more than anyone.”

Tormund stares at her for a long time, just watching her, and she has to wonder what he sees.  He’d been there, after all, the day she’d arrived at Castle Black.  He’d been there – watched how she’d flown herself at Jon, arms going wide, sob raking from her instantly, trembling in his hold, face buried in his neck, rocking with him, back and forth and back and forth and –

He’d been there when she’d poured herself into him, never to return.

“Don’t take too long, little wolf,” he tells her finally, a gruff sigh leaving him as he turns for the door.  “The dragon queen won’t sit still forever.”

Sansa watches him go, catching sight of Arya in the threshold as Tormund drifts past.  They share a nod of familiarity, and Sansa is a sudden stranger, the show of acknowledgement a window into lives she’s closed herself off to – either willfully or not.

Have they shared a pint as easily as they’ve shared this nod?  Have they shared stories or laughs or hands?

She wonders, suddenly, at all the moments she’s missed in her single-minded rule, at this life her sister has built for herself, this life that Jon has built for himself, all the people and all the trials and all the joys that they’ve known.

She’s never shared her darkest parts, no, but she wants to now, suddenly.  She wants to know what it means to be seen – wholly and cleanly.

Arya stands before her.  Jon lays behind her.

And she wants them to know.  She wants them to know everything – all the horrid, rancid details, all the gruesome little workings of her insides – peeled back and emptied out.

(Perhaps this is what living means – perhaps this is what she demands of herself, as much as she demands it of Jon.)

She stares at Arya and her perpetual hold on Needle at her hip.  She stares at Tormund’s back as he stalks from the room.  She stares and stares and stares – vacant and longing.

(Tired of unkindness.)

Sansa makes her way from the room, silent and stiff. She finds herself at Bran’s door.

Before she can knock, the door swings wide – open for the first time since he’d retreated that bloody, unforgettable night, as though he’d been waiting for just this moment.

“Sansa,” he says, and he’s her little brother again – though his cheeks are gaunt and his eyes are hollow and there is nothing fond in his voice at all.

Her chest clenches from the harrowing sight of him. “Bran,” she exhales softly.

He sits staring up at her, hand still held at the door.  And then he wheels back, inviting her into the darkness of the room, shadows playing on them like taunts.

She thinks of their trek south.  She thinks of the summit.  She thinks of the beat of dragon’s wings shadowing their journey home. She thinks of the dragon queen, her white-sheened brilliance like a threat, even now, her mourning a fire-brewed thing.

She thinks of the start of it all.

Sansa takes a seat before Bran, the fire crackling at her side.  She licks her lips.  She finds her words.                                   (At the beginning.)

                                                 She will start at the beginning.

                                                                  Sansa clears her throat, eyes a dark demand, breath rising like wind-swept embers in her chest. {“Why did you bring her here?” –

* * *

Daenerys becomes a haunt – a silver, shadowy thing Sansa hardly ever sees outside the dim veil of sundown.  Sometimes, when she takes to the halls at night, she finds the dragon-less queen just lingering in a threshold, as though she has suddenly lurched to a stop, caught halfway between one place and the other, forgetting where it is she means to go.

The war has left widows of most of the North – wives who have outlasted their husbands.

But there is no such word for mothers who have outlasted their children.  

Sansa knocks on Daenerys’ door just the once – short and solid.

“Come in,” Daenerys beckons with a voice like ash.

Sansa enters her chamber smoothly, offering a polite curtsy and closing the door behind her.  She finds Daenerys lounging in a cushioned chair near the window, holding a near-empty wine glass loosely in her hand.  She sneers at Sansa’s entrance, a jarring expression for a face otherwise perfectly poised, a model of regal disinterest when she turns back to the window.  “And how is my nephew?” she asks coolly, fingers curling around her glass.  At Sansa’s silence she turns a single, raised brow her way, looking at her out of the corner of her eye.  “Come now, I know you’ve just come from his chambers.  You practically live there now, don’t you?”

Sansa smooths her hands over her skirts.  “He is much the same, Your Grace.  Nothing we’ve attempted has yet to wake him.”

Daenerys scoffs, taking a swig of wine.  “Such a doting sister.”  She seems to catch herself, lip curling as she turns fully to her. “Or should I say cousin now?”

“Jon is…dear to me, Your Grace, no matter the relation you attach to it.”

“Yes,” she says, emptying her wine glass.  “Dear enough to fuck, it seems.”

“Your Grace – ”

“Let’s not pretend, shall we?  It’s a rather tedious affair at this point.”  Daenerys arches a challenging brow at Sansa, tipping her empty glass back and forth.

“She burnt the Temple of the Dosh Khaleen when the khals refused her rule.  She burnt the slaver ships when they denied her their fleet. She burnt Euron Greyjoy when he rescinded his allegiance.”

Sansa blinks, remembering Bran’s words.

“She destroys what she cannot have.  House words have never rung so true.  She will take what is hers, with fire and blood.  Or fire and blood will take it instead.”

Sansa draws in a deep, steadying breath, lowering herself to the seat across from Daenerys.  Her hands fold together over her lap with certainty.

Meereen will be the last city she lays ruin to.

           Sansa catches sight of the flagon of wine on the side table.

           (The last, she vows.)

           Sansa grabs the flagon, offering it to Daenerys.

           After a moment of contemplation, Daenerys extends her hand with the wine glass expectantly.  Sansa begins to pour as she speaks, “If we’re not pretending anymore then I gather it’s safe to say you’re not particularly interested in Jon waking.”

           Daenerys throws her head back with a stunted laugh and Sansa stops pouring, replacing the flagon, her hands shifting seamlessly back to her lap.  Daenerys bites off an indignant scoff when she looks back to Sansa, eyes flashing.  “You’re much too smart to think I’d ever cross an ocean with an army such as mine only to sit second seat at the table.”

           Sansa doesn’t answer her, but she doesn’t need to.

           Daenerys’ eyes harden on her, taking a sip of wine like a threat, never blinking from her when she swallows.  “I did offer him an alternative.  He refused.”

           “It’s only an alternative when it’s a choice, not a threat.”

           Daenerys purses her lips, the fingers of her free hand thrumming along the armrest.  “I didn’t relish the idea of harming my own blood, no, but I’d have done it if it meant stability for the throne.”

           “I believe that.”

           Daenerys eyes her critically, shifting in her seat.  “And you understand why I must.”  A long sip of wine.  A thrum of silence between them.

           It is said like a statement, but even Sansa hears the question in it.  She offers a perfunctory smile.  “I understand why you believe you must.”

           Daenerys’ cheeks tinge a harsh pink, her nostrils flaring.  “It is not belief.  It is fact.”  She takes a large gulp of wine.

           “You’ll pardon me, Your Grace, if I hold such a fact up to speculation.  You did, after all, base your entire campaign for the throne on the misguided ‘fact’ that you were the last – and rightful – Targaryen.”  Sansa cocks her head thoughtfully, reclining in her chair.  “We’ve since seen the truth of that,” she finishes calmly, no hint of smugness to the words, though the boldness of such a sentiment is inherently unspoken.

           Daenerys narrows her eyes, her jaw locking, a cold, even calm blanketing over her. And this is it.  This is the dragon queen in all her bereaved splendor. This is grief made sharp – made fire-licked.  “You would do well to hold that tongue, my lady, before I have it cut out.”  It’s such a soft-spoken threat, her voice lilting as though it is a secret shared, a hidden joy.  Daenerys’ lips curl with her dark smile, stained with wine.

           Sansa glances to the slowly emptying glass in her hand.  

           “So eager to defy me,” Daenerys muses, all hint of grief gone.  “Treason is an easy crime for you, isn’t it?”  She is fire again – the small, blue flame at its origin.  A quiet destruction.  She looks off into the corner of the room, taking a drawn-out sip of wine, a needful distraction.  A sigh leaves her when she finally lowers her glass – a sound not unlike the exhaustion of bruised hearts.

           Sansa thinks of Jorah Mormont then.  The quiet bear at Daenerys’ back, and the way she always inclined her head at his words, the way her smile seemed a tender, girlish thing in his presence, the way her hand reached for him in the end, with desperation and yearning and loneliness.

           So much loneliness it was painful for Sansa to watch.

           “You love him so?  That you would risk such treason to speak to me thus?  That you would give your life for his claim?”  Her eyes slip back to Sansa like a demand.

           “For his claim?  No.” Sansa shakes her head softly, a sad sort of smile tugging at her lips, and she knows now that there is no keeping it any longer.  There is no way to stop it spilling from her, in waves and waves and earnest, fierce waves. “But for him?”

           There is no keeping this.

           She imagines Daenerys sees the truth of it in her face, because she is nodding slightly, jaw quivering, a heavy breath drawn through her lungs.  “And you think I haven’t loved like that myself?” Her eyes are wet suddenly – jarringly.

           If Daenerys is trying to hide the regret, she’s doing a poor job of it. And for a moment, Sansa wonders what they might have been in another life.  In another time.

           (When they’d not crawled over leagues and leagues of heartache too ripe to ever call it finished –

           Leagues and leagues of it and –

           The road is too long.  It winds too sharp.  And Sansa cannot see the end from her vantage point, cannot calculate the curve.  She discerns it through faith.  She travels blind, but for her hand in Jon’s.)

           What they might have been – Sansa wonders – in another life.

           But they have only this life.

           And she will not waste it.

           “I think you’ve loved,” she answers her in a whisper, and it’s not a truth that’s hard to see.  

           Daenerys does not take her eyes from her, hand tightening over her forgotten wine glass.  She is a haunt, yes – still a visage of mourning – but fire does not die so easy.

           (Sansa reminds herself that fire sows no seeds.)

The words lodge in Sansa’s throat, scraping their way out – a wreckage of sorrow lighting her tongue.  “I just don’t think you’ve ever loved anything so well as your throne – so well as yourself.”

Daenerys looks upon her with barely held contempt, her chin tilting high, eyes blinking back the wetness.  “You’re treading on thin ice, Lady Sansa,” she warns.

           “But it is my ice, and I will tread it how I will.”  

           Her North.  Her home.  Her Jon.

           (Even if she burns for it – this she will not surrender.)

           Daenerys takes a last, violent swig of wine, emptying her glass and nearly slamming it on the side table as she stands.  “You would be dead without me,” she hisses, a harrowing glint of shadow lighting her pale features.  It is almost a plea.

           Sansa only shakes her head, her eyes sharp under the firelight, hands still held primly in her lap.  “I would be dead without a great number of people – mainly Jon.  And Arya, and Bran, and Theon.  But not you.”

Daenerys blinks wildly at her, mouth parting with no words to follow.

Sansa stands as well, her height lending an air of assurance to the words.  “We would be dead without your dragons, Your Grace, but hardly without you,” she corrects, something of compassion seeping into her tone, remembering –

           There is no word for mothers who outlast their children.

           Yes, she has loved.  But so have they all.

           “I’m sorry,” Sansa says.

           (Daenerys will never know what for.)

           A scoff leaves the queen’s lips.  “Sorry?”  She’s practically shaking with the indignation.  “Sorry?”  Her face twists into a mask of disdain.  “You will be,” she promises, voice a tight whisper.  “You will all be sorry.”

           Sansa does not wilt in the face of her wrath.  She simple waits.  She simply watches.  

           “Father will know if you do.”

           “My armies will sweep through this land and lay waste to all who defy me.  I will retake that which is mine by right, and you will learn to properly cower before your queen,” she sneers, a shadow-crept wrath etching over her face.  “You think you have won, because my dragons are dead.  Because my children are dead.  But I was a queen before I was ever a mother, and a queen I will stay. They heralded my name like prophecy, they knelt in reverence, they bled for me, because I demanded it, and because they knew it was right.  Westeros will tremble before me, dragons or not, because I am the last true Targaryen.  I am the fire, and I am the blood.  And you will know my wrath.  You will know that I carry the greatness of Old Valyria in my veins.  You will know – ”

           Daenerys chokes on her own vehemence, a cloud of blood spraying suddenly from her lips as she jolts to stillness, eyes wide.

           (Words were not the only poison Baelish taught her.)

           Sansa tucks her hand back into the folds of her dress, the powdered drug between her fingertips a weight she has learned years ago.

           Daenerys snaps wild eyes to her emptied wine glass in recognition, lips flecked with blood.  She stumbles, blinking furiously, hands grasping for air she hasn’t the lungs for.

           Sansa does not turn away, even when the dragon queen collapses to the ground, gripping Sansa’s skirts between white knuckles, choking on her own blood.

           “I would give my life for his, yes,” Sansa offers demurely, lowering herself to the floor, a tender hand on the dragon queen’s elbow just before she starts seizing.  “But first, I would give yours.”

           It’s an ugly, inglorious death that takes her – the blood seeping from her mouth like a wound, fingers gnarled into trembling, grasping claws, eyes red-rimmed and hateful when she finally gasps her last – small and infirm and less than a queen.

           It is not a dragon’s death.

           Daenerys’ eyes slip shut, and instantly – like a dark, thieving mirror – with Ghost’s distant howl breaking against the night, somewhere across the castle –

           Jon finally wakes.

* * *

           {“There is a price.  Only death pays for life.”

It is an echo of years past.  An echo that rings unfamiliar to Sansa’s ears, but in the dark hour, in the hollow of night, it comes to her –

           “Some say the witch’s magic still lingers inside me.”

           Sansa’s eyes go wide, her mouth parting.  Bran offers what might have passed for a smile once on her lost brother’s face.

           “Because she is needed.”

           There is an old sort of magic to sacrifice, after all – a violence done most kindly.

           And fire sows no seeds.

           So Sansa will sow her own.}

[thedarkthatbindsus]

Here it is!

Your first peek at The Dark That Binds Us, my debut novel, due to be released in Fall 2019! 

The earth shudders as another dreadnaught drifts over the Dukcha Wood, casting a shadow like storm clouds.

Professor Gim keeps a hand on my shoulder, the both of us crouching as low as we can into the underbrush, waiting for the ground to still and the roar of the engines to fade. Its shadow is so huge that it blocks the sun, already struggling to pierce the thick canopy of the jungle.

I don’t know why I’m holding my breath, but I do, hand over my mouth as the ground finally stills and only the sounds of birdsong and buzzing insects fills the air. Professor Gim’s body relaxes next to me, but our guide Arjun’s body stays tense. When I look at him, his dark eyes are still wildly scanning the canopy, sweat pouring down his face.

Like me, he’s no stranger to invading Adosi ships

“This is…unexpected,” says Professor Gim. She doesn’t sound the least bit rattled. In fact, she’s glowing from the combination of sweat. My heart is pounding so hard, I can hear it in my ears. “I guess that peace treaty didn’t mean much.” She turns to me with a reassuring smile on her tanned face, but it quickly fades when she sees how pale I am.

“Are you well, Verity?” she asks. I nod, but of course, I’m lying. The underside of an Adosi dreadnaught is always an ill omen. I have scars left over from Adosi brutality. A cold knot of dread coils in my stomach at the mere thought of seeing the crimson armor of an Adosi soldier, but I take in a deep breath through my nose, trying to draw in some of Professor Gim’s bravery. I can’t be the apprentice of famous explorer Minji Gim and be a coward.

 She pats my shoulder, giving me a soft smile before she turns to Arjun. “Are you ready to lead us, Mr. Kang?” she asks. He seems to be having a harder time calming down. He clears his throat, shaking the sweat from his ginger beard and mustache. He gives a stiff nod, leading us out of the underbrush and back onto the path.

 We’ve been in the Dukcha Wood for a week, and we’ve spent three of those days spotting Adosi ships flying eastward to Haseul City. It’s the last bastion of civilization before the jungle and the capital of East Nal Va. I’d be a fool to think those ships were paying a friendly visit.

But Professor Gim has led us with a single-minded determination. Through rainstorms, armed checkpoints, and oppressive heat, Professor Gim has never faltered.

Even though Arjun is the guide, the professor leads us down the trail, her trousers and boots caked with mud. The handles of her pistols glint in her belt. I carry a pistol of my own, even though I hate the things.

“It’s not safe for a woman in most places,” she told me before we departed from New Argent City. “Any student of mind needs to be able to protect herself.”

I took the gun from her with shaking fingers. “Have…you ever killed anyone before, Professor?”

She shrugged her shoulders. “Once.”

Now, she pauses in front of us, kneeling down to look at something in the mud. She waves me over and I rush to her side. A strand of black hair sticks to her cheek with sweat, but her face is glowing with excitement. It’s a struggle to look away from her face and down to where she points a long finger.

“What does that look like, Verity?” she asks me, nearly breathless.

I wipe away some of the mud to reveal a glint of polished stone, a sharpened length of obsidian attached to a turquoise hilt. As Professor Gim fishes her field notebook out of her satchel, I carefully pull the obsidian dagger from the mud and rotate it in my hands. The blade still gleams as though it were shaped just yesterday.

 A series of thick, intricate letters carved into the bottom of the hilt tell me exactly why the Professor is so excited.

This is of Witgan make. The characters on the hilt could either be the name of the person it belonged to or the trademark of the smith who made it.  

“We’re close,” the Professor says as she puts her notebook away. “We’re so close!”  

Already, I can feel the weight of our discovery settling on my shoulders. For years, the scholarly consensus was that the Witgan people never ventured this far north from their cluster of villages and cities to the south of the Aksenti Mountains…not until their decline two hundred years ago forced them to migrate into Ilios. But little discoveries like this dagger put doubt on that theory. Witgan literature is just as rare, but what little pieces of it the Professor found mention temples and shrines erected by Witgan people who traveled abroad to honor their gods and spirits. Of course, they may have been destroyed over the years, but finding just one here would be enough to shift all we know about Witgan history.  

Professor Gim plucks the dagger from my hands and shows it to Mr. Kang. He takes it from her almost with reverence, turning the blade over in his hands carefully. He reads the characters on the bottom, tapping them with a finger.  

“This belonged to a warrior,” he says, speaking to us in stilted, accented Varterian. “This is their family name, Tu Wabe.”  

“Astounding,” Professor Gim breathes, but excitement is cut short by another dangerous rumble of earth. This time it’s accompanied by a terrible roaring sound, like some great beast has been awakened. My body goes cold, and memories of a crumbling, burning city flood my mind. For a moment, I’m a little girl again, watching my home disappear into a crater carved by Adosi bombs.  

Professor Gim has to shake my shoulders to tear me away from the memory.  

“We keep moving,” she says, that mad determination back in her eyes. “The sooner we finish here, the better.”  

I take in a shuddering breath. I didn’t come this far to be cowed. Mr. Kang and I follow the Professor down the trail, deeper into the woods and farther south. The trail disappears into the mud and dead vegetation, and it becomes so dark that even the air chills. The canopy becomes so thick and overgrown that no light can peek through. The humidity creeps away, replaced with the kind of dry cold that proceeds winter. The stench of mold and dead things is stronger here. There were rumors in East Nal Va of the wood being cursed, either by ghosts or malevolent spirits. I’ve never been a superstitious person, but I’m having a hard time finding a logical explanation for the sudden drop in temperature.  

I pull a torch out of my satchel, shaking it to activate the mechanisms inside that cause it to glow with a bright, white light. I have no idea how it works, but I can’t help admiring my friend’s ingenuity.  

Professor Gim shakes her own torch to life and gasps when she casts the light on a wall peeking out from the trees. I join my light with hers, giving Mr. Kang room to run his fingers over the carvings on the brown stone.  

Some of the lettering is faded, but over his shoulder, I can make out the words ‘ruined’ and ‘fallen’ amidst murals of mountains crumbling and people and animals fleeing to escape whatever calamity is being described here.  

“The Akiwran’tam,” says Mr. Kang. “When Mt. Aksenti erupted.”  

And shortly after that, Ados invaded and took what was left.  

“But we’re miles away from Mt. Aksenti,” I say. I raise the torch higher and find that the ground starts to slope up into a hill. Cobblestones poke through the mud and undergrowth. A road. This used to be a road! I leave the Professor and Mr. Kang to follow it, nearly having to fall to my hands and knees to climb up the slippery incline. I breach the tree line like I’m emerging from the water and gasp like I'm taking a breath for the first time in minutes.  

A temple rises before me, and I see patches of moss growing over ancient stone hewn with arches, faces, and the bodies of gods and spirits. It rises in terraced levels, each adorned with demonic faces, intricate visages of dragons, leopards, and birds. Some of the temple has fallen, islands of stone invaded by tree roots and rot. It’s silent here. Not even wind whispers through the leaves. I don’t even hear a bird.  

“Verity!” the Professor shouts from behind me. “Don’t wander...off...”

Her voice trails into astonishment. She drops her torch, raising her hands to her mouth in shock. Mr. Kang mutters something to himself in Witgan and clutches his heart.  

“I knew it,” Professor Gim says with a gasp. “Oh, I knew it. I knew it!”  

I’m ready to join her in celebrating before I hear it: a horrible buzzing noise like a horde of locusts is approaching us fast from the east. The sweat that blossoms on my skin tells me what they truly are: Adosi wasps, the smaller ships that hover around their dreadnaughts like flies and peel off the main fleet for reconnaissance or to carry smaller squadrons. There’s no roar of a dreadnaught engine, so these ships are flying on their own.  

“We need to get inside,” I say, partly out of fear and partly because I am eager to explore this discovery.  I lead the way inside, and the Professor and Mr. Kang follow me towards the stone archway that marks the entrance. The darkness swallows us, and the stench of dust and mildew waft around us. It’s colder here, and I find myself shivering as I raise my torch to look at the walls. There are scratches on them in several places. There’s an armored figure that repeats several times amidst falling mountains and cracking skies, but each time, their face is scratched or gouged out. When I touch the stone, it’s icy cold against my fingers.  

“I...don't know this,” Mr. Kang says beside me. “They were obviously an important figure, but at some point, they must have done something unforgivable. I’ve never seen this before.”  

“This day is full of wonderful discoveries,” the Professor sighs. I wonder, does anything scare her?  

I let her lead the way deeper into the ruins. I trip over uneven stone, feeling my exhaustion creep over me. They war inside me, the desire to go home, and the urge to see what lies deeper in its ruin. If those Adosi ships keep buzzing around outside, I don’t know if I’ll make it home.  

The hallway slopes down and we slip over the wet stone. Water drips from the ceiling. We must be underwater somehow. The hallway opens up into a grand, circular chamber of stone, waterfalls roaring through an opening in the high ceiling and spilling in with the sunlight. The sound fills my ears and rumbles in my chest, the spray of the water dampening my skin and clothes. But it’s what lies in the center of the chamber that draws my attention.

It’s a body.

[ask-meme-addicts]

"The Picture of Dorian Gray" sentence starters

❝ There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about. ❞

❝ The ugly and the stupid have the best of it in this world. ❞

❝ We shall all suffer for what the gods have given us, suffer terribly. ❞

❝ I have grown to love secrecy. ❞

❝ Your cynicism is simply a pose. ❞

❝ You know we poor artists have to show ourselves in society from time to time, just to remind the public that we are not savages. ❞

❝ Conscience and cowardice are really the same things. ❞

❝ I choose my friends for their good looks, my acquaintances for their good characters, and my enemies for their good intellects. ❞

❝ A man cannot be too careful in the choice of his enemies. ❞

❝ Is that very vain of me? I think it is rather vain. ❞

❝ None of us can stand other people having the same faults as ourselves. ❞

❝ I like persons better than principles, and I like persons with no principles better than anything else in the world. ❞

❝ There is nothing that art cannot express. ❞

❝ The harmony of soul and body—how much that is! We in our madness have separated the two, and have invented a realism that is vulgar, an ideality that is void. ❞

❝ My heart shall never be put under their microscope. ❞

❝ It is only the intellectually lost who ever argue. ❞

❝ I feel that I have given away my whole soul to someone who treats it as if it were a flower to put in his coat, a bit of decoration to charm his vanity, an ornament for a summer’s day.” ❞

❝ In the wild struggle for existence, we want to have something that endures, and so we fill our minds with rubbish and facts, in the silly hope of keeping our place. ❞

❝ Those who are faithful know only the trivial side of love: it is the faithless who know love’s tragedies. ❞

❝ People are afraid of themselves, nowadays. ❞

❝ Courage has gone out of our race. Perhaps we never really had it. ❞

❝ Every impulse that we strive to strangle broods in the mind and poisons us. ❞

❝ The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it. ❞

❝ Nothing can cure the soul but the senses, just as nothing can cure the senses but the soul. ❞

❝ You know more than you think you know, just as you know less than you want to know. ❞

❝ Wherever you go, you charm the world. Will it always be so? ❞

❝ Time is jealous of you, and wars against your lilies and your roses. ❞

❝ Our limbs fail, our senses rot. We degenerate into hideous puppets, haunted by the memory of the passions of which we were too much afraid, and the exquisite temptations that we had not the courage to yield to. ❞

❝ You like your art better than your friends. ❞

❝ I am jealous of everything whose beauty does not die. ❞

❝ Young people, nowadays, imagine that money is everything. ❞

❝ Credit is the capital of a younger son, and one lives charmingly upon it. ❞

❝ Behind every exquisite thing that existed, there was something tragic. ❞

❝ The way of paradoxes is the way of truth. ❞

❝ I can sympathize with everything except suffering. ❞

❝ Humanity takes itself too seriously. It is the world’s original sin. If the caveman had known how to laugh, history would have been different. ❞

❝ Nowadays most people die of a sort of creeping common sense, and discover when it is too late that the only things one never regrets are one’s mistakes. ❞

❝ You are quite delightful and dreadfully demoralizing. ❞

❝ I am always late on principle, the principle being that punctuality is the thief of time. ❞

❝ I adore it, but I am afraid of it. It makes me too romantic. ❞

❝ Nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing. ❞

❝ Passion is the privilege of people who have nothing to do. ❞

❝ If I ever did a crime, I would come and confess it to you. You would understand me. ❞

❝ When one is in love, one always begins by deceiving one’s self, and one always ends by deceiving others. That is what the world calls a romance. ❞

❝ There is always something infinitely mean about other people’s tragedies. ❞

❝ I want to make Romeo jealous. I want the dead lovers of the world to hear our laughter and grow sad. I want a breath of our passion to stir their dust into consciousness, to wake their ashes into pain. ❞

❝ People are very fond of giving away what they need most themselves. It is what I call the depth of generosity. ❞

❝ The only artists I have ever known who are personally delightful are bad artists. ❞

❝ It often happens that when we think we were experimenting on others we are really experimenting on ourselves. ❞

❝ Children begin by loving their parents; as they grow older they judge them; sometimes they forgive them. ❞

❝ To be in love is to surpass one’s self. ❞

❝ Poor? What does that matter? When poverty creeps in at the door, love flies in through the window. ❞

❝ Our proverbs want rewriting. They were made in winter, and it is summer now; springtime for me, I think, a very dance of blossoms in blue skies. ❞

❝ I shudder at the thought of being free. ❞

❝ I know you would never harm anyone I love, would you? ❞

❝ Whenever a man does a thoroughly stupid thing, it is always from the noblest motives. ❞

❝ Of course, it is sudden—all really delightful things are. ❞

❝ The reason we all like to think so well of others is that we are all afraid for ourselves. The basis of optimism is sheer terror. ❞

❝ Unselfish people are colourless. They lack individuality. ❞

❝ You are much better than you pretend to be. ❞

❝ I cannot understand how anyone can wish to shame the thing he loves. ❞

❝ When we are happy, we are always good, but when we are good, we are not always happy. ❞

❝ The real tragedy of the poor is that they can afford nothing but self-denial. Beautiful sins, like beautiful things, are the privilege of the rich. ❞

❝ Being adored is a nuisance. ❞

❝ You are dreadful! I don’t know why I like you so much. ❞

❝ You will always be fond of me. I represent to you all the sins you have never had the courage to commit. ❞

❝ Love is a more wonderful thing than art. ❞

❝ There are only two kinds of people who are really fascinating—people who know absolutely everything, and people who know absolutely nothing. ❞

❝ The secret of remaining young is never to have an emotion that is unbecoming. ❞

❝ I knew nothing but shadows, and I thought them real. ❞

❝ You taught me what reality really is. ❞

❝ You used to stir my imagination. Now you don’t even stir my curiosity. ❞

❝ I have grown sick of shadows. ❞

❝ You don’t know what you were to me, once. ❞

❝ You have spoiled the romance of my life. ❞

❝ Without your art, you are nothing. ❞

❝ There is always something ridiculous about the emotions of people whom one has ceased to love. ❞

❝ There is a luxury in self-reproach. When we blame ourselves, we feel that no one else has a right to blame us. ❞

❝ I can’t bear the idea of my soul being hideous. ❞

❝ You cut life to pieces with your epigrams. ❞

❝ Things like that make a man fashionable in Paris. But in London people are so prejudiced. ❞

❝ One should never make one’s début with a scandal. One should reserve that to give an interest to one’s old age. ❞

❝ How extraordinarily dramatic life is! ❞

❝ I don’t think I am heartless. Do you? ❞

❝ The moment she touched actual life, she marred it, and it marred her. ❞

❝ Life has everything in store for you, ❞

❝ We live in an age that reads too much to be wise, and that thinks too much to be beautiful. ❞

❝ If one doesn’t talk about a thing, it has never happened. It is simply expression that gives reality to things. ❞

❝ You must not tell me about things. What is done is done. What is past is past. ❞

❝ I don’t want to be at the mercy of my emotions. I want to use them, to enjoy them, and to dominate them. ❞

❝ You talk as if you had no heart, no pity in you. ❞

❝ if I told you, you might like me less than you do, and you would certainly laugh at me. I could not bear your doing either of those two things. ❞

❝ Your friendship is dearer to me than any fame or reputation. ❞

❝ You became to me the visible incarnation of that unseen ideal whose memory haunts us artists like an exquisite dream. ❞

❝ Whatever I have done that is good, I owe to you. ❞

❝ There is something fatal about a portrait. It has a life of its own. ❞

❝ Perhaps one should never put one’s worship into words. ❞

❝ There seems to be something tragic in a friendship so colored by romance. ❞

❝ It has a corruption of its own, worse than the corruption of death itself—something that would breed horrors and yet would never die. ❞

❝ The past can always be annihilated. ❞

❝ How exquisite life had once been! How gorgeous in its pomp and decoration! Even to read of the luxury of the dead was wonderful. ❞

❝ Is insincerity such a terrible thing? I think not. It is merely a method by which we can multiply our personalities. ❞

❝ I am tired of myself tonight. I should like to be somebody else. ❞

❝ I love scandals about other people, but scandals about myself don’t interest me. They have not got the charm of novelty. ❞

❝ You don’t want people to talk of you as something vile and degraded. ❞

❝ You must not say things like that. They are horrible, and they don’t mean anything. ❞

❝ You have had more to do with my life than you think. ❞

❝ Each of us has heaven and hell in him. ❞

❝ Youth smiles without any reason. It is one of its chiefest charms. ❞

❝ Keep your horrible secrets to yourself. They don’t interest me any more. ❞

❝ What is it to me what devil’s work you are up to? ❞

❝ I wish you had a thousandth part of the pity for me that I have for you. ❞

❝ The husbands of very beautiful women belong to the criminal classes. ❞

❝ I am not at all surprised that the world says that you are extremely wicked. ❞

❝ It is perfectly monstrous, the way people go about nowadays saying things against one behind one’s back that are absolutely and entirely true. ❞

❝ Nowadays all the married men live like bachelors, and all the bachelors like married men. ❞

❝ Everybody I know says you are very wicked. ❞

❝ I like men who have a future and women who have a past. ❞

❝ Moderation is a fatal thing. Enough is as bad as a meal. More than enough is as good as a feast. ❞

❝ He atones for being occasionally somewhat overdressed by being always absolutely overeducated. He is a very modern type. ❞

❝ What do you want? Money? Here it is. Don’t ever talk to me again. ❞

❝ Each man lives his own life and pays his own price for living it. ❞

❝ The man who could call a spade a spade should be compelled to use one. It is the only thing he is fit for. ❞

❝ I think that it is better to be beautiful than to be good. But on the other hand, no one is more ready than I am to acknowledge that it is better to be good than to be ugly. ❞

❝ To be popular one must be a mediocrity. ❞

❝ We can have in life but one great experience at best, and the secret of life is to reproduce that experience as often as possible. ❞

❝ I wish I could love, but I seem to have lost the passion and forgotten the desire. ❞

❝ My own personality has become a burden to me. ❞

❝ Death is the only thing that ever terrifies me. ❞

❝ The world has always worshipped you. It always will worship you. ❞

❝ Life has been your art. You have set yourself to music. Your days are your sonnets. ❞

❝ The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame. That is all. ❞

❝ The world is changed because you are made of ivory and gold. The curves of your lips rewrite history. ❞