#might as well draw a few things for spooky season despite it not really being my thing LMAO | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

pixiegrl · 4 years ago

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The Monster Mash, It Was a Graveyard Smash

This was a Halloween fic for the 5SOS Halloween Fic Event organized by @ashesonthefloor! Thank you for doing this! I had alot of fun writing this fic. Shout out to Liz for editing! And Mel for being my hype woman and letting me bounce ideas off you!

The prompt was: "That's not a Halloween costume? You actually look like that??" (could be fangs, horns, wings, literally whatever supernatural element you want) Or one person has supernatural aspects and spends Halloween night with the other person. The other doesn't realize it's not a costume until they're gold/the next day/whatever you decide to do"

It’s also on ao3 at: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27262129/

Luke is regretting his decision to tell Michael that he would get the decorations for their apartment. He only agreed because Michael loves Halloween, but he cannot be trusted to do the shopping. He’ll buy everything in the store and then will they not only have money, Luke will have to spend the whole month being terrified of his apartment and what might pop out at him. Michael is endlessly fascinated by Halloween, a holiday fairies don’t celebrate. It’s a human-made holiday, and before they left Australia and their little home clan of magic to move to New York, they’d never encountered anything like it. Even though they’ve been here for roughly five years now and have come to understand most of the other holidays people celebrate, Michael loves Halloween the most. It’s the one thing he insists on celebrating, despite Luke’s protests against it. Luke likes fall, but he doesn’t like being scared, which seems to be Michael’s favorite part. He’s been banned from decoration shopping since the time he hung a skeleton from the ceiling that caused Luke to scream and cry upon entering the apartment.

Luke doesn’t get Halloween. It’s such a human holiday and, despite how much he likes dressing up and eating candy, he doesn’t understand Michael's fascination with it. He finds the whole thing to be too scary and overdone for his liking.

Usually, they have enough Halloween decorations for the apartment but, in a fit of rage last year, Luke threw some of them out after Michael had left a fake spider in his bed. Which is probably one of the reasons that Michael forced Luke to go this year. It’s his least favorite thing, having to go to the store and go through the aisles to find something that Michael likes. Luke doesn’t like anything terrifying, which is unfortunately all Michael ever wants. Luke has already had to avoid the fake snakes and serial killer franchise masks just to get to the decorations.

He’s been standing in the decorations aisle for twenty minutes now, trying to decide between the scary decorations (some kind of bloody werewolf head, which Luke thinks might be inaccurate) and the cute ones (a small, smiling purple bat). He’s also partial to the black rose wreath hanging up, but he’s worried Michael will say it’s too “soft” for the scary punk vibes he prefers. He also knows Michael desperately wants to impress his new boyfriend, Calum, with their decorations.

Luke is finally steeling himself to take the werewolf's head and be done with it when he hears a groan next to him.

“You’re not really going to take that, are you?” The voice says. There’s an Australian accent there, which surprises Luke so far away from home. So far in New York, it feels like it’s just him and Michael and now Michael’s boyfriend Calum, who are from his home country. He turns, wondering what kind of stranger just decides to address someone in the store and is surprised by the person staring back at him. It’s a rather attractive guy, all brown curls with brown eyes and dimples in his cheeks showing as he’s smiling at Luke. Luke blushes, glancing away from him and back to the head.

“My roommate likes scary decorations and stuff.”

“Well, it’s a horrible stereotype. How would you like it if someone hung your face up on a wall, full of teeth and blood?”

Luke wrinkles his nose. He’s never met a werewolf, but he can’t imagine it would be fun to have people think that. It’s already not fun when he and Michael meet people who automatically assume that fairies are out to trick people and con them. Luke only did that once and it was to pass a class.

“I guess. But they are hunters.”

“Please, they’d be much more civilized than that. You don’t go around eating your meat raw and bloody do you? Besides, who even hunts to eat anymore?”

“Well, what about full moons then? What about a transformation?”

“You mean why do werewolves have to hunt and kill? Maybe they just like playing with their friends and rough housing. They certainly don’t look like that,” the guy says, jerking his thumb towards the head.

“Well, I have to go home with something. What do you propose if you’re so against the werewolf head?” Luke asks. The guy lights up immediately, full of enthusiasm. If he was a dog, his tail would be wagging.

“You seem like someone who would like something elegant. What about this?” He says, pulling the wreath off the rack and handing it to Luke. In this light, up close, Luke can see that there’s glitter on the edges, letting the roses sparkle in the light. Luke runs his finger over the edge, wondering if he can spell it so that the roses will be more realistic and alive, while still being wholly fake and preserved. He’s surprised this stranger was able to figure out so quickly what Luke likes, but it could be the floral shirt that he’s wearing, too.

Luke glances up, smiling gently to show his approval. The guy grins even wider, dimples deepening.

“What else do you suggest?” Luke asks. The guy immediately starts to pull things from the shelves, babbling at Luke about how nice the various things are, small smiling bats and little arched black cats. He goes around pulling out the most objectively least scary things that somehow manage to be adorable. Luke is a little in love with this man, who’s dumping a fake candelabra into his basket, telling him that the black and gold looks elegant, but spooky.

They stop in front of the fake animal skeletons. Luke is a little put off by the incorrect spiders and snakes. They’re not supposed to look like that at all, beady eyes staring at him. The cat draws his attention though, arched back and skeletal smile on its jaw. It looks...fun. Wholesome. Luke reaches out and pets along the back, charmed by how incorrect it truly is, little ears and all.

“You should get it,” The guy says. Luke looks over at him, startled by how fond his face is staring back at Luke. Luke blushes, embarrassed that this guy saw him petting a skeleton cat. The guy doesn’t seem to care, simply picking the cat up and holding it out to him.

“It’s silly.”

“Nothing’s silly if it makes you smile,” he says, holding the cat out further towards him. Luke takes her, staring down into the cat’s little face. It smiles back at him.

“What should I name her? Names are important you know,” Luke says solemnly. It’s a fairy tradition, after all.

The guy furrows his brow, biting his lip a little. “Name her Petunia. A nice name for a nice cat.”

Luke smiles, nodding. “Petunia. I like it.”

The guy grins back at him, “Anytime. Always glad to help a cute stranger on their quest for Halloween.”

He walks away, throwing Luke a wave and a wink. Luke blushes, staring down at Petunia. Naturally she offers him no advice in the matter.

It isn’t until Luke gets home and has faced the ire of Michael because of the lack of scary Halloween decorations that he realizes he should have asked the cute guy for his name and number. Now, he’s never going to see him again. It’s the real travesty of the night, leaving Luke sad, followed around by a little storm cloud as he wallows in his unhappiness.

***

Luke can’t believe he’s waited this long to buy candy. Usually they’re on top of it, big bags of assorted candy bought at the start of the season, ready to give out to the kids in their apartment building and for Luke and Michael to binge eat while watching movies. However, this is the first year they’ve thrown a Halloween party and they’ve mis-estimated the amount of candy needed. They still have a few weeks left, but they’ve realized that the usual two bags won’t cut it if they’re having people over and want to put it out for the party.

Michael is busy with work all day, but still insisted that if they want to get any of the good stuff, it has to be done today. So now Luke is standing in yet another aisle of a department store, trying to figure out what on Earth Michael means by “the good stuff.”

Luke knows that he likes Reese’s and that Michael is partial to anything with mint in it, but Luke’s not sure what else to get. Chocolate and candy isn’t really a thing for fairies growing up. It wasn’t until Luke and Michael moved to New York that they’ve even come into contact with the stuff and he’s still learning what it is that people like. He’s got a bag of assorted chocolates, a couple packs of mint chocolate Kit Kat’s for Michael, and a bag of mini Reese’s for himself, but he feels like he’s missing something.

“You can’t only be buying chocolate,” A voice says next to Luke. Luke startles at the familiar accent, turning to see that it’s the same guy from the decorations. Luke is dumbstruck by the coincidence of the whole thing. Here he was, sure he’d never see the man again and now here he is, standing in the candy aisle of a Walgreens and telling him that he’s making the wrong candy choices.

“It’s you,” Luke says, at a loss for what else to say. The guy grins, all sparkling eyes and dimples. He looks like a Disney prince.

“I’d ask if you’re stalking me, but I don’t know if you’d be doing that in a drug store at 3pm on a Monday. How’d your roommate like the decorations?”

“Mad that they weren’t scary. Said I ruined the holiday until his boyfriend came over and said he preferred our decorations to the other things he’s seen for the season. Now Michael can’t get enough of them. Although he keeps trying to change Petunia’s name.”

“Well he’s not allowed to. That’s her name and it’s the only one she’ll answer to,” the guy says, serious expression on his face broken by the wink he sends Luke. Luke blushes, turning back to the candy.

“First you judge my decoration choices, now you’re judging my choice in candy. What will you judge next?” Luke teases.

“Well, you pick scary decorations and now chocolate. I’m starting to think you have a vendetta against werewolves.”

Luke scoffs, trying to put on an air of disbelief. “Come on, you don’t really think werewolves are real.”

“It is Halloween season. Anything is possible.” He grins. Luke notices his teeth look a little sharper than most people’s, but doesn’t think anything of it.

“What else am I supposed to buy if not for chocolate? It’s a staple of the season.”

The guy furrows his brow, turning to look at the shelves of candy. He snaps his fingers and leans down, grabbing a bag of what looks like sour gummies. He tosses the bag into Luke’s basket.

“Oh, so werewolves don’t like chocolate, but they like candy that hurts to eat.”

“If werewolves are part dog, they’d have chocolate allergies. Sour candy is safe and allergy free. Besides, maybe they like a little kick with their sweet,” The guy says, winking.

Is this guy flirting with him? Luke can’t possibly be that lucky.

“Well, I wouldn’t know anything about that. I tend to prefer saltiness with my chocolate,” Luke says. The guy grins even wider and Luke blushes, realizing it sounds a bit like a come on.

“Guess you’ll just have to try it and see.”

Luke turns away, grabbing another bag of sour gummies and putting it in with the others. Luke turns to the guy, ready to ask him for his name and number, when his phone goes off. He shoots Luke an apologetic look and pulls it out of his pocket, eyes going wide when he sees the name of whoever it is.

“Sorry, I have to take this. Good luck with Halloween.” And with that he rushes out of the store, partially running to get outside.

Dejected, Luke buys his candy and heads back to the apartment. He dumps it onto the counter, ripping open one of the bags of sour gummies to give it a try. They’re not bad, the little bit of kick at the edge of sweetness is enough to override the loss of feeling Luke’s having in his mouth after the first bag.

Michael comes home an hour later, finding Luke moping on the couch with his candy. When asked, all Luke can say is that the universe is out to stop him from getting a boyfriend. Michael wants to know what sour gummies, something neither of them has had before, has to do with any of that.

***

Luke isn’t sure how he ended up here in the Halloween store, but it seems to be where he is. A combination of needing to get away from Michael and Calum��s making out and general boredom has led him here. It’s the last week before Halloween and he’s rummaging through the remains of what’s left for costumes, combing through glittery fairy wings and bad makeup. It’s really his fault for waiting so long to find a costume for the party, but it’s not like Luke actually needs a costume at all. He is a fairy and so, understandably, he already has fairy wings to wear. He has slightly pointed ears and golden eyes and there’s glitter that goes with him everywhere. It doesn’t mean it’s not still fun to go to the stores, watch the teen girls try to look like mermaids and little kids dress up in superhero costumes. Luke just usually tries to go earlier than this because now all that’s left are the rejected costumes and the college students trying to make a mad dash to make something out of whatever is left.

Luke shifts through the fairy costumes so he can send pictures to Michael of what people seem to think fairies look like when someone bumps into him. He startles, turning around.

The person who’s bumped into him looks to be a guy about his age, with windswept brown hair and large brown eyes. He throws his hands up in mock surrender when he sees Luke looking at him. It reminds Luke vaguely of a puppy who knows they’ve done something wrong and is trying to look innocent. He looks familiar, but Luke’s not sure why.

“Oh, I’m sorry about that. Should really be more careful about where I’m going,” The guy says. Luke perks up at the hint of Australian accent. It can’t be that same guy Luke’s been running into all over town. First with the decorations and then the candy. Is it too much to hope that Luke would meet the cute guy here? What are the odds he’d also be looking for a costume last minute? Maybe the universe doesn’t hate him after all.

“It’s you! My werewolf decoration and no chocolate guy!” Luke says, grinning when the guy breaks into a full smile.

“I knew you looked familiar! Could never forget a pretty face like that. It seems that fate has brought us together in this horribly placed Halloween store. Ashton,” The guy says, sticking his hand out. Luke takes it gently, letting the guy shake it with far too much enthusiasm for someone he’s only met a handful of times. He really does remind Luke of an overeager puppy. Luke might already have a crush on him, with how cute and happy he is.

“Luke. Feels nice to finally be on a first name basis with the man my roommate has a grudge against now.”

Ashton laughs, a short bark of a thing. “So, what brings you to a costume store so late in the season? You seem too put together to have waited until the last minute, considering how detailed you were about the decorations and the candy.”

Luke blushes. “Oh, I have my costume. I just like to come to the stores and look around. There’s something funny about going to a Halloween store so late and seeing the chaos of it all. Besides, it can never hurt to have too many accessories for a look. Who would wait this long anyway?”

Ashton laughs, “Well, then it seems I’m the chaos you’re looking for. I managed to wait for the last minute for a costume and now I’m rushing to find one for a last minute party. Maybe you could help me?”

Luke’s a little surprised. It’s rather bold of Ashton to ask a stranger to accompany him while looking for costumes. Not that Luke’s going to turn down what feels like a date with a cute guy. He hasn’t gone on a date with a cute guy in ages. Maybe he can manage to convince Ashton to hold his hand.

“We can certainly try. What are you looking for?”

“I’m not sure yet. Usually I like to take a look around and see what’s left. Sometimes it’s fun, trying to make a costume out of the things people don’t want.”

Luke is horrified. “How can you not plan for something like that? Costumes take detail and work. Why would you leave it all up to chance?”

“Maybe you need to learn to live a little, Luke.”

“You wouldn’t say that if you knew what my costume is.”

Ashton looks him up and down and it feels a little like being checked out. He preens a little under Ashton’s gaze. Ashton looks up, blushing slightly when he meets Luke’s eyes.

“Let me guess. You’ll be a princess. Or a mermaid. Since you are Australian and all.”

Luke shakes his head, “Close, but not quite.”

Ashton glances over at the fairy wings Luke's been looking at. “Oh! A fairy. How charming. It fits you.”

“Are you going to be a prince? You’d make a nice companion for Cinderella.”

Ashton laughs, “Can’t say that princesses are my thing, really. Besides, princes are boring and stuffy. It lacks imagination and adventure.”

Luke looks around, “Unless you wanna be a prince or a superhero, it looks like you’re out of luck shopping at this place. They’re almost out of everything since, you know, it’s the week before Halloween.”

“I know a better costume store a bit outside of the city. Why don’t we set up a day and go shopping together? Since you seem to have a lot of opinions about my outfit, it seems fitting you should help me look,” Ashton says, holding his hand out, raising his eyebrows expectantly. There’s a pause as Luke realizes that Ashton is asking Luke for his phone. For his number.

Luke can do little else but take out his phone, unlock it, and hand it over to Ashton. He messes around with it for a few moments, inputting his number and sending a text to himself. He hands the phone back to Luke smiling.

“There. Now you have my number. Text me when you’re free and we’ll set something up,” Ashton says, winking at Luke as he turns on his heel. Dumbstruck, Luke looks down at his phone, laughing when he realizes that Ashton put a little wolf emoji next to his name. He’s really committed himself to this joke it seems. Luke is too on Cloud Nine to think about it any further, going home to proclaim to Michael that he’s finally met the love of his life and that they’re going on a date.

***

Luke has been anxious waiting for his “date” with Ashton. He refuses to call it a date, doesn’t want to get his hopes up, even though Michael has been calling it one for the last week. He’s been talking to Ashton almost nonstop since getting his number. It’s been fun, sending Ashton his daily thoughts and happenings of the day. He’d sent Ashton a picture of chocolate the other day and had gotten a little frowny face emoji in response. It’s terribly endearing of Ashton and Luke thinks it’s funny that he’s so committed to some goofy werewolf joke for the season.

They’d agreed to meet on the 30th, later in the afternoon after work, which seemed like a dumb idea to Luke, even if Ashton insists that it’s more fun going through Halloween stores to try and make a costume out of what’s leftover. Especially because Ashton insists that the store he knows outside of the city has better things. Luke has been standing outside of the subway entrance for the last fifteen minutes and he’s starting to get nervous that Ashton isn’t coming. Luke’s just about steeled himself to give up and go home when Ashton comes sprinting down the block, stopping directly in front of Luke. He bends in half, hands on his knees as he tries to catch his breath.

“Sorry. I got a little hung up this morning and lost track of time,” Ashton says, still trying to take a deep breath. He looks disheveled and winded, curls tangled around his face and brown eyes wide as he looks up at Luke. He looks like he’s doing his best imitation of a puppy who knows they shouldn’t have wrecked something and now they’re hoping to fix it by being cute. Luke would like to pretend it won’t work on him, but who is he kidding.

“It’s fine. I was just worried you forgot,” Luke says, trying to keep his tone light and not betray his worry.

“How could I forget a date with the cutest guy to look at costumes?” Ashton asks, an earnest expression on his face.

Luke blushes, glancing away from Ashton. He doesn’t want to admit how much of an effect Ashton has on him. He hasn’t known Ashton long enough to be this smitten.

“We should leave now if we want to make the train in time. Your running late messed up our time table,” Luke says.

Ashton grins. “Who knew you were so punctual? We’d better hurry, then.”

Ashton grabs a hold of Luke’s hand, tugging him down into the subway station. Luke allows himself to be pulled along, too focused on the grip Ashton has on his hand to pay attention to much of anything else. He’s only mildly aware of swiping his Metrocard and rushing to the right platform for the train.

They manage to make it in time, Ashton tugging them to an open seat. They collapse onto the seats, pressed close to each other. Luke is hyper aware of how their thighs are touching; they’re pressed together from shoulder to hip. Ashton hasn’t let go of Luke’s hand, instead choosing to lace their fingers together and squeeze. Luke flushes, surprised at how affectionate Ashton is with someone who is largely a stranger.

“So, how do you know about this place? You mentioned it was a little outside of town,” Luke asks, hoping that focusing on the conversation will take his attention away from Ashton’s grip. He’s never been this smitten over someone who’s human. He’s supposed to have this effect on people, not the other way around.

“A friend of a friend. I found out about it one year when I was looking for a costume in college and now I just keep going back. It’s nice. They always have a good selection and it’s usually stuff I wouldn’t know about.”

Luke hums. He doesn’t have very many friends here. Despite the fact that he works at a fairly nice interior design company in the city, it’s hard for Luke to make friends. He has to always be on alert about using his magic and about being too open with non-magical people. It makes him worried and anxious some days, especially when he uses his magic at work for little things. Sometimes he uses it to change the color of a couch or curtains when he can’t find the right color. Sometimes he uses it on the room he’s designing, to bring his clients peace and happiness. He’s never malicious with his magic. Despite the stories, fairies aren’t supposed to be mean. They’re mischievous and like playing tricks, but magic shouldn’t be mean. Luke just likes using his magic when he knows it will help his clients, give them everything they want. He knows it’s why Michael opened the little café he owns, started using magic blended into the food and drinks for happiness and easing worries and whatever else he thought people might need. It’s nice, knowing that there’s some way the two of them can help people.

Ashton clears his throat, drawing Luke’s attention back to him.

“So Luke, what do you do? You seem awfully free during the day for someone with a job.”

“I’m an interior designer. Usually I’m working at this time, but sometimes I get a little flexibility with my schedule,” Luke says. He doesn’t mention that he might have spelled his boss a little to let him leave early so he could meet Ashton. It’s not like Ashton needs that information.

Ashton gives Luke a once over, smiling a bit, “I can see that. You seem very stylish and put together. You would be something snotty.”

Luke scoffs in fake offense and smacks Ashton on the shoulder, “Well, what do you do, Mr. Big Shot, that lets you leave in the middle of a work day if you’re going to tease me?”

“I’m a lawyer. Nothing too fancy, I do copyright law and such, but it’s nice.”

“Well, maybe you’re the fancy one with your high rise job,” Luke says. Ashton frowns a little bit before he must realize Luke is teasing. He huffs, rolling his eyes.

They chat for a bit on the rest of the drive, talking about growing up back home and what brought them here (school it seems is the answer), and what it is they do at their jobs. Luke’s so caught in the conversation, he almost forgets why they’re even on this trip until Ashton perks up.

“Our stop is next.”

“What?” Luke asks, letting Ashton pull him up to stand and tug him towards the door. Luke doesn’t know how Ashton even heard any kind of announcement from where he was sitting.

Ashton ignores him, instead tugging him towards the door. Luke grabs onto one of the poles as the train slows, still managing to slide a little bit and bump into Ashton. They’re still holding hands.

The train comes to a stop and Ashton tugs Luke out and down the street, pulling them in the direction of where the shop must be. It’s an older looking building, with a sign out front advertising the Halloween store inside. It feels lived in, a product of love and familiarity around it. It puts Luke at ease a bit, convinced there won’t be creepy statues jumping out at him here.

There’s a bell over the door that dings when they enter. Ashton clears his throat before yelling, “Kaykay!”

There’s a thump from somewhere in the back of the store and then Luke hears an excited, “Ashton?”

The girl that pops out from the back curtains is short with bright blue hair. Her face breaks into a wide grin as she sprints across the store, launching herself at Ashton to wrap her arms around him in a hug. Luke doesn’t realize until Ashton tugs his hand away to hug the girl, laughing, that he’s been holding his hand the whole time. He blushes, glancing away.

“What are you doing here? I haven’t seen you in ages,” Kaykay says when she detangles herself from Ashton.

Ashton grins, “I’m taking a friend costume shopping and thought of your store. Figured I had to show him a proper Halloween store.”

They both turn their attention to Luke. Luke blushes under the gaze of this girl, clearly an old friend of Ashton’s. She narrows her eyes a bit, looking Luke up and down. He must pass whatever test she has though, because her face breaks into a grin and she sticks her hand out.

“Kaykay. I own this lovely shop. You seem much too nice for our Ashton. How on Earth did you meet him?”

“Luke. He harassed me in a store about Halloween decorations and now I can’t seem to get rid of him,” Luke says, shaking her hand. She laughs loudly, snorting slightly at the end. Ashton pouts, but there’s a look in his eyes that’s almost relief. Luke tries not to read too much into it, that Ashton’s happy that Luke and one of his friends are getting along.

“Well, if you want good costumes this is the place. I have it all. Ashton can show you around. Holler if you need anything,” She says, bumping Ashton’s shoulder with a grin as she heads towards the back again.

“How do you know her? Doesn’t seem like the kind of place for a lawyer to casually be at.”

“Her girlfriend is my tattoo artist,” Ashton says, heading in the direction of what looks like the magical creature section. Luke perks up, following him. Maybe if he plays it right, he can see Ashton’s tattoos.

Ashton rugs out a pair of purple fairy wings and shows them to Luke. They’re ornate, large and iridescent in the light. Luke’s surprised by how close to accurate they are, running his fingers along the edge of them. They remind him of his own wings as they catch the light, casting a rainbow into the ground.

“What about these?”

“They’re lovely, but I already have my costume. Besides, we’re looking for something for you,” Luke points out, letting go of the wings and setting off further into the aisle. He stops in front of the werewolf costumes, face to face with another snarling mask. He startles, taking a step back and bumping into Ashton.

“What about this? You keep making all those jokes about werewolves.”

“You can’t be serious, Luke? I mean, look at it. It’s not even close to accurate. Werewolves are part wolves, they wouldn’t stand on two legs. And besides, they wouldn’t have red eyes either.”

“You sure know a lot about werewolves for someone who claims to dislike the way they’re portrayed.”

“I, uh, read a lot,” Ashton says, blushing a bit when Luke looks at him, raising an eyebrow. It’s adorable seeing him so passionate about something. Luke leans over, brushing a strand of loose hair behind Ashton’s ear. Luke feels so warm suddenly, this close to him, casual touches and all. He can’t possibly feel like he’s known Ashton so long, so personally, but he does. It feels like Ashton keeps sharing intimate parts of himself with Luke and Luke’s never been so taken by a human before. It’s going to break Luke’s heart if Ashton figures out that Luke is a fairy and leaves him. It’s happened before, but Luke doesn’t know if he could survive this one.

A crash from the back of the store startles them both. Luke pulls his hand away from Ashton’s ear, blushing as he turns back to the costumes. He picks up a pair of wolf ears and sticks them on top of Ashton’s head.

“Here, you can wear these instead. Now you’re a cute werewolf,” Luke says, giggling. Ashton smiles, touching the tips of the ears. Luke pulls a wolf tail off the rack too, holding it out to Ashton. He laughs, sharp and quick, grinning from ear to ear.

“You’re really going to lean into the wolf thing, huh?”

“Well, you made all those werewolf comments. What else could you possibly be?” Luke says. He misses the way Ashton tenses slightly, relaxing when he must realize Luke’s teasing him.

“You need to get something too,” Ashton points out. He turns back towards where they came from, heading off in that direction again. Luke follows after him, stopping when Ashton picks up an intricate floral headpiece and puts it onto Luke’s head.

“If you’re going to be a fairy, you need a headpiece. It’s tradition,” Ashton says firmly. Luke doesn’t usually wear any type of floral headpiece because it feels too on the nose, but the earnest adoration on Ashton’s face as he looks at Luke might sway him. Luke nods and Ashton grins, taking the crown off his head and continuing through the store.

They walk around for a little bit, commenting on the different costumes and decorations until it’s late enough that they both realize they have to head back home. They take their purchases up the register, where Kaykay’s standing, staring at the two of them. She laughs, pointing at the wolf ears Ashton’s still wearing, clearly forgotten about. Ashton blushes, pulling them off and putting them on the counter for her to ring up and bag.

They head back to the subway and ride it back into the City. Luke’s exhausted suddenly, tired from the day and knowing that he’ll have to spend part of tomorrow setting up for the party.

“Have fun at your Halloween party. You’ll have to send me a picture of your outfit once you get all dressed up,” Ashton says when they finally leave the subway, getting ready to part ways.

“You’ll have to show me how the wolf ears look with your whole outfit. Very Teen Wolf of you,” Luke says. Ashton laughs and leans over, placing a kiss on Luke’s cheek before turning to walk away, waving. Luke is stunned, rooted to the spot when he realizes that Ashton just kissed him. Ashton gets halfway down the block before he stops, turning back to look at Luke, red in the face. Luke waves back, hoping his face doesn’t betray how startled he feels. Ashton waves back, turning around and heading off in his direction. Luke turns around, following suit.

He makes it all the way home, still stunned by the turn of events.

“What’s gotten into you?” Michael asks, when Luke enters the apartment.

“I think I have a crush on a human.”

Michael groans, shaking his head, “You’re a disaster fairy, you know that right?”

Luke changes Michael’s hair pink in retaliation.

***

The party’s in full swing by nine. Luke is overwhelmed, his apartment crammed with people and loud with music. He’s been playing host for the last few hours, but it’s simply too much for him to handle; too much energy to talk to all the people here and smile and laugh, when most of them are Michael’s friends, or people he’s met at the bakery and friends of friends and Luke has had to use too much of his charm to keep up appearances. He’d lost Michael as soon as Calum showed up to help set up, Michael happy to latch himself onto his boyfriend, covering him in glitter and laughing, giddy and excited. Calum is dressed as some kind of Devil, red horns and all, grinning wildly when he’d seen Michael’s look.

Michael and Luke tend to take advantage of the fairy wings, working them into every Halloween costume they do. Luke tends to go classy with his look, soft fabrics and light colors, trying to look enchanting and ethereal. Michael tends to go the way of a Victoria’s Secret model, short skirts and bright colors. Tonight’s no different. Luke can see the tips of Michael’s bright green wings in the kitchen, where he’s laughing next to Calum, in his black lacy bra and matching lacy boy shorts. This year, he’s wearing a long floral printed skirt, cut high in the front to expose the lace panties, and a matching floral see-through top on, covered in small fake flowers in bright blues. He’s surrounded by a cloud of glitter, sparkling in the light and charming everyone who’s talking to him. Although, some of that could be the fact that his nipples are practically visible in the bra and that Calum has one hand wrapped around his waist, squeezing Michael’s hip whenever someone laughs too loud or gets too close to Michael. Michael doesn’t seem to mind, though, leaning into Calum whenever he does it, turning to kiss him on the cheek.

Luke is hiding in the corner of the living room, drinking whatever cider it is they have and wondering if he can hide from the crowd in his room without being rude, when he hears a whistle to his right.

“If I’d known you would be here, I’d have brought some flowers to go with your crown,” a familiar voice next to him says. Luke perks up when he realizes who it is.

“Ashton! What are you doing here?” Luke turns, laughing when he sees Ashton. He’s wearing the wolf ears and tail they’d bought together, a red flannel shirt with the sleeves rolled up and jeans. Luke can see that Ashton has a set of moon tattoos on his forearm. He looks like a perfectly ordinary “werewolf,” smiling shyly at Luke as he gets closer.

“Would you believe me if I said Calum’s my best friend? He kept saying he was going to a party his boyfriend was hosting and asked me to come along, said Michael wouldn’t mind. I have to say, the decorations I picked out look nice. And I appreciate the candy,” Ashton says, grinning as he shakes the packet of sour gummies. Luke blushes, laughing and glancing away. It’s charming, how committed Ashton is to the joke of the whole thing, standing in Luke’s living room, framed by the low lights as Monster Mash plays in the background. He can’t believe a human is having this effect on him; it's ridiculous.

“Well, I’m glad you’re enjoying the party.”

“Enjoying it much more now that I’ve seen you. I’m glad to see you’re wearing the crown. When you said you were dressing as a fairy, I wasn’t expecting this. They look so real,” Ashton says in awe, reaching out to ghost his fingers lightly over Luke’s wings. They’re beautiful, iridescent pink and purple, gold glitter shedding from them whenever Luke moves slightly. Luke’s dropped his glamour for the night, letting his ears and noses become pointer, eyes their usual liquid gold color, framed in gold eyeshadow and pink lipstick. Luke’s even wearing the flower crown, soft pink and yellow blending into his blonde curls. He thinks his wings look nice with the gauzy green tulle dress he’s wearing, covered in little fabric flowers. He’s wearing a forest green lace bodysuit underneath it, easily visible through the tulle, and nude high heels. Luke knows he looks good, miles of long legs shimmering in the light, every bit the part of ethereal fairy the storybooks say he is. Ashton looks captivated by Luke, unable to look away from his wings. It bothers Luke a little, worried that Ashton only likes him because of how pretty he looks, not because of who he is.

“They should. I paid good money for this,” Luke says, his usual answer whenever someone asks about the wings. “I should have known you’d go as a werewolf, though. Are the tattoos special just for it?”

Luke reaches out, brushing a thumb over Ashton’s forearm. Ashton shudders a little under Luke’s touch, moving his arm to give him a better view of the little red and black moons. They look like a series of moon phase tattoos. How appropriate.

“You’re very committed to your werewolf joke.”

“Yeah, something like that. I saw them in a painting once and had to get them. I’ve always liked the moon,” Ashton says, voice low, watching as Luke continues to rub his thumb over them. They’re breathing in sync, Luke realizes, connected by Luke's touch on Ashton’s skin, Ashton’s fingertips still pressed lightly to Luke’s wings. Luke wants to make a joke, turn on the charm and flirt with Ashton like he usually does with people, but he can’t find the words. He’s so captivated by Ashton and his presence, trapped in his pull.

There’s a loud whoop from the kitchen area, startling them both. Luke pulls his hand back, gripping onto his bottle tighter as Ashton coughs slightly, tugging on his sleeve.

“Do you want to, um, I can give you a tour?” Luke says, voice raising in question as he glances at Ashton. Ashton perks up at that, glancing at Luke.

“Sure. I’d love to see your little home.”

Luke nods, taking the last pull from his bottle, noticing that Ashton’s staring at his throat when he tips his head back. Luke puts the bottle on the table next to them, turning to Ashton and putting on his best flirty smile.

Luke takes Ashton’s hand, interlocking their fingers and tugging him into the back of the apartment.

“You’ve seen the kitchen and the living room already. Michael’s room is back here and so is the bathroom and my room,” Luke says. He stops in front of the bathroom door, waving his hand a little to the inside. Ashton steps in, whistling when he notices the floral shower curtain and all the other little flower accents in the room.

“You guys really like flowers don’t you?”

“Well, we have to have some nature in the middle of the big city,” Luke says, stepping in after Ashton. Luke closes the door gently behind him, muffling some of the noise from the party. Ashton turns to Luke, smiling.

“I didn’t say it was a bad thing. It’s nice, sweet of you. Matches your outfit,” He says. He takes a step towards Luke, raising his hand a little as if he’s going to touch the flowers on Luke’s dress. He glances up at Luke, tilting his head in question. Luke nods quickly.

Ashton grins, running his fingers along one of the flowers on Luke’s dress. He uses his other hand to reach up and cup Luke’s cheek in his hand, humming slightly.

“Your ears are very impressive. I’m sure Kaykay would love to know where you found them. Your eyes are so golden.”

“I use really good contacts,” Luke mumbles, turning into Ashton’s palm. He presses a soft kiss to the palm, hoping it will signal to Ashton that he wants to be kissed. Ashton seems to understand, tugging Luke down a little and pressing a soft kiss to Luke’s lips.

Luke deepens the kiss, tilting his head and nipping lightly on Ashton’s lips. Ashton growls, turning them so Luke is pressed against the countertop. Ashton pulls away, nipping along Luke’s jawline and neck. Luke squirms a little, giddy and excited about the turn of events. Ashton runs his hands along the back of Luke’s thighs. Luke sighs at the touch on his legs, warm through the dress fabric, hypersensitive and hyper aware of what’s happening.

Ashton nudges Luke slightly, obviously trying to get him to sit on the counter. Luke obliges, pushing himself up onto the edge and tugging Ashton in between his spread thighs. Ashton continues to kiss along his neck and collarbone, running his fingers along Luke’s legs, pressing under the skirt and onto his skin. Luke wraps both arms around Ashton’s shoulders, playing slightly with the curls at the base of his neck. Ashton leans up, pulling Luke back into a soft, open mouth kiss, full of warmth and the sour sweet taste of candy.

Ashton pulls back, glancing up at Luke. He’s shimmering with glitter from Luke’s touch. His face is full of such wonder and adoration and for a moment Luke is afraid. Afraid that Ashton doesn’t like him at all, that Luke’s just used his magic to have his way and Ashton is going to leave him.

“You’re so beautiful. I’m going to be covered in glitter forever.”

“Well, at least you’ll have something to remember me by,” Luke teases, trying to keep the mood light. Ashton hums, running his fingers along the edge of the body suit, squeezing at Luke’s thighs.

“As much as I love kissing you, I do tend to prefer to take the people I fancy out on dates first.”

“Oh?”

“Would you maybe want to get breakfast? Brunch? Something food related in the daylight. A proper date. Tomorrow?”

Luke’s heartbeat speeds up. Ashton looks so earnest and open, glancing up at Luke bashfully. It’s so charming and endearing to see Ashton like this.

“Of course I would,” Luke whispers, running his fingers through Ashton’s hair. Ashton grins, nuzzling into Luke’s neck as Luke laughs.

“Wonderful. Amazing. We should get back to the party before anyone misses us.”

Luke nods, let’s Ashton help him down off the countertop and straighten himself out. He presses a kiss to Luke’s bare shoulder, grinning when he catches Luke’s eye in the mirror.

They venture back into the party, going off to find Michael and Calum. Luke realizes halfway through talking to them that Ashton is holding his hand, that he hasn’t let go since the bathroom. He catches Michael’s eye, who’s grinning and wiggling his eyebrows at him. Luke huffs, glancing away from him and back to Ashton. It feels right, standing here in his kitchen, close to Ashton. It feels like he was always meant to be here. He doesn’t even mind when he has to help clean up later with Michael, after everyone has left and it’s just the two of them.

Luke changes and gets into bed, checking his phone before going to sleep, seeing that there’s a text from Ashton. It’s a little heart, message reading Good night sweet fairy. Luke blushes, but his heart soars at the idea of a boyfriend, of Ashton as his boyfriend. He knows he’ll have to explain himself tomorrow but for now, he can live in this little fantasy world where everything is perfect and no one will get their heart broken with any kind of revelation.

***

Luke is nervous. Luke has never been nervous for a date before. He’s gone out with plenty of people, human and magical alike, and he’s never been nervous. Yet here he is, standing outside of the little coffee shop he and Ashton agreed to meet at, biting his lip and twisting his ring around his finger. He’s bitten his lip raw it seems, too anxious and worked up about seeing Ashton to sit still. He’s been thinking about this since last night, spent half the night staring up at the ceiling worrying about seeing Ashton. What if Ashton only likes him because Luke accidentally used his magic? What if Ashton only likes this magical version of Luke, and not Luke, who’s regular and boring and ordinary?

Luke doesn’t know if he can take it if Ashton doesn’t like him the same way. Luke’s been known to accidentally enchant people before, put them under a fairy spell, creating love where there is none. It’ll break his heart if the spark he’s felt with Ashton is manufactured and fake. He likes Ashton so much, all teasing and bright laughs, dorky jokes and adoring eyes.

“What’s got you so focused?” Ashton’s voice startles Luke, pulling his attention to the man who’s appeared out of nowhere. Ashton looks good, with his leather jacket and windswept hair. He looks worried as he stares at Luke.

“Nothing. Just nervous, that’s all.”

Ashton reaches forward, grabbing Luke’s hand. “About what?”

Luke looks down at their interlocked fingers, blushing when Ashton rubs his thumb along the back of Luke’s hand. “Our date.”

“There’s nothing to be nervous about. I’ve already seen your apartment and I’ve met your annoying roommate. You’ve met my annoying best friend and you laugh at my bad jokes. We’ve already passed all the awkward steps of dating.”

“Dating?” Luke squeaks out. If he’d known they were dating, he would have dressed nicer.

Ashton grins. “As long as you don’t order chocolate.”

He tugs a stunned Luke into the coffee shop, going up to the counter to order them coffee and sandwiches to eat. He takes the number from the girl at the register and guides them towards an empty table.

“So, if we’re going to date, I think there’s something I need to tell you,” Luke says. Better to get it over with now before either of them gets in too deep.

Ashton’s face falls, “You know?”

“Know what?”

“About me?”

Luke pauses, tilting his head in confusion, “What about you?”

“That I’m, you know…”

“A big fan of dogs? You like fairy tales? You make bad jokes?” Luke asks. He’s terribly confused as to what Ashton could be talking about. Ashton’s a human, isn’t he?

Ashton groans. He leans back in the chair, tilting his head up. “Oh my god I thought Cal would have told you both.”

“Told us what? Ashton, what was Calum supposed to tell us?”

“That we’re werewolves,” Ashton hisses out, leaning in close to Luke. Luke’s eyes go wide. He’s completely shocked. Although, maybe all the jokes now about werewolves make more sense. God, the moon tattoos are a dead give away, aren’t they now?

“What?”

“I thought you knew! Not before at the stores, obviously, but at the party. When I realized Calum was dating your friend. I thought Calum had told you both already.”

“But the decorations! The costume! Your tattoos! Wait, are you allergic to chocolate,” Luke says. The panic is rising in his throat, shock clouding his judgement, glee tinting the edges of his mood. Ashton can’t possibly be a werewolf, Luke can’t possibly be that lucky. That Ashton’s like him.

“I mean, most humans don’t get the jokes. But I thought you would have known about it. Except you didn’t say anything so I thought you were trying to be secretive about it. And no, I’m not allergic. It's just a funny little joke Calum and I have. And I prefer sour gummies, anyway,” Ashton says. His voice is rising in pitch, worry clear in his face.

Luke is giddy though, full of glee. This means that Ashton is magical too! He understands Luke. Luke doesn’t have to hide! Luke reaches across the table, grabbing Ashton’s hand. “I should tell you that Michael and I are fairies.”

It’s Ashton’s turn to look shocked and confused. “A what? Like, with the wings and shit? Like Tinkerbell?”

Luke gasps in mock offense, smacking Ashton, “Not like Tinkerbell. Do I look small to you?”

“Bratty enough,” Ashton says, grinning.

“Well I’m not the werewolf with moon tattoos.”

“Hey, you’re the fairy who wore his wings as a costume. Wait..that look wasn’t a costume, you actually look like that?”

“Of course I do! Real wings and everything. What do you take me for?”

“My whole bed is covered in glitter just from touching you. God I’m going to be covered in glitter forever, aren’t I?”

“Only if you play rough during your time of the month,” Luke teases.

“Excuse me Tinkerbell, it’s very rude to ask a werewolf about that. That’s a private and special thing.”

“Shit, I’m sorry.”

Ashton grins, nudging his foot against Luke’s, “Nah, I’m just messing with you. You deserve it after all the glitter I found in my hair.”

“Just for that, I’m going to make sure you’ll be finding glitter all over your body forever.”

“Forever? Only if you promise to wear more of that lingerie.”

Luke huffs, rolling his eyes. He lets Ashton reach over and thread their fingers together again, kissing the back of Luke’s hand. Luke blushes.

“You’re taking this surprisingly well,” Luke says. Ashton glances over at him.

“I mean, I am a werewolf.”

“And me being a fairy doesn’t bother you?”

“Should it?”

“It’s just, you know, the magic thing.”

“Are you worried you’re enchanting me? The only thing you’ve done is enchant me with how pretty you are. Werewolves are mostly immune to that kind of thing, anyway.”

Luke relaxes a little, slumping back into the chair. Ashton grins, leaning over the table to place a quick peck to Luke’s lips.

“What was that for?”

“You’re just the cutest. I’m very lucky to have such a cute boyfriend. Make all the other werewolves jealous.”

“Boyfriend?”

Ashton blushes, “I mean, if you want to. I’d like to date. Take you out places, cover my bed in glitter, other things.” Ashton wiggles his eyebrows.

Luke rolls his eyes. “Werewolves are massive dorks.”

“Only for you, Sugar Plum Fairy. Only for you,” Ashton says, laughing in the face of Luke’s mock horror and outrage. The conversation ends as their server brings them their drinks and food. They go about eating their meal, Ashton just as messy as Luke thought a werewolf would be.

“You’re staring,” Ashton says, glancing up at Luke.

“Just watching you eat, looking to see if I can see your fangs,” Luke teases. Ashton rolls his eyes, sticking his tongue out.

Luke is content, though, watching Ashton throughout the meal as he alternates between trying to eat politely and then giving up and talking with his mouth full. It’s endearing, Luke thinks, getting to date a werewolf. He’s charming and funny and Luke can’t believe that a halloween decoration got him a boyfriend. He absolutely refuses to tell Michael about this part of the story.

#5 seconds of summer #5soshalloweenevent2020 #lashton #luke hemmings #ashton irwin #my writing #it wouldnt be me if there wasnt magic involved now would there

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thatordinaryoddity · 4 years ago

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UPDATE: Once In A Blue Goddamn Moon

a 💗 Jamie & Dani Fanfiction 💗 [The Haunting Of Bly Manor, Netflix 2020]

written by thatordinaryoddity

Rating: K+

Words: ~9,5k

Genre: Angst/Hurt/Comfort

Status: Complete (will be uploaded in three chapters + Prologue)

AO3: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27475423/chapters/67177879

FF.net: https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13742358/2/Once-In-A-Blue-Goddamn-Moon

Summary: Jamie leaves Flora’s weeding more wrapped up in her thoughts than usual. In all those years, there hadn’t been a day without thinking of her deceased lover Dani. But sometimes, once in a blue goddamn moon, events coincide in an exceptional, odd way.

A/N: Hey there darlings! I hope you’re all doing well!

I’ve just managed to upload my fanfiction on AO3 and FF.net *yay*. In short, here’s the new update, have fun! Next chapter will be out tomorrow, same time, same place(s) - until then, stay awesome!

The Garden Above the City

____________________

Jamie dropped off her luggage and went straight to the kitchen to get herself a cold, clear glass of water. Finally, after what felt like way more than an almost seven hour flight, she was in her usual environment again. To tell from the dawn outside the window, the day had just begun here in England since they had been on a nightplane. A little bit jetlagged, she pulled her cardigan tighter around her shoulders as she seated herself in the dark-green, cosy vintage loveseat. Like some sort of weird compulsion, she checked the water surface with every sip she took from her glass, hoping to see her reflection – as always, even after all this time, even after all this disappointing time.

In hope of getting some distraction from her train of thoughts, she grabbed the remote control for her radio and switched it on. Restless as the past few days had left her, she shifted around nervously on the seat, unable to find a comfortable way to sit. After a few fidgety minutes, the grey-haired woman gave up on finding any rest and decided to make herself a little something to eat instead. In the background, the music from the radio silenced to make room for the daily news. A female voice started talking:

And now to the weather forecast. This Friday autumn morning will be sunny in all parts of South England. It’s supposed to get cloudy with thunderstorms in the evening. Over the weekend, we expect rain in the greatest parts of Britain. Also, a rare Blue Moon will appear this weekend, coinciding with Halloween for the first time in more than 70 years. The full moon will rise in the east at 4.53 pm in the UK on Saturday, less than 20 minutes after the sun sets.

Jamie wasn’t even really listening. It was more like she heard the voice of the radio lady but couldn’t catch what she was saying. She was just tucked so far away in her own thoughts.

After she had eaten her breakfast and unpacked her suitcase, she decided to visit her favourite place in the world – Teddy’s little rooftop garden – one of the few things left to give her soul some comfort.

When Dani left all those years ago, Jamie had been unable to set another foot inside their florist’s shop back in America. Everything was connected to too many memories. There wasn’t a single spot where they hadn’t kissed. Sometimes, Jamie even came across a blonde hair here and there which would leave her as a sobbing wreck for the rest of the day.

She couldn’t even remember what she had been doing all day long during the first few weeks, if she had eaten or not, but she knew she hadn’t been sleeping for more than an hour at a time. She hadn’t even been able to bear collapsing into unconsciousness, because waking up from it to once again face her loss had been torture. She had begun to feel even worse since that one time she had gone to the shop, only to find all their plants dead due to the weeks of unintentional neglect. It hurt so much. All of it felt miserable.

After what had seemed like an eternity, some kind of inner healing had set in. Something inside her had told her she needed to move on. And although no hour had passed without her being reminded of that awful grief, Jamie had managed to move on one day. She had sold the flower shop and also her – their – flat, packed only the indispensables and booked a one way flight back to England. The woman had been aware that she couldn’t stay in America, in that cosy apartment, near the charming florist’s. It had been their dream, their life – and she would have perished had she stayed there.

Fortunately, she’d had some money left over from selling the flower shop and Henry Wingrave’s noble inheritance – he had sold all the antiquities and expensive, century-old furniture in Bly Manor to get rid of “all the old dust”. And since he was one of the only four people to remember what exactly had occurred at Bly Manor, he had decided to split the money between them as some sort of indemnity.

Back in Britain, Jamie had moved into a charming, suburban brick row house on the outskirts of a larger city. She’d been unable to bear living on the landside all alone because her own thoughts seemed too loud in all that silence. Likewise, living in the city centre had not been an option because the rush always unsettled her. Therefore, her current, modest accommodation had been just the right choice in her situation. Yet as the seasons had changed and one year had turned into two, the green-eyed woman had felt that something was missing inside her heart – the presence of a garden, of real flowers and plants. Since her row house didn’t have much more to offer than a few tiny window cills which were far too small to make a suitable home for all of her pot plants, Jamie had decided to search for something else. As luck would have it, she had found just what she had been looking for one day on the empty bus seat next to her while on her way home from grocery shopping. The forgotten newspaper on the seat right next to her had revealed just the right page of small ads:

Retired Gardener needs helping hand with his 40 sqm rooftop garden including a conservatory. All those interested please contact Theodore Campbell under ….

This ad had been more than just written words on the newspaper, it had been the beginning of something great, of something essential for the woman’s soul to find a little comfort and silence after all this time.

The years had gone by and turned her hair a steely gray, and she had gotten used to this new reality. Dani was never gone from her mind, not a single second, but it had become easier to live with all that screaming numbness inside her.

Theodore Campbell – Teddy – who suffered from multiple sclerosis and was confined to his wheelchair, had provided Jamie with so much love and understanding that he had become family to her. Truthful family, unlike those people who were related to her by blood. The elderly woman had shared her story with the old man and he had listened, understood, and remained silent when she had just needed to cry. Thus the little garden above the city had become not only a diversion, a pastime – but instead it had become home to her.

Teddy was 85 years old by now and Jamie visited him at least five days a week. Just as much as she saw him as a father, the old man loved Jamie like his own daughter. His wife had also passed away many, many years ago and the couple never had any children. Somehow, Teddy was a kind of role model for the green-eyed woman, because he himself had been through really hard times and yet, he always had a smile on his lips and another joke to tell every day. When his health began to deteriorate, he became reliant on his wheelchair, unable to attend to his gardening duties all by himself. Unwilling to give up the rooftop garden and sell it to someone who might just turn it into a rooftop terrace, he had place the ad in the newspaper.

Luckily, the pensioner was able to draw from his savings to pay for his treatments and special care, but with that burden and the rather lousy annuity a gardener gets, money was short nonetheless. Despite his financial status, he insisted to pay Jamie for her help, but she had always declined. His company and the garden had always been more than enough compensation for her. That, and the afternoon tea with shortbread biscuits, of course.

“It’s fine Teddy, I’ll get it,” the elderly woman put away her gardening gloves as the doorbell rang. The passionate gardener had spent almost the whole day on the rooftop, nurturing the plants and flowers with care and dedication, as she had been away for almost one week. Utterly absorbed in her work, she hadn’t even noticed that the sun was setting.

“Good evening Madam, trick or treat,” three colourfully dressed up children stood outside the door, gleefully grinning and bursting with excitement.

“Oh hi there, I love your costumes, you’re all exceedingly spooky! Let me see what the secret sweets stash has to offer!” Jamie smiled back at them, rushed into the kitchen, grabbing a handful of chocolate bars and handed each kid a few of them.

At the back of her head, she remembered the radio announcement about Halloween and the occurrence of the rare blue moon this night. If the kids hadn’t turned up in their costumes, she wouldn’t even have recalled that tonight was Halloween. She hardly attributed any importance to holidays like this, always assuming them to be a day like any other, but unbeknownst to her, this Halloween would turn out to be a very special one.

Without the sunlight warming her in the chilly autumn breeze, Jamie decided to lay her work on the rooftop garden down for the day and put on some good night tea for Teddy and herself.

“Ah thank you my dear, you are truly an angel!” Teddy said gratefully, as he took the hot tea mug from her. “You care to join me for a while?” The old man had hoped to be able to spend some time with her because he had noticed that something was especially strange since the moment she entered his apartment this day. Since she had returned from her trip to America for the wedding ceremony, Jamie seemed to be more absent-minded than usual.

“Would you mind if I go outside to the garden? The moon is so pretty tonight and I just want to admire it for a little bit on my own.” With a faint smile she placed her hand on the old man’s shoulder, trying to let him know that he needn’t worry. With a soft nod, he accepted her wish.

The sun had set entirely by now and the clear sky was embellished with its shiny stars already. The full moon tinted the rooftop with all the plants in a pale, silvery light. Despite her brown turtleneck pullover, made from very warm and soft linen, the elderly woman slightly shivered in the cold night air. Nevertheless, she sat down on the iron garden bench, wrapping her elegant, slender fingers tighter around the warm mug. With every sip, the warmth of the tea seemed to spread inside her body, stopping her from freezing any longer. The night was so very calm, and soon, her heavy thoughts, too, appeared to fall silent. Before she knew it, sleep somehow overcame her after a day of hard work and all the mental tension over the past week.

Jamie woke up, trying to figure out where she was for a moment. She didn’t know how long she’d been sleeping there, outside, on the cold iron stand of the garden bench. But somehow, her surroundings appeared to be ghostly silent and the cold night suddenly seemed very mild, more like a summer night really. There wasn’t a noise to hear, not even some distant hustle of traffic, not even the wind playing with the leaves of the plants. The green-eyed woman felt uneasy, odd, somehow dizzy. With one last glance upon the sky to the gorgeous moon in all its glory, she went towards the door leading inside. Suddenly, she was interrupted by a voice. A voice, so obviously real and present, that denying it or blaming it on the wind would have been utterly pointless:

“Jamie...”

She was thunderstruck. It was as if all her body cells, every membrane and every fiber froze to ice. A cold sensation rushed through her body from head to toe, leaving every inch of her electrified. This voice – could it be real? Was it another dream? Suddenly, she heard it again, louder this time, but with the same fragile gentleness.

“Jamie...”

The elderly woman didn’t even dare to turn around, she was literally frozen. A sudden gasp escaped her lungs, when she felt a soft touch on her shoulder. She squinted her eyes, trying to wake up from what she believed to be a dream, but the touch tightened.

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soveryanon · 6 years ago

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Reviewing time for MAG138! /o/

- ………………… It’s Holy Shit Smirke What The Fuck time, and I feel obligated to mention in preamble that: yes, I do get one of the points of his statement – that he lacked… flexibility and that it impacted his understanding of the Fears; that he associated them with a neat categorisation, with places, with stone and concrete and stable, fixed monumentality (“And if, as I came to believe, the Dread Powers were themselves places of a sort, then surely with the right space, the right architecture, they could be contained. Channelled. Harnessed.”) when they’re actually mutable, can express themselves in an infinity of ways, and that Smirke’s ~taxonomy~ was far from perfect, probably too tainted by his preconceptions and associations with tangible places to work for long after a few decades of illusion; that, in the end, Robert Smirke died as an old man unable to admit the flaws in his work (“Would you have me separate The Corruption between insects, dirt and disease? To, to divide the fungal bloom from the maggot? No. No, I… stand by my work.”), ready to blame others than him or his own community for their sufferings (“No; I feel certain they were bought into existence by some ancient civilisation, some… foolish tribe from pre-history.”). Leitner (!) (yes, “!”: Leitner, being right about something, I know. Incredible.) and Gerry had actually warned about describing the Fears with such neat separations:

(MAG080) LEITNER: I told you it was an unhelpful analogy. Let’s try another one. Um… Imagine, you are an ant, and you have never before seen a human. Then one day, into your colony, a huge fingernail is thrust, scraping and digging. You flee to another entrance, only to be confronted by a staring eye gazing at you. You climb to the top, trying to find escape and, above you, can see the vast dark shadow of a boot falling upon you. Would that ant be able to construct these things into the form of a single human being? Or would it believe itself to be under attack by three different, equally terrible, but very distinct assailants?

(MAG111) GERRY: […] And when our fears change, so do these things. But it’s not quick. Gertrude reckons they’ve basically been the same since the Industrial Revolution. She and my mum both liked to follow Smirke’s list of fourteen. ARCHIVIST: [DISBELIEVINGLY] Th– I mean, there are a lot more than fourteen things to be afraid of in the world. Where do you draw the line? GERRY: Hmmm. I always think it helps to imagine them like colours. The edges bleed together, and you can talk about little differences: “oh, that’s indigo, that’s more lilac”, but they’re both purple. I mean, I guess there are technically infinite colours, but you group them together into a few big ones. A lot of it’s kind of arbitrary. […] And like colours, some of these powers, they feed into or balance each other. Some really clash, and you just can’t put them together. I mean, you could see them all as just one thing, I guess, but it would be pretty much meaningless, y’know, like… like trying to describe a… shirt by talking about the concept of colour. O–Of course, with these things it’s not a simple spectrum, y’know, it’s more like– ARCHIVIST: An infinite amorphous blob of terror bleeding out in every direction at once. GERRY: Now you’re getting it. ARCHIVIST: Like colours, but if colours hated me.

Sounds like the Fears are… part of a whole, and that “infinite amorphous blob of terror bleeding out in every direction at once” might still be the most Accurate Description for… whatever they are.

But I’m also an utter fool who likes neat categorisations for these concepts so YES, I acknowledge that Jonny is calling us out on trying to put labels on everything that happens in the series and on trying to make occurrences fit into the list we were given in MAG111, but suddenly I can’t read / HOW ABOUT I DO IT ~ANYWAY~. :w

- Obligatory tears because: Tim, disillusioned at the end of season 3, had reached the conclusions about Smirke’s work that Smirke himself half-admitted here (back-and-forth between admitting that he had been wrong and ~standing by his work~):

(MAG117) TIM: […] You know, for the longest time I thought the secret was in balance…! In some… dusty old architect’s work on symmetry. [SCOFF] But he failed, didn’t he? What was he even trying to achieve? He’d lived like anyone else, he… died like anyone else. Whatever he was looking for, in his “Balance and Fear”? I don’t think he found it.

(MAG138, Robert Smirke) “I have been blessed with a long life, something few who crossed paths with the Dread Powers can boast, but now… at the end of it, my true fear is that I have wasted it, chasing an impossible dream. To speak plain, I have begun to lose faith in the possibility of Balance. Of any sort of equilibrium among them.”

And look, yes, I know, I should be terrorised that Smirke’s shiny system wasn’t so great and functioning after all… but I’m mostly SAD, because Tim had spent the last three-to-four years of his life trying to understand Smirke’s work, and had concluded that it wasn’t working. And he was right. (And then he died, too.)

- So we’re getting a new designation for the Fears: the “Dread Powers”, which, yeah, what it says on the tin, neat!

- Smirke’s words and his influence on current characters localised in London puts me to mind again that… how come that some people apparently knew what the rituals would do to our world? How can they know of the result, since no ritual has succeeded so far?

(MAG092) ELIAS: These things that touch us, they… don’t have a form of the sort that could exist in physical reality. So the Stranger wishes to remake that physical reality into something closer to itself. It wants to make this world its own.

(MAG111) ARCHIVIST: No, I don’t have time. Tell me about the rituals. GERRY: Well, they all have one. Most of them, anyway. Takes centuries to build up to a level of power where they can try it, and if they fail, it’s back to square one. ARCHIVIST: Okay, but what do the rituals do? GERRY : They… kind of “shift” the world, just enough for the Power to come through. Merge with reality. Some say, or well, they guess, that it could bring other entities through with them. I mean, I doubt The Buried would be bringing through The Vast, but you know. ARCHIVIST : But what does that actually mean. F–for the world? “Merging with reality”? GERRY: […] right now all the entities have to act like a hunter, they pick off the weak ones around the edges, the ones that wander to close, and the rest of the time they have to just graze on whatever fear we all passively give away. ARCHIVIST : And if one of the rituals succeeds? GERRY : The world becomes a factory farm.

So this might be what Smirke theorised himself, notably on the idea that Powers had allies and opposites:

(MAG138, Robert Smirke) “Fourteen Powers, with their opposites and their allies, each with an aim no more no less than manifestation. Apocalypse. Apotheosis. I wonder: did my work bring about these Dreadful things, or… did I simply develop the means by which they can be known…?”

And we saw through The Hunt (or… the essence of the hunt) that its goal is not to manifest, since it revels in the chase and the pursuit – not in getting the prey. Though Smirke might have given inspiration to humans touched by the powers, to organise their activities around circumstantial allies (or allies by nature) and enemies? There might still have been a bit of truth to it, since Gertrude did manage to neutralise The Buried’s ritual with the body of Vast-touched Jan Kilbride… So, to what extent was Smirke, in the end, spot-on, and to what extent did he over-systemise something that was filled with irregularities and particularities?

(- I wonder if the ideas of what the world WOULD look like if one of the rituals succeeded weren’t due to… the Fears-touched dreams? There is definitely something too suspicious about “dreams” overall in this series – I assumed for long that it was a case of “well, of course, if you experience a terrifying thing, your subconscious with get plagued with it and you’ll have nightmares related to this” for a lot of them, independently from Jon’s Archivist-induced dreams. But Smirke revealed that he had initially begun his work influenced by the dreams he had:

(MAG138, Robert Smirke) “Did I ever tell you about the dreams? I’m sure I must have. I would dream about them, you see, as a young man, long before I devised my taxonomy. I would find myself in nightmares of strange, far-off places: a field of graves; a grasping tunnel; an abattoir, knee-deep in pigs’ blood. I believed then, as I still believe now, that these places I saw were the Powers themselves, expressed in their truest form, far more entirely than any “secret book” can claim.”

And we’ve had various cases of dreams being more spooky than “regular” ones: Oliver began to see the veins in his dreams (MAG011, MAG121), Robert E. Geiger was only able to hear Stefan Brotchen’s last words in his dreams (MAG099), Annabelle had started to get dreams involving spiders despite being unaware of the nature of the experiments (MAG069), Carter Chilcott had been dreaming of “floating through ancient graveyards or the open, empty sea” while on the Daedalus (MAG057), Joshua Gillespie dreamed of asphyxiating despite the coffin itself not giving him any such experience while he was awake (MAG002)… Is it possible that people are more sensitive to the Fears in their dreams, since dreams are a bit more in the Fears’ territory (Jonny mentioned, iirc, that they behave on “dream-logic”)? Is that how Garland Hillier saw The Extinction coming, too: due to his dreams?)

- Alright: sudden information that Smirke APPARENTLY HELPED THEORISE THE RITUALS??? HOLY MEW????

(MAG138, Robert Smirke) “So many have abandoned us, casting about for rituals that I helped design. In my excited discussions with Mr. Rayner, I… perhaps extrapolated too much from his talk of a “Grand Ritual” of darkness. The Dark, I thought, was simply one of the Powers so, it stands to reason that each of them should have its own ritual. Perhaps they already did, even before I put pen to paper. They certainly do now, and I shudder to think how Lukas, Scott and the others may use this conception.”

So, to break this down: it seems like Maxwell Rayner agreed to discuss with Smirke about what he identified as The Dark’s ritual, and Smirke guessed from there that the other Fears that he had isolated probably had (or should have) their own rituals, and worked on theorising them? Basira herself had noticed that Natalie Ennis’s words reported in MAG025’s statement (“She said that they were all going, that 300 years was a long time to wait, but she was lucky to have found it so close to the end.”) matched with two solar eclipses happening in Ny-Ålesund (MAG108: “And when Natalie Ennis talked about it being 300 years ago, well. How much do you know about the relationship between Edmond Halley and John Flamsteed?” “What, Halley like the comet?” “Exactly.”); Basira might have been spot-on on the idea that The Dark is quite… regular and organized around these eclipses? Or at the very least, that The Dark was aware of its opportunities to reshape the world.

And Smirke hypothesises that a few other people might have taken inspiration from it, some of them also part of Jonah Magnus’s own circle (so they were probably all mutual acquaintances, at the very least, as people that Smirke had “brought into [his] confidence”?):

* “Mr. Rayner” (The Dark): unless twist, Maxwell Rayner himself, and Smirke had abundantly talked with him, apparently. No mention on whether Jonah knew him too (except if the Elias-is-Jonah theory turns out to be an actual thing, since Maxwell was revealed to have been a ~friend~ of the Head of the Institute in MAG135), but Dr. Algernon Moss, in a statement given May 14th 1864, had reported on his encounter with Maxwell Rayner who was already well-known at the time (MAG098).

* “Scott” (The Buried): likely referring to George Gilbert Scott (MAG050), who had been under Henry Roberts’s tutelage, who had himself been one of Smirke’s disciples. Sampson Kempthorne, the author of the letter to Jonah, briefly employed Scott in 1834 (historical fact) and noted that he tended to design claustrophobic places. Scott had been said to have “also received certain architectural tutelages from Sir Robert himself”, and during a reception, Smirke had explained to Kempthorne that Scott hadn’t really understood his lessons about “balance” and that Kempthorne had dodged a bullet getting rid of him. Sampson Kempthorne wrote his letter on June 12th 1841, was in good terms with Jonah Magnus but not really an intimate of Smirke himself (he wasn’t into ~the confidence~).

* “Lukas” (The Lonely): we know from Barnabas Bennett’s letter to Jonah Magnus, dated April 9th 1824, that Jonah had warned him to avoid Mordechai Lukas and was himself on “good terms” with him according to Elias (MAG092). Smirke could be referring to Mordechai or another from the family – since, at least, it seems like the ties between the Lukases and the Magnus Institute remained strong over time, with the Lukases being current sugar daddies patrons of the Institute (MAG017, MAG033) and Elias knowing ~Peter~ personally.

So that’s indeed quite a peculiar society of people in the know about the ~Dread Powers~. Given that Maxwell Rayner gave information to Smirke about The Dark’s “Grand Ritual”, and that Mordechai Lukas was already… powerful enough by himself to punish Barnabas in 1824, it doesn’t look like Robert Smirke “converted” all of the people surrounding him, but that he got acquainted with a few people who already had their own knowledge? Not sure about George Gilbert Scott, though – it seems like this one learned Smirke’s principles and ran away with them, serving The Buried.

In the same way, it really feels like Smirke might have exaggerated his role in organising the rituals? The Dark has its own already; we know that the previous attempt to bring The Stranger through took place in the Court Theatre of Buda in October 1787 (statement given by Abraham Janssen in MAG116), when Smirke was… a young kid. There was also some suspicion about the ~Archives~ under Alexandria, which were attacked by what looked like a Dark faction in AD 391, perhaps to stop an attempt by the Beholding (MAG053). According to Peter Lukas, The End and The Web have never been interested in setting up their ritual (MAG134), and Daisy&Jon guessed that The Hunt doesn’t want to reach its culmination (MAG133), even though some Hunters were seeking it. It doesn’t seem like Smirke created the principles that guide rituals, more that he himself didn’t have any information about attempts by other factions than The Dark? But he apparently wrote… guidelines (/wild-mass guessing essays) about others, and feared, towards the end of his life, how they could be misused.

Smirke, why the FUCK did you do that in the first place, OF COURSE IT WOULD GET MISUSED………….. (Though, it’s easy to see how something meant to protect could serve nefarious purpose. Explain in details how fire works, in order to save lives during a housefire, and one pyromaniac could still twist the principles to achieve more damage…)

Smirke specifically said that he “put pen to paper” so, unless it was an exaggeration… there might be a Robert Smirke essay somewhere about his ideas of the Fears’ rituals, whether they’re concrete guidelines or more general principles. The question is: where, and is it actually “worth” something, either to construct the rituals or to stop them? Did Gertrude have access to it? … is it in Elias’s safe? (Or is it… absolutely useless and off-the-mark, and Smirke feared for nothing because he thought his work a bigger deal than it actually was for the Fears themselves?)

- Amongst the list of people into ~Robert Smirke’s confidence~, what about Henry Roberts? He had trained George Gilbert Scott:

(MAG050, Sampson Kempthorne) “Henry [Roberts] was very effusive about the talents and prospects of young Mr Scott and was at great pains to inform me that his young protégé had also received certain architectural tutelages from Sir Robert himself. He said this with the oddest of looks, as though there was some jolly secret between us. I rather just nodded, as if to say I took his meaning, and he left well enough alone. […] At the mention of the name George Gilbert Scott, Sir Robert’s face flushed suddenly, in a manner not entirely unlike that of his protégé. He asked me what my interest was in Mr Scott, and I told him that he had, until recently, been engaged as my assistant. At this, Sir Robert gave a small laugh of satisfaction and told me I did not realise exactly how lucky an escape I may have had. I asked again what his training had entailed, and Sir Robert stared at me for a silent minute, before he finally nodded his head. “Balance,” he told me. “Equilibrium. […]” Without prompting, his tirade continued, and he talked about George, about shortcuts in symmetry and a patron that the young fool did not understand. I could follow very little of it, and it seems to be decidedly removed from anything that I would consider architecture, but whatever it was that Sir Robert had been teaching George, it appeared the lessons had been put to less noble use than he had intended.”

Both George Gilbert Scott and Henry Roberts historically survived Smirke (dying respectively in 1878 and 1876) – but it seemed that at the time, Henry Roberts knew about the true nature of Smirke’s work, and yet didn’t apparently dedicate himself to one power like Scott apparently did with The Buried…? Did it happen later, or did Henry Roberts totally manage to remain neutral…?

(And I’m HOWLING overall that… I hadn’t noticed, back in MAG050, that. Henry Roberts’s behaviour implied that Robert Smirke was indeed sharing what he knew of the Fears with his private club of acquaintances. I thought he was only training people in his “Balance and Fear” and that they independently happened to discover the powers by themselves. But nope, it’s REALLY all because of Robert Smirke; good job, Bob.)

- A curious detail: Robert Smirke’s death as given in MAG138 does not match the official version in our ~world~: the historical figure died on April 18th, 1867 while Martin reported that the letter he wrote to Jonah was dated February 13th, 1867, and that he died of ~apoplexy~ mid-writing it. That’s two months before his historical death!

(MAG138) MARTIN: Statement of Robert Smirke, taken from a letter to Jonah Magnus, dated 13th of February, 1867. […] Uh… [INHALE] The, hum… The letter ends there. Uh… Ap–apparently Robert Smirke was found collapsed in his study that evening, dead of, uh… [FLIPPING PAPER] Apoplexy.

Buuuut that year (1867) curiously has one matching point of data with the statement previously read by Martin, in MAG134 – it’s the same year Garland Hillier disappeared.

(MAG134, Adelard Dekker) “Garland Hillier’s final essay, published in 1867 and simply titled “L’Avenir”, “The Future”, was supposedly a rambling and meandering speculation on the end of the human race, influenced by Darwin’s recent publication of The Origin of the Species and his own shattered faith. He posited a future where, far from any glorious or holy revelation or reckoning, a decadent and corrupt humanity was violently and utterly supplanted, and wiped out by a new category of being. One he referred to as “les Héritiers”. “The Inheritors”. He gave no details on how he believed they might look like, or how they might behave, but his predictions for the final days of humanity were unpleasant, and visceral. […] Anyway, the point is that sometime after that essay was published, Garland Hillier disappeared. Exactly when this happened, no one is really sure, but the last records of his existence can be found near the end of 1867.”

I don’t know if the “change” regarding Robert Smirke’s death is simply a matter of authorial self-protection (Magnus Archives is ~an AU~ of our reality, this Robert Smirke is not the same one as the historical figure) or if it is potentially tied to something more tightly knitted (a shift, a rupture between the Magnusverse and our own world? etc.)

At the very least, I *squint* hard at 1867. Were Jonah’s activities tied (from afar or more closely) to Garland Hillier’s own activities? Did Beholding start feeling threatened by the ~prophecy~ announcing the new emergence?

- You, too, get Marked by Beholding and get A Big Giant Eyeball haunting the sky in your dreams, the got-in-contact-with-Magnus trademark:

(MAG120) ELIAS: The Archivist wanders. He is searching, though, for what he does not know. […] All through it, the shadow is above him; the shape that gazes down upon him, bloodshot and unblinking. […] It opens, and he walks slowly down the steps into the earth; but even as it closes above him, the great shadow still Sees him. There is nowhere in this universe that it would not blot out the sky. […] So he watches her, trying in his single-minded focus to ignore the attention of that impossible thing that covers the sky and fixes its gaze on him with such force it would choke him – were he breathing. […] And at last, the Archivist looks up. [STATIC INTENSIFIES] At last, he looks into The Eye that sees all, and knows all, and clutches at the secret terrors of your heart. The Ceaseless Watcher of all that is, and all that was; the voracious, infinite hunger that tears at his soul, invoking him to discover, to observe, to experience all and everything and forever.

(MAG138, Robert Smirke) “I have been dreaming again, Jonah. The same every night for months, now. I imagine myself a boy again at Aspley. I awake, cold and alone in the dormitory. The sky outside is dark and I see no stars. I light a candle to better see my way, and step down the silent corridor. The masters’ rooms are empty; the fire in the kitchen is dead. Eventually, my steps lead out into the courtyard. It is so quiet that the sound of my feet upon the grass is painful to my ears. I stop, and look up at the sky, that empty black nothing, and I see the edges of the horizon becoming a dull white. I cannot understand what I am looking at. And then the sky… blinks. And I awake.”

(Bob didn’t have it so bad, after all? I mean. At least, his Big Eyeball blinked.)

- Third named mention of “The Watcher’s Crown” in the series! … almost directly answering Jon’s plea to know more about it from last episode:

(MAG111) GERARD: She worked out they’d all be happening quite close together. She’d already been doing it a while, and the Unknowing was the next on her list. That and The Watcher’s Crown. ARCHIVIST: The, the what? GERARD: Uh, the Rite of The Watcher’s Crown. It’s what she called the ritual for the Eye. She didn’t tell me much about that one, just that she knew how to take care of it.

(MAG137) ARCHIVIST: […] What the hell is The Watcher’s Crown? So far the only mention of it I’ve had is from Gerry, and he didn’t seem to know much about what it actually meant. [PAUSE] And he’s gone now. But if it is the grand ritual of Beholding, then I– … I mean… I need to know about it. Right…?

(MAG138, Robert Smirke) “I am not a fool; I know well enough what this dream is likely to mean, and I warn you again that if you have any remaining ambitions to use our work, to try and wear The Watcher’s Crown, you must abandon them! Not simply for the sake of your own soul, but for that of the world! I have always had the utmost respect for you as a man of dignity, and learning. Do not allow yourself to fall to this madness.”

Interestingly, Smirke presented it like a literal crown that could be worn…? (What is in Elias’s safe.) (Is the crown Fashionable.)

- Take your pick of your Failed-Because-Of-Hubris representative:

(MAG080) LEITNER: And so I branded them with my seal. I told myself that if any should escape such a mark could help me retrieve them. But I think, in my heart, I dreamed of my work becoming known. That “The Library of Jurgen Leitner” would stand as a symbol of courage and protection. Hubris. I suppose it is fitting punishment that my name has become a watchword for evil, spoken by those who only know it as marking the darkest, most terrible of secrets. My name has become a curse.

(MAG111) GERRY: Eventually, I grew old enough and wise enough to see [my mother’s] obsession for what it really was: hubris. She lived her just carefully enough not to be destroyed by things she studied, but that was it. The things out there weren’t like taming fire, they couldn’t be contained or used for light or warmth. The best you could hope for from them, would be that they don’t spot you, and instead my mum chased after them, obsessed with others who had tried to stare at them without being blinded: y’know, Flamsteed, Smirke, Leitner. Idiots who destroyed themselves chasing a secret that wasn’t worth knowing.

(MAG138, Robert Smirke) “You see, Jonah, I feel the hour of my death approaching and, though you have always been reluctant to pay due heed to my warnings or counsel, I continue to see in you the reflection of my own past hubris. […] So yes. Hubris. Not simply in that, I suppose, but in believing that those I brought into my confidence shared my lofty goals. “

I wonder if we’ll hear about John Flamsteed at some point, since Basira had done a bit of research on him by MAG108, too… (Though he lived waaaay before Smirke and Jonah.)

- I’m still not sold on the Jonah Magnus=Elias theory. On the one hand, there are many things indeed reinforcing that possibility: Smirke thought that Jonah had sunken into Beholding and that he planned to launch the Watcher’s Crown. MAG138 casually revealed that Smirke knew “Rayner” and the way he described him implied that Jonah knew him too (there was nothing in MAG098 to confirm or deny that Jonah knew the guy; the statement was even given to the Institute, not to Jonah himself, and we didn’t know if he was still alive at the time (1864) until MAG138). This is coming shortly after MAG135 which… revealed that Elias PERSONALLY knew Maxwell Rayner and was acquainted (?) with him at some point. Robert Smirke was guessing that Jonah was trying to escape death, and there is obviously the question: and if he had succeeded, who and where would he be? There is even the mention that:

(MAG138, Robert Smirke) “I am choosing to assume that these manifestations are unintentional, Jonah, and you have not… simply decided to implore a Dark Patron to end the life of an old man.”

… which (except for the fact that Beholding Never Does Shit) obviously puts Elias to mind because uh, who is well-known for murdering old people? Would Robert Smirke have been voiced by someone from Jonny’s family, too?

BUT ON THE OTHER HAND, every time Elias opens his mouth, I… can’t “read” him as 220+ years old. He’s too shitty? Too petty? Too… not exactly impulsive, but there is always an undercurrent of impatience in him, I feel? I don’t really know how to explain, but I feel like someone much older than “middle-aged” wouldn’t… revel as he does in petty jabs and punchlines, wouldn’t be so intent on getting the last word and on being Verbally Right at every turn?

(But then, that’s one of the main question in this series: what the HECK is Elias, what is his backstory, what are his goals, what even is his ROLE, and what does he know about the Spiders in his Institute.)

- HOWEVER, nervous laughter re: the fear of dying, because hum. Hum. Who does that remind me of.

(MAG080) ELIAS: Well, he was always going to need to fly the nest at some point. Go out and see the world for himself. LEITNER: He might die. ELIAS: It’s always a danger. Almost always.

(MAG121) OLIVER: The thing is, Jon, right now, you have a choice. You’ve put it off for a long time; but it’s trapping you here. You’re not quite human enough to die, but – still too human to survive. You’re… balanced on an edge, where The End can’t touch you, but you can’t escape Him. I made a choice. We all made choices.

(MAG136) ARCHIVIST: My– [PAUSE] [INHALE] [SIGH] My memories of the coma are not clear. But I know I made a choice; I made a choice to become… something else. Because I was afraid to die.

(MAG138, Robert Smirke) “I beg you, do not pursue this goal; if only a single lesson may be gleaned from my life of long study, and longer hardship, it is that the fear of Death is natural, and to flee from it will only bring greater misery. Repent of your sins, Jonah. Seek forgiveness. I am certain the Dread Powers cannot take a soul that keeps faith in the Resurrection.”

Elias had already installed Jonah Magnus as a Role Model for Jon in MAG092 (“Because he had to know, to watch and see it all. That’s what this place is, John, never forget it. You may believe yourself to have friends, to have confidantes, but in the end, all they are, is something for you to watch, to know, and ultimately to discard. This, at least, Gertrude understood.”) and ;; I. Am. Getting the feeling that Jon might be, totally unknowingly, walking in Jonah’s footsteps a bit…? Except for the part where he’d agree to sacrifice people close to him, because Jon’s conscious decisions have been the absolute opposite so far.

- Something heartbreaking to me: the way… information is not being shared, between Martin and Jon – though Martin is apparently planning to let Jon hear Robert Smirke’s statement eventually. Because MAG138 brings another light on Jonathan Fanshawe’s letter and Jon’s own conclusions about Jonah Magnus:

(MAG127) ARCHIVIST: Hm. “Jonah Magnus”. I’ve never really given much thought to him. Not nearly as much as I should have. I suppose I had always hoped there was a chance he was… innocent, in all this. I know, I know! But I had… [EXHALE] I had just… hoped that maybe the founding of the Institute was in earnest. And not simply the foundation stone for all the terrible things that have happened here. … But no. Whatever is happening now… has its origins two hundred years ago. In the work of an evil man.

(MAG138, Robert Smirke) “It is telling that of those I have brought into my confidence, it is only you and I who have continued this far without falling to one Power or another, despite all my instruction and work. This is, of course, assuming you have not taken the path of The Eye that I know has called you – called us both – for so long, even since before we began our work on Millbank. […] I am choosing to assume that these manifestations are unintentional, Jonah, and you have not… simply decided to implore a Dark Patron to end the life of an old man. I further find myself supposing that they may emanate from your own intrigues and preparations to culminate those plans which we agreed to abandon so many decades ago! […] The Eye has marked me for something, of this I have no doubt. My… humble hope is that it may be a swift death, an accidental effect of your own researches, which I once again implore you to abandon.”

Jonathan Fanshawe sent his letter to Jonah in November 21st, 1831: the fair assumption was that Jonah had probably funded the Institute in 1818 as a temple to Beholding? But it seems like it wasn’t the initial goal of the Institute, since Smirke was under the impression that Jonah hadn’t followed the path of Beholding until rather recently (unless Jonah had managed to deceive him all this time?). It could explain the wording used by Breekon to refer to the Institute:

(MAG128, “Breekon”) “That was the first time we saw what would become this place, The Eye’s Pedestal.”

“what WOULD BECOME this place”: not what it WAS already, even though Breekon is talking about their time serving on the Robert Small, around 1853, years after the foundation of the Institute. (Though the concept of the Institute, of Jonah asking all his acquaintances to send him spooky stories, amassing knowledge, threading his map of relationships around spooky people, of trying to know and learn more about it… indeed sounded extremely Beholding in the first place. But it seems like Beholding taking a hold of the Institute was a consequence, and not the initial goal of it – like the Institute wasn’t initially created to serve it?)

In the same way, I had wondered in MAG127 if Jon mightn’t have been wrong to conclude right away, like Jonathan Fanshawe, that Jonah’s goal had been to get rid of Albrecht without any concern for him – there could have been other reasons to take the actual books away from him, especially since they were the ones affecting Albrecht? But hum, alright: even without being a (conscious?) Beholding agent in the 1810s to 1830s, there are many ways to indeed be an “evil man” – Millbank says hi:

(MAG127, Jonathan Fanshawe) “Jonah; I must first and foremost decline your generous offer of a medical position servicing Millbank Penitentiary. While the terms you’ve laid out are no doubt more than adequate, I have, over these last months, come to the unfortunate conclusion that our intimacy and friendship must cease immediately. I do not know what interest you have in the poor condemned souls within those walls, nor do I care to guess. In the light of what I have so recently witnessed, I can no longer in good conscience associate with any of your endeavours.”

(MAG128, “Breekon”) “Poor wretches who emerged from Millbank, with tales of Australia and its cruelty on their lips, bundled into the cramped and creaking ship that would drag them away from everything they loved – and towards everything they feared.”

(MAG138, Robert Smirke) “What we built at Millbank should be left well enough alone, resigned to the nightmares of the reprobates and brigands contained within its walls. […] This is, of course, assuming you have not taken the path of The Eye that I know has called you – called us both – for so long, even since before we began our work on Millbank.”

For Breekon to mention that it was an awful place, it must have been REALLY bad, indeed.

And it saddens me to agree with Martin that he… probably wasn’t the right person to read this statement:

(MAG138) MARTIN: I don’t know what he’s talking about when he mentions Millbank. The old prison, I guess? Tim said the tunnels under the Institute were all that was left of it, but… Jon said he’d checked them pretty thoroughly. [SILENCE] [SIGH] I’m not the one who knows all about this stuff…!

It’s not even just Jon who was specialising in navigating the tunnels – he was finding his way, but Tim was able to use them pretty efficiently too (MAG114, Jon: “I know there are some exits to the tunnels outside the Institute, so I guessed you were using them to get in and out, avoiding any… tape recorders.”). And there is something that Martin didn’t appear to remember about them, but that he had read himself:

(MAG088, Enrique MacMillan) “so here I came. To tell my story, of course, but another thing as well; cold, empty and calling. There’s something here, you see. Something to be dug up, rooted out, buried within. A hollow space that all eyes point towards. And I intend to reach it, if my fingers don’t give out first. I know where to dig.”

[…] MARTIN: Based on a few scattered notes and accounts from some of the older staff, it sounds like Mr. Macmillan got in a bit of a fight, which led to his arrest, and the replacement of quite a bit of the floor in Jon’s office. There are still a couple of boards with marks on them that I’d always hoped weren’t fingernail scratches, but I guess…

(+ Daisy’s mention to Jon in MAG114 that she didn’t like the tunnels because they felt “empty”, and the fact that… the “DIG” leaked into Jon’s dreams for reasons still unknown, despite Martin having been the one to read that statement.)

Is it the same structure as the tunnels under the Reform Club (MAG035) and St Paul’s Church (MAG063), or are they all separate installations? The ones under the Reform Club were long but looked clearly organised and structured; the one under St-Paul’s Church ended with a wall; and the ones under the Institute had been mentioned to be a veritable maze and… cover a very large area:

(MAG080) LEITNER: Over the years I have found that [this unexpurgated copy of Ruskin’s The Seven Lamps of Architecture] interacts with Smirke’s architecture, and those tunnels specifically, in a more predictable way. By carefully reading specific passages in certain locations I am able to exercise… a degree of control over the substance of the tunnels. […] I’ve been in hiding for over twenty years now, ever since my library was destroyed. Obviously I have not spent all that time below your Institute. The old Millbank prison tunnels stretch out a very long way, and there are other entrances than the one below the Archives.

(Leitner even telling Jon that he had made them simpler for him.)

- YOU KNOW WHAT OTHER LINES SHARE THE SAME ENERGY?!

(MAG123) ARCHIVIST: [SIGH] I wish I could talk it through with Martin. … Or Tim. [SHORT SAD CHUCKLE] Or Sasha. But we never really did that, did we…? … Everything’s changed. … [SIGH] Two days out of a coma, and I’m already tired.

(MAG138) MARTIN: Tim said the tunnels under the Institute were all that was left of it, but… Jon said he’d checked them pretty thoroughly. [SILENCE] [SIGH] I’m not the one who knows all about this stuff…! I wish– … No. No, it’s fine, I’m… fine, I… [EXHALE] I can do this.

It’s open to interpretation but I’m really hearing Martin’s “I wish–” as a “I wish Tim was still alive and with us” and AOUCH orz

(I’m… still hoping that we’ll get something from Martin about his own mourning of Tim orz Because that one must have been… so harsh… he was so worried about Sasha’s disappearance in the beginning of season 3, his small voice broke my heart in MAG092 when Elias confirmed that she had died a LONG time ago, and the fact that he had been buddy-buddy with her murderer while Elias was doing nothing about it had been one of the points he threw to Elias’s face in MAG118. And Tim was around even longer, and he experienced so many bad things alongside Tim, and even at his worst, Tim was often mellowing down / a bit more protective of Martin than… anyone else, really, be it in Michael’s corridors or when Tim had explained to Martin that he didn’t think that reading the statements were a good thing? And this despite Tim telling Jon in MAG114 that he didn’t know Martin as well as he knew Sasha, hence the fact he was avoiding him like the others – what does it say about Martin’s relationships with other people… ;;)

- But the “Good luck, Jon, I– … [HUFF] Stay safe.” coming after was absolute Gay Energy, and MARTIN!!!

It feels like the episode was the Perfect Recipe for how to get an episode popular/trending/making people scream: it has MARTIN throughout it, and we’re all thirsty to hear from him! It has Martin being snappy and cunning! Martin’s loyalty towards Jon! A Robert Smirke statement! The relationship between Smirke and Jonah Magnus! New questions about Jonah! More lore with Smirke’s taxonomy from the inside! Beholding statement, with eyes horror! A small mention of Tim! Elias! Elias in prison! Elias FINALLY ACKNOWLEDGING PETER’S EXISTENCE! MORE CHAINS RATTLING AT EVERY TURN! Elias calling Martin out for his manipulative tendencies! Martin using the tape recorders instead of being used by them!

I still feel floored.

- Special bonus for another occurrence of Martin’s “Mm-hMM” when people are telling him something he doesn’t want to hear, and I LOVE HIS CASUAL SNAPPINESS IN SEASON 4…

(MAG129) ARCHIVIST: I just… I’m sorry. Basira is off doing… God-knows-what, and I can’t talk to Melanie. MARTIN : Mm-hmm.

(MAG134) PETER: […] And as far as the coffin goes, there’s not much I can do about a bull-headed Archivist who seems hellbent on self-destruction. My powers only extend so far. MARTIN : Mm-hmm.

(MAG138) ELIAS: I am so very pleased to see you. MARTIN: Mm-hmm.

Martin “Mm-hMMm.” Blackwood, ilu.

- The difference between how Elias constantly reminded Jon how he belongs to The Eye, versus Elias’s… apparent uninterest? in Martin’s own alliance to the Lonely is quite… jarring. As for Jon:

(MAG092) ELIAS: [SIGH] What are you? ARCHIVIST: I… The Archivist. ELIAS: Precisely. It is your job to chronicle these things, to experience them, whether first-hand or through the eyes of others. To simply be told, well… ARCHIVIST: It doesn’t please your master? ELIAS: Our master, Jon. […] We thrive on ceaseless watching, on knowing too much. What we face is the hidden, the uncanny, and the unknown. If you are to stop them, you need to get better at seeing.

(MAG116) ELIAS: I have been doing my best to prepare you, Jon, to See. You should hopefully have it a bit easier than the others. ARCHIVIST: Another of my… powers? ELIAS: More… an aspect of your becoming. DAISY: You don’t say. ARCHIVIST: Er… right.

(MAG120) ELIAS: [The Eye] stares into him, and it stares out of him, and he is falling into the devouring eternity of its pupil. He wants to cry out in horror, but he cannot. He. is. whole.

(MAG135) ELIAS: Fine. Consider it a test – things are… coming, things that will need Jon to be far stronger and more willing to use his connection to our patron. […] If Gertrude had a plan for this one, I haven’t found it, which is why Jon needs to be closer to The Eye. If anyone can stop what’s happening, he can. See through the darkness, etcetera.

With Jon, it’s always been a casually possessive “us”. While Martin…

(MAG138) MARTIN: I think he wants me to join The Lonely. ELIAS: Then it sounds like you have a decision to make. [SILENCE] MARTIN : … What? [HUFF] That’s it? No, no monologue, no mindgames? You love manipulating people! ELIAS : That makes two of us. MARTIN: [HUFF] ELIAS : But no. This is too important for me to jeopardise with cheap “mindgames”. I simply have to trust that when the time comes, you’ll make the right choice. [SILENCE] MARTIN: Great. Great, great. So, what you’re [NERVOUS LAUGHTER] actually saying is that you’re gonna be… no help whatsoever!

… is clearly not getting that.

It’s terrible yet makes so much sense that of all people, Martin would talk to Elias about Peter’s offer, and implicitly seek out… whatever Elias might have to say about it? Elias had been the one to hire Martin in the Institute:

(MAG056) MARTIN: I don’t have a Master’s in parapsychology, I don’t even have a degree. When I was 17, my mom, she… had… she had some problems, and I ended up dropping out of school, t–trying to support us. I tried everything, but no one was hiring. So I… I just kinda started to lie on my applications, sending them out to just about anywhere. For some reason, my lie about parapsychology got me an interview with Elias and, and then a job here. M–most of my employment details are made up, I’m only 29!

… for reasons still unknown – was Elias actually fooled But Would Never Ever Admit It (as of MAG084, at the very least, he knew about Martin’s fake CV (“I mean, that doesn’t actually, er, make her qualified.” “[POINTEDLY] Formal qualifications aren’t everything, Martin.”) but that was long after MAG056 and he could have eavesdropped on that conversation)? Did Elias hire him because Martin was vulnerable and either prone to become canon-fodder or Beholding food, being Full Of Secrets and fearing that they might get discovered? Was there… something else? And in the same way, we’re not sure how Martin ended up working in the Archives – when Tim, in MAG098, pointed out that Jon had asked him to go with him, Martin was curiously silent as if… he couldn’t really say the same. Why is Martin at the Institute? Doesn’t working there for at least nine years mean anything?

I feel like the episode both began with a question (Martin asking where he should stand between The Lonely and The Eye) and ended up with his implicit answer, maybe… after all guided by Elias, when he made a jab at Martin for being into manipulation games too, and for not sharing his information about The Extinction with Jon:

(MAG138) MARTIN: So… so what? What does it mean? Am I supposed to be reassured that new Entities can be born? That there’s some, some kind of… precedent for The Extinction? … Peter? [SILENCE] Huh. Maybe he has gone to a party. […] I don’t know what Peter’s planning, but my–my guess is that it might involve something below the Institute. Hopefully, by the time you get these tapes, I’ll have something more concrete for you. [PAUSE] Good luck, Jon, I– … [HUFF] Stay safe. [CLICK.]

At the end of the episode, Martin’s answer feels twofold: to manipulate, and to choose “Jon”.

Manipulate, because he checked whether Peter was around before revealing that he wasn’t just using the tape recorders because it’s what the archive team does with the statements (MAG134: “I can’t help but notice you’re recording right now?” “It… was a statement, right, that’s what we do.”), but because he’s planning to send information to Jon, through the tape recorders that have always been associated with him (MAG126: “… It’s because he’s back, isn’t it. [SIGH] He’s back, so now you’re going to be… around, again. Listening in. Mff. You missed him, didn’t you. … Yeah. … [VERY SHARP SQUEAL OF DISTORTION] Yeah, me too.”).

I don’t know if it’s enough to go full Web-aligned, but… it feels like between Eye and Lonely, Martin is actually heading towards a third option? Or maybe a neutral ground, since his loyalty for Jon is bypassing the rest as of now? Elias’s arrest had always been presented as Martin’s plan, it’s logical that Elias would remind Martin of it with such insistence (since he’s still stuck there), but it’s still… stricking:

(MAG113) ARCHIVIST: Martin’s plan is solid. I think. MARTIN: I mean, they might just kill him. MELANIE: Good. ARCHIVIST: I mean, maybe. But… I think they’re still our best chance. Even if we did manage to blindside him, I–I don’t know how long we could… hold him. MARTIN: And, in fairness, he’s happy enough to use the police against us. ARCHIVIST: Quite. And I’d rather not be staring down a kidnapping charge on top of everything–

(MAG114) ARCHIVIST: And Martin… he’s okay with it? DAISY: It was his idea. ARCHIVIST: Yeah. You think it’ll work?

(MAG117) MARTIN: These last couple of years, I’ve always been... running, always hiding, caught in someone else’s trap, but… but now it’s my trap. And, well. I think it will work. I know, I know it’s not exactly intricate, but… it felt good, weaving my own little web. […] I guess I’m just… sick of sitting on my hands, drinking tea and hoping everyone’s okay. This way I finally get to do something. It’s gonna hurt, but… I’m ready.

(MAG120) ELIAS: I must admit I’m impressed, Martin. I knew you were all planning something, of course, but I didn’t believe you specifically would have the… er, capacity for boldness that you displayed. It took me quite by surprise. MARTIN: You didn’t just see it in me? ELIAS: Honestly, I didn’t look. For all my power, I will admit I am not immune to making the occasional lazy assumption. I presumed that I knew you thoroughly, but by the time you demonstrated otherwise… well. There was simply too much to keep watching over. I only have two eyes, after all.

(MAG138) ELIAS: Besides which, don’t forget I am still living At Her Majesty’s Pleasure, due in no small part to your actions. […] MARTIN: … What? [HUFF] That’s it? No, no monologue, no mindgames? You love manipulating people! ELIAS: That makes two of us.

(And once again, it is VERY interesting that Elias likened Martin’s depiction of him to Martin himself on the subject of manipulation. Once again: what do you know about the spiders in the Institute and about Jon’s ties with the Web, Elias…)

- It really feels like Martin was Our Protagonist, during this episode? From Jon barely catching him in MAG124, to Martin’s own work alongside Peter at the end of MAG126, to Martin reading a statement in MAG134 to… Martin being the character we follow in different locations in MAG138, getting his point of view (going to see Elias, reading a statement, doing his own follow-up, revealing a bit more of his own agenda).

;;;; I’m still so “!!!” over Elias and Martin being in the same room. Elias was absolutely shitty with him, but at the same time, there is an undercurrent of… honesty? behind their exchanges? Because Martin knows that Elias knows about his relation to Jon and:

(MAG118) ELIAS: [EXASPERATED BREATHING] … Did Jon put you up to this? MARTIN: You think I’m doing this for him? ELIAS: No. It’s just the sort of half-baked scheme he’d come up with. And I’m well aware that you’ll do just about anything for him– MARTIN: I– ELIAS: –and I don’t need to read your mind for that one. […] MARTIN: Well, I hope you've got something better than that pathetic dig at my feelings for Jon. ELIAS: It’s baffling, really. Such loyalty to someone who really treats you very badly. MARTIN: Oh, is that supposed to be, what, a revelation? ELIAS: [CHUCKLE] You know, I really should have gone for that. Find something that would finally manage to shatter that precious image you have of him.

(MAG138) MARTIN: […] Why am I only hearing about this now, and why doesn’t Jon know?! ELIAS: […] as for our… dear Archivist, I’m afraid I no longer have any real control over what he does or does not know. Unlike yourself! [PAUSE] I notice you haven’t told him either. MARTIN: Yeah. Well. I’m still not sure I really believe it. [EXHALE] A–and, I don’t… I–… I’m, h… ELIAS: Worried he might charge off into another coffin. [SILENCE] … Quite.

… I feel like we always get a glimpse of what Martin isn’t saying, when he speaks to Elias? It’s not the whole picture, it’s not Everything about Martin’s feelings, but there are some bits, some weaknesses that are getting exposed. (And I don’t know if these were Gratuitous Jabs at Martin or if they were meant to get Martin to do exactly the reverse of what Elias was denouncing ;; Because the episode did end with Martin making sure that Jon would know, though indirectly…)

- I’M ABSOLUTELY DDDD: OVER THE FACT THAT

Ahahaha, “This is too important for me to jeopardise with cheap ‘mindgames’” says the guy who sent Basira (and potentially Jon) to focus on The Dark and DIDN’T SAY ANYTHING ABOUT THE EXTINCTION TO THEM, and, in the meantime, discusses The Extinction with Martin when he brought it on the table and DOESN’T MENTION THE DARK’S ACTIVITIES AT ALL WITH HIM. Guess who is back to manipulating through information: THIS GUY. So, there is definitely an agenda behind it; he’s not seriously concerned by The Dark, isn’t he. It’s just a matter of throwing a bone to Basira and making sure that Jon gets to Experience The Dark, isn’t it.

- On the Relationship Between Elias And The Apocalypse:

(MAG080) LEITNER: The Unknowing. ELIAS: [CHUCKLE] Creativity never was their forte. LEITNER: You of all people should want to stop them. ELIAS: And we will. But I don’t think we’ll need your help.

(MAG092) ELIAS: The Unknowing. I need you to stop it. ARCHIVIST: Again with– What is “The Unknowing”? Exactly. ELIAS: A ritual. The Stranger and its kin attempting to gather power enough to bring it closer.

(MAG102) ELIAS: I should have thought preventing the horrific transformation of our world is not solely my concern!

(MAG126) MARTIN: Yeah. You said. … But if things are really so urgent, then why didn’t Elias say anything? PETER: [LAUGH] Because, behind all his bluster, Elias’s just like all the rest. He’s so preoccupied playing the game he doesn’t pay attention to the big picture. He managed to convince himself that he could get his ritual off first, which would have made all of this a… bit moot, but that’s not really an option anymore.

(MAG135) ELIAS: I have been observing a recent increase in people and supplies being moved to the small town of Ny-Ålesund, in Svalbard. An increase which I believe may be linked to a rather desperate attempt, by the People’s Church of the Divine Host, to perform a crude ritual of their own. To bring their… “Mr. Pitch”… into the world. […] You thought the final death of Maxwell Rayner might have sufficiently derailed them? Yes, that was my hope too, but alas it would seem not. […] I rather feel the real shame would be letting the entire world fall into Darkness because of a single person’s wounded pride. Detective. The stakes are far too high for that kind of… indulgence.

(MAG138) MARTIN: So why haven’t you helped him?! ELIAS: My relationship to the apocalypse is more… complicated. MARTIN: [UTTER DISBELIEF] Oh, seriously? ELIAS: Seriously.

TECHNICALLY, we only have Peter’s word that Elias wanted to launch ~his ritual~ because Elias was obviously Very Silent on the issue, but. What is your “relationship to the apocalypse”, Elias – is it just a matter of getting it the way you want it, or not at all…?

(In the way he answered Martin, it sounds almost as if he wouldn’t have been against The Extinction wrecking the world, hence his inaction but? He was probably implying that he had other plans to stop it which involved Beholding’s ritual?)

- Regarding Elias’s agenda:

(MAG122) BASIRA: Elias is locked up. […] A bunch of Section’d officers took him in. He made some sort of deal, I think. But… he’s not getting out anytime soon.

(MAG127) ELIAS: Our… arrangement with the Inspector notwithstanding, I… rather feel that right now all the distrust is very much your own. […] I’ve made it clear my cooperation’s contingent on his not seeing me, and my terms have been accepted thus far.

(MAG138) ELIAS: As for why I’ve done so little about such a looming existential threat… to be blunt, I have been rather busy. MARTIN: [BARELY CONTAINED SNORTING CHORTLE]

Was Elias talking about his activities while still running the Institute, or what he’s currently doing in prison? But oh yes:

(MAG138) MARTIN: Great. Great, great. So, what you’re [NERVOUS LAUGHTER] actually saying is that you’re gonna be… no help whatsoever! ELIAS: … Just like old times~ MARTIN: I don’t know what I expected. [INHALE] Right. Right, we’re done here.

Elias has always been a Very Busy Person.

- … And Peter Has A Very Busy Social Life apparently, too:

(MAG134) PETER: Right! Then, if you’ll excuse me, I have a family thing to get to. […] Okay! Now, I really am running late, so if you don’t mind?

(MAG138) MARTIN: … Peter? [SILENCE] Huh. Maybe he has gone to a party.

Technically, maybe he’s trying to make Martin feel Very Alone by showing off that he has a lot of things to attend, but still. Does anyone even realise he’s there.

- Have I mentioned that ELIAS FINALLY ACKNOWLEDGED PETER’S EXISTENCE? Incredible, I can’t believe, etc.

And he did it in the BEST POSSIBLE WAY:

(MAG138) ELIAS: Come on, Martin. It’s been so long since I’ve seen you. Let’s not start with lies. MARTIN: [LOUD SIGH] Fine. ELIAS: I am so very pleased to see you. MARTIN: Mm-hmm. [SILENCE] ELIAS: No time for pleasantries? Very well, then. To business. What can I do for you? Tired of running budgets for Peter? I know I would be.

Absolutely unprompted and to gratuitously complain about Peter – ALSO, L-O-L ELIAS, “let’s not start with lies” but WHO is lying here. We ALL KNOW that you’re dying to do these budgets, that you’re probably doing them in your head a millisecond before Martin by watching him, seething that he’s doing YOUR precious scheduling and budgeting.

And

(MAG138) ELIAS: [INHALE] Everything Peter has told you is true. MARTIN: Oh… ELIAS: For all his… many faults, Peter is legitimately trying to stop the end of the world as we know it.

…………………. Listen. It’s getting harder and harder to keep in minde that they might NOT be marrying/divorcing for the sixth or seventh time. It sounds so much like bitter exes/nagging spouses………………………. And I mean………………… they deserve each other………….?

(Though, if season 4 is any indication: Elias’s true OTP is with hand gestures. He’s getting WORSE and WORSE with the chain rattling sound.)

Title for MAG139 is out and HHHHHHHHHHHHH once again. Immediate thoughts are for AGNES? AGNES? AGNES? PLEASEPLEASEPLEASE? (Reminder that The Desolation still hasn’t gotten a statement in season 4 so far~). Agnes statement from Gertrude’s stash…? (Is there a tape with Agnes’s voice, somewhere?) Or maybe about The Dark’s victims, to keep with the theme; Julia? Julia’s mother?

And second meaning could as well be about Martin, or more likely… Jon, very obviously. I guess ;;

#1 #2 #3 #4 #5 #the magnus archives #tma spoilers #tma season 4 #mag138 #tma liveblog #long post/

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hookedonseavey · 6 years ago

Text

Haunted House - Daniel Seavey

summary: main character is friends with the band and their girlfriends, they all decide to go to a haunted house. main character hates haunted houses. daniel helps her out, feelings are caught. nothin but fluff and banter, honestly.

word count: 2.7k

warnings: none. maybe one swear word?

a/n: Hey y’all! Here’s the first of a few requests I got last week from a list of prompts. I figured in honor of spooky season I’d make them go through a haunted house lol. Full disclosure, I’ve never actually gone through a real haunted house, so my apologies if this is super unrealistic. I’m pretty happy with how it turned out though, hope you guys enjoy it!

prompts: "I like the way your hand fits in mine" and "Could you hold my hand?"

We waded through the throngs of people to the line leading up to the haunted house, our group's laughter lost in the sea of chatter. I looked up at the imposing building and tried to swallow my fear. The boys were joking around with each other ahead of us girls: Christina, Tate, and Gabbie were commiserating about their boyfriends. They were all seemingly unbothered by the looming threat of being harassed by zombies swinging chainsaws. I knew they were just actors, but still. I hated haunted houses. And like an idiot, I let myself be talked into coming along.

"I love haunted houses. They scare the shit out of me but Corbyn gets to act like the big, protective boyfriend. It's hilarious," Christina explained.

"They don't scare me at all, I think they're corny as hell. But Jack likes them, so, you know…" Gabbie chimed in.

Zach's voice traveled back to us. "C'mon guys, why're we doing this?" he asked, trying to cover his own nerves with his typical air of confidence.

"Because it's fun," Daniel said matter-of-factly, tossing his arm around Zach's shoulders. "Unless you're too scared," he teased.

"Daniel, be nice…" I chided.

He turned around to face me and started walking backwards. "Or what?" he challenged, smirking mischievously.

"Or I'll have to punish you…" I said with a grin, a chorus of 'ooh's and catcalls coming from the other boys.

"Tread lightly, my friend…" Corbyn said, slapping Daniel's back.

"She would never hurt me, she loves me too much," he said, shooting me a wink over his shoulder that caused butterflies to erupt in my stomach. Trying to ignore them, I stuck out my tongue as Daniel turned back around to walk forward again. Daniel and I were definitely the closest friends within the group. We'd gotten along the best ever since Christina introduced me to the boys earlier in the year; we understood each other in a way that was almost intuitive. And yeah, maybe I had a little bit of a crush on him. How could I not? He was the sweetest guy I'd probably ever met, he was an amazing musician, and he was gorgeous. The complete package. But I had no idea if the feelings were mutual. Dani and I were flirty with each other, but always in jest. I didn't think Daniel meant any of it, and I certainly never meant any of it at first… But then it started to mean something. I couldn't bring myself to stop or say anything, though: our friendship was too good to risk messing up.

"You'll be fine, Zach, just stick with me. I'll protect you," Jack said, bringing my attention back to the imminent danger and drawing laughter from the others. Zach rolled his eyes and adjusted his jacket.

"Yeah, yeah, yeah. If I get attacked by a zombie, I'm taking you down with me," Zach said to Jack, meriting himself a slug in the arm. By that point, we'd almost reached the entrance gate, and I felt my stomach bottom out as I looked ahead and saw flashing strobe lights that briefly illuminated a man missing half his jaw. Subconsciously I stepped away from the group, fiddling anxiously with the hem of my sweater. As the rest of the group moved up in the line, Daniel looked around and noticed I was hanging back. He weaved around the others and came to stand in front of me.

"Hey, you okay? You look a little pale," he asked quietly, instinctively reaching out to hold me by the elbow.

"Yeah, I just… Forgot how much I hated these things," I said with a half-hearted laugh.

"Oh," he said, at first a little unsure of what to say. "Well, do you want one of us to wait out here with you? Zach would probably be willing to sit this one out. Or I'd be happy to stay with you," he suggested, those big blue eyes looking down at me, round and imploring.

I shook my head. "No no, I don't want any of you to have to wait for me, this is supposed to be fun. And you were so excited for this, I'm not gonna make you do that."

He shrugged, the ends of his lips turning up into an impish smile. "You aren't making me do anything, I'd be staying out here of my own free will," he said. "Someone's gotta protect you from those zombies, right?" His thumb had started moving gently back and forth on the inside of my elbow. I tried to suppress the shiver that arose from his touch and shook my head again. I really didn't want to make Daniel sit this out despite his insistence to the contrary. Something about what he'd just said seemed to stick in my mind. Someone's gotta protect you from those zombies… I had an idea, a way for me to go through the house that might make it survivable. I gulped.

"Could… Could you hold my hand? Like, while we go through?"

He blinked down at me, seemingly surprised by my request. "Yeah, of course," he said, sliding his hand from my elbow to my hand, intertwining his fingers with mine. He looked down where our hands were joined and adjusted his fingers a little, extending and flexing them a few times before they closed a final time to envelop my hand in a reassuring warmth. He cleared his throat. "You ready?" he asked. I nodded, mentally scolding myself for having such sweaty palms, but Daniel didn't seem to mind as we rejoined the others and walked through the gate towards the door of the building. As we entered, my grip on Daniel's hand tightened and my heart started beating way too hard to be healthy.

Daniel leaned down so his lips were right next to my ear. "If it gets to be too much, just tell me and we'll get you out of here," he murmured, squeezing my hand gently as the vibration of his voice brought goosebumps to the surface of my skin. I nodded as we all huddled into the center of the first pitch black room, nervous laughter filling the air for a few seconds only to fade into a terse silence. A single light flicked on, shining into the corner to expose a zombie slouched against the wall in the corner. Christina and Tate squealed as he slowly looked up at all of us, lurching forward with a groan. Zach and I both jumped while Daniel, Jonah, Tate, Jack, and Gabbie were all smiling and laughing, and Christina and Corbyn had their arms around in each other, looking like they couldn't decide if they were scared or having fun. I was marveling at how most of them didn't seem as scared as I felt when, without warning, another zombie jumped from the dark in the opposite corner, grabbing my and Daniel's shoulders with his decaying hands. I shrieked, recoiling into Daniel as everyone jumped and stumbled haphazardly into the hallway in a panic. Another zombie jumped out from behind a corner, screaming with his arms reached out towards us like giant claws. Yells and screams filled the hall as we skirted by him.

"I hate this I hate this I hate this," I repeated over and over, and Daniel tucked my arm through his as he pulled us to the front of the group as we all entered another dark room that appeared to be a dead end with no door.

"It's okay, they're just actors."

"I know that, but - " Before I could finish my thought, a metal door in the corner was kicked open, slamming into the wall with a bang like a gunshot. Standing behind it was the guy I'd seen from the line who was missing half of his jaw. I screamed again, reaching the hand that wasn't already in Daniel's grasp to grip at his shirt front. Zach pushed past Daniel and I and made a beeline for the door.

"I'm done, let's get out of here!" he yelled back at the group, eliciting a round of laughter from the ones who were still somehow enjoying themselves. Despite the laughs, a consensus seemed to have been reached by all of us that we needed to get out as quickly as possible. We moved from room to room, each new scare sending me retreating further into Daniel's side until I was practically hugging him with my face buried in his shoulder, my nose filling with the scent of his cologne and focusing on the comforting feeling of his hand in mine as I tried to block out my surroundings. As unpleasant as this was, I was beyond thankful that Daniel was willing to be my human shield. My feelings about him certainly didn't help my situation, though. By the time we got to the last room, I wasn't sure if my heart was pounding because of the scares or because of Daniel's proximity.

When we finally made it out and walked into the open courtyard behind the house, I felt like my heart was trying to escape from behind my sternum. The operators of the house were serving hot cider and cookies under tents in the brisk autumn air. Zach was already waiting for us, sitting on a haybale next to a scarecrow with his head hanging between his knees. He looked up when he heard the boys' voices.

"Took you losers long enough," he scolded, standing up slowly and walking towards us.

"Hey man, all you had to do was stick with me, but you didn't listen. It's your own fault," Jack teased.

"No way bro, you're insane. There's something wrong with you if you think that's fun."

"I, personally, had a great time," Tate said, slipping her arm around Jonah's waist as he laughed, shaking his head at her.

"Wow, yeah, that was… A blast, for sure," Christina said sarcastically. "But I'm ready for cider," she said, looping her arm through Corbyn's and pulling him towards the tents. The others followed suit, with Daniel and I bringing up the rear.

"Hey, you made it out alive," Daniel said lowly, squeezing my hand.

I took a shaky breath. "That's debatable."

Daniel chuckled. "I think Zach was more scared than you were, honestly."

I rolled my eyes. "He's a drama queen." It was at that point I realized Daniel had made no attempt to remove his hand from mine, and I became entirely too concerned with whether or not I should try to take my hand away or if I should just leave it and see what he did. I decided on the latter as we reached the front of the line for cider, taking a paper cup in my free hand and silently sending up a 'thank you' that I now had something else to focus on.

"Where'd the others go?" Daniel asked as he pulled me along behind him back out into the courtyard. I looked around and saw Christina under a different tent where they were selling t-shirts with the phrase 'I SURVIVED' emblazoned across the front. My eyes quickly found the rest of the group under the same tent, laughing as they looked through all the haunted house merch.

"They're over there," I said, nodding towards the tent. Daniel followed my gaze and nodded, the two of us falling in stride together as we made our way over to the others. He chuckled when he noticed the t-shirts, using our joined hands to point towards a rack of them.

"You need one of those," he teased, gently elbowing me in the ribs.

"Shut up," I retorted, smirking in spite of myself. When we reached the tent, Christina looked over at the two of us from the other side of a t-shirt rack with a cocked eyebrow and a knowing smirk. Confused by her expression, I made my way around to her side of the rack with Daniel trailing behind me as he joked around with Jonah and Corbyn.

"It's about damn time you two figured it out," Christina intoned once I was within earshot.

I blinked. "What, me and Daniel?" I asked in a hushed tone.

"No, George Clooney," she snarked. "Yes, Daniel. That boy hasn't been able to shut up about you for months."

"What?" I asked dumbly, looking over my shoulder to watch him laughing with the others with his nose all crinkled up. My stomach did a backflip at seeing him so happy. "No way."

"You think all that flirting was just for fun?"

"Honestly… Yeah."

Christina groaned. "You're clueless. He's obsessed with you, girl. Talk to him and see for yourself, doesn't look like he'll be leaving your side anytime soon," she prodded, playfully shoving me in Daniel's direction. I bumped into his shoulder and the two of us went stumbling, our hands finally breaking apart as Daniel reached out to keep me from falling.

"You okay? What happened?" he asked, still laughing a little from something one of the boys had said.

"Yeah I'm good, it's too crowded in here," I said pointedly, glaring at Christina.

"Can we go sit for a minute?"

"Yeah, sure," he said, replacing his hand in mine without preamble and walking out from under the tent to sit on an unoccupied haybale. "You sure you okay? You seem nervous…" Daniel said, making my heart jump into my throat.

"Yeah, I'm good. Adrenaline rush, I guess," I tried to make the excuse sound more convincing than it felt.

Daniel cleared his throat and started to pick at a hole in the knee of his black jeans. "I, uh… I'm glad you went through with us. I felt better with you there."

I looked over at him, cocking an eyebrow. "You didn't seem scared at all."

"Well, yeah, I wasn't scared, but I just… I liked having you there, I guess." His gaze shifted from his ripped jeans to where our hands rested between us, and he slowly started brushing his thumb across my knuckles, sending a tingle up my arm. Oh my God.

I blinked a few times, any words I wanted to say feeling caught in my throat. Finally, I found my voice. "Thanks for holding my hand. It helped."

He looked over at me, his eyes wide and a cute little smile resting on his lips. "Yeah?"

I laughed breathlessly. "Yeah, it was nice. Someone had to protect me from those zombies," I kidded, squeezing his hand in a return of the gesture he'd made so many times already that night. Then there was a moment of silence that seemed to stretch into a little piece of forever, the two of us, watching as his thumb moved over my knuckles.

"I like the way your hand fits in mine," he said, just loud enough for me to hear.

It felt like the air had been knocked out of my lungs. After double and triple checking with myself that I'd heard him right, I spoke up quietly. "Me too." Is this really happening?

"I mean, look at this," he said, bringing our joined hands up between our faces as his demeanor changed to be more playful again. "Our fingers fit together perfectly. And our palms line up…" he trailed off, spreading out his fingers. I did the same, holding my hand against his much larger one. "Crazy. We need to hold hands more often," he said sweetly, as if were discussing something as simple as going out to eat at a certain restaurant or visiting our parents. I giggled at his candor.

"I agree," I said, slipping my fingers between his again, warmth radiating out through my hand and down my arm, infiltrating my chest where my heart had finally calmed down. Feels good. Our eyes met and something felt different. A good kind of different; exciting. "Hopefully not at any more haunted houses, though," I said jokingly.

Daniel laughed. "We can hold hands wherever you want, honey, just say the word," he said, bringing the back of my hand to his lips and causing heat to rise in my cheeks. And at that moment I couldn't think of another time where I had felt so happy.

The ending feels lame but it’s what I got for you. Hope this is close to what you wanted, nonny! Thanks for the request!

#my writing #mine #daniel seavey #daniel seavey one shot #daniel seavey fanfiction #daniel seavey preference #daniel seavey imagine #why don't we #wdw band #why don't we fanfiction #why don't we one shot #why don't we imagine #daniel james seavey #ds #haunted house

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leiascully · 6 years ago

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Ficlet: Mrs. & Mr. Spooky

Timeline: Season 10 (interlude in the All The Choices We’ve Made ‘verse - Visitor + Resident + etc.) Rating: PG Characters: Mulder, Scully, Tom Colton Content warning: none A/N: This combines and expands on the ficlets from the past few days. I made a few edits here and there.

Scully’s reaching for the coffee pot when she realizes someone else is also reaching for it. She draws back politely. Bullpen coffee isn’t worth a fight. She doesn’t really need to be more awake right now. She just wanted something warm. The heating in the basement is being repaired, and her sweater only does so much.

“Oh,” she says when she actually looks at the face of the person who wants the coffee. “Colton.”

He looks up. “Dana? I haven’t seen you in years.”

“Decades,” she says with a tight grin that shows her canines. She hasn’t missed him.

“How’ve you been?” he asks.

She considers the range of her options. Abduction. Cancer. Loss of a daughter she didn’t know she had. Infertility. Near loss of Mulder. Loss of Mulder. Death of Mulder. Revival of Mulder. Birth of a miraculous son. Loss of a miraculous son. Gain and loss of two new partners. Years on the run. Attempted redemption. Breakup. Therapy. Renewal of relationship. Second chance at redemption. Mother’s death. More therapy.

“Fine,” she says. “You?”

“Oh, still busting my ass,” he says, sticking one hand in his pocket.

“Still not assistant director,” she says, feigning politeness.

“Well, looks like you aren’t either,” he says.

“No,” she agrees. “We took a leave of absence.”

“We?” he asks.

“Oh, yes,” she says, gesturing. Mulder’s clearly been lurking; he saunters over and leans over her shoulder. “We took a leave of absence for, oh, almost a decade, but we were asked to reconsider. We’ve reopened the X-Files. You remember my husband, Mulder.”

“Sure,” Colton says, holding out his hand to shake and grimacing as Mulder squeezes a little too tight. Scully would roll her eyes, but that’s the only kind of conversation men like Colton seem to understand. “Wow. Congrats. I guess you’re Mrs. Spooky for real.”

“We actually changed our legal names,” Mulder says blandly.

Colton narrows his eyes. “Yeah, well, good luck, I guess.”

“You too,” Scully says. “It must be frustrating to climb the ladder all these years and still be on the bottom rung. Maybe you’ll get your big break soon.”

“I for one found our sabbatical really refreshing,” Mulder says. “You might consider it. Right, honey?”

“Definitely,” she says, leaning against him. “It really put everything in perspective and gave us leverage to negotiate when they asked us back.”

“Wow,” Colton says through gritted teeth. “Sounds great.”

“Should we step out for coffee, since there’s no more here?” Scully asks Mulder.

“It’s a date,” Mulder says, smiling at her. “Stretch our legs, knock out this case. Third one this week - they just keep piling them on when you’ve got a solve rate like ours.” He shakes his head regretfully. “See you later, Colton. Nice catching up with you.”

“Yeah, great to see you,” Colton says. He takes a long sip of his coffee. Scully’s fairly certain he burns his tongue. She smiles.

“You didn’t have to completely annihilate him,” Mulder murmurs as they walk away.

“He had it coming,” she tells him.

He whistles in quiet admiration. “I like this killer instinct of yours.”

“Thank you,” she says.

“I’d pay money to watch you tear down men brick by brick,” he muses. “Just one thing, Mrs. Spooky. We’re not married.”

“Maybe it’s time to change that,” she says.

“What inspired this?” he asks, raising an eyebrow.

She sighs. “Seeing my mother in the hospital again just reminded me that as it stands, we have no right to see each other. I’m your doctor, but what if I get sick? There are too many scenarios, too many factors. It would make things so much easier if we had legal protections.”

“How romantic,” he murmurs as they walk out of the Hoover Building.

“How’s this for romantic?” she says, and takes his hands. She uses her grip as leverage as she slowly kneels on the sidewalk, glad she stopped wearing hose sometime in the mid 90s. “Fox Mulder. You and I have been through hell and back. You understand me like no one else has or ever will. You’re my one in seven billion. Will you marry me?”

“People are staring, Scully,” he says, amused.

“Let them,” she tells him, gazing into his eyes. It’s an interesting perspective, one she’s rarely seen outside the bedroom.

“Is this real?” he asks.

“Mulder, I’m kneeling on a sidewalk in Washington D.C. and it’s almost lunch time,” she tells him. “There’s no way I would do that if it weren’t serious.”

“You might be a doppelganger,” he says, “but yes, Scully, obviously I’ll marry you.” He pulls her up and into his arms for a lingering kiss. She lets herself melt into him. People around them are applauding.

“You really gave the tourists a thrill,” he says against her lips.

“As long as I still thrill you,” she says breathlessly.

“You do,” he tells her, and kisses her again.

+ + + +

Scully gets on Etsy. It seems like there are a hundred thousand people offering hand-lettered signs, and she browses for more than an hour, looking for just the right style. She finally chooses someone who paints on reclaimed wood. It’s trendy, appropriately rustic. She feels reclaimed herself. She and Mulder are still buffing away each other’s rough spots, but raw edges are in vogue. She knows how to slide her hands over him without getting any splinters by now.

It’s reasonably priced, all things considered, and they can deliver it by Mulder’s birthday. Mrs. and Mr. Spooky, it says. She thinks he’ll like the less-than-traditional order of it, an omen that she’s adopted the identity fully. They aren’t hanging in the office, though. There has to be some modicum of professionalism..

+ + + +

“Rounding the bases toward 60,” he says, after they’ve had cake and opened presents. “I wouldn’t be here without you, Scully.”

“Sure you would,” she says.

He leans back in his chair. “When I was young, I thought I was the light that shine too brightly. I just assumed I’d die young. My sister was gone. All I had was my passion. And then Diana left and some part of me looked for ways to martyr myself.”

“I remember,” she says. “We were always running pell-mell into dark rooms.”

“You showed me it didn’t have to be that way,” he says, taking her hand. “You showed me storms could be weathered. Lives could be rebuilt.”

“We rebuilt each other,” she says. “Up from the foundations.”

He turns her hand over in his and kisses her palm. “We’re stronger for it.”

“Happy birthday,” she tells him, smiling.

Outside rain patters down, chill and grey. They’re snug and warm under their own sturdy roof. Later they’ll slide together into bed, damp from the shower, and share a slow caress. It’s October and they’ve come around again: slung full circle around the sun, from the basement to the stars and back.

+ + + +

They hang the sign in the entryway, over the hall table with the mail basket and the bowls for their keys.

“I like it,” Mulder says judiciously. “It’s the first thing I see when I walk in.” He flourishes his hand at it, palm open.

“Of course you like it,” she says from the front steps. “It’s very tasteful. Can I come in?”

“I have to carry you over the threshold,” he tells her.

“Mulder, you’re going to throw your back out,” she says, but she knows her eyes are soft. “I don’t think you have to do that for a courthouse wedding anyway.”

“A courthouse wedding is still a wedding,” he chides.

“In the eyes of the government, yes,” she allows. “Nobody else cares.”

“I care,” he says, coming out to the front stoop. He leans down to nuzzle at her neck; her hair is pulled up and his nose and lips are warm against her skin.

“I know we should have waited until tomorrow,” he says.

“A Halloween wedding would have been a little on the nose,” she tells him. “This is perfect.”

“A nip in the air,” he says, nipping at her neck so that she shivers. “Falling leaves. Apple cider and ghost stories.”

“Very atmospheric,” she says. “Are you going to carry me inside or not? It’s chilly out here and this dress isn’t very warm.” It’s a cream-colored silk sheath with russet trim: something traditional but updated, a wedding dress for a bride who took the long road home. She’s wearing her mother’s coin necklace around her neck and blue earrings. The old rhyme feels like a prayer. She knows it’s how her mother and Missy would have dressed her.

“I thought that’s what the shrug was for,” he mumbles against her collarbone.

“The shrug only does so much,” she says.

"Don’t worry, sweetheart,” he murmurs. “I’ll warm you up.”

“I know you will,” she says, twining her arms around his neck. He bends his knees and slips his arms under her. She feels so safe in his arms, as if the weight of the past has been, well, not lifted, but made light for the moment. Their memories are draped over them the way her shrug is draped over her shoulders. There’s a warmth in them, despite it all.

“Happy wedding night, Mrs. Spooky,” he says, as he carries her into the house.

“Happy wedding night, Mr. Spooky,” she tells him, and he nudges the door shut with his foot while Kismet barks from the den.

#octoberficfest #atcwm verse #my fic

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agentelmo · 7 years ago

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The X-Files MSR Analysis Series: Season 1 Episode 12

“Fire”

Previous episode analysis - 1x11 Eve.

Oh Fire, what an episode. The first time we see Mulder actively pursue a woman and it’s not Scully. WHAT IS THIS FUCKERY.

It’s okay though, because it turns out Mulder’s ex -- Phoebe Green -- is a real piece of work, making it quite easy to dislike her, which is handy because I think that’s the point.

There are two MSR angles here. The first is how Scully is really there for Mulder as a friend. She sees he is vulnerable and is protective of him; she is caring and reassuring even when Mulder seemingly dismisses Scully in pursuit of that British poontang. The beauty of their blossoming platonic bond really shines through in this episode.

The second angle is that Mulder has exactly what he desires right in front of him, but doesn’t see it. Phoebe is a tantalising reminder of a lifestyle he’s given up -- having a woman in his life -- someone to love and care for who loves him back. But everything that he desires in Phoebe is already there in the form of Scully. The issue is that Mulder doesn’t allow himself to see her as anything more than his partner, his friend, and so doesn’t recognise that he has this incredible woman right under his nose already.

With this in mind, there are parts of Fire that almost play out like a stereotypical romcom. The male protagonist with the amazing female best friend who is perfect for him but he just continues to pursue terrible women, all while the best friend looks on from the sidelines, picking up the pieces, supporting him. Until one day... *cough* seven years later... *cough*

So since this is an MSR review series, I tend to start with Mulder and Scully, not the cold opening. But I have to comment on this, being English myself.

What were they thinking? It’s actually kind of painful seeing these frankly horrendous actors talk in exaggeratedly hoity-toity English accents.

Tally ho, pip pip, cheerio!

Did you feel that? It was the collective eye roll of the entire population of Ireland.

If this gets any worse we’ll be giving Dick Van Dyke a run for his money. But hey, thankfully we’re not here long since Lord Moneybags McPoshface goes up in smoke.

Now we’re off to see our favourite FBI star-crossed lovers. Muldo and Scullywag!

So this episode confirms that Mulder and Scully do have other cases between episodes that we just don’t see. Fertile ground for the old fanfic writers, amirite?

In fact, it’s reconfirmed again in the season 10 episode, Mulder and Scully Meet the Were-Monster, where Mulder recounts how one time the two of them went on a case looking for a “rock-like creature”...

Only to discover it was a publicity stunt by a local landscaping business.

Yeah, I don’t remember that episode.

Makes me wonder who were they prosecuting in Fire? What case was this?! What cute MSR moments are we not getting to see?!

So we start with these two coming out of a hard day at court, Mulder jokes with Scully about the case.

Epic bants, Mulder. You slay me. And Scully too, apparently! She’s fucking giggling. GIGGLING.

Look at how cute they are. Having fun and enjoying each other’s company so effortlessly. There’s no guile about it, they are just comfortable being themselves.

Is it weird that I just feel happy seeing Mulder have a friend? He’s actually a pretty sweet, charming guy when he lets that side of himself out. Few people gave him the chance, and after so many years of being labelled “Spooky”, combined with some clear trust issues, he rarely gives anyone else a chance either.

Until Scully, of course.

Mulder relaxed and just having fun with Scully is my jam, fam. She laughs at his joke and he laughs at hers.

Just get fucking married, already.

Sadly, all marriage plans must be put on hold since some British bint arrives and ruins everyone’s day.

This “practical joke” Phoebe plays with the cassette tape gives some possible insight into the kind of relationship she and Mulder had when he was at Oxford.

She appears to enjoy toying with the emotions of others and then makes light of the consequences. I mean, here she makes Mulder and Scully believe they were about to be killed by a car bomb, but then makes no apology for it. Especially to Scully, someone she doesn’t know from Adam.

Mulder, clearly accustomed to her torment, doesn’t even bother to chide her for the prank, despite clearly scaring the shit out of Scully. I think he knows it’s easier to just play along.

Nicolas Cage, is that you?

Phoebe seems like the type who would say things like “it was only a joke” or “what’s the big deal?” or “stop being so over-sensitive” etc. The kind of gaslighting cunt that makes people crazy in an intimate relationship.

What’s interesting about these two is that it’s apparently been 10 years since they last saw each other, but Mulder wastes no time dredging up their romantic history like no time has passed at all. Making it abundantly clear that 1. Mulder isn’t entirely over Phoebe, and 2. he’s still resentful towards her for whatever it was she did to him in their relationship -- more on that later.

So spinning off on a tangent for a moment here... This all throws some serious shade on Mulder’s relationship with Diana Fowley. You would think that whatever left over resentments or lingering feelings he had towards Phoebe would have been resolved or at least faded in the wake of a new long term relationship with another woman. Mulder later says in this episode that he has spent the last 10 years trying to forget Phoebe -- it’s within those 10 years that he had a relationship with Diana.

This would place Mulder at Oxford in approximately 1983. He met and started dating Diana when he left Quantico which was three years later in 1986. We don’t know when their relationship ended, but let’s assume it was when she fucked off to Europe to work for the Syndicate in 1991. So, he was in a relationship with Diana for approximately five years and in all that time he still harboured feelings for Phoebe. Wow. It’s strange to think, that 100% canonically Mulder wasn’t over Phoebe when he was with Diana. Perhaps Phoebe was his first love?

I mean, it’s possible -- he was very young then. It would certainly explain why he doesn’t ever romantically pursue Diana when she returns, even though he could have, and she was certainly interested. Perhaps his feelings for Diana weren’t quite what we’re led to believe? Or perhaps it’s simply that his growing feelings for Scully just made things too complicated. Personally, I blame Amor Fati for muddying the waters on that one.

Aaaaaaanyway, back to Fire.

I love Scully’s face when Phoebe feeds Mulder this cheese-tastic line.

She’s clearly uncomfortable witnessing this, most likely feeling somewhat of an awkward third wheel. Not to mention a little put out -- dat’s my man biyotch!

I jest, but I wonder if there is some truth to the idea that she felt special to Mulder because he is a loner. This man who doesn’t let anyone get close chose her to open up to. Yet she’s now realising that wasn’t always true, and perhaps her connection to him isn’t as special as first thought? I mean look at her face, she clearly does not like this.

The dynamic between these two women is intriguing too. Phoebe clearly makes Scully uncomfortable. Firstly, Phoebe never acknowledges Scully’s presence; only greeting her when forced to by Mulder’s introduction.

To play this joke on the two of them, Phoebe had to have been watching them approach the car and no doubt overheard their conversation -- noting their close relationship. Seemingly she’s already sized Scully up as rival for Mulder’s attention -- someone to undermine -- and so expertly removes her from every interaction the three of them have by outright ignoring her.

It almost works too, Mulder is clearly enthralled with Phoebe, gazing at her the whole time in this dreamy way, but as soon as Phoebe says this:

It breaks Mulder out of her spell almost instantly -- he even physically pushes her back.

Talking shit about Scully is the point at which Mulder will no longer play along.

There’s some interesting symbolism in this scene with the camera work too. Where Phoebe and Mulder are always in frame together, and Scully is separate -- the camera reflecting how Phoebe’s relationship to Mulder re-positions Scully as the outsider.

So before we move on, I gotta share the amazing eye fucking that is going on during the cassette tape scene in the car.

That second picture looks like it should be captioned “find someone who looks at you the way Mulder looks at Scully.” I mean, geez man. His face is a weapon of mass seduction. He really should have a licence for that thing.

Next we’re in basement HQ and Scully notices straight away that something is up with Mulder.

She keeps eyeing him as he is clearly becoming more and more uncomfortable. But why might that be? On first viewing you could be forgiven for thinking Mulder is just getting hot under the collar -- pardon the pun -- chatting away with his old flame. Pardon that pun too. Potentially this is what Scully assumes as well, but we know with hindsight that it’s because he’s listening to Phoebe ream off the details of how her suspect likes to burn people alive.

Phoebe maintains her campaign of exclusion. Trying to undermine Scully by completely ignoring her, and then throwing out a reference to a “private joke” she shares with Mulder -- drawing a clear barrier between the two of them and Scully. She’s making it clear that she’s talking to Mulder and only Mulder.

As Phoebe leaves, having never once glanced in Scully’s direction, she suddenly says goodbye to her, treating her as an afterthought to emphasise that Scully is neither needed or wanted.

Seriously, dis bitch man. Scully is onto you.

As Phoebe tries to erect barriers, Scully immediately kicks them back down again as she straight up asks Mulder what’s this private joke is.

That’s my girl.

Mulder concedes, but you can tell he is embarrassed. I love that you can see the exact moment he decides to just tell her the truth.

Up until this point Mulder has kept his private life quite guarded, even from Scully. For all the world to see, he is a man entirely about his quest. Revealing to Scully that he has the same frailties as any other man -- falling in love with the wrong woman, for example -- is making himself vulnerable to her too. The fact that doesn’t stop him is a testament to their relationship at this point, to how much he trusts and respects Scully. He feels safe with her.

Only living for his quest is how Scully saw Mulder too, so to see that he can be consumed by something other than the X-Files -- be made vulnerable by a woman -- is surprising to her. She’s seeing another side to him.

When Mulder starts to deny he’s affected by Phoebe now, Scully takes the opportunity to dig him out a lil’ bit. Of course she’s gonna call him out on his bullshit. That’s what friends do.

What’s striking about this exchange though is that shes not jealous. She’s amused. Shes truly playing the role of his best friend, looking out for him rather than being the best friend secretly in love with him -- which she totally is by the end of season 1. What? Fight me.

That switch Scully talks about in season 6′s Rain King? It’s not been flicked quite yet. She still only sees him as a friend, someone she cares about deeply, but she’s not at “the only person you can ever imagine yourself with” point. Not quite yet.

Guys. Did Scully just make a dick joke? Like, not just any dick joke... but an erection joke? And, and... not just any erection joke, but Mulder’s erection joke?

Wut.

Also what the heck is that voice she puts on? “Is that what you were extending?” She is so cute when she’s teasing him. UGH!

Now this is where I see some of the romcom-y aspects of the episode come in. Mulder is honest, open and unguarded with Scully -- playful, even. He’s being his usual self again. This cool, controlled act he seems to don when Phoebe is around is completely shed and they banter away again like they did moments before Phoebe arrived. Basically, with Phoebe, he knows revealing weakness is danger, whereas with Scully he can let his weaknesses show.

Dude... the perfect woman for you is right there. RIGHT THERE! OMG.

Unfortunately, this could then mean something negative for the MSR, at least here and now in season 1. That perhaps Mulder doesn’t even allow himself to see Scully as a “woman” i.e. as a sexual being. Thus she is safe to bare his soul to, she’s his friend and partner only -- a non-threat.

But I suspect that’s actually what Mulder needs. To see Scully this way first. A friend and equal first and a lover second. Even when they are finally together I believe this is how they continue to see each other.

Entering into a romantic relationship with Scully then, would be the ultimate statement of self-healing for Mulder. That he can find love with a nurturing, caring, loving woman rather than an emotionally damaging one. Let’s stick a pin in that thought, we’ll come back to that.

So Mulder and Phoebe go down to the arson specialist, Agent Beatty, and he proceeds to slather all over Phoebe. He’s being quite gross and creepy, actually. Almost makes me feel sorry for her.

Yeah... Almost.

Thing is, she knows the power she wields over men and uses it against them. More power to her when the men in question are like this guy. But Mulder? She’s basically kicking a puppy.

It always bothered me how OTT Agent Beatty is with Phoebe. Is it the British thing? I am not the kind of woman to tear another woman down about her looks -- Phoebe is beautiful -- but the guy is falling over himself. Is that really warranted? It’s gotta be the accent. I don’t get it, but then I am British too so, yeah, it’s like being Superman on Krypton. Big deal. We all have the super powers so it’s hardly special, ya know? 😂😂

All while this is going on, Scully is there but unsure where her place is. Phoebe’s exclusion tactics clearly working their magic, because it seems Scully is starting to feel a bit insecure about where she fits into this new three-way dynamic. She’s no longer sure if her place is alongside Mulder, so she just loiters in the doorway.

The camera focuses on her a couple times and at first she’s just listening in. But then she seems to crane her head around to look at Mulder; possibly noticing that there’s something up with him?

Remember, this is happening before Mulder has told Scully he doesn’t want her on the case. So there’s something quite sad about this. Scully standing alone in the doorway, unsure of her place.

Sir Malcolm Marsden’s dog is named Jackson. Really, Chris? Really?

I think Chris Carter has a very short list of names that he must use again and again otherwise anything he writes will simply spontaneously combust.

Now this next scene is probably one of my favourites in the entire episode, because as insecure about her position in all of this Scully seems to be feeling, she isn’t one to be so easily pushed aside. So she appropriates the three pipe problem “private joke” from earlier, and completely hijacks it’s meaning to make it their private joke.

She is the Watson to his Sherlock, and Phoebe? Phoebe is Moriarty -- “mind game player extraordinaire” as Mulder describes her, a foe who likes to play at being a friend and who is decidedly the true outsider of this three-way dynamic.

Not to mention, Mulder truly is the Sherlock to her Watson too. He is the ideas man, the guy who is so completely in his own head that he sometimes fails to grasp the human element. I mean, how many times throughout the series do we see Mulder eff things up by not dealing with people very well, necessitating Scully to step in?

In fact, you don’t have to go very far to find the last instance of it. In the previous episode, Eve, Mulder has to be rescued by Scully when dealing with one of the murder twins parents. In many ways, Scully is his connection to the outside world. His human credential, as David Duchovny once so poetically put it. In the same way Watson is Sherlock’s.

So Mulder tells Scully she’s off the hook on this case because he believes Phoebe is playing a mind game with him, a practice of hers he seems acutely familiar with.

Scully concernedly eyeing up Mulder all episode is suddenly vindicated. He is clearly distressed and Scully switches tack. She goes from teasing to protective.

That worried look on her face, the way she leans forward, searchingly. She’s seeing how unnerved he is and she can tell he’s upset. She is truly his best friend in this moment. She doesn’t judge, doesn’t criticise -- she just hears him out.

Mulder has already confided that he “got in over his head” with Phoebe, and so now all past questions about whether Mulder truly trusts Scully seem to fall away here, because he’s now freely baring his soul to her. The flood gates are open.

Phoebe is fire. Wow. She terrifies him. But there is a double meaning here. Not only is she like fire in that she represents a painful memory that laid the way for emotional trauma, but she’s like fire in the way that draws a moth to its flame. Mulder being said moth.

She’s dangerous, but he’s attracted to that danger. Something about Phoebe pulls him in, almost against his will. He walks out of the office determined to face his demons, but ultimately ends up willingly ensnared in Phoebe’s web, yet again.

Unfortunately it seems Mulder is drawn to the leggy, brunette, femme fatale type. I mean, look at Diana. Perhaps this is why he doesn’t look at Scully that way for such a long time, she’s not the kind of woman he would ordinarily go for. Not in just looks, but in the element of danger. In the same way some women are attracted to the bad boys, perhaps Mulder is attracted to the bad girls. Women who emotionally mistreat him. It would certainly align with the idea that we seek out unresolved past traumas in intimate relationships, doomed to relive them. Perhaps Mulder has mommy issues. I know that’s certainly a popular fanon concept.

Ultimately what it comes down to is trust. Mulder’s trust in others was probably damaged considerably by Phoebe.

Think about the circumstances under which he met her. He’s left his home; left his country; gone to college as far away from his old life and miserable, divorced parents as he could get. He’s looking for a fresh start, a way to leave the past behind. Running all the way to England is one way to do it. There he meets Phoebe. This brilliant, beautiful woman who takes an interest in him -- wants him.

Desperate for comfort, for love, for understanding, he lets her in. I think he lets her in so completely that she knows everything -- his darkest childhood fears, his secrets. Probably knows all about his sister too. I think he gave everything to her and she lit the fire and watched him go up in smoke.

Phoebe is fire.

Scully, bless her, now feeling quite protective over puppy, seeing how vulnerable he is to Phoebe, offers to help on the case. But Mulder declines, believing he can handle it himself.

Yeah good plan, Fido. Let’s see how that goes.

I’m just sayin’.

Now there’s some strong suggestions made about what might have happened between Mulder and Phoebe when they were at Oxford.

Phoebe compliments Mulder on his interview technique, and how he managed to persuade the witness to cooperate after she had confessed to lying to her partner about where she was the night before.

To which he quips back...

So the suggestion being made here, is that she had one or two indiscretions of her own during their relationship. Namely, that she cheated on him. If we think of how this episode ultimately ends, it’s a pretty safe bet. The look on his face when he sees her in Lord Marsden’s arms is the look of a man who has been there before, and is not even surprised. Almost like he had been waiting for this all along.

So I think it’s fairly certain she cheated, probably several times. From the sounds of it he forgave her and took her back every time and was probably a push over about it. Firm but polite.

And you know what? I can absolutely see Mulder being like that. As mentioned before, Phoebe was probably the first woman he opened up to emotionally. So severing that bond would have been a huge loss, leaving him incredibly vulnerable to emotional abuse -- he would have forgiven her anything if it meant holding onto her.

My impression of Mulder is that through all his bravado he feels very deeply and so, when he does let people in, he can be very easily hurt.

His behaviour much later in I Want To Believe demonstrates that quite well. Mulder is clearly very hurt by Scully’s suggestion that she won’t come home if he continues working the case. He sees this as a rejection of the person he is -- “...this is everything I know, this is who I was before I met you...” etc etc.

Later when he goes to see Father Joe at the hospital Scully comes across him first, she grasps his hand but you can see he’s not comfortable with it -- he feels vulnerable around her, she’s essentially broken his heart and he’s doing his best to bury that and keep focused on the case. She hurt him and his walls are up. He takes his hand away again, and can barely even look at her.

When she can see he’s avoiding her, trying to run away, she calls out to him. Tells him that she does understand this stubborn, passionate, drive of his -- that it’s the reason she fell in love with him in the first place.

But he is still too hurt to be understanding. He’s defensive, and saying something he no doubt regrets later. He’s let her in, deeper and more completely than anyone has ever been, so for her to reject him this way isn’t just a disagreement he can work out later, it cuts him very deeply.

Bare in mind, this is in 2008. So you can imagine how much more fragile and vulnerable he was where love and women are concerned back in his Oxford days in the 80′s.

Anyway back to Phoebe…

Mulder’s sharp comment clearly strikes a nerve with her, and she chews him out for holding onto what happened 10 years ago. Mulder then infamously says...

So who wants to bet that he might have walked in on Phoebe with another guy?

Remember how Mulder later catches Phoebe with Sir Marsden? I suspect there’s a mirroring of the past in the present. You gotta feel for Mulder, though. It’d be difficult to let go of something you can never unsee with the passage of time to dull the memory.

Not to mention other memories that can’t be dulled; like that one time they fucked in a graveyard, apparently.. Oh good times, good times.

Soooo... Mulder fucked Phoebe on a tombstone? Yikes. That’s simultaneously creepy as fuck and so Mulder all at once.

Also, with a bit of Google-foo I discovered that there is no grave for Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in Windlesham. He was originally buried there in a rose garden, but was exhumed and re-interred in Hampshire in 1955 – as far as I can tell, there is nothing left at the original Windlesham grave site. 1955 is long before Mulder and Phoebe would have been there. So… yeah. Whoever’s tombstone they were fucking on, it wasn’t sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s.

Perhaps there’s a metaphor for their relationship in that. A complete lie? A huge error in judgement? That which appeared to be something it wasn’t? You could go on forever.

Dana, babe... you need to get a freakin’ light bulb up in that office. No wonder the two of you wear glasses -- that poor lighting is not doing your eyesight any favours.

Next we see that Scully -- despite Mulder’s insistence that she not get involved -- has decided to help him anyway.

There are two reasons for this. First, she’s feeling insecure, she’s been dismissed by Phoebe and, to a lesser extent, Mulder too. The two of them are still feeling each other out and defining the parameters of their working relationship, so I think there is a part of her that seeks some kind of approval from Mulder. She is determined to assert her worth. She’s worked with him long enough to know he can use her help; but I think a part of her wants to prove to Mulder that she can’t be so easily replaced as his partner.

The second reason is simply because she’s feeling protective over him after hearing about his history with Phoebe. She can see he’s vulnerable and it concerns her -- she’s never seen him like that before, and she’s quick to fly into protective mode when she feels he’s in harms way.

What I love is that Scully proves her worth with flying colours. Coming up with a stellar profile which pegs the guy perfectly.

Seriously, who is the profiler between these two? Seems the majority of the profiling we’ve seen thus far has come from Scully.

She has the presence of mind to check immigration records for British citizens with a connection to the Marsden’s or previous victims that have recently come into the United States.

She also correctly analyses which accelerant he is likely using.

As well as how he uses it.

Cough syrup?

Paint?

She does all this work without a sniff of help from Mulder or Phoebe. They’re too busy fawning over each other and planning a little fuck buddy interlude at a swanky hotel.

All the while Scully is getting the job done.

She is forever the MVP of the series. Seriously, Mulder and Phoebe would have been up fudge creek without a paddle if she wasn’t working the case.

The next scene with Mulder and Phoebe seems to lay the foundation for why Mulder finds himself being drawn back into Phoebe’s thrall.

He shares his theory with her that the arsonist has some kind of pyrokinetic ability and Phoebe agrees without batting an eyelid. Mulder laughs at her because he’s quite taken aback by this. He’s more used to Scully who would have challenged him -- grounded him -- and got him to think of how what he’s suggesting could be scientifically possible.

Without that challenge, Mulder doesn’t even consider how the killer is doing it beyond “he did it with his magic fire!” Thus missing the significance what Scully is investigating -- the accelerant.

Mulder has a bit of an issue with confirmation bias, so as soon as he gets even the slightest inkling of some kind of paranormal goings on, he will straight away gravitate towards avenues of investigation that prove his theory. People agreeing with him plays into his egomania – having this beautiful, “brilliant”, woman agreeing with him is gonna get his “juices flowing” too. But it also blindsides him -- this is a man that needs to be challenged.

While investigating apart on this case, they are coming at it from their own unique point of view, but both are missing a significant piece of the puzzle that they fill for each other. If Mulder hadn’t ditched Scully they would have arrived at the complete answer by now. That the killer cannot control fire, he does not have pyrokinesis necessarily, but he does have the unique ability to ignite fires if a powerful enough accelerant is present.

In Fire, Mulder hasn’t fully recognised it yet, but this is the unique and beautiful dynamic that makes them perfect partners. As he later says in season 11′s Nothing Lasts Forever -- they are reason and faith in harmony. It’s been their magic formula from the very beginning.

Unfortunately their harmony is being stifled. Mulder is distracted by Phoebe -- her agreement has flattered him, stroked his ego, and with that she goes in for the kill -- easily seducing him with an offer of spending the night together.

It’s bittersweet to go back and watch this episode now; seeing Mulder pass Scully over in hopes of bedding Phoebe, knowing what we know now; what Mulder will come to realise. That the woman who is perfect for him is the one that’s always right next to him.

Ah the folly of youth, eh?

Oh Mulder...

He’s such a pathetic puppy. The idea of getting laid gets him all giddy.

I think what you can take away from this, is how over the fucking moon he would have been in All Things when Scully comes to his bed. I mean, can you imagine? 😂😂

Theeeeen it’s awkward-conversation-with-Scully time. Mulder is clearly not focused on the case at this point, he is far more invested in getting his head away than catching this arsonist because Scully is there saying hey, I might know who this guy is, and he’s like, “yeeeeeeeah, that’s nice, but this is not a good time for me soooo...”

I mean, wtf Mulder! Sir Marsden’s family is at risk, he has a wife and children. People have been burnt to death by this guy and you’re all nah, sorry Scully I haven’t got time to solve the case, I am kinda busy right now trying to get laid.

Fuck. Me. What a douche nozzle.

Look at Scully’s face at the end of the phone conversation. She’s not liking this new side of Mulder at all. She keeps pushing against his obvious resistance because she believes he’s ditching her in favour of Phoebe. Her insecurity is more palpable here -- but this isn’t necessarily romantically driven. I think she’s feeling insecure as his partner; like she’s being replaced. Whereas Mulder just wants to fuck Phoebe; working with her is actually beside the point. Poor Scully.

Then it’s the scene you’ve all been dreading! Yep, it’s the dance/kiss scene.

So it starts with Mulder milling around the hotel lobby waiting for Phoebe to arrive, but she ignores him and walks straight by. Mulder was clearly thinking they will be spending the evening together as well as the evening together, if you catch my drift.

It suggests that Mulder was actually interested in rekindling their relationship -- he was planning on a romantic evening with Phoebe I mean, look at what he’s wearing. He’s “undercover” but he could have gone as a bodyguard to one of the other guests, or as a member of staff to give him more freedom to move around without raising suspicion. But no, he’s dressed to attend the party, not to stand guard dog outside of it.

He wanted to dress up for her. I don’t think he was just in it for a one night stand. He loved Phoebe once, and I think if she didn’t fuck him over later in this episode, he was in very real danger of falling in love with her again -- her betrayal pulled him back from that precipice.

Let’s not think about that too much.

He looks vaguely pathetic standing in the hallway, desperately waiting for Phoebe to throw him a bone.

Phoebe, of course, wouldn’t want Mulder and Sir Marsden in the same room together since she’s playing both of them. Yet, despite the fact she’s ditched him the entire evening, with just the tiniest scrap of attention, he’s eating out of her palm again.

She truly does have a power over him. For some reason he is enthralled by her, and it seems to be related not just to her beauty, but her intelligence, her “brilliance” as he called it.

But you know who else fits that criteria? Yeah, not even gonna say it.

Scully is genius-level brilliant. It’s a very rare occurrence when she’s not the smartest person in the room. She was perhaps less conventionally attractive for the 90′s. She has a 1950′s Lauren Bacall-esque screen goddess look to her, especially in seasons 1-3.

Which is my only explanation for why people fall all over themselves when Phoebe is on screen but seemingly fail to notice Scully at all. Oh that, and...

So back to this dagger-through-the-heart scene... Phoebe uses sex to lure Mulder in several times in the episode, and it happens again during this scene.

Scully arrives in time to see them start dancing and is more irritated, or fed up, than jealous. She’s arrived at entirely the wrong moment and now she has to wait.

This episode does then establish that Scully wasn’t in love with Mulder this early on. Attracted to him sure – but not so attached that she would be jealous of him with another woman. We know exactly what that looks like for Scully, and when that woman is jealous she is completely incapable of hiding it.

As much shit as they’ve been through together at this point, it has still only been a matter of months since they met.

Although I think she does experience a bit of a sting when she sees them kissing – rolling her eyes at him. This wasn’t what she came up here for.

She’s there to work, to focus on the-- wait.... WAIT. WAIT.

Is that butt groping I see, Mulder?!

It fucking is!

That horny, sex-starved, puppy is just gagging for it! GAGGING.

Fuck. Seriously, in All Things I think he must have all but attacked Scully.

ANYWAY.

Scully is there to work, to focus on the case, while Mulder... well...

Mulder is distracted by a handful of ass cheek and a tongue down his throat, it seems.

It might be crossing her mind that she had decided to forego her own love life to work with him on the X-FIles back in The Jersey Devil. She’d berated him for not having a life, and yet, here he is. A taste of her own medicine, perhaps? Let’s not forget, Mulder had a similar scene waiting for Scully as she went on a date, staring at the clock looking miserable.

I suspect she’s probably also wondering what the hell happened to trying to avoid getting ensnared in the flames of Phoebe Green??

Scully then stops dead in her tracks as she sees Creeper McCreeperson hiding in the foliage.

But she doesn’t get the chance to think about that for too long before she spots that there is a fire on the 14th floor. She rushes out to tell Mulder and Phoebe and then proceeds to raise the alarm in the rest of the building.

Dana Katherine Scully -- MVP.

Phoebe informs them both that the children are on the 14th floor, and so Mulder, being the action hero that he is, decides to go up there -- people need help and so he will save them, that’s his edict in life. No matter how difficult it is for him, he’s going to try because that’s what he tells himself he must do. In the psychotherapeutic sense, he is every bit a “rescuer”. A person who feels connection to others through saving them. It’s how he has learnt to relate to other people.

The rescuer identity usually emerges in childhood in reaction to a feeling of powerlessness. The child may have experienced their parents as emotionally unavailable, distant and unable to meet their emotional needs. With these needs being unmet, the child learns to experience love and connection vicariously through meeting the needs of others.

Think about it. Mulder lost his sister when he was supposed to be looking after her, and in his memory of these events he is powerless to stop her abduction -- no matter what he tries; grabbing a gun, screaming for help; nothing works. We know from the Pilot that his parents refused to talk about what happened to Samantha and as a result the family fell apart -- his parents divorced and the first chance he got, Mulder got as far away from them as he could; going to Oxford.

To compensate for this trauma; the unimaginable weight of guilt and powerlessness he felt to save Samantha, he saves anyone and everyone he can. This way he can sooth that voice in his head; the voice that tells him he is worthless, unlovable. From his 12 year old perspective, his parents withdrew their love when he failed to save Samantha, and so now his self-worth is tied up in a need save -- if he can save someone, he is worthy of love.

So regardless of how terrified he is, he goes head first into the fire to save those children.

He doesn’t want to do it, in his mind, he has no choice.

In a way, it makes me wonder if that’s why he took back Phoebe despite the fact she cheated on him. Perhaps he saw her flaws, saw her destructive behaviour and believed her could save her. Men and women often fall into the trap of believing they can change their partners through love. Perhaps Mulder believed if he loved Phoebe enough, she would change -- that effectively, he would save her?

Poor Mulder. He pushes himself to the point of passing out to save those kids, but fails. While everyone else, including Phoebe, is fawning over Creeper McCreeperson for ultimately being the one to save them...

...it’s Scully who searches for Mulder and immediately goes to him when she sees he needs her help. Regardless of where she falls on Mulder’s priority list, he’s always at the top of hers.

This whole hotel scene really tells you everything you need to know about how these two women feel about Mulder.

One casually discards him when it’s convenient, while the other will wait for him, and be there for him even when he doesn’t ask for it.

Even when he pushes her away.

The next scene emphasises this further, with Scully sitting at his bedside taking care of him. Handing him water as he chugs up his innards and the first thing out of his mouth is...

The script notes for this scene are well known now. Mulder apparently wakes to see Scully and muses on the fact this was not the woman he had anticipated ending up in bed with.

Chris Carter’s writing, everybody.

Thankfully Scully is sensitive enough to his shame and embarrassment that she doesn’t give him a hard time. In fact, she’s mothering him, using that soft, gentle, loving voice that she usually reserves for talking to children.

She’s trying to sooth him, knowing he is going to be hard on himself.

When she asks what happened, he is entirely honest with Scully. They have established a level of emotional intimacy in this episode that they’ve not touched on since Mulder’s emotional confession of his childhood bedtime ritual in Conduit.

This intimacy gives Mulder a feeling of safety that I suspect he hasn’t experienced in a long time. He can be wholly open with Scully, all his weaknesses and vulnerabilities laid bare for her. Represented physically by his walking around almost naked in front of her, wearing nothing but black silky boxers.

Oh Mulder, he really goes all out when he think’s he’s gonna get some. Which just makes me think all sorts of fun thoughts about Mulder and Scully’s season 7 sex life.

(Here ya go, @allyinthekeyofx these gifs are dedicated to you.) 😉

There’s a significant shift in Phoebe’s behaviour when she enters the room. First, she directly addresses Scully, and holds a whole conversation with her. Shocker! She dismisses a piece of vital information Scully gives her, of course, but she still has noticeably adjusted her approach to her. She doesn’t seem to be treating her as a threat anymore.

When Mulder comes back in and sees Phoebe, he suddenly becomes conscious of his body, of his exposure and vulnerability, so immediately covers himself.

The difference in the level of intimacy he feels safe sharing with these two women is clearly drawn by such a simple gesture.

It then becomes apparent why Phoebe is behaving differently, she is returning to England. Mulder is clearly disappointed to hear she’s leaving. Again, reinforcing the idea that perhaps he was hoping for more than a one night stand. Was he hoping she would stay in the US for him?

Phoebe’s dwindled interest in Mulder is palpable. She seems to have given up her romantic pursuit, no longer bothering to ostracise Scully. She politely, and it seems genuinely, bids her goodbye as she leaves.

Knowing full well what she’s just witnessed -- Mulder essentially being dumped -- Scully is ever protective. Looking out for him once again. It’s a shame you can’t hear gifs, because it’s all in that soft, gentle, tentative tone of voice she uses when she asks him...

Mulder is clearly deflated, but I love the next exchange between the two of them.

This is Scully’s chance to shine, to prove herself to him. She basically single-handedly solves the case and discovers who the arsonist is after Phoebe and Mulder spectacularly failed.

She’s clearly making a point to him in outlining the entirety of her investigation. She wants him to know exactly how much she has done. Mulder seems to be only vaguely interested.

That is until she gets to the climax of her little tale, and he flips into overdrive realising they now have what they need to find this guy.

Scully’s face as Mulder leaps into action is perfect. That smug smile of satisfaction.

Whose “brilliant” now, eh?

Mulder flies over to Cape Cod to warn Phoebe, only to find her wrapped in the arms of Sir Marsden. Oh hey, I made these gifs already!

Mulder’s face... It all makes sense to him now. This was all just another game. She played him, and she played him good.

But it seems Mulder has finally learnt his lesson. Fool me once, and all that.

Since it was clear Mulder hadn’t fully let go of his feelings for Phoebe in 10 years, I’d say this was a good thing for him. If she had gone home and he was left to pine over her, that would have been disastrous. So it worked out for the best, if a little painfully for Mulder.

It’s called tough love, bitch. Suck it up.

After this moment, Mulder’s entire demeanour with Phoebe changes – he’s put his barriers back up, and the detached Mulder tone comes out.

He’s looking at her like he can’t quite believe he almost fell for it again.

When Scully arrives later, she can tell straight away that Mulder is upset.

Again, Mulder… what you are looking for is right in front of you. He brushes it off, but she’s watching him intently. She’s so protective of him, it’s so sweet.

So they discover that the arsonist is not the driver, but is in fact the caretaker, and as we know, has painted up the house with argotypoline -- rocket fuel.

In a repeat of the hotel scenario, the children are up stairs in a building that starts going up in smoke.

Mulder valiantly but stupidly tries to put the fires out. Bath towel vs. rocket fuel, Mulder. Seriously?

Finally realising that whacking a rocket fuel fire with a towel is the stupidest thing he’s ever done whilst sober, Mulder orders everyone out of the room.

However, Mulder does find a moment to continue his hand’s love affair with Scully’s back. All in the midst of facing his darkest fear of fire – nice!

Now this is going off book a bit, but I get the sense that there was supposed to be some kind of scene where Scully is in danger in the fire and Mulder overcomes his fears to save her.

I say this because there is a cut line of dialogue from the original script where Scully says “don’t let it be said that you wouldn’t want through fire for a woman” and Mulder apparently replies “and don’t let it be said that I wouldn’t do it for you again, Scully.”

To whoever it was that decided to cut that. CC, I’m looking at you.

I mean, that’s pretty heavy handed stuff… perhaps they realised it was a bit too heavy handed for a show that was supposedly never going to put these two together romantically.

If it had been left in, it would have drawn a clear parallel between Phoebe and Scully. Still along the vein that the episode is already toying with throughout, but those lines of dialogue would have made it far more blatant. The comparison being that Phoebe is fire – she is a tormentor, a symbol of sexual desire and emotional pain for Mulder. As such, his relationship with her compounded his fear; she feeds them. Whereas Scully is a soothing, caring presence. A symbol of love and friendship, and emotional healing for Mulder. As such, his relationship with her helps him to overcome his fear.

The episode does still maintain certain aspects of this – once Mulder has severed his bond with Phoebe, and reunites with Scully, he does put himself between others and the blaze, trying to put it out. He also takes control of the situation and orders everyone out of the house. He’s no longer freezing at the sight of fire.

I really like that as they shuffle everyone out of the house, Mulder tells Scully to find a fire extinguisher but tells everyone else to get out. It’s him and Scully again – together as partners, she’s the one he trusts to have his back.

Mulder, Gawd bless him, summons up the courage to face his fear without needing to save Scully in the end, its having the chance to vindicate his earlier failure at saving the children that motivates him to push forward.

Bless this brave puppy.

Success!

But yeah, being pulled from a burning building twice in one night? Those kids are fucked. Traumatised for life.

So remember I said there was some interesting symbolism with the camera work in the opening of the episode. Well, now we’re at the end, the framing has flipped. Mulder and Scully are reunited as partners on the screen, and now, with Phoebe’s influence over Mulder dashed, she is framed as separate from the two -- the true outsider.

The final scene is very sweet, and symbolic of Mulder and Scully restoring their equilibrium as they return to the casual bantering we saw from them in the beginning of the episode, before Phoebe showed up.

Where we started was that Phoebe was the one in on the joke, now she’s the butt of it. Scully does have a fun side too.

I just gotta say, she looks especially beautiful in this scene, thankfully this was a good wardrobe day for her. Season 1 was very hit and miss.

Scully asks where Phoebe is, and Mulder, clearly more relaxed than we’ve seen him the entire episode, shrugs – he doesn’t know, and seemingly doesn’t care to.

Now if we were to get the romcom ending, Mulder would have noticed all the times Scully was there for him and would have thanked her, or at least recognised that he did need her help after all. Or maybe he’d tell her he’s thankful she didn’t listen to him when he told her not to help. But this is the X-Files, so... yeah who the hell do you think you’re kidding?

Phoebe also sends Mulder another tape, but he doesn’t need to hear it. He’s free of her thrall now, and so there’s nothing she could say that would be meaningful to him anymore.

Would have been a nice touch to see him drop the tape in the trash, but I think we get the idea. It took 10 long years, but Fox Mulder is finally over Phoebe Green.

Next up… My favourite episode of season 1. 1x13 - Beyond the Sea.

#thexfiles #x files #txf meta #txf analysis #MSR #x files msr analysis series #xf gifs #xf screencaps #fox mulder #dana scully #chris carter #david duchovny #gillian anderson #phoebe green #txf 1x12 #fire

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bellatrixobsessed1 · 6 years ago

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The Path Of Stars

In light of having finished the new Voltron season (spoilers); After parting ways with Zethrid and Ezor, Acxa finds herself on Earth in a rural place where she happens upon a pair of curious kids.

Earth is a quiet place. It’s kind of peaceful, eve if she is there by accident, she decides that it is rather nice. There is a certain haze to the air almost golden, the air is warm. On the corner of the street is a lone mailbox overtaken by different forms of creeping ivy, she cannot name. A few yellow fuzzy looking flowers burst from the ground surrounding the rotting wood, the grass is tall, thick, and overgrown. The paint chipping away depicts some type of Earth avian. She doesn’t know if she should be here, she doesn’t think so. But it seems like a good place to think things over, it looks like it has been long abandoned and she can’t foresee anyone intruding. She finds herself, a few feet from the mailbox, standing in a field of rolling yellow, the same color that the sun seems to paint the air. The grass is long, she plucks a strand of it and holds it up to a gadget to be analyzed. The quick scan identifies it as ‘wheat’. She has never seen wheat before, it looks similar to some grasses from her own galaxy but not quite the same. Their seeds don’t glow.

Again, she wonders if it is a good idea to stay. But after parting ways with Haggar and then Lotor and then her former friends Ezor and Zethrid, she doesn’t see too many other options. The Galra Empire is much too unstable and she doesn’t have many allies there. Earth though, not much attention is paid to it.

She looks around, it is so open. Everything is so open and the air is tinged with many scents. No doubt wheat is the most prevalent of the odors. But there is something else. Some kind of flower perhaps? She follows a dirt trail, eventually she should found the house that the mailbox belongs to. She just hopes that it is as abandoned as this road.

Her wandering leads her to a different type of field; this one grows tall—taller than she—and green. Some type of vehicle, something far less advanced than what she is used to seeing, plows through the field. It is kicking up a fine cloud of dirt. Acxa finds herself coughing on it. In the distance she can hear laughing, childlike and playful. She can’t imagine that they would be taken seriously if they spotted her and told tale of the blue-skinned woman with the purple hair and the horns. But she burrows away into the field parallel to the one being plowed, she supposes it’s better to draw as little attention as possible.

For the first time she considers that seeking refuge here is going to be harder than she thought. The place isn’t so deserted as it initially looked.

She continues her walk, hidden by the large stalks. The sky is growing darker, a few stars pop up against the now deeper blues that push the oranges and golds down. It reminds her of home, she feels a few pangs in its absence. Parting ways, she decides, isn’t going to be easy in the slightest. Maybe she should seek out Voltron and its paladins. Why not? It is her path after all. Not Lotor’s nor Haggar’s nor anyone else’s. But it has been months and they haven’t been heard from. No, Earth seems somehow safest. She can’t imagine that they’d go looking for her here.

The laughter grows louder and she can see the children; a boy and a girl. The girl wears her hair in braids that are becoming un-intertwined. She and the boy are barefoot, their hair is the color of the straw they play on. The girl takes a handful of it and throws it at the boy who makes a face—tongue protruding—and spits it out. As a girl she used to do similar things to her mother, though the grasses she had tossed were pink in color. The boy tugs at his overalls, tips his straw hat, and pouts, “ya got it all ov’r me.”

The girl just giggles.

Acxa carries onward. As the dusk sets deeper in, she can hear different chirps and buzzes. At first she things that they belong the flickering bugs, but that can’t be right. She reaches a hand out and captures one. In flashes in her hand, carefully she runs a pointer over it. She sees it spread its wings and before she can react it is drifting away and out of reach. She doesn’t know if she likes them very much. There are so many of them dancing in between blades of wheat and stalks of—she finally decides to scan it—corn.

Finally, she comes to a building. It is not as inviting as the first two cottages she passed. That’s how she knows that it will be her home until she can figure things out in full. The place is falling apart, she is weary of entering as part of the roof is going concave. Other planks of its wooden wall are flapping about as gusts of wind take them. But she’d rather be in there than exposed completely to otherworldly weather. The place is drafty and cluttered. There are holes in various spots in the wall. She takes to picking things off of the ground and inspecting them. Whatever these tools might be they are rusting. She recognizes one as a shovel—her people would have crafted it differently but she knows what it is for. There are other things; different types of blades, saws and pliers. Something that she knows she has the name for but can’t quite place it at the moment. She sets the rusty tools aside and tries to make herself comfy.

She had been smart enough to bring food—just in case Earth couldn’t provide—water, pillows, and one blanket. She doesn’t have much else though; her gun, a change of clothes, and a pendent Ezor had given her so long before. The rest she’ll have to scavenge.

She lays the pillows out but knows that sleeping on such hard ground is going to take some getting used to. With her hands behind her head she lays staring through a hole in the roof. She wonders if anyone of those stars is her home planet, if they are even part of her home galaxy. She doesn’t think so. Just as she is beginning to drift off she is awakened by a rather spooky sort of sound. Her heart quickens as she scans the barn. Her eyes meet large yellow ones. The thing hoots again and she relaxes some, the creature seems harmless enough. But its call is uncanny. She nestles herself back up in the blankets. Since it is clear that she cannot sleep she beings to think again. And thinking isn’t exactly calming it brings a longing for how things were when Narti was alive and well. When their group was still a group and she had a clear direction. For a while she had dreamt of following her own direction, now that she has the freedom she is overwhelmed by it. Daunted, a little frightened maybe.

Her musings are cut off again by two things, first a hoot and the spreading of wings, and then a figure appearing in the doorframe. She tenses.

“Woah, cool! See, Maureen, I tol’ ya I saw a alien.” He looked so smug as he cocked his straw hat.

Her heart beats faster, she could have sworn that she’d been more careful. She swallows.

“Are ya gonna take ov’r Earth, Brady says ya will.” Maureen askes.

“I’m not going to take invade or over anything.” Axca replies. She hopes that they won’t mention her to anyone else, she doesn’t want to be a public spectacle.

“But yer invading this barn.” Brady observes.

She lifts a finger and puts it down, he has a point. “Don’t you have somewhere to be?”

“We went ‘n snucks out.” Maureen says gleefully.

She thinks back to a time when she talked to children, she hadn’t done it very much, so she falls back on a tactic that works on any age group. “I won’t tell your parents that you snuck out if you don’t tell them about me.”

The pair exchanged looks. “Deal!” Maureen declared.

“No, no, not deal. Ya also have ta teach us space stuffs.” He puts his hands on his hips boldly and holds his head high.

Acxa sighs, she supposes it would do her well to have someone to talk to. Despite it all, she never really fancied being alone. “Alright, I’ll tell you all about the Galra and Alteans as long as you keep quiet.”

“Ken ya take us home?” Brady askes.

“We kin’a got don’t like the dark.” Maureen adds.

“Ken we ride in your spaceship?” Brady questions.

Her spaceship! She groans to herself. She hadn’t thought that one through. It isn’t a large craft but it would be noticed. “No, no spaceship. But I’ll walk you home.” Most of the way, she adds to herself. These children were certainly going to make Earth interesting until she could find her way back to the cosmos.

#acxa #voltron #fanfiction #voltron legendary defender

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centaurianthropology · 7 years ago

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The Magnus Archives ‘Drawing a Blank’ (S03E03) Analysis

So now we start digging into season 3 proper, the introductions done, the characters in place, and the new mysteries beginning to unfold. This episode, we have a lot of loose ends, but few answers. Come on in to hear what I think about ��Drawing a Blank’.

So, the Stranger, huh? I actually had to go back and look at the transcript for ‘The Librarian’ to find that one. And here’s the thing: Leitner never mentioned the Stranger to Jon. He only told Elias about it. So any information he gave about the Stranger wasn’t given to Jon.

Gertrude, on the other hand, did mention the Stranger briefly in ‘The Kind Mother’. However, Sims didn’t note the mention during his addendum at the end of the tape, or his analysis of the statement itself. So why did he twig onto the Stranger so suddenly as something important? Especially if he didn’t hear Leitner mention it or tie it into the Great Old Ones? Does Sims have his old tapes? I doubt it, since he doesn’t even have clothes. So how does he suddenly not only remember Gertrude’s passing mention of the Stranger—one that was tied not to mannequins but to the Not-Them? Did he tie the mannequin to the Not-Them and that’s how he got there? Is the Not-Them the trouble the Stranger has so recently caused them? Why is he so suddenly oriented perfectly to tracking and investigating the Stranger, when before this it was a mention in one single episode that sailed over his head? Was it some sort of continuity error, or is Jon getting insight he shouldn’t have? If this is the case, does he even notice that he’s referring to the Stranger as a solid and real thing, and making a ton of connections to it, when he didn’t even mark its name the first time he heard it?

So, while waiting on that answer to come along, let’s look at what we do know about the Stranger. Leitner associated the Stranger with the Unknowing. I suspect that the Unknowing has something to do with the complete destruction of an Archive and the blinding of the Beholding. We can therefore assume that, in the scheme of these Great Old Ones, the Stranger stands opposed to the Beholding somehow.

We also now see that the Stranger is associated with facelessness, or perhaps simply the lack of eyes. It’s easy enough to link this to the Closed Eye. There’s also a sense of the Uncanny Valley about the Stranger, something not quite right in everything about it. Could the students from ‘Anatomy Class’ be tied into this somehow? They were also fans of dismemberment. Could what happened to Chloe’s boss Lana also have happened to the people that the students disassembled in their share house?

And given what Gertrude said in ‘The Kind Mother’ I think it’s a fairly safe bet that the Not-Them is also an aspect of the Stranger, which further ties Breekon and Hope to the Stranger. Breekon and Hope delivered the table to the Institute, setting up another aspect of the Stranger to strike at the heart of the Beholding. It seems that Breekon and Hope may be a sort of hands-on way that the Stranger gets around, while other aspects like the coffin take people and try to control them, and the Not-Them replaces them. So given that, is the mysterious coffin from ‘Do Not Open’ also tied in with the Stranger?

Sims also ties circuses into the Stranger, so perhaps we should consider whether or not the Circus of the Other is also an aspect of the Stranger. Certainly the taxidermy tiger might be tied in with that sense of artificiality that the Stranger has going. The potentially animated clown doll would also work with that aspect.

And this ties in one more aspect of the Stranger that links a great many of these aspects: people vanishing. Now, given what happened to Lana, I think it’s safe to assume that those people die, but by and large the people who are targeted by the Stranger go away. Maybe they’re replaced, maybe not, but they all leave behind them people confused and mourning.

Confusion and not knowing. The opposite to understanding and enlightenment (even to the point of breaking your mind). And so the things that tie the feel of the Stranger together are the opposite to those which tie the Beholding together. I have the feeling we’re going to need a lot of red string to link together all the things that tie thematically to the Stranger. Off-hand I can think of the following: the anatomy class students, Breekon and Hope, the coffin, the Not-Them, the People’s Church of the Divine Host, the Circus of the Other, and I’m sure I’m forgetting a few others. Maybe once we’ve got a good list of all the being tied into the Stranger, this initial picture of confusion and not-knowing will start to take a clearer shape. And maybe by that time, Sims will have realized that he seems to have homed in on the Stranger without any real reason for doing so, or any good solid knowledge about it as a basis.

Beyond the Stranger, we learned a little more about Sims and his situation. It seems he definitely has the compulsion to record, and one that Georgie finds disturbing enough to liken to drug abuse (and I loved Sims’ indignant “I could be doing drugs!”). He can’t not take down the statements, and even now calls what he does ‘his job’. I’m not sure how aware he is of his fixation. Probably no more than Martin is aware that he had to start talking to Daisy as though he was giving a statement. And given that he hasn’t really recognized his compulsion as such,

And also, he has stalkers? Is that the Institute’s people, or someone else? Plenty of factions probably want to get their hooks into a budding Archivist before he becomes terribly powerful. Some might even want to kill him to prevent that very outcome. But given that they’re delivering statements, and we know that Elias knows exactly where he is, I think Elias is trying to lead him to certain conclusions. Maybe to the conclusion that he’s as trapped in his role as Tim is? Maybe that he is needed at the Institute?

And is Jon correct in his idea that if he doesn’t act, people he cares about will get hurt? He’s not exactly known for leaping to the correct conclusion where mysteries are concerned (see here smashing up the spider table). And even if he is right, who would be in danger? Georgie? Martin? They’re basically the only two who have been described as ‘close’ to him by any stretch of the imagination.

Whether Sims is right or wrong, he’s decided to get to work. I imagine we’ll find out what that means fairly soon. We can hope that it means reaching out not only to Georgie, who is only peripherally involved, but to Martin as well. Perhaps even to others he’s run across in the statements who might be helpful or sympathetic. Trevor the Vampire Slayer might well be an ally, if he could be found. Gerard Kaye, if he isn’t really dead (and I won’t believe he is until we see that body), would be particularly useful. Melanie, if she’s back from India, might be willing. Hell, if Antonio Blake, the dreamer, might be reached, he could prove invaluable.

There are factions we haven’t really explored, and I have the feeling that, as Sims reaches out, he is going to start running into them. Might we meet members of the Lukas family? How about the Open Eye? Could Sims get confronted by members of the People’s Church? As much as I want our Archivist back with his friends in the Archive, the possibilities for expanding the TMA universe and fleshing out a lot of the factions in their own words seems particularly exciting this season. And I for one am looking forward to finding out more.

Conclusions

A solid episode, despite my ongoing questions about how Sims knows about the Stranger, and what it is exactly that he does know. The story itself was spooky, and the introduction of the Stranger as potentially a nemesis to the Beholding is intriguing. Sims is on the path to finding out more about it, and likely about the Unknowing, without perhaps even knowing why he’s on that path. Certainly he’s being driven by compulsions, and possibly even knowledge he doesn’t realize he shouldn’t possess.

This season is taking an interesting new shape. After the paranoia of season 2, it’s sort of fun to see an expansion of the universe, and to see a much more proactive (hopefully in a saner, better way) Sims. Now all that’s left is to wait to see how he messes it up, because I may love him, but Jonathan Sims is a human disaster.

#The Magnus Archives #analysis

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alexsfictionaddiction · 5 years ago

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Review: The Family by Louise Jensen

I’d not read a Louise Jensen before but I think I’ll read another. Despite being pretty busy recently, I flew through The Family on one hell of a fast ride.

Right from the beginning, we’re following Laura’s plight as she struggles to keep her floristry business, her house and her teenage daughter Tilly in the wake of the sudden death of her husband Gavan. Gavan’s brother, wife and daughter appear to have distanced themselves from Laura and Tilly following a legal implication with one of the building sites owned by Gavan and his brother Iwan’s business. Now that he’s gone, Laura and Tilly are cast out and with only an interim death certificate, Gavan’s life insurance is taking a long time to pay out. Desperate, Laura agrees to follow her friend Saffron to a safe, sustainable commune at Gorphwysfa Farm, where Saffron’s organic fruit and veg company is based. The farm is home to a group of people, who are all running from their problems and now living a quiet, simple life together. There they meet handsome, enigmatic Alex, who promises to take care of Laura and Tilly for as long as they need him to but life is never the same again.

‘It takes more than blood to weave a family, doesn’t it? It takes threads of kindness and understanding; love and patience.’

There is a lot of mother-daughter relationship exploration, which is always an interesting dynamic in a psychological thriller. Laura and Tilly’s relationship is a driving force for many of the decisions they both made. Getting both of their perspectives really helped me to understand them, so although it did feel a little disjointed at times, the multiple perspectives were the best choice for characterisations. I read this as an eBook ARC, which often involve display issues and I’m sure that didn’t help with the flow between chapters.

As there often is between mothers and daughters, there is an intense unspoken rivalry between Laura and Tilly. This shows itself in many guises throughout the novel and it definitely reinforces the believability of their relationship. It also adds to the ante of the plot and another level of conflict to contend with.

The book is bursting with a constant sense of unease. The cause of the unease changes but there is never a lull into true peace, which is ironic considering the kind of atmosphere the residents of Gorphwysfa are trying to provide. I knew that an explosive ending was hurtling its way towards me and my mind was frantically trying to figure out the ins and outs of it. I got a little confused when one of the twists was revealed as the timeline of events didn’t seem to add up but that’s something that a re-read should clear up, if I’m mistaken.

I really loved spending time with Tilly and she felt so real to me. She is incredibly insecure and sad and she does everything she can to hide it. My heart went out to her on multiple occasions and I just wanted to protect her from Alex and the commune that she has been dragged into. She is the ideal cult victim and I didn’t really know whether she’d come out of things well or whether the whole experience would damage her beyond repair. She is constantly seeking approval from pretty much everyone and I was willing her to find her own self-acceptance but her vulnerability gave her an authentic endearing quality.

‘The livestock were contained as far as they could be but it’s inevitable you always get an escapee. Someone who wants to bolt for freedom. Who has to be restrained.’

Alex says the above quote before everything unravels but a chill went down my spine. He’s a cookie-cutter cult leader and as soon as I met him, I realised what the situation really was. The whole atmosphere has a Manson family vibe about it and I lost some respect for Laura, when she decided to inexplicably put the scraps of her life into Alex’s hands. I found him so creepy and I couldn’t really understand why the women of the community were so drawn to him. I grew to like him and sympathise with him more as his story was revealed but I never understood his charm.

At his core, Alex isn’t a bad person and although he is manipulative and dangerous, I did feel sorry for him. I’m not completely convinced of a lot of his motives and I feel there are still a few secrets that didn’t quite get a chance to come to light. However, I believed that he has a good heart. I can’t talk too much about what is actually happening behind the scenes for fear of spoilers but the truth is much more complicated than a simple brainwashing.

As you might expect from the title, The Family explores the idea of family and the many forms that can take. All of Gorphwysfa’s residents are seeking some kind of love, acceptance and sense of belonging and in each other, they find that. They advocate for chosen family over flesh family, which becomes even more relevant as Laura’s secrets surface. The title is also a nod to the Manson case that I’m sure was an inspiration for the story, as a real-life case of deadly indoctrination.

There’s no doubt that this is a very haunting, unsettling novel and I really loved drawing the parallels between the cult of Gorphywysfa and what I know about the Manson Family. I didn’t see the little details of the story coming and I have to commend Jensen for that. Despite some continuity and confusion issues, it was a very quick, twisty read for the spooky season.

#the family #louise jensen #thriller #review #book review #books #bookworm

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star-trekkin-across-theuniverse · 8 years ago

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Cover You in Oil, pt16

Word Count: 6050 Tags: @outside-the-government, @yourtropegirl @to-pick-ourselves-up-7, @ghostssss, @rampant-salamander, @saysay125, @sistasarah-sallysaidso @shewhorunswithfandoms, @flirtswithdanger @supermoonpanda @rayleyanns

“I miss you.” The email was to the point. Sally laughed to herself, and smiled despite feeling tense and anxious. She picked up the telephone at her desk and dialed Tony’s number; she suspected Victor was somehow monitoring her calls and Internet use. She wanted to save the secret of the satellite access on her cell phone for as long as she could.

“This is an unfamiliar number but the country code is Latveria, which can only mean one thing.” Tony answered after three rings.

“I miss you too.” Sally felt the tension leaving her shoulders as his voice carried across the line.

“You got my email! I don’t know why I was worried, I knew you would get it,” Tony laughed. “How is it? Spooky? I didn’t realize it was right in the middle of vampire country. You should have packed vibranium scarves.”

“It’s beautiful, Tony. It’s so quiet compared to New York. I mean, that’s not hard, right? But I’ve never lived far from the sound of the ocean before. In New York, it was so noisy that I didn’t even notice that the sound of the waves was missing. But here? It’s quiet. There’s birds. I think they’ll wind up annoying eventually. And if you sit still long enough, you can hear the wind. But the trees are incredible, and the castle overlooks this valley, and it’s stunning.” Sally ran on once she started talking.

“Unmarred by modern man?” Tony chuckled.

“Victor says he’s got a very advanced robotics program. So maybe not completely unmarred,” Sally laughed.

“Victor?” Tony’s voice raised in pitch. Sally smiled to herself and shook her head, even though Tony couldn’t see it.

“Victor von Doom. He’s the emperor of Latveria. It’s his car,” Sally explained. “Actually, you met him. He’s who picked me up at the airport.”

“I thought his name was Hans?” Tony interjected.

“Yeah, me too,” Sally laughed. “I get the feeling he’s a very hands-on kind of leader. Wants to be involved in the day-to-day operations of the country.”

“Robotics?”

“I’ve probably said too much already, Tony. It is a closed border. Besides, I haven’t seen any of it. I only just saw the car for a few hours today. Latveria has very strict working hours. The app has been rendering the photos into a 3D scale model for me for the last 6 hours. I hope that doesn’t count as working. Apparently you are only allowed to work seven hours a day. And Victor has said that skipping meals is not allowed.”

“Let me guess. He doesn’t have anyone willing to bring you pizza so you can work through,” Tony laughed.

“It’s more formal here. Makes sense, right? He’s an emperor, he’s got to keep up appearances,” Sally sighed. “I don’t mind really. This is a big job. Having to break to leave the garage for a meal will force me to sit back and consider the steps I’m going to need to take.”

“How is the car?”

“It’s fucking amazing, Tony. It’s a complete custom. It’s like, twenty-five feet long, or some sort of nonsense. Sixteen cylinders. The front end is longer than Clint’s Challenger. And classic, elegant lines. But it looks like it’s going to be a lot of work,” Sally admitted. “And I may be a little out of my league. The engine is more like an airplane than a car.”

“You must know something about airplane engines, Sal. Your parents were both aeronautics engineers,” Tony prompted.

“We’ll see. I helped Pops with a Cessna once. This is a little different,” Sally laughed.

“Princess, if there is anyone in the world that can restore the car, it’ll be you. Victor von Doom chose well,” Tony reassured her.

“Aw, thanks,” Sally paused. “I miss you already.”

“Your side of the bed is awful cold,” Tony agreed. Sally smiled.

“I should probably go. I have no idea what the long-distance calling plan is like, but I don’t want to run up Victor’s bill if it’s not awesome. I love you.” Sally looked out the window, taking in the sunset across the valley. “I really wish you could be here. It’s beautiful.”

“I love you too, princess. I’ll email you again tomorrow,” Tony said. “Good night?”

“Yeah, good night. It’s eight pm here,” Sally laughed. “Good night, Tony.” She placed the phone back in the cradle and picked up her cell, waiting for the inevitable text message barrage. It didn’t take long.

“What aren’t you telling me?”

“It’s stupid.”

“What’s stupid?”

“I just feel unsettled. It’s probably just jet lag.”

“Can you pinpoint why?”

“No, just a feeling. That’s why it’s stupid.” Sally sighed and pursed her lips. She wasn’t sure what was bugging her, and saddling Tony with her paranoid worries wasn’t fair.

“You let me know if you feel unsafe, and I’ll be there in a matter of hours.”

“I’m just being silly. It’s fine. We’ll talk again tomorrow. I want to keep the texting on the down low. Which is stupid because there’s nothing to worry about. But I want to keep it quiet anyhow.”

“Anything, Sally.”

“I know. Love you.”

“Love you more. Be safe.”

Sally exited the texting program and locked her phone screen before tucking the phone away in her purse. She double checked the rendering, and noted the progress bar was at 30%. The bathtub was calling, and beckoned her to draw a bath, dropping into the deep tub under a mountain of bubbles and soaking the exhaustion from her bones. The setting sun shone through the stained glass window in the bathroom, casting beautiful jewel toned light everywhere. She must have nodded off because she wakened in the dark. The water was still warm, but just. She reached for a towel and stepped out of the tub, drying off as she paced back into the bedroom. There was a quiet but insistent knocking at her door, and Sally sighed before pulling it open, wearing just her towel. Victor wasn’t facing the door, instead glancing at his watch. He looked up as the door swung open, revealing Sally and her towel, some bubble residue clinging to her shoulder.

Sally pursed her lips and raised her eyebrow, aware of how rude her body language was, but unable to stop herself. Victor sucked in his breath, his pupils dilating.

“I was hoping to invite you to join me in my study for a night cap.” He regained his poise quickly.

“Study? Night cap?” Sally asked. The words were from a different era.

“Sounds a little more elegant than inviting you to watch Doctor Who in the TV room,” Victor admitted. Sally laughed, loud and sudden. Confusion crossed Victor’s brow and Sally caught herself.

“Doctor Who sounds awesome. Can you give me a few minutes to get dressed?” Sally asked. She took in his appearance quickly, mentally running through her wardrobe to find something that would fit. He had khaki slacks on, and a sky blue sweater over a plaid shirt, unbuttoned at the neck. His sleeves were pushed up and when she glanced at his feet, she saw he had soft leather slippers on. Casual, she thought. Not blue jeans and Tony’s stolen Black Sabbath shirt casual, but she realized she’d at least be able to get away with pants. Victor nodded.

“Of course, I’ll come back for you in fifteen minutes?” He offered. Sally nodded and closed the door. She dug through the drawers of the dresser, pulling a pair of navy capris out before rummaging through another drawer for a soft pink fleece pullover. She pulled a comb through her hair and pinned it back off her face. As she headed toward the door to wait for Victor, she brushed a layer of gloss across her lips, and was suddenly grateful that this wasn’t her every day life. Life with Tony might have society expectations, but it was never going to have dress-for-watching-TV demands.

Calling it a TV room was a modest description, Sally realized as Victor led her into a home theatre every bit as well equipped as the theatre in the Avengers Tower.

“We have just secured broadcast rights for the last three seasons,” Victor began, “but I have every episode available. We can either watch what is on tonight, or start wherever you prefer.” Sally settled into an easy chair and swung the legs up, adjusting her bum to get comfortable.

“We could start with Nine, if you are okay with that?” Sally suggested.

“Nine?” Victor gave her a surprised look.

“Well, a girl never gets over her first doctor,” Sally laughed. “And I’m going to be here for a while, so it seems appropriate to start at the new beginning.”

“Perhaps this can be a standing arrangement then,” Victor suggested as he reached across the counter at the back of the room for the remote. Sally forced a smile.

“Far be it for me to say no to an emperor,” she nodded, hoping there was sufficient lightness to her tone. Victor stilled, one hand holding the remote pointed at the front of the room. He stepped forward and tilted his head, taking Sally in. She hoped she looked relaxed and at ease. He settled on the edge of the table between the two chairs, and took one of Sally’s hands in his own.

“Sally, I don’t want you to stand on ceremony, or feel you are subject to the whims of a monarch. You are in my employ, but you are also my guest. While you are here, I want you to feel welcome. Like you are a member of the family,” Victor began.

“Do you have one?” Sally blurted. She instantly regretted it, and her regret grew when she looked up at Victor.

“My mother passed some time ago, and as you have probably gathered, I remain a bachelor,” he replied. Sally cringed inwardly.

“I’m so sorry, that wasn’t approp-“

“Sally, this is what I am talking about,” Victor interrupted. “You’re here, alone. I’ve torn you away from your fiancé to work on this project when you should be home, working on wedding plans. I don’t want you to feel you need to treat me like a king. I want you to see me as a friend. A confidante. We are both alone, we could perhaps combat the loneliness with friendship.”

“I don’t know what to say,” Sally stammered.

“I invited you to join me this evening for this reason. To give you something that feels a little like home,” Victor explained.

“Let’s watch some TV then,” Sally nodded, gently pulling her hand away. She readjusted herself on the easy chair and waited as Victor got everything set up and settled into the easy chair opposite her

She must have fallen asleep because she remembered the beginning of the first episode, but not the end, and she woke with a start when Victor touched her shoulder. “Sally, it’s quite late. I didn’t realize you’d fallen asleep. I suspect it’s the time change catching up with you.”

Sally wiped the drool off the corner of her mouth and ran her hand through her hair. “Oh god, I’m so sorry. I hope I wasn’t snoring.”

“As I said, I didn’t even notice you were sleeping. Allow me to see you back to your rooms.” He held a hand out for her. Sally, relaxed and disoriented, took Victor’s hand and allowed him to help her to her feet. She stumbled a little, and he wrapped an arm around her to steady her. When she stiffened at the familiarity, Victor steadied her and held her away from himself. “I only sought to assist you, Sally,” he explained. Sally hung her head and sighed.

“I’m sorry. You’re being very kind and thoughtful and here I am, skittish like a scared kitten,” Sally yawned.

“I don’t expect you to drop your guard immediately, Sally. Only a fool trusts blindly,” he shook his head. “Come, you’re exhausted, and I am sure you’ll be wanting your run in the morning. The night is far gone for an early riser.”

Sally yawned again. “Thanks, Victor.” She allowed him to lead her back to her rooms, and waited as he opened the door for her before stumbling inside. She shut the door and waited until she heard his footsteps retreat before she locked the door and stumbled into bed.

Just as Sasha had suggested, the back gardens were much more pleasant for running. Sally oriented herself quickly to the grid of rings making up the paths of the green space and found that the paths were level and smooth, with just enough give to make it feel more like trail running than road running. Despite Sasha’s assurance that the paths were paved, it was not pavement, but some sort of stone and pebble aggregate that had less impact shock that a paved road would. She still found herself winded earlier than she would like, but reminded herself that the altitude change was significant and it would just take time before she was back to her normal endurance. A shiny glint on the grass caught the corner of her eye as she slowed to a walk, gasping for air, and she swung her head around to see what it was. There, on the grass, were two men in fencing whites, practicing. The taller would lunge, the shorter would parry, and then the scene would change. As she walked to catch her breath, Sally watched in fascination, drawing closer as she followed the path. She picked back up to a run as she passed them, and tried not to stare as the men continued sparring. On her second lap, she pushed herself to run until she could see the men again, and the slowed to a walk to catch her breath, captivated by the careful elegance of their movement. Again, just as she was passing, she picked back up to a run. By the time she made it back to the garden entrance, the fencers were also reaching the door, masks held under their arms. Sally was surprised to see one of them was Victor.

“Good morning, Sally. I trust the garden paths were more to your liking?” He asked. Sally swiped her forearm across her brow, trying in vain to keep the sweat from reaching her eyes.

“The paths are very well maintained, and the gardens are beautiful,” Sally agreed. “That was you I saw fencing?”

“As I said before, running is not my sport,” Victor laughed. “But we all must find something to keep us in shape.” Sally noticed his hair was damp with perspiration, and realized fencing was likely a harder workout than it appeared.

“It looks so elegant. Like a dance,” Sally commented as they stepped through the garden doors.

“You were able to observe then, as you ran?” He asked.

“Kind of hard to avoid looking,” Sally laughed. “You’re quite tall, and in case you hadn’t noticed, dressed entirely in white. You stood out amongst the greenery.”

Victor smiled in return. “Just as running is your morning constitutional, fencing is mine. It’s a gentleman’s sport.”

“Gentlemen don’t run?” Sally quirked an eyebrow in question, biting her lip to hide her smirk. Victor blinked slowly, almost as though he was considering his response.

“Only in an emergency,” he chuckled. Sally laughed and shook her head. “It would appear we both need to wash up before breakfast. I will see you in the dining room.” Victor excused himself and headed the opposite direction from the living quarters. Sally made her way to her suite and quickly showered and dressed for breakfast. Before she headed to the dining room, she checked in the 3D rendering of the car and was pleased to see it was finally ready. She wanted to start stripping back the body and tearing down the engine, but it was going to take weeks, she feared. The sooner she could start on it, the better. Every piece was going to need to be inventoried, categorized and its location marked so she would be able to reassemble the engine and the car. That meant a photo every time anything was done.

The dining room was quiet, and Sally slowed her steps as she walked in. She approached her seat and dropped into it with a sigh. A servant quickly brought her a cup of coffee. Sally smiled in thanks and gazed out the window at the mountains beyond the castle. They were idyllic. It was hard for her to believe that those mountains were where the Dracula legends had started. She was so lost in the view and her coffee that she didn’t notice Victor arrive and sit until he spoke.

“The summer will soon draw to an end, and the mountains will be blanketed with snow. Have you ever skied?” Victor asked. Sally shook her head.

“No, I’m a beach girl, right to my core. I moved south for a reason,” Sally laughed.

“You will like skiing, I think. And maybe snowshoeing. We’ll have to find something to keep you active when the gardens are buried and there is nowhere to run,” Victor smiled.

“I hadn’t thought of that,” Sally admitted. “I don’t think I’ve ever had to reschedule my runs for an entire season.”

“We will get you on snowshoes as soon as there is a good snowpack. It’s not as fast, but the soldiers complain that it is just as exhausting,” Victor laughed. Sally found herself smiling.

“That might be okay. I did get myself snow pants.” Breakfast was served to them, and they both fell silent to eat. Despite being able to hear her stomach growl, Sally forced herself to eat slowly, keeping pace with Victor’s slower movements.

“Vurdalakovich will meet you at your rooms in fifteen minutes, Sally,” Victor began. “To escort you to the garage.”

“I really don’t need an escort, Victor,” Sally protested. “I appreciate that he’ll come –“

“You do need a guard, Sally,” Victor disagreed, cutting her off with a sharp look. “And he is happy for the assignment.”

“Of course,” Sally acquiesced. It wasn’t worth angering the man who might very well be the most powerful in eastern Europe. “If you’ll excuse me, I need to change.”

“I would walk you to your rooms, but I’m afraid I am needed in the labs,” Victor nodded. “I will see you at lunch.”

Sally nodded, and rose from her chair, stepping away from the table with a careful backward step before turning to head toward her rooms. She carefully hung her sundress in her closet and pulled on a pair of shorts and tank top before pulling her coveralls on. After pulling on her socks and boots, she tied her hair up and dropped a lip-gloss in her pocket. The decreased humidity was giving her chapped lips, and as she rubbed her lips together to spread the gloss around, she had a sudden recollection of Tony kissing her, and goosebumps rose on her skin. She tapped out a quick text on her phone before turning it off again. As she plugged it back into the charger, a knock sounded at the door, and she collected her tablet before opening the door to Sasha. He nodded, wordlessly, and led her to the garage. Once they were away from the view of the castle he relaxed enough to ask questions.

“Do you know anything about this car, Sasha?” Sally asked, flipping through the images and flagging areas where she needed better photos for the rendering.

“Not really. I took a look at the engine for the emperor when he was first looking for mechanics, but it was past my knowledge, even from working with my grandfather,” Sasha admitted. “I’ll be able to help you, but not until you have an idea of where you want to start.”

“I think we need to start with a tear down. And meticulous photos so my program can render a proper blueprint for us. I found a handbook for the vehicle yesterday, and I’m going to scan it and see if I can get a translation, but if you speak any German, it might be helpful.” Sally stopped and waited while Sasha opened the garage for them. He turned the lights on and Sally approached the wall of tools on the far side of the garage. She pulled a grease pencil out of her overalls and dropped it on top of her tablet on the bench before pulling a series of tools off the wall. “I haven’t used metric tools that often.”

“It’s no different. Just match size to size,” Sasha laughed and approached the bench. He pulled down a few more tools. “You’ll need these more than others, if this is built like any other German vehicle.” Sally smiled. Picking her tablet up again, she circled the car one last time and took the photos that she felt she needed while it was intact.

“Do you know if there’s any drop cloths kept in here?” She asked as she tried to decide where to start.

“I believe there is a cupboard by the toolbench filled with them.” Sasha nodded. “How many do you want?”

“Laid out along either side of the car. I’ll need a black marker too.” Sally popped the bonnet on the engine and took some more photos. She heard Sasha rummaging and then heard the snap of a cloth being opened. “Thank you.”

“This is more worthwhile than standing outside when the door locks from the inside anyhow,” Sasha laughed and laid out another sheet. “Some of the body panels are going to be very heavy.”

“Yeah, there’s an overhead hoist though. And I’m stronger than I look,” Sally laughed in return.

Once the sheets were on the floor, Sally grabbed some tools and started taking the car apart. It was slow, meticulous work, stopping to take photos with every piece she removed, and marking where everything came from both on the sheet and in her app.

“I’ve never seen anyone do this before,” Sasha commented as Sally wrote notes about a group of screws on the drop sheet and then placed the screws in the circle beside the notes.

“Did you notice how I moved all the sheets back about six feet after you laid them out?” Sally asked. “They don’t move now for the duration of the restoration. Where they are on the sheet directly corresponds to where they came from on the car.”

“It’s clever,” Sasha nodded. A short tone sounded from his pocket and he sighed. “That would be my dinner alarm. I know you haven’t got very far, but the emperor –“

“I know, he made it clear that he expects me at every meal. I’m anticipating this tear down is going to take weeks, Sasha. It’s probably best to set a routine and stick with it anyhow,” Sally interrupted. “It’s just going to be get increasingly frustrating when I have to leave thirty to forty-five minutes prior to meals to wash up and dress.”

“Am I right to suspect that even though you are only working a seven hour day here in the garage, that your computer will be working through days and nights for the first weeks?” Sasha asked. Sally laughed as she scrubbed her hands in the utility sink.

“It would take ages to get an accurate rendering if I only processed info during that seven hour work day. Surely that isn’t forbidden as well?” She asked.

“I think as long as you are not working, the emperor will have no objections,” Sasha nodded. “Let’s get you back to the castle so you can dress for dinner.”

Sally was careful to dress more formally than she had the previous day, and when she entered the dining room, Victor rose and smiled. His appraising gaze lasted a little longer than Sally felt comfortable with, and she could feel a flush creeping up her neck and cheeks in response.

“Forgive me Sally. Every time I see you, you are more beautiful,” Victor complimented as he held out her chair. She glanced away uncomfortably as she sat.

“Thank you,” she murmured. The meal was quietly and efficiently laid out in front of them. Sally glanced up at the clock, worried she’d been late, and was reassured that she hadn’t been. The staff were just exceptionally prompt.

“While you readied yourself, I spoke with Vurdalakovich. He said you expect the initial work to take weeks?”

“Yeah. Because I’m not familiar with the vehicle, I want to be really careful to document every thing that comes off the vehicle, right down to the smallest washer or nut. With his help, I was able to lift the bonnet completely this morning. I’m going to strip all the body panels first so I can figure out what needs fabricating as soon as possible. You said you had a good fabrication shop here?”

“Primarily for the robotics lab, but anything you need, Sally,” Victor nodded. “The fabricators can make anything for the car. Engine components, body pieces, whatever.”

“That’s fantastic, Victor,” Sally sighed in relief. “And if they’re usually used for robotics they’ll be well calibrated.”

“Absolutely. You need but ask,” Victor agreed. “But let us speak of something other than work. We are both on our meal break.”

“Okay,” Sally smiled. “Tell me more about Latveria. You’d mentioned the country had maintained neutrality during the wars. I grew up during the Cold War, Victor. Was Latveria a Soviet Bloc country?”

“No.” Victor’s tone was firm. “Latveria was lucky to remain free from the influence of the Bolsheviks, despite being surrounded during the Cold War. It has always been a monarchy.”

“Did you inherit the throne from your father?”

“Latveria’s internal history has been a little less than peaceful over the years. I took the throne from the previous monarch. He was,” Victor paused, “problematic. For the people.” Sally quirked an eyebrow and sipped her coffee, hoping Victor would continue. “The mountains are home to the Romani, and the last monarch’s treatment of ethnic minorities was troublesome.”

“The Romani?” Sally asked.

“I think Americans use the outsider’s term,” Victor explained. “Gypsies. It’s a slur. The past ruler hated the Roma. He was responsible for my parent’s deaths. I took his country from him so that he couldn’t exterminate the Roma, and have brought Latveria out of the dark. We are now the leading nation in robotics.”

“And you don’t even have a Wikipedia entry,” Sally smiled. Victor pursed his lips in a frown and Sally held up a hand in surrender. “That was a joke.”

“I prefer to keep prying eyes out of our business. The entire GDP is dependent on our advantage in the robotics industry, and as a result, I need to run the country like a corporation. Espionage is a huge problem in technology and engineering,” Victor lectured. Sally nodded. “Enough about politics. I think I mentioned the incredible winter sport?”

“I really hope to try snowboarding,” Sally admitted. “While snowshoeing sounds like it will be excellent daily exercise, snowboarding is a little like surfing on the mountainside. And I do love to surf.”

“I will see to it that the runs are groomed for you. I am sure there will be days when you cannot do much work on the car and will need to bide your time,” Victor smiled. “Now, tonight after supper I am needed in the lab. I’m afraid I have to excuse myself from our evenings plans already.”

“It’s just as well. I’m finding the jetlag catching up to me, and would like an early night,” Sally smiled. “That said, I should probably head back to the garage so I am not cutting hours from my day.” She excused herself but still waited for Victor to dismiss her before heading back to her room to change back into her coveralls. Sasha caught up to her halfway across the grounds and glared slightly.

“Do I need to find a bell for your neck so I know where you are?” He asked.

“Sorry. I wasn’t sure where you were, but I got caught up in conversation with Victor and lunch went long. I really want to get some more peeled off that chassis,” Sally apologized. She wasn’t really sorry, and she knew Sasha could tell.

They settled back to the tedious task of cataloging each piece that came off the car, and worked through the afternoon. It was just approaching dusk when Sasha quirked his head and then checked his watch.

“It is time, Sally,” he commented. Sally sighed.

“I feel like we’ve made no progress at all,” she complained. “Let me take a few more photos and we can go.” She grabbed her tablet and quickly took photos of everything they’d completed.

“I shouldn’t have to remind you of your own words, Sally, but remember. This is an unfamiliar vehicle, and a once in a lifetime restoration. You’ve got six months. This is day two,” Sasha laughed. “It will come more quickly as the days progress and you get more comfortable.”

“Victor was right to assign you as my detail. You’re a good assistant. I don’t know much about the guard duty stuff, but you’ve certainly been helpful with the car,” Sally smiled as she washed her hands. “Do you have coveralls? It’s just going to get dirtier, and your uniform probably shouldn’t get coated in grease.”

“I’ll see about getting some,” Sasha nodded and waited for her to step outside the garage before he locked up.

Sally was relieved to be in slightly more casual clothing again after having to dress for lunch, and knowing that she was free for the evening after the meal made her anxious to be finished so she could go and work a little, off the clock, and talk with Tony. She was looking forward to talking about the car with him, but more wanted a chance for a video chat so she could see his face.

“You seem distracted this evening, Sally,” Victor commented, snapping her back to reality.

“I’m sorry, Victor. I’m missing Tony today, and the time difference hasn’t worked in our favour yet. It’s early days, I’m sure I’ll be less homesick as time goes on,” Sally apologized. Victor smiled and nodded.

“I was wondering about that. Your internet connection has only been used for a few emails.” Victor’s words hit Sally like a slap to the face. Her suspicions had been correct.

“I didn’t realize you were monitoring my accounts.” Sally chose her words carefully.

“Like I said at dinner, Latveria’s advantage depends on preventing espionage. Outgoing messages are monitored for attachments that could be security breaches.” Victor said it like it was completely normal, expected behaviour. Sally swallowed thickly.

“Of course,” she nodded. “I hadn’t thought of that.”

“I wouldn’t expect you to, darling,” Victor smiled, laying his hand across hers. “You’re hardly a spy. You blush if someone looks at you too long.” As if on cue, Sally blushed again and gently extracted her hand from under his.

“Yeah, I’ve never had much of a poker face,” Sally laughed uncomfortably, before falling silent again. Victor looked at the clock at the end of the dining room, laid his cutlery across his plate gently and placed his napkin carefully beside his plate.

“If you’ll excuse me, I must get back to the lab.” He rose and departed before Sally could respond. She pushed her plate away, appetite gone, and quickly made her way to her room. Once she was settled in her pyjamas, she connected to the castle Internet and sent emails to her mother and Tony, while texting Tony on her phone.

“I need you to respond to my email so that we can video chat.”

“Let me get into something more comfortable.” Sally could almost hear the teasing leer in Tony’s text.

“Yeah, about that. Victor is monitoring the castle Internet. I figured he was, but he confirmed that while we ate supper.”

“So this is video chat sex then?”

“No!”

“He’ll stop monitoring if we’re talking filth and I’m naked.”

“Alternately, he’ll monitor us more closely. You’re a good looking guy, Tony.”

“I’ve responded to your email now. Shut up and video chat me before he gets more suspicious. ;)”

Sally checked her email quickly, and read Tony’s reply before she opened the video chat app and dialed him. He picked up, and she breathed a sigh of relief that he appeared to be fully clothed.

“You look exhausted, princess.” He was to the point.

“I’ve only been here a couple days. I believe the term is called jet lag?” She laughed.

“Right. I forget that not everyone has a JARVIS to monitor them. Drink more water. And remind me to make you your own AI when you come home.”

“I’m going to have other things on my mind when I come home,” Sally laughed. “How’s the planning coming for the wedding?”

“It’s been two days, babe.”

“And you’re trying to tell me Pepper hasn’t made progress?” Sally laughed again. “Not possible. More likely that you haven’t asked yet. I’ll email her right now.” She opened a window and sent a quick message to Pepper and one to Natasha as well. If Victor was going to monitor her email, she was going to make it as boring and mundane as she could. Bridezilla would be sending emails every day. To everyone involved.

“Warn everyone to expect a lot of wedding emails from me to clog up Victor’s monitoring.” She sent the text on her phone and looked back up at Tony. “I miss you.”

“I miss you too. It seems like two weeks, not two days,” Tony admitted.

“Are you keeping busy?”

“Always, princess. I’d kind of fallen behind on things once you arrived. I guess there’s a benefit hidden in the thousands of miles separating us. I’ve got to focus on my work,” he laughed.

“I am not going to be blamed for your inability to focus!” Sally protested, laughing.

“God, I miss that sound.” Tony was suddenly serious.

“Me squawking?” Sally furrowed her brow in confusion.

“You laughing. Any chance you’ll be finished that car in two weeks?” Tony asked. Sally almost thought he was serious.

“This car is incredible. I’ll have to ask Victor if I can send you photos,” Sally said. “I’m pretty sure it uses airplane engine technology, but I haven’t actually got into the engine yet. I’d say we’re about ten percent into the tear down.”

“We?”

“I have a security detail who was a mechanics apprentice before he was in the royal guard,” Sally explained. “He’s helping. Tell Clint I have a better apprentice now.” A light behind Tony started flashing red and he glanced over his shoulder.

“No, Dum-E! Stop!” He called before turning back to the monitor. “I’m sorry, Sal. I gotta go deal with this.”

“Don’t forget to sleep, Tony,” Sally chided. He rolled his eyes.

“If I get ahead of my deadlines while you’re gone, I’ll be able to slack off once you’re home.” Tony was walking toward whatever was going on while holding the phone on his end.

“Or you’ll sleep through the honeymoon, and let me tell you how happy that will make me,” Sally laughed. Tony winked and shook his head.

“Not at chance. Not after six months apart,” he argued. “Shit, I’ve really gotta deal with this. Dum-E, stop! I’m sorry.”

“Go rein in your problem child robot. I love you. Talk to you tomorrow?” Sally asked.

“Wouldn’t miss it. Just knock me another email to let me know you’re waiting,” Tony nodded. “I love you. Sleep sweet, princess.”

Sally closed the connection and finished getting ready for bed, plugging in all her devices to charge. Just as she was drifting off to sleep, she received a text from Tony.

“I’ve had JARVIS redouble the security on the satellite link, and Natasha is going to see what her old network can give us on Victor and Latveria. I’m not going to let you stay there if you aren’t safe. JARVIS assures me there is no way that Victor can pick up our satellite communications.”

Sally relaxed with the phone still in her hand and drifted off to sleep.

#avengers fanfic #tony stark x OFC

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