#mouth guards kirkland

[sunnylolli]

Lighthouse au

A rough draft of the beginning of the au, though I'm still adding onto it!!

The rough idea is: Arthur is a lighthouse keeper, appointed to the job as a political favor to him in 1880, to thank him for his service in the Royal Navy. As he enlisted very young with the Marines, he doesn't have family to bring with him besides his brothers, who are largely uninterested and leaves him as the sole lightkeeper of an island (That I made up, but it's supposed to be off the coast of Dartmouth, Southern Britain) named Isle of St. peter.

Francis, a French Marine Captain, washes ashore in the bay, just beyond Arthur's house. Arthur discovers him on his way to the lighthouse early in the morning and brings him home for lack of anything else to do. Francis remembers little to nothing about before he woke up on St. peter's, he's wearing a marine uniform that is 30 years outdated and he's drawn out to the sea, wading out waist-deep sporadically, without cause. And when asked, he can't conjure up any explanation, other than he feels like he's forgotten something that he needs to find. The two of them grow close, becoming each other's confidants and warming up to each other over time.

But as time goes on, Francis begins to act strangely and Arthur begins to notice him zoning out whenever he sees the sea. Arthur begins to have dreams that he cannot remember in the morning, he begins to hear whispers whenever he's too close to the coast. The only place on the entire island that feels safe becomes the lighthouse, and as things escalate, he holes himself up in it more and more. Francis keeps wading out into the sea and Arthur needs to come drag him out more and more, until he eventually decides not to. In a morbid, insane curiosity to see what will happen when Francis inevitably cannot touch the bottom anymore.

He sees him drown. Then sees him back on the shore the next morning, alive and breathing. Arthur begins to try following him after that and it's a slippery slope, to follow the only person you've ever loved into the pitch black, icy cold waters of the sea, when you can't swim.

Arthur Kirkland sits on a chair with his overalls soaked to the knee and his woolen sweater damp enough to make even the warmth of the fireplace seem mute.

Wind roars and lures outside. The sun is obscured in spurts and rises to around mid-morning.

A stranger lies in his bed. Damp and pathetic, Arthur watches him cautiously from a respectable distance.

The stranger is wearing an old navy uniform.

A French marine uniform.

And he’s only breathing, in and out between shivers now, because Arthur found him when he did.

Floating just a bit out from the shore on his way to the light. He’d floated right at the surface. Back facing the sky, face down to the clams.

Arthur clasps his hands together.

The Frenchman keeps breathing.

He has a neatly groomed face, Arthur notes, something you wouldn’t be able to say about his hair.

It’s splayed around his head like seaweed.

Some of it stuck to his face, some sticks to Arthur’s pillow. Hair that long, it doesn’t seem like a skipper’s apparel.

He might be of higher ranking, then. Certainly comfortable enough to break dress code.

“Typical.” Arthur mutters, his voice is swallowed by the house as it always is and he reaches up to remove his hat. Rubbing his neck tiredly, he runs through the morning in his head and tries to slot it in with his duties.

He should alert the coastal guards.

Send out a telegraph, informing of a possible capsized french vessel somewhere around the mouth of the bay.

But the man’s uniform looks too old, somehow. And Arthur gets the feeling that even if he did alert authorities and got a team out to search, they wouldn’t find any ship.

And they wouldn’t find any other crew.

He sits there watching for a while longer, frowning. Fumbling with his hat and biting the inside of his cheek till it bleeds; The taste of iron gets him going and he stands.

He needs to re-oil the wheels and rewind the clockwork.

Maybe after, when he’s measured and noted down his supply of fuel, he’ll figure out where the hell this frog came from.

Francis Bonnefoy awakes to the sound of gulls.

They screech mercilessly outside and with a groan, he lifts a heavy arm, a subtle crack at his shoulder bringing him to full wakefulness.

He opens his eyes to a sunstreaked roof.

Wooden-beams cut across it, carved with initials he can barely see.

To his right is a nightstand, to his left, a window. Curtained with lace and cotton, allowing the barest of sun to peek through.

The air smells faintly like varnish and seasalt. The bed he lies in creaks beneath him, and he fights himself upright, supporting his arms against his knees.

He curses quietly to himself, bringing his hands up to rub delicately down his face.

He feels nauseous and faint.

Did he have too much to drink?

He doesn’t usually go overboard with his liquor, but maybe he holds his Gin worse than he thought.

But, he thinks, he doesn’t remember drinking. Matter of fact, he doesn’t remember a whole lot.

The room he sits in is wholly unfamiliar to him, once he feels good enough to glance around.

The sidetable is sparsely populated, with a single bottle of unbranded liquor, snuff and some sort of a journal accompanied by a pencil.

The floors are old and worn, a crate sits near the far wall, nicely decorated with an embroidered cloth lying on top.

An empty brandy bottle, serving now as a candleholder, sits overrun with wax on top of it. The glass glistening a soft brown in the light from the windows.

The room doesn’t leave much space for much else, besides an overridden desk and a dresser. There are a few pictures on the walls; Francis spies a group photograph, paintings of boats and ships. A half-finished project of a model ship sits on the windowsill.

The wood awkward and angled, the masts missing its sails.

It’s strange.

Francis feels strange.

He doesn’t remember docking.

He especially doesn’t remember entering a town, let alone a house.

He turns to look through the window and pulls the curtains aside to peek outside.

The view that greets him is of a green hilltop overlooking the sea. He follows the curve of it, going up and up until he spots a lighthouse.

A path forged from the garden gate a few feet away all the way up to the beacon.

His stomach sinks.

They were at open sea.

Nowhere near the shore.

He looks down, patting at his uniform.

It’s stiff and damp to the touch. Sand in the folds of the clothing, algae and seaweed sitting trapped around the buttons.

“Oh.” He mutters, swallowing against a dull panic clawing at his chest.

“Oh, Sainte Marie.”

[rebelsandtherest]

Frater Familias

Words: 5,719

Summary: Churchill lies, Singapore falls, an empire abandons his children in a sea of wolves. When their brother finds out, there will be hell to pay.In early 1942, Alfred Jones travels across the globe to save his baby brother and sister from the betrayal of their father. When Arthur Kirkland returns at long last, his eldest is waiting for him, ready to spill blood.

Warnings: Language, mentions of death and bodily injury.

Author’s Note: I kept things very vague to make it easier for myself, but this takes place not too long after the Battle of Coral Sea in May 1942.

You can also read on Ao3 if you prefer

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Alfred Jones hadn't wanted to kill his father this badly since 1781. Come to think of it, Alfred wasn't sure he'd ever wanted to kill his father as much as he did now.

Sure, he hadn't been pleased that President Roosevelt acquiesced to Britain's insistence on a Germany-first strategy. The scar of Pearl Harbor was still fresh and livid, and he was spoiling for a chance to hunt Kiko down personally. Even so, he'd kept his mouth diplomatically shut and had taken heart when Churchill assured him that British forces in the pacific would hold, that the ANZACs would have plenty of reinforcements to hold allied territories there.

That, as it turned out, had been a massive lie. Gargantuan. Colossal. Titanic, in fact. His father might as well have designed the ship himself, stuck his two youngest on board without lifeboats bound straight for an ice field, and stayed cozy in Belfast while Alfred broke his back feeding coal to the Carpathia in a blind, unplanned panic. Churchill fiddled while Singapore fell, and Father fiddled along with him.

"Where is he?" Alfred demanded, ignoring the guard at the entrance who was trying to slow him down."

"I'm sorry?" Asked the startled British soldier stationed at the war room door.

"Arthur Kirkland. Where is he?"

The soldier took a few tries to say, "General Kirkland hasn't yet arrived, sir."

"Fine. Which room will be his?"

"Sir, I'm so sorry, can I get your name, I'll need to ask–"

"Where?" Alfred demanded, and there was something in his too-perfect voice, his too-blue eyes, that made the soldier startle and point immediately down the hall.

"End of the hall, on the left."

Alfred stormed in that direction without a word. The soldier blinked a few times. A deer released from headlights, it took him a moment to get his bearings.

"Wait," he called after Alfred, quickly jogging after him. "Wait sir, you're not allowed to-" but Alfred was already inside, going around to sit in the officer's chair behind the empty letter desk. "Sir, the General won't be here for another five, six hours."

"Fine," Alfred said, and had this young Australian known him better, he would have known to be frightened by his stoic, collected anger. Facial expression unchanging, the American wheeled back in the chair and propped his feet on the desk. "I'll wait."

--------------------

There was quite a bit of hubbub around the base when the British entourage finally arrived. None of the humans here knew what Arthur was, but they did know he was a high-ranking General, so the arrival had caused quite a bit of fuss and bustle. Alfred remained in the office, unaffected. When he heard English accents appear down the hall, he closed his eyes and mentally braced himself. When he opened them again, the click-clack of English bootheels was just around the corner, and in seconds he was staring up at his father, England himself.

Arthur stopped short just inside the threshold of his office, flanked by two aides, one young and fresh-faced, the other brunet with a trim mustache.

"Alfred," he said plainly, as if he hadn't expected to see his eldest here, after everything, the 's glare was fixed solidly on Arthur, but he spared a dismissive glance at the humans. He returned his ire towards his father before he told the aides,

"You two, get out."

Arthur didn't even blink. The younger aide looked to his mustachioed companion for help.

"Sir," the elder man said, glancing diplomatically between Arthur and Alfred, whose crossed arms and lack of cover disguised whatever rank he might've been. "This office has been assigned to General Kirkland, I must insist that—"

"Yes, it has," Alfred said in a patronizing tone. "Now get out."

Bewildered, the aide looked to Arthur, but though the General's eyebrows had fallen in a dark look of annoyance, his eyes hadn't moved from the seething American before him.

"It's been a long journey, Hesten," Arthur said stiffly, "go find your lodgings." The younger aide immediately began to splutter some confusion, but his elder quickly shushed him and shepherded him out the door. "Close the door on your way out," Arthur instructed. The brunet man did, glancing fleetingly at Arthur and then at Alfred before the door clicked shut.

The walls were battle-thick concrete, and as the door shut, the sound of the outside hall faded into a dull ambiance.

"Of all the asinine American theatrics I've witnessed, Alfred, this must be among the worst."

"How dare you," Alfred spat.

"I beg your pardon?"

"I said," Alfred yanked his feet off of his father's desk, not caring that he left scuff marks. He stood to his full height and god it had never felt so right to be taller than this cowardly, self-righteous excuse for a father, "how fucking dare you. Show up now? Of all times? Where were you?"

"Alfred," Arthur didn't have to physically roll his eyes for Alfred to hear the intent in his voice, "I did not ask for you to—"

"Where were you?" Alfred demanded, raising his voice louder than he'd intended. "Because I can tell you right now where you weren't."

"I'm not going to to stand here and allow you to lecture me in my own office—"

"By the time I got here, Jack had already died twice!" Alfred shouted. Arthur had been ready with a retort, but he stopped short as the 'twice' rang off the walls. "Zee was only alive by pure luck, stuck as a nurse on a doomed destroyer, blown up by so much shrapnel that by the time I got her to shore I thoughtshe was dead. And where were you?"

For a moment, silence was his only answer, father and son locked in a staring contest while Alfred took in loud, furious lungfuls of air.

"I realize you've only recently opened your eyes to the fact," Arthur said flatly, "but we are at war, Alfred. We all must make sacrifices."

"Sacrifices," Alfred scoffed, surprised they'd reached this point so quickly. "And who is it that decides what's worth sacrificing?"

"We are Nations," Arthur insisted. "Difficult decisions such as these are an unfortunate necessity of what we are, how we must conduct ourselves in times of—"

"They are your children, Arthur!" Alfred hadn't meant to call his father by his first name, and he hadn't meant his voice to crack like it had. "Damn the nations, damn Churchill, damn you, damn it all, they are your children!"

"They are my children," Arthur matched Alfred's volume, but kept a stern expression, "and they, along with the rest of my family, are at war."

"Fuck you!" Alfred shouted back, "Fuck you and this entire fucking family, Jack is barely over a century old, Zee even less so, they're babies, dad, infants! And you just fucking left them out here!"

"We've all seen war within our childhoods," Arthur snapped back, with a surprising amount of bite behind his words.

"With muskets, bows, and daggers, not this!" Alfred swept his hand as if to indicate the entire world. "Go to the artillery, go to the infirmary, go to the foxholes and tell me this war is like anything you or Ifaced as children. Jack's only recently got over the shellshock from the last time you left him to the wolves, and now this!" Alfred took sick satisfaction in seeing his father's face flinch.

"I've tried to shield them from it," Arthur bit back, "Just like I tried to shield you and Matthew when you were young, but it's never worked, not once. It's not worth lying to them."

"Lying to them about what? Your reinforcements? Their chance at survival once Churchill wrote them off?" Alfred demanded. He watched his father flinch again and hoped to god he was listening. He was aware that he was shouting loudly enough to be heard outside the office, but he couldn't find it in himself to care. Let the humans know exactly what their general was—a callus empire, and an absent father. "Curtin was preparing a speech to brace his people for invasion, and how to break it to their children—their children!" the American spat. "Your son was deluded enough to believe he could fight them off alone, because what other choice did he have?" Arthur was emotionless. "Tell me! What other choice did either of them have? If I hadn't heard the rumors coming out of the pacific, what do you think would have happened?!"

"But you did hear them," Arthur said, voice straining to keep its composure. "And so your very complaint here is rendered moot-"

"Don't you go making this out to be my fucking responsibility," Alfred spat, coming around the desk to face his father directly, where no tip of Arthur's chin could hide how much his eldest towered over him, "don't you sit there and act all sanctimonious because I managed to get here at the eleventh hour. It wasn't your doing, it wasn't your plan. I'm here in spite of you, not because of you."

"And yet," Arthur wasn't actually looking at Alfred when he said it, straightening his shoulders to some invisible mirror, saving face as he always has when he said, "You are here, as am I, now."

"I was here before you had the decency to do your own duty as father," Alfred yelled, "I was here before the order reached the SecNav's desk. You were off in fuck knows where doing fuck knows what drinking tea farmed thousands of miles from your stupid cozy island, while I commandeered a ship to offer your children hope." Alfred glared, a thousand things he wanted to say simmering under the bonfire of anger. "I have a court martial waiting for me in Los Angeles," he confessed angrily. "They'll drop the case before I get home, once I've told the President about the hell you've left us here, but don't you dare act like my being here was part of any grand plan. They are your children, and you chose to abandon them. If I didn't know that it would fuck them over even more than you already have, I would've stuck a bowie in your liver the second you stepped through that door."

A long stretch of silence passed in between them, but it offered no resolution.

"Are you not my child, as well?" Arthur asked, venturing a glance at his eldest.

"I am," Alfred replied, glaring, "but none of us asked to be." When the words landed, Arthur's furious expression cracked and morphed through shockwaves of hurt. Alfred knew he'd hit his target, so he took a step closer. Quiter, but not quietly, he said,

"For the last century, I've looked on in envy at the father they had. A doting father, a loving father, a father who was there," Alfred pressed into his father's personal space, and Arthur was glaring up at him with a mix of hurt, anger, and trepidation writhing underneath his drawn brows. "Nothing at all like the man who paid humans to raise me. I thought you had changed. I've seen you change, become someone you never were for me, and I praised God and all his fucking angels that my brother and sister would be so lucky. It took him four kids, but Arthur Kirkland finally figured it out. Now it's all gone right out the window because his empire's gotten too big for his goddamn war," Alfred's fists were trembling with anger. He'd never said such things to his father in all his life, and he hadn't planned on saying them today. It was the memory of Jack's dead eyes, the tears of relief on Zee's bloodied cheeks, how thin and worn they'd both felt under the weight of his hugs, that dug up a protective sort of anger for them that he'd never felt for himself.

Arthur looked like he wanted to slap Alfred across the face. If he wasn't so completely dumbstruck, he probably would have.

"You are not going to do to them what you did to me," Alfred growled, getting right up in his father's face, "because if you do, I'll fucking kill you." With that, he stormed out of the office and slammed the door louder than a gunshot.

Arthur stood motionless for several long minutes afterwards, before slowly moving around his desk and gingerly lowering himself into his chair. At great length, he bent over his lap, ran a world-weary hand through his hair, and let out a shaking sigh.

--------------------

It felt as though the entire building was staring when Alfred left his father's office. He tried to ignore it, wiping his sweaty palms on his trousers and trying to level his rapid breathing. God, he needed fresh air. He'd taken not even ten steps toward the exit before he came to a halt, faced with the last person he expected to see.

"Jack," he blurted, heart leaping into his throat. "How long have you—" Alfred stopped short, because it was clear enough from the boy's expression he'd been there more than long enough.

"I-I was just here to give him-" Jack looked down at his hands, and it was then that Alfred realized the teen was holding a dossier. "I heard dad got in this afternoon—since he's not been briefed on the–" his voice was steady, but he wasn't, swaying on his feet, hands making the folder wobble just slightly. Underfed, underslept, and overwrought, he looked like a stiff breeze might knock him offshore. "I mean, I thought I should be the one to tell him about everything, and you know how he likes having things written down- I didn't write all of it, but I wrote one of the reports, edited some of them, you know, included the things I thought he would find important, everything we were able to…" Jack trailed off, staring down at the folder in his hands, wondering if there'd been any point in putting it together. It wasn't as though the British Empire had any need for retrospectives on what was essentially a United States Navy rescue operation.

"I guess I just wanted to let him know I was alright," Jack muttered, almost to himself. He heard a sigh and looked up. Unfamiliar wrinkles cast shadows across Alfred's forehead, a mix of grief and pity and fading anger. The American reached under his glasses to rub at his eyes.

"C'mon, kid," he said behind his hand, voice hoarse from yelling and fatigue. "Let's get you outta here, aren't you supposed to be resting?"

"I haven't been able to sleep much," Jack replied. They both had dark circles under their eyes.

"Fair enough. Any good place to hide around here? I nicked some of the old man's gin." Alfred shook what sounded like a partially empty bottle, and Jack raised his eyebrows in surprise.

"He's going to notice that," he said, eyes flickering to his father's office. "Soon," he added.

"No he won't," Alfred used the bottle to wave Jack into step with him as he left their father to sulk alone. "He drinks rum when he knows he's fucked up. And the fact that he hasn't already come out here to search my pockets means he knows he fucked up."

Jack led Alfred out past the perimeter of the small base and up onto a small hill a few hundred meters from the beach. Though grassy and dusted in the shade of several short, scraggly trees, the area was still dusted with sand. It made a comfortable place for the pair to sit and stare out at the ocean, passing their father's gin back and forth until they were both tipsy enough to deal with what the day had wrought. The sun was hot on their backs as it tilted past afternoon an into a long autumn dusk.

"Did he really mean it?" Jack blurted, breaking the silence. Alfred looked over at him.

"Mean what?"

"I mean, when you said that Churchill planned to give up the… surely dad have to have known, right? Did he… I guess I just… did he really plan to do that? To take Churchill's side of things, if things got really bad?"

Alfred opened his mouth to speak, but quickly thought better of it. Things got 'really bad' a long time ago, kid, he'd almost said. Alfred wasn't willing to guess whether or not Arthur had really planned to abandon his youngest son and darling daughter to the fury of the Japanese military, if it had come to that. Deep down, past all his anger and resentment, even Alfred did not want to think of his father as a cruel man. Callous, yes, stupid, absolutely, but not the sort of man who would watch his children sink beneath the waves of invasion and remain unaffected.

Yet if Alfred's ships had not sailed swiftly enough, what would Arthur be doing at that moment? Alfred realized Jack was staring at him, eyes lost. He sighed.

"Dad is… a complicated man," Alfred told him lamely. "As far as fathers go—and never tell him I said this—he's not… the worst out there. But wars turn him into a moron, make him forget his human side. I think we all saw that well enough in '15." Jack looked away quickly, jaw clenching. Alfred was grateful that at least that he hadn't had to say Gallipoli to get his point across. "He's always been like this. It's nothing you did. It's just him being the dumbass he hides under all that 'keep calm and carry on' bullshit." He watched Jack's back for a moment. The teen fiddled with the sandy grass and found a pebble, flicked it down the hill and watched it trace a line in the sand.

"Always been like this?" Jack asked, and glanced back to Alfred, unable to hide his curiosity. Alfred actually laughed.

"God, kid, he used to be even worse. I mean, hell, he was still a fucken' pirate when I was a baby, he ever tell you that?"

"He what?" Jack's face grew into a wicked grin.

"Sure as shit! I still remember—I mean, not well, but I know he had this ludicrous red coat and earrings and a cutlass and everything. God knows what a pirate was doing with a baby."

"So what, did he take you out on the ship with him?" Jack was transported, trying to imagine Alfred as a baby, much less their stick-up-the-arse father as a pirate.

"That, I don't know. It was a long time ago, and I was really small. I do remember his ship, though, at least the one he had when I was a bit older." Alfred's smile faltered. "He'd be gone for years at a time, even decades. He'd come back unannounced, stay for a week, and then leave without saying goodbye. He did that because of a war. We'd always have a year or so of peace in between, and he'd stick around and be a decent dad, and then, boom, another war, and off he goes. Actually," Alfred chuckled, "I'm not sure he was ever not at war, when I was growing up, I think the letters just took a while to cross the Atlantic." he shrugged and looked over at Jack, who was frowning at him. It made him uncomfortable. He cleared his throat.

"Listen, all I'm trying to say, is that he's always been like this. And he's gotten better—god, so much better, but this war…" Alfred began to say something, but came up short. He let out a breath with a shake of his head.

"It's different," Jack said quietly. All the nations knew it—even Jack, who was scarcely 150, could feel it.

"What he did to you and Zee is indefensible, in any century, in any war." Alfred said, eyes landing on the edge of a bandage peeking out from under Jack's sleeve. "I just want to make sure you understand, it's nothing you did, nothing Zee or anyone else did. It's just… dad." It was an unsatisfactory, unjust answer to the horrors that had unfolded in the last six months. Alfred knew it wouldn't wipe away the uncertainty in Jack's guileless face, but maybe, over time, it would temper his resilience to exist as the son of a deeply flawed man.

"Right," Jack said softly, sounding more thoughtful than was his wont. He picked at his fingernails, lost to his own musings for a while. In the quiet that followed, Alfred realized how exhausted he was, and let his eyes drift shut, enjoying the feel of the sun warming his face in flickering patterns as it twinkled through the leaves.

"So wait," Jack broke the silence once again, "if dad was a pirate, does that mean that the King sent out men to hunt him down? His own nation?"

"Oh, man," Alfred sat up, reaching for the gin, which was closer to Jack. "Gimme that. I can't tell this story as good as uncle Rhys, but I'll try."

--------------------

Though she was probably a fiercer fighter than virtually anyone in their family, barring perhaps Alfred or Arthur himself, in wartime, Zee's sex relegated her to hospitals and infirmaries rather than battle stations. It'd been this way in the last war, and she found she preferred it. War was death, and if she had to watch her people die, it was far better, she thought, to see them die after doing her damnedest to save them.

She and Jack had their separate forces, but the two had clung close together as the situation in the Pacific soured. She'd been aboard the destroyer for a little over a week by the time the Americans arrived, but she hadn't had a chance to see the Yankee himself before a Japanese bomb blew her floating hospital to bits. It had in fact been Alfred who spotted her bobbing in the surf and dragged her to shore, later admonishing her with a wobbling voice that it was the worst kind of way to say hello to one's estranged brother. Left with open wounds and a dislocated shoulder, she'd been brought down the coast to the base where Jack was holed up, becoming the first female resident of its sparsely-appointed infirmary.

In the short, hellish time that Alfred had fought alongside her, he'd seen his sister absorb all kinds of pain with the iron-willed composure of their father, but after a thousand small cuts, the shoulder is what did her in. She'd vomited and promptly passed out when the medics had set it. They'd given her morphine when she woke up, but it had left her deliriously nauseous. Unfortunately, when they'd taken her off it, the pain kept her awake so long she'd cried, which had startled Jack so badly he begged her to take the morphine until the swelling went down. She'd capitulated, but the nausea had kept her abed.

Alfred rapped his knuckles on the open doorframe before ducking in. Tired brown eyes squinted open to see him, and she grunted to acknowledge him.

"Hey Kiwi," Alfred said softly, unconsciously slouching to make himself smaller, quieter. He unfolded a canvas chair that had been stashed in a corner and sat near the head of her rickety hospital bed. "How're you holding up in here?"

"This place fuckin smells," she complained, voice gravelly and hoarse. "Or maybe that's just you." Alfred snorted.

"Feeling better, I see," he smirked. Zee sighed, using her right hand to manually adjust her left arm, which was strapped to her torso in a sling.

"If one more person talks about how I'm feeling, I'll vomit again."

"Alright," Alfred lifted his hands, "I won't ask. Jack said you'd convinced them to let you go tomorrow?" Hearing this, Zee's eyes opened a little wider, and she turned her head towards Alfred, one eye obscured by her curly hair that was pressed against the pillow.

"You've talked to Jackie today?" she seemed surprised.

"Yeah," Alfred frowned at her, "have you not?"

"This morning I did, but dad said no one could find him," she said. It was Alfred's turn to be surprised.

"You've talked to dad?"

"Yeah, 'bout an hour ago, give or take." She watched Alfred's face with catlike attention. "Dad mentioned he'd spoken with you. What did you say?" Alfred couldn't help it when he let out a snort.

"Spoke with me, huh."

"What did you say?" Zee asked again. "I haven't been coddled like that in thirty years. And what with how he's been…lately," Zee's eyes were distant for a few seconds before she shook herself and looked up expectantly at her brother. Alfred drew in a deep breath and leaned back in his chair before letting out a long sigh.

"He's been acting like a shit father, you and I both know that," he began, picking at a stray thread in his sleeve so he wouldn't have to make eye contact, "I just told him so."

"What, just… Just told him that?" Zee was incredulous, "and he listened?"

"Apparently," Alfred demurred.

"Christ," Zee let her head fall back into her pillow, staring up at the ceiling. "That must be nice." Alfred would've had to have been deaf not to hear the bitterness in her tone. It made him angry at their father all over again. Zee had always been the apple of Arthur's eye; that he had ignored even sweet Eleanor so profoundly was a testament to how low he'd stooped.

"He doesn't listen to me because he sees me as his equal, if that's what you're thinking," Alfred cut in. "He listens to me because I was his biggest fuck up, and he doesn't want to fuck up more than he already has with you two." Zee had no immediate response to that, and continued to stare up at the ceiling, swollen arm rising and falling with every breath. The wall lamp shone through her half-full IV bottle, casting abstract patterns of light that morphed gently against her hair.

"Well," Zee said at length, still staring at the ceiling, "I guess the coddling is nice." Quieter, hoarser, she muttered, "Could've used a few more fucking troops."

"He'll pull his head out of his ass and remember how to be a good father, eventually," Alfred told her, not really knowing if he had that kind of faith in their dad, "in the meantime, I got you. Both of you. You need something, anything, even if it's just yelling at Admiral Lord Father again, you tell me." Zee smiled at the sardonic title.

"Thanks, Yankee," she said, voice thicker than before. He'd never heard her use the moniker so affectionately. "I… might take you up on that."

"'Course. Us victims of the Arthur Kirkland School of Parenting gotta stick together." Zee let out a laugh that quickly turned into a hiss when it jostled her arm.

"I don't suppose you could get rid of this goddamn morphine and convince my arm to heal, could you?" She asked him, blinking away tears of pain.

"I will happily yell at the Empire till the cows come home, but even I can't work miracles, Kiwi-girl."

"Damn," Zee grit out. Alfred glanced at her shoulder, and then out the window; it was getting late.

"We'll have you outta here in no time. But I think it's about time you got some sleep."

"I've been trying," Zee huffed, clearly frustrated with the entire situation. She glanced at the empty glass on the stool by her bed. "Would more water be too much of a miracle?" Alfred smiled.

"Course not." He plucked up the glass and left the room, returning with not one but two full glasses of water, which he deposited on her bedside stool. While Zee gratefully took a few large gulps, he dug around in his pockets and produced a few squares of Red Cross-issue chocolate. He waved them at Zee. "Motivation for you to rest up and get off that morphine," he said, setting them beside the water glasses. She looked at them hungrily but warily, obviously still nauseous.

"Do you know how to motivate with anything besides food?" She teased.

"Food is an excellent motivator. Now get some sleep," he bent to give her a quick kiss on the forehead. "And don't tell Jack I gave you chocolate, I'm not made of the stuff."

--------------------

Alfred didn't see much of his father in the following days. When he did, it was always from a distance, and generally one of them would make themselves scarce before they crossed paths. He heard by way of mouth that the General was making something of an apology tour with his two youngest, or at least as close to apologies as the British Empire was capable of crafting. Zee left the hospital but kept the sling, and was, apparently, coddled quite fiercely by her prodigal guardian and given free run of the base, much to the discomfort of the men. She milked Arthur's guilt for all it was worth, and Alfred could tell it would be some time before she'd give him the forgiveness he hoped for.

Jack received similar coddling once Arthur tracked him down. Unlike his sister, Jack seemed eager to receive the affection and make amends, putting the harms of days past as far away from his mind as possible. Jack had always been trusting and kind, though Alfred didn't think Arthur deserved it. Jack was young, baby fat not yet making way for the angled jaw that promised to fill in as he grew more and more to look like his father. Even so, Alfred could still see the shadows that clung to the boy's features when Arthur wasn't looking. They made him look far older than he was.

Throughout it all, Arthur avoided speaking with his eldest son with obvious intentionality. Alfred didn't plan on stopping him. His anger towards his father was still not completely slaked, and it wouldn't do anyone any good to butt heads now that the Empire and his children were negotiating apologies.

Still, Jack had begun sneaking looks over his shoulder at Alfred whenever Arthur suggested a new plan of attack or promised reinforcements. It took a few times for Alfred to realize that Jack was looking to him not just for reassurance, but for a second opinion—for approval.

He had a feeling he and his father would argue about that, some day.

"But they're both okay? I mean, as okay as can be?" Matt's voice was tinny, worried words garbled somewhat by the thousands and thousands of miles of cables that brought his voice to Alfred's ear from the other side of the globe.

"Yeah, they'll be alright. I think it's going to take them a little longer to heal than normal, but they'll be alright."

"Good. And what about you?" Alfred wanted to tease his brother for how mother-hennish he sounded, but separated by so much distance, Matt's concern was a welcome comfort.

"Oh, I'm fine," Alfred shrugged, resisting the urge to rub at the spot by his collarbone where the lingering ache of Pearl Harbor had taken root. "I'm just glad I got here in time."

"Me too," Matt said darkly. A moment of silence passed before the Canadian added, "I'm not… happy you were dragged into this war, Al, but I'm not unhappy either." Alfred clenched his teeth and sighed out through his nose, fighting off a flare of anger towards their father.

"Well," He joked, because what else could he say? "Someone's gotta keep this family kicking, right?"

Arthur had been on base for a little over a week when Alfred went to the Officer's mess to meet his siblings for breakfast, as had become their habit, only to find both missing. Alfred had already finished his eggs and half of his pancakes when Jack and Zee arrived, Jack looking crestfallen, Zee furious. They slid into the bench opposite Alfred.

"Dad's gone," Zee said bluntly.

"Wait, what?" Alfred frowned, stopping mid-bite.

"He left—early this morning, apparently," Jack griped. "Didn't even tell anyone. Didn't even say goodbye to Zee, much less me!"

"He left this for you," Zee said, reaching across the table to give him a small envelope.

"Oh, god," Alfred groaned, taking it. The Anzacs watched with interest while he opened it and scanned its contents. It was a small notecard, but with the sun shining on it over Alfred's shoulder, Zee could see that it was packed with text, their father's neat handwriting compressed into a wall of ink.

"What's it say?" Jack asked eagerly. Alfred's expression remained unmoving as he read. At length, he took a stiff inhale and slid the note into his breast pocket.

"Says I owe him a bottle of gin," he said. Zee looked at him quizzically, but when Alfred volunteered no further information, she shook her head and stood.

"Jackie, d'you want tea?"

"Nah, I'm good," Jack waved her off, still sulking. He began to pick at the wooden edge of the table, prying off a small splinter of wood and flicking it away. Alfred watched the sad, annoyed tilt of Jack's eyebrows and wondered if this was how he had looked, a lonely child left on the shores of Virginia.

"Hey, don't be so glum," he told Jack, "like I said, war makes him act stupid. He won't be like this forever." And hopefully, it would not be years or decades. "In the meantime," Alfred flipped his plate around and handed Jack the fork. "I'll be here as long as you need me, for whatever you need"

"Really?" Jack took the fork gratefully, and surveyed the two pancakes left on his brother's plate.

"Really really." After a little hesitation, Jack managed a smile. He used the fork to give a playful, grateful salute and dug in, immediately transported from his sadness by the contraband maple syrup. Zee soon returned with her tea and lounged against Jack while Alfred sipped at his coffee. While the troops ran drills and the officers ferried new intelligence to and fro, the three siblings, long separated by the world's largest ocean, shared the first of many morning reprieves together, the faults of their father temporarily forgotten.

[everythingnerdyxoxo]

Borinwood Asylum - Ryan Kuhn x OC - Thirteen Ghosts

Summary: Living in darkness for all these years she'd adapted to the dark. She could hear their screams, cries and his laughter. How curious it made her.

Pairing: Ryan Kuhn x OC

Chapter Nine

Dr Kirkland, and Dr Williams stood anxiously at the back of the room as Jane unhooked the back of Ryan’s straightjacket, releasing the bindings that kept his arms tight. Ryan stood quickly, taking Jane off guard a little as he clicked his neck and stretched his arms out.

Charly was taken back at Ryan’s height; he was much taller than she has expected. When he had gotten free before he had run into the nurse so quickly, she hadn’t noticed. He must be a whole head taller than her, though she couldn’t remember the last time she had stood herself, and with her broken leg that wasn’t going to be happening any time soon.

Michael and Ryan glared at one another from across the room, Charly noticed she was conveniently still locked into her chair in the middle of their fight. The tension was building, and they looked ready to pounce.

‘Oh wait!!’ Jane shouted out again, raising her arm again to gain their attention in a very irritating way.

‘I have another amazing idea!’ Everyone in the room looked cautiously at her as she wheeled towards them the box of weapons they would use for torture.

‘Now Ry-Ry, I imagine you to be a good fighter, but Michael is superior to you in strength. Perhaps it would be fun to add weapons into the mix!’ She laughed manically as she left the box, taking a step back towards the panic button.

‘Jane this is ridiculous! One of them will be killed, this was not the plan!’ Dr Williams had shouted across to her, ‘Push the panic button! What the hell are you thinking!’

Charly watched as Ryan glanced into the weapon box next to him, his eyes locking briefly with her own, it was a determined look, there was something he was trying to communicate to her, but she couldn’t tell what it was.

He was quick in his movement. Snatching from the box the small pair of scissors that Jane had used against Charly the day before, he rushed forward at Michael and the fight ensued. Michael was strong but slow in his movements. He threw his arms around clumsily as he tried to land a punch on Ryan, but he ducked and moved out of the way at each time. Jane was laughing manically behind Charly as she watched anxiously at the fight in front of her. Dr Kirkland and Dr Williams stood behind Michael against the way, as tightly as they could be trying to avoid being involved in it.

Ryan was using the elements of the room to his favour, pushing a table against Michael, and winding him, throwing the hook in his direction to distract him, Ryan has landed two good punches to Michael but had yet to use the scissors he held tightly in his hand.

Ryan went to move the table against him once again, but Michael had anticipated this. Charly reckoned he wasn’t as slow as she had thought him to be. He landed an upper punch to Ryan, throwing him in a turn against the table so that he winded himself as he now faced Charly instead of Michael behind him. He locked eyes with Charly once again, her anxiety growing, she opened her mouth to cry out to him, seeing Michael readying another attack against him. She shouldn’t show emotion, but this man meant everything to her now, he couldn’t die.

Ryan smiled at her, the same manic smile he gave her when he attacked the nurse previously. Charly caught her cry, she knew that smile, he had a plan.

The movement of him being thrown against the table acted as a distraction. What happened next was almost slow motion. The scissors in his hand were opened up, like a knife and he turned. Michael was over him, his arms raised above his head as he was readying to throw himself down on him.

Ryan ran at him, scissors open in his hand, there was a look of fear on Michael’s face as he suddenly realised what was happening, but as Ryan got close enough to make the killing blow he ducked. Swinging himself to the side and moving so quickly that no one in the room could even react.

He ran past Michael, brandishing the scissors and in one quick movement, stabbed Dr Kirkland in the side of the neck.

[charlotte--kensington]

Of Silver and Seraphs

The USUKUS Twice per Year is out, so let me just publish this while it’s still fresh..

Rating: T

Somehow the gods of romance didn't seem to be on Amelia's side.

Between a quite possibly deadly undercover-mission involving an entire coven of vampires and not one but multiple near-death-experiences, how was she meant to confess her love to Alice?

She didn't know, but she'd have to figure something out.

Based loosely upon the vampire soirée in Cassandra Clare's "Clockwork Angel", written for the USUK Twice per Year, July 2022 - "Based on a Book".

You don't have to know "Clockwork Angel", but you should know Hetalia.

-

Warning for mentions of blood and injury, no wounds are described in detail, however

---

Storm'd at with shot and shell,

While horse and hero fell,

They that had fought so well

Came thro' the jaws of Death

Back from the mouth of Hell

Alfred, Lord Tennyson, "The charge of the light brigade"

---

Alice had to admit, no matter how many times she'd done it before, the feeling of wearing somebody else's skin was not something she'd ever get used to.

Fine, that had to have been just about the worst way of phrasing that, but then again, Alice couldn't say she had figured out a  good way to explain what she did while shape-shifting yet.

Was there even a good way to describe what warping one's body to look like that of another person felt like?

She wasn't quite able to see herself as anything but human, human with a special ability at best, so it wasn't as though she could give that much of an answer. A shapeshifter, an  eidolon  - how was she supposed to see herself as something like that?

And yet, here she stood watching her mirror image distort and change like ripples altered the reflection of a lake, here she stood feeling the old, familiar pinpricks that came with each new transformation. 

Her body and form sometimes reminded Alice of water, the way it could fill any shape, the way her flesh and bones, skin and hair warped and changed just to fill a mould, to become like those of whatever person she was changing into.

The feeling of a thousand needles pricking and poking just beneath her skin still caught her off-guard, chased shivers down her back and along her spine every time she shifted.

Alice looked back at the mirror, let her eyes wander over that reflection that did not show her. Her body perhaps, but not how  she , Alice Kirkland, truly looked.

Marianne Bonnefoy's reflection looked back at her through blue, almost violet eyes.

Where Alice’s hair normally fell onto her shoulders with not even the slightest of waves, it now curled into dirty blonde locks. Where it normally failed to hold its shape in any way, it was now tied into an intricate updo with nary a strand or a loose curl out of place.

Simplistic black gear had made way for a dress far beyond the confines of her imagination, not that it had been able to keep up either way, ever since she'd been introduced to a world of vampires, werewolves, witches, fairies and shadowhunters.

Her tailored gear, with its black leather and linen that clung to her body to allow for more range of motion, had been replaced by a dress of midnight blue satin. The fabric spilt along curves that she did not have on any other day like a cold winter night's river, flowing into a wide skirt that ended only a finger's width above the ground.

The satin shimmered softly in the light of the witchstones lining the wall, and Alice marvelled at the way the dress hugged her waist, at the way the overskirt contrasted with the soft ivory colour of the petticoat and the small buttons running down her corsage, gleaming in the dim light like stars on a midnight sky.

The open front of the gown was framed by gentle ruffles with golden thread at the centre, a line which began at the outer ends of Alice's collar bones and continued along her body over her chest and waist down to the hem of the dress.

The bell sleeves, which were tight down to her elbows from where they widened significantly, were adorned with several layers of lace flounces, embroidered in the same glimmering gold thread as the skirt itself. 

There was something regal about the dress, something that did not fit Alice at all, something that would have deterred her had she had to wear the dress herself. This way, on this night and in this body, it seemed right.

Had Alice had the money to do so, she might have asked Marianne for the dressmaker's name, but as of that moment, she lacked the funds to even dream of that. She supposed that it was easy for vampires to accumulate a substantial amount of money over their frankly inconceivable lifespans.

"Thank you so much for all your help, Madeline," she said with a glance at the young woman behind her.

Alice might have made an attempt at giving her a smile, but somehow Marianne's face didn't allow it.

It just didn't look natural on the vampire's face; instead it seemed as though her mouth itself was bristling at the thought of a smile, making the expression seem oddly waxen and unreal. There was no warmth to be shown in that almost violet tone of her eyes, no light or glow whatsoever.

Madeline only nodded.

It was evident that, even knowing that it was Alice, the girl wasn't quite comfortable with being this close to what looked like a vampire, to even see her inside the institute, outside of the crypt.

"Of course, Miss," she said after a moment.

Alice struggled to ignore the way her fingers trembled when she stepped away from the mirror, when she lost her excuse to keep those unnaturally pale fingers hidden within the layers upon layers of her skirts.

She was well aware of the weight of tonight's plan on her shoulders. Perhaps that was why her knees kept threatening to buckle beneath her weight.

The thought of going fully undercover amongst a coven of vampires, with only her powers to disguise her, only Marianne's lessons on etiquette and behaviour to guide her, it was terrifying at best, incapacitating at worst.

There were no feelings of safety or assuredness.

Whereas any other transformation had given her at least a general clue of the other person's feelings or memories, Marianne was a closed book to her, shut and locked, the key lost somewhere Alice could not access.

The vampire was but a spectre to her, not much more than an ephemeron.

All she had to protect her were Marianne's looks and reputation as well as her rapier.That, and Amelia.

And yet, if Amelia was tasked with protecting her, who was it that kept the shadowhuntress safe?

Almost out of habit alone Alice's teeth sunk into her lip.

She flinched when sharp fangs pierced the soft skin and the coppery taste of blood filled her mouth. 

Yet another thing she couldn't control.

The way Marianne's teeth behaved, when they sharpened into vampiric fangs and when they remained hidden, nothing but those of a regular human, it eluded her as much as their owner.

With furrowed brows Alice reached up to feel the small cuts in her lower lip, pulling her finger away to find it covered in the bright red blood of vampires, much lighter than her own.

A knock on the door tore Alice away from her thoughts.

"Are you ready?"

A head of amber waves peeked in through the small crack in the door, blue eyes bright and cheerful as a summer's day, as though they were not about to enter a vampire's den. But three words, and Alice could tell that the young shadowhuntress was nowhere near as worried as she was.

There was a moment of silence as Amelia stepped into the room, when she saw what Alice was wearing, how she looked. 

It was almost against her will that Alice could feel excitement well up inside her, just a gentle buzz and flurry, butterflies inside her stomach at the way Amelia's eyes wandered across her body, at the way she looked at her dress, her hair, her everything.

Except it  wasn't hers.

None  of this was.

Somehow that thought put a damper on the fluttery feeling.

"I am," Alice answered with a slight delay, in the hope to tear Amelia's attention away from Marianne's body and towards  her , or at least the situation at hand if the other wasn't possible.

"Do you have everything you need?"

The young woman nodded, her hair bouncing with the almost ecstatic movement as she gestured at different parts of her far less salient apparel.

"Throwing knives and stele hidden in the corset, seraph blades inside the coat and strapped to my calves where the boots can be folded back. Not to mention the electrum wire on your parasol," Amelia said, pointing at the object in her hand. "As well as the rapier inside the shaft, should you need it."

Without speaking or interrupting her explanation, Alice stood there, brows furrowed in a mix of confusion and scepticism.

There was a short pause, a moment of quiet.

"What is it?" Amelia spoke up again.

"In your corset?" Alice asked incredulously. "How are you going to reach the knives during a fight? Do you plan on undressing right then and there?"

She pointed at Amelia's legs.

"And then the ones on your calves," she admonished. "I know you can fold back part of the boots, but I highly doubt you can do that on the fly, or am I mistaken?"

The shadowhuntress puffed her cheeks, arms crossed over her chest, pouting. Not even the worry she felt could stop Alice from thinking about just how adorable that expression looked on her.

"First of all," Amelia began, "the knives are in the  outer corset, not beneath my shirt. And second of all, I doubt there's going to be a problem."

Alice was about to rebut, when a glint of silver caught her eye.

With far too triumphant a smile, Amelia held one of her knives out to her, blade between her index and middle finger, handle pointed at Alice.

"You were saying?" Amelia asked, and no matter how adorable she'd appeared to Alice just a minute ago, at that moment she just wanted to wipe that grin off her face.

"Fine," Alice caved in, before looking back up at the other's clothing. "Now that you mention it, however, what are you wearing? Didn't you tell me that vampires valued all things high-society and that propriety and etiquette are the most important things?"

There was nothing proper  or  decorous about Amelia's apparel: Not only were her woollen trousers appropriate only amongst the nephilim, where men and women held equal respect, but also was she wearing a corset on  top of a white shirt.

Alice lacked the words to describe just what emotion she felt upon seeing this, but there most definitely was a lot of it. She had to admit, there was something all too appealing about the way the fabric brought out Amelia’s legs, about how the corset flattered her waist and emphasised her chest. However, there was no way whatsoever in which either fulfilled the expectations Braginsky had towards the members of his coven. Not even Amelia's wide, black overcoat could hide away the corset that stood out like coal amongst snow on the white shirt beneath, and that wasn't addressing the way the high leather boots seemed to make her even taller.

"They are, but that only matters to you!"

Alice didn't quite understand.

"I'm just your subjugate for the night, remember? Since you're responsible for the way your property looks, Braginsky's rules don't apply."

Had Alice not been so worried about the hours still to come, she would have laughed at the pride Amelia seemed to hold in her reasoning. 

The thought of Amelia being nothing but property did not sit well with her - to be a subjugate was to serve a vampire as a glorified meal on two legs, to follow whatever order was given and to lose whatever will they might have had.

An edible slave, a being with a mind that was not suppressed but forbidden.

A shiver ran down Alice's back as she struggled with banishing the thought from her mind.

This was not the time to think about her qualms regarding vampire society.

"That does not mean I won't have to explain your apparel," Alice persisted, but unlike her, Amelia did not seem concerned all that much, if at all.

"You'll figure something out!" was all the reply Alice got before the door closed and she was alone again.

Sometimes Alice wanted to ask the other what went on inside her head, a penny for her thoughts, maybe even a pound at times, but whenever she did, she remembered just how similar the young shadowhuntress was to some of the characters in her novels.

Only three things in life mattered to Amelia Jones, those three being food, fighting and friendship.

Without another word Alice shook her head, then she made herself on the way down the long, almost enigmatic hallways of the London institute, down to where the carriage was already awaiting them.

 ◇ • ◇ • ◇

 Her fingers were trembling like aspen leaves in her lap, shaking and quaking as Alice stared down at the wan skin of her hands. Had Marianne not been so pale, near cadaverous even, by default, she'd likely been as white as a wall, too. This way she was as pale as a vampire, not that there was much of a difference between the two.

Even now, on the way to what felt like certain doom, she was still trying to reach Marianne, or at least part of her mind, but the vampire informant was keeping away. It felt as though Alice was trying to break down a wall using a feather.

All Alice knew of Marianne, she knew from what she'd been told, not from the transformation.

Alice knew that the vampire had been working together with the London enclave for decades - an easy thing to do, if one did not age - by peddling them information about the Downworlders, which the shadowhunters wouldn't have gotten otherwise.

She knew that Marianne held some sort of grudge against Braginsky, but anything regarding why or since when eluded her.

"Hey," Amelia spoke up, tearing her from her thoughts. "You'll do great."

Alice gave the shadowhuntress on the other side of the carriage a doubtful look. Even if she had trusted her own abilities more, which was to say  at all , there were far too many things to go wrong, be that because of a mistake on Alice's part or some other reason.

"All we have to do is go in, catch Braginsky as he breaks Covenant Law, and call in the cavalry. It will be fine, promise."

How Alice longed to have that effortless confidence Amelia exuded in everything she did. She made it all sound so simple, the intricacies of catching the head of London's most powerful vampire clan in the act of harming mortals, of proving he was openly defying the Accords.

"I hope you're right," she sighed.

Amelia pulled a small, cylindrical object out of the depths of her coat, twisting it around in her hands as she fiddled with it. After a moment Alice recognised it as Ludwig's latest invention, the pivotal point of the plan - the Phosphor.

"Here's to hoping Ludwig's invention does what it's supposed to do, right?," the shadowhuntress said with a light smile.

Alice looked at the small metal object in Amelia’s hands.

The Phosphor was a funny little thing - even if it had originally been meant to  produce light, it had only ever made other lights flash once before causing complete darkness during the tests. When Ludwig had first presented his invention to them, the bright flash followed by complete and utter darkness as all lights went out simultaneously had surprised them so badly that Amelia had almost fallen off of the library ladder she'd been standing on that moment.

That flash of light seemed to be as good a signal as any, but it didn't mean Alice felt safe in having her life -  as well as Amelia's - depending on it.

Alice merely nodded as she pulled back the curtain of the carriage by a couple of inches, just barely enough to see outside, beyond of the cabin and onto dirty cobblestone and the grimy, soot-dyed buildings of the city. She was used to the view she got, and yet the city - perhaps even the world - had never seemed more glum to her.

And still Braginsky's manor was so far away it was hard to think about, so close she couldn't  stop thinking about it.

As though to console her, Amelia reached for her hand, gently taking it into her own ones, which were far warmer than Alice’s. Even though she tried to mask it, Alice caught the shadowhuntress' slight flinch upon touching the cool skin of what was technically a vampire, if only in shape and appearance.

"I'm sorry," Alice muttered, well aware of the inhuman cold Marianne's body exuded, the deathly cold of her touch.

With still trembling fingers, Alice reached up to the filigree gold necklace Marianne had lent her, those dark, greyish blue stones that wrapped around her throat in much the same way a river cut through a landscape enveloped in freshly fallen snow. The gesture might have passed for her toying with the jewellery, but in reality she was reaching up to feel the small spot just beneath her jaw, where her pulse was so easy to feel on any other day.

Nothing.

"Would you just stop looking at me like that already?" Amelia complained suddenly.

Alice recoiled.

"How  do I look at you?"

"As if you were about to cry!" the shadowhuntress explained, before adding. "Which, in case you forgot, you can't even do in this body, so I don't know how you manage to look at me like that in the first place!"

Amelia seemed unsure whether to feel exasperated or sympathetic, but nevertheless she held on to Alice's hand, warming it in much the same way her smile warmed her heart.

"I'm sorry," Alice relented. "It's just... If something goes wrong, it's not just my life, it's yours and Marianne's and those of the entire enclave as well. Just..." 

Alice's voice broke off, and when she spoke again, she was barely above a whisper: "What if I fail, Amelia?"

There was a moment of quiet as neither of them spoke, and only the muffled sounds from outside were heard. Even then, Alice could not concentrate on the shouts or noises, the sound of hooves and wheels on cobblestone, when all that was on her mind was the light squeeze and reassuring warmth of Amelia's hand.

There was something contemplative in the way Amelia was looking at her, something that told of how she was weighing two options against one another inside her head. Alice didn't dare to ask what she was thinking about, only focused on that soft feeling of warmth, holding on to it as though it was the last thing tying her to her humanity.

It might as well have been, considering what the Silent Brothers had told her. If she truly was half demon, half nephilim, as they had said, she would be left with only measly quarter of herself being human. Sometimes Alice missed those days before she knew, before this second world had overtaken her view of how things were and how they went.

There was no use thinking about who or what she was, not when she had so little time and so many problems.

"I... I might be able to help get your mind off all that for a bit," Amelia said, but there was doubt in the way she spoke.

Her free hand was tangled somewhere in that chin-length hair of hers, pale fingers amongst amber waves as that bright blue of her eyes focused on anything that wasn't Alice.

Alice's brows furrowed ever so slightly, but still she nodded. Any distraction was good, it didn't matter how suspiciously Amelia was behaving as long as she could take her thoughts off of vampires and manors and possible death for just a second.

"Anything," she almost whispered, and something in Amelia's expression changed, almost too fast for her to catch.

There was determination, doubt, and yet more things she could not make out.

"Close your eyes," Amelia instructed gently, as Alice obeyed without another word.

Left in darkness, Alice tried to focus on whatever sounds Amelia made so she could get some sense of what she was doing, but outside of the soft rustling of the fabric of Alice's dress and the noises from outside, there was not much to hear.

Her trembling fingers had clenched into fists in the fabric of the dress, and no matter the hundreds of thousands of thoughts buzzing around throughout her head, for a moment Alice was acutely aware of the wrinkles her grip would leave behind.

For just a fraction of a second she could feel the same warmth as that of Amelia's hands before, except it was much closer now, less direct, so close to touching her, but never quite closing the distance.

As though on instinct, Alice's eyes fluttered open.

She found herself face to face with Amelia, barely an inch of air between them, their noses almost brushing against one another and the air they breathed mingling in that little space between them.

Amelia's expression was unreadable as she remained there, hovering only a hand's width away from her, one hand on the back panel of the cabin to steady herself against the motion of the carriage.

And then realisation struck as she noticed the way Alice looked at her, no, that she was looking at her at all. A bright, near scarlet flush spread across her cheeks like red wine spilling over marble.

"I-!" she exclaimed. "I told you to close your eyes!"

She was hiding her face with her hands, and Alice couldn't help but stifle a small giggle, the first time she'd felt any trace of happiness that night. 

Against the pale skin of her hands the red of Amelia's face stood out even more, a bright red flare that caught Alice's attention unlike anything or anyone else.

"I'm sorry," she replied with a small laugh, but Amelia merely puffed her cheeks, peeking out from between her fingers as she slowly lowered her hands again.

Even as her eyes closed the second time Alice knew that Amelia was eyeing her suspiciously, likely making sure she was truly keeping her word. Another second passed, then that warmth was back, so close yet so far. No matter the distance, Alice could hear the harsh pounding of Amelia's heart, another thing she blamed entirely on Marianne's body.

A soft smell of honey and lavender surrounded her, an almost unexpected gentleness amongst the harsh, stinging aromas of the city waiting just beyond the confines of the small cabin of the carriage. For a moment, Alice wanted nothing more than to take another deep breath, to inhale this smell just one more time.

She didn't get to think about that, however, as the gentle press of Amelia's lips on her own cut any sort of ropes that might have tied Alice to her thoughts. Her mind was slowly but surely floating away from sense and sensibility.

A tender kiss, and all but the most basic of thoughts left her, and anything other than that fuzzy feeling that spread throughout her body was but background noise and inanities.

When they separated at last, Alice didn't dare open her eyes, didn't dare breathe.

Perhaps that wasn't a bad thing; had their eyes met right then, she would have likely found a way to melt from sheer embarrassment alone.

But who could blame her?

They hadn't kissed before. 

Alice  hadn't kissed  anyone  before, so for Amelia to just-

Her head couldn't keep up with the thoughts buzzing through her head.

Had this body allowed it, Alice would have flushed, would have turned the same shade of ruby red Amelia's cheeks had been before, but this way she was stuck with her own trembling fingers and that indescribable, insurmountable wish - no,  need to kiss Amelia again, to feel the soft connection of their lips another time.

Her head was reeling, reeling with the memory of how Amelia's lips had felt on her own, reeling with thoughts and feelings she had never known before.

"So...," Amelia began, all her doubt and insecurity clear in the slow, drawn-out word. "Did it help?"

The question pulled Alice from her thoughts as though she was being saved from drowning, and yet she felt like she went right back into the sea with the way the young shadowhuntress looked at her. And still that hand, that voice, they were the only things she could hold on to, the only things to save her from going under once again.

"Oh God...," Alice whispered, more to herself than anything.

Almost on reflex Alice's hand came up to feel her lips, the barest of touches. She could still feel the imprint of Amelia's lips on her own, as though traces of the kiss still lingered.

"What is it?"

Amelia looked about as anxious as Alice felt. 

She was toying with one of her throwing knives, twisting it between restless fingers and watching the way it caught and reflected the faint rays of sunlight pushing in through the clouds above and through the curtains that hid the two of them from the city beyond the carriage. 

Even through that never-ending whirlwind of thoughts churning about inside her head, Alice could not help but wonder when she'd pulled out the weapon.

"You... You didn't do this just because I look like Marianne right now, did you?"

She was back in the sea, back to those towering waves, whipped up by unrelenting winds and unwavering storms, as the worry, the doubts she felt threatened to drown her.

Had she lost her first kiss to nothing but her abilities, something she had never wanted?

Amelia's head snapped back up, and for just a moment their eyes met, shock and worry, blue and violet.

"What?"

"I asked whether you-"

"I know what you asked!" Amelia interrupted her. "But-... How would you even get that idea? I would never-"

Even as she cut herself off, Amelia seemed almost indignant at the mere notion. Nonetheless, Alice could not ease her doubts, not when everything that had happened was so out of the blue.

Amelia had never expressed any interest in her before, had she?

"Well, I... It's just the two of us, I look like her... And you know, maybe..."

Whatever Alice had meant to say dissolved into mere rambling under Amelia's gaze, under the heat of those eyes and the sheer embarrassment, the overbearing discomfort she felt.

It seemed the universe was still on her side one way or another, as a call from the carter interrupted and freed her from having to say anything more.

They'd arrived.

"We are  not done talking about this," Amelia almost hissed.

She rose to her feet, exited the carriage before extending one hand to help Alice down, as the fresh evening wind tore at the soft waves of her hair and tousled them even more than they had already been.

"Mistress," Amelia jibed, a small reminder that from this moment on they were no longer friends or partners or whatever that kiss had turned their relationship into.

They were vampire and subjugate, mistress and servant.

"One last thing," the shadowhuntress said under her breath. "For now none of this matters. Just concentrate on the mission, everything else we can discuss later."

Alice wanted to laugh at the ease with which Amelia said that, but with the weight of her own worry pushing down on her chest, she couldn't even breathe, much less laugh. 

All you have to do is survive the evening , she told herself. 

Only the evening, then you can talk to her.

If only the success of their plan would come to her with the same ease as that thought, maybe they'd have been on their way back home already. But alas it did not, which was why they began making their way up to the large portal of the manor ahead of them.

The gravel path that wound through the garden of the manor was seamed with all kinds of shrubbery and even some topiaries, but Alice could not appreciate the beauty of her surroundings. 

Her eyes were fixed to the crest above the double doors before them, to the emblem of a bear and the letters I and B intertwined with one another.

A shiver ran down her spine.

Ivan Braginsky.

The head of the biggest of London's vampire clans was as much a myth as he was a monster, as menacing as he was merciless. She'd only heard tales of the things he'd done, but if she was honest, Alice didn't mind that at all.

The thought of meeting him scared her.

At the door they were welcomed by a young man in a suit, as simple as it was elegant. He didn't seem special or remarkable in any way, outside that dead, almost soulless look in his eyes, which were now focusing on Alice.

She felt as though those eyes were able to swallow any sort of light completely, as though holding his gaze for too long would make her just like him, but a husk of a person.

A subjugate of Braginsky, she assumed.

"Lady Bonnefoy," the mortal said with a deep bow. "Please follow me inside."

Alice wanted to explain who the - as of yet unintroduced - woman by her side was, when a familiar voice spoke up in the back of her mind, equally dignified and indignant at the same time.

We don't introduce our playthings to one another , Marianne’s voice came to mind, and for a moment Alice could almost see that disdainful quirk of her lips.

Took you long enough to show up , Alice wanted to bite back, but she knew only too well that Marianne wouldn't answer. This was neither a conversation nor telepathy, it was the only barest traces of the vampire's memory still remaining in her body 

She didn't bother replying.

As the subjugate led them through the wide corridors and hallways Alice could not help but marvel at the beauty of the building and its decorations, of the architecture and art surrounding her. She hated how beautiful and extravagant everything about the manor was, hated how antithetical it was to its occupant and the things he did.

Beside her Amelia walked in silence, her head lowered and any sort of emotion banished from her face. Not all subjugates had to look as soulless as Braginsky's, but nonetheless they all seemed to have this bland and almost clinical expression. 

Somewhere deep inside Alice - or rather, Marianne - knew that he was leading them to the large ballroom that extended across most of the width of the building, towards that beautiful room of gold and glimmer, of smoke and mirrors, which faced the lavish gardens that lay just beyond the wide window facade.

Pictures of gardens and the hedge maze, of moonlit picnics and a time before Braginsky's betrayal of Marianne flashed through Alice's mind so fast she could hardly keep up, fast enough to blur her view and to make her forget about where she was.

She barely noticed they'd reached the ballroom.

The sheer number of vampires all around the room sent a shiver down her spine. She was well aware that Braginsky's clan was huge, but this... This was more than just his own clan, there had to be others around as well. Just the thought of what might happen, if they actually  did get into a fight, was nauseating.

Of course the brigade was just as large in numbers, of course there'd be more to help them fight, but even so this was more than she had imagined it to be.

Far more.

If their suspicions of Braginsky proved to be justified, a fight larger than what she could be sure they could handle would erupt.

Alice could feel a shiver running down her spine but she remained silent, didn't speak a word as she let her eyes wander over the mass of bodies, of vampires and mortals.

The Downworlders were strange to look at.

With the way each and everyone was clad in apparel from a different century, from a different place and time, nothing quite seemed to match or fit together, seemed to clash and conflict just by being in the same room.

Perhaps Amelia wouldn't stand out at all.

A vampire at the back of the ballroom caught her eye.

He stood near the window facade and the French windows leading out onto the balconies, which overlooked the gardens below, a half full wine glass in his hand. 

He was taller than most of the other attendees, and had he not stood out by his towering stature, he'd have attracted her attention because of the way he carried himself. There was a certain flair in the way he talked and gestured, about the way he moved that just did not fit in.

Braginsky , Marianne hissed deep inside her head, and for just a moment Alice could feel the hatred that had to burn inside of the other woman at every given moment, that scorching heat and the flames that flared up whenever she as much as thought of him.

As though he had heard her, the vampire looked over to them.

With a wide, fanged smile he began making his way over towards Alice.

Had she not known that vampires were in full control over when their fangs showed and when they didn't, he might have just fooled her into thinking that smile was friendly.

"Marianne Bonnefoy!" he exclaimed with a smile that seemed too bright to be sincere, too innocent to be truthful.

He took Alice's hand and placed a gentle kiss on it, bowing almost as deeply as his subjugate had earlier, albeit not with the same utter submission. He might have bowed, but it was clear Braginsky did not plan on capitulating in any way.

The fight was coming, and it seemed as though the other knew.

Forcing herself to keep a straight face, to keep from giving away just how much that thought scared her, Alice reminded herself of the rules Marianne had set for her.

Keep your back straight.

Hold your head high.

Whether you are being insulted or whether you are insulting somebody, do both with a smile.

"I am glad to see you have decided to attend after all, my dearest Marianne," the vampire spoke, and Alice could not help but notice the hint of an accent in his words.

"What made you change your mind about these receptions?"

Keep your back straight.

"There is only so many times I can turn down the head of my own clan, isn't there, Ivan dearest?" she replied in a voice that could never have been her own, neither in tone nor words. The otherworldly (or should she say downworldly?) calm in Marianne's voice could not have been further from the panic Alice truly felt.

The man nodded as though she had passed a test, as though to show that he had accepted her "apology", if her words could be considered one. The innocent smile that played around his lips seemed almost eerie to her, seemed as out of place as she felt.

There was a slight delay as the vampire took a sip from his glass, never quite taking his eyes off of Alice. She was petrified beneath the stare of those eyes, immobile and completely defenceless to Braginsky's machinations.

Somehow the moment Braginsky's eyes shifted from her and onto Amelia scared her more than the minutes she'd been forced to hold his gaze. All of a sudden the thought of having him stare at her with that disturbingly innocent smile didn't seem that bad, so long as he took his eyes off Amelia.

She stood right beside Alice, still and silent, head lowered and holding on to both her own coat and Alice's parasol as she feigned to be nothing but an ever-dutiful, ever-obeying subjugate to her mistress.

"And who is this little flower?" the vampire asked, leaning in to wrap a lock of Amelia's honey-blonde hair around his finger.

Even from the corner of her eye Alice could see how the shadowhuntress stiffened and tensed up, how her entire body went rigid with the blink of an eye as all warning bells inside her head went off simultaneously. She caught the way Amelia glanced towards her for only a fraction of a second, a silent cry for help, for Alice to save her, to do  anything .

And yet, she couldn't.

"Quite the peculiar clothing you put her in, Marianne... I would have thought you'd put more... Care into the way your pets dress," he said with both a laugh and a sneer.

A part of her mind, a part Alice couldn't tell whether it belonged to Marianne or herself, wanted to slap Braginsky across the face, to strip away that fake-innocence and most importantly, to get him away from Amelia. 

She couldn't do it, there was no way for her to do it, but that didn't mean she couldn't dream. 

Hold your head high.

"Why, I  did care, Ivan, don't you see?" She asked, begging to the Lord, Marianne and just about anybody else out there that she wasn't about to ruin everything.

Amelia was still trapped, so close to one of London's most feared vampires, unable to as much as move her pinky without raising suspicion. A subjugate would never move away from a vampire, much less one as powerful as Braginsky.

"This one has the most formidable frame," Alice continued. "Would it not be a shame to hide that beneath layers upon layers of fabric?"

She gave Amelia's rear a small pinch, drawing the smallest of squeaks from the shadowhuntress as she found herself unable to stifle her reaction in time. Almost as though on command a bright red flush spread over her cheeks.

The sneer on Braginsky's face yielded an expression somewhere between knowing and impressed, as he eyed her - Marianne - with newfound interest.

"Quite so, I'm afraid," the vampire admitted after another sweeping glance at Amelia's body, at the way her corset emphasised her waist and chest, at how the trousers she'd picked made her legs seem longer and her behind more shapely.

It had been meant as an emergency lie, but Alice couldn't say she disagreed with the ramblings of her own distressed mind. 

It would fit the situation, if she had just another look at Amelia, wouldn't it? 

She was her property, after all.

"It would have truly burdened my heart, had my dearest clan member lost her sense of taste and propriety," he admitted, and the lie seemed almost as outrageous as the ones Alice had told him.

With another look at the soft, bare skin of Amelia's neck he asked: "You would not mind, if I had a little drink, would you, dearest?"

Words could not describe just how much she minded.

Alice stood as stiff as a rod, as though his words had petrified her. If only he'd seen the storm raging inside of her, the waves threatening to pull her down into the depths all over again, he'd never have believed the silence she projected outwards. 

Whether you are being insulted or whether you are insulting somebody, do both with a smile.

"I must apologise, Ivan, but I am afraid that I shall keep this one to myself for just a little while longer," Alice spoke after a moment. 

Even with the people all around her, she could have sworn that it was so quiet she would have heard a pin drop. She could hear the way the blood rushed in her veins, the way her heart tried so desperately to jump out of her chest and escape. 

"After all, you know best how marvellous that first drop of blood from a new pet can taste, do you not?"

Had she not made the experience once before that night, Alice might have bitten her lip. This way all that was left for her to do was to stare her fear, to stare Braginsky right in the eye.

He nodded, and that smile returned, as though it had not been all too obvious how much he disliked the reply she had given him. He took another sip from his wine glass, and only now did Alice wonder whether it was truly wine that he was drinking.

In the shine of the candles along the wall the red liquid reflected an eerie red light onto the pale skin of his face, and Alice could not help but shudder at the way that dark red bedewed his lips, which curled into a wide grin before her eyes.

"Right as always, my dear," he said at last.

"Just remember not to let a good  wine spoil as you wait for the grapes to ripen."

The vampire turned around, and as he disappeared into the crowd, he turned around one last time, throwing her a glance over his shoulder as he exclaimed: "Enjoy yourself, dearest, you still have all night!"

When they were alone at last, Alice could see the tension falling off of Amelia's shoulders.

"Couldn't you have been a bit quicker just then?" the shadowhuntress hissed silently between grit teeth. "One second later and he would have had his teeth in my neck!"

"How about you try playing the vampire barely half an hour after having your first kiss stolen the next time?" Alice asked, consciously averting her eyes as she did.

"Wait, that was your-"

"Later , Amelia," she interrupted the other gently, knowing full well that they'd attract nothing but unwanted attention and trouble, if they got too loud.

"You can't just say something like that and expect me to-"

Amelia's cheeks had reddened ever so slightly.

"Now now, is that a way to speak to your mistress, dear?" she tutted, admonishing the shadowhuntress even as she herself wanted nothing more than to address the elephant in the room, that wall keeping them apart.

Alice didn't know what she would have done should Braginsky actually have laid a finger on Amelia, had he gotten even an inch closer. Somehow pushing the thought away seemed like her best bet.

Amelia remained silent, but even so the frown on her face spoke volumes, telling of a long night of conversation whenever they escaped this ongoing nightmare of vampires and fear, of blood and fright.

Another minute passed as they stood in silence, then Alice set in motion, slowly crossing the room, mostly to see and to be seen. Another thing Marianne had told her - to make sure people knew she'd been there.

If Amelia and her hurried to leave in whatever chaos might stem from the moment they called in the brigade, it wouldn't be as suspicious as long as the vampires could swear she'd been there. This way they might think she escaped in time, otherwise it might have seemed like she lured the shadowhunters to the ball and never showed up.

They were slowly approaching the large window facade at the back of the ballroom when a young man, another subjugate, caught Alice's eye. He held a large golden platter in his hand, but what had caught her attention in the first place wasn't the platter nor the empty wine glasses on top of it, but the surgical tools beside them.

She was about to ask Amelia whether she knew what the tools were for, when another one of the guests, a male vampire, stopped the young man.

He reached for one of the scalpels on the platter, and before even one word could leave his lips, the subjugate tilted his head to the side, baring his neck and giving the other man access as though it was only natural to do so.

Alice watched on in horror as the vampire drew the surgical tool along the mortal's neck in a swift, elegant motion, creating a long fine cut right across his throat, just barely above his Adam's apple.

As though drawn by the finest of pens, a delicate red line appeared in the wake of the scalpel, as the vampire set down the tool and instead pressed one of the wine glasses to his skin just below the cut.

Blood ran down over pale skin and into the elegant crystal glass, a rivulet of glimmering gemstones flowing over a bed of marble. Alice couldn't tell whether the colour drained faster from the subjugate's face or her own.

The vampire didn't remove the glass until it was filled up to almost one inch beneath the rim, but when he ran a long, pale finger along the wound to swipe up any remaining blood, there was that same waxen, cold smile on his lips that she had seen on Marianne's earlier.

His grin only grew wider, when he licked up the red staining his finger tip.

It was obvious the subjugate struggled, obvious he could barely hold himself upright with the way his knees shook and how much he trembled, but he never dropped the platter in his hands or actually fell. Nonetheless Alice couldn't imagine much force would have been necessary for him to collapse.

What horrified her more than what she had just seen, however, was not how disgusting all of this seemed to her, Alice, or just how little the vampires seemed to care about their servants, but rather that she felt hunger. Hunger that wasn't her own but that of Marianne, who had just witnessed another vampire feed right in front of her, where she hadn't.

There was a lump in her throat, and all of a sudden breathing wasn't as easy as it had been the minute before.

Alice couldn't tell what felt worse, the emptiness of her stomach, that seemingly unceasing hunger eating her up from the inside, or the nauseating realisation that she felt this way because she had watched a vampire feed on human blood. 

She felt like she was going to throw up.

It seemed Amelia had noticed her discomfort, as even without another word she reached for Alice's hand, giving it a light squeeze as she held onto it in a way that was hidden by her wide skirts.

"Oh God, I'm a monster...," she whispered beneath her breath, audible to only Amelia and herself. 

Still the taste of bile filled her mouth as Alice struggled to regain control over her body. It was  her body, not Marianne's, she just had to get that back into her mind and she would be fine.

That didn't do anything about her shallow breaths, however.

"You're not."

Alice looked over to her, meeting her gaze for only a second, not trusting herself to hold it for any longer without remembering what had happened earlier, in the carriage. 

"How would you know? Whether I'm Marianne or myself, I'm half demon either way."

The jadedness, the cynicism of her remark surprised Alice herself, but something inside of her felt as though it had finally been released. She didn't know how long she had been doubting herself like that, but only now that she had voiced out that insecurity did she realise it had been there in the first place.

"You said  God ," she replied. "You couldn't have done that, if you were like them."

Alice's left hand clenched scrunched up the soft fabric of her dress, sure to leave wrinkles she couldn't have cared less about at that moment.

"And even if you are part demon, we all have a little bit of devil inside, some just in a more literal way. You're a good person, Alice."

There was a short pause.

Amelia took a deep breath before she continued.

"I've known that for a long time, I just wish you did, too."

I just wish you did, too.

The words echoed in her mind, reverberating all throughout her head, so silent yet unbelievably persistent. For a moment all she wanted to do was pull Amelia into a tight hug, feel her warmth and the soft rise and fall of her chest as she breathed, as her heart beat, as she was close to her.

And yet, she couldn't, yet they remained distant and neutral as the fear Alice had felt all night became prominent once again. If Marianne had been right, they wouldn't have much more time until Braginsky showed his true face, until the main event of tonight's ball began.

As though on cue, a wide set of double doors behind them opened, clearing the entrance of what appeared to be the library of Braginsky's estate. Almost instantaneously the mass of vampires on the dancefloor thinned out, as one after the other passed through the doors to take a seat in the adjacent room.

Even as they passed by Alice could not help but notice how many of the vampires stared at Amelia, how they leered at her and gave her a once-over, how they seemed to drain her blood with only their eyes. She could see the hunger in their gazes, and seeing that directed at Amelia when she couldn't do anything about it scared her more than she had expected.

A cold shiver ran down Alice's back, but she couldn't give in to her own weakness as she followed the crowd of Downworlders into the adjacent room.

The library had gained an almost theatre-like ambiance: A small stage had been set up on one end of the room, more than half of it hidden by thick bordeaux curtains, merely a small part visible to them already as dim candlelight doused the room in a soft, warm light.

As Alice still struggled to take in her surroundings, tried to ignore the dozens of vampires surrounding her with so little space to separate them, Amelia guided her towards two empty seats in the back row, farthest away from the stage. It might have been caution or the wish not to be stared at anymore than she already was with her looks and apparel, Alice couldn't quite tell.

"You have it ready, right?" Alice asked, as the same queasy feeling from before overcame her, threatened to pull her back into that ocean of worries like the sudden arrival of high water.

This was what Marianne had told them about.

Almost ball-like soirées at Braginsky's estate, during which mortals were drained of their blood, during which mortals were killed for the pure joy of it. It was appalling, repulsive, how they murdered in front of an audience, defied the Accords with every drop of blood they drank.

It wasn't just fun and games for Braginsky, it was politics and theatre, smoke and mirrors.

There was a lump in her throat.

Amelia reached into her pocket, showing only the smallest part of the Phosphor, just enough to let her know it was where it should be.

"I do. But remember, no acting before they drink."

Such a simple rule, and yet Alice struggled to stay still even now, before Braginsky had shown his face or lifted the curtain, before anything had happened, really. She nodded ever so slightly, the movement barely noticeable in the dim flicker of the candles along the walls.

Her heart was trying to spring from her chest, beating at a fearful, frantic pace, threatening to burst through her ribcage at any moment. No matter what Alice tried to tell herself, she was scared, more so than she'd ever admit to anybody else or even herself. There was nothing to strengthen her fraying nerves, nothing to smooth the crashing waves or the indomitable storm raging throughout her mind.

It was Amelia's hand and how it gently closed around her own, which came as a small trace of solace when all Alice could feel were fright and anxiety, a hand like an anchor saving her ship from being swallowed by the unrelenting tempest inside her head.

Just as she resurfaced from beneath that water, as she was released from what had been building up into sky-high waves all night, just then she noticed the two subjugates dragging in a third man with a bag over his head. He was barely if at all conscious, judging by the way his feet dragged over the ground, and it appeared as though he hadn't seen the light of day in a long time.

For just a moment the dismalness of the thought that Alice was watching two humans drag one of their own up onto stage towards certain doom, all so they could get closer to the monsters they so admired, sunk in, leaving a bitter taste in her mouth. Her hands were clenching around the armrests of her chair, and at that moment there was nothing she wanted to do more than to escape the living - or rather, undead - hell that was Braginsky's manor.

The picture of the vampires before her sitting on the edge of their seats, overcome by their desire for just a bite, just a single drop of blood, disgusted her. She was forced to watch on in silence as the man was chained to the chair at the centre of the stage, forced to realise in silent horror just how badly he had been treated, how much he'd been abused.

Bruises and cuts decorated his flesh like stars speckled the night sky, like comets drawing a bright streak behind them as they cut through the dark. The rags hanging off his slim, famished frame only highlighted that.

He wasn't awake, but maybe that was better for him, given his circumstances.

"Amelia, please-," she all but whimpered, even though she knew there was nothing they could do.

They were powerless.

A fine group of saviours and protectors they were, forced to look on helplessly and unhelpfully, all because the Accords only forbade vampires from feeding on mortals, not from harming them. Unless they drank from the man on the stage, all misconduct that had taken place that night would have been that of Amelia and herself sneaking into Braginsky's home without proper invitation or warrant.

The lump inside Alice's throat only seemed to grow, threatening to cut off her breath, to suffocate her in a slow and cruel manner.

Once again Amelia's hand squeezed around hers, but for the first time that night Alice found herself unable to tell whether the shadowhuntress was doing this in an attempt to calm Alice or herself. Either way, no matter whether it was in vain or not, it was better than nothing.

Ivan Braginsky stepped onto the stage, a haunting picture of menacing elegance. With the candlelight shining onto him, the dark red of his wide coat appeared to shimmer like fresh blood in the light of the crescent moon, with the deep, midnight-black of his shirt and waistcoat his skin seemed paler even than freshly fallen snow, paler even than his almost white hair.

"Welcome!" he exclaimed with spread arms. "Welcome to a night free of the yoke of the nephilim!"

Why, why could a sentence like that not be enough for a conviction or to justify them being here?

Why did they have to stay idle, have to stand by?

Why-

With a flourishing gesture, Braginsky pulled off the coarse bag that had been covering the mortal's head, baring him to the dim lighting and hungry eyes all around him. What awaited her beneath the scraps of fabric was far worse than his body had lead to assume: A myriad and a labyrinth of cuts and bruises and scars, a tale if the torture the stranger had to have undergone at the hands of Braginsky.

The taste of bile filled Alice's mouth, but still she remained quiet.

One bite, one bite is enough for us to step in.

The words were less calming than she had meant them to be. They came closer to a reminder of what was to follow to them revealing themselves, a reminder of the fight that would come rather than the calming mantra they had been meant to be.

In an attempt to distract herself from the horror taking place onstage, Alice allowed her eyes to wander around the room, through rows of seats and through the crowd of vampires all around them. A woman near the front caught her attention with how she sat at the edge of her seat, how a thin line of spit trailed downwards from the corner of her mouth as she all but tried to devour the human with her eyes.

Alice couldn't quite tell who of them was holding on to the other's hand anymore, whether it was Amelia or her that held the other in that wrench-like grip as the world slowly faded out, leaving only them and that awful space they were trapped in.

All understanding of time left her as each second was drawn out indefinitely, prolonged to last longer than a minute, an hour, longer than days even. It simply wouldn't end.

"This mortal dared dabbling in the occult," Braginsky said at that moment, pulling the man up by only his matted hair, tearing him up into a state of feverish half-consciousness.

"He dared overstepping the boundaries set by coming too close to things beyond his pathetic understanding of the world."

A weak groan escaped the human's lips, nearly inaudible over the jeering and screeching of the Downworlders filling the room. The world "miserable" seemed like an understatement, if ever she saw one.

"Now...," he continued, far more quietly than before. Braginsky was slowly walking around the man, one finger lifting his chin in an almost tender gesture.

"What do we do to meddlesome humans like this one?"

As quickly as that softness had come it was gone again when he pushed the mortal away from himself in a way that almost made the chair keel over. 

The crowd's reaction was near instantaneous.

The sounds stemming from the rows of vampires in front of Alice lay somewhere between yells and cheers and moans, a cacophony of hunger and greed as shrill voices called for Braginsky to cut him, to bite him, to bleed him dry.

If possible, Amelia's grip around her hand tightened even more, to a painful extent as the both of them watched what should have been theatre instead of reality. Neither of them was comfortable with watching on blindly, with listening to the deafening screams of the vampires, and yet neither of them could show it.

Amelia seemed to be trying so hard to stay strong.

Was she doing that for Alice or herself?

Alice's nails dug into the soft wood of her armrests like a blade, forcing deep marks into the chair as she held onto it for dear life, as though it was the only thing keeping her afloat.

Up on stage Braginsky had tilted his victim's head to the side to bare his neck. Another wave of that uncontrollable hunger surged through her, and Alice could taste bile in her mouth. The thought alone of feeling like this because of what Braginsky had done was enough to make her want to starve herself for at least a year.

He licked a long stripe along the mortal's neck.

Alice's teeth sunk into her bottom lip, and just like before a coppery taste filled her mouth. The screams around her were deafening, but so far they hadn't broken the Accords, no matter how despicable the things they'd done were.

Braginsky asked the crowd what he should do to the mortal for the second time.

Next to her, Amelia pulled out the Phosphor in a slow, controlled motion. There was not even the slightest of trembles to her movements, all was clear and precise, a mind already in battle, long before the first blow.

At last the vampire sunk his teeth into his victim's neck.

As the crowd erupted into cheers and a perversion of exultation, as a nearly inaudible cry tore from the man's throat and all the world seemed to fade out, Amelia slowly rose to her feet, the Phosphor raised above her head.

Ivan Braginsky's eyes widened when he noticed her standing there, a lone figure at the back of the room, but it was too late.

She'd pressed the button.

 ◇ • ◇ • ◇

 Fire.

There was fire everywhere, and had she not had something entirely different to worry about, Amelia would have cursed Ludwig and his inventions for once again making her life harder than it had to be. This way, however, she had other issues to take care of.

The world had erupted into a hell of chaos and flames.

Instead of making the candlelight first flash then fade like it had done to the witchstones at the institute, the Phosphor had made the flames flare up in a way that easily set fire to wallpaper, curtains and anybody who'd dared standing too close to one of the chandeliers or candelabras.

Vampires burned like matchsticks, one of the little-known side-effects of living for centuries and drying out more with each new day. Horrifying as it was, no small part of Amelia felt relieved with every vampire that succumbed to that inferno she had inadvertently and accidentally caused.

The fire had cut off their means of escape by blocking the doors and windows, and even though it wasn't as big a problem to Alice and her yet, they'd have to find a way out of here eventually. But for now they were trapped with the vampires as much as the vampires were trapped with them.

As mayhem and panic enveloped the room faster even than smoke and flames could, Alice seemed to snap out of her fear-induced stupor at last. She stood straight and strong, right beside Amelia, back in her element at last. She still looked like Marianne, but there was something so undoubtedly Alice about the way she carried herself that to Amelia there was no doubt about the identity of the woman beside her.

A small smile danced around Amelia's lips as she extended the handle of the parasol she was still holding towards Alice, allowing for her to unsheathe the rapier hidden inside its shaft in one single, elegant motion. 

Alice was quick to bend over, grabbing a fistful of fabric from her skirts and cutting through the soft satin in two smooth motions, first to her left, then to her right. It was a matter of seconds, then the floor-length gown had lost several inches in length, now only barely passing Alice's knees.

"Remind me to thank Madeline for choosing a hoop skirt instead of a crinoline with vertical braces," Alice said as she tucked the wide trumpet sleeves of her dress in a way that would keep them out of her way.

"You know, I'd love to, but I think there's something we should take care of first."

Namely the horde of vampires that was still all around them, panicked and burning, screaming and crying out in pain. The first few seemed to have snapped out of their stupor and had spun to face them. Barely a second had passed before Amelia found them rushing towards her with bared fangs.

Without another thought Amelia pulled forth one of her seraph blades, her left hand free to reach for her throwing knives any second.

"Amitiel! " she yelled, watching the blade come to life with a bright blue flare of angelic light upon hearing its name.

Amelia ducked down between the arms of a vampire that had come storming towards her and rammed the weapon right between his ribs, his pained cries echoing inside her head as she tried to look away from the way he dropped to the ground lifelessly as the angelic force of the blade overpowered his demonic blood.

With a slight shake of her head Amelia forced herself to refocus on the battlefield the library had quickly spiralled into. She couldn't dwell on every vampire. 

She neither had the time to do so, nor did  they give her the time.

It was as Amelia avoided another attack with a quick sidestep, that an uncomfortable thought forced itself into her mind. 

What if the brigade wouldn't come because the agreed sign had not come and never would? 

What if Alice and her would be forced to fight Braginsky's clan by themselves, simply because the Phosphor hadn't worked?

She spun around her own axis as she barely avoided a vampire leaping towards her. Before he could make another move, Amelia had already pulled out two of her knives and thrown one straight into his chest. 

Amelia couldn't let a thought like that preoccupy her, she told herself, not when she - and more importantly:  Alice - was in danger. Even as she threw her remaining knife she was ready to pull out the next two, even as the silvery blade pierced the back of a vampire ready to attack Alice she held the handles of her other weapons in her hand.

She caught a glance of how she fended off a vampire and his subjugate, and Amelia could not help but marvel at the flawless execution of each motion of the silver rapier, at the elegance and beauty of Alice's movements as she moved in a way that almost made her look like a dancer.

Amelia might have kept on staring, had a scream not torn her away.

With eyes of fire and a grimace stiff enough to be made of stone, a Downworlder charged at her. She tried deterring the vampire using her weapons just like before, but he nimbly avoided the blades before they could hit their mark.

She realised her mistake at the last moment, but it was too late.

The vampire leaped towards her, and as Amelia tumbled backwards she nearly lost her balance. She barely caught herself, but still Amelia managed to use her momentum for a low kick in an attempt to make the vampire fall. 

To her disbelief, the Downworlder simply jumped over her leg in a show of speed that not even her acceleration rune could grant her. Even with the magic of angels imbued into her skin, her being, the speed of a vampire was no match for her.

He didn't stumble in the slightest and instead avoided her attack as he forced Amelia back farther and farther, until her back made contact with the wall, perhaps a hair's breadth beside a candleholder. Before Amelia could react, he had her pinned to the wall with a hand around her neck, slowly forcing her upwards onto the tips of her toes.

"Not so powerful now, are you, little nephilim?" he hissed, and there was something gruesome about the way the flames all around them flickered and reflected in his bared teeth.

"This is what you get for deceiving us."

The words chased a shiver down Amelia's spine, causing her to stiffen as all she could think of was a way of escaping the death grip he had on her throat. She could hear her blood pounding, could feel his grip tighten, and yet, for just a moment, she was immobile as her feet lost contact to the ground.

She wouldn't have long, a couple of breaths, a couple of blinks, not enough to think of any proper plan, not enough to react on little more but instinct. As Amelia's hands came up to pull on his wrench-like grip around her throat, she saw a small flash, maybe the promised pictures of her life flashing before her eyes, maybe an illusion as rationality left her.

Amelia kicked and struggled against his hold, tried pushing herself off the wall, but his hold wouldn't budge. Her vision blurred, and for a moment she regretted getting separated from Alice. She didn't want to die, but if this was how she went out, she'd rather have done so side by side with the woman she cherished most.

In a last flicker of an idea, the shadowhuntress tried reaching for a smaller, stylett-like blade tucked away in one of her pockets, a weapon she'd added only after talking to Alice, just before leaving. With the last of her power Amelia tried bringing the weapon upwards just far enough to cut the vampire, to free herself from his grip.

It turned out her attempt had not only come too late, but was also in vain.

Before Amelia could save herself, the vampire opened his mouth, revealing his fangs once again. Blood glistened on his teeth, and as Amelia's vision blurred more and more, as her lungs cried out for air, she swore she could see him cough up blood. Red stained the previously white shirt and soaked through the fabric within mere seconds, and as the vampire fell, so did she.

Amelia lay there, breaths heaving and eyes watering as each harsh, laboured breath felt as though her chest was being forced open with a crowbar little by little, as though the air was going to burst her lungs and break her ribs. 

From the corner of her eye she could see the way her assailant all but crumbled, how he seemed to age centuries before her very eyes as his hair greyed and his skin withered away within mere seconds. Tears were still burning in her eyes, whether because of the pain or the smoke, Amelia could not tell, but by the time she had managed to blink them away, all that was left of the vampire were his clothes and a pile of ashes.

On weak, shaking arms Amelia pushed herself off the ground to sit up. Only now did she notice the hole decorating the back of the coat lying in the ashes before her, only now, among uneven breaths and with a heart that threatened to burst from her chest, did she notice the figure standing above the remnants of the Downworlder.

Alice's rapier was still half raised and she was only marginally less out of breath than Amelia when she helped the shadowhuntress back onto her own feet. Amelia leant back against the wall as she tried to regain her calm.

"I... I truly can't leave you alone... Can I?" Alice asked between heaving breaths.

"Then don't," she rasped out with a smile.

"You shouldn't talk as much," Alice admonished her gently, and when she met Amelia's gaze, there was a faint sadness in that bright violet of her eyes.

"Don't strain yourself."

"Try and silence me all you want," the shadowhuntress said with a rough laugh before adding. "I actually have some ideas on how you could do that."

"Oh, I'd love to hear those," Alice replied. "But unless you want to waste all my efforts in keeping you alive, we should take care of the matter at hand first."

Amelia looked up and found herself surrounded by a small crowd, Alice and her at the centre as more and more vampires and subjugates surrounded them, forming a ring that tightened with every second. The two of them stood side by side, rapier raised and knives in hand, faces ash-smeared and the bright red colour of vampire blood splattered all over.

"Ready?" Amelia asked with a small smirk.

"I thought you'd never ask."

The tension snapped and with little more than the blink of an eye the tentative calm from before was gone as the library descended into chaos once again. Once more, her knives shot through the air to find their way into the chests and backs of anyone who came too close, and once more Alice's rapier reflected the candlelight with a bright flash of silver as it cut through air and flesh alike.

Piles of ashes and puddles of blood littered the ground, a battlefield of dirt and grime, smoke and hellfire. Her breathing was ragged and uneven even now, but still Amelia pulled out knife after knife, targeting those who left the outer ring to instead attack them directly.

As her blade turned another vampire into little more than a pile of dirt, the Downworlder's companions spun around, ready to attack. Amelia could see the fury in their expression, how they bared their fangs as they ran towards Alice and her.

She'd already raised her arm, ready to throw another set of knives when the windows all along the side of the room burst into a hailstorm of broken glass, ending up as little more than glimmering dust on the ground.

The brigade. At last.

More and more shadowhunters poured in through the broken windows, a flood of black in their gear of leather and linen, with the ink-like runes drawn onto their skin. The circle around them broke up as more and more of them engaged in smaller fights, as the library spiralled into pure mayhem, a haven of smoke and screams.

Nonetheless Alice and her stayed together, side by side and back to back as they worked together to gradually break away from the wall and the flames still lapping at curtains and wallpaper, away from the fiery hell still spreading all around. 

From the corner of her eye Amelia caught a glance of Alice's movements and that practised, fey-like elegance which felt impossible to put into words. She had the allure and deterring effect of a valkyrie as she danced across the battlefield, her dress torn and soot-smeared, soaked in blood as it flew around her whenever she spun, whenever her rapier cut through a vampire's neck as though it was finer even than a spider's thread.

Amelia might have kept watching, a victim to the grace of the siren she'd fallen for, but alas, they were on a battlefield. 

A scream tore her attention away, made her spin around to find a young subjugate, perhaps even younger than her, storming towards her. He clung to one of Amelia's knives, she recognised, arms high above his head with the weapon in both his hands as tears streaked down his face.

"Duck!" Amelia yelled, no matter how much the order burnt in her throat.

Even so, without hesitation Alice obeyed, dropping down into a crouch as the knife cut through the air above them. It would have, at least, had Amelia's arm not stopped its path.

Amelia had brought her arms up to shield herself when, even though she'd been the one to warn Alice in the first place, the knife still struck her arm. The blade cut through her sleeve easily with all the force the mortal had brought into his attack, cut through the fabric as though it was little more than a single thread.

Amelia didn't know  what she yelled, just that she cursed, just that it was almost as loud as the pain screaming in her veins. Nonetheless, she caught the subjugate’s hands in a way that allowed her to wrench the knife from his hands.

The young man, little more than a boy, struggled in her hold, thrashed around with a force unlike any she'd seen in a mere mortal so far, like a rabid animal almost. Tears streamed down his face, down that mask of anguish and fury he wore.

"You killed her!" he cried out. "You killed her, you just-!"

Amelia hurt, somewhere deep down, somewhere she couldn't reach. She couldn't place what it was, why his yelled words and expression struck something so deep inside her, couldn't make sense of why  she felt pain.

She knew of the close bond subjugates had with their masters and mistresses, but even so she'd never seen anything like this. Amelia might have spent more time contemplating this, but she struggled with forming a coherent thought when all she felt was the throbbing pain in her arm whenever the man moved, whenever he sent another spike of pain shooting through her. The knife had cut through her coat and farther yet, exposing the once white, now red, fabric of her blouse.

With another hiss of pain she changed the way she held onto his wrists, twisting his arms behind his back as she tried to figure out a way to knock him unconscious without letting go. Still the subjugate struggled against her hold, kicking and screaming, even going as far as trying to bite her.

Until he didn't.

As though his life held little more value than the flicker of a candle in the wind, it had been blown out, cut short by a long, silver blade straight through his neck. He slumped in Amelia's arms, and it took her a second too long to let go.

In front of her, Alice used her free hand to wipe away some beads of sweat on her forehead, plastering some errant strands of Marianne's dirty blonde to her skin. For the first time that night, Amelia realised she'd seen Alice not for who she truly was, but for whom she appeared to be.

A vampire, a  stranger , not the woman she loved.

For just a moment all Amelia could see was the light violet of Marianne's eyes and the cold quirk of her lips, not Alice's smile and bright, emerald-like eyes.

Whereas the transformation had seemed like a façade earlier, Amelia now found herself unable to see the woman hidden behind. As she stood there, a blood-smeared rapier in her left and a cruel grimace blemishing her face, the shadowhuntress could see little more than the vampire she posed as.

"You... You killed him," Amelia whispered, barely above a whisper as time appeared to stand still, barely audible amongst the clamour of the library.

A terrible sense of déjà vu spread throughout her, even as she spoke, and for a moment she heard him say it again, heard him yell at her again, then it was gone. 

Alice had killed a mortal, and Amelia hadn't done anything.

She'd let her kill a human.

Amelia had condemned a human to death by not stepping in.

"A little thank you would be nice," Alice muttered as she wiped the rapier on her long-since ruined dress, before looking up to face her once again.

"I know you don't usually-"

"We don't kill  mortals , Alice!" Amelia snapped, and the words echoed throughout her mind like church bells, a cruel, continuous reminder. 

They didn't kill mortals, they  shouldn't kill them.

And here she was.

"We're meant to protect them! What gives you the right to-... to... To just betray that!?"

Alice looked at her as though Amelia had slapped her across the face. Her cheeks had reddened, there was a mix of hurt and an emotion Amelia didn't recognise on her face.

"First of all," she spat. "I'm not one of  you !" Alice exclaimed, sharper than either of their weapons.

"And second, would you rather I had let you die? Would you prefer for me to just let... To just let somebody kill you right before my eyes?"

"No, but that doesn't mean you can just- Hey, where are you going?"

Before Amelia could finish, Alice had turned on her heel to run away. It took her a moment to realise that Alice wasn't running  from  her but  after someone. Amelia wanted to follow her, but just as she set in motion, she was thrown back and slammed onto the ground.

For the second time that night all air left Amelia's lungs, and for a fraction of a second she couldn't tell up from down as the world blurred around her, little more than a spiral of colours and noise, flickering lights and the smell of smoke. 

A weak groan escaped Amelia's lips, but nonetheless she pushed herself onward, hastening to get back on her feet.

If she was correct about whom Alice had been chasing, she had to hurry.

Her nerves were screaming when she used her already injured arm to push herself off the ground, but Amelia paid it no mind. If she wanted to make it out of this night alive, if she wanted  Alice  to make it out of this night alive, she would have to bite through the pain and find her. 

The vampire above her was little more than another obstacle in her way.

He was ready to attack her again, but just as suddenly as he'd thrown her back and against the ground, Amelia pulled out her second seraph blade.

"Verchiel! " she shouted, all while barely avoiding his charge, while barely dodging his fangs or being thrown back again. She didn't give him the time to attack once more or even to turn around again, as she buried the blue glowing blade deep in his back.

Amelia didn't stand there to watch him crumble to dust as Verchiel defeated his demonic essence, instead she pulled out the blade and all but sprinted towards the shattered windows in front of her, in the same direction Alice had disappeared in. She passed by other members of the brigade still engaged in their own battles, but at that moment she couldn't have cared less.

At that moment the only thing on her mind was Alice.

The moment she jumped through the broken window and landed on the snow-covered gravel outside felt as though she'd run into a wall headfirst.

Against the close, hot air of the burning library, the crispness and cold of the late February night felt freezing, as though each breath Amelia took would freeze her from the inside out and cut her lungs all over.

She rose to her feet, drawing the thick woollen coat tighter around herself with her healthy arm as she surveyed the area. Amelia's fingers were twitching, her heart was pumping at a pace faster than even that of the thoughts darting around her head. The shadowhuntress had never seen herself to be panicked or frightened, as one to give in to the pressure and the adrenaline.

Amelia knew fear, but at that moment it had become almost incapacitating.

She knew worry, but right there, on that gravel path between the serene parks before her and the burning estate in her back, right there Amelia knew nothing  but worry.

At last she caught sight of movement in the distance, realising her fears had been justified as she recognised whom Alice was with. Before Amelia knew what she was doing, she found herself running past shrubs and topiaries, feet pounding the ground, hair and coat flying behind her as all thoughts but one left her mind.

I have to reach her.

It was an echo inside her head, erratic, uneven, a plea to whomever awaited her above or below. She'd seen it again, the dark crimson of his coat, how it shimmered beneath the moon like the blood he'd shed, the blood he  would shed if nobody came to stop him. 

Amelia's lungs were screaming as she pushed herself onward, across low hedges and around topiaries, ever onwards, no matter the pain or the side stitches. She trusted Alice, trusted her to defend herself, but that didn't mean she trusted Braginsky, on the other hand.

There was a reason he'd become one of the most powerful vampires within all of London, perhaps even all throughout the kingdom.

The clan leader did not take prisoners, did not let enemies live.

A victim in his hands or those of his clan would not have to wonder whether they would live, but rather  how long  they would.

Amelia turned another corner and at last she'd reached them, vampire and shapeshifter, face to face with their weapons raised. She felt her heart hit the cold, hard ground when she noticed the bright red colour dyeing the front of Alice's dress, the way the blood blossomed at her shoulder like the most grotesque of roses.

Not a thought was on her mind as she threw  Verchiel , hurling the blade with all the force of the fury boiling inside of her, long before she even knew what she was doing. The power of the blade and its blue shine had weakened significantly after taking out the vampire before, but nevertheless it should be more than enough to at least harm Braginsky.

It should have been.

"Now now, don't you think it is a tad rude to attack a man when he isn't even facing you, little  nephilim ?"

He'd caught the weapon.

Without ever turning to face her or the blade, Braginsky had caught it between two fingers, holding it at an arm's length, lips quirked in disgust.

As though the seraph blade was little more than an insect.

No true danger, but repulsive nonetheless.

"So?" he asked, and once again that sickeningly sweet smile returned to his expression.

A shiver ran down Amelia's back, cold as ice and unforgiving as steel as he gave her a smile so innocent it could have been that of a child, but not ever that of a vampire, a murderer of hundreds.

"You are no man, Braginsky," she growled between grit teeth. "You're neither a man nor are you any more polite than I am."

The worry from before made way for an indescribable fury, a kind of rage that couldn't be contained in any way, shape, or form. Even at that moment Amelia found herself reaching for another seraph blade, for another three throwing knives.

She wouldn't go down, she wouldn't let him live.

"Tsk... No respect whatsoever," the vampire admonished, and an amused smile played around his lips. "So  this is your subjugate, Marianne?"

Braginsky turned to face Alice again, acting as though Amelia wasn't there at all, as though her presence didn't pose a threat, not even a mild annoyance. Had his attention not meant danger, it might have riled her up even more.

She looked over at Alice again, tried to gauge the situation, attempted to make out just how bad the wound hidden underneath the once blue fabric of her dress was. 

Alice stood straight and unwavering, but her left hand was pressed against her shoulder as she tried to stop the bleeding. Her teeth were clenched and the expression on her face was one Amelia had never seen on her, one of cold, unyielding hatred.

Something about the situation seemed off to Amelia, but she couldn't quite discern what it was.

"To think you of all people would fall for one of her kind, dearest," Braginsky went on, and between her worry for Alice and the hatred that still set fire to her nerves, Amelia struggled not to attack him right then and there.

"Then again... You didn't  fall per se, did you? You betrayed me, isn't that right?"

The last words he spoke were cold, and for a moment Amelia could see the cruelty he'd so carefully hidden beneath a thin veneer of friendliness, no matter the story his eyes told. It seemed the dam had broken, seemed that he'd given up the act from before.

"As much as I enjoy your monologues,  dearest ," Alice spat. "I'd appreciate it, if we could get through this sometime soon. I remember there being something we wanted to take care of before you got distracted."

Alice lowered the blood-smeared hand, teeth grit as she raised her weapon once again. With the rigidity of her expression, Amelia almost wouldn't have noticed her flinching, when Braginsky laughed at her.

He laughed.

A cold and cruel laugh, a sound that burned like fire upon hearing and froze one nonetheless, if only for one second. Amelia's grip around her knives tightened once more as Alice and her exchanged a quick glance.

They were ready.

"Well, colour me surprised," he retorted. "I wouldn't have expected you to fight with a wounded sword arm, but then again... You've always been as stubborn as a mule, haven't you Marianne?"

The arrogance dripped off his words in much the same way blood still dripped off his rapier, dyeing the snow beneath in a bright, violent red. Braginsky wiped off his blade with a gloved hand and a smirk before licking it off.

He hummed, then he spoke, more to himself than towards them: "As I thought... You're not Marianne, are you? I noticed you acting strangely, but this is not vampire blood."

"How nice of you to notice," Alice retorted. "That means I can finally use my left hand again."

She passed the weapon to her free hand without as much as batting an eyelash, as cold and unwavering as the winter night all around them.

No more words were spoken or agreements made before Bragisnky darted forward at a speed higher than any a human could manage, with a precision and calm so unfitting for their situation. His and Alice's weapons clashed with an awful sound, and Amelia could have sworn that sparks flew as she parried his blow with ease. Alice dodged his next slash and attempted to strike him with a quick attack forward as he was still defenceless, but Braginsky merely spun, leaving her rapier to cut the air beside his arm.

Amelia had been watching on up until that moment in an attempt to find an opening, a moment in which Braginsky was distracted enough for her to strike, but it seemed that chance wouldn't come without her aid.

At that moment, as she threw herself into the battle, she couldn't have cared less about what was to happen to her, as long as the vampire  suffered  . This was the monster who'd killed enough mortals to fill Highgate cemetery all by himself, the vampire who'd broken the Accords without as much as a second of doubt, the man who'd  dared harming Alice.

She would make him pay.

Amelia called upon the name of her third and last seraph blade,  Azrael , as she dashed towards his unprotected back. She had a clear line, chance and opportunity, as long as Alice occupied him, she'd be able to catch him off guard and- 

"My, one might think there's no honour left among your kind,  nephilim . First you sneak into my home and now you attack me from behind?"

Braginsky wasn't facing her, he'd not turned to see her and yet he knew where she was, what she was going to do. He gave Amelia no chance to react to his words, simply spun on the snow-covered gravel as he parried Alice's attack using his rapier to not only block Amelia's blow, but strike her blade so hard it was flung out of her hand and across the yard.

They were left on either side of Braginsky, one in his front and one in his back, and yet the unsettling feeling that it was them, who were overpowered, overcame Amelia, a crack in that thin veneer of composure she struggled so much to uphold. Neither of them spoke, not a whisper nor a word as they circled the vampire in their midst, closing in on him slowly.

There was no communication, and yet Alice and her moved in complete unison, as though an unspoken and unbroken bond connected them. Like so many times before that night a pair of silver knives cut through the air, mere seconds before Alice's rapier swung downward in a wide motion.

It was Braginsky's speed that betrayed him, how he dodged Amelia's blades with ease and yet so narrowly they just barely passed by his head of silvery blonde hair. He'd kept his balance but not his attention, and when Alice attacked, when the tip of her rapier sliced through the air, it also cut through his coat and into his skin, allowing bright blood to drip freely onto what had been pure white snow only seconds before.

Ivan Braginsky cursed in a language neither of them knew, deep and menacing words unlike any they'd heard before, words that sent shivers down her spine and made her only too aware of the surrounding cold. He kept his hand clenched around where the blade had cut his forearm, teeth grit and eyes sparking with a fury unlike anything Amelia knew.

"Playtime is over, little  nephilim ," he growled. "And you - You're not Marianne nor are you her kind, so who are you? What's in it for you?"

Amelia caught a slight flicker in Alice's gaze, but she didn't reply, only darted forward again to attack the vampire with another series of short, quick attacks, each of which he dodged, if only by a hair's breadth. Amelia attempted to use his distraction once more, sent another knife towards his exposed back, but he merely spun, avoiding both her blade and Alice's.

Braginsky continued seemingly unperturbed by the slew of attack raining down upon him, the same smile plastered on his face, even when it was obvious by the fire in his eyes and the way his teeth grit that he was nowhere near as calm and content as the façade he put on led to believe. 

"Going by your abilities you must be one of the Children of Lillith, am I correct?" the vampire continued, barely breaking a sweat as he ducked beneath a swing that might have decapitated him had he been a second too late.

"So what do you get from helping them? What good has her kind ever done you?"

"What does it matter to you?" Alice yelled, and she accentuated her words with a harsh downward swing of her weapon.

Braginsky barely managed to block her, his own rapier horizontal as he used his second, gloved hand to steady his blade and withstand the force of Alice's attack. 

"Oh, but it doesn't matter to me," the vampire replied simply. "I'm merely intrigued that you'd be working for the likes of her. You know what they call us, don't you?  Downworlders ."

He spat the term as though it was little more than an insult, crude and brutal, unforgiving like Alice's attacks and unwavering like his defence.

Amelia reached for another two knives, noticing she was almost out. 

They'd have to end this quickly. 

She threw the two blades, both at once, aiming for Braginsky's back and sword arm, attempting to focus even as her heart threatened to jump from her chest with each and every frantic beat.

Just like before it seemed as though Braginsky had known not only that she would attack, but also when and how. He spun in a simple, elegant movement as his own coat flew up around him, and when the knives missed him for the umpteenth time that night, when Alice staggered at the sudden absence of his weapon against hers, he used his momentum to carry the force of his movement into a single attack.

The rapier cut through the air in a wide arc, and when it stopped its tracks, leaving behind a long, deep cut all along Alice's thigh, Amelia couldn't tell who of them screamed louder. Alice writhed in pain, tumbling down onto the ground as red spread all around her, and yet all Amelia could hear was that distorted, shrill yell of  "ALICE!"  that had cut through the air the same way Braginsky's weapon had done.

For a second, she didn't know where she was or what was happening, she only knew that pain, the pain of knowing that the monster before her had  dared harm the one she loved. Fury boiled in her veins, hotter than the fire behind her, harder than steel and sharper than her knives.

Braginsky stood still in front of her, blood dripping off his blade, back straight and relaxed as he looked down upon the woman at his feet. 

"To think you reminded me of Marianne for even a second," he mused, before drawing in a long, deep breath.

When he turned on his heel to face Amelia once again, his face split into a cruel, fanged grin. There was something maniacal about his expression, about the flicker of hunger in his eyes and the almost unhinged smile he wore.

"A lovely smell, isn't it?" he asked, taking another deep breath. "And you did stop me from feeding earlier, so wouldn't it be fair for me to take  her instead?"

"Over my dead body!"

Amelia wasn't sure when she'd drawn the knives, when she'd decided to attack, but at that moment there were few things she actually cared about. She wanted to see Braginsky feel the same pain Alice felt, wanted to see him at her feet, wanted to wipe that godforsaken grin off his face.

"My... That can be arranged, if you so wish," he replied, dodging another one of her throwing knives.

A guttural scream tore from her already sore throat, deep and raspy, uncontrolled as she threw another round of knives, uncaring where she hit him as long as he felt pain.

"And here I thought they trained your kind in combat," Braginsky mused. "But looking at you I highly doubt that - I don't think I've seen form this sloppy since the sixteen-hundreds..."

Amelia didn't know what she was doing, whether she yelled or remained silent, whether she made any sort of decisions or just allowed for her body to take over as she darted forward, closer to Braginsky than she knew she should have gotten, close and all too willing to kill him right then and there.

He laughed, true, honest amusement as he watched her struggle, as he spun and twirled out of the way of her movements as she used her knives like daggers, as she tried harming him in any way that mattered.

And yet, Braginsky merely drew in another deep breath, pupils dilated and almost entirely black when their eyes met over their blades. For the first time since he'd struck Alice he attacked again, bringing his rapier down in a single, harsh movement Amelia barely managed to block by crossing her own blades.

"You know,  nephilim  ," he said, meeting her eyes directly, black and blue, night and day. "Perhaps I won't kill your little plaything tonight. With the way she smells, I can only  imagine what she tastes like..."

Amelia grit her teeth and ducked down, hoping to catch him off-guard the same way he'd done to Alice earlier, but the vampire merely staggered. She tried kicking him, attacked him over and over with swings of her blades and any other means of attack she had, and yet with every time she attempted harming him, a new scratch or cut appeared on  her skin, another wave of fire, another burning sensation as his rapier painted fine lines of red all across her arms.

He pushed her back, farther and farther back, each step forward another two steps Amelia took backwards as she tried so frantically to defend herself, to keep him distracted from the woman cowering amongst bloodstained snow only a couple of feet behind him.

Amelia could feel the despair welling up inside of her, a tense, sickening feeling that slowly spread throughout her body, swallowing and suffocating all hope.

She was down to the last two of her knives.

She was stuck fighting a being so much older and more powerful than her, trapped in that fearful state of uncertainty whether she'd make it out alive.

Whether  they'd make it out alive.

"Why, it seems someone became a tad quiet," Braginsky taunted between two swings of his weapon. "One might just think you're scared."

And they would be right.

Amelia was scared, more so than she wanted to admit, than she had ever been. With each and every drop of blood Braginsky spilled, his calculated gruesomeness appeared to fade more and more as the mad, almost maniacal nature slowly overtook him. Between the way his pupils had dilated to the point his eyes appeared entirely black and the way his fangs had sharpened into glimmering points, Amelia knew that his composure had made way for a far more reckless and violent enemy.

"I'm not scared of you," she growled, and even though her words could not have been further from the truth if she had tried, Amelia put all her force and the power of that ineffable maelstrom of emotions inside of her into the way she threw her last two knives.

All sense of time left her.

No matter whether it was a fraction of a second or more, whether it was a minute or less, at that moment Amelia stood still, frozen in time and place as she realised she'd left herself defenceless, all because she'd allowed for Braginsky to get under her skin.

She didn't know whether to clench her eyes shut or stare ahead in complete horror as she watched her knives fly past the vampire by a wide enough margin for her to doubt she had aimed at all. She had not, she'd sacrificed her last defences to a single, careless throw. 

Her movements had been little more than those of a puppet of a string, controlled by an outsider, either the adrenaline pumping through her veins or the fear of Braginsky, of losing.

And yet...

Amelia had lost.

They had lost.

And still, a pained scream tore its way from Braginsky's lips.

Her eyes fluttered open, and she found herself faced with the vampire clenching a hand to his chest, bright red blood welling forth from behind his fingers, from a wound Amelia knew she hadn't caused. Only now did she see the blade stuck in his hand, sticking out grotesquely from pale white skin.

His curses echoed in the cold night air, words in an unknown language, more horrifying than anything he'd done that night. Amelia was petrified, as stiff as a board as she watched how the blood soaked through the black fabric of his shirt, how it dyed his hands and dripped down onto the snow.

And yet, in that near eternal fraction of a second, Amelia recognised the blade protruding from between the fingers of the vampire's unharmed hand.

Verchiel .

A wide smile spread across her face as she realised.

Behind Braginsky, leaning heavily on one arm and a low wall, Alice stood on weak legs. Her dress had taken on a dark violet from her blood, her face had become as white as the snow still clinging to the fabric. Her left arm was still halfway raised, but before Amelia's eyes it dropped, as Alice did the same.

"You'll pay for this,  nephilim -" Braginsky hissed at that moment, but before he could threaten or harm her, Amelia had pushed forth from behind him to drop down into the snow next to Alice.

Amelia didn't care, what he would do to her, what would happen to her or how he'd kill her, all that mattered was that Alice was safe, that she survived, that she  lived . She couldn't care less about herself, couldn't care less about anything beyond the woman at her feet.

"She's losing a lot of blood, you know?" Braginsky asked coldly, not even making a move to harm her. "I won't have to do anything to this one at all, I just have to  wait ." 

Amelia wanted nothing more than to attack him, to make him fall silent, anything not to hear his words anymore, but she couldn't. She couldn't leave Alice, couldn't stand up, couldn't move at all.

"Why aren't you killing me?" Amelia bit out between grit teeth. "Wouldn't it be easy now? Kill me as I'm defenceless, get out of here and keep up your murdering spree?"

She bent forward, leant over Alice to feel the soft puffs of her breaths, to see the slight rise and fall of her chest. She was still here, still with her.

"Oh, but where's the fun in that? Your kind is awfully resilient, it would be nothing if not an annoying waste of power to kill you."

He walked around her, coming to stand to Amelia's right.

"Not to mention you seem to suffer far more as you slowly watch  her  die, so why waste my power when physical pain does not hurt you nearly as much? And even if I  did kill you... Your blood tastes nowhere near as sweet as hers, damned angel blood of yours."

Braginsky seemed almost playful as he spoke, but his words had struck a chord inside of Amelia. 

Blood .

Without another thought Amelia reached for the already torn hem of Alice's dress and tore off another wide strip of fabric, all around the dress as she bared more yet of Alice's legs. On another day, under different circumstances she might have celebrated, but at that moment all she felt was an indescribable sense of panic, slowly but surely choking her breaths.

Amelia was quick to tie the fabric tightly around Alice's thigh, just above the wound, just tight enough to restrict her blood flow and stem the bleeding. Again she let a hand hover over Alice's mouth, feeling the puffs of air hit her hand.

She could do this.

She'd save her.

Somewhere at the back of her mind she noticed the sound of footsteps, rapid and ever louder on the gravel, the sound of what must have been a small crowd storming towards them, but Amelia didn't care. With shaking hands, she rid herself of her thick black coat and instead rolled Alice onto the woollen fabric to get her off of the icy ground.

"Well,  nephilim , as fun as this was, I'm afraid I can't stick around to play any longer."

There was a rustling sound, then the faint sound of wings, then Amelia was alone, all alone with Alice, unconscious and barely breathing.

She didn't notice the appearance of the shadowhunters until one of them yelled her name. Amelia couldn't tell who it was or whether she even knew them, but she didn't particularly care at that moment, either. She said something, showed them the direction in which Braginsky had left, but she knew they wouldn't catch up.

How would they, when he had transformed?

There were curses, but as the brigade went on to hunt the vampire, Amelia didn't move an inch, remaining where she was, kneeling beside Alice, hoping, begging, praying. She could feel the adrenaline ebbing off, could feel the pain return to all the little cuts and bruises of the night, but the pain did nothing but ground her.

She could always use a healing rune later, but Alice didn't have that luxury. With trembling fingers Amelia shook her slightly, reaching for her unharmed shoulder in an attempt to gently stir her awake. Her wounds alone were bad, if she froze to death those would not matter.

"Alice," she whispered. "Alice, please-!"

Amelia wasn't sure what she was asking for.

Maybe she was asking Alice to open her eyes.

Perhaps she was begging for her to stay alive.

Even so, the words felt meaningless, like nothing but lip service when there were so many words she wanted to speak rather than a meaningless plea. She'd kissed Alice only hours before, but even so she'd never told her how she felt.

She hadn't held her, hadn't had a moment of privacy and time alone with her, no moments of romance and tender togetherness.

They'd had nothing, nothing more than a friendship and a single kiss.

The thought stung, but she knew it was the truth. 

Amelia bent forward once more, and as all thoughts faded into a gentle hum in the back of her head, she pressed her lips against Alice's once more.

Compared to earlier, this kiss tasted nothing but bittersweet, like little more than dying love. How could it be any different?

Here she was, kissing Alice, even as she was unconscious, even as she was dying before her very eyes. How could this kiss taste like anything  but the pain she felt?

She shouldn't have sent them away, she realised, shouldn't have sent the brigade off to catch Braginsky when she needed them here, needed somebody to get Alice to safety, to protect her and to keep her. But she was alone, alone with Alice and her thoughts.

Amelia didn't realise she was crying until the scorching heat of her tears broke through the cold all around her, running down along her cheeks like rivers of flame. 

She couldn't tell whether she made a sound, whether she spoke a word, whether she whispered or yelled, but it didn't matter.

Alice's eyes had opened.

Alice's  eyes, bright green like a forest after rain, like shining emeralds, like so many things Amelia couldn't put into words when all she felt was pure, ineffable joy, when all she could do was pull Alice into a tight hug, pull her close and feel her heartbeat against, feel her breaths, feel her being  alive .

It was only when Alice let out a small whimper, that she released her.

"Oh my God, I'm so sorry, I was just so happy, so-!"

Alice let out a small, shaky laugh, weak still, but even so it was a sound Amelia wanted to hear forever and ever. She was back, back and awake, back to herself and her own body. Back to long blonde hair, to that pale, slightly freckled skin, to those eyes so far beyond what Amelia was able to put into words. Back to gentle laughs and loving scolding, to heavy books and fresh tea, to-

"Are you... Are you just going to stare at me?"

There was a smile playing around Alice's lips, but even so it was obvious she was in pain. She was holding herself upright on her left arm, her right laying limp in her lap as she tried not to strain her shoulder too much.

A small curse slipped past Amelia's lips, then she shuffled to kneel behind Alice, carefully steadying her and allowing for her to lean against her. Absentmindedly, Amelia noticed the way the intricate updo Madeline must have put so much work into had begun slipping upon transformation since Alice's hair was finer than that of Marianne, resulting in the hairstyle slowly becoming undone.

She reached forward to gently pull out one hairpin after the other, watching as Alice's hair fell down onto her shoulders lock after lock. They remained like that for a while, in that simple silence, that silence that seemed to scream but two words.

We lived.

"So...," Alice asked after a while. "Did he die?"

"He... He didn't."

Amelia faltered for a moment, then she returned to the task at hand. As long as she was distracted, everything was fine. As long as she didn't have to address the elephant in the room, all was well.

"When you collapsed I... I ran over, I didn't think, I just-"

Alice didn't speak for a moment, just remained where she sat, allowing for Amelia to toy with her hair as words became sparse. There was so much they wanted to say, or at least so much Amelia wanted to say, and yet it was so hard to take all those feelings into words.

"How's your arm?" Alice broke the silence at last. "I didn't get to... Well, check up on you earlier."

Amelia laughed, even as she felt anything but amusement.

She was worried and elated, excited, she felt dread and love and happiness and so much more, so much more than she could ever voice out.

It felt absurd.

"Do you really think  you  should be the one asking  me  that?" she asked with a laugh, before continuing after a moment. "I'm fine. Or well, I  will be fine, for now it just hurts."

"You know... I can't draw a healing rune for you, but I could..."

Alice fell silent.

Amelia lowered her hands, letting off of her hair for a moment as she leaned around to see what had caused Alice to stop speaking. Surprisingly, she reached up to cover her face and turned away.

"You could  what ?" Amelia broached the topic once more.

She caught a glimpse of Alice's face, and for a second she could have sworn that she was blushing ever so slightly.

"I could... Kiss it better..."

Alice muttered the last words, barely above a whisper, fast and unclear under her breath, but Amelia understood nonetheless, and flushed. Her hands stalled as she struggled to find another hairpin to busy herself with. For lack of a pin, she began combing Alice's hair with her fingers.

"I- Um... I think... I think I'd like that."

As soon as she'd spoken those words, Amelia wanted nothing more than to take them back. Surely Alice had merely made a joke, and here she was taking it seriously...

"Close your eyes."

"W-What?"

Alice turned around to face her, puffing her cheeks ever so slightly, as though she was pouting. Nonetheless there was some sort of mischievousness in her eyes.

"Well... Do you want it to work, or not?" Alice asked.

"I-... Fine."

Reluctantly Amelia closed her eyes, taking a slow, deep breath. She could smell ash, and now that her eyes were closed, she could feel the cold seep into her bones from below, starting at her feet and calves, slowly working itself upwards as she knelt there in the snow.

"Hold still," Alice muttered, then Amelia could feel her lips pressing against her own, a gentle, warm caress, so much better than the bittersweetness from before, so much better, so much more  alive .

When they parted, Amelia wasn't sure whether Alice had put her under a spell or broken a curse, but for a moment she could feel,  taste the magic lingering in the air.

"Didn't you say-," she began. "Didn't you say you'd kiss it better?"

Alice tilted her head, and that mischievous grin was back, that glimmer in her eyes, all those small little bits and pieces Amelia had come to love.

"So it didn't help?" she asked, and a light smirk played around her lips. "I could try again, if you want?"

Amelia's voice was husky when she replied: "I-... I'd quite like that, I think."

They might have kissed right then and there, but just before their lips could connect once more, a yell tore them apart.

"Amelia! Alice!"

At the other end of the small square, a familiar silhouette came running towards them, followed by a small group of shadowhunters and -huntresses. Alistair was out of breath, a wide smear of soot on his cheek, black leather shining in the pale moonlight as he ran towards them.

"Fuck, I knew I shouldn't have sent you on that mission alone," he cursed, scooping Alice up into his arms without as much as batting an eye at either her weight or her protests.

"I swear to God, with every mission I send you on I age another five years..."

Amelia struggled to keep up with him as he carried Alice off towards the entrance of the park, away from the burning mansion and towards the carriages awaiting the return of the brigade.

"Did- Did you catch him?" she gasped, almost running to keep up with the shadowhunter's pace.

Alistair merely shook his head, shifting his hold on Alice ever so slightly.

"The damn bat was gone before we even reached you," he replied. "We'll have to wait until he shows up again, somewhere at the other end of the kingdom. For now we'll just tend to our wounded and remain prepared."

They reached the carriages, and Amelia was quick to open the door to allow Alistair to set Alice down onto one of the benches, leaning up against the side of the cabin.

"Take her back to the institute, we'll wrap things up here," he said, then he ducked back out of the cabin. 

Amelia took a seat on the bench opposite to Alice, meeting her eyes and giving her a soft smile.

"So, are you still worried about tonight?" Amelia asked. "I told you we'd be fine."

Alice laughed.

"So  this  -" she gestured towards her leg and Amelia's arm- "This is  "fine"  to you?"

"Well, not  fine-fine ," she replied. "But I've seen worse. So, all in all, I'd say we're going to be fine."

There was a moment of silence, then both of them laughed.

Yes, they'd be fine.

[healthandwellnessab-blog]

Sports Mouth Guards From Your Dentist

Mouth guards typically cover the upper teeth, and are designed to protect against broken teeth, cut lips and other damage to your mouth. If you wear other fixed dental appliances on your lower jaw, your dentist may suggest a mouth protector for these teeth as well.

Read More >>>>

[nateezfics]

ATEEZ headcanon: giving them a lap dance

A/N: got inspired earlier when I watched a video on YouTube. The video is under the influence choreography by Nicole Kirkland. Do watch that if you want before or after reading this!

Seonghwa

He would be so caught off guard when you suggest giving him a lap dance

But mostly aroused

He’s more than willing to let you try it out on him, because how in the world can he turn down a lap dance

You’re not brave enough at first and it takes so long for you to build up the courage that he forgets you ever even suggested it

You decide to give him a dance for like an anniversary or something because a special occasion would be a good enough time to do it

You’re nervous as hell, all dressed up in your best lingerie

He’s made it himself comfy on the couch, still in his nice attire from your date night

He looks a sight — black slacks, shirt unbuttoned at the top, legs spread wide

He’s so hot and your resolve wavers a bit, but you turn on the music and walk over to him

He watches you so intently, every move, every little sway of your hips

He doesn’t even fight the urge to touch you

He’s bringing you into his lap right away and you just wing it and decide to grind on him to the beat of the music

Looking in his eyes and seeing the desire in them gives you a confidence boost

So does the tent in his pants, but you really want to finish the dance, so you try not to focus too much on that

You’re all over him — your hands on his chest and teasing the opening of his shirt, lips on his ear, and crotch grazing just above where he needs you most

It’s all so exhilarating and you both get so caught up that you don’t notice when the music finishes

Absolutely will flip you over and fuck you senseless right there

He’s breathing so hard, breath loud in your ear as he kisses up and down your jaw

“Fuck, baby. You’re so damn hot,” he’ll say as he dry humps you just so you can really feel how hard he is

He will return the favor tenfold and will go down on you until you’re both breathless

He just wants to show you how grateful he is for tonight’s little treat

Doesn’t want to mess up your pretty lingerie, so he’ll just pull your panties aside and fuck you while enjoying how delectable you look

Hongjoong

You don’t even tell him that you want to give him a lap dance

You want it to be spontaneous, so you’re waiting for the right moment

There’s so many moments you want to do it, because damn it, this man is fucking fine

Your perfect opportunity comes when he’s away at the studio and texts you saying he’ll be late again tonight

He’s been visiting the studio a ton lately, more so than usual, and you can literally imagine how tired and worn he looks at the moment

He’s been stressed and you think that this would be the perfect stress reliever

You get yourself ready and pick out a nice bra and panty set just before throwing on some sweats and heading to the studio

He’s hunched over his desk, face in the computer when you walk in

He turns to look at you with wide yet sleepy eyes, but smiles when he sees you

It takes a little bit of coaxing to get him to take some time away from what he’s working on

You turn him away from his desk and put some space between you before turning on some music and beginning the dance

His eyes, once bleary and tired, turn sharp and pointed as he watches you slip off your sweats to reveal what lies beneath

He’s polite and allows you to do your dance without interruption, leaving his hands at his sides even as you began to dance over his lap

Eventually it all gets too much and he buries his face in your neck as his hands grip your hips to bring them down against his hard on

The song hasn’t quite finished yet, but he’s already peeling off your panties so he can stuff his fingers into you

Has you like this for a bit, working you up like you have him, saying things like

“You’re going to give me a heart attack doing things like this without warning” and “You’re so damn good to me, baby.”

Slips his cock into you and let’s you ride him in his chair all while he gropes your ass and whispers dirty things in your ear

Yunho

He thinks you’re joking when you tell him you want to give him a lap dance

Laughs you off which only makes you want to do it even more just to spite him

You pick a random evening, one where he’s actually home at a decent time

He’s in the kitchen looking for something to eat when you walk up from behind and start feeling him up

He whirls around, mouth dropping open at the sight of you in lingerie

He doesn’t even have time to ask what’s going on because you’re pulling to him to the living room, pushing him into the couch

He just falls into the cushions, looking up at you with wide, curious eyes

Kind of like a lost puppy

He’s so confused when the music starts as he’s still trying to process everything

He curses when you start to dance provocatively, body looking so divine in the lingerie

He swallows hard when you hop on the couch and straddle his lap, grinding and moving over him, hands all over him

He’s very touchy

Hands all over your form — hips, ass, waist, chest, arms

You have to admit, you almost get side tracked when his erection grazes against your core, but you’re determined

He’s trying so hard to pull you all the way down on his lap, but you’re resisting to give in

You tease him with feather light touches and judging by the low groan from him, he’s getting a little fed up

You don’t care and turn yourself around to shake your ass against him, biting back a moan as he grips your ass with both hands

He finally reaches a breaking point and pushes you forward until you’re on the floor on your hands and knees

There’s the sound of pants being undone and soon you feel his cock prodding against your clothed core

“You know I don’t like to be teased, darling,” is all he says before pushing aside your panties and thrusting into you

Yeosang

You’re dancing around the house being silly

Yeosang is on the couch playing on his phone, but every now and then watches you as you dance around the living room to the beat of the music coming from your speaker

It’s all just shenanigans until a certain song comes on

Your whole mood changes instantly because this song is that kind of song

You begin to sway sensually to the slow beat

At first you’re just feeling yourself, not caring about your boyfriend sitting on the couch, but then

An idea hatches in your brain

You saunter over to him, bending down over him while your hands run up his thighs

He looks away from his phone and at you

He’s looking at you like ma’am wtf are you doing

You wedge yourself onto his lap, rolling your hips in time with the music

You hold his chin with your hand and keep your eyes locked with his as you mouth the words of the song

They’re some filthy lyrics

And at first Yeosang blushes a little because this just so random of you

But he relaxes and gives you all his attention, even widening his legs more so you can sit more comfortably

You look a mess

You’re in a pair of gym shorts and one of his hoodies

But you’re still turning him on immensely, cock hardening in his sweats

He interrupts your little performance by running his hands up your waist, slipping them under the sweatshirt

You moan as his hands massage your breasts and you sit on his lap fully, moaning again when you feel his erection press into you

Your movements stop as you bask in the feeling of his hands on you

He smirks

“Don’t stop, baby. Keep going. You were doing so well.”

You try to keep going, but his hands keep touching you all over and soon you’re pleading with him to fuck you

San

He’s the one who asked you to do it

And of course you agree

It’s something you have yet to do and you’re both excited to try something new in the bedroom

You get ready, dolling yourself up

Hair, make up, a sexy lingerie set, and some heels

You look stunning

He pulls you close, kissing down your neck while his hands roam over you

You have to push him away because you can’t do this yet

Not before you do your dance at least

He surprises you when he gets a camera ready

He says he wants to video the whole thing so he can save it for later ;)

You’re a tad nervous to be recorded, but once the music starts and you watch him as he reclines into his seat, your nerves fade away

You’ve got a whole floor routine put together, and you grow in confidence when you notice how he watches your every move intently

You crawl to him, rising between his thighs as your hands climb his torso to tease at the buttons on his shirt

He smirks and beckons you closer

You hop into his lap and straddle him, hips circling over his groin

He chuckles smugly when you stutter when you feel his erection

He reaches behind you and pulls your hair and you arch backwards

His free hand runs up your body from your tummy to your neck

You manage to gracefully roll off his lap and back into the floor

You go back to your earlier place and begin to undo his pants

His hand goes to your cheek, thumb stroking it sweetly as he watches you

You free him from his pants and stroke him

He groans and his head falls backwards when you take him in your mouth

“Ah, fuck, baby. You’re so damn hot.”

Mingi

You tell him you have a gift for him

When he asks you why you got him a gift, you tell him it’s because you just want to cherish him

He’s a little confused when you ask him to sit on the edge of the bed before running into your closet

He just waits for you there

So cute

He quirks an eyebrow at you when you come out of the closet in a silk robe

He asks you what this gift is exactly

He still hasn’t caught on

Until it dawns on him

He blushes as his eyes rake over your form

You walk to him, hand threading through his hair

He looks up at you, so beautiful and so amazing

You bend down and kiss him before telling him to sit back and enjoy

You discard the robe and he swallows as it falls off your frame to reveal your lingerie

He just kind of sits still as you dance

Until you throw one leg up on the bed over him, rolling your body so sensually it has his mind reeling

He grips your thigh firmly as he looks up at you, eyes now dark

A moment later he leans forward and begins to leave kisses on your thigh while his hand runs along your skin

You grip his hair and shudder at the feel of his lips

You dance on him some more before you push him backwards into the mattress

He falls onto his back, hands at your waist as you crawl on top of him

You grind down into his hard erection and you both groan out in bliss

The friction is euphoria

“You’re the best, did you know that?” he asks you after you’re impaled on his cock

You giggle and lean down to kiss him as you roll your hips

Wooyoung

Kind of like Yunho, he sort of plays it off as a joke

But with a twist

He says that you can give him a lap dance if you let him give you one

So that way you can see who’s better at being sexy

Of course he has to come through with the shenanigans

But you’re down for the competition and hey

It’s still going to be fun for you both ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

You’re both in your apartment

Neither of you are really dressed sexy at all

Unless you consider sweats sexy

But you give him the dance first, sitting him down on the couch and putting on a sensual song

You just freestyle it, winging your way through the motions

You make sure to keep your eyes on his as you dance

He’s unwavering until you began to strip down to your underwear

You crawl into his lap, hands tugging at his hair and pulling his head back

You kiss up and down his jaw and neck as you roll your hips to the tempo of the song

You whisper filth into his ear and smirk at the way he squirms under you

You sit up straight and continue with some slow movements over him, hand sliding down to grope his clothed hard on

He moans just as his eyes lock with yours and fuck

You feel your panties grow damp

He must’ve noticed a change in you because he glides the pad of his finger over your panties, grinning at the wetness

He dips his finger past the fabric to plunge into your hole

You moan, body freezing from the sudden pleasure

He gloats

“That’s cheating,” you say in a pout

He laughs as he begins to finger you, now adding another finger

“Don’t worry, feel free to get me back when it’s my turn to dance”

He winks at you

Jongho

You’ve been taking this dance class recently

And normally you’d show your boyfriend all the choreo you learn when you get home

But lately you’ve refrained from showing him any of the new moves

He doesn’t really think much of it

Until you tell him how complex this new choreo is

And how sensual it is

Naturally he perks up at the word sensual

You decide to keep the new dance a secret until you’ve fully mastered it

You get yourself all dolled up one night and decide that’s the best time to show him

You sit him down in a chair and he asks you if this is the “sensual” dance you had mentioned before

You say yes and tell him you wanted to master it before showing him

He sits back in the chair as he watches you turn on the music from your phone

He’s pleasantly surprised as soon as you start dancing

The choreo is hot and he can’t help but blush a little at the sight of you moving so beautifully

He gets so into it, leaning forward to watch you closely

He gasses you up and cheers you on, telling you how amazing you are

Finally you began to dance on him, and he just laughs as he grabs your hips

He adores you and you’re so beautiful it has him straining in his pants

He sings along to the song so

He raises his hips to meet yours and smirks at the noise you make

He lets you finish your routine before he lifts you in his arms and carries you to the bedroom

He lays you on the bed and as he kisses down your stomach, he praises you endlessly

“You did so good, baby. You were wonderful. My gorgeous, talented, and sexy little girl. Now let me reward you.”

He ravishes you all night, high off of you

[spicykat9]

Better Than Expected

Rating: E

Paring: GerEng

Word Count: 2243

Author's Note: This takes place during WWI because I was very curious in exploring nations in the omegaverse dealing with their status during war periods. I understand if people need to pass because of that.

Arthur had been captured by the enemy. Wouldn’t be the first time and wouldn’t be the last. Except there was one difference. He was an omega and instead of using magic like he usually did to hide his status, his government had asked him to experiment with what they were calling “suppressants.” He had been very hesitant, but in the end, agreed for the sake of science and to make life easier for people like him. 

But he could feel his heat coming on. It wasn't supposed to be for six months according to doctors who were working on the suppressant. But it had only been three. He could already feel the cramps. It was only a matter of time before he started secreting pheromones and after that…He didn’t want to think about what happened after that. 

“I must speak to Captain Belischmidt,” Arthur demanded for the third time, rattling the bars of his prison. 

The guard only gave an amused huff. 

“Now is not the time for laughter. It’s an urgent matter…A…medical emergency if you will.”

“That’s what they all say,” the guard replied with an eye roll. 

Arthur began pacing. This wasn’t good. At this rate, he was going to get jumped by the guards, his fellow prisoners, or worst of all, both. He felt sick just thinking about it. Escape was becoming less and less of an option after days of trial and error. 

Two hours went by and Arthur was starting to feel feverish. The pheromones were starting given the way the guard and his cellmates kept stealing glances at him, but luckily their brains hadn’t caught up to their instincts. Arthur remained seated near the cell door, head resting against the cool bars. 

Finally, he saw a familiar face: Rodriech. He glided down the corridor, briefly observing each cell. An omega like Arthur, this seemed like a lifeline. 

“Roderich!” Arthur called, perhaps a little too desperately, “Roderich I must speak with you!”

At first, Roderich only gave him a passing glance, but did a double take and stiffened. “Leave us for a moment,” Roderich ordered the guard.

“But sir–”

“That is an order from your superior. Do I need to report you for insubordination? Captain Beilschimdt would not take kindly to it I’m sure.”

The soldier flinched. “Forgive me, sir, carry on.”

Roderich watched as the soldier departed, piercing eyes only softening once they were alone. 

Arthur rose to his feet, slightly wobbly. 

“What the hell were you thinking?” Roderich hissed.

“As if I chose to be captured.”

“You shouldn’t have been on the frontlines in the first place. Not with what you are.”

Arthur’s skin prickled. “Shut your fucking mouth. I am just as capable–”

“I know, but…” He pinched the bridge of his nose. “What if I hadn’t come across you like this? What do you think would have happened?”

Arthur remained silent, dropping his gaze.

“This is why you shouldn’t be on the front. There are plenty of positions you could fill where this…that…wouldn’t happen.”

“So are you going to help me or not?” Arthur mumbled.

“I should let you learn this lesson the hard way, but…” Roderich let out a weary sigh. “No one deserves to go through that…” He turned to the guard. “I will be taking prisoner Kirkland to the medical bay. I can’t have you catching whatever ailment he has come down with.”

The guard looked as though he wanted to protest, but he knew better. Roderich’s threat from earlier still hanging in the air. 

Roderich unlocked the door and began leading Arthur toward the medical bay. 

“Lean on me if you have to,” Roderich offered, still staring straight ahead.

“I’ll be fine…”

They made it to the medical bay without hassle, save for a few alphas who gave them strange looks, having picked up on Arthur’s scent. Luckily it wasn’t too strong to send them into a frenzy. 

Arthur took a seat on the bed, staring out the window that sat near it. 

Roderich popped it open for him. “I need to lock the door. Both to make sure you don’t escape, but also for your safety.”

“I understand.”

“I’ll let the nurses know and only betas will tend to you. I promise.”

Arthur nodded. When Roderich was about to leave, the Brit let out a small ‘thank you.’

Roderich gave him a firm nod and left without a word.

- - -

Arthur had nodded off at some point, but his little nap was cut short by the searing heat and the need to be filled took hold of him. He tossed and turned, hoping that maybe he could sleep through the worst of it (but logically he knew better). 

Then the door cracked open. 

“Shit…” A voice muttered, “Oh my god A-Arthur I’m…I just wanted to check–”

He smelt an alpha and given the voice…This was not good. Against his best wishes, Arthur sat up and looked at Ludwig standing in the doorway.  

Fuck me. Fuck me. Fuck me.

“Fuck that,” Arthur growled to himself. 

“I’m just…I’ll go,” Ludwig stammered, “I’ll have the nurses bring you something to…you know…”

Ah, there was the cute red face. The same one the young alpha had worn that fateful Christmas night a few years ago. For a big, scary-looking alpha, Ludwig was quite the gentle, sweet man. Arthur wouldn’t mind if he–

Arthur shook his head. He couldn’t ask Ludwig–his enemy–to do that. And he wasn’t about to become some whiney bitch begging to be fucked.

But it would make things so much easier. 

“Actually Ludwig…” Arthur said softly, “C-Could I ask…For both are sakes and to make this little problem go away as quickly as possible…Could I request your help?” 

He kept his look hard, though it was becoming hard to focus on anything other than the idea of Ludwig pounding him into the mattress. But he knew he had to keep his wits. 

Ludwig’s brows furrowed as he cowered behind the door slightly. 

“Either stay or leave, what is it,” Arthur gritted, glaring at the German who was only making his condition worse by standing there with his woodsy scent. He didn’t even wait for Ludwig’s answer, already pulling his pants off before his slick started to leak onto his uniform. 

“Are you sure?” Ludwig asked.

“Yes, now get over here. And lock the door.”

Ludwig did as he was told and joined Arthur on the bed. 

How obedient Arthur thought. 

He pushed Ludwig onto the bed harshly and straddled his hips. Arthur pulled off his uniform jacket, his undershirt, and every last article of clothing until he was naked. 

Ludwig just stared up at him in awe, eyes a little glazed over as their pheromones mixed in the air, but there were no signs of aggression. Perhaps this would be more pleasurable than Arthur had first thought. 

Slowly, Arthur began to strip Ludwig down, grinding against the other as he did so. But it wasn’t long before the head became too much and he just ripped the rest of Ludwig’s clothes off. 

Ludwig took in a sharp breath when the cool air hit him. 

Arthur took a moment to admire his partner. A strong, domineering alpha laid on his back for him, looking up at him with such a tender look. Arthur was no longer just turned on because of his heat. 

Slick gushed out of him. Arthur groaned. Well, look like they had to get on with it. 

Arthur inserted two fingers into his ass, stretching himself. He bit his lip, not far enough gone to dissolve into a moaning mess. 

But when he added the third and began thrusting in and out, inhibition flew out the window. He panted lightly, gripping Ludwig’s shoulder as he rocked his hips against his fingers. When he found his sweet spot he let out a breathy moan. 

Ludwig licked his lips, just watching and biting back the urge to shove him down on his cock. He wanted Arthur to be in control. 

"C-Can I?" Arthur asked breathily, staring at Ludwig's hard cock. 

"Uh... I-I guess--" Ludwig's words bled into a long moan as Arthur lowered himself onto his dick.

Arthur let out a groan as he felt himself be filled. Far better than any toy he had ever tried. It stung a bit, but he’d always enjoyed a bit of pain in sex. 

He took a moment to get used to the sensation before starting to rock his hips, this time on Ludwig’s cock. Little ‘ahs’ escaped his lips as he tightened and bounced himself up and down. 

He was on fire, burning with need and the desire for more. But for once, it felt alright. It was alright as long as he was in control–as long as it was Ludwig who he was connected to. 

Ludwig just laid there. He had a light grip on Arthur’s legs to keep him balanced, but Arthur seemed fine doing the work on his own. He was more than happy to just watch the Brit dance above him, red-faced, glassy eyes, lost in pleasure. And how wonderfully Arthur tightened around him. 

The earthy smell of the aftermath of rain filled the room, and Arthur’s moans became louder as he begged for more. Ludwig took that as an order to start meeting Arthur’s movements, thrusting up in time with him. 

That smell, Ludwig couldn’t help but lick along Arthur’s arm, wanting to see if he tasted as good as he smelled. Then he froze, coming back to his senses. 

Arthur shivered. It felt good to have Ludwig’s tongue on his skin. “Do it again,” Arthur whimpered. 

“Arthur–”

“I said do it again,” Arthur said more harshly. 

But before Ludwig could follow the order, Arthur slumped against him. It seemed as though Arthur was becoming worn out. 

Ludwig licked along Arthur’s neck, bucking his hips up at a faster pace.

“Yes, yes, yes,” Arthur whispered, “More, more.”  

Ludwig wasn’t quite sure how much more he could give. He let his hands and tongue roam Arthur’s body, with his hands eventually reaching Arthur’s neck. He rubbed gently at the Englishman’s nape. 

Arthur's whole body tensed and he came with a weak cry into Ludwig’s collarbone.

Once Arthur had caught his breath, Ludwig went to pull out.   

"Let me finish you off,” Arthur rasped, pushing himself upward. 

"Arthur..."

"I'll use my ass or my mouth," Arthur snapped, "Which is it?" 

Ludwig stuttered out an assortment of syllables. What could he say to such a blunt offer? His cock ached sure, but he felt like he had already taken advantage of Arthur enough. 

Arthur rolled his eyes and began rocking his hips once more, this time with more intent than just the random pattern he had set before in the haze of his heat. Ludwig on the other hand remained frozen in place. 

Arthur’s hands trailed down Ludwig’s chest and abdomen, causing the German to shiver. Arthur smirked. His hands came back up to Ludwig’s chest, brushing against his nipples. Ludwig took in a sharp breath. 

Ah, so that was Ludwig’s weakness. As an experiment, Arthur twisted both of the nubs causing Ludwig to moan loudly. Then, Arthur leaned down and took one into his mouth, and sucked. He repeated the motion with the other. And to close it all off as Ludwig shivered beneath him, Arthur grazed his teeth against the nipple. 

Ludwig threw his head back against the pillow coming hard. 

"Good boy," Arthur murmured. 

The German whimpered involuntarily at Arthur's words. He pulled himself off Ludwig before his knot could form and collapsed beside him. 

As nice as that fuck was, Arthur could feel the heat creeping in again. He grimaced, turning onto his side, away from Ludwig. 

"Arthur I'm--" 

"I'm fine,” Arthur snapped, cutting Ludwig off, “Don't say anything."

"I'm sorry. I-I didn't--" 

"Don't apologize. I should be thanking you. Better than getting ganged up on by some guards or other prisoners."

"Arthur..." His name was so soft on Ludwig’s lips. Attentive, like he genuinely cared. It made Arthur’s heart flutter.

"Sorry, I'm just being bitter. I hate when I get like that. This. So... Needy and... Whiny. Does a number on the pride."

"Then maybe you can top next time."

Arthur looked over his shoulder. "What?"

"Perhaps if you're giving you won't get so whiny. All you can do is try."

"With you?"

Ludwig's cheeks reddened as he realized what he admitted. "Uh... W-Well... I mean... Only if you want to."

"You are something else Beilschimdt," Arthur said with an amused huff. "Maybe when the war is over and we can have a proper date first."

"Date?!?"

"Yes. Really Ludwig? We just had sex and yet you freak out at the idea of a date"

"True... B-But I...I didn't think--"

Arthur turned back towards his partner, silencing him with a kiss. It was gently, slow, lips melding together. Instincts wanted Arthur to go deeper, but he still had enough control over himself to keep it soft. “Let’s discuss it once everything calms down,” he whispered as he pulled away. “Ready for the next round?”

Ludwig’s face burned a fiery red, and he gave a timid nod. 

Everyone stayed clear from Arthur's room for the four days his heat lasted. Even the betas could smell the mingled pheromones seeping out from below the door. But no one dared say anything. Not even when Ludwig finally emerged, face still tinted red and clothes wrinkled and disheveled. One glare from Ludwig shut them all up.

[rein-ette]

for @needcake's request, 5 times Engport died and one time they saved each other.

III.

Portugal finds him in the attic. The ceiling of the inn is heavily slanted, and through the drawn curtain hardly any light comes through. The room is musty and damp and smelled of — of rot, of festering wounds, of things falling apart.

England himself is still.

No one had bandaged his wounds, so lying on the bed infested with all manner of pests his body was a rich tapestry of reds and browns and mottled grey. Sickness cradled his spectral figure in its wings, perched on the headboard as it tore into its meal with abandon. For a moment, Portugal thought England was already dead.

Then he coughed, eyelashes fluttering weakly. Gabriel, he mouthed, voice long consumed by the illness — by the war, damn those things — that ravaged his body. Portugal saw the question in his eyes, anyways. Why are you here?

"To take you home," he murmured, brushing his knuckles over one bare cheekbone, rising from his pale skin like the spine of a great beast. "Did you think I could not find you? That I would not come for you?"

England only gazes at him. In the desolate landscape of his face, only his eyes remain a fevered green, too bright. Two jewels, set in clay.

He does not — cannot — protest when Portugal wraps his body in cloth, cradling his frail figure against his chest. Does not protest when Portugal carries him down the stairs, does not protest when he's forced onto the horse and Portugal rests his forehead against his and murmurs. It's not far. Hold on to me.

He does not protest, but oh — oh, how Portugal wishes he had.

England is dead now. Lying on a soft bed, cradled by linen and silk and velvet canopies, he's hidden away like some stolen treasure — an antique sword, a broken childhood doll — stashed in an opulent corner between Lisbon and the sea. This far away from his isles, the sun finally warms his skin, but his eyes are fixed and dark.

Portugal guards his corpse and regrets.

IV.

Tomás was — to say the least — confused.

He began getting a little disoriented when the first Dutch cannon struck their ship, and when the Dutch themselves boarded he was kind of lost — but to be confused in the chaos of battle was normal. Fights with the Dutch were normal. Even losing was pretty normal; their captain may fight like the undead, but the crew was only human, and they had been caught alone without escort.

At least, their captain had fought like the undead, until a tall Dutch sailor put a sword through his belly and a shot in his shoulder. Then he’d really just been dead.

That was when Tomás’ confusion really started. Because after killing their captain, the Dutch soldier had simply waved a hand and left, soldiers straggling behind as they made their way back to their own ship. The cannons fell silent moments later, and Tomás own battered comrades hadn’t tried to pursue. Watching their enemy’s flags disappear into the distance, Tomás had helped drag their barely conscious captain below deck as he pondered over this strange occurrence: in the middle of a war, a Dutch warship had just caught them, trounced them, and simply let them go.

But that had not been all. For just as he was leaving the sick bay, an officer had grabbed him in the hall and rasped, “Tell the navigator to set course for Dover.” Wide-eyed, Tomás had only managed to squeak out an affirmative before he’d been released, leaving him standing there with a bloody cloth with one hand and absolutely no clue why they were about to head into enemy territory after they had, uh, just been utterly destroyed by their enemy.

Still, Tomás had done his job and relayed the message, expecting that to be the end of the madness. He was only a rigger, he reasoned — if he just followed orders surely everything would straighten themselves out with time.

He was wrong. Now, a week later, Tomás still understood nothing. He had orders to find one Sir Kirkland, Lord of Canterbury, but he had no idea if he’s found the right one. When he’d asked the first mate what this Lord Kirkland looked like, the first mate had only shrugged and said, “Never met ‘im. Probably a geezer, since he’s a lord.”

Yet this young man standing in the doorway in front of Tomas, claiming to be Lord Kirkland, could not have been older than twenty.

“Are you or are you not one of Gabriel’s men?” The man demanded impatiently. His Portuguese was heavily accented, but clear.

“Yes. Yes sir.”

“And? What does the bastard want with me?”

“He’s dead, sir. My first mate asked me to come get you. Sir.”

The young man — Lord Kirkland — raised his eyebrows. His gaze seemed to skewer Tomás right through his skull. “Dead.” He repeated. Tomás nodded hesitantly. Lord Kirkland muttered something in his own language under his breath, then rolled his eyes and said, “Fine.” Fine? “Joseph!” He barked to someone in the interior of the manse. “Get this man a horse and ready the carriage. And call the doctor, for god’s sake, Gabriel’s gone and gotten himself killed again.” He whirled around and pinned Tomás with another look. “What’s your name?”

“Tomás Santiago, sir.”

“Thanks for your hard work, Santiago. After we put your captain back together, I’ll tell him to give you a bonus.”

Tomas stared. Put him back together? Bonus? Wasn’t the captain dead?

But this Lord Kirkland guy was still look at him expectantly, so he stuttered out a “Yes, sir” again and thanked him.

A few minutes later, Tomás left on a fine horse more confused than ever.

Notes

Scene 3 is set during the English Civil War (1642–1651). Portugal brings him to the Ribeira Palace, which used to be where the Praça do Comércio is now situated.

Scene 4 is during the Dutch-Portuguese wars. But it’s pretty much crack, so there’s really no need to say more.

[marvels-writings]

Escape (3)

| Part 1 | Part 2 | 

Series Masterlist

Maria Hill Masterlist

Request: Hi! I always love your writing. Everything is closed in New Zealand for at least another 3 weeks so your writing helps keeps me sane. Could you please do a Maria Hill x reader. Maybe the reader is an assassin that Maria has been trying to bring in for months but reader always manages to escape. The reader catches feelings for Maria during their many encounters and one day helps her save one of the avengers. Maria asks reader “if i asked you to stay, would you?”. Angst but Happy ending please ☺

A/N: I need to plan out series better instead of making it up as I go, and the collage isn’t mine

This was never the life you’d wanted, you never wanted to run from hideout to hideout and find new ones. You knew you would need to find a new hideout in New York, somehow all the trouble in the world ended up here. The footsteps pounded up the stairs and reached the door, you smirked and left a note in front of the vase, gathering your bag and crouching on the windowsill and looking down at the street when Maria kicked open the door, pistol pointed inside.

She walked forwards and read the note, it said ‘I told you I’d put them in water ;)’. Maria couldn’t help the smile which crept up her face, she turned around to see you sitting on the windowsill, the bag held on your left side, your right side dangling out of the window.

“If it means anything to you, I did have a great night.” You winked at Maria and jumped, using the bag to slow you down and rolling when you hit the floor. Smirking up at Maria who looked down at you through the window before you sprinted off towards the SHIELD cars to get your other bag back.

Maria called in backup, she didn’t know you needed her to call backup to get your bag back. You snuck around the front, wearing a mask to look like an ordinary citizen with a bag, only your hair was the same. You’d used a change of clothes, now you wore a simple fav/color t-shirt,

“Miss, have you seen this woman?” One of the agents asked you, showing you two pictures, one of you without makeup, one of you impersonating the agent.

You suppressed a smirk and nodded your head ‘no’ before continuing towards the car. All the agents headed away from the cars, scouring the crowd for you. One agent was guarding the car with your bag, you approached them carefully, pretending to ask for help, you reached into your pocket to pull out a map but you pulled out your taser, quickly knocking them unconscious and putting the agent in the car.

You threw your bag into the car, taking the bag that had been there, putting dirty clothes and things you didn’t need in the bag in the car and taking extra weapons, masks, another suit, a change of clothes, fake ids and an extra credit card in your bag, leaving the unconscious agent in the back with an apology note and made your way away from the scene, looking over your shoulder in case anyone noticed you. 

Somehow, none of the agents noticed you leaving with a different backpack, or even noticing the switch. You heard them shouting and reading your apology note out loud and you subtly sped up, lip twitching up in a smirk as you walked away from the scene and towards another hideout. 

-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-

This hideout was better located, it was away from the city and security cameras. It was a cabin near New York City, the previous owner had died, you’d bought it from his son, who had wanted nothing to do with the cabin. Using the extra money you had, you had renovated the cabin and gotten new furnishings. This was the hideout you came to when you needed to relax, it was completely off the grid, you could almost call it a home.

You threw your bag on the couch and lay down next to it, pulling out your phone and lifting it to eye level to see a notification from Maria. You smirked tiredly and clicked on it after securing your phone so she couldn’t track you.

‘Why?’ was the only text from her, you sighed and sat up.

‘That’s the only question you have?’ You texted back, switching your phone off immediately after, you got up and went to the refrigerator, there was nothing inside except for a few frozen food items which were probably going to expire soon.

You sighed and closed the door, getting some water from the sink and making your way to the bedroom to get some deserved rest. The cabin was one of your favorite investments, all of the walls were covered in bulletproof glass, it allowed you to get a full view of the forest around you, but you felt safe knowing that nothing less than a missile could break through the glass.

You changed into an old camp sweatshirt and sweatpants you’d left in the closet and flopped down on the comfy bed. You fell asleep quickly, watching birds outside and listening to them sing to each other, feeling more peaceful than you have in months. 

-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-

Waking up in a familiar place was the best feeling, you knew exactly where you were and how you got here. You smiled to yourself and got off your bed, yawning and scratching your hair as you looked around. Maria stood at the foot of your bed, in a navy, body-con dress with her eyebrow raised and her hands on her hips. Her hair was in a tight bun, one or two strands to frame her face. 

Your hand instantly went under the pillow to where you’d left a gun only to find that it wasn’t there anymore. Maria waved the gun in front of her, you looked outside the window, there wasn’t any backup, it was just her. 

“Just you?” You asked, your voice still raspy from sleep as you slid off your bed, smoothly retrieving a knife from the side of your mattress and tucking it in the pocket of your sweatpants.

“Just me, you weren’t replying to my texts,” Maria stated, you shrugged and put on some slippers, walking towards Maria who stepped aside and let you go through the door as you put your hair in a messy bun.

“So you decided to pop in?” You joked, then furrowed your brows and turned to face her. 

“How the hell did you even find me?” You asked, Maria, smirked and leaned an elbow against the dark granite counter as you walked towards the fridge.

“I put a tracker in the bag you’d left behind,” Maria answered, you looked outside the window from the kitchen, there were no other cars.

“How did you know I’d come for the bag?” You questioned, making a mental note to change the bag and clean all the weapons for trackers.

“Call it a gut feeling, and there isn’t anyone else,” Maria said, you flinched when she noticed, you took out frozen waffles from the fridge and a container of Kirkland maple syrup.

“Waffles?” You offered, Maria raised an eyebrow, you shrugged and put them back in the fridge, making sure the gun in the fridge had the safety off.

“Why are you here?” You demanded after putting the waffles in the microwave and turning to face her. 

You put your hands on the counter and leaned closer to her face, looking for any sort of reaction, trying to prevent staring at her blue eyes. You smirked when you saw her glance towards your lips and inhale sharply, leaning away from you before answering.

“To talk,” Maria answered, sitting on one of the barstools across the counter, you tilted your head to the side.

The microwave drew your attention away from her, you took the waffles out of the microwave and poured maple syrup, scouring the fridge for whipped cream then adding that and switching on the coffee pot. You took some silverware from one of the drawers and started eating as Maria stared at how casual you were.

“Talk.” You said, gesturing to her with your knife, the brunette took a deep breath, this was going to be more complicated than she thought, mainly because of you.

“Weapons?” She asked, you looked at her, not amused, she sighed, she knew you weren’t going to discard the knife in your pocket.

“Talk,” You said again, Maria sighed and rested her elbows on the counter, watching you eat breakfast.

“You’re supposed to be the frightened one spilling all your secrets,” Maria muttered, you chuckled while eating, scooping a bit of whipped cream on the fork and shrugging.

“I never really do what I’m ‘supposed to’, now tell me why you’re here and why I should care.” You stated Maria’s eyes widened at how direct you were.

“You said you didn’t want this life, I can get you out of it.” Maria offered, you groaned and put the last bite of waffles in your mouth, eating the last bit of whipped cream and putting your plate and silverware in the dishwasher.

“I doubt that, but tell me how anyway.” You said, you smirked and walked to sit next to Maria on one of the barstools, your knee brushing hers lightly as you turned to face her. Maria subtly clenched her jaw, causing your smirk to grow, this was going to be better than you thought.

| Part 4 | 

Tag List: @capcarolsdanver, @versdan​, @lesbian-girls-wayhaught​, @lovebotlarson, @dhengkt​, @5aftermidnight​, @hstoria​, @natasha-danvers​, @veryfunnyal, @xxxtwilightaxelxxx​ , @ophelias-heart​  , @never-didbefore​ , @justarandomhumanhere, @the-most-unicorn-of-them-all , @thatssocamryn , @lesbian-x-blackwidow , @marvelbbyx , @wlw-imaginesss , @marvelb00kwolf , let me know if you’d like to be in any of my tag lists!

A/N: Feedback is amazing, thank you!

[mirkwoodshewolf]

Robin and Gale Hood; Ben Hardy x reader Chap. 5

*Author’s note*

Okay now that all over our initial characters have been introduced, it’s time for some REAL action. This one is a bit long so sorry not sorry but everything is important here in this chapter. So expect some blood, violence and some medieval claims against women.

Chapter 5,

The Archery tournament

Taglist:

@plethora-of-things

@waddles03

@psychosupernatural

@ixchel-9275

@simonedk

@jd-johndeacon-or-jackdaniels

@queen-paladin

@queensdivas

@queendeakyy

@geek-and-proud

@wormzteef

__________________________________________________________

The next day just as promised, everyone in Nottingham was gathered out in the fields to see the archery tournament.  Every eligible archer had signed up for the chance to win either the golden arrow or get the kiss from the lovely Maid Marian.

As a parade marched around the field while the villagers gathered around to find a good seat, up on the throne stand, Prince John and Sir Heston stood looking over the crowd.  Prince John was lightly bouncing with excitement as he told his serpent advisor.

“Heston, the time has come for me to finally enact my revenge. My trap is baited and set and then revenge! Revenge!”

“Shhh. Not so loud sire. I know how much this has meant to you but you don’t want to give your plan away to capture Robin Hood so quickly.”

“That insolent blackguard! Ohh! I’ll show him who wears the crown!” Prince John proclaimed as he plopped down on his throne and slammed his hand on the armrest.

“I share your loathing sire. That scullery scoundrel who fooled you with that ridiculous disguise. Who dare insult your intelligence and superiority…..”

“ENOUGH!!” Prince John exclaimed as he tried to hit Heston over the head but the python dodged his attack. “Heston, you deliberately dodged.”

“But-but-but sire…..please.”

“Stop sniveling and hold. Still.” The prince sneered lowly. Heston straightened his head up and he was then hit on top of the head by Prince John.

“Thank you sire.” Heston lowly groaned.

Soon arriving to the field grounds were Maid Marian, Prince James and Arthur Kirkland.  Marian hugged her cousin and best friend saying.

“Oh you guys I’m so excited. But how will I recognize him?”

“Ohh he’ll let you know somehow. That young rouge of yours is just full of surprises.” Arthur said as he took Marian’s hand and patted it.

“Yes cousin. If I remember that rascal, he’ll do whatever it takes to get to you.”

“Well don’t leave yourself out James. I’m sure that wherever Robin goes, Gale is not far behind.” Marian told her young cousin and the three of them walked on.

But oh little did they know was that just behind them hiding in the bushes and trees were the gang of rebels.  Robin and Gilbert wearing similar peasant clothing and they each had their own handmade bows and arrows (that differed from the ones they normally used as to better hide their true identities).

While Little John and Gale wore royal clothing that befitted Hungarian royalty, and David wore a count’s robes and Kit wore a captain of the Guard’s armor.

“There she is lads. Golly—has she gotten even more beautiful.” Robin said in awe.

“He grew his hair out. I did once tell him he’d look good with long hair. Never did I think it—he’s like a God.” Gale also whispered in awe.

“Cool it you two lovebirds. Your hearts are running away with your heads.” Little John said as he handed Robin a large grey hat.

“Oh stop worrying. This disguise would fool our own mum, right Gale?” Robin said as he placed the hat on him and tied the blue bandana around his neck.

“Yeah. But our mum is dead. You and Gilbert need to fool ol stick up his arse over there.” Soon walking towards them was the Sheriff of Nottingham himself.  Gilbert and Robin winked at their friends and walked out.

“Sheriff your ‘onor!” Gilbert spoke with an exaggerated Irish accent.

“Yes…..” the sheriff muttered before both his hands were suddenly taken and being shaken with such strength and force as Robin now spoke in a Irish tone.

“Meetin yah face to face is a real treat for me brother and I. A real, real treat.”

“Well thank you.” the Sheriff said as he managed to get his hands free. “Now if you both will excuse me I’ve got a tournament to win.” As the Sheriff walked away, Robin and Gilbert signaled to the others of the success playfully laughing behind the Sheriff’s back.

“Well that’s phase one done.” Gale said.

“Yeah they’re not bad actors. But wait till they see the scene we lay on Prince John. My Queen.” Little John spoke as he bowed and held out his hand for Gale.

She giggled poshly and took his hand and the two of them walked on with Kit and David walking behind, holding the train of Gale’s dress. As the two of them finally stood before Prince John, Gale spoke up doing her best Hungarian accent.

“Ahh mi lord!” the four of them walked up to the Prince as she continued, “Our esteemed high King of England. The all mighty God himself. You’re magnificent.” She praised as she and the boys bowed.

Prince John who soaked in this praise from this strange woman chuckled softly and said.

“Well, she sure does have style ehh Heston?” Gale let out a posh laugh before saying.

“Oh you are a flatterer PJ.”

“PJ? I like that you know I do. Heston put it on my luggage. PJ. Ha-ha! Hahahaha! Ha-ha! PJ yeah…..” the Prince proclaimed before laughing and muttering to himself as he stroked his tache.  Heston however wasn’t buying it.  He lifted himself up to Gale and Little John and hmphed.

“And just who might you be miss?” he hissed out.

“How dare you insult our lady Queen and Duke!” Kit proclaimed angrily using a thicker Hungarian accent.

“Easy now my dear Captain. This creepy thing obviously has no class whatsoever.” Gale said.

“Excuse me?” Heston gawked.

“This is our beloved Queen of Hungary, Queen Elizaveta I. And I am her royal Duke Sir Reginald. And it’s rude to stick your tongue out at a lady.” He took Heston’s hat off his head and put it over his nose and mouth.

“If I may my liege, allow me to lay some protocol upon you.” Gale said as she curtsied and took Prince John’s hand to kiss it.  He quickly removed his hand away from her and said.

“Oh no forgive me but I lose more jewels that way. Please, both of you sit.”

“Thank you PJ.” Gale giggled as she sat down to his left while Little John took the seat to his right.  “I always enjoyed the tournament of the peasant folk. Oh! OH!! HEY WHAT!!! CAPTAIN! COUNT!” Gale spoke before feeling something squirming underneath her butt.

Quickly David and Kit came into action and pulled out Heston from underneath her.

“Oh my. Excuse me serpent.”

“Serpent? You vile harpy have taken my seat!”

“How dare you insult the Queen of Hungary!” David sneered angrily.

“Your majesty, if you would permit me, allow me to silence this snake once and for all.” Kit threatened with a dark smirk as he withdrew his sword.  Heston shuddered in fear as Prince John said.

“Oh never mind him. Besides he should now be out there keeping his snake eyes open for you know who.”

“Wait—sire you—you mean I…..I’m being dismissed?”

“You heard his mightiness move it creepy get lost. Be gone long one.” Little John said as he slapped Heston with his cane and Heston slithered off backstage.

“What vulgar beasts. Creepy? No class serpent? Long one? Oh whose that dopey Duke and Queen of Hungary think they are anyway?!” he then slithered off to do his job assigned to him.

As the good Friar and I stood side by side each other and we watched that vile snake slither off muttering to himself, I turned to Friar Tuck and said.

“Now you know he’s up to something darling.”

“Indeed. Come on Alan.” He told me and we raced off to find that serpent before he could ruin anything.  For now my darlings until Friar Tuck and I find that snake, you’re just gonna have to watch for yourselves on what happens next.

The fanfare sounded off and soon all the archers came walking in single file across the field with their bows in hand and their quiver of arrows on their backs.

Finally arriving on the stage were our three young royal characters.  Marian was the first to step up on the stage and she curtsied to Prince John who gave her a slight acknowledgment.  Arthur was next and he bowed before the Prince who just gave him a sideways glance.

When James finally came up and bowed before him, Prince John flat out turned his head aside and refused to even look upon his half-nephew. Which to be honest didn’t upset James at all, for he loathed his half-uncle for sending his father away and ruining the people of Nottingham.

But soon his eye caught sight of Gale.  At first he didn’t see it at first, all he saw before him was the radiant woman who felt familiar in a way.  He walked over to her and when the two of them locked eyes she gasped and quickly took out her fan and opened it up and hid from him.

“Oh I—beg your pardon my lady. I—you just look like someone I once knew.”

“And just who would that be young man?” asked Kit slightly interrogating him.

“A……a girl I once knew long ago.”

“Well may we introduce our majesty, Queen Elizaveta I of Hungary.” David said.

“Your majesty.” Prince James said as he knelt down on one knee and took her right hand in his.  It wasn’t until he looked down and saw the ring on her thumb.  He quickly looked up in shock, that’s when ‘Elizaveta’ lowered her fan just until her eyes were visible and his heart stopped.

He knew those eyes anywhere.  Only one women had entrancing eyes like that.  And even through the disguise, he knew she had gotten even more beautiful than ever before.

“I have seen many wonders of the world, but none can compare to the beauty that lies within your eyes.” James praised in awe as he gave a sweet, loving kiss to Gale’s hand.

As his thumb gently brushed the back of her hand and down her fingers, Gale felt that bolt of electricity that only James had given her in the past.

“Why thank you my fine young English man. And you have a face that would make the archangel Michael boil with envy.” James softly smiled and kissed her hand once more, making Gale’s heart go BOOM.  She softly gasped, the two of them not breaking eye contact once.

Marian who had been watching her cousin with intrigued eyes, knew right away that the so called ‘Queen’ was actually his Gale Hood.

As she smiled happily for her cousin, a throat cleared before her and when she turned she saw a man dressed in an oversized robe, wearing a very large grey hat and a blue bandana that almost kept his face hidden.

“Ahhh your ladyship. Begging your pardon but it’s a great honor to be shooting for the favor of a lovely lady like yourself.” He spoke in an Irish accent and held in his hand a white daisy.

She reluctantly took it from the strange man who then whispered to her.

“I hopes I win the kiss.” Before giving her a wink.  She let out a soft gasp and when she looked into his eyes, and he looked back into hers she knew just who this man was.

“Well thank you my fine, bow-legged archer.” She said as she stroked the flower under her chin before softly giggling. “I wish you luck,” she then leaned closer to her love and whispered so that only he could hear, “With all my heart.”

The two of them stared lovingly at each other before Robin snapped out of his daze and took his place with the other contestants.

Soon coming up towards the royal stands was the captain of the guard who held on a fluffy pillow the prize of the golden arrow.  He presented it to Prince John and said.

“Your highness, with your royal permission we are ready to begin.”

“Proceed captain.” Prince John said.  He then gave the arrow to Maid Marian who bowed her head to the Captain.

“The tournament of the golden arrow will now begin!” the Captain proclaimed to one and all.  As a final fanfare of the trumpets played out, the contestants readied their bows and soon arrows went flying out.

The crowd cheered and whistled as arrow after arrow flew from one side of the field to the range of targets spread out on the other side. Many people were hitting various places on their targets but not quite worthy enough to gain a spot for the golden arrow and the kiss.

That was until the Sheriff of Nottingham took his shot and got close to the center of the bullseye.  Of course when that happened, the crowd all hissed and booed at the arrogant, vile sheriff.  Next up Gilbert and Robin readied their arrows and fired two straight bullseyes into their targets, to which the crowd applauded.

Marian clapped for Robin’s success knowing that he was one step closer to winning their kiss.

“A perfect bullseye. Well, well.” Prince John said intrigued as he stroked his mustache.

“Yeah, that’s what we in Hungary call pulling back and lettin it go PJ.” Little John said to him.

“He’s gotten better.” Prince James said. “I’m sure you must be honored to see such skill from him.”

“Indeed I am, my prince.” Gale said as the two of them secretly hooked pinkies with each other.

“I’m gonna win that golden arrow! And then I’m gonna present meself to the lovely Maid Marian……” Robin boasted as the Sheriff readied his next arrow.

“Listen you Irish hound dog. If you shoot half as good as you blabber you’re better than Robin Hood.”

“Robin Hood he says! Wow-wee you hear that brother!?” Robin exclaimed as he playfully slapped the Sheriff in the back.

“My brother is tip-top but we’re nowhere as good as he is. In fact I’d say I’m better than that rouge.” Gilbert teased as he fired his arrow behind his back without even looking at the target.  It landed right on the bullseye and as the crowd continued to cheer, the Sheriff couldn’t believe his eyes.

Back on the stands, Gale fanned herself and she said.

“My, my. Those two have class. Don’t you think so PJ?”

“Indeed they do, Eliza. Bravo! Uh, bravo. Yes.” Prince John said before doing a light applause and grinning to himself.

Robin took out an arrow and observed it as he began to make conversation with the sheriff about a topic that he knew would make the sheriff explode.

“Oh umm….by the way. We hear you’ve been having a bit of a fascination with Robin’s clever little sister Gale Hood these days.” The sheriff lowered his bow and he said.

“She’s a witch that’s why. Just like her wench of a mother, she’s inherited the black magic of her people. I wouldn’t even be surprised if she’s put a spell on that brother of hers in order to hide from me.” Robin would’ve slugged him right then and there but he held back his anger to hide his cover.

Gilbert also had to hold in his anger cause even worse than Robin, he wanted to kill the sheriff for saying such a thing about Gale.

Unbeknownst to the three men, Heston (who had been observing the two young archers since the beginning with utter suspicion) slithered up towards Robin and peeking through his robes, he could see the green attire underneath.

He softly hissed and slithered through the thick bush muttering to himself.

“I knew it. It’s Robin Hood. Oh he thought he could hide but no one can hide from a snake.” As Heston continued to slither, he was soon stopped by a lute guitar in his path.  When he looked up there before him stood Friar Tuck and you guessed it, me!

“Going somewhere Heston?” I asked snidely.  Before the snake could speak again, Friar Tuck and I grabbed him and muzzled his mouth shut.

We then found an ale barrel and I uncorked the top of it while Friar Tuck straightened Heston out and carefully lowered his body into the barrel. The snake’s muzzled demands fell on deaf ears as Tuck punched him in the head and I closed the barrel with the cork once more.

“That’ll take care of him for a while.” I told him.

“Thank you my friend.”

“Anytime my darling. We better get back to see if Robin and Gilbert made it to the finals yet.”

“C’mon then.” We raced back towards the crowd and heard the Captain proclaim.

“Attention everyone! The three final contestants are……the honorable sheriff of Nottingham!” The sheriff stood up and took his bows but he was only met with hisses and boos from the crowd. “And the Walsh brothers of Bristol.” The crowd cheered as Robin and Gilbert high-fived each other and waved to the crowd.

When Robin turned to the royal stands, he gave a friendly wave and kiss to Maid Marian who waved back to him with a loving smile.  Prince John turned to her noticing her favoritism and said to her.

“My dear I suspect you favor the bowlegged Irish archer, hmm?” Marian smiled shyly and said.

“Uh. Why yes, sire. Well—at least he amuses me.” Prince John laughed before saying as he turned back towards the field.

“Coincidentally my dear girl. He amuses me too.” He chuckled darkly.

“For the final shoot out! Move the target back 30 paces!” the drums rolled and that’s when the Sheriff ordered one of his guards.

“You heard him Wormtail! Get going you rat on two legs!” the stoutly man soon got behind the target and the Sheriff whispered to him. “And remember what you’re supposed to do.”

“Yes sir, sheriff sir.” Wormtail said as he moved the target back 30 paces before setting the target back down.  The Sheriff readied his bow for one last shot.  He took careful aim and released his arrow which went flying. But to everyone’s surprise and no one’s foul calling, Wormtail jumped up into the air and the Sheriff’s arrow went straight into the bullseye.

The Sheriff grinned proudly and said.

“Well, guess that shot wins the golden arrow, the kiss, the whole nine yards.”

“Now just a second Sheriff. Don’t go counting my brother and I out just yet!” Gilbert snapped.

“Your right, my apologizes. Good luck you two.” Gilbert brushed past the Sheriff and readied his arrow.  He aimed right for the Sheriff’s arrow, ready to split it down the middle, but before he could take the shot something happened.

Gilbert suddenly let out a pained scream and he collapsed to his knees, holding his lower back in agony.

“BROTHER!” Robin cried out.

“Get a medic over here now!” The Sheriff called out.  Soon medics arrived and they soon found that his lower hip was bleeding rapidly.  They patched him up as best as they could before taking him away.

“Wait, wait!” Gilbert groaned as he gripped Robin’s sleeve and whispered to him. “Split his arrow Rob!” Robin nodded and soon the medics took Gilbert away to patch him up.

Robin then saw the Sheriff tuck in a small bloodied up dagger back into his sleeve and felt utter rage within him.  He hoped that after this was over, he’d get the chance to really beat the hell out of the Sheriff.  

For not only did he have the gawk to insult his sister, but he also attempted to kill one of his best men right in front of him.

As he took his stand and readied his arrow, he inhaled deeply before exhaling out softly.

‘This is for you Gilbert.’ He thought to himself.  Suddenly his bow was tipped upwards and his arrow went flying sky high.  The crowd gasped and using his last arrow, Robin fired his arrow at his old one.

The second arrow struck the tail of his first arrow which dipped it downward, soaring through the air like a falcon diving.  And miraculously it not only hit the bullseye, but it obliterated the Sheriff’s arrow right off the target.

The crowd soon cheered loudly at Robin’s victory. Marian above all else was most excited as she embraced Arthur excitedly.  James and Gale both whistled and cheered for Robin.

Prince John clapped slowly but turned to the Captain of the guard and gave him the signal.  The captain nodded and winked before looking around and whispering to one of the royal guards.

Robin tossed his bow into the air and caught it doing a victory twirl and headed on over to the royal stands and escorting behind him was the royal guard.  Maid Marian staring at him lovingly and smiling as she now sported the daisy behind her ear and resting against her long blonde locks.

As Robin now stood before Maid Marian who held the golden arrow, Prince John stood up from his throne and said to him.

“Archer I commend you. And because of your superior skill you shall get what is coming to you. Our royal congratulations.”

“Oh thank you kindly your highness. Meetin you face to face your high and mighty is a real treat……”

“Yes, yes, yes I know!” Prince John interrupted him before clearing his throat.  He then took out his sword and began to knight Robin as he said, “And now I name you the winner. Or more appropriately,” he chuckled darkly before tucking the blade into Robin’s robes destroying his costume and revealing himself. “The loser!”

The crowd all gasped in horror, and even Gale, David and Kit stood there horrified.

“Seize him.” Prince John nonchalantly decreed.  The guards soon wrestled with Robin Hood as he tried to escape and fight off each of the guards, but they easily overpowered him and had him bound and chained up. “I sentence you to instant, sudden and even immediate death!” Prince John hissed.

“Oh no!” Maid Marian gasped fearfully.  Tears formed in her eyes and gently seeped down her cheeks. She turned and pleaded to Prince John. “Please, please sire! I beg of you to spare his life, please have mercy!”

“My dear emotional lady why should I?” Prince John asked not caring at all for Marian’s tears.

“Because I love him.”

“Love him?” Prince John asked in surprise. “And does this prisoner return your love?” Robin turned to see his beloved’s tears run down her face. He longed for nothing more than to break out of his binds, hold her in his arms, and kiss those tears away.

“Marian my darling, without you it’s like there’s no air for me to breathe.” Marian placed her hand over her heart at Robin’s declaration of love, while Arthur wrapped a comforting arm around her.

“Ahh young love.” Prince John mocked.  Marian and Arthur turned to Prince John.  Arthur glaring while Marian continued to allow some tears to fall down her face. “Your pleas have not fallen upon a heart—of stone.” He continued to mock sympathetically before proclaiming out “But traitors to the crown must die!”

“Traitors to the crown? That crown belongs to King Richard! LONG LIVE KING RICHARD!!” Robin exclaimed.

“LONG LIVE KING RICHARD!!!” the people of Nottingham echoed back.

“ENOUGH!! I AM KING! KING! KING! That’s it! OFF WITH HIS HEAD!!!!”

The drums soon started playing that dreading death beat. The executioner soon came up with his axe as the guards forced Robin on his knees.  The crowd went dead silent with horror as they were about to witness the beheaded of their beloved hero.

Marian sniffled and sobbed into Arthur’s chest.  He embraced his friend trying his best to comfort her.  Suddenly screaming through the air was a female voice.

“NOO!!!” everyone gasped out and covering his body like a shield was Gale.  She glared with pure hatred at the executioner and she sneered.

“If you kill him, you’ll have to kill me too!”

“Queen Elizaveta get away from that blackguard at once!” Prince John proclaimed.

“Never you filthy dog! I’ll never let you touch another hand to my brother again!”

“You’re what?” she stood up and removed her disguise and the crowd all cheered as they now saw Gale Hood in her traditional clothing. The with one swift stroke of her dagger, she freed her brother. “Robin Hood has a sister?!” Prince John exclaimed in surprise.

“He does indeed sire. And this one’s a witch just like their filth of a mother was.” The Sheriff told him.

“Takes a demon to know one Sheriff! You both abuse the people of Nottingham, the same way you both abuse your power of authority! You both speak of loyalty and keeping the law yet you are cruel to those most in need of help! Manipulating and mistreating them for your own selfish gains!”

“SILENCE!!” Prince John whined out.

“But there is one man who knows well the difference between power and respect. And you Prince John took that right away from him when it rightfully belongs to him! LONG LIVE PRINCE JAMES!!”

“LONG LIVE PRINCE JAMES!!!” The people of Nottingham echoed back Gale’s proclamation, just like they did for Robin.  James turned to Gale who looked back at him with soft eyes.

“Sheriff of Nottingham, arrest them both!” Prince John proclaimed.

“It will be my pleasure.” The sheriff growled lowly.  He snapped his fingers and soon his guards surrounded the two siblings.

“Hmm let’s see now there’s……” Gale then began counting out the number of guards to herself then said. “So there’s ten of you and two of us. What’s a poor defenseless woman to do?” Gale pulled out a handkerchief from her pocket.

She then began to fake sob into the handkerchief before blowing on it which erupted red smoke out of it and soon both siblings disappeared.

“I knew she was a witch.” The Sheriff muttered.

“Oh boys~ we’re over here!~” a voice soon cooed out.  The guards all turned and hidden within the toys and trinkets were both Robin and Gale.

“Kill them! Don’t just stand there! Kill them!” but then leaping from the royal stand, Little John, David and Kit sprang into action and helped out their fearless leaders.

Little John took on two of the biggest guards while David and Kit tag-teamed a few other guards from reaching the two siblings.  Together Robin and Gale sword fought against a few guards while sneaking up behind them was Prince John with his sword raised.

Turning around, Robin easily knocked away the prince’s sword and he quickly turned from sneaky failed assassin to trembling child in a matter of seconds.

“Please, please don’t hurt me! No don’t hurt me! Help! Help!” Prince John fled to the safety of some drinking barrels before exclaiming out once more “KILL THEM ALL!!!”

From the royal stands James withdrew his sword and told Arthur.

“Get Marian out of here Arthur.”

“But what about you?” he asked.

“Don’t worry I’ll be fine. They didn’t call me the lion’s fang for nothing. Now go quickly!” James charged forward and joined in the fight.

When Robin was distracted from fighting off a guard, another one was aiming his arrow right for his back.  Just before the guard took the killing shot, James stopped the guard and with one swift swipe across his back, the guard fell to the ground.

After knocking the guard he was fighting, Robin turned to see Prince James standing a few feet away from him.

“Thank you.” he told the Prince.

“Figured you could use an extra sword.” James said.

“Where’s Marian?” Robin asked.

“She’s fine. Arthur’s taking her away from here. And don’t worry, he’s just a friend of ours.”

“I wasn’t worried about that.” Robin said.

“I know, but just in case you were. Arthur only has viewed her as a sister from when we first met him in London. Now where’s Gale?”

“I don’t know. But she’s alright, she can handle herself.”

“I hope so.” The two then raced off to continue the fight.

Meanwhile deep within the woods Laura, Michael and Robert had gotten lost in the woods in the midst of the chaos of the crowd fleeing since the battle began.  The three siblings were frantically trying to find their parents when they got lost in the woods.

“Mama! Pa!” Robert cried out.  Suddenly they heard a branch snap and coming out of the trees was the Sheriff of Nottingham, his sword withdrawn and when he spotted the three Sharpe children, his eyes narrowed.

“Just my luck.” He sniped coldly.  Michael trembled with his arrow and fired at the Sheriff but his aim was terrible and it only embedded itself into a tree. “That was your first mistake child.”

“You dare touch a hair on those kids and you’ll regret it!” a female voice snarled protectively.  The Sheriff then felt a blade right at his neck and he slowly smirked.

“The demon!” he hissed.

“The only demon I see is you. Now step away from those children and draw your sword on me you coward.” As the Sheriff spun around and tried to slash at Gale, she quickly side-stepped and stood guard in front of the Sharpe children.

Protecting them like a mother bear would her own cubs.

“Kids get up into the trees, now!” The kids quickly climbed up as high as they could go to keep away from the Sheriff and watched with awe and terror at the fight that was about to go down. “You claim me to be a witch, well I can certainly say I can take you down without black magic.”

“You’re a vile succubus of the Earth Gale Hood. Hypnotizing anyone with your charm before you taint their souls to the darkness. Using men to do your dirty work for your own selfish gain.”

“You know sheriff you would’ve made a great judge. What happened? King Richard saw your perverted side and put you in the lowest rank possible away from the palace?” The Sheriff then lunged for her but she spun around him and gave him a good cut along his cheek with her hidden knife.

As she stood behind him she told him as he wiped his cheek and saw the blood on his hand.

“That was for Gilbert. Now you both have a matching set.”

“Enough tricks siren!” the two then began to go full on at each other, spinning around each other and nearly making close calls with each other.

Of course the Sheriff had one more dirty trick up his sleeve. After Gale had gotten him on his knees after slashing his leg with her sword, he secretly took some dirt in his fist.

“Ms. Gale watch out!” Michael cried out but it was too late, he tossed the dirt right into Gale’s face.  She cried out as the soil stung her eyes and she continued to scream as the Sheriff now had her pinned against him, her arm bent far behind her back and his other hand gripping her hair pulling her head backwards.

“As magnificent as you are, you are still a woman. And women are feeble creatures.” He tossed her down to the ground up.  Her head hitting against the trunk of the tree.

He raised his sword high in the air ready to strike down at Gale and finally end her.  Robert tucked his brother’s and sister’s heads into his chest and he too closed his eyes not wanting to see the inevitable.  His sword then swung down and through the forest a loud CLANK was heard.

The kids slowly opened their eyes and that’s when Laura gasped happily.  The sheriff stood there in fear for standing right before him blocking his attack on Gale was Prince James.

“I knew he’d save her. Just like the princes do in the storybooks.” Laura said to her brothers.

He pushed the Sheriff’s sword aside and with a fast strike, he managed to cut a small chunk of the Sheriff’s long black hair.  As it fell to the ground the Sheriff looked up at the Prince with horrified eyes.

“Touch her again, and I’ll cut off more than just your hair.”

“My-my Prince…….I-I meant no harm. Please have mercy on me.” The Sheriff pleaded as fell to his knees.

“If you have the pride to attack a woman and attempt to kill children, you should have the balls to fight against me. Now on your feet!” The Sheriff’s fear soon melted away as his cold exterior came back up and he stood back up.

“So she’s corrupted you too? The future king. Never fear your highness, I shall remedy of your tainted soul.”

“Oh you’d be surprised just what she’s taught me.” Challenged James.  The Sheriff cried out as he lunged towards the Prince.

But ohh James was indeed a clever fighter.  Just like Gale did to him earlier, he spun around the Sheriff but instead of using his sword he thrusted it to the ground and quickly mounted onto the Sheriff’s shoulders.

Using his momentum and the Sheriff’s own body weight against him, the Prince spun the Sheriff of Nottingham right off his feet.  When the Sheriff, dazed and confused of what had just happened to him, he heard a snap of his bone.  It was then he realized that the Prince had pulled his right arm behind his back and actually broke it.

Before the Sheriff could even turn onto his back, he soon found not only the Prince’s sword, but his own sword crossed over each other over his neck, ready to behead him.

“Please……my Prince….mercy.”

“Every breath you take is mercy from me. I should kill you where you stand for your crimes against Nottingham.” The sheriff closed his eyes fearfully awaiting his punishment.  “But unlike my bastard of an uncle, I know self-control. And I won’t kill before children.” He released the sheriff and gave him a final threat, “But harm those children or Gale’s family again, and next time my sword won’t stop.”

He tossed the sheriff’s sword to the ground and like a frightened dog, the Sheriff ran with his tail tucked between his legs.  James put his sword away and looked up at the tree.

“You children alright?”

“Yeah we’re okay.” Robert said.

“Thank goodness. C’mon down now, he won’t be back anytime soon.” Robert was the first to scale down the tree, with barely any help from James (Robert was a pretty skilled climber and said he didn’t need any help getting down).  Michael then followed behind and James helped him down to the ground, which left Laura clinging onto the trunk fearfully once she saw just how high they really were.

“C’mon Laura jump!” Robert called out to her.

“No!” she cried out fearfully.

“Laura it’s not that far, come on we gotta find ma and pa!” Michael urged her on.

“I can’t! I’m too scared!” James took his sword off his belt and went up the tree to go get Laura.  Once he was half way up the tree, he gave Laura a comforting smile and he told her.

“It’s okay Laura. Can you give me your hand?” he extended his hand out.  Laura looked down and clung onto the tree tighter, her small body trembling with fear.

“What—what if I fall?” she asked.

“I’ll give you a Prince’s vow that I will not let that happen. I’ll be right here to catch you.” her eyes went to look back down but James told her to not look down, only to look at him.

Soon Laura took James’ hand and slowly he brought her closer to him until she clung onto him like a bear to a tree.

“Now, just keep your arms wrapped around me okay, and you can close your eyes if you wish.” He told her as he wrapped an arm protectively around her.  Laura buried her face into James’ neck, his long blonde hair gently tickling her face with each movement he did as he carefully scaled down the tree.

Once they were safely on the ground, James comfortingly rubbed her back and told her that they were safely on the ground.  Laura opened her eyes when two familiar voices began calling out to them.

“Ma!”

“Pa!” soon coming through the trees were Adam and Veronica Sharpe.  James set Laura down and the three children raced up to their parents.  The Sharpe family reunited with each other through hugs and kisses as the kids all spoke at once about what had happened.

Adam looked up at the young Prince and said to him.

“Thank you my Prince.” He went to kneel but James stopped him and he said.

“There’s no need Adam Sharpe. Your children’s safety was my only concern. And I’m happy to see that they’ll be in their parent’s care once again.” Adam stared in awe at this young Prince but smiled and nodded.

“We—we wouldn’t know what we’d done had anything happened to any of our children.”

“Misses Gale!” Laura exclaimed.  James soon turned around and saw Gale starting to regain consciousness softly groaning in pain.  He quickly raced over to her and saw her eyes still covered with dirt and dust.

“Keep your eyes shut my love.” He adjusted her so that her head was on his lap.  He quickly took his water pincher and dumped some water onto his hand before spreading it over her eyes then using his sleeve to gently wipe the water and dust again. He repeated the process a few times before finally allowing Gale to open her eyes.

And once again he was caught off guard by the ethereal beauty of her brown eyes.  The two young lovers stared at each other, almost feeling like the world was slipping away and the only thing that mattered was just the two of them.

“James.” She whispered.

“Hey Gale.” He softly greeted with a smile.

“You—you managed to find me in time?”

“Like I told you when we first met. No matter where you are, I will always find you.” he brushed some of her hair away from her face.

“How romantic.” Praised little Laura softly.

“Sissy stuff!” Michael gagged.  It was then Adam and Veronica decided to take their leave and take the children back home (but really it was to give the young prince and their female heroine some privacy).

Once the Sharpe’s had left, James continued to gently stroke through Gale’s raven hair and stare into her eyes.  Gale soon reached up and took a strand of his long blonde hair in between her fingers and twirl it around.

“You took my dare?”

“Yeah I—I remember you saying long hair wasn’t easy to manage. And you were right.”

“But it—it looks good. Finally gives you the real Charming look.” He faintly chuckled and said.

“God did I miss hearing you call me that.”

“I thought you hated when I called you that the first time we met?”

“Being away from you all these years, made me come to appreciate all the things that we used to do. Every small thing you did or even called me. And—you calling me Charming has been the one thing I missed the most. Cause it makes me think back to the day we met.” Gale smiled solemnly.

James helped her stand up and he said.

“C’mon. Let’s find your brother and the rest of the gang.”

“Onto Sherwood forest then, Charming.”

“Lead the way then, Gale Hood.” She grinned and walked on ahead with James following right behind her.

Back at the tournament, with the battle that had broken out, the field was in disarray.  Tents had been knocked over, the royal stand completely destroyed, and the field completely emptied.  Prince John who was the only one still there exclaimed.

“HESTON! You’re never around when I need you!” that’s when he began to hear a drunken hum coming from the barrel of ale that he was hiding behind.  He pressed his ear to the barrel before uncorking it.

Soon drunkenly raising up was Heston.  He removed the muzzle from his python’s nose and that’s when Heston slurred.

“Oh! Oh hey th-there you are old man! PJ you won’t believe this…..but the archer boy is really Robin Hood.”

“Robin Hood…..” Prince John sneered softly.  Heston nodded proudly.  Prince John then exclaimed in anger as he took Heston out of the barrel and began to throttle him furiously.

[shytalia]

A Prince and a Pirate’s Fate (USUK fanfic)

Summary: When the future King and Queen of the Spade's Kingdom come of age, a mark appears on their body. Alfred is the kind Prince of Spades, heir to the throne. Arthur is his fated husband, the future Queen. The only problem is, Arthur is one of the most infamous pirates to sail the seas, a wanted man in all four kingdoms, and he violently refuses his place in the castle.

No attempts at capturing him have been successful and he remains on the run, fulfilling his lust for defiance. Alfred, following his nineteenth birthday, decides to take the task of bringing Arthur home into his own hands.

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Also available on my AO3: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shytalia

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Chapter One

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Sometimes, Alfred swore The Gods were laughing at them.

As he kneeled before an altar, dressed in shabby clothes and in a small, port town with nothing but fish and brothels to its name, he wondered how this had all happened.

Arthur Kirkland, one of the four kingdom’s most wanted pirates, was named the next Queen of Spades.

Alfred had laughed at first when he heard the news since he figured it had to be some sort of shitty joke, only the punchline never came. It was confirmed that Arthur was, in fact, the correct person. It wasn’t easy, of course. A lot of people tried to take fake ownership over the title, brandishing their skin with false symbols of the Spades. But they were each debunked as frauds and the search for the real queen had continued.

Usually, it was not this difficult to find the queen. When the next King and Queen came of age, slowly a mark began to appear on their bodies to reveal their true destiny. So, as one might imagine, a deep, navy mark in the shape of a spade on someone’s skin coming out of nowhere was fairly hard to ignore. There were no rules as to where it appeared, it could be flashy and materialize on someone’s wrist, for all to see. Or, it could be more intimate, on the small of their back or on their thigh.

Alfred knew his mark was due to appear soon after his eighteen birthday and it wasted no time making itself known on his right hip. His many fans marveled at the placement, it was easy to cover up, but it also conjured seductive fantasies into their minds at the prospect.

Of course Alfred expected the reaction, ever since he had been a young teen, girls and boys alike wished to see the matching mark appear on their own skin. Not only for the power and the wealth, but many wanted Alfred himself. Why wouldn’t they? He was the Spadian Golden Boy.

Everyone swooned over his tanned skin, revealing in the way it shone with sweat when he sparred or practiced his weaponry skills. They simply wanted to run their fingers through his wheat blonde hair and stare into his eyes, often equated to the vast, blue sky in which their gods shone down on them. Everyone wanted him.

Well, almost everyone.

Arthur’s mark had appeared before even Alfred’s had, considering he was a good four years older. By this point, he had already become one of the most hated people in all the kingdoms.

He had started to make a name for himself early on, seemingly coming out of nowhere but with such a feisty attitude, wit, and the will to fight, he quickly rose from just some shabby nobody to a master of strategy on the sea. He gained a following and by the age of seventeen had already accumulated enough loyal people to call himself a Captain. This also meant he rose to the top of most wanted criminals, but despite the navy’s best efforts to collect him, Arthur always managed to escape. Almost.

There had been one faithful day in which the British Spadian had not been as lucky and was promptly detained by military guards. They had been following the Captain and cornered him in a coastal town, managing to lock him up and report back to the castle that they finally had the menace in custody. All they needed to do then was escort the prisoner back to the capital to face judgement.

That was how it was supposed to go, anyway. But before they could make it to their destination, they had to prepare the prisoner to enter the castle. They surely didn’t trust a pirate not to have weapons hidden on him, after all, and a change of clothing to better prepare him to stand before the current king and queen was only proper. That way, they wouldn’t have to subject themselves to peering down at a rogue pirate, dressed to fit the description. He had been in torn, black pants, a low cut shirt, jewelry no doubt stolen, piercings in his ears, and a deep, blood red coat to show his authority. That power held no meaning with the guards, however, as they began to strip the bound prisoner to change him into more moderate clothing.

It was then that the fate of the Spade Kingdom would change forever.

As they undressed him, they could tell the captain grew more and more agitated. He turned and twisted, making it progressively difficult for them to take off his shirt. Eventually, one of the guards buckled under the annoyance and pulled out a knife. Reportedly, Arthur had not shown any fear at the blade and only matched the sharpness with his own, cold glares.

His resolve wavered slightly, however, when he realized the knife was not meant for his skin but for his clothing. In one quick movement, the guard had yanked his shirt and cut through it, making it impossible for Arthur to fight the removal any longer. It was then that both guards stopped and stared, questioning their sanity as well as their positions to the crown.

Before them was a man, gagged to keep his curses muffled and hands cuffed to keep him from running. A wanted gunman with blood on his hands. But on his back, between his shoulder blades, was a distinct, dark mark perfectly in the shape of a spade.

Having been trained relentlessly to find the queen should they come across them, like all royal guards and military personnel, their first instinct was to test if the mark was truly what they feared it would be or if it was just a normal tattoo. To their horror, the truth was revealed that the pirate in their custody was marked as their next queen. They sent word immediately to the castle, who at first did not believe them, but upon inspection after inspection, and test after test, there was no denying the horrible fact that Arthur was indeed Alfred’s intended by fate.

He was to be brought to the castle immediately.

By some miracle, at least in Arthur’s eyes, the wagon was intercepted and he was freed by members of his crew and, strangely enough, a new friend they had made along the way. His name was Lukas, he learned, and he was not only a devoted priest of The Gods, he was an excellent mage with magical powers almost unmatched. With his help, the loyal crew members were able to rescue their captain from his undesired destiny.

Shortly after, word spread of the shocking revelation. People didn’t believe it, not at first. But, as the gossip spread farther and farther, the infamous Arthur Kirkland became wanted less for the crimes he had committed and more because the royal family wanted their rogue queen apprehended and brought to them.

Alfred was finding it particularly hard to pray when all these thoughts kept swirling around in his head. It was said that The Goddess herself marked the new queens with the royal symbols, but the young prince simply couldn’t understand why She had to mark Arthur Kirkland of all people.

He had lots of dreams about his future and the person he was going to be spending it with. He had prayed fervently to The Goddess in hopes to have a joyful and easy love life with his mysterious, future queen. Many monarchs simply tolerated each other, if they didn’t down right loathe one another, and very few ever actually fell in love. Alfred didn’t want a life of hating his partner but now, as he kneel before a statue in Her honor, he could only imagine she was laughing at him.

It had been nearly four years since Arthur’s secret was discovered and in those years, the royal military had tried desperately to claim him. Their navy occupied the seas he sailed, their guards watched many ports and coasts like hawks, they even put out a handsome reward for anyone who could capture the elusive Brit and deliver him. All these attempts at capture had failed miserably.

Many balked at the way Arthur evaded his fate, shouldn’t he want to claim his place? He was practically promised riches, food, clothing. Anything he ever desired, he could have in the palm of his hand. The royal court had tried desperately to play on this mindset as well, promising the Brit that if he surrendered himself, he would face no judicial punishment based on his past actions. It was unheard of! For a pirate captain as notorious as him to be given full pardon, everyone figured it was only a matter of time before Arthur came waltzing up to the castle gates himself. But as days turned into weeks and weeks into months, they realized the stubborn pirate was not interested.

--- ♠ --- ♠ --- ♠ ---

Alfred’s eighteenth birthday had been celebrated with a feast and loud celebrations. He had finally come of age and was expected to marry his queen soon. The lack of the new queen at the festivities put a sour mood in Alfred’s mouth, despite his signature smile and all the gifts. Don’t get him wrong, he was not at all thrilled about being married to Arthur-renegade pirate-Kirkland, but he was the Prince and therefore, needed to put aside his own feelings for the betterment of the kingdom. It struck a nerve in him to think that Arthur was considered any sort of ‘betterment’, he had no idea what The Goddess could possibly be thinking with this.

Nonetheless, it had been years since that fateful day his future husband was found out. Every single day they had failed ceremoniously to bring him home. So now, at age nineteen, Alfred decided he would be the one to bring Arthur back himself. He had waited patiently, as he was told to, but now that a year had past since his eighteenth birthday and they still were no closer to capturing Arthur, he grew tired of being idle. He was past his coming of age and Arthur was already twenty three, well past the usual marriage of a future queen. It was only adding insult to injury.

So here he was, in a small, modest temple fit dimly by candles and incense. He finished his prayer and stood up, walking out into the chilly, sea-salt air.

He had not been permitted to leave the castle on his own and surely not on some wild goose chase after a wanted criminal. That was why he had to sneak out, he was a prince after all and he knew how to evade his guards so he could go have a good time. He was notorious for sneaking out and just having fun in the capital, talking, helping, eating, drinking, and dancing with the locals. It was part of why he was so loved by them, he felt like one of them, not just some up-tight kid sitting on a throne of privilege. Alfred loved his people and showed it openly and without apology, and in turn they adored him for it too.

Now, those secret passages out of the castle grounds served a new purpose, to get him out so he could find Arthur. That’s exactly what he did, only pausing to leave a parting note for his dear parents.

He also made sure to dress less extravagantly, he didn’t want to tip anyone off as to who he was or get robbed. Many people knew his name and who he was, but surprisingly many also did not know his face as well as they thought they did. Once he managed to sneak out of the main capital, it became easier and easier to blend in. In towns and villages not as close to the castle as the big city, less people recognized him and that made traveling easier. After all, they weren’t as invested in the royal family as those closer to the castle. They had hard jobs to do dealing with agriculture and fishing, too busy working with their hands to provide for their families to care what some rich people looked like.

That worked in Alfred’s favor as he made his way to the coast, in a little town near where he had heard Arthur was last sighted. He searched for clues and asked subtle questions, but found himself disappointed when not much was revealed. After a couple of days, he was starting to lose hope in his search, as no one he talked to seemed to have any sort of lead for him to follow. That was, until, he heard someone mention a large ship coming towards the dock. His ears perked up at that and he listened in.

A large ship of some sort was coming to dock at their shores and the people of the town readied themselves. They were either there to pillage or to spend money, and being in a coastal town, you had to be prepared for both.

Alfred took this information and ran with it, making his way towards the waters to see just what ship they were talking about. Upon lying his eyes on it, he knew there was no mistaking it.

This was a vessel he had never seen with his own eyes, but had heard described like it was a prayer. The dark, mahogany wood stood proud against the cool waters of the sea. The masts, to Alfred, were a synonym for depravity and refusal of divine fate. But, it was the figurehead that protruded from the front of the ship that was truly a dead giveaway, no other ship had anything like it.

It came in the shape of a wooden woman facing outward, her hair curling around her face and behind her, as if the wind itself was blowing through it. In her hands was a bow and an arrow, ready to be shot at the foes foolish enough to stand before her. She was a symbol of fear to those unlucky enough to come across her wrath but a thing of beauty and grace for those who simply watched it bob from the waves. It was the famed figurehead of The Siren's Arrow.

Alfred knew he couldn’t let this chance pass him by, so he slowly made his way closer to where the boat had stopped and allowed some of its passengers to exit. Thankfully, they all looked rather docile at the moment, laughing with one another and heading right for humanly indulgences in the form of either food, bars or brothels.

The young prince watched them each carefully, but his frown sunk lower when each passed that didn’t match Arthur’s depiction. He had never seen Arthur in person, obviously, but there were enough “Wanted” posters around to know what he looked like.

Finally, after a painfully long half an hour in which he lazily leaned against a wall and watched, he caught sight of something that made him catch his breath. From among the crew members still spilling from the ship, he pinpointed a bustle of messy, blonde hair. He moved to lean in closer, squinting his eyes to watch the newcomer as he stepped off the ship and onto the pier.

He was smaller than Alfred expected. He had heard stories of the unlikely captain, that he was not as tall or large as many other pirates tended to be. In fact, he looked petite beside his rough cohorts. He was also rather attractive. Alfred caught his thoughts before they trailed off too far and kicked himself for thinking that the man walking casually onto the beach was anything but a slimy criminal. Small or not, the prince knew that Arthur was a dangerous man, not above breaking the law or killing him if he saw him as a threat.

He was also sure he would be less than pleased to see a royal, of all people. This was where Alfred’s plan came to a fault. He had been evading guards and gathering clues as to where Arthur was, with no real plan of action to actually get him back home with him. He surely was stronger than him physically, just based on their bodies, but he couldn’t exactly pick the Brit up and run all the way back to the castle with him. Surely, he’d be dead before he even got out of this town.

He had been so trapped in his thoughts again as he watched Arthur, he didn’t process that the man in question was growing ever closer to him. He also didn’t notice that the other blonde noticed him staring intently.

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[adorable-american]

So, I'm in the mood for vampire drama...

UKUS, suggested Franada

Disclaimer: I do not own hetalia or any of its characters.

Warning! Rape, violence, and mentions of blood.

Pt1

Alfred was a renounced vampire hunter, a name that carried well in the world of monsters and those who knew the ugly truth. Alfred had been blind from this world until the age of 19 when his twin brother had disappeared and the only trace left was a jagged tooth, a clump of unidentified hair, and blood. Lots of blood. The local police had never seen anything like it, higher ups had been called and informed of the strange findings. Whatever happened that night, the struggle was obvious and Alfred hated himself for not being there with his brother. For not being able to help him, instead he had been on a date with some cheerleader from their college. Months had passed without much as a letter or a phone call from both the police or the feds that had been on the case. It was like the world had forgotten all about his brother. But Alfred didn't. He took to the internet, quickly finding tales and lore about hideous beasts and monster that preyed on humankind. Not much longer after that initial search Alfred became engrossed with the supernatural. His obsession caused him to lose sleep, to lose track of time, missing classes and assignments. Just as quickly as he found a path with answers, he lost the life he had been building for himself. He was kicked out of the student apartment complex, out of the college, and on his way with a single motive.

Find out the Truth.

-----

It had been years later when Alfred started earning his notoriety in this horrific world. But he didn't care, he was revenging his brother. His brother who he now knew had been attacked by a vampire, razor sharp teeth that could slash open the human throat in one bite. Eyes that glowed with hunger, beauty so perfect that you were invited in by their presence, an aura that soothed the most anxious of souls, the vampire was deemed "The Perfect Hunter" because everything about them invited you in, but just as the creatures had as many abilities, they had as many weakness also. Daylight, for example, burned their cold bodies, fire turned them to ash, beheading disabled them but didn't fully kill them, a stake to the heart was highly effective but it had to be certain types of wood, etc.

Having been tracking down the vampire that was there that night was Alfred's main goal, but he had nothing to describe the vampire except for he knew the vampire to be blonde, with long curly hair. And that was such a broad detail. Nonetheless, every vampire knew he was looking for one of their kind. To the Vampires, Alfred was known to take them in and torture them in hope of answers, answers none could give before they eventually died of sun exposure or Alfred's impatience. He typically held them long enough for the hunger to drive them mad. However long that was, depended on the vampire itself, typically older vampires needed less to survive compared to new vamps.

It wasn't until after his 25th birthday that Alfred gotten his first solid lead. A happy birthday card had been left for him under his car windshield wiper and in Matthew's handwriting. "He's alive." Alfred let out a breath of relief. All this time he never felt like his brother had been gone but he felt crazy when thinking he had felt like he was being watched for the past several weeks now. It had to have been Matthew right? Why would his kwn brother stay away from him after all this time? And why not let him know he was alive?

.... the realization of answers to that last question now troubled the hunter. He felt sick to his stomach with possibilities. "I need a drink" he said aloud as he crumbled the card in his fist.

"Me and you both." A smooth accented voice responded to him but as soon as he turned, already pulling a cedarwood stake from his pocket, the parking lot behind him was empty. Knowing good and well he heard someone Alfred didn't let his guard down. "Put that thing away and maybe I can answer some of your questions... hunter~" the smooth voice called to him again but every direction he looked was empty. He couldn't fight what he couldn't see.

"Show yourself!" Alfred yelled into the night air.

There was a long pause before a cool voice whispered. "Turn around."

Alfred whirled around, his arm raising to stab whoever was behind him but just as quick as he turned the creature he expected to find grabbed his arm, bending him and his hand back until the weapon clattered against the pavement. He didn't see the figure as he was righted again and his weapon gone.

"Tut tut tut" the vampire clicked his tongue as he appeared once again behind the hunter. This time when Alfred whirled around he saw the vampire. He stood cooly behind Alfred. The vampire was obviously older as his clothing was centuries old.

He was faced with a British vampire, one who wore high waisted trousers, a wool printed vest, a matching tail coat, a cane, and a top hat that hid most of his blonde hair. Someone of great importance in that time period Alfred could assume. But Alfred couldn't look away as he was transfixed by the vampire's glowing emerald eyes. He was one of the most beautiful vampire's Alfred had ever seen. And he had seen plenty.

"Your brother..." the vampire started to speak and Alfred had felt the lull of his voice soothing him. Drawing him in. He wanted to reach out and touch this man but realization dawned on him and again he was flailing for a weapon.

The vampire watched as the hunter was so quickly eased into the false safety his kind exuded with. But as his eyes quickly became wide with the realization he took the hunter by both wrists and slammed him against the trunk of his own car. He did jt hard enough that the hit to Alfred's head caused him to lose focus.

Alfred's head hurt and his vision swam with pain, the sudden movement caused his glasses to go askew and this further blurred his vision. The vampire that was now over him was holding his wrists tightly. "This is it" Alfred thought as he swallowed hard. He could feel the vampire pressing against his lower body as green eyes were curiously checking him over. His glasses were fixed and he could clearly see the smug look on the vamps face. "Who are you? What do you want?" Alfred said through gritted teeth as the vampire moved his wrist above his head, one hand now holding him down as the other raked over his upper body.

"Arthur. Arthur Kirkland." He finally introduced himself. His eyes inspecting the hunter who was now in such a compromising position. He let his hand rake slowly down the hunter's chest and stomach until he hit the hunter's belt. His hand skimmed over to Alfred's groin. Palming the hunter through his jeans. This was going to be much easier than he thought. "If you want to see your brother, you are going to have to make the same deal he made all those years ago to another vampire."

Alfred shuddered at the vampire's touch. Biting his lip as he refused to give the vampire any satisfaction for this. "W-what are you talking about?"

"Your brother, he gave himself over to a vampire named Francis." Arthur spoke again in a cool voice as he leaned against the hunter. Nipping at his lower lip, his sharp teeth easily tearing the skin open as he had a small taste of the hunter.

Alfred hissed at the pain and headbutted the vampire over him.

The vampire, Arthur, wasn't hurt by the action but it obviously made him mad as his free hand came up to the hunter's jaw. His grip was so tight Alfred whimpered in pain, he could almost feel the bones crunching under the pressure. "Don't." Arthur warned.

Defiant, Alfred spat into the vampire's face.

Arthur remained cool as he pulled out a handkerchief, wiping the saliva off his cheek before shoving the cloth into Alfred's mouth. "I tried to be nice." He said baring a mouth full of jagged teeth and ripping Alfred's shirt as he tore open the skin over Alfred's collarbone.

Alfred felt as his skin was ripped away, blood flowing quickly down his chest. The vampire's tongue and mouth quickly lapping up the blood. His limbs grew weak, the vampire let his arms go as he now held Alfred up by his coat. His head lulled to the side as the vampire moved him so he coukd get a better angle. His legs had gave out moments ago and he couldn't feel anything except the vampire's teeth and tongue over his collarbone.

"You look so cute like this." Alfred's vision was swimming again but he could hear the sneer in Arthur's voice. He was pushed up onto the trunk of the old car as Arthur moved his attention elsewhere. Undoing the buckle of Alfred's belt he slowly undid the hunter's jeans. Hoping the human could feel everything. Alfred's flaccid member was stroked to life as the vampire made more bite marks, claiming the hunter for his own musings.

Alfred hissed at each bite to his swelling member but still couldn't deny the mixture of pain and pleasure was turning him on. The biting stopped, but the strokes continued in an agonizingly slow pace. The vampire's bloody wrist had then been pressed into his mouth. At first he refused, Arthur punished him but thumping his sensitive member, it wasn't until Alfred accepted the vampire's blood that he was then rewarded. The hand around his memver stroking hard and fast as praise. "Good boy~" Arthur's voice echoed out against his darkening vision. He came for the vampire before falling unconscious to the pavement.

Arthur smiled as he gathered up the defeated hunter and carried him easily to the motel room in which he was staying for the week.

[usukusliterarygems]

#1: The Thief of Spades - Season One.

Read It Here!

Author:  alifeasvivid - @alifeasvivid

Genre: Romance, comedy, heist.

Rating: Mature

(USUK/UKUS/USUKUS)

Number of chapters: 25. 

Summary: Alfred F. Jones is a notoriously elusive, brazenly cheeky, high-end jewel and art thief known to most only as the Thief of Spades. Many have tried to catch him, but only straight-laced Inspector Arthur Kirkland of New Scotland Yard has ever had any success, mainly because he is a thief himself... that is, he stole Alfred's heart.

Drama level: All is rainbows/A small problem happens for like a second/Some conflicts and tense situations but you can handle it/You may shed some tears/NO TEARS LEFT TO CRY

- - -

- Analysis - 

With reasonably short chapters and a very pleasant writing, The Thief of Spades is definitely one of the readings I would recommend to anyone at any time. If you need a reading you can do even when you are stressed with your exams or work, this is a great option for you.

The story begins very casually. In the first chapters, we are introduced to Alfred and Arthur through small scenes of their encounters, connected in a vague timeline. It's a bit like a cartoon where you don't have to watch every episode to understand what's going on. This, of course, is not a problem. The universe is fun and the characters are charming so this format was already good enough for me. 

However, over time, the plot begins to develop and, as a result, the story, besides being fun, becomes engaging and really moving at certain points.

Let’s talk a bit about said plot. Arthur is a policeman who has been trying for some time to capture Alfred, a thief of precious artifacts. Alfred recognizes Arthur as a worthy opponent (and a major hottie) and likes to purposely press his buttons with every crime he commits, which always annoys the shit out of Arthur. Despite all that, it’s clear that there is a mixture of sexual tension and mutual admiration between the two, and the situation is clearly a “will-they-won’t-they”. While reading it, I bet at some point you will think: JUST KISS ALREADY, YOU DORKS.

Anyway, going back to the story, over time, Arthur learns more about Alfred and vice versa and the two develop feelings for each other that go beyond sexual attraction. However, during that same period, pressure for Alfred to be captured increases and the case goes into the CIA's hands, intensifying Arthur's internal conflict over what he wants to do about Alfred. Especially given that Alfred, despite being a criminal, is a good person, a kind of modern Robin Hood, and is basically the definition of chaotic good.

This fic would be already great even if it stayed in the format of the first few chapters, but the development it goes through really adds a special touch to it. Because the characters are so charismatic and the development of a relationship between them is built with such a sense of anticipation, we end up really rooting for them when they face obstacles. 

Digging a bit in the author’s style, the author writes in the present tense, which I think really fits this story. It creates a sense of immediate action that fits the narrative. Moreover, there is a perfect balance between action and introspection in the writing of this fic that makes it especially good. Here is a part that exemplifies this:

“Emeralds are soft. The Thief of Spades has worked with them before and they are sort of a pain in the ass. They’re high enough on the Mohs scale, but since they often have a lot of imperfections, they break pretty easily and they don’t like heat.

It’s normally not a problem. Alfred F. Jones shoves his hands into his pockets as he admires the vibrant green stone on the pedestal in front of him. The heat thing is normally not a problem unless a thief’s best bet is to free the stone from its twenty thousand dollar display case using a laser.”

See? We start by simply seeing Alfred's thoughts, catching a glimpse of what's going on in his mind, and then we have a quick and smooth transition to the action that's happening right now. This ability to combine introspection and action by the author makes the story very pleasant and easy to read, without losing its depth.

Another great scene that uses this writing technique:

“Everyone has stolen something from someone. Many of the things he takes have already been stolen at one point or another. Someone's blood stains every beautiful thing in the world.

His head still conjures images of plans and contingencies, of meticulous execution and perfect escape. His heart spins philosophies of anti-imperialism and a world where everyone realizes that no one truly owns anything—all structured around a compulsive love of beauty.

Alfred reclines comfortably in his chair, staring at the ring. This is who he has become: a person his eighteen year old self hadn't even known could exist in that moment--someone truly free.”

Amazing, right?

Another thing important to note is that the dialogues are pure gold. They made me have a huuge smirk on my face so many times. The author's sense of humor is really great and their ability to write interactions that have rivalry and seduction at the same time is amazing.

In short, this is a great story that I really recommend. The second season is being written now, so try to leave reviews there to encourage the author so we can have more of this lovely work! Please, please do!

- - -

Here are some of the lines that I really liked:

- “He is not a child, Gil, but yes, this is… oh, what do you call yourself again? The Bandit of Shovels?”

-  “Don’t have the stamina to keep up with me, Inspector?”

Arthur huffs. “Rather, I don’t have the patience.”

- “I’m, like, so sorry,” he says in a ditzy accent. “But does this smell like chloroform to you?” He smothers the guard’s nose with a cloth and uses his surprise to slip a very potent sleeping pill into his mouth. The man goes limp and drops to the floor with a thud. The Thief of Spades chuckles darkly. “That line never gets old.”

- - -

Extra points:

- The use of “♠︎” as a line breaker is a nice touch.

- The author is just really good at describing jewels. 

- Alfred and Arthur have fantasies about each other and they are delightful to read. 

[the-record-obituaries]

Feb. 26, 2020: Obituaries

Annie Harris, 69

Annie Lou Harris, age 69, of North Wilkesboro, passed away Thursday, February 20, 2020 at her home. She was born April 9, 1950 in Wilkes County to Grover and Margaret Whellington Gentry. Annie was a member of Denny Grove AME Zion Church, where she served as a deaconess, on the usher board; and the treasury board. Mrs. Harris graduated from East Wilkes High School and attended Wilkes Community College with a major in Early Childhood education. Annie had a passion for teaching and spent 30 years in the Woodlawn community preparing preschool children for elementary school. She felt that cultural exposure, discipline and resilience were qualities to equip children with a strong foundation. Mrs. Harris always encouraged children to learn from their mistakes and discouraged them from repeating the same mistakes. Her faith in God was her foundation for life. She was preceded in death by her parents.

Surviving are her husband, Douglas Harris of the home; daughter, Teia Weldon and spouse Dexter of Marietta, Georgia; step-daughters, Nena Gilreath Lucas and spouse Waverly of East Point, Georgia, Hope Gilreath Carter and spouse Allen of Jonesville; step-son, Douglas Harris and spouse Tysole of Ellenwood, Georgia; brothers, John Edward Gentry of Boone, David Gentry of Roaring River; sisters, Lillie Miller of Lancaster, California, Shirley Gentry of Charleston, South Carolina; nieces, DeShanta Richardson, Siah Perez and spouse Francisco, Michelle Gentry; nephews, Kirkland Gentry and Keith Gentry; great nieces, Andrea Richardson and Amiah Richardson; great nephews, Miguel Perez and Liam Perez host of loving cousins and friends.

Funeral service was February 25, at Miller Funeral Chapel with Rev. Michael Gillespie, Rev. Wayne Harris and Rev. Gene Martin officiating. Burial  followed in Mountlawn Memorial Park. In lieu of flowers, memorials may be made to Denny Grove AME Zion Church, P.O.Box 253, Wilkesboro, NC 28697. Miller Funeral Service is in charge of the arrangements.  

  Talmo Holbrook, 84

Talmo Holbrook, age 84, of Traphill, passed away Friday, February 21, 2020 at Woltz Hospice Home in Dobson. Talmo was born October 18, 1935 in Wilkes County to Lester and Ruby Richardson Holbrook. Mr. Holbrook was a retired U.S. Army Veteran and National Guard. He was the best fiddle player in town. Talmo was preceded in death by his parents; and his wife, Rosemarie Schumann Holbrook.

Surviving are his daughters, Angela Wyatt and fiancé Scotty Church of North Wilkesboro, Jeannette Goss and spouse Rick of Traphill, Debbie Woodie of North Wilkesboro; son, Benny Holbrook and spouse Libby of North Wilkesboro; grandchildren, Brittany Luffman and spouse Austin, Brad Brown, Tyler Woodie, Brad Eller and spouse Corrina, Jon Rhodes and Traci, Ricky Goss and spouse Samantha; great grandchildren, Jaxton Luffman and Zane Luffman; brothers, Randall Whitley and spouse Ruby of Traphill, Jesse Whitley of Wilkesboro.

A private family memorial service will be held. Flowers will be accepted or memorials may be made to Woltz Hospice Home, 945 Zephyr Road, Dobson, NC 27017. Miller Funeral Service is in charge of the arrangements.  

  Elmer Pearson, 81

Elmer Delano Pearson, age 81, of Boomer, passed away Thursday, February 20, 2020 at his home. Elmer was born October 2, 1938 in Wilkes County to John Philo and Lucinda Goodwin Pearson. Mr. Pearson was a member of Mt. Caramel Baptist Church. He loved to do woodwork and had his own woodworking shop. Elmer loved bird watching, loved raising bees and using his metal detector. He was preceded in death by his parents; and brothers, Robert and Earl Pearson.

Surviving are his wife, Romilda Penley Pearson of the home; his children, Gregory Pearson and spouse Sandra, Barbara Huggins and spouse Hal, Susie Griffith and fiancé Marvin Stamper all of Boomer, Jeffrey Pearson of Mulberry; grandchildren, Stephanie Eller, Jonathan Pearson, Beth Huggins, Shannon Reed, Jessica Huggins, Ronnie Griffith, Misty Howard, Adam Griffith, Corey Ferguson, Mindy Govea, Cassie Pearson; and sixteen great grandchildren.

Memorial service was February 23,   at Miller Funeral Chapel with Rev. Jerry Key and Rev. Billy Moore officiating. Burial will be at a later date in Moravian Falls Cemetery. Memorials may be made to the American Lung Association, PO Box 27985, Raleigh, NC 27611. Miller Funeral Service is in charge of the arrangements.

 Jesse Adams, 95

Jesse "Howard" Adams, age 95, of McGrady, passed away Wednesday, February 19, 2020 at his home. Howard was born May 2, 1924 in Newhall, West Virginia to Jonah and Bertha Wagoner Adams. He was a World War II Army Veteran, where he received the Eame Service Medal with 3 Bronze Service Stars, Good Conduct Medal, World War II Victory Medal, and Distinguished Unit Badge. He was proud to serve his country. Mr. Adams was a craftsman with woodworking. He enjoyed fishing, gardening, feeding the birds and flowers. He loved his family and his dogs. Howard was preceded in death by his parents; his son, James Glenn Adams; several brothers and sisters.

Surviving are his wife, Martha Shew Adams of the home; sons, Howard Junior Adams of McGrady, Ronnie Lee Adams and spouse Traci of Crumpler; daughters, Debra Call of McGrady, Diane Holloway and spouse Ervin of Ronda; seven grandchildren; six great grandchildren; and two great great grandchildren.

Funeral service was February 22,  at Miller Funeral Chapel with Rev. Sammy Taylor and Rev. Billy Shepherd officiating. Burial with military honors by Veterans of Foreign Wars Honor Guard Post 1142  followed in Mountlawn Memorial Park. The family will receive friends at Miller Funeral Service from 6:00 until 8:00 Friday night. Flowers will be accepted. Miller Funeral Service is in charge of the arrangements.  

Roger Petty, 59

Mr. Roger Dale Petty, age 59 of Moravian Falls passed away Tuesday, February 18, 2020 at Wake Forest Baptist-Wilkes Medical Center.

A Service to Honor His Life was February 23,   at Antioch Primitive Baptist Church in Sparta with Brother Hugh Miller officiating. Mr. Petty was born June 25, 1960 in Alleghany County to Juanita Petty Irwin.  Roger was the 1995 class valedictorian in the first Paramedic Class offered at Wilkes Community College.  He started his career at Wilkes EMS and then after several years ended his career as a cardiac catheterization technician at Watauga Medical Center in Boone.  He retired from the Wilkes County Rescue Squad in December 2016 with 38 years of service.

He was preceded in death by his step-father; Eugene Phipps Irwin and a sister; Lisa Edwards.

Mr. Petty is survived by his wife; Annette Hutchens Petty of the home, three daughters; Tara Petty Shore and husband Andy of Wilkesboro, Amanda Petty of Las Vegas, NV, Taylor Petty Johnson and husband Michael of Moravian Falls and one son; Logan Petty of the home, five grandchildren; Brett Shore, Nicolas Zeildon, Isabelle Petty, Isaac Petty and Madison Johnson, one brother; Bobby Edwards and wife Denise of Browns Summit and two step-brothers and their spouses; Mark Irwin and Kate of Mouth of Wilson, VA and Phillip Irwin and Chris of Raleigh.

Flowers will be accepted or memorials may be made to Wilkes Ministry of H.O.P.E., 514 Elkin Highway, North Wilkesboro, NC 28659.

 Peggy Day, 86

Mrs. Peggy Creasman Day, age 86 of North Wilkesboro passed away Tuesday, February 18, 2020 at Wilkes Sr. Village, on what would have been her and Frank's 64th wedding anniversary.  Peggy has relocated yet once again, this time to her eternal home in heaven to be with her Lord and her childhood sweetheart.  

Funeral Services were February 22, at Reins-Sturdivant Chapel with Dr. Bert Young and Dr. Dean Simpson officiating.  Entombment was in Scenic Memorials Gardens Mausoleum.  

Mrs. Day was born April 8, 1933 in Davidson County to Roy L and Pauline Kindley Creasman. She was a member of the First Baptist Church where she was in the Euzelian Sunday School class.  

When Peggy was a teenager she worked for Belk's and Penny's on holidays and weekends.  She graduated from North Wilkesboro High School in 1952 and attended Woman's College in Greensboro (now U.N.C Greensboro) and worked as a secretary in North Wilkesboro at Wilkes Auto Sales from 1953 until 1955 and she also worked at Modern Globe.  

Having met while sledding in the eighth grade, Frank and Peggy quickly became an item; they were inseparable for nearly 60 years. She married the love of her life, Frank Day, in 1956. Peggy did everything with Frank, until he predeceased her nearly a decade ago.  After she married Frank she became a mother and homemaker. Then she went back to work at Nancy King Textiles.  

Nearly thirty years ago, Frank and Peggy Day took the empty Rose's building, once the retail hub of the Wilkesboro's, and turned it into a Victorian themed mini-mall. It was their hangout and a retirement passion after many decades of manufacturing. The Melody Square Mall became an active second hub of the downtown from its inception.  

In the wake of Frank's death, Peggy kept the Mall and her retail store going for many years. For her, the mall and the store were so much more than just a business. Frank and Peggy helped dozens of businesses get their start inside this Victorian village. Most of these new business owners, and their regular customer, became like family to them.  

Likewise, they also enjoyed seeing friends and acquaintances drop in.  It was like the venerable country store where folks came for more than merely shopping and eating.  Many pulled up on a bench to talk, or just sit and watch people go by. Others used the pleasant space to walk laps around the corridors. The mall has changed hands. And now, Peggy has moved on to sled once again with the love of her life.

She loved the Lord, her church and her family with all her heart. She loved and was loved by many friends.  

In addition to her parents she was preceded in death by her husband; Frank G. Day.

She is survived by a daughter; Melody Lynn Rasmussen and husband Gerald of Wilmington, NC and a son; Tim Day and wife Diana of Marietta, GA, four grandchildren; Davis Day, Cameron Day and wife Emily, Alexander Lee Rasmussen and wife Shaina, Nicholas Paul Rasmussen and three step-grandchildren; Joanna Toso, Grace Toso and Jared Toso.

In lieu of flowers, memorials may be made to Helping Hands Ministries, POB 5037 Statesville NC, 28687, or http://www.hhmworldmissions.com/ or to Samartians Purse, PO Box 3000, Boone, NC 28607.

Carol Kilby, 80

Mrs. Carol Brown Kilby, age 80 of North Wilkesboro passed away Tuesday, February 18, 2020 at her home.

Funeral services were February 21,   at Mtn. Valley Baptist Church with Rev. Scott Church and Rev. Glenn Dancy, III officiating.  Burial was in the church cemetery.  church.

Mrs. Kilby was born October 2, 1939 in Wilkes County to Roby Hobert and Fannie Isado Vannoy Brown.  She was a member of Mtn. Valley Baptist Church.  

In addition to her parents, she was preceded in death by her husband; Maurice Kilby.

She is survived by three daughters; Sandra Lambert and husband Allen, Maurica Kilby, Gail Smith and husband Keith all of North Wilkesboro and one son; Alan Kilby and wife Terri of North Wilkesboro, eight grandchildren; Daniel Lambert, David Kilby, Sydney Culler, Grayson Hart, Jaren Smith, Braden Smith, Avery Hart and Seth Culler and four great grandchildren; Baylee Kilby, Lucas Lambert, Kailee Lambert and Jason Kilby, five sisters and one brother.

Flowers will be accepted or memorials may be made to Mount Valley Baptist Church Building Fund, c/o Bobbie Witherspoon, 1420 Cartpath Road, North Wilkesboro, NC 28659.

 Janie Greenwood, 69

Mrs. Janie Childress Greenwood, age 69 of Ronda passed away Sunday, February 16, 2020 at Woltz Hospice Home in Dobson.

Funeral services were February 20,   at Reins-Sturdivant Chapel with Pastor Bert Mathis officiating.  Burial will be in Pleasant Grove Baptist Church Cemetery.  

Mrs. Greenwood was born April 5, 1950 in Iredell County to Lee and Annie Ball Childress.  She was a member of Cherry Grove Baptist Church and she loved corvettes and she loved to travel.

In addition to her parents she was preceded in death by a brother; John Childress.

She is survived by her husband; Alan Greenwood of the home, three sisters; Barbara Sebastian of North Wilkesboro, Merlene Anderson of Cricket and Pat Royall of North Wilkesboro, five brothers; Larry Childress and wife Joyce of Taylorsville, Wayne Childress and wife Judy of Millers Creek, Bill Childress of Wilkesboro, Dennis Childress and wife Dorothy of Ronda and Kim Childress of Hays.

Flowers will be accepted.

 Paul Marley,Sr. 92

Paul Marley, 92 passed away peacefully on February 15, 2020 at his home in Wilkesboro, NC

surrounded by loved ones.  Born in West Jefferson, NC on October 9, 1927 to Coy B Marley and Virginia M Dunn Marley.

 Paul served two terms in the United States Army from May 14, 1946 until April 12, 1947.  

He was inducted near the end of World War II and was stationed at Ft. Sam Houston, Texas where he served in the Medical Corp and later was a Clerk General in the mail room.   Later he was called back to duty in January 24, 1951 for the Korean War and was stationed at Ft. Jackson, South  Carolina. His main duty was processing new recruits, many of the boys were from Wilkes County coming through the lines that later were stationed at other bases for training.

Paul worked for the North Carolina Department of Agriculture as a Poultry Inspector for 40 years before retiring.   He was a member of the Rotary Club and helped them start an annual fundraising horse shows and served as show chairman for many years.  Also, he coached the girls' softball team that the Rotary Club sponsored. He enjoyed fishing, hunting, raising Beagles with his father, music and always had a good joke or story to tell.  After retiring Paul work with Wilkes County Habitat for Humanity raising money and building homes. Also, he traveled with his daughter, Teresa to dog shows all over the United States and a large part of Canada.   Enjoyed spending winters in Florida with his son, Cecil and his wife. Once asked about his children all living so far from Wilkesboro, he answered " If I had known they would all move to great places to visit, I would have had more kids"

He is survived by his wife of 65 years Peggy (Bumgarner), his sister Charlotte Edmiston (George) of Ferguson, his daughter Teresa Marley (Charles Jones) of Indian Wells, California, his son Paul Cecil Marley, Jr (Jennifer Marley) of Palm Bay, Florida, grandson George Bynum of Hudson, NC along with nephews, nieces and countless friends.    He was preceded in death by his parents, bothers Ralph Vernon Marley and James Turner Marley, sisters Pauline Marley and Annie Marley-Funkhouser and daughter Paula Bynum.

The family would like to thank all Paul's wonderful caregivers, staff at Rose Glenn and Wake Forest Care at Home Hospice.  In lieu of flowers, the family request that memorial contributions be made to Parkinson's Foundation at www.parkinson.org, phone 800-473-4636 or  200  SE 1st Street, Suite 800, Miami, FL 33131.

Jackie Gayles, 84

Pastor Jackie Bejerano Gayles, age 84 of Wilkesboro, passed away Friday, February 14. 2020 at University Place Nursing and Rehabilitation Center in Charlotte.

Funeral services will be held 2:00 pm, Saturday, February 22, 2020 at Mt. Carmel TPC Church in Harmony, NC with Bishop Jerome Temoney officiating. Burial will be in the church Cemetery. The family will receive friends at Mt. Carmel TPC from 1:00 until 2:00 pm on Saturday prior to the service.

Mr. Gayles was born April 29, 1935 in New  York to Daisy Gayles. He was a member at Seventh Day Adventist in Wilkesboro. He was employed at Bec Car Printing as a Printer retiring after twenty five years. He loved his family and teaching the word of God. His passions were hunting and reading.

In addition to his mother he was preceded in death by a daughter Cecilia Scott and a son Kim Gayles.

He is survived by his wife JoAnn Gayles of Wilkesboro, a daughter Elena Gayles of Florida; three sons, Marc Misher and wife, April of Huntersville; Don Vito Gayles and wife, Tony of Richmond, VA; Keith Gayles of New York; twelve grandchildren and eleven great grandchildren; a sister Elena Simmons of California; and a brother, Dr. Carlos Gayles M.D. and wife Cynthia of Rochester, MI.

Flowers will be accepted or memorials to the Donor's choice.

Online condolences may be made at www.reinssturdivant.com

[alifeasvivid]

A Hell of a Drug, episode 10 of Thief of Spades (ukus*)

now kiss.

Aaaaaand we go from 0 to... well not 60 but... like 45 in span of two chapters. Let’s just say I took pity on all of you.

*this chapter has a bit of a usuk bent

Rating: T+ Warnings: paint, half-naked Arthur, bondage but not the kinky kind Summary: Arthur lets his guard down at a bar and pays a price for it. Alfred’s got an axe to grind with Francis.

This chapter is dedicated to @irisoflunadreams. You’re too awesome and without you this fic would have stalled a long time ago ;)

Read here on AO3.

It had only been the fact that the CIA had just completed Arthur’s background check that managed to keep his mum from becoming a suspected accessory to the Thief of Spades.

Otherwise her absolute (and rather embarrassing) unwillingness to cooperate would have gotten her in serious trouble.

“No,” Abigail had replied sternly when Elizaveta had asked for a statement and had said no more after that.

Elizaveta had been fairly exasperated the next day in the office. “Well, he’s clearly fixated on you, Inspector. Do you have any idea why?”

“It is very strange,” Francis had interjected dryly, “so many Americans are tasteless, but I always think Alfred to be refined more than them.”

Arthur had ignored him and told Elizaveta he hadn’t the faintest notion and he still doesn’t. Thoughts of that night and the ensuing days might be more forefront in his mind at the moment, but instead, as he blinks blearily awake, notably uncomfortable, the facts of the current case are more relevant.

A painting that a wealthy family was going to put up for auction was revealed to be a forgery. Francis had insisted that Jones was behind it.

It’s the frog’s words that ring in Arthur’s mind:

“It is his. I know by now very well. Yet it is a mess even for him. Of course, he is only a mediocre forger mainly. His brushstrokes are utterly savage.”

If the strange sensations crossing over Arthur’s torso are any indication, Francis is very wrong. Jones’ brushstrokes are nothing but precise, delicate, and meticulous.

The heavy pounding in Arthur’s skull might be distorting his perceptions slightly, however. His eyes attempt to focus, but he’s aware of a bright spotlight on him, surrounded otherwise by almost complete blackness. “Agh, fuck,” he groans. “Wh—?”

“Oh good, you’re awake!” Alfred exclaims, smiling as he looks up at Arthur from his spot between Arthur’s thighs. “Careful though, Rohypnol’s a hell of a drug.” He balances the pallet of paints in his hand (perfectly safe body paints, of course) and places one of the two brushes he’d been holding between his teeth. He loads the other with paint and leans in close to Arthur again. “Hold still, okay?” he says around the brush. Idly, Alfred wonders how often Inspector Kirkland works out; his body is such a pleasing canvas.

Arthur attempts to move on instinct, but finds himself tightly secured to a chair. “You drugged me!?” he shouts indignantly. He prays that the dizzying number of butterflies rising up in his stomach at the sight of Jones knelt between his legs with such fascinated concentration in his eyes is the result of the drugs and nothing more.

Alfred grins and stops painting; taking the brush from his mouth, he responds, “Would you rather I just hit you over the head? Anyway, it didn’t take much. You’re kind of a lightweight. You should probably be more careful when you drink in public.” It had been concerning to Alfred, seeing Arthur in the bar earlier, letting some guy just buy him drink after drink.

Then parts of it come back to Arthur: the pub, the round of drinks someone bought for everyone in celebration of… something. Bloody hell, that was obviously a trap.

He can’t see what Jones is painting on him, but there are open tubes of body paint, a cup of cleanish water and a cup with brushes in it scattered around him on the floor, which appears to be made of concrete. Arthur is relieved to see he still has his trousers and shoes on, although he can’t say he really expected them to be missing. Jones is often ostentatious, Arthur has learned, but rarely all that obscene.

Arthur notes that the thief himself is dressed in a fitted black t-shirt, revealing toned forearms and biceps, black pants and presumably black shoes, though Arthur can’t see them with how Jones is kneeling. His hands are covered in paint splattered latex gloves. “Where are we?” he asks.

Alfred looks up at his captive from behind his glasses and rolls his eyes. “Oh sure, ask the boring questions.” He isn’t surprised though. Arthur is a detective first and foremost and he’s likely trying to ascertain basic facts before anything else, but Alfred knows better than to play that game.

“Alright. Fine. To the point then. Why me?”

Alfred leans in closer to his canvas, eyes intent on his painting, if only so Inspector Kirkland won’t see his cheeks stain pink. “I can’t resist anything I find beautiful,” he murmurs and then clears his throat. “Besides, I had to prove to Hedevary’s pet cheese wheel that I’m totally an awesome painter. But I can’t paint on him; he’s probably got a lot of chest hair.”

“Y-you’re not painting something lewd or gross, are you?” Arthur knows he should ask the obvious questions, like how does Jones know that Francis insulted his painting skills or, more importantly, what is it about Arthur that the Thief of Spades finds beautiful. He wants to, but is too flustered by the quiet declaration and amused by their apparent shared dislike of Francis to ask those questions. And he is somewhat concerned about what state he’ll be in when his colleagues find him, as that is surely where this is headed.

Alfred snorts, offended. As if he would defile such a lovely canvas, or indeed humiliate the Inspector in front of his team. “Only if you find Monet’s water lilies to be lewd or gross,” Alfred says the last two words in a loose imitation of Arthur’s accent and then grins. “Only my finest work for you, Inspector. I want you to think nice things about me when you have to wash it off,” he says and winks at Arthur in a way he really hopes is flirtatious.

“You want my mum to see what you’ve done to me?” Arthur fires back to avoid more of those butterflies, but also to gauge Jones’ reaction. “Here she’s been raving about what a ‘lovely young man’ you are.”

Alfred beams at the mention of Abigail. “I’ll bet you the emerald that she likes it and thinks I did a good job,” he offers on impulse.

Arthur raises his eyebrow, noting that he’s starting to become sore where his hands are tied behind his back. “You still have it?”

Alfred nods. “Duh. I was going to give it back to you as a present on our date, but you joined up with Agent Hedevary and she likes to say unkind things about me.” Alfred’s lip curls up minutely in disgust. “I’m not who she thinks.”

“Unkind things? She’s only doing her job, Jones.” Arthur frowns. Elizaveta has expressed dislike of the Thief of Spades, but Arthur would hardly classify anything she has said as particularly cruel.

“She makes you carry a gun,” Alfred nods to Arthur’s shoulder holster, which is lying at the edge of the light. It had saddened him so much to see it. He so badly does not want Arthur to see him like Hedevary does. “I’m not violent. I’m… a lot of other things, but not that. Remember that. Please.”

Arthur looks into what might be the most sincere expression he’s ever seen on anyone. “I will,” he promises.

Alfred nods, smiling just a little, loads the second brush with paint and continues working. It’s coming along so well, despite the fact that Arthur’s stomach is clearly very sensitive. Alfred decides to save that information for another time, rather than tease him now. “I’m almost done. I’m not who you think I am either, Inspector.”

Arthur’s breath catches as he tries not to squirm under Alfred’s paintbrush. “So you’re not the world-renowned jewel thief known as the Thief of Spades?”

Alfred smirks. “I didn’t steal that paining. I did the copy, but it was never intended to be sold. It was just a favor for a friend.” He puts his brushes down, places his gloved hands on Arthur’s knees and surveys his work. He’s certainly not entirely satisfied with it, but time has run out and it will have to do. It’s exquisite enough the show that stupid Bonnefoy. Alfred feels a twinge of regret at having to move away from Arthur when he’s been so close for the past few hours, but it must be done.

Arthur watches as Alfred collects his supplies into a plain, black backpack, feeling the chill of wherever they are more acutely now that Alfred’s body heat is not near him. “You’re going to leave me here, I take it.”

Alfred slings the backpack over both of his shoulders. “Yeah, don’t worry though. They’ll be here soon. Make sure not to let surrender monkey get too close of a look. Oh, and let me know what Abigail thinks.”

Before Arthur can reply, the thief is gone.

It can’t be more than three minutes later before he hears doors bursting open and the voices of his team, as well as several others.

“Arthur? Are you alright?” Elizaveta asks, turning off the spotlight just as overhead lights come on.

Arthur winces at the change. “Yes. I’m fine. You just missed him.”

Francis steps in front of her, his face suddenly disconcertingly close to Arthur’s chest.

It’s nothing like when Alfred was that close. Arthur wants someone to just untie him already so he can clock the frog very soundly. “Get away, Francis.”

Francis ignores him. “It is the best work I ever have seen from him,” he muses.

Someone from forensics comes over, takes numerous pictures of Arthur which are certain to be very compromising and awkward later, and finally unties Arthur, handing him a spare jacket.

Arthur pulls on the jacket, being careful despite himself not to disrupt Alfred’s work. He picks up his shoulder holster without putting it on and heads for the nearest apparent exit, wanting nothing more than to go home and take a very long shower.

“Where are you going?” Elizaveta calls after him.

“Home.” Arthur answers without looking back. The Thief of Spades, he thinks, is a hell of a drug.

[pxndxrasbox-archieved]

Though the guard is nowhere in sight at the moment, there is a bottle of red wine, expensive by the look of its make and the year etched on the label. There was a red ribbon wrapped around it near the mouth, and upon closure inspection: There was also a small card taped to the neck. Once opened up, the message upon it was rather simple, but sincere in every word. “Dear Kirkland, forgive me for not being here at the moment. I’ve negotiated taking at the very least the evening off for today, so I will see you soon.”

    [Lionheart]- Well well, this was a pleasant surprise. Eyebrows rose sharply as he glanced at the label and seeing the note attatched brought a warm smile to his face. Tessa’s insistant use of his surname was truly endearing especially since he knew what his given name sounded like on her moaning lips but for this occassion, he’d let it slide. An evening with Miss Tessa? He’s already got his nice vest picked out and laid out ready.

    “I shall see you soon indeed, my dear.” he chuckled.

@ardensfides​