#mulish

[alfieriwebagency]

Abito da uomo – SILVER € 169,00 . . Silver Abbigliamento Via Veneto 69/70 CB www.silver-abbigliamento.it . Seguici anche su: @micol_via_veneto @sandro_ferrone_campobasso . . #brerasmilano #breras #modaitaliana #modauomo #abbigliamento #abbigliamentouomo #spedizioniintuttaitalia #shopping #colmar #ciessepiumini #mulish #mclassics #museum #poloralphlauren #lanciottideverzi (presso Silver Abbigliamento) https://www.instagram.com/p/Cp-uxJDsspA/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[letsoulswander]

Thought I had something and that's the same as having something

[raspberryzingaaa]

Thinking about going to World Most Boring Bible Study Ever. Idk yall. Idk. Idek.

[fabiansociety]

yakuza 6 is a much smaller game than yakuza 5, without the pervasive melancholy and the sprawling cast, and i'm not quite sure what i make of it at this point. i appreciate the tighter focus (even if i loved y5's picaresque), and particularly the ways the game is willing to really drill into the way kiryu is flailing as he settles into middle age, and how he's making the wrong choices as a result of it. the sidelining of haruka sucks; she's a character that is frequently ushered out into the wings for the endless second act of these games, but the way her agency is taken away in this game in particular feels faintly rancid. the fact that you learn that she's been the victim of some horrific violence in the same instant you learn that she's become sexually active is… not great. the series as a whole isn't terribly judgmental about women having sex—or, rather, it doesn't punish its women for being sexually active the way a lot of stories do—but it does have a bad habit of killing or harming its plot-bearing women, and the game using haruka's sexual activity as a proxy for her adulthood, and that adulthood meaning she's now available to be a victim of violence sucks. haruka's relationship with kiryu, separate from kiryu's relationship with haruka, has always been one of the series' strongest suits. haruka as a character is able to question him in a way other characters can't, because kiryu can't simply walk away from her, the way he does with adult women he gets close to, and he can't simply punch her into agreement, the way he does with the men in his life, and to have all that narrative tension resolved before the story even properly starts? it's a weaker story for it.

and the especially frustrating part is that haruka being awake and participating in the story doesn't do anything except improve things. the game can't function if kiryu is constantly saddled with haruto, so it has him hand his grandchild off to complete strangers repeatedly when he's in onomichi, and if haruka were awake, she could simply care for her own child while he goes off to try to find the father. she could be in onomichi with him, which would both streamline the bizarro logistical hoops the game hops through to park haruto somewhere and allow her to actively argue with kiryu about his fucked up decision to go back to jail. that decision—to functionally abandon his children for the sake of his own pride—is the real question at the heart of the story, and the game can only approach in obliquely, because it's silenced the only character who could make it more than subtext.

all that being said, though, the game itself is delightful? the substory writing remains world class, and the game's mood and tone and virtual tourism remain second to none. it's just frustrating that I'm something like 500 hours into this series and they still haven't figured out how to structure their A plots.

[retired-cyrus]

[ Interest check? ]

Hey y'all, Mod Mulish here. We were wanting to check in with this blog since it's been a while and see if anyone would still be interested in interacting and such.

Just know that if enough people are interested, we're going to be implementing a few key rules, making a few changes, and be a bit more cautious about the asks we answer and such. This is for Mod Callous's safety since we don't want him to stress so much for something that's supposed to be fun both for him, all of us, and hopefully everyone else who enjoys interacting with a Cyrus.

So if you'd be interested, please interact with this post or send us something in the ask box. We'd love to be able to return and have fun with some fun peeps again~

[carletes]

I feel like advancing a hard stance that I refuse to debate so: Carlos is and always will be a top.

[pseudowho]

"--need to go--" kiss "--just for a minute, let me--" kiss "--go to the bathroom, I--" kiss "--god, you're a menace, I'll lift you onto this counter, and you'll stay there until I get back--" giggle, kiss.

You whispered filthy whispers against Kento's lips, playfully dragging him back to you by the collar each time he tried to release himself.

Half-huff, and half-kiss, he grumbled and spun you around as you laughed, gripping your hands behind your back and pressing you forwards against the counter.

"--unhand me, wife, or I'll tie you up--"

"--don't threaten me with a good time, Kento--"

"--truly-- truly incorrigible woman--"

You laughed again, arching back against him, and pressing his cock into the crease of your barely-covered arse until he moaned; in annoyance, or lust? You weren't sure. Perhaps both. You had the bit between your teeth.

Kento wouldn't put up with your shenanigans for much longer. He slapped your arse, jiggling it with a growl, and dashed past your swiping hands to the bathroom. You whined, then sighed to the sound of his victory chuckle, the bathroom door clicking closed behind him.

Silence-- for 30 seconds. A minute. Two minutes. Three. You called out, smirking.

"Doesn't take that long to pee, Ken--"

The bathroom door clicked open. A low, mulish grumble sounded from within.

"I...can't go."

You frowned, stifling a laugh. "What?"

"I can't go. I'm too hard. I...can't pee."

Bursting out into laughter was your downfall, and it broke down into panicked squeals as Kento stomped out of the bathroom after you, his lap tightly tented over his cock.

He tossed you onto the sofa, dragging you back by the legs when you tried to wriggle and escape, and pinning you beneath him with nuzzled growls to your throat.

"--thorn in my side-- too erect to piss, and other problems my wife causes--"

"--oh, no, whatever can we do to fix this--"

"--you're talking too much and wearing too many clothes, as usual-- come back here-- certainly one thing we can do to fix this, madam--"

[ceilidho]

take me home, country road

[ao3]

You have nothing on your person apart from a hastily packed suitcase and the dress you came into town wearing, on the run from trouble back home. Too bad John's missing a bride that matches your description. Or: the 1800s (mistaken) mail order bride au (chapter 16 + 17) tw: violence, injuries, and misogynistic language

first chapter >> last chapter

-

Sinking into fear is the body’s natural response. You let it envelope you without putting up a struggle. It wouldn’t be one that you’d win anyway. Resistance already leaks out of you like tar, pooling around your quivering legs.  

It makes you feel lighter than air, almost buoyant; and conversely, heavier than lead. 

You can’t feel the cold metal of the gun through the layers of fabric separating it from the skin of your back, but you can feel its weight. And you can imagine it burning into you, burning a ring into the flesh, the muzzle leaving faint depressions behind, circular indents.

“Don’t feel so clever now, huh?”

Fear chokes as well as it binds. When the man you remember as Graves (appropriately named, you think, the gravity of the situation sinking into you as well) drawls the words into your ear, any moisture in your mouth dries. 

“Well?” he prompts, shoving the gun harder into your back, almost sending you toppling into the shelf still in front of you obscuring you from sight. “Got anythin’ to say?”

You open your mouth but nothing comes out.

“You a mute, girl? I know you ain’t deaf since you heard I’d been sniffin’ around lookin’ for ya. ‘Least I’m guessin’ you did, since you managed to give me the slip for the whole time I was in town.” He sniffs. “Took me a while to find out you were shacked up with the sheriff. Hiding in plain sight. Couldn’t believe I missed ya when Sheriff Price was damn near the first person I met in this two-bit town.”

You finally muster up the nerve to speak. “Y-you’re making a mistake.” 

The furled upper lip is audible in his voice. “I’d try not to piss me off too much, sugar. Lyin’ just rubs me the wrong way is all.”

“No, you—you really don’t—” 

He shoves the gun harder into your back, making you wince. “Now, I know you’re a slippery little bitch, so I’ll level with you, alright?” Graves murmurs, pitching his voice low to ensure that only you hear. “You make so much as a peep—so much as a fuckin’ whisper—and I’ll shoot. Wink and I’ll shoot. I am dyin’ for you to give me a reason to go with the better half of the dead or alive question.”

There’s no point in lying. It might’ve worked had it been anyone but the man holding you hostage; not a man as stubborn and mulish as him. You nod when he asks if you understand.

“Now get to steppin’.”

He doesn’t tarry long, leading you out of the shop with a hand on your shoulder and . You stare at Miles with mounting horror, wordlessly begging him to look up from the ledger open in front of him on the counter. Your prayers go unanswered though; he doesn’t so much as glance towards the door before it’s swinging shut behind you.

“Remember,” Graves says in a low voice as the two of you step out onto the porch, “not a word. I will shoot anyone that tries to interfere.” 

That kills the impulse to shout for help. 

The thought of letting Graves take you away without voicing so much as a single plea fills you with horror, but you can’t see any other way out. He walks you through the streets like an old friend, the pistol still wedged into your back obscured by his coat. No one seems to notice the wild look in your eyes or the strained edge of your smile. 

Your behavior infuriates you. Demural and soft and wretched. You’ve only allowed one man to put you under their thumb; only one has ever earned the right. 

The thought of your husband is an ache in your chest that doesn’t abate. It thumps with the terrified flutter of your heart. You half wonder if he’ll suddenly appear from around a bend and wrench you into his arms, gun already drawn and aimed at the man attempting to take you away from him. 

“My husband—” you start, tripping over your words. Almost tripping over a rock as well since your spine is too stiff to let you look down at the ground while you walk. “—He can—he can pay you.”

He laughs, a nasty, mocking sound. “I’m sure he’d like to, sugar. Jus' ain’t sure he’s got the cash to pay your price.”

“At least let me ask—”

At that, he jams the gun violently into the small of your back, making you wince agaun. Petrified. Sweat sluices off your brow and drips down your face. “What part of shut the fuck up don’t you get?”

That silences you. Hard to muster up the nerve to retaliate with a gun lodged against the base of your spine. Still there’s so much that bears asking. Why did he come back? Why here—why now? 

The town takes on a dull, listless quality as he steers you away from the more crowded areas. It’s almost like looking through muslin; a veil between you and the world. 

Your eyes dart from person to person as they pass by in the opposite direction, but even those that bother to meet your gaze only smile politely, a couple passing gentlemen chirping, “Morning, Mrs. Price” before sweeping by in a hurry. 

None question the wild, frantic glint in your eye, the look of a horse about to bolt. If they paid you more than a moment’s notice, they might, but even the lady who frowns curiously at Graves, his hand still resting gently on your arm as if he were an old, dear friend, abandons her momentary curiosity when her companion says something of interest, pulling her back into their conversation. The flicker of hope in your belly dies a soundless death. 

There’s something almost phantasmagorical about the entire ordeal. Almost like it isn’t quite happening, like you can’t quite make yourself believe that this is, in fact, real. Like you’re watching from outside of yourself. Though you can see the wooden facades of the nearby buildings and smell the scent of hay and manure from the livery stable, it doesn’t resonate within you as real. 

He meanders through town with you stationed in front of him. A meat shield. Collateral damage. Simply by the way he maneuvers you through the crowd, he reduces you to a body, stripping you of any semblance of personhood. You’re less than meat to him, less than human even—no more than a meal ticket. 

When you muster up the courage to open your mouth the next time someone passes you by, Graves’ hand slides up to your shoulder and he digs his fingers into the bone. A warning. 

“If you think I was kiddin’ before, just try me,” he sneers into your ear, thumb pressing into your shoulder blade until you wince. 

Again, his voice dispels any thought of getting someone’s attention. 

He doesn’t lead you towards the train station like you expect. Instead, he heads to an awning beneath the saloon on the periphery of town where a couple horses are leashed to a post, waiting for their riders to come untie them. The roof of the awning is strung with a dense cluster of overlapping cobwebs. A spider scuttles across the web and into the dark inner recesses of the canopy. 

This far from the center of town, there’s hardly anyone. When you give your surroundings a quick glance, you can’t find a single other soul within earshot, only a single man pushing open the batwing doors on his way into the saloon. Then you’re alone again. 

A tawny gelding chuffs when Graves approaches.  When he suddenly unhands you, it doesn’t click until he’s several paces away from you, running his hand down his horse’s neck and rifling through the saddlebags, emptying the contents of his coat pockets into them. You have to glance down at your shoulder just to be sure. He sheathes his gun as well, tucking it into the holster fixed to his belt. 

“Bought the horse off a drunk three towns back,” Graves explains while loading up the horse.

You don’t respond, still unsettled. It’s the first time since he led you out of the general store that his gun hasn’t been aimed at you. It wouldn’t be practical for him to dress and load the horse one handed. The sun beats down on you, burning the top of your head. This could be your moment—a moment to scream or run away.

But you don’t. You don’t scream and you don’t run because you are, above all else, a coward. Through and through. You’ve been running from your problems for months now, leaving someone else to take care of the mess you left behind. 

Fear paralyzes you; it makes you think too much or not at all. Even now, with Graves giving you the perfect opportunity to turn and run, you can’t stop thinking about the potential consequences. What if he were to shoot you? What if he were to haul you back into town and expose your sins to everyone who gathered around? What if the people in town that have come to see you as one of their own were to gather around your crumpled form and stare at you with vitriol and disgust? 

“How did you—” you start, then pause to breathe, the nausea building again. “I thought you’d left town.”

“You’d’ve liked that, huh?” 

You don’t answer that. You know better than to antagonize a man with a gun. 

He sighs when you don’t rise to the bait, almost pettish. “Wedding announcement. I saw it in the paper—by then, I’d moved on to Lexington, so it took me awhile to backtrack, but I just knew somethin’ about that bit in the paper about the sheriff’s wife hailing from the east coast didn’t sound right. Too big of a coincidence. Had to at least be sure—retrace my footsteps. Lotta money on the line, you know.”

You stare straight ahead at that. You ought to have known. 

(“In the paper. The county sheriff got hitched—of course it’d be a story.”)

“To be honest, that kinda cracked me up. Murderess marrying the county sheriff.” He snorts out a laugh, shaking his head. “Sorta thing you’d read about in a dime novel.”

A new emotion wells up within you. It simmers in your belly, hot and cold at once. Righteous fury. All this time, you’ve been betraying yourself with your silence, allowing men to read your fear as guilt. Complicit in your own ruin. 

“I’m not a murderer.”

The look he gives you is withering. “Sugar, I hate to break it to you, but you did kill a man.”

You open your mouth, but nothing comes out. Nothing ever does, it seems.  But the more you hold it in, the uglier the thought seems, until it erupts from your chest like Vesuvius, lava and tephra shooting out. 

“He deserved it,” you finally spit out, the words coming from deep in your chest. 

Graves doesn’t even pause in his ministrations, back to tightening the saddle straps. 

“He deserved it,” you repeat, spittle flying out of your mouth and landing in the dirt between the two of you. 

“That’s not somethin’ I usually concern myself with,” he finally says, looking distinctly unimpressed when he meets your stare. Bored blue eyes. 

You’re struck by the sense that your life means so little to him that the circumstances surrounding your bounty hardly merit more than a passing thought. If he could spare less, he would. 

It’s the vilest thing in the world to be regarded with such bored contempt. 

“He would’ve—he would’ve raped me otherwise. I didn’t have a choice.” 

At that, Graves pauses. When he looks towards you, his eyes are curiously blank. 

“Better that than what’ll happen now,” he says, the words so perfunctory that it takes a moment for them to sink in.  When they do, you have to swallow back bile.

His glibness shatters whatever hope you’d had left. 

In that moment, you finally acknowledge that appealing to his sense of decency won’t lead you anywhere because it simply doesn’t exist within him. You’ve known men like him before—those more concerned with lining their own pockets than taking care of the vulnerable people around them. The archetype is not uncommon. You should’ve expected it even, especially from a bounty hunter. 

There won’t be any bribing him or talking your way out of the situation you’ve found yourself in. Whatever facinorous end awaits you back east, he’s happy to shepherd you there so long as it earns him his thirty coins. 

How many times do you have to ask yourself if you’re brave enough to do something before you answer? 

When Graves turns to face you again and takes a step towards you, likely to urge you up onto the saddle, you recoil, stumbling away from him. His eyes sharpen at your movement, fulvous wolf eyes narrowing on you. 

“And here I thought you’d stopped pissin’ me off,” he says lightly, a hard edge underlying his words. His hand lifts to rest against the handle of the revolver tucked back in its sheath, thumb flexing over it. 

“What’s the point?” you retort, nostrils flaring. “You either kill me here or I die there.”

You sound braver than you feel, fear making you shake so hard that your knees almost knock together. 

Graves’ smile is all lip, no crinkling around the eyes. “Oh, I won’t kill you, sugar. I’m a better shot than that.”

Your heart pounds against your ribcage, stomach turning over at the thought of him putting a bullet through your shoulder or leg. 

“I’m surprised you won’t just come quietly. You think the sheriff wouldn’t hand you over to me himself if he found out what kinda woman he married?”

That’s been your fear from the very beginning. The one thing that’s kept you awake at night, the nightmare shaking you out of a dead sleep. You’d convinced yourself that him calling the authorities or even escorting you back east himself was an inevitability. That John Price, paragon of virtue, wouldn’t bend the rules for anyone, much less you. 

But the more you think about it, the less sense it seems to make. Every tender word and touch rises to the forefront of your memory. If John has shown you anything, it’s love. He’s proven his devotion a thousand times over, shown you time and again that were you to leave, he’d come running. 

Suddenly, the thought that your husband would let someone take you away from him seems preposterous. It doesn’t align at all with the man you know. He’d go to hell and back for you, would rip out a man’s tongue for speaking to you the way Graves speaks to you now. Hindsight makes that clear. 

You meet his eyes, intention set. “I’d rather just ask him.”

Blue eyes turn to flint, flat. Droll candor shed for ruthlessness. Silence before a storm. 

He’s on you before you even have a chance to whirl around and make a run for it, arm cutting into your windpipe when he wraps it around your neck. He drags you back into the shadows of the awning, out of sight from anyone on the street; your heels score lines in the dirt. You choke, wheezing on your next breath, but his arm tightens, trapping the scream in your throat. 

“Shoulda done this before,” Graves grunts, reaching into his back pocket and pulling out the pair of cuffs he had tucked away. 

When he unhooks his arm from around your neck, you gasp for breath, sucking in deep lungfuls of air. Panic swirls and rises in your chest. 

“Get your hands off—” you hiss, beating his arm with your fist to no avail. He yanks your arms in front of you until your wrists are pressed close together. Your blood curdles at the feeling of cold iron against your skin and the gut-wrenching sound of handcuffs being fixed around your wrists, tightened to the point of pain. You can hardly flex your hands with how tight they’re bound. “Let me go, let ME GO—”

He pulls you in close again. “Don’t think I won’t tape your fuckin’ mouth shut too,” Graves snarls in your ear. Nausea swells in your belly. 

“Please— please don’t do this—” you beg, a sob breaking from your chest now. 

He sighs, long suffering. “Lord knows I tried to warn you.”

Despite the threat, Graves doesn’t tape your mouth shut. Instead, he fastens a rough piece of rope around your head, fitting it between your teeth like a bit. You don’t have it in you to be thankful for small mercies this time. The hemp cord scratches the corners of your mouth when you try to move your lips around it. 

“There,” he says, giving you a rough shake, satisfied. “That’s better. Can finally hear myself think.”

The tears leak out of the corners of your eyes in big, fat droplets, clouding your vision. When he wipes your cheeks with a calloused hand, the nail of his thumb catches on the delicate skin under your eye, leaving a thin cut. The pain makes you flinch, staring daggers at the man in front of you, but he doesn’t apologize for his rough handling. 

Graves heaves himself up onto the saddle first, swinging a leg over with practiced ease. You yelp when he hauls you up after, setting you on the saddle in front of him. Heat crawls up your neck when your skirt billows around your waist, horrified. 

“Save your tears, sugar,” he tells you, gathering the reins in one hand. “You’ll need ‘em for later.”

The horse whinnies when Graves pulls upward and guides him towards the road leading out of town, hooves clopping against the dirt. Your heart shoots up into your throat. 

Galloping out of town, you chance a glance back, head spinning as the world blurs around you. A man stands under the awning you just left, his head cocked as if stupefied. He’s too far away for you to get a proper look at his face though, no way to tell if he’s someone that might recognize you and alert John. You try to scream or wave your hands—anything to get his attention, to let the stranger know that something is wrong. 

You watch until the figure melds into the surrounding town. 

You keep waiting for someone to appear from behind you. A tall figure to darken the horizon, blot it like the moon passing over the sun. 

The last bastion of your hope collapses into rubble the farther away you ride, no man nor horse following you in pursuit. And then a hand grabs a fistful of your hair and wrenches your head back around, cutting off your view.

The plan is to leave the horse in the next town you reach and take a train back east. Graves would’ve done that back in the town you just left, he tells you, but he wanted to put as much distance between you and the sheriff. 

“You never know with men who’ve gotten a taste of married life,” he says when he finally deigns to stop miles from town, sitting on a rock and having a drink while he leaves you tied to the horse by your wrists. You shift from foot to foot, a cramp winding up your legs. “They get themselves a little pussy and lose all sense of dignity or morality. Can’t be trusted to do the right thing.” 

Steam practically billows out of your ears. You have the good sense to keep your mouth shut though, cognizant of the fact that you’re alone out in the middle of nowhere with a man who’d be happy to bring you back dead or alive. Though he hasn’t been quite so explicit, it’s apparent in the way he doesn’t offer to untie you or let you rest as well. The skin under the cuffs on your wrists are rubbed raw from your attempts to free yourself, and from the journey itself, with all the jostling and the persistent cramp in your right shoulder. 

The animal awareness dawns on you during that first rest. He’d taken the rope out when you were far enough outside of town that it didn’t matter if you screamed or not. That’s what stays your tongue now—the creeping notion that you are far from anyone that would be remotely sympathetic to your plight. 

“How much was the bounty?” you ask, more out of morbid curiosity than anything. You balance on one foot to shake the cramp out of the other. 

“Now, I hate to be rude, sugar, but what does it matter to you? It ain’t you collecting the reward.”

Your lips flatten into a taut line, already regretting prying. It’s not like knowing would change anything. 

The break ends sooner than you’d hoped, Graves urging you back onto the horse before taking a seat behind you. It troubles you because you’re not far enough away from town that you couldn’t still be rescued. There’d be more of a chance of John or someone else—one of his deputies, perhaps—coming across you out here. But you don’t have much of a choice. 

Out here, the land stretches on without end. Only the faint blue of a mountain ridge paralleling your route breaks the horizon. The land is flat, sparse apart from the dense shrubbery and trees twisted and bent by the wind. Cottonwood and boxelder. Chokecherry. Dogwood and hawthorn. Lush blooming saltbrush. 

The clear blue sky overhead is almost mocking, the rain from earlier long since abated. There’s hardly a cloud in the sky now. It’d be scenic if you could abstract it from the circumstances. A perfect day for gardening or a brisk walk after being kept indoors because of the rain. You’re still damp from riding through the rain earlier. 

A few bison congregate in a small dip in the terrain, grazing on the wild grass. You stare at them wide-eyed as you gallop along the upper ridge, startled by the sight of so many in one place. 

Despite the sublime beauty of the land, you remain on edge, unable to take anything in or truly enjoy it. Panic and revulsion leave you as gnarled and knotted as the krummholz trees out in the middle of the open plains. Riding with Graves feels nothing like the few times you and John shared a horse. It’s impersonal; transactional. Entirely against your will. 

The sun has only just begun to descend under the horizon when you and Graves approach a ramshackle house situated by itself in the middle of the open plains. Barely more than a barn, and long since abandoned by the looks of it. Age has done the place no favors; wooden slats sag and separate from the exterior of the house, the gaps in between the boards letting in all manner of insects and rot. 

Graves dismounts his horse about a stone’s throw from the hovel. His brow furrows with dissatisfaction as he surveys the abandoned property. 

“Shit,” he remarks, sucking his teeth. “A local back in town swore a family still lived here. Don’t look like anyone’s lived here since Abraham.”

Part of you wishes the former tenants still resided here, on the off possibility that one might take pity on you, but a much larger part of you is grateful for the dwelling’s vacancy. You’ve heard stories before, of families living out in the middle of nowhere. Rumors. Not all bad, of course; it’s common enough for families migrating west sometimes to stop along the way for a generation or two, building more permanent dwellings than the caravans they began their journey in. Many such families were also known for putting up travelers passing through in exchange for goods or help with chores. 

But you’ve also heard other stories. Like the Riley family out near Cherryvale and their homestead just off the Great Osage Trail. They lived out there for more than two decades before the number of lone travelers vanishing off the trail within walking distance of their property pointed the finger of suspicion at them. When the authorities finally got around to procuring a warrant for their property, they found the house deserted apart from the furniture that couldn’t be loaded into the wagon and an infant boy, dehydrated and petrified. 

You shake the story from your head. “…Are we spending the night here?” you ask tentatively. 

He looks at you from the corner of his eye, nostrils flared. “Don’t go gettin’ any ideas in that head of yours. Jus’ because a man’s gotta rest his eyes, don’t mean I gotta give you a peaceful night’s rest. No, I’m leavin’ those hands of yours tied.”

Your hopes deflate at that. 

He helps you dismount before hobbling his horse with a pair of leather straps around its front legs to keep it from darting off in the middle of the night. You wince sympathetically; you have more in common with a horse now than any man. 

The inside of the cabin is just as derelict as the exterior. At the very least, he feeds you. A couple scoops of pemmican straight from the tin. The fact that he insists on feeding you instead of letting you feed yourself puts you on edge. Your spine is stiff as a board through it all, your mouth barely opening up to receive the spoonful of pemmican, the metal clanking against your teeth. You wince, the sound itself tasting of rust. 

At all times, you are aware of the precarity of your situation. You can’t imagine there were any stipulations in the bounty to bring you back unscathed. Though he hasn’t tried anything untoward so far—not so much as made a licentious remark—you don’t know how long your luck will last. You flinch every time he so much as twitches in your direction, sure at any moment his mood will flip and he’ll drag you across the floor and haul himself over you. 

It’s enough to make your stomach hurt, turning over itself. He doesn’t try anything though, and for that you exhale shakily, the tension running off you in rivulets. 

One hour drags into the next. Night blackens the sky, seeping in through the crumbling walls of the cabin. 

“Well,” Graves says, wiping his hands together to dust off any lingering crumbs. “I’m gonna hit the hay.”

“Do…do I get to sleep as well?”

He cocks a brow. “Not much I can do to stop you.”

“It’s just that…” You lift your hands as you trail off, silently pointing out the handcuffs still secured around your wrists, the implicit assertion being that you won’t be able to sleep with the metal digging into the bones of your wrists. 

Graves scoffs. “You can’t think I’ll just uncuff you ‘cause we ain’t in town no more. I got a little more sense than that, sugar.”

“You could use rope instead?” you suggest. 

The seconds he spends considering it are long. You hold your breath as you watch him weigh the pros and cons. 

Finally, he shrugs. “Alright.”

The relief that washes over you is almost palpable. 

He pulls a blanket out of one of the saddlebags to function as a makeshift pillow, setting it up on the floor in the center of the room. True to his word, Graves uncuffs you and loops a double knotted rope around your wrists instead, fastening the rope tying your hands together around his own wrist. Your stomach sinks as he pulls the knot taut. 

He levels a heavy stare on you after giving the rope one last tug. “I don’t usually repeat myself, sugar, but I will this one time. Don’t go tryin’ anythin’ stupid. I’m gettin’ a good night’s rest and so help me if you wake me up—” his eyes flash, gray going steely “—you won’t like the consequences.”

You nod. Swallow back the phlegm clogging your throat. 

True night plunges the old house into darkness, cricket songs slipping in through the cracks in the walls. The temperature also plunges with the setting sun. It gets cold at night, even in the summer months; the draft makes you shiver, the rotting exterior letting in the elements. 

You keep to the wall with the least amount of rotting boards, as far as the rope tethering you to Graves will allow you to go. It would probably be in your best interest to try and get some sleep, but you’re far too restless to calm down. The atmosphere in the house is far too eerie to settle your nerves either; you can’t help but wonder about the family that must have left this place to rot and fade away into memory. 

It’s all you can do to blink back the tears that spring to your eyes when you think about the memory of you that John will have to carry into the future now that you’re gone. It isn’t fair. After everything you’ve had to endure in this lifetime, you thought maybe that this might have been your reward. That John was your reward. 

Your hands drop from your chin to your knees, hopelessness plaguing you again. The thin, sharp whistle of defeat. High and reedy as a death rattle. 

Then your eyes drop to your wrists.

The cord is fastened in a bowline knot around your wrists, difficult to undo without considerable effort, but the material is softer than the cuffs Graves had you in before, and it gives when you pull one hand down while pushing the other up. Your skin bunches around the cord, but it doesn’t cut into you the way the metal did. 

Graves is still fast asleep when you glance over at him. He doesn’t snore, but the rise and fall of his chest under the blanket is steady. Stable. 

The fatigue dissipates from your body the second you put it together. That there’s a sliver of a possibility of slipping your hands out of the rope tying you to Graves. The exhilaration is almost overwhelming. You have to sit with it a beat before acting, wary of letting your guard down too fast.

Time passes slowly as you fiddle with the knot, reaching your fingers as far as they’ll go and gritting your teeth through the ensuing cramp in your wrist. You nearly groan in frustration when your hand twitches and you accidentally retighten the knot. A near crushing blow. 

Please, you mouth more than whisper, frustrated tears clumped in your lashes. Teeth sinking into the flesh of your bottom lip, pinching off the wail rising up your throat. 

Your heart skips a beat when the rope loosens around one of your wrists, enough for you to wiggle a pinkie underneath and slowly shimmy it up the length of your hand. A cramp makes your pinkie spasm, almost causing you to lose your grip. Sweat pools in the cup of your palm. 

When your wrists are finally free, the rope clutched in trembling hands and the basal joint of your thumb scrapped raw from the fibrous rope, you can only sit there, heart beating wildly in your chest. You have to force yourself to remain calm, wary of waking Graves up after all that effort. His eyelids quiver only with his dreams though. 

You glance towards the door on the other side of the cabin. It seems either farther away now that you know it’s within reach. You know better than to just run straight for it though. Weeks of being on the run before finding John have taught you to pace yourself, to push down the fluttering evocation in your chest to make a mad dash for the closest way out. 

Instead, you take a deep breath out, closing your eyes until you’ve calmed down. Then you rise slowly to your feet. 

Your eyes, having long since adjusted to the darkness, scan the room for any loose floorboards. Aside from one obvious corner of the house which has begun to rot away and collapse, it’s hard for you to discern at a glance which boards will groan under the weight of your feet. You have no choice but to guess.

Each step has you on edge, heart in your throat. Your focus shifts quicksilver between the floor and Graves. Waiting for any sudden movement. 

Halfway to the door, you take another cautious step forward and the floorboard creaks under your foot. Your heart stops, eyes flitting instantly over to Graves’ sleeping form. He doesn’t so much as shift. It’s another beat before you’re able to move again, confidence shaken by the noise. You keep imagining him suddenly shooting up from the floor, pistol in hand, the hammer striking the primer, the hiss of gas escaping the barrel. 

The door gives a faint creak when you push it open, so you open it only enough for your body to slip through, wincing when you twitch and accidentally push it open another inch, dragging out the creak. Still, he doesn't wake. You slip past the door, shutting it quietly behind you.  

The moon glows cornsilk gold in the sky. A vast, uncharted land stretches out around you, untouched by human hands, or so changed over the years that any human presence has long since been buried beneath the loam. But when you stare out into the distance, you realize that you have no idea where you came from. Everything looks the same in each direction, no landmark familiar enough for you to orient yourself. You’re out in the middle of nowhere and nothing looks right. 

If you had less strength, you’d fall to your knees. The despair is so immense that you hardly have the strength to hold it all at once. 

The silence lulls you into a false sense of security. You linger for too long, stuck contemplating your options. Coyotes yip in distant packs, their barks carrying across the plains. You shiver at the sound. It reminds you again that you’re on your own now. No husband to come chasing after you if things get sticky. 

Your first few steps away from the cabin are tentative, gliding your legs through the grass and staring up at the cornsilk moon. A combination of indulgence and bewilderment. If you knew the right way home, you wouldn’t waver, but these days, you have no faith in your instincts. They’ve only ever led you off course. 

The gelding that Graves rode in on sits in the grass with its hind legs folded underneath it. With its legs still hobbled, you know removing the leather will take more time than you'd like, but you figure it'll be easier to make your way across the plains on horseback, with the added bonus of leaving Graves stranded. If God were just, he’d starve out here and leave his corpse for the coyotes to feast on. 

You approach the horse cautiously, conscious not to make any sudden movements. Its ears angle towards you as you draw near. Attentive to your presence. 

“Hey there, honey,” you whisper, reaching out a hand and trying to show that you aren’t a threat. Its nose twitches.

Another step forward. Easy does it. One leg in front of the other.

“I won’t hurt you. I promise.” You try to mirror your memory of John in your voice, honeysuckle soft words. 

You aren’t John though. Not even close. You take another step towards it.

It brays when you get too close, skittish. The sound pierces through the night, louder than the coyotes in the distance. Louder even than the creaking door.  

The hair on the back of your neck raises, lips numb. Then the prickling awareness of movement in the house, like an itch on a phantom limb. 

Behind you, the door to the cabin bursts open with a bang, slamming off the wall and ricocheting back. You whip your head around to look only to find Graves’ towering form under the shadow of the doorway, his hair mused and clothes askew. And he looks enraged. 

“Hey!” Graves bellows from the doorway, breaking into a run towards you. “Get back here!”

There’s no time to sit with the regret, no time to bemoan the fact that you didn’t exercise enough caution, that for some reason without a gun leveled at your head, you allowed yourself to forget the very real danger this man posed to you. 

All you can do is run.

The grass whistles around you. You run so hard that your lungs burn, your arms pumping furiously beside you, dress swishing between your legs. You don’t have to look behind you to know that Graves is gaining on you. His body is built for pursuit. Still, you push yourself past your breaking point, not stopping even when you taste blood in your mouth. Mindless; directionless. No idea where you’re going—just away from him. You’d jump off a cliff if you came across one. 

He’s close enough for you to hear now, heavy breathing right behind you. But by then it’s too late. A heavy body rams into you, sending you careening towards the earth, the ground rushing up to meet you halfway. The dirt hardly cushions the blow. 

You hit the ground hard. Head knocked loose of thought, agony ripping across your face. The double blow of a body heavier than yours forcing you into the dirt, so solid that it crushes the breath from your lungs. 

Blood leaks from your lip, most likely split. When you breathe in to fill your lungs, you taste dirt and rust and earth. 

“Insufferable bitch,” Graves snarls, putrid breath wafting under your nose and making your eyes water. He grabs a handful of your hair and wrenches your head up before slamming it back down. Something crunches. Distantly, you wonder if your nose is broken. 

Your ears ring, the rest of his words drowned out by the blood rushing to your face. 

“Please—” you beg, blood dripping from your split lip. 

“Knew I shouldn’ta trusted you—conniving little cunt—c’mere now, get up—”

He rises to his feet over your body, big hand curling around your wrist. You hear your shoulder pop when he yanks your arm behind your back. A rush of cold. A sweat breaks on the nape of your neck. Shock sets in the moment after, adrenaline flooding your body. 

Then a sharp, focused surge of pain. It radiates from your shoulder outward, so intense that you can’t believe it at first. Your whole world reduces down to it. Feathering out down your back; irradiating waves of it. Thoughts scattering and then coming back together around the pain. If you scream, it comes out unbidden. 

“Ah, hell, I didn’t mean to do that,” he grumbles from behind you, likely staring at the unnatural jut of your shoulder. “Alright, sugar, one second—I’ll pop that back in.”

“Nononono—” you gasp, panic lancing through you, but he pays no attention to your words. 

The pain of popping your shoulder back in is excruciating. Relief follows shortly after, but the time between dislocating and relocating your shoulder is so short that it hardly comes as a balm to the pain.

“You…bastard…” you gasp. 

“Wouldn’ta had to do that if you hadn’t run,” he sighs, the sight of your pain subduing his rage. 

It doesn’t stop him from grabbing you roughly by the arm he just dislocated when he finally gets you on your feet though, steering you back towards the house. The pain that radiates up your arm is almost blinding. 

He drags you back to the cabin with a punishing grip. There’s no sympathy when you stumble. Moonlight illuminates the path back to the cabin and shows you the trenches in the wild grass made by your feet. Hardly more than a couple rods. 

The defeat that courses through you upon being dragged through the ramshackle front door is ten times that of earlier. When he lets go of your arm, you collapse in a heap on the floor, aching and sweating. A bag of bones and blood. You’d rattle if someone shook you. 

“I hate you,” you mumble from your spot on the floor, shaking through the pain. “Rot in hell.”

Graves doesn’t respond, but you can almost hear the way he grins.  

No rest for the wicked or the good this time. Graves wakes intermittently throughout the night to check up on you, wary now that you’ve tried to run. Your regret is palpable. You should’ve waited. Bided your time. There won't be another chance now, not after you played your hand so soon. 

The ache in your shoulder keeps you from finding sleep. Every time you get close to it, the pain radiates down your arm and it slips from your grasp, your hand closing around the empty space it leaves behind. Teeth grit, breathing through the pain. Loosening your jaw and panting because the pain overwhelms you when you so much as shift onto your side, the hard floor digging into your elbow. 

Right on the edge of sleep, just as you're about to latch on, a boot catches you in the ribs, jostling you back into the realm of pain. You wheeze, breaking into a coughing fit. 

“Get up,” a hoarse voice grunts above you, empty of sympathy. “We got places to be.”

He has the two of you back on the horse as soon as dawn breaks. Your escape attempt the night before must have spooked him, and you regret it now in the light of day because you know he won’t let you out of his sight again. The metal handcuffs digging into your wrists assures you of that. 

There’s no time for breakfast or time to wash up. Graves makes it a point to be back on the road as fast as possible, repacking his bedroll and stuffing it back in the saddlebag before dragging you up with him. 

The pain is a dull throb after sleeping most of the agony away. It comes back when you move too quickly though, which is hard to avoid on horseback when each gallop echoes through your sore bones and joints. 

The arching sun immixes with the heavens above, rising higher as the hours pass. You ache for a hat; something to keep the heat of the sun off your head. On the horizon, the mountain ridge sits like a spine bursting out from the earth. It’s all wastelands and portents. Evil omens. 

Your heart feels swollen and bruised, like something trampled under elk hooves. 

“Cheer up,” Graves says, tipping your chin up when the sun reaches its peak around midday, the gesture making you so uncomfortable that you almost shudder out of your skin. Your face still throbs with pain. “You should be glad I didn’t jus’ shoot you.”

Your lips pull back, baring your teeth to nothing. 

A shot rips through the air at that, his words commanding it into being. Your head instinctively ducks and even the horse under you staggers, spooked by the sound. Graves curses, tensing up behind you.

"What in the hell—"

You whip your head around to stare behind you, looking for the source of the gunfire. When you find it, your eyes widen.

[clemencetaught]

@jeoseungsaja sent in:

He'd been out all day. And this time not to get physically wounded in the process (nor to be frantically consumed by a case that's been taking his sleep away for years), but to take a last-minute trip to the beach. To send messages upon the sand. When he was little, his mother, Da-Eun, used to tell him that messages written on the sand, when touched by magnanimous waves, would be sent to those who are no longer among the living. 'Think of them as angels in the water,' she used to say with a smile, whilst taking Hyuk's small hand and guiding him to the endless grains of salt, 'they will take your message anywhere, so the one you're sending it to can read it.' He remembers writing one for his biological mother. And as time went by, he remembers writing many to Da-Eun, too. And now, to his best friend, Patrick. If it was for him, he would've sent his dear friend an entire book of thoughts. However, it's always been hard to realize that these are the only letters that, maybe (even if it's a product of imagination), will get to him. Lines on the sand, taken by sea's foam. He just writes a simple message. Hope it gets somewhere; somewhere, near him. Happy Birthday, Dae-yah. You are missed. He drinks tea in his name. Eats one of those curry puffs he liked so much. Then he heads back; head heavy. He doesn't expect anyone to be there; he told Suki and Jae-Hwan to take the day off, too. Nevertheless, when he twists the doorknob, he sees that familiar shadow again. The Black Knight. He wonders if he knows. If he cares. Well, if he read Patrick's file, then he would know. But who knows if he cares. "I'm not in the mood to see anyone today." A bitter grumble; dark eyes (saddened and tired) looking up to see the covered figure. "Any business you may have, bring it another day." But not today; not today, where he wants to remember Patrick's LIFE instead of his DEATH. He sighs, then basically pushes a bag upon the Black Knight's chest. It's a plastic bag, with the legend of red 'thank you's' written all over it. "Here, have this. I don't need it anymore." Inside, there's a foam container with multiple curry puffs. He doesn't tell him why, there's just an impulse of giving this to him, somehow. As if feeling this man is more or less similar to him. Barely eats. "Now go. Please." Nicely, because as he looks into those eyes, something simply...itches. Gnaws. Pulls strings. "I'll...see you soon." Hyuk forgot to take out the receipt from the bag. The yellowish strip has doodles made with blue ink; a hedgehog with a party hat. It also has the message 'happy birthday, best friend' written next to the drawing. Maybe letters in the sand are sent, after all. They arrive, perhaps. Not in the same of foam, but in the shape of silly doodles and receipts. (HELLO DEAR FERRE, I HOPE YOU DON'T MIND ME SENDING THIS YOUR WAY WIUEDHWIUEDH, there's no need to reply or anything BUT, I HAD TO SEND IT, EVEN IF IT'S A LITTLE LATE; HOPE THIS IS OKAY, TAKE MUCH CARE, CARE YOU TONS!!)

He shouldn’t be here.

Well, there are a lot of places Myungdae shouldn’t be, but when has that ever stopped him? So he offends ANACHRON and the law and probably a bunch of other people by trespassing, but isn’t that the Black Knight’s job in the first place? Stepping on the toes one person, one organization, one complex at a time in order to get the desired result. Waiting around and playing by the rules clearly doesn’t get him or the victims anywhere so he shouldn’t feel any guilt for this set of felonies.

And he doesn’t. Not really.

It shouldn’t be any different here, especially when neither the law nor ANACHRON ( or ARGOS for that matter ) are involved here. 

That being said- a different kind of guilt sets in his stomach here. It’s the kind where he promised Nell he would take the day off today of all days because according to her, ‘it’s your BIRTHDAY, you’re not supposed to work on your birthday’. She didn’t even let him make breakfast for her, Hiro, and Elise like he usually does. 

“Your only job is to relax for today, mate,” she had said, jabbing a finger at him that morning.

( Embarrassingly, or maybe it’s been his preference, he had forgotten about it- his birthday, one chilly day in February. When ARGOS made his new identity, it had taken Myungdae a long minute or two to remember:

“Birthday?” The stenographer had asked, fingers clicking away on his typewriter. In comparison to Nell’s typing, it was cacophony, inhospitable as the grey walls of the facility itself. Nothing at all like Nell’s. He hated it, the way it filled the silence between the probing questions.

Myungdae wavered, eyes glued to the table. When was the last time someone had asked him that? He closed his eyes trying and failing to summon an image of a calendar. “…February.” Which day was it? It wasn’t at the end, but it wasn’t quite at the start either. “Tenth.”

Could you blame him though? When the bulk of his five years were spent purely on a. avoiding ANACHRON, b. making sure ARGOS didn’t think he was burden, or c. most importantly, survival, birthdays, in turn, seem rather…ridiculous. Facetious when there are more important things to be concerned over. )

Myungdae stared back at her, eyes still groggy from having slept bent over his desk instead before she huffed, hands on her hips. “Birthdays are days only good things are allowed to happen, yeah?”

( She was kind enough to just serve him his usual first cup of coffee, however. Nevermind the hearty breakfast that she and Hiro had technically made for him; they could always have leftovers tomorrow. Alfred was kind too- simply gave him his usual coffee order and claimed it was ‘on the house’- he was practicing Latte Wednesdays, you see. )

Which implicitly also means- no BLACK KNIGHT activities today.

And yet here he is lying to her. And slipping into Hyuk’s shoebox of an office in the dead of night. He has yet to truly ask himself- why does he keep returning, coming to this mulishly hard headed detective? This detective whose bite is about as acidic as the words he flings out both carefully and recklessly. It stings each time, each visit like a scab picked off too soon. 

Myungdae tells himself each time he leaves- this will be the last time. Last time he sees his dear friend. Last time he sinks into the past. Last time he’ll put Hyuk in danger.

Sure, Hyuk won’t forgive him, just as he probably hasn’t forgiven Patrick Grace for leaving too soon, but he’ll be ALIVE.

And isn’t that the most important thing, above all else? What other reason would those last five years have been for then?

The detective is not there when Myungdae at first arrives, but air is still abloom with the scent of lilies of the valley and dust. He checks the pot by the window sill- moist, for once. Looks like the detective remembered to water it for once. 

And speaking of which, the door opens. And Myungdae dives into the shadows without another moment to spare. Oh, how Hyuk truly is a conundrum in the way he makes Myungdae’s heart race both in anticipation but also in fear. 

Myungdae is quick to roll his eyes- since when is the detective ever seeking out company? If anything, it’s the other way around: company seeks him out and then clings to him like wet seran wrap. But then he looks up, confused as suddenly, he’s carrying a bag- what’s that smell? It’s fragrant and delightful and familiar and-

He peeks inside before pulling out one of many curry buns. 

Oh. Aren’t those more common in the United Kingdom? If one really wanted to eat them here in Seoul, they’d have to go out of their way to find, like some place in Itaewon. He drops the curry bun back into the bag.

“...I’m not here on any business.” Well, does he ever have a good reason to come back here over and over again? He’s about to dish out another quip when Hyuk’s voice gives him pause. For some reason, it’s almost…hurts to hear. There’s no acidity, no anger- just…melancholy. And a hint of desperation- like he’ll BREAK if the Black Knight says another word. The Black Knight shuts his mouth, frowning.

It stings again though, a little bit more than usual- being told to leave, even if Hyuk will be expecting him on another day. “Very well. I’ll…I'll come back another time.” He opens the window and pauses before leaping out. “...Sleep somewhere that isn’t your desk. Otherwise, you’ll blow your back out.” 

A fair distance away from the eyes of the detective and the rest of the city, Myungdae removes his hat and then his mask before reaching into the red bag. He pulls out the receipt- oh. That’s why.

And here Myungdae thought the detective would have…forgotten after all these years. Isn’t that what time is supposed to do to grief anyways- soften the edges and make the details a little blurrier, a little more difficult to remember? Fingers glide over the hedgehog and underline the hastily scrawn message: happy birthday, best friend.

Myungdae sighs.

( When he gets back to base, Nell and Alfred are both waiting for him. Alfred, for once, sympathetic, and Nell, a little peeved, but can she be blamed? They all know this lifestyle is all-consuming- once you start, it’s hard to put the sword back down. Addictive. Myungdae doesn’t say anything, only perching on the table and setting Hyuk’s bag beside him. He opens the container, takes out A CURRY PUFF and takes a bite, chewing. Slowly.

It’s still warm. Just a little bit.

He takes another bite. )

[literaryvein-reblogs]

some words for characterization (pt. 1)

Personality

aggression, arrogance, artifice, atrocity, audacity, bearing, best, bravery, buoyancy/buoyance, calm, character, charisma, charm, compliance, confidence, courage, dash, dedication, determination, disposition, distinction, effrontery, egoism/egotism, empathy, endurance, enterprise, esprit de corps, fettle, fight, foible, fortitude, gall, generosity, gentility, go, good will/goodwill, grit, gusto, hauteur, heroism, hubris, identity, ilk, individuality, inhibition, innocence, kind, laziness, longevity, magnetism, manner, martyrdom, mettle, might, monstrosity, morale, motivation, mystique, nerve, obedience, oomph, patience, penchant, perseverance, pizzazz, point, potency, presence of mind, prima donna, proclivity, property, psyche, qualify, reputation, savor, self-respect/self-esteem, shortcoming, soul, spirit, spunk, stamina, staying power, taste, temper, tenacity, thing, trick, twist, valor, verve, vigor, vitality, weakness, willpower, zeal, zing, zip

Attributes of Personality: aboveboard, adventurous, airy, amenable, approachable, arrogant, assertive, assured, august, bashful, belonging to, big hearted, blasé, blithe, boastful, boorish, brash, buoyant, callous, captious, catty, charming, cheeky, childlike, chilly, churlish, clear, clinical, cocky/cocksure, co dependent, colorful, combative, confident, cool, coy, culpable, cute, dainty, dastardly, dedicated, delicate, demonic/demoniac/demoniacal, dependent, despicable, determined, dewy-eyed, die-hard, dignified, dispassionate, distant, dynamic, easygoing, egocentric, egotistic/egoistic, embittered, endearing, engaging, even-tempered, exalted, exemplary, feckless, finicky, flatulent, forbearing, forward, free, frigid, gallant, garrulous, generous, genteel, glacial, good, good humored, good-natured, gregarious, gutless, halcyon, happy-golucky, hardhearted, hard-nosed/hardheaded, hell-bent, high and mighty, high-strung, hyperactive, icy, ill natured, immovable, imperturbable, individual, indulgent, infamous, inherent, innocent, insouciant, intrinsic, inveterate, irresponsible, jazzed-up, kindhearted, kosher, laid-back, latent, liberal, likable, loutish, low, loyal, magnetic, matronly, meritorious, mincing, miserly, mulish, native, nice, nonchalant, obedient, obsequious, odd/oddball, officious, openhearted, open-minded, opprobrious, ossified, outspoken, particular, peculiar, perfidious, persistent, personable, philanthropic, pigheaded, predictable, prim, proper, pushy, quick-tempered, recluse/reclusive, reserved, rotten, saintly, Satanic, selective, self-assured, self-centered, self-confident, self-conscious, self-satisfied, self-sufficient, shabby, shifty, slothful, snotty, spick and-span, spotless, spunky, squeamish, staid, standoffish, stoic/stoical, stubborn, suave, sweet, thick skinned, trustworthy/trusty, unapproachable, unpretentious, unsuspecting, uppity, vain, valorous, virile, vocal, winning, wishy-washy, zealous

Intelligence

acquaintance, anticipation, apprehension, attention, bent, capacity, clarity, cognizance/cognition, comprehension, consciousness, creativity, darkness, depth, education, empathy, erudition, expertise/expertness, familiarity, feeling, foresight, genius, grasp, head, ignorance, imagination, innocence, intellect, interpretation, invention, ken, know-how, learning, literacy, mentality, misconception, nirvana, observation, perception, proficiency, sagacity, sanity, scholarship, sensibility, skill, soul, understanding, wit/wits, workmanship

Attributes of Intelligence: able, abstruse, accident-prone, acute, alert, analytic/analytical, apt, astute, aware, bewildered, blind, brilliant, canny, cerebral, clairvoyant, clever, cognizant, common-sense, comprehensible, considered, conversant, cunning, deducible, delirious, designedly, dim, dizzy, down-to-earth, dumb, eagle-eyed, efficient, empty, empty-headed, erudite, expert, farsighted, feeble-minded, frivolous, gullible, hazy, idiotic, illiterate, impressionable, incomprehensible, ineligible, inexperienced, ingenious, inquisitive, insipid, intelligent, inventive, judicious, knowing, learned, logical, lucid, mindful, moronic, not born yesterday, observant, omniscient, penetrating, perceptive, philosophical/philosophic, privy, proficient, psychic, quick-witted, rational, reasonable, sagacious, sane, savvy, scholarly, seasoned, sensible, shallow, shrewd, skillful, slow, soft, studious, subtle, thick, thoughtless, unaware, uneducated, uninformed, unknowing, vacant, versed, veteran, weak, well-balanced, well-defined, wide-awake, with-it

Social state

abasement, affirmative action, association, awkwardness, behind, belonging, bond, breach, breeding, calm, care, celebrity, censorship, circumstances, class, coherence, companionship, complicity, concord, conjunction, consanguinity, contact, cooperation, courtesy, credit, culture, degree, détente, dignitary, diplomacy, disagreement, disfavor, disharmony, disorder, dissolution, disturbance, duty, echelon, eminence, entertainment, entry, estate, excitement, falling out, familiarity, fellowship, fidelity, foreplay, friendship, fun, fuss, genre/genus, get along, glory, height, hit it off, hospitality, hubbub, humiliation, immunity, infidelity, intrigue, juncture, laissez-faire, lather, level, liberty, luxury, marriage, men’s movement, mortification, mutiny, nepotism, nobility, nonviolence, notoriety, odium, opprobrium, partnership, piffle, place, pleasure, polygamy, popularity, predicament, prestige, rage, rapport, rate, relationship, reproach, reputation, ruckus, rupture, seclusion, servitude, shame, situation, society, sophistication, split, standing, state, status, stillness, stink, support, sympathy, taste, terms, tomfoolery, uncertainty, variance, whirl

NOTE

The above are concepts classified according to subject and usage. It not only helps writers and thinkers to organize their ideas but leads them from those very ideas to the words that can best express them.

It was, in part, created to turn an idea into a specific word. By linking together the main entries that share similar concepts, the index makes possible creative semantic connections between words in our language, stimulating thought and broadening vocabulary. Writing Resources PDFs

Source ⚜ Writing Basics & Refreshers ⚜ On Vocabulary

[deadsetobsessions]

“DIDJA SEE THAT, DANNY?!” Tim, a scrawny eleven year old now, excitedly smacked Danny’s arm.

“Ow. Yes, yes I did.”

“Oh, gosh, I have to tell Jazz about this!!” The kid waved his arms about wildly, grinning from ear to ear.

“Jaso- I mean, Robin, smiled at me! And said he liked my t-shirt!! Oh my god, he likes literature puns, he even laughed! And then he punched the bad guy in the face! Look! I even saved the tooth!”

“Okayyy, nope!” Danny plucked the tooth and tossed it, ignoring Tim’s betrayed face. “I’ll trade you that for this.”

Danny Held out a piece of paper with Robin’s and Batman’s sigil on it, from when he asked them to sign it after they “saved” the two brothers from the two-bit thugs trying to mug them.

“Oh. My. God. This is like the best day of my life!! I love you, Danny! You’re the best brother ever!! Oh my god! I have to get Nightwing’s signature!!!”

Danny felt a rush of warmth at Tim’s proclamation of affection. Ah, he should probably step in.

“Hey, wait, no, we’re not going to Blüdhaven for you to stalk another vigilante.”

“It’s not just any old vigilante-!” Tim ignored Danny’s dramatic clutching-pearls gesture of mock hurt. “It’s Nightwing. The original Robin! He gave me my first ever hug!”

Danny paused. God dammit.

“…Fine.”

“YESSSSSS!!!!”

——

Danny-

“I’m gonna be Robin whether you want me to or not!”

-is so damn tired.

“Tim. I’m literally a vigilante ghost. What makes you think I’d be stupid enough to argue with a kid who runs around Gotham at night to take pictures of other vigilantes?”

Tim deflated. “Oh. Honestly, I thought you’d put up more of a fight…”

Jazz laughed and ruffled Tim’s hair. “I definitely couldn’t stop Danny when he went out. He trusted me to support him and I trusted him to come to me if he was injured, though. Can you promise me that, Tim?”

“Yeah… okay, Jazz, I promise.” Tim promised, even if he was still pouty.

Danny chimed in.

“Oh, don’t get me wrong, I’m totally worried and I’m gonna hover like a mother hen when you go out, but again, I know how stubborn and crazy we vigilante types have to be.” Danny paused. “Do you want me to put up a token protest?”

Tim nodded, sulking. “Yes, please. I had a speech planned out.”

Jazz and Danny exchanged amused glances.

“Oh, okay, my bad, kiddo. Here, let’s start from the top.”

“Okay. Ahem,” Tim straightened his back, settling into his previous mulish expression once more. “I’m gonna be Robin whether you want me to or not!”

Danny placed an appropriately disapproving frown on his face. “No, you can’t! It’s dangerous! You could get hurt! You’re just a child!”

Tim launched into his speech. “But I can’t stay still and do nothing when people are getting hurt! Even…!”

They were gonna be here for a while. There was definitely something about Batman going on a spiral because Jason wouldn’t be able to walk again after the Joker got to him. Danny wondered if ectoplasm could help. He might offer, if it actually had a change of getting Tim out of the vigilante business.

But that’s for later, because they had time. Jazz was on Spring Break… and they’re still staying here for free, after all of these years.

“So, how are you going to convince Robin to let you be Robin?” Jazz asked Tim.

Tim froze. “I… hadn’t thought of that yet.”

“Well, you could always remind him of the fact that we saved him from the Joker. He seemed pretty ready to leave the Robin mantle, the last time I saw him as Phantom.”

“I don’t want to blackmail him into it!” Tim whined.

“It’ll just be a suggestion, Tim.” Jazz smiled patiently.

“Besides,” Danny continued, smirking mischievously at his adopted little brother. “If you were actually blackmailing him, you’d pull out the photos where he ate dirt.”

“I guess that’s true…” Tim mumbled. “I know! I’ll have to follow them to see how I can best approach him!”

"I think that's called stalking," Jazz deadpanned.

"Well, it's not any worse than what he's already done." Danny shrugged at his older sister. "Sure, kid. Why not? Do whatever you want."

"I was planning to!" Tim bounced off to grab his photography gear. Jazz stared off after him.

"Should we be encouraging that?"

"More like can we actually stop him?" Danny leaned back, lazily completing his GED assignments. Jazz sighed.

"Guess not. Make sure he doesn't get in trouble."

"Do you even know how hard that is, Jazz?" Danny complained, dodging the whack Jazz sent at the back of his head. She smirked at him.

"Womp, womp, Danny. How does karma taste today?"

Danny flipped her off as he put the last punctuation on the paper. He heard a clatter and groaned.

“I’m gonna go watch Tim stalk Batman for the night. Want anything from the store?”

Jazz hummed. “Get me the specialty strawberry ice cream, from that one place?”

“The one that’s definitely a front for Falcone’s money laundering??”

“Yeah. They make good strawberry ice cream.”

“Sure.”

Danny went ghost and flew straight through the walls to catch Tim sneaking out by the scruff of his collar.

“No. Bad Tim.”

“Awww, come on Danny!”

[alfieriwebagency]

Giacca da uomo con cappuccio fisso, realizzata in tessuto opaco, super leggero e riciclato. Imbottita in leggera piuma naturale, è un capo iconico della collezione Colmar Originals, proposto in nuove nuances per la stagione primaverile. Silver Abbigliamento Via Veneto 69/70 CB www.silver-abbigliamento.it . Seguici anche su: @micol_via_veneto @sandro_ferrone_campobasso . . #brerasmilano #breras #modaitaliana #modauomo #abbigliamento #abbigliamentouomo #spedizioniintuttaitalia #shopping #colmar #ciessepiumini #mulish #mclassics #museum #poloralphlauren #lanciottideverzi https://www.instagram.com/p/Cp7V4WVMPC4/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[evilminji]

What is "A God" and does the King of the Infinite Every Between count?

The great and endless "slipped between the cracks" of everything and all things? The souls of those Death has Taken but no God can Claim? THAT King?

Is he... A GOD.

I mean... probably not? He's a Halfa. Little hungry, right now. And very, VERY powerful. Can absolutely kick their asses. But "God"? He'd honestly have to throw that one to his advisors to go look up.

Like? If we're talking Title? Maybe. There are definitely people who worship him. He wi-( ......*cough* HI Desiree, nice to see ya.) Would LIKE, people to stop? But he can't TELL them too. That's THEIR choice. They get to make it. But if we're talking the SPECIES or BEING known to you as "God"?

Nope.

He's definitely not.

But then again? There are a LOT of Beings out there, that serve that particular Role, that aren't "Gods". Does that make their work somehow less precious? Their worshipers Faith, less genuine? It's just a position, dude. Divine management.

The great and glorified Housekeeping of Creation.

In HIS experience? A whole lot like babysitting.

Though... now that he thinks about it? WHY? Why DO you want to know? If he is or is NOT a God? Furthermore, how the HECK did you even GET this "number"? This is the Zone! Did you intentionally "@Anybody"?! Kid! Kiddo, what the actual FUCK! That was SO DANGEROUS holy shit!!! (Is this karma? This feels like karma. Is this what HE was like as a kid?? No WONDER Jazz always looked so stressed)

I could have been ANYBODY!

And? A mulish AF Percy Jackson and his crowd of friends? Just stare back up in that "I DO NOT Repent And Would DO IT AGAIN BUT WITH MORE FIRE" way only highly hormonal and deeply feral teenagers can? Just >:( ×15

Danny, the only adult here, is Concerned(tm).

They? Demand he Adopt's them. They need a BETTER Divine Parent who will ACTUALLY take care of them. And according to the qualifications they carved into the REALLY smashed together, Neo-Archaic, Call Summon Boulder they collectively carved? HE has all the "Good Parent" Qualifications they want.

So congratulations!

IT'S A CROWD.

No they aren't asking. You are Dad now, FATHER. Now come and protect your adopted offspring! And give out hugs and praise! Also we made a list! And-!

*proceeds to try and menace the literal Ruler of The Infinte Zone in a crackling squeaky voice*

And like? Well, shit. Guess he's a Dad now. They're clearly too powerful to fight. Such devastating cases being made. Oh woe, he is powerless before them etc etc.

MAN, you all are tiny!

Who wants fudge?

@hdgnj @hypewinter @ailithnight @the-witchhunter @babbling-babull @lolottes @nerdpoe @mutable-manifestation

[cressidagrey]

Lightning in a Bottle - Chapter 2

Summary: 

Eira Archeron was neither a Valkyrie, nor a Seer, nor the High Lady of the Night Court. She was actually pretty much useless. The only thing she wanted was to be somebody's first choice for once in her life.

Also known as: Azriel's shadows decide that if he doesn't treat his mate right... they'll just do it for him.

Warnings: 

Elain Bashing, Angst, Nesta threatening bodily harm, Amren being mean.

(super pretty dividers by @tsunami-of-tears)

Azriel was a lot of things. A knight however was not one of those. 

He was a bastard, a shadowsinger, the spymaster of the night court. He had fought in wars, tortured, killed, slaughtered, and bathed in the blood of his enemies…figuratively and literally in a sense.

But Azriel had never once been considered to be a knight. 

Not until he had met a slip of a human girl who never had the acrid smell of fear clinging onto her like he had expected. 

To Eira Archeron, Azriel had been a knight. 

He still wasn’t quite sure what he had done to give that impression…how she had heard Spymaster as a human and then continued to call him Sir when he had returned to the human lands to make his preparation to talk to the Human Queens. 

She had stopped calling him that at his request…she had been more than content to let Elain do the talking. And his attention had snapped from her, to her twin sister…flawlessly polite and beautiful. 

Azriel easily admitted that between the threat of the war and the worry of the future..somehow his attention had stayed there. 

And he hadn’t thought much more about the fourth Archeron Sister. 

Not when the other three had demanded his attention in a myriad of ways…from Feyre as High Lady, to Nesta with the problems she had adjusting or Elain, who had suffered beautifully and pined away for her human life. 

Eira…Eira hadn’t been anything to worry about, because she had done nothing. 

Hadn’t done anything but tried to be no trouble for any of them. And succeeded. No need to pay attention to her, because she hadn’t done anything. Ever. 

She had found herself work as a seamstress, seemed to adjust well to Velaris and her new Fae body…and that had been that. 

She was a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma…and Azriel hadn’t even realised it. 

He had become complacent… had started to have a fucking blind spot right in front of his face…and he hadn’t noticed. 

Too busy with himself…with his own overly emotional moping, because he had felt unfairly treated… and had come away from that with a chip on his shoulder the size of the continent and the mulish expression of a teenage boy on his face…

He had admitted that too. 

At last, he had realised it…at least before he had done any lasting damage, Rhys’ words rattling around his brain and seemingly dousing him in cold water. 

It had been an infatuation with Elain…nothing more. Jealousy about his brothers both finding their mate in such a short period…Feeling unfairly treated...

And Azriel didn’t even have the excuse of his age for it like he had with Mor.  He had been so young when he had fallen head over heels in love with her…His centuries spent pining painfully away were a choice he had made because Mor was unattainable...

So really, these days, Azriel had no excuse that it had taken that long…

Weekly dinners had been a tradition for centuries. And they were not going to stop with them now. Especially not with Nyx there now, who enjoyed the attention of everybody doting on him…though he had one clear favourite. 

Azriel entered the dining room to Nyx’s loud chanting of “Ra! Ra! Ra!” which was the universal sign that he wanted Eira to hold him and nobody else. 

Feyre relinquished her son with a snort, letting Eira take him and settle him on her hip, pudgy little baby arms immediately flying around her neck. 

He blinked once at Eira’s appearance…at the sight of her in a grey dress, high-necked and covering her from her wrist to her ankles, cut high at her neck. Not out of the usual for her. He had not once seen her in the traditional Night Court fashions of tops and trousers…But what did surprise him…that was her hair…

Usually, it was scraped back into a messy knot at the base of her skull…well, now it fell down to her waist in perfect ringlets…held back from her face with two gilded hair combs. Beautiful. 

She took her seat and he moved to sit across from her, like he always did… like he was in a trance, somehow so taken by her that he couldn’t help himself. 

Eira smiled at Nyx in her arms, bright, pearly white teeth showing. He had never seen her smile like that either. 

And then her eyes met his… that smile changing from brightly happy to painfully polite…

And with one look… everything changed.

Lightning crackled along his veins. Crackled through his whole body, his hands tightening into fists as for a moment he didn’t know what happened. 

It caught around his ribs like a whip, tying him to her for eternity. And Azriel could just stare at her, wide-eyed, as she went back to doting on Nyx like nothing had happened…

Everything inside him was rearranged, a place carved out inside his chest just for her…just for Eira. 

For Eira with her big silver eyes, her delicate little hands…

He had always liked her…liked her soft voice, and how she had filled the silence so that he didn’t need to say anything, do anything, but hang onto her every word…liked how she had made it so easy for him to be around her…how she had seemingly always tried to be helpful, always tried to be kind…

Finally! the shadows crooned. Finally, Master! That took you long enough! 

They had known. 

They had known?! Since when…how…

He watched in terror how a tendril of shadows appeared over Eira’s shoulder and waited for her to flinch back…but nothing happened. Eira didn’t even seem to notice it, as she was cutting food in smaller pieces for Nyx, feeding him, his blue eyes wide, staring at his aunt in adoration. His little wings fluttered against her hold and she adjusted, seemingly without a thought…doting on Nyx. 

Eira Archeron was going to be the death of him.

Azriel knew that already. 

Because it already felt like she was crushing his very heart in the palm of her hands…because everything he had spent centuries begging, pleading, praying for, was right there, sitting in front of him and ignoring his very existence. 

Eira. 

Everything he wanted…right there, where he had last expected it. 

“Az, do you want the salad now, or am I just supposed to wave it in front of your face for another five minutes?” Cassian asked him, voice dripping with sarcasm, and that finally managed to get him to function again.

“Thank you,” he managed to force out, pulled all the wayward shadows in his nearer surroundings to him with a harsh tug at their metaphorical leash and took the salad from his brother. 

Salad. Dinner. 

And then…cauldron boil him, he needed to…figure out what he was going to do with…

His blood was rushing in his ears and he was thankful to sit because otherwise, he would have already fainted. His heart was pounding in his chest, far too fast…worse than it had in centuries…even while fighting for his life. 

“Are you alright?” Cassian asked him carefully and he just about managed a nod.  “You don’t look too good.”

He probably didn’t.

“I am fine,” he forced out. 

Great even. He was…

Mate, some instincts inside him purred. Mate. 

Our mate, the shadows sang, so very pleased. Ours! 

He forced himself to eat. Even when every part of him ached for Eira to turn to him like she usually did during dinners…and start a conversation about something or other…Listen to her voice. 

She did nothing of that sort that evening, doting on Nyx, though her soft whispers to the little boy made something inside him ache. 

“So what else happened this week?” Rhys asked at that moment, clearly trying to start a conversation, something that didn’t involve Keir in Hewn City being an absolute pain. 

“Eira got her teeth changed,” Elain spat out and Azriel was so taken aback by that tone of her voice that he needed a moment until the words registered…until…

Eira got her teeth changed? Why had she done that? She was already perfect. There was no reason to change anything. 

He couldn’t help but stare at her, again or once more or…and he watched the blush rise high on her cheeks, see how uncomfortable she was as the attention of the table shifted to her. 

“You had your teeth changed, Eira?” Rhys asked, sounding as taken aback as Azriel was feeling. 

“I did,” Eira agreed, her voice quiet. 

“Look at me?” Nesta requested, two seats down from him and he watched as Eira bared her teeth. 

Perfect pearly white teeth. Uniform in size. No trace anymore of the two big incisors that had sat inside her mouth. They had been just a smidgen too big for her. It had been charming as far as he was concerned.  But now they were all…all perfectly even. 

“It looks great,“ Nesta said. “But they were fine before as well.” A sort of understanding passed between Nesta and Eira, a look between the same grey eyes they shared that Azriel didn’t understand but wished he would

“I like it more like this,” Eira admitted, her voice quiet, going back to take care of Nyx. Nesta inclined her head. 

“Then that’s all that matters.” And that was that.

As long as she was happy, Azriel couldn’t care less. If she liked this more, then she should have whatever made her happy. 

“You actually agree with her? Nesta!” Elain exclaimed and Nesta stared at Elain, lips pursing for once, seemingly disagreeing with her sister. 

“They are Eira’s teeth,” Nesta said with a shrug.  “As long as they are attached to her mouth, I think she can do whatever she wants with them.”

Azriel tended to agree. Her teeth. If she liked them like that…well, that was that then. 

“You should have had them made into fangs. You could use them, Girl,” Amren commented drily. 

Eira said nothing in response, her shoulders seemingly caving in. 

His shadows bristled so sharply that he nearly flinched, hissing quietly, Our Mate. Our Mate! She doesn’t need fangs, but the tiny ancient one needs her throat ripped out!

He glared at them, but they ignored that. Instead, some of them bitched under their breath about anything Elain had to say…while some others were waxing poetically about the gleam of Eira’s hair in the candlelight. 

So beautiful, they purred in his ear.  So pretty. Doesn’t her hair glow like gold like this? Like a halo…

It was decisively unhelpful. Even when they were right. 

Especially because it frayed what little self-control he had. What little self-control he had that stopped him from going on his knees before her right now and begging her for…something, anything…everything. 

His ruined hands curled into fists as the shadows continued with their little monologue. 

Nyx seemed to be content to tuck his head against Eira’s shoulder and play with one big ringlet of that gleaming hair as he fell asleep, yawning widely. 

That seemed to be all the excuse Eira needed as she stood up. “I’ll put him to sleep,” Eira offered quietly as she stood. She hadn’t said a single word that evening unless it was talking to Nyx or Nesta asking her a question. Had stayed quiet. Silent. 

He missed her voice. 

He couldn’t stop the shadows from rushing out to pull her chair back so that it made no noise, fighting with them for control as they insisted on clinging to her skirts. “I’ll be up early tomorrow…I thought I could take Nyx to that playground he likes,” Eira said at that moment looking at Feyre and Rhys.  

“Of course,” Feyre agreed with an indulging smile. “He loves the swing there.”

Eira left and he watched her go, trying to swallow and trying and failing his shadows from following along in one big massive cloud…

“Az, what was that?” Rhys asked with some amusement but he couldn’t bring out the words. Couldn’t say anything…could just pull open his metal shields and push it at Rhys, begging him to understand. 

His brother’s eyes widened in pure undiluted shock. 

*By the cauldron,* he breathed in Azriel’s mind. 

“Are you both alright?” Cassian demanded, the shock being obvious on Rhys’ face. 

*Congratulations, brother,* Rhys said quietly in his mind, carefully. *I hope this isn’t…unwelcome?*

Unwelcome? How could this be unwelcome? 

This was…This was everything he had ever wanted. 

“Yes,” Rhys said, clearing his throat. “I am fine, and Az will be… alright.” 

Oh, he would be. He would be more than alright. He just…needed to...He pressed a hand against his chest, feeling his heart thump against the touch. 

“You sure about that?” Cassian asked drily. “You look a bit green around the gills, Az. How are you feeling?” 

“Like somebody is carving up my chest,” he managed to bring out. 

It was the truth. That mating bond was like a razor wire, tied around his ribcage, sharp and painful. He wasn't sure if that was even normal or if that was just him trying to get used to it, if it was, just the shock that finally he had a mating bond himself or...

“Well, that sounds healthy,” Cassian said sharply, reaching out with one broad hand to put it on Azriel’s shoulder and squeezing. Warm, solid…giving him something to concentrate on. 

“Give him a moment,” Rhys said with a pointed look. “He’ll be fine once he catches his breath.”

He just needed...

She's fine, Master, the shadows assured him. Just singing the Princeling to sleep. 

“You want some water?” Nesta asked, already moving to stand. 

“What the fuck is going on?” Cassian demanded, his voice sharp.

He had no idea what he was supposed to say. 

“The mating bond snapped for him,” Amren drawled drily. “He’s just being dramatic about it.”

Dramatic? He was being dramatic? 

Azriel hadn’t thought he would get this for half a millennium! 

*Careful, Az,* Rhys said into his mind. *She does not mean it like that.*

He harshly pulled at the shadows that had been striking out on their own, getting ready to make their displeasure known to Amren. 

“What? To whom? You?” Cassian asked, the hand tightening nearly painfully. 

“If that was the case, I would be utterly uninterested,” Amren said with a snort. “But I imagine.. it must be Eira.” 

It was deathly quiet in the room after that declaration, all the eyes on him. 

Elain broke the stifling silence. 

“Is that a joke?” She asked, sounding utterly aghast. “Your mate is Eira?”

He couldn’t help the snarl that broke out of his throat, Cassian's grip turning from supportive to warning in an instant, the shadows poising themselves to attack. 

“Careful,” Rhys said quietly. “His instincts are primed. And his control is…not what it should be right now.”

*Reign it in, Az. Nobody is going to take her from you,* Rhys warned him. 

“We are all just…surprised!” Mor hurried to add, exchanging a look with Feyre next to her, who was paling rapidly. “Congrats! She has been having a crush on you for years!” 

What?

“Oh gods,” Feyre murmured under her breath.“I…I may have really messed up,” she admitted with a grimace. 

Not exactly what Azriel wanted to hear. 

A glance was exchanged between Rhys and Feyre. 

“You told her to get over her crush?” Rhys said surprised, blinking once. Feyre just nodded. “When?”

“2 days ago? After she got her teeth changed…I thought she only did it for Azriel,” Feyre admitted quietly. 

“Why would you do that, Feyre?!” Nesta demanded sharply. 

“Were you trying to protect Azriel’s virtue?” Cassian asked with a snort, trying to find some levity in that situation even when Azriel was starting to get furious.  “Don’t worry, there is nothing left for you to protect.”

“I didn’t want there to be any problems. And she was annoying you at every dinner,” Feyre tried to explain. His eyebrows rose nearly to his hairline. 

“Annoying me?” He repeated, unable to believe what he was hearing. “She wasn’t annoying me!” 

“Making you uncomfortable then,” Elain amended quickly. “She talked to you constantly.” 

Yes. And it had never bothered him one bit. 

He would rather just listen to her talk, to one person talking, than to take part in the loud and raucous conversations that could go on for hours. 

If anything…he had welcomed it as a respite. In Eira’s little world, there weren’t really any…there were no bloodyproblems to take care of,  no weapons…she talked about embroidery and fabrics and books she had been reading…her world was so soft. 

“If that bothered me, I would have said something,” he bit out. He didn’t need Feyre to protect his virtue. Or Elain. Or anybody else. 

“I thought you would be too polite for that,” Feyre admitted with a grimace. Before he could respond, Elain beat him to it. 

“Does it even matter?” She asked, crossing her arms as she stood. “It’s Eira. It’s not like you’ll actually want her,” she said with a roll of her eyes. “I’ll be upstairs.”

It was pure shock that kept him rooted to his chair. Pure shock that stopped him from lunging across the table, at Elain’s throat because how dare she?!

The shadows hissed, spitting mad, whirling around him, a mess of voices, bombarding him with suggestions of what he should do about this, about that kind of disrespect to his mate. 

Want her? He didn't just want her, he needed her!

To his surprise, it was Nesta, Nesta of all people who slammed her hands onto the table, who stared him down with sparkling grey eyes, steel in them. 

It wasn't Nesta who stared him down. It was Lady Death herself.  “You lay one finger on Eira where she doesn’t want it and I’ll hack off your fucking hands!” She snapped at Azriel. 

He swallowed. He could only incline his head in response.

“We’ll deal with all of this tomorrow,” Rhys pointedly, with a sigh, making an executive decision. “After our visit to the Hewn City.”

*Can I trust you not to tell her for one night?* he asked Azriel mentally. *Let Feyre talk to her first and apologise?*

 *Tommorow,* he agreed. He didn’t want to tell her now…not when she was tired and wanting to sleep. Tomorrow. 

Still, without a conscious thought he sent the shadows to check on her…finding her up in her room, getting ready for bed. 

Safe. Content. 

His. 

[retired-cyrus]

I do not have much time to update. She has found me.

My next post shall be very late as I am unsure what this outcome will be.

[mutable-manifestation]

Ghost Chirps AU Part 5

Part 1 & 2

Part 3

Part 4

***

While “Jason” (i.e. Alfred with an empty jet that Jason will meet up with later in order to “arrive” in Amity) hops a private jet, Red Hood is busy searching the Fenton home from top to bottom.

The local police move slowly, and by the time they arrive Jack and Maddie Fenton are both tied up and disarmed in their living room under heavy guard.

They hadn’t been restrained immediately, Batman talking him into giving them a chance to implicate themselves first.

Hood let him take the lead, but he didn’t even get a chance to ask a question, being cut off at the first indication he might want to talk about their “work.” Less than 60 seconds in, and the pair had outright confessed to violating the meta protection acts - and in tedious detail.

The questioning didn’t suffer any from them being tied up.

Far from the mulish silence or crocodile-tear laden denial of most criminals, they instead doubled down, insisting that nothing they had done was illegal, then jumping to the assumption that they were “possessed” - and boy had it been a nasty surprise when the whole house came alive trying to attack them with a quick verbal command.

Well, trying to attack Hood. And only him, for some reason.

One laser also freed the Fentons, who turned out to have even more weapons built into their suits. 

Somehow. 

Despite them being skintight.

That had been a pain, but Red Robin was able to hack the system using one of the couples’ own devices while Hood dodged - and kept the stray fire away from the others - leaving everyone else to recapture the pair. A blessedly simple task once they found out the lasers would splash harmlessly off of their armor (save for a gross film of green goop left wherever they grazed).

They take turns knocking each unconscious to change them in order to properly disarm them - Batman and Nightwing taking Jack first, followed by Orphan and Spoiler dealing with Maddie. 

The only non-weapon laden clothing they own turns out to be pajamas. 

This is around when the police show up, looking hesitant.

They, too, cite the “Anti-Ecto Acts.”

Oracle had debriefed them on the supposed Acts and “Ghost Investigation Ward” on their short drive over. Both were utterly bogus - the Acts had never even been proposed, let alone been approved as law, and the so-called “GIW” had no ties to the government.

The Fentons had been furious and denied the information intensely when told, but the cops mostly just looked relieved.

Apparently there’d been a lot of property damage by the GIW and Fentons both that had supposedly been dismissed under the Acts as “necessary in the pursuit of ecto-scum.”

For the Fentons, half of this damage was in the form of broken fire hydrants, cracked sidewalks, and totaled cars - they’d never been good drivers, before, the cops disclosed, but they’d become even more negligent since the ghosts began appearing, to the point they had to have a news segment warning when they would be on the road.

The lack of fatalities thus far had been nothing short of a miracle, they claimed.

“Of course there haven’t been any fatalities!” Mrs Fenton defends. “Our work is to protect people from those things, not make more! Officers, listen to reason-” Hood snorts disdainfully -”The Red Hood is clearly a ghost! All our systems targeted him the moment they came online - and they only target ecto-entities. He’s clearly taken these heroes under his sway - why else would they be working with a murderer!? You have to do something before he starts up his killing here in Amity!”

The officers look at him a bit hesitantly, but Batman is unmoved and gives the cover story Hood had outlined back in the alley.

Any concerns the locals have are quickly assuaged.

But for the whole explanation, Jason is trying not to shake even as he falls apart in place.

Their little website called them ghost-hunters, making it pretty clear what “ecto-entities” meant. 

Their system supposedly only targets ecto-entities.

The system had only targeted him.

The system only targets ghosts.

Jason had died.

A lot of his family members had died, too, granted. 

But Jason was the only one who seemed to come back wrong - anger sticking in his throat and never quite fading, an inclination towards violence even when he wasn’t angry well beyond what he’d ever felt before, and a sea of other emotions (that he would never acknowledge aloud) and triggers for those emotions that he always struggled to make heads or tails of.

He doesn’t have the meta gene. He knows that. He knew that.

He just assumed that the test missed it, because he knows he doesn’t know magic - the All Blades being the only exception - and he couldn’t think of another explanation at the time.

But he came back wrong.

And as he stands there, he wonders if he came back at all, mind on Solomon Grundy.

Wonders if he isn’t just some ghost, wandering around possessing his own corpse.

He jolts, as the thought strikes him: what about Danny?

If he’s a ghost and chirping is a ghost thing then what about his KID!?

Absently, he notes that Bruce has started interrogating the cops on what they meant by “ghost attacks.” 

He ignores the discussion, hustling for the door in the kitchen down to the lab.

He slams and locks the door behind him - in Red Robin’s face - as he descends, making a b-line for the computer he’d seen when the Fentons had dragged them all down there to start bragging about their crimes.

The only thing Oracle could get out of the whole building was things that were openly available online; direct connections were impossible.

Opening up the screen, he gets to cracking.

Going for the surface level files first, it turns out he doesn’t even need so much as a password to find what he wants.

One of the video game sub-files has an unrelated file in it: ghost notes.

There are plenty of other notes, of course, but he’d only been skimming to start, looking for anything hidden.

The Fenton parents were too open to bother, of course, with plenty of more obvious files strewn haphazardly across the home screen, but it’s always better to check. That there is a hidden file means it was likely made by either Danny or Jazz.

And it’s a treasure trove.

Sub-files for rogues, allies, conditional allies, and “halfas” were what greeted him.

The last being the only term he didn’t recognize, he clicked.

6 files: Clones, Danny, Dani, Dan, Vlad, and Red Hood.

He clicks his own file.

What greets him is a picture of himself 4 days ago, looking just to the left of the lens in an alley that he distinctly remembers searching for the kid in.

Just below is text.

~~~

??? Name: Red Hood

Species: probably a halfa

Status: Nnnneutral? I think? I know, I know, heads in bags. But Valerie tries to kill me all the time! And we’re allies sometimes! Hood- uh- looked for me? Okay I guess I can’t really judge this yet but please read the first met section before you judge please you guys?

First met: Aug 17, 2005, was in Gotham to bother Batman, stopped to think a bit on some fire escape - decide on the first prank yknow - but then my ghost sense went off. It felt like a halfa so I thought “oh cool, must be Dani” so I chirped, but then Red Hood - who was chasing some guy down an alley at the time - froze and looked around. I dropped visibility and chirped again and yeah, he definitely heard it. Humans can’t so he’s definitely a halfa - no glow so he can’t be a full ghost and it felt nothing like an overshadowing. 

Ended up following Hood around the rest of week - forgot to prank Batman, damn - and playing hide-and-seek with the chirps. It was really funny. But he very obviously doesn’t know he’s a halfa. But the guy is, like, scary levels of smart, so I’m sure he’ll figure it out on his own now that the chirp thing made it clear that something is up. Hopefully.

I figure I can go back in winter break - he should have it figured out and let his emotions process enough by then to at least hear me out when I explain the AEA and GIW and everything, then it won’t matter so much if he can, like, track me by voice or something if I talk since we’ll have MAD by then.

Despite his reputation, the people living in his haunt seem to love the guy. I can see why. On top of the whole smart he’s actually really nice to people he’s not shooting in the knees (which only even happened one time in the week I was there? It was actually pretty relaxing - most quiet week I’ve had since the portal opened THANK YOU TUCKER for hacking the portal hatch to be inoperable for a week). 

Where was I? Oh yeah, he’s actually surprisingly nice to people? So like, I think he’ll probably hear me out if I go back and be polite? I hope. Hate to leave the guy in the dark and him end up on the GIWs dissection table for “lots and lots of painful experiments.”

Not that those guys could even catch the Box Ghost. But uh, Hood doesn’t seem to have powers either? Or if he does he doesn’t know about them I don’t think - he only used the chirp the whole time I was their - not even to cheat with moving around.

Seriously. That guy's acrobatics could make Freakshow’s contortionist green - er, red??? - with envy. Actually wait, aren’t contortionists and acrobats different things?

SAM NOTE: help^?

Powers: 

?

~~~

Jason leans back, breathing deeply.

“Not a full ghost,” “not 'overshadowed'” - a term that sounds likke some kind of cousin to possesision - “definitely a halfa,” “humans can’t hear chirps.”

Halfa. 

Half. 

Ghost. 

Half Ghost.

It should sound absurd - you can’t be half alive and half dead.

But Jason has seen the Lazarus pits, has met Solomon Grundy, has met aliens and bullshit magic and can pull magical swords out of his own damn chest.

Half alive. Half dead.

Hopefully not just a fancy way to say possessing his own corpse.

He doesn’t have time to deal with every file - he’ll “confiscate” one of their USBs with a copy of everything for himself before leaving the rest to Batman & co, of course, minus the halfa files (a small part of him wants to shove his condition in Bruce’s face and demand he kill the clown again even though he knows it’s a futile hope, but the rest - the same part that snapped and denied and refused to say he was a meta less that a day ago now - cannot stomach the thought of even more rejection. Of a Bruce that believes he’s a monster. Of a Bruce that mourns him even while he’s right there. Or at least, more than he already does.) - but while the files copy he take the time to look at Danny’s.

The image has two people, Danny Fenton on one side and a version of the kid in a black hazmat suit with white hair, tanned skin, and painfully familiar green eyes. And floating.

~~~

Human Name: Danny Fenton

Ghost Name: Danny Phantom

Species: Halfa (half-human, half ghost)

~~~

It’s the section after that that makes Jason’s breath catch in his throat.

~~~

Death: The Portal Accident

So like, there was no audio (thank GOD I do not want to hear myself screaming) so. Details: When the portal didn’t work when they plugged it in mom and dad left for fudge, Jazz went to try and talk them into a more realistic career choice than ghosts. Sam and Tucker came over and Sam dared me to climb in and check it out - it was broken anyway so no harm. Except it wasn’t broken, just that my parents put the on button inside. Which I caught myself on when I tripped on a wire.

Anyway, electrocution! 

(T - Danny for the love of god be more serious, the cheerful tone is creepy)

(D - Hey! I’m the one who died! Shouldn’t I at least get to write my own epitaph)

(S - …Danny this is not an epitaph. You don’t even HAVE a grave)

(D - wow way to rub it in Sam)

(T - yeah Sam)

(S - ugh! Whatever, just stop with the chatting in official files)

(T - “official”)

(S - Tucker.)

(T - shutting up now)

Electrocution! I got zapped to death, but the ectoplasm from the portal was also opening up on top of me and a lot got bonded to me I guess (S - probably because of the electricity with how you ended up with some of Vortex' powers for a little while) at the same time said electricity was reviving me? - probably getting my heart beating again or something, I was a little busy screaming to pay attention (T - yeah okay we're going to Nasty Burger after this. And playing Doomed) - not that it would’ve mattered without the ghostification preventing me from melting me all the way to death.

Status: Me!

Powers:

Chirps! (ghost echolocation of some kind! humans can't hear em - halfas can, of course, in either form)

Form Change (really Sam? This barely counts)

Human form

Ghost form (no need to breathe)

Flight (last clock speed 210mph) (T - and climbing. Dang dude)

Invisibility (S - don’t forget shareable.) (Shareable. sigh)

Intangibility (Shareable)

Ecto Rays (eyes & hands) (T - and butt) (D - dude! I’m deleting that. Tucker why can't I delete it. TUCKER) (T - bow down in awe of my ksill) (S - ksill) (D - ksill) (T - yeah okay it’s permanent now) (D - aw man!)

Ghost Sense (S - why do we never test your range?) (D - no need? They always make themselves obvious or are being sneaky specifically to annoy me so *shrug*) (S - I still think we should test it)

Power Absorption (that time with Vortex’s weather powers)

Cryokinesis (Wayyyyy to much ice. NOT testing max output on that) (T - yeah frozen city was enough, let’s not cause an ice age. Tech needs some cool but too much is still bad and I just upgraded Patricia)

Ghostly Wail (cone of destruction, very exhausting - always at max output. Not to be used)

GHOST FORM ONLY (but really just never)

Cartoon Body (D - what???) (S - Freakshow literally turned you into a puddle and you just turned back and were fine. I don’t know what else to call that) (D - okay fair. but:)

GHOST FORM ONLY

Physical Enhancement (better strength, speed, stamina, durability, reflexes, balance, etc much better than human) (T - why does this look like dnd knockoff stats haha)

GHOST FORM ONLY (S - obviously mr last place in PE)

Resistances (pretty solid on the overshadowing, avoided being taken in by Ember until targeted, didn’t get turned to stone during the Medusa thing) (S - which was pure luck! Be careful!)

Ecto Electricity (ghost stinger, but I really don’t think this counts Sam. I mean I just. Make my ecto zappy. But it’s still just ecto) (S - so is your ICE and you don’t just call that "just cold ecto") (D - fine, but it feels overly specific) (S - maybe writing it all down will make you stop. Forgetting. POWERS!) (D - come on Sam that was a lucky hit! I was distracted! And it turned out fine!) (S - Fenton…) (D - oop okay doing fire now)

Ecto Fire (made Dash’s shoes melty that one time by make the ecto hot) (T - really needs more testing)

Tech possession (chasing Technus into computers, not very tested)

Ghost form only, i guess?

Overshadowing (control people, copy their voice, invade dreams - the control one erases the person’s memory so they don’t know they were overshadowed just lost time. I hate Walker. SO much) (T - rip Danny’s reputation, you’ll be missed)

Probably ghost form only

Duplication (T - That’s optimistic) (D - I’M WORKING ON IT OKAY!?) (S - pretty sure it just falls under cartoon body until you can actually separate) (D - :( betrayal)

Probably ghost form only

More? (D - ugh I hope not) (T - hey don’t say that, maybe you’ll get a power to make the JL give a crap about Amity) (D - honestly I’m getting pretty close to letting Boxy loose in Gotham) (S - Danny, don’t stoop to their level!) (D - it's only box ghost!) (T - I mean he has a point)

~~~

Jason changes his mind, seeing the commentary, and deletes the entire hidden file from the computer as soon as his copy is made. He can go over everything and bring any important info to Bruce separately, the bat’s can just chew on the parents’ files for now.

Once the original files are thoroughly and irretrievably removed he pockets his shiny new USB, makes a second one with all the official files, and heads back up and out - carelessly brushing past a thoroughly irate Red Robin with a pair of firemen and broken jaws of life. And not a scratch on the door; impressive - just in time to get Oracle’s text that he’s got 2 hours and 16 minutes to be at the location on his HUD so he can “arrive” to Amity.

And a fresh set of civilian clothes will be waiting in the plane, Alfred as reliable as ever.

“Files,” he says, tossing the safe USB to Batman and interrupting his interrogation of the police officer.

He catches it effortlessly of course, but the officer stops paying attention to him to jolt at Hood’s reappearance - even outside of Gotham his reputation is fierce.

“I sent a copy to myself. I’ll review them and give you an overview, but other than that consider this the end of my involvement in this little shitshow,” he says, continuing smoothly to the door. “I’m heading back to Gotham.”

Now, he has a little over two hours before Jason Todd needs to arrive in Amity Park. He only needs to lay hands on a laptop that he can isolate from Babs’ influence and he should be able to review the Halfa files in full before he "lands" - after he figures out just why the kid has a grudge against the JL.