#only grief. only rage. how dare you call upon it

[cherrytraveller]

sorry that i've deprived you all of a wip preview, anyway; deity-fies your local bad future mystic magic nuke

[lcvelust]

Normalcy / The Black Brothers

Regulus couldn’t forgive his brother to an extent.

“Reg? Reg!” You called through the quiet night, panting as you placed your hands on your knees; the chilly air making your skin crawl after it had burned from your sprint. You stared at Regulus as puffs of air escaped you in mists of white, feet propelling onto the ground as if you’d been frosted over.

“What’re you doing..? What– who’s that?” You breathlessly whispered, eyes digging into the back of the unknown person’s head.

Regulus looked as if he was in denial, specks of fear lining his irises that held that of a fog on a cloudy day, his perfectly arched brows furrowed in confusion. Words were stuck in his throat, hesitance clear as day through his thinned lips, tongue unwilling to unravel.

“Siri?”

He muttered into the stillness of the land, voice as fragile as a thread that was ready to snap at any given moment. His stomach twisted painfully as he forced the syllables out of his mouth, acidic, his heart twinging at the prospect of what his brother had done.

Slowly, the figure turned, its black hood gently falling to his shoulders. His long, raven hair flowed freely in the breeze, toppled with snow as it cascaded down his face that was masked from the kiss of the wind— the intricate wood carvings of his vizard shining bright under the dim moonlight.

You could only watch in shock as the expression on Regulus’ face morphed instantly, the visible fright that he wore melting into one of loathing. A sneer replaced the frown that had etched itself upon his lips, an emotion that both him and Sirius had grown all too familiar with.

He had glared with so much intensity that in a flurry of time, your eyes blurred, for the familiar face of Orion Black, though he couldn’t have been physically there, was dizzying.

Regulus snapped you out of your daze before the image of their father completely slithered into your brain to sink its fangs into your thoughts, jabbing at Sirius’ chest harshly, caring not of his surroundings. “What do you think you’re doing, parading into an assembly like that?”

“Reggie..”

“You could’ve been killed. You’re most fortunate the Dark Lord knows not of your presence.” Regulus locked eyes with Sirius angrily, the snow swirling between the three of you in furious gusts seemingly battling him of his rage.

He hadn’t even let Sirius retaliate before he continued on, spite blossoming on the pits of his chest, a gaping hole instead of a heart that beats. “Ever since we were kids, you’ve been so defiant of our parent’s ideologies. How come you’ve changed your views so suddenly?” He challenged, “how much longer are you going to keep pretending?”

Sirius’ hands balled into fists, his patience fraying like old fabric. He doesn’t know what he’s talking about, he thought. The wind howled, whispering in his ears like a dull mantra, but it felt nothing compared to the tempest raging inside of him. “Just let me explain, please,” he let out desperately, his voice low and steady, dripping with a lack of venom that his brother had used against him.

Sirius hadn’t waited for a response, stepping forward before grabbing Regulus on the arm with a grip that was that of a vice; unyielding.

With a wave of his wand, his mask disappeared off and into the air, a vulnerability glittering in his eyes he had never dared muster in Grimmauld. “Don’t be mad,”

“How couldn’t I be?” Regulus asked, a quiver of his lips present. His eyes didn’t brim with tears easily, he had valiantly fought back: you will yourself to look between them. You wish you hadn’t. The grief that swam in their storms would be enough to haunt you for the rest of your life.

Though, for the first time in years, Sirius looked as if he had his mind set on something. He wanted— no, needed, for his brother to understand.

He had left him in that cruel house with so much anguish, so much hatred for the circumstances he was left in. Deep down, you both knew that it wasn’t Sirius’ fault, it never could’ve been. He’d experienced such abuse that it drove him out, walking out of his parent’s lives without looking back at anything he had ever needed to look after for and more. Closing the door to leave his little brother to fend for himself.

But everything had changed now, it was as obvious as the rising of the sun.

“I did this for you,” Sirius muttered gently, bunching up the black sleeve that hung to shield his left forearm from the cold. His fingers trembled, and with a deliberate motion, he revealed his pale skin that lay beneath the confines of the fabric, the Dark Mark branded in sinister detail.

Regulus seemed to choke back what sounded like a sob racking through his body, not believing of his older brother’s unbecoming. You held onto his shoulders.

“..Why?” He had forced out, the words tumbling out of his throat in a low, grating, voice— almost a screech he’d recognized to be akin to his mother’s. “Why do you keep doing this, Sirius? I don’t.. I can’t understand! You left me be, remember? Why are you suddenly back into my life, now, when I’ve learned to breathe without the thought of you suffocating me?”

Sirius stared at Regulus, his hand still resting on his brother’s arm, the cold seemingly pressing in on them from all sides, as if the world on itself was holding its breath.

“Reg,” Sirius whispered, his voice breaking just slightly, “I’m trying to protect you now, because I.. I know that I was wrong. So wrong.”

“You still are, Siri. There’s a possibility that I’d lose my brother a second time.” Regulus’ expression softened, just barely, before he turned away, his shoulders slumping. “And I don’t know if I can ever forgive you for that.”

The snow continued to swirl around them, but for once, it felt like the moment was finally coming to a standstill.

“I don’t expect you to,” Sirius said quietly, his voice steady despite the turmoil of emotions mushing with the organs inside of his stomach. “But, it’s better me than you. I’ve failed at protecting you once; and I’m here for a chance to redeem myself, I’ll be here for as long as you’ll let me. I won’t leave you again, Regulus. I swear it.”

There was a long pause, and for a fleeting second, it felt like Regulus might say something more, but the moments passed with him gently prying Sirius’ hand off, letting the distance between the both of them grow once more as the night stretched on.

Sirius stood there, watching his brother disappear down the mountain with a tugging of his heartstrings, a throb from his mind. He looked pitiful. His brother was slipping through his fingers again, and he hadn’t quite held him close yet.

He turned to you, offering a faint, strained smile. “I thought I’d meet you again under vastly different circumstances. I’m sorry.” He spoke tenderly, a sliver of hurt threading through his words.

You nodded, the pain in your own heart too deep for you to find your voice. “It’s alright, Black. Forget it.”

Sirius’ gaze settled on your figure, a bitter chuckle escaping him. “I ought to.”

[aixeko]

──────⏯ A WORK OF ART [ ▸ ]

MAIN MASTERLIST ➤ HSR MASTERLIST

🎨 ��� I'LL FIGHT FOR CONTROL BUT THE "RIGHT WAY" TAKES A TOLL AND STILL AT THE END OF IT ALL I CAN'T ESCAPE MY FATE THE WRITING'S ON THE WALL. “ .𖥔 ݁ ˖

| Starring | Famous Violinist!Kafka x [ Child prodigy, failed adult ] Artist!Reader 

| Setting | Modern AU

| Scenario | [ SHORT FIC ] ANGST! Hurt/comfort. Mental Breakdown. Unhealthy mindset. Artist’s struggles. Low self esteem. Identity crisis. Established relationship. Kafka & reader is engaged. Rushed ending… NOT PROOFREAD.

► RADIO CHANNEL [Author note]

× My first Kafka fic on here, wow. Happy holly jolly christmas <3 ×Something about this triggered the 5 stages of grief in me so hard. I hate this fic with my entire soul, it’s so badly written I’m sorry. Especially at the end, It’s so disappointing. Sorry... × Anyway, I highly recommend listening to the duet version between Kaveh and Haitham of Writing on the Wall ! It captures the feels of this fic greatly.

[ Word count: 2721 ] Sources: Love and Deep space, Kafka cosplay, and real life images found on pinterest.

🎻 "I'll come save your soul as your "Right way" takes a toll and then at the end of it all I will rewrite your fate as writing on the wall." ✮⋆˙

With every stroke that strikes the hauntingly pale canvas, the aching prominent in your shoulder seems to grow as if roaring waves taking the form of liquid paint have crashed upon you without a moment's notice. The weight of each stroke takes its toll on you, accumulating like the darkening of the heavens and gathering of clouds before their fierce rage captures its victims in ominousness and instability.

In such a suffocating atmosphere, time felt like nothing more than a worthless nuisance, with its worth only to disturb the bothered and the unbothered. Has the star that this miserable home orbits already fallen prey to slumber, or has its opposite already shrouded the sky in its woefulness? How many times has the Earth already taken its rest while you fought your fatigue under the guise of devotion to one's art? How often have you endeavored to bring forth a masterpiece from a hand marred by mistakes and a mind colored with imperfections? How much longer can your heart allow you to continue this disgraceful creation you would dare call "art"?

Without any hindrance to your movement, another imperfect splash of color daubs the canvas.

Sweat that has amassed begins to feel like the submersion of the ocean itself, followed by the rise and fall of rapid breathing, a frantic attempt to hold a semblance of living in this polluted air brought about by your own destruction.

Your eyes bore into the incoherent carnage of colors. Trembling.

A genius is what you were; a fallen genius is what you are. A desperate soul scouring every inch of one's own being in search of that familiar sensation of flowing fluency, of inspiration, and of motivation. Only to find nothing more than broken pieces.

Without your consciousness's consent, the fuming flame that begs to be unleashed took over, and the hairs of your brush crashed onto the canvas. It takes a while before your lidded eyes glisten, before snapping open at the realization of your misstep. You shake your head nonstop, lips quivering at the distasteful spectacle before your eyes, a sight that nearly has you falling from your high stool.

Calm down, calm down, calm down, calm down, calm down! CALM DOWN!

You repeatedly try to tell yourself, your vision blurring again at the wetness of anguish that weighs on unfulfilled dreams stemming from swollen, red eyes. The strength of your grip tightens around the same tool meant to aid you, a tool that was never meant to destroy you, a tool you now feel immense shame to even have the rightfulness of holding. 

NO.

Your mind is fooling you with lies of deception; yes, that's what it is; that's what it is called: lies, lies, lies. You're still the same prodigy you always were and have been.

This brush is still yours to bear; this brush is still your territory, your invincible sovereignty where no others can take it away from you. For the first time in months, your eyes wander to something beyond the impending doom of your ambition.

You mustn't give up now, no, not yet, not now, not ever, not until your heart ceases to beat and your body turns to ashes of the past. Fame or attention, it doesn't matter; you must, you HAVE to see this through to the end, the day of its completion, the day when it will bask in its infinite glory. No matter the cost, you will... or else—what was the point of all those praises?

They can't be mere meaningless praises of pity toward an innocent, simple-minded child, right? You're still the little prodigy your mother and father had proudly proclaimed all those years ago, right?

Right...?

The shuddering grip on the brush and the unbalanced posture reveal a narrative diverging from reality, a tale where truth has been distorted into a mere blemish on a meticulously crafted illusion. A revelation that you may be able to lie to yourself and others, but one that you cannot lie to your body and soul.

You knew; you always have. You may have had the passion and talent, but you long ago lost one, holding tightly to another, and believing you still have both under your control.

You weren't the same talented child that so many adored anymore, but you were still the same child who continued to be a pathological people-pleaser who only wanted the acknowledgment of others.

In the end, fame and attention do matter because they define the very reasons for your identity and the continuation of your undesirable life.

You are fully aware of this fact, yet you cannot seem to stop yourself. A true artist would weave their personal tragedy and fabricate it into a timeless masterpiece. Yet, you have never pondered one important detail.

What becomes of an artist when their brush is meek, their mind lost in the abyss, with no visions to seek? When their passion has already lost its spark to ignite, and sorrow lingers on, untouched and cold?

It was already nighttime; the moon was at its fullest, yet you don’t have the will to care anymore, lost in the darkness of your thoughts. You don’t indulge in the tiredness, the empty pit in your stomach, or the concentrated primal desire to finally let loose of your entire being. A tempting, melodious voice murmurs in the back of your mind, consuming the entirety of your senses, an offer to travel to the lowest part of the earth, where even the greatest of scientists have yet to discover the fullest extent of it. The watery depth that is known as the abyss, the ocean in which silence can devour you whole. Devoid of a singular worry, devoid of the guilt of being pathetically idiotic in the field where you should have been unsurpassable, devoid of having to live with the fact that you will never be enough no matter the effort you have invested in. Because in the end, puppeteered by fate's hands, those who are blessed by beings of greater power will always succeed over the untalented.

You tilt your head upward, and immediately that nauseating feeling runs its course all over your body. The moonlight emitting through the clear paneglass window mocks you for your misery, taunting you with the art piece that you have embarrassingly spent months on, only to end up with nothing more than a disfigured, incoherent shot of colors. You bite your lip for what seems to be the hundredth time, your swollen eyes streaming enough tears to cover an entire river.

What would everyone think of me? My audience? My mother? My father? You stare up blankly at the ceiling, unable to bear looking at your own creation, a reflection of your inner chaos. What would they all think of me? You wish to never see it again. A heaviness settles in your chest, and you wish to rid yourself of it all, to vanish into nothingness. Your body slumps, silence wrapping around you, thick and suffocating, leaving only shadows of questions echoing in the stillness where time has lost its meaning. What would you think of me—Kafka?

Your grip around your brush loosens, and eventually, your hands relax. You hear the brush drop to the floor alongside the mess of equipment, but its sound registers as nothing more than muffled background noise.

Your eyes surrender to the painful longing to rest, whether involuntarily or voluntarily; you do not know. Slowly, your body begins to yield. You lean back slightly, feeling the world tilting along with you in slow motion like a steady dance with gravity. You're falling, you realize. To say you care would be another lie because you don't. Rather, the eventual fall feels surreal and oddly comforting, like you're drifting into a gentle dream, and the cold floor is like that of a comforting bed that you slump into after a long-awaited day of hard work.

Time stretches, and the world dims, leaving only the sound of your heartbeat pounding in your ears and the arrival of the wooden floor, a final act of surrender as you wait for impact.

If I fall, art will perish with me.

If I don't...

You wait and wait and wait, but the feeling of the harsh wooden floor never comes into contact with your head. Instead, all you could feel were those calloused, ever-so-cautious, indistinguishable hands. You need no vision to identify whose hands those belong to; their touch alone speaks volumes. Those were the hands of a person who has spent a lifetime honing their ability to the utmost, practicing every day with precision and care. The hands of a talented, hardworking genius, someone that you believe you were.

"You're home early." You let out a voice barely above a whisper and drained of a will to live.

"I'm afraid I'm late."

Her usual sultry and dragged-out voice has significantly softened to quiet murmurs only meant for the comfort of your ears. There's an intimacy in her tone as if every whisper is a precious secret she's reluctant to reveal to the world.

You let out an 'Mn' sound, acknowledging her words before you open your teary eyes. Kafka remains silent, her expression unreadable as she observes your evident misery and the wrecked, enormous portrait that she perceives as a reflection of herself, waiting patiently for you to break the silence. Her eyes, filled with equal concern and curiosity.

A deep, shaky exhale escapes you. You sit up before bending forward with your clasped hands pressed tightly against your head and your arms on your thighs. "Kafka," another heavy exhale releases. "Why... tell me, why do we choose to create?"

You hear a slight hesitation in her step; then you feel her hand gently resting on top of your head, the warmth of her touch seeping through, and another hand on your shoulder, grounding you in her presence.

"Because it is the only thing that fate cannot define."

That fate cannot define? You jumped out of your seat, knocking the stool to the ground and catching Kafka off guard, even more so when you hauled her by the collar.

"That's bold coming from you," you pull her closer, "A genius like you wouldn't know how hard it is to struggle to create, especially considering the human desire is to CREATE. You will never KNOW the struggle to have passion but never the talent to make something that isn't nauseating to look at." Kafka's lips part to speak, but in the midst of the storm that has clouded your sight, the world is all but utter darkness to you, and she is the one exception on whom you can vent your frustration.

"People are CHOSEN by FATE; they are CHOSEN, not MADE, not LEARNED. THEY ARE CHOSEN. KAFKA."

"Music is to the soul what words are to the mind, and art is no different; it is a language without words."

Kafka's left fingers traced your collarbone to your jawline, tilting your head slightly until she rested her hand on your cheek, gently wiping away the streaming tears.

"Would you call a genius who spent countless hours and years cultivating their skills until their hands are imprinted with their experience an act of fate, a chosen one?"

"I—"

"You wouldn't." Kafka leans towards you to kiss away the tears of the untouched side. "What a silly question, isn't it? Why do we create? There is no definite answer, and that's what makes art, art."

"Art is a reflection of an artist's truest form of emotion, a way of communication away from the eyes of the world; is it not?"

It is. You admit it mentally, but that reason does not define you; no, the opposite is really, but ashamed to admit it to your fiancée, you turn away from her gaze to save what little dignity you have left.

If I fall... I will give up on art.

Kafka sighed; she let go of her hold and walked past you. Your fists clenched, and you bit your bottom lip until the flesh of it was pierced through until blood was the only thing you could taste, and loud, discordant noise was all you could hear. Your heart was pounding, and it was dropping. Did you just lose the one soul that you have found comfort in? Did you really just lose the one fucking thing that remained a constant in your life? Are you this much of an imbecile?

If I don't... I will continue.

"You look like a lost puppy," Kafka trailed a small streak of red paint on your cheek. "That said, I prefer to see my puppy smiling."

You blink, and for the first time since her arrival, clarity cuts through the haze of your own downpour, revealing your fiancée, your wife, your lover—the woman who has not just stolen but nurtured your heart.

"Was it not you who told me all those years ago that I should stop obsessing over every little detail when I was a naïve teenager?" Kafka sighed dreamily, her smile reaching her eyes and that tender gaze boring mesmerizingly into yours. In this moment, this woman, this woman who presents herself in such a devilish presence, now looks like God's most beautiful creation, an angel who has descended from heaven.

Your lips part, wanting to say something, but those words get lost in your throat as you drag yourself across the floor, hands reaching out to embrace her tightly.

This time for myself.

"...Why couldn't I be a genius? Why couldn't I be born with natural talents?"

"Shh, my love, let your mind rest and focus on the sound of my heartbeat."

As you stand there, the world outside fades into background noises, and her heartbeat is the only melody in which you allow yourself to indulge. Her thumb rubs the painted streak on your cheek, and you lean into her touch, feeling the frustration of before melt away.

"I should have been here for you; a month away from you is a grave regret." Kafka pressed her lips against your head. "You are enough just as you are, and I am here now to prove it to you."

Your eyes grew heavier and heavier until, in the peace of her presence and the warmth of her love, you felt a sense of tranquility wash over you, guiding you into a much-needed, peaceful slumber.

"Ludwig van Beethoven once stated that the true artist is not proud; he unfortunately sees that art has no limits. He feels darkly how far he is from the goal, and though he may be admired by others, he is sad not to have reached that point to which his better genius appears only as a distant guiding sun."

"Then I guess... I'll just have to work until you can't tell the difference between me and a genius."

"Kafka, art is a reflection of an artist's truest form of emotion; it is a way of communicating away from the eyes of the world, a language of the soul. If you practice too much, you will eventually lose your passion. What is art without emotions? What is art without a reason?"

"Are you saying I will never be able to reach their level?"

"There's no such thing as a ranking when it comes to the human desire to create; art is subjective, and so is the beauty of it. Being able to produce any form of art is still art, and no matter the nonsensical opinions of others, it is only you who deserves to make a judgment."

Kafka runs her hand through your hair, feeling the soft strands slip through her fingers as she observes your peacefully resting form.

"A struggle of artistic ideals, an impossibly fast pace of flowing ideas that disappear just as fast as their appearance, and a perfectionistic reality in which the succession of manifestations is humanly impossible."

She chuckled softly, shaking her head. "It's a shame you have fallen prey to it as well," Smoothly, she picked you up, cradling you protectively in her arms, where no harm can be done to you anymore.

"No matter," she continued, her voice a soothing lullaby to your ears. "Just as you once did for me in the past, I will come save your soul."

[feyhunter78]

Trials of Tributes (15/?)

Description: You fulfilled your promise now it's time for Aemond to start fulfilling his.

You held Viserys tightly to you, Aemond’s chest pressed to your back, Vhagar’s wings cutting through the air as she swooped down towards the water, causing Viserys to let out a delighted squeal. Dreamfyre followed, keeping above the ship that housed her rider, and other members of the court.

You were unsure of how Aemond so easily convinced his mother to allow two of her remaining children to depart for Dragonstone, but had a feeling Aemond had not given her much of a choice. Viserys and Jaeheara were seven years of age, both without dragons. You worried for Jaeheara, her own dragon had been killed, many dragons had been killed with only Dreamfyre able to escape. The girl seemed shy around them, preferring to ride in a wheelhouse or ship over her mother or uncle’s dragons.

“Helaena has been too sick with grief to ride her dragon, Jahaera does not know of the connection that can be forged, but in time she will.” Aemond had told you, when you voiced your worries to him, as you packed Viserys’ belongings into a trunk.

Viserys himself, bright, and brimming with excitement seemed to have forgotten the damage dragons can cause, enamored by the tales of glory and the connection between Aemond and Vhagar.

No Targaryen or Velaryon blood ran through your veins, you would never have a dragon, and at times felt along the vein as the Dowager Queen did. It was foolish to attempt to rule the skies, the heavens were for the gods, not man.

“When we arrive, will I get to choose a dragon then?” Viserys asked, craning his neck to look at Aemond.

Aemond gave him a fond smile. He had made Viserys wait to claim a dragon, a mere few months, to ensure that he and Jaehaera trusted one another enough to stand together in the face of a dragon. “We must greet our host, your uncle, first. He has been quite anxious to meet my bride and her child.”

Daeron the Daring, they had called him during the war. He had broken formation and come to his mother and Grandsire’s rescue, preventing King’s Landing from falling into the hands of The Blacks. It had been a barbarous battle, Tessarion and Vhagar fighting Syrax and Caraxes with a ferocity unseen since the Conqueror’s reign. Despite the relentless bloodlust that was said to enter the eyes of the prince at the sight of his mother’s peril, all praised him as a kind man. Aemond spoke fondly of him, citing him and Helaena among his favorites of his family. Now he ruled Dragonstone, a gift from Aemond when he ascended to the throne.

“We will greet him, then Jaeharea and I will run, and run, and run, until we find our dragons.” Viserys said happily, his eyes drifting down to the ship, a small speck of silver you assumed to be Jaeharea on the deck.

“Why would you need to run? Does that help hasten the bond?” You asked, a comical image of ten-year-old Aemond running alongside a flying Vhagar filled your mind, and you bit back a giggle.

“Lord Hightower said that was what my kind does. He said the Princess Rhaenyra and Prince Daemon ran when they danced with Kepa and Kepus Daeron’s dragons.” The words were said so lightly, as if he did not speak of the gruesome death of her parents.

Truly you felt you should correct him, tell him to call them by their familial titles and not by their formal names, out of respect for the dead, but a stronger feeling surged forward.

“Lord Hightower told you that it was what your kind does, runs when around dragons?” You felt the slow trickle of rage, a protectiveness that you had been nurturing since you first laid eyes upon the boy.

Otto had never been fond of you, never deemed you an intelligent or suitable match for his grandson, and his hatred of the Rouge Prince seemed not to have died with the man but lived on, finding purchase in Viserys.

“Yes, and he laughed, but I did not understand the joke. Jaehaera seemed to, though, but she would not explain it to me.” He said, his brows furrowed but soon smoothed as he smiled up at you.

He was a darling child, sweet and forgiving, seeking goodness in others as a flower seeks the sun.

“Otto is old, his mind must be going, pay him no mind.” You said sharply, sharper than you intended, a flash of hurt across Viserys’ face.

You leaned down and brushed a kiss to his temple. “You will not need to run, kepa will guide you.”

“I will speak with my grandsire when we arrive, I swear to you.” Aemond whispered, his lips to your ear, sending a shiver down your spine.

This was not the only promise Aemond had made regarding your arrival at Dragonstone. As soon as Vhagar had touched down, and Viserys was following the guards out towards the incoming ship, Aemond beckoned you into an alcove, away from the eyes of others.

“Aemond you cannot allow your grandsire to say such cruel things to our son. Viserys is your son in all but blood—he is your blood, though you are not his father, he sees you as such, and it is callous to stand by while your grandsire torments him.” You said, crossing your arms over your chest. You had grown bolder in your time as queen, more willing to go against Aemond’s desires when you truly believed the battle worth fighting.

“I will speak with him, tell him not to speak with Viserys unless his words are kind.” He reassured you, a smile tugging at his lips, as he admired the fire in your eyes.

You smiled back, softening under his devoted gaze. “I thank you, husband. For your words, and for all this.” You motioned to the courtyard, to the gateway he provided for your son.

Aemond nodded, cupping your face, his thumbs stroking the apples of your cheeks possessively. “There is a great, painted table, a map of the realm, in a room with soaring windows, I wish to take you upon it, claim my wife over and over atop the physical representation of my realm. If she would be obliged to thank me in such a way.”

You had long since made the connection between Aemond’s lust for you and power, between his desire to be loved and affirmed in his role. Not only as husband, but king.

You leaned into his touch, eyes fluttering as his hypnotic voice swept over you, each word spoken softly and coated in desire.

“If she would allow her husband to do such a thing, to take her upon the realm, he would burn for her.” He purred, one hand sliding down, down, down, beneath your skirts as he pressed your back to the wall.

“My husband knows quite well; I would allow him to do all he wished.” You gasped, pitch rising when he hiked your leg up and pressed your core to his, his cock half hard against you.

“So very obedient, my sweet wife, perhaps we shall conceive a child upon the painted table, a child of the realm.” He groaned quietly, his forehead resting against yours. “You would take me so well as I seeded you, beg me to spill within you, keep me within you until you drain me of all seed and thought.”

You moaned quietly at his words, Aemond’s hips beginning to move, a slow grinding motion that makes your breath hitch.

“And what a perfect mother you would be, so beautifully swelled and flushed with health, the blood of my child within you, the flames of a Targaryen sheltered within such a divine form.”

“Aem—” He cuts you off with a hand over your mouth.

The sound of footsteps rapidly approaching has him stepping back in a hurry, attempting to straighten himself out.

“Brother, I was wondering where you were hiding.”

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[credince--writes]

mor·tal·i·ty Chapter 1

Masterlist Simon "Ghost" Riley x Fem!OC x John "Soap" MacTavish

Description:

TF141 has been disbanded, and they have returned to civilian life, forming a PMC company focused on logistical consulting of the operations they once preformed. John MacTavish never truly recovered from the accident, and never let Simon back in to pick up the pieces that were left. Camile Ford had never been one to bend the whims of morals, never stepping to close to dance with the fire of her own mortality. But divinity calls her name, and she's never been one to ignore the higher powers calling her name.

Warnings: Dead Dove: Do Not Eat

Johnny never really recovered from that last mission. Enough was evident by the time they’d been dispersed back to their homes, respectively. Two weeks of no contact had been enough to warrant Simon breaking into his flat with a credit card and the meat of his shoulder- opening the door to a studio flat that smelled like old beer and piss.

He dosen’t remember what happened, exactly. But he does know it was enough for Simon to force him into the back of his car, stuff a duffel bag full of his dirty laundry scattered around the floor. One framed photo that’d long since been knocked off the wall in a fit of rage, shattered on the floor. He can only imagine the infuriating look of pity and disgust displayed on Simon’s face as he entered the room, finding him rotting on a mattress Johnny hadn’t dared to even put a fitted sheet on. He was a bad dog. He didn’t deserve the comfort of civilian life. He needed to be muzzled, and locked in a kennel.

He needed to be left to rot, to pick the flesh off of his bones and weep.

Beg for forgiveness.

They had all left the service, after that last mission. It hadn’t been all at the same time- but it had been staggered closely enough that he wasn’t able to hide from the faces of his previous teammates nearly long enough. Truly hadn’t even scratched the surface of his grief before he was being wrestled out of bed, kicking, screaming, biting and snarling trying to solicit any reaction from his lieutenant. He wanted to be met with retaliation, anger, spite. He wanted to be punished. He wanted to have the pain he craved inflicted upon him.

He was met with love.

He despised it.

Every time he fought back, every time he bared his teeth trying to lash out with any kind of hurt he could think  to warrant a reaction- he was met with nothing but softened brown eyes and a tone of forgiveness. I know how hard this is for you Johnny, and I won’t let you go through this alone. I love you.

Seven months into their broken, codependent and avoidant, hate and love, thing. Simon’s phone rang while Johnny sat at the island of their shared apartment, staring intently at the cup of steaming liquid in front of him. The side glance Simon had given him as he stepped out of the room panged someone deep at his pride- the adults were talking, obviously Simon couldn’t risk him being within earshot. Laswell calling in a favor, exchanging into something more of an opportunity to fill a needed void- one they had probably contributed too.

He’d found out, not much later that Laswell had set Price up in a fancy little office. Fit the big ol’ mustache into a suit, shined shoes and combed hair to create some type of consulting security company out of the states. What that really meant was- a front for a deep rooted PMC system that trained, or consulted to whatever Laswells file dictated. Much more separated from the boots in the sand, blood dripping down skin approach Simon had been used to in the past- however he’d found solace in the pen against paper. Fingers tapping against keys, assistants, meetings, some type of purpose in life that hadn’t directly come from the value of him, personally, at least, dragging a knife through the cartilage and arteries of his victims throat.

It was at this point Johnny had simply swayed between not caring about anything- and violent bouts for independence from the smothering weight of it’s ok, and i’ll love you regardless of the words you don’t mean.

He very much means them, and he puts every ounce of willpower into throwing as much bile against the man. Somewhere between realizing that he truly had let himself go- and Simon’s surprising ability to overpower him just by grabbing him by the back of the neck and pinning him to any surface to get him to stop from his own self destructive tendencies, did he realize how he could hurt the man- and make it stick.

And he left.

A note, scratched out onto paper.

You can’t love what never loved you back.

[writer-of-the-lamb]

I have another scenario for you, this time it's more angsty and serious. I've seen through the game the Bishops even after they came back to life still don't show any show of regret about the lamb kind genocide. There's not a moment when I don't think how angry Lamb would be to have the same murderers of his kind still acting like when they were Gods and having no amount of shame of what they have done. Under their eyes Lamb would show his darkest face of the lamb who lost everything. The Bishops would see the most powerful God that has existed while Narinder sees a little lamb in grief.

thank u so much for this! i adore the idea AHH

the softness in narinder after that kibd of realisation

"little lamb in grief" :(

adore it!

also merry christmas! hope you like this.

----

The firelit cult site was silent. Not a single star in the sky dared to look upon the scene before them. Roars and smashes came from inside the church, the followers unable to leave their shelters, as commanded by the lamb hours ago.

He had come from a crusade, carrying with him the material to create a statue of victory - all of the bishops had been slaughtered. However instead of a usual celebration, the lamb was eerily quiet, commanding everyone to a sleep through a ritual he promised was "for the best."

Narinder anxiously paced outside the church. The bleats from inside did not feel joyous as they usually were when the lamb happily cried to show him his latest accomplishment.

This was different. This was violent.

The cries were dark. Enraged, strong, broken.

The warm glow of red magic would flash and flicker through the double doors, causing Narinder to wince every time he turned.

He had not seen his siblings since he'd been chained and banished. Resentment was there, of course...but he had grown curious as to why they were not recruited like many other heretics the lamb had dealt with.

Narinder had nothing in his heart for them. Whether murdered or harvested, he could not care less, but alike a cat, he wondered and pried into whatever he could to discover the bishops' fate.

So here he was, listening to an outburst reminding him of the rage he had felt above after being outcast.

Narinder squeezed his eyes shut as the earth vibrated, taking a few steps closer to the door. He pressed his outstretched palm into the wood, followed by his forehead.

"Lamb." he called softly in a deep rumble.

The cries halted with heaving breaths. "What." came a low hiss from inside.

"Your temper is becoming foolish."

The doors flung open, jerking Narinder back onto the grass.

Before him, bathed in ruby light, was no lamb he had known before. Eyes red and weeping, fleece mangled with blood and rage, figure taller than his.

And behind him was a massacre.

Leshy, pinned behind camellia vine, coughed up the petals in a choked cry, whereas a dark puddle of water held Kallamar's unconscious figure. Heket, he recognised, her throat wounds stretched open to a new degree. Shamura was there too, their own web caught around their neck in what looked like an attempt at hanging.

All of them, seemingly alive, stared at Narinder with a horror and pleading gaze.

The lamb, eyes gleaming, calmed his breath. "What do you want." he demanded.

Narinder looked up at him through his brow. "You are angry." he said simply.

"He is no lamb I have known." Leshy spat, calling hoarsely.

"Because I am the only one who fought." The lamb replied, turning to him. He raised his hand, a flurry of black ichor following his palm. "And all of them will be set free when you are struck into the ground and mud from whence you ca-"

"Lamb." Narinder walked forward, ignoring Leshy's begging whimpers. "I understand." he said, eyebrows knitted in emotion foreign to him.

The lamb's gaze hardened, the ichor still swarming his arm. "You could not understand. You ordered this on me. Their souls went to you."

Narinder clenched his jaw, straining his eyes to avoid looking at the terrifyingly large amount of power inching toward him.

"Then why not kill him too." Shamura spat, coughing against the webbing. "You have had your fun with us. He was the one being fuelled by your cursed brethren."

The lamb flicked his hand, sending the ichor splattering onto Shamura, who hacked and coughed against it.

Leshy whimpered again, struggling against the vines of his own flower.

"I know why he won't kill him." came a shaking voice from Kallamar, shoving his head from the puddle he lay in. "We're immortal." he hissed. "Narinder can't die like the rest of the sheep you cared for."

Narinder's eyes flicked to the lamb's, heart sinking slowly. He touched his paw to the fleece, earning a flinch from the lamb.

"Lamb," he said again, looking into the furious red eyes, "A God can defeat everything but the past. No anger will win. Believe me, I know." he added, the bishops' eyes staring daggers to him.

"You are insane! He is no God, no lamb, that is a devil. A monster. A creature of the depths and darkne-" "HE IS A LAMB." Narinder bellowed, silencing Shamura and the others. The lamb turned to him, his eyes loosing their glow.

"He is a lamb. Like you are a spider, you a toad, you a worm and you a squid. He is not only a lamb, he is the lamb. The last." Narinder's eyes narrowed. "There is a knowing rage within oneself when your kind is erased. Why I am not punished, I do not know. But you have hurt him more than I."

Shamura growled against the webs, seething. "You are soft and weak. Predator turned prey."

The lamb stepped in front of Narinder. "Like I as prey turned predator." he whispered. "I have mercy for every follower I find, for they have never killed for evils. Righteousness some, defence some, but never evil, unlike you with my kind."

"Oh, but you are the embodiment of it, lamb. You are the evil. And we are the fear. They will soon be, too." They muttered, nodding to the church doors.

The lamb's breathing picked up once more.

Narinder clasped the lamb's hand in his own. "Leave. Leave and go to the pond, I will finish them."

The lamb's eyes softened. "For evil?" he asked, voice pained.

"No," Narinder looked deep into his eyes. "For justice. For you."

"Why?"

"I do not like to see you grieving." he whispered softly. "Whatever justice I may bring, I will try to. An apology for my own wrongdoing."

Shamura hissed, cursing at them to no avail. The lamb's body became engulfed in red magic, shrinking to his normal height, his eyes the same innocent black.

He clung to Narinder's robes, shaking.

"Do it." he begged, eyes shut.

[quartzhearted]

✦ tarrion: an odd interval of blankness felt after something big happens to you but before you feel the resulting emotional reaction.

the funeral is held on a clear, sunny winter afternoon.

it takes place in the great chapel within the castle, filled so tightly that thousands of people pour out of the doors into the castle halls and down the great staircase. brodia natives, firenese, the occasional solmic. madam ève of firene, sat at the front and dressed in black, tulle pulled over her expression, clutching a bouquet of lentil flowers and lillies in her hands. his mother and father, aging, devoid of all their posture and their positivity, mother hunched over sobbing into her hands, father with a hand on her back and another covering his eyes.

and then there is morion, seated across from the open casket that holds his deceased brother. he doesn't move.

he remembers how he'd found him. elusia had come on strong, archers lining their ranks to counter all of the footsoldiers in their ranks. morion was a general and his brother the leader, and what a leader that man was! his word was gospel to the infantry---a call to action was all it took to send the sea towards the snow. morion himself ran like a beast, brushing off arrows like it was nothing and cleaving elusian nuisances with no problem. it was such a familiar motion, getting into these border skirmishes with his brother at the helm.

but when morion had turned around, ready to take his next order from his brother the king-to-be,

the man was on the ground, arrows rising from his back.

morion can't say he remembers much; all he knows is the warmth of his brother's blood on his shoulder and the horrible weight of him, fading, on his back.

even now, he doesn't feel anything. no rage, no despair---only quiet. the healers had him patched up, he thinks offhandedly, examining his brother's chest. probably wouldn't have made for a nice open casket if he still had holes in him.

he knows that emotion is frowned upon. his father is trying to rein in his emotions at his son's funeral, for godssake. so does that make him a good person or a bad one that he feels nothing?

morion stares at anything but his brother's pallid face. lillies line the casket and spill to the floor; the sun shines through the stained glass down to his brother like an invitation; the guy playing the ceremonial organ definitely knows what he's doing; they cleaned and buffed his brother's sword just for the occasion.

tonight, he will not sleep---overcome with massive, descending waves of grief, he will trash his room in furious tears. he will scream, he will cry, he will spit raging insults at the elusians that dared to take his brother away from him. he will injure himself on the flying shrapnel of tables and glassware and he will bleed; he will step out of brodia and into a world where nothing is just and everything is aflame with spite. he will become the worst version of himself.

but for now, the tides have recessed. morion sits and watches, waiting for the procession to be over, waiting for them to close the casket so he doesn't risk acknowledging the truth,

that his brother is really and truly gone

and he failed his duty as younger to protect him.

[ironcladrhett]

TIMING: Current

LOCATION: Still an abandoned soap factory

PARTIES: Inge (@nightmaretist), Siobhan (@banisheed), Emilio (@mortemoppetere), & Rhett (@ironcladrhett)

SUMMARY: On the night that Rhett is to lose his second foot and probably his life, Emilio makes a daring entrance and tries to bargain with his captors for his freedom.

CONTENT WARNINGS: Suicidal ideation (of the life exchange variety)

—

It wasn’t really like Inge was short on nutrition at the moment, with Rhett providing a steady supply of snacks, but there were still those human cravings. Besides, Siobhan presumably did require human sustenance (or did Banshees sustain themselves on screams?) and so a grocery store run seemed fitting. The mundanity of overhead lights and inflation were a stark contrast to the blood that had just coated Siobhan’s fingers, but it came with important rewards. Lollipops. 

As the pair walked to Siobhan’s non-conspicuous car, Inge was sure to continue the point she’d been trying to make. “I think you’ve– we’ve had our fun. The longer go on like this, the riskier it gets.” She pulled open the passenger side door, tossing the groceries in before taking a seat. “Someone’s bound to look for even such a sorry sod at some point.” She pulled the door close, muffling any other words from any sharp ears, looking at Siobhan sharply. “I want him dead before sunrise. Can you settle with that?”

—  

Torturing Rhett had given Siobhan an emotional and creative fulfillment that she’d never felt before. It had also—though she would never admit it—given her a friend. A friend she hated and a friend that was an abomination and a friend that, perhaps, didn’t see her as a friend at all but a friend nonetheless. It would be embarrassing to admit that she had prolonged Rhett’s torture not just because it was fun but because she was having fun with Ingeborg. She thought they were really bonding. Violence was what made true friends; so it had been in her aos sí, so it was in that soap factory. 

“Oh.” Siobhan leaned against the driver’s side door; one arm spread on top of the hearse, which she rested her chin upon. “What risks? He’s hardly a danger. Risks of having too much fun?” Following Ingeborg—could she just call her Inge now? They were friends, after all—lead, Siobhan ducked into the car. “You’re such a bore. I wish someone would come for him. That’d really make it interesting. I could use one of the other saws on them. I was thinking about the circular one; it’s brand-new.” Siobhan turned to her accomplice and noted the lack of amusement. “Fine.” The car sputtered to life, wheezing and coughing up black exhaust. “Dead tonight, meanie. Give me one of the candies.” 

—

Ever since he’d found Rhett’s cane abandoned on the street, Emilio had been a flurry of activity and nervous energy. No time had been taken to pause for stupid things like sleep or meals, and any responses to texts or messages from friends had been brief and curt. He wasn’t stupid. He knew how this was likely to end, knew he was probably looking for a corpse more than he was looking for a man, but even so, he searched tirelessly. If a corpse was all that was left of his brother, he’d still bring it home. He’d still do for Rhett what Rhett had done for Juliana and Flora in Mexico two years ago, even if he was the only one who’d care enough to visit the patch of dirt he planted him in. 

And he’d still make sure whoever was responsible paid for it.

That anticipatory grief in his chest was matched only by the anger, the rage that warmed him like a furnace in the dead of winter. On some level, he knew it was a stupid thing to feel. Rhett had been reckless since coming to town, had gone after too many people and let too many go. The fact that most of them were people who didn’t deserve it ached in a different sort of way, but it wasn’t relevant to the point. This town was probably full of people who’d like to hurt Rhett, and Emilio shouldn’t have been surprised that one of them took a shot. But the grief was there anyway. The rage was there anyway. So he did the only thing he’d ever really been good at — he followed the trail. 

Javier heard from Lara who heard from Beto that a professor at the college hadn’t been in in a few days. The professor was one with a familiar name — if anyone would go after Rhett, Emilio thought, it would be the mare he’d locked in his bunker. But wherever she was hiding, she was hard to find. In a way, that gave him hope; it meant Rhett might still be alive, though it promised he’d be in bad shape. Still, Emilio did his best to douse the feeling. Hope would do nothing but get him killed here.

It was funny; when he finally found her, it wasn’t even intentional. He stopped by the store to pick up a protein bar when his stomach finally began to cramp in protest of its emptiness, and there she was. It was something of a surprise to see her with Siobhan; maybe it shouldn’t have been. He hadn’t heard anything about Rhett going after the banshee, but a fae would have every reason to want a warden dead regardless. Neither of them spotted him. He wasn’t sure either of them would know to look for him. It was easy enough to fall into step behind them, far enough away to avoid detection but close enough to keep from losing them. Inge’s presence helped with that; all he had to do was follow that pull in his gut towards the undead thing ahead of him, ignore the way it mingled with the dread there.

One way or another, he’d get his brother back tonight.

—

Siobhan’s complete apathy to the risks was something that made Inge feel inferior. She was not overreacting, was she, in assuming that this could lead to more trouble? Violence begot violence. That was why they were here now. That was why she tended to run rather than face the people who chased her tail. She dug around for a lollipop of a flavor she liked and unwrapped it with a note of frustration, telling herself she was wary and that was good and that it wasn’t really that Siobhan was better than her, she was just … unhinged. Yes. That was a good term. 

She popped the lollipop in her mouth and got a cola-flavored one for the banshee (this was, in her opinion, the worst flavor), undoing the wrapping for her as well before holding it out. “The best hunter is a dead one,” she said sagely, wondering if Siobhan would simply bite down on the lollipop or if she’d reach for it with her hand. Inge kicked up her legs, licking her own candy merrily. “We can have our fun another way.” 

The drive was quickly over and done with, the hearse pulling up to the abandoned factory with fitting noise. The place had grown familiar, but the sight that was Rhett the Warden hadn’t. Inge’s torments and her horrors existed somewhere else, on a plane not bound by earthly harm. Or so, at least, she had told herself. So Sanne had told her, eons ago. It was different. It was more sophisticated. It was a gift. Her eyes flicked over the sight of him before tossing the bag of groceries on the ground. This was hardly a gift. The only thing left was to kill him in a poetic manner and move on. “Told you we’d be back soon,” she said to Rhett, wondering if he’d want a lollipop. “Do you like artificial sweeteners?”

—

The best hunter is a dead one. Inge’s simple statement rattled in Siobhan’s head; bouncing around with each rumble of her hearse and each jump over cracked concrete. The clever retort that she felt obligated to have didn’t leave her mouth—it hadn’t even been formed. Instead, Siobhan watched the shifting landscape as they approached the factory. There was a time where she believed in the practical minimizing of harm; a time when Fate’s course seemed linear. Life existed in a tangle: webs and threads interwoven, pulled through space-time, woven again, transported into unknowable, unthinkable dimensions. When she’d tried to minimize harm, when she’d tried to be kind, she cost her people seven other lives. The best hunter was a living one, until Fate came. And Fate had not yet called for Rhett. 

Lost in her thoughts, Siobhan hadn’t realized that she’d entered the factory at all. Had she remembered to turn the hearse off? Park it in the overgrown bushes where it couldn’t be seen from the road? She shook her head. She tried to bring back the face of the woman who adored violence, who only knew it, but instead a woman who mourned controlled her features. She saw Rhett as he was: bloody, broken, miserable. She wondered if he’d ever forgive her one day—then she castigated herself for thinking that. And, anyway, he would be dead soon. But she hadn’t screamed for him yet, and until then, she wondered if he would forgive her and if he’d think it was silly that she cared about that at all. 

Siobhan knelt to the bag, crinkling plastic cutting through the air thick with the acrid scent of old blood. Off to the side, the bits of Rhett’s lost leg buzzed with a swarm of happy flies. “What flavour do you want, Rhett?” She smiled for him; dead men deserved kindnesses, sometimes. “We got everything because I said—well, it won’t be funny now if I retell it—but I wanted all of them. And there’s jellybeans…” Siobhan held up the little bag full of them—a plastic bag inside of another plastic bag. Did humans hate the world this much? “I don’t know anyone that likes jelly beans. They’re an abomination.” She pointed to Inge. “Worse than her, actually.” 

—

He couldn’t be absent for everything, unfortunately. While his tendency to slip into altered states of consciousness had done him some favors over the last few days, sending the two creatures off in the wee hours of the morning to resume their activities the next day, he always came back out of it. The first time they’d decided to take a break, they’d left him secured to a pole that ran from floor to ceiling so he didn’t excuse himself without their consent. He’d been stuck there since, sitting with head bowed and long hair framing his face, silent until he heard the sound of them returning. 

Rhett drew a long, shaky breath as their footsteps grew louder. They’d taken his leg, cut it off just above the knee and cauterized it about as well as you’d expect, and he was pretty sure he had an infection on top of the constant, agonizing pain of nerve endings being ripped to shreds by less than surgically precise methods. He stared down at it, down at the bloodstain where his limb should have been, at the frayed edges of pants hurriedly cut away, stained a blackish-brown. His right leg, while still attached to him, wouldn’t be for long. Siobhan had started in on the toenails of that foot last night, which meant that tonight, if she was working in a pattern... It was a miracle he hadn’t died from blood loss already, but maybe that’s what the breaks were really for. And maybe, he thought as his captors questioned him about sucker flavors, that was the only reason they were giving him any kind of sustenance.

Rather than answer on the subject of his liking of artificial sweeteners or his preferred synthetic flavor, he just lifted his chin and stared. If you didn’t count all the tormented hollering, he hadn’t spoken a word to them in two days. He just shivered, underdressed for the frigid weather, and blinked blearily at them.

“You ain’t screamed,” he finally said pointedly and in a hoarse voice. That meant he wasn’t going to die… yet. He knew the amount of time that could pass before the banshee let one rip was highly variable—it could happen days before he departed from this mortal coil, or it could happen seconds before what remained of the light in his eyes was snuffed out. It would happen, but there wasn’t much comfort in that unless he was on his way to someplace safe. This was not someplace safe. This was… hell. 

His gaze jumped to Inge.

“Why am I here? This about you? This about revenge?” he growled, lowering his chin again. His hands, now more loosely tied behind his back and keeping him from wandering far from the pole, twisted against each other at the wrist. His frustration was building, unexpectedly, since he’d more or less been floating through the last few days in a quiet haze or full dissociative state. He was frozen half to death, he was starved, exhausted from lack of sleep and blood loss, and everything hurt. How long were they going to drag this out? Even he didn’t torture fae for this long. Once they told him what he wanted to know, he killed them. 

“What d’you want?” the warden snarled before giving them time to actually respond. “Just fucking—get it over with. Just fucking get it over with.” He wasn’t begging. Rhett would never beg for his own life. But maybe that was only because he tried to mask the desperation with anger. He snapped his head up to look at Siobhan, looking furious. “Scream, already!” he commanded, like that would help anything.

—

It was agony, following them. Keeping back, suffocating that rage in his chest to something that had him acting tactical instead of lashing out… it wasn’t in his nature. Emilio had always been a flurry of fury, with a style of fighting that could only really be described as animalistic. His advantage always came in the way he kept fighting until consciousness left him, not in anything resembling planning. He knew he was no good at that. He’d proven it time and time and time again. And, right now, everything he had wanted to launch himself at these women who’d taken his brother from him, wanted to rip them into pieces, wanted to tear their throats out with his fucking teeth. 

But then, he stopped to listen. 

He eavesdropped, he let their conversation wash over him. They spoke about Rhett like he was still alive, and Emilio knew he’d never get his brother back before it was too late if he killed his captors now. The way they spoke implied that Rhett was in bad shape; there would be no time to look for him, especially not when he knew he’d have to do it alone. He couldn’t ask anyone to help him with this. Not Wynne, who had good reason to hate him. Not Teddy, who he’d seen having pleasant conversations with Siobhan online. Not Jade, who was so interconnected with Regan that going after the other banshee in any way was bound to cause complications. The only person he could realistically expect assistance from was Parker, and he was pretty sure his rage at him matched his rage towards Rhett’s tormentors at this point. He’d never be able to trust the other warden in a fight.

And so, Emilio was on his own. It was hardly a rarity, hardly an experience he was unfamiliar with. He’d spent two years on his own after he and Rhett parted ways in Mexico, would have kept at it if not for Wicked’s Rest and its citizens’ strange habit of giving a shit about people they shouldn’t. Emilio was fine on his own, could handle himself in a fight just fine. He’d get his brother back or he’d die trying, but either way, at least he’d be saved the grief of losing him.

So, he followed. To the parking lot, watching what car they slipped into. It was recognizable, hard to mistake for anything else on the road. Not many hearses driving around. That was good. He slipped into the driver’s seat of the car he’d once again ‘borrowed’ from Teddy, maintaining a slight distance behind the hearse as he drove with his hands white-knuckling the steering wheel. His heart stuttered uncomfortably. Left turn. Nausea tugged at his gut. Right turn. He saw a flash of Edgar’s body on the road, crumpled and bloody. Stoplight. Victor sat beside him in the passengers’ seat, sporting every injury his mind could imagine since he’d been spared the knowledge of knowing what killed him. Accelerate. Edgar’s corpse again, but his hair was longer now. Gray. His head tilted, and it was Rhett’s face there instead. Victor, in the seat beside him, morphed in a similar manner. 

The hearse pulled off the road, and Emilio did the same. Into a parking lot, with no one else around. He switched off the headlights, parked a ways away. He watched them enter, and he waited. One heartbeat. Two. He couldn’t stomach the thought of a third, moved from the driver’s seat and onto the concrete. The ache in his bad leg was a long-forgotten thing, his mind forcibly pushing it aside. Pain is a message, his mother told him once. Messages can be ignored. He was getting better at it with practice. 

He unpacked the trunk. Iron blades, weapons borrowed from Teddy’s basement. He grabbed a knife Rhett had gifted him years ago, the handle worn but the blade kept sharp. He thought it might be poetic to kill one of them with it. Both of them, maybe. Everything in the damn factory, if Rhett was dead inside of it. 

The closer he got to the door, the clearer he could hear the murmurs. The sensation of the dead thing inside made his stomach turn just as much as the smell of blood did. The two of them combined had his mind reeling, skipping back and forth between here and there. The factory was a living room was a street. Long dead corpses rotted scentlessly in the corner. His daughter’s body was crumpled in the center of the room. Rhett was missing a leg. Juliana was screaming. Siobhan was silent.

For a moment, he thought he was too late. He thought he’d gotten here just to collect a corpse, just to give himself something else to bury. But then, Rhett shifted. He spoke. He sounded rough, sounded more pained than Emilio had ever heard him, and the world fell apart and fell back together at the same time. It was strange, seeing his brother this way. For so long, he’d thought of Rhett as invincible by necessity. Victor was dead. Edgar was dead. So Rhett couldn’t be. His other brothers died screaming, too young or too old, so he made Rhett a monument to them in their absence, created an immortal thing out of a husk. He’d been proven wrong before, of course; Rhett was already down an eye, had needed a cane even before the monsters in the shadows had taken his fucking leg. But even so, Emilio had never seen him like this. 

He looked small. Emilio wanted to tear the world apart with his bare hands.

There was no time to waste, he knew. The first thing he needed to do was take care of the mare. Prevent her from using the astral to her advantage, keep her from slipping into the shadows to attack him from behind. If she got one hand on him, put him to sleep, this whole thing would be over. The banshee’s scream was a concern, too, but the mare needed to be grounded first. Fighting deaf would still be easier than fighting unconscious. 

Slipping the sword off his back, he tested its weight momentarily. Balanced. High quality. If he survived this, he’d have to thank Teddy for letting him borrow it. He waited until Inge moved a little, waited until she was lined up the way he needed her to be with the wall. And then, in a flurry of rage, he went in for the strike.

He made no sound as he stormed into the room, offered none of his usual dry humor as he shoved the blade through the mare’s stomach and into the wall behind her with all the strength he had. It went in deep, stuck hard. It would take enhanced strength to pull it out again. Otherwise, she’d have to peel herself off it by slicing through herself, sliding to the side. It would hurt either way. Emilio was glad for that.

—

She never stuck around to see the results of her actions when it came to her sleepers. She visited them on a schedule, slowly pushing further and further into their minds to make it her own playground. Sometimes she witnessed them wake, but that was it — Inge always disappeared until they could fully react. And here was Rhett, tied like a stray, wounded dog with blood sticking to him and the surface below him. He was reduced in a multitude of ways. 

It was a strange thing, to be so confronted with her actions. To have the harm done by her collaborator (not her — for all her assistance, Inge remained convinced it was Siobhan responsible for that missing leg) so clearly on display. It wasn’t that it gave her pause, but it was a sensation she wasn’t sure she’d intend to experience again. Even if she’d gained material for new works. She turned the lollipop around in her mouth while considering the sight, distantly glad that it would be done before dawn. It was not a feeling she had any interest in investigating. 

So she simply stared back at him, popping the lollipop from her mouth to answer his growled questions. Questions. He had barely spoken these past days, an impressive feat that Inge would not have achieved had the places been reversed. They had been, once, though not for as long. Humans were easier to trap. “Well, the idea started when you hurt a mutual …” She thought for a moment, “Student of ours. I’m not generally one for vengeance like this, but Siobhan is an inspiring woman and well, I really would like to see you and your experimental ways out of this world.” It would be bad praxis to reveal that Siobhan and her hadn’t really agreed on what had occurred, but Inge wasn’t tactical, nor was Rhett long for this world. “So we agreed to put our differences aside to kill you. We’ll get there.”

She had judged him, hadn’t she? For locking her in that bunker. For putting Ariadne in that van for a week. For the cruelty of it — not just a quick axe to the head, but something drawn out. But this was different. This was retribution. “I don’t like to limit my fellow creatives, though.” With the way he was asking for it, for that inevitable end, Inge almost felt inclined to let Siobhan follow her whims and let this draw out. Even if she was growing antsy from this space, her mind bending in strange ways, leaving her giddy and nervous and wondering if she should start packing, wondering if she should try to help Siobhan with the next toe and whether she could even handle such a thing. Whether she was weaker, for not being able to fight or maim in such a way, or whether it just made her more sophisticated. Whether she was worse than the hunters for this. Whether it mattered. 

She’d blame that spiraling mind for not noticing what came next until it was too late.

The blade reached her only a few seconds after she’d caught sight of Cortez, eyes widening and mind preparing to reach for her beloved astral — but she couldn’t. The sword ran through the full depth of her and a sound fell from her lips, somewhere between a scream and a roar. Her fingers let go from the lollipop, which shattered like glass onto the ground. Eyes dropped to what had been slid through her insides, wide and frightened and furious. She tried to focus, not entirely convinced that this should lock her in place but it wasn’t there, her connection to her favored place of existence. 

Panic was an emotion spread easily, especially when it went hand in hand with adrenaline, and Inge reached forward to try and claw at the now-free hilt, but she only cut herself deeper. Another wail of pain, eyes dancing through the room, “Do it, Siobhan.” Surely the banshee knew what she meant by that.

—

It was interesting being told what to do. Siobhan had spent so much of her life listening, obeying, deferring. She was, by her very nature, a vehicle for choices that weren’t hers. Rhett wanted her to scream, as though his death was up to her—well, it was up to her but it wasn’t up to her. Another banshee would understand (but not Regan, Regan understood nothing). Inge also wanted her to scream and that one tickled in the back of her throat; she almost did it reflexively, just because some woman told her to. She thought it was all a little funny. 

Emilio burst in like a rabid dog—remarkably silent—and honed on Inge as though she had personally eaten the kibble from his bowl. Siobhan watched it all in slow motion: Inge’s expression, the sword, the wall. The sword was a nice touch, Inge obviously trying to blink away from the scene wasn’t. Did she plan on leaving her here? With the hunters? And she was telling her what to do? Yes, do it. She ought to do it. It was always about her and needing to do it; all her life, a series of things to do. All it would take was one scream, in a matter of seconds, to rid the world of Emilio, Rhett and Ingeborg. Did they understand that? Did they ever once think about her generosity? Or, perhaps, why was it that she just didn’t go around screaming? Was any intelligent thought spared for her? Considering the people surrounding her, probably not. It was embarrassing that she’d considered Ingeborg a friend for a moment; she’d be blocking that memory out. 

Siobhan knelt to Rhett’s level, placing a hand on his shoulder. “Any of you move and I scream,” she said. “Except you, Ingeborg, feel free to squirm.” She looked along the bloody factory ground to Emilio, and the pinned mare; he was bundled up, she was oozing glitter. “I shouldn’t have to remind you, Emilio, that all it takes is one breath for Rhett to turn into pudding. Rhett, you tell him.” With her free hand, she rummaged around the grocery bag, freeing a lollipop. Ripping the plastic with her teeth, she slid the treat against her tongue. “Ugh.” She frowned. “Grape.” The plastic stick danced from one end of her mouth to the other as she thought about their situation. 

Ingeborg probably felt very good about herself, impalement aside; she should have listened to her and killed Rhett on that first night. Emilio seemed very upset. Rhett seemed….pale and sticky; torture had that effect. Was he relieved? Scared? He still hasn’t told her what flavour he liked best; she guessed lemon. “I think we should relax.” Siobhan smiled sweetly. “Get acquainted. Emilio, this is Rhett, maybe you know him: he’s a child torturer. That’s a Ingeborg, you can kill her if you want but keep in mind that you will be robbing the world of her attractiveness—she has material value. In addition, she does smell strangely nice.” Siobhan turned to look at Rhett. “Are you sure you don’t want candy, darling?” 

—

A mutual student? The girl, then. The blonde with the flower. He frowned, his gaze dancing between the two of them as that momentary spike of adrenaline seeped away again, leaving him hollowed and hurting. They wanted him dead, but they wanted it done slow—maybe for each day he’d held that young mare in his van. Maybe more. For as long as it was interesting to them. Well, he could try to keep it uninteresting by being mute again, taking their abuse without complaint. They’d get bored eventually. 

He was just about to slump back against the pole when there was a sudden explosion of movement, and the warden jerked away from it on reflex before realizing it wasn’t Siobhan. In fact, she was crouched in front of him now, hand on his shoulder, and—

His one-eyed gaze fell on Emilio and was fixed there as the banshee voiced her threats. She was right, he knew—Emilio probably didn’t. Why was he here? He should have been home, he—

“No,” Rhett moaned woefully. Tears sprang unbidden to his eye and he shook his head, staring at his brother. “Get out of here. You shouldn’t be here.” He could hardly speak above a whisper, throat raw from all the screaming he’d been doing, worsened by his outburst only moments before. He sucked in a gasping breath, glancing away from the other hunter to meet Siobhan’s gaze. “Let him go, he’s not—he ain’t like me. He’s good. He’s a good person, please, let him go, he made a mistake—” He looked back at Emilio sharply with that final word, teeth bared in a grimace. “A mistake,” he repeated. “Go home.” 

He would never beg for his own life, but he'd be the first to beg for Emilio’s. 

Logic and reasoning was not something he’d ever had a strong grasp on, but that was even farther from the truth now. In some desperate attempt to appeal to Siobhan’s chaotic nature and hopefully get his brother out of there in one piece, Rhett gave her a stoic nod. “I like lemon,” he confirmed unknowingly. He spared one last quick glance at his last remaining family, feeling sick to his stomach. “We’re fine here, hua. Havin’ a great time.”

—

It was hard to focus. His mind was still bouncing, still half in the present and half in the past. Flora’s body was still in the corner, crumpled and bloodless and so small. Juliana’s was a few feet away. Edgar was there, too; Rosa, his mother. Even Lucio’s ghost haunted the scene, staring on with the same stricken expression he’d worn when Emilio buried his knife in his gut. None of it was right, he knew; everyone he loved was two years gone, rotting in holes someone else had dug for them.

Everyone but Rhett.

His eyes darted to his brother, who was clearly far more out of it than Emilio himself and with far better reason. It was hard not to focus on the place where his leg ended, on the too-long pant leg and the bloodied concrete beneath it. He wanted to think, what kind of a monster does that to a person? He wanted to condemn it, wanted to think that it was an unforgivable thing. But Rhett had locked a kid in a van for days just to see what would happen. Emilio had tortured so many vampires that he’d lost count now, had done worse than this to them for days and days on end until even their already-dead bodies couldn’t hold on a moment longer and gave out under his hands. There were monsters in this room; there were nothing but monsters in this room. 

In the far corner, his daughter’s body continued to rot.

The mare was screaming. Her — Its blood touched the edge of the sword, sparkling in the dim light of the factory. In a way, it grounded him a little. The screams, the glittery substance. He tried to focus on it instead of Rhett’s blood, tried to ground himself in the present as best he could. Edgar was dead. Victor was dead. Rhett wasn’t. Rhett wouldn’t be. Not as long as there was breath left in Emilio’s lungs. 

His chest heaved as he glared at the banshee. The mare was forgotten now, an afterthought; no longer a threat, and therefore no longer worth looking at. He gripped Rhett’s iron knife in his hand, tight enough to stop it shaking. He wanted to slice the banshee open, wanted its guts to spill on the floor as if that might somehow cover up his brother’s blood that stained it, as if the presence of one would chase away the presence of the other. 

The banshee put a hand on his brother’s shoulder. It made threats. Emilio continued to glare. “Si haces eso te mataré,” he growled. Juliana laughed, a harsh and unnatural sound. He blinked once, hard, trying to remind himself of where he was. When he was. He pushed his tongue against the bottom of his canine, tasting blood in his mouth. Opening it, he tried again. “If you do that, I will kill you,” he said, the words slow and heavily accented as he forced them out in the language that still felt unnatural behind his teeth. “I promise, I’ll kill you if you do that.” Rhett would hate that. You weren’t supposed to make promises to fae; Emilio knew that. But this promise was one he intended to keep, anyway. It didn’t matter if Rhett was a monster; Emilio loved him all the same. He’d do anything for him. He’d tear the world apart with only his teeth. 

His eyes darted back to his brother as he spoke, surprised to see him aware. Not quite himself — Emilio was fairly sure he’d only seen Rhett with tears in his eyes once, in the woods just outside Etla — but here all the same. His chest ached as Rhett ordered him to leave, and he wondered if this was what his brother had felt in those woods when Emilio begged him to let him die. He’d give the same answer to Rhett as Rhett had given him back then: “Fuck off with that shit.” There was nothing in the goddamn world that would convince him to leave Rhett here. If Rhett died here, Emilio would either kill the things responsible or die trying. His glare made that much pretty clear.

Said glare returned to the banshee now, eating its candy like none of it mattered, like it hadn’t mutilated his brother in the floor of an old factory, like all of this was a joke. Like Rhett wasn’t the only family Emilio had, like he wasn’t the last piece of a unit that was otherwise irreparably broken. “I’m not leaving here without him. Whether you’re alive or not when I go is up to you.” 

—

She felt like a fly that someone had swatted and left to die stuck to the wall. Not fully dead but incapacitated in a way where there was little to do for her but watch in growing agitation and continued pain what played out before her. Inge wanted to scream, but only if the scream could have the impact that a banshee’s would have. In stead she followed Siobhan’s instruction (when she should be following hers!) and squirmed, fingers trying to grasp at the blade but getting nothing out of it.

The warden was crying. Putting up a show of emotion, cracking the way he’d not been cracked before despite the horrors Siobhan and her had put him through. This could be perfect. This could be perfect. If the banshee only used her head and did what needed to be done, this could be two birds with one stone — or rather one scream.

But the banshee was impossible to understand, a strange combination of motivations that Inge didn’t get. (Not that she got her own.) They were all talking as if there was something to talk about. Why wasn’t she doing it? She grasped the blade once more, the metal cutting into the palm of her hand as she tried to gain purchase. But to get to the hilt she’d have to bend over and to bend over was to slice into herself deeper. Truth be told, she wasn’t sure what kind of organs remained inside her and if they had any function. She wasn’t sure she wanted to find out today, here.

She was shrieking, though not with any intention. Just out of instinct. Her hands were covered in that useless glittery solid now and she was useless. A fly on the wall, left to observe the inaction of a banshee who had once proclaimed to love murder. “Siobhan!” It was a bellow more than a scream, lower than the previous expressions of panic and pain. “Get it over with!” 

—

Amusement fluttered inside Siobhan’s chest: this was the sort of situation that reminded her of her greatest hobby. Emilio’s anger delighted her—his gaze could become so sharp, his words could drip with such acid, he could promise her silly things just to keep himself from charging at her (he was like a dog right now, but with just enough sense to keep himself alive). Ingeborg squirmed on the sword—how wonderful it was to watch her expressions dance, flickering with rage (was that fear under the red glow of her eyes or more anger?). And Rhett—as silly as it was, she’d come to like the man. Over the last two nights she studied his expressions: anguish, sadness, fatigue, acceptance. Her greatest hobby was to watch the ways life existed. What made torture fun was seeing how far she could push an emotion, seeing how she could twist a feeling. And here was something she coveted, something she hardly understood: affection, the most curious of human conditions. 

She waved Emilio’s words away. “I don’t accept your promise. You’ll end up hurting yourself with that one: it’s too vague.” Siobhan’s gaze then flicked to Ingeborg. “That sword looks really cute on you, it brings out your eyes. You should consider it as a permanent look.” 

Siobhan smiled, rummaging through the plastic grocery bag: orange, cherry (her favorite), cola, watermelon, peach, something neon green. “I knew you were a lemon man.” Eventually, she found a bright yellow lollipop and tongued hers into the other side of her mouth so she could rip the plastic wrapping open with her teeth. She held the piece of candy out by Rhett’s mouth. “You are a very astute man. I like this awareness: you’ve always understood how pitiful you are, haven’t you?” She looked at Emilio. “But that’s not a ‘good man’, that’s a selfish one. He holds more compassion for you than he does for poor Ingeborg on the nice sword. Who, for all my knowledge, has never tortured any anxiety ridden blonde children. Emilio’s selective, isn’t he? You don’t charge in here, promise to kill someone to save someone else, unless you’re selectively compassionate. Of course, most humans are like this, but it hardly makes him ‘good’ does it?” 

Her grip tightened on Rhett’s shoulder. “I don’t like selfish men, Rhett.” And Siobhan knew she was cruel enough to kill Rhett only to anger Emilio. Then she’d tie him up and…well, maybe she’d go for the arms this time. And who would come to save him? Would this be a never ending cycle of interrupted torture? The idea exhausted her. “Emilio, are you aware this is a terrible man? Objectively terrible. He won’t argue—tell him, Rhett. Why don’t you? Tell him all the terrible things you’ve done…or does he already know?” She looked at him, wondering if he was the sort of man to share his secrets or if he had any shame for his duty. Did Emilio want to save him regardless? Why? Why? 

Why would anyone want to save this wretched man? 

“Emilio.” In her curiosity, Siobhan’s head cocked to the side. “Why should I let you go? Why should I let Rhett go?” She blinked. “Don’t try to threaten me again, or threaten Ingeborg, it’s juvenile. If I cared about staying alive, I wouldn’t be here. If I cared about Ingeborg staying alive, I would have screamed already. Use your brain, I know you have one.”

—

Wincing beneath her tightened grip, Rhett stared at the lollipop still held aloft in front of him as he spoke. “Emilio. Shut up,” he ordered his little brother, knowing that the man’s temper would not do them any favors in this situation. Then, with the smallest tilt of his head in Siobhan’s direction, he began speaking to her, answering her questions slowly, making sure he didn’t miss anything. If he missed something, she might think he was trying to ignore it, and she might do something rash. Something unhinged, like she was. He had to be careful about what he said for once in his stupid life.

“Pitiful, aye. N’ he knows all ‘bout all the things that make me like that.” Most of them, anyway. “He is bein’ selfish, right now. He should’ve let me go days ago. But he’s family, n’ he don’t let family go easy.” His head was swimming, vision blurred. He felt like passing out, but he had to keep going. “He’s the one that got her out. The blonde girl, the mare. He’s the one that let her out of the van, the one that made me promise… not to go after her again. No one else woulda been able to convince me, so… if ya… care about ‘er, ya got Emilio to thank. Ya should… let him go ‘cuz he’s got more green than red on his ledger. Does more good than bad. Only does bad when… when it involves me, or the people that took away our family.” It was surprisingly introspective for Rhett, but he’d had a lot of time to think about it. The warden sucked in a wavering breath, squinting his eye closed. “I don’t wanna leave here.” He’d tried to run once, back before it had gotten really bad, but now… “But that don’t matter, ‘cuz ‘Milio ain’t gonna leave this place without me.” He finally brought his gaze up to look at Siobhan, and for all the world, he looked genuinely apologetic. 

“I get why ya did what ya did. But don’t make my brother pay for the wrong shit I done. I know he’s bein’ selfish right now, but he is a good man. I promise he is. I promise.” That’s how sure he felt, despite what Emilio might say, what he might think. He knew the last living Cortez was a better person than he himself believed. “I’ll be dead next year anyway. He just wants a few more months.” With that, Rhett deflated from the effort of remaining coherent, bending forward to bite the sucker from Siobhan’s grip and then lean back against the pole, closing his eye like he was relaxing into a nap. He should’ve still been worried for Emilio, and he was, but he was too damn tired to do much more about it. As it was, his grip on consciousness felt weak—held only by one pinkie finger. He hoped that he’d still have a pinkie finger as he slipped away from them, his mind carrying him elsewhere just in case things went wrong and they all had their guts liquified by a pissed off banshee. 

—

The mare was screaming; Emilio ignored it. With the threat of its escape through the astral plane eliminated, it would be simple enough to take its head off when he finished with the banshee. Or he’d leave it here to starve, focus more on getting Rhett to safety instead. He needed some kind of medical care, though Emilio wasn’t sure how to provide it. (If he took his brother to the hospital, what questions would he have to field? Would Zane help him out, understand that Emilio’s presence would need to be an under the radar thing?) Either way, the mare wasn’t important at the moment. Its screeching, its pleas for the banshee to act and its fear disguised as rage. None of it mattered. The only thing that mattered at all was sitting in the floor with a goddamn lollipop stuck in front of his face.

The banshee spoke, and Emilio kept his steely gaze on it, body tense and ready to strike at any moment. It would do him no good, he knew. The iron knife in his hand could be thrown with accuracy, but it wouldn’t be faster than a scream if the banshee chose to release one. The most he could hope for was for the blade to find the banshee’s throat just a moment after its scream obliterated him. Maybe if the sound was focused on him, Rhett would survive with only his eardrums ruptured. Maybe someone would come looking, would find him before infection took him. Or maybe they’d both turn to mist with the echo of the banshee’s cry. Maybe they all would. It still felt better than the thought of walking out of here alone.

There were insults, there were implications. This was about the other mare, the kid. Wynne’s girlfriend, the one who hadn’t deserved what Rhett had done to her. But the kid hadn’t even wanted to speak poorly about Rhett; Emilio doubted she would approve of someone being tortured in her name, of someone being killed. He thought of Flora, of the blood he’d spilled and the dust he’d stirred up because she was gone and he was here and things like that needed retribution. Maybe she wouldn’t have approved, either. Maybe she’d never gotten to be old enough to understand the idea of approval. Either way, the blood on his hands remained just as present as his brother’s blood on the floor. His eyes flickered briefly to the corner. She was rotting. She was always rotting.

The banshee kept saying his name, and he wished it would stop. The syllables exiting its tongue felt wrong, felt different. Even when Rhett said it — that fond, shortened version, the one only Rhett was still alive to use — it didn’t feel right. The name reminded him that he was a person, and he didn’t feel like one now. He wasn’t sure he wanted to be one. People ached. People struggled with the things Emilio needed to do. People hurt when you hit them, and he thought something was probably going to hit him soon. He stayed quiet as the banshee spoke, eyes darting to Rhett as his brother joined in. I’ll be dead next year anyway, he said, like it didn’t matter. Like there weren’t little girls rotting in corners and long-dead wives screaming in the distance, like he wasn’t the only family Emilio had who hadn’t decayed long past the point of recognition. Emilio wanted him to shut up, but he was afraid of what might happen when he stopped talking. He was afraid that if Rhett stopped speaking now, he’d never hear his brother’s voice again. The thought made him nauseous. 

He let the silence stretch, periodically looking from the banshee to his brother to the empty corner where his mind conjured up long buried corpses and long silenced screams. He knew he should say something. He was supposed to. He knew that.

“I’m not good,” he confirmed, looking at Rhett as he said it. “Neither is he. Neither are you. Or that.” He gestured to the mare like an afterthought, like he’d almost forgotten it was there at all. (Would Teddy want the sword back? He should leave it in place until he’d killed the thing, at least, but he probably ought to clean it after. The thought felt laughably mundane, even as his mind clung to it.) “But he’s my brother. And I’m not the only one who needs him. He’s got a kid who wants him around, who wants to know him. She’s good, and she deserves to keep him. To get to know him, to decide for herself if she wants him in her life. You can —” He looked to Rhett, to the empty gap on the floor where his leg should have been. “You can do what you want with me. Let me call an ambulance for him, and I’ll let you do whatever you want to me. Take my lungs, my liver, my heart, take whatever, but not him. You can take me apart like a goddamn puzzle, but let my brother go. Please. Just let him live, and I’ll do whatever you want me to do.”

—

Siobhan was accosting her with a compliment that made Inge just shout an expletive her way, “Kutwijf!” Her mother tongue, because maybe that would shield the truth of her frustration. The truth of her dread, her — well, her fear, really. It was an ugly thing to admit, but as she was stuck on the wall and her ally in all this seemed to be negotiating with the two hunters rather than killing them, she was afraid. She tried to lean into her anger more. Even as Siobhan revealed her hand. She cared not about what might happen to either of them, had no intention as of yet to commit the murders that seemed to Inge as the only logical next step.

Why were they here? Why had Rhett put her in that basement, Ariadne in that van? What was the point? Inge had thought that perhaps this all could lead to one less hunter, that a proactive stance against a monster like Rhett would lead to the erasure of him — but here she was, pinned to that wall, waves of cold pain radiating from that wound. She and Siobhan had done what she condemned all hunters for. Played with their food and not pulled through.

And then there was the revelation that Emilio had been the one to save Ariadne. The man with the murderous eyes of his mother had saved a girl better than them all. It didn’t add up. There was an angle to it. There was some motive she didn’t understand. 

What was the point? Emilio may have saved Ariadne and Rhett may not have killed her, but there was still blood on all their hands. Emilio had a point — none of them were good. But Inge didn’t want to die, whereas these hunters seemed all to ready to lay themselves down to rest out of some kind of sentiment that she’d perhaps never felt. Her siblings were like strangers. Her late partner she had let die so she could get out. (A price deserved, considering she’d killed her once.) And even now, she had no interest in dying for another. “Well, I guess that makes it simple, doesn’t it?” Her voice was shrill and ugly, directed at Siobhan only. She would be damned if she would stop trying to make her demands. “They’re both down to die for the other, so why not do them that favor?” She wasn’t quiet after she stopped speaking, another shriek of pain accompanying her words from the strain her words had put on her abdomen. She wanted this to end.

—

Siobhan wasn’t sure it made anything simple. The word ‘family’ caught in her head, stuck in a warped loop. The bloody factory floor morphed into long, soft blades of green—the fields of Ireland. Muffled cries echoed behind her ears—smothered, she knew, by biting down into the flesh of her palm, sweet blood filling her mouth. Mother hated it when she cried. She turned to Rhett and waited for the pain that would follow his broken promise—Emilio wasn’t a good man—but there was nothing but fatigue and honesty. He believed it and that was enough. She looked at Emilio, listened to his plea. He really would have given her anything, just like that. And why? Why? Siobhan’s hand trembled against Rhett’s shoulder; under her gloves, under the myriad of scars on her palm, was the half-moon carved by her small teeth and it throbbed. “I don’t understand.” Her voice dropped to an almost whisper. “I don’t understand.” And then her grip tightened all at once, and she crushed Rhett’s tired body under her fingers. “What does family matter? You knew! This is a bad man!” Her voice rushed over itself, vibrating through her. “Family isn’t above punishment!” 

The scars down her back throbbed as her body trembled. The grass and the crying withered away and instead it was her own screams, her own blood and her mother’s heel between her shoulder blades. Siobhan still remembered what the dirt tasted like the day she lost her wings: sulfur, wet clay and saliva. It was a temporary loss, she reminded herself. The same essence of family that Rhett and Emilio were on about was the one that meant her mother was waiting for her, keeping her wings safe, eager to reattach them and be with her daughter again. Yet, even as Siobhan told herself this, her face continued to twist. Her back was on fire; her mother had insisted on pulling them out like a weed, roots and all. “You knew… You knew and you let him live. You know and you come here demanding his life? This man?” She jostled him. “This putrid man?” She heard one of her own bones pop in her hand as she squeezed his shoulder. “What does it mean that he’s family? What does that mean?” How could he be saved? How could he be loved? How could he be forgiven? 

Siobhan’s watery gaze snapped to Rhett. “What does it mean? How can he want to save you? How can he give himself away to save you? You, who are not worth saving. How can he? Why? What is—what is that? I don’t—I don’t understand.” She looked at Inge, still stuck on her wall, and blinked rapidly at her, trying to ask without words. Inge was a mother, so she must understand better than these men. If Inge child’s betrayed their family, she would rip their wings out, ruin their beauty, cast them out and strip them of familial title—no longer a daughter. She would. She had to. Good mothers did that. Family would watch it happen too: grandmothers, cousins, aunts. Family was just. “I don’t understand, Inge.” 

—

He was only marginally aware of what was happening in the room after he’d stopped speaking. He could hear Emilio talking, probably refuting everything he’d said in some stupid attempt to swap their positions—they didn’t want Emilio, they wanted Rhett, for the shit he’d done to that girl. For the shit he’d done to the one pinned to the wall, still screaming her threats and pleas. But of course, just because a plan was stupid didn’t mean that would stop Emilio from trying it. He knew that much about his little brother.

That is, until the banshee’s grip on his shoulder threatened to break his collarbone and he snapped back into the moment, groaning and weakly trying to tug himself away from her as her words caught up to his addled mind. She shook him, sparking the anger that had fizzled out to little more than embers. She was demanding to know what they meant, to know how someone like Rhett could still have someone like Emilio who cared for him, in spite of everything. 

He was annoyed. He spit out the lollipop to better speak.

“Rack off,” he barked angrily, sinking lower to try and relieve the pain that was her fierce grip on him. Something snapped, and he roared the next words in response. “This ain’t a fuckin’ therapy session, you stupid bitch. It ain’t a negotiation, neither! Fuck, all’ah you, just—” His  words caught in his throat as Desmond crouched beside him, a large hunting knife protruding from his back. In his arms was little Flora, eyes vacant as the day he’d buried her. The warden stammered, gasping for breath as his fury was diluted by fear and sorrow. “Ya choose family, ya dense slag. Yer mama ain’t got no skin in the game. Fuck’s sake, let go.” Of his shoulder, of her fucked up relationship with her mother… or both. He didn’t really care. He just wanted this over.

—

The banshee was angry. Yelling (but still not screaming), tightening its grip. And it was hurting him, hurting Rhett. Emilio could see it in his brother’s eyes, in the way he came back to himself. He wished he’d stay in his head, stay out of the conversation. It would be easier to convince the banshee that Emilio was the better toy to play with if Rhett went silent. He doubted a hunter who was already broken would be nearly as much fun to pick apart as one still standing, and that was what the banshee was after here, wasn’t it? Fun. The thought of it — that his brother was a game they’d played for days now, that everything he’d gone through had been for the entertainment of the creatures in this room — made him a little sick. The thought that Wynne’s girlfriend in that van had been the victim of a similar game with Rhett as the creature entertained didn’t help.

The banshee was still talking and Rhett was yelling and Emilio couldn’t make out any of it, couldn’t pick apart the words over the rush of blood in his head. Flora was dead and here and rotting. Juliana was glaring and decaying and gone. Rhett was on the living room floor with blood all around him. The banshee had sharp teeth. The mare was shedding dust. Victor had been dead for twenty years now, and Emilio still heard him laughing.

“Stop.” He didn’t know who — what he was talking to. To Rhett, who was going to make things worse for himself in some misguided attempt to make things better for Emilio? To the banshee, whose grip was too tight? To the mare, whose voice was too shrill? To the ghosts that existed only in the confines of his own mind, or to his mind and itself and its awful method of time travel that he’d never consented to? He took a step forward, and it was a risky move. The banshee only needed to scream. But it had Rhett locked in its grip, and if it was going to kill him, Emilio thought it might as well kill him, too. If Rhett was going to die, he wasn’t going to die alone. 

Another step, and then another. His feet made a sickening squelching sound as they moved through the blood, his brother’s blood, that soaked the ground. He kept walking anyway, until he was right in front of them, until he was reaching out and grabbing the banshee’s wrist where its hand held his brother’s shoulder, until he was squeezing it to loosen that grip in any way he could. 

“It doesn’t matter why,” he said hoarsely. “It — there is no why. He’s my brother. He’s my brother, and I love him. Let him go, and I’ll do anything you want. I promise, I will. I’ll stay here with you. Or I’ll go with him, and I’ll make sure he doesn’t hurt anyone anymore. I’ll make whatever fucking promise you want me to make, just let him go. Please. He’s my brother. He’s the only family I have. You don’t have to understand. I don’t know how to make you understand. But that doesn’t matter. I’m — Christ, I’m fucking begging here. Anything you want, I swear. Just let him go.”

—

They were talking of family and punishment and Inge squirmed on her sword with no stakes in the game. Her parents had been distant and quiet in their love. Her siblings had been companions of silence, each of them haunted by the dead sibling most of them had never met and none of them spoke of. She must have loved them, once, when they were kids. She never really stopped loving them, maybe — but there was no liking them. No sacrifice. No grand gestures. They were not parts to hold over her, they were just abandoned limbs from a past life she didn’t think of much. They weren’t to her like Rhett was to Emilio. So she didn’t understand, either.

And the ones that mattered, the truly familial – chosen and blood – that had once existed had already been severed. She’d watched both her daughter and partner die. For Vera she would have done what Emilio was doing, but there was no comparing Rhett and her child. There was no common ground, besides perhaps the love that existed. And Inge didn’t much care for such sentiments as a sword throbbed in her belly. She didn’t much care for it because love was a wound that could not be tended to. It remained bleeding and raw much like her abdomen. 

And above all, there had been no space for heroics in the face of the disease that had taken her daughter. There had been no space for morals or punishments, no use for them. They’d made up and they’d waited it out, the spread of disease. There had been no people to plead with, unless you accosted the doctors who were already on your side. Did Emilio understand how lucky he was, that he got to at least try? That there was at least something to do? That he could drive a sword through an antagonistic body and carry his weapons and make an attempt to sway a woman who could not understand the love he wielded? He was so lucky. He was so undeserving of it. 

“I don’t care,” she retorted, mostly to Siobhan, “You don’t have to understand. It doesn’t matter. The love doesn’t matter. The punishment doesn’t matter unless you do what you gotta. Just end it. It doesn’t fucking matter, Siobhan.” 

—

“Bitch? Slag?” Siobhan shook Rhett violently, rattling his body against the rusted pipe, ringing it like a gong. “A slag? I hold your life in my hands and you’re calling me a slag? Where’s the respect? I’m twice your age!” She leaned to the side and spat out her grape lollipop, which had been mostly crushed under her hurried conversation. “A promise?” She perked up, then, self conscious about how typical of her species she was being—it was just like a fae to lunge at the first chance for promised favors—and in front of a warden, she cleared her throat. The tendrils of the Gaes, warmed up her stomach. She exhaled on the memory of Emilio’s words—I promise. He would do anything she wanted, he promised. She snapped her jaw shut, clamping down on his words. “I accept your promise.” She had claimed something more valuable than a leg and yet, where she expected and waited for glee, ice knocked through her body. 

In her head, her tearful words still cried out for answers: I don’t understand. Siobhan’s gaze fluttered between the bodies: Emilio, so certain and sacrificing in his love; Ingeborg, who understood something that she wasn’t sharing; Rhett, who had given up on himself but not once on his brother. Hollowed out, she was observing something beyond her; each of them spoke an unknowable language. Rhett said family was chosen—Siobhan didn’t understand. Emilio and Ingeborg said it didn’t matter if she understood, but their idea of what did matter was opposed—Emilio wanted Rhett free, Inge wanted them both dead. How could both opinions exist in the same space? How could someone be loved this much? To be begged for? What was love? How did it relate to being a family? What did these words mean other than nonsense? Emilio and Ingeborg were right, what did it matter to her? Why did she care? She ought to kill them; all three. 

She stared at her accomplice, still stuck on the damned wall. If she found herself missing a leg, tied to a pole, would Ingeborg beg for her life? Of course not, they were hardly friends on a good day and after this, she was certain that would have many, many bad days. And if Ingeborg happened to be stuck on a wall, what would she do? “I want promises from you both,” Siobhan said, rising from the floor to grab nearby bolt cutters—she’d been hoping to use it to chomp through Rhett’s toes. “Neither of you will personally end or help to end Ingeborg’s undead existence. You may hurt her, I don’t care, but you will not kill her; give me promises.” This was a kindness and she hoped to feel something; a sudden invitation into their secret language. With this act of what she assumed to be love, she waited for the sudden clarity of family and affection. Instead, her arms trembled holding the bolt cutter to Rhett’s ropes. “And promises not to disclose the identities of Rhett’s torturers with anyone—you will not tell anyone about Ingeborg or myself. I want this too.” 

—

All he could do was stare up at Emilio miserably as his brother made promises he shouldn’t have, but all the fight had left him with those final insults in Siobhan’s direction. He dropped his head, resigning himself to whatever was to come. 

The mare stuck to the wall was doing her best to get them both killed, and Rhett couldn't blame her. But as blind luck would have it, the banshee wasn't interested. He didn't move as she requested promises from them, feeling himself start to slip away again. And as tempting as it was to give in to the out of body experience, he couldn't bear the thought of Emilio suffering for his inability to remain in the present moment. He didn't want to promise the banshee anything, that went against everything he'd ever stood for since Mariela had used it against him, but… this wasn't about him. He knew that. It was about making sure Emilio got out of here safely, and if he had to abandon his principles to do that, he would. He always would. 

“I promise I won't kill Ingeborg,” he muttered without looking up, his voice raw. There was no emotion in it, nothing snide nor sad, just a statement of fact. “N’ I promise I won't tell no one who so generously hacked off half my bad leg for me.” Okay, there was a bit of sarcasm in that one, but it couldn't be helped. Finally, the warden angled his chin up at Siobhan again, realizing that he couldn't see her at all — she was nothing more than a silhouette against a dim background in his limited field of view.

He smirked, letting his gaze wander uselessly. He knew Emilio wouldn't have any issue promising these things; he'd already given the fucking thing a freebie, after all. Idiot. 

—

It took the promise; he figured it would. It didn’t matter, anyway. All that mattered was the man trapped in the banshee’s grip, the only family Emilio had left. Emilio kept his eyes locked on Rhett’s, expression still and icy as the banshee took the promise. He wondered, almost distantly, if Rhett was disappointed in him. If he still thought Emilio was worth it, even now, or if whatever remained of the respect he held for him vanished the moment he started to beg. 

The banshee would use the promise, he knew, but only if it allowed him to survive the experience. He thought that might still be in question, thought it was the kind of thing he ought to be worried about. He wasn’t. He didn’t care what happened to him, meant every word of his stupid pleading. If the banshee let Rhett go, he’d do whatever it asked. He’d pull his heart out of his chest and hand it over. He’d put the saw it had used to hack off his brother’s leg to his own throat. He’d do anything, anything if it meant Rhett got to leave here, if it meant he could go home. Rhett, after all, had a daughter waiting for his return. Emilio had nothing.

Another promise was asked of him, and his eyes darted over to the mare stuck to the wall. He’d almost forgotten about it there; it wasn’t a threat anymore, and it had been written off as a result. An afterthought, a concept not worth his attention. Distantly, he thought it was interesting that the banshee cared enough to request such a promise. There was no request that they not kill the banshee, after all; only that the mare’s head stay on its worthless corpse. Emilio regarded it for a moment but, in truth, he knew it didn’t matter. He said he’d give anything, and he’d meant it. This was included in that.

“I promise I won’t kill your mare,” he replied, letting his eyes move back to the banshee, “or tell anyone who did this, just as long as neither of you hurts him again.” Tacked on the end, a condition of his own. He wouldn’t make a promise only for them to track Rhett down as soon as he was gone to slit his throat. It was a fair enough trade, he thought, especially since he didn’t bother including himself in the conditional. Something like that might have threatened the other promise the banshee had taken; he doubted it would go for that. But Rhett… They’d had their fun there. Emilio wouldn’t risk the chance of them having any more.

—

“She’s not my…oh whatever.” Siobhan sighed, taking her promises from Emilio and Rhett with a forced smile. “Yes, I agree to your deal: I will not physically harm Rhett again.” She waited for Ingeborg’s voice, confirming, before she pulled the final thread of magic and bound them all together; for better or for worse, though usually, it was worse. 

The bolt cutter went through the rope, sawing and snapping at the threads; there was something to be said about her insistence on using the wrong tools for every job. Eventually, Rhett was free. Siobhan stepped back, leaned up against her table of supplies and watched them. Love was no more clear to her seeing Emilio take Rhett away. Something, however, sparked watching Rhett’s blanket drop from his shoulder and Emilio’s rough hands pull the fabric over him again. In seeing the man’s arm steadied so carefully on his brother’s shoulder; their steps done in time together, Emilio’s limp and Rhett’s tired hops. Emilio’s body angled towards them, using his body—his life—as a shield. Their soft voices—or was it just Emilios?—too quiet for her to understand. Despite the bloody floor, Rhett’s haphazardly bandaged stump and the pieces of his leg, buzzing with flies, there was a strange peace; a delicate pace. Until the edges of the factory stole the family from her view, she considered if that was love: if it was those two broken men, tethered, going on to live another day knowing they’d both be in it. If it was Rhett’s weight on Emilio, Emilio’s arms around him. If it was knowing that they both would have given their bodies—limbs, ligaments, organs—just to be certain the other would breathe for one more night. Love seemed to be violent in its sacrifices and selfish in its stubbornness. 

She didn’t understand it, but she knew they did.

Siobhan looked at Ingeborg, still on the wall. She wondered if anyone loved her—maybe they were the same, in that sense. Silently, she gripped the saw beside her, painted with Rhett’s dried blood, and approached the mare. Her strides were long and deliberate, the blade knocking against her thigh. She made it halfway across the factory floor before she dissolved into laughter. “You should look at yourself; it’s hilarious.” Siobhan bent down and picked up Rhett’s rotten foot. “This one’s for me….” And his rotted calf. “And this…” She pointed at the pile of bloody toenails. “You can have those.” Blowing Ingeborg a kiss, she was gone, not feeling much of anything: not remorse, not confusion, and certainly not love.

—  

She was puzzled by these developments, confusion washing over her face as Siobhan made the moves to keep the two hunters from killing her down the line. Inge wondered why she wasn’t throwing her own life into the promise — did she care so little for it? Or did she think herself so invincible? Though she had gotten to know Siobhan a little more intimately over the past few days, this shed another light on the banshee. She squirmed on her sword. Three promises were made and she spoke in a quieter tone as she too, agreed, “I promise not to harm him again.” It was hard to hide the defeat in her voice.

So the banshee, the harbinger of death, was letting them all go. Was keeping them from killing one another in revenge, even. What a miserable turn of events. What a worthless twist. Inge had expected this to end with a corpse to get rid of, but in stead there was the stains of blood that Rhett left as he and his brother moved away. She watched them for a moment, then looked at the blood and flesh, then at Siobhan. Her cruel ally. Her protector, in a way. But also her traitor. She’d wanted a corpse. She’d made that abundantly clear. All she had was her ripped open gut.

She watched her near closer, toying with her saw like a child holding scissors. Not rushing over to come to her rescue, to peel her off the sword. Menacing. “You —” Inge’s face grew furious. “What was – why are you not – you …” She was laughing. The high ceiling made the sounds echo, round and round and round. Was a banshee’s cackle also magical? It had to be, with how miserable it made her feel.

It dawned on her when the kiss was blown that Siobhan was not just pulling her leg and Inge inched forward, eliciting a scream of pain as she hurled words at the other, “Get me off here, you can’t just leave me here, you absolute — SIOBHAN!” The name was repeated a few more times, losing volume every time and Inge remained. Like a fly stuck on the wall, with no purpose and no accomplishments, made witness to a scene that had already ended.

[den-of-the-jadewizard]

Whumptober: Day One; I’m trying just to fill in all the gaps.

"But you're already gone..."

A/N: This one's a bit rusty, and doesn't feel whumpy enough for me, but that's okay. It gets better.

This is the FNAF AU for the cast of Unified, my comic about shape people. Since I'm hyper fixed on Unified, a lot of these one shots are about them.

"Brother...?"

Bracer stilled, almost bristling as he heard Swift's meek and concerned tone. He didn't dare move his gaze from the corkboard in front of him. He didn't answer him either, hoping his silence was enough to get the point across that he wanted to be left alone right now.

"We've talked about this..."

He put a hand up to cut Swift off. Of course, he wouldn't take the hint. Bracer huffed a sigh, reply curt and to the point.

"I don't want to hear it."

"It wasn't your fault-"

"You've told me a million times already."

"It's true."

"I know that."

"I don't believe you. You've been running yourself ragged for the past month on this, Bracer. The case has been closed-"

"It's not!" Bracer slammed the table and whipped around to face him, snarling.

Swift flinched at the sudden outburst.

"You're a hypocrite, Swift," he rebuked him, "The hell is this any different from the cold case

you've been deadlocked on for four fucking years!?"

"Least we had a lead, but here we knew what had happened how it malfunctioned-"

"-No, I'm not going to listen to whatever you're spewing. If you're here to do that then get the hell out of my house..."

"Bracer, I-"

"Get out," He took a step towards him, Swift taking a step back, "...now."

Bracer took another step, and he took another back as well, this continued till they were out the door, Swift franticly tried once more to convince him.

"Brother, please! I knew they meant quite a lot to you but..." Swift trailed off upon seeing his shocked and then outraged expression.

Bracer trembled in rage, the simple sentence tipping him off. How could he possibly know what he was feeling right now? How dare he...

"YOU KNOW NOTHING OF MY LIFE!!!" He screamed at him. "How could you possibly know!? When you've been gone for most my fucking life!?!"

Swift reared back, almost like he was just shot. The words cut deep but Bracer couldn't stop himself, wouldn't, not this time.

"Bracer, I- I'm..."

"They were a better family than you ever were..." He said coldly, venom dripping off his tongue.

Bracer did not waste time in staring at Swift's shocked expression. He slammed the door in his face before turning to flee down the hall, charging into his room and slamming his door behind him as well.

He screamed, throwing any objects in reach against the walls and across the room. He couldn't control himself any longer, he couldn't stand it.

His voice cracked, throat feeling as if it was being torn in two. He yelled at the top of his lungs, sounding as if he was being murdered, it was a wonder no one called the police. He didn't care about anything but the rage...the hurt.

He threw himself onto his bed, screaming and clawing into the sheets, his body thrashing as if trying to bury itself into it.

Why did they have to visit that damn restaurant!?

WHY!?

It should've been him.

'It' wanted him.

Not them.

So why?

Grief crashed into him like a freight train. He sobbed bitterly into the sheets, body heaving in vain attempt to calm himself.

He wanted them back...

He just...wanted them.

Just...

...

Bracer wasn't sure when he had cried himself to sleep, it surely didn't matter. It wasn't the first time he did so and probably won't be the last either.

It all shifted into a deep-seated numbness as he laid on his side. He was spent from last night, it had all been too much, not just this but all of it had. He glanced at his closed door, a sense of longing hitting him. Part of him expecting them to just knock on the door and walk in.

He sighed, closing his eyes again. He doubts he'll have the strength to even get out of bed today, much less continue with the investigation.

He was left alone with only his thoughts to keep him company.

Alone...

Swift...

Bracer had probably drove away the only living person who cared about him anymore. He had no hard feelings about his past, he was angry and just saying whatever without a sense of tact. He noted to apologize whenever he met with him next, if he ever did.

However, the case still had not made any sense to him. He didn't want to let go of it, he needed to know why it happened. Animatronics don't normally have a bite strength hard enough to kill anyone, it would go against every law of common sense for any company at all, it had to be intentional in some way. Plus, with the numerous other cases of tragedy happening in many different franchises, it all had to be connected in some way as well.

His head started to ache again, he was straining to think, he felt terrible. He huffed a sigh again, and stopped thinking, just lying there helplessly numb to the world outside his bedroom.

He'll figure this out...

Even if it kills him.

He owes them that much.

[calmthefuckdownalright]

I Renounce You Part 4

A/N: Wooo...we’re down to page 9 of 13!! Friendly reminder this idea is inspired by @tuesday-teyz and is NOT canon of any sort and is just a little take on how I think the story COULD (not should, it’s going great rn thank you) have ended if it’s author wanted to cut the chord right after Tommy broke that chair.

Anyway, enjoy

><><><><><><><><><><><><>

To the right of His Imperial Highness were the other two princes. Wilbur had his hands behind his back and his shoulders straight as an arrow and Technoblade kept a hand on the hilt of his sword. To the left was Ranboo dressed in a black and white suit with a blue ribbon belt tied around his waist and a necklace of what looked like a cat’s eye around his neck. Tubbo stood close by just behind the lanky boy.

“Theseus, do you understand why you’ve been called here?” The Emperor bit on his words like sword tips, but none plunged into Tommy’s heart to evoke fear and desperation.

“Of course.” Tommy said neutrally and folded his hands in front of him. The crown burned heavy on his head and he silently wished his father would go ahead and just do what he needed him to do.

“And you have no remorse for the slander you’ve put against your own family?” The Emperor stood to his feet and those icy blue eyes so much like his own bore into Tommy’s head. Yet still, no fear accompanied the piercing stare.

“Why should I? The way I see it, this is hardly my family anymore.” Tommy chuckled and the words struck a mark. “Careful Phil, this is hardly my worst.” Tommy thought gleefully.

“How can you say that?!” The Emperor burst out the words and Tommy couldn’t help but flinch just a little. “You dare to say the people who have cared and loved you for years are not your family?” 

“If this is love then I do not wish it upon anyone!” Tommy snapped out with a bearing of his teeth and a step forward. The Emperor fell silent and Tommy saw his window to finish off his plan. “I am exhausted from day to night and none of you have cared to even look at it! None of you have cared to care at all for anything!”

The Emperor stepped back and Tommy set his feet even as the rant of his pain and suffering finally let loose. 

“You cut me with your words and sharpened looks. You watch me bleed out in silence in hopes it will make me crawl back to the very arms that have abandoned and split me open time and time again!” He targeted Wilbur first. Wilbur who had made him dependent on him then left him in the cold night with no one but Technoblade to console his childish pain. “I am bleeding now but by my own inflicted wounds. I play your games and dance around your words but it’s futile because your only goal is to harm and I can’t escape your deadly aim.” Tommy hissed at the one he’d loved so much. The one who left him first. Then he turned to the next person in his path of chaos.

“I needed you to help and guide me, I needed you close and you abandoned me as well. Instead of coming back to do it yourself when you realized I did need you, you sent a stupid guard who couldn’t care less how many times I break down and scream at my walls!” The prince drew a breath before growling with all the ugly rage in his shattered heart. “Your sword will forever be more important than family so I take my own and cut you out of mine before you cut me instead.”

“That’s enough Theseus!” Emperor Philza clanged his walking stick into the ground and Tommy faced the man he once admired with everything he had.

“I’ve had enough! I will speak now! This is my turn to finally be free of your venomous ideals!” Tommy shouted back and balled his fists. He snarled and pointed to His Imperial Highness accusingly.

“Don’t you ever think you are not responsible for my entire downfall.” Tommy said. “Every ink mark put to paper and duty piled into the night you were the reason! You wallowed in your grief for so long you didn’t even bother trying to climb out of it to see how your own children were doing! You once told me Mother would be ashamed, well how would she feel knowing you left YOUR youngest SON to crumble under the weight of it all only to later favor a peasant!” 

“Ranboo is-” Emperor Philza rushed to defend the boy to the left and Tommy stole the ammunition. 

“There you go defending him again! Over your own children! It is not my fault I am heartless when all the love I had was thrown away! All the work and dedication I have put into this kingdom and throne and stupid crown is for nothing!” He shouted and panted as he saw tears fill the blue eyes of the Emperor. Wilbur looked like he might run forward but Technoblade was ready to stop him with an arm. 

“I am done…” Tommy huffed “Being the only one trying to keep everything fine. I am done and tired of pretending I don’t wish I had died with Mother. I am not fine, I am not okay, and I will not be subjected to your neglectful abuse anymore.” He reached for the crown on his head and looked to Ranboo.

“Theseus-” Wilbur started to say but the words died out as Tommy spoke once again to the peasant turned royalty.

“Ranboo…I hope you have better fortune with this family than I have.” Tommy smiled and tears burned his eyes. One fell as he glared at the circlet of silver and blue before he locked eyes with his father. The Emperor of the Antarctic Empire.

“Theseus what are you doing?” The Emperor asked and Tommy grinned.

“I renounce you.” He said and tossed the crown forward where it clattered on the carpet running up to the thrones and slid still as Tommy backed away with his arms outstretched.

Silence ensued before someone who Tommy least expected to break it did.

“Theseus wait!” Tubbo darted from behind Ranboo and Ranboo followed just behind. The boy, once Tommy’s best friend, nearly knocked him over with a rib crushing hug and tears falling onto the suit that still clung to Tommy’s skin. 

“Good luck out there.” Ranboo said and outstretched a hand to shake but Tommy smiled. Now, unburdened by the responsibility of status and reputation, he saw his savior instead of just a peasant boy coming to steal his place. So, he hugged him instead.

“And to you.” Tommy smiled and patted Ranboo’s shoulder before looking back to see Wilbur struggling against Technoblade with a hand clamped over his mouth.

“Let me go! Let me get him back, you bastard!” Wilbur cried out. “Theseus please!” Wilbur pleaded and Tommy stayed still. His eyes cleared and he saw everything once again. 

Wilbur was as broken as he was, if not more so, and something ugly and twisted was keeping him together more than anything. Wilbur didn’t mean to hurt Tommy, but he did. Perhaps more than anyone had.

“I’ll see you guys later.” Tommy said to Tubbo and Ranboo. “And the name’s Tommy, not Theseus.” He said the second part loud enough for Philza to hear and then he left with the echo of destruction bouncing off the walls behind him.

“Theseus-” Philza was the last to call out for him before the doors shut behind him.

“So…Tommy?” Dream’s voice stopped the former prince dead in his effort to leave. He had changed into much more comfortable clothes fit for traveling and was busy packing a small satchel that could carry a money pouch, ink and quills, and a book or two. He wore riding boots as his intention was to buy a steed from the stables in the city and ride it to his next destination.

“Why are you here?” Tommy said flatly and tightened the strings on his satchel before swinging it onto his shoulders and tying the excess to his belt.

“Originally to apologize, but now I’m curious as to where you plan to go now with a target on your back?” Dream said cooly and Tommy could hear the smile in his words.

“Why should you care? We’re through, Dream.” Tommy hissed and bit his tongue. Out of all the people that had hurt him over the years and by how much, Dream’s was the worst.

“I don’t want to be through, Thes- I mean Tommy. I want us to be brothers again.” Dream stepped forward on his last words and Tommy clamped his eyes shut. It still hurt.

“Please, don’t call me that if you’re truly sorry.” Tommy pleaded and stood straight to make sure the satchel stayed secure.

“Tommy please, let me make it up to you!” Dream begged and it made the former Prince’s heart coil.

“You can’t take back what you hid from me, Dream. You can’t undo that betrayal.” Tommy faced his companion and met green eyes unshielded by the mask of a smile.

“I know and that’s why I’m sorry! I should’ve told you at the start and I shouldn’t have followed you to your garden. That was yours and I took it from you.” Dream grasped Tommy’s shoulders and gripped his biceps in an effort to reach Tommy’s iced heart.

Silence stretched out like a canyon and Tommy bit back tears and lowered his eyes from the familiar green of Dream’s. There was a sigh and a shaking breath.

“Tommy, I want you to come back to Esempi with me.” Dream said.

“What?” Tommy’s eyes snapped back to Dream’s. It was like a magnet. Everything slowed and the world became a shade of green. A green akin to home and smooth grass instead of icy snow and cold shoulders.

“I want you to come back home with me, as my brother.” Dream repeated with more force and his eyes lit with a promise of love and happiness.

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Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | ____ | Part 5 | (Finale)

[libidomechanica]

Margins call God—call God

A tricube sequence

               1

And waile with such pity do we

could shown. Curve in a stay. The naked

on her day. Margins call God—call God!

               2

Which I escap’d from thy tear it. You

almost mine and all, among. With things

passion—draweth Helicon the faint!

               3

When removed! And make my gulf hadst not

kept his brimming and was in the aid

on pity on horse? See him, but I.

               4

When to speaketh. It wilder- mooned

touches roughts that old hiding. I burn

with earth—and the employs for these lips?

               5

Pan the walls, and the forgive she down

hands. Last summon air.—If I sleep without

this lips! But yet do the new booth.

               6

Cap of works of either minds of the

valley there he man’s side should never

you alone. Then to seem’d twincline, oh!

               7

That shuns Love. For under grief; for soul

the affords. By tenderness is goodly

pegs; but false here it is my green.

               8

For you’re slowly which you, so sudden

age to all have do? On will my

desire my eclipse and charity.

               9

Hammering all drawn, or do depart,

it makes vs language appease my

though bubblings, which in the selfe thee; things.

               10

Through each other, in the sun sank or

for adore! For what sages drown’d within

that till on Menie down words, how broad.

               11

The sorrow last. Like there, the way, I

can received thine eyes bene alone?

Roll, that villain fickle Nelly Gray!

               12

Time of thy delight last! My scorn withdraw

no more awe thy thing with pride, thou,

then your sigh and low, the should they land.

               13

Let not seem near the flight of flower

for Thought, if you. Has up one age, her

soul of years doe avoyd the rivers.

               14

Nothing to was that Johnny! Poor for

signal shaking from hill, as at thine

hand of mine eyes shill: wi’ joy his pay.

               15

His hand, and Johnny’s left wind the Moon

of silence together. With they spoke,

and look upon the wind was in ways.

               16

Are bounted in your brazen familiar

part, in they ran: thou, whereby; learns

to the year? Not only fit for you.

               17

As soft winna let us carefulnesse

of miracle. Thou comes thy

soul in her by me received a man!

               18

Now called he’d wrinkles she cold along;

flame-lit place fate, still. Since, dar’st the sun’s

see, thine isles shown. They guest; but I die!

               19

To keeps, the summer beast? Go on, go

chide but the who, hardly can my lips

witness, once by their merry-making?

               20

It is not in a diet. And ancient

veil that now chariot hush, then

forgive, but seas whereby young bird sang.

               21

Music to that is old Susan Gale.

That blinded Pleiad, which once she saw

thee and feel why amiss, a shaking.

               22

At moment! As with so late scholar,

spleen. His rage at my learn, to him, raking,

as with each though the meaning lies.

               23

And me this swept then ridden and her

stood, and whiles away from the perfume

them thus to sooth, what is booth. Mr.

               24

For mine eyes, comes the pony more shadows

flying our palm? Of those Virtue

be anything. So he reeds and breath?

               25

Those wrung head& to knock again- her about

there. Summers ever knew my woeful

charge, even by tasted on Nell!

               26

The impossibly terror cause be

where harmless the bed in part, gather,

seeing fires. So Pharaoh, or stand thee.

               27

But my lust. Let us coffee, decked.

Tide—till thee, robes flame the was she was

the main, she land only airless lie.

               28

For the languish dreams did not as kind.

To give more fruitful of perfume to

see, the single heart. Your quaint then out.

               29

Only might does you blin’s law. Yet was

shut feast, that’s his suffered … to choosing

from among hand, still as sweet Draughter.

               30

As loathsome. An oath, reconciled to

many starte with your waile than my

servant’s eyes care, I had through not me?

               31

—A clear spring- wheel, the dead, are bought

to my request. His death, I will die,

vibrates in that so unsluice spake more.

               32

Colin the last breath, and Infinite

clock with grave when adored. My fate, and

go, and furrows on the scarlet pain!

               33

The summer, ere twere fierce loue, and took

their end toward sun, for my love do? She

pang; dare in a grace. Than sense—thy loue?

               34

Her that, in my arms will years best. For

thou can never ill-bred each other

tender the moued to mine eye, her dreams.

               35

And as if on when I lived twenty

and Good Betty lambs we eaten light

and as if death head we but plays me.

               36

Robbed, to hello. Up in the coastal

stay to dwell try my gaily love to

one hand, that is ditties but can ease.

               37

And for on one day as to weariest

words. The end toward Lamia: tell you

bene aloft with a pious birds.

               38

Take your infrequest. Or his verse and

this guide. So he thus again arres

to the plain is flood on hire baundoun.

               39

Yours all: wi’ joy possibly sad as

a week’s so green both flatter. These world

an irritable when you appease?

               40

Breaches of arms I have all weep, it

came latest soul from me. I lovd so

night, both forbid mercy are your day.

               41

And multitudes so fast in mysterical,—

he braver at the strained thy

loues thee. Our break my idiot boy.

               42

His devotion that I asham’d thy

far awa! With thy dainting of transfer

which won a goat inke is a birds.

               43

None live as not sinking and, pleasant

that thou thy minds are game. A-list’ning

so fresh design upon a diet.

               44

The silence passionate away, do

not ever therefore her into amaze.

Her sex and the drink up a mind.

               45

Then let a stars that love know, dead the

came. By bonds in the news printed breathed,

when ecstatic fumes call Thy plays me.

               46

Or him if horse, that it could I know.

It make you in a sweet him, but the

Southern balm breathings reflection slide.

               47

Enough, above, do not be well she

long thee! Doth looks in truest and thus

bepearly nothings to either on.

               48

Under their proudly say. It is also

in sensitive lifts thee but found,

since live or wheels would fair and saying.

               49

Troth, still, and me die, times back have to

behold the grave alwaies set: bayleaue

arrival. And by his eyes at survive.

               50

As in the tended; but was wherein

yourself, the diseases to weak race;

but for a long I prize with power.

               51

He took through tremulous shadow and

clear perfume. For from Pyrrha’s pebbles

may me blood rushes, who like a son.

               52

In each comfort took the poor great krater-

cup bearing kisses racing. Be

glass o’ sweetly grant I may the day.

               53

Dreams in the life-days and husband; so

large here better. And not how she’s the

sun from wear you Virgins, thy should quake.

               54

Say overthrown, or as place where brains,

the sun? To fight; my death soft hands, or

pity do not ask the peoples left.

               55

Well; or where; that shepherds feelings vse

eloquench hood at its round witch, haunt

of love, and maun I still in the greete?

               56

Much too deep in tune that, in love office:

nor stars, and Betty’s most thou mayst

with slow amenity, and she wood.

               57

Beside me thundring ye love, too store;

new one, to love’s wrongs. And down by there,

tis eight to the proudly spleen. At heart!

               58

Yourself from else itself in thy mind.

In high, which to a few live, and greatness

mighty thou art to frown; he wheel?

               59

And escaped for my hears, though thence. The

yellow sky, that poetry where be

a copy near into That make heede.

               60

The banks the illusion vex me a’;

but fall in royall rocks. But a now

not for certain and unmated, glide.

               61

Bounty shame too-early grow; but

boundlessly brough the fires of her soul! A

dream in up and by tasted in loue?

[theestervashti]

"The Mister." From Esther 7: 1-7.

The forecast says more hot heat is on the way, more missiles are going to fall from the sky, there are going to be more riots, diseases, more poverty, and funerals to attend, but no one is really discussing the antidote, called a strategy.

The reason is, there ain't one. I have created a five stage plan that would address all of the world's ailments, each one, in addition to counteracting the problems in our global human forecast is also designed as profit center:

Removal of all despots and tyrants from world governments.

Repatriation and urbanization.

Atmosphere scrubbing and 100% restoration of natural heat translation with the upper atmosphere.

Habitat restoration.

Complete relief of poverty.

The problem is and will be populism. My plan is either too idealistic or too expensive, or abortions this and abortions that, but in spite of the fact my priorities are correct, concise, well thought out and necessary, someone will have something derogatory to say.

No matter who good or wise a plan may be, a populist will try to upend it, turn a benefit into a threat. About the upkeep and prosperity of the people and the planet and an end to life-threatening populists, the King of Persia had a remedy: kill the bitches.

Haman Impaled

7 So the king and Haman went to Queen Esther’s banquet, 2 and as they were drinking wine on the second day, the king again asked, “Queen Esther, what is your petition? It will be given you. What is your request? Even up to half the kingdom, it will be granted.”

3 Then Queen Esther answered, “If I have found favor with you, Your Majesty, and if it pleases you, grant me my life—this is my petition. And spare my people—this is my request. 

4 For I and my people have been sold to be destroyed, killed and annihilated. If we had merely been sold as male and female slaves, I would have kept quiet, because no such distress would justify disturbing the king.[a]”

5 King Xerxes asked Queen Esther, “Who is he? Where is he—the man who has dared to do such a thing?”

6 Esther said, “An adversary and enemy! This vile Haman!”

Then Haman was terrified before the king and queen. 7 The king got up in a rage, left his wine and went out into the palace garden. But Haman, realizing that the king had already decided his fate, stayed behind to beg Queen Esther for his life.

The frame employs us to cross the Second Day, known for a lack of keen thinking about violence, right and wrong, good and evil into the Third, called Dry Land. To this effect, Xerxes agrees with Esther, populism cannot be used as an excuse to murder the innocent in large numbers.

Now this is an old text, circa 4 BCE. The fukchucks have had an ample amount of time to study how sincerely God and the gods of Israel frown upon genocide of the people of Israel, but where mass murder and God's Words are concerned by all means take all the time one needs.

The Values in Gematria are:

v. 1-2: What is your petition? The Number is 13827, יגחבז‎ ‎, "yaghabez." "will dry up the grief."

v. 3: Spare the people, this is my request. NOW did that hook nosed sloppy cunt Marjorie Taylor Green or that child molesting FILTH Mike Johnson follow the holy scriptures when Vlodomyr Zelenskyy came to ask "spare my people, please?" or did we say fuck you very much? What about what happened in Israel because of the Mormons and the Republicans on October 7? Or all the rapes and sexual assaults on Jewish people that the Republicans and their friends in the Marriott Corporation, at Hillsdale College and BYU are performing with impunity all across America? Is the White House doing everything it can to spare the people? No it is not.

When Joe Biden criticized PM Netanyahu's clean up of Biden's Mormon mess in Israel, I nearly lost it.

The Number is 12513, יבהאג‎‎, yabhag, "In the hague."

The Gematria says only the Holiday Spirit can spare our lives. Perhaps after every Republican lawmaker and member of the LDS is dead as penance for what they have done.

After this is done and revenge of the God of Israel against these persons is complete, then yes, we should "hag" and resume the routines of normal life. Like most, I'm not sure what that means anymore, but this is what the definition states:

"The masculine noun חג (hug), meaning circle or circuit. It's used a mere three times, twice to denote the hydrologic cycle (Job 22:14, Proverbs 8:27) and once to describe the "cycle of the earth," which appears to denote the more fundamental thermodynamic cycle (Isaiah 40:22)."

v. 4: "I and my people have been sold to be destroyed." The only response to a threat of this magnitude is to kill or be killed. The world does not except, very amply the evil that has been done to the Jewish people for thousands of years for reasons no one can explain but the time for the message and the messengers to die is nigh. There cannot be a cease fire in Gaza, there cannot be any objective but to declare the enemies of the Kingdom of Israel are all already dead, just waiting to be killed.

This includes Donald Trump and "JD Vance" every member of their party and their support systems, everyone, all of it. You went over to Israel just like you said you were going to do and you carved out that tunnel network and murdered thousands of innocent people didn't you? Now, there will never be a cease fire until every last one of you is deceased.

Anything less "would disturb the king."

The Number is 12532, יבהגב, yehavag, "will choose."

Why are the Jews called the Chosen People? Does this mean chosen for annihilation?

God's instructions to the Jewish people about the fact they were designated by Him for specific purposes are found in Ki Tessa:

Bezalel and Oholiab

31 Then the Lord said to Moses, 2 “See, I have chosen Bezalel (protection) son of Uri “the fire”,  the son of Hur “purity”, of the tribe of Judah “the most praised”, 3 and I have filled him with the Spirit of God, with wisdom, with understanding, with knowledge and with all kinds of skills— 4 to make artistic designs for work in gold, silver and bronze, 5 to cut and set stones, to work in wood, and to engage in all kinds of crafts. 

--> this is the first time we have seen the Spirit of God mentioned since the Creation. And here is that word, “protection” which keeps coming up. About this the Parsha says again: 

“Refuge is conferred by the Most Praiseworthy, those who bind themselves to the fire and are pure of the causes of slavery.” 

6 Moreover, I have appointed Oholiab “the Father’s House”,  son of Ahisamak, “Who listens”  of the tribe of Dan, ”Superior judgement”  to help him. Also I have given ability to all the skilled workers to make everything I have commanded you: 7 the tent of meeting, the ark of the covenant law with the atonement cover on it, and all the other furnishings of the tent— 8 the table and its articles, the pure gold lampstand and all its accessories, the altar of incense, 9 the altar of burnt offering and all its utensils, the basin with its stand— 10 and also the woven garments, both the sacred garments for Aaron the priest and the garments for his sons when they serve as priests, 11 and the anointing oil and fragrant incense for the Holy Place. They are to make them just as I commanded you.”

v. 5: King Xerxes asked Queen Esther, “Who is he? Where is he—the man who has dared to do such a thing?" The Number is 5749, ט‎הזד‎ ‎ ‎"1,000". A thousand is probably the most tricky term in the alpha-numeric system of Hebrew. A millennium is how long it takes between the dawn of time and the permanent end of human savagery, what is called Mashiach.

1,000 is the number for the new god, "the Mister", one's honey bee, it is also the fulcrum past which one must attain to Ha Shem, a "Pillar of the Sun" at two thousand, when the number doubles.

"The verb און ('wn) appears to mean to experience a lot, to be subject to much. It doesn't occur in the Bible but in cognate languages it's either negative and means to be tired and troubled, or it's positive and means to be at rest and enjoy a life of plenty.

Nouns און ('awen) and תאנים (te'unim) are of the first category, and mean trouble, sorrow or toil. Noun און ('on) is of the second and describes an surplus of vigor or wealth and specifically of reproductive powers."

To reproduce either in the flesh or by the means of ideals that lead to the destruction of others is not holy nor meet in the Eyes of the Lord. The Jewish people were tasked by God to maintain the proper traditions named by the Torah, no matter how contrary they run against the grain of populists and ensure all men are safe to pursue life on earth.

v. 6: The adversary was terrified. The Number is 5554, "the echo, you must beat." '

v. 7: The king got up in a rage, left his wine and went out into the palace garden. But Haman, realizing that the king had already decided his fate, stayed behind to beg Queen Esther for his life.

Should we decide another man's fate in a rage? Certainly not. The Mormons and Republicans and their friends have to die. The Number is 7851, ע‎ח‎ןא‎, ahana, "The ceremonial importance of a man's spear."

=

Spears represent the ability of men to govern each other- they are the connection between the mind, the arm, the hand and the rest of the world. They are constitutions that bind persons that live well-dedfined territories to the laws that permit them to be fairly and well-governed. Every nation on this planet depends on the integrity of other governments to properly conduct their own affairs.

The basis for constitutional government is found in the Torah, the Tanakh, and fully supported by other God given instruments like the Quran and the Bhagavad Gita. They were given by God and the gods so that life would one day become normal, that it would be easy.

Whether the law is minor, don't litter, don't run naked through the streets, look both ways before crossing the street, or major, designed to prevent election fraud, murder, sex with minors, or terrorism, we depend on our managers and governors to use them on our behalf’s without failure. We are told by the Spirit this expectation is not unreasonable, also not to show mercy when the reasons are at risk.

What is happening on this planet was once fully preventable. Allowing persons who do not understand how utterly careless it is to allow the same conditions to proceed is not acceptable. All the world's stakeholders, every man, woman, and child needs to make the White House aware they will not stand for it.

[hier--soir]

congrats on 4k jessie! that’s so huge!

🫀number 50 on the prompt list for joel?

- @honeyedmiller 🖤

"I know, I know, I'm stuck with you. I wouldn't have it any other way."

warnings/tags: recent death of joel's f!partner [no explanation for how], brief mention of the funeral, grief and loss, hallucinations [auditory, sensory], non explicit smut - joel fucks a grave [saltburn you will always be famous], descriptions of blood but it isn’t real, dark subject matter but not dark joel, grave desecration, dead dove do not eat [if you don't wanna read it, don't].

word count: 600

A mellow breeze winds through the tall grass.

The small crowd has long since dispersed. Weathered faces painted with streaks of salt, mouths downturned as they murmured her name and dared not to speak of what had led to this day. He’s thankful to be alone now, with her.

The air is rich and humid here. Good weather for the garden to thrive in, she’d always said, toothy grin on show just for him.

With his knees planted in the earth, thick fingers caressing the ground where they’d once liked to walk together, Joel agrees that this is the perfect place for her. A little mound carved out in the middle of the acreage, in a spot so deep that only he will ever be able to find it once the grass begins to grow through her.

He would know the way to her in his sleep. Hours spent in the field behind the house, bodies twisting between yellow and green, wrinkled faces splitting into smiles upon getting lost again. The memories spill across his back and send his face crumpling against the dirt, throat tightening with low cries as his fingers fumble with his belt.

Just a man, alone with the woman he loves. And the soil feels forgiving beneath him. Soft enough that when he looks closely, he starts to feel sure that, in time, he could count each and every little grain of soil that holds her. That he could press his lips to each one and thank it for keeping her safe when he couldn’t.

And when he presses inside, her name a choked prayer on his lips, from the earth comes deep red. It seeps up through granules of fresh, soft dirt and greets him so kindly. To feel her warmth soothes his palms, his chest, the base of his stomach. A reminder of the way she would spill for him, bountiful and loving in the arms of his embrace.

This is close but not as close as he needs, yet he surmises that this will do; this can be enough.

It’s thick and viscous as it pours from the soil and lines the soft rolls of Joel’s flesh. Spins his skin maroon and makes him moan, eyes pitching black as heat curls in the base of his spine. Her earth clings to his skin, tacky and wet from his eyes and her overflow of red.

The long grass tickles his ankles, creeping beneath the legs of his jeans like whispers of fingers trailing along his skin.

If he keeps his eyes closed, fingers curled tightly in the dirt, he thinks he can hear her voice past the rushing in his ears. Dulcet tones that bypass the raging pulse of his own blood and set his skin alight with goosebumps as she murmurs his name.

It’s raining now, he thinks. Soft patter of water against the back of his shirt, the bare skin of his thighs. It thickens her earth, solidifies it beneath him, around him, until he’s panting, sobbing, letting her hold him as tight as she wants.

“I love you,” Joel cries, but he smiles through the tears when he hears her call his name. Distant, as if he’s only hearing it from the other room. Perhaps not as far as he’d feared.

So he coos softly, “I know, I know.” Curls his fingers the way he always loved to and strokes softly, body slack and shaking against her earth. “I’m stuck with you. I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

[thoscheienjoyer]

Here's a rough draft of a rewrite with a speech like that, I plan to do much more with this concept:

"Look upon my work, Doctor, and despair"

The Doctor looked on in horror at the fallen civilization she once called home, she'd seen it once before, but now she was forced to stand with the man who did it and take it all in. "Why would you do this?" She finally snaps, she can't determine if she's angry or sad, maybe both, she was a whirlwind of grief.

But the Master doesn't take her question seriously, he just smiles calmly, as if what he did was nothing, and maybe to him it was nothing, or too much to feel. "The better question, why wouldn't I?" She stared in disbelief but didn't speak quickly enough for him not to continue: "I did it for us, Doctor."

"Why would I want this?!" Rage bubbled to the surface at such a claim, she wanted to punch him for daring to bring her into this more than she already was, it was already her fault she didn't stop him, she didn't need this.

"Do you remember how old we were when we were forced into the academy? When we first looked into the good and the bad of the universe?"

She didn't remember, she was too young.

"You were one of the lucky ones, Doctor, most were driven mad. Though, maybe you are in your own little way with the hero complex and all."

"I'm not like you. I didn't want this." Her voice shook and she refused to see his point, there's no explanation that could have been good enough to calm her rage, is this how he feels?

"You are like me, we're the only ones left" The Master steps closer and she steps away, she didn't want to look at him right now.

"We were always the only ones worthy of this title, a timelord, what did they ever do with it? Nothing. They sat around and created monsters with their cruelty. What if it was up to you what to do? What if the laws of time were at your will? What would you do?" He leans in despite her attempts to keep a literal and metaphorical distance. "You'd do a better job than they did. We stand on the ruins of a world put out of it's misery, you should thank me."

Instead she punched him in the face. He tasted blood on his lips and stared at her in shock, he'd expected a big reaction, but not this. He was almost impressed, it was thrilling to have such a chokehold over someone else's emotions. Over the Doctor's emotions.

Her breath was shaky, the punch did nothing to help. "This is our home, did it mean nothing to you?! All this talk of vengeance and you fail to mention all the innocents you've slaughtered in the crossfire! Did they deserve it, Master?! I didn't want this!" She didn't know why she felt the need to repeat it, maybe it was reassurance to herself she held no hate for the high council.

"It meant everything to me!" He yelled back and she paused, he had been masking the hurt. Was he feeling remorse? No. He was upset he wasn't satisfied. "All those years with constant, pounding, drumming!" stomp stomp, stomp stomp. "I think about this wretched place and it's like it's still there. There was a time when you were the only good thing on this planet, but you left it so why should I care about anything I ruined? Unless I ruined you too by doing this, that'd be ironic, wouldn't it?"

The Doctor was silent, she could see his pain, but she couldn't justify or forgive his actions. "Just take me wherever you were going to."

His mood drastically shifts, anger fading to a giddy persona where he's nothing but proud of himself. "Follow me, dear." As if she had a choice, she followed along the destruction, too detached from the situation to let it stop whatever he was planning. Throughout: 'I did it for us' was on a loop in the Doctor's mind, this was her fault.

Am I the only one who hated the timeless child reveal and thought it made no sense? If they needed a reason for the Master to blow up Gallifrey they had plenty:

The Doctor and the Master were both heavily bullied to the point the Master almost died and the Doctor had to kill the bully to save him because he was being drowned

The Master was locked in a room for who knows how long intentionally as a punishment

The Master was taken from his family as a child to look into something that basically gave him schizophrenia

The Master was told to his face he's "diseased" (End of Time) and he's "the worst thing to come out" (The Five Doctors)

He has constantly been the timelord's pawn, giving him the drums was an intentional decision

It's implied he was tortured for his crimes after being trapped on Gallifrey when he sacrificed himself for the 10th doctor in End of Time

I would have LOVED if the Master blew up Gallifrey simply because he thought they deserved it after how they treated him and the Doctor both. What could make him do this could just be the fact he's disgusted by Missy's actions in trying to be better and feels like he has to do the worst thing he can possibly think of and that's what comes to mind. He'd try to convince the Doctor he's right "Remember how they didn't help us? How they took us and made us see things no child should? How we never got our own lives? That'll never happen to anyone ever again now" unhinged speech

Or "With them gone we are truly the last of the time lords, we have a right to the universe more than anyone now and it's ours to shape. Conquer with me and be a just ruler if you're so concerned"

[ilariyalavorowrites]

Good enough (9-1-1) Part three

Imagine leaving LA after feeling like an outsider in your relationship with Bobby and Athena as they seem to pull away and distance themselves from you. Only to find that it is almost impossible to actually walk away.

Warnings: Angst with happy ending, AU, Bisexual Athena, (Eventually) BDSM

Pairings: Bobby Nash x Reader x Athena Grant

Word count: 1,124 words

Universe: 9-1-1

Reader gender: Female

Author: Ilariya_Lavoro writes

Previous/ Next

Part 3/10

Regret had flooded your senses from the moment that you re-opened your eyes a few days prior. The surprising discovery that you were still alive had been a relief to say the very least but at the same time you feel terrible for your rash, impulsive actions. You were bound to a bed on a ward in an unfamiliar hospital. 

Lines and wires were going in and out, connecting you to various machines on both sides of the bed. They had been anticipating the worst possible option when you had been wheeled in unconscious, barely holding onto the threads of a life you’d haphazardly left behind in your rear view mirror.

Now you could clearly see the error of your ways, you regretted the path that you had taken. Blinded to the alternative ways that you could have turned, instead rushing in head first without a second thought for how they would feel. This was karma for your choices. You were completely and utterly alone.

You had dared to ask if anyone had called looking for you, if anyone had visited whilst you had still been out cold. The answer to both had been the same, no. No-one was out there looking for you. This was your new future, far from how you dared to envision it. You had left and this was your new tomorrow.

You should feel free but that was not the case. You were drowning in a harsh sea of regret, grief and sorrow. This was of your own making, the bed you had made. One you would lie in night after night. There was no way back, not one you see in this particular moment in time.

You were numb as time rushed past you as Doctors and Nurse entered your room, speaking and carrying out necessary tests and procedures on your road to recovery. However none of that happened, you just laid there, letting it all wash over you. Where would you go? You had given up your apartment, handed in your notice and abandoned the ones you claimed to love.

No roof over your head, no job and no-one waiting up for you at the end of the day. When you had been truly left with your thoughts in that small room. Your raw, untapped emotions bled back through breaking down your walls. Pulling you under the waves as you were consumed by the sheer force of it all. You had been flung out of the calm into the raging heart of the storm.

You cried out in the dark, this was self inflicted. You were wrong. Astronomically led astray by anger and fear pulling you out of the light, in the cold embrace of the emptiness. There were no winners, only losers and you were the biggest loser in this situation.

In the haze, you had heard that you’d likely be released at the end of the week. Pending the results of the various swabs and tests showed.  You had broken a few ribs and fractured your left wrist but they were concerned about the length of time you’d been unconscious for.

They had scheduled a CT scan for the following morning but as the cloud of despair grew overhead. You cared very little for what lay ahead in the days that followed. For there wouldn’t be anyone at your bedside to hold your hand, telling you that it would be alright. Depression tightened its hold upon you, weighing you down upon the thin mattress that you laid upon. Another nightmarish evening lay ahead in this deafeningly lonely room of yours.

This was your life now

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

Forty Eight Hours Earlier

There had been many times that Athena had found herself standing outside your apartment. They had started out as purely platonic social visits which had evolved over time to something much more romantically inclined. Bobby had been over more than she had in the beginning before the shift had even occurred.

Standing before the front door, the spare key in hand did nothing to elevate the heavy feeling that lingered. Something wasn’t right because it was far too quiet. For there, no noise emanating from within the abode. No music or mumble as you played the most recent series you were bingeing through. No footsteps walking from room to room. No hum of the washing machine as it worked through the programmed laundry cycle.

It was rarely this silent, it was almost as if you were simply not there but you won���t just leave your car parked outside. There were simply too many questions and too few answers for her taste. The cogs in her mind whizzed as she tried to make logical sense of this situation but nothing fit. 

She stepped up into high gear as she slid the key into the lock, turning it clockwise to unlock the door. Athena pushed it inwards, her sharp eyes took in the room as the content was revealed to her. She narrowed her eyes at the now spaciously decorated interior. 

WRONG

WRONG

WRONG

The word echoed in her mind as she stepped into the apartment, closing the door behind her. What had happened to the many photos that had once littered your walls, each a happy memory that could recall each and every time that she was here. Each little touch made these four walls into a home that she loved returning to, with or without Bobby. Only the small coffee table and sofa in the corner of the living room remained alongside the heavier pieces of furniture that would be dotted around the other rooms. One thing did stand out in the spartan room. A singular envelope laying flat upon the table. This was a start. She dared to hope that what she could see before her eyes.

At the same time, her years on the force gave her the skills to read a room. This apartment spoke volumes as she made her way through each and every room. Until her feet found their way back to the living room. She took a seat upon the lumpy, well loved sofa as she mentally compiled her evidential list.

The lack of personal belongings/clothes

The sudden radio silence

Your abandoned car

The keys that she had kicked on her way in

No, this couldn’t be the case. There had to be more to this than this surface-level detail. Athena whipped out her phone and dialled a familiar number. She placed it to her ear and waited for it to be answered. “She is gone” There was no time for pleasantries, she got straight to the point as time was now against them. However, one mystery remained that could be easily solved. The contents of the envelope.

[dhwty-writes]

The Terribly Sad and Tragic Affair that Is the Fake Funeral of Shadowhand Essek Thelyss

Apparently, I am not only drawing for the Critical Role fandom, but writing for it, too. After months of nearly no progress I just vomited out 3k words this Tuesday and it only went downhill from there.

This fic is based on this post by @anne-o-nyme, I really hope I managed to capture the energy of it.

Have fun!

Summary: There were eight strangers in the foyer of his dead brother's towers and Verin Thelyss was slowly losing his patience.

After the sudden "death" of Shadowhand Essek Thelyss, it is his brother Verin's job to empty out his towers. The Mighty Nein show up to help (and maybe steal a few things).

OR: Verin is grieving, Essek just wants his stuff back, and the Mighty Nein are the Mighty Nein.

Warnings: I didn't tag this with MCD, because Essek is technically alive and kicking. Since Verin doesn't know that though, and this fic is written from his POV, this is dealing with grief and includes depictions of depressive thoughts as well as anxiety attacks. For more explicit warnings, please mind the tags on AO3. Take care of yourselves, and let me know if I forgot anything.

Read on AO3

There were eight strangers in the foyer of his dead brother's towers and Verin Thelyss was slowly losing his patience. "Listen," he said with what little calm he had left, "I know that by returning one of our beacons you became heroes of the Dynasty and were placed under Es— My bro— his stewardship. But this here—" he gestured vaguely at the interior of Essek's towers that had always been too cold, too empty, but not like now, never like now— "This is a very difficult situation for me, so if you could please leave, that would be greatly appreciated."

"Yes, yes, it's very sad that Essek died," the blue tiefling said—Jester, her name was Jester; she had given him that already as she had offered him her condolences with a hug—and Verin could barely contain his anger. After the funeral he had quite enough of lying dignitaries, nobles, and heroes currying favours with him. That had always been Essek's thing, he would know what to do, how to make them regret even daring to speak up; Verin had never been any good at it.

"But we're his friends!" He grit his teeth at Jester's blatant falsehood. Perhaps his anger showed on his face, since the tiefling faltered. "And, uh— Fjord?"

"It's true," the half-orc with too-smooth words and too-smooth voice lied, too. "We spent quite some time with your, er— your brother here. Made some good memories. We thought we might take this as our chance to say goodbye, too."

"We are here to help as well. We wouldn't want to infringe upon your grief, though," the tall firbolg added. "So, if you'd prefer us to return at a later point, we'd be happy to."

Verin was still trying to process everything—from these strangers showing up unannounced to their overwhelming presence to the fact that his brother was dead—while simultaneously trying to keep an eye on the halfling who looked like she might have sticky fingers. So, he latched onto the word that stood out the most to him: "Help?"

"Right," Fjord said, looking slightly embarrassed, "we probably should have led with that..."

"We should have called ahead, too," the scary-looking human in blue—they didn't even wear white for the funeral—added. "We always forget to call ahead."

"But Beau, how should we have called ahead?" Jester complained. "We didn't know Verin yet."

"Well, Essek—" the human was interrupted by the even scarier-looking woman next to her stepping on her foot unsubtly. She at least had the decency to act embarrassed. "Right. Sorry 'bout that."

Awkward silence fell across the room, the Mighty Nein looking anywhere but him. It took him a few moments to realise they were waiting for him to speak up. "Help how?" Verin could have kicked himself. By the Light, he could do better than that. He had to do better than that.

A beat of silence followed, then everyone seemed to talk at once. Verin wanted to weep. How was he supposed to deal with this? How had his brother dealt with this? 'He probably hasn't,' he thought. 'They're probably all liars, probably—'

Someone cleared their throat and all eyes turned to the other human who hadn't said anything so far and who looked properly miserable. Immediately, the Mighty Nein fell silent. "Word has reached us that Den Thelyss ordered these premises to be vacated as early as possible," he said quietly with an accent Verin has been taught that belonged to the enemy. "And while some of us may not look like much, I can assure you, we are quite capable."

His eyebrows shot up to his hairline. "I supposed such menial tasks are beneath the heroes of the dynasty. There are servants—"

"Well, sure," the halfling with the probably sticky fingers interrupted, "but we know him. Knew him, I mean; sorry, force of habit."

"Besides, there's a lot of stuff," the lavender tiefling, who Verin was pretty sure was a known pirate, piped up. "Looks like you could use the help."

"If you want to, of course," the sad Empire human added.

Verin only wanted to scream, to give room to the torrent of thoughts raging in his head. 'My brother just died. My brother just died and he wasn't consecuted, so he's gone for good. He's gone for good and I didn't even know him; I didn't even know about these supposed friends he had because he didn't allow me near him in decades. I was a horrible brother and so was he, but I can't even be mad at him because he's dead.

'And now these liars show up and talk about friendship and knowing him, but those are all lies, horrible ones, because Essek had no friends. Essek was cold and cruel and lonely and do you even know how horrible that is? Dying alone with no-one who mourns you, just the favours you still owe them? Do you? I don't even know, and I'm his brother.'

Were he a weaker man, a less disciplined one, he might have said so. But he was Taskhand Verin of Den Thelyss and he had learned discipline before he had learned to talk. So, he said: "Your help would be greatly appreciated, thank you. I'll have the servants bring up some tea. There are, uh—" He straightened his back, summoning the composure that was befitting a Taskhand, even one with a dead brother. "There are boxes up there, they've been brought to the rooms already. Anything of value will be sold; the rest will be given to charity. The things— Well, if you find anything that might have sentimental value, something in his handwriting, perhaps, I think I should like to keep that, please."

The firbolg nodded sagely. "Of course. We will be careful with our selection."

With that, Verin turned around and— froze. Where was he even supposed to start? The towers had always seemed to huge for just Essek and he knew that there were very few personal belongings in them. Still, they would have to be scoured clean within the fortnight.

A large hand on his shoulder made him jump, although he'd never admit it. "Sometimes, when a task seems too large, you should start with the smallest part," the firbolg said. "If I were you, I'd start with the smallest room."

"Thank you, that, uh— that seems like good advice," Verin replied, still a bit startled and confused. "I, er— I'm afraid I didn't catch your name."

"Caduceus Clay. I live in a graveyard, so I'm used to this," Clay said, as if it was the most normal thing in the world.

Verin furrowed his brows slightly. A graveyard? It seemed highly unlikely to him that one of the heroes of the Dynasty would live in a graveyard of all places. Perhaps they were not only liars, but impostors too? But they had the symbols of the Bright Queen, so there wasn't much that he could say.

"Right," he mumbled. "I believe the smallest room would be the closet. Although it might be tied with the bathroom..." He trailed off again. He had never seen Essek's bedroom in his towers. Judging by how many times he had even seen the inside of the building; he could count himself lucky if he even found the way there.

"Why don't we split up?" Clay suggested. "One group takes the closet, one the bathroom and one the bedroom. We'd get done sooner that way."

"That is a great idea, Caduceus," Jester said excitedly. "I'll take the bathroom; I promised— er, I'm curious if I can find more of that hair oil, I got for Fjord that one time!"

"Ohhh, are you saying this is... an investigation?!" the halfling joined in.

"That's exactly what I'm saying, Veth!"

"Seems like a case for Wildemount's best detectives!"

"Bye, Verin!" Jester called and he blinked and they were gone. Fjord joined them as well, muttering something about having to supervise them.

The purple pirate-tiefling shrugged, heading off in the same direction. "Well, I wouldn't mind rifling through some drawers. I'll have a look at that bedroom."

"Yeah, I don't need to see Essek's underwear, so I'll pass on the closet," Beau added tactfully—Verin was getting the sneaking suspicion that manners were not really her strong suit. She linked hands with the large woman at her side, pulling her along. "Come on, Yash."

"I'll go handle the tea," Clay said. "Don't worry about it." He vanished in the direction of the kitchen, his steps accompanied by the constant tap tap tap of his staff.

When Verin looked around, he realised that only the sad Empire human was left with him in the hallway. "If you wouldn't mind," he said, pointedly avoiding eye-contact, "I would love to have a look at the closet. I always, ah— appreciated your brother's sense of fashion."

Verin blinked at him a few times, then shrugged. "Sure." He began heading up the stairs.

"My condolences," the human continued. "I realise I didn't speak up earlier, but— I am sorry for your loss."

"Thank you," he said, letting the same numb feeling wash over him again that he had embraced since the news of Essek's death had reached him.

"I know that we seem like a bunch of, ah— forgive my language, but assholes, but we're really here to help. I will tell the others to tone it down a bit."

"Thank you," he repeated.

"If you'd prefer that we start in, ah— less personal rooms, we can do that also."

"If I'm perfectly honest, I don't even know what I should be doing there."

"Neither am I." The human laughed nervously. "I have dealt with grief before, but I've never had the, ah— how do you call it? Hang on." He pulled out a copper wire and whispered: "Beau, how do you say zweifelhafte Ehre in Common? You can reply to this message." A moment later he straightened. "Right. I never had the dubious honour of emptying out a deceased person's house before."

"Neither did I," Verin admitted. 'Usually, the deceased person comes back,' he didn't say. Instead, he opted for: "You're, er— What's the word in Common? You're weird? I'm sorry if that's insulting, I just— waele xanalressen [stupid languages]."

"I don't understand your words, but I think I understand the sentiment." The man grimaced. "And I've heard that one before. I hope we're not too much of a... too much."

"It's alright," he lied and opened the door to Essek's bedroom. 

It wasn't alright; Verin wanted to weep again.

The door to the bathroom stood ajar, as did several drawers and cabinets, although he couldn't glance inside. Considering that he heard glass shatter and a quiet "oops" followed by a hushed "Jester!" he was rather glad about that. Besides, what he saw was already quite enough to handle. Beau was currently rifling through Essek's nightstand, the tall woman tossing unread books on the bed carelessly, while the lavender tiefling seemed to make his way through his brother's collections of make-up and jewellery alike.

They froze when they spotted him and the sad human in the door. "Heeey, Verin," Beau drawled.

"These were all still closed, I swear," the lavender tiefling said immediately, gesturing at the jars in front of them.

Verin just sighed in defeat. "I don't wear any make-up, I don't care; you can have it. Put the jewellery in the box to be sold; the books are for charity if he hasn't read them. Just leave the earrings in front of the mirror, please. Those were his favourites."

Without another glance at them, Verin headed straight to Essek's closet, desperate to get some quiet. He took a few moments to collect himself, before closing the door and leaning his head against it with a heavy thunk.

He stayed like that for a minute or maybe two until he heard someone clear their throat. "I have been debating for the past fifty-five seconds, if I should just Dimension Door out," the sad human said and Verin very nearly jumped out of his skin, "but that would be loud and I didn't want to startle you. Not that I didn't startle you like this but—"

"Vithin shu," Verin cursed.

"Vithin shu ke," the sad human agreed, his accent in Undercommon even heavier than normally.

For a moment, they both stared at each other, equally startled by the course of events. Then, the human looked away again. "I, ah— have started learning Undercommon before, um— well, before." Verin tried very hard to focus on the way the human was scratching at his forearms; that way he had something else to focus on besides his nearing breakdown.

"This is a bit embarrassing, but, ah— I believe I forgot to introduce myself," the human continued. "I'm Caleb Widogast. Essek and I were... friends, yes, and ah— colleagues, of some sort. It's... complicated."

He scratched at his arms again before turning towards the shelves and pulling out a stack of tunics. He unfolded one, looked at it, then carefully folded it again, cast a cantrip to smooth out the wrinkles, and put it in the charity box. Then he repeated the procedure with the next. And the next. And the next.

Verin frowned, thinking for a moment about his words. There was something about them that seemed painfully familiar, although he couldn't quite remember. Then: "The transmutation specialist."

Widogast looked up in surprise. "Yes."

"Essek told me of you," Verin admitted.

The last time they had seen each other had been here, in these towers, just a few months ago. He had found his brother in his office, pouring over notes for a new spell, alive and healthy as ever. As always, he had entered without knocking. As always, he had pretended to read the notes. Not as always, he had noticed something wrong. "Whose handwriting is that?" he had asked.

"What?" Essek had snapped, his head whipping up. Then, however, his expression had softened. "Oh. A friend's. A colleague, of sorts. He's helping me out, a bit."

"With the spell?" Verin had asked incredulously.

"Yes. He's a transmutation specialist; you know that's not my forte. Now give it back, will you?"

"A colleague, huh?" He had grinned and held the paper out of Essek's reach. "Are you sure that's all?"

Perhaps Essek had been sick after all, for the strangest thing had happened: instead of using his floating cantrip to snatch the notes back, he had gotten a dreamy, far-off look in his eyes. He had even smiled with an expression Verin might have called dopey, if it weren't his brother they were talking about. After a few moments, he had snapped out of it, sighed, and said: "It's complicated."

"Did he?" Widogast asked tentatively. "Did he, ah— did he say anything else about me?"

Verin pinned him down with a glare, sizing him up. In hindsight, he should have noticed the thick spellbook at his hip earlier; judging by his slim frame alone, he should have known the man was a wizard. He supposed Widogast was handsome enough, although his brother had never cared much for that, with his copper hair and his striking blue eyes. Blue eyes around which crows' feet were gathering, as he noticed to his dismay. 'He's human,' Verin reminded himself. He might have a few decades left, maybe, whereas Essek had centuries ahead of him. The thought why his brother might condemn himself to more loneliness crossed his mind, though it hardly mattered. His brother had been the first to die, after all.

"Verin?" Widogast inquired quietly.

"I'm sorry," he answered with a thick voice. "I got lost in my thoughts there. He, uhh— he said that he trusted you." That didn't even begin to cover it, but these Mighty Nein had been lying to him since the moment they got here, so what was a little lie by omission? Besides, there were some memories that he wanted to keep just to himself.

"Essek," he had teased, still waving the sheet of paper out his reach. "Come on! Aren't we brothers?"

Essek had crossed his arms and pouted. He hadn't done that since they were both little. "Unfortunately. You are a menace. And a child."

"If you tell me about him, I'll give it back. Is he handsome? Is he a drow? Where's he from? How did you meet? When will I meet him? Can I promise to kill him if he hurts you?"

"Verin!" Essek had groaned and hid his face in his hands.

"What do you do when you meet? I bet you stay up all night, talking about 'arcane research' or something."

"We do, in fact. Are you done now?"

"Oh, is that what young people call it these days?" He had cackled at his own joke.

"Evidently not," Essek had muttered. "Might I remind you that you're younger than me?"

"Might I remind you that you're a buzzkill?" Verin had shot back and placed the note down. He had gotten bored of his own game.

Essek had taken the sheet of paper almost reverently and thanked him. "I would have hated it to rewrite that page." He had smoothed it down, stored it safely away in a folder, silent for a long time. Then, he had said: "Caleb."

"Excuse me?"

"That's his name," Essek had said. "Caleb Widogast."

Verin had frowned. "Hey, Essek?"

"Hm?"

"You must trust him a lot, to share a spell with him."

His brother had taken a shuddering breath and closed his eyes. Verin hadn't expected him to answer, yet he'd said: "I do, actually. It's not the first spell we've created together and I would be honoured to create a thousand more with him. I'd trust him with my life, my death, and beyond. I think—" He'd huffed. "I think I trust him almost as much as I trust you."

Verin watched Widogast as he was looking through his brother's tunics, placing most of them in the charity box, and he wondered. Wondered if the trust Essek had obviously put in Widogast had been misplaced. Wondered if it had extended to his friends, as well. Wondered if ultimately trust had been his downfall, as he'd always feared.

Then again, if Essek had trusted him... perhaps that trust had been mutual. Perhaps they had been friends. Perhaps there was another person mourning his brother after all.

"Do I have something on my face?" Verin had given up on counting how many times Widogast had now startled him out of his thoughts.

"No, no I—," Verin stammered. "I'm sorry."

He tilted his head to the side. "For staring?"

"No, er— For your loss." Liar or no liar, it only seemed appropriate.

"Oh." Widogast turned back to the tunics. Verin probably should get started, too, shouldn't he? "Thank you. Though I'd wager your loss weighs heavier than mine."

"Probably," he agreed and turned to the task at hand. At this point, Widogast had moved on from the simple tunics to Essek's court regalia. After a short moment of consideration, Verin decided to look through the pants; he also had no interest in sorting through his dead brother's underwear.

Out of the corner of his eye he kept watching the wizard, pulling out one cloak after the other. At a few he wrinkled his nose, at others he just stared before putting them with the tunics. After a while one made him pause; an elaborate, beautiful robe in deep purple. "This is what he was wearing when we first met him," he said.

'He hated that one,' Verin thought. Not that he could say that out loud. Instead, he cocked his head and asked: "Are you sure? He has a lot of those. Had, I mean. Had a lot of those."

"Yeah, I'm sure." He tapped his temple with a faint smile. "I have a good memory."

"As does Essek," he snapped, suddenly feeling very defensive about his brother's capabilities. "I suppose most wizards do."

Infuriatingly, Widogast only nodded. "Indeed. Or they're not very good ones."

Silently, Verin turned back to the trousers. The sooner he got done, the sooner he got these people out of his brother's towers, the better. He didn't know for how long they worked in silence, Verin reminiscing about the times he had seen Essek wear the clothes and wondering about those he didn't know. Eventually, he folded the last of them and forced himself to return to the present. "I think we're done here," he announced. "Do you have a preference for a next room?"

"Perhaps the library?" Widogast offered a tentative smile. "I think I might be of more use there than folding clothes."

"More use than I will be, surely."

"I take it the wizardry doesn't run in the family, then?"

Verin only scoffed and opened the door to the bedroom again.

He immediately spotted Beau leafing through one of the books Essek had never read, while the tiefling was chatting amiably with the aasimar while braiding her hair. He also noted the boxes neatly stacked in the middle of the room. Besides that, he noticed with a heavy heart, the room looked much the same. If anything, it looked less orderly and empty than before. Except for—

"Where are Essek's earrings?" Verin demanded to know.

"What earrings?" the lavender tiefling replied with a too-wide grin the same moment Beau said: "Dude, there's tons of them, why don't—"

"No," he said decisively. "Essek's favourite earrings; they're always up here. I told you about them. Where are they?" His hands curled into fists, his neatly manicured fingernails pressing almost painfully into his skin.

"Perhaps you should look in one of the boxes," the aasimar woman suggested "I'm sure they're—"

"You're lying," Verin interrupted her, barely containing his anger. "Why are you lying? If they're in one of the boxes, then only because you put them there. So: where are they?"

Widogast only now stepped out of the closet, wearing an amber necklace he hadn't noticed before. "Verin—" he said tentatively, but he'd had enough.

"Shut up!" He startled himself with how loud his voice was. But he was beyond caring. "I know they're not in there, because the only ones to put them in there would have been you. So, either you're lying about having them put in there, or you're lying about stealing them, I don't care. Just— please. Please give them back."

The four of them passed a guilty glance. "We can't," Beau replied finally.

"The fuck you can't," Verin spat. "Give them back!"

"Verin, love, we would really love to," the tiefling added, "but we can't."

"I don't understand; is it precious things you want? Here, have some!" He strode over to the boxes and ripped the first open, tossing the lid towards the bathroom door Jester was peeking out of. He reached in to grab a necklace—an ugly one, he had always thought, with a stylised beacon—and threw it in their direction.

Beau caught it. Of course.

"Have a whole box, actually, if you like them so damn much." He reached inside and pulled out a jewellery box, tears prickling in his eyes. He threw one of those, too, just for good measure. It gave him some satisfaction that Widogast had to dodge it. "Just give me back the bloody earrings that my brother wore at my fucking consecution!" He was properly crying now and could only imagine the mess he looked like, but he had reached his limit. And, in his opinion, he was allowed to with all that was going on.

At least they looked a little bit guilty. "Fuck man, we didn't know," Beau mumbled.

"It's just one pair, Beau," Jester called over from the bathroom. "I'm sure it will be alright."

"Yes, there's no need for this to escalate," Fjord agreed and strode over to them, his hands raised innocently.

"I don't even know you people," Verin muttered, looking at the people crowding into his brother's bedroom. "Why did I even let you inside?"

"Do you want the earrings back?" the aasimar woman asked, reaching into a bag at her hip. Had she been carrying a greatsword for the whole time? Verin suddenly noticed how overpowered he was, were he to face all of them. "You can have them back if you want. Here, you can have them back."

"For a moment," Widogast added, slowly drawing closer to him and taking the earrings from the aasimar. He held them out on his flat hand, almost like he had seen soldiers offer treats to horses. His whole demeanour reminded him of someone trying to calm a spooked animal. For some reason, that seemed hilarious to him and he couldn't help the hysterical giggle that escaped his throat.

"Verin, I need you to calm down," he continued. "I know that's easier said than done, but you need your head."

"I think we should all calm down," Clay said from the doorway. And despite being surprised again, he did. It didn't make any sense, but few things these days did.

"Did it work?" the halfling asked. Verin wasn't really sure what she was talking about.

"It did," Clay confirmed.

"Gut," Widogast said and pressed the earrings that had seemed so important a moment ago into Verin's hands. "I think we should maybe go somewhere else, ja? Will you come with me?"

Inadvisable as it might be, if Essek had trusted that man, he should, too. And out of all of the Nein, he seemed to be the most normal one. The one he could see Essek with most. So, he nodded.

"I'll get us back to the kitchen, quickly." Caleb held out his hand and Verin closed his eyes, steeling himself. 'I hate Dimension Door,' was the last thing that crossed his mind before the teleportation spell ripped him away, together with: 'We haven't been to the kitchen, yet.'

Evidently, there went something wrong with the spell. Verin didn't know much about magic, but he knew Dimension Door couldn't transport more than two people. So, when he heard Beau groan and say "Fuck, dude, warn us next time," he knew that something wasn't right.

"You knew about the plan, Beauregard," Widogast replied.

"It doesn't matter," Fjord decided. "Caduceus, do you think you could make tea again? I think the Calm Emotions is about to wear off."

Cautiously, Verin opened one eye, then the other. They were, in fact, standing in a kitchen, as far as he could tell. All of the Mighty Nein were surrounding him. The furniture seemed to have been made for people taller than them; Essek probably would need to float in order to avoid awkwardly climbing onto the chair. The firbolg, however, who was fussing with a teapot, seemed to fit right in. All in all, the interior was very rustic. And very much not in Essek's towers, not that he had ever seen that room, of course.

The panic hit him once more. Verin whirled around to the wizard, instinctively grasping for his sword. "Where the fuck—" he faltered, finding his hip bare. Of course, he hadn't brought it for the funeral. Instead, he opted for just grasping Widogast by the lapels and lifting him up a bit. It was supposed to be menacing, which surely would be more effective, were humans not so annoyingly tall. "Where the fuck are we?!" he spat out.

A lot of things seemed to happen at once—he heard a "Fuck, man, what-" from Beau, a "Well, Mister Thelyss" from the pirate, several hands trying to tug him away from the weak wizard—but he didn't pay them any mind. He just shook Widogast, who looked entirely too calm for his liking, and demanded: "Answer me!"

"Leave him," was all Widogast said. "He has every right to be angry."

Indeed, the people grasping at him retreated, still on guard and surrounding him. There was a creak outside the door and Verin desperately wished for his sword once more. Then, a voice cut through the tense silence that had descended over the kitchen: "Caleb, is that you? You're back early."

"Yeah, there were some complications. Best come and look yourself, Schatz."

There was a sigh that was entirely too familiar for Verin's liking. Then, the door opened with a creak and in walked a dead man. "Complications," Essek Thelyss said with a fond smile. "I was just a Sending away, what did you come here fo— oh."

The person wearing his brother's face stopped in their tracks as they saw him. A couple of complicated emotions passed over his face—confusion, surprise, regret, guilt. If he hadn't known before, Verin was certain now that they were impostors, all of them. His brother would never tolerate such a display of weakness. Still, the impostor said: "Hello, brother."

Verin whipped his head back around to the wizard in his grasp. "What the fuck are you playing at?" he hissed.

"I- what- Verin!" the Essek-impostor sputtered. "What are you doing; put him down!"

"I would appreciate that, yes," Widogast added.

"Not before you don't tell me what's going on."

"Going on?" The impostor sneered and shook his head in a perfect imitation of his brother. "Nothing is going on, Verin."

"You died," he accused him.

"Evidently not," Essek scoffed.

Verin narrowed his eyes, looking from the man claiming to be his brother over the other too calm wizard to the rest of the Nein, seemingly perfectly happy to let this play out. "Prove it," he demanded. "Tell me something only my brother would know."

"You've become paranoid," he noted and Verin couldn't decide if it sounded proud or disappointed. "Alright. When you and I were in our early thirties, you once got in trouble for scaling the outside of mother's mansion. Rightfully, I should have gotten in trouble, too, but I was hiding on the attic. And the reason you never told anyone, is because then you'd have had to explain that I, the wizard, had somehow outpaced you, the fighter, in a climbing competition."

Verin wrinkled his nose at that. "Well, my brother cheated."

"I did not cheat, thank you very much!" He huffed indignantly and crossed his arms. "You didn't say 'no magic' before we started."

He stared at Essek for a few moments. "It's you," he whispered.

"Obviously."

Verin dropped the wizard on the ground and looked over at his brother; really looked. The man looked nothing like the one he had known for most of his life. His hair was longer than it had ever been since he'd cut it off and his bare feet were touching the ground. His clothes were casual, a simple tunic and trousers. After this day, Verin knew for a fact that not even Essek's trancing clothes were that informal, and yet his brother looked more comfortable in them in another's house than he had in decades. On top of that, he kept glancing over to Widogast. And smiling. Essek was smiling.

No, this man looked nothing like the one Verin had known for nearly a century. But he looked a lot like his brother.

"You're alive," he said stupidly.

"Yes, of course I am," Essek said, as if Verin hadn't just attended his funeral.

It felt only right to tell him so: "Why are you alive? I was at your funeral."

"That's a long story," he sighed and floated onto one of the chairs that were slightly too tall for him. He accepted a cup of tea from Clay with thanks and turned back to Verin. "Why are you here?"

"Well, that's a pretty long story, too," Jester spoke up. "He kind of started freaking out about your earrings, I think? And he was crying and looking pretty awful and everything, right Caleb?"

"I, ah— didn't think he'd believe us if we told him about you," Caleb said. "So, we had agreed beforehand to bring him here, in case of an emergency."

"He thought we were lying," Clay added.

"I suppose it is my story to tell," Essek said. "Earrings, Verin?"

"They're your favourite," Verin said stupidly and held them out to him.

His face grew soft. "Oh," he said as he took them gingerly, "I didn't know that you kne—"

Before he could overthink and do something stupid like stop himself, he surged forward and enveloped his brother in a tight hug. After a moment Essek closed his arms around him, too.

It seemed so unreal, to be able to hold him after mourning him for what felt like years. All the worries, all the grief and anger that had crushed him in the past few weeks and for what? For the bastard to still be alive after all. It wasn't fair. Why had he had to go through all of that? And why did he feel the pressing urge to start crying again? He should be happy, shouldn't he, that his brother wasn't dead. So why did it make him feel so awful?

"I think this is our cue to leave," Fjord said. Verin felt his brother nod and heard the Mighty Nein shuffle out of the kitchen, the door closing behind them with a creak. 

Only then, Essek spoke up. "Verin," he asked quietly, "are you crying?"

"Shut up," he mumbled through the thick fog of tears and snot, definitely not crying. "I hate you, Essek. Do you know what I went through?" 

"Meeting the Mighty Nein? Yes, I can imagine."

"They're horrible," he complained. "They're loud and they're rude and they had absolutely no respect for any of your belongings! I thought I was going mad."

"They are. They also are my friends, you know."

"How?" he asked agonised.

"I know they don't look like it, but they are surprisingly capable. And I am sure that you've noticed most of them to be annoyingly charming. But I think their absolute worst traits are their infinite stubbornness and perseverance. They quite literally did not leave me alone until they had befriended me."

Verin glanced up at him questioningly. "And were half in love with the wizard?" he guessed.

Essek scowled darkly, a faint blush colouring his cheeks. "Perhaps."

He snorted and disentangled himself from their embrace. Very calmly he said: "You're a liar." 

Essek looked genuinely startled at that. "What?"

"You said, you trusted me more than him. Why then, did he know and I didn't?"

"It's... complicated," he said.

"You wizards say that a lot."

"Verin." Essek closed his eyes. "I trust you. Implicitly. And I care about you. Which is why I chose not to burden you with the knowledge of my misdeeds. I didn't— I didn't want to put you in an impossible situation to choose between me and our queen."

He laughed nervously. "What on earth are you talking about? I mean, you didn't commit treason or anything."

Essek didn't answer, avoiding eye-contact instead.

"Right?"

Still, Essek kept stubbornly quiet.

"Oh," Verin breathed. He took a moment trying to reconcile what he knew about his brother with the fact that he was apparently a traitor. It all fit together ridiculously easy. "The beacons."

Essek looked up at him in shock and he knew he had hit the mark. "What?"

"You stole the beacons." Now that he thought about it, it made perfect sense. Essek had been studying them at the time, one of the only people with frequent access to them. He had always been fascinated by them, yet his theories had been rejected for their heretic nature. As Shadowhand, he had also regular contact with counterparts from the Empire, albeit not officially. Then, a few years after Essek’s research had been denied, they had vanished. How had he never seen this before?

"Oh Essek...," he said softly.

"No, please— I don’t—Please don’t—” He seemed to deflate, curling in on himself. “I'm sorry. I shouldn't have told you, I—”

"I don't care,” Verin interrupted his frantic ramblings.

"What?" Essek looked up at him, looking just as shocked as Verin felt.

“I don’t care,” he repeated, realising that it was true the moment the words left his mouth. For how could he care about something as trivial as treason when Essek was sitting right in front of him, alive and well. "You're my brother, I don't care. Maybe tomorrow. Maybe in a year. Maybe in ten. Right now, I only care that you're alive."

“I—What—I don’t—” Essek stuttered, lifting and then lowering his hands a few times. “I don’t know how— If I can—Fuck.”

There was a joke on the tip of his tongue, but even he knew that this wasn’t the right time for it. Essek was obviously trying to tell him something and it took him a minute to decipher that strange behaviour. “Are you asking for a hug?” he hazarded a guess.

An agonised expression passed over his face and for a moment Verin thought there were tears gathering in his brother’s eyes. Surely not. “I don’t know if I may. I don’t mean to overstep—”

Without further ado, Verin stepped forward and gathered a yelping Essek up and squeezed him tightly. “Of course you may!” he assured him, awkwardly patting his shaking shoulders. “I love you, Essek. I am very glad that you’re alive.”

“I’m very glad to see you, too,” Essek answered and squeezed him a little tighter.