#palm reading canada

[fernando-jpg]

local weatherman

[avecra]

Dosed

summary: When you are laced with a deadly pathogen, the team finds themselves working endlessly to find a cure. Only it might not be enough.

pairing: bucky barnes x reader

word count: 6.7k

warnings: canon level violence, illness symptoms (fever, cough, vomiting), angst on top of angst with a happy ending, bucky goes through many emotions

a/n: hi hello it has been a hot minute since I have been active im so sorry :( i had a lot of personal issues to deal with but now im hoping to be a little bit more active and post more stories :)

You could feel the heavy rumble of the jet as it landed on the muddy grounds. An overcast covered the sky and emitted a soft grey through the thick glass of the display of the jet, the light pitter of rain tapped against the window. 

Bucky’s gentle touch stole your gaze from the window to the super soldier, his fingers wrapped around the Kevlar vest and he began to tighten the straps around your shoulders, pulling them into place. 

“Do I really have to wear this? Steve said that the building is supposed to be empty,” you said, trailing a finger along the front of your vest, over the stitched ‘Barnes’ that sat over the thick fabric. 

“Yes, honey,” Bucky chuckled, tightening the straps over your back. “Just cause Steve says it’s empty doesn’t mean it is. I can’t risk anything happening to you, therefore you get to wear my vest.” He winked at you and tightened the last strap across your abdomen. “Gotta keep my girl safe, now don’t I?”

You smiled sheepishly and nodded, continued to watch him strap a few guns and knives to his body. Exhaling a tense sigh, you ran your sweaty palms down the side of your tactical uniform, Bucky noticed. “It’s gonna be okay, I’m not gonna let anything happen to you.”

“I know,” you whispered, grabbing his hand. “I’m not exactly equipped for these types of missions, I’m just a little nervous.” 

Bucky’s eyes softened when he heard the small crack in your voice, his hands encased around yours and he tenderly pressed a kiss to the back of your palm. “I’m gonna be right by your side the entire time.”

You bobbed your head, taking in a deep breath as Bucky gently slid a gun into the holster on your thigh. “But just in case.”

The two of you had been assigned to track down a lone mercenary in the middle of western Canada. The stormy weather had made it difficult for the jet sensors to get a read on the building that sat in a nearly empty forest.

A mercenary hacker under the name Roman Donovan had been on Tony Stark’s radar for quite some time, after noticing the many sudden security pop ups, indicating that Donovan had smothered his way into Tony’s tech. Both Steve and Tony had been working relentlessly to find a position on him, until a sudden location popped up. 

You had your doubts, whether you were the best candidate for this mission, but Steve had reassured you with your technical and computer knowledge that you were the perfect fit.  A squeeze to your hand reminded you that Bucky would be with you every step of the way.

With a nod from you, Bucky placed the small comm device into your ear, tapping it a few times so he could hear the breaths that left your lips. He slipped one into his ear as well, tapping it a few times until he could catch the chatter of the two agents in the cockpit of the jet. 

“Prescott and Logan, stand by. We’ll radio you in case we need backup,” Bucky announced, pressing the button that opened up the ramp of the jet. He turned to you with a soft, comforting smile. “It’s just a simple extraction of files,” he reminded with a gentle hand to your back. “Ready?”

A final nod of your head, you looked at him. Ready.”

---

The building had been vacant this far, Bucky had led the both of you to the control room where you rapidly typed on the main computer. Bucky stood by the door, sending cautious glances over his shoulder every few seconds to survey the dark hallway. 

“I’m almost done,” you called out to him, fingers dancing across the keyboard, desperately pushing into the numbers and letters faster. “It had more firewalls than I expected.”

Bucky glanced over in your direction, a frown taking over his features. “Is that a bad thing?”

“Not necessarily. Just means this guy wants to keep people like me out of his stuff,” you mumbled. Bucky chuckled under his breath.

A few more clicks to the keyboard, you powered off the system and the flash drive ejected  out of the main computer. Stepping back, you watched the monitors as the files slowly disappeared from folders and main screen savers, until all the screens went dark. 

“I think I got it,” you muttered, eyes wide as they focused on the screens. The flash drive began to flicker a blue color, indicating that the files had transferred successfully without a trace of Stark technology.

The loud slamming of a door alerted Bucky, as he raised his rifle up, pointing towards the sudden sound. You pocketed the flash drive and raised your head at the sudden sound, eyes filled with confusion as they flickered over to Bucky’s alarmed blue ones.

“Get behind me,” You quickly made your way over to him and his hand immediately darted out to grab your wrist. Though you could feel the tension riding off his body in waves, his hold on your arm was gentle. “Stay low.”

You nodded and grasped the back of Bucky’s tactical vest, fisting the thick fabric. With a cautious foot forwards, Bucky stepped out into the hallway, taking slow, steady steps into the dimly lit corridor. 

Your hands made their way from the fabric of his shirt to his vibranium hand, and you gripped as tightly as you could, in a way to ground you. He couldn’t feel the tight pressure, but he could feel the weight of your hand in his. 

The two of you stealthily made your way through sets of hallways and stairwells, inching closer and closer to the doorway, until the loud slamming of boots against the tile floors halted you in your stance. Fear corrupted every fiber of your body, you couldn’t take your eyes off the panicked look in Bucky’s blue ones. 

You felt Bucky push you away behind him, before a sudden force knocked him to the ground, grunts passed through his lips. 

“Y/n, run!”

Not looking back, you trusted Bucky enough to know that he would make it out unscathed, with only a few scrapes and bruises. You, however, were not a field trained agent, with little  combat knowledge. You bolted the other direction, on the way to warn the two agents standing by in the jet.

“I need backup! Logan, Prescott, to the northeast side of the building, now!”

It wasn’t until you felt the pull of your vest and the weight of someone did you register your head slam against the ground, rather harshly. A strangled cry left your lips when you felt a needle puncture your skin, just at the conjunction between your shoulder and neck. 

His hand pressed down on your neck harshly, cutting off your air supply, but you were frozen in fear - he head injected something into your skin. You did not find the strength to fight back.

Fear paralyzed every fiber of your body.

Grunts and strangled screams were heard, you didn’t know if it came from you, but suddenly the weight was lifted off you, though you registered nothing of it. A few greedy breaths of fresh air. The pulsing of your heartbeat rang out in your ear, chiming and pudding against your skull. You laid frozen.

“Y/n is down, I have Donovan apprehended. I need backup, please!” Bucky spoke into the comms a moment later as he threw the hacker on his stomach and pinned his wrists behind his back. He was tempted to sap his wrist, but he held back. 

“Roman Donovan, you are a hard son of a bitch to find,” Bucky growled in his ear, reaching into his vest to pull out a pair of wrist restraints, tightening them to Donovan’s wrist. The man yelled in pain and discomfort.

Bucky glanced over to you, eyes softening when he took in your fragile form on the concrete. You just laid there, almost lifeless, but once Bucky saw the rise and fall of your chest, only a little relief came to him. It quickly rushed away when blue eyes focused on the empty syringe near your foot. 

“There’s a lot more pain coming your way. What did you inject her with?” Bucky yelled viciously, grabbing Donovan roughly by the hair. But the man simply let out a dark chuckle, eyes narrowing on you. The way weak coughs passed through your lips, the way you burrowed deeper into yourself.

“I know your weak spots, James Barnes.” was all he said. 

The hurried footsteps of Prescott and Logan reached his ears and Bucky abruptly stood up  and watched the two agents haul the mercenary to his feet and slam him against the wall, patting him, finding a gun strapped to his back and a small grenade. 

“Secure him to the panel near the bay doors. Bastard can fly out for all I care.” 

Bucky wasted no time in making his way over to you. A gentle hand soothed comforting circles up and down your arm, gently coaxing you and Bucky gently lifted you up in his arms and leant you against the wall, concerned as your head lolled back. 

“Baby, are you okay?” His panicked gaze flickered from the bleeding gash on your temple, to the light bruising around your neck, the small dot of blood at the conjunction between your neck and shoulder. He sighed, bringing a hand to rest on your cheek. “Y/n, answer me baby, what hurts?”

Your eyes were clenched shut and you brought a shaky hand to rest over Bucky’s, and you lifted your gaze to meet his worried blue ones. “I’m okay… I think.”

“You think?” Bucky asked, running a hand over your hair. 

“I-I don’t know, I feel fuzzy,” you mumbled, leaning your head back against the wall. 

Taking slow, deep breaths, you felt Bucky rub slow, soothing circles up and down your thigh. There was a buzzing sensation circling throughout your temples, down to your cheeks, along our jaw until it spread through the rest of your body. 

“Deep breaths in and out, baby,” Bucky whispered soothingly, leaning down to kiss your knee.

But then, in a moment or two, you felt it suddenly disperse. As if the wave of numbness rid itself out of your body. You allowed Bucky to help you to your feet, brushing his hands over the front of the vest before making sure you had no further injuries. 

“We’ll check you over at the compound,” Bucky said as he wrapped an arm around your waist and led you down the hall, following the two agents in suit. “Let’s get out of here.”

---

Bucky watched helplessly as he and Steve watched as Dr. Cho and her team scanned over your body. He couldn’t imagine how confused and scared you were, hands gripping the sheets. Your first field mission had been a complete disaster. Bruce walked in, the used syringe in an examination tube. 

“What do you think he injected her with?” Bucky asked after a couple of minutes of silence.

“It’s weird,” Bruce began, handing the folder over to Bucky. 

“I pushed it through a scanner, to see if I could find any sort of answer to what this is. All tests come back negative for a virus or disease. Has she had any of her symptoms progress on the way home?”

Bucky shook his head, “No, she’s just been… frozen, paralyzed almost. He has injected her with something; I saw the blood on her neck and it seemed like he had tried to… kill her or something.”

“You think he would?”

“Why else would he press his fucking hand over her throat?”

“That, I am not sure. So unless she starts to show signs of some sort of sickness, I unfortunately have no answers. I’ll check in with Tony, see if he has any answers. I’ll keep you guys updated.”

“Thanks, Bruce.” Bucky sighed, watching as the doctor left. He opened the file, reading over the diagnosis levels. “I still don’t get it.”

Steve hummed, taking the file out of his hand. 

“The only thing he said to me was ‘I know your weak spots’ and then called me out by name. But I have never come into contact with this guy, not even as the Winter Soldier. The dude is early twenties and lived with his grandma in east Maryland up until two years ago, living in some studio in Princeton up in Jersey. How the hell did he end up in Canada?”

“That doesn’t track at all. Unless he has dug up on all of us. He probably just wanted to get you by surprise.” Steve said. “Real name is Benjamin Croot. 24 years old.”

“Sergeant Barnes,” Dr. Cho’s voice broke through on the intercom. “She is asking for you.”

Bucky moved faster than he could process. He rushed through the doors and you turned your head at the sound of his boots. 

“Is she okay? She’s not hurt or anything?” Worried questions spewed out, his hands came to grip yours as tight without hurting you. He brushed his hand over your warm, sweaty forehead. “She’s warm.”

Dr. Cho nodded. “My team ran all the tests imaginable for this certain… situation. And everything came back negative, which worries me. If what Y/n described is true, then he must have injected her with something that is lethal or close to being lethal.

“She said to have felt numb, fuzzy almost. Those are usually the signs of a virus or even… a pathogen starts to form. But what I don’t get is that I could not find a single trace of.. well anything really.”

“Dr. Banner doesn’t have an answer either, though he’s checking in with Stark as we speak.” Bucky said, pressing a kiss to your forehead. “What should we do? Keep her here?”

The woman sighed, pieces of her hair falling from the neat bun. “Honestly, I’m not sure. Part of me wants to keep her in the medical wing, just in case, but her stats are all normal, though her temperature is abnormally high.”

“How high?”

She flipped open the chart. You hadn’t really been present in the time either of them were talking. You were just so tired. Physically and mentally. 

“The last time I took it, her temperature was sitting at about 100.5, which isn’t that bad, but it’s not great either. So, I would advise to just rest for the night, and when she wakes up we will run a couple more tests, see if anything has changed.”

Bucky nodded, squeezing your hand as the doctor excused herself. 

“Whatcha thinkin’, sweetheart?” Bucky sat on the edge of the cot, brushing hair away from your eyes. 

“Tired.” He could tell your energy was scarce.

“Let’s go to bed then, hm.”

His movements started before you even had the chance to reply. As gently as he could, he slid his arms around your waist and shoulders and helped you up to your feet. The two of you made your way from the medical bay to the residential wing, to yours and Bucky’s shared room.

“Don’t you have the interrogation to do?” you mumbled, watching his features contort when he pressed his thumb against the scanner and led you into the room. In your fuzzy mind, you barely registered Bucky’s touch as he gently peeled your uniform off and slid your pajamas on.

“I’ll do it tomorrow. Besides it’s late, sweetheart and I think I speak for the both of us when I say it’s been a long day,” He gently eased you onto the bed, gently covering your form with a blanket. 

A shiver racked through you and Bucky watched with a concerned look as you tightened the blanket around your shoulders. He flicked off the lights and crawled into bed next to and wrapped an arm around your waist. 

“Sleep, sweetheart. I’ve got you.” You faintly nodded and relaxed into his hold, feeling his hands run smoothly up and down your arms. The faint glow of the television set and the low volume did nothing to tear you from your due slumber, though you faintly felt the coolness of Bucky’s appendage running over your hair before you slipped into a dreamless sleep.

---

Sweat coated every part of your body as you woke up with a sharp gasp of air. 

Pounding temples, you peeled your eyes open and sat up; the faint glow of the TV caught your eye. The movie Bucky played had finished and had been playing in an endless loop. 

The clock on your nightstand read 2:07am, you reached for the cup of water and took slow sips, barely and faintly registering the sounds of Bucky’s light snores. 

You felt the nausea before anything else. It ran from your stomach up to your chest and you clamped a hand over your mouth, threw off the covers and made a beeline for the bathroom. 

That was until a wave of dizziness hit you and your knees buckled. Vision tunneling, you would have fallen to the floor if it weren’t for the strong pair of arms that wrapped around your waist before you could touch the carpet. I’ve got you, a tired voice murmured, but your hazy mind didn’t hear the quiet mutter.

The warmth of Bucky’s chest touched your heated back as he sped to the bathroom, flicked on the light and watched helplessly as you crashed to your knees and emptied what was in your stomach into the toilet. 

Bucky kneeled behind you and grasped your hair in one hand and rubbed soothing circles along your back. He felt you slacken in his arms, head resting back against his shoulder and when he pressed his palm flat against your forehead, he almost hissed at the radiating heat.

“You’re burnin’ up, sweetheart,” His wide blue eyes darted to your half-lidded ones, cerulean darting over your sweaty, clammy skin. 

“I don’t feel good.” you croaked. 

It hit him in one, big wave as he took over your tattered form. The confusion, the fatigue, to your spiked fever, Something wasn’t right, considering the fact that you rarely felt under the weather.

Those are usually the signs of a virus or even… a pathogen starts to form. Cho’s voice rang in his voice

Weakly, you flushed the toilet and leaned back into Bucky. Shivers racked through your body and Bucky peeled your shirt off your shoulder to see a dark blooming bruise where Donovan had injected the needle. 

“FRIDAY, wake Steve and Dr. Cho. Tell them to meet me in the medical wing,” Bucky called for the AI and slipped his hand under your back and knees and lifted you up against his chest. 

You jolted slightly, dizziness clouding your mind as Bucky stood up. You were limp in his arms, like jell-o.

The cool air of the hallway felt like a slap in the face, you pressed your cheek into the warmth of Bucky. A low whine passed through your lips and Bucky ran his thumb just below the back of your knee. 

“Buck,” Steve called, eyes widening as they fell on your shivering form. “What happened?”

But Bucky didn’t stop his movements, he spared a glance to Steve and kept heading towards the direction of the medical bay. Steve followed Bucky’s fast pace, quickly matching his speed.

“Her temperature is too high,” Bucky said, glancing over at his friend. “When we checked into the medbay, Cho noticed that her temperature was a little higher than normal, but when she got up a couple minutes ago, she was burning hot.”

A slick sheet of sweat coated your forehead, Steve noticed, and how small tremors racked through your body every so often. His eyes fell to the darkening bruise on your shoulder, Bucky caught his eye. 

“I think she was laced with something.”

Your fingers grazed the fabric of his shirt and Bucky looked down, continuing his trek to the medical wing with Steve hot on his tail. You could feel the rapid thumping of Bucky’s heartbeat as you weakly bunched his shirt in your fist.

“Laced? Laced with what?” Steve questioned as he rounded the corner, eyes locking onto Cho’s at the end of the hall.

Bucky looked down at you, clammy skin, eyes barely open, though you kept a strong grip on his shirt. “I don’t know.”

Everything was hazy the moment Bucky set you down on the hospital bed. Though sweat coated nearly every inch of your body, shivers racked through your body relentlessly. It was sweltering and freezing simultaneously. 

Nurses rushed around you, obstructing Bucky’s view from you, one of them placed a cannula just under your nose, an IV into your arm. The thought of more needles sinking into your skin made you sick. 

The last time someone used a needle on you, he was malicious as he jammed the needle into neck harshly. The memory brought nothing but fear to you. 

You were hot. Uncomfortable. The pain in your head was nearly unbearable.

“Bucky,” you called out, only it came out more of a whimper. “W-where’s Bucky?”

Metal clamped gently on your hand, the other hand coming to smoothly brush your sweaty hair back. “I’m here baby, I’m right here.” 

“It… it hurts,” Bucky watched as another nurse attempted to put another needle through your skin, he noticed the subtle shaking of your head, the whimpers.

“Is that really necessary?” he asked with a sharp glare, it melted away when he looked over at you. “What is it, baby? What hurts?”

“My head.”

Worried eyes wandered over to Cho’s as she placed a reassuring hand on his shoulder. “Sergeant Barnes, I understand you want to offer her comfort, but I can assure she is in good hands with my team.” 

Bucky nodded, leaning down to press a kiss to your cheek. His finger trailed over your forehead gently, and when he saw Steve and Sam in his peripherals, he sighed to himself. “I’ll check up on you later, sweet girl. I have something to take care of.”

You nodded drowsily, the dizziness taking control. 

Bucky reluctantly moved away from your bedside to his two closest friends, solemn looks on their faces. Sam kept his eyes on you, watching as the nurses took your temperature.

“How is she?” he asked. Bucky kept his eye on you the entire time, watching your tired eyes start to close. 

“It’s not looking good,” Bucky sighed. “Her temperature is extremely high, nausea, light-headed and dizziness. Whatever this bastard did to her, he has to deal with me now.”

“He’s downstairs, whenever you’re ready.” Steve said, his eyes laying on your frail body. “It is 2 in the morning and one of my teammates is lying on a hospital bed with a fever of over 100 degrees and a migraine that’s probably killing her. Let’s get this over with.”

---

Roman Donovan sat in a cold, bright room, hands cuffed to the tables with two SHIELD agents armed standing at the entrance. A smug smirk sat on his face as he fidgeted with his fingers. His head perked up at the sound of the door opening. 

“Well, if it isn’t the mighty Winter Soldier, what a traitor you are to your own country, huh? I mean, working for the people who you literally fought against-” Sam walked behind him and gripped his shoulders tightly, fingers digging into his muscles. 

“I am only gonna say this once, so you better fucking listen to me. What did you do to her?”  

Donovan chuckled, “I don’t know what you’re talking about, old man.”

Bucky shook his head, vibranium fist clenched. 

“You know, Roman, this guy isn’t too fond of repeating himself. Especially to arrogant assholes like you.”

“What did you do to her, Donovan?” Bucky was strangely calm.. “You know the woman you attacked earlier, the one whose throat you almost crushed after you injected her with drugs? She’s got three degrees in chemistry, computer engineering and computer science, so I get why you, a man of your personality, would go after someone who is not strong enough to put up a fight against you.” 

Steve looked on through the window, phone pinging. He pulled it out, the text from Natasha sent dread through himself. 

Temperature over 105, tests coming back positive for some type of influenza. Cho is really worried. Not looking too good for her.

“Shit.”

He went on and walked into the room, leaning over to where Sam stood. 

“So aggressive, James. And for what reason?”

Sam chuckled, crossing his arms. “If you think this is aggressive, you’re in for a ride.”

“I’m gonna ask one more time, and if I don’t get an answer, that means you’re straight up out of luck.” Bucky leaned forward, black and gold vibranium reached for the chain of his restraints and pulled him down, causing Donovan to hit his head. “What did you inject her with?”

The man tilted his head, blood dripping down his cheek. “What makes you think I injected her with anything?” he cockily sneered. “I thought all the Avengers were required to be knowledgeable in the field, cause let me tell you, Sergeant, that little girlfriend of yours is such an easy target.” 

Steve nudged Sam, leaning his phone towards his eyeline, showing the text message. Sam felt a pang of worry settle deep in his stomach, sharing a worried glance with him. 

There wasn’t much time left for you. 

Steve stepped forward, pulling Bucky aside to show him the text message. 

Blue eyes raked over the words he had been dreading the most. "Not looking too good for her.”

“Well Donovan, I want my answer.”

The man smirked. “Yeah? Or what?”

Bucky’s left hand reached out and grabbed a fistful of Donovan’s hair and slammed his head against the metal desk one time only, though it was enough to break the man’s nose. Screams of pain resounded in the small but soundproof room. 

“No one’s gonna hear you, Donovan! Those guys with the big ass guns? They’re not gonna help you either. Not when one of their own is about to die in this building. And so help me, Benjamin,” Bucky sneered into his ear, the man’s eyes wide with fear, “if she dies under your hand, there is nothing on the green earth that is going to stop me from tearing you apart. I’m gonna ask one more time, what did you inject her with?”

“A deadly pathogen! It’s a pathogen that kills its hosts within 24 hours of it being administered.”

Bucky’s eyes glanced at the clock. 2:58 AM. It was a late night mission, the jet had landed in Canada at 7:45 PM. Meaning you had to have been injected with it at 8:00 or so. Meaning six hours had already passed, he had eighteen hours left. You had eighteen hours left.

“Did you know adults that experience fevers that go over 105 degrees can run into complications causing serious implications of brain damage,” Sam blurted out. “means you’re in the dog house if we lose her. And ain’t a single one of us is gonna stop that mean.”

“Is there an antidote for it?” 

Donovan nodded. Bucky slammed a pen and a notepad down on the table, causing the man to jump in fear. “I suggest you better start writing it down. Now you get to deal with Tony Stark and Bruce Banner. Better start writing.”

Eighteen hours would go by quickly. 

---

“Sergeant, it’s not looking good for her,” Dr. Cho said, voice breaking slightly. “This virus that she’s fighting, it’s too strong.”

Bucky looked through the window, heart shattering as his blue eyes fell on the breathing mask they covered your mouth with, the tubes that kept you hydrated. You looked so… lifeless. Natasha sat by your side, her hand gripping your wrist, though you were so out of it, eyes barely open.

“He injected her with some sort of influenza. He knows the antidote, but he has less than eighteen hours.”

She noticed the worried look in his eyes. 

“She was constantly asking for you. Even in a state of being delirious, she was still calling for you. Natasha was able to calm her down.”

The soldier gulped. “Is… is she going to die?” 

For a moment, Dr. Cho couldn’t answer. She didn’t know the probability of the antidote being made on time. 

“James, I cannot answer that. But what I can say is that I will do everything in my power to keep her alive. She’s a fighter.” With that, she excused herself. Bucky stood still for a moment before pushing the door open.

The sounds of your heart monitor and the sounds of oxygen traveling through the tubes filled the room. Natasha’s emerald eyes met Bucky’s, a small smile presented on her face. 

“Any updates yet?” she asked, but it fell on deaf ears as Bucky kneeled at your bedside, grasping your limp hand tightly in his. 

The amount of pain that swirled in his mind was almost too unbearable. Your eyes met his, though you couldn’t move, couldn’t speak. Tears welled in your eyes as they rushed down your cheeks. 

“It’s okay, my love. I am right here.” His voice was above a whisper and pressed a kiss to your palm. “Tony and Bruce are gonna find a cure for you, honey. I promise. It’ll all be okay.” He felt you weakly try to grasp his hand back, but the action alone made you more tired. 

“I love you so much, baby. Words can’t comprehend my love for you. I want you to know that,” Tears welled in his own eyes, his hands reached up to cradle your cheek. You leaned into him. “I love you.”

Your skin was so warm under his touch. His eyes read over the stats on the open chart, seeing your temperature rise every hour. 

“She was injected with some sort of influenza. Tony and Bruce are working right now.” 

“Did you find anything else?”

Bucky kissed your hand, gently guiding your head back on the pillows. “Son of a bitch has the antidote. Had to break his nose just to get him to spill it out.” 

Natasha placed her hand on his shoulder. “I will stay with her and I’ll alert you guys if anything changes. Just try to hurry.”

Bucky nodded and leaned down, hugging your frail, weakened body and pressed a kiss against your chapped lips. “I love you, Y/n. I’m gonna fix this.”

He did not spare Natasha a glance as he stormed out of the medical wing, boots stomping with every step he took. Long strides took him to the end of the hall, where the elevator was.

“FRIDAY, where is Stark and Banner?”

“Both are in Mr. Stark’s lab. Shall I notify them that you are coming?”

“Tell them I have a stop to make first.” Bucky slammed the button to the interrogation level. “ I’m coming with the antidote.”

---

Donovan jumped in his seat when the doors opened, revealing the shadow of Bucky’s figure. A knife sat in his hand. The prisoner visibly shivered. 

“You know what I’m here for, Donovan.” 

“Come on, man! It hasn’t even been-”

The knife that was once held in Bucky’s hand was now lodged into metal table, an inch away from Donovan’s finger. 

“You’re fucking crazy!” 

“What happened to the tough guy act, huh? You wanted to act all big and bad up in Canada. Why the sudden change of heart?” Bucky taunted him, walking closer to the pad of paper that had been scribbled on, step by step, three pages, front and back. “Remember, you’re targeting my weak spot.”

He seemed ashamed, guilty almost. But it wasn’t because your life was in jeopardy. It was because he was caught, with no one left to save him. 

“You know, you’re already facing five counts of criminal charges of unauthorized access into government systems, you wanna add a murder charge to that? Assault with intent to cause bodily harm? That sounds like fifty years to me, that is with just the unauthorized access charges.” Bucky sat down across from him. “And if this,” he held up the paper, “isn’t true or it doesn’t cure her, you’re facing a very serious murder charge of a federal agent.”

“You’re nothing but a coward, Benjamin Croot. Tough guy act falls the minute you’re faced against someone who overpowers you. You’re gonna rot in that prison for the rest of your life.”  

---

It was morning.

The sun had risen fully. 

10:47 AM

Tony and Bruce had been hard at work, trying to figure out the antidote. It was nearing the afternoon, and they had been at it since nearly four in the morning. But neither were giving up. Not when your life was on a timer.

Bucky had dropped off the paper before going back up to the medical bay, spending his time with you. He hadn’t slept since he first woke up, his groggy eyes immediately landing on you staggering to the bathroom.

He laid in the small bed with you, balancing himself on the edge, giving you all the space. He had laid a damp rag over your forehead, in hope to cool you down a little. Tremors racked through your body suddenly, Bucky jolted. 

You laid still for a moment, eyes clenched shut, brows furrowed. An unpleasant gurgling sound came from you, body jerking slightly. Bucky’s eyes widened and he pressed the call button repeatedly before running to your side. You weren’t awake, you were warmer than before, heartbeat rapid as the monitor started to go crazy, alarms blasting. Dr. Cho and a couple nurses suddenly bursted into the room, eyes wide

“What’s wrong? What’s happening to her?” Bucky cried out, helplessly watching as they pushed you on the side. 

“She’s choking. Her lungs are filling up with fluids, and if we don't drain it, she will lose her.” Bucky’s eyes filled with horror. “Sergeant Barnes, I know you’re concerned for her health and safety, but I need my full attention if I’m gonna save her. Please.”

Bucky wordlessly nodded, his eyes fixated on your body, your face. 

Eyes closed.

Pale skin.

Lifeless, almost. 

The monitor flatlined. Bucky was pushed out of the room. Sheets pulled around your bed as voices screamed and yelled, though it was all distorted. 

“Bucky?” He turned to Sam, tears spilled over his cheeks. 

“She’s…” A cry got caught in his throat. “she’s flatlining.”

Chocolate eyes widened. 

“I need to find Tony and Bruce.”

Sam loved you like a sister. The two of you had always been close, ever since you joined the team. And when Sam laid eyes on you, defibrillator pads pressed on the exposed skin of your chest, head laid back, a knife twisted into his heart. 

Neither men didn’t move a muscle until the flatline changed to a faint beeping. 

---

“Please tell me you’re somewhat close to putting an antidote together.” Bucky and Sam pushed through the doors. Tony looked up, “How is she?”

“She’s running out of time, she flatlined for a minute,” Bucky rambled out. “Please, Tony. What do you have so far?”

“It’s almost done, I think. We followed every single one of the steps, used past remedies that have helped even Thor himself from a virus. But if this guys even altered one of these steps-”

“He’ll have to face me then.” Bucky finished. “Is it ready?” Tony nodded, though he had a look of hesitancy. “What is it?”

Tony looked over at Bruce, having just placed the antidote in the freezer. “It needs to maintain a temperature of -50 degrees. Meaning…”

“You need to bring her down here, or else it won’t work. I have all the medical supplies she’ll need down here. I just need you to transport her.” 

“I’ll do it.” Bucky said, not that anyone else would have even offered. “Have every single thing ready by the time I step foot in here.”

“I’ll inform Cho.”

Both scientists nodded, scrambling to ready the emergency medical cot. Sam followed Bucky as they raced through the stairwell, racing up the stairs, though adrenaline gave Bucky all the energy in the world it seemed. 

Once he reached the room, Sam sprinted to ready the elevators, to get you to the lab as quickly as possible. Dr. Cho had removed all the tubes and wires off of you, only an oxygen mask with a tank attached. 

“Come on, baby,” Bucky strapped the oxygen tank to his back and slid his arms underneath your knees and shoulders, and ever so gently he lifted you up, grey hospital gown drenched in sweat. Your head lolled back, arms and legs completely limp. “I got you, baby, I’ve got you.”

With you laid against his chest, he moved swiftly, his pace faster than normal and it wasn’t long until he was in the elevator with you, nearly unconscious in his arms. Bucky looked down at you and rested his forehead against your sweaty hair, though it did not bother him in the slightest. 

Your brows furrowed for a moment, followed by a whimper. “We’re getting there, love. We’re almost there.”

The doors opened and Bucky made a beeline for the lab doors, immediately going to the corner of the room where they had the cot set up. As gently as he could, he cradled the back of your head as he placed you down on the mat, softly placing the tank on the ground. 

“Okay, now Tony.” Bruce unbuttoned the gown at the shoulder, revealing where you were attacked. Bucky held the side of your face, caressing your cheek. 

He had placed a part of his armor on the hand piece as he took it out of the freezer, glancing  at the space from the freezer to you, and in two big strides he held the needle just above the darkening bruise and quickly administered it into your skin. He pressed the button and a fluid was shot into your shoulder.

Your body shuddered for a moment, there was no sudden movement from you.

It was the longest minute of Bucky’s life, his eyes filling up with tears. The sudden rise and fall of your chest kept getting  stronger with every breath you sucked in. The bruise surrounding your shoulder slowly vanished, your natural skin color coming back. 

When your eyes peeled open, Bucky nearly sobbed in relief, crashing on his knees as he gripped your arms. 

“Y/n, baby, can you hear me?” he pleaded desperately. 

“B-Bucky,” your voice was raspy and raw.

“Oh my god, you’re okay. You’re okay, you’re okay, you’re okay,” he muttered over and over like a mantra, cradling the back of your head as he peppered your forehead and cheeks with kisses. You were still a little warm, not as life threatening as it was beforehand.

“W-where am I?” you tiredly asked, eyes roaming around the lab. “What happened?”

 Bucky gently took the oxygen mask off, replacing it with a nasal tube. “You were poisoned, honey.” Flashes of you flatlining not even two hours ago flooded his mind, but he shook them away. You were well and alive, breathing with a steady pulse. “You were really sick for a while, 

but Tony and Bruce here made a cure for you.”

You nodded, still a bit drowsy from the near death experience. “What about… him?” 

Though your voice was barely above a whisper, Bucky heard you clearly. “He’s already taken care of. If I had it my way, the bastard would spend the rest of his life on Raft for all I care.”

Tony chuckled, coming over to pat your hair and a quick kiss to your head. “Leave that to me, kiddo. This kid doesn’t know what’s coming to him. Get some rest, hon.”

Bruce, Tony and Sam all bidded you a goodbye, leaving the two of you alone. 

Bucky cradled your face in his hands, pressing a soft kiss against your lips. “I love you, sweet girl.”

“I love you, too, Bucky.” You sounded downright exhausted. But you could finally rest. “This is why I stay behind the computers.”

Bucky chuckled and laid against the pillows, pulling you to lay on his chest. “Valid.” Your laugh was a tired one, Bucky could tell. “C’mon baby, let’s nap together.” 

You had no obligations on that, closing your eyes as you held onto Bucky’s arm, lulling to sleep. 

Finally, Bucky could rest knowing that you were at ease and finally able to rest without being in pain. His eyes drifted shut and you both finally succumbed to a well deserved rest.

--

[felassan]

Edge – The Future of Interactive Entertainment magazine, issue #401 (October 2024 issue) – Dragon Age: The Veilguard story

The rest of this post is under a cut for length.

Update: this issue of this magazine is now available to buy from UK retailers today. it can be purchased online at [this link]. [Tweet from Edge Online] also, Kala found that a digital version of the magazine can be read at [this link].

This post is a word-for-word transcription of the full article on DA:TV in this issue of this magazine. DA:TV is the cover story of this issue. When transcribing, I tried to preserve as much of the formatting from the magazine as possible. Edge talked to BioWare devs for the creation of this article, so the article contains new quotes from the devs. the article is written by Jeremy Peel. There were no new screenshots or images from the game in the article. I also think that it contains a few lil bits of information that are new, like the bits on companions' availability and stumbling across the companions out and about on their own in the world e.g. finding Neve investigating an abduction case in Docktown.

tysm to @simpforsolas and their friend for kindly telling me about the article!!

-----

[image source]

Article introduction segment:

"[anecdote about Edge] We were reminded of this minuscule episode in Edge's history during the creation of this issue's cover story, in which we discuss the inspiration behind Dragon Age: The Veilguard with its creators at BioWare. Notably, director John Epler remembers the studio experimenting with a number of approaches during the early phase of development before eventually locking in to what the game was supposed to be all along, above all else: 'a single-player, story-focused RPG'. As you'd expect from BioWare, though, that was really just a starting point, as we discovered on p54." BioWare draws back the Veil and ushers us into a new Dragon Age

"BEHIND THE CURTAIN BioWare's first true RPG in age age is as streamlined and pacey as a dragon in flight. By Jeremy Peel Game Dragon Age: The Veilguard Developer BioWare Publisher EA Format PC, PS5, Xbox Series Origin Canada Release Autumn

The Dragon Age universe wasn't born from a big bang or the palm of an ancient god. Instead, it was created to solve a problem. BioWare was tired of battling Hasbro during the making of Baldur's Gate and Neverwinter Nights, and wanted a Dungeons & Dragons-like setting of its own. A small team was instructed to invent a new fantasy world in which the studio could continue its groundbreaking work in the field of western RPGs, free of constraints.

Well, almost free. BioWare's leaders mandated that the makers of this new world stick to Eurocentric fantasy, and include a fireball spell - since studio co-founder Ray Muzyka had a weakness for offensive magic.

Beyond that, BioWare’s storytellers were empowered to infuse Dragon Age with their own voices and influences, leaning away from D&D’s alignment chart and towards a moral grayness that left fans of A Song Of Ice And Fire feeling warm and cozy.

In the two decades since, the world of Thedas – rather infamously and amusingly, a shortening of ‘the Dragon Age setting’ that stuck – has taken on a distinct flavor. It’s something director John Epler believes is rooted in characters.

“There’s definitely some standard fantasy stuff in Dragon Age, but everything in the world, every force, is because of someone,” he says. “The idea is that every group and faction needs to be represented by a person – someone you can relate to. Big political forces are fine as background, but they don’t provide you with those interesting story moments.”

Dragon Age: The Veilguard bears out that philosophy. The long-awaited sequel was first announced with the subtitle Dreadwolf, in reference to its antagonist, Solas – an ancient elf who once stripped his people of immortality as punishment for betraying one of their own. In doing so, Solas created the Veil, the thin barrier through which wizards pull spirits and demons invade the waking world. In other words, many of Dragon Age’s defining features, from its downtrodden elves to the uneasy relationship between mages and a fearful church, can be traced right back to one character’s decision.

“The world exists as it does because of Solas,” Epler says. “He shaped the world because of the kind of character he was. That’s, to me, what makes Dragon Age so interesting. Everything can tie back to a person who to some degree thought they were doing the right thing.”

Perhaps BioWare’s greatest achievement in slowburn character development, Solas is a former companion, an unexploded bomb who sat in the starting party of Dragon Age: Inquisition, introverted and useful enough to get by without suspicion. Yet by the time credits rolled around on the Trespasser DLC, players were left in no doubt as to the threat he presented.

Determined to reverse the damage he once caused, the Dreadwolf intends to pull down the Veil, destroying Thedas as we know it in the process. The next Dragon Age game was always intended to be his story.

“We set that up at the end of Trespasser,” Epler says. “There was no world where we were ever going to say, ‘And now let’s go to something completely different.’ We wanted to pay off that promise.”

Yet almost everything else about the fourth Dragon Age appears to have been in flux at one time. In 2019, reporter Jason Schreier revealed that an early version, starring a group of spies pulling off heists in the Tevinter Imperium, had been cancelled two years prior. Most of its staff were apparently moved onto BioWare’s struggling Anthem, while a tiny team rebooted Dragon Age from scratch. That new game was said to experiment with live-service components.

“We tried a bunch of different ideas early on,” Epler says. “But the form The Veilguard has taken is, in a lot of ways, the form that we were always pushing towards. We were just trying different ways to get there. There was that moment where we really settled on, ‘This is a singleplayer, story-focused RPG – and that’s all it needs to be’”.

Epler imagines a block of marble, from which BioWare was attempting to carve an elephant – a character- and story-driven game. “We were chipping away, and sometimes it looked more like an elephant and sometimes it didn’t”, he says. “And then we eventually realized: ‘Just make an elephant’. When we got to that, it almost just took shape by itself.”

2014’s Dragon Age: Inquisition was an open-world game commonly criticized for a slow-paced starting area which distracted players from the thrust of the plot. The Veilguard, in contrast, is mission-based, constructed with tighter, bespoke environments designed around its main story and cast. “We wanted to build a crafted, curated experience for the player,” Epler says. “Pacing is important to us, and making sure that the story stays front and center.”

Epler is very proud of Inquisition, the game on which he graduated from cinematic designer to a lead role (for its DLC). “But one of the things that we ran into on that project was an absentee antagonist,” he says. “Corypheus showed up and then disappeared. You spent ten hours in the Hinterland doing sidequests, and there wasn’t that sense of urgency.”

This time, The Veilguard team wants you to constantly feel the sword of Damocles dangling above your head as you play – a sense that the end of the world is coming if you don’t act. “There’s still exploration – there’s still the ability to go into some of these larger spaces and go off the beaten path to do sidequests,” Epler says. “But there’s always something in the story propelling you and the action forward, and allowing you to make decisions with these characters where the stakes feel a lot more immediate and present. And also, honestly, more real.”

No sooner have you finished character creation than Dragon Age: The Veilguard thrusts you into a choice. As your protagonist, Rook, steps into focus on the doorstep of the seediest bar in town, you decide whether to threaten the owner for information or make a deal. Brawl or no, you’ll walk out minutes later with a lead: the location of a private investigator named Neve Gallus, who can help you track down Solas.

You proceed into Minrathous, the largest city in Thedas and capital of the Tevinter Imperium – a region only alluded to in other Dragon Age games. It’s a place built on the backs of slaves and great mages, resulting in tiered palaces and floating spires – a kind of architecture unimaginable to those in the southern nations.

“When your Dragon Age: Inquisition companion Dorian joins you in Orlais, in one of the biggest cities in Thedas, he mentions that it’s quaint and cute compared to Minrathous,” Corinne Busche, game director on The Veilguard, says. “That one bit of dialogue was our guiding principle on how to realize this city. It is sprawling. It is lived-in. Sometimes it’s grimy, sometimes it’s bougie. But it is expansive.”

Immediately, you can see the impact of BioWare’s decision to tighten its focus. Around every other corner in Minrathous is an exquisitely framed view, a level of spectacle you would never see in Inquisition, where resources were spread much more thinly. “When you know that you’re gonna be heading down a canyon or into this plaza where the buildings open up, you have those perfect spots to put a nice big temple of Andraste or a mage tower,” art director Matthew Rhodes says. “You get those opportunities to really hit that hard.”

BioWare’s intention is to make strong visual statements that deliver on decades of worldbuilding. “People who have a history with Dragon Age have thought about what Minrathous might be like,” Rhodes says. “We can never compete with their imagination, but we can aim for it like we’re shooting for the Moon.”

The people of Tevinter use magic as it if were electricity, as evidenced by the glowing sigils that adorn the dark buildings – street signs evoking Osaka’s riverfront or the LA of Blade Runner. They’re just one of the tricks BioWare’s art team uses to invite you to stop and take in the scene. “A lot of what you start to notice when you’re the artist who’s been working on these big, beautiful vistas and neat murals on the walls is how few players look up,” Rhodes says. “We design props and architecture that help lead the eyes.”

For the really dedicated shoegazers, BioWare has invested in ray-traced reflections, so that the neon signage can be appreciated in the puddles. There are also metal grates through which you can see the storm drains below. “The idea behind that is purely just to remind the player often of how stacked the city is,” Rhodes says. “Wherever you’re standing, there’s guaranteed to be more below you and above you.”

One of BioWare’s core creative principles for The Veilguard is to create a world that’s actually worth saving – somewhere you can imagine wanting to stick around in, once the crises of the main quest are over. To that end, the team has looked to ground its outlandish environments with elements of mundanity.

“A guy’s normal everyday life walking down the streets of this city is more spectacular than what the queen of Orlais is seeing, at least in terms of sheer scale," Rhodes says. “One of the things we’ve tried to strike a balance with is that this is actually still a place where people have to go to the market and buy bread, raise their kids, and try to make it. It’s a grand and magical city, but how do you get your horses from one place to the next? Where do you load the barrels for the tavern? It’s really fun to think of those things simultaneously.”

Normal life in Minrathous is not yours to behold for long, however. Within a couple of minutes of your arrival, the very air is ripped open like cheap drapes, and flaming demons clatter through the merchant carts that line the city streets. A terrible magical ritual, through which Solas intends to stitch together a new reality, has begun.

“We wanted the prologue to feel like the finale of any other game we’ve done,” Busche explains. “Where it puts you right into this media-res attack on a city and gets you really invested in the action and the story right away. When I think back to Inquisition, how the sky was literally tearing open – the impact of this ritual really makes that look like a minor inconvenience.”

Our hero is confronted by a Pride demon, imposing and armored as in previous games, yet accented by exposed, bright lines that seem to burst from its ribcage. “They are a creature of raw negative emotion,” Busche says. “So we wanted to actually incorporate that into their visual design with this glowing nervous system.”

When a pack of smaller demons blocks Rook’s route to the plaza where Neve was last seen, battle breaks out, and The Veilguard’s greatest divergence from previous Dragon Age games becomes apparent. Our rogue protagonist flits between targets up close and evades individual sword swings with precision. In the chaos, he swaps back and forth between blades and a bow. He blends light and heavy attacks, and takes advantage of any gap in the melee to charge up even bigger blows.

“Responsiveness was our first-and-foremost goal with this baseline layer of the combat system,” Busche says. Unless you’re activating a high-risk, high-reward ability such as a charged attack, any action can be animation-cancelled, allowing you to abort a sword swing and dive away if an enemy lunges too close. “We very much wanted you to feel like you exist in this space, as you’re going through these really crafted, hand-touched worlds,” Busche says. “That you’re on the ground in control of every action, every block, every dodge.” Anyone who’s ever bounced off a Soulslike needn’t worry: The Veilguard’s highly customizable difficulty settings enable you to loosen up parry windows if they prove too demanding.

Gone is the overhead tactical camera which, for some players, was a crucial point of connection between Dragon Age and the Baldur’s Gate games that came before, tapping into a lineage of thoughtful, tabletop-inspired combat. Epler points out that the camera’s prior inclusion had an enormous impact on where the game’s battles took place. “We actually had a mandate on Inquisition, which was, ‘Don’t fight inside,’” he says. “The amount of extra work on getting that tactical camera to work in a lot of those internal environments, it was very challenging.”

Gone, too, is the ability to steer your comrades directly. “On the experiential side, we wanted you to feel like you are Rook – you’re in this world, you’re really focused on your actions,” Busche says. “We very much wanted the companions to feel like they, as fully realized characters, are in control of their own actions. They make their own decisions. You, as the leader of this crew, can influence and direct and command them, but they are their own people.”

It's an idea with merit, albeit one that could be read as spin. “It’s not lost on me,” Busche says. “I will admit that, on paper, if you just read that you have no ability to control your companions, it might feel like something was taken away. But in our testing and validating with players, what we find is they’re more engaged than ever.”

There may be a couple of reasons for that. One is that Dragon Age’s newly dynamic action leaves little room for seconds spent swapping between perspectives. “This is a much higher actions-per-minute game,” Busche says. “It is more technically demanding on the player. So when we tried allowing you full control of your companions as well, what we’ve found is it wasn’t actually adding to the experience. In fact, in some ways it was detrimental, given the demanding nature of just controlling your own character.”

Then there’s The Veilguard’s own tactical layer, as described by BioWare. Though the fighting might be faster and lower, like a mana-fuelled sports scar, the studio is keen to stress that the pause button remains as important to the action as ever. This is, according to Busche, where the RPG depth shines through, as you evaluate the targets you’re facing and take their buffs into account: “Matching elemental types against weaknesses and resistances is a big key to success in this game.”

You pick between rogue, warrior and mage – each role later splitting again into deeper specialisms – and draw from a class-specific resource during fights. A rogue relies on Momentum, which is built up by avoiding damage and being highly aggressive, whereas a warrior is rewarded for blocking, parrying, and mitigating damage.

Those resources are then used on the ability wheel, which pauses the game and allows you to consider your options. The bottom quadrant of the wheel belongs to your character, and is where three primary abilities will be housed. “Rook will also have access to runes, which function as an ability, and a special ultimate ability,” Busche says. “So you’re bringing five distinct abilities with you into combat.”

The sections to the left and right of the wheel, meanwhile, are dedicated to your companions. Busche points to Lace Harding, the returning rogue from Inquisition, who is currently frozen mid-jump. “She is her own realized individual in this game. She’s got her own behaviors: how she prioritizes targets, whether she gets up close and draws aggro or stays farther back at range. But you’ll be able to direct her in combat by activating her abilities from the wheel.”

These abilities are complemented by positional options at the top of the wheel, where you can instruct your companions to focus their efforts on specific targets, either together or individually. Doing so will activate the various buffs, debuffs and damage enhancements inherent in their weapons and gear. “So,” Busche explains, “as you progress through the first two hours of the game, this full ability wheel is completely populated with a variety of options and different tactics that you can then string together.”

BioWare has leaned into combos. You might tell one companion to unleash a gravity-well effect that gathers enemies together, then have another slow time. Finally, you could drop an AOE attack on your clustered and slowed opponents, dealing maximum damage. The interface will let you know when an opportunity to blend two companion abilities emerges – moments BioWare has dubbed ‘combo detonations’.

“I like to think about this strategic layer to combat as a huddle,” Busche says, “where you’re figuring out how you want to handle the situation, based on the information you have on the encounter, and how you and your companions synergize together.”

Deeper into the game, as encounters get more challenging, Epler says we’ll be spending a lot of time making “very specific and very focused tactical decisions”. The proof will be in eating the Fereldan fluffy mackerel pudding, of course, but Busche insists this shift to fast action isn’t a simplification. “What really makes the combat system and indeed the extension into the progression system work is that pause-and-play tactical element that we know our players expect.”

The autonomy of The Veilguard’s companions doesn’t end with combat. BioWare’s data shows that in previous games players tended to stick with the same two or three beloved comrades during a playthrough. This time, however, you’ll be forced to mix your squad up at regular intervals.

“We do expect that players will have favorites they typically want to adventure with,” Busche says, “but sometimes certain companions will be mandatory.” Others may not always be available – part of the studio’s effort to convince with three-dimensional characters. “They do have a life outside of Rook, the main character,” Busche says.

"They'll fall in love with people in this world. They’ve had past experiences they’ll share with you if you allow them in and get close to them.”

Being separated from your companions, rather than collecting them all in a kind of stasis at camp, allows you to stumble across them unexpectedly. Busche describes an instance in which, while exploring the Docktown section of Minrathous, you might bump into Neve as she investigates an abduction case. “If I go and interact with her, I can actually stop what I’m doing, pick up her arc and adventure with her throughout her part of the story,” Busche says. “What’s interesting is that all of the companion arcs do ultimately tie back to the themes of the main critical path, but they also have their own unique challenges and villains, and take place over the course of many different intimate moments.”

Some parts of a companion’s quest arc involve combat, while others don’t. Some are made up of large and meaningful missions – as lavish and involved as those along the critical path. “While they are optional, I would be hesitant to call them side content in this game,” Busche says. If you choose not to engage with some of these companion-centered events, they’ll resolve on their own. “And it might have interesting implications.”

The Veilguard promises plenty of change, then, even as it picks up the threads of fan-favorite characters and deepens them, honoring the decades of worldbuilding that came before it. This is perhaps the enduring and alluring paradox of Dragon Age: a beloved series which has never had a direct and immediate sequel, nor a recurring protagonist. Instead, it’s been reinvented with each new entry.

“It’s a mixed blessing to some degree,” Epler says. “The upside is always that it gives us more room to experiment and to try new things. There are parts of the series that are common to every game: it’s always an RPG, it’s always about characters, and we always want to have that strategic tactical combat where you’re forced to make challenging decisions. But at the end of the day, I think what makes Dragon Age Dragon Age is that each one feels a little bit different.”"

Q&A Matthew Rhodes Art director

Q. Early BioWare RPGs were literary, with the emotions and detail mostly happening in dialogue boxes. How have you seen the studio's approach to visual storytelling evolve? A. This has been my entire career. When I first showed up at BioWare, it was at the tail end of Jade Empire, and then I was working on Dragon Age: Origins and early Mass Effect. The games had taken that next step out of sprites and 2D models, and it was like: 'How do we say more? How do we communicate more clearly?' During those early days, a lot of games depended on words to fix everything for you. As long as your character was talking bombastically, you could lend them everything that they needed. But as time went on it also became a visual medium, and it's been this long journey of trying to establish art's seat at the table. I've worked with some great writers over the years, and art is also an essential part of the storytelling. From Dragon Age: Inquisition on, I've been trying to stress with my teams that we are a story department.

Q. Is part of that also letting writers know that your storytelling assistance is available, to help them show rather than tell? A. On The Veilguard, that principle has been operating the best I've seen it. Where you would need a paragraph of dialogue in one of those exposition moments where a character just talks to you, we could sell that with a broken statue or a skeleton overgrown with vines. We've had more opportunities to do that on The Veilguard than most of the projects I've ever worked on combined.

To a hammer, every problem looks like a nail, and so in every department, writing will try to solve it with more words, and art will try to solve it with more art. I've bumped up against moments where it's like, 'As much as we could keep hammering on this design, I think this is actually an audio solution.' And then you take it to audio, and you don't get that overcooked feeling where each team is just trying to solve it in their silo. It's a really creatively charged kind of environment.

[main body of article ends here]

Additional from throughout the article --

Image caption: “Spotlights shine down from the city guards’ base as they pursue you through the streets of Minrathous.”

Image caption: “While most of your companions can be sorted into comfortingly familiar RPG classes, The Veilguard introduces two new varieties: a Veil Jumper and a private investigator.”"

Image caption [on this Solas ritual concept art specifically]: “The name previously given to the game – Dreadwolf – was a direct reference to Solas. Your former companion, now on his own destructive mission, still features, despite the name change.”

Text in a side box:

"RATIONAL ANTHEM The hard lesson BioWare drew from Anthem was to play to its strengths. “We’re a studio that has always been built around digging deep on storytelling and roleplaying,” Epler says. “I’m proud of a lot of things on Anthem – I was on that project for a year and a half. But at the end of the day we were building a game focused on something we were not necessarily as proficient at. For me and for the team, the biggest lesson was to know what you’re good at and then double down on it. Don’t spread yourselves too thin. Don’t try to do a bunch of different things you don’t have the expertise to do. A lot of the people on this team came here to build a story-focused, singleplayer RPG."

Image caption: “In combat you no longer control your companions directly – this is a faster-paced form of fighting – but you are able to direct them in combat, and can even blend their abilities in ‘combo detonations’.”

Image caption: “You’ll be exploring new regions across Tevinter and beyond – Rivain is a certainty, and that’s only accessible via Antiva travelling overland.”

Image caption: “There are three specializations per character class; on the way to unlocking them you’ll acquire a range of abilities.”

Text in a side box:

"MEET YOUR MAKER “Full disclosure: Dragon Age has traditionally not done skin tones well, especially for people of color,” Busche says. “We wanted to do a make-good here.” In The Veilguard’s character creator, you can adjust the amount of melanin that comes through in the skin, as well as test various lighting scenarios to ensure your protagonist looks exactly as you intend in cutscenes. “Speaking of our first creative principle – be who you want to be – we really feel these are the kinds of features that unlock that for our players,” Busche says. “We want everyone to be able to see themselves in this game.” For the first time in the series, your body type is fully customizable too, with animations, armor and even romantic scenes reflecting your choices."

Image caption: “Your companions are a mix of old and new – Lace Harding is a familiar face. Veil Jumper Bellara is new, with a new occupation, while Davrin is a new face with a familiar profession – he’s a Warden.”

Image caption: "Arlathan Forest is home to the ruined city of the elves, now a place of wild magic, Veil Jumpers and (allegedly) spirits".

Image caption: "Bellara is driven by a desire to learn more about the elves, rediscovering the shattered history and magic of her people."

[source: Edge – The Future of Interactive Entertainment magazine, issue #401 (October 2024 issue) - it can be purchased online at [this link].]

[inky-duchess]

Fantasy Guide to Education

I'm always asked what sort of education different people recieve throughout different historical eras and since I'm heading back to college soon, I thought it was high time I made this guide.

Disparity

Education is viewed as a right by many but for some and thoughout history it was a privilege. For the wealthy and those of high status, education can be easily accessed. They can afford to tailor an education to fit their needs, they can hire tutors, and they can afford tuitions to top schools. For the poor, education was a luxury. However this doesn't mean that it was available. Some communities would fund a school or send their children to a local teacher - usually they had to pay a daily fee or at least bring kindling for the heating. Many poorer children also worked so they could not attend school consistently or were pulled out very early into their education. However, some poorer students could gain access to high level education if they were extremely bright or caught the attention of a wealthy benefactor who could fund their education.

Education as a Weapon

Education could also be banned for certain groups in society. It could be illegal to fund schools or host gatherings for students of a certain background, race, religion or gender. Education against the law could be punished by imprisonment, exile or execution. This is a measure usually taken by oppressive governments in order to follow a moral code or restrict the betterment of a certain group. An example would be the Irish Catholics under the Penal Laws.

On the otherhand, there is education that is influenced by the state to inject certain values, moralities and Opinions into a population. This is the intense restriction of reading material, removal of books that contest the teachings of the government or the kidnap of children from their culture, in order to forcibly educated them in alignment to their beliefs. An example would be the residental schools of North America and Canada and the AHS schools of Nazi Germany.

Content

As above, content of what children learn usually falls into a certain category. This is also true for the education offered to the wealthy and the poor. The poor would be offered a basic education, learning literacy and arithmetic, usually with an expectation that the children would not go on to any jobs that needs a broader education. Any higher education would be hard to obtain because of cost and the discriminatory view of the enrollment panels. The wealthy would have access to an array of different subjects including: The arts (drawing, music, painting, poetry, dancing), sports (riding, martial skills, rowing, hunting), arithmetic, geography, languages, geography and history. While progression to higher education will still be difficult, any affluent families are legacies of prestigious colleges or can make a donation to grease a few palms. These schools would be where the wealthy make lifelong connections and get springboarded toward opportunities.

Private Tutoring

Whilst some affluent, aristocratic and Royal families send their children to schools, private tutoring in the home was a popular choice. Children would be educated at home but tutors who either lived in the home or come to the house. The children would be educated alongside siblings or the children of courtiers or neighbours. Private tutoring sessions would often be the only education for upper class women recieved, taught by governesses and tutors.

Premises and Equipment

As mentioned above, wealthy and aristocratic families would usually attend established schools or attend school at home. They would be provided any equipment they needed. If they attend school, they would often wear a uniform. Some schools had multiple variations of the uniform for different activities. Many of the schools attended would be boarding schools. Boarding schools offered education to those who boarded and day students, however day students were often looked down upon as lesser than.

Poorer schools would be relient on donations and fees paid by students. As mentioned above, there may be a building reserved for classes - sometimes an designated schoolhouse or a teacher's home or a public building such as a gathering house or sometimes even outside - hedge schools. Equipment would be provided by the school. Uniforms at poorer schools were not a thing but students were expected to show up neat and tidy.

Corporal Punishment

Corporal punishment at schools was the go to punishment for students. Teachers had free rein to strike children for mistakes and bad behaviour. Punishments include insolation, physical stress positions such as standing on a chair all day, getting objects thrown at them, being slapped on the back of the legs with a cane, being rapped on the palms or knuckles with a crop or ruler. Students may also be humiliated by teachers through the use of dunce hats, encouraging other children to bully them or by the use of verbal abuse. Corporal punishment did extend to all classes except for royal children since that was either taken by proxy by whipping boys or left up to parents.

[enhaheeseung]

At your service l. Heeseung

Pairing: live in maid heeseung x rich fem reader

Warnings: age gap, angst, heartbreak.

Masterlist:

WC: 1,544k

Sorry for late update I hope you all enjoy and stay tuned for my future works♥️

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With the way last visit went, heeseung can only assume you're completely done with him.

Realistically, why wouldn’t you be after what you saw on his phone?

That being said.

He still couldn’t understand how you moved on that quickly.

He knows he messed up badly, but was it really that bad for you to already have forgotten about him and shacked up with another man?

Did you not feel the same way about him as he felt about you? Were all your I love yous not as meaningful as his? Was it just that easy for you to get over him?

How could you possibly be with someone new when it hasn’t even been a month yet? He couldn’t even imagine looking at a girl that wasn’t you right now or ever, for that matter.

But whatever.

None of it really mattered now anyway because he was leaving tomorrow, and this would be the end of this beautiful yet sad chapter in his life.

I’m leaving for Canada tomorrow morning. Could I come over and see Bruno one last time?

You were just saying bye to sunghoon he had apologized for his whole plan looking back on It it probably wasn’t his best idea but what’s done is done and you accepted that and you were just appreciative he went through all that to get back at your ex even though it didn’t go as planned.

However, he did give you some advice about Heeseung to ponder.

What wasn’t helping you make a decision was the necklace heeseung showed you last time he was over. Maybe you should hear him out, maybe Sunghoon was giving you good advice, and maybe you should just listen to your heart and contact him just one last time for closure, but you didn’t want him to know you were still hung up on him it’d probably give him satisfaction to see you hurting after he played with you and used you all these months, but maybe he was really sorry maybe his feelings were real and maybe maybe maybe.

Sigh.

“I’ll think about it, hoon.” You walked him to the door, and he trailed behind with his luggage. “Thank you for coming over, and thanks for all your advice.”

“Anytime,” he wrapped you up in a hug. “I’ll visit you again soon, okay?” You nodded, embracing him for the last time.

You shut the door after seeing him off, and right after the door shut, you heard your phone buzz.

You watched Sunghoon back out of the driveway all the way until he was out of your sight before going to your phone.

Reaching for it, you turned it on, checked your notifications, and covered your mouth with your palm when you saw his contact pop up.

Opening the message, your eyes scanned carefully over each word.

What did he mean by leaving for Canada? Your brows furrowed upon reading the text. Was he moving away forever? For good? Were you not going to be able to see him again? Was this just it?

With your brain racked with questions, you try to come up with answers only he had as you replied with shaky hands and typed out a simple yes in response.

He replied before you could even turn your phone off. He literally had his phone on the whole time, and he was just waiting for you to reply.

“Thank you. Is five okay?”

“Five is okay.”

You put your phone down on the table, attempting to fan your eyes dry, when you feel tears pricking them. You don’t even know why you are crying.

You went to your room to get yourself together a bit before he came over.

After about an hour later, you heard the doorbell ring, and you composed yourself as much as possible before answering.

“Hi,” he muttered softly when you opened the door, his eyes undeniably full of emotions that you couldn’t quite read. “May I come in?” You nodded and moved aside.

You had already set all of Bruno’s stuff in the living room so he didn’t have to be in your home longer than needed.

“Hey, boy!” Heeseung said excitedly, and Bruno ran towards him. Heeseung kneeled down and held the puppy in his hands, chuckling as Bruno licked his cheek. He grabbed the leash next to him and secured it on Bruno’s neck. “I’ll bring him back in about half an hour,” he informed you.

You didn’t even look at him. You answered with a quiet okay and went upstairs, letting him see himself out.

Heeseung sighed lowering his head as he made his exit he walked about a mile down the road till he reached the little park you and him had frequently visited in the past.

He walked a trail that led to a tiny bridge with a lake view and sat down, releasing a heavy sigh.

Bruno was next to him, panting and taking in the scenery as heeseung did.

Heeseung smiled fondly at Bruno. He had gotten so big in such a short time span, too bad he wasn’t able to watch him grow up big and strong with you.

He frowns at the thought of you. “I hurt your mommy, Bruno. I messed up really bad, and I broke her trust.” he drops his head, completely disappointed with himself. If only he hadn’t acted so stupid and immature when he first met you, this would have never even happened in the first place.

He picked up a pebble next to him, tossing it into the water and watching the little ripples it created. He stayed there for a while, his feet dangling off the bridge as he gently swung them back and forth.

Bruno sat down next to heeseung, resting his head on his thigh. “I'm gonna miss you so much.” he fluffs his ears playfully. “And your mommy, too.” he stands up after a few more minutes and dusts off his pants. “Come on, boy, let’s get you home. It’s getting chilly out here.”

He slowly walked back to your house, taking as much time as he could cause he knew after this, it was really over.

When he finally arrived at your home, he knocked on your door to return Bruno.

You let him in wordlessly, just like before. He took a few steps inside, unleashing Bruno, and he went to the food and water bowls right away, making heeseung chuckle.

“Here,” you managed to say in a normal voice, and you handed him his final check.

“Oh,” he turns to you, taking it from your hands. “Thanks,” he muttered, folding the check and shoving it into his pocket.

He stood around for a bit, thinking you might say something or at least tell him bye or have a safe trip.

Who is he kidding? You probably couldn’t wait for him to leave. “Thank you for letting me see him,” he did his best to say without getting choked up, but that was difficult, seeing that he was saying goodbye to what used to be his little family.

“You’re welcome.” You swallowed thickly, that familiar feeling making its way to your throat, but you fought off the tears despite them stinging your eyes.

“Yeah,” he said, taking a deep, shaky breath. “Uhh,” he looked down, chewing on his bottom lip, hot tears gathering in his eyes as well; as much as he tried not to cry, he just couldn’t contain it. “I just wanted to say I’m really gonna miss you and Bruno, and I know I already said I’m sorry, but I’m gonna say it again because I really am. I’m so sorry for breaking the trust you had in me,” he looked up at you, meeting your soft gaze. “If I could take it all back, I would cause I-i still love you so much, y/n.”

You immediately broke eye contact, looking everywhere in the living room except him.

Why did he have to make this so hard? Why couldn’t he just leave instead of confusing you?

You were still conflicted about what to do, and you didn’t get enough time to think about how to deal with the situation. You weren’t about to make a rash decision just cause he was leaving, so you stayed quiet.

As the seconds passed without you giving him a response or even so much as looking at him, he took that as a silent sign to just go, understanding that what you and he once had was officially over, which hurt him deeply, but he knew there was nothing else he could do.

You stayed quiet until he walked to the door.

You stayed quiet when he twisted the knob.

You stayed quiet when he said I love you one last time.

And you stayed quiet until he left.

When the door shuts, that’s when you finally let your tears fall.

It hurt to watch the love of your life walk out of your life, but you told yourself it’d be okay.

You were used to people leaving, and you were used to being alone.

Despite everything you two did together, he was just another person who used you and left.

You’d get over him just like the rest.

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Thanks for reading likes comments and reblogs are always appreciated sorry for any typos or errors I hope you all have a good day/night♥️

[slafkovskys]

What’s all star weekend gonna be like for the boys and Angel? Hopefully Luke gets voted in 🤞🤞

jack’s running into the gym in his and luke’s apartment complex, popping in front of where she was doing her cool down on the treadmill. she pauses the machine and her podcast, looking at the man alarmed, “who’s hurt? do we need to go to a hospital?”

“no. why would you- nevermind,” he leans against the front of the treadmill excitedly, “what are you doing the first weekend of february?”

“the first weekend of february?” she closes her eyes as she racks her brain, “probably sleeping?”

“do you want to sleep in toronto? because i’m a fucking allstar baby,” he shows her his phone and she looks at the announcement, taking the phone from his hand as she reads it a couple of times before squealing. “you’re coming, right?”

“of course i am! oh, i’m so proud of you jacky,” she mumbles, pressing her hands to his cheeks before pulling him in, “so, so proud.”

quinn’s bid to toronto comes later that night and she sends him an equally enthusiastic message, asking for a call as soon as he could. with two of her boys set, she worried about luke. she knew he could be voted in, but what if he wasn’t?

he can see her mind running wild as they lay in bed that night. she was tracing shapes on his chest with her lip between her teeth, obviously having something to say. he clears his throat, “you can say it, angel.”

“what if you don’t get to go?” she avoids his eyes, “it’s not fair if i get to with quinn and jack and you’re just not there. it won’t feel right.”

“i’ll cut you a deal,” he offers and her fingers stop, palm laying flat against his abdomen as she prepares to soak in what he has to say, “if i don’t get voted in, you and i, we run away for a couple of days. somewhere warm with fruity little cocktails. then we go can go to toronto and be with them. does that sound good?”

“yeah,” she sighs, “now i kind of don’t want you to go so we can be somewhere warm with fruity little cocktails.”

luke misses the vote and he swears he doesn’t mind when he’s sending her a flight confirmation for the three days in the dominican republic with another flight to toronto attached. they have their time before joining jack and quinn in canada, hanging out in the suite that was unofficially housing all four of them most of the time.

she’s secretly a little happy that she gets to have luke with her and the rest of the hughes family that joined the occasion. leaning into him when play is slow or grabbing onto his wrist when quinn’s shot bounces off the bar. he stares at her, “is this what you’re like all of the time?”

without missing a beat, she and ellen respond in tandem, “yes.”

[hanasnx]

I carnally crave a description of Logan/Reader’s (in the I Was Made For Lovin You universe) wedding. who was there? did they kiss? (i know the answer, but what happened instead?) was it entirely just a legal thing or did he put on a suit for her? did they make a day of it? also, what point in Logan’s life is this written during? before he was an x-man? is the reader essentially in Kayla’s place??

dude i have so many questions; i would love to pick your brain, if you’re up for it.

i loved this ask so so much!! ive been thinking about it since i read it when i woke up

the way i imagine it is yes, essentially reader is in "kayla's place" in the x-men origins era. even tho its a trash movie i love it sm and he looks so good in it. now you'll need to suspend some belief here for me because this is after logan's got the adamantium procedure, he's still got his memories, his house in the mountains, his construction job, and before he was an x-men. so. not very canon compliant im jumping thru a lot of hoops because its a self indulgent piece written thru the lens of fantasy to explore my own experiences and psychology

neither of them have any family or any friends to speak of. logan has a bad habit of picking up and caring for strays and youre a stray, so to speak. he takes on the responsibility of "caring for you" and youve got no one else. the marriage is official and legal, but there was no kiss, just signatures on the marriage contract. you live with logan in alberta, canada, but you got married in the states to avoid needing a witness and any extra hoops. basically a court house marriage

knowing logan it was a rather dry affair, there was nothing really celebratory about it. as soon as you two were officially married there was no hug or grins or anything, it was just another day. for logan, this is a commitment he takes very seriously, and marriage is just a way to show his intent, he doesnt need anything extra about it. no suits and ties, no dresses, just casual clothes and paperwork.

once you show a little disappointment for how things turned out, even though you told him before that it was all okay, i think hed sigh and turn the wheel of his truck (heading back across the border to canada) and go in to a store. tells you to wait there he'll be back, and you ignore your slight shivering. comes out with two dinky plastic cups and a bottle. turns the heat on for you and pops the bottle, pours you two glasses of champagne. "here you go, kid," he tells you, pushing the cup against your palm. he bumps his cup against yours, "mazel" he says and downs the contents. even though its small, its something. and its done in logan's way, and you love logan. your cheeks are a little warmer now from the drink and you feel better about it the day. he even holds your hand while he drives to keep it warm with his body heat, and to help you feel like he did this because he loves you

by all means pick my brain! i loved this ask

[agoodpairofsocks]

tell me about rich inc pretty please

I'VE BEEN WAITING FOR THIS DAY TO COME !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! : D

Okay so. Shit. where do I start. Be prepared to read.

In 1977 there were two college students in New York, Solomon Bruno and Richard Mann, who were childhood friends experimenting on rats in Solomon's mother's basement trying to increase the longevity of their lives. Right? Right.

This next sequence of events is what leads to Richard becoming an evil, homicidal billionaire and leads to Solomon joining the anti-Rich INC activist group known as the Mortal Men, who is trying to prove Immortality is quite literally made of the blood of the innocent- One night Richard and Solomon are outside a diner and there's a cute girl inside, they flip a coin and ultimately decide that Richard is the one who gets to talk to her- Her name is Helen, she's studying at Harvard to become a lawyer. They begin dating. On Richard's 21st birthday Helen throws him a huge house party which he pretends to like, even though Solomon knows better and knows he doesn't enjoy those types of social gatherings. Richards not enjoying himself and ultimately decides to leave, he tells Helen who accidentally lets the words "I love you" slip from her mouth. Ruh-roh, Richard says NOTHING back and just. Leaves.

Solomon sees Helen rush upstairs, crying, and goes to check on her. One thing leads to another, and, they be boinking. ANYYYYWAYS fast forward like two months later and Helen goes on a trip to Africa (she loves elephants and endangered species) and Solomon is trying to deal with his guilt of sleeping with his best friends girlfriend, he's wondering if he should tell him.

One night, while one of the newer testing rats is in the same cage with the oldest test rat- the elderly rat eats the younger one. And, surprisingly, it starts displaying signs of youthfulness again! Its gray hairs disappear and it starts behaving like a younger rat. So, Solomon and Richard, not thinking about the implications of this strange development, just decide to celebrate their accomplishment! Yay!

They smoke some herbage, they drink some drinkage, they're havin' a good time !

They turn on music, they're slow dancing! Like friends do!

And then Solomon, thinking about his guilt and sleeping with Helen is like, "Hey, I have to tell you something."

And Richard straight up goes, "You don't have to tell me anything," And he kisses Solomon on the mouth.

But wuh-oh. Solomon punches him in the eye! .... Not cool dude ! he yells at Richard to "get the fuck out" of his house . And uh. yeah they're not friends anymore. To say the least. A few months later when Helen is back in town, Solomon gets into a car crash when a black cat runs in the road and he swerves out of the way. He ends up in the hospital, sedated, when Richard shows up and has him sign this document Helen wrote up. Which, he does, not knowing it's basically a false admission that he had NOTHING to do with the development of immortality and that he owns no rights to the profits or credit. Which. The actual story takes place in 1999 and it follows: A young man named Jasper, who is an aspiring writer from Canada living in a dingy apartment in New York with his hairless cat named Ugly. He ends up working for Rich INC as Richard's assistant. A young woman named CJ, who is the leader and founder of the Mortal Men, her life's work is to take down Richard, and avenge her brother who went missing four years prior. 👀 Solomon, who is now a jaded and bitter forty year old man who has dedicated his time to trying to fighting Richard any way he can and getting the credit he deserves, throwing away his life in the process. Richard, who is now a cold and compassionless horrifying billionaire who gets away with everything he does, has the world in the palm of his hand and feels he still has nothing that he wants. And Helen, Richard's unloved wife who is perpetually trying to fill the void of the dreams she lost. UHHHHHHHHH if you read all this fucking. thank you lol. also questions are very appreciated... dbihkbshkbkhsb thanks for asking about Rich INC. I should start on maybe making it into a graphic novel around January...... but we'll see

[skarlitt]

New Intro Post + My Story

Hello and welcome to my little corner of Helpol Tumblr! I felt very fortunate to have grabbed this URL (yes that's how I actually spell my name!) and decided to dedicate this blog to my spiritual journey! Story is under the cut!

My craft name in the pagan community is Skarlitt Rhoze, and I'm continuing to use that here as I move into Hellenic Polytheism.

~My Past In Witchcraft~

÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷

I am a blood witch, my family and craft originating in Ireland but now living in Canada. I spent my childhood learning spell work, reading my own tarot cards and palms, and charming my own talismans. In December 2017, as Saturn entered Capricorn on the New Moon, I had my first lucid dream in which I met my spirit guides and was fully initiated into my own solitary craft. Despite my ancestry, I no longer partake in witchcraft in any covens or groups- I always work alone now. (But that said, I still love to talk about my experiences and help out fellow witches 😊)

~ My Start With Hellenismos ~

÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷

I didn't find HelPol myself- I truly believe it found me. It was only this summer (2024) that I was called to Lord Dionysus. So I did some VERY rough research on how to connect with a god (I've never reached out to a known deity before this, just stuck with ancestors and spirit guides), and made him an offering for the first time.

Later that evening, I received a message from some old school friends (haven't spoken to in 2+ years) who asked if I would meet them at a bar to hang out. I don't know how I didn't make the Dionysus connection right away, but I realized it the day after that it might have been him who helped me rekindle an old connection.

I was so shocked at this. Witchcraft always worked for me, but never in such a fast and obvious way. It's only been about 3 months since this happened, and since then, I've received so many more amazing signs and blessings from the gods. So of course...I dove right into Hellenism because I knew deep down this was meant for me. I still don't understand why the gods are choosing to reach out and help me, but I'm more than happy to embark on the journey to find out why!

More info here...

- I am happy with any pronouns!

- I was born under the dark Moon on the spring equinox. Aries sun, Cancer moon :)

- Currently worshipping Dionysus, Hermes, and Aphrodite

- Hoping to reach out to Apollo and Persephone!

- First-year college student, studying Communications with a minor in Music (thank you Hermes!)

- Not super active all the time, though I try as much as I can! I'm super busy studying like 24/7 haha

[socially-awkward-skeleton]

All Along the Watchtower (Chapter 6)

[can also be read on AO3]

Pairing: Captain John Price x Fem!OC (3rd person POV)

Word count: 6.6k

Warnings: Minors DNI - descriptions of torture, threats of violence, morally gray characters, swearing, smoking, mentions of human trafficking, strangling, physical violence, gun violence

Summary: Sergeant Rory Sinclair must face the aftermath of her decision to enter the belly of the beast, fighting to save the lives of six women, and facing down Bratva enemies

A/N: Rory Sinclair is a dual citizen (both Canada and the UK) who's been living in the UK since she was 14. She is 28 at the time of this fic, Price is 32. This series is set in 2017 before the events of the first MW game. Rory's thoughts are bold and italicized, other italics are used for emphasis

October 17, 2017 20:12 - The White Room Gentlemen’s Club

Rory moved through the halls like a shadow amongst the dark corridors, an unseen specter as she chose to head downstairs into the belly of the beast despite knowing full well Price was on the floor above and she was disobeying a direct order. None of that mattered now. All that mattered was making up for the mistakes in the past, the guilt that chewed at her mind – gnawing away at the threads of her sanity – and the lives of those girls she had just watched get dragged inside. She couldn’t sit idly by, not this time. Instinct drove her forward, pushing her into the danger, into the violence she’d left behind. Stepping down gracefully on just the balls of her feet as she descended the stairs rapidly into the basement, her handgun was at the ready, suppressor barrel already screwed on tight. Back pressed to the wall. Checking her corners in the dim light. The music from upstairs was muffled as it drifted down through the ceiling into the damp and musty cellar. Vibrations of footsteps above causing dust and debris to trickle down to the floor sporadically, mixing with the drops of water that echoed like plinking piano keys from the water pipes along the walls. Cold and barren. Her gut twisted as it felt all too similar to that bunker in Syria – another prison she would have to raid. 

Quietly she hid in a pitch-black passageway, watching out for the men she had seen earlier, peering down and waiting for the all-clear. A door at the end of the hall opened with a low groan, and ducking back into the shadows, she waited until the men passed and were out of sight before creeping down the hall. Rory’s stress came barreling through her like a freight train as her heart raced, the sweat building on the back of her neck, the tremor in her hands increasing. She had to get a hold of herself, a steadying breath taken with that deep inward rush of air as her lungs inflated, before blowing away all the fear that threatened to spill forth from inside her. Her hand shaking as she wrapped it around the handle of the door, fingers squeezing against the metal, palm clammy with sweat. Pressing her ear to the door for a brief moment, she tried to listen in for the sound of voices, ignoring her own muffled shaking breath. The last thing she needed to do was burst in and put herself and the mission at risk, she had already been far too impulsive.

There was nothing but silence on the other side. It made her stomach drop. Memories of the tearful sobs of women and children flooded her head. That eerie silence that filled the room of soldiers as shock rolled through the pack of trained killers like a wave…and the nightmares it had left her with. 

She could wait no longer. 

Slamming her shoulder against the door as she turned the knob, it blew open and shook on its hinges. Pain was already climbing down her arm from where she had used her body to force her way through. Scanning the room, she checked for enemies. There was nothing. No one. 

And then she turned the corner…

Out of sight, huddled away, locked up in what amounted to a cage, sat the women – bound and tied together. Rory’s breath hitched in her throat, the empty pit in her gut only getting deeper as her blood ran cold. Wrapping her fingers through the chain-link fencing that kept them contained, she kneeled down before them, taking in the sight of the six women she had seen stagger in. “Hey,” she whispered harshly, trying to get their attention, checking to see if any of them were cognizant enough to talk or even just to notice her presence. 

A young blonde – Rory estimated was likely in her early twenties – stirred at the sound of her voice, eyes fluttering open enough to stare groggily back at her. It was as good a sign as any that she could help. Moving closer to the fence, Rory tried to remain quiet while also getting the blonde’s further attention. “Hey, I’m here to help you, okay?” The woman stared through her like she was a mirage, phasing in and out of reality. A hope too good to be true. She could only imagine what these women had been through to get them here, it was clear that they were still under the effect of some sort of narcotic and she could only assume it was likely Flunitrazepam. 

With a soft groan, the woman spoke in a thick Eastern European accent, made heavier by her drowsy state. “English?”

Rory paused and nodded. “I’m going to get you out.”

The sound of rushing water from a flushing toilet stole the Sergeant’s attention, and she quickly turned to notice a door open on the other side of the room, a Bratva enforcer exiting while zipping up the fly of his jeans. He was massive, a hulking giant with a shaved head and wearing a boxy leather jacket. As he looked up and noticed Rory kneeled down, his eyes flared after being caught off guard. Stalking towards her, his arms hung to his sides like a gorilla as he swung his fists. “<Russian>: Little bitch.” His thundering footsteps barreled towards her, knuckles flexing as heavy panting breaths came from him like a snorting bull. 

Standing up, Rory’s eyes widened like a prey animal, and she took slow careful movements away from the cage to make space and not have her back to the wall in this case, sliding the grips of her boots backwards against the cement with a quiet scuff. Quick to lift her weapon and aim for his chest, she shot him several times, but it did little to stop or even slow him down. 

Would have had more luck with an elephant gun. 

Before she could get another shot off, he grabbed the gun in her hand and twisted her wrist while wrenching her arm back until it felt like her muscles might rip apart, tendons fraying like rope. Forced to cry out, spittle flew from her lips as the veins in her forehead rose to the surface and her face turned red in anguish. The enforcer tossed her gun away, the beretta skidding across the floor. Shoving her forward, he slammed her face first into the fencing, quickly overpowering her. Twisted metal wire dug into her cheek and temple as his giant paw of a hand pressed against the other side of her face. 

She groaned as he kept pressing harder against her, making her feel small. Powerless . Docile . Slamming the heel of her boot back into his shin with a definitive crack , she broke his concentration long enough to twist her arm free of the lock he had held it in and using the cage for leverage, she lifted herself up it. Climbing the fencing as if she were repelling until she could finally flip up into the air, spinning her body like a gymnast, twisting her legs up like a pretzel around him. The room moved in a flash of color and light as the wind whipped past her ears, her quick action sending them both falling to the ground. 

Taken down with the weight of the staggering giant, she lay stunned for a moment, the wind knocked from her. Slowly rolling over onto her side, Rory crawled back up onto her hands and knees, her breathing ragged. Stumbling forward, a muscular forearm curled around her throat, pressing up against her as she was pulled back into the enforcer’s crushing embrace. Lifted off her feet as he stood, her boots dangled in midair. Struggling against him and the sensation of breathlessness, her throat squeezed like she was in the thrall of a boa constrictor. She clawed at his arm, her vision going blurry and her mind dizzy, her ears beginning to ring. Using what remaining strength and determination she had, she began a concerted effort to pry his arm away from her to allow her another breath of air. Wriggling within the leather net of compressive muscle, managing to win back some freedom of movement, she swung her head back against him. Bone knocked against bone as her skull met with his nose and threw him off balance. Sent careening backwards in the direction of the wall behind them, they slammed up against the cement and cinder blocks, hot breath heaving out of him in a gust.

For just a moment he was weakened, and that split second required immediate response. Shoving her elbow back into the soft spot of his diaphragm hidden under his ribs, digging into it, needling the bone as deep as it could go, his arm released like a hinge and she slipped free of his hold. Knees crashing to the floor as she fell, adrenaline kept her numb enough to keep crawling towards her gun. Ignoring the pain until the comforting feeling of metal was in her grasp. Her fingers wrapped around the grip of the beretta and rolling onto her back, she lifted her torso like she was completing a sit up in basic training. Pointing the muzzle up at the enforcer, aiming right between his eyes, the reverberations of the hammer striking against the bullet thundered through her body, and the casing tinkled on the ground like the bell ringing for an angel about to get its wings. 

Red shot back against the grey wall in a sudden spurt, a hole left in his skull as the enforcer’s body fell backwards and slid slowly to the ground. Blank eyes stared out at her as the last few tics of a dying nervous system shook his body.

She slumped back to the ground, taking a moment to compose herself and catch her breath, choking out hoarse coughs and wincing at the sudden rush of throbbing aches that seemed to get worse with each beat of her heart, as if the blood itself was pushing the pain to every part of her body. Rory stretched out the ball and socket joint of her shoulder, biting her lip as she closed her eyes. “Fucking hell,” she groaned. 

“ Sergeant, Sitrep ,” Price ordered through her earpiece and her eyes widened. It was as if part of her brain had turned off forgetting she was even on a mission. She saw the opportunity and she took it, and now she was in the lion’s den. “Sergeant?” His low husky voice rumbled in her ear and she fought to gather herself, debating whether she wanted to risk getting caught in a lie. “Had to leave the vehicle, Captain.”

“The hell are you on about, Sinclair?”

“Found a back way in. Wanted to make more use of myself than just sitting on my arse.”

“You’re disobeying a direct order from me,” there was a frigid tone to Price’s voice.

“I am, sir. Yes.”

“Better have a damn good reason.”

“I do, sir.”

There was a silent pause, an alarmingly long one, and then his voice came through again, with more grit than he had before. “Don’t get caught. Don’t shoot unless you have to. Things go tits up, I won’t play nice just ‘cause we’ve got history, clear?”

“Crystal.”

“Good.”

The calm only lasted for so long however before a radio in the enforcer’s pocket went off. A man’s voice speaking in Russian. She couldn’t understand the words and couldn't respond. If they didn’t get an answer someone would likely come down and check on what was happening. 

Shit was about to hit the fan.

Rory checked the enforcer’s body for any hidden weapons before she was met with more hostiles, her hands becoming stained by the blood from the wounds on his chest as she patted down the pockets of his coat, finding a butterfly knife and slipping it into the back pocket of her jeans. It wasn’t much, but it was better than nothing. Every advantage would count in a situation like this – she only had another 12 rounds to her name. 

Running back over to the cage, she looked down at the women – the reason she had gotten herself stuck in this mess – and gave her promise to save them. Her vow . “I’m not leaving you in here, okay? Just trust me.” She had no idea if any of them heard her, if most could even understand her, but she had to let them know they weren’t alone – even if she was .

The beat of footsteps on concrete flooring coming from the hallway told her she wouldn’t be for long. She took position beside the door and waited for it to open. Muffled voices from the other side let her know there were multiple hostiles, and they were steadily growing louder. Her heart began to race in her chest, sweat formed on her brow with the adrenaline starting to course through her system once more. Her gun pointed. Hand steady. The door creaked open and before it could even come to a full swing, she caught a glimpse of the first enemy through the crack. Pulling the trigger reflexively, doming the man through the temple, she could hear the weight of his body toppling against the wall on the other side of the door. The low thud of a grown man dropping like a sack of potatoes, and then the grumbling of voices of those forced to pull one of their dead out of the way to get to her, and the squawk of a radio.

---

“ Captain, I think there’s trouble starting ,” Nikolai’s voice reverberated in Price’s earpiece as he collected as much intel as he could, taking pictures on his phone of the log books. His hand froze on the page, holding the log book open with rough, calloused fingers, as steely eyes narrowed. “What’re you talking about, Nik,” he asked in a rough whisper.

“ Three with weapons just headed through the door you went through .”

“Goddammit.” Price dropped his task at the desk and rapidly moved to the door of the office, readying his weapon. He waited, counting down in his head, expecting footsteps and getting nothing. 

Silence . 

His brow furrowed, nostrils flaring, lip curling in response. Every line on his face carving deeper into his world weary features. There was no fight headed in his direction, it had started on another floor. “Shit, Rory,” he growled.

Storming out of the office, his breath heaved as he barreled his way down the stairs. A living wrecking ball of muscle and force, he felt the unstoppable urge to run headlong into the danger he was sure to face. 

“ Captain, are you under fire? ”

“No, Nik. Not me.”

“ Not you? ”

“It’s the fucking Sergeant,” John roared as he entered the fray.

Kicking open the door that led down into the basement, sweat started to build on Price’s forehead, seeping into the knitted wool of his beanie as he raced down the steps. The closer he got to the bottom, the louder the gunshots got – it was a good sign at least, it meant she was still alive and still fighting. 

Several Bratva remained in the hall still and Price quickly took them out of commission with shots to the back and the skull. He ran as fast as his legs would carry him and his smoker’s lungs would allow, entering the large room at the end of the hall where the ambush had occurred. Holes had been blown into the ceiling and water pipes hissed with steam as Rory fought off hostile combatants. With a man trapped in a headlock, his bullet riddled body covering hers, she let off the final shots from her suppressed weapon taking out several hostiles. Forced to grab the gun from the man she was using as a human shield, she continued firing her way through the armed mob taking her on. 

Gunshots rang out and panic was sure to set in with the patrons up top soon. 

The quiet blasts from Price’s suppressed weapon took out several of the armed men before the raging stampede of footsteps above let him know they were in for another flood of enemies. “I told you –” He was fuming, his jaw held tight in a scowl as he fought back the overwhelming urge to rip into her – it wasn’t the time, not with another fight incoming.  

“I’m well aware, Captain,” she shot back. Moving effortlessly between each target of hers, more like a dancer than a soldier, it was clear she knew how to take her size and weight into account even against larger enemies. Tossing a grown man over her shoulder, before shooting him in the face, Rory pointed Price in the direction of the imprisoned girls caged in the corner. “Look.”

Removing the last enemy in his way, his eyes went wide at the sight of six young women tied up and left unconscious, but otherwise showed little more reaction as the stoic captain he had learned to become. His jaw locked and he breathed a heavy sigh. “This isn’t what we came here for,” he rasped.

Rory sprinted over to the cage, ignoring his reaction, and knelt down at the fence. Her expression was pained as she gazed upon the huddled mass of women bound together. Women several years younger than herself, who were dealt a rough hand in a world that had so much darkness in it – darkness that Price was committed to fighting against. She looked up at him, her eyes large and innocent, something vulnerable about her that he couldn’t place. “I know, but we can’t just leave them here either.”

Cold grey-blue eyes narrowed once more as the Sergeant continued her protests. “How do you expect us to get them out of here, eh? We don’t know who they are, where they came from…”

Her stare remained focused, that same fire he had seen earlier back to burn like an inferno razing through depths of forest green. She wouldn’t be dissuaded. “We have friends in the CIA and MI6, surely we can pull some strings.” Rubbing at her forehead with her hand, Rory finally turned away from him. “I am not leaving anyone like this,” she hissed.

“This is for the police to handle. Not us.”

Rising back to her feet, the top of her head barely coming over his shoulder, she hardly appeared an intimidating figure and yet didn’t back down from a fight. He respected that . “And you think the police aren’t on the dole for this kind of thing?” Rory crossed her arms over her chest and glanced over at him with narrowed eyes. “You’d really be able to live with yourself knowing you’ve left these women in this situation?”

He grumbled, sniffing as he scrunched his mouth up, lowering his head to meet her eye line. “We’ll talk about this after we deal with the mess you’ve brought down on us.”

Stabbing her tongue into her cheek, her frustration with the situation was clear. “Yes, sir.” She stepped away and began checking the scattered bodies for weapons and ammo, separating the clip and doing a visual check to make sure it wasn’t empty. 

Price could do nothing but watch her, his gaze flicking back to look at the women caged only to return to the soldier who had started a firestorm with the Bratva. He already knew if this was any other subordinate under his command he would have tossed their ass onto the next plane back to base after ripping a strip off them from one side and down the other, and yet here she was dragging him into a damn debate as if she were his second in command. She might have been hardened by her time at war, a veteran, but that didn’t change the fact she still had a soft underbelly that could get her in trouble. A lamb with a bleeding heart was asking to be brought to slaughter and made a meal.

Moving to the closest body near him, he started checking for weapons and ammo himself and spoke into his earpiece, “Nikolai, what’s going on upstairs?”

“People are leaving. Being escorted out. More Bratva company incoming, Captain.”

“Right. While they’re distracted, head upstairs and grab the package I put together for Laswell.”

“Happy to.”

He looked over his shoulder back at the woman under his command. “We’ve got another wave incoming, Sergeant. I hope you’re ready, or we’re both fucked.”

She stretched out her shoulder once more and looked over at him as she cocked her weapon. The intense furrow of her brow darkened her eyes, her soft expression made cold as steel, as if a switch had been flipped in her – he recognized that stare all too well. “Ready when you are, Captain.”

Taking the fight back out into the hall, they hid like funnel-web spiders waiting for unsuspecting prey to make that one false step past the darkened passageway. With ample cover and a tighter space to fight it meant they could control the flow. It gave them the high ground. 

Rory leaned out from cover at the sound of footsteps, peeking her head around the corner of the wall before shooting the first unsuspecting Bratva soldiers that made their way down. A single bullet to each man’s head. 

She was one hell of a shot. 

A small smirk pulled at the corner of Price’s mouth. He might have been pissed off with her, but finally getting to see her in action was causing him to soften up to the girl more than he thought he would, especially with a threat looming over their heads. “Scout sniper training, yeah?” He couldn’t help but be impressed with her showing of precision and skill, especially as it wasn’t a firearm designed for it. 

She glanced over at him, her back pressed to the wall as bullets began to fly in their direction in response. “Yeah.”

He could hear the pride in her voice as she confirmed his suspicions, a confident grin overtaking his face. “Good shit.” She really was a woman after his own heart. Sure she was a bit of a pain in the ass (if he was being honest) acting on her own accord, but it’s not like he wasn’t the type to break the rules and cut through the bullshit to get what he needed himself. 

Quick to return covering fire, she leaned out once more, only having to briefly aim before shooting, listening for the grunts and groans of the men as their bodies gave out to their injuries. “Clip’s almost out. Need you to take point, Captain.” She got off a few more shots, before ejecting the clip and tossing it, swapping positions with Price and grabbing another from her pocket, loading it while he continued firing at their enemies. 

Caught in a burst of crossfire, he couldn’t move from his position and his eyes widened as she leaned over across him, her hand held against the wall at his side as she steadied herself, returning fire, sharing his position at the corner. She didn’t look at him, too focused on the fight, but he certainly noticed the way her body curved in against him as his back rested against the hard surface behind him. A reversal of the way he’d first known her. He stared down at her for just a moment longer than he had meant to, his mind drawing a blank before realizing what he had done, forgetting where he was and what was happening. Lifting his own weapon he continued firing, his mind racing as he tried to remember duty above whatever memories he had of her. He was half sure she could feel the way his heart pounded in his chest as she pressed up against him. Luckily, he could blame it on the adrenaline of the fight.

The enemy was swiftly handled and upon realizing they had downed the last, Rory’s eyes drifted up to look at him, finally realizing the rather compromising position they had been caught in through her own volition. She stepped back, and brushed her fingers through her hair as she cleared her throat. He couldn’t help but tilt his head and give her a quick smirk, especially as she refused to bring her eyes back to his. 

“We should head upstairs, check on Nikolai.”

“And what of the girls, sir?” Her eyes dragged back to carve into him.

Christ, she was an insistent little thing. “What of them, Sergeant? That isn’t the mission. Thought you said you could follow an order?” He looked at her through his brow. “I put you on comms, didn’t think you’d fly off the handle. I expect a goddamn explanation.”

“I did what I had to.”

“Fuckin’ bollocks.”

“Don’t you dare say that to me,” she seethed. “If my record weren’t as fucking blacked out as it is, you’d know why I went in there.”

“Don’t raise your voice at me, Sergeant,” Price warned.

Rory lowered her volume, but the fight remained in her eyes. “If you had any idea of even half the shit I’ve seen…”

He loomed over her, his chest pressing up against her, his glare dug into her while his voice stayed low, daring her to answer back. “Go on, tell me.”

Her lips parted to speak, but before she could, a loud groan from down the hall caught their attention. One of the Bratva they thought they had killed was still clinging to life amongst his fallen comrades. They both leaned out from their cover position, looking at one another with cocked brows before slowly creeping down the hall together, their weapons at the ready. 

At the base of the stairs, a bloodied hand gripped at the railing as the last surviving Bratva soldier tried to pull himself up. Moaning like the living dead as he crawled forward, blood streaking the floor and the wall. 

The scowl on her face reappeared and her hand reached out, gripping onto the collar of the man's tracksuit jacket as she pushed him back against the wall. Another groan and his hazy stare flitted between her and Price, his vision swimming with the loss of blood. Hand slipping from his collar and wrapping around his throat as she squeezed. “I'm guessing whoever's in charge isn't the type to get their hands dirty, eh? Where's your boss?” Her voice dropped an octave, low and cold as she threatened the man.

Meeting her with a blank stare, the Bratva soldier’s brow lifted as he spat out blood, giving her no other response. Shoving his head back against the wall once more, a heavy thud banged off the cement. “Your boss, where is he?”

“Sinclair,” Price barked her name, getting her attention. Straightening himself upright as he folded his arms over his chest, casting an intimidating shadow over her and the injured Bratva soldier – it was clear she had forgotten she wasn’t in England anymore.

Rory looked over her shoulder back at Price. “Yes, Captain?”

“I don't think our friend here speaks English.” His head tipped to the side and his brow rose as he looked at her. 

She sighed and rolled her eyes. “Care to do the honors then, sir?”

“It'd be my pleasure.” 

Rory continued to hold the man against the wall as his hands pressed at his gut, the blood continuing to pump between his fingers, and Price crept closer. 

<Russian>: “Where's your boss? We wanna have a chat.”

The Bratva soldier's gaze couldn't seem to rise high enough to meet Price. The color fading from his face quickly. There was no fight left in him whatsoever. <Russian>: “Upstairs. VIP room. Entertaining guests.”

Price nodded. “Right, let him go. We're headed upstairs.” He stepped past the man, lifting his boot over the blood stains left behind and the bodies piled together to climb the stairs. 

“Should I put him out of his misery?” She looked over at him as if to gauge the level of mercy they were willing to show in this fight.

“Not worth it,” he said with a shake of his head.

---

Upstairs, the club was nearly entirely empty now. Most of the staff had exited along with the patrons that had been partying when they had arrived. The dance music still played but there was no one there left to enjoy it, and Rory was pleased as punch. Knowing that she was so close to getting her hands on the man who controlled this operation, she had become a dog with a bone, not willing to let this go. 

The VIP room was deserted except for just a few personal bodyguards and one man still sat on the quilted black polyvinyl couch, his arms outstretched across the back of it, seemingly unbothered by the interruption created by the two strangers. An older man with greying hair, the Bratva boss in charge of the establishment, fixed his suit jacket and looked between his two new guests, expecting to get some sort of answer from them through the intimidation of his presence and position of power alone. “Do you know how much of a problem you’ve caused?” 

“‘Bout to become more of one.” Price lifted his weapon and shot the last two guards left.

“Do you have any idea who I am?” The man snarled, sitting forward in his seat, the guise of being relaxed falling away instantly. 

“Someone with answers.” Rory aimed her weapon and shot both of the Bratva boss’ kneecaps, shattering them on impact with her bullets. She didn’t just want answers, she needed them, and she wasn’t going to ask nicely. 

The Russian screamed, guttural and animalistic as he slid over into the couch, his fingers slipping over the manmade material as he tried to grip at it while overcome by pain. 

Price didn’t shift, he didn’t flinch, he didn’t even try to stop her now. Remaining completely sturdy. Stoic . Taking a slightly wider stance as he crossed his arms over his chest once more. He was letting her take the lead on this. 

Slipping the butterfly knife from her jeans, she walked over to one of the lamps in the room, pulling the cord out of the wall before slicing it off and using it to bind the boss’ hands. Grabbing at them roughly, she tied the knot tight, to the point where his hands started to change colour in a few short moments, and stood over him, twirling the knife in her hand. “Here’s the deal, yeah? You answer our questions, or I turn you into a human pin cushion. Starting with your extremities first. Understood?”

<Russian>: “Fuck you.”

She jammed the knife down into his thigh, turning the blade slightly. “And you’re going to answer in the Queen’s English.” Prying it back out with a jerk. 

The Russian shuddered, his whole body shaking from the pain that racked him. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing? You think this will stop anything? <Russian>: “Fucking bitch.” He looked her up and down as spit clung to his lip.

Puncturing his flesh once more, stabbing the knife in just inches from the last wound she’d left, she spoke through gritted teeth, the patience and passivity slipping away from her. “What did I say?” 

“Who the fuck do you think you are?” His eyes were wide with blind rage.

“A very dangerous woman,” she husked, pulling the knife out of his leg once more and wiping the blood off on his shirt. “I want information, and I want it now. Zorokov . I know you’re working with him, why ? What does he get from this?”

“You mean other than more fucking money?” he spat.

“How does it benefit him being tied to you ?”

“I don’t have to say anything. You’ve no jurisdiction here.”

She hummed. “You’re right.” 

Pulling the cigarette pack from the inside pocket of her coat, she slipped one out and placed it to her lips. Collecting her lighter, the flame flickered over the tip as she inhaled. Burning bright, she pulled it from her mouth and tilted her head back blowing a stream of smoke up towards the ceiling. She felt that sudden rush of anger that always swept through her before an interrogation, and then the control that she used over it, closing off that part of herself that still believed in human decency, in mercy . Warm hazel eyes that usually sparkled with life became deep and empty, sizing up the man before her like a predator with its prey before it would strike. 

“Which is precisely why I can do this.” Stabbing the cigarette into the flesh of his neck, Rory dotted the smoking amber tip against his skin over and over again leaving bright red burns behind.

 “Fuck!” He roared, wriggling and writhing away from the cigarette like the snake he was. Willing to make others suffer, but not willing to endure the pain himself. A man playing at being hard. 

“Answer my questions and I can make it stop.”

“Fine! Fine!”

She pulled the cigarette away and brought it back to her lips, staring down at him expressionless, the bright orange glow of the end reflecting in her eyes as the ashes spilled off of it. 

The Russian took several strained breaths, glaring at her as if looks could kill.  “You have no idea what you’ve done, little girl. No idea of who you’re dealing with, how deep this goes.”

“Do tell.” 

Rory moved to stand near the captain, noticing that his attention had been kept on her during the proceedings. That despite the furrowed brow and narrowed eyes, there was something in his tightly clenched jaw that made him look as though he was trying to suppress something. That perhaps for as little as they really knew about each other, Price had fallen prey to the way everyone else saw her or the way he remembered her, and the image he had of her was being shattered. Threatening a man was second nature to her now. The good-natured part of her, the one that wanted to help people and save the world, the one that made her vulnerable and soft could so easily be turned off in order for her to become the wolf she always said she was. 

“It’s lucrative business – drugs and women – always has been, always will be,” the Bratva head rasped. “The world’s oldest profession.”

She blew out another mouthful of smoke, her tongue running over her bottom lip. “And you’re making them do it against their will.”

“These women come from the assholes of the world, I’m giving them opportunity. They’re certainly better off with me than others.”

Her molars ground against each other as she fought to keep down the bile and vitriol that wanted to spit from her. The tremor returned, shaking through her hand and causing her fingers to lock. Price’s eyes dropped to notice the violent shaking that travelled up her arm and the way her hand curled into a fist as she tried to stop it. She couldn’t keep the fury down, her body burning up inside, feeling forced to unleash it. “You son of a bitch!”

Price was quick to hold her back with one arm outstretched across her body. This wasn’t an argument, it was an interrogation and she was losing sight of that, making it personal. Clearer heads had to preside, so he continued the questioning for her. “Who else is he tied up with? Can’t just be one man.”

The Russian chuckled, “Mr. Zorokov has many business partners,” he said with a shrug. “Transactions don’t just happen here.”

“Where are the women coming from?” Rory returned to her line of questioning, her stomach dropping, fearing the answer. She had a feeling she already knew. 

“All over. Europe, Middle East, Asia, South America. Doesn’t matter, as long as they come from somewhere where no one will miss them.”

“Christ,” she snarled, lip curling with disgust. Untapped rage boiled under the skin and within the folds of her grey matter. “I should kill you right now.”

“Calm down,” John commanded her under his breath in a husky whisper, his nose wrinkling as he sneered. His attention returned to the prisoner they interrogated. “We let you live, you give up everything you’ve got on Zorokov. We ignore the drugs – it’s not what we’re here for anyway. This business, the front it offers, still all yours.”

She could only stare at her commanding officer as if he had betrayed her, making a deal with a criminal of this sort. Her arm continued to tremble at the thought of a bastard like that getting away with what he had done, his crimes left unpunished.

“I would take the offer if I were you,” Price added, noticing as the Russian seemed to debate with a furrowed brow over the course of action he had just been delivered. 

A slimy grin slid across the lips of the Bratva boss. “What’s mine is yours.”

Rory scoffed, turning and marching out of the room, unable to stomach what she had just witnessed, becoming all the more disillusioned with the world. 

Out of the sight of the prisoner, Price grabbed her arm, slowing her to a halt as she headed towards the back once more. “Hey! Where the hell do you think you’re off to?”

“You just made a deal with a man who confessed to forcing women into servitude!”

He sighed and his face flinched. “Sometimes you have to make deals with the better of two evils – hell, sometimes it’s with the worse of ‘em. We don’t have the time or the opportunity to be making moral stances here. This is to stop a fuckin’ war, Sergeant. We’re soldiers. You should know that already.”

“But after everything –”

His grip on her arm tightened, his fingers squeezing her. His hard gaze kept on her as he spoke confidently, “He’ll get what’s comin’ to ‘im.”

“He better.”

Price’s hand slipped from her arm, letting her pull away. There was an unspoken promise between them now. Unfinished business that would need to be dealt with, another mess to clean up at a later date, but for now they needed to meet back up with Nikolai and retrieve the intel they had come here for. 

Returning to the landing in the back, Nikolai descended the steps carrying the laptop and log books under his arm, and looked between the two soldiers, the tension between them was obvious. “Captain?”

“Head out to the van, Nik. Get it started,” Price ordered. “Need to make a quick exit. We’ve got some unexpected guests coming to join us.”

“Guests?” Nikolai asked, not sure what exactly that meant. 

She could feel Price’s gaze on her now, a lingering glance and her eyes lifted to meet his. Her brow was cocked, surprise invading her stare. After everything that had just occurred, after the speech he gave her, she was stunned to find he would actually take her concerns seriously, not expecting him to actually stop and help. 

“Six of ‘em.”

“Really?” she was apprehensive to trust. Every experience she had had with a situation like this before proved otherwise. 

Price took his eyes off of her, remaining hardened. Shifting his broad shoulders. Keeping up appearances. “Don’t get used to it,” he said gruffly. “This isn’t protocol.”

“What about this mission has been so far, sir?” she scoffed.

His mouth twitched into a grimace. “You know there’s likely gonna be more where they came from once we leave, yeah? This won’t stop it.”

“Yeah. I know.”

It was the worst part of the entire scenario. No matter how much good she tried to do, no matter how many people she tried to save, there were always forces out there with more power who would just continue. More lives stolen. Ruined . But even six lives saved did more for her conscience than she could admit. They just might help her get some sleep at night. 

“Well, let’s not fuck about.” 

He gave her a nod and it was all she needed to know what was expected of her next. They would be headed downstairs, they would free those women. She could find a little peace. 

[dee-the-red-witch]

Would you do me the kindness of reading this thing I wrote?

I walk out to the edge of the lake and stare at the burning horizon, a perfect autumn evening. I watch the Canada geese cut a V across the sky. He walks up behind me, laces his fingers with mine. Today is the last day I will see him for a very long time. He is going to college in another state. I am going to apprentice as a welder. We hold each other closely and appreciate the feeling of one another's palms, the way the joints and lumps don't quite line up comfortably but fit all the better for it. It is three years later. I've got some time off, and I call ahead to tell him I am coming to visit. He has a little time, too; classes haven't gotten too busy, and he's in the planning stages with the group he intends to collaborate with for his senior research. He is always ahead of the curve, where as I always feel like I'm playing catch-up. But today, I have caught him, and we stand at the edge of the duck pond. His hands feel the same; mine have grown hard and calloused, but he doesn't mind. We embrace, and we feed little bits of corn and lettuce to the birds. He says they get too much bread, that they get fat and that the uneaten bits rot in the water. I'm happy to hear him speak. There is no place more comfortable that we could share than the crunchy brown leaves that cover the grass. Another three years have passed. We were supposed to reunite after he earned his Bachelor's, but he got a research offer out on the coast he couldn't pass up. I understand; I got a good job in Detroit, fixing all manner of things for cheap and commuting to help with sculptural projects at all manner of art school in the area. A welder's work is always needed. Today, he's very busy, but we've made time anyway; he's in his last year of his Master's program, we hope — the research is promising, and he doesn't mind teaching so much. I ask if the next college he studies at will have an arts program; maybe I can go to school there, too, and stay closer to him. He hopes so too. We are at a little bar in the gay district of the city he works and researches in; it's nice, and we're the only couple our age; everyone is fresh as morning dew or seasoned and glad for space to be. I have a ring in my pocket; I've been meaning to give it to him for too long. I made it myself, with help from a few art students, who I can't stop talking about him to. It's autumn again; we only seem to meet in autumn. He sips his hot drink. I get ready to go on one knee. But I do not. He has beaten me to it. He takes a knee next to the table and pulls out his own ring, and he asks me to put it on my finger. I say I will, and I do, and it's a little tight, but he says we'll get it fit. My hands are calloused from the work; he still remembers them as they were six years ago, soft and delicate, laced between his own as we watched the geese flying south and the sun set behind the trees at the far side of the lake on the most perfect of autumn evenings there ever was.

I have to admit, I nearly cried the first time I read over this one before recording it. Anyways, again, it's beautiful- thanks for letting me do it.

[siredlust]

All Too Well

DOCTOR STRANGE FAN FICTION

GIF not mine

pairings : Stephen Strange x F!Reader

warnings / tags : ANGST, sad ending, bad writing, not proof-read

english is not the author’s first language – please excuse / point out if there are any grammatical mistakes.

➳ summary : After a year of being away and Y/N moving on from Stephen, they both stumbled upon each other.

Author’s Note : this has been in my drafts for MONTHS but i had to go hiatus because of school :,) but, i’m back now! a lot of people have been asking for part 2 so here it is! i hope you lot like this fic :) so sorry if it’s short and badly written, my writing’s getting sloppy

— I do not give permission for my work to be copied, uploaded, or distributed by anyone other than myself.

↳ MASTERLIST — PART ONE ༉‧₊˚✧

They say breakups give us a lesson—

An experience to have a relationship; to feel the highs and lows of it, the love, the happiness, the pain.

You took the plastic bag from the vendor and thanked him.

You walked out of the small shop and to the chilly sidewalk, you took your phone out and sent a quick text to Jeremy.

You put your phone back in your purse, bumping into someone in the process.

“I’m so sorry, I-!” You immediately forgot what you were going to say once you looked up and realized who you bumped into.

It was as if time had slowed down, like everything around you had been in slow motion the moment you recognized the dark haired man who had two white streaks on the side of his hair.

Stephen had just realized that he bumped into you as well and shock filled his features, “Y/N?” Whispered him.

“Yeah, Hello, Stephen.” You whispered, smiling slightly.

Stephen gulped, he still couldn’t believe seeing you in front of him after all these years, he tried to keep it cool so as to not show his heart that’s almost beating out of his chest, “Hi..” He said.

Neither of you looked away from each other’s eyes, still looking at one another as if you were both trying to read each other, “How have you been?” You said.

As if snapped out of a trance, Stephen blinked severally before responding, “I’ve been good.” He gave you a tight-lipped smile, “How about you, how have you been?”

The small smile on your face remained, “I’ve been great.” Your expression dropped a bit, “How are you and Christine?” You said, your voice unwavering.

Stephen gulped and looked down, a defeated look spreading across his face, “We, uhm,” he cleared his throat, “We never got engaged.” He pressed his lips together, “she got married with someone else.”

“Oh.” You whispered, looking anywhere but him.

They say to experience anything and everything in a relationship is a privilege.

To learn from your mistakes and to grow so you don’t make them again.

“Where have you been?” He whispered, hearing the defeat and sadness in his voice.

You looked at him causing your eyes to meet, “I moved to Canada a few days after we.. you know.” You bit the inside of your lip, “I got an offer to transfer from Metro-General to Toronto General and I accepted.”

“Oh.” It was his turn to say it.

You took a deep breath, “Stephen..” You said, looking up at him; his eyes never left your face, he looked at you the whole time—he couldn’t look away, “Just between us, did the love affair maim you, too?” You said softly.

Stephen opened his mouth to answer, “Hey, Y/N! Come on, you’re the only one we’re waiting for!” Yelled Jeremy, which caused you and Stephen to snap out of a trance you supposedly had, and looked at Jeremy’s direction.

“Coming!” You replied back, you looked back up at Stephen, “I’m sorry, Stephen, looks like I’ve got to go.” You chuckled softly.

“Of course.” He said, smiling softly.

You smiled, and caressed his arm before going towards Jeremy.

Stephen noticed snow had started to fall from the sky. He put his hand out and a snowflake fell on his palm, the glistening of it causing him to have a short flashback of the time you and he had fun with snow.

Just between you, he remembers it all too well.

© siredlust, 2022

TAGLIST : @typical-bistander @strangeobsessed

[sisterspooky1013]

Gaslight, Chapter 36/48

Rated X | Read it here on AO3

Mulder sleeps in the back of their rented van on the drive to Henryton, exhausted from nearly twenty-four hours of preparation and worry. His mind feels like an oversaturated sponge, and he finds himself in a perpetual state of frustration as memories tease the edges of his subconscious, never fully revealing themselves. It’s all on the tip of his tongue, burbling just under the surface, but woefully inaccessible.

Langly remains in critical condition, his bedside now attended by his younger brother who flew in on a redeye from out of state. Byers dutifully calls for an update every few hours, and the men make it their mission to save Scully in his honor. What they can’t bring themselves to say aloud is that if he dies, it will hurt all the more to have lost them both in one fell swoop. Never seeing Scully again is an idea that Mulder can’t even allow himself to entertain. He just has to find her. He has to.

Frenchie is curled up near his head, intermittently cracking one eye open to verify that he hasn’t left her again. She’s been glued to his side since she arrived, and between her clear separation anxiety and the fact that they have no idea how long they’ll be gone, he decided that they couldn’t leave her at the Gunmen’s house in good conscience. Having her in tow will also allow him and Scully to set out for Canada right away, without returning to Washington, as will the lock box under the driver’s seat containing two sets of passports, ID, birth certificates, a marriage license, and $10,000 cash.

In the back of the van there are also several firearms. To Mulder’s recollection, the last time he fired a gun was during his short stint at Quantico. But when Byers slid a pistol into his palm, he instinctively released the magazine to verify that it was loaded, slammed it back home, and racked the slide without a single conscious thought regarding what he was doing. He hopes that he doesn’t need to use it, but knowing that he would be able to do so effectively instills the confidence he’ll need if he’s going to pull this off.

It was Byers, fresh from the hospital, who suggested that Teena Mulder’s cryptic message regarding the trains that pass through Henryton tunnel should be interpreted to mean he needs to board a train there. Henryton, however, has no train station, only the infamous tunnel. The railway schedule indicates that between three and five trains pass through the tunnel each day, as early as 10:00 am and as late as 6:00 pm. Their plan is to arrive by 10:00 and scope out the area, then board the train if given an opportunity to do so. They have surveillance equipment, radios, a first aid kit, and detailed maps of every square inch of land within five hundred miles of Henryton, none of which have offered any answers or even suggestions as to Scully’s location. As prepared as they are, they are operating off little more than a hunch and an audacious amount of hope.

They arrive in Marriottsville, a small town near Henryton, just past 10:00 am and stop for breakfast at a mom and pop cafe called Ruth’s. It’s a weathered clapboard house that’s been gutted and converted into a restaurant, and they slide into a booth next to an antique fireplace with historical photos displayed on the mantle.

“Good morning, gentlemen, what can I get for you?”

Their server is an older woman with a moon-shaped face and wiry salt and pepper hair, and a name tag on her apron that says “Moira.” She meets Mulder’s eye and smiles, and she’s so genuinely warm and welcoming that he can’t help smiling back despite his sour mood.

“Coffee, please,” he says, and she winks at him.

“Three coffees, coming right up.”

They sit in relative silence, thinking about Langly, or Scully, or the potential outcomes of boarding a train to nowhere and encountering who knows what on the other side. Mulder has tried, unsuccessfully, to force his brain to remember where he and Scully were taken before. Any tiny detail that might give them some context regarding the level of security in the building or how far it is from a source of transportation. He worries over what they’ll do if she’s injured or ill, or if they’ve already wiped her memory clean and she no longer knows who he is. There are a million ways it could go wrong, but never for a single second does he contemplate not trying. He could never live with himself if he doesn’t at least try.

Their coffees arrive and they order pancakes and waffles, bacon and eggs, carbohydrates and protein to fuel the journey ahead. Byers lays the maps out over the table, following the train tracks with his index finger and looking for an out of place building along their course. He’s already done this dozens of times, but he’s just as meticulous now as he was on the first pass. Mulder watches him with heavy eyelids and a worried heart, wondering what Scully is doing at this exact moment.

The bell above the door jangles and the excited squawk of children draws looks from several patrons. Mulder glances at the newcomers as they are shown to a table, and they seem familiar to him. The man, presumably the father, is tall and tawny, and he takes one side of the booth while the two children, a boy and a girl, sit on the side that is facing Mulder and the Gunmen’s table. The girl is older, and her hair is long and ruddy against her porcelain cheeks. The boy looks more like the father, with protruding ears and raucous laugh. Mulder watches them for a long time as they color their menus, wondering if he knew them before but just can’t recall the memory.

“Flapjacks and scrambled eggs,” Moira says as she sets a plate in front of Mulder, and he is distracted enough by trying to force himself to eat that he forgets about the familiar family for a time.

“I think John should stay back,” Frohike announces, shoveling a forkful of waffle into his mouth.

Byers turns and gives him an incredulous look.

“I agree,” Mulder chimes in, and Byers turns his incredulous look to the other side of the table. “For one, we can’t leave Frenchie in the car; it’s too hot. And if we don’t come back…”

The men all stop eating and look at each other. He doesn’t need to say the rest: if they don’t come back, someone will need to look after Frenchie, and be there for Langly. Someone will need to try and send for additional help.

Byers slowly nods and lowers his eyes to his plate. Though he won’t say it, Mulder can tell he’s relieved.

In his periphery, he sees someone small approaching the table. When he looks, he finds the young girl from the familiar family walking towards him, her eyes on the ground. She crouches down beside the booth and picks up a yellow crayon, then stands and looks at Mulder, locking her brilliant blue eyes on his.

“Abby! Get back over here!” the man, her father, calls out, turning in his seat to admonish her.

Mulder gets a better look at his face, and it’s just so familiar. He knows he’s seen it somewhere before. The little girl scurries away, and her father gives Mulder a long look. A warning look.

“How’s everything tasting?” Moira asks, a stack of dirty dishes resting on her hip. They assure her that the food is up to snuff, and she takes in the pile of maps now neatly folded in the middle of the table. “Where ya headed?” she asks, gesturing to the maps with her chin.

The men exchange glances.

“Henryton,” Frohike supplies after an awkwardly long silence. “Any recommendations?”

She pulls a face, indicating that Henryton is not what she was expecting to hear.

“There’s not much to do out there in terms of tourist attractions, I’m afraid, but lots of great walking trails. Lotsa people like to visit the train tunnel; it’s the third oldest in the world that’s still in operation. And haunted to boot.”

“Haunted?” Byers asks, quirking an eyebrow.

“Well,” she says, shifting the dishes to her other hip, “It’s really the old sanatorium that’s haunted, but the tunnel is right nearby. Legend is that they didn’t used to let the patients bathe for weeks on end, and they’d get to smelling so bad that they’d escape and run down to the river to wash up.”

Byers sets his fork down and pushes his plate away.

“Even now,” she continues, “people claim that they see ghosts crossing over the tracks on the west end of the tunnel. Sometimes trains will even stop right there, halfway through, to let ‘em pass.”

“The train stops in the tunnel?” Mulder asks, too urgently, and she gives him a perplexed look.

“Sometimes,” she says, hiking the dishes up higher. “Not always. That’s why people think it’s the ghosts. If the engineer spots one, he better throw on the brakes or the whole thing could derail.”

“Wouldn’t want that,” Frohike says blandly while giving Mulder a significant look.

“Anywho, I better get back to it. You ready for your check?”

They nod, and she leaves them.

“Ghosts on the tracks,” Mulder says, pushing his plate away. “Why else would a train stop in the middle of a tunnel?”

“I have a bad feeling about this,” Frohike says, shaking his head.

They settle the bill and collect their maps, and as they head toward the door, Mulder passes by the table of the familiar family. The children are dowsing their pancakes in an ungodly amount of syrup while their father stares absently at the table top, his own plate untouched. Just as he reaches the front door, Mulder turns back and approaches them, seeking resolution for the familiar feeling that he just can’t shake.

“Excuse me,” he says, addressing the father. The man looks up sharply, alarmed, and Mulder takes half a step back. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you. Have we met? You look so familiar to me, but I can’t place you.”

The man flicks his dark, intense eyes over Mulder once, sitting up taller in his seat in a show of dominance.

“I don’t think so,” he says levelly.

The little boy, taking advantage of the fact that his sister is distracted by Mulder’s presence, sticks his finger into the half-melted scoop of butter sitting atop her syrupy pancakes and then stuffs it in his mouth.

“Peter!” she shrieks, “Don’t touch my food!”

“Abby, shhhh,” her father says softly, and she sticks out her lower lip.

Abby and Peter. He remembers from the maps that Ellicott City isn’t far from here. What are the odds?

“Cal,” Mulder says, turning back to the man. “Calvin, is that your name?”

The man stands abruptly, positioning himself between Mulder and his children, and Mulder takes another step back.

“Who the fuck are you?” the man hisses, and Mulder is surprised to find himself quite intimidated. He holds his hands up, palms out, in deference.

“My name is Fox Mulder,” he says. “I know Dana.”

Cal looks at him for a beat, his expression unreadable.

“Mulder?” he repeats, and Mulder nods once. “How do you know Dana?”

He has no idea what this man knows regarding the nature of he and Scully’s relationship. Most likely nothing at all.

“We used to work together,” he offers, and Cal relaxes a little.

Cal seems to become suddenly aware that the whole restaurant is looking at them. He extends his hand, and after a brief moment of consideration Mulder shakes it.

“Calvin Rose,” he says, then cocks his head over his shoulder towards the children. “This is Abby and Peter.”

“Hi,” Mulder says, looking at the children and smiling. Abby shrinks towards her brother shyly.

“Hi, I’m Pete!” the little boy says proudly.

“Did Dana tell you to come here?” Cal asks with narrow eyes. He may have concluded that Mulder isn’t a threat, but he clearly doesn’t trust him.

“No,” Mulder says, and his heart sinks. The children are both watching him intently, and he doesn’t want to scare them. He motions for Cal to come closer, and the man leans his upper body forward, turning his head to the side to offer his ear. Mulder speaks in a low voice, one he hopes the children can’t hear. “We’re trying to find her. She was…taken.”

Cal slowly leans away and stares at him.

“What do you mean?”

Mulder looks at Abby and Peter. Their syrup-sticky faces and their wide, innocent eyes.

“Maybe we should discuss this in private,” he suggests, and Cal follows his gaze back to the very observant children.

“Yeah,” he agrees.

They sit down at the dirty table just vacated by Mulder and the Gunmen, close enough for Cal to keep an eye on the kids but far enough away that they won’t hear them.

“What do you mean taken? Taken where?” Cal asks, his elbows on the table top.

“I don’t know,” Mulder admits. “I’m not sure how much Dana told you about what happened to us before, but I believe she’s been taken back to the place where our memories were initially manipulated.”

“Who took her?” Cal asks urgently, questions tumbling out too quickly for Mulder to answer. “Did you see this happen? Where were you? I don’t even know where she’s been, she just left and then I got this letter yesterday—”

“You got a letter? From who?”

“From Dana,” Cal says, reaching into his pocket.

He sets the letter on the table and Mulder reads it several times. Henryton tunnel at noon. He checks his watch. It’s almost 11:00.

“This isn’t from her,” he says, handing the note back. “I’ve been with her for the last seventy-two hours, and I know she didn’t write this.”

Cal looks at the note like it’s suddenly a foreign object.

“Then who sent it?”

Mulder shrugs.

“The people in charge of all of this, I assume. They may be trying to lure you there, instead of taking you by force.” An image of the black van tearing out of the parking lot at the safehouse flashes through his mind. “That’s what happened to Scully.”

“Scully? Who’s Scully?”

“Sorry, Dana. Scully is…her maiden name. That’s what I’ve always called her.”

Cal looks at the table.

“Right,” he says. “I guess I should know that.”

“Even if this isn’t from her,” Mulder says, pointing to the letter, “it’s helpful. It confirms that I need to get on the train at the tunnel, and at an exact time. But you don’t want to get on that train, Cal. Especially not with the kids.”

Cal’s eyes widen and he looks over to the children, then back to Mulder.

“What are they doing to her?”

“I don’t know,” Mulder says, and his chest tightens. “Best case scenario, they plan to wipe her memory again. Worst case…they’re destroying the evidence of what they’ve done.”

“I’m going with you,” Cal says without hesitation.

“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Mulder objects. “I have no idea what we’ll encounter. It’s going to be dangerous, and there’s a possibility that we won’t make it back.”

Cal leans in, locking his eyes on Mulder’s.

“Mira, cabrón,” he says, his voice suddenly venomous, “I appreciate your concern, but that’s my wife out there.” Cal must see Mulder’s reaction in his face, because he softens a little. “I mean…the kids don’t know,” he says, glancing over at them. “They still have their chips in, they’re still taking their meds. She’s their mom. I have to find her.”

The queasiness he feels seeing how attached Cal clearly is to Scully, that he still thinks of her as his wife, is quickly replaced by fear.

“They still have chips? That means they’re tracking you, Cal.” Mulder looks around the small restaurant. No one seems to be paying them any attention. “If the kids don’t get on the train, they might come for them.”

Cal sits back and swallows, then his eyes dart around erratically while he thinks.

“Who are those guys you’re with?” he asks.

“Friends,” Mulder tells him. “Of both mine and Dana’s. We’ve known them for years. They’ve been helping us.”

“You trust them?” Cal asks, very seriously.

“Absolutely,” Mulder says emphatically. “I’d trust them with my life, and Dana’s.”

“You trust them with my kids?”

Mulder sees how much the question hurts to ask. Sees the fear behind it, the risk. It only reinforces how deeply Cal cares for Scully. For a fleeting moment, Mulder wonders what will happen to the three of them if they make it out of this alive.

“I would, yes. They’ll do everything within their power to protect them, if necessary.”

Cal sucks in a deep breath and lets it out slowly. He looks over at his children, who are piling the remains of their breakfast onto one plate and covering it with salt and pepper.

“We better get going,” he says resolutely. “The train will be there soon.”

Tagging @today-in-fic

[proton-wobbler]

Yellow-rumped Warbler (Setophaga coronata)

There are (currently) four subspecies within Setophaga coronata:

Myrtle Warbler (S.c. coronata)

Audubon's Warbler (S.c. auduboni)

Black-fronted Warbler (S.c. nigrifrons)

Goldman's Warbler (S.c. goldmani)

Our story (my rambling) begins with Myrtle and Audubon's Warblers being described as separate species, until a study in 1973 found evidence that the two routinely hybridized within a small strip of Western Canada. The Biological Species Concept* defines a species as any members of a population which can interbreed and create fertile offspring, and with the limited genetic evidence of the time, this concept was used to lump Myrtle and Audubon's into the Yellow-rumped Warbler. (*keep in mind there are many ways to define a species, so this single concept isnt a "be all, end all" argument)

This hybrid zone, however, is only 80 miles across, and has been shown to be stable over the past 50 years, suggesting the hybrids may not be as viable as previously thought. This, coupled with a new and overwhelming comparison between the birds' genomes, suggests that Myrtle and Audubon's Warblers are indeed separate species.

So the story goes back even further, because this story is really about bird populations and not our human ability to categorize them. The most likely situation is that the Myrtle Warbler was separated from the other three forms of the species during the Pleistocene glaciation, over the last million years or so. This pattern can also be seen in other "paired" species from East to West, such as Baltimore and Bullock's Orioles, or Rose-breasted and Black-headed Grosbeaks. The glaciers cut off the breeding population of Myrtle Warblers, and only after their receding could they move West to meet in the middle again.

In an interesting twist, the leading idea is that Audubon's Warbler is not only a separate species, but is actually a hybrid species which arose from Myrtle meeting the Black-fronted Warbler once it expanded back West. This hypothesis is supported by mitochondrial DNA of a sedentary population of Audubon's being very similar to Black-fronted, rather than to Myrtle Warblers. There needs to be more study into the genomics of these birds to confirm whether or not Audubon's would stand as it's own species, or if it and Black-fronted are more closely related.

Off to the side of all this is Goldman's Warbler, which makes sense when you take a look at the breeding range of these warblers. Black-fronted and Goldman's Warbler are both non-migratory birds, and the population of Goldman's Warbler is located almost entirely in Guatemala, with possible populations to the west in Chiapas, Mexico. In the same genomics study above, Goldman's Warbler stood out as unique when compared to both Myrtle and Audubon's DNA.

To sum this up: more study is needed between Myrtle, Audubon's, and Black-fronted to confirm previous findings, but a three-way species split from this single species seems to be supported. The International Ornithological Congress (IOS) has already done so, splitting Yellow-rumped Warbler into Myrtle, Audubon's (with Black-fronted as a subspecies), and Goldman's Warbler.

While we're on the topic- hybridization between Setophaga warblers is not unheard of, and Yellow-rumped Warbler has multiple documented hybrids in the Macaulay library. I won't post all the pictures, but the best are linked as follows: Cape May, Magnolia, Palm, Yellow-throated, Grace's, Townsend's, Hermit, Black-throated Green). Other than it's own species-complex, Yellow-rumps are most closely related to Yellow-throated and Bahama Warbler.

Sources Below

Wikipedia (for ease of summarization)

Birds of the World (for the more in-depth story)

Barry the Birder (for the compiled image of all four birds, and for talking about the All About Birds article so I could find and link that)

All About Birds (for the range-pic, and for summarizing the study from The Auk- way better than I did, I may add. Go read their article if this intrigued you.)

Papers cited in Birds of the World:

[on 'lumping' YRWA] Eisenmann, E. (1973). Thirty-second supplement to the American Ornithologists' Union check-list of North American birds. Auk 90: 411–419.

[on the hybrid zone] Hubbard, J. P. (1969). The relationships and evolution of the Dendroica coronata complex. Auk 86:393-432.

[hybrid zone] Barrowclough, G. F. (1980). Genetic and phenotypic differentiation in a wood warbler (genus Dendroica) hybrid zone. Auk 97:655-668.

[hybrid zone] Brelsford, A., and D. E. Irwin (2009). Incipient speciation despite little assortative mating: the Yellow-rumped Warbler hybrid zone. Evolution 63:3050-3060

[on mtDNA between auduboni and nigrifrons] Milá, B., Toews, D.P.L., Smith, T.B. and Wayne, R.K. (2011). A cryptic contact zone between divergent mitochondrial DNA lineages in southwestern North America supports past introgressive hybridization in the yellow-rumped warbler complex (Aves: Dendroica coronata). Biological Journal of the Linnean Society. 103: 696–706.

[on the 'hybrid origin' of auduboni] Brelsford, A., Milá, B. and Irwin, D.E. (2011). Hybrid origin of Audubon’s Warbler. Molecular Ecology. 20(11): 2380–2389.

[on 'splitting' YRWA] Toews, D.P.L., Brelsford, A., Grossen, C., Milá, B. and Irwin, D.E. (2016). Genomic variation across the Yellow-rumped Warbler species complex. Auk. 133(4): 698–717.

[deluxewhump]

Erik's Journals pt 1 (2011)

Note on this project: This is a companion piece to Carlo's story. It is an epistolary mea culpa (of sorts) of the series antagonist, Erik Holstrom. It can be read as a stand alone work. The main themes are legalized slavery referred to as a "pet" trade, and the ensuing psychological and emotional mistreatment of a character, often when said character was a minor. Entries range from when Erik's pet was eleven until he is in his mid twenties. Chapters are marked by year and month of entry. Readers may find themes, content, and the moral relativisms of the narrator disturbing. 46k words.

Content Warning for entire series: institutionalized slavery of a minor (11-18), emotional abuse and manipulation, dubious comfort, pet whump, disordered eating, violence, guns, mutilation (off screen, no main characters), corporal punishment, sexual content/dubcon ( character is 18+), broken bones, death of a parent, unreliable narrator

Journals of Erik H, regarding Carlo H. Sent to Max S. Baltimore, Maryland. November 2018

What is Yours Will Always Be

another note: For anyone who read Carlo’s story; Erik’s journals deviate quite often from the original version of events. The idea to revisit it at all last winter came from a strong desire of mine to develop Erik from a background whump villain who would keep a boy in a cage and never call him by his name in nine years into a more sophisticated character who blames his own evils on the systems that created them.

This was both a new challenge and a way to offer insight into why Carlo struggled with such powerful vestigial feelings of loyalty and homesickness toward his old master, which I think is a major theme of his story. Thank you and I hope you enjoy (or enjoy not enjoying).

June 2011

I will record here the various instances and worthy notes regarding Carlo Holstrom, pet, age eleven, acquired and taken into my supervision June 1, 2011.

I had no intention of buying a pet until I laid eyes on this one last week in California. I had spent the long blue evening on a poolside patio with two colleagues, sipping white rum drinks under skinny palm trees. Our talk always circled back to work, as it does among colleagues. 

As to why I was in Palo Alto, I co-own a shipping and logistics company with a long time friend of mine, Martin Olson. O&H (Olson & Holstrom), as an LLC, has eighteen hundred trucks on over three thousand popular commercial shipping lanes at any time, day or night, throughout the U.S. and Canada. This California trip was planned months ago to meet with the CEO and CFO of one of our most prolific and loyal customers, a dry goods chain that supplies every major grocery store in the south and southwest. 

I was going to return to my hotel balcony early with a drink in hand. That was until I saw a bloated, eager man with gin-blossomed cheeks making his way past the koi pond and tiki bar, up the attached wooden stairs to the card rooms and billiard tables on the second floor. He had in tow the most beautiful boy I had ever seen, wearing a cheap state-issue collar and a look of tempered but unmistakable fear.  Despite the boy’s long strides trying to keep up and obvious attempts to anticipate the man’s every move, the man was yanking him along by the wrist, as if he expected resistance and was too stupid or too drunk to see he was not being met with any. 

I paid my tab and followed them upstairs until I spotted the man’s broad, sweat-darkened back at a card table. I made brief eye contact with the boy, reaffirming the fear and uncertainty I’d seen downstairs. He soon dropped his eyes. I sat down at the same table and asked the man what he was drinking.

I knew from his car-salesman smile and his bloodshot eyes what he was here for, the cheap collar on the young pet was another gleaming clue. It was the same material as a hospital bracelet, steel gray and marked on one side with a discharge stamp. My limited knowledge of how the state dealt with those given up to pethood led me to believe he was fresh from a state home, or some sort of correctional facility. Did they have juvenile correctional facilities for pets? Most were at the very least fifteen, I couldn’t imagine a boy his age in one.

Two sweating Coronas arrived and the cards were dealt. I watched the frightened child until he felt my gaze and met my eyes again. I held it and nodded hello. He was leaving there tonight with me, and I think he and I both knew it, though his keeper did not yet.

It took me three hours and twelve thousand dollars, along with a considerable bar tab. But he left at my side. I did not pull him alongside me like a reluctant dog on a leash. I didn’t have to.

I requested a folding cot and extra linens from the front desk. With them I made him a soft bed between the television set and the balcony. God only knew when he’d last been fed, so I ordered soup from room service, which he ate by dunking the crackers it came with in the broth and eating those. He nursed a can of ginger ale like it was a security blanket. 

Only once did I put a finger under his chin to encourage him to look up at me. “Don’t be afraid,” I told his solemn dark eyes. “Everything is alright now.”

July 2011

I brought him home with me to Maryland. My property is a gated and green six acres punctuated with several very old oak trees, in the southwest of what they call the Valley. Our portion of the Valley is the berg of Foxfollow, in the suburbs of Baltimore.

The house, which I bought to be near our new O&H headquarters in ‘05, was built in 1870, replete with crown moldings, brass accents, the original paneled doors with their crystal knobs and ornate skeleton key mortises, carved bannisters, gleaming mahogany floors and stone hearths. The beams in the west living room are wood from the original Baltimore train station, earning the house a plaque sent to me by the Maryland historical society. On paper it’s a six bedroom brick colonial, three full baths and two half, a generous back porch, an office downstairs and library upstairs, two living rooms, and a solarium that faces east I call the music room, on account of the piano I’d found a home in there. From those easterly windows one can see the city skyline at night, though from anywhere else on the property it feels as if we are in the middle of the country. 

Carlo’s file has been difficult to obtain from the state of California, as his previous owner seems unreachable to give consent to release it. Maybe he finally hanged himself in the closet of a Motel 6. There are several regulations blocking my acquisition of the file by any simple means, courtesy of the state of California and its impressive labyrinth of bureaucracy.

It will have to wait a few weeks, and then can begin an appeal process for it. Without file or title, though,  I can tell you the boy is well mannered, healthy and bright. I had him tested for aptitude. He has an eleventh grade reading level and shows basic understanding of fourth grade math, if lacking any practical application. He does not give any outright indications of having been physically or sexually abused, as per a pediatric psychiatrist. He understands his position, and does not seem to covet any other, or think himself above his station.

Understandably, he fears returning to a state home, does not enjoy crowds, noisy places, or other children, and is timid around my dogs (perhaps because they are hounds, excitable and vocal. This is alright though, as they do not come inside the house).

Carlo has wavy, unruly dark hair and expressive black eyes, a button nose that is slightly broad at the dished bridge, and olive toned skin. He is only little, but he has both an androgyny and racial ambiguity about him I think he will grow into nicely, though I am in no rush for the baby fat to melt from his cheeks, as I am finding it is endearing to me.

August 2011

The file shows just the one previous owner, the one trying to flip him for a profit like a beachfront property. Before that, group state homes.

Titers show proof of MMR, Varicella, Polio, and Tdap vaccinations. Mother: Luca, Chiara. Deceased. Father unknown. No known siblings or relatives. Birthplace - Palo Alto, California, 2000. Blood type O+.

The surname Luca is Italian, or often Romanian, but could be from any number of places, belonging to any number of diaspora. It also could be a maiden or married name, and is not necessarily the boy's blood relatives anyway.

Carlo is adjusting well. I try to imagine how it feels to be in a new place as a pet. I can’t quite, but I can at least grasp at it just by employing my best empathy. I try to remember being so young, and there’s certainly memories, but it is difficult to remember how my mind worked, how each day felt. I remember how I felt about my sister and my friends and my father and homework. I remember learning to shoot a rifle that year, wondering if it would not blast apart the slender hares on our property and make them useless for pelt or stew. I remember trapping one and giving it to Mathilde as a pet.

My father wouldn’t let anyone shoot anything in a trap. Did I understand that? Did I resent him for not letting me pull the rifle to my shoulder and blow it apart at close range? I can’t remember my inner thoughts. Only facts that were catalogued as if by someone else. 

With him, I try to be diplomatic and easy to get along with. Clear instructions and kind words. I bought him a new wardrobe with plenty of comfortable cotton, complete with winter coat and boots he won’t need for months yet. I put a writing desk in the bedroom I gave him, as he seems inclined to bookishness and already has several notebooks, a sketchbook, and a few paperbacks among his personal possessions.

He took a liking to a painting I had hanging in the dining room, a framed John Moore. I noticed him studying it more than once as we ate our dinner at the table in relative silence, interrupted only by Anna returning to refill my wine. 

In the landscape, a castle sits atop a craggy hill lit by silver moonlight that shines through wisps of cloud. In the still bay at the base of the hill is an anchored ship, with rowboats deploying a dozen passengers towards the dark shore. I told him the name of the painting, Lindisfarne Castle and Abbey, Holy Island, by Moonlight, and asked him why he liked it.

“Because it’s quiet,” he said. “But it’s almost got a sound.”

“What sound is that?” I asked, and he looked at me to first make sure I wasn’t teasing him. Encouraged by my earnestness, he replied, “A humming. Like quiet, but louder.” A few days later, I  had it moved to the wall in his room above his desk. 

September 2011 

Carlo has tutors in math, science, and English. I took him into town and had his hair cut, for it was starting to hang in his eyes like the mane of a colt. He looks like a wavy-locked Tsarevich now.

He contracted the flu last week, and I had Dr Amalfi come by the house. It was treatable with tamiflu, soup, and as much fluid as I could get him to drink. I set a cool cloth on his forehead when he was hot and a heating pad on him when he was cold.

He vomited right in his bed the first night he'd fallen sick, and had unfortunately been lucid enough to realize he'd done so. Bright-eyed with fever, he begged me forgiveness and to leave it for Anna, tomorrow, but I'd already stripped the vomit-splattered blanket and sheets into a pile.  "It's fine, sweetheart," I told him, taking his soiled pajama shirt from his clammy, reluctant hands. "Go wash up, and let me take care of this. I want to get some medicine in you."

Even when he returned clean, with fresh sheets and comforter ready for him, he'd been unwilling to meet my eye. Perhaps I should have let him strip his own bed, but his temperature had distracted me too much to even think of it.

I sat on his bedside trying to get a fever reducer and tea into him, and told him how I’d been a medic in the army many years ago, before he was born. To be squeamish about a little accident such as his was not within my scope of understanding, I said, after the manner of things I’d been up to my elbows with in Iraq and Kuwait. I do think that, delivered with an air of nonchalance, made him feel slightly better. 

It did not happen again, as far as I know, though I left a bowl by his bedside. 

The morning his fever broke, I checked on him when I woke. I found him sleepily watching television, and I was relieved.

November 2011

Last week I punished Carlo for stealing chocolates from my office. They were a gift from a visitor, some pretty truffles in a pretty box. I would have given the lot to him if he asked. The sweet is not the point, but the theft. I believe he thought I wouldn’t notice, as they’d been sitting there at least a week. After he did it I wondered if I had subconsciously laid it as a trap. No, I didn’t think so. I was genuinely surprised when he’d taken one without asking. He admitted to it immediately, which was brave at least.  

Come, I'd called him, and bade him lean his forearms on my desk. I struck him only once, swiftly, on the back of his legs like a 19th century Headmaster. He cried, more from embarrassment than pain I think, as I have never hit him. Afterward, I explained why to him again, which I think only further embarrassed him. He understood perfectly well, and reiterating what he'd done wrong was only insulting his intelligence. I am hoping it is not an incident often repeated.

The following Monday, I called him into my study, a room he'd avoided ever since the incident. He glanced about the desk nervously, looking for a clue of some new transgression he might have committed. “You’re not in trouble,” I assured him. “Don’t be skittish.”

I gifted him a new ipod touch and a pair of headphones, as well as a desktop speaker that it docked into the top of to charge and play aloud. He looked disbelievingly at the box in his little hands. "If you need help setting it up let me know," I told him. "Or Anna, she's good with these things. What do you say when someone gives you a gift?"

He hurried to find his tongue to thank me.

-

Yesterday Mathilde brought some friends by for dinner. I had Carlo assist my paid help to serve drinks, entrees, clean up, etc. It’s good and helpful for him to at least be comfortable with that element of pethood.

At one point two of Mathilde’s guests (for though they were in my house, they were not mine) got into a heated argument at the climax of which a glass was broken. The two involved in the argument, a rather soused woman named Natalie and her antagonist Ben, stormed off to clean her dress of spilled wine. Little Carlo came forward to pick up the shards in his bare hands until I clicked my tongue at him, gesturing for him to leave it and come by me.

“Let one of the staff get it, honey,” I said to him from across the table. “I don’t want you getting cut.” 

He came and stood by my chair as I’d beckoned and shifted his weight to his other foot, unsure what to do with himself or his hands. 

“Look for anything that needs clearing whenever you are headed back to the kitchen anyway,” I said near his ear, like the advice was conspiratorial. “Efficiency is key in most things.” Quite seriously, and I think grateful for the clear directive, he took my empty plate and two others with him to the kitchen.

In a spirit of such softhearted warmth that it was foreign to me, and probably in apology to how the incident with the truffles transpired, I have designated a drawer in my kitchen to be Carlo’s, and filled it with things I’ve noticed he liked, sweets and peppermints and truffles. I told him it was his, and to take anything from it any time he liked. 

I want him to obey me with unquestioning haste when I do ask something of him. For the rest of the time, I don’t want him to walk on eggshells. I want him to see this as his home.

He may as well, since it is. 

Next

[imhereforscm]

"A kid's wish"

Genre: fluff

Pairing: Tauxolouve × goddess!reader

Warnings: none

For the fluffbruary event (@fluffbruary )

A/N: Goddess reader for today😚💕💕 Tbh, this one woke up memories in me. Because when I was like.... What? 7? 9? I had a friend of mine move away and I remember both of us feeling so sad about it. We're not friends anymore, because we both changed growing up... And now she's making unhealthy decisions in her life, if you know what I mean💀

Prompts: reflection | water | apology (Day 11/2024)

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

Tauxolouve stared into the ripping water filling up the reflecting pool, his own reflection depicted on its surface, between the everchanging scene of Earth and those of people's smiling faces after having their wishes granted.

He snapped his fingers, changing the view of this elderly lady from Italy to the one of a young boy from Canada. He peered at the list beside him, holding it up and reading over the letters there, informing him of what this very young man yearned for. "Well, that's strange..." He muttered to himself, staring intensely at the paper in his hand.

The human boy didn't wish for something specific, in fact, the very wording of his wish was odd and difficult to understand.

Tauxolouve set the list aside and approached the water once more, staring at the young boy, as he gazed absentimately out of the window of his bedroom, dressed in light blue pajamas, decorated with trains of red and green. The boy's dark eyes were casted high up into the sky, as if looking for something.

'I wish for something from him.'

"Of who...?" Tauxolouved said, speaking in whispers and the silence didn't offer answers.

"This kid..." He heard your voice, beautiful and melodic in his ears, that longed for nothing other than just to hear it by his side. You walked to his side, your heels clicking against the floor, as you came to stand in front of the reflecting pool as well, your tunic swaying behind you as you moved. You placed your palms upon the rim of the pool and peered inside, a soft and tender smile across your lips. "I remember him."

Tauxolouve stared at you, curiosity turning his mind into a skein. "You've granted his wishes before?" He asked.

You nodded, cutting the string of the skein that entangled his brain. "His friend moved away recently and he's been missing him a lot. It's kind of difficult for them to meet up for now, with all the preparations for his friend's new house, but they talk on the phone..." You paused, seemingly wanting to say more, which you did, after a while. "He still misses him. He wished for something from his friend. Nights remind him of their fun little sleepovers."

Tauxolouve's eyebrows rose slightly and his eyes lit up with understanding. "I see how it is..." He stared back down at the child depicted upon the surface of the rippling water and thought for a few moments, wondering what he could do.

"Any ideas...?" You asked, staring at the skeptical profile of your husband.

"I might have, yes." Tauxolouve responded and the snap of his fingers echoed amongst the layers of silence that covered this place.

The two of you remained wordless, as you stared down at the sight of the child's head turning to stare at his mother, that had just entered the room.

The mother handed him her phone, the screen bight with his friend's mother's name across the screen.

The young boy's eyes lit up, as he eagerly grabbed the phone out of his mother's grasp and brought it to his own little ear. The boy's wish vanished from the list and Tauxolouve smiled, staring down at the happiness that colored the kid's cherubic face.

"I guess they hadn't spoken in a while." You said, resting your temple against his shoulder, as you watched over the kid too.

Tauxolouve's hand slipped around your waist, holding you close as the image of the young boy faded from the reflecting pool. "I'm sorry, I suddenly got extra work and had to stay behind longer than usual." He said, apologizing for not returning home at the usual time.

"It's fine, you had work, that's understandable." You said and you lifted your head to gaze at him properly.

"My little lady, I missed you so much." He said and brought his face down to yours, your lips meeting in a sweet rendezvous. "Every second away from you was torment." He said, between kisses and you smiled against his lips, his cupid's bow grazing your upper lip.

"I love you, Louie." You kissed his cheek and whispered against his skin.

"I love you too. I love you so much."