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bracketsoffear · 2 months ago

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Slaughter Leitner Reading List

The full list of submissions for the Slaughter Leitner bracket. Bold titles are ones which were accepted to appear in the bracket. Synopses and propaganda can be found below the cut. Be warned, however, that these may contain spoilers!

Abercrombie, Joe: The Heroes Anderson, Poul: The Broken Sword

Bachman, Richard (Stephen King): Rage Burgess, Anthony: A Clockwork Orange

Chesterton, G.K.: The Sign Of The Broken Sword Christie, Agatha: Murder is Easy Colgan, Jenny T.: In the Blood Collins, Suzanne: The Hunger Games Conrad, Joseph: Heart of Darkness Coville, Bruce: The Japanese Mirror

Echeverría, Esteban: El matadero (The slaughteryard) Ellis, Bret Easton: American Psycho Evans, Robert: After the Revolution

Felker-Martin, Gretchen: Manhunt

Golding, William: Lord of the Flies

Hemingway, Ernest: For Whom the Bell Tolls Hendrix, Grady: The Final Girl Support Group Herbert, James: The Fog Hitler, Adolf: Mein Kampf Homer: The Iliad Howard, Robert E.: Rogues in the House Hunter, Erin: Warrior Cats

Icelandic Saga: The Saga of the Sworn Brothers

Jackson, Shirley: The Lottery Jarrell, Randall: The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner

Kuang, Rebecca F.: The Poppy War

Lansdale, Joe R.: Down by the Sea near the Great Big Rock Laumer, Keith, et. al.: Bolo

Martin, George R.R.: A Song of Ice and Fire McCarthy, Cormac: Blood Meridian Michelinie, David and Dean Wesley Smith: Carnage In New York Moody, David: Hater

Owen, Wilfred: Dulce et Decorum Est

Pendleton, Don: The Executioner Pratchett, Terry: Jingo Pratchett, Terry: THUD!

Remarque, Erich Maria: All Quiet on the Western Front Remender, Rick: Deadly Class

Schmitt, Carl: The Concept of the Political

Takami, Koushun: Battle Royale Thomas, Ryan C.: The Summer I Died Tzu, Sun: The Art of War

Vallejo, Fernando: La virgen de los sicarios (Our lady of the assasins)

Walsh, Rodolfo: Operación: masacre (Operation: Massacre) Weber, David: Honor Harrington

Abercrombie, Joe: The Heroes

The author explains in the foreword that he didn't just want to show that War is Hell, but to explore why it nevertheless has such a hold on human imagination. Thus, we get to see both the stupidity and waste and horror of it and the way it can turn men into monsters, but also examples of how it brings out the best in some people, and how the constant danger and the bonds among soldiers can be so addictive as to make someone who's gotten used to them feel like a peaceful civilian life is hardly worth living.

Anderson, Poul: The Broken Sword

The book tells the story of Skafloc Half Elf (actually a human stolen by the elves), son of Orm the Strong. The story begins with the marriage of Orm the Strong and Aelfrida of the English. Orm kills a witch's family on the land, and later half-converts to Christianity, but quarrels with the local priest and sends him off the land. Meanwhile, an elf, Imric, seeks out the witch to capture the son of Orm, Valgard. In his place he leaves a changeling called Valgard. The real Valgard is taken away to elven lands and named Skafloc by the elves. He grows up among the fairies there. Later, he has a significant part in a war against the trolls.

The eponymous weapon, named Tyrfing in the 1971 revision, was given to Skafloc as his naming-gift by the Aesir. He later travels to the ends of the Earth to have it reforged by Bolverk, the Ice Giant.

Anderson wrote the book during the Cold War, and it does reflect on the story. For example, the Elf-Troll conflict is basically a proxy war between two great powers, the Aesir and the Jotuns; the latter two do not fight directly because that would lead to Ragnarok, the final battle in which most of the world would be destroyed. The parallel to the real-world threat of nuclear war is obvious. Even the titular sword may be an allusion to nuclear weapons; Skafloc contemplates throwing the sword into the sea, but realizes someone - probably much less moral than himself - would eventually find and use it.

Bachman, Richard (Stephen King): Rage

A controversial psychological thriller novel about a disturbed high-school student with authority problems who one day kills one of his teachers and takes the rest of his class hostage. Over the course of one long, tense and unbearable hot afternoon, this student, named Charlie Decker, explains what led him to this drastic sequence of events, while at the same time deconstructing the personalities of his classmates, forcing each one to justify his or her existence.

The novel has been associated with actual high school shooting incidents in the 1980s and 1990s. In response, the author allowed the novel to fall out of print (though it can still be found and read), and has even explicitly requested that no future printings are made.

A rare, disturbing book allegedly linked to actual horrible events in real life, and whose own author wants nothing to do with? What's more Leitner than that?

***

It tells the story of Charlie Decker, an inexplicably volatile high school senior who decides to storm his algebra class, shoot his teacher and take the students hostage. The book became infamous after it was associated with actual high school shooting incidents in the 1980s and 1990s, with the author letting it fall deliberately out of print in 1997 after the book was found in the locker of a teenager who had killed three classmates and injured five others.

***

The story is about a disturbed high schooler who, after being expelled, shoots his teacher and takes the rest of his class hostage.

Stephen King requested the novel to be pulled out of circulation after its connection to several similar school shooting incidents possibly inspired by it. It is a real life Leitner.

Burgess, Anthony: A Clockwork Orange

The novel is narrated by Alex, a young man who leads a gang of “droogs” and takes pleasure in “ultra-violence.” After being arrested and convicted of murder, Alex undergoes an experimental procedure that is intended to cure him of his violent tendencies.

Chesterton, G.K.: The Sign Of The Broken Sword

"Where would a wise man hide a leaf? In the forest. If there were no forest, he would make a forest. And if he wished to hide a dead leaf, he would make a dead forest. And if a man had to hide a dead body, he would make a field of dead bodies to hide it in."

A Father Brown tale, filled with war, bloody passions, broken blades, and of course, murder.

General Sir Arthur St. Clare provoked a completely unnecessary military battle and defeat purely to cover up the fact that he had killed one of his men in a bout of rage. He was then in turn overpowered and hanged by his own surviving soldiers in revenge.

Christie, Agatha: Murder is Easy

During his travel back home from an overseas job, former policeman Luke Fitzwilliam comes across Miss Lavinia Pinkerton (in some editions her last name is Fullerton), an elderly lady who's on her way to Scotland Yard. A serial killer seems to be loose in her home village of Wychwood under Ashe, and she believes she knows who the next victim will be. Luke secretly thinks she's making this up, but her similiarity to his favorite aunt leads him to humor her.

The next day, Luke reads about Miss Pinkerton's death, then about the death of Dr. John Humbleby a few days later. Dr. Humbleby was the one the affable old lady thought would die next. While the cause of his death seems to be thanks to an infection, Luke decides to look into the matter himself.

Pretending to be a researcher into superstitions and witchcraft, Luke begins his investigation into the multiple deaths. What all the deaths have in common is that the victims were largely seen as pests and none of them seemed to have died by foul play. With the help of Bridget Conway, a secretary of Lord Whitfield (in some editions he's called Easterfield) who's much smarter than she looks, Luke might be able to figure out who the murderer is and stop the killings for good.

The serial killer kills anyone who is in any way disliked by their real target, Lord Whitfield, with the ultimate goal of pinning all the murders on him. If that sounds completely insane, that's because it is.

Colgan, Jenny T.: In the Blood

Summary: "All over the world, people are "ghosting" each other on social media. Dropping their friends, giving vent to their hatred, and everywhere behaving with incredible cruelty. Even Donna has found that her friend Hettie, with her seemingly perfect life and fancy house, has unfriended her. And now, all over the world, internet trolls are dying...

As more and more people give in to this wave of bitterness and aggression, it's clear this is no simple case of modern living. This is unkindness as a plague. From the streets of London to the web cafes of South Korea and the deepest darkest forests of Rio, can the Doctor and Donna find the cause of this unhappiness before it's too late?"

Why it's Slaughter: Yeah, it's anger as a bloodborne disease, basically. You get angrier and more violent, spreading the disease further -- and then your heart can't take any more and it explodes.

Collins, Suzanne: The Hunger Games

Winning means fame and fortune. Losing means certain death. The Hunger Games have begun. . . . In the ruins of a place once known as North America lies the nation of Panem, a shining Capitol surrounded by twelve outlying districts. The Capitol is harsh and cruel and keeps the districts in line by forcing them all to send one boy and one girl between the ages of twelve and eighteen to participate in the annual Hunger Games, a fight to the death on live TV. Sixteen-year-old Katniss Everdeen regards it as a death sentence when she steps forward to take her sister's place in the Games. But Katniss has been close to dead before-and survival, for her, is second nature. Without really meaning to, she becomes a contender. But if she is to win, she will have to start making choices that weigh survival against humanity and life against love.

Conrad, Joseph: Heart of Darkness

In Heart of Darkness, various European powers are exploiting Africa for its riches and resources while leaving little or nothing to the Africans who are laboring under them. Through Marlow, Conrad shows the horrors of colonialism and concludes that the Europeans, not the Africans, are the true savages.

Coville, Bruce: The Japanese Mirror

"Jonathan is noted for having had a foul temper that made him yell at anyone who triggered it, until the titular mirror begins absorbing his anger after he gets his blood on it... and the thing inside begins to stir."

Echeverría, Esteban: El matadero (The slaughteryard)

Argentina, 1839. A young man dies for his political beliefs when attacked by a mob in a slaughteryard used to butcher cattle.

The story takes place at the height of Juan Manuel de Rosas’ reign of terror. Though fictional, it is an open indictment of that brutal regime and the first masterwork of Latin-American literature, orginally published twenty years after the author’s death. El matadero, or The Slaughteryard, is reputed to be the most widely studied school text in Spanish-speaking South America.

Ellis, Bret Easton: American Psycho

Patrick Bateman is a yuppie's yuppie. He works on Wall Street, has a pretty girlfriend, and spends most of his free time in trendy restaurants and clubs. However, he is also a psychotic killer who often hallucinates and murders people in increasingly horrific ways, often over the most trivial of provocations or for no reason whatsoever.

***

It follows the life of Patrick Bateman, a wealthy and handsome investment banker living in Manhattan in the 1980s. Beneath his polished exterior lies a psychopathic killer who preys on his victims without remorse. Bateman's exploits quickly grow more and more extreme, and his mask of sanity starts to slip.

Patrick Bateman's murders (or hallucinations of murders) are often over the most trivial of provocations or for no reason whatsoever. It is a book about the Slaughter.

***

Patrick Bateman moves among the young and trendy in 1980s Manhattan. Young, handsome, and well educated, Bateman earns his fortune on Wall Street by day while spending his nights in ways we cannot begin to fathom. Expressing his true self through torture and murder, Bateman prefigures an apocalyptic horror that no society could bear to confront.

Evans, Robert: After the Revolution

Roland the Super-Soldier has cybernetic implants that reward him with a sense of euphoria for killing and battle. As a result, Roland is a highly reluctant fighter because he knows he will lose himself to bloodlust if he ever sees enough fighting and tries to deafen out his implants with lots and lots and lots of drugs. The Battle of Waco sees him fully jump off the wagon and he ends up killing well over a thousand people while on a battle-induced high, even going so far as to hunt down escaping survivors and people trying to surrender to chase the thrill.

Felker-Martin, Gretchen: Manhunt

Beth and Fran spend their days traveling the ravaged New England coast, hunting feral men and harvesting their organs in a gruesome effort to ensure they'll never face the same fate.

Robbie lives by his gun and one hard-learned motto: other people aren't safe.

After a brutal accident entwines the three of them, this found family of survivors must navigate murderous TERFs, a sociopathic billionaire bunker brat, and awkward relationship dynamics―all while outrunning packs of feral men, and their own demons.

Manhunt is a timely, powerful response to every gender-based apocalypse story that failed to consider the existence of transgender and non-binary people, from a powerful new voice in horror.

Golding, William: Lord of the Flies

A group of boys wind up stranded together on a deserted island. While they initially intended to work together, the boys wind up separating into faction and come to grow hostile and distrusting of one another. Eventually, the boys turn to violence, malice, and eventual murder in order to stay alive, with mob mentality and fear gripping them all.

Also important is the fact that the boys are stranded trying to ESCAPE a war, and then get so caught up in fear and desperation to survive that they initiate war among themselves, resulting in a cruel cycle of perpetuating the violence and death they feared and sought to get away from. Essentially it's a commentary on war itself and the things fear can drive people to do, reducing them to base instincts.

***

Stranded on an island, the fragile social constructs between a group of British schoolboys break down, and they revert to mindless violence and murder.

Hemingway, Ernest: For Whom the Bell Tolls

In 1937 Ernest Hemingway traveled to Spain to cover the civil war there for the North American Newspaper Alliance. Three years later he completed the greatest novel to emerge from "the good fight," For Whom the Bell Tolls. The story of Robert Jordan, a young American in the International Brigades attached to an antifascist guerilla unit in the mountains of Spain, it tells of loyalty and courage, love and defeat, and the tragic death of an ideal. In his portrayal of Jordan's love for the beautiful Maria and his superb account of El Sordo's last stand, in his brilliant travesty of La Pasionaria and his unwillingness to believe in blind faith, Hemingway surpasses his achievement in The Sun Also Rises and A Farewell to Arms to create a work at once rare and beautiful, strong and brutal, compassionate, moving and wise. "If the function of a writer is to reveal reality," Maxwell Perkins wrote to Hemingway after reading the manuscript, "no one ever so completely performed it." Greater in power, broader in scope, and more intensely emotional than any of the author's previous works, it stands as one of the best war novels of all time.

Hendrix, Grady: The Final Girl Support Group

Lynnette Tarkington is a real-life final girl. She witnessed and survived not one, but two mass killings and the events have left her traumatized and constantly looking over her shoulder. And she's not alone. For more than a decade she's been meeting with five other actual final girls and their therapist in a support group for those who survived the unthinkable, putting their lives back together.

The support group has to keep their very existence secret. Each of the women were able to turn their events into movie franchises, to varying degrees of success. Fans of both the original killers and the films they inspired are known to stalk and harass them, along with anyone who thinks that getting a good soundbite to sell could be their ticket to fame and fortune.

Then one day, one of the women misses a meeting and Lynnette's worst fears are realized—someone knows about the group and is determined to take their lives apart again, piece by piece.

Herbert, James: The Fog

an earthquake cracks open a secret bioweapon buried underground for disposal, and which causes people and animals who breathe it to go utterly homicidal. The main plot surrounds Jon Holman, an Environmental Officer for the British government, who is present at the fog's dramatic entrance and spends most of the book trying to stop the fog; meanwhile, Herbert occasionally takes us on little side trips to see what horrible thing the fog is making happen next.

Hitler, Adolf: Mein Kampf

A hateful book made by a hateful man, definetly. I dont know if you gonna put it, just submiting this here just in case.....

Homer: The Iliad

(Unless otherwise noted, translations are by Peter Green.)

"Goddess, sing of the cataclysmic wrath of great Achilles, son of Peleus, which caused the Greeks immeasurable pain and sent so many noble souls of heroes to Hades…"

(translation by Emily Wilson)

The Iliad is the archetypical war story. It traces the destructive path of the demigod Achilles, who sets in motion a devastating series of events when he refuses to fight the Trojans in a pique of pride. The infamous catalogue of ships in Book 2 gives a sense of the mind-numbing scale of a war fought over something as intangible as the pride of men and gods. The lavish descriptions of battle and the accounts of individual deaths and wounds give a sense of the utter devastation of war and the grief it leaves behind:

"Not in vain from [Diomēdēs's] hand did the missile fly, but struck Phēgeus full in mid-breast, threw him clear of his horses. Then from the fine-crafted chariot Idaios sprang down, but dared not make a stand over his slain brother, nor would he himself have escaped the black death spirit without the aid of Hēphaistos, who saved him, hid him in darkness, to ensure that aged Darēs [father of Phēgeus and Idaios] was not wholly undone by grief."

Without the help of Achilles, the Trojans begin to gain ground on the Greeks. Torn between his pride and his concern for his comrades, Achilles agrees to let his beloved Patroclus disguise himself in Achilles' armor to hearten the Greeks and scare the Trojans:

"All at once [the Greeks] came charging out like a swarm of wasps by the roadside that boys have a way of provoking to fury, constantly teasing them in their nests along the highway, as children will, creating a widespread nuisance, so that if some traveler passing by should happen to annoy them by accident, they with aggressive spirit all come buzzing out in defense of their offspring-- like them in heart and spirit the Myrmidons now streamed forth from the ships, and an endless clamor arose…"

Hector, prince of Troy kills Patroclus and unleashes the unbridled wrath of Achilles, who becomes so enraged he slaughters every Trojan in his path so gruesomely he enrages the River itself:

"Achilles, scion of Zeus, now left his spear on the bank, leaning against a tamarisk, and charged in like a demon, armed only with his sword, horrific deeds in mind. He turned and struck at random, and ghastly cries went up from those caught by his sword: the water ran red with blood…"

"My lovely streams are currently all awash with corpses; I can't get to discharge my waters into the bright sea, I'm so choked with the dead, while you ruthlessly keep on killing!"

When the River almost drowns Achilles, he's terrified--not of death, but of being robbed the glory of his promised death at the hands of the Trojans:

"If only Hektōr had killed me, the best-bred warrior here, / then noble had been the slayer, noble the man he slew…"

In The Iliad, war is destruction and grief but simultaneously honor and glory, and Achilles is only one of the many characters who move through its battlefields like the incarnation of Slaughter itself.

***

Dating to the ninth century B.C., Homer’s timeless poem still vividly conveys the horror and heroism of men and gods wrestling with towering emotions and battling amidst devastation and destruction, as it moves inexorably to the wrenching, tragic conclusion of the Trojan War. Renowned classicist Bernard Knox observes in his superb introduction that although the violence of the Iliad is grim and relentless, it coexists with both images of civilized life and a poignant yearning for peace.

***

I mean it's a big ol' war story! The wrath of Achilles alone is the stuff of Slaughter-aligned nightmares.

Howard, Robert E.: Rogues in the House

One of the Conan the Cimmerian short stories http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks06/0600781h.html

From TV Tropes: "Conan is sitting in prison after killing a priest (he had it coming) when he is approached by a nobleman named Murillo, who has a proposition for him: kill the Red Priest Nabonidus for him, and he will provide Conan a horse, a sack of gold, and a one way ticket out of town and away from the gallows.

Conan escapes from jail, and, after dealing with the prostitute who turned him in, heads off to Nabonidus's mansion. Conan tries entering through the sewer, only to get stuck down there thanks to one of the mansions traps. While down there, he runs into Murillo, who had arrives there first with the intention of killing Nabonidus himself, thinking Conan had high tailed it out of town. They soon discover Nabonidus trapped down there as well, a prisoner in his own home.

Turns out Nabonidus's servant, a man-ape named Thak, has rebelled against his master, and now uses the assortment of traps set around the mansion to keep out unwanted guests (and keep his prisoners in). The three rogues will have to work together if they ever want to get out of the mansion alive, lest they fall victim to Thak, or perhaps, to each other."

Hunter, Erin: Warrior Cats

Warrior Cats is a series about a society at constant war. It is known for having an excessive amount of gore and violence for a children’s series, and this exact violence is the subject of many pieces of fanart. What’s more, the Warrior Cats community frequently animates the battle sequences and violence to music.

This is a series in which war is a simple fact of life (it’s called Warriors for a reason). There is no real end to this constant conflict, the continuous cycle of bloodshed. The series is still ongoing. It’s been 21 years. These cats are still fighting and fighting and fighting for generation after generation.

***

This one didn't get past round 2 in the Hunt and honestly I think it deserves a Slaughter win more. It takes place in a kitty civilization where the characters are very frequently battling over very important subjects such as who gets to own a pile of rocks or some cat catching a rabbit on the wrong side of the border. There's brief periods of peace and allyship, but most of the time, tensions are present and everybody is probably willing to start beating each other up if they scent another clan on their territory. The violence isn't instinct or the thrill of it beyond the fact that these are still cats who hunt prey, but it's still rather irrational in many cases. The only real path in life you can have in a clan which isn't committing to causing and withstanding senseless violence is the path of healing that senseless violence, seeing cats you can't save die and also not being able to have children or a mate ever, which isn't even something you can choose to do without approval from cat heaven most times, meaning that you'll most likely be locked into a cycle of mindless battles over that one guy from the other clan accidentally marking the wrong side of the border.

This is also how you get brand new artists in the age range the books are for drawing cat violence and death with their limited skills before they somehow become the best artists you've ever seen while still probably drawing lots of cat violence and death. These murder cat books have an unexplained impact on young artists who will be drawing the same scenes of their pick for the saddest cat death years later. It also gets people making their own stories inspired by it, which are often still cat soap operas with plenty of senseless violence (source: 9 year old me had one of these bloody cat soap opera stories inspired by Warriors), and might even lead to Warriors rps with similar amounts of violence.

Icelandic Saga: The Saga of the Sworn Brothers

"About a decade after Iceland has converted to Christianity, best friends Thorgeir Havarson and Thormod Bersason grow up together in the Icelandic Westfjords. Teachings of love and forgiveness are, alas! all wasted on Thorgeir and Thormod, who feel they are not cut out for a pacifist lifestyle, and intend to shape their lives in the ways of the vikings of old. As they believe it is their destiny to die fighting, the two make a pact that whoever of them lives longer will avenge the other, and seal the deal by performing the rites of fóstbrœðralag, sworn brotherhood. Naturally, there comes a time when the fearsome warrior Thorgeir gets himself killed, leaving the scrawny poet Thormod with the duty to avenge his death."

And, oh boy, does he ever.

Jackson, Shirley: The Lottery

“A fictional small American community that observes an annual tradition known as "the lottery", which is intended to ensure a good harvest and purge the town of bad omens. The lottery, its preparations, and its execution are all described in detail, though it is not revealed until the end what actually happens to the person selected by the random lottery: the selected member of the community is stoned to death by the other townspeople.”

Jarrell, Randall: The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner

From my mother’s sleep I fell into the State, And I hunched in its belly till my wet fur froze. Six miles from earth, loosed from its dream of life, I woke to black flak and the nightmare fighters. When I died they washed me out of the turret with a hose.

Kuang, Rebecca F.: The Poppy War

"When Rin aced the Keju—the Empire-wide test to find the most talented youth to learn at the Academies(…) That she got into Sinegard—the most elite military school in Nikan—was even more surprising.(…) Rin discovers she possesses a lethal, unearthly power—an aptitude for the nearly-mythical art of shamanism. Exploring the depths of her gift with the help of a seemingly insane teacher and psychoactive substances, Rin learns that gods long thought dead are very much alive—and that mastering control over those powers could mean more than just surviving school.

For while the Nikara Empire is at peace, the Federation of Mugen still lurks across a narrow sea. The militarily advanced Federation occupied Nikan for decades after the First Poppy War, and only barely lost the continent in the Second. And while most of the people are complacent to go about their lives, a few are aware that a Third Poppy War is just a spark away . . ."

Series heavily focused on slaughter and war.

Lansdale, Joe R.: Down by the Sea near the Great Big Rock

A family on vacation camps out near the titular rock. Over time they become increasingly snappish with each other and thinking violent thoughts. It culminates in a bloody massacre off-screen whose aftermath horrifies one of the investigating detectives. The story ends with the great big rock sprouting flippers, the slaughter having sated its hunger, and swimming into the sea. The fish that swim near it start fighting each other.

Laumer, Keith, et. al.: Bolo

"Bolos might fail. They might die and be destroyed. But they did not surrender, and they never — ever — quit."

A series of stories, originally by Keith Laumer, that were later expanded into a Shared Universe by other authors. They detail the exploits of the Bolo, autonomous AI tanks that are supposed to have evolved from the standard main battle tank of the 20th century.

These aren't your normal tanks. For one, their designers decided that bigger was better, and since the only thing that could really take down a Bolo was another Bolo, they just kept building the Bolos bigger and bigger, to the point where even the stealth tanks mass 1,500 tons. Or in some novels the Mark XXXIII weighs 32,000 tons.

There are plenty of examples of why this is Slaughter, but the aptly-named Final War, culminating in a mutual campaign of total extermination between humans and Melconians that turned a whole spiral arm of the Milky Way into a lifeless waste of dead or hopelessly contaminated planets, takes the cake. It is notable that plans of Operation Ragnarok, the human half of the equation of genocide, were based on a scenario initially created to illustrate utter madness of such campaign. Even the eponymous sapient supertanks start cracking under the weight of their orders by the end, succumbing to bloodlust. When one of the very few surviving Bolos, Shiva, reawakens, he is horrified by the atrocities that he himself had not been above committing under the pretense of following orders.

Martin, George R.R.: A Song of Ice and Fire

Torture, war, bloodshed, sadism... it would be easier to list the aspects of Slaughter this *doesn't* include.

McCarthy, Cormac: Blood Meridian

An extremely dark and vicious deconstruction of the Western novel, with the central antagonist of Judge Holden, a violent, well-educated man who believes that "war is god" and appears to be solely motivated by the desire to propagate violence and pain. While the Glanton gang were already despicable and vile people, he corrupts them even further into his depraved frame of mind, succeeding with all but the protagonist... who he later kills violently.

Michelinie, David and Dean Wesley Smith: Carnage In New York

Spider-Man rescues Dr. Eric Catrall, a scientist, from government agents. Simultaneously, serial killer Cletus Kasady is brought to New York to undergo an experiment that would purge him of the Carnage symbiote, which is bonded to his bloodstream. Catrall infiltrates the experiment and in the confusion Carnage escapes, taking Catrall with him. When Catrall turns up in jail, Spider-Man learns he had invented a chemical that drives people insane with bloodlust, and the government wants it back in order to weaponize it. Even worse, the serum is now in Carnage's possession. Spider-Man is forced to go toe-to-talon with one of his most dangerous foes to retrieve the serum, which could make all of New York just as bloodthirsty as Carnage himself.

Moody, David: Hater

Something is wrong with society these days. The news gives reports of people just suddenly deciding to kill other people: enemies, strangers, coworkers, friends, family. Random. Brutal. For seemingly no reason.

Enter the protagonist, The Everyman: He lives a mundane life, married with children, slaves away for a paycheck under a miserable bitch of a boss. He stops going to work and barricades himself with his family inside their home until it's over because he starts seeing people mowing down other people in real life, on the street and at work, not just on television, which has basically gone off the air, and is now displaying the message, "REMAIN CALM DO NOT PANIC TAKE SHELTER WAIT FOR FURTHER INSTRUCTIONS THE SITUATION IS UNDER CONTROL".

By the end of the book, the main character realizes he is a Hater and then kills his father-in-law with plans to kill the rest of his family save for his daughter.

Owen, Wilfred: Dulce et Decorum Est

If you can't place why the name Wilfred Owen sounds so familiar, you might recognize him from MAG 7, "The Piper." That's right: the historical Owen's poetry dovetails so perfectly with the themes of the Slaughter, he becomes a character in the Entity's first appearance in the series!

It's really tempting to quote the entirety of "Dulce et Decorum Est" because all of it fits the slaughter so well, but instead I'll just provide a link. (pollrunner’s note: they did not provide a link)

The short of it is that the poem reflects the experiences Owen had in the trenches of World War I. Owen titles the poem after "The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est / Pro patria mori. [How sweet and proper it is / To die for your fatherland.]" He therefore excoriates people in his society who encourage young men to go to war, despite never having "pace[d] / Behind the wagon we flung [a soldier dying from a chemical attack] in, / And watch the white eyes writhing in his face, / His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin…."

Owen's poem is the perfect representation of the visceral, disgusting trauma of witnessing your comrades slaughtered by the early twentieth century's newly industrialized war.

Pendleton, Don: The Executioner

"I am not their judge. These people have judged themselves by their own actions. I am their judgment. I am their executioner."

Mack Bolan (nicknamed "The Executioner" by his fellow soldiers) is an elite sniper/penetration specialist in The Vietnam War when he receives word that his father Sam, a steelworker in Pittsfield, has gone insane and shot dead his wife Elsa and daughter Cynthia ("Cindy"). On talking to the Sole Survivor, younger brother Johnny, Bolan discovers that his father was being squeezed by Mafia Loan Sharks and, on hearing that his daughter was prostituting herself to cover his debt, snapped under the pressure.

Figuring there's no point in fighting a war 8,000 miles away when there's a bigger enemy right here at home, Mack Bolan sets forth on a one-man crusade to destroy The Mafia, using all the military weapons and tactics at his disposal including heavy machine guns, rocket launchers, sniper rifles, night-vision scopes, radio-detonated explosives, electronic surveillance, silenced handguns and the garrotte. Bolan is also fond of using wiles to turn his enemies against each other.

Inspired the character of The Punisher. Being in the Mafia (no matter how distant the link) is punishable by death. Doesn't matter if you just are an errand boy, you are guilty and must die.

Pratchett, Terry: Jingo

"‘Neighbours… hah. People’d live for ages side by side, nodding at one another amicably on their way to work, and then some trivial thing would happen and someone would be having a garden fork removed from their ear.’ When the neighbours in question are the proud empires of Klatch and Ankh-Morpork, those are going to be some pretty large garden tools indeed. Of course, no one would dream of starting a war without a perfectly good reason… such as a ‘strategic’ piece of old rock in the middle of nowhere. It is, after all, every citizen’s right to bear arms to defend their own. Even if it isn’t technically their own. And even if they don’t have much in the way of actual weaponry. As two armies march, Commander Vimes of the Ankh-Morpork City Watch faces unpleasant foes who are out to get him . . . and that’s just the people on his side. The enemy might be even worse."

Pratchett, Terry: THUD!

It's a Discworld book following Sam Vimes, commander of the city watch, trying to get to the bottom of a murder and quell tensions between the dwarf and troll communities in the city of Ankh Morpork. Thud! Is a book all about violence, in all it's different scales. Starting with War, the War of Koom Valley being a rallying cry that never fades, making every conflict between dwarves and trolls it's own little Koom Valley. From war to mob violence, fear and bile, assassin's sent to Vimes's house to kill his son with a flamethrower. Then down to quiet, horrible murder in the dark, betrayal so bad that the victim's last action calls up a quasi demonic force of pure vengeance.

This force, the summoning dark, possessed Vimes. He's always been an angry character, but also a man with supreme self control, who knows if you do a thing for a good reason, you'll do it for a bad one. through the narration we can see how the summoning dark strengthens his violent impulses and kneejerk reactions, his biases and anger, making him go on rants in his head about how "someone will burn for this! Burn!".

Although it has aspects of Dark to it, it's much more a book about the violence in people, any kind of people. One of its iconic scenes is of a thoroughly civilian clerk named A.E. Pessimal going postal and throwing himself into a riot, even biting a troll, which are made of rock in discworld!

Remarque, Erich Maria: All Quiet on the Western Front

"I am young, I am twenty years old; yet I know nothing of life but despair, death, fear, and fatuous superficiality cast over an abyss of sorrow. . . ."

"This is the testament of Paul Bäumer, who enlists with his classmates in the German army during World War I. They become soldiers with youthful enthusiasm. But the world of duty, culture, and progress they had been taught breaks in pieces under the first bombardment in the trenches.

Through years of vivid horror, Paul holds fast to a single vow: to fight against the principle of hate that meaninglessly pits young men of the same generation but different uniforms against one another . . . if only he can come out of the war alive."

Remender, Rick: Deadly Class

It's 1987. Marcus Lopez hates school. His grades suck. The jocks are hassling his friends. He can't focus on class. But the jocks are the children of Joseph Stalin's top assassin, the teachers are members of an ancient league of assassins, the class he's failing is "Dismemberment 101," and his crush has a double-digit body count. Welcome to the most brutal high school on earth, where the world's top crime families send the next generation of assassins to be trained. Murder is an art. Killing is a craft. At Kings Dominion School for the Deadly Arts, the dagger in your back isn't always metaphorical.

Schmitt, Carl: The Concept of the Political

In The Concept of the Political, composed in 1927 and fully elaborated in 1932, Schmitt defined “the political” as the eternal propensity of human collectivities to identify each other as “enemies”—that is, as concrete embodiments of “different and alien” ways of life, with whom mortal combat is a constant possibility and frequent reality. Schmitt assumed that the zeal of group members to kill and die on the basis of a nonrational faith in the substance binding their collectivities refuted basic Enlightenment and liberal tenets. According to Schmitt, the willingness to die for a substantive way of life contradicts both the desire for self-preservation assumed by modern theories of natural rights and the liberal ideal of neutralizing deadly conflict, the driving force of modern European history from the 16th to the 20th century.

Takami, Koushun: Battle Royale

The story tells of junior high school students who are forced to fight each other to the death in a program run by a fictional, fascist, totalitarian Japanese government known as the Republic of Greater East Asia.

Thomas, Ryan C.: The Summer I Died

So much screaming. When Roger Huntington comes home from college for the summer and is met by his best friend, Tooth, he knows they're going to have a good time. A summer full of beer, comic books, movies, laughs, and maybe even girls. So much pain. The sun is high and the sky is clear as Roger and Tooth set out to shoot beer cans at Bobcat Mountain. Just two friends catching up on lost time, two friends thinking about their futures, two friends-- So much blood. --suddenly thrust in the middle of a nightmare. Forced to fight for their life against a sadistic killer. A killer with an arsenal of razor sharp blades and a hungry dog by his side. So much death. If they are to survive, they must decide: are heroes born, or are they made? Or is something more powerful happening to them? And more importantly, how do you survive when all roads lead to death!

Tzu, Sun: The Art of War

It's an entire manifesto on how to conduct warfare effectively, ranging from hand to hand combat to military tactics. It's expansive and detailed and is still utilized today despite being hundreds of years old. Also I'm convinced my copy of it IS a Leitner because every single time I go and read it to get content, an armed conflict somewhere in the world pops up on my news feed a day or two later. It's spooky.

Vallejo, Fernando: La virgen de los sicarios (Our lady of the assasins)

A novel set in the backstreets of Medellin, Colombia, captures the lives of the beggars, thieves, drug addicts, and other lost souls of a city overwhelmed by the drug trade.

Walsh, Rodolfo: Operación: masacre (Operation: Massacre)

1956. Argentina has just lost its charismatic president Juán Perón in a military coup, and terror reigns across the land. June 1956: eighteen people are reported dead in a failed Peronist uprising. December 1956: sometime journalist, crime fiction writer, studiedly unpoliticized chess aficionado Rodolfo Walsh learns by chance that one of the executed civilians from a separate, secret execution in June, is alive. He hears that there may be more than one survivor and believes this unbelievable story on the spot. And right there, the monumental classic Operation Massacre is born.

Walsh made it his mission to find not only the survivors but widows, orphans, political refugees, fugitives, alleged informers, and anonymous heroes, in order to determine what happened that night, sending him on a journey that took over the rest of his life.

Originally published in 1957, Operation Massacre thoroughly and breathlessly recounts the night of the execution and its fallout.

Weber, David: Honor Harrington

Military Science Fiction series by David Weber. The book series is mainly set around the adventures of the titular heroine, although we see a fair amount of the wider universe. Weber has explicitly described the series as "Horatio Hornblower" IN SPACE! with the series being a great deal more focused on (Space) Naval operations than other science fiction series. Honor Harrington occasionally performs ground-based and political adventures, but the vast majority of the series is focused on her ship-to-ship conflicts, where she serves as commanding officer. A lot of military combat and dueling.

#leitner tournament #reading list #slaughter poll

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thenightling · 2 years ago

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How a 1985 horror film addresses the importance of true names and gave a cis character a dead name

I happen to love the original 1985 horror film Fright Night (not so much the remake). In the original Fright Night a teenage boy named Charley Brewster discovers that his new neighbor is a vampire.

Not knowing what to do, Charley seeks the aid of has-been horror actor, Peter Vincent. Peter Vincent hosts a TV show also called Fright Night where he shows classic monster movies (usually featuring himself.) Now Peter Vincent happens to be the character’s stage name based on Peter Cushing (Hammer Horror actor who played Dr. Van Helsing in Hammer’s Dracula movies), and Vincent Price (classic horror actor). It was actually the name of the character he played in his old monster movies “Peter Vincent The Great Vampire Killer.” Imagine if Sarah Michelle Geller couldn’t find work after Buffy, started hosting late night monster movies and began answering to the name Buffy Summers. That’s pretty much what happened here. At first Peter is reasonably skeptical to Charley’s claims that his neighbor is a real vampire but after seeing the man doesn’t cast a reflection in a mirror Peter is forced to face the reality that vampires are real.

From this point on the character experiences intense character growth. He goes from cowardly-has-been horror actor to becoming the hero he always pretended to be. One major catalyst for this is when Peter is forced to defend himself against a recently created vampire “Evil” Ed. Seeing that poor boy die as a vampire is both heart breaking and terrifying and Peter realizes he has to become the hero he always pretended to be. While trying to encourage himself he repeats again and again the words ”I am Peter Vincent, the great vampire Killer. I am Peter Vincent, the great vampire killer!”

Earlier in the movie when Charley had tried to encourage Peter (after he had panicked at learning vampires are real) Charley had said something very similar to which Peter had responded with “That’s a character in a movie! That’s not even my real name!” Well, Peter finally becomes the hero he always pretended to be. His “real” name never comes up again. In fact his character is credited as Peter Vincent on the end credits. And he answers to Peter Vincent all through the sequel. At this point his original name has become a deadname. He sees himself as Peter Vincent and that is who he has become. The deadname no longer matters. His stage name, his character name has become his true name. This is a great symbolism to show how a chosen name can be a true name and a birth name is not necessarily your true name or who you are meant to be, and yes, you can learn who you truly are later.

There’s a lot of LGBTQ+ overtones in the original Fright Night (again, not so much the remake). Amanda Beares (who played Amy, Charley’s love interest) was a lesbian in real life. Stephen Geoffreys (who played Ed) was gay in real life. Roddy McDowall (Peter Vincent) was gay in real life. Not only that but the character was half-inspired by Vincent Price (who was bisexual). The character Jerry Dandridge (the main vampire) had a live-in male companion that was implied to be a lover even though he also felt Amy looked like a lost lost. And Fright Night Part 2 also featured several gay actors, including one who was dying of AIDS, Merritt Butrick (it would be his final role). The character Regine was also implied to be bisexual. And there was a one trans character named Belle.

Though deadnaming wasn’t (by the majority) considered an issue yet in 1985 I would like to believe that Peter Vincent’s self-acceptance and discovering who he truly was is something powerful for many in the LGBTQ+ community.

There’s virtually no LGTBTQ+ content in the remake. Come to think of it, I don’t even remember there being any black actors in the remake either for that matter. Meanwhile in the original Fright Night the club bouncers and the homicide detective were black. Jerry’s sister in Fright Night: Part 2 (1988) was of mixed race, and Belle (the transwoman vampire) was black.

Fright Night (1985) deserves a more respectful remake, embracing the LGBTQ+ overtones of the original, not changing everything to try to make it be the anti-Twilight that the 2011 Fright Night tried to be.

#Fright Night #Peter Vincent #Deadnames #True Name

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the-dog-watch · 1 year ago

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The Thirteen-Gun Salute

me: i am fundamentally opposed to the british empire and all forms of colonialism and imperialism. history is a record of their atrocities.

my therapist: that's fair

me: but i love it when god's chosen captain jack aubrey is restored to the navy list and reclaims his sword so ere long he may draw it once more in the honorable defense of his country.

my therapist: who doesn't?

(once again, apologies to the OP)

Patrick O'Brian loves to repeat character-types throughout the Aubrey/Maturin series. For example, the beautiful, fashionable lady spies who end up embroiled in Stephen’s intelligence work, characters like Mrs. Wogan in Desolation Island or Mrs. Fielding in Treason's Harbour. Enjoyable in their way (personally I have a lot of fondness for Mrs. Fielding’s failed seduction in The Ionian Mission) but I never find myself that interested in them on their own, or at least not as interested in them as I am in the original; they’re all pale shades of Diana. They might be fancy and beautiful and high class but they lack her ineffable quality of being a messy bitch.

If Diana is the red-blooded progenitor of the Beautiful Lady Spy archetype, then Stephen is the progenitor of another recurring character type: the Bisexual Man with Mental Health problems, another iteration of which is Lord Clonfert from The Mauritius Command, who was the most interesting part of what I personally find to be the weakest, most insubstantial of the books. In Jo Walton’s reading guide, which I’ve been using a little bit, one of the commenters pointed out that the dipsomaniac doctor McAdams and Lord Clonfert are "dark reflections" of Stephen and Jack, an idea I find fascinating. Mirror universe Aubrey and Maturin...spooky!

But anyway, I bring this up because Andrew Wray is yet another iteration of the Bisexual Man with Mental Health Problems, certainly a more destructive and a much more functional antagonist than Clonfert ever was. I really liked the dissection scene; in her review Jo Walton said she found it so gruesome she almost "didn't want to know Stephen anymore;" no disrespect to her but some of us are built different. This is one of my favorite Stephen Maturin crazy ass moments of all time, up there with self-surgery in HMS Surprise and that time he stocked up on too many stimulants in Sweden and accidentally turned all the ship's rats into coke fiends.

But, sadly, overall the messy gay drama with Wray and Ledward (WHO THE FUCK EVEN WAS LEDWARD did we ever even see him speak????) was a little too understated, even for me. Obviously I didn't expect Stephen or Jack to get revenge on them in the traditional way, but something a little more definite than Jack getting pissy at a dinner after the fact could have done the trick, I think.

The dissatisfaction I feel with it is what brings me back to Clonfert; the actual plot of The Mauritius Command feels very remote and inert to me, and Clonfert is the most vivid part. Jack is so basically above him in all ways (or so Stephen describes it) that Clonfert completely destroys himself out of his neuroses and Jack is shielded by Stephen from ever even knowing about or being hurt by it. It was similarly anticlimactic but there was an element of tragedy and pathos to it, and Stephen’s shielding Jack from the disturbing truth has an echo in Stephen’s own inability to fully open up to Jack about Diana, Stephen's inability to open up about pretty much everything.

Thankfully, this book has way more going for it than The Mauritius Command. I like the rhythm and episodic nature of these latter books much more than TMC's rigid retelling of a historical naval campaign. Stephen re-living some of his revolutionary past with the United Irishmen, and re-living some of the divided loyalties poor James Dillon (may he rest in pieces) felt in the first novel was a welcome call back, the Kumai trip was generally wonderful, I was pretty happy about Jack's ultimate ambivalence about being reinstated in the Navy again, and I LOVE the Stephen Maturin Strikes It Rich storyline (more on that next time I think; I do think it's very funny that when it comes to money, neither Stephen nor Jack is 'the smart one.')

I got to really love the Diane, and this is the first time we’ve had a genuine shipwreck; as exciting as that was, it was genuinely heartbreaking to lose her. RIP Diane but I’m already well into the next book and in love with my new girl (Nutmeg of Consolation, you will always be famous. 😭)

Personal Ranking

The Far Side of the World (10) > HMS Surprise (3) > Desolation Island (5) > The Reverse of the Medal (11) > The Ionian Mission (8) > The Fortune of War (6) > Master & Commander (1) > The Surgeon’s Mate (7) > Treason's Harbour (9) > The Letter of Marque (12) > The Thirteen-Gun Salute (13) > Post Captain (2) > The Mauritius Command (4)

#aubreyad #the thirteen-gun salute #recap post #stephen maturin #jack aubrey #diana villiers #andrew wray #he died in this one so i decided he gets a character tag #i like the side characters in this series but honestly i think i have more emotional attachment to the ships than to the guys #like the order of precedence is #1. jack and stephen 2. WAGs 3. all the ships even the ones jack said were shitty and sucked 4. every other character #HORRIBLE OLD LEOPARD AND POLYCHREST you will always be famous!!!!#famous for sucking and being horrible but famous nonetheless

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syngrafaes09 · 2 years ago

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Strange Nights | Vampire! Dr Strange x Y/n

Logline: After Y/N gets imprinted by a vampire Dr Strange, living under a fictive identity, they must unravel the cause behind her constant misadventures before their hopes are crushed forever.

Masterlist

Chapter 15 : Ghostling

She yanked off the blood-soaked cardigan. Wanda and Pepper watched silently in the rear-view mirror as Y/N tried fruitlessly to remove the dried blood from the cheek. There weren't too many stains – mostly on her face and neck.

Pepper pulled over to an abrupt halt and opened the doors. Pentagons and circles were drawn in the mid-driveway that was lined with burnt-out candles.

"What's wrong?" Pepper and Y/N asked in unison when Wanda held out a hand to bar them from venturing any further. "After that attack on Halloween night, Stephen and I had put multiple protection spells on your house. No one unless invited could have entered the house. Looks like someone broke in. Whatever we are dealing with is dangerous... you shouldn't go in Y/N."

Y/N would have paid heed to the warning – almost had - if she hadn't spotted the police cruiser parked on the dark sidewalk of the house. Matt. She dashed for the door. Fast enough for the off-guarded vampires to notice. As soon as she passes the threshold, however, she froze. For there, lying devitalised on the floor was her dad, Matt. Thick blood spilt out from a wound on his side. Around him what used to be the living-cum-dining room lay in shambles. Most of the furniture had been knocked to pieces on the left wall. And on the edge of the large pile of rubble, lay Matt.

A sharp scream pierced through the night as Stephen was about to lay his hands on a jaguar. Against his instincts, he backed away from the prey towards his new ordeal.

After what he had heard, he was expecting to deal with a hysterical girl, crying and thrashing around. Oddly, Y/N was sitting still on the porch steps, as quiet as death, with blank eyes. As his eyes lifted to the door, Wanda stepped out. Luckily the neighbours are out. I think no one has noticed anything. There's too much blood, you should leave. You are not in a right-

"I know." He crouched in front of Y/N, a finger gently lifting her face to meet his gaze. "I know this is difficult for you –"

"You don't know anything," she gritted through her teeth. "Y/N you aren't safe here." Wanda pleaded once again. She had tried to get her back to their house while Pepper called for an ambulance, but the girl won't listen. They would have driven both of them home if she had known that Stephen would come from mid-hunting.

"Until we figure out who is behind this, you'll stay with us. You can see Matt in the hospital once he gains consciousness," Stephen said. His eyes pleaded for her to obey him for one last time. "What guarantee is there that I'll be safe with you?"

"You have to trust me."

"How can I trust you, when my life became much messier than it already was after you turned up?" Y/N cried out, recounting every horrible incident that occurred after that fateful evening in the cafe. She felt ten years younger. Things now were exactly like they were a decade back. The constant threat of death to her loved ones was back. It was like the death monster had hibernated for a few years after her mother's death. It had woken up the day she lost her father, Charles and now was back into action once again.

"Please," the man before her pleaded with all his sincerity.

"What do we do next?" Wanda asked Stephen, as they watched Morgan and Y/N pad to her room. His hunting ritual had been cut short, obviously, he needed to hunt. On the other hand, his reflection on the glass door urged him to get himself cleaned of the dried blood. He wondered how Y/N hadn't screamed at the sight of him then recalled she had asked him not to touch her, a long while ago. "Any lead from Matt?"

"Not much." She was disappointed when she looked into his mind and found nothing on the intruder. They had entered and blasted him with an energy wave knocking him out along with the furniture. "Then whoever went in, didn't expect she was out... Try looking for a friend of hers, Anna-"

"She knew Y/N wasn't going to be home."

"What?"

"Lila and I picked Y/N up from Anna's cottage. Besides, she seems normal. But I'll check on her," she said. "But what I don't understand is why leave a clue ... or sign of what was done? If someone was as powerful as to knock down those spells, wouldn't they have managed to clean up ... at least the driveway..."

He also pondered over the same point. "Was it a mockery?" He suggested. "But why her, Stephen?"

"Have you forgotten what happened an hour ago? You watched her manipulate reality, Wanda! While your manipulations are weak beyond hexes and require a great deal of effort; she did it effortlessly. She had no idea what she was doing. It worked on a subconscious level. One look at her and you knew it. And I won't be surprised to know that all these years she had been subconsciously attracting all sorts of miseries in her life like a magnet. That means anyone like you could have noticed her."

She nodded grimly. "Alright then, I'll find out what I can."

After having scrubbed himself off the blood, he wished to relax in the bath. He hadn't slept in the last four days. His days were piled with surgeries while nights were preoccupied with Tony's promise to the tumbling Order that they'll track down the hybrid culprit. Coupled with that Bucky's stunt of telling Matt about the supernatural world had backfired and he had to clear up the mess – plant fake memories of the event- which had exhausted him. Animal blood wasn't providing enough strength. And his throat burned with desire. The bath could wait.

He glided down the stairs to the basement. Tony, who had returned home and was working in the lab eyed him suspiciously as he examined the place and went one level further below. His object of pursuit lay in the far left end.

"What are you doing?" Tony thundered, having followed him to the second lab.

"Why, have you lost your sight?" He had a bag of fresh blood popped in his mouth. Stephen grabbed another two bags from the blood bank refrigerator before shutting it.

"Those are meant for emergencies- unforeseen crises."

As soon as the first bag was empty he popped in another. "I'm in the midst of a crisis," he pointed. It was odd speaking mouthful as a consequence some of his words were mangled. Tony didn't seem to have any trouble understanding him, however. "I'm exhausted and need something stronger than animal blood."

"You didn't have animal blood, try it and then tell me you are exhausted." Tony snatched the third bag from Stephen as he passed him. He grunted and tried to take it back. "We have a human upstairs-"

"Yeah, another reason why I should have this. I wouldn't be able to control either around her or in the hospital tomorrow." He finally managed to snatch it back from Tony.

Hearing the commotion, the rest of the house had stirred to the basement labs. "You didn't tell me you had a fresh blood reservoir, brother," Loki sniffed and whined. "Those are meant for emergencies." Tony, annoyed, repeated his words from earlier. Stephen ripped off the empty bag and popped the final bag.

Their banter was cut short at the time Wanda grimly announced, "Anna is nowhere and her house reeks of Chaos magic."

Y/N felt her head throbbing - it felt like someone was tearing her brain apart. Slowly. A groan slipped her lips.

"- need more time-"

"-buried deeper-"

"-what-"

"-psychic barriers-"

The muffled, jumbled voices faded with the clicking of the door. She tried to blink my eyes open, but the sudden assault from the light made the pain in her head roar and she quickly closed them again.

As she lay there, she slowly became more cognizant of the surroundings. Something warm – probably a blanket – covered her body. She was lying on something soft and flat – not the cramped-up armchair she had slid into after cleaning up in... Morgan's bathroom. But the realisation didn't help to recognise the voices.

Mentally bracing against the coming pain, she eased my eyes open. A prickly sensation of fear crept up the back of my neck, as she took in the unfamiliarity of the room. This wasn't the large blue room with a sitting area, a coffee table, two armchairs, and a couch. This golden room had a queen size bed in one corner, adjacent to it a door and in front of her, a glass container that took up most of the wall. She gaped at the content of the container. She had seen many Ironman cosplay suits but these two suits... "So real and... historical," she amazed under her breath.

"You are right." The voice made me jump. If it had been anyone else, they wouldn't have heard her. But Morgan wasn't anyone else. She was so quiet that Y/N hadn't noticed her coming in. Well, she didn't have vampire senses like her. "That's Mark II and Mark V."

"You shouldn't reveal that to her," another voice – male – grimaced, from her back. "It's okay Pete, she's part of our family now. I'm sure she won't give away an Avenger-level secret." Her mind was still processing the family part when the Avenger-level secret hyped it further up. She heard a derisive snort.

"Oh," Morgan looked at her confused expression, "If you still don't realise it, we are the avengers. Or precisely speaking, everyone in this house, except Peter and me, was an Avenger; Peter was the friendly neighbourhood Spiderman, of course," she announced it like she was reading out the perfectly normal, well – anticipated headline from the daily newspaper.

There were many speculations where the team of superheroes was once they disappeared into thin air – hiding in space, resting underwater, kidnapped by aliens, and so on. But with time people had lost not only the vim and vigour to trace them back but also any reminiscence of the faces behind the masks. Like many men that came before the avengers, they were lost to the history of legends.

Many questions were spilling like beans in her mind – why did they hide? What had happened? If they were still alive, why aren't they helping people like they used to? But all that came out of her mouth was, "What time is it?"

Morgan chuckled. "One in the morning," she answered with a shake of her head. "Well, you must be hungry. Let's get you some sustenance then mom could drive you to the hospital."

"I don't need any sustenance." Her stomach rumbled in protest. "I wanna see Matt first, please, how is he?"

She shook her head. "No food, no hospital. That's what mom said. Your unc- err... father is out of danger. Rachel's with him."

"If anything goes slightly left, give a gentle tap," he said, indicating to the inconspicuous roundel beneath the sleeve of the hood that Morgan had forced Y/N into after she had hesitated to change into her clothes, "and the suit would be around you. Any questions?" The Tony Stark looked at her expectantly. After Morgan's revelations, it had become difficult to move about the house without being dazed. As if it wasn't already marvellous enough to take in the fact that the Rochester household had once been the Avengers; the AI, nanotechnology, and other technologies that were still in process of making, are existing in this house were incredulous.

"How do I use it? And get out of it?"

"Excellent question. F.R.I.D.A.Y. will manage everything. You have nothing to worry about. Now off we go."

You have nothing to worry about. She wished it was true, hurrying behind him up the stairs of the lab. She felt moisture fill up her eyes as she looked at Pepper standing by the door. They knew each other barely, yet her kindness towards me was insurmountable. Without her getting Y/N to the hospital behind Stephen and Wanda's backs, she would never have got the chance to see Matt tonight.

Y/N had choked on a mouthful of bread when Pepper had informed me that everything that she had of mother had been burnt to ash and Stephen would take me somewhere safe once he returned from his errand in an hour. From his and Wanda's erratic behaviour and request to not let Y/N out till they returned, Pepper hardly believed he would keep up his promise of letting Y/N see Matt.

"You have got twenty... six minutes exactly from now," Tony announced as a Shelby Cobra and a Saleen slithered out of the garage door soundlessly.

"That will be enough," Pepper said, giving Y/N a small smile. "And where... are you going?"

"To the nuclear plant. Jane's got something for me."

"Really? Or are you chickening out Tony?"

"I'm scared of none," he replied indignantly.

"I never said you were scared."

"F.R.I.D.A.Y. put on the Mystic shields. Nobody breaks in other than our blood-sucking- Oww" Pepper elbowed him before he could finish. "They have names. Stephen, Wanda, and Loki," she said, sliding into the driver's seat. "But what if some other witch impersonates them? I was just giving clear-cut commands." Pepper didn't answer and zoomed into the darkness.

In the hospital, Rachael and Jade were sitting in the waiting room outside the ICU. One of the volunteers came out with the magazine cart and behind him Jade. The thing was a joke because the ICU is not a place where people come to stay for a long time. Not usually, anyway, Rachael and Y/N were a special case. But then again, Matt's case was different than their mother's. He was kept for observation while she had been kept from dying.

The white ceiling. The pale walls. And her still form wrapped in gauze. Still, so still. They had sat for hours looking at her closed eyes. At her slightly downturned face. At the tubes going into it. Her skin looked waxy.

Y/N blinked and pinched the bridge of her nose. She didn't want to see Matt like that. And he wasn't. He looked very much alive behind the glass doors. He wasn't dying like Jane.

"Stop." With her hand on the door, Y/N blinked back at Rachael. "You heard me," she said, still not looking up at her. "You have done enough damage already. It has to stop."

"Rachael, what have-"

"What have you not done?" Her red-rimmed eyes burned with pain and anger. She stopped to draw a deep breath and then went ranting on. It seemed she had wanted to say all this for years. "Don't tell me that I don't understand what you feel because I don't - I don't want to. Every time I try to accept you like my own- like dad expects me to, y-you do something crazy. No, crazy isn't appropriate... You find some way to push me to the bottom." Tears fled free from her eyes as Y/N peeked through mine. "Wasn't my mom enough?"

"S-she was my mom too."

"She never loved you," Rachael finally said, unleashing years of pent-up rage and jealousy.

"Okay," she tried to reach her, hold her and stop her violent shaking, "She... loved you, not m-me."

"If you get that then leave us alone. Spare one of our parents alive."

"I'm not doing this. I never hurt mom or any of our dads."

"You nevertheless aren't a good omen," she claimed. And she was right. Y/N never was. Death and destruction followed everywhere she went. "Go away like mom had taken you far from us."

Y/N had to choose my words very carefully then. "I can't do what you want. But I'll if your dad wants the same. I never- don't want to hurt him when he wakes up."

"He never will want you to go, if that's what you want to hear. He always tried to bargain for a family that wasn't ever there. He has to accept that. That imaginary family he thought he had, ceased to exist the day mom left us. All of us have to..."

Sometimes you want things that can't happen. That won't happen. And it's just how things are. "I guess that's it then."

There weren't any hugs. Any turn-backs. Or goodbyes. There was her dad who always denied the fact that there was no broken family, it always lived forever, and here was Rachael that called it all imaginary. Either way, she couldn't bid farewell to something that would always exist or to something that never existed.

"That was cruel," Pepper whispered.

"Some people don't understand that everyone has their fair share of misery and happiness. Rachel's one of them. And I'm tired of trying to make her understand that our losses are the same in one way or another."

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whitepolaris · 11 months ago

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The Balsams

by Joseph A. Citro

Most New Englanders have heard about The Balsams resort in Dixville Notch, New Hampshire. Deep in the North Country wilderness, ten miles from the nearest town, it is a city unto itself. There's something surreal about this magnificent grand hotel in such a remote and wild setting, almost as if some kind of giant Victorian spacecraft had touched down in the great north woods.

Of course, many people known that Dixville Notch's residents are the first to cast votes in presidential primaries-and, in fact, the voting booths are here in the hotel. Besides national politicians, you can also expect to see notables from the entertainment industry at the hotel, along with the less recognized elite from every walk of life.

What you don't expect to see are ghosts. And if there were ghosts, you'd expect the well-trained staff to be sworn to secrecy. Yet when I visited two years ago, I was delighted to discover The Balsams has a wonderfully active otherworldly population.

I was even more surprised to learn then president and managing partner Stephen P. Barba-who had worked at the hotel since 1959-not only talked about the ghosts, but has also been documenting their activity for years.

The Vanishing Beauty

"The number of reports [of ghosts] has greatly increased since we began our renovation program fifteen years ago," Steve told me.

Although he's never seen a wandering spirit himself, Steve doesn't discount the testimony of the many employees and guests who've had supernatural run-ins. "There are several staff who report seeing ghosts," Steve told me. "We have a bellhop who will never go to the third floor. . . ."

In the summer of 1997, Steve said, doorman Wesley Richardson was heading up to room 439. Halfway up the last flight of stairs, he looked up and saw a beautiful woman sitting in a chair on the third-floor landing. At first he thought she was a guest, but when he considered the hour (almost midnight), her clothing (a long, black old-fashioned dress), and her fixed stare, he wasn't so sure. When she didn't seem to notice him or the sound of his footsteps, he finally realized what he was seeing: not a guest but a ghost.

Just as Richardson began to turn away, the beautiful woman vanished.

A similar encounter involved a young businessman visiting the hotel. Thinking he was alone in the John Dix social parlor, he was surprised to hear the delighted laughter of a young woman. Enchanted, he began looking around for her. Much to his disappointment, she was nowhere to be seen. Later, returning to his room, he passed a large mirror in the corridor. In its dim depths he saw the reflection of someone behind me-an extraordinary beautiful young woman in a long formal gown. She and the clothing she wore seemed strangely old-fashioned.

The young man quickly turned to face her, but the hall was empty.

This lovely apparition has been reported many times in many parts of the hotel. Though she is often glimpsed in mirrors, she is also spotted sitting in chairs, standing in dark corners, and on occasion in plain sight. She has even appeared in the main lobby.

The Naked Man

Steve took me to room 120, one of the several allegedly haunted guest rooms. When we arrived, a housekeeper who had just finished cleaning was locking the door from the outside. Though we all knew the room was empty, we could plainly hear movement and talking within. Steve smiled, placing his ear against the door.

"You hear that?" he said.

Unbelievably, I did.

Just to be sure no one was there, Steve knocked before unlocking the door. Sure enough, the room was empty.

After we stepped inside, he told what had happened there.

After we stepped inside, he told me what had happened there.

At 12:30 in the morning of February 17, 1995, a lady awoke to find a naked man at the foot of her bed. Moonlight revealed that he was dripping wet form head to toe. At first she thought it was her husband, fresh out of the shower. She called to him, "Honey, are you all right?"

The answer came from under the bedclothes right beside her.

She quickly understood that the intruder was not corporeal. He faded away as she watched. Just before the apparition vanished completely, her husband, a sergeant in the Massachusetts state police, glimpsed it too.

Afterward, Steve Barba did a little research that revealed two possibly relevant details. First, back in the era of the big bands-the 1930s-bandleaders routinely stayed in room 120. Second, a certain bandleader had drowned in Lake Gloriette, which is located on the grounds of the hotel.

And Others . . .

Jacques Couture, an occasional employee of the hotel, is convinced that the place is not one, not two, but a small population of ethereal residents, some of whom he has personally seen. On November 15, 1995, for example, he was standing in the Captain's Study talking with hotel employee Diane Hall. As Jacques looked over Diane's shoulder in the direction of the Sun Room, he saw an apparition materialize right before his eyes. It appeared slowly, he said, standing direction in front of the door leading outside. Though the ghost's features were indistinct, Jacques was pretty sure it was a man.

Without saying anything, Jacques tried to signal for Diane to look, too. But before he could touch her shoulder, the apparition vanished. Jacques also reports an physical sensation, saying he felt very cold.

These are but a few of the myriad curious encounters at New Hampshire's most venerable haunted hotel. Nature? Supernature? Who knows? Both worlds seem perfectly intertwined at The Balsams.

#weird ghosts #type read

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darkkitty1208 · 2 years ago

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Tonight was the night.

The night.

Tony could feel his heart hammering in his chest at the thought as he stared at his reflection in the mirror. Three-piece suit, the finest one he had (which was tailored within a day in his panic), complete with a red tie to top off the look. He had been fiddling with strands in his hair rather obsessively now, trying to look his best and occasionally cringing at himself as he practiced his words in front of the mirror.

He had planned this night rather too meticulously to be humanly possible. Everyone would think being a billionaire meant it was easy to arrange a date night – in reality? That just meant opening up so many possibilities.

It needed to be a special date. He needed it to be the best of the best, the pressure of it making his palms and neck sweaty. He cleared his throat and started over.

"Stephen," he said, voice as sincere as he could, "the love of my life, my ever-faithful partner and my one and only wizard… or sorcerer, whatever," he cringed again.

God, this was hard.

A majority of his life, he had always been winging things and going with the flow, trusting his guts with confidence and relying on his billionaire playboy persona to fix the situation at hand (which, well, admittedly, hadn't worked out for the most part – that didn't stop someone like Tony Stark, though).

But tonight was different. He needed to be prepared. Everything needed to be perfect. It has been three years now and Tony doesn't think he was ever able to maintain a relationship (nor had he expected anyone to be able to put up with him enough to do so) this long. Well, there had been Pepper, but that ended eventually. They just didn't work. She deserved someone better, someone who would dedicate more of their time to her than he ever could. Someone who actually cared and loved her, someone with enough time in their hands to do more than just going head-first to death and disappearing for days on end.

As far as relationships went, Tony wasn't exactly the best partner, he had to admit. He had experimented with some – there was also the whole drunken fiasco with Rhodey (he realised they were better off as friends), and then there was May (the sex was great and all, but the whole… emotional connection thing? Yeah. He wasn't really into that), and a string of several other lovers along the way (he had to keep up his playboy image, didn't he?), but none of them had been… permanent.

And then there was Stephen.

Stephen had been the one to turn his life upside down and downside up. He had been Tony's permanent. Someone who would always stay by his side no matter the circumstances, who kept up with his snark and antics, and even loved him for it.

Tony wasn't sure what he did to deserve a man like him, but he sure as hell wasn't going to let this chance go to waste.

Which was why he felt permanent wasn't enough. He needed something more real, a mark that proved Stephen was his and he was Stephen's. That they belonged to each other and would last that way for forever. Till death do us part, and all that.

Tony took a deep breath. He straightened his tie.

"Alright, let's start over," he muttered, brushing his fingers over his chest. He cleared his throat.

"Stephen," he started, "the love of my life, my ever-faithful partner… I know it hasn't been long, I mean – erm, I know we haven't known each other for a long time," he cleared his throat again, dammit get it together Stark, "Meeting you… Meeting you has been the best thing that has ever happened in my life," he smiled, a sincere one that he had never shown in front of camera – a smile reserved only for people he held dear in his heart, "So, if you'll have me, Steph… Could you see your way, erm… If you could see your way to–"

His hand stopped mid-air and his words were cut short as a knock was heard on the door.

"Hey, it's Pepper."

"Uh, yeah," he said, hastily tidying himself, mentally preparing for Pepper's scrutinising eyes to observe every single detail in his look, "Yeah, come in."

Pepper slid through the door, just as Tony turned around to meet her eyes.

She stared.

"...wow."

Tony smiled, spreading his arms wide.

"What do you think? Good enough?"

"It's… wow." she said, and the wide-eyed look on her face has Tony sweating.

"That's…" he chuckled, almost letting his nervousness slip, "That's a good thing, right?"

"Yes! I mean, of course, Tony. You look… you really put in extra effort in this, did you?" she replied, and Tony smiled at that.

She stepped up to him, hands brushing against his chest and tugging at his tie, neatening it. "Good luck, Tony," she looked up at him, eyes sincere, "I wish you both the best." Tony smiled.

*.~ ◇ ~.*

"Where are you going?" Wong asked as he saw Stephen step down the stairs of the Sanctum, looking almost like a completely different person with his tuxedo and slick-backed hair.

"I'm… going on a date."

"A date?"

"...yes, a date."

"With Stark?" Stephen nodded almost sheepishly. Wong snorted at that.

"Where?"

"The Ritz."

Not a surprise for him. Being a billionaire meant being able to dine in the Ritz like how one would go to McDonalds.

"Well," the librarian turned his head back to the book on his lap. "Have fun. And don't forget to use protection."

"Wong!" Stephen protested. The other sorcerer could barely hide his smirk at the flustered reaction.

Just then, a knock sounded from the Sanctum entrance. Stephen couldn't help but perk up at that, stifling a giddy smile as he sauntered over to open the door.

Tony stood there with a bouquet of flowers in hand. The man seemed stunned.

"...hi," Stephen said, smiling. Tony snapped out of his trance and finally responded with a croaked, "Hey."

And then the engineer froze again as he stared at Stephen's face.

Stephen stared back, trying not to feel too awkward at the situation.

"Are… those for me?" Stephen pointed at the flowers.

"Hm?" Tony flitted his eyes to where Stephen pointed, "Oh! Yeah. It's uh, for you. Yes."

"They're… very beautiful," he remarked, "Thank you."

Stephen accepted them with a warm smile and quickly portaled it to be placed in a conjured vase. The sorcerer then leant in to peck a quick, chaste kiss over Tony's cheek, delighting in the slight flush it caused on the other man.

"Sh-shall we?" Tony said, stepping aside. Stephen nodded, conjuring a portal to a nearby alley close by their restaurant.

(Tony knew he hated cars. He wouldn't ever take Stephen on a ride unless the sorcerer stated otherwise. They had agreed on portals as their main transportation mode since the first time they dated.)

They both stepped through, shoulder-to-shoulder. They walked through the alley, when suddenly a man shouldered his way between them with a muttered 'sorry'.

Tony huffed.

"Rude."

Stephen, on the other hand, was frowning. He grabbed the man's shoulder and turned him to their direction. True enough, the smuggler snuck out his wallet and was in the middle of tucking it in his pocket. Stephen sighed.

"Great. Would you please give that back? You won't really find anything of value in there."

The man scowled at him. He pulled out the wallet, opened it, and Stephen had to suppress an embarrassed wince at how pathetic the inside was.

The man raised his brow, looking up. He turned his head to Tony, and his eyes widened.

"Tony Stark?"

Tony looked at him. "The one and only."

The smuggler huffed out a laugh.

"You're telling me," he pointed at Stephen, "A guy like you dates Tony Stark?"

Stephen looked down, but Tony had a stern expression on his face.

"Watch it, jerk face," the engineer warned, hands in fists.

"I mean. It's no wonder, the guy's a billionaire and you want a slice of that, don't ya?" the man stepped ever so closer but not Stephen nor Tony backed down.

The smuggler tsked at him. "Especially with those hideous hands, I bet y–"

The man was suddenly knocked off his feet with the force of Tony's angry fist, his body toppling to the ground as a trail of blood came out of his – seemingly broken – nose. Tony composed himself as he took deep breaths, his anger levels out of the roof.

"Bastard," he spat out, "We can't have a single date night that goes smoothly, can we?" He inspected his red knuckles, waving it off.

Stephen stood and stared at the prone body, and then at Tony.

A moment lapsed in silence. And then a giggle errupted from the sorcerer, almost uncalled for. Tony frowned, but couldn't help joining in.

"What? What's so funny?" he said in-between chuckles.

"No, it's just…" Stephen looked into his eyes, his blue-green-grey eyes glinting in the city lights. "Thank you."

HAPPY (belated) BIRTHDAY, @darkkitty1208!!! 🎉🎉

Sorry this is coming to you so late, but I genuinely hope you had a wonderful birthday full of smiles and good food!!! Thank you for all the support on my goofy little doodles, hon!! ♥️

#ironstrange #my fic #my writing #TOOK ME A WHILE BUT HERE YA GO #BARELY PROOFREAD FORGIVE ALL MISTAKES PLEASE FBJSNFBR

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queenclaudiabrown · 1 year ago

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Shadow of The Jaguar by Steven Savile | THREE

It was still too early to call Nando Estevez, and would be for some time yet, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t make preparations. There were a thousand things that needed to be put in place for a legitimate scientific expedition, and almost none of them could be done overnight. Still, they had to be done.

Cutter corralled the team into his office, mentally sorting out the best way to divvy up responsibilities.

He looked at them looking at him, and wondered what they saw. Sometimes he had difficulty recognizing the man he saw reflected in their eyes, seeing instead a distorted image in a fun-house mirror. He recognised the features, the lines and bone structure, that was all intimately familiar to him, but the flesh did not make the man. The sum of his experiences did. Memories shaped a man’s life and gave it purpose and meaning.

They had their memories, and he had his, and even when they were of each other they were different. Cutter hadn’t lived through many of the experiences they thought they shared between them. It was a peculiar thing to think about: a wrinkle in time.

He needed to think about something else. Time to throw himself into his work.

They had resources now, he reminded himself. The ARC was a long way from his disorganised academic haven shunted away on the far corner of the university campus. They had money at their disposal, and they even had access to the strings that needed to be pulled.

He could probably have left them to their own devices, said something like: “Suit up and be ready for the morning,” and they would have been.

But he preferred to be on top of things, even if it was akin to teaching his grandmother to suck eggs - an expression that had never made that much sense to him.

“I feel like I just stepped through the looking glass,” Cutter began, peering beyond them at his reflection in the glass door. “Now I’m trying to believe in five impossible things before breakfast, and I think my head is going to explode.”

“Six,” Connor corrected.

“What?”

“It’s six impossible things.”

“Right. And that’s meant to help prevent my head from exploding?” Cutter scratched at the stubble on his cheek to hide his slight grin. “Okay, so let’s review the situation from our end.” He turned to Stephen. “Was Nando Estevez in your seminar group?”

Stephen shook his head. “The name doesn’t ring any bells. Sorry.”

“Ah, well, Nando is an old student of mine. He contacted me last night to report something potentially very exciting. He’s a ranger in an eco-reserve in Peru. Part of his job is to study the behavioural patterns of the 100-plus endangered species that can be found within the rainforest. Recently, he’s noticed a lot of strange activity, including tracks he doesn’t recognise, and bones that are out of time. Reading between the lines I think he suspects they are from a supposedly extinct creature. By themselves they prove nothing, though they do raise a lot of questions, and coupled with some peculiar migratory patterns he has observed in the species, I think it means a prehistoric creature has been introduced into the ecosystem. Perhaps more than one. This could be our first solid evidence of an anomaly outside of the British Isles.”

He paused, and allowed that to sink in for a moment. Connor, of course, was the first to speak up.

“Do you know what that means?” he said breathlessly, as his mind raced to catch up with all of the possibilities. This was a conspiracy theorist’s dream... and nightmare. “It doesn’t have to be the only one, does it? I mean, there could be anomalies all over the world. Everywhere.”

The implications of it hung there, just waiting to be voiced. It was Abby who spoke up next.

“Oh, God,” she said, shaking her head. “What does it mean? If anomalies could begin opening everywhere, the past and the future breaking through, is time itself coming undone? Life’s supposed to be a straight line, from birth to death, not twisting and turning across the millennia.”

Then her specialty kicked in.

“How can we survive if bacteria from the Permian are suddenly let loose, and we’re not there to contain it? We have no vaccines. No resistance. Look at bird flu. What if it’s not natural? What if it appeared just because a bird in Eastern Europe fed on some Jurassic faeces? Look how it’s spread, what it’s done to livestock.”

She sat back and muttered, “Oh, God.”

All of this had occurred to Cutter, and more. The threat to humanity didn’t have to come from the past, either. Seeing Abby’s troubled face, he chose not to voice his fears.

“You think something has come through, then? Some sort of predator?” Stephen asked, bringing them back, ironically, to the present.

“I don’t know.” Cutter admitted. “But that would be the logical conclusion. The rainforest ecosystem is a finely balanced mechanism. Sudden changes are uncommon, and when they do occur it’s almost always because something has unsettled the balance. A new predator is the logical extrapolation of the facts.”

Stephen nodded.

“It’s hardly new, though, surely?” Connor said. “What about El Chupacabra? South American territories are rife with stories of mysterious predators and mystical devil dogs going back centuries. Iconographically, even their gods are based upon incredible monsters. Take Quetzalcoatl, the bird serpent.”

“True,” Cutter said. “There might still be unidentified species in the region.”

“Any ideas what we’re looking for?” Jenny asked.

“Could be anything, literally. We’ve got all of history to contend with. Predators were common on the South American pampas.” He stopped, wary of letting them get carried away with endless supposition.

“So, this morning I was told in no uncertain terms an investigation was out of the question, and this afternoon we’re packing our bags for Peru. As much as I hate the political ramifications of what Lester is asking us to do, this is a pretty unique chance for us to see what’s out there. Let’s not waste the opportunity.

“With that in mind, we’re going to need to make some pretty serious preparations in a very short period of time. I’m going to contact Nando and arrange for a welcoming committee, once we reach the reserve. Connor, I want you to sort out the technical side of things, go to the stores, work out what we’re likely to need to do this properly.

“Abby can you handle the practicalities: tents, dry bags, first aid supplies, salt pills?

“Jenny, if this is meant to be a legitimate expedition, we’re going to need transport both to get there and once we’re on the ground - and it has to be of the non-military variety. Let’s distance ourselves as far as possible from anything official. Get onto the airlines, find out the nearest airport, arrange the hire of an All Terrain Vehicle. I’m sure there are a stack of permits we’ll need to have in place before we touch down.”

“Already onto it,” she said briskly.

“Great. Stephen, we’re going to need supplies in situ: food, water, dietary supplements. We’re not going to be in a position to wander into the nearest supermarket once we land, and certainly not once we’re in the wild. We’re going to need maps too. I don’t want to leave anything to chance.”

“Maps? Maps? We don t need no stinking maps,” Connor said, doing a fairly miserable Bogart impression. “We’ve got the GPS trackers, satellite hook-ups, pin-point accuracy. All the mod cons for us, Prof. None of this splashing around in the mud trying to read soggy paper.”

“Right, and they’re all well and good, but how exactly do you plan on charging them up on day two? We’re going to have to do it the old fashioned way, I’m afraid.”

“I don’t suppose...” Connor paused, looking around the room hopefully. “You know... What about guns?”

“What about them? Should we plan on smuggling them across international boundaries? Last time I looked ‘gunrunner’ wasn’t in the job description.”

“We could use diplomatic pouches,” Connor offered.

“Do you really think I’m going to let you run around in the jungle with an AK47?” Cutter asked. And his face made it clear that it wasn’t really a question.

Connor shrugged. “Worth a try.”

“Who knows, one day I might weaken,” Cutter said. “But I wouldn’t count on it.”

Alejandro Inatuzi was a simple man. His life consisted of simple things.

The simplest of which was the dream of going home to sleep. The Médico Clinica Cuzco operated on a three-shift system - at least in theory. He had worked eighteen hours straight, with three more to go, and needed a cigarette if he was going to make it through.

He snuck out, nodding as he passed the ward sister who was hunched over patient charts working out doses of medication for the night shift. Pills of all colours were laid out in white paper drinking cups, waiting to be taken through to the wards. She smiled up at him as he walked by her desk. Her deep brown eyes were manna from heaven. There was beauty, he mused, the young, pretty kind that was brushed on with makeup, and then there was real beauty, the lines of the face, the curves of the body, ample and rounded, of a proper woman. Sister Maya Vennasque was a proper woman in every sense of the word. She had the kind of beauty that would have made painters weep and plead for the chance to immortalise her.

Hell, Alejandro wanted to paint her, and there wasn’t an artistic bone in his body.

He mimed smoking a cigarette and she shook her head. so he shrugged a kind of rueful can’t blame a guy for trying shrug, and pressed the button for the elevator.

The corridors exuded that ever-present ammonia and antiseptic smell. The floor tiles were scuffed and worn, any kind of lustre long since trodden into submission by countless feet over the course of too many years to remember.

The elevator arrived, and he went outside for his smoke. Alejandro rolled his own licorice-paper cigarettes, adding a little smoothing extra to the tobacco in order to wake him up during the interminably long shifts.

He savoured the smoke as it filled his lungs, finished cigarette, then wandered back up to finish the chores on his duty roster. He had six rooms left to visit before he could go home.

Maya smiled her heart-stopping smile as the elevator doors opened up again.

“No rest for the wicked,” he said, leaning up against the desk, “and no use pretending I’m not the wickedest.”

“Alejandro Inatuzi, what would your wife say if she knew you spent your nights flirting with another woman?”

“She’d threaten to cut bits off of me, I am sure,” he replied, grinning. “So let’s keep it our secret.”

“You’re incorrigible,” Maya chuckled.

“I try to be.”

“Take these in to the Englishman would you?” she said. “He needs to take three on the hour.” She handed him one of the small pill cups.

He wandered back toward his steel cart, which was still up against the wall where he had left it an hour ago. That was one thing about the night shift, generally it was calm - at least once it was past three a.m., that is.

That was one of the curiosities he’d discovered working in the hospital - more people died at three in the morning than at any other time of day.

They joked about the Death Hour, but they all believed it. ‘El Diablo’s Time’, they called it.

He checked his watch. It was five minutes to four. Five more minutes, then he was home free. He laughed quietly at himself and started whistling as he walked.

The Englishman was in the last room off the corridor, sharing, it with Paco, an emphysemic who hadn’t said a word since he lay down in bed, six weeks earlier. Paco had been brought into the hospital to die, left there by a grandson who had no wish to care for the old man. Sometimes people disappointed Alejandro; there was honour in caring for your elders. It went back to tribal times; the men gave their lives for the tribe, and when they could no longer hunt or fish or fight, they were cared for by the beloved they had spent their lives feeding and protecting.

This new generation, with their flat-screens and their fast cars, left a lot to be desired when it came to humanity. With that thought, he turned to enter the darkened room.

There was a man standing over the Englishman’s bed.

It took Alejandro a moment to realise that he didn’t recognise him.

“What are you doing?” he asked. A superstitious part of his brain began screaming that he had walked in upon El Diablo, come to claim the Englishman for himself. Inwardly, he cursed himself for a fool.

The man turned to face him, but said nothing.

For a moment it seemed as though he had no face. There was no shape to it; no features, no colour. Alarmed, Alejandro reached for the switch and turned on the overhead lights.

The stranger was wearing a mask, and he held a needle gun, which he had stabbed into the morphine dispenser. Alejandro watched as he depressed the trigger again and again and again, administering dose after dose.

“Get away from him!” the orderly cried in alarm.

The stranger let the dispenser drop and stepped away from the window-side bed. The saline drip was shot through with a ribbon of red: blood, Alejandro realised sickly.

Still the stranger said nothing. He reached behind his back for something as he walked slowly toward the door. His hand came back holding a snub-nosed revolver.

Alejandro threw up his hands, pleading, “Don’t shoot me. Please. I did not see anything. The Englishman died in his sleep. It happens. Please, do not shoot me. I have a wife and three boys. Please.” The stranger came close enough that the foul stench of his breath was sucked back into Alejandro’s lungs as he swallowed air.

He didn’t pull the trigger. Instead he raised his hand and hammered the hilt of the gun into the side of Alejandro’s skull with a sickening crunch of bone. The orderly fell, sprawling out across the freshly disinfected floor. He could see his own face reflected in the white tiles, and the blood-red rose that seemed to flower at his temple.

The stranger stepped over him, his footsteps echoing hollowly in the antiseptic quiet of the ward.

Alejandro did not dare move until the steps had faded to nothing. Only then did he struggle back to his feet. He stumbled across to the Englishman’s bed and pulled back the blankets. He wrenched the needle out of the patient’s arm, cutting off the supply of whatever drug the stranger had administered.

The flesh had already turned bruise-purple around the central line.

Poison? There were a hundred lethal drugs in the supply cabinets, and no way of knowing the toxicology of what was in the Englishman’s blood without testing the bag from the drip itself.

The rhythmic beep of the heart monitor beside the bed faltered, and stopped.

Alejandro hit the alarm.

A minute later the crash team came running.

The call came in a little before six in the evening.

“Lester,” he said, answering the phone himself. As the voice spoke on the other end, however, he sat up straight in his chair.

Cameron Bairstow was talking.

Sir Charles’ man had made it through the wall of protection ringing the hospital by posing as a hospital orderly.

“We’ve had word.” Sir Charles’ aristocratic burr was stretched painfully thin by a mix of grief and the muted telephone line. “It is Cameron they found, and Jaime is dead.”

“I’m sorry for your loss,” Lester replied, surprising himself because he actually managed to sound as though a part of him meant it.

“I don’t want your sorrow, Lester, I want you to bring my boy home. That is all that matters to me.”

“I understand, but surely Cameron is safe now, and at the risk of being insensitive, there’s nothing we can do for Jaime. There is no longer the need for our little charade. And I’m sure the Foreign Office can assist with the arrangements...”

The silence on the line was long and drawn out, the rasp of breathing the only hint that Sir Charles was still there. Finally, he spoke.

“Cam is far from safe. There was an attempt on his life tonight. He was drugged in his bed, Lester. Someone broke into the hospital and tried to kill him while he slept. God only knows why. I won’t lose him, Lester. I have instructed my man to post armed guards at his bedside twenty-four seven, until your people arrive to collect him. It is only by the grace of God that he is not dead, twice over.” Again there was silence, and then he spoke again.

“Listen to me, and listen to me well. I have lost one son. I will not lose another, Lester. I do not trust these people.”

And despite that shocking truth, there was something in the way Sir Charles spoke that hinted there was still more to this than he was telling.

That rankled.

“I would very much like to contact your man,” Lester remarked, fastening onto the old man’s evasiveness. He wasn’t about to let this go. If there was one thing he hated, it was people hiding things from him. “There are questions I need to ask, for my team, and no disrespect, but it would be best to hear from him, rather than through your filter.”

“Are you suggesting that I would lie?”

“Not at all, sir, not at all. You have nothing to hide, I’m certain, so why should I think you are being anything other than 100 per cent truthful? I understand you are concerned that any indiscretion might make your son’s situation worse - loose tongues cost lives, and all that - but I assure you my team will act with the utmost tact. We will bring him home, but we really need to talk to your man to assess the situation properly. We have questions that need answering. Fools blunder in, Sir Charles, and none of us like to think of ourselves as fools, do we?”

“Very well.” Sir Charles said. “I am trusting you with my boy’s life, Lester. Don’t let me down.” Then he gave him the com-sat co-ordinates, call signal, a list of contact times, and the frequency that would allow Lester to reach his man on the ground.

“A simple telephone number would have sufficed,” Lester said dryly.

This time the silence on the line was absolute. Sir Charles had broken the connection, leaving Lester holding the phone.

He sat back in his chair as he worried over what hadn’t been said. It was far more telling than what had. Lester cracked the bones of his knuckles, one at a time.

Sir Charles wanted his son back, there was no denying that, but he wanted it done quietly, with the minimum of fuss, because for whatever reason he didn’t want Cameron’s story splashed across the front pares.

Was he just protecting his son? There was nothing untoward in that, if he was. No sinister purpose. Cameron had almost certainly witnessed his brother’s killing, and that someone had attempted to murder him before he could talk added a sense of urgency to the situation. That intrigued Lester, he had to admit. But then murder was often fascinating.

So what was it, an eye for an eye? Had Jaime’s killers come looking for Cam to finish the job? If so, what had he seen that could possibly frighten them into murder in such a public place?

He had to impress Sir Charles’ urgency onto Jenny. He had given his word. That meant that they would bring him home.

And not in a box, if it could be helped.

***

The storerooms were an Aladdin’s Cave of gadgets. Connor Temple scratched the scruff on the side of his face and tapped through the various menus looking for anything and everything that might be of use.

Every item he could possibly need or want was represented by a small icon, which led to a description detailing precise dimensions, weight, and function. Despite what Cutter had said, he fully intended to fill up one of the Personal Digital Assistants with every scrap of data he could find on Peru, including flora, fauna, maps, political climate, hot zones, traditions and culture. They could jury-rig extra juice from a spare battery cradle that would give them twenty-four hours continuous use, and considerably more if used sparingly. Sometimes the holes in Cutter’s understanding were frightening. When it came to technology, it was as though he were trapped somewhere back in the eighties with his transistors, eight-track players and LEDs.

“Practical, think practical,” he muttered to himself, resisting the urge to get carried away and requisition stuff for every eventuality.

As an afterthought, he patched through to Jenny on the intercom.

“Stupid question, but what sort of baggage allowance have we got?”

She laughed at him. It wasn’t cruel laughter, though - far from it. There was genuine affection in the sound. He could imagine her smiling into the intercom.

“We aren’t flying British Airways, Connor. And we can’t exactly drop in

on a Hercules, so just this once we’re travelling in style. I’ve chartered a private jet from a government contractor.”

“Nice.” He was impressed.

Moments later, Connor was compiling the playlist for his MP3 player in his head, and he had it complete by the time the first of the steel coffins rolled in on the conveyor belt. It was all about the mood, matching the spirit of adventure with the mellowness demanded by fifteen hours cramped up in a tin can hurtling through the sky. Augustana, Aimee Mann, Breaking Benjamin, some Foo Fighters and Everclear to kick-start the journey. He could imagine Dave Grohl singing ‘Next Year’ as the wheels left the ground, followed by something more grungy as they climbed to altitude, The Levellers’ England My Home’ with its discordant fiddles, and Pearl Jam’s ‘Black’ with its melancholic melody. Throw in some Snow Patrol, Billy Corgan, Neil Hannon, and Mike Doughty and some old classics like Black Dog and 2112, and that was the first hour pretty much sorted.

The second hour, well, that had to be mod classics like Madness’ Must Be Love’, Adam Ant’s ‘Prince Charming and The Specials’ ‘Ghost Town’, then shake it up a bit with ‘It’s A Kind of Magic’, ‘Mirror in the Bathroom’ or Bowie’s ‘Ashes to Ashes’ to follow. With any kind of mix, the success was down to how well the individual tracks flowed - it wasn’t about how great they were individually. There needed to be just the right amount of juxtaposition and continuity between bass lines and vocals to make it interesting, but not jarring.

He broke the seals on the coffins to make sure everything he had chosen was safely stowed inside. Once he was satisfied all was as it should be, he locked them up again and struggled to drag them through to the loading bay. He muttered the refrain from a Stone Temple Pilots song as he wrestled with the steel boxes, not that anyone would have been able to recognise the words between huffs and puffs.

It was a huge amount of equipment, but then, he had tried to think of every eventuality.

Connor went through to the rec room. A re-run of Robot Wars was playing to itself on the flat-screen. He sank down into one of the beanbags across from the sofa and fired up the laptop someone had left on the table. The ARC was on an integrated network. Within a few minutes he was browsing the music files on his own machine and recreating the playlist from scratch. It took him the best part of an hour.

It was an hour in which his curiosity got the better of him. He went back to the virtual server that linked the various machines up, and tapped in a string of commands. He hit a wall immediately, But, he thought to himself, what are walls for if not climbing?

He tried another string, hit another wall.

Then he went back to his own file directory and pulled out a spider program, and set it running as he returned to the wall. In five minutes he was through and looking at the main server, completely free of any filters or barriers.

“Well, well, well,” he said to himself, cracking his knuckles. Six more keystrokes had him in the personal files. Four more and he was reading the name Abigail Sarah Maitland on his screen. It was all there, everything that was known about her, and he couldn’t stop himself from reading until he heard footstens in the corridor outside.

Connor slammed the laptop case down and tried to pretend that he was minding his own business. He was whistling a mangled Nirvana tune when Abby’s pixie-like face peered around the doorframe. Seeing Connor, she stuck her tongue out, grinned, and then hurried away, her heavy boots clattering along the corridor.

He blushed and, sighing with relief at his narrow escape, fired up the laptop again. He killed the connection to the personnel database.

He spent the rest of the day filling three PDAs with everything remotely Peruvian that he could find, and it really was a case of anything and everything restaurant addresses in downtown Cuzco, emergency service numbers, embassy contact details, festivals, ceremonies, custom and costumes, religious practices, poisonous plant life, six-months-worth of newspaper articles. By the end of the day he had compiled an electronic oracle.

“Ask it a question, anything you like,” he challenged Abby the next time he saw her.

“Oh, I don’t know, how about the meaning of life, the universe and everything?” Abby said, smiling.

“That’s too easy,” Connor tapped out a couple of commands, and the number forty-two appeared on the screen. He held it up to show her.

“You are such a geek.”

“But a loveable one, right?”

“Not the first word I would have chosen.”

“Tread softly,” Lester said, handing Jenny Lewis the contact details for Sir Charles’ man on the ground in Peru. “There was an attempt on young Bairstow’s life last night. He’s still with us, and we need to keep it that way.

“Needless to say,” he continued, “Sir Charles is most upset by the whole affair. I promised him you would take care of it. There are armed guards assigned to the hospital now. You are to get Bairstow out of there. Understood?” She nodded.

“Minimum of fuss. Sir Charles is leaning on me to get his boy home, which is all well and good, but on top of the whole attempted murder thing, we’ve got an actual murder to worry about, of a Peer of the Realm’s son on foreign soil. Like it or not, we’re talking a political minefield.

“Sooner or later, the press are going to get wind of Jaime Bairstow’s death. They always do. Someone in Births, Deaths and Marriages will sell them a copy of the death certificate, or one of the baggage handlers at the airport will let slip about the coffin he carried off the plane that morning.

We don’t need a diplomatic incident here, Jenny. It’s all about damage limitation. We need to keep our stories straight.”

Jenny read through the contact information.

“What am I supposed to do with this?” she asked quizzically.

“Make the call, ask the right questions. That’s what you’re good at, after all. Make the necessary arrangements to bring the boy home.”

“There’s something you aren’t telling me, Lester,” Jenny said, laying the paper aside. “What is it?”

Lester shrugged.

“I don’t know. Just a feeling. I’m really hoping we’re talking about poachers here. Perhaps the boys stumbled across some of them in flagrante delicto, so to speak. God forbid Cutter’s paranoia rubs off on me, or Connor’s conspiracy theories, but I can’t help thinking there’s something Sir Charles doesn’t want us to know - and my money’s on the fact that that something is tied in with Cameron’s recollection of the attack. First Cutter comes into the office talking about anomalies in Madre de Dios, now this.

I’m not a huge believer in coincidence, if you catch my meaning.”

“It’s rather hard to miss.”

“Good. Let’s be blunt here, if it turns out young Bairstow has seen an anomaly, we’re going to need to make sure that part of the story never makes it out for public consumption.”

When the next contact time arrived, Jenny took the details down to the Communications Centre on the main concourse. She had a technician relay one of the handsets through the com-sat on the right frequency, and retreated into the privacy of an empty lab.

“Little Gods,” she said into the handset. “Little Gods, are you receiving me?”

A burst of static answered her.

She repeated the call sign every twenty seconds for five full minutes before a disembodied voice crackled back.

“This is Little Gods, over.”

“Little Gods, this is the ARC calling. Over.”

“What can I do for you, ARC? Over.”

“Our mutual friend suggested we contact you before we fly in. We have some questions about the lie of the land. Over.”

“Ask away. Over.”

“We’ve been led to believe you have spoken with Cameron? Over.”

“Yes, I have. Over.”

“What can you tell us about the attack on his brother? Over.”

That was met by a grunt of what sounded like laughter. She hoped it

was a quirk of the broadcast.

“Nothing that makes any sense, I’m afraid. Over.”

“Try me, Little Gods. Over.”

“His recollections are patchy at best, though he does recall being stalked by a big cat. Over.”

“So it wasn’t poachers? Over.”

“No. He’s adamant that it was an animal. A jaguar perhaps, but huge.

He kept saying that. The cat was huge. That’s about the only coherent part of his story. Over.”

“Don’t make me drag it out of you, Little Gods. Over.”

More laughter greeted that.

“He talked about diamonds in the air, as well. Diamonds that swallowed his attacker. Over.”

Jenny paused a beat, and wished she hadn’t heard correctly.

It was a concise and credible description of an anomaly, but she wasn’t about to let Sir Charles’ man know that his words meant anything to her.

“I see what you mean,” she said. “It makes no sense. Over.”

“Trauma plays tricks on the mind. It’s a miracle the lad is alive, after everything he’s been through. His wounds are terrible to see. Over.”

“Indeed. I am assuming one of them was a head wound? Over.”

“Multiple blows to the head, resulting in severe concussion, all of which would account for the disturbed vision and so-called floating diamonds. Not very exciting, I’m afraid. Over.”

This time it was Jenny who laughed. Breaking protocol, Bairstow’s man continued.

“Our friend tells me I am to meet you at the landing strip. I hope you are as beautiful as your laugh, ARC. Over and out.”

Jenny sat there for a few moments, letting the implications of what she had heard settle in. Diamonds in the air. Cameron Bairstow had described the shimmer of an anomaly. There was nothing else she could think of that could possibly account for what he had seen. Not even a concussion would lead him to that precise a description.

The revelation posed an entirely new set of problems, but it did not begin to answer why someone would try to kill him.

She needed to talk to Lester.

“Well, that is most disturbing,” Lester said. He had his back to her, and stared at the wall as though gazing out through a window that wasn’t there. “Are you sure that’s what he said?”

“Positive,” Jenny confirmed. “At least that’s what Little Gods reported”

“So what do you suggest we do now?”

“Cutter should be made aware of the situation, for a start.”

“I’m not entirely sure he should. The last thing we need is Indiana Cutter thrashing through the jungle with a machete, in search of diamonds in the sky.”

“But what’s the alternative?”

“In-and-out, that’s the remit. Keep Cutter away from the Bairstow boy. Keep the Bairstow boy away from the press. Basically keep everyone away from the anomaly, and bury this non-story dead.”

“You make it sound simple.”

“It’s why we pay you the big bucks,” Lester said without the slightest trace of irony in his voice. As he turned, she saw that he was smiling. Far from being pleasant, it was an almost predatory expression. “Do your job, manage the situation, Jenny. Go there. Get the boy. Bring him home. I don’t want to be reading about any of this in the newspapers. No anomaly lasts forever, we know that much. So we keep it quiet, bide our time, wait it out. It will decay and disappear. It might already have done so, for all we know. The fewer people who know about what’s going on, the better.”

“Standard governmental operating procedure,” she said, before she could stop herself. Lester didn’t appear to catch the cynicism in her voice; he was far too preoccupied with fighting imaginary PR fires in his head.

“Quite. Least said, soonest mended. It is not as though people are going to stumble upon a temporal rift in the middle of the rainforest.”

She resisted the temptation to point out that it had already happened once.

#primeval #shadow of the jaguar #steven savile #nick cutter #stephen hart #abby maitland #connor temple

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mianmimi · 2 years ago

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Random Earth 838 omegaverse headcanon: Omega Mordo wears more layers than necessary and when Alpha Stephen tells him he doesn’t need to do that he goes “baring my bondmark/scent gland like some sort of floozy??” He’s traditional like that lol, calls Stephen “my alpha” as a petname and enjoys the role of a traditional omega. Even though they’re both aware that Mordo’s more than capable on his own, Stephen loves to be the typical chivalrous protective alpha for his omega ❤️

Hello dear Nonny! I know this ask has been here forever and a day. I was writing a little drabble for it 🙈 I’m sorry for the delay. Also sorry for how the drabble kinda goes off the rails a bit at the end 😆 Enjoy ♥️ And I’m also sorry cause it’s not the best of my attempts, got a lot on my mind recently 😞 But I’m trying.

_____________________

“Don’t you think that’s a bit excessive?”

Stephen watched from the bed, his gaze filled with soft amusement as Karl readied himself before a grand mirror.

“Not at all,” Karl said. He adjusted his regalia, soothing the faint creases on his thick emerald collar. He looked at the reflection, first of himself, then of his lover. Stephen was casually laying on their bed, peppered hair a mess, with a smile melting through his face with such genuine sweetness it made Karl’s belly flutter.

“No one here minds,” Stephen’s deep voice drew out his sleepy words. “It’s New York. Omegas expose their bondmarks as much as their faces. You know some cultures even encourage it.”

“And that's wonderful,” Karl said. “But it isn’t part of my culture.”

The omega turned to face his alpha, hands threading through his locks to secure the jewlery that fell off that past night.

“I won’t have anyone else knowing my scent,” Mordo approached Stephen, his steps solid and graceful. He cupped Stephen’s cheek gently, the soft palm warming at the smile that met it.

“Oh? Supreme privileges?” Stephen teased. “Is that written in the bylaws somewhere?”

Karl’s face eased. Years ago his family would have readily arranged that for him, matching him with nothing less than a master or a supreme. Romance was a happy surprise if you found it in a marriage, but it certainly wasn’t needed. It was enough for an alpha to protect and provide. And gods if you were truly fortunate, your alpha might even respect you. All those things and more he believed, accepted, and expected.

Until he met the mess of a man known as Stephen Strange, a man who opened his eyes to the possibility of love beyond a marriage contract or a bond.

“Supremes can change,” Karl said. “You could lose your title, your rank, and all those privileges you adore. But you act like it’s guaranteed to you forever. All it takes is one poor choice and you can lose it.”

“Not happening,” Stephen said. “Not to me.”

“Why? Afraid someone will take what’s yours?” Karl asked.

“The things that matter, yes.” Stephen said. He lifted Karl’s palm and kissed it gently. The omega allowed it before slipping away from him. And just as he predicted, Stephen leaned in to keep their contact.

“You don’t look so sleepy anymore,” Karl said, stepping away from the bed. “Hurry up and get ready. It isn’t proper for the Sorcerer Supreme to be late.”

His doe eyes brightened, satisfied when Stephen at last swung his legs on the side of the bed and stood with a stretch. By the time he stepped out he would look as he should, nothing less than the regal Supreme. But for now he was simply an alpha shaking off his sleep.

“Let them wait,” Stephen said, throwing his hand up lightly. “They can wait. I said so. Supreme privileges.”

“Well someone has to tell them you decided to sleep in. Might as well be me, as your omega and representative,” Karl said.

“I really wish you would stop that,” Stephen sighed. “You’re not my assistant. I know it’s tradition but you don’t have to speak for me.”

“I insist. Now can you check my collar? Is it high up enough?” Karl asked, turning so Stephen could see his nape.

The omega’s lips fell open when he felt Stephen’s finger gently brushing the bond mark. How the alpha got behind him that quickly amazed Karl for a moment. Stephen hovered gently over him, the warm breath descending into a gentle kiss on the scarred skin.

Karl gave a soft moan of approval as Stephen kissed the mark, scenting him for good measure. Then the fabric of the collar came over the mark, sealing it away, and Karl’s heart was at ease knowing the only eyes to see it would be his alpha’s.

“Much better,” Stephen said as Mordo turned around once more to face him. “Are you sure we can’t stay a little longer? There are other places beneath your robes that I would very much like to kiss.”

“My Stephen,” Karl teased. “Ever generous with your affections if it keeps everyone else waiting,”

The alpha lifted his hand to cup the back of Karl’s neck, intending to kiss his omega properly, but as he did Karl’s smile faded.

“Stephen…what’s this?”

“What?”

“Your hand.”

Stephen quickly stepped away, narrowly avoiding Karl’s own attempt to grab his hand to inspect it. He silently casted a spell over the darkness spreading down his fingers, a stronger glamor than the ones he used before.

“Undo the glamor,” Karl demanded, his tone completely different from before. “I want to see.”

“It’s just the spell to stabilize my hands,” Stephen said. “I just forgot to complete the series of maintenance spells for my injuries. I haven’t been sleeping well for days-”

“You think I haven’t noticed that?” Karl asked. There was tightness within the calm of his voice, “Do you also think I don’t notice when you hide away from me and our children to attend meetings that don’t happen?”

Stephen sighed and shook out his hands, lifting them so Karl could see. The omega held them, carefully inspecting the glamor. The alpha felt his chest crunching with unease, counting the layers of spells Karl was peeling through before he finally pulled away.

Any deeper and he would have been found out.

“Whatever it is you suspect, it’s not true,” Stephen said. He looked at his hands. They were scared and pale, but free from marks of forbidden magic. “It’s nothing worth worrying about. Believe me. A little rest will solve it. I just need to remember those spells to hide my injuries from before. I can handle this.”

“That’s what you always say,” Karl said. “Right before I’m proven right.”

“Karl-“

“I want to be wrong Stephen. About my suspicions, and what my intuition is telling me.”

Even in his anger Karl remained composed, measuring the force of his voice carefully. It was more terrifying to Stephen than outright blind rage.

“And what exactly does your intuition tell you?” Stephen asked.

“That you’re keeping secrets from me,” Karl said. His voice was soft yet broken.

“I trust you with my life,” Stephen’s words were like a plea.

“But not your secrets.”

Stephen shook his head at those words. He pulled his omega close, scenting him gently, trying to dispel the storm gathering between them.

“It’s nothing for you to worry about it.”

“Then why the glamor? Why the sudden meetings with no one? What can’t you share with me that you readily share with your colleagues? Or is it all part of your Sorcerer Supreme privileges?”

Karl’s body was tense, shifting away from Stephen’s touch. Stephen kept his arms around his omega, for the first time scared of letting him go.

“I want to know how to help you,” Karl said. “Why won’t you let me help you?”

“Because you’re my mate. You have so much already to think of and attend to. I don’t want to add another burden-”

“Supporting you was never a burden Stephen,” Karl said. “Because I love you. And I have never given you any chance to doubt that. But how am I good enough to be your mate but not good enough to be your confidant?”

“Karl,” Stephen sighed and looked at him with eyes that begged. “I just need you to trust me. Please.”

Karl stared at him, his warm brown eyes melting at the sight of his alpha pleading. He put aside himself, as he endlessly did, and embraced his Supreme.

“My trust, just like everything else of mine, is yours,” Karl said. “And I just hope that one day you can look me in the eyes and say the same.”

#doctor strange #stephen strange #karl mordo #strordo #ask and answer #thank you nonny #stephen strange/karl mordo #otp feels #master mordo #earth 838 #supreme strange/baron mordo #supreme stephen/master mordo #baron mordo #omegaverse #omega!karl mordo #omega!mordo #omegaverse dynamics

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